15 - How a PRIVATE Podcast Became a Law Firm Owners Most Powerful Lead Magnet

What if your next client could get to know, like, and trust you before they ever picked up the phone?

In this episode, I sit down with family lawyer Sarah Khan-Bashir, founder of SKB Law, to explore how a private podcast became one of the most effective marketing tools in her business.

Sarah already had a successful public podcast, Family Matters with SKB Law, featuring powerful client stories and expert insights from across the family law sector. But together, Mike and Sarah took things a step further by creating a private podcast designed specifically for people actively searching for legal help.

Instead of offering another downloadable PDF or fact sheet, I worked with Sarah to create an audio experience that allows potential clients to hear her voice, understand her values, and gain practical guidance on divorce, separation, child arrangements, and family law matters, all before booking a consultation.

During this conversation, you'll discover:

🎙️ Why private podcasts are emerging as a powerful alternative to traditional lead magnets

🎙️ How lawyers, consultants, coaches, accountants, and other professionals can use audio to build trust at scale

🎙️ The psychology behind why hearing someone's voice creates a stronger connection than reading a PDF

🎙️ How Sarah transformed existing website content into a valuable client resource

🎙️ Why authentic client voice testimonials can be more persuasive than written reviews

🎙️ The difference between a public podcast and a private podcast strategy

🎙️ How to create a private podcast without expensive equipment or complicated technology

You'll also hear Sarah's inspiring vision for making family law more accessible, supporting aspiring legal professionals, and expanding international services through SKB Law.

If you're looking for fresh ideas around lead generation, content marketing, podcast marketing, personal branding, or client acquisition, this episode is packed with practical insights and real-world experience.

Thanks for listening to the Making Digital Real podcast.

If something in this episode sparked a question, an idea, or a lightbulb moment, I’d love to hear from you. You can send me a voice message directly and I may even feature it in a future episode.

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If you’d like help with private podcasts, LinkedIn strategy, MemberVault, or simplifying your digital marketing, you’ll find everything on my website, including ways to work with me.

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Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

Transcript

0:01

Right, we're live. Hey, everybody. It's Mike here from Making Digital Real. And as you know, every now and again, I bring in brilliant people into my world and into my lives and into my podcast episodes, if that's what you're listening on today. But today's going to be a good one because we have Sarah Khan-Bashir here from SKB Law. And Sarah, thank you for joining me. Would you like to introduce yourself before we get into the world of private podcasts? Sure. Thanks, Mike. As you said, my name is Sarah Khan-Bashir. I'm a solicitor and the founder of SKB Law. We are a family law practise and obviously provide legal services in and around the world of divorce, separation and children's matters. Brilliant. Now, we've been working together for a little while now. You have a podcast, which is a public podcast, which goes out, you know, across the world, across all the major apps. Before we dive into private podcasts, tell us about how or why you're using the power of audio for your marketing in that sense. Why choose podcasting? So that's a really good question because I sort of fell into it, Mike. Essentially, we deal with people, we deal with people's lives and the work that we do has an impact, a real impact on those clients and, you know, for them and their families for the rest of their lives, really. So we have to handle things with a certain degree of sensitivity. But one thing that struck out to me as I was dealing with lots of clients was that the client's stories themselves had a massive impact upon other people who were having these kind of issues. Most people think this is only happening to me. What do I do? I must be the luckiest person in the world. My marriage is broken down. Nobody understands what I'm going through. So it was actually the very, very first client that I first had as a trainee about 25, 26 years ago. And I met her at an event and obviously 25, 26 years on, her life had gone on. She moved on to do great things. And we began talking about our initial interaction. And she told me the story of why she came to us, why she came to me. She told me the story of how we helped, how we assisted and how no one else actually got it. In terms of what she was trying to get across, what she wanted out of the whole, it was a separation of child separation issue. So I said to her, I said, you know, I really like to record your story so that other clients can hear what you've been through and how we were able to help, but how you essentially how your resilience got you through things because it was a particularly nasty case, Mike. So she agreed straight away because I've absolutely got no qualms about that. So if you listen to our podcast, it's called Family Matters with SKB Law. She is the very first podcast we did, the very first client I ever had. And her story is so compelling. I think that took us, I think it was 2023 or 24, we became in the top 10 of the divorce podcast in the UK. So it was quite a great achievement for us. But essentially, there's a long answer to your question, which is, I really believed in the power of storytelling. I believed in the power of storytelling that would help more clients using the experience in the stories of one client or two clients or three clients. So that's how it all was born. The first series was client stories. So whether it was around divorce, separation, children, international marriages, we deal with a lot of clients who have that intersectionality between religious, cultural, international marriages. So whether it's that or the current issues you're going through, there was a story for everyone to relate to. The second season was all about those additional experts that assist with family law cases. So whether that's therapists, whether that's mediators, whether that's forensic accountants. The second season told their stories, again, in order to help clients to reach more people, to lay bare the world of family law, really. Fantastic. And what I like about that, first of all, is you're really increasing the fact that you care about your clients. It shows that you are brilliant in the world of working with all of these different departments that bring this whole family law thing to a close with your clients. And usually, in my world or in a podcasting world, it would stop there. You've got a podcast, you've got your audience, people are finding you happy days, and you can continue that wonderful adventure. But where we carried on the conversation was, okay, you've got a public podcast, which is out there for people to find. What about the people that are actually actively coming to find you in the digital world? So let's just say your website. What is it that we can offer them rather than just this, check out this podcast with all these episodes, find one, and we hope you like it? We chose a private podcast as your lead magnet, didn't we? And rather than me trying to explain it all, do you want to tell me about how that happened and why you chose to go down that journey rather than just choosing a download a fact sheet or download a PDF like everyone else? Well, this is the exciting bit, right? So it was a coming together of mine, of yours and ours. And so if anyone listening who's interested in this, essentially, we were generating a lot of content for our web page, right? So fact sheets, as you said, guides, articles, anything that a client may feel is of interest to them relating to family law world. So that's fine. We had all that. We have the public podcast, as you said, you know, people can just access them because they want to hear about a particular client's journey. They want to hear about a particular expert's assistance within that client journey. But someone said to me once, and this is when we were developing a new website, we just updating everything. And someone said, you know, the stuff that you do is great, but the world of divorce law and family law can be a bit daunting. And one of the things is that a lot of people will be Googling on the Internet and or trying to find the right lawyer for that in their world, for their problems, someone that they can connect to. Because one of the things I always say to clients, you've got to have complete trust, particularly in this area of family law, because only when the trust is there does that information flow freely that can be used to help your case and get you where you want to be. Not necessarily where you think you want to be, but what you as an individual as a client needs out of this family law situation, whatever it is. So that conversation with this individual has said you really need something on your website that gives people an insight who are scrolling at night, trying to find someone that they can connect with. You know, they've got divorce lawyers, divorce lawyers, family lawyers, you know, everything is there, you know, when you search certain terms. But they need to see who you are, they need to see who Sarah is, they need to see who SKB law is. So you need something on there that allows them to access you out of hours or hear what you're all about. So that conversation start in my mind, thinking, right, how do we do this? Then enters Mike, right? And Mike, the idea you pitched to us, honestly, I thought, why did we not think about that? But you don't because you work in a silo. You think, right, this is my client work. This is the admin work. This is the marketing where everything's in a separate box. Your suggestion to bring to life essentially the guides, the fact sheets, the articles by simply making them into a podcast, which meant just reading them rather than people having to read them. You did two things, essentially. You can use your voice, your intonation. People can pick up on that to show what is actually what really matters to you because I live and breathe this job. And I don't mean that in a way that, oh, my God, it's taking over my life. It's a job that gets me out of bed in the morning because I'm thinking about certain case and think about certain client. And I'm not thinking, oh, God, how do I do this? I'm thinking, I want to help this client. How do I get, you know, how do I really, really help this client and make their life better for them? And so when you came up with that idea, I thought, hang on a minute. Yeah, we've got all the information there instead of me recording more and more podcasts, which are great in the public domain. If someone is scrolling and comes across our website, this is that window into who we are. The private podcast where they will say, yeah, we want to reach out further. We see the information. Yeah, you're a family lawyer. So are so many others. But by accessing these private podcasts, they're able to then get immediate access to what we do, immediate access to the problems that we can solve, and immediate access to how we can tailor make them bespoke to that individual's situation, needs, budget even. And honestly, again, I know you're going to ask me more questions about it. But again, the question comes to mind, well, I haven't got time to do these. The podcasts take time, right? You book a studio, you've got editing to do. You have to rewatch the podcast or re listen to it. But again, you provided the tools to say I can make this easy. It's not as complicated as people make out. You simply spend 30 minutes, sit down with your iPhone and send a recording over to me. Everything is contained in that iPhone mic. I don't need any special mics. Whereas when I first started podcasting, people were saying, oh, you need this kind of mic, you need that kind of, you know, la, la, la. And it makes it too complicated. Whereas you said, no, voice noted to me that if the quality is good, we can use it. So I sat down one Saturday afternoon, looked at all the guides and the articles that I wanted to bring to life for these individuals who are searching just for us. You know, recorded them all in one session and the rest was was up to you, which you created this access for people, which is essentially is a window shop into what we do. Yeah, 100 percent. So just to summarise what you've just said, we chose our audio because there are a lot of people who might be listening or watching this right now thinking, why didn't Sarah just record a video for her audience? The problem with that in my eyes is people have screen fatigue. People don't want to spend more time than they have to sit in front of a monitor or a screen. But if they can consume your content and listen to what you've got to say while they're walking the dog, driving to work, sat at the airport, wherever they are, then it's easy. And with a private podcast, we did five episodes for you. Yeah. And once we've once we've done those five episodes, that's it. It's not a continuous journey. We've got it. It's set. It's there. It now just runs for as long as we need it to run, whether we want to change an episode in the future, add one. But what we're doing is we've created that that's in exchange for somebody's name and email address. So we're growing our database to nurture those people. And we're ultimately using the power of all these podcast apps that everybody has on their phone in their pocket. I mean, that's the point. That video is great, but it's not as accessible as audio. Audio, there is no limit to where you can listen to it. Like you said, walking the dog, waiting in a queue. Whereas on a screen, you actually have to sit down and focus. So it opens up and widens the net for potential sort of listeners. Yeah. And so in those five episodes, your audience are listening to you. They're getting to know Sarah. They've already started working with Sarah before they've even realised it. But tell me about the magic of stitching in the voice notes from the clients that you've worked with that were happy to give you a voice testimony. I mean, that was pure genius. And again, you're the expert. I would not have thought of that. But we collect reviews from our clients, which obviously help other clients determine whether they're going to use us, make a choice. But the beauty of the voice review, so essentially what it was, we sent the clients a lake and we said, if you are happy to do so, can you send us a voice recording review, essentially? And actually, in the beginning of the podcast and towards the end of the podcast, you stitched in a sample of that review at the beginning and the end. And that immediately captures the audience. I mean, they're my clients, Mike. I've worked with them for years and years. But even I was taken aback and taken in because they were authentic. It was their real truth. And you can't really deny that whether you agree with it or not, you were like, you know, the buy in is there because you've got somebody real who's been through that journey and is giving you their review of what it meant to them and what the outcome was. So, again, yeah, information we already had, but using it in such a great format. Brilliant. Fantastic. Well, do you know what, I can't thank you enough for joining me on this live today because it's really, really good of you to come on board and, you know, tell my audience and hopefully yours as well about the journey that we've been on. But before we go, tell us what is happening within the world of SKB Law for the rest of 2026. What's happening in your business and what would you like to kind of tell people about? Well, thanks, Mike. Well, I think for 2026, we've got a rebrand coming up, which hopefully would be launching in July. And we've got an exciting project within that relaunch happening, which I won't say too much about now. But essentially, we're trying to my passion has always been as well as family law is trying to make family law more accessible. There's lots of people out there that are not able to access family law and are stuck in limbo marriages who cannot afford to get divorced, who can't afford to, who don't want to stay married. But, you know, it's out of their reach from a financial perspective or from a confidence perspective about going to see lawyers. So I'm trying to create something that makes it accessible to more people. There is more that the demographic has changed for clients who are accessing legal services. So languages is a huge factor. So I'm trying to address that as well to make sure that people who don't necessarily have English as their first language are still able to access justice, as it were. And on the other front, we are still moving towards trying to provide work experience for more and more students or people trying to get back into law. They've had a career break. And we have the Aura Network, which is the South Asian females in law network to try and bring together women who are in that sort of demographic to swap their challenges, to connect, to obtain mentors, to move even further within the legal field. That's my real passion is to make sure that law isn't just accessible from a service point of view, but from a career and a profession point of view, regardless of whatever your background is. So those are things that happened in 2026. We're working more internationally as well. We've just signed a memorandum with a firm over in Pakistan because we have quite a few clients from the other side of the world, America, Qatar, the UAE and Pakistan and India. So we're trying to now make connections to make sure we provide more of a seamless service to our clients who have those kind of international jurisdictional issues. So, yeah, so lots of exciting stuff. And somewhere in that I'm hoping to take holiday. Don't know when. Absolutely, absolutely. That is brilliant and well done you. And we must discuss maybe doing a little LinkedIn workshop for your group as well at some point. That'd be fun. That sounds fantastic. Oh, right. Well, I'm going to end the recording here and I hope this has been useful to everybody who's listening or watching. And if anybody would like to take a look at the landing page that we built for Sarah to access the private podcast, please do DM me or message me below or whatever you want, because I know that you're in the process of building a new landing page for the new website as well. So whether it's in the near future or in the future, we can make sure we can get that out to whoever's listening or watching. So thank you so much, Sarah. I really appreciate you joining me today. Thank you for having me, Mike. But as I said, I've said previously before as well, I think I did in a post, if anyone is hesitant out there, just pick up the phone or WhatsApp, Mike. Right. He's really accessible. He explains everything. I mean, I didn't get this straight away. I really didn't. Mike knows that. So he really took the time to explain how this thing works to me. So you don't have to be a tech genius at all. You just need to understand what it will do for you or your practise and go for it. Oh, brilliant. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Very welcome. Take care. See you next time. And I'll see you in a second. OK. Bye-bye, everyone.