The Mad Proliferation of Lawyer Coaching || Lawyer Has Gas… and He’s Giving It to You

Episode Notes

Transcript

Gyi Tsakalakis: Before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors. Lawmatics, Nota, and Lawyaw. Conrad, Happy Barbenheimer Eve Eve.

Conrad Saam: Barbenheimer, that sounds like a Bavarian dish of which I’m unfamiliar.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It is not. It is coming up in two days. It is the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day. Will you be the first one in line?

Conrad Saam: I will probably not be the first one in line. I will be very tired from having watched the kickoff of the Women’s World Cup. That’s going to be my media consumption is watching women’s soccer for the next two weeks.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Awesome.

Conrad Saam: One of my favorite things. Tell me, are you going to Barbie or Oppenheimer?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Neither. I’m probably not going to any movies this weekend, but I have to say there’s a lot of philosophical interest in Oppenheimer. I’m a huge Christopher Nolan fan. But the biggest doubleheader in blockbuster is perhaps since Ghostbusters versus Gremlins in 1984, or Blade Runner versus the thing in 1982.

Conrad Saam: I’m assuming you Google that. This is not just at the top of your mind. You are not a cinema file.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I thought maybe I would do one that you might be more familiar with, because —

Conrad Saam: Oh, crap! Because I’m old? Wow! How very ageist of you. By the way, this is Barbie, which is we grew up in the 80’s with Barbie.

Gyi Tsakalakis: True. Well, aside from watching Barbenheimer, what are we talking about today?

Conrad Saam: So, as usual, we are hitting the news, a great news segment, and then some really, really good pieces. We’re going to talk about the proliferation, the Mad Proliferation. Maybe faster than legal marketing agencies, we have legal coaching companies. So, we’re talking about legal coaching and then we’re going to go over local lawyer, Sam Bernstein, and all of his gas.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Money makes the world go round.

[Music]

Male 1: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, teaching you how to promote, market and make fat stacks for your legal practice here on Legal Talk Network.

Conrad Saam: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. We have got a solid show for you today. But first, Gyi, let’s do some news.

Gyi, you’re very up on what’s going on in the legal marketing world. Fastcase 50. Share what’s going on with the Fastcase 50?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, Fastcase does its annual honoring of 50 legal visionaries, not just marketing, but legal technology. I am probably surprised more lap in marketing. But I always think if you’re a lawyer, we talked about this and you’re up on tech, I think it’s important to know who some of the folks are who are leading the way and following that. And you know, a lot of the historical honorees have been people who have created technology that become big players in legal, so I would encourage folks check that out.

Conrad Saam: Gyi, have you ever been a Fastcase 50?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I have not.

Conrad Saam: I have not either.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I am not that important and I’m not that innovative or visionary.

Conrad Saam: Maybe this is our like — this is Gyi and Conrad supplicating to Fastcase to consider us for the 2024 Fastcase 50. I am joking.

Gyi Tsakalakis: We got in the band list staff.

Conrad Saam: We have blacklisted for pandering. I hope they blacklist people for pandering.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I would be honored if we got blacklisted because that would mean maybe some of the Fastcase actually listen to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. How about that?

Conrad Saam: All right, we’ll find out in the comments. All right, so, Gyi, last time on Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, Threads had just launched. You have to school me on what Threads was because I just come back from a week in the Idaho Wilderness. It made a big splash especially among the digital marketing group. What’s happened since then? Predictably, I might ask.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Threads is dead. It died. No, I mean, we talked about this last time, but, you know, look, it’s no surprise when you got so many users as meta does. You can get people’s attention, launch a new app, but this kind of rise, and I wouldn’t say it’s a fall, but a rise and a dip. People are tired of like there’s too much. There’s too much stuff on your phone. Can we all just agree on one app to rule them all?

Conrad Saam: Wow, Mark Zuckerberg would like to talk to you, Gyi.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I don’t know. That would not be my choice.

Conrad Saam: Oh, okay. What’s your pick? One app to rule them all? What’s your choice? How’s this for tangent?

Gyi Tsakalakis: That is interesting question. Honestly, I don’t know.

Conrad Saam: Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I just want one. I don’t want to have to go to all these different places.

Conrad Saam: In two weeks, tune in to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing for the app launched by Conrad and Gyi to rule them all.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All you need is Lunch Hour Legal Marketing YouTube channel. That’s all I know.

(00:05:01)

Conrad Saam: There we go.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

Conrad Saam: All right. And finally, Nota, previous sponsor of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, they’ve just done to deal with maybe the kookiest bar in the country, the Florida State Bar. Gyi, what is Nota doing with the Florida Bar?

Gyi Tsakalakis: The Florida Bar is giving every member of the Florida Bar a free IOLTA trust account. I think it’s super cool. There’s a whole bunch of stories in there to me, but I think the big one is like, you know, as you mentioned, I think you called — what did you call them? Kooky over in Florida?

Conrad Saam: Kooky.

Gyi Tsakalakis: But a great effort, great member benefit, and you know, if Brazos to me, if Brazos want to continue to be relevant, give member stuff they need, like, oh, I don’t know, IOLTA accounts, great idea. So, I like it.

Conrad Saam: I like it too. So, if you are in the State Bar listening to us, think about following Florida. I never thought I would say that sentence ever, but there we are.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s the first.

Conrad Saam: When we come back, Gyi and I are going to talk about lawyer coaching and the proliferation of the coaching model.

[Music]

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[Music]

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Gyi Tsakalakis: Know exactly which marketing tools work. Plans start at 45 bucks a month.

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[Music]

Conrad Saam: So, Gyi, there has been a massive push on this concept of coaching. Now, it’s not a new thing, coaching has been around for a very long time. Although we’ve seen this proliferation of coaching and everyone being an influencer. I’d love to talk through why you think coaching has been so kind of rampant recently. And then I believe you’re going to share with us a bit of cynicism towards the end of the segment about coaching, which is not really coaching, but in the guise of something else.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I love coaching. What is coaching, right? Actually, I was a high school football coach. I actually miss coaching high school football. One of my favorite things to do and giving back because it meant so much to me. When you sass me about coaching, what are you talking about?

Conrad Saam: So, I think, we’re definitely not talking about your glory days. The older you get, the better you were. I’m sure that is the case for many of us. But in the context of legal, I think one of the things that has happened, and we’ve talked about this and this is talked about repeatedly among the legal industry, is what an absolutely piss-poor job the law schools do at teaching lawyers how to run the business of a law firm. That just doesn’t exist. I’ve done segments on from lawyer to CEO. We’ve done lots of conversations about how to run your business and, you know, nature hates a vacuum, and in pops a bunch of people that have been successful in the practice of law teaching others how to be successful in the business of law. And I think that’s very, very valuable. I think many lawyers, many doctors, I mean, this happens in the medical industry too. You learn that profession but you don’t learn how to be a professional. Wow. That was kind of clippie but I liked it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, not every lawyer is a business owner either by the way.

Conrad Saam: And they don’t need to be, right? And not every lawyer needs to be a business owner. And so the law school, in defense of the law schools, perhaps that is okay. Having said that, many of you are lawyers first and business owners second when you should really be thinking more on the business owner side. You know, Ben Glass has been doing this for a long time. How to manage a small law firm has kind of a cult following and they’ve been providing a service for a long time. Crisp Video has moved — I mean it’s no longer Crisp Video, it is Crisp, and they have moved very aggressively into — So they do video but that is a part of their business. The majority of their business is in the coaching and interestingly it’s a bit of an aside, but they have really kind of rained in the number of people that they are serving when they —

(00:10:08)

Gyi Tsakalakis: Create scarcity.

Conrad Saam: Create scarcity. So, Gyi, talk about that. What has Crisp done on the scarcity side and also why?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I think, you know more the details about it than I do, but they’re limiting the number of lawyers they’re taking in and so, you know, you feel like if you got – if there’s only one seat left, it might encourage someone to want to take advantage of that opportunity as opposed to unlimited seats like, oh, maybe someday I’ll get to it.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. So, literally, they’ve gone from filling the Dallas Cowboy Stadium to constraining who they’re actually working with. It’s a very good way of limiting your — you know, we talk about the right client. The right client for Crisp isn’t all law firms, right? And so they’ve done that by this kind of scarcity model. It’s 10:49. But again, they’re focused on coaching people through running the business of the law firm and they do that through some really, really great speakers and coaches. I believe their coaching model, they take older very experienced executives outside of the legal industry and have those people acting as coaches for law firms. Right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Lawyers, Lawyers Lab, and I think they got lab coaching now with affinity. So I think they do some coaching. Lots of coaches.

Conrad Saam: Charlie Mann. Charlie Mann recently went out with, I believe is called Law Firm Alchemy, which is very much a business consulting under the tutelage of Ben Glass. Spent a long time at Ben Glass Law and then I believe Great Legal Marketing. So, he’s launched up. But the coaching is, you know, I see this as a very positive thing. There are a lot of lessons that can be learned. This is kind of an extension, more formalized extension of the masterminds.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Strategic coach Dan Kennedy.

Conrad Saam: Dan Kennedy, right. So there’s lots of opportunities at this point in time to sharpen the saw on your business skills, and that is provided through coaching. And it makes me happy because, you know, I don’t have a JDI, I have an MBA, and so.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You should be a coach.

Conrad Saam: I think I would be. In the same way you talked about being a football coach, I was a terrible coach.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Would you coach?

Conrad Saam: I’ve coached also. I’ve done the soccer thing like lots of parents have done the soccer thing. I also coached skiing. I don’t think I transitioned well to especially with kids. I tend to push my kids, my personal kids, pretty hard and I don’t understand kids who don’t respond to that. So, I’ve left a lot of kids on a slope in tears. Let’s leave it at that. But you know, when we were talking about this in the show preps, you had kind of a cynical take on some of the coaching. And I think there is a great business coaching, but where do you start to get wary, not weary, or may be wary as well. Weary and wary about coaching. What do you think is the kind of dark underside of coaching?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s maybe not limited to coaching so to speak, and maybe because it’s so hot right now, right? Coaching is so hot, but you see there are a lot of this value stuff on the coaching is also in the eye of the coachee and what their expectations are and all that yada, yada, yada stuff. I’m not like trying to like talk trash about coaching. I think coaching is tremendously valuable. I’ve participated in business coaching as a coachee or mentee or however you want the term, whatever coach type term you want to use to learn from coaches. Coaches are great. You know, as thinking about this, I think we talked about it before in like conference context, but, I just see some of these more veteran firms were like — you know, they see the coaching model and they’re like, “You know, that looks pretty good.”  And so they’re like, you know, I’ve got the young new lawyers look up to me because I’ve got my multimillion-dollar law firm and throw that in my Facebook ad, and say, “Hey, you can turn into me with some coaching from my firm. All you got to do is pay to participate in the coaching thing. Oh, and by the way, we’re also happy to take your referrals.” And so I get a little bit concerned, I suppose, about these lawyers that –

And again, this is just my view point. I’m sure if you’re listening to this and you’re in one of these coaching programs and you’re like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to your firm and you love your coach and you happily pay twice as much for it. But I think you have to be mindful and kind of take stock on like the dream of being this type of firm. And then, you know, what the coaching program is actually doing to support you, right?  Sometimes, in some of these coaching programs, it’s just a pep text, right? You’re getting a pep, not just a pep text, you’re going to pep tax. I don’t want it.

Conrad Saam: What’s a pep text?

Gyi Tsakalakis: You know, “Hey, get out there and do a great job today. Be productive and prioritize your most important tasks, and think about your positioning today.”

(00:15:04)

And I don’t want to diminish the value of that for some folks. For some folks, that’s great.  That’s helpful.

Conrad Saam: Dude, if that’s helpful, you don’t belong running a firm. You’re so kind. I don’t want to diminish the value. What? Let me reframe this for what Gyi is really thinking. If you’re the kind of person that is going to be successful because you get a text in the morning from someone that is the same exact text that 250 other law firms get, you’re probably not going to be successful. That’s what Gyi thinks.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I think that the most constructive way that I would advise is have a conversation about being aligned on what the objective is. We talk about digital marketing agencies. Like what success look like, right? Talk about what success looks like when you’re in these programs. I don’t know. I feel like this is turned into — it wasn’t intended to be a bash session on coaching. I mean, I think some of these coaches are — they are transformative. I mean, if you’re a mastermind, right, you’re seeing the inside behind how firms work. I’ve participated in them myself and I’ve been to some of these legal masterminds and they can be great. I don’t know, it must be the Facebook ads. The Facebook ads are driving me nuts. Zero to two million dollars in revenue in the next three months, sign up for our coaching program, and see how we did it. I don’t know. This is seeming very negative, I don’t know.

Conrad Saam: So let me put a positive spin on this. My take is if you’re coaching is going to expose you to the running of the business that you don’t even think about, there’s huge value in that. There’s huge value because otherwise you’re going to learn everyone else’s lessons that they’ve already learned your own hard expensive way. And masterminds being a less formal version of coaching. Great way to avoid the mistakes that others have already paid so you will need to learn. How’s that?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Absolutely. And the other side of that coin is don’t expect that you’re going to be able to copy the Playbook of another law firm that’s going to work the same way. And in fact I think that’s part of my problem is, is that a lot of these coaching programs, they are structured as frameworks and so, my marketing mind is like, “Well, this isn’t going to help you stand out because you’re literally trying to recreate this other firm that already exists. Like, that’s not how it works.

Conrad Saam: Step one, generate multimillion-dollar feet that you can invest in marketing over the next 10 years.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right.

Conrad Saam: Just like I did. Okay, we’re going to take a break. When we come back, we’re going to do a discussion on the value or otherwise of giving away free gas.

Gyi Tsakalakis: If you’re like a lot of lawyers that we talked to, you’re trying to grow your firm but you’re having trouble doing more in a day than just managing your systems.

Conrad Saam: So what you really need is a simple system that can easily identify where your profit leads are coming from, analyze practice performance and easily sync up matters.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And I’ve got to admit, I’m both an investor and advisor to Lawmatics, and the reason is I’m super excited to what Matt’s building over there.

Conrad Saam: So you don’t have to change your entire system. Lawmatics easily integrates with my case Clio, Smokeball, Rocket Matter and lots of others.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So take a test drive today with Lawmatics to make client intake easier. Lawmatics.com.

So, as if you’re a longtime listener of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, you know that periodically we love to reflect on Lunch Hour Legal Marketing sentiment whether it’s reviews or comments on our YouTube page and we do love hearing from you. So, please do go to those places and let us know what you think and send us, show ideas. Today, I wanted to share a story of gratitude. I was on a webinar for I’ll give the plug to answering legal. They did a summer boot camp webinar and had some excellent panelists. And I was very humbled and surprised and touched that my fellow panelists, at least some of them, were also Lunch Hour Legal Marketing listeners. So how fun was that? How cool is that? And so thank you to those folks for making my day. And as I said, please do let us know what you think. We love to hear from listeners whether it’s on your podcast app, YouTube channel or where else? I know Conrad is big on TikTok these days. So check out Lunch Hour Legal Marketing on TikTok too. Thanks so much.

All right. Now we want to talk about free gas. So in a local Southeast Michigan law firm, the Bernstein Law Firm. We came across this very interesting — originally, I saw it on LinkedIn. They’re doing a free gas giveaway. Why don’t we go ahead and play the video clip so folks can hear what’s going on?

Male 1: The Sam Bernstein Law Firm is giving away free gas.

Male 2: To find out where, like and follow the Sam Bernstein Law Firm on social media. We’ll announce the location today.

(00:20:02)

Gyi Tsakalakis: So if you didn’t catch that, what the firm’s doing is, they’re going to go to a gas station in their community and give away free gas. But in order to find out where they’re doing it, you got to follow them on social media because they’re going to reveal the location on social media. Conrad, what do you think about this idea from a marketing standpoint?

Conrad Saam: So, there’s a couple elements to this, and I’m going to start with bad and then we’ll go to good. When I first saw this, it felt like the business objective here was to, as they said, grow their like and follower count. And my concern in something that is so focused around that as the objective is that there’s very limited genuine engagement, right. That is a very difficult thing to actually push. And when you’re just chasing likes and follows, this is going to cost them, I’m guessing roughly $20,000 and this is a fairly spendy way to actually go about doing that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: How did you come up with $20,000?

Conrad Saam: Well, a hundred gas tanks.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, is that it? I didn’t see it’s a hundred gas tanks.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, a hundred gas tanks, a hundred bucks a pop, and then I’m putting in $10,000 behind the — and this is important, the very aggressive PR and advertising spend that they put behind this. So, one of the things, and this is part of what I think they’re doing right here and we talked about this before. You cannot do a build it and they will come concept with social media. And I think many, many, many agencies and most lawyers miss this. You spend so much time generating the content and none of the time or money promoting that content. They are clearly promoting a crap out of this, right? So, this is showing up as boosted posts. I think we can show later on. This is shown up on multiple local TV stations, multiple radio stations, and I don’t know this, but I suspect there is money involved in the acquisition of that media if that’s earned or bought, don’t know. So I’m pulling 20 grand as a very rough number. It is probably north of that, to be honest, as I go through these things.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Got it.

Conrad Saam: Also, it’s a pretty unengaged group, right? Yeah, I want free stuff, so I’m going to sign up for this thing, right? There’s lots of things that people sign up for to get free stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily build like I really like you Sam Bernstein because you’re giving away free stuff. And if this is a one-off, it’s an expensive one-off.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So you might say find a way to do something like this that maybe has a little bit more affinity built into it. And by the way, just so you know, they’re a very well-known prestigious firm, great lawyers in Southeast Michigan. They’ve been doing marketing and branding for a long time. In fact, we’ve talked about them before I believe. They have billboards that are just 1-800 and a picture originally of Sam. I don’t know if Sam’s still active in the firm or not, but it’s a family firm. The kids have taken over. Just picture of them, like that’s the brand that they built. So it’s certainly not a one-off. This isn’t like, and I think it’s important for people that are listening to this, like, Gyi and Conrad aren’t like go buy free gas cards for people and then you’re going to coach your way to success.

Conrad Saam: That’s right.

Gyi Tsakalakis: But, let me give you a couple other sides of this coin, and I agree with you on the engagement stuff, right? This particular campaign isn’t going to increase engagement, but it may just grow followers, and followers, if you combine this with other marketing stuff, other good works you’re doing in your community, your charity work and you’re posting that on social media, those posts are likely to get engaged. So I don’t want to speak for them, but I think that the goal here might be like, “Hey, look, we’re giving away some gas. As you mentioned, whether it’s paid or not, it got tons of media attention, a ton of links. So, I don’t know how you feel about links these days, but they do help for SEO still from what I’ve heard from some people. And they’re growing the awareness from a campaign, right? It’s free gas. It’s not a very sticky thing to your point. Gas prices have been fluctuating so I think gas is top of mind for people especially commuters or people that run businesses. People are sensitive to gas prices. I don’t know what it’s like up in Seattle, but around here, there’s a lot of chatter about gas prices. So I think there’s that.

But the big thing for me is that you’re not trying to do this because people are going to like fall in love with gas, but following and then finding ways to like get those people to engage with other social media posts, I do think it’s pretty creative. And not to mention that when your firm like there’s, when your Coke and Pepsi, your incremental brand stuff, it gets a little bit more tricky. They’re not trying to get their first client. They’re trying to get their 900 millionth client.

Conrad Saam: I think the thing that just bothers me on this —

(00:25:02)

Let’s use a round number of $20,000.  There is no affinity. People do not have an affinity for a commodity.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Let me stop you one second. You know what’s a better way to think about this than just $20,000? What percentage of their marketing budget is this?

Conrad Saam: Microcosm, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. That’s an important point though, because when you say $20,000, you’re kind of emphatic about it. You seem to be implying that that’s a pretty big spend for this campaign.

Conrad Saam: No. What I’m implying is that that $20,000 — We’re not even implying. The point I want to make is that that $20,000, and you know this, I am a big believer in trying to build affinity, right? I like you. And it’s hard to like someone just because they’re giving away a commodity, right? I would much rather see them. I’m pulling this out of the air. You spend the $20,000 sponsoring the Turkey Trot and you use the money to get in front of runners, right, and so now there’s an affinity. Everyone buys that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And they do that stuff too.

Conrad Saam: My point being that stuff is much more impactful than this very wide net for which no — like no one’s like, “I love cheap gas.”

Gyi Tsakalakis: This is great. I love this because that’s true. Now, out of the consumers in the state of Michigan, how many of them are passionate about the Turkey Trot versus how many need gas?

Conrad Saam: A 100%. So, I get your point on this. I would rather distribute that money across things that people are genuinely into, whether it’s church, dogs, open spaces, saving the historical houses of Detroit. I would rather see it spent on something that is not — I keep coming back to the concept like no one cares about gas. I mean, everyone cares about guess but no one has an affinity because of that. And so I want to see this. I just want to see it used to make people like, “I like that Sam Bernstein guy because he cares about stuff that I care about.”

Gyi Tsakalakis: Totally. And again, I think that they would say the same thing to me when I reflect on this. This isn’t even dawn on me when we were talking about this in the pre-show, but, one of the points I think that’s important here is that they’re in a different phase of their branding and marketing. This is certainly not the first thing you should do as a new law firm, right?

Conrad Saam: Yes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There are much better ways to spend dollars to attract attention. I agree with you that affinity is more valuable than awareness, but it’s the incrementality. I mean, this is why people do display ads because there’s only so many Turkey Trots. Let’s go back to where we kind of talk about this stuff. So, you’re like, what are you into, right? That’s what you’re going to have the best affinity in is the thing that you’re passionate about. Maybe you’re a runner, maybe you’re very passionate about historic buildings in your community or you’re passionate about bringing the community back, whatever it is, and you’re going to get David Meerman Scott. You’re going to get your super fans from that, right? You’re going to get to people who are super — They’re like, you’re the firm that does that. We talked about Ken in Chicago and they love Chicago food and they’re all about the food. They’re in the food groups. People are sharing the food. And you know, there’s a side note, maybe that’s a good idea for Ken. It would be buy somebody an app at their favorite Chicago restaurant or something. It might be a corollary and you’re kind of combining these two ideas.

But the other side of the coin is it’s like when you’re a different phase of your growth, you want to go bigger. You want to be in everybody’s feed. Now, ideally, you’d be in everybody’s feed for the thing that everybody loves. But the problem is, everybody doesn’t love the same stuff. Anyway, I know it’s an interesting thing that — I was thinking about this because, I agree with you. I wouldn’t be like your first $20,000 but if this represents 1% of your marketing budget, then I would like to measure that versus the reach. We don’t love talking about reach, but in this context, when you get to that size, your reach and your share of voice, it does matter.

Conrad Saam: You’re making the argument that at scale, brand awareness is actually more economical than brand affinity.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Maybe that’s what I’m saying. I was going to say valuable, and so I say, no, not valuable, because I agree with you on the value.

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Maybe it’s more of a reflection on just like a different place in your growth evolution, because, again, the same thing with TV, right? Like we’re always poo poo and TV is super expensive and what is — there’s no affinity there, and blah, blah, blah.  But guess what? These folks on TV, like people are calling the vanity number. They’re calling 222 2222, because it’s in their head. And the gas giveaways in people’s heads. Here we are talking about it.

Conrad Saam: And awareness is effective. Awareness is effective, right. I just like affinity more.  I’m going to come back. I want you to answer this question, but I’ll answer it first. I’ll give you a moment to think on your feet.

(00:30:03)

If you were to share one idea to reach a local audience, one tactical trick, quip, whatever it might be to reach a local audience, what would that be? I’m going to give you mine because this just popped up in my calendar this morning, and it is to prior to the holiday season, so we’re now looking at the November-December time. Can you identify and profile — if you want to take the Christmas Christian version of this, you could do the 12 Days of Christmas. There’s the Hanukkah version of this as well. Can you profile 12 different businesses, local businesses, that you can support to have consumers make their purchases at in order to support the local economy, right? And the trick is, if you start in November, you’re not going to have enough time to pull this together, which is why it was on my calendar for this year. But can you grab 12 businesses? And one after another, you know, December 1 through 12, encourage people to go to those businesses to put their money back into the Detroit economy instead of into Jeff Bezos’ latest space exploration plans. That is a very great way to build affinity and awareness among the local community.

Now, if I’m Bernstein and I’ve got that budget, what I’d do is I go to the local TV affiliates and I ask them to let me profile my 12 favorite local businesses on television. That’s how I would spend that money differently. Sorry, that just hit me, but that’s how I would do it differently. All right. I’ll shut up.

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, I love that. You know you made me think of this Brooks Derrick, Derrick Law Office that he does a lawyer his friends and food, right? So he just goes around and interviews local restaurant, tours, small businesses. But again, you know what the thing that — and it doesn’t have to be a holiday thing, that’s what I’m going to say. Forget about the holiday. I mean the holiday is great, but you can do this all the time. And to me, and this is why I think this is your cake and eat it too in some ways in this example, because guess what? Everybody’s got to eat, right? And so, that to me, makes me think about everybody’s got to get gas, so you’re opening the audience up from a, it’s not just the Turkey Trot here. You can hit the vegan restaurants, you can hit the steak places, you can hit the pizza joints, you can hit the local bars. It’s local, which I think is super, super important. It’s a goodwill small business story, right, because you’re highlighting to having these folks tell their stories. And of course, you’ll get some of that network effect that Bernstein is trying to get because people will actually engage with this stuff because those restaurants will also want to share the story and share the videos and their subscribers will. People are checking in and they should be promoting that at their businesses.

I wasn’t even thinking about that, but when you ask me the question, my initial reaction was build partnerships with local businesses in a variety of different ways. That’s what I was going to say, but I think, as you’ve told yours, it became even better because I do think that to optimize it, do both, right? Find those intersections of affinity and reach. I think that’s the message. Where can you do both? Not everybody Turkey Trots, but everybody’s got to eat, and everyone’s getting a gas even though it’s a commodity. Anyway, I love this segment, and I think folks are listening. We anticipate doing more of these kind of breakdowns of lawyer marketing campaigns. And so, if you’ve got examples for us, please do send them. You can hashtag us LHLM or you can call Conrad’s cellphone number which is, just kidding.

Conrad Saam: No, but seriously, like these are the best. And, by the way, we can look at the good, the bad and the ugly, right? Or the great, the bad and the ugly. Very happy to have our perspectives. Our drive-by perspectives on what people are doing

Gyi Tsakalakis: So, Conrad, what was the gouch for this episode? For another day. With that, dear listeners —

Conrad Saam: I thought we were going to get through this without you saying gouch.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I could not. I mean, I mean it’s all we talked about. You have to stay tuned, maybe we’ll do an episode on gouch.

Conrad Saam: Watch the shorts when Gyi admits he was not listening to the pre-production meeting and did not know what the goosh was, on YouTube.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And with that, dear listener, and dear subscribers, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you’re new to the show, please do feel free to subscribe and leave us a review. Follow the hashtag LHLM on all of your social media apps. I don’t know if we’re on Threads, but is anybody? I know Conrad’s on Clubhouse. Until next time, Conrad and Gyi out on Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

Conrad Saam: Clubhouse or die, is the next big thing, everybody. You heard it here.

(00:35:01)

Outro: Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you’d 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.

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