In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Thom Singer, a sales and marketing expert and a professional speaker. They will discuss marketing tactics for attorneys running their own law firms and how being a great speaker can improve your business. Trial lawyers! This episode is for you!
Thom begun his career working in a financial printing firm; selling to big lawyers and big corporate law firms. One of these firms brought him in to become their marketing person, so he got to know the law business really well. 4 years later, Thom became a solopreneur, making people shift how they think about their marketing.
http://thomsinger.com/
Listen to Thom’s podcast! Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do with Thom Singer: http://thomsinger.com/podcast/
“The practice of law, is a business…”
Three letters that will really help you excel when it comes to selling: L. A. W.
L is for Lawyers: So much of the business comes from referrals from other lawyers…
A is for Analytics: We live in a world that is data driven. Where are your leads coming from?…
W is for Wisdom: Knowledge. Experience. Understanding. Common sense. Insight.
“Don’t go to a networking event thinking I wonder if I can get a lead, go to a networking event saying I wonder who I can give a lead to that will lead to real business…”
Thom’s Tip: Go old school. Send a handwritten note. Every week. It will improve your relations and you will grow your reputation.
Hacking’s hack: A Thom’s podcast episode. http://thomsinger.com/speaking-skills-for-engineers-academics-technologists-and-other-left-brained-professionals/
Tyson’s tip: If you use WordPress… Visual Composer. Easy to use. Great results.
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
Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!
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: Thom Singer: Law is a Business
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
I’m tasting music. Hey, Jimmy, what’s going on?
Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson. I’m really excited about this week’s show. We have an awesome guest you and I’ve been talking back and forth trying to get him on the show. His name is Tom singer, and I’m going to give a brief introduction of Tom. He has an eclectic background working in sales, marketing and business development roles for Fortune 500 companies, law firms and entrepreneurial ventures. He’s a professional master of ceremonies, motivational keynote speaker and the author of 12 books on the power of business development, networking, entrepreneurship, legal marketing, and presentation skill while also serving as the host of the popular cool things entrepreneurs do podcast. He regularly speaks at business and Association conferences around the United States and beyond. And he has presented to over 600 audiences during his career as a speaker. He lives in the amazing city of Austin, Texas, where he and his wife are the parents of two highly spirited daughters. And as it relates to our show and our message, he speaks as the law firm speak right partner retreats, associate training and legal Association events. He was the director of marketing and business development for two Amboise 100 law firms in the Dallas and Texas, Dallas and Austin, Texas area, he has created many programs for attorneys to get more involved in their communities and coach them on the art of client development and cross selling. He released in 2016, the book the ABCs, of legal marketing, and I think we’re really lucky to have him, Tom, thanks for coming on the show.
Thom Singer
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jim Hacking
I came across Tom on a podcast about two years ago, and I’ve been following him ever since his cool things entrepreneurs do is a really great show. And I’ve gotten a lot out of it. So Tom, what are your thoughts on what kind of mistakes lawyers make when they think about marketing? Or what is the advice you give to newer attorneys?
Thom Singer
Well, thank you very much. And I do appreciate you listening to my show. And you had sent me a note a while back. And I thought that was really nice. And I’m really happy to be here with you guys. You know, it’s interesting, because I started off, I sold to lawyers, I worked for a financial printing firm, and I sold to the big corporate law firms during sort of the IPO boom of the 90s. And early part of the 2000s. And I got to know, sort of the big lawyers really, really well. And then one of the firms brought me in to become their marketing person, I really didn’t know that that was going to sort of be a big pivotal change in my whole career, I ended up spending a little over four years working at these two law firms. And then ever since since I’ve gone on my own, I’ve worked individually with people and with a firm’s getting people to just shift how they think about their marketing. So I think the biggest problem, or the biggest thing I have to work with people up front is that lawyers have to realize that the practice of law is a business, it’s no different than running a dry cleaner or being I’m a professional speaker, and trainer. It’s no different than that or being a consultant or really any type of services business. And sometimes I think lawyers and I don’t know where this comes from. But I think sometimes they think it’s a little different than a regular business that somehow it’s a calling. And I remind them that being an attorney isn’t a priesthood, it’s not a calling at the end of the day, you have the exact same pressures on you that anyone else who has a business has, and that is you’ve got to be able to pay your rent, you got to be able to pay your employees. So you have to have sales. And when I started in the business, you couldn’t say the word sales around lawyers, because they thought it was like some dirty four letter word. But in reality, all businesses have certain things they have to do they have to do accounting, they have to do their taxes, they have to have HR policies, and they have to have failed because without clients, your business will fail. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living.
Tyson Mutrux
I actually I love that you brought that up, Tom, because I was going over your website, and you have the ABCs of sales in a variety of blog posts on your website. So before we get to your actual book, what are just generally the ABCs of sales? You don’t talk about all of them both generally, what are they? And what are the top two or three, I guess letters in the alphabet of The ABCs of sales?
Thom Singer
Well, you know, I think the biggest thing you have to remember and I’ve written a series of books are at the ABCs of networking, the ABCs of public speaking the ABCs of legal marketing, and now I’m working on the ABCs of sales and, and the thing, the most important letters and I’m going to use sort of a legal marketing book rather than a sales book as sort of my thing. I’m going to give you three letters, that really, really matter. For all of you who are listening since I’m assuming a large portion of your audience is attorneys, whether they work for big firms or they’re small firms, or if they’re solo, I’m going to give you three letters that out of the ABCs of legal marketing that will really help you excel when it comes to selling and the first one and those three letters and I’ve done a lot of research on your listeners. Those three letters are L A and w. So you can see it was really scientific that I picked the three letters. But really quick, just giving these as an example, the L in the ABCs of legal marketing stands for lawyers. And one of the things you have to remember is that most attorneys I talked to get a huge amount of referrals from other lawyers. And what happens is and coming out of the corporate side, myself, I talked to lawyers all the time, who are corporate lawyers, or litigators, their friend is getting divorced. And their friend calls them and says, Dude, I’m getting divorced. Can you help me? Well, no, he’s a corporate lawyer. He’s not a family law attorney. So what happens is, is he says, I’m not the right person for you. That’s not my expertise. Let me refer you to someone else. And that happens across all practice areas. And so if you’re not spending a lot of time building really strong referral relationships with other lawyers, then you’re missing out, because so much of the business comes through that. So that’s the first one. The second letter in law is a. And that comes down to analytics. And we live in a world that is data driven. And and we’ve all heard all the talk, you know, in the business world about big data, whether it’s big data, or just little data, you need to be analyzing what’s going on? Where are your leads coming from? So one of the first things I do when I work with somebody, I get them into my group coaching program, and they happen to be a lawyer. My first question is, let’s look at your last 20 clients. Where’d they come from? Did they find you in the Yellow Pages? Were they referred to you? Was it you know, they drive by your office all the time? You know, how did they find you? And that’s a question you have to be asking, every single new client is how did you hear about me, and you start to see patterns, and you have to start analyzing that. So if 20% of your business is coming from, you know, Bob, the corporate lawyer that you went to law school with, who is sending everything that’s too small for his big firms, to your smaller, firm, and it’s 20 or 25% of your business, you need to know that, because you’d better be cultivating that relationship with Bob, because you could have 20, or 25% of your business just evaporate otherwise. So you need to be paying attention to where business is already coming from analyzing it, and then reverse engineer it. So if you’re getting that much business from Bob, where’s Mary and Sylvia and Ted, you need to go and get other people who could send you that same type of business. So that’s the second letter. And then the third one is w. And w is for wisdom. And wisdom is so important in business. So the dictionary says that wisdom is the ability or result of an ability to think and act utilizing knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. And my favorite part, for attorneys of that definition, is common sense. Because common sense isn’t very common. There are so many basic business things that you need to be doing that just come down to your insight, your common sense and your basic understanding. And if they didn’t teach this to you in law school, and if you started in a larger firm, they didn’t teach this to you, they didn’t teach business skills to you in the early days of being a first year. So you need to take it upon yourself to get that basic knowledge, get that basic business common sense.
Jim Hacking
And I think that all three of those suggestions are strong, we spend a lot of time talking about making ourselves more referral. And with the niches that Tyson and I have in the legal field, I think that makes us more susceptible to receiving referrals, I think that if you are an attorney who likes to do 10 different things, then that makes it hard for people to refer you. But with the wisdom, I think that’s just tremendous. I think that so many lawyers like to think that we’re different, I think that going to law school sort of gets you thinking one certain way. And I think people that are drawn to the law may have a certain mindset. And I do think they fall into that trap of thinking of this as a calling. And that marketing is that we’re above marketing. So I think that having that wisdom to see that we are in some ways, like dry cleaners and other people that have to keep the lights on and keep employees happy and keep clients happy.
Thom Singer
The thing I sometimes have to remind people is being a dry cleaner is a good thing. I mean, sometimes they go I’m not like a dry cleaner. It’s like, yeah, dry cleaner has to do deliver good work, give good customer service, you know, have you know, be attainable during the correct hours, you know, respond. If someone has a complaint, it’s no different than the same things you have to do running a legal practice. And a little aside is when I go in and speak at like partner retreats, whatever the initials of the firm are, or the main name, they go by, I can pull those letters out of this book. And people always have the exact same response that you do. They go, wow, those were three or four directly, you know, important tasks, or important things that we needed to know. And I always just use a keyword or the name of the firm or something like that. But it’s always very poignant because all of these tips, they are all common sense. They’re all basic things we should be doing, but that most people aren’t doing and running their business.
Tyson Mutrux
So a lot of the listeners I mean, we have a wide range. We have some on the low end with low marketing budgets. We have some on the high end with really high marketing budgets, but I’d say probably the most of them Most of them are probably solo small firms, limited marketing budgets. If you had a group of them in a room like today, what would you tell them? What would you say put your marketing dollars in this medium or wherever you may say those marketing dollars need to go?
Thom Singer
How would you advise them. But it’s so interesting because so many people get jealous that people have big marketing budgets, however they came by they were they’re really successful, they’re married to someone who’s rich, they, you know, partnered with another person that was Oh, they’re so lucky. Well, first of all, you know, reverse engineer how they got the money to have bigger marketing budgets and do the steps necessary to do that, if you think that’s important, but the reality is, is you don’t need to have a big marketing budget, I’m, I’m a solopreneur, I work for myself, I speak at firms, I do all this stuff. And 90% of my business comes from actually higher than that comes from referrals. And those referrals come from people who know me. So I think the number one thing if you’re a small, firm, and you don’t have unlimited money to you know, do all the big advertising things, you would dang well better become an active member of your community. You know, networking is not a bad word. It’s an important word. And anyone who is in sales knows that it comes down to relationships, and people are going to do business, and refer business to people that they know they like, and they trust. Every now and then people come back at me and especially attorneys and other people, sort of what I call left brain professionals and they go well, people do business with people they know like and trust. That’s a little bit of an old cliche. Well, first of all, cliches are usually based in truth. And second of all, think about how you do business. Who do you like to do business with people you’ve heard of whose reputation is strong people who you golf with people who you went to law school with people who you know, live on your same street people, or some random person you found out of the phonebook by just running your finger down until you stop. You do business as a human being with people who you know, like and trust either directly or via their reputation. And so the way you have to do it, if you don’t have a big budget, is you had dang well better be out there and be involved with things. And that means more than just paying dues to your chamber of commerce or your Bar Association. It means showing up at the events, talking to people being curious about them. And then the number one thing is making referrals. I’ve built my whole career based on the fact that I give a lot of referrals. So if any of your listeners are going well, what does he mean? He built his career on it? Here’s a question for them. When’s the last time you sent a legitimate like, Wow, great piece of business to somebody else, be it to a lawyer to an accountant to any type of consultant to you know, whoever when’s the last time you referred a piece of business where that person made money. And if you can’t remember when that was, and if it wasn’t in the last week or two, then you’re not actively participating in your community. Networking is a give and take. It’s not a verb. You don’t go networking when you need something like Oh, man, I don’t have enough clients this year, I better get out to that chamber thing, go networking. It’s a lifestyle. And the networking isn’t about you winning, the definition of networking is it’s the creation of long term, here’s the key word mutually beneficial relationships between two or more people. So mutually beneficial means it has to benefit them. So if you’re not showing up to give, you’re never gonna get I teach people don’t go to a networking event thinking I wonder if I can get a lead. Go to a networking event saying I wonder who I can give a lead to that will lead to real business. And if you do that, yeah, you’re gonna give a lot more than you get maybe seven to one or 10 to one. Those ones you get that can change your whole career. So you had dang well better be out there making sure that you’re referring business out, if you want business referred to. And
Jim Hacking
that is a tremendous point, we spend so much time thinking about, you know, what can we control? What can we not control, what we control is the leaves that we give to other people. What we can’t control is the leads other people give to us. But the more that we do that, the more they’re going to send our way. So we’re speaking today with Tom singer. He’s a certified speaking professional with the National Speakers Association. Among the other qualifications that we discussed earlier in time. Tyson and I have been doing a fair amount of public speaking. And I know that you just gave a great episode on your cool things, entrepreneurs do a podcast for lawyers and other left brain people about public speaking. What are some lessons that our listeners can take when it comes to public speaking?
Thom Singer
Well, they say that public speaking is one of the biggest fears that people have Seinfeld has a whole bit that people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. And you know, again, there’s some truth to that. I mean, I have a lot of friends who you know, will want to come and see me speak because they think it’s funny that I’m a professional speaker, because I mean, think about it, how many professional speaker friends do you have, you know, people are like, whatever, but they’ll come and they’ll be like, Wow, you were so comfortable up there. You know, I could never do that. Well, if you back up 20 years, I probably couldn’t have either. So the first thing you have to remember about presentation skills, is their learned skills. Very few people show up and are just great or adores. I had to learn how to do it. I’ve given over 600 professional level speeches. And before that I’ve given hundreds of Toastmasters speeches and things in the firms I worked for, and stuff like that. So you have to speak more if you want to get better at it. But here’s the thing, a person who can stand up at a conference or a Chamber of Commerce event or anywhere, and give a clear, concise, meaningful touching speech is always viewed as the expert. So if you want to be seen as the expert, you need to be speaking more in your community, because all of a sudden, that’s great. But if you’re monotone, and you’re boring, and you’re dull, and you don’t have anything to say, and people would rather stick a needle in their ear and hear you go on for 10 minutes, that’s going to do the opposite to your reputation, people are going to be like, This guy’s a bozo, this woman, you know, is horrible. And a lot of people tell me Well, but Tom, if you’re smart, you don’t have to be a good speaker. You know, and that’s what a lot of people learn that they’re not going to be, you know, they’re not trial lawyers, a lot of attorneys will fight me on this fact that the speaking skills are equally as important as the content and data that you’re presenting, they talk to a trial lawyer, and he’ll nod, he’ll sit in the back of that class and nod like you bet those speaking skills matters. Because they know that if you can be persuasive, and engaging of a judge and a jury in a courtroom, you have more of a chance of winning that case than if you’re just moaning on and droning on. So you’ve got to speak more with the intent of improving, if you want to improve.
Tyson Mutrux
I’ve spoken to some of our listeners. And I know that they do want to get into speaking because they know how important it is. But they just don’t know how to start, how do you recommend people just start? And then also, how do they get those speaking gigs? Because some may not know how to get them. So what are your recommendations on that?
Thom Singer
Well, so the first thing is, is that you’ve got to be comfortable doing it. And you have to learn the basics. So I tell everybody that they should join Toastmasters Club, and they should participate actively, which means every week, for an hour a week, for a year. And if you go through the whole basic training manual from Toastmasters, you cannot walk away without having improved a little bit and having the confidence. But once you learn what Toastmasters teaches you the basics of vocal variety, and how to persuade, and how to move your body and use your hands when you speak and how to make eye contact, then take all those rules and throw them away. And just let your own personality get up there. Because you have to be yourself. You can’t stand up and be speaker, man or speaker woman, you have to get up there and just have a conversation with the audience. The days of the sage from the stage, the expert who is so smart, that we just hang on their every word from the seat, those days are gone. audiences want to be talked to like their appear, they want it to be interactive, they want advice from the audience to be given. And then the speaker is able to take that and go sort of think on their feet and take it from there. So I think my first advice, if you want to start you have to get good and the only way you’re going to get good is to speak so get out and then do more speaking. But then how do you get like proper ones. Number one, you got to put yourself out there. I started out back in the days when I was working for a law firm. I told every Rotary Club, I’d developed the speech on how to network for lawyers, but it worked for everybody. And I started telling Rotary Clubs and young men’s business League and Young Women’s Alliance everything. If you ever need a speaker, I have this talk that has real business content. And I started to develop a reputation that I was good. And I got out there and I did it, I wasn’t worried about being paid. I just wanted to do it. It was fun. I liked it, I had this little dream that maybe I could turn it into a career. But I knew it was a long path. So if you want the speaking gigs, you got to tell people that you want them and apply I mean, you know, within the bar, they’re always when they have these conferences, they’re always looking for people to teach the LEDs. If you don’t put your name in 100% of the people who don’t apply to give those speeches aren’t picked. So you have to apply, you have to fill out the applications. And then when you’re on stage, you better deliver because if you’re great, they’re going to come back to you time after time. If you’re there not. So I had a mentor in the National Speakers Association tell me early on in my career about 10 years ago, he said when you come off stage, what do you want people to say? And my answer? And the answer most people give when I ask is Oh, that was great, best speech of the day, great job. And he said, Yeah, that’s the ego talking. That’s not what you want people to say. And I laughed and said, No, I have an ego, I want that. And he said, what you want people to say is what else can you do? For me? I said what do you mean? And he was not necessarily those words, but a derivative of what else can you do for me? And what that means is, is that they after they hear you speak, they come up and say do you do consulting? Do you have a book? Will that speech work for realtors? Can I bring you into my company? Etc? Etc, etc? If they want more of you? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? If they want more of you then you know, you delivered a great speech. So don’t listen to people who say Oh, that was great. Because we live in a polite society. That might be all they can say, no one’s gonna come up and go. Hey, Jim, that was about the most mediocre speech we’ve had all day. No one’s gonna say that. So they come up and they go Jim, great speech. There’s a lot of people out there who think they’re great because people say great job. And it’s just we live in a polite society. So you know, put yourself out there work Wanna get better hire a speaking coach, get someone to come and watch you and critique you. I’ve had people fly me in to other cities that don’t live in, put me up for the night to watch them give a big speech, so that I could tell them what they did. And you know, I think that’s like the coolest job in the world, someone puts me up in a hotel, lets me come to the banquet, watch them give a speech, and then I get to tell them what they did wrong. It’s kind of a cool gig when you can get it. It’s not cheap. But locally, you could probably find somebody who can come in and watch you do your chamber of commerce gig and come back and give you a lot of little tips. And last bit, videotape yourself. And as painful as it is, watch the whole video
Jim Hacking
on those are tremendous suggestions. And some of them were ones that you covered in the episode of your podcast called speaking skills for engineers, academic technologists, and other left brain professionals. One of the other points you made in that podcast that I really enjoyed and I pleaded guilty to was speakers reliance on PowerPoint. Can you talk a little bit briefly about PowerPoint and how that can really be a crutch?
Thom Singer
Yeah, now I use PowerPoint, I use it probably, you know, almost every time I speak not every time but most of the time, and I like it. PowerPoint is there for me to remind me what stories are coming up. Next thing to remember is is that PowerPoint wasn’t designed to be your handout so often, especially at these legal conferences. They print your PowerPoint in a book with like little lines next to every slide. So people could take notes, which by the way, nobody does. I don’t know why we do that. But they print the three up with the little lines so people can take all the notes. And they think, Oh, well, this is my handout. So they design their PowerPoint to be the handout that’s in the book will handout makes a crummy PowerPoint. And a great PowerPoint would make a crummy handout because a great PowerPoint is just visuals and a couple of words, really to remind the speaker of what they’re doing. But what I see, especially at legal conferences, is sometimes they’ll tell them oh, you’re limited to 20 slides. So people will take it down to eight point font. And they’ll do all these builds where things come in on top, and it’s like, oh my god, what have they just done? They’ve made this horrible, then they turn around and point at their words, as they talk, they don’t look at the audience. So the PowerPoint is a visual that should enhance, it’s by no means sort of part of the lecture. And so you got to be really careful. If you look at my PowerPoints that I use, they’re usually a picture and like three words. And it’s really there just to trigger me as to where I’m going to go next. And people say, Well, Tom, you’re not doing as technical the speech as I am as a lawyer. I’ve seen the best legal speeches, people don’t even use have don’t even use PowerPoint. So it’s PowerPoint, just a crutch.
Tyson Mutrux
So what are some of the biggest, I guess speaking tips, you can give Trial Lawyers while they are in trial? Because I think I always try to not speak at ledgers. I try to be as conversational as possible. Sometimes we’re sort of constrained, sometimes the judge that makes us stay at the podium, there’s a variety of things that that try to constrain us. But what are some tips that you might have for some trial lawyers, with regards to public speaking?
Thom Singer
So one of the things I’m really clear on, because I’ll go into firms and teach associates presentation skills. And I’m really clear upfront that I actually don’t have any experience teaching courtroom presentation skills. So you know, I shy away from saying, I know how to do that. But after my speech, the trial lawyers come up and go, everything you said, works exactly with a jury, you know, you backed yourself out of having any responsibility for any knowledge of that. But in reality, it’s the same thing. And it comes down to exactly what I was saying before. And it’s what you just said, is you don’t want to talk at people, you want to talk with people. You don’t want to lecture people, if you’re the sage on the stage, if you’re coming in, and you’re Clarence Darrow, and you’re just, you know, coming at them with all this power and smart, you’re trying to whiz bang. People don’t want that in the society. We live in everybody. And because of social media, and everything else, everybody thinks everybody is everyone’s equal. So if you’re not treating people like appear, then they’re automatically going to look at you as that you’re sort of high and mighty, and all that. So you want, you want to make sure that you’re being conversational, you want to be speaking in very simple terms. Now, sometimes, you know, I’ve heard the advice that you want to dumb it down to a third grader, I actually don’t agree, I think what you want to do is you want to make your explanations in a way that another educated person from a different field could understand you don’t assume your audience or your jury or third graders, because if you’re doing that, they’re going to feel that you’re talking down to them. Assume that they’re smart people who just don’t have an understanding of the exact topic that’s being discussed, or the top or they don’t have expertise in the law and how, you know, the lawyer is normally doing it. So speak to them, like they’re a smart person, while you’re educating them, take them on a journey with you, instead of telling them what to do and you’re just going to have more success.
Jim Hacking
We’re running out of time for this week. So what are the different ways that our listeners could work with you or find out about you? What do you suggest as far as people that want to follow up?
Thom Singer
Sure, everything about me can usually be found at Tom singer.com. And that’s T H o m s ing er but if you forget the H because most people spell Tom T O M can go to T O M S ing er dot com and it will redirect you to the right place. So it’s Tom singer.com. One of the best things, especially for a small lawyer is join what I call the potential project. And this is something that spun out of my podcast listeners were saying, do you do like a group coaching program? Do you do something that’s not too expensive, where we could, you know, get calls, and I started a weekly Zoom US video call, where I get, you know, five or six, seven people come on, and we just go through what people are working on in their business, whether it’s sales, whether it’s their marketing, whether it’s their career goals, and everybody in the group participates as equals. And I actually think it would be a great place for small lawyers to go. And you can find that at Tom singer.com, under the about menu. But right now, the biggest thing is listen to my podcast, cool things entrepreneurs do, because if you’re a lawyer, whether you have your own firm, where you work for another firm, you’re really an entrepreneur, because at the end of the day, it’s all based on business, you eat what you kill, as a lawyer, you work for a big firm, no one’s feeding you the business, you’ve got to develop your own business. So you’re really just a solopreneur under someone else’s flag. So whether you’re with a big firm or a small firm or a solo practice, I think, cool things entrepreneurs do, we’ll get you a lot of inspiration, a lot of ideas and just come into it realizing that if I interview the CEO of Ghiradelli, chocolate, he’s got a business to run. It’s no different than you he’s just selling chocolate. But he’s not selling chocolate. He’s selling an experience, which is really what you’re doing isn’t attorney. That’s great advice, Tom, we are out of time. So I do want to get to our tip and our hack the week before I do, though, want to remind everyone to check out our Facebook page and our Facebook group. Check us out there, there’s
Tyson Mutrux
a lot of great conversation going on. Then also make sure you like us on Apple or iTunes and anywhere else that you get your podcasts before I get to my tip, Jimmy when give your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
My hack of the week is indeed Tom’s podcast episode from May 5 2017. The speaking skills for engineers and other left brain professionals I think anybody who’s doing any kind of public speaking, I also thought that most of the lessons learned in the podcast episode translate to anyone doing YouTube video. So I learned a couple of do’s and don’ts that I break all the time. And the chief among them is talking with a very monotone voice, Tom, I hate to say it, but a lot of my YouTube comments are a lot of great content. And but man, you got to smile more and you got to be a little bit more peppy.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s really funny, Jimmy because we both have a bunch of YouTube videos. So I had to tell you that podcasts have to go to him. But I would say that is my big critique of you. But it’s because you’re just thinking the whole time that you’re talking, I can tell you’re thinking about what you’re about to say. But I’m actually you also have a tip of the week. So what’s your tip of the week?
Thom Singer
So my tip of the week is go old school and send a handwritten note. And I don’t mean one. I mean, every week, try to send three to five handwritten notes either to somebody who referred you a piece of business and you say thank you, maybe you stick a Starbucks card in it. Maybe it’s someone you met at a networking function, you just send them a note that says, Hey, Jim, it was great to meet you at the, you know, Young Lawyers Association, I really enjoyed our conversation, I hope our paths crossed again. Maybe it is for somebody who it’s their birthday, or their anniversary or something else. You say, Hey, you crossed my mind today. I want to do that if you made that a habit, you will grow your reputation. People never get a handwritten note and look at it, throw it on the ground and say How dare they write me a note saying it was great to meet me. People are touched by it because it’s not happening very often. Too often we meet somebody and we send them just that cold LinkedIn thing that LinkedIn is crafted that says I would like to add you to my LinkedIn profile or whatever. And whoever feels special because they got that from someone they talked to for two minutes. So send a handwritten note. And if you make it a habit to send five of them a week, that’s 250 a year it’s 250 people who you will touch in a way that other people aren’t because they’re trying to use digital shortcuts. I
Jim Hacking
found that such a great suggestion. And it’s it’s ironic, because that’s how I contacted you the first time I heard you on John Jancis, duct tape marketing. And I followed up with a handwritten note, I looked up your mailing address, and that’s sort of how we connected so that is great advice.
Tyson Mutrux
And here we are. That is incredible advice. Because I my wedding my wife gets mad at me excited by so many thank you cards because we’re every time I’m someone at a store and I see some things because I really like I always buy them so that it’s a great piece of advice. And I love getting pictures back or people that are posting on Facebook about the cars the gap for me. So I think that that’s great advice. My tip of the week is actually radically different from either of yours. If you use WordPress, I’ve been using something in WordPress I think could help everyone. And that’s visual composer. For heavy WordPress users. You probably already know about it. But for you lightweights you probably don’t. Visual Composer is sort of like sounds. When you’re on your WordPress page and you’re making edits to your website. It allows you to basically just drag and drop move around make edits to your website very easily. So I highly recommend it. I’ve been using it more and more. I’ve sort of got away from using it. I gotten back to us and I was doing a lot of stuff manually. It actually is Really easy. It’s great to use. So that is my tip of the week. Gentleman you have anything else.
