I always tell people, don't sell provide service, be there to serve them and help them in any way possible, but don't be selling everybody. When I was on these boards, and I was on a lot of different boards, everybody knew I was a lawyer, but I never asked people, who do you use? Do you know the lawyer? They knew I was a lawyer. I don't have to be selling them lawyer and again, contributing smart things at these meetings, people say, Oh, he's a smart guy, and he's at a good firm, and whatever else. So those kind of things help. And so I would always really focus on not selling. And when people need your services, they're going to ask,

good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time this podcast finds you. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast. My name is Jay Berkowitz. We got a great guest today. Keith Wasserstrom from Corporate Council Business Advisors, but he's an awesome networker. We're going to learn a lot today from Keith. Keith, welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing law firms podcast. Thank you very much. You're in a unique position. Actually, you're not that unique. We've had four or five former attorneys who are now in what do we call it, public life, slum in it, like the rest of us, but you bring a tremendous amount of experience to your role as a business advisor. So talk a little bit about what is corporate counsel business advisors do, and how you help companies, right?

So I try to help frustrated business owners and executives manage their businesses more efficiently with clarity, alignment, accountability, productivity and both personal and financial freedom. The idea is that executives and owners can enjoy growing their businesses in an environment that fosters respect, fun and personal success, while the leadership teams know exactly what they need to do and exactly who needs to do it. The owner or executive can spend more time doing the things that he or she loves rather than working on the integrity of the business.

I met Keith through a networking group, and he's a great networker. We're going to talk a little bit about that. You mentioned something in the group, and you said that a lot of times there's an air conditioning guy, and he's really great at air conditioning and fixing air conditioning, and then he has this entrepreneurial moment. He opens an air conditioning company. That's an example of someone you can really help out. I wonder, obviously, I assume, obviously, you've read the book E Myth. Yes, love that book, yes, yeah. And so that's the classic. I'm going to ask Keith later about his best business books, and about half the people we asked them for their best business book on this podcast for the last 15 years, about half the people mentioned email. But that's the classic story in E Myth, where someone's really great at doing something, they open their own business, then they have to learn the business side of the business. So maybe tell us a couple examples of how you've helped folks learn the business side of the business and explain it from the perspective of maybe an attorney who's opening their own business.

into business. That's a great question. How do you turn a shop? Is dinner? Hispanic Lawyers Association. How do you generate business from those events?

And those were actually uniquely easy, because you first of all, it helps them. Coming from Greenberg, Troyer, very well respected, large for people have heard of it. Coming from washer Stroman associates might have been more of a challenge, but also being there, and I'm not black and I'm not Hispanic. So when you're at their event, first of all, they appreciate it. They don't necessarily know that green bridge Troyer is nobody made me go, but the green bridge paying for it, the fact that I'm there, it shows that I'm supporting their cause, whatever their cause is, and typically you are. You go to a fundraiser or whatever kind of dinner for your shul or Cancer Society, you're supporting their costs, because paying for that,

whatever it is, step one is showing up 100% so Keith is sharing with us some great strategies for networking, and he's one of the great networkers of all time. Built his business as a young associate at a at a law firm. Built a law firm business on multiple occasions, and now is building his own business as a consultant, and I do a lot of networking. So Keith, if it's okay, how about we brainstorm and share with people 10 great business building networking strategies. Can we think we could pull that off? You keep track the number I'll

start. Okay,

so number one is showing up, but you talked about going to a Friday night Shabbos dinner, and that was through a charitable Association. And number two was showing up when your big law firm is buying a table. But it's very easy a lot of times, to not go to the networking event, so half the battle is just showing up. So when you show up, what are some of the things you should do in that room to make a difference between showing up, sitting down at your table and sitting with your friends that you came with, or your coworkers. And how do you turn it into business? What's the number one thing you should do once you show up?

First of all, you have to meet everybody at your table. Sometimes you'll sit at a firm tables. Everybody already, but most frequently, the tables that I've got to you don't know a lot of people. You might know half of them. It's also typically noisy these kind of events. So I would get up. And I also have a challenging name, Keith wasserstrom, and especially if you're not American, whatever you might not, Keith is an odd name, so I always have to say teeth Keith. But. The watch system was also hard, so I would give it gives you a reason to give somebody a card. So especially at noisy events, you can give them your business card. Now they're connected to you. And a lot of people, I think most people, put their business cards into their Rolodex, back in the day, into their but you're meeting somebody, and what do you do is just typically, the conversation kind of thing. So a big step up to just going a lot of people go to events, and they sit at their table. They might go to the buffet line or go to the bar, but they're not meeting people. If I see somebody that I know from a previous networking event, I'll go and see them again. So there'll be an opportunity for me to meet them again. Remind them one of the things about we're

gonna keep this tight, okay, one at a time, you gotta. Number one is showing up. Number two is meeting everyone at your table. Number three is get up and walk around. Don't just sit at your table. I'll give you number three or number four, and we'll transpose it, which is show up early. And a lot of people miss this, me included, even though I know it every single time, but now I've started blocking time because the best time to network, if you're going to that dinner, or you're going to the luncheon for the Bar Association, whatever it is the Chamber of Commerce, breakfast like once they start the breakfast, and the speakers, once they start the lunch, and the speakers once They start the dinner and the awards or whatever you're tied to your table, but you're rude if you're talking and the speaker speaking. So that, look, the absolute most important thing is you've got to get there really early if you're there and the first and second, third, fourth, people are walking in. They're looking for someone to talk to. You've got no pressure on you or anyone else that you've got to talk to the rest of the room. So it's a really great chance to make quality conversations. And the next one, I'll lead you to. This one, you can talk about it. What is that quality conversation when you meet someone new?

Right? So by the way, my strategy was always to be one of the first 10 people there. It's always the people that are setting it up. They can't beat them. I try to be the first 10 people there. And this, I don't wanna say it's a trick, but sometimes I would actually leave when everyone goes to the table and they're ready to start the program, I would leave because that is not again depends on your goals are. If you wanna be get informed about the program, that's a different story. But if you're really different networking, that is dead time, because, like you said, you can't be talking. It's worse if you're talking during the event. So that's

good trick, by the way, because a lot of people feel so obligated to go to these events. And they go to these events, and they show up at 10 after eight, and they rush to their table, and then nobody talks, because the speaker is talking, and they leave and they have no success, and they say networking doesn't work. But my dad's good friend, Paul Morton, recently passed, so shout out to you, and love to Paul Morton. But he taught me that trick. So I called the Paul Morton trick, where he was the president of a TV network in Canada. But he said he had to go to all these dinners. He had to show up. Said, you show up really early. You meet everybody in the room. You shake all the hands. Everybody sees you there, and then you have your assistant actually not even give you a table seating, so nobody's there's not an empty spot at the table with your name plate. You actually cheat the system, and that's a really good so we'll call that the Paul slash Keith strategy, but a great way. You meet everyone in the room, shake all the hands, kiss all the babies. Okay? Keith, quality conversation. A lot of people are nervous. How do you engage folks in conversation when you're there early? So

it depends if you can tell whether the person is if you have something in common with that person. It's huge. Again, from Philadelphia, so I'm like a Phillies flyer, Sixers and Eagles fan. But I'm also, I've been in Florida for 40 some years, so I'm also a Miami fan as well. So if I can come up with there's a something happened in recent events, a sports game, or whatever else I can mention, then see if they're engaged in that sports event. Having something in common with somebody is a huge icebreaker. And if they talk about this, the tribe, right? Members of the tribe. So the fact that somebody is a Phillies fan in South Florida is rare, so you'll bond automatically. There's several people I met maybe once, and they're Phillies fans, and I could tell you who they are, because I met them and bonded over that. We schmoozed about it. And it's also funny, because once you have that connection, you could connect with them. You send them a text message. That was a great game, or you can he can commiserate it for team lost. So finding some kind of connection, obviously at a law or a bar thing. What kind of law do you practice? Interesting because, and that's huge because, as a networker, I just had a conversation with one of my clients. He was a trust and estates lawyer. I said that's phenomenal for networking among lawyers, because a lot of people do not do trust in estates, or do so if you're a guy that hangs out a shingle and you do everything, that's that's different story. A corporate securities guy, a real estate person, those people are not going to do trust in estates. It's very particular. It's changes all the time because new laws. So you have a great opportunity to you. Market to those other types of lawyers.

So I want to nail these down and get us a list of 10. Because 10 golden rules. I'm a big 10 list. I came up with another great one there, which is, find something in common and then follow up. So if they're a Phillies fan, or if they're trusting a state lawyer, or if they drink wine, my friend Jeff Michelle, calls it, find their passions. So you can even ask people like, Hey, what are your passions or hobbies? Oh, man, what I'm really passionate about is like, red wine from Burgundy, right? And then you're at a restaurant and the waiter recommends a red wine from Burgundy. You try it, and it's great. It's well priced. And you take a picture and you send it to your new friend, right? So you find something in common and you follow up. I want to just build on what you said about the quality conversations, because he said the first thing was, like, where are you from? And I learned this great strategy from Andrea Nirenberg. She's written a couple networking books. And what she shared is that picture a house in your mind, just a simple picture of a home. And then the first question is, like, where are you from? And the other part of this is you want to start the conversation, because not everybody's a natural conversation. Natural conversations. Like a lot of people get pushed to go to these networking events or feel obligated they have a sales role or sales responsibility, particularly these legal events. Everybody knows they got to build their book of business. So if you make it easy and make the conversation easy, and by the way, people like to talk about themselves, so you're going to say, where are you from? Picture this house in your mind, and then the next thing you could say, Tell me about your family. Never ask those potentially awkward questions, are you married? Because obviously, if they're not, or tell me about your kids, if they don't have kids, just tell me about your family. And you're freeing it up to they can tell you about their great grandfather who invented cheese or whatever, but you're freeing them up tell me about your family. Then the next thing is, picture like maybe a little dog on the stoop of this house. Hey, do you have any pets? Again, open it up to them to talk about things they love. Or picture some golf clubs beside the car. What are your hobbies? Do you play golf? Or do you have any do you have any hobbies? And then picture a plane flying above the house, and you can say, Do you have any trips planned this summer, this year, this winter, whatever. And then the final one is, if you get a long conversation and you really want to hear about their passions, imagine some clouds and say, Tell me about your dreams, what's up in your future, but you're opening it up to this person to talk a lot about themselves, and it's like a super easy way to have a conversation. When it's not easy sometimes with some books type of conversation. Okay, so now we're sure we showed up, we got to an event. What are some other good strategies for building a network, finding other business opportunities?

One another thing is if you get an opportunity to be on a board of a charity or an organization or whatever else, one thing I tell people I coach in this is that don't go to any board just because you get on a board and then go there and just sit in the seat and whatever else you really got to show up, but also be involved. And it's a lot easier if you're doing something that you're interested in and passionate about, if you had a friend or a relative that died from cancer. So cancer is important to you, and you really want to help the cancer organization. Don't just show up and be one of 40 people in a room at the board meetings actually contribute. And again, the same thing, showing up early allows you to meet those other 40 people, and those other 40 people are also interested in cancer. How did it affect you? Somebody might be a doctor or make some whatever. So everyone's but they're there because they're interested. And you should only really get involved in things that you're interested in. If you're not interested in animals, you don't want to be involved in the you. SPCA,

no, that's great. Great tip, right? Go with something you're passionate about, and then I have a great tip for how do you contribute on a board? So when you first join a board, do something you're really good at. So if you're an accountant, volunteer to assist with the accounting and the bookkeeping. I'm a marketing guy, and the first time I was on board, guess what I did? I did the marketing, and I got the designer at our ad agency to do the posters for our event, and I got the printer that we did a lot of printing with to donate the printing. And so I was a star, like, like you were at your first year associate job, I was a star on the board. And then the next year, I said I wanted to learn about PR, and one of the roles was to do PR, and I'd never really done PR professionally. And so I wrote the press releases and got the media contacts and sent the press release up the organization, made the introduction. So it was easy. Again, I looked like a superstar, but now I had PR on my resume, so that's a great way to contribute. Another tip I say to people is you should have one personal and one professional volunteer, like if you have a networking role. So Keith said, the charity you're passionate about, and then pick a professional organization that's a good fit for you. From a business standpoint, volunteering is really good. Now we met through a networking group. There's a lot of great networking groups, so let's say that's number nine is join a networking group. How do you pick the right networking group? Keith,

they might be hit or miss, but you go to the events and you see who's showing up. And it has to be ideally your target market, really. But it. Could also be people who are good referral sources. So if they're going after the same kind of clients that you are, same kind of big businesses or individuals, whatever it is, but those people might not be great clients in the networking group that you're meeting with on a, you know, periodic basis, but they're great referral sources there. It's also a good it's good for you to join that group, but so you have to see if there it's active. I was in one that, let's say there's maybe 60 people in the in the group, and we meet every other week, and attendance was lacking. So you're going to these meetings, and a lot, not a lot of people are there. So they started harassing people about coming to the meeting. So attendance is better. So if there, and I know BNI is really strict, I think if you missed two meetings are out, and they're also very strict about referring inside the network, which is great if you're going to get on the recipients, receiving end of that. But sometimes, if you if some people in your group are not great, if you have an accountant that's really not good, and you get accounting opportunities, you're sending it to a bad accountant. That's not good for you. So it's because you

being involved in other activities which are, like fun, like for your kids, like I was a little league coach. You have all these kids coaching, but you're also the parents are there too. And so you get to meet the parents. And if you if, again, it's everything's an opportunity. You're not thinking about it in the sort of the forefront of your mind, but in the back of your mind, if you're thinking about it, thinking about it, there's some great people in your community that now part of your little league, and you're going to meet their parents, whether it's the JCC Basketball League, whatever it is. So you have an opportunity, and if you're a good and respectful and you're a good coach, and the kids like you, that reflects positively on you. So when the kids tell the parents, Oh, I love Coach Keith kind of thing. That's a good, positive thing for you. And again, you get to meet other people. You might not other meet because you might not be in their sort of business or professional circles. It's funny, because I would meet people everywhere. My wife's the joke. I'd go into the bathroom and come out with two business cards. One of the thing I would tell you also which

I was, I've done some great business in the bathroom.

I always tell people, don't sell, provide service, be there to serve them and help them in any way possible, but don't be selling everybody. When I was on these boards, and I was on a lot of different boards, everybody knew I was a lawyer, but I never asked people, who do you use? Do you know the lawyer? They knew I was a lawyer. I don't have to be selling them lawyer and again, contributing smart things at these meetings. People say he's a smart guy and he's at a good firm and whatever else. So those kind of things help. And so I would always really focus on not selling. And when people need your services, they're going to ask, I'm

going to throw a 10th one in too, which is, build your personal brand. So do things like create a podcast, join these groups, the Chamber of Commerce, the the Bar Association, and definitely volunteer to speak. Write a great little speech, and if you're not comfortable on stage, you can do it like this, one on one, interview format, put out a podcast. Super easy. All we did is booked a Zoom meeting here, recorded it, and you're listening to it today, so I'm going to review it. Keith, quickly. Number one is showing up. Number two is meet everyone at the table. Number three is show up early. Be one of the first 10 people there. Introduce yourself. So like I said, and you said, have a quality conversation. Learn something about them, as I said, picture the house. Tell me about your family. Where are you from? Do you have any pets? Do you have any hobbies or passions, any trips coming up. Number four, you said, Get up and go around. Don't just be stuck at your table. And you can actually meet people in the buffet line, at the bar, at the coke check if you're somewhere up north. We don't have coke checks down here in Florida. And then you said, if they're a Phillies fan, follow up on the Phillies if they like burgundy red wine, follow up after the fact. Join groups. And we talked about some good groups. Find something you're passionate about that fits your professional join a board and volunteers on those groups. Get involved, or if you're interested in cancer. And you said number nine would be, find something around your kids or your family, and number 10 is, build your personal brand. Do a podcast. Get speaking events. We're almost out of time, but we're going to do the quick one liners. So you got to do these quick okay, yes, tell us about your personal productivity tips or apps that you use.

I'm using this buzz AI to help me get messages out on LinkedIn. You have to babysit. It's not completely on its own yet, but once you get it going. It does go sends out messages periodically. So that's good buzz.ai. Yeah, there's other ones like it as well that, but I signed up with them, and I'm so far I'm pretty happy.

Best business books.

E Myth is fantastic. It really depends on what your issues are. Atomic habits is great if you need to change your habits. I actually wrote a book a 10 a secrets from the leak from legal pad. My partner and I, when we first started coaching, we were both ex lawyers, and we just used some experiences from our legal practice and growing our own firms and some things with our clients. And so it's 12 strategies to really grow your business. Is that on Amazon? No. But anyone asked for me, I could send him a copy of it. All right,

there's a link to Keith's website. On this, blogs, podcast, YouTubes, what do you subscribe to? And when it comes in your feed, you're like, Oh, stop everything else I gotta listen to.

There's nothing I necessarily follow. I follow people. So one of my coaches was interviewed in something about the kingdom or something like that. Because I went to that podcast, I was actually signed up for another they get send me all their messages every time that podcast. So I ended up watching again. The kingdom is about God and whatever religion that's typically non Jewish. But I found the next one was about how to get the most for your company. And I was not, you know, I was, I thought was interesting. The idea that he came out was he had a client that sold his business for $3 million and then the next year, that company sold it for $10 million and he went back to his client said, You hurt your family and you hurt your community. Because if you could have sold it for 10 million instead of three, that's generational wealth your family. But you are a charitable guy. You tithe and you give to your community. You missed out on giving out to your community. And all that company did that bought his company was they raised their prices, and they were able to sell it for $10 million because their revenues were that much better just raising their prices. So it was like a really great message for me, because it's not just about you and your business. It's about your community. Because a lot of people, especially in our community, we give, and again, your family. So you're not just thinking about yourself. You have to think

about larger. Last one, where can people get in touch with you?

So I'm at corporate council.com, Corporate Council business advisors. That's the, probably the best way I'm on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, which is another great way to

click the links in the show notes, Keith, this was awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.