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PI Marketing That Works: Stand Out by Staying Real · The Jon and Marc Podcast

• 0:00
  I think the secret to really high quality content is
• 0:02
  authenticity. I think it's a secret to success
• 0:05
  in general as a marketer. Everything is trying to come off
• 0:07
  as like, I've won the most money or here's someone with a giant
• 0:10
  check and like, I'm just trying to go so over the top.
• 0:13
  I'm standing on top of a truck with a sledgehammer and you're
• 0:16
  saying go the opposite. Wear your jeans, put on your
• 0:18
  cowboy boots, talk about your farm and your horses, and be
• 0:21
  real. I like to zig when everybody
• 0:23
  else is zagging. Welcome to the John and Mark
• 0:41
  podcast. Today I'm going to be talking to
• 0:44
  Hunter Garnett, Managing Partner of Garnett Patterson Injury
• 0:48
  Lawyers in Alabama. Hunter came into town with his
• 0:51
  family to go to Disney and we had been talking and we figured
• 0:57
  this was a great opportunity for Hunter to come down, come to our
• 1:00
  office and talk about some of the unique things that he does
• 1:03
  at his firm that are probably really advantageous for you to
• 1:06
  think about implementing possibly at your firm.
• 1:09
  Hunter, thanks so much for joining us today.
• 1:12
  Yeah, thanks for having me. We talked about Disney for a
• 1:14
  little bit, but you're not a Disney guy.
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  Your family enjoying it though. Yeah, they are just not my
• 1:18
  thing. I'm kind of an outdoorsy person.
• 1:21
  I like skiing, going to Alaska, riding horses, that kind of
• 1:25
  stuff. Yeah.
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  There's there's Gatorland taking to see some Gators.
• 1:30
  Yeah, that would be way more my speed, like seeing some like big
• 1:33
  snakes and alligators. That sounds fun.
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  Just. Go air boating.
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  Yeah, that does sound fun. Or you could just drive, drive
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  through Orlando and any little lakes, ponds.
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  You never know what you're going to find.
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  Pick. One jump in.
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  Well, I don't know if I'd jump in, but you may find the
• 1:47
  wildlife that you're looking for.
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  Your approach to marketing I think is marketably different
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  than what we see a lot of the big personal injury firms.
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  Most of them are thinking, how much visibility can I get
• 2:00
  through traditional media, through the traditional digital
• 2:03
  outlets. And your approach has been
• 2:05
  different. A lot of firms watch this
• 2:07
  podcast to specifically learn how they can grow their firm
• 2:10
  outside of the normal everyday things that we see the big firms
• 2:14
  do. How would you summarize your
• 2:16
  overall approach to growing your firm?
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  I think it starts by knowing your ideal client, your client
• 2:21
  avatar. And to be candid with you, I
• 2:23
  stumbled across mine because it's just the type of clients
• 2:27
  that I attracted naturally. And it just so happens they're
• 2:31
  my favorite type of client as well, which is blue collar,
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  middle class, typically politically conservative,
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  typically Christians, strong family values are almost always
• 2:40
  married. And what I found was that
• 2:43
  because those are the type of people I grew up with, I didn't
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  know a lawyer when I went to law school was the first lawyer in
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  my family. They didn't know any lawyers
• 2:51
  either. And so it was pretty easy to
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  build a brand with them because they didn't have 10 other
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  lawyers that came to mind when they thought of personal injury
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  lawyer. So when I figured that out, ever
• 3:03
  since then, my entire marketing strategy is how do I build
• 3:07
  affinity with these people and not just be the first lawyer
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  that comes to mind when they're in an accident, but be the
• 3:13
  lawyer that comes to mind when they hear the word accident,
• 3:15
  when they hear the word injury, And try to equip them as super
• 3:20
  fans to be like zealous advocates for my law firm.
• 3:24
  When you started marketing for your firm, was that your mindset
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  or was there a trigger point where you realize like I need to
• 3:30
  take this more direct approach to marketing?
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  I started marketing before I had my own firm.
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  I was an associate and we were referral based and I figured out
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  pretty quickly that my personal Facebook page was the best
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  marketing asset that I had. You know, I had 15102 thousand
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  friends, whatever it was, they kind of already knew me.
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  And so using my personal Facebook pages to just stay top
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  of mind was where I started at 1st.
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  And then that evolved from, OK, these people that are kind of
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  already know me, they already like me and let's get them to
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  trust me to OK, let's turn them into like super fans, OK?
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  And let's grow our spear of influence.
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  Not just where they are. It's just my friends that know
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  me, but people are familiar with my name because I'm staying top
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  of mind with such a so many people.
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  When you break that down into specific tactics, right, it's
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  one thing to say I turned them into super fans.
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  It's another thing to say this is how I did that.
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  How did you go about doing that? By telling my story, I think
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  that it all starts with who and why 1st.
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  And so The Who of why my target client is who my target client
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  is. I think that's the first thing
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  that every lawyer has to identify.
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  You can't be everybody's lawyer. You know, you, you have your
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  marketing should in my opinion, push away some of your
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  perspective clients. OK, I wear jeans to work
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  everyday. I wear cowboy boots to work.
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  I typically mean a polo or a button up.
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  I'm super casual and there are some people that expect to walk
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  into a lawyer's office and him being a suit and it'd be very
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  buttoned up and polished. It's not me.
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  And so my marketing tends to push those people away before
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  they're they ever come in my office.
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  What are the specifics right when, when you, you took that
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  deliberate step saying I'm going to to turn this into a marketing
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  engine? So that's The Who.
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  That's The Who that I'm trying to attract.
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  And then I think the next thing to do as a lawyer is once you
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  find your who, you need to find your why.
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  OK, Why do you do what you do? And if your answer is because of
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  ego or money, it's not a very good why.
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  Most of us have a deeper why. Maybe we're competitors, you
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  know, some of my favorite trial lawyers to Co counsel with like
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  they're gladiators and I love their why.
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  Their why is like they like putting on armor and pulling
• 5:39
  their sword out and going to battle.
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  OK, my why is very faith-based. OK, my faith's important to me
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  and I'm a personal lawyer in Huntsville, AL because the Lord
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  closed a bunch of doors and the one that he opened happened to
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  be to have my own firm in Huntsville, AL.
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  And so my why resonates with my who.
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  And then from there, that's all like really high level, like
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  psychology type stuff, self reflecting, like everybody's
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  journey is different. And then you leverage that
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  through attention. And there's 1000 different
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  vehicles to generate attention. There's a lot of free vehicles.
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  And for me it was Facebook. It's to a lesser extent
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  LinkedIn. Currently it's been TikTok.
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  Now we're experimenting with some YouTube and some paid
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  search type stuff to get even more leverage.
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  But the specific toolbox depends on your who and your why, right?
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  The why is a common theme that we hear when we talk to really
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  growth focused marketers and firm owners.
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  Cassidy Lewis focuses a lot of her marketing on why.
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  Why am I doing the things that I'm doing?
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  There's so much wasted marketing activity that doesn't actually
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  have anything behind it, right? There's no purpose to it.
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  It's motions because of motions. And the larger A-Team gets and
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  the actually the further away the marketing gets from The Who,
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  from the managing partner, the more dispersed that message
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  becomes and the meaning behind it.
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  You run your firm, you also oversee your own marketing,
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  right? Right.
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  The why needs to connect to The Who, and then the motions need
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  to connect to the why. Facebook is not the dominant
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  social media channel right now. Facebook still works for you as
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  well as it has. Yeah, and I think it's part of
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  it is you're the people that are hurt in accidents.
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  You know, they're on Facebook. You know, the the, the
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  demographics of Facebook are older people and typically your
• 7:39
  high value cases or at least your medium.
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  But the people that are having surgeries, they're on Facebook.
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  I probably generate more attention through TikTok, but
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  it's 20 to 45 year old to typically bounce back from an
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  injury. You know, they got a soft tissue
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  case. They hire me, we settle it, we
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  move on to life. I try to make it an impression
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  on them in case they get a big case later.
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  But the people that are having surgery or things like that,
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  they're, they're on Facebook. So what are you posting?
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  What are the types of things that that are engaging and
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  actually powering your marketing?
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  Stories So I try to post well, we do a lot of things.
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  So like if I sponsor something, if I take my pony to A to a kids
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  event, you know, we're posting stuff on that and just reminding
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  people what I do, but also showing, I mean, just the basic
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  social proof stuff, right? I want to show that I'm a real
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  person, that I'm relatable. I want to show that I'm an
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  expert. If I can post just every once in
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  awhile, one out of 10, like, hey, here's what I'm doing at my
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  law firm, and then also if I can associate myself with other
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  leaders in the community, that's good content too.
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  So, education, affinity, entertainment.
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  Yeah, I do. So my favorite things to post
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  about are stories OK And so like recently I've been posting about
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  my family stuff OK my parents adopted through 4 kids through
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  foster care and that shaped who I was.
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  I was a teenager at the time and it.
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  You were one of seven. I'm the oldest of seven.
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  Yeah. My youngest four siblings are
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  adopted to foster care. And so, like, that's a big part
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  of my journey, right? It's shaped who I am.
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  I grew up on a farm. I tell stories about growing up
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  on a farm and taking care of animals.
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  That's who I am and the only lawyer that I I did not know any
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  lawyers when I went to law school.
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  That's part of my story and it resonates with people.
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  I'm the first lawyer in my family.
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  So stories, that is people don't remember very many things, but
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  if you can tell a story that's captivating and does a lot of
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  things, one, it makes you more memorable to that person, but it
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  also shows them, hey, this guy can tell a story.
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  He can tell his story. He can probably tell my story.
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  And most people recognize that. That's what's important about
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  choosing a lawyer, especially for really big case, a case that
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  might go to trial is the ability to tell that client's story.
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  That's what you're doing in court, right?
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  You're taking that individual story and you're portraying it
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  to the jury. The overlap between the skill
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  set of a good trial lawyer and a great marketer.
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  I mean, there's a ton of overlap.
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  If you really think about it, every great trial lawyer could
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  be a great marketer and every great marketer could be a great
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  trial lawyer. It's just adjusting the same
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  skills that you have and applying them in a different
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  way. When you were talking about who
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  watches you on TikTok, you knew the exact demographic.
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  You knew their age, you knew generally what their injuries
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  were and where they were at in their client journey.
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  How do you vary your content between those social media
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  channels to appeal to the cohorts that may exist on one or
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  engage on another? So I think about marketing
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  generally as like a bull's eye, OK.
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  And off off the dart board you have people have never heard of.
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  And then as you get closer to the center and you're shooting
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  for for a bullseye, your bullseye is your super fans
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  right now. I want 1000 people who are just
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  huge. They have this gigantic brand
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  affinity from my law firm where they know what we do in the
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  community, they know what type of type of person I am, and they
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  know, like and trust me, OK. And so my personal Facebook page
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  is basically moving people from the center off the board, closer
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  to the bullseye, through stories, through community
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  involvement, that kind of stuff. All right, TikTok, very
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  different. Most of the people watching my
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  stuff on TikTok, they have no idea who I am, right?
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  Facebook, the only people that are going to see it basically
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  are already for friends, right? Maybe friends?
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  A friend? Directly connected with you
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  personally or not? The ferns page.
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  I have found that a Facebook business page to be a very poor
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  use of resources. We put some stuff out there.
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  I think it's a decent conversions tool.
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  I think clients probably go to it and look to see what you're
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  doing. I don't think there's really
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  many people that come into our funnel because of our business
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  Facebook page. TikTok is different.
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  TikTok You can get an exceptional amount of reach if
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  you have high quality content. You can post on your firm's
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  Facebook page and have the best content imaginable and nobody,
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  it may be that nobody ever sees it.
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  It gets suppressed. Yes, but if you unless you're
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  putting money behind it, right, TikTok, good content wins
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  consistently on TikTok. And so I am trying to do a
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  better job of actually scheduling some content on
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  TikTok and sitting down and making myself produce content.
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  But I have found the best success to come from spontaneous
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  inspirations, a lot of like news jacking type stuffs.
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  So if there's a really bad work type injury that's getting some
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  press, I cover it. I say, hey, here's what the law
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  is regarding a workplace injury. OK, here's the type of case that
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  this person should expect to have.
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  I got this recently. This recently happened.
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  Two police officers were arrested in Huntsville for
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  driving under the influence over the same weekend.
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  OK. And so I made a TikTok that was
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  the hook. Basically one of them caused an
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  accident. Oh, guess what?
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  Monday morning I get a phone call and it's the victim of that
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  accident. And she told me that eight
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  different people had sent her my TikTok.
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  And you know, when she walked in, she was pretty easy to
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  convert into a client. You know, I had shown my
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  expertise to 50,000 people in my community.
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  The cool thing about TikTok too is it shows your content to
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  people that are interested in it.
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  Like if you post on other platforms you may get reach all
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  over the world or whatever it might be.
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  Or if you post a generic topic like you know maybe immigration
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  law. Whatever it is you may have
• 13:23
  people all over the world see it on TikTok when you say something
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  strange happened in Huntsville, AL over the weekend. 2 police
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  officers were arrested for driving under the influence.
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  They pretty much are just going to show that to people in
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  Huntsville. And so when 50,000 people see
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  your TikTok video about Huntsville police officers being
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  arrested for driving drunk, that's 50,000 people that are
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  within 10 miles of your office, and that is pretty cool.
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  So how many takes did it take you to do that video or
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  generally when you're doing a TikTok video?
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  1 take. One or two or three because it
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  gets worse every time. You know, I, I think the secret
• 13:55
  to really high quality content is authenticity.
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  I think it's a secret to success in general as a marketer and I
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  think you lose some real authenticity like the the, the
• 14:06
  more takes that it takes. What's the editing process like
• 14:09
  from you filming the video to final product again?
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  Just I try to get in one take to be honest with you, but like.
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  Overlays or like add roll cuts, just adding captions, that's it
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  I. Literally sit in my desk.
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  It's always like 5:30 or later when the office is empty.
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  The lighting's pretty good and I set my phone up once or twice a
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  week and try to just off the cuff, give a 15 to 92nd.
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  Here's here's some law for you and it's good.
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  It's not polished, it's not super clean.
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  It's authentic. I think people like that.
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  I think whenever you post really high quality stuff on social
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  media, sometimes people scroll right past.
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  We associate high quality content as an advertisement,
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  whereas when it's authentic, there's little you know, umm,
• 14:55
  us, you misspeak. It's, it's real.
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  That's what people are attracted to.
• 15:00
  It's so counterintuitive, right? It traditionally, marketing is
• 15:06
  going through rounds of design and you're AB testing things.
• 15:09
  And sometimes you're focus grouping when you're doing like
• 15:13
  large TV advertisements and you're sitting here talking
• 15:16
  about pulling out your phone for 15 to 90 seconds and recording
• 15:19
  in, you know, one or two takes. And the more polished it is,
• 15:23
  it's the inverse relationship between the output.
• 15:27
  It's a very different perspective.
• 15:30
  I think then people have been approaching marketing
• 15:33
  specifically in this space, right?
• 15:35
  Everything is trying to come off as like, I've won the most money
• 15:39
  or, you know, here's a someone with a giant check and like, I'm
• 15:44
  just trying to go so over the top.
• 15:45
  I'm standing on top of a truck with a sledgehammer, right?
• 15:47
  And you're saying go the opposite.
• 15:49
  Wear your jeans, put on your cowboy boots, talk about your
• 15:53
  farm and your horses and and be real.
• 15:56
  It's counter positioning too like it's if if you're different
• 16:00
  than everybody else you're going to stand out.
• 16:03
  And I don't know whether everybody's market size is my
• 16:05
  markets less than 1,000,000 people got 750,000.
• 16:09
  Well, that car about 10% of the market, 75,000 people is plenty
• 16:14
  to have a huge law practice. And so I think it's to your
• 16:18
  benefit like if I like to zig when everybody else is zagging.
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  So like I'm thinking about getting in the newsletters now
• 16:24
  because print media is, you know, a dinosaur basically built
• 16:28
  with some some strategic billboards.
• 16:30
  I like that kind of stuff. I tell you what else to news
• 16:33
  reporters, OK all these hungry reporters are in their 20s and
• 16:38
  they're on TikTok and they're seeing my stuff and they you
• 16:42
  know, can tell an expert from a non expert.
• 16:45
  And so guess what they see your TikTok talking about Huntsville
• 16:48
  police officers getting arrested for DUI.
• 16:50
  Next thing you know you got 3 phone calls from reporters and
• 16:52
  you're on the news talking about, you know, DUI accidents
• 16:55
  and you get a free 25,000 eyeballs at 10:00 on the 10:00
• 16:59
  news. This actually happens to you?
• 17:01
  Yeah, all the time. Yeah, all the time.
• 17:03
  And then so you're getting essentially free organic reach
• 17:07
  from TikTok, you're getting free publicity on the news, and then
• 17:11
  you wind up getting cases both from the TikTok and from the
• 17:13
  news. Yeah, and it's even better than
• 17:17
  free. It's better than paying for it
• 17:20
  because if it was a TikTok ad or a Facebook ad, if it was a paid
• 17:24
  TV commercial, everybody can tell and they know you're paying
• 17:28
  for that, that you're maybe you're an expert, maybe you're
• 17:30
  not. You're just paying.
• 17:31
  You're just giving money for attention.
• 17:33
  I'm generating attention that people know.
• 17:37
  It's because I'm an expert. I love that.
• 17:39
  What are the advertising mechanisms that you do pay for
• 17:43
  and why? I have run LSA successfully,
• 17:47
  Lsas or a black box right? And nobody knows how How to get
• 17:51
  more calls, how to get better cases.
• 17:54
  I found the secret LS as a shake that box up so I just cut them
• 17:57
  on and off. I agree, I like I have
• 18:00
  conversations all the time with firms like our LS as aren't
• 18:02
  working. Like turn it off on a Friday,
• 18:04
  turn it back on on Monday, reboot the system.
• 18:08
  I have a rule every time I get a six figure 7 figure case from LS
• 18:12
  as I turn them off for like a month and like you know and then
• 18:16
  sure enough I cut them on and we start getting cases again.
• 18:19
  So I run some LS as I spend a little bit of money on really
• 18:25
  web development, not really SEO, just a technical on page type
• 18:29
  stuff. We we create most of our own
• 18:31
  content. We do some earned media through
• 18:33
  trying to earn backlinks like HARO and stuff.
• 18:37
  I've run some mass tort campaigns for Facebook for a
• 18:41
  local mass tort. We had a big P Foss facility in
• 18:44
  my hometown actually. And now I'm running PPC for the
• 18:47
  first time ever. We're about to start running
• 18:49
  YouTube because we've got a pretty good, we've got pretty
• 18:53
  good operations now and we can double without breaking anything
• 18:56
  I think. And so we're starting to run
• 18:58
  some some some paid search stuff.
• 19:01
  Paid search, I think over the almost two years now has been
• 19:08
  ineffective, right, for multiple reasons.
• 19:11
  I think that the competition has been driven up because it has
• 19:15
  gotten much harder to gain visibility through organic SEOAI
• 19:19
  overuse taking visibility. So the firms who were not doing
• 19:24
  SEO correctly fell and they had to pick up some of those cases
• 19:29
  somewhere. So you see the same three spots
• 19:31
  of Google ads getting invested in by more demand and the price
• 19:36
  is inevitably go up. I've seen markets where it's
• 19:38
  gone up two to three times as much as it was a couple years
• 19:41
  ago. So becomes price ineffective.
• 19:43
  And I think consumers are starting to understand that paid
• 19:49
  search is paid. It goes through your whole
• 19:51
  mantra of like paid is an advertisement where I'm going to
• 19:54
  be organic, I'm going to be real.
• 19:56
  Why did what was the impetus for you deciding?
• 20:00
  I think I need to go into paid search, which I assume you know
• 20:03
  all the things that that I just mentioned and you've seen them.
• 20:06
  Yeah, For me as we finally had the capacity to handle more
• 20:10
  cases, started hiring lawyers and so it was an option.
• 20:15
  My real reason for doing it was I wanted to see if I could do it
• 20:19
  and if I could generate cases in a cost effective way.
• 20:22
  And I think we are my, my operations are pretty tight.
• 20:26
  Our our average legal fee for litigation cases is really high.
• 20:29
  I'm a trial lawyer. We haven't talked about that.
• 20:31
  But like I tried cases, we get good outcomes.
• 20:34
  My pre lit department is entirely offshore near shore.
• 20:38
  So our cost to resolve pre lit cases is definitely the lowest
• 20:42
  in my market. And So what I looked at it as is
• 20:45
  like, hey, these older guys that are spending money to get cases
• 20:48
  or PPC like they're making money or they wouldn't do it right.
• 20:51
  Presumably they're they're rational.
• 20:54
  If I know that I can resolve those cases with less cost, I
• 20:59
  should be more profitable than them.
• 21:00
  I should go get these cases. Now other mindset is I'm 33
• 21:03
  years old and I believe that I have the ability to turn every
• 21:07
  almost every client that comes from my firm into a super fan.
• 21:10
  And I think they're good for one or two referrals over the course
• 21:12
  of their life. And so my lifetime value of a
• 21:15
  client is not just, OK, let's run them to the system.
• 21:18
  They're going to hate us by the end of it and squeeze every drop
• 21:21
  of the juice out. It's through.
• 21:22
  It's, it's let's run them through the system.
• 21:24
  Let's give exceptional customer service, let's show them our
• 21:27
  values and let's create a super fan.
• 21:30
  And so if I break even on those cases and I get a Google review
• 21:33
  and I get a future referral partner and I get a name on my
• 21:36
  list, I get a relationship with somebody like I'll take that.
• 21:40
  I'll break even. I want to hone in on that
• 21:42
  because that is not something that that many legal marketers
• 21:47
  or firm owners, if they do it, they don't verbalize it.
• 21:50
  You're looking at the acquisition cost incrementally
• 21:53
  as just break even, right? I'm, I'm going to take this
• 21:58
  case. Maybe I'll get a great case out
• 21:59
  of it. Maybe it'll just be a standard
• 22:01
  case, but I'm getting all these secondary and tertiary effects,
• 22:06
  right. And that that is an interesting
• 22:09
  way to gain market share with the caveat of of you have to do
• 22:14
  good work, you can't be a mill. How do you maintain quality
• 22:18
  operational customer service with a remote team?
• 22:24
  Well, we measure, you know, you get you get more of what you
• 22:27
  measure. And so I had a pretty good book
• 22:30
  of business when I started my firm and I considered just
• 22:33
  sticking with like attorney referrals, client referrals, not
• 22:37
  taking anything less than like $50,000 in value.
• 22:39
  And I've considered this a lot. I could keep my 10/7 figure
• 22:43
  cases and my 50 mid to high 6 figure cases and probably make
• 22:47
  more money next year than keeping everything that walks in
• 22:50
  the door. OK.
• 22:52
  But I'm again, I'm 33 years old and I think that I would be kind
• 22:56
  of limiting my potential long term if I if I do that.
• 22:59
  So I run my pre lit department in pods.
• 23:02
  I have a soft tissue case manager who all he handles is
• 23:06
  chiropractor cases. OK.
• 23:08
  And so we measure him through a formula that his portion of the
• 23:13
  shared cost at the firm on like a per day basis, basically per
• 23:16
  file to look at whether he's profitable and the goal for him
• 23:20
  is the break even by the time I attribute some money to
• 23:22
  marketing, by the time I, you know, pay a lawyer for his POD
• 23:26
  to break even, he's actually profitable on little 12 to
• 23:29
  $25,000 cases. But I also he's measured on the
• 23:34
  number of Google reviews, the net, the Net Promoter score and
• 23:38
  also how many referrals it generates, OK.
• 23:41
  And so just in my current case inventory, my offshore pre lit
• 23:46
  manager has generated about $1.25 million in future legal
• 23:52
  fees just in my current case inventory.
• 23:54
  OK, when I figured that out that I'm making money on the
• 23:57
  chiropractor cases pre lit, I figured I can probably make
• 24:02
  money on any case that comes through the door with this
• 24:04
  system. As far as maintaining customer
• 24:08
  service offshore, near shore, in the office, it's it's the same
• 24:14
  OK if you have firm values, if you have a firm culture, they
• 24:18
  don't have to be in the office across the hallway from you.
• 24:21
  OK, you can have a relationship with people that are on another
• 24:25
  continent. It just requires intentional
• 24:27
  conduct. It requires showing them that
• 24:29
  you care about them and and making sure that their values
• 24:32
  align with the firm's values. Let's switch from international
• 24:36
  to hyperlocal. A lot of your marketing is boots
• 24:39
  on the ground, interacting with your community, grassroots.
• 24:43
  How do you take those things that are happening in real life,
• 24:47
  that are real, good, meaningful things in your community and
• 24:52
  make them more? How do you give them a digital
• 24:54
  footprint? How do you publicize them?
• 24:56
  What is the mechanism by which when you do these events, they
• 24:59
  become something bigger? Well, so I'll tell you, and this
• 25:02
  is not directly on point, but like newsworthy cases.
• 25:05
  I think every lawyer should have a Rolodex of reporters, OK.
• 25:09
  And you got like your heavy hitter reporter that's just
• 25:11
  producing the best story content of anybody in your market.
• 25:15
  And when you get a case, it's truly newsworthy.
• 25:18
  You talk to them about it and you tell their story and you
• 25:20
  actually kind of piece that out and get 2-3, maybe 4 stories out
• 25:24
  of it. And then along the same lines,
• 25:26
  as you go down your Rolodex and you got your guys down here that
• 25:28
  they're just starving, they'll cover anything.
• 25:30
  Like you can generate free attention just by doing their
• 25:32
  job for them, OK, pitching them on like, hey, there's been an
• 25:36
  uptick in deal that look at all these guys are sitting in our
• 25:38
  jail for Duis, you know, like there's an uptick in Duis right
• 25:41
  now or I'm seeing a lot of hit and run accidents with people
• 25:44
  without insurance. So I've done a good job at that
• 25:47
  historically. But to address your question
• 25:50
  directly, I have not done a good job of promoting what I actually
• 25:53
  do in the community, OK? We, I've typically been a bit
• 25:56
  old fashioned where I require, you know, I just rely on word of
• 25:59
  mouth. I might post every once in a
• 26:02
  while, but just actually last week we hired a full time
• 26:06
  videographer. If I say full time, she's like
• 26:08
  30 hours a week and her job is to hang out in the office and
• 26:11
  edit videos and spawn as I do spontaneous things or check my
• 26:15
  calendar, you know, go with me as I'm doing things and let's
• 26:18
  just get some leverage. So this past weekend, I do this
• 26:20
  all the time. I have a really, really good
• 26:22
  miniature pony that's like totally bomb proof.
• 26:25
  He's like a dog, all right. And I will, I haul him all over
• 26:29
  North Alabama that if you tell me, hey, there's going to be 50
• 26:32
  to 500 kids at this event, you want to bring your pony like,
• 26:35
  I'm there. OK, whatever it is, I'm going to
• 26:36
  drop what I'm doing. And so she went with me.
• 26:39
  And her job was just to video me like chopping it up with kids,
• 26:42
  you know, talking to the leaders of the nonprofit that's putting
• 26:45
  it on. And we're going to do a couple
• 26:47
  things with that. We're going to put together a
• 26:48
  nice little video for the nonprofit about the event just
• 26:52
  just to hype them up and show them that we're part of their
• 26:56
  tribe, we're part of their community, we believe in them.
• 26:58
  And then also repurpose content. You know, we're going to have a
• 27:01
  bunch of little short 15 to 32nd clips from that and then a
• 27:04
  probably a two or three minute video.
• 27:07
  I only want to do something like that every time that we're
• 27:09
  giving back to the community. I think that's smart.
• 27:12
  It's the the right way to do it. It's not expensive either dude.
• 27:14
  Like I mean you go to your local Community College or university
• 27:18
  and post a part time 10/15/20 hour a week job.
• 27:22
  Like the the people that are good, it's their hobby, it's
• 27:25
  their passion. Like if you tell them like I'm
• 27:27
  gonna pay you to make video content, they're like, you're
• 27:30
  going to pay me. I've been doing this for free.
• 27:31
  You know, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, that's how we
• 27:35
  grew our video team, right? People here in Orlando, we have
• 27:39
  UCF has a great film school, Full Sail here in Orlando have a
• 27:44
  great film school. And with AI moving from written
• 27:48
  word to audio to image, now to video, there you know there are
• 27:54
  people who feel like they need to get in and do work and prove
• 28:01
  themselves. What's your opinion on AI video?
• 28:04
  Do you use it? Do you recommend it?
• 28:06
  Not yet. I mean, I'm, I'm open to it.
• 28:09
  I was actually on Jordan Ostroff's podcast recently and
• 28:12
  he had like the funniest, corniest, I was describing my
• 28:15
  client avatar as Bubba and Tammy and telling him like who Bubba
• 28:19
  and Tammy are. And he did an AI video of like
• 28:22
  me and like this, like, you know, redneck.
• 28:25
  And I can say I'm a redneck. I'm don't use that derogatory
• 28:27
  redneck fellow and this woman like Dolly Parton and and like,
• 28:31
  it was really, really funny, but I'm not using it yet.
• 28:36
  You want to. Yeah, I would like to.
• 28:38
  I would like to especially for like B roll type stuff you know?
• 28:42
  What's like your dream scenario if AI could do X?
• 28:46
  Doesn't have to be in video but anything.
• 28:48
  If AI could do it, I would use it.
• 28:50
  You know, I don't know. I don't know what that looks
• 28:52
  like right now. We're trying to, we're trying to
• 28:55
  preserve all the B roll that we can.
• 28:58
  And so if AI could create B roll content with different
• 29:02
  backgrounds and stuff like that, like they would probably be
• 29:04
  helpful. You know, I don't know though.
• 29:08
  Are you using any of it within your actual practice for legal
• 29:10
  work? Yeah, I actually have.
• 29:12
  I have. I have a fractional chief
• 29:14
  technology officer that's a PhD student studying quantum
• 29:17
  engineering. He wants to be a a consultant
• 29:19
  and I met him playing pick up basketball and I could tell like
• 29:22
  this guy eats, sleeps and breathes.
• 29:24
  Yeah, for those of you who don't know, Hunter's like 69. 65.
• 29:29
  I'm 61 and you're standing up next to me and you seem much,
• 29:32
  much taller. But yeah.
• 29:34
  So anyway, he wanted to be a consultant.
• 29:37
  I was like, OK, tell me about your clients.
• 29:38
  Why don't I have any clients? OK, where's your office?
• 29:39
  I don't have an office. Well, I can help you.
• 29:41
  I got an extra office and I'll be your first client.
• 29:44
  And so he's down the hallway and he just pops in and we chop it
• 29:47
  up and try to find a problem to solve every week, sometimes two
• 29:50
  or three problems. And so we're implementing AI and
• 29:53
  automation all over the place currently.
• 29:57
  I not only agree with you on that being the approach, but
• 30:00
  it's the exact same thing that we did.
• 30:02
  We took someone who was hungry, who had a development
• 30:05
  background, who had extreme interest in AI, and we made her
• 30:11
  the person who is the recipient of all of the crazy ideas.
• 30:15
  We came up with concepts, we scoped them out, we hand them to
• 30:18
  her. We're like figure out the right
• 30:19
  tool to use, figure out how to make sure that the data is
• 30:22
  protected and then check it to make sure it actually works.
• 30:25
  And we've just started building all types of different things.
• 30:27
  I think that is the way for firms to, if they're not going
• 30:31
  to take the significant investment in something like a
• 30:33
  supio right where it's, it's a heavy investment in necessary
• 30:37
  integration to so many aspects of the firm.
• 30:40
  Just find someone who knows what they're doing and give them the
• 30:43
  canvas and let them just paint. And I've actually, I've got a
• 30:47
  sister that's a senior in high school.
• 30:48
  She doesn't know what she wants to do.
• 30:50
  And that's what I've been telling her is like, listen,
• 30:52
  like my dad owns a lawnmower shop.
• 30:54
  I go to dad's lawnmower shop, go to junior college and don't just
• 30:58
  like learn the things that he teaches you, like learn some AI,
• 31:02
  learn some automation. Like save dad 1000 hours a year
• 31:05
  and the skills that you learn the next two years while you get
• 31:08
  your associate's degree, you can apply that in any industry under
• 31:12
  the sun. Like if you can save a lawnmower
• 31:14
  shop 1000 hours a year, you can probably save a law firm 10,000
• 31:17
  hours a year. And so anybody listening like
• 31:18
  you got a kid that's in high school or in college that like
• 31:21
  doesn't know what they want to do.
• 31:22
  I think that's the thing to learn and it's not the technical
• 31:25
  side of it like coding or anything like that.
• 31:27
  Like just learn how to use that tool.
• 31:29
  Learn how to prompt an lol. Yep.
• 31:32
  No, I again, like, I completely agree, my son.
• 31:37
  So I'm using AI and he's like, can I use it?
• 31:39
  I'm like, sure. So he starts asking it things.
• 31:42
  He asked me, can this thing create apps?
• 31:45
  And I'm like, yeah, it can. And about an hour later, we're
• 31:49
  sitting there playing the game that he created through ChatGPT.
• 31:54
  He's like, I really like candy clicker games.
• 31:56
  I want a candy clicker game. But he wanted to design the
• 31:58
  candy and make all the rewards. And he loves it.
• 32:02
  He asked me if if he could do an episode with me and teach other
• 32:04
  kids how to use AI. I'm like, that's actually a
• 32:07
  really great idea. We should do that.
• 32:08
  And there's this fear of, do I want to expose my children to
• 32:15
  social media, to AI? But monitored and done
• 32:18
  correctly. Like that is probably a more
• 32:20
  useful skill than handwriting for sure, you know?
• 32:25
  You know how to write in cursive?
• 32:27
  I used. To I don't know how to write in
• 32:28
  cursive, you know? I have two sons.
• 32:31
  This is my younger son. He prefers instead of typing,
• 32:34
  instead of writing, he uses voice text.
• 32:37
  Great. So he'll just open up an app and
• 32:39
  he'll hit the little microphone and he'll say what he wants to
• 32:41
  say and it understands him and that's what he uses.
• 32:44
  And that's the future. The more that we can have people
• 32:48
  embrace the technology that's available and just like you
• 32:51
  said, get comfortable using it, the more likely they're going to
• 32:54
  be successful because every industry is becoming a
• 32:57
  technology based industry. Law is advancing now, but
• 33:02
  traditionally law firms are so far behind technology wise.
• 33:06
  There are firms that that I work with who still use paper for
• 33:12
  everything. You know, there's an intake
• 33:14
  person and lead comes in, she opens up the binder and she
• 33:17
  starts writing down the intake. That is the age of the dinosaur
• 33:20
  and everyone is moving towards using technology in so many
• 33:24
  different ways. Just getting comfortable with it
• 33:26
  is becoming so important you let your kids use AI.
• 33:29
  Well I only have one. He's 4 1/2 months old so not
• 33:32
  yet. No screens for him yet at all.
• 33:35
  Smart that that's a little too young.
• 33:37
  When we talk about all the different marketing things that
• 33:39
  you're doing, some of them are are deliberate marketing
• 33:42
  exercises and many of them are just you being you, right.
• 33:45
  How do you deal with attribution and determining should I, if
• 33:50
  there is an opportunity to invest, whether it's your your
• 33:53
  money or your time, should I do this activity and was it
• 33:56
  beneficial? You have to know your ideal
• 33:58
  client, right? And you can't be everything for
• 34:02
  everybody. That applies to like charitable
• 34:05
  giving too. OK.
• 34:06
  And so I have a lot of people reach out and they want me to
• 34:08
  give to, you know, maybe a Boy Scout group or the Humane
• 34:12
  Society or whatever it is. You can't give to everybody.
• 34:15
  And so my giving goes towards typically organizations in my
• 34:21
  home county and, and youth organizations in my home county
• 34:25
  even more specifically. And so like I was asked about a
• 34:27
  month ago to sponsor a golf tournament, told my friend
• 34:30
  politely, It's like, I don't golf, I don't like golf.
• 34:34
  I don't want to give to your golfing tournament, but if you
• 34:38
  have a pickup basketball tournament like I'm all in.
• 34:40
  If you do a, you know, a horse riding event like I'm all in.
• 34:44
  And so I think it needs to be things.
• 34:46
  I think this applies to everything.
• 34:47
  This applies to marketing giving whatever it is, you need to like
• 34:51
  it and if you enjoy it, you're going to get a personal
• 34:54
  satisfaction, you know, spiritual growth, whatever it
• 34:57
  is. And then and then if there's an
• 34:58
  economic byproduct of it, like great.
• 35:01
  If TikTok is taxing to you, if you dread pulling your phone out
• 35:04
  and taking a selfie video, like don't do it.
• 35:06
  If you dread going to the charity event that you
• 35:10
  sponsored, like I would have if I'd sponsored the 8th hole of
• 35:13
  this golf tournament, like don't do it.
• 35:15
  Find things that like, it doesn't even feel like work, you
• 35:18
  know, like you would give to it anonymously or you would give to
• 35:20
  it even if you you didn't have your own law firm, whatever it
• 35:23
  is. And then pick those things and
• 35:25
  just do it at a higher level. Do it more often.
• 35:26
  Leverage it. Don't even make people ask you
• 35:29
  like seek out those opportunities.
• 35:31
  What about the marketing activities that are more
• 35:33
  trackable when you're doing so many different things and so
• 35:37
  many of those things are word of mouth related, but the final
• 35:40
  capture point winds up being a mechanism that has some sort of
• 35:44
  attribution to it. How do you value the different
• 35:47
  steps within the funnel in addition to that final touch
• 35:50
  point? That's hard.
• 35:51
  You know, we try to, we try to have dual attribution, right?
• 35:55
  So we know the last thing they looked at and then we know from
• 35:58
  our phone conversations with them or in person conversations
• 36:01
  what they actually attribute their like source to.
• 36:05
  But it just every month I find out like something else like,
• 36:10
  hey, that case actually came from this person, you know,
• 36:13
  whatever it might be. And I don't really have a good
• 36:15
  answer for. I think that's where we're
• 36:17
  moving towards, you know, we're, we're inherently tribal
• 36:20
  community based people and it's becoming even more so.
• 36:23
  And so I think we're moving away from having real data on like
• 36:27
  this case came from this channel and this channel solely, like
• 36:31
  people are going through and looking at everything that you
• 36:34
  have. And I think everything that you
• 36:36
  add, your marketing stack is like like 1 + 1 equals three, 1
• 36:40
  + 1 + 1 = 7, so on and so forth. So I think you really have to
• 36:44
  like if you're running just PPC and you don't have a social
• 36:48
  media presence, you don't have any video content, you don't
• 36:51
  have any community reputation, you don't have any Google
• 36:53
  reviews, you're going to waste your money.
• 36:56
  I think you build assets like a snowball.
• 36:59
  Can you build the assets first that you own and that they're
• 37:04
  not rented assets, you know, your Google business profile,
• 37:06
  your social medias, what are your sweat equity type stuff?
• 37:09
  And then as those assets start to produce anything at all, then
• 37:14
  you know that it's working. And that's when you can start
• 37:16
  throwing some money at it and have a little, you know, and put
• 37:18
  a little gas in the fire. What's your opinion on using
• 37:23
  like lead generators? I think that they are, you know,
• 37:27
  if you're, if you don't have enough cases, if you're
• 37:30
  starving, if you, you know, are worried how you're going to pay
• 37:34
  your bills for the next year, They're probably the best option
• 37:37
  to just buy leads. But I think they are probably
• 37:42
  the worst thing to spend money on if you have any type of brand
• 37:45
  at all. And if you're trying to build
• 37:48
  something that's sustainable and like we'll spin off money for a
• 37:51
  lot of spin off leads for a long time.
• 37:52
  Obviously not much to it. I think it's a good way to kind
• 37:55
  of enter into a new market. For example, like if you I'm in
• 37:59
  Huntsville, let's say I wanted to go to Birmingham, kind of the
• 38:02
  same philosophy is like PPC, right?
• 38:04
  If you have the operations to turn a client into a super fan
• 38:09
  and increase the long term value of that client, I think it's I
• 38:12
  think it's worth looking at. As someone who invests so much
• 38:16
  in their personal brand, what is your opinion on brand
• 38:20
  conquesting firms? Who will buy your brand on PPCI?
• 38:24
  Think anybody that's buying my brand is probably wasting their
• 38:27
  money because they're really looking for me like they've got
• 38:31
  a real referral. I actually think brand
• 38:34
  conquesting is something that smaller firms should consider
• 38:39
  because if you have a good intake system, if somebody's
• 38:43
  calling around, you know, whatever it is they're calling
• 38:44
  to talk to, you know, billboard lawyers or whatever, if you can
• 38:48
  distinguish yourself and counter position during that intake call
• 38:51
  like that could be a good use of your resources.
• 38:54
  The common theme from this conversation is do the things
• 38:57
  that work for you do do well for your community.
• 39:01
  Have purpose and don't follow the pack, right?
• 39:06
  There's a lot of things that people are doing that they're
• 39:08
  doing because they see others doing them, and that's not
• 39:11
  necessarily the right way. There are firms that say they
• 39:16
  want to grow, and then there are firms that actually do it.
• 39:19
  And Hunter and his firm are the ones to learn from.
• 39:24
  I think you shared so much insight with our audience today.
• 39:27
  There's so many things that people can do.
• 39:29
  If they take one of the things that you mentioned today and
• 39:31
  they start implementing it in their local market, they're
• 39:33
  going to be successful. If you get a case in Alabama,
• 39:36
  call Hunter because he's not just talking.
• 39:38
  He's actually the man who goes to court and does the trials as
• 39:41
  well. Family man, man of faith, man of
• 39:45
  his community. Thanks for joining us.
• 39:46
  Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been fun.