In this episode of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, dive into an engaging conversation with Bobby Steinbach of Mean Pug Digital and the Hot Docket Podcast. Explore the world of legal marketing, the entrepreneurial journey, and how to build a standout brand in the competitive landscape of law. Whether you're a seasoned attorney or new to the field, this discussion offers valuable insights into growing a law firm and staying ahead of the curve. Tune in for an episode packed with actionable advice!
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.
In this episode of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, dive into an engaging conversation with Bobby Steinbach of Mean Pug Digital and the Hot Docket Podcast. Explore the world of legal marketing, the entrepreneurial journey, and how to build a standout brand in the competitive landscape of law. Whether you're a seasoned attorney or new to the field, this discussion offers valuable insights into growing a law firm and staying ahead of the curve. Tune in for an episode packed with actionable advice!
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.
You know, it's pretty interesting because we were always of this mindset going into it that perfect firm for us, huge personal injury firm, because that's what we've got experience building into coming from Morgan Morgan, being in-house there for three and a half years. So we thought we had this like really unique mindset that would be where we'd be able to bring the most value. I think what time has shown is we actually offer a ton of value to firms of all shapes and sizes. I personally love building brands from the ground up. Where they've got nothing, they come to us. And then we've got a firm in Wisconsin that we've now built to. I think they have five or six attorneys and they're getting more cases than they know what to do with.
Speaker 2:And to me that's obviously like dream client dream scenario from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. This is Ben Glass. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast where I get to interview interesting people inside and outside of legal who are making a ding in the world. I had a great interview today, a great discussion, with Bobby Steinbach of Mean Pug Digital and the Hot Docket Podcast, and recently I was on Bobby's program and we just had a great conversation and got along fine and before we went live I told him you know, I wouldn't want to be in your space because I think it's really challenging. And then, of course, all the billable hour lawyers that would never be in the contingent fee space, and so everyone's always like either the grass is greener over there or I'm good here and I don't want it.
Speaker 3:So I'm really looking forward, bobby, to talking about a lot about your entrepreneurial journey and your business and how you stay competitive and all that stuff. Yep, me too. Thanks for having me on, ben. Yeah, so let's start here. What is the scope of MeanPug Digital? Who's your avatar, probably size, or even case type of client, and then what's the array of services, at the end of the day, someone could acquire from you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty interesting because we were always of this mindset going into it that perfect firm for us, huge personal injury firm, because that's what we've got experience building into coming from Morgan Morgan, being in-house there for three and a half years so we thought we had this really unique mindset that would be where we'd be able to bring the most value. I think what time has shown is we actually offer a ton of value to firms of all shapes and sizes. I personally love building brands from the ground up. Where they've got nothing, they come to us and then we've got a firm in Wisconsin that we've now built to I think they have five or six attorneys and they're getting more cases than they know what to do with. And to me that's obviously like dream client dream scenario. So I wouldn't say there's like an avatar in terms of size or practice area. It's more avatar in terms of type of person or firm that we would work with.
Speaker 1:Right, if you come to us, you're choosing to go with a firm called MeanPug Like just think about that for a second. You chose not to go with you know a quote, unquote straight up the middle agency by going with us. So I think you have to go into that eyes wide open, understanding that our process just looks a little bit different than going with another firms might have. So that's the answer to that. In terms of what we do, we are full service. So we do everything from branding to web design and development, seo, ppc, traditional media operations, consulting, strategic consulting, you name it. We do it if it helps grow a law firm and we think that is crucial for your marketing partner to be that all-in-one kind of solution.
Speaker 3:Give me some sense of the scope of firms under roof that you have in your portfolio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we've got firms that are like just started out. We launched a firm a week and a half ago, so we've got firms that are brand new. And we've got firms that are 200 plus attorneys, so really wide range.
Speaker 3:That is wide range, and you spoke a little bit about your Morgan Morgan. It's part of your background, so let's start before that. How did you become you and get interested in the entire space of advertising for lawyers, digital marketing but your space is broader than quote digital marketing, but your space is broader than quote digital marketing, for sure. So talk to us a little bit about that, because I'm always curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we have a pretty interesting genesis. So prior to Morgan Morgan, andrew and I were actually some of the first employees at a startup in New York City Ruckus for anybody who's big into like secondary tickets, I was the first engineer there. He was the first paid digital guy. I started there in like 2014. I think he started in 2015. We grew that to just over 30 employees before an exit and then we were kind of bouncing around.
Speaker 1:What do we do next? Where do we go? Naturally, the answer after a startup is go to the biggest personal injury law firm in the us. That's a pretty standard transition. So I think like that makes that's. It's a pretty interesting genesis because our roots are not in legal, our roots are in startups and I think we bring that to a lot of our work where we try and iterate really quickly. We try and come up with ideas really quickly and find traction. We're not playing around as if we have monopoly money and just do the same thing everyone else does because it doesn't really matter. You're a law firm, you'll get cases organically month over month. That's not the mindset we have going in. We want to try unique things to move the needle.
Speaker 3:What's interesting and I'm sure you've discovered this is most lawyers. Really. You're coming from a world where the language is different, oftentimes the scopes of the project and the scopes of the money is different and, as you've just described, like the way they think, the way startups and those who are backing startups think, it's just so totally different from the way that got me into law school, right, identifying issues and being able to go this is black, this is white, and I can eliminate the least likely answer on a four question, on a four part answer on a test, and so that's fascinating. So, if you can like, how did you find Morgan Morgan or they find you guys?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Andrew had actually been doing like a little bit of contracting with them while we were at the startup and they had been going through this process internally where they knew their ambitions kind of outran their current structure. They wanted to try something completely different and you know we were part of that. Answer is like bringing in a really experienced digital marketing team in-house.
Speaker 3:And so was this more or less the start of the digital marketing team for real at Morrison.
Speaker 1:It wasn't so. They, I believe, really started in like 2012 or 2013. Their COO, ruben, came into the company I think around then. It might have been just before, but they were initially out in Wall Street area, kind of like financial district. They had a floor in a building out there and when I joined they were in Brooklyn, like out in the Sunset Park area. So they moved, offices, had a huge industrial space. It wasn't like we weren't the first digital marketing people there, but we were that first wave of digital marketing people there.
Speaker 3:And if I ask a question that's outside the bounds of any NDA or anything but did you have any experience with law firms at all? Lawyers?
Speaker 1:intimately. I mean, besides family, no, my mom's a lawyer. I mean I've got some extended family who are lawyers, but no, my mom's a lawyer. But I don't have any like work experience with lawyers.
Speaker 3:Gotcha, and so this is around 2012 or so.
Speaker 1:I went there in 2016. Okay or yeah, 2016. In 2012, I was still in college.
Speaker 3:All right, so it's not all that long ago that they were taking the leap, I think, to go bigger, right To have a different, as you said, a different view of what they wanted to build here.
Speaker 3:It's first quarter of 2024. So I guess eight years or so, but the internet, as I recollect, was pretty competitive space even in 2016,. Right, I mean, I started back when literally took a class at Errol's on HTML to create some of the first websites way back in the day, which you can find if you go on the Wayback Machine, I think, for Ben Glass Law, the prior version of Ben Glass Law, and so I'm curious, in that iteration and discussions about between you and the law firm, how do we take this to levels that maybe no one's ever been before? What was that like? Because it sounds like that's an entrepreneurial bunch who is getting smart engineers in, but they're still lawyers. So that's the thing that holds most of us back is that we're still lawyers and we're kind of close-minded thinking. What was the experience like, though, working with a group that wanted to go bigger than anyone had seen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, once I learned the basics of legal, it became pretty fascinating. That's the thing when you're in this day-to-day, it becomes hard to forget what your learning process was like and how difficult it was to understand, even at the very basics, what contingency fee even meant. What does it mean free unless you win? How does that make sense? Even that was a learning process. And then there's just simple jargon that you might not have heard before, things like intake or retainer or whatever it might've been, and that's just like the ground groundwork right. Then you start talking about the different case types and practice areas and firms that operate where, and MDLs, and it just like blows your brain. So I, after I learned the basics, I started appreciating just how ambitious what they were trying to do was and just how different it was from anybody else in legal like, how different their approach to all of this is.
Speaker 3:You said something very interesting that I want people to pay attention to. So you are a smart guy college, startup and law firm and even the words no fee if no recovery you do not understand fully what that meant or how it could actually work, and it's one thing. As lawyers in the contingent fee space, we think everybody knows how we get paid, and not everybody knows how we get paid, and I think lawyers often mistakenly skip over that step in their communications to potential clients, Because unless you've had a situation where you need a lawyer, you just don't know. You don't know what you don't know Feels like a scam, yeah, yeah. And then when you get into it, though and here's the big challenge you find that everybody is using that language and now trying to figure out how to differentiate as a consumer, how to differentiate when you're trying to find a lawyer. All right, so when you left there, did you know, when you all were leaving, that you wanted to be in the legal marketing space?
Speaker 1:Nope, our first client was a CPA review course, so it was pretty much not the opposite of legal. It's still professional services, but it was not a law firm.
Speaker 3:How did you even get that?
Speaker 1:first client, personal relationship, yeah yeah, and it was like the type of client that you know we don't do now, and it was a totally different type of work than we do now too. We were building custom application on, like python, django and doing a react front, like all this like more complex software engineering than what we do now. What we do now is difficult in in the creative side of things. Building a brand is a hard thing to do, a differentiated brand but it is not a traditionally technically complex thing.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's a different side of the brain, I think. Completely right, that's a great place to go, because building a brand is hard. I work, you know I work with a lot of lawyers in the sort of solo and small firm market. Many of them have an 800-pound gorilla or bigger, you know in their market and they're always wondering how do I even start to compete? My answer has always started with they don't have all the cases, and all you need to do is count out how many continued fee law firms there are within, you know, 15 miles of wherever the center of the 800-pound beast is, and that proves that they don't have all the cases.
Speaker 3:So I think it would be interesting to walk through with you. A potential client comes to you and says and maybe they're not a startup like you've described, just launching a firm, that's a new launch but somebody who comes up their experience, they're in the market, they've done well. Maybe they're pissed off at their current marketing agency because that's one way these relationships end. Maybe they realize that the referral relationships are passing away and they're not getting as many of those cases. Walk me through the iterative process of figuring out are we going to be a good match for each other, because you said that's really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll tell you, our process is not super lengthy in terms of qualification of opportunities. We've got an initial call where we chat with you, understand what your needs are, what your pain points are and get a basic understanding of are we going to be a good fit for each other, right? And that question is mostly about are your expectations aligned with reality? Like you're like a guy in Miami and your budget's $5,000 a month and you're saying, hey, how do I beat Morgan to Morgan or how do I beat Rubenstein? Like the answer is you don't. You got to think about something. You got to think about what success means differently, right At that budget. So that's the first step is making sure that the expectations are aligned with reality. And if they're not, can they be aligned with reality? Right From there, our next step is going into like a very in-depth audit where we take a look at everything you're doing, both on-site and off-site, and say are you doing everything that you should be doing given your current resources?
Speaker 1:If the answer is yes, maybe you shouldn't work with us, right? Like I don't know that we would do things so differently than what's currently being done. If the answer is no, then there's like a potential fit. So in terms of, like your initial question, how do we iteratively walk through whether we're going to be a good fit for each other? It kind of follows that trajectory, but obviously there's a bunch of gray in between.
Speaker 3:It seems to me that one of the issues that many lawyers have is not actually lead acquisition, although that's what everybody says it is, but then they have so many holes in their bucket where a lead conversion is a place where they can be improved, I think. But let's talk about that lead acquisition, because everybody comes to us. Most everybody comes to us like how do I get more cases? And you're looking at budgets and reality and what are they doing? And now you accept the client and you get through your audit. What are you generally finding in these audits, Bobby, that are consistent across firms where you go? Here's where we can start, or here's the top three things we're going to work on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say, inevitably there's going to be a host of like on site SEO, technical issues, right, whether that is images, missing alts or broken external links or broken internal links like there inevitably will be that and it's not. That alone probably isn't like a good indication you're failing or you're succeeding where you are, but it is kind of a litmus test. If somebody is upkeeping your site or your site's being upkept, those should be narrowing in size and, like you shouldn't have more of those, shouldn't grow over time, they should shrink. So there is something to kind of be gleaned from tracking that from there. Typically, where we would usually concentrate is how does your backlink profile look like? Are you getting the links you should over time? And this is on the seo side, right. Yeah, there's a whole other type of concern we might look for on the paid side paid ads, or on the just like brand slash web development side. But specifically on like technical on-site, off-site SEO, we'd look at your backlink profile. Are you growing your link profile? Are they from the right sources? Is it just garbage links that are navigational, they're not in content, so just be able to look at that high kind of bird's eye view. There is typically something that can be done better than what's being done. So that's usually another area that's consistently underperforming and then zooming back out of SEO.
Speaker 1:The third, I think, is many agencies not all, but many agencies kind of look at problems myopically, and I don't know if that's a chicken or the egg type of problem. Are they looking at it myopically because they're structured as an SEO agency, so they're only looking at SEO, or is it kind of the opposite? Or wait, no, not, I was saying everything. When you're a hammer, everything you see is a nail. That's the yeah. So I think, because that is how many of these agencies are structured and there's like a ton of reasons why you should structure that way by, and there's like a ton of reasons why you should structure that way.
Speaker 1:By the way, I'm not shitting on that approach. Like it makes a lot of sense and I can tell you the number of times I've kind of stood back and been like, should we hyper focus on one or two things? Should we just be branding, web design development and paid ads or digital advertising? I've had that. I've asked that so many times because, like, yes, it makes your cost efficiency better as an agency, it makes it easier to staff. It makes it easier to build processes for one particular service. It makes it easier on the client acquisition side in some scenarios. There's a bunch of reasons to do it, but to me, I've always come back to one overriding reason not to do it, and it's that you won't be as effective as a partner because you're looking only in one very small aspect of marketing and advertising for problems and it's in your best interest to drive your client's budget entirely into that set of issues. So you will just always be misaligned in terms of objectives with your clients if you were single focused.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I think you're exactly right because, look, we know that marketing and building a law firm is hard, right, there's a lot of things that have to go right, and so I don't know if you play golf I tried once after four kids and stopped when the fifth came but you have to be really good at a lot of different skills to be a reasonably good golfer right, because you can hit the ball a long way. But if you can't putt boom and I think it's from my experience and I've been a consumer of agency services and I think it's rare that somebody actually understands and this may piss people off marketing first, I'm from the Dan Kennedy School of Direct Response Marketing. You know it has that broad scope of genuine. How do we influence the human brain stuff? Right, because so many are myopic, either by choice or it's just what they fell into and what they're good at. And that's one of the biggest challenges I think that our members have is working with someone who's only looking at one slice of a very complex pie.
Speaker 3:On the other hand, you know, to get somebody who's really good at marketing. Who's really good at marketing because, at the end of the day, digital is a media, speaking is a media, tv is a media. Right To get someone who's really good at it, you're going to pay a lot of money for that person, I think, or that agency. So good for you for doing that. How many people do you have under roof there that you can tap their expertise across the spectrum of marketing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got 22, 22 in-house here. So I like this. I always say this. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this because I always put it into our sales process, but I'll say it anyway.
Speaker 1:I always say that we're like a Goldilocks own agency, where we're not too little, not too big, right, if you are a two, three, four person shop, in many scenarios you're learning as you go, kind of like flying by the seat of your pants. Conversely, if you're like a scorpion or a fine law, it's just do you have a good account team or don't you? And it's total luck of the draw. If you do or don't, they might swap out, they might get burnt out by their company, whatever it is, it's just a massive company, it's an enterprise and that's what you're choosing to work with. I think that right now we are perfect size. If we grew above 40, I would say is the cutoff I could see how things might get away from us in terms of quality control, at least in our current setup. Obviously, we'll face that problem when we get there, but I think you just have a whole different set of challenges when you grow above like 40, 50, 60, something in that range.
Speaker 3:Well, you and your leadership team would need to acquire new skills, either yourself personally, or go out and buy them, hire them right, because that's a different beast than what you've grown into here, and law firms face the same thing. So you can have law firms that you know as they cross over seven figures, and then you know certain segments of multiple seven figures. It's a different world, and one of the things we try to help lawyers to do is to just be humble and recognize when you need to go out and buy talent and to get out of your own way, because the thing that slows down small law firms the most is the lawyer, leader, ceo, founder because he or she doesn't grow mindset-wise and business skill-wise as fast as the company needs.
Speaker 1:At what point do you typically tell them it's time to go find somebody?
Speaker 3:So it's an interesting question. So most of the lawyers that come to us are trying to get to seven figures. Right, they get through seven and get to a million dollars, to that $3 million range. And get to a million dollars to that $3 million range. That's the real what my friend calls the badlands, because you're not really big enough and you don't really have the revenue and the profit margin, even at those levels to acquire someone who's a superstar that you're going to need to go four, five, six, seven, eight million dollars. That's hard.
Speaker 3:So what we are trying to do is to give that lawyer leader typically the founder, as many skills as they can to get through the suck of the bad land.
Speaker 3:So again I say this and people get mad at me it's not that hard to build a seven-figure law firm. It just isn't right. And I understand perfectly that a lot of lawyers would think that statement is stupid, right, but that space between one and three, one and four, is a really hard space. I will come in and I will run the operations and I will understand numbers and, mike, you just go out, as I understand it like, you just go out and be the personality in front of the case and acquire the lawyers that'll serve the clients and help acquire the people. So that's our view and so typically you know, great legal marketing members, we're good, like our organization is good, teaching you up to about 5 million After that, like that's really outside of our space. And you know, guys like Ken Hardison and Mike Mogul, I think properly are more equipped above the five let's say, $5 million revenue mark to deal with and to teach and to take to the next level these law firms. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Awesome. Hey guys, this is Ben. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, Brian, and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time practicing attorneys. Check us out at GreatLegalMarketingcom.
Speaker 3:What do you see? So it's 2024, first quarter. Check us out at greatlegalmarketingcom. My Facebook page blows up some of the stupidest lead gen ads I've ever seen in my life of people jumping out of cars and waving checks and I can't believe the lawyers actually know these ads are running, making promises of you're going to have an AI lawyer but you don't need a lawyer. But it's all lead gen for lawyers. It's the stupidest stuff ever. Do you find the internet space like more challenging today than ever to get somebody up running scene? You know, quote unquote in the three pack used to be on the front page of Google. That's almost impossible to quote on the front page of Google unless you're in the three pack. I think yeah. So what, as guys and gals who are in that space trying to make people like me happy to the extent you're willing to share, how challenging is that now?
Speaker 1:It's challenging, it's very challenging. What I would say is I just think it's really important for lawyers to go into these engagements and processes eyes wide open. I would not go in expecting your marketing partner to do everything to turn your law firm from not getting cases to getting cases. Like, your marketing partner is there to enable a lot of the things you want to try to think about, things that might be effective and help you plan out and project what the effect of the things you want to try to think about, things that might be effective and help you plan out and project what the effect of those things might be. Those are all in scope, but expectations have to be tempered and there has to be like an understanding that you're going to throw 10 things at the wall. One might stick Like that is how successful marketing works. So I think it's really important to kind of get on the same page as an industry around how your marketing and the business play hands in these types of things In terms of like what works.
Speaker 1:I don't think I'm like breaking a secret or telling people anything they don't know when I say there's a handful of strategies at any given time which yield abnormal high results LSAs. Everybody's talking about LSAs. They are the format that works right now, but already you're seeing they're kind of not working. Lsas were the next big thing a a year ago and now they're not because everybody started doing it. So, but in terms of what tomorrow's next big thing is, I don't really have an answer besides saying you got to just do everything really well because there's so much junk out there. So if you cut corners and don't do it really well, you're better off just not doing it.
Speaker 3:Our message to lawyers would be and we may have talked about this, so we're about 80% of our money comes from humans, 20% of our money comes from what we would call pure digital. Like they went out searching for a lawyer or searching for information and somehow they ended up with us. And so we really because our market is a small firm market like really emphasize this human marketing capital, like, really emphasize this human cap, human marketing capital, because one of the reasons that lsa's become harder, I think, looking from the outside, is that google tracks well, did you actually answer the phone? And if you didn't, we're not putting you up like some up next batter, right, and so many law firms still today, despite the fact that there's a dozen or 20, quote unquote coaches, law firm coaches out there with substantial businesses, so many of them, so many lawyers, want to jump to the easy button I'll pay you, you get me the cases, and I'm going to be pissed in 30 days if you don't have me the cases. Like, that's the stuff I see Right Versus looking inside to their own systems, processes.
Speaker 3:Who do they hire? Are they listening to the phone calls, right? Does the potential client come away from that call feeling man, I'm so lucky I talked to ABC law firm today Like they were really good, they sound like they understand, and so that's the mix too, which leads me to my next question is do you all have a coaching aspect? Because you know my mogul coaching aspect, my friends at SMB. So services and products and coaching aspect, we're pure coaching. We don't sell any products or services, sell any products or services. What are you doing, if anything, for your law firm members or clients to say, hey, it's all this other stuff too soft skills, human business processes that you also should get right, because I can go out and get you leads, but if the client doesn't potential client doesn't walk away thinking this is the best day of my whole life, then you are going to get blamed. Actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not really our business, that's your business. I know that some of our quote-unquote competitors they have that as part of their businesses too. I put it in quotes because I think it'd be pretty narcissistic to call Crisp a competitor when they're what like a hundred million dollar company or whatever, and we're kind of playing in different stratospheres right now.
Speaker 1:So that's totally fine, I'm not like bemoaning it, but but yeah, I don't think. I just don't think that we are close enough to the backend operations of a firm to tell them anything that they don't already know or that like we have unique insight into. Like yes, you know we do call center auditing and kind of like high level tracking so we understand what's the pickup time, what's like the agent turnover time, things like that. We track it and we can help figure out whether there's an efficiency. But it kind of stops there.
Speaker 1:I don't think you want us telling you you know, yeah, I don't think you want me non-lawyer Bobby telling you you shouldn't have settled that early in the negotiation. You undercut like are you like low ball the price? Like me saying that gives zero value, because I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:Right. So certainly you would stay out of that space. But if you ever do want to complicate your life, like teaching lawyers how to train teams to sell and to you know, in the PI space, it's the turnover of money, it's the velocity of money that's the most important, as long as the client is being well served. There's so many processes. We're looking at every step of the process. How can I make this 1% better, 1% faster, 1% faster. The client likes it because he or she gets their money, lawyers like it because we get paid faster, and that's so much of the game of running a law practice is in these processes. But you've already had discussions of should we narrow our scope, not listen to Ben?
Speaker 1:And we do like that strategic consult. We call it strategic consulting where, with our partners, where it makes sense, we'll have weekly calls with Andrew and I and their partners and go over some of the high level things that they're seeing in the space where we think we can make improvements. If there's breakage on the back end in terms of intake to retainer, how can we improve it? We'll have those conversations. But I don't think it's coaching level, where it's not our primary business pointing these back end operations out and trying to guide them towards completion.
Speaker 3:Talk to me a little bit about the Hot Docket podcast. So podcasts take time and energy to produce and money to produce, right? So for you all and a lot of people have podcasts, right what are you using it for the business?
Speaker 1:I love it for the content angle. I mean it for the business. I love it for the content angle. I mean I think it just creates a bigger footprint on web. It makes a nice feature to like a lot of our content, nurturing sequences and general drips and we get to just form more relationships. I've always been a believer in this concept of collisions. I don't know if you know, have you heard of Tony Hsieh? Does the name Tony?
Speaker 3:Hsieh ring a bell. Yeah, sure, zappos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also more recently of like self-emoliation.
Speaker 1:Of all that, yes, yeah. So he was a big believer in this concept of collisions, to the point where he built basically a mini city in Las Vegas to facilitate people colliding more often. Having more of these day-to-day interactions and the ramification there is you're creating a network effect, right, like more people talking about the things that matter just brings up industry level and makes everyone more successful. Like rising tide raises all ships. So I'm also a believer in that. I don't anticipate that we're going to like talk to somebody who's a potential client on the on the podcast and then convert them. That's just like not the way this industry is set up. That's not the way our sales process is set up. It's just not what we're doing it for. We're doing it so that we can have more conversations about interesting topics with people who are in our space.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's fun. So Brian and I each have a podcast and we do it. We get to talk to experts like you 45 minutes or so and ask all the questions that are running through our heads about how to build a better practice. Tell me about Mean Pug Digital. Where did that name come from? And you're wearing your Pugs t-shirt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually got her down. She's like right below me. I'm not going to drag her out, she's sleeping, but we have a bug it's. I always like to tell everybody this. It's the story doesn't do the brand justice. It's like a very boring story for a very interesting brand.
Speaker 1:But in like tldr the short version is andrew and I have been like going back and forth on trying to figure out a name for five days, six days, whatever it is. Everybody who's gone through this process understands the frustration of you know. Is the domain name available? Is the brand name sticky? Is it too long? Is it stupid? Like going back and forth on that five days and eventually we're like, okay, we need to just come up with a name, because this isn't what matters. We could have the best name in the world, but if we have no clients, who cares? So we were both like hey, we like MailChimp as like a brand. We really think it's like a fun, sticky, kind of like in your brain type of a brand. What can we do? That similar, hyper-focused on animal? So they had chimp. What do we have? Oh, I like pug pug. What would be good in front of pug? Okay, angry pug taken Like nice pug kind of stupid. So where do we land Mean pug? Meanpugcom is available.
Speaker 3:And it was available. That's how you get a brand. So that was the iteration 20 years ago Great legal market. I'm sitting in my room thinking of different combinations and seeing if they were available. Who else should lawyers who are running small law firms be listening to? Do you think, in terms of learning about marketing, digital marketing, even outside of legal SEO in general, what are some good we call them reliable authorities that you think that are worth listening to?
Speaker 1:Andy Sickle is good in legal Outside of legal. Honestly, it's really hard because of what I talked about at the very start of this podcast. Half the challenge is learning legal and understanding these clients client like the customers in our space, or clients in our space, the unique case types, what funnels work for who. So, like I think it's just as easy to go down the wrong path listening to someone outside the space as it is to not. That said, it's not a podcast, but I think a really good resource is Steve Toth and his SEO notebook. It's like a weekly or biweekly newsletter. That is excellent. There's always a lot of good tips and another one is SEO FOMO. That's another really good newsletter.
Speaker 3:Well, look, this has been awesome. Is the website meanpugdigitalcom you could, or you could go to meanpugcom, that'll be easier. Meanpugdigitalcom you could. Or you could go to meanpugcom, that'll be easier. Meanpugcom. I saw you had a number of resources that folks can go and download and are most of the folks who come to you. How are you getting your clients Referrals, or are you cold calling people and getting them to?
Speaker 1:break down. You know this too. What's that famous quote? 90% of my money works, but I don't know where it's going. I don't know the quote.
Speaker 3:Half my marketing money works.
Speaker 1:I just don't know what's happening from doing good, solid work for four years plus now. Outside of that it's kind of like your standard find referral sources that link that have good traffic. So for us, clutch, for instance, tends to generate good traffic in market buyers and just good old human referral. Those are pretty much our bread and butter.
Speaker 3:Are you on the seminar circuit too? Do you guys go to events?
Speaker 1:We do. You can find us at all the big like MTMP, aaj, mtl. We're at all those. I would love to start doing a little bit more of the speaking circuit and do some more educational type of stuff too, because anybody who's been to those conferences knows a large part of it is not the educational part, it's like what happens around the event.
Speaker 3:A hundred percent, you know, and the. I think the opportunity there for you is huge because literally there's one of these every two weeks. It seems to be both virtual and live in person, and I think people like us are always looking for good speakers who can deliver value to the audience there. And then someone goes oh, let's have a further chat Again. I think your space is challenging because I do think people get entrenched in it is they find it challenging to move, I think, from one digital agency in particular to another. Am I overstating that?
Speaker 1:I mean, the promise seems to be come to us and it'll suck for six months and then it'll get back and then, in a year from now, you'll love me, I don't think you're overstating it and I think I just tack one thing onto that People don't want to move, and the reason people don't want to move is they think everyone sucks. So you're kind of in this position where they hate you, but they also don't want to move because they think everybody sucks. So it's not great. It's not a great. Yeah, there's like a perception problem in this space, for sure.
Speaker 3:Well, there's like a perception problem in this space for sure. Well, I think you overcome that. I think you can start to overcome that by speaking right, getting on your podcast. Like, people listen to this stuff, they realize you're not an idiot. Come on other podcasts and you can get live on stage. I mean, that's the big thing, like putting no like and trust, and when the only thing you're ever doing is fielding off LinkedIn inbound unsolicited calls for your SEO budget? Right, lawyers like to hear from people who act like they're not idiots, and you are yeah, it's an education problem.
Speaker 3:You and Andrew are great guys. You're running a cool little business there and this has been fun. This has been fun as I thought it would be my friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, ben, it's really good. I enjoyed it All right.
Speaker 3:Say hi to Andrew. We'll talk soon. Will do, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks. If you like what you just heard on the Renegade Lawyer podcast, you may be a perfect fit for the great legal marketing community. Law firm owners across the country are becoming heroes to their families and icons in their communities. They've gone renegade by rejecting the status quo of the legal profession so they can deliver high quality legal services coupled with top-notch customer service to clients who pay, stay and refer. Learn more at greatlegalmarketingcom. That's greatlegalmarketingcom.