In this episode Jim and Tyson interview Joey Vitale and go through his process of starting his own law firm, choosing the right niche and re-branding accordingly.
“I took a look at what my strengths were and met up with some mentors, work with them for a while, and co-founded a startup for startups. Then I realized that the market we were going after, wouldn’t really value the type of service we were providing.”
Besides, all three attorneys discuss and share their different approaches on giving away free content.What’s your point of view on this matter? Comment!
“For me it starts with this idea of creating a lean business and then making sure that the sales component can work, and then once you confirmed that then you can go to the other priorities.”
Hacking’s hack: Using Overcast (https://overcast.fm/) I found out about Andrew Warner and https://mixergy.com. GREAT INTERVIEWS.
Joey’s tip: Experience with Facebook Live in your business. https://live.fb.com/. And use https://obsproject.com/ to go live through your desktop.
Tyson’s tip: Google Adwords Express. From your phone. SUPER EASY. https://www.google.com/adwords/express/
Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to http://www.maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: info@maximumlawyer.com
The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.
Resources:
- Join the Guild Membership
- Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
- Follow us on Instagram
- Join the Facebook Group
- Follow the Facebook Page
- Follow us on LinkedIn
Transcripts: The Right Niche ft. Joey Vitale
Joey Vitale
For me, it starts with this idea of creating a lean business, and then making sure that the sales component can work. And then, once you’ve confirmed that, then you can go to the other priorities of streamlining what your business looks like what the onboarding looks like, how to deal with any, you know, client management, that kind of stuff.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar, podcast, liar podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
You are back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson nutrix.
Jim Hacking
Oh Tyson. We got you in the car today. I know you got to drive down to court. So I will try to man the phones and keep things moving. We’ve got a great guest with us today. Joey Vitaliy, an alum of our very own St. Louis you law school, Joey’s very energetic guy. We’re really excited to have him you and I have a very instructive and informative lunch with Joey a couple months back when he was in St. Louis. I find him to be very impressive. You know, every now and then Tyson, you and I get into a debate about whether or not people should start their own law firm right out of law school. And basically Joey has done that. I’m gonna let you introduce them real quickly. And then we’ll get to the show.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and Joey is actually very impressive. Because we met with them. He there were a lot of changes going on with his firm, believe he had just moved. He’s done a lot of good stuff. He targets independent artists, I believe, or small businesses that deal with Etsy, things like that. I’ll let you clarify that Joey. But Joey will tell us a little bit about what you do. And you just rebranded yourself. So tell us what that’s one look confused as to what the new brand is. Tell us what it’s all about.
Joey Vitale
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you guys for having me on. i It really is an honor. I know that you guys have had some rock star guests on recently. So I’m excited to be here. Again, my name is Joey lights, Halle, like you guys said, I’m a younger attorney about a law school for a little over two years now. And late last year, I decided to start my own law firm. After working with tech startups for a while I found this gap in legal services for creative minded small businesses. And when I first launched my firm, I couldn’t think of anything more creative. So I used my initials, which are J CV law. And after a couple of months, I realized nobody can say that the right way. So I knew I would have to change it to something. And so as I realized that my target market had a particular niche, I realized that I was really working with independent thinking creative type, small businesses. So whether that’s a handmade seller on LP, or an online business coach, motivational speaker photographer, there’s a variety of people underneath that. But basically people who are solo small business owners that really have a creative passion that they’ve built their business around, have a certain set of legal needs and business needs, that I realized they weren’t really being provided with. And so that’s how my law firm came to be in a short story sort of version.
Jim Hacking
Joey, how did you sort of get into that community? How did you first start working with those people? And how have you enjoyed it?
Joey Vitale
Well, I, about a year ago, this time, I was looking at working at a small midsize firm in St. Louis, doing medical malpractice, larger corporate civil defense work. And it took me a few years to realize that that wasn’t a very good fit for me as an attorney. I’m not a very litigious person. And it took me a while to realize that meant that I probably wouldn’t be a really great fit in the courtroom. And so I really took a look at what my strengths were, and met up with some mentors in St. Louis, who worked with with startup companies. And so I worked with them for a while, and actually co founded a startup of my own for startups. And the idea was to teach them the legal stuff that they could probably do themselves with, like a video based library of content. And I took over the marketing role of that company. And over a couple months realize that there was this other group of small businesses that really respected the idea of supporting businesses more. I know, the three of us talked about this a lot when we had that lunch that you mentioned earlier, but the reality is that there are a lot of new business owners who realize that there are a four have options to get legal stuff done, whether that’s Legal Zoom or some other stuff. And I realized that the market that we were going after, wouldn’t really value, the type of service that we were providing. And just great timing, I happen to meet a business mentor and sales coach, who her target market was this creative, small business niche. And so I met her about the time that I was leaving that startup community. And then we kind of put our heads together and figure it out pricing packages and pain points for this group that I can solve.
Tyson Mutrux
Joy. I’m glad you actually mentioned, that’s a great segue, because I wanted to ask you about you had been tinkering with some different pricing plans for some potentially monthly plans. What did you decide? And how did you come to that decision?
Joey Vitale
I knew from the beginning that I wanted something subscription based, because I knew that from going from zero business to having something that would be more sustainable quickly, subscription plan would be a good way to get there. And so my idea was a some type of almost more of a payment plan than a subscription. But the idea is that we worked together for 12 months, providing really a foundational layer of legal protection for your business. And like you said, Tyson trying to figure out the pricing that was difficult. And meeting up with that mentor was so helpful, because she made me realize that I had to not undervalue what I was doing. But also not price out my target market. And so really, if you take a look at my packages, now, they’re priced in such a way where I really have my target market budget in mind with some research that I did. The idea is that a business like my target market shouldn’t be making about, well, it varies, but they shouldn’t be spending about 3% of their annual revenue on legal help. And so what I did was I created packages that were essentially 3% of their revenue, and then kind of took away an added value to that I was pricing myself accordingly.
Jim Hacking
Joey, I remember, we spent some time talking about sort of who your avatar client is, and how did you go about defining who your avatar client is? And could you sort of describe how granular you’ve drilled down in trying to identify who your target client is?
Joey Vitale
Yeah, well, I tend to say half jokingly that my target market, my avatar is a white woman, between 35 and 45, purple hair. That tends to be true, a lot of my following and client base, at some point has dyed their hair, but really, the common denominator is older, usually females who are creating a business and in some ways going against the grain. And so people who have some type of some cultural passion, who would rather go to a small coffee shops and a Starbucks when they grab their coffee, and who basically have left their day job to really try to sustain themselves on doing something that they
Tyson Mutrux
love. Now, Joey, you’ve been doing a lot on Facebook Live, I mean, you’ve been killing it. I see about a post that day. Has that been benefiting? You seems like it has been that it hasn’t been benefiting your new firm, your old firm.
Joey Vitale
So it has, but I want to cut to the chase, because I think this is where it gets really interesting. So it definitely has I’m doing about one Facebook Live a week. And I’m interacting in the group quite a bit throughout the day. But a couple of months ago, I released a blog post telling small businesses that they have to get up SP. And there are both legal reasons and non legal reasons, kind of business reasons why it makes sense to get off on a platform like that. Because of that blog posts really in the traction that it got, I got about 2000 new members in my group. And I spent that month trying to figure out how I could really create a funnel around these new members. And it was my lowest sales month, because I realized that a lot of people that were I was bringing in, they weren’t really my true target market. And I think that, you know, it’s great when you have something that kind of gains traction. But if I’ve learned anything, and the number of months that I’ve been working in this specific firm, it’s that when you start to take your eyes off of who you’re really trying to serve, then you really that really affects your bottom line.
Jim Hacking
And so Joe, how have you reshaped it since then, since you learned that the people that you’re attracting after that blog posts? Weren’t your ideal clients? How did you sort of shift your focus and sort of get back on the horse?
Joey Vitale
Well, one of the main things that I did was, I was trying to think about a new way because a lot of the people who were Joining couldn’t afford my services. And I was trying to think of a way to create a smaller package or kind of content with a paywall around it that would allow them to be brought into some sales funnels. And what I eventually realized was that if I just kept targeting my audience, and what I mean by that is that I kept kind of looking at the original content calendar that I created, like you guys have talked about that before, the content that I knew would speak to who I was targeting, versus trying to answer all of the questions that people have been asking, really going after the questions that I knew the businesses in my market were more concerned about. And this is like a question that I want to throw back to you guys. I know you guys both love Gary Vaynerchuk. And there are a lot of experts right now who are saying, you know, give away content for free. But have you guys run into any kind of obstacles there were trying to define that line where you’re able to give away content for free. But then when people want your time, or they want your services, there has to be a line there where you don’t provide discounted services, or you don’t undervalue the time that you’re spending.
Tyson Mutrux
I’m in the category where you give away the free content. There are a lot of b2b business to business type of marketers out there that actually do well with the paywalls. I don’t think many business to consumer ones do too well with it, because the consumers just don’t have as much money to spend for that content. I think it all comes down to the policies and procedures you have in place at your firm. And with the way I do things, it’s not very easy for them to get me get a lot of my time to eat away, am I not just we’re getting set up. I mean, it just it I think Jimmy is the same way we create all these videos, they create these emails, we create all these ebooks, things like that, to educate the client. And it’s the type of client that wants to give away my time for free. That’s not That’s not the type of client that I want. And so I’m filtering those people out anyways, they’re filtered out through the phone call system procedures, through the educational videos, through the educational blog posts, through the books, things like that. So there are ways of filtering those people out. And if they’re not willing to go through all of that content, then they’re probably, in all fairness, probably not the type of client I want anyways, because they’re the ones that are just going to want to eat, it’s your time, it’s your time, it’s your time. So Jimmy, I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.
Jim Hacking
So for me, I do want to notice a little bit tricky, because my situation is a little bit different than yours, Joey. Because for you, if you’re trying to start a close community where you can charge a fee for people to get general access, that’s a little bit different than for me where, you know, my free content is out there with the idea of getting people to hire me for a specific case. So I know I’m gonna get paid on the back end for that, generally. And it’s not like, there’s some content that’s free and some content that’s paid for. So it is a little bit different for me. But for me, what I do is I take the free content and turn it on its head, I say to people look, and we have a form email that either Marwan or I send out that says that, you know, Mr. Hacking has hundreds of pages on his website, or free content, 200 free YouTube videos, and those give information of a general nature. But if you want specific information about your specific situation, then you’re gonna have to pay for it, you have to set an appointment, you know, we were at that press about it. But basically, that’s the gist that you know, we give all kinds of great content that covers a broad range of topics. But if you want specific interaction about your specific situations, and that’s something where you’re going to have to hire us.
Joey Vitale
Yeah, I think that’s a good line to draw. A difficulty with my firm is that a lot of what I do, you don’t technically need a lawyer to do for you. And the big example is trademarks. And so one thing that I know my lock must be careful about is providing, like you said, general information on kind of what’s going on around trademarks, but not getting into the weeds of if you have a specific situation or you want to do something, whether that’s analyze an existing trademark or do an application on your own. It’s tricky for me, because I’ve had a few experiences where people have said, Hey, I love your content. Now I feel comfortable doing this on my own. And that wasn’t my intention. What was your intention? The intention usually is to let them know kind of that certain things are problems and certain things are not problems. So for example, a big thing that a lot of small businesses don’t realize is that they legally need a privacy policy, and they probably should have a Terms of Use. And so what a lot of people are doing is that hearing that and then copying and pasting what they’re seeing on other websites, which can be problematic for a lot of reasons who want to which is because they might be using private information or having different terms that don’t actually apply land business
Jim Hacking
joy, do you have a list or a document that you can give to people about why you might not want to do XYZ legal process on your own while you might not want to develop terms of? I mean, do you have sort of a standard go to like, for me, I say, there are certain things, a limited number of things in the immigration world that I think people can do on their own. But for the vast majority of situations, we recommend the US and attorney. And here are some horror stories for each of the types of things that people might do on their own. Not necessarily trying to scare people, but trying to educate them about, you know, it’s always about that they don’t know what they don’t know. And so it’s
Joey Vitale
a really good point. Yeah, to educate. And I don’t have one centralized document that does that, like I have, like a blog post about privacy policies, right. And it say your reasons why, you know, you should have an attorney help you or, you know, horror stories around what happens. But that would, that’s a really great idea for like one resource that says, Here are the main areas that my law firm can assist with, and the reasons why you don’t want to DIY it yourself.
Jim Hacking
And I would encourage you to even take it out a little bit from that and take, here’s why you should hire us take that completely out, make it a neutral document, let them come to the conclusion on their own, and maybe maybe at the very end just have something. Oh, by the way, we happen to help with these things. I mean, that’s become apparent to them, when they get your emails when they see you in the Facebook group. You know, you don’t need to be pounding your chest and saying we’re going to save you from all these errors, you’re going to let them figure that out on their own just by telling them the stories about the people who screwed it up on their own. Right.
Tyson Mutrux
Joe, I do you have a question or want some clarification? So yeah, the monthly subscription plan? Are you providing legal services with that as well? Or what what are they getting out of that package?
Joey Vitale
Yeah, so with the subscription plans, what they get is, they get unlimited, quick questions. And what that is, is basically any question that they have, that I don’t need to do research, to provide them feedback on that’s included. And it can be like a clarification question, that really wouldn’t be legal advice, or it can be, you know, Hey, I am thinking about trademarking my name. I ran a search, and I found this name, that’s trademark. Does that impact, my current business name choice? And should I change things. So it includes those types of questions. It also includes a certain number of basic documents that I’ll provide throughout the year. And that’s between four and 12 documents. So each of those documents is their legal documents that I prepare. So it is, you know, providing legal services. The idea is that those documents take about an hour of my time to complete for you. And so really what they’re paying for is between about six and 20 hours of my time throughout the year.
Tyson Mutrux
So have you had any pushback with people wanting more services from you, and you’re not being able to provide them or people who are pretty content with what you’re offering.
Joey Vitale
So far, people have been really content with it, and they, almost all of them, it is their first time with an attorney. So really, just the peace of mind that they get knowing that they don’t have to worry about this certain issue anymore, is just huge release for them. And part of what we do is we do an initial consultation call in the beginning, where we map out kind of how to best use that basic document pool. And then whether they want those upfront throughout the year. And it’s kind of seen more as a payment plan, or whether they want it scattered throughout the year so that they feel like they’re getting consistent value over the 12 months. That’s their
Jim Hacking
preference. We’re speaking with Joe vitality. He’s the owner of indie creative law. And Joey, one of the things that I really admire about you, there’s a couple of things. One is the fact that you really have taken that startup mentality. And I think that a lot of lawyers could learn a lot from your approach when it comes to, you know, thinking like a startup thinking, you know, bootstrapping it and just sort of building it from the ground up. Could you talk a little bit about sort of your mindset and how you approach being a lawyer in 2017?
Joey Vitale
Sure, well, I mean, I definitely failed a lot to get here. I was definitely a victim of analysis paralysis for the better part of 2016. I felt like I had to read books on marketing and all of that stuff just to kind of tread water. For me. Through trial and error. I learned that especially if you are trying to build a business that’s based on something that doesn’t really exist as a business model yet. You’re really not creating a business. You’re creating an assumption, like you’re creating an experiment really. And so the idea is to build a way to test what you think might work and as cheap and as small of a way as possible, and then confirm that it does provide value. So for me, that meant, before I could really get to building out the details of my firm and kind of processes and systems around at all, I first had to make sure that these packages that I was providing, were being seen as valuable enough to, to my market pain points that they would be willing to buy it. And so I created and kind of solidified my subscription plans in November. And in December, I gave myself a goal of trying to get $1,000 worth of new subscription members in one month, which meant creating a lot of relationships, introductory phone calls, figuring out where I could different types of communities and you know, online groups and stuff where I could kind of sit in and listen on and ask people for phone calls just to learn more about their business and tell them more about mine. And was a lot of hustle. But for me, it starts with this idea of creating a lean business, and then making sure that the sales component can work. And then once you’ve confirmed that, then you can go to the other priorities of streamlining what your business looks like, what the onboarding looks like, how to deal with any, you know, client management, that kind of stuff. But it really started with the idea of how are we really providing business? How are we really providing value as a business? And how can we start small and focus on you know, getting people through the door so that we can the business can have some oxygen to work with?
Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s a really awesome story and a really awesome message, Joey? Jimmy, it looks like we’re a bad time. Do you want to give your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
So I had the craziest thing happened this week, I was looking in my podcast feed on overcast, which is the app I use to listen to podcasts. And I guess that I signed up for a new podcast, somehow, a podcast showed up in my feed. I guess I’m getting old and forgetful. But if not this magical podcast appeared in my feed, and I really am enjoying it. And Joey I thought of you when I watched it, because the fellow who runs it is a guy named Andrew Warner. And it’s called Mixergy. And I think he does a hour long video Skype type interview. And then he turns the audio of that into a podcast. It’s very interesting because he keeps the video behind a paywall that you can subscribe to for the year. I think it’s like 100 bucks for the year. The interviews are really good. He’s got fantastic guests. He really digs in deep on his interviews. He does a lot of research on people and I I really have enjoyed the four or five episodes I’ve listened to it’s Mixergy I think it’d be someone that you joy should get to know. Right? Yeah, I think neither am I XERGY?
Tyson Mutrux
That’s a really good one. You showed me the guy he’s got he’s the one with the Facebook Messenger app. Right? Or the bot?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, exactly. We’ll talk about that next week. I’m gonna play around with that.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, that was pretty awesome. So Joey, I think you know, the how we do things here, we always ask our guests to give a tip of the week, do you have a tip that you’d like to give our
Joey Vitale
listeners? Yeah, so I encourage everybody to at least experiment with Facebook live in your business. One way that I have used it that’s been just awesome has been a free app called OBS. And it allows you to go live through your desktop, which gives you you know, the ability to attach a higher quality webcam, better audio, but also get really creative with what you’re showing on the screen. So you can show your screen, you can put a lower third to show your business name. And it really takes your Facebook Lives to a whole new level quality wise, that you can then download and re upload onto YouTube and things. And so it really makes the this idea of starting with video content, and then repurposing it into other video content and downgrading it into audio and text much easier.
Tyson Mutrux
That is fantastic. What was the website for that?
Joey Vitale
It’s called obs and you guys do you guys do show notes. I can send you a link to a really helpful website that explains how to get started
Tyson Mutrux
with it. Absolutely, yeah, well, we’ll put it in the show notes. And then for my tip of the week before I get to that, I do want to remind everybody to go to our Facebook page like us there. Make sure you request to be a member of the group. We talked about a lot of cool things there. Also tweet at us on Twitter, and check us out at maximum lawyer.com with where we have all of our show notes. We have our show notes in the app where you get your podcasts whether it be Android phone or an iPhone, whatever may be my tip of the week is I’ve been tinkering actually a little bit with Google AdWords. And I find it very interesting. I’ve more of an interest than anything I, I’ve been looking at. Seen a lot of people use Google AdWords, I used it. Probably five years ago, it’s pretty good success. But as the market got saturated, I kind of fell out of interest with it. So I’ve been tinkering with it on my phone, and there’s something called AdWords Express, you can create the ads from your phone. What Google does is Google creates the keywords for you. And then you can go back and change click on and off the actual keywords you want to use. It’s super, super easy, usually takes about 24 to 36 hours for the for the ad to actually hit Google. That’s actually very interesting. Very cool. Be careful, too. You can burn up a lot of money in a really short time to be careful in short, your budget but I I find it very interesting. It’s pretty easy to do. So. That’s my tip of the week. You guys got anything else?
