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Nonprofit Legal Services and Information Products À La Carte with Jess Birken Pop-up Episode
Categories: Podcast
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In this Pop-up episode, Jim interviews Jess Birken while they wait for their flight to get back home after the Lawyer Forward Conference. Jess is a Lawyer and Consultant for nonprofits who runs her own Law Firm; Birken Law Office. They will go over her business, how she uses infoproducts to educate her clients and make the most of the consults they have and the advantages of her subscription model!

Find Jess on Twitter and on HackYourPractice

 

Register to MaxLawCon19, June 6 and 7 in St.Louis.

 

Topics:

    • About Jess and her business
      • How did she get into that niche
      • Going out on her own
    • What does it mean to be a Lawyer for nonprofits
      • Small business law with an extra layer of compliance
      • Special rules
      • Contracts – Real Estate – PR issues
      • STARTUPS and Founders – Organizations
      • Helping others
    • Dabblers
    • Lawyers serving on boards of nonprofits
    • If you are a Lawyer serving or wanting to serve on a board, check out this letter to give to your board chair to keep your roles clear.

 

  • Information Products

 

    • Selling the information that it’s “in your head”.
    • Online Course, eBook, etc.
    • “An online course that’s really the advanced education that I wish people had before they met with me. Because in my consultations what I was doing, was just repeating the same things over and over again.”
    • What’s working:
      • Sales in her website
      • Selling the course as a way to upgrade the paid consultation
      • “Get the most out of your hour with me”
      • Lead magnets?
      • 75% of clients go for the upgrade
      • Consults more beneficial

 

  • “If clients go through the online course and the get the education on like the basics, they’ve done the homework hopefully and then they’re showing up  with more advanced questions.”

 

    • LinkedIn?

 

  • The Subscription Model

 

      • Flat monthly fee
      • Benefits
      • Flat fee menu

 

  • “Breaking it down into the smallest pieces, allows them to pace themselves and pay for it as they’re ready.”

 

  • Building a tribe in the nonprofit sector
    • Common problems
    • Bad advice in the community?
    • Excellent content and ideas
  • 3 years from now
    • Scaling: branching the nonprofit subscription out across multiple states.

 

Find Jess on Twitter and on HackYourPractice

 

Register for the MaxLawCon19!

 

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

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

 

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Transcripts: Nonprofit Legal Services and Information Products À La Carte with Jess Birken

Jim Hacking
All right, this is Jim we’re gonna record a pop up episode with Jessica Birkin. Right. Yeah. Just Birkin. Just Berg in Birkin. Got it. All right. Well, I’m just sitting here. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be driving Mitchell probably get pissed at me. I called the map because we’re trying to go back to the airport. All right. We’re good. Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast. Hey, it’s Jim, maximum lawyer. This episode will not have Tyson on it because it’s a pop up episode that I shot down in Austin, Texas. I was down there with Mike Whalen for his lawyer forward event. I gave a little talk. And I came across an attorney who I first met last year at Clio con, actually on stage she was presenting on building an information product. Her name is just Birkin. She was on stage with her and Magens Saatva, who we’ve had on the show before, and we had to take a car back to the airport. So we decided to shoot this, or I should say record this pop up episode. And I think you’ll get a lot out of it. We talked about being a nonprofit lawyer. She’s a lawyer for nonprofits, helping them with startups and other issues that arise for them. And then she talked about the info products as well. So I hope you enjoy it.

Jim Hacking
All right, just tell everybody about yourself.

Jess Birkin
Hey, I’m Jess Birkin. I’m a lawyer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And my practice is focused on serving the nonprofit community. So I work with charities, pet rescues, churches, things like

Jim Hacking
that. How did you get into that niche?

Jess Birkin
The short answer is the recession. I was going to be a criminal trial attorney. And I was clerking for a judge right after law school. And then 2008 happened. And basically all the lawyer jobs were gone. And I realized I hated trial work. And so I went back to school and got a master’s in nonprofit management. And I never thought that I would be a practicing attorney after that.

Jim Hacking
Really, yeah. So what changed?

Jess Birkin
I ended up getting a job at a national nonprofit organization where I used my law degree and my master’s and eventually just ended up back in private practice, the nonprofit job kind of was a dead end. And I wanted to do more. And I knew I could help more people and do more things than just the one thing I was doing there. So I ended up leaving and joining with another lawyer. And I was partnered with her for about three years before I hung my own shingle.

Jim Hacking
So what timeframe was that? That you had a partner?

Jess Birkin
2013?

Jim Hacking
And then for three years? Yeah. And so when did you make the decision? Go out on your own?

Jess Birkin
March of 2016. So I’m coming up on my third year anniversary?

Jim Hacking
And what was your plan?

Jess Birkin
When I hung my own shingle? Correct? My plan was GTFO. ASAP, and bring my book of business with me. And

Jim Hacking
that was she doing the same kind of law as you are? No.

Jess Birkin
Yeah, roughly. She was more of a litigation focused. I’m more transactional. I don’t like to go to court.

Jim Hacking
Well, I guess I mean, when you were with her, were you still doing just nonprofits? Yes. Okay. And so what does that mean to be a lawyer for nonprofits? What do you spend your time doing?

Jess Birkin
So if you think like, Small Business Law with an extra layer of compliance, because nonprofits have special rules that apply to them due to their tax status. So it’s really just, you know, a lot of contracts, a lot of real estate deals, a lot of general business operations, HR issues, and then you know, special things like fundraising, government grants, PR issues, or avoiding PR issues.

Jim Hacking
Of all those, what do you spend most of your time doing? What’s your bread and butter?

Jess Birkin
I do a lot of startups. So I work with a lot of founders that are starting organizations.

Jim Hacking
Do you enjoy that?

Jess Birkin
I do. Why did you? Well, okay, so why I like my job is really because I get to leverage my skills to help somebody else do something good. Like, my skills are relatively boring, right? Like reviewing a contract is like, wow, whatever. But if I’m leveraging my skills to advance this nonprofit mission, it’s like I’m helping, like lift them up so that they can go out and do good things. So that’s really exciting to me too. work with groups that are like coming out and doing something new.

Jim Hacking
That’s cool. When did you realize that that was something you enjoyed doing? Like was there a moment?

Jess Birkin
Not really. I think I was really just operating from like, a gut reaction place. You know, once I started through my whole career plan out the window with the recession, it was like, what’s just what’s the next right thing? And so I kind of operated like that for a long time. And then I started working with my marketing guy, Leo. And he’s really the person who kind of got me to take a step back and understand why do I get up every day and do this stuff?

Jim Hacking
Sort of gotcha to your why. Yeah. And most lawyers I know, don’t do nonprofit law. In fact, you’re the only person I’ve ever heard that specializes in it. I think. There’s probably a lot of dabblers. Are there a lot of dabblers?

Jess Birkin
Oh, there’s so many dabblers. And it’s like, it’s the worst thing. Why? Because, yeah, you know, it’s like, well, we talked about this before, where it’s like, if I needed heart surgery, and I told you, I was gonna go to a brain surgeon, you would look at me, like I was insane. But with lawyers, we do that all the time. And it’s like, you know, both doctors are extremely smart. But they have a thing that they do. You know, you wouldn’t go to an immigration attorney and be like, Hey, can you resolve my charitable solicitation issue for me? Like,

Unknown Speaker
don’t do that? No, no. So I know that we talked last night about sort of lawyers serving on boards of nonprofits. And I’m sure that some of our listeners are either serving on boards or have been asked to serve on boards. Can you maybe give them some reasons why they can tell people, Hey, I shouldn’t be on a board. And here’s why.

Jess Birkin
Well, I hate to tell people not to be on the board, because nonprofit, the nonprofit sector really means capable, talented, smart, savvy people on their boards. So I don’t like to tell lawyers not to be on boards. I just like to educate lawyers about like, remember that you have two hats on. And like when you’re serving as a volunteer, I think people kind of forget that they’re also the lawyer. And most lawyers don’t join the board, because they want to provide free legal. But most nonprofits want you on their board, because they’re expecting free legal. So there’s this weird miscommunication that often happens. And it’s just important for attorneys to remember that you’re going to end up creating an attorney client relationship. And, you know, there, you should take some measures to sort of safeguard against conflicts and stuff like that.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and I guess it probably usually starts from the best of intentions, people wanting to help and all that kind of thing. And they probably feel obligated to, you know, and just think to themselves, Oh, just fill out a few forms to get this nonprofit started or to file their annual reports. But I guess, like with every dabbler, there’s just lots of pitfalls, that sort of the old town run, so you don’t know what you don’t know.

Jess Birkin
Yep, exactly. I actually have a Word document you can download from my website. If you go to I think it’s at Birkin, law.com/board service. But I’ll give you the link, you can put it in your show notes, okay. But lawyers can go download this Word document. And it’s a letter that you should give to your board chair that explains like, Hi, I’m so glad to be part of this board. Thanks for the opportunity. Let’s talk about what my relationship with you as a lawyer looks like. Whether that’s I’m not your lawyer, I’m not doing any of that. So please don’t ask me to, or I’m comfortable doing XYZ things for you. But I reserve the right to say, this is outside my area. And that’s just a really good document to sort of like paper the file to help you sort of keep your roles clear.

Jim Hacking
Make sure everybody’s on the same page. Yep. All right, cool. Well, we’re gonna take a break because I have to get some gas before we hit the airport. And then maybe we’ll talk about the cool new stuff you have going on. Right on. Alright, so we made it through security.

Jess Birkin
And I didn’t throw up in the car. Yeah, there was a motion

Jim Hacking
sickness issue. We were sort of low to the ground. It was a strange what was it a maxima Nissan Maxima?

Jess Birkin
I don’t know. But that passenger seat does not get any taller. And that’s just like a crime against humanity. It should be able to go higher,

Jim Hacking
just was offended by the big dashboard on the car.

Jess Birkin
Yeah, big dashboards can kiss my ass.

Jim Hacking
Alright, so now we’re going to talk about where I met you at Clio last year and what you You’re presenting at Clio, because you’ve got some cool things going on. Do you want to tell everyone about that?

Jess Birkin
Some cool things going on.

Jim Hacking
That’s pretty specific. No, what I mean, is that you, and Megan presented on having a product to sell and information product, right? Yes. And so I think some of our listeners have dabbled with that or thought about that. I know I have for sure. I keep putting it off. But what is it that you developed? And then how did you actually mechanically do that?

Jess Birkin
Sure. So Megan, and I, yeah, we presented on productizing, your law firm, or like basically just taking, like the knowledge that’s in your head, and like turning it into something that you can sell or giveaway or, you know, like an online course or an ebook. So Megan made this sort of like DIY self represented lawyers tool for if you have an ethics violation case, and I made something for my nonprofit clients, I’ve got an ebook that is basically like, designed to help nonprofit founders get more information. And then I’ve got an online course, that’s really like the advanced education that I wish people had before they met with me, because in my consultations, what I was doing was just like repeating the same things over and over again, you know, you have like, the things that you have to tell everybody. And so the online courses, sort of designed to A, it’s just good information. No matter where you are in the country, if you’re thinking about starting a nonprofit, be if you end up having a consultation with me, it’s really like all of the things that get you ready to have the conversation with me, so that I’m not wasting my time. But it stands alone on its own as an educational thing.

Jim Hacking
Did you make that at first for your actual clients?

Jess Birkin
No, actually, I had this whole concept of like, I could find these people on the internet, like through Facebook ads, or something. And nobody really explains like, my original goal was like, I’ll put this out there and productize this knowledge that’s in my head, and then I’ll sell it on the internet and make money while I’m sleeping. And that’ll be amazing. And that would be amazing. But it’s actually really more work than you would ever anticipate, to just go find people that are thinking about starting a nonprofit. So that was one of the unknown unknowns in that process. So what has worked so far, that’s now sort of on this, like, long, long trajectory? And what does that mean? It’s just like, it’ll come, it’s going to take a long time, you know, whatever. But the immediate sales are actually, from my own website, where people are in the decision making phase of like, I want to potentially hire Jess, and they’re purchasing one of my consultation packages. And they are offered the course as a way to upgrade their paid consultation, like, Hey, do you want to get the most out of your hour with me? Well, for $200 More, upgrade your package with founders roadmap and spend 90 minutes learning all the things that, you know, it’s like getting two extra lawyer hours for, you know, cheap. And that’s what’s working. Yeah, that’s actually what’s working, which makes a lot of sense, because people are in the decision making phase already. Like, they’re already thinking, I want to talk to this lawyer. And so they’re already finding me. I’m not going out trying to just, you know, in the ether, speculate about who might be thinking about starting a nonprofit, that’s actually harder to find than you would think.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, it’s not like you could search the divorce rolls and see who’s filed for divorce or see who got arrested for DUI. It’s sort of a hard group to identify. I wonder, have you ever tinkered around with like lead magnets, like, I guess, like a special report on how, I guess that’s sort of what you’re talking? Yeah.

Jess Birkin
I’ve done like Facebook ads and landing pages. And at some point, it was like, I was taking myself financially chasing this thing. And it was just like, why don’t I just offer this to the people who are already booking my consultations? That was an insight they actually came out of speaking at Clio. Because Megan and I did a podcast episode and then it was like, Why aren’t I doing that? That’s dumb. So now that’s how I do it. And that’s how it makes money.

Jim Hacking
What percentage of people go for the upgrade?

Jess Birkin
Probably 75%.

Jim Hacking
And do you find those consoles to be more better, more fulfilling, more beneficial?

Jess Birkin
Oh, 100%. Yeah, yes, hands down because it’s So if they go through the online course, and they’ve, they’ve gotten the education on, like the basics about nonprofits, they’ve done the homework, hopefully. And then they’re showing up with more advanced questions. And I’m not spending the whole hour with them trying to teach them all of these like basics. It’s like known, okay, now you’ve really like made some decisions or thought about things. And we can really get to the like, real questions, not just spend time with me saying, like, once a nonprofit, how does that work? How’s it different than a for profit? Why would you choose one? What’s a board of directors? How does that work? How’s that different than owning your own company? You know, all that stuff? took up so much time before.

Jim Hacking
You and I were talking about our mutual admiration of Gary Vaynerchuk. And listeners to the show. No, I talk about him all the time. He’s going all in on LinkedIn. He’s he thinks it’s a soft market. And he also thinks that there’s people that are starting to spend more and more time on there. I wonder if you couldn’t target people affiliated with nonprofits on LinkedIn? Yeah, I’m sure it could. It sounds like you’ve learned your lesson. Well,

Jess Birkin
you know, the problem. It’s one of those like, you guys spend money to make money, right? And it’s like, at this point, I’d rather put money into my subscription program and let founders roadmap kind of just be there and like, let people upgrade as they come in, and not chase. Because I don’t it doesn’t make sense to spend 1000s of dollars trying to make this thing go right now.

Jim Hacking
Or what’s the subscription model? What is that? And how does that work?

Jess Birkin
So because I am a glutton for punishment. What actually happened was, I had this boyfriend who dumped me in August of 2018. And I was 24 hours away from going to lawyer wrists lab con, which is a three days conference for legal innovators. And it’s like this whole thing where you can reinvent your law practice. So rather, I was like devastated crying my eyes out, whatever. And I was like, Well, I am not going to this conference, and just crying my way through this. So let’s just set a goal. And I’m going to like, dive in and do this thing. And I had been thinking about doing subscription services for a long time. And I made it my goal to get that created at lab con. And so basically, in three days, I left with, like, have the whole program framed out. And so what I do is I offer flat fee services with a monthly payment.

Jim Hacking
Wait, so you did go to the conference, but you instead of crying your way through it, you went to work? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And so what did that process look like? What were you doing?

Jess Birkin
At lab con? Correct? Well, I was just like, Okay, I’m gonna be with like, 70 of the like smartest, legal innovators, marketers, like, whatever. So I just, I just was like, pushing myself to really think about like, what is it? How is it going to work? What’s the structure? What am I offering? Like, how do I make this a new product? And not just, you know, because I think a lot of subscription services are just like, you just paid for my services. And I call it a subscription. Like, I wanted to actually create something new. So it was like framing up like, what is that? And like? How do I What does it look like? And what do I offer? And how do I not go broke doing it? And like, what’s the pricing? And what’s the name? And what’s the marketing strategy and all that stuff? You know,

Jim Hacking
our friend Joey vitality.

Jess Birkin
The name is familiar, but he has

Jim Hacking
a subscription model for creatives, I should introduce you. Well, so how does it work? So I am Joe Blow, and I just started XYZ nonprofit, how does this subscription amount of work? Sure,

Jess Birkin
so let’s say you buy a nonprofit strategy session with me, you upgrade to founders roadmap, you’re about to hire me because you think I’m amazing. You get an engagement letter. And it basically says, Hi, choose your own adventure, how would you like to work with me, you can go the traditional old hourly route and give me a very large retainer deposit upfront. Or you can choose to work on a subscription model, where you pay a flat monthly fee, you get this defined package of benefits. And you have the ability to purchase your legal services through a flat fee menu.

Jim Hacking
Okay, so I can see how that would have appeal. I think people are always happier to pay money later, more than they would be to pay it now.

Jess Birkin
Yeah, and with especially with my startup clients, and I work with existing nonprofits as well, but with my startup clients, they take a long time. So they you know, some of them, you know, might take, I’m ready to go but they might you know, they’re working a full time job. They’re trying to squeeze this in on this If all those things, so breaking it down into the smallest pieces, like just do the incorporation, then we’re just going to do the bylaws, then we’re just going to do the IRS application that allows them to pace themselves and pay for it as they’re ready. And it sort of puts the onus on them, instead of me holding on to their four or five grand or whatever, and chasing them around being like, hello, hello, are you ready? Now? I’m burning your retainer for nothing.

Jim Hacking
So you’ve eliminated that headache? Right? That’s good. And how have people responded to it?

Jess Birkin
Literally, nobody has chosen hourly since I started doing this. Yeah.

Jim Hacking
And is the monthly that is that lifetime?

Jess Birkin
So yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a month to month subscription. You can cancel it anytime. I didn’t want to screw around with making people feel like they were trapped in the legal services, because I think we already have a negative sociation with attorneys. Anyway. So it’s month to month. And then I claim that I will cancel you after 24 months if you haven’t graduated out of the like startup founders level after two years. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I don’t know.

Jim Hacking
That’s cool. That’s exciting. And I think that everyone should think about alternative ways to skin that cat. And I’m sure if you know if no one else is choosing the old way. I think that’s a big message for a lot of us.

Jess Birkin
Yeah, and I mean, I’ve really worked hard to create something that’s valuable. So it’s not just like, oh, yeah, you get to talk to me, and pay a flat fee for it. I built a whole website with like, a huge library of documents, I put all of my best, you know, templates, basically, like my IP, like all of my documents in there, like if you need a policy or procedure for your nonprofit, or you need guidance, I’ve got this huge library of like, video content, whatever. So there’s stuff in there. It’s not just basically paying for access to me. So they’re really I think, seeing the value of like having the access to all of those things. For a reasonable price.

Jim Hacking
Awesome. And for you, it’s scalable, it doesn’t cost you anything to have one more person, right. All right, so we’re here in Austin, waiting for our plane, because we were both at Mike Whelan’s lawyer forward conference, which was great. And one of the topics that I talked about in my closed with was building a tribe. And I’m wondering if you thought about or have already built a community where your nonprofit board members sort of have the ability to talk to each other? Because I think they might, you know, obviously, there’s confidentiality things. But if you invite them to a Facebook group, that’s optional for them to join, I think it wouldn’t take too long for them to start, you know, talking to each other about common problems, I think that might be a way to build a tribe.

Jess Birkin
I’ve thought a lot about this. And I’m like, I want to do that, because I see that that would be beneficial. And the nonprofit sector is so bad at cross collaboration, like everybody in homelessness knows each other, every blood buddy and dog rescue knows each other, and nobody goes outside their little silo. So but like, what do I do if people are giving each other bad advice? Right? Like, do I have to be in there policing it? And then like, do I then that’s like, lawyer client stuff. And I haven’t quite figured out how to

Jim Hacking
so I had that same concern when I started the immigrant home or little Facebook group, and it’s not like deep thought in there. It’s more like, Hey, I got my citizenship. And everybody cheers. I think most people, and you’re dealing with a more sophisticated clientele than I am. I think I’m dealing mostly with immigrants. And so every now and then, somebody posts a legal question. I’ve never had another community member answer that legal question. And I usually just encourage them to come offline and email me directly. And then I just delete the comment. So in a year and a half of having the group we’ve, I’ve never had a problem. And it’s it’s very, very low maintenance. And one thing that you’ll find with the maximum lawyer group we found is that people begin to police themselves. So you get people contributing, you get good dialogues. I mean, we’ve we’ve had great ideas for podcasts that come out of the group, we’ve started to identify common problems and immigrant home, you know, people will ask, it’s really the sort of a support and news is all that it is.

Jess Birkin
That’s interesting. I kind of liked that idea that I could just delete a comment if it was problematic. What I struggle with is like, how much time do you have to spend monitoring the communications in there? Not much at all. Okay, so it’d be like if that was a huge time suck. I’d be worried about that,

Jim Hacking
say 10 minutes a week and we have 800 numbers. Oh, dang. Yeah. Okay. Now, how about last question. All right. So three years from now. Where will you be in? What would you be doing?

Jess Birkin
Three years from now if I listen to Mike Whalen, I’ll be branching my nonprofit subscription out across multiple states and let like scaling.

Jim Hacking
Well, what if you don’t listen to Mike Whalen? What do you want to do? Where do you work? As we sit here today on January, whatever it is 27 2019 and 2022. Where do you want to be?

Jess Birkin
Well, I’d like to make more money and take more vacation. So I probably listen to Mike. We have customer service

Jim Hacking
agents on there. Alright, cool. We’re gonna wrap with that. Thanks for coming on. Just where can people find you?

Jess Birkin
can find me on Twitter at Jess Birkin or online at Hack your practice that lawyer

Jim Hacking
and it’s J SS and then it’s bi r k e n, right. All right, cool. All right, everybody. We’ll see you later.

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