Charlie Mann: 00:00:04

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10. Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:00:26

Well, 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. We have a great guest today. I've gotten to know Charlie man over the last two years. And I recently saw him speak at a conference and he did a topic that we've never covered in any depth on this podcast or on our webinars. And maybe if you're nice enough, Charlie would come back and do a webinar or two. But the top is referrals and law firm referrals. And Charlie's the founder of Law Firm Alchemy, and welcome to the 10 Golden Rules podcast and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Charlie Mann: 00:01:07

Jay I'm excited to be here talking with you. Yeah, like you said, you know, we've known each other for the past couple of years. But I'll tell you a little bit of the fun backstory is that, you know, my brother, Joe, back when we were jlm. Joe was Joe had been the first person to get to know you. And I remember him being so impressed with the way that you talked about internet marketing, and some of the, like, honest talk in that you weren't a guy who presented everything in absolutes. Your guy said, like, look, here's we have to be strategic with different firms, right? There's not just this super easy one size fits all. And you were showing him some of the backend some of the work that you did. And that was such a very clear like, hey, let's we're jumping the level of trust here because this person didn't just come into the universe and say, hey, send people to me, you're like, hey, I mean, check out what I do. If you like it. Cool. If you don't well. Okay. I think that you will, though. So my association with uj for such a long time has been like just this good, honest broker of digital marketing information. And I'm excited to kind of combine that with the referral marketing discussion. Awesome.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:02:15

Well, thank you so much. I didn't know this was about me. It is, I like to think we're light on the snake oil sales. 10 golden rules, but yeah, heavy applies, right. And then real meat. So what is law firm alchemy? It's your new entity. And you mentioned GLM, Great Legal Marketing. And that's the great Ben Glass organization. And Charlie used to be an integral part of this before setting up his own his own thing. So tell us about law firm alchemy? Yeah, so

Charlie Mann: 00:02:45

it provides coaching both one on one and group coaching programs for law firm owners. And really what it is I've, I've kind of coalesced J on who I'm really trying to affect and how I'm trying to affect them, which is, it's a law firm owner, who is usually in some state of transition with the practice and those common states of transition are, my revenue has plateaued, but I'm trying to make significant change in my life, or major changes happened in my life, kids are starting to go to college or even into high school, and they need them less than like, okay, if I'm not needed there, I mean, I can go do things in my practice, or, you know, I've coached folks who are going through a divorce, not saying that I'm their coach about that. But that happens to be when New Energy is put into the law firm, or, you know, they recently had a partner who decided to exit the firm or the person I'm talking to decide to exit the firm, and working a lot with law firm owners on the word that I the word that I have to put on it, honestly, is identity. Because I mean, Jay, you and I both know working with law firm owners that there is a lot of the lawyer side that comes into the process. And there is that okay, I've been busy being a lawyer now I own a law firm and non this thing called an entrepreneur, which some of them are really bought in on some of them, you know, they they listen to Jim Rohn, or read some Jim Rohn books or sauna, pullian hill or Dale Carnegie early on, and that kind of got them in that mood, maybe they hit you know, the E Myth at some point. But even then, how do we transition farther into that identity as being an entrepreneur and become the leader, the marketer, the manager, the systems overseer that is required of the entrepreneur to scale up the practice? So I the reason I like talking about it that way is because I know there are a lot of people who want to organize what the firm does. I want to organize what the leader of the firm does in working with the owner. So we do that through one on one and group coaching programs at law firm alchemy. And

Jay Berkowitz: 00:04:47

why alchemy? Like that's such a cool word and it's kind of like an old word. Why did you select that and what does it mean? Yeah, in for you.

Charlie Mann: 00:04:54

So alchemy I mean, first off, I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. So total nerd background for me, love sci fi, love, fantasy, all of it. But then the other layer on it is, Alchemy is the original idea was well, turning lead into gold or as Dan Kennedy would put it, you know, making something out of nothing. And obviously turning lead into gold is impossible to do. But isn't it cool that we get to when you're dealing with a human being take things that we believe are impossible and make them true. And so I like to say I love being in the business of making the impossible possible. And that's what alchemy is.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:05:32

It reminds me my buddy just started a mortgage company. It's called John Galt mortgage. Oh, well, yeah. So anyways, that the era to it. All right, well, cool. So law firm referrals. Yeah, I interview well, eight or 10 law firms a week, the last couple of weeks since GLM. But you know, I talked to four or five law firm owners every week. And, you know, without a doubt, everybody gets their most cases, in their best cases from referrals. And we've innovated some programs I'll talk about to try and boost referrals. Now, you did a whole hour presentation on referrals for law firms. And so I thought it was awesome, to put it in context and to put some real meat to the bone. Because, you know, everybody sort of comes to us, because they want to top up the referrals and the great cases they get from either past clients or referral partners. And you really made an art to building those referral partner relationships. And really, like how can we get more of the best cases, because you know, referrals, convert easier, convert better, way higher percentage and every business in my business? And everybody talk to, and for law firms. Obviously, if somebody tells someone, hey, you know, you go and ask a friend, like you're in a car accident, hey, you were in a car accident? You got a big check from that lawyer, who was your lawyer? Who should I talk to? And then they call up, you know, directly to the lawyer. And it's like, a 99%, close rate, you can only screw it up. So we all have those phone calls when it's a referral from an existing or past client. And then there's a lot you can do to build those referral relationships. Do you want to just start at the top or you want to how do you want to share with us? Yeah,

Charlie Mann: 00:07:21

let's let's start at the top. And I want to highlight something that you said, Jay, which is build referral relationships, right? Because it implies build is an active verb. It's not wait for referral relationships. It's not the old just do good work, and the cases will come mentality. Instead it is the idea of I will go and construct these things. I think a lot of times the reason that lawyers are afraid of building referral relationships is they, they experienced impostor syndrome. They feel like they are overextending themselves. They don't want to be an uninvited guest, which all of those things are head trash. You know, you probably remember at the during the presentation, I asked the room like how many of you identify as an introvert and 80% of the hands go up, right. And these are law firm owners. Many of them are trial attorneys. These are people who do sales meetings all the time to produce more clients and appointments. And yet they're identifying as introverts. And the point that I was able to make there was in a room full of introverts, these are law firm owners who could refer cases to you, do you understand that you can create a superpower in an instant, if you become the one person who is willing to reach out to all the other introverts, most of whom want to have a conversation, but they want to have the right conversation. That's the truth that like that's the hidden truth about introverts. Introverts don't always just want to be away from everyone else. They just don't want to do small talk, they want to have purpose in conversation. And if you want to invite referrals into your world, start reaching out to all of these other lawyers, all of these other related professionals, community leaders, all of whom are waiting for someone exactly like you to just say, Hello, and invite them to a conversation, give them a seat at the literal or proverbial table and open up each other's worlds to each other. The other huge myth in the referral game. I remember this from years and years of doing boot camps, when we would talk about referrals. Was the common objection that I heard from a lot of firm owners J was well, you know, the problem is, is I think that they already have a person they refer those cases out to. So again, another hand raising exercise, who in the room can say that out of the four major practice areas which the four major ones, at least the ones I work with personal injury, criminal defense, Family Law and Estate Planning. How many of you have at least one referral source in each of those areas? And like no hands are in all of those areas, no hands go up, which means that there's literally opportunity for every single Will individual in the room because they have all collectively dispelled this notion that attorneys, they've already got the referral sources, it's not true. Again, it's all about just reaching out, you can make it as complicated or as simple and not recommend simple as you want. But it's just, it's active, you got to build the relationships.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:10:21

You talked about having a cadence, and I love the term cadence for a lot of these activities and marketing activities of just setting two meetings a week. And would that fall into this? This, you know, target?

Charlie Mann: 00:10:35

Absolutely. So you heard the the framework and when I present it, I love to call it you know, the 15 Minute magic trick, I'll make a half a million dollars in 15 minutes, right. And the core the framework behind it is, if I can get you to do to meet ups per week, just two coffees per week, and send a weekly email newsletter, and a monthly print mailer to referral sources, the email can go to literally anyone but the mailer, let's send those to existing and potential hope everyone heard that word, potential referral sources to start a relationship, if I can get you to do those three things, and stay on cadence with those, it is only a matter of time, I know that these work, I have coaching clients doing these systems, and getting huge results, I wouldn't call it a half million dollars, I do a half million dollar referral roadmap, if it wasn't producing a half million dollars in multiple firms, and adding up wins along the way. So if you can stick to that cadence, you can get and you will get more referrals. And honestly, Jay, some of the opportunities that crop up, especially with the meetups, I like to talk about the meetups first, because they are the most powerful resource. Some of the opportunities that crop up include like someone in a firm meeting another firm owner, and finding out that that firm owner they're meeting with is thinking about getting out of a certain practice area. So like, oh, you know, yeah, I'm actually kind of tired of doing family law cases, I don't want those anymore. So then I have a client who goes, Oh, well, that's what I do. You want to just keep your phone number on and send those cases my way, I'll happily write referral checks for you. You don't find out about that. If you don't have a conversation with another human being, because they're not posting that information on Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera. That's something they tell you over a cup of coffee.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:12:23

So you're saying your family lawyer, you should meet with family lawyers.

Charlie Mann: 00:12:28

So I want every attorney to meet with both competing and non competing attorneys. This is like, and this is the thing that guys like you and I understand, Jay is, it's good to talk with your competition, because you really don't know where they're going with their business. And you don't know if they serve a different client than you. So like I've worked with some folks. One guy out in California, in particular, an attorney who the only family law cases that he wanted to handle were high conflict where there was a narcissist possibly diagnosed likely almost always undiagnosed. On the other side of the divorce, that was his specialty, all of the like, zero conflict, easily mediated stuff, he was happy to refer out. And there were a lot of family law firms that didn't want to be in the high conflict business. But if you think of everyone in family law as being your competition, you don't sit down and say, Well, you know, this is what I focus on. Just send me these people. And I'll gladly send you the others. And that's actually why as part of the meetups, whether you're meeting with competition or non competing, you always want to ask, who's your perfect client? Like what cases do you really love working on? Because then by the way, it means that each person has an opportunity to make money off of what they're best at. And they want to do the most of another example, personal injury firms, personal injury firms like I hear it all the time from folks I work with, oh, you know, the problem is that they're a personal injury firm. They'll take any car accident that comes their way. Ah, that's not true. How do we know that's true? Not true. Because we've spoken with attorneys who don't want all of the personal injury cases, some of them, they only want to do pre litigation work, they just want cases that settle and as soon as they're gonna have to file a suit, they're going, who's a referral partner send this out the door. This is and this, by the way, is litigation on a truck accident, let's send it to a truck accident person. This is litigation on a slip and fall, it's to slip and fall. But there are so many referral partners that can exist in that space. And the opposite way. There are other law firms that go look, I only handle cases that when I look at the valuation are going to be a minimum $100,000 case in fees to my firm, and I want to refer out all the pre litigation work to someone else. Great. That's two personal injury firms that can be partnered up with each other. Both of them get bigger because of it.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:14:51

So true. Yeah, we've got the divorce client in New York and she only wants consultative divorces. She's Certain many years she was tired of getting involved in the fights and it was just draining her. And so she only wants consultative in New York for high net worth. It couples very specific, perfect and exactly she prefer she'd love to meet the guy who likes to fight the narcissist on the other side. And same thing with tons of PII like, we have a client in North Carolina, and he only wants to super high end, high value cases. And then lots of firms just want to settle. They don't want to go to court. Yep, they don't want to admit it.

Charlie Mann: 00:15:34

Well, and that's why you have to have these conversations, because it's not something that they'll say, in maybe the larger lawyer gathering. Yeah, I mean, look, some lawyers are gonna be boisterous. And they go, I haven't stepped foot in a courtroom in the last 18 years, right, because for them, it's a look, I've engineered this business in such a way, but most attorneys are terrified to talk about their lack of experience in court, if that is endemic to the practice area, you know, being a trial attorney is a high value part of that practice area, I think of like criminal defense attorneys as well, right, like some who are trying to get into the, you know, maybe violent crimes area, you know, celebrating the felony space, or maybe even looking into white collar crime, but they're thinking to themselves, Oh, you know, I haven't really been in the courtroom that much. I'm a little bit nervous about talking with people about these types of cases. You just, that's why you have to go and have these conversations. Because if you're curious about them, if you ask a few good questions, and you allow the person to be comfortable in the space with you, they will reveal all of their secrets. Or maybe maybe that's just me, Jay, I can't tell you how many secrets get revealed to me. Just in the first seven minutes of meeting most people, I discover one thing from them that like they won't tell just about anyone else in their lives. But honestly that just chalking it up to actually taking the time to talk with the person treating them like a human being, being interested in them. That's a game changer be interested in other people.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:17:05

That might be a challenge for most of us. Remember Seth Godin for Saturday said, you know, my mom taught me I have two ears and one mouth for a reason. You got to listen more than you speak. How do they book the meetings, your attorney, your body and you love what you heard so far from Charlie, and I'm going to book my two meetings a week? How do they identify who they're going to meet with? How do they book the meetings? And you said, that can just be you know, Starbucks coffees? Can they be zooms as well? Are you like them getting together?

Charlie Mann: 00:17:35

You know, I will pry always do these things in priority order. But I accept the reality of the world, I am still at my deep down in my heart. I am a pragmatist on certain things. And if I know factually, if I didn't get you to do the two meetups in some form, or fashion, it will be a win for you. And you tell me, Charlie, the only way I'm doing this is if I can do them over zoom. Okay, just do them. I beg of you just do them. That's fine. Do I prefer that you show up in person with the human being because it's, it's more intimate, it connects you better overall. And there's studies on like the ability to build a relationship faster when you are actually in person as opposed to over zoom? Yeah, I'm going to push you in that direction. Now to get these meetups set, the easiest thing to do is start with your list of people that you already know, but that you haven't had an actual discussion about referrals with them. So let's say you've, you've been around the courthouse recently, your criminal defense attorney or you're a family law attorney, and you've gone in for some hearings, recently, you met a few other attorneys are there the people that you see there, the usual crowd, going get coffee with those individuals, reach out to them via phone or via email. And by the way, the easiest thing to do is on a Monday morning, open up your email. I challenge everyone listening to this this episode to do this Monday morning, open up your email and send five emails out the door to people who you know. And by the way, everyone listening to this does know that there is someone in their community they should be doing this with, there's probably 10 to 20 of them, reach out to five of them. Say, Hey, it's been great to see you around at the courthouse. I recently heard about this verdict that you got. I'd love to grab coffee with you and talk about what's going on in your firm. It can be that easy. And then ask the question, what's the easiest way to get on your schedule? At that point, I'm doing a presumptive close on the conversation and I'm allowing them to say oh, here are a few times I'd be available or they can say you know reach out to my front desk person to handle my calendar my paralegal handles my calendar. We're making it very easy, but we're just assuming a yes on this. So you reach out to some of those people that you've met recently, the other group to reach out to our people who either have been or you would like to have be mentors, because not only in these meetups, can we look for referred cases, we actually can gain new Intel and new wisdom, from spending time with these other individuals. And being curious about them and asking questions, you know, I'm pretty sure it was Benjamin Franklin, who kind of developed for himself this idea is, the best way to get someone who do you a favor is to ask them for the first favor. So sort of his concept was, if I asked you for a small favor, I can later on ask you for a bigger favor. And so by asking them about information about their you know, how good they are, like, Oh, how did you get so good at trying cases? What would you recommend to someone like me, then when you go and ask for it, you know, what type of cases do you tend to refer out? Now I will get the actual information. Now I can boost myself to the top of that, that stack for that individual. But you have to actually reach out and most people are eager to share their ideas, because they don't really get asked about them. They're tucked away in their head, and they mold them over. And maybe they have one person in their life that they talk shop with. And they would love to talk shop with other people, including you, all you have to do is ask. So send the emails out, send them out to five people, you'll get responses. And if you don't get responses, it's because there's a problem with like your email sending program. And we may have bigger issues to diagnose on your email. But if that's a problem, pick up the phone, pick up the phone, heaven forbid, we pick up the phone. So do that. And then by the way, we have this beautiful thing, Jay, we have this beautiful thing that we can use to build our list. It's called Google, you can Google other law firms in your area. And you can build a list dozens long, in the span of an hour of people who you should contact and people who you will contact over the next few weeks to schedule these meetups. Yeah, it's incredibly clean

Jay Berkowitz: 00:22:10

now to build in a market. Like if you just search, you know, family attorneys, wherever, you know, Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Google Maps, you know, almost everybody is going to have a Google Maps GBP Google business profile. And so when you click on the More More attorneys, you're gonna get a list of 40 or 50, that, you know, have a Google maps have some reviews. And there's your starter list, the second list that you can add to it, you know, 10 1215 are going to be advertising in the local service ads, Google's helps to at the top, they were showing three for some reason, they're down to two. And then you click on the More attorneys, and they're going to give me a list of 14 or 15. Between those two lists. You don't even have to be that creative. Obviously, you could go out to the Bar Association's and the fine laws and the Abalos and all these other lists. But really, the Google Maps is a pretty precise way of starting Benwell wants to get more sophisticated. There's a company we've been using called Cold lyrics. And they'll actually pull the custom maps data for you from a marketplace.

Charlie Mann: 00:23:17

Well, there you go. Now everyone hang me. I'll

Jay Berkowitz: 00:23:19

make a recommendation. Yeah. But literally, it's right there for you. That's, you know, you said it best. It's right there on Google. And you know, you touched on the agenda of this meeting. But what is do you have a basic agenda that you recommend for folks? Yeah,

Charlie Mann: 00:23:35

I mean, the and Reddit as well to Craig Goldfarb for sharing one of his events, what he does in some of these meetups, and Craig, someone who I'm really aligned with, and I'll be the moderator, his event coming up in April, which highly recommend the seven figure attorney Summit. And Craig was sharing his own agenda. I was like, yep, that's great. We're copacetic on this. And basically what it is, is just, you're going to ask the other person information about themselves, and their law firm. And you're just going to give them the space to share that should be 80% of your meeting. One thing I'll say is at the top of your sit down with them, don't get over committed to small talk. If you want to break someone's barrier down to share the real information with you indicate that you are a person who digs deep early on, if you find yourself five minutes into the discussion, still talking about the weather. And and you know, as we're discussing you and I discussing right now and the most recent political ads that are going on and how that all that just drives you crazy. You are missing your opportunity. Here's the way to shortcut this. Do some basic research ahead of time. You have social media platforms, you probably have the firm's web So, I am always shocked Jay, at how little research people will do before say, doing a podcast episode before going and meeting someone for coffee, when you can literally in the parking lot, pull up their website, look at their bio, pull one interesting fact about them, and launch into a congress Oh, I saw that you went to University of Syracuse. That's quite a word. We're down in Florida. That's quite a ways away What took you from Syracuse to Florida? Great. Now we're going to start learning about their life story instead of today's weather. That immediately puts us in a, oh, this person is interested in me, they care enough to look up information about me. And then at the end of the conversation, we start pivoting toward the referral structure, right? Oh, you know, I love referring cases out Who's your ideal client, and maybe you're going to ask this earlier on because the person just clearly wants to talk business. They're very excited about talking about their law firm, their latest case, whatever it might be, and you just sit there and you'd be super interested. And then you want to pivot that conversation? Hey, you know, one of the things that my firm does is our perfect client is blank. What's the best way for me to communicate that to your team, like those are the types of referrals that we love handling. And here's what we do for referral partners, let me know if this is something that interests right. And you can tell them, hey, some of our referral partners prefer to be updated on the case. Some of them just want to refer the case over and see the check in the mail at the end, if that's something available in your practice area. Some of them just love to refer it over. And they just want to know that a great job is being done on it. What works best for you, again, presumptive close positive language, allowing the other person to potentially dictate their needs in a referral partnership. And by the way, Jay, everyone is going to the first few of these meetings that you do, you'll probably be nervous, it will feel uncomfortable. Because you're uncomfortable with that pivot. At the end, you're uncomfortable pivoting from like, hey, conversation to alright, I have an agenda for this, I'm trying to get some type of relationship started. Don't get in the habit of not asking just because it's comfortable to not ask, test it out over time, you're going to find it a totally natural thing I remember like, for example, when I first started doing sales, as soon as I would get to the point of selling, my voice would change, it would get higher pitched, it would wobble a little bit. And it was just because I was under practiced. And then over time, it becomes just this thing that you do. It's just a conversation that you have. And it becomes really positive for everyone involved. Because oh, by the way, now you're an action taker, when you actually suggest this referral relationship, and you show them how good you are at handling this. You've become the action taker and they're like, oh, this might be the one that actually works for us, instead of those other people have said they'll send us referrals, and it never actually happened.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:27:56

Awesome. Well, that's, that's really, really valuable stuff. Thank you. It touched on the cadence of the weekly email in the monthly print mailer. I get the right mechanic that's. So we do a lot of consumer facing emails for clients. Yeah. And you know, I tell a story, I might as well tell the story. So I was in a car accident, like nine years ago, rear ended, actually two guys on my team. And we all got different lawyers. Mine was recommended by the chiropractic. So I went to the chiropractor, and they're like car accident, wow, you were in a car accident. They were so excited. They started giving me free stuff that they put on my tab. And you know, we've got a great attorney, you've got to talk to this attorney. So we weren't really working exclusively with attorneys, you know, 10 years ago, whenever. And so I met this guy, and he got me a really good settlement, he actually got me a better settlement than the guy who's sitting in the backseat of this rear end, one of my staff members, and he was actually more hurt than I was. Anyways, so this guy did a good job. Fast forward five years later, driving on the Turnpike, stop and go traffic and there's an accident up ahead, wham, I get rear ended again. I couldn't remember the first guy's name. Because in five years, he hadn't connected with me on LinkedIn or, or Facebook. He didn't send me a birthday card. He didn't send me a Christmas card. I'm Jewish. He didn't send me a Hanukkah. He didn't send me an anniversary. You know, not a printed newsletter, not an E newsletter. So I always tell the story to my clients, like at the very least, you know, we've got to do some social media stuff. You know, just one once a week on a minimum cadence. And we'll send out a monthly newsletter with, you know, answering some questions and talking about some community events we're involved with, you know, at a very basics, we're gonna get a monthly newsletter out so they can remember your name for the referral. And, you know, again, that's this is baseline stuff, what you're recommending that this consumer piece or you're talking about a newsletter for these business referral partners. So So

Charlie Mann: 00:30:00

the email, I like it to be universal, because one of the things I want to do is get as many people on that list as possible. I know there are a lot of email marketing experts who love to talk about segmentation, right? Like, there's Brandon Dunn, who's heavy into segmentation, he has his company right message that will allow you to do all of this segmenting of your list. But the truth is, for most law firms, you don't need to do heavy segmentation of your email list up front. It's okay, if you want to start, you know, in a CRM system, tagging people as either, you know, we'll call a general public and then a referral source, right, just using sort of very simple terms where it but when you start, I don't need you sending one email per week to the referral sources and one email per week to the general public, we can get there in time. But I know that if I ask people these habits right up front, that will be the point of collapse. So that's why I always start with one email per week to the entire list. Your job is to basically be interesting. It doesn't have to be super informative. It doesn't have to be heavily designed or even formatted. It can be I'm not disagreeing with the idea of a well designed email. But it's something as simple as a plain text email that is conversational and tone that delivers some entertainment, and some value in one piece that has a link out to like a website to an article that you wrote on your website to a video that you published on YouTube to one of your social channels. One of the things I love about email marketing J. And the reason I love doing this weekly thing is because it is a support piece for the entire ecosystem. Great Can I drive, let's say I have 1000 people, let's say I have 500 people on my law firms email list, could I drive 25 people to read this one article that I recently published on my website, or to check out some page on my website that my web marketing team recently put together, and we can go ahead and hit it with a little bit of traffic right away that will, you know, boost the whole system here, they may follow some of those internal links, or they're gonna go watch that video that I just published on YouTube. That way it gets the first 25 views instead of having three views for the first eight weeks of its life. This is an accelerator and everything that you do. And oh, by the way, it's also an opportunity to highlight partners in the community. Let's highlight that chiropractor. For example, let's highlight this lawyer that has been a good referral partner to us, let's highlight a charitable cause. And if you are not consistently publishing in this media format, you don't have the ability to drive traffic to have impact. And the reason I wanted this frequent is because frequency creates the proximity effect. proximity effect is literally like being close to someone, people will prefer the person who is close to them, especially if you've made like physical contact with an individual email in order to create the proximity effect. We need to use frequency with people by the way, anyone who's scared of moving from like a monthly or heaven forbid a quarterly email that you're sending out. Because you're going people are going to unsubscribe, people are going to be mad that I'm sending them all these emails. Nope, your unsubscribe rate will actually go down. In nearly all cases your unsubscribe rate will go down, your open rates will improve and your click through rates will improve. Why? Because of consistency, frequency and proximity with all these individuals.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:33:38

And who's reading these emails? Like is it typically an agency or like a lot of firms have success with like a community relations manager?

Charlie Mann: 00:33:48

Yeah, a lot of them come from inside the firm, right? Which starts to sound like a horror movie trope. It's coming from inside the house. But that's that's what it is it most of these emails are going to come from inside. If you have a good agency that has, you know, experience with copywriting, like some good sales copywriting, where they know how to be interesting. And they're willing to not be too clinical about what goes in the email. That's awesome. Work with that type of group. But otherwise, sending it sincerely from inside the firm. You know, you won't spend a lot of time writing this thing. If you curate your ideas ahead of time. That's really important. And I think this is about being a good marketing partner. Overall, I think that every firm working with a digital agency like yours, Jay, one of the best things they can do to succeed is to be a great partner and be using in house resources to enhance the overall marketing, whether that is curating some good ideas, some things that they would like to talk about or writing some original copy to pass on deliberately passing it on to their digital marketing team and saying, This is something that when I wrote It felt like it was totally in my voice, this is a good model. So that way you can see the language that that person tends to use. That's how you can become a great partner. And if all you have to do is write one email per week to help you become a better partner to your digital marketing agency and to enhance your whole ecosystem, I think that's a pretty fair trade off overall.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:35:18

And what goes in the monthly print mailer? So that

Charlie Mann: 00:35:23

one I like to send to referral sources? You know, because I understand that there's the hard cost of print and mail that goes along with it. So I like to focus on how do we get somewhere between 50 to 200 referral sources on there, which you know, that's the competing attorneys non competing attorneys related professions, financial advisors, chiropractors, marital therapist, depending on bail bondsman, depending on what practice area you're you are in, get them on a list and mail them a print newsletter that is valuable to them. What is interesting information, what commentary can you offer on their field? What resources can you curate and share? A lot of times you're going to be mailing it to a business owner. So is there a business book that you read recently that you would recommend and you're willing to buy and give away a free copy to them, there's a great website called Book depot.com, where you can buy remainder books, which means you can buy books like I remember buying something like 100 copies of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog for $2.75 each. And now I have 100 copies of a book that they would otherwise spend $20 on, I can give away free to 100 different people. That's a way that you can populate this newsletter with information that is useful and interesting to the other person. Now, there's one caveat in this Jay, the law is one of the most popular forms of television shows, right? On television, you have a police, you have military, you have firefighters, you have doctors, you have lawyers, those are the dominant professions. You are a you the law firm owner are standing on top of a gossip column that everyone would want to read. And never forget that what you do is interesting, it's conflict. It's high stakes. If you learn how to be a great storyteller on that, you can send that to the general population, you can send that to your referral sources. Everyone will love those stories.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:37:24

So you're saying like, the new episode of Lincoln Lawyer comes out?

Charlie Mann: 00:37:30

Yeah, that too. All right. That is a great resource. Yeah. Oh, my gosh,

Jay Berkowitz: 00:37:34

they're saying people are interested in law stories tell actual law stories? Yes. You

Charlie Mann: 00:37:40

know, they want to know what's the crazy your criminal defense attorney, right? You've heard some crazy stuff at the courthouse, you've watched the lawyers walk in and say the clients name only to find out they've got the wrong file, because that's not the clients name. That's the type of stuff that you can share that astonishes people. But you're like, Yeah, this is the reality, the law, just like medicine, just like anything can be a messy profession at times, if you are not working with the right people, which by the way, we're a great referral partner, here's our opportunity to remind you of that fact. And we did it through a storytelling venture.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:38:16

Alright, let's hop into the next category. So I don't want to miss it. And we do have a time crunch here. On our side, not on the listeners side, listen to you, in determinately. There, we will do Chapter Two as a as 100% If you're willing, but the medical providers, you know, super, super valuable, particularly for the personal injury guys. How do you target these folks? Is that the same kind of meeting that you recommend? That's

Charlie Mann: 00:38:41

a good question. That's a good question. So these are, you know, the related professions, the medical providers, financial advisors, et cetera. And we use a very simple format to reach out to those people which I love sending a letter. Because by the way, when you mail from a law firm, what do you have in the upper left hand corner of the envelope, you have a return address for a law firm people tend to open mail from law firms, what a great advantage to have. So you send this letter and the letter really should do three simple things for you. Well, and you're really doing them for the person who's receiving them. One, you are going to address a problem that likely occurs when that profession deals with lawyers. So let's talk about medical providers getting paid might be an issue, right? They're often asked to reduce fees. To reduce the bill, they may deal with being feeling like they're last in line to receive the money. The timeline seems strange and all over the place. So if I'm reaching out to a medical provider, saying, you know, I'll bet that you've got one of the frustrations we hear from chiropractors, physical therapists, orthopedist, etc, like you is that dealing with how you get paid on a personal injury case can be a very frustrating experience in dealing with most law firm So that's the first point I'm going to make. The second point I'm going to make is, we have a solution for that this is what we like to do for our partners to make it really easy for you to want to have a successful outcome and to be a hero in the story, because we believe that you are a frontline hero for all of our clients who are dealing with a medical issue and need to recover. It's not only good for them financially, but it's good for them personally. And we want to make sure that they complete their treatment with you. And then three, I would love to sit down and talk with you more about your business and what you see from people who are victims of accidents or just a talk shop about the profession overall, would you like to grab lunch or coffee on me? That's simple, don't have to make it difficult. That three part formula can be used with any related profession that you have, identify a problem, show them that you've got an actual solution to it, then invite them out for one of those meetups, which by the way, that means you can do another category of people to do those meetups with it's so easy to hit your two meetups per week.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:41:06

That's awesome. I love it. I love it. I love this stuff. I loved it when I heard it at the conference. And I'm taking notes here. And we're going to try and teach folks some of this stuff and refer them to this interview. So I just want to segue over to some of the personal questions I asked been asking on this podcast a million years. Well, not a million but 15 or 20. So cool thing and your LinkedIn you were a featured columnist on Bleacher Report, how to write well what was it like and what did you cover?

Charlie Mann: 00:41:37

I love that. So yeah, I was a featured columnist. And Bleacher Report, I started writing for them in 2010, I believe maybe as early as 2009. And it was just because I was really interested in fantasy football. I had seen a couple of articles from Bleacher Report. And then I saw that you could sign up to write for Bleacher Report like at that point in time. They weren't paying columnist or anything you it was almost like medium.com, where you could just kind of blog your stuff, but it had a built in community and really good articles will get boosted onto the front page. My focus was primarily writing about fantasy football and the Denver Broncos. I'm a Denver Broncos fan. And this was during the Tim Tebow era. And I started writing some articles. And what I didn't realize was that without learning about it, I was actually pretty good at Search Engine Optimization and writing good headlines. And so one of the editors reached out to me and said, Hey, we're looking for someone to be the Denver Broncos featured columnist. Do you want to do it? I said, Yeah, I wasn't paid for the role at all. I didn't have press credentials or anything. It was just churning out a ton of articles about the top 25 greatest Denver Broncos players of all time analyzing the most recent game. It was a ton of fun, and it taught me lessons I didn't know I would need about writing great content that I've carried with me to this day.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:42:54

I'm a huge fan of former Denver Broncos ball boy now. You know who I'm referring to? No. So the Miami Dolphins coach was a former Denver Broncos ball boy. That's right. And he he grew up I guess in the locker room and then he became a receiver at Yale and now he's like, one of the top offensive masterminds in the game. And Mike McDaniel. Mike's doing amazing. I moved to Florida 22 years ago. So I'm, I used to be an NFL fan because I came here from Canada and I liked all the teams but I'm stuck one. Thankfully, Mike McDaniels has saved us when we're relevant for the first time in the thick since the first year I moved here, so that we covered your NFL team, what are some of your hobbies and personal passions?

Charlie Mann: 00:43:44

Oh, boy, that's too long of a list tonight. And my hobby is having hobbies. But if I were to identify the core of them, I mean, look, I have the average ones of fitness and reading. But I think the one that I really love talking about the most is leather working. So I'm really into leather working. I'm into crafting in general woodworking as well. But leather working was a passion I found kind of right before and then deep into the pandemic. And so I make wallets, I make valet trays, I've made a couple of bags for friends, things like that. So that's my, like, if I were left alone for a week, like if the family were away for a week, and I had no responsibilities, I'd love to just do leatherworking for a whole week. But

Jay Berkowitz: 00:44:25

it's really cool. definitely unique. Do you have any software or tools, apps anything for personal productivity or for fun that you recommend to everyone?

Charlie Mann: 00:44:35

So my favorite is this app called things three, it's a to do list app. It's really basic, it doesn't connect with a bunch of stuff. And that's actually what I like about it. Simplicity for me is a blessing. And so keeping a simple to do list shouldn't be complicated. But if you give me a piece of software with a lot of complications, I won't do it. So the purity of things three helps me actually utilize it.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:45:02

Oh, that's great. It sounds like Eat That Frog. Great book about doing your top three things First thing in the morning. And eating the frog means like doing the thing that you don't want to do that you need to do that's really important, or doing something to get it into the hands of someone else so that they can do their job that day. We actually did our company's book club on Eat That Frog last month. And that is nice. This month, we're reading what the heck is EOS? We're gonna jump into EOS in January. So but I just share that because I can tell you're very well read. So what's your go to business book that you'd recommend to someone in a law firm? Let's let's keep it legal?

Charlie Mann: 00:45:45

Well, you know, it's it's actually a universal book that I recommend for business owners, people, whoever, it's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And when I say like, read that book, I don't mean just read that book, you need to read it and apply it. There are lots of people who have read the book, but are not applying the principles. So if you have read it, go and reread it, I universally recommend it to just literally everyone, my kids, they will be reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and they will be talking with me about it. And I will bribe them to do it.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:46:16

Do you have any podcasts YouTube's webinars that you subscribe to and don't miss when they pop on your feet? Yeah,

Charlie Mann: 00:46:24

so on the YouTube side, I'm a big fan of a show called Good Mythical Morning. But I'm really a big fan of the guys who run it Rhett and Link and their childhood friends who they built up this incredible Entertainment Network on YouTube, but then sprawling out into physical products, books, events, et cetera. And I find them extremely inspiring, because it's how do you take this small form thing and create an empire out of it? And balance the desire to be creative with the drive to make money. So balancing entrepreneurship and artistry at the same time really excites me. Awesome.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:47:02

Well, we'll have all your links in the show notes. But what's the best way for someone to get in touch with

Charlie Mann: 00:47:07

you? Yeah, if you go over to law firm alchemy.com. And I will say specifically regarding this conversation, law firm alchemy.com/referrals, that will have a referral playbook there that you can go and download. It will go in depth on all of these three pieces of the framework that we've talked about, and give you some more strategic advice. There is a great way to get on the list. Stay connected with me and see what is going on and what opportunities are available.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:47:36

So Charlie, thank you so much. This was outstanding. Jay,

Charlie Mann: 00:47:40

I expect that we'll have some awesome conversations far into the future as well and I'm looking forward to a continued relationship.

Charlie Mann: 00:47:49

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com That is podcast at t e n Golden rules.com