What if everything works in law firm marketing, just not for you yet? If you are starting from zero, where should the first dollar go: lunches or LSAs? Is podcasting a smart play, or should you borrow someone else’s audience first? What would happen if you defined your “wanted case” and fixed intake before buying more leads? And who already has your clients today, quietly waiting to refer them? This episode tackles the questions most firms avoid and shows how analog work scales your digital results.

Jonathan Hawkins: I was a lover of the platform or the sort of the channel and I just wanted to do it. I always wanted to do it. But it's a lot of work and it's, you know, it's a lot of time. It's light energy.

You gotta find all the stuff. There's, I get a lot out of it and I really like it. But there are easier ways in higher ROI. Things you can do If you're gonna do it for marketing, I would not start with that. And I'm with you too. I've gotten more work out of being a guest on a podcast than I have on via my podcast.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We'll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you're in the right place.

Let's dive in.

And the reason why we're not doing that is because this is a repeat guest. Today. We've got Brian Glass on for the second time. If you want to hear about his journey and all that. Gotta go back to episode 27. It's a good one. So go back and listen to that. But a brief introduction and then I'll hand it over to Brian to really fill out the introduction, but he is the co-owner of Ben Glass Law and great legal marketing. He's a personal injury lawyer up in Virginia. So Brian, thanks for coming on again. And why don't you fill out the introduction. Tell us a little bit more about what you do and really great legal marketing, which might be of interest to our lawyer audience here.

And we do personal injury. And my dad has a long-term disability appeals practice. For fun, we run great legal marketing which is an organization dedicated to helping solo and small law firm owners run better practices. The marketing piece is a little bit of a misnomer. You know, it really started 20 some odd years ago.

As a, as a company that was intent on teaching personal injury lawyers how to run better Yellow Pages ads. And we don't, the, the thing about the marketing word being in the name is that many of the solicitations that I get on LinkedIn are about like, let me help you grow your marketing practice. And we don't provide any services.

You know, our niche, Jonathan, is as you know, is, is talking with lawyers like you and trying to help you figure out like what's the problem, the next problem to be solved in the law firm, and what's the best use of your next dollar and hour?

And it's really cool. The thing that I like about it is you get in there with the other lawyers and everybody's sharing. They're sort of opening the kimono, so to speak. And I'll say you and Ben really open up and talk about what you guys are doing in your firm, which is really always very enlightening and educational.

And you know, you guys have been experimenting doing lots of things over the last three years since I've been in there and I'm sure predate me as well. So I want to dive into some of those things and get your perspective because you do talk to a lot of lawyers, you coach lawyers. I use that in air quotes.

And you guys. Talk to a lot of marketing vendors, so you sort of have a pulse of what's out there in the legal space, and so.

And, and by that I don't mean the leaders, right? You know, good leaders are, are facilitators and can help you. out really what is the problem and maintain and hold in, check all of the lawyer egos and law firm owner egos that can be in the room. But really the value of any Mastermind is on the 12 or the 15 other law firms that are in the room with you.

And so credit to you and to the rest of the members of our hero and our icon groups for showing up and for caring about helping other law firm owners get better at what we do.

They're like, come to us. We'll get, we will do this magic thing, and you'll get all these cases and all this stuff and it can be overwhelming. All the things you can do, all the vendors trying to sell you stuff. And so hopefully today we can cut through some of that and, and sort of figure out what, what.

What people should look at. And so the first thing I'll say is, you know that lots of things work. I mean, maybe everything works to some

Brian Glass: Everything works.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let's focus, I wanna focus on, in your opinion, and let me one other sort of background. There are brand new lawyers, there are established firms, there are really big firms and you can sort of pinpoint.

Who this works for. As we talk through things, not everything's gonna work for everybody along that spectrum. So, where do you wanna start?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so maybe.

Brian Glass: Well, no, I'll tell you. You know, I think your point about maybe everything works to a certain extent is absolutely valid. Everything works right? You know, for small law firm owners, you come out and you go, billboards don't work 'cause there's no way to track whether anybody called my 888 number that's on the billboard. Like, if billboards didn't work, lawyers wouldn't have 'em everywhere. So that branding works. It's a part of a larger. The rest of your broader marketing strategy LSAs don't work 'cause they're too expensive.

And you know, anywhere from just opening my law firm on January 2nd to I have 40 lawyers practicing in metropolitan Atlanta.

Right. And the answers are gonna be incredibly different based on your budget and based on what you already have in place and based on what the next thing that you wanna implement is. And I, I think that is maybe the biggest challenge for lawyers picking their marketing strategy is being really, really honest with yourself and self-aware about where I am right now?

Their thing might save somebody out there. But the challenge really is figuring out what is the thing that's gonna be the best for me.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I, I was talking to a law firm owner yesterday recorded a podcast. It'll be coming out some weeks and before starting her law firm, she had been involved in, in a couple of businesses, non-law businesses, and really grew those pretty successfully and really had the marketing down on those two businesses.

And then she got into the law firm and she said, marketing law firm. It's just a lot slower than her, the things you can do in some of these non-law businesses. It's quick, quick hits, but the sale of a lot of the law legal services, it's just a longer sort of sales cycle. But let's, let's step back.

And at least do that. 'cause you know, as you've, I think I've heard you say when you got, when you don't have money, you have time. So use that.

Brian Glass: You don't have cases you.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so why don't you so high level, if, if I'm a new lawyer, starting a firm, maybe take me through some of the, the, the, the big. Pillars of that $500 marketing plan.

Brian Glass: Well, that, that is the really the, you know, the big pillar is spending money on time with people, right? Whether it's coffees or lunches. That's, I think the, the place that almost everybody that doesn't have any business and doesn't have any clients and doesn't have a very large budget, should be starting.

Whether that's the first touchpoint or the last touchpoint before they get to us, most of our clients and I, in my personal interview practice, have had my name mentioned to them. By somebody else in the universe before they Googled me or looked up my LinkedIn or looked at my Instagram profile, and then maybe they came through that channel, but most of them my name come outta somebody's mouth.

In a personal injury practice, the people that already have your clients are doctors, you know, chiropractors, physical therapists who are in smaller practices, who aren't in institutional practices. There may be larger law firm owners. They are, you know, the, the big advertising firms. That I, until five years ago, didn't have the capacity to handle the smaller cases.

Than it is, than it was five years ago, but those offshore people aren't trying cases. And so you could go become the litigation arm of a big advertising firm. And so the doctors lawyers and then like, who else in the community should I be speaking to that that has an audience that naturally fits for me.

No. Right. So for him it's referees that know it. He is a lawyer for me, some of these people at the gym that know I'm a lawyer, finding these other communities where you can become the hub, not only necessarily for what you do, but for referrals out to other lawyers in your community. And so if I had no money and I had time and I had no clients, I would spend. All of my time and whatever, whatever marketing budget I had doing that, doing referral lunches, going to meet people in their office, and then I would have some kind of newsletter or, or maybe an e-newsletter, but I'd prefer it be a physical hard copy thing that I could mail to them afterwards that reminds them that I'm still alive and still practicing law.

So that's where I would start.

I did one after joining you guys. I have one now. I've heard your dad, Ben, talk about it. You know, everybody thinks digital, digital, and that's what most people are selling out there. But really what you've just described is an analog. So how do you, again, going back to your podcast about the $500 marketing plan, you talk, you also talk digital, and you have a interesting approach to that about establishing a digital presence.

So how do you,

Brian Glass: Well, you could.

Jonathan Hawkins: how do you approach the balance of the digital analog?

Brian Glass: So it's not either or. Right. And in fact, the, the one of the things that I would be trying to balance if I were doing all these in-network in, in-person meetings with other lawyers and law firm owners and business owners is I would be documenting it, right?

And they do a pizza, new Orleans pizza review. There's a guy in Miami who does chicken parm reviews, right? And then of course, Josh Hodges goes to every small town in Ohio and interviews all of the lo local quasi celebrities, right? And so that's all, that's all analog stuff that he has, that they have just documented digitally and now they've.

Now they've scaled the analog relationship building that they've done by broadcasting it somewhere. But all of those things at their cores are analog relationship building tactics.

What platforms do you personally use and, and your firm use?

Brian Glass: I, well, I'm primarily active personally on LinkedIn and a little bit less on Instagram and TikTok. But I get into. Into these cycles where I make, make more video content and put it out. None of the video content, almost none of the video content is about being a lawyer, right? It's just trying to be an interesting or do things that I think are interesting.

LinkedIn is my, my most popular mind is the one I use the most often. Because it comes the most naturally for me. It's easier for me to sit down and write something than it is sometimes it feels awkward to hold up the camera and shoot a video into the camera, and could I get over that? Probably. But just LinkedIn comes a little bit more naturally for me.

I probably could get better at that. The only strategy that I have for that is if somebody sends me a connection request, I have my ea accept all of them. And if it's a if it's a law firm vendor, but somebody selling into the law firm space. We have an autoresponder that says, Hey, that's not something that I need in my law firm right now, but I run this company called Greatly Marketing.

And we have a partners program, right, where you either you can supply content for us or maybe if you do something that's interesting enough, like we'll have you on one of our stages either on the Zoom call or, or at our summit. And so here's how you sign up for that, right? So now I capture you my email address.

So it's, that's, it's digital, but it's not any, I don't think it's offensive, outbound. It's, it's not the, Hey, let's hop on a Zoom call and talk for 15 minutes, kind of thing. It's trying to provide value to you first, and if you're not interested in the value, then. You know, you just don't click on the thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let's talk about LinkedIn. Yeah. I'm very active there too. I've talked about it a lot. I, I bump into attorneys and they're like, especially you, you're a personal injury attorney. People say, well, Jonathan, you're a, you're a a B2B course. It works for you. It's not gonna work for me. You're a B2C.

What's been your experience in terms of generating referrals or work or whatever.

I, I have said if you have a practice like yours where it's nationwide, B2C, or if you have an e an what I call alphabet soup practices like my dad's ERISA practice or Brewster raws, FTCA practice where you can, you know, it's a niche, true niche, it's federally based and you can practice anywhere, then those are great for LinkedIn because most lawyers don't know how to or don't want to do cases like that, and you can do it anywhere. So I, it, it has not been great for me in terms of case generation. That's not why I do it. I really do it because. I just, I, I enjoy creating content about how to run a better practice, live a better life as a lawyer.

And for me, it hasn't been cases, although for some people it's cases, but for me it's been broader distribution of my podcast invitations to speak on stages and an easier access to like good employees, right? Because it's in the same way that your clients can go and binge some of your content.

If you have a YouTube channel or a a social media channel, my employees can come, future employees can come and click and say like, what are these guys about? And I'm talking about running a better business, living a better life. Like I think most people want to work there. So that's really why I produce that content.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I, that's been a similar experience to me. I have gotten actual cases out of it direct that say I've been following on LinkedIn and I don't know who they are, so that way, but the other thing that I've, I've. Definitely noticed. I'm curious if you've noticed it. There's all these local attorneys that never comment.

Never. Like they, they're like ghosts, lurkers on LinkedIn. But then I'll go to some bar van or somewhere and I see them and they're like, oh my God, I love what you're doing. I'm like, well, why don't you comment man? So it, it, it almost like amplifies the local networking scene as well. I dunno if you've experienced that up there in Northern Virginia.

But yeah, I do think that there's. As much engagement as you can get, there probably is three to 10 x. That number of people who read all of your stuff and never comment on it, you know, until they see you at at the courthouse.

Real quick, if you haven't gotten a copy yet, please check out my book, the Law Firm Lifecycle. It's written for law firm owners and those who plan to be owners. In the book, I discuss various issues that come up as a law firm progresses through the stages of its growth from just before starting a firm to when it comes to an end.

The law firm lifecycle is available on Amazon. Now, back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So the other thing you mentioned, you, you've got a podcast, obviously you're, you're a guest on this podcast, but you have your own I'll let you pitch it here if you, if like, but it's it's life beyond the briefs. You can tell us, my interpretation is it's really for somebody that's 2, 3, 5 years behind where you are now, sort of, you help bring up people.

Brian Glass: Don't do it. Don't do it. No pod po you, you have to figure out why you're doing it. I, it gives me access to smart people who I can interview for an hour. And it gives me access to friends of mine who I can have discussions with that I probably wouldn't otherwise have had about building their business.

You know it, I think it's, if I get a couple hundred downloads on an episode, that's amazing. And so with, and then people will binge listen to it, right? Same thing as as LinkedIn in some regards. 'cause you'll have people who call, oh, I've been listening to your podcast forever. I, I'll miss an episode.

And you have no idea who they're, so that's kind of cool. But I think it's, it's terrible for like. New people tripping onto you and discovering you, especially in the first three months, six months, even a year. You have to be willing to, and I've heard you say this, if you're gonna go into a new channel, be willing to stick with that channel for three years on a regular basis.

I think it's, again, it's back to like relationship building, right? I think it's good for analog, actual one-to-one connection and for developing one to many afar connection. People who think they know you 'cause they've consumed a whole bunch of your content, but it's not where I would start

Jonathan Hawkins: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. The people that do it know this. But you know, I went into mine again, I was a lover of the platform sort of the channel and I just wanted to do it. I always wanted to do it. But it's a lot of work and it's, you know, it's a lot of time. It's light energy.

Brian Glass: Well, that's the way to get introduced to other people's audiences, right? Like how many people out there are scrolling lawyer podcasts and decide that's the one I'm gonna listen to. No, like, people start listening to your podcast or my podcast because one of their friends was a guest, shared the episode with them and they decided, they liked the way that we interviewed people enough that they would listen to the next episode, right?

But you get far more. Discoverability by being a guest on somebody else's show who already has an audience. And if you're gonna do that, you should do like you've done, right? Which is have a book that you can give away and have a page where you can capture and scrape off some of that audience into your own channel.

So I think if you enjoy it it shows and people will listen. And if you don't, it's a waste of your time and effort.

Jonathan Hawkins: So true, and maybe that's a good segue in a topic that really, I guess. Goes across all the different marketing things you can do. And you mentioned it a minute ago, but you know, in my view, it's pick something that, that you're gonna do and you gotta do it consistently. And then you've gotta do it for I think, a pretty long time before you give up on it.

That's the other, you know, that, that's that meme or whatever where the guy's mining and he's about to hit the, the diamonds, but he gives up. And then the last part is at least for me. I sort of try not to have expectations just

Brian Glass: Hmm.

And so that, that goes back to you mentioned the thing about the three years. I just like to pick a date way far out. I figure that's long enough that. If it's gonna work, it should work by then hopefully. But as you approach maybe a new marketing channel or project or whatever, how are you looking at it and how do you gauge whether you're gonna do it or not, versus another one?

Brian Glass: Yeah that's a good question. We don't give it three years, you know, especially if it's digital. So this year we spent some money in LSAs. We spent some money on lead gen. We spent some money on a referral marketing campaign. And, and I've kind of moved around like, all right, I'm gonna give this thing 90 days and see what happens.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I guess,

Brian Glass: but

Jonathan Hawkins: let me, let me give a caveat on that. It's, it's if I'm spending money, buying ads or whatever, absolutely. There's gotta be a quick, but in terms of the content game, that's what I meant by that. So.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so you know, another example is you mentioned the book, it just came out. That's another cornerstone piece of the GLM community. Get a book out there and you spend all this time and energy and money getting, getting it sort of created. And then you just gotta go out there and put it in the world. But you never really see a direct return on that book that you can say, all right, here's the line from the book to this client.

Maybe it happens every now and then, but you know, that's when you just gotta sort of have some faith and just keep putting it out there.

Which is what most people do. And, and so that, that you write that you never really see the direct line of attribution through the book, but I don't think you really see the direct line of attribution through almost anything that anybody does in the lawyer marketing space. Except, except non-branded lead gen.

Right? Because e everything else is. You know, the multi-touch attribution is so hard that you're really just giving your best guess at is anything working or is it a waste of money?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, it reminds me, I saw an ad this morning. I'm gonna, I'm gonna post about it tomorrow, so I know you do this a good bit. And it's for, it's, it's a legion company aimed at PI attorneys and, and they say, you don't pay us for leads. You only pay us for signed cases.

Brian Glass: How, how

Jonathan Hawkins: which is completely unethical. There's like 30 ethics opinions around the country.

Brian Glass: Well, and, and so. I see more than my fair share of those. 'cause I watch all the videos. Just like, and so now you're gonna see a bunch of the interesting thing, they must all share some digital cookie somewhere, because once you click on one, you're gonna see seven of the competitors ads. So you, yeah, you'll have a whole portfolio of things to post about by tomorrow morning.

Jonathan Hawkins: I'll be looking for that. That's interesting. So we've been talking a lot about marketing and different approaches and channels and. This, that and the other. But another thing that you, you showed the GLM Mastermind a while back was I'll call it fixing your intake. And so, and a lot of people say, I wanna spend all this money, I need more leads, I need more leads, I need more.

But they have a leaky bucket. And so I don't know if you have the stats in front of you, but you you did some work to, to fix the leaky bucket. I'll call at your firm and, and take me through that, and what results did you see?

And so for us in the the car crash space, it's clear liability in Virginia. Less than two years ago where you went to an emergency room or you went to an urgent care, or you saw your primary care doctor in a quick period of time and you had some established. Period of care, right? I'm not interested in talking to somebody who, know, was in a crash 48 hours ago and hasn't been to a doctor yet, and, and is calling a lawyer first, right?

Our calling that we're missing some way or another. Right. And then you can start to fix, and I wish I had the silver bullet for you. 'cause it's not a script, it's not, you know, a follow-up sequence. It's not a drip campaign. It really is hiring somebody who gets. Personally offended like our intake person does.

To, you know, a, somebody at the front desk does a little bit of a screen and then the lawyer closes the sale to maybe there's a paralegal involved, and then we hear about overseas stuff. And so, okay, we hire a VA offshore to do the intake and we train that person and, and at every stage is like. This is what I can afford.

This is what I can afford. And you, you kind of move up. The biggest change for us happened when we found the right person and she was in-house in Fairfax, Virginia. And as I like to say, if a, a good case is on the phone, she could run screaming down the hallway like her hair is on fire and find a lawyer to get on the phone and close that deal.

In 12 months, right? If you just invest in having the, the real life person in-house, you probably could close that, that gap pretty quickly because most lawyers will tell you, we sign a hundred percent of the cases that, that we want, and it's just not true.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, you just, I, I love the evolution of how you guys sort of tested and experimented and sort of grew along the way, and you sort of found where you are now. We'll see where you are in, you know, three, four years from now. The other thing that you, that I've heard you talk about and this is going back to SEO.

As a marketing approach that I thought was interesting. You, your evolution to the SEO sort of experience where you guys did a lot of that in-house, you did a presentation to us and it was extremely sophisticated the way you guys did all that. It was incredible, really. And you guys,

Brian Glass: we're very proud of

Jonathan Hawkins: was great, but then you decided we're scrapping that we're hiring somebody out of outside vendors.

So maybe take me through that thought process.

You know, after we showed you guys the presentation of here's all the things that we're doing in-house with these AI tools to, number one, select what's the gap in our content right now? Whatever our competitors have that we don't have, how can we take our current content and make a little bit better?

Changes needed to be made. And, and then we would go and execute. He, he liked working with us 'cause we would take all the things that he said, and then by the next call, 30 days later, we had done all the things. But finally I looked around and I was like, Shep, we're spending $2,000 on Jonathan. It's my time.

And you never know during the sales process, and you never, and, and there's always somebody in the space looking over your shoulder, you know, willing to get on a call and tell you the three things that your firm is doing wrong. And it's very hard to figure out, and especially if you were starting brand new in 2025 or 2026, like, good luck.

I've at least got a 18 year, you know. Novice background in this stuff, and I understand the terminology. If you were coming out brand new and you were hearing about schema markup and H one tags and No way.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is a lot. It is a lot. And you mentioned the other, you know, you mentioned ai, but that's the other piece at the summit, you know, Hennessy talked about. AI people are moving away from the traditional Google search. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole, but now it's, it's a AI search and people aren't necessarily even clicking on your website anymore.

So whole different ballgame

Produce content that holds you up as the authority in the space. Get that content into the hands of other people who can talk about how you're the authority in the space and. Do do and do good work and more work will come. Right. And so there are there AI specific tactics. Can you have a bot go and recommend you on Reddit 150 times?

Jonathan Hawkins: We might have to end it with that. I mean, that is basically it, right? And how.

Brian Glass: What's, what's old is new,

Jonathan Hawkins: I know. That's it. You know that that might be what we end on. But I'll ask one last question. Is there any, anything we haven't talked about? If I'm a lawyer out there and maybe we not focus on the behemoth type, really big sophisticated firms, like the similar ross out there that really have his machine going what advice would you give to somebody out there that's trying to build their firm and trying to build their marketing channels?

And you know, I think maybe the thing to end with is this like. If you can create the firm where you're people and you actually like showing up. It's a whole lot easier to work in that firm long term. You don't have to sell it to private equity. You don't have to have your exit 'cause you're tired of it. And that really is the path to wealth is to be able to do the thing at an above average rate for a longer than average period of time.

And that's happiness too, right? 'cause you actually enjoy showing up and putting in your 40, 50, 60 whatever it is hours that you're calling. So I don't think it's anything fancy. It's just like doing work that's interesting to you with people that you like.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Brian, we're gonna end it with that. I appreciate you coming on. For people out there that want to get in touch with you or learn more about your firm or great legal marketing, what's the best way to find you?

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, I think it's ish.

Brian Glass: Okay, so we're, we're doing a bootcamp at analog Marketing Bootcamp. You can check out the details at GLMBootCamp.com. We'll probably do a couple more of those throughout the year. People seem, seem interested in that.

So one day event talking about all the things that are not digital that you can do in your law firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: When in January. Is that

Brian Glass: I think it's, oh, I'm sorry. It said January. It's February, February. Screwed up. The date. February

Jonathan Hawkins: okay? Yeah. This will be out by then for sure. I was, I was gonna move it up.

Brian Glass: I should know the date of my own event. It's a, what, what we did? No, it's the 11th. February 11th. What we did this year is we've started tacking on to the beginning of our mastermind meetings, and in particular, The HERO meeting a one day event where you can come and meet some of the members, and then there's an upsell opportunity from that bootcamp to, to come and see what Mastermind is all about.

If you're gonna get on a plane and stay in a hotel, you may as well hang out for another day, so February 11th.

Brian Glass: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: Alright

Brian Glass: too.

Jonathan Hawkins: Thanks.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We'll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.