“It’s not about getting your name out there and pounding your chest so just people know who you are. It’s about getting clients into the firm so you can make some money and run a business.”
In this episode Jim and Tyson will take a stand. This podcast is for people who want to open and run their own law firm and get management tips.
Our focus is on the solo firms; the small firms. Helping those people survive and thrive and do really well.
We practice what we preach. Narrow your focus. That’s what we are doing. That’s our marketing strategy.
Sometimes when you get your message out there, some people won’t get it, but others will.
What do you stand for? What’s your message? Who your client is? Who your avatar is?
Hacking’s Hack: A book: Shoe Dog: “A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” by Phil Knight.
Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.
He is one of us.
Tyson’s Tip: http://www.chetholmes.com/. You’ll really dig deep into your business.
Read the book first. “The Ultimate Sales Machine”.
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Transcript: Not For Everyone
Jim Hacking
When you ring your bell, or you blow your dog whistle, not everyone’s gonna get that message, but some people are and the ones who get it the ones who are your avatar, they’re gonna love it. And they’re gonna love you for it. And that’s why it’s so important to take a stand because you can’t make everybody happy.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
I’m tasting nutrix What’s going on Jamie
Jim Hacking
Tyson. I’m excited. We have a good topic Pick for today.
Tyson Mutrux
Yes, we do actually come from a an experience you had out in Washington DC, which is where I’ll let you talk about in a little bit. But how you been?
Jim Hacking
I’ve been good. It feels like we haven’t recorded just you and me for a while.
Tyson Mutrux
Well, it may have been a two or three weeks. We’ve had some really good guests. We Rosen John Fisher. Yeah, it’s good. Good to be back on with you.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so this week, I went to Washington DC. I took my son Ismail up for the weekend. And then on Monday morning, I got sworn in to the DC federal district court. The reason I did this is because in my immigration practice, I sue the immigration service a lot. And I kept filing suits all over the country. And every time I did, I had to file a pro hog Vici motion, and I got sick of it. So I said, you know, I can sue them in DC. So I’m just gonna go up there and get admitted and streamline that whole process because it was really slowing down my case it so anyway, on Monday, we had to be at the district court at nine o’clock and man security at this place was really tight. You think St. Louis County is tight. This place was really tight anyway, all the attorneys were waiting in a long line. It took us about a half hour to get through security. And the whole line was attorney. So it’s sort of strange. But anyway, during the waiting I was between two young lawyers, and they had obviously either gone to law school together or had mutual law school friends, I would say they were probably about two years out of law school. And they went back and forth talking about big firm life. And I have to tell you, Tyson, it really made my skin crawl like I was having a physical reaction to listening to them. And I probably shouldn’t say any of this stuff. And I certainly don’t want to antagonize anybody who works at big law, but it’s just so not what I’m about and why I practice law. And and they were just talking about all these, one of the attorneys worked at a firm called Skadden Arps, which is a big, big firm. And they were talking about how they have scabby hours at their firm. And everything was related to the name of the firm. And it just sounded also cheesy. And so like, they’re just all braggy about, you know, and then I have a brief do and then I mean, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was just so cheesy. And I’m sure that their work is meaningful. But just being around all these government lawyers and big firm lawyers, it reminded me, again, why I do what I do and why like solo and small, firm practice so much more. And I wondered whether or not you and I should talk about this on the podcast. And I thought, well, if we do, we’re going to be pushing away people or we’re going to make people feel like this isn’t for them. And then it dawned on me that with everything that we do with our marketing, you and I both that we really have to, you know, take a position, we have to take a stand. And so I think it’s okay for us to talk about things that require us to take a position and that this podcast is for people that want to open their own law firm or run their own law firm or get management tips and things like that. Those are the kinds of guests that we get. And that’s sort of what our message is about. So I think that it’s perfectly acceptable for us to have that kind of a conversation on our show.
Tyson Mutrux
I think it goes back to, you know, narrowing your focus, doesn’t it, it goes back to kind of practicing what we preach. And you’re right, that this podcast probably isn’t for the big firm people. And that’s fine. I think that they can probably take away from what we’re saying a lot of good things to buy their practice that work. Lee Rosen, he talks about a lot of principles that would apply to a lot of big firms. But some of the big firms are just there, the too big to fail mentality. But I think you’re right, though, I think that there’s some people that may not want to listen to this, that’s fine. That’s great. Whatever. Our focus is on the smaller firms and solo firms or small firms, helping those people survive and thrive and do really well. And that’s fine. And that’s what our niches that we’re going with it. And that what we’re talking about today can apply to our practices as well, where you know, the things we’re saying don’t apply to everyone. And that means that your marketing messages focused and that’s good. I don’t know if you want to talk about your trump email, but I think it’s a good example. Yeah,
Jim Hacking
so I want to segue right into that. So later on that same day, after I’m sworn in, and after we went to the Newseum and after Ismail twisted my arm into going to a place called the Shake Shack, which is a hamburger place started by A guy from St. Louis on the East Coast, it’s actually coming to St. Louis, we went there for lunch. And we went and saw our buddy Seth price, he had been so gracious to take us out to lunch on Sunday and to hold our luggage while we were touring downtown DC. Anyway, I get to the airport, and I have to send out my weekly Monday email. And, you know, as an immigration attorney, I have a very defined message. And I want my clients to know that we are advocates for them. And that if if you’re ever going to come up with a position of the government, or an immigrant, that we’re almost always going to side with the immigrant. And so with the Obama administration, we have a long history in our email or weekly emails of being critical of the president. And his policies, you know, we frequently refer to him as the deporter. In Chief, this is President Obama, and the fact that he’s deported more people than anyone, and that he has some really harsh detention policies for women and children who came across the border from Central America. And so we really feel that we’ve been an equal opportunity basher of politicians that take hard lines on immigration. And so obviously, with that message, that’s always going to push some people away. And once a week, or once a month, we get some kind of email from people sort of critical of our position. And I sent one out right after the election, about Donald Trump and sort of his anti immigrant rhetoric. And I got one email back from someone who said that he was glad Trump got elected, and he asked to be removed from my email list. And that’s just fine. And to me, that lets me know that I’m sending out the right message that when people are responding even with anger, or with dissatisfaction with what I’m saying, then I know that I’m toning it right that I’ve got the right message. And so on Monday, I sent out an email with my post election analysis of President Trump and his immigration policies and sort of what where I felt emotionally, how that landed was, you know, the messages that he has with the people that I care about, and the constituents that I serve, that I felt comfortable sending out that message, but quickly, I got some rapid responses from people who obviously voted for Donald Trump. And they were really angry with the message that I got. And I, you know, I thanked him for reading. One of the people is a longtime client, and I’ve helped her and her husband through two or three different matters. And so I took what she said to heart, but at the same time, you know, I knew sending it out that it would cause controversy, it got a very high click through rate to read, and I got a lot of responses. And so then I know that I’m saying something of substance, because if I’m just being mealy mouthed, wishy washy, saying Oh, sometimes the government is good, and sometimes the immigrants are good. And if I refuse to take a position, then no one’s ever gonna listen to me because it’s boring. And it’s milk toast, and nobody cares.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And what you’re saying really follows with what Dan Kennedy says, what what was John Fisher say? What what both of what they say is that, you know, you got to stimulate this reaction from people, don’t just go on Facebook, or don’t just put up commercials or just say, hey, we do this, this, this and this, you are creating a message that evokes a reaction from these people, which is good, you want to have this community of people that are communicating constantly with you. And I think that that’s great. It’s kind of like what what Dan Kennedy talks about with with Disney, right? At any given point, people should be laughing, they should be crying, they should be emitting some sort of emotion. And I’m not saying you have to do that with every one of your messages. But think about that whenever you get your messages, because I think that that Trump, email is a great example of how that works. And all that comes down to, at least in my opinion, it sounds like and I’ve never asked you this to me, but my guess is you probably have a well defined avatar of who your client is. And I think that people if they don’t maybe think about creating an avatar, and have you come up with an avatar, I’ll kind of go through the things that people should consider. But do you have an avatar absolutely
Jim Hacking
do have an avatar. And it’s funny that you mentioned that because not only did I get some angry emails, I got a ton of love emails, I got a ton of emails from what I would call my avatar, which are, you know, people who are immigrants themselves or immigrants, sympathizers, people who support immigrant rights and who the message was, I mean, I got one message from someone, a client of mine who said, Jim, it’s almost as if you’re in my head, the thoughts that you put in your email were exactly what I think so. And I should say, I did get more positive emails than I did negative, which doesn’t always happen. But you know, there’s people when you ring your bell, or you blow your dog whistle, not everyone is going to get that message. But some people are and the ones who get it the ones who are your avatar, they’re going to love it, and they’re going to love you for it. And that’s why it’s so important to take a stand because you can’t make everybody happy. And it’s so funny that you brought up Dan Kennedy. And I think the Disney point is well taken, but in and of itself, just Dan Kennedy. I mean, he always says all these crazy things that are offensive, and rude, and I would say chauvinistic. But you know, you remember him and you know where he stands in you You can choose to do business with them or not, you know, I’m not going to get a business from people who hate immigrants, I’m not going to convince anybody that my position is right if they’ve drank all the hardline Kool Aid, so wasting my time trying to make those people happy, is pointless. I don’t want to antagonize people, but there’s no reason for me to try to market to them. Yeah,
Tyson Mutrux
in with what you’re saying about Dan Kennedy, all you have to do to know exactly how he feels is pick up his book about, I think it’s no BS ruthless management of people. That book alone will tell you exactly how he feels he’s very abrasive, which is exactly what he wants. He knows his avatar. And it’s very well defined. Just whenever you define your avatar, I do want to just say a couple things about this. I think people what they do is they create these demographics of what their avatar looks like. And I think that they stopped there. I think that’s a mistake. They come up with, you know, age, sex race, they come up with, you know, male, female, whatever it is, they stopped there, maybe income level. And Dan Kennedy would tell you to ask the questions like, what keeps that person up at night? You know, what are they afraid of? What are they angry about? You know, who are they angry at? What are their frustrations? And I think you’ve you’ve come up with you start asking those types of questions. You go from the demographics, and you really, really chisel it down to exactly who your avatar is. And your avatar, I’m assuming what keeps them up at night is one of them could be am I going to get deported? Because I’ve done the X, Y, or Z? Or am I going to actually get into the United States, because I’m trying to get to this country that is torn apart by war, you have all these, you probably have multiple avatars. But those are the things that keep them up at night, you know. So I think that if you start there, and actually I think you need to absolutely start there, coming up with your avatar, which is going to help you to direct your message. Because that message to bring this full circle is not for everybody, that message needs to be for those people. And who cares about the rest of the people. It’s not about getting your name out there and pounding your chest just so people know who you are. It’s about getting clients into the firm. So you can make some money and run a business. Yeah, and
Jim Hacking
it can’t be exploitative. And it can’t be done just for commercial purposes, you have to actually believe what you say, you know, you don’t want to just, I mean, I think part of Dan Kennedy, a little bit of him as a persona. But I also think he’s pretty curmudgeonly, and he believes a lot of the stuff that he says so just with us, I mean, if I, you know, don’t really love immigrants, if I don’t really want to fight for them, but I just want to say this stuff to try to make a buck that sucks. And that’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is being true to yourself, and being true to you know, who you want to market to and the message you want to bring, but also in a way that is willing to piss people off and to push people away who aren’t who aren’t going to hire you.
Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. And I think that you’re right about pissing people off, it’s okay. You make people mad, is absolutely okay. Right. Even if it is someone in your avatar, you are then stimulating a conversation with that person, you can get all these emails from people. Those are people that are actually reading and consuming your stuff, and you’re able to have a dialogue with them. You’re able to build that trust with them, and they’ve got enough trust with you that they can communicate with you. That’s a great thing. You’re building community. That’s fantastic. Yeah.
Jim Hacking
And I went to check the last couple of weeks because I’ve talked about the Trump administration in the last couple of emails. And I would say I’ve had an uptick in opt outs, but I haven’t had any complaints on our emails, and including everybody who’s written back to me to say that they didn’t necessarily like my stuff, except for that one guy. No one has unsubscribed yet. So that’s been interesting, too. Hey, let me ask you this. So how about into practice? Like you’re so like in the personal injury world? Or in the criminal world? How do you do these things? I mean, I think like, one interesting thing in our town is in there are other family law attorneys in the country that do this, where they sort of take a side and we only represent moms, or we only represent dads. And so I think that’s sort of a way to build a tribe. But I think it’s a little bit harder when you don’t necessarily have a boogeyman or an enemy or a straw man to knock down in your marketing. I mean, I guess what for you, it’d be insurance companies.
Tyson Mutrux
We haven’t you absolutely have a boogeyman. And it wouldn’t be insurance companies, and it’s large companies, and it’s primarily the insurance company. That’s who we beat up on. That is by far the biggest Boogeyman. I think the big difference between what I do and what you do. Mine is it’s hard for me to drive demand because it’s per occurrence as something happens, then we have to get the client with yours. You can you can stimulate demand, right, because there are some people out there that are not citizens that just are kind of going through the motions every day and they’re they’re here. They don’t have to become a citizen that could become a citizen, but you can drive that demand. And I’m assuming over the last couple months or last month, you’re been you’ve been able to drive the demand because of the election, but that’s the big difference, but you’re Yeah, you’re right, though. So with with personal injury cases, the boogeyman is the insurance company, but it’s also the bill collectors because a big part of what we want to talk about in the videos is people are afraid that they’re gonna go into debt, they’re gonna go bankrupt because of these outstanding medical bills, or the other thing is that they’re not getting the treatment that they need. And so we focused on things like that, where we, that those are the messages that we focus on, really what that client is looking for. Because we also tried to debunk that, in general, the idea that people are just out there in this as if we were to file have a trial, you know, we’re we debunked the idea early on, that people are just out there to get money. That’s not the number one people thing people look for. All the market data shows that the number one thing that they’re looking for, is they’re gonna get the treatment that they need, right, the next thing is to make sure that their medical bills paid for the third thing is actually getting a thumbs up. That’s third of the list. And that’s a distant third. So we want to focus on the top two things in our messages. And that’s how we that’s how we target our marketing. And as a part of that, we use the insurance companies as the boogeyman to say, Listen, they’re they’re not trying to get you a one or two, maybe they’ll give you one not to fame, definitely not three. And that’s how we do that.
Jim Hacking
So I think that’s really important. And I think that all of our listeners should think about, you know, what do you stand for? You know, who’s your avatar? What, what’s your message? Why are you here? Why are you different? What makes you stand out? You know, and for me, I want to be perceived as a fierce advocate. And I think that most people want their lawyers to be good advocates. And so I think that’s really important. So
Tyson Mutrux
Jimmy, I don’t normally do this, we normally do this at the end. But what’s something I want to do is our numbers have been increasing quite a bit for maximum lawyer, I want to remind people to go to maximum lawyer, comment on us, make sure you subscribe. Our numbers are up, it’s doing really well. But I do want to remind people to do that, go to the Facebook page, because we just started the Facebook page, like us their requests to be part of the group. It’s a private group. We’re trying to create a community there, create people talking, asking questions, things like dad. So in the middle of podcasts we don’t wanna do at the end. Now. We’ll do it right now. Just to remind people, make sure you do subscribe, make sure you give us a comment, because when you give us a comment, it makes sure people can find us on iTunes. That’s a big part of what we do. So we’re going to remind people to do that. So what else do you have to add?
Jim Hacking
Well, I just think the message is clear. I think that you know, you’ve got to be able to drive your flags, stake your claim, you know, make sure that people know what you stand for. If you don’t stand for something, you don’t stand for anything. And so I think that a lot of people make the mistake of trying to go along, get along and get everybody that they can possibly in the door and they come up with a marketing message that is bland and milquetoast and, and very uninspiring.
Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. Well, do you want to give your tip of the week or your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
Okay, now, I’ve been looking forward to this. So I have a book for you to read. And the name of the book is Shoe Dog. And it’s written by Phil Knight, who, as you know, is the founder of Nike and Tyson, I have to tell you, that he is one of us believe it or not, Phil Knight is one of us. He started Nike by selling shoes out of the back of a truck at race meets in in Oregon and California. After he was done with college and grad school, he became a distributor for a Japanese shoe company called Tiger. And he built he completely bootstrapped Nike and he must have done an amazing job of keeping notes in a diary. It is such a roller coaster, and it’s it’s the first half of the book is a small business gone well. And it is such an emotional roller coaster. He’s up, he’s down. He’s on the verge of success. He has a crashing defeat. The story is very well told he must have had help with it because it reads like a novel. And it’s so detailed in Israel, like they’re real characters in it. So the book starts back in the early 60s. And right now, I’m almost done. I’m at 1979. So it’s before Air Jordans before they’re huge. I mean, they had exponential growth every year. But they still as of 1979, they haven’t had a public offering. They’re still privately held. They’re still bootstrapping, they’re still worried about money coming in the door and money going out. I think you’ll find it so inspiring. And I’m listening to it on Audible. So you know, Audible is a tool we’ve talked about on here before but it’s read by an actor named Norbert Leo Butz, who is actually from St. Louis. And it’s like a novel and it’s so exciting and I’ve learned so many lessons from it, that I think that it would actually be a book worth studying like to get to get insights out of to us in our practice.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s really interesting to think about just shoes in general back in 1979. That Nike wasn’t real force like, ever since I’ve been alive. Nike has been, I mean, Nikes all I buy really I mean, I, you know, there’s ASICs, there’s a new balancers, Adidas or Reebok, I guess, maybe a couple others out there. But really, I mean, Nike has been top of the mountain ever since I’ve been alive. And so it’s just hard for me to believe, you know, think back to 1979, or whatever it wasn’t. So that’s, that’s really interesting. So at the check that out, so you said, you’re how far into the book I’m just about done? Around two hours left, and you’re still in 1979?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, so that’s great. I thought was gonna be all about Air Jordans and accounting stuff. And he was an accountant. And the reason the book is called Shoe Dog is Shoe Dog or people who, like we would call it a lawyer’s lawyer, like a Shoe Dog is someone who loves shoes, he thinks about shoes, he thinks about feet, and thinks about improving their product all the time. I mean, the messages are amazing, I think I really think you’re gonna like it.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, I’m gonna check it out another yet another book I need to read. So all that all adds to the list? Well, mine is something that you and I don’t know if you’ve started it yet. But I’m in the middle of it. I think it’s fantastic. It’s the Chet Holmes International. The mastery course, I think is 300 bucks. I think it’s fantastic. Have you started yet?
Jim Hacking
I have not. I’m going.
Tyson Mutrux
I know I’ve started I’m halfway through Jim Manning is halfway through it. Just to give people advice, when you pay for the course, it’s a lot of videos, you got to sit down and block your time to do it. But print out all the manual, I print them out. And I bound all of them. So I have all manuals, there’s 12 of them printed out and I bound them I bonded on those bottlenose binding machines, they’re all bound. And so you go through it, and you really dig deep into your business. And now. So that’s why I’ve got some ideas that I’m gonna run by you later about shift in the firm shift in the dynamic and affirm this is all coming from a deep dive into into this course. And it’s really great. And so it’s channeled International, I think it’s called the mastery course or something like that. Just go to the website, you’ll find it it’s it’s easy to find $300. But I’ll tell you this, it’s worth $2,000. So do it, I highly recommend it. So that is my tip of the week
Jim Hacking
probably need to read the book first. And in fact, it’s so interesting that you brought that up because, you know my wife Imani joined the firm last summer and she just got finished reading her first business book essentially came over and it was the Ultimate Sales Machine and she loved it.
Tyson Mutrux
Perfect book. That’s a perfect book to start with. And you’re right, you should read the book, first Ultimate Sales Machine, because it’s the same principles. But what it does is it magnifies those, and it goes through exercises of forcing you to really think think about your avatar, right? Things like that. Not he doesn’t call it an avatar, but it’s the same thing. We’re talking about same principles. And it really you define your business, you may think that you run an immigration firm, but that’s not what you run, you know, you don’t run an immigration firm. You provide opportunities for families to come and live the American dream, right. That is what you provide. You don’t you’re not an immigration attorney. So you expand really the definition of what you do for people. And it really broadens your approach. It’s really good. And I’m not talking about you’re not you’re still narrowing your focus to a certain niche. So we’ll make sure people don’t confuse what I’m saying here. But you really expand just really what you do for people. It’s really great. It’s a great, great course. So I recommend it. Awesome. All right. Well, I think we have some really great guests coming up. I’m really excited about it. And I’ll see you next week.
