Introducing MaxLawCon 2021 speaker Seth Price!
Seth Price is an accomplished attorney and transformational thought leader who scaled a 2-person law firm to 38 lawyers in less than a decade. Seth Price founded BluShark Digital LLC a digital marketing company using the same cutting-edge marketing techniques (high-quality technical optimization, sophisticated content, authoritative link-building, and local optimization) that Seth used to grow his own business and has established itself as a best in class digital agency focusing on the legal sector.
Join us in St. Charles, MO at the Ameristar Casino, Resort, and Spa to hear his presentation: How It Started, How It’s Going (Scaling a Law Firm: Lessons Learned)
Watch the sneak peek.
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Transcript: MaxLawCon 2021 Speaker Seth Price
Speaker 1
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.
Tyson Mutrux
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m back with one of the OG Seth price. What’s going on, buddy? Good to be here. Great to see. It’s good to see you, man. So hey, your topic is I think, for me and Jim, like one of the ones that we’re most excited about. And I’m not just saying that I mean, it. It’s how it started, how it’s going on scaling in law firm lessons learned. So I actually think that this was Jim’s idea to come up with a topic, but I guess, what are your thoughts on the topic? You know,
John Fisher
COVID has been a pretty humbling experience, there was a lot of cool stuff going on, we saw growth, we saw like crazy things happen. And that all of a sudden, that train that we were on a lot of stuff, you know, wasn’t the same stuff we were so a lot, a lot of good stuff, you know, a lot of opportunities for talent around the country around the world, but really made us reflect. So you know, we started as as criminal boutique, we expanded into a bunch of different areas. And we’ve contracted some during COVID, trying to do less well, and then saw where things were performing. Like in South Carolina, we started with a listener of Max law, David Phillips, who did now we got a three person and growing division there. So I think what we did is we use the COVID time to sort of prune some of the areas that were less scalable, and less exciting, and try to put our efforts, emphasis and effort and energies into those areas that are and things that sort of like, you know, as you go along, you know, things that you guys saw when we were on the office intake jamming along, is had some real cracks during COVID. The good news is I lost drama. But really a lot of you know, it was harder to keep and retain culture. And people hire during culture, that loyalty just wasn’t there. And timing is good stuff that Jay and I have talked a lot about on max growth live, you know, experimenting with overseas labor, you know, and layering that with domestic labor to try to get the best of both worlds.
Tyson Mutrux
So it’s interesting, because I mean, you’ve been doing you’re someone that’s been doing this for a while. So how many how many years now? Have you had the firm?
John Fisher
It depends on is a really good question should be an obvious question. We’ll use 12 as a number. It could be as high as 15. We don’t really there was sort of a ramp up period before, you know, we launched it about 12 years ago, we started scaling it.
Tyson Mutrux
So almost say 15. Do you I mean, you you still had lessons learned over those 15 years. So what were give me what I want a bunch of them, just give me one lesson that you learned in those 15 years leading up to the pandemic. So the 14 years leading up to the meeting
John Fisher
was getting getting getting your bookkeeping and accounting in order. Neither Dave or I are experts in that. And we, we have found that really hard to, to scale. And the expert advice you bring in comes with, you know, it’s an unusual group of people giving you that advice. And that we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of setbacks in that space. You know, I think it’s that every time I think that I have intake down, I am humbled and it is a constant, there is no set it and forget it. Combination of natural turnover combined with people’s ebbs and flows combined with a whole bunch of different factors, that that’s there. And that at the end of the day that the marketing drives everything, if you have the cases you’ll have the talent, you can cashflow and that you know, that’s why I’ve always put marketing such as such a you know, a number one priority, which is if the if the phone’s ringing, everything’s great and a lot of you can hide a lot of the issues that you’re dealing with. Whereas if it’s if the phones are not you start focusing on everything and that’s part of what happened during COVID You know, things you know, if the courts were shut down and people stopped going outside and weren’t getting arrested weren’t getting injured, we started to say oh, wow, here these things are you know, we’re making money despite certain things not because of them. You sound
Tyson Mutrux
just like James Oliver hacking the third for sure. He’s all about the marketing and you’re absolutely right. That being said, though, being going having gone through COVID Now, do you feel like the firm is better off or worse off?
John Fisher
complicated question, you know, in some respects we’ve we’ve gotten leaner and we are firing on all cylinders, but you know if I could could I trade if I could trade it back magically? You know, we were we were humming Prix and there’s a lot of uncertainty the courts aren’t fully open. You know, in the major metros, people are not living life the way they were will go Back at some point it will but you know, go back to those early macros live shows, we were thinking for months, and we’d be back to normal. Can we have a cat and it turned out it wasn’t as devastating. And PPP was an amazing thing for small business. But this is certainly been an upheaval. So I’d like to say we improve certain things, but I don’t like it’s frustrating because you see what could have been. And I’m not harping on it. But it certainly was a setback. And you learn a lot about yourself and who’s on your team
Tyson Mutrux
will go a little bit longer, because I didn’t want to be a blue shark too. And I want to mention, just because I think blue sharks, it’s amazing. How was that affected during the pandemic? Because I think it’s important that people realize, because this is connected with your speakers topic from excellent, cause you scaled a firm while also scaling a business, right? And so how was that affected during because I feel like blue shark like 2020 was like one of those years where I think blue shark was really going to take off. And I guess how is that
John Fisher
affected? You know, believe it or not, I was expecting the firm to be fired and blue shark was really going to be hurt. blue shark really wasn’t the need for marketing has gone up, paid search has become so expensive. And I think what the thing that’s happened is people are looking at organic search, as hay used to be free. Now it’s Hey, can I get a better ROI from organic, it may not be 100 cases a month, but if paid search for $10,000 is only giving me you know, four pi cases? Can I take $10,000 and generate 15. organically? I’m just saying like the the expectations change. So we’ve had a really good run, the brand has resonated, you know, like anything else, I feel like we’ve we’ve had high quality going virtual hasn’t been as detrimental there. I think that in general, the thing that this is for everybody is that it the cracks, I think are starting to show particularly warm weather. And that, you know, some people, you know, they don’t want to come back to the office, some do. And that sort of dynamic is sort of the next piece, but blue shark itself, I feel very blessed that we’ve been able to help people out and in most instances, be able to sort of help people navigate these pretty treacherous waters that are going on right now. For sure, for sure. All
Tyson Mutrux
right, two questions left. If people want to reach out to you, whether it’s about blue shark about the business, whatever it might be, how do they get in touch
John Fisher
with you? Look, I’m everywhere. If anybody in this group just hit me through Facebook Messenger. You know, I geek out on this don’t feel like it calls all the time. Hey, Joe Vitale, I need to get this set up. I want to say no, just like, hey, go get a postcard, like meaning. His answer was very simple. But sometimes if I can help you with a threshold question, happy to do something more, we’ll gladly talk more. But a lot of times, people are hung up on something really small. So feel free to ping me through messenger or email,
Tyson Mutrux
whatever it works. You’re at the first conference, you’re at the second conference, what are you looking forward to when it comes to the third conference?
John Fisher
You know, like, there is something that you guys have created, you know, Jim have put something together, where there’s like the sort of ability to work with people that are building and growing together and thinking outside the box. That’s what that’s what I look forward to is like, it’s the concepts and ideas that people because a lot of people here are just starting out. And it’s easy to say, Hey, your firm’s been around for a while. But it’s those ideas that implemented at any firm are going to take you to the next level. And they’re coming without the baggage. I have a bunch of baggage and issues and HR thing. And these guys are just like, Hey, can I can I get you know, some sort of communication between these softwares that’s going to revolutionize my efficiency. Can I take stuff offshore that, you know, a legacy firm doesn’t generally do and I feel that this conference is great because the ideas shared both from the stage as well as from drinks are I think at a level that generally doesn’t exist in the legal community. No question.
Tyson Mutrux
No question. I Brother thanks for coming on man. We will see you soon. GORGEOU cedar.
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
