Marketing in the Age of COVID-19

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing

Marketing in the Age of COVID-19

04/20/2020

Gyi Tsakalakis: Kelly.

Kelly Street: Hey Gyi Tsakalakis. How are —

Gyi Tsakalakis: How are — ah.

Kelly Street: Ah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Collision.

Kelly Street: We both just want to know how each other are.

Gyi Tsakalakis: We’re so interested in the feelings and we have a lot of feelings today.

Kelly Street: A lot of feelings today; feelings of sadness, feelings of joy, feelings of perspective, feelings of introspection.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Happy to be breathing the air.

Kelly Street: Yes, happy to be breathing and having lungs that feel good.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Exactly right.

Kelly Street: Yes. So what are you feeling today, Gyi?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I don’t know, reflective I guess. We’ve as well talk more about wild time to be alive.

Kelly Street: It is a wild time to be alive. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about for this episode was how we can incorporate a song into the intro because that’s one of the things that we are oh so good at.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s so true. We have to do some singing for our final episode here.

Kelly Street: Yes. Yeah, your final episode with me, and so in light of that, one of the songs I was thinking of was, I don’t know if anybody else out there is a fan of ‘Last Man on Earth’ the now-defunct show, but I loved that show and one of the songs that Will Forte would sing all the time is “Closure, Closure, Closure, Closure, Closure…” anyway.

Gyi Tsakalakis: How fitting, that is the perfect song for this episode.

Kelly Street: Yes, we’re going to get a little closure and move into the next beyond.

[Music]

Intro: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, with your hosts Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street, teaching you how to promote, market, and make fat stacks for your legal practice, here on Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Kelly Street: And welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Before we get started, we want to thank our sponsor, Nexa, formerly known as Answer1, is a leading virtual receptionist and answering service provider for law firms. Learn more by giving them a call at 800-267-9371 or online at www.nexa.com.

All right, Gyi Tsakalakis. Here we are. Today, we are talking about marketing in this new world that we have. We are talking about how your business can respond to COVID-19, and we are talking about remote work.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And we are talking about your new chapter.

Kelly Street: Yes, my new chapter, which has to do with remote work.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Perfect. Well planned.

Kelly Street: Yes, yes. So if anybody else has listened to our other podcast ‘Clienting’, you have already heard that I have left the nest of AttorneySync and gone out to become a business partner in my next venture, which is called Work Well Wherever.

It is a remote work and remote HR consulting firm and we just help companies deal with going remote whether you had already started to do it or have to do it now. There you are. That’s what I am doing.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And congratulations to you on your new venture. Very exciting, and certainly as a thing that we have been talking about a lot, no shortage of demand for figuring out how to work remotely these days and these uncertain times of infection?

Kelly Street: Yes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: The infection?

Kelly Street: Pandemic.

Gyi Tsakalakis: The pandemic, and we have — obviously, I think it’s no secret here. It’s been on everybody’s mind whether you are a business owner or not, dealing with the new realities of the COVID environment and so let’s start there.

What are you talking about with folks about remote in general, like what are some of the big things that you hear come up a lot with running a business remotely?

Kelly Street: Yeah, that’s a good question. So my business partner has had — the company has been going for a year already and so really the shifts that she has seen are companies thinking about companies preparing to all of a sudden everybody has to be suddenly remote and so for me in the last couple of weeks, since joining on-board, we’ve really done just a lot of, okay, where are you now, the first few weeks of panic, and of going oh my gosh, we suddenly have to transition our law firm to being fully remote and figuring out security and systems and all of that stuff and homeschooling and everything that’s involved there.

(00:04:58)

To getting through that little bit of panic time to now, okay, this is going to be the reality for a while and so what things can you put in place now that are going to help keep your business open and your doors open.

And so there are lots and lots of interesting things out there. We are doing templates for here’s how you get started on your remote work plan and here are some tools that you can think about and also trying to make sure that people aren’t getting overwhelmed with all of a sudden you need to do everything because you don’t right-away.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, those are some good points there and part of the conversation that always keeps coming up and much of the — we kind of think about it the same way that I outlined it is, number one priority has to be how can I continue to deliver service to clients, because if you can’t do that then nothing else from my client development standpoint is really going to matter. You can stay top of mind, you can put some things out there, but if your virtual firm is — or your remote firm is closed, can’t provide service then client development takes the back burner.

So couple of big ones that we talk about and I was kind of throw some of these ideas that we know we’ve been talking a lot about this stuff, one is, are you making it easier for your clients and potential clients to be able to actually interact with you, whether you use Zoom or the phone or Google Hangout or Meet or whatever, having a presence where they can actually interact with you is — it has to be priority number one.

Kelly Street: Yeah, if you didn’t already have an online calendar planner and online appointment booker that’s — I mean that’s one of the beginning keys is just getting some time on there when people can make sure to get on your schedule, hook it up with your Zoom or if you aren’t using one of those services, even your FaceTime on your Apple phone just getting something so you can have some sort of interaction that appears to be face-to-face and they know they can schedule that time with you. As you always say, Gyi, it’s table stakes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Table stakes.

Kelly Street: And if they weren’t already doing it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, my — I’m just going to throw out my — what we do, we use Calendly, integrates really nicely with Zoom, integrates nicely with use Google Calendar on Google Suite. So there’s one idea, the Acuity, there is — if you search for calendaring scheduling software, there are literally millions. Do you have any preferences in that world or —

Kelly Street: Calendly and Acuity are the top — definitely the top two, because they integrate with so many different things and they’re just — they’re what people are used to, they’re really user-friendly and they’re not super-expensive.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, another thing that always comes up in this conversation is make sure that you’re making it easier for your clients to actually pay you. So if you took checks, now it’s the only way people could pay you, you might be reconsidering that with something either like LawPay or Headnote so people actually pay you, just keep the lights on.

Kelly Street: Yeah, I mean, that it’s just everything can be transitioned online because, Gyi, we’ve talked to virtual firms who were doing this months and years ago. There have been lawyers who had their firm fully online who were working with clients in other states, because they lived in a state that they weren’t actually barred to practice in.

So this has all been possible. It’s just taking a step back, looking at kind of the like five essential areas of things, how are clients going to pay you, how are clients going to talk to you and schedule time with you. And then how are your employees or associates that you might have, how are they going to communicate with you, just all of these little areas that you can do it all online, you can do it easily, it’s just a matter of taking a step back and looking at those things.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, and once you have those, once you’re able to deliver the essential part of the service, I think the next thing to be thinking about — we get this question all the time is should we be marketing, advertising in this time, and look, it’s one of these blanket-type questions, probably not the right question, but one of the big concerns is, is that does it come across as tone-deaf or inconsiderate when people are literally getting sick and dying and losing loved ones to be marketing law practice and my view of this is.

And again, it’s similar in the context of like that really this environment is just an acceleration of things we’ve been talking about a long time is that if by marketing you mean being available answering questions, providing support, being a shoulder to cry on, listening, providing your expertise on an intersection of some of these new issues that people are facing in this environment with your law practice, then I think the answer is yes, you should be marketing. Is this a great time to plaster the Internet with a free divorce lawyer consultation ad?

(00:09:56)

Maybe not, but I think that my big point here is, and again, we’ve had this conversation a lot, but this concept of leading with empathy, being grateful that you still can provide service and help people. I think marketing in that context is people need you now more than they’ve needed you ever in some contexts.

Kelly Street: Yeah, I mean this has not gone away. We’ve just been talking about that we’ve been — for most parts of the country, we’ve been in lockdown for a month or more now or maybe a little bit less but around that time and we don’t know when it’s going to end, we don’t know when it’s going to go away, and so life needs to kind of start getting back to normal on some of the things and continuing to do your marketing.

Gyi, you mentioned divorce lawyers maybe shouldn’t be like, hey, come, get a free consultation now, but what you can do is what some of the firms I’ve seen are doing out there which is, hey, how to keep your marriage together during quarantine or how to co-parent during quarantine because I actually know families who I mean, hey, I’m in a co-parenting situation and so we’re dealing with it really — I think really smoothly but I have seen other families where the kids are staying at one house or the other for weeks and now a month at a time and that’s really challenging. So maybe shifting your marketing messaging to fit the times is just one of the ways to get through this and stay top of mind.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, exactly, and it’s a type of thing where we’ve been having these conversations for a long, long time about how your marketing needs to meet who your potential clients are and what they are dealing with and at the end of the day, even though some of the specific issues that they are dealing with might be much more related to COVID-19.

At the end of the day, the fundamentals of marketing messaging still remain the same who are your potential clients, what is on their mind, how can you help them, how are you uniquely qualified to help them and if you run your messaging through that kind of filter I think you are fine, I mean, I think you gave some great examples. We see people are dealing with financial issues so bankruptcy is going to be a topic, there are going to be issues related to work, some employment issues related to whether it’s from contracts, or comp, or whether it was reasonable for an employer to stay open. I mean, there are so many different practice areas that are touched by this. So anyway, I think we’ve articulated that one.

The other big one that comes out of this is, it’s more of a business question of like should I be pulling marketing dollars back, and again, this is type of thing like you can’t really answer that without knowing a lot more about where you are, and your goals and your long term financial planning, but I will say this, there are a lot of firms that recognize that this is also an opportunity because you see things like firms are pulling back, which creates a vacuum so that there’s going to be more market share to be had and sadly there are firms that are going to fail, but again, if you are in a position to be able to strategically plan for making it through this and beyond it, this is a time of great opportunity for those firms that are willing to take advantage of it.

Kelly Street: Yeah. Yeah, I would say, I 100% agree with that and if you are able to maintain and to keep going through this time, absolutely, keep the budgets, keep something going and another one of the things I was thinking about when it comes to continuing to do marketing and stuff, it is just making sure you’re updating all of your information to of, hey, these are the hours we are actually open now and are updating your website to say, we’re taking remote appointments and having a little header at the top that’s just communicating with potential people because as we’ve talked about, there are so many practice areas that are your messaging and what you might be talking about with clients is pivoting right now, and so just making sure that people know, they can still get a hold of you, they can still talk to you, they still have access to you and I love that you mentioned that spends could be a little bit, there’s some opening in certain areas because for clients who had — for law firms who had a healthy financial picture going into this, this could potentially be a good time to take advantage of some extra marketing spend.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, and again, I think the other thing that I always come back to is that, you have to plan for us pulling through this because if you’re not planning for that then you’re basically planning for the apocalypse.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There’s business, and marketing, and client development, to practicing law, take a backseat if you’re not looking at this from the standpoint of — people are still going to need your services and having business continuity planning, but that’s a whole other topic and I’m reticent to — I hope people that are listening don’t say, oh, I heard you say, keep spending full steam ahead on marketing.

(00:15:05)

Well, there’s a lot of unknown in there. Have you solved the problems about being able to continue to service clients? Where are you on your next quarter budget planning at least? If you haven’t had those, this is a great time to evaluate those things and build them if you don’t have them but the sad thing is that you see is that people react with fear in this environment, which is natural, but if you don’t push against that instinct, fear drives a lot of bad decision-making.

Kelly Street: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, questions I have for you is, I’ve seen some of the lawyers that I follow on LinkedIn or social media that they are kind of adding a bit more of a sprinkle of personal experience or personality than they normally would have. How do you see marketing and what law firms are putting out there? Do you see that changing now in this kind of environment?

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s funny, it isn’t the same thing, but it’s like a broken record here, but it’s really just accelerating some of the things we’ve been talking about forever. So we’ve been talking about bringing your human to work, letting more of your personality show, giving a peek behind the scenes of what’s going on at your firm, sharing more of your personal interests and the causes that you’re passionate about, and I think that this environment has accelerated a lot of that because we are taking meetings at home, with kids and pets, and you can hear my co-working toddlers probably running behind me, not throughout this recording, but the point being is that, we’re all in this together and we’re all dealing with these things, and I do think that it has helped nudge people in a direction of being more comfortable with sharing some of that, which I think is a positive thing.

Again, I think that that’s — one of the things we talk about a lot is that people have a lot of anxiety about having to take meetings where there’s some at-home distractions and the thing I’ve — my personal experience like — meetings that I’ve been on where I’ve been concerned about that. A lot more of the time, the person I’m in the meeting with is like, oh my gosh, like let me see your toddler, and so it like becomes about that where I was like very concerned about it.

And the other thing that I think is a thing to think about is that, if people are like having a very negative reaction to your personal life and the impact of being — having to be at home and trying to make it through this, they might not be the kind of person you want to be interacting with anyway and so anyway, I just put that out there.

Kelly Street: Yeah. I mean, is that the kind of client you want who’s going to be like, excuse me, can you keep your one-year-old away from you right now? I know they just learned to walk, but make sure that they are not in the room, that’s —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, and I think setting those expectations like obviously there are certain kind of — I know some lawyers are going to listen to this and be like, well, yeah, but there’s confidentiality issues, and of course, having those conversations you need to be, that’s another good point is to be able to create space wherever you’re working that you can have reasonable diligence and making sure that those confidences are protected. So not every call is appropriate for significant others and toddlers walking around.

But I think just — to the original point that you made, which is, people are letting a little bit more of who they are, shine through, just from the nature of the environment, and again, I think if you look at it constructively this is a good accelerator for sharing more and putting more of a human face on the faceless lawyer that people are scared to engage with.

Kelly Street: Yeah, there are definitely, I mean, there are a lot of things that I’m worried about the long-term impact and even short-term impact for what’s going on right now, but there are a lot of things that I’m also excited about and the sharing connections and being able to show more of who we are and even saying like, oh lawyer, that’s what your kitchen looks like while you’re taking this meeting here. Huh, this is — or like, oh, you’re home around and so you’re wearing a sweatshirt instead of wearing your normal suit, just seeing that different side of people.

And also, I think when we are able to come out of this, this different appreciation for connection and also a greater appreciation for the technology and the tools that we’ve had, that we weren’t taking advantage of. So I think all of those things are going to be good to hopefully balance out a lot of the hard things that are coming out of this time and actually happening for people.

(00:19:50)

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I mean, I’d love that perspective. I think that if this becomes a catalyst for change in terms of putting the client back at the center of your practice, being more responsive, reducing friction in the ways that clients can interact with you, making things easier for them in terms of whether it’s e-signatures or online payments, getting CRM in place so that you have got regular automated touch points with clients, I think that those all could really be positive things for clients and the profession in general, because I think lawyers in certain respects they are pandas forced and so this is one of those innovate or die moments and the firms that are embracing this stuff and are able to provide great remarkable service to clients regardless of their location are the ones who are going to be more likely to have a competitive advantage moving forward.

Kelly Street: Yeah, I love the innovate or die perspective because — so it’s just fascinating because we are like watching TV and we are watching shows at home and one of the things that has just tickled me so much that I have been able to see is years and years ago I worked in the car business and — I guess not that many years ago, but anyway, worked in the car business for a little while and it’s so archaic and reminds me a lot of the legal field and how stuck in the past and just kind of using all of these old systems kept going on and on, even though technology was available, you could innovate, you could do new things and some people were, like there were companies like Carvana who were doing deliveries and car elevators to buy things anyway.

So now we have seen all of these big car companies who have had to go in-person deliveries and buying your car totally online and negotiating totally online and I just love that one of the great things will be innovate or unfortunately not so I am excited to see all the innovation that will come out of this too.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. I mean even outside of just that touches legal, but not necessarily even just like for practicing lawyers, this is going to be a catalyst; it already has been a catalyst in a lot of jurisdictions for the courts to make moves to be able to do more online. I know that some state legislatures are — actually I don’t know if it was a legislative mover or the Supreme Court, that’s a good question, in some states they have even been waiving some of the requirements for like wet signatures.

So finding ways to get like notary done and if that stuff sticks, like that is going to be massive changing in the landscape, which — for a positive in my view, right, I mean there are some — there is going to be some iterative steps and there is going to be some mistakes made, but that’s how it works, like that’s how we get better is we have got to test new things, try new things, be mindful of the issues that are presented with this new stuff, but some major positive changes I think coming spurred, hopefully that persist.

Kelly Street: Yeah. I am hopeful that those new or I guess innovating in the legal field will stick around after this with moving things to online, because again we have been talking about this stuff for so long now it feels like, because I think it was two years ago or around there that I think a Canadian province; we will have to maybe fact check this, but I believe it was British Columbia, I think some traffic tickets and stuff, you could use an online system to go through and invite those and so that stuff has been around and so I am hopeful that some of these new policies or procedures will stick around afterwards and that we will keep kind of innovating and using and doing new systems because it’s available and it’s the future people.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah and again my view is always if it makes life better for the client, if it makes life better for the legal services consumer, the potential clients, that’s what’s going to win. The people that are online right now that are leading in their communities, conversations about whether it’s just washing your hands and staying safe and social distancing, some people — I have seen firms that have put that kind of information even on their site because in their community they are a source of trust. They are on Facebook having those conversations, those are the firms that are going to win in the end because that’s where the consumers are, that’s where people expect to be able to get information and I have always thought that is that if you think about what makes life easier for the clients and where the client is and follow suit, that’s the way to stay relevant.

Kelly Street: Yeah. All right, that is a great note to go into hearing from our sponsors. So we are going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and then we will pick things back up after that.

(00:24:56)

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[Music]

Kelly Street: And we are back. Okay, so I just thought of a question, another question for you. Hey Gyi, during COVID-19 and quarantine, are people still building links?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Ah. Yes, they are as a matter of fact. One of the big ones that — and again, this is not new, this is just a different context for it, but if you put information on your site, if you are a local resource for testing, for announcements, I know we have talked about this before, but the search engines are recognizing a new schema that are related specifically to COVID. So structured data markup you can put on your site for announcements, for testing.

If you put that information on your site, are leading conversations about that, those resources get shared and linked to, or a video, right, so anything that you are doing that you are publishing on your site that is useful information in this environment to people, that’s going to earn links.

People are talking about these issues on forum sites, journalists are covering the topics, there is all sorts of news and there is going to continue to be news about the intersection of legal issues related to COVID. And so if you are publishing on that, you should expect that you are going to be earning some — hopefully you are earning some links with — I shouldn’t say that, because I am rail against this idea just write it and they will come because that’s not how it works, but you have got to start with being a leader, having a voice on this, publishing on it and then getting that information out in front of an audience that’s ready, willing and able to link to your content and you will build links.

Kelly Street: Yeah, there you go. So talking about all these — the different things or things that you want to continue doing, I want to go back and reverse a little bit about, I know we talked about or you mentioned not wanting to kind of be a shark or take advantage of things that are going on or have your messaging. How about SEM PPC spend right now, what are your thoughts on whether people should be using that?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, so it’s the same type of thing. I mean I think the messaging matters, but one of the — I know the WordStream people put out kind of a COVID state of paid search ads right now and I don’t know if they have updated it, but last time I looked at it the cost per clicks in certain categories were actually down and that’s a reflection of lawyers pulling out of the auction. So cost per clicks come down.

Volume for a lot of the types of queries that are really being impacted by COVID, there is no drop-offs or the drop-off is smaller than the drop-off from the cost per click. So what does all that mean? It means that you can buy clicks cheaper than you were prior to this time, but the question of should I be using — should I be doing SEM PPC, like that’s a big question regardless of whether or not it’s COVID.

But I will tell you this, like there is search volume, if your practice intersects with something COVID related, there is a lot of demand. There is a lot of intent demand right now for answers to those types of questions. So we talk about it in the context of landlord-tenant, we brought up the financial issues. I mean even there are criminal defense context that are relevant, there are issues that are relevant.

Kelly Street: Yes, I have heard that — actually that car related accidents are kind of, at least in Minnesota where I am at, are going through the roof right now because people are driving recklessly, they are drinking a lot more and a lot of the driver services, they are kind of changing to maybe being grocery shoppers or that sort of thing or they are just not working. And so there are things that are going to need to — lawyers in criminal defense are going to be busy coming out of this.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. And sadly in the family context as well, having people cooped up together for long periods of time doesn’t necessarily bode well for people’s psychology and so there are going to be a lot of issues that come out of those circumstances.

And so again, I think the traffic one is a great example too of like there is a presumption, and this is that fear thing, right, I am a motor vehicle accident lawyer, nobody is on the road anymore, so I am going to pull out of all of my advertising because driving is down. Well, guess what, driving is down, accidents are up for a lot of the reasons you said.

(00:30:09)

I think that’s the thing you have got to be careful about is that if your firm does that type of work, you really need to keep your ear to the ground so that you don’t make these decisions out of just like knee jerk reactions to being scared that the market is going away. So there is opportunity there. It all comes back to the same thing which is who do you serve and what are the issues they are dealing with and if those issues relate to — they still have to drive because some people are still out there, the stuff is still moving around, there are still essential workers.

And sadly too, I guess I don’t want to get too political about this, but there are places in the country that are not taking quarantine very seriously.

Anyway, the point is, is like to know your audience and then tailor your message to those types of things that you can help with that relate to the things that are on their mind.

Kelly Street: Yeah, love it. What else Gyi? What else have you got?

Gyi Tsakalakis: What else do I have? One of the big questions that a lot of people have been bringing up and again I think it’s somewhat misplaced, but this idea of like should I totally change my practice because of, I was in one area and I don’t think that that’s going to be an area and so I am going to just jump into like bankruptcy or something. I think you end up doing a lot more damage both to your own firm as well as potentially messing things up for clients.

On the other hand, if you have had experience doing bankruptcy and that hasn’t been a major focus, like maybe you can shift some of your messaging to revitalize that part of the practice.

I think the other thing though is that and again it’s one of those things where we have been talking about it forever, find ways to partner with other lawyers that don’t necessarily do the same thing, because if you have an audience and you are a trusted source of information finding other firms, other lawyers, people that aren’t lawyers, but maybe other professional services providers, accounting people or financial people to do content with, to partner with, to have messaging with, I think that’s a much better approach to dealing with what might be a downturn for your practice than to try to reinvent your practice overnight for, again, hopefully something that we are going to at least somewhat return to normalcy over the next months, if not in the New Year.

Kelly Street: Yeah and I just — as you were saying this popped into my head of trying to work with other people, I shouldn’t maybe speak to it a ton because I don’t know exactly how LAWCLERK or these other services work or hire an esquire, but there is a potential possibility I will say that if you have experience in other practice areas you could jump into using those services for yourself to kind of if your practice area is quiet now of trying to help out some other firms and be maybe like a temporary associate or something.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Totally, I mean I think all that stuff should be — I don’t know if you can hear my toddlers, but they are —

Kelly Street: I can. They are excited right now.

Gyi Tsakalakis: They are causing a ruckus. I don’t know what’s going on.

But yes, I think exploring those options and making adjustments at your practice. I just get concerned when I see the advice of again operating from a place of fear, drop everything, start over, for all the reasons that we have talked about, I think that you have got to be careful with that.

Kelly Street: Yeah. And I think — I mean we have hit on this so much during this episode, but it at least seems clear to me that there are so many practice areas, if not almost all, that you can transition to something else. You can kind of pivot your messaging, you can adapt it for what’s going on in this time unless your calls have totally dried up, unless you don’t have anything that you are able to kind of keep paying yourself and your employees, there seem to be a lot of ways that you can shift and still work in your practice area.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I think that there are — in most practice areas your potential clients are dealing with some COVID life issue that relates somehow to how you help them.

Now, of course there are some practice areas that just don’t, right? I mean I think we were talking to some people in the financing space where, yeah, literally things are frozen for them, their clients aren’t doing anything right now and so that might be much more of a just stay close, check in with them, be top of mind, but not the same — there is not a pivot there to provide them service in that context.

I just think that it’s not a time to retreat. This is a time to be out there, be a leader, keep creating.

(00:34:55)

I guess another one that came up, so forget about, I mean marketing we use so liberally, but people have been networking through Zoom Happy Hours. So if you are part of an organization, get that organization on the virtual meeting, don’t just say we are shutting down all of our networking and those kind of events, take those events virtual, take the networking and the socializing virtual so that you are staying top of mind with folks.

Kelly Street: Yeah, I like that. Have you — another thing that I just wanted to ask you since you are active in a lot of groups and you are a Twitter master, I mean really you are a prolific tweeter, are you seeing that people are starting to feel a little bit calmer, a little bit more settled into this time or is it kind of just all over the board?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, it’s all over the board. I think that people are adapting. So the conversations we had 30 days ago were much more — a lot more uncertainty and people were dealing with the issues we talked about, like how do I even interpret this shelter-in-place, does that mean I can still work if it’s from home. And we are through that initial wave, but there is still a lot of uncertainty.

Here in Illinois we are under lockdown until the end of April right now, we don’t know if that’s going to be extended, we think it’s unlikely that it’s going to be shortened and so there is still a lot of trepidation. And of course there are people that — we are talking to people who are directly impacted, whether they are getting sick themselves and recovering or they have a loved one who is going through it or they have co-workers who are going through it and so when it strikes close to home, when someone is getting seriously sick or in the tragic event that they pass away from this, those are serious issues and so there is still a lot of — sorry, my toddlers are really going crazy right now.

Kelly Street: That’s all right. Yeah. I mean interestingly this is — I just was thinking about having a succession plan for your business at this point in time or for your law firm of being able to say all right, there is a pandemic going on, this is reality, now I need to plan for what’s going to happen to my clients or my employees if any of us get sick and just making sure that everybody has access to all of the things that they need to in case you are down and out for a long time.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, exactly. I mean again that’s another context where it’s like whether it’s estate planning or business succession planning, all of those issues are issues that people might have had on the back burner that are brought to the forefront now that they are having to face some of it.

Kelly Street: Yeah. And at AttorneySync I know we had plans, we did a lot of password sharing and we had plans for if someone was out of the office passing the baton of this person is going to do the work or that person is going to do it and just making sure that there was a lot of communication going on. So thinking about those things for your team, if you have a team of who is going to do the work if you or someone else isn’t able to.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Exactly.

Kelly Street: All the good things to think about. Wow, we covered a lot of COVID ground today.

Gyi Tsakalakis: We did.

Kelly Street: We did for my potentially last ever Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Hopefully I will be able to come back, but I also just want to make sure I tell everyone out there thank you so much for coming along on the ride with us through the last two years of doing Lunch Hour Legal Marketing and I have appreciated getting all the requests to be on and the feedback and the questions and just the support when we are out and about and having people say oh, I love that podcast. So thank you everyone.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And you will be very much missed, but I think we will have you back if you are willing to do it. And we wish you nothing but success with your new venture and tell people where they can find you at your new venture.

Kelly Street: Yeah, shoot me an email, [email protected]. I have kind of transitioned most of my social media over to LinkedIn as well so you can just look up Kelly Street on LinkedIn and I am sure you will find my photo or Work Well Wherever on there as well.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thanks so much and thank you listeners. As always, if you have questions or feedback or topic ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We are excited for the next chapter of the show and you as our audience make the show what it is. So please do reach out, and if you haven’t done so already, please feel free to subscribe to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing at all the places that you subscribe to podcasts, including Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and various others.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And wow, they are really going after it.

Kelly Street: Feedback provided by James and Alexandra.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Mostly Alexandra, I don’t know what’s going on with her. We will find out.

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Outro: Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you would like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and/or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes.

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own, and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

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