Leadership In Law Podcast

S02E92 Fractional Legal Teams to Build Your Firm with Jeff Holman

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 2 • Episode 92

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Jeff Holman is revolutionizing legal support for growing businesses with a model that makes perfect sense once you hear it yet somehow hasn't existed until now. As founder of Intellectual Strategies and creator of the first fractional legal team model, Jeff brings a unique triple-threat perspective as engineer, lawyer, and business strategist to tackle the very real problem facing innovative companies: they need sophisticated legal help, but not a full-time legal department.

The traditional approach to legal services creates a painful dilemma for startups and scaling companies. Founders either avoid calling their attorneys due to unpredictable hourly billing or handling complex legal matters themselves, sometimes with devastating consequences. Jeff's fractional model solves this through subscription-based access to a complete legal team that treats clients as partners rather than billing opportunities.

What makes this approach truly powerful is how it addresses the needs of both clients and attorneys. Growing businesses gain access to expertise across multiple legal domains without the anxiety of watching the clock. Meanwhile, attorneys avoid becoming bottlenecks by distributing workload across a team of specialists who can handle everything from routine NDAs to complex intellectual property issues. Most surprisingly, this model isn't competing with traditional large law firms; it's complementing them by handling day-to-day matters while partnering on major transactions.

Having navigated both sides of the legal relationship as in-house counsel and outside advisor, Jeff understands the value of sustainable, long-term client relationships that grow with a business. His mission extends beyond his own practice to transforming how legal services are delivered throughout the industry. 

Reach Jeff here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/holman/
https://www.intellectualstrategies.com

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Leadership in Law podcast with host Marilyn Jenkins. Cut through the noise, get actionable insights and inspiring stories delivered straight to your ears your ultimate podcast for navigating the ever-changing world of law firm ownership. In each episode, we dive deep into the critical topics that matter most to you, from unlocking explosive growth to building a thriving team. We connect you with successful firm leaders and industry experts who share their proven strategies and hard-won wisdom. So, whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey as a law firm owner, the Leadership in Law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. I'm your host, marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, jeff Holman, to the show today. Jeff is the founder of Intellectual Strategies and the creator of the very first fractional legal team model for startups and scaling companies. Jeff is flipping the traditional legal model on its head, giving growing businesses on-demand access to top-tier legal support without the overhead of a full-time in-house team. Whether it's navigating IP structuring deals or handling high-stakes scaling decisions, jeff's approach is built for the real-world speed of business. Now what makes him stand out? He's part engineer, part lawyer and part strategist, holding degrees in electrical engineering, law and an MBA. He's licensed to practice in California, utah and before the US Patent and Trademark Office. With over two decades of experience solving complex legal and business challenges, jeff is the bridge between innovation and legal protection. If you're a founder, investor or operator who's ever thought we need legal help, but not a full-time lawyer, this conversation is for you. I'm excited to have you here, jeff. Welcome.

Speaker 3:

It's my pleasure, marilyn, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. I know you have a great backstory and I want you to tell us that your backstory and your leadership journey- oh yeah, it's been one of these all over the place.

Speaker 3:

But no, I started out as you mentioned. I started out in engineering. I kind of knew I don't know how I knew this but I knew I wanted to get an engineering degree and I knew I wanted to go into business and not necessarily be an engineer, but for some reason engineering kind of drew me in for kind of a first stop on the path.

Speaker 3:

How interesting, exactly why I chose it. But you know I love learning and so, and so I'm sure it was just hey, this is kind of this new world out there. Let's see where it goes. And I figure, if I can think like an engineer, I can probably, I can probably step into business roles and bring that with me. My path to getting into business, into a business role, though, really took this really broad diversion, I guess through law. Right, I didn't plan to go to law school, I planned to get an MBA and I eventually did, but really went through law school first and spent 10 years doing patent law with inventors and working out in Silicon Valley for a few years and starting my own firm, and then going and getting an MBA, starting my firm, again going in-house. It's been a journey and it's been a lot of fun, a lot of learning and a lot of exposure to many different things and people.

Speaker 2:

That sounds very interesting. So you've gone from being a student to being an employee, to being an entrepreneur and okay. So you've seen the different schedule. And then the MBA. So you know, obviously, the different steps needed in a business to help someone in whatever area. So from startup to M&A.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, I'm not necessarily an expert in all of those, but I know enough to be dangerous and to have the conversations and, as I like to say, translate. Help, you know, help the people translate, help my clients translate into legalese if they need to, or help the lawyers that I work with translate into business or tech or vice versa. So I'm really a you know. I like to facilitate conversations among smart people. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I love that. So when we're talking about innovation and strategy, when thinking about someone that's at what point in a business would I? Should I start thinking about having an attorney look over, say, my contracts or helping me make sure that I've got things right? What would be a good time for that?

Speaker 3:

This is. I mean, it's the hard question for everybody, right? We know the right answer. The right answer ideally is from day one you get somebody smart involved who knows the ropes, so you don't mess stuff up, because you know, let's face it, everyone's going to mess stuff up. The practical answer is most people don't do that. They jump in. They're like hey, how do I form my business without paying an attorney? How do I form a partnership with this friend of mine? And just let's handshake this thing because we know each other well. How do I?

Speaker 2:

And nothing could go wrong.

Speaker 3:

I mean what could go wrong? I mean, and the reason people do it is because sometimes it works. Always there are hiccups along the way, even in the good relationships, but it's the, unfortunately as, as you know, we attorneys are always focused on risk it's the. It's the times that don't work out, and they don't work out really poorly, right, or they work out really poorly, they don't work out well at all. So those are the times that really you have to guard against those, because otherwise some types of problems that you don't address correctly can shut your entire business down.

Speaker 3:

And it's sad to see a good business get shut down by things that aren't necessarily related to the business itself. Right, it's not because your product wasn't good, it's not because customers don't want to buy from you, it's not because your brand wasn't cool. It's because you know you had a partner who disappeared and then you couldn't run your company without their vote at least not legitimately and you couldn't get bank loans or set up accounts because you had somebody who just didn't show up and you didn't ever plan on how to run a company in the absence unlikely event that your friend disappears, has a life event and is gone. We see that stuff happen and fortunately it's more rare than not. But when it does happen, it's just devastating and that's just, you know, maybe an extreme example, but there's all the little hiccups along the way that you can, if you, you know. What I like to say is first-time founders just need a guide and lawyers and financial advisors they're great guides to help these startup founders think like a second-time founder instead of act like a first-time founder.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and the one thing I like to think about is when it comes to partnerships, and whether it's in business or not, thinking is an exit strategy that you both agree on in the beginning is better than trying to figure it out with a slew of attorneys or whatever at the end when no one's getting along.

Speaker 3:

Yes, you're going to have attorneys involved in your business at some point. Right yeah, unless you have the most mediocre average business in the world. If it's a good business that starts growing, you see success. You're going to have attorneys because unfortunately, this is something I learned that didn't necessarily anticipate as you get clients who are becoming successful and people see that success. You have all sorts of is sycophant the right word.

Speaker 3:

All sorts of people who come out of the woodwork and they're like I'm going to sue you for this and I'm going to sue you for that, and a lot of that, unfortunately, is driven by very productive lawyers in plaintiff's counsel. But you just success kind of breeds, people who want to come and latch onto your success, and then on the other end of the spectrum, of course problems and failures and you know you can't pay your, you can't pay your debts back, Like you're going to have attorneys involved there too. So I'd rather be on the successful side and have the attorneys involved helping me maintain and grow my success, rather than have them involved, of course, on a failing business, or even rather than have them not involved because my business is so mediocre that I don't ever see any successes or failures in my business. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

Yes, that would be sad. We always want to be growing and building something, and I would hate to be the middle of the road, just kind of sitting there waiting for success to show up, and it never does.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I say that from the lens of I work with innovators, right, I work with people who are creating new brands, creating new businesses, creating new products. There's a whole world out there that doesn't need a lot of attorney help. You get a lot of service providers in very traditional fields and they can probably run their businesses without much interaction with attorneys. I don't know if the contractor that comes to my house to lay tile, I don't know if he really needs a lot of legal help unless he's looking to grow and expand and set up relationships and really become bigger than that kind of small business mentality, and that works for a lot of people. But in the innovation field, when you have people growing and purposefully trying to create something that didn't exist before, you're going to need to have a growth mindset, otherwise you'll never get that off the ground.

Speaker 2:

True, and I love that you're working with that. I believe there was a quote in 1851 that the guy at the USPTO said everything that's been invented has been invented. There'll be nothing else.

Speaker 3:

Oh yes. Yes, I don't remember who that was. Everything under the sun has been invented. I think that came from. There's a case. The Supreme Court said something like that, chakrabarty, if I remember right.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, I was thinking it was USPTO. That's crazy.

Speaker 3:

Well, thomas Jefferson or somebody early on probably said that too about inventing, but I do think there was a case where that was. Maybe they were quoting the earlier quote, I don't remember.

Speaker 2:

Wow, interesting. Okay, so you're working with innovators and, instead of being like in-house, you're helping them, guiding them, which I love that. What types of things would you help with? I mean, when are you specifically? A lot of technology, how are you? How are they finding you?

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's a great question. And working with innovators has driven me to maybe become a bit of an innovator myself, right, I've been on the outside and worked for companies like IBM, where you're you know you're helping them put more patents into their portfolio. I've worked with really small businesses where you know you help them with one legal issue patent, get a trademark and you know they love showing off their trademark registration or, you know, landing a deal with a client or closing up a problem dispute in their business. One interaction can make the entire difference for their business, and that's fun, can make the entire difference for their business, and that's fun. And then I've worked in-house, right, where you essentially are trying to manage everything all at once with all of the different people in the business, and so I've seen a lot of different things.

Speaker 3:

The reason I bring all that up is the way that we work with people is seeing all of these different approaches made me realize that there's a better way to deliver client service to these small business owners Because, you know, if you think about it, a small business has a lot of the same issues that a large business does, meaning they've got to deal with their customers. They've got to deal with their product that they're selling and how they're getting that from their manufacturer, or they've got to deal with crafting their service and how they deliver that. They've got to engage baby employees or contractors along the way. You've got to deal with debts and finances. You've got to deal with a lot of the same issues, maybe not on the same scale but all the same issues.

Speaker 3:

And when you look at it and you say, well, a big corporation has 20 different areas that they have to deal in and a small corporation has probably the same 20, just smaller. And how do you effectively give support to somebody who's so small that one person or a handful of founders are all wearing 12 different hats trying to do everything? A large corporation you have a division that handles finance. You have a division, in fact I think IBM. At the time we were doing patent work for them, they had not only an entire network of patent attorneys outside the company, they had, I think, around 120 or 130 patent attorneys inside of IBM just to handle the patent side of things in the business. And so when you're a small business, you don't have anybody in your company who manages payroll. It's the founder who does it right, or the founder's spouse maybe does it to help out. And so you have all these same problems. You have all these same issues. Same thing happens legally. You have all the same possible legal issues in your business. You just have, you know, you just are on a really tight budget, trying to get all of the services done, trying to cover all your bases, avoid the risks.

Speaker 3:

And it struck me. You know, why don't we make our, why don't we deliberately design the way that we deliver services to our clients, who are all startup scaling size companies, and make it so we can give them the breadth of legal expertise that they need? They don't need it every day, but sometimes they need that innovation side. Sometimes they need to resolve disputes, sometimes they need to enter into an agreement with a partner or a supplier, sometimes they have hiring issues or firing issues.

Speaker 3:

Why don't we bring all the legal expertise that these small businesses need in just a smaller package? We'll make it available, we'll essentially put together an in-house team that's fully capable, and then we'll be available to these companies on just a fractional basis, which I'm sure your audience knows. But fractional, really, in a very general sense, just means typically, you have some recurring monthly arrangement where you pay kind of the same amount every month, maybe a retainer, maybe it's an hourly, it can vary, but you have this, just this availability to access to expertise on kind of smaller time slots than it would take to hire them full-time. And so that's what we did. We designed what I call a fractional legal team.

Speaker 3:

I love that's the highest compliment that one of our clients can give us is when they start saying, hey, our legal team, or we're so glad you're on our team and I'm like good, we've established the framework and the mindset that we're working together. That doesn't usually happen. When you talk to business owners about their attorneys, they're like man, I don't want to call my attorney, they're going to bill me for the phone call, and so I want this team mentality to develop with our clients, rather than this kind of vendor, expensive vendor relationship that typically exists. I can see this, you can see.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, it makes typically exists. I mean, I can imagine this.

Speaker 3:

You can see.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. I mean, you're a subscription model, you're a business, monthly recurring revenue, which is what a lot of businesses really want to get into, and so you can determine and do your budgeting. So it does work uphill. What I love about that is a small business doesn't have to be concerned about, like you said, getting charged for a call. If something's popped up today, I can pick up the phone, call you and say this is a problem I have, or drop you an email or something like that.

Speaker 1:

As a member of the team like.

Speaker 2:

We use Slack as a communication portal, so I've got a couple of fractional people that I work with that are in my Slack. If I have a problem, I send them a message and I don't have to worry about getting an extra bill. I love that type of subscription model and the small business owner gets what they need without stress, and you can handle more clients that way as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for real. And then to take it just one level further. That's why we expanded it, because I started off inadvertently falling into a kind of an outside general counsel or fractional general counsel role and then I realized, wait a second, my clients need more expertise and they need a team of the right attorneys at the right time, available to them. Why don't I establish, instead of just Jeff Holman, one good attorney but one very good bottleneck sometimes, you know, if I'm not available why don't I bring in other people, hopefully people that are even smarter than me, and that way, when my client has a problem, it's not me trying to solve their bankruptcy issue right, or their whatever it is. That's maybe a little bit outside my core expertise. I can say well, that's an awesome opportunity or that's a problem we need to address. Let's put you in touch with one of the other team members who has dealt with that a lot, and so it spreads the burden internally.

Speaker 3:

I mean I like that you mentioned kind of you brought up sustainability of the business, using other words, but that was the other thing I was really trying to do. If we're if I'm talking to an attorney audience, I'm like build hedge against their own risks, and so they build these really protected perhaps portable businesses, right when they say I'm going to take my clients to this law firm but if I ever need to leave, I'll take my clients to a different place.

Speaker 3:

I don't think that's good for the law firms as businesses. I also don't think that's good for the clients necessarily, because I don't know. I think there are better ways to do it and I think having kind of a stable team improves aspects of the law firm as a business and also improves many aspects of client service from that law firm.

Speaker 2:

I agree, yeah, so so you you can does your team size fluctuate as you have a client that has a need that you haven't addressed before.

Speaker 3:

Sure, yeah, I mean it's so. We've got a core team, that's, you know, here all the time. But we do bring in other experts as we need to, and that's one of the other benefits of having fractional, a fractional executive on your team, whether it's a legal or marketing or whatever you have. Right, like we're connected in the industry. So when I have a client who has like a really detailed tax need or a bankruptcy need or you know, heaven forbid, a criminal need, like I'll go out to my network and I'll be like, hey, we don't do that in-house, but I can go hire that for you Because, let's face it, clients have already hired us and clients usually don't even want to hire any attorneys, let alone have to hire an attorney for this and to find another attorney for that and find another attorney for that. That's, that's miserable, right. Let your fractional legal team just manage that relationship for you.

Speaker 3:

Not only that, I can I kind of can control the costs a little bit better, because I know when, when these other experts that we bring in are on budget or not. I can say, hey, that seems like that's a little out of whack, let's revisit why that costs so much. Or I can say, hey, is this really the right experience? We need a specific type of attorney, but do you have the experience to go along with it or not? And so I can manage that relationship from kind of financial and technical aspects of it. And that takes away a lot of the burden, I think, from the team, the business operators who, at this size of business, these startup and scaling companies, they should be focusing on operations, sales, you know, the core function of the business, not stressing about the. How long is it going to take me to find the right person to come and help with this unemployment claim that I've got, or whatever it might be?

Speaker 2:

I love that. Now thinking about if any attorney that's listening has been thinking about building this kind of business. You obviously are licensed in California and Utah, so you would have teams in each of those states, because not everybody's licensed in multiple states. So if someone was looking to build something like this, how did you start? How did you first get clients Right? So you had to come up with a marketing machine, or was it through your network of electrical engineering?

Speaker 3:

No, it's. That's a great question, and you bring up kind of two things. One is multi-jurisdictional practice.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm going to leave that one on the on the table for now, because that's a separate issue, but I'm happy to talk about it, if you want to, From a marketing perspective, from gaining clients. You know, I think so. This is the second iteration of me running a law firm. Right, I worked in Silicon Valley for a few years. They worked on big clients. I wanted to come, I wanted to work on smaller clients. So when I had an opportunity, I kind of jumped out and I worked on a few smaller clients. But I really fell back into working on some of these bigger clients and I remember one time saying, man, this is great, I don't have to do any marketing, I just have work coming in. That was the can I say this among friends? That was one of the dumbest things I ever did was to be like I'm not doing any marketing. Right and Right and down the road I'm like OK, that was me letting the external factors, letting clients, design my business for me.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 3:

You know, I realized that at one point that's around the time that I said, hey, I'm going to go get my MBA. I want to be more deliberate in how I design my practice to provide services to these small businesses, businesses. And and so I I really did design it very deliberately and I said, well, how do I do it so that I can go out and find clients that are the clients that I want? I went you know, I had this plan and I went to this general practice law firm so I can get more business experience to supplement with my IP experience. I went in house to a company it was their general counsel. They'd raised tens of millions of dollars and while I was there, did more and we're doing some cool technology stuff. So they needed somebody with my mix of expertise and this isn't very exciting, but my first real client leaving that position was them, and so it was the relationship I had with them and they said, hey, we're moving from Utah to North Carolina. I said that sounds exciting, I'm not going to North Carolina.

Speaker 3:

And we came up with a plan for me to just essentially what I called at the time be their outside general counsel, meaning I was simply contracted with them to continue doing the exact same things I had been doing as an employee. So I fell into it. Right, that's not very deliberate. But from that point forward, when I realized that this kind of two-month transition turned into a year and a half transition, I realized, oh, I can actually be very deliberate about how I create my messaging, about how I create my law firm, about how I come up with this team approach. And so now we're really deliberate in our marketing, our messaging, the firm structure that we have. It's all aligned to provide the best, I think, and I hope, best client experience to small and scaling companies in e-commerce, saas and other tech industries.

Speaker 2:

That's amazing. I love that they moved and you just kept your position. That was helpful for both of them and that was just that. Did that spark the idea of doing the fractional legal team?

Speaker 3:

That's what the Well, yeah, I did, because I, you know, I had seen in there all of the different functions that they needed. I mapped it out for him. One time I'm like, hey, you know, I'm one guy and you're asking me to do all these things, like I'll do everything I can, but we got to bring others in or we need help, or sometimes we just push things off to lower priorities. And when I left that and I got into this position, I'm like, oh, there's gotta be a peer group out there of people who do what I'm doing. I didn't know what it was called at the time and I found a good group that was run at the time by now a good friend of mine, beth Liebowitz, and I think it was called Oxana. I don't think she's running it anymore, but she fantastic attorney and she was running this group with other attorneys who were kind of doing this outside general counsel stuff.

Speaker 3:

It was then that I watched several people in that group kind of start up as these solo fractional general counsel roles, as these solo fractional general counsel roles grow their business and then, ironically, the success that they had led them to be way too busy, more than they like, you start, oh, I'm serving these small clients. Well, I got six or eight or 10 clients that I'm serving because I can, and I spread my time over these. Well, as soon as two or three of those really take off, all of a sudden you're in a bind and you're back to where all of these young, all of us, as as like early career attorneys, didn't want to be. We're like burning the candle at both ends because we're, and so all of a sudden I realized I'm a bottleneck. I'm a bottleneck for my clients no-transcript papers, I, you know, whatever channel you choose, and I am the expert.

Speaker 3:

And me being the expert gives me access to clients that I want and I. That's not untrue, but that also leads you down a path where you are your own worst enemy, in a way. And so my approach is I worked with a couple agent like marketing agencies out there. I'm like why do somebody comes and hires a marketing agency? They don't insist that the CEO, who might be the name of the marketing agency, does all the work. But when you hire an attorney as a client, you're like no, I hired Jeff Holman, I want Jeff Holman to do every bit of my work. And I'm like well, that's not a sustainable business. So, anyway, there's a lot of this. I guess I'm giving you tidbits and peeks into my thoughts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, it's very interesting because I think the way that you just talked about it not being the bottleneck by building a team and marketing the team of what you can do, you also can sit back and see when capacity is being reached. You know the old timing is when you reached 80% capacity, you need to increase capacity, which means bringing in another team member. So by deliberately building a team that you can spread capacity around, you can also see when you need to bring someone new on as you bring on new clients.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you've said it very well. I like how you said it.

Speaker 2:

Excellent and I love the fact that you've got this set up and you can take a small business that's just being innovative, brand new and as they continue to grow and then move into the scale factor and you can still help them as they grow.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that was the real key right I saw.

Speaker 3:

In fact we've obtained clients at times because friends of mine have moved into a role as a fractional or outside attorney, you know, with the idea of being there, but when they again got too busy they had to drop clients.

Speaker 3:

And so they might for a good attorney. Like I've seen lots of attorneys, they kind of transition out of a job and then they're looking for another job, but in the meantime they pick up a couple fractional engagements but they last six to nine months usually before they go and they eventually say well, I got, I'm going to go back in house, I'm going to go back and work for one company, one you know, one client, one employer, and those three or four or five clients they picked up along the way that thought they were entering into a long-term relationship, all of a sudden that relationship got cut short, and so those sometimes come over to me and I'm like I don't, I'm not looking to have a four month relationship and then and then be the reason that you can no longer use me. I want something that's much more enduring and long-term and sustainable.

Speaker 2:

And I think, relationships. So you're, you're building relationships with these companies that go until IPO or something relationships with these companies that go until IPO or something.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, usually they go until they get a large investor who has really strong relationships with an expensive law firm and they say we're going to go and we're going to use my $1,500 an hour attorney, right, and I'm like, if you've got the money and that's the way you want to do it, then then that that's the way you do it.

Speaker 3:

But what I found interestingly is some of these large law firms are coming back and saying you know, I had a I just onboarded a client the last couple of weeks who is transitioning away from a really good law firm, thousand person law firm. Their attorneys are charging thousands, I'm sure, per hour and they love the law firm, good relationship with them, but they just couldn't continue to afford them because of their business situation. Well, when I was talking with the attorney as we were kind of handing off some stuff, he said hey, you've got a really interesting model. I think there's probably opportunities where we could work with you and you could work with us, because you handle the inside, inside the business issues, and we handle a lot of the big transactions.

Speaker 3:

They don't want to do NDA review or things like that they want to handle seed you know, priced rounds, seed rounds, m&as, acquisitions like they want to handle the big deals.

Speaker 2:

The big stuff yeah.

Speaker 3:

And they put up with the small stuff the day-to-day, if you will, so that they can have access to the big stuff when it comes up. These really large, really respected, really expensive law firms and practices like mine, where we can essentially liaison, manage the day-to-day but liaison with these larger firms as the needs come up to engage them for the things that they actually want to be doing.

Speaker 2:

And that makes total sense, because that way you're by collaborating, you're actually giving the client much better service, so you're making all three more sustainable, and it's all about customer service, right? In the end, good service, world-class service, is what we call it, so that you can grow and have your clients grow as well.

Speaker 3:

Yes, exactly I love that.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Well, thinking about your firm and your team, if I could wave a magic wand and solve any problem in your firm, what would that problem be?

Speaker 3:

Oh great, just one, or could I give you two more? No, just kidding, you know, I think so. I've been at this for like eight years or so. This growth from transitioning out of that company to inadvertently becoming their outside general counsel, to, you know starting, you know really starting to think about how to approach this team, to what we've got today. And during that whole time I have there's one persistent problem.

Speaker 3:

That problem is, you know, it takes a lot of effort to get the word out to people about what we do, and the word that's called, of course, as you know, is marketing. So I've said to many people who've come in and said, hey, we'll help you with your marketing, and we've tried to do various things along the way, but my phrase has always been the same. I've said listen, you know, shane Kat, whoever I've talked to, I've said there's a faucet out there. I know it because what we do is a good service. We deliver it in the right way. Clients tell me that I've seen it, I've been on the outside, I've been on the like. I know this is the right way to do it. I just need to find that faucet, right.

Speaker 3:

I want to find that faucet so that we, as we, you know, and this is what my clients do, my e-commerce clients are talking about ROAS and it's like, well, you know one dollar in and I get X dollars out, like they just know, once they know their ROAS and assuming nothing shifts too dramatically in social media advertising, you know stuff like that they know that's just a faucet and yeah, and they just put more dollars in in law and in service-based businesses.

Speaker 3:

I think that's a lot harder for a lot of reasons, but, but I know there's a faucet out there for the right service that's scalable and sustainable, which I think we've designed. So finding the faucet that's my and I, you know, and my that's why I'm here right Is to get the word out about the services we do, both because I want potential clients to know about it, but also because I think it's the right type of delivery service that other attorneys should be doing Like. If I think other attorneys should be adopting this model and implementing it. Maybe the way we're doing it, maybe better ways I don't. I don't know the way we're doing it, maybe better ways, I don't know. But as word gets out and the delivery model grows in popularity, it'll start to maybe reveal where those faucets are for us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, it sounds almost like a no-brainer for a law firm. You just make it a team effort and you can provide so much more to a small business as they are scaling team effort and you can provide so much more to a small business as they are scaling.

Speaker 3:

It is a no-brainer. The problem is existing law firms have business models that do not allow it. You know, not like formally, it's just the structure of the business model that law firms use. It would be really hard to transition straight over from let's call it an eat what you kill model to this team mentality. The business model doesn't. It's better and they should do it, and it's worth the effort and the cost and the headache to transition, I think. But it's really hard for people to make that switch if they're not starting from scratch. So we're seeing a lot of people, especially in some communities and forums that I'm in, a lot of people are starting to jump into the fractional legal services model.

Speaker 2:

Right, I'm hearing it more often, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And I'm starting to see some people who are thinking about and trying out these team approaches or collaborative approaches where they say, well, you know, I'm part of this I don't know co-op, or whatever you want to call it where you're, you know, you're my client, but I bring in other people that are other attorneys that I have loose relationships with, and so it's happening and it will happen. It just will take some time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's a little bit more experimenting and people seeing that it's working and the advantage all around. This has been a great conversation, so I just enjoyed hearing how you started and how you help small businesses and growing businesses. I know my listeners are going to want to connect with you and chat with you and hopefully talk to you about some advice of how to do this themselves. How would be the best place for someone to reach you or connect with you?

Speaker 3:

LinkedIn. For your audience, linkedin is going to be the best place. So I'm just there on LinkedIn and you know Jeff Holman, you'll find uh, when you click on my profile, you'll see that I'm the one that says that I help. I think I say I help startups and scaling companies build fractional legal teams. So that's pretty clear based on the conversation we've been having. But I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I'll connect.

Speaker 3:

Don't throw me a solicitation right after connecting or I might unconnect, disconnect from you. But uh, but it's, I'm there all the time. That's the place to go If there are clients that want to get ahold of me. We also do like a free strategy call that you can book through my website, intellectualstrategiescom. But I think your audience is probably more attorneys, marketing stuff like that, and LinkedIn would be a great place to connect. I'm happy to talk to people about this. I, you know I've been on I think I was counting it up the other day since, since I think I was counting it up the other day since the end of last year, I think I've done like 45 or 50 podcast episodes as a guest just to share this and other things that I'm passionate about.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Well, I appreciate it. I've got both of those links in the show notes, and so we'll have people be able to reach out to you very easily. Jeff, this has been great. I really appreciate your spending the time with me today. It's been a great conversation, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you. It's been my pleasure being with you, thanks.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to lawmarketingzonecom to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law podcast and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. Remember you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at lawmarketingzonecom. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.

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Marilyn Jenkins

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