Visit MaximumLawyer.com for complete show notes of each podcast episode, tips, hacks and more resources!
Today on the show we have Michael Foster and Brian Wallace, co-founders of Foster & Wallace. Their firm is based in Kansas City and is brand new-less than a year old.
We’ll discuss taking the leap from BigLaw to running a practice, the biggest challenges they’ve faced in making the transition, running a firm with two different practice areas, establishing yourself with a website,
Hacking’s Hack: Ryan McKeen said at the beginning of the year that he’s done reading business books. I’m reading a book right now called Billion Dollar Whale. Think modern day Malaysian Gatsby except it all really happened.
Tyson’s Tip: Two books by Russell Brunston- .com secrets and expert secrets. I use these as desk references.
Michael’s Tip: Have coffee to network rather than lunch. Saves money and is better on the waistline. Ask for 5 star reviews from everyone you work with.
Brian’s Tip: When you’ve got business partners its important to be open and transparent. Leave it all out there.
Check them out at FosterWallace.com
Make sure to register for MaxLawCon19, June 6 and 7 in St.Louis.
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Transcripts: Big Law to Small Practice with Brian Wallace and Michael Foster
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
he kind of looked each other in the eye. And you know when the right time is to start a firm and we have conversations about that, whether it’s a January one, or do you not want to start in the winter, because people are doing that, you know, you want to start in the fall all those different types of things. And ultimately, you know, we had kind of had some conversations with people and just decided that there is never going to be an exact right time.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking, and Tyson nutrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Jason matrix. What’s up Jamie?
Jim Hacking
Harrison, I’m happy to be with you today. You’re recording full, you’re going to do three podcasts today. It’s insane.
Tyson Mutrux
Until more or with you, which makes me a bigger fool. But yeah, I’m doing one with Guy DiMartino this afternoon. So a lot of fun. So, pretty excited about it. What’s it? What’s new with you?
Jim Hacking
Well, let’s see. I recorded a great pop up episode last night that that should have dropped by now with Sara Schaaf from headnote. That was pretty fun, firm wise, we’re rockin and rollin, just a little bit too busy, and we’re going to be hiring some more people
Tyson Mutrux
always be hiring to good, it’s a good thing. Alright, so I don’t want to keep our guests waiting too long. This week, we’ve got two guests on the line. So Michael and Brian, I’m gonna do sort of a brief introduction based on some of the information you gave me. And then I’m gonna let you introduce yourselves individually. So people can get a little bit, learn a little bit more about you. But so, so Jimmy, Bryan and Michael have a firm named, it’s Foster Wallace. It’s about seven or eight months old now. And they’re getting more into plaintiffs work. And it’s injury and business side of work. So it’s kind of an interesting mix, on how they’re splitting things. They came from big law, which is, which I think is kind of cool how they’re going from big law to small law and mixing things up a little bit. But in they reached out to me about their website, and you know, who I recommended going going with. And so it kind of evolved into more of a discussion. And so I said, Hey, come on, let’s talk about it on the podcast. So let’s we’re gonna do this in order. It’s, it can get complicated with two people. So we’ll start with Michael, you want to introduce yourself talking about your background and how you got to where you are now, and then we’ll go to Brian after that.
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
My name is Michael Foster. I grew up here in Kansas City. Dad was an attorney. My uncle is what I mean, he’s a judge here in Johnson County, Kansas. And the judge uncle’s a judge in Nevada, Missouri. Bunch of lawyers in my family Long story short, yeah, my great uncle was a judge here in Wyandotte. County, Kansas, went to school in Iowa, at Drake University, played on the golf team came back. You know, family was like, don’t be a lawyer, don’t be a lawyer. So I took a year off trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And then I just decided to go to law school against their advice. Once you and Casey were actually met my partner, Brian Wallace here, right, basically our first class where we were saying little section together, both of us ended up doing pretty well in law school really well, to get jobs at big law firms. Brian went to Oracle POLSINELLI. And I went to a firm A trial firm called Sugar Thomson Killroy. What’s crazy about that, and we both clerked, during law school. And then what’s crazy is four months after we took the bar, and in our first year, sugar Thompson and POLSINELLI, Shelton, planning and whatever merged. So I mean, my best friend from law school, my study partner, and I were the same firm while I was doing more trial work. And Brian was more of doing corporate work. That’s what eight years we both make shareholder. Fast forward to from that, and we both decide to make a leap of faith and bet on ourselves. Leave big law. You know, I’m sitting here in jeans and a pullover, and it’s a different different, different type of life working a lot harder, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s more like running a business. So like Michael, I’m from Kansas City. Unlike Michael, I did don’t have an attorney in my family. I don’t think I knew an attorney growing up. Actually, my dad encouraged me to go to law school, maybe maybe because he didn’t see. So I don’t know, I don’t know. I actually went to UMKC for undergrad as well. I played soccer. So Michael, and I kind of both were student athletes in college, undergrad, and then we met at law school. And the rest is kind of history from there at at POLSINELLI. I did. You know, for the most part, I did a lot of transactional work in the insurance space, the sports space, actually sports and media, a little bit in life sciences as well. So I had a good mix of a lot of different things that I saw in terms of m&a, m&a, were kind of outside General Counsel work, corporate work formation, capital raises, stuff like that, you know, after around 10 years or So, at most nally, we just had this itch we had to scratch we there was, I can’t say a bad word or a bad thing about the firm that we were at. It was more just, you know, we wanted to go out and see if there was a different type of life that we could create for ourselves. And as Michael said, we we decided to take the take the leap, and that eight months in, we’re cautiously optimistic. But we’re working very hard and having fun.
Jim Hacking
So when you guys were shareholders, and started having that conversation about going out on your own, what was going through your mind? Did you think you were insane? And did you? Who brought it up first? And
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
how did it progress? Oh, it happened over beers. I think I can remember us talking about it. We were sitting there at Brian did. Brian was a lawyer for the we both did work for the Kansas City Chiefs. And they invited us to their opening game, it was at a place called Chicken pickle here in Kansas City, versus the Patriots last year. And we were having beers and you know, didn’t know a whole lot of people. There was like more of their vendors that they invited to this deal when he said it was in 2017. Yeah. 2017. For Yeah, first game of the year, when the Chiefs actually beat the Patriots in New England, I believe yes. And I just remember having beers we’re talking about, you know, we are crunching numbers. And we’re like, you know, it’s not couldn’t be that difficult. If we if we, you know, to maintain this same standard of living, if we just brought a few clients over, or just did a little, you know, a little hourly work with Brian, you know, and then me do a more contingent stuff, we could probably make it work. And it you know, I had some family members of mine, a cousin who was at a big law firm as well and went out on his own. He’s like, you know, I’m having this time, my life doing it. And he was doing really well. And I said, why not? We live once you know, what’s our future going to look like? And there’s nothing, it’s POLSINELLI are the people they’re the other shareholders? What’s your life gonna look like in 10 years from now? Where am I going? I’m 35 years old. You know, I have young kids, Brian got young, me older kids in mind, but both have young families. You know, are we just going to be hustling and Bill in 2000 hours a year, you know, just chasing, you know, chasing the dream, you know, a little bit in the care that that carrot that’s out there in the big in the big in the big law world. And this this, this, you know, maybe we could you guys talked about it earlier, hiring people and running a business more, you know, doing the big, big love to, you know, handle the trials handled, the big picture stuff just sounded enticing to us. And we, we started at that point, we just started having launches probably a couple times a week amongst each other just to talk. This, this idea we had in September of 17 wasn’t like this. I mean, it wasn’t like, Hey, we’re doing this. We’re just like, it was more of like, we’re just brainstorming like, Could this actually even work? Because we didn’t, we didn’t leave until, Gosh, 10 months later. So it was a very long, thoughtful conversation and exploratory period where we tried to do as much due diligence as we could and as the saucer said, going out and, you know, camp, hammering out lunches, not just with ourselves, but with a bunch of people around town, solo, small, firm people and just picking picking their brains and seeing what the opportunities were out there.
Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s really interesting, because I think I remember those conversations that I’ve had in the past, and I’m sure Jimmy remembers those and most people listening, remember that moment when you start talking about okay, is this possible? Can I make this work, and it’s really an exciting time. And then at some point, you’ve got to act, you’ve got to do something. So What convinced you all you could do it? And guess when did you drop the hammer? And say, we’re going to do this? And what, what, what actions did you take to get going?
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
I can’t look back and point to anything. It was, it was a very kind of like, organic, just slowly started to build. We had conversations with with some other lawyers who potentially were thinking, well, I might want to join you, you know, I might want to do this. So we had to explore those things. We had to do this. And then finally, there finally came a point in time, I think, where we chatted about, you know, what our business model was? Enough, we had talked about what our business deal was enough that, you know, we kind of looked each other in the eye and said, we are doing this, it’s a matter of when and in the wind was always a problem because, you know, you’re worried about like your fiscal year stuff at your current firm. You know, when the right time is to start a firm and we had conversations about that, whether it’s a you know, January one or do you not want to start in the winter because people are doing that, you know, you want to start in the fall all those different types of things. And ultimately, you know, we had kind of had some conversations with people and just decided that there is never going to be an exact right time. When for us to pull this trigger, and we just, it was almost, I mean, I think over a over a span of a week, we, these conversations started mounting and getting a little bit more. I don’t know what the right word is. But it was like, almost like powerful like this is happening, like, and we went in and out of conversations with our respective kind of mentors and higher ups and said, you know, we told we told them what our decision was, and all that. But even leading up to that, what our, you know, what our big one of our big concerns was, from a timing perspective, how much do we have to put into this business? First, before we leave, and what we didn’t want to do is we didn’t want to go out and have we didn’t want to spend like six months or a year, building up a website, and and brand and you know, our logo and all that stuff. So that when we left our old firm, on day one, we had all this stuff up and running, because I we thought that that would kind of look a little bit disingenuous, like we were just getting paid by our old firm that goes to go develop our, our, our business outside of it. So we really only had started some of that process and talking to like potential partners or service providers, you know, weeks before we left, because we were we were very concerned with, you know, rubbing people the wrong way. And we wanted to when we were going to leave, we wanted to leave the right way. Yeah. And that said, we, I remember, we left in late July, we both went to Colorado on vacation with our family, kind of stupid, you’re not getting a paycheck, and you’re on vacation. But both of us wrote, I mean, I want to say 300 handwritten letters to everyone at POLSINELLI that we kind of were friends with and knew over those 10 years, you know, wishing them the best, you know, to keep in touch, knowing that, you know, we those were some of our best referral sources because we didn’t have a, you know, huge we weren’t out there if they weren’t yet we weren’t going to we are planning and we told everyone we love we weren’t out there to go out and try to like, you know, some people leave big law and, you know, listen and steal clients and do all that stuff. That wasn’t our we had no intention of doing anything like that. So we knew we were starting from scratch. But like I said, I mean, that’s just we did, we wanted to do it, how we felt was kind of the right way and just based on how the firm had treated us for 10 years and we just kind of wanted to treat him unkind.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so let’s talk about when you came back after having written all those notes, and then you’re sitting somewhere in a place where I guess you’re going to have an office, talk about those first few days and what was going through your mind at that point,
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
terror. The first three weeks or so we were in, at Foster’s in laws, just in an upstairs office there in one one shared desks, staring at each other working all day. And that those first few weeks it was it was completing all the letters, getting all that stuff out, it was trying to hammer out our website with our service provider, you know, it was all those little things that you do to try to try to start a business there were a few things that were actually referred over from, from Boston la that we were handling, kind of working with people from POLSINELLI so there was there was some work to be done. But for sure it was you know, you have you have no safety net at that point. You’re just you’re out there, you’ve done it, you’ve made the decision. And you know, we just knew we just knew that we had to do everything we can to make it work but it was you know, obviously it was there was terror, but there was a lot of optimism and you know you have you have one day that I’d say that you get a lot of stuff done you feel really good. Maybe you have you know a good lunch or a coffee or something like that and then you know you have two days that are just off and you don’t feel like you got as much stuff done as you wanted to and it’s like I never had a day really where I was like truly questioned whether we made the right decision but you just you still have early on kind of those little ups and downs not not giant giant ones but just you know you’re just dealing with the emotions of all that stuff and confirming with yourself and your partner that you made the right decision. I love it. I
Tyson Mutrux
think it’s really interesting Jimmy hearing these two just describe their journey so far because it brings back so many memories same memories that I had whenever I started my firm. So how did the two of you split up the division of labor? So who does what do have different roles? How do you handle that?
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
We both kind of row from the same you know, we’re we both work together. There’s no like, Hey, you do this. I do that. I mean, we trusted each other we went to law school, you know a lot of people probably don’t probably could never have a partner. I’m lucky enough to be able to have a partner that I trust. Is that I think is, I mean, he’s gonna roll his eyes, but I think is 10 times smarter than I am. But we both have our strengths, we both have our weaknesses. And I think we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and we just, you know, if he’s busy, you know, billing by the hour just to keep the lights on, I’m busy, you know, pushing those contingent cases forward or working on the marketing or, you know, calling someone about helping us with marketing or websites or drafting Articles to help, you know, push Foster Wallace, you know, you know, grow it a little bit, especially early on, early on, there’s just kind of this natural division of labor because of what our, what our practice areas had been. And kind of fill in the holes on stuff we were getting in. And, you know, I mean, we, you know, it’s all the corporate stuff, you know, I was kind of doing and in any sort of litigation stuff foster Foster was doing. And we’ve started to kind of crossover on some stuff me more on his side than him coming to mind. But then we just, yeah, we just filled in gaps. You know, we’ve taken in some, you got to do whatever you got to do kind of to get by. And so we know a lot of people in real estate. And so we’ve done some landlord tenant work. And it just seemed kind of more natural, even though it’s kind of in a courtroom setting, though, at the time based on what our workloads were, and who was doing what I just kind of stepped in to fill in that role. And, and Foster has stepped in to fill some roles and other areas that that he had not really worked in before. And so we we work together and talk about almost everything that we do, other than the corporate work. And other than that, there’s no way that I’m coming from a litigation. Nothing against litigation. But I just think it’s, it’s easy. It’s easier for anyone like Brian can help me with looking at a brief or doing some research on specific topics, where I can’t really do any. I mean, I would know the first thing about a capital raise or some corporate formation. I mean, I just I was never trained that way. But litigations a little easier, just to come in and pick up. Nothing yet nothing against really good trial attorneys, because there’s something to be said there. Trust me. There’s a lot of there’s a lot. There’s a lot. I don’t know, yeah, but there’s just some of the general stuff. But keep that we helped me draft of what we need to ask.
Jim Hacking
So this conversation started with Tyson regarding your website. And I have a couple of questions. One is, I know there’s like a famous actor, composer named David Foster Wallace. So I was wondering if you were worried about that impacting your SEO? And then when the with the website itself? I think I think it’s sort of an interesting website, it feels to me, in looking at it almost like it’s two different firms split down the middle. I mean, you have that jump box at the front on the front page, taking you one way or another, which I generally like, but it feels sort of like your website is split, almost fundamentally in two different ways.
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
So Foster Wallace. Yeah, that is a concern. There’s a flipside concern for us, though, for that, saying that there’s also you know, with me doing more plaintiffs contingent work, there’s a big firm in Kansas City, Wallace Saunders. So we are concerned about being Wallace Foster, Wallace Saunders. Not really sure we didn’t really talk about, you know, some other name, we didn’t really go into, you know, because,
Tyson Mutrux
you know, some firms use
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
initials, some firms use, you know, cancer, the injury attorneys or something? Well, you know, we couldn’t be honest with you. I didn’t know where we were gonna go. Are we going to be an injury firm? You still don’t know. I mean, you still don’t completely know, seven months? And where, where you might develop a certain type of niche. Yeah. But yeah, it is a concern. But you know, Foster Wallace law, you’ll be able to find us. Yeah, but it definitely was at the beginning, when we first put our website up, people wouldn’t. When they were looking at Foster Wallace, they got David Foster Wallace, the writer, and we got that all the time. On our website, to your point about kind of splitting down the middle. You know, we were getting we were getting some kind of referral calls in very, very early on, before we had our website up. And it was like, oh, yeah, and I couldn’t find the on the internet. And so we were, you know, we were racing to get something up on our website right now. I mean, we just kind of view it almost as like, it’s a validation website. It’s a it’s a business card. It was not, we at the time, we didn’t have a bunch of money to spend to do all the SEO and all that stuff. And so we just we scrambled with a there were some ladies in town that had left big law, they were marketing. One was a chief marketing officer for an am law 100 firm here in town. And she kind of helped that set that concept up, because we knew at the beginning we needed to drive some of the hourly work so maintain this stuff on my end, and we wanted to drive to kind of confirm what what foster can do. Do so that’s why I actually the reason why we reached out to Tyson is we were talking to a few service providers right now about like a complete overhaul of the website. That’s what that’s what we’re looking into now. So that was our that was very much that we knew was very much kind of a, a temporary thing and purely almost business card validation type website.
Tyson Mutrux
Jim, it’s really funny that you say that about it feeling like two different websites, because I was trying to figure out what, what it was what was bothering me. And it’s the two buttons that you say, once I have a case once as I was business, and it just that it’s it is like two different websites. And it drives me crazy. Because if I’m a business owner, and I need jewel, as basically, I feel like I’ve got a case, but I’ve got to click, I have a business button. i There’s definitely got to be a different way. What I love about it is, are the images of the two of you are sitting there with KMC in the background. I think it’s a really cool set of images that you will have in there. I don’t know how that works with your site speeds. My guess it probably slows down your site speed. I’m not sure about that.
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
But yeah, we need to we need to pick that up. We’re aware of that. Yeah,
Tyson Mutrux
what’s interesting. So the biggest problem and you’re right, right now it’s just a business card. And one of my emails they talked about, you know, your can do a lot of this on your own. If you do some work on the legwork. It sounds like you are doing some of the Lego League word already worked by creating content, articles, things like that you’re putting them in other areas, I don’t know where you’re where you’re distributing those, you’ll have mentioned writing some articles, you don’t want to be throwing all those articles on your website. So you can repurpose that content. Because when people, the only way people are going to find you right now is if they search for you, and even when they search for you, they can’t quite find you. So you’ll need to start pumping content content content into here. And I don’t really know how you’re going to build the website up between the two of you. I think some people might recommend that you have two separate websites. And maybe you have one Foster Wallace website, Foster Wallace, that calm and that be your business card. But then when you click one of these buttons, it takes you to a separate website that talks specifically about your practice areas. Now, I’m not I’m no SEO expert, but my guess is that you if you will have enough content and enough time to to put everything together. And another thing is enough money to hire someone to do two websites. I think they’re probably what they’re going to recommend is that you do have two separate websites, because the the practice areas are way different. They’re not similar in any way, in my opinion. Unless I’m missing something. It seems like they’re way different. And so you it may make sense about me to have two separate websites. Jimmy, what are your thoughts on that? I was
Jim Hacking
going to be one of those people who suggested that they might have two different websites, I think that having an overarching one is a good idea. But I also think, you know, one of the set prices, mantras, or one of the things that they do is they sort of build a web page or website around each lawyer, and about that lawyers expertise. So if you look at Price Benowitz, they have a lot of different attorneys who have different practice areas, a lot of them do criminal, but for instance, the immigration lawyer has her own domain name website. And I do think that with the with the inconsistent with the two different kinds of business practices, that’s going to cause problems, because the purpose of the website is number one, you overcame reason number one, which was we needed to get something out so that we could, you know, look legit, for our clients. Number two is you want to start providing information so that people who are looking for the answers to a question, look, come to your website that ultimately I know that there’s SEO and I know there’s all these games with language and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, you want to be answering people’s questions. And I do think that the website needs to be a whole lot more robust, and it needs to have your voices. Right. And then the one thing Tyson that the one thing that I might stick with just the one website is the fact that they’re dealing with at least on the corporate side, they’re dealing with sophisticated clients who are used to seeing sort of these no offense guys, bland, boring.
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
You know, white collar,
Jim Hacking
law firm type website. So to that extent, I mean, they can’t get crazy and zany, like we do with YouTube and all that stuff. But at the same time, I do think that they can infuse a lot more personality and I think separate it out to make it clear who does what, what they do and what their expertise is and build that around
Tyson Mutrux
each personality.
Tyson Mutrux
Gentleman what do you what are your thoughts on that?
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
I mean, I think you’re right, I think, you know, one of our thoughts do is you know, me Maybe it’s a different website with the not Foster Wallace and keep our Foster Wallace business card and just focus on the planet’s contingency work with what you guys just discussed. You know, people aren’t, we’re not picking up Brian’s clients, you know, on the corporate side, from the website at all. And these are referrals. There’s no corporate clients that go out there and try to search the internet for their next business attorney that’s, you know, that that’s just more of the injury, you know, people that don’t know, what they’re looking for in like an in, you know, somebody gets in a car wreck, or, you know, that’s where SEO comes in. I don’t think Maybe I’m crazy. But you know, Brian’s ideal corporate client would come from our website at all. So yeah, maybe it’s just us, developing a new website is just completely focused on contingent cases. Yeah, you guys raise good point. I mean, that’s and that’s things that we’ll we’ll take into consideration and things that we’re kind of discussing with the service providers, because we’re just brainstorming about where we want to take it. And how much emphasis we want to put on the corporate stuff versus more just litigation, we do have got a ton of content that’s written right now. And we were, we were actually kind of in the middle of greenlighting, throwing a bunch of content up on the website, when we kind of decided to hit the timeout button and say, let’s, let’s actually try to do this as part of a potential more major overhaul of, you know, our website or SharePoint development have a kind of a secondary one, I think it’s great that
Tyson Mutrux
you will, were able to hit that pause button and recognize that you need to make sure you’re heading down the right path, because there are some mistakes you can make early on. And I learned a lot of this from William Ed, the setting up your website early on is very, very important, especially if you’re gonna start pumping in the content all at one time. Because site structure and making sure you set it up the right way, and putting the links in the right places and content in the right places. And linking to that content is all really really, really, really important. A couple of notes about the website, in general, I think you need some sort of lead capture the Contact Us is not enough, having some sort of lead capture on this above the full page is gonna be important. I know that’s a little bit more difficult. With there being the to practice areas, that’s a little tougher. So whether you go with this website, or separate websites for each of your practice areas, I think it’s you should have some sort of recapture so they can contact you right from the homepage. That’s a big part of it. Another thing is, and I’m glad you said you’d created a bunch of content, hopefully, you’ve also create a bunch of content for the corporate side, too, because I agree with you that they’re most of them are not going to be finding from the internet, they’re going to be referral based. But they’re also there’s you creating content for your corporate clients, you can send emails to them newsletters, you can send them that, let’s say they’ve got a question about something, it can be really helpful, if you can send them a link from your website to show that you’ve written about it, to show your expertise. And so even though most of your clients are not going to find you from the internet, which is fine, showing your expertise in a bunch of different areas is going to be very helpful to you in selling some of those clients. Because some of these may be referrals. And I’m making some assumptions because I’ve never been in that world, my assumption is, is that I’m gonna refer you a business, bigger client, and then you sort of have to sell them on. And so you can basically go in, I picture sort of a meeting where you meet with them and kind of have to sell yourself and way of selling yourself as having that website with all that knowledge that you put out there to your corporate clients. And they can, they can see that you can demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about. So Emily capture definitely had content for both of you. I don’t know how you created your content. One suggestion I do have is, both of you just sit down, sit down. And think about, you know, the 100 most common questions that you get from clients, and just create content about them, whether it’s videos, whether it’s writing articles, you can dictate whatever, whatever is easier for you. We talked about hundreds of ways of creating content in our in different episodes. But I would just start pushing out the content as much as you can getting on your website. But just make sure you get that site structure. Right. And Jimmy talks about, I just talked for a long time. But Jimmy THAT’S about that. Yeah, so I
Jim Hacking
think that those are all great points. I have to say that the hair on the back of my neck stood up when you guys said we have a bunch of content ready to go. That’s always the mark to me of someone who is afraid to push things or publish. And I don’t want you to get bollixed up with perfectionism and having to have it just right. I know obviously you have to edit and do your due diligence to make sure everything’s good but what if you just posted One thing a day for the next month, I mean, don’t make it bigger than it has to be tried to make it doable, bite sized pieces, you guys are obviously very busy. And I think the best thing to do is just as create content about what you’re doing during the day, Gary Vee talks all the time about just, you know, recording, quote, unquote, recording or just telling what happened and about, you know, what you worked on that that kind of stuff isn’t is interesting to people. And it’s really easy to turn into the content, if you drive home at the end of the day and talk into your phone, in an anonymous way about what you did that day and, or what lessons you learned or things you taught your clients or things, you overcame that in a braggy way, but in a content creation kind of way, you guys would have a ton of more and more content and, and that’s going to help whoever you end up working with on your website,
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
to capture your voice. The articles, I know that we need to be writing those, there was a good point, you guys made it up to 100 pieces of you know, questions like when clients ask us questions, create a piece on that a lot of the content we’ve written know is is you know about different practice areas. If you go to our website, now you like see what I do. And it says like, insurance issues or personal injury doesn’t have anything or following that. So it’s a lot of it really creating good content, even better than what I’ve seen out there. You know, from my own, I’ve always I’ve written this stuff on, you know, car wrecks or just breach a contract, whatever, you know, that I use, you know, site, certain things site law, I know people aren’t interested, but just, you know, tries to show that I know what I’m talking about. So that’s more of the content I’ve written. But yeah, I need to do a better job of blogging and actually writing about what people questions people are people have. And, you know, I wrote and I haven’t published it. And this just goes with not being scared to publish it, it’s more like when we try to roll out this new website, put it in this new website is, you know, 15 to 20 page document, it talks about the process of a lawsuit. So when the first client comes in, you know, in and how we analyze their case to go to an appeal. And it goes through all the stages and tries to answer questions that we think the client might have along the way, you know, telling them what to bring what will ask them to sign at our first meeting, assuming you want to take them on, and why would you not we might not want to take them on. And then after that, you know, talk about, you know, the demand letter in our investigation, everything we’ll do, and so we’ve written that, but yeah, we need to put it out there, we just, we’re just trying to figure out with our, with our website, and where we’re going. And if we’re gonna, you know, hire someone to build a website for us how we’re going to incorporate that stuff in.
Tyson Mutrux
So and I can’t remember if I asked you this in the email that was how did you create this website yet? You hired a couple people? Do you know if they visit a WordPress website? Or do you is a template you haven’t had any idea?
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
Yeah, it’s WordPress, you know, we, we talked to a few people early on about website creation stuff, neither one of us are necessarily tech savvy. And we have, you know, a little bit of a budget, you know, we were getting, we were getting bids on websites with like, SEO stuff, and all this for 20 $25,000 in and, you know, we that was just out of our budget, at the time, and we, we thought there’s a chance that we’ll have to revamp this thing, you know, in the near future. So, you know, when we worked with those, the two, ladies FIRESIGN marketing, you know, they’re, they’re more on the brand marketing type stuff, they helped us do our logo and all and all of our content that’s on the website now. And we just, you know, we needed, we needed something quick and dirty and fast. But we think they did a great job and got us everything we needed at the beginning, you know, now being seven, seven months in or whatever, and starting to get a better sense of, we want our website to be a business generator, something that to your point, you know, someone Google’s, you know, an issue and you know, our content starts to pop up. And the only way I think for us to start do that and get anywhere close to first pages is to build a way more robust website with all the content, all the things that you guys were talking about.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so this is great still there, we’re gonna start to wrap up. We’re kind of over time. But let’s continue this conversation offline so that we can and I’ll get you in touch with some more SEO companies. So you can kind of feel them all out. And then we can talk more about maybe if you want to do it yourself. I don’t know Do it yourself as an option for you all if you really want to do that. But we there’s some different options. There’s some really good lawyers in the Facebook group, William Ed, primarily who, if they do it all themselves and they they’ve got I think I’ll go out on a limb and I’d say that they probably have the best performing nursing home negligence website in the country. From an SEO standpoint. So you can do it yourself or you can go with the company either way. It’s just about getting a lot of the the basics done up front. And we can talk about that offline. But I do want to wrap it up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group and get involved there. So Brian, Michael, if you’ve not gotten on Facebook and gotten the Facebook group get involved, and people are giving away all their secrets, and it’s fantastic, and people are really, really willing to share, so it’s great. Also, go to iTunes, give us a five star review. If you’ve not done that yet. Jimmy, what’s your second week?
Jim Hacking
So our buddy Ryan McKean said at the beginning of the year that he’s not reading any more business books that he’s sick of business books, and I totally get it. So I’ve been trying to read more, more fiction and more biographies and just good stories. And I’m reading a great one. Now I’m actually listening to it on Audible. It’s, it’s insane. It’s called billion dollar whale. Now, I love stories about sort of psychological manipulation. But this is about a Malaysian financier, a young kid who would throw these huge parties. And I think he embezzled a lot of money, he’s probably going to be indicted pretty soon. But it’s a crazy story about about this dude with lots of cash, lots of parties, lots of models, and Hollywood actors. It’s absolutely mesmerizing, and I highly recommend it. It’s called billion dollar whale.
Tyson Mutrux
Wow, that is interesting. Okay. All right. So Michael, and Brian, we, I don’t think I warned you about this, but we’d like to do is we would like our guests to give a tip or a hack that they’ve been using, that’s helping them in their practice. And so if you need a second to think about, that’s fine. But do you will have a tip or a hack for us that we can you can tell our listeners
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
couple things from marketing, I’d say, you know, we, early on, you know, do those coffees with people to try to have a coffee with every with a lawyer, you know, a couple times a week, I know, lunches are great, but they get expensive, and you know, they’re bad on the waistline, coffee cost three bucks, you get to sit down with someone for 30 minutes, a great use of time, you never know who the next referral is going to be. And that’s good advice. Other you know, other things I’m thinking of right now is, anytime I have a good result with the client, or I’m talking to the lawyer that I’ve worked with, in the past, ask him to give me a five star Google review. You know, we have 25 reviews, now, it’s been seven months, which is great, all five stars. And probably 10 of them are from other lawyers that have worked with us in the past, and trust us. And I think it really helps when we do get that website up and going that’ll really help, you know, validate us even more than, you know, other lawyers stresses. When you’ve got business partners, you know, I would, I would just say, just from kind of an operational perspective and long term, relationship perspective, it’s
Unknown Speaker
Foster and I,
Brian Foster and Michael Wallace
we are very open and transparent with each other, we don’t let issues you know, we don’t, if something comes up, we don’t go in our offices and stew about something where, you know, so I would just, I would say that, you know, from a, from a trust relationship standpoint, you know, leave it all leave it all out there. I mean, talk about all of your issues upfront, and, and, and continuously and try to address everything you can. I mean, that’s how that’s how we deal with each other. That’s how we try to work with our clients. I’ve got nothing magical
Tyson Mutrux
about the brutal honesty, either. And I think that that’s, I think that’s crucial. I think, I think you’re right, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think that’s really good. All right, gentlemen. So my tip of the week of the two books, and I think that these may appeal to both of you if you’re wanting to do your own website. And these were recommended. He actually recommended on Facebook, any Stickel, two books by Russell brunson.com, secrets and expert secrets. And so I’ve sort of used these absorbed into these. I haven’t read them, but I’ve actually seen them in them as a sort of a desk reference, as opposed to just reading it from cover to cover. And they’re really good desk references. So check them out.com secrets and expert secrets. All right, Brian, Michael, thank you so much for coming on. I thought there’s a lot of fun, just kind of tossing around some ideas and giving you some feedback. So thanks so much for coming on. It’s been a lot of fun.
