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Growing Pains and Solutions for a Brand New Solo w/ Ryan Brown
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LET'S PARTNER UP AND MAXIMIZE YOUR FIRM

Visit MaximumLawyer.com for complete show notes of each podcast episode, tips, hacks and more resources! 

Today on the show we have Ryan Brown, a long-time member but brand new criminal defense attorney with his own solo practice in rural Georgia. In this episode we’ll discuss some of the biggest issues he runs into as a new attorney, as well as give him suggestions on how to expand his firm so that he can focus on the areas of practicing he loves, all without compromising his vision.

We’ll talk about:

-Recognizing systems you can improve and actually following through

-How to integrate automation into your solo or small size law firm

-When you should hire your first employee

-What to do with good domain names that you own but aren’t using

-Targeting and attracting younger clients

-The types of content that are best when you are starting out

Hacking’s Hack: There’s this little conference coming up called “MaxLawCon19” that is pretty close to selling out. Make sure you don’t miss it.

This week two different members of the group set up “Maximum Lawyer” lunches in their respective cities. We encourage this and will be doing this soon in St.Louis.

Tyson’s Tip: Jim stole my tip, but I want to add that we will be announcing a lunch date some time in the next week.

I have been subscribed to Adobe Cloud for awhile, but didn’t realize how much I had access to. I highly recommend it, especially for video.

Ryan’s Tip: Grammarly is great for guys like me who are fast typers, especially if you are doing a lot of typing online.

Ryan’s Website: https://www.jryanbrownlaw.com/ryan-brown

Make sure to register for MaxLawCon19, June 6 and 7 in St.Louis.

For more content from us please subscribe to our Youtube Channel

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 or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: info@maximumlawyer.com

Interested in being on the show? Shoot us an email at support@maximumlawyer.com or message us on Facebook!

Welcome to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

 

 

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Transcript: Growing Pains and Solutions for a Brand New Solo w/ Ryan Brown

Ryan Brown
I really would like to stay as a as a small firm in that myself and maybe one other attorney as a long term goal. I want to be, you know, the best criminal defense attorney in the south metro Atlanta area. And that is the goal. And I’m not saying that can’t be done without the bigger ones. But I have not gotten to a point where I’ve thought about trying to be you know, bigger than bigger than it is itself.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum layer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking, and try some new tricks. Let’s partner up and maximize your phone. Welcome to the show.

Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast and I’m Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting matrix what’s up? Yep.

Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson. We are both up early texting each other today. I don’t know why either of us, Rob that damn early.

Tyson Mutrux
I know. It’s funny because you sent me to text you know, he do an hour but I’m thinking the exact same thing about you know, sometimes you get up early. So good. It was what 430 I think is what we’re texting back and forth. And intent even chimed in, which is kind of a shocker for both of us. Normally funny send up probably 10 o’clock every day.

Jim Hacking
But now makes sense. He’s in DC with Seth. So that that makes sense that he’s an hour ahead.

Tyson Mutrux
It all came full circle. We figured it out as the otherwise there’s no way that kids up that early. That’s right. Well,

Jim Hacking
I’m excited about our guest today. He’s a longtime member of the Facebook group. He’s very active in the group. We love having him in there. He was added I noticed today by Tyler Moffitt a long time ago. And without further ado, let me introduce Ryan Brown. Ryan, welcome to the show. Good morning,

Ryan Brown
Jim Tyson. Thanks for having me this morning. Like I said, I have been a longtime Facebook Lurker while the podcast listener before a Facebook Lurker, and then, you know, gradually become more active. So I appreciate you having me on this morning.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I wouldn’t say you’re a lurker. I mean, you engage that’s not quite fair to call yourself a lurker and you’re done. I

Ryan Brown
think you’re right, I think I learned at first got comfortable kind of learned the players. And then I definitely felt became more comfortable engaging, certainly,

Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s natural, I can do dip your toe in a little bit, get get involved, I get it now. So didn’t talk a little bit about you what you do and sort of how you just learned about your journey.

Ryan Brown
Of course. So I’ve only been practicing probably a year and a half. I graduated law school in May of 17. passed the bar I think, end of October, early November of 17. I immediately went to the district attorney’s office here locally where I had been an intern throughout law school, when you know you’re coming out of school, you get a job offer you, you take it home. So I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do long term I knew I wanted to do be a criminal defense attorney, which is what I am now. I got an offer opportunity. Well, I will say this when I was at the BAS I was I had decided I was going to leave and and I was going to probably start my own firm. And I reached out to fellow maximum while your member, Tyler Moffat and I had been listening to the maximum all your podcasts, kind of in anticipation of opening my firm, I talked to Mr. Moffet, he actually offered me a job, kind of with the understanding that eventually I would leave and open my own. And I was able to go work for him for a little while. And it was really beneficial as far as learning, some basic farm management, you know, skills that you don’t learn when you’re in in the district attorney’s office. So now I am a solo. I’ve been solo since December 10. of last year, so almost four months now. And I’m enjoying it quite a bit.

Jim Hacking
Ryan, why do you think you were such a quick start to launch your own thing? A couple of reasons. I

Ryan Brown
think that the main driving factor was I knew I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. And the nature of criminal defense practices, that there’s just not big firms, you know, you don’t have the opportunity to go be a big firm criminal defense attorney, you know, sometimes you’ll see a 234 person firm doing it, but for the most part it is solos. And there’s I think the big reason for that is probably, you know, legal conflicts as far as representing co defendants stuff like that. So I knew that, you know, in order to make that happen, I was going to have to learn the skills to be a solo entrepreneur, you know, law firm, owner business owner. So it kind of started with the desire to be a solo criminal defense attorney, and I had to develop and teach myself. And I’m still doing that every day. By far I’m not saying I know how, you know how to become the business owner. You know, the technician part was from the E Myth look was the part that I enjoyed. And I really had to learn how to how to run the business and I’m still learning like I said every day. Let’s talk a

Tyson Mutrux
little bit more more about that part of it. I guess, what are the things that you struggle with when it comes to running the business?

Ryan Brown
You know, I’m kind of anal Of course, while you’re typing, I wrote down my weaknesses you know, before the in anticipation of this morning so, you know, one thing I’ve heard Joe talk about this too, in different times. Ontex. But I’m great at saying, Oh man, I need a system for this, or I need something that does this. And then I’m really not good at all about making that happen, you know, you know, I’m very good at saying this could be so much more efficient. And then I just keep saying, Man, this could be so much more efficient, and I never do anything about it. And I think I struggle with a little bit of a little bit of just taking the first step in doing it as well as I get nervous about it, am I going to approach this problem and fix it the right way. So the first big one was, you know, managing my leads. At first I was just kind of had a little notebook writing down notes. That was terrible. I’ve gone to Clio grow. Now use Clio, for my case management, I added Clio growth. And that was a good first step, but I’m still working on developing the certain they use the word pipeline to certain like, you know, tears or steps in the process, through the intake process that I really did, I kind of just struggle mentally of putting pen to paper, and getting them organized into how my, my, my intake flow works.

Jim Hacking
I totally feel your pain. I mean, Tyson knows and teases me often that I am not the follow through guy did a Colby and my follow through is very low. And so how are you? How are you overcoming that? Are you taking baby steps? Are you trying to implement small little systems?

Ryan Brown
Yes. So the you know, and I use the intake, you know, this is kind of everywhere, from Document audit automation to intake, wherever it may be, in that I’m really having to kind of learn how to do it first, which is not that difficult, but it does take you know, watch a YouTube video, a millennial, so that you know how IT teams myself. And it’s a little bit of trial and error to with the intake process. One thing I struggle with is I try to categorize the my leads in like, how they come in, and what kind of client it is, and doing criminal detention. And sometimes I’ll have direct phone contact with a client who’s in custody and someone on the outside is calling, I’ll have, you know, a web submission from the online form or whatever. So what I’ve really tried to do is kind of take each one of each one of those possibilities, and do a little bit of a system for for that particular one one at a time. And I don’t know if that’s the quickest way to get it. But once I get them built out, I think it will work great. And just, you know, it’s a little trial and error in the sense of, you know, how often do I need to be sending the follow up emails to a lead? You know, if they’ve been in the pipeline for, you know, eight weeks? And I haven’t heard back from them, since they submitted the first online form, is it okay to take them out of the pipeline? Now, you know, and take that one as a loss. So you asked, the question was, you know, how am I overcoming it? I don’t know that I am, I know that it is a weakness that I need to work on. I like to think that I’m taking it I’m taking it on and attacking it. But at the same time, I’m dealing with a little bit of the, oh my gosh, I’m so busy, I’m never gonna get anything done. When am I supposed to work on that problem

Tyson Mutrux
as well. One of my process goals that I’ve worked through with Jason, so it’s something that I know I need to do every single day is building out systems. And it’s something that I think is really, really important in the firm. And it’s in so when we sort of work it out, as you know, what are my three process goals that are gonna get me towards my vision. And so that’s one of my three. But I think if you think it’s that important, I think it’s very, very important that you spend, you take a chunk of your day, whether it’s 30 minutes, every 15 minutes, could be an hour, whatever you whatever value you put on it. And you say I’m going to take X number of minutes each day to work on that. I mean, is that something you do now? Or how often do you work on those systems? As it is? Or is it just kind of here and there when you have time? Or how do you do it now,

Ryan Brown
I will say it’s here, they’re somewhat, I will tell you that nighttime is, you know, at night is when I work on this kind of thing. It’s when you know, that like 10 to 11 o’clock, when you know there’s kind of not a lot going on, I’m more of a night worker than a morning person to be honest, you know, I get up obviously, you’ve got to be in the office and in court and everything but you know, I really like the nighttime the night to myself, you know that it’s quiet, that’s my time where I can sit down, that’s when I write a lot of my content for the website, and that I really have the opportunity to work on this kind of thing. So it may be something where I just need to sit out three, four or five days in advance, just given how I know I manage my time and and physically write in my in my planner, you know, on Monday night, I’m going to spend 45 minutes or an hour working on you know, the intake system and then on Tuesday, it’ll be the you know, the document Ottoman automation through Clio and stuff like that, that that is probably something that I could definitely implement and that would be super helpful.

Tyson Mutrux
Why don’t we Why don’t you just put on your calendar every day at eight o’clock or nine o’clock whatever time you do you choose, you know from for 30 minutes that you’re going to work on building systems and what have you just did that

Ryan Brown
So I think that that would probably solve the problem. And I know it’s crazy. And I know this is probably low level, as far as I know, y’all talk about a lot of really high level law firm management stuff. But that’s probably all I need to do. Because I do I mean, my Google Calendar, you know, that’s what I live by I haven’t you know, it’s on my phone, it’s on the the first app that shows up, as you know, I plan down to the minute just about so I think that if I just physically slam that tight in there that I really do think that I would probably be able to work on it and get it done.

Jim Hacking
Ryan, have you looked at some guys like Billy Umansky or Jay Ruane and sort of how they’ve built a practice and Sean ham, who have built practices that are sort of bigger than themselves? I know, you said that most criminal defense attorneys are solos, but have you given much thought? And maybe this is a little further down the track of Yes, of growing and growing it?

Ryan Brown
So, you know, that’s an interesting question. And that’s one thing that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about is, you know, what my personal goal is, and that, you know, is my personal goal to be a solo or is it to be, you know, to have a firm that is bigger, bigger than myself, this is crazy. But you know, I’ve actually come across clients who have been represented by some of those people before they moved and stuff, which just shows how successful they are, you know, in their practices, I do have maybe a unique goal to the group, and that I really would like to stay as a as a small firm, and that myself and maybe one other attorney as a long term goal. You know, and I think that is different in that. If you can tell, Hi, I’m struggling with my words here. And that, you know, I have this goal written down. And I, the problem I have is I am 27 years old. And that goal, I may feel differently about that goal. When I’m 31, or two and married with kids. Right now, it sounds great to me to I want to be, you know, the best criminal defense attorney in the south metro Atlanta area. And that is the goal. And I’m not saying that can’t be done without the bigger ones. But I have not gotten to a point where I’ve thought about trying to be, you know, bigger than bigger than the

Jim Hacking
limit is itself.

Tyson Mutrux
So you’ve got the two offices here. One’s in Newnan. Georgia, one’s in Macon, Georgia. Just curious. And I forgive me, because I’m familiar with the landscape of Georgia and how its proximity to Atlanta. But how far away is that? Is that are those locations from Atlanta? And do you find that it’s difficult getting getting clients in Atlanta because of your proximity to

Ryan Brown
where your offices are? Yeah, so So I do have two locations. Technically, they’re both very small accent I’m a complete so I use Ruby to answer the phone. You know, I’m the only employee, I have these locations. Noonan is the closer one to Atlanta. So Noonan is probably 35 or 40 minutes south of Atlanta. I don’t take cases in the city of Atlanta. Every now and then I’ve had one or two, maybe in Fulton County, which is where Atlanta is, most of my cases are going to be suburban, and even ex urban to the, to the south and west of the city. So I you know, I target all of my Google Ads very specifically to zip codes outside of the city of Atlanta, where the you know, where it’s much more expensive, much more competitive, are you geography is kind of based on Judicial Circuit in Georgia is very county based. We have like 159 counties. So I really target probably like five to seven counties to the south and west of Atlanta, and really try and keep the main business there from from the Noonan office. Now the the actual reason that I have a Macon office is no more complicated than it’s like the third or fourth biggest city in Georgia. My girlfriend lives there. And I spent a bunch of time there. And I found a really cheap office. And I said, Well, this gives me an opportunity to work here on Mondays and Fridays, when I spend the weekend there. And I’ve been able to actually get quite a few cases from there and actually become kind of profitable there as well. So it’s been that’s kind of been an interesting development. It’s only happened over the past maybe like, four to six weeks, probably the specific answer to that question would be, I try to stay out of the actual competitive, you know, downtown Atlanta market and really focus on the suburban ex urban where I would the competition is less I think I have, I have more of an opportunity to eventually hopefully dominate the south and west metro areas. Go

Jim Hacking
walk us through your day, like what’s a typical day or a typical week for Ryan Brown, solo solopreneur solo lawyer with no support.

Ryan Brown
I’ll start that by saying I’ve had one big change since I started and that was getting Ruby that’s made a huge difference for me, and helps me tremendously so that that was kind of a big change that I made probably like six weeks in that was super helpful. It really is. I spent a lot of time at the courthouse which is good and bad. I guess it’s hard to work when you’re at the courthouse. That’s the worst part. Certainly. We have these massive court calendars that are that are you know 250 For positions and if you’d have one case on the calendar, you very well may be there from nine to one o’clock. Those court dates are typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and probably happen every other week. So those are those are huge times up. Now generally, I’m in the office in my noon, and office, usually Monday through Thursday, or Tuesday through Thursday, depending on the week, I’ve started working from the Macon office a lot on Fridays, and it’s very by appointment only, you know, I’m not really accessible from the street or, you know, I don’t really have dropped in, that’s not really something that that I have experienced. But my day to day life, I, you know, I get up come, I live about five minutes from the office come in, I usually in the mornings go through the email first thing and kind of go through those, then I always make a to do list for the next day the night before. So you know, on a Sunday night, I’ll sit down, I’ll jot down, you know, 10 things I need to do the next day, kind of ranked in priority. And then there’s always some triage too. So, you know, I’ll come in, I’ll start working on brief, or I’ll start, you know, reviewing discovering a case. And then usually, at that point, the phone’s usually ringing three or four times. And, you know, it’s whether it’s a potential client or a new or existing clients, and I end up getting distracted by that a little bit. By that time, it’s lunch, I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done. And then the afternoon, I’m usually able to really crank out some work, that’s when I do a lot of my discovery review. Even put out some content at that point. You know, and it’s just so dependent on our course schedule that and I spent a lot of time in the car, that’s, that’s the other thing, it is kind of my circuits kind of spread out. And that there are, you know, other courthouses that I frequent that are 40 minutes away, you know, and that’s only one county over, that’s the very next jurisdiction over, you know, if you have court there, and you’re sitting in the courthouse for three hours, and you’re burning two hours in the car, that’s a, it’s not a wasted day, but that is a huge chunk of the day, that’s gone, right there.

Tyson Mutrux
Man, Jimmy, this is bringing me memories, my old criminal defense days where, you know, in the morning, I’d be in the city, and then I would head to the county, and then I would head out to St. Charles County. And then if I had time, I’d head down to Jefferson County, and then if not, I’d call the clerk will have no I wouldn’t gonna be there in time. I, I feel your pain, if you,

Ryan Brown
like, all of the all of the local county seem to be on the same court calendar where, you know, it’ll be a Tuesday and Thursday, and it’s, I’ve got four courts, I’m supposed to be in on Tuesday and four on Thursday, and it’s like, you know, you just physically, it’s not, it’s literally that actually is impossible. From a time standpoint, that’s gonna

Tyson Mutrux
cause you some problems as you as you begin to grow in and I don’t want to get too big, but just just keep that in mind, it’s gonna cause some issues. Do you mean,

Ryan Brown
that’s, that’s already, that’s already something that I’m always going to talk to you all about. And as far as one of my weaknesses, and I think it’s because I’m new is that I think I’ve probably geographically spread myself too thin, from the, from the noon and from the noon and office. In that I do have cases kind of a 360 degree, you know, radius around the office. And I’ve really started in the past month, I would say I really tried to be more restrictive on on those cases. And part of that came with a price increase, actually, I started charging more. And it’s crazy that I’m getting less cases and making the same amount of money, which is kind of what my goal would be, you know, is to be a not accessible to necessarily every single person who walks through the door.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, and I don’t know, I mean, in Missouri, we can do this. I don’t know if you can do it in Georgia. But have you ever considered the idea of using contract lawyers to cover court appearances? It may be I mean, I was in get a text chain on a text chain with a bunch of other criminal defense lawyers, I’m actually still on it, like being on it. But what we would do is we there’s about 20 people in the text chain. And what we do is say, Hey, I’m gonna be in Jefferson County tomorrow morning, does anyone need coverage? That’s a simple way that doesn’t cost you anything of actually getting those court appearances covered. Another thing you can do is, if you don’t want to do that, just pick an attorney in each jurisdiction, that you’re there a lot. And if it’s something where you’re not going to get the case, done that day, not a plea or something like that, get them to cover it. And even if you cut them off a little bit of money to do that, it’d be worth your time. And the other thing is, if you if you staff up a little bit, let’s say you just hire a receptionist, and I don’t know how close you are to doing that. But that’s going to free up a lot of your time and someone that’s gonna be scanning in your pleadings, drafting your minor pleadings for you, all that stuff, like answering the phone that’s gonna free up all your time. So how far away are you from hiring someone? Yeah, so

Ryan Brown
that I have two things to say about that. And that’s actually something that I had written down that I was hoping would come out in that. So you know, I spend a day or two things back to my schedule. I spend a ton of time doing, you know, management or like, you know, just ministerial type tasks, like I spend more time mailing stuff than just about anything, you know, and that’s something that I really Need to eliminate waste. As far as hiring someone, you know, I spend a good chunk of money on Ruby a month, my goal has been to hire a in person, Assistant Secretary type role by January of 2020. That’s kind of been my goal, that will be open a year. And I’ve been saving money for it. And that is kind of the, you know, I’m not going to hire someone just to hire someone at that point. But that is when I want to be financially secure enough to say, Okay, I am making the decision that I’m starting to hunt for someone who can help me out because we’re not able to E file our criminal pleadings where I’m at. So literally any, any what I sent, when I file an entry of appearance, with the, you know, the basic boilerplate motions, that’s a, I’ve got a printed copy, or printed the original, make two copies, print a letter to the clerk, put them in the mail, you know, return as a self addressed return envelope in the one that goes to the clerk with the letter saying, hey, send it back, put the postage on it, take it to the post office, which sounds you know, which sounds you know, not that big of a deal. But it’s a time suck. You know, especially if you have a good week where you get hired on a couple of cases. You’re talking, you’re talking a lot of time, you know, by the end of that week that you spent that I spent, literally putting put stuffing envelopes, quite literally.

Jim Hacking
Brian, you’re killing me here, dude, do you have enough money to pay an admin person for two months?

Tyson Mutrux
Yes, probably.

Jim Hacking
Yeah. You got to do this yesterday, man. There’s no way you can be dragging it out till January. You’re, you’re doing way too much low level stuff.

Ryan Brown
Yeah. And that, you know, that is you asked me my weaknesses earlier, that’s what I should have said is that, you know, I think it’s probably a competence thing in that, you know, you’re scared, obviously, you know, I just started in December, am I you know, should someone who’s been open three months be hiring someone? The answer is, yes, I think you know, and I know that in my heart, but it’s the physical doing it. Because I do I spend, I’d say 60% of my time, on low level, stuff like that, that is just a time suck. And that’s what, that’s what wears me down. You

Tyson Mutrux
know, I cannot tell you how giddy this makes me that Jim hacking is lecturing you on doing low level work? Which is really, really funny to me, Jimmy, I don’t know if you see. But, so, question I have for you. And you know, we’re getting sort of close on time. But it seems like you’re doing a pretty good job of getting clients. So I mean, how are you doing that? What are you doing to get clients?

Ryan Brown
Yeah, so um, the when I first started, it was it still is I do a, you know, a good bit of spend on Google Ads monthly, very targeted to the zip codes that out that I want to target. What I have been surprised at is the amount of referral referrals that I’ve received, I’ve gotten far more referrals than I ever anticipated, which is I’m so thankful for because they are the most likely to sign the contract, they are the most likely to pay their full bill. You know, they they almost always hire, you know. And that is something that I did not anticipate, I didn’t think I was going to get that many referral businesses or referral clients. There’s a lot of general practitioners here. I really did not see that coming. And it’s been a huge blessing. With that said, a majority of them still do come from, you know, a Google Ad based lead, if you will. I recently bought Georgia sex crime defense.com For a couple reasons. One reason is I have two ideal clients, I hear a lot of people talk about ideal clients. You know, one of them is the, probably the best client is a a college kid who has been arrested for something related to something that happened on the college campus, and their parents, are you interested in securing them some legal representation, that is a that is probably my, if I had to pick a client where that was, had to be my only practice, that would be it. We have a university here in my circuit, University of West Georgia. So you know, I try to, you know, find a way to kind of market to them. And then my other ideal client would be, you know, my long term tenure goal is to be doing Excel, you know, have one or two types of crimes that I’m only representing those, whether it be you know, gang crime, sex, crime, whatever it may be. I think that the strongest sense why it’s, you know, it’s a lot of people, you know, there’s a negative stigma to that, certainly, to some level, but, you know, I enjoy kind of being the underdog. That’s, you know, and, you know, I think everyone deserves fair legal representation. So that is one reason I bought that that domain name, I have no idea what to do with it. I don’t know if I should do anything with it yet. If I should start a little blog on it. I was gonna see if y’all had any opinion on that.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, let’s stop. Let’s take one thing at a time. I think I think part of this is that you’ve got so much going on. you’re paralyzed, and what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. Much of it has to do with the fact that you’re doing Jim hacking work where you’re just doing just low level stuff. And so I think you need to get rid of that crap. But let’s pick the academic one, what I guess what would you call that practice area.

Ryan Brown
So it is criminal defense. What I have found is that, and I think that the way to get into this market is, you know, if you’re a college student here in Georgia, and you’re arrested, you’re usually facing a, a suspension or expulsion from the university, as well as the criminal case. So you know, there’s a bunch of lawyers out there marketing to the criminal case, I have found that there are not that many lawyers marketing to the school suspension side of things. And you know, they really do kind of run concurrently. So I think that the, the, you know, this, whether it be blogs, or whatever it may be that the easy end to these potential clients is going to be, you know, hey, the school wants to investigate me or this the university and, you know, investigator, which they literally have university investigators that are not law enforcement agents, you know, want to do an interview, should I be doing those, you know, is probably my way into that particular niche client base.

Tyson Mutrux
I think that the the, the your source of getting those clients is, is hitting you right? In the face it because I think where do you go as you go to these other attorneys that are not handling the academic side of things, they’re doing the criminal side of things, you could do CLAS, you could do a lot of things marketing to those attorneys. But I think maybe even before you start doing that, I think you start producing the content, I think you need to start doing videos, putting out blog posts, creating pages of content on your webs on a website, I would do one just specifically for that. And I think you also need some sort of lead magnet. And you can tell me, what’s what’s great about this, you could target on Facebook, specifically that the students you know, don’t get kicked, kicked out of school, that kind of thing. And you can really cool advertising with that. And I don’t know is, if you I don’t know, if you can get access to people that have been charged with crimes online, in Georgia. And in your area of interest here. You can even get really creative and do some micro targeting, which we talked about in another podcast. But here’s some really cool things. Jimmy, what do you what are your thoughts?

Jim Hacking
I wonder if there isn’t a way that you could have a VA or somebody review all this school, university newspapers, because a lot of times those kinds of stories, pick up steam in the school newspapers, because I think a lot of people view the student suspension system, as you know, murky and sort of subject to the whims of the people involved, not a lot of due process. And I think they’re not wrong. Yeah. I think if you portray yourself that as the advocate of fairness, and justice and due process, and you know, educate people, and then I would just be combing through the news for stories about 20 year olds who get in trouble, either on campus or off campus and those kinds of things. I think that, you know, I don’t think Instagram would work, but I think you got to think about the younger people, and where they’re where they’re hanging out. Right, right. Certainly, and that’s,

Ryan Brown
that’s something that, you know, you know, I’ve Hale, I have a very well based follow up with y’all as I have ideas about, you know, I’ve thought about this, what do y’all think certainly, I’m not afraid to reach out at all.

Jim Hacking
Maybe you were the lead magnet, maybe for that lead magnet, do something simple, like, the top 10 Things you need to know if some school investigator contacts you or, you know, and then we have another I have another friend who does. He’s in Oxford, Mississippi, J Karndean. And he does he does a lot of stuff for I guess, minors and possession and other college type called type things. And they do. They do like, wouldn’t be a CLE but it’d be like, they go to the fraternities and the sororities and they do talk.

Ryan Brown
Yeah, and so that and that’s one of the things that I you know, that’s that’s funny say I that’s one of the things I have written down in the idea book that I’ve never done, you know, and I need to I need to just reach out to the fraternities or sororities do it you know, that’s something that I need to put on my put on my calendar Hey, email, find I’m sure that it’s online, find the president of so and so fraternity sorority send an email say I want to tell him you know,

Tyson Mutrux
just give free information. All right, I’m putting putting you on notice right now. Okay. I’m on what When? When are you going to get that done?

Ryan Brown
I’m when we hang up the phone. I’m going to I’m going to send that email today. Today. Well, maybe not today. I want to plan my I want to plan the content. First of what I would talk about

Tyson Mutrux
how to perfect perfection is

Jim Hacking
crippling you right?

Ryan Brown
It is it is okay. So I won’t do that. I will send the email to that.

Tyson Mutrux
You send the email to And then when are you going to finish? When’s your deadline for finishing the content?

Ryan Brown
The content to, to that I would pitch to them at a if I was talking about on your website type time for your well, I will do a, I may do a, a, you know, it probably needs to be like an evergreen page, not really a blog post you think is that kind of what we think about this? I think you

Tyson Mutrux
need a website dedicated to so and so I’m thinking big picture long term, when you join me I

Ryan Brown
need to get a I need to get a domain and get it set up. Is that is that kind of what we’re thinking for that? Yeah, I think so. I’m writing this down. So, man, this is where I this is where the paralysis hits is these, you know, longer mid range type. I don’t know, I don’t know what a good target goal is for that, because I have not went through the process of building a website out. You know, I use a, you know, company that does mine. And, you know, maybe something where I just need to add a add a domain to that service, which will make it quicker certainly.

Jim Hacking
It’s, it’s, it’s not just paralysis. It’s priceless. Plus licking stamps on envelopes. It’s those two, yeah, yeah, it’s a bad combination. It is sort of here

Tyson Mutrux
and here. Here is my Are you going to conference.

Ryan Brown
So I went last year, I was you know, I was fairly new. My brother is getting married this year. And I’m going to be in Jackson Hole, Wyoming up until through the start. So I don’t know that I’m going to be able to make the Congress this year just because the brother’s wedding is hard to get out of you know,

Tyson Mutrux
I get that. Okay. Well, here’s your deadline, June 4 To have the content. Okay. All right. Okay. So June, day before our conference starts. That’s when you need to have it done. You’re going to email someone today about getting into the university to speak into people. And then I’m going to call you out of it’s not done and I’m going to remind you, I’m gonna hound the hell.

Ryan Brown
Alright, that was done. All right, I’m writing it down right now and putting it in putting it into Google Calendar. There

Tyson Mutrux
are plenty of resources in the group to reach out to to get a website up quickly. So no, no,

Ryan Brown
I mean, the group has been so helpful to me. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s incredible.

Tyson Mutrux
Jimmy, what else? Yeah, but

Jim Hacking
you’re good man, Ryan Brown, I it was fun having you at the conference last year. And I think don’t be too hard on yourself. And, and we’re, you know, we’re, we’re sort of pushing you, but it’s all it’s all good. I mean, you are far ahead of many of your peers who you graduated with. I mean, don’t, don’t get caught up in all this stuff that you haven’t been able to pull off. I mean, take take pride in the stuff that you have been able to pull off. And, and I think I think you just need a massive amount of more support. I think it’s on lots of different levels on lots of different phases, and you’re gonna get there. You just need to separate yourself from the things you don’t need to be doing.

Ryan Brown
Start like starting like, and that’s a that’s why I wanted to be on the show. I need the I need the advice and input certainly.

Tyson Mutrux
Hi, I’m gonna rap Ryan, I hopefully you got something out of this. I think I think I think you are on the right track. So I think Jimmy’s right, I think you’re you’re doing a lot of the right things, you, you recognize some things you need to do. And I think that that’s a big part of it. I think that’s really awesome. All right, so we’re gonna wrap up. Before we do and I’ll make sure that everyone knows to go to the Facebook group get involved. There’s a lot of a lot of just great people like Ryan there that are contributing, giving feedback, asking questions, and it’s a really great environment to get involved there. But if you don’t mind, if you are enjoying the podcast, if you’re getting something out of it, please go and leave us a five star review and help spread the word. Jimmy, what’s your hacking elite? Alright, so

Jim Hacking
I do want to remind everyone that there’s this little conference coming up in June, June 6, and seventh, it’s called Max law con 19. You might not have heard about it. But if you are thinking about it, we’re getting close to selling out, I think we have about 30 plus a few slots left. I’m sure it’s going to be sold out like last year was. So make sure to at least get your mind around, you know, buying a ticket for my hack of the week. This is something that has grown organically out of the Facebook group and I was very excited to see it. Two different members of our group Mark Zamora, in Georgia. And Jay Ruane in Connecticut are putting together lunches of maximum lawyers in those cities. I always thought that our friend will Edie would be the first to do something like this in Cleveland, because we have such a big fan base in Cleveland, but I believe that Tyson you and I should follow their lead and do a lunch in St. Louis. What do you think?

Tyson Mutrux
It’s a great idea. And You You You stole my tab, which was you didn’t know about it, but that sucks. I’m going to come up with a new tip but I’ve got another I’ve got a good backup. But I absolutely agree and I am a little you know, I’m a little embarrassed. We haven’t done it to this point. You know, I mean, it’s but I’m glad that’s the power of this group though is that people are are organizing and they’re getting they’re putting together groups. And it’s, it’s really awesome. So you and I need to announce a date in the next few weeks and we’ll make it happen. All right, Ryan, so you know, you know the deal, what is your tip of the week. So I do have a tip

Ryan Brown
or hack of the week. Mine is an app apologize if this has been used before. But I have recently discovered Grammarly, a Chrome extension that kind of works on grammar and typos, stuff like that. I’m a fast typer. And not always that accurate. And it’s been a very efficient tool for me to go back through and just extra comma two periods here. And it’s been super helpful for me and my online typing and stuff like that.

Tyson Mutrux
i No one has recommended that when I don’t think that’s actually a really good one, that that’s one of the cool things about Yoast, whenever you’re for your WordPress sites, whenever it helps you with your SEO but also helps you with your grammar, it’s really kind of cool tells you, okay, there’s too much passive voice and there’s a paragraph or there’s a run on sentence here is actually pretty nice and super helpful. That’d be

Ryan Brown
really helpful. And I will say that the conference is awesome. Everyone should go to the conference.

Tyson Mutrux
Nice. That’s a good, good plug. Appreciate it. Alright, so I have I’ve been here’s my tip of the week i i subscribe to Adobe cloud, Creative Cloud for a while I was using it for just a couple things. And I didn’t realize the power of it. And it really is incredible. There are so many accents, so much access to different video editing apps that I had no idea that I had access to. So my tip is to go to and subscribe that Adobe cloud, I think it’s 79 bucks a month and for what you get is a feel for all the all the different products you get. But I’m just I mean, just looking at my phone now, I get three apps that are on the phone that allow me to work with video, Spark Video, Dobby clip, and then rush these days. But there’s also desktop conveniences that go with each one of those and they’re all cloud based. And so they really do help you with the editing video, I was thinking about buying a really expensive video editing software, and I decided not to because of this, so I highly recommend it. So check it out. Alright, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with this when we get to go back and forth a lot. Hopefully how to stop some drops. Thanks for coming on.

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