Everybody Likes Tom Petty, Your Client-Generating Machine, and the Rump Roast: Portland Edition

Episode Notes

Transcript

Legal Toolkit

Everybody Likes Tom Petty, Your Client-Generating Machine, and the Rump Roast – Portland Edition

11/10/2020

[Music]

Jared Corriea:  Welcome to the award-winning legal tool kit podcast only on the Legal Talk Network. Twice a month we’re delivering law practice management tips and tricks directly to your ear holes. My name is Jared Corriea and because David Letterman is busy filming his Netflix show, I’m your host  I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys.  Find us online at www.redcavelegal.com. I’m the CEO of Gideon Software Inc. We build Chatbots so law firms can convert more leads. You can find out more about Gideon at www.gideon.legal. Before we get rolling I’d like to take a moment to thank my mom for listening to every episode of the show. I’d also like to thank our sponsors. They’re the reasons you’re listening to this show right now. You’re welcome mom. We would like to thank Alert Communications for sponsoring this podcast. If any law firm is looking for call, intake or retainer services available 24/7/365 just call 866-827-5568. Scorpion is the leading provider of marketing solutions for the legal industry. With nearly 20 years of experience serving attorneys, scorpion can help grow your practice. Learn more at scorpionlegal.com. Abby Connect has delivered premium live receptionist and answering services to lawyers since 2006. You can try them out for free at abbyconnect.com. TimeSolv is the number one web-based time and billing software for lawyers.  Providing solutions since 1999, TimeSolv provides the most comprehensive billing features for law firms big and small. www.timesolve.com.

So let’s kick this episode off with something completely different. I promised I was going to talk about my interests outside the law and that’s what we’re going to do right now. So I want to talk to you a little bit about music which I love. I listen to a lot of music and I want to talk to you today about Tom Petty. I would tell you this it’s practically unamerican to dislike Tom Petty and it’s hard to find like nearly universally liked public figures including in the music industry. For example, would it surprise you if I told you that I actually don’t like Bruce Springsteen or the Rolling Stones. Sorry, send in the hate mail. But as it turns out I guess I’m not universally liked either and neither are they. But you know what, I’ve never heard anybody say Tom Petty kind of sucks, never heard that. And if some alien came up to me and said that they hated Tom Petty, I feel kind of like the donkey from Shrek when he’s talking about parfait, right? He’s talking to Shrek and he says, “Who doesn’t like parfait? Everybody likes parfait. They’re delicious.” Everybody likes Tom Petty.

In fact one of the reasons that 2020 sucks so hard is because tom petty is dead.  However, Tom Petty is back if only to break up the constantly inane political banter with the release of Wildflowers and all the rest. If you didn’t know, Tom Petty’s 1994 album Wildflowers is considered as best by most critics and most humans as well. After writing a bunch of pop rock hits with his band The Heartbreakers, which you may have heard of, Petty created Wildflowers with super producer Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin did a lot of rap albums and he resurrected the career of Johnny Cash later on. But Wildflowers was a completely different album from what Tom Petty had been producing before. From the early 70s onward he did a lot of pop rock as I said and and then around 1988-1989, which we’ll talk about, he started working with Jeff Lynne who was a pop music super producer at that time, but he did a lot of heavy production, right?

And Wildflowers was totally different. It was stripped down. It dealt with serious themes he hadn’t dealt with before and it was a lot simpler than his previous records and so as the departure really worked, right? So how much of a departure was Wildflowers you might ask. Well, five years before it came out on a Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty released a song about teenagers running amuck in Los Angeles like vampires and he called the song Zombie Zoo. On Wildflowers, he’s writing songs like It’s Only a Broken Heart and Hard To Find A Friend the latter track featuring Ringo Starr on drums.  But all in all it’s still pretty depressing compared to going out in LA all night and party, right? So as I think about it, I don’t know why Wildflowers is my favorite Tom Petty album. There are other contenders as well. But let me tell you that from 1994 to 2000, I wore that record out, right?

(00:05:02)

I’d run through my favorite songs on that album constantly, Wildflowers, the title track, You Wreck Me, A Higher Place until I was extremely sick of hearing those songs and I’d wait a day and start playing them again. And you don’t know how it feels, had this great MTV Video where they censored the word joint, right? The simpler times of 1994. You couldn’t say joint, not on MTV. But when I got hooked on Tom Petty it was 1989, when Full Moon Fever came out. That was his first solo album and I was 11 years old. And five years later at 16, I’m listening to this super introspective album about his divorce from his wife and I have to say I connected to both albums on a pretty deep level, right? Even the Full Moon Fever had probably everything to do with my life as a teenager and in college and Wildflowers had nothing to do with what I was experiencing. And I think it’s pretty damn impressive for an artist to be able to pull that trick.  So Wildflowers and all the rest is out now and here’s the story behind it.

In ’94, Petty was feeling so creatively empowered that he built this Wildflowers album as a 25 track double album. So when he took it to the studio heads, they were like “Nah, that’s too long.” And Tom Petty who never did anything that the studio heads wanted, he actually advocated for the price for his own albums, right? He want to set the price for his albums, which was kind of unheard of. He was like, “Okay, it’s too long.” And before he died he seemed to be having second thoughts about that decision, so he was working on releasing Wildflowers as like the complete double album when he passed away. So now, after some estate wrangling, see I talked about the law, his daughter and some of his former band mates published this album and they’re calling it Wildflowers and All the Rest.  So here’s what you can expect to hear on that album.

There’s several alternative versions of songs from the She’s The One soundtrack which was originally intended for release on Wildflowers, right? One of the songs is California, which if you haven’t heard is probably the best Tom Petty song you’ve never heard and let me just say She’s The One, you’ve probably never seen that movie, there was never a better soundtrack for a crappier film. You’re also going to find Leave Virginia Alone, which is a song that was originally quartered by Rod Stewart and that song hit number one in Canada in 1995.  Perhaps it goes without saying that Tom Petty’s version is better than Rod Stewart’s. So how much does Rod Stewart suck you might ask yourself. It turns out a lot. He hated the song and he had to be convinced to record it, which is another reason why Rod Stewart is the absolute worst but we can cover that in another monologue. Other highlights you’re going to find are previously unreleased cuts like Something Could Happen, There Goes Angela and A Feeling of Peace.  And the new release also includes home recordings, concert recordings, you should definitely check it out.

When it comes to Tom Petty, I kind of feel like Bob in Office Space as played by John McGinley, one of the two Bobs, right? I’m a Tom Petty fan and I celebrate the guy’s entire catalog. So, I mentioned Wildflowers is Tom Petty’s most critically acclaimed album, but he really hits super duper star status when he released Full Moon Fever, which is his first solo album in 1989. That includes songs you absolutely know by heart, Free Falling, I Won’t Back Down. And starting in 1988 and leading right up until ’96 Tom Petty was hitting blackjack on every hand basically. Listen to this ridiculous run through, this murderer’s row of a discography for that period.

1998, Traveling Wilburys Volume 1. Traveling Wilburys was a super group featuring George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne who was a former lead singer of ELO and produced Tom Petty’s albums at that time. You probably know the video for End of the Line where they’re all singing in a box car, right? As I said before ’89, Full Moon Fever comes out and Tom Petty becomes like massive star at that point for a solo record.  1990, Traveling Wilbury’s Volume 3. This one was released after Roy Orbison’s death and then included the four remaining members of the band.  Fun fact, there was no Volume 2.  1991, Into the Great Wide Open. You probably remember the title track Learning To Fly plus this is Johnny Depp’s starring video for Into the Great Wide Open.  1993, Greatest Hits. That includes two new songs, Mary Jane’s Last Dance featuring a memorable video where Kim Basinger plays a corpse, trust me it’s good, and Something in the Air, a remake of the 1965 from the Pete Townsend Project, Thuwith the nderclap Newman. 1995, Playback. This is an absolutely immense six CD box set with the hits B-sides, live tracks, unreleased songs. I’ve listened to this whole thing straight through a bunch of times. It’s got 92 songs on it. 1996, the She’s the One soundtrack.

(00:10:01)

This is one with The Heartbreakers and this is a great album that doesn’t get enough respect to put on this name, right? He got two versions of Walls, two versions of Angel Dream, a Lucinda Williams cover, a back cover, a song called Zero from Outer Space. This one’s worth another listen if you haven’t listened to it before. Because it’s true that for nearly a decade Tom Petty was throwing nothing but fastballs. And that’s the list that you must really check, can’t be proud of.

Now, along with this episode we’ll also be releasing my Tom Petty playlist on Spotify, which is a collection of some of my favorite deep tracks. That’s actually going to be linked to this episode, so check it out, take a listen. It’s good to be king. Long live the king. Now, let’s take a moment to listen to a word from our sponsors and we’ll be right back.

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Jared Corriea:  Okay, it’s about time to get to the sardines in the middle of this sandwich. Let’s interview our guest. My guest today is Megan Hargroder of Conversations Digital. Megan, thanks for joining us.

Megan Hargroder:  Jared, thank you for having me.

Jared Corriea:  Can you tell the folks listening who you are and what you do.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, so my firm, Conversations Digital is focused on building what we call client generating machines, which is just a fancy way of saying websites that do their job.

Jared Corriea:  Client generating machines, I like that. I hope that it’s trademarked or you should do it before we publishes.

Megan Hargroder:  It’s not, I probably should though.

Jared Corriea:  I think website development is a really interesting topic and I’ve kind of followed it loosely for a while even though I couldn’t design a website to save my life and I’m very impressed with the people who can, right? And focusing on lawyers too is kind of an interesting niche also.  So, let me just ask you broadly, here’s a softball question for you. I promise softball questions. What makes for an effective law firm website in 2020 end of 2020 the best year ever?

Megan Hargroder:  The best year ever. So, yeah, so I think that what makes for a good website is kind of matches up with what makes for a good business and for law firms that’s something that really establishes trust and building trust online. So, sometimes people are going to be coming to your website because they know you already and they’re checking you out or someone told them about you and sometimes it’s going to be organic, so either way someone needs to get to your website and they need to see that you do what they need, that’s kind of the first thing. Do you have a message up there that says I help people do x or this is the area of law that I practice. They want to see that you’re an expert in what you do, that you’re trusted by others so you can do that through testimonials, having your awards, affiliations up there.

Jared Corriea:  Right.

Megan Hargroder:  And that you care about your clients and that you’re passionate about what you do. So really a website that establishes trust, great graphic design is of course wonderful and we get a lot of attention for creating like beautiful websites, but that doesn’t —

Jared Corriea:  I love your websites, can I just say that?

Megan Hargroder:  Oh thank you so much.

Jared Corriea:  I’m just gonna say it.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah.  We put a lot of love into them. But foundationally, I think what a lot of people do wrong is that they start with pretty boxes and colors and then they try to put words into them and that’s the wrong way to do it. The right way to do it is what’s your message, what’s your core message, you put that at the top. What story do you want to tell people, you put that next. What do they need to know about you, are you — did you get an award in something, are you the best at this, are you — do you have the most bomb testimonial eve, you got to put that on there too. And really treating your home page like it is the whole website because it’s 2020, mobile traffic is outweighing anything else right now and a lot of times people are on their phone and they’re just scrolling through your home page, so it’s kind of like your one shot.

Jared Corriea:  That’s an interesting concept there, so like — and I think a lot of what you say is right, like it sounds simple, but executing that is actually really hard. And then the other thing I think is that lawyers are text people. They love to write stuff like they love to write and a website like text has utility but that utility is limited if there’s too much of it.

(00:15:02)

You don’t want like a block of text, right? Nobody wants to look at that. But this notion you talked about which is like getting the one shot with the home page because mostly the searches nowadays are mobile, that makes a ton of sense. So like, does that mean that you go with like a one-page website or does that mean like you’ve got a really killer home page and then you build out the psych architecture behind it like what does that look like for you and the firms you tied to.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, if you’re a brand new lawyer and you’re just building out your website that can start with just a one-page home page website. But if you have just a one-page website you’re never going to develop SEO or search engine optimization which means that when people search for your specific practice area in Google, they’re not going to find you if you just have a one-page website. You’ve got to have some more detailed practice area pages, maybe a blog and some other things on there to like really rank in Google. So it depends on what your goals are. We work with a lot of people who are like I don’t care about ranking in Google because I have so many referrals that I just want to focus on that and then we have way more people though who are like, “Can you get me on page one.”

Jared Corriea:  Like I’m good for Google, like I’m okay.  Yeah, the page one people are most of your clients, right?

Megan Hargroder:  Everyone, everyone’s like I want page one.  I want the top spot on page one and I’m like, “Okay, great. What is your niche?” And a hundred percent of the time it’s personal injury and I’m like, “Anything else? Let’s talk about anything else to get you to page one.” Personal injury is the hardest thing to get someone on page one for.

Jared Corriea:  And personal injury firms dumps so much money at the market like they’re the one type of law firm that’s willing to pay for search engine optimization. I’ve seen like at high levels.

Megan Hargroder:  So much. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per month and you can actually there’s this cool spy tool that I use called Spyfu and you can put your competitor’s website in there and it’ll tell you how much money they’re spending every month on Google Ads.

Jared Corriea:  Yeah that’s a beautiful thing. Everybody check that out.  And then if you’re a lawyer in any practice area outside of PI, you can see what little your competitors are spending, right?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah.

Jared Corriea:  Well that’s what I talked to people about. It’s like a low bar, right? Like a lot of lawyers if you’re not talking about a PI firm like to be able to overspend your competitors, it’s not like you need to back up the Brinks truck, right? You just need to do

a little bit more.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, and a lot of times you don’t need to spend at all, like the more niche your practice area is, if you have a really, really good website with good content and all of your SEO stars are aligned, you don’t actually have to do all of that extra garbage. It’s all going to be dependent on what your competition looks like. So the more specific you are, the better you’re going to do and I always try to get people to niche in further than what they’re comfortable with and everyone’s always very happy and excited that they do, like you would be surprised how specific.  Well, you wouldn’t, you’ve seen how specific niches can get.

Jared Corriea:  Well, you’re like so animal law way too broad, I want you to focus on tortoises that kind of thing?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah or like succession plans.

Jared Corriea:  Tortoise law is huge right now.

Megan Hargroder:  Tortoise law, you could do succession plans specifically for parrots.

Jared Corriea:  Right.

Megan Hargroder:   You know. That would be a whole thing. If anyone wants to do that please call me. I’m like really dying to do branding for something like that.

Jared Corriea:  I feel like this would be an appropriate time to talk about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Charlie Day’s focused on bird law.

Megan Hargroder:  Bird Law.

Jared Corriea:  I don’t want to get us to too down the line, that’s later. Two things that I thought were interesting like you’re anticipating a lot of the questions I would have for you. So number one is like SEO ready websites, which is a concept I talk about all the time is that even if you’re never going to utilize SEO at a high level, it’s important to make sure your website is SEO ready in the sense that like you can do that effectively later on and also that you could make an impression in search, maybe not top ranked pages, right? But like make an impression and search without having to pay for it, right? And one of the things you talked about designing practice area pages that speak the keywords and key phrases, right? Can you talk a little bit about that because I think that’s undersold a lot for attorneys.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, so foundationally I want to say this part because I feel like this gets missed a lot.  You want those pages to be part of your website. So, you want it to be your domain backslash the name of the page. There’s this big trend going on that I don’t know who’s recommending to lawyers to create all these external landing pages and then try to send traffic to these random landing pages and that’s such garbage because you’re throwing your SEO away on — it should always be connected to your site. So, typically you want to have like a handful at most of really detailed practice area pages is what’s ideal for SEO. You want to have at least 600 words on there, not block paragraphs, break it up. Google loves bullet lists, different sections for things. More words the better but they have to be good.

(00:20:00)

Megan Hargroder:  So, don’t copy/paste any garbage from anyone else’s website and don’t write like a lawyer.

Jared Correia:  Yes.

Megan Hargroder:  So if you want to rank in search —

Jared Correia:  You’re bringing the heat Megan keep going.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. I’m here for it. You got to ready the seventh grade reading level and that’s really difficult for a lot of lawyers.

Jared Correia:  That may be higher right?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. I mean, and that might be a thing where you write your practice area page and you give it to a copy writer and you say dumb this down to like regular people words if you can’t do it. But I always ask for that from lawyers like seventh grade reading level and then they’ll give me something back and I’m like, what seventh grade class were you in.

Jared Correia:  Right. Did you skip the seventh grade altogether to go to college? Yeah, they’re bad at it, it’s true. I think there’s this massive disconnect between lawyers, consumers generally and part of that is the way they write. So like, let’s extend on this conversation a little bit because I think this is interesting. So you talk about content marketing also. And I think it’s pretty cool that you’re willing to come on here and say, “Hey, not everybody needs SCO”, right? Like you can build out a content marketing profile on your own and I’m a big believer in content marketing but like the thing that lawyers don’t do is they don’t put in the effort, right? So, content marketing for most lawyers is like, “Hey, I wrote a blog post and I published it.” And just wait for a pat on the back.

Megan Hargroder:  “Slow clap.”

Jared Correia:  It needs to be more aggressive than that, right?

Megan Hargroder:  Correct. Yeah. There’s a lot of different ways you can do content strategies outside of your website even. And one of the big ones is email marketing but again, you have to do it right, you have to do it really intentionally. So I like to tell everyone as soon as you launch your new website to export your contacts from your email list and send an email out, not through your email platform, through a proper email marketing platform so you don’t get can-spammed.

Jared Correia:  You mean not the native email application like Mailchimp or something like that?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. You want to use Mailchimp or I prefer ConvertKit, but whichever is fine.

Jared Correia:  That’s okay, we’re all friends here.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, cool. And let people know what you’re doing, like who you are, what you’re doing and how you can help people and how they can contact you. Like 100% of the time, people get either leads or referrals just from sending out that email letting people know, because people don’t know. Lawyers think like, “Oh, people know me, they know I’m a lawyer”, but they might not know what exactly you do specifically. And the goal, like the ultimate marketing goal is for whenever one of your contacts, whenever someone asks one of your contacts, “Hey, do you know a good lawyer who could help with X.” You want to be top of mine, and you want to get that referral. So on hand it’s like, yeah, it’s marketing but I think referral marketing is and will always be the most powerful form of marketing and there’s a lot of digital tools and content base marketing tools that can help you amplify that.

Jared Correia:  I think what kind of gets lost in the mix, right, is like content marketing can lead to referrals, right? So I think a lot of lawyers think like, “Hey, I’m going to send this out, and I’m going to get 10 more clients.” But you may send that out to your referral sources, you may send that out to colleagues and they send you a case like six months down the line. And I think that’s overlooked a lot.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. Referral marketing is a long game and it’s one of those things where you want to treat everyone like they’re a potential referral source. In terms of social media, I always tell people, you’re probably not going to get a direct client from Twitter. That doesn’t happen very often. It can, there are some instances where you probably can, so let’s just say you’re a DUI lawyer, and you regularly publish on your Twitter account when, where the police checkpoints are. Everyone who drinks and drives is going to follow you because they want to know where those checkpoints are. And if they do get in trouble, they’re probably going to tweet you about it. So that’s one example where Twitter can maybe get you a client, but for the most part, you are tweeting to your peers for their respect and acknowledgement.

Jared Correia:  Yup. And that’s even more so on platforms like Linkedin right, which is like a “professional networking resource”. Yes, I’m on board with you in terms of content marketing. I think that makes a ton of sense.

Let’s turn to some other overlooked components of a website because I don’t want to get too far away from the website conversation. So here are some things that I thought to people about in terms of websites and I get questions about that you can answer, rapid fire.

Megan Hargroder:  Let’s do it.

Jared Correia:  Website backups, important, how important? ADA compliance, which is something I hear a lot of lawyers asking about in terms of website, so what are your feelings on that, and then security of information on a website. Thoughts?

Megan Hargroder:  Okay. So we got backups, ADA and security. I’m ready for it. Backups, vital, yes, do it. Better yet, use WP Engine as your hosting platform. It’s superior to everything else and it does backups for you automatically, so you don’t actually have to worry about. Boom! ADA compliancy. This is a scam that has —

Jared Correia:  Can you say “Boom” after every point, please?

Megan Hargroder:  Exactly. Yes. Absolutely.

(00:25:00)

All right. ADA compliancy, it’s basically a scam. There’s a few factors that goes into your site being ADA compliant. It primarily has to do with your text being text and not in graphic form and your all text being present. That’s pretty much the gist of ADA compliancy. There’s a couple of other little things going in there. If you hire professional developer to do your website, you’re almost guaranteed it’s ADA compliant but there’s something going on where people are trying to sell people this $500 ADA compliancy —

Jared Correia:  The kit, right?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. It’s garbage and it’s actually bad for your SCOs, so don’t do it.

Jared Correia:  Boom! Sorry, I did it there.

Megan Hargroder:  Oh, I forgot it. All right. Boom! And site security, is also really important because you will sometimes have clients giving you confidential information through your contact form. You want to make sure your site is secured. The number one thing you need for that is an SSL certificate, start there. If you’re using WP Engine, the SSL certificate is free. So I’m circling back to use WP Engine, makes your life easier. And then there’s also this app that I can’t remember the name of right now, but if you’re using WordPress, there’s an app that instead of going to /wp-admin to sign in to your site, like the traditional log in?

Jared Correia:  Right, which have a breaking guess, yeah.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. Most people can guess that your username will be “Admin” and your password is something like —

Jared Correia:  1-2-3-4?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, hopefully not. But so, success2021, really common password. I make everyone change that by the way. So you can install a plug-in where you have an actual sort of like secret log in.

Jared Correia:  Secret log ins, now you’re talking. That was great. Now, “Boom” number three, done?

Megan Hargroder:  Boom.

Jared Correia:  Let’s talk about website text again. I got two more questions for you in this segment. Number one, if you’re going for a non-text based information on the website, what’s the most important, images, those doc images or your images, or a video, or embedded content from other places, or anything else? If you’re a lawyer who’s traditionally used to writing stuff down everywhere, how do you convert to like a different medium of communication?

Megan Hargroder:  Well, you want to sort of blend. It should all blend together to tell a story. So that like the whole piece feels like a piece of work, right? It’s not like here are some text, here is a video, here is a photo, here’s some more text. It should all flow together. So one of the things you can do is use a video to tell part of your story. That’s a really good way to sort of introduce yourself to people and let them get a feel for you as a person rather than just having a photo. A lot of lawyers look very unapproachable and their standard headshots were like the school background.

Jared Correia:  I have to say I’ve seen some bad ones. Some of this is like the ‘The Hills have Eyes’, it’s really not great.

Megan Hargroder:  Super creepy. Like people — so many people look —

Jared Correia:  It’s okay to smile.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. It’s like why are you trying to intimidate your own clients. This is not the time for that. Often a video will help you give people a feel for like being more comfortable with you. So I always recommend that unless you are really terrible on video in which case don’t do it. And then I like to use photos to really help tell the story visually. So I do what I call supplemental messaging. This is not supplemental messaging at all, this is just what I call it where I will have a section of text talking about something specific, and then in the background is an image that shows that. So maybe it’s about an uncontested divorce and the image in the background is like a couple just waving goodbye to each other casually. You know, but you’ve got the opacity level down so that the text over is very visible. Yes, supplemental messaging.

Jared Correia:  All right. Supplemental messaging, I like it. All right, last question for you. What is the most overlooked thing that law firms are not doing with their websites that they could be doing that would be very impactful in 2021? Success 2021.

Megan Hargroder:  The attorney biography pages. That is the second most visited page on a law firm website after the home page, 100% of the time. If there’s multiple attorneys, typically, one is more popular than the other but most law firms have the most generic, here’s where I went to law school, and then here are some achievements and I clerked with blah, blah, blah. No one wants to read that and no one really cares. Like those achievements belong in a bulleted list but this is an opportunity for you to tell a story that people can connect with, for you to build trust with them by showing that you care about your work and what you do for your clients and to like really show — like show them what you’re made of.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, that’s great. Megan, you are great. This is a fun interview. We’re already done, that was really fast.

Megan Hargroder:  That was so fast.

Jared Correia:  I know, I know. So I wanted to thank my guess today.

(00:30:00)

Megan Hargroder of Conversations Digital. She will be back in a second, don’t worry. Megan, can you remind everybody who you are, what you do and then how can people contact you if they want to talk to you about website design and marketing.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. So I’m Megan with Conversations Digital. We build client generating machines for solo and small firm attorneys and you can get at me at our website conversationsdigital.com.

Jared Correia:  Awesome. Thanks again. We’re going to take one final sponsor break so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice, then stay tuned for the Rump Roast. It’s even more subtle than the roast beast.

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Jared Correia:  Welcome to the rear end of the Legal Tool Kit. The Rump Roast is a grab bag of short form topics all of my choosing. Today, we’re going to bring back our guess who is Megan Hargroder of Conversations Digital to play not one, but two games, a main game and a bonus game.

Megan, you live and work out of Portland, Oregon.

Megan Hargroder:  True.

Jared Correia:  Did you know that Portland in 2016 was ranked the second most hipster location in the world by MoveHub’s International Hipster Index. Were you aware of this?

Megan Hargroder:  Embarrassingly, yes, I was aware of this before I moved here, correct.

Jared Correia:  Oh, so was that one of the reasons why you moved, you’re like, “I got to go to this place.”

Megan Hargroder:  No.

Jared Correia:  So, some place in the UK, was like the number one most hipster place in the world, apparently. I love Portland by the way. Can I say that Portland is a beautiful city? I think most people don’t know that it rains more in Portland than in Seattle. So it’s very green and lush, so I’m a Portland fan.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Jared Correia:  Now let me trash Portland for the next five minutes.

Megan Hargroder:  Yes, I’m good at that too.  I’m better at trashing. I love it, it’s beautiful but yeah, we trash it a lot too.

Jared Correia:  All right. You’re going to like my game. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to give you five scenarios and you’re going to tell me how hipster these things are by rating it on a scale of 1 to 5, Carrie Brownstein hits.

Megan Hargroder:  Okay.

Jared Correia:  Are you good?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, let’s do it.

Jared Correia:  We’re doing a little Portland staff here. Okay, 1 to 5, Carrie Brownstein hits. We’re just going to roll into these, 1 and then you rate it. Okay.

Scenario number one, you make a complaint on Yelp about the (00:33:26) and café because your vegan soy latte was too frothy making the design on top look less like a heart and more like butt cheeks. How hipster is that on a scale of 1 to 5, Carrie Brownstein hits?

Megan Hargroder:  Before I moved to Portland I would have given that a 5, but now that I’m like deeply in grade in this, I’m going to go 3.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, because you’re like, “I want my latter to be served correctly.”

Megan Hargroder:  It could get worst.

Jared Correia:  Totally. All right. Scenario number two, you’re a one-man show at the Hollywood Theater but you’re going to make some revisions and give it another go after talking it over with your friends so much, Carrie Brownstein hits, 1 through 5.

Megan Hargroder:  I’m going to go 4.

Jared Correia:  Four? Okay. Have you ever done a one-man show, a one-woman show or one person show?

Megan Hargroder:  No, but I’ve been to a lot of them, they’re very big here.

Jared Correia:  Yeah. See, I know the culture. I’m probably the farthest thing away. I’m so not hipster that people probably mistake me for a hipster sometimes. All right, are you ready for scenario number three?

Megan Hargroder:  Let’s do it.

Jared Correia:  You just gave cyanide to literally all of the tourists outside of Voodoo Doughnuts.

Megan Hargroder:  Oh? That’s a solid 4.

Jared Correia:  Really? Okay, good, good. I feel like I’m hitting these pretty good.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah.

Jared Correia:  Scenario number four, you don’t like the new (00:34:44) at Occidental Brewing Company. You just don’t like it. Maybe (00:34:53) business, come on.

Megan Hargroder:  This is a  real thing that just happened to me except it was some kind of like chai spice and it was reall offensive.

(00:35:02)

Yeah, I’m going to go 5 on that one.

Jared Correia:  Beer is just, beer is just disgusting now. Like I don’t know, like can I just get like a regular beer?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, you can’t —

Jared Correia:  I don’t know, what’s going on?

Megan Hargroder:  You can’t do that here. I ordered a Stella in a bar the other day and they’re like, “I’m sorry, what?”

Jared Correia:  Stella is not working right now, she’s on the next shift. Scenario number five, the Buffalo Exchange didn’t have any Mumford & Sons concert t-shirts this time. Do we hit number five?

Megan Hargroder:  Five.

Jared Correia:  Yes.

Megan Hargroder:  Five.

Jared Correia:  Yes. Anything you want to say about Portland before we move in to mini game number two, like stuffs you like about Portland, perhaps?

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. Portland is beautiful. There is nature everywhere. I really enjoy all of the outside options here. It’s good, lots of outside.

Jared Correia:  That was nice. There’s a big tree on the license plate.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah.

Jared Correia:  All right. Are you ready for a bonus game?

Megan Hargroder:  Yes.

Jared Correia:  I don’t do bonus games with everybody but I think this is going to be fun.

Megan Hargroder:  I’m honored.

Jared Correia:  My producer, Evan, who you talked to and you just told me earlier you hate trivia. So I have a couple of trivia questions for you.

Megan Hargroder:  Great!

Jared Correia:  Because I’m an ass. I want to give you some easy ones, are you ready?

Megan Hargroder:  I’m ready.

Jared Correia:  Topic number one, science and nature. It’s a true or false question. The giant sea cucumber can eat with its anus, true or false.

Megan Hargroder:  I don’t know what that is, true? That sounds true.

Jared Correia:  It is true. Topic number two, here’s an easy one. The topic is quantum mechanics.

Megan Hargroder:  Oh, great. I’m an expert on this so I’m really ready for it.

Jared Correia:  Great. Oh perfect, so this should be easy for you. The question is, identify the total angular momentum states possible for the case, L=3, S=12.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. Seven?

Jared Correia:  Very close, very close. The actual answer is, “The total angular momentum of an electron is the vector sum of its orbital and spin angular moments and is represented by J.” Everybody can tell I was reading that right?

Megan Hargroder:  That was going to be my second guess.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, it’s pretty close really. See you’re good at trivia.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. I’m doing great. I’m really (00:37:16) in here.

Jared Correia:  What’s your favorite trivia topic?

Megan Hargroder:  My favorite trivia topic?

Jared Correia:  What do you know the most about other than Portland and hipsters?

Megan Hargroder:  Oh gosh, I would say probably TV. I guess I’ll go with TV. Like comedy specific, TV.

Jared Correia:  Okay. So here’s what we’re going to do. Those questions are actually hard, like everybody knows, right? So quantum mechanics is not my specialty either. So can you get people like one streaming recommendation that they should listen to or watch right now?

Megan Hargroder:  I recommend just because of the climate of the goings on and the world today, to bench watch something delightful that you’ve already watched. So I just finished re-watching all of The Office and Parks and Rec.

Jared Correia:  Oh, wow! That’s a lot of episodes.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah. I would go with that or Broad City. Broad City is really good, not for everyone but —

Jared Correia:  Okay. That’s good stuff. I just watched the Queen’s Gambit which is pretty good on Netflix.

Megan Hargroder:  Oh, I did just watch that. I’m finished with all TV basically. I watched that a few nights, so good.

Jared Correia:  We’re on quarantine so like what are you going to do. We watch like five episodes of TV show overnight. On that note, I really have no way to tie this back in to the episode structure in any way, but we’re done with our games.

Megan Hargroder:  Cool.

Jared Correia:  So thank you, Megan, that was a lot of fun.

Megan Hargroder:  Thank you so much. This was fun.

Jared Correia:  Guess it’s a blast. We’ll do it some other time.

Megan Hargroder:  Yeah, we should.

Jared Correia:  However, that will do it for another episode of the Legal Tool Kit podcast. Where we at least went down swinging like Sonny Liston.

[Music]

(00:39:33)

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