See this recording on YouTube of a podcast Nermin and I just recorded at the end of October about how business owners, lawyers and doctors need to rediscover this idea of buying back their time.
Nermin runs a consultancy teaching lawyers how to scale their law firm growth. Her advise and wisdom transcends the law. It’s all about recognizing that you have matured and what that maturity entails.
Hi and Welcome Law firm Owners.
My name is Nermin Jasani. I’m a law firm strategist, and I’m here with Jason Ciment today from Get Visible.
And we’re here to share with you one of the number one tips that we have for more mature law firm owners, and that’s that at some point, you have to stop pretending like you’re still a new lawyer and realize that you have matured and that it’s time for you to buy back your time.
And the one of the best ways that you can start buying back your time is by hiring a full-service digital agency.
And there’s no one who does that better than Jason.
I’m gonna give Jason a couple of minutes to talk about how he really services and helps law firm owners who’ve had their practice for at least 8 to 10 years, really grow and be able to spend more time with their parents and their families, rather than you having to, you know, market themselves, and be networking groups.
So, Jason, take it away.
Jason
Good to talk to you.
And so, it’s funny, because we just met a week ago, sort of in more detail, and we were going back and forth, describing, who is our ideal client.
And after doing this, for 16 years, on the marketing side, my partner and I realized that most of our clients, whether they own a business, or they’re a lawyer, they value their time at $300, or more per hour, or some even up to $1200 bucks an hour.
And when we discussed this, you just started laughing because you’re like, yes, that’s what I talk about all the time “buying back your time.”
And so Nermin, I can tell by your intro, you’ve got this down.
That you probably go thru this mantra at least every few days with someone else who’s trying to understand, why are you a different consultant that other consultants.
And you’re like, because I understand what you’re going through as a mature lawyer, not a newbie, and, and as your billing rates start climbing from $100, to $200, to $300, to $400 an hour.
You have to change your mentality, because just as your work is getting better, and your output is better, the demands on you are much, much more so people have tended to come to us also, as mature lawyers.
When I started in my thirties, not the same as being over 50 now, in terms of what we can provide.
And our team has grown.
We’ve got 15 people on the team now doing all sorts of things.
And so, I distill it into a few things:
- We create websites, that’s sort of the easy one, so we build it in WordPress, We design it.
We have low and high-end sites, depending on a solo lawyer, or a larger law firm, or business, or whatever.
If they decide the rankings matter, then we have a conversation and talk about, well, what type of rankings do you want?
- Do you want rankings that are going to produce leads?
- Or do you want reputational rankings that you can walk into a meeting and say, I’ve got this good housekeeping seal of approval that I’m a top ranked firm?
So one of them is reputational and one is leads.
Once we determine the types of rankings they want, then we have to embed into the websites, the keyword research, the content, the algorithmic stuff, like header, tags, and meta tags, and descriptions of images, All that kind of technical stuff makes sure the pages load really fast.
So we can satisfy something called Core Web Vitals from Google.
So a lot of that stuff.
Let me share a quick aside.
I grew up in a in a family jewelry business.
I used to ride my bike at 10 years old after school to clean the store and close up.
They’d give me a quarter, and I’d go buy a piece of toast at the cafe downstairs.
So in that process of growing up in that business, I learned about the diamond business.
And they talked a lot about the four C’s in diamonds like color, and clarity.
So we came up with 4 C’s for search engine marketing.
And so, we say, well,
- you need content.
- You need coding.
- You need community, which is another way of saying, well, who are the sites that are linking to your website?
So, can we get lawyers, links from other lawyers, from directories, From bloggers that talk about their area of law, OK, and powerful sites like newspapers and things like that.
So, that’s what we call community because Google wants to see who is in your community
The 4th C – which is where the secret sauce really happens – is something called correlation.
And what that is, is you say, Hey, look, I’ve done all those three things I’ve showed up to the prom.
But I’m not the one that is getting the crown on my head.
And so correlation is comparing you and your website for one specific term to other pages that are being ranked – because there’s potentially 3000 variables – and figuring out what needs to be tweaked to beat other ranked pages.
So I feel like I’m talking a lot.
But the idea really is to come to a company like ours, because you value what your hour of input could do versus an hour from our team.
We figured out a metric that says, if you’re a lawyer and you’re billing $300 an hour, hiring us is worth $1200 an hour of your time because we’re going to do it twice as fast as you and twice as good, So your $300 of time is really going to cost you $1200.
Literally spending a few thousand dollars a month with us would take you 10, 15 hours of your time and it won’t be as good either.
So it isn’t worth it anymore for a mature lawyer to do what we do.
Nermin Jasani
I want to highlight a couple of real quick things that you said.
Number one, the reason why, I think working with a company like Jason’s is fantastic is because they do everything.
So oftentimes, I will see lawyers who have, like, seven different people, who they will go to one person to do their website.
One person who’s doing their social media.
One person who’s, you know, doing their SEO and whatever else, you know, pay per click.
So many different people.
Instead, they could all just come to you once a month, and be, like, all right, Jason, how are things working once a month?
Right?
You don’t have to have four separate phone calls with four separate people.
Where no one’s talking to each other?
Here, Everything is with you.
And so you’re that were where the buck stops, right?
Everything comes through you, and there’s just one point of context.
And when I talk about convenience and buying back your time, this is why, you know, it’s recommended to work with companies like yours and to work with you, Jason’s specifically, because it’s one stop shop.
Jason ciment
Nermin, Let’s talk about you for a second because you represent something that lawyers a lot of lawyers are Hesitant to admit which is they don’t really know how to be A Business person lawyer, right?
They’re good at law.
Maybe they even did good at law school.
And even got onto the law journal.
I went to law school, I can relate to these things.
But you don’t learn how to be a lawyer, even in law school, let alone, how to promote a law practice.
Especially when someone’s working for 10 years, and the biggest sentence we ever hear, as I get all my business from referrals, I don’t need search engine rankings.
And they don’t realize, yes, no one’s looking for you, because they’re not gonna find you.
You never invested So of course, you’re only getting referral business, but there’s all these other channels of business that are available, and how do you break through the ice of ego to the lawyers, to let them know after 10 years what they are missing?
They’re making money so who are you to tell them what they know, what they should know?
What do you do?
Nermin Jasani
Yeah, that’s such a great question.
So obviously, if, for the lawyers who are listening to this, none of them have an ego, right?
We’re just we’re talking about other lawyers.
Oftentimes You know, the biggest thing is That I say to my client is like, you can’t fly by the seat of your pants anymore, You’re not guaranteed that referral, You’re not guaranteed.
We also discuss their billing rate. You know this should be your rate, right?
Like, we have to figure out what your prices are going to be strategically.
Not based on, Oh, well, I’ve been in practice for five years and the other guy charges $500.
I’m going to charge $400.
That’s a strategy that’s like just, you know, swimming to the bottom.
Like, it might have worked for you when you first started your practice, but you’re not a newbie anymore, you’re more established business owner, and so it’s OK for you to charge more premium rates at this point, and they do, and that is what makes you competitive, right.
There is a perceived value if you’re an attorney who has 10 years of experience near still charging $300 an hour.
Well, must not be that good, but then you go to the person who has $600 an hour, or whose charging that amount much more than you are, and all of a sudden, there’s perceived value.
It’s the Toyota versus the Maserati right?
Like, you know what you’re getting with the Toyota – they’re both going to get to the same place, but there’s the perceived value that comes with it.
And, oftentimes, for more mature attorneys, more experienced attorneys, It’s time to start selling your brand as a Maserati and not as the Toyota, right.
So you’ve got to graduate yourself, and you’ve really got to understand that you need to have a strategy in place to really come off that way.
It can’t just be that you’re charging these prices.
You then have to have a website that looks like you deserve to charge these prices, not a website from 1982.
Jason
Yeah, it’s Funny is that I I’ve never heard the Toyota Maserati example, because I always talk about the Toyota and the low-cost Yugo.
But you’re going on the other side of the equation, which I really like.
If your rates get to this higher Level, then you need a Maserati service out there supporting your brand.
You can’t go to the local gas station or the local mechanic.
You gotta go to the higher level of service,
And, of course it sucks because it costs more money – but it has to be done.
I had a friend that owned a Bentley that he bought – a beautiful cobalt blue Bentley – for 50 grand which was worth a lot more money but any scratch, $1500 to fix that.
Nermin Jasani
It’s the Price Tag for owning a Bentley.
Jason ciment
If you’re going to present yourself as a Maserati, then you got to do the entire structure.
You can’t fake it.
Exactly.
You can’t have a Maserati with a Toyota engine right?
Like, that’s not gonna work, you’re gonna have to make sure that everything on the inside and outside matches, and that includes, will you hire who your team is, where your office is, even if you don’t have an office, If you choose to work remote, right, what your website is, how people find you, what people say about you.
All of that has to look like a Maserati, and we’ve got it presented that way, because it’s the only way you’re really going to be able to attract and work with people who are willing to pay $600, $700 an hour, right?
No one’s gonna be like, oh, yes, please take $600 right here.
You know, you’ve gotta give them a reason why.
And that reason does start with your web presence.
Jason ciment
Got one last question, then, short, which is, so if you’re talking to an attorney and you’ve got them listening to you, about getting back their time and you’ve got your 90-day plan to get them turned around, if you will.
What’s a teaser that you can talk about to get someone interested to call you?
Yeah, so, the one thing I always say is, let’s get on a call, right?
Let’s have an interview.
Let’s see if this is gonna work for you, let’s grab it, right?
It doesn’t cost you anything.
It doesn’t cost me anything, let’s have a conversation, because, I can tell you that there are things in that very short conversation, that you will end up saying, “oh, I never thought of that.”
And it’s easy to say, yes, I never thought of that.
But then, it’s different to then implement it- so we can have that call.
And then we can start implementing things, Because that’s really, what this is about, is all about the execution.
So, even in that exploratory call, they’re gonna walk out with value.
It’s legit.
Jason Ciment
Every service company wants that first call, and they pay a lot of money to get that lead.
We’re talking to someone now who is paying $800 per lead.
That’s their cost to get each appointment.
It’s too much money.
It’s not my client yet and we’re talking to them about how to reduce that cost, so it’s, it’s a legit thing what you’re saying, OK?
So the takeaways are, for a lawyer, who sees and get back to your time, lived in …
Lifestyle, completely.
Don’t be an impostor.
To use the nice woke term these days, right?
And make a call with you to learn the high-end strategy and then for me to be that that deployment system and Together, We can help them grow their practices.
Nermin Jasani
Keeping Lawyers happy, That’s our vision.
