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.

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast. We have a great guest today named Dominic crew, and he is a coach for law firms. And we'll get into it with Dominc in one minute. But Dominic, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be a business coach for law firms? Yes, so

first of all, Jay, thanks. Thanks for having me on. And in terms of background, as you mentioned, I'm a business coach and I specialize in law firms. But it wasn't always that way. I actually had a pretty, pretty extensive corporate career here in the United States, and then in the UK, as well. I was a COO for business development. So different background, but a background that's very relevant to the needs of law firms who I work with today.

It's funny, you're from Boston area, and everyone from Boston has interesting accents. But yours is definitely more interesting, right?

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. You know, I've had to adjust my accent here in the Boston area. And I've also had to learn their accent, as well. There's definitely,

especially pronouncing each of the towns like I got one wrong today. It's really hard to figure out how they pronounce those towns, right?

Yeah, you know, it's been It's only taken me 20 plus years to perfect it. But you know, I'm a coach. There's always room for improvement. And to learn more, Jay.

Before I do that, I should say, first of all, Jay, so. So we have Bill Gerstein, he's the person that's the blame for naturalizing youth in the United States, and it's never too early to get started on planning for next year. So for me and for my clients, although, you know, we're in October, and I, essentially the years kind of coming to an end. And that's why I encourage all my time, all my clients to start the start the planning for next year, at really early, because what you don't want to do is ended up putting your plan together in January, which might mean February, and before you know it, you know, you're well into the year. But what you mentioned there in terms of components of a plan, what I've learned in my business coaching practice, when they ask the question to my clients, like do you have a plan? They say, Well, of course I have a plan? Of course I do. And when I asked them, would you mind sharing it with me, they hesitated a little bit, because they have never actually written their plan down. So the very, very first component of any plan is the task of getting it out of the individual's head and down on paper, so that it actually exists outside of their own mind. And is created and comes into being so think of a plan as like, it's an actual object, it has to be created, and it has to exist outside of their mind. So the very first component is get it out of your head and get it done on paper. That's Component number one. Great. The second component of putting together a plan aim is to have real clarity around what it is that you want. What is it that you're hoping to achieve in your planning exercise. And that's different for each type of client that I'm working with. Right? So really getting clarity around what it is that you are looking to achieve. Because I have found that if you don't have a good target, to reinforce, it's really hard to determine, right? If you've had it or not, so clarity around what your target actually is, and getting that done on paper. So those are the probably the two, you know, straight out of the two most essential components of a plan. So I'm gonna pause there, because I bet you have questions already.

Do you like a realistic target? Or Tony Robbins? I'm not sure if it's his term, but he uses it be hag, a big, hairy, audacious goal, do you like to set a nice aggressive goal?

Personally, I hit that term B hag. big, hairy, audacious goal. I'm much more in the realistic camp. You know, just, I'd rather see my clients achieved something that's small but significant than really swinging for the fences, and miss. So I always try to anchor my clients in terms of their goals of making sure that they're realistic. At the same time, I'm not going to tell them that I'm just going to ask them questions, Jay, about, you know, how are you going to do that? Because very often, something that might seem audacious to me or unrealistic, they may have a way to get themselves there. But at the end of the day, it's their goal. It's not mine, and it's not my position to tell them that can't be done. But I really want them to be successful with small steps.

And what is the process look like? Like your work remotely? You do this on a zoom? How much time? And what are the what are the components of that planning meeting or meetings?

Yeah, well, just it's funny, we were mentioning Bill Nye for like the third time. So with him, we scheduled to two hour sessions. And generally speaking, I work with most of my clients every other week, but we put aside two one hour sessions to get on paper. The plans for next year, I do it remotely. So I work with clients all over the country, although I'm in Massachusetts, more than half my clients are in other parts of the country. And then even for those that are in Massachusetts, a lot of them we, we do it remotely. And it's fairly easy to pass documents back and forth and to share stuff on the screen and actually type out the plan. While we're on the call together. So it's fairly straightforward. I try to make it a simple and easy process. Because Jay, what I find is that lawyers are very busy people, they do not have a lot of time. And while sometimes you know complexity is, you know, part of being a lawyer, on the business side of complexity sometimes is not your friend. So I try to keep it really simple and straightforward for them, because I want them to be successful. Number one, in creating it. And then secondly, with the actual execution of the plan as well.

One of the risks of planning, I've seen in the past, and we've actually made this mistake, we do a great job, we come out of the gate, we got a great plan. It's on paper, we got a goal, we got strategies and tactics to get there. And then we don't think about it again for another quarter until we have our quarterly meeting. How do you make these things living and breathing and really get take action? Yeah,

That's fantastic.

And that can be different for each person. So for example, let's just say it's really easy, they have a revenue goal, well, guess what, every month, they're gonna go on to the online portal that we use, and they're going to put their revenue number in. And there's going to, it's going to show a comparison against their benchmark with their target and how that's tracking and aggregating over the year. And I find that frequency of discussions around where they should be having metrics, and then for them to be able to see it graphically. And to actually comment. On was the month of October, hey, I was way under, here's why I was on vacation in Europe for two weeks. That's why or I was way over while we had a really big key A settle. And that was a big win. You know, it's a one off, it's an anomaly. But having metrics, and having a system whereby they can actually put them in our math on them and track their progress is really important.

I have a great friend and business mentor, Josh Nelson from seven figure agency, which we're very involved with. And Josh says what you measure gets attention and gets results. Absolutely. I tweaked it slightly for myself, but we, you know, with Josh's guidance, and the seven figure agency template, we started looking at our numbers each month, you know, how many meetings did we have? How many were qualified? Yes. Many proposals did we write how many new clients did we add in the month? What was the average revenue for client? How many clients? God forbid we lost one. So how many net new clients? Yeah, you know, I just simply calculated the numbers to achieve my goal. And I worked it back, you know, how many clients do you want? What's the revenue per client? Then? How many meetings do you need? How many qualified meetings do you need? And then it made it very clear what was required my marketing program on the front end to get us to those numbers. And then Josh, and and the seven figure crew, ask us for those numbers every month. Yeah, big, big help.

It is a big help. And you know, it's funny, because sometimes people say, Well, I don't want to do that, you know, I want to have goals, but I really don't want to have to report to somebody every month as to Hi, I'm doing with them. Which is kind of bizarre, because they want the result without having to do the work, right. It's like, it's like one thing, you know, are not being wanting to look great, but not willing to go to the gym to do your work. But what I've actually found, Jay is that increases motivation, if there's a pathway to get to your goal, and you can break it down into the steps that you need to get there. Actually, all those little steps. You know, aggregating over time are actually moving you towards accomplishing your goal. So you asked earlier, like, how do you stay? How do you keep people motivated about their goals? Well, they number one is they need to be motivated, is their goal. It's not mine, I'm certainly going to help them, right. But tracking and seeing progress over time, is actually highly motivating. Because sometimes, not always, but very often, the results lag, the activity has to happen first, and you're not going to see it show up. Right. So tracking the activity that are going to lead you to the results. Helps you see progress when you can't see it on the horizon, just yet translating into I give the example of revenue. That's a good one, you got to do the marketing in order to have a sale, landed client do the work to collect the revenue. So it's lagging. But yeah, it's metrics are huge. And they are your friend.

That's great. We also have a planning that we've been doing for years for ourselves 10 golden rules, and we also new clients. And we do I learned this years ago when I was in the ad agency business, that brainstorming it's very frustrating if you're in a room with eight or 10 people, and you're doing brainstorming, because one person is talking and nine people have ideas, and they want to share their ideas and their very process. And that great creative teams work in pairs. Think of you know Lennon and McCartney and Elton John, Bernie topping and you know, Edison had a partner and Word apart, you know, I had a business planning. Yeah, counterpart. And so what we do is we break into pairs. And we brainstorm on four different things. First, we brainstorm on the strengths of the company. And then we come back and we vote on what are the top strengths of the company. And then we brainstorm on the weaknesses, then we brainstorm on trends, because in the old used to do strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities, and it's like, it's just strengths and weaknesses flipped upside down its threats and opportunities. So we do strengths, weaknesses and trends. It's something we got from Rockefeller habits. And then the final portion, and we vote on what the top of each of those first three are. And then we, the final one is projects, and we brainstorm projects, come up with the projects that we should be doing to, you know, either capitalize on a strength, fix a weakness, or capitalize on a trend, that's either societal, or in our industry. Yeah. And through the years, it's been incredibly powerful for us. And for many of our clients, who've gone through the exercise, where we've, we've figured out, you know, what we really need to do, and set those projects, and then assign a team to work on those projects. And we we again, use the Rockefeller habits model, which is, we pick the top five projects, and the top one of five, and the top one to five absolutely has to be done in the quarter. And then we assign people to work on each of the projects. And then each, each individual person has five, or what we call rocks, quarterly rocks, yeah, yes. Also used an EOS. And we're transitioning to EOS. So I just share that, because maybe hopefully dimensionalize this, some of this stuff for folks. And when you think about that approach,

yeah, you know, I mean, the takeaway is, you know, when you're planning for your business, chances are if you bring other people in on it, and they can be your internal, the other partners in your firm, it can be somebody external, right? Chances are, if you bring them in, and that reinstalling task, you're going to come up, you're going to be thinking more broadly than you had before. So that number one is, it's the power of many people over just one individual. Right? And then the second component of that is, when you come up with those ideas, sometimes people you know, they want to do everything, right, hey, we got 12 spankin, either all great ideas, but really narrowing that down and say okay, so either of these 12, like what are the one two or three that are the highest value? highest return? Right, just like we you know, if this was finance, we'd be talking about, you know, what are the interests, we had some of these various things of debt? Which ones are you going to attack first? Right? It's the same type of thing. I can't do everything. How do I get the biggest bang for my buck? And so you prioritize the ideas and then get consensus? Not entire agreement, but consensus that everybody can live with? Around? Well, okay, so what are these in front of us? What are the 212 or three that we're going to really push on for this year, and that way, you're not trying to conquer the world, but you have clarity and focus in the areas where you're going to divert your attention.

That's awesome. I want to touch on what it means to be a coach. And I've spent a lot of time we used to do marketing for seminars and events, I got to see Tony Robbins, like eight times in this period of three years. And, you know, if folks who've listened to my podcast know that, I went to see Tony, at the very start of my business, walked on fire and did Unleash the power. You know, a lot of the breakthroughs that we accomplished, were around the time of studying with Tony, you know, Tony says that the best performers in the world have coaches, you know, and he told this long story about how he became a polo player and how he got the best coach in the world and had the little polo horse and it's a long story. Fantastic story. But he got a polo court polo coach and became a competitive polo player. And he said that, you know, if, if the best people in the world use coaches, why don't you use coaches? Right? So, you know, you're a law firm, Coach, what should law firms look for in a great coach? Yeah, well,

I'm totally into coaching, obviously, right? That's, that's why I'm a coach. And those whether they're athletes or pro players, or whatever, realize they they engage a coach and advisor because they want to get the results, but they want to get them faster and quicker than trying to figure out by themselves. So obviously, that's why, you know, many people hire coaches to help them get where they want to go, and they realize that it's going to get them there. Faster. Remind me Where were you going with that question?

I said, What should law firms look for in a great

listening skills Believe it or not, even though I just said, Hey, repeat, but you really want to engage a coach who is going to understand the unique circumstances of you. And your firm. Because what I have found is there is no one size fits all, there are so many different types of law firms, different practice areas, firms that are in different different parts of the cycle, if you like. And so like all things, it really pays to spend time upfront, you know, thinking about what you want, but more importantly, how it applies to you and your firm. So, for example, I was working with a client earlier this morning, and she has some revenue goals. And we talked about billable parts of her business. And she was pretty clear like, I don't want I don't subscribe to the model of hourly billing in my firm. It's one of the reasons why I left big law, it's pretty important, right? So when I'm working with her, I have to make sure that I understand what she's trying to accomplish. And that's kind of I won't say it's unique to her. But I can't ever go in and work with a client with a preconceived idea of they should follow this game plan. And that's going to work for them. Because the reality is, it's, well, it might, but each person is unique. So whenever you're looking to hire a coach, you want to have someone who's thoughtful, and he wants to hear what exactly it is that you want. And what's most important to you. And there's a little bit of a process involved in that it doesn't happen immediately. But it's one of the reasons that I love coaching, because each client is unique. And I love that because it's like each one is a little, there's no manual, each one is unique. And I gotta think what's going to work for Jay, and know that what works for Jay may not work for somebody else. And by the way, when it comes to a law firm, and you have a partnership structure, trying to get everybody together in agreement and rowing in the same direction as to what the priorities are, you can begin to see why that business planning process is so important. Because you don't want to get halfway through the year and someone's you know, looking for a budget to do something that nobody has any idea what they're talking about, because you've never discussed it or identified it as a priority that requires resources at your firm.

Oh, that is that is a great question. And for lawyers, in particular. It's difficult, because, you know, they're in their profession. They are, they are the expert. People hire them because of their expertise, right. And so, when they go to law school, they're taught how to do experts in the law, but they're not taught how to be experts at building managing and growing a business. So I guess the takeaway from from from that is, you know, this is this is not intuitive very often, in fact, quite often for lawyers, the things that make them great lawyers and hold them back on the business side. So I guess the thing that I'd say is, don't, don't put the pressure on yourself to be an expert in everything, because that is just not realistic. Your lawyers are experts in the areas where they need to be expert. And for those areas that fall outside of that, and get shot outside experts, right, don't try to become an expert in SEO. You know, when you're a personal injury attorney, bring in a professional who, who is in that area and plays in that area every day. So ask for help. It's not a sign of weakness, it's actually a sign of strength, at the end of the day, you want to you want to have a firm that's, you know, provides excellent services to its clients. But you want to be able to sustain the work environment, have a steady flow, and you want to have a strong business, so you can attract and retain the best talent and keep them there. So, yep, it's not a sign of weakness, and good professionals in areas that are outside of your expertise.

Well said, we have our scorecard. I mentioned that a few minutes ago, you know, what are the top five or 10 things that every law firm should be looking at on a KPI or a business scorecard? And what's the cadence? How frequently should they be looking at it?

Yeah, for my clients, if it's financials a financial metric, at least every month, right? Because, you know, there's typically a cycle there, right? Where they are using QuickBooks, and they're getting metrics. You know, if there was something about marketing, for example, you can get things much more frequently than that. Right? It could, it could be every week, you're looking at how many hits? How many people came to your site, the geographies? So I guess I would say it depends what what it is, right? For example, there's some of my clients where I'm working with them on time management, you know, I'm working with them every week. They're providing me information on how their week, but because it's really something that requires that, you know, level of detail or frequency of detail on the financial stuff, it's typically once a month. So again, find out, you want to be successful with what you're measuring. So again, part of that as well, how do I know I'm making progress? And that then that discussion around well, what is the cadence need to be to make sure we're making the strides that we need to, you know, in the window, that we have to address it? Sometimes those are short windows, and sometimes they're longer? Does that answer the question, Jay, on that one?

Yeah, that's great.

It was like a typical lawyer answer, you know, when you ask the question. And, you know, it really does depend, you know, it really does. But, you know, most business things, you know, the monthly, it's the monthly cycle, and that way you have 12 opportunities to, to address, you know, how are you doing? Are you on course, rather than waiting to the end of the year to say, oh, boy, I had a really busy year, but you know, what, we made less money than last year, you don't want to wait till the end of the year. And that's why getting the planning process going early is so important. And that's why, you know, reviewing those metrics that you've identified, frequently, and talking about them, is so important.

We'll set and and we do marketing coaching, you know, essentially, like we're an agency, we do a lot of business coaching and marketing coaching. Sure. And, you know, part of just part of the way we've always gone to market, but I'm interested in how you look at it, when you sit down with with a belief Gerstein or someone like that? Yeah. What are you looking at? With regards to the firm's marketing? What are the experts want to see the firm doing and there if they have, you know, SEO guys, or whatever, that you call a digital agency?

Yeah, you know, again, again, the answer is always going to be it depends. The way that I work, and I'm the coach as well, right? Your coaching clients, on the marketing side. You know, the, the way that I'm working with my clients, it's kind of like, it's really around the business. And it may take me into marketing, but it may not take me into marketing at all. And it depends in the practice area of law. Also, a lot of my clients, I'm working with them more around building their business, you know, through channels, centers of influence, referral partners, networking, all that sort of stuff. So I tend not to get into the marketing world. And you know, why, Jay? Because I don't understand that and I'm not an expert in it. So you know, this we're a part single injury at firm. And you know, they were looking to expand their footprint, get more more traffic, I would bring somebody in like somebody like you to come in, because it's an area that's outside of my expertise. So mine tends to be more about the top of the house. What are your goals for the firm? What's your revenue goal? What are what are your expenses? What are some of the strategies that we can use to get you there faster? I'll give an example. Working with an estate planning attorney. And we were discussing what strategies she'd used. And she looks she does networking and all the stuff that we talked about some SEO. But actually her her. Her most successful strategy is to partner with other estate planning attorneys, who are in their late mid to late 60s Who are full and can refer business to her easy round. Yeah. So think about there's always different strategies, and marketing is a component of that. But there are all sorts of innovative and creative ways to get you to the same destination, but maybe a little faster. So again, finding out what's the right strategy for the particular firm, given what they're looking to accomplish on their timeframe on their preferences.

That's great. Well, you know, let's wrap up with a few, a little bit more personal things and learn a little bit about you. I give you a heads up on these. But, you know, one of the questions I've been asking on my podcast for many years now, is what's your favorite apps or tools or personal timesavers? or personal productivity apps that you use?

Yeah, you know, for me, and one that's been really essential for my business is having that app where I can keep track of my conversations with my clients, and what their follow ups are. So you mentioned earlier about, well, how do you work with clients? Are you working remotely, having an application and a platform to do that enables me to be able to do so. So documenting my meetings, my action, they're actually notes, giving them reminders to be successful. So it's not it's not a hustle up. But it's really leveraging technology, in a way whereby, when my clients and I do sit down together, you know, once every two weeks, or whatever the cadence is, we're ready to go. So that's probably my number one is that and then the other thing, and again, it's not an old, it's not a high tech app. But at the end of each week, I personally sit down, and I review what I've accomplished that week, my wins my losses. What I find is that discipline, I mentioned about the business plan, where if you do if you're looking at it monthly, you have 12 opportunities to, you know, address change course, tweak. While by doing that exercise weekly, I have 52 opportunities, or maybe 40. I'll give myself four weeks off to do that. But I find that discipline really, really helpful.

That's great. I'm writing that one down. What are some of your go to favorite business books?

One that I that I am loving at the moment is profit first. I don't know if you're familiar with Sure. Yeah, I'm really not just reading that. But implementing that.

You know, I've worked in business or with your clients, or both.

I'm using it for my business. But I plan to use it for my clients, I always I always think you're much more. If you can speak to how you've used and implemented something yourself, it becomes more credible than saying, hey, you know, I have this great idea for you. And I'd like you to be the guinea pig with it. Right? So I've been I've been I've read the book. I've been implementing it for about eight months. At this point. I think if you put into practice, right, it's really about being disciplined in how you think about your business, spend money in your business. And it's right up my alley. Because again, I get motivated by seeing small changes compound over time, just like, like compound interest. It's the same thing. Except it's for businesses. So that's, that's what I'm all about. Profit First at the moment.

Yeah, the basic principles is you basically take your profit out of the business first. So first thing in the month, you take out you know, if it's 10% 20% 30% and he you know, he even recommends like things like buying an annuity or putting it into stock broker or whatever. So the money's literally taken out of your business operating. And then it gives you you know, it sort of forces the discipline of operating with discipline and an operating to your budget and operating through your plan because it's so easy to just, you know, invest in this by that this marketing the This hire this whatever, if you don't have the

discipline, yeah. And you know, when somebody probably listens to this and says, Well, you know, that's hardly mind blowing. But like all these things, it's simple. It's just not easy to do, right? And I find that even in my own practice, like, you begin to talk yourself as to why you don't need to put that money aside this month, because this is coming in. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you don't do that. You set it and you stick to it. And if that means making some hard decisions, right, that's, that's what you need to do. And if that discipline that I find so impactful, you know, you can literally see things grow.

In the book Profit First, it comes with, there's a series of experts, and there's profit first accountants who've been certified. And so there's, it's become a pretty robust program over the last four or five years, however long since he wrote the book, how about webinars, podcasts? Is there anything you subscribe to that you'd recommend that you love?

You know, I listen to yours. Of course, you know, I wouldn't say there's any one particular one that I'm a regular for that, you know, that I would never miss. But I asked other people, what they're listening to. And when they tell me that there's one I asked him, What in particular, was it? That you liked about it? Like what's different? Right? Because there's so much out there, you know, you could spend all day listening to these podcasts. And I tell many people that, right, because there's so much knowledge out there, but I always kind of turn around and say, that's great. But what did you learn from it? And how are you going to take action on it? Right, so So let me ask you this. Jay. I want to turn the question around a new What's your go to podcast, or source of learning?

episode for a couple of weeks and the dolphins the Patriots are playing in Miami this weekend. So I hope you all can look up and see that the dolphins thrashed the Patriots in no disrespect. But are you one of those Fairweather? No, do you consider that the Patriots won seven Super Bowls with Brady or just six? Like get count that Tampa Bay Super Bowl is one of yours? No, I

don't think I don't think we can really do that. But I mean, it's incredible that that he was able to do that that thing of is it the player or the coach? You know, he kind of I think answered that. And it was incredible to accomplish that.

By the way, you know you mentioned you know, you listen to my podcast and thank you very much and, you know, if you've been listening this long, like we're about 40 minutes in, I'd love you to go on iTunes to Spotify and give us a five star rating. Take a minute to write a really nice review about everything you've learned from Dominic and how much you like the 10 Golden Rules podcast, it helps us in a lot of ways, like it helps us be found. And obviously it helps us. But it also helps us get great guests, because a lot of people are going to look up, how many listeners you have, and how many stars you have, and how many ratings so please take a minute to do that, or go to YouTube, and give us a follow as well. Well, I think that's it unless the last part of the question was, do you watch any YouTube's because I find now that I can a lot of people are doing this on video, and I subscribe to a lot of YouTube's.

Yeah, you know, I do and Jay Shetty you know Jay Shetty. No, I don't know, I like his stuff. He he's, you know, from the UK. And there's some that I put in the portal as well, for my clients, and it's more than it's more than the motivation, motivational stuff, how you can change your thinking. Because I think that's really, it can be really, it can really change, change things if you can catch yourself about how you think or how, how maybe you obscure your thinking, or sabotage, your your thoughts. And, you know, being able to see that it's not, it's not just me, other people do it as well, I think is helpful to my clients, where you realize that, you know, we're all walking this path, we're just trying to walk it as best we can. So you know, if there's people out there that can help us do that. Give us encouragement when it's needed. It's just along when that's needed to, you know, that's helpful. And, you know, I recognize I'm just one person, if I can bring other resources to them, like your, your, your podcast, Jay or maybe a TEDx, show them, that helps them it's the whole, I want to bring the whole benefit of what's out there to help them.

By the way, another power tip is take action. Like if you heard that music playing, I just went subscribed to Jay Shetty, his podcast. And, you know, I'll buy the book you recommended by the end of this year, by Profit First, which I already have

your amount of action. And you know, it's so important because today, you know, there are so many distractions out there. If it's a quick and easy just just do it, and do at night. And then before you know what that book is going to arrive, and you're gonna have forgotten that you even ordered it and it's oh, this is good, right?

I mean, look it on the pile with the other 50 books that I just

That's right. And you know, there's no shortage. Think of it as like you're feeding yourself. You're nurturing yourself your brand.

Yeah. Last questions. Easy one, where do we find you? Easy.

So you find me at Elevate business coaching. So my email is de Groot, g r e w at Elevate business coaching.com

Awesome, Dominic, thanks for the time and thanks for your wisdom.

Thanks for having me on. Jay. Appreciate it and keep up the great work.

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