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
LinkedIn’s Yoda: How to Post for Growth | Tony Albrecht
What happens when a trial lawyer burns the boats, leaves litigation behind, and builds an entire business by posting on LinkedIn?
In this episode of Life Beyond the Briefs, Brian sits down with Tony Albrecht—former litigator, founder of Contender, and the go-to ghostwriter for trial lawyers who want to grow their influence online without sounding like everyone else.
Tony shares his personal journey from asbestos defense to digital storytelling, including the moment LinkedIn clicked and changed the trajectory of his career. Together, they unpack what it really takes to build a personal brand as a lawyer in today’s attention economy—and why most attorneys are still playing the wrong game when it comes to content.
Inside this conversation:
- The surprising upside of consistent posting (even when no one’s watching)
- The 1-5-10 Method Tony teaches lawyers to build visibility, trust, and relationships
- How to use content to generate demand—not just leads
- The difference between being a funnel and being a magnet
- And why the most powerful form of marketing might be the one you can’t measure at all
Whether you’re brand new to LinkedIn or already posting but feeling stuck, this episode is a tactical, mindset-shifting guide for showing up with more clarity, consistency, and confidence.
Where to find Tony Albrecht:
- Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-albrecht
- Explore ghostwriting and bootcamps: https://contenderllc.com
- Read In the Creative Arena: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Arena-Creativity-Building-Future/dp/1735605824
If you’re a lawyer ready to market with meaning—and stop hiding behind a headshot—this conversation is your call to action.
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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.
Want to connect with Brian?
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It's really peculiar, but it's like when you shift how you approach posting on LinkedIn, what you talk about, what your corner of the internet is this is the term that I use that piece of digital real estate that you're out to claim and own, something really peculiar. There's a mindset shift that happens, where I think we do become better versions of ourselves, more capable, more competent, more confident versions of ourselves, and that it's again something confident versions of ourselves and that it's again something I would not have expected, but it's so powerful.
Speaker 2:Hey friends, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the podcast about building a law practice and a life on your own terms. If you're a lawyer who's posting on LinkedIn and hearing crickets, this episode is going to flip the script for you. Today, I'm joined by Tony Albrecht, former litigator, ghostwriter for trial lawyers and the self-proclaimed Yoda of LinkedIn for lawyers. Tony didn't just leave the courtroom. He built an entirely new business by showing up consistently online and helping other lawyers do the same. In this episode, we talk about what actually works on LinkedIn right now, why most lawyers are playing the wrong game and how Tony's 1 to 5 to 10 method can turn your profile into a magnet for referrals, relationships and real growth. If you've ever wondered what to say, how often to post or whether anyone's really listening, this one's for you. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, welcome back to the show Today's guest. If you're on LinkedIn, you know who he is Tony Albrecht, the founder of Contender, ghostwriter for trial lawyers. He would tell you he's picked the world's smallest niche and he's playing very strongly in it and, depending on the week, describes himself as the Yoda or the Bob Ross or the Monet of that can be your next one. I was linked in Tony.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show. Thanks, brian. I'm looking forward to this conversation. You are Well, if I'm the I do like I'm a fan of Monet, although I see myself more as more like a tragic thing. Go figure, but uh, you, uh, you are an artist in your own right in this arena. So I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 3:So I'm always and we were talking about this before we got on like this is going to be a good episode, because I'm actually genuinely curious about this. Sometimes you have to like power through a podcast. I don't think this is going to be one of those. You are a lawyer turned ghostwriter for trial lawyers, and if people aren't familiar with your career path, can you take a minute and just kind of walk through like how you got to Toronto, Canada, writing content for US-based, primarily trial lawyers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll try to keep this under 90 seconds. Let's start the clock. So I'm from St Louis. I ended up going to law school at St Louis University and practiced basically from 2009 until 2021.
Speaker 1:And over those 12 years, my career most of my time practicing was for insurance defense firms on the asbestos circuit. A lot of the asbestos cases in the US are concentrated around Southern Illinois and St Louis. I was a paper pusher on the defense side in that machine. I say I torched my career twice. The first time was in St Louis. I was a paper pusher on the defense side in that machine. I say I torched my career twice. The first time was in 2013. I sold all my stuff, quit my job and took a one-way ticket to Bangkok.
Speaker 1:What I thought was going to be one year trying to find myself ended up turning into four years between full-time litigation roles. I met a beautiful Canadian at a silent meditation retreat in India in 2015. She ended up becoming my wife in 2016. Came back to the US and I plugged back into litigating in 2017. Spent another four years doing that, where we built a house in St Louis. I had two children and then she had told me when she agreed to move to St Louis I had five years before I'd be moving to Canada and sure as shit she meant it. Getting toward the end of 2020,. We had a choice Stay in St Louis and I make partner in 2021. Or we move to Canada, and then I got to figure out what to do when I grow up.
Speaker 3:Was that the deal? Was that like if you make partner, then OK, then there's enough incentive for us to stay here in St Louis?
Speaker 1:Yeah, golden handcuffs. It was basically that that the money was going to be good enough, that it was going to be really hard to walk away. But one of the things that has become clear to me in the years since leaving the practice was, had I actually found myself on the trajectory that looks more like yours earlier in my career, there's a very good chance. I'm still practicing. You know like I ended up. I say that my quality of life on the defense side was pretty good. It was. You know, I built a lot, but a lot of the building was fairly. It wasn't like heavy lifting and like I think I had. I worked with pretty good people, like I liked the people I worked with and it wasn't a bad gig. But it was just a thing of like I knew I didn't want it. I could see my future and I didn't want it, and that was part of why we made the decision to come up to Canada and so it was through.
Speaker 1:I hatched a plan to join a buddy's consulting company. I had 39 years old, two kids. My wife had been staying home with the kids, so I had to figure something out. And he said you got to learn LinkedIn and just about every lawyer. I'd ignored the platform throughout my time in practice. One thing led to another. I took a course the operating system from Justin Welsh that a lot of us have done. Have you done that?
Speaker 3:I did yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was just like a matrix moment where the thing just opened up in this new way and you just kind of see how there was all this attention gathered and it was basically there for the taking and there was almost nobody even trying to communicate with people in a way that was attractive. And here we are. What was this? 21, 22? Yeah, that was October 21. I left the practice and started posting daily. So I did the operating system right around then, I would say september. I started writing about creativity and creative process, actually, um, in that fall, and then started posting daily january of 22, and that's when I gained traction. That's when people started asking if I could help them. That's when I started figuring out. Okay, it's actually pretty easy to help people go from zero to having traction.
Speaker 3:The primary thing is to get them to hit post every once in a while.
Speaker 1:That really is. Yeah, it's like if you could just get that muscle, that consistency muscle, down. That one, I think, is the hardest. And then, once you do that, you realize that a lot of the things you're worried about happening don't actually happen. And so then it's like, okay, so we're not in danger, we're not going to immediately get disbarred or fired. Then you start saying, okay, so what can we actually talk about? What do we want to say? What message are we trying to share? And once you start doing that, that's where the good stuff starts to happen. You know that from firsthand experience.
Speaker 3:What was your friend's consulting company? What did they do?
Speaker 1:Mainly Salesforce implementations for nonprofit organizations.
Speaker 3:So the point of growing LinkedIn was to find people to sell to. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, I did come at it from that that angle. But my approach I was never going to be that guy who was sending out 50 DMs, cold every day, just that punch me. And there's a guy named Darren McKee. Have you run across Darren? I've seen you interact with Darren.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Darren, for my money, he's the best social seller on the platform and he's built his following and built his audience and his business on a very relational approach to the platform, where you know, like I've, I've emulated him very closely. So it's you know, I describe it as the difference between viewing what we're doing out here as are you a funnel or are you a magnet, and I think a lot of sellers think of themselves as funnels. They're trying to build funnels, where you're trying to see how many people you can get in front of in the hopes that some small percentage turn into clients right, which is why the DMs are such a dumpster fire and why you have all the vacuous comments coming from potential sellers, whereas the better way to play this game is to try to become magnetic, that the way you show up is clear enough and compelling enough that some people are going to just be attracted to you and your message and again, this is something you've figured out.
Speaker 3:Is that the social selling concept that you're talking about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Magnetism. What are you doing, if anything, to then take your following and drive them off the platform? Email list, newsletter list? I know that you have a podcast. Is there anything that you're doing outside of the LinkedIn platform once you have somebody's attention?
Speaker 1:Next question. This is one of those do as I say, not as I do things.
Speaker 1:Most coaches yeah, I have had a list that I have done a poor job of communicating with consistently.
Speaker 1:I understand the mechanics. I understand and this is something I talk to people about that you put yourself at risk when you're building on a social platform that you can be banned from at any moment. That is just inherently risky and for me that's been a risk I've been relatively comfortable with, and before we went live here I was telling you about some of my growing pains around just trying to have enough bandwidth. You know, over this last year, as the business has grown, the limiting factor has been me and my capacity. So I am now at a place where I've got enough support around me and we've got some stability in the business model and my team that we're now directing more of our time and our attention toward again building that list with intentionality and I'm also now building up our what I call the linked legal membership, and so it's it's like a basic content membership model with some like training around these, these bootcamps I've started doing as of six months ago and, like the podcast is is part of that as well. So trying to get multi-channeled.
Speaker 3:We've we've got YouTube fired up and are starting to put things out there on YouTube as well Let me just tell you, like you're not alone in that, do as I say, not as I do, because we talk about this all the time right, which is getting your in the law firm being able to acquire clients. That's not on digital, not through SEO or through PPC or LSAs, because those are expensive leads. How do you do it? Through referrals? Well, it turns out it's really hard to build a sustainable, regularly operating referral system. And even when it is running pretty well, if you look under the hood and you go, well, how did all of those people get tagged with that tag in the email system? And nobody in the room knows the answer to the question, right? I mean, this is what we're going through right now.
Speaker 3:So we've got this on a long-term disability side, we have a whole list of lawyers we're marketing to and nobody's really sure how they got tagged that way in the system. Um, and it's just that's. It's so easy to hit the digital easy button, but it's it's hard to come off the platform. So I share, I feel your pain on. Uh, do as I say, not as I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's, it is hard. Yes, it's like once you say you, the hygiene is. Yes, it's maybe not high maintenance, but it requires maintenance. It requires consistent pruning or maybe gardening to have it just continue to look right.
Speaker 3:And you're in the position that many small law firm owners are in, which is you are the product right. You may have all these supporting people around you and I don't know how big your team is, but probably nobody wants to talk to them, Nobody wants to hear from them how you do this and you probably aren't at a position where you can. You are hiring people who can actually construct the system very well, Even if you said here's what I wanted to do, like go build that thing Size of your business compared to the size of most small law firms, Like yeah, we just, and so we ended up doing all of this stuff, and then, when we focus our attention on building the next thing over here, somebody forgets how we tagged everybody in the system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's really well said and that is largely accurate. My team is up to. We're at four right now. We actually have a fifth who will be starting three full-time, one part-time and then we'll have a second person starting part-time next week. But I have actually invested my sister Christy. We just celebrated six months since she joined me full-time. Yes, she has been responsible for starting to like build out the infrastructure on the backend with that idea of how do we free up more of my time and attention to do the song and dance and try to take as much of that backend stuff, which I think is maybe a little counterintuitive for how to to grow the business. But that's the bet we've made and we'll see how it turns out.
Speaker 3:It's leaning into. Whatever your skillset and Christy's skill set are really All right. So let's talk about LinkedIn. You know you, like many lawyers, ignored it during your practice and used it as a digital resume, probably, and announced your super lawyer awards and your new job, and you're humbled and honored right as you look back now, in 2025, what are you telling lawyers actually is the goal of building an audience or posting anything on LinkedIn?
Speaker 1:I like how you're framing that question. I don't want to be hyperbolic and obviously I'm biased, and not just in that the platform getting active on that platform has changed the trajectory of my life and career in this insane way, but I do believe that there's just tremendous upside, for both your life and your career, to showing up consistently on LinkedIn and expressing yourself, and so I think about that from a, let's say, professional, a personal and also an entrepreneurial aspects. So those three distinct things where LinkedIn has the ability to generate leads, generate cases, clients, referrals. So if you are a law firm owner, if you're somebody tasked with where business development is part of what you do, then showing up on LinkedIn and building relationships, leveraging that platform in a way that strengthens relationships and bonds between you and other nodes in this humongous network, that's really valuable and those benefits compound as you go along in ways that can directly impact your bottom line.
Speaker 1:And, brian, I think what you've done over the last year and a half, that you've been focused on this, you're maybe the poster child of this in legal Professionally. If you're somebody who's not even an owner, if you're an associate in a firm or you're a supporter, whoever you are in the profession, you can strengthen that network in a way that creates opportunities. And then, personally, it's shocking to me how many of my friends in real life are people that I've connected with on LinkedIn over the last three years. It would not have occurred to me that that was a thing, but it's turned out to be a very real thing.
Speaker 3:So, knowing that right, knowing that it's bottom line, plus personal, plus entrepreneurial, plus, like I would add, man, the word is escaping me. Plus, like I would add, man, the word is escaping me. There is a self-actualization component to making the kind of posts that I tend to focus on, which is talking to somebody who's three to 10 years behind me in the process. Like there is that just makes you feel good and I think that, whether that's ego or not, like I think that's helpful to who you are as a human being, to have to have something you put out in the world, to the former version of yourself, somebody else goes. Okay, that resonates and that helps me. So, knowing that there's all those reasons to be posting, what kinds of things are you paying attention to, either statistics or metric KPIs, whatever to know whether or not it's working?
Speaker 1:Love that question. What you just identified around self-actualization 100%. I often describe that as a creativity bucket. I started posting about creativity on LinkedIn. My first book is titled In the Creative Arena the War of Art. Steven Pressfield's book on creativity is the book that I gift more than any other, and I think what you're describing there, brian, has absolutely been my experience and it is this it's really peculiar, but it's like when you shift how you approach posting on LinkedIn, what you talk about, what your corner of the internet is this is the term that I use that piece of digital real estate that you're out to claim and own, something really peculiar. There's a mindset shift that happens where I think we do become better versions of ourselves, more capable, more competent, more confident versions of ourselves, and that it's again something I would not have expected, but it's so powerful. Now to answer your question, what I pay attention to. I'm in this weird spot where I consider myself a practitioner of the art of dark social, and I will say on Discovery Calls.
Speaker 1:Pause, pause. Define dark social. Yeah, so dark social is this idea that there is a lot happening out in the space of digital and social that we cannot see happening. So when we talk about your pay-per-click, your SEO, the metrics there, a lot of that tends to be fairly linear and fairly determinate, like you can look and see where a lead came from when it comes to stuff in social. Where did it come from? Like, if, let's say, you get a case referred by a lawyer you know out of, let's say, out of Alexandria, you know that person may send you an email and they've looked at your website and they've listened to a couple of podcast episodes and they've read a ton of your LinkedIn posts and maybe they Googled your firm right before they sent you the email. Where'd that come from and what caused that?
Speaker 1:And the truth is like it's all of it right, that's the power of brand and I'd say that distinction between lead generation, that idea of the funnel and demand generation, that idea of the magnet, that what we're trying to do on social is create demand for us, not that people are walking around hoping they get in a car accident so that they can call you know, brian Glass, but that somebody comes to know, like and trust you in a way that in the event something happens, they know exactly who to call.
Speaker 1:They don't have to think about it. But that dark social aspect of it is really. It's really tricky for me. And on all my discovery calls I will say, like I do not do lead gen and honestly I don't fully understand how all this stuff works. I just know that it works, that when we show up and we do this stuff, we are able to attract attention and we are able to build relationships often asymmetrically, often in a way that we don't understand or we're not even seeing from people interacting with our stuff in a way that creates opportunities. So, not to actually answer your question, brian, the things I pay attention to yeah.
Speaker 1:It's such a weird thing where it's like the vanity metrics, the things you actually see, the impressions, the likes, the comments those are both helpful in that those are the main things I have to look at to know whether or not stuff is resonating with people, whether stuff is working. At the same time, none of us are. Actually, I say we're not trying to be influencers, we're trying to move needles for our businesses and it doesn't matter how many impressions you have. That does not contribute to the bottom line of the business at all. So it's a in my day-to-day I spend a lot of time with those analytics of trying to understand, you know, like why is this post behaving this way and this post behaving a different way?
Speaker 1:And if I'm being totally honest with you, I mean with my business I have a lot of data about kind of like how my content performs in terms of generating leads and clients for my business. But when it comes to my clients, I'm at their mercy of basically anecdotal evidence of somebody reached out and mentioned I love what you're doing on LinkedIn, like that kind of stuff. I feel relatively limited my, I guess, to dismount from that question in terms of, like, the things I care about for my business. You know we're two and a half years in and so far my I say they're like the only client that's left me, who's left me where I did not remove them from my roster. It's only happened one time and I take some solace in that that we're doing a decent job, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, amazing. Yeah, I mean I pay attention to impressions. It's funny because, anecdotally, right Cause I'm not tracking this very deeply but I'll notice that I'll have some posts where the impressions are like off the charts and the engagement rate is low, and then I'll have stuff where the engagement rate's really high for whatever reason, that isn't getting distributed and that used to bother me. Now I'm just like whatever, like I'll try again tomorrow. I just see what you know. So I I felt my, um, my style, my tactics or whatever, in large part by by reading the things that you put out there, and one of the things that I saw you put out there one time was something about.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I'll put a post up and it won't give many impressions the first 10 minutes, so I'll take it back down, edit it a little bit, change the try it with photo, put it up 30 minutes later. So I find myself like if something's not doing very well first thing in the morning, like let's see what we can change. And so there's all kinds of little tactical things that if you're paying attention to guys like Tony Darren McKee or Justin Welsh and there's a handful of others who will you know for the most part just tell you what they're doing there, you can learn a lot about a methodology.
Speaker 1:So I do, I do want to. Yes, well, can I? Yeah, I want to ask you about that, like, what you pay attention to is. So you've you've shared pretty openly about how you kind of went all in on a content strategy for with the law firm and for glm, I think right. And so have you seen things in terms of certain types of posts that produce more activity for either the business, for GLM or the firm?
Speaker 3:So mostly I'm using it for GLM, right, because I think it would be rare that somebody finds my LinkedIn content and then decides to hire me for a car crash or even refers me to a car crash. Now I've gotten a number of referrals out of LinkedIn. That's to me a side bonus. I use it as a megaphone to drive people down the GLM funnel and we've tried a bunch of stuff that hasn't worked. You know, come sign up for my newsletter, come to write a 90-day free trial Stuff. That has worked.
Speaker 3:Recently, renegade Lawyer Marketing the book. It does amazingly well. Anytime I post about it I sell about 10 or 15 copies and I'm not trying to make any money off of that book and if you're listening like a big secret, right? Um, because it's ten dollars for me to pack it, ship it to you with a whole bunch of extra free stuff. Really, I just want your email address so that I can try to sell you more stuff later. So that has done really well for us and then I'll try to drive people to the podcast, which really is just a long form sales funnel for more GLM stuff. Yeah, and so do I pay attention to you know, in our lead attribution in the law firm, like nobody is calling and saying. I saw Brian on LinkedIn. They're sending me a DM about a case you know. Lawyer in New Mexico. Lawyer in Florida. Hey, I have a friend who's in a crash in Virginia. Can you help him? Great, not so now that my intake to you.
Speaker 1:So, that's.
Speaker 3:you know, that's here and there. Really, I do this to help more lawyers to get new marketing and to get speaking engagements so that I can help more lawyers to get new work. Yeah, Probably very similar to what you're doing with Content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think that that tracks with why you and I, we do a lot more volume in our content than just about any other lawyer on the planet, and that's spot on as well. So, yeah, I appreciate the context there.
Speaker 3:Let's talk content methodology. So you have a one-man method. Sure, you're nodding, but you I've heard of that Is that yours?
Speaker 1:I thought you made that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did make it up, yeah.
Speaker 3:So tell me what that is, tell us what that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's. I don't know if you've seen these sort of sprints that are 30-day. They're typically 30 days post every day on LinkedIn for a month Through 2024, I was trying to figure out where the business was going. It's turned out that scaling a ghostwriting business has been a pain in my ass. That's one thing, and also just something I like.
Speaker 1:After talking to a bunch of people who have grown agencies, it's become clear to me those aren't even fun problems to solve. Like that's what I'm interested in doing. So I started thinking about how to try to help more people. So one of the ways that we've come up with is I call it a boot camp training model, and I call them boot camps just with the idea that it's not about the information, and the information is not the hard part. The hard part is getting the reps and showing up consistently and putting in the work that leads to strengthening those muscles, and it's by doing that that we get a better understanding of the platform and that's when we're able to start to have good things happen. Now the one five, 10,. Don't tell anybody this, but I came up with that yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just you and me. Yeah, I actually came up with that literally on like the first day of my, my last round of my bootcamps in January, and it I just like came up with it off the top of my head and I was like, okay, I like that. And the idea is that on a weekly basis, what you're aiming to do is one quote, unquote good post, five generous direct messages, dms, and 10 substantive comments, and that being kind of like a, let's say, like a baseline circuit. You know if you're strong. So, like for somebody like you with where you're at in your game, let's call it more like watch me do math in public. Yeah, 5-25-50 is more what it would look like for you to get the reps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't do arguing and DMs, and that's the thing is that, like people, those sprints focus on the posting no-transcript, where my balance in that social network is just very high. I have a lot of strong relationships with a lot of people and I'm able to then withdraw. I get to your point about and you are somebody who's made a bunch of deposits. When you post saying, hey, I've got this book, do you want it? 10 or 15 people will respond. They will say yes, because your balance is high enough that when you ask, people will respond. And so the 1-5-10 is an idea of like how it's not just about the posting that you're effectively putting up a billboard saying look at me and saying how do you move in the space in a way that builds relationships, because that's actually how you create opportunities.
Speaker 3:This is Gary Vee. Jab Jab Jab Right Hook.
Speaker 1:And I have been binging Gary Vee for the. I have become, after being keeping him, kind of. I read Jab Jab Right Hook. Yeah, like v for the. I have become, after being keeping him kind of. I read jab jab right hook. Uh, yeah, like six years ago, I read what was that? What was the first one? It wasn't fired up. It was I don't know, whatever the hell. It was the one from like 2009. I read in like 2013. I finally became an acolyte of his, really over the last 18 months he was a big linkedinonent in 2016.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, he was way ahead of it.
Speaker 3:We listened earlier.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. Well, that's yeah. I mean, like you look at Jonathan Pollard and like what he's done and that it's like Pollard. I mean he's one of a kind, he's like he is magnetic, right, in that sense he would not have 80,000 followers had he not started in 2020 at the front of COVID, right, like that was when he gained. My hunch is like 70,000 of those in the first two years.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you the DM strategy, because I don't do any DM. My DM strategy is this when I get a new connection request, my EA has three scripted DMs to send out. One is to practicing lawyers to download notes from our summit. One is to vendors to get on notes from our summit. One is to vendors to get on our partner distribution list at GLM. And one is to law students and it's with a link to a podcast about how to get a job at a firm that won't try to kill you. But other than that, I really have no DM strategy, and so for somebody like me, who you know, if I have something to say, usually I'm saying it in the comments. What are you substantively putting in these DMs, and are you sending them to new connections? Probably not cold, but what I mean is to people who have newly come into your universe or are you refreshing relationships or some mix of the two?
Speaker 1:It's a good question and where my mind goes is, frankly, Brian, I think you and I are situated differently than just about anybody else who's listening to this, I think, in the sense that most people listening to this aren't thinking in terms of lead gen so much, or, let's say, they probably shouldn't be listening in terms of lead gen.
Speaker 1:If you are somebody who runs a PI firm and you're trying to get this out in terms of brand awareness to help with referrals, then there isn't going to be that DM where, like, if you send that DM to that law firm owner who's ripe for growth and you drop them that that bit about GLM and sign on to this thing, then like, yeah, cool, Okay, yeah, They'll sign on. If I'm a PI firm owner, I don't have anything to sell you and I'm just trying to. I want to be top of mind for what you were saying that that attorney in New Mexico has somebody who gets in a crash in Virginia, right. So just, it's just putting yourself out there in a way that people are more aware of you, number one and number two, that they like you, that they want to support you, right, and they that you stick in their mind that you're memorable. This is a roundabout way of saying that like how I would approach DMs if it's you and me is different than like what I'm thinking in the one-five-ten for lawyers.
Speaker 3:Okay, so then, before I'm a lawyer and I'm just starting out and I have a car crash practice in Virginia, what substantively am I saying to somebody else?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so LinkedIn has a DM problem where they're just a dumpster fire.
Speaker 3:There's two problems for let's say that law firm owner Legal nurse consultants.
Speaker 1:God bless them Lovely. I have yet to meet an LNC who is not lovely. I will say that they're just a lovely group of people, god bless.
Speaker 3:Somebody taught them that no lawyer has ever heard about what they do.
Speaker 1:Oh it's. Yeah, I posted about that About 10 days ago. I put out a post about two, a tale of two LNCs in my DMs and I guess this speaks to your point that one of them just started asking me about my thing and like my bootcamp and what I'm doing, and the other one asked if we could get on a call for 15 minutes to talk about what she does. And I think that's my strategy from the beginning on LinkedIn this goes back to early 2022 has been very simple Be consistent, be generous, be genuine.
Speaker 1:If you can do those things, you're going to be way ahead of the game, and that applies more than anywhere else in the DMs. Like, what do I even say to that person? I think, if you're, if you are that law firm owner and, let's say, is when you're sending a connection request, that's another muscle to to start to, to work out right. It's like sending out connection requests to people you haven't met in real life. That, in and of itself, is a is a hurdle that we all need to get over. But let's say, just do two minutes of research.
Speaker 3:Like if it's not clear, it's so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like take a look at their website, take a look at their profile, take a look at things they posted and chances are something will stick out to you, some point of affinity, where you're just because, again, you're not necessarily trying to sell something, you're not pushing something on them, and you're somebody who has some standing in the network, in the profession in a way that your message is likely going to be welcome.
Speaker 1:So you're just looking for a way to sound like a human being and that's easier when you reach out to somebody because of something they posted or something that they put in a comment somewhere that you're able to just take that insight, that thing that you appreciated, and just flip that round into a connection request or a DM for already connected, saying hey, I appreciate what you said about that and it's just I think of it as ways of how do we strengthen our connections between nodes in the network. You're just looking, every time you send out something like that, that's expressing appreciation or sharing an insight, you're strengthening your connection with another node and that's really the trick. Don't tell anybody Again, this is my secret, but it's like the more you're able to strengthen those nodes. It's not a linear progression, but it's something that, like it all, it adds up in a very real and powerful way.
Speaker 3:And if information like this were actually the secret, then we'd all be billionaires with six pack apps.
Speaker 1:I'm still trying to figure out the six pack part.
Speaker 3:Well, at least you got the billionaire part figured out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the money was the easy part, yeah.
Speaker 3:All right, let's do. Let's, let's wind this up with some LinkedIn quick hits, cause I know people will will want your opinion on on these topics. So I'm going to give you a topic and I've never done this before, so I don't know really what the rules are. But let's, let's try to keep discussion on these topics under 60 seconds. I'll set my timer. Yeah, cool LinkedIn premium worth it or not?
Speaker 1:For most people. I'd say no. That it's. The main advantages to LinkedIn. Premium are not about reach or your post doing better or getting more engagement. They're largely about the ability to search, if you're trying to find talent, and also to see who's looking at you, like who's taking a look at your profile. I found that there's why I think you might need premium, in that if you're a power user, linkedin has had this very peculiar thing where if you are bopping around the platform, you will get suspended for bot like activity, when you're not actually a bot, you're just somebody who bops around. I have not had premium, basically 18 hours out of the last three years. Sure enough, I ended up in Linky jail during that 18 hours.
Speaker 3:All right, I'll keep my premium account Sending 100 connection requests to people you don't know per week.
Speaker 1:If you are a law firm owner who's trying to build up your network in a way that can create more referrals, I think that adding those people to your network assuming that they're relevant in terms of either practice area or geography that is worth doing.
Speaker 1:What I would want to see getting the consistent that would count as consistent, but the generous and genuine piece would be are you able? So, like your strategy of having your EA follow up? Like that's solid. Having that support is an amplifier, but I would want you to find ways to then be building into your schedule opportunities to reach out to people and just say hey when you have the opportunity, not that you have to do it with everybody, but like that's what I would want to to be happening that it's not just adding people to your network for just for the sake of adding them, cause what you end up with is what I say is like if you want 20,000 followers, you just do that for 18 months and then you'll have 20,000 followers, and then you see people who, with their posts, still get four reactions Right Because that they were playing that game. And that is the epitome of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Speaker 3:Video on LinkedIn. Does it work? Yes, next question.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I was going to say they betaed the TikTok style feed about nine months ago. That has been gaining traction. I know I bet you've seen some of this in the video you've been doing Like. Reach on video has increased substantially over the last nine months or so and if you're on mobile, video actually has its own little tab at the bottom. You can go play around there where the algorithms appear to be different for the video versus the traditional feed in a way that is a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:all of its own Bottom line, the world is going toward video.
Speaker 3:I hadn't thought about that, but I think you're exactly right about the algorithms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the video feed is more like TikTok straight interest graph, whereas the traditional feed is more in the direction of the social graph, where it's spreading things based on who you know and who's in your network.
Speaker 3:Right, okay, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Context with selfies with every post. You might get me in trouble with this one, brad, well, so okay. Actually, my biggest viral post ever is a post that was a video about six months ago, saying this is why I, as a 42 year old man, post selfies. Right, and it's selfies can be really valuable in the sense that they can help create a sense of connection, right it just it just gives somebody another a more intimate look at who you are. That context, less piece of it. What I try to say is like have something in the background that says something, that just communicates something. And also, if you're relying on selfies, just like, let's say this you don't need to have selfies in every post. How about that? I'll say that in a way that I won't get myself in trouble.
Speaker 3:What time should people be posting?
Speaker 1:Whatever time you want. Going back to Justin Welsh, I am now of the opinion that there never was a golden hour on LinkedIn. The 8 am Monday through Friday was created by Justin Welsh to feed his funnel. I am now convinced that this is like a tinfoil hats conspiracy of mine. It was absolute genius. What the man. He's a maestro, because he figured out how to get everybody to show up at the same time to contribute to his stuff, contribute to one another's stuff and to the. I mean, he wasn't wrong in what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:With the network, you've got all these people sending out all these connections, all these nodes connecting with one another. It is really powerful. And with that said, now you see all these posts where people are like I posted it this time on this day and it worked. I posted it eight o'clock on a Saturday night and it was awesome. And the truth is I think the supply and demand still is true that the algorithm needs has a demand for content 24 seven. And if you're posting at a time, I think the sweet spot is where not fewer people in your network are posting while they're still awake, like if you post at 2am chances are in your network.
Speaker 1:there aren't enough people there to give it the engagement through the first 45 minutes to really get that thing moving. So that's going to be a problem. But most of my posts that have done the best over the last, let's say, nine months a disproportionate number of them have come after 7 pm, like between 7 and 9 pm, and I think that's what's happening there. People are still there, but less demand or less supply, that's later.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 7 to 9,. I don't really do Most of mine. If I've written it and I schedule it through Buffer, it's coming at like 8.45 in the morning and then two hours later. Um, typically on the weekends, but if I have like a brain fart idea in the middle of the day, it's coming whenever it's whatever it's coming. Yeah, I haven't done. I'll save the late night stuff for exactly that reason that I'm afraid that nobody's gonna see it. But maybe I'll start experimenting with seven or nine. Last thing you want to do is let the good idea out the wrong time.
Speaker 1:Do you know Bart Sinyard? Yeah, so Bart posted something that I loved. This was a few months ago and he posted at like 10 o'clock and I liked it and I sent him a DM saying man, that's a phenomenal post, pro tip. I would hold that until, like, I think it was a little bit late. Hold that thought, nevermind it went. It ended up going to like hundreds and hundreds of reactions, a ton of comments. I followed up with him and be like there you go. That shows what I know, right, I'm always learning every day too.
Speaker 3:Well, that's that, to me, has been the great experiment of LinkedIn. You know I started in in October of 2023, probably. I just said I'm going to post every day for a year and just see what happens. I had 900 followers. I'm at almost 17,000 now and it's low stakes learning. It's almost like a standup comic, just testing new stuff, see if this works. And then for a while I was taking the stuff that performed well on LinkedIn and it would go into a great legal marketing journal or become a podcast episode. It's just a low risk way to test. So if you're out there and you're listening and you know who Tony is, but you're not posting on LinkedIn, this is your invitation to begin on a regular basis posting something and follow Tony and sign up for one of his boot camps and you're going to learn a lot.
Speaker 1:Where else do you want to direct people? Find me on LinkedIn. We don't need to get more complicated than that.
Speaker 3:I've got yeah, no, stay on platform.
Speaker 1:Whatever, yeah, look, I'll get you off platform from there. Just come visit me there. Send me a connection request.
Speaker 3:All right man, thank you for doing this. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Brian, it was fun.
