Niche Your Way to Notoriety with Nicole Christie

Are you struggling to attract clients to your law firm? Are you finding it hard to stand out in a sea of competitors? Nicole Christie, a lawyer and one of the speakers at the MaxLawCon 22. Nicole has some advice for you: niche down!

Nicole shares her personal experience with starting her own law firm and struggling to be found on Google due to offering too many services. She emphasized the importance of niching down and becoming an expert in a specific area of law.

Here are five benefits of niching down your law firm:

1. 1. Build a Strong Reputation: By focusing on a specific area of law, you can become known as an expert in that field. This can help build your reputation and make it easier for clients to find yo
   2. Gain Referrals: Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. When you become known for your expertise in a particular area of law, you are more likely to receive referrals from satisfied clients.
   3. Target Specific Groups: By narrowing down your area of practice, you can target specific groups of people who are more likely to need your services. For example, if you focus on immigration law, you can target immigrants and their families.
   4. Increase Sales: When you become known as an expert in your field, you can charge higher rates for your services. This can lead to increased sales and revenue for your law firm.
   5. Build Confidence: When you are an expert in your field, you are more confident in your abilities. This can translate to better client relationships and a more successful law practice.

Niching down your law firm can have a positive impact on your success. Don’t be afraid to focus on what you are good at and become known as an expert in your field. Master one area of marketing at a time and consider speaking engagements and free conferences as a way to get your name out there. Happy niching!

Episode Highlights:

00:38 Nicole, discusses the benefits of niching down in a law firm and shares her personal experience with finding her niche. She also provides examples of different niches within the legal field

09:04 Nicole discusses the benefits of finding a niche in the legal field and shares her personal experience

13:48 Tips on marketing a niche law firm, including leveraging social media, advertising to churches, and mastering one marketing strategy at a time Watch the full video on YouTube here.

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Transcripts: Niche Your Way to Notoriety with Nicole Christie

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Nicole Christie as we share her talk. Niche Your Way to Notoriety. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:17) – Run your law firm the right way. 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.

Nicole Christie (00:00:38) – All right, so I say niche, but you’ll say niche. Okay. So we’re going to go forward. So I want to apologize. I had a lot of thoughts that came after this slide, so we’re going to pop through some of them. But today I want to talk to you about niching and we want you to get to a point where you can take your law firm from being this all and what do they call it, a jack of all trades, master of none, to actually niching down to something that can be lucrative for you.

Nicole Christie (00:01:05) – So when I started my law firm, I was all excited. Actually, I quit my job after working for this state for 20 something years. And the very next day I got up and said to myself, Are you crazy? You quit your job. What are you going to do now? And then I thought, Nope, I have a law firm. I’ve opened up my law firm, I can do this. So I decided to build my own website. I don’t recommend it, but, you know, I thought I don’t have a lot of fun, so let me just do what I can do. I got on Wix. I figured out quote SEO. I tried to do little links. I did what I could and I made it go live. And so I, you know, it made it go live. I did all the things that I needed to do in terms of getting connected with people. And then I decided to Google myself. And I want you all to share in this experience with me.

Nicole Christie (00:01:55) – So I want you to Google yourself. You can take out your phones. I know Jim said, don’t have them out, but just for this moment, take out your phones, go to Google. But I don’t want you to cheat. You need to search incognito. Google researches you. They know what you’re doing and know what you’re looking for. So I want you to look up incognito, search for your law firm type of area of law. I don’t want you to do your law firm name. Do the area of law. If you have multiple areas of law, pick the one that makes you the most revenue, the one that you enjoy the most, the one you’re known for. And I want you to Google yourself. So once you do that, just look up so I can know that you’ve done it. We do not have to share, so try it for your area. Also, the other key is try incognito for your particular area. Don’t do it here, but just for your particular area.

Nicole Christie (00:02:47) – I’m from Hartford, Connecticut, so I would look up DCF attorney, Hartford, Connecticut, Incognito, if you can do it. So when I did it, you know, again, I went on Wix and it said, you know, you’re alive, You can be found. And I Googled myself and I started scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and like, where am I? And I could not find myself granted. Yes, I did the website. And one of the things that that taught me is if I couldn’t find myself, my clients can’t find me either. So when people when you’re looking for whatever it is you want to buy, whatever the service is, you’re going through the Google search and buy a raise of hands. How many are going to hire somebody on the second page? None of us. We’re going to hire somebody from the first page. And it isn’t the easiest thing to get on the first page of Google where they’re at the top, where they’re at the bottom, where they’re in the middle.

Nicole Christie (00:03:46) – It is not the easiest thing, but one of the things that I discovered is that by narrowing down my areas of practice, I had probate, I had DCF, I was trying to do family, I was trying to do a couple of other things that was representing churches. I was doing a lot of things. And so last year I did this particular presentation and I didn’t get to finish, so I figured this would be part two. But I want to quickly go back over this. Some of us are doing law just in this way. So we represent Saint Louis. That’s your county, that’s your area of law. But some of us are literally driving to other counties. And I would just say that these are the counties represents other areas of law. So I’ll take Cass. We’re driving from Saint Louis to Cass sometimes in our brain, sometimes actually doing this, trying to do criminal law, because criminal law is where we think we have some more money. But yet we’ve opened up on doing estate planning and we keep doing this constantly.

Nicole Christie (00:04:44) – And what’s happening is that we take a lot of time, we take a lot of effort. And what I also find is that we don’t actually become good at any one thing. So I like what I call the county approach. We just looking at Saint Charles, we’re looking at these different counties and these are different sectors. So I don’t want you to think of niching as only one kind of case that you do. It can actually be an area of law. And also, we were talking about it in our mastermind group. It can also be people you can focus on a particular set of people actually read a book about marketing to churches. If you especially if you live in the Bible Belt. I remember driving to Texas and to visit some family and we got there on a Sunday. We went to the grocery store and I’m like, Where are we? I’m from the northeast, seven days a week. They’re all the same. We do everything every day of the week. And I looked around and there was no one in the grocery store.

Nicole Christie (00:05:36) – It was like I went to church. They all go to church. And that is a whole area that people don’t really tap into. So when I think about marketing and I think about niching, this is what I came up with. And I call it my DCF County doesn’t represent everything, but these different sections are all sections that I concentrate on. So it helps you to develop a real good elevator pitch when you can say, I help people dealing with DCF, I help people dealing with child protection, that’s it. But when you have five different areas of law, I help people dealing with real estate, then I do some business. You have lost me after the third one because at this point, I don’t know what you’re actually good at. I don’t know what you concentrate on. I don’t know if you can actually help me with my kind of case. When you niche down, now you become the expert. And it’s interesting. Not only will clients find you, but then other lawyers will find you to talk to you about it.

Nicole Christie (00:06:32) – That actually had lawyers say to me, you know what? Why don’t I just give this case to you? Because it’s too complicated. They don’t want to deal with DCF. DCF in our state is one of the largest entities to deal with. And so what I want to encourage you to do and think about your niche in terms of the big things that you can do with this one particular area of law, something that I don’t know. Does anyone here do business law in the area of construction? All right. So I met someone who does deconstruct and I didn’t realize that that was a whole business in and of itself. He’s the guy that breaks down everything. So when they’re getting ready to build on a particular land, he’ll go in and break it down or he’ll go into a building and gut it out. That’s a whole particular niche because he had waste issues to deal with. He had his issues to deal with, he had contractors to deal with. So you can actually develop a whole giant area of law when you think about your particular niche.

Nicole Christie (00:07:30) – So don’t be afraid and think if I niche down too far, I’m not going to make a lot of money. We doubled in our sales just by niching down. And for us right now, what we’re trying to do is be able to reach as many people work on our processes. But if you’re not worried about the kind of law, remember trying to do estate planning. And I took on a trust and I’m like, What am I doing? I don’t know about the act. And I just it was nerve wracking. But I can go into court the very next day on an order of temporary custody. Read the affidavit in five minutes and know exactly what I need to do. And it’s confidence building. Alexis just talked about imposter syndrome. It helps your imposter syndrome when you actually know what you’re talking about, because then now you’re not an imposter. You know exactly what you need to do.

Speaker 1 (00:08:16) – The Guild is maximum lawyers, community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level.

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Nicole Christie (00:09:04) – And so where I left off last year is this is where I want to pick up. Now that you have figured out your world, you figured out your county. You want to actually try to stay within your county limits. Think about what it is that you do and don’t let people tell you, Oh, you should take on this other kind of case.

Nicole Christie (00:09:21) – Don’t you want the money? I had someone tell me, Don’t you want the money? No. If it’s going to make me not look good, I’m going to step into something I don’t know how to do. And I’m not going to do a good job. I’m telling you, your clients, they’re going to Google everything. I love when they tell me I’ve done my research. Where what law school did you go to? What law books did you read? But I did my research. Don’t you think? Actually, had I call them my co counsels. So you have your client, but then you have their relatives giving them all kinds of instructions. I call them this actually a secret co-counsel. And one of my secret co counsels told my client, well, you know, courts. Close down and judges go on vacation in the summer. I said, Honey, if the judge goes on vacation, there’s somebody else to come in in the place. And I know this court system. So when you have that confidence, you can go up against your co-counsel who are giving your client’s advice all behind your back.

Nicole Christie (00:10:16) – And so when you figure out your niche, don’t forget that list. And I remember when I started out with my law firm and I told people that I’m opening up my law firm, you know, was word of mouth. But I remember I had foot surgery and I knew I had to take two weeks off from work. And I planned it. I literally planned it. I did the foot surgery and I sat with my foot propped up and I just came up with names. I went through my phone, I text people, What’s your address? What’s your email? And I went through a list of names. Keep those names. Those are names that are going to help you. I still get cases from that original list, people who just know people who want to be supportive. Even your haters just put them on there. Well, you know, I don’t know how to do that law, but I think she can do it. I don’t care how they refer you. I don’t care if they put a little salt in what they have to say.

Nicole Christie (00:11:06) – But if they send the person over to you good enough and you can give them the thank you card with whatever salt you want to return. But I say return with the positivity because it’s not worth it. And there’s another section that what I decided to do after I did this list and at some point during Max Law and just doing with the actually listening to the podcast and hearing about doing YouTube videos, I started doing YouTube videos and you know, you set it up and I literally just use a webcam. I don’t have I bought all this equipment and I still don’t use it. I just use the webcam, but I make videos and I will sit down and talk about just what I know. And I loved when, you know, I’d asked him, what should I do? What should I say? Just talk about what you know. But if you are all over the place and you’re going from estate planning and you’re going to criminal and then you’re doing some business, you only know a little bit of all of those things.

Nicole Christie (00:11:57) – But if you concentrate in one particular area of law and one type of person, I met someone yesterday who does family law, but he only represents women who are in abusive relationships or married to narcissist. And I’m thinking with the narcissist movement, as I would call it, going on, he’s got business coming in day in and day out. So think about it in terms of where you can go, what kinds of things that you can do within that particular niche. And it also leads you to and I’ll just stop here to answer interject, it leads you to the types of people who deal with those kinds of laws. So for me, I do child protection. So that means I’ve gotten cases from social workers. You get to know court staff and court services officers. I had one call me and she personally said, I need to send you this case because I know you will do a good job. And also, when you niche down, that’s what ends up happening. You do a very good job for people.

Nicole Christie (00:12:54) – Then the word of mouth gets out. I also get to know nurses. You get to know doctors, you get to know teachers. So you think about your small little world, but there’s these people and you can actually target your marketing, your even your digital marketing to be able to land on pages that are people that are teachers, people that are doctors, people that are therapists, Because at some point in another and people think with child protection is, quote, a poor man’s kind of activity or, you know, type of case not true, because little Johnny, no matter if he lives in a mansion or he lives in an apartment complex, he’ll go to school and say, mommy drinks every night. And I am very scared. It doesn’t matter. DCF will go to whoever’s home, so don’t limit yourself. Think about the world of people that your clients will come in contact with. And so in doing the YouTube videos, I’ll talk about that. I’ll talk about what happens with a therapist.

Nicole Christie (00:13:48) – I’ll talk about what happens with a doctor. We also decided to branch out and do some cases with divorce. Dealing with DCF, people will use DCF as a weapon. So keep that in mind. And so lastly, and I’ll skip this one, think about social media. And again, if you keep that message in your mind constantly, you will be able to put that message out there. You’ll be able to have a focus. And one of the things that I found, my Google ads are incredibly cheap because I’m in Connecticut and I have a niche that very few people are going after. My Google ads are incredibly cheap. We did a display ad and they showed me and they actually showed me the graph. They said that it was like $0.07 or up to $0.10 a click because it’s DCF, it’s a narrow niche. So it’s another great way to try to leverage your marketing dollars when you do. Those clicks are very, very expensive. So I would consider niching down to maybe a group of people, niching down to maybe advertising to churches, especially if you do PE.

Nicole Christie (00:14:51) – If you get on the good side of a pastor, he will say, Oh, you need to hire attorney Christy. We like her. He’ll get up on the pulpit. And say we need to hire Attorney Christie. We like her and they’ll send that information out. And then pastors go to pastors conferences. Well, you know, we got a girl here. She does a really good job. You should give her a call and they will put your name out there for you, complete free advertising. And again, especially if you live in the Bible Belt, those are packed. Churches get in front of a mega-church, do a conference. If you do estate planning, do some free conferences and do some free speaking for churches, and that will help you get your name out. And also, if you’re going to do different types of either social media, whatever the areas are, try to master that first, try to master one at a time so you don’t leave yourself kind of half doing things If you want to start with doing speaking engagements, stick with that.

Nicole Christie (00:15:46) – If you want to start to do social media, stick with that. If you want to tackle Google ads, hire somebody and then stick with that. All right. So that is my time. So if you do need me in any way, shape or form, please give me a call and let me know. And I hope that you got something out of this. And please try your best to niche down. It is a great way to get your name out there. Thank you.

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