Putting Yourself Out There, Key to Your Solo Practice

Episode Notes

Transcript

Adriana Linares: Before we get started, I want to make sure to thank our sponsors, Clio, Nota and Lawclerk.

[Music]

Intro: So, if I was starting today as a new Solo, I would (00:00:16) lawyers. What it means, new approach, new tool, new mindset, new Solo. And it’s making that lead.

Adriana Linares: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Solo on Legal Talk Network. I’m Adriana Linares. My guest today is Levi Barlavi. Hi Levi.

Levi Barlavi: Hi Adriana. How are you?

Adriana Linares: I’m good. So, we should disclose that the reason I know you is because I helped you for a while with your technology in getting streamlined which we’re going to talk about. That’s how we know each other. And thank you so much for having been a great and fun client of mine. I guess you don’t need me anymore which is kind of my dream. I know that sounds weird but I don’t really want long-term relationships with clients. Not because I don’t enjoy working with them but because I feel like at some point you can reach a level of technology competence and business efficiency where instead of me working to get you there, you get there. And then they call back when they need something or here’s an idea. And I want to become more proficient or efficient with this or that.

Levi Barlavi: So, you’re not like one of those therapists who want to just keep me in the chair for years.

Adriana Linares: As a matter of fact, I’m the exact opposite. I’m more like the doctor that wants to cure your problem and then not see you again until you’ve got another ailment that needs fixing.

Levi Barlavi: Right.

Adriana Linares: Isn’t that terrible. But it was really fun working with you. But the whole point that is, we are friends on LinkedIn or we’re not friends, maybe that would be Facebook but we’re connected. And I love your LinkedIn post. I’m going to ask you about that and how you’re using that just to give sage advice to fellow attorneys. But also, I think there might be a marketing aspect in there so I’m going to ask you about that. And I definitely want to ask you about your Solo practice, your niche practice. So, why don’t we start there. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your practice.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah, I am a Los Angeles based attorney. I’ve had my own practice now for over 10 years. I have a very niche practice so I assist doctors with their business transactions. So, I do everything from healthcare practice startups, to acquisitions, to sales, joint venture agreements, and private equity transactions and basically all of the contracts in between, I assist my clients with. And I’ve been doing this for a long time now.

Adriana Linares: Can you tell us how you narrowed down into that niche? I love niche practices. I love talking to attorneys with niche practices because obviously it’s focused and it’s special, but another interesting thing, and I hope you talk about this too. I think you love it.

Levi Barlavi: I do.

Adriana Linares: I know. So, how did you get, how did you funnel down from when you started to this niche and why do you love it so much?

Levi Barlavi: I took a very circuitous route to get to where I am. I started out when I graduated Georgetown, I came back to Los Angeles and I clerked for a complex litigation courthouse here in LA which was fascinating because you got the best of the best, kind of doing mass class actions or very complex lawsuits and it was really enjoyable to be a clerk. So, after that I went out and I worked in a defense litigation practice, handling employment law matters. And I really didn’t have a good sense of what I wanted out of my career. I was kind of one of these leaves floating in the river, letting it take me where it ever wanted to take me. But the truth was I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy the work. I didn’t find any pleasure out of it. I found most of the clients were frustrated about getting sued. It seemed like everything, every good deed gets punished and they couldn’t do anything right. And I didn’t find the process one that was great in terms of outcomes. It just seemed like everyone left upset. And then I got a great push to go out on my own and we can get into that. But basically, I threw my hat into the solar ring three years out of law school and I didn’t know what I was doing. I absolutely was swimming deep in that deep side of the pool, deep side of the ocean. But when you go out on your own, one of the great things about going out on your own, you get a real flavor for everything because man, when you have to eat what you kill, you’ll take anything that people will give you. So, I did everything from personal injury to plaintiff side, employment litigation.

(00:05:00)

And I come from a family of doctors. I married my wife who’s a dentist around the same time that I went out on my own. My sister is OBGYN. She came back to LA a few years after I did from medical school. So, I have a family of healthcare professionals in my network of friends and family. And one by one they start putting contracts in my face saying, “Hey, could you review this employment contract? Can you review this lease?” And the light bulb went off and I said, I have a pretty good organic network here. And I really enjoyed the work. It seemed like every time I help answer a question or review agreement, or put a deal together, clients were satisfied and I got a lot more pleasure out of work and so that’s when the nucleus of the practice took. Probably two or three years into being a solo practice and then from there it just took off.

Adriana Linares: That’s great. And I don’t think you’ve had a shortage of clients since then. But I do know it took you a while to get your tech, right.

Levi Barlavi: It did.

Adriana Linares: Because you didn’t call me.  10 or 12 years ago, you called me about three.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah, it did.

Adriana Linares: So, tell us a little bit about, I mean, obviously you got along just fine. You’re a Solo. Wait back up question. Did you have an office? Do you have a home office now? How was your location?

Levi Barlavi: Yeah, I had an office. I had a nice office in Century City for a long time. I would bounce around. I would have support staff here and there, but I was solo in the sense of the word, Solo for a long time. I wore all hats. And then, every year was a growth year until 2019, which was my best year. So, the pandemic really was a blessing for me in some ways. It couldn’t have come at a better time. It was scary because I’m transactional so everything kind of stopped. All my deals just stopped and froze or fell off the deal cycle. And then it just gave me an opportunity to kind of rethink how I want to practice. I was burning the candles at both ends. There was a lot of pain points in Solo practice. So, I just took the opportunity to control what I can control and part of that was learning. And so, I found you through another podcast and you did wonders for my practice just in terms of learning word competence. I think so many attorneys, just a small investment in learning technology goes so far and I even started pulling on that thread after talking to you and that’s led to a lot of real improvements in my practice.

Adriana Linares: No. I love that we got you on a practice management system. You learned how to use word better. We created some templates for you. You didn’t have an assistant at the time but I think you have one now.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah. I have an assistant. I have an associate now.

Adriana Linares: Oh, wow. Awesome.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah.

Adriana Linares: And all that technology has probably helped you work with them easier, collaborate better. You just plug them into your fully Cloud based Law practice and you’re ready to go.

Levi Barlavi: We’re completely remote. I was an early adopter of Clio which I connected with you.

Adriana Linares: Oh, that’s right with you. You were already using Clio.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah, because you were talking on behalf of Clio for something. I don’t remember. So, 2020, I basically established a new vision for my practice. How I wanted the practice to look after we got out of the pandemic, whenever that was and we came back to normal. And part of that was adding technology component to it to have an easier way of practicing, which you helped me with. But now we’re completely remote. I have my client service director who works from home. I have an associate attorney in San Francisco. So, technology was a big reason why we’re able to work like this, right now.

Adriana Linares: I like that you said you had developed a new vision for what you wanted to practice to look like after the pandemic. So, aside from just using technology to improve efficiency and processes, did you have a business coach or how did you — was there any other part of doing that, that you would want to share with our listeners? Or something important. Sage advice, that’s why you’re here.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah, no. So, for me, I didn’t have a business coach. I was kind of looking for one, but I never landed on anything. But it was a development born of really frustration realizing that I couldn’t just burn the candle at both ends and work all of the time. I need to work smarter. And so, the pause, I took a workshop. There was a seminar with an author Cameron Herold, I think his name is of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

(00:10:00)

I maybe missing the name of his company but he basically put on a seminar for CFOs and CEOs and COOs and he has this idea of just like an Olympic track athlete or someone who’s in sports visualizes their success. He said that you have to visualize what your business and what your career is going to look like but make it three years out. And then work backwards. So, I took a hike. I went up to the LA Santa Monica mountains. I took a yellow legal pad with me and I just wrote feverishly. I put like eight pages of notes. This is how my practice is going to look like at the end of 2013. This is how I wanted to feel. These are who my clients are. These are the people I want to work with. These are the staff that will be hired. So, I kind of game planned how that would look and I’m halfway there through that vision and we’re more than halfway there. All the support staff was hired from that business plan. Yeah, it really came out of a sense of when you, most of us attorneys don’t have any business acumen. So, we don’t teach us anything on the business side of law coming out of law school. So, when you work as a solo attorney, you learn how to become an accountant, a bookkeeper, and marketer and do all these hats. But I was just working so hard. The break offered me opportunity to step back and reflect and renew my plan.

Adriana Linares: Well, it’s all very good advice. We’re going to take a quick break. Listen to some messages from some sponsors. And when we come back, I’m going to ask you about marketing. Be right back.

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Adriana Linares: Okay. I’m back with Levi Barlavi and I’m excited to be talking about growing your Solo practice, having visions for it, having a plan for it and of course wearing all those hats because it is hard. When you go to launch your solo practice, you don’t realize how many hats you’re going to end up wearing. But I want ask you about marketing because I remember when we had initially met, you told me you did a lot of speaking. I don’t think a lot of Solos and especially new Solos realize how important it is to get out there and do that. What a lead generation tool that can be? But two, because you’re in such a niche, if I remember correctly and you could just expound on this, you are often invited to speak at medical conferences. So, tell us about that and maybe how you got that opportunity or built upon. Maybe one opportunity that you had and then continue to use that as a way, as a marketing tool. And I know you also do it because you love it but the whole point is, do stuff you love.

Levi Barlavi: Right. Actually, I came to love it. I’m at my core. I’m was a pretty shy kid growing up. And so, at my core, I’m still that person so I sometimes pinch myself when I actually speak in front of like a hundred doctors and say, who is this guy up there? But how that started was, really it came from networking. When I started on my own, there was social media but it wasn’t as prevalent. I certainly was not doing it and so, my goal was just to meet as many people as I can meet. So, I went to a lot of conferences and knocked on a lot of doors so to speak and reached out to CPAs and bankers and other advisors introduced myself. And once I developed a following, mostly dentist and worked with some of the industry specific people in the dental industry and they started hearing about my work with mutual clients, they started inviting me to come talk at conferences and association meetings. And I have to say, I was terrified of doing so. Like I said, I was a very naturally shy kid growing up but the one thing that Solo practice has taught me is that, for all of the material benefits of creating your own business and reaping those rewards, my greatest value is when I came to know I’m not doing something right.

(00:15:11)

Fill it with knowledge and then see the personal growth on the other side of it. So, going out and speaking was one of those. I knew that I wasn’t comfortable doing it but that I wanted get over that discomfort. So, I started speaking at conferences and really, I didn’t advertise much. That was like the nucleus of where my referral base started coming from. It was speaking at all of those events and conferences over the years.

Adriana Linares: Me too. I’ll tell you, I’ve never paid a dollar for marketing. All of my business has always come from speaking, it’s just a no brainer. Can you give me the name of two presentations that you normally give, two doctors and medical conferences just to give lawyers, other lawyers an idea for the types of topics that you might offer if somebody said, “Hey, we’re looking for a speaker for our ATM machine conference”.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah. The one I do the most is probably the issues and transactional steps in terms of buying or acquiring a practice. So, a dental practice for instance. I will go and speak to set of dentists about what the process is like when you acquire a dental practice. What are the steps you take? What are the legal issues involved and top line issues related to those. So, understanding broad frameworks related to the legal structure of the transaction. And then walking them through what the transition looks like, both from a kind of practical sense and also legal sense. So, that’s just one of the talks I give to doctors. I also do more and more now private equity transactions so I talk to them about the benefits and the negative, the downsides of selling your practice to a private equity company. What those issues include, why it would be different from a doctor-to-doctor transaction? and really a lot of different topics.

Adriana Linares: I like the first topic which you said, sort of built for dentist. But once you have that base presentation down, I assume you could then modify it for any other vertical in the business.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah.

Adriana Linares: Yeah, that’s an important thing for all lawyers to hear. Look, I’ll use me as an example. I get asked all the time to give presentations. My answer is always, yes, because it’s the best free marketing for me ever. So, what I’ve done is I’ve created a page on my website, lawtechpartners.com/sessions. I go pick one of these and I can modify any one of them just a little bit, but one it makes it easy for me to say, well, here’s my normal topics that I speak on. These are also the most highly requested because a lot of times people come to me, they’re organizers. They don’t even know what they want. So, I go just here, take one of these and show it to your board and pick one. And then if there’s a small modification somebody wants, it’s easy for me to make because I already have the base presentations down. The other thing I’m going to say is, for those of you listening, Toastmasters. And if you’ve been a longtime listener of mine, you’ve heard me say, I used to do Toastmasters when I was in my twenties. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself in order to learn how to speak better, not just publicly but even in small groups and stuff. So, I strongly recommend everyone out there to get out there and go to Toastmasters if you are young and new, and haven’t really gotten comfortable with public speaking.

Levi Barlavi: Great, great suggestion. Yeah. I’ve developed some tricks in terms of how I get up there and talk. And one thing I love to do is whenever — first of all, I think you might have to help me with that service page, I’m speaking on my website. I need to include that.

Adriana Linares: And I have a speaker request form. I don’t have time for a bunch of emails and having to ask a bunch of questions. Go to the site, fill out the form, pick your sessions. It’s easy.

Levi Barlavi: Or create the kind of media kit so that you can just disperse that very easily. But whenever I talk, I still, I’m so nervous, but it’s such a phenomenal way to connect to clients because you’re providing goodwill, you’re providing information, you’re not asking for anything. So, for them to see you in person and feel how you present and what your knowledge is, you’re selling even without trying to sell to clients. And one thing I love to do is I always get nervous when it’s like a crowd of 150 people, like when we do big dental conferences. I love just before I even start, I will go talk to four or five people in the front row and just chit chat with them and just get to know them, ask them their name, what they did over the weekend.

(00:20:03)

And it kind of sets me into more comfortable zone. So, it just kind of focus, like I’m speaking to a friend in the front room.

Adriana Linares: Right. Then you’ve got somebody who’s gaze you can meet and you know it’s a friendly face.

Levi Barlavi: That’s right. With anything it’s just like more reps makes you more comfortable to do anything like that.

Adriana Linares: I agree. We’re going to save the last segment for a full LinkedIn conversation because I love the way you use LinkedIn. But sort of talking about you getting out of your comfort zone which is obviously what you do when you give public talks, you had a LinkedIn post where you forced yourself to do a video.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah.

Adriana Linares: Can you tell us about that? Like why you wanted to do that? How you finally got the courage up to do it and then how it went?

Levi Barlavi: Yeah. So, just a little bit of background. I’m a social media hermit. For the longest time I was never on social media and we can talk about why I ended up going onto LinkedIn. I’m using it and it’s been a fantastic journey.  But one thing that I have been always apprehensive about is to put out video online.  So everyone has told me, “Hey, you know, these talks are fantastic.  You should record them and you should put them out.  You should kill two birds with one stone.”  And I have this, I don’t know if it’s unique to me but I can get in front of a crowd now of 100 people and be very comfortable because it’s almost like a closed environment and I know it’s staying there, but the idea of, then putting something out into the ether and the in the internet where I have no more control over it was very, very uncomfortable for me.  So I’ve been kind of battling that discomfort for a while and then I’m just kind of in this, you know, whenever I feel discomfort I just try to figure out a way to push myself to get over it.

So I was at a dental conference, you know, conference has started back up.  The truth is that they can be quite boring.  It’s a lot of small talk.  If you get outside the presentations you give — you’re doing a lot of small talk, walk around, talking to people having the same conversations and I just told myself that I’m going to record three conversations just kind of ad hoc if I’m talking to someone and something interesting is being discussed, I’m going to ask them if they would mind having a two-minute conversation with me and record it.  I was just going to record it and just put it out that second.  I wasn’t going to worry about editing it or how it sounded.  I wasn’t going to view it, just going to put it out.

So the funny thing was, the first conversation I had was with someone named Fred Joyal, who’s a co-founder of 1-800 Dentist which was a fantastic marketing arm for dentistry for very long time.  And he just wrote a book about being bold and stepping out of your comfort zone.  And this was the first person I meet from the conference floor.  I just told myself, “All right, if you’re not going to –”

Adrianna Linares: The universe. The universe is telling you something.

Levi Barlavi: Its conspiring against me.  So you have to do it.  So I asked Fred if you would record just a brief conversation about his book about being bold, I thought it was so connected to what I was trying to personally right there in the moment.  So we did a great little two minute video.  I post it on social media.  And it was really well received.  I got a lot of private messages from it.  And sometimes if you’re too analytical, like I am, or in your head too much, you’ll overthink things to the point where you’ll never get anything done.  And sometimes you just have to do, do, do, and then get comfortable afterwards.  You know, you’ll never be comfortable before you just have to do something.  Be uncomfortable with it and then do it enough where you’re comfortable.  So that was just an exercise for me to just try to exercise my boldness muscle and get a little comfortable, putting videos out there.

Adrianna Linares: Well, I loved it and you the very first thing you say is I told myself I was going to make these videos.  So here I am and you just you know it’s — I think what was so compelling about it is, it’s very personal and informative.  So you’re just start out by saying just so you know this is new and I’m kind of nervous though I’m going to do it anyway, I’m forcing myself.  I mean that’s inspirational just in and of itself and then the conversation was really good.  So we’ll take another quick break here.  We’ll come right back and I’m going to ask Levi a little bit more about LinkedIn because he’s very active on the areas.  Very good and sage advice and we’re going to talk about how he has used that as successfully as he has.  We’ll be right back.

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Adrianna Linares: Okay, and I’m back with Levi Barlavi who is a health law attorney based in Los Angeles.  He’s a solo practitioner and has been telling us — actually not totally a solo anymore.  Has been telling us about how he’s grown his practice, gotten out of his comfort zone as far as marketing goes.  And one of the things I really wanted to focus on because I look at LinkedIn probably more than any of my other social medias.  I never get on Facebook.  I tried to look at Twitter but LinkedIn for me is always just interesting.  It’s straight up.  So Levi, when did you or how did you decide — you said earlier, I’d never been on social media, it was not my thing and then decided to put it all into LinkedIn and it’s been very successful.  What got you there?

Levi Barlavi: You know it was part of that journey that we talked about earlier in 2020 about thinking about my practice anew and what I want to get out of it, I just realized that if you are not you know, it’s one thing to be expert in terms of what you do as an attorney, but the business of law requires you to also be good at the business of law.

So I was leaving, you know, speaking networking are fine, they’re fantastic in terms of earned media and generating goodwill.  But I was leaving a lot of low-hanging fruit on those trees by not participating in the conversation online.  But I was really hesitant but you know, in 2020 I also realized that I had kind of gotten a little bit comfortable in my practice, I wasn’t really pushing myself in any way.  I was just kind of doing what I was doing and I was very judgmental of social media and I was probably judging a lot of people who are putting stuff out there.

Adrianna Linares: We all do.

Levi Barlavi: We all do, right?  And I didn’t like that I was judging it without really even participating it or knowing anything about it.  The truth is, you know, it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there in any context.  And so, I decided that I was going to go on social media on Instagram and LinkedIn and just kind of put stuff out there.  And initially, most of my clients, especially the cosmetic aesthetic clients, dentists, plastic surgeon they’re all over Instagram and they’re all over in a way where I have clients that have like 10,000, 20,000 natural followers, who are my clients so they’re big fish in their industry and they keep telling me, “Hey, why are you not on here and promoting yourself?”  And it’s just not something I like to do.  So, in the beginning of this year I again I challenged myself, I said, “Posting on Instagram wasn’t — I I don’t really like to post pictures and stuff like that.  But writing is something I love and you know I started reading and reviewing people’s posts and I said this is really interesting.  LinkedIn has fantastic, fantastic thought leadership.  You can really learn a lot from it.  So I kind of dip my toe in the water.  My first post was about quitting my job, and starting my practice and it kind of blew up.

And then I told myself, so I’m going to give myself six months, I’m just going to write consistently for six months about four or five posts a week and see what happens.  And then after that six months, I’m going to sit back and just kind of say “You know what was this experience about?  What did I learn from it?”  And initially I thought I would be writing to doctors.  So all right this is going to be — I’m just going to be writing see doctors every day and it quickly very quickly transferred into just writing to other attorneys about my experience being an attorney.

(00:29:58)

And I realized from some of those early posts I had really young attorneys newly in their career.  DMing me, asking me about the follow-ups.  I said, “Well, this is fantastic” and then I realized how much I learned in the last 10 years which I didn’t realize, you know, you think that everyone knows more than you and everyone is so much more successful and then I realized I had learned so much going out solo so early.  So I just started writing, you know, every time the client matter came up or something interesting came up in the week or something, someone taught me, or I’ve learned, I would just write it and the experience has been fantastic.  The cash value of it, yes, I’ve got in clients from it.  My networking group has gotten deeper, there’s people that read it who don’t even engage with it.  That come talk to me afterwards and tell me that, “You know, hey, I like this or that.”  So, all of that was fascinating but really it was the — when you write consistently and you kind of get your thoughts out in writing, I was writing a lot about value and business philosophy, and learning.  Transferring those thoughts into writing cements those thoughts more consistently in your practice.  And so, it’s a way, you know, they say you should write to your audience of one.  But something I wrote was that audience can be you and you can look at LinkedIn, not just as a marketing tool, but as a way to kind of crystallized what you’re trying to achieve in your own practice and that it reverberated 10 fold back to me in terms of bringing those lessons to my team, teaching them internally, writing them, and then talking about them and then we’re kind of using those to grow the practice.  So it’s been a great experience.

Adrianna Linares: Well, speaking to that directly, on April 15, you had a post that says “Dear young attorneys and law students after 15 years of practicing as a lawyer here are the rules that I’ve learned” and so then we click on the actual article which I love that link then tells you it’s a five-minute read, don’t worry, it’s nine rules but it’s not going to take you 90 minutes.  The title of your post was “Advice for New Lawyers and Law Students, Nine rules for success, and one reason to ignore everything you read on LinkedIn” very clever and of course the one that you had the videos on, I really liked and then recently you wrote about how saying no can lead to yes and then you write a doctor called me last month.  She wants help with her practice acquisition.  I had to say no because I’m going on vacation.  I was honest I told her timing wouldn’t be great.  It’s longer, right?  I’m just trying to summarize it real quick because I hope everyone connects with you and goes and reads it.  You said “I left her with valuable information.  I sketched a game plan for her, gave her the advice, gave her two referrals.”  So it’s very nice of you.  And probably a lot of attorneys are going to say “This guy’s crazy.  I would have definitely figured out a way.”

But as you wrote they moved the closing because she wanted to work with you.  So I think this is the advice you give on here is just so real and so helpful.  So I’m not surprised that it reverberates you had 10 comments on that one over 60 people have liked it and just so you know people like me forget to click that we like things.

Levi Barlavi: There is far more people like you than this (00:33:25).

Adrianna Linares: Yes.  Right.  So if we actually all engaged, you probably have more like 100 or 150, but I want you to know, you know, I read your stuff obviously, because that’s why you’re here, but it doesn’t always transfer to me clicking on likes and stuff, but we’re out here listening.  So the other thing I wanted to comment real quick on, as far as your profile goes which I have had Allison Shields and Dennis Kennedy, come on the podcast and the past to talk about their book, called ‘LinkedIn for Lawyers and making the most out of it’ and they help attorneys walk creating a profile.  With your profile, I wish they should feature it in their book, you put and this is like the first thing.  You have to say exactly in your profile, what you do on the health law attorney helping doctors successfully navigate business transactions with confidence.  Right there, you don’t just say attorney, you’ve got some very easy to read easy to understand what you do information there, as well as your contact.  And then I love your sticky post.  So really nice picture of you.  I want you to just talk to me about why having professional headshots done was important, although we all know why, but you know, a lot of attorneys still won’t do it.  They’ll be like, “Hey, babe, can you take a couple pictures and use portrait mode.”  So, the very first sentence of your sticky post says, “Hello world.  I’m one of those rare attorneys who digs what I do.  I help amazing doctors on the entrepreneurial journeys” and then you go through.  I think your LinkedIn page is so compelling.  So just talk to us a little bit about everything I just rambled on about.

Levi Barlavi: I appreciate that Adrianna.  So this all started all of my marketing side by working with a branding guy in 2020.

(00:35:01)

  I’m talking to Mel, I want to go on this journey and his name is Shy and he created some fantastic kind of like, fresher colors and he put my signature into PDF and we worked on creating kind of like a tagline and then he started writing putting my block post on LinkedIn himself and I realized that wasn’t the right move and I started and then I took off on and start putting my own voice into LinkedIn and that’s where it took off.  And kind of my page started developing as you engage with LinkedIn and you realized the people who are doing this right are people who are very thoughtful about putting together a profile that matches the clients they want to work with that is clear and consistent in terms of what they’re trying to showcase in terms of what they want to do.  And then have a really good picture associated with it.  So we went and got headshots for me and Jennifer and we’re going to get some for my associate and add it to the website but LinkedIn is really —

Adrianna Linares: And your website is beautiful.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah, it’s been working as a personal kind of website for me.  And I have to tell you, there’s a lot of attorneys who have a lot of Fear Factor about putting stuff on LinkedIn.  I cannot be a bigger proponent of just don’t overthink it and don’t worry about the likes.  You know, I put a post out to young attorneys and law students about how to use LinkedIn and just once a week, just post someone else’s post and give you a little thought on it, add a little color to it, just exercise that muscle because what ends up happening is, and what happened for me I was so fearful about not writing to doctors, I was like, “What the heck am I doing?”  Just spouting off about, you know, legal life and the things I’m doing first of all, I’m giving my competitors all of my wisdom, not just people who follow me, but I realize is, it gets you into this abundance mindset about, you know, when you’re just generating information and goodwill.  It reverberates back to you in multiples.  And so it’s not really about kind of being scarce and feeling like I can’t share my secrets with anyone, trust me, I hide some of the stuff and I’m not posting everything but putting stuff out there what ends up happening is that other people start looking at your profile even if they’re not engaging and start connecting with you because they see what you do.  It’s almost like a bounce back effect.  Talk about anything that you have a passion for enough and people will be curious about what you do and then if they connect with something that they, you know, there’s a need they need to fulfill either for themselves or client, they’re going to find you and that’s kind of been my experience.

Adrianna Linares: Well, I love it and you are an inspiration.  No, doubt.  I can’t thank you enough for your time today.  I know how busy you are.  Will you tell everyone where they can find friend follower and connect with you?

Levi Barlavi: Yeah.  Absolutely.  So it’s Levi Barlavi in LinkedIn.  You can find most of this information and posts on putting out is on that site.  My practice is called the Pacific Health Law Group.  So my website pacifichealthlaw.com, you can find us and if you just look me up, you’ll find me on Instagram and on the web and happy to talk to any other attorneys about my experience and Adrianna it’s a great help with me, i think I might need you to come retool some stuff and also I think I need to have a program where you just training my associate now on somethings that we discussed.

Adrianna Linares: Well I very much enjoy working with you.  For me, the best thing about you was your cool tone voice that you always brought me down my energy level to like a calming level.  So, thank you.  Well, I have to tell you it’s been very enjoyable.  I’d love to keep helping you in any way, of course, you know, but I really appreciate how forthcoming and hopefully you are two other attorneys.  You know, it’s a community out there and we have to support and help each other.  Even those of us who aren’t attorneys but are part of the community, really appreciate people like you.  Thank you so much, Levi.

Levi Barlavi: Yeah.  Absolutely.  It was a pleasure, the best advice I ever got was from other attorneys’ mentors.  Sometimes you have those formal mentor relationships sometimes it’s opposing counsel that you end up learning a lot from.  So, you know, just give back once you learned it.  It’s an incredible — it’s far more meaningful than anything else (00:40:00).

(00:40:00)

So I appreciate you having me on and allowing me to share some of these things with you.

Adrianna Linares: Glad we’ve done it and everyone make sure you get out there and connect with Levi.  Let him know how you heard about him and why you’re there?  So he doesn’t ignore you.  Adrianna’s podcast, and you learned a lot.  It’s great.  Thanks so much.  See you all next time everyone on New Solo on the Legal Talk Network.

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