Your Practice Mastered hosts Richard James and MPS invite marketing expert Kara Prior onto the show to discuss how social media has leveled the playing field, allowing law firms of any size to successfully grow through organic marketing. Kara shares why viral content doesn’t always drive sales, how firms should be posting videos, and simple ways to move social media fans into a direct “owned” audience. With 70 high-growth law firm owner interviews under her belt, Kara provides key takeaways to help solos and small firms win with smart social media marketing. 

Tune in now to hear why consistency and quality beat a big budget when it comes to winning new clients from social platforms!

Right. But it's a chance to distinguish yourself. What would it be like, you know, maybe working with you, working with a firm, you're looking to kind of match your personality.

That's why I also encourage firms if they have, you know, multiple attorneys, certainly, or even multiple employees who are willing to get on camera, let's give them some camera time because You know, we're looking to different people are going to resonate with different personality types, and we're looking to kind of put that out there and help the firm distinguish themselves.

MPS: I was going to go there and I just want to say a great example that just popped into my head, client of ours, Charles LaPooka, he does a great job of that. Just the natural pulling up a video when he's out doing something or on the golf course or doing one of his hobbies and just pulling the video up and he does bankruptcy work and it's just so relatable.

And it's been a very winning formula for him, especially on TikTok. Right. So your point of just the natural side of things, I think it does outperform substantially in my opinion. Of course, there's a time and place for buttoned up video, but you know, that natural ability, I think is great.

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MPS: Hey, law firm owners. Welcome to the Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts. I'm MPS.

I've seen her start with James Publishing and now become the Grow With Kara show that she now has and has become wildly popular in the legal space. We're honored that she was willing to come on and have a conversation with us today and so I'm excited to have this conversation. Michael, how about you?

MPS: Oh, I'm super stoked and Kara super excited to have you on. I know that today's episode probably gets to have a little bit more of a marketing flair in relation to law firm owners, which for lack of better terms, from my understanding is like putting a fat kid in a candy store, you know, like it's marketing and lead generation is quite the conversation for them.

Kara, I'm super stoked and to kick things off for people that don't know about you. What's maybe something that not everybody knows about you?

It's really cool. Taking a little bit of a look under the hood. What's working, maybe what hasn't worked so well, really providing some shortcuts into mistakes that have occurred in the past, helping our solo and small law firm audience to not make the same mistakes, very growth minded, very entrepreneurial.

And it's really fun to have those conversations and really learn from those folks.

Is there something you see that's a common amongst all of them that they've gone through?

Kara Prior: Sure. And it's interesting you ask that Rich because I've interviewed attorneys at almost every growth phase, right? So just starting out a couple years in, you know, just sort of hung their shingle trying to figure out these kind of early wins all the way up to, you know, multi really million dollar massive firms, right?

It's free to low cost, but it's just who is putting the time, putting the effort, the consistency, and who's putting out the type of content that people care about. So that's really been, it's been really cool to see how, you know, some of these, you know, smaller firms are generating most, if not all of their business now through social media, it didn't happen overnight. You know, we'll get into that, but you know, certainly, that has really sort of leveled playing field for a lot of these folks that I've talked to.

Richard James: You know, it's interesting. I'll be honest. I will tell you that I've had a paradigm shift in this like, I actually wasn't all that happy about it. I wasn't thrilled that social media was is what it is today. And to an extent, I even took Facebook off my phone cause I was addicted to it. I admittedly like, Hi, my name is Rich and I'm addicted to Facebook.

I'm done. Like, yes, we advertise on it, but I don't want to be a part of it. I don't want to know about it anymore. I'm literally done. And I went through a season, a pretty long season where social media was gone for me. But Michael you really opened my eyes as you came into the business. You were like.

Okay, we're not doing this right. And there's a better way to do it, Michael, you saw, I mean, you're in the age group that sees it, I guess. It's part of life. It was not a surprise to you that it was going to go the direction it went. And for me I would admit I'm caught a little off guard.

How did you see it, Michael?

And although we weren't, you know, you weren't too fond of it personally using it and it wrapping you up. I knew from a business perspective, it needed to be used just for presence and attention, because that's how people find you now, right. And that's where people search or I could see it chomping at the bit.

I'm sure you have something to say about that, right?

Kara Prior: Well, to your point, Michael, right. It's, you know, social media has so long been adopted by the rest of the business world, right? Late adopters, definitely law firms. So, I mean, this isn't like cutting edge stuff. This is proven, right? And something that I hear a lot is. You know, the type of content that drives sales or, you know, maybe generates high quality appointments usually isn't the same content that goes viral.

And getting overly focused on. Kind of too much expectation from a single post or from two or three posts, right? It'll leave you frustrated it'll leave to frankly a dead end and It's important to kind of remember that each I kind of like to look at it like each social media post has a job Right, not every post is meant to drive appointments or meant to drive sales.

Why is my phone not ringing? You know what I mean? That's just so, it's so backwards, but frankly, that's how, you know, a lot of, I spend a lot of time kind of educating attorneys on this kind of view.

Richard James: Look, my name is Richard James and I'm a dinosaur. Cause, I mean, like, I was the direct response guy, like if for me, if it didn't have a direct ROI for my time and my money, why was I going to do it? That's why I didn't love social media and coming from the direct response world where it usually dominated in many facets I just assumed social media would at some point like stop being the thing I thought everything would be my space.

It would have its season. It would go away, right? I just honestly, I just made that assumption. I do have a practical question for you though for those attorneys that are listening and Whether they've started in social media and they're building organic posts, and maybe they understand this concept that I would say Vanderchuck put out years ago jab, punch, right, or jab, right hook, whatever that was, where you give before you ask for something.

Kara Prior: Good question. I think it's a mistake to get too hung up on like a specific number. However, to your point

Richard James: I got hung up on a number. There's a surprise, right? Yeah.

Kara Prior: I can appreciate, but organic social media it's a critical piece. Of your marketing puzzle, right? I think the disconnect here kind of comes from the lack of understanding kind of where organic social fits in your marketing strategy, how it's supposed to work with other channels.

So your marketing channels, they don't work in these perfect little silos. Like sometimes we want them to, especially social media, right? They work together to drive sales.

Like I kept it solely for in house. I never put it out there and I never had an organic post. Like, I never even barely posted pictures of my family on a trip or anything. I certainly didn't put any information out there. I had no organic presence whatsoever. And I always wondered and complained why we weren't getting the value out of the dollars spent that we were on ads on social media.

We have our own podcasts as you're evidenced by the fact that you're on this now, and we've got a strategy around this and no, I can't point directly to ROI on any particular channel, although we do measure views and all the things you want to measure because we want to know how many, you know, Alonzo will tell me good job, Rich, just got your hundredth follower or something, whatever, you know, and so he makes me feel good because I got it, but I can't point to an ROI there, but I can tell you, that all of our other stuff is working better than it ever worked before, ever.

And that's not just, I don't just mean an ad is working better. It is. I don't mean a webinar is working better. It is. I don't mean that our follow-ups are working better, but they are we're connecting with more people on the phone now than we ever have before.

And so now

Kara Prior: that. I don't believe that.

Richard James: It's it's really working It's this omnipresence model And trust me, like, I don't love that I got to go create content. I mean, I'm going to be straight. I don't love that about that. I don't like that part of the business. I don't like having to think about pulling my cell phone out and making a video about something.

I just didn't want that to be part of my life. And Michael, I don't know that you do either, but it works, right? Michael, I mean, we're finding that there's no question. It is definitely working.

I know, you know, we came out with a bang with this social media marketing stuff. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about your journey and working with law firm owners in this space?

Kara Prior: Yeah, I would love to. Thanks. So I've actually been with James Publishing for almost 11 years. Believe it or not, I actually started as a social media manager with James Publishing. Again, kind of my journey here, what has really been one of, you know, I was a professional journalist for 10 years before I joined with James, mostly.

Richard James: I didn't know that about you.

Kara Prior: Yeah. Yeah. I was working at entrepreneur magazine. I was most traveling on the country, interviewing startups, pretty high profile, Jack Dorsey and some other high profile startup founders kind of really figure out doing video. Actually, it's kind of interesting how it has all come full circle, but no video interviews with these founders.

Small businesses and certainly small law firms kind of figure out how to get to that next phase and how to really kind of work. So, you know, I've been running a company for about 5 years now. We still have our publishing side of the business. It's quite lean and, you know, highly profitable for us, but it gives us a great opportunity to really dive into some more innovative stuff and really help our law firms grow.

And so this helps me put the pieces together of how you got to where you are today. So, congratulations on leveraging the lessons of life. I think we all do it, leveraging the lessons of life to find your way into a great partner in James Publishing and him giving you and you giving him the opportunity to grow that firm.

And today taking all the knowledge you have about journalism, natural curiosity, content development, and video production, and being able to teach attorneys, how to utilize that to start to master. And as you say, feed this insatiable beast of social media for the information that it desires. You were nodding your head when Michael was saying something about my lack of desire to record content, something I really didn't want to do.

And I suspect that's a common theme. You hear from a lot of attorneys that they don't have the time. They don't want to find the time. They don't want to be a slave to it, whatever. What's your, it feels like you have an answer to that. I'd love for you to give that to us.

Third Friday of every month at 10 o'clock, whatever works for you, right? You block it off. You just spend 30, 45 minutes batch recording some videos and I can definitely talk about, you know, topics that work well, but answering common questions going beyond. You know, let's talk about topics that anyone would care about whether or not they're actively looking for an attorney at that exact moment.

Help you build that audience. So if you have a basic content calendar, you know, write down some topics, you know, get some talking points and block off that time, you know, you're holding yourself accountable. Certainly what we help our subscribers do, right?

Is just have that time set off. And then you have content for the month. If you're doing a podcast, repurpose this stuff, right? You probably already have some existing footage that you could really take that, find those nuggets, right? Pull out those quick wins or those obvious kind of nuggets, make them into, you know, 20, 30 second clips.

It's different talking to the camera. It's different, you know, looking straight into that, you know, little light and you just have to try it even if you're first. Right. Dozen, two dozen, three dozen videos, you know, they're not so great. You will get better. There's a lot of coaching that we do live on our shoots just to, you know, make it more comfortable to have a Q&A style, right?

Have your paralegals sit in on it. So it's more of an organic conversation. You know, all of these tips and tricks can help. But in the end, if you're going to grow, you have to consistently, frequently post high quality videos on social media. That's really the bottom line.

Richard James: You know, it's funny, I've watched, so for years ago, in the very beginning of my practice, I did a little bit of everything. I would write a book for an attorney that needed a book. I would build their Infusionsoft campaign in their CRMI. If they needed a commercial shot, I would hire the videographer in the studio and they'd pay me to do all the video work, and I would be there while they're shooting the commercial.

Boy, it was, I mean, shooting three commercials oftentimes took us eight hours and it wasn't because they needed a lot of makeup, right? It was because like, they just couldn't do it. And unfortunately when you're shooting commercial. You know, you don't have a lot of practice time necessarily, and they weren't doing a lot of camera work.

So that makes it whatever year that makes it right.

Kara Prior: Let's hear it. We need to see.

Richard James: Oh, you need to see it. Okay, so we'll get that one.

MPS: Maybe I could get Alonzo to pull it and like, just put it in here I'm not embarrassed by it's still out there.

Richard James: All right. We'll put it in for everybody. We'll have Alonzo put in. Okay. So, I mean, love you and you're my son and I told you it was amazing at the time. It wasn't, but you got so much better, right? And you grew from that first video and to, you know, then you became the global leader of information for Wix. com after, you know, however many years of you doing that. You just, you get better over time. Right, Michael?

So it's not, you know, it's not very natural. So you just really got to get the reps in. And you do, you get comfortable over time. You find ways to enhance your ability to continue to get better. And then before you know it, yeah, you continue to grow to a point where you feel like it's second nature to you.

And so that's the key.

Kara Prior: Yeah. And I can speak to that personally too. I mean, you know, I was very uncomfortable with it or, you know, I thought that they were okay. And then I look back and I'm like, Ooh, like so stiff, just so uncomfortable trying to force it. So it's the practice, but I also want

Richard James: We don't believe that, by the way.

Kara Prior: It's true.

Richard James: we don't believe that.

Kara Prior: It's very true.

Right. But it's a chance to distinguish yourself. What would it be like, you know, maybe working with you, working with a firm, you're looking to kind of match your personality.

That's why I also encourage firms if they have, you know, multiple attorneys, certainly, or even multiple employees who are willing to get on camera, let's give them some camera time because You know, we're looking to different people are going to resonate with different personality types, and we're looking to kind of put that out there and help the firm distinguish themselves.

Richard James: I love it. I'd love to continue to hear Kara's story. Yeah, Michael, where do you want to go from here?

And it's been a very winning formula for him, especially on TikTok. Right. So your point of just the natural side of things, I think it does outperform substantially in my opinion. Of course, there's a time and place for buttoned up video, but you know, that natural ability, I think is great.

But Kara, why don't you tell us along the journey did you ever have a challenge point in what's something maybe you took from that?

Kara Prior: For a long time, we were shooting videos for attorneys virtually remotely, you know, like we're doing now, but we were putting them on the attorney's websites, right? Like, we were using them in emails, putting them in newsletters. They were nice. They were great. It was a popular product, but I mean, how many FAQ videos do you need on your site?

We knew that attorneys wanted these videos, but what was the real use case? What could we do to help them grow? You know, in the long term and frankly, keep them around as paying subscribers for us. Right. Kind of make our offer more sticky and really invaluable, frankly. So a big turning point was when we realized, okay, maybe.

You know, we back away from the 456 minute substantive videos that we were posting on websites and maybe, you know, we can actually ramp up the volume and you know, deliver these social focused videos. And then what we were able to do and what I highly recommend anyone watching is.

It will allow you to, of course, dramatically increase the exposure, the views of that video. It's typical when we put. 200 worth of boosting. We get tens of thousands of views for our subscribers, but it allows you to be targeted much more targeted, right? Of course, geographically, several other key demographics.

Richard James: You know, so I don't mean to be flippant about this, but I know that there's some attorneys that are thinking, she said, put a hundred dollars behind it, and they took like a hundred dollars bill and they taped it to their monitor and they're like, oh, that's behind it. That's what she means. Right? No, I mean, so I know that's an extreme and that's probably not true, but it's probably not far off from the truth.

For some people not really understanding what that means. And it's really easy for you to say and me to say these things and Michael to say these things these days because we understand how it works. I suppose one of the challenges that your clients come to you with is that, okay, I started making the videos.

Kara Prior: Right. And when I talk about the boosting or putting some, you know, investing some money in increasing exposure, that's more of the cherry on top. It's more of a bonus, right? It will help you fill that room more rapidly.

Richard James: But in It works.

Kara Prior: It works, certainly. But, you know, you can do the same thing. It'll take you a little bit longer, of course, but you can do the same thing at no cost if you're willing to kind of put in the time to create the content. But to your point, Rich, it's important at some point to kind of transfer at least a portion of your audience to your own audience.

Right? So, you know, get a portion of them to sign up for your email list, subscribe to our YouTube channel, sign up for your podcast, whatever else you have going on, you know, get them one step closer in that funnel or, you know, one step closer to the booked appointments, you have much more control over your owned audiences, right?

Richard James: No, that's a great point. Like, for years, I've said the number one asset in a law firm is their list and the relationship with their list. And for years, what I really meant by that was their address and their email address and their phone number and the way in which we communicate with them. Well, that's changed.

And I can remember years ago when Michael started back in his computer MD of Gilbert, when he made his first video, I can remember saying to him, he was really serious about this. And I said, okay, at some point you need a way to get them off YouTube and on your email list. Like that was my lesson

to Like, don't let YouTube own your list. Make sure you own your list. I don't know, Michael, how big is your list? You still have it. How big is your list from that?

Richard James: 95,000 subscribers. And you got

Kara Prior: Is incredible,

Richard James: 47 000 people on your email list that you can communicate to and build a relationship and sell them something fundamentally. Right.

MPS: Yeah, I mean, so much power.

Richard James: But now like, yes, and we want to do that, but like, there really is no hiding from the fact that the lists, the subscribers on YouTube, whatever they are on TikTok, the, whatever they are on Instagram and Facebook, see, I still don't know the names of all these things, but whatever they are, in the way that they're following you and they're part of you they've opted in to get more of your content or LinkedIn or whatever channel they are your list too.

And so. Yeah, this idea, Kara, you hit the nail on the head, like, building your list from this. That's what we're saying. Building an audience, right? But building an audience that you control whether or not they receive your information or not, right? And the way to do that is to get them to opt in at some level so that they want more information from you.

Am I saying that correctly?

Kara Prior: Yeah, exactly. The goal is to create such compelling, valuable social native content that at least a portion of your audience, a portion of your community wants more from you. And having, you know, much more control, you know, getting them to opt into emails, to text messages, you know, to all of these channels that again, are kind of.

Richard James: Nice. Michael, where do we go from here?

MPS: Yeah, I'm just curious, Kara, for your success habits. You know, what do you do on a daily or a weekly basis that continues your sustained success?

Kara Prior: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm big on preparing the night before for the following day. I don't know, it might seem simple, but I always take at least an hour in the evenings, put the little guys to bed and, you know, I have some time to really, you know, take a look at high level.

What do I want to get done? What have I accomplished? And it's just, I mean, it doesn't take long, you know, it's not you know, too in depth, but it really does keep me on task personally. And that's kind of a micro level. That's one trick. I also it's super important to me to stay physically active and physically fit.

Richard James: can

Kara Prior: to keep on doing.

Richard James: And spend an hour every night chasing your kids around the yard. I'm sure that'll keep you fit. Michael, isn't it interesting that all the high achievers or I think it's safe to say at this point All the high achievers we've spoken to on this program have included some sort of physical activity Into their argument about what keeps them successful.

Would you agree with that?

MPS: Yeah, I mean, and I fall right into the category and I just think it's important. It keeps your body healthy. It keeps your mind sharp. Kara, to your point, productivity, I feel increases just because you have more energy. And I think it falls back into another common thread we've heard across the board, including what Kara just said, which is discipline.

Would you agree with that, Rich?

Richard James: It's disappointing to me, you know,

MPS: Yeah, I know. It may not be what you wanted.

Richard James: No, because I wish it was. Oh, if you just smoke more cigars and drink more bourbon, that's how you stay perfectly. That would have been great. That's the answer that I was looking for. But apparently not. So I'm just going to have to be okay with it, I guess.

So Kara. Hey, listen, if everybody, if they want to learn more about you, what they want to follow you, they want to, you know, gather the more knowledge from your contact you. They've got questions. How would you like them to go about doing that?

Richard James: Awesome. Well, listen, I know this isn't going to be the last time you're on here because as you know, podcasts evolve and there's always more information that we have to deliver to one another. So you're going to be back, but being that this is the first conversation, I just want to say, thank you.

As I said earlier, you and I used to have these conversations privately. And it's a shame that nobody ever got to hear them because they were so good and you brought so many value bombs and now that they get to hear you publicly and give them some great advice. So thanks for sharing the journey with us and some insights as to what you've been through and what you see in your law firms and some real value bombs as to how they can get their social media presence to the next level.

I appreciate you.

Kara Prior: Thank you. I appreciate you both. You both are very inspiring to me on a daily basis. So I really appreciate the time. It was a pleasure.

Richard James: Michael, bring us home.

Let us know just one thing you pulled out of today's episode that's It's actionable for you. We'd love to hear it and we'll make sure Kara sees it as well. But Kara, once again, thank you for taking the time to spend some time with us today and provide some value to the law firm owners listening.

Kara Prior: Yeah. Thank you.