In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview a listener of the show, Anneke Godlewski; director of marketing and communications at Charles E. Boyk Law Offices, LLC. They will go over different community based marketing strategies and discuss how they can help your career and your business.
“If you see somebody on the news organically it’s gonna have a little bit more of an impact than seeing a TV commercial.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annekekurt
https://www.charlesboyk-law.com/
TPS Proud Student and Teacher of The Month: https://www.charlesboyk-law.com/gives-back/tps-proud-student-teacher-month/
Bikes For Kids:
https://www.charlesboyk-law.com/gives-back/bikes-for-kids/
Hacking’s hack: Appointment Core. Automate Your Appointment Setting Process for Your Infusionsoft & Google Calendar.
https://www.appointmentcore.com/
Anneke’s tip: Get Google Reviews! Every person that comes into your office, have them filling a paper survey in which the questions would evoke a really good review and then ask them if they’ll be willing to pull out their phone and leave a review right there in your office’s address in Google maps. Remember they should not be connected to your wifi.
Tyson’s tip: he WordPress app lets you post into different websites and track some data.
https://itunes.apple.com/ar/app/wordpress/id335703880?mt=8
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Transcripts: Anneke Godlewski: Community Based Marketing
Anneke Godlewski
You know, I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that if you see somebody on the news organically, you know, just like the web, if you see somebody on the news organically, it’s going to have a little bit more of an impact than seeing a TV commercial. So that’s kind of where we’ve been putting our focus the past four years, and it’s really paid off.
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. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And on facing matrix Jimmy, we have an incredible guest on the show today, she actually graciously spent two hours and 15 minutes on the phone with me on Friday, sort of going through one of the things we’re talking about today, but I’m really, really excited about it.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I’m too and one of the reasons I’m excited about it is because one she’s a listener to the show, and to that this whole awareness of Veronica and the work that she’s been doing with Chuck boy came about because of a question that will immediately asked on the Facebook group so that the Facebook group has really gotten a lot of engagement lately and a lot of good sharing of ideas. It’s becoming a little laboratory. And then it’s great for us to pick up on things that people seem interested in and be able to turn it into a show.
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, absolutely. I agree. And that’s one of the things we’re how I found Annika was through Larry Weinstein is a listener who also is engaged in mastermind experience through our Facebook page as well. But that’s how I got on a call with with them on Friday. We were just talking about a couple of the programs she was doing. And it was really she’s really incredible. So I’m excited about it. But Monica, it’s Annika God Lou ski? And do you want to introduce yourself and really who you are what you do?
Anneke Godlewski
Sure, um, I’m the Director of Marketing and Communications for Chuck Boyd. We’re based in Toledo, Ohio, which is a mid sized market just about 45 minutes south of Detroit. So yeah, I started working for Chuck in 2006, I took a little hiatus to go overseas and go back to school in 2010. And then I came back to work for Chuck in 2013. So I’ve been here, again for the past four years. And ever since I came back, we really tried to focus on community marketing. The plan was, well, we had started a couple of the projects before, like around 2008 2009. But we really tried to make a concerted effort, this time around to do something different. And one of the big challenges that we have the most personal injury attorneys are all attorneys rather in Toledo have is there are these large mega firms in Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Chicago, that pretend to have hometown local offices here, they flood the airwaves with tons of TV, tons of radio, you know, these multimillion dollar budgets? Well, we wanted and they were kind of, you know, scooping up some of the clients. And we wanted to really point out to people that it’s very, very important to have a hometown attorney, much like it’s important to buy locally, it’s important to have somebody who knows the area knows the intersections knows, you know, the people that were involved in whatever catastrophic event is causing you the need to hire an attorney. So we figured that instead of trying to touch those huge marketing budgets, which, you know, even if we had the billions of dollars to spend, we wouldn’t want to, we tried to figure out a way to really connect with people in our office, connect with our current and past clients connect with the community. And through those efforts, we’ve been able to garner quite a bit of media attention. That, you know, I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that if you see somebody on the news organically, you know, just like the web, if you see somebody on the news, organically, it’s going to have a little bit more of an impact than seeing a TV commercial. So that’s kind of where we’ve been putting our focus the past four years, and it’s really paid off.
Jim Hacking
How have you gone about doing that? How have you gone about getting that local media attention?
Anneke Godlewski
There’s three different ways that we’ve primarily focused, the first being talking to our clients, asking our clients what we feel what they think is interesting or important, or if there’s any, you know, certain, I don’t know, a certain project or anything that they are a big advocate for, in doing so. You know, that’s an easy way to start is just really opening up that personal client communication. From there, it kind of gave us I guess, kind of gave us a mindset to understand what people really worry about. One of the questions that we ask our clients on on intake is, you know, what are your fears? What are you nervous about? Because in our minds, I mean, Chuck has been doing this for 30, almost 35 years. And so what we see from a legal perspective, isn’t always the same as what our clients see from their own personal perspective, you know, even though we care about Got our clients and we do everything that we can to connect with them on a personal level. You know, at the end of the day, as a business owner, Chuck’s worried about his bottom line, he’s worried about the amount of money that he can get for this claim, or for what you know, whatever claim? Well, the clients don’t always think that way. And if you look at all of our reviews, I mean, you’ll find very, very few of them that talk about money, they’re worried about not being able to get back to work, they’re worried about not being able to pay the bills at Christmas, they’re worried about whether or not they can, you know, go bowling with their grandson on Thursday. So it’s getting yourself into the mindset of trying to figure out what it is that is really, really important to them. And then once you start doing that, you kind of are able to pick up on other things that the community as a whole would appreciate, understanding about. That being said, we, every time we file a case that’s particularly important or particularly impactful, we write a press release about it, we send it out to the local media. Well, actually, we’ve even branched out into the national media, we’ve gotten some national attention. But it’s hand feeding the media information that we think that would be important to others. Now, the flip side is, is those reporters are constantly looking for things to write about all the time, they’re always in competition with the other stations, and they always need something to write about. So if we’re sending them a press release, that already has a quote, included, it already has all the information, it might have a link to the file stamped copy of the complaint that was just filed, you’re making the job very easy for them. So that’s kind of one of the ways that we started doing this. And I think maybe some of the listeners of this podcast are going to think, well, the media doesn’t even know me, I don’t know, the media, like there’s no way that we’re ever going to be able to get in front of them, we kind of thought that too. But you know, the more you reach out, like, the more friendly people will be follow their Facebook pages, follow their Twitter feeds, it’ll reach out to them, we’ve sent cookies, we’ve sent cupcakes, we’ve, you know, just gone out there and handshake. It’s not, I think a lot of us sort of get lost in, you know, a silly, exclusive digital world that is so meaningful, when you take the time to invite somebody out to lunch, or you take the time to like look them in the eye and actually shake their hand and smile and ask how their day is, it’s very few and far between that we have those types of interactions now. So I mean, just even getting out there would help. One thing that we did do, probably three and a half years ago, I would say we have these little key tags, we give them to all of our clients, if your keys are lost, they can, you know, whoever finds your keys can call this 800 number, it’s actually our phone number, you know, call this number to return these keys, there’s a little individual reference tag number, I can share all the information of where we ordered them after the call, but we give them to all of our clients in case they lose their keys. Well, one guy was fishing off the coast of North Carolina, and he was knocked over by a wave and he lost his keys, they floated 10 miles up the shore, I get a phone call from a lady at a yacht club, who says hey, we some fishermen found these keys on the beach, you know, we’d love to get them back to the rightful owners. I called the guy, he was beside himself happy because he had lost 100 pounds. And his wedding ring didn’t fit anymore. And his wedding ring was on that key ring. So he was totally ecstatic to get his keys back. But to prove that that program works, we include a copy of the newsletter article we wrote back in like oh eight or whatever. When that happened, we took that letter, we took extra key tags. And we also affixed those key tags to a key light. And we mailed them to every single media person in town, when in turn, go on to all the local newspapers, websites, TV, radio, make a list of every single person’s name that they could find. And we just pre assigned those key numbers to the name just kept an Excel spreadsheet of it. And then did a mass mailing of like, you know, I don’t know, 300 350 of these key lights and key tags, everybody in the media with an additional letter that said, you know, we know that you guys are up all night, catching the news, we really appreciate everything that you’re doing to inform the city of what’s going on. And you know, to warn us of you know, things that are happening. We also know that you probably need legal commentary on a lot of these stories. So put this key tag on your keys. If you have the need for legal commentary at any given point in time, call us 24 hours a day, we’ll get you a quote, we’ll get you you know, you know, we’ll send a lawyer down to your station, whatever. So it’s that was kind of our introduction to the media. And of course, they loved getting something that you know, they could have a takeaway for. So anyway, press releases, and then we do two community marketing events. We do bikes for kids during the summer, and we do TPS proud during the school year, we just primarily focus on those three things throughout the year. And we just don’t kind of we don’t really do anything extra we I mean, outside of those three programs so that we can do these really, really well. Then we do a lot with client referrals and, you know, keeping our clients happy. So that’s kind of our focus.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s incredible Annika and I want to get into some of those programs in a little more depth in a second. But from a cost perspective. What’s the cost difference? Weighing theory based marketing and traditional marketing, because it sounds like you’ve been doing this for quite a while. So you’ve probably tested a lot of different things. What’s the cost difference? Like?
Anneke Godlewski
That’s a fantastic question. Because it’s always a good point. Or it’s a good place for even maybe younger attorneys, or attorneys who are just starting out or trying to watch their budgets, it’s coming, the marketing is just so cheap compared to I mean, TV advertising, for instance, I know that Toledo market is extremely inexpensive compared to other like metropolitan areas. But I think when we priced it out, we could get a halfway decent amount of frequency. On one big chain, I think it was like the CBS or this, the ABC affiliate here in town. And it was going to cost like, maybe $5,000 a month, which is and it wasn’t even for a schedule that was that fantastic. So I think it was a 32nd spot with like, a small, small handful of the prime news station tight like are the the news spots, plus, I don’t know, maybe a hint, like some extra ones that run throughout the day. But that’s a mediocre TV campaign for $5,000 a month. And we’re not even going to touch any of the people that are already out there advertising all the time. So when we looked at it from a cost perspective, it’s like, okay, $60,000 a year, or you can do bikes for kids for, I don’t know, maybe the bikes are $200. And we do it for 10 weeks. So in $2,000, I’ll explain the vice the whole bike circuits process a little bit later. But it’s very, very inexpensive. I mean, if you have a marketing director, or even somebody in your office, you don’t even have to have somebody full time. Even if you have somebody who’s just interested in being involved in the community. It’s really just manpower or, you know, hours time to send the press releases and to, you know, for the TPS, proud student and teacher of the Month Contest that we do during the school year, that’s monthly gift cards. So it’s very, very inexpensive. I mean, I will say that we do take the time and effort and spend the money on a monthly newsletter, because we have all this goodwill and all these wonderful stories and all of these amazing connections, but we unless you have a place to talk about them, then it doesn’t really make much sense. I mean, social media has been a fantastic medium for us. But the newsletter is also 100% pays for itself by like February or early March of every year. So we send out newsletters to 15,000 people a month. So as you can imagine, I mean, the postage, you can do the math, but it’s 100% worth it. And it’s always been something that our clients, but we always get a lot of feedback from our clients every month when we know that they hit mailboxes. So I know that’s kind of a long winded answer to your question. But it’s it’s very, very miniscule compared to traditional radio, TV, or even paid advertising or pay per click advertising, depending on the market that you’re in.
Jim Hacking
You’re talking about a physical newsletter, is that right? Correct. Yep. Oh, okay. And what do you do you have a service that you use? Or that or do you do the in house? Or how does it work?
Anneke Godlewski
I read it in house. And then we have a graphic designer that lays everything out and takes care of the mailing for us. But we have a really great, extremely inexpensive, but high quality person that I would be happy to share with you guys too.
Jim Hacking
Awesome. I really liked the idea of you guys sort of staking your claim in Toledo and differentiating yourself from you said the big gorilla law firms that come from other markets, do you have language that you use to sort of point out either subtly or overtly about how you guys really are in Toledo and everybody else are just a bunch of posers?
Anneke Godlewski
That’s actually a good question, too. We try to focus on our clients and focus on giving and focus on you know, just everything except for us. So that message hasn’t always been portrayed. But I think that people understand the underlying idea that, Oh, wait a second, this guy really does like really is from here. So we focus more on, you know, Chuck was born and raised in Toledo. And that I know that that’s not necessarily a prerequisite to be a hometown attorney. Like you don’t necessarily have to grow up in the town that you practice in, but we kind of use that to our advantage. The fact that he he was born and raised here. He went to law school in Toledo. He went to undergrad, you know, 25 minutes outside of Toledo. You know, we’ve been practicing in Toledo. We are heavily involved in the schools because Chuck went to one of the high schools for TPS, little public schools. So it’s more focusing on the goodwill aspect of buying local, shopping, local, eating local. So use a local attorney like Chuck, I think that connection of everybody understands that if they can, the economy will do much better if you choose to shop at Ace Hardware or like a local is hardware that versus Home Depot. So if we can make that connection for them and like, show that it’s also important for the services that they you know, need like like lawyers, then that kind of helps to.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, let’s jump into to couple the programs, I guess, start with the TPS proud program talking about what it is and how do you how you do it. Okay, so
Anneke Godlewski
the way that we started TPS was Chuck goes to a tuck that he doesn’t go anymore. I’m sure he wishes he did. But he went to start high school and Toledo, Ohio. And start is one of nine high schools in the Toledo Public Schools district. So we decided that we would start with start, and we’re trying to figure out a way to get involved, but we didn’t want to just write them a check, because that’s usually one and done. And nobody really cares too much about it after that, the ink dries on the check. So we thought that maybe we could come up with some other way to interact with the students. And we came up with the idea of that student teacher appreciation, like just be at that idea. And then we’ve turned it into a student and teacher of the Month Contest. So how it works is we go into the schools at the beginning of the month, and we spend one day, one day’s worth of lunch periods as a school videographer Josh Nagle, and I go in, and we set up a camera on a tripod, and we announce to the students that they have a chance to win a $50 Visa gift card if they come up and tell us about a teacher that they appreciate. So it’s we just saw, Hey, guys, come on up. You can make a 22nd video about your favorite teacher, and there’ll be the opportunity to win $50 At the end of the month. So we ask these kids three things. One, what is it about that teacher that you like so much to what is one thing that that teacher has taught you that will stick with you for the rest of your life? And three, if you could tell them one thing, what would it be? And I kind of have to preface this with the fact that TPS is they’re not doing well, their graduation rates hover around 60 65% A lot of Toledo there’s a ton of poverty. After the whole auto crisis in Detroit, we really felt it hit hard because we make so many of the car parts for Detroit that it was just you know, things things aren’t that great thing here right now. So TPS is in the news a lot for you know, their their schools are failing or, you know, these kids, TPS students are fighting each other. Sadly, even. I mean, there’s some parts of the city that there’s gun violence, I mean, not a lot. But every once in a while you you’ll hear about it. So no one ever has anything really nice to say about TPS, which is kind of sad, because we’ve found a ton of stories within this those walls that definitely needs to be told. And that’s, I think, what it’s kind of morphed into. So we would go in, ask these kids to create 22nd videos, and we would come out with like, you know, 5060 videos of these kids saying wonderful things about their teachers. And if you can imagine, I mean, since budgets are always down, and since these kids are not often lazy, they’re kind of unruly, sometimes a lot of these teachers a don’t get the recognition that they deserve, but BS, maybe they don’t think that their students even care or pay attention. I mean, they’re just trying so hard to get them to even graduate that. I don’t know, I don’t think that they ever think that there’s a strong connection. But so we’ll leave there we have, you know, armed with 40, or 50, or 60s, depending on the school have videos of these kids saying wonderful things about their teachers. And these are like, teenagers, you know, who don’t really give a crap about other people in general, what most people think, you know, they don’t think that teenagers care about anyone but themselves. So we’ll download all those wearable and all those videos to YouTube, create a playlist, and then we would email them to the teachers and say, Hey, teachers, these 50 kids had wonderful things to say about you. Will you please nominate any of your students for teacher of the month. Now, out of those videos that we filmed, we would pick one of those, like one of the teachers that was talked about to be the teacher of the month. And then the teachers on the flip side are nominating students at the same time. So then we go into the school at the end of the month. And we have the student who created the video about their teacher, surprise, that winning teacher with $150 Visa gift card, like either in the classroom or some schools opt to do an assembly. And then on that same visit, we have the teacher that nominated the student go into that student’s classroom and surprise the student. And the student will win $150 gift card. And then as a little bonus, the kid who created the video about that winning teacher will also give him or her $50 Visa gift card as well. So $350 a month drop in the bucket compared to the $5,000 they could send on TV, but what the takeaway is, oh, and we also have Josh calm and film the whole thing, the surprise and everything, but you’re really uplifting. A kid who has a lot of things going against him and they probably don’t get a lot of recognition at home. They’re probably struggling as it is to even make it to school. You know, and then they hear the stories from the kids about the teachers and the teachers are like oh my gosh, I didn’t even know that my my students felt that way. I didn’t One teacher told me in tears, she was telling me that she was literally putting her two weeks in that afternoon. But she won, like that morning. So it was just, I don’t know, you’re kind of showing people, are you giving them the chance to open up and maybe say the things that they truly feel deep inside, but they just don’t know how to say it. So anyway, after we did this for two years, at start, we went to the superintendent of Toledo public schools, and I asked him if we could do it, district wide. And he kind of looked at me with a blank stares, like, I mean, I guess, but there’s no extra money. You know, like, that’s kind of what his eyes were telling me, like, I don’t know how we’re going to pay for this. And as soon as I told him that, you know, we’ll cover all the costs, we’ll cover the videographer, we’ll cover the visa gift cards, we’ll you know, manage it, run it, everything will advertise for it, he was totally on board. So then we chose to do it at each like, every month, we choose a different school. And since there’s nine schools that works out perfectly for the nine months of the school year, but we’ve gotten such great feedback and just had really amazing stories. And we’re coming up very soon, like this fall, we’ll probably be hitting 1000 videos. So we want to do something really great for TBS, and for the kids. And you know, we’ll tell the media about it too. But we always choose the winners based on story and not necessarily on you know, financial need, or whatever. I mean, it’s very easy to choose on story for the TPS proud program. But, you know, a lot of times, there’s really newsworthy stories, so we tell it, we send press releases, we tell the media about it. And a lot of times, they’ll show up with a camera crew, and they’ll record the whole thing. And so the teachers are happy, or the principals are happy and superintendents happy, because finally somebody is reporting on TPS schools in a really positive light instead of a negative one.
Jim Hacking
I think this is tremendous. What a great, great campaign, I got a little teary eyed when you were talking about the teacher who’s gonna quit and just the whole overall approach the thing, the thing that I like about all the marketing that you do the most, and I really come to believe that this is true is that you guys sort of get out of the way, you know, you’re over on the side of things. And the marketing is all about making heroes out of the students, or the teachers or your clients. I just think that people are savvy enough that if they want to find Chuck, boy, after experiencing one of your campaigns, it’s not too hard to find Chuck boy, so no one needs to be there. You know, like, Chuck doesn’t need to be there with a bullhorn at each teacher event, he’s probably not even there at all, for a lot of them. And it’s just, it’s just a great example of lawyers needing to get out of the way, shutting their mouths and letting other people do their marketing for them.
Anneke Godlewski
Exactly, exactly. And I think to that, that what you just said, proves the point that any attorney can do this, even if they are not like the touchy feely type attorney, I’ve encountered some lawyers who are just like, well, you know, I’m just not like that, you know, I’d rather be at trial and, and, or beating up on, you know, some prosecutor, like, just, you don’t even have to have a marketing director, it would have just, I don’t know, the kindest paralegal in your office. And that would give them a great reason to get out of the office for a couple of hours once a month and make kids smile. You know, it would be it’s not difficult to do, and you don’t have to be an attorney to do it.
Jim Hacking
Let’s go ahead and talk about the bicycle campaign. If you can explain that to our listeners, please.
Anneke Godlewski
Sure, of course. So we started bikes for kids in 2009. And we had just written a book called Little Kids big accidents at the time, it was all about child accidents, and what to do and how to prevent them. So we were trying to figure out a good way to promote it. But again, we didn’t want to talk about ourselves. So there was another firm somewhere that was they were giving out bicycle helmets. And we decided to just take it a step further and give out bikes. And I called up a local bike shop. And I said, Would you be willing to, you know, sell the bikes to us at cost or, you know, just a little over cost. And I’m, I’m pretty sure we get them at cost. But we give out 10 bikes every summer, and we about one every week of summer for 10 weeks. And you know, at first when we started out, we think we paired with a local radio station, and we produced a 15. Second, I think we did a 15 second commercial first, and we just told the radio station like, Hey, we’re gonna have stories of awesome kids who have done something not tremendous. How many tremendous things can a seven year old do? Well, I’ve witnessed quite a few tremendous things that a seven year old can do, but we always tell everyone nominating. The point is like, they don’t have to have done something extraordinary that changed the lives of 100 people, they just need to have done something that has positively impacted, you know, their own circle of life. So like, you know, their grandparents or their neighbors or whoever. So we’re trying to celebrate just ordinary kids doing extraordinary things and who are just keeping their heads down and, and chugging along and maybe overcoming some adversity or, you know, just it’s hard to be a kid and I don’t think a lot of people give kids enough credit. So we just wanted to figure out a way to celebrate them, I guess um, so people can visit our website, it’s bikes for kids toledo.com. All they have to do is tell us in 150 words or less what it is about that child that makes them deserving of a new bike. There’s no financial prerequisite at all. In fact, we don’t choose by some based on financial need whatsoever. So we’ve gotten just tons of amazing stories of kids that have done awesome, awesome things. Now, the media portion of things is, you know, year one, we paired with a radio station, year two, we’ve decided to take it a little bit further than that, and just asked TV stations were like, Hey, we have these kids. They’re doing great things. I know that you guys are always looking for positive things to report on instead of, you know, all the sad things that are happening in Rust Belt, Toledo, Ohio. So we just said, if you would be willing to run our commercials that we produce ourselves, with the help of our videographer, most stations will produce a commercial commercial for you. If you just ask they will do it for free. But we handed them a 15 second commercial and a 32nd. Commercial asked them for free airtime. And they have so many PSAs or public service announcements that they’re supposed to run so they are commercial fell under PSAs. And a lot of the stations now well, back then they didn’t really as much. But now they’ll offer banner ads, you know, or digital ads. So they give us free digital ads, they give us free airtime. And then we’ve also negotiated to have the child on some type of morning show. Like in this year’s instance, it’s WTO LLS, which is a local CBS affiliate does the morning show called The your day. It’s sort of like a local Good Morning America. So we’ve negotiated to have the child on that show every week. And we’ve also reserve the right to send a press release out on the kids story to all the other stations as well. So like I’ll give you an example of how it works this year. We have do like giveaways on Tuesdays at 230. We chose that day in time because it’s the best news day, or I guess the slowest news time so we increases our chances of getting other reporters from the other stations there. And then we asked the parents and the nominators to keep it a surprise for the child. Child shows up, we get them on camera. And again, we have our videographer go everywhere with us. Like I can even explain that another time. But he does like mediation videos he does virtually captures virtually everything because I think everybody understands that video is so important. But videographer shows up, we film the child’s like, awesome surprise face. And this year, we even had some kids cry. I mean, like legitimately get all teary eyed because they’ve been so happy to win this bike. And I think too, you see more tears, not necessarily when they see the bicycle, but when they hear the reason why they’re nominated, which is so awesome. I love my job. So we do the bike giveaway reporters, get interviews with the kids, our videographer gets it interviews with the kids, or chat with you know, with the kid. And then the next day on WTO. We go on and the kid gets their very own, you know, seven to eight minute segment on what they did. And why the nominator nominated them. And it’s it’s usually the nominator and the child who’s on TV. And then I’ll sit there to just to kind of help in case the kid gets a little camera shy. I tried to not be on one time, and the producer was like, No, you have to be there. Please, please be there just because we can. Like I can help you buffer in case the child forgets what to say or is just too shy to say anything. And then we also make sure to like we send the press release out either Monday night or Tuesday morning. And almost every time we get the big three stations there because again, we choose stories of kids that are really newsworthy, and we feel that are going to are going to connect with people. But the videographer, Josh will send all of our footage, like all of his video footage to every news station anyway. So like just in case, you know, if it’s a busy news week or something and a reporter from a certain station can’t be there, we still give them the footage and we or if they ask for photographs also send them photographs, but usually it’s its video footage. That way we can have one more chance to get on the nightly news about that. So press release. kid shows up surprised by their bike, you know, everybody’s all happy and teary eyed. And then the next day we go on the news. So we have just tons of opportunities for photographs and for storytelling and for videos and for you know, then you get the the links to all the media stuff too. And it’s just everybody feels good. You’re making new friends on Facebook because of course you’re gonna be friends, the nominator and the parents and then they’re going to share the video with their grandparents and they’re going to share the video with their teachers and their aunts and uncles and cousins. So you can imagine the type of tension it generates and all the goodwill and the like that, I mean, I know I posted as an example to the Facebook group about the little girl who beat stage four neuroblastoma. I mean, you can’t feel any better than that, and sharing it with the staff and sharing it with, like the people in, in your own circles, it just, it has a very profound impact. And I know I’m getting a little teary eyed because I don’t think that people really truly realize how every single person has the power to make a difference. And it’s just letting go of, like insecurities and letting go of, well, you know, maybe no, excuse me, maybe nobody’s gonna pay attention, and maybe nobody cares. And you know, this program isn’t gonna make me any money. And you know, well, what’s the return on investment, it’s like, stop thinking in terms of dollars, and the dollars will flood in. So I don’t know, we just, we just get such good feedback on it. And it’s made such a difference in the firm and how people view us and how we are so now easily able to connect with anyone, like any type of client coming in, whether or not we’ve had experience with like, their exact type of personal situation. You know, we’ve seen it all. And so we’ve seen a lot of extra things, because of the community marketing that we’ve decided to do. And it’s helped us to connect with our clients.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright. Annika, you have provided a ton of great information. And I’ve got a lot of other questions. But you mentioned something that I really want to talk about now is really talked about, you know, giving back and people want to know what the return on investment is, and all that. And I get the impression from listening to you and listening to chuck, you will live by the Go Giver principle. So when you talk a little bit more about that, because I get the impression, you will really don’t care about the ROI, you really more care more about giving back. So we talked about the Go Giver principles and how you will live while so
Anneke Godlewski
I think the mentality is and Chuck has, I think he adopted this from Sammy Chong, who was a life coach out of Toronto, fantastic, fantastic man. But he’s always taught us to give without expecting anything in return. And I am 100% not suggesting that you just go out and you waste Money and you not pay attention to you know, where your calls are coming from and how money’s coming in. And no, you do have to pay somewhat of attention to it. So you don’t, you know, just waste all your money. But I think that people are able to connect better when they realize that you are not in it for your own game. Because everyone like Chuck always says you want to do business with people that you like and trust. And it’s really hard to trust someone who’s always talking about themselves. Because if you have to talk about yourself all the time to prove your worth, then it’s hard to trust you. And it might leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, because they don’t necessarily know whether or not you’re trying to prove something or whether or not like, there’s some sort of thing that you’re worried about, like maybe you’re insecure about your own stuff, like I don’t know. But I think that we’ve just always tried to focus on other people. And it’s allowed them to really, really believe in what we’re trying to do. Because at the end of the day, I mean, we tried to take care of people who have been injured in catastrophic events. And that is such a vulnerable time for people, they’re not able to work, they have medical bills like crazy, you know, a lot of them are still stuck in the hospital or stucking. They’re stuck in nursing homes, or no, they don’t know what to do, they don’t know where to turn, their family doesn’t know what to do. And if anything, the families have it even a little bit harder, because they’re trying to take care of all of the responsibilities and obligations that they have in their own households plus take care of the injured person plus take care of you know, the unknown of what’s going to happen six months down the road when I can’t get back to work. So we are trying to make ourselves as approachable as possible. Because we know how scary it is for people. I mean, I hate to say this, but maybe we’re that’s sort of another underlying theme is that we’re trying to change this idea. But everybody’s heard the ambulance chaser jokes. You know, they think that personal injury attorneys are, I don’t know, just not genuine, or they’re just in all the media has made this bad too. And, you know, movies and stuff that personal injury attorneys are only after money. And we’re trying to change that stigma. Because we don’t want your case just so that we can make a huge, you know, 33 and a third percent fee, we want your case because we want you to get back to health and the sooner that we can get you back to health with the help of your doctors and the help of getting the insurance company to pay what they are, you know, that client is entitled to, the sooner that you can get out working, the sooner you can contribute to the community and the sooner that you can get your life back. Well. Just think about it. If you fell on the street and you could not get out because you broke your ankle or something and you had one person walked by or another person walked by a third person, maybe the third person He’s like, I’ll help you out for five bucks. And then the fourth guy walks by and he’s like, let me pick you up, let me take you to the hospital or not necessarily take you to the hospital, like, let me call your wife or whoever and actually gives you some help so that you can get on with your day. Who would you really want to call back? Would you want to call the guy that asked you for five bucks just to help you out? I know, you’re gonna call guy number four, because he’s the one that you know, helped you without expecting anything. So if this guy who funded this is really bad analogy, is I hear myself saying it. But so like, let’s just say your friend falls on the sidewalk, too. And he needs some help. Are you going to tell him to call the $5? guy are you going to tell him to call the guy that helped without getting anything in return? So I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that, you know, the more and more we do this, the more friends that we make, and the more you know, people trust us and the more referrals will end up coming in. And that’s where so much of our client base has been directed from his repeat referrals and repeat clients.
Jim Hacking
We’re wrapping up today with Annika good Lucy Annika so much great practical information placement. I always say this is the best podcast ever. But I think this was definitely the most practical podcast, we’ve had a two quick follow up questions for you before we wrap up. One was, when you talk about the videos that you’re doing for the students and the schools, do you have a separate YouTube channel? Are you are you sending people to your website? And then the other question was, tell us a little bit about the videographer, if you could.
Anneke Godlewski
His name is Josh Nagel, and he is fantastic. And he can just tell these stories through film that, I mean, everyone in the office, we always, you know, just get all teary eyed every time we see his stuff. But Josh does a fantastic job. And he really has an eye for really pulling the emotion out of all the different situations. Now, I will say for the people who don’t have a full time videographer, or maybe somebody who doesn’t have a marketing director at all, and they’re like, wait, I had to get a marketing director and I have to get a videographer, this is gonna cost me a fortune you can easily do I mean, I’ve seen some awesome videos that he shot even from his iPhone. So I mean, he is a professional videographer, he does have professional equipment. But I don’t want anybody to think that it’s a prerequisite for trying to do any of these programs. But having a videographer there, or at least someone to capture what’s going on is kind of the key that holds this whole thing together and really helps people on the outside visualize what’s going on, because you know why it works so well. And then so we have a Carlsberg Law Offices YouTube channel that we have everything on it. We have different playlists for different situations, you know, like in the news or bikes for kids or TPS proud. But for the most part, what we’ll do is embed those playlists on our site, and then send everyone to our site to view everything. So like, for instance, when we film all these kids is videos, we give them a little paper card that says to view your video visit TPS proud.com. And then if they visit TPS product calm that goes to our site, and then they can view the videos that are embedded on our site already. So at the end of the day, I mean, all of these programs and all these marketing efforts, we always want to try to drive people back to our site, because obviously, the more traffic the better. Plus, there’s another facet to the bikes for Kids program, that I didn’t mention that we are trying so hard to get other businesses around us to help with nominations, which is a really easy, great way to get people to link to our website. So you know, you have to go to bike circus Phyllida, which is a URL that just forwards directly to our site. But you know, how easy would that be to go to some businesses and just say, Hey, will you please help us tell the stories of amazing kids and so we can give them a free bike, like who isn’t going to link to our site, you know, because the more stories the better. So that’s kind of another way to get really reputable links from other places. And then Toledo public schools, of course, loves everything that we’re doing and they link to our site too, because they want to share on their website everything, all the good things and all the good stories that are coming out of the mouths of their kids.
Tyson Mutrux
All right Annika this has been incredible but we do at the wrap it up so I want to get to Jimmy’s hack of the week when he got Jimmy
Jim Hacking
icon this year when you and I attended I signed up for appointment core and integrates with Infusionsoft. It’s been fantastic for us. As far as allowing people to schedule and reschedule things themselves. It’s also eliminated the need for us to call and remind people about their appointments so if you’re not using online scheduling Calendly or appointment core, or one of the other ones I really suggested it’s it’s just really cut down on a lot of our busy work and automated a lot of that stuff.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I use appointment core as well. I do think it’s really great. I think there’s a lot of cool things you can use with a lot of cool tools you can use and if people are this daring, they can even put it on their website and let people book appointments with you from the website. I’m not that daring, but there’s definitely some great benefits from it. We’re gonna get to Annika tip in a moment, but before I do, I want to remind everyone to go to iTunes, give us a five star review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts also thanks Have you checked out on Facebook, join our Facebook group, a lot of great interaction going on there. Monica provides a lot of good information and tips as well on Facebook page, make sure you go there. But Monica, I understand that you have a tip of the week as well.
Anneke Godlewski
I do. So I think we all know I am so happy that you said the thing about the five star reviews because I think we all know how important those are. And one way that we went to virtually no reviews to I don’t know, I think we have like 150 Some in less than a year is by having somebody every person that comes into your office usually check Signing Time or check pickup time, have them fill out a paper survey with very specific questions that will involve, like any other answers would make a great review. And I can share this with those who can share some examples with you guys to share on their Facebook page, but haven’t a lot of paper survey asked questions that would evoke a really good review. And then after they answer the last question, which is Do you mind, if we make this into an online review, ask them if they would be willing to pull out their phone and leave a review right from their phone. As long as they’re not connected to the Wi Fi, Google won’t punish you or anything or penalize you or whatever, have them pull up Google Maps, type in your law firm address, pull it up on Google Maps and have them leave a five star review right then and there. It has been so easy, you don’t have to deal with links, you don’t have to deal with, you know, hounding them later, whatever. And nine times out of 10 people are more than happy to do it for you,
Tyson Mutrux
Monica, that’s a really, really good information for my tip of the week. Previously, I had talked about blogging from your phone, that way you can provide good content. I actually just found over the weekend, a WordPress app. And the WordPress app actually lets you post to multiple websites that you own that are your domains, then you can add posts, you can add pages, whatever it may be, it’s actually anassa also allows you to track some of the data viewers visit to your labs and things like that. So I want to wrap it up for the week. Thank you very much Annika for all the help you’ve given me since Friday. I mean, you’ve been very helpful. I really appreciate it, getting my bikes for Kids program going. And I also just want to thank you for coming on the podcast, you provide a lot, a lot of great information.
Anneke Godlewski
Thanks for having me.
Jim Hacking
There’s nothing that Monica has talked about that is outside of any of our abilities. This is a total example of, you know, real practical, hands on things that we can do. If you’re not doing these things. It’s only because you’re choosing not to there’s nothing overly complicated and it’s an amazing set of programs, but it’s something we all can implement. So let’s get out there and do it.
Anneke Godlewski
Thank you. No problem. Thank you guys.
