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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
Ep. 206 – Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Audio Book) – Chapter 19: What You Can Learn from My Mastermind Groups
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In this chapter of Renegade Lawyer Marketing, Ben pulls back the curtain on what actually happens inside Great Legal Marketing’s confidential mastermind groups.
Spoiler alert: it’s not magic funnels, viral TikToks, or shiny new marketing hacks.
It’s fundamentals. Executed relentlessly.
Inside these closed-door sessions, successful solo and small firm lawyers from across the U.S. and Canada share what’s working—and what isn’t. And despite all the changes in media (Google, AI, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X…), the same truth keeps surfacing:
The basics still win.
In this episode, Ben breaks down the recurring principles behind thriving firms:
- Why most income still comes from referral systems—not ads
- The surprising power of monthly print newsletters (yes, snail mail)
- Why refining what works beats chasing new shiny objects
- The real leak in the bucket (hint: it’s not your marketing budget)
- How mastermind members build marketing equity in-house
- Why “likes” don’t deposit at the bank
If you’re spending money on marketing but not obsessing over relationships, referrals, and conversion, this chapter may sting a little—in the best way.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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.
Welcome And Show Mission
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work, and still make it home for dinner. Each week, Ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the Tennis Queen. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place.
SPEAKER_00Let's dive in.
Chapter 19 Context And Thesis
SPEAKER_00Today's chapter 19 from the book What You Can Learn from My Attorney Mastermind Group. Your marketing formula as discussed so far, and more to come in the book, doesn't change even when you get good at marketing. At GLM, we run several attorney marketing mastermind groups that meet in person for two days, four times a year. During these confidential meetings, in addition to talks from highly qualified guest speakers, member firms take shots in the hot seat to talk about what's working and what's not, and to ask the others in the group for input on both. We distribute ooze and ahs over a lot of marketing materials, including newsletters, books, magazines, bags, and other branded goodies, and more importantly, we take deep dives into each other's practices, and in some cases there are personal struggles. And that's why these meetings are confidential. After one of the meetings, I was driving a couple of members to the airport, and one of the longtime members made an interesting comment. He said, You know what's amazing, we've been doing this for years. We've seen a ton of marketing ideas, and some have come and disappeared as valuable tools. The internet is getting to be more difficult for everyone. TV and radio are very fractured. Now there's YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X. It's just interesting that we keep coming back to the basics, the things that worked then and still work now. That might disappoint some, but he's exactly right. We had presentations from at that meeting 21 law firms at that mastermind.
Mastermind Format And Insights
SPEAKER_00It was a diverse group, including personal injury, family, workers' comp, bankruptcy, criminal defense, small business formation, estate planning, and the lawyer to the lawyers. And these folks were spread across the four corners of the country and Canada. Most of our current mastermind members have been a part of the group for years, and each of these successful firms has tried hundreds of marketing ideas during the time they've run their businesses. None was using any sort of unusual or unique marketing. To be clear, whatever marketing they invested in, they executed very well. And the point I make here is that we are not the lawyers typically who are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on digital marketing, TV, radio, billboards, or anything else. We're doing grassroots marketing and we're growing great practices for lawyers whose families are happy and proud that their spouse or dad or mom or whatever wanted to be a law firm owner. But here's what comes out. Most report that a majority of their income comes not from advertising for new clients per se, but from human marketing from their herds or tribes. In other words, the majority of their income comes from some sort of referral process. Here's a renegade pro tip. Never lose sight of the basics for building your clientele, your business, or your staff. If in doubt about marketing
Return To Marketing Basics
SPEAKER_00basics, go back to chapter 17, your one-chapter marketing Bible, and the rest of this chapter. While the individual marketing pieces and strategies we discussed are confidential to the mastermind group and shared not only at meetings, but also through private channels, the list of principles you would run across in these presentations include the following. Number one, these folks get really good at a handful of marketing techniques or strategies and they execute them flawlessly. Rather than creating new ads or other marketing pieces, they continually refine what they're already doing to make them even better. This includes making sure their follow-up campaigns are personalized and as deep as they can be. Number two, we all print and mail newsletters every single month. I know that sounds old school. It just is, and it just is because it works. These newsletters are dense and interesting copy, not just legal articles. And yes, snail mail, not email. Number three, they have excellent websites, but they're decreasing the amount of content they're creating for their sites. They're improving the quality of the content they already have on their sites. Almost all of them consult with or retain SEO experts, and they're also each students of copywriting. Like there's one thing to write for the computer so you show up on Google or in the AI. It's another thing to show up for the human being and be actually persuasive. So we study copywriting, and you should study copywriting as well. Number four, they work on their referral sources. Most of the members have some sort of dream 100 of potential referral sources they keep in close touch with. At our meetings, we have seen the inside of many different referral marketing systems, and most are exhausting. But the result is that everyone is getting in front of potential new clients in some way. When I say exhausting, it means these people will actually do things. If you follow them around, you would have
Grassroots Over Big Ad Spend
SPEAKER_00no question about why they are successful. So it's exhausting in that way. Not exhausting in the I'm wasting my time and I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing way. Um so this is harder than writing a check to a marketing vulture, but the ROI and your team can be enormous. See, it's really easy to write a check or pull out your credit card. One mastermind member put it this way one person who knows you is more valuable than a hundred who know your name. That's why it's so much more important to develop authentic relationships than to pay some marketing vulture to get Facebook likes. Because by the way, last time I went to the bank, they told me they would not deposit likes into my account. Number five, five, they train all their employees to answer the phones correctly. They constantly monitor and retrain as needed to make sure this happens. They don't let a bad telephone answering experience burn up their marketing dollars. It's the number one leak in the bucket, folks. Like your marketing somehow has provoked somebody to fill out a form, chat with you online, or heaven forbid, like call you on the phone. And the number one place where we could all make more money is getting better at responding to those people who have taken the time to reach out to you and getting them signed up as fast as you can because speed to lead, we believe, is important. And so many firms don't have a system, they don't have people, and they're they don't even know their numbers. Like they don't even know how many lost leads they have. Most
Human Marketing And Referrals
SPEAKER_00law firms do not have a lead generation problem. They have a client conversion and sales problem. And it starts with the marketing, but it also includes like not having people, really good people who are trained to do this for you. And number six, they continually build equity in their firms by bringing their marketing in-house. Just about everyone in our masterminds has at least one marketing assistant who is great legal marketing trained, right? We got programs for that. In fact, the marketing assistants attend the meetings with us. Some even have in-house videographers, SEO webmasters, and graphic artists. So there you go. Next time, chapter 20, get better at marketing. It is your duty, it is your ethical duty to get better at marketing. Again, I'm Ben Glass. This is Great Legal Marketing. We'd love to have you be a part of the program. Mastermind groups, the tribe, newsletter subscribers, got something for everybody, for solo and small firm lawyers, want to build a practice where people are happy, where people are thriving, all right, and where your
Six Core Principles Overview
SPEAKER_00family sees you at dinner time and on the weekends. That's us. If that's interesting, reach out. We'd love to have a conversation.
SPEAKER_01That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.
