Spill The Ink

What do we all do before making a decision? Research. Market research enables architecture, engineering and construction firms to make strategic decisions about their business. Firms can use the information for diverse purposes, including to plan for the future, create buy-in, break into a new market and identify missed opportunities in their current markets. How do you know you’re doing “good” research? How should you incorporate your findings into your marketing strategy? Michelle invites Sarah Kinard to weigh in on the conversation in this episode of “Spill the Ink.” Sarah is the owner of The Flamingo Project, a market research and strategy consultancy for AEC firms. They discuss how firms can use market research to their advantage, common pitfalls to avoid, considerations before kickstarting a research project, and more. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Who is Sarah Kinard and what is The Flamingo Project What market research is and how to get started Why AEC firms commonly engage market research firms How market research supports growth strategies and decision-making  How market research information supports content development How to tell the difference between “good” and “bad” information What to know before engaging a market research firm  About our featured guest Sarah Kinard is a strategic visionary with over 20 years of experience in professional services firm strategy, marketing and implementation. She is known as a change agent and is frequently hired by firms to create a strategy rooted in research, business practice and scale, resulting in their unique growth plan. Her career has taken her from a well-regarded regional firm, to a national K-12 firm to begin a higher education practice that went global, to a global interior architecture firm focused on hospitality. Her experience and understanding of differing markets, project types and growth strategies bring thoughtful, tailored research to her clients. She is constantly curious and able to weave together market data and trends in insightful and actionable ways. Sarah's curiosity, fail-forward/fail-fast approach and desire to have fun in everything she does are the hallmarks of how she “does it differently.” Sarah serves the AEC industry as a Trustee for the SMPS Foundation, as past president for the SMPS North Texas Chapter, and recently received the Hall of Fame award from SMPS North Texas. She partners with many business consulting agencies in the industry, including Zweig Group, Go Strategies and Elevate Marketing Advisors. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out The Flamingo Project Follow The Flamingo Project on LinkedIn Connect with Sarah Kinard on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah Kinard: I tell people that information is your compass. That's what market research gives you, information to make decisions. [music] [00:00:11]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:28] Michelle Calcote King: Hey everyone, I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for architecture, engineering and construction firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com. Today we're going to talk about market research. Market research is often the compass that leads successful marketing campaigns, but what is the key to conducting good research and how can it help architecture, engineering and construction firms empower their marketing initiatives, chase growth opportunities and achieve success? Today I'm excited to welcome Sarah Kinard to talk about the topic. Sarah's the owner of The Flamingo Project. In addition to having a very cool company name, The Flamingo Project is a market research and strategy consultancy designed to grow existing AEC firms and launch new businesses. Sarah currently serves as a trustee on the Society for Marketing Professional Services Foundation and is a past president of that organization's Dallas Group. Thanks for joining me today, Sarah. [00:01:37] Sarah: Thanks. [00:01:38] Michelle: I'm excited. One, give me a little background about your career, why you created the Flamingo Project, and I always tell people not to double-barrel questions, but I'm going to do it. Tell me about how you came up with a name. [00:01:50] Sarah: That's okay. It's a good question. I'm a marketer at heart and when I figured out that that was my calling, I was at a small liberal arts college and they didn't have a marketing degree. They had traditional business, communication arts, those sorts of degrees. I went to the Board of Regents and created an interdisciplinary degree. So, apparently, I've always been an entrepreneur and I didn't know it.  [00:02:16] Michelle: Very cool. [00:02:17] Sarah: Marketing, communicating an idea has always been something that has fascinated me. I was the little kid loving commercials. Of course, like so many of us, I didn't find myself at a product. I found myself at a service, which is a different thing. My first full-time career job was at an architecture firm that designs everything but hospitals and jails. That's really where I learned the craft of architecture, fell in love with the industry and specifically, urban planning and how the profession can shape communities and cities for the better. Sometimes they’re not always for the better.  Once I had the industry jargon under my belt and understood how projects came to fruition, how you win projects, I joined a firm who hired me to work with a principal to establish a new practice. It was a firm that had a 60-year-old history of doing K-12 work only, and they wanted to get into higher ed. 100-year buildings are a different thing than K-12 buildings. That's really where I found that research was at the core of how I was going to make it work; understanding the differences in the markets, what was needed, how to identify projects, obviously, competition, differentiators, you name it. That's really where I found market research as such a core to who I am and how I operate. From there, I went national with the firm with higher ed. After that, it was what's the growth strategy beyond this for the firm? Acquisition was clearly the right path for them, but not for me. I decided to move on to a global firm. It was actually global. A lot of the times we talk about how it's a global firm, but do you actually have a global role? I had people in Shanghai, Singapore, all over the US, London, Paris, Dubai reporting to me. [00:04:09] Michelle: Very cool. [00:04:10] Sarah: I say the time zones were brutal, the travel was amazing. It was time to stop doing that.  [00:04:19] Michelle: I know travel is very sexy until you start doing it regularly for work. [00:04:25] Sarah: Exactly. From there, I was trying to discern what was next and I got to speak with fantastic firms out there who wanted me to help them to grow. I realized I wanted to help a lot of firms grow and that was when I decided that my next step was not for me to go into another firm.  One of the things that research gives you is the understanding of the market, of differentiation, of how you need to look differently, and what stands out from the flock? A flamingo. [00:04:59] Michelle: Love it. That's cool. I love that. I'm just curious because I know how long it took me to come up with my own company name. Did you know it? Did you have it in your heart? Or did it come from a painstaking process of a million names and coming down to that one? [00:05:18] Sarah: It's going to sound little nuts, but when I was having the revelation that this is what I needed to do I was sitting at our family lake house alone, which at that time never happened. We would all be there at the same time. My mother-in-law was obsessed with flamingos and there was a flamingo staring at me on the mantle. [00:05:39] Michelle: That's funny. I love that. [00:05:41] Sarah: The flamingo made me do it, is the other thing I like to say. [00:05:45] Michelle: I love it. I think it's great. [00:05:47] Sarah: It just also worked out. [00:05:49] Michelle: Let's talk about market research and AEC firms because this is an industry that is not known for being the most forward-thinking and progressive. Tell me about the kinds of market research that you do in AEC. [00:06:04] Sarah: I've really spent a lot of time trying to help firms boil this down because it is a little alien to them. They don't know what they're looking for, they don't know what to ask for.  I like to say, basically, there's different purposes for market research and understanding what the purpose is. Is it a growth initiative for your firm? A growth initiative could look anything like a new sector, a new service, a new region. Is it to really understand your brand position? Is it to understand where you can do more strategic promotion, is what I like to say, whether it's PR or conferences, any of that. Is it competitor profiling? Really understanding where you sit with your competition. Content development. What do we need to be talking about? Then going back to growth sector and geography forecasts. Are we in the right sectors and the right geographies for our services right now? Are they changing dramatically? I also refer to it as a health check, understanding where it is. And pursuit specific, of course. We're real accustomed to anything once we get an RFQ RFP in our hands for research. Where did that come from, who's our competition, what are our differentiators there? We're good once we get to pursuits specific, usually it's pulling back from that. I'd like to say that those are usually the purposes and sometimes that can be in tandem with a strategic plan. Sometimes it can be because you lost something you didn't expect to lose. There can be reasons to give energy to the idea of market research, but those are the common purposes. [00:07:54] Michelle: Do you see that AEC firms only do market research as a one-off? Have you worked with some firms that are really starting to incorporate it as something that they do day in, day out, it's a regular part of how they operate? Are you seeing that shift? [00:08:09] Sarah: I am seeing that shift. It's very exciting and I really believe that it is indicative of the transition of leadership to the next generation.  One of the big differences between, let's say the boomer generation that has owned firms for a long time and done amazing owning the firms, but also benefited from really long-term expansion of markets. Yes, there were downturns in there, don't get me wrong. There were downturns, but they were all fairly typical. There was a cause and so there was a response. It was less multifaceted than the world that we are in today.  That is also a generation that started a firm, grew it locally, regionally, and maybe beyond, and could do that very well through relationships and not necessarily through market information. The generation that's taking over in leadership now, whether they're Gen X or millennials, are more accustomed to having access to information to make decisions, period. It's how they operate. It's very exciting to me when I get these phone calls where somebody says, "I've just been moved into a director of strategy role for the firm, and so I'm responsible for looking at potential growth opportunities, but I don't know how to do that. Can you help mentor me in how to do that?" Which it's thrilling to me. It's thrilling that firms are saying, "How can we make sure that this firm stays really viable for our employees, for our clients, for the communities we're serving?" It's very exciting. [00:10:03] Michelle: Yes, I bet. It's really rewarding when something you've been telling clients forever that, "This is a good thing, this is important," and then they start to implement it and ask for it without you having to struggle and push them toward it, I know that feeling.  We do a lot of content for AEC firms. Tell me about the work that you're doing to help fuel content. I'd love to hear more about that. What research are you doing and then, tell me about the output. [00:10:31] Sarah: What I'm doing is very different from what you are doing. I am saying very much, at the high level, strategic, "This is where we want to go with our vision. This is where we want to be in 3–5 years. What are the influences on our industry that we need to be talking about? What are the things we're trying in terms of new markets to capture? How do we need to be talking about that in the future so that it will resonate with where we're going?" It's much more at the company vision level and response to influencers and drivers in the marketplace. I do not do SEO evaluations and those kinds of things. It's more around, "This is where we want to be in the future." I have a client who says that what they like about working with me is we lift the gaze towards the future in everything that we do so that we don't, in the busy times — which we all know, are frequent — get stuck looking down at the piece of paper to get the work done and then look up later and say we missed. I'm really focused on, "What are the economic impacts that we're going to be seeing? What are the drivers of the market that are changing? Really, what are the things that our clients even need to be thinking about?" [00:11:57] Michelle: Yes. We live in this information age, we're in the heyday, right now, of ChatGPT and all this, how do you help clients tell the difference between good and bad information? How do you help them sort through that? [00:12:11] Sarah: I just love this question. [00:12:13] Sarah: My husband and I actually talked about this question last night as we were talking about our days today. I think that just in terms of me and where I sit, generationally, I couldn't refer to anything on the internet in a research paper in college. [00:12:32] Michelle: Right, I know. Same generation.  [00:12:36] Sarah: That was all very voodoo. LexisNexis is where you went for your information. It was already this canon of information that was, "This is the real deal." The World Book Britannica was the real deal. Today, yes, what is good and bad information? I like to tell people that, yes, there is definitely bad information out there, but really looking at it and saying, "Who is this coming from? What is their point of view?"  For example, people will call me to look at transportation for them. Transportation is, of course, a broad market. One of my favorite resources is ARTBA, but ARTBA, it leans towards things that are impacting labor for truck drivers. I just need to know that when I am referencing it. Really, what the clients want to understand is, for the trucking industry, how EV is going to be impacting construction, durations of rides, all those sorts of things. That's what we care about. Yes, we care about the labor too, because without them there to work, it impacts our industry for sure. Understanding the bias that certain things come with that are good bias, somebody else needs that bias. I don't need that bias. They have a lot of other very helpful and good information. I like to say go to organizations and associations, but every one of them has a point of view. Every one of them has a point of view, something that they're advocating for. Make sure you understand what it is they're advocating for so that when you're reading, and you're researching, you understand the bias that's there. [00:14:23] Michelle: Yes, it's like how I prep clients for media interviews. The journalist has a story they want to tell. Figure out what angle they're coming at, to begin with. We all want every media interview to start with a very— We don't play in the real politicized world of media, but there's still a story they're trying to get. They're still trying to fill a hole in an editorial calendar. You've got to go into it understanding that before you conduct the interview and make sure that you're operating from that. That's a great point. [00:14:58] Sarah: You can have a source that is a good source, but it becomes a bad source for you because you don't understand their point of view. [00:15:08] Michelle: That makes sense. If you're a marketing director at an AEC firm, and you're like, "We've really never conducted research, and I feel like we should," what would be a good start for somebody who's like, "We just need to get more direction to our marketing strategy"? Where would they start to integrate research into that? [00:15:30] Sarah: I believe that a marketing strategy is a response to where you are and where you want to go as a company. When the purpose of research is about the company strategy, the marketing strategy has to help move the needle there. When you want to inform your marketing strategy, you're uncovering where you need to use different messages to differentiate to meet your market and stand out from the flock, as I say. It's a response to that company vision and understanding what that means in terms of where we're trying to go and not just the words and the vision. Is it a growth initiative? Is it going deeper within an existing market? That's what we're trying to do usually with our work, is lay the groundwork for that to be done.  Going back to the purposes, the common purposes is that you guys want to be, from a competitive standpoint, winning at SEO. Then it's content, and so it is understanding what content is needed. Is it that you want, in a specific market, to be more well-known? Strategic promotion may be what you really need to be focusing on. It's almost do a swat to say, "What is it that we need to shore up right now?" That's a good starting place. Really, the marketing strategy is a response to where you are and where the company wants to go. [00:16:59] Michelle: I'm jumping around a little bit here, but I find—because we work exclusively with professional services firms, positioning is a real interesting thing for professional services firms. Like you said, most of the previous generation, their positioning was their geography. It was where they were based. They're a South Carolina firm and that was it. There was no other thought around positioning beyond geography. Are you finding that more firms are really starting to think more strategically and globally around their positioning? [00:17:34] Sarah: Yes, I think that the firms who have expanded their footprints beyond, let's call it, four or five geographies, have to find their voice and their point of view. Whether they plan to expand beyond where they are right now at all, they have to have a point of view. You look at large architecture firms and engineering firms that have been around for a long time, and you call XYZ Engineering Firm when you are going to do something really complicated. That's their brand. They haven't had to open additional offices in places because their expertise is sought after. Their point of view as well is sought after. As well as certain architecture firms, they've got specific expertise in certain areas. That's one model is the whole, "I've got a point of view, people will want me to come.” And then others that just want to expand geographically across the United States for various reasons. It could be driven by their clients and their clients being in those places. It could be because they're wanting to be more differentiated for resilience. [00:18:49] Michelle: That makes sense. That's great. Tell me, what do you wish firms knew before engaging a market research firm? [00:18:57] Sarah: That is such a great question and a little bit of a complicated question because this is such a new thing for so many firms. I think what I wish they knew is when they're hiring a firm, it is for you. This is not a report you're buying off of a shelf. This is for you. That's where I spend a lot of time helping them to refine what the purpose is and how they're going to use it. A great example of that is if this is something that is part of a strategic plan initiative where they're going in, and they're saying, "We want to understand what's going on nationally in the market when we're doing our strategic planning to determine some potential growth areas for ourselves,” that's one purpose. Or during the strategic—because people always ask me, do we do it before or do we do it after? Both, it doesn't matter. You can decide you want to grow, you want to differentiate and then do the research to decide which direction. [00:20:03] Michelle: Right, yes. [00:20:04] Sarah: Or you can do it at the front end either way. If it's for that, they're not necessarily looking for in every single market, all of the competition by volume, by this, by that. They're trying to understand what's the opportunity, what's the scale of that opportunity and how crowded is it? Those are some of the questions that we're going to want to answer. Then we stop because they're using it to make a determination of do we want to go further.  You decide you want to go further, you want to investigate — and this is an example, for one of my clients — want to investigate K-12 in this state because you want to grow further in the state. Guess what? One of the deliverables is a spreadsheet of all of the past bond elections, all of the firms that did the work from those bond elections, their voting history, all the things you need to make a decision of, is this a good one for us to go look at? Is this a large district that tends to break up projects into $10 million projects instead of a district that either awards at all to one firm and has awarded it to the same firm for the last four bond cycles? These are the kinds of things. It's both a understanding the health of the market, where population growth is forecasted, all those kinds of things but there's a spreadsheet so that their BD teams, their seller-doer teams can go in and say, "If I'm looking at this district, what's the story?" How are you going to use it? is a really important question. Especially in the engineering world, because they're engineers, they want to get down to all of that nitty gritty. I say, we can do that, but I don't know that you're going to use it to make the decisions you need to make based on the purpose you told me. [00:21:59] Michelle: Right, just helping them come back and remind themselves of what they're doing. [00:22:03] Sarah: Exactly. Purpose and how you're going to use it. [00:22:05] Michelle: Yes. I always like to ask this, if, let's say, somebody didn't have time to listen to this conversation, what's the most important lesson you hope someone would come away from about market research in the AEC industry? [00:22:19] Sarah: I tell people that information is your compass. That's what market research gives you is information to make decisions. My definition of market research is an answer to a question that informs action with a defendable why. If I break that down, market research is asking a bunch of questions and going to find the answers, which then helps you determine, "Are we going to go do that or not do that?" Because you have done that based in information, you have a defendable why over and over again. To me, information is your compass. Market research can give you the information that you need and it doesn't have to be hard either. [00:23:02] Michelle: Yes. Thank you so much.  We've been talking to Sarah Kinard of The Flamingo Project. If somebody wants to learn more, maybe has a market research project they've been pondering, what's the best way for them to connect with you? [00:23:15] Sarah: theflamingoproject.com is my website. I have a number of articles and worksheets and things like that on my site for market research to help get you going, to get your brain oriented into market research. I am always up for a conversation of how to break it down, make it easier and simplify it so that you guys can get started. [00:23:40] Michelle: Wonderful. Thank you so much. [music] [00:23:42] Sarah: Thank you. [music] [00:23:44] Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.

Virtual meetings and remote work are the new norm of the professional landscape — yes, even for law firms. As the industry evolves, so should our communication skills.  Michelle invites Marsha Redmon, a legal communications and business development consultant, to share advice on how legal professionals can improve their engagement when presenting and pitching to remote and hybrid audiences.  They discuss best practices for communicating in different scenarios, common mistakes lawyers make, how to project confidence and credibility, and more. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Who is Marsha Redmon and what is Marsha Redmon Communications The challenges lawyers face with virtual communication How to engage audiences in remote and hybrid settings Common mistakes attorneys make when setting up their video Advice for setting up your remote video to enhance credibility What technology and equipment are worth investing in How to train and mentor employees remotely Best practices for holding difficult conversations virtually Best practices for presenting to C-suite executives Projecting confidence and authority as a woman About our featured guest Elite law firms and lawyers have gone to Marsha Redmon for 20+ years to learn how to have a more powerful presence when they speak. During COVID, she became the go-to expert teaching professionals worldwide how to fix their virtual presence so they can speak with confidence and engage powerfully — to win clients, have impact and own their niche. Marsha is a former practicing attorney and award-winning TV journalist. The through-line in her varied career is, “There must be a better, faster way to do this.” Her workshops teach lawyers and executives the speaking skills and a fast messaging process they need for effective thought leadership in every scenario: speeches, panels, pitches, media interviews, client summits. Marsha practiced law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and was an award-winning consumer and investigative television reporter in major markets. She also taught business communications to MBA students at the University of Maryland. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Marsha Redmon Communications Follow Marsha Redmon Communications on LinkedIn and Twitter Connect with Marsha Redmon on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Download Marsha’s “5 Steps to Being a Powerful Virtual Presenter” checklist Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more, visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Marsha Redmon: Lawyers often aren't aware of their audience, and so they tend to talk over the heads of people when they're in person, and virtually, it's a lot easier to lose your audience. If you're not concise, if you're not focused, if you don't have energy, if you're not making eye contact, all of those things make it much easier for you to lose the attention and really lose the ability to connect virtually. [music] [00:00:27]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering, and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:44] Michelle Calcote King: Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink, that's ink with a K, .com.  Today, we're going to talk about all things remote work and virtual meetings. These are the norm in the post-COVID world. Although there've been some bumps along the way from learning how to unmute and mastering screen sharing, overall, it's allowed us to connect better regardless of our physical proximity. In this new world, it's really vital for lawyers and their firms to be able to connect with clients and their peers in a virtual setting. Doing so effectively requires a different set of skills compared to in-person communication, which is why this topic is so relevant today. We've got the expert in the legal industry on this topic to discuss this.  We're talking to Marsha Redmon. She's going to discuss best practices for navigating virtual communication in the legal industry. For 20 years, she's helped lawyers and other professionals improve their presentation skills. She's a former practicing attorney and also an award-winning television journalist. She's uniquely positioned to talk about this. Welcome to the show. [00:01:56] Marsha: Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here. I'm actually joining you from spring break in Fort Lauderdale. [00:02:01] Michelle: Love it. [00:02:01] Marsha: This is not my usual setup, but it'll do. [00:02:05] Michelle: Actually, I'm going to get into that later because I want to talk about, what are those things you've got to do when you're not in your usual setup. That lends perfectly to that.  Let's talk in general, let's set the stage. The whole world has had to really learn pretty fast how to operate in this remote world and communicate over Zoom and Teams, but what about lawyers in particular? Are there some unique challenges that you think lawyers have faced? [00:02:28] Marsha: I think so. The main reason is that lawyers often aren't aware of their audience, and so they tend to talk over the heads of people when they're in person, and virtually, it's a lot easier to lose your audience. If you're not concise, if you're not focused, if you don't have energy, if you're not making eye contact, all of those things make it much easier for you to lose the attention and really lose the ability to connect virtually. [00:02:56] Michelle: Do you see generational differences too? I was just having a conversation yesterday, especially in the law where older attorneys don't retire along the normal timeline that a lot of other industries do. Are you seeing real generational differences with this? [00:03:12] Marsha: I think so. For some folks, the technology itself is challenging. The need to really remake how you communicate. I think folks at either end of the generations may not believe that this is our world and that it's worth it and absolutely required to learn how to connect and communicate effectively as a lawyer over a camera. Whether it's virtual or hybrid, we have to learn these skills. I think there's a lot of resistance. A lot of folks still haven't realized that in the most important communication situations like pitching and CLEs for your clients, this is never going to go away because it's just too convenient. [00:03:53] Michelle: Yes, it really is. It's too convenient. It's going to morph, and we're going to see changes, but this kind of communication is going to continue. Absolutely.  Tell me about the workshops that you put on. What are some of the different things you're teaching in those workshops? [00:04:09] Marsha: Sure. As you mentioned, I've had this business coming up on 24 years next month. I started out doing media training, so, teaching lawyers how to talk to the press, whether it's broadcast or print. Very quickly, I expanded it to include all communication skills that impact lawyers, so, all the ranging from presentation skills to pitching, to how to talk about your practice. Both the core communication skills as well as thought leadership-specific communication skills. Of course, as you mentioned, once the pandemic started, it was 100% about virtual communication. Now that the pandemic is over, I am spending a lot of time teaching hybrid communication, so, talking about how to connect when you have people in the room, as well as people who are virtual. [00:04:58] Michelle: Oh, fascinating. [00:04:59] Marsha: Yes. The sad thing is that hybrid is harder than virtual. [00:05:05] Michelle: Oh, yes. [00:05:09] Marsha: Because we're dealing with two audiences at once. If you're the speaker and you happen to be in a room with people, we tend to forget about the people who are joining virtually, and so it's offensive and we miss out on some large portion of our audience. [00:05:26] Michelle: Interesting. I just heard about a thing called an Owl. Have you heard of this? That you could put into a room, and it follows whoever the speaker is. I haven't bought one yet. I've just looked at it, but it'll follow the speaker for that particular reason, that people who are hybrid, who are remote, but everyone else is in-person, are really left behind in those conversations. [00:05:51] Marsha: It's challenging. It's challenging at law firms. A lot of law firms use different platforms, and so it's hard, or they change platforms. I do a lot of work at a very large government agency that has a lot of lawyers and accountants, and they have traditionally used the one we all hate. That one. [00:06:10] Michelle: Teams. [00:06:10] Marsha: Now they've added a second one, so all of those people are now having to master both. [00:06:19] Michelle: We become creatures of habits with our tech platforms. Once we're comfortable with one, it's hard to switch over to another. That's fascinating. I'd like to hear more about that hybrid training. What are some other things you are training your clients to do in those hybrid situations? [00:06:36] Marsha: The challenges with hybrid, the first one is tech, so, figuring out. It sounds like this Owl thing is probably a voice-activated camera, and so, understanding, in all the conference rooms that you might work in, how do things work? Voice-activated cameras can be a problem if you have a main speaker, but other people have ice, or they're opening a chip bag or something else. You can have the camera turn away from the main speaker. Sometimes the microphones are voice-activated, so you may get a lot of background noise that's very distracting to the remote audience in particular. That's the first thing, attack.  The second thing is making sure that you have procedures in place to do everything possible so that the remote audience is brought into the room and is given all respect, and that you're showing a true commitment to making sure their voices are heard. My best piece of advice around that is to have a person in the in-person room whose job it is to be the voice of the remote attendees so that they're monitoring the chat. They're getting questions, and they're literally speaking up and saying, "We have two questions from the Chicago office. First question is this, second question is that," so that we have that handled. Another thing I would recommend, if you have a panel or several speakers, make sure some of the speakers are remote because that brings a kind of parody so that we're showing the people in-person aren't the important people, but we're spreading the attention. [00:08:06] Michelle: Interesting. Let's talk about, you're in your office, you're doing a Zoom or a Teams meeting. What are some basics that you see a lot of lawyers get wrong? [00:08:17] Marsha: Now that we're back in our office, we're starting all over. Most of us by now have figured out, how can I show up well as a talking head. Talking head video means this. I have a little bit of headroom. I'm in the middle. You can read my expression. I come across as a professional. Most of us have figured that out at home. Now that we're back in the office, almost without exception, everyone is backlit. Whatever blinds they have behind them, typically, they're facing the door and the windows behind them, and so their audience can't read their expression because there's so much light behind them. We all need to spin away from the light or get a better blind, or drape, or something because the bottom line is we judge each other over the camera the same way that we would if we were in-person, and so our audience needs to be able to read our expression. For me, I'm a little dark today because I'm doing this from a hotel room and the beach is out there. There's a lot of sun coming in on the side. Ideally, I would look more like you. I would have nice light on my face, I would have color in my face, but we need to work all that out in the office because we don't have credibility with our audience if they can't read our expression, if they can't see our eyes. We've got to work these things out.  On the flip side, if we do it well, then the audience, even if we're communicating one to 100, every person on the other end feels like we're having a one-on-one conversation because we're showing up like a talking head, which also brings with it a lot of perception of expertise, a perception of knowledge because we've spent all of our lives seeing experts and heads of state looking like this, right? [00:10:05] Michelle: Right. [00:10:06] Marsha: Talking head video. We can borrow that credibility if we go ahead and work out the lighting, the framing, those things. [00:10:15] Michelle: Interesting. Lighting, how you position your face in front of the camera. What about backgrounds? What are your suggestions there? [00:10:23] Marsha: My goal with the background is to have it be not distracting. [00:10:27] Michelle: Mine is probably a little distracting. [00:10:30] Marsha: The good thing is you have fun stuff in the back, which is just showing expertise because I'm sure those framed things are awards and things like that. [00:10:37] Michelle: Right, yes. [00:10:38] Marsha: I can tell that from a distance, and lawyers resonate with that. The good news is you have a lot of distance between your back and the things behind you. They don't distract me. I don't have the urge to lean in and try to read what they say because you have enough distance. [00:10:55] Michelle: Okay, interesting. [00:10:55] Marsha: Yes. The goal is to not be distracting. Here we have a couple of things. Nothing really worth watching, but a little bit of color, which is helpful. If you have a lot of stuff going on behind you, you just want to try to get some distance. If you happen to be on Zoom, you can always do Blur My Background, and that's very effective. I personally do not like virtual backgrounds. [00:11:17] Michelle: I was going to ask, that was my next question. [00:11:19] Marsha: They tend not to work that well. As the lawyer leans slightly here and there, some big headrest on their chair suddenly looms over them or their ear disappears. If you have hair, I saw a woman once do a pitch with a bun on the top of her head, and as she slightly moved forward and back, the bun would disappear and reappear. It was super distracting and not at all professional. [00:11:45] Michelle: If they have some worries about what's in background, you would recommend just doing the blur versus choosing a background. Okay. [00:11:52] Marsha: Yes, unless they've tested it, and it works really well. The thing about the virtual backgrounds is you really need to light your wall. Who has time for that? It's better to just blur. [00:12:04] Michelle: Interesting. What about technology? Obviously, I podcast, so I've got my fancy microphone, I've got a really nice camera. Are there some basics that you recommend everyone have right now, or are there things we can do without having to get a whole new setup? [00:12:23] Marsha: I think it's good to have a decent camera. The camera can really make a difference. That's why I'm so white today. This is the camera that I just keep in my bag all the time. The camera can really make a difference. If you're in a situation in your office or your home, wherever you do a lot of getting on Zoom or some other platform, it's good to handle background noise. If you know there can be a lot of noise if you're in a big city and you hear a lot of ambulances and things that are loud, I would suggest using a noise-canceling headset. One that covers both of your ears and have the noise canceling microphone because that will keep your audience from being distracted by the noise in your environment, and for you as a speaker, as a communicator, having both of your ears covered means you don't get distracted by the noise in your environment. [00:13:14] Michelle: It's amazing, I think, how well noise-canceling microphones perform. I work from a home office, and I have two dogs. I have been recording before and just heard mayhem going on, barking happening outside my door. I've learned that, really, it doesn't translate over the microphone. I used to stop recording and go back and listen, and they actually do a really effective job. Once you learn that, you calm down a little bit more about outside noises and that kind of thing. [00:13:46] Marsha: Yes, absolutely. For the last three years during the pandemic, I did all of my workshops virtually until the last six months. The yard guys would come, and they'd be six feet outside my window, and I'd be doing a workshop for 150 people. No one heard a thing, and I kept talking, which is important.  [00:14:07] Michelle: I had that happen. I was doing a speech to an industry group of, it was probably 100 people on it, and I was actually at my sister's house in South Florida. Her yard crew came, and right outside the window. As soon as I started talking, and I didn't have my noise-canceling microphone, I'm sure you can relate, it was panic-inducing. [00:14:31] Marsha: Oh, yes. Plus you completely forget what you were saying. [00:14:36] Michelle: Yes, you just blank. What about eye contact? I saw you wrote about some of that on your website. How do you make eye contact in a virtual setting? [00:14:46] Marsha: That's the most important thing because if you're looking down here at your notes, or you're looking down here at the video of the people you're talking to, it seems as though you can't meet the eye of your audience or you don't respect them, or you just don't know what you're doing. The bottom line is you have to look at the camera. I like to do a couple of things to help you cheat and make it easier. What I do is I'll take the Zoom window or the Teams window, and I'll squeeze it up so it's smaller. I'll push it right under the webcam, and I'll get about, as you can see, I'm a little more than an arm's length away from the camera, and so I can look at that video box right under the webcam, and it still looks like I'm looking at the camera. [00:15:27] Michelle: Ah, smart. Interesting. [00:15:29] Marsha: Yes, that makes a huge difference. The second thing is, for a lot of us, we have slides, we have bullets. I recommend that you squeeze that up and put that right under the webcam as well. Don't let those slides go full screen. You want to squeeze them up and put them under the webcam. [00:15:44] Michelle: Got it. The other thing I noticed when I first started doing these podcasts and doing them on video, actually, my producer of the podcast said, "You've got to lower your camera." I was doing the classic, it was up here, and I had never thought to bring it down here. She sent me the exact how. Once we did that, I thought, "Oh my gosh, that made such a difference." I would've never thought of it. [00:16:13] Marsha: Yes, it's easier. Truth be told, the ideal position for your camera is right at eye level. [00:16:20] Michelle: Right, at eye level. [00:16:20] Marsha: From today, my camera should be right here. [00:16:24] Michelle: Got you. [00:16:25] Marsha: There are no books in this hotel room, so I couldn't get it up. To your point, it's easier to make eye contact when the camera is level than when it is too high or too low. As you showed a moment ago, when it's too high, it makes you look really small so you don't seem professional. You don't seem like a full adult because the camera is looking down on you, which now that many of us are back in the office and on Zoom in the law firm offices, that's the new problem. It used to be the camera was shooting up our nose, now it's too high because they've got webcams on top of giant monitors. [00:17:02] Michelle: Right, yes. [00:17:03] Marsha: They've got to find a way to lower the desk or put the camera maybe on a tripod in front of the screen. Some solution. [00:17:14] Michelle: Definitely. I had a client once that I felt like all I ever saw was the top of her head for that exact reason. It was a giant monitor and she had a camera stuck up there, and she couldn't change it. It's all these new things that we're having to figure out here. The other thing I thought was really fascinating on your website was talk about… What I hear from our law firm clients is the real reticence of firms with remote work or even hybrid work is training and mentoring young attorneys. I have a fully remote team. We've been remote since 2018. We had office space for many years, and then I took it remote in 2018. I've always mentored in a remote fashion. What are tips that you give your clients about how to do that, how to accomplish that? [00:17:59] Marsha: The thing I'm hearing from all the law firms I work with is that small breakout rooms are a really effective way to let people connect and talk and engage, and feel like they know each other. Even now that a lot of lawyers are back in the office, they're not back in the office every day. Some firms still have people that are 100% remote for whatever reason. To have those times with teams of people so that we connect and we talk about things, whether we're talking about work or we're talking about life and ourselves to connect, to do it in small groups. Two people, three people up to four people. Just to get that connection. Then if it's possible, to get together in person relatively often when everybody is there as much as possible. One of the government agencies I was talking about, they have a community day now. I think it's only once a quarter, but everybody has to come on the same exact day because otherwise, they're letting people choose which days to come in. [00:18:57] Michelle: That's great. I saw somewhere where you were teaching them how to make little videos, screen recordings. I thought that was so important, because myself as a boss, as you're working through the day, you think, "Ooh, I'd love for my entire team to know this." What I hear from lawyers is, "Oh, well we're missing that, just drop in the office or that hallway conversation." When they say that to me, I think, "Yes, but that can still be accomplished through technology." Are there ways that you help them do that? [00:19:26] Marsha: Yes, there are a number of screen recording options. I'd be happy to send you some links and stuff if you want to put it in the show. [00:19:31] Michelle: Let's put it on there, yes. [00:19:34] Marsha: That just make it really easy. That you can log in, and you can use it to connect. You can also use it to say stuff. You record it once, and then people can watch it when it's relevant to them or useful for them. Sometimes with time zones and stuff, it's hard to get everybody together all at once. With the benefit of screen sharing is they can see your face in a little bubble, but then you can show them stuff on the computer. You can walk through and say, "Hey, looking at this document," or, "Looking at this new piece of tech we want you to use," or, "Let me walk you through some changes to the website," or whatever it happens to be. You can make a little screen share video and they can see things as well as you. [00:20:12] Michelle: It is very very helpful. Lawyers, they deal in the world of contentious topics, what about difficult conversations over Zoom or Teams? [00:20:25] Marsha: I actually teach a workshop called “Difficult Conversations,” which, of course, is about messaging, really. It's about actually having the difficult conversation. The thing I know is that it's easiest to connect and read each other if the camera is on so that we can see each other and we can hear each other. A lot of our judgment of tone and emotion comes from the voice, but it also helps to see people. It varies from person to person, but certainly, if you're delivering bad news, we always used to say if you're delivering bad news or having a hard conversation, you want to do it in person. If you can't do it in person, I say do it over Zoom or Teams or Webex, whatever you have, so that you can see each other. [00:21:07] Michelle: Yes, that's super important. What about busy executives? Is there anything different about, say, lawyers are presenting to the C-suite? Is there anything unique about when communicating with that audience virtually? [00:21:22] Marsha: Yes. I call it the short attention span audience, or as I used to say about lawyers, some of them have the attention span of a gnat. Just because you're that person, too, doesn't mean you know how to present to those people yourself, as with lawyers many times. The main things are, get to the point right away. My focus on that is to flip the order of your communication. Most of us were taught the scientific method, proof, proof, proof, conclusion. I always recommended, conclusion— [00:21:50] Michelle: Conclusion first. Right, yes. [00:21:52] Marsha: My point, here are the two steps you'll need to take, here's the benefit to you if you decide to do as I recommend. [00:21:57] Michelle: That's your journalism training right there, yes. [00:21:58] Marsha: Absolutely, yes. [00:21:59] Michelle: An inverted pyramid. [00:22:01] Marsha: Yes, super structured. In fact, really everything I teach around communications, most of it comes from journalism. In addition to my five years at Big Law, it's all about, how do you structure a message, how do you get the attention of an audience, how do you keep the attention. It's all the stuff you and I learned in journalism. [00:22:20] Michelle: 100%. I love to hire former journalists because they come ready-made with all of these skills that are often difficult to teach. It translates so well. Honestly, obviously, as a PR firm, it translates for that. I think just in general nowadays, having good communication skills gets you so far in business. This is just another step forward in learning how to do that.  Tell me about women and female attorneys. What's unique about how we as women communicate? What are some things we specifically need to think about? [00:22:56] Marsha: I think it's beneficial for women to get together with women and to talk about the communication issues and how to project confidence and authority. There are some slightly different issues for women, and I just find we're more comfortable talking about these things together, not having any men in the room. This is a very popular workshop I do, powerful presence for women. It's specific to women, and I mention women-specific communication issues only there. I never do it in front of men because it's just better for all of us. The specific things are pitch, knowing if you have an issue with pitch. If your voice is too high, how to use the lower natural range of your pitch. High-pitch voices don't carry as much authority as we want. There are specific ways to deal with that. If you have the issue, you probably know it. For me, the most important thing around confidence and authority for women these days is to become concise. Most lawyers talk too much. All of the research tells us men talk more than women do, but the perception is that women talk more. The upside for women is when we become concise, when we say less, when we have a real structure to our message, it's very noticeable, and we get extra benefit from it. My number one thing I always teach to women are my messaging structures and the templates that I use so that they get right to the point. Their sentences are shorter, their communication is direct, and that bumps up the perception of authority and expertise. It keeps attention, which is hard to do now for all of us. Then other elements, of course, are around things we do with our voice. Not using phrases that take away our power, not saying a lot of likes and ums. The most important thing, and men and women do this equally, is saying things like kind of and sort of. It's deadly. We have to get rid of that because we're basically saying, "Don't believe me. I don't really mean it." [00:24:58] Michelle: It's the worst whenever you listen to a recording of yourself, and realize you've got an issue with some of that. My issue is saying the words, "You know." When I'll listen to a recording, just cringe every time I hear it. It is very difficult to work it out of your communication style. [00:25:17] Marsha: Yes. I say, again. "Again, blah, blah, blah." I'm like, "Oh." [00:25:23] Michelle: Yes, that's so difficult. This is all fascinating. It's very relevant for nearly everyone working today. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, especially while you're on vacation. We've been talking to Marsha Redmon of Marsha Redmon Communications. If people want to learn more, where should they go? [00:25:39] Marsha: Sure. It's really easy. It's my name, Marsha, marsha.com is my website. If you happen to be interested in a nice little checklist, you can go to presencetips.com. [00:25:52] Michelle: Great, awesome. [00:25:53] Marsha: It'll be in the show notes. [00:25:54] Michelle: Yes, fantastic. All right, thank you so much. [00:25:57] Marsha: It's my pleasure. Thank you. [00:26:00] Michelle: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time. Be sure to click “Subscribe” to get future episodes. [music]  

What does your brand say about your architecture, engineering or construction firm? Does it accurately reflect who you are today or is it still rooted in your early days of establishment? How a potential client perceives your AEC firm holds significant sway over their decision-making process. If your brand seems outdated or inconsistent, it could be the decisive factor that sends new business into a competitor’s arms. Michelle invites Mark Wierda, co-founder and president of Cultivate Brands, to talk through everything AEC firms need to know about building a strong brand that resonates with prospective clients. They discuss why brands evolve, how to execute a rebranding campaign, common mistakes made by AEC firms, and how branding impacts PR and marketing strategies. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Who is Mark Wierda and what is Cultivate Brands What is a brand and what it means to have a strong brand How brands evolve over time How to execute a rebranding campaign Advice for building a brand that resonates with prospective clients and employees Common mistakes AEC companies make with their branding  How branding impacts the effectiveness of your public relations strategy About our featured guest Mark co-founded Cultivate in 2005 and serves as the agency’s president. With a background in photography, marketing and technology, he is often found on video and photoshoots and in the trenches with the web and apps teams. He’s proud to have a team with a knack for building strong brands — and bringing those brand stories to life to help clients overcome challenges and move the needle. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Cultivate Brands Follow Cultivate on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Mark Wierda on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Mark Wierda: I've seen construction companies will tend to throw a lot of energy at going through a rebrand process, but then have this tendency of saying, "We're done here. We don't have to do it anymore. We did that," and then kind of move on. So it's always trying to encourage that group to stick with it because it's not a one-and-done process. [music] [00:00:21]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. Hey, everyone. Welcome to “Spill The Ink.” I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your podcast host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for architecture, engineering and construction firms, and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  Today we're talking about branding in the AEC industry, and it's not a term a lot of architecture, engineering and construction companies have a lot of familiarity with, but it can be quite complex and impactful. It balances lots of visuals, the needs to speak to diverse client base and you've got to effectively communicate your team's technical knowledge and expertise. What do construction firms need to know to build a brand that resonates with prospective clients and employees? We're going to tackle that in today's episode. As part of that, we have welcomed a guest that I've had the pleasure of working closely with on a large construction company rebrand, Mark Wierda. He's joining us today. He is the co-founder and president of Cultivate Brands They are a brand agency, like I said, that my agency partnered with on a rebrand. We worked together to launch a new brand for an 85-year-old construction company. Throughout the process, I was really impressed by Mark and his team's brand strategy and creative work so I'm excited to pick his brain today. Welcome to the show. [00:02:03] Mark: Thanks so much, Michelle. It's a pleasure to be here with you. [00:02:06] Michelle: Yes, I'm excited to talk about this because you and I have been deep into a rebrand for quite a while here. One, if you don't mind, I made a short intro about Cultivate, but tell us a little bit about Cultivate, and I know you're one of the founders. Give me a little overview of what you guys do at Cultivate. [00:02:24] Mark: We have a relatively small team, about 15 folks on our staff. We're based here in the Chicago area and the southwest Montana area in the Bozeman community. We got our start, my gosh, back in 2005 really as a bunch of creatives, creative shop taking whatever projects we could find. I think for us the big epiphany or whatever was realizing that even though we’d feel good about maybe the projects that we'd be doing, the creative we'd be making, our clients would feel good about it. It came to a point where we realized if the foundation wasn't good, if we didn't have the right information, if we didn't really know that core idea or why we were making what we were making, it really impacted the effectiveness of any of the work that we were doing. That, I think, required a lot of soul searching for our team, a lot of thinking about what do we need to do to put our team and our clients in a better spot? Because when we're doing any of this creative communications work, any of that, and really settled in on this idea of brand and branding. [00:03:37] Michelle: Yes, and it's so important today, especially in the online world, I think, to have a really distinctive brand. Let's talk about construction companies. What would you say is unique in that industry when it comes to branding and developing a strong brand? [00:03:55] Mark: I’d love your perspective on this, too. I think, not to oversimplify it, but a lot of times we've seen that for a lot of construction companies, they've just never really considered it. They've never really had to. A lot of times these companies have been around for generations, and it's always been built on a handshake and relationships. For them, branding, it starts and stops on the sign, the logo, or whatever that's on the door. Now there's all these new pressures in terms of labor shortages and material, and there's technological advancements. Now the way that they've maybe done business for decades is not going to work as effectively as they have. I know that's not everybody. I don't know, what's been your experience so far? [00:04:43] Michelle: Yes, I agree. I think it's a couple of things. I think it's one, we see this in every area of professional services that we work in that it's really transformed from a— it's still a relationship business, but the way relationships are formed has gone from just an offline thing to an online thing.  I think in an online world, brands are more important. We have so much information thrown at us, so having a clear, distinctive idea of who this company is, what it stands for, what it's about helps people process and understand, okay, rather than it being Joe, the guy I see at the Rotary Club once a month, and I have this good relationship with him. It's more about who is this company? Especially, like you said, with attracting employees and keeping the right people. The brand. What does this company stand for? What kind of career is this going to be for me? Those things become important and branding becomes really important. One of the things I liked about the work that your team did when working with this one particular client — quite an old client — showing how brands have evolved over the years. If you don't mind, talk a little bit about that in terms of— What I thought was interesting was helping them understand that, when we're talking just purely a logo, the trends are more towards simplification of a logo, pairing down a little bit of the design.  Tell me how brands have evolved over years. [00:06:25] Mark: Maybe to answer that, if I could maybe take one step before that in terms of what we mean by branding and what a brand is. Then I'll answer the second part. I think when we talk about what is a brand, we kind of say, and you hear this, your brand is what others say about you. It's that feeling someone has in their gut. When they see your name, when they hear your name, it's that perception that folks have. That perception becomes, I guess you'd say it becomes reality when folks are making decisions based on that. If they're going to choose to work with you, if they're going to choose to get on board with what you want. I guess we would say, you have a strong brand when it's aligned because that perception is shaped by what you say, by what you do; it's shaped by all these types of things. We would say, you have a strong brand when that's all aligned. When what you say and what you believe and what you stand for and how you treat others, treat your audiences, your clients, your employees consistently, because then you start to create— When you consider what your audiences care about and can align with that, that's where that strong brand happens. But your question was, how does it evolve? I think a lot of times the branding evolves because, in the case of the client we've been working on together, in some ways their business had evolved where their branding, their visual identity that they had had was rooted in a type of work that they really did 10, 20 years past. Now even that had shifted. That kind of pigeonholed them into a way of working that wasn't representative of who they are now. I think I see that a lot of times where, yes, to your point, there is a move to just go simpler and stylistically, all of that. A lot of times it's driven out of if there's a misalignment in what they're saying, what they're putting out there, that's a real good reason to shift it to create that alignment. [00:08:40] Michelle: Yes. If there's a construction company out there that's thinking, "Yes, our brand's a little dated. We probably need to go through a rebrand.” Can you talk us through what that process looks like? How does your firm approach branding projects? [00:08:55] Mark: Oh man, you’re throwing all the questions. [00:08:58] Michelle: What could they be facing? [00:09:00] Mark: I'd love to hear your take on that one too. Sorry. Can you reframe that question again? [00:09:07] Michelle: When we first start working with them, your team did a really great job of holding a workshop where you asked some really important questions and dug around, did that fact-finding process. Maybe if we talk about, what are some of the things that y'all are asking in that process? We all came together and we did that workshop. What would be some of the things that you guys look to draw out? [00:09:39] Mark: First and foremost, I think it'll be that recognition from the construction company that it's needed. You need willing and open participants. [00:09:50] Michelle: Coalition of the willing is my joke. [00:09:52] Mark: Yes, there you go. I'm going to use that. [00:09:58] Michelle: Yes, exactly. [00:10:00] Mark: Absolutely. That has to be the starting point. Then I think it's going through an exercise to understand where the brand is now, and what's its desired future state. And understanding what's the gap between that and then working towards building that bridge between the two. I would say, yes, we worked through this workshop process that had a research component, had a lot of just fact-finding, getting as much information from the client. Really it's about fostering those conversations within the company to get to a point where they really understand their true identity. What is it that they stand for? What's important to them? All of that. We often say we don't see it as our job here to tell them who they are. We feel like we've done our best work when we can take what they say, come back, hold up a mirror, and they feel like that's it. That's who we are. That's what we're all about. First, it's going through that process of understanding their identity, which the practical aspects of that might be developing a vision statement, listing out those core values. You were very active with those guys in doing all of that work. Understanding core values. What's a mission? What's the vision? Maybe positioning ideas like where are they going to plant their flag relative to others? Those would be the foundational pieces. The second part, or the counterpart, is then doing the same for their audience. Who are they trying to reach? Identifying them, naming them, understanding what they care about. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter much who you are if you can't do that in consideration of your audience. Those two pieces come first. Then it's about trying to figure out how do we create those connections between those ideas that will connect those two together? Maybe we think about this idea of really humanizing the brand. How do you bring your brand to life by giving it a personality? That's where a lot of the design work or logo design work or creative work comes in terms of just some extra tools to really get those ideas out there. You can do that and you can maybe draw attention, but we'd always advise for these construction companies, they have to then deliver on what you say. Deliver the value, do it consistently, behave as you aspire to be. Then if you've done all those things, that's where you can watch that gap start to close. I don't know that answer— [00:12:45] Michelle: Absolutely. I thought one of the interesting things we did was after all the fact-finding, we came away and said, “Okay, there's two directions we can go here.” We had that one that was more rooted in history and a little bit more traditional. Then there was one that was a bit more modern and forward-thinking. I thought it was an interesting opportunity for them to go, “Both of these are true about us, but where do we see this company going forward, too?” This particular client chose the more modern, forward-thinking brand because they're thinking about the next generation of employees who are younger. There's a real generational shift happening in most industries and definitely so in construction. I thought that was a useful exercise, especially because the people often making the decisions are the older generation too. This company is unique in that it's got a younger CEO. But looking at, how do we position our brand and show who we are, but thinking of that next generation of employees and clients? That leads me to my next question about, you and I know working in this construction field, working with construction clients, the key issue right now is the labor shortage. Getting the projects isn't the concern, more so getting the right people and getting the people.  How does the brand impact their ability to attract the right people? [00:14:16] Mark: That's a great question. I think there's a few ways. On one hand, there's an awareness component. If the brand is out there, people see it, know it. Already there you're starting to draw attention to the potential labor market, if you will. I think I would say the other piece is having a strong brand can really help pave the way so that folks already know what you stand for. What's your reputation? There's already a sense of, is this a place that I could see myself? Is it exciting? Is it interesting? Is there going to be opportunity for me to progress in my career? Things like that. I think for anyone, especially if there's a labor shortage, like a struggle to find folks, you have to give them more reason to choose you over somebody else. A strong brand, which really just is a way to say you've got a well-aligned organization who knows what they stand for and knows where they're going, that's where that can really help. One thing I've noticed is construction companies are great at tackling a project. It's in their blood. They'll put resources on it. They'll figure it out. Once they make a decision, they just go. There's not a lot of second-guessing usually. I wanted to know if you found this with more of the engineering and architecture side, but 've seen construction companies will tend to throw a lot of energy at going through a rebrand process, but then have this tendency of saying, "We're done here. We don't have to do it anymore. We did that," and then kind of move on. So it's always trying to encourage that group to stick with it because it's not a one-and-done process. [00:15:55] Michelle: 100%. I think that comes from the age of before the internet, is my guess, because we see that, too. In the past you would hire an agency, have them go away, create your stuff. You'd have your collateral. You had your brochure, that sits on the— In the age of the internet we expect new content. If we don't see new content, their latest project, we don't see their thoughts on the latest issues, then we assume they're stagnant or they're not a growing dynamic company just because our information demands are different nowadays because we're accustomed to this constant feed of information. A company that's not regularly telling its story, we assume something by that. I think today's leaders grew up in the pre-internet days where, “Wait, I did that already. I've got my brochure. I've got my logo, my business cards. I'm done.” That need to constantly tell the story is a new thing, really. That's my guess as to why that happens. We see it not just in construction and other industries. [00:17:16] Mark: Do you? [00:17:17] Michelle: Because it's a “Wait. That's not my job.” But it is your job now.  I wrote this blog post a while back about it's not a one-and-done anymore. Unfortunately, to have a good strong brand and reputation, it's an ongoing, regular process. You got to tell your company's story because of how people expect to be fed information nowadays. It's interesting that you saw it from your side of things. [00:17:42] Mark: What's been your experience with how a company's brand contributes to the effectiveness of any of the ongoing PR work and things like that? [00:17:51] Michelle: It's pretty important. If we have a client, because we're definitely more focused on PR and my agency, we do a full range of services, but PRs are our number one, I always say to them, "Look, we have no problem getting attention to your company. That's what we do." I always tell them to sort that side of the house first because what we're going to do is if we get attention to your company, people are going to come to your website and your social media feeds. They're going to request information. If it doesn't align with what you're putting out there, you've missed a huge opportunity. It's really important to get things like your brand and your website and those things first before we start creating that engine of attention, really. Of media articles and your social media and all those things that you do on a regular basis. Because otherwise, you've really lost the opportunity. It's not worth it. It's not worth it to do all that if they then come to a website that is really old, a brand that looks out of date, they're not saying anything on social, that kind of thing. That's where I see a disconnect. Because we don't build websites. If I've got a client that the website's terrible, I'll say, we got to do this first before we kick that in.  What are some of the common mistakes you see construction companies make with branding? [00:19:13] Mark: It looks like I might have jumped the gun on that question. That one mistake is just seeing it as a one-and-done kind of thing. That's probably the biggest mistake. A lot of times I think it's just that follow through with, really, I'll use the word activating. Maybe that's a buzzword. You've developed all this great work to figure out what you stand for. You've maybe gone through a rebrand with a new logo and tagline and all those kinds of things. Then following through with maybe a brand awareness campaign of some sort just to make sure that then is put to use. We often say the logo you put out there, the tagline, those things are really like—they don't have any meaning really in and of themselves. They have some based on the style and all of that, but it's more about how do you start to attach meaning to that. I think just encouraging construction companies then to figure out ways to tell that story. Then just using some of the low-hanging fruit might be—at least the things that we see is like maybe you're telling stories. We've gone through the work to figure out who your audience is. Maybe it's putting that out on social media and putting a little bit of an ad buy behind it that's very targeted. Just to ensure that it's getting out there and in front of folks or on the recruitment side, developing maybe some strong creative that really speaks to that workforce that you're looking to attract. Then, again, putting a little push behind it so that it goes out there. The other, I guess, mistake, maybe an example that we saw or we've seen in the past is if you can then just make sure on the recruitment side in particular, that there's great follow through. What I mean by that is we had a client here, a building materials company in Chicago. Finding truck drivers has just been hard. There was a lot of effort putting together this campaign to really try attract folks to leave their current job maybe driving garbage trucks or other delivery trucks, and come work for them to drive a ready-mix truck. One of the most important things that the company did was, in addition to recruitment campaign, they really worked hard on the experience that these recruits had in onboarding, because what they found is that they would sign up, they would leave after the first day or two on the job because it was just too overwhelming. So they worked really hard to create this experience for the first couple of weeks of training to really bring them to reset expectations, to help them understand what they're going through in a way that was consistent with the messaging that was put out there in the campaign. Just to see that that was aligned. That was the case where they would attract a bunch of people, but if the expectations weren’t right then it was just more work. [00:22:06] Michelle: That's fascinating. Your prior point about attaching meaning to a logo and a tagline, I don't know if you've seen that movie, there's a movie out about the Nike deal with Michael Jordan. I don't know if you've had a chance to see it. [00:22:17] Mark: I haven't seen that yet. Would you recommend it? [00:22:19] Michelle: I do. It was great. One of the things that it was fascinating to watch them talk about—these were executives with Nike and they're talking about, “Yeah, have you heard, there's this new tagline they're talking about called 'Just do it'?” And to hear that from—this was, I guess, in the '90s when they were starting to talk about it. If you'd been in that meeting where it's like a swoosh mark and just do it, you'd have sat there and thought, “What?” They have attached such meaning to that through their ongoing efforts to where now we get it, we get what they're saying by that. Without all that, it would've been a useless just do it. Definitely. From a brand guy I think you find that movie fascinating. I definitely did from a PR side. Second last question I'd like to ask. We talked about how brands have evolved and that kind of thing. How does a creative make sure that he's reflecting how brands are? Is it just watching what other brands are doing and helping them stay relevant? There might not be any way other than just working in the industry and seeing how brands are changing, but how do you do that? [00:23:33] Mark: Probably like any industry, there's folks who tend to rise up as really leaders, thought leaders. I think we try to stay pretty in tune with that. Participating in conferences, secondary workshops, those types of things. There's been some really great thinking in terms of brand strategy and design. A group out of southern California called The Futur’s Chris Do that we love to follow and just learn about how to do our work better. I'm trying to think how to frame that up for these AEC firms in terms of how do they get better educated about that. [00:24:18] Michelle: I'll jump in. My guess is, one, just to be aware that these things change. Design sensibilities. I think that was a lesson I got. It's like you don't really realize that fashion changes until you haven't touched that pair of jeans for 10 years. You pull it out and you think, "I can fit in these," and you turn and put them on and you're like, "That doesn't work at all.” The point is that these things change and how your target audiences perceive you because of those changes is impacted. They wouldn't be aware of that unless people like us told them because it's not their job to be aware of it. Just being aware of that and then working with somebody like you who stays connected. But being open to the fact that these things change and you've got to, if you look at any major brand, they have evolved. Like McDonald's or Amazon, these things, they evolve. They don't just stick with that same brand for the same reasons that you shouldn't wear your 10-year-old pair of jeans. Do you agree with that? [00:25:25] Mark: Yes, I agree. It makes me think of the client we worked on together where the owner recognized, like, he used the analogy of the construction projects, the infrastructure projects they build, which I thought was really good where he's like, we 100% stand by the work that we did at that time. It did exactly what it needed to do. It was great work. Things have changed. Things break down over time. It takes work to keep at it and keep it together and keep moving forward. He really saw their rebrand as an opportunity to just honor what his father and previous generations had done before and really think about where they were headed. I think the result was in some ways their visual identity became simpler, stronger, more clear. It spoke more to the core of who they were and the what that they did. [00:26:24] Michelle: Yes, that's spot on. I agree. I remember hearing that analogy he made. The analogy was, just like bridges, roads, they have to be updated. This company built the first generation of America's highway system. We're now looking at a need to refresh that and update the infrastructure and it's the same way.  I think the idea there was that they had a lot of this as a company with a very strong culture internally. You've got people who've worked their generations, who had a real affinity and nostalgia for the current brand. He wanted to make sure and to give them an understanding of why would we change something that everyone feels so connected to? I think it really turned out well when he was able to explain it that way. [00:27:14] Mark: Yes. For them it was definitely going through that process of just calling out and naming the things that they'd always stood for but never really identified. [00:27:24] Michelle: Formalized. [00:27:25] Mark: So that they could then make it go farther so that they could move from just a core group who understood it because they had been there and they'd been a part of building it to something that was really transferable. I think that's the power of branding or brand there is it really helps transfer those ideas. [00:27:48] Michelle: Yes. That's great. Well, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Mark.  We have been talking to Mark Wierda of Cultivate Brands. If our listeners want to learn more about your team and what you do, where should they go? [00:28:03] Mark: Yes, probably the best place is to just head to our website, cultivatebrands.com. [00:28:08] Michelle: Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me. [00:28:11] Mark: Yes, thank you, Michelle. [music] [00:28:14] Michelle: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.  

Women face unique challenges in the workplace, particularly in male-dominated industries like law. For female law firm owners, these challenges can inadvertently impact their efforts to efficiently scale their business, leaving highly capable attorneys to grow their firms at a slower pace than their male counterparts. In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” host Michelle Calcote King invites Davina Frederick to weigh in on the conversation and share how she’s helped lawyers grow their firms. Davina is the owner of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, a strategic growth planning and coaching company that helps women law firm owners turn their businesses into million-dollar enterprises. Davina shares personal anecdotes and insights into overcoming these challenges and empowering female law firm owners to achieve accelerated growth. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Who is Davina Frederick and what is Wealthy Woman Lawyer The unique challenges faced by women-led law firms How to scale your solo law firm in a million-dollar enterprise Shifting your business mindset to that of a CEO-level thinker Key components of marketing for scale Why a systems-driven business model is ideal for law firms Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Wealthy Woman Lawyer Follow Wealthy Woman Lawyer on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Davina Frederick on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Check out Davina’s books:  “The Wealthy Woman Lawyer’s Guide to Law Firm Marketing in the Virtual Age: 10 Bold Actions to Take Now to Attract Your Ideal Clients with Total Ease”  “The Wealthy Woman Lawyer’s Guide to Building a Systems-Driven Law Firm Business: 7 Essential Systems You Need to Take Back Your Time, Avoid Burnout, and Create Lasting Wealth” Listen to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer® podcast About our featured guest Davina Frederick is a Florida-licensed attorney, law firm growth strategist, and business coach for women law firm owners. She is the founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer®, a strategic growth planning and coaching company that helps women law firm owners scale their law firm businesses to and through $1 million. She’s also the founder of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer® League, a community and program designed to support women law firm owners who want to scale from solo to CEO of a thriving law firm business. Davina is the host of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer® podcast, a top podcast for women in law in the U.S., and a two-time author of books on law firm management and marketing.  Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.

What if there was a way for lawyers to ditch the billable-hour model without sacrificing value or profits? ADVOS Pro is teaching law firms to do exactly that with its P3 Method. The P3 Method enables firms to transition to a “deliverables-based” format where the firm’s expertise and results — as opposed to six-minute increments — act as the measure of its worth. The model is designed to reward efficiency, streamline processes and prevent attorney burnout. In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” Michelle Calcote King invites ADVOS Pro Co-Founder Whitney Harper to share how the experience she and her co-founder Gwen Griggs had as attorneys and business people shaped the creation of the P3 Method. They also discuss ADVOS legal's success using this model over nearly a decade of law practice, and how other firms can do the same. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn What is ADVOS Pro and the P3 Method What is involved in the four-module course on applying the P3 Method How points for the deliverables-based model are calculated How law firms can break up with the billable model while growing profit margins The importance of learning how to pitch your legal services How the solution enables firms to invest in tech and automate tedious processes About our featured guest Whitney Harper is a seasoned legal professional known for delivering high-value service to her clients through her unique understanding of the intersection of law, operations, sales and strategy. She is the co-founder of ADVOS Pro, a business that helps law firms break up with the billable hour method and begin measuring their worth in expertise and results. Her practice, ADVOS legal, uses the ADVOS Pro P3 Method to provide a range of legal services to high-growth companies, including strategic legal counsel, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and commercial contracts. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out ADVOS Pro and ADVOS legal Follow ADVOS Pro on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Whitney Harper on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.

To advance and excel in the extremely competitive legal field, attorneys and legal professionals are pressured to work long hours, handle substantial workloads and exhibit a high degree of professionalism when dealing with complex issues. Although their role is undeniably vital, the industry is facing growing criticism for the negative impact its demanding work environment can have on the wellness and mental health of those working in it. The Legal Marketing Association’s Well-being Committee was created to advocate for healthy work environments, reduce mental health stigma and provide resources to increase well-being and support the success of legal marketing professionals. Cynthia Voth, who currently serves as the LMA West Region president and formerly served as the President of the LMA International Board of Directors, was a key player in launching the committee.  In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” host Michelle Calcote King interviews Cynthia, discussing why the committee was founded and how it helps industry professionals. They also talk about the different ways Cynthia’s law firm is making resources available to its employees and why normalizing conversations about mental health is critical to the industry’s survival. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn How the Legal Marketing Association's Well-being Committee is driving change and promoting wellness The legal industry's mental health stigmas and strategies for law firms to overcome them How Miller Nash LLP is making wellness resources available to its attorneys and professionals Advice for cultivating a culture of wellness in law firms About our featured guest Cynthia Voth is an experienced legal marketer and law firm administrator with a passion for collaborating with and coaching attorneys on business development and delivering excellent client service. She is the Chief Client Officer at Miller Nash LLP. Dedicated to the advancement of the legal profession, Cynthia serves as the 2023 Legal Marketing Association West Region president, previously served as the 2019 president of the LMA International Board of Directors and has been part of numerous committees, including as a founding member of the LMA Well-being Committee.  Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Miller Nash LLP Follow Miller Nash LLP on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Connect with Cynthia Voth on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Learn more and find resources from the LMA Well-being Resource Center Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Cynthia Voth: I think there's been this long-standing feeling that to talk about your mental well-being is a weakness. It's not. It's a strength. [music] [00:00:11]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:28] Michelle Calcote King: Hey, everyone, and welcome to “Spill the Ink.” I'm Michelle Calcote King, I'm your host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, at “Spill the Ink,” we're spending the entire month of May focusing on conversations that help law firms prevent and address burnout, stress and anxiety, and generally support well-being in this demanding industry. A few years ago, the Legal Marketing Association announced a Well-Being Committee to support legal professionals in promoting mental health and creating healthy work environments. Cynthia Voth is a former LMA president, and she was a key player in launching the Well-Being Committee in 2019. I am delighted to welcome her on today's episode to talk about such an important topic and learn from her experiences. Thanks for joining me today. [00:01:27] Cynthia: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. [00:01:29] Michelle: Yes, I'm excited to talk to you. I'd love, if you don't mind, introduce to our listeners your role and your experience in the legal industry. [00:01:42] Cynthia: Sure. Yes. I am with a firm based in the Northwest, Miller Nash. We're about 150 attorneys. My role is chief client officer. I am basically chief operating officer but with a client development focus, and client service focus. My long professional career has been in marketing and business development or client development, and marketers tend to be pretty capable people, and over time, you just take on more responsibility. Next thing you know, you're managing the law firm. That's been my, in a nutshell, trajectory of my career. I've been a long-standing supporter and volunteer for the Legal Marketing Association. I've served in a number of leadership roles. As you mentioned, I served as president of the International Board of Directors in 2019. I'm currently serving as the West Region president, so I came back for more. I love our association so much that doing another tour of duty for the amazing West Region, but that, in a nutshell, is my background, and I'm based in Seattle, Washington, if the people care about that sort of thing. [00:02:56] Michelle: Yes, I noticed the difference here. I got my Florida short sleeves on and you're bundled up there. [00:03:01] Cynthia: I'm in fleece with my Patagonia puffy behind me. It's quite cold. I'm waiting for spring to arrive.  [00:03:07] Michelle: If you can talk to us first about the stigma surrounding mental health in the legal profession. Why is there the stigma? [00:03:19] Cynthia: Yes, I'm sure there's a lot of different reasons. I think culturally, there's just stigma about mental health. Thankfully, it's getting better. People are normalizing conversations about mental well-being. They're being a lot more forthright. I feel like there's a lot more acceptance than even five years ago. I think the legal profession is high demand and it's a critical profession. Lawyers are trained to find what's wrong with— They are actually drawn probably, to the profession because their brains are wired to find the nuances, the errors in the argument, the errors in the document. Sadly, it also extends to the errors in people. What's wrong with the firm? What's wrong with people? They don't like to show weakness. There's a high level of competitiveness.  All of those things don't really lend to a nurturing environment that's accepting and open when it comes to the struggles that people may have. I think there's been this long-standing feeling that to talk about your mental well-being is a weakness. It's not. It's a strength. I think there are shifts happening, but I think historically, they just haven't been there from the staff side. That's for attorneys. Right? We've seen the ABA come up with their well-being pledge, and they've had that for several years. It's been very focused on the attorney side of the equation, and I think the staff side at law firms, there's been a long-standing divide. Attorneys sometimes use the word non-attorney. Right? [00:04:59] Michelle: Right. [00:05:01] Cynthia: We, in the legal professionals' sector have been using a term that is “not staff,” because we also are important for the success of a law firm. There are pressures that we feel because there are long-standing hierarchy differences. Staff are not treated very well, in some firms. They're not as respected in some firms. Not all firms, but in some. Throughout the course of my career at one point supervised legal assistance and paralegals, and I was shocked at how many people told me in interviews that they had had staplers thrown at them by attorneys in the course of their career. That's abuse. That's physical abuse. [00:05:50] Michelle: I have heard the same stories, yes. [00:05:52] Cynthia: Yes, and they were true. People aren't making this thing up. To work in an environment— I'm not saying all firms are like that, but there's definitely real struggles and pressures and abuses and transgressions that happen, which is just incredibly unhealthy. We're not supposed to be subjected to that on a regular basis. I think that has also added to some of that because when that has been accepted behavior for people, then if someone complains or— It's not even complaining, just flags, "I've had this abusive thing happen to me," then sometimes the reception is not, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that. We will never do that again." That's not always been the response from law firms. It's like, "Oh, well, that's just so and so." Right? That's just what they do. That's not okay.  I think that has also added to the stigma, because it's don't talk about that sort of thing. Yes, there's a real need to normalize the conversations and create more compassionate, supportive workplaces everywhere in the world butI think, and particularly, I think the legal profession has a lot of work to do. [00:07:08] Michelle: It reminds me of thinking about how extending this conversation, not just from attorneys to the professionals that work in firms, is that hurt people hurt people. You've got two groups of people there, and if you don't address one or the other, it's going to continue.  Let's talk about the Well-being Committee. Why that was founded, and what were some of the goals? [00:07:33] Cynthia: Yes. Along the lines of what I was just sharing, I was hearing from a number of our members the pressures that they face. To be real honest, we lost some beloved members of our community who committed suicide, and nobody knew. I'm not saying the job is what caused them to do that, but it was probably a contributing factor. It's just one of those things where when you know people are struggling, but they don't always have the support or the environment to reach out. It inspired me to address that issue. The Legal Marketing Association clearly focuses on supporting professionals within law firms, business professionals within law firms, to help grow marketing, client development, business development. Part of being successful in your job is having that sense of well-being. It felt like an area where the association could put some energy and resources to normalize conversations, and to really see if we could give people resources and support so that they wouldn't feel alone or they wouldn't feel that stigma, and hopefully, we wouldn't lose any further members to suicide. I know it's more complicated than that, but if you don't try, if you don't offer something up there, then nothing's going to improve or change. Even if it made a difference in one person's life, that there's a resource they didn't know they had, or a stigma that got taken away because it's like, "Oh, I've heard this person talk about their depression struggles,” then that to me is a success. Honestly, the response from people was amazing. It was just this really wonderful, "Oh, my gosh, I want to be a part of that. I'm so thankful that we're bringing this into the conversation." We had Renee Branson and Ryan King as our initial co-chairs, and now we have Megan Hill and Terry Isner, who are co-chairing that committee, but just really passionate, beautiful people who really want to help others. It just was this incredibly supported and wonderfully embraced initiative. [00:10:07] Michelle: Yes. I love that. I didn't know Terry was doing that. I'm a former Jaffe-ite. So, yes, good friends with Terry. [00:10:12] Cynthia: There you go. He's that. He's the co-chair. He was co-chair last year. He is co-chair this year. [00:10:17] Michelle: That's great. [00:10:18] Cynthia: Yes, really excited to have him part of it. [00:10:20] Michelle: It's a good fit. Tell me about, what are some of the initiatives that the committee tackles? [00:10:25] Cynthia: A lot of programming, I think, normalizing the conversation. Like making sure that people— I think just even talking about mental health and well-being is powerful in and of itself because when we don't talk about things, then people feel like there's shame there. A lot of programming; the well-being Wednesdays; and making sure that the events that are hosted include well-being elements. Rooms that you can go to if you need to just take a breather. Just even morning yoga sessions or things like that. Little things that you can do for self-care. Well-being… It's normalizing conversations, but it's also doing things for yourself to make sure that you are physically and mentally feeling fit. The committee has worked that into a number of events.  They're working on a well-being pledge just to help educate, much like the ABA pledge. That's still in the works, and I'm not quite sure the status of it, but I'm hopeful and optimistic that we will have that as a toolkit for folks to bring back to their firms. So, yeah, a number of different fronts. There's, honestly, so many things.  One of the things that we actually did immediately was a really wonderful resource page on the legalmarketing.org website. That was largely, it was put together by the committee, but Renee Branson was really a driving force because she just had a wealth of resources. For those who haven't visited the legalmarketing.org website, most of our content is behind a paywall. It's a professional association, you need to be a member to access all of that. We were really adamant, for the well-being work, to put that in front of the paywall, so it would be free for anyone to use. I just encourage everyone, whether you're a member or not — I do think it's a great association to encourage membership, but if you're just looking for a really great list of resources, I would definitely go to legalmarketing.org and check out the Well-Being Committee page and the resources listed there. [00:12:27] Michelle: Thank you. You actually just got ahead of one of my questions, was about, where can we point people to resources? That's fantastic.  If you're a law firm leader and you know this is something that you want to tackle for your own firm, you want to address it. What are some ways that firms can support mental health in their firms? [00:12:49] Cynthia: I'll use our firm as an example. I think trying to normalize the conversation. Again, I can't impress that enough. I think there's so much stigma and shame, and I think people need to know that the folks they admire, who seem so strong and put together, have their own struggles, too. It makes you feel less isolated and alone. It gives you resources to go to. I think having that be part of a conversation. We've held firm meetings where I've had pretty successful firm partners talk about their own depression. [00:13:21] Michelle: That's great. [00:13:21] Cynthia: Talk about the struggles they have, talk about being on medication, and normalizing that so that there isn't stigma that sometimes I think people think it's a crutch or it's a weakness if you have to take medication. Blood chemistry is a really complex thing. Sometimes you need medication to help you out, and that's okay. We've done things like given some billable credit for a well-being day, just to make sure that people know we value taking time to take care of yourself. It's a day, so I'm not saying it's a month, but it's a gesture of making sure people know that's important, too, and you should invest in yourself, and the firm will give you some billable credit for those timekeepers out there.  For Valentine's Day last year, we signed onto the Calm app for our firm. There's corporate memberships to Calm Premium that you can do, and so that offers meditation, and sleep assistance, and all of the things. We gifted that to everybody as a gesture of caring and they can share it with their families. They can have up to five logins on this Calm app. It's really a valuable resource for our folks. [00:14:43] Michelle: It's a great idea. [00:14:44] Cynthia: We've had some people who have never meditated before. If you've never meditated and you're like, "Oh, I can't meditate." I would encourage you to try guided meditation. Sitting there in your own brain without someone talking you through, or some calming music can be really tough, especially if you're in the legal profession. It's hard to get the wheels to stop spinning, but I have been trying guided meditation for some time, and I will say it does help my brain quite a bit. There's so much research out there about the physiological and mental benefits of meditating regularly and getting your brain into that state. That was something we wanted to invest in. I think it's knowing your firm culture and community and making gestures and bringing it forward to people. It's not just an EAP program. It's important to have an EAP program that has resources, but I think it's taking those extra touches to bring it into conversation. I've seen some firms who have even normalized it by having backgrounds that have statements and slogans about normalizing talking about well-being and health, and that's just part of what they put front forward. I think it's really knowing your firm and your culture and working with your executive committees or your C-suite or whoever is going to set the tone and make decisions. Then really making gestures and staying with it. I think that will help move the needle for people feeling cared for and feeling like they're not alone, and there isn't that stigma there. They're not going to get penalized if they speak their truth. [00:16:21] Michelle: Do you feel like this is really taking hold in the industry, or is there quite a ways to go? I know there was that PowerPoint slide that got a lot of attention at an Am Law 100 firm, where it was basically like, "Hey, you're in the big leagues. This is your life 24/7." [00:16:42] Cynthia: Suck it up. [00:16:42] Michelle: Suck it up, buttercup. Yes, basically. What's your sense of where the industry is right now with all of this? [00:16:52] Cynthia: There are surveys out there, and I think the industry still has a ways to go. I think some firms have made some good inroads, but there isn't— You read some of the horror stories. There was that horror story chain of the woman who took family leave to have a baby and some of the abuse that was thrown on her. [00:17:16] Michelle: Oh, I missed that one. [00:17:17] Cynthia: I can't remember it. It got a lot of play on the social media for a while. People, there is some old-school mindsets out there. It was the suck it up or the walk it off. I will say my age, I'm 53—No, I'm 52. I'm not 53 yet. I will be 53. I came up in an era where it was walk it off, don't talk about it. That's weak. Don't be weak. Firms are still led largely by some boomers, and a little bit of Gen Xers. I'm a Gen Xer, and I feel like we swing in between the Millennials and are a little more capable and willing to speak our truths, but I think there's a lot of management that still holds to that old-school model. I do think the billable hour model, and the pace of law firms as a business model do lend to some challenges, but I think people are brilliant, and they're creative, and if they bring a level of care and passion to it, we can solve any challenges. We can remove stigma and support people's mental well-being while still having successful business. [00:18:33] Michelle: Right. [00:18:34] Cynthia: I would argue, it would make our businesses more successful. When people are happy, and they feel cared for, and they are feeling well, they will perform better, they'll be more creative; cognitively, they function at a higher level— [00:18:47] Michelle: Yes, 100%. [00:18:48] Cynthia: —than if they're feeling abused and they feel like, "The firm's sucking the marrow out of my bones." I do think there is a real strong business case to be made for firms to really embrace making this part of their culture. For everybody, not just for their timekeepers, but for all of their business professionals, because people have choices of where they can work, and life is short, and the world is pretty dark and hard right now. We just came out of a pandemic. That was brutal. The environment's not in very good shape. There's a lot of pressures out there where people are questioning how they spend their time and their days and recognizing that life's short. If we can, as an industry, make improvements so that the quality of people's life and emotional well-being is better, then our industry will be stronger for it. [00:19:41] Michelle: Yes. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. The research supports that this is good for business. I remember when I first started managing people reading about how being a boss you need to approach it almost like when you're on an airplane and they say to take the oxygen mask first and help those around you. You can't be a good, effective boss if you yourself are unhealthy. Get your own house in order first. And we've all worked for that unhealthy boss. It's not fun. [00:20:11] Cynthia: No, it's not. As you said, unhappy people or injured people injure or bring misery to others. What does it look like if people are in a better head space? You will be a better manager. You will retain your talent. Your teams will go to bat for you because you've shown that you care and that their life and their well-being is important to you. That's how you create great teams.  Oh, gesundheit. [00:20:44] Michelle: Thank you. [00:20:45] Cynthia: You're welcome. [00:20:46] Michelle: I sneezed. I muted it though.  That's great. You had mentioned the Legal Marketing Association's support page. If you're not a member of the Legal Marketing Association, are there other resources out there that you can think of? [00:21:02] Cynthia: Yes. Like I said, our support page is in front of the paywall, so you don't have to be a member. I think that's a pretty nice list of websites and places you can go to.  I mean, the ABA has their well-being pledge, so if we're looking at legal-specific places, I think that's another resource. Our firm just signed on to that. I'm looking forward to bringing that front forward. There are things in there, I will say, that I think firms need to focus on, like not making alcohol front forward the centerpiece of all events.  [00:21:34] Michelle: Right. Yes, right. [00:21:37] Cynthia: In terms of other resources, I guess I kind of lean on those largely for the law firm, just because I'm trying to stay in that space where I bring acceptance. That's been my go-to. I know there are a lot of places out there [00:21:53] Michelle: That would be a great place to start. Both of those. Absolutely.  Before we go, I'd like to ask, if there's one lesson that law firm leaders can take from this conversation, what would it be? [00:22:07] Cynthia: I think it is normalize the conversation. Reduce the stigma. We all have a responsibility to reduce that stigma. You don't realize how some offhanded comments can make people feel shame about the things that they're feeling, and if we're going to create an environment that is supportive and people can thrive, then I think we really need to create that level of acceptance and normalcy so that everybody is comfortable to speak their truth. [00:22:40] Michelle: Yes, I love that, because it is. It's just such a vital part of the whole conversation, being able to talk about it and feeling comfortable talking about it. Absolutely. [00:22:47] Cynthia: It costs firms nothing to do that. It costs you nothing. You don't have to pay for a fancy program or buy some expensive things to install into the offices. It's not easy for some people to do it, but it can be easy once you start that conversation and people don't feel like they're going to be judged, or penalized, or stigmatized for speaking their truth. [00:23:19] Michelle: Right. Yes. Well, thank you so much.  We've been talking to Cynthia Voth — boy, I just got tongue twisted there — Of Miller Nash. Cynthia, if people want to just reach out and talk to you more about this subject, what's the best way for them to do that? [00:23:32] Cynthia: I'm on our firm website, so my email address is there, and my phone number. It's just cynthia.voth@millernash.com. I'm on social media. I'm on social media, so you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Instagram is all about hiking for me. That's my well-being happy space. If you want some beautiful pictures of the Northwest, and some hiking, and some dog photos, you can follow me there. I haven't been super active on Twitter, to be honest. I gave up on it a few years ago. I'm on there, but— [00:24:04] Michelle: Yes. I'm the same way. [00:24:05] Cynthia: —I'd reach out on Insta or LinkedIn. Yes. Those are great. I welcome anyone to reach out. I think this is such an important conversation. I think we as an industry, we as individuals can have a huge impact on our industry and within our organization. Anyone who wants to just talk about it, start a movement, or whatever, I'm happy to support and talk about the subject because I think it really has the ability to change people's lives and honestly, even potentially save people's lives. That's the best way we can spend our energy. [00:24:40] Michelle: Yes. Well, thank you so much. [00:24:41] Cynthia: You're welcome. Thank you very much for having me. [music] [00:24:46]: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. [music]

Legal professionals operate in incredibly demanding and high-pressure work environments that lead many lawyers to struggle with severe stress, burnout and mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Research into attorney mental health often reveals grim realities. For example, a recent study sponsored by the California Lawyers Association and the D.C. Bar found lawyers contemplate suicide at an “exceedingly high rate,” with 8.5% of lawyers surveyed reporting suicidal thoughts, compared to 4.2% of the U.S. population age 18 and over. Conversations about lawyer wellness and resilience are becoming more commonplace and a growing number of firms are implementing well-being programs and strategies to help their staff navigate the stressors of the industry. This episode of “Spill the Ink” is a must-listen for legal professionals who are looking for tactics to build resilience into their work lives. Host Michelle Calcote King invites Renee Branson, founder of RB Consulting and co-chair of the Legal Marketing Association’s Well-being Committee, to discuss the industry’s barriers to wellness and share her advice on how firms can support their employees in becoming more resilient. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Barriers and stigmas affecting mental health and personal well-being in the legal industry How the industry’s attitude towards mental health has shifted over time How law firms can incorporate resilience and well-being strategies The six domains of resilience and why they matter Tactics for managing stress and burnout as an attorney About our featured guest Renee Branson founded RB Consulting with a vision of bringing the power of resiliency into the workplace to help people cultivate mental well-being and help organizations maintain high-performing teams. At RB Consulting, Renee works with lawyers, legal marketers, business professionals, non-profit leaders and others to equip them with immediately usable tools to increase resiliency, well-being and optimism in the workplace. She’s a Certified Resilience Coach with a master's in counseling psychology and over 20 years of experience as a mental health professional, educator and non-profit executive. Renee serves as co-chair on the Legal Marketing Association’s Well-being Committee and is a member of the American Bar Association’s Attorney Well-Being Committee. She also serves as the Executive Director of the Sexual Assult Resource Agency, a non-profit agency working to eliminate sexual violence and its impacts through education, advocacy and support services in Charlottesville, VA, and surrounding counties. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out RB Consulting Follow RB Consulting on Twitter and Facebook Connect with Renee Branson on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Renee Branson: He said, "Hey, I saw that you're a trained therapist," and I said, "That's right," and he said, "I just have to let you know that this profession is killing us." [music] [00:00:11]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:29] Michelle Calcote King: Hey everyone, and welcome to “Spill the Ink.” I'm Michelle Calcote King, I'm your podcast host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  May is a Mental Health Awareness Month and in recognition, we're going to spend the month focusing on conversations that help law firms prevent and address attorney burnout, stress, and anxiety, and generally support well-being in this demanding industry. Today, I've got Renee Branson joining me. She's a Certified Resilience Coach — I love that, resilience — with a master's in counseling psychology. She's the founder and principal of RB Consulting where she works to help businesses including law firms establish and fortify their well-being programs. She's delivered several keynote speeches and presentations about the importance of resiliency and well-being, including for the Legal Marketing Association. Thanks for coming on the show. [00:01:30] Renee Branson: Thanks for having me. [00:01:32] Michelle Calcote King: I'm excited to talk about this. I definitely want to dig into that concept around resiliency. The older you get, you learn the importance of resiliency in your life. [00:01:41] Renee: For sure. [00:01:42] Michelle: Let's talk first about your consulting work just to set the stage and so that everyone understands what you do in this area. [00:01:52] Renee: My background, as you mentioned, is in counseling psychology and I've spent most of my career in that realm and specifically in the realm of nonprofit work working with survivors of trauma, both childhood and adulthood trauma. From that, I really learned a lot about what it means to foster resilience and when folks do have higher levels of resilience, their ability to move beyond traumatic experiences in their life. It was several years ago, I was having a conversation, actually with an attorney and it was a large law firm, and I was working for a nonprofit and I was meeting him as a potential donor actually in a completely different year of life. He said, "Hey, I saw that you're a trained therapist," and I said, "That's right," and he said, "I just have to let you know that this profession is killing us." It was such a dynamic shift of okay, this is no longer a donor meeting, right? [00:03:06] Michelle: Yes. [00:03:08] Renee: It haunted me, stuck with me, and really started to look at what are some of the specific needs in the legal space. Why is it that professionals in the legal space are maybe more vulnerable or lack some of the skills around resilience? And applying what I knew about trauma to the professional space. Trauma can be a lower “t” trauma or the big capital “T” trauma, but we all experience traumas throughout the course of our life. None of us get out of here without that. [00:03:48] Michelle: Yes. That was actually going to be my next question is what is it about the legal industry that makes it particularly prone to these challenges? What is it about this industry that makes attorneys have less resilience, and the professionals in the firms? [00:04:10] Renee: I think one of the things that I've noticed is that there's both an external and internal factors that are at play and make this perfect storm. I'm just speaking some generalities here. This is certainly not the case for everybody or every experience, but generally speaking, if you look at what makes a good attorney, you're looking at high levels of perfectionism, high levels of wanting to have autonomy. And then externally, a pressure to not show vulnerability or not to ask for help. Those external pressures and that makes that perfect storm of being able to say, "Oh, I'm supposed to be bulletproof." Also, we swim in this environment of then a lot of other bad coping mechanisms easily and readily available to us particularly in this industry, whether it's the constant cocktail party social hours, the really late nights of work where now we're chronically sleep-deprived, so we're certainly not functioning. That absolutely lowers our ability to be resilient. There's a reason why people torture people by not letting them sleep. [00:05:50] Michelle: Right. [00:05:53] Renee: That is really just that perfect storm that creates that breeding ground. [00:06:00] Michelle: How have you seen the industry's attitudes change around this topic and what's driven that change? [00:06:08] Renee: I think what's driven the change is this, we're starting to see not only high-profile deaths by suicide, people are seeing their colleagues suffer really from addictions and just general health issues. I think it started to become more noticeable. I also know that when folks are really struggling and are at the point of burnout, rates of negligence or even malpractice rise because folks aren't on their A game. They're really struggling and so rises in that kind of situation, so there's really a component of ethics. That it's the ethical decision to maintain resilience not only personally but then uphold it as an industry standard. [00:07:15] Michelle: Yes, it's interesting. I saw that play out. I was a member of the Florida Bar's committee that oversaw when there were complaints by the public of attorneys, and I would say 9 times out of 10 there was a mental health issue or addiction issue involved where then they didn't uphold their duty of service to the client. Absolutely, I can see how it's an ethics issue.  If I'm a law firm leader and I realize this is an important issue and I want to help, what are ways law firm leaders — and I know one of them is hiring someone like you — how can they help? What are some of the things that you help firms put into place to help their attorneys and professionals? [00:08:02] Renee: That's a great question because I think it's one of the things just like, it would be the same if I were to try to go into a law firm and provide some kind of legal advice, that's the fish out of water. It's really hard for switching that mindset over for those in the legal profession to say, "Okay, what do we need?" I think, first of all, having some good folks around you who really are experts in the field, whether that’s someone you actually fully bring on board, or you're just working with, so they really understand the psychology behind change and the psychology behind that. That's I think a critical point. I think also looking at it really holistically, it can't be a bolt-on. I always only half-joke about, "Yes, it's great to have a massage chair in the break room and fruit in a fruit bowl and bring someone like me in for once-a-year hour-long talk," that's great. I'll never turn that down but it has to be really that holistic change. Looking at how do we function as a firm, how do our policies reflect. If we say our values are the wellbeing of our attorneys and the legal professionals who work with them, how does that show up in the policy and our process and our procedures of how we do business from day to day? [00:09:38] Michelle: It's looking at all the structures and processes and how they work and seeing where some of that might be contributing and doing that analysis. I like that. [00:09:48] Renee: Right. [00:09:49] Michelle: What are some critical times, I'm sure there are times when you've noticed firms tend to reach out to you more. Are there some critical times when mental health training might be more useful than other times, or when does it trigger in a law firm leader's mind, "Oh, this is an issue." [00:10:07] Renee: Oftentimes, it is maybe after something's happened. Or there's a lot of either discord going on in the firm and they can feel the heat rising, or there really has been a tragedy happen in their firm, either a suicide or some noticeable addictions where that's become something that— Oftentimes, that's the time when I'll get called. What I always try to let people know is the best time to make yourself personally and your organization really resilient is when the sun is shining. You've got the ability to build that real strong resilient base when you're not already in crisis mode. It's like trying to sell a parachute after you've already been pushed up out of the plane, so really getting that foundational thing and then being able to build on the strength. [00:11:17] Michelle: Right. I say the same about marketing and PR. Don't come looking for marketing help when your revenue is down and you're desperate for work. You got to do it when things are good because it's such a long-term strategy. [00:11:35] Renee: Here I am. [00:11:35] Michelle: Yes, no worries. Oh, technology. [00:11:40] Renee: I know it. [00:11:41] Michelle: You alluded to this a minute ago but what are some of the stigmas around mental health and the legal profession? What do you see are the stigmas that create the barriers to getting help? [00:11:54] Renee: I think the big one is that fear of being or looking vulnerable. Early on when I started working in this space, I realized the disconnect between when I used the word vulnerable and what people would hear were really very different things. It made sense to me. I figured out that we were talking in two different ways. Someone said to me once, "Listen, Renee, we don't do vulnerability. We don't do vulnerability because vulnerability in the legal world means…that's when mistakes happen. That's when there's weaknesses. We do everything we can to shore-up those vulnerabilities. That's our job." That made a lot of sense to me. There's a reason. Even sometimes when the tools and behaviors that we are doing are unhelpful to us in one realm, they're very helpful to us in another realm. By understanding that, I tried to really help people understand that. If you think about vulnerability, if you think about anything you've ever gotten in life that you've ever wanted whether it's been in your professional career, in your personal life, whatever that might be, there was always an element of vulnerability in that. There was always that moment of risk where I could either get it or not get it. I'm putting myself out there on the line that goes through the relationships that we're in and the jobs that we want. Seeing vulnerability and that openness to risk actually brings a lot of reward, and so leaning into a vulnerability of saying, "You know what? I need something different for my life. I need to start adding some things onto taking a look at what's not working for me anymore. What tool used to work and isn't anymore?" When I talk about resilience, I talk about the six different domains, I refer to them as books. Six different domains of resilience. Sometimes you might be really high on some areas of resilience and really need to then turn up the dial on some others and so being able to sit back and look at, "Where do I really need to pour some energy into so it's filling my cup back up?" [00:14:25] Michelle: I'd love to hear what those six different domains are if you don't mind sharing. [00:14:28] Renee: Yes, absolutely, I would love to. I talk about them in no particular order and that's because, like I said, they're all at different points. Sometimes, we might need one more than the other. When we talk about those six resilience domains, I call them books because I think of this as a library. We'll pull down one of the shelf sometimes when we need it. One of them is calm. The ability to calm and soothe ourselves in the moment. It's one of our very first skills that we learn as human beings when we think about the ability to self-soothe. We had caregivers who nursed us and rocked us and cared for us and then shortly after, as still in infancy, we learned how to self-soothe. We suck our thumb. Babies hold teddy bears or wrapping blankets, so that ability to self-soothe is critically important. Now, we don't walk around pacifiers anymore, so then what do we do? Sometimes, we forget that we have that capacity in the moment that can be offline for us, particularly, when we're already at a [sound cut] rate of that kind of chronic stress. I talk about, we all have stress that it spikes and it'll go back down and it'll spike and it'll go back down. When we're in a chronic state of stress and it'll spike and maybe it'll go down a little bit, then it'll spike up again and it'll go down just a little bit or maybe it doesn't and it flatlines. Even in our new baseline, we've got cortisol coursing through our bodies, and so that ability to calm and self-soothe. We really need to focus on just our health, how we are physically treating our bodies and also what our body is telling us. We know that stress and health are really, really closely related. If we're getting chronic headaches, if we're having constant gut issues, that's a sign of what is our body telling us. Feeding ourselves literally well, getting sleep, all of that is a big component of it.  A third one is, and this is one that folks often don't really think about, but it's staying connected to our values. Values is a huge one. This goes back to what I was saying that if a law firm says that one of their values is the well-being of its people and it says it's on the values that hangs on the walls of every law firm but they're not really living into that. There's an incongruence. We're incongruent with our values and that state of being is stressful in and of itself. [00:17:25] Michelle: Right. Yes, absolutely. [00:17:26] Renee: We ask ourselves, "Where are we personally and as an organization? Are we staying aligned in our values? Are we living in the integrity of what we say we value?" Really in a moment then of crisis, challenge or change, we can say, "Okay, what value do we need to make sure that we're really upholding here?" because we know that anytime, both personally and professionally, when there's a moment of crisis challenge or change, those are the times that will also challenge our values the most because we're looking for an easy exit from the discomfort or the stress of it, so staying really, really close to our values. [00:18:12] Michelle: I like that. [00:18:17] Renee: Especially with the organization, if any one did have to be top of the list, I really would put that one I think at the top.  Also, our ability to reason. We know that when we are under an enormous amount of stress, our thinking brain, our logic goes offline. [00:18:40] Michelle: That's so true, yes. [00:18:43] Renee: Because we've got our little lizard brain which is — I don't know if you've ever heard of the brain is like a hand. We've got that fibula deep down in there that is really messing with us and telling us that we're in danger, and so we've got no blood flowing to the thinking parts of our brain. So keeping those on line, being able to recognize— I always recognize that when I've read something three times and I still haven't comprehended anything I've just read, then I know, "Okay, I just need to push back from the desk." [00:19:12] Michelle: I need to slow down, stop, take a break. Yes, I hear that. [00:19:16] Renee: That's right. Recognizing that, not letting it freak us out too much. We're like, "Oh my gosh, I've lost my marbles here," and give ourselves that ability. When we are able to get back online with that, then we're much more easily able to adapt to the challenge or change that we're going through. We're much more likely to be able to learn from it and actually have that, be that. We talk about positive stress, too, that growth-based stress that stretches us and helps us grow. That's something with reason.  We talk about optimism and optimism for me, it can be a bit sticky. Right now, I'm also the executive director of a sexual assault resource agency. I know that bad things happen to good people for no reason. Sometimes when I think about — or at least when I used to think about optimism, it was like the sunny side of the street, don't worry, be happy, good vibes only, which didn't resonate with me. To learn that optimism really is a more grounded kind of optimism, that means simply that the current crisis, challenge or change isn't permanent. It's not going to last forever, even when we think it is. That it is not pervasive. It doesn't touch every single aspect of our life, so really to take a moment to say, "Okay, what of this problem isn't touching what part of my life and can I lean in and get some relief, some joy, take a breath in that space?  Finally, the third P is that it's not personal. Yes, it impacts, me but it's not because of me. It's not because I'm a bad person or I'm worthless. If I believe those things, I can still feel sad in the moment. I can still feel frustrated in the moment but I still have some optimism because I know it's not permanent, pervasive or personal. [00:21:22] Michelle: I love that. Yes, it's like a perspective almost. [00:21:26] Renee: That's right. [00:21:26] Michelle: It's not just being positive for positive reasons. It's just gaining the perspective so that you don't obsess over the negative and you can put it in the right place almost is what it sounds like you're saying. [00:21:38] Renee: Yes, that's right. The very last one really quickly is connection. We are hard-wired to be connected with one another, and it matters less about how many people we're connected to. We are so hyper-connected to everyone around the world all the time, 24/7, but that real, authentic, deep connection. Even if we just have a few people in our lives and even better, if we've got even just one person in our place of work where we feel that we can show up authentically, that can be literally life-changing. [00:22:15] Michelle: Yes, absolutely. I wonder, too, and I know what you were saying there is about deep connections but the advance of remote work and how that impacts mental health, I could see it having both positive and negative impacts, and the negative from the connection side of things. [00:22:34] Renee: Yes, I think that's right. I think that's one of the things that we will be learning about and studying for decades to come. I think we learned because we needed to. Again, it's about this being adaptive in the midst of a crisis.  Just a personal example, I joined this online book club group at the beginning of the pandemic and there's a core of five of us from all around the country who've only met in person, some of us just once. Actually, I saw one friend in Chicago last week, but really deep connections. We text each other daily and check on each other's lives and ask about our kids. It can happen remotely but we have to be more intentional about it because we don't have those off-the-cuff water cooler moments. Intentionality is really important. [00:23:34] Michelle: I love that. Yes, I love all your points about resilience. For me, it wasn't something I really understood as a concept. I think a lot of people don't understand it until they go through a few things and they go, "Oh, this is what resilience looks like," and if you can get ahead of that, especially in such a demanding profession where you are expected to be the perfect one with the bulldog kind of persona, it's so incredibly important. Last thing I wanted to ask was around burnout and stress. Attorneys are expected to bill crazy amount of hours. I don't know if you've seen, there was a big drama the last couple of weeks where a PowerPoint presentation went viral, and it was in one of the big Am Law 100 firms. It was basically saying, "Look, you're at the big leagues. This is how it is. This is your life. You're online 24/7. Don't complain," and it caused this big uproar. In an industry that demands that, how do you help attorneys avoid that burnout and stress, or how can they help themselves? [00:24:47] Renee: I might have lost you there for just a second. [00:24:49] Michelle: Oh, that's okay. Sorry. I was just saying, how can attorneys honestly help themselves or what tools do you give them for avoiding that burnout and stress before they get to that point where it becomes a real big problem? [00:25:02] Renee: Gosh, it's so important to have a firm that is not like the one you were mentioning that really does have that space to say, "You're allowed to be human, and as a matter of fact, we need you to be human," but we don't all have that pleasure or ability at the moment to have that kind of support. I think having some of these resilience skills on board, knowing how to advocate for yourself and advocate some systemic change, I think is really important, but the idea of being able to grind oneself down and then maybe get a week or two weeks of vacation, even if in an ideal world, you really do log off for those two weeks, which I don't know any attorney in my life I've known that's really fully done that. Let's say, even if that's the case, you're already at such a point, you're not getting up to a recovery level at that point. [00:26:15] Michelle: Right. [00:26:18] Renee: There's not a magic reset button, just like whether it comes to getting in physical shape, too. We can't just go away kind of on a warrior weekend and all of a sudden, we come back and we're in a marathon after a weekend of a running camp or something. It's that those consistent small changes that we can make, that are within our control, are even more important when we have things that are out of our control. One of the things, when I talk to law firm leaders, is I'm not always going to be able to get them to see the altruistic benefit of making changes. That's just the reality and that's okay, but we can also make the economic argument for this that it really does cost in real money and in real reputation, which results in real money, when you're just grinding your folks down to a nub. We know that that makes an impact as well. Investing in well-being doesn't have to be for altruistic reasons, it can be for just plain old economic reasons as well, and that's okay with me as long as it gets done. [00:27:39] Michelle: Yes, nothing wrong with that. Yes, exactly. Nothing wrong with showing the tie to more revenue and a more effective business, so that's great. Well, thank you so much. A really great conversation, really topical for the month of May as we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month and we're shining a light on some of those issues.  We've been talking to Renee Branson of RB Consulting. Renee, if a law firm leader listening to this right now wants to get in touch and learn more about you, where should they go? [00:28:12] Renee: They can find me on my website which is simply just reneebranson.blog or my email address is rb@reneebranson.blog. That's probably the easiest way to reach out. I'd be delighted to talk to more folks. [00:28:28] Michelle: Great. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. [00:28:32] Renee: Thank you so much. Take care. [00:28:36]: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.  

When faced with a complex legal challenge, businesses search for law firms that can provide specialized solutions to their problems. By branding your law firm as a “jack of all trades,” you risk having potential clients lump your sophisticated law practice with other competitors.  What does that mean? You’ve just lost new business because you didn’t stand out. Casting a wide net can help expand your target audience, but it can also prevent you from being memorable in an extremely competitive market. Niching is a way to demonstrate to prospective clients that your team is uniquely qualified to represent them. In this episode of Spill the Ink, Michelle Calcote King sits down with Robert Ingalls, the Founder of LawPods, to discuss the value of being niche-focused and how podcasting can be used to a firm’s advantage.  They discuss the process and strategy behind an excellent legal podcast, the value-add podcasting provides firms, and why defining and owning a niche area is a key to success — in both the legal business and podcasting world. Also, hear about how Robert took his years of experience as a litigation attorney and combined it with a passion for podcasting to start the company Lawpods. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn What is the value of starting a legal podcast? How does podcasting work? How does niching help law firms differentiate themselves from their competitors? How can firms define a niche and use it to boost a podcast? About our featured guest Robert Ingalls is a recovering attorney, professional speaker and the founder of LawPods, one of the first podcast production agencies for law firms. At LawPods, Robert and his team help some of the premier law firms in the world launch and grow branded podcasts that build relationships and drive revenue. Robert’s path to podcast producer for the Am Law 100 was anything but direct. For years, he battled anxiety from the pressure, long hours and constant conflict of a litigation career. When he was finally ready to throw in the towel, he had no idea what to do next.  With no business or marketing background and only a love for podcasts he discovered while creating a podcast for his law firm, Robert decided to see if lawyers would pay him to help them launch podcasts. With very few takers in the early days, Robert spent two years in a corporate banking gig, grinding nights and weekends to finally bring LawPods to life. As a speaker, Robot frequently speaks on topics including positioning your law firm podcast for success, prioritizing mental health, entrepreneurship and law office technology. In his spare time, he enjoys teaching podcasting at community events, spending time with his wife and daughters, skateboarding and snowboarding. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out LawPods Follow Lawpods on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Robert Ingalls on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Read “Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You” Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript Robert Ingalls [00:00] For most lawyers, you’re sitting down and your job is to help someone else understand the answer to their question and make them feel better. Make them say, “I’ve been here. We’ve been here. You’re in safe hands. This is the place to come because we understand exactly what you’re going through.  [MUSIC AND INTRODUCTION] [00:20] Michelle Calcote King [00:38] Hi everyone! I’m Michelle Calcote King, your host, and the Principal and President of Reputation Ink. We’re a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and professional services firms. To learn more about us go to www.rep-ink.com.  When a business is facing a complex challenge, they do what we all do: head to Google to start researching solutions. What inevitably happens is hundreds of search results come up. While casting a wide net is great for getting the attention of a broad target audience, niche marketing can offer a greater competitive advantage in highly saturated markets. And for the sake of today’s conversation, we’re talking about law firms, but this applies to other industries and professional services firms as well.  My guest today is Robert Ingalls. He's a strong believer that a key part of your firm’s branding and marketing strategy needs to be niche-focused. And I have to say that I strongly agree, but we’ll get into that.  We’re also going to talk to Robert about his transition. He made the transition from his career as a litigation attorney, and then in 2017 he decided to change gears and use that expertise to found the company LawPods. As a new-ish podcaster, I’m really excited to talk to you about podcasting and that strategy and how it works for law firms. Robert, thanks for being on the show with me.. Robert Ingalls [2:03] Hey, Michelle. Thanks so much for having me. Any time that somebody puts a microphone in my face and lets me talk, it’s a good day for me. Michelle Calcote King [2:09] Love it. Let’s start with what LawPods is. Tell me about your journey to starting that. Robert Ingalls [2:16] Oh, that’s a big question. I was a litigation attorney. I initially went to law school probably because I wasn't sure I wanted to be a big kid yet. But, I’d also had a kind of a lifelong affair with just the pursuit of justice. I always found it very entertaining and certainly romanticized it. The idea of helping people was really exciting to me. So, I went to law school and became a criminal defense attorney. That was always the path. Once I got there and I started practicing, I found out very quickly that it wasn’t for me; that I am not built for that type of work. You know, people say attorneys have to compartmentalize. I don’t have it. It’s just not a muscle that I have, and it’s not one  that honestly I think I care to develop. I take my whole self with me everywhere I go and that was really hard for me because the types of things I was doing every day — while completely ethical and the right thing and my job — they made me feel bad. I did not like what I was having to do and the way it made me feel. It was incompatible with good mental health for me and I discovered that pretty early. From there, I jumped into kind of general litigation, but also kind of jumped into what lawyers will call “Door practice.” You know, whatever comes in the door. And that was not great. Jack of all trades, master of none. I think we’re probably going to get into that later in the conversation, but I was stressed out all the time, overworked, very anxious. I didn’t have a word for it at the time because, you know, the idea of having mental health problems was, “No.” Michelle Calcote King [4:15] Well and I’m sure it wasn’t in the lexicon as much back then as well. Robert Ingalls [4:19] Not at all. The type of area I came from growing up, it wasn’t something that you admitted to either. It was a weakness. So, I’d never thought much about it and I thought this is just what life is. This is how life feels. Then, my wife came to me after we got married and kind of hit me with, “I want to have a baby. Like, now.” And up until that moment, that was tomorrow guy’s problem. All of a sudden it was like, someone might live here next year. That really caused me in that moment, and over the next couple of weeks, take stock of my life. And I said, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be this person who is stressed and anxious and was overwhelmed all the time. So, I started on a path of personal development, which I’d never been into before. That path of reading books in personal development led me to a podcast. The second podcast I listened to, just kind of, a light bulb went off for me. Michelle Calcote King [5:30] What podcast was that? Robert Ingalls [05:31] It’s different now, but it was called “Awesome Office.” It was a great podcast and it was about office culture, and I was running an office at the time so I was like, “Let me learn about this.” The guest was a guy named Tom Bilyeu, the founder of Quest Nutrition. He’s now gone on to found “Impact Theory,” a very good podcast about personal development.  And we’ve all heard this so many times in our lives that it’s: try. You can be anything you want; you can do anything you want. It was the first time I’d heard it because that was the thrust of the message: you don’t have to do what you’re doing. You can stop it now and do something else. I just heard it. “I think I can be anything I want. I don’t have to keep doing this.” That just gave me license in that moment to get out of that tunnel vision I had and explore. I think I told  you before we got on that 30 days after I listened to my first podcast, I bought this microphone. The medium resonated so deeply with me that two people could sit down and have a conversation a world apart and it could be valuable to me. Michelle Calcote King [6:41] How cool that you’re doing that. Robert Ingalls [6:44] Yeah. Like, somebody right now is listening to this podcast probably two years from today when we recorded it and they’re gonna, hopefully, get value from it because we took the time here to sit down, have this conversation, put it out where people could hear it. And then it’s kind of got that evergreen status where people can continue to interact with it. So, that’s the short story of how I got where I am. Michelle Calcote King [7:06] So much of what you just said resonates. I often tell clients that marketing allows you to take control of your firm in terms of creating a brand to attract the kinds of clients you want, you know? And I don’t think a lot of lawyers have thought through that. I’ll give you an example. A lawyer will often tell me, “Oh, well, all our business comes from referrals. We don’t get it.” And I’ll say, “Well, you’ve never done marketing. Of course all your business has come from referrals.” Until you start engaging in that and defining an ideal client and ideal business and then marketing for it, you don't understand the power that that has to really create the kind of practice that you want. Marketing is critical to that. So, I love how you said that.  Also, podcasting for me has been such a value-add as well. I've enjoyed every minute of it. And it's not just from the content creation; it's the relationships you build. Have you found that as well? Robert Ingalls [8:05] Yes. When I first started, that was the biggest thing that was unanticipated for me, but for my clients as well. They overwhelmingly say the network effect of the podcast has been one of the most valuable things that they didn't even come in seeing as a potential ROI. And they’re having conversations with people like we’re having right now. We’re getting to know each other in real-time right now. They’re having these conversations with people they otherwise might not be having conversations with or connecting with. Those people turn into, potentially, referral sources; potentially clients, potentially friends, and certainly a member of your network, which there’s always value in that.  Then the relationships you make from the listeners that you connect with, people listen, they start to follow you, they start to reach out to you, you start to connect with them. I have become a guest on numerous shows that I started out as a listener, and I was like, “This is really good information.” And then I started to think, “I think I have something of value to add to this conversation.” Now I'm a guest on the show; now I'm developing relationships; now I have referral agreements with some of these people. It all starts from this beautiful medium that we're engaging in right now. That's why I went all in. That's why when I left my career, I started building this company. You know, I took a corporate America job just to pay for the kids I now have and started building the company. It was early, but I believed in it. I saw how powerful it was in all of these things we’re talking about. And I think the market is kind of proving me out here because every year we see that staircase go up. Michelle Calcote King [9:57] Yeah. And COVID, I would say, probably definitely helped. I hesitated getting into podcasting because I thought I don't have more to share than what's already out there. There's all these sort of legal marketing and PR podcasts so I thought I'm not going to add anything new was what I hesitated. Then I talked to a consultant at a company that manages podcasts and produces podcasts for companies and he talked me through the networking value; and to view it as a networking tool. Sorry, my dog is walking around in the background. Robert Ingalls [10:35] I love it. Michelle Calcote King [10:36] She’s my velcro dog so I can’t push her out while I do this. But, you know, he really coached me around thinking about it as a networking tool first and foremost. Once I did that and shifted that, I’m still producing great content, but I’m making connections in a way that is really simple but has a lot of added value. That was kind of a lightbulb moment for me. When you talk to law firms — we’ve kind of just covered it — but, do you give them any other reasons about “Why a podcast?” As we know working with lawyers, they’re busy people and they’ve got billable hours to meet. Talk me through the value proposition that you give them. Robert Ingalls [11:27] The first one that we usually discuss is when people are showing up on your website, they have questions. For a lot of my clients — I have a lot of trial lawyers — when people show up on their website, something bad happened to them or someone they care about. And they're there not to learn about you, per se. You're not the hero of their story.  Michelle Calcote King [11:51] Right Robert Ingalls [11:52] They're there to get answers.  Michelle Calcote King [11:54] About their problem. Absolutely.  Robert Ingalls [11:55] Right. That's why we're making all of the content we've been making. That's why SEO companies will never go out of business for at least…until they figure out how to beam stuff into our brain, I guess. We're creating content to answer questions and that is usually, depending on the type of law firm, that is usually the first thing we're thinking about: is they ask, you answer. Now let's answer in a way that could perhaps provide more value. Because we write all of this content. It’s very good. It's helping drive people to our site, but people don't love to sit and read content. And videos are good; I like videos a lot. I think that there's a very good place for them, but audio has exploded, I believe, because it does something that no other form of marketing can do: it sells you time. It doesn't say stop and read. It doesn't say look over here and watch. It says, “What are you about to do? I'll come with you.” You can learn, be entertained, and gather information — and on your own schedule, from your own app. You don't have to sit on my website and use the rudimentary players that a browser allows you. You can tap one button, leave the website, go to your podcast player, to my show where everything you could ever want to know about your problem lives.  Michelle Calcote King [13:17] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [13:18] So, you have another problem, then just scroll through your feed. That is also something. And I know they have that problem because I've been in thousands of consultations. I've heard every possible angle of a question asked to me. I've also worked on my SEO. So I know what people are typing before they land on my site. I know what they're typing before they land on my competitor sites; I know what they want to know. And so I'm creating content that when someone does land on my website, that will nurture them, that will cause them to get that know-like trust that we want. That is going to get past that friction point of getting them to pick up the phone. Michelle Calcote King [13:55] Yeah. I love how you say that, that, you know, we're producing a piece of content that is giving time, that's respecting how busy people are and how they like to consume information. But what I found, too, about podcasting, is it's an easier medium for the creator as well. Do you find that? And is that part of how you coach law firms? Robert Ingalls [14:17] One hundred percent because that is one of the biggest objections we get is, “Because I don't have time for a podcast.” And it's one of those things — I've told this story in presentations — I had a call with a law firm owner and they were in a very niche area. And he had two objections. One was, “I don't have time.” Two was “My niche is saturated. People are already doing it.” And so perhaps. Both of these things could be true, sure. Maybe. In theory. So, I did a little research after the call and went on to his website. He was creating a lot of articles and writing a lot of blogs, also creating a lot of YouTube content. You know, a lot of it was just like, “Look at all these books.” But still, that takes time and energy to create.  Michelle Calcote King [15:17] Absolutely. Robert Ingalls [15:18] And then when you look at the saturation point, there were two other podcasts in his niche. It was super —  “Niche,” “niche.” I never know where to go with that. I will fluctuate as this conversation Michelle Calcote King [15:31] Yeah, I do the same. Robert Ingalls [15:33] And that was saturation to him. For me, the idea that someone else is already doing a podcast about my practice area and that means I shouldn't do one? That blows my mind because I see that the same way as somebody saying, “Well, they already have a website. Why would I have a website?”  Michelle Calcote King [15:56] Ah, yeah. Robert Ingalls [15:57] Why would you want someone educating your prospects on their podcast? You think they're gonna listen to their podcast and then call you? No! They developed a relationship with that firm now. And I think some people think about their podcast as kind of like Joe Rogan, as well. “I'm gonna make a podcast about something somebody will want to listen to while they're mowing the grass on Saturday.” That's not the reality for a lot of people and I don't think it's the angle you should be pursuing. You are speaking to a specific problem, usually. That's usually what you're trying to do, you're talking about something that people want to know about. They don't really want to be entertained. There are a lot of really good entertainers out there. And if you're that good, that your law firm podcasts can be entertaining, it’s time to switch areas. It's time to go into entertainment. So the idea that somebody else is already doing it, I shouldn't do it is…I think that's misguided. Michelle Calcote King [16:50] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [16:51] And…I'm trying to remember the other; I had a number two…  Michelle Calcote King [16:56] We’re talking about how easy they are to give time to compared to… Robert Ingalls [16:59] Oh, the time commitment! Michelle Calcote King [17:00] Yeah, exactly. Robert Ingalls [17:01] Thanks for throwing me a life raft there.  Michelle Calcote King [17:02] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [17:03] And then the time commitment, I think you hit on it, is it ends up being significantly smaller than any other type of content creation. Especially if you're working with a team, your job really is to sit down in front of the microphone. It's a USB microphone that you just plug into your computer, it's not a lot of fancy gear anymore. This stuff is streamlined. You sit down. You have a conversation. You walk away. That's it. Most lawyers that have a podcast, that's the extent of their involvement in the podcast, because you're not sitting down creating content that is unique, really. For the most part, you're not sitting down and creating NPR content that has to go from here to here and create a unique and compelling, hooking story. You're creating content about things you are already the expert in. You're talking about things you know about. Like, when you got me on this call, I didn't have any expectations. I didn't prepare for this. We're having a conversation about something I understand deeply. Michelle Calcote King [18:07] Exactly. Why would you do an interview about something that you don't know well enough to just speak casually about? Robert Ingalls [18:14] Yeah, sure. Depending on the type of content you’re making, sure. But for most lawyers, you’re sitting down and your job is to help someone else understand the answer to their question and make them feel better. Make them say, “I’ve been here. We’ve been here. You’re in safe hands. This is the place to come because we understand exactly what you’re going through. It’s a tough position that you’re in. We’ve done it before. Here are some of our clients that have been through it.” Just getting them to that point. And they feel comfortable with you. The amount of time that takes is infinitely smaller than trying to sit down and put 1,500 words on a page. Michelle Calcote King [18:57] Hmm. Absolutely.  Robert Ingalls [19:00] People try to get dressed up and take a thousand cuts for a video you want to put on Youtube.  Michelle Calcote King [19:06] We are a content creation firm and PR firm for law firms. When you’re producing written content, the amount of, you know, editing by committee that lawyers will do — you know, lawyers are word people so the tinkering of words… Robert Ingalls [19:27] Tinker, tinker. Michelle Calcote King [19:28] Yeah, the debate over oxford commas. Robert Ingalls [19:30] Ha! I have bigger things. Michelle Calcote King [19:33] Yeah, well, they all do. So, whereas podcasting takes that away. It takes away that whole process of that tinkering with the words and the back and forth. And I liked what you said about entertaining. I’ve always had a bit of a dislike for podcasts where they don’t jump into the meat of the conversation and there’s this banter and I’m thinking, “I’m not getting any value.” Because when I go into a business podcast, I want value. I want to learn something very quickly. So I’ve always stayed away from that myself as a podcaster. I don’t have a co-host that I sit there and chit-chat about the weather with. I get into it immediately. Do you advise your attorneys similarly? It sounds like you do with the, “We’re not trying to compete with Joe Rogan.” Robert Ingalls [20:27] Right. One hundred percent. But I also do balance that with bringing yourself to the podcast. But I don’t think that bringing yourself necessarily means a lot of chitchat, especially in the beginning. I think it means weaving stories in there that humanize you. That let them know…like, you’re not talking at them. You’re talking with them. And you can very much mention that you had a terrible golf outing on Saturday. Michelle Calcote King [20:56] Right, right. Robert Ingalls [20:57] Just weave in your life. And that’s very simple — well, simple is maybe the wrong word. But that comes naturally for a lot of lawyers. We are trained storytellers. Even for the ones of us that didn’t go into trial work. We still learn how to craft a narrative in our first year of law school. That was a big thing, persuasion. We learned how to communicate with other people. It’s just kind of natural communication. Just bring yourself out and tell some stories that make you a little bit more relatable. Michelle Calcote King [21:28] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [21:29] But the chit-chat itself, the nonsense…that kind of stuff? I highly advise against it. And it’s one of those things where you know it when you hear it. Because I’ve listened to podcasts — somebody will say, “You should listen to this podcast,” — and the first five minutes, I don’t even know what the episode is going to be about. Michelle Calcote King [21:47] Yes. Robert Ingalls [21:48] And I’m sure that’s endearing for people who have developed a relationship with that show. And so maybe it’s the kind of show that that’s just how it is. It’s this one show that goes on for a really long time and people aren’t just showing up to get information. They’re showing up to feel like they know the host. Perfect. If that’s what your show is about, great. That is almost never what a show that I work with is going to be about right now because people show up to lawyers like they show up to plumbers. You don’t even think about them until you do. Michelle Calcote King [22:24] Right, absolutely. Robert Ingalls [22:25] Something happened. My house is flooded. What do I do? Michelle Calcote King [22:30] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [22:31] That is how…. Plumbers shouldn’t be approaching their content with a lot of fluff. Water is rising; get to the point! Michelle Calcote King [22:41] Right. Robert Ingalls [22:43] And that’s how I think lawyers should be approaching their content. Michelle Calcote King [22:46] When you talked about the extent of the lawyer's involvement is getting a microphone, plugging it in and having a conversation, tell me about the work that you do behind the scenes to make that happen. Are you assisting them with outreach and finding the right guests? Talk to me about that a little bit. Robert Ingalls [23:08] Sure. To answer all of it, our commitment is you do the talking, we do the rest. And we learned that over years in business of “How do we make this…how do we lower the commitment as best we can while still delivering exceptional products?” And we discovered that really, lawyers are in a position to show up, talk, walk away, and we can do the rest. And so it starts with crafting the strategy for their show. We start on day one with “Who is our target listener?” A lot of podcasts that I start to work with that exist already, even at really big firms, have never answered that question. Michelle Calcote King [23:53] Wow. Robert Ingalls [23:54] I know!  And they just started talking about something they thought was interesting without thinking about who would listen. Who are we making this for? Because every time you make a content decision, it’s very arbitrary if you’re not making it with your listener in mind. Michelle Calcote King [24:10] Absolutely. Robert Ingalls [24:11] Our goals in mind. What’s our long-term goal? How does this become revenue? So that’s one of the first things we do is, “Who are we doing this for? Why are we doing it?” We work with a lot of PI (personal injury) firms. They’re not all created equal. And, you know, what areas are you focusing on? Michelle Calcote King [24:26] Right. Robert Ingalls [24:27] Some PI firms will have 50 different tabs as far as like we do medmal, we do car accidents, we do truck accidents…. And is there one of those that you’re doing the best with? Or is there one that you really want to hammer? If there’s one you really want to get into, that’s where you want to live. Michelle Calcote King [24:48] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [24:49] Okay, perfect. Maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe we make content. We have a Utah attorney that we’re working with who does PI all over, but we have a truck accident podcast. That’s what our podcast is about: trucking accidents. Michelle Calcote King [25:01] Love it. Robert Ingalls [25:02] And so we want to think about that kind of stuff. What’s the strategy? Who is it? Because we have some attorneys that we work with who are much more interested in referrals. They handle catastrophic injuries.  Michelle Calcote King [25:14] Right. Robert Ingalls [25:15] And they get almost all their work from other attorneys who took the case and said, “We need help with this.” So their podcast is created for attorneys. It is an educational tool that attorneys in their target referral market would want to listen to. It would be valuable for them. And then it’s branded by the firm, “Hey. While you’re here, if you have something going on like this, send it to us. We’d love to work with you.” So, their podcast is referrals. That’s the kind of conversation we have upfront. Just creating that strategy on why are we doing it? Who are we doing it for? Setting ourselves up for long-term success. And then from there, it goes, “We’re going to do voiceover intros and outros with professional voice actors so when people show up to your podcast it doesn’t sound like they recorded it in a wind tunnel.”  Michelle Calcote King [26:05] Mhm. Robert Ingalls [26:06] It sounds professional because just like your website, when somebody shows up to any of your content and it’s bad, it reflects poorly on you. Podcasts are the same way. So, we want to make sure that when they first listen, it’s got a nice soundtrack. It’s got a good voice over. That your microphones are good. We’re going to ship you microphones to make sure that you’re getting good sound. You should be able to record in your office, at home, in Fiji, as long as you have a good wifi connection. And people really shouldn’t be able to hear the difference between the conversation we’re having right this second if you have the right microphone. But people will often buy the wrong microphone that they think is good. So, we solved that problem by shipping them a microphone.  Michelle Calcote King [26:49] Just doing it. I like it. Robert Ingalls [26:50] Just doing it. It’s things we’ve learned along the way, it’s business ownership. And then, we set up a calendar for them, they find a time that works, they hop on, we’re on the call with them, we check their sound levels, check their guest levels, press record, they have a conversation while we’re in the background, and then they hang up and that’s it. We edit, audio engineer, cut the video up into a video podcast for Youtube that’s optimized with keywords. We write show notes, we post it to their blog, post it to Youtube, post it to Apple podcast, Spotify, everywhere podcasts go. We also cut it up into pieces of microcontent. Into little shot video clips on branded templates with captions that people will actually engage with on social media. And then post those things to their social accounts as well. So, it’s really getting that entire content marketing strategy from sitting down and talking for twenty minutes. Michelle Calcote King [27:42] Love it. That trucking example was a perfect segue because I do want to talk to you about niche marketing. It’s what we initially planned but I’m so fascinated with podcasting right now. We started it last year and did it for about a year. I had to take a little bit of a break and I’m just getting back with it. But it was just such a great network builder and all these other benefits that you mentioned that I’m just a fan of the medium. But! Let’s talk about niche marketing and where you think that falls in terms of strategy for law firms. How do you advise firms in terms of finding a niche? When I first started working with law firms, there was a joke about you know because branding law firms is the most difficult thing, the joke was this is just a bunch of professionals that the only thing they have in common is the shared HVAC system and the building that they're working in. As a brand person, you’re looking for what’s that unique value proposition and often these full service law firms really kind of form because of geography. They serve the geography, and as things have changed — obviously, COVID was a big shift but it was already happening with the internet — people are looking for exact experts in their exact problems. So, how are you advising law firms with that? Robert Ingalls [29:16] It’s something that comes up frequently and more so for us with medium sized firms. And that is a lot of times how they formed is people came together. They did this, they did this, well let’s just pool our resources. And then they became a firm. Like any other business, it is really difficult to establish yourself and scale when you do a lot of things, especially if you do those lots of things in lots of different ways.  And, you know, if you go to a networking event and you meet four different people. You meet one that does divorces for high-value men, that’s what they do. They introduce themselves, “I handle divorce proceedings for men that have significant resources.” And okay, that’s perfect. Then you meet another one who does estate planning. Okay, alright. Then you meet another one who does personal injury, some criminal defense, they’ll also do wills for you as well, but nothing too complicated. You know, it’s all these things. And then somebody comes in and they ask for something. If they come and ask me for estate planning, I’m not going to send them to that person because I don’t know what that person does — wills, but not too complicated. By doing all of those different things it can be really difficult to brand yourself. Michelle Calcote King [30:36] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [30:37] And that doesn’t mean you can’t make a good living. I, having practiced for a long time, know a lot of attorneys that are making 80,000 to 150,000 practicing that kind of law. And for a lot of people, I think that that's a very good income, and they're very happy with it. I mean, most of those people I know work really, really hard to cover that — or maybe “hard” is the wrong word. They work a lot of hours. Michelle Calcote King [31:00] Right. Robert Ingalls [31:01] The potential to scale that is really difficult because it’s hard to systematize it. Michelle Calcote King [31:09] Right. You’re not repeating processes. Yeah, it’s not only a great marketing strategy, it just makes your life easier is what I tell people. Robert Ingalls [31:19] There’s an excellent book and this is focused on agencies, but the framework applies everywhere. It’s called “Built to Sell” and it’s about building a company in a way that it’s actually a business. Because if you leave your desk for a week as the owner of the company and things start to break, you don’t own a company.  Michelle Calcote King [31:42] Right. You’re a glorified freelancer. Robert Ingalls [31:46] Yeah, you own a job because nothing continues to happen. And on my side, I think a lot about that. You know, my company is not huge yet, but I can disappear for days before anyone really would notice. And that's how it needs to be. Michelle Calcote King [32:00] It’s a fabulous feeling, isn’t it? When you realize you’ve gotten there. Robert Ingalls [32:03] Yeah. But I think any business owner needs that. You need systems and processes that are repeatable. That when something happens, everyone knows what to do. I read a book where he called it “fire killing.” So like your job as a business owner is not to be a fire killer. Your entire day becomes putting out fires for everyone. Everyone is at your door and it makes you feel important because everyone needs you and you’re busy. You’re so busy. And we feel like busy translates into value, which it definitely does not. By having the type of thing when you’re in a niche — and I think PI firms maybe, I work with a lot of them, but I feel like they do it the best of most of the firms I’ve seen. They have the systems, they have these processes, There’s usually one partner who doesn’t even practice anymore. He’s the face, he’s the marketer, his entire job is to tell the story. Then you’ve got the chief litigator whose entire job is to be really, really good at driving cases. They work up the cases under, they bring them to him when it’s time to go to bat and he takes them and runs with them. And then you’ve got the associate who does this, the intake team at these firms is huge. You’ll see four attorneys and then you’ll look and there’s 15 support staff. I love that because they’re creating a system where the attorneys aren’t filing paperwork.  Michelle Calcote King [33:25] Right. Robert Ingalls [33:26] The attorneys aren’t drawing a lot of boilerplate stuff up. They've got an entire system where from the moment a client picks up the phone and comes through their system, everyone knows exactly what they're supposed to do next. And that's really hard to do if you're doing multiple things. Michelle Calcote King [33:43] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [33:44] I feel like I kind of got sidetracked with the business part of it. Michelle Calcote King [33:46] Oh, no, no because I’m a big proponent of it from both of those sides. From it makes your business run more effectively…but what you were describing at the beginning of that was…. There's a concept about mental availability, right? The world is so much more complex, we're given so much more information, we have so much more information available, so the simpler the message, the more easy it is to recall it. So, when an attorney says to you, “I do a little of this, a little of that, a little that,” you're not going to remember, “Oh, he's the guy to go to for this friend of mine who is high net worth and is getting a divorce.” So  it's really risen because of you know, the internet age and how much information we have now, and you've got to simplify your brand in order to kind of cut through. Robert Ingalls [34:39] Yeah. The ability to get in front of people in the marketplace with  that simple message of “I do this and I do it well.” And that's it. “This is who I am. This is what I do.” It is really easy for people to recall. It's really easy for people to refer to you. Michelle Calcote King [35:00] Mhm. Robert Ingalls [35:01] And any market you go to — right this moment, we could drop ourselves in Iowa and it would take us…within an hour, we would know who the PI people in town are. Just from driving around; just from watching television. And they're hammering, “This is who we are and this is what we do.” They're not trying to draw up your will for you. They're not trying to do these other things. A firm that is practicing like that is almost always going to be more successful in their ability to scale and turn a profit because it's a lot easier to make a profit when you're able to systematize. When you're able to automate a lot of things. There's going to be less errors, there's going to be less need for as many people. And I mean at the end of the day, I know we're here to help people and a lot of attorneys, I think we're driven to the profession to help people. We can't help people if we're not making a profit. We have to take care of our needs, we've got to do what makes us feel fulfilled in order to even show up. So we've got to get those profits and I think that some attorneys are still struggling with that and that's an area I love to help people when I can. Michelle Calcote King [36:02] Wonderful. Well, I have really enjoyed this conversation. It’s kind of touched on things that I’m really passionate about. So, I appreciate you kind of taking the time and leading us through it.  We have been talking to Robert Ingalls of LawPods. If people want to get to know you better, where is the best place for them to go? Robert Ingalls [36:24] I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. So, if you go there, you can find me. Robert Ingalls. There’s not too many of us. I think I’m the only one with any involvement in podcasting. If you type LawPods in any search engine, whether it be Instagram or Google or anywhere, you’re going to find us. Michelle Calcote King [36:39] Love it. Robert Ingalls [36:40] Feel free to reach out www.LawPods.com and email me directly if you’d like robert@lawpods.com.  Michelle Calcote King [36:46] Alright. Thank you so much. Robert Ingalls [36:47] Thank you.

The legal industry isn’t known for being the most progressive when it comes to adopting new technology. Yet, (slowly but surely) lawyers are realizing that wielding the right legal tech can lead to improved productivity and client satisfaction. In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” Michelle Calcote King interviews Daniel Steinberg, the co-founder and CEO of Lawbrokr, about how to best leverage technology in the legal space. They cover a wide range of topics, including the state of the legal tech industry, ChatGPT and emerging technologies. They also discuss how Lawbrokr’s platform enhances marketing departments and why firms should integrate tools that help pre-qualify prospective clients.  Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn The creation of Lawbrokr and how the platform works Why investing in technology enhances marketing initiatives and business operations What the state and future of the legal tech industry looks like How technology can be leveraged to make lawyers better at their jobs About our featured guest Daniel Steinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Lawbrokr™, a pre-qualification platform that helps lawyers humanize the ways clients interact with their law firm. In his role, he leverages his background in professional services (ex-EY), marketing technology (ex-Influitive) and legal technology (ex-Clio). Lawbrokr is a sales and marketing platform for law firms. Focused on building software to support how law firms pre-qualify leads, Lawbrokr augments a law firm’s online presence and captures more data through frictionless workflows that guide the consumer through the legal services of the law firm.  Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Lawbrokr Follow Lawbrokr on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Daniel Steinberg on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Daniel Steinberg: It's important to make yourself more operationally efficient, especially in these tight times. You don't want to look at what that technology did for you for that 30 days. You want to say, what did that technology, or what can that technology do for us on an annualized basis? I think that's really important. [00:00:17]: Welcome to “Spill The Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering, and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:35] Michelle Calcote King: Hey, everyone! I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host and the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to www.rep-ink.com.  With new technology like ChatGPT making its way into the market, it's no surprise there's a lot of buzz about the implications artificial intelligence might have on fields like marketing. But this isn't the first invention to give people a “the robots are taking over” vibe. In reality, these tools are designed to enhance our skills and capabilities, not to replace them. Plus they can be very profitable. In the legal world, learning to maximize technology means law firms can get the most bang for their buck with their marketing budget.  I'm excited to dive into this topic on today's show. Welcome, Daniel Steinberg to join the conversation. He's the founder and CEO of Lawbrokr. Lawbrokr builds software to support law firms with their sales and marketing, making it easier for consumers to access legal services. Welcome to the show, Daniel. [00:01:45] Daniel Steinberg: Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be exciting. [00:01:48] Michelle Calcote King: Yes. I'm excited to talk in general about tech, but I'd first love to start with you explaining Lawbrokr to me. We've talked before, but I'd love for you to explain what it is and how law firms can use it. [00:02:03] Daniel Steinberg: You start with the easy ones. I love it. Hopefully, this works out well.  My company Lawbrokr is really focused on the front-end experience of a law firm. We enhance the way that a consumer would interact with lawyers, your law firm, and intake staff prior to the conversation happening directly with you. We act as this bridge between the interaction point of what I would refer to as pre-qualification, into the intake flow. We act as a sales and marketing platform, like you said, that's highly focused on conversion of disqualifying and qualifying your clients so that you can capture better data in an online format, so that they can make you as a law firm smarter and better and have more meaningful conversations. That's where we focus and I'm sure we can get into the nuances of it, but that's really the core crux of our platform. [00:02:59] Michelle Calcote King: On your website, you talk about creating a storefront. What is a storefront exactly, and how does that differ from a website? [00:03:07] Daniel Steinberg: Yes, very good question because messaging is super important and we're in the works of what that looks like. A storefront for us is our brand name for our product view. The reason that we go with that messaging is because we really are trying to digitize the law firm experience online. To us, that feels as though we're taking your potentially brick-and-mortar storefront and turning that into a virtual way of interaction point. We mimic consumer psychology of how consumers think and feel when they operate and interact with Shopify e-commerce stores or other interaction points that they do in a more commoditized setting than the legal space. For us, a storefront, and what it is and how it differentiates from your website, is we focus on what's referred to as a landing page. A landing page is a hyper-focused moment in time that keeps the consumer very, like I said, digitally focused on what the problem at hand is and how do they solve for that problem. We deskin your website, so we act as this extension to your website in a very high-intent moment, like a call to action button, whether that be book a consultation or living in different areas on the internet that a consumer might find you. That could be Google Ads, Google My Business, Marketplace, contact us forms, so on and so forth. Again, it's more along the lines of someone's virtually raised their hand and said, "I need help." How do we help them solve that problem? You usually solve that problem through hyper-focused moments like a landing page. [00:04:49] Michelle Calcote King: Got it. Your ideal type of law firm to use this, explain that. What are the ideal firms for this kind of tech? [00:04:59] Daniel Steinberg: We're an extension to your marketing really. We're focused on firms that are trying to elevate their brand digitally, whether that be through social platforms, Google Ads and Facebook Ads, et cetera. We act as a conversion play to that. We try and help your clicks and conversions elevate to the next level based off your marketing spend. In that vein, we're really focused on that 5 to 30-person law firm that is trying to elevate the experience while guiding the clients through what legal services they offer. We have a light version of our package that's focused on solo and small practitioners that are trying to grow their practice and take it to the next level, and expand and really try and dip into the marketing spend. But our core focus is that 5 to 30-person law firm traditionally focused on personal legal transactions, but we are practice area agnostic. [00:05:59] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Can you explain, how do you view the legal sales and marketing funnel? What's a typical funnel look like? How does a consumer navigate through that? [00:06:12] Daniel Steinberg: With Lawbrokr or before Lawbrokr? I think part of the reason we've slotted our business into this, what we refer to as pre-qualification is the legal industry as it stands prior to a system like Lawbrokr is very much 0 to 100. A consumer comes in, they're highly stressed that one of the most impactful moments of their time, whether happy or sad, at the end of the day, there are stressors when it comes down to the legal interactions. As soon as they either pick up the phone and call a law practice or virtually use contact us forms and things like that, it goes from first interaction all the way through what we would refer to as the intake process. The unfortunate reality is intake is super frictional. Consumers aren't willing to divulge a bunch of information until they're ready to retain your law firm. What we're missing there, and the reason why the process as it stands today is very revolved around price sensitivity is as law firms, as lawyers, we're not so focused on building out that first impression that matters most and leveraging data to really sell against the client's challenges and pains. The reason for that is actually traditionally because of the uneducation piece in the consumer market. If you haven't educated your consumer on what those legal problems are that you're able to solve for, well then traditionally everyone's going to ask what the price is, shop around, and go after whatever the cheapest price may be. With a tool like Lawbrokr or other pre-qualification formats, it doesn't just have to be Lawbrokr, the point and value there is to really understand the client before you speak to them, so that your first impression is more focused on: This is how my law firm operates, this is how we can support you in your legal needs, and this is how it would happen within our practice. When you do that, you're really guiding an uneducated consumer through what that legal process may be, and you're making them feel a lot more supported in order to adopt your law practice and move forward with the case. It's a bit clunky in the way that it happens right now. Again, it leads the consumer in this open-ended conversation of where do I go and what do I do? That's part of the reason why we're trying to solve for that. [00:08:42] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Just for people who might be listening, who might not be as familiar with some of these terms, talk me through pre-qualification. What do you mean by that? [00:08:54] Daniel Steinberg: Pre-qualification, qualification, they're all embedded in that same bucket, but it's really around, I know what my law firm does. Based off what I do, is that client the right—someone referred to this the other day, so I'm going to use the same language—is that person the right avatar for our law practice? A lot of firms, actually, a lot of businesses are like, "I want as much revenue as possible." Sometimes when you actually bring on the wrong individual, the wrong person, the wrong case, it actually backfires and it's more costly for you in the long run. Same way in business, if I brought on a business that isn't the right fit for Lawbrokr and that customer cancels, that's a lot more costly for me to bring that client on than if I didn't and I said, "Thank you so much. This is what we do. Unfortunately, we're not a fit for you." We as law firms and lawyers have to be okay with saying we want the quality case that we know we're really good at, and we can satisfy, over the quantity metric, whether we are having a slow month or not. The reason for that is because there is this cyclical cycle of how you drive new business in the future. Driving new business is very revolved around advocacy and referrals and things like that. So long as you're focused from the front-end side of things, bringing on the right cases, it's really going to help you continue to build and grow your practice from there on out, whether you're bringing on one or two clients that are high quality versus 5 to 10 that are high quantity. The qualification piece is really who is that right persona for me that we know we can support every single day? [00:10:35] Michelle Calcote King: Without a solution like Lawbrokr, are many firms doing that qualification process manually? Are they getting on the phone, having conversations, that kind of thing? [00:10:47] Daniel Steinberg: I think they definitely are. I think that there is a front of office that is either picking up the phone and having those conversations or initial interactions. Then there's also the traditional way of doing it, which would be a Contact us form. Problem with those two methods is there's no standardization to it. Law firms find clients in a magnitude of different ways. It could be their website, their contact us forms, their Google My Business, their Google Ads, their social media, referral sources and calling in. Those are seven different, distinctive ways that a client can interact with you. If you're not standardizing the way that you're interacting with them, the questions that you ask change. The way that you interact with that client changes. From an efficiency perspective, there's too many ways to interact with potential clients, and sometimes the right client slides through the cracks, and that's what we're trying to solve for.  To answer your question, I do think there is a form of qualifying today. At the end of the day, sometimes it's also up to the client, and it might be qualified, but the experience might have not been to what the standards were for that consumer, and that's where you ultimately lose cases. [00:12:03] Michelle Calcote King: We all know the legal industry is not the most progressive when it comes to tech or innovation sometimes. What are some of the objections that you're getting? Are you getting many objections, or do you think law firms are really starting to understand the importance of these technologies to streamline and improve their practices? [00:12:30] Daniel Steinberg: It's a really good question. I think that comes down to do we practice what we preach on the qualification side of things? Our focus is finding the right law firms that do spend money on marketing activities, and making sure that we can enhance the way that they do that. That being said, there's definitely some apprehensions when it comes down to another piece of technology. What I think is really important to recognize and what we very much focused on when building our systems was how do we ultimately keep it as simple as possible? There's a lot of legal tech solutions that consistently pop up, and they're extremely valuable to a law practice. That being said, it's very frictional for someone to stop, drop, and roll, and ultimately implement another technology when 30 people in their law practice have to onboard, train; they might have to do a migration. Does it implement with our current systems and so forth? If you're as a legal tech founder creating those frictions, that's where the objections ultimately happen. I think where we're focused on Lawbrokr is we are an extension to your online presence, which means that there is no onboarding. There is no training. Really, what we're focused on is spin up your storefront. From there, the only thing that matters is you are now collecting more in expanded data in the current systems that you already use.  If you create this complementary product that ultimately doesn't have to consistently tell new staff how to adopt it and how to use it, I think that makes it a lot easier of a transition for a law firm. That being said, there is an education factor to what's the value to me as a law firm when it comes to qualification? I think our job there is explaining and walking through what the importance of conversion is on your marketing spend efficiencies within your law practice, standardizing the way that you ask questions, and ultimately being a really good salesperson. For me and our team, we are not lawyers. My background is sales partnerships and marketing. We're trying to be these expert advisors on how do you sell? Because at the end of the day, lawyers are enterprise salespeople, whether they look at that or not. They are selling very intensive services at the most impactful moment of a consumer's life traditionally, no matter what that legal problem may be. It is really important to understand that client's challenges and pains a lot and make sure that you're supportive in that realm. Yes, there's always going to be push back when it comes to any technology. It's important to showcase where we can support and how we can. [00:15:24] Michelle Calcote King: Let's talk ChatGPT, since it's the topic du jour right now everywhere. Are you seeing it used in any way with your clients or with your work? [00:15:41] Daniel Steinberg: I think a lot of legal tech companies haven't— I don't want to use the word pivot— but have adopted ChatGPT and white-labeled that into some of their solutions to support, whether that be document automation or looking specific things up or writing paragraphs or decisions in that matter, and have embedded it in the technology that some law firms have already used and are paying for to date. That being said, we're too far away from that to understand how lawyers are using it or if lawyers are using it.  We don't have it within our technology. I think it's an incredibly powerful tool. I don't think that it can replace law firms. I think it can only enhance the way that you operate. When we think about technology at Lawbrokr, we think about how does our platform help enhance the way lawyers and firm admins and law firms in general practice law? How do we enhance that to make your lives that much easier and better, so that you can focus on the things that you're meant to focus on? Whether we did adopt AI tools and technology and things like that, it would only be from an enhancement perspective. I think there's still a lot of unknowns when it comes down to the legalities behind it from decision-making and things like that. It is a really exciting topic, and I know that the legal world as a whole is really excited about it and I see it all the time. [00:17:12] Michelle Calcote King: I see almost excitement and fear.I think, both. It's that way with any new technology, there's a little bit of trepidation until you understand it and how it's going to improve what you do on a day-to-day.  Tell me also your thoughts on — and I hate to even bring it up because I can't stand hearing it — but there have been all these layoffs in legal tech. There's been a pullback on some funding, or at least from what I see. It's hard to know exactly what's happening.  What do you see where the legal tech market is right now? [00:17:54] Daniel Steinberg: I think there will continue to be disruptors within the industry. I think that the layoffs are a factor of unfortunate business conditions that exist and market conditions that exist. I think funding will be tighter and more conservatively dispersed. At the end of the day, as most people know, legal is one of the most laggered industries, and it's consistently beginning to adopt new technologies. We've seen that since the COVID days or the early COVID days and making people move out of office, in-home, and so forth. It's something that, at the end of the day, law firms and lawyers weren't used to in their everyday lives. I've been doing that since I've been in tech for five to six years. For us, it was normalized, but for this industry, they're starting to adopt more and more technology. I'm excited about the future of legal tech. I think that there's going to be peaks and valleys of new companies, amd potentially some companies not being able to get funding or adoption within those businesses. I definitely think there's more of a conservative approach when it comes to adopting new legal technology. Pricing yourself appropriately and showcasing the return on that for a law firm is really important because at the end of the day, law firms and lawyers are really focused on how do we get and acquire net new cases? I think that for us within the legal space, it is definitely a recession-proof — to an extent — business. You're always going to need technology to enhance your practice, whether you believe that or not. It's important to make yourself more operationally efficient, especially in these tight times.  [00:19:43] Michelle Calcote King: Right. It becomes even more important. [00:19:45] Daniel Steinberg: Although a big factor is looking at things from a conservative mindset and making sure that you're spending appropriately when adopting legal tech, is probably a good way to say that, I think it's important for law firms to look at things from a macro-level perspective. A lot of legal tech companies position themselves on a month-to-month subscription and annual subscription. That's great. You can acquire things from a month-to-month so that you can save capital on a monthly basis, but at the end of the day, you don't want to look at what that technology did for you for that 30 days. You want it to say, what did that technology, or what can that technology do for us on an annualized basis? I think that's really important. [00:20:26] Michelle Calcote King: Did COVID among your client base really…. Did you feel that clients were like, "Oh, wait, I need to invest more in technology,” because of this shift and how people are navigating honestly just the world in general, like other sectors where there was just this big rush to digitization and improving how they do things digitally?" [00:20:56] Daniel Steinberg: I think that's a great question. When COVID first hit, I was actually working at Clio, so I was running partnerships at Clio during COVID. We definitely saw a mass adoption of cloud technology and an operating system that can help your firm navigate the conditions from anywhere, and work remotely and be okay with that. Of course, you start to see the adoption of Zoom and tools like that and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and so forth. From my business perspective, when I had left Clio, we actually started as a marketplace. We did see a mass adoption of people needing net new clients to continue to survive and thrive through those times. That was great. For us, there was a lot of marketplaces that popped up and our goal was how do we make sure that we take our technology and augment different ways that consumers interact with you versus being that necessary source of truth, which is why we've shifted our business to saying, "Hey, this is how you would interact with a consumer, where they find you anywhere through one dedicated hyperlink." To answer your question, I did see definitely adoption from a technology perspective during COVID, but it also depends on what that legal tech business was. I think the first and foremost was, how do we get a cloud solution that helps our law firm operate and transition to a remote working world? Since then, there's been a lot more adoption of technology in general to enhance your firm. [00:22:31] Michelle Calcote King: Is there another tool or platform or category of tech that you see besides your own really taking hold that we haven't talked about yet that people should be on the lookout for? Is there a particular area that you see that it's going to really take off? [00:22:49] Daniel Steinberg: I think there's a lot from document automation perspectived, subscription services and how law firms reposition their law practice as you get into this new age of law. We talked about the laggard industry of adoption of technology. I also think that a lot of smaller law firms — and I'm speaking from a small law firm perspective because that's who we work with — are starting to adopt and look at fixed fee services and things like that. There are some tools that I love and I think have done a great job positioning that, like Fidu Legal and Documate from a document automation perspective that just actually rebranded themselves to Gavel, to really hone in on what their purpose and mission is. Those are great tools to look at and adopt. Again, it's all about efficiencies and redeploying and adopting technology. Like we talked about earlier, there's a lot of technology that have adopted AI and machine learning to help you be smarter and work better. Again, not to replace the law firm, but work better, be smarter, and capture more insights in a magnitude of different ways. There's a ton of technologies that do that. Here in Canada, there's one, Rally Legal, there's Josef in Europe, and there's a ton of other tools that across the board are using different types of technologies throughout. The way that I look at it is, what lifecycle of the business are you looking to solve a pain in? When we think about what Jack Newton said, who's the CEO of Clio. The book that he wrote, it's all about this client-centered law firm. You can't just adopt technology at one point of the consumer journey. The consumer journey starts with a tool or a system like pre-qualification and Lawbrokr. but then funnels into the intake platforms, of the likes like Clio Grow or Lawmatics and tools like that. Then funnels through to the more operational systems of invoicing, billing, maintaining client portals, and so forth, and follow through all the way to advocacy. That lifecycle has to have some piece of technology or have some type of process in place in order for you to really create a frictionless experience for your customers on an ongoing basis. It doesn't just start with your first impression at Lawbrokr. It's actually your first impression sets the stage, but you have to make sure that you have processes in place throughout the case and the file and thereafter to make sure that ultimately you're growing your business because it is cyclical, whether you're a law firm, a business like yours, a business like mine, or anything like that. [00:25:36] Michelle Calcote King: I like to always end interviews with this question. What is the most valuable lesson you hope people listening today might take away from our discussion? [00:25:50] Daniel Steinberg: Let me pause on that so I have a good answer. [00:25:51] Michelle Calcote King: Yes, I know. [laughs] [00:25:54] Daniel Steinberg: That's hard. Selfishly I obviously want to educate people on the importance of qualifying your opportunities. At the end of the day, and that's obviously the business that we're in, but if you take one piece of advice, it's what we just alluded to, which is think about your law firm holistically. It's not just adopting a technology like Lawbrokr, it's not just adopting a technology like Clio or a document automation tool. You need to have a plan in place, a process, and a budget associated to technology, and technology lives across every process of the legal journey. That's one of the most important things that a law firm should be thinking about, whether you are a modern law firm and have implemented a COO at your firm, a marketing manager, a coordinator, and so forth, a firm administrator. These are things that ultimately you want to plan for, because you do have to have budget and line items for them, and you can't be as efficient as possible with a bunch of different tools that don't talk to each other or just one tool in general and say that you're modern and fixated in the way that you're able to work remotely now, and that's good and done. There's a bunch of different ways that ultimately are integral to running a strong law practice from a technological perspective. Sometimes adopting too much technology can hurt you, but adopting the right technology that plays into one another and can automate a lot of your processes is what's important. [00:27:35] Michelle Calcote King: That's great. Thank you so much. This was very interesting.  We have been talking to Daniel Steinberg of Lawbrokr. Where's the best place if people want to get in touch, should they go to LinkedIn or your website? What's the best place for people to reach out to you? [00:27:49] Daniel Steinberg: Huge LinkedIn advocate. I think it's my favorite social network. You can add me, Daniel Steinberg/DSteinberg on LinkedIn. If you want to go learn more about Lawbrokr, you can visit us at lawbrokr.com, L-A-W-B-R-O-K-R.com. Always just happy to have conversations and learn about what's happening in the industry and how people are thinking about pre-qualification and new technology. [00:28:18] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Thank you so much. [00:28:20] Daniel Steinberg: Thanks so much. [music] [00:28:24]: Thanks for listening to “Spill The Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. KYQznGZ1SWj4TWzsFjhi

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