In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Walter Reaves, a criminal defense lawyer from West Texas. Walter is having a marketing issue: he is not having the cases that he wants. They will discuss about different marketing strategies to solve this problem and improve his business.
“Every time I’ve narrowed my practice and narrowed my marketing I’ve made more money.”
The cases that Walter likes are DWI’s and basic misdemeanor stuff like possession of marijuana, theft and assault. And if he could choose 1 type of case that would be the minor drug cases… A problem in Walter’s website: his videos are very general and very broad. This means that he is going to get a broad number of questions. He should narrow down the type of cases that he wants and start creating content on those.
Mentioned resource: Build To Sell
Hacking’s hack: Involves a phrase that we are hearing a lot: Know Love and Trust.
To do business with someone, first they have to know us. Then, they have to likes us. Then. to trust us.
We have to have marketing that’s devoted to getting them to know us, and that is rising up their hands. Then how we get them to like us; giving them consistent good content for free. And trust is when they make that decision to actually hire us.
Walter’s tip: Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
Tyson’s tip: An app. VIDEORAMA. Edit video, add text. Perfect app for IGTV!
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Transcripts: Narrow Down Your Practice ft. Walter Reaves
Jim Hacking
If there’s stuff that you don’t want to take, you could farm that out and just really narrow your focus every year we get more efficient. As a practitioner, you’re going to become the guru on the Hill that everyone’s going to refer stuff to. I also think that other criminal defense attorneys would start sending you more stuff if they thought you weren’t going to steal their clients for other criminal issues. I think it just overall would make you much more referral.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking and enticing matrix with me. Okay, so my friend, how are you? Did you have a good Fourth of July?
Tyson Mutrux
I did. It was really fun. It’s kind of laid back for the most laid back forth that I’ve had in a long time. But really good. How about you? Yeah, we
Jim Hacking
had a lot of fun. I got to go to some friends parties along the parade route. And then we got to go see the fireworks last night. It was a good time.
Tyson Mutrux
Very cool. Very cool. Well, we have a guest on the line today want to introduce our guest. Yeah. So
Jim Hacking
our guest today is Walter Reese. He’s a criminal defense attorney practicing in West Texas. And he has been an adjunct professor at Baylor law school, and he is active in various criminal defense lawyer organizations. He’s also been a great member of our group. He came to the conference in May. And we’re really happy to have you, Walter, thanks for joining us.
Walter Reaves
Hey, thanks for having me.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, Walter. So you gave us an issue that you’re having. Before I get to that, though, I want to, I want you to just give us a setup of your firm, how you get started, things like that with a basic setup of what’s going on with you.
Walter Reaves
Yeah, I forgot a right now a just a office with me as the only attorney I’ve have got a secretary slash paralegal slash does everything else person who’s been with me for about 11 years now. And we pretty much operated that way. For a while I’ve gone back and forth with ahead a Associate Attorney for a little while. But right now, it’s just the two of us. And we’ve got an office actually, I’m in Waco, Texas. And that’s where I practice out of. So and I’ve been doing that for a really long time.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, so what’s a really long time mean? Means since
Walter Reaves
1981, so 37 years
Tyson Mutrux
of vehicle, so you’ve been doing this? You’re not new to this game. So that’s good. All right. So Right. So you gave us a problem that you’re having, you’re doing really, really, really, really, really well on the Internet, what I could tell, but do you want to tell us what your problem that you’re having?
Walter Reaves
Yeah, we may not do really well on the internet, as far as search results just for, for the, I guess, the most common search terms, for criminal defense lawyers. It’s the I guess the problem is the traffic is, it’s not really the traffic that I want. I mean, we get some good cases that way. And probably most of our leads nowadays, come through through that source. But it’s really, it’s a lot of a lot of kinds of steps that we don’t want, it’s not really qualified people. And it’s a lot of a lot of people that are just calling around what advice or mental like the lawyer that they got now. So they want to get rid of it, but they don’t really have any money to pay another lawyer. So that sort of issue. I really haven’t done much. I mean, I won’t say I haven’t done much. I haven’t been really intentional about how I’ve approached things, add content to the site fairly regularly. I’ve started picking up and trying to add some, some videos, not really on a schedule, but that’s pretty much been my marketing activity is just, it’s just adding content to the to the website, and all the traffic that’s come through is organic traffic,
Tyson Mutrux
right? So you don’t like the cases. And if I’m, if I’m saying this wrong, let me know. You’re not getting the cases that you want. So you we want to maybe sort of change things up. So what are the cases that you’re getting now to the website that you’re not quite happy with the word of the cases they want to get in the cases
Walter Reaves
that we really like are, we did a lot of DWI. Here we call it DWI. Everywhere else it’s DUI. And then then a lot of just sort of the basic misdemeanor stuff like possession of marijuana, this sort of the assaults, Baylor University’s here so that’s a pretty good market and some of our better clients or our students go into school. We’re here at Baylor. And there’s a, there’s another technical school here.
Tyson Mutrux
So if you’re going to choose just one type of case, and I’ve done a criminal defense, and so I know how to visually there’s quite a wide array of cases that need to be taken off. If you take one type of case, what would you say?
Walter Reaves
Yeah, go back and forth on that. It’s probably the minor drug cases, like marijuana and control substances.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, and what’s your least favorite case that you’re getting to the website. And their least favorite
Walter Reaves
are just the more serious felony offenses, like robberies, assaults, and in cases like that, generally cases where people have prior records.
Tyson Mutrux
And that it’s interesting, I think you’re probably in the minority when it comes, I think most criminal defense attorneys wanted to handle the big stuff and not the other stuff. So that’s interesting, but luckily, with the way you want to do, and you can sort of streamline it, I can tell you, I’m looking at your website now. And I’m looking at just the videos. And I can I can maybe identify one problem already, is that you your videos are very general and very broad, which means you’re going to get a broad number of questions when you come in. So for example, there is one about I mean, one of like ones like get to know a top Waco, criminal defense attorney, top factor and picking a Waco, Texas criminal defense attorney, you know, how much do they wake up criminal defense attorney cost? I mean, these are very general questions. Just just talking about criminal defense lawyers, you’ve got some ones that are really, really good. I mean, if you were going to handle just DWI cases, this is a really good one, Texas driver’s license suspension after DWI. Do you have a guide to DWI and DUI crashes? And you talked about the marijuana? These are some really good ones you said you’d have? Do police have the right to search my car after smelling pot, or arrested for possession of marijuana question mark contest police search, I think we need to start doing probably in Jimmy’s gonna chime in in the fact that but maybe start narrowing down the types of cases that you want, like really folks sit down and just create content like that, because what’s going on is people are searching for a criminal defense lawyer on Google, and they’re getting you injured, because you’re coming up really, really well. Because you have all these search terms that are more broad up, start chiseling it down, I think we probably what you need to do is take that, I mean, the niche of criminal offense actually is a pretty broad niche, what I would do is I would I would narrow it down to the three or four types of criminal cases that you want, and just start creating content on those, I think you’re gonna start seeing a huge difference in the types of cases that you’re gonna see. What are your thoughts on that?
Walter Reaves
I think that’s probably really good advice. And yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Walter, I
Jim Hacking
think your website is good. It’s got a lot of good content. And it reminds me though, of one of my favorite episodes of Dean Jackson, s, and he was interviewing a photography company. And they like do photos for like brochures and advertisements and things. And so they have one website called we shoot can, and they have another website called The we shoot bottles, and the two different domain names, two different websites. And I don’t necessarily think that you need separate websites. But when I was on your website to get down to the drug, I had to click on criminal offenses, and then to drugs. And I think that, you know, I have a couple thoughts. One is that it’s a lot of work to get to that point in the website. So I think that might be deterring people from sending you the kinds of cases that you want the most. Yeah, I
Walter Reaves
mean, yeah, I get that, that idea. So yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I’m not real sure how to go about doing that. But that’s definitely a fixable problem to to make it a little bit easier to navigate.
Jim Hacking
Well, let me ask you this question. Walter, do you think that it would be feasible for you to become the marijuana arrest guru in Texas, that, you know, I really believe that people’s attention spans are so short now that when they think of a legal issue, they should think of you and when they think of you, they should think of that legal issue? In other words, are you willing to trade off some of the things you don’t want to do to become much more focused in your marketing and your messaging? And just I mean, do you think it’s a feasible business model? To just handle marijuana cases in Texas? Do you think you could make that work?
Walter Reaves
Yes. Yeah, I think it’s feasible. Definitely a feasible model to to handle cases in a broader area, then I’m handling it that I’m handling right now. It’s probably not feasible to to get that narrow just in the county where I’m at, because I don’t know that there’s enough traffic to do that. But if The to expand out yeah, definitely thinks think that’s an approach towards taken
Jim Hacking
with me with immigration, you know, I just I was doing lots of different kinds of things for immigrants and just focusing down on immigration really helped me. And then every time I’ve narrowed my practice and narrowed my marketing, I’ve made more money. So. And I think another byproduct of that is, if you were to do that, and you refer it out the criminal stuff you don’t want. I mean, just because you market marijuana doesn’t mean couldn’t steal two DUIs and things like that. But if there’s stuff that you don’t want to take, you could farm that out and just really narrow your focus of the year you get more efficient. As a practitioner, you’re going to become the guru on the Hill that everyone’s going to refer stuff to. I also think that other criminal defense attorneys who maybe don’t want to handle the marijuana stuff would start sending you more stuff. If they thought you weren’t going to steal their clients for other criminal issues. I think it just overall would make you much more referral.
Walter Reaves
Yeah, I can’t argue with that. I mean, I’ve I’ve heard that for years that you do better by by niching. Down and, and going more specific, I have no doubt that strip, just always done a hard to pull the plug. And I guess it kind of takes a leap of faith to do that?
Jim Hacking
Well, again, I don’t think you have to do it all at once. I don’t think it has to be anything drastic, I think what you do is you build it all up and build it all out, build maybe a separate website, or Asia at least. So I think you still get the benefit of maintaining your firm as it is I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that you just cut it all off cold turkey, I think it’s something you’re going to ease into, as you develop and build out the marijuana guru website, you know, even it’s just a landing page with some videos, I think that that would be enough to get things started. And then I think he just sort of ease into it, it eventually started gaining its own momentum. And then I think also, another benefit of taking this approach is that, like Tyson said, it’s really going to make you focus your marketing. And it’s also going to free you up to be more creative. Well, if I wanted to find all the people who use marijuana or who may get arrested for marijuana, where would I go to find them, and then maybe you start doing things like sponsoring concerts where lots of tokers show up or you know, things like that, I think by focusing your practice, you’re going to free yourself up to be a lot more creative. As you get more specific with your marketing.
Walter Reaves
I agree. I think that’s a great suggestion. And it’s kind of solves one of my songs. The other problem, which is just kind of being a little bit too scattered and not being very focused and putting a bunch of stuff on all sorts of different things, which really doesn’t accomplish a lot other than maybe driving traffic. But yeah, I can see a lot of benefit and just focusing their focus in the approach on one thing.
Tyson Mutrux
Walter, what has stopped you from doing it to this point?
Walter Reaves
You mean just getting more specific about one particular thing?
Tyson Mutrux
Right? Like, it sounds like you know that what we’re saying is right, but you’ve not done it. So what is stopping you from doing that.
Walter Reaves
And I guess just probably reservations about sort of putting all your eggs in one basket. But when you sort of think about it, you’re really not putting all your eggs in one basket to begin with, because I still have like a lot of other traffic coming in. And you sort of you ask about sort of the bigger cases, and I still do those, but a lot of what I do is sort of the appeals and post conviction and and I get those cases just primarily from referrals from other lawyers. So that’s, you know, if I do those, that’s, that’s not really something that’s marketing. So I guess I mean, it’s really, when I think about it, it’s really not putting all your eggs in one basket, it’s just kind of slowly moving towards that because it’s not like you’re cutting off and not doing anything else all the sudden and just doing one thing.
Jim Hacking
Walter, I’m thinking about a book that I read one time on my way to Infusionsoft annual convention, and it’s called Built to Sell. It’s about a marketing company that does lots of different things. They do Facebook ads, they do logos, they do commercials, they did all these different things. And they decided to focus only on logos, which was not necessarily their most lucrative case type. But by focusing on it, they again became much more referral and much more efficient. So you might check that book out. It’s a short read. It’s only I think he can probably read it in about an hour or two. Let’s go ahead and spit ball this. Let’s just sort of talk it through if Walter was going to try to become the marijuana arrest, king of Texas, what would be the kinds of things I mean, what does a case like this generate in fees? Walter what you sell sure exactly, but give us like a range of represent that someone could expect.
Walter Reaves
May you say it’s somewhere around 3500 Pour 5000
Jim Hacking
Okay, sure. So, so how much would you be willing to spend on advertising? To bring in a new client? per client?
Walter Reaves
Yeah, I don’t know, that I’ve ever met, where for a case like that, I would say 1015 $20.
Jim Hacking
But if I told you, Walter, if you give me $100, I will give you a client that’s gonna pay you $3,500 I would think that you’d be willing to make that deal all day long, right? Yes. I mean, obviously, a lot of your marketing, go to people that don’t necessarily hire you right away. But I think that a lot of times, we as lawyers don’t think expansively enough on, what am I willing to spend to get someone to actually hire me? Yeah, great. And so then if we think okay, now we have some money to play with, what are some things that we could do in case and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this to sort of promote Walter as this is his expertise, like, would we want to devote it more towards other attorneys to get referrals? Would you want to do it for me? Because I think you’re right, Walter, one of the things you said to us in your email is that I don’t know whether or not people are really reading special reports anymore. And I think people’s attention spans have gotten shorter, and it’s got to be something really quick and hard hitting the you’re going to want to do to sort of get people to raise their hand and and begin a conversation with you. Well,
Tyson Mutrux
I mean, I know from my own website numbers and YouTube numbers, that the marijuana cases you get a lot of people watching videos on them. And usually after an arrest or lessons, what they’re doing is they’re searching in advance about whether they can smoke marijuana, what the limits are, can they have any marijuana in Texas, things like that. So that’s one thing, somebody you said, really funny, Jimmy, marijuana king of texas.com is available. So that is one that I mean, like there, you could totally brand yourself like that in that way. Now, I don’t think marijuana cases are going to be at least in Missouri, they’re not one that’s going to be referred out to you that much. If you are from other criminal defense attorneys, I think that they’re going to keep the majority though. But I think what you’re going to probably see is if you if you brand yourself as the as that marijuana king of Texas, we’ll just call it that for now. Because I think it’s funny, what you’re gonna say is you’re gonna get referrals from a lot of professionals that either get a marijuana charge themselves, or have children, they got a marijuana charge. And a lot of one of the referral partners that you have, they’ve got kids that are in college, that are gonna get into trouble at some point, and they’re going to be looking to you because you are the guy that knows about marijuana, you are that guy. So they just shifting the your message, and something I don’t quite know. And something like sub price is going to know this better? Do you? Do you change the branding on your anchor website? Or do you start with a separate website like marijuana king of texas.com? And start from there? And I don’t know the answer that question, just because I think if it were me, and because, you know, I’m hard headed, I would probably just start putting that branding on my website now. And sort of the other stuff that started to filter itself out as you get more and more marijuana information on the website. But I would really ramp up because I think a lot of people you’ve been practicing for a long time, okay. And I think that people that have been practicing for a really, really long time, carry a lot more weight when it comes to video. I think that you just, I think I was looking at you. I mean, you look like a typical attorney that knows what he’s doing. And I think I think that that will present really, really well on video. So if you’ve got videos already, so I would just start cranking out a ton of videos on that. Get them transcribed, get them on the website, and I think you’re gonna have a ton of content. Walter, that’s something you’re willing to do. Yeah. Yeah.
Walter Reaves
I mean, I think that’s, that’s a good approach. And I’ve, I’ve been focusing a little bit more on videos, especially with this 31 Day Video Challenge, and already have sort of got a few done. But yeah, that’s something that I think is really doable, especially if I just focus on that one particular area, it’s it’s going to be pretty easy to come up with 15 or 20, or more videos that I could knock out pretty fast just on specific questions.
Jim Hacking
You can come up with questions, I can cover past cases, you can tell stories about problems that your clients have had has happened in marijuana. Just talking about old cases would be enough to give you 10 videos right there. And marijuana is really in the news right now. You know, I think Jason’s right. I think that people who are smoking marijuana are using marijuana probably on on the web a lot looking for things like this. I know that with my overseas clients who have to take a medical examiner drug test in order to come to the United States. I mean, I think that would also give you the chance to sort of do some some co branding with people and I think that you As you start to think this way, you’ll start seeing a lot more opportunities and creative juices are going to get fun because you’re going to hear about things or things in the news or there might be maybe maybe some crazy not in Texas decides to introduce legislation to make marijuana illegal. And then you know, that would start a whole other debate. You know, I doubt that’ll happen in Texas, but you can highlight that stuff. And I think it’s also it’s also something that you can have fun with, I think that if you could have t shirts or slogans or, you know, just something witty related to marijuana, I think that people don’t take marijuana or marijuana driving charges, uh, seriously, and they do other things. So I think you could sort of have some have some fun with it.
Walter Reaves
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it’s a lot more fun than like, trying to have fun with DWI, which didn’t have the greatest reputation. So, yeah, I can see a lot of opportunities for that.
Tyson Mutrux
Let me ask you this, Walter. So the trend with marijuana, if we’re looking at a trend is that it’s going to be legalized. So something you may want to think about, and hedge your bets some way maybe with the DWI? is, do you want to put all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to heading towards marijuana? Because that’s legalized in two years? Three years? Five years? You’re screwed into it? Have you thought about that? That’s part of it.
Walter Reaves
Yeah. And that’s the only downside to that is to think we’re probably still several years away from it. And in Texas, but in I don’t know whether it’s ever going to be completely legalized, at least as long as I’m alive, it might just get reduced to like a ticket. But yeah, I’ve given some thought. Yeah, I mean, when I’m sitting here thinking through that, it’s I don’t know that I really want to, I mean, I definitely think it’s, it’s a strategy, but I don’t know that I want to, like do that in to the exclusion of everything else forever. But I don’t really think I have to, there’s enough opportunity there to produce some good quality cases, and my other stuff would still come to me without really having to do any marketing,
Jim Hacking
because you’re still gonna get referrals for your appeals from other attorneys. And I think it also makes you sort of more of a topic of conversation, I mean, that I think that the word is going to spread as as it sort of seeps into the public consciousness that Walter is focusing on this. I think that coupled with your years of experience, I think Tyson’s right, I think on YouTube and stuff that’s really going to come through, I wanted to throw out one other thing. And I know, this is sort of contrary to what we were just talking about. But I know that one of your cases, was recently featured in The New York Times would really sort of highlight that in a lot of my marketing and my website. I know that that was probably an unusual case for you. And it’s not the kind of marijuana case we were talking about wanting to get. But, but that credibility is something I think you really need to highlight.
Walter Reaves
Yeah, that’s sort of something I’ve been focusing on. And I guess, sort of struggling with how exactly to do that, other than just kind of pushing it out and putting something on there. And energy. I mean, it is an unusual case. And it’s something that I’ve sort of that I have been looking at that kind of how to maximize the use of that and sort of the press that that generated,
Tyson Mutrux
you know, I would put it. I mean, as soon as you get your website, you she knew that something like as seen on the New York tire has read in the New York Times, something like that, on your website, right. Whenever they come to it, it lends you a ton of credibility. I agree with Jimmy, could you contact it looks like you’re using foster web marketing? Could you contact them and just have them easily added to the website? Yeah, yeah, they’re
Walter Reaves
pretty responsive on that stuff.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, Walters, thank you so much for coming on. Before we get to our tips and hack the week, I do want to ask everyone to please go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast and give us a five star review. It really does help spread the word. We get a lot of good reviews on there. So we’ll help spread the word and share the podcast with one of your friends. Also, check out Facebook group, it’s it’s often been more than ever. It gets kind of crazy how much activity is going on Facebook group and we get new members every day. So sign up Devin Tashi, thanks. I’m just gonna do it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
My hack of the week involves a phrase that we hear thrown around a lot. It’s called know like and trust. So we need to get people to know like and trust and trust us. And so it’s really gotten to be sort of blase. And I don’t think people put a lot of thought into what that really means. And I was listening to Dean Jackson the other day and was talking about separating those three things out and in order to have someone do business with us. They have to know us full stop. Then they have to like us, full stop. And then they have to trust us for that. And so we have to have marketing that’s devoted towards getting them to know us. And that is how do we get them to raise their hand or the lead magnet that we talked about? Then how do we get them to like us. And I think the best way to get them to like us is to give them consistent good content for free. And then trust us is where they make that decision to actually hire us. And that’s going to take some actual human interaction and going back and forth so that they trust you enough to, especially in someone like Walters arena, or my arena where you’re actually asking clients to pay you money, then it’s a little bit harder to get that to happen than to get them to sign a contingency fee agreement, just because there’s no out of pocket for them right out of the box. So to get them to trust us enough to do that. I think you really need to spend some time thinking through, how do I get people to know me? How do I get people to like me? And then how do I get them to trust me, instead of just running that all together in one big smash up? So that’s been a helpful thought exercise for me this week. So I thought I’d share it.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s a good one. I, I’ve never heard anybody break it up like that. And actually make it think about it. I like that. Good. Walter, what is your tip or hack of the week?
Walter Reaves
Yeah, mine sort of goes along with that I was on vacation, sort of a vacation last week, and I read the book story grand by Donald Miller. And I know a lot of people are familiar with that. And sort of the general concept that I really recommend that the Kiley he like goes through the process and as the worksheets and everything to kind of come up to come up with your own story brand, which is something that I’ve started working on. And I’m going to revise my website to do that. And sort of the side effect of that is, is that if you read the book, he talks about it sort of spoiling all the movies you ever, ever see. And he’s right, because everything follows a pretty predictable path that he lays out. And once you can you sort of see that after you read that book. So Donald Miller and storebrand.
Tyson Mutrux
Very cool method. Check that out. Very good recommendation. So my tip of the week actually comes from a friend of the show Mitch Jackson, he just put something on the Facebook page, which I thought was pretty cool. basically tells you how to easily do videos and Instagram TV, IG TV, and Mitch predicts that that’s going to be the next big thing. And so he recommended an app video Rama and I checked it out and he tells you exactly the other Facebook group he studied exactly how to use it. Really cool app where you can basically go in there, do your edits, add it, add your text, things like that. It’s really good app. So free. Check it out video Rama, Walter, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a blast. Thank you so much.
