The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Lawyers Can Ignore Social Media - If They Want to Stay Poor and Unhappy
Join us on The Renegade Lawyer Podcast as I dive into the world of social media with Kris Bryant from Crush It With Kris. Discover how small firm lawyers can build a personal brand without breaking the bank. Kris shares insights on leveraging platforms, overcoming shyness, and the power of storytelling.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to amplify your presence, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you stand out in a crowded digital world.
Tune in and take your brand to the next level!
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
For one. I tell my story in my content. I talk about problems that my ideal customer has to really pique their interest and appeal to people to get them to watch more of my content. But also what helped me with just being an introvert is honestly just doing the thing right. My first videos were terrible, my lighting was bad, my hair looked crazy and what's funny is some of those videos were my best ones that actually took off. So even though we might feel like we suck, there's always people that we can help with our message. But if you're not putting it out there for enough people to see it, you're doing a disservice to your audience.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Speaker 3:Hey everyone, welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. I'm Ben, and each episode I get to interview interesting people entrepreneurs who are making a ding in the world inside and outside of legal, and today this is such a hot topic. I've got Chris Bryant Crush it With. Chris is the name of the company and that's Chris with a K, and we're gonna talk about social media. We're gonna talk about how lawyers in small firms can build a personal brand and not spend a bazillion dollars on digital marketing or traditional marketing.
Speaker 3:Before we went live, chris, I was telling you that, as we're recording this, we just had our monthly meeting with our tribe. The topic was this it was social media. It was talking about different platforms. People want to know what works, what doesn't work, and the big question they want to know is oh my gosh, there's so many choices. How do I spend my next hour or my next dollar investing in this thing? I think I need to do it because I see everybody else doing it, but I'm not really sure. So very timely to have you on the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, so welcome to the program.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, ben, for having me. I'm excited to be here. I've really been looking forward to this and I hope to provide as much value to your audience as possible on all of these topics, because they are very timely.
Speaker 3:You will. You would find it interesting, Chris, to know that most lawyers if we look at lawyers out there in the community practicing they're actually shy. They may talk, mean in their letters and on their pleadings that they send to court, but stick a camera or a microphone in front of their face and say something interesting that would make people want to be a friend of yours or pay attention to you. They don't know what to do. So I'm curious and I know you work with lawyers and you work with other small biz owners. Work with other small biz owners. Let's just start really broad, because everybody's got a certain number of dollars and a certain number of hours that they can do marketing in a day. So why play at all in what we call social media? And then I'll have you define social media, because that too is a broad term. Why play there these days?
Speaker 1:Social media is just powerful. It's definitely changed my life. It's changed so many people's lives. But everyone is on social media. We all have our various different platforms that we like more than others. But when I have conversations with a lot of attorneys on my sales calls and my marketing calls, they are relying a lot of the time on word of mouth or their network to bring in their next client, and it's frustrating to rely on that because there's no predictability, whereas if you come up with a strategy to really focus on a platform and I always recommend that when you're new to social media, it can seem overwhelming because there's TikTok, there's IG, there's Facebook, there's YouTube, there's LinkedIn, there's so much. And then you're like OK, I can't tackle all of these and I never recommend that. I always recommend to start off with maybe one or two platforms and to decide which platforms that you should be starting out on. I would recommend starting on the one where your audience hangs out. Starting on the one where your audience hangs out. For example, if your target audience is CEOs and VPs and decision makers, then you probably should be spending some time on LinkedIn, because that's a very powerful platform. And then you touched on something else, which is I'm shy.
Speaker 1:What do I talk about? One thing that I don't really share a lot is I am an introvert, and some people don't even believe it, but I am For one. I tell my story in my content. I talk about problems that my ideal customer has to really pique their interest and appeal to people to get them to watch more of my content. But also, what helped me with just being an introvert is honestly just doing the thing right. My first videos were terrible. My lighting was bad, my hair looked crazy and what's funny is some of those videos were my best ones that actually took off. So even though we might feel like we suck, there's always people that we can help with our message. But if you're not putting it out there for enough people to see it, you're doing a disservice to your audience.
Speaker 3:So you touched on a bunch there, but you hit a point that we often teach, which is when you start doing something new, you probably are going to suck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to get the sucky part out of the way.
Speaker 3:And the good news is, when you're starting in social media or a new platform for you in social media, no one's watching. You can go on YouTube and see videos from probably 20 years ago of me and stuff literally trying to do stuff on my own, not knowing what I was doing, but it's so easy. It's so easy to push, publish and then you have the video up there on the internet forever, unless you go back in and cancel it. So that's a big one and that's a strategy that we use. We get comfortable being uncomfortable and just getting out there.
Speaker 3:The second thing you mentioned, which is really important we preach a lot, is you said you tell your story. I'm going to ask you about that in a second. But every human being in the history of the world has their own, very unique, never duplicatable story. Nobody has your story, and so just know that Now there is a tension between lawyers who just want to brag about themselves versus learning to be a good storyteller. So why don't you start, chris? Tell us a little bit about your story. Why don't you start, chris? Tell us a little bit about your story. Who are you? How did you get to be this famous leader and guru in the social media space?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my story. It started where my mom was a single parent and I watched her struggle a lot, taking care of three kids by herself and working these various different jobs, and it was just still so hard to get by. And then fast forward. I went to college, I worked various different sales jobs and I knew that my calling was not working for other people. I was the kid in high school walking to my part-time job complaining about going to work for the man, and I just knew that I wanted an online business. So I started taking the steps to figure out okay, what am I good at? And I realized that in order to really succeed online for me, I needed to learn social media. So I started learning Instagram and Facebook first, and then I was like holy cow, I'm really good at this. And I learned Facebook ads and I started a little agency. But I had people discovering me and being like hey, can you help me market my business online? I was doing it on the side for a while when I was in corporate. Then one day I was just like you know what? I have all these skills that I'm not even applying because I'm doing this job that has nothing to do with what I want to do for a career. I left my job and I started my agency and people were like, are you sure you want to do this? And I haven't really looked back since.
Speaker 1:Fast forward, I've grown my brand to well over 100,000 people online. I did that in less than a year. I've been featured on many different publications. I help clients across the world amplify their message online and connect with their ideal audience, and entrepreneurship is just a passion of mine. I feel like some of us just have that in us where we should be entrepreneurs and we should be having an impact and helping people. So that's what I love helping people do. That's what really just lights me up when I can help people connect with their ideal audience, attract more customers, grow their small business. So, yeah, that's how I ended up where I am today, and I've been in business for about six years now.
Speaker 3:For the young people that I sometimes counsel on where do I go to college, or should I go to college? I'm curious what did you study?
Speaker 1:Nothing that I'm doing anything with now. I studied criminal justice and I loved it. Actually, I entertained becoming a lawyer and somewhere down the line I don't know I ended up getting into sales and I did that for many years and it's still a transferable skill that I use day to day in my business, which I'm grateful for. But I just have a bigger passion for marketing and social media, which I'm grateful for, but I just have a bigger passion for marketing and social media.
Speaker 3:Sales is about communicating with other human beings and figuring out what they want and listening oh this is so important what they want and need, and being a great listener and saying and determining whether your service or product is the right thing for them or not. Being honest about that and then letting the other person come to the decision in their own mind that you are the wise man or woman at the top of the mountain. That's what really good lawyers do who are not. And it's not to say that running billboards and TV and all that stuff is wrong, but there's only one or two in a market who can be one or two right, they're spending a ton of money, and most of our audience is not doing that.
Speaker 3:They're building good local brands, doing quality work, trying to figure out how do I get my next client in the door, and not only just the next client, but the right client, the right person for me. So now I'm curious. You said, oh, I just really like this other stuff, I'm good at social media and I started my agency. When you say that that means people began paying, you sounds like yes, you teach them or do for them one or the other to be able to amplify either a personal or a business brand. Would I be right about that?
Speaker 1:Yes, you are so there's two ways that I work with people. It depends on where they're at. So maybe if they're in a more beginning stage and they have a smaller budget, but they want to do the work themselves. And it's funny, right before I jumped on this call with you, I was on another call, a sales call, and I was just saying to who I believe he's going to turn into a client next week. But I was just saying I'm really passionate about teaching people how to fish right.
Speaker 1:You can hire an agency or you can hire someone to do all of the work and then you don't even know what's going on behind the scenes and if that person goes away, you might not know how to step in and pick up the pieces and continue on, Whereas if you work one-to-one with a coach or a consultant and then you learn the stuff and you can continue to apply those strategies, those marketing strategies, daily, weekly, to build your brand and your presence online.
Speaker 1:So that's one way I do work with people in a consultative approach. And then we also offer a done for you side where we do the marketing, social media management. We do podcast tours, where we coordinate and schedule our clients on podcasts that have their ideal audience and we do all of the heavy lifting because I understand being an entrepreneur. It takes a lot of time out of your day. We're busy people, so you might need to hire someone in their expertise, like myself, to get you booked on these things. So we do both done for you and done with you services just depending on the needs of the client.
Speaker 3:When you started your agency and left your corporate world job. So tell me about that, like going and finding first clients and figuring out things like how do I charge this? How do I deliver a great experience? What if they hate me? Because we all have that fear, right when we start a business.
Speaker 1:I learned how fearless I really was when I made that change, because I've spent the majority of my life working for someone else. Every other Friday, my check is coming. I worked in sales for many years, so I was set up good and I looked at it like at the end of the day, if I fail, I can always get another job. I have all of these skills. I have jobs that are paying me six figures.
Speaker 1:So I know that I'm valuable. So if I try this business and it fails, I can update my resume, try to find another job, even though it won't be what I wanted to do. But that fear of having to go back to a nine to five I wanted to do, but that fear of having to go back to a nine to five lit me up to the point where I was. It was like I am a stubborn Gemini. So I really fought like hell to just make sure that I am putting myself out there. I invested in coaching, I invested in all types of marketing things. I tried and tested to just figure out.
Speaker 1:I felt directionless. That's the best way to describe going from a nine to five, where you're being told what to do to all of a sudden working for yourself and no one's breathing down your neck telling you what to do each day. I felt directionless at first, but I've experienced the most growth since working for myself. I've failed. I've succeeded. That timeframe that I left my job is when I built my following to over a hundred thousand people, millions of views per month. I learned how to hunt and find money and new opportunities for myself. I started working with brands and reaching directly out to brands like popular brands like Panda Express, all types of different brands to pay me to make content.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at some point you thought like, oh no, like they're never going to pay attention to little old me because they're big brands and they must have a huge in-house team. That's really expert.
Speaker 1:I always tell people when they say, oh, I hate sales, I hate doing this, and I look at it and I say it's not that these people don't want to work with you. They don't know about you yet. And if you position yourself in a way where you're not being overly salesy and then you're reaching out to enough people, eventually a percentage of those people are going to say yes, right. And you can have the same approach with making content, just getting consistent with it, because you never know who's watching and you need multiple touch points as well. When you make content and you put it out there, people need to see you a few times.
Speaker 1:I have customers that have watched my content for two years before they bought. I'm like wow, like we've been in touch for two years, and sometimes that's what people need. And if you're consistently putting out content and doing the thing and focusing on income generating activities in your business, you find your way. And that's how I found my way when transitioning from a nine to five to entrepreneurship, which for many people it can be very scary.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, this is Ben. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, brian, and I built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time Pakistan attorneys. Check us out at greatlittlemarketingcom. So you strike me as highly energetic, very interesting, hardworking, and you said early on you relied on coaching and I'm sure you had other influencers in your life I'm curious about today, like who do you follow, watch, read, get inspiration from, listen to these days?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I love Mel Robbins and I believe she's actually from Massachusetts or New England. I love her messaging. I like Gary Vee as well. I know he's not for everyone because he uses curse words. I love YouTube as well. I like Robert Benjamin as well. He talks a lot about growing on social media. I've invested in him. Charlie Morgan there's a lot of people who have just created their own lanes and show you what is possible, and I want to learn from the best. I want to learn from the people who are doing very well in their business and I want to learn their strategies and I've applied them to my business.
Speaker 3:Do you go to any conferences these days?
Speaker 1:I'm actually going to be in a conference in November, so it's a marketing conference where I'll be part of a panel. So I do some public speaking as well, but I do need to go to more conferences. I need to do more in-person networking stuff. I've done like some Chamber of Commerce stuff, but a lot of the stuff I do is online.
Speaker 3:So there is a real value in being in a room with other live human beings, both there's learning from the stage and there's learning from the people in the room. So I would think like chamber of commerce, okay, fine, but that's not where the next generation of people who are going to come work for you with you and buy from you.
Speaker 3:I can guarantee you that. Tell us the story of when you started and then you built to 100,000, I guess followers. I don't know if this is one channel or across multiple channels, but why were people finding you interesting? What were you saying to the world?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. For one, I was consistent. I was focusing primarily on video content. I think that's what really shifted the needle where people could hear me, they could see me. You can interpret things in so many different ways if it's just text, whereas with the video, you really get to feel and understand that person and decipher many different things.
Speaker 1:So that was the first part, and you mentioned where the audiences are, so a good chunk of it is on TikTok, on LinkedIn. I have over 10,000 connections on there as well, so I've grown exponentially there. But as far as things that I was saying, I was really providing value to people and not making it so much about me, but talking about ways that they can become better, sharing really helpful resources and also agitating right. So talking about the problems that people have that are in my ideal audience and talking about those problems and then giving them a solution and ways to solve those problems, and also talking about the problems that I faced, what I did to solve those problems and how my life is different, and I think if more people approach content making in that way, they'll start experiencing some of the success that I've had.
Speaker 3:So more people approach content in the framework of here I am. I'm not for everybody. Here's what I think, and here's what I've done, and here's how I've won and here's how I failed, rather than trying to be somebody else. So you mentioned a couple of names, right, but you're not them, I'm not them, you're you, I'm me. Let's just get comfortable with our own stuff. That's the framework. Who's your avatar, client, customer, these days? Who are you looking to come through your door and say, chris, I want to hire your company?
Speaker 1:Yeah, service providers 100%. So high ticket services. So lawyers, consultants, life coaches, business coaches, leadership coaches but I've been helping many lawyers lately these days but basically anyone who's like a small to medium sized business that has a high ticket service and they're looking to connect with more people online, get more customers, get more public relations opportunities or podcast opportunities and really are serious about building their reputation and brand online. Because a lot of the people I meet, especially when I talk to people from LinkedIn, it's a lot of these dated old school strategies that don't really work anymore and it needs to change because times are changing, social media is evolving and there's so many different ways to connect with people that you wouldn't even have a chance to meet otherwise if it wasn't for online. So we should be tapping into it 100%.
Speaker 3:The secret of why we do podcasts is because we talk to people that we never would have run into and spend 45 minutes or an hour asking them the questions that we want to know the answers to.
Speaker 1:That is a huge benefit of doing the work to make a real podcast that you do consistently and doesn't die after's actually one of my most popular services, right now, because really going on podcasts is a new opportunity to get in front of an audience for one that you might not have had a chance to get in front of, because we all have our own audiences and the complaint that I hear from a lot of people is that they're constantly speaking to the same 10 people that comment on their stuff and it takes time to build up an audience. So going on podcasts is like the cheat code to be able to leverage other people's already established audiences, and we work towards helping people get on podcasts that I would say are in the top one to 5%, one to 10% and if you just get in the habit of going on podcasts because speaking is so powerful to get your message out there and then you get that warm introduction from the host, so it's powerful stuff, just speaking in general.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you this though now dealing with lawyers and you have lawyer clients and most legal work is local, regional or statewide there are some practices. Part one of our practice here is a nationwide practice, but for most lawyers mom and pa running a law firm their practice is pretty local or regional. So does that matter?
Speaker 1:when you are talking about the tool of using a podcast to amplify your voice, I would say not so much, because, for one, you get the brand recognition, you get to reach more people, and then you also get to repurpose the content that you get and then we also look into if someone was like I'm only looking to reach these certain areas, then we can do the research to find them.
Speaker 1:But a lot of podcasts are just national anyways, so you get to just reach all different types of people. But we also offer a hybrid approach where we combine okay, we'll help you get booked on some of these podcasts, but also let's do a hybrid approach where we can consult together and come up with a strategy to maybe leverage LinkedIn to find people only in the state of North Carolina that you can get in front of that could be potential clients. Let's come up with a marketing strategy on LinkedIn and combined podcasts. So I like doing a hybrid approach when I'm faced with situations like that as well, because you can tap into a few different avenues to drive leads. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You can use the old as seen on. So you use one of my favorite words, which is repurpose, and I think a lot of lawyers miss this step. So they'll do the hard work of creating a video or being on a podcast or doing something that's fairly cool, and then it's a one and done and repurposing. You and I both know that's the magic. Do once now figure out 10 different ways to go use this thing. So talk to us a little bit about that, in terms of just reminders that there is so much more than the 45 minutes or an hour you may spend speaking on some of these podcasts. Talk to us about some of the strategies or ways that can be repurposed 45 minutes is a long time.
Speaker 1:There are so many different nuggets of information that you can get from it. For example, there might be an interesting phrase that you said that you can turn into a quote and you can make content out of that. You can take one to two minutes of a clip and turn that into pieces of content, but you can turn one interview into dozens of different pieces of content and you can take video from it. Or you can take the video and turn it into text or turn it into a graphic. You can create so many pieces of content for months and months.
Speaker 1:And what's really helpful too is the podcast host will also see that you are doing the legwork to actually help promote their platform, because I always say that it shouldn't be a one-sided transaction. It should be build a relationship. For one I always encourage share it, leave a review, share your episode, encourage people to check it out and also stay in touch with the podcast host, because that's an opportunity to build a relationship. You can get invited back, you guys can bounce ideas off of each other, refer people to each other, and podcast hosts meet so many different people. So I always encourage people to not make it so transactional, where you just show up that one time and then nothing happens. And I'm sure you can attest to this.
Speaker 3:That's another one of my favorite phrases. Yes, let's build a relationship. So, again, expanding this to any of our vendors who service the law firm or who service Great Legal Marketing. So you got web vendors. You have people that come clean the office Like we're always asking how can we make this a win for you? The question I asked you before we went live what is the thing that we can do to make this experience a great experience for you? Because true entrepreneurial success comes when both sides to a transaction feel like they got a win out of the time and energy and money that they invested in the thing, whatever the thing is.
Speaker 3:And I just find so many vendors out there who are selling to the legal world. They don't understand it at that level. They're like okay, I got a website, I can buy your pay-per-click, manage your pay-per-click spend and all that stuff. And we're always looking for people who are, like, genuinely interested in our stuff, who ask us more questions than like how many cases do you want to get in? What are we actually trying to achieve? What's your five-year vision? Where do you want to be in 10 years If I have a law client and I know what they actually want to achieve beyond the legal situation that I'm hired to solve.
Speaker 3:That's cool. Now we have a relationship, Now they trust me, they know me, all of that other stuff that we typically talk about. Let me ask you this Do you have some stories you can name names or not name names, but stories of lawyers or law firms that have come to you and like, okay, we came up with this strategy and here's what we did and here's what happened. So how do you help Law firm comes to you and says, hey, I heard about you and crush it with Chris and we would like to, whatever, get more cases. It's not just get on podcasts, it's got to be a benefit to the firm, and so I'm curious if you have any stories of firms that you have helped. And somebody went from just starting on YouTube to having I don't know 500 million followers, whatever.
Speaker 1:That helped their business thousand or $5,000 from one episode. We usually guarantee at least like eight interviews, and that was just off of one. I've seen clients as well that have gotten thousands of views, millions of views, even for myself on certain things. And then we also have lawyers and people that we worked with that haven't been on podcasts at all and within one week we've gotten them booked on four or five. So we really go to town on really understanding our client, who they're looking to get in front of. It's not a one size fits all approach. We don't just send everyone to the same places and hope for the best. There's research, we leverage our network and it's just a really personalized approach that we take with all of our clients to ensure that they're happy and that they're getting lots of visibility. At the end of the day, I'm curious.
Speaker 3:Now just back to your business-wise. Let me ask you that question when do you see yourself in five years? What do you want to have built? Do you have a vivid vision of what your three and five-year life might look like with your business?
Speaker 1:I think about that a lot. So the biggest challenge that I see for small business owners and I can speak from my own personal experience we have these amazing skills and services that we offer, but it's so frustrating getting sales and getting enough eyeballs on what it is that we can do. So I am creating a program where it's combining online marketing strategies to actually just help with the income generating activities, leveraging platforms like LinkedIn to generate leads and to be seen as a thought leader. I recently just received the top voice for social media on my LinkedIn account, which I was so pleased with some of these strategies to really be seen, be heard and take the uncertainty out of where is my next lead coming from? Because just posting organically to your 100 followers the same 100 people every single time and hoping that they're always going to raise their hand and book a call is just not realistic, and I say this coming from a sales background.
Speaker 1:I want to teach people to fish, like I said earlier, but to also be proactive and go after the opportunities that they want through LinkedIn how to pitch, to get themselves on podcasts and get lots of guesses so that they can use their own marketing methods as well as leveraging podcasts as well. So I want to create a program that combines like the best of both worlds so people don't have to have a shortage of leads and they're worrying about that nonstop, because that's why so many businesses fail, especially in the consulting and coaching and any type of high ticket service online. It's like they have these amazing services. Not enough people are seeing it. They're not booking enough calls, so I want to solve that problem with the program that I'm putting together. So that's my goal, and people can go at their own pace and there will be live coaching a few times a week. So that's the game plan.
Speaker 3:There is a tension in LinkedIn, so I want to ask you about LinkedIn strategies. Anyone who's listening to this, who is on LinkedIn, gets pitched incessantly and there's some version of hey, I thought we could work together. Would you like to spend 10 minutes of your day talking to me while I pitch you? There's not enough coaches out there like you to be able to not do this, because that's what we say. So, for the consultant world, the lawyer world, in the LinkedIn medium, what are some ways that you have found and that you teach that you can be more successful in growing an audience and, as you say Chris, actually get leads and sales?
Speaker 1:Starting conversations and, instead of sending people like a five paragraph long thing, personalize it. What's their most recent post? Are they sharing a new win? People are inherently selfish and they care about themselves. So if you take the time to actually look at what the person has going on, or if you phrase what you have as an opportunity, then people will be more inclined to listen, versus sending them five paragraphs about why you're great and why they should buy is only going to scare people away. But look at what they're talking about, what they're posting about. Did they just get a new promotion? What are they having challenges with? Are you having those same shared challenges as well? Just talking to them like a human being instead of trying to pitch and be overly salesy. It's going to be really off-putting and, like you said on LinkedIn, people have grown so accustomed to it to the point where LinkedIn has even lowered the amount of connection requests that you can even send out per week and per day now, because it was getting so out of control on that platform.
Speaker 1:And then also using hooks in your content, really hooking people and talking about stuff that solves a problem. That's thought provoking. You want to be seen as a thought leader in your industry. I'll have people send me messages and they're like oh, we'll help you 10 X your your Instagram following. And then I look at their Instagram and they have 30 followers and I'm like what can you show me and why would I pay you when I have more followers than you do? So I get it, but definitely just personalizing and just paying attention to the person that you're talking to.
Speaker 3:So what are the strategies we use in running a law firm? I get pitched for lots of legal, ancillary, legal adjacent services. We also publish a great print journal, for great legal marketing goes out to our members. So somebody will pitch and say, hey, we can get you more leads, we can do this, we can do that. Our offer always back is here's how you play. You have this journal, here's how you start with us. You submit articles for publication.
Speaker 3:We don't print every article and it's not pay to play. All right, we're Reader's Digest, we have our own articles in there. But if you're one of the top four articles of the month and it's relevant to our stuff, we'll consider printing it. You can have a call to action in there. That actually gets rid of 99% of people because they don't want to do the work, they just want the easy pick, but for the smart one.
Speaker 3:So anybody who's listening to this, who's got services to sell to lawyers. You want to get in front of a huge audience in print. You have to craft written material that's actually useful to our audience and then you can have a call to action. Free book, free download, free consult, whatever. That's the win-win relationship that we're looking for, and other coaches probably, who get pitched could probably use that strategy themselves. They've got like all right. Prove to me that you know what you're talking about. Give me something I can give my audience. Let me ask you this, chris, in the last couple of minutes Podcasts so a lot of lawyers. They do want to get on other people's podcasts. They do want to do exactly what you've described and what you help them do, and there's a bazillion podcasts out there. So what are some of the things you help lawyers or you do for them in order to get on other people's podcasts?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. We do all the heavy lifting. We really take the time to uncover their unique story. Going on a podcast is not about going on there and making it a long sales pitch. No one cares, right?
Speaker 1:No one wants to hear that it's all about your story, how you help people, providing actionable and valuable tangible things that people can do after listening. And people get this confused all the time where they're like I don't want to give out too much value for free because I'm not getting paid for it. When it's the opposite.
Speaker 1:That's the wrong idea. What makes you memorable is your story, so anything that you can share, that you've been able to overcome. For example, I have a client that moved to the US from Germany with a suitcase full of books and $1,000. And he turned his life around, started a business, helped other people grow their business and I'm like that's a really amazing story because Americans love like the underdog and a comeback story. So having stories where maybe you've been able to overcome adversity or help others, or just having something unique that you can present, that's refreshing Because oftentimes and I see this a lot on social media everyone is just trying to be like everyone else.
Speaker 1:I have had so many people create fake accounts pretending to be me, taking my content, uploading it to their stuff, and it's so much better when you're just yourself because there's only one you right. So that's the first thing we uncover the unique story. We do the research to find the platforms to get them interviewed. We do the outreach, we do the coordinating to get them booked and find the times that they're available. We help with media kits. I have a media kit that converts very well.
Speaker 1:I get a lot of compliments on my media kit and you can use tools like Canva for free to create a media kit. You can go to I think it's called Creative Market and get templates that you can buy for $10, $20 and just upload and make changes to it. But we do all of that and and just upload and make changes to it. But we do all of that and we just facilitate and make sure that the interviews happen and keep everything on track. But these are the things that a lot of busy entrepreneurs just don't have time for. Yes, some of them are like oh, I can learn, you can, but the reality is a lot of us just don't have the time to do and that's why they hire us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think most lawyers need to learn enough to have an intelligent conversation with somebody like you so that we can establish what does done look like, what is the goal and how we know if we have been successful. Because again you're right, it's not just about I got on 10 podcasts. Was I actually able to generate sales or leads by being an interesting person demonstrating expertise without bragging? It's actually hard to generate sales or leads by being an interesting person demonstrating expertise without bragging. It's actually hard to be good at this because they don't teach it in law school, they don't teach it in college and you have to learn it, I think, by listening to people like you, by being in other rooms where people on stage who are really good at delivering great value and then being interesting enough to say, oh, you know what? That was pretty cool. I think I would like to work with he or she who just delivered great value.
Speaker 3:So those are all great secrets. So let me ask you this I'm sure that there are people who are listening to this, chris, and there's a ton of stuff we actually didn't cover. But in great legal marketing has been social media. What do I do? It's two over one, so there's one and then there's this whole podcast gig and actually one of the things I heard, there's people who start podcasts and that's hard and you have to go now, attract guests and do all the backend, and it can be just as effective to be on other people's podcasts, all right, so I'm sure you have more cheat codes. Someone who's listening to this would like to reach out to you, follow you on social media. So tell us about that and then tell our audience the best way that someone could raise their hand and get in contact and have a further discussion with you 100%.
Speaker 1:All of my social medias are at Crush it With Chris and if you go on LinkedIn and type in Crush it With Chris under Chris Bryant but you can email me at hello at crush it with Chris and it's Chris K R I Scom and yeah, I'll respond to emails that way. Or you can go to crush it with chriscom is my website.
Speaker 3:That's fantastic. Look, it's been awesome having you as a guest today. We wish you much success and hold on for a sec, Cause I do want to talk to you about something once we sign off here. So, chris, thanks for being a guest with us.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. This was awesome. I was really looking forward to this.
Speaker 2:Very cool. If you like what you just heard on the Renegade Lawyer podcast, you may be a perfect fit for the great legal marketing community. Law firm owners across the country are becoming heroes to their families and icons in their communities. They've gone renegade by rejecting the status quo of Bye.
