Chris Dreyer: Niching Up and Being Known for Something

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Chris Dreyer discuss:

  • Moving out of a scarcity mindset.
  • Why niching will open up opportunities for you.
  • Being perceived as an expert and increasing conversions.
  • Finding a niche in your passion.

Key Takeaways:

  • Have broader experiences and then find your niche.
  • Finding your niche will make your business development even more streamlined and efficient as you will eliminate waste that you never recognized.
  • When you niche, you are not a blank canvas and are having to create custom products each time. What you do becomes repeatable.
  • Focus on how you are going to be different, how you can stand out, and how you are going to generate business.

“If you’re thinking about niching, it doesn’t mean you have to say no to other things, it gives you optionality.” —  Chris Dreyer

Connect with Chris Dreyer: 

Website: https://rankings.io/

Website: https://chrisdreyer.co/

Book: https://chrisdreyer.co/books/

Show: https://chrisdreyer.co/podcast/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiRS7BCssVkGrxcNsxCCa6Q

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdreyerco/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrisdreyerco/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisdreyerco/?hl=en

Thank you to our Sponsors!

Legalese Marketing: https://legaleasemarketing.com/

Moneypenny: https://www.moneypenny.com/us/

Practice Panther: https://www.practicepanther.com/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

niching, people, lawyer, cons, business, marketing, steve, law firms, personal injury, helping, trucking, firm, legalese, individuals, pros, create, develop, specific, book, seo

SPEAKERS

Chris Dreyer, Narrator, Stephanie Vaughn Jones, Steve Fretzin, Jordan Ostroff

 

Chris Dreyer  [00:00]

If you’re thinking about niching, it doesn’t mean you have to say no to other things it gives you optionality.

 

Narrator  [00:12]

You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

 

Steve Fretzin  [00:34]

Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I hope you’re having a lovely day. I am Steve Fretzin. And I am the founder of Fretzin Inc, where we help lawyers every day to be that lawyer, someone who’s confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. We do this in two ways, either through advanced training and coaching to help them take things to another level and internalize how to do business development and marketing in a way that’s going to be sustainable through a career. Then we take those top performers, we put them in peer advisory roundtables, and let the rainmakers chat with each other in a confidential environment so they can solve problems and work on challenges and give best practices to each other hold each other accountable. Great program. People love it. My attrition rate is very, very, what’s a tree’s attrition, uh, Chris, welcome to the show is attrition hires attrition, low attrition is high rise high attrition. high attrition means people stay right, right, right. All right. So brain not functioning apparently with my vocabulary is better than my definitions of my vocabulary. So that’s a problem I’m gonna have to work on with my English teacher wife. But anyway, welcome to the show. How’s it going, Chris?

 

[01:45]

It’s going really well. Happy Friday.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:47]

Happy Friday. Yeah, my brain is we’ll see if I can kick it into gear once we get going. But want to thank you for being here and I’ll introduce you in a moment more directly want to of course thank the sponsors. We’ve got practice Panther who is making law practice management easy you can do it from your phone do it from your computer, it’s powerful automation robust workflows. Check it out practice Panther we’ve got legalese who does the you know the newsletter the social media, the graphics, like anything you need to help make sure your marketing is humming check out legalese. And, of course, mani pedi who is taking care of my live chat on my website, as well as doing live reception for law firms that want to save money and have a better reception. Make sure that people get to the right place. Chris, I think in personal injury too, if you’ve got like a what’s it called? Like a phone phone tree? Probably a pretty bad idea. A phone tree? Yeah, like press one for this press two for that. And people? Generally those

 

[02:43]

transitions, yeah, anything that makes it more effort on the consumer, they just don’t like,

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:48]

yeah, you gotta have good intake. And that starts with a live response to, you know, a phone being called, for sure. So Chris, you are the founder, CEO of rankings. Io, you’re also going to be an author soon of niching up, which is coming out in October. So you’ve got a lot going on, man, thanks for being on the show in your quote of the show is commit to a niche and try to stop being everything to everyone. And that’s Andrew Davis. So let’s start off with that quote. And then let’s talk a little bit about your background too. Yeah,

 

[03:19]

the most important thing that we’re all trying to achieve is to provide value. So it’s like really reflecting and that introspective introspection. What are you the best in the world that do that you don’t have to try to be everything to everyone do what you do? Well, I think a lot of times the things that we develop skill in, we actually enjoy. So it also lowers your stress. There’s there’s tons of benefits, but I’m a huge proponent of proponent of niching, of focus of specialization. Yeah. And I’ve

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:49]

actually like as a serial entrepreneur, I started a recruiting business, I started an executive coaching business, I started Believe it or not a networking website, all of them failed, not in the sense of me losing a bunch of money, but they failed in the sense of my focus, my energy, my time and what is my passion, and they all were distractions from what I do best, which is helping lawyers to grow business. So it’s really true that when we try to, you know, build out too broadly and try to help everybody with everything, it ends up kind of blowing up in our faces.

 

[04:20]

Yeah, and what’s that, quote, you know, if you love what you do, you’re never working at a day in your life. So you know,

 

Steve Fretzin  [04:24]

actually, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t buy that all the way. And I’ll tell you why. If you’re, if you’re someone that loves food, and you become a chef, and you’re working in a kitchen, and you’re making the same food over and over every day and cleaning those dishes, and then getting prepping, cooking clean, I think you could lose a little bit of that. So I actually turned it around. I said, if you do what you love, I say do what you love to do for others. And you never work a day in your life. So I think I’m not saying you can’t do what you love and be happy the rest of your life. But I think for some people like for me, I love sales. But what I really love is teaching sales teaching business develop admit to others and watching them shine. So I don’t know, that’s just a twist I came up with I wrote an article about it not so long ago. But you mentioned SDN. It’s funny, you mentioned that, Steve, in terms of the cons of niching. That would be one that I would love to highlight. Okay, well, we’ll have to get into one of the cons. Yeah. And we go, well, there we go. So we’re gonna come back to that. Let’s get into your background, though. Because you, you know, you’re helping mostly personally, right? Personal injury firms with, you know, getting that lead gen created. So how do you get into that? What’s your background leading into this, this business that you’ve created?

 

[05:34]

Yeah, so I was a history education teacher, and I started a side hustle, doing affiliate marketing, I had over 100 sites, I ranked number one for double chin for like three years. kind of amusing. Yeah, it’s weird. People are overweight, and I gotta grow a beard. Yeah, I love that. It’s one of the reasons why right. And so I’ve had a lot of experience in tons tons of niches, and doing digital marketing for a lot of different areas, and some are more competitive than others. Basically, the the short version is, my income went basically to zero. After a Penguin algorithm went out when I wasn’t doing things from a qualitative perspective, that evergreen perspective. So I am, at the time I was younger, and look, I wasn’t saving money, my costs were increasing with the amount of money that I was making. So I had to get a job, got a job at an agency is a digital agency, they happen to have a large clientele of legal found the passion there really enjoyed working with lawyers. And it’s the classic story, I thought I could do it better. So I launched my agency, we’ve been very focused on search engine optimization, helping firms rank on that first page of Google.

 

Steve Fretzin  [06:47]

Yeah. And I think it’s so important for people to understand, you know, the difference between, for example, SEO, search engine optimization, and pay per click, and they both have value for different people. So a lot of personal injury attorneys are spending the big bucks on the on the ads in the paper click, why is SEO maybe a better option for some attorneys?

 

[07:11]

I’m a proponent for both, I think they each have their pros and cons. And I’m a huge proponent for omni channel marketing and anything that can develop a brand. Now, the pro a pay per click is it’s quick, right? But you have to pay, it’s harder to get profit margins out of it. It’s extremely saturated. Back in the day, when there wasn’t a lot of competition, it wasn’t as saturated, you could pay, you know, $60 a click for car accent where you’re not paying less than 100 anywhere unless you just get something very specific. Yeah.

 

Steve Fretzin  [07:40]

It’s a lot more in Chicago than that. Sure. Yeah. And there. Yeah, right.

 

[07:47]

But it’s you’re also leasing. It’s the classic leasing versus an owned asset, it stos and owned asset, you’re building an inventory, a library that you can have your consumers access, and it takes longer. But over time, you can lower your cost per acquisition, it can be a very, you own the asset, you’re developing it over time, it can be a great lead generation source. They each have their pros and cons. I like direct response when a consumer types in a query and you’re, you’re the answer. So it’s the name of the game. And right now, especially in the personal injury space, there’s a lot of different options, but but most of them, quite frankly, because of the competition are expensive. So it’s happened everything.

 

Steve Fretzin  [08:32]

Yeah, and so let’s let’s get into your, you know, your sort of big deal, which is the name of your book niching. up what so we all know, niching down, right, that means to specialize even more so right? niching down, what’s niching up?

 

[08:48]

It’s essentially the same thing. But let me explain. A lot of the reason why I don’t love the phrase niching down is because there’s a scarcity mindset. Right? It’s like you’re reducing your opportunities, I think that’s a lot of most of our audiences fears, that they’re going to have less opportunities. But it actually lends itself to a lot opportunities where you’re no longer competing in a red ocean where you can get these blue ocean types of opportunities and be very specific for someone.

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:17]

Right, and let me just clarify that there’s a book out there called Blue Ocean Strategy. And it talks about you’re in competition, you’re in like a sea bloodied red with competition go where the blue ocean is, right? So you’re finding this space where other people aren’t looking or are, you know, hanging out, and that then becomes the blue ocean or the opportunity?

 

[09:39]

Absolutely. And we see this in the legal space. Back in the day, no one did nursing home cases, right. But then 11 parent coffee, right. They started finding, you know, nursing home neglect, and they they developed this niche became known for it became the authority on it, but yeah, other individuals weren’t even competing for that. And now you had you had Joe freed, you know, Joe free As a national trucking lawyer, where at the time, people didn’t think that you could focus only on trucking, they thought it was ludicrous. And he went all in. And now he’s known as this preeminent trucking lawyer, he is the single source, right? He gets tons of referrals, all the all the benefits that comes with niching. And you see this time and time again, where you can actually pick sub areas of personal injury, or any area of the law, and really stand out and be be perceived as that expert.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:33]

Right. And I, you had a post on LinkedIn today. And I commented on it about, you know, I’d rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. Right. And I think that’s what I did, I realized in not only is there a great need for lawyers to learn business development, which is, you know, I but I didn’t, I didn’t like know that. And then just say, without even working with a lawyer, I’m gonna get into it. Right? I did it over a year or two and saw that it was there and sign like I proved it out. Right. So is that is that the right approach? Or is it just noticing something and going for it? Off the off the cuff?

 

[11:10]

Yeah, so David Epstein wrote this book called range. And it talked about it did it from a sports perspective where it gave a couple individuals and it talked about in the doll, the doll didn’t start out and just focusing all in on tennis, he did a but his parents put them through a bunch of sports, he played basketball, baseball, but he found a natural proficiency and passion are on tip tennis. And then he pursued that. I think it

 

Steve Fretzin  [11:33]

was a shame it didn’t work out. Right? Poor guy, terrible for him.

 

[11:38]

Right? On the balance on the right of the arm side, you know, who knows, but the where I was going with this is you got to have these opportunities and experiences to determine and be able to see and have an awareness of where a niche could potentially be. And I think the biggest mistake that a lot of coaches and mentors say is Oh, you need to start with a niche. Well, do you even know what that niche is? Start first have these broader experiences and then find your niche?

 

Steve Fretzin  [12:11]

Yeah, I mean, I would even take it a step further. I was I was niching. We’ll call it niching. Up, right? We want to brand it right? We’re working with lawyers and law firms. So I’m in the legal space. That’s my niche, right? Business Development is the niche within the niche, right. That’s the service I’m providing and all that. Now on top of that, I recently stopped working with law firms, I can do a presentation for a law firm, I can do a law firm retreat, that’s all lovely. But ultimately, I’m not going after law firms the way I used to where I try to meet with the managing partner, the business development and marketing people. And not only was that a huge kind of wild goose chase, but I just found that they were giving me their problem children, they were giving me that the people that they couldn’t coach and train, and it wasn’t really a fun and be those people didn’t have an interest in in they weren’t motivated to grow and do the stuff I was teaching them. So it’s, it’s now it’s like, I’m even smaller in the sense of how I’m niching up to, you know, get the right clients and the clients that are most in need of me, and also will be the best fit.

 

[13:13]

Yeah, and what does that mean for you from an efficiency standpoint on where you’re marketing to try to get to try to do your business development to acquire these clients and can stand out and how you can cater that experience specifically to those individuals. And you can start to see those commonalities of these avatars that you can market towards, and you’re eliminating so much waste, wasting unnecessary time wasting unnecessary marketing expenditures. Yeah. And also, it improves your your conversions, because you’re so specific.

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:44]

And you can speak to them. Right, right. And so now I’m talking to the individual attorney. And you know, it’s just it’s a very comfortable place. And you know, the other thing is, when I was working with law firms, they always wanted to know like, how their attorney was doing and can I send them numbers, it really took away from the confidentiality. So I think there was a little bit of a conflict of interest, especially when that attorney would look like kick ass, realize their firm wasn’t a great culture wasn’t a great place actually, then they leave the firm would kind of have a little bit of a raw flavor for me because I just turn someone into an assassin who’s now going to be an assassin for another firm or on their own. As listen to this podcast, I hope you’ve learned some valuable lessons when it comes to not just managing your firm but helping you thrive. Practice Panther the all in one legal practice management software is designed to help you do just that. It has powerful reporting that gives you real time feedback on the health of your firm and its finances automated workflows that free up your schedule while keeping your cases on track and tons of native feature like E signature and two way texting that keeps your clients happy and informed with practice Panther you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Get a free demo with practice panther.com/v That lawyer to receive 10% off your first year.

 

Jordan Ostroff  [14:57]

legalese marketing is not your traditional Marketing vendor. Instead, we’re a true fractional cmo that helps you save time and spend your money the right way to build a practice of your dreams. We help through the entire process from customizing your intake system to driving leads, and even getting more reviews afterwards, schedule your free call at legalese marketing.com.

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:20]

Staff tell everyone what Moneypenny does for law firms

 

Stephanie Vaughn Jones  [15:24]

where the call handling and live chat experts and Moneypenny receptionist can ensure that your calls are directed to the right person seamlessly saving you time and money. Steve, did you know that 69% of people don’t like to leave a voicemail?

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:37]

I did not know that. That’s a lot of business going away right there. Let’s cut to the chase. What are you prepared to do for my listeners?

 

Stephanie Vaughn Jones  [15:43]

We’re offering an exclusive two week free trial. If you’re interested in hearing more, you can call me directly on 470-534-8846. I mentioned that you’ve heard this ad on Steve’s podcast.

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:57]

Very cool. Thanks. So it was a little bit of that type of thing too. But ultimately, I want to understand, you know, I understand from my perspective, the value that I got niching up. But what are the pros and cons of someone that’s listening to say, You know what, right now I’m in personal injury, handling anything and everything I get my paws on? What are the pros and cons of making a determination to go and start niching? Up?

 

[16:25]

Great question. So let’s start with the cons. The first con that everyone thinks about and that’s why I think niching down is a scarcity mindset is they think of reduced market cap less buyers are fearful that I have less people to buy, right? That is a con you do have less buyers. Yeah, there’s rebuttals, there’s counters to all this, I would argue that you’re not converting all of those, right? Sure. The Another con is the repetitiveness right, where you’re repeating things. Some people more creatives like variants, they like to vary their day to day and have a lot of variety. That could be a con. Another con could be industry risk or, or your risk of your service, you know, things like COVID affected different law firms more than others, right, if you’re a maritime lawyer, you got crushed during COVID and had to pivot pretty quickly. The biggest con in my opinion, that outweighs all of those, and you could make an argument against this is for niching is increased effort and sacrifice. When an individual has to use multiple people to get something accomplished. It’s the reason why Walmart sells groceries. You go to Walmart to get what your day to day, whatever. And oh, by the way, I can get my groceries I’m already here. So it’s less effort and sacrifice and consumer. That’s a big one, when it comes to niching. Take myself and then just get example. We just do SEO, we don’t do pay per click, we don’t do social media. We don’t do these other services. So they got to talk to other agency providers, there’s a little bit more effort, you have more points of contact. Yeah, all of these can be rebutted, we

 

Steve Fretzin  [17:59]

love the one stop shop, like that’s become the American thing is like, how do I get everything at once and you know, like when my wife has to go to two grocery stores, I have to hear about it for three, because Trader Joe’s doesn’t have everything and Whole Foods doesn’t have the brands we like so then she’s got to go to jewel, and it’s like a major hassle, however, right? Like there are certain products that you want what you want, and they’re not offered everywhere. Right. 1,000%?

 

[18:29]

I think before we get to the pros, I think once you have this in awareness that there is an increased effort and sacrifice, it lends itself to referrals. Right? Yeah, you want to make it you want to provide you want to reduce that commitment of time, you want to make it easy. So you know, it lends itself to business development, which you’re very accustomed to Steve. Yeah. And, again, all of these, you can be rebutted, you can go either side, we can make a case we can lawyer these up and I can be the you know, the fence side, whatever we can do that. On the pro side. Let’s talk about the pros. Number one, you’re perceived as an expert. If you choose to embody and go in into an issue you’re perceived, whether they know your background or not, you’re perceived. The second one is increasing conversions. Because think about your marketing, all the copywriting all the case studies, all the testimonials are very specific. Third, depending upon your industry, you can charge higher fees. You know, if you’re a divorce attorney and you specialize in celebrity divorces, right, you only do divorce you’re probably charging higher fees than your standard family law firm.

 

Steve Fretzin  [19:37]

I got one of those. And he is saying to you I try and I was talking about raising his rates even higher and he was like really I would go yeah.

 

[19:46]

So yeah, absolutely. The other thing is is increased efficiencies. When you niche you’re not a blank canvas and always having to create these custom iterations, everything. It’s repeatable. Right now I know we talked about the con we’re Some people don’t like that, but you’re eliminating waste, you’re improving your efficiencies, I like to make this kind of analogy is like, imagine what would happen if Henry Ford back in the day with the Model T, every five cars, he said, let’s do this one red. Let’s do the next car and let’s put bigger tires on it. How would that impact is efficiency? It’d be terrible, its throughput would be horrible. So it can help from velocity standpoint, efficiency standpoint, there’s a lot of more a lot more advantages in terms of perception how it lends itself to referrals. But those are some of the big advantages.

 

Steve Fretzin  [20:35]

Let me let me let me push back a little bit if if you decide that you’re going to focus on a specific personal injury, okay, let’s say bike accidents, and you want to be the bike accident person, okay? Could that get boring? You know, just handling bike accidents? Yep. Well, are there other outlets that you can use to be creative, maybe the marketing, maybe the business development, maybe the strategic partners and referral sources you develop, maybe you can, you know, get that running perfectly, and then set up another type of business or another, you know, niche. So, I don’t think that it’s a bad I think it’s a really good idea to be known for something versus not being known for anything. And if it gets a little a little repetitive and boring. Well, so what you’re making a ton of money, you’re gonna live a phenomenal life. And you can always use that revenue to, you know, do other things that are creative outlets, or start another type of business if you’ve got that running on autopilot.

 

[21:30]

And Steve, I couldn’t agree more. And people also trust people that are like them. So if you’re focusing on bicycle accidents, what if your bike rider would have found joy riding and going to these these races and things I you know, look at law tigers, why is law Tigers successful is because typically the individuals that use law, tigers are motorcycle riders, they like to go to the motorcycle events, they can talk to other writers and they understand what it means to ride a motorcycle. And they trust them more they know where those individuals hang out and congregate. Look, I don’t I’ve never ridden a motorcycle in my life. And I don’t know where the festivals are. But I guarantee if you have someone that has a passion about it, that he could tell you all of them.

 

Steve Fretzin  [22:13]

I mean, initially when you said law tigers, I was like, that’s really cool. Someone has a specialty and Tiger bites and claw marks. Right. Maybe not a good, right. Maybe there isn’t a market there. And well,

 

[22:23]

I’d say I would say my book is on niching not on branding Steve. Oh, okay. Yeah, but I do love. I love those guys, Dave Thomas, amazing brand. But I would say yeah, there’s some differences that you approaches you can take there in terms of positioning.

 

Steve Fretzin  [22:36]

Very cool. So give me an example of, you know, niching up that like a client of yours that you sort of talk through niching up and kind of so where were they what were they doing then? What did they decide? And then what ultimately happened? So let’s talk

 

[22:51]

about someone I’ve had on our show, not a client of ours, but I know it’s Mike Papp, Antonio, okay. Right, everyone, and this is a paraphrasing a quote, he said, everyone’s dropping pamphlets from the sky to try to get car accidents. So what did he do? He created an entirely new category mass torts. Now look, what’s happened to mass tort? Yeah. Now one of the things that happens is when you do create a blue ocean, every red ocean was at at one time a blue ocean. So he creates, he pulls in competition, people see that opportunity, right? There’s a lot of people that just specialize in trucking now or nursing their mass towards the he was the first in and that had a lot of significant advantage. And that’s one example. You’ve seen it for property damage, seen it for nursing, seen it for trucking, seen it for bicycle, motorcycle, where they just take it a step further, I would, I would say probably one of our listeners, maybe rideshare. Maybe there’s somebody specializing in just rideshare like bigger insurance policies, a lot of people doing that. And it’s a way that you can stand out and you can focus in your advertising. And again, it helps you eliminate waste because you know, specifically where to advertise and get the most out of your marketing dollars.

 

Steve Fretzin  [24:09]

And I think that’s where I want to take this conversation in the last few minutes we have is alright, so someone decides that they’re, you know, there’s enough business they have in a certain area, you know, let’s stick with bike accidents. Okay. And so there’s enough business I have I see that bikes aren’t going anywhere. In fact, now there’s electric bikes, right? So now people are going even faster and maybe more dangerous, right? So there’s that. And so what do they do with that? How do they work with you or work to build that up so they can own that category? Yeah, so that’s,

 

[24:42]

that’s a branding exercise. That’s a marketing exercise. No,

 

Steve Fretzin  [24:46]

they don’t want to, let’s say, but let’s say that they want to hire you because they want help building SEO around that. So though, yeah, would be more specific to what you can

 

[24:55]

audit now. Yeah. So we would create an entire content strategy. So you take bicycle accidents, there are 1000s of phrases related to that, that you could write and have a whole inventory, very specific inventory, you could go to the different bike, Facebook groups, forums, figure out what those individuals are asking and create content around those needs and that information, that’s what you could do. You could be the known the single source to answer those their pains.

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:26]

Okay, got it. So you want to have content that. So when someone searches on Google for that, you know, you’re just coming up as the top result and under a variety of different phrases. So you might not do that if you if that’s one of 100 types of accidents that you handle.

 

[25:43]

Absolutely. And I want to just kind of highlight something. Guys, if you’re thinking about niching, it doesn’t mean you have to say no to other things, it gives you optionality. If you go to Joe Fried’s website, national trucking lawyer on the menu, of course, it highlights trucking. You know what it also lists slip and fall premises all these other cases, it gives them optionality, if they get a good if you get guys get a great case, opportunity doesn’t mean you have to say no, because you choose a niche, and you get the option to say yes or no to what you would like.

 

Steve Fretzin  [26:15]

Right. So ultimately, I think we’ve covered this a little bit, I just want to sort of wrap things up in a nice little package with a bow. If somebody’s looking to, you know, go to market, pie firm, effectively, what are some of the things that you typically advise on and suggest they do?

 

[26:34]

If they’re going to market, it’s how are you gonna get leads? It’s lead gen. Lead Gen. Yeah. Your lead gen. Michael Masterson from Ready Fire M has as a, I’m gonna paraphrase, again, a quote, it’s companies that have a disproportionate number of marketing and sales employees have a better chance to succeed than than those that don’t have better have a chance to grow. And, you know, once you get revenue, you can hire assistants, you can hire operations people technicians to deliver obviously, at the very beginning, you’re going to be multitasking, doing a lot of both. But you got to be focused on how you’re going to be different, what your unique selling propositions are, what really what value you can bring it and market and generate leads to business development. Yeah.

 

Steve Fretzin  [27:15]

So yeah, and I see, you know, I work with a number of personal injury attorneys. And I see on one side, you know, the marketing that helps them, you know, to build their brand and to become known for something or multiple things. And then on the other side, I see the relationships, right, the business development, so I always separate marketing and business development, even though they work very well together, and helping them you know, build those relationships, establish strategic partnerships, again, referral partnerships, and try to advise them that, you know, if you’re in personal injury, well, who’s most likely to run into a lawyer that’s going to or an advisor that’s going to run into a personal injury? Is that an estate planning attorney is that a criminal attorney is that CPA is that you know, who’s, you know, think about, like, Who’s most likely to get those kinds of requests, and try to buddy up with those folks, those the ones that are going to be able to refer you on a regular basis, especially if you have a specialization in a niche in that area?

 

[28:11]

Absolutely. And that ties right into that in the niching. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:15]

yeah. Well, thank you, Chris. Good stuff, man. So let’s talk about your game changing book, which is 12 pillars to success by Jim Rohn, very famous author, talk about the ways that you’re a game changing book. It’s just,

 

[28:29]

every time I read or listen to that book, it just makes me feel good. And I think a lot of the principles in this book can apply to anyone. And it’s just so you can get through in a day. And I always come out, it’s just a feel good book that really highlights the main components of, of growing as an individual to create opportunities for yourself. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:51]

really cool. If people want to get in touch with you, how do they how do they reach out?

 

[28:56]

Yeah, I’m most active on LinkedIn. So if you want to connect with me there, or you can go to our website. It’s rankings.io.

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:02]

Okay, cool. Cool. So your book is coming out? It’s niching up, it’s coming out in October, what what are some of the things that that’s going to include and cover? A lot of what’s coming out today?

 

[29:14]

Yeah, it’s gonna come out in October 18. And, you know, at the very beginning, I highlight all the cons, I get out, you know, I get those out at the beginning. And and I highlight the pros, but at the very end, there’s a special chapter because I use our business as a case study. So I talk about the cons as it relates to my specific business like you can see it in practice.

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:33]

Yeah, and I appreciate that. I think you and I are two peas in a pod. We’re giving up things, but not really. Right. So I’m able to refer marketing companies, legal marketing companies, and legal recruiters and legal things that I just don’t do an A shouldn’t be doing. Right. Stick with what you do best in what you love. And I think it’s really admirable that you’ve done that focusing on you know, a particular group of attorneys and only doing sort of like one main thing for them And then that just gives you I think, a lot of room to get, you know, referred by other, you know, marketing companies and stuff that don’t really specialize in SEO. So yeah, thank

 

[30:09]

you for that, Steve. Yeah, I think from an integrity standpoint, it’s this you want to you want to provide as much value as you can to your customers, I think none of us want to do a bad job. And when you focus, it lends itself to that. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:21]

you get it, you get a good job when you were when you’re focused, you know, people that’s a problem, and especially in legal marketing, people try to do everything. And there’s always a gap. Right? They’re great at SEO, but they’re terrible at design. They’re great at design, they’re terrible at content, they can’t write anything and it’s all you know, a problem. Like, you know, just you know, focus is, you know, I know you might be given up some scraps, but ultimately, you’re just not doing everything well. No one can so right you know, couldn’t agree more. I man Well, very good. Very good. Thanks for again, and and Hey, everybody, thank you for spending some time with Chris and I today. This is another opportunity to be that lawyer, someone who’s confident organized and a skilled Rainmaker. If you like the show, and you enjoy the content that people I bring on. Please don’t be shy, you know, let us know. You know, give us a nice like or compliment on your Apple phone or anywhere that you’re listening to the podcast, and share the love, share, share this podcast with other lawyers and let’s see if we can keep you know, keep this thing rolling forward. All right, everybody, be safe be well, we’ll talk again soon. Thanks again, Chris. Thanks, Steve. Thanks

 

[31:23]

for having me. Bye. Bye. Bye, everybody.

 

Narrator  [31:29]

Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes