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Eggs 447: Standing Out in a Crowded Legal Market with Jonathan Rosenfeld · EGGS! The Podcast

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Now back to the show. Hey, everybody.
1:37
Welcome back to Eggs the podcast.
1:38
Today's special guest is Jonathan Rosenfeld.
1:40
How are you, man? I am great.
1:43
Thank you for having me. Happy New Year, almost.
1:46
Yeah, you as well. Thanks so much for making time
1:48
to talk to us today. Really appreciate it.
1:51
Why don't you give us a a quick overview of who you are?
1:56
I know you're an attorney and you focus a lot in AI, but how
1:59
did you get to where you are right now?
2:03
Well, yes, I am a, an attorney, although I sort of consider
2:10
myself more of a business person slash entrepreneur and, and
2:15
really that's probably, I don't know, that's probably the
2:19
majority of the time that I spend.
2:21
And in terms of, you know, interest to me, yes, the law can
2:25
be fascinating, but really what I'm interested in is, is growing
2:31
and expanding my business. I am the, the owner, managing
2:36
attorney and business developer development person at Rosenfeld
2:42
Injury Lawyers in Chicago. We do all different types of
2:46
personal injury cases and that's sort of my, my area in general.
2:53
And then what specifically, we've really niched down over
2:57
the past, you know, year or so in terms of really developing
3:01
certain very specific areas of the law, which resonate both
3:07
with our, our clients as well as with, you know, search engines
3:11
and the evolution of AI. So those are, that's really what
3:16
I do. You know, other than that, you
3:18
know, I've got, you know, business aside, you know, I'm
3:22
married, I've got 2 wonderful kids and you know, that keeps me
3:26
pretty, pretty busy. Awesome.
3:29
Yeah, no, I love it. Well, and and I think it's an
3:31
interesting topic too, you know, especially given your focus on
3:35
AI and sort of future tech and marketing and things like that.
3:38
I think it'll be really fun to get into this with you.
3:39
But like, I feel like your industry in particular, you
3:43
know, law firms, I think are kind of like my industry and
3:47
maybe Mike's to some extent, which are, you know, industries
3:50
that are ripe for AI to kind of either destroy you or help you
3:55
grow. Like it's going to be 1 or the
3:57
other, but you're probably not going to be able to just keep
3:58
doing what you've been doing. And so, so I think it's pretty
4:02
cool that you've been taking some big steps in that way.
4:04
So I wonder if you talk a little bit about just sort of your
4:06
perspective on sort of the future of your business and and
4:10
the way it's working and how you're seeing AI play a role.
4:13
Yeah, I mean, well, I guess there's, there's two different
4:16
aspects of it from internal workings, you know, what we're
4:20
starting to use and adapt, you know, a lot of the AI features
4:24
on, on Gemini and e-mail and things like that.
4:27
But really externally, from a marketing perspective, what I'm
4:31
really working on and really tinkering with and, and some of
4:34
it's working and frankly, some of it's, you know, I, I wish it
4:38
was working a little bit better, but is really focusing on
4:43
becoming, demonstrating your expertise in a particular area.
4:49
Because I think AI has the power to generate vast amounts of
4:54
content that you can just, you know, essentially, you know,
4:59
punch it into a computer, whatever you want, and it'll
5:02
just throw out a mess of content.
5:05
What I'm really trying to do now is not only generate content,
5:11
but generate content that that has more of a human side to it.
5:15
So in other words, if I'm doing like we finished doing a website
5:19
on on bicycle accidents and one of the we have got a lot of
5:24
content on bicycle accidents. There's a lot.
5:27
I know if you're if you're not in the in the area, you mean may
5:30
not know, but there's a lot of attorneys who have specific
5:34
websites designated to bicycle accidents.
5:37
I see Mike with the bike and, and back and that sort of
5:42
smirking about that. But, you know, essentially a lot
5:46
of these websites, they just become very generic.
5:49
And what we're trying to do is really take the, the legal side
5:54
of things and apply it to maybe in a specific case that we
5:58
handled, you know, so for example, if we have a page about
6:02
a during bicycle accident, we're going to talk about the laws
6:06
that are applicable to, to prevent during accidents.
6:10
But then we're also going to talk about a specific case that
6:14
we handled involving a cyclist who was injured by an adoring
6:19
accident. We can talk about, you know, the
6:21
financial recovery that we have obtained for him.
6:23
So we're really, what we're trying to do is really use the,
6:27
the tools available to everyone and then layer it up with an
6:32
extra, you know, humanizing layer to really show that not
6:37
only we know the law, but we're really the experts in this
6:41
particular area. And I think what I've seen is
6:44
that a lot of times when people are using AI tool tools to
6:48
generate content, they're missing that sort of unique
6:52
element of their expertise or whatever their, their voice,
6:58
which really leaves a void, I think in a lot of situations.
7:02
And inevitably there's just a lot of mess out there.
7:06
And I think when you're showing your your real, your expertise
7:10
and you're really just maybe not even expertise, but you're
7:13
really putting that extra layer of effort into it, you are able
7:18
to differentiate yourself from competitors down the street.
7:23
So AI and law and legal stuff seems like it should go hand in
7:27
hand because really AI is crawling a bunch of data legal
7:33
briefs. It seems like it would be really
7:34
easy to like, hey, gather all the information on bicycle
7:38
accidents that happened in this market at this time, all the
7:41
legal cases and so on and so forth.
7:43
And it should be able to just crawl it and pull it exactly for
7:45
what you need. Is that kind of the case in in
7:50
law these days? It's more of a helping hand.
7:53
I've seen some some videos of people taking a little too far
7:59
in court and going nuts with it, but as far as like replacing
8:03
like four or five different assistants, you could probably
8:06
just crawl it real quick, get what you need, get the info and
8:09
and be ready for court the next day pretty quick is that.
8:12
Pretty much what you can, you, you can.
8:16
But you know what we're really conscious about, you know, and I
8:20
think some of the the newsworthy episodes you've mentioned are
8:23
really a good reminder for everyone that you really have to
8:27
verify everything. Yeah.
8:31
You know, if you just let these tools just run wild, you will,
8:35
you know, you will get vastly accurate information.
8:39
But what happens is, is that when you get that, you know, 1
8:43
statistic that's wrong or you, that case law that may have been
8:47
overturned and you don't check it, that's really when you run
8:52
into problems, you know, both professionally, you know, and,
8:56
and ethically, frankly, with, with the court and with your
8:59
clients and, and, and everything else.
9:02
But certainly from, from a standpoint of beginning,
9:08
absolutely. I mean, it's a tremendous,
9:10
tremendous time saver. I mean, right now we're using
9:13
different tools to generate, for example, we're doing a lot of
9:19
content on, I'm jumping around a little bit, but I'm trucking
9:22
companies and in terms of trucking companies safety
9:25
records. And it's, it's really, really
9:28
useful to use some of these AI tools to extract that
9:34
information that may have taken, you know, two or three people,
9:40
you know, I don't know ours, frankly, to, to gather that
9:44
information, you know, look at the accident rate, maybe per
9:48
mile or breakdown into a really tangible statistic that now you
9:53
can really get very, very quickly and very accurately.
9:58
So for for data, I really find that AI is really helpful for
10:03
more of an analytical perspective.
10:04
I still think that it's a little bit lacking.
10:07
And that's really also where you can differentiate yourself.
10:11
Yeah, I think that's right. Well, and I wanted to talk a
10:13
little bit about that standing out in the competitive market.
10:15
I mean, obviously your realm of expertise and personal injury
10:19
law is, you know, crowded marketplace.
10:21
And you know, there's certain connotations that come with
10:24
those types of things. I mean, akin to, you know, the
10:26
way people think about used car salesman, things like that.
10:29
There's like reputable companies, but you've also got
10:32
your share of shady guys on the other side that are kind of
10:34
messing with the reputation of the reputable firms.
10:36
And so I think, you know, maybe even more so, or more
10:39
importantly now with AI and things like that, it's important
10:42
to stand out in those fields because it'd be easier for the
10:44
bad guys to, to make a bigger message or make more noise than
10:48
it ever was in the past. But it also, you know, for the
10:52
for the firms that are reputable and the firms that are actually
10:54
trying to help and they're not just being predatory, those guys
10:57
need to have the opportunity to raise their voice too and raise
10:59
their profile and, and create more good messaging in their
11:03
world. So I wonder if you talk a little
11:05
bit about just as a competitive landscape and maybe one of the
11:08
more competitive realms of law, how do you find your position
11:13
and how do you stand out now? I mean, you mentioned content
11:16
strategy, which I think is really bright and I think
11:18
writing the AI wave is obviously very important part of this.
11:21
But maybe today you know what, what are the sort of universal
11:26
truths or the things that you've been working on over the years
11:28
that you're going to continue doing in 26?
11:30
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the
11:32
things that I've, I've sort of, I don't feel a little bit more
11:35
comfortable about now than I may have felt, you know, six months
11:39
ago. Is that really the the same
11:42
things that, you know, differentiated you, you know, in
11:48
the past are really going to differentiate you in the future?
11:52
You know, showing frankly, just people want to see someone that
11:56
they can relate to, regardless of your circumstance.
12:00
You know, if you're injured in an accident, you don't care.
12:04
You know, how frankly, how polished your, your lawyer's
12:08
shoes are. You don't care, you know,
12:11
necessarily about the fantastic brief they may have written a
12:17
year ago. What you care about is you care
12:19
about someone who's responsive and attentive to your needs and
12:22
has, you know, experience with your particular situation.
12:26
And I think a lot of times, you know, myself included, you know,
12:30
you sort of get overwhelmed by some of these tools and you see
12:35
maybe a competitor who's got a flashy, you know, ad either on
12:40
TV or, or on a website or something.
12:44
It's all about the ultimate. But ultimately, you know, I, I
12:50
think regardless of your circumstance and regardless of
12:52
your, you know, where you come from, these are things that you
12:56
know, people want, they want it, they want someone who's
12:59
responsive. So you know what, we have people
13:01
who, you know, answer calls 24 hours a day.
13:05
You know, we return calls. You know, lawyers in my office
13:09
return calls every single day. You know, Christmas, New Year's
13:13
included, it doesn't matter. These are little things that we
13:17
do from a, a service standpoint because not, you know,
13:21
obviously, you know, we can talk with, I'm jumping around, we can
13:24
talk about the marketing component.
13:26
But ultimately you have to realize that when they're
13:30
calling you, they're not calling just you.
13:33
They're calling, you know, the, the five or ten other people
13:37
who, you know, maybe down the street from you who are
13:39
competitors. And ultimately, you know, you
13:43
have to be servicing these people very quickly and you have
13:47
to be addressing their needs and their concerns and answering
13:50
their questions because if you're not, someone else will.
13:55
And so that's something that, you know, that this is something
13:58
that I've really held near and dear to my heart for, for a
14:03
long, long time. And it, I think it's really
14:05
served me well, frankly, because, you know, I address
14:09
some of the belief that, you know, when, when you're resting
14:13
someone else's working and, and they're getting, they're getting
14:17
that business. And so you just got to be super
14:19
responsive, you know, and that's, that's just something
14:22
that we've done and that's part of our really our culture.
14:25
Yeah, no, I love that. And I think that, you know, one
14:28
of the things that really stands out and what you said is this
14:30
notion that basically it's still the interpersonal relationship
14:33
that's the most important thing. It's the, you know, the trust
14:36
that you established by being available to, you know, any time
14:39
of day. It's the, you know, relationship
14:42
that you start to develop by responding quickly and all those
14:45
kinds of things, like, I mean, all that stuff.
14:46
So it's funny, you know, we sit and talk, we spend a lot of time
14:49
talking about AI and the future of marketing and all this kinds
14:52
of stuff. But it's like at the same time,
14:53
all the stuff that always worked still works.
14:56
And so and, and building relationships I think is one of
14:59
the big things. I wonder though, what do you
15:01
think about the opposite? Like is there something that you
15:03
used to do in the past that you just don't think will work going
15:06
forward? So I mean, if relationships is a
15:08
relic of the past that's going to continue thriving in the
15:10
future, what's the opposite of that?
15:12
Well, I, I think, you know, I think when it's from a marketing
15:17
perspective, you know, some of the techniques that were very
15:21
pervasive a couple years ago, you know, in terms of, you know,
15:26
first, you know, keyword stuffing content, that's just,
15:30
that's done, You know, a lot of the generic, you know, images
15:35
that people were using on websites.
15:37
That's over. You have to, again, it's not.
15:42
I think what a lot of times people get very concerned about
15:45
is they get very, they get very caught up with new technology
15:48
and they really, you know, almost become crippled by not
15:53
taking any action. And they get very intimidated by
15:57
a lot of these new technologies that may, you know, spit out a
16:00
fantastic, you know, filtered photo of them or, or, you know,
16:06
someone in their office. But I think at the end of the
16:09
day, what you have to do is you really have to use those tools.
16:13
And again, I've, I've sort of hit on it before, but layer on
16:16
your personal take on all these things.
16:19
So, you know, whatever, you know, whatever is working today
16:23
in terms of marketing, it may not work six months or a year
16:26
from now. And I think you just have to
16:27
recognize that and adapt to it. But a lot of time from a
16:31
marketing perspective, a lot of the, you know, what we were
16:35
doing in terms of, you know, maybe having a lot of different
16:38
location pages, that's not really working as well as it may
16:44
have in the past. Sometimes in the past what we
16:48
had done is we instead of having one longer page on a specific
16:53
topic, we were having 5 or 6 different pages on it.
16:56
And that was, you know, leading to issues with content
17:00
cannibalization on it. So I mean, there's, there's
17:03
subtle things, but again, I think you really have to stick
17:07
to the basics in a lot of these things.
17:10
And really I think you'll be OK. But yeah, I mean, everything
17:13
evolves over time and I think you just have to realize it that
17:17
you either adapt or you die. So you've mentioned a few
17:24
different websites, almost, almost like you're designing a
17:27
website about around a specific topic.
17:30
You mentioned the bicycles, you mentioned the semi trucks, you
17:32
mentioned it almost is like you're niching down to the type
17:38
of accident or the type of injury or a client that you
17:44
focus on or represent. How do you AB test that?
17:50
And, and is there a reason you're going with multiple
17:53
websites instead of 1 website that contains multiple, you
17:59
know, like you could have a blog in a a single website that
18:02
covers both all those topics. Is there a reason you're going
18:05
with different domains for different specific items?
18:11
Great. Yeah, great question.
18:14
First off, we do have, you know, a, a sort of a the mothership
18:18
of, of, you know, main websites, but then we also have very
18:22
specific websites designated to specific injuries.
18:26
And the reason for that is if you start, you know, and this is
18:32
just through pretty much through trial and error and, you know,
18:35
there's been some case studies on this and different search
18:37
engine publications. But if you start going to like
18:42
the AI overview and you click on that and then you click on the,
18:45
the next overview and you keep clicking through it, basically
18:49
it's like a, it's like a onion and it just, it keeps peeling
18:52
deep, deeper and deeper, the layers of the onion.
18:55
And what we want to do is we want to be able to, you know,
19:00
get into that deep, deep layer where if someone's really, you
19:06
know, looking at a specific topic and they're, they're
19:10
looking at, you know, if they're in a, in a whatever, let's say
19:13
that they're, we have another website.
19:15
I know it's going to shock you, but on nursing home cases.
19:19
And if someone, if someone's researching these topics,
19:23
frankly, what we want is we want people who are an educated, you
19:28
know, client. We want someone who's done the
19:30
research, who's looking, you know, really diving deep into
19:34
this as opposed to someone from maybe 10 or 20 years ago who's
19:38
just, you know, flipping through the Yellow Pages and whoever had
19:41
the, the, the brightest tie, they would just call them.
19:45
We want people who are actually learning about the topic for
19:50
themselves, their family member, whoever.
19:53
And by the time they, they contact us, they've done the
19:57
research. But in in order to get to that
20:00
point, there's we have to be really put together.
20:05
A very, very comprehensive, you know, website or like I call it
20:10
piece of work demonstrating our expertise and that you know it
20:14
again, in at the end of the day, we're we're writing this really
20:18
both for two two things. We're writing it for our client
20:23
or perspective client or doing this for the search engines.
20:28
When you start doing the, you know, the AI overview and you
20:32
click on that, you'll see people all, you know, I think sometimes
20:35
in the past it was called people also ask.
20:37
And if you click on those, there's a whole nother layer of
20:40
that. And I think what a lot of these
20:42
search engines are doing, or I mean, it's pretty obvious what
20:45
they're doing is they're associating a brand with a
20:50
particular topic. So you want to have your brand
20:55
associated with whatever topic you want to have expertise in.
21:00
And you can still have a, a, you know, a main website.
21:04
But what happens is, is that if you are covering, let's say
21:09
you're covering 10 or 12 or 20 different topics, it's difficult
21:14
for some of these search engines, depending on how your
21:17
content is structured to see, to draw the connection between
21:22
these different topics. And in our, in my world, you
21:27
know, I think they're all somewhat related, you know,
21:29
bicycle accident, truck accident, nursing home abuse.
21:32
But in the eyes of a search engine, they don't necessarily
21:37
draw that connection. And, you know, the eyes of a go
21:41
ahead. Sorry.
21:41
I. Was going to say that actually
21:43
makes a lot of sense a because not only does the, you know,
21:49
Google or whatever entity out there crawl your site, they're
21:53
going to say, hey, this one is an expert on bicycle accidents,
21:58
whatever. But you have the overhead
22:01
company website that you're, I'm assuming you're linking back
22:05
from the external site to your your company site.
22:10
Every single link back actually helps your SEO grow.
22:13
So that's part of an SEO search is the link backs and the the
22:17
credible links that are going from one site to another.
22:20
So by doing that and having multiple domain names, that
22:23
probably helps your overall SEO as well.
22:27
From what I. Understand.
22:28
I could, I mean, no, you're, you're, you're 100% correct.
22:32
I mean, these aren't, we're not doing any, you know, they're
22:36
we're not creating a you know, a lot of times there was this talk
22:38
about private blog networks from the, from the past where people
22:41
would have, it was somewhat of a Black Hat, you know, SEO
22:44
technique where people would essentially, you know, have have
22:48
a stable of maybe, I don't know, fifty 100 websites.
22:51
A lot of them were really unrelated to one another and
22:53
they would just sort of link back and forth and what, you
22:56
know, Google's, there's not, there's no hiding from Google or
23:00
any of these other search engines anymore, But they would
23:03
see that, Hey, like, why is a Chinese food, you know,
23:07
restaurant, you know, linking to Jonathan's website that about
23:11
law. That's just not related.
23:13
And why is it also related, you know, linking to a baseball card
23:16
website? So I mean, but when you do have,
23:19
you know, things that are, are really related and genuine, I do
23:25
think yes, you do get credit for that.
23:27
If you look at, you know, how Amazon is set up with, you know,
23:30
the links, you know, Zappos and everything else on their footer,
23:35
they're basically just essentially reinforcing their
23:38
brand to a certain degree. Maybe it's a, it's obviously,
23:41
you know, I'm not going to compare myself at all to to
23:43
Amazon, but it's a similar theory there.
23:47
Well. What I love about it is I think
23:48
it's a real bit of practical advice for a lot of small
23:50
business owners because I think a lot of people have fear to
23:54
niche into a specific area. I think a lot of business
23:57
owners, especially young ones, we'll try to be all things to
24:00
all people or, you know, they'll have kind of a very generalist
24:03
approach as to what they do for work.
24:05
And, and, you know, I mean, even though personal injury is a, a
24:08
niche of law, let's say, it's still a really broad area.
24:13
You know, I mean, just the three examples you've given, you know,
24:15
from bikes to trucks to nursing homes, I mean, even that's quite
24:18
the spectrum. You know, So if you're really
24:20
trying to niche, I mean, you could probably build a practice
24:22
around any one of those things. You know, you're the the bicycle
24:25
guy or you're the, the trucking guy.
24:27
But what I love about this, and it's kind of like what I call
24:30
pseudo niching, which is this notion of, you know, building a
24:34
niche, but like you're not actually precluding any of the
24:36
other things that your business does, but you're developing or
24:38
showing expertise in, in a given way, which is, you know, in this
24:42
case through landing pitch strategy.
24:44
And so I really like that because it doesn't, I guess it
24:47
doesn't shorten or, or minimize what it is that your company can
24:51
do at large, you know, in terms of the types of customers you
24:54
can serve. But each of those things.
24:56
And you mentioned how like the, the web browsers and stuff will
24:59
see these or how Google will crawl them.
25:01
But also on the other end of that, the person who's viewing
25:03
it or the person who's Googling it, the person who has had the
25:05
nursing home accident or the person who has had the bike
25:08
bicycling accident, the person who's riding the bike isn't
25:11
looking for somebody who's great with trucking companies.
25:14
You know, I mean, they're looking for somebody to know
25:16
something about bikes. That's a, that's a, that's a,
25:18
That's a really, really good point.
25:20
I think a lot of times, you know, people are almost turned
25:22
off when they're like this guy, you know, I was, I was in a car
25:26
accident. You know what?
25:28
I don't give a crap about someones, You know, if the guy
25:30
handles divorce cases and and business stuff, I want, I want
25:34
to, I want the best lawyer for my particular situation.
25:38
And I think that's a really, really good point where if you
25:41
do have some of these areas, which, you know, again, under
25:44
the big umbrella of law or whether if you're in real estate
25:47
or whatever, it doesn't, it doesn't make any difference.
25:50
People want someone who has experience with their particular
25:54
situation. And I think sometimes when you
25:58
know people, you know, maybe it's out of ego.
26:01
I don't, I don't know exactly what it is.
26:03
Or just trying to like, you know, throw darts at the wall
26:05
and hope one of them sticks, but they just go overboard in terms
26:09
of the breadth of their, you know, content on a website.
26:16
And I think sometimes it's a while you may think it's, it's
26:19
awesome to have all of this content out there and show how
26:22
fantastic you are in every single area.
26:25
The, the person who's picking up the phone and paying your bills
26:28
ultimately really doesn't care at all about these other areas
26:34
of expertise or, or really interest that you may have.
26:38
So I think it's a really, really good point.
26:40
We've done a little bit of AB testing with that and we'll,
26:43
we've actually tried to segment out certain areas to avoid that.
26:49
So people don't see, you know, if for example, if they have a,
26:54
a drug recall case or something, they don't, you know, they may
26:58
be calling from a out of state. They don't care about Chicago
27:01
car accidents. And I think that's something
27:04
that you have to recognize as a business owner that really
27:09
sometimes you want to maybe take a step back and and niche down a
27:14
little bit and really maybe go deeper as opposed to spreading
27:20
out. So that's something that that
27:22
we've really tried to do. And one of the other things I
27:24
like about it too is that, I mean, especially for small
27:26
businesses and maybe even, you know, all the way into mid and
27:29
large sized companies, it's hard to market to everyone.
27:32
So if everyone is your audience, it's really hard to spend all
27:34
your marketing dollars trying to reach everyone.
27:37
You know, really what you do need are some of these sort of
27:39
niche categories, you know, where, OK, we're going to put a
27:41
little extra money into this or that, you know, vertical and
27:45
that will help our marketing dollars go further, right?
27:48
I mean, I don't know, I don't know how much of this is
27:50
seasonal, but I have to imagine car accidents pick up in the
27:52
winter, let's say. So, OK, so if we're going to
27:54
have more car accidents in the winter, well, let's adjust our
27:56
marketing spend so that our, you know, car accident website is
28:00
getting a little bit more traffic and a little more
28:02
exposure. And we'll back off of bicycle
28:04
accidents because, you know, nobody's riding their bike in a
28:07
Chicago winter, you know. And so I think, you know, so
28:10
you, it gives you the opportunity to have a strategy
28:13
like that versus if you have just like a website that's kind
28:16
of a catch all, it's like, OK, well, I can drive people to this
28:19
catch all website of ours. But, you know, I mean, we're
28:21
marketing, we're spending the same amount of money on bikes as
28:23
we are on cars, even though we know there's no bike traffic
28:27
coming this time of year, you know, so I.
28:29
Think it's kind of a, it gives people no, that's, that's a
28:32
great, it's a, it's a great point.
28:34
And again to what we were talking about earlier, you know,
28:39
again, if someone's looking at the your, if you're, if you're
28:43
driving traffic and someone's looking at it and be like this
28:46
is sort of random or whatever, it just dilutes.
28:49
It dilutes your brand, it dilutes you're wasting money if
28:52
you're doing paid search, it goes on and on and on.
28:55
But at the end of the day, I, I just think that a lot of these
28:59
techniques, marketing techniques, SEO techniques that
29:03
may have, you know, they may have, you know, you may have
29:07
worked two or three years ago and people, you know, read about
29:12
and they see all the, you know, development with AI and content
29:15
and stuff like that. And they get very frankly
29:19
scared. You have to just take a step
29:22
back and just sort of really think about things from a
29:26
consumer's point of view as opposed to maybe what you want
29:31
to do, which can be disheartening sometimes.
29:35
So I recently drove through Vegas and I don't know, have you
29:40
driven through Vegas recently? I, I, I've driven through, not
29:46
really I, I've, I've been to Vegas.
29:48
I was there last year. But yeah, it's it's, it's not my
29:51
favorite place, but. So with that said, going through
29:56
Vegas, there's a section where there's four or five accidents
30:00
every time I drive through there.
30:01
And just so happens in that section, there's about 8
30:04
different billboards for personal injury attorneys in
30:08
that 10 mile section. And I honestly wonder, I, this
30:11
was my thought process as I drove through there and saw four
30:14
accidents and all the billboards, I'm like, do they
30:16
statistically figure out where the most accidents happen and
30:20
place their billboards accordingly?
30:22
Because that to me would make sense, you know, and, and the
30:26
thought. I like.
30:28
The lead up to my question is you do a lot of stuff online,
30:32
but do you do other marketing offline?
30:34
Is that something that you do? Is that something you an Ave.
30:38
you go down? Is is the the Billboard
30:40
placement? I don't do billboards.
30:44
I've I've tried everything. Frankly, I've tried.
30:48
I I've done TV, I've done radio. I've done actually, I take it
30:53
back. I have done some billboards in
30:55
the past. I've done some, I don't know,
30:58
the seats for the bus and stuff like that.
31:01
I've actually done some, yeah. You know, I got AI was pretty, I
31:05
was pretty saw. I was pretty saw though.
31:06
I've done, I've done, I've done everything.
31:09
And at the end of the day, everything does work.
31:12
You know, it's just a matter of how well it works.
31:15
And it's like, you know, we were talking about with content, you
31:19
know, you can, you can, you know, scattershot all these
31:23
different marketing dollars everywhere.
31:25
And it just becomes like it you really, I think what you really
31:30
need to do is whether you're doing something online or you're
31:33
doing billboards or you're doing TV, you have to focus on one or,
31:39
or maybe 2 areas and, and ratchet down on that as opposed
31:44
to doing everything. Because I mean, everything's
31:47
very, the cost associated with all this stuff.
31:50
It just gets, it's gets out of hand very, very quickly.
31:55
And I think you're better off saturating 1 area or what maybe
32:02
saturation is not the, the correct term, but, you know,
32:05
diving in a little bit deeper with some of these areas as
32:09
opposed to just going crazy on everything because, yeah, to
32:13
have one billboard, yeah, you may get 1, you know, few cases.
32:16
But you know, really to have an effective, you know, billboard
32:20
campaign, you have to have, I don't know what the, I don't
32:23
know what the numbers are, but I'm guessing it's probably 10-15
32:26
at least in a, in a fairly concentrated area.
32:29
Same with the television spot. You know, first time someone
32:32
sees it, they're going to be like whatever, the 20th time
32:35
they see it, it may be different.
32:36
So I think it's, it's really important that you just pick
32:39
your, pick your poison and, and go with that.
32:42
And. Stick with it.
32:44
Do you? Do you have a sales funnel
32:47
process that you track where your leads generations come
32:50
from? We do every single, we've got a,
32:56
we use call rail with the different designated numbers for
33:01
every single case type, every website we do when we do a paid
33:06
search, we have a separate number.
33:09
We try to track as much as possible.
33:13
You know, it's, it's increasingly, despite all these
33:16
new tools, it's really actually more difficult I find to track
33:22
today than it was maybe in the past.
33:24
Just because if you are doing different, different campaigns
33:30
and you are doing, you know, paid search and you're doing a
33:33
Facebook campaign and you're doing a YouTube campaign, a lot
33:37
of times people jump back and forth and people may not even
33:41
recognize, you know, where they're, where they're clicking
33:45
and, and what site they're on and things like that.
33:48
So we do try to do that, but at the end of the day, it becomes
33:53
very, very Gray in terms of how you get that client.
33:59
So to answer your question, we do, but I don't know how
34:03
effective it is all the time. Interesting.
34:06
Yeah, I know. That makes sense.
34:08
I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about, I mean,
34:10
we've obviously talked about some of the things you're doing,
34:13
but I mean, your company, at least according to the
34:15
information we saw is, is still showing 10 to 20% growth in an
34:19
industry where a lot of companies are going out if
34:21
they're not growing at all. And and so I wonder if you just
34:25
talk about like in your experience, you say obviously
34:27
you've been tracking what you can track and things like that.
34:29
But is there one particular channel or multiple channels
34:32
that make up the most of that new growth that you're seeing
34:35
versus just, you know, whatever you would have considered being
34:38
sort of traditional growth, just this pretty pretty, you know,
34:40
significant growth? Yeah.
34:42
I mean, I think what we, what we always have really done a pretty
34:46
good job with is we're always looking at, I think in every
34:50
business you need multiple streams of income.
34:55
You know, if and, and you know, you can apply it actually to
34:57
whatever, whatever you want to do, whether it's an investment
35:00
or whatever. You know, you got to have your,
35:02
you know, you got to have your, you know, S&P, you got to have
35:05
your bonds, you got to have your real estate.
35:06
And I look at that almost the same way as I do with the
35:10
business. So you know, you have your sort
35:12
of your core, you know, core group, which may be, you know,
35:16
auto accidents or slip and fall or something like that.
35:19
But then we're always looking at different, you know, if there's
35:22
a mass tort out there, you know, if there's a medication recall,
35:25
we're going after that. You know, if there's.
35:29
A few years ago, there was a law which enabled military veterans
35:36
to get compensation for their injuries if they were at a
35:43
Marine base in North Carolina known as Camp Lejeune.
35:47
And if you, you, unfortunately, the government really covered up
35:52
a lot of the safety issues related to the drinking water
35:55
there and people got really sick.
35:57
We got into Camp Lejeune. That window of and that of
36:01
opportunity is now closed. We have those cases and we're
36:05
moving on to other areas. So I think as a, as a business
36:08
owner, whether you're in law or whatever you, you're in, you
36:12
know, always, I'm always, you always have to be looking around
36:14
the corner and seeing what is out there.
36:17
And that really enables you to to grow and adapt as as new
36:23
areas emerge and as new opportunities develop.
36:29
Yeah, I think that's right. Well, and I think it's, you
36:32
know, that ability to be agile, it's one of the things that
36:35
technology's really enabled for. I think a lot of, you know,
36:37
small to mid sized businesses, it used to be much harder to
36:40
move around and to chase the new shiny thing.
36:43
But in industries like yours specifically, where there are
36:45
new cases that pop up all the time or there's a new thing
36:47
that's uncovered, the ability to jump onto those things is great.
36:51
And, and you know, back to our conversation before about sort
36:53
of, you know, this niching or pseudo niching down into
36:55
different things. You know, when the Camp Lejeune
36:58
story breaks, well, now you've got another landing page you can
37:01
throw up and you've got another vertical where your agency can
37:03
offer expertise in, you know, cases of that type.
37:07
And, you know, and for people who are victim of Camp Lejeune
37:10
or, or have questions about it or whatever, they can, they can
37:13
do a Google search and they can locate you.
37:15
Even if they don't find the ground, you know, mothership, as
37:17
you referred to it as the, the, the website, you know, they can
37:21
find you for this specific thing that they're looking for in that
37:23
moment. And you know, it doesn't matter
37:25
to them that you can help them with their bike rack too.
37:27
And so, so I think that, you know, that the technology has
37:31
really enabled us to to make those kind of jumps really
37:33
quickly, which I think is very cool.
37:35
But to that end, how are you choosing the platforms and the
37:39
techs that the tech that you decide to try?
37:41
So I mean, you know, I'm sure just like all of us, you're
37:44
experiencing like this overload of new things that are coming
37:47
out and there's all this new stuff and everything's AI
37:49
enabled. How are you or like, what
37:52
process are you using to make decisions about what to try,
37:55
where to spend resources and that kind of thing?
37:59
Trial and error School of Hard Knocks is my best school, but
38:03
not, you know, I, I think you just have to really keep, you
38:08
know, it's, it's really, it's really sounds really boring and,
38:11
and really, really cliche, but you just got to keep grinding
38:14
along. You know, I think one of the
38:17
things that we're doing now is we're really doubling down on
38:20
YouTube content. You know, if you look at the the
38:26
statistics in terms of search volume and content viewed
38:30
online, YouTube is the second biggest search engine out there.
38:35
And I think that, you know, whether it works for your
38:39
particular industry today or not, you have to realize that
38:44
that's a big, big area, big pool that ultimately, you know, I
38:51
would, I would guess that that will be an opportunity in the
38:55
future. So, you know, I think that
38:57
that's a tremendous area. And we're doing a lot of very,
39:00
you know, we're using AI to do videos on YouTube.
39:05
We're, we're, we're really trying.
39:09
And I think this is really, you know, I'm not saying this in a,
39:12
in a grandiose way by any means, but you always have to just be
39:17
willing to, to try these different things because it
39:21
doesn't, it's very cost effective.
39:23
Frankly, it's cheap. It's relatively cheap compared
39:26
to other things. And I think, you know, if you
39:28
just sort of stand idle on the sidelines and that sort of
39:33
expands in the future, you're going to really, you know, kick
39:36
yourself for not getting in. If it starts, if you see, you
39:40
know, you're getting some traction there, by all means,
39:43
you know, double down on it. But I think the, the key is, is
39:46
just to remain nimble and, and try these different things.
39:51
And really, you know, put enough.
39:53
When I say try things, I don't mean just, you know, throw up
39:56
one video and just call it a day.
39:58
I mean, do a series of videos on whatever your particular
40:02
business is and maybe try 5 or 6 different topics, see which ones
40:08
start getting a couple likes and and do another video or or three
40:14
videos on that topic. But I think that's really the
40:17
way that you have to do it. And you know, no one knows
40:19
what's going to be coming down the pipe in the future, but I
40:22
think that if you have your at least your foot in the door,
40:25
you're going to have an advantage over your competitors.
40:30
Yeah, the the YouTube as a search engine, people don't
40:33
really think of it that way. But if you, if you step back and
40:36
think of, oh, I'm working on my truck today and I need to figure
40:39
out how to change the oil or whatever, I can't tell how many
40:44
times I've just jumped in there. Change oil on 2002 Ford
40:49
Avalanche. Well, you know, whatever YouTube
40:51
is the, the go to for like self training for me or for, for
40:55
other things. So if someone's trying to learn
40:57
a specific topic and you have content on that topic on
41:01
YouTube, it's a great way to, to a, let them know you're there as
41:07
an expert and B, you can link from your YouTube channel or
41:12
your page back to your website or to whatever you're using
41:17
Linktree, whatever to try and generate leads.
41:20
So yeah, that's a great, great observation.
41:23
Are you doing anything specific with your YouTube channel that
41:26
is helping other than the AI content?
41:31
Are you titling your, your titles in a certain way?
41:36
Are you adding SEO features to the the overview?
41:42
What are you doing specifically with that?
41:44
A lot of, a lot of it, you know, I, I think still people want you
41:49
got to sort of look at what people are searching for.
41:52
And I, I sort of, I'm just a big believer in, you know, looking
41:58
at FAQ content as part of that. You know, I think it sort of
42:04
gets really, you know, redundant and really boring if you're just
42:09
like, you know, hey, if you're in a car accident, call me.
42:12
You know, people don't want that.
42:13
I, I think people want to, they want more specific information.
42:17
They want to know, you know, about, you know, particular
42:21
topic. And I, if you, if you look at
42:23
the, you know, frankly, if you look at a lot of search queries
42:25
for whether it's, you know, how to change the, the oil on your
42:29
truck or who makes, you know, whatever the best pan or
42:34
whatever, whatever you're looking for.
42:37
I think a lot of times people not only today, not only are
42:40
they typing it in, but they're, you know, they're speaking into
42:43
their phone as a question. And if, you know, I think you
42:47
really want to take advantage of that from a content marketing
42:51
perspective, both on YouTube as well as your your website in
42:56
terms of really answering very specific questions and gearing
43:03
it towards, you know, not necessarily an aggressive sales
43:08
technique. You want to be, you know, just
43:10
give out that information. And, you know, I'm just a
43:14
believer that if you give that information, you know, freely,
43:19
it'll ultimately come back to you in in spades.
43:22
Well, I think it's one of those things, YouTube and podcasts and
43:25
all these kinds of platforms where you're actually out there
43:27
sharing your voice or your opinions.
43:29
I think it's kind of an extension of what we talked
43:31
about earlier in terms of relationship development, right?
43:34
People have relationships with content online, even though it
43:36
sounds a little funny. But like, you know, I mean, if
43:39
you listen to a podcast long enough, you actually might start
43:41
to believe that like, you know, somebody or that you have some
43:43
kind of relationship with them, right?
43:45
You've heard about their kids and you know what they do for
43:47
work and you know, you kind of start to understand a person,
43:49
right? And it's a little bit of A1
43:51
sided relationship, but nonetheless, that affinity can
43:54
help generate that trust and things that turn into business
43:56
down the road. So, you know, we believe and
43:59
we've talked to a lot of people who spouse this idea that, you
44:01
know, sort of the notion should be that you give more than you
44:04
take in, right? Like by giving freely to your
44:06
point, you know, you're creating value for a person.
44:09
And if they use you, awesome. If they don't, at least they
44:12
left better because they got some good content or good
44:14
information. And that ultimately is just one
44:17
more layer on that onion of trust that you're trying to
44:19
develop, You know, where eventually you've got a full
44:21
bulb there and people are ready to to go to pull the trigger
44:24
with you. So I think that that the the
44:28
content like that is really key. You also mentioned coming up in
44:31
search engines and things like that.
44:32
I think AI is another big search engine that we need to be
44:35
thinking about, which is, you know, like when you ask Chad
44:37
GPTA question, how do you get your company in there?
44:40
And I think a big part of that is exactly the things we've been
44:42
talking about, you know, putting yourself out there as the expert
44:45
in subject matter, AB or C, you know, will allow those GPT tools
44:49
or whatever to make recommendations based on their
44:52
web searches. And if you're coming up in their
44:54
web searches, then that'll be the type of thing that a person
44:56
is asking their phone for and then it's then delivered to
44:59
them. So I think it makes a lot of
45:01
sense to, you know, use those two different pieces of, you
45:04
know, your overarching marketing strategy.
45:06
You know, one, to try and develop relationships in person,
45:09
but then two to extend that through content like on YouTube
45:12
or wherever. Yeah.
45:14
I mean, I think it builds trust. And really that's really the key
45:18
for all of this is to really develop trust with prospective
45:23
clients, develop trust with search engines.
45:27
You know, they're using a lot of, from what I've seen, a lot
45:30
of these search engines are actually looking at YouTube as
45:36
sort of a third party authority when it comes to some of this
45:41
stuff. And if they see, you know, you,
45:43
you just have to look at, you can't really look at things
45:47
compartmentalized today. You have to look at everything
45:50
very holistically. And I think that's just part of,
45:54
you know, part of the game, part of the piece of the puzzle.
45:58
Yeah. The last question I wanted to
45:59
ask you, just as we're starting to get to the end here, I wanted
46:01
to talk to you just like about starting over.
46:03
So obviously we've talked about a lot of the things that you've
46:05
learned, trial and error, school of Hard Knocks and all that
46:08
stuff. But if you were young attorney,
46:11
young entrepreneur, young, you know, person going into Business
46:15
Today or maybe established person who's trying to start
46:18
something new, where would you begin in terms of whether it's
46:23
it's content, whether it's, you know, building websites, you
46:25
know, whatever sort of strategies you might approach,
46:27
You know, if you had to tell the younger you how to get started,
46:30
where would you begin? Man, I don't know.
46:36
Yeah, I, I, you know, I would honestly, I would look at, I
46:40
would try to do a combination of, you know, old fashioned
46:44
networking and in terms of really, you know, developing,
46:51
you know, that that network of people who, you know, you could
46:56
go out for lunch with, you know, go out for coffee with who, you
47:00
know, you may have gone to school with sending them an
47:03
e-mail, writing them a note. I think people have sort of lost
47:10
awareness of the impact of direct networking and face to
47:15
face contact. And I think that's sort of a, a
47:18
shame. And I think especially for a
47:20
young person, you know, who may have, you know, recently
47:23
graduated school or relatively recently graduated school, the,
47:28
the, I mean, in my, in my mind's eye, the, the real value of
47:32
school is not necessarily what they're teaching you, but it's
47:35
really the network that you develop.
47:38
So I would really ratchet down on that number one.
47:41
And then, you know, if depending on what your, your interests
47:45
are, whatever, I would really start building, you know, a
47:48
website that is very niche specific, I would scrap, you
47:54
know, if you want to get into finance I and you're doing, I
47:58
don't know, distressed dead or something, I would really double
48:01
down on on that before you start going into other areas.
48:07
So I think it's really a combination of two things.
48:10
But I think at the end of the day, you have to realize that
48:14
you are there and your goal should be to build your brand
48:19
every day via via on person and online, whatever it is, you want
48:27
to get your name and your face out there.
48:29
And at the end of the day, you know if you're doing it more
48:33
than the other people, you probably your chances of success
48:37
are are increased. Yeah.
48:40
No, it's funny because I think it reinforces the point we kind
48:42
of touched on earlier, but it's like in all this conversation
48:44
about AI and future marketing, you know, your bit of advice to
48:48
the younger you is just go out there and network and do and
48:51
shake hands and do the thing that you did in the beginning.
48:54
And we used to be forced to do it because that was the only way
48:56
to do business. But I think the point is that a
48:59
lot of us get distracted doing all the other things.
49:01
And maybe it's fear or distraction or it, you know, but
49:05
I think a lot of this tech makes it feel like you're doing
49:08
something even if you're not really doing anything.
49:10
And so we feel like we're putting a lot of time and energy
49:12
into our business, but we're not doing the things that we could
49:14
do that will move it the furthest, the fastest.
49:16
And I think it's just what you said, which is getting out there
49:19
and networking and shaking hands and meeting people and, and I
49:22
think that that's, you know, still kind of the hack, you
49:25
know, despite AI and everything else coming down, I, I think
49:28
that that's still where to begin, you know, and you can
49:30
certainly optimize and add and, and, you know, augment the
49:33
things that you do in person, you know, but I, I definitely
49:36
agree with you that that's where you begin.
49:39
Yeah, so get out there and get off the couch.
49:42
I guess we'll. It's almost that time, Jonathan.
49:46
You want to tell people how they can reach out to you, Get in
49:49
touch if they have any questions.
49:50
Want to learn more about your business?
49:52
Yeah, I mean, if you have any questions about this, you know,
49:55
you're looking for a personal injury attorney, you can go to
49:58
rosenfeldinjurylaw.com. I'm on every social platform as
50:05
well under Jonathan Rosenfeld. But you know, I, I only work on
50:11
a contingency fee basis, so I'm not like a, a lawyer who's
50:15
charging by the hour. So if you have any questions
50:18
about anything, give me a ring and check it out and we'll see
50:22
if we can help you. But thank you for the
50:24
opportunity to, to talk with you guys.
50:26
It was fun. I loved it.
50:27
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
50:28
And thanks for making the time for us.
50:30
I mean, we're taping this December 29th, right between
50:32
Christmas and New Year. So I really appreciate you
50:33
taking the time to do this. And you know, and I think it'll
50:37
give people a nice little place to hit the ground running for
50:39
2026. I think we talked about a lot of
50:40
good stuff, so thanks for doing that.
50:42
Absolutely. And thanks so much to everybody
50:44
who tunes into the show this week and every week.
50:46
And we'll see you guys next time.