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In this episode, Jim & Tyson interview Parker Layrisson, a personal injury attorney who runs his own law firm in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Listen as they go over his car accident personal injury business and the importance of community marketing in a town like Ponchatoula. Also, his struggles running his firm, how his book has helped him, podcasting and more!

Topics:

• Parker’s background
  • Ponchatoula, Louisiana
  • Small town lawyer
  • Specialist that does 1 thing: car accident personal injury law
• The firm’s beginnings
  • Started running a satellite office for a big law firm
  • Went on his own about 10 years ago
  • Took anything that walks in the door
  • Parker’s mother got involved in a car accident, and it got personal for him
  • Focused only on car accident personal injury
• A niche in a small town
  • Lock down your tribe
  • Community marketing
  • The book: Accident Handbook
• Where are cases coming from
  • 88% come from referrals: former clients, the list
  • Intake: Gary Falkowitz
  • Follow up and provide value
  • Mentors and referral sources
  • Goal: 10 cases a month
• The book and marketing
  • The list
  • Copies to former clients and referrals
  • Reviews
  • “The book is like a business card that you can put on a shelf”
• Book promotion in Times Square: a marketing hit!
• Parker’s biggest struggles
  • Staffing issues
  • Replacing marketing and legal assistants
  • Work Life balance
• Young Guns Mastermind
  • Supporting one another
  • Achieve higher goals
  • Brainstorming
• Time in the business and on the business
  • More ON than IN
  • 2 associates
• Podcasting: Parker has started a podcast!
  • A podcast about stories of people that live in Ponchatoula
  • Great way to get in front of people!
  • The logistics of it
• Community marketing
  • Fighting against bigger city attorneys
  • Programs like Bikes for kids
• Advice for law students opening their firms
  • The list: track all the people in your life and be meaningful about staying in contact with them
  • Thank you notes

Jim’s hack: Any chance you have to throw a little party and connect with your people, it sort of strengthens the bond of everybody.

Parker’s tip: An app to send hand written notes: https://www.bond.co/

Tyson’s tip: Start tracking your goals and if you are doing the things you said you were going to do.

//

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Transcripts: The Importance of Community Marketing ft. Parker Layrisson

Parker Layrisson
If you take the time to write a thank you note and day, it will be super cheap, it won’t take much time. And it will just make all the world of difference in your practice. And if you start tracking people, eventually you’ll have clients, and then you just stay in touch with those clients. The mistake I made when I started practicing was treating the lawyer client relationship like a transaction, forgetting about that client as soon as the case ended, and the money was coming in. And, you know, I look back on my practice and 1000 clients, I’ve stayed in great touch with the last 500 and it’s helped me grow. I really feel bad about not doing that with the first 500. And there’s a lot of missed opportunity there.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking, and Tyson Meatrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your phone.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson mujer. What’s up, Jimmy? How you doing, bud?

Jim Hacking
Good Tyson. I’m doing great How you been?

Tyson Mutrux
Man? I had one of those weekends where I just sort of chilled out all weekend. And it was great. Well, they Yeah.

Jim Hacking
Well, you know, we had our 10 year anniversary party last week. And that was quite a blast. So I’m going to post some photos from it. And it was fun getting together with old clients and lawyers and friends who supported the firm. It was nice to say thank you to everybody. And it was a real good morale booster.

Tyson Mutrux
Very cool. Yet. It’s so awesome. I’m shame. I missed it. But it was amazing. I made a special trip for your birthday. So couldn’t you did it. And I couldn’t miss a date night. So that’s important, you know that? I got a question for you. So John Fisher posted your Twitter banner, and it was a bunch of people in the background. Was that from the party? Or was that just a stock photo?

Jim Hacking
Or no, no, that’s that’s been my Twitter photo for about 10 years. That’s a photo from the first ever, most some day at the capitol where we had everybody down in Jefferson City, I gave a little speech. And then we took a picture with everybody on the steps of the Capitol. So that’s that’s my picture for a really long time. John went off the chain last night on mastermind experience he was dropping all these photos and all these shout outs to everybody. I think he stayed up too late or something.

Tyson Mutrux
I noticed that when I say anything else. Anyway, do you want to introduce our guests?

Jim Hacking
Yes, I do. I’m very excited to have on today’s show. Our good friend Parker Larison. He is a personal injury attorney down in Louisiana. And he was kind enough when we were down at the Clio conference to come over. He doesn’t use Clio, but he came to the conference. And he was kind enough to take the money and my team and I out to lunch. It was a great time. We had a good time at the hotel and was great. Finally getting to meet Parker Parker. Welcome to the show.

Parker Layrisson
Thanks so much for having me, guys. This is a real treat.

Tyson Mutrux
Parker. So you and I have chatted quite a bit before. I’m holding your accident handbook, which is one of the coolest books written by an attorney that I’ve seen. It’s a hardback book. And it’s really digestible. I really like it. So it’s awesome. But I guess, for the people that don’t know, you talk a little bit about what you do and a little bit about your practice. Yeah, sure. Thanks.

Parker Layrisson
Um, basically Ponchatoula, Louisiana, which is an itty bitty town about an hour north of New Orleans and about 45 minutes east of Baton Rouge. And it’s kind of a Mayberry style town or populations, only 7000 people. Now we’re kind of near Hammond, which is probably a 20 25,000 person, college town with a regional Louisiana college right north of us. Well, I’m a small town lawyer, I think I’m the only lawyer in our area. That’s a that’s a pure specialist that does one thing. And for me, that’s car accident, personal injury law. So you know, that’s what I do. I enjoy it. And you know, enjoy living in this tiny town that I grew up and

Jim Hacking
Parker, tell us about how your firm started, like, when did it start? And how did you go about building it?

Parker Layrisson
Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, I had worked with another firm running what was essentially if they wanted to have satellite office here in Ponchatoula, they have a large class action case based here, and wanted to keep in contact with their clients. And so for about four years, I ran a satellite office for them. But it was mostly, you know, my practice and that it was cases I would generate for myself to work up. And then I went on my own about 10 years ago. So I’ve been here in Ponchatoula, practicing for close to 15 years, and have been on my own for 10. And, you know, like most small town lawyers, Jim, when I got started, it was your classic take anything and would walk in the door type of practice. You know, as I mentioned earlier, there had been a specialist in the area, I think, I don’t know our exact count. We have roughly 200 lawyers in our parish, which is what Louisiana folks call it County, and my town probably has 10 You know, not that many, and none had specialized so I would do you know, DWIs on Mondays and Will’s on Tuesdays and so on so forth. And then you know, some years later, my mother would be involved in a bad personal injury case, where she got involved in a wreck and really got her neck and her back banged up badly. And for me, although I’d been doing personal injury law all along, along with probably five to 10, other things, that’s when that area of the law just got personal for me. And I just from that moment on and ever took another type of case, I shut the doors on my DWR practice, which was pretty robust and written a book there, too. And all the other stuff I was doing, and it was a bit of a leap of faith. And fortunately, you know, it’s worked. So that’s all I’ve got here today.

Tyson Mutrux
So Parker, I mean, you are in a town of about 6500. People as of 2010. I’m sure it’s grown a little bit since then. But I can’t imagine it’s grown much. Even if I gave you the benefit of the doubt of having 10,000 people, which I doubt you do, that’s still a small town, it’s hard for me to fathom, you know, having a pie practice, it just one niche, you know, just PII or any criminal in that small town, how do you do it?

Parker Layrisson
I think probably the key would be, you have to lock down your tribe, so to speak, you know, meaning, if I’m going to try to pull this off, you know, it would kick in all Fiat cases, but I need to get most of them, you know, and for me, the key, there has been a lot of community marketing, and just focusing on putting a fence up figuratively, around my town, you know, and trying to keep all the work here that I can get, of course, we will dip into other areas for work. But the majority, the vast majority, the overwhelming majority, comes from right here, probably five to 10 mile radius of where I live and work. So it’s a struggle, I’m not gonna lie. But you know, you just you just have to work at it work on your business a lot. And be very thoughtful about how you market the business. And you know, I’ve been blessed the practices as grown in the book that you mentioned earlier is a big part of that, you know, it helped me and help differentiate me from the 200 lawyers that want the same cases I have. I mean, the one difference probably between being a country lawyer like me, versus a big city lawyer, like the two of you, is that you can’t really get many attorney referrals in personal injury, you know, the guy who does title work mostly, is never going to send me the rear end or 18 Wheeler case, you know, you might only get two of those a year or fewer. So they keep them the biggest firms in the parish that kind of market themselves as business defense firms. They try to hustle the cases to your very few conflicts. It’s not like being in a big city where you firms, a big firms could not take that great million dollar case. Here, you know, it’s kind of every every man and woman for themselves. And it’s really a fight. So it’s difficult is the short answer.

Jim Hacking
So where do most of your cases come from Parker? And how do you keep track of the metrics of where your cases are coming from?

Parker Layrisson
That’s a great question. 88% come from referral. Most of those referrals are former clients, and we kind of track them the old fashioned way through a spreadsheet. You know, it starts with intake, you know, you guys turned me on to Gary Falco wits. And I hired him this year to come in and revamp our intake system, he flew in from New York. And we have a great day long training there. And he’s followed up since. So basically, everybody that contact system, know how to contact us online, on the phone, or even walk ins you get walking into in the country. We asked them how they found us. And we keep track of it in a spreadsheet. And that’s where you mentioned earlier, the marketing, we really follow up with those champion referral sources, we really follow up with them a lot and try to provide them with a lot of value. The one thing I should mention, too, is it’s a very broad base referral base, you know, when I look at my list, there are only a couple people that have referred me 10 Or more cases. And all the years, you know, probably a 500 cases in our database, you know, since the start keeping track, and I made more than that I really haven’t counted in a while. But one of those is my brother. And one of those as my mentor who’s a late lawyer passed away. It’s a challenge there very few people, you know, when we look at the list here, I think I have 20 or fewer have referred me four cases or more. So it’s a really short list of people that are kind of common, you know, referral sources, I have to kind of cast a really wide net. But fortunately, we’ve been able to do that, you know, my my goal is to get in, you know, close about 10 cases a month. And this year, we’ve already met that goal, and it’s still October, so we’re happy with where we are. It’s a pretty narrow list. And the lawyer that passed and sent me so many cases, most of those were when he got sick with cancer. And he essentially recommended me to us existing clients and transition his caseload to me. So the points just there’s not a situation where I have a great you know, personal injury medical clinic across the street that I can go develop a referral relationship with and expect, you know, multiple cases per year or month. It’s, you know, we have to kind of cast a community wide net and hope to catch what comes through

Tyson Mutrux
So I got a question about your book, sir. This is a question I have I haven’t written a book yet. But I want to. I know Jimmy has written a couple books, how do you use them? In your marketing? I mean, you get it done, right, you do that you do all this work? And you get the book done. I mean, sure, in what ways do you use it to market?

Parker Layrisson
Well, all of my marketing starts with my existing list. You know, I’m a believer that that’s kind of the key to the tribe, you know, it’s so much more efficient to market to people that already know, like, and trust you. So the first thing I did when I got the book in was that my stage of my career, I’ve had a little over 1000 clients, so and so the first 1000 copies were sent to my clients, you know, along with a thank you for supporting me, then, of course, I put them in the hands of anybody that thought could be a potential referral source local doctors, or lawyers, you know, etc. But the big key, where I think it’s probably the most effective is in our shock and awe package, and I’m in the process of revamping my shock. And I’ll package right now, without the benefit of the great former marketing assistant who’s had a baby, so it’s going slower than I expected. But I think I’m gonna be really proud of this shock and all package, when the new versions done, I’d love to share it with you. Because it includes the accent handbook that you’re talking about, as well as a newer book, we just got published about an 80 Page soft bound book of client reviews and other reviews. So we’ve basically repurpose Google, Facebook, etc. And a few 100 client reviews online, and put that in there for social proof, you know, to quote the child in persuasion concept, but it’s got some other stuff in there, you know, infographics about how your case works, and manual, so you can keep a journal of your symptoms. But that’s probably the main way. I mean, when we wrote the book, of course, we did all the barnstorming, you would expect and book tour. Heck, we even got the thing on a billboard in Times Square in New York, which, which was a big hit on Facebook here in Mayberry. I think, you know, getting it in the hands of the people that already know like, and trust you is the most effective because it’s kind of like a business card, they’re never going to throw away they keep it on their shelf or, or somewhere. And I’m not deluded into thinking people read it, I’ll tell you a funny story. dedicated the book to my parents, my mom who I mentioned, was a personal injury victim. And of course, my dad. And I’ll never forget to come over the house about a week after I gave them the first copy of the book. And there’s a bookmark buried about 250 pages deep in and that was my mom, who was just voraciously reading this thing. And then about 678 pages deep was a huge red cherry popsicle stick, which was dead, he tried a little bit and gave up. But the point here is if you can’t do I mean, my dad is illiterate guy, he graduated in English and went to Berkeley to study that in grad school. So he’s a reader. But when you can get your own dad to get through a book, you know, it’s pretty delusional and think everybody’s gonna read it. I don’t think they do. But I think when they feel the weight of a 300 page book with hardcover, they kind of just perceive you as more of an authority than you were before you gave it to them. And getting it in their hands is the key. So that’s what was done. Parker, how

Jim Hacking
did you get your book promoted in Time Square,

Parker Layrisson
you know, there’s a service that will help you with that. And at the time, I had this exceptional marketing assistant that I mentioned earlier, her name is Ashley Richardson, and she’s a dear friend, and she’s just awesome. She was a client before she came to work for us. Anyway, she figured it out. She’s a marketing guru, I can’t take any credit for that. She figured out a way to get it down. It’s pretty cool. And they take a photo of the book, while it’s up on the digital billboard, that you can repurpose in social media. We just redid it on like a throwback Thursday, a few weeks or months ago. And it was a big hit all over again, you know, three years later. So I highly recommend that if you do something you’re proud of. It’s really as simple as googling how to get on, you know, and I don’t know what service it was and some PR service

Tyson Mutrux
out there do it. So Parker really struggle with the most it seems like you live pretty laid back and you never seem stressed out? I mean, like it’s a whatever they use drugs.

Parker Layrisson
Yeah. Well, I think finding that balance is a struggle. I mean, on one hand, you have the kind of philosophical decision because for us, we employ a four day workweek here at my firm. And we have since we started 10 years ago. And I’m also pretty liberal with my apparently no one’s paid parental leave, which I’ll take myself and we each did about six weeks each Monday, my staff a little longer. But I think it’s 12 month or 12 weekly at this point. But it’s hard to try to figure out where’s like, how many cases do I need and want, you know, and you’re throttling back. And then when you do that sometimes finding the right people and systems is a challenge. So right now my challenge is I have to replace this great marketing assistant after replacing great legal assistant that just began law school in the fall. So those staffing issues are more challenging. As your, but I think they’re really, you know, big picture challenges, you know, just where’s the right place to draw the line in this work life balance between one of the car but you know I don’t aspire you know Tyson I admire that you have ambition to become the owner and leader of the largest personal injury firm in the Midwest. I mean, I think you can do it man if anybody in the world capable of and it’s you, I don’t share those kinds of ambitions. But sometimes it’s hard to know where to stop, you know in terms of your goals so that you can be home enough or whatever. And you know, it’s different. Some days I’m happy with where I’ve drawn the line, some days, I want to move it a little bit. But it’s a constant struggle to try to figure out I’m not working hard enough to support my family and protect our future needs. Am I you know, leaving the office early enough to be the dad and husband I want to be. That’s really where my my challenge is, and figuring all that out.

Jim Hacking
One of the things that I was excited about Parker, when we met was your sort of little mini mastermind group you have going on down in the bayou was wondering, sure, if you could talk to her tell our listeners a little bit about that. We call

Parker Layrisson
it young guns. And it sprung out of a informal lawyer mentoring group that I started probably five or six years ago. And I noticed when the economy went bad, a decade or so ago, that there were fewer firm jobs than there were when I got out of school. Now, my younger brother is six years younger. So I have a lot of his friends that were getting out of law school at a really tough economy. And they were kind of forced into solo practice. And so several of them reached out to me to get some guidance on how to handle a PR case, or how to handle a DWI case, etc. So we put together this little group and I started kind of soliciting victim speakers like you guys, you know, down here with the federal judges at the head of the Bar Association or whatever. But guys, I thought we’d give them good advice. Eventually, some of the older guys in that group who kind of moved on from needing a mentor and just expressed the desire to start a mastermind group. So we put together this group, Young Guns mastermind, it’s completely free and informal. But we have one live meeting a month here in my office, and most of the lawyers live out of this town. So they’re coming up from New Orleans or in from Baton Rouge, or other areas. And we also have a weekly phone call. And it’s you know, like most mastermind groups, it’s about supporting one another to achieve higher goals, and keeping everyone accountable for the goals that they set. And we do a lot of brainstorming. So several of your listeners, I mean, Carlita, you met Carly Gonzalez, Mike Donovan, and a lot of folks that are in the maximum lawyer, Facebook group, Andrew LeBrons, who I think has commented, and he’s a great tech expert, just a great group of folks. And thanks for mentioning.

Tyson Mutrux
So far, you mentioned a little bit about balance and things like that. So roughly, what percentage of your time do you spend on the business? And what percentage of your time do you actually spend in the business?

Parker Layrisson
At this point, I’m spending more time on business than in. And that’s your kind of a fairly recent development, I have two great young associates that are in their second year out of school. One was my longtime legal assistant. So she’s been with me, six, seven years, maybe. But they are now able to handle more of the caseload. And that has allowed me to step back a little bit and focus more on markets, I would say, percentage wise, it’s tough without thinking in advance. But it probably at least 6040. This week, will be spent on the business rather than and what I found is that all changes in their seasons and the practice like seasons in life. And, you know, sometimes when staff moves around, forces you to jump right back down, or, you know, when trials come up, or you know, big depositions or whatever. Now that we do nothing but car accident cases, our systems have improved to the point where there not a whole lot of unforeseen emergencies where I have to jump in and take a deposition. You know, I’ll of course do that and the bigger cases and the thornier issues, but I’m pie with the screen your case as well. You know, you don’t see a lot of summary judgment motions are no big surprises. It’s been nice. We’re working on the business a lot more than in it. That’s been a big key and me kind of being more laid back than I used to be. For me, it’s less stressful than, you know, trying the cases and whenever nasty deposition.

Jim Hacking
Parker talked to us a little bit. I know that you have some exciting news of your own on the podcasting front. tell our listeners about

Parker Layrisson
that. Oh, yeah. Well, I was inspired by the two of you. And I’ve started a podcast. It’s called the constitutive podcast, and it will go live on November one bank probably five or so episodes so far, and it’s been a lot of fun. I got to interview my dad for our fifth episode. He was the longest serving Sheriff down here in my area. So he’s kind of a much bigger deal than I am, or even my brother. And so that was pretty neat. He told us all about his childhood growing up here and I mean, discount 7000 People now imagine what it was like during the 1940s and 50s when he grew up. So it’s been pretty neat. It’s just a podcast about local really about sharing the stories of the people that live here. So, I’ve really enjoyed it. And I gotta tell you, for folks that are listening to they’re considering starting a podcast, it’s just a great way to get in front of people that you want to and without being salesy. You want to meet community leaders and kind of get them in your world. This is a great way to do it. People are eager to come on the podcast, and be involved. It’s been neat. We have over 700 likes on Facebook already, and we haven’t had a single episode yet. So considering that’s about 10% of the town, I’m really excited. Our partners so talk a little

Tyson Mutrux
bit about the logistics of the getting this up and going. So I know a lot of people are interested in doing this. How did you do it?

Parker Layrisson
I couldn’t do it without my good buddy, Ernie Svenson are better known as Ernie, the attorney with the law firm auto pilot program. He introduced me to a guy named Danny Osman, with emerald setting productions are located in Tennessee. But Danny is a Podcast Producer, who just does a great job. He made it he has several packages, so to speak. So you can from kind of a more dry and which which I decided to pass on to a more done for you. method. So basically, I just do the recording on my hand. I ship it up to Danny. He takes out all of the arms and our hands and your nose and crutch words and makes it sound better with some good intros, outros, etc. And I’m very happy with the final product. And then it’s been a real treasure to work with. So if you’re considering doing this, and you have the means to hire somebody give Danny a look. He’s awesome. I couldn’t recommend it more.

Jim Hacking
Mercury. I think that you struck on something with your podcasts. And I think it’s I think it’s really smart and and good in that you’re not going to do one about the ins and outs of car accidents. I think instead you’re working to become the electronic and audio mayor of your town. And I think that with our friends like like Bernard Nonnberg and Moe Lilienthal in Alabama, I think that they’ve really built a following of people who get to see you talking about something other than, you know, the minimums and maximums of underinsured motorist coverage. I mean, nobody wants to hear a podcast about

Parker Layrisson
Sure. Sure. And boy, those Moe and Bernard have great shows. I’ve really enjoyed watching them they’ve been, although they’ve never met me, or I’ve never met them. They’ve been kind of virtual mentors to me. Hmm, you guys. But you’re right. And one of the blessings of practicing in 2018 is we have so much more data than we had in the old days. And for me, this all really sprung out of what I was seeing in my Facebook Insights and metrics. You know, in the old days, I did exactly what you just mentioned, gentleman talked about uninsured motorist and car accident questions, put a lot of time and thought into those types of issues. And that’s throw them out into social media. And they’d go over like you’d expect. Nobody was interested. And then we started doing other things that we thought people might be interested in. So yeah, same thing. When we thought about the podcasts, they encouraged me to do a legal one. I said, No, we’ll put a little brief legal ad in it for our phone. Maybe one day, we’ll talk a little bit about it and episode. And nobody’s gonna listen to me talking about my job, it would be too self serving just to born. And I think you hit the nail on the head. And I can tell you in the Facebook world, which is my primary social vehicle, it’s really proven, you got to give the people what they want. And if it’s Facebook or Instagram, is pictures of cute kids and kidneys and whatnot. This not talking about legal issues that are scary, like subrogation and uninsured motorist.

Tyson Mutrux
As a part of that Jim’s question actually triggered something that I wanted to ask you before I sort of want to backtrack a little bit. Sure. So Charles Boyd, and I think they run a similar practice to you because they’re sort of Fending off bigger city attorneys quite regularly. And that’s why they do a lot of community marketing. Have you had anything similar to that where you’re having to fight off these bigger city lawyers? And if so, how do you do it?

Parker Layrisson
Absolutely. And I’m so glad you mentioned Chuck and Annika because I want to thank them. One thing we do is an exact copy out of their playbook bikes for kids. I was fortunate to see Annika speak on that topic, probably four years ago, five years ago, I don’t remember how long but a while back, she basically shared her gameplan and I reached out to her and she’s just such a diverse is that that Bob Berg Go Giver mentality that you guys do and have shared here. And she shared me their game plan. She followed up with my staff. So we started a few programs that are similar there. So we gave away 25 bikes this summer. We do it Student of the Month and teacher of the month and local school, stuff like that, because a year ago or maybe a little more. The largest advertising firm in the state moved in and opened a satellite office in Hammond little college town I mentioned at the beginning podcast. Well that offices probably five miles from mine, you know, our two towns basically touch borders. So that was super frightening. It’s like you’re running this Mom and Pop hamburger shop in Mayberry. And suddenly somebody opens up with McDonald’s next door. And you’d be naive to think nobody’s gonna buy McDonald’s burgers. So we were worried all the local lawyers were. And several of my friends really saw big hitting their Fiat practices. After they came to town we didn’t we actually grew, we had our biggest growth in a while. And I think it’s because unlike those other lawyers that had billboards and radio ads and stuff like that, we weren’t focusing our marketing money there. We don’t do TV, radio, billboards, etc. So yeah, I think we’ve had to fight that course, we’re not as big and successful as Chuck in our communities, our biggest is, but withstood that storm. Because we follow his lead a little bit and use some of the programs, he did some similar stuff.

Jim Hacking
Alright, Parker, for my last question. If you were to present at LSU to a bunch of law students that were thinking about opening up their own law firm right out of law school, what advice would you give them,

Parker Layrisson
I would tell them to immediately put pen to paper on their list, you know, and at that time, they wouldn’t have quite yet to be friends and family. But I would stress to them the importance of tracking all the people in your life, and being meaningful about how you stay in contact with them. You know, there’s a great book, I forget the title, 365 days of gratitude, something in that ballpark, where this judge and I guess at the time, a lawyer, I started writing, thank you notes, you know, if you take the time to write a thank you note a day, it will be super cheap, it won’t take much time. And it will just make all the world of difference in your practice. And if you start tracking people, eventually you’ll have clients, and then you just stay in touch with those clients. The mistake I made when I started practicing was treating the lawyer client relationship like a transaction, forgetting about that client, as soon as the case ended in the money coming in. And, you know, I look back on my practice and 1000 clients, I’ve seen him great touch with the last 500. And it’s helped me grow, I really feel bad about not doing that with the first 500. And there was a lot of missed opportunity there. So that would be my advice to be focused on your list, even before you have a single client on there. And you’ll grow better and quicker and just brought so much sooner than I did for the

Tyson Mutrux
new attorneys out there. And then the people just starting their practice, I think it’s really important to hear what Parker just said, and really understand that because that is the a common theme that we hear on podcasts all the time is people talking about getting their lives together. And that’s really how Jim started his practice. That’s really how I started my practice is just really getting that list together and staying in touch with those people. So I think it’s really important. Alright, Parker, we’re gonna start to wrap things up. Before I do want to remind everyone to go to Facebook group, and hop in there, make sure you request to join there. And there’s a lot of great information going on a lot of information like case management systems, calendaring, time management, whatever it may be a lot of great information. And also, if you don’t mind, please go and give us a five star review on ITunes or Stitcher podcast. It really does help spread the word. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
Well, you know, our good friend, John Fisher always gives us great advice. And I took a page out of his playbook this week when we had our party for the 10 year anniversary of our firm. And so we were really lucky to have a lot of our friends and just making a big deal out of it and sort of promoting it. And just even just the act of inviting 200 people led to us getting some new cases. So we just even the people who couldn’t come remember that they wanted to tell us about a potential referral partner or someone that might have a case for us. So we were just able to reconnect and talk to our list again, and another way and then of course, the people that came to the party, were excited to be there. And they got to meet my parents and my kids and, and it just really built, build some good bonds. And then the whole team got to go up on the little stage. And I got to say nice things about all of them. So it’s, it was just a great event. John, John did that when he launched his book. And so any chance you have to throw a little party and connect with the people, it sort of strengthens the bond with everybody.

Tyson Mutrux
I really like that it’s really interesting too, because you’re communicating with your list every single week, maybe even multiple times a week sometimes. And so for them to reach out. I think some people get worried that if I send out this newsletter all the time, they’re gonna get inundated and just ignore it. Clearly people aren’t ignoring the message. So I think that’s really awesome. Oh, Parker say you know, the deal. What’s your tip or hack of the week? Well, I

Parker Layrisson
mentioned the importance to me of handwritten notes with clients and other contacts. And there’s an app that I use now of course, when you’re getting started, you know how much money just go buy the cheapest, you know, pads you can get. But Bond and bond black is the iPhone app is something that I used to send Hey, handwritten notes that I don’t actually write, you know I can, I can speak into my phone and use the contacts that are already in my contacts and quickly send notes out that bond has a machine handwriting, my very own handwriting they did they do a handwriting test. And it’s really neat. Nobody knows or getting a note that was written through an iPhone. It’s expensive. There’s a less expensive service called hand written where they use a Y instead of an eye on the word. So it’s kind of a misspelled handwritten friend I mentioned earlier, Andrew Agron uses now it’s much less expensive than bond, I don’t think they can use your actual handwriting that they have like a stock, male handwriting, female handwriting, a few options to choose from. But I thought that was pretty neat and bombards can copy your handwriting. And it just makes it easy when you’re at the airport and crank out notes just wherever you are. And it’s really helped me meet my goal of writing one gratitude, handwritten note per day.

Tyson Mutrux
You know, honestly, Parker, I don’t want them to copy my handwriting, my handwriting looks like a fifth grader. But it’s cool that they can do that. So my tip of the week is, so we talked about goal setting all the time, and 12 week goals and all that kind of stuff. And I think that sometimes we we don’t hold ourselves accountable. So my tip of the week is to start tracking your goals. And look, if you’re actually doing the things you say you’re going to do. And so I’ve been using a successful I think I may have briefly mentioned it before, on the podcast. But basically, I take a lot of the things that we’ve talked about over the last couple of years. And I’ve put them into a success log based upon what our coach Jason self has told me to do, and sort of the variation of what he’s taught me. And so basically what I do is every morning, I sort of rate myself on the last 24 hours on my goals and my process goals and whether or not I’m doing the things I say I’m supposed to be doing. And so it really does kind of keep you focused on what your endgame is. And so, and focusing on the things that you need to get to your your end goals. So I’d be happy to share this with anyone. If you just reach out to me on Facebook or wherever and shoot me an email, I’ll send you a copy of what I have. It’s in a Word document, you can edit it for yourself. I’ll take out some of my big goals because that’s my information. You don’t need to know it. So that is my tip of the week. Track your success and I think you’ll do big things. Parker, thank you so much for coming on. I think you have been an amazing guest. It’s been great to get to know you. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good weekend. You too. Bye bye.