In this episode, Jim and Tyson choose a random city and practice area and run the search on the google to see what comes up. Then they give their thoughts on the firm's website from a marketing standpoint. Great episode.

Jim and Tyson are both huge fans of the “I Love Marketing Podcast”, and in one of their episodes, “Yellowpages Roulette”, they do something like this but using the Yellow Pages.

Random location and practice area: Sacramento, California - Bankruptcy.

1st Case Study: http://www.sacramentobankruptcy.com/
2nd Case Study: http://www.sacramentobankruptcyattorneys.com/

- Content
- Layout
- Design
- Lead magnets
- Information
- and more!

Both case studies have lots of pros and cons, lessons and huge take aways! What are your thoughts about them? Please comment!

Hacking’s Hack: From Google Hangouts you can make calls! If you are a user of Google Hangouts, calls are really easy to make!

Tyson’s Tip: A book. “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” by Seth Godin.
It’s great! About building communities and being part of them.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

One of the things of growing a firm; it’s like raising a kid, it’s like an organic thing; it’s alive.

In this episode Jim and Tyson interview Attorney Mike Campbell and go through the issues of running and growing your own law firm.

Mike Campbell graduated from the University of Missouri in 2011 and after working as an attorney for other lawyers for a couple years, he decided to take the leap and open a solo practice. He runs his own law firm since 2015. http://mikecampbelllaw.com/

Staffing
Should I hire someone?
Major issue for Mike. As the firm grows, more work needs to be done, and if you want to keep on making a good job with clients and results, you’ll need to eliminate, delegate and/or automate. If your systems are in place, sometimes the only way is staffing, and having people working for you is not easy.

What are we doing well? What should we do better? And what we should stop doing?

Tyson’s Tip: A podcast; “How I Built This”. http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this
It is awesome. They bring on people with established businesses to talk about how they built their companies.

Hacking’s Hack: Believe it or not, an INK PEN. Write down your tasks and things to remember, you will be more effective.

Mike’s Tip: Ring Central. https://www.ringcentral.com/
A web based app, a cloud service. An online office. Lots of great tools, check it out.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

Are you taking your solo lawyer practice seriously?

The 5 signs that you are not taking your solo lawyer thing seriously

1. You answer your own phone.

• It telegraphs to potential clients that you’re really not that busy.
• It telegraphs that you don’t have enough business going on to be able to support someone answering your phone.
• It demonstrates you are sort of desperate for the call.
• It keeps you from doing good work. It distracts you.
• It is a lack of time management.
• Clients are expecting a receptionist. It’s more professional.

2. You have a non professional email account.

• You need to look professional. Be professional.

3. You meet with potential clients at Starbucks or Panera.

• It telegraphs you are small potatoes, and that you don’t make enough money to spend money on an office, or you don’t care enough.
• You need an office. Because of what it represents, because of the privacy.

4. You lower your fee when pressured by a potential client.

• Set a fee which is fair to you and fair to your client.
• You don’t wanna be dealing with client who are looking for the lowest cost denominator.
• It telegraphs to clients that we as lawyers will fold to others when dealing with another attorney or the government.
• It sets the tone for the relationship. Clients could end up bossing you around.
• People are smart, they are gonna try to get the best deal possible.

5. You offer many practice areas in your website.

• This telegraphs that you will do anything.
• It shows you don’t have the systems nor the expertise built out to handle a particular matter.
• How can you target with so many practice areas!?

Hacking’s Hack: Don’t work at home, work in the office. Stop looking at your phone, emails, to-dos, etc once you get out of the office. This will give you time to be with yourself and your family. Read books. Spend quality time with your kids.

Tyson’s Tip: The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies. By Chet Holmes. Portfolio; Reprint edition (May 27, 2008). The best book on how to run your business.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

Add value to your practice.

In this episode, Tyson and Jim talk about the advantages of internalizing concepts from other industries to make your own practice better.

When you see something in another industry, instead of having a closed mindset,look at it, play around with it and see how you can internalize it and make it something you can use in your own practice.

Learn from other industries, look for ideas to make you practice grow. There are many ways of doing it. Mastermind, Podcasts, Magazines.

Take advantage from actual technologies, social networks, events, webinars, seminars. Improvise, try new things. There’s just an unlimited list of ideas you can get from other industries, and all you have to do is think about how you can apply it to your practice area. If you can, use it. If you can’t, then don’t use it. Simple.

Hacking’s Hack: A website: https://ifttt.com/. You can set up rules and things that happen after certain events. Automate.

Tyson’s Tip: The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales. by Dan S. Kennedy (Adams Media; 3 edition (February 20, 2006)).

Basics of how to write a sales letter. You can do it as an email and as an actual letter. Marketing.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

As your firm gets larger...

In this episode Tyson and Jim discuss about the perks of managing a growing firm.

As you hire more people, there are more people that are dependant of you. Sometimes this consumes your time and your energy. Don't become a bottleneck in your firm.

Keep track of what it is that needs to get done. Make a list and then figure out who's the best to do it. This will give you more space and time to you to make the things YOU need to do.

KPI: Key Performance Indicators: Things that you can identify, you can look at, that give an idea of what the direction of your firm is. For example: new clients, new leads. If you have your KPI’s in place you can correctly determine whether to hire or not a new employee or which decisions should be made. Put plans in place and follow through.

Hiring employees is difficult and expensive. Not financially but everything else> the time assisting, developing and growing them.

Sometimes, hiring a non experienced employee is better. They don’t have preconceived notions coming to the office and you can train them the way you need.

Hacking’s Hack:
Zig Ziglar’s podcast. https://www.ziglar.com/

Automobile University. You can learn and listen in your car as you commute or travel.
Get the most out of everything. Maximize.

Tyson’s Tip:
The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea (Bob Burg, John David Mann, Penguin UK, 25 feb. 2010).

You give more to referral partners, to your clients, you give and you receive. A simple book, it breaks things down for you with 5 principles.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up and maximize your firm!

What would be the one thing you'd like to tell yourself if you could go back in time and give yourself a piece of advice?

In this episode Tyson and Jim discuss about things they both wished they had known when they started their firm.

Branding: changing the name of your firm. KNOW your demographics, it will help you choose an adequate name. Putting your name on the firm's name is not always a good idea; don´t make everything about you, try to use the service you provide instead.

Make sure you make up a system to take track of everyone who contacts your law firm. Build a database. Get your clients information, it will be of value. Use call scripts.

Segmentation: make sure you choose and work with the right clients.

Hackings Hack: Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You (John Warrillow, Penguin, 2013)

Great book for lawyers to read and to think about as they start building their practice.

Tysons Tip: UpWork.

You can hire all kinds of assistants. It saves you a lot of money and it gets things done. Your firm running 24hrs.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm!

In this episode Tyson and Jim discuss about how to work ON your law firm instead of IN your law firm. Building systems is fundamental.

Building systems and building for the future is gonna make a better lawyer. You´re gonna be more efficient, you´re gonna provide better service to your clients, you´re gonna get a better result. Use your present time to make your future better.

Choose wisely your experts and consultants. Keep it simple. And don´t rely that much on other people, at the end of the day, you´re the one using the system.

Tyson´s Tip: Communication with your team, it´s important. Slack. www.slack.com

You can share everything and keep your communication in ONE place.  It´s free.

Hacking´s Hack: The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber.

How to think about your business. Entrepreneur + Manager + Tactician. Learn how to balance your focus.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up and maximize your firm!

In this episode Tyson and Jim introduce themselves and tell us how they began their law journey.

Hacking´s Hack: Go on and listen to Dean Jackson and Joe Polish talk about marketing in their podcast - http://ilovemarketing.com/

Go back and start from the beginning, there are lots of great podcasts about marketing!
Before unit, during unit, and after unit: you come upon them at different stages of your project. Learn how to manage them.

Tyson´s Tip:  Basic, but elemental: The Top Five.

Every day you should write 5 things to be done. The same with your week. At the end of the day and the week they must be done. Small tasks are just fine, but write them done and get them done, this will keep you moving forward. Green pen for the completed tasks, and red for the non completed. You will hate to take out that red pen!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up and maximize your firm!