In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Justin Maxwell, cofounder of Smith.ai call answering & intake service for small & solo businesses. They will go over his story and business, the service that it provides and how it can help law firms. Also, they will go into Artificial Intelligence and its role in upcoming intake services.

The firm: https://smith.ai/
What Smith.ai does is when someone calls or chats through the website, it can determine if they are the right customer for your business and get them booked on your calendar and even get payments from them just to make sure that they are fully qualified and converted into your lead.

“You can put out Adwords, you can have people refer you, but if you are not doing something with those leads you are really wasting your money...”

Artificial Intelligence
“We’ve been training a system on how to qualify customers and how to provide tools to actual live virtual receptionists, and how to better qualify customers as well. Artificial intelligence assisting real people who are great on the phone and great qualifying customers.”

Hacking’s hack:
A podcast: https://www.superfastbusiness.com/list-all/

Justin’s tip:
Use the promo code Maxlaw when signing up to Smith.ai to get 50 Dollars off your first month!

Find out what you do really well, focus on that and then fill the gaps around it.

Tyson’s tip:
If you have a process goal, and this process goal is gonna lead you to great results, put those on your calendar and put them early in the morning. Because late in the afternoon you are exhausted.

//

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Ryan McKeen, a big supporter of the show and a very successful lawyer out of Connecticut. In the past, Ryan and a partner opened their own firm but it didn't last long. Ryan learnt from this experience and he actually runs a very successful law firm. They will go over his mistakes in the past and his success in the present paying special attention to Ryan’s vision, technology and efficiency standards.

The firm: http://cttrialfirm.com/

The biggest problems of the firm that didn’t work out:
1. Under capitalization: “When the money becomes really tight it can create a high level of stress”
2. No real defined purpose. No real defined reason for existing: “That only gets you so far”

Efficiency:
“In order to exist we need to be super efficient. And so there has been a perpetual focus over the years on adapting technology that we believed was best even if it meant it was more expensive at that time. A side from the team we have assembled now, that is the number one driver of our growth. Without our systems and our technology we would be run over by our caseload.”

The best piece of advice:
Really focus on the vision component of your firm.
“What exactly does this look like now, what is it going to look like a quarter from now, a year from now, etc. Once you can set those goals; focus on your vision, your marketing falls into place, your team falls into place, and you have alignment, and you are all rowing in the same direction.”

Ryan’s best hiring advice:
“Having somebody who is culturally inclined to do the work and has the technical skills necessary, that’s where you gonna get your home runs.”

Ryan’s blog:
https://aconnecticutlawblog.com/

Ryan’s biggest struggle:
Himself. He sometimes hyper focuses on his business in a way his not present with his family sometimes… He has gained almost 50 pounds, his diet has suffered, his sleep has suffered. He should set up boundaries and focus on his health and family.

Hacking’s hack:
1. Use software to print checks!
2. Take the Kolbe Index. http://www.kolbe.com/. Which is an assessment of your cognitive functions and how you make decisions and sort of where your strengths are. Use it to improve your staff.

Ryan’s tip:
Drink water! Keep healthy!

Tyson’s tip:
A book. Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth, by Gabriel Weinberg.
https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer-ebook/dp/B00ZE96ZWY
//

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this pop-up episode, Tyson has an incredible story to share. Marquis Jackson, is a man who was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit. After spending 19 yrs in prison, On May 2, 2018 with the help of Jay Ruane and Dan Lage, he walked out of the New Haven Courthouse as a free man.

All 3 attorneys and Marquis will go over this amazing case and share their personal thoughts and experiences, paying special attention to hope and how it can help you in your life and business.

After being falsely accused and sentenced to 45 yrs in prison, Marquis maintained his innocence and continuously appealed his case even when being denied. He kept his faith and strong belief in God that one day he would be exonerated. He stated that he has always been a innocent man but was labeled as a criminal. Something he never was, Never had to be or will ever be. Jackson had a very supportive family he had no reason to hurt or harm anyone.

The firm: https://www.ruaneattorneys.com/
The Go Fund Me: https://www.gofundme.com/Marquis-Jackson

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Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson will go over the first edition of The Maximum Lawyer Conference. They will talk about their observations and what they experienced going through each event and breaking down all the presentations that took place in the conference.

Systems, SEO, content, marketing, branding, and more. But the real highlight of the event: Personal interactions...

The speakers delivered. The presentations were excellent. But what was more important, the connection between everyone who was there. The speakers were all very approachable and every who came to the event could talk to whomever they wanted.

Hacking’s Hack:
Stay tuned and make sure to register to upcoming the MaxLawCon 2019.
Anneke Godlewski wrote down everything that happened during the conference in the facebook group. Check it out!

Tyson’s Tip:
This Time Tyson has a favor to ask to the attendees that came to the conferences and people that did not come to the conference… Tell us what you want. Put it in the facebook group. Who do you want to be with? What you want to do? Topics? Ideas?

//

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Gary Falkowitz, Esq., founder & president of Maximum Intake Consulting and author of the book The Complete Guide to Law Firm Intake. They will go over his career, his firm, the book, and strategies to convert qualified leads into retained clients and maximize marketing campaigns.

Gary is an expert in intake and he has consulted with lots of law firms.

The firm: http://maxintake.com/
The book: https://www.amazon.com/Gary-P-Falkowitz-Esq/e/B07BTGL2GQ

“As I began to investigate law firms, I realized that we as an industry where not putting enough focus or effort into the front end of our business. We were spending a lot of money, we were making a lot of money, but we weren’t maximizing the return on our marketing investments.”

How do you as fast as possible convert a qualified lead into a retained client?

Use e-contracts!
“If you are not using them you are hurting yourself.” In the race of conversion anything that can help you to sign clients faster is a must.

Conversion percentage:
“Say you have 100 leads, and 50 of those qualify for retention (they meet your law firm’s criteria and you want to get that person signing with your law firm). Your conversion percentage is determining how many of those 50 did you ultimately sign.”

Biggest mistakes of the intake process:
Your ability to respond to web leads. How fast are you responding?
“Who is gonna win? The best law firm? Who knows what the best law firm is!? The law firm first to respond is gonna win.”
Follow up.
“Picking a law firm sometimes is not the most important thing going on. That’s why follow up is so important.”

When to stop following up?
“Don’t give up. Keep calling until you hear those words: I am not interested, or I have hired another law firm.”

16:11 - The balance between having an attorney handling the intake vs having staff dedicated to intake.

25:41 - How is it like to work with Gary?

29:57 - Suggestions on questions to ask during a interview.

32:01 - The mindset when evaluating or beginning to evaluate systems.
“Am I maximizing my investments?”

Max Law Con: May 17th and 18th
http://maxlawcon.maximumlawyer.com/

Hacking’s Hack:
Read Gary’s book! The best lawyer book I’ve read win a long time! It is so important to listen to actual lawyers.

Gary's Tip:
Listen to your staff on the phones. If you can’t come up with 5 suggestions to improve those callas, give Gary a call, he will tell you he is sorry and wrong. Lol.

Tyson’s Tip:
Tettra, a wiki for slack teams.
https://tettra.co/
Help your team make better decisions in less time. Tettra is a knowledge management tool for modern teams

//

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Charles Boyk, AKA Chuck. They will go over his career as a solo practitioner and the philosophy and marketing strategies behind his successful law firm.

“The more people you help, the more people you turn on to marketing, the better relationships you have with everybody in the community.”

In the beginnings:
Chuck couldn’t get a job after he graduated, so he was forced to be a solo practitioner from the start. At that time, he sure wished he had a job in a firm, but in retrospective, it was a blessing because he had to start working on marketing from day 1.

His firm: https://www.charlesboyk-law.com/

“To me marketing is like breathing, you have to do it every day. And you have to have the attitude that it’s a fun experience.”

The List:
If I were just starting my law firm today, the first thing I would do would be the list. The list of all your past clients, everybody that has ever contacted the firm, all you employees, employees friends, judges, opponents, and with that list you can create an email newsletter.

“As an attorney, my job is a storyteller. And we tell the stories of a our clients, the successful cases… We make them the heroe en the story. We tell the stories of people in the community. We communicate good things, and people in the community that have overcome things. Basically we try to help other people.”

Necessary for every firm: Online presence!

“We are only as good as the cases that we have. And unless you have a plan, and you have somebody that on a day to day basis is working to carry out the plan, how are you gonna be successful?”

Max Law Con: May 17th and 18th
http://maxlawcon.maximumlawyer.com/

Hacking’s Hack:
A Chrome extension.
http://www.crowdtangle.com/
Whenever you are on an article you can see how popular it is and a lot more!

Chuck's Tip:
Get a local library card and listen to audiobooks for free, and listen to them while training.

Tyson’s Tip:
2 books. Both from Gino Wickman.
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837
Get A Grip: An Entrepreneurial Fable . . . Your Journey to Get Real, Get Simple, and Get Results
https://www.amazon.es/Get-Grip-Entrepreneurial-Journey-Results-ebook/dp/B009K44DQY

//

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Garrett Moon, CEO and co-founder of CoSchedule a calendar and mission control for your marketing team and strategy, and the author of the 10x Marketing Formula. They will go over his beginnings as an entrepreneur,the idea behind CoSchedule and how it can help your law firm, his book and a lot more!

Early times:
Before CoSchedule, Garret runned a Marketing Agency where they did marketing consulting, web design and some software costume development. And what they started seeing is a consistent pattern of marketing teams struggling to implement their day to day jobs. We had the urge to solve that problem…

His site: https://coschedule.com/
His book: https://10xmarketingformula.com/

CoSchedule and legal marketing:
Most people are doing content marketing, many of your competitors are already doing it in some form or fashion and so it gets harder and harder to stand out. We have to start thinking about taking our content to a next level to really stand out from the competition.

The book:
The idea of the book was to show how we were able to get results even though we were entering a crowded marketplace…

The formula:
The 10x Formula book is a series of formulas or things that you can do as a team or as an individual to find you own individual 10x opportunity to multiply what you are doing. Systems, content, traffic, growth, competitors.

If you are running a law firm, these are some things you could do to improve your marketing:
1st phase: Learn how to acquire traffic. Learn how to use your website to let people find you and see you. Learn how to publish.
1. Content. Do it up to 5 times a week.
2. Get that content into social media and email.
3. Every time you do a blog post send it out to your entire list.

2nd phase: Call to action. Use something that the user can take away. Every time a user visits your website or reads your content you are gonna be giving them tangible value, and in exchange for that value you are gonna gain an email and an audience member.

3rd phase: Turn that audience into paying customers. Build the trust first with the content.

The Mindset:
One of the most valuable things is learning to prioritize opportunities very well. Opportunities that have the ability to multiply your results as a business by 10 times and can provide you with significant growth.

Max Law Con: May 17th and 18th
http://maxlawcon.maximumlawyer.com/

Hacking’s Hack:
https://readitfor.me/
It’s a book summary service with an audio summary, a textual summary and a video summary!

Garrett's Tip:
Learn to listen to audiobooks 1,5 times or 2 times faster! It is hard at first, but really valuable when you get used to it.

Tyson’s Tip:
List your done wells. Anything that move your goals forward an inch. Every day right them down. It will get you in the right mindset.

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Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson have Bernard Nomberg from The Nomberg Law Firm as a guest.They will go over his practice, how the family business works, their marketing strategies and challenges in a town that requires them to stand out.

A family business with 100 years of experience!
Bernard runs the firm alongside his brother and partner David, but before them, his father Joel did. Now Joel is happily retired and Of Counsel.
The Law Firm: https://www.nomberglaw.com/

Nomberg Law Live and Video Strategies
A weekly show that airs through Facebook Live every Tuesday at 10am CT, 8am PT in which Bernard brings on different guests to talk about whatever it is that is their specialty. To watch Nomberg Law Live go to Facebook and like The Nomberg Law Firm: https://www.facebook.com/NombergLawFirm/
The idea is to branch out a little bit and have more variety. But, if you want to see Bernard talking about workers compensation law you can go to his Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZZ7l9auCk5DeJDe76VkeUA

“Just start. Just practice”
As a rehearsal you can do offline videos just to see how you sound like and look like.

“I do videos to try to humanize who I am as a lawyer, cause I think a lot of folks who don’t deal with lawyers they tend to be a little afraid to talk with them. I just gotta show that I am a guy just like them!”

Stand Out!
“As a 2 man firm we can’t compete with the billboards and the TV attorneys; thos big firms. So we have shifted our marketing to the social media, the internet…”

“Just be yourself. People can see through that, if you are being someone else, if you are trying to impress, if you are trying to be something that you are not. Those clients, those friends of the firm, the opposing counsel, the judges, they see through that in a heartbeat… That should be enough with all the learning that you have, with who you know, what you know, the bookmarks… All of that ought to be enough for you to be successful”

Max Law Con: May 17th and 18th
http://maxlawcon.maximumlawyer.com/

Hacking’s Hack:
A book that actually popped up in the Facebook Group: “The Complete Guide to Law Firm Intake: Powerful Strategies To Maximize Retention and Increase Revenue” by Gary P Falkowitz
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Law-Firm-Intake/dp/1946203262

“So many lawyers spend so much money on getting the phone to ring, but we all do a pretty poor job, or not a good job as we think that we do, on actually conversion.”

Bernard’s Tip:
Everyone's time is precious. Including those who are calling your office for advice. And I think that listening is the most important thing an attorney can do when he picks up the phone and talks to a client, they just wanna be heard, whether it’s one minute or thirty minutes.

Tyson’s Tip:
If you are not comfortable with video, record a 1 minute video about anything you wanna do and post it to the Maximum Lawyer Group. That way you could get feedback from us and members of the group on it so you can get better.

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Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson will go over the different kind of skills you need to run a successful law firm and be a good lawyer.

“Why the skills that make you a good lawyer probably are not the same skills you need to run a successful firm?”

Lawyer VS Entrepreneur:
Sometimes people have occupations that fit their personality and sometimes they don’t. Being a good lawyer is not the same as being a good entrepreneur and business owner. Although it sure shares a lot of values and mindsets.

Identify Your Skills:
Finding what it is that you are really good at, what your unique strengths are, it’s really important because: 1, it helps you figure out what you are good at and what you should be doing, and 2, it helps you find people who have different skill sets that can support you and fill in the places where you might be weak.

Think Outside The Box:
If you are doing the same thing as everybody else, you are probably doing the wrong thing and you need to really look outside of your usual space to find people that can teach you things that you haven’t thought about. Some of the best tools that we use came from outside of legal marketing…

How Can I Be Doing That Better?:
Whenever you are listening to CLE’s or business podcasts, etc, don’t think “Great, I am already doing that”, think “How can I be doing that better”?

Invest In Yourselves:
You really need to make time and find out people who you resonate with you. Keep pushing yourself.

Take Action!
Implement what you know. Read a lot, study a lot, listen a lot, but implement.

Max Law Con:
http://maxlawcon.maximumlawyer.com/

Hacking’s Hack: Inventory your email and delegate: Categorize the different types of email that you receive and once you have a comprehensive list of categories of emails that need responses, delegate those emails automatically to the right person in your office. .

Tyson’s Tip:
A book from a coach: “Organize Your Team Today: The Mental Toughness Needed to Lead Highly Successful Teams”, by Jason Selk, Tom Bartow and Matthew Rudy.

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Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
You can also go to https://maximumlawyer.com/ or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.