The Reluctant Rainmaker, by Julie A. Fleming

So, I've been reading The Reluctant Rainmaker, by Julie A. Fleming.  Her book -- unlike the other books I've been reading -- seems to focus on big firms, billable hours, and large clients.  Sure, every once in a while she'll mention divorce law, but it's clear to me she comes from and is trying to develop clients at a big firm (actually, she doesn't call it "marketing", or "clients" she calls it "business development").

Mind you, I'm not criticizing her work.  If you work at a medium or big sized firm, and you work on other attorney's clients, but you'd like to start grabbing your own client -- this is probably a great book for you.  But, if you are going to hang your own shingle and work on "100% commission", then this is not a great fit for your library.  Nonetheless, I am going to read through it.

She spends time discussing the need to write articles and network and how to get those writings into your firm's blog so that your online profile on the firm's blog will include your credentials.  I think that has little value to mom and pop clients; indeed, that value is to impress other attorneys, not the real non-corporate client.  Moreover, she also encourages attorneys to ensure they have a website, but then does nothing to explain how that web site should be used.

kc.

Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business Online and Off, By Jim Cockrum

Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business Online and Off. I'd say -- it's good, maybe really good, but not great.

Cockrum divides the book into 100+ chapters, with marketing ideas strewn throughout the book. The good? I did get some ideas from the book. One is to do a webinar or recording, and rerun it here and there on some scheduled loop so people can come back to watch it/participate in questions at the end of the webinar. That may be a way to drive some traffic to a future website. I also thought about the idea of doing a live event for a male only divorce clientele. Basically, if you want to have an informal chat about divorce I'll buy you a drink; if the event is small, you may get me 1:1 for 60 minutes; if the event is semi-large, you may need to share me with 12 people; if the event is really large, I can get 25-30 people there. I spoke with my wife about this earlier today. I think you'd want to charge $5 bucks to get in, but they'd get a free drink from their (potential future) lawyer. It's a bit out of the box, but it is definitely low cost.

The other interesting tidbit in this book is something I recently did to try to solidify my job prospects in a prosecutor's office. I met the elected official that ran the office. Twice. I sent her two personal follow-up thank you notes. My hope is I can buy some brand name recognition out of that (I donated to the campaign, too).

The bad/ugly of this book. Much of Cockrum's marketing might comes from his 100,000 member email list that he regularly "emails" for the purpose of connecting with them and having a relationship with them -- but, also sells shit to them. Hmmm, isn't that spam? He insists it's not. He insists he has affiliates -- I've sued some of those folks for illegal spam -- and they follow all the rules. I actually know that area of law -- and he's pretty hazy on some of his details. He says you should never mail to someone else's email list, then extols the virtue of cross-marketing in joint ventures with other marketers. Well, California says the "advertiser" has liability, so if your partner has cut corners and is spamming some folks, well then, so are you.

That said, he believes SEO is worthless, unless you can drive traffic to leave behind some information to contact them and market your product or service to them. I get that -- and I agree with that. If I have 1,000,000 25 year old convicts that come by my website, I've got tons of eyeballs, but they're all worthless, because none of them will be able to afford my service. but, if I had 10 fathers, with kids, and a large pension, and a significant house in a marriage of 15 years looking for information and I got them to my site -- well, that's really valuable traffic. And, if I can sign up one of those 10 for a $10,000 retainer -- then I'd be willing to spend a bunch of time and effort to get them to my site and get them signed up. Cockrum believes the way to win that battle is through a multi-step sales plan -- and I wholeheartedly agree with that idea.

I guess the other idea I got from this book -- would be a bit of a charity and pro bono stunt: I thought it might be interesting to offer a free pro bono divorce to whomever could post the most compelling video of why they deserve free representation. Give it six months to germanate and then announce the winner and make a press release out of it.

Also, he did make a great point about offering a huge guarantee in the online world. Basically, it would pay for itself. Can you imagine a money back guarantee for your legal fees? How about If You Don't Believe I Did The Most Amazing Job As Your Attorney, I'll Refund Your Fee? (But, You Must Let Me Videotape The Return Of The Fee). I think that's ethical -- but it may run afoul of the ethical rule that says you may not do contingency fees, except in certain legal contexts (PI+). (I know for criminal you may not link the fee to the result). So, I'd need to look into it.

He does cover Twitter and Facebook - but I really couldn't make sense of it. To be fair, I don't use Twitter. And, while i have a Facebook account, I don't use it much. Somehow you put up your firm, and then you respond back and forth to posts, I suppose. I guess, I just don't quite see it yet. And, Twitter is even more of a mystery. Do you post on twitter, hey I just won a big case, I'm a stud? Do you comment on Charlie Sheen's lack of parenting skills and how no judge should give him custody, but they do anyway?

Finally, Cockrum says use Twitter to keep in touch with your customers. I guess I don't see that either. Maybe I'm just too old. I don't want someone's twitter going off all the time about some professional service. For instance, if I had an architect, I wouldn't want to know that he just got a new client and is designing a new home. . . would you? Why would my clientele want to know that I settled a DUI case, or got my client a better custody arrangement?

Onward.

k

ps- I did recall that long ago I did do some PR work - for free, because I really liked the company -- for a carshare company. So, I suppose if I had a really satisfied customer, I could use them -- as I was happily used -- to do PR for the firm. And, i was on CNN, and a bunch of local news stations -- it was actually pretty fun.

Guerilla Marketing Tactic: Develop Professional National Group That Reviews Professional Marketing

So, I was thinking after reading Glass's book of a new strategy. I'd love to form a group -- national would be ideal -- which consists of about 5-10 professionals (read: Engineers, Architects, attorneys, psychologists, etc.) that will meet something like once a quarter, to discuss what marketing they've tried, what's worked, how much they've spent and what results they've gotten. I haven't figured out how to do it yet -- but I will. Now, it may be on further reflection, I decide that the best group would be a group of 6-10 attorneys from around the country, instead of a broad spectrum of professionals. The idea came to me in the past few days -- so, I thought I'd document it here. So, more on this later.

k

Next Book

The next book to be reviewed -- after I read it in the next few days -- is, The SEO Manifesto (mostly read), Free Marketing: 101 Low and No Cost Ways to Grow Your Business Online & Off, by Jim Cockrum, and also a free book, How To Get Free Traffic Unique and Useful Ways to Send Visitors to Your Sites, by Lambert Klein.

And, in a future post, I intend to offer my book exchange or business book club idea -- and, more specifically, I start to review the notion of a monthly professionals marketing meeting, where I would host a meeting where we would exchange our own ideas as to the good, bad and indifferent strategies and tactics.

Review: TPE The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, By Mike Michalowicz

Review: The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz.

I enjoyed this book.

His ultimate thesis, boiled down to a sentence: Stop bitching and whining, and start doing. That's my kind of thesis (this resonates with my background with years of folk-style wrestling, and a few years of triathlon -- you can (and should) do more with less, rather than less with more). He takes on the know-it-all business books -- and says, forget complex business plans, instead, focus on things in a daily and quarterly construct. I like that thought.

One's Passion.

He devotes a chapter to ensuring that your business is your passion. Well, this _is_, a bit of a problem for me. I know my passion: Taking gnarly criminals and putting them in prison for long periods of time after hard fought jury trials. That's as fun today as when I started five years ago. I love the battle. I don't know that I will have the same passion for civil (instead of criminal) trials. I may have more passion, if I have a direct client that savors the result. It may be much more difficult if I don't do as well as a client had hoped and I have to explain that to him. So, I'm on the fence on the passion topic.

Incidentally, you may ask, well then why give up being a prosecutor? Well, I have a newborn son, a wife, and we live in Los Angeles. I'm from Iowa. Los Angeles is hell. You really can't (ethically/morally) send your kid to public school, except for a few small areas of respite around hte county. As you can imagine the housing prices are astronomical in those areas (think like $600,000 for 1200 square feet and on up from there). But, San Diego is like half that price. I was a wrestling coach there -- so I know the schools. I'd put our kid into the Poway District in a heartbeat (along with several other school districts as well). Moreover, I moved to California to live in San Diego -- I only came to LA to go to law school. Unfortunately, the San Diego DA's office (according to several inside confidential sources I've developed) hires all of their law clerks; the remainder of the spots, are divided among those who apply. In practical terms, they have about 20 spots; the clerks take 17-19 spots; the other 381 people compete for the 1-3 spots that are available. Even with 5 years of being a DDA and 45 jury trials (25 of which are heavy felony jury trials) I don't think I'll be able to snag a spot this year. Which means, I expect to move to San Diego and simply put up my own shingle and start taking cases. Hey, I tried -- I'd rather just be a DDA in San Diego -- but, since this year will be my fourth annual application, I'm going to have a strong Plan B for getting the family out of LA and down to San Diego.

So, here's what Michalowicz has to say about business plans (and I love the sentiment):

"How many times have you heard about the importance of a detailed business plan? Make sure you have ten years of financials. Make sure you can make $100M dollars capturing only 0.1% of the potential market. Make sure you have a strong management team with a strong track record. Make sure you can show clearly where the customers will be coming from and why. Everyone tries to tell you that you need a winning business plan if you ever hope to go anywhere with your business. Well, I'm here to tell you a business plan is a total waste of time."

Go brother Michalowicz, go! They are a waste of time (I've written them in a past life about recording studios, car retail and selling pop songs on late night TV). Instead, he insists on three short documents -- more of a creed, than the details. That's fine. There should be some plan -- but it shouldn't be out of control. (Basically he says set quarterly goals and set a daily metric so you can check the numbers and plot your current trajectory and modify as necessary).

As for networking groups, he suggests doing it online: LinkedIn.com or meetup.com.

MONEY

He also describes that his life is filled with people who ask him for "money to launch his business." He says they are a waste of time -- and posits that "so many people get caught up in the money aspect that they forget everything else that's important." Instead, he says "[i]t is critical that your business makes cash, not that it starts with it." Well, that's the good news about a law practice -- I do, indeed, expect to charge money first and then do the work. And, I do believe many people need the assistance of an attorney, whether for divorces, construction or renovation disasters, or personal injuries or accidents -- or, even criminal charges. The distinct difference between divorces and criminal work on the one hand, and person injury work on the other -- is that the PI work is first the attorney does the work (and pays the filing fees), then you see what you make (if anything); whereas, in the world of criminal and family law, first you get a retainer (or flat fee), then you do the work. That's my kind of cash flow. So, I pretty lucky in that regard.

In fact, Michalowicz says this about money needed at start-up:

If I get one more stinking, whining email about how impossible it is to start a business without any money, I am goin gto explode. Money, if used wisely, will let you start faster. But lack of money will not prevent you from starting. If you have the ability to send me an email, you clearly have access to a computer or cell phone, which are more than enough tools to get started. So if you don't have money, stop making excuses and find a way."

I've got money available to fund a start-up law practice. But, I refuse to spend tons. Indeed, I think it will be very hard to get me to rent a full-fledged office at $500 bucks per month -- that's $6,000 per year; I think I can do great things with $6,000 per year. (More about how I've seen lawyers waste money in unnecessary overhead in my law firm staff years in New York in the 90s in another later post). So, I intend to really, really start on a shoe string. I'll find a way to work out getting access to an office for appointments and access to a business mailing address -- that's all I really need in the beginning I think.

For office furniture Michalowicz suggests goin to office buildings with multiple occupants to see if you can snag what tenants inevitably leave behind when the move out. Bravo! I've already done that for free wood in my amateur woodworking career.

On large overhead/payroll, Michalowicz says this:

I nearly destroyed my company by borrowing to death. It wasn't the credit cards; I paid all of those back. It was the bank loans. I borrowed $250K and blew it. One of the biggest mistakes I made was using the money to cover payroll. I gave myself a bloated salary and paid for employees who weren't needed. Finally, when the money ran out I had to face the truth and cut y salary, fire employees, and get back on track. But I still had a huge amount of debt on my shoulders.

I love that thought. But, I expect my payroll to be me. At least for the first few years.

He offers this tip about press:

"Start local and small and then build your way up. Your local paper is starving for good stories about local heroes. Email or fax a quick press release, and you'll be surprised how fast the local guys call for an interview or to confirm facts."

Finally, Michalowicz extols the virtues of being small: Nimble, quick, flexible and able to offer the ultimate customer/client service. Obviously, the downside is, lack of capital, budget, and people resources. But, it's not all downside is the point.

Finally, he's best website tips:

1) for service professionals (I suppose that includes attorneys) -- a) elance.com or b) guru.com; of course, c) craigslist.org;

2) Virtual Meetings. dimdim.com;

3) conference calls. freeconferencecall.com

4) accounting. Intuit's quickbooks simple start offers a free, basic accounting system (then again, so does excel. No need to buy or specialize until you have the need, right? One can track the expenses in the first year of 3 clients, $15,000 in revenue and $3,000 in expenses -- if it gets overly complex, then I'll find some other way to track the info, or use all of the overwhelming checks coming in to hire someone to track it);

5) payment clearance: Paypal and zen cart.

6) sales marketing automation: zoho crm - apparently free for three users or less; not sure exactly what it even does!

7) Office space. Unused office space from friends or other rents -- exchange space for service (will consider, I'd give free legal advice in exchange for rent payments; or agree to do appearance work for some criminal law firm);

All in all, I'd give the books high marks. I intend to go through the web sites and give some further review of those in the coming days. I also need to post my own metrics and what I'm going to measure on a day to day basis.

k

Video - Marketing Companies

So, it turns out there are multiple companies that specialize in law firm marketing.

First up --

This dude, Rainmaker Lawyer. He gives some free advice off of Youtube about his strategy and tactics. One of which is fine -- he says partner with another lawyer who does not compete but offers some complementary service to you -- like a litigator with a transactional lawyer. You each share mail to one another's list. That seems logical to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYnYGyh9GD4&feature=autoplay&list=UUwwONWb7JPUMjmmQhnnLfLQ&lf=plcp&playnext=1

k

Book Review: You Can't Teach Hungry

So, I decided last night that I would read on the issue of legal marketing. I set out to put my new Kindle (birthday present) to work. Moreover, I set a budget of $200.

I bought "You Can't Teach Hungry" today by John Morgan. Morgan -- apparently, Morgan and Morgan -- is a firm of about 1,000 people across multiple states. He earns a seven figure income. In other words, he's a million miles away from my starting point. He offers that the budget for advertising should include TV and should be $1 million for the first year. Yea. Uh-huh. He also insists you should leverage (read: borrow) in order to get the money to advertise. He says other people operate mills, but his pre-trial and trial work lawyers have caseloads of 100-150 cases at any time. Uh huh. I carried 25 felonies as a Deputy DA -- that's a heavy pure trial caseload. Someone isn't getting full attention. How do I know? That means that if I spent 1 hour per day on each case, that would be 25 hours in a day -- it can't be done.

That said, I do like the fact that he preaches accountability and metrics to measure advertising $$$ against your results. He apparently still spends millions on Yellow Page advertising -- I'm 43 and I haven't used the Yellow pages in at least five years. I'm sure my mother and grandmother do though. . .

I was shocked to see some of the marketing books were $50 (