Casefuel History

2012

The Start Up

Jan wins a grant from the McGill Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship and raises an angel round for his first company, a consumer products start-up called Vitality Sciences. After getting inventory he realizes there isn’t much budget left for marketing. Alarm is set at 4:55 AM for the next two years as he tries every organic marketing channel known to man.

2013

Intro To Marketing Services

Jan reads about the magic of Google Ads and hires a consultant through his network to run google ads for the company. The next time he hears from the consultant, he's up for renewal. Every dollar of budget has been spent with zero results. Jan makes a mental note that this is kind of messed up.

Channel/Market Fit

Jan reads a really old book called Breakthrough Advertising and figures out they should never have been on Google Ads in the first place. He decides to take a chance advertising on a new platform called Facebook Ads which is scary at first but quickly figures out it's easier to make numbers work with clicks that cost 10 cents instead of 10 dollars.

2014

Recurring Revenue

After 2 years of flat revenue driven by organic efforts, Vitality Sciences ramps to recurring revenue in 4 months driven by a subscription offer through Facebook and paid ads on amazon. Jan stops setting his alarm at 4:55AM because the ads are working around the clock.

Start Up Advisor

Jan goes back to the Dobson Centre to coach teams in the startup competition. His team ends up winning the grant that year. Jan starts getting consulting offers for Montreal startups.

The Exit

Vitality Sciences is profitable but has capped out the market. Jan sells his interest and pursues consulting in New York City. He remembers how low the bar is for marketing services and vows to do better and guarantee his work so the people hiring him won't have the outcome that happened to him.

2015

First Law Firm Client

Jan hones in on paid traffic and conversion rate optimization as the most attractive part of his offer. Not knowing he shouldn't, he approaches one of the biggest spenders in NYC Personal Injury and they say yes.

Break Six Figures in Spend

Jan's ads helps his first client win a 7 figure construction accident case in the first few months. That client increases spend and Jan starts signing firms in non-competitive practice areas around NYC. The Google Ads account crosses the $100k spend threshold in a few months

2016

The First Hire

Jan makes his first hire for web development and discovers a love for SOPs.

2017

White Label

The team has continued to get good results and accidentally prospects one of the top SEO providers for legal. After cutting their cost per acquisition in half they become the go-to provider for their clients

The Legal Marketing Fastlane

Clients spanning most of the major practice areas and major geographies across the country have been breaking records on time to first lead. Jan puts his thoughts on how to do this into a book, The Legal Marketing Fastlane. It hits the Amazon best seller list the next month.

2018

CaseFuel Rebrand

The team hasn’t accepted a client outside of legal in a while, rebrands from Expert Engines to CaseFuel

Back to Facebook

We notice Trust and Estate clients getting a strange amount of price shoppers. To test a hypothesis on channel/market fit we launch our first client account in Tucson. Cost per booked appointment is cut by over 75%.

The Law Firm Growth Podcast

Jan starts interviewing the most successful firms in the country and thought leaders in the legal industry for a weekly podcast. He starts realizing that intake is pretty important.

2019

Total Ad Spend Crosses $1,000,000

Close By CaseFuel

Taking the best practices from top closing clients, the team gets a software platform together to automate intake, track leads and more. Initial clients are able to stay profitable despite rising ad costs

All-In On Trust & Estate

CaseFuel launches their first hybrid program including ad management, software and intake training for estate planning attorneys.

2020

Covid-19 Pandemic

Some of our larger estate planning clients are suddenly without a channel as the country shuts down seminars for lock-down measures. In the next month we adapt the seminar model online. Interestingly, the economics now work for small and solo firms without the cost of direct mail and event venues. We launch this model in dozens of markets over the next few months