In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Tom Copeland, the marketing director with Craig Goldenfarb, a very successful plaintiff attorney in Florida. They will go over Tom’s career, his role at the firm and his marketing strategies.
Craig’s firm: https://www.800goldlaw.com/
Check it out! http://www.sevenfigureattorney.com/
Hacking’s hack: A book! Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost Into Profit, by Joe Paluzzi.
And their blog! http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/
Tom’s tip: A book! Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell.
And anything about Seth Godin! http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/
Tyson’s tip: Also a book! Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials), by James C. Collins.
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Transcripts: Bob Burg: The Go Giver
Tom Copeland
I would just give the advice if you don’t understand how it works, you probably don’t need to roll some dice on it. You know, don’t put your money on it if you don’t fully understand it. Run your law firm the right way.
Unknown Speaker
This is the maximum layer podcasts, rely upon 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. And I’m testing metrics before I send my friend, I’m excited about our guest today. His name is Tom Copeland. He’s the marketing director with Craig Goldfarb, who’s a very, very successful plaintiff’s attorney down in Florida. I attended last year’s seven figure summit that Craig and Tom and his team put on. And I’ve really come to admire what Craig has built and what Tom is able to do as marketing director. So Tom, welcome to the show. Well, thanks,
Tom Copeland
guys. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me here. It’s good to talk to you again. I know last time we talked was was at the summit in March. So happy to reconnect with you guys. Thanks for inviting me on.
Tyson Mutrux
All right sounds to tell people what you do and how you got hooked up with Craig and what your role is for sure.
Tom Copeland
So as marketing director, I guess I should qualify our firm a little bit. So Craig started his firm about 15 years ago. This is our 15th year anniversary, he’s got a pretty interesting story. He has a mentor who we work with first in Miami, plaintiff’s attorney, mentor, and he kind of followed that model and kind of made it his own. Over the course of 15 years, Craig started with one employee. And we actually just hired our 52nd employee this past week. His name is Curtis page, and he happens to be our digital marketing manager. So that’s a pretty cool thing that I’d like to talk about, too, if you think that you guys would be interested in that a little later. So the way that I came with Craig, though, is that I was actually a freelancer for a couple of years at a College, University of Florida go Gators, for anybody who’s listening. And I started my own freelancing career. And my whole background is in web development, design and SEO. So I kind of created a little niche for myself where I was working with attorneys. And quite simply, attorneys are people who, in my eyes, at that time, had the money to spend, they understood that they needed to spend the money in the marketing. And so it was usually a pretty easy sell. So that’s really just what happens. And I ended up working for doing some work for a couple of different attorneys who introduced me to Craig or Craig had somehow kind of heard of me, and we kind of had a couple of quick meetings and it moves really fast. Craig wanted to bring you on full time. And we went back and forth for a couple of days. But I eventually took it I took his offer. And it’s been great. That was four years ago, that was 2013, May of 2013. I took the leap of faith and love freelancing. And I’m so glad I did. I really have a home here. And Craig’s just a wonderful guy. So yeah, couldn’t be happier.
Jim Hacking
Craig is a wonderful guy, and you and he and his team have built a really great practice. Tom, explain to our listeners a little bit just about the scope of Craig’s building his practice, sort of how big it is and how the team works?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, sure. So. So really interesting, this firm has gone through some incredible transformations over the four years that I’ve been here. Craig is a hard worker. He’s a dedicated worker. He’s a great lawyer, very, very sharp businessman. And he’s got some marketing acumen behind him as well. But the one thing that we really kind of struggle with early on was that Craig’s the type of guy who tries to do a little too much, right, he tries to do a little, he’s got his hands on a little bit of everything. And he started to even realize that he was trying to do too much. So what he did that I think was really smart is that he diversified the responsibilities and brought on some really smart people to start heading up some different departments. And when I started the marketing department, it was just me, it was one person, only me. And what we did was we took it, we looked at the roles and responsibilities in marketing. If you think about it, we could break it down a couple of things. First, we’re selling, we’re marketing, our law firm, our brand, and our services, our legal services. But then underneath that same umbrella, we also have to, you know, meet our clients expectations and meet their needs when they have them. So we also developed a client relations, we also develop a client relations office within within the marketing department that’s run by a girl named Casey was fantastic. She’s been with us, she was about a year before me. So that kind of rounded out the two main parts of the marketing department. But then also, we realized at some point, it doesn’t make sense for me to be doing graphic design, because it’s not my strong suit. Why don’t we hire a graphic designer. So we did, we brought on a junior graphic designer out of college. And then as I said, just this past week, the last piece of the puzzle that we hadn’t filled yet was the digital marketing manager. And this is somebody who handles all things digital, so handling a website SEO pay per click, social media, and branding online. So we hired that person and that effectively created an in house what what I basically described as an in house marketing agency, because everything is handled in house. Now that was the last piece of the puzzle. That was the last thing that we were using an agency for. So now that it doesn’t Stop there, Craig also been very smart and made some really great investments in the last couple of years as well into his litigation department. So our litigation department is headed up by a gentleman named Spencer kuvin, who is an excellent and reputable plaintiff’s lawyer. He’s been with us for a couple of years. And then this is really where it all ties in. The last great hire that he did was Michelle Winfrey, who happens to be our legal administrator, who manages all things admin. So he’s got some smart people running in the most important parts of this law firm. And that’s really just his ability to be able to spot talent, and bring talent on with that talent, you know, run their own ship.
Tyson Mutrux
Most attorneys contract things out, like digital marketing manager, like SEO, things like that. Why do you all do in house?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, no, great question, I’m definitely happy to talk about it. So realizing, of course, that bringing things in house are more expensive, it seems. But you know, the first thing is, is that it may not be more expensive. So if you think about it, we were able to offset the amount of money that we were paying to an agency to handle our website and all of our pay per click, we’re able to offset that costs by bringing somebody in so you know, at the salary ranges that the digital marketing manager, for example, comes in, you’re already offsetting 25 to 30% of it right off the bat, or even more, I think, I think we even end up often with maybe 50 or 60% of it by bringing somebody in house. So first of all, the cost is not necessarily as prohibitive as you might think. The second thing is that I would say that it’s it’s buy in, it’s just buying. So I’m gonna brag real fast about the culture, because this does tie into the idea of bringing somebody on board in house. So we really kind of went from a culture of what you might consider to be your most typical law firm, right? So we’ve got a couple of senior partners, and then you’re kind of full of and then the rest of your staff are legals secretaries, and reception and such. And when Craig came on board, he’s kind of an old school guy, you know, he’s kind of the guy that if he sees one of his employees on the phone, you know, on the cell phone, doing something real fast, he kind of immediately thinks like, was that the wrong person to hire, we have totally flipped that around that is totally different from where we are now. And it’s really, it’s really a result of Michelle, and Michelle came from Disney, actually, she was in telecom and Disney for years. So what she was able to bring into this firm is really just a turn a turn around in culture, and a culture of trust, and a culture of family and a culture of relationship building and team building. So by bringing somebody in house, you’re getting that buy in from them, you’re getting them to buy into our culture and who you are. And as a result, it’s going to show through in the work product, with an agency, you know, the frustrations of an agency, you’ve got to constantly call them, you got to constantly send them emails, asking them do this, do that, that goes away. Because when you hire the right digital marketing manager, they are able, they are a manager, like right there, that’s the most important thing, they manage their own workflow, they manage their own products, they manage their own production. So we bring on this digital marketing manager who did just start with us. He’s he’s pretty fantastic so far. And really, there hasn’t been much training, you know, the all the training has really just been in helping to understand who we are in the marketplace, the services we provide, and what we like to do, you know, some of the strategies that I’ve been using online in terms of SEO, and pay per click, and then let him run with it, let him take it, let him create his own ideas, let him create his own campaigns, let him create his own production. And so the time spent, I guess, is the biggest the biggest benefit is, is the time that’s eliminated, and going back and forth. And speaking with a third party vendor, the elimination of that it’s got to be worth its weight in gold. It’s kind of what we’re betting on.
Jim Hacking
What would you say to someone who’s thinking about hiring a marketing director? What are the skill sets or the characteristics that a law firm that sees themselves growing and are thinking about hiring someone to be devoted just to marketing for the firm? What would what should they be looking for?
Tom Copeland
So I love this question. I love getting asked this question because I do get asked it often. So my big thing that I love to tell everybody is that when it comes to a really great marketing person, I’m using marketing as a very general term here, when it comes to a really great marketing person, there are always going to have one of two very different skill sets. Okay, first one is graphic design, you’ve got an eye for design, you’ve got an eye for laying out graphics for laying out colors, or visualizing and creating visual pieces. So that might be somebody who can come in and create some beautiful print marketing collateral for you, let’s say if you’re if you’re a corporate law firm, or if you’re doing corporate law, or real estate law, you know, maybe print collateral is something that’s that’s really important to you bring on that graphic designer, somebody who has just the background in graphic design, they don’t necessarily have to be a graphic designer, but that’s their core competency is graphic design. So that’s kind of like the first box is you’re either a graphic designer, or very generally speaking again, you’re a writer. Graphics are right. Those are the two main base skill sets that any great marketer has. And I think if you think about that and start to think about some of the great markers that you know, you might be able to place them in a bucket one of the others Because the thing is, is that the other responsibilities that come with being a marketing director, they can all blend into one of those two things if you’re a really, really great writer, than doing SEO and creating web content and creating search engine marketing content, okay, and doing the kind of content that you need to do to like, become a thought leader, for example, in publishing content and getting it out there. That’s where the writer comes into place. The graphic designer comes into place when it comes out to laying out all of your all of your graphics and your branding and making sure that you have a cohesive brand, not only offline, but online as well. And vice versa. So that’s the best advice I always like to give when you’re interviewing somebody, if you’re thinking on bringing on a marketing person, just ask yourself first and foremost, what is it that I would want first? Do I want a writer? Do I care about SEO does like do I care about pay per click? Do I care about online advertising? Do I care about social media, that’s your writer, if that’s not what you need, if you’re thinking, we have a nice website, we have all that what I need is I need somebody who can come in and who can create really stunning, fantastic visuals for me, create great PowerPoints, create a print collateral, like we talked about with the brochures and flyers and folders, then you want to look for that graphic designer. And then what you do is you fill the rest of the pieces in because anybody who’s good at any one of those two things can do the other thing, just not as well. It’s the core competency that matters, identifying what the core competency is, and then hiring for that.
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, I’m just so curious, like what your day looks like. So let’s say you walk in the office this morning. Assume you’re not doing a podcast, what is your day? Like?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, yeah, cool. So my day is pretty fantastic. Man, I do love my day. So I will come in. And I will generally kind of assess the day, there are some people out there that make the argument that you shouldn’t check your emails throughout the day. I mostly agree with that I don’t. But what I do like to do is the first thing I like to do is just go through the emails, and just see it helps me prioritize what needs to happen today. So I like to do that. That’ll help me figure out if I need to be putting the digital marketing manager on this particular campaign that we talked about making sure that he’s following through the things that we spoke about the day before that week, also, with the graphic designer that we have on house, making sure that she’s fulfilling all of the responsibilities that have been placed on her. And that might be something from me, it might be something from a digital marketing manager might be something from client relations, or it might be something from any of the other 50 staff, we have attorneys paralegals, they’re always looking for different pieces of marketing materials that they either need to, you know, reorder or restock up on, or maybe it’s a new idea for something. So it’s a lot of managing, I mean, a lot of my day is now we’re structured in a way where I’m doing less of the actual work. And I’m more managing the workflows in the work processes, which really is perfect for me for a couple of reasons, I can obviously do the work. And I have been doing the work up to the point where we started hiring more people into the marketing department. But I’m more of a big picture visual guy on the 30,000 foot view guy. So if I get wrapped up into creating a landing page for the firm, and then spending all day on it. So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to be the guy who’s doing the building of the landing page that day that we want to build makes a whole lot more sense for me to just manage that process of our digital marketing manager doing it. So that’s most of my day. I’m also consulted with a lot throughout the day with other attorneys. So one of the things that we’ve also been able to do with having an in house marketing partner, is we actually help the attorneys create really powerful PowerPoints and visuals and presentations for their critical mediations. So imagine a big case, like a big important case that’s coming up a death case, for example, we create powerful visuals for those mediations. And we have seen success and defense attorneys coming to mediations with one number in mind. And then they see that PowerPoint in that video and what we create, where it’s just it’s raw, and it’s emotional. And they see what we create. And they get back on their phones with their bosses and say we need more money. So we’ve seen it happen. It’s really cool. It’s really fun. And that’s just something that comes along with being able to have an in house marketing department that you may not think about, you know, if you didn’t have them. So it’s a lot of consulting with a lot of attorneys as well. And I’m actually you know, going back to that quick conversation about, you know, do you hire the graphic designer, do you hire the writer, I’m actually the writer, that’s the bucket I fall into. So I do spend some my day writing. We do our newsletters, of course. All right, all of that content. I enjoy writing content for the website, I enjoy rewriting content and creating new content for the website and also doing this thought leader pieces for all of our different attorneys. We have six of them, actually. So at any given time, you know, we might be pushing one of them through to the web, you know, we might be pushing one of them through as a thought leader on some something. So my day it’s a long one. It’s definitely long and it definitely starts early. But it’s really a matter of the day is spent managing processes and managing workflows for the entire team here in the marketing department. We’re talking with Tom Copeland he’s the marketing director for attorney Craig Golden Fox. Are and Tom, what kind of metrics or key performance indicators do
Jim Hacking
you guys track of where your cases are coming from? And what might be an unexpected tip or ideas our listeners might not know about as far as where cases can come from?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, great question. So the way that we track our metrics, it’s kind of holistic. And then it’s kind of quantitative, it’s a little bit about So very simply the processes that we ask our clients, when they call our, I guess, our leads, when they call for the first time, they’re asked by our intake coordinators, which is another separate department for intake, all they do is just phone calls in and they ask, it’s really that simple. Now, once they ask, we mark that down in our system, and then when we get them to come in and sign some paperwork, when we go to them to sign paperwork, we actually ask them again, and a lot of times, they don’t even realize that they get asked twice, they don’t even realize it. And that comes through, because that’s evidence because they might give two different answers, they might say TV on one, and they might see why found on the web on the other. Now, here’s the cool part. That’s kind of the holistic part. The cool part is that, because the majority of our leads do come from the web, I have all kinds of tracking systems and operations in place to sort of follow them around, so to speak. So very simply, we use a lot of different tracking numbers, I’ll actually use different tracking numbers for different campaigns in the web. So the website has a specific number, Facebook page has a specific number, Google, my business has a specific number, you see where I’m going. And then we actually have a system here in house that does track phone calls in an out. So that’s most of what happens if we kind of take the holistic approach. And we kind of take the analytical approach and put it together, you know, key performance measures that we really care about. So I got a list of probably, or maybe 12 of them that have kind of developed their proprietary in the sense of, I sort of thought them through and work them through, and they work for us, and they give me some insight, I’ll give you an example. So what I call our conversion rate is very simply put, it’s all the cases that we’ve accepted for the month divided by all of the leads, very simple. It’s just telling you how many people that call in actually signed paperwork and became clients. But I take a little bit deeper. I’ll also check into it three months later or so. And I want to see which one of those cases dropped out. Which one do we dismiss? Or which cases do we discharge? Because of some insurance issue or something? And then we try to see, is there a pattern there? Is there a pattern with people that were dismissing? And we found patterns, we’ve actually found patterns and insurance defense companies, you know, we see like, certain certain companies, we obviously, we end up discharging, so that’s one of them. And I call that the effective conversion ratio, I actually go back and I look at okay, so we had, however many cases left that month. Now, how many are still in house, that’s an effective conversion ratio. Like I said, I probably got 12 others to that we kind of look at on a regular basis. And then we look at everything from Google Analytics. And we get real deep into Google Analytics. And then we get into Google Tag Manager. And we actually have, I might get a little technical here. So I’ll be careful about that. We actually have our website loaded up in a way to where anything that happens on the website, we know what’s happened with it. And we know what you’ve done before you call our tracking number. So I know what pages you’ve been to, I know how long you spent on those pages, I can even tell I can get down to even more granular I can get down to where you click, you don’t necessarily go that granular. But we may, you know as we bring on a new digital marketing manager where he might be able to do that something. As far as unexpected goes, I’ll tell you what we look at the breakdown of all of our different referral sources. And some of them like we said, we’re web some or TV. And then a lot of them are referred by other people. That’s a really, really important category. So if you think about your category of referred by current or former clients, what you’re basically saying is somebody has vouched and said, I use this law firm, and they referred it’s actually a current or former client, it’s actually a former client, who referred a new case to us, that is one of the most important referral sources for us to track, mostly because we want to know, it gives us an idea of what our sentiment is, among our current former clients, are they happy, you know, of current or former clients as referral sources high for a particular stretch of a couple of months, that’s really, really good. If it’s really, really low, we might need to look at something, unfortunately, it hasn’t really been very low, it’s actually been the opposite. We just keep watching it go up, which is fantastic. But also importantly, is that we’re using the whole when you get that when you’re getting a lot of referrals by other people, specifically about current or former clients, what you’re doing is you’re being told that you guys got the whole package, you’ve got the marketing in place, you’ve got the actual work on the case in place, because they’re happy with the work that you’re doing on the case. And then at the exit, and when the case is over and finished, you’ve made that impression on them. So we watched that one very, very closely. And ironically enough, we don’t spend $1 on it, right? I mean, we don’t spend a penny on it. That’s our one referral source that is totally free and totally organic. But it becomes a really, really important one. So I’d really encourage anybody out there who’s listening. Don’t just think about the kind of referrals you’re getting Don’t just think about, you know, am I getting a lot of referrals? actually get in there and find out if you can find out? How many referrals are we getting from current or former clients? And not only that, it’s really important to watch the trends, we don’t really care. You know, you can look right now it’s your one month, but what is your one month mean, if you got 20% of your cases referred to by current and former clients? What does that mean? If not compared to all other months? So not just doing it one time, that’s not really enough, I’m really gonna tell you anything it’s doing over the course of time to spot the trends.
Tyson Mutrux
I’ve got a interesting question for you. So it may take a second to think about it. So take your time if you need to. So want you to go back to your days as a freelancer and pretend that a new attorney just started the new firm? And she she says, I’ve got $1,000 to spend? How do I use it? What advice do you give her?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, that’s a fun question. That’s the kind of question that gets me excited to be in marketing, especially in legal marketing. So what do you do with the $1,000? Well, you know what I say that there’s a lot you can do with it, to be honest. But let me give you a really, really simple ones that I know, works. And this might surprise your listeners, this might surprise you guys out there, I would take that $1,000. And I would say don’t hire me. Don’t hire me. Here’s what you should do with that $1,000. Instead, go through your Rolodex, start making some calls to some friends, family, partners, colleagues, vendors, everybody that you can think of that could potentially refer a case to you, and take that $1,000 and break it up over the course of the next six months. And make a plan to invite people out to lunch, take that $1,000 and spend it on lunch with people get face to face, there is nothing that’s going to create a quicker and more robust return on your investment. They’re getting face to face with people, again, so long as you do it over the course of let’s say six months. So I will take that $1,000. And I would do the math real fast to find out, you know, how much can you spend per day on a lunch? And if it turns out that you can you know, your average lunches, maybe 40 bucks, okay, great. So $40, and then break that out over six months. And maybe that might mean that two times a week, you’re gonna be going to lunch with somebody, somebody that you don’t know is the key, don’t go out with your friends, don’t go out with your wife, go out with somebody you don’t know, or you just have a very casual acquaintance relationship with. But the key is if somebody has showed interest in you, somebody’s shown interest in your work, and at least knows you well enough to accept the lunch from you, right? At least knows you well enough to say, of course, let’s go out for lunch, let’s talk. And then what you do is you make that ask at some point lunch, when it’s going well, you make that ask towards the end, you say, Look, I’m looking for referrals, we really want to build up a referral business. If you know, anybody who needs a lawyer, please think of me, you just got to make the ask. It’s really that simple. It doesn’t have to be weird. It doesn’t have to be aggressive. It can be very casual. And it can be that simple. But the point is that you make the ask. So funny enough, that’s what I would do, I wouldn’t put $1 into that I wouldn’t put $1 That $1,000 to anything digital marketing, I wouldn’t, because a it’s not going to go very far. And be fairly, you’re only competing with anybody else out there who’s only spending $1,000 on digital marketing, which is nobody. So therefore, it doesn’t make sense to do that. I would say build some face to face relationships, and get back to some old school tactics of just getting in front of people and just getting your face out there.
Jim Hacking
Let’s flip that around a little bit. Has there been a marketing tactic or trick that you thought for sure was gonna really work well, and it just sort of fell flat?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, there has been and I’m gonna share the biggest one with you guys. So you definitely heard of geo targeting, quote, unquote, geo targeting. I know your listeners, have you guys have seen this before. It’s the idea that wherever you go with your mobile phone, wherever you go with your mobile phone, you get sort of marked and you get sort of fenced in, so to speak, like a digital fence on you. And you can have ads served to you during that time. Okay, here’s the thing. I don’t see how this has any bearing whatsoever in personal injury law now and other types of law. Yeah, maybe immigration, for example, Jim, for you, you know, you might be able to identify some physical locations, were a geo targeting anybody who happens to be in that in that location, you know, maybe may see your ad, for example. I don’t know what that would be. But I bet if you thought about it, you’d be able to come up with a few of them. But for personal injury law, it’s just it’s not there. Because frankly, anybody can get into an accident, anybody can fall, anybody can get into a car accident, and anybody can become the victim of negligent death or nursing home, which those are the four things. So we don’t really have anything to geo target. I mean, I’ve tried actually geo targeting nursing homes, but what I’ve found is that it’s not very effective, because it’s just it’s not intelligent enough, the technology is not intelligent enough, this technology has no way to no way to differentiate between, you know, an employee of that location and somebody who happens to be in that location. Furthermore, there are some things about geo tagging that people don’t tell you that a lot of people don’t understand. One of the most important things is that it’s not like your phone is just always giving off a beacon. It doesn’t work like that your phone is not just like this constantly on Beacon that’s just peeping out your location where you go, it’s not like that. What ends up happening with technology works is that throughout the day, different apps on your phone are taking snapshots of where you are, it’s a blip. Think of it like a click, it’s just a click, where are you at right now? It just marked your location. Now, some time goes by, at some point later on the day, boom, it takes another click, where are you at now? And what it does is it does that to create a picture of your day, so to speak. Does that make sense? So it’s looking to see where you’ve been all day. And then the systems the algorithms make a determination on okay, if they were at this place, which is new, they’ve never been there before, you know, might go into that bucket. But they were at this one location that we’ve seen them be at for lots and lots of hours at a time. So that must be home, or that must be work. But it doesn’t necessarily know exactly where you’re at. Now the technology is getting better, it’s starting to get better start to get to the point where you can say, I want to target everybody who has been to an Autozone in the last 3030 days, you know, Autozone retail shops. I don’t know if you guys have that up there. And if that’s the case, great put them into this bucket when they serve some apps to them. But the biggest fallacy I’ve seen in that the technology is just not quite there. Number one, and number two. The other problem with this is that there are so many companies out there that do this stuff. And I don’t know if any of them actually to it. So we actually do it in house because I also have a background in programmatic buying. So we’ve been doing geo targeting, I’ve been doing it myself for about two years. And I really have yet to see anything real concrete or solid come out of it. Because a I think the technology is not quite sophisticated enough. Yes. And be the expense is ridiculous. And I’m cutting out the middleman. I’m doing myself, I’m going straight to the to the marketplaces for these things and buying them for the firm. I don’t use I don’t use an agency. So it’s even less than others. And I’m still not really seeing a return on it. So I don’t know what you what your experience has been with that guys. Do you guys have any experience with the geo targeting thing?
Tyson Mutrux
I’ve not done any geo targeting. What about you, Jimmy?
Jim Hacking
No, I haven’t.
Tom Copeland
Yeah, you know, it’s just it’s so new. But But let me ask you this, though. have you guys gotten the emails from like firms soliciting to tell you that? You know, we do geotargeting? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. All the time. Right. And how many different companies? What 456 of them? It seems like every week I get a new email from a different company I’ve never heard of right. Never heard of them. But they’re telling me that they got geotargeting products for me. And I don’t know, man, I’m just maybe it’s just the skeptic in me. But how is it that all of those guys are so good at geotargeting? What they’re soliciting? Using emails to random lawyers. To get just as good doesn’t add up. It just doesn’t add up to me. So you know, just be careful out there. Guys. If you’re getting talked about geotargeting, you want to give it a shot at for a couple hours, then yeah, we’ll give it a shot. We’ll put some some couple grand on it, we’ll see what happens. Just be careful. I mean, there’s a lot of other easier ways to create a return on your marketing dollar than something that you don’t understand. I would just give the advice. If you don’t understand how it works, you probably don’t need to roll some dice on it. You know, don’t don’t don’t put your money on it if you don’t fully understand it. Because I’m a technical guy. I got a technical background and I’m actually doing the work. And I’m telling you it is it is complicated for me. And I spent my I spent my full time day on this stuff.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s a really a piece of advice, Tom.
Jim Hacking
Hey, one other thing that we wanted to be sure to mention was the seven figure Summit, Tom and Craig are working real hard on getting that ready with Michelle. And I know it’s going to be a great event. I drove down with the boys to Florida last year for spring training. And then I swung by to see Craig and it was it was a great day of learning. I got to got a lot of good takeaways. And that’s where I first met Tom and Craig. Tom, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what’s next and how our listeners can get involved?
Tom Copeland
Well do Yeah, thanks. So the seven figure attorney Summit is a seminar that Craig Goldfarb and I created and the precipice for it was just that we’ve been to a lot of marketing and operations and business seminars for lawyers. And we’ve always been pretty bored by them. We really wanted to fold in some new concepts that we’ve learned from the last 15 years that Craig learned from last 15 years. My concepts and systems that I’ve built here in the marketing department over the last four years, and also Michelle Winfrey, who I mentioned earlier, who is our admin, what she’s been able to do in terms of organizational processes and team building here. So it’s actually three prong this summit is about it’s a full day. We’re doing it in Orlando, it’s gonna be at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel. Our next event is on November 30. So that’s this coming up November 30. In Orlando, it’s a full day seminar. And we touch on the business of law creating a law firm and think about your law firm as a business. We touch on marketing, which is my section, of course, then we touch on organizational structuring, which is Michelle section and also team building, which is Michelle section as well. It’s really cool, man, we’ve had a blast doing it. We don’t make we actually lose money on this. So we’d like to say that because we actually charged 49 for it. That’s it, it’s only 499. And you also get if you needed any other reasons, you also get six CLE credits by the Florida Bar. So we actually lose money on this. We just love doing it. Because we love talking about this stuff. We love what we do here at the Law Offices, Craig Goldfarb. And we just want to share it because frankly, if you guys get something out of this summit, and you make your law firm a little bit better, you make your processes a little bit better, and you make a little bit more money. A rising tide lifts all boats, in our opinion. And we should be out there, doing these kinds of things, and always trying to strive and be better. Because you know, legal services, man, we’ve got to stay competitive when we’ve got to stay relevant to the public. And that’s really kind of what this is all about. It’s about bringing some like minded lawyers together for a day, have a little fun, learn some interesting stuff, and get yourself some CLE credits. So just to wrap that up. That’s November 30. That’s a Thursday, we started about 7am. We’re done by about three nice and easy in and out in Orlando at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel, you can actually sign up for that anytime at seven figure attorney.com. And that’s a seven spelled out seven figure attorney.com.
Tyson Mutrux
Great, that’s perfect. We’ve got to wrap things up because we’re up against the time. Jimmy, before we get to your hack of the week, I do want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group, join Facebook group, get involved in the discussion there. Also give us a five star review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like our podcast, we hope that you do because you’re listening to it. So if you do, hit pause, go give us the five star review. It really helps her numbers. Jimmy, what’s your actively.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so for my hack of the week, I’ve spoken before about Joe Pelosi and content Inc, which is a great book. And I just finished their second book, which is killing marketing, which I really enjoyed both of the books and I got a lot out of them. But I’ve also started following their blog, which is obviously free. And they just do a really nice job of formatting their blog posts, embedded in each blog post in a in a not salesy, but just a very easy kind of way, they have like automated tweets, where if you click on it, it’ll link to your Twitter account and tweet it out. They also do a really nice job of creating a little placard or JPG to go with each blog post. So on social media, they have a very visually appealing interface. So I would really recommend that our listeners, check out that blog, you can get it if you type in Content Marketing Institute, it’ll take you straight to their blog. And you can see the way that they post and it’s just a real visually appealing delivery of information and the information they have is rock solid. I’ve gotten a ton out of it already.
Tyson Mutrux
So we always ask our guests to give a tip of the week. Do you have a tip for us?
Tom Copeland
Yeah, I’ll throw one out there. So a book I just finished was a book by Malcolm Gladwell called outliers. Malcolm is a He’s an economist. I think maybe at the University of Chicago. He’s fantastic. I mean, he just wrote this incredible book. And this book when he writes a lot of books, but his most recent one outliers, New York Times bestseller, it’s all about understanding that exponential success, I guess. And the people in this world who have achieved exponential success. So you think of like your Steve Jobs, you think of and he even goes back in like the 1800s. You think of like the you think of like the captains of industry, it’s more than just the fact they did hard work. It’s so many other things and variables that come together, like timing, like resources, like understanding that there’s an idea here that nobody else has thought about. It’s really awesome. He gives a lot of really cool stories on that. So if you haven’t checked that out, please do. Very good
Tyson Mutrux
book, anything but nothing, Gladwell is just amazing.
Tom Copeland
And I’ll throw one more out there to anything by Seth Godin. If you guys definitely know Seth, listeners, check out Seth Godin, he has a really good job of taking marketing concepts and making them really simple and relatable. So check that out, too. If you’re struggling with this whole marketing thing, and it’s kind of over your head, check out his books. Again, it’s Seth Godin. He’s got some good stuff out there.
Tyson Mutrux
Definitely, definitely. Alright, so my tip of the week is gonna be a book as well. And I haven’t actually sort of embarrassed we have not recommended this to this point. It’s built to last by Jim Collins, who’s also written good, great. It is a foundational book is what I will call it and it’s, it’s a book that we don’t really mention a whole lot, but I definitely recommend you read through its I’ll be honest with you, it’s a little dense, it’s a little thick, but Jim Collins really breaks it down on really building a company that’s going to last 100 years. I mean, it’s it’s a really, really good book. So highly recommend it. I remember I had to read this book in undergrad and I’ve always kept the book about the original Cabell always had and it was, it’s just such a really good book and it breaks down. You know, what you need to do when it comes to core principles and everything else and it really just breaks down from a foundational perspective. So give it a look. It’s really good or listen to it if you want to, if you understood on Audible or something like that. But, Tom, thanks for coming on. It’s been a great episode. I really appreciate
