The 1958 Lawyer

They say failing to plan is planning to fail, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of both. Today, we’re diving into the ‘pre-journey checklist’ for life and business—because, apparently, just winging it isn’t a great long-term strategy. Ron Bockstahler is back with us, ready to help us set real, meaningful goals instead of just making to-do lists we’ll conveniently ignore. Ron, let’s be honest—how many of us are doing this whole planning thing completely wrong?
 

1. Why is it so important to start with the end in mind?
2. How can someone define success for their life, not just their business?
3. What are the biggest mistakes people make when setting goals?
4. You talk about writing down goals—why does that make such a difference?
5. How can people ensure their business serves their life, not the other way around?
6. What role do personal values play in shaping a business?
7. Why do many entrepreneurs lose sight of their original goals?
8. How do you balance ambition with personal happiness?
9. What small step can someone take today to create a more balanced life?
10. How has goal-setting personally impacted your journey?
     

That’s it for today! Big thanks to Ron Bockstahler for sharing his insights on how to balance life and business, without losing your sanity. If you want to dive deeper, grab a copy of his book Don't Lose Your Balance: Live Life or Build a Business? Do Both. It’s packed with real-world advice, practical steps, and a few hard-earned lessons you won’t want to miss.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who needs some work-life balance. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you next time!
 

About Ron Bockstahler:

Ron Bockstahler is a father to six children, husband to a loving wife, athlete, and entrepreneur. With a unique perspective on life, Ron started his business, Amata Holdings, LLC, more than 22 years ago with the twin goals of raising a family and attending as many home Chicago Cubs games as possible. 

Throughout his career, Ron has had a relentless focus on setting and achieving life goals. After initially dropping out of high school to make money to support a young family, Ron was able to go back and finish his high school career and graduate with his class. To pay for college and gain the discipline to thrive in college, Ron joined the Marine Corps, where he served four years as an enlisted Marine. 

After his tour in the Marines, Ron attended Northern Illinois University, where he completed his degree in less than three years. After graduating from college, he took a position as a copier salesperson, where he cut his teeth and learned what it took to succeed in business. Within a corporate career spanning fourteen years with two companies, Ron worked his way up from copier salesman to the C-Suite, always setting and working tirelessly to achieve his written goals. 

A self-proclaimed workaholic through most of his career, it took running his own business for Ron to learn to appreciate the values of a balanced life. For more than 22 years, Ron has worked to maintain a balance between running a successful company, raising six children, maintaining a healthy marriage, and actively working to be a competitive athlete (during this time, Ron has competed in seven full Ironman races and numerous triathlons and marathons). 
 

Connect with Ron Bockstahler:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbockstahler/

Company website: https://amatacorp.com/

“Don't Lose Your Balance” book: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Lose-Your-Balance-Business/dp/1964046467
 

Show notes by Team Podcastologist

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

Today, we’re talking about balance. And no, not the kind where you finally master standing on one foot during yoga class—this is about balancing life and business without falling flat on your face. My guest is Ron Bockstahler, a man who’s not only built a successful business but also managed to have a life outside of it—an actual, fulfilling life! He’s here to tell us how to do the same, and I, for one, am taking notes. Ron, welcome to the show.
 

1. What inspired you to write Don't Lose Your Balance?
2. Can you share a bit about your background and how it shaped this book?
3. What struggles did you face in balancing business and life?
4. Who do you hope will read this book, and why?
5. What is the biggest misconception about work-life balance?
6. If someone is feeling overwhelmed, what’s the first thing they should do?
7. How does this book differ from other business or self-help books?
8. What key lesson do you wish you had learned earlier in your career?
9. Can success and balance truly coexist, or is it a constant struggle?
10. What do you want listeners to take away from this conversation?
     

That’s a wrap for today! Big thanks to Ron Bockstahler for sharing his insights on how to balance life and business, without losing your sanity. If you want to dive deeper, grab a copy of his book Don't Lose Your Balance: Live Life or Build a Business? Do Both. It’s packed with real-world advice, practical steps, and a few hard-earned lessons you won’t want to miss.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who needs some work-life balance. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you next time!
 

About Ron Bockstahler:

Ron Bockstahler is a father to six children, husband to a loving wife, athlete, and entrepreneur. With a unique perspective on life, Ron started his business, Amata Holdings, LLC, more than 22 years ago with the twin goals of raising a family and attending as many home Chicago Cubs games as possible. 

Throughout his career, Ron has had a relentless focus on setting and achieving life goals. After initially dropping out of high school to make money to support a young family, Ron was able to go back and finish his high school career and graduate with his class. To pay for college and gain the discipline to thrive in college, Ron joined the Marine Corps, where he served four years as an enlisted Marine. 

After his tour in the Marines, Ron attended Northern Illinois University, where he completed his degree in less than three years. After graduating from college, he took a position as a copier salesperson, where he cut his teeth and learned what it took to succeed in business. Within a corporate career spanning fourteen years with two companies, Ron worked his way up from copier salesman to the C-Suite, always setting and working tirelessly to achieve his written goals. 

A self-proclaimed workaholic through most of his career, it took running his own business for Ron to learn to appreciate the values of a balanced life. For more than 22 years, Ron has worked to maintain a balance between running a successful company, raising six children, maintaining a healthy marriage, and actively working to be a competitive athlete (during this time, Ron has competed in seven full Ironman races and numerous triathlons and marathons). 
 

Connect with Ron Bockstahler:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbockstahler/

Company website: https://amatacorp.com/

“Don't Lose Your Balance” book: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Lose-Your-Balance-Business/dp/1964046467

Show notes by Team Podcastologist

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

Patrick Carver is the Owner of Constellation Marketing, a digital marketing company that focuses on driving growth for law firms using web design, advertising and other tools. In this episode, Ron and Patrick talked about how you can take advantage of the many facets of digital marketing today. 

Patrick shared how a law firm can attract clients by doing sustainable and organic practices like making articles that are tailored for the client you serve, by designing your website to have relevant information and by working on technical aspects such as google advertising, search engine optimization, backlinking and other strategies. 

Timestamps:

• Key things to do for organic growth (7:38)
• Backlinking and how it can help your website (11:27)
• What is Google My Business? (28:20)
• Other marketing channels that law firms should be considering (35:16)
  
   

“Take advantage of the digital real estate that’s out there that exists for attorneys.” - Patrick Carver

Connect with Patrick Carver:

Website: https://goconstellation.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickacarver/

Patrick Carver, Owner of Constellation Marketing

Digital Marketing for Law Firms

Patrick Carver is a Missouri native who has spent over a decade working in digital marketing. Before devoting his work full-time to Constellation Marketing, Patrick served as Digital Marketing Manager at Fortune 500 company DICK’S Sporting Goods. He has successful experience across a variety of industries and business sizes.

Patrick received his B.S. in political science from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. His long history of success is anchored by a strong work ethic and a creative problem-solving approach. In high school, he was an all-state soccer player, a national champion debater, president of the student body, and an entrepreneur. In college, he was a two-time first-team NSCAA all-American soccer player at Emory University as well as team captain and continued his entrepreneurial interests while maintaining a full-time academic load.

Now, as CEO of Constellation Marketing, Patrick leads a talented team of legal marketing professionals who work together to achieve a shared goal of driving growth at law firms. From web design to advertising, we have the skill, experience, and drive to build, manage, and maintain the entire spectrum of your digital marketing needs.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickacarver/

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:29  

Okay, welcome to the show, the 1958 lawyer, I am Ron Bockstahler, your host, we got to today, we're going to start off our series, our marketing series, because I think marketing is one of the greatest misunderstood aspects of running a small business and a small law firm. So we're going to start it off with who I think is one of the best in the country of just talking the overall marketing picture, understanding what it takes, he only works with law firm. So he's a specialist working with law firms. And he's got a ton of background. So Patrick Carver, the CEO of constellation marketing, welcome to the show. Patrick, great to have you back. I'm very excited to have you on the show today.

Patrick Carver  1:06  

Thank you so much for having me, it's great to be back. Appreciate all that,

Ron Bockstahler  1:10  

you know, and I'm going to start it off by in I know I've we you and I have talked but marketing people are some of the most mistrusted individuals out there, because they come in and they can do SEO for you, they're gonna pay per click is gonna, you know, and a law small law firm, a solo practitioner says, okay, here, and I'm gonna pay you guys to do this, and you're expecting X amount of results on that, and you get nothing, maybe get something the first couple months, and then it kind of goes down the tubes. And, and we're going to talk to that because, you know, I've gone through this for over 20 years running my company, which made me go out and get a little education on my own. And then I started talking to Patrick, and wow, this is someone that you can trust, he's gonna tell you what it is. So he's not here to he's not going to sell you. He's just going to tell you what it takes to take your law firm to the next level, as far as marketing goes. So with that point, Patrick Patrick, let's talk about how you got here, I guess maybe that's a good way to start.

Patrick Carver  2:00  

Awesome. Yeah, I am originally from Missouri. And I got into this, essentially, because my father is a criminal defense attorney. And throughout, kind of growing up, I would help him here and there with little items, just kind of understanding technology, I'd built some websites and done some different stuff. And I was working for a separate company. And he'd been kind of unhappy or just, you know, unfulfilled with his marketing provider, one of the big companies that's out there and provides marketing services, and he'd send me these reports every month. And he would say, what does this mean? You know, he didn't understand what it all meant. He knew enough he'd been where he knew he needed to do something, he knew that the market was changing from doing advertising in the yellow pages that you needed to be online, Seo was this thing that was happening, and so on. And so he had the foresight to know he needed to do something. But beyond that, he you know, really just wanted to focus on being a great lawyer and running his practice and all that. And so he'd send me these reports. And he basically would just ask me, Hey, if you have a minute, just let me know what these guys are doing, and if it's any good, and so I was able to eventually install Google Analytics on his website, and let it run for about six months, I think. And by the end of this, this little experiment, I realized that none of his business coming in was from anything that this company was doing on the SEO side, literally every new case that he was getting, had come in by someone googling his name. So he was, you know, really getting all of his business through the fact that he was a good attorney, he would get referrals and stuff like that. And so that really, for it, well, it angered me, you know, that he was paying $1,500 a month for what I thought was, you know, kind of a scam. Really, I thought that somebody, you know, these folks had kind of sold him a bill of goods, but they weren't really doing anything on a monthly basis to actually create that change and, and be accountable for those results. And we're really just kind of banking on the fact that, you know, he wasn't super knowledgeable about about SEO and the, and the inner workings. And so at some point, he just said, Well, do you think you can do better and you know, and make me an offer to do it? And so I did it. And at that point, I wasn't, I wouldn't consider myself an expert at that point with regards to search engine optimization, but I knew enough to where they kind of let me experiment a little bit. And after a year, or six months, we started to see some really good traffic growth and we were the things we were looking at to try and change bringing net new people into into the equation who didn't already know I'm in were just out there searching for a criminal lawyer, we could see that, you know, not only was he getting more traffic, more people were calling and more business was happening where they didn't, he couldn't track it back to a referral, right? He, it was a net new person coming in. And so that was really the big lightbulb moment for me that, okay, you know, doing it the right way or doing the, you know, a good amount of work in the right way can actually lead to these results. And so after, you know, the first full year, their business was up by almost $200,000. And that was a big, you know, again, lightbulb moment for me where I could, you know, see really how this could be have a big impact on other people's firms. Now,

Ron Bockstahler  5:49  

now, you then you became you started up constellation marketing, and you guys have expanded now, so you're working with law firms throughout the country, give us an idea of the type of law firms you're working with today.

Patrick Carver  5:59  

We work with mostly what I call transactional law firms. And those are for me, firms that rely on a volume based business. So they are not the corporate law firms that maybe have a couple of clients per year. And they're happy with that these type of firms and we're talking about personal injury, criminal immigration, bankruptcy, family, you know, kind of anything that fits in there, that is a in for us, it's typically a solo or small law firm, that is really relying on that influx of new business on a monthly basis, they may get some recurring, but, you know, hopefully, people aren't committing felonies every single month of the year, right and coming back to you. So it's those type of businesses that when we kind of get them, often, they are running a good business, they are delivering a good service, but they're mostly existing on referrals, and friends of friends, things like that. And they want to get to that point where they they're getting new business in the door that is not reliant on referrals, which, you know, as the audience knows, can when they happen, they're awesome, but they're often infrequent. And you can't really do anything to amplify them, or increase the frequency in a really good, you know, consistent way.

Ron Bockstahler  7:27  

Let's take it to because you did a presentation on how to create a pipeline of new clients without referrals, like, let's talk to that, how do we do that? What's some of the key things that you got to do as the small law firm?

Patrick Carver  7:40  

For sure, the biggest things you can do our to really just take advantage of the digital real estate that's out there that exists for attorneys. And what I mean by that is, you think about how someone is looking for a lawyer. And we know that the majority of people either start or at some level, they are going to pull up their phone or on their computer search for criminal lawyer near me or criminal lawyer in Dubuque, Iowa, what, wherever they are, that is where Google takes over. And you're going to start to see the search result, which has some ads, it has map listings, it also has what we call organic results below it. And our view is that you want to try and maximize the number of positions you have in that kind of ecosystem. And so there, you can pull levers there, you know, on the free side, and then also on the paid side, right, so everybody's probably familiar with Google Pay Per Click advertising. So you can kind of skip the line and get up there to create that instant visibility. Now, if you don't want to do that, or you want to have something that's maybe more sustainable, then you can focus on more on building your own assets. And so we think about that as number one, that's your website, building a website, and just doing really simple things like discussing your practice areas in depth, and discussing the situations that your clients find themselves in and how you can help in those situations, that is going to increase the general visibility of your website so that when people are searching for not only kind of a generic, I need a lawyer type term, but also, hey, what's the penalty for trespassing in Georgia or something like that? You may pop up for that, right? And so you want to kind of think about how what are the all of the issues that you are able to solve for your clients and write about it and that's free and you you know, you can do that relatively easy. The other part which I think has a little bit less of an impact, but still is can be useful is then maximizing your presence on all these other platforms. that allow businesses to represent themselves. And specifically, I'm talking about legal directories and just other directories in general, because if you go and search anything, particularly a lawyer search, you're going to see, it's a couple of individual lawyers from your neighborhood. But then you also have the abos, the fine laws, the lawyer calm, having a presence on there is good. But ultimately, you're gonna get a lot more mileage by building your own your own website and presence. But it's kind of our view that, you know, you want to maximize everything right, and get as much of that real estate as possible. So it's not one or the other. It's all the above, right?

Ron Bockstahler  10:47  

Let's could you kind of take it back, you talked on you go to that first page on Google, there's three distinct things you mentioned, that was the ads to pay per click ads, there's Google My Business. So the map, yeah, and there's the organic stuff, you'll build not your own stuff. Now let's, we focus on organic. And just so everyone knows, is we are going to have Patrick back on the show here down the road. And he's gonna really dig deep into SEO for us. But for today, we're trying to keep it over. You bet. It's really, really hard. But one thing you just said is, why should I be on those directories? And hopefully linking back to the website? And can you talk a little bit about what backlinks are and how they benefit your organic search results? For sure, they're

Patrick Carver  11:29  

largely two things that dictate how Google selects what pages should appear in the organic search results. It's you've probably heard about this before that it's their algorithm. And, you know, the algorithms changed. And so you got to do do these new things. The two kind of core components that have pretty much stayed the same from the beginning is our content, the quality of content, and links, and links are representations of your website, on other folks as websites. And so that, you know, the act of constellation linking to Amata would be a backlink, right. And that is helpful to Google to see who is essentially validating you are vouching for you on the internet, right. And so someone who has a collection of links from, you know, just in a local lawyer scenario, maybe has a link from the Bar Association, the local business organization, and some other folks as well, for Google that represents more credibility. And so in conjunction with what you're putting out in terms of content, they look at those two things, and they're basically trying to rank you on credibility, and the more good links from, you know, quote, unquote, reputable sources that you get, it goes to enhance that image, right. And so it's not, you know, I think there's a misnomer about search and things that if you just do kind of one, this one thing, you're going to get the results, and you're you're going to be in good shape. And so people will often say, Well, I don't need the right keywords, or I just need the good links, right. And it's, you know, it's just not, it's not that that simple, or there's more at play when determining those results. But backlinks are certainly an important part of, you know, developing that that overall presence or that overall image, but I would kind of, you know, push people to think about it more about just the overall image or brand of your company that you want to have good, helpful, fact based information on your website. And then if you can get backlinks from people in your community, from other lawyers from you know, these other areas that are relevant to what you do, you're going to benefit from

Ron Bockstahler  14:06  

that. I like your content. If you mentioned, how does it say dog bites I specialize in, you know, going after clients or helping clients with dog bites. Now I can write articles about dog bites that have keywords within that article that I post that on as a page on my website. Now, someone else might see that and they might be writing something similar and they might add a link to my article as a reference. That's a backlink Correct?

Patrick Carver  14:33  

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, they're kind of hard. It just depends on how niche specific you know, your information might be right. Because, you know, if you're writing about maximum settlements on dog bite cases, you know, that's a pretty specific thing and there's probably not, you know, people just standing around waiting to link to that. But if you were to and this is, this goes into some of the stuff Adeje, you know, around link building and developing these things, you know, but could you do a guide, you know, for parents right about the dangers of dog bites, and then reach out to some of the middle schools in your area, you know, that have maybe resources for parents and send them an email or something and say, Hey, I've got this great guide, it's about dog bites, or it's about drug prevention or things like that. I think this might be useful for, you know, for your parents, right. That's just one example of, you know, how a transaction like that that might occur. And the hope is that if you are creating good information about whether it's dog bites, or criminal laws that naturally Google will reward you. And I've seen this happen, where, you know, we've written content and developed resources, over time that they show up, they get ranked, and then random people out there on the internet, use them as resources in news stories and different things. Because you are, after all, a legal expert, right. And so people are looking for that information. But there's certainly an art to it. And, you know, I think the low hanging fruit, for most people is really just doing the basics of, you know, having a website, you know, adding to the directories doing your Google My Business, you know, and before we even get into kind of the higher end or more applied SEO strategies, I think, what I always advocate is, if you just do those basic things, I mean, you're ahead of a substantial portion of the, you know, the other lawyers out there who are competing for that same type of activity.

Ron Bockstahler  16:44  

Patrick, I see this a lot in the 1000s of law firms that I work with is someone will say, you know, my practice was going great things have slowed down. And, you know, they're thinking, did they slow down? Because the economy slowed down? Or did they slow down, because I'm not getting as much FaceTime on Google, you know, digitally out there. And that, probably the latter, they're not getting as much face time they so that someone comes in, it's a marketing competence. So we got to redo your website. And I'm always questioned, do you really need to redo your website and spend 510 $1,000, pumping out a new website when maybe it needs maybe a little refreshing? And then more pages added to it, which is basically content that you could just pump out? It's a different thing we talked to what do you think? What do you see? Yeah,

Patrick Carver  17:26  

yeah, it's kind of needs to be reviewed on a case by case basis. I mean, I think for a lot of digital marketing companies, they have a financial incentive to build you a nice new website and extract as much revenue as possible from that. Do I think that often a new website is needed? I do. But that's with the caveat that I don't necessarily think that you need a five or $10,000 website to get the job done. Right. And the problem that, you know, we often see with websites, or I'll describe a scenario that's very common is, you know, hey, I started my firm. Two years ago, I had my cousin build the website, I haven't really touched it in a while. And, you know, now I want to, I want to grow up, but I think it's, I think it's pretty good. And that, you know, there's not, you're not going to necessarily say that, Oh, that website's awful. And, you know, could we make it work? And could we improve it? Yeah, we probably could. But with a company, I'll give you an insight into kind of how we, you know, how we do it with my company is that, you know, we have what I call a formula or package with what we know really works in terms of how you build the website, from the, you know, the code side of it, the plugins we use, it all works together to, you know, kind of get this end result of really fast loading website meets all of Google's guidelines. And it's often easier for us to go and build that new site, because then we we know the ins and outs of how to work on it, it's easier for us to update content, it's easier for us to do all of these things, you know, if when it's kind of in our own style, right. But that being said, you I think you do have to be a little weary or just keep, you know, scrutinize kind of the rationale for you know, if a marker does come and see you know, and wants you to get this, you know, enormous website, or it's going to be this big expenditure, I think you want to you definitely want to scrutinize them and call it you know, call him to task a little bit or at least have them explain what's the difference between where I'm at and where you know where I'm going, and it shouldn't just be Well, yours is bad. And this one's better. Right? If there's a real tangible, meaningful difference that they can commute Okay, then I think that's a company that's going to be more trustworthy. And you know, and generally has a philosophy behind it versus, well, you know, we didn't build that website, and we're gonna build this one. And we're gonna charge you a bunch.

Ron Bockstahler  20:14  

But let's talk about and there's a lot to marketing. So I try to keep this on a high level, but touches in the old sales model, if you're a salesperson, you're expected to go out and have anywhere from five to, I'd say, eight touches of a prospect before they become a client, which means you call them you talk to him, you said something to him, you know, whatever, you know, it, just all these things would be a touch. But now that I think that mentality that is still there, right, you still have to have five, eight touches, but the touches, you're not physically going to their sets location and what they're seeing you digitally. So how does that plan I want to lay out expectations. So you come in, you got a nice website, and you got some links going on, you got your you're doing some paid ad, you got some GNB going, which we'll talk about in a minute. But how do you know what expectation wise? How do we lay that out? So the attorneys that are doing the marketing, they understand that it's not going to happen, just because they see you once doesn't mean that boom, I've got a new client?

Patrick Carver  21:09  

Yeah, I think you can, you know, there's a couple things to think about that. I mean, the, it goes back to really our core philosophy, which is get as much real estate as you possibly can. So you want to have your own website, you want to be consistently adding material to it, you want to be developing it growing it over time, you can also influencing with ads with these other areas. But something that, you know, that we do, and we're big believers in is not only creating kind of the obvious content, which is maybe building a page that is personal injury lawyer, Chicago. So that's a very common specific type of search terminology, you know, search term that we see very often in different markets. But that's not the only that's kind of the, you know, it's a big part of the iceberg. But it's still just what you're seeing on the surface. And so what I mean by that is under that there, are there going to be a lot of other questions that are kind of the search before the real search. And so before someone's actually searching for personal injury lawyer, Chicago, they may be searching something like I was hurt in an accident, you know, what do I do? Or what kind of compensation can I expect from an accident? Or how does it work, these type of questions that they have, those are great opportunities to create content and create things that you can add to your website. And I think that's how one of the ways you know, you provide value early on, so that by the time they actually are ready to hire an attorney, if they see you, again, when they're searching for personal injury attorney Chicago, you know, you show up again, it's like, Okay, I've already seen that person I already got, you know, some value, they seem to have credible information about the thing that I'm experiencing, right. And so, over time, people often will ask me, How long should I be doing this? You know, kind of like, is there? You know, once I get to a year, you know, am I done? Right? And, of course, I have a self, you know, I have my own incentive, you know, to, as a business to keep doing SEO for them for forever, right. But the truth is that you can continue to grow the visibility of your site, almost, you know, infinitely I mean, there are some ceilings that are limits that you'll hit. But, you know, over the course of a year, if you have, you can talk about every individual practice area. But then you could even break out each of those individual practice areas to five other questions or parts of what might go into a drug law case. And you could talk about penalties, you could talk about, you know, all sorts of things. And so the more that in those are really what you might have heard being called as long tail searches, where it's not the most common, but it's these more specific questions that are out there that people have, and are using that to get information and then figuring out what they need to do, do they need to get a lawyer and you know, and then they get down to that closer to the bottom of the funnel and actually search for an attorney. And so I think, you know, it's financially lucrative to continue to build your presence like that over time and keep doing it to just show up for as many possible searches that fit within your target customer as possible.

Ron Bockstahler  24:43  

And that's a key point because you can keep your costs down, especially on a PPC if you're very very targeted, very specific. You're just in content, but also in geographically. Where do you want to where do you what clients do you want to be touching? If you're in Atlanta, do you want to be touching a client In Seattle, it may be you do it, generally, you probably don't use your price a lot, usually within once the state that you're in. So Okay, couple things are coming to mind, I want to chat a little bit about remarketing. And that might be a little too advanced for this brief overview. But if I write this article, and it becomes one of my pages on my website, someone does that long tail search, as you just talked about, and they find my article, they read my article, can I rebrand to them? And is that something that a law firm should be looking to do?

Patrick Carver  25:30  

Yeah, we don't do a lot of it. And the reason that is because you have two big players in the targeting space, are Google and Facebook both have restrictions on what lawyers can do, in terms of advertising to potential clients. And they are Google's, I would say more stringent about the fact that they don't want to show personalized or targeted advertisements at people that are, I can't remember the exact terminology they use. But basically, people who have like an open legal question or something, I don't think they're they've decided they don't want to be in the business of serving ads. It's like, Hey, Jim, you know, we saw you got a DWI, like, you know, and that could show up at somebody's workplace and things like that. So there's not like, there's a very, it's very challenging to run, for instance, personal injury retargeting on Google. And you know, and there's a lot of rules with Facebook now, as well, especially since the I mean, really, since the issues with the election, they become even more specific about what you can and can't say, and we have attorneys who run ads on Facebook and do some of that retargeting, and they get flagged all the time, because it's mistakenly construed because their algorithm or their bot, you know, has flagged it as well, they were talking about this. And so this is political speech. And so it fits into this other category. And so it certainly is possible. But you know, really, the bread and butter of what we're we focus on for our clients are those being at that intersection when someone has a problem, and they are actively looking for that solution. And so I think with some, you know, types of law, like maybe estate planning, or different things where it's maybe not such an immediate need, the retargeting can be a really great tactic, and can really be useful. But I'm such a big believer in like this idea that, you know, the absolute best place to meet somebody and convert them as a client is when they are in the, you know, the, they have that acute need. And if you can be there, whether it's through ads through organic search, or the map pack, you know, you're in great shape, to then convert them as a client.

Ron Bockstahler  28:02  

That's good to know. I didn't realize that's that's good information. But that's also why you hire someone like Patrick, to help you with your programs and not me. So I, I'm not the expert. Let's talk a little about GMB. And that's what you're calling the map pack.

Patrick Carver  28:17  

Yeah, yeah. So it's Google My Business and you know, that it's Google, my business is kind of like a directory, it's, you know, where you can just submit your business information to Google and then be eligible for, you know, to be in those map location packs when people are searching. And, you know, I'm sure everybody's seen it. You search for a variety of things, and a little map will come up and it will show you the different businesses around there. And they are referencing Google My Business Listings for those, you know, for those businesses,

Ron Bockstahler  28:52  

and I know those are pretty easy to set up. But I don't know that everyone really wants to be in that world of setting it up themselves. So it's easy to have someone help you do that. Right.

Patrick Carver  29:00  

Yeah, I mean, it is really easy to do it. So you know, if you are, you know, just solo and or I mean anybody and you're, you know, you're not really actively looking for a marketing company unnecessarily. This for me is like one of those easy layups that you can do as a business owner, whether you're a plumber or I was telling this electrician I had my house today, the first thing you should do is get a GMB is basically having a website, having a GMB going in submitting yourself to legal directories, that's easy stuff that you can do on your own. And yes, there are elements that can be optimized and if you're really serious about, you know, continuing to grow your presence and you want to you know, you're in competitive markets. It does pay obviously to have people who are experienced with it because the it is a free service for something like GMB but light years between, you know, somebody who is really working on optimizing it and kind of putting some thought into how they can get the most out of it. versus, you know, the casual casual person.

Ron Bockstahler  30:09  

I had thought it was interesting when Google went and bought the domain dot business, too. So people, you know, small business owners can actually set up their own Google My Business account. So that's fairly new, isn't it? It's not that old?

Patrick Carver  30:20  

Well, I think that I'm not totally familiar with that. I think that may be part of giving them an ability to have their own website they've been doing. They've been doing GMB. You know, for probably, I want to say, like 10 years, but they're starting to have more services available and more integrations with kind of different, like marketing services or different ways that they can that a business can elevate its presence. And so in the beginning, it was the I think their main goal for the first however many years was just, we want to map everything, right, we want to be the source of truth for businesses, right and have this big directory. And so now I think they're seeing that, oh, you know, we can put up an ad to run ads for your business, right? So that when you go log in, you'll see, hey, you can get, you know, you can do ads on Google ads, you can do some of this other stuff, build a website, and things like that. So I think it's going to continue to kind of grow and provide different opportunities or have different integrations,

Ron Bockstahler  31:24  

you know, that brings up a great point is you always got to be kind of changing your mind your business a little bit. So it's the attorney that I talked to that says, Yeah, business, I'm always getting these leads. So I'm good, I'm solid, but all of a sudden, that dries up, because something changed, like an algorithm could have changed that just because you're not getting those same leads. So you always got to be looking ahead or working with someone that's assisting you to help make some changes. That's like anyone running a business. That's just what you know, my 20 years of running amata, it's, it's got to change so much. I can't even look back and go, Whew, that was us. That was our company. That was our business. Right? It's that's how much changed, I think digital marketing might even be changing faster. So you can't rely on what you did this year last year to really bring in the same amount of business this year. Yeah,

Patrick Carver  32:05  

yeah, I think there's truth in that. I mean, I think the but there's, you know, or your audience should take comfort, also in the fact that a lot of things haven't changed as well, right. I mean, in, you know, what I would call and I don't know, if I'm the best, like legal historian on this, but I'm saying the modern era of, you know, legal marketing and advertising, as, you know, post Yellow Page kind of era of heart, you know, physical books, right. In that time, it's, you know, I think the biggest thing is the website, and I don't think that's changed, you know, but you kind of add on some of these supplementary or complementary type things like Google My Business where, you know, I don't think that's, you know, the only thing you can focus on, right, and you have these other opportunities, and, you know, there's past couple years, there's been a big push for, for video, and, you know, now I need to have video for for everything. And, you know, I'm not, you know, a huge proponent of video, I don't think it has a, you know, transcending effect on the marketing practices out there for law firms. I think it has a place. But point being, you know, there are a I mean, there are a lot of things that are changing, you know, very, very quickly. And a good example, you know, that's happening right now is Google just released an algorithm update to target what are called review sites, so people out there who are reviewing products and trying to push that traffic to Amazon or something, you know, those type of businesses to affiliate marketing, but that's an indication that they are, and I've seen it with, I left a review today, the way, the way they're allowing people to leave reviews has changed as well, they're now asking a question, did you actually use this business? Did you actually and so there are these like little things where, you know, it's, it can just change overnight? And, you know, and we see it, whether it's in advertising, I mean, certainly on the SEO side, you know, the search results change on a on a daily basis. So, you know, some of those changes are very big and can have kind of a transformative effect on how you're creating content or, you know, some of these, like, things that go into the big picture. Other times, it's not enormous. But yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's just like, if you needed an attorney to write a contract, I mean, are you going to go with somebody who got it off? LegalZoom, you know, 10 years ago or something and hasn't kept, you know, really kept up with contract law? It's like, No way, right? You want somebody who's, you know, the expert on it, and who's following that stuff extremely closely. So yeah, I think it's super important.

Ron Bockstahler  34:49  

At the same time, I think when you're looking at articles published articles out there, if you look in if you find something that's five, six years old, it's, I mean, in many cases, right, sometimes that's still good, good information, but a lot especially if you're talking about anything in digital marketing. Wow, that's antiquated. That's old stuff. You know, things have changed so much from maybe when that article was written. So I think you look for more modern stuff, let's jump rolling a lot of time left, let's talk about other marketing channels that you're using, or you think you want to that law firm should be considering other than your Google in the website.

Patrick Carver  35:19  

Yeah. So, you know, to be candid, I mean, we feel like, that's really the big game, you know, that's the, you know, the big piece of the pie. And the reason we believe that is because we've tried a lot of different stuff, right, we have tried, you know, cold outreach to, you know, potential clients, we've tried Facebook ads, we've tried, you know, regular ads in, you know, paper journals, and different things like that. And the problem that we experienced with it is the, you know, the results, but then the scale, that there's just not anything out there that we feel like matches the scale or the potential for Google, essentially, whether it's ads, whether it's, you know, focusing on the GMB the mat, pack side, or organic, we feel like, you know, that is really where the majority of these interactions happen, where people are out there searching for an attorney, and, you know, and then going to make their decision to find one. That being said, I don't think that, you know, it means that you should just not explore other areas and not do, you know, try other things. And something that I think, you know, that we don't really do a lot of, but I think is a good strategy for lawyers, is to develop some sort of very simple email marketing, to their colleagues and to other people. And if it's even just once a year, or a couple times a year, trying to share something valuable to other lawyers for the purpose of generating referrals, or just, you know, making sure that people know, you know, good keeping you front of mind, you know, it's very low cost, it's very low energy. And but, you know, if you get a couple cases from it, I mean, awesome, right? That's, you know, that's fantastic.

Ron Bockstahler  37:13  

Like, stay in front of mind of even past clients, if you got a decent quarterly newsletter, it monthly, quarterly, whatever it's gonna be you always putting content in front of them, and they read it, you know, that keeps you far in mind. I think that's huge.

Patrick Carver  37:25  

Yeah, I mean, and then there's other things that you can do, I think, too, you know, that are, are smaller gains, but still useful. I mean, I think with that concept in mind, you can still, you can do the same thing on social media. And, you know, if you can also think about something like a giveaway, or, you know, something that, you know, you don't have to do it all the time, but, you know, once a year giveaway, some tickets or a gift certificate or something, and just make sure you hit, you know, on social, so clients who liked your pages, may see it, you can email folks and, you know, I'm sure there's, you know, I know, there's ethical considerations, but, you know, little things like that, that are, you know, kind of offline, right, they're small, they're not extremely scalable, but, you know, can be really useful. I mean, and just speaking from, you know, personal experience, I know, my father has, you know, built a really good referral business from just being active in some of the organizations, you know, he's held leadership positions, and that opens him up to, you know, being the guy in, you know, in Springfield, Missouri for, you know, certain variety of criminal defense, right. And so, I think by just kind of getting out there, you know, and doing some of those, those non those things that don't scale really well can still be important. And can you can still create some of those personal connections where, you know, somebody is going to remember you the next time they have a case that, you know, kind of matches your sweet spot. I,

Ron Bockstahler  38:59  

there's an article I read a while ago, and I don't think this has changed all too much. But the majority of attorneys will get 80% of their referral business from other attorneys. So I think being out there doing that, that's, that's, that's like, I think a given and that's what they've always done and that's they were able for most time, be able to rely on that. I think today, the world's changed quite a bit. And you have to have that online presence. You need to be out there you and maybe I guess, we want to even go back a little further, you want to set your goals, you know, what's your objective? What do you want to have as your book of business? What's that look like? Is it going to be 500,000 as a million as a 2 million, and then based on kind of working backwards, you know, working with somebody to create a marketing strategy that's going to allow you to have that consistent volume coming in. So you're you're living comfortable and you're able to practice law and do what you want you enjoy what joy what you're doing, without the pressures of, can I pay the bills? Can I keep the lights on?

Patrick Carver  39:50  

For sure. And we we work with a variety of customers who some folks are on the spectrum, the end of the spectrum where you know, they are charging business people and they want to grow this firm to, you know, multi million dollars a year. And then we have the other side who maybe they just had a baby, and they really just want a good income, but they don't want to, you know, go drive to, you know, a 10, County radius, or they don't want to, you know, do this, these different types of things for their practice. And that's great, you know, and so we want to help them, you know, kind of achieve that goal. I mean, I think it's bad business, at least for me, and our company personally to, you know, come off or be perceived as folks who are just in it for our own interest, right. And I would rather work with somebody, and they pay me 500 bucks, you know, a month or something, I'm not going to make, you know, maybe any or hardly any. But if they do decide in the future to kind of grow, or they want to do other things, then hopefully, we built a good relationship. And, you know, and what, what we've seen over time is that we get a lot of people who are solo or smaller, just kind of, you know, they've left their other firm, they're going out, they're doing their own shingle, don't have a ton to get started, but after six months, after a year, and then in the two years, I mean, their business really has changed. And the cool thing I think, is seeing that, but then, you know, I don't ever have to, it's never a hard sell then to say, Hey, I think we, you know, we think you need this new thing, or we need to double, you know, the amount of content we're doing. And it's like, okay, cool, trust you, you know, because of the results before. So, you know, I just I think we haven't talked about too much. But I think if you know, too, when you're evaluating marketing people, and you know, you, it's hard to, I think discern this, but the more you can get somebody who is interested in your goals, right? I think the better off you'll be, and the better the relationship will be for the long term, then, you know, somebody who's just kind of there. And, you know, they're really kind of bullying you into saying, Well, if you don't spend 10,000, I don't think it's, it's gonna work, you know, are you it doesn't make sense. I think

Ron Bockstahler  42:07  

that's good point. And know what you know, who your what you want to achieve before you go out there looking for someone to work with in marketing? Because you're right, it does matter. What's your end goal, where do you want to be? And maybe you need to share that with your, you know, potential marketing partner. So, I think, any last word, I think we're gonna, we're gonna kind of wind it down. We're gonna have Patrick back on the show down the road, we got a couple, we got a lot of marketing coming up. So there's good, there's a lot to marketing. But I think, you know, Patrick said it, you've hit it right on the head, there's You don't gotta go crazy. Look, I spent a ton of money, you can do a few things consistently, I was looking at a slide that you'd sent out a while ago when you did a webinar. And it's basically a 12 month, kind of like the SEO timeline. How long does that take? And I want you like, I'll let you give you one a couple minutes to touch on that. Because that really sets the expectations for when you're going to talk to a marketing company, don't let them tell you that they're gonna give you overnight results. Yeah,

Patrick Carver  43:02  

I mean, that's a big red flag, you know, for sure. I mean, we, in that that presentation, I kind of talked about the, the time continuum for in the sense of pros and cons for SEO versus advertising. And so with, you know, SEO, the you have this long term value, the ROI, the potential for long term ROI and sustainable business over time is very high. But it does take some time, right? Because if you don't have that background, you have been writing and you have been doing these activities that go into creating that visibility, it's not going to happen overnight. And if you know, people aren't upfront with you to some degree about that. I mean, I'm, it's great to be optimistic, and, you know, take you through that. But if they're kind of answer to that is, you know, well, don't worry about it, you know, we'll take care of it. And, you know, it's going to happen this quickly, then I think it's a big red flag. But you know, when you're starting out, and you know, when I say starting out, it doesn't necessarily mean you're first starting out. But from a visibility perspective, you don't you know, you're not showing up for a lot of keywords, you're not generating traffic from Google, you know, it's going to take months, it's going to take a few months, and then it starts to trickle in, you know, between two and three months, and then it's six months you're seeing, you know, no, I mean, if they're good, noticeable traffic difference, and then really, it's by the end of the year, if you are starting from scratch, that's when you are going to really have that kind of aha moment that okay, my leads have doubled I'm getting more business my revenue is 200% or 300%. On a monthly basis more than when I started this and you can kind of see that progression. And with ads, obviously you can skip the line you can start getting generating calls in that literally first seven days or first 10 days, however, quickly. They can get you up there, but you You're not building that capital, right? You're not building that asset. And if you for instance, if, like what we've seen with COVID, there's fewer, you know, when COVID first started, there were a lot fewer people driving, guess what that means fewer auto accidents. Guess what that means fewer cases for auto accident attorneys. And so a click that went for 80 $100 was going for $350 in a place like Chicago. And so, you know, overnight, your, you know, pipeline of business, your, you know, cost per acquisition goes from, let's say, 1000 to 4000. I mean, it's crazy, right? And so that's the potential kind of problem with that, that model, and it's also on a tap. So, you know, while you're spending that money, you're not building anything. It's, you know, as soon as you stop it, it's going to be, you know, turned off.

Ron Bockstahler  45:56  

If you say that I got two quick stories, I was an attorney call me and he was asking me some questions about digital marketing. He's gonna redo his website. And he's been with me for I'd say, six, seven years. And I said, Look, I'm going to meet with this other law firm, that was also a client, they got about 21 family law attorneys, and I've good friends with them. And you all ask them, I say, you know, what are you guys doing? And so I did. And I called Joshua, when asked, Hey, Josh, what do you guys do? And he goes, be honest with you. We don't do a lot of PPC anymore. Because we were kind of out there before the internet became really big. So we're an authority. He is what he's, I'm, we're an authority in Google. So we are always really highly ranked, we always got good content going. So we get so much business. And that's what you're talking about. That's the stuff the long term they invested in that long term. And so now they just continue to have that business. While there's other attorneys like, Okay, I'm going to redo my website, because I'm not getting that stuff. But he's been doing PPC the whole time. And yeah, the volatility on PPC is, like you said, it could just shoot up and all of a sudden, it's very expensive, your cost per acquisition goes crazy. I think that's a great example of, you got to do both.

Patrick Carver  47:06  

Well, you can test it out, right. And what we always like to do is, especially if you're a newer firm, you know, we always advocate the SEO side, and then we say, but let's try, let's do some ads, let's do you know, a small commitment on ads, and within a month, we'll have a really good idea of what it costs to actually land a client. And then based on that, you know, you can go up and this kind of doesn't often or doesn't work for a lot of other marketing agencies who charge on a percentage of the ad spend, which we don't do, we do a flat rate. And, you know, over time, like, you know, it's, we think it's better for the client. But you know, we're not incentivized to go spend $20,000 of your money, just because we get a better, you know, return on it. And so, you know, the truth is that, you know, we don't see people typically kind of scaled down the the Pay Per Click, even though you could, there, you know, once they kind of get into it, and they're starting to go from, say, $8,000 a month to $30,000 a month in, you know, in revenue, it's like, okay, how can we keep growing right? Like, how can we add more SEO? How can we add more PPC, and so then based on that, we will then provide analysis, and we, we can look at, you know, the whole like, past year, whatever, and it's like, okay, we can see that 70% of your clients came through Google organic search 15% came from ads, which one do you want to invest in more? Right, and it's pretty clear, it's a ads often give attorneys I think, comfort, because it's a very tangible way to assess the value, you know, of a marketing company, right. Whereas with SEO, it's, you know, it's not as it's not, it's often not as clear because we could be going for a certain keyword. And then some person, you know, finds us by doing a search that is, like, related, but it's, it's like, a very niche specific type of search, and it gets them in, and it's sometimes hard to attribute that. But we can see from, you know, the source of these calls, the source of the emails and everything that the vast majority of them for all of our clients over 70% for all of our clients is from SEO. And so if I, you know, once you kind of get into a more mature kind of marketing approach or your your firm's a little bit more mature, I mean, I'm such a big advocate of then doubling down even more on the content and more on the SEO side, because, you know, if you put in $1,000 on that versus the ads, I mean, the long term payoff of that is so much more. So much more.

Ron Bockstahler  50:02  

There's so much we're gonna talk about, we're gonna get you back on we'll talk about visibility traffic leads, click throughs. Like we didn't even get into the, you know, we'll dive a little deeper into the analytics of what they do. And I think you can actually talk people through like, Okay, here's what PPC is. And here's what SEO is gonna give you. And there's, here's the real distinct difference. And what you just said, there's a long term benefit and better ROI, when you're planning out for the future and putting out content. And I think that's where we want to go next time we get you on the show. Patrick, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thanks so much. You're welcome our

Patrick Carver  50:37  

having me. I really enjoyed it.

Ron Bockstahler  50:39  

If you don't want to wait until we get Patrick back on the show. You can always reach out to him at Patrick at go constellation.com You get Patrick Carver, you can find him on LinkedIn. He's very active on LinkedIn, or you call him at 404-482-3539. Patrick, anything else I'm missing?

Patrick Carver  50:57  

I'm good. I really appreciate you and having me on. And I hope this was useful. If there are any questions more than happy to get into it and give you some no BS answers not get into sales mode. So hit me up. I love talking about it.

Ron Bockstahler  51:13  

Appreciate you having it. Next week, we will actually be keeping our theme going with marketing we'll be bringing in Michael Dylon talking about writing a book become an authority that kind of goes back to what Patrick was talking about with content. So and then right after that, I believe we got Michelle or not show Melissa Castello, who's a storyteller. So it all comes down to like similar things, get great content and put it out there and be seen and you are going to have more business than you know what to do with. So thanks for joining us until next week. Have a great week everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Timestamps:

• The most difficult part in file retrieval(1:17)
• Eliminating the problem of indexing (8:46)
• Evolving with technology and maintaining client relationships (15:47)
• Future quality of life features(23:52)

“If you’re not evolving exponentially with the technology that comes out, you’re gonna fall behind or you’re not gonna be able to capitalize on opportunities that are  really out there for you.” - Mathew Dragatsis

Mathew Dragatsis

Website: www.scansearch.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-dragatsis-b218883/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScanSearchDAM

Twitter: https://twitter.com/scansearch

Mathew Dragatsis, Scan Search 

Document Imaging

Mathew Dragatsis has been the Founder of Radiant Solutions Corporation and CEO of their new product, Scan Search. He has almost 30 years of experience in document imaging and has served many different kinds of organizations with their document imaging, management, and retrieval needs. 

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-dragatsis-b218883/  

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:29  

Welcome to the show everyone, good to have you back. We have a little bit different show today. So it's gonna be talking to a good good friend of mine. In fact, if I can think back about 20 years ago, Matt was a client of mine. So he started off as a client, Matt dragados. This started his firm in 2001. But he was doing the head of another firm before that, that he had sold. He ran for four years. And he's in the imaging scanning imaging technology field, and he has an amazing product that he's got out on the market today. So Matt, I'm gonna let you jump right into it. Kind of tell us what you got it. Let's talk about your history, though. Cuz you've been entrepreneur, you've been running your company for over 20 years. Tell us how you got here?

Mathew Dragatsis  1:10  

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on. First of all, I really appreciate it. Yeah, we started radium solutions back in 2001. And basically, that company was formed to provide solutions to all sectors, to allow companies to scan in their documents, extract the information that's on those documents, and then do something with that, basically, you know, if you're an accounts payable department, we're gonna extract all the pertinent data, and store that and allow you to, you know, retrieve that document based on that information. And that'll kind of lead in the scan search as well. But that's what we've been doing for probably the last, you know, 20 years or so, we've done things with law firms, as well. But it's always been scanning your documents, and I'm sure the, the audience who can relate to this, scanning your documents, all of your case, files, what have you, and then you know, look at the screen, and then basically index those, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're going to tag them, you're gonna, you know, index them and tell them how to retrieve that document based on a case file, a customer name, maybe social security number, what have you. And that's a manual process to do that. So we've been doing that since 2001. We've got companies in many different sectors, including government, big and healthcare. And, you know, that's basically what we've been doing, and been quite successful at it for all these years. And then I'll kind of lead in a scan search. So after, you know, almost 30 years of doing all this, in realizing that the most expensive part of these systems is not the software, and it's not the annual maintenance, and it's not, if it's the size, the subscription, gets the manpower to tag those documents, if you're gonna put a document in the system, right now, basically, all you can do it, let's say you upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive, you can do a search on the file name. And if you happen to know a date range, maybe the date range is pretty limited. And you could put them in folders and kind of do that. But to actually get to your documents, it's a struggle. And it's even more of a struggle to get them in there to be able to index them from an imaging system. And there are several imaging companies out there. But the fact remains, there's that indexing process. So if you're going to scan 1000 documents a day, you're going to have two or three people spending all day long indexing those documents, because you need to be able to retrieve them on the important date of the time those documents. So I'll sit around one day, and I'm thinking, Well, you know, I'll use a case file number as an example. Typically, you're gonna have a field, that's going to be called case file number, and you're going to type in, we're trying to OCR and validate that it's correct that information in that field. So I was thinking to myself, why do we need to know that that case, file number is a case file number? Why do we need to know that? Can we just search for it, like we do Google and find a Google, you know, webpage based on, you know, some loose, you know, searching criteria. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this, if we could do this, this eliminates the entire indexing process, which is the most time consuming and expensive. So we put a little pencil to paper, and we kind of design this thing to work that way. And it took us almost, I'm gonna say almost two years to bring scan search to market. But in that time, we realized, wow, this is powerful stuff. And you know, part of the process was, Who's your competition? Is anybody doing it? How big is the marketplace? And we actually hired a firm to do all that for us. And they came back and they were like, Well, no, there is no competition doing this, how you're doing it, there are products that you could put together, you have to have the wherewithal to do it. And they're very expensive to bring this to the marketplace. But we figured out a way to do it as one package. Okay, so basically upload your documents, we process them in the cloud, you search by anything on those documents. I mean, that's as simple as it could possibly get. And so you know, about two years later, we actually, you know, formed the company scan search, and that's an entity now, and we provide this solution as a says, In other words, you can go to our website, sign up, and we've got a free trial. We've actually have a free version of it for smaller versions, if you want to try that out. And you're able to basically within minutes set up your department or your customers or your deposit Stories are your folders, whatever you want to call them, and start uploading documents to those sections of the system. And within minutes, you now have those documents accessible, full text, any word or phrase that's on there. And I guess, stop and think about that for a minute. That's pretty powerful. Because right now that

Ron Bockstahler  5:17  

will rub, you jump through 20 years pretty quick there, Matt. Let's so you know, look, I've known you for a long time. You've actually been into moto CLI for a long time. But it didn't. I never put it to, like scanning and OCR searching of a document. And so I think your business has evolved as every business I think has, I mean, 20 years ago, we didn't even think about the technology that we have today. Right? So right, you were thinking this 20 years ago, but you've kind of evolved, you've evolved, you know, the technology has evolved into what you are today, right? So this is why this came to market is you know, a lot about this industry.

Mathew Dragatsis  5:54  

Yeah, you know, like I said, to jump through that pretty quick, but that is pretty much all we've been doing. But you know, the technology has evolved, we've evolved with it, you know, in the beginning, in the very beginning, we can only do scan documents that we created. So they would be credit card applications, they would be insurance claim forms, they would be oh geez, you name it anything that you would fill out Omaha Steaks with our customer, there are there things that you fill out to order steaks that used to be in the magazines, and you send it in, but our system would read all that we did a deal. I won't name any names, but it was a government agency that dealt with a documented immigrants. And basically, they had a form that they had to fill out. And we did hundreds of 1000s of these a week for the IMS basically, and I won't tell you the firm that we were working with, because I can't but you know, that was a form that was filled out and sent in. And then we started dealing with kind of unstructured data, we got away from the remember the comb, and you put the letters in there. And, you know, the little circles that you would fill in and all that, you know, that's how we got our start. Now, that doesn't even exist anymore, that to my knowledge when you get to these high end systems. So now it's a lot more artificial intelligence, intelligence has come into play, where you know, we are trying to look for certain fields and look for things to put in there. But it's nowhere near perfect. I mean, it's far from it. But that's what we've been doing up until Scan Search. And yes, it has evolved quite a bit. But I just knew there was a big jump that we could take to to to make this the process of retrieving documents. That's really what we're giving our customers way easier. And I couldn't put my thumb on it for a while. I'm obsessed with this. So you know, what I've been thinking about for years, how do we make this better? And why we've seen all kinds of attempts with other companies, that sort of different sorts of things. But we're the first we know we were the first today anyway, are we happy, but they're really offers this all encompassing, simple, simple package, you sign up, you set your system up, it's a 10 minute process, if you have three different departments in your organization, and you want to have their own documents separated for security reasons, organizational reasons, what have you, you set up, you immediately start uploading all your documents.

Ron Bockstahler  7:58  

And I want to, I want to put this in a box because you know, most of my worlds in the legal industry. So we work with a lot of attorneys 1000s of law firms. And you know, I look at two boxes, I have ediscovery software, you know, we my firm, we use war room a lot, which is an ediscovery. Platform. And then you know, some people use a disco or relativity. So we're not really we're not talking about that correct? We're talking about Box or Dropbox or Microsoft product, SharePoint. OneDrive, or what Google so we're actually looking at a product that's more it's a document repository for anyone, but with the benefit is you can search by any word within that document.

Mathew Dragatsis  8:46  

Yeah, so let's just compare, we'll use Dropbox as an example. And it's going to be the same for Google Drive, or what have you, let's just say that you somebody sent you a wet signature scan PDF, and you're gonna store that in Google Drive, you're gonna upload that, and you're gonna probably put that in a folder for that, whatever, whatever case customer would have you. And if you want to bring that document back, you've got to go to that folder and look for it physically scroll to find it for a search by the file name, because they only find by file name for a scan image, or a neatly produced PDF, which would be a scan image to PDF. That's what you do with Drive Dropbox, or, you know, Microsoft products and have you would have it was ours, you do the same thing, you upload it. And but we can take it one step further. We now look at that document and we say okay, here's what's on the document. Let's make it available by any word or phrase, it's on that document, not just the filename, you can search by the file name as well, obviously today, but we take it away way, way more robust, a robust step forward by saying you can read the document back based on anything that's on it. Now. Sure, on the to avoid confusion here. If I upload a Word document, I can search for every single word at a time there but that's not what we're talking about. We're Talking about the documents that are either scanned or produced as a neatly natively produced PDF. Those documents, it cannot search on because it doesn't know what the words are. It's an image, it's a picture, it's the same thing as you took a picture of you and me, we uploaded it. It's that that useless when it comes to bringing it back. So what we do is we take it and we like I said, we do a full text analysis of it and make the all those words and phrases available to the user to bring that back. And what does that look like, maybe you want to bring back every document on a certain case, and you've got a particular word, the social security number, a case file number, what happened, whatever it is, if you type that in there, just that they're gonna get back every document. But if you bring if you type in that, and let's just say a particular word or phrase that you know, is on a particular set of documents, you type that into Google, you're gonna get only those back. So it's, it could be as refined as you want it.

Ron Bockstahler  10:52  

I love this. So I hadn't told you this, I signed up, I went, knowing you're coming on the show, I went and signed up for a user account with search scan. And I uploaded a few documents, personal documents might have one of my great little article there. My daughter wrote last year, why yell so much. And so I knew there's a couple words within that document. And I was able to type that word in I want to once emotionally. And it's a PDF that I basically just moved over into search scan. And I was able to search by the word emotionally and pull that document out of that. And I thought that that's slick. Now that's something that I can't do right now with OneDrive.

Mathew Dragatsis  11:32  

Yeah, oh, no, no, no, no, I mean, that was any of them. And the thing is, you can type in multiple words, or multiple phrases, and it'll bring it back, you know, think about in your mind what you're thinking before you do your search, just type that in, and it'll bring everything back.

Ron Bockstahler  11:46  

And look at this as a way to mean, first of all, it's a very secure, let's talk a little bit about the repository. It's a very secure repository, it's gonna be the same platform or similar as what you're gonna get it Box or Dropbox or OneDrive, it's just gonna have this added benefit.

Mathew Dragatsis  12:00  

It's a big added benefit. Yeah, I mean, store documents are just sitting there, it's the value comes in when you can get it back. Right. So yeah, if you want to talk about, you know, our security, that was a big, big important factor with any cloud based solution that holds data or documents. So we look to Microsoft, you know, to solve that, for us, we told them, we want the highest level we could possibly get. And so with scan search, when you're setting it up, you have the option to enable two factor authentication. And what that means is, or MFA with another multiple factor authentification is, before you sign in the first time, you have to either give them your phone number or your email address, and we're gonna go ahead and when you go to sign in, it's gonna, you're gonna get an email with a code, we've all seen this before, and you try to get it now you're in there, it's the highest level that you can pretty much get in this realm of security, because new security was going to be huge for HIPAA, and you know, things like, very sensitive data documents. And so that was because everyone's gonna ask, well, how secure is it? Well, according to Microsoft standards, we're about as secure as you can get with Microsoft as your little plug for Microsoft. Right? So you know, we have that added redundancy we have, it's just a great platform, and it's bulletproof. I shouldn't say that. It is well proven, you can get it.

Ron Bockstahler  13:15  

Right. Let's go back a little bit. You've been an entrepreneur. Now for 20 plus years, your business has had to evolve. They clearly have done a really good job of doing that. I think I'd known you a good portion of those years. Talk about being an entrepreneur, what are some of the struggles you've gone through? Because a lot of our listeners or your solo attorneys or small firm attorneys are just entrepreneurs that are gone through what they're going, you've been successful now for over 20 years? Tell us? How have you done that? And what some of the changes you've seen, and you had to adjust your business model?

Mathew Dragatsis  13:43  

Oh, yeah, that's huge. Great question. So I think as far as being an entrepreneur, I think one thing that I realized, not early enough, because we all have struggles going through these beginning of companies is that you really got to think down the road, you can't be a reactive person, when you're running a business, you really got to be strategic. And so I really went from being so excited as a young man starting, you know, the first company and then this one, and you know, you get caught up in all that it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of fun. But you get caught up in the moment, and you're not thinking, you know, a year or two down the road, typically. And I think over the years, I've personally mature to a point where I'm really looking at what to what's gonna go wrong. What's gonna go wrong, in two years from now, what's going on five years from now, you know, or what's gonna go right until I can act on it, and know it and see it. So I'm gonna say I spent a lot of my time and day is really thinking about not what's going on right now, although that's a part of my job. But part of the artwork of being entrepreneurs, we're we're going to take this, you know, where's that runner pointed? And you got to be on that. You got to be thinking that all the time, because things are coming at you all the time. And you know, what's the old saying, you can't control the wind, but you can adjust the sails. There is no truer statement and you're gonna have to burn your dodge here and your zag there and zig and that's, you know what you do? So that's as far as I was speaking to someone ensuring there's that's what I would say is that that goes, as far as maturing, you know, technology wise, you know, that's a full time job in itself. I mean, you know, technology grows exponentially. I'd love to show you some of the systems that we originally put in. I mean, they were like Atari, I mean, do you think video games now it was back then, you know, the first iterations of these OCR software is you actually need to connect the dots, you know, so you had, you know, you had your son, nine dots. And if you wanted a four, you basically did that. And that's because that's how sophisticated the lack of the OCR software was. And I go way back with a lot of these companies that develop these products. And, you know, we were just, we were, this was the cool stuff, all fax paper faxes coming in, you know, and you skate crazy stuff anyway, now, it's just so much further. So really, you know, if you're not evolving exponentially with the technology that comes out, you're gonna fall behind, or you're not gonna be able to capitalize on opportunities that are really out there for you, as a business owner, when you're buying technology.

Ron Bockstahler  16:00  

That's a great point, Matt, because I think, you know, people hear and I talk to the attorneys I work with, they're like, Yeah, we're not going to fall behind, because we're going to be taking care of our clients. But what you just a second part of that is, you're not going to capitalize on really what's out there, you're gonna miss out on opportunity. I know, we all we all work, because we love to work. We're also here to make money. You know, I like a lot of the terms, if you're not saving $250,000 A year before taxes, rethink how you're doing things. Because the truth is, I mean, if you're making that kind of money, you should have a program in place, it's protecting that money. But if you don't, then you don't sit and say, Hey, I got a goodness, perfect, because it's really not. And if you're not keeping up on this technology, as you're talking about today, and you do this as a full time job, so this technology is something you do his full time job, I can't keep up with it, I got to turn to someone like you to say, Hey, what's going on in this this world? And when I heard about this product, I was like, wow, that, that's pretty cool.

Mathew Dragatsis  16:57  

Yeah, I mean, and that goes back to, you know, you talk about that, relationships are huge. I mean, if you're a law firm, and you're kind of running the it part of it, you don't have the relationship, these people that you are watching them grow, like myself, and you want to stay in touch with those, whether it's for something like this, or whatever it might be. So I'm gonna say some of my six most successful customers have a team of vendors that they grow with. And you know, my job is always come up with new technology and be able to provide that to whoever. And I've got a list of, you know, 20 customers that I've been working with for since the beginning, 20 years. In fact, we just put a big one of these systems, it wasn't the SAS version of it. In a company, I've been dealing with this gentleman for probably 17 years now. And we have our conversation two, three times here, what's new, he calls me, I tell them, and they're great customer, but a lot of customers like that. It's the relationship with your vendors, that you know, they're there to sell to you, they want you to be educated. So you'll buy from them to make money. I mean, that's really leverage that leverage these people to help you become successful, and your goals.

Ron Bockstahler  17:59  

And that's where you got someone that's good. On the other end, that vendor partner, that's a good vendor partners thinking long term, they're thinking down the road, because they don't want to just have a deal with you today. They want to deal with you. You know, I mean, back when I first started out of college, I was selling copiers and the whole mentality. I mean, if you get caught up in it was day to day, but the truth was, if you sold a customer today, and you stay in touch with that customer, you're selling them again, in three years, maybe two years, they're gonna expand, they're gonna need another one, or they're gonna replace the one they have. So it's a, it's a repeat business. And once you get in, and you do a really, really good job for that client, and you're always taking care of them. And like you said, talking to him 234 times a year, you're building that relationship. And it's the same as you got a law practice, you might have a law practice and corporate law that that client uses you occasionally. But if you're always in touch with them, they're always going to come back to you if you do a good job. That's repeat business. You're not going to buy that business again, right? No, got market, you don't spend any money, that business is there for you.

Mathew Dragatsis  18:54  

Yeah, you better have your magnet on the refrigerator.

Ron Bockstahler  18:57  

Yeah. Gotta be in front of them. It's a it's a long term game, and you got to have that mentality. And it seems like that's, I mean, I know, I've had that when I got you started a year before? I did. Yeah, yeah, I just, I keep that mentality.

Mathew Dragatsis  19:11  

You have to and I'm learning, that's where we're marketing scan search way differently than we've traditionally marketed traditionally, you know, I'm selling big systems, you know, a quarter million dollar $2 million systems out there that are going in, and they're gonna have that system for five to 10 years, 15 years, I got some customers from the beginning that are still using the system. And that was a very, that was a of course back then, you know, you're wearing a suit and tie and you're bringing doughnuts in and you're having coffee and dinners and that that whole process completely changed. Okay, so now I get customers that I don't ever talk to because we're marketing this as a says, and I'll get to my point in this just a second but the people are signing up now I didn't mean I won't meet now if it's a gigantic customer doing a million documents month we're gonna want to meet them and and nurture that relationship but if otherwise, but we're going to constantly stay in contact with these customers via email, podcast posts, you You know, Merry Christmas emails, whatever, whatever postcards, whatever it's going to be, he got to be in front of these people all the time. And this is a new way of marketing for me. So we hired a great marketing firm, they're doing a phenomenal job, but they're putting us in front of several 100,000 people a week that are seeing our ads. And it's amazing how people will go from seeing an ad, very few sign up the first time, I mean, very few, very small amount. But we're at the our average, right now, they see that as seven and nine times for the actually sign up. So that means that they, we had to get in front of them seven, nine times to make them our customer. And then you have to keep doing that, obviously. And so this whole new way of marketing, and you and I have talked about this in the past, it's a radical departure from the way that we used to do business. I mean, there's no more hamstring. It's kind of bizarre. I mean, everybody is, and all I do is I sit in front of the dashboard, or I should say I check it daily, and seeing what's going on, you know, we're like, yeah, we're looking down the road to see what's trends, what's not going right, what's going right. But it's very bizarre to me to do business this way. Because I'm like you, you know, I used to traverse the industrial parks in Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois, with boxes of donuts, knocking on doors and those days, that although that was a lot of fun. But young kids do that anymore.

Ron Bockstahler  21:11  

I don't think you know, one thing you said that I don't think has changed is you had to be like a touches how many times you have to touch a prospect before they became a client and is usually in that six to eight range. So that doesn't seem like that's changed. You still got to have that touch. It's just the touches coming in a different way.

Mathew Dragatsis  21:26  

It's a different media, I mean, completely different. Yeah.

Ron Bockstahler  21:29  

No talk, I want to talk to the our attorney listeners because that's primary listeners much attorneys is, you know, getting a new client isn't someone you just like, if it's a referral, and they need a need today, but generally it's they need to stay they know about you, they see you they see your name, they start to in their subconscious, they start to build that trust in you comes comfortable, right? Because let's face it, we all say we trust someone, we don't do a ton of research. Because it's something major, we're not doing a whole ton of research, we start to believe that we trust them because someone told us we could or we seen their ads, and we've seen them a few times and all sudden they're built into our subconscious. And then when I actually need something, and I see that they say it's the attorney yet and I'm gonna get divorced. Boom, I'm calling them and I feel comfortable calling them. And I think that hasn't changed those touches. That's still the same. And it's it's interesting that you brought that up?

Mathew Dragatsis  22:22  

Well, if you think about it, we're still looking at we're still watching videos, they're just not TV commercials now their Facebook ad videos, or their tic tock or their what have you. So it's still a human being talking to you. I mean, it really is, that's our biggest thing is our videos, and our ads, of course, brands all linked to a video. I mean, that's kind of the thing, we want them to see our video because that's still a human face and voice that's talking to them about our value proposition. So yeah, you're right, that hasn't changed at all. But, you know, in the old days, Ron would be you'd be URI sitting in front of them, you know, across the desk, having a cup of coffee and explain to them, you know what your value proposition is? But yeah, this is just a river Max had drum from MTV. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. Okay. It's kind of like this is kind of like that now. He was like a virtual guy. That was I don't remember he was selling I'm sure it was video ads or whatever. on MTV. Some of your younger listeners, they're not gonna get no idea. Yeah, virtual here. It was a virtual human basically it it was hilarious. But that's the that's kind of what it reminds me of. I see my own ads. So it's not me. We've got, you know, the ads and actors and all that. But it's not real. It's a video that's being played, but boy, it sure does seem real.

Ron Bockstahler  23:32  

That's amazing. It's amazing where things are, and they're gonna keep continuing. Now let's talk about sketch search. Your products been out on the market now for how long? Seven weeks, seven weeks, you've got great activity you guys are I know you're building up really quick. So we're lucky to have you. I appreciate you coming on the show and talking to us. You've got new stuff coming on. So your products continually evolving?

Mathew Dragatsis  23:52  

Yes. Yes. A lot of cool stuff coming up. So like, can I touch on that for a minute? Absolutely. Okay. So originally, you were able to just upload documents, which in itself was a great way to do it super easy. Go to your directory, upload a million documents. And next, you know, they're all available planning word or phrase. So and that's great. But if you a lot of people get most of their documents emailed to them. So you know, they're going to get a scanned document, maybe it's been turned into a PDF, but it's got a signature on it. But we need to be able to, you know, put that in the system to store it, but we also need to get it. So right now, instead of downloading that document to desktop, and then maybe uploading it to our system, you basically get an email address for every department you have, or every box, whatever you want to label every file folder, probably not that close. But anyway. So now you're able to just take that email, look at the document and then just forward that email to your place where you're storing documents. And then that's it. There's no more that step of downloading and uploading again, that was going to be pretty important, obviously. So we released that a few weeks ago. It works great. I mean, you could just go through all your emails, and anything that's attachment on it, forward it to your scan, search email address, and that's all you do. That's all you have to do. There's never printing it. There's Never filing it. There's never scanning it. There's nothing, there's no downloading it. It just simply forward that email and we take care of the rest for you. Yes, you,

Ron Bockstahler  25:08  

Matt, you have tutorials out there for all these things.

Mathew Dragatsis  25:11  

Yeah. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And it's, yeah, we put a lot of effort into our video production, it took forever to get done, but it's done. And if you go to the website, you know, you can see all this stuff, scan search.com, by the way, anyway. So we did that. That's how that's working. Right now we've got, we're gonna run the answering our viewer, right now we want it right now, when you search for a document that brings the document back, and you can then go ahead and search within the document and things like that. But we want to do it where when you This is one of the things we're working on now, where when you do your search, it comes back the document, the words are highlighted, and it takes you to what you searched on. Basically, we think that's a pretty cool feature that we're going to put in there, and I can't give you a date, it's gonna be available. But that's going to be big, it's not really necessary to do, but we think it's gonna be a nice feature to give to the customers. And then we talked about in right now in the drawing board is integration with other repositories. So we think it'd be very slick, to be able to go to Microsoft's OneDrive and search for what you're searching for, and be able to bring your documents back that way, or Google Drive or Dropbox, or vice versa. You know, these, we all have API's, which is basically a connection that makes other applications talk to each other. So you could go to, you know, scan search. com, log in search for what you're looking for, and it'll bring you back your scan documents that you uploaded or emailed or what have you to us. And everything else that stood out, you know it through. So we're working on that now that design is not solidified. It's a it's a big one to integrate with these these things. But we're hoping sometime, you know, next year, we'll have that and that that'll be nice. Is it necessary, no. But again, a nice feature to be able to give to our customers just kind of tie things a little bit better together. Because right now we do not, and we probably never will do it because we don't want to reinvent the wheel. But for Word documents, you know, we were talking about scan search, upload your document, search any word or phrase Great. Well, you can then now with electronic document, meaning a Word document or an Excel document, if you're in Google Drive, you know, they've got docs and in their spreadsheets and what have you. So if you upload a Word document to Google Drive, and you search for word or phrase on there, it'll bring the document back. But along with that you upload a scanned document, that document is invisible, you'll never see it unless you know the file name of it. So we'd like to maybe at some point in time, you know, bring all that together, just to make it more seamless, we're in the business of making things easier when it comes right down to it. And we use technology to do that. So these are just some of the things down the road that we're looking, we want to have to do it, we're coming up with a bulk upgrade, or a bulk upload the download a little chrome extension or a little app on your desktop, and you can upload millions of documents cuz we're gonna have customers, you know, I have customers now not using this, but our own technology. You know, I mean, we've got one customer, they upload a 12 million invoices a year, that's a lot of documents. And, you know, we're going to get them converted over to scanners. But it's a process. It's a big undertaking process wise for them. But everyone's on board, why we show them this? They're like, Oh, my gosh, where was this 10 years ago, you know, and another thing is, so that's the things that we're working on many other things as well. That's one of the key things we're working on, I guess the message here is, we're going to consistently try to make it better, you know, people working on the development, the design, or the user experience, and then just constantly rolling this out. The nice thing is, you know, we come up with idea, we design it, we test it, we make it ready, we push it to production, we're done. In the old days, you had to call 300 customers and go to every one of their servers and and do the upgrade, which was, you know, it took a year to do that sometimes. So, so this, yeah, it's, you know, it becomes available, you know, pretty much immediately, which is nice.

Ron Bockstahler  28:49  

Well, this is great. It's been I look, I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking to us a little bit about being an entrepreneur, but you know, really about scan search and talking about technology that's really changing the way we're doing things. I think it's gonna be a pretty big winner for you guys, for everyone. I think

Mathew Dragatsis  29:03  

I'm seeing this. I've been doing this for 30 years scanning, extracting data, what have you. I mean, it's a great technology. I'm obsessed with it, I always have been. I truly believe that this is a disruptor in the industry that I've been in all this time. And the reason I say that is twofold. One, no one's doing it to the feedback we're getting far exceeds my expectations of what I thought we were going to get with this. And so with that being said, I think we've got a very disrupting to the industry product here.

Ron Bockstahler  29:28  

That's great. I wish it's great to see a mnemonic client from 20 years ago, doing great and going on a good friend of mine that I enjoy drinking some beers with. So Matt, I wish you all the best of luck and hopefully we'll get out and start touring some small cities and in some of those brew pubs we we well, thanks for coming on yet. Wait, so let's Matt You can reach Matt go to scan search.com That's the best way just go check it out. scanners.com you can reach Matt directly. Mount even What's your email Matt? What's the best way to contact could,

Mathew Dragatsis  30:00  

you know I'll tell you what did you want to do just enter gases at scan search comm that's how you can reach me directly. That's my personal email. But also there is a 800 number on the website asked to talk to me. And it'll get forwarded to me if you want to have conversation.

Ron Bockstahler  30:15  

But once we've had macro, match the CEO of scan search.com been doing a long time. And once again, man, I've known you many years. So I'm really, really happy to see this great success. And I wish you all

Mathew Dragatsis  30:25  

appreciate the time I really appreciate you get in front of me the people that are going to run Thank you. Absolutely.

Ron Bockstahler  30:29  

Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to everyone next week we will be kicking off our marketing I guess it's gonna be look like marketing. Two months, we got a lot of marketing coming your way. So stick around and pay attention. We'll talk to y'all next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Michael DeLon is the President in Paperback Expert, he is an author, speaker, marketing strategist and business growth coach for business owners and sharp, aggressive entrepreneurs looking to get to the next level in their business. 

In this episode Michael talks about all the ways you can establish credibility, stand out, and convert leads by publishing a book. He uses three concepts: clarify, simplify, and multiply to harness a lawyer’s journey or life story to make a compelling story out of it which will then be the cornerstone of all their marketing strategies. 

Timestamps:

• Telling your story (5:14)
• Clarify. Simplify. Multiply. (6:53)
• Your book as the centerpiece of your marketing (16:20)
• Continuous leads, follow up, and more conversions(3:58)

“Everyone... has a story of why they're doing what they do. Somewhere they made a decision of why they became a lawyer. Why? I wanna know that story. Weave that through the book because none of their competitors can fight that. Your message is what differentiates you.”

Paperback Expert 

Website: https://paperbackexpert.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelDeLon

Books: https://www.amazon.com/Michael-DeLon/e/B00J2794ZY%3F

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldelon/

Michael DeLon, President of Paperback Expert

Department (Marketing Strategist and Business Growth Coach)

Michael is an author, speaker, marketing strategist and business growth coach for business owners and sharp, aggressive entrepreneurs looking to get to the next level in their business.

Michael is a native of Indiana and has lived near Little Rock, AR since 2004. His business background includes real estate, automotive, radio, internet, consulting and 10 years in family ministry.

Michael is a voracious learner … you’ll always find him with a book (or 2 or 3) and an audio series going on his iPhone or iPod. But more than learning, Michael loves applying, testing and perfecting marketing concepts that help his clients achieve more.

Michael and his wife reside near Little Rock, AR with their three children. They are deeply involved in The Bible Church of Little Rock.

Michael loves spending time with his family, traveling with friends and living life on the edge.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldelon/

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:28  

Welcome to the show, I am your Runbox dollar your host got a very, very special guest with me today. Michael Dylon, Michael, I want to say you're the credibility expert. And I know you've got a great bio, but you know, the ideas. And the attorneys out there you need to be writing books, and showing that you are the expert what to do. And that's exactly what Michael helps you do is he helps you go out and create a book, take that book, the number one bestseller on Amazon, and then just you change your marketing so that your marketing is all built around your credibility. And not just being another, you know, face and a website that really has no meaning whatsoever to a potential client. So Michael, I didn't mean to mess up your your intro, but very excited to have you on the show. Welcome to the show.

Michael DeLon  1:12  

No, that's great, man. I'll take that title, anytime credibility builder, and it really is a game changer. When you create your own book. You and I were just talking about you reading my book that I published back in 2013. That was my first one that that was the book I wrote wrong when I escaped prison. And now it wasn't a literal prison man, right? It was an emotional prison. I was stuck in a job that I hated for about two years, and needed to get out. And it was a ministry job where I was building marriages and families. And they just went through corporate reorg and all that stuff. And I was in a position that I hated and prayed and said got it got to get out of here. And I started a marketing consulting firm in Little Rock, which is where I live now. Because marketing is my background helping small business owners with marketing. But I go out Ron and I come to Yes, I think I can help you grow your business. You meet with me, we talk and you say Now Mike, what have you done for the last few years? And I said, Well, I built marriages and families. And you'd say, Michael, that's honorable way to go, you know, look at the timeline. I've got another appointment. Let's keep this conversation going. And you assure me out the door. And Ron, I was not getting any clients and I was living on savings. I'm like, Man, I gotta fix this. So I found myself one day pacing the hallways of my church saying God, how do I help Ron? Because I know I can. And he said, Why don't you just take all of your marketing strategies and put them in a book. Now back then I didn't know the first thing about writing the book. So I sat down and I just started plowing through it. It took us a few months to get it done. But what happened is I'd call you and I'd set an appointment, I'd mail you a copy of my book. And about a week later, I walk into your office. And there was my book was on your desk dog, your highlight and underline you'd read my book. And in that meeting, Ron, you'd say now, Michael, in your book, you said, how do you help me do that? And you'd hire me. And the next guy hired me and the next guy hired me. Pretty cool.

Ron Bockstahler  3:01  

Cool, cool.

Michael DeLon  3:01  

What changed between those two meetings? Did my background in ministry change? Not a bit? Did my understanding of marketing change? Nope. What changed was how you thought of me, when you got a copy of my book, you immediately saw me as an expert. And you are ready to take down the prescription I had for you to solve your marketing problems, that Ron changed my business in my life. And that was the seed that got planted that has now grown into paperback expert, where we help attorneys create their own book without writing a word, to establish that credibility to separate them from all that competition. And then we teach them actually how to market themselves as a credible authority and expert. So they'll gain clients get referrals and grow their revenue, which is what it's all about.

Ron Bockstahler  3:52  

Here's the first thing I thought of when you said I wrote that book back in 2013. So eight years ago, I met you through networking, through a mutual friend who actually lives in St. Louis. Right. I live in Chicago, like Indianapolis, I suppose. And my business is on Chicago, but and so in 2013, I went and bought the book when I met you because I thought okay, I gotta understand, I'm going to go cruise and I read the book. And of course, I've got it all marked up and eared up. I'll never return it to anyone, right because I got so many notes in the book. But you wrote the book eight years ago. Now you're still that I got something from that, I guess shelf life, right? So you talk about shelf life because I mean, how many times we go out and go to American but we go to somewhere we hand out our business card which goes in the circular.

Michael DeLon  4:36  

Yeah, and we're getting away from businesses. I was just at a three day mastermind and this guy pulled out as his give. He's got this little.on The back of his iPhone case that all you have to do is touch it to my iPhone and all of his contact information comes to my iPhone. Business cards are a thing of the past right? But the shelf life yeah, books have shelf life. number one number two in our culture. Itzhak religious To throw a book away, we move them from house to house or office to office. So once you put a book in somebody's hand, you become a household member, right. But the other thing that doesn't I mean, most of the time, your, your message isn't going to change over time. Okay. And the other thing that doesn't change in in really, where we shine, and what we really want to help our clients do is to tell their unique story. Okay, I began this podcast with my unique story of escaping prison. Okay, and I do that for a reason is number one, it captures your attention, I've got you now you're like you're in prison, right. And then I weave that into how I got to where I am today. So it's a compelling story that's memorable. That is unique to me. And every one of your listeners, every one of your clients are on has a story of why they're doing what they do. Somewhere in their college, somewhere, they made a decision to become an a lawyer, why I want to know that story. Because I want to weave that through the book to separate them because none of their competitors can fight that they can all do better pay per click, they all hire better intake people. Your message is what differentiates you I've got a couple examples we can talk about from attorneys that we've been able to seriously differentiate, not because I created something for them. But because we discovered their story. And we were able to weave that into a very clear brand strategy and a clear message that just it changes everything in your marketing.

Ron Bockstahler  6:27  

Michael, I'm mesmerized by marketing, because it's so complex. It's almost one of those things where you know, I'm an attorney, I don't want to get into the weeds on marketing. How do I break this down to something that's going to be effective for me and I can stand out in my family law attorney or whatever type of law I'm practicing. How can I stand out? I know you said you got a couple examples I'd love to hear about.

Michael DeLon  6:47  

Yeah, so three words, Ron, that I try to live by that work in marketing works in life. Okay, three words, clarify. Simplify, multiply, and they go in that order. So let's talk marketing. You have to clarify your message, your distinct unique message. Alright. William Franchi. He's a personal injury attorney down in Florida. He came to me wanting to do a book. We started going through the process brand strategy, and I learned that he was a baseball player moved from the Northeast down to Florida to go to college to be baseball. He was heading towards the pros. He was that good. He was a pitcher. Okay, first or second year in college, he threw his arm out, had to go get surgery, took him out of baseball, lost his career, lost a scholarship. He kept going through college got his degree. And through a long series of events, he became a personal injury attorney. Right? And he helps people who are in situations through no fault of their own many times they got hit by a car or something. They're going through rehabilitation, right. And I said, William, have you ever told that story your story to anybody? Well, no, you're about the only one. He didn't think it was too powerful. I said we're in timeout. Here's what we're gonna do. So, the name of his book, The way we branded William was when life throws you a curveball. He was a pitcher. And the underneath his name on the front of the cover says William Franchi baseball player turned attorney. And what we what we were able to do is tie in his baseball passion being a pitcher throwing curveballs at batters life threw him a curveball, he never expected to be out of baseball. But every client he served on life has done them a curveball. And so what we were able to do is take his personal story, his journey in creating very distinct brands. So now, not only does he have his book, but when he's on TV down in his market, guess what he's talking about? You know, what if life throws you a curveball, and you've had a slip and fall, or you've been involved in an auto accident, or you're bitten by a dog, whatever. It wasn't in your plan, life threw you a curveball. I've been where you are. I understand the pain you're going through. I understand the process. Let me help you walk through this process. It's a very compelling message that separates him from everybody else who's like, Oh, get you $18 million for that, right? Because that's what everybody says. He has a very distinct unique message that we discovered as we walked him through his story because most honestly, most people think their story's boring. I disagree. We all have compelling stories. It's how you discover and how you tell it in your marketing to separate yourself. That's just one way but I think it always comes down to your unique compelling story. So you'll clarify your message. And that clarity just gets right through all of the noise that's out there. Because your consumer says this is somebody different.

Ron Bockstahler  9:51  

Auntie Ji Okay, now he clarified his message not toxic because you had three words there, clarify, simplify and was the third one, multiply multiply That's probably the most important that I forget. So okay, we got a message. Let's stick with the same topic, same person. Now simplify cuz I know you do more than just write the books, you help them with your branding. Branding is very important. I know you talk about it. So guys, let's keep that going.

Michael DeLon  10:13  

Yeah, so he's got his book. Now he's got his message, obviously, on the website, pictures of him right in with his baseball garb. And when he goes on TV is funny, he walks on TV with his suit here as attorney suit, but he has his baseball mitt in on his left hand. Okay, Nobody's expecting an attorney to come in looking like that. He's got pictures of himself with his baseball bat over his shoulder. In his office, he's got baseball paraphernalia in different pictures, right? Because we're always branding around that theme, because that's what separates him. Now, when he's doing his TV ads, he's always coming back to Hey, when life throws you a curveball, you need an attorney who understands and who can walk with you, once you go to my website, download a copy of my book. So they download the book, and the follow up email sequence that they're going to get is all themed around being thrown a curveball, what happens when you swing and you miss what happens with all of these baseball analogies that everybody's familiar with, but it ties right back into his message, he can do that on radio, he can do that in follow up thank yous, you know, the Thank You card that he sends out. And whether it's to a meeting, or whether it's doing, you know, direct marketing to prospects and things. The theme of that is a baseball theme with him and his catcher's or his baseball mitt, okay? mmediately, just that one picture separates him, and it causes people to stop before they throw the thing away, to go, what's this, and then is copywriting, right, to make sure that your message is clear and compelling. But it's taking that and that's how we clarify your message. This is how we simplify marketing, and teach our clients how to do this is to take that clear message, and you use it in all of your media channels. But the beautiful thing about simplifying your message with a book is all of your media channels can come back to get a free copy of my book, because it has the information that you need. Let me go ahead.

Ron Bockstahler  12:14  

Yeah, let's stick on free because you got a chapter in your book where you're talking about free, can we and we'll just we'll come back to multiply here in a minute and set five. But let's talk about that chapter. You talk about free in what should the attorneys that are listening? What should they be thinking through? And what are they given away? What's your giveaway? Because you don't want to give away your intellectual property, at least not all of it. Talk to free,

Michael DeLon  12:35  

right? Yeah, free is giving formerly really, because let's talk about an attorney, you got somebody coming in, if you're an estate planning attorney, or personally doesn't matter, they are not going to be able to do what you do. And when you have a compelling story or a unique way of doing business, you can give it away because your competitors aren't smart enough to copy it. Because you put a lot of work into building a system, right? So free, you're not going to get rich selling your book on Amazon, Ron, it's just not going to happen. You're on Amazon and Kindle for credibility purposes, because that's where people go when they say, Oh, you're an author, let me find you there. So somebody can buy your book on Amazon, you bought my book, thank you very much. I earned whoo about $5. From that, you're not going to get rich, what I'd rather you do. If you're an attorney, give your book away on your website, give somebody a free PDF, download, capture their name and email, get them on your list or number one asset and business easier list. Get them on your list, the thank you page should pop up. And you should be there hopefully with a short video saying thank you so much for downloading a copy of my book, I know it's going to be really helpful for you. I would love to mail you a free copy. That way you can highlight it, underline it, put notes in it. And when we talk later, you'll be able to have the page number of the question you have just tell me where to mail it doesn't cost you a penny, I'd be happy to do that. And you have a form. They're pre populated with their name and email that you just got for them to add their phone number or their mailing address, right. 40% of the people are testing this with our class 40% of people who opt in for the free PDF will opt in for a free copy of your book. Now what do you have on you have all of their mailing address not just to send out your book in a hopefully beautifully branded, welcoming Wow kit or a padded envelopes something that will stand out? Okay, but also for all the other mailings, your print newsletter, anything else that you're going to be mailing to them and the beautiful thing about direct mail two big things right now? Well, last time you went to your mailbox, the physical thing in front of you. I mean, how many pieces of mail were actually in that thing last night, all right. That's unless I had four pieces left on Saturday when I get my mail for things in my mailbox. It's like an echo chamber. Hello. Right. This is a great time to do direct mail. Now when I send books out, I tell my clients to put them in a big padded envelopes. And so I'll tell you how they run when I mail my book out to he's gonna come in this big gold envelopes. Okay, so when you go to your mailbox and you open up and you see that gold envelope there, you know, my books inside, it's gonna be a great time making an experience Disney, why do people pay so much money? You just went to a amusement park? Yeah, you probably paid, you know, 60 $70 to get in, you go to Disney, you're gonna be paying 160 or $200 per person again, why is that they have the same kinds of rides. It's because of the experience. We need to add some experience into our marketing, telling your stories one way to do an experience, but how do you deliver a book? So free? We're talking about free here, right? I'm giving my book away for free so I can capture your name and information. That way I can do all kinds of marketing to you. Right? Right. now's a great time. I'll give you anytime you get around any holiday. We got Thanksgiving coming up, got Christmas, New Year's, we have Valentine's Day, think about an opportunity to mail a copy of your book out to your best clients, thanking them. How many Thanksgiving cards do you receive every year on? Yeah, probably not. How many Christmas cards? Do you get? Dozens. So send a Thanksgiving cards into Thanksgiving letter saying thank you for allowing me to serve you. I just wanted to make sure you had a copy of my new Amazon best selling book.

Ron Bockstahler  16:10  

Michael, if you're looking at a budget standpoint, what percentage of your budget would you recommend to for a playing attorney? What percent of his budget would you allocate towards sending these things out?

Michael DeLon  16:22  

Yeah, their marketing budget probably depends on on where his budget is, but probably a half to 1%. It doesn't cost that much. You know, the books that you know, when our clients publish a book, they buy them from us, they're copying yours, you're gonna sell it on Amazon for like $17 $20 Each, right? But the author's cost is only $5 per book. Okay, you can mail that to somebody for probably another 350. Okay, so you got $8 Total in that, what's a client worth to you, we just spent $12, to get a new client, I think most attorneys will probably be spending hundreds of dollars for a new client. So it's understanding you're not giving, you're not mailing 1000s and 1000s of books most of the time, okay, we have a couple of clients who mail lots of books and send lots of books, most of our clients are sending about 30 books a month. And they get into a rhythm because that's where they are on their marketing. And everything's pre done. They have all the packages got the books, you sign your book, because a signed book you'll never throw away. But it's a matter of understanding the book is that cornerstone of your marketing that your Facebook ads, your LinkedIn ads or Google thing, everything can come back to a similar landing page, you could have the same landing page, you know, multiplied one for Facebook, one for YouTube, one for Google, they all say the same thing. Here's a free copy of my book. That way you can track where it's coming from to obviously, like you're building your list. And through the emails that you send out. Or if you do podcast, you're taking content from your book. And using that in your ads, you're using that content on podcast, you're using that content to create blog posts. So you create your book once, then you find 1000 different ways to use it in your marketing, to simplify your marketing, you're not chasing every new shiny object. And you don't have new ad agencies and media people coming in to change your message heaven forbid, you have a clear, compelling message. you simplify your marketing by having all media channels driving to a free copy of your book. And then that funnel that comes out of that can be identical for every one of those channels. And it all reinforces the fact that you have a story to tell and you can relate you can bond emotionally with that prospect, which is we make buying decisions emotionally. Then we find the logic to back them up, right?

Ron Bockstahler  18:44  

Here's your I mean just making a sound easy, but I'm even getting a little anxiety just thinking about it going holy cow that's I can do a there's a lot to it. You need a coach, you need someone you need you to some and say okay, hold on, let me step back. Let's walk through this process, step by step. And we'll get to that end result where you have a book and then we can start doing the marketing programs. Absolutely. Let's go okay, multiply, or we're simplify. let's kind of take a step back. And let's go to that third point that multiply. What are we doing there?

Michael DeLon  19:14  

Yeah, multiply is where you actually you're gaining clients and you're getting referrals. Okay, when I talk with a prospect, they always want to jump to multiply. That's what I want to do. Great, but we have to go clarify and simplify first. Then when you put those in the right order, then you get multiplication, because you're going to be able to convert more of the prospects you're getting, because you're giving them something of high value, they're not going to throw away. Here's the number one myth I hear in business run. I hear it every week, is whether I'm talking to an attorney or financial advisor doesn't matter. Same myth. I need more leads. Here's what happens. They do their advertising, they do an event they do whatever, and they get 20 people calling them for let's say a book, whatever it is right. 20 people, eight of those people book have a consultation with two of those people by. Okay. They come to me they say, Michael, I just need more leads. On my time out. Ron, what are you doing with the six people that you met with the didn't buy? What kind of follow up process do you have? Well, we send them an email or two, really, to IT people, most people don't buy until months after you had that first contact with them, right? What about the 12? People who raised their hand who got your book? Or went to your webinar? Who didn't contact you? Are they totally not interested? No, you got to have a system in place to stay in touch with these people. And when you do you start multiplying your business and your business grows. Now, do you need more leads? Yes, you need a continual flow of leads. But you need to do a much better job of converting the leads you're getting in order to increase your revenue to gain clients. How about so that's why I'm gaining clients. One of the best ways is by offering somebody to have a copy of your book. Right? Because it's powerful. How many other attorneys in your market have their own book that they're offering for free? Yeah, and

Ron Bockstahler  21:04  

here's the funny thing, I bet someone can answer that question. They can't say how many they can name the one that they remember, because they have their own book. That's right.

Michael DeLon  21:11  

It makes a difference. And we all love referrals, right? Everybody loves referrals? How do most attorneys get referrals? Most of them don't. But if they do, they say, well, here's my business card, would you hand this out to somebody? Or here's our beautiful brochure, right? How about Ron, at the end of your transaction, whether you're an estate planning attorney, just got my estate set up? I'm thrilled with you. Right. Before we leave Iran, thank you for allowing me to serve you Would you do me a favor? And because you're happy with me, what do you always want to say? Yes. And you say, Ron, you may not know this, but most of our clients don't come to us to all the advertising and marketing that we do they come to us are happy and satisfied clients like you? Would you do me a favor? Would you take three or four copies of my book. And as you're talking with your friends in the next week or two, about how we've set up your estate properly and put you at ease? Would you just hand the copy of my book to them and say, This is the person we've trusted to put our house in order, you should read this book.

Ron Bockstahler  22:10  

I love that we talked about I talked with you. And then I talked to an attorney who I met who had her own book. And I was like, wow, hold on. And I remember the name of the book, it was how to divorce a narcissist. And when, like, I'm never gonna forget that the rest of my life, right? I mean, and I hundreds and hundreds of family law attorneys. But there's one who had never met in person, but I've read her book, I spent some time talking to her. I'll never forget that one person. That's how you make yourself unique.

Michael DeLon  22:38  

It really it really is. And when you think about your best clients, the ones you want to clone, right? They run in circles of people just like themselves, right friends, neighbors, relatives, business searchers, church members, you can you can enhance your sphere of influence at least five times by taking your best clients and putting multiple copies of your book in their hand with that little script. Because now they can go out and say, Well, yeah, we finally got off the stick and got our estate in plan in order. Now we don't have to worry about it. And you don't want we work with a guy who wrote a book on it.

Ron Bockstahler  23:13  

So Mike, let's talk unique message. You got a chapter in your book, you talk about unique message, I tried to look it up and kind of read about it look unique messes. I talk to attorneys all the time. And I say I do this, I get a list of 12 things they do. Yeah, that is not unique. And then I can never remember. Why would I call them?

Michael DeLon  23:28  

That's right. Yeah, it's less about all of that. Because at a certain level people buy who you are more than what you do. In with attorneys. I mean, all your competitor does those same things, too, right? So what's going to separate you, you've got to understand what's in it for the client? What are they looking for. And many times they don't know what they're looking for in terms of the services you provide? What they have an emotional, something going on, right? I feel like I need to get my house in order so that if I, if me or my spouse starts having dementia or losing our mind, we've already got everything set up. So we don't have to deal with things it's already taken care of. Right? We need to make sure we have those conversations with our children before that they ever comes. So it's talking about those pain points per se, in having a chapter in your book that explains that and how you've helped other people walk through that process, save that legal stuff into your meeting with them face to face or on Zoom. The book is in your clear message is really about the higher level process that they're going through. You've got to meet them where they are, and how you can help them get to where they want to be. It's just a simple bridge, but you have to understand where your clients are. I've got a thing that hangs on my wall. Hang on. I know you're the only one who can see this, but I like to hold so it's short. It's a four by six card as a drill bit and a hole had this thing for decades. And it reminds me that Black and Decker last year made millions of quarter inch drill bits. And Black and Decker wants to tell you about the steel they using the drill bit, and the quality of machinery they use and the talent of the people who've been with them 150 years. And all of that falls into the category of who cares? Because it's been proven wrong, that of all people that bought these quarter inch robots last year, not one of them wanted to own a quarter inch drill bit. They each wanted a quarter inch hole. When you do your marketing, your messaging and you're reaching out to your prospects, you have to understand what is it they're actually buying from you? What are they paying for, they're not paying for an estate plan. They're paying for the peace of mind and the security of knowing that when life throws me a curveball, I'm going to hit it out of the park because I've taken care of the thing ahead of time. Right. That's what they're paying for. When you speak to that, you're going to get a lot more client. Because no, i Nobody wants to do an estate plan. Right. But I want what the estate plan gives me. And so talk about that. And oh, it just so happens to be an estate plan that we put together. And I tell her name your process. You know, if you do estate planning, you're like every other attorney. But if you have the box dollar, you know, patented estate planning kit that we need to take you through to make sure you have all four aspects of this estate plan. They're like what I always go back, and one of my favorite examples is Dave Ramsey, the financial guy, he has a seven baby steps. brilliant marketing, he's not really that smart in budgeting and finance. He's just a great marketer, because he has these seven baby steps and you can identify, oh, I'm on step two, I have to finish it before we go to step three, it's a process into the exact same thing with a state planning or, or personal injury, it doesn't matter. People like a plan. Give them a plan, take them through, just don't go deep into the woods and speak to what how your customer how your client thinks about things.

Ron Bockstahler  27:03  

Here's the hard part is I know you said this, you said look, you got it in your mind. You've got a history, you've been successful. How do you bring it? What's your process? How do you get that out of someone's mind and into marketing content? Yeah,

Michael DeLon  27:16  

great question. We do it through interviews. So brand strategy, right, but he has a story to tell. You've got to know how to ask questions to elicit the right answer so that we can discern and discover your unique story. So we've got eight questions that we ask our clients and from those the answers they give us we can discover their unique story. So you can have somebody to ask you questions, tell your story to them. It's not as boring as you think. And as you go into that, after we get your brain, we go into the book creation process, which is you don't write your book with us you speak to write it, one of our writers actually interviews you, we walk you through the creation of your outline, and then you speak to write your book as you're being coached by a writer. And that process. Ron is amazing, because many of our clients go, I've never told that to anybody. But it becomes the essence of a chapter or the entire book. Because you've got somebody else asking you questions, almost an Dare I say an uninterested third party, but a third party who's really interested in you, I can see things in your business run that you can't see. And vice versa. I've got you know, I'm a marketing guy. Okay, I get two coaches that I pay, who are looking at my business from a marketing perspective, because I am too close to my business to make good marketing decisions, right? Same thing with an attorney, you're too close to it. You start talking attorney speak. Nobody cares. You sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Right? You've got to pull back and speak to us in a more emotional way. Tell us your story. Stories captivate our attention, they cause us to listen. Right? Star Wars, Star Trek, you name all the movies. Why are we so compelled to, because it's a story that we can latch on to. That's really what people want. It is challenging yourself. You know, that's why we exist. But you can go out with a buddy and have a coffee, or have dinner and say Here are five questions I want you to ask me. I want to dive deep.

Ron Bockstahler  29:20  

So a little bit of a curveball question for you in law, and I look at it, you got b2b And you got b2c? So you got the attorneys that deal with consumers, family law, state planning, bankruptcy, and then you got to be those attorneys that are dealing with more corporations more maybe litigators or corporate law. Yeah, whatever probate but so is there a difference in the book they need to write? No, okay.

Michael DeLon  29:42  

I've had people ask me that all the time on b2b, it doesn't say you know, what do you sell to a business? Now you sell to people, right? You sell to people, they and I assure you, there are other competitors who are going after that same business, right? What are they saying? They're probably saying the same things you're saying right now. Welcome. Hey, I graduated from here and I've got all this time. I I. But when you start turning the table until your compelling story, why do you do that? Why are you a patent attorney? You could be doing 1000 other things. Why are you doing this? There's a story there. And when you tell that story, it starts resonating, because they understand it's not about the knowledge that you have. It's about the heart that you bring. Okay, I want somebody who's not only good at what they do, I want somebody who's also passionate about what they do. That comes through your story. So it doesn't matter, because people buy people in whether you're b2b or b2c, they're going to buy you and your services. And they better what we've always heard you got to know like and trust you, right? What better way to know like and trust them, and then spend about an hour to an hour and a half talking with them? How great would that be run, if you could get in front of that prospect? And spend 90 minutes just talking with them, understanding them, helping them understand you? That'd be great, that's valuable. Well, why don't you let your book do the talking for you, and you mail it to them as a beginning of a relationship.

Ron Bockstahler  31:07  

And I like to add how often especially attorneys listening, how often is that there's a book that using as a reference, where you're continually going back to it. And I think that happens a lot. As you said, we never throw away books. If you were in my office right now, you know, I've never thrown away a book.

Michael DeLon  31:23  

And you mentioned, they have shelf life. But then think about a marketing spend. Okay, I tell you spend a lot of money on marketing, whether it's TV, or you name it, Facebook doesn't matter. But they make that spend month after month after month after month. A book is created in such a way that you invest in at one time. And it pays you back year after year after year. I wrote my book when 2013 I still use it in my business today to gain clients to get referrals and to grow our revenue. That's how you need to look at simplifying your marketing clarifying your message so you can multiply your book, I mean, that books been well worth well over seven figures to my company in this time, right? I'm not going to deviate, it will be here in 25 years, I'll still be using that book. I might add other books. But that's foundational book that set me apart from every media rep in in Little Rock when I was out doing my marketing consulting, and all the ad agencies, they were all doing the Charlie Brown thing, right? I came in with a book and put me in a category of one changed everything. It can still happen today because the battle hasn't. Here's the deal. Everybody thinks Ron that the marketing battleground is out there. It's on Pinterest, it's on Facebook, it's on LinkedIn, it's on whatever. And the truth is the marketing battleground is between the ears of your prospect. It's in their mind. It's how they think about you. Okay, why do people spend $10,000 to go to a Tony Robbins seminar for a weekend? Because they think about him very uniquely, right? Yeah. All right. He wrote a book a few years ago on finance. Right? Begin? number one bestseller. So hundreds of 1000s of topics. Why? What does he knows about finance? If he came out and he wrote a book on estate planning, guess what? It'd be a number one bestseller on net on everywhere, right? Because why? Because he's Tony Robbins, not because he understands estate planning people by him because of who he is. And attorneys can do the exact same thing to their audience. You need to become the go to expert to your audience, owned them at the heart level. And then allow them to expand that sphere of influence by bringing referrals to the table. That's how you grow business.

Ron Bockstahler  33:49  

What do we so I know we're gonna have some attorneys, they're gonna say, Man, I got to reach out to paper book expert, paperback and paperback expert, speaking impediment going here. But what's gonna be the process? How long is it gonna take to actually write a book?

Michael DeLon  34:04  

That's a great question. So number one, I tell people never write a book. Always speak it right. There you go. We're going to our process is designed so that after brand strategy, which takes about a month working with me to get that clear brand, we move into the book creation process. And if everybody stays on track, then we can get your book created in about six months start to finish. We publish it in paperback to Amazon, we publish it in Kindle in PDF for your website and E marketing in obviously in paperback. So about six months from today, six to seven months from today. You can be an Amazon Best Selling Author of your own book, then we'll give you the marketing systems that we've developed to help you market that credibility that you have so that you can grow your business. So Michael,

Ron Bockstahler  34:48  

after you the book is published, it's good to go you guys aren't walking away. You're still going to be sitting there helping them how to maximize that investment in the book.

Michael DeLon  34:56  

We do. Yeah, because the next one for we didn't talk about this we created A podcast for our clients, if they don't already have a podcast, we create one for them. And we interview them on every chapter of their book. And we syndicate that to all the platforms, right? It's a video interview, so they can put their videos on their website and YouTube. But we also have marketing systems that we give them, system built step by step systems that they implement in their business that coincide with their authority and their credibility. And then we stay with him for additional year. So our flagship program is a 12 month program, create your brand, your Amazon best selling book, your podcast, and all the marketing systems that we're going to bring to the table for you. That's a 12 month program, we're going to stay with you for another 12 months, no cost, through our coaching programs that you're part of, because we stand behind what we do wrong with a two year, double your money back guarantee. Because wrong, oh, this works. And so we're going to stay with you. We don't just publish your book and disappear. We've been doing this for a long time we've dialed in, we know it works. When you do the effort. When you follow our counsel and run our playbooks. You'll gain clients, you'll get referrals, you will grow your business, we guarantee that with our money back guarantee, and I

Ron Bockstahler  36:09  

know you've worked with hundreds of clients. I mean, many of them are attorneys. How long have you been doing this?

Michael DeLon  36:14  

Since 2013, when my business changed? That's when we launched paperback expert.

Ron Bockstahler  36:20  

Last Word, we got a couple more things, what do you want to leave our audience with Michael,

Michael DeLon  36:24  

you know, the biggest thing is be yourself, tell your story. And make sure that you bring people around you to get that story. But tell your story, and speak to the needs of your prospects and your audience. And your business is going to grow. And you can do it yourself. There's ways to do it, bring friends around you or something. If you need help, just reach out to us paperback expert. com, we'd love to talk with you about that. But be yourself tell your story. Because it really is pretty compelling. That's awesome.

Ron Bockstahler  36:54  

I mean, look, I'm I think it's one of the greatest things out there. I think of all the marketing, I've talked to people, we've done a lot of people in our company, this has to be the number one concept that every attorney I've talked to they need to be jumping on and writing a book because the ones that have we know who they are. And you know, of the 1.3 million attorneys in the United States. What's that say that less than 1% have published a book. Yeah. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been great. I know, a lot of our listeners are getting great value out of it. So I think they'll be reaching out to you and wanting to Hey, how can we get started. So best way to contact you

Michael DeLon  37:32  

back just at my website, paperback? expert.com.

Ron Bockstahler  37:36  

So paperback, expert. com, I'll actually post that up there. So it'll be out there. So I won't butcher it when I actually posted. So when he wants to find that you guys could check it out. You can you can check out the watch the podcast on Apple or wherever you list your podcast. You could also go to a model model offices.com look under our podcast page. You can find the podcast there. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. I really, really appreciate having you and look forward to having you back on the show.

Michael DeLon  37:59  

Hey, Ron. Thanks, man. It's been lots of fun talking with you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Melissa Costello is the creative lead and chief storyteller for MELISSACOSTELLO.COM’s video-centric take on branding and marketing. In this episode, she shares the value of telling stories in marketing and why marketing through video works for lawyers. They talk about how lawyers today need to start thinking differently about their business and embrace marketing. 

The most important kind of marketing that is especially effective for law firms is using client testimonials. Melissa says that there’s no substitute for testimonial videos, story telling is the most engaging medium of communication and people will want to do business with you if you tell them your clients’ stories. 

Timestamps:

• Marketing through storytelling (1:16)
• How to create engaging marketing (7:50)
• Different types of video (19:51)
• Why video marketing works for lawyers (28:20)

“It is one of your greatest assets, the stories that your clients would be only too happy to tell - of how you changed their life, how you saved their business. Attorneys to a very large degree think that they provide a very intellectual product, and a legal product is anything but.” - Melissa Costello

Connect with Melissa Costello:

Website: https://melissacostello.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MelissaCostello.comChicago/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissacostellochicago/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/melissacostello

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbZ8FHOYkCwD078T9dJgVYg/featured

Melissa Costello, Creative Lead and Story Teller

Marketing

Melissa Costello is the creative lead and chief storyteller for MELISSACOSTELLO.COM’s video-centric take on branding and marketing. Telling stories and building brands that impact people’s businesses and people’s lives is her passion. Her upbringing engaged her in a lively mix of both the fine arts and the marketing arts, joint passions shared by numerous members of the extended family. It’s in the blood as is a restless curiosity. Costello has been awarded both domestic and international honors for the videos and television commercials she has produced for more than 30 years through her companies in Chicago and Los Angeles, and in collaboration with former political media consultant, David Axelrod for clients such as President Barack Obama and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/melissacostello

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:29  

Welcome to the show. I am your host, Ron box dollar. And today we have a super special guest because he's one of my favorite people. And definitely one of my favorite people to talk to Melissa Costello. Welcome to the show, Melissa.

Melissa Costello  0:40  

Hey, thanks, Ron. It's really fun to be here already. Thanks.

Ron Bockstahler  0:46  

Again, it's funny because we generally get together for coffee, and now we're doing it over a show.

Melissa Costello  0:50  

Exactly. And we can't stop. You know, it's also good to have a 45 minute cut off point, I suppose.

Ron Bockstahler  0:57  

Well, you know, let's talk about you take us, you know, in your bio, which I didn't read the whole thing, but you actually talk about, there's my notes here. Your family engaged in a lively mix of fine arts and marketing arts. What are you talking about?

Melissa Costello  1:10  

What does that mean? You know, storytelling is actually what it means we it's coming at storytelling from a number of different disciplines. My dad's dad was an attorney. He was a litigator, he was brilliant at they used to say he created a spell in the courtroom, my father became a copywriter, my father, you know, took that notion of storytelling and applied it to, you know, huge corporations in America, he worked at Leo Burnett, his brother started an advertising agency, and you know, was another brilliant storyteller and writer, my sister is a script writer, it's in the blood, my son is a writer. So at the dining room table, you know, my sisters and I were the in house focus group. So it's like, girls, what would you think if we could cut apples into stars? Would you like that? What would you call it? What would you dip it into? You know, was, to me, the notion of marketing of advertising was play, this is what we're playing. This is fun. And I still bring that sense of playful discovery to my work, because that is what storytelling is, you find the story and you share it. And who doesn't love to tell a good story?

Ron Bockstahler  2:26  

We're talking most of our audiences are attorneys. And they're generally if they're litigators, they got to be a great storyteller. But Why do so few use video to tell their story digitally, to prospective customers?

Melissa Costello  2:42  

Well, that's a really that's a really good question. Ron. It's mystifying in the 21st century. You know, when you look back at where this whole thing started, you know, originally, video storytelling was called TV commercials. And it was in the very, you know, it was in the mix for an advertising agency, and it was cost prohibitive for most, because you'd have to have a massive crew. And you'd have, you know, in those days, I can't even imagine what the rates were like in the 50s and 60s when they began advertising. And by the way, it was very primitive. When you look at some of those old ads, they're horrible. I mean, by today's standards, things would, you know, the art has evolved. It's very sophisticated. But I would say that, as things have shifted forward, as things have evolved, I don't understand why people don't use it more often. Except that if you buy it on your own, you're usually not going to get a great product, you're going to if you go through an advertising agency, they have vetted a solid filmmaker, for you to work with. But I think smaller organizations have a hard time accessing those individuals accessing those companies. And they also have a hard time justifying the cost, you know, and expense is something that comes up often. But I, you know, what I say to my clients is what's really expensive, is doing it poorly and not using it. I mean, you're throwing money away, do it right. And you can use it over and over and over and over and over again. So, you know, in the legal world, you have such extraordinary stories to tell. They are the thing that almost every law firm leaves on the table. Every time they talk about marketing, it is one of your greatest assets are the stories that your clients would be only too happy to tell of how you change their life, how you saved their business. I think attorneys to a very large degree, think that they provide an intellectual product and a legal product is anything but I know from my own experience, having been in small claims court, represented by David Goodman, thanks very much, David, shout out. I know and I haven't done anything wrong, but the Feeling you have the anxiety? The Am I a bad person? What am I doing in small claims court? That David, you know, definitely stepped in, corrected everybody's perception. The judge was like, Oh, well, yeah, da, I can't tell you what he the gift he gave me. It's beyond money. It is He gave me peace of mind. And he also well gave me peace of mind and what,

Ron Bockstahler  5:27  

hopefully a win.

Melissa Costello  5:30  

He definitely gave me a win. He definitely gave let's back

Ron Bockstahler  5:32  

up because I want to go into the cost, the sticker shock of quality, storytellers and what you need. But I want to talk more about let's get a little I want our listeners to have a more of a understanding of your past your history, the amazing clients you've worked with. I mean, you've worked with David Axelrod and a lot of his clients. So let's talk about maybe your top one or two clients that you've done video done storytelling with?

Melissa Costello  5:57  

Well, certainly, Barack Obama. Yeah, that was a high point it working with somebody, first of all, who's so verbal, so bright, and so kind and such a gentleman and really couldn't find anything wrong with him. Like I didn't, I didn't have to cover up any flaws in the filmmaking, you could say. And also working with David Axelrod, who you know, just an utterly brilliant strategist, and then bringing the emotion to his work through film. It was absolutely a high point. And then my children even started to feel like they were engaged in the campaign to the point that on the night that he won, I was in Grant Park with my son, and he turned to me and he said, Mom, we did it with tears in his eyes. Because, you know, the politicians would cycle in and out of our home, we would shoot in our home all the time, it became kind of a backstage for Axelrod's company. And you know, mayors and governors and whatever everybody would kind of pass through at some point, and the children would get to meet them.

Ron Bockstahler  7:03  

You know, David Axelrod is a brilliant marketer, political media strategist is what he's doing. whatever title you give him, at the end of the day, he understands if he was running a law firm, he would know how to make that the number one law firm in Chicago. That's true. And so when we're talking to the law firms right now that are listening, the attorneys that are listening to this, they need to start thinking maybe bigger or differently about how they're going out and approaching their business in general, and marketing in today's world, and I'm actually been slow to the digital world arena, and you know, tick tock, and everything's on video. And, you know, but everyone has to embrace that, which means they got to embrace someone that can make them look really good. And help them tell their story.

Melissa Costello  7:50  

I you know, again, back to the intellectual product concept. The other thing that almost all firms want to communicate is we're worth it worth worth the money that you're spending on us. And how do they do that? They do that with the ubiquitous skyline. It's like, you know, Attorney law firms have no idea how often someone in marketing says, Don't tell me they've got a skyline right there at the top of the homepage, and the or they've got, you know, some fabulous shot of their marble clad, you know, lobby or whatever they've got. That's not what moves people to hire you what moves people to hire you. First of all, is testimonials. You know, if there's one thing to me in marketing, the biggest thing that social media shifted, is the shift from, I'll take you at your word that you're a brilliant lawyer versus ah, I want to hear it from your clients. That's what social media taught us is to go to the people who are the user of the product or the user of the service, and ask them what they think, what was their experience like? Well, it's come to the point where there is no substitute for testimonial marketing. I mean, you and I did it together. It because every time you show, a testimonial video, in a room, you have just invited your most vulnerable, most enthusiastic, you know, former clients who love to hang out with you. They're right there in the room with you. And they are absolutely consistent. Every single time they show up. They are just as brilliant as they were the last time just as effective. How can you not do that?

Ron Bockstahler  9:30  

It's funny, you brought up the skyline and you know the most of these websites, you go find the five white guys that are sitting in their suits, and that's the picture to put it on their website. But that is not the picture that gets anyone to want to work with them. And it's hosted on they missed the emotional connection. If you go to one of these, you're watching TV and a commercial comes on to donate money to dogs or to kids, you know, St. Jude's it's an emotional video play and they are raising money from people they don't know No. So it's almost like the attorneys got to catch on law firms got to understand that they got to do the same thing, they got to create emotion, when someone's going through a difficult time. And you they, they want to call you because you show that emotion, in a video on your website, anywhere that that potential client can go and see it, that's what's gonna bring them in.

Melissa Costello  10:20  

Absolutely. And when we say emotion, emotion isn't just hand wringing and tears. Emotion is a full spectrum, emotion is surprise, emotion is humor. You know, it's this whole spectrum that pulls people in, it's like, oh, my gosh, there are human beings there. They're human beings, they're this is one of the first things that you learn when you go to art school is that one of the things that defines art is surprise. And, you know, like, Oh, I didn't expect to see that, or I didn't expect to hear that. Or the surprise, in terms of a testimonial could be, oh, my goodness, somebody else has experienced that. That's emotion. That's the kind of emotion you want to build into marketing, that engages anyone who goes to your site, you can do it in a website, you can do it in collateral, you can even do it in print. You know, certainly in video, it's easier in video, because video is real time and people moving and the sound of their voice and all of it.

Ron Bockstahler  11:21  

But if you're putting together a marketing campaign, which this is what every law firm should be looking at as an all all encompassing marketing campaign, you want to have the same messaging going out there. It's just, yeah,

Melissa Costello  11:31  

well, the thing that consistency does for you, is it doesn't undo you, because it stays the same as it travels, you know, as people experience it. For instance, you know, if I do a really great video, and you put it on a really bad website, and most websites are really bad, they're just incomplete. That's the way I view it. You put it on a really bad website, a visitor to your site goes, which firm? Are they? Are they the website? Or are they the people, the brilliant people in the video? Or are they somewhere not even represented? You know, anytime you raise questions, you lose them, you lose them, if you make them stop and go hang on a minute, they're gone, they're gone. So it's your opportunity,

Ron Bockstahler  12:13  

which is interesting. You're doing digital marketing, you can measure and you'd have video out there you can measure if people are coming and talking to you from that, versus the billboard that's a big argument with you know, spending a ton of money on those billboards. Are they really effective? Well,

Melissa Costello  12:27  

you know, they're doing something Otherwise, they wouldn't still be up there. I go ahead.

Ron Bockstahler  12:32  

No, no, no, I agree. They're doing something if they're being done in conjunction with a really solid digital campaign.

Melissa Costello  12:41  

You know, I always found it just so curious that, you know, the attorneys who generally advertise on the highways are the PIO attorneys who might be causing accidents, because their billboards. So it's like, it becomes, you know, it's, you know, ethically, I don't know, I don't know, makes me wonder.

Ron Bockstahler  13:01  

Lot of questions. Let's keep, let's see, is there any one particular area of law that does better with video?

Melissa Costello  13:09  

Well, I would say yes, certainly, personal injury, big in part. Now, this is a funny thing, in part, because you've got these guys who are just run volume practices, they don't know your name, they don't know your story, they just get in the door and hand you off. And I feel like when a personal injury attorney actually demonstrates that they care, it is flying in the face of that wallpaper of billboards, and of late night TV ads that just, you know, these people why it's so clear why they're doing what they're doing. Let me put it that way. It's about money. It's about a volume practice. So it creates an opportunity for a different kind of pie attorney to demonstrate it to demonstrate it in video to demonstrate it on their website.

Ron Bockstahler  13:56  

What about family law? Let's talk family news. Some areas of law. Oh, do they all I mean, does everyone benefit from video?

Melissa Costello  14:06  

Everyone benefits from good video? Yes. You know, it's back to that. What's really expensive, what's really expensive? Is spending any kind of money on video that doesn't represent you and represent your firm. And when I say represent, I mean the why, as well as the What the Who are you? You know, so many websites, so many videos, Rob, you have the pleasure of getting to know someone through conversation, you know, the conversation you and I are having and I'm watching you nod and I'm watching a smile. That needs to be a part of what happens when you go to someone's website. That's the whole purpose. It's an introduction, so why not make it as round and compelling as possible and that means showing up with the why showing up with your humor showing up with your surprises.

Ron Bockstahler  14:57  

And when they don't. This is what we did do video together and you were amazing, because you sit, you know, they don't see you on a video. But you're the one that's asking questions. You're talking, you're having a conversation. And then the end product is that client that's giving those responses, which, you know, at least I know, for a model office suite, it was amazing. I was like, wow, this is this is crazy good at this. We have so many great clients are saying so many great things that I never would have even thought to ask those questions. And that I think, is what the benefit. That's where law firms attorneys are gonna really benefit from working with Melissa costello.com.

Melissa Costello  15:34  

Well, thank you, Ron, it's, you know, interviewing. Interviewing is an interesting skill when I started. And I had my production company in Los Angeles, and I was interviewing for Jenny Craig. And I thought it was about getting a really great list of questions. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They're not expecting this. And then go plowing through that list so diligently and hang on a minute, don't cut. Let me make sure we haven't forgotten. No, that's not what it's about what I discovered as I became, you know, a more mature and more skilled interviewer. And watched great interviewers like David Axelrod, for instance, what I discovered is, it's about being present for the dialogue. That's really what it is. If you are a good listener, you will have a good interview. Because you have to find that story. It's not something you already necessarily know when you walk into the interview. Yes, I have the basic, okay. The person went here, they were hurt in a car accident, they met this attorney, everything is good. Okay. That's not really the story. The story could be, my daughter was sick. You know, I was at risk of losing my job. I didn't know how. That's the deeper story. And that's, that's what's fun to find.

Ron Bockstahler  16:49  

Big, I'm thinking to myself, wow, you know how many people I mean, I was, and I mentioned this before, it's like, you have the opportunity to call Melissa Costello and just talk to her about putting together video, to me is amazing. We could all just reach out to you, because you've done so many celebrities, and just obviously super famous people and your experiences is unsurpassed. You are a great storyteller. So I just think it's that connection that you have, if I'm a listener, I'm going to be hanging out as soon as the show's over, I'm going I'm going to give her a call, I want to I need to have her in my office, because I need to understand how I can better connect with more clients or even better connect with my current clients.

Melissa Costello  17:26  

Thanks, Ron, so much of it is so simple. I will say this, you know, one thing I do you know, for instance, I call it videos, let me back up a second. I call it video centric marketing. Because I lead with video, I lead with your most powerful marketing tool. And then I take everything we gather on the day of the shoot, all of those stories, all of those images, all of those surprises, all of that emotion. And I share it on all media, I put it on your website, I put it in social media, I cut the video down into bite sized chunks, and I share it everywhere. And that is that is the power of consistent storytelling. I mean, I even do something on websites lately. I've been doing something I call case stories forget case studies, case stories, which means Ron box dollar came to me he had been in a car accident and buffet and I tell both sides of the story in a more complete way than I can afford to take the time to do in the video. Because the videos got to be under three minutes. And you got to finish watching it and go, Wow, I just found my law firm. You know, that's my objective.

Ron Bockstahler  18:41  

Okay, so that made me think you do different types of video because you did. You know, we had a three minute longer video branding video. And I called you and I said, I got a pitch. I'm doing a pitch. And I need a short video. And you cranked out I don't know what like a 32nd client testimonial video. I don't know exactly what you call it. But I was like, wow, like changed everything. Even I was sitting during the pitch I was sitting there going. This is amazing. changed everything. So talk to the different types of videos that are that you put together.

Melissa Costello  19:15  

Sure, sure, sure. And they're all kinds. They're the typical product that most law firms are interested in is a branding video. So it gets featured at the top of your landing page. And it's, you know, here are the big, you know, the important people in the firm you need to meet you know, here are the founders. And then here are some of their clients. Not every law firm feels comfortable putting their clients on camera. I hear this every time Oh, nobody will agree to do it. And I say you know what, when you have performed the kind of life changing business changing service that you have performed for them, they are delighted and actually honored to be asked. And by the way, they have a great time on the shoot. That's a whole other story. Like I think Your client can go if they want to. They're hanging out. They're hanging out. They're like, this is cool. I'm sorry, I lost my, I lost my thread where it was.

Ron Bockstahler  20:09  

You know? That's funny because I think I was hesitant that how many clients would sign up and say, hey, yeah, we'll come in and do video. And it was overwhelming. I think we had in two days, it was so many clients. So you're right.

Melissa Costello  20:21  

It's surprising. It's surprising. But don't you love to help someone who has done something wonderful for you? Absolutely.

Ron Bockstahler  20:30  

It's a pleasure. It's human nature.

Melissa Costello  20:32  

It is human nature. So that's your basic branding video. There's, you can also do a straight up testimonial, like you and I did together on a straight up testimonial video just clips of people saying extraordinary things. One client of mine likened it to going to your own funeral without having to die. He said the things I heard them saying I can't. What are they talking about me? Another type of video is you can do practice area videos, you can do bio videos, lino, let's talk about who you are, and why you got into law and you know, give us the whole backstory. Oh, another thing you can do is, you know, I also do animation. It not necessarily, though, actually, the Uniform Law Commission wanted to talk about an animated piece about how a uniform law gets developed, how it gets passed, you know, what that process is like? So

Ron Bockstahler  21:27  

isn't that when you talk about the bios, I mean, cut you off, but make the attorney human. Exactly making it. So that those prospective clients are going, Man, I just want I connect with this person. Yeah, you know, I mean, how often I talk to family law attorneys that it's not unusual for someone to hire someone and then leave with, you know, six months later, fire them, and jump to someone else. But if they've gone through that video, and they've had that experience, and you're human, it's very unlikely that they're going to do that.

Melissa Costello  21:56  

And I think it's especially important for legal practices, because there is a great deal of mistrust for attorneys on the street, there is not just PII attorneys, I know from my own experience, looking for a divorce attorney, how harrowing that was, if I could have gone to someone's website, clicked on a button, and countered a human being who actually seemed like they had my best interest at heart, it would have been done deal. And this is the thing, this is the thing about, there's an opportunity here for smaller firms, because big firms are not doing it either, by the way, and when they do it, they do it poorly. So you have the opportunity to not only compete with bigger firms, but to beat bigger firms, if you are doing a better job of representing who you are, what your values are, what life changing things you've done for your clients. It's I don't know why everybody isn't trying to do it. I can't get it

Ron Bockstahler  22:57  

digital marketing world that we're in today, which didn't exist 20 years ago, it has given everyone a level playing field. So if you're out there, and you're picking a business today, and if you get clients, but they're not real repeat business, and you see one firm grow, but that small solo practice has the opportunity to become just as large in today's market if they do it the right way.

Melissa Costello  23:18  

Mm hmm. And you know what, the smart ones get this, the smart ones there. It's not that they have more money. It's that they recognize that there's something missing from the way they're representing their firm and their work. They get it, they get it before others get it. And in family law, it's incredibly powerful for that reason I was talking about before that, how do I find someone I can trust? How do I find someone who I really think is going to listen? How do I find someone who doesn't view me as a case number, who really views me as a human being as a mother, you know, in a complex network that I'm trying to save and move forward in a safe way?

Ron Bockstahler  23:58  

We have so much, there's so much there. But I really want to jump into the world of TiC tock videos out there everywhere you see, I've seen a couple of attorneys that are doing their own videos and my old school thought was if you're doing something that's better than nothing, but I'm not always so sure that's the case. When you're doing in I get you try to create something low budget you're trying to get started. But it's just that I guess it's I guess you maybe want to look at what type of clients you want to go after. Mm hmm. And you bring in a professional bringing in Melissa Costello's team and creating thing and by the way, let's talk about B roll footage. So explain to people I guess maybe talk about the process. So I don't think people understand it. Just because I come in for two days. You got footage for two years of new new stuff. So let's talk how it all works.

Melissa Costello  24:46  

Well, this is you know that my style of shooting is not like anybody else's style of shooting and it's because of my layered history. I did television commercials for quite a few years and then I did political commercials for 11 years. And then I decided to take all the skills that I had learned in those two areas and distill them and create a method of shooting, that would work for a smaller budget, you know, because those were 40 5060 to 100. And, you know, the television commercials were hundreds of 1000s of dollars for a one day shoot. And, you know, without editing, by the way, and you know, the political commercials would be 4050 60,000 a day, well, that's not tenable for the average smaller firm, and I want to work with the smaller front, I want to work with a midsize firm, and help them differentiate. So, damn, I lost my train of what was that? A B roll. My style of shooting. So what I do is I, first of all, I shoot with three cameras, there are three cameras rolling all day long. I'm doing interviews all day back to back to back to back. And the other two cameras are grabbing B roll. What B roll is, it's anything that gets cut into your video, that doesn't feature a person talking on camera. So a person like a newscaster talking on camera. And by the way, this is one of the things I learned in filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute is if what you are looking at is the same thing that as what you are hearing, you are missing 50% of the opportunity to communicate, right? So talking heads, even though you need it because you need to see who is this guy? How does he move? What do I see in his eyes? That's important. But what's equally important is when you get to look at that person in their environment, not talking, what is the office look like? What are their clients look like? How do they look like? They're they have an easy relationship between each other? Can they laugh? Or is it all terribly serious? Does it look respectful? And you know, what's the demographic at this firm? Are there women? Are there people of color? What kind of you know, is there an economic diversity of clients at this firm? All of this is something that gets communicated through B roll. It's the subtext of everything that the attorney says on camera. So you know, this is why this gets into, you know, this is like film class, and I apologize, but this is why it is such a concentrated powerful tool. It's because, you know, the what's the trope, a picture's worth 1000 words, it has been estimated by Forrester Research, I think it is that a minute a video is worth like 1.8 million words or 1.7 million words. How can that possibly be true? It's because of all the things that are unspoken. What am I wearing? Do I nod when I listen to you speak? Am I do I look like a happy person? What's my environment like previous that office, I heard a train go by all of this is subtext. And it is a gift to be able to communicate some of those softer values without having to say, I'm actually a very nice person. If somebody said that on camera, you wouldn't believe them anyway. So that's the value of B roll.

Ron Bockstahler  28:20  

Here's where I get excited about you social media and video. It's so popular, but you almost have to have it. But you could do shorts, I don't know what the technical icon shorts, quick shorts of that B roll footage where everything you're communicating the atmosphere who you are without saying a word, but you can have a talk over telling another story. I bet it happens more. And I'm going to try to pay attention when I watch TV. Again, in a commercial, what I'm looking at is not someone talking but I'm looking at B roll and someone's talking. It's not the same I bet that happens 95% of the time. But using a quality operation, like what you've done. And what I've experienced with you is I can put out your shorts on social media saying New messages with that B roll that's already been shot time and time and time again. And that the more you do that, whatever the initial cost was, I mean, your ROI just is going it's going to explode. And the business you're going to bring in you at some point want to maybe pause the commercials or do those shorts going on social media because you're gonna have so much work coming in. But here's the great thing is you're running a law firm is stressful, and you got to do so many things. And one of the biggest things that attorneys have to worry about is where's my next client coming in? Because when I'm done with this, you know, it's that it's like all sales, right? The roller coaster goes up and down and things are great. I'm working, I'm busy, busy, but I'm not prospecting my getting a business off sudden, I got nothing. And I got to start the whole process again. But if you had quality video, and you're okay, let me turn my video back on let me put my short school back on social media and then I could just bring in those clients again, it's almost like turning the faucet on. Mm hmm.

Melissa Costello  29:51  

And in a funny way, you know, the pandemic and zoom has habituated people to communicating like this So I feel like videos even more important than it has ever been. I mean, we all got hooked on it, you know how it is you get on a phone call and you go, yeah, it's kind of flat, the phone is a little bit flat, it's a little empty compared to what I'd become used to communicating with you, as I see right now. You know, the other thing I want to talk about it and social media, social shorts, I agree with you, as I call them to, is, it is so economical to change them up. They are basically a 32nd television commercial or a 22nd, television commercial, they're tight. And, you know, if you create them in a group, they are incredibly affordable, really, the most expensive part is the day of the shoot, that's where the bulk of your money is going, then you've got assets that you can be rolling out, for forever, forever. I mean, unless you leave your firm like that, or you sell your firm or whatever

Ron Bockstahler  30:57  

did your firm but I mean, it's still the same day, you can just recreate using that asset as you go, I love this, you'd say it's an asset, because that's what it is. Now you actually have a marketing asset that you can reuse, you could voiceover for a very long time.

Melissa Costello  31:11  

Exactly. It's limitless. The problem, actually, the problem is coming up with the best, you know, choose the best idea for the social short, because I, you know, sitting here, the two of us could sit here and talk about a model Office suites, and in one minute have 20 ideas for social shorts. That's the challenge is trying to rein yourself in and do the best 20 That's what it is. I'll tell you,

Ron Bockstahler  31:36  

Melissa, it's only a challenge when you're sitting with someone that's creative, and understand how to tell a story. That's the difference. You know, I've worked with you I've worked with others. And that is a huge difference. And I just don't think it's prevalent. I don't think a lot of great storytellers are out there that are law firms can go to and say, I want to bring you on to tell our firm story because no one's saying it that way. So when they're saying, hey, I want a videographer to come in and shoot a video.

Melissa Costello  32:01  

i You're absolutely right. And you have to start with the story. If you don't have there's an old what, how does it go? If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. This is a Hollywood, a Hollywood or maybe it's Broadway, you know, Maxim, that, you know, if you don't have the story, you got nothing. And the same thing is true of a video. And the same thing is true of a website. And I It shocks me that even though 90 At least no, probably more like 95% of all law firm websites are indistinguishable from each other. They are all utterly generic. I mean, you go to the homepage, and you're like, give me can you give me something to sink my teeth into Please, I'm begging you. But oh, my train of thought, let me write stories. That's gonna what store gonna

Ron Bockstahler  32:53  

run out of time. Okay, here's the great news. Melissa's gonna be coming back. And we are going to co host several shows over the next two months. And we're going to focus on marketing. Marketing is such a big world is so much involved in there's so many different specialty areas. And I think if you know, the law firm, the attorneys I talked to I know or just an even myself, sometimes we're like, wow, this is so overwhelming. Where do I start? How do I go find someone, I'm going to upgrade my website, I'm going to I'm going to do some SEO, or I'm going to do some PPC, but they're not doing it all, you know, as one encompassing, you're basically then a we keep spending money, but not getting the results that in our mind, we think we should get. So we're going to try to help them with that. So Melissa, and I will be interviewing different experts in their area of marketing. Let's understand those areas. And let's find out what they need. It will be taken. I'll set it up so you can feed us Ron be at a matassa calm, you can ask questions, we'll address your questions during the shows, we're gonna have a lot of fun with talking about marketing and how you can make the most of what's out there with the resources you have. Now, I know there's you want to talk about and the investment because you know, videos, not inexpensive. Good video, it's definitely not inexpensive. It's gonna cost you some capital. But the ROI is there. I know you want to chat about that. Let's give us your take.

Melissa Costello  34:09  

Well, I would say again, because I was explaining earlier about this asset that you create isn't just a video, it creates the content for your website. It creates social media shorts that you send out on a regular basis. So you use the same asset you keep going back to and when I by the way. Another thing that I do whenever I shoot is arguably I give too much content there. There probably is such a thing run you would know. I mean, hours and hours and hours, literally eight hours of interviews with multiple people and eight hours no 16 hours because they're two cameras shooting B roll 16 hours of B roll. I know what to pull out of there. But I think I do are amortizing that shoot day across all these different chains. Animals, that is a great value, that is a terrific value. And the imagery is beautiful. And the quality of the interviews are shared over and over again. And I mean, you could send out a social short, that was nothing but a couple of quotes from people on your video, that would be really powerful just in and out done, and go, Wow. And there are so many moments like that, that we capture over the course of a day. In addition to that, I asked my clients, can you anticipate something that you'd like to talk about perhaps down the road, something you might want to add to your website, something you might want to future in social media, it could be something happening in the industry, it could be something happening in our larger culture, it could be, hey, maybe we want to get video bios in the can and use them down the road, you don't have to spend it all now that's the point. It's an investment that you can roll out, you know, over time, over years, really over years.

Ron Bockstahler  36:03  

I'm sold on it, I've just seen how it works. It's so effective. But if you want to take the risk of not having a new clients coming in the door, not having the revenue to support your lifestyle, and you know, enjoy your life, because it's all about you know, work life balance. That's what we always talk about. You got to have some video in your marketing blitz, you got also had redefine your marketing, I think, you know, meeting with Melissa, I think that is definitely the first start to understand this. Here's the other thing. I got a lie love by Melissa. It's not about oh, can I get this work? It's about how do we create? What's your story? Let's talk about your story. And let's see isn't an effective a compelling story that we can present to clients? And that's your approach, your approach is just different. It's not about oh, here's my fee, and here's what we're gonna do. No, no, no, no, it's not. Let's talk about your story. And it makes the attorney it makes your clients come out and say, Wow, let me think through what is my story.

Melissa Costello  36:56  

And it's growing things is growing things. Ron, you and I, this is one of the reasons we always have a lively conversation. We both love to grow things. We both love to make things happen for other people. I mean, when I hear back, you know, from a client, this happened not long ago, a client said, you know how you said, I can't give you an exact measurement of you know, what you can expect video to do. And she said, You're wrong. A week later, I had clients saying, you know, I am hiring you. I saw your video. And now I get what you know, I get how you're different. That's the thing. What differentiates you isn't your practice area, it's you. And that's what's palpable on video in a way that isn't palpable anywhere else. Powerful, huh, we have to

Ron Bockstahler  37:45  

wrap it up. But we will be back. I think our next show that I'm going to have is we got Micah Dylon coming on and we're going to talk about being an author, what's the value of being an author and how that sets you apart in your area of practice. So come back into the next show. But Melissa, I want to leave it back to you as the last words. Last thing you want to communicate more is yours.

Melissa Costello  38:04  

I would say show up, do whatever you can to show up in you know in your full complexity in your in the richness of who you are as an individual and who you are as a professional. And the best way to do it is on video. The most unforgettable way to do it is on video. It sticks.

Ron Bockstahler  38:23  

So Melissa, on your website, you got a quote from Mark Lebowski, any firm that doesn't have video and the best video they can afford is losing business every day. They just don't know it.

Melissa Costello  38:36  

Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Mark. Mark said it was palpable. It was a palpable shift. Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler  38:43  

it's a must have in today's digital world. Yeah, Melissa, it's been how can our listeners get a hold of you?

Melissa Costello  38:51  

They can go to my website, Melissa costello.com is my very simply the name of my company and my URL. They can take it my phone number? Absolutely. They can call me at 312305 7500 and leave a message because I don't necessarily pick up calls I don't recognize. But I do get back to people.

Ron Bockstahler  39:14  

I've always found your really, really easy to get ahold of. So give us a call. I mean best just go to Melissa costello.com. Reach out to her from there, or just continue listening to the 1958. Lawyer Melissa will be co hosting and we'll be talking about marketing. So tune in the next several shows will be dedicated to understanding marketing, what you need, how we will answer any questions. So you know, send in your questions to Ron be at a Mott ofs.com and we will address those questions. Thanks for joining us today. I look forward to hearing from you and having you on the show next month. Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Costello  39:46  

Thank you, Ron.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Marie Sarantakis is the founder of Sarantakis Law Group, LTD. She is a best-selling author, a prominent family law attorney, nationally recognized divorce coach, and the president of Adrikos, LLC. In this episode, Marie talks about narcissism in divorce court cases and defines what it really means and how it differs from mere selfish behavior. 

They also discussed how divorce coaches can give clients support beyond the courtroom as they are able to provide emotional support and a big picture analysis of the situation. Lastly, they talked about the benefits of the remote environment of the pandemic in law and how it could help with expanding your network.

Timestamps:

• Difference between a narcissist and a jerk (3:20)
• Helping a client through being victimized by a narcissist (7:00)
• Divorce coach and divorce attorneys(11:23)
• Integrating technology and practicing networking(17:00)

“You get divorced based on irreconcilable differences. Just because you married a bad person, doesn’t mean you actually get more in the divorce case.”

Sarantakis Law Group, LTD.

Website: https://sarantakislaw.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SarantakisLaw/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariesarantakis/

Marie Sarantakis, Founder of Sarantakis Law Group, LTD

Family Law

Marie Sarantakis is the founder of Sarantakis Law Group, LTD. She is a best-selling author, a prominent family law attorney, nationally recognized divorce coach, and the president of Adrikos, LLC.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariesarantakis/

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:29  

All right, welcome to the show. A good to have everyone back today we got a special guest who has a best selling author. She's a prominent family law attorney nationally recognized divorce coach, she's founded her own law firm Sarah Takus Law Group, and she's the president and re coasts LLC located in Oak Brook Marie San Takus. Murray, welcome to the show today.

Marie Sarantakis  0:48  

Thank you so much for having me, Ron.

Ron Bockstahler  0:51  

Okay, I want to get started quick. But let's give a little background You've done so much in your career already. So kindly was talking to how your family law attorney, you've written a book, How to divorce a narcissist, and when and when. And we want to talk about that kind of go through some of those things. But let's just talk about how you got to where you're at today.

Marie Sarantakis  1:07  

Sure. So you know, I come from a Greek immigrant family, my parents had businesses as I was growing up. So I've always been the type of person where work was just a normal part of life, and something that was sort of at the center. And I always knew I would own my own business one day, didn't always know what it would be. I went to law school became a lawyer. And I started my own practice about a month after I was licensed. So I jumped right in with both feet and have been a divorce attorney ever since. Wow. And successful.

Marie Sarantakis  1:42  

Thank you.

Ron Bockstahler  1:43  

 Let's go. You wrote to me, why'd you write the book, I mean, what gave you that energy, time, desire?

Marie Sarantakis  1:49  

Sure. So as far as time I just don't necessarily sleep a lot. So I like to keep busy. And I'm naturally a very creative person. And I love to build things, I love to create something out of nothing. And writing a book on divorce. And narcissism just seemed like the perfect fit. I found so many of my clients would come in talking about having a narcissistic spouse. And I felt like a lot of attorneys didn't quite understand what it meant. And that clients really were able to heal and move on, the better. They understood what it was and how to deal with it. And so I thought it was such an important topic. And when I found myself having the same conversations over and over again, I thought, this really needs to be shared with a broader audience beyond just my clients. So that's what motivated me to write the book. And it was a really fun experience to put together. So I enjoyed working on it, I typically worked very late at night. So anybody that knows me knows I'm a night owl. And you know, I would say 99% of the book was written well, after midnight every night.

Ron Bockstahler  2:57  

You know, my first question is, I can see someone's coming in, they want to get a divorce, they're unhappy, clearly, they want to leave their spouse, I would just use the term of the narcissist in a general format, probably understanding exactly what it is. Did you? Was it more of that? Or did you actually was the opposing spouse actually a narcissist.

Marie Sarantakis  3:15  

So you know, it goes both ways. I certainly think that there's a lot of people who assume their spouse is a narcissist, just because their spouse is acting selfishly, but selfishly really doesn't quite get at what somebody with narcissistic personality disorder has. That's a whole different level of depravity of cruelness. And you know, that particular disorder is much more calculated, that person needs constant stream of attention. And if things are not about them, they become very angry, and they always find a way to shift the focus about them. And somebody with narcissistic personality disorder also is all about control. They need to control everything and everyone around them to such an extent that it doesn't matter what the cost or the consequences are. Control is everything.

Ron Bockstahler  4:04  

So wow, how many clients do you think have come into your office over the past 10 plus years and said, legit, I got a narcissist, I've got to get away.

Marie Sarantakis  4:15  

Oh, I couldn't even tell you how many. But I could tell you it certainly is very common. You know, this is probably something we hear about several times each week. And what's rather interesting is you know, sometimes we see people alleging their spouse may be a narcissist, but maybe it's them. Maybe they're the one who's the narcissist themselves and are just trying to get ahead of it. Maybe their spouse has already alleged to them that that's what they believe they are. So they think, Well, if I get ahead of it and say that they're the narcissist. Now, they're less credible when they make the same allegation. You know, but at the end of the day, as far as divorce court goes, in a certain sense, it doesn't really matter, right. I see this common misunderstanding that clients feel compelled that the judge needs to know that their spouse is a narcissist, and all the evil and cruel things they've done. Now granted, some of the things may be very relevant to, let's say, parenting time and raising children, maybe affairs and spending money on that. Sure those things may be relevant to a divorce case. But the general idea that their spouse is a jerk that really doesn't come into play Illinois and no fault divorce state, you get divorced based on irreconcilable differences. Just because you married a bad person, doesn't mean you actually get more in the divorce case. Wow. Alright, so

Ron Bockstahler  5:36  

let's go back to that real quickly. Why did you go into family law because you're coming right out of law school when you started your firm?

Marie Sarantakis  5:41  

Sure, well, I sort of fell into it, I always thought I would do criminal law. But I started working with a family law firm. And basically, by the time I was ready to graduate, I had quite a bit of experience in the field. And I was also extremely involved in various bar associations. So it's kind of funny, because even though I was a law student, I think a lot of the attorneys around me assumed I was a lawyer, because they had seen me for so many years at so many places, and being so involved, they didn't quite realize that I was so young and so new in the field. And because of that, it was such a blessing because I was able to get referrals right off the bat. And that's part of the reason why I was able to open my own firm so young, because of the networks and the connections that I had made. While before my career even started.

Ron Bockstahler  6:31  

Yes, that makes me want to jump into a whole different topic, which is networking as an attorney, the valleys critical. We'll save that because I really want to get back to the book because I really want to talk about the different stages you've outlined. And I look at this as a specialty within a specialty. So you got family law, we're talking about divorce, and now we're talking about divorce specifically to someone with narcissistic behavior. And how do you help your client work get through this?

Marie Sarantakis  6:58  

Well, I think a huge part of it is knowing that somebody understands what they're going through, because narcissists tend to gaslight their victims, so they try to make the other person believe that they're going crazy that their interpretation of things are wrong. And so by the time they come and see me, oftentimes they're doubting themselves, they're doubting what they've experienced, their self confidence is hurting. And so I try to help them first and foremost, cope with the reality of their situation, and shift their focus from that other person and maybe directing anger or revenge towards them and focusing their efforts on bettering themselves. Going back to who they used to be before they were with the narcissist, and finding that person again, and pursuing their dreams, because they often feel so despondent and hopeless. To me, the most rewarding part of what I do is giving people hope again, and then seeing them on their way to the next part of their journey.

Ron Bockstahler  7:59  

Or in the by the way, you brought up sat with my wife when I was reading part of this book and gaslighting in. I asked, my wife said, You know what that means? She goes, Oh, yeah, because I used to experience that with my dad, who we've since reading your book, and he started saying that he definitely has Narcissus behaviors. How do you because it seems like a narcissist can bring that loved one back time and time again, push them away, and then bring them back? Why do you isn't attorney consulting your client? And they're kinda got to be thinking on the edge at certain times, like, oh, it's horrible. And then the next week, it's great again, how do you help them work through that and understand what's going on?

Marie Sarantakis  8:34  

Even though I'm a divorce attorney, I certainly want to see families reconcile if there's ever a hope or chance for that, I want to see that happen, right. But I never want to see somebody go back to an abusive situation. And so you know, it's a fine line, because you don't know whether the person is being physically mentally abused, right. And so if it's just a function of this going back and forth pendulum of dealing with a difficult individual, you know, we see that happen a lot. And oftentimes with the narcissist, they can be on their best behavior for a short period of time, right? So we may see them stay all the right things and take all the right actions to win that person back over and say, Oh, I don't want to be because they don't want to get divorced to them. It doesn't fit into their perfect narrative. They want to appear as though they have the perfect family unit. And they would much rather drag their spouse along and have their spouse just put up with anything and everything that they do all their bad behavior. So what they'll do is for example, let's say a divorce case is pending. And things may not be going their way in the divorce. And so they'll the son hmm, maybe I'll try to charm my spouse back. You know, maybe they'll reconcile and we'll pull back the divorce proceeding. And oftentimes that happens, but sadly we also see a high rate of those people refiling sometime later really just starting over back at the beginning, but now, the narcissists knowing what direction things were heading, maybe doing sneaky things behind the scenes, hiding more money getting better at, you know, concealing this bad behavior. So that can be very dangerous, you know, and one option that clients have, if they're married to a spouse and considering reconciliation, I always offer the option. certain counties have what's called a reconciliation calendar, which basically means we pause the proceedings. So their initial filing is still pending. But we're not going to court every 3045 days, we may wait a few months and go back and give the court an update. At that point, we can tell the judge, look, we've reconciled and we want to take the case off call pull back a petition for dissolution, or judge we tried to reconcile it didn't work. We need to go forward with the divorce case.

Ron Bockstahler  10:51  

Let's jump in. Because you're also a nationally recognized divorce coach, talk about what you're doing in that role. You got a firm? That's a separate firm from your law practice,

Marie Sarantakis  11:00  

correct? Exactly. Yes. A Dracos. 

Ron Bockstahler  11:04  

Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about what you're doing there? And are you working with clients that are non clients of your law firm?

Marie Sarantakis  11:12  

Yeah, so I never coach my law clients, I always keep that very separate. But I do recommend that all my law clients have a divorce coach, if it's possible. So divorce coach is someone you work with, let's say on a more personal level than your attorney, your attorney is there to help you through the litigation, they go to court, they file pleadings, their end goal is to get you in and out of the case with the greatest settlement possible, right. But divorce attorneys aren't necessarily the best people, they're not your best friend to just have conversations with about the divorce proceeding in general, if it's not necessarily law related. So sometimes people just need to talk about these things and work through various scenarios. A divorce coach doesn't give any legal advice. But they have a great deal of experience in divorce proceedings, and really can help someone with the whole process and looking at things very big picture. And helping people understand where to focus their efforts and energies, and what things may not be worth dealing with.

Ron Bockstahler  12:17  

So typically, I actually didn't realize there was a role of a divorce coach, Coach, I should have, I guess, I never thought about it. It's just a divorce

Marie Sarantakis  12:23  

coach can save clients substantial money with their divorce attorney, because generally speaking, you're going to be paying the divorce coach, less per hour. And because they really help you get focused on what's important in the case, they may be able to narrow down the issues for you.

Ron Bockstahler  12:40  

Wow, that's so you think every Have you just said it, every person getting divorced, should have a coach on their side?

Marie Sarantakis  12:47  

I think everyone can benefit from one certainly now, you know, it may not be an option, right? Because I understand that everybody's financial situation is different. And the more people you have working on a case, the more expensive things tend to get. But on the flip side, again, a divorce coach could save you potentially 1000s of dollars. Wow, I'm gonna have

Ron Bockstahler  13:07  

to look, that's a whole nother world for me. So you're working with other family law attorneys, as they might be the attorney in a case, but you might be the coach in the case?

Marie Sarantakis  13:14  

Correct? Exactly. You know, and sometimes what we work on is helping people communicate better. Maybe they just are so used to speaking to each other in such a derogatory and hostile manner, that it's really creating more and more issues in the case. So sometimes it can be that simple. I'm also parenting coordinator. So I help parents work together to put their kids best interests first, above their own above the litigation. And when we see a conflict, let's say maybe outside of a traditional divorce case that's pending, sometimes parenting coordinators are assigned to couples in order to help them afterwards sometimes even during the litigation, if need be

Ron Bockstahler  13:55  

centrally. So that's a dri COAs separate LLC from the law practice. Now, how big is that? I mean, how big how many clients you taking on on your coaching side on an annual basis? You know,

Marie Sarantakis  14:06  

it always varies. That's hard to say, because it's always different, right. And part of it is, you know, basically, I'm working so much with my law practice as well, that I have to be careful the volume of clients that I take on in both businesses. So I do very careful screenings before I accept any clients for either business, because I want to make sure that these are people who would benefit from my services and walk away feeling that I actually helped them because sometimes it may not be a good fit. And I think those initial meetings, those initial consultations are absolutely critical to make sure that everybody's on the same page and has the same expectations. Oh,

Ron Bockstahler  14:45  

you really don't sleep?

Marie Sarantakis  14:47  

Correct. I told you

Ron Bockstahler  14:49  

where you're a frequent lecturer. You're an author in the legal community. You I mean, you're doing a lot of engagements. You're out there as an expert, talking to people helping other attorneys helping your clients. Yeah, you're putting a lot in this hole. and your rising star Thompson router Super Lawyers had you as a rising star you were named the top 10 family law attorneys under 40 in Illinois. Very impressive.

Marie Sarantakis  15:08  

Thank you very much.

Ron Bockstahler  15:10  

Thank you back. Let's go back to the book because I loved the book. It was so educational. For me, I want to talk a little bit about co parenting with the narc give us a few tips.

Marie Sarantakis  15:17  

Sure. So you want to keep very accurate and detailed records when it comes to your spouse's behavior. So what you tend to find is narcissists want to act like they're the super parent, they're what I call often the Disney World parent, right? They're going to take kids on the trip, buy him a puppy, give them ice cream for dinner, and they're going to try to win the kids over to their side. And then you find when they start to feel they're getting a strategic advantage in the divorce case, or the efforts are no longer worth it, they really kind of pushed the kids aside, and you know, maybe ice cream for dinner Disneyland and a puppy isn't what's in the kids best interest, you know. So a lot of times their behavior comes from a very selfish place, and being very self interested in not putting the kids first. So you want to make very careful records, because while they act as though they're the perfect parent, you'll find that they slip up a lot. So for example, they may fight you to get all this parenting time, and they want to be this super parent. But then once what they they actually get it, they don't exercise this time. And they say, Oh no, you watch the kids, oh, sorry, I can't, oh, I'm going on a trip, oh, I've got a business meeting. So if that parent isn't actually following the parenting time schedule that they wanted, so desperately during the pendency of the case, document that because you may be able to go to court and change it at a later time, if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Ron Bockstahler  16:43  

Wow, I gonna have to after the show, I have to thank my wife for being such a perfect mom and wife. Absolutely. This is interesting. Tell me about your law for a little bit. I mean, are you you're doing so much, I've got to think you've integrated technologies into your law firm, to keep up with everything,

Marie Sarantakis  17:00  

very much. So. So zoom has been a wonderful blessing, you know, it's made everything so much more efficient. Most of the counties that we currently practice in, are using zoom for a majority of court appearances, they're still the occasional trial or hearing that is in person. But you know, we're saving our clients so much time and money by being able to hop onto the computer, and really cut to the chase. You know, in the old days, for example, I would have to one drive to the courthouse, so there was that travel time, then I would have to if I was in Chicago park downtown, so now I'm paying for parking garage, then I would you know, let's say go to the Daley center, you know, wait a little bit to get up to the elevators get to the floor, I need to go to maybe wait in front of 40 people to have my case get hurt. So in order to talk to the judge for maybe even 10 minutes, there would be substantial amount of prep time that went into that behind the scenes. Now, when we have our scheduled time to appear in front of the court, we log into the Zoom, the judges there were there, we say our part, and then we log off. So it really does save an inordinate amount of time.

Ron Bockstahler  18:12  

So I mentioned I think the practice of law is changing drastically, especially with the pandemic and people realize that they can practice from anywhere. And clients aren't saying, Hey, I'm going to come into your office like they used to

Marie Sarantakis  18:24  

write, I would say at this point, you know, I've not met a majority of my clients, which if you would have told me that was the case. Three years ago, I would have said, that's impossible. How can that be people want to meet their attorneys, they want to know their attorneys. But what I found is we're really able to replicate so much through telephone and through zoom, that it really does feel like you get to know them. And you know, like if clients say to me, they want to meet in person. I'm happy to do that. But I think there's such a benefit on both sides. I rarely have that be the case. Occasionally I'll have a client, who isn't that tech savvy, who may say to me, Look, if we're going to hearing or proving up, which means concluding a case? Can I come into your office and do the zoom there? Can you help me out with that part? Because I don't want to miss my court appearance. But a majority of everything we do is all remote?

Ron Bockstahler  19:17  

Or what happens when the courts open back up? Do you foresee I'm going to trials? I imagine you're gonna go back in person, but I don't know. What else do you see going back in person, if anything?

Marie Sarantakis  19:26  

Sure. Well, I certainly hope it doesn't for the reasons that I stated. But you know, it's certainly a possibility. And I think we're also going to see some sort of element that there's always going to be a remote part of this. I don't think we can unlearn the things that we did these last couple of years. And it's been such a fantastic learning experience and efficiency. That for example, we have these routine court appearances called statuses and statuses are where we report to the court what's going on in a case what we're working On maybe what the problems are and where we're going next. And the judge then decides what to do with the case moving forward. So statuses, you know, that's not necessarily something where judges making a ruling or making a decision, they just want to hear an update from the attorneys. So for things like statuses, I would imagine a lot of counties are going to continue to do those remotely, because why not? They seem to be working very well that way. But I could see how there are certain times where maybe credibility is an issue or technology could be an issue where if something is being decided that day, the judge may want to hear from the parties and see them in person to make a judgement,

Ron Bockstahler  20:42  

which would make sense and they would have, obviously, they got the ability to do that. So we're gonna have a meeting in person. It's interesting, because are we looking at a difference in genres, age differences, the way people are looking at how things are going to emerge after this pandemic? You know, it's

Marie Sarantakis  20:57  

interesting, in the very beginning, I would say there may have been initial reluctance to older attorneys on Zoom. But I'm finding that's very much changed over the last few months, everybody's gotten used to it. So I think that learning curve is behind us. And everybody can appreciate how nice this has become even the people that initially wanted to go back in person, and missed maybe that camaraderie and that human element of going to court. You know, I think we all became a little spoiled and saying, Wow, I don't know if we really miss sitting in traffic that badly. Graphics just getting worse.

Ron Bockstahler  21:34  

so many people don't want to take public transportation. I arrived in Chicago, I would say two weeks ago, last time I was in Chicago, and I parked it on like the 14th floor of the garage, they can what's going on? Wasn't this busy pre pandemic?

Marie Sarantakis  21:47  

Right now, it's definitely picking back up again, people are out there, people are doing things.

Ron Bockstahler  21:54  

You do a lot of networking, but where else are you getting clients from?

Marie Sarantakis  21:58  

A majority of my clients all come from referrals. So it's either a previous client that I had was satisfied with my services, and they've told a relative a family member or a friend, or referrals from other attorneys. So that's really the main thrust of where almost all my business comes from. I mean, sure, we get calls from people, you know, Google, maybe reading the book, whatever. And it may or may not be the right fit, right. But I think the people that are referred to me from someone else, they know a lot about me going into it. So by the time they call me, they know they need my services, and they know what they want. It's interesting.

Ron Bockstahler  22:34  

I had Michael Dylon on the show recently, and Michael helps law attorneys write books. And it was ironic because I know you I think I asked you and you didn't work with him you did your book on your own. But how often, you know, in his, I guess his pitch would be when you have a happy client, you just finished a divorce, you hand them three books instead of a business card and say, if you got a friend going through difficult times, haven't read my book. Is that a legitimate scenario for you?

Marie Sarantakis  23:00  

I like that idea. Oh, absolutely. I think that's a great thing to do. Because, you know, it's all about connections and relationships, and you want to be able to help people, and what a tangible way to hand off a case and that clients going to remember you and what you did, and maybe help someone else moving forward.

Ron Bockstahler  23:21  

Well, I gotta tell you, when I first talked to you, and then you'd mentioned your book, actually went to your website now that I think about it. And it's one of the first things I sent seen on your website, I immediately ordered your book. Because, yeah, just the title. I said, I've got to read this book, I just I know nothing about narcissism. But it just drew me in saying, okay, she's an expert in this. If someone's going through a difficult divorce, there's a good chance there's a narcissist on one side of them. One side of the divorce, I would say I need to get Marie involved. That's the first thing that went through my mind. And I

Marie Sarantakis  23:53  

do think it's very important that attorneys try to distinguish themselves in some particular way, right? We all have our strengths. We all have our specialties, the things that we deal with more often than others. And whatever those things are, it's important to have those things be known because again, just like I said it earlier, it's important that you find the right fit between attorney and client, you can have a wonderful client and a wonderful attorney doesn't mean they should necessarily work together. There's that human element that is so critical that you've got to make sure that their personalities and their goals align.

Ron Bockstahler  24:28  

Right. It's easy to see why you are a rising star and why you've got so many accolades out there talking to you is just very easy to talk to you. So I am, like I said, super happy. Got a chance to have you on the show. I want to give you a last chance, what would you like words or anything you want to leave our audience with?

Marie Sarantakis  24:45  

Well, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to be on your program. I think you have an excellent show and it helps so many people so thank you for doing what you do.

Ron Bockstahler  24:54  

Absolutely. I appreciate that. Best way for our listeners to contact you

Marie Sarantakis  24:59  

Sure. They can call my office my law firm at 630-796-0000. Or they can visit my law firm website, Sarah and Takus, law.com sar, A and T. AK is law calm,

Ron Bockstahler  25:18  

and how to divorce a narcissist. And when you could find the book on Amazon, you can go to Marie's website and order. I think you order through Amazon when you go to your website, is that correct?

Marie Sarantakis  25:27  

Correct? Yes, yeah. It's also available Barnes and Noble and other major retailers that sell

Ron Bockstahler  25:33  

I highly recommend if you're an attorney, and you've got clients that might be going through, or you might be going through divorce, referred to Marie and definitely get the book, read the book and understand things that are in it. I think it's enlightening. Marie, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. It's been wonderful. I wish you all the best going forward. I think I'm going to I think we'll hear your name a lot over the next 20 or 30 years in the practice of law. So I'm glad I got you on the show early.

Marie Sarantakis  25:57  

Thank you so much, Ron. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Ron Bockstahler  26:00  

Thank you, everyone. Have a great evening. We'll see or good, great day and we'll talk to you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Nate Dinger is the Senior Vice President of Commercial Banking at Signature Bank - he helps small, mid sized businesses, and law firms in Chicago manage their finances. Often times lawyers don’t have any time to take care of their own firm’s financial concerns so Nate, along with Signature Bank, helps them through financial advise, management and even through giving out loans for cases - which is uncommon since banks usually see court cases as high risk situations. 

Nate also talks about their company vision and focus of being a relationship-based bank. He discusses the big difference between knowing a guy or a gal and calling a generic phone number since people feel more valued when talking to a legitimate person than a service line. 

Timestamps:

• How lawyers can benefit from commercial banks (3:10)
• Relationship-focused banking (10:41)
• Financing cases through commercial banks (16:01)
• Character as the most important of the four C’s(20:16)

“When the suns shining and everything's going fine, you might not need them. But on a rainy day, when things get shaken up a bit, it certainly helps to have a warm body to call.” Nate Dinger

Connect with Nate:

Website: http://www.signature-bank.com/index.cfm

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinger/

Nate Dinger, Senior Vice President, Division Head - Commercial Banking at Signature Bank

Commercial Banking

Nate Dinger is the Senior Vice President of Commercial Banking at Signature Bank - he helps small, mid sized businesses, and law firms in Chicago manage their finances.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinger/

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:29  

Okay, welcome to the show. I'm your host Ron box dollar. And today we have Nate dinger, Senior Vice President and division head at Signature Bank, a commercial bank located in chicago primarily in Chicagoland area, helping small midsize businesses, Chicago and law firms in Chicago. So they have a special niche. Nate, welcome to the show.

Nate Dinger  0:47  

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Ron Bockstahler  0:48  

Yeah, we're gonna try to get through this without me butchering everything I say. But hey, let's talk about you a little bit. You've been with the bank for just over 16 years. Now, let's talk about how you got there. Yes,

Nate Dinger  0:59  

I got here, I took a job with a much smaller community bank, you know, a long time ago, and that bank no longer exists. It was fell victim to the first recession a little while ago. And But in that process, one of my clients, new Mecca work our CEO in May, the introduction signature was a much smaller place back then. And, you know, I jumped on board, I was young and willing to take the risk to a newer bank. And you know, it's been a lot of fun. It's been a fun ride since then.

Ron Bockstahler  1:26  

Awesome. And you're Wabash man, you and I were talking that before the show. So what's it mean to be a wall bash? Man? Can you explain it to our Chicago listeners who don't know?

Nate Dinger  1:35  

Sure? Sure, sure. So I think it means a lot to me, that's for sure. So for those of you that don't know, while Bash is a smaller, all male liberal arts college in Crawfordsville, Indiana, to great school, very tight network of alums. And, you know, it's a place where I learned to think, and, you know, you have small class sizes, where you're oftentimes, you know, under 1010 students in a class, you're interacting directly with your professors who challenge you on a day to day basis. And it really helps not only, you know, get a college degree, but I think, learn to think and, you know, help you, you know, help you grow up during the college process, so meant a lot to me.

Ron Bockstahler  2:11  

And to me, it says, You got great Midwestern values, which I know is one of the big things that Signature Bank, Let's chat a little about Signature Bank, what sets you guys apart from other banks?

Nate Dinger  2:20  

Sure. So I think there's a few factors. Number one is that we are strictly a commercial bank, and we're a relationship focused. Our bank was founded by three former LaSalle bankers that, you know, left there when Bank of America bought them and kind of pushed their group up market, you know, bigger deals, that sort of thing. And what we really value is the owner operated business where we can sit down with decision makers, you know, learn how their business takes, learn how they make money, and hopefully form a partnership. So 10 years from now, we'll still be in business will be bigger and better. And so will they and, you know, we'll be a value add partner, rather than just a money center.

Ron Bockstahler  2:59  

So Nate, how do you guys work with law firms, law firms kind of unique in what they need and what they do? So how does your Signature Bank really molded into let's face it, I got a reference to you from an attorney who's a good friend of mine said you got to talk to Signature Bank, the one of the best banks in Chicago for a lawyer.

Nate Dinger  3:14  

So sure, sure. So we've got a lot of different programs for law firms, given that no two law firms are identical, and none of them are exactly alike. So, you know, from your, your typical, you know, call it corporate law firm that, you know, has accounts receivable, so on and so forth. We've got programs designed for that type of firm, and we have a niche on the plaintiff side, that contingency fee firms that I don't think a lot of banks really appreciate, given the lumpy nature of their cash flow and the potential risk of losing a case here and there. We've developed a lot of specific programs around that, and not many banks, taking the time to understand how those businesses work. So I think that's something that that really sets us apart. We're also not scared of, you know, service industry clienteles, a lot of banks don't like that they like assets that they can touch, they like a building or a vehicle or something of that nature. But we really value service companies where we can meet the individuals learn how they work. And, you know, for lack of a better term, some cases, you know, we're betting on the jockeys and not the horses. So we understand the people that are running those institutions that I don't think a lot of banks really appreciate.

Ron Bockstahler  4:21  

Here, you bring up. I mean, basically, you're but you're an asset based lending institution. And if you're a law firm, your cases are your assets. Can you talk to how you guys look at a law firms cases? And how are they valued as an asset?

Nate Dinger  4:35  

Sure, sure. So there's a couple of different ways that you can, you know, put a value on and the first one is you take a look at the expenses that the firm has, has invested into their portfolio. So oftentimes, you'll see several 100,000 You know, million dollars, whatever it may be invested into a portfolio of matters and to us seeing that the firm has invested not only their time, but their dollars into these cases. How Get as comfortable. It also, in most cases, they don't have all their eggs in one basket. So, you know, diversification is an important thing for us in most situations that if something does go sideways, and heaven forbid, there's a loss, you know, at a trial or case settles for an amount less than the client had hoped for, that there's still work remaining that can, you know, get the clients pay, keep the firm running and, you know, ultimately get the bank paid back as well. We also firms in more in the mass tort, or class action space, we can value the projected proceeds from some of the larger the larger mass torts, larger cases out there, and lend back a percentage of the expected proceeds, you know, to those firms to help with, you know, their working capital, their ongoing expenses, and or continuing to build their portfolio. So those are just a couple of the different ways that we look at those.

Ron Bockstahler  5:51  

Some of them, can you talk to a little of some of the products, the loan types, your partner buy in buy? Let's, let's see firm acquisition loans, plan of early access loans, you guys, are you playing in those areas?

Nate Dinger  6:05  

Absolutely. Yeah, those all the above, I guess, would be the box check. You know, to that question, we do them all, every situation is a little bit different. You know, here's one that we're a unique loan that we're doing just as an example, right now, we've got a client that has a large verdict against a money good defendants, which has been appealed. And insurance company has offered to ensure their verdict in the event that something gets overturned in the appellate court or whatnot. So we're looking to help them finance the premium, which is a hefty sum, to ensure that case, and that's just one of the creative products, if you will, we have out there. But as far as you know, looking for a box to check to fit a firm into we don't really have one, we take a look at every, every firm and evaluate them individually, because it's tough to really, you know, although they both may be to plaintiff firms or baby to, you know, pick another genre, you know, they all don't operate the same. So we want to make sure we really understand each one and that, you know, its own merits, you know, can support we're looking to do.

Ron Bockstahler  7:05  

So now let's talk to some of the attorneys that are listening, and what should they be doing to prep or, you know, set up their law firm to be able to go out and work with a Signature Bank or receive the best, best quality financing for cases they're working on? What can they be doing today? If even before they have those cases?

Nate Dinger  7:24  

Absolutely. So I think the first thing is your financial reporting and your organization around your portfolio. Many times we get an introduction to a firm, and they really don't have good books and records demonstrating the portfolio of cases that they have. So we always recommend outside of just tracking the expenses that have gone into them, track your timeline, you're reasonably, you know, estimated timeline of resolution for the cases, and then kind of high low it, I know what the popular thing for firms to do is and the low end, we expect to settle for x, or on the high end, if things go well, we anticipate why having an organized set of financials really helps, it can speed up the process immensely. So you don't have to create them once you go out looking for financing. And it helps the loan officer individual looking at the case, understand things and you know, kind of tell the story to any sort of approval committee helps us tell the story a little bit better if things are organized,

Ron Bockstahler  8:15  

you know, when the PPP loans came out last year, year and a half ago. And we my model, you know, we did a lot of webinars to help our law firms receive those loans. And we ran into several of them that hadn't done their taxes in going two years back. And I was I was a little surprised. But did you guys run into the same things I know you guys participated, you helped a lot of your clients with those programs. Did you see that? And then is that something that they should? I mean, they gotta look to how do they avoid that? I

Nate Dinger  8:42  

guess? Yeah, so we did run into that. And I would not just with law firms. But you know, with a number of our different clients. Thankfully, we were able to to work with everybody, we got 100% of our clientele, PPP that wanted it. So it was a big success story. From our end, we were very proud. It was some long days, it's a long night, you know, working 1214 16 hour days to ensure that everybody was going to get their funding, because if you think back, it's not that long ago, but it was very chaotic. And nobody knew what was coming next. We didn't know when the courts would open again, that sort of thing. So it was a priority for us to work with our clientele. But to your first point about you know, filing the tax returns and things I you know, it's a best practice for any type of business to to get the financials filed in a timely manner in professional service areas, unfortunately, are ones that, you know, some of the best lawyers in the world and some of the best doctors in the world are busy doing their thing day to day. They're busy treating patients or representing their clients and forget to do the backend things. So yeah, I think making that a priority. It certainly helps if you're looking for for financing.

Ron Bockstahler  9:42  

You know, Nate, I'll say another thing that surprised me as we're helping attorneys get the PPP loans. Several of them are with large banks and their, you know, solo or partner practice law firms, and they're with Chase and PNC, and they couldn't get anyone on the phone. So they couldn't even talk to someone about how they can apply for that loan. And I thought Why are you with that bank? It's not an appropriate bank for this your size of operation. I mean, you're less than $5 million, your operation? You know, that's where I think Signature Bank can really it really steps up and says, No, we'll talk to you to kind of talk to how you guys handle customer service and why you different from, you know, let's beat up on Chase and PNC.

Nate Dinger  10:19  

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the biggest difference is here, you work with people, you don't work with one 800 numbers, or anything along those lines, you'll always have a person's number to call him, you know, most of the time you have multiple people you can reach out to so you know, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, you know, you've got three or four other folks that you can call while I'm in the hospital, you know, probably hiring one of your lawyers to represent me. And that's that's been, you know, Mission one from day one, it signatures were a relationship focused institution, you know, big banks are, they're good for what they do, you know, the capital markets and things of that nature, they do it well. But I think PPP was a really good value prop, I guess, call it a validation for banks like ours, that we really did step up. In helped, we helped a lot of companies that came from big banks that were either told no, we're not going to process your application, or come back in two weeks, because we don't have time to handle the volume. We said, you know, what we're happy to help and stepped in and helped quite a few new clients for signature, you know, get their PPP funding, we help with the main street program, several other things along the way over the last couple years. But it's true, if you're at a bank, whether big or small, and you don't have a person to call, you're probably doing yourself a disservice. Because you know, when sun shining and everything's going fine, you may not need them. But on a rainy day, you know, when things get shaken up a bit, it certainly helps to have a warm body to call.

Ron Bockstahler  11:39  

And that's so I've owned a model office suite now for 20 years. And I've always had a call someone I call an individual, it's never been with a big bank. And when the bank a couple of times this has happened, the bank got bought by a bigger bank, and my banker, I just moved with my banker. And I was surprised that so many law firms didn't have a banker that they knew. So So I think hopefully, after this show, there are gonna be picking up the phone and calling you and calling your team and saying, Okay, we need to have I guess, let's answer this question. What are the hesitations for a lawyer, a small law firm, not to want to go with a small bank, what historically have been the things that you've heard?

Nate Dinger  12:17  

You know, over the historically it was location, you know, we're commercial held, we only have three offices. So we're not on every street corner, like a chase or a BFA. But with technology these days, you can deposit checks from your phone, from your desk anywhere. So you know, and the need for cash, actual cash has gone down significantly over the last, you know, call it 10 years. So a lot of the previous, you know, hesitation factors, you know, don't don't exist anymore. Or some people think that, oh, you know what, we're too small. Nobody really cares about us, or nobody will appreciate our business. And that couldn't be further from the case. You know, we appreciate every client Big or small, you know, and they're all treated the same way. You'll always have, you know, dedicated account officers, our technology is also second to none, given that we're not on every street corner, and we do business, primarily Chicagoland, but across the US, our online platform is, like I said, second to none, you can do any and everything that you could with the bigger bank with us these days. And we have to remain competitive in the tech space. Because because of that factor, our clients need to make the deposits they need to do everything that those places offer. But we offer all that plus, you know, a face and a handshake.

Ron Bockstahler  13:27  

It's funny, you say that I remember thinking I came back, I had my family out in Hawaii in January of 2020. And we came back and you know, the pandemic happened. And I would say going into August, September, I still had the cash, maybe it was $100 in my pocket that I had back in January because I hadn't spent cash and you know, while that cash has gone now, but I really haven't spent cash since because, you know, as you said, things have changed. We don't need an ATM on every corner. We don't eat cash all that much. So the needs of I think that's just the changing times. And law firms need to understand that they need to change also. So it opens the door to you know, quality banks, where you can actually talk to a person you know, your own person on a regular basis like Signature Bank, talk about it. Let's go the one big things that I do hear a lot of attorneys talking about that's or IOLTA accounts. And I know you guys have a lot of experience working with them and IOLTA accounts kind of talk about how you set those up. And you know why they want to go with you for their IOLTA accounts.

Nate Dinger  14:24  

Sure. So I think you know, we first things first, we really value and appreciate the law firms and understand the importance of these accounts. We know that things have to be you know, they have to be a well oiled machine and they can't have any hiccups. They can't have overdrafts, that sort of thing. So we from the very front end, understand and appreciate the importance of the IOLTA accounts. We take care of all the reporting that's required to the state meaning paying the interest sweeping it to, to them, so they're they're covered on that and we also have very robust fraud protection. It's ramped up, you know, even higher than normal for for a Catholic We do understand the appreciation of them for several different fraud prevention tools that we offer, and many layers you can you can stack on, to ensure that nobody gets their hands on, on your money. And, you know, from time to time that happens, you know, lawyers write a lot of checks to, to their clients and things. And every now and again, that gets in the wrong hands, but we do everything in our power to protect it when that happens. And you know, we've gotten a lot of business over the years, from lawyers that have had issues elsewhere. And, you know, then got referred to us because we do, you know, understand the importance of them. So, yeah, it's something we, we take seriously. And we also appreciate the firms trusting us, you know, with those accounts.

Ron Bockstahler  15:40  

So Nate, the attorney that referred me to you how I met you, as she's a personal injury law firm and just couldn't say enough good things. What are some of the special things you guys can do for personal injury law firms, or contingency for sci fi firms? Like I guess, they're more than just personal injury? So I should expand that?

Nate Dinger  15:57  

Sure, sure. So the number one thing that we do to those firms is we lend money, which is fairly unusual. If you talk to a lot of banks that have law firm clientele, the first thing they're going to ask you for is, let me see your accounts receivable aging, or something like that. And these firms don't generally have accounts receivable. So that's step one, we understand that, and we have our own set of metrics in things that we look at to value those firms. And on the flip side, lend them lend them money for their case expenses, or, you know, to help finance working capital, while they have resolved cases that are waiting to find, because oftentimes, these cases can have anywhere from, you know, 60 day to an 18 month tail on them, everything's resolved, you know, the money is going to be paid, it just takes forever to work through the process. The last 18 months, especially things got a long gated as courts were closed, and judges were unavailable and things like that. So those are things that signature understands and puts into the equation for financing that I don't think a lot of other competitors do.

Ron Bockstahler  16:58  

Now, that was definitely set you apart. I think it's very hard for a lot of law firms to find the financing they need to take on some cases. So great point. Let's chat about you guys are Chicago based. I mean, I know you're all across the country, but you really focus you take care of people in Chicago, let's talk about some of the organizations that you guys are out there supporting. Because I know that's a it's very important to a lot of the law firms out there that want to they're doing the same thing that make sure they take care of their, their hometown with you. Well, sure, sure. That with a little bit of a you know, I know Mr. Corey, I know you guys, but you guys got a long list, what are a few that really want it? Let's talk on?

Nate Dinger  17:29  

Yeah, so Ms. accordion is in a, you know, it's funny, we're, they're, they're pink, and you know, we, we count the money on their candy days, you know, when they collect other change. And you guys see, I'm getting your jelly beans and stuff out there. It's a really fun, you know, fun time of the year for us, because you really see the impact on a first hand basis is when they're all in, they're dumping their change in that sort of thing. So that just a great cause, you know, I was just at a gala last week for nonprofit schools called Instituto, and it's in the west side of Chicago. And we were there for their fundraiser. You know, there's quite a few different organizations, we really support the Evans scholar Foundation, which is a caddy scholarship for a needs based scholarship for kids that caddy and it's a full ride for four years for the individuals that qualify, and it's such it's a life changing thing for the kids that that get it, you know, we help with boys old girls hope, Mercy Home this lot. You know, it's really fun to see all the different organizations that are that our executive team and our, you know, our lending staff are involved with, I can go on for a while on all of these things you can tell they gets me excited. But yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun thing to do.

Ron Bockstahler  18:34  

Absolutely. I mean, look, I've been through your website, I've talked to some people within the organization, I know you guys are doing a lot for the community. So thank you very much, everyone. Appreciate that. But also, that's another reason why I think a lot of our law firms need to call you guys and talk about let's work with the firms that are helping our community. I think that's top priority, we got to be thinking about that. So I know you work with a lot of law firms, you know, what are some of the things you're seeing today, as far as what's changing in the business of law?

Nate Dinger  19:00  

You know, I think we're specifically today and or even the last 18 months, the closures really, the core closures really hurt a lot of our clientele. They just, they have a nice portfolio of cases and good cases and things of that matter, but they couldn't get things moved along. So both for their clientele that either needed the money or you know, needed help, they weren't able to do so. And it's not through any fault of the law firms. It's just kind of the, the crazy, hopefully once in a lifetime situation that we were in addition for signature, you know, we didn't panic, you know, we understand that these things are really out of out of our client's control. So we found ways to work with every single one of them. You know, I think the law firm industry as a whole, you know, it's funny, it's viewed as a high risk entity in banking terms. You know, we're very heavily regulated, you know, business and certain types of companies are considered high risk and a lot of that has to do with their law firms are handling money on behalf of their clients and a lot of have, in some situations a lot of money on behalf of their plants. So those types of things are a red flag for our auditors and any sort of governmental agency saying, Oh, how do we make sure things are on the up and up, and, you know, that's something that we take very seriously. And, you know, we know all of our clientele and are able to help them. And you know, kind of navigate some of those roads in the event there ever are issues, you know, every now and again, client will get their IOLTA account out of balance, you know, just by mistake or a bookkeeping error, you know, they cut a check for $10,000 instead of $1,000. And those are the things that we can help them clean up because it's getting more and more important and more heavily scrutinized as time goes on.

Ron Bockstahler  20:40  

So last, I think, a couple of things. I'm going to give you the last word, but I heard, I think it must have been a video with your CEO MC O'Rourke talking about character and the things you guys you know who you're banking with. And it might have been one of your videos where you guys talk about it's not the company, the law firm that pays the loan back, it's the owner, it's the individual. So talk to the character, talk to what you're looking for, as far as when you're out there meeting the right people, that's going to be the right let's call it the right law firm lawyer for Signature Bank.

Nate Dinger  21:09  

I think that's probably the most important see, if you will, you know, they in banking, you talk about credit, you talk about character, you talk about, you know, there's the four C's, but I think characters is number one, we like to look everybody in the eye and shake their hand, and really learn who they are, you know, how their firm operates. And you know, what they value and, you know, nine times out of 10, if we're on the same page with the owner of the firm, or the, you know, the different partners, we can find a way to help and it's just one of those, you know, call it old school, call it whatever you want one of those things that we'll never stop doing. Because we find it it's one of the most important things we do on a day to day basis is to get to know our get to know our clients.

Ron Bockstahler  21:51  

I think that's I think it just that's important in life know, dealing with the right people working with the right people. And you're right, I don't think that'll ever change. Right? A lot of a lot of things.

Nate Dinger  22:01  

Yeah, our CEO, he's got a couple of the cliche, but he says I got a guy. And if I don't have a guy, I need to have a guy that has a guy that I can I can talk to it's his old school way of of doing business, but you know what works? It's what I believe in as well. So rather than having a one 800 Number, you know, now you got a guy if you're listening to this, or gal do we have plenty of women on our team too, but I'd have be happy to be that guy. Well, now

Ron Bockstahler  22:25  

that anyone's listening to this show any lawyer out there listen, and now they got Nate, you got nature banker give Nate a call. They last word, what do you want the last word you want to leave our audience with about yourself about Signature Bank? Yeah, I

Nate Dinger  22:36  

think the number one thing we'd like to leave with the audience is that we are committed to this space, the legal, the legal space is something we really value and enjoy doing. You know, we talked about the individuals earlier, and it's probably some of the most fun clients that I have in this space as well. So I'd like the audience to know that they can call me about anything, whether it's, you know, I've got a deal in place with my current bank, is it good? Is it bad? What do you think that sort of thing so I'm happy to talk through any situation that that may arise and see if we can be a good fit. Sometimes we're not like we can't do business with everybody unfortunately. And if I'm unable to help, there's a good chance that I know somebody that will we've got a deep network in this space and hopefully know either with signature or someone that we know we can be evaluated to any of the listeners.

Ron Bockstahler  23:22  

So I lied so that my last question you know, you just made me think of litigation finance are you guys tying up or working with any litigation finance firms at this point in time?

Nate Dinger  23:31  

We don't really work directly with any of them it's funny we take we get business from and or refer business to you there are several in the area that we know sometimes when they have clients that are you know, already for a senior banker you know, like we're typically lower risk but also lower cost and in some of the litigation finance companies out there we get referrals from them and or we have clients that their risk appetite is a little more than ours. We have several that we can also refer to those litigation finance company so we know and we know them well but there's nothing directly you know, there's not a directly correlated back and forth for any of them.

Ron Bockstahler  24:10  

Sure. Okay. The best way for our audience listeners to get a hold of you

Nate Dinger  24:16  

Sure. Telephones always on my direct line is 312-386-6904 Or feel free to email me and dinger which is m D i n g R at Signature Bank dot bank.

Ron Bockstahler  24:31  

Say that email again because that bank that's different.

Nate Dinger  24:34  

It is it's new. So yeah, it's N. dinger at Signature Bank dot bank.

Ron Bockstahler  24:40  

name has been great to have me on your show really appreciate you coming and talking to us and introducing our audience to Signature Bank we I think a lot of them want to give you a call after this show. So it really highlights what we're doing. October is financial awareness month at a modest so we're trying to really bring you you've had the CFO we've had Steve Metro with Metro financial come in and talk about how they can save more money. But you know, it all comes down to the bank got to have a strong bank and personal relationship with the banker is a must. If you are a small business, a solo law firm or a partner practice law firm, so appreciate you having on the show. Thanks for listening everyone, and we'll catch you again next week.

Voiceover  25:17  

Thanks for listening to the 1958 lawyer podcast. If you liked the show, tell a friend and please subscribe rate and review us on Apple podcast, Google Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. If you'd like to hear more about Ron or Amata go to a motto offices.com All the links are also available in Show Notes

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Steve Mesirow is the Senior Managing Director in Mesirow Wealth Management and he has been providing expert investment advice and financial planning strategies to his clients for over 25 years. In this episode, Steve talks about how law businesses are at a disadvantage because they register their taxes at the highest rates. He discussed all the ways in which lawyers can build and protect their wealth in a tax-advantaged way. 

Through systems called Cash Balance Plan, Donor Advised Funds, Profit-sharing, or Roth IRA, lawyers can do their best at their career without losing any of their well-earned money. Steve also talks about all the ways in which his company helps people - lawyers or otherwise - worry about things that are impactful, helping them save money in ways that are meaningful in the big picture. 
 

Timestamps:

• Building and protecting wealth through a cash balance plan(2:07)
• Deduction through donor advised funds (14:02)
• The difference between fiduciary and non-fiduciary (23:22)
• Saving money in meaningful ways  (26:41)

“The best use of your time is to work on your business and not be following down the rules of different financial planning aspects or chasing down a couple of stocks. That might not be the best utilization of your time.” - Steve Mesirow 

Steve Mesirow: Mesirow Financial

Website: http://www.mesirowfinancial.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmesirow/

Steve Mesirow, Senior Managing Director in Mesirow Financial

Wealth Management and Financial Planning

Steven Mesirow is a Senior Managing Director in Mesirow Wealth Management. He provides investment advice and financial planning strategies to individuals, business owners and charitable organizations that are designed to help accumulate, manage and preserve wealth.

Steven joined the firm in 1993 and has more than 25 years of financial services experience.

Steven serves on the Jewish United Fund Health and Human Services subcommittee. He has developed a social investment strategy; Mesirow Impact Management - a portfolio strategy that invests in companies with a positive corporate culture.

Steven earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history/political science from the University of Michigan, a Master of Arts in history from the University of Maryland and a Management Aptitude Test in teaching from the American University. Steve is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) professional and a Certified Fund Specialist™ (CFS™).

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmesirow/

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:29  

Welcome to the 1958 lawyer. Great to have everyone here today. Our guest today is Steve Mesirow with Mesirow financial. If you're in Chicago, you definitely know Mesirow financial, one of the largest financial firms in the city, one of the top in the country. So see, let me give you a quick introduction. You know, we're just talking about this. So I'm going to mention that Steve's got a master's in history, a master's in teaching, started to go into teaching and then found his way back into financial planning, been doing it for 25 years now joined the firm that correct me if I'm wrong, Steve, but your grandfather founded. You joined the firm back in 1993. A couple things that I will I think are really, really great on Steve part is he's he serves on the Jewish United fund Health and Human Services Subcommittee. He's developed a social investment strategy Metro prot impact it Metro impact management, portfolio strategy that invests and invest in companies with a positive corporate culture. Steve's got a ton of things he's done. So I'll stop right there. I'll let Steve take off. Steve, welcome to the show. Great to have you.

Steve Mesirow  1:30  

Thank you, Ron, it's a pleasure to see you again.

Ron Bockstahler  1:32  

Yeah, we got to get into that Oh, whole history and teaching thing down the road. But, you know, let's start off. But you work with a lot of law firms, a lot of attorneys that make a lot of money, and how they can protect that money, and maybe keep more of it from taxes. Let's start there. And let's lay out a couple things I want to talk about today.

Steve Mesirow  1:50  

Sure. The first subject that I think you and I want to talk about as lawyers, we were just discussing lawyers, all of their income is ordinary income taxed at the at the highest rates. And so the issue with lawyers is how can we help them protect and build their wealth and do this in a tax advantaged way. And the most powerful tool out there to how to this is what's called a cash balance plan. And a cash balance plan is a supercharged retirement plan, which will let a attorney put let an individual put away somewhere around it depends on their age, but it could be around $200,000 A year of pre tax income, up to that amounts. And the way they get there is a regular 401k, you have your limits, you can put away a little bit each year with this works. The way cash balance plan works is you're giving yourself a very generous pension plan. And the government lets you put away a very generous pension plan where you get to fund about $2.6 million by the time you retire. And so they back into the math of that and say, Okay, if we're going to get to 2.6 million, and you're 50 years old, here's how much you'd have to put away each year to do that. And so you get to put it away in a tax advantaged account, which grows like gross, like any regular retirement plan. And then the end game, the end game usually is when you reach that when you reach that limit, you roll it into an IRA and take it out in your retirement. Like I like normal Ira distributions.

Ron Bockstahler  3:34  

Okay, ton of questions here. And I want to go back, we're going to talk about the cash balance plan first, and then I want to go back into a little bit of your history. Because I remember when I first I'll go there right now, I remember when I first met you I go man, the only Metro I know is like Metro financial, you know, the one whose names on that big building over there on Clark Street. And you go Yeah, yeah, that sounds like, wow, you're Steve mesereau. That's pretty impressive. So let's go right there real quick. And then we're going to come back to this balanced plan. Tell us the history and and how is it that we're talking with the Metro from Metro financial, which like I said, everyone in Chicago knows,

Steve Mesirow  4:11  

oh, my grandfather started. My grandfather started from actually, he was a he graduated law school before he was 21. And he had to wait when you couldn't take the bar until you were 21. So he took a job at an investment firm, and stayed in the business forever. So he started the firm about 84 years ago, as a one man shop, and then took on partners to kind of more partners. My father was partner number 10 and 1960. And we're now about 500. Now about 500 employees, of which about 200 are shareholders. So in many ways, a law firm is the only thing that is similar to that where you have such a diverse ownership of you have 200 Two donors in a 500 person and a 500 person firm. And, and what happens is, then that affects the culture that affects the culture of the firm, because you have so many owners walking through, and everyone is more concerned about where we're going to be five years from now than the next six months, there's no, there's no quarterly earning pressure. Because there's no outside, there's no outside shareholders, you can just

Ron Bockstahler  5:25  

focus on the clients. And you have I mean, you have clients other than attorneys, but attorneys, I mean, the successful attorneys are making a lot of money. And as you and I talked about, it's a cash income. It's not like they're getting invested shares, stock options,

Steve Mesirow  5:40  

rights. So the problem attorneys face, I deal with wealthy individuals, and they generally have, yeah, I deal with wealthy individuals. And the problem attorneys face is all of their wealth is developed through ordinary income that's taxed at the highest rate, as opposed to, you know, I have clients who are small business owners, and some who are getting stock options from, from the public companies they work for, but the lawyer is faced with ordinary income. And, and your population is particularly, is particularly good, because they're all small business, they're all small business owners, as well. And as small business owners, there's some complications you have being a small business owner, there's definitely some challenges there. But there's also the other side of the coin is there's opportunities that you can change things and change the construct, so that it favors you. So that favors you. And you can take advantage of different of different things.

Ron Bockstahler  6:43  

Yeah, you're the you're the but the seven 800 law firms that I work with in a lotta they're right in this wheelhouse of, they're making quite often a lot of money. But what do you do how you got to pay your taxes, so then they're finding ways to go spend the money, maybe add an employee's they don't need it, which some people on the outside might look at and say, Well, why are they doing that with like, why not, because I'm going to pay taxes anyway, I'm just reducing my tax burden. But instead of spending money uselessly, where they're not really getting a true value on it, there's a cash balance plan, they could be throwing a couple $100,000, before taxes,

Steve Mesirow  7:16  

before taxes in your and your construct also works particularly well. Because when you set up a retirement plan, you have to include, you have to include all your employees. Now, that's not that big of a deal. And if you have, you know, a handful of employees, these plans still work really well. But if you outsource in your model, if you outsource your paralegal in your legal secretary and some other and some other functions, if you're the only employee, or if you're one of the only, if you're on one of the only employees, you can be generous as hell to your pension plan, because your your retirement plans are in fact, you

Ron Bockstahler  7:59  

know, that goes back to your construct and model is particularly well suited for this model, when it comes down to is education, you gotta you know, they need to understand that there's a better way to do things and, and when you told me about this cash balance program, it blew my mind, I was like, wow, there's the way to save that much money before taxes. I'd never heard of this. In fact, I went to a couple of state planning attorneys who had never heard of this, which, you know, probably shocked me even more, but we need to be in front of them.

Steve Mesirow  8:28  

There's another side of this, which is also a little bit of a benefits is I'm not sure how great of a concern this is. But when you put your money into a retirement plan, there are also creditor protection facilities. And so when you're running your own small business, it's usually not an issue, but in the back of your mind. You know, if someone's going to be sued, it's you. So, right, there is no there is no one else to hide behind. So in fact, the creditor protection piece is you're getting that you're getting that sort of as an afterthought for free. And it's, it varies by state to state, but ERISA plans, which retirement plans are have a very good, very good protections in there. So it's a nice added, it's a nice added benefit. It's not a reason to do. It's not a reason to do these, but it's a nice, it's a nice added benefit to juicing up your retirement plans.

Ron Bockstahler  9:24  

Just be I'm thinking of a specific attorney who's 61 years old, has been practicing for quite some time. And, you know, he spent the first say 20 years of his practicing life paying for kids school, both of his daughters went on to the law school and got a master's in a PhD. So you know, he spent money but now he's at that prime, I guess, in the last 10 years have been that prime age where it's, I can save because I don't really got all these other expenses. But is that the age that you say, Okay, it's time to look at that or do you say, Hey, I just told you I was talking to a 32 year old family law attorney who's doing very well right now is that is this 32 The time that says hey, let's start Maybe start with 100,000 a year? And can you change this pension amount? Or is that to be fixed? Give us some details.

Steve Mesirow  10:07  

So it actually, what happens with one of these retirement, you know, I would say, anytime is a good time to save. Now, when you're 32, you also have the time, the power of time. And whatever you put away, even if it's small amount is got the compounding effect of year after year after year. And that's very powerful. The way a way a pension plan works is you get to favor, you get to discriminate, that's the only plan, you're allowed to discriminate in favor of older people. So the 32 year old might only be able to put away 80 to $100,000, the 60 year old you're talking about can probably put away $250,000 or more, because they have a shorter window to reach a shorter window to save money and build up their pension until retirement plan. So it favors the old. Now, if you have what's kind of interesting with these plans is also work. So you have one or two employees, I know you'd say your six year old has two or three employees. The odds are they he is older, he or she sorry, he or she is older than the employees. And so when you put away money for each person in your plan, you get to skew it in favor of the older person, if you want now you can do the same amount, you can do the same percentage across the board to everybody. But if you want to skew in favor of the older you can, and that's and that almost always works out instead almost always works out in favor of the owner.

Ron Bockstahler  11:40  

So we're talking what's the highest tax rate right now? Is it 36.9? Or,

Steve Mesirow  11:46  

Yes, it's going to, and it's probably going to go up a couple percent.

Ron Bockstahler  11:50  

And then we also because if you're in the state of Illinois, you also can defer an extra 5%.

Steve Mesirow  11:57  

So Illinois State taxes 5%. And, and that's, I have no idea what's going to happen with taxes in Illinois, Illinois, my guess is that they're going to stay the same or go up. But that's purely a guess I would have no great insight to that. But there's a fluke in Illinois tax. And that is retirement plan money. When you put in, you get you're deferring on the Illinois state tax. When you take money out of a retirement plan, or IRA in Illinois, there's no state tax. So, for example, say you have your 60 year old person, they put away $100,000 into a retirement plan on a pre tax basis. Alright, so they're saving on Illinois and they're saving on federal, they turn around the next month, they turn around Jan, they put to put and do it for 2001 and 2022. They take the money out, they take out the $100,000 they're gonna pay federal ordinary income tax, but they're not going to pay Illinois. So by just moving your money in and out of a retirement plan, you're saving 5% for Illinois, right away.

Ron Bockstahler  13:14  

So I just I want to be honest with you, you just went above my paygrade.

Unknown Speaker  13:18  

But yes,

Ron Bockstahler  13:20  

that's pretty exciting. I mean, that's a reason just to give you a call and talk about this,

Steve Mesirow  13:24  

right? It's and it's a bizarre, yes, it's a bizarre Fluke in Illinois, that that is allowed most other states tax retirement plans as ordinary income. But Illinois has, has that provision in there for whatever reason that state retirement plans and pensions are not currently taxable.

Ron Bockstahler  13:41  

So I want our listeners just remember cash balance plan, write that down. You want to talk to Steve about that. And we're gonna move on, but I will definitely probably come back to that at some point. Let's talk about some of the other options that are out there for our solo practitioners, our partner practice law firms that are just looking how they can keep some of their own money. You know, another

Steve Mesirow  14:02  

great tool and I don't discuss this with you is donor advised funds. If you are philanthropic, say you were giving away $10,000 a year to your various charities, whatever they whatever they may be, you've probably lost your deduction. You've probably lost your deduction of whether you when you can itemize that in Illinois and some of the in New York and some of the other high tech states, the deduction became not as valuable. What you can do to cross that threshold is instead of doing $10,000 a year, you can do $50,000 You can bunch a couple years so 250 $1,000 In one year, get your deduction. And the donor advised fund works like your own philanthropic fund, you then dish out the money year by year to your charities whenever they're ready for whenever you're ready to give it away so you still give away The same $10,000 a year you were planning on doing. But you can manipulate your deduction into one year to cross that threshold. That is also very helpful for if your income fluctuates. So, so theoretically, if you're going to say you're going to retire in four years, but you're planning on giving to your causes for the rest of your life, you want to accelerate your deductions into those last years where you've got your high income. So you can put it into a donor advised fund. So I've had people accelerates their deductions, until those higher tax years, and then they have the money to give out to their charities, later on. Or, ahead, some if your income fluctuates, for whatever reason, your business, you have some big years, you have some low years, you shove your deduction and your charitable contributions into the year that it's more meaningful for your taxes, and still give out your money as time goes by.

Ron Bockstahler  16:06  

So you're talking you're talking about the years, the maybe the last 510 years of work, work years, we still have that heavy taxable income coming in probably the most taxable income you've ever had in your life, is that when you want to create and not you create your own donor advised fund is there organizations out there you could do it through,

Steve Mesirow  16:23  

there's organizations, you can do it through. So Fidelity has one Schwab has one, there's a number of them, it's there's a number of them that do it on a on a very cheap basis. And, and it's, it's relatively easy. And then while the money's in there, it can sit and grow each year. But depending on you know, some people's income fluctuates of either they may have over their careers fluctuate from the private sector to the public sector, and their income may fluctuate. Or, you know, they settle a big case. And they have big income one year, and they have lower income and their other years. I'm sorry, I missed that. No, no, no,

Ron Bockstahler  17:03  

I'm, we're doing this show remotely, and my children are home. So I was asking them to keep it down. Sorry about that. Yeah, that's what happens when you have five young children coming home from school.

Steve Mesirow  17:17  

You're here. Alright, so let's jump into are there

Ron Bockstahler  17:21  

such a thing as a 401k? Or profit sharing plan for solo or a small firm?

Steve Mesirow  17:27  

Absolutely. And you can do that. And that may be the answer. If you are want to contribute. If you want to contribute up to 50 $60,000 a year, then a solo 401k, or profit sharing plan is probably the answer or sometimes a SEP, those might be the answer this cash balance part is only on the accelerated when you want to do a greater a greater version. And sometimes, sometimes you work them in combination with each other. But the first part is to sit down and figure out what is the need, what am I after here? You know, what am I after here? What can I do? What what flexibility does each plan? What flexibility does he chant plan have? And what are the practical costs of implementing of implementing such a thing. And there are, and some things are great in theory, but then there's the practicality of how it how it works out.

Ron Bockstahler  18:25  

So I'm not going to. So we're looking at like a 401k, sap of a profit sharing plan of up to you say 60s up to

Steve Mesirow  18:32  

about $65,000. Okay, that's that's the route to go. And the other piece that people can do, at the moment, although Congress was talking about maybe changing this rule is you can do what's called a backdoor Roth IRA, and a backdoor Roth IRA. Even if you're doing your profit sharing plan, or 401k, or one of these other regular retirement plans, you can do what's called a backdoor Roth IRA at the moment. And what that does is you can make a, you're allowed to make a non deductible IRA contribution, you do that, and then at some point later, you convert that IRA to or to, you convert that to a Roth IRA. And the cost to do that is you pay the difference of your basis to what it's worth. So if you contribute $6,000 to a Roth IRA, your basis is $6,000. You convert it a month later, and it's worth $6,005. You pay tax on the $5 gain. But you can make you've essentially made yourself a Roth contribution of $6,000. And you can do that for yourself, and you can do that for your spouse. And that's is very powerful, especially if you're younger and you have time to start Benefits

Ron Bockstahler  20:00  

of that Roth IRA, you're not going to be wanting a Roth in a Roth IRA, you're not going to pay taxes on the income,

Steve Mesirow  20:07  

correct. It's always after tax money. So the way to think about retirement plans, at some point, the government is going to get their tax. So on a 401k, profit sharing, or pension, or cash pounds pension plan, you're putting your money in pre tax, and then you're taking it out in later years, when and as you take it out in later years, then you start paying the tax as it comes out in later years, a Roth IRA, you're putting the money in after tax, and you're putting the money in after tax and estate after tax. And the plus to both the plans is they get to grow tax advantaged. Whatever it earns every year, you're not taxed on it. So one way to think about all these retirement plans is, if you had in your own name, and it was earning money, the money that would be going to the taxes, you get to keep in your account. And that money that would be going to taxes gets to earn money, year after year after year. And that's why the compounding is so much more powerful in a retirement plan. Whether it's a Roth or a regular, it's so much more powerful, because all that money that would have been going to the government gets to keep working for you year after year.

Ron Bockstahler  21:20  

And I remember talking about the Roth is 6000 per year, each year, but you are we're saying the backdoor as we would start it with a regular IRA. Each year,

Steve Mesirow  21:31  

you do the same, you do six? Yes, your clientele most likely is not eligible to do a regular Roth IRA. Because they're ready to die. Yeah, okay. Their income is too high, which is why this, but this backdoor is sort of a anachronism of the of the code that you can, you can make a non deductible IRA, and then convert and then convert it converted later and you're only paying and you're not paying, you're not you're only paying taxes on money over your basis, which is going to be insignificance. Right.

Ron Bockstahler  22:08  

And those years when you're not when maybe if you have a bad year, incomes not as high, so your taxes not gonna be high, maybe those are the years you take and do the conversion, would that make more sense? If you

Steve Mesirow  22:17  

have a low year, it's a great year to convert regular retirement, same money to Roth, and take advantage of any year you have a lower income. And ultimately, you know, nobody, it's not bad to have a combination of personal money, ordinary retirement money and Roth money. Because, you know, while we can go with what the rules are now, it's good to have flexibility because the tax rules will change over the next 2030 years. They always have so laid out, keep a little flexibility.

Ron Bockstahler  22:52  

Absolutely. And you've talked about I four distinct programs. Here we had our cash balance plan, which is amazing. You got your 401k, your profit sharing program, your IRA and then your Roth IRA. Let's talk about financial planning as a whole, because I think all of us, we hear from we there's a lot of financial planners out there, at least if you're running in our circles, I think you talked to a lot of what's the difference? You know, what's it to being a fiduciary and not being a fiduciary? Kind of? What do we need to look for Steve?

Steve Mesirow  23:22  

So first off, there's two different ways people operates. There's our IAS, which stands for registered investment advisors. And they will, they will all operate as fiduciaries. And I'm in that category. We operate as a fiduciary where a brokerage house operates under under different status of the appointment of the brokerage rules, and they're held to a lower standard. And I don't need to tell lawyers the difference between fiduciary and not fiduciary. But if it's the same price, I'd probably rather have a fiduciary still most wirehouses most of the big firms that you most of the big national chains, you think of operating under brokerage rules, despite what's in their commercials, when when push comes to shove, they're your brokerage clients. The other thing I would say to your group is, even if you're good at even if you're good at investments, and you enjoy it, it's not the best use of your time. You have to think of your business as a business and what's the best allocation of my time as a resource. And you've got some terrific specialized knowledge and qualifications that most other people don't have. So the best use of your time is to work on your business and not be following down the rules of different financial planning aspects or chasing down you know, chasing down a couple of stocks. That might not be the best utilization of your time. The other piece that we often do for people and part of what makes it fun as well, we start with what the clients after, and what's going on in their life and trying to make their money fit their life. We've got tools, where technology is great nowadays, I can suck in the data from the bank accounts, the mortgage, the insurance policy, the swap accounts, the old 401k, it all sucks into one place. And I have a living, breathing balance sheet that updates every night. And so I can see exactly my clients. And I can see their net worth every day updated both our assets and liabilities updated each each night. And what that does for me is allows me our financial planning tools to make projections and figure and help answer the questions of, can I retire in three years? Can we buy the second house? I want to send my kids to private school? What is that going to mean? Can we join this country club or not? What if we downsize our house? What if we upsize our housing? Those are the questions that I like to discuss with people. And I think those are the more interesting, those are the more interesting questions to discuss, because those are more meaningful. And then we we have some clients where we tell them look, it's you're gonna run out of money at 83 years old. That doesn't sound that old to me anymore.

Ron Bockstahler  26:34  

Not today, not today, where I was at grandma's 100th birthday party a couple weeks ago. So 83 is young.

Steve Mesirow  26:41  

Right? Right. And so And life is full of choices. If we do x, what's the consequence of that? Can it be, or I've had other times where I've had people who were trying to lower their spending and increase their savings, but they were doing it in meaningless ways. They were going out to dinner less, or they were doing little things that were impacting their lives a lot. But weren't that meaningful to the big picture. So I want my I want my people to worry about the right things that are impactful. And that sweat the little things that aren't

Ron Bockstahler  27:18  

its history, I don't know that do you or your clients Ever think about that year when they start to make more money on their investments than on their day to day annual income? Is that a that a year you celebrate?

Steve Mesirow  27:34  

Yes, that would be well, that's I like to refer to that as your your when you reach financial independence, it's your assets can produce enough to support your lifestyle. And then you may want to keep working, because you enjoy it. So you want to keep building you want to enjoy, you want to keep building your wealth, whatever the you know, whatever the reason, terrific. You know, that's, that's great. But it's nice to know, in the back of your minds, hey, I have this, I have this here. And I'm doing this for my enjoyment. And so maybe I don't need to, maybe I don't need to put up with x.

Ron Bockstahler  28:13  

So there's two things I want. I mean, I want to like paint a scenario for our listeners, let's talk about that. 32 year old family law attorney and let's give her some objectives. Let's say she's gonna I mean, most of us love to work. And most of the attorneys I'm with, they work until they can't work anymore, you know, well into their 70s or 80s. But let's just say she wants to quit at 70. And she wants to walk away with $5 million. Just hypothetical. I mean, can we work backwards? And is that what you do when you work? When you sit down with someone and say, let's work? What are you going to do? Let's figure it all out.

Steve Mesirow  28:45  

We work backwards, either from $1 figure, like like a x x dollars, or we work from, hey, I'm gonna need $250,000 A year after tax to live my life because the other part of this is while we have these different pieces of money, they're all taxed it different. They have different tax implications. And so the issue is, how much money can I pull out after tax a year and we have, we have tools and software that helped model that. And usually what I like to do with the client is I'm a big believer of getting their other professionals in the same room. So once a year, I often meet with my clients and their accountants or every couple years, the clients, the accountant and the estate attorney. And what I find is that each of us helps make the other one better at their job. The information that each of us has helps the other helps the other immensely. And it also while it's an investment while it's in Watson initial investment of my time, it ends up saving In the lots of time, because decisions are made much quicker and easier with your whole board of advisors in one room, there's no, what I was finding, before I did this is the client was the messenger between each person and the client shouldn't be the messenger. And they might not relay everything with the subtleties that they each of us or our speaking. But then it's real easy for the client, everybody's in the same room. And what often happens is the client then turn on make a suggestion, the client will turn to the accountant attorney and say, Is this what I should do? And the attorney and the accountant say, Yes, that's exactly what our other people are doing. And we cut right to the chase. So it ends up being a big time saver for all the parties, it also ends up getting a little bit better results. Because when the accountant or attorney and or myself are operating in a vacuum, and don't know what the other person is doing is part of the plan. You know, it's it's each of us as a means to the clients end.

Ron Bockstahler  31:06  

Right. Let's talk a little bit about because you got a timeframe, right. So you're practicing law, you got your own practice, when do you make a decision to sell? And get out? And then what do I do with the funds that I, you know, maybe it's an urn out, maybe it's a five year earner, but let's say it's a five year or not with a balloon at the end, and you're picking up this $2 million? At the end? What do I do with that $2 million? You know, how would you consult on something like that,

Steve Mesirow  31:31  

give us some ideas, it depends back towards that, that picture that you just painted, where the person wants to get to, I want to get to $250,000 a year, and my kids educated, which I know is going to cost 50,000 A year for these four years, or I'm talking to a bunch of professionals seven years ago, seven years of school. So we back out through that. And then we can see where we can take risk and where we can't take risks. And from where I sit, that's I often the often I have people who are too reluctant to take risk because of the of the ups and downs of the stock market. And my greatest fear from where I sit, is that somebody lives a really long, healthy, a long, healthy life. And so being too cautious in the short term can end up hurting them if they live to 105. Like grandma. Yeah. So that's what I want to reserve and protect against in the so what I often do is we set up some money that's safe, that's buying us that's giving us our time, to an our staying power to wait through any lousy period and lousy periods is that they might come they will come. It's like winter, I know it's coming at some point. So there will be some horrible down years, there will also be some wonderful, great years. So as long as you have the staying power, in the short term to get through that you can invest for the long term and get your real growth and build your wealth. That's, that's meaningful for you, and wonderful for your family as well.

Ron Bockstahler  33:18  

I like the way you got that reference on Game of Game of Thrones in there. Yeah, Winter's coming. It's inevitable. They're gonna have you know, it's funny, if you'd look at the last 20 years, I mean, I've owned my company for 20 years now. And every 10 years, there's something you know, there's the oh, 809 crisis that was supposedly a once in a lifetime financial meltdown, which I'm doubting that that's actually the case. And now we've had this pandemic, that's really set people back, but it's actually if you if you pivoted in certain businesses, you've done really well. So yeah, you know, within 10 years, there's gonna be something else that's gonna go, Whoa, it's gonna hit us.

Steve Mesirow  33:51  

I assume that out of 10 years, we're always going to have to terrible years and the reasons different every time if we knew. You know, there's things we can point to right now, that make me nervous. But it's often the something that nobody's thought of. Nobody thought of the pandemic. Nobody thought that the mortgage financial crisis would balloon the way it said. And there will be something new. It's there for sure. But the if you have the staying power to sit through it, you end up just fine.

Ron Bockstahler  34:21  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, we're gonna be wrapping up. So Steve, give us some final thoughts, things you want to relay to our listeners, and then we'll then we want to close with how they can reach out to you also.

Steve Mesirow  34:32  

So this is good fun stuff for me. And I have a team of people with me, I've got some younger people, I've got some, I've got some other colleagues, and we try and find a fit. We try and find a fit for everybody and not everybody has to be a fit for me, but I'm happy to sit down and talk and see if we can help them and who they might be a help for or who might be the right fit for them. I would say that this is this is not always the best use of your time to do it yourself. There are things that I have that there's things that I see, because we do this every day. There's some times for the higher end clients or sometimes different investments that we would that we get to see, because we're doing this every day. And the little bit of you're paying somebody which generally works out to be somebody paying somewhere between three quarters and 1% is a normal is a normal rate, that an advisor and advisor, whether it's me or someone else down the block, should be able to add that much value, and a add value over time. And secondly, protect you from the one or two mistakes that might happen. over 10 years, that'll be critical, or to bring an opportunity to you that might be critical. Over time.

Ron Bockstahler  35:47  

You mentioned mistakes, but, you know, you want to point out that a small mistake at the time you do it could cost you hundreds of 1000s of dollars over the time, a 2030 year savings

Steve Mesirow  35:58  

period. There's this whole field where we're hardwired as human beings, there's a whole psychology element to this. There's a field called behavioral finance, which postulates and studies that we're hardwired as human beings to make bad financial decisions. And it's nobody's fault. It just is. And the biggest, the most obvious one that I've seen 100 times in my career is people will extrapolate whatever's just happened the past three or six months will continue forever, except that it never does. So when things are good, people are sending me in money, because they only see things going up. And they hear their neighbors talking. And they think this is just going to keep going forever. And so they send in money when markets are high. When the markets are crashing, people extrapolate if I lost 20% In the past two months, and the downtrends are always quick and sharp. If I lost 20% In two months, hell in six months, you know, in six months, I'm gonna have this permanent, terrible dent that I'm never going to be able to recover from. I'll sell out now and buy back in when things are good. Except the

Ron Bockstahler  37:12  

downturns are quick. And there's so easily seeable in the after, you know after. Yeah, in retrospect, we all know it retrospect. But yeah, we don't know what went before it happens

Steve Mesirow  37:24  

in people. It's like trying to catch a falling knife. It's people extrapolates it, it's so hard to pin, when's the bottom? It's an impossible, it's an impossible task. And then when people try and buy back in, it's mentally impossible, because if you were uncomfortable when the market was at 18,000, how do you possibly buy back in at 20,020 4028? So it puts them in an impossible situation? Also, yeah, go ahead, finish the last thought. There's also sometimes tools and opportunities that come with a crash. Sometimes there's great assets that, okay, your stuff dropped, but there's something else that great, that also dropped, that they dropped that you can take advantage of. And that's the time to act and, and really part of it is to have a plan and be ready for these things to happen. Have your contingency plans ready? For what happens in case things go down? In case things go up? There's there's got to be contingency either way.

Ron Bockstahler  38:25  

Steve, I want you we didn't talk about this. I hadn't mentioned it before. But Monte Carlo modeling, I know you use some form of it, or could you explain to our listeners what that is? And yeah, I mean, that's a great reason why you want to use a professional financial planner to start with. But Ken, let's talk about MonteCarlo modeling.

Steve Mesirow  38:43  

So someone developed Monte Carlo, because at first when people were making models, they said, Okay, here's what happens if we earn 6% a year forever. And we can model out how your portfolio does and your withdrawal rates. And everything works out smoothly, nicely, except that the stock market never behaves quite like that. Monte Carlo accounts for the variability of returns. So there might be a long term return of six or 8%. But in getting there, there's a minus 20. A plus 25, a minus seven, a minus six A plus 30. So what Monte Carlo does, is it takes it takes the returns and puts them in random orders to see what your probability of success is going to work out your withdrawal rates, you know what your withdrawal rate is going to be? Because you know, I need I need $100,000 A year to live on whatever that may be. But if you get a if you retired in 2002 1007, right before the crisis, right before the financial crisis that may mess up, that may mess up your plans because the very first year, the year retired and taking money out was a minus 30% year. So the Monte Carlo takes all the returns of the past 100 years, puts them in various orders, and tries to figure out a probability of probability of success. And then you measure that by saying, okay, Ron, your probability of your plan success is 86%. Is that high enough for you to be comfortable? Or do you need to be at 95% for you to retire and be comfortable, maybe you need to work another year and a half, to move your probability of success and build up your wealth from 85% to 95%. Because I want you sleeping at night, I don't want you to have an ulcer or to have to change your lifestyle. Once you're retired, it's hard to change your lifestyle and who wants to mean, right? And you kind of

Ron Bockstahler  40:59  

want to enjoy the rest. And I think it's very important for you to realize that we're living longer. So you don't plan for like this 10 year retirement just good chance you're gonna have 2535 year retirement maybe longer. That you got to be thinking through. Yeah, definitely don't want to do it yourself. Steve. It's been great talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on the show. What's the best way for our listeners to reach out to you?

Steve Mesirow  41:21  

You can email me at Steve s te ve period mesereau mes IR o [email protected]. Or they can contact Amata and you and Jeremy can pass them on to you and share my content the months

Ron Bockstahler  41:38  

me absolutely anyone wants to give me a call reach out to us you can everyone knows how to get a hold of me Ron be at my offices calm. I will share information Steve is wonderful to work with. I can't say enough great things like that. Anyone that's in Chicago knows Metro financials, one of the largest financial firms in the city and been around for would you say

Steve Mesirow  41:55  

8085 years now

Ron Bockstahler  41:58  

five years. Great, great organization and great person and Steve. So definitely reach out to him. You're working so hard to make your money. But make sure you're putting it away. And and I guess deferring your tax burdens so that you can actually save more money and be prepared when you are ready to start taking a little more time off. So see, think me and I should they really appreciate having you.

Steve Mesirow  42:19  

A pleasure. Always fun, Ron.

Ron Bockstahler  42:22  

Thanks for listening, everyone. You've been listening to Ron Boxall and Steven Metro on the 1958 lawyer Tune in next week. All of October is financial awareness month. So we're going to be talking with a CFO coming up in the next week and learning how we can be making this money or keeping this money that we can actually save with Steve. So thanks for joining us, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ryan Kimler is the Founder of Financial Clarity, working with solo and partner practice law firms, bringing them financial clarity to grow their law practice into successful and profitable businesses. In this episode, Ryan talks about how important financial discipline and accounting is for a law firm and how invaluable the guidance of a CFO or accountant can be on that regard. 

They also discuss how the CFO and accountant is not only useful for keeping your law firm financially uncompromised, but also to project future earnings and actions that must be taken to ensure the firm's profit for each of its members. 

Timestamps:

• Why does a law firm need a CFO (0:50)
• Getting past the frustration of the financial aspect of running a law firm (10:15)
• Reducing the time spent trying to manage IOLTA accounts (19:03)
• Tips for saving your law firm’s funds and increasing it’s income(21:04)

“Accounting and finance doesn’t have to be the scary part of your firm… we want to be your guide, help you out, give you a clear direction and clean financials and bring clarity around the numbers of your law firm” - Ryan Kimler

Ryan Kimler, Financial Clarity

Website: https://www.financialclarityllc.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryankfinancialclarityllc/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rkimler

Blog: https://financialclarityllc.blogspot.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiLyqCOvxvnnlr3_6BOGqww

Ryan Kimler, Founder of Financial Clarity

CFO and Accounting for Law Firms

Ryan Kimler is an Accountant and CFO. His passion is in helping attorneys run their law firm by the numbers to increase profitability and cash flow. He helps attorneys spend more time working on their business instead of in their business so that lawyers can get back to crushing their business instead of the other way around.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryankfinancialclarityllc/

Have comments, questions, or concerns? Contact us at [email protected]

Episode Transcript:

Ron Bockstahler  0:28  

Welcome to the 1958 lawyer. I'm your host Ron box dollar. Today we are joined by CFO Ryan Kindler, founder of financial clarity. Ryan's firm works with solo and partner practice law firms, bringing them financial clarity to grow their law practice into successful and profitable business is something that we all want. Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan Kimler  0:47  

Thanks a lot, Ron. It's great to be here today.

Ron Bockstahler  0:49  

Absolutely. Let's get right down to it. I mean, why is the law firm need a CFO?

Ryan Kimler  0:54  

That's a great question. So a lot of people, you know, they hear the term CFO, and the first thing that they think of is probably Google, or Apple, right, some large company. And then I think I don't need a CFO, I'm just a small business owner, right? However, a CFOs job is really to track profit, and cash flow, and then go analyze the company's financial strengths and weaknesses, and process what the corrective actions should be. So even, you know, small businesses, you know, in order for them to continue to grow and be more profitable, they need a CFO, they need someone in their corner that can analyze the numbers, look at the financial strengths and weaknesses and propose corrective actions.

Ron Bockstahler  1:37  

It's interesting. I remember when PPP first came out back in was at April of 2020. And we did a live webinar on it trying to introduce a lot of our law firms to you can go get people, you're qualified, right, you qualify for PPP. But you have to have done last year's taxes. Yeah. And I was shocked at how many like, man, I'd like this is great, but I can't apply because I haven't even filed my 2019 taxes. Yeah, 2018? I think I was it was going back. And I was surprised with what I considered the financial, lack of financial discipline, it's so many firms. How can we change that what kind of process can be put in place? Let's say I'm a brand new attorney gonna go off on my own. Maybe I only have $500,000 book a business to start with. So it's not big, but yeah, potentially can grow? What do I need? How do I get started?

Ryan Kimler  2:31  

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, the big thing that, you know, we bring up to our clients when we're working with them is, you know, we, we really want to be their guide. And, you know, help them understand that accounting, and finance doesn't have to be the scary part of your firm, right? It doesn't have to be the unknown part that is like, I don't want to go talk to my accountant, right? You know, we want to be your guide we want, we want to be your friend, we want to help you out, we want to give you a clear direction and clean financials and bring you clarity around the numbers of your law firm. And I think that's what every firm needs. You know, one of the big things that's changed over the last five years is, you know, with technology and zoom and things like that, and we've advanced so far because of the pandemic, you know, attorneys, you can go out now and find accountants and CFOs that specialize in working with law firms, as our firm does. And you don't have to just go to the generalized accounting firm or the generalized bookkeeper down the street that handles everybody's small business and town. That's kind of a catch 22 because they aren't specialized. And so they don't necessarily know all the ins and outs of a law firm and how to help you. And as an owner, of a law firm, you don't necessarily know what's out there and what's available of how much help you can really get from a financial partner that can work with you that specializes in law firms, and has been exposed to lots of different law firms and lots of different systems.

Ron Bockstahler  3:59  

Ryan, let's talk a little bit the financial model. I think a lot of firms say I'm a to partner law firm, and we're ready to hire someone. Yeah, put some numbers behind it. What's it mean to hire somebody? I mean, do they? I mean, can you help them? financially justify the higher I guess is the question.

Ryan Kimler  4:17  

Yeah, absolutely. So the, you know, a lot of our clients we put on profit first, which if you're not familiar, it's basically a way of dividing your income that comes into the firm into a few different buckets. So you can cover your owner payments, your taxes and your operating expenses. And so one of the first things that we look at is, you know, what's it going to cost to hire this person. And for that, we use a couple different online tools to calculate like payroll taxes and estimated benefit costs and things like that. Do you have the money that's been allocated into your operating expense bucket to go out and hire that person, because if you don't have the money, you can't hire the person, right? And then you just, you're just going to be shorting yourself profit and cash flow in the future. So that's one of the First things that we look at and then one of the second things we look at is okay, let's say you do have the money, and you do have enough in your operating expenses with paying all your other bills paying everything else. What can you expect that person to bring in and get, you know, as far as an handle as far as a caseload so that hiring that person is not just a cost, but it actually is, brings value to your firm, and you're bringing in more money. So those are the big two things that we start with and look at the first one being, can you even afford it?

Ron Bockstahler  5:32  

Right? Are you familiar with it? Or I guess I know you're familiar with it. But let's talk to the third, third, third, if you're a large law firm, or accounting firm, I think they have real similar models, you're going to hire a an associate, I think even a partner you'd look at, okay, your salary is going to be a third overheads going to be a third, which is their benefits, office space, whatever it takes to employ them. And then a third is profits. Yep. So I think too many firms Don't think like that, or small firms Don't think like that. They just, Oh, I got a lot of work, I'm gonna go hire someone, but say I bring someone in for $100,000. Are they going to generate $300,000? in revenue?

Ryan Kimler  6:07  

Right? Yeah, that's, that's tough. And yeah, and I think a lot of attorneys, you know, don't look at that right away. And that's probably one of the first things that they should be looking at. And, you know, I, we have definitely come into firms where, you know, we put them into a profit first system, and unfortunately, you know, we kind of figure out through some analysis that they've hired too quickly. And then they have to go have the unfortunate conversation of letting someone go, I mean, that's tough. But like you said, you know, using the third, third, third rule, looking in advance, before you ever hire that person is really, you know, is doing your due diligence is really what should happen.

Ron Bockstahler  6:47  

But we deal with that on the staffing side, they go hire a paralegal, but they don't got enough work, you know, fulfill the third, third, third model, which means they're giving up their profits. Yeah, it's interesting. Let's talk a little bit about banks. I know we chatted offline just a little bit. You know, I know I've gone to banks, and I've gone to investors and other businesses, and it's, you got to have someone in your corner. Yeah. How do you help law firms either go secure financing, I guess, what's the question?

Ryan Kimler  7:15  

So the first thing is, is that any bank you go to, as far as going to get funding, you're going to have clean books, you're gonna have to have, you know, all of your expenses updated, and all of your, you know, up to date financial statements. So that's the first thing that CFOs can help with, as well, as you know, then once you have those financial statements, your CFO is going to know those financial statements and know what's going on, know how cash flows through your business. And having a CFO or a financial professional in your corner, when you go to a bank to go get funding is really, you know, giving you a leg up, it's a big advantage brings a lot of credibility to the table. And as being a financial person, they're going to be able to look at how cash flows through your business and kind of assess before you even get to a bank, how much risk is there? How much you know, how much risk tolerance is there? And then they can have that conversation at the bank of how much risk are they willing to take on? And also kind of advise you, as far as you know, maybe you don't have as much risk as what the bank thinks that you have? And where to go from there. You know, what, you know, is the interest rate, really reasonable for the amount of risk is there right, you kind of get your own second opinion from a person that you trust, and that's on your side, that's not sitting across the table from you.

Ron Bockstahler  8:31  

So you know, law firms, a service industry, so looking at historical data is I wouldn't say useless, but you're kind of on the assumption that you can repeat that, that level of business. So how is it beneficial for to have a law firm when they're going in to get maybe a line of credit established to have forecast based on historical revenues?

Ryan Kimler  8:49  

Yes, absolutely. And I would say not only having a forecast, but also a plan put together of, you know, let's say you project revenue growth, revenue increase, what's your plan to get there, you know, how many cases that how many average case value dollars, and that's something that a CFO can definitely put together for you that we do on a monthly basis with our clients is, you know, updating what their, what their targets are, what their projection is, and then, you know, keeping track of those numbers of how they're doing on a scoreboard so that they can see it and know where they're at. Rather, they're meeting what they want their target To be or not. It's almost like

Ron Bockstahler  9:26  

playing a game of baseball, you're looking at scorecard, you say, Hey, where am I? You know, it's coming into the seventh thing. You need to score some runs here.

Ryan Kimler  9:32  

Absolutely, absolutely. That's exactly what it's like. And it really gives the firm owner an idea of what's working in the business, what's not working, and rather not they're on pace and on track to meet their target. That's actually probably one of the biggest problems that we are challenges that we run into working with firms is that they don't have a scoreboard they don't know where they're at. They don't know if they're winning or losing the game. You know, they're just kind of running their firm. And if they don't make enough money at the end of the month, then they just start working harder and harder and harder. And they're firm without kind of digging in and finding out what's going on.

Ron Bockstahler  10:10  

You know why you're not making the money? Where's your dress? Yeah, that kind of leads me into, you know, what, many lawyers are frustrated by that financial aspect of running a law firm? How can you get help get them past the frustration, so they can focus on practicing law?

Ryan Kimler  10:23  

Yeah, absolutely. So I think a lot of it comes with, you know, taking the majority of the work off their plate. So, you know, we've we've developed a system that, you know, really what I did was I sat down and, you know, I've worked with a little over 200 law firms, I sat down looked at, okay, what's the operations as far as on the financial side, when it comes to accounting, and their CFO work, you know, what has to happen? In order for us to get clear reports and develop a scoreboard? And, you know, I developed? You know, what parts? Can the accountant take off? have lawyers play? What parts does the lawyer absolutely have to do? And then if they have an assistant, what parts can the assistant take, and, you know, through that process, you know, we really came down to an attorney needs to do their billing, um, you know, ideally through some sort of CRM, and an attorney needs to pay bills that they're paying personally, if they don't want an assistant, you know, handling it, or what or what have you, but eliminating a lot of the other tasks, and getting, you know, the attorney out of, you know, those other time sucks, if you will, can really help them, you know, focus back on practicing law. And then also, you know, at the end of the month, you know, simple one hour meeting with your accountant or CFO to give you an update and look at your scoreboard and know where you're at and give you a clear heading for the next month and the quarter coming up can really be efficient for the attorney and get them back into practicing law, when they have a clear direction and a clear path moving

Ron Bockstahler  11:57  

forward. It just hearing you say it, thanks. I think about how much stress, you could take off an attorney's plate. Just on an average day, you know, you don't have to worry about this, you know where you're going now he's gonna focus on where you're gonna get your business from. Yeah, is much easier. Absolutely. I like that. What are you seeing as some of the biggest mistakes out there that's happening within law firms.

Ryan Kimler  12:18  

So one of the biggest one I one of the biggest ones, I think, from from a cash flow perspective, is not taking in trust funds. So you know, the, the big thing in law school is, you know, don't, don't screw up your trust account, right. And don't overdraw it, right. And you'll get audited, and all these all these scare tactics, all these things. And, you know, even if you're doing contingency cases, right, I know that the common thing and that contingency space is what we do it, you know, basically up front for free. And when we when we take, you know, 1/3 of the fee, or whatever your percentages, right, and they're not taking a trust fund up front. The big problem with that is, is that when you go to the courthouse, and you pay a filing fee, or you go do whatever expense the case needs, you're taking cash that you've earned, you know, into your business, probably from other cases, and you're paying it out. And it's not getting billed, sometimes for months, right, because you know, if your case lasts for months, and so it's cash that you've earned, that you could be using in your own firm, to pay your own expenses, rent, you know, employees, what have you, and instead, you're paying it out on a client case. Now granted, it gets booked as an asset, right? It's almost like, it's almost like you're giving your client a short term loan, it's almost like you're being a bank. And actually, you know, quick tip, I guess a good check on your accountant, if they know what they're doing or not, is they should have an account on your balance sheet in the asset section that says, like advanced client costs or client costs, that you expect it back, you by IRS guidelines, you cannot expense those items. So therefore, it's not writing down your taxable income. And that's really the reason for it is the IRS wants their money. You know, so just think so paying that cash out, you know, is really not helping you, it's not helping you write down your income, reduce taxes, you know, it really should be your clients cost. And even if it's a contingency case, and you can collect 500 bucks on a retainer, right, I mean, or whatever it is not having to pay that out of your firm and acting like a bank, keeps more cash in your bank in your firm. And is really a big mistake that I've commonly see, when I work with firms that the do contingency work or even not doing tend to see work and just don't collect enough trust funds.

Ron Bockstahler  14:40  

Real quick, and though so you take money out of your post tax income, and you pay a fee for a case that's a cut down on contingency. You can't charge interest on that to the client. Correct?

Ryan Kimler  14:52  

Correct. You cannot.

Ron Bockstahler  14:53  

So this is interesting. I was listening to someone Esquire bank was talking with Len Lerner who is a big Personal Injury Attorney out of Vegas. And so Glen for years was finding basically financing his own cases and realized how crazy it was because he was losing money. Whereas you know, he can, he works with Esquire bank, and he goes back and just give me they finance a case. And that's how he's paying those fees, and then is able to charge the client, those fees plus whatever interest, you know that he had to pay the bank?

Ryan Kimler  15:25  

Sure. So yeah, that's much better than paying it out yourself.

Ron Bockstahler  15:29  

That's a great point to bring up that I think so many attorneys are just missing. And they think, well, I got the cash, I'm just gonna do it, which is kind of probably what I would do it, you know, without being educated and understanding it. So this is a good reason that you need to be working with a CFO is going to save you money. And what happens when something goes wrong with the case, you just take a loss?

Ryan Kimler  15:45  

Yeah, absolutely. If if you if you take a contingency case, and let's say you have a bunch of filing fees, let's say it adds up to $500. And you do lose the case, and then at that point, you do not expect your client to pay you. At that point, what happens is, then that does become an expense for your law firm, which means it does write down your taxes. However, obviously, you are out the cash. And you know, it's already it's already flowed out of your firm.

Ron Bockstahler  16:13  

So now you just lost money taking the case. Yeah, you mentioned iolta accounts, let's talk about iolta accounts, and what are some of the do's and don'ts in managing an account?

Ryan Kimler  16:22  

Sure, absolutely. So one of the things that I've learned is, do not make sure that your credit card company is not taking credit card fees out of the trust account. If they are that something that has to be replaced and becomes a real headache. But a lot of merchant companies do like to do that. So that's, that's a pain. I like working with law pay, because they don't, they only take fees out of your operating account, never out of your trust account. Another another don't is there are several big cities that are on state borders. So like Kansas City, right? If you're in Kansas City, Missouri, you know, you might have worked in Kansas, you might have worked in Missouri, you do have to have if you're operating in both states, you do have to have two separate trust accounts. And you need to keep those funds separated. You know, Kansas City is not the only one, like Philadelphia would be another example. Right, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, keep those trust accounts separated and you cannot commingle funds. So that is those are, those are two of a couple of the most common mistakes. And then a third one, when I would say would be I don't, I don't like to see attorneys write checks out of their trust account. Because a lot of times they'll go to the courthouse, they'll write a check for a fee, it'll come out of their trust account. And then before they get back to the courthouse, they do or sorry, their office from the courthouse, they do go into a million other things, and then they forget that they wrote that check, it doesn't get into the ledger. And before you know it, you know, you've shorted a client ledger in your trust account, because you kept you know, taking fees on down the road. So I don't like to see attorneys write checks if they can avoid it. Or if you're going to write checks, really what I like to see is I like to see attorneys print checks from their office, you know, have your assistant do it or whatever, and take them to the courthouse with you. I know it's tough, because you don't always know the fees that you're gonna need. But that's what I like to see happen. And then another Another common mistake is run just running all revenue through the trust account. That is not that is absolutely not a best practice. But I know some attorneys, you know, they they just tell there's this anytime you're collecting a payment, you know, just run it through the trust account. Right? And then they go through and they sort out what's earned and what's not, or that is absolutely not a best practice. I do not like to see that. I mean, really what it comes down to is you just need to educate your assistant, or tell them, you know, this is trust or no, this is not trust. But that's a that's a common mistake that I see. And yeah, you're basically just you're bringing in revenue through the trust account, and then just moving it all the time over to the operating.

Ron Bockstahler  18:59  

It sounds like it's more of a it can be a real management headache. So what can you What can a law firm? What can an attorney do to reduce the time spent on trying to manage these accounts? Yeah, so

Ryan Kimler  19:09  

clear operating procedures are very important. You know, a lot of times I like to see my attorneys collect a trust retainer at the beginning, that they feel is going to support the case one time, and then as they do their Billings, they can just transfer out of the trust account and transfer the Earned funds. And then they don't have to deal with additional payments. Another great management tool is just having some sort of CRM, right online that that everybody in your office can access at any given time and see the trust balances, right. You don't have to share all the revenues with with everybody in your office, but at least let them see trust balances so that they know who's whose ledger has money who's doesn't and you know, it saves them and it's all in one system so that you don't have attorneys that are keeping Separate Ledger's on paper in their own office, and it's not getting in all into one system that is, that is the biggest, most important thing that I've seen over the years is just get it all into one system that everybody can access and be in the know, and keep the system up to date. You know, if it's a daily entry, you have to make keep it up to date. And from there, things run pretty smoothly,

Ron Bockstahler  20:24  

you're getting systems you're recommending.

Ryan Kimler  20:27  

So I am a certified advisor with Clio. However, you know, that's not the only one. I mean, there's there are a lot of systems out there, I've worked with practice Panther as well. My case, case, Fox, there's you know, there's a lot of systems out there, they really all cover their basis. But I do like Clio quite a bit. It really has helped keep a lot of attorneys that we've worked with from overdrawn that trust account, because they can go and pull that ledger up really quickly on their own. Alright, well, let's stand

Ron Bockstahler  20:58  

the software topic, there are a couple tips that you can share that will improve profitability quickly.

Ryan Kimler  21:04  

Sure. So I did mention lawpay a little bit earlier, right? Everybody, everybody's in the game now of collecting credit card fees, right. And that's how we collect payments from a lot of our customers, I actually encourage the law firms that I work with to change the expectation right up front, and if you can collect at ages, right. So with law pay right now, their lowest credit card fee is 1.95%. plus an additional 20 cents per transaction versus a flat a CH is $2. So let's say you're taking in a $1,000 retainer run in the credit card route, you're paying at least 19, almost $20 a CH route $2. Right. And a lot of times, I think it's just the expectation that the assistant or someone at the front desk sets up front and says, Okay, well, we'll take your credit card to pay for this, which well, instead, you know, if you say we collect pay him a CH because a lot of times what I think their clients probably do is okay, here's my credit card, they put on the credit card, and then a month later their statement comes out and they get the bill and they take the money out of their bank account, and they go pay their credit card bill. So they had the money right in the in their bank account. And taking the a CH you know, keeps the fees down and, you know, $20 versus 218 dollars times all of your transactions, if you you know, as many as you can get transferred over, those savings can really add up. So that's one thing that I like to do. And actually, right now all of our clients that are farmer is on a CH,

Ron Bockstahler  22:35  

that's a great point. And we're seeing it anywhere, I donated money recently. And you know, they say you're paying the 3.95%, you know fee if you're paying a credit card. So it's just become a part of everywhere. So I don't think an attorney shouldn't be hesitant to say, we accept a car. But if we're going to accept credit card, you're going to charge the fee processor.

Ryan Kimler  22:54  

Absolutely, that's another way to do it. And I would encourage attorneys to check their fees, too, I know that there are some payment processes out there that are pretty expensive. Law pay is one of the cheapest that I found, you know, saving, let's just say 1% on all your credit cards, well, you know, figure out what you're figuring out what your credit card revenue was for last year, that can really that can really add up to some big money. Another another tip that I would get into as far as software's go. attorneys are a lot like accountants, we see this flashy new software that we think oh my gosh, this is the perfect fit into what I need. This is you know, this is this is going to be so great for my firm, you go and you sign up for it, you give them a credit card, you start a 14 day free trial, you know, sometimes you use the software for a month, sometimes you don't use the software at all. And then they just start charging your credit card and month after month after month, you get hit with it, you know, it's the common subscription model. It's very common in the marketplace nowadays. And so I like to that's one of the things that we do is we like to review your recurring charges once a quarter, you know, recently I sat down and did that with an attorney, we took 4045 minutes, this was the first time that I had done this with this client. And we ended up saving him for $189 a month of just subscriptions that he had signed up for over time, and just was not using. So that's almost six grand a year from 45 minutes of effort. So that's a that's a great exercise that I really like to run through. And if you if you want to do it the the easy kind of a pain in the butt way it'd be to just go get a new credit card and cancel your old one. And all these you're going to get all these notifications to your email box of Hey, your credit card failed your credit card failed, your credit card failed. And then you can go through your emails and look Do I really need this Do I really not. So that's another way to do that as well. It's kind of a pain in the butt. But that's another way to do that as well.

Ron Bockstahler  24:54  

Yeah, but you really can uncover what you're spending most of us. I don't I mean, I don't have any idea.

Ryan Kimler  25:00  

Yeah, that's really important. You know, it can really, really add up over time. And, you know, I think, you know, the 50 $500 or $6,000 that we saved over him over the next year, for 40 or 45 minutes of his time, I think is pretty well worth it.

Ron Bockstahler  25:18  

So that mean, that's quarter million dollars over a 40 year law firm career?

Ryan Kimler  25:22  

Yeah. Over over 40 minutes of work?

Ron Bockstahler  25:25  

Yeah. You know, look, you got it. I know, you put a lot of stuff out there, you do a lot of writing, you're published in quite a few areas, do you have anything that's coming up any events that people can tune into to hear more?

Ryan Kimler  25:36  

We do. So Thursday, October 14, we are going to be having a webinar around financial education. And I'm really excited about that webinar. I also have a really special giveaway for all the webinar attendees that are going to show up. So definitely look for that. Yeah. And

Ron Bockstahler  25:57  

what's uh, I got a couple more questions. But where can attorneys reach out? And where can they reach you online?

Ryan Kimler  26:02  

Sure, absolutely. So www dot financial clarity, LLC. com is my home web page, I have a contact page on there, you can book a call with me. And then also, I'm on LinkedIn as well, you can look up Ryan Kilmer on LinkedIn. And actually, Ron, you and I are connected. So anybody as long as you're connected with Ron, I should show up as a second contact or a second second degree connection, I guess is what they call it.

Ron Bockstahler  26:27  

You know, I'll tell listeners, I've listened I've read a lot of the content you've put out. It's been awesome. So I think you've really got some great stuff out there. You know what you're talking about, I think you can help a lot of the the solo partner practice law firms out there that they don't really want to deal with it. But it's one thing to make money which you can not spend it also, it's kind of a combination. That works. For some people, the PnL has a profit and profits and expenses, you got to pay attention to both? Yeah, absolutely. I get to get to the end product. So. So Ryan, real quick, is there anything else you want to add that you want to go over that I haven't asked questions on,

Ryan Kimler  27:00  

I think we've done a really good job of covering, you know, quite a bit of the the big topics and challenges that law firm owners deal with, I guess the, the biggest thing is, you know, I just I guess I would want your listeners to know that, you know, I think I said this a little bit in the beginning. But accounting and finance doesn't have to be the hard, scary, unknown part of your firm. You know, I know that it's not, it's not necessarily a lawyers expertise, just like my expertise is not practicing law, you know, but you get with the right guide, get with the right person at the right firm. And it can really change how you view that section of your business and really give you power and managing that part of your business. And it can bring real change to your law firm. And profitability and cash flow. Both are super, super important. You know, you can't operate a day in business without cash. So, so yeah, I guess that's, I guess that's the biggest thing that I'd want your listeners to know, it doesn't have to be hard. And there's there are professionals out there that specialize in working with law firms. And, you know, they're easier to find now in the zoom world that we live in. And, you know, there are people out there that can help.

Ron Bockstahler  28:12  

So it's coming from us a partial CFO serving over 200 law firms. And so from your perspective, what's one thing in the legal profession that you would like to see change?

Ryan Kimler  28:23  

I would say one thing that I'd like to see changed, I would say, our court system, like I would really love to see our court system change. You know, it's such a tough one, you know, it, you know, these jury trials, you know, made up of your friends and peers, right, for criminal trials. I mean, they just don't, they just don't always work. You know, so that's a problem. You know, I think the time that it takes to get through a case can be a problem. Our, our court system is definitely an imperfect system. I'm sure that you know, attorneys have even more frustration with it than I do. But, you know, it's, as far as the legal side goes, I mean, that's something that I would like to see change, you know, we've got to we've got to get together and figure out something better, as far as, you know, for the lawyers for the people. You know, I know that being a lawyer is high stress job, right? I mean, you're, you're trying to go and win cases not just for your clients, but also for you know, the families of the clients that you're working for, you got a lot of people that are depending on you. And I think you know, a lot of times you work really, really really hard in your law firm and self care is not always at the top of the list. You know, I can definitely relate when, when tax season rolls around and and our clients are demanding a lot from us, you know, self care and family time is not always at the top of the list. And that's something that I would that I want to see changed. You know, I want to help the law firms that we work with, make a strong profit and a strong cash flow and have the time that they want that for themselves, and for their families to live their life, that's something that, absolutely, you know, I'm out to check cause changing.

Ron Bockstahler  30:10  

While you're talking about one question came up that I'm sure most of you probably already know the answer, but I don't. So I'm gonna ask the question in pro bono work. Is there any kind of tax relief for pro bono work?

Ryan Kimler  30:20  

Yes. So if you if you build the case, as as you normally would, right? So these are like, you know, let's say your hourly rates $200 an hour, right? I'm just throwing out numbers, but you build a case you build the hours, right, that value, whatever it comes out to be, let's just say it's five grand right? can really be put on as donated time, right? When it comes to doing your tax return and things like that, that should be able to be expensed.

Ron Bockstahler  30:50  

Okay, so there's good benefit to doing some pro bono work. So if you can free up time by hiring a CFO, do some pro bono work and lower your tax burden. There you go. Awesome. Ryan. It was great having you on the on the show today. Let's repeat one more time best way for our listeners to contact you.

Ryan Kimler  31:06  

www dot financial clarity LLC comm or you can find me on LinkedIn. Ryan killer.

Ron Bockstahler  31:13  

Ryan, thanks for joining the show today. And thank you for listening to the 1958 lawyer podcast. If you like the show, please share it with other attorneys. And if you would like to be a guest on the 1958 lawyer shoot me a message at Ron V at a badass is calm. And let's talk until next time. Have a great weekend.

Ryan Kimler  31:29  

Thank you very much for having me today, Ron.

Ron Bockstahler  31:31  

Absolutely.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai