Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
How Grassroots Marketing Skyrockets Law Firm Growth | Tim Semeroth, Len Spada, & John Griffith
Grassroots marketing offers powerful, low-cost strategies that enable law firms to connect authentically with their communities and enhance referral networks. By engaging with local organizations, sending personalized communications, and creating meaningful relationships, law firms can achieve sustainable growth without the need for hefty advertising budgets.
• Grassroots marketing as a vital strategy for law firms
• Importance of personalized outreach and newsletters
• Community engagement through scholarships and events
• Building referrals via partnerships with local businesses
• Authentic branding and client trust as foundational elements
• Reaping substantial ROI through creative grassroots initiatives
• Sharing success stories and informative content on social media
• Fostering a culture of community involvement within the firm
Get your tickets to the 2025 Great Legal Marketing Summit Here.
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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Hello, my friends, and welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design. And in today's episode I'm talking with three friends of mine Tim Semeroth from Iowa, len Spada from Boston, massachusetts and John Griffith from the great state of Tennessee about grassroots marketing. Listen, if you are a law firm owner or a lawyer who's thinking about going out on their own, you will quickly learn that there are hundreds of ways to spend thousands and tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing your law firm. What gets talked about far less in the legal marketing space because people aren't selling it to you is how to market your law firm for free or for very little money. And so this conversation about grassroots marketing tactics either on social media or at community events, or through the use of newsletters, or repurposing all of those things so that you make sure if you're doing one thing, you're using it in seven or eight different ways is so incredibly important for owners of solo and small law firms, especially if you were doing under a million dollars a year because you don't have the excess capital to spend on your marketing. So if you're trying to grow your law firm through grassroots marketing.
Speaker 1:This is the episode for you. Check it out. I hope you enjoy it. So one of the things that happens at legal marketing conferences is there's all kinds of expensive stuff that you see on the stage whether it's digital advertising or SEO or social media production or podcasts or even books and so what we wanted to do is have a session on marketing that you can do in your community for low dollar or even free, and so joining us on the stage now are going to be Tim Summeroth, len Spada and John Griffith, who are members of our Hero and Icon Mastermind groups, talking about things that they've done in their firms to create grassroots marketing without breaking the bank.
Speaker 1:There are strategies and tactics in these slides and in this presentation really at all kinds of different price points, so you'll see some of this stuff is more expensive than others, but no matter where you are in the journey if you're somebody who's doing low six figures in revenue all the way up to somebody who's doing nearly eight figures in revenue you're going to find a strategy that you can implement in your practice now that will give you excellent ROI and build your authority within the community. So we put together slides from each of your presentations to the mastermind groups this week and I'm just going to let you take it away and we may have some questions for you as we go.
Speaker 2:Okay, Hello everyone. As far as what we do here at Spada Law Group, just to give everyone a summary of what my firm is about, we're a personal injury firm outside of Boston and we're 16 total heads. We have four lawyers, hiring a fifth soon. I have several offices, but our main office is in Chelsea, massachusetts, and the Latino community is really our target market, has been for many years. Everyone on the firm speaks Spanish, except me. We've developed a large presence in the Spanish community and these are some of the initiatives that we do in the Spanish community and with respect to marketing in the English community.
Speaker 2:We are involved in the motorcycle community. Those of you who've heard I don't know how many of you heard Tiger's speech this morning, yeah, I know, but we do a lot and you'll see that this first slide is a summary. We do scholarships. We give out five annual scholarships. We chose ten communities that surround our main office, ten cities. We give out five scholarships, $1,000 each, and we've been doing that for five years. That's one that's very close to my heart. Each individual student has to write an essay and they have to talk about a challenge that they've confronted in their life, how they've overcome it and what they've learned from it and some of the individuals, these students, some of the how they've overcome it and what they've learned from it. And some of the individuals, these students some of the things that they've gone through in their life are really amazing, the things I can't even imagine going through. I grew up in the city, I grew up poor, and when I read these stories, some of them have actually brought me to tears. So let's go through it. So there's the scholarship, the motorcycle events and a large non-profit in Chelsea called La Collaborativa. So you'll see them Bikers Helping Bikers is the non-profit that we sponsor each year. It's a non-profit that gives money back to bikers who have been injured and need funds for their mortgage, rent, food, they're out of work and, if they happen to have passed away, we help their families.
Speaker 2:We came up with the idea where we would have this all occurred during the Sons of Anarchy. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the TV series. It's a motorcycle show, about 1% bikers. But we came up and we designed our own patched riding vests and what we did was we collaborated with bikers helping bikers, riders helping riders, and for each vest that's worn at rides, the firm donates $200 to the cause Each year. We've been giving about four or $5,000 to the charity and bikers wear the vests and get on their bikes and we have a great time.
Speaker 2:That's our booth. We're massbikerlawyerscom and you'll see my staff manning the booth. We have a swag bag and we have an interesting client base interesting client base. I don't know if any of you do work with the biker community, but it's a very close-knit loving and I love the community. But they're not for everybody. They're an interesting crew and they've been very good to our firm. So we have been doing this now for four years. My total spend in the four years has been about $30,000 with the vests the money that we donate, and we figured it out in preparation for today, when people want to talk about ROI. We are approaching a million dollars over those four years in legal fees. So I spent about $35,000 in our fees. We don't do it just for that. I love the community, but if you're looking for ways to spend, not break the bank and get a decent return on your investment, this has been one of the best.
Speaker 1:How have you tracked that million dollars back to the 30,000?
Speaker 2:We have a. Every motorcycle case, except for a few, have come through people that I've met in this community and we track. We have Filevine. It's a pretty easy metric to all my settlements. Whether it's a car accident, whether it's an Uber or Lyft accident, whether it's a pedestrian accident, it's broken down and we even have one category where it says saw us at an event, and this is really one of the events if it's a motorcycle, and so that's how we figured it out. This is actually the woman that's in the front. Here was a client of mine who got seriously injured in an accident and happy to see her back on a bike three and a half years after a very serious accident. And that's us, with my director of operations giving a check away.
Speaker 2:Now in the Latino community, we collaborate with an organization called La Collaborativa, and they are the largest non-profit Hispanic organization in the state of Massachusetts and one of the largest in New England, and they do amazing work. The communities that we serve are very poor. They come and they have needs. They have housing needs, they have food insecurity, and this particular organization does so much and this one is so near and dear to my heart that they have a food truck which provides healthy food in the community. One of the things you'll notice where I am in Chelsea is that diabetes, hypertension, their nutritional habits are not what they should be, and this organization is doing much to educate them and try to get people to understand that they can cook for a family of four or five, or whatever it may be, and not break the bank.
Speaker 2:We sponsor a gala event each year. We all get to wear tuxedos. This was the last one and this I don't know if it'll play, but as you can see here, this is near my office. This is walking distance from my office. It's underneath a highway and each week there's a food truck which gives out basic necessities to the community and we're talking, hundreds and hundreds of people line up each week. So we're a financial contributor here and we also you'll see this the people in blue are members of my team helping with kids. This was an event that took place at Easter, I think it's only. I want you to see the truck if we get a video of it.
Speaker 2:There you go. We were giving away Easter baskets and actually my building is right in the background. I'm going to go through a little quicker. We also work with the local radio station, roomba 97.7. It's all Spanish. We advertise on it and we don't just advertise on the radio station. The radio station allows us to get into the community. We're at Puerto Rican festivals. They have a Dominican Republican festival.
Speaker 2:They have an El Salvadorian festival and we're at most of them in collaboration in conjunction with the radio station. Now this gentleman his name is La Chocolate, that's his name. He's a local radio personality. He's very famous in the Boston Spanish market so he does some of our advertising. We represent his brother in a serious car accident and he's been very instrumental in getting the name of our firm out into the community and helps us with all these charity events.
Speaker 1:This is on the job, but I want to ask you a couple questions about your marketing, because you don't speak Spanish and you don't ride motorcycles.
Speaker 2:I speak a little Spanish.
Speaker 1:A la pagada de espada. I get it.
Speaker 2:I no longer ride a motorcycle. I did years ago.
Speaker 1:My point in making those points is that for many of us those would be disqualifiers. You'd say I can't market to this community or I can't support this community because I don't do that thing. And I know or at least I think I know that you wrestled with that for a little bit. So how did you come around to? Okay, if we're going to be in this space, cause it is a high ROI space, how do we not show up as lawyers who have gone? There's no small motorcycle cases, so I want to be in the motorcycle world.
Speaker 2:For those of you who did not hear the Law Tigers speech earlier bikers who get into accidents care more about having someone who's a great lawyer, who has experience, who's tried cases, and these are catastrophic cases. These are not. There is no such thing as a minor motorcycle accident. You can be hit from behind by someone doing five miles an hour and it can lead to catastrophic injuries and it does. The way I approached it and the way I got into the community is I represented somebody who was instrumental in the bikers helping bikers, riders helping riders, and it was a serious case. We took the case up to the eve of trial and the case settled. So he brought me into the community and I was reluctant because I don't ride and I told him that and he was right when he said to me they don't care, my community does not care, they care only that you care and that you're very good. So he brought me in. I gave some I wouldn't call them seminars, but he would bring them into one of their events and I would speak on the benefits of having ample under-insurance and uninsurance coverage, things like that. We set up a program where we would review bikers' insurance policies and give free advice. That's how I got into it.
Speaker 2:Now I will tell you that I have been pressured, in a friendly way, to get back on a bike. They're always asking me to get back on a bike, come ride with us, and there's a part of me that would love to do that. But based on what I see in my practice, I mean I'm terrified. So I would not be someone who would ride and get the pleasure and enjoyment that they do. And I'm honest with them. They say, why won't you ride? And I tell them I'm fearful and it wouldn't be an enjoyable experience for me. I'm happy to help. I love your community, I love the camaraderie, I love the fact that you're all there for each other. So I love helping you, but I'm afraid to be part of your rides. And they get it and they get it and they laugh and they always try to get me to buy a bike. A lot of people think lawyers are we're all rich and we're super rich and they're like you could buy the nicest bike. And my wife has made it perfectly clear that I'm not buying a bike.
Speaker 4:Len, in the last minute we have on your section, could you just comment on impact on culture of your team Because they're out there on non-work hours? It looks like of your team Because they're out there on non-work hours.
Speaker 2:It looks like In the Spanish. All of my, 90% of the firm is Spanish speakers Latinos, latinas from the community, from a number of communities that surround my office. So we have the culture of my firm has been going in a direction that makes me so happy because not only is it my mission to provide great services to this community, but I'm attracting really good talent on my hires because they see that I'm authentic in my desire to help the community. So I have people who I don't even have to push to do weekend events. Of course I compensate them, but they they feel these feel especially the younger ones really feel like they're doing something and they are really good for their community and I love seeing that. So I'm actually they're bringing in friends. Hey, you want to work at this firm? It's a great firm. We have a good mission. They're helping me open up other offices. I've opened up two other offices in predominantly Hispanic communities in the western part of Massachusetts, the northern part of Massachusetts, and so that's really, yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1:I think, as you pass that to John, we were talking yesterday in our mastermind groups about building culture in the office and what's your office culture? And we've got to have core values in order to have culture. And it's no. Culture is just having this shared mission which is for the client, and you've built something where you have this mission into the Spanish community and so that attracts bigger and better talent from the community. That helps you solve the problem that so many of us have, which is that there's nobody good to hire for our jobs. So now you can pick and choose. So thank you. Thank you, len John quick.
Speaker 3:Hey guys for you that don't know me, I'm John Griffith from Nashville Actually Franklin I say Nashville because nobody knows where that is but just my quick story that I wanted to share with you. In 2012, I was practicing. I had a law firm, I was doing pretty well. I had a law partner and we did workers comp and my partner did comp, I did PI and in 2012, there didn't have to advertise that much. We had workers comp. We would infiltrate there. If somebody had an injury. We'd spread like, well, we do a good job for one guy and then they'd all hire us and then they'd send us their PI work. That was incidental to that. So everything was pretty going along pretty good until 2012.
Speaker 3:There was a change in the Tennessee law that made workers' comp not profitable for lawyers. They took us out of it and the pendulum swung to the opposite side. To do it was 2014. Our inventory had cut by two thirds. We're not getting case. We're going out of case. I'm going broke. I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 3:I had been divorced, I was paying alimony and child support. I was scared to death because I didn't know what I was going to do, so I did maybe what some of you are doing. I came to see Ben glass. I was getting all these pesky emails from him and I'm like, ah, okay, so I did and I came and it was the best decision I made, because, as I was sitting in a chair, like some of you are, I'm like I don't have any money to advertise. I don't know what I'm going to do, so what do you do?
Speaker 3:So I worked really hard. I took the concepts that Ben was teaching and I wrote a book. I started identifying my avatar, my perfect clients, and I started taking them to lunch. I started developing referral partners and, fortunately, I broke up with my partner and I just and our culture wasn't good there. That was another big thing I had. I had my partners that worked with us and she would cause fights with all kinds of people and I was scared to go to work some days. I really I'm saying that funny, but I'm like I don't really enjoy going to work and then my partner went off for two weeks. He had a surgery or something, and then I ran the office and it was good. We started developing a better culture and so, anyway, I started my own firm, broke up with him. That was a nasty divorce, but then we were on our way in 2015 and that went good. So my marketing person made these slides and they're really not relevant to what I'm going to talk about, but what I started doing.
Speaker 4:You're a very busy guy.
Speaker 3:That book was my calling card and I gave it to everybody. I cold called chiropractors, I cold called orthopedics that I knew and I was giving this book, it to everybody. I cold called chiropractors, I cold called orthopedics that I knew and I just I was giving this book away to everybody and I developed my list. I did a paper. I've done. It's in here somewhere. I've got three newsletters that we do, hard copy, newsletters that we produce ourself and we print it all. But we it's over 5,000 copies every other month. We do it every other month. So do that.
Speaker 4:I remember this cornhole boards idea. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Actually I saw some other company do that and I'm always marketing. I'm always trying to sell and, by the way, always be marketing. I market to. I've gotten so many cases from the lady who cuts my hair.
Speaker 3:Everybody that you deal with, they need to know what you do and I had this philosophy before I'm a Ben of. I'm a little proud. I don't want to. I don't want to come off conceited or arrogant. I'm not going to tell everybody I'm a lawyer.
Speaker 3:And then I realized, as I've gotten older and practice more and I try a lot of cases and we've had really good results and I realized I had to change a heart. I'm like the public deserves to know that we're good. I see a lot of lawyers that when I go to motion practice on Friday morning in Nashville I see lawyers screwing up cases left and right. I'm like we are a better law firm and these people deserve to have us and I have that mentality that these people need to know that we are a good law firm, we're a great law firm and I have that mentality that these people need to know that we are a good law firm, we're a great law firm and I believe that with all my heart and we work really hard on our quality of our work.
Speaker 3:So I represented this guy right here, michael Oliver, officer in Franklin, great guy. He was hit by a car in the line of duty. He rolled over three times, almost died and he and I got really close, got a great settlement for him and I made these cornhole boards. He said he liked cornhole and so I made it for the police department. Now they're playing it with Griffith Law stuff all over it all the time. He told me when their meetings are, I send them pizza for their meetings. I'm like I just fatten them up and just give them whatever they want no donuts, that might be offensive, but anyway, let's see If you need to be an expert in your field and you need to let people know that you're an expert.
Speaker 3:I speak a lot for trial lawyers organization. I was president of Tennessee trial lawyers. I've spoken a lot. I get some of the best cases from speaking. We just settled a case for nearly $6 million that I got for speaking in Memphis and the lawyer saw me and she said John, you sound like you know what you're doing. I'd like for you to help me in this case. I'm like tell me about it and shazam, that's a terrible case and I can help you. Sorry about that, but anyway, this is a CLA. We put a CLA on for trial lawyers advanced trial tactics every year and I just did it two weeks ago and we've got some referrals from that.
Speaker 4:But just understand, he doesn't even tell you everything. He's doing this CLE for Tennessee trial lawyers but he organizes the whole thing. They help to market it, but he's I'll put this thing together for you. They get the money from the ticket sales, but you're just putting yourself out there and doing work that for most trial lawyer organizations like creating a CLE is a pain in the butt.
Speaker 3:They are. But I want to give CLE. I tell people, don't go to the end of the year CLEs, go to the big dogs in your organization, Don't waste your time and get some real news that you can use and put it to work immediately. So every time I put a CLE we have a great attendance and I want people to know that they can come here, they can get our checklist, our pretrial checklist, all the stuff that we work really hard on for ourselves and I just give it away. It's just like giving away information on your website. People aren't going to use it half the time, but just know that you're the principle of abundance?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've just got in doing these stupid videos. I have a good time doing it, it's fine. I've got a lady that helps me and I've learned a lot today. So I appreciate that. We went our sizzle wars. That's my beautiful wife, jenny, and she's my right hand, but I don't know if this helps, but my marketing person put this in there. Here's our newsletter that we do Cairo nation. We've got three one called Cairo nation and what we do.
Speaker 3:If you are in the personal injury world and you talk to a chiropractor and you don't know a chiropractor, you will find out that attorneys treat them like crap. They say, hey, we just settled your, your patient's case. We're going to pay you 50% and you're going to like it. I'm like our pledge to you is we will cut our fee before we ask you to reduce a penny. And so we do that. And I hand, deliver checks to our biggest chiropractors. I love doing that. Hey, we've got a settlement in and I'm delivering checks all the time. Hey, man, they like seeing me come in. Here comes John, he's bet, he's got some money for us and it's a great thing.
Speaker 3:And, and don't sell these cases short. We just settled a case last year for $950,000 that a chiropractor referred to us. They refer them. They got radiculopathy. We don't take every case. We don't take cases now that are less worth less than about $20,000, $25,000. But a lot of these cases with permanent injury and radiculopathy they're great cases and they're usually getting cut on Board of Hires to other lawyers. We target specifically about 600 lawyers in Middle Tennessee who don't practice what we do or they're're a jack-of-all-trades. They don't specialize, they're criminal probate, all that and you can do this. This is easy to do, guys, and you just have to answer questions. Take them to lunch and see what questions they have and answer those questions. Good stuff. Oh, that's not me, that's Tim, that's Tim.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you because we were talking yesterday about the KPIs that your marketing director has for getting you lunches and there's something else. So talk about what actionable things that you track on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis that your team is doing that feeds all this marketing machine.
Speaker 3:We have intake marketing as a team together and they're tracking our leads, wanted leads and all that stuff. But we track the number of testimonials that she needs to get, the number of social media posts. I can share my tracking that we have A number of leads lunches that she schedules me. The goal is 1.5 a week. You can't do a half lunch but I'm trying to get two a week and it's not always possible with my schedule. So that's the main thing that she does. She does a good job. I'm always looking to improve.
Speaker 1:Are your other lawyers doing lunches also?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, my lawyers. That's part of their KPIs. They are. I pay for them to go to lunch, but at least twice a month they're supposed to take a referral source out to lunch and it works out great. I've got one lawyer who this year has had referred to him 18 cases. This is a lawyer who's an excellent lawyer, who's working for me, basically for free. He's paying for himself. I would not have those 18 cases and our average fee per case is really good with him. So it's not just like they're little crap cases, they're big cases and our average fee per case is really good with him. So it's not just like they're little crap cases, they're big cases and even after referral fees they're great cases.
Speaker 3:Those are things that you can do. I do what everybody else does. I inspire my case managers to. I pay them a hundred dollar bonus every time they get a five-star Google review. I know a lot of people do that. We've talked about that, but that works out really well, and one of my case managers got $600 in bonuses last month for doing six five-star Google reviews and it really helps drive it up.
Speaker 6:So that's all I got, Thank you.
Speaker 3:John, thank you.
Speaker 6:Hello, my name's Tim Summelroth and I'm from Iowa.
Speaker 6:And there was a presenter to the mastermind group this morning who quoted Dale Carnegie, who said that people buy from people that they know and trust and that really drives a large segment of how we try to get cases. Because, I'm very lucky, my firm has 16 lawyers, we have three offices throughout Iowa and I am confident that we do a very good job for our clients. And who are the people who should know and trust us? They are people who've interacted with our team and the first thing I wanted to share are just the lengths that we go to remain connected to those people who've encountered our firm, either because we represented them or they were a witness in one of our cases, or they just got one of our legal guides from us. The first example I'll give is that we try to be constant presences in their mailbox and we make sure that everybody on our list gets a holiday card. That is a custom card that specifically references the lawyers in our firm.
Speaker 6:For everybody who has everybody in our system for whom we have a birthday, a birthdate for in our system, we send birthday cards from the firm again custom cards and and the reason why I call it the uh, the Marv Starman rule. So what I mean by that is uh, I'm 53 years old. Uh, marv Stallman was my parents' insurance agent. I remember his name because every year when I was growing up he would send me a birthday card. The reality is that for most of your clients, they're not getting more than a couple birthday cards. They get any at all, and they get one every year from our firm if they've been connected to us. We do a bi-weekly e-newsletter. We do the monthly letter to our print newsletter to everybody who's on our list. We're up to it's in the thousands, kelly. Is it like 7,000, 6,000, 7,000 letters that go out to past clients, people who've downloaded our guides?
Speaker 1:We go Just pause on that, because you can hear that and say that's a lot of additional work. So talk about how you repurpose some of that content and how you pick and choose what goes in the newsletter.
Speaker 6:For that newsletter, the newsletter that goes out to our past clients. It is very much like it's consumer information, so it is, as you can see, it's seven eco-friendly ways to start living eco-friendly or it's safety tips or it's consumer tips. If we have pictures of members of our team out in the community, we'll throw that in. There's usually one reference to something that's related to the law.
Speaker 6:Our goal and I learned this from Ben, learned it from Dan Kennedy is the idea is that we're just reminding those people who should know us, like us, trust us, that we're still here and we're still ready if something happens unfortunately to somebody in their life. One of the ways that we grow our list is, of course, we give out free guides that you can download. This is actually how I met Ben. I met Ben before he founded Great Legal Marketing. We met on an ABA listserv 25 years ago and I sent him the hey, ben, I have this idea for mistakes people make when dealing with doctors after an injury pamphlet, and he gave me some feedback on it Then he was on on my list and then I sent him emails, yep.
Speaker 6:And I've been sending him checks ever since. So, as I said, I'm from Iowa, which is quite possibly the whitest state in the United States, and so I'm always nervous about giving this example. So I actually asked, perplexed, if this was true or if it was just a lesson that I had learned from in school. That was false, but it is true. Native Americans, when in the in the great plains, they would, they would try to use every part of the Buffalo they could. They would use the meat, they would use the fur. They would use the meat, they would use the fur, they would use the bones, they would use the horns.
Speaker 6:And so that is the approach we take to what is referred to here as smart marketing. So when a member of our community reaches out to us and says, hey, you're lawyers, you must have money. Would you sponsor something? We try to brainstorm what are all the ways that we can leverage this sponsorship? And the first test is always does it align with our brand? And so this is an example of what we did, and probably the person you want to talk to tonight at the cocktail reception is not me.
Speaker 4:It's my marketing director, kelly because she's the one behind End up Kelly. Yeah, all right, when we got away. Kelly comes to just about every in-person mastermind meeting we have with Tim, and if Tim's travel schedule doesn't allow, kelly still comes to the meeting.
Speaker 6:Yep. And so here's an example of what she does. So we get approached by this organization that does this 5k for crime victims and they say, would you donate money? And we say, okay, but obviously the first step is you're going to give us a link to our website from from your website. Secondly, you're going to give us your logo, because Kelly is better at marketing your event than your people are. So we start them promoting their event through our social channels and you're going to give us a table and at that table we're going to raffle off something that's appropriate. So for runs, we tend to raffle off like a Theragun and then for all the people who are all the runners, the supporters who are signing up for the raffle, they're all going on to our newsletter list and then we're taking a ton of pictures. We are posting pictures before the event advertising the event, and then we're turning that into posts that we're sending out after the event. So we try to take advantage of everything and you're really only limited by your imagination. And so if you've been in a mastermind group with me over the years, you've heard me say all right, I'm trying to think of five more ways to take advantage of this sponsorship and whether it's hey, go get a big check, make sure you get a picture taken handing the big check to this group. Or hey, go get a big check, make sure you get a picture taken handing the big check to this group. Or hey, can you get a speaking slot associated with it. That's what I mean by smart marketing. It's a way to. It's inexpensive. I think this sponsoring this event was probably $2,500. We maybe spent less than $500 on the rest and on the prize and everything else that we handed out and added many names to our list.
Speaker 6:One of the things that's near and dear to my heart is mock trial. My dad worked in a factory. My mom was a teacher. I never met a lawyer until I participated in mock trial, which is an academic competition. I've coached mock trial for 28 years in Iowa. 25% of the lawyers in my firm are former students who I coach, and I had the good fortune that I've been able to coach each of my kids. One of my kids, my son Joe.
Speaker 6:We were coming back from a mock trial competition and he said it really wasn't fair, this team that we went against. They clearly were not coached by a trial lawyer. He said I like to win, but I like a fair fight and, based upon that, I challenged him. It's what are you going to do about it? What he did was he went around and took video interviews talking about how to do an opening statement, direct examination, that sort of thing from the lawyers in my firm who did mock trial when they were kids or who coach, and then he turned around and put that onto an online platform. It's now a free course and it's been in existence for about two and a half years in Iowa and, as of this week, we had over three lessons that have been watched and downloaded on this course, and so it's just an example of something you can do. It's very the marketing or the branding is very subtle. All it says is Mock Trial 101, powered by fightingforfairnesscom, which is our URL. But I can't go to a mock trial competition in Iowa and not have people jerk their heads back because they saw us online.
Speaker 6:We track very carefully the people who refer cases to us. This is a concept that Ben has been teaching for years the idea of identifying who the mavens are, the people who are recommending you to others in their lives, who have influence. Because of that, we give quarterly gifts, and these are not big gifts. Sometimes it's a Bluetooth speaker, sometimes it's a book, sometimes it's a towel or a backpack, but every quarter the people on our Mavens list and we have about 60, get a gift from us, not because they just referred a case to us, because we pay referral fees to other lawyers, but it's just a way to stay top of mind, and so the example that I wanted to share is this is a thank you note that we got for our Mavens gift a couple of weeks ago, and this is a lawyer from Indiana and he's talking about gifts that we gave barbecue tools, emergency flashers that you put in your car in case your car breaks down, four truths, a book, the cooler bag that's three years worth of gifts that he remembered and then thought to write a thank you note to my partner about it. And so that's the power of giving gifts to people as they remember you, they know you, they like you, and I'm quite convinced that the next time this some poor person from Indiana gets hurt in Iowa, he's going to call us again.
Speaker 6:Here's the latest leveraging that we've done in terms of sponsorships. Also, this was inspired by things that Ben and Brian are doing at their firm. We realized that who are the influencers in the typical law firm? They're the staff, they're the paralegals, they're the ones who a case comes through. That is not a type of case that firm does. They're going to have just as much influence about where that case gets referred to. So we just decided you know what? We're going to become the biggest sponsor of the Iowa Paralegals Association.
Speaker 6:And so this is an example of similar game plan the smart sponsorship game plan where we said, okay, we're going to sponsor your annual meeting, but you got to give us a link from your website. You have to let us give you the money, the big check. You're going to give two speaking spots to our attorneys, and then we're going to do a raffle for the paralegals. And again, just like athletes, paralegals also have a lot of stress, and so Theragun was very popular with them too. Now, what that means is that we're now paralegals also have a lot of stress, and so Theragun was very popular with them too. Now, what that means is that we're now getting paralegals from around the state on our list who are now they're getting our newsletters, they're getting cards and hopefully they're going to remind their bosses that they have a firm in Iowa who they know and trust, that they should be sending cases to have you hired out of that list as well.
Speaker 4:Not yet. Not yet that's coming.
Speaker 6:Yeah, oh, absolutely. So. Here's the thing I, thanks to advice I got from being part of this group, I am a recent convert to LinkedIn. If any of you are on LinkedIn, please connect with me. But one of the things that we're doing is we're connecting with as many paralegals in the state of Iowa as possible, because the next time we have a paralegal opening, our goal is to hopefully do most of our recruiting through our LinkedIn connections. Tim Semelroth, iowa. Connect with me on.
Speaker 4:LinkedIn. Okay, thank you all three of you for that. Who has questions and do we have microphones? Jason will toss the microphones around. If you have a question, raise your hand. We'll get you a microphone About any of these strategies or tactics. Jay's got one.
Speaker 7:Hey Tim and everybody, great job. When you're doing the, you're sending out the quarterly gifts. So if someone's a Maven and they give you referrals, do they get gifts forever and ever every quarter, or is that just gifts for people who send multiple refers?
Speaker 6:in a quarter. So we look at our LinkedIn or, pardon me, we look at our Mavens list every year and evaluate. But if they've referred a case in the past three, four years, they stay on the list until it becomes clear that they're not yet. They've retired, they've died, whatever. But we tend to keep them on the list until we haven't heard from them for years.
Speaker 7:By the way, tim was last year's winner of the Glam Awards, so good luck tomorrow to you and everybody else. Glam Awards are back. Awesome, a little plug there.
Speaker 8:Hello, I had a question about the gifts. Are they branded gifts or just a gift that says from our firm?
Speaker 6:Some are branded with the books. We typically give books once a year, and so we'll just sign those and maybe put a card inside the next level and this was a great idea that we got from. I don't know if Rick Martin is here, but he was telling us about a site called thekitchenbitchescom where they do one-off branded cups where you can put somebody else's logo, so like the logo of the person you're giving the gift to, on the outside of the cup, and then when you lift it up, you see your firm's logo on the bottom. So that's probably going to be one of our next gifts. Thanks, sherry.
Speaker 8:For the charitable organizations that you get involved in, and maybe it's a silly question. But what if it's something where maybe not everyone, not all the people in the staff, are affiliated with? Just from, not every one of my staff goes to the same church that I do. Not everyone lives in the same town that I do, but I'm not saying they would have a problem with it. But is it something where, hey, it's a me thing, but for the rest of the staff it's not a big deal? Because I know, len, you were talking about how everyone else has been the Latino community. It seemed like everyone was on board. But what if it's something where it's just a me thing?
Speaker 2:It's funny that you mentioned that, because what we're doing now is we're soliciting from the crew, as I call them, things, organizations that are close to their heart, and then we're trying. What we're going to try to do is we're trying to have a rotating charity so that we'll pick one that's the group has either come up with or there's a maybe not a consensus, but a majority feeling on one, so that they feel like they have some involvement in the process and we just thought about that. So previously it was what I wanted, and that's not happening. It's still happening, but they have some say.
Speaker 5:Okay, got it. Thanks, all right. I got a question for you, john. I think on your PowerPoint you had four different newsletters your Best Life, illegal Luminaries, chironation and Wadire.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually three Illegal Luminaries was just a title of that page but going to attorneys, chiropractors and our herd. So we've got about 5,000 newsletters that go to our herd every other month.
Speaker 5:So how do you manage in terms of the content for each of those three newsletters?
Speaker 3:It sounds like a pretty big lift for somebody to do. I read a book about eight years ago that changed my life, maybe six years ago. It was Miracle Mornings by Hal Elrod, and one thing I picked up that Lee said I do that too. I get up at least an hour earlier at least. I get up usually at 5 am. Dave Ramsey said if you want to live like no one else, you've got to live like no one else.
Speaker 3:In my 30s and 40s I was sleeping until 7, jumping in the shower, getting in the car and I was late to work and I was late all day long. And now I feel like I've got just so much better control. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you've got kids. You've got just so much better control. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you got kids, you got other responsibilities. But I do try to make that time for myself.
Speaker 3:And the answer to your question is I write all the content myself. I enjoy writing, I journal and once I start, sometimes I don't have any topics and I'll just look through my. My pictures for the last 60 days, get some ideas, but any I'm always thinking about it. So I've always got a list that's going and once I start writing, it just compounds. I'm like, oh, that reminds me of another topic and you get a lot by taking doctors out to lunch or, uh, just listening to your clients and just repackaging the question in a different way. Or just, I still get writer's block occasionally, but I've got a list of probably 100 topics that I could write about.
Speaker 4:That's the thing. You then keep your inventory of the articles and you reuse them, you repurpose them. I'm sure Justin Miller and his team out there in the direct mail there in the right far corner can also help you with that. And you just want to. Kennedy would teach, we all learn. You just want to be interesting. You don't want to be boring. So there's a lot of ways to do that. It's every other month. Keep the catalog, maybe keep a journal of just ideas, or maybe notes on your iPhone, whatever. Oh, here's a cool idea. I like to do that. I track topics that are in the news. My space is like stupid shit. That's in the news that you need to not be like them, and so it's a habit. It's just a habit to get into, and once you develop the habit, then you will see things that should go in either to your journal or to your notes that you're keeping on this.
Speaker 3:Something else cool that I've done just started. Recently, one of my lawyers wrote a book on AI for attorneys, but I've downloaded all of my newsletters and my book into AI and I write in the style of John Griffith. Please write a story on or a blog on this topic, and it does a great job. And it's in my voice. Sometimes I'm still tweaking it and just making sure it's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing I want to add to that is I do the same thing, but sometimes I don't know what I want to write about. So I have taken how many people here do a monthly or bimonthly written newsletter that gets mailed out Okay, a lot of people. If you're not doing that, I was so skeptical when I first decided to do it. I just really didn't think it was a good idea. Now, if I was going broke and I had to start whittling away my marketing, it would probably be one of the last things that I would cut out.
Speaker 2:Okay, and getting back to John's comment about AI, I have been feeding chat GPT for six months, seven months, eight months all of my old newsletters and just telling it and prompting it to just continue to learn what Len Spada's writing style is like, continuing to learn what topics Len Spada has written on, because after you've done newsletters for several years, you get did I write about that? You don't remember, but chat remembers it and you can prompt chat and you can literally say take on the role of marketing director at Spada Law Group. You are at a loss for what to write about in your next newsletter. No, I mean it, that's like a literal prompt. You're having a writer's block on what to write about.
Speaker 2:Go through, look at all the 75, 80 newsletters that Spada Law Group has put out and give me 10 ideas of what I can write about. That might either be variations of what I've written about in the past or new subjects, and when it comes back, when I first did this, I was like whoa, this is crazy and it's so helpful. And then you can take it from there and give me bullet points, give me an outline that I can begin to write on my own with. It's fantastic.
Speaker 6:We started this year inspired in large part by John specifically geared towards lawyers, and the way that we have developed the content for it is as I told you. At the beginning of the year, I decided I was going to commit to posting regularly on LinkedIn, and so I try to post four times a week on LinkedIn. Kelly looks at the LinkedIn posts that get the best engagement. She then turns that into a twice-a-month e-newsletter that goes out to about 800 lawyers in the state of Iowa and then she looks to see which ones of those are most clicked on, and then she's now turning that into a monthly print newsletter that goes out to lawyers in Iowa.
Speaker 6:And here's what I'll tell you just about, because I'm not the smartest person in the room Most of the time I'm not the smartest person at my table, and but I come to events like this and I hear smart things that my friends like John and Len are doing, and so what I found? Some of the most popular posts that I do are hey, I just got back from this great legal marketing conference and and my friend Len said this really smart thing and I make sure I tag him so he gets credit for it, but those are incredibly popular, not being the wise man who is sharing my wisdom, the guy who was lucky enough to be in the room with smart people.
Speaker 4:It's the strategy of being the reporter.
Speaker 6:Yep, that's what you call that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thank you, gentlemen, it was awesome.
