Legally Speaking, with Robert Hanna

In this episode, John Tyreman sits down with Robert Hanna, founder of the legal recruiting firm KC Partners and host of the UK's number one law podcast, Legally Speaking. Robert shares his journey of launching a podcast in 2019 as a way to stand out in a highly saturated recruitment market by leading with value and building relationships. Together, they discuss the vital mindset shift from looking at immediate ROI to considering the "Cost of Inaction" (COI), how the pivot to virtual recording opened up a global guest pool, and Robert's ambitious strategy to build a media brand that becomes the first professional services podcast to be acquired. In this episode, you'll learn:

• How a podcast helped Rob stand out in a saturated legal recruiting market
• Why looking at the "Cost of Inaction" (COI) is better than immediate ROI
• How shifting to virtual recordings during COVID 10x'd the show's global reach
• Why defining a specific Topic of Influence (TOI) drives consistent growth
• How inviting society presidents as early guests hijacked a massive audience
• Why Rob's ultimate goal is for his podcast to be acquired as a media brand

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introducing Robert Hanna
01:33 KC Partners Origin Story
04:27 Why Legally Speaking Started
09:33 ROI Mindset and Consistency
17:54 Events Growth and Future Plans

This episode was produced by Red Cedar Marketing.  Need help launching and running a business podcast that actually produces results? Visit www.redcedarmarketing.com. 

Transcript

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Rob Hanna 0:00

aside from us being the highest grossing, I believe, legal podcast in the world, sponsored by a $5 billion, the world's largest legal tech company in Clio that have just surpassed 500 million annual recurring revenue, and being exclusively sponsored by them since 2021. Aside from guaranteed sponsorship revenue where the ROI on that is, is, is infinite, um, that's the wrong way to look at it.

John Tyreman 0:27

All right. Welcome business podcasters to another episode of "Podcasting in Professional Services." I'm your host, John Tyreman, founder of Red Cedar, where we build media brands for experts like you. Today, my guest is Robert Hanna, founder and managing director at KC Partners and host of the UK's number one law podcast, "Legally Speaking." Welcome to the show, Robert.

Rob Hanna 0:48

Ah, John, absolute blast to have you with me today as a guesting on your show. I'm so used to hosting, so I'm genuinely excited. Love what you're doing, love what you stand for. I'm passionate about podcasting. I'm passionate about brand building and helping organizations and people see the value in all of this stuff. So real pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

John Tyreman 1:05

Yeah, totally. And I get that sentiment a lot that podcast hosts love being in the guest seat, so I love to be able to provide that, uh, that value to you. Um, first of all, Rob, before we get into it, um, I just wanna say thank you for participating in our 2026 State of Podcasting in Professional Services research study. Um, folks that are listening to this can get, pick up their report at redcedarmarketing.com. Um, but thank you so much for sharing your insights there and today. Um, but before we get to your show, "Legally Speaking," can you first just kinda set the stage for our listeners who might not be kinda familiar with your firm, KC Partners.

Rob Hanna 1:43

Yeah, so I help lawyers land dream jobs. So I have a legal talent solutions business, and of last half a decade, content-focused business as well, which is why the legal side of it started. So my day-to-day is I legal-- I run a legal recruiting business in the UK. We service big law lawyers, so anything you see in the news where a company's taking over another company, we're probably hiring those lawyers. And we're also helping US law firms that are building aggressively in London to, um, grow with their strategic hiring of, of, of UK-focused talent. So that's what I do principally as part of my day-to-day. Why do I do it? What gets me out of bed? My grandfather, my late grandfather, ran a very successful law firm in the UK, and I grew up from a legal family. He built a tremendous legacy, um, an offline legacy in his world way back when, before social and everything else. And he got-- At his funeral, one of his friends said to him, "Live respected, die regretted." And that really landed with me. He built a fantastic reputation in an offline world where word of mouth and what you did for people really carried meaning and went through generations of families. And I thought if I could carry that legal legacy, uh, but in a modern, innovative, creative, researchable, discoverable way for my generations beneath me, my daughters, I think I can do good. So that's what drives me. That's what gets me out of bed. That's what gets me excited to build a kinder, more collaborative global legal community.

John Tyreman 3:02

when did you found your firm, KC Partners?

Rob Hanna 3:05

That was in 2016. So I started-- Pri- prior to that, I had a, um, career for about 10 years in general recruiting across, um, energy, oil and gas, procurement, supply chain. And then I realized that I felt I had the skills, I had the tools. I was getting fed up of making people money. I thought maybe I could do it for myself and also do something where I have a genuine why attached to it. I think entrepreneurship really you do need to have that burning passion and that why and that thing that gets you out the bed, 'cause most days suck. Um, and if you're comfortable with that and you enjoy that, you'll keep coming back. So yeah, that's really, um, my, my career. I was the first in my family to go into the City of London. I wanted to be the first in my family to set up a business in the City of London. And yeah, it snowballed from 2016. Uh, but I soon realized very early to starting my business in 2016, absolutely nobody cared that I set up a business. I need to give them a reason to care. And one of those reasons was being new to business development strategy, outreach strategy, um, leveraging social, LinkedIn. I've been a LinkedIn Top Voice. I've advised LinkedIn. I've been invited to their offices around the world. I've helped them with product rollouts such as their beta testing audio platform and various other things. Um, I realized very early on that podcasting could have been that outlet, which I'm happy to talk more about at any point. Um, but the real key is, it's great that you set up a business, but you have to get people to care and support you and champion you and give you a why to support your business as well.

John Tyreman 4:27

So you, you founded the business in 2016, you mentioned podcasting as an outlet and, um, obviously that's a way that you've built your business up today. So the first episode of "Legally Speaking" aired in November 2019.

Rob Hanna 4:41

Yep. research.

John Tyreman 4:42

you. Why start a podcast in the first place? Like, why that medium instead of leaning into some other channels?

Rob Hanna 4:48

two reasons. One, way back then, we were the first in the UK to launch a legal talent, if you like, focused legal careers show. So we got blue ocean opportunity. This is 2019. We're in 2016 chatting today. Podcasts are everywhere. You know, you can use a platform like we're using Riverside FM. Um, you can do everything in-house. You don't even need an editor. You can use their co-creator chat platform. You could DIY it yourself. You know, they're really making, podcasting very accessible for everyone. So the big takeaway from this, if you've got an idea, take action on it, because you can be b- ahead of the market. It's better to be first than it is to be better sometimes. And so we got low-hanging early stage bl- uh, early mover advantage in terms of being first. Um, the further why behind that was, as I mentioned sort of a little bit tongue in cheek before that nobody cared I had a business, what I also was up against is very established competitors. So if you're starting a business in a saturated market, which I was, and I'm actually a big advocate for saturated markets 'cause that tells me there's demand. You just need to find your way to stand out in that saturated market. So I was up against organizations, legal recruiting business been around for 10, 20 years that have had the clients that I wanted to, my dream client, and they were doing the very traditional things that you would expect that organization to be doing in terms of leveraging their database, chucking out job adverts, you know, churning the wheel and doing the deals, doing the deals. And that's great, but no one's gonna pick up to Rob Hannah. "Hey, do you wanna come and work with me?" You've never heard of me. I've got no proven track record. Um, I'm just doing this 'cause I've got this burning passion and desire in my, my, my, my stomach. And so what I wanted to do is think lead with value. So the podcasting was a great way to start conversations to lead with value. So rather than reaching out to my prospective client, which would be a senior lawyer in a law firm who's A, very busy, B, sort of very, very sort of not used to probably getting these sort of invitations, so it might be exciting and new. I thought I had a chance. So I'd say, "Hey, um, you know, I'd love to feature you on my, my podcast. Um, I'd love to invite you into my office." This is when back in-person podcastings were really giving them experience. So I would invite them to my office. I'd make them cups of tea. I would, um, give them a really first-class experience. I'd give them the best to my ability interview, and then I would say to them, "Look, all I need is this half an hour of your time, and we will curate content for you. And this is new. We'll create a newsletter for you. We'll be able to pass this on to your marketing for- team for you. We'll be able to create some short-form video clips." Again, very early in short-form video clips that would start, which are gonna be an upward trajectory. So I'm starting to come with value because lawyers are busy technically servicing on their job, not necessarily so good at business development, profile building way back when. I think they're better at it now on LinkedIn and everyone in the professional services space are, are catching up. And so we were able to basically pitch to them This great service, great opportunity to get out there, exposure, give them a great example, and then of course the, the journey is all around legal careers. So we could say this could be a great way for you to then create a video job spec for you to mark out, which would help you with your, your future in hiring. And then they'd be like, "Oh, but don't you do hiring?" "Yeah, we do." And suddenly you catch them on the hook on the back end, right? So it's organic value-led relationship, good experience, really researching them, giving them questions that they wouldn't expect to be asked, to be interviewed to a higher standard, to establish a relationship, to then hook them to be your client on the back end. And that's kind of how the strategy work and it snowballed from there.

John Tyreman 8:03

Well, I imagine that there was a bit of a hiccup in that strategy when COVID hit and in-person podcasting became a little bit more challenging. How did-- What was the impact of that time and, and how did that play out with the podcast?

Rob Hanna 8:16

Well, that's the beautiful thing, right? You can either look at problems or you can think they're solutions. So that actually helped get our show global. Like I'm tuning in from the UK, you're not flying over here to spend half an hour of your time to sit in the room with me. You don't want the fuel cost, you don't want the time away from your family, you don't want the, the headache of it. Um, but you'll happily jump on a Zoom or a Riverside and do a half an hour recording. And so it opened up the world to us. It actually opened up our horizons to what is possible to get access to legal voices in and around the world of law that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to do so. So it 10X'd our show in terms of people that have been discounted that we'd love to have, because for us, we had the blind spots. At the time, if you don't know, you don't know. I had never heard of Zoom really around the time of, you know, when Zoom was becoming the, the, the platform. So it actually, in hindsight, was one of the most beautiful things that happened from a very obviously challenging time that made it table stakes now for virtual recordings. And as a result that we've, we've kept that as our sort of forward medium. We do lots of miniseries where we do in P- we've just got back from Ibiza where we've been doing poolside interviews. We've been to Dubai, we've done interviews on yachts. Uh, we've done stuff at G-Wagons at Mercedes World. We've done stuff, uh, all over the world. Um, whole host of things, and we still keep that in-person experiential type interview, but a lot of it now is virtual, and COVID really set the play for that.

John Tyreman 9:33

I do wanna get into some of the ways that you promoted the podcast, but I, I do wanna focus, first on the business impact that the podcast has had so far. So you launched the, your business in 2016, you launched the podcast in 2019. Fast-forward to today, we're in 2026. Has the, the podcast been, in your view, an ROI positive investment? And then how do you quantify that?

Rob Hanna 9:59

aside from us being the highest grossing, I believe, legal podcast in the world, sponsored by a $5 billion, the world's largest legal tech company in Clio that have just surpassed 500 million annual recurring revenue, and being exclusively sponsored by them since 2021. Aside from guaranteed sponsorship revenue where the ROI on that is, is, is infinite, um, that's the wrong way to look at it. The way to look at it is COI, it's cost of inaction. Okay? So many people don't take action because they want to know the immediate ROI. I don't think that's an entrepreneurial lens. I think that's an accounting lens. I think that's in a finance lens. I think that's a very closed lens of looking at it. Business is, you know, it's not about getting lucky. Business is about more risk you take. The more risk you take, the more luck you get. And so I, I, I, I, you know, you said, "Why did you start a podcast?" No one else was doing it. You know, people were afraid. People weren't really paying attention to it, and so those blue ocean opportunities. So, um, the ROI, yes, if we were to track it in terms of sponsorship alone, is probably 200% plus. In terms of being out there, we're always, you know, e- each week I'm producing shows, content, legal careers focused on my target law firm partners. My candidates are reaching out to me. We've made placements off that. We've had referrals off that. You know, average deal sizes are, are quite chunky in the UK. They're tens of thousands. Um, but the real thing is, it's the cost of inaction. None of this, none of the opportunities and my personal brand elevation to, you know, I've been able to collaborate with the likes of Gary Vee and go on stages and podcast the likes of Steven Bartlett, you know, the sort of "Dragons' Den," "Diary of a CEO," one of the most popular podcasts in the world. All of these opportunities wouldn't have had to me if I hadn't leaned into the COI principle. So if you're sat here with an idea or thinking of a podcast or what else, stop looking at the ROI. Think, "What is the cost of inaction? What could this cost me if I don't take action now?" And I think if you switch that mindset, you'll suddenly start seeing actually there's a world of opportunity for you out there.

John Tyreman 11:49

And so how do you hold yourself accountable to that action, right? That's the one thing that I think in all of professional services a, a lot of consultants struggle with is investing that time into those unbillable hours, right? So what, I guess what motivates you to get up and act?

Rob Hanna 12:07

Well, firstly, I think you have to have your own self-accountability, right? If it's meant to be, it's up to me. So you have to have an element of self-accountability. And I also feel that in, in sort of my, my, my sort of belief in, in business generally is if you're not passionate about what you're doing You're probably not going to do it. So what I mean by that is you may feel like you need to do a podcast, but actually if you're not passionate about that, but you know it's gonna be beneficial, is there someone you could maybe bring in and you could be part of your team, you know, or people that you know that might want to do that, that could make it consistent or what have you. And everyone says they're time poor, they don't have time. Everyone has time to do a 15-minute interview in a week, and that 15-minute interview could potentially turn out to be three, four months of content, maybe a year's worth of content if you really strip that down into a content strategy, into themes around the world, things going on in the world, you know, anxiety, World Mental Health Day, um, diversity and inclusion. Like if you touch on topics and things that are relevant to your audience or niche or AI technology. So everyone has the time. And so I would say to people in terms of accountability is A, have self-accountability. If you're not passionate about it or it doesn't drive you, who are some of those people that could potentially help you to p-put the driving seat, to put the metrics in place? Because in business there are two types of individuals. Typically, if you're a business owner, there's visionaries and there's integrators. The visionaries are the ideas people that go out there, they've got a million ideas. None of them get executed without an integrator. So you might just need that integrator, that person that can help you with integrating and actually doing the execution, doing the value add, whatever it might be, following up on some of the processes.

John Tyreman 13:40

I love that you're speaking in EOS terms because,

Rob Hanna 13:42

Yeah. That framework works, right?

John Tyreman 13:44

Oh, it, it totally does, and it's helped me organize my business, and a few of my clients operate on it as well, and they love it too. Rob, a couple things that you mentioned I want to highlight and dig in on a little bit. So you mentioned creating content every single week, and then you mentioned consistency. So your show is a weekly podcast, so I guess I've got two questions for you. Number one, why weekly? And then two, how are you able to maintain that consistency? Like, what are the systems that you have in place?

Rob Hanna 14:15

Yeah. Great, great question. so firstly, I, I think we could be an everyday show. Our demand has got that high. So we're in now the top 1% of shows in the world. We're a top number one for, um, the UK, where we, we partner, so we're the go-to for a number of the major legal, um, outlet YouTube channels such as National Law Review, which gets 3.2, um, million viewership each month, that, that kind of stuff. So we're in demand. It's obviously my, my time. I couldn't actually physically do, uh, one a day with the other bits and ventures. So firstly, why one a week? Because we absolutely know the demand is there and people expect it. I'll use a scenario as well is, um, you know, in Netflix, when you see your favorite series, um, you start getting into "Lost" way back when or what have you, you're gutted if there's not a new season coming out. You're gutted. So we're in Season 10, and of course, now it's a commercial business. We've trademarked our content. We've got big ticket sponsors. We're doing some of the-- We go to some of the biggest events around the world. I get flown around the world to come up and do a media and actually be the voice outlet for these legal organizations. So we've built a brand, and when you've got brand, people wanna be attached to it. It's really, really important. So absolutely one a week is because we know the demand is there, and that enables us to be consistent. And then in terms of being consistent, we've done over 500 episodes across 10 seasons. Um, it's not just about putting out another episode. Once you get to a, a level and an, and an audience, they expect quality. There's a reason they've been following you and expecting you. So your caliber of content and your caliber of guest and your caliber of delivery needs to continuously get better because other people are coming into the market. And I love that there's other legal podcasts coming out there innovating, coming at us or trying to take market share because keeps us on our toes, and I like that. And that's why I think, you know, if you just have a podcast, you're at risk. We're building a community around that, and I can talk about some of the strategies we're, we're doing. So consistency, we're also looking at the themes Right. So what are the big ticket themes? Legal technology, AI, efficiencies, um, big things going on that are gonna impact careers. The key to a successful podcast is having a good TOI. It's a topic of influence. So our topic of influence is legal careers, and what I mean by that, if you're gonna start a podcast or, or anything really, um, it's understanding what the pain point is. So for me, remember my holding company is my legal recruiting business. I want lawyers, lawyers to be, to be working for and to help them with new roles. So legal careers make sense. So people might be putting into ChatGPT now or Claude, um, or Google way back when, how to get a legal job or top tips to get an interview in a, in a law. So that needs to be our content, right? That stuff needs to be in our content to, to deliver to our audience, to deliver on our ROI, our, our TOI, and so we've been able to be consistent around understanding the key themes and things impacting our TOI, where we know demand is. So we can look at Google, um, index data. We can go on Keywords Planner. We can go on answerthepublic.com. You know, we can get all those g- Goo- Google index data points in terms of what are the questions people are asking, and then we go and get the absolute best guest to deliver on those questions and get their stories, 'cause facts tell, but the stories really sell, and that enables, enables people to really connect with our audience, and I think we do a good job of that, and we, we go above and beyond in terms of researching guests, in terms of asking questions that is not in the public domain. So when they come on, they're almost like enthused and excited 'cause they've never been asked these questions before, because going on a podcast now isn't as exciting as once was, so you need to bring out the absolute best. Um, and so we just work in that top percent, one percenters of really delivering the best interviews possible for our guests.

John Tyreman 17:29

I love the, the research-based approach that you take on the issues first, rather than identifying guests that you want to bring in just because they're influential. The Lost analogy is great because it really is a media brand that you're building. It's much more than a podcast and, um, and I think that that's kind of the theme that I'm, that I'm taking away from our conversation right now. And, and I wanna expand upon that a little bit, 'cause you've mentioned a, a couple times of doing interviews on, on boats and, you know, courtside and things like that. Can, can you talk about going to those live events and, um, and how that ties into the podcast, and what has been your experience in the conversations at those live events and how that melds with the podcast that you've created?

Rob Hanna 18:19

Yeah, no, thank you. And thank you for mentioning Courtside Conversations. So for context, con- that launched in January of 2026, and that is a blend of, uh, Padel, which, um, is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world right now, which is inevitably going to be an Olympic sport, or padel, um, which originates from, from Spain, with podcasting, with networking. And so I wanted-- And there's a legal theme to that as well with the courtside, courtside, um, et cetera. Um, what, what we, we found is actually, um, there is event fatigue, and there is death by hotel conference, there is death by lanyards, there is death by small conversation. And what's really important is to understand that we're all humans here. We all wanna go out and connect with people, have a conversation, be ourselves. And so actually, putting the networking and the chatting and stuff after an activity when your endorphins are up was a really smart play. And we were in the sunshine. It was when it was the Billion Summit, um, in Dubai, looking out at the Future Museum of the World. Um, incredible Padel courts. We brought 50 or so legal people together, and we just played Padel. We had a great time, the conversations, bit of competition. Lawyers are competitive. And then after that, people were ready to do some side interviews and connect and chat. And then we had a DJ that was spinning the tunes and sort of afterwards. And it just, it just proved the concept that actually people want slightly different interactive, immersive, connectivity-focused events. And why did we do it? Because I think it's really important if you're building a brand to let people feel seen, heard, and valued. What better way than to invite them to an in-person event and to an experience? Because yes, there's a like and a comment on Spotify or on LinkedIn or on YouTube, or there's a quick exchange. But actually shaking hands or, as my friend Mitch Jackson says, "Turning digital handshakes into real-life hugs," that's really important. And I think if you're gonna be building a community and as a podcast host and you're the lead or the voice of that, I think being open. And that's why I put on a lot of events. Another one is the Great Big Legal Offsite, which we're gearing up for this year, which you might have seen in your, um, your sort of research, which is on July the 3rd. And we've done, again, slightly different format. That's all about the future of law and law firms trying to add value to lawyers and people in law, but we'd make it fun. We've had an eight-foot AI robot that would go around singing "Lady in Red," squirting the guests with water. This year's theme's gonna be Laws of the Jungle. We've got "America's Got Talent" and "Britain's Got Talent" and X Factor's MC for the day, like the voiceover artist coming. And people are just wowed. It's like, wow, we don't get this in legal. Like you're coming in, you're disrupting, you're being different. You're, you're working on COI, you know, im- not the immediate ROI. And then suddenly you get attached to one of the world's biggest legal tech brands that see what you're doing, that are trying to be progressive, and it suddenly starts becoming a great collaboration partnership, but also your ROI then starts 10, 20, 100X-ing.

John Tyreman 20:59

I think it-- you're very forward-thinking in terms of focusing on the experiential aspect of that. I see that as be-being like that that's in the future, but you're doing this right now.

Rob Hanna 21:10

Well, yeah, again, remember when I was doing the podcast, no one was doing it. So again, people are sleeping, right? And you've gotta wake up, that podcasts are not exciting anymore. No one cares that you've started a podcast. No one cares about the "Legally Speaking" podcast outside of the community that I've built. But new people, I need to go out there and get these new people and ac- think of growth, think of attraction, think of leaning into what I've already built. Because everyone's probably read the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, the flywheel effect. You've gotta continuously start putting energy inputs, new ideas to keep that momentum building and building, and building and building. And then, like you said, we're building a media brand. We're gearing up to potentially be acquired one day. We don't wanna be sponsored by, we wanna be owned by. So we have a whole strategy about being the world's first professional services show to be acquired. Won't be Joe Rogan's level of the hundreds of millions, but it'll certainly make a chunk into the, uh, the dent to prove that podcasting should be investable assets. Podcasting people should be paying to play to get involved in them and be seeing that they're the most trusted form of medium. People spend so much on ads, sp- so much other things, but actually if someone-- And don't get too hell-bent on downloads. I'm getting on my soapbox here, but I bloody will. Um, it's about actually, if someone's gonna give you 20 to half... If someone's gonna listen to this episode end to end, that proves you've got a really good quality content and people care about what you're doing. That person listening to you for 30 minutes every week is an invaluable potential fan, referrer, business person at some po- in the future, rather than getting touched on a short-form video clip for three seconds, never going to watch the full episode, but being tacked on the TikTok algo or what have you. So I feel like don't get too worried about the official number of downloads. Think about the average listening and time, the quality of those people, because if they're listening to it end to end, they care about you, and it's about taking those people, turning them into super fans, loyal fans, and growing from there.

John Tyreman 22:54

on top of all of that, the relationships that you forge with the guests, that y- those guest conversations, that's, that's, um, immensely valuable as well. Rob, I wanna ask about, um, so 500 episodes is very impressive. how do you make sure that those older episodes still see the light of day? How-- Do you re-promote older episodes? How do you work that into your promotion cycles?

Rob Hanna 23:18

bang on, John. And it's so true. We just did it this week. My friend Jody Hill, who's one of the top, uh, mental health voices. It's been Mental Health Awareness Week. Um, you know, and that was, uh, in episode two. Um, we, we have a, A, we have a searchable web- website on our, our website, so we can put in the keywords. Again, I'm a big, what, what are the keywords? What are the datas? What's easily accessible? So we look at, we have a events of the year calendar. Everything that's going on in and around the legal world and in the general world, and we think about how then we can repurpose an episode from that, okay? So there's obviously mental health awareness. Christmas, July 4th, we do Christmas specials, you know, things going on. Anything where there's an event or something going on in the world, we have that tracked, and we use that as an opportunity to then repurpose, recycle it. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to audience jack, right? When stuff is trending on hashtags, we wanna make sure that we're talking about those conversations, so we're at the front doorstop of that. Similar to why do I wanna come on your show? I want to hijack your audience. I hope people listening to this enjoy. If two or three people, ideally a few more, enjoy this and start hearing about "The Legally Speaking" podcast or refer that to people, I feel like I've done my job. Similarly, when I share it, you're gonna hope people are gonna want to know more about your show, and that's just the way it works. It's about audience growth, audience collaboration is domination. Um, but yeah, absolutely content repurpose is really important strategy. And of course, you can modernize it, right? So our audio quality wasn't that great back way back then. Our branding was different, so we put it in slightly new branding. We used the new images of the individual. We used the quotes that might be timeless quotes or what have you. So it's never, never dated, but we're very keen to do evergreen content interviews. So we try not to do too much dated content. We try and do it, and we explain to our guests in advance that, you know, the longer we can kind of not say, "This week, this is happening," and we remove that from the interview, then we've kinda got more legacy evergreen content to keep those episodes churning out again and again and again.

John Tyreman 25:02

And this is why it's so important to make sure that your episodes are tagged and organized properly, and the data is structured in a way that's indexable, it's searchable, um, not just for, you know, search algorithms, but to your point, for when you know that you have e- episodes in your back catalog that you wanna go and highlight again.

Rob Hanna 25:20

the key, what we're good at or what we were good at when no one cared about the show and no one knewed about us, is knowing who's on the rise.

John Tyreman 25:28

Right. Yep.

Rob Hanna 25:29

What I mean by that is when someone's hit there, they're not gonna come on your show. They're too busy. They don't care about you. But if you get someone who's on the rise, and you get them early enough that they're grateful for the opportunity, and then when they get there, you repurpose, you get that audience jack back, you get that value back, you get that lifetime value back off them without them even noticing. And the relationship started organic because you helped them first.

John Tyreman 25:50

Yeah, I, I like to advise my clients on breaking up your target guests into three buckets when you're first starting out. friendly contacts that'll help you out just because they trust you, they know you, they like you, and they wanna help you

Rob Hanna 26:01

Yep.

John Tyreman 26:02

And that second bucket is the rising stars, the people that are-- want to get their voice out there that you're placing a bet on for the future. And then your dream guests. Once you're established, you can go out and reach out to, to dream guests. that's kind of validating to hear that kind of perspective from you. in your marketing, you've mentioned that you're on a mission to disrupt the legal recruitment sector. So it sounds like the podcast is helping you achieve that mission.

Rob Hanna 26:27

Yeah, I mean, hopefully what I've shared thus far the proves-- proof of concept. you know, I, I take time away from my family to go around the world to do that as well. So, you know, I know it sounds exciting. I've been in Ibiza, I've been to Dubai, but, uh, you know, I'm, I'm also very family-focused. Like I wa- I've got a, a young daughter, I wanna be around her. You know, I, I, I've built this life so I can be. You know, I can't-- I don't get stuck in the corporate trap, and I can be a creator and business builder and owner and have that freedom and flexibility. But I'm also very passionate about delivering on this mission. So yeah, I will go out there, and when we go to these places, we do the work. Yeah, it's great that we're doing an interview in the sunshine. There's a poolside panel, but I'm researching the guests. I'm getting the best quality information out of them because we're drowning in information but craving wisdom, right? And so I need to get that wisdom out of my guests to ensure that we're top tier. It's like, yeah, I listen to Legally Speaking podcast 'cause the interviews genuinely fill my cup with entertainment, education, and relevant, helpful information that's gonna help me become a better lawyer or a better legal professional, someone to harm- enhance my legal career. And what I mean by that is we're never gonna be a Diary of a CEO, and we don't want to be, because, you know, unless you get that big to Diary of CEO, which I'm sure a lot of people know about. I'm sure I'm, I'm talking to-- I know the US audience, I'm sure people are familiar with it. You know, they've got so big now, they can have politicians on there, but it's not Diary of a CEO anymore. It's not CEOs on this. It's sports stars. It's anyone. It's anything, right? Because unless you get that big, stay to what I said to you before, that TOI, that topic of influence, 'cause that's where you're gonna get brands. That's when you're gonna get partnerships. That's where you're gonna get leads. That's where you're gonna get trust. That's when you're gonna get your micro, nano communities really coming together and being part of you and supporting you. And if you get a major breakthrough, then sure, have who the hell you want on your show all the time and just make it into whatever you want it to be. But I think being really strategic is really important.

John Tyreman 28:10

Awesome. Awesome. Yep, and it's clear that you've led with that why throughout this whole process, and that's one of the driving forces to the success of the "Legally Speaking" podcast. So, uh, Rob, I've got one final question for you. Um, where do you take the show from here? What's on the horizon for "Legally Speaking"?

Rob Hanna 28:28

Yeah. We wanna be the number one legal show in the world. Um, we're in the top 1% of shows in the world. We're in the number one in the UK. We're very, very-- We're probably all but there arguments, you know, if we, we could argue we are, but I think we absolutely do wanna have that badge and be known to, if anyone thinks of legal media, thinks of legal interviews, thinks of legal information, they think of "Legally Speaking Podcast." And we wanna be the first show to be acquired, um, by a major organization that shakes the industry and proves that podcasting wasn't just a nice-to-have, but it was the real business development strategic tool that actually created real ROI through conversation and connection because, um, community is really important. Building a podcast around community is one of the strongest, smartest ways I think you can do it. So I wanna be the first in the legal world to have done that.

John Tyreman 29:10

Sage advice, Robert. and thank you for, um, your, your time today. for folks that are listening, they can connect with you on LinkedIn. Uh, they can check out legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the event calendars, for all the latest episodes. is there anything else that, we didn't talk about today that you'd like to highlight for our listeners?

Rob Hanna 29:30

I think one is just a strategy that we did when we first launched the show. I know I've talked quite a little bit sort of, you know, generally. Give one strategic play because this again could come across a little bit overwhelming for somebody who has never started. So when I first started "Legally Speaking Podcast," again, thinking strategically, I've referenced that we had a topic of influence What I didn't say when we first started is we were very, very intentional about who our first guests were, and I mentioned collaboration is domination. So when we invited our first guests, we invited the presidents of the London Young Lawyers Group, which is a society over here in the UK which has around 7,000 members. Now, those 7,000 members are my ideal legal recruiting avatar. They're sort of mid to junior level lawyers, which of course are ones that I would want to recruit or get known to, but had already got relationships with my competitors, right? Because I'm new into the market with KC Partners. So that's why we called it Legal Speaking Podcast, point of difference and then hook on the back end. So why did I invite those on? Because they had a trusted audience. And what were they gonna do when it aired as the first episode? They'd never been invited to a podcast before. They put it in their newsletter to 7,000 people. They put it out to their social networks. They promoted it. So from starting from zero through being strategic and going to the organization societies where I've got trusted voice, trusted influence, I was able to grow and I immediately got leverage, and then I got ratings and reviews early from key people of influence when the relationships were nice and high. So think about who are organization societies that have trusted data networks that you could hijack, that you could invite on, that then they can send out to their audience that's gonna boost your start. And the other thing, as I mentioned before around Netflix, um, you know, it's really important you don't just go onto Netflix and watch one show of a new series. You like to binge-watch it. So we also stacked content, right? So when we launched, we released a few episodes, and then we were ensure we're into flow to ensure we can continue to deliver, and we're always social listening and asking for feedback very, very early on to ensure that we're delivering on what we wanted to. Um, so that would just be a couple of other strategic things I would think about if I was launching a show.

John Tyreman 31:29

Well, for folks that are, are listening this far into the episode, they just found a couple golden nuggets that they can put into play when they launch their podcast.

Rob Hanna 31:36

There we go. Well, look, it's been an absolute blast, John. Congrats on everything you're doing. It's been a real pleasure. Um, yeah, hopefully we can collaborate again in the future, but I'm, I'm, I'm passionate about this stuff, so I appreciate you giving me the time today.

John Tyreman 31:46

And then I appreciate you. Thank you so much.