Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / You Either Compete, Get Bought, or Die: The New Reality of PI Law

Transcript

You Either Compete, Get Bought, or Die: The New Reality of PI Law · The Jon and Marc Podcast

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Their big elephant in the room is the Wall Street money coming
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in and changing our business. How do you survive in a world
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where all this mass marketing money comes in like 5 Morgan and
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Morgan's come into your town. The only way to survive is to
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build a brand outside of our area.
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People don't know quotas go and sale.
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They can't spell it and definitely can't remember it.
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So putting out on a billboard or something else, it's just like
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everybody else. You can be efficient as you can,
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but if you don't have the brain, you're not going to be able to
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stop these monsters coming in. Welcome to the John and Mark
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podcast. Today we are joined by Michael
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Sale. He is the Co founder, Co
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founder, Co founder of Cordisco and Sale.
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Managing partner and trial attorney.
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So yeah, I'm still wearing those three hats.
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They are located in Bucks County just outside of Philadelphia.
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I've had the pleasure of working with Michael since, gosh,
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2021-2022, somewhere around there.
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I've watched the firm grow. We're going to talk a lot about
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the growth that his firm has gone through, how they've
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achieved it. Thanks for joining us, Mike.
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Thanks, great to be here. I think the first time we
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actually met was at NTL in Miami.
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We did for so years ago. I remember talking to you and
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you're telling us about your partner and how the firm was
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going through an evolution and how you really wanted to grow
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and you wanted to put together a strategy that got you guys to
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the next level. Your partner John has been part
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of the firm since the beginning, but he's also known in the local
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area, right? And that's how kind of he he got
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his local notoriety. How has that helped the firm?
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Grow. So yes, we're about 10 years
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this July. June will be our 10th
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anniversary together. John was a local politician,
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kind of. He was in the State House when
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he was 21 in Pennsylvania, and then was a Democratic Party
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chairman for 25 years. Wow.
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I didn't know him before. We ran into each other at the
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gym. I met my wife at the gym too.
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Just things happen when you spend 2 hours a day or an hour
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and a half a day there, things happen at the gym.
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So anyway, I met him. We had lunch together.
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Starting hitting it off because I was into grassroots marketing.
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I was always an entrepreneur at that time, like my ideas.
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But he worked for a bigger law firm with like 80 lawyers and
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although he brought the most money in, like big bank accounts
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and stuff, they didn't get benefits or get paid on non Pi
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work that they brought into the firm.
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So he was like, I don't know what I want to do.
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And then we hit it off and it was kind of a guy you go into a
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bank with 10 people, come up and shake his hand.
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So I figured if I could take my grassroots marketing knowledge
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with low budget, at the time I was working with my father who's
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an estate planner, you know, by the hour work, we didn't have a
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big budget. So if I took my knowledge and
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marketing at that time, you know, I was doing videos in my
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basement, green screens and all that all by myself. 10 years
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ago. Yeah, 12 years ago. 12 years
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ago, 12 years, you're heading the curve.
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At that point, I figured if I could take my knowledge and
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energy to him and his energy too, with somebody that's
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locally famous, we can hit it off.
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And we've grown. We've grown a lot in the last
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few years. You know, we had COVID in the
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middle and you know, different hiccups and you know, things as
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you grow and, and progress. But I think in the last two
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years, we've grown almost 300% with new cases probably growing
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about 200% or maybe 100% in revenue because it takes a while
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to get that coming in a little delay growing, scaling, We're
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hiring like crazy. Things are good right now.
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It's just managing that there's steps, money wise, staffing,
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making sure the client experience is there the whole
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time. Mike is one of the more
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aggressive managing partners and firm owners that we've
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encountered. He frequently will reach out and
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ask a question about something we'll get on a call and he'll be
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diving into. You'll be diving into the
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specific metrics that are relevant.
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You know, you talk about expansion.
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We had a strategic conversation about how you expand out
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locally. You've done a great job taking
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the firm from its origin with a partner who is, you know,
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ingrained in the community. And now you're a next level
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firm. You're one of the top firms in
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your area. You're a podcast host.
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You you haven't abandoned the things that, you know, you
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talked about doing 12 or so years ago.
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You've just expanded on them and made them.
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Modern yeah, just started with the just the two of us and then
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brought over somebody else and now we just hired 3 lawyers this
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month, one of them being my wife.
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But, you know, we we're actually.
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Great hire, yeah. She always wanted to come tough.
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Negotiator. She was a criminal defense
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attorney and running from court to court to court and then
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realized looking at my associates, if they work hard
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and do well, they can make a lot of money.
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So she's here. Finally, we have a woman
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attorney there to break up these four or five men that are there.
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So everything's good. Culture is good.
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We've been growing that with new hires and keeping an eye on
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that. But you know, so far so good.
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And every month's a new adventure.
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One of the things I was always impressed about you is I've had
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many conversations of the years where John will be surprised
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that you bring new marketing trends to him.
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You are on top of everything that's going on.
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So like how do you balance that of staying on top of upcoming
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things while running the entire firm?
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That's always the equation, right?
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So a few years ago we had an office manager, kind of case
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manager take over. An idea was that John and I had
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because it came from some coaching ideas we had.
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And it was like, OK, now Mike, you can become the trial lawyer
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and do more cases because at that time we're really starting
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to get on some multi $1,000,000 cases.
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I was running them with John supervision and he's like, oh,
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now we can be more of a trial lawyer.
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And then for me, I had all these ideas pent up over years that
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finally when I had this person's take over operations, now I got
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to all the different things I couldn't get to over the years.
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But to answer your question is, you know, it's constantly
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staying in the right frame of mind coming to conferences like
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this. That's all I met John like he
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was speaking here, I don't know, 2021, maybe something like that.
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And I think you just filled in for somebody that cancelled, if
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I remember. I do remember that actually.
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I forgot about that story. There was someone whose flight
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got cancelled and they had me jump in and present and I had
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basically nothing prepared. I whipped up a presentation
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deck. Sounds familiar.
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Got on stage. And he killed it.
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And I'm like this guy knows what he's talking about because we
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went through and SEO companies, you know, every 3-4 years you're
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maybe looking for a change depending on the market's tough
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googles up and down. You guys have no control over
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it. You do your best.
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And then you got crazy stuff like AI moving and LLMS and all
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that kind of stuff. So, you know, moving forward,
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it's new adventure, but going to conference is being part of
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coaching groups, being part of masterminds, do all that.
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And that feeds my brain. So I could be the visionary of
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the firm, but at the same time I'm growing.
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So I still love handling cases, I still love doing depositions
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at times, just not too much of that because that becomes very
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stressful and takes me away from the leadership part of the firm.
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It's a balance. How much caseload do you allow
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yourself to be involved with? Every month I try to thin it
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down and thin it down. But like I had a case last year,
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we just resolved it. It was 26 depositions I had to
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take. Thank God for video and zoomed
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positions because in the old days we'd have to go to a room
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like this to. Travel.
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Camera all these people and travel now we're able to do
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that. So I just finished two monster
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cases multimillion dollar resolutions.
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One was set for trial next week. Thank God it's settled.
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I booked this just in case it's and thankfully I looked at my
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room bill today. You know, it was the last room
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we could get, so it was very expensive.
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You resolved those two cases, but you also wound up getting a
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case from the nursing home explosion.
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I remember it was in Bucks County a couple weeks ago and I
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remember seeing it on the news and it said Bucks County nursing
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home explosion. So I immediately Google it to
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see how close it is. Your office.
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I'm like, I bet you this is relevant to to their firm.
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And next thing I know, I hear you guys wound up signing up the
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case. A lot of firms look at those big
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catastrophic events and they think like, OK, let me talk to
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my marketing agency. How do I get one of those cases
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when those things happen? How did you wind up getting that
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case? So you have like 10 of them,
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right? We have probably over 12, but
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there was 3 deaths. Unfortunately and thankfully, we
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have one of the deaths of the nurse and it comes from
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relationships in the community. Another business owner that knew
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them brought them over to us, and they're a really nice family
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from Kenya. So they took a little while to
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get settled in. And then actually John and I
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went to the funeral last week and it was just a beautiful
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celebration of life. But what that allows us to do is
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get to know that person. You know, we're watching all of
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these speeches and memories and everyone talking how great this
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nurse is, but now we can actually feel her.
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So when we're fighting for her, we now have a person, not just a
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name, and we can really feel in our hearts.
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So that really energizes John and us to do that kind of thing.
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So it was snowing that day too, but it was well spent going out
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there last Saturday and spending three hours and before even mass
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started and they were just giving speeches about how
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wonderful this person was. So we got that case and then
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another cases kept coming in, but it was the same day we had
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our Christmas, my lunch for our staff.
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I get home, it was about 4:00 because we had lunch earlier.
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I'm looking on TV about this horrible explosion and then
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everyone behind on TV from the governor to the local
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politicians to the local agencies, they're all my
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partner, John's friends. I'm like John, there's everybody
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U there. So we put a page U.
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We were trying to be respectful to the families.
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We didn't really want to go overboard.
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It's a fine line. You got to like balance on those
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local events and they just happened.
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We saw some other attorneys like really putting stuff out there
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and we're like, should we do it? Let's do it in a tasteful way
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and, and try to be a source of information and help since we
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have connections in the local community.
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And it turned into, you know, 1314 cases now and hopefully
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working on getting one of the other death cases now.
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So we'll see how that works. And then that means we'll be
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leading the litigation, which is even more interesting because we
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have the majority of the cases. After the the first case wound
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up getting signed up, but what type of local press did you wind
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up doing or coverage did you get and how did that help?
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The local newspapers are familiar with our firm, so they
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were running constant stories on that.
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I came back from a trip between the holidays and the next
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morning. John's OK.
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I want all the attorneys dressed up.
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We're going to meet with his family.
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So we came in and did that. Then the next day the register
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will was there. But after that, we filed the
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lawsuit as quick as we could. We were not the first people to
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file the lawsuit. There's other firms that did
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that, but once that filed, they want to do story after story.
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And I actually had to, I went out to a nursing home, met some
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clients and they actually want to interview them.
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And we're still waiting for our online interview or an in person
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interview. But you know, our name got
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circulated and circulated and then putting out press releases
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and things like that really helped out.
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So a lot of new inbound links for the team.
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Yeah. Always thinking with that SEO
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mindset. You have to for the team, yeah.
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Is that a new type of case for you?
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Have you done explosion cases? We have done nursing, we have
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not. We do nursing home.
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Just regular negligence. They don't blow up all the time.
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No, thankfully no. Then this one was completely
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avoidable from what we can see. I mean, the guest company was
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there 2-3 hours before they exploded and everybody knows you
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have to evacuate, right? You have all these people, half
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of them in wheelchairs, some of them have dementia and
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Alzheimer's referred, not very mobile.
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And they just left them there. And frankly, right before the
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explosion, our clients are telling us that the staff said,
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it's OK now you can go back to your room, everything's safe.
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And then 10 minutes later, boom, they're a hole in another world.
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And they're, they're shell shocks, though.
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I went to a few other nursing homes because they got
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dispersed. Obviously there's over 100
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people there in different other nursing homes in the area.
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And when I met these people, they were like, our family's
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gone. Like some of them don't have
11:22
family. Some of them are strange from
11:23
their family. Some of them are in their 50s,
11:25
young, some of them are older. And they're like everyone we
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know is now spread out and we're all by ourselves.
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And the one lady I spoke was like, as soon as you leave, I'm.
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I moved, had to move my bed next to the window so I can look
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outside because I feel like this is going to explode again.
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And soon as you leave, that's all I'm going to think about
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till I fall asleep. It's really touching.
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If not, thank God we have never been in those experiences.
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But if you are like, it's a whole nother world afterwards
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and, you know, and then you feel for the soldiers and all who've
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been through all this, it's. It's difficult.
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Yeah. Aside from the relationships
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that John had right or has right, with all the people who
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you said we're standing in the background, what other types of
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local community engagement have you done that you think
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contributed to your brand being one of the first to come to mind
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when an event like that happens? Throughout the spring, summer
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and fall, we try to go to as many community events as we can.
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We have a tent, we give away things, we get to know the
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people. But just basically being
12:20
entrenched in the community. Every person that asked me to
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sponsor their team, something like that, We sponsor probably
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50 or more teams this year just to get in the community.
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I used to have a theory, if I'm not involved, why should I
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sponsor A-Team? But in reality, just getting our
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name out there and letting the community know that we're here
12:35
and we care for them. You know, people tell us that
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they've heard of us, they've seen us on TV, we used to do
12:39
local cable TV. But beyond that, even our new
12:42
hires, they're like, Oh, well, we've heard you have the best
12:44
reputation for this or that that, and we try to put that out
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there social media and just staying involved and staying
12:50
somewhat visible locally. As someone who's so focused on
12:54
tracking and numbers as an accountant, formally right?
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Counting major. Counting major.
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I knew I didn't want to be an accountant, so I went to law
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school. How do you attribute value to
13:07
these things that are not trackable?
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Branding in general is not really trackable.
13:12
It's one of those things that you just have overall feel now,
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I think like, I don't know, 5-10 years ago we all got so excited
13:18
about tracking digital marketing or PPC, you know, direct lead
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attribution. Guilty.
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Yeah, we're we are. We are screaming from the
13:27
rooftops the past four years and we're kind of chilling.
13:29
Out now and now you realize that it's a multi touch thing you
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know somebody said maybe there's less than 3% of people out there
13:36
that actually need a lawyer when you know that been in an
13:38
accident. So you're really marketing to
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them with direct marketing like LSASPPC, hopefully good SEO, but
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the rest of it is just marketing to this 97% other people and
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just getting letting them know that you're good guys, that
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you're here to help, that you do good things in the community.
13:57
You know, you're the power player in your area.
13:59
And if you have great customer service, hopefully, hopefully
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when they see your name, if they're doing that search
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because you're at the top, you know, with good SEO and other
14:08
things at that time, they're going to remember your name and
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that kind of all works together. So it's really hard to to
14:14
measure any of that stuff. But overall it's doing good for
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our community, doing good for the firm.
14:19
We're always here to help. I mean, we have people call all
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the time with other legal issues.
14:23
We're always try to help them, push them in the right
14:24
direction. We can't answer all their
14:26
questions, like if somebody called about estates or, or
14:28
family law or something, but we send them somewhere.
14:31
We always help everyone that calls and one of the great
14:34
things is that our intake team, Barbara, she's the our main
14:37
person. She actually gets more reviews
14:39
than anybody else in the firm, mostly from people that she sent
14:43
somewhere else and has helped. And I think that creates
14:45
goodwill everywhere. She's not allowed to get reviews
14:48
from the new clients because that's for the paralegals to
14:50
get, but she actually gets she gets them from the people that
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we turn away, which is interesting.
14:54
That's such a good point. If I think about a lot of law
14:57
firms intake departments, I don't know if a lot of them are
15:00
taking the time to. Refer them to to a place where
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they can't help them. A lot of times there's some we
15:05
can't help you and they're decline to call.
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Put a little extra effort in. That extra goodwill you can get
15:11
can go a long way to compound over time.
15:14
People are looking for help and it's like whether you can help
15:16
them or not, I think. It takes so much for a person
15:18
that has nothing to do in their life with legal that's never
15:22
talked to. A lawyer maybe doesn't have
15:24
anybody in their family lawyer, just a call.
15:26
It's so brave for them to do that and research you and
15:28
finally make the decision. I'm going to call about this
15:31
issue because we're all busy in life and has to be that
15:34
important to them to actually research and make a call.
15:37
So we want to make sure just the legal community in general that
15:39
we're willing to help. We're going to do something.
15:41
You're not just a number, you're just somebody that we need to
15:44
send somewhere else and we're going to give them our
15:45
relationship and share with them so that you know they're in a
15:48
better place when they leave. That is a actually an incredible
15:52
piece of tactical advice. We get asked all the time, how
15:55
do I get more reviews with firms that we work with where they're
15:58
doing a good job getting reviews from people who are actually
16:00
signing up with the firm, but it's still maybe not enough to
16:02
be competitive with people who are getting more reviews faster.
16:05
Think about the people that you turn down and helping them out
16:08
and maybe getting reviews from them.
16:10
That's actually not a bad tactic.
16:12
I still remember one of our conversation we had with Ted
16:13
from Juvilees. He's like a big source of pain
16:16
points for like his team with intakes when he doesn't refer
16:18
his people calling like they just need help with like their
16:21
auto accident claim, not because they're injured, but like my
16:24
car's jacked out. I need help.
16:25
It's like we can help you with that, but it's like help them
16:28
with that. And then they'll recommend you
16:30
to other people to come back to you next time.
16:32
But it's like people are coming to you because they're in a car
16:34
accident. They might not have been
16:35
injured, but they need to get their car fixed.
16:36
So they need to get to work and to point them in the direction
16:38
to help them out because a ton of those calls come in that are
16:41
just left undealt with. And that's helping that 9897% of
16:45
people that are not in an accident like for the future.
16:48
Or not injured in an accident. Yeah, not injured.
16:50
And then now they're raving fans that are hopefully going to get
16:52
on your social media bandwagon and and take that ride with you
16:56
into the future. When you're looking at a team
16:59
who comes to you and says, hey, like we need someone to sponsor
17:01
our jerseys, are you willing to do that?
17:03
They said you're doing what, over 50 right now?
17:05
Probably. Yeah.
17:06
Is there any sort of calculation that you do where you say like,
17:09
OK, they want $500, they want $1000.
17:13
Like how much is too much? Inevitably there's a budget.
17:16
Yeah, right. How do you make those
17:17
determinations, whether it's a team or it's a festival or
17:20
farmers market or other community events?
17:22
There's no rhyme or reason to it.
17:23
I mean, obviously something too much is too much.
17:26
We're not sponsoring teams necessary to go overseas and and
17:29
play sports and things like that.
17:30
But but just for the local leagues, the ones that need the
17:33
money. I used to love when it was where
17:35
my kids run because there were visibility.
17:37
Oh, people know the name. But even beyond that, it's still
17:40
part of our community. And every community needs a
17:42
little bit of help. So there's there's no rhyme or
17:44
reason of what budget are here and there because you can't
17:46
track any of it really. It's just there.
17:48
And at the very least, you're just helping out the Youth
17:50
League, which is so important to us.
17:52
Do you do any traditional marketing anymore?
17:54
But billboards, Radio. TV.
17:55
We did cable, local cable for years and I watched our intake
18:00
numbers over those four years we did.
18:02
So we just didn't do it for a year and I think we did for
18:04
about four years. We saturated Bucks County, so a
18:06
lot of people still, I think we're on TV in Bucks County,
18:08
which we haven't been. Over a year so used to seeing
18:11
the commercial. Maybe it's streaming or
18:13
something else like because I say people, we're not really on
18:16
TV that much anymore, but we're in a unique area where we're
18:19
surrounding, they call it collar counties outside of
18:21
Philadelphia. So we get all the big
18:23
advertisers coming out to mass TV and things like that.
18:25
So it creates an SEO problem at times too when Google wants to
18:28
put those Center City big budget firms higher in local searches
18:33
where we're at. So we always have to combat
18:35
that, which one of the reasons we opened up a Philadelphia
18:37
office this year strategically. So we have, I don't know, 8 or 9
18:41
satellite offices Now we just have a bunch of offices.
18:43
Getting reviews is so important because we need to spread them
18:45
out. You know, we have KPIs for our
18:47
staff to do that and and extra bonuses if they go above their
18:50
KPIs and getting reviews. The firm has grown over the past
18:54
four or five years. What is the next level of
18:56
growth? The next milestone for Critisco
18:59
and Sale. Probably doubled revenue.
19:01
We've tripled the amount of cases.
19:03
We're just preparing for the new world in Pi.
19:06
There's a lot of things going on.
19:07
Three major things, right? Cars are getting safer.
19:10
Accident avoidance is going to be on all cars I've heard by the
19:13
end of 2020, seven, 2028, somewhere around there, right?
19:16
So that's one. On all new cars new.
19:18
Cars. Yeah.
19:18
So there's going to be less cars.
19:20
Well, they we just saw Waymo here too, which makes things
19:23
interesting. We have an Atlanta funny thing
19:25
over right for Christmas. I think it was Christmas Eve,
19:27
like right by the mall. There's a shopping rush and
19:29
there's cars everywhere. A Waymo just stopped in the
19:31
middle of the intersection and the whole like the major
19:33
intersection from the mall was just gridlocked.
19:35
We just see a fire truck pull up, like put his head in the
19:38
window to yell at somebody. He's like, oh, he was just like
19:41
turns around. Like I don't know what to do in
19:43
this situation. You got the safer cars, you got
19:46
the changing cars, right? Then you have, you know, AI and
19:50
all that technology. We were just in a conference
19:53
talking about like pre lit. Pre lit may not be around in
19:57
5-10 years and may all just be run through AI programs and
20:00
communications that way. Sure, the clients have to treat,
20:03
sure you have to advise them, sure you have to do this and
20:05
that. But how much is that going to be
20:07
by human compared to AI and pre lit?
20:09
Having a good litigation team in the future is going to protect
20:12
firms like us. So we're going to be more of a
20:14
litigation firm. And the other big elephant in
20:16
the room is, is the Wall Street money coming in and changing?
20:19
In our business buying up firms, first they're buying up all the
20:21
leads, which are making the leads more expensive, correct.
20:24
So now at least we have AI to kind of reduce our operating
20:27
costs a little bit, becoming more efficient, save some margin
20:30
and then offshore people also helps out in that regard.
20:33
But in reality is this year not even in your business and SEO,
20:37
but in our business they they're starting to buy up firms,
20:40
starting to buy a firm. So you're either going to
20:42
compete with them, right, you're going to die or you're going to
20:45
get bought. And every area is going to have
20:48
its own unique timeline, I feel. I hope Pennsylvania's a little
20:50
bit longer so we can build out and be stronger.
20:53
But how do you survive in a world where all this mass
20:56
marketing money comes in like 5 Morgan and Morgans come into
20:59
your town and just take over All the leads and cases are going to
21:02
be coming so expensive. Our margins are going to shrink.
21:05
So my theory on that is the only way to survive is to build a
21:08
brand. How else are you going to
21:10
compete against that? You have to have a known brand,
21:12
at least locally at the very least, if you're not going to
21:14
go, you know, nationally or to other cities.
21:17
But you can be efficient as you can, but if you don't have the
21:20
brain, you're not going to be able to stop these monsters
21:22
coming in. The one magical thing about
21:24
building a brand that I've realized is no matter how much
21:29
money you throw at it, in order to build a brand, you actually
21:31
have to do real things. Like you can't just spend money
21:33
to build brand. Like running ATV commercial,
21:35
like kind of helps a little bit. But if you want to build a real
21:37
brand, you have to like be a real person in the community.
21:39
If you want to record social content, run a podcast, you have
21:42
to record all that. You can't just offload that to
21:45
someone else to do using influencers.
21:47
That's just advertising. That's not building brand.
21:49
So it's like you have to put real effort in as like an
21:51
attorney now to building your brand.
21:53
You can't just film one commercial one time and run that
21:56
same commercial for a year. One of our other SEO providers
21:58
was, yeah, doing some of the social media for us.
22:01
They weren't in house. So we realize that the more in
22:04
house stuff you can do, the better.
22:06
And you know, as you said, we launched our podcast this year.
22:09
It's called the Injury Pros, great name.
22:11
It's not just me. So I have 6 attorneys besides
22:15
the partners now and I try to make them all be part of the
22:18
podcast. And at least two others right
22:20
now are, are doing it. They're they're hosting their
22:22
own because we're the pros. It's not just Mike.
22:24
We're the pros and that's going to be our brand.
22:26
We hope moving forward is the Injury Pros because eventually,
22:28
you know, outside of our area, people don't know quotas go and
22:32
sale, they can't spell it and definitely can't remember it.
22:36
So putting that on a billboard or something else, it's just
22:38
like everybody else. We're really in the next couple
22:40
years moving towards this new brand.
22:42
We think that's going to resonate and be able to put us
22:45
in a position to either compete with the Wall Street money
22:48
coming in or if the terms be it, we'll, we'll partner with them,
22:52
you know, and move forward. Did that name get approved by
22:55
the local Bar Association? It doesn't have to be, it
22:57
doesn't. You know you can have a
22:58
different brand in Pennsylvania. I'll tell you what, Mike brought
23:01
this up to me years ago. He was very, very forward
23:04
thinking. And he was.
23:05
Running the name. He was trying to think of like,
23:07
how do we do this right? At the time you thought that
23:11
John, you know, maybe retiring at some point soon and you know,
23:14
the the name would get rebranded anyway, right?
23:16
If it's not Cordisco and sale anymore and it's just sale like,
23:19
why not use that opportunity to potentially rebrand to something
23:22
that's a little? Bit more and I was able to
23:24
secure the URL a few years ago and I brought up to John and
23:26
it's a remember it's timing because right now our brand in
23:29
our area is growing. We're scaling.
23:31
You don't want to hurt that, right?
23:33
So it's a slow process. You know, we're trying to build
23:35
up some Google juice, some domain authority as we go on
23:39
that brand and the podcast was our major center point of that
23:43
and that's we're slowly going to move there.
23:45
So that's our goal. It needs to be a very
23:47
calculated. This is my forewarning.
23:49
When we do that, we need to, it needs to be very calculated.
23:52
We need to make sure that any domain migration gets done
23:54
appropriately. And it's not just let's just
23:57
change the website, right? For those of you who are
23:59
thinking of rebranding, the complexities that come into a
24:02
rebrand and all of the social media profiles and all of the
24:05
directory listings and everywhere where the firm has
24:07
been mentioned in the past, it really needs to be like a real
24:10
digital PR effort to at the flip of a switch.
24:13
Now we're the injury pros and everywhere, yeah, we're the
24:16
injury. Pros so I people ask me, do you
24:18
want to do more social media? Do you want to do more of that?
24:20
I said, let's put a hold on branding right now that you
24:22
know, there's different ways we get business.
24:24
You know, there's lead purchasing.
24:26
We do a mixture of that right now because I don't want to
24:28
spend too much on the brand quiz going sale right now just
24:31
because if this is really where we're going, I would really want
24:34
to save for that and be able to blast that out appropriately.
24:36
Time will it set us back a few years?
24:38
Maybe. Because you know, new brand
24:40
takes time to build in the community and out there, but
24:43
it's going to be a natural progression because we're taking
24:45
it slow and building it, building it slowly.
24:47
It's good too, because like what you're able to do with the
24:49
podcast now is you can continue to push out content and kind of
24:52
learn what's resonating more with your audience, The topics
24:54
you're talking about, the different lawyers you have,
24:57
which ones are really resonating and kind of fine tune your
24:59
messaging slowly with the podcast and learn what the
25:02
audience really likes before you launch the brain with our new.
25:05
Lawyers that we hired, they're all interested in participating
25:07
in it. So it's not just me.
25:09
You know, at least you guys have each other.
25:11
It's like when one person does a podcast, they get busy, they get
25:14
tired, they just get disinterested in finding new
25:16
guests. So at least I have some support
25:18
to keep that that ball moving. You definitely need someone else
25:21
to like help keep pushing you along because it was just on me
25:24
to record every time I would. Push it off frequently.
25:28
So did you tell the lawyers when you're interviewing them that it
25:31
was part of their job? Requirements.
25:32
Well I asked them if they'd be interested in the 1st and they
25:34
said yes, so. Moved along in the interview
25:36
process. I mean, if they don't want to,
25:38
they don't want to, that's fine, but we don't have a lot of
25:40
content. Content's the key in this world
25:42
and getting more videos. The reason I did the podcast I
25:44
was telling you earlier is that I don't like getting in front of
25:46
video and talking about accidents.
25:48
It's stiff, it's boring, it's mechanical.
25:51
So just having these conversations, better stuff
25:53
comes out, it's more natural, you sound better.
25:55
And you're more confident, Yeah. And you're more relatable, yeah.
25:58
You were saying you had one of your podcast episodes just on
26:01
YouTube had over 70,000 views. And it was about car insurance,
26:05
like what kind of insurance to get with a local friend who is
26:07
at an agency. And we're talking about the pros
26:10
and cons. And usually we hear about lawyer
26:11
videos talking about that. It's so boring and it's so
26:14
cliche because everybody does it.
26:15
But this guy was minimal budget behind it.
26:18
You know, within three days it had like 70,000 views.
26:21
And of course, tails off after that.
26:22
Sure. Super relevant topic.
26:24
I love that you had an insurance like expert as the other person.
26:27
When you're creating content, you do run into what you're
26:30
talking about of like, OK, how many times could I talk about
26:33
getting into an accident? What do you do after an
26:35
accident, right? You can have them on our web
26:37
pages, which we have done over the years, yeah, but just
26:39
haven't like even new business owners, even if they're not in
26:42
personal injury, you're creating a relationship with another
26:44
professional that hasn't heard of people, thousand people they
26:47
know. And if you put them on your
26:49
show, you're promoting them. We give all our guests the clips
26:52
to tape with them, sound bites and everything else for their
26:54
social media that promotes us. Hopefully we get a backlink from
26:57
them and then in and they're out there and who do they know when
27:00
somebody they know gets an accident?
27:02
Hopefully it's us. So you're just growing that
27:03
community locally, local business owners.
27:06
But in so far we've been able to concentrate it on injuries,
27:08
people, doctors, different professionals in in the
27:11
business. It's like even with us, like for
27:12
example, Supio, their marketing team is great.
27:15
We gave them all the clips, they take them, repost them every
27:17
couple weeks from our episodes from MTP in October.
27:20
You get a ton of views. So I'm like, thank you.
27:22
We're working with somewhere they said, hey, John, Mark, we
27:25
want you guys to help us build a podcast just like you guys built
27:28
the podcast. And we're like, OK, you have to
27:30
be committed. If you are, the guy got to be on
27:32
and you got to be willing to talk to people in your community
27:35
and be a little uncomfortable. But the payoff is exactly what
27:38
you're talking about. You're building your own brand,
27:40
You're networking. You're building SEO value.
27:43
You're building AI value just compounds you're building.
27:46
Yourself, you're becoming a better interviewer.
27:48
Like for us it's direct examination, getting good things
27:50
out of our clients question and answer in front of a jury.
27:53
It works all around and it's not that hard to set up to me, it's
27:56
a no brainer but we had a time we moved into a new brand new
27:59
bigger office this year and we have we now have our own podcast
28:02
room and all that kind of stuff. So we were kind of waiting for
28:04
that transition, but so far I think we might have like 30
28:07
episodes and. Six months.
28:09
The secret is to have a podcast studio set up.
28:12
It seems intimidating to do. It's not that hard.
28:14
No honestly, you just have to get started with something and
28:16
then once you get started, just slowly upgrade it to make it
28:19
better. You don't have to have like a
28:20
perfectly polished episode your first one.
28:22
Everyone sucks at the beginning, so just start with you can and
28:25
then just slowly grow it, but you want to make recording as
28:28
easy as possible. And it's not.
28:29
We always tell people it's not live.
28:30
Yeah. If you mess up, it could be cut
28:32
out. It's one of those things where
28:33
it's comfortable. You're just having conversations
28:36
about important stuff to your business and to your life.
28:38
Great for content, Yeah. What would you say has been the
28:42
biggest growth lover that you've pulled over the past couple of
28:45
years to help the firm grow? We were growing at a slow pace
28:50
for a few years and then I thought investing in coaching
28:55
was one of the things that brought my partner John and I
28:58
together. We were two busy people.
29:00
He was a lot involved in politics, did some cases, and I
29:04
managed the whole firm. People say we were like 2 ships
29:06
passing in the night, but coaching sat us down monthly and
29:10
we had a coach that asked us hard questions.
29:12
What do we want to do? So we actually created a plan of
29:15
where we're going to go and what we're going to do next.
29:17
And then I kind of took over that and figured out like a 10
29:19
year plan, 15 year plan and re engineered based on our case
29:24
value and how much fees we get and how many cases we need
29:27
coming in the door to get to a certain least revenue number.
29:30
Because you can't measure profit that much.
29:32
You hope you having a certain percentage.
29:34
But by the time I was 60, which I think was like 13 years a few
29:38
years ago, I wanted to be a $20 million firm revenue.
29:40
You know, we're probably going to hit that like 5 years just
29:43
based on our planning. So good leaders in your firm,
29:46
You know, we're hiring for director of operations now we
29:48
have a few good candidates. The other staff we hired A
29:52
onboarding, training and HR person that just came from a
29:55
local university. So building that leadership
29:58
panel, you know, that can help you keep that boat moving
30:01
forward. Because I can't do it all.
30:03
And now I feed my brain with these kind of conferences and
30:06
coming up with the ideas. So, you know, CEO and visionary,
30:09
I'm about 70% of that because I'm trying to narrow down my
30:12
cases to be more of a supervising lawyer.
30:14
I still like to get my hands wet in there, a few of the bigger
30:17
cases, but but then I have clients that came back to me
30:19
three times and I'm like, I'll take your.
30:22
And then I'm there for that client because I care and I form
30:25
relationships and they come back.
30:26
The clients that I've gone to trial on and spent a lot of time
30:29
with, whether we win, lose, it doesn't matter.
30:32
There are raving fans. They're the ones you see on our
30:34
Facebook all the time because they know you fought for them
30:37
and they have that feeling that somebody fought for me.
30:40
No matter what happened. I had an ally, a fighter with
30:43
me. Yeah, it's like.
30:43
The original reason you got into the business is to help.
30:46
People, I just told that to a a candidate we're interviewing.
30:49
I said, you come from the corporate world and you've done
30:52
all these great things in operation, I said, but this is a
30:54
business where you can help people.
30:56
Yeah, they come to you in their worst time and you actually can
30:59
change lives, whether it's helping them out with medical
31:02
treatment or, you know, the obvious money that they can get.
31:05
And, you know, you get a lot of hugs at the end of these.
31:08
And it's meaningful because, you know, it's tough sometimes when
31:11
you have a death, for example, you can't fill that hole.
31:13
You can ever change it. But you can have life changing
31:16
money for some of these people and they love you.
31:19
And it's nice to have people out there love you other than your
31:21
family. So it's personally fulfilling,
31:24
but of course, financially fulfilling in these stages that
31:27
we are with rapid growth. You know, it's stressful just
31:29
like any entrepreneur. You're up at night wondering if
31:32
you're going to make the payroll, if you're going to do
31:33
this. Are those cases going to be
31:35
there next month, like a lot of moving parts And during this
31:38
phase, you're not really taking home a lot of profit because
31:41
you're growing so fast. So it's a balancing act.
31:44
And I don't know that you ever stop that.
31:45
We were just listening to Mike Morrison.
31:47
You know, he was going from 50 million to 300 million in five
31:51
years and he made it in three years.
31:52
Like where do you stop in that process?
31:53
I don't know if it's ever a place.
31:55
I had a conversation with John recently.
31:57
I go, how much money is an F? Yeah, at some point, we're not
32:01
like rolling cash. We're like we have, we're
32:02
planning our growth and our partnerships and how we're going
32:05
to grow the company. And I was like, at what point is
32:08
it enough? I was like, I want to be able to
32:09
see my kids grow up. I have my number.
32:11
This is my number I want to get to.
32:12
But everything above and beyond that is great, but not
32:15
necessary. I got to live a life.
32:17
We all have kids, right? Younger kids and all.
32:20
And you know, that's the best part about being an entrepreneur
32:23
is that you can be there. I don't want to miss one game,
32:25
one wrestling match for my kids. I'm leaving tomorrow because
32:28
they have three wrestling matches on Wednesday.
32:30
Nice. I got to be there for and this
32:32
stuff's great, but that's what matters.
32:34
I always say as a dad, you have 10 good years to spend with the
32:37
kids and being entrepreneur, you get to decide when you're there.
32:40
When you're not there, no one's going to tell you unless you're
32:42
in trial or something. And that's what that's why I
32:44
don't like the too many trials because you're just taking away
32:46
from your family during these important years.
32:48
But I'm there, you know, I like to do my morning routine.
32:51
I like to hit the gym 456 days a week and get my head straight
32:55
and I might not come in till a little bit later, but guess
32:57
what? I'm working on the weekends.
32:59
It's there's no a work life balance.
33:00
You just do what you have to do to move forward.
33:02
But I always tell my staff your family's the most important
33:05
thing and if you can set up your business to run around your
33:07
family, especially in these younger years, you know, when
33:09
we're our kids are in college, it's going to be a different
33:12
life. That's a whole nother phase of
33:13
life for us. Our kids are just starting high
33:15
school now and we have one in one in middle school.
33:17
But that's next phase right? Right now it's my my life is
33:21
determined by my kids schedules and work.
33:24
Beyond that, I really don't care about too much more.
33:26
We get to see friends here and there, that's great.
33:28
But hopefully schedule some good vacations through the year to
33:30
help you clear your head, create some memories of your family.
33:33
That's the most extremely good. Perspective on that?
33:35
And since the first time I met you, every time you come to
33:38
Miami, you bring your wife, you have a good time, it's a work
33:42
trip. Now.
33:42
And now it's a work trip, yeah. Every trip's a work trip now.
33:47
We'll be in San Diego, be in Scottsdale next week for another
33:50
conference. Yeah, wow.
33:52
And she gets to choose when she can come.
33:54
But of course we have three kids, so.
33:56
It's been great to see the evolution of the firm, the
33:58
continuing growth path of the firm.
33:59
I mean, it's only up from here. The trajectory's been great.
34:03
Really appreciate you joining us, sharing some of the insights
34:05
that you've had and continue to have.
34:07
And we'll be on the lookout for the injury pros.
34:09
And make sure you listen to Mike's podcast, too.
34:12
Yep, injury pros. Thank you guys.
34:14
All right. Thanks for coming on.
34:16
Awesome.