Scaling Law Firms through Automation and Lead Conversion with Philip Fairley

But no matter who you use or whatever you do, if you can put numbers behind it, you've now future proofed your firm or your business, whatever it may be. When I say numbers, I am talking about the things on the business side of it. But even more important, before you look at those, make sure you've got a great relationship with somebody that knows the finance of a business. We teach them and educate them on how to run their business.

Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. I am your host, Bob Govreau. It is great to have you with us today. We're going to be talking with a special guest today and I'll, I'll introduce him in a second. We're going to focus a lot on the legal business side of things today. Now if you're not a legal business, I want you to know that this applies to you as well. Everything that we're going to talk about today applies to every entrepreneur. But this particular business owner and organization does support law firms specifically. Now I would say what they do, there's other agencies that support other industries. So insightful in what we're going to share. It's something that you need to understand and then also look at how you can put it in place in your own business as well. Just before we get started, I want to remind you that this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success from from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. My special guest today, his name is Philip Fairley. He has an organization called the Rainmaker Institute. I'm going to share a little bit more about that or I'll let him share a little bit more about that as we get started. But we're going to call this the Legal Marketing Mastery on Growing Law Firms with the Rainmaker Institute. Now, before I jump in and bring Philip in and share some incredible insights and Philip and I have a wonderful collaborative relationship where he does amazing things for so many businesses. I'll give a brief introduction of what Philip is up to. So Philip, Philip Fairley is the president and owner of the Rainmaker Institute, the nation's largest law firm marketing company. And this is in the United States, the largest, the nation's largest law firm company that focuses on client generation, lead conversion and data analytics. During his time at Rainmaker, he co developed Turbine, the only software platform that automates the intake process and Rain analytics, the only tool which automatically measures all law firm data. If you're a lawyer, you're going to want to learn about what these are all About Rainmaker has helped over 23,000 attorneys and law firms grow their business by learning and implementing proven marketing and intake strategies.

And.

And as well. He's married with three children and enjoys the Arizona lifestyle, mountain biking and coaching youth sports. It is my pleasure to welcome my friend Philip Fairley into the podcast today. Okay, Philip, I'm. I'm excited to bring you in here and listen. Over the last, I don't know, six months or so, we've had the opportunity to jump on a number of calls, look at some collaboration. I want to share a little bit about your event that you've got coming up that I think is a huge game changer for the industry. And it's always been an absolute pleasure to connect with you. You're. You're just one of those guys that, you know, is one of the smartest guys in the room, and you just kind of shut up and listen to you and your insights. So I'm super privileged to have you on the show today.

Well, I'm. I'm flattered. I really appreciate that, because one of the things that I find myself getting really excited about, growing businesses, specifically law firms, so I can get a little excitable during some of those times, but I do, too.

I do, too.

Yeah, it's always been great because you get it right. Right. Look at the growth of your firm. It's because you understand that whatever. Whatever industry that you're in, it's really about business and looking at those fundamentals and then just innovating on top of it. So I think that's why we've connected so well, 100%.

And you know what? It's. I've done a few of these podcasts now, and the funny part is we always come back and we go, it's not rocket science, but there's always a system that needs to be put in to solve a problem, and I think you do that extremely well. And I want to jump into that in just a minute. But what I'd love to start with, Philip, is hearing a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. I feel like every time someone shares, there's resonation of, you know, some of the. Some of the journey, some of the challenges, some of the outcomes, relationships, any of that stuff. And I think it's a really great way to build context and connect you with our audience, and then we'll talk about some of the value you bring. So, please, I would love for you to share your journey with everyone who's listening.

Well, just like everyone else is. Everybody's journey is unique. And I like that because I think there's some relatable parts in here because as you're going through the journey, it's just like, man, remember the good old days, Bob, right? I'm going to date myself. I was child of the 80s. Remember the good old days when there was the lunchboxes were met. We're living in the good old days. We get in the weeds of our life right now. And sometimes your journey, you're in the middle of it, but you don't step back and take a look about. Oh, okay, that was pretty special. And I can relate to some of those things because I think everybody has a couple professional lives, right? At least two or three. Mine was pretty unique in the fact that I fell in love with law and with politics at such an early age. In fact, I just brought my family back to New England, where I grew up over the New Year's, and I got a chance to connect with one of my best friends from elementary school, like third and fourth grade. And one of the first things they told my wife and my teenage daughters before they rolled their eyes was I had never met anybody in the world that wanted to be a Supreme Court justice when they were 10 years old. But that's what your dad told me when we were riding bikes in the neighborhood.

Isn't that funny?

And I had totally forgotten that. So I've always been fascinated with that. I think maybe the changes in the world in the 80s. But on my way, going through college and then saying, I'm going to go to law school, I was going to be an attorney, I wanted to go even further than that. And then I ran into technology in the mid-90s, and there was a lot of opportunity there. So I was like, hey, I'm going to pause my law school approach and I'm going to get into tech, because it was pretty interesting. So going through that whole process, I just fell in love with the technology, went through the financial industry and did a lot of high tech in there and then started to work with law firms. And it made my mom proud because she was like, oh, my son's not going to law school. Right? Or is he a doctor? But I started working in legal tech, where there was really basics, like literally putting needles, practice management software in closets and like server rooms. That that was how basic but how revolutionary it was. And then at the ripe age of 25, right. You know, more than anyone else, I can do this better than anyone else. That's where I started my first business and it was tech. And then I started a couple more. And at the end of that, and in my technology journey, I had three companies that I had started. One of them, I learned very important lessons. And the other two, one of them I broke even. And the other two I was pretty successful at, and they went in that order. Interesting, right? Of course, yeah. But so my interesting journey to come to own Rainmaker and how I started is I went down the legal route. And you probably don't know this, but my brother Stephen Fairley is the one that started Rainmaker, and he had started Rainmaker 25 years ago. It's our 25th anniversary. And he started out with coaching and consulting. And while he was building this out and putting. Focusing on the niche, I was in Chicago building tech firms. And so I would get free coaching and consulting from him, and he would get all of his technology from me. And it was just a really nice brother relationship. And as we both grew our firms in that way, you know, very successful, enjoyed a lot of our life together. But then in 2017, 2016, got one of those really shitty phone calls. So you probably everybody listening has gotten one of those phone calls. Maybe it's from a spouse, it's from a business partner. Those are hard, but it's really bad. It's when it's your best friend that you lived in five different states with and went to college together. Best men in each other's wedding. And he. I remember the day. I remember I was cutting my grass in my. In the suburbs of Chicago, turned the mower off, answered the phone, and he's like, I got some really bad news to tell you. And he was diagnosed with cancer. And, you know, talk about a punch in the gut out of the blue. And so I don't. I don't know where. What your belief systems are, Bob, but I'm a believer in a higher power. And so we did a lot of praying together as a family and coming together. We just made a decision. So after that phone call, within 10 weeks, I sold my remaining my IT company, sold my house, 60% of my belongings. My wife said 80%, but I said 60 and packed up everything and then moved from Chicago to Arizona, not knowing what I was going to do, but except to be there to take care of my brother Stephen. I thought I was going to open up another IT company or innovate or do something else after I get my feet wet. And then the opportunity there was a big need to. What's the next step for Rainmaker? Because how many business owners do you work with that, have continuity plans for the head of the tip of the spear, the owner?

Yeah. Yeah. Not. Not nearly enough.

Right. Neither did Stephen. And you know what? I think I was blessed in that opportunity to then thinking I'm an entrepreneur. It's been a long time since I signed the back of a paycheck, so what am I going to do? But I love building things and I love owners, and I did a lot with legal tech. And so I kind of rolled into Rainmaker. And then during that whole process, unfortunately, he fought hard and this fall it will be four years since his passing. It seems like it was yesterday, but just been a blessing to be able to take his legacy and just completely insert tech and modern evolution of what's working in business and have just been able to grow it beyond any means that it was ever before with completely different solutions that we're helping our clients with. Always still within the legal space, but just been really able to build on his legacy and our reputation and then modernize it and supercharge it. I guess enough adjectives and, you know, platitudes, but.

But what a great tribute to an organization that was created. But I think one of the, you know, one of the learnings out of here is to find people too, that have other skill sets and can bring value to relationships. And, you know, I think that's one of the reasons that we've connected and, you know, respecting each other and what we bring to the table. But for you to come into Rainmaker at that point with it and insights from inside the larger sort of corporate world of law firms and bring that into Rainmaker is probably completely transformative as well. And, you know, luckily for Rainmaker that they were able to bring you in and. And bring those insights because, you know what, there's a lot of value, and I try and tell my kids this all the time. You know, there's a lot of value in making sure that you're approaching things from different perspectives at all times. And I think it's one of the things I learned in business school early on is to always reframe the perspective and being able to bring in someone with. With tech expertise and larger sort of organization. Consulting into Rainmaker probably changed the direction, but probably filled some of the smaller holes of I'm not really sure how to fix that and you came in with solutions. So regardless of the way that you got on this journey, I'm sure Rainmaker is much better for your contributions and certainly lucky that we get this opportunity to collaborate here today.

Well, I think depending upon who you talk to, lucky to have me sometimes, you know, pushing the envelope. Here's the next new idea. But I walked in thinking my skills were useless, and I've got to relearn skills. And that's why people have board of directors. That's why they have mastermind groups. Bob, you know this well. That's why they look at other experts like you with a different mindset to come into their business. Because when you get stuck in the weeds, it's really hard to look above the grass. It really, really is. And I thought my tech skills would be minimal value at best. I had to tell you, within 12 months, we had our own business intelligence tool and then our own automated intake software. So I was back in the tech anyway.

Absolutely. But what a. What a value add to Rainmaker and all the clients who are in there. So let. Let's talk about Rainmaker and what you guys have going on overall. Because, you know, from an outsider, you know, high level, you guys help law firms grow and scale their business. And in. And I don't want to say in a unique way, because there's some things that you guys do that other people do do, but I feel like your approach to it and your ability to wrap everything together and deliver it is very unique in the space and something that's very needed. So please share with us Rainmaker and all of the things that you guys are doing to support your clients.

Yeah, well, I think we call ourselves Rainmaker, but we also have Institute there because one thing we've always done is teach. And in fact, here's a dirty little secret. We really give away our best strategies and stuff for free. Right? Because we know our marketplace, our attorney law firm owners are very busy and they need help and they've all been burned. So we highly educate them and that's where we start. And then, you know, full disclosure, if you have time or you have money, right? And that's been always our approach. We will work with smaller law firms and help them set these systems and teach and educate them until they grow to the point where they can't do it for the. It's not the best use of their time. And then they need expert help. Right? So that's really always been our approach. And the things that we've created. We started out with executive coaching. We still have a book on Amazon that's a top 10 seller and how to Get Started in Executive Coaching by My Brother. We still get royalties, and it's like 25 years old. But then Starting that and then really understanding how law firms work. Then we started creating solutions to fill the needs. And that's really been the whole evolution over 25 years. Like, we never sat down, Bob, with this master plan and said, we're going to map out every service and everything that we're like, no, we just follow the needs and the pain points and provide solutions. And so when we started out coaching, then we would sell tickets to our Rainmaker retreat, and it would be $5,000, because you would then learn, and then you go back and go do it yourself. And then we're like, they would follow up with them and like, 5% would do it themselves. And the rest would have the book and the process and the custom sitting, collecting dust. How many books and seminars have we all gone to? And then we come home, put it on there, and then we start stacking more things on top of it before you know it. Right? So we found out, well, hey, we probably need to do some of these things for them. Okay. And this was like before avo, before Scorpion, before five. Like, it was like when there was nobody in this market doing any of even the basic things for them. And so we started generating some leads for them. And then we would generate some really good leads in this new thing called Facebook that nobody knew how to fish in, in this new thing called, like, SEO, where Bob, we were selling. Talk about transformation. What we started with, we have maybe one service that we still offer to clients. We were offering 30 blogs a month. The more blogs you put up, the more we'll do the 10amonth. But really, you want the third. Why? Because that would lead to phone calls. Right. But then we found out that our retention issues were problematic because they're like, they weren't closing those, turning, converting those leads into clients. And they. They would say, well, we're going to have to part ways because, you know, we just don't have the results. That is. You guys suck and your leads are terrible. Right? I just try to read through the. I'm a pretty practical person. And then we're like, okay, I get it. Maybe we just. Then we pull back the covers and they left a voicemail, and they responded to them two and a half days later. One time they were like, well, this doesn't work. Okay, let me teach you how to follow up. Oh, that's intake, right? Yeah. You mean the old crotchety person that nobody wants to deal with, or worse, thinking they're a receptionist and putting them in the charge of your cash flow really legitimately? No, they Just answer the phone they and determine who sets an appointment with you and who doesn't. Not a big deal. But we said, well, what are you doing with the leads that you get? And then that took us down the journey and we had far reaching ideas that we had to duct tape together. Reminds me of that old 80s show, MacGyver, where take an egg and crack it and build a jeep out of it and get out of the war camp. Right. And dating myself or if you don't know that show. Right. Because there was no technology to be able to accomplish these things. Right. And so we created our first intake system about 18 years ago. And, and, and that was not much automation. It was kind of like, here's data collection or data input. And so that just took us down this journey of what can we do better? What can we do more? And then when there came drip nurturing and text reminders and when that started happening in the mid, you know, 2000 4568, like, hey, these are new things. And we just kept evolving it. So what we do for our clients is really client acquisition and then helping them grow into a CEO. We actually call it a lifestyle law firm, one of our trademarks. But when I say client acquisition, we help them generate leads and then we make them convert leads. And by the way, making them convert leads, we also force them to run their firm with data like every month.

Go figure. That that's a good idea. Go figure.

I think that was probably the first time I reached out. I was like, bob, I know you like numbers. I like numbers. Our clientele shy away from them, like their clientele shy away from attorneys. And so that's one of the things we have synergy. But when you run your firm with numbers, then you get that lifestyle offer because then you can get a leadership team and hold them accountable with a couple numbers. You know what's working and what's not. And you keep everybody in a system, in a process, and everything just starts flowing like a business. So when we say client acquisition, there's a lot of frosting that we help them with. And I think that's the point you were talking about because a lot of marketers, there's a lot of great companies out there. I know you've got a lot of good friends that have been on your, on your podcast that I know very well and respect. Well, there's a lot of shady ones. But no matter who you use or whatever you do, if you can put numbers behind it, you've now future proofed your firm or your business, whatever it may be. And so our services grew through a client needs and them not being able to hit their goal because there was missing parts to the process. So a marketer will talk about impressions, they may even talk about phone calls. But you need to know leads, appointments, set shows, hired, hired later, cost of that. And that's what our intake system just by nurturing, doing all the auto, it gave all that information. So we really help our clients scale by acquiring the business and running their business like a CEO.

All right, business owners, I gotta have some real talk about what he just said here for a second. All right, for those of you who've been listening, you know, we're an eight figure firm, 105 individuals. And this year we have organic growth of 35%. It was at 40, but summer has kind of kicked our butts because nobody is working when they should be. But that's a different challenge, different story. I say that because it took me 15 years, so we've been in business 16 years. Took me maybe 14 years to understand that exactly what Philip said is what every business is key to scaling their firm or their business is. It's not all about marketing and lead generation. You can do that really well. It's about the entire sequence, including the follow up and you know, self identified. I've always said up to the last two years, my biggest challenge with generating new business and growth. And we've always been growing. There's been so much left on the table because of that lack of follow up. You get the interest, you don't follow up or you follow up once and, and they don't respond and that's it. And you leave so much on the table. Philip, what you just talked about is a system that I've had to internally build for years. And now we've got a, a, a marketing team, setters, you know, a CRM in place sales team. Wow, I wish I could have just turned a key and found you, you know what I mean? Honestly, like it, it, that's. And I appreciate that you guys have gone through the journey of finding the pain points in the process and, and sort of filled those holes and those voids because man, oh man, that's exactly what businesses need. Law firms, listen to me here, this is, this is something that you need to understand and you need to learn about because if you're looking at growing and scaling a law firm beyond just being a sole practitioner and having a few law clerks, this is exactly what we need to grow. And Philip and his team are a Fantastic resource. So kudos to you guys for what you've built. I love it, I respect it and that's why I love collaborating with you. You guys are innovating the space, so well done.

We just had work where we were blessed to work with some really smart clients that just kept pushing us and kept pushing us and then. But you're right, no matter what industry that you're in, when you're, if you're starting out, figure out how you can put numbers to the most. When I say numbers, talking about 5 or 10 or 15 or 20. Now there could be dozens of numbers underneath that that give you more indicators. But as a business owner, you start simple because you can be overloaded with too much data, you get data fatigue and then none of it matters. Right? But when I talk about running it, you do not have to be a finance major. You do not have to know statistics or algebra 2 that I'm helping my team with right now. You don't have to know any of that. You need to know percentages and addition and multiplication. And when I'm talking about appointment sets, qualified leads, time on desk close rates, conversion rates for your sales staff and the attorneys that like we're talking five or 10 numbers, if you start looking at these every single month, you're going to then want more. But it tells a story, Bob, and you just have to listen. Right?

And so I selfishly I'm going to say that, well, first off, I agree with everything you just said. Selfishly I'm going to say, but before you know those numbers, you need to have your financial numbers in place because they so much correlate that if you like, if you're looking for return on ad spend as a, maybe an extra layer in there, you know, you don't even know what resources you have available to start putting money towards ads and lead gen strategies because maybe you have some free ones. But you know, you've got to get and you know the key to success in all of this and growing and scaling it. If you want to take it to another level, you have to get both. They have to be there and they have to work together.

How else do you get pricing if you don't know your cost of goods sold? How else do you know there's so many other parts of it? How do you know if you don't have your, your PNLs and your chart of accounts and your financial numbers and, and you as an owner when you're small, you have to know them all. And another tip, when you're small sign all the checks that go out the door. Just do that, do that for a bit until it gets so tedious because you really need to know what's going out. But 100%, Bob, like where you. Where we were successful at the business side of it. So many other law firms, and us as well. I wish we had a relationship with a great financial advisor. I'm not talking about my 401ks or my stocks. I'm talking about a CFO position that's looking up above the forest, a bot of the weeds and looking at the bigger picture. Because those aren't complicated numbers either. And when you set them up right, you as the business owner need to not know all of them, but just the high levels. And then dig deeper if there's red flags. But if you, if you run your business by what's in your BMO account, I said that for you, Bob. Or Chase bank account, like if that's how you run and then how much the. Maybe you know how much the attorney or the salesperson or the widget maker in your business generates in revenue and you know what's in your bank account and you know what your vendor's money's, what your costs are. Well, that's good, but that's not even all of the picture. It's so important. So no matter what you want to do, if you want to open up another practice area, marketing, if you don't know what you're most profitable, if you're like, well, I think it's felonies, but it really could be DUI or estate planning or if you don't have your financial numbers beside that, what marketing dollars are you going to put towards? So your key you get. When I say numbers, I am talking about the things on the business side of it. But even more important, before you look at those, make sure you've got a great relationship with somebody that knows the finance of a business. Even if you're starting out, even if you have a CFO in your business or if they're more of a controller or a bookkeeper, whatever their role may be, you really need to be looking at the bigger picture with that. And it does not have to be so cost prohibitive. It's scaled to your revenue and your business needs. But start now because it was like a multiplier. It's like going to university here. I would have said college. There's another friendly for you there. But when you go to university, I tell my daughters it's a multiplier. It's like A multiplier. You want to multiply anything that you do times five. Now, when I was a kid and you and I went to college, I don't know if I want to lump you in that, but it was like a 10, 10x. Now it's maybe 5x, but it's. When you look at these ways as a business owner, you get so involved with, I've got to touch everything, I've got to do everything. You know what, when you have experts that can set up these things in little pieces for you and you keep your eyes on the numbers, then it tells a story and you start doing a lot more creative things.

Yeah, yeah. And once you have these systems in place, then you can focus on being the CEO. Right. And I, I feel like so many people are trying to do all of the things and, and I agree with you. You know, sign the checks, learn the finances, you know, learn the marketing, understand the numbers, how they all come together. But once you have a system in place that you can essentially monitor everything and deploy it out to other people, whether it's the Rainmaker Institute that's helping you with your lead gen, right up to your marketing and booking sales calls, to having your finances outsourced, you know, yes, you need to understand them. But hey, if you can just focus on being the CEO and providing all of the legal services or as an entrepreneur in some other area, whatever solutions, whether it's focusing on major relationships, overseeing some of the productivity from the team, coaching the team, you know, there's just so many things that you could be doing that this is a really efficient solution to put in place to grow and scale your business. So love that. So thinking of some of the top things that you guys do, right? You said client generation, lead generation, decision, data driven decision making. Talk to me about some of the automations that you guys can bring and, and maybe even some of the presence, the online presence that you can bring to law firms. Because I will say this, listen, law firms, you're not far away from being accountants. And, and we have a lot of similarities. Our businesses operate in a very similar way as professionals who are focused on getting specialized skills and being able to help people. We're not the best marketers, although we can learn it. But as a generalization, we don't really think about the online presence very well. We're not really great at thinking of automation because we feel like it takes away from some of the professional skills that we've developed, but this just gives us leverage to do more and help more people. If we do it the right way. So, Philip, enlighten us on how maybe your team supports that.

Yeah, I'm going to flip it around. I talk about the online presence and then I'll talk about the automation. But I want to make a note on automation because a lot of people get. A lot of people are talking about automation now because of AI and they get those mixed up. Automation has been around for a long time, but all it does is allow you to leverage as you scale up in a repeatable task. And I'll tell you the practical way and then I'll kind of frame it for law firms. But it also works in other industries when you're talking about sales. So there's a couple things right now that are working in the space, and this goes to professional services accountants. I'm going to talk specifically about attorneys and law firms. But there's a couple things right now that are working versus what was working during COVID post. Covid and even pretty. That's like adbc in my life. Right. What happened pre Covid and what's BC now? Right. Or it's ad. I'm not tricky enough to get a trademark around that. But so the things that are working right now is you just need to step back and say, how are you consuming your life? How are you consuming your digital? So one of the things that, whereas we did a lot of traditional SEO and web and Google, those are all still part of the mix. But one of the things that's working right now is video. The good part is law firm owners. Less than 20% of you use video in your business. If you're in another industry, Well, I imagine accountants are maybe even less than that or right around in that space, less, even worse. Okay, now they're, they're terrible traditional, right. You meet in your conference room, you guys have tax law, our attorneys have Supreme Court statute books and same thing, right?

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. Similar model.

Yeah. So what's working right now is video. And then what we've also found is that you can take those videos and repurpose them. Creating videos is very difficult to make. So we actually have a process to teach people, and we do this readily to teach you how to script an idea in five minutes or less how to record the video. This is practical. How to record a video in one to two takes in 10 to 15 minutes, and then where the heck to distribute it to get eyes on. In fact, I was just doing a webinar with one of our friends, hona, which is a great tool for law Firms. But I was teaching their community that yesterday. And when you found out there's a process to create video and then you know what to do with it, it's a game changer. And I'm not talking 10, 15, $20,000 videos that, that look highly produced law and order shows or movie trailers. There's a couple people in our space that love to sell those for high costs. We track everything with data with our analytics tool. Nobody watches them. So your videos, they should be amateur with professional editing. That's what we consume, that's what. Bob, I know you watch videos. I don't even have to ask. I do as well. So the neat part is when you create a video and I'm going to refer to this as like a 5 to 8 minute YouTube video shot in horizontal, then what you can do is you can repurpose that, get it transcribed, you turn it into your blog, you slice it up into three to six short form videos. So you get your TikToks, your reels, your Facebook, your Instagram posts as well, right? You've got your monthly newsletter because you need to do about two of them a month. So you get your newsletter, right. You've got your nurturing emails because you put in case studies and educational videos and what's it like to be a client of ours? Day number one, it's a great follow up video if they don't hire you. So using those to leverage, put in your system and what you're marketing, what you're already doing, but just supercharge it with video. You create like two videos a month and you learn the process to slice it up. And it takes care of almost all of your organic video because you multipurpose it. We call it Omnichannel. I'm tired of single use, like single use straws. I'm tired of single use marketing. I hate when people, I see people creating TikToks or writing a newsletter. Ah, what are you doing? Create a couple pieces of content, just repurpose it everywhere and then get back to growing your business and closing deals or looking at your numbers. So video, you've got to have a foundational great website that performs right. And you have to Google reviews in the US and in Canada. Google reviews, it's an asset that's more important than SEO. In the US we have another tool called local service ads that you can pay per call instead of per click. Like a pay per click. Those are very well for, for local businesses in your neighborhood. It showed up on your basis of your Google reviews. And there's three of them at the top of the page. And you get your reviews and your picture, and you only pay per phone call, not per click. You don't get the traffic and volume, but you get a higher ROI and a much lower cost then using those videos. The other best thing right now is retargeting. So if somebody hits your website, they watch a video, they've called your firm, then you retarget the hell out of them. We got all creepy back in the early 2000s with Amazon doing that. When you looked at that pair of shoes, you're like, why are they following me everywhere? It's the big government, right? And I'm like, sorry, guys. When I'm in the backyard sharing a beer with my neighbors, I'm like, actually, it's our fault. It's marketing fault. Because there's dollars to be made. That's why we did it. Where there's no, like, big clan that's going to oversee or some master creator, puppeteer. No, we. But you, literally. Because not everybody, no matter what your service is or your product or your widget, you got to understand, not everybody's ready to buy right now. They could be researching one. If you're a law firm, they're scared of you. They don't even want to buy your services because they probably don't want to, because they're probably not in a good spot and they're intimidating. So not everybody's ready to buy. So you have to nurture them. And you nurture them with emails, with texts, with phone calls. Please do not like seven to 10 phone calls. If they don't hire you over a couple weeks. If you're like a law firm, if you're another service where there's not a urgent need, then it's like you're trying to sell them a mattress. But in certain areas, like law firms, that it's your job to stay on their radar. But then the other thing is, we spend our time on social. Whatever platform, whatever it is, whatever our flavor. Don't tell me you don't. I know you may be pious, but you're not that. That. That you're there. And then you follow them around with retargeting so they see the snort short clip snippets of your videos everywhere. And we do this at Rainmaker and our budget on retargeting. You see it, Bob? Yeah, sorry.

Now. Well, I. I see yours. And I. We also do it. It's so powerful. So powerful.

Our budget. I don't know about yours. We have attorneys across. We have like attorneys in 42 states right now. Like, we've worked with over 23,000. Our budget's a couple thousand, like 2,000amonth in retargeting, sometimes we can't even spend that much. Right. So for law firms or other businesses, you may be 500, maybe $1,000 a month in your local area. If you're not national, Right. It's. If you're not retargeting, if your marketing team's not talking to you about this, if your vendor's not, then they're probably trying to sell you SEO blogs. Like, 30amonth. Yep.

And truthfully, I, I had this conversation with my, my personal trainer the other day. He's got a great fitness brand. He's got a ton of followers, I don't know, tens of thousands anyway, on his Instagram. And he gets a lot of traction. He threw. Every now and again, he gets a million plus interactions with some of his posts. He's doing some incredible things that I could never do. Like, I can never get that. And I'm like, yeah, you're like, that's a lot of work. And he's like, well, what do you mean? I was like, well, like, I just pay to get them in front of the right people and then, you know, I just retarget them. He's like, he goes, what do you mean? I was like, well, like, the first time they see it, you know, they're like, oh, that's interesting. Move on. And if that's the last time they see you, then that's the last time they see you. But that's not the last time they see me. And he's like, what, what do you mean retargeting? It's, it's very powerful. You need to understand how that works.

The cheapest money and the best money you can give to Google and meta. Right? Or Facebook. Right. It's just the cheapest YouTube. And it's so effective because, you know, in our industry, a lot of our clients love billboards. I don't know why. They spend a lot of money on branding. This is the easiest way to brand. You just follow them across all the platforms.

You know what I am. And this is a pretty. I feel like a helpful clarification too. I. When I first started going to a coaching group, Rob Nixon, God love him, he's. He was the first coach I've had. The most incredible coach I've had. I owe so much to him. And. But I would go in and I was always a very high Performer in any of his groups. And I went in and he was like, oh, we're going to talk about marketing this next round. I'm like, oh, great. You know, I don't know what my marketing is. It was a lot of handshaking and networking, like personal networking back in the day, one to one. And. Which is a lot of work. Like, that's more than those organic posts that he's trying to get out. And I remember he said, okay, Bob, I went and hired somebody. I went and hired a marketing person before this event. I was like, I'm gonna have this in place. This is gonna work really, really well. I'm gonna be a superstar. So I get in there and he's like, okay, you've got a marketing person. Are they a lead gen or a brand marketing person? And I was like, oh, shit, I don't know. I was like, I don't know. I don't know. You like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, the, the branding person, you know, gets your face seen, makes the brand look good. It's kind of noisy. And the lead gen is the one that gets all the clients in and, you know, engages them into being and paying you as like, oh, damn, I got the branding one.

There's a lot of those around.

Yeah. And so to your point, right, Because I know you guys help with the lead gen strategy. The brand side, like, it's nice if you want it, but the one that puts money in your pocket is the lead gen, right? Branding just makes you feel better about yourself. The lead gen is the one that pays the bills.

Well, the neat part, with video, you get to brand with your personality and everything you do, you think of. Like, if you don't believe in video, think of this for a second. I'm not going to have you meditate, but I'm going to have you close your eyes for a second. Think of a white piece of paper with the word boy across it. Okay, what image does that bring up? Gotcha. Now think of a picture of a boy on a couch, three or four years old, with a dog on his lap, smiling at the camera. Okay, more impact, right? Now think of that little boy bouncing. A basketball, laughing his head off. And he dribbles the basketball off the dog's head, right? Which one has more impact? So you take your personality and you bring that through. You add it to every piece of your marketing that you do. Anywhere you can write something. Think about how you can put a video in but most people won't because they're Terrifying. I don't know what to say. I feel like I look stupid on camera. I'm like, well, I have a face for radio and I do it all the time. You're all right. Nobody cares about you. Look at some of the people that are out there. They're not all beautiful. They don't care. Right. So all of those things still lead to the point of now we have these leads and they're generated. Now what am I going to do with them? Because too many. Too many people in our industry, and I'm going to say your industry as well, because I used to work with a lot of accountants on the IT side and tech side of it that you think your marketing job is done after they've contacted your firm? Like, no, that's only half of it. That's lead generation. Your coach could have said, are they branding pr, are they lead generation or are they lead conversion? They're different. They're radically different because not everybody's ready to buy. So that led to the automation. To answer your question, I think you asked me like 30 minutes ago, I told you I wanted to get to the automation part of it because that was what our clients were struggling with. And so automation, don't be scared of it. It's not generative AI, where it's going to write messages for you. When you look at automation, you do things. Look what it did to the dental industry, right? If you're an attorney and you have a show problem for your consults, fix it. It's easy. Other industries, you mean have a problem for your salespeople getting show. Well, is somebody calling them the day before or the day of? Are they sending them a text message that's automated and a couple emails that are automated and are they sending them a video from the person they're meeting with saying, sitting in their backyard with a dog saying, hey, this is why I do this, this is why I help. This is what I can potentially help you with. I'm excited to meet you. Make sure you bring all your questions, like, just put those three or four things in your show. Rate's fixed. So let's talk about if they call your firm and they don't set an appointment. Well, what are you going to do with that? Are you just going to, well, call them once or twice more? No, you send them a case study. You send them. Here's what it's like to work with my firm on day number one. Now, if you're a law firm that helps people in bankruptcy or you help them in Canada, it's like fresh start. You get a whole team. Like you get to set the table for whatever your business does for your clients. And you're like, this is what it's like to be a client of my day, number one. And then two days later you send out another email and a text messages text two or three times. Emails. In the legal space, I say 8 to 10 to 12. Because you're not selling something that's optional typically. Right. If you're selling something that's optional, you slow it down and you match your normal sales cycle with it because you don't want to be spammy. Right. But you nurture this and you automate the follow up, which then enhances your manual work. So in our industry, most people don't think they have sales. They don't even think they have a customer journey. They have an intake receptionist up front that answers the phone. People mysteriously show up. They hire me right now where they never, they were garbage and they'll never hire me. And they were not a good lead. That's the normal sales process for a law firm. But I insert professional services here. No judgment, just here, no judgment. So just to make you better. But then when you automate this, then there's a task for your salesperson or in the, in the, in the legal space, your intake person called Jane Doe because she didn't set an appointment for this reason and that was four days ago. She said this message, this message and then they pick up the phone. So automation will not replace good old fashioned manual work. But, but it will. It's like having a full time person that doesn't ask for a vacation or never wants a raise. This kind of always works.

Yeah, we like those, we like those people.

Can I get 10 more? Right.

And the answer is yes. Right. Like it's scalable and it's easy to continue to add features to automation as well and you know, long term nurturing as well. Getting them into marketing. Automate that, you know, you don't have to send a direct message. It was funny. We were just talking with our team about our onboarding process. We're always trying to make it better and we're like, let's automate some of this. Let's automate. Check ins with the clients and say, you know, how's everything been? It's been a week, how are you feeling? And I was like, you don't have to even send out this manual message because you might forget or you might not. So there's human error. You will forget. Yeah. Or it's not your priority because you're dealing with something else. But this message goes out and all you have to do is respond. When the client says, yeah, things are great. You go, awesome. Thanks for the feedback. It's not so great. Great. What do we need to do to fix it? You know, let's. How is that for, you know, enhancing your client journey, your client experience? Automation can be so helpful in making us all look good.

It does. And it keeps everything in line. Just like with the whole intake or sales process and the automation of your CRM or your follow up. What? Just think of an analogy of a bucket of water, a pail. Right. Most law firms, most professional services, you just drill a bunch of holes in different stages where they're leaking leads out all the time and they don't even know it. Like, I forgot to follow up with that guy.

I would say all businesses too. I would say all businesses. I feel like it's a mist in all businesses. Unless you've got this stuff locked down.

Yep. And so what you do is you just mind map these things. Just like with your follow up and your nurturing, you're like, okay. I say the same thing to people that say, ah, I don't know what to automate. I need, I need more time and I can't hire anybody. I just. We do the same thing like, okay, we'll take a deep breath, make a plan. In three months I'm going to automate this and if I can automate it in three months, then I need to probably rethink the, what we're doing and see if we can then change that process so we can automate part of it. Because the more automation, the more scale and the more better customer journey and experience because it's more predictable. Like McDonald's. Nobody under the age of 10 has ever said that's a great taste in Big Mac. Honestly. Maybe, I don't know, maybe they, I just don't think they're like, it's not great food. But last summer I took my family to Europe and our girls, we rolled into Dublin and they were just complaining and whining like teenagers do. And I had this dinner planned at this church that was refurnished into this brew pub and I was like, this is going to be a foodie. It's going to be great. And our girls are jet. I don't know, just teenagers or jet lag. You choose. Probably both. We're like, okay. Me and my wife, we looked at each other like, well, this sucks. This is not our European Trip, we thought, we're going to go. There's a McDonald's. We went and took them. We got the same hamburger. We knew what we're going to get. We took them back, we dropped them off, then we went to the brew pub right afterwards.

But the point being, you needed one.

Yeah, we had more than one that night, Bob. No judgment zone here, but it's the consistency. So you talk about automating something, right, at a base level, then you could add new things. Like we're testing some things right now because I think AI is great. It's never going to replace law firms. But if you don't use it in your business or your law firm, it's. You're going to be replaced by people that do leverage it. Right. You won't be replaced by it, but others will. So one of the things we're doing is, oh, we have this appointment reminder automated, right? Text email call here, pop up, call them. We're doing an AI voicemail drop with, hey, just wanted to make sure that it could actually then respond a little bit just to confirm an appointment. So then that's one less meeting or a phone call or time that your salesperson has to do while they can be prospecting on another or following up with something else, like leverage your time. Use it.

Just another touch point too. And one thing I would say as well, you know, the consumers email. Email is great, but it's not the one that's going to get the highest response rates. We're all fully aware of that now. Everyone's got their phone in their hands getting something, whether it's a text message or a voice note like that, it's just, it's going to be seen, it's going to be heard, you know, much higher probability that they'll respond to that too.

But you have to be smart with it. Like email, you can write three or four times the amount of touches text, two or three touches each stage, max.

You don't want to be invasive. You don't want to be invasive, especially.

If you're in a, in a, you know, let's say you're a divorce attorney and your clients and, and make sure you ask is there spouse picks it up or like, honey, is there something we need to talk about? Be careful. But you know, if you're an accountant, that may not be as raw as somebody in the legal space, but.

No, that's true. That is very true.

Just little, little inside baseball that you know, that we deal with so well.

And this is good and I, you know, What? I love marketing and sales and business development. So I could join chat with you all day about this. I love what you guys are doing. Let's talk and, and we'll wrap up with this. Let's talk about your Rainmaker retreat. This is something that I'm really excited about and, and thank you for the invitation to be part of this event. Let's maybe share with our audience a little bit about what the Rainmaker retreat is going to be, how they could get access to it. And, and I'm going to make sure that everybody has contact information and whatnot for you. But let's just talk about the impact and the change that this could have in the lives of those that attend.

Well, there's only one reason we've been doing this for 25 years and have worked literally with over 23,000 law firms and attorneys because we teach them and educate them on how to run their business. We do not make you a better attorney. We make the assumption that that's there. Right. We work and we teach attorneys that want to be owners, business owners, CEOs. So we found a long time ago that it's not just funny, fun to think about, change your mindset approach. Right. You know, those things are all good. But if there's no blueprint for a law firm business, there's about three or four law schools that actually even teach an entrepreneurial class. Right? They do not prepare you. They teach you, in my opinion, to be professional skeptics, and then you graduate and learn how to become an attorney. But they teach you how to think. They teach you how to operate within this in a very sophisticated environment with ever changing facets. They surely do not talk to you about P&LS, about sales and about deliverables and about how those always fight with each other in a business and then how to compensate staff, how to have an organization, how to create a leadership team so you don't have to have your hands in everything. So what we've done is we boiled this down to really a business owner's education. So we teach you the way to generate leads. We teach you the exact strategies that are working now. And also if they're going to be working in 2025, because they're different than last year, they're radically different. Right? Especially per practice area. So we teach you how to generate leads so you can go do this or your marketing team can go do this the next day. We teach you how to take those leads and convert them. No matter what area, what size, what, what evolution or or what level of firm that you are to how to take your intake, your leads, and convert them into clients at 70, 80% rate. And that's not a joke. Now, if you're in a different business, Rainmaker Treat's probably not for you, but those are high sales, close rates. But remember, attorneys, they're not here for that mattress or a set of tires. They've got something legit going on in their life. So we teach them how to convert. Then the biggest part that I am so excited that you're going to be a part of is then teaching them the business of law firms, teaching them how to run their business, create a leadership team, things to think about and how to operate so you can get out of the day to day minutia, the day to day legal work, the day to day making the sausage, right? Because there's a certain point in your time that that's not the highest use and value of your time. So then we teach you how to generate leads, how to convert those leads, and then how to run your business with numbers that we talked about. The first part of this, we force you, like, here's the exact numbers, here's how you track the numbers, here's what you need to do with the numbers, here's how you interpret those numbers. And then we wrap it up with a taste of what every business owner, every law firm business owner, because you're in a sophisticated industry and you just doubled down on difficulty and said, I'm going to start my own business because I can do this better than everyone else, right? So the third day, we dedicate this to what we call our lifestyle offer. It's really being able to enjoy all the hard work. You get to play hard. So this is this event. Since it's our 25th anniversary, we've brought a couple of guests along. You were one of those. You were one of my most exciting ones that we could bring because you bring an aspect that normally is not taught in our industry. And I love it. But we're having everybody participate in Torrey Pines Golf Course. Now, if you're not a golfer, you don't have to be good because we're doing a scramble that means four people get hit your ball and you take your best one and you go from there. But it's a bucket list iconic. It's. They've had two US Open PGA Championship tournaments here. So we're having at the Lodge at Torrey Pine. Think of the golf course drops right off into the ocean. There's the Pacific Ocean just north of San Diego. So we're going to teach you how to run your business, how to generate clients, how to scale it, be a CEO and then we're going to teach you, if you do these things, we're going to show you what the lifestyle that you can get. And that's what our Rainmaker retreat is.

And what is the date of the retreat?

It's the 8th through the 10th of November in Torrey Pines. And the best place to find out information is rainmaker retreat.com and if you did happen to listen to this podcast and you're listening all the way through, I'll give you a little extra special incentive if you use the discount code fop Friends of Philip, because we're all friends here. If you use that, it'll give you an extra $200 off. Just a nudge. Honestly, the amount of money that we could charge for this if you were talking about an ROI and what this has done, this has created this event single handedly. We've been running these Rainmaker retreats now for 22, 23 years. This event single handedly and what we teach that you fill your notebook up and you go back and implement it yourself if that's your choice, or get your trusted partners to implement, has turned more law firms into seven and eight figure businesses than any other activity you could get to, period.

Love that. And that is the mic Drop finale. Philip, so many invaluable insights here. First off, thank you for sharing your entrepreneurial story. It definitely took a different turn than I was expecting, but excited about what you and your brother have created. It's a magical company that has a huge impact on so many people. So congratulations on that. Thank you for sharing your insights related to marketing and your, your turnkey system. Again guys, turn turnkey system for taking leads to closing deals. That's how we need to grow and scale our business. We need all of those systems in place. This is a really great resource to do that for all of my listeners. If there's something that you have found extremely insightful, please drop a comment, a note, a thank you. We'll get it to Philip. If you've enjoyed this, please like and follow our podcast. We'll have another release next week. If there's someone that you feel would benefit from this, some of the insights that were shared. So many things could be transformative in someone's life. Grab this link, share it with those. I can guarantee you, I speak for Philip and I in, in this that we're on a mission to empower the most amount of lawyers, professionals, entrepreneurs to have the greatest impact in their lives and to change the world together. This is one piece that you could help support with that. So please do that as well. Thank you for jumping in and joining us today, listeners. Philip, what a pleasure to have you on here. I can't wait for the Rainmaker retreat. It's going to be an absolute blast. And for those of you listening, hopefully we'll see you there as well. Thank you, everybody and have a fantastic day.

Thanks.