Latest / UnF*ck Your Legal Marketing / Why Posting Less and Engaging More Transformed LinkedIn Success with Frank Rekas
Transcript
- Gary Johnson: Welcome to Unfuck Your Legal Marketing, where we get brutally honest about marketing, business, and the messy middle of making it all work. I'm Gary Johnson, marketing coach, strategist, and professional bullshit detector for attorneys and professional advisors who are tired of doing what everyone else does. And if you listen to this and think, ⁓ my god, I need help with this, my next group coaching cohort opens May 14th. Check the show notes for the details. So around here, we skip the fluff. Real conversations, real insights, and yeah, probably a few f-bombs along the way. So let's get into this. So today, we are discussing the all-powerful LinkedIn. And my guest, Frank Rekas, is an expert at it. Not only that, but he's also known to many law firms as the wealth guardian and mainly because Frank helps attorneys cut taxes, protect what they've built and create financial freedom on their terms, not on the government's terms. What's just as interesting is how he's built serious authority on LinkedIn. His posts spark real conversations, real engagement and no fluff. So today we're breaking down what he's doing. what most lawyers get wrong and how LinkedIn can become a strategic asset, not just another platform to quote unquote post on. So Frank, welcome to unfuck your legal marketing. I'm so glad that you're here. for having me, Jerry. And I have a lot to live up to based on that introduction. Yeah. You're way too humble. Stop it. This is not the show. This is where we're going to shit all over people and have fun on ⁓ that subject for LinkedIn. I'm kidding, by the way. You're way too nice for that. Okay. So my first question is when, when did you decide LinkedIn was going to be a real strategy for you? Not just a place to occasionally I post here and there. ⁓ I was putzing around with it for a bit and finally around, would. think it was about the fall of 2023 that I decided, okay, I think that this is a way for me to market. It's a way for me to reach people. And I don't have to pick up a phone and call anybody and interrupt their day. I can just post on LinkedIn and reach out and message and comment and let's see where this goes. And that was initially my whole thought. Let's see where it goes. So thinking back to those first days when you're doing it. Was there anything in particular that it was like, God, I kept doing this wrong. Like I was just doing stuff wrong. Yeah. Initially I was posting a lot of company generated material. Okay. I was at a, I was at a broker dealer or what we'll call an insurance based financial planning firm and they had created a lot of material. I'm, okay. This looks good. Let me post that. This looks good. Let me post that. Well, there's 5,000 other people posting the same thing. My God, that's gold. So listen to what Frank just said. He was posting the shit that the firms were wanting him, encouraging him to. You're probably reposting it, right? It was created inside of a platform. Yeah. We would just pick the ones that we wanted and we had to post it exactly as is. Nothing changed. ⁓ God. Which didn't make you stand out in any manner whatsoever, right? No, especially with all my other colleagues who were on LinkedIn posting the same thing. So how was I different from any of them in that respect? Right? I couldn't be. No, not at all. So how did you get away from that? I started creating my own content. I just started trying certain things out. I started writing my own post. I just started having some ideas and let me try this. Let me see how this works. And I think the more I did it, at least I feel the better I got at it. And, you know, I had to go through some channels, you know, we, have compliance now. I'm no longer at that firm. I still have compliance, even though I'm independent, but we have compliance to go through. And sometimes I would get my replies back pretty quickly. Other times I would get them back, you know, 48 hours later. That was kind of frustrating. So what I started doing was batching some of my content. So here's three or four posts, review them. And then I would, you know, have them and schedule them and post them when I felt like it. let, I want to dive into two different things that you just said. One was compliance. So in the financial world, you've got a lot of regulations in regards to compliance. Now on the attorney side, they also have the code of ethics, right? And no solicitation of guarantees. there's, there's different restraints. Obviously there's a whole lot more restraints on you than there are in attorneys. A whole lot. Yeah. But were you ever afraid that, okay, if I put my own content out there, that compliance department, or as I call the department of no fun, that they would go, no, Frank, sorry, you can't do that. No, Frank, sorry, you can't do this. You know, or one of the higher up partners is going to say, you know what, Frank, you this is, you got to stop doing this. It happened. It did. ⁓ yeah. mean, you know. Jokingly, I used to call compliance the sales prevention unit. Right? Yes. I love that. It's not anything that I did on purpose. I never said the word guarantee. I never said promise. I knew what the boundaries were. I think it was just some of the things that they didn't like for whatever reason. Well, for example, you referred to me as the wealth guardian, right? Which I've used as a term for myself. They didn't want me using that. Implications of certain things, I guess. I never really got a great answer on it. So instead of fighting it, I just got angry and, you know, threw a pen at the wall and... Moved on, you know, I tend to ask for forgiveness, not for permission. Ah, yeah. I But I never did anything, Gary, that was outside the lines that would have gotten me in trouble or a slap on the wrist. It was more like, Frank, you can't say this, you can't say that. Can you take it down, reword it? You know, they would give me the suggestion, which, okay, that's fine. But sometimes it's a bit of a pain in the, you know, where. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Now, the other thing that you had said was batching. You would go in there and, know, instead of one-offs because you had to wait for them to get back to you. How did you, did you have a process for batching? Well, actually first, can you talk to the listeners? What is batching and did you have a system for it? So batching is creating a bunch of separate posts and having them ready to be posted at a time when you feel ready to make that post. So I would take, maybe it was a Saturday morning or Sunday morning and I would write three or four and then I would put them in the bin, so to speak, to be reviewed. And hopefully they got reviewed and came back and then I would post them when I thought it was the appropriate time. The unfortunate part about that is, is I may come up with an idea that four o'clock in the afternoon, like, ⁓ wow, I really want to post this either in five minutes or tomorrow morning. Couldn't happen. Couldn't happen. So that. That was a bit of a detriment, you know, even if it had zero to do with anything, we still had to go through the channel for that. So that's why I did the batching. And in a way it kind of me become a better writer. And I would make notes of ideas or I'd see somebody else's post or I'd see an idea, ⁓ I want to write about this. I would just write like titles or I would just write thoughts that I wanted to do. And then I would go back to that. And, you know, come up with, you know, my post material. If there was any sort of process that was putting it in the, you know, the note page on my phone, that was pretty much where it was. Well, it also allows you to remember that, right? Because you had that thought. You just met with a client. They said something to you you're like, I could post on that because it's value driven, you know? And, um, I always find for me, batching is. So such a huge time saver because like, I'll give you an example yesterday. I recorded five videos, five of my weekly videos. I post once a week on LinkedIn posts, five videos. what normally one video would probably take 20 minutes. Five videos took me half hour. Yeah. Huge, huge time savings. That because all I have to do is change my, my outfit, you know, Everything is all set up. I'm in the mode, right? Because we get in that mode, whether we're writing, whether we're video, whatever we're doing, whatever we're performing, it just gets us in flow, which saves us a lot of time. And it actually gives us better content to put out there, which I think is valuable, you know? Absolutely. With your content, specifically, you get a ton of engagement on yours. A ton of engagement. ⁓ why do you think you get a whole lot more engagement than a lot of the, ⁓ people who post regularly on LinkedIn? Because what I see is most people they'll get five or six likes, maybe a comment or two. And then you look at Frank's and Frank's got 30 on this one, 20 comments on this one, 50 comments on, it just, they're so much engagement. What's the difference between yours and them? think it starts with your own process. You can post and ghost as they say, and that will kill, that will kill your, your engagement and your visibility. One of the things that I've been doing for a long time is I'll know when my post is going to get posted. I schedule it might be eight o'clock in the morning, might be eight 15, and this is Eastern time. So maybe 15 minutes beforehand, I'm already out there. I'm liking, I'm commenting, I'm doing what is called warming up the algorithm. And trust me, I'm not an expert. didn't come up with all these, you know, ideas. I gathered them from a lot of the people that I follow, but that helps bring your post in front of more people. And then it's commenting on the comments that I'm getting as quickly as you can. If I start on LinkedIn at, I'm just going to say 7 45 AM in the morning. If I have, if I don't have a meeting schedule, if I don't have anything that I absolutely have to do, I'm going to be on there till about eight 30 quarter nine, maybe nine o'clock engaging with other people along with engaging with, ⁓ the people that are commenting on my post. Now that may sound to be my wall. Wow. That's a lot of time. Yeah. But I've baked that into my calendar. So that's my process. That's my marketing. Yeah. So what I hear from you is- a lot to do with it. What was that? I said, I think that process that I have has a lot to do with getting the engagement and the comments. Yeah, I totally agree. So if you're taking notes, and I hope you are, warm up the algorithm before you even post. So engage with other people in your network, post, but then stay with that post so that you're commenting on the comments. You're thanking them. are asking them questions. You're, you know, if they're asking you a question, you answer that, but you sit with it and make it a part of your process by putting it on your calendar. So it's intentional as opposed to, know what? It's eight 30 it's Tuesday. I don't feel like posting. don't feel like, you know, and that I think is a big issue with. And this isn't just attorneys, this is with all of us that we let our feelings get in the way of our activities. And the fact that you've got a process that goes, okay, I got this process, it's on my calendar, I just do it. Like I brush my teeth, it's there, I just do it. What made you all sudden think, okay, I gotta do this process, like, you know, and put it on the calendar and have it there? Like, did you have a coach? it just intuition? Was it you're such a process oriented guy? Like, what was that? think a lot of it is a combination of all that. You know, yes, I had a business coach. Yes, it was intuition. It was also observing other people and watching what they're doing, whether they're in my industry, in another industry, in a related industry. You you and I connected on LinkedIn because you work with attorneys and you work with law firm owners. So those are people that I naturally gravitate to. Why? Well, because we each work with those people. So why wouldn't I try to connect with those kinds of people? ⁓ and as far as the calendar thing goes, I didn't get as specific honestly, until recently. Really? I would block out the calendar, but I would just block it. And in my head, it was blocked for either doing LinkedIn. Or maybe having a coffee meeting with somebody. now, or most recently, I've blocked it out specifically for LinkedIn time, which would involve posting and engagement. And then somewhere in there, I'll build in 30 minutes or 15 minutes, depending on what my day looks like. Although now if I've got it planned out ahead, I'll put in a specific block just for sending DMs. Really? Okay. Otherwise I'm not going to do it. Or it'll be sporadic and I want to send at least five a day. don't have to do 10 DMs a day. Okay. If I can do five a day, I'm pretty happy. And what do your DMs typically say? I'm sure they're not like, Hey, you want to go on a date? Like what do they call that? Slide into your DM? No, no, gosh, no. Cause if they are. I'd be offended that you'd have never DM me like, Hey, I thought we were friends. you. Come on. You know, Gary, could be something as simple as, Hey, thanks Gary for visiting my post today. Anything specific with you resonate. Thanks Gary for supporting my post. Really appreciate it. How's your week going? Thanks Gary. Noticed you went to XYZ conference. What did you like most about it? Just trying to start a conversation as opposed to. Hi, Gary. I think you should buy some life insurance. Hi, Gary. I specialize in, you know, 401k plans. Do you have one? Yeah. I refuse to do anything that's even remotely close to that. I might send you an idea, but it's after we've had a little bit of a conversation. Yeah. Now when you send somebody a connection request, do you personalize it or is it just, you know, the, I'm not going to send a message with it. I just send the connection request. You know, it depends. Okay. A nice lawyer answer. You obviously know your audience really well. Yes, I do. If it's someone that's been kind of active on my posts and they've been commenting, but we aren't connected, then I'm going to throw in, Hey Gary, I see you've been commenting on my post recently. I really appreciate the engagement. I thought we should connect something simple, just like that. Other times I'm just connecting. I'm just connecting request. Yeah. Have I noticed? What works and what doesn't, they both work. it. of the things that the LinkedIn gurus talk about a lot lately is they encourage people not to put a personalized message because the people who are doing the personalized messages will are doing it with a bot. And then what they do is as soon as you hit accept, it's what you had just said earlier, there's a pitch. Hey, Frank, you need any life insurance because I've got a plan for you or hey, do you have five minutes where I could learn all about your entire life and, ⁓ and then be able to pitch something. go, okay. Yeah, no, because it's just, it's so salesy. And so as a society on LinkedIn, we have almost been conditioned that, no, this is going to lead to this. therefore I'm going to ignore it. Cause I don't want to get pitched and I know it goes through me. However, though, I love how what you had said where it's like, Hey, I saw you were at this convention. Hey, thank you so much for engaging. Hey, I saw you made a comment on so-and-so's. It's very personalized. It's not, Hey, we both have a bunch of LinkedIn connections together. Or Hey, I see the great things that you're doing at your firm. ⁓ you know, you're like, shut the fuck up. Like, come on. Like I don't see straight through that. And I keep on thinking to myself, what agencies are telling people you should do this because this shit works? And I'm like, I've never known anybody to do that. And even so far, Frank, I was in a shitty mood one day and I decided I was going to respond to these people's pitches. And all I said was, does this actually work? That was it. And guess what happened? Nobody responded. Of course, no, because they know their clock. Right or they're utilizing a bot and the bots like what do I do with this? Like yes. Yes You know, it's drives me crazy one thing I have stopped doing is I think you would probably agree you can tell when someone's commenting on your post and it's AI generated Yes, you can tell yeah, and for a while I was okay Let me respond back. I finally have decided I'm not responding to those Now the gurus say, well, that kind of hurts the algorithm of your posts. Okay. I eventually want these people off so that it doesn't really matter. Does it? You know, I only want people that are true to themselves, authentic people, generous people, giving people, cause that's how I view myself. That's who I want commenting. I don't want to bot commenting. And especially if you repeat like, you diagnose something that I've already said and you just repeat it back to me and tell me how great that was. Yeah, it sounds like my conversations with ChatGPT. That's a great idea. So glad that you asked me that, Gary. And I'm like, ⁓ thank you. Yeah, it makes you feel good, right? It does. It's like, finally somebody's nice to me. I appreciate that. Like when I'm not feeling good, I go into chat and give it, hey, what do you think of this? That's a great idea. You're so brilliant. I'm like, thanks. Somebody thinks that way. Now we're talking Gary. Yeah, exactly. So on your post, you tend to write in short punchy sentences and it gets a lot of engagement. Is that strategic or is that just you being the Chicago guy that you are? It's just me. know, if nothing else, I'm direct, straight to the point. And I'm trying to make, I don't want to, I guess I'll say impression because what I'm trying to get out there is If I'm talking about a specific issue, concern or problem, like, you know, we need the bottom line here. I don't think people want to read a lot of fluff. I don't like writing really long posts. I don't like reading really long posts. So I try to just be as direct as I can. Yes. Personalize it. Give it a little personality, but sometimes, you know, you're going to see some short punchy sentences in there. Yeah. Which I think is important because obviously it's working, right? And our most valuable asset is our time. So for wasting other people's time by just going on on on on on on, guess what? They're just going to scroll right past us and be like, Nope, not going to happen. know, so you speak directly to attorney's tax pain. How important is that kind of, if I can say this word, specificity. There you go. Good God. That was awesome. That was tough. That's such a fucking easy word. My God. So that's the one thing everybody's going to remember about this podcast. ⁓ my God. Yeah. These two Jacks couldn't even remember how to ⁓ forget it. Like specific being very specific, you know, ⁓ do you know, is that important? You know, I think that when I decided to market to law firm owners and to network for law firm owners. I was looking for something that would differentiate me. What could I be known for? How can I separate myself from the other 500,000 financial advisors and planners in North America? What could I do? And it was really, well, with the people that I'm working with, is the number one thing that they're concerned about? Paying too much in taxes. Okay, that was my... It's kind of like my foot in the door, so to speak, that gets the conversation going. That doesn't mean we won't do other things. We will do other things, but that's the one that turns the light bulb on and says, huh, maybe I should at least talk to Frank. And that's what I'm looking for. It makes you very memorable. It makes it so that they say, you get us Frank, you understand us because They need somebody like you that does understand the complexities of having a law firm and what they need to do in order to avoid paying excessive taxes to the government. ⁓ and I love the fact that you have stayed in that lane. You, you do so much for them that it's amazing. It really is, you know, now you also post very personal stuff. You have pictures of you. your daughter, and when you're out there networking, do you find that there is a line of, okay, that's too personal. This, you know, it's not personal enough. Like some people go, ⁓ is that TMI for your, for really making those post personal because you put your heart and soul into it. know, I think I want people to get to know me. Yeah. I don't want them to know me as just my professional self. So Like everybody else, have a life outside of our profession. I'd like to show you not all the time, sometimes what it is that I'm doing. So yeah, if it's my daughter, if it's out networking, if it's having lunch, coffee, breakfast with people volunteering in my community or for my church when I do that, going to Chicago, visiting my brother, going to a game. mean, that's part of my life. That's part of who I am and as people get to know me, you're going to know about that. And I wasn't worried about it at first. think sometimes where I do kind of be concerned is when I start talking about some of the experiences in my family with health and death and, some of that. And sometimes I'll ask myself, no, am I doing this to send a message to people? Which I think I am, but I'm also kind of doing it for a little bit of therapy for me, because it helps for me to kind of talk about it a little bit. Interesting. And I love your vulnerability on that aspect too, because most people, they're not themselves. They want to wear a mask out there and say, this is who I am, but that's really not them. You know, they're, they're, they're phony. And I also, and this is just in my heart, I believe that people are that gravitate to you. And one of the reasons why you're so successful and why you're killing it on LinkedIn. Because you are who you are. You're authentically you and you know unapologetic But not offensive, you know, I hate those people that are like well if they don't fucking like it Well, that's on fucking them. I'm like no it's on you because you're just an asshole like stop that like well This is just who I am. No, it's not like yes. Okay, we all have our asshole tendencies But do we have to put that out there? in the world of LinkedIn or any sort of social media. If you are, you are making a decision of I'm going to be seen as an asshole. And maybe some people gravitate towards that. I personally hate it, but I always love you sharing your life, you know, and I, and I love your answer to that, which is you want people to get to know you. And it's a great way, instead of going to a coffee after a coffee, after a coffee, after a coffee, You're able to broadcast this out there, but to have the stones to actually do that. I applaud you for that because most people, including myself, I have held back on times and I'm like, Nope, not going to do it. You know, I'm not going to be that personal, you know, but now I need to look at it for as therapy. think it's fucking brilliant. Well, and I, I'm going to, I'm going to say two things about that. Number one, I, I took the, the hint. from someone that I follow, her name is Stacy Havener. She's in my industry, but she's all about stories. Whether you're talking about your profession or your personal life, people want stories and they gravitate to people who can tell a story and share something about you. And the more I started following her and engaging with her content and messaging back and forth, I became much more comfortable with putting some of that personal stuff out there. The other side of that is when I finally meet someone in real life, we feel like we know each other because they've seen some of that personal. So there's no more of that awkward first 10 minutes of trying to think of something to ask. You just get right into it and you just start talking like you've known each other for 10 years. And I think that's helped. Yeah. I love that. You post very regularly. Do you ever get burnt out? Yeah, but I have this FOMO that, my gosh, I gotta post every day. Oh no, I didn't post today. Oh shoot, it's five o'clock. Let me just throw something up there. I'm not trying to set a world record. I'm not trying to do that. I'm not trying to go 1,412 days. I'm just posting every day because I'm in a rhythm. I'm in a rhythm. I know there's gonna come a time. I I skip here and there, you know, just because I do like to post. It's my thing. Yeah. have a lot of colleagues who are like, God, you must spend so much time on LinkedIn. Why do you do that? Ask me where my last five clients came from. Better yet, ask me where my last 10 clients came from. That's why I'm out there. Yeah. I have. Yeah. I love that. mean, what is one mistake you've made on LinkedIn that you're like, that was a good learning experience. Early on when I was connecting with people. So we'll go back to that. did a lot of. Hi, Gary. I see you're connected to John Smith. Thought we should connect. And it was like a ton of bricks. Went, why aren't these people connecting with me? They know that we all know the same people. I stopped that line, phrasing altogether. And it's like, this isn't working. So that was, that was a bad mistake. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. Like we were saying, it just reeks of salesy here is common. That's. what I call a transaction as opposed to a relationship, which is totally against you too, knowing you because you are Mr. Relationship. mean, you know, for the listeners, when I first met Frank years ago, we had a zoom call and we hit it off great. And I'm like, my God, you need to get into Provisors, which is this networking group that we're in. Cause I'm like, you were the perfect person. And I'm like, Okay. I don't know if there is one in your area or if there's anybody in financial services in that because, you know, most people that are in financial services, they love getting into the networking groups, rightfully so. Yeah. But there's a little, there's a waiting list, you know, especially in Pro Advisors. know in Orange County, there's 82 financial advisors that are on the waiting list just to get in, just to get in, you know. And, there's 36 groups in Orange County and there's this huge, I'm like, ⁓ my God, but you are different than the others because you're so relational and you exude this caringness for your clients. Like I'm like, you're not from Chicago. You're way too nice. Like there's just no way. Like I'm like Minnesota. Nice. That's more you like. You know, I would consider you more a Vikings fan or a Packers fan. I'm kidding. Oh By the way. Go ahead. I was just like, you know, you and I had that initial conversation and you told me about Provisors. I think it was like a month and a half later I was in. Yeah, I know. We hung up. looked it up. I reached out and I got in the group because I'm like, okay, I can do this. This seems like a good place Because you get shit done. You're like, done. Let's go. know. Let's Yeah. So. Frank, this has been amazing. cannot tell you. Like listeners, like the amount of gold that Frank has bestowed upon you is enormous because he talks about, yeah, he's got his hands a little bit tied with compliance, yet he's able to still get a lot of posts out there that are authentically him. He batches to save himself time. Also the mental capacity. to be able to post on a regular basis. He actually puts it in his process. It's on his calendar. He uses the mantra of don't post and ghost, which I think is brilliant. You post, you stick around. And by the way, the LinkedIn gurus say 90 minutes and that you should be like right next to that post after you posted it. But even before he does that, he warms it up. He warms up the algorithm. by engaging with other people's posts, by liking it, by commenting on their post. He sends five DMs a day, which is awesome. That sort of consistency and that sort of discipline is great. His posts are short. They're no fluff. He takes out the fluff to save the reader's time. He definitely differentiates himself. And if you do not follow him yet, follow him, connect with him. because you're going to see some gold out there and he does it so that people get to know him so that they will be like, yeah, I want to have you help me with my life insurance because that is a very intimate relationship. Anybody who doesn't have life insurance that it's an attorney call Frank up right now because he will really get to know you and then understand what your goals are. But then we'll either say, I think I can help you or I think I have somebody else who can help you because of X, Y, and Z. He's always looking out for people ⁓ because he's authentically himself. And the last one is tell stories. Post people love story time is why movies are so successful. Why TV is so successful. Cause it's stories and we have them and Frank, thank you. Like this is brilliant. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you being on this. for the listeners and for me too, you know, it's always great having a conversation with you. you, Gary, for having me. And I can see why you do so well in marketing because that was a terrific little summation and promotion at the same time for me. So yeah, thank you very much. And one of these days we're going to, we're going to meet in person and we're going to celebrate this friendship that we have. Seriously. Next time I'm out in Florida, you know, or next time I'm out by you for sure. know Florida is really nice in August. ⁓ And Arizona is really nice in August too. So maybe we go up to Maine or something like that and meet up. But, if you, if you want to get a hold of Frank, we're going to put all of his contact information in the show notes. So it's easy to get ahold of him. And again, if you're not following Frank Rekas right now, make sure you go on LinkedIn, connect with him. He is one of the best out there learn from him because he's doing it right. And he also can save you a shitload of money on taxes. ⁓ Frank, thank you very much and we will talk soon. Thanks, Gary. Really appreciate it. That's it for today's episode of Un-Fuck Your Legal Marketing. If you got a spark of inspiration, learned something new, or at least got a good laugh, make sure to follow, rate, and share this with someone who needs to hear it. Thanks for hanging out with me. And remember, the best marketing. is the one that actually sounds like you. See you next time.