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
Could Humor Make You More Hireable? | Jimmy Lai
What if the fastest way to grow your firm was not another ad, but a joke?
n this episode of Life Beyond the Briefs, Brian sits down with Jimmy Lai, an immigration lawyer with a fast-growing, empathy-first practice, to ask a simple question: Could humor make you more hireable?
From Taiwan to Oklahoma City, Jimmy’s story shows how culture, personality, and daily LinkedIn posts can turn strangers into clients and advocates.
You will learn:
- How to use humor and empathy to lower client anxiety and increase conversions
- A simple LinkedIn posting routine (PS and PPS) that builds trust and referrals
- Why community beats cold outreach and how to build one that sticks
- Smart ways to scale, including of-counsel partnerships, reviews, and operations that do not break
- The immigration law nuances that make your intake truly client-centered
Hit play, grab a coffee, and steal the playbook for being memorable without being unprofessional.
Connect with Jimmy Lai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmylai-jdmba/
Free LinkedIn Growth Community on Skool
Free now. Becomes paid on September 20, 2025.
Learn posting frameworks, get content feedback, and join community accountability.
Join here: https://www.skool.com/unforgettable-professionals/about?ref=c82ba443bf884d888c5bb36e1705a4a0
Enjoying the show? Follow, rate, and review Life Beyond the Briefs, and share this episode with a lawyer who needs a nudge to post with personality.
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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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empathy is like when people call you. They don't want to speak to a lawyer, Like I think I saw something funny and sorry to jump out the rails, but I saw YouTube comments saying, like the three professions that people hate the most used car salesman, lawyer and politician. I'm two for three right now. When are you going into politics? No, no, never, never, never politics. But like people just don't, they don't, they don't actively seek lawyers. Like they don't, they don't actively seek lawyers, they don't want to talk to lawyers. If they're looking for you, they're at a low point of their life.
Speaker 1:So empathy was something that we really wanted to differentiate us and have someone like that on the phone, and that really helped. And we asked for Google reviews that way too, Like be on the phone even though we can't help you, or if we were able to at least guide you in the right direction or point you to some resources you could go to. And we asked for the Google reviews and I think that's what got us to the 100 family law phone calls, because those Google reviews helped our maps ranking.
Speaker 2:Hey friends, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs. If you've ever wondered whether your LinkedIn posts should sound less like a statute and more like a story, this one's for you. I'm chatting with Jimmy Lai, an immigration lawyer who went from Taiwan to Oklahoma City and built a growing practice by doing the unthinkable for most lawyers leading with empathy and sprinkling in humor. In the next few minutes you'll hear how Jimmy uses personality to win trust, why cultural diversity can be a business advantage and the simple LinkedIn routines that actually turn attention into clients. We'll talk intake scripts that calm anxious families, reviews that sell your firm better than ads, and how to scale without losing your soul. Grab your coffee, open LinkedIn and let's rethink what professional looks like. This is your permission slip to be memorable. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Today I have the privilege and honor of talking to Jimmy Lai of Lai Turner out in Oklahoma City. Jimmy does a little bit of everything and I've followed his journey on LinkedIn with a lot of interest over the last couple of years and trying to figure out. You know, what do you make of this guy who talks about cheese, who talks about driving? You know seven hours to go meet somebody one-on-one for a cup of coffee and who also is a very good immigration lawyer, in the middle of the country and has a cool backstory, born and raised in Taiwan before landing in Oklahoma City that we're going to get into. So, jimmy, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thanks. Thank you, brian, thanks for having me. I'm excited so here's what I.
Speaker 2:I love these like origin stories of how people got to where they are. So, you're born in Taiwan and we I visited Taiwan in like 2020, before COVID. I have a brother who's adopted from China and he was studying abroad in Taipei, so when the hell else am I going to have a chance to go to Taipei? So I went over there for Thanksgiving. We found an American bar that was serving the only turkeys that they had on the island, and I spent five or six days over in Taiwan. How did you make it to?
Speaker 1:Oklahoma City. So I'll try to keep this brief. My backstory so yeah, I'm from Taiwan. Actually, I lived in South Dakota when I was 10 to 15. And I went on these high school exchange years once my mom finished her studies and I needed to go back to Taiwan. But I couldn't necessarily go back to the Taiwanese education, so she sent me abroad for high school and I ended up being my sophomore year in Japan, my junior year in Germany and my senior year I did my A-levels in England.
Speaker 1:My sister did the same thing. So she spent her sophomore year in first year was Quebec, then she spent her junior year in France and then her senior year was in Norman, oklahoma. And that's kind of how I ended up there was because the host family was telling my sister yeah, like you're wonderful, you and your brother can go to OU, stay with us, you don't have to pay us rent and just stay with us. But we looked at the tuition of OU versus another local university maybe 50 miles out, and it was a cheaper option for tuition. So that's how we ended up. Being in Oklahoma was just because of my sister's host family being in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2:And the same advice that I gave everybody looking at schools like, go to the cheapest place, that'll take you Oklahoma, and you decided to stay, yeah, so my dream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, say that again. No, I said my dream was to be on the East or the West coast. That was my dream because, like South Dakota when I was young and now still in the middle of the country in Oklahoma it's. It's a little bit of an upgrade from you know, oklahoma, south Dakota, but no, my dream was always East Coast and West Coast. But actually I'm really glad I'm in Oklahoma now because the cost of living is great comparatively and it allowed me to kind of start my own business here. I figured if I was to start a business in the East or West Coast it might be more expensive and the barrier to entry might be a lot higher. How many languages do you speak? Currently it'll be four languages and one dialect. So English, japanese, mandarin, german and then Taiwanese is like a dialect.
Speaker 2:So four or five languages. And in your immigration practice are you servicing those ethnicities and people from that part of Asia, or are you taking all comers from everywhere?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for immigration it's federal. So nationally we have clients over the US and globally I would say a lot of a little bit more Chinese speaking clients, because I speak Chinese Too bad, I don't speak Spanish. That would be really helpful. But yeah, like most, for the most part of these Chinese speaking clients is for our immigration practice.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you I know next to nothing about immigration law. I mean, are there hearings where you have to go ever in person for anything?
Speaker 1:So there are hearings and there are some hearings that can be done virtually, but I practice more on the business, immigration side and the family-based adjustments. So for couples, if they're married in Oklahoma and they're living in Oklahoma, they have a office here, a field office, to attend their marriage interviews. So I will attend those marriage interviews with the clients and that's the irony of my situation, which is like it's so heartwarming and I'm so happy to see them get the green card. But in a way it's interesting because I'm actually still here under what's called the E-2 non-immigrant visa to be able to start my own law firm and live and work in the US, and so as a non-immigrant, I'm helping other people get their green cards and citizenships. So that's kind of like the irony of my situation right now.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting, and is there a timeline or a time limit on that? Do you have to return at some point?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like the visa, the E2 visa is good for five years and it's renewable as long as the business is operating. So I'm actually under an immense amount of pressure to make sure that my business doesn't go bankrupt and doesn't go kaput Like I need to make sure the business keeps running, or else that's it for me. I got to pack my bag and go. So I tell my staff and team members I was like. You know, you guys are lucky to be American. If anything happens, you can always polish up your resume and find a job anywhere in the US you want. You don't need to get additional work autorizations, you don't need to get extra permissions anywhere. But for me, if this business fails, I literally have to pack up my bag and leave, and you know, if I want to come back, I need to find a different path. So this is it for me.
Speaker 2:Does it need to be the same business or you just have to be operating any business in order, like on the renewal period?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for the E-2 visa is tied to the business itself, so it has to be this business. But maybe in the future, if I restructure it like maybe make Light Turner a holding company and underneath it has different kinds of divisions or corporations, and that can work. But for now my business is tied to the law firm itself. So that's the visa I'm in.
Speaker 2:But this is like that's a really interesting nuance and many, many years down the road for you. But it's like what do I do when I need to sell my law firm? You know, as we hear this boogeyman of VC money and private equity coming into law firms, if you were to sell your interest in Lyon-Turner to I don't know Blackstone, call it, does that affect it must affect your immigration or your ability to be here? I'm betraying my ignorance of all things immigration and naturalization by screwing up all these terms, but does that? If you sold your interest, do you then have to go and figure something else out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like with part of the E-2 visa, I need to be at least a 50% owner. So like, if I do sell my you know equity whatever to less than 50% or sell out, I guess, well, first I might be happy because if I'm getting a lot of money then that would be great for me to invest in other things. But yeah, technically, once I sell I can't stay under the same visa anymore. So that's it for me. But if I have the additional capital, maybe I can invest in a different business and come in through the E-2 visa. But then there's another one called the EB-5, which requires like $800,000, $900,000, that would be the path for a green card.
Speaker 1:And the funny thing is that so my business can actually eventually qualify if I keep reinvesting into my business. But the only thing that doesn't count as reinvestment is payroll and that kind of sucks, because I've spent so much on payroll already. But they say payroll doesn't count towards your investment requirement. But once we approve you, conditionally you need to hire 10 US workers. So like, before you get approved, your investment, your payroll cost, doesn't count as investments, but once we approve you, you're going to have to hire 10 US workers to keep your green card.
Speaker 2:You must know all of this as an immigration lawyer, but is there somebody who you consult on like that hyper sounds like a hyper-specialized, with a lot of opportunity to screw it up and then have all of the thing that you built just fall apart?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like EB-5, definitely not my special practice area. So I've talked to a couple of mentors and in the immigration field, even though we're all kind of competitors because it's a national, it's a federal practice. So even though if a colleague or a friend is in Chicago, we're, in a way we're kind of competitors if we practice the same practice area. But I found that the immigration practice is it's pretty small in a way and people are encouraging and nice about it.
Speaker 2:So there's like Facebook groups where immigration attorneys will share some tips and be helpful about some of the situations that you or your client might be in. Guys don't ever share anything, any information on experts, but you know, I've never had somebody who's like in a trucking case, for instance, who wouldn't help you even if they weren't involved, just because you're quote a competitor. So that sounds very similar and I'm glad that your practice area has that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it is. And yeah, I come across quite a bit of plaintiff attorneys and they're all really nice and generous with their time.
Speaker 2:So you started this basically right out of law school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty much. Basically so right out of law school to maintain my student status and we have something called the OPT to be able to maintain your status. I couldn't work for my law firm yet and I was also waiting on for my bar application to get licensed. But in that time period it was about a 10 month time period I was actually just doing remote unpaid internships to maintain my status. So I was doing that while making preparations to start my business.
Speaker 2:And then your business. Now it's not just an immigration firm. You all have criminal defense and personal injury and a family law and a couple of other practices. Can you tell me a little bit about how you went about growing and scaling and thinking about, okay, we should add this, or like, when we get called for family law, maybe we should just refer those away? How have you made those decisions so far?
Speaker 1:Sure. So with immigration it was a no-brainer being a non-immigrant myself, being on student status, understanding the struggles. It's naturally interesting in immigration like figuring out, okay, what are some pathways, and so that naturally for me was immigration, was pretty clear early on. Also, I'm not Oklahoman, even though I've lived here for the last, you know, 13 years. But I don't really have strong ties to Oklahoma other than being a student here. So I figured immigration would be the practice area where it's federal and it's national. So I don't have to worry about having ties to Oklahoma. I can get clients from all over the US or all over the world. So that was kind of the direction. And in starting our own law firm I had a classmate of mine just decided okay, we'll partner up. So we started a law firm together and in terms of local strategy, we went against conventional wisdom which is always niche down, pick something that you really like and can do, connect so well.
Speaker 1:But coming straight out of law school and starting your own firm, I didn't have any specialties, I didn't have any specialized skills right. So even though immigration was what we want to do to start a business, I kind of treated it as running a business instead of a practice. Early on I knew I had to treat it as a business. I was passing out, going to networking events, passing out my business cards like candy and just letting everyone know, just putting on blast. I started a business, so letting everyone know, and then slowly, eventually people will reach out and say, oh, do you do this, do you do that? And we will. Actually, we will still analyze it and make sure that we can take it. But we also couldn't afford to turn business away. So it was like a balance of making sure that we're capable of doing this or at least have a mentor that's able to guide us along the way.
Speaker 1:And in terms of the practice areas, we actually started with some employment law cases and then, over time, for some reason, our marketing. It just I don't know how to say this, but for some reason something worked. And so for after one year in business, from January to March, we had about 100 family law leads. For some reason we don't do family law, we don't advertise family law, but for some reason people were calling us about family law. So we thought, okay, interesting, we didn't do it, so we need to get someone on board to kind of fulfill these client needs. So we were lucky to bring on one of our directors family law director and he came on and we just started working that side. So right now family law is actually about 50% of our revenue at the firm.
Speaker 2:I mean it's interesting because you have a couple of options at that point. Like number one you can bring somebody on which you did Number two, you could refer everything out or you could just continue to ignore the hundred phone calls that are coming in. For whatever reason, my super lawyers profile generates nothing but mold cases, and it's the only place that generates mold cases. I live in an apartment complex. There's black mold. I got sick. What do I do? And like once a month I get one of those leads from super lawyers and it only comes from super lawyers.
Speaker 2:And so I went on the VTLA Virginia trial lawyers listserv and I was like, does anybody actually handle these cases? Crickets Cause, I'm. I'm trying to figure out. You know we're generating these calls. I'm doing it doesn't cost me anything, except whatever we're paying for the backlink on super lawyers. Like what do I do with this? But you were getting a flood of these family law cases and at the time was it just you and Turner who were picking up the phone and answering these calls, or did you have any receptionists or anything like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, and early on, well before the flood, luckily, like before that, we found out that I definitely need a receptionist or someone to handle the phone calls, because in the early days it was me Like Jimmy the receptionist, jimmy the secretary, jimmy the partner.
Speaker 2:Let me give this a live for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or let me talk to my other part, let me talk to the partner to see if we want to take this case. So like it's just like a deflection or something. So like Jimmy, all the hats, jimmy, the HR, jimmy, everything, hr, jimmy, everything. But eventually I started to get burned out. I was like I can't answer phone calls at 9 pm at night, like yeah, even though money might be good, but like that's 9 pm at night, like why am I answering the phone calls at nine o'clock at night? But in a way that differentiated me a little bit, but I knew that it wasn't sustainable. I can't keep doing it.
Speaker 1:So we were, luckily, we were hired Actually my partner his to answer the phone call. She's a really on the phone, she's really good on the phone and has the value that we want, like being empathetic, when you know that's one of our core values. Empathy is like when people call you they don't want to speak to a lawyer, like I think I saw something funny and sorry to jump out the rails, but I saw YouTube comments saying like the three professions that people hate the most used car salesman, lawyer and politician. I'm two for three right now.
Speaker 2:When are you going into politics?
Speaker 1:No, no, never, never, never politics. But like people, just don't. They don't actively seek lawyers, they don't want to talk to lawyers. If they're looking for you, they're at a low point of their life. So empathy was something that we really wanted to differentiate us and have someone like that on the phone, and that really helped. And we asked for Google reviews that way too, like being on the phone even though we can't help you, or if we were able to at least guide you in the right direction or point you to some resources you could go to. And we asked for the Google reviews and I think that's what got us to the 100 family law phone calls, because those Google reviews helped our maps ranking, even though our SEO wasn't doing well. If you search some key terms, our map ranking actually shows up as the top five sometimes, so that those were the reason why I think we got the 100 family law phone calls from January to March.
Speaker 2:Right, and so you know. It's funny, because if you go to any kind of business development or how to run a legal practice seminar, one of the first things they're going to tell you is don't answer the phone at nine o'clock at night, like by yourself, right. But I think it's easy, when you are up on a stage telling people how to run their law firm, to like forget what it's like to need the money that's coming in from a client who's calling you at nine o'clock at night. And so there are. There are steps to all of this, which is like you answer every call and you're the one who does everything. You find somebody who can replace your empathy level on the phone, even if they're not a lawyer, and can marshal people, like through the decision tree of can we help this person or can we not help this person.
Speaker 2:And when you're able to afford that receptionist or intake manager or whatever your firm calls them, the revenue actually goes up and so does the profitability. But it takes a while to be confident in yourself enough to invest in that person and get them on board. Yeah, and so how have you got cause? Now you, you've scaled it. I forget how many lawyers you you told me you had I think it's seven at one point, but maybe it's more than that. Now, like, how have you thought about cost of next hire versus revenue stream from NextHire, balanced with? Like are we actually generating any of these phone calls? Or am I also going to have to invest in LSAs or PPC in order to get the phone ringing for like a criminal law practice?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I would say I'll be humble and say a lot of it was luck. Would say I'll be humble and say a lot of it was luck, like I just stumbled through everything and just fortunate that great people decided to believe in us and joining the team. And they've all been great. Like all the people that joined us, I rarely have to terminate anyone and even though recently we have one staff members turn in their resignation. But for me, on my side, it's like everything's always I try to make things amicable, but in terms terms of scaling, it's like that question like is the chicken and egg? Like do you add more first or do you have enough revenue coming in? And so right now I think the gauge is what we're trying to do is establish, define the roles better. That's something we're trying to do better. It's like each staff member have their job description and the roles and then having a KPI and sending that KPI.
Speaker 1:So it's not just this particular team saying, oh, we're so behind, we need more people, because what we ended up doing was just hiring our problems away, like taking on more costs. So actually, you know, my payroll cost is considerably high and I'm trying to keep that in a manageable level now and while scaling up and getting the phones to start ringing, and really identifying which head or which marketing is working and to double down on what's working. Because of my entrepreneur spirit and suffering from shiny object syndrome, I'm willing to try everything. Like you know, you see me on LinkedIn doing all this stuff. You see me trying to do YouTube, instagram, tiktok and all this stuff. So I just need to like really dig deep and figure out which marketing channels generating the best returns and just double down on that instead of trying out all these different things at once.
Speaker 2:So it's really funny because you're describing like job descriptions and KPIs and marketing and I'm thinking like all while spending some time running an immigration law practice yeah, it's, you're wearing a lot of hats and so trying to figure out like what, what's actually working and what's not working. So, for instance and we test a lot of stuff too we we ran in 2024, this pharmacy bag. So there's like a there's a Harris Teeter parking lot that's basically a stone's throw from my office. They I didn't even know this thing existed, but they're at their pharmacy bag guy reached out to ask if we wanted to buy ad space on it and it was. It was unbelievably cheap. It was like a thousand dollars to have the front of the bag for the entire year, you know whatever. So we ran this small large ad on the front of the pharmacy bag. Injured in a car crash had a QR code.
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but at the end of the day, it's a thousand dollar experiment. It didn't work. So like, I don't recommend that. But but we're always testing. But the point is you have to have an ability for anything that you're testing to run the test and to know what the numbers are at the end. So like, we put a QR code on it.
Speaker 2:By the end of the year, 30 people had come to the website on the QR code and probably 15 of them were my team making sure that this thing worked, or people walking through our office scanning the bag which is hanging on the wall. So that thing was that was a total failure, but it's. But I was talking to my friends Preston and McBilly who run some of our social media and they were like no dude, those are like, let's say, it was only 15 clicks, those 15 super high intent clicks. Right, you had a direct call to action, told them what they were going to find when they got there and they went there and then your website, your landing page, whatever didn't do the job of converting them into a phone call.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting way to think about that. But for 15, I'm not going to run the experiment again for another year, like we'll go focus our energy and effort on something else. But the whole game of marketing and attracting clients is that it's trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work. Cut the spend on the stuff that doesn't work as soon as you can. Put more dollars behind the thing that does work and then hope that the thing that works continues to work yeah and you sharing that?
Speaker 1:yeah, you sharing that just made me realize too that, exactly that, uh, we tried out tv ads, so like a local news station, and we tried out ads for for three months and it was like two thousand dollars a month. It was supposed to be like impression wise, it was supposed to be like a fifty thousand impressions a month based on, like the spots, and we ran it for criminal defense, immigration and family and at the end of the day, we also asked them to put our tracking number.
Speaker 1:so, corel, I said I want the COREL number on there so at least we can track if anyone actually calls that. So after three months, no phone calls and there's no way for us to track if they actually visit our website or anything. So I was like, okay, we need to cut the cord on there. Luckily it was a month to month, um month to month thing instead of a full year contract, so we can kind of end it there and focus the 2000. I think we can spend it somewhere else, like maybe just run the LSA for $2,000 instead of a TV ad.
Speaker 2:What boring program were they running your ads on that? It was only $2,000 a month.
Speaker 1:Probably like yeah, I don't I don't know what boring program, but yeah, it was only $2,000 a month and I saw it as a as a branding play, but yeah, it's just more of a branding play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know, if you were, if you had a sophisticated tracking, the question really would be like did we see spikes on the website five minutes after, five minutes after the ad ran, right? So that would be the way to try to figure that out. But it is a clue that nobody picked up the phone, although you know I would question whether the tracking number on the tv ad would work, and coming from a guy who doesn't run any tv ads, so take this for the grain of salt. But if my experience is, if I saw you on tv, I would look you up first and then call you from your website. Right, and that's. You know.
Speaker 2:It's kind of the same thing that I tell lawyers to say, oh, we don't advertise, my website, doesn't matter, because all my, all my cases come from referrals. Well, it might come from a referral, but they're at least looking you up on some digital property, especially younger generation, and you're squarely in that younger generation. Like when was the last time you went to a restaurant and you didn't look at their Instagram to see if the food looked good or like what the vibe looked like? Right? And so you, you law firms, still have to have the digital properties. Even if all your cases are coming from TV, like insert, whatever referrals, tv LSAs, you still have to have social proof out there in the world that you're not a serial killer. Yeah, true, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's I guess that's my strategy for LinkedIn. Then yeah, I will.
Speaker 2:The social proof it's a great segue, because I was just about to ask you. You, you know, maybe two, two and a half months ago you became like super poster, right, and I've I think I could describe like if actually I talked to to Jeffrey Lamont, who's a financial planner in Toronto, and the day that we talked he had posted something that was like it's nine 37 at night and blah, blah, blah, blah, and we got on the call. I said are you like taking Jimmy Lai's course, cause it had a PS and a PPS at the end of it. So you definitely you have a very distinctive structure that you write with. I'm curious where that came from.
Speaker 1:Sure, I think, yeah, this is a perfect segue, because when we talked about marketing, I was trying out Google ads and all these ads and it came out to about we're spending about 20, 30 thousand a month right now on all the ads. And that came out to about we're spending about 20, 30,000 a month right now on all the ads. And that was back in September of last year and so I figured you know, I need to figure out something. I need to try to build a personal brand so that I don't have to rely on ads, because the ROAS might be good sometime but it can change overnight, the platform can change overnight and sometimes doubling down on that might not be the most effective way. So that's where I've looked at LinkedIn. I was like, okay, I heard I went to one of those conferences and the attorney it was actually David Bruno, the criminal defense attorney, I think in New Jersey he shared about his referral strategy on LinkedIn. He said, like it makes it worth it if you just get one case from LinkedIn. I was like, okay, so I just went on LinkedIn and started posting one case from LinkedIn. I was like, okay, so I just went on LinkedIn and started posting.
Speaker 1:And then, by December of last year, came across a ghostwriter. I think you may be familiar with him, jacob yeah, jacob Molina, yeah, he's grown pretty fast as well, and so I was one of his earlier clients and I worked with him from January to June and so he shared with me like his LinkedIn strategy is okay and that makes sense, the storytelling style, and I really credit him for helping me grow my profile At that time. I was still around 1,000 or 2,000 followers at that time and so he started the spark in me to really want to grow out LinkedIn and even though he was writing two posts a week for me, I started really going down the rabbit hole of trying to learn how to be better at LinkedIn. So I took all these programs, like all these big name LinkedIn creators Jasmine Elledge, laura Acosta, justin Welsh, matt Barker and then Chris Donnelly so, like all these creators, I kind of invested in their courses and learned, and so that's kind of where I learned to kind of craft my own style and the PS and PPS is.
Speaker 1:I think it's just my sense of humor. I like adding humor to my post and I just want to make LinkedIn fun because that's the whole thing, like people think they might be boring, like if you work in procurement it's like what's procurement? But I bet there's interesting stories you can share about procurement if you're working for a business or as attorneys. Sometimes we think that our work is boring because we know it like that. But for the layperson, they might not know that this, oh well, like this is what you do. But if we do it all the time, we find it repetitive and we find it boring. So that's. The whole thing is like how can I make LinkedIn fun? And then I got addicted to LinkedIn. I just started posting, but conventional wisdom is to only post once a day. I've been posting two to four times a day, but now I'm going to scale that down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're starting to run out of stuff to talk about. Yeah, at one point I had to talk about cheese, and that's how I got a little bit more viral and that's why I have this book who Moved my Cheese right there. I have this book like who moved my cheese right there.
Speaker 2:It's just an inside joke. Yeah, that's all personal brand, right, like I mean I read that in the kind of tongue in cheek introduction of you just on this episode. It's like it's a connection I don't have many other lawyers for whom I would associate with any food you know, right, and it it makes you stickier as a referral source. So I think a hundred 100 think as a personal branding and as a referral source, play what you're doing makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 2:I thought the pspps was taught to you somewhere because it seems like linkedin seems to matter if you can get people to dwell on your post, even if they don't engage with it. You know like or comment or share or whatever. Um, and I'll tell you in a minute one thing that I do, but like that, it's scroll, stopping to have your hook, and then the story, and then I the stories you know, even if it's kind of boring start scrolling and then I see there's a PS, pps, you stop and you read that Right, so that's, that's very smart, if that's not an. The background the post does insanely well because people that I try to like make that find pictures where the text is smaller, because people will click and like zoom in. So anytime I'm getting giving a presentation, I make sure that the screen, the picture that I post from that presentation, is the one that is hardest to read, the thing in the background that's a nice tip.
Speaker 2:It does insanely well, and so it's funny like you gamifying LinkedIn to find these little tweaks that tend to boost your post. And now you've built a community on school S-K-O-O-L. It's called Unforgettable Professionals. You got 300 and some odd people in there and you keep threatening to monetize it. So what's going on with that?
Speaker 1:No, I wouldn't say that's threatening.
Speaker 2:It's more of a gentle reminder you keep threatening that if people don't join now, you're going to monetize it later.
Speaker 1:Well, at some point I think, yeah, like, and that's a philosophy, like it won't replace my income, like the main source is law firm and the school committee is. It's more of like a passion, because I've I got addicted to linkedin and the people ask me like why, and then how I'm doing this and even though I'm not a big influencer by any means, but they see me show up consistently in daily and they really want to know, like how I'm doing it. So, more of just having a supportive community being there, like you can share your ideas in there and have feedback from other people before you post. Because I think one of the most common objection to people posting on LinkedIn and I suffered from that too was I only saw LinkedIn as a place for resumes and for looking for jobs. I didn't see it as a place to post and share your opinions. Because LinkedIn is very, very public. Like you can't make it like Facebook or something where you can make your profile private and only share your thoughts to your family and friends, but LinkedIn is public. Even people not connected to you can see your posts. And so a lot of people are just afraid. Like what if I have nothing to say? What if I say something to offend people? What if it's boring? So that's kind of like.
Speaker 1:The purpose of the community is like getting people together and share the ideas. And the monetization part is because I feel like if you're not invested in it and it's more like maybe a little bit of an accountability aspect is like okay, you're paying for it, so then you will maybe spend at least an hour a week in this community to learn and improve. So that's kind of like the aspect of, okay, everyone can come in for free to learn and improve. So that's kind of like the aspect of okay, everyone can come in for free, but then eventually some of the more valuable contents or tips or accountability is going to be behind a paywall in the classroom tab. But everyone can come in for free until my birthday and I announced that in my community it's actually it's September 20th. People are wondering like when's your birthday? It's September 20th. And then at that point I'll turn on like if anyone wants to join, they'll have to pay a membership fee to be able to join, but the existing members will be able to be in the community for free. Perfect.
Speaker 2:So my best guess is that this episode is coming out on September 16th, so you got four days to go and join Jimmy's school community.
Speaker 2:No, but you know the inability to post anonymously on LinkedIn keeps out most of the trolls. Right, like, if you look at any kind of Facebook page and even in these like I'm in like a personal injury lawyer group on Facebook and you can post anonymously and most of the people are helpful. But if you're in any broader kind of community, like, you get trolls that just shit all over even what you thought was you're trying to be helpful or or whatever, and linkedin you know the fact that you can only have a profile that's tied to an email address um tends to keep out most of the trolls.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I agree with that, like, even though I had a post go super viral almost 600 000 views and that was last a couple months ago and I just wrote about, you know, gen z texting me late at night and that post blew up, but I still got hate on that.
Speaker 1:it's a true story, like it's not 100, true in the sense that I had to tweak a few things, but it was true that he texted me that night and it was true that it was those conversations. But there was trolls still, even if it's very public. I got some hate comments and I just, you know, just block and ignore.
Speaker 2:That's fair. So that does happen past like 200,000, 300,000. Reach a different side of LinkedIn right. Once you get like exit velocity and you're outside of lawyer LinkedIn, then people are like fucking lawyer. Yeah, all lawyers want to do is bill like this wasn't even a post about billing yeah, yeah and then you.
Speaker 2:sometimes I'll go and I'll look at their comment history and they're just four lawyers in a row. They've had something negative to say, so that's that. Yeah, right, everybody wants to go viral until you go viral and you reach the wrong side of LinkedIn. Yeah, all right, so I'm going to link to that in the show description as well as your law firm. You're coming out to hang out in DC for the Great League Marketing Summit at the end of October, so I'm excited to see you in person there. Where else do? And Jacob Molina will be there as well, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to bring this for you to sign it. I'm going to bring this one. I love it. You have and if you're, if you're listening, jimmy has the original run a copy of renegade lawyer marketing, which I mean. The story behind that cover is that we got the manuscript back like 14 days before our event and usually, like the new cover, we put through 99 designs. We had it professionally done, that one. We're like I don't know, just pick something, pick something so we can get this thing printed. We'll call the next one like second run, but like just get it up, just get it up and out, so you have. You have one of the original 200 of the print run.
Speaker 1:Where else can people find you my man linkedin, youtube, tiktok, instagram, anywhere I'm trying. So I guess that would be. My strategy is that I'm going for top of funnel type content so that people think of me, like if people come across immigration or people like a lawyer which hates cheese, jimmy, immigration Jimmy. So I've gotten quite a few referrals lately that, oh, you know, my family member needs immigration or this business thinking about immigration, and they've been reaching out to me. So that's kind of like my play right now with LinkedIn and organic content is just be on top of mind.
Speaker 1:And I guess my sense of humor is weird and I try to be as funny as possible and I think humor sticks. Like when you mentioned like stickiness, I think humor sticks. So whenever I'm doing marketing, I'm thinking about like how can I make fun of myself? That's kind of my style. So one thing I may have, one thing, one idea that you know I don't mind sharing, is like maybe something where someday I could put up a billboard and say we hate lawyers too, and then so they'll be like oh, what? Like these lawyers hate lawyers too, okay. So like that gets the sticky right. They're like okay, what are they about? So that you guys top of mind like okay, these lawyers, hey, lawyers too. But I'll put a bracket like we only hate, you know if you're not our lawyers.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think you know these practice areas like immigration, where you can do it nationwide. Really, maybe I'm just not on this side of TikTok and Instagram, but I think that's. And again, maybe the algorithm isn't feeding that to me because I don't need an immigration lawyer and maybe there's hundreds of people like you out there doing it. But that's exactly the strategy I would be trying to execute on and I would be working on building my team on the back end so that I had somebody to answer the chats that are coming through who isn't me. I would have like a mini chat, you know, like that comment visa to get my white paper or whatever. Like I would have that set up, and then I would work on making sure the phones are answered 24-7 by somebody to do so that we're not missing any leads. And you probably have done all of that, and if you haven't, I'm going to teach you how to do it at the summit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't done it, so I'm going to go and learn how to do it. Awesome man.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, this has been a lot of fun and I will see you in a month.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you See ya.
