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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
From Woo-Woo to Whoa: Conscious Marketing for Serious Growth
Can marketing be spiritual? Can personal growth drive a 10x ROI?
Jordan Whelan thinks so—and he's got the receipts to prove it. In this episode, Ben Glass sits down with the founder of Gray Smoke Media, a one-of-a-kind marketer who blends metaphysics, mindset, and media mastery to scale law firms with soul.
From building Canada’s largest injury firm to launching a music career with millions of streams, Jordan’s path is anything but typical—and neither is his approach to legal marketing.
You’ll learn:
- Why mindset is the real marketing multiplier
- How to compete with Goliath law firms on a David-sized budget
- The surprising media channel Jordan uses to drive 30,000 clicks a month quietly
If you're ready to grow your firm with creativity, strategy, and something deeper, this one's for you.
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.
I think, on a personal level, where I'm at and what the company that I want to build, on a spiritual level and a personal level, I will say that if I don't feel that I want to see you succeed, I have no interest in working with you. Interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you a good person? Do you speak to your staff a certain way? If we go for lunch, how do you treat the server? I know how to make people rich. I've made them rich in various industries. I know how to make people rich. I've made them rich in various industries. I know how to do it, Um, and I understand the leverage that I have in that sense. So for me it comes down to do. I want to help you, hey everyone.
Speaker 2:This is Ben. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast where every episode is. Our listeners know I get to interview someone inside or outside of legal. Today it's cool. I've got Jordan Whelan on the line here and on the video. Jordan is the founder of a company called Gray Smoke Media Interesting background as a TV and radio producer and publicist and has now managed over $3 billion in class action claims communications.
Speaker 2:So he found the legal marketing space and he's doing really cool stuff. In addition to that, he's a musician, so we'll talk about that a bit. But Jordan and his company are helping lawyers solve new problems, as he told me before we went live, and really helping those firms that are trying to be the top echelon firm in a local area or, I imagine, nationally. So we'll talk about that. It's always important for our listeners to have insight into what some of these firms that have a lot of money to spend like. What are they doing? How do they think? Because, at the end of the day, most firms are not like that and most firms are trying to compete with firms with large marketing budgets, and Jordan's got some great ideas about that as well. So welcome to the program, my friend.
Speaker 1:I'm honored to be here. Your background looks very much like mine.
Speaker 2:It does. Yes, we have the same. Some artist came in and did this for me, so I don't know how you got yours, but mine is wallpaper completely. Yeah, I think, uh, I don't know how it got here, they just make it nice for me. Um, so let's talk a little bit, because you're a young guy but you've had an interesting journey and you've actually done a bunch of different things. So talk to us a little bit, jordan, about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get to where we are today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean, I'm not that young, I just use a methylene blue on my skin. But we can talk about that another time. My background's in media I was a radio and television producer that then transitioned into PR found that space really interesting. That's kind of a natural kind of transition a lot of people go out of media into. But while I was in the media space I sort of realized how you could use earned media and elevate it to. You know they call it free advertising PR, right, but you could use very smart ways to get in the six o'clock news techniques like newsjacking, and then how you could leverage those for things like SEO or your SERPs results.
Speaker 1:And as I was working at this PR firm, I started working with a client named Diamond and Diamond At the time they were about a 30-person injury firm that had just started advertising Personal injury. Advertising wasn't really a big thing in Canada at the time this is probably about 12 years ago and so I started doing their PR and as time went on they sort of said well, can you do this for us? Can you do this for us? We're growing really quickly. Today they're the biggest personal injury firm in Canada, biggest real estate law firm in Canada.
Speaker 1:They've expanded beyond to corporate wills and estates office in the US at the moment, and I think it's 19 offices across the country, and what I learned during that is completely self-taught. I went from being their PR firm to being their media buying agency, to assisting with digital strategy, and over the past 12 years I've really learned the recipe on how to create a massive law firm. I've negotiated major sporting deals with NFL, nhl, but I really got to see how all these little parts of marketing work together for a law firm and I've also learned the psychology of lawyers. I've learned how to deal with them and since then, obviously other law firms have reached out to me about working with Gray Smoke Media.
Speaker 2:What did you learn as you were learning the psychology of lawyers? What, if anything, surprised you about the way we think about the world, or think about business, or think about working with partners like you and developing our practices?
Speaker 1:The ones that are successful in marketing are deferential when they need to be deferential. The ones that quickly fail are the ones that carry over their arrogance from law school to their marketing, thinking that they know better and thinking that they have the time to learn all the nuances of the marketing. One of the great things about my client, diamond to Diamond, that I really say to a lot of people is they just listened, they knew when to shut their mouth, they had an intuition about let's do this, but they really were deferential to individual experts and subspecialties, from everything from SEO to AdWords, and that's something I noticed. The second thing is I noticed they're great clients because they're usually quite busy and they don't really have time to bother you with emotional outbursts which can extend to other industries, and they are very concerned with the numbers, which is exactly how we operate. We are not here for emotionalism, we're here for results. We're here to get people to the final echelon and 10x, 20x their spend. That's how I operate.
Speaker 1:One of the criticisms I have about doing business in Canada versus America is that in America it's very much a transaction where we're both have skin in the game. In Canada, it's a very emotional experience and so that's been something that I've, you know, social mores of moving here I've had to kind of adjust to, and I much prefer America in that sense. But overall I think the lawyer that's going to make it to the final echelon, or get to where they need to be, is the one that takes the time to understand their client. They take the time to understand what their unique value proposition is, if they even have one. That's another thing that's very interesting is a lot of them don't even they think that their you know beautiful face, their beautiful website, their history is enough to set them apart from the thousands of other law firms, and I'm here to tell you that that's not really how marketing works.
Speaker 2:Of course, yeah and so, or in the old Brahmite like, just do good work and they will come, which probably did work. You know, I often tell people I've been practicing for 42 years now and you know, back in the day, the media was the yellow pages, tv, radio, and in order to get to know a lawyer, you had to make an appointment and go to a meeting, right. And today consumers can, quote, meet with a dozen lawyers in an hour just by going to watch their YouTube videos and their social media and their website. So it's a completely different world. Let me ask you this as you were starting a new client engagement yourself, you mentioned a number of things like what's their value proposition? Do they even know that what their value proposition is?
Speaker 2:Walk us through Jordan, sort of a framework of your discovery call or your discovery process of do I want to work with these guys and gals at all number one? And then, if so, how do I help them differentiate themselves, particularly in the PI space, right, how do I help them differentiate themselves? So how do you, as a company, discover how you can best help a particular law firm?
Speaker 1:I think, on a personal level, where I'm at, and what the company that I want to build on a On a personal level, where I'm at, and what the company that I want to build on a spiritual level and a personal level, I will say that if I don't feel that I want to see you succeed, I have no interest in working with you. Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you a good person? Do you speak to your staff a certain way? If we go for lunch, how do you treat the server? I know how to make people rich. I've made them rich in various industries. I know how to do it of quantum physics and lots of work from people like Joe Dispenza to bring abundance and wealth into people's life. But also on a subconscious level, if you're dealing with a person that has a scarcity mindset, fear-based mindset, they will never get to the final echelon because they will be their own worst enemy. So that's on a personal, metaphysical, spiritual level. Beyond that, I don't work with anyone who's in infancy stage, because I don't deal with websites and I don't deal with that initial kind of growing pains of a law firm.
Speaker 1:I deal with people that really are looking to expand geographically or in services, but I can quickly sort of suss out how much they understand themselves and their clients by probably about 20 different questions. For example, what is your unique value proposition? How do you get trust from people? How do you position yourself as an authority? A big thing that's factoring into SEO now, in the future, with Google, is expert authority and trust. They call it EAT. How are you positioning yourself like that? Do you have a podcast like you do? Are you all over the internet? Do you have reviews? Are they real? How do you have press hits?
Speaker 1:If someone's sort of in that space, then I can ask them the final question, which is where do you see yourself in five years, which is quite a trite question, but it's really about how can we help you and is it a fit pushing beyond the 10% of your revenue, going up to, say, 20%, and do you have that capacity inside of you, to that risk tolerance, to go there? Because it's a little bit scary in the beginning, especially when you do a radio campaign. It takes six months to get traction. Seo could take a year to take traction, to get traction. So there's a trust element that I have to build with you. Obviously my resume speaks for itself, but, um, you know we have to, we have to, we have to build with you. Obviously my resume speaks for itself, but you know we have to, we have to, we have to have a connection on a certain level, otherwise it's not going to work.
Speaker 2:Your description of what you look at. In a personal level, you and I would be very much aligned. I've always felt but have found it difficult to find partners, vendor partners who get that that if we are going to do business together there's actually an unlimited pie in a win-win relationship that can be born. I found it and I'm curious about your experience. I found it and I'm curious about your experience. I found it very challenging to find people running companies who think like you just described. You think because I think that that is a higher level of consciousness. It is beyond transactional. It is for me like long-term mutual growth. So my question is where did that come from for you? Is that some? Is that a household that you grew up in? Is that what you heard at the breakfast table or did you assimilate this type of thinking at this? It is a higher consciousness level of thinking.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah uh, well, the first thing is I was sick for 18 years. I had a chronic illness. Uh, from the time I was 18 to 36, um, I um took a drug called accutane and the long story is it was in a hospital's most of my life. Um, I'm, oddly, very grateful for the experience because it's taught me compassion for people and it's taught me self-reliance. On a certain level, it also is what led to my higher consciousness awakening, in the sense that I was told I had to have surgery. I was told I was going to live with a colostomy bag the rest of my life, and I knew from a higher level that it was not in my journey to me bag the rest of my life, and I knew from a higher level that it was not in my journey. And then I used the work of people like Joe Dispenza and different teachers metaphysically to essentially cure myself. And then that extended over into other facets of my life, seeking out spiritual teachers and questioning really everything.
Speaker 1:It's interesting what you mentioned. You know about so many people. What plagues them in this space, this marketing space, is the zero sum game, right, that there's not enough space for everyone, that there isn't enough money, even though there's trillions of dollars sloshing around all the time. That comes from deep childhood programming and just programming from society. And I actually had a client that I just couldn't work with anymore. I had to sever the relationship just because I couldn't fill that void for them. I couldn't. I think I was making them probably over 150,000 a month and I personally couldn't make them feel safe. I couldn't make them feel like it was enough, that they were enough, and that's something I just can't. That's not my job. It's certainly the job of more of a spiritual or psychologist to kind of get around that. But I am, you know, I do a lot of psychedelics, I meditate a lot.
Speaker 1:I'm in a different kind of space and that's what's actually allowed me to get extremely creative with the marketing I do. For example, you know I'm a songwriter, singer. I started in June. I'm at like 4 million streams now and people ask me how I do it and the answer is I connect to a higher power and I largely channel these songs and then I use marketing psychology. Right now I'm driving 30,000 clicks a month from a website that people don't really use for marketing.
Speaker 1:But that's something I sort of just grabbed for me being able to go inward. So that's really what you hire me for and our agency for is it's really to say what can you come up with that no one else can? I had a pharmaceutical company email me during COVID and was like publicly traded? I was like we have this problem, can you fix it? Just a referral from a friend and by going inward and sort of examining things and thinking about things from a higher conscious perspective, we were able to come up with a really tailored solution for them. And I know it sounds woo-woo to most people listening not to you, but it really is. What is the impetus for a lot of this?
Speaker 2:Well, and woo-woo is exactly the word I use to describe so I have a personal mindset spiritual business coach. Oh, there we go. His name is Sammy Chong, out of Toronto. When Sammy and I first started working together six or seven years ago, I'm like Sammy, this is woo-woo, I don't get it right. But he directed me to a number of books and other resources and I yet you discovered I'm hearing you say you discovered this other world, my words through your long chronic illness journey. But at some point was there somebody who was in your life that said listen to this guy or gal. Here's a book, here's a resource, here's something that might help you. Because I find, jordan, that there's times when people come into your life that will change the trajectory of your life if you listen and that they're coming at the right time. Did you have that experience at all?
Speaker 1:that they're coming at the right time. Did you have that experience at all? Yeah, I mean, I was completely unconscious till about 36 years old, believed in nothing. This woman in Bali, actually last year, is the one that I met who said you know, you're supposed to be a musician. This is what you've been searching for your whole life, to you know, trying to find your purpose. And I had no musical background. I'd never written a song. I had struggled with it and after she had put me through a lot of healing, I was able to write songs in 20 minutes that are now on the radio.
Speaker 1:So then that sent me on this journey, just to keep discovering, questioning everything. I don't even think necessarily. You know it doesn't sound mooboo to us, but you know people can't deny what's happening on a quantum physics level, right, everything's energy particles. You're essentially just collapsing probabilities and it sounds woo-woo, but when you really break it down, it's really not. So that allowed me to say, okay, what am I attracting to my life? What are these people I'm attracting to my life? What are they teaching me? What are my ex-cli clients teaching me?
Speaker 1:And it really does extend to a lot of the marketing stuff right here, because you cannot connect with people if you don't understand their motivations or how they are a reflection of you. So that informs the sort of marketing recipes that I create is trying to understand. You know this whole thing. Why does someone bother you? Why do they trigger you? Because you see yourself in them. So I've incorporated a lot of that into this. But if people shut me down or they don't really are open-minded to it I mean obviously you are then I don't really press on words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was going to be. My next question is like, do you have the discussions that you and I are having with your clients, like even on a sort of because I think you alluded to this like on a discovery basis? You want to at least assure yourself that this is a person who may not be at the same stage of consciousness that you are, but at least is open to the idea, right, that life is more than transaction, transaction, transaction just go and do it that there is something bigger. So I'm just and maybe you've had no clients that you've had a discussion like this with, but I'm curious how much this plays in your life as you're thinking about how do I make this law firm more money.
Speaker 1:I meet people where they are right. I meet people where I see them and where I can sort of suss out where they're at and where they're headed. Not even really on the quantum level you can really bifurcate this into. You have your quantum physics, you have your metaphysics law of attraction, stuff like that that can be separated from what is largely mentality, right. So subconscious reprogramming through subliminals, through meditation, through even.
Speaker 1:You know, the biggest thing for people to fix their life and I tell everyone is nervous system regulation. You know, if your nervous system is dysregulated you're in a fight or flight state you are not getting anywhere with on a personal level, professional level. That's something I had to really deal with. So I think at a minimum I tried to let people see what they could become, or let them see the best version of themselves, and that's shown through a marketing recipe.
Speaker 1:You know I could say I can say to a client very quickly if you spend this amount with me, I'll give you an example in the SEO space, the traffic set right, so you have 150,000 searches in an area. If I know, I can gobble up 15,000 of that. Let's say 20,000 of that over a period of 12 months. I then know the client's conversion rate maybe is 2%. So I can quickly work backwards and say to the client you know, if you pay me 10 grand a month we can bring in. You know, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:One client was like 10 grand a month we can bring in. I think it was like 165 a month, so massive ROI on the money and I can break down and work backwards on the numbers. But then if you don't A trust me or B trust yourself or even see it in your reality, then I'm not going to break through that and I'm not going to meet that resistance. And so some people have to see themselves as winners. They have to see themselves as that final echelon. They have to look in the mirror and look in their own eyes and be able to say I am this and I can become this and I want to build this. I would say less than 5% of people can do that.
Speaker 2:Um, and it's difficult to do to see yourself as worthy, even this is what I'm thinking as I'm speaking to you, and it seems to be such a foundational part of letting you do the work you were born to do. And yet you and I are talking about the, the, the 5% right, because most, most people are unconscious. They just are so fascinating, so we could do hours on this, let's-. Hey everyone, this is Ben again, just butting in here. If you don't already have a copy of my book Renegade Lawyer Marketing, you're really missing an opportunity to help your firm grow. This book is 300 pages of very practical advice for those of us who are running solo and small firms and who are not spending tens of thousands of dollars or $100 million on advertising. At Ben Glass Law, over 80% of our new leads start because a human being has mentioned our name, and in this book, brian and I share the secrets that make this possible.
Speaker 2:Now you can get the book over at Amazon, but if you do, you're going to miss out on three really terrific bonuses that are only available when you order the book from renegadelawyermarketingcom. Number one you're going to get our ultimate referral letter. This is the exact letter that we've used to drive referrals both from lawyers and other professional practice owners, including healthcare providers in our case, and has helped us accomplish our financial and growth goals. Second, you're going to get our intake success system, because what good is it to drive more cases to get more leads if you don't have a system and a person and a script for answering the phone when they do call? The intake success System is a complete course that will help you and your team convert more leads.
Speaker 2:And finally, you're going to get the notes from the latest Great Legal Marketing Summit. These are 100 pages of notes and slides from all of the speakers at our last summit and again, none of these bonuses are available on Amazon. Finally, if you like, after you buy the book, you'll be able to get on a 20-minute strategy call with either Brian or me. What we're really good at is helping you figure out what's the best use of your next dollar and your next hour in building the perfect practice to serve your life. So go over to renegadelawyermarketingcom pay shipping and handling and order your book today at LawyerMarketingcom pay shipping and handling and order your book today.
Speaker 1:I'll come back whenever you need me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So let's move to, because you've talked about PR, about SEO, a little bit. You have been involved in huge media spend, so building these sort of and you don't want to work with a novice right so there has to be a firm in place, certain marketing assets in place, a mission in place, like a deep knowledge, probably, of who we are actually trying to attract to the firm, right, but assuming you have somebody that comes to you that knows where they want to go and who they actually serve. Let's just talk about building that foundational pyramid first, to make sure that it's in place before we continue to build, before we can get to the point where someone can spend 10 and get 160 back.
Speaker 1:So the first question would be what have you done and what has worked and what hasn't worked? And then we can kind of dissect why didn't it work? Did it not work because of the execution? Was there just poor execution? Was it a bad idea? Did you not do it for long enough? I mean, people do radio ads for six weeks and then pull out, and to me that's absolutely crazy. You really need about six months of saturation.
Speaker 1:The first thing I look at is the digital landscape. What's great about SEO is you already know that in your space and geographic area there might be 100,000, 150,000 searches a month. That's already there. That's not just your actual search results, that's also your local search results. That's never going away. I mean, it's going to decrease with the AI, but that's already there. And so my question is how much of that do you currently gobble up?
Speaker 1:I like to tackle SEO first, because if I look and see that I can mimic your competitor's content strategy and link strategy and then really improve your local SEO, I can turn to you and say, listen, your competitor's got 25,000 hits a month to their website. I can take in eight months. I can get you half that, and then we work backwards on my ROI. That's the first thing I tackle, because that's there, that's not changing. It's not like I'm putting up a billboard and forcing you to stare at it. That's people that you're capturing in the exact moment of psychology, saying I need a lawyer, I need a personal injury lawyer, I need the best one. It's already there. I mean, I had a client improve their local search results and it probably brought in a million dollars a year and it took us like three months to do. I always tackle that first, even though that space is starting to change. To me that's the best, best area to get a local level. Psychological level. I'm not bothering people with ads. I'm just saying, hey, let me be a conduit to bring you from point A to point B.
Speaker 1:The second thing we do is we look at the AdWords. I am still a big fan of AdWords, so we look at the spend. We analyze where money's being wasted. We look at the long tail keywords. We look at things that are being done, that are budgets being wasted. If you have a good AdWords management company, you're probably fine, but it's not even that it's so. Many people spend money, drive traffic to their website. They don't use services like hot jar, which is basically going to analyze.
Speaker 1:When I come to your website, what do I do? Do I click off? Is there something really off putting about the homepage? Do you have 12 men and I'm a woman? Do I feel like I'm included here? Um, just what do I feel internally when I go to your website? The women, the reason, people, women like Beyonce is the music's good, but it's about how she makes them feel largely empowered, right. So what do I feel when I come to your site? What's the essence? And then, once we sort of tackle that early stuff your digital strategy you know some social media and stuff like that then we're a company that wants to move on to bigger spends, everything from at a home radio TV.
Speaker 1:I love radio. I still think it's great. It's still quite popular. The CPM is quite low on it. You can get down to like $4 CPM. It's the best for reach frequency. So I try to tackle that's like my early stage plan. Let's get the SEO going, let's get the site going, let's get the AdWords. I mean you can run a business just on SEO and AdWords. But then let's move into radio.
Speaker 1:I don't love social media for conversion, particularly if I see a lawyer on social media acting in a sophomoric manner. I don't feel it instills any level of trust. I don't really want a lawyer that's trying to be, you know, a clown let's be honest a lawyer who's, you know it's fun to be approachable, but that's a fine line. I want to be an approachable firm. That's nice because lawyers are kind of seen, as you know, standoffish. But then I don't want you to kind of I feel like you're being a star and that's a fine line that lawyers have to kind of watch where they're being too much of a jokester. Um, but that's kind of your main thing that you could run a multimillion dollar law firm just on that. You know some good content on the blog, the social media, and that doesn't cost you that much money. Um, the biggest fail I see by by law firms is they underspend on SEO. They come into a space and they say I want to spend five grand a month in SEO and it's like well, great, your competitor's spending 15 and you're in Miami, so don't expect X, y, z. And if you tell me you need to make an extra million dollars a year and that's my budget, like goodbye, because I'm not in the business of just taking people's money. I'm in the business of providing an ROI.
Speaker 1:And then the last sort of part about all this is really, with television, with out of home, with all these things, there needs to be a lot of effort put into the creative. What are we selling? At most, people can digest two buzzwords about your law firm. So what are two things that you would describe yourself? Are you approachable? Are you a law firm for the people? Do you have trust? Do you have a background? Whatever we're selling, that needs to be communicated. And then there's little things like if your ads have too many words, too many pictures. Simple, right, it's like music creation Simple, simplify, simplify all the way down to people.
Speaker 2:It's like music creation simple, simplify, simplify all the way down to people, not in a condescending way, but in a way that if I see you for 2.5 seconds as I turn my car.
Speaker 1:What do I remember? You started that. Sorry, it's very long-winded, ben I apologize.
Speaker 2:Information download no, it was awesome, but you started with local search and you said this is starting to change. And so what? As we are recording this in April of 2025, what are you seeing predicting?
Speaker 1:feeling in terms of local search and how it's starting to change. Well, first of all, seo in general is going to move towards and it's already starting. If you don't optimize your videos and pictures, alt text, if you don't label them in a way that they would lend themselves to voice text, you're going to be left behind, and same with any sort of searches. If you use weird characters or spacing and stuff that's not going to lend itself to voice, you're going to be left behind. I think the blog content on sites there's no longer that game where I mean I actually own a site that's like this, it's tagged and it's killing me, but where you could put up really high quality content and it would pull in people. Before because of the generative AI component of Google. Now, at the top, it's really just going to pull the main bullet points and people just read. They call it the zero space, right, so they're just going to read, you know. Question is how long do I have to file after a divorce? Instead of going to the family lawyer's website and reading the long winded blog? I just need the bullet points from the top side and reading the long-winded blog. I just need the bullet points from the top. So traffic across the board has gone down for everyone. So I think if you're a law firm that wants to continue to keep up, local SEO is going to be huge the amount of people that don't update content on their Google my Business which is such an easy win. To just put new content on there, new photos, optimize it for keywords it's such an easy win. That's crazy to not do that. I would absolutely do that.
Speaker 1:And then if you're writing blogs and content on your site, you want to lean into what makes you human. Anything that makes you human or anything anecdotal or from a compassionate angle, is going to be always going to win out with people. So AI is never going to replace the story of that client that you helped. Ai is not going to be able to tell the story of how you grew your law firm. That really tugs at people's strings. So that's what I tell people is lean into what makes you human and what you do. Ben, like having a podcast, being out there putting your face out there is super crucial for people, much more, I would say, than TikTok, having long-form conversations where I could go and watch you for an hour and know that you know what you're talking about and connect with you. I mean the amount of lawyers that just don't set up a camera and do that once a week. To me it's just crazy and it's fun, of course.
Speaker 2:And it's fun of course works, but then the client experience is a C because they haven't worked on that end of the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually can think of one particular person that couldn't keep up with the amount of business we were sending them. And I'm not trying to brag, it's just it's actually a growing pains problem. Um, well, in certain spaces you can farm the cases out right. It's a referral system, particularly in pi. You don't want to do a lot of that because if you, then you become notorious for being that kind of a firm. But that's kind of a workaround in the temporary space. But, um, I think so it's not as quick as people think.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, if I long term SEO, my track record is really strong. But SEO is a unique business is that you know you might go up 5% month three and then a 10% month six, because we can only grow it so fast. So I think there's time for people to adjust. With things like that. It's usually when someone really finds something that clicks really well that radio station that hits that soccer mom at 3pm and with that great creative that everyone remembers then all of a sudden the phone's off the hook and they can't keep up. I don't personally really concern myself with that. I just sort of asked the question. You know, are you prepared for what's required? It hasn't really been a massive issue for me. I think a lot of people they find a way to work around it and it's kind of what do they call it Like worst base, worst best case scenario, right when you're just so, the revenue is going up so quickly that you're like I can't even keep up, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. But you know, I I hear from from agencies all the time. It's like the lawyer says our work isn't working with. Then we went and listened to the calls and the team that's answering the calls doesn't know what they're talking about. They're not reselling the, the great idea to call the firm and and these leads that we are working hard and they are paying for to get are just not even being being acted on properly. So I wondered if you had faced that.
Speaker 1:found that I have, but there's workarounds. There's chatbots. Now there's Intaker's great, it's pricey but it's great. You can use some AI, you can leverage it, you can use services that will follow up with a text or an email. It's really about them kind of realizing. It's what you said.
Speaker 1:The calls are the biggest thing. Or sometimes the calls will go to the wrong number, they'll drop off and you've wasted it. You know in Miami you're paying $200 a click for personal injury law. So you know that's five, say five clicks a day. It was going to the wrong number. There's a grand that you just blew. But this is why you hire people like us, because then we kind of go into your leads and we go into your hot jar and we go oh, here's the problem. But usually at that point a lawyer's probably yelled at someone for no reason. They've probably been angry with one of their staff members for the wrong reason, or maybe for good reason, I don't know. I do put up a boundary with getting too involved in internal politics and the systems internally. If I can see that I'm driving tons of traffic to your website and it's converting, if you have a problem with your secretary, then I'm not really concerned me.
Speaker 2:What should firms who are, let's say, they're in a geographic area and they're competing against one of the firms that you are managing and helping to get leads and they don't have the budget, give me some sort of a framework for what these firms can do to not be overrun by the firms that are highly successful at advertising and marketing their practices?
Speaker 1:The first thing I would do is I would mimic their content strategy.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Ben. I just want to butt in here during the podcast to give a shout out to one of our major supporters of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, my good friend, jonathan Hawkins. Jonathan is a part of our in-person mastermind group but, more importantly, he's the founder of Law Firm GC, which you can find at yourlawfirmgccom, and Jonathan serves as outside general counsel for law firms. His clients are lawyers. He represents lawyers and law firms from formation to dissolution and everything in between. Jonathan helps attorneys and law firm owners identify, understand and navigate the legal, business and ethics-related issues.
Speaker 2:And you know, you'd think that lawyers would know all this, but they don't. They're so busy running their own practices. They're experts in their own niche and Jonathan is a guy who's going to make sure you don't make any silly mistakes informing your partnerships, dissolving your firm, firing lawyers, hiring lawyers, setting compensation schemes everything that a lot of us never think about until it's way too late. We want to thank Jonathan for being a big supporter of the podcast. Invite you to go check him out at yourlawfirmgccom. That's yourlawfirmgccom. Yes, jonathan will talk to you, no matter where you are in the country. All right, now back to this episode.
Speaker 1:Better you can look at what they're doing. You could leverage AI to sort of look at what their blog content is. You can use programs like RFs and stuff to see what they're doing. You could leverage AI to sort of look at what their blog content is. You can use programs like RFs and stuff to see where they're getting most of their traffic from. It's an inexpensive way to spend maybe 10, 20 grand mimic their strategy and essentially steal their traffic from them by writing superior content, more video in bed doing a podcast like you, that's an easy win. The local seo is another easy win. Um, just quick updates, keywords, optimization, stuff like that. It's relatively inexpensive. And then, as you get to sort of another level, I mean there's traffic sources. I don't give this one away because this is kind of like my, my thing, but there's a traffic source I use right now. That's a social media network. It's top 20 in the world but almost no one talks about it. It's not one of the major ones. I have built content on there that can drive. That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't want to say it's kind of my secret. Maybe I'll tell you offline, but the principle is it's out of category. Is it going where others aren't? Yes, and figuring it out.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's how I have built my music career. Actually, to get so many streams is I didn't go on TikTok, I got out of the sandbox and went elsewhere. But the main thing and you could do it internally or hire someone like us, it's just creativity, right, or someone like us, it's just creativity right. So, for example, if I know that your competitor has built an ad campaign around a specific word that they use that's not trademarked, I can then optimize your site for that keyword and steal all their traffic and neutralize their ad campaign. So, for example, if your client spends a million dollars saying that their main keyword that you see everywhere I don't even know, I'll just imagine an adjective of some sort and then this consumer psychology is thinking oh, what's that? Law firm? That's like always, you know, reliable highly reliable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, perfect.
Speaker 1:So then I can build landing pages and I can optimize your website so that you come up number one for that keyword term. So if they search that specific keyword term, then they actually end up on your site, which then neutralizes their campaign is and what they're doing and what they're selling, and try to, you know, find a way to be more attractive to people. Simplify. Colors are, you know, obviously evocative. So you want to do things like that. It's listen. If a competitor is spending $3 million a year and your budget's $200,000, I'm not going to pretend that you can compete, but I will say that honestly. If the delta's like half a million dollars, you could still outperform them because they've let their egoic mind get in the way. And if you are able to have a lawyer that's quite open-minded and deferential to someone like ourselves, then we can find a way to creatively compete. And there's lots of ways to do it. But on a personal level, even just getting out in the community and swapping- a local hockey team and shaking some hands, it goes a long way 100%.
Speaker 2:And so I'm in the DC market, right, and people will ask me well, so-and-so law firm is now in your market advertising. We're like, well, we don't even notice. Well, so-and-so law firm is now in your market advertising. We're like, well, we don't even notice, it doesn't affect our numbers at all, because of what we have built here, which is, I mean, over 80% of our dollars come because a human being mentioned my name or my son's name or the law firm name to another human being and that started the journey.
Speaker 2:They may go and touch all of our digital spaces, but because we have such a significant reputation as call these guys, you can trust them. If they don't do the thing that you have, the problem you have, they probably know somebody who does it. And, being deeply embedded in part because we grew up here in the community, in the gyms, in the schools, in the sports teams, all of that stuff is how we have been able to do it. Let me ask you this, because you've mentioned radio a couple of times and there are many people that say, well, radio is kind of a dying media, because, like, who listens to radio? Because you're listening to some streaming content when you're driving in a car and who has the radio on. But you have found success, obviously, in radio. You've talked about it a little bit, so let's just for a couple of minutes here, as we're getting close to wrapping up, like talk to us about the media radio.
Speaker 1:Okay, radio Okay. So I mean, yes, radio is not as big as it was 10 years ago, but the numbers are actually still quite substantial. Um, obviously they've lost some of that traffic to podcasting. Um, but the problem with podcasting if you're going to run podcasting ads in any way, they're very expensive. The CPM can be excess of $20. Um, the reason they are is because a lot of people are very emotionally attached in a parasocial relationship with the host. So that's why they trust the host. That's why live reads work well on the radio. It's the same sort of concept With radio. First of all, it's absolutely the creative. It's very important that the creative immediately grabs you right off the first sentence, so you sort of want to try something a little outrageous on the first line. You know, with our client we got a little trouble with this, but we did have a thing that size doesn't matter except when it comes to your settlement.
Speaker 2:You can get in a little trouble. Look, it's okay to get in a little trouble. If you're not irritating somebody at some point, then you're not really doing your job and little troubles can be fixed.
Speaker 1:So that's cool yeah, and and and it just buzz is always. You know, buzz is good. Um. So with radio, um, you want to be careful what you buy, right. If you buy a run a schedule on radio, they're going to put you. Um, you're going to get less premium spots. The graveyard shift, they call it right.
Speaker 1:So it comes down to hiring a media buyer like myself that's going to negotiate down the spot rate. You want to pick largely either morning or drive home and then spread the rest of the budget, run a schedule, but I like to try to get the goodies is what I call them. So I will negotiate an ad spot on the website for people that live listen and I will push for a live read from the host, because if it's John Smith and he's hosted for 25 years and my family's listened to him his words carry weight. Um, so I always push for that. But I really do honestly think, ben, it's really the creative. It's so important.
Speaker 1:I have had a client run ads for months and I just said this creative is not going to connect with people and it really comes down to unique value proposition. What is interesting about you, what are you selling? And this is so important. Please, please do not hire a voice actor. Please have someone from your eight year law firm become the face and swap it out male or female, because that's the other problem is, it's like you can't be what you can't see. If I watch your commercial and I'm a woman and I'm a empowered young woman and I watch, and it's 25 white guys yelling at me, I don't feel connected to you. I mean it's just we're mimetic by nature, it's just what we are. And so swap in a woman's voice, swap in a man's voice.
Speaker 1:A, b, test everything you know. You can try five different spot reads. You can use different, unique, unique urls. Right, you could do wwwgetyoursettlementtodaycom. Another one has wwwwhatever. Then you can know which creative is actually working and then go with your winning creative. Um, but it's consistency you really have to to go top of mind with people um six months. And then my school of thought is after a year I swapped to a different station because you've already saturated that commuter. You've saturated the morning commute and the evening commute and you're going to get your diminishing returns around the 12-month mark.
Speaker 2:Do you have a genre preference? Talk, sports, music, western or country?
Speaker 1:Personal injury tends to do a lot of sports because blue collar injuries. If I'm a bricklayer and I can't work, then there's a loss of income that's higher. It depends on who you're going after. I had a family lawyer client that did radio, and women initiate most divorces. So my logic was let's go after the women. I think it's like 70% of divorces are initiated by women. So we figured out who were those women and what. Um, when would they be psychologically most annoyed with their spouse? And we found out their age and we found out that they actually were the most annoyed in the morning. Um, cause there was some sort of fight in the morning about whether they're driving to work. So we front loaded heavy spots in the morning and then went after this female soccer mom demo in a specific area and it worked really well. Um, but again, that comes down to not just not just saying, oh, we want to get everybody that wants a divorce. It's. It's about getting granular with the facts.
Speaker 2:The headline divorce lawsuits caused by men initiated by women.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great See, that's great creative right there, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, just like well. So that principle would be hey, talking to your client, having a long-form discussion with your client, you will discover stories that they don't believe they don't even know they have. You'll discover assets they don't know they have. That a good open-ended thinker like you can go oh, there's a hook that's different and, by the way, nobody else has that unique story, that background. So, Jordan, look, this has been great, it's Great Smoke Media Um. So Jordan, look, this has been great, it's great smoke media. Jordan, Whelan, Jordan, if folks want to track you down, uh, find out more about you, maybe have a chat with you about, um, about your services. What should they do?
Speaker 1:Uh, so gray smoke mediacom G R E Y smoke media there's a 30 minute. Uh, if you want to do a 30 minute consult, they're prepaid 30 minute. If you want to do a 30 minute consult, they're prepaid. Or we do 15 minute introductory calls, complimentary If you you know, you can book them if you feel you're a fit. I largely work with PI lawyers, but we aren't just because the history of my agency is that for 10 of the 12 years we were a general marketing agency. Do work with everyone, but we are presented as a legal marketing agency if we feel that we're a good fit for something. If you have a unique marketing problem, I would say everything from reputation management or, um, you know, like you were mentioning, the delta between you and your competitors, spend, uh, you can reach out to us and then, uh, yeah, we can have a call and and figure things out. But again, it's like I mentioned earlier. It's very important we have a two strike rule.
Speaker 2:If you treat me or any member of my staff uh poorly for two times, we cancel the contract it's the same way we treat uh law clients and we don't have to cancel too many uh, but we do. If I getting on a call with you, I'm like jordan, I've already listened to the call and I have the transcript. Now let's gonna have a chat. Um, and real quick uh, tell us about your, your music and where we can go find you, um, yeah, appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Uh. So, yeah, I started making music in june. I got two songs on the radio right now. Uh, my stage name is jordan power. Uh, so j-o-r-d-A-N Power on Spotify or all the different streaming platforms and it's kind of pop. There's a little EDM, but I'm kind of evolving the sound to be more pop rock over the next six months, but it's going really well. I mean, yeah, I'm at like 4 million streams since June. I love it more than even this. I got to be honest, it's my purpose.
Speaker 2:It is oh, and even this I got to be honest. It's my purpose. It is oh, that's interesting. So you know my thing you would have no way of knowing this is I'm for 51 years. I've been a soccer referee, right, and so there's no place I would rather be, honestly, than on a field in a competitive rivalry. High school soccer game, which is the weirdest place to be, like nobody else, hardly anybody else wants to be there, but that is my space, which is being out there running with 17-year-olds. Well, you've got a fascinating story. I'm so glad that we were able to connect on the podcast. If there's anything that we can do for you, let us know. And again, folks can go to Gray Smoke Media, g-r-e-y Smoke Media and book some time with Jordan. Very good sir.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you, my friend, and that's a wrap for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, do me a favor, subscribe, leave a review and share this with a fellow lawyer who needs to hear it For more powerful strategies on marketing practice growth and taking control of your legal career. Head over to greatlegalmarketingcom. You can also find us on LinkedIn Search for Great Legal Marketing and Benjamin Glass to connect. Stay tuned.
