In today’s episode we’re sharing a presentation from MaxLawCon 2020. Our originally scheduled MaxLawCon 2020 speaker Jordan Ostroff presented LIVE to the Maximum Lawyer Guild community and today we share his presentation: Creating a Referral-Based Practice.
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Transcript: “Creating a Referral Based Practice” with Jordan Ostroff
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.
Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. Our originally scheduled Max law con speaker Jordan Ostroff presented live to the maximum lawyer Facebook community. And today we share his talk running a referral based practice. Let’s get to it.
Jordan Ostroff
All right, so we’ll get the unimportant stuff out of the way for starters, so I’m Jordan Ostroff, I run Jordan law, a business law and personal injury firm here in Orlando, Florida, which is so much less fun during Coronavirus when everything else is closed down. And then I also run a lawyer focus marketing company called legalese marketing. So for this video, if you are a Florida lawyer, you’re gonna get an hour of CLE out of this, if you watch the entire thing, if you’re not a Florida lawyer, then I can’t help you. But hopefully, maybe your state will take the Florida information. So let’s get started. I’ll just give you a little bit more about my story. So once I’ve been in the firm, I was a prosecutor before this, so I never did anything about running a business. So I ended up like hundreds of 1000s of dollars in debt for bad marketing, not knowing what I needed, chasing everything having the wonderful shiny object syndrome. And so I really made a couple good decisions, half acidly. And then was able to really figure out what was working what wasn’t. So for me, it was referral based practices. So as we get into this, I want to focus on my new hypothesis, which is, all of us have all of the answers. We know our business better than anybody else. We care about our business more than anybody else. So the only thing that I’m going to do here is really help you ask the right questions. I think that’s the key. I think too often we get stuck on people selling us on what they think is right. So I’m going to talk to you about why being referral based practice works for me, and some of the things to consider to see if it will work for you and help you answer the right questions. Even if you don’t want to be referral based, let’s say about a third of this will be super helpful for you. And then the rest of it will be meaningless for your firm in all honesty, so being our referral based practice has some pros and cons. Obviously, from the standpoint of the pros, the client comes in warm, you remember, this is somebody that reached out to somebody that they know, like and trust, and that person referred them over to you. So with that they’re coming in warm, they’re not just searching for, you know, 15 people off the internet, or something along those lines, you’re more resistant to competition. And by that I mean, you know, your biggest competitor, one town over can start spending 1000s of dollars on Google ads, or Facebook ads, and you’re going to cost your is going to be that much more expensive. Or you’re gonna show up that infrequently. I think you get more consistent cases, obviously, this means you have a lot of referral sources, but basically every profession and every industry is going to have somewhat of a natural ebb and flow. But by getting referrals from so many people, you might get more referrals from accountants in march into April, and then more referrals from other lawyers in November and then more referrals from, you know, your landscaping guy in July, whatever it is, along those lines, you can kind of run through a lot of those ebbs and flows by jumping on everybody else is positions, you have a lower cost of acquisition for the most part, you can run a referral based practice for free, we’ll go into some of the things and some of the costs there. But understand, you know, for Google ads, for Facebook ads for SEO, you’re paying or you’re putting in sweat equity, for a referral base, you’re putting in sweat equity, and there’s some stuff you can pay. But in terms of that cost of acquisition per case, it can be pretty low, you have more resistance to change in the marketplace. So again, you’re not relying upon Google’s algorithm. You’re not relying upon Facebook, suddenly banning your advertisement, you’re not relying upon all those things. Now we do have a number of cons here, it takes time, you’re not going to have 50 referral sources tomorrow. If any of you are able to do that, please, please please let me know how you did it. So we can make millions of dollars off of that. It’s on you. It’s on us. We have to be referral based we have to put in the effort ourselves our firm or hire somebody do it. You need to be consistent about it. You can’t just suddenly stop staying in contact with people for six months, and you need to be likable, which I hope all of us are likable realistically, such may not be the case and if you know you’re not likable, then you can work on it or referral base might not be for you. So being likable. I mean basically you need to sit down and come up with you know what makes you likable. What do you do that makes people like you want to be around you what makes you not likable and then like it Anything else, you want to accentuate your positives and you want to minimize your negatives, everybody else is going to have a different likability about them. If you saw for me, I’m in a polo shirt, and I’m wearing shorts if I stood up, and that’s pretty much how I dress all the time. Regardless, one thing is hot as all heck in Florida, too, I want to be a little bit more approachable. I think too many attorneys give off that unapproachable air. And so that’s one of the things that I have done to try and make myself more likeable. So the next part I will talk about is having an intake system, I think this applies to everybody. Regardless of whether or not you are running referral based practice, I think everybody should have an intake system that can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. The benefit of the intake system is you’re going to standardize your follow up on cases, which means you’re going to have a better idea of what leads are better than others. If you don’t have a standard intake system that on the months where you’re slow, you’re going to have the opportunity to follow up a lot more and close more cases, on the months where you’re not slow, you’re not going to have as much time. So you need to systematize that if you have nothing. In this link, I have a thing for you. It is a Google Excel spreadsheet. I’m not sure if the screenshare is going to move over. No, that might be me. All right, hold on one step. Here we go. There we go. So as it can be as simple as this. It’s an Excel spreadsheet, we have clients first name, last name, title case, how they found you did they hire when they put down what do they owe, you can make this 17 more blocks, you can even get rid of some of these. But really, if you’re tracking these first four, first name, last name type of case and how they found you, that’s going to make it so much better for you to know what’s working and what’s not working. And by that, I mean that could be people that are sending you the right cases, that can be any marketing effort whatsoever, you need to track where your cases are coming from. Most attorneys do not do that. And then you have no idea what’s working and what isn’t. So that’s all in this download, email me my emails at the end, I will send you this slide it has all of these links, feel free to use it. If you want to be more complicated with a CRM go for it, I use long attics. But at the end of the day, an Excel spreadsheet will be enough for most of your needs. So again, one of my all time favorite quotes, Insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting different results. As lawyers, I think we do different things and expect the same results. As in we don’t follow up consistently and we expect people to hire us, all of this is an art, this is my biggest problem. I want this to be a science, it is not there are million different variables. But at least if you control a consistent intake system, then you can remove some of those variables. And then it really comes down to your copy comes down to your clients. It comes down to your saleability, all of those things. So that leads us to the next part. Again, this should apply to everybody whether you want to be referral based or not, you need to come up with your ideal client, every attorney that I talked to, the more specific they are about their ideal client, the more successful they are, there are a few exceptions to that rule. But for the most part, the better you have your ideal client avatar, which is what I like to call it, because it gives you kind of that concept of a you know fictitious person, that’s where you have to start failing to plan is planning to fail. So if you don’t know where your ideal client is, then you don’t know where to go about finding them. You can’t think about how they’re going to find you as an attorney, you can’t think about what words are going to appeal to them. You can’t think about what their problem is if you don’t know who they are. So if you don’t have that you’re wasting time, you’re wasting money, you’re wasting resources, and you’re getting aggravated. And I know this is true, because this was me for two years, I had no idea who my ideal client was. So I spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars, just basically screaming in an empty room, I should have gone up to the top tallest building in Orlando and just thrown my business cards off of it. Because that was the the marketing that I was doing, because I had no idea who I wanted to target. And yes, I understand that would be unethical to do that. But I’m just using hyperbole here. So some of the things to talk about your ideal client, what problem do you want to solve? Who has that problem? Can you make a living solving that problem? Are there enough people with it? Can they pay you what you want? And then where are those people, if you don’t have your ideal client in mind, or if you want to go over it, I’ve created another download for you, which is right here. So you can download this. It’s literally three pages of questions that goes over the demographics of your ideal client that goes over their wants and desires that goes over their critical questions. And then you go over prior client experiences. So you don’t have to answer all of these questions. You don’t even have to answer any of them. But these are a bunch of things that you can think about. To get that ideal client avatar in your head. The more specific you get, the better any of your marketing is going to be. Whether it’s referral based or ads, you need to know this one or you need to hire a company that will help you understand this or help them understand this for you and go through as many of these as possible because all of this determines not only where you advertise but how You advertise and what you say, and what you offer and how you price it. Everything comes down from here. So don’t reinvent the wheel, shoot me an email, I’ll send you this, you’ll have access to it, you can go from there. Now going back to here, so we now get to do my my least favorite thing, which is math. How many referral sources do we need? And this means you’ve decided you want to be referral based, you just want to figure out how many do I need. So you need to figure out how much money do you want to make. That could be as a firm that could be as you individually for this, we’re just going by based upon the firm. So we have a firm here that wants to bring in a million dollars, the average case cost is $2,500. That means the firm needs 400 cases, if the firm closes half of their leads, that means they need 800 leads, if they get 10 leads per referral source over the course of a year. That means you need 80 people, you can swap these numbers out however you want, you can also add in what you need to make based upon what the firm makes. But at the end of the day, that’s what you’re looking for. I think that if this number is over 100, you’re going to have a really hard timeframe, I think it was under 50. That’ll be easier. 50 A year is a pretty good one to shoot for. That’s one person a week, that’s one new referral source per week for a year. And that gives you the opportunity to stay in touch with those people to send them business back, etc. So assuming you’ve agreed to be a referral based practice, or have that in addition to other marketing efforts, this is the way to figure out how many referral sources you really need. And I will tell you don’t get me wrong, I have never had 80 people that send me 10 cases ever. But I have 30 people that send me 10 cases, and I have 25 people that send me five cases, and I have 150 people that send me one case. But if you look at it this way, it’ll be really easy for you to come up with what your numbers need to be. And then you can start working towards them and tracking to see how close you’re getting to those numbers. So now we get into the next and I swear I promise this is the last download that you’ll get on this. But this is our blank referral spreadsheet. So coming up with their ideal referral source similar to coming up their ideal client, it’s Who’s your ideal client going to go to when their problem comes up. So for a lot of people, they’re going to go to some lawyer they already had contact with, they might go to their divorce attorney, they might go to their business attorney, if they don’t have that sort of professional connection, they might go to a teacher, they might go to their parent, whatever it is, the more you know about them, the more you can think about who they’re going to go in front of, which helps you know, who needs to know you. So if you don’t have your ideal referral spreadsheet, and even if you do, I suggest downloading mine, one because I’m biased, but two, because we have gone in and created this nice Excel spreadsheet that has 121 gift 131 different professions. And then I added a shameless plug of myself on the bottom of it as a great guy. For now, I blatantly stole that from somebody else. But basically, we have a bunch of different job titles in here. So H vac house cleaner, event planner, estate planning attorneys, loan officer, marketers, nail technicians, painters, whatever, are all of these 131 different jobs going to be ideal for you? Absolutely not, is your ideal client going to go in front of that many people? Absolutely not. But are you going to have five or 10 of those that are really going to be helpful for you? Yes. And this might help you think about other jobs that you want to make sure you get connections with. And then you can just go through this list and fill it out the name of the referral, their business, their phone number, email website and an info, I suggest on any of the professions where you really are going to have somebody who’s great for you. Like as a business law attorney, I love accountants and I love financial advisors. So in those situations, I want to have two or three different ones that I can refer to. So in this section, I will list the differences between them. So sometimes, and by that, I mean like it could be male and female, it could be older, younger, it could be one of them runs a larger practice one of them, it’s just that it could be they’re located in Seminole County, which is kind of the north end of our of our circle versus Osceola County, which is basically the south end. And so by having two or three people in different ones, you’re going to have more people able to properly make sure that your clients are getting treated the right way. So I would suggest if you have something like this, still download mine, or at least look at it, see if there’s any other ones that you want to add. And then I go through this for me probably every three months, I COVID has been a really nice time to catch up on stuff like this. After that, maybe will be six more months before I go through this, but you’d like to see who’s on here who’s not who sent stuff, who hasn’t, etc. So where do you find those referral sources? This is I think, the hardest part of this whole thing. If you genuinely like other humans, which not everybody does, but if you do, you’re not going to have a problem building relationships with people you’re going to have a problem finding the right people to potentially build that A relationship with so that I always tell people start with your current network. You know, we all know I’m sure we all have 1000s of friends on Facebook and for watching this, how many of them really know what we’re doing? How many of them? Do we really know what they do? How many of them do we want to get to know better start there and see what spots come out, then you can talk about networking events, obviously, that’s different. Now, most of them are virtual. On the one hand, that’s easier to go to more events, because you don’t have to drive there. And for people that are more introverted, it’s a little bit safer, if you will. But at the same time, it’s harder to build that connection through a computer. And it’s harder to build that connection in a Zoom meeting, or a Google hangout where there’s 20 people talking at once. You can’t break up into smaller groups, those kinds of things. When you’re at a networking event, though, by a notch show of hands, because I can’t see anybody’s hands, how many people try to collect business cards. And I hope that nobody is thinking, Yes, that’s me. You don’t want to collect business cards as the winning thing of a networking event, you are not there to collect as many business cards, you’re there to build relationships. So you are better off having a longer conversation with two or three people than you are chatting for 15 seconds with 100 different people. Because remember, we want to build genuine relationships here, which are based upon those connections. So other places, leads, groups, BNI, certain things like that, those will tend to accelerate your referral sources, because in theory, you should have 20 or 30 people that are referral sources immediately. The downside, though, is I think a lot of times you kind of get stuck with who’s in that group for certain ones. So like, when I was in BNI, I would say there were 10, or 15 people in the group that were great, and really helped me and I helped them and we liked each other, and we still stay in touch. And then we had another, you know, 20 people that would circle in and out that weren’t really that committed, but we’re taking up space for somebody that might have been helpful in a position we need. So there are pros and cons there. Organization organizations, you want other lawyers to already be in the organization. And we’ll talk about this a little bit more later. But basically, you want to join groups that already have lawyers there. Because it is easier for somebody to refer you business, if they’re already referring it to one of your competitors. It is much easier for somebody who refers business law cases to my competitor to refer them to me based upon me building a better connection, or showing them why my firm is better than it is to teach somebody to refer cases to a business law attorney or an estate planning attorney, or whatever it is that you are. So when you join, like chambers of commerce, I joined one that had no other lawyers. And I thought it was a genius. I was there for a year and got absolutely nothing out of it. Because nobody in there knew how to refer to lawyers never got cases that would come up that we would need things like that. Also social media really good place, we really under utilize social media for our benefit. And I include myself in this, don’t be afraid to just post on social media, Hey, I am looking to meet with realtors, I am looking to meet barbers. I’m looking to meet mortgage brokers just posted on Facebook and see what happens. Because you’ll get a bunch of people that will name themselves, which is cool, but you’ll also get a bunch of people that will name somebody else. And unless that person is what Keith Ferrazzi calls a super connector, unless they’re like me unless they just really enjoy connecting people to get there together. There’s a reason why they’re naming that person, that person did something to stay top of mind with them, that person did something to stay memorable, hopefully did a great job. So those are the kinds of people that you want to meet because they are making other referral sources. And they’re going to connect with you through their referral sources, which leads me to believe they’re going to be a better referral source for you than somebody who nobody knows. So really think about what will work best for you. Do you like the one on one connection? Do you like the larger meeting? Do you like the social media connection, figure out what you want and go from there. Because that’s going to be really helpful for you, you have to find the right thing that fits for you what you want to do otherwise, you’re going to hate it, it’s going to be really difficult, you’re not going to want to go to the events, you’re not going to want to log into the meetings, whatever it is. So don’t be afraid to have an opinion and not do things that you don’t want to do. Alright, so more places. And we’ll give you some examples. We’re making some pretty good time here. The fact that there aren’t questions helps me get through this. But if you do have questions, chime in, Becky and I are watching so we’re ready for him. So other places, you know, for these referral sources, you want to find places that are right for you and your ideal client. So for us for business law, we want to go places that have a bunch of business owners. So that might be chambers of commerce, that might be different business incubators, that might be different trade shows. For first party property attorneys, you want to find contractors and homeowners. So maybe you want to go to the trade show for contractors. Maybe you want to join one of the local unions or go speak at one of their meetings, something along those lines for title companies. You want those realtors, those mortgage lenders, those homeowners same thing. You want to find places where a lot of those people are to be referral based because it’s going to be really easy to meet a bunch of them in one shot and do one presentation there or connect with one person who runs the chamber or something along those lines, so normally this point, I go through other people, and we have people go through their topic, and we talked about it, but we’ll skip that for now. So extra referral sources, your family and friends can be great referral sources, probably, I used to be a criminal defense attorney in a former life, probably not a great referral source for family and friends to have criminal issues, or to know people who have serious criminal issues. It depends. But just think about your family and friends, make sure they know what you do, and make sure that they’re keeping an eye out for you. And you can do that by hosting events for them having barbecues, obviously, a lot of this is Once COVID is over, knock on wood soon, hosting events, things like that current clients, you got to do something to stay top of mind with current clients, if you’re gonna get good referral sources from current clients on this one, for as a former criminal defense attorney, current clients were really great to send other people. So we would do a newsletter, and we would follow up about changes to the law, and we would send them things about expungements. So we would say top of mind, so when their friend got into the same stupid criminal issue that they had, they would think of us. But think about, you know, from your clients perspective for business owners, you know, family and friends and current clients are pretty good. If you’re looking for real estate stuff, current clients and family and friends might be pretty good. You might have certain areas where you’re not going to get referrals from current clients, because it’s going to be their competitors, or whatnot. But just think about if those are things that make sense for you. And this last one, this is something that’s pushed by Atticus Atticus is a lawyer coaching program here in Orlando, I know we’ve had a bunch of people that spoke there was somebody was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, talking about it. I think Atticus has some really great ideas. This being one of the best ones, everyone you spend money on could and should spend send you business. So your dry cleaners should send you business your lawn person should send you business, your nail tech should send you business, your process server should send you business, your vendors should send you business, your printing company, it is worth paying more to use a company that will send you business back if you need to spend $300 more on business cards, but they will send you a $3,000 case, you’ve made the right call. And that’s not to say that everybody in your life has to send you business by any means. And you should cut them out if you don’t. But when it comes to vendors and people that you were spending money on, they should be doing things for your business back. Atticus talks about once a year, you want one case a year from them, I can tell you, my lawn guy has sent me some really big medical malpractice and personal injury cases for friends that got into accidents or had issues with you know, something with a doctor along those lines. And he does a great job cutting my lawn too. And I like them. And we get along well. So it’s the ultimate solution right there. Try to find more people like that. It’s not going to be possible for everything. But try, you know, when you’re talking to your accountant in sometime in the next, you know, six days now the taxes or do talk to them about what you do, make sure they’re thinking about you, you know, maybe you need to come in and do a presentation at the office, maybe there’s something you can do for them. Maybe you have clients that you can refer to them. But also try and make sure that they’re aware of what you do and sending you stuff back a really easy way to make money off of spending money off of cool things. For example, we get our house cleaned a bunch by somebody that sends us a decent amount of business. So I get business out of it. And again playing house. It is totally a win win win. And it’s something you should be looking for as you’re going around town spending money and buying things. I have definitely switched vendors because of vendor getting refer me stuff. So it sucks. You always kind of feel awkward about it, or at least I do. But if you’re talking about wanting to make sure that your practice grows as best as it can be small things like that can make a humongous difference.
Becca Eberhart
Hey, guys, it’s Becca here. I’m sure you’ve heard Jim and Tyson mentioned the guild on the podcast and in the Facebook group. That’s because we’re seeing some really exciting things happening with guild members and their businesses. The Guild is this perfect mix of a community group coaching and a mastermind. Inside you’ll gain support, tap into a network of connections and continue learning a common theme among successful entrepreneurs. There are so many benefits inside the guild, including weekly live events and discounts to all maximum lawyer events, head over to maximum lawyer.com forward slash the guild to check out all of the benefits and watch a few testimonials from current members. Investing in a community is like the self care of business ownership. Being in a community with other people who get it is crucial when you’re creating a rock solid foundation to build your business on one that’s strong enough to withstand setbacks, transitions and growth. So head to maximum lawyer.com and click on the guild page to join us. Now let’s get back to the episode.
Jordan Ostroff
All right, so once you have those people in mind, you’ve been referral based you know the number you have an idea of some people so where do you build this connection? So I always talk about the best networking is doing what I want to do with who I want to do with. So we’re working on Building a genuine connection, but doing something that we genuinely like with somebody that we genuinely like. And I will use the word genuine a million times more through this, because that’s what it all boils down to the human brain, you know that gut feeling is going to come up so much, if you are faking it, you have to be genuine about all of these things. So some ideas, food and drinks, could be lunch, could be dinner, could be happy hour, always make the other person pick, and then you pay, always make the person pick, and then you pay the benefit of that. And normally, I ask questions here, and we go through five reasons why it’s, that’s not the right reason. So I’ll just give you the right answer off the bat, you want them to pick a place that they’re going to be comfortable with, not just because of how it will impact them to make them enjoy the meeting more, but also, because they’re going to pick a place that’s going to give them an opportunity to run into somebody else they know most likely, they’re going to pick that place close to their office that they go to frequently, something along those lines, now you have a better chance of meeting somebody else who knows them. And making a connection with two people at this one lunch. I’ve had it happen to me sporadically. I’ve talked to other attorneys that have literally gotten six figure cases out of somebody who knew the person they went to lunch with and met with them when they went to lunch with somebody else. And that was the only way they connected and then they are there stayed in touch for a couple of weeks later that person thought about them. So make them pick. Also, as you can tell, like I like food. So making them pick, I get to try a bunch of different places around town. Whereas if I had a pig, I would go to the same places and get bored of them. So another good option sports, I don’t necessarily mean you should play sports. But taking people to games happens to be pretty good. If you’re going to play bowling is good. Golf is good. Top Golf, I think is the absolute best, at least for me and my referral sources. Top Golf has been wonderful, we enjoy it, you’re kind of outside but kind of shaded, you’re sort of playing golf, but if somebody sucks, it’s not a big deal, which is usually me. You can get drinks, you can get food, you can sit there and talk. So it’s sort of like bowling outside with, you know, with golf in it. So thinking about things like that, if though, you know, if you’re not a big food and drinks person, you’re not a big sports person, just think about someplace quiet, where you can talk and everyone have fun. So we’ve done ones, paint your own art places or make your own pottery places we’ve done once a chocolate making that was a really good one, it was really interesting to see especially like older male attorneys do make chocolate. And some of them were like, you know, this is outside my comfort zone. And then other ones I think found a new calling as a chocolate tear. So just look for a place that’s semi quiet, where you can talk and everyone will have fun. The sporting games, I’ve got magic season tickets when basketball exists. Again, obviously, we’re not having a great conversation at the game. But at halftime after the game before the game. It’s a nice event. It’s a nice experience. So but again, really any place that semi quiet, where you can talk and everyone will have fun. All right. So how do you connect with referral sources, be genuine comes up again, be honest, be engaged, be interested, be present and Don’t fake it. The easiest way to think about this is imagine in the reverse. Imagine you went to lunch with somebody that you didn’t know that well, and they were faking it. And they weren’t being honest with you, and they weren’t engaged and they were playing on your phone, and they didn’t care what you had to say. And they were reading the staff and whatever, I hope that you would never want to see that person again. So don’t be that person be the opposite, you know, really set that time that time aside, really make that connection, really make that focus really build that relationship, because that’s where all this is going to come from, like the relationship comes first, the cases come second. And I have made some really good friends who have never sent me business. I wanted them to they haven’t but I genuinely liked them. They genuinely like me, we have a great friendship. And that has been totally worth it. So I don’t want you to think that we’re you know, I’m telling you to commoditize everything, I’m telling you that by doing things this way, you will you can’t lose. Even if you’ll get a case, you still have a great time, great relationship, etc. So when you’re at this meeting, and I got hold, I’ll move my screen so I can see what’s over here. So here’s what they need to know about you. They need to know your contact information for clients, they need to know one good and memorable story about your ideal client. And they need to know that you can’t solicit leads, at least in Florida, we can’t I’m assuming that’s going to apply to pretty much everybody. That’s all they need to know. And you want that story to really talk about your ideal client and to be memorable in some way. For me, I think I’m funny. There’s a couple of people in this chat that can confirm or deny that they’re more than welcome to. But I always make my story kind of funny. And so we had one, I won’t go into too much detail, but basically somebody at a business got popped for selling drugs. And the business hired us to investigate if everybody or who else they sold drugs to and come to find out that like basically everybody was getting hired pretty much every day at their business. And so we put in a drug testing procedure we put in, you know, policy and procedure on drugs and whatnot went through all that for them. But to me, that’s really funny and memorable story for our ideal client, they were the right side of business for us, etc. So what do you need to know about them, you need to know who they currently send their leads to. And again, like I said, Before, you want them to already have somebody, you want them to be sending cases to your biggest competitor, because that means they are getting these leads, that means they are thinking about an attorney, that means they are making that connection, that means that they’re already making these referrals, and it’s a lot easier to just convince them to send them to you than it is to teach them how to find needs for you and send them to a lawyer. You want to know if you genuinely like them, if you don’t genuinely like them, find somebody else. And I will be totally honest with you for I don’t know, 18 months, I put up with a lot of people that I didn’t genuinely like, and I was not miserable with it, because they sent me business. And you know, it was okay, the minute I stopped, and I was just like I’m done with this person, I felt so much happier about it. So you’re gonna feel that struggle that like, oh, they sent me so much business, I have to put up with it. Get over it, as soon as you can. Like we have to take care of our family with take care of ourselves, we have a firm to support. So I’m not telling you that you can’t network with anybody that you don’t like. But try and get in the position as quickly as possible, where you will are only networking with people that you genuinely like because you will enjoy it so much more, the return will be so exponential. And then just one other thing you know about them, like literally anything else you can to build that genuine relationship with them. It is not about you, it’s about them. It is not about you, it’s about them. And please your God take notes like not in front of them. But you have the best tool ever, your iPhone or your cell phone is the best tool possible. As far as I know, every phone has a note section. So when I’m done with lunch with somebody, when it is over when we are when we have crossed paths, before driving in my car, I will open up their contact, and I will type in some notes, things like their kids names, their kids genders, how old their kids are, what their interests are, things like that. And then every time I go to meet with them, I’ll go through those notes really quickly. Because I can’t tell you how much it sucks when somebody asks you for the sixth time, how your daughter’s doing when you only have a son or something along those lines. So again, don’t be that person, like the benefit of being referral based is you get to play both sides. So the things that rub you the wrong way, don’t do them to other people, because they’ll rub other people the wrong way. So it’s not you, it’s about them. So take those notes. Alright, so again, I talked about Florida CLE. So this is Florida’s ethics rule on direct contact with prospective prospective clients. This has to be in there for this to be a CLE you can read over it, when you get the slides, we’re not going to go over it now. It shouldn’t apply to all of you. If you’re in Florida, this is the thing that basically you can’t solicit. So here’s the rule on it in Florida. Alright, so now, how do you stay top of mind with people, you will have people that will send you business, I have gotten five to $10,000 cases from somebody like literally within a week of meeting them, I never met them before it was just the right thing, or worked out the right way I should say, but that’s not going to be common. What’s going to be common is you’re going to have to have those five or seven touch points for them to be referring stuff to you. Just like with clients, most clients aren’t going to call of your office and hire you immediately right there on the spot. Most people aren’t going to refer you stuff immediately. Some will. That’s wonderful, not everybody. So make sure you follow up with those referral sources. The first one actually do the things you told them you would do. I try to end every one of my meeting, one of my referral meetings or networking meetings are relationship building, whatever you want to call it ending with what can I do for you? Who can I connect you with? What clients are you looking for? Who are your best referral sources, and then I’ll try to do something to make that connection. So a lot of times, you know, we’ll have people in our network that are really helpful for other people or network. You know, we like Realtors a lot. They get involved in a lot of land sales for businesses and what they need to talk to mortgage brokers, they need to talk to title companies and other title attorneys and real estate attorneys. So I will connect them to the people that are already in my circle. Sometimes they want a presentation on something that we talked about. We’ve done stuff on employee handbooks, we’ve done things on the metoo movement, we’ve done ones on, you know the five things that realtors will do to lose their license, sometimes they want you to come in and do that presentation. Sometimes they want you to send them something. Sometimes there might be an article you come across the next week, do you think super helpful for them? You know, there’s something about the real estate market in your area or there’s a presentation a free presentation being put out by somebody else. Try to do something that you genuinely think will be helpful for them for them and then to them in the next couple of weeks. Especially if you told them you would do something. So again, provide value for them. If any of you follow me on LinkedIn, you’ll know I’m on like a one man quest to try and stop LinkedIn spam. I’m definitely losing but I’m trying. So you need to be providing value before you expect anything in return. What can you do to help them in their business? Can you teach them about how your clients intersect with theirs? Or vice versa? Can you have them on a podcast that you have this goes back to Gary V’s the cool kids party thing, can you do a video with them? Is there a white paper or a blog post you can write that will be helpful for them. Something along those lines, provide value to them, first, show them that you are helpful for them, show them that you are committed to them, show them that you genuinely like them first. And then cases might come after that they might not which is totally fine. You need to make sure that you’re not just providing value with the expectation of cases, but you are providing value anyway to help build that relationship of which the cases will come. So things that are easy newsletter, you can send it every month to everybody with the same stuff. You can host parties or events. Again, not during COVID. You can text them stay top of mind, you can email them articles, you can do email intros between them and somebody else. I mean, there’s all sorts of things that you can do, there’s no reason, there’s no reason for you not to be able to do anything for them, there’s always going to be some value you can provide. And if there really isn’t, and then they’re probably not a good referral source for you. Because there just isn’t that intersection between what would help them and what you’re doing already. Again, I list iPhone, if you go on your iPhone, you have favorites, your top 50 favorites, you can set those in your phone. For me, that is my wife, who’s number one. And I think she’s also watching this, she’s totally number one on my heart, and a couple of people in the firm. And then like my 45, top referral sources, friends, people that I want to stay in touch with people I’m trying to build that relationship with. And then in our CRM, I have a list of a bunch of more people for my, you know, really good, go to referral sources, but send them in your phone. And then when you’re sitting there, you’re stuck in that two hour cattle call, you’re on that virtual meeting where you don’t need to talk yet. And you’re just waiting for the judge to call you whatever, you can go through your phone really quickly shoot off a text, shoot off a message at the holidays, you can go through and wish people happy Father’s Day, happy July 4, Happy Mother’s Day, whatever it is along those lines. So I like having my iPhone top 50 set with, I would say the 50 people that I want to stay in touch with the most regardless of why good thing would be to put some, at least some referral sources in there. All right, so you’re still not sure what to do with referral sources cheat sheet and steal. I’m giving you the right to do that in these in this context. Don’t lie, you can’t lie, but you can cheat and steal. And by that I mean, what do people do that makes you refer to them? And steal it? Why are you referring them versus anybody else? And steal that reason? What did they do to stay in touch with you and and cheat and steal that idea and use it for yourself? What have they done to be top of mind for me? Think about it, then do it for other people? What value do they provide to me steal it and use it for other people. Like seriously, I maybe have had two actual unique thoughts in my entire life. The rest of it was me just stealing things from other people and slightly tweaking it for my goals. And I am more than happy to share all this with you and steal away, steal whatever you want from anything that’s here, I’m totally fine with it. And I will send you more stuff that you can steal from just make it work for you. And then do the reverse. You know, there are people that I went to law school with that I genuinely love, and they are great attorneys and they’re board certified. And I never send them business. Because in that moment, I genuinely forget about them when there’s that case, because they don’t do anything to stay top of mind with me. And so I think about what they could do, they could send a newsletter, they could check in, they could host a party, they can post on Facebook more than whatever it is, and then do those things. So other people think of you when they have the potential need. And again, not everybody is going to refer cases, just right off the bat. Some people don’t have the mindset for it, they don’t have the connections for it, they don’t have the time for it, whatever it is, you have to be okay with that. But by doing this and by keeping your eyes open for these sorts of things, you will come across a enough people who will do it, and then you’ll come across some that will be better than you at it. And then you can learn from them. And you can build their connections and you can work on some of their connections. And you can make yourself a better referral referral based person refer? I don’t know, however you want to call it. So what do you do when you get a referral? I send a thank you note and I hope that there are people watching that have gotten a thank you note for me. If you can see it in the thing kind of small, it looks like this. It folds in half. It has our logo on the front, it has my contact info on the back. And then I write a handwritten note inside thanking them for it. If it’s a referral fee applicable case like a personal injury case, a car accident, something like that, under Florida law, I will do the necessary signings and let the client know so that they can get a referral fee. In Florida, you can’t do anything else. You cannot do anything else. You cannot even if they’re a lawyer, a lawyer may not give anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer services. I won’t go too far in detail with this because other states may have different things, but you can’t send another lawyer a bottle of wine in Florida or something along those lines. This is what the rule says you can read the ethics opinions, if your state’s different, great. If your state is different, do more than this, please dear God, if your state will let you do more than this, Florida will not so I can’t, or I don’t. Here’s the Florida rule on contingency fee. Again, we’re gonna skip through this. If you’re a Florida Bar member, you’ll have a CLE that requires that I talk about these. So they are here they’re in the slide, we go over them make yourself aware. Here’s the one for fees and costs for legal services and divisions that aren’t contingency fee. Florida has like three different ways they talked about it. But we’re again going to skip over this. So we have the person, we’ve gotten that referral, they’ve come into our office. So what do we do next? You keep the referral source updated on the case, as allowed. Keep the referral source updated on the case as allowed. And that means letting them know what’s going on, you do an amazing job on the case for the referral, do an amazing job, you close that case, as best as you ethically can, you then ask that client to rave to the referral source of value, please, dear God, go talk to so and so and let them know how great of a job I did or let them know what your experience was like, there is I can tell my referral sources how great I am. And they’ll take it for granted assault like they should. But when they sent over their neighbor, when they send over their spouse, when they send over their best friend, when they send over their business partner for that person to go back to them and say, Oh, my God, you know, Jordan law did a great job. They were responsive, the resolution was great. They really helped protect my business, whatever it was, that’s going to be worth so much more than me saying, Yeah, I’m great, you know, I’m doing a great job. I’m a great attorney. They’ve heard it from somebody that they care about, they cared enough to refer the person over that person cared enough to talk to them back and tell them how wonderful I am. And then ask the client for review. These are the five things that you should do with all of those referrals once you’ve gotten them. So this is the Florida Bar ethics rule on asking for reviews. If you Google it, it says you can’t, because it’s like a 10 year old case, they changed the rules for this, it basically complies with Google’s Terms of Service, I hope and you’re saying you can ask for reviews. Not in in every state, you can’t figure out if you can, if you can’t, don’t do it, if you can do it. Why? Because a review is really just a referral from somebody they don’t know. And review is really just a referral from somebody they don’t know. So if you are doing advertisements, and you are focused on getting great reviews, it’s because you realize that the people that find your ad will also read those reviews, and they’ll see those referrals for people they don’t know. So if you’re going to be referral based, you also want to have those reviews. And you should get better reviews being referral based because again, they’re coming in warm, they know somebody that you know, they chose you for a reason, etc. And really, I don’t know, if you’re like me, when I go to buy something, anything, I look at reviews, I don’t care what it is, I should say that if it’s like five bucks, I don’t care. But like anything more than that, I go and I look at reviews, even if it’s referred, even if I use it, even if, you know some other attorney convinced me to buy an iPad, and I saw how they did it. And it was great. And I still went online and looked at reviews for the iPad Pro versus this size versus this versus that whatever. Not everyone’s going to do that. But I think a lot of people will and Google makes it really easy for it to be there. And people to find it as do a bunch of other review sites. So people want to see more reviews, quantity is more important than quality. Quantity is more important than quality. That is not often the case. But with reviews, it is studies have shown that a 3.5 or 4.5 star out of five reviews are best that people with more reviews in that range actually get more referrals or more cases, or more clients than firms that have a five out of five star rating with fewer reviews. Because I think that I it really goes back to like people think that the reviews are real if you have a couple bad ones. So don’t lose your mind over every bad review. They can be really good. They can be helpful when they’re vary by a bunch of good reviews. So if you look up Jordan law everywhere, I’m pretty sure we’re 4.9 Pretty much everywhere, very happy with that we’ve got like two or three bad reviews and then 97 Good ones or whatever the numbers work out to be. More reviews are better than less reviews, even if they’re slightly worse, somebody giving you a four star review is still a positive thing, even if you want all five star reviews, according to all of the studies. So now we’ve gotten through a couple of those cases, we want to get more referrals, we’ve got about 13 more minutes. So we’ll get through this pretty good time. So go to your referrals and ask literally ask them what can I do to get more referrals from you literally just ask them that you would be so amazed at the answer. For a lot of them. There’ll be nothing, you know, I don’t get as much from trying for some of them. I have had people literally say, Well, you know, actually I’ve been referring cases of this kind to you and to so and so whatever has been so much happier with you. And you really asked about this, you know what I’m not going to refer to so and so anymore. I’m going to send them all to you because I asked If you don’t ask you can’t get. So in addition to asking, meet their contacts, go to some of your great referral sources and ask them who else do you know that I should get to know? And also introduce them around? Who else do I know that you should get to know? Because I really like keeping those circles connected. Because if I refer something out to my family law referral, and then they refer something out to their real estate attorney, and then their real estate attorney has a referral, I’d rather come back to me. So if I know them, and they know me, and they know everybody else, we keep the referrals in the same circle. Not always going to happen, not always going to be possible, but something to think about. So think about new referral sources. We’ve got the Excel spreadsheet and download, go through that. See what other things you can add, see how those are going as clients who they go to when you get referrals from people that you don’t know what their profession is, or you don’t know what the relationship is between them and the client, ask the client, how do you know so and so? Oh, well, they’re my accountant. Oh, well, they’re my neighbor, oh, well, whatever it is. And if you start seeing the same professions, or the same connections, come up, figure out how you can jump on that relationship better. A lot of times, you know, you’ll get some really good referral sources for people in positions of authority and power, whether that’s bosses, whether that’s teachers, whether that’s something along those lines, those can be really good referral sources for anybody just because that’s somebody that people look at as a you know, a mentor, if they don’t have one or somebody someplace to go for guidance, massage therapists, psychics, I mean, you can get really good referrals from all sorts of professions, because people have the opportunity to talk and they trust that person for a number of reasons. So think about sending a random gift that makes them think of you again, in Florida, you can do that in exchange for a case, a random gift is not a yeti mug with your logo on it. A random gift could be a yeti mug with their logo on it, though, if you send them your work swag, that’s not a gift for them. That’s marketing. There’s a book called gift holiday gift, ology. Highly recommend it. We’ve talked about it in the group, it talks about that and really hammers that point home. One of the things that we love to do is I have my assistant call their assistant and ask what are they like what restaurants they like, this would be for like a birthday gift and anniversary gift, something along those lines. Hopefully the assistant knows them, it seems to be a little bit easier for their assistant talk to my assistant and vice versa. And then we’ll send them the gift that the assistant recommended. And then we’ll send the assistant a five or $10 Target gift card, Starbucks gift card, something like that, which is amazing, because I’ve actually, in some instances, gotten more cases from the assistant, because that five or $10, Starbucks gift card stood out so much more than the $150 bottle of, you know, 16 year old whiskey or whatnot, because the attorney got a million gifts, and nobody ever cared about the assistant. So it was really nice thing to do, regardless of the benefit of it. But it was interesting to see that that help give us to people in a firm that wanted to refer business back to us, instead of one on something really easy. So you’re you’re looking to build a tribe, a herd, raving fans, whatever it is, along those lines, you’re looking to build a group of people that will go nuts about you. Ideally, the best referrals will be referrals from multiple people, just because it’s like, oh, I wasn’t sure about you. So I also asked, I asked my financial advisor and I asked my estate planning attorney, and both of them without hesitation told me to go to you. I have I’ve got a job posting listing right now I’ve literally had two people that I know both call me about the same person who submitted and it was that much more impactful to get this referral or this recommendation from multiple people. So in addition to building that tribe and heard, you’re going to do that, and you need to do that by making this a consistent system, this isn’t you work really hard for three weeks, and then you fall off the face of the earth. This is you make this a consistent system, you do this over and over again, you do the same things consistently. And you see how it grows, that could be checking in with people every two weeks, that could be making sure you send a birthday card everybody on their birthday, that can be making sure when a certain sporting event comes up, you invite the same person or when a certain teams in town or concert, you take the same people something along those lines, but systematize, it will make it easier. Find mentors, I have gotten so much farther than I would have gotten otherwise, with mentors and also find mentees. I didn’t put that on there. But a lot of times, you’ll learn just as much from somebody that you’re supposed to be teaching, because they have a different perspective, because they have a different outlook, because certain things worked for them or didn’t work for them. Because they might be more in touch with technology or some of the quicker changes. I joke with some of my mentors about you know, when they started as lawyers, and we couldn’t advertise at all. And there wasn’t Facebook, and everyone was just in the yellow pages and you know, whatnot. And so you’ve seen things change. And so it’s really nice to stay in touch with people that have changed how they’re running their own practices to accommodate and see how they have changed over time. It’s also helpful to have people and bounce ideas off of who’ve seen more than you ever will put together a mastermind. This can be a bunch of attorneys in town, it could be virtual, it could be more experienced than you less could be a mix, but it’s a really good way to get more URLs, it’s a really good way to build a better practice, you want to do a mastermind that is small enough where you will trust everybody fully in it. So you don’t want a mastermind that has everybody in it, because you’re going to be a little bit more close to the vest about what you share. That’s one of the things I think is amazing about this group, we’ve got what 3500 members right now, maybe more. And so a lot of times, like there’s a bunch of people that are competitors with each other, and that are on this group that still share everything, wholly and fully. Those are the kinds of people that you want in your mastermind, you don’t want that one person in town, we all have who’s going to take a take and never get back and steal the ideas and try to stab you in the back. You don’t want that person in your mastermind. So if that means you have to go nationwide with it great if that means you have to go small with it great. But it’s a great way to get more referrals and bounce ideas off of people and devil’s advocate each other etc. host events how people bring people that you don’t already know, I have this idea that I’m going to do after COVID, where we’re going to play guest bingo. So I’m going to sit down with one or two other attorneys, we’re going to create a bingo card of things about people that we want and referral sources like they’re a doctor or another lawyer or something along those lines. And then you’re going to have to bring a guest and you get all the squares for your guests. And then you’ll get to pick one other guests to fill out the rest of the squares. And whoever gets the most squares will win some sort of an award. And I think it’s really cool because we’re going to do that making 20 Other people looking for somebody who fits a certain criteria of who we want to network with. So we might look for people who are accountants, we might look for people who are financial advisors, who might look for people who are involved in a certain Chamber of Commerce, something along those lines, but you events like that, it’s really nice to do. And in Florida, it’s really nice. When you can’t give somebody a gift, you can host an event for everybody and invite your referral sources first and invite everybody else and it’s less of an issue because you’re not doing it just because they are giving you business, you’re hosting an event to build, you know, awareness and whatnot. What else, normally, we take feedback here, we’re in the group. So we’ll power through that as well. We got our six more minutes, use social media talked about it before posts on social media looking to talk to so and so join referral groups or other groups on Facebook, the max Law Group, I will tell you, and I wasn’t paid to say this is my favorite Facebook group right now as a lawyer, I mean, a bunch of other ones, I don’t interact there nearly as much as we do on Facebook, it just we have a great group here. So if you find other ones great, but at the end of the day, you have this one here. So totally cool to look for referrals in here. I’m in Central Florida in Orlando, I’m looking for a family law attorney, anybody else know any, any ones in here that I don’t know, whatever it is, along those lines, when you’re in other groups. Usually this is for more local groups. If somebody asked for a referral, try to connect with them offline. So we’ve got a bunch of different groups here for Central Florida for referrals and whatnot, people will post for a personal injury attorney or business law attorney, I will always send them a message offline that says, hey, look, you posted in here because you don’t have somebody whether you send this one to me or not, I don’t care. Let’s go to lunch, let’s go to happy hour, let’s go to the magic game. Let’s get to know each other. Let’s do whatever phone call, whatever it is, I want the rest of your referrals. I want to build a relationship with you where you will think of me and not have to go to Facebook to figure out who to refer to. And the coolest part was, so I did this presentation at my local bar association. And I said this. And literally somebody walked up to me afterwards he goes, Hey, two weeks ago, you reached out to me because exactly what you said, and we didn’t connect yet. So let’s get together. And and then we got together after that. So I totally that is a little confirmation. I do walk the walk here. Share your success and failures online with people like I run my Facebook, very open and honest with people, it talks about me being a lawyer, it talks about positives, it talks about negatives, I want to I want people to get a feeling for who I am, I understand that I’m not going to attract everybody, and I will probably repel a bunch of people. And I’m totally okay with that. If I’m going to repel you, that’s fine. There’s 7 billion people in the world if we don’t even hang out, I’m okay with that. But by me being honest to me, and being genuine to me and posting those things, I will attract the people that I want to connect with more at least that’s how it seemed to work. So be human show people your true you. We’re almost done here. We’ll still we’ll still make time. So six months later, see who’s sending you business, do something for them, see who’s sending you leads that don’t hire, so they’re sending you leads, but those people aren’t hiring, talk to them about the process, talk to them about what they’re saying, talk to them about who they’re sending, talk to them and try to figure out what the issues are. A lot of times it might be that they’re not talking you up the right way. A lot of times it might be they don’t understand what you do something along those lines. And then look at who’s connecting you with other people who send you business. We can connect, I can send you five cases over the next couple months great. Or I can connect you with five people who each send you five cases and now I’ve sent you 25 cases. So think about those things. For people that don’t do anything. Check in, see what’s going on and go over that with them figure out and again, you’re not going to have 100% success here but Any amount of success will snowball and build and you’ll get a better idea for who you want to connect with how you connect how you build those relationships, etc. So, you know, track leads, we talked about that we’ve got the intake sheet that you can take. And then if they’re not sending you, if you don’t like them, if it’s not a good fit, find somebody else, you know, if it’s somebody whose services you pay for, let him know, they have six more months, if they do a great job, you know, maybe stay with them, if they don’t do a great job, and they don’t send you stuff definitely move to somebody else. And I’ve also told people, like, look, I like you, but and I’ve made it, I’m in this coaching group, they’re forcing me to do this, I’d love it. If you sent me some business in the next six months, I can come back, that would make me so happy. I, you know, I don’t I’m gonna be the bad guy. I’m gonna make them the bad guy. And sometimes you get stuff. And sometimes you don’t, if you really liked them, and really care about them, and you don’t follow this instruction 100% I totally understand because I don’t follow this 100%. I tried to but there’s some people that I just have that place in my heart for even though they don’t refer business, which is totally fine. It is holding my business back, but it makes me feel better as a person. So it’s all a balancing test. All right, so need more help. This is the legalese Facebook, we pretty much post a video a day that gives your free tasks, that sort of phone number, this is my email, you can email me I will send you the slides, I’m not going to give you an opt in you don’t have to opt in you don’t have to sign up. I don’t have to send you newsletters for the rest of eternity. You can just email me and I will send you this slide which has those three attachments on it. And if you were a Florida Bar practitioner, here’s your Florida CLE. We have gone over 15 minutes so you can get a CLE from this for one hour general CLE. Good until August 31 of 2021. And that’s it if people
