Strategies for Time Tracking, Delegation, and Automated Marketing For Law Firms

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 67: Everyone Wants to be a “Lawyer with a Life.” Here’s How One Attorney Did It with Jordan Ostroff

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host is always Jan Roos. And I'm here today with a very exciting guest, in my opinion, the best beard in the legal space, Jordan Ostroff. Thanks for coming on the show, Jordan. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having me. I am truly honored.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome, man. So I wanted to get in and you have such an interesting background. I really had a tough time getting a concise list of questions for the interview. But one of the things I wanted to start with, and I've just picked this up from following some of your LinkedIn posts, and also you had a really interesting handle on a couple of platforms, which was lawyer with a life.

Jan Roos: And you take really serious, this kind of idea of work life balance. How did you get to the point where this is [00:01:00] something that's a reality for you? Cause I feel like everyone wants to get there, but you're actually there.

Jordan Ostroff: I appreciate that. It started out by being totally miserable and working 80 hours a week and 60 pounds overweight and super in debt and just really not happy.

Jordan Ostroff: And then I realized what mattered the most to me was not money. It was time and flexibility and freedom. And then my wife, we found out my wife was pregnant with our kid. So that was a whole nother thing of needing more time to be able to spend with him. And so we just started making as many decisions as we could, prioritizing time and freedom and flexibility instead of money and revenue and whatever.

Jordan Ostroff: And honestly, I think I've gotten farther and done better. Doing those because I

Jan Roos: zig when everybody else X. Yeah, that's interesting. And I want to get to this a little bit later, but the fact that you're running both the law firm and the marketing company was, is, evidence of the fact that you have systems enough to run, not just one business, but two, as far as where you're at that point where it was the [00:02:00] rock bottom, could you have, run us through what was the situation where you're like a solo at the time, what did the company look like?

Jordan Ostroff: Yeah, so I grew up in South Florida. I came up to Orlando to go to the University of Central Florida. Go Knights, charge on. I stayed here to go to Barry. I don't even know what Barry's chant is. And then I was a prosecutor here. So I had nine or 10 years in this area, had done a mock trial at UCF, mock trial at Barry, had been able to get training from judges and local attorneys and whatnot.

Jordan Ostroff: And so when I jumped to start my practice, I had a lot of connections in the community already, not even realizing what that was worth. So like I did well enough to make enough money to make a bunch of bad decisions with that money. If that makes sense, at the peak negative moment of my business life, we had four attorneys, probably three other staff members.

Jordan Ostroff: I bought another firm from another attorney that didn't have any systems and processes. So I bought basically all their [00:03:00] problems without any of the solutions. Couldn't find other marketing efforts to help. I couldn't find other people to help put the systems in place. And so we were like 200, 000 in debt, not including law school, not including a mortgage, not including like legitimate debt, if you will.

Jordan Ostroff: And it was just, it was not a good moment. I'm not a good

Jan Roos: month, year, whatever. Yeah. It's interesting. You bring that up too. I've never really thought about that. This is something that I've seen. I think they say this a lot in like Vern harnesses organization, but it's like, The biggest likelihood of getting this situation where you do find yourself like that, it tends not to happen at the top and it tends not to happen at the bottom, but it really is in kind of the middle ranges of that, couple partners range.

Jan Roos: It's it's really happened with you, but like, why do you think that happens?

Jordan Ostroff: So I guess I'm going to flip that a little bit. Cause I, for me, I always learn more from failure. And so like buying this other firm was my biggest mistake, but actually it was the best thing that I did because of what I learned from it.

Jordan Ostroff: So I think [00:04:00] that, I don't know if people find an issue really in the middle. I guess ultimately I had enough money to overcommit myself. If I had nothing, I wouldn't have been able to overcommit, but I just, I'm a big fan of learning from your mistakes and failures. You're that's where you grow the most.

Jordan Ostroff: And so I actually strive to make a bunch of mistakes so that I can learn more from them. That bad of mistakes again, knock on wood.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Okay. So let's take us back to the point too. So we got a lot of situations. We got the debt house is on fire. What's your order operations? Like, how did you triage that situation?

Jan Roos: Really? What was like the first thing you looked to fix? And then would you go from there?

Jordan Ostroff: So the biggest thing that I looked to fix was my time, not to enjoy it, but to be able to triage more things. So I looked at what are the things that I could offload from me, the quickest, the cheapest, that would save me the most time so that I could throw myself into the larger problems and get this fixed.

Jan Roos: Okay. That's interesting. And what did this happen to be for the firm at the time?

Jordan Ostroff: In terms of what I [00:05:00] offloaded,

Jan Roos: yeah,

Jordan Ostroff: I honestly, I couldn't tell you. It was just a, it's a blur of systems and processes and just continuously going down the list. So in essence, what I tell people is track a full week, like literally go through everything that you're doing in the week and how long it takes.

Jordan Ostroff: See what things come up, see what things take the longest, see what things you think you can offload to, a minimum wage employee or a VA employee, and then that frees you up to have more time to start working on the harder tasks, the higher level tasks, the more customized tasks. So I don't know what my number one, two, five, whatever it was, but that's the methodology I would give to anybody.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And it's actually really interesting too, because I think a lot of common like response to this would be to start cutting costs. But I think when people start cutting costs, they're like unknowingly incurring a huge cost of time on their self. But it's like, when you were able to set with that, you at least had the bandwidth to focus on how to get those bigger prices down.

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jordan Ostroff: Yeah so for me, I cut our marketing [00:06:00] budget because I wasn't sure if it was working because I didn't have the right systems in place. But also it was like, if I'm already drowning, why do I need more water thrown on me?

Jordan Ostroff: So that was the easiest thing to cut. But yeah, every study that talks about longterm success for law firms always talks about growing top line revenue.

Jordan Ostroff: I haven't seen any that talk about the success of lowering overhead just because as attorneys, we have a license to print money. There is no reason that we can't charge more per hour, generate more cases, close a six, eight, nine, 10 figure PI case. Class action lawsuit, whatever. And so everything looks at increasing that top line, not so much limiting the bottom line.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I think also there's like a tendency to, and it's this is something you hear a lot too. It's what makes a good attorney? It's being able to look at a contract and find the one thing that doesn't fit. So it's I think what drives a lot of people to succeed in the field is just like naturally an orientation to the negative.

Jan Roos: And if it's tough to like suppress that in some ways too. But like when you get you can't save your way to a 17 year firm. So there's [00:07:00] so much you can cut, but yeah, let's talk about the marketing a little bit more. So I guess as far as the situation and we'll get to the point that you guys are at today, which is super broad, not only for your own firm, but also doing this for other firms, but I guess what was the situation when you guys turned the marketing back on, how'd you guys prioritize getting that house in order?

Jordan Ostroff: So it was interesting. I pulled the PNLs at one point. I might be slightly off on the numbers, but in essence, we were spending about 150, 000 a year on marketing. And then the next year, when that went to almost zero, my firm did 5, 000 less in business. And that's not to say that the marketing was that wasted.

Jordan Ostroff: It was to say that we were able to double down on referrals, spend more time on recreating the work consistently, building better client relationships, building better referral relationships, building a truly a better business that we were able to make up a lot of that lost revenue from the marketing stuff in,

Jan Roos: Other ways.

Jan Roos: Okay. Gotcha. And the referral is obviously [00:08:00] probably one of the cheapest ways to continue to get the cases going. Probably coming close to zero, but when you guys ended up turning it back on what did you guys focus on?

Jordan Ostroff: So I focused on really thinking about my ideal client. And to be honest, that the answer to that question has changed a number of times.

Jordan Ostroff: over the history of our firm. But basically at that point, our ideal client was going to be a student or an early twenties person at some sort of professional job that would have some sort of criminal case. And so from the student's perspective, the academic stuff is very similar to what they would go through with licensing for a realtor or a barber backed by a criminal case.

Jordan Ostroff: And so the more that I had that ideal client avatar in mind, the more I could vet what marketing made the most sense to them. Knowing that I went to try to go speak over at UCF to fraternities and sororities, we started running our ads in that area or running our ads outside of that area for parents who had previously looked at, UCF or colleges [00:09:00] in Orlando or Valencia or what it was along those lines.

Jordan Ostroff: And then what else we do, we also started looking at some of the social media stuff that was more focused on younger people there. So I don't even remember what it was. It doesn't exist anymore. Yeti or something. I don't know. There was like something like that was making the rounds on campus.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I'm trying to think. Was it too long ago? That was, Oh God, I actually remember. Was that the one where it was like you told a secret anonymously and that was I'm trying to think. I have no idea what the platform was. It was just

Jordan Ostroff: like a bunch of college kids are using this. So put ads there.

Jordan Ostroff: I never used the platform.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. I guess I

Jordan Ostroff: never used the actual platform. I use their ad platform.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Hey if it worked at the end of the day, that's the important thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And as far as it's interesting too. Like I think, there's a hidden lesson there with the fact that you guys were so focused on the client avatar, it almost didn't really matter what you didn't have to know, you have to know what the platform is to get it to work.

Jordan Ostroff: Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, when you I go back to how dumb [00:10:00] I was for the first time. I don't know, two or three years of running my firm where it was like, Hey, what about buying, these leads? What about advertising in a, at a local bar? What about all these things that in retrospect were not wrong period, but we're so wrong for me.

Jordan Ostroff: So wrong for my firm. So wrong for what we were trying to do, but I didn't know enough to say no, which was my problem.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Gotcha. And as far as kind of situation, like zooming all the way forward today, you're running legally as a marketing agency. Like how important do you think the avatar process is to like people that are coming to you for advice and for help in different programs?

Jordan Ostroff: Essential like that is if you don't have your ideal client avatar in mind, if you're not consistently looking at that and tweaking it and changing it and thinking like that person and writing to that person and trying to be where that person is going to be, you're wasting time, money, resources, and you're preventing yourself from being as successful as you can.

Jan Roos: Okay. Absolutely. Now, as far as like people that might not have one of these in mind, [00:11:00] like what's the kind of basic process that, I can also ask you too personally, it's as far as like how you ended up settling on the avatar that ended up working for you, like, how did you end up going for that in terms of, for the law firm?

Jan Roos: Yeah. Or I guess I, how do people, how do you recommend people think about this generally if it's a blank slate?

Jordan Ostroff: Oh yeah. So I have, I've got a worksheet that I've sent people and it's 35 questions, but honestly, this is like the most fun thing you can do. If you're not sure about this, literally I would get together with you and your significant other, your spouse, everybody else at the firm, or I guess on zoom with, with COVID and everything.

Jordan Ostroff: And just be like, Hey, create Steve for me, create Julie for me, put together somebody walking in the door, contacting us. What do we want them to look like? And I don't mean that like physically look like, but what do we want their problem to be, how old do we want them to be? What do we want their job to be?

Jordan Ostroff: What do we want their history to be? What do we want their hobbies and interests to be? And then, you obviously have to make sure that matches what you're trying to [00:12:00] do. I'm sure all of us would love to represent ultra high net worth multi billionaires, pay us a thousand dollars an hour for whatever it is, but if we're doing traffic tickets.

Jordan Ostroff: that, those things don't align. But it's a really interesting and fun experience to create that person in essence. And then you start thinking like them then you get to play that role play of, if I'm a 20 year old college student who just got a DUI, what am I doing? Am I telling my parents?

Jordan Ostroff: Probably not. So what am I doing? I'm going to talk to my friends. I know that one kid in my one class that disappeared for six weeks, because he went to jail What did you do? And then don't hire that lawyer, find a better one, whatever it is along those lines. It can actually be a lot of fun.

Jordan Ostroff: And then honestly, you just test it, you try it, you give it a shot. And then refer back to see what works and what doesn't work because there will always be mistakes. Or there will always be lost opportunities, let's call them.

Jan Roos: Yeah, no, that's super interesting. And one of the things, and this is a conver this is like a topic that comes up like a fair bit on the podcast too.

Jan Roos: It's like you always talk about the importance of niching. And using your guys case, [00:13:00] it's you guys didn't Set out to be the best criminal firm in Florida. Like you guys set out to be the best criminal firm in that area for that avatar. And I always talk about stuff about it's always a tension between the total volume of people that you want to talk to and like the, the fitting to the avatar.

Jan Roos: So I guess like from that point, like once you have your avatar in place, how do you know if you have an avatar that's big enough? Great question.

Jordan Ostroff: I don't know if there's an answer other than you try it and see.

And

Jordan Ostroff: the more that you are comfortable with the amount of cases, the more you're comfortable with what you're doing, the easier it is to say no to things that are on the fence or not your avatar.

Jordan Ostroff: I, I don't fault anybody who takes cases that they probably shouldn't 'cause they really, truly need the money. You just need to have a plan and process in place to start turning those cases down because it's not gonna be good for you. It's not gonna help you grow the firm. You're not going to be able to really be known for something if you're taking anything that comes in the door.

Jordan Ostroff: And you're not going to be as good handling every single case under the sun. You're not going to build as great relationships with [00:14:00] other attorneys by referring them cases and getting the cases you are the best at back to you. And you're going to miss out on a lot the longer that you don't allow yourself to truly focus.

Jan Roos: It's a really interesting point. Cause it's I think a lot of the times people think about this from like a marketing perspective, but yeah, if this is probably a good opportunity to segue to talk about process stuff a lot more, because like ultimately, you can have that retainer that comes in, but if you're not getting good at that one type of thing that you're doing, you're not gaining ground while other people are not right.

Jordan Ostroff: Yeah. And it's really interesting to me because look, I'm a big fan of do whatever you want to do, but strive to be the best at it. If you want to work in the fast food industry, be the best burger flip or whatever. That's totally fine. I have no qualms about that. What I have problems about is people that get involved in something and mail it in.

Jordan Ostroff: And unfortunately, like there are a lot of attorneys doing that not by choice. You get the average solo attorney making between 40 and 60, 000 a year who may have 150, 000 in law [00:15:00] school debt, plus business debt, plus a mortgage, plus. Whatever it is, plus maybe a spouse that lost their job for COVID.

Jordan Ostroff: Like I, I get it and do what you got to do, but take whatever extra time you can and work yourself into a position to not have to make those sacrifices as quickly as you can.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. And now also being able to fast forward and see where you ended up getting from that kind of like start story, it's no, you've obviously put a lot of time into process to get to the point where a lot of this stuff is running more or less automated without your involvement.

Jan Roos: For a lot of it. We can go back to that story, but I'm just curious, like, how in general do you think about offloading a process that you're handling today and you want somebody else to be doing tomorrow?

Jordan Ostroff: So it was Jim Hacking said this, or I guess I shouldn't say that Jim Hacking was involved in this conversation.

Jordan Ostroff: I don't remember if he said it. Or if it was a guest, but he talked about in essence, the, if somebody can do an 80 percent as well, you want to pass it off to them, but they added the fact that that gives you that much more time to get it to that a hundred percent mark. And so that was the thing [00:16:00] that I never understood, it was always like, look, I want to be the best.

Jordan Ostroff: I can do it better than anybody else, which is totally not true. And for so many reasons, but really it's more if they can get it good enough, I can get it to where it needs to be in a lot less time. And so for a lot of these processes that you're doing as an attorney, that's probably the first step.

Jordan Ostroff: And the benefit of that extra is then you send it back to the paralegal, the legal assistant, the other attorney. Who got it to 80 percent of where it needs to be, you give them the other 20%, you explain to them why it's there. And then the next time it should be 85 percent the way you need. And then you do the 15 percent and you give them the feedback and then it should be, it should work its way up for them to do it.

Jordan Ostroff: At this point, like I'm not a burden to my firm, but I don't, I run a meeting once a week for the firm and that's it because they're better at what they're doing than I am. Like that is their. Everybody has their kingdom in our firm that they are in charge of, that they are so much better at than I am.

Jordan Ostroff: And I just get brought [00:17:00] in to bounce ideas, make sure that everybody did their other tasks, that we are consistently making things smoother and better. But they're the ones doing it because they're in control. They're smarter about it. They're more knowledgeable about it. They're more invested in it.

Jordan Ostroff: They're more interested in it. They're better at it and they've got totally different skills than they.

Jan Roos: I definitely want to dig into the conversation about empowerment because it seems like you guys have been doing a lot of that, but before that, I just want to clarify one thing. So are you saying that for the most part, when you have a new process in the firm, you're letting them take it from zero to 80.

Jan Roos: And then at that point, they're giving you back to feedback. Like you don't need like a new process. You're not the first pair of hands to touch that.

Jordan Ostroff: At this point, no, at the beginning. So going remote is perfect for this. Just screen share, get in a zoom meeting, get in Google meet, even by yourself, record your screen, walk through doing it the way you want it done, and then send it to the person who's supposed to do it and then work with them on the next couple track to see what's going on, fill in what's going to happen.

Jordan Ostroff: And then ultimately you get to a point where [00:18:00] it's like, all right. And now it's yours and in three months, let me know, how can you make it better? What can you do? What have you learned from doing this over and over again that can take it to the next level? That's how I think you have to start it when you're offloading things for the first time.

Jordan Ostroff: At this point I am, I don't even know the wifi in my firm. It's just, they send me a post it note when it gets changed and I update it. Like I'm just out of. So much of that stuff.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And as far as you have a situation where the team's handling it, how much of this was, nature versus nurture.

Jan Roos: Are you hiring people that have the capability to do it? Or is it through going through this process that people are able to develop their own ability to create things like this?

Jordan Ostroff: Fantastic question. So I'm going to give you a lawyer answer and then let me know if I actually answered it. The biggest problem that people, the biggest mistake that I see people making with hiring is twofold.

Jordan Ostroff: It is not doing it soon enough, which I get the, you're taking on quite a bit of risk. And two, it's prioritizing experience over [00:19:00] skills, over talent, over ability, over interest. And I have done it and I still do it. Don't get me wrong, but those are the two things that I see blowing up in people's faces.

Jordan Ostroff: Which is not to say you won't find great people who are talented, but if you have somebody who's got the experience and the talent, then don't worry about the cost. If you're worrying about cost, I'd rather take somebody with the right mindset, the right skills, the right techniques than with the experience.

Jordan Ostroff: And I think like the easiest way to explain that is when you're hiring somebody to answer the phone at your law firm, probably for the most part, I'd rather have somebody who's Never worked in a law firm before, but comes to me from Disney customer service or work at a fancy hotel or something along those lines than the person who's got 20 years in a law firm, because they probably weren't doing it my way, as opposed to this person's got better training than I'm ever going to give them.

Jordan Ostroff: From, what may have been like a summer job in college, that may give them these incredible skills that [00:20:00] they can bring into our office for the betterment of everybody else internally and our clients. And I don't think a lot of people make those decisions because we think that Oh, we're the ivory tower of law.

Jordan Ostroff: No one will ever understand this when really I think we need to understand people and you can learn the law a lot easier than you can learn how to interact with other humans. From a lawyer perspective, from a staff member perspective. From a legal perspective.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really interesting. I guess like outside of the realm of attorneys that are actually providing the service, like you also get like a big opportunity to bring some learnings from other industries too it was funny, I can imagine if you hired that person from Disney, I bet their customer service training is top notch.

Jan Roos: I would love to crib those notes if I had the opportunity for sure. And then as far as and then this might be a rapid fire one, if people aren't hiring soon enough, what do you recommend? For people as their first hire, take some time off and get themself on the right track.

Jordan Ostroff: Like person wise, or how do I rationalize the mindset?

Jordan Ostroff: I guess both, we'll start with person. [00:21:00] So person, you want somebody that is going to be able to follow your lead and. Follow your lead and take it farther, follow your lead and do it faster, follow your lead at and whatever is along those lines, because from the mindset standpoint, I think we get stuck focusing on cost, but really you need to focus on opportunity cost.

Jordan Ostroff: If you have enough work to be billing 250 an hour, and instead you're doing filing for an hour, you're in essence costing yourself 250 bucks. So if you can hire somebody for $10 an hour to do an hour of filing, you bill your hour 50. Now you've made 200 or your two 50, you've got, you've made two 40 because the two 50 minus the 10 bucks you paid them.

Jordan Ostroff: As opposed to you losing out on $250, you've got an almost $500 swing between having that person do it and having you do it. And that's where I think a [00:22:00] lot of law firm owners get stuck is they're like it's gonna cost me $30,000 to bring this person on, or whatever the number is. And great at two 50 an hour times, 10 hours a week, times 52 weeks a year.

Jordan Ostroff: That 30, 000 person just saved you 750, 000.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Okay. Like putting the numbers like that, that absolutely makes a ton of sense too. And then do you would you recommend somebody go into helping people, helping themselves out on like the fulfillment side or one of these admin positions or what's like a good place to start anything?

Jan Roos: Fantastic

Jordan Ostroff: question. There is no right answer. Because the right answer is have them start doing what you don't want to do. So I tell all law firm owners, you're looking at three things that you should be aiming for. How much money do I want to make? How much do I want to work? And what actual work do I want to be doing?

Jordan Ostroff: And that third prong of those questions is going to answer for you who you should bring on first. Me, I hated e filing. It was my least favorite thing. I don't know [00:23:00] anything about e filing in any other state, but in Florida, there's no API, it cannot integrate with anything else, or at least it couldn't when the last I checked and it's 15 buttons of clicking through this is the case number, this is the County, this is whatever.

Jordan Ostroff: So I gave that to a law student for whatever it was, 10 bucks an hour as quickly as possible, because I hated it. And then I found out what was the next thing that I hated. And I went from there. Mixed in with what would save me the most time.

Jan Roos: Great,

Jordan Ostroff: gotcha.

Jan Roos: And I know we breezed over this in the beginning, but I'm really curious about that exercise that you mentioned earlier about going through like on the week to week basis.

Jan Roos: So like getting down in the nitty gritty, like how do you do this time tracking process and what kind of increments are we talking about? Like how does somebody run that to get an idea of where their time's actually going?

Jordan Ostroff: So what we've had people do is an Excel spreadsheet.

Jordan Ostroff: And they go by the clock and just clock your entire day. And it's I understand you're going to be 10 to 15 percent less efficient because not only are you doing billable hours or not only are you handling cases, but you're also writing down

on

Jordan Ostroff: the [00:24:00] sheet, but you get an idea for it. And and I have people put in look, put in, go into the bathroom, put in, making coffee, put in, making lunch, whatever.

Jordan Ostroff: I'm not using this to tell you that you're wasting time. I'm using this to figure out what of your time we can offload the easiest. I'm not bringing in a personal chef to take lunch off your plate, but if I find out that my, head paralegal is spending two hours a day fixing documents from the legal assistant or filing or something that shouldn't be their job, we can address those ASAP.

Jan Roos: Interesting. And like that's the thing too. It's I feel like it's such a nebulous thing and COVID of all times too. Like I can't even tell you what month it is sometimes, let alone what I did last week. So I think a lot of people could probably be worthwhile going to do that kind of exercise.

Jan Roos: Okay. So I wanted to switch gears in terms of talking about the agency. So this is something that I used to like flippantly say to clients when they were talking about it Oh yeah, we need to have this copy or this copy. Look, honestly, if you guys want to have this much control over the process, you might as well just, Don't run a law firm, run an agency.

Jan Roos: And then you actually did that. I wanted to talk about that process. I know. What was the [00:25:00] kind of timeline? Like I gathered that, you guys were running a lot of this stuff in house, but how'd you make a decision? And what led you to doing that in the first place?

Jordan Ostroff: So started in house as my own solution to the problem that I couldn't find the right solution from anybody else. And then I realized that was my blue flame. That was where I burned the hottest. That was what I truly enjoyed running a business and doing marketing is what truly not gets me up in the morning, but it's what I truly enjoy when I have to do work at, or I guess to the extent that sometimes I don't even think it's work where I don't feel that way about legal work.

Jordan Ostroff: Like legal work is work and it's worth doing. What somebody will pay you for it often, but it was not my, it was not my thing. And so I was like, let me work with a couple other people that I know locally. Let me see if it works for them the same way it worked for me. Let me see if I'll learn by working with them.

Jordan Ostroff: And really we found out that a lot of the same things. It's not a question of we had the same ideal client, but I had them answer the same questions that I answered to come up with my ideal client. And then we took [00:26:00] the same steps from there to go where they're going to be where their ideal client is going to go and who they're going to talk to.

Jordan Ostroff: And so it was crazy to see the replicability of the same methodology. And then finally I was like, you know what? Screw it. Let's see what happens. Let's try to sell this. And here we are.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And then as far as the team is like, is it the team that was originally working in house that ended up becoming the agency or like, how did that kind of scale out from there?

Jordan Ostroff: So I had, let's call it pick the brain of somebody who really knew marketing, who was local. Who has since now become my business partner on the explosion of this, because I have never worked in an agency. I've never I guess now before now I've never run an agency before now. So there are things that are going to be way different.

Jordan Ostroff: There are things that are hyper technical, even a lot of it's just lingo. Like I have the word hard stop is my new favorite thing. Never used that before until now. That's our big, we've got the proposal meeting with a hard stop. And whatnot along those lines. And then I've only taken one [00:27:00] person from the law firm who actually is split.

Jordan Ostroff: She's in a really good spot to be overseeing social media for both companies internally from the same mindset and doesn't even work with any clients. In either direction of the companies. Otherwise there's no other crossover.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's interesting. And having sat on both sides of the table too, it's interesting.

Jan Roos: Cause you had a part of your career where you're working with, how would I call it? Regular Joes. Now you have a situation where you're on the other side of the table, working with attorneys as clients, what's your perspective on working with either form? And what kind of, have you gained any perspective on blind spots that you might've had that people are listening to the show might have, but they don't realize about themselves.

Jordan Ostroff: Good question. Yes, I'm going to call some attorneys out, not by name. But before that, so we did legal ease marketing EASC because I really like dad jokes. If you follow me on TikTok, it's all bad dad jokes with me and my kid. But I have found that to actually be a really good name idea because one of the biggest things I try to do as a lawyer was explain [00:28:00] legal terms to somebody who wasn't a lawyer.

Jordan Ostroff: And now from the marketing side, I try to explain marketing terms to somebody who's not a marketer, but they're a lawyer. And so like I'm translating legalese into marketese and marketese into legalese and all that into normal English. What I have found that's interesting has been, I think a lot of attorneys would learn how their clients feel by going through the process of pitching other attorneys.

Jordan Ostroff: And so like I, I get ghosted all the time by lawyers who I'm sure hate when their clients or their potential clients ghost them. I get price sensitivity from lawyers all the time by lawyers who I'm sure hate when their clients have the same price sensitivity. I get, they don't see the value from lawyers all the time who I'm sure don't understand why their clients don't see the value from their own legal services.

Jordan Ostroff: And I think it's been such an interesting concept to get that feeling. And I'm trying to figure out how you convey that to lawyers, not because I care about how they treat me, but I care about them [00:29:00] using that understanding to help them do a better job closing their clients and getting over, the objections that their clients would have.

Jan Roos: Yeah, it's actually super interesting because I don't know if this is out yet, but I did record a podcast on this, on, on the topic too, but I think it all boils down to what people, it's like people have a fundamental philosophy of what they find acceptable in life. So if you think that a sale needs to take 14, meetings to close and you need to call 38 references and all of the other stuff.

Jan Roos: Brigham role. Don't be surprised when that ends up coming on your doorstep, because on some level you've micro communicated and you're not going to be angry at someone if they use, on some level you might, it's not super a little bit hypocritical if you are, but yeah, it's it's a, I think like people, you see not to be like super woo about it, but you end up seeing what you put out in the universe in some way.

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jordan Ostroff: Yeah, I like, I want to find a way to craft an email that's just Hey, do you remember how I called you five times and sent you six emails and you've opened all of them? Because I can see that, but you've never responded. That's totally cool. I just [00:30:00] want you to be aware that when you get upset, the clients do that to you, understand what you're feeling, like, why did you avoid me?

Jordan Ostroff: Because the clients are thinking the same thing for you. So how do you translate that objection to prevent it? And, but I can't rationalize that in a non douchey way. And so I'm trying, if I get to it, like I'm going to do it. And cause I genuinely mean it for their benefit. Like I would rather a lawyer be happy and not be my client.

Jordan Ostroff: Like I have no problem with that if you are happy. It's when you're miserable and inaction is the reason you're not my client or Albert Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. That's when I get upset.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't have too much of a solution for either.

Jan Roos: I'll let you know if I find one, but it's the best that we've had is like karma now, which isn't the, which probably isn't the most productive, but no it's really interesting. And as far as the mindset stuff, it's you bring a really interesting perspective from your history on that stuff too.

Jan Roos: But as far as channels and stuff go have you seen things change from, either the time when you were announced to what are you excited about [00:31:00] today? As far as, changes in, the broader marketing landscape.

Jordan Ostroff: So really interesting you mentioned this. So I have totally stolen Gary Vee's model.

Jordan Ostroff: Like in essence, I'm trying to be the Gary Vee, top of funnel, create awareness, all that stuff. And the problem that I've always had is I don't think he talks about tactics enough, but now from this side, I'm like, Oh, because the tactics change all the time, there is no way to have evergreen tactics.

Jordan Ostroff: And then like on LinkedIn, my specific tactics posts die. Like my audience does not care about like Here's a really good tip when you're running Facebook ads, do this instead of that. It's not their wheelhouse. And it's been really interesting to see the fact that I just don't think that our clients really care about that.

Jordan Ostroff: And to some extent, they shouldn't. In essence, they're hiring us to deal with the tactic changes versus them having to worry about it themselves. So I don't know if that answered your question or not.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Just as far as things that are changing too, cause it's no, you guys have a really big, like breadth of services on [00:32:00] terms of stuff that you guys offer illegally.

Jan Roos: If not that, I also was curious about you guys have a lot of stuff, like how do you get these different channels to play with each other?

Jordan Ostroff: So that goes back to that ideal client avatar, like that's why I never saw the merit in we sell pay per click ads or we sell SEO or being solution specific, unless you're going to be client specific.

Jordan Ostroff: If you're only working with car accident lawyers, I get only selling pay per click ads because for the most part that's going to work for them. It's intent based. Something just happened. That's So our perspective is like the, you look at it as us offering broad solutions. I look at it as that gives us the right tools for each individual project.

Jordan Ostroff: And so that allows us to have these things all work together because in essence, it's like, where is your ideal client going to be? If you're trying to target. Younger people, how cool would it be if on some random day, they're listening to a podcast on Spotify on the way to work, then they get home and they're [00:33:00] playing YouTube ads.

Jordan Ostroff: And then they're messing around on Facebook after that. And then you've got ads in those three spots and they happen to catch your ad three times throughout the course of their day, and they're your ideal client. I think that's just a strong. Pitch, obviously, if you retarget, you can jump that, but if you've thought like them and if you've tried to market to them, you're going to get enough people that literally you are marketing to their life.

Jordan Ostroff: It's going to be amazing and really difficult for them to avoid you.

Jan Roos: Yeah. You're basically omnipresent to that person, as long as you do it if you have the right channels and just curious for for different firms and different avatars, is it the same mix? Are you guys going for different ones?

Jordan Ostroff: No, it totally well for sometimes it's totally different others. It's not we've had some where literally our entire marketing campaign has been to referral sources that we're not even trying to target clients, we're trying to get that estate planning attorney in front of a bunch of financial advisors.

Jordan Ostroff: At scale. We're trying to get that real estate attorney in front of a bunch of realtors or title companies or mortgage brokers. And it's been crazy to see the [00:34:00] success of a lot of those while everybody's still stuck inside from COVID while everybody's, not going out to lunch that we have these people booking.

Jordan Ostroff: Zoom calls, how often does that lead to referrals? I don't know. I'll I'll know more the longer that we do it, but it's been really interesting to hit what, to hit the solution people are trying to get or trying to solve the problem rather than giving them a consistent solution.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's interesting too.

Jan Roos: Cause it's I find it very impressive that you guys are having success with these channels. And it's what would you say are the commonalities that allow you guys to win on channels like, Spotify or, LinkedIn outbound message. What's how do you guys have this what, what plays across the different channels,

Jordan Ostroff: so the ideal client, their demographics and trying to create their normal day. If you're a business law attorney and you're trying to get in front of, small to medium sized business owners, what are they going to do in their normal day? In the past, they'd go to the chamber of commerce meeting.

Jordan Ostroff: They'd be in a BNI chapter, maybe they're doing some digital stuff, but now what are they doing today? Are they on [00:35:00] LinkedIn? Are they in Facebook groups? Are they on, what is their normal day and who are they talking to or interacting with in their normal day? And then you try and get in front of them there and you try and get connected with.

Jordan Ostroff: The people that they're talking to, it's crazy because the more specific you get with that, the more you're willing to pay for marketing efforts because you know that they're in the right place.

Jan Roos: And it's it's also like less competition if you think about it too. It's who doesn't know how to throw up a Google ad these days, but if you're the person who's cracking these channels that no one else is on, that's a huge advantage as well.

Jan Roos: Yes.

Jordan Ostroff: Yes. But you're not just cracking the channel. You are figuring out who's already on that channel, who's already on that platform, who's already engaged, and then you're finding, are they the client for this firm? I'm not going to tell you that we have created a marketplace. But if we, where people are shopping, which market to be in.

Jan Roos: Yeah, it's interesting. And it's it's really funny because it's [00:36:00] like, you guys have such an interesting approach and it's almost inverting the way that we've always approached things. I find it so fascinating because it's like the order of which you guys are putting things out is totally different, but it totally works, which is really awesome to see.

Jan Roos: It's the last thing I wanted to talk about too, was I noticed that you guys have some stuff around automated marketing on lead and I guess intake type stuff, which is like a commonality across all these, different potential platforms. What do you think is important about these things too?

Jan Roos: There's so many solutions that are out there as far as, CRMs and, autoresponder sequences. I was like, what do you think is really important stuff that people should be focusing on? Great question.

Jordan Ostroff: So I. Look at this a little bit differently because my perspective is the more that you are consistent, which usually means automated for some of these things, but the more that you are consistent, the more you know what's working before the consistency and afterwards.

Jordan Ostroff: I talk to law firms all the time and Clio trends will tell you like 68 percent of lawyers don't follow up with leads more than once. So in that perspective, like what's the point of [00:37:00] sending that person leads if they never going to follow up? Because what will happen is the months that they're dead, they follow up a bunch, sign a bunch of cases up, then they get busy and they stop following up.

Jordan Ostroff: And then you have no idea if the ads are still working or they're making any difference, or if it's the efforts of the firm. So by making that intake system more consistent. You can see the benefit of what's coming into it a lot better and you free up the time to be more personalized because you're going to get those people that want, a second consultation just to ask you the same five questions that every client has, but like they need it to be that formal.

Jordan Ostroff: And now you've got the flexibility and freedom to do that because you're not sending out 35 emails to every other lead, those are done automatically in the system.

Jan Roos: So basically, yeah, if you have the volume there, then you don't necessarily, if you can filter it, then you don't have to deal with everyone too.

Jan Roos: It's it's like an inverse sort of relationship, right?

Jordan Ostroff: And even though, and even when you're at the low end, the trackability of this and the consistency of it helps you [00:38:00] not waste money that you don't necessarily have. Yeah.

Jan Roos: And like time, you don't have either too. Yeah. And as far as like any, I don't know if this is like a geeky tech question, like what do you guys use as far as your stack

Jordan Ostroff: tech stack wise?

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jordan Ostroff: I'm a big fan of the Google suite as the backbone with all of those we are CRM agnostic as a company. I personally like Lawmatics because that's what I found for my firm at the time that I needed it, but we've worked with, any of those CRMs for other law firms, I don't even know what our video people are using for the video stuff from there, but it's just, it's an interesting thing.

Jordan Ostroff: I'm a fan of the. Less. So the fewer systems that you are using, the fewer software that you're using as if it'll do 90 percent of what you need, 90 percent as well as you need it, you're going to scale so much better and then you're in the position to be like, Hey, this person's the only one with access to Photoshop, Adobe, Final Cut Pro, what, whatever it is that their job entails.

Jordan Ostroff: [00:39:00] The more that you have 15 different systems across the whole firm, law firm and otherwise, the more you have to spend training everybody, the longer it takes for them to be good at their job, the longer it takes for them to do tasks repetitively enough to become better and better at it. So I am, I'm not a fan of jack of all trades.

Jordan Ostroff: I think you give everybody their expertise and I think you cross train everybody with one or two other positions when people are sick or out and you just let them, run wild.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I gotta say too, like as far as, looking at the scoreboard, the amount of time that you guys are able to take as far as, running the business versus being in the weeds, it seems like that's probably a winning approach.

Jordan Ostroff: I hope so. I, I just, it's the biggest. So again, we go back to the hiring, but like retention is a huge part as well, because you're going to, if you bring in the right person, you need to keep them. And I think these law firms, these businesses that I talked to law firms or otherwise that are like, Hey, we're using Zapier to link Google forms with constant contact with.

Jordan Ostroff: [00:40:00] Dubsado with BombBomb, with Loom, with this, with that holy crap. That's a whole day's lesson just on what system does what? Like, where do you have to log in to get to what you need? And I think that you don't get as happy employees if they're getting trained every week on a new system and a new service and a new process and a new design, as opposed to being like, look, this is your responsibility.

Jordan Ostroff: This is your ownership. This is your house or whatever it is. You tell us how to make it better.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's interesting too, because it's I've gotten some feedback to, and this is more like friends talking about their crappy managers and that kind of stuff too, like two sides of this one is no one likes the manager.

Jan Roos: Who's got a new initiative every three days. And the second thing is, I've noticed this on the client side too. And tell me, have you seen this too? A lot of the times. I found this type of person that just enjoys making complex systems for complex systems sake. And normally this [00:41:00] isn't a super successful person.

Jan Roos: And I think nine out of 10 times they're doing that so they can avoid, making an uncomfortable call to a prospect that they don't want to make. But, as you pointed out, it's there's a huge organizational cost to this complexity, let alone your own time, right?

Jordan Ostroff: Yeah. So from what you're talking about, the metaphor that I use is a law firm is like If it's just you and it's small, you've got that little John boat and you're turning on a dime.

Jordan Ostroff: But as you build, you end up as this giant cruise ship and if, God forbid anybody's been on a cruise ship or somebody went overboard, but like it's a mile and a half to turn that ship around to come back to try and find somebody. And so you have to look at your law firm the same way. If you're going to change directions and pivot, the bigger you are, the harder that's going to be to do.

Jordan Ostroff: From an organizational standpoint, which is why I think you've seen a lot of the AMLA, a lot of the big firms have to lay off a ton of people because they couldn't make the COVID pivot. Whereas a lot of the smaller firms were like, Hey, need us to do bankruptcy next month. Great. I'm going to take the CLE now and we're good to go.

Jan Roos: Yeah, [00:42:00] no, that's awesome. And at the end of the day too, like it boils down to, Sometimes one of the easiest ways to get good process to keep it simple. A

Jordan Ostroff: million percent.

Jan Roos: Okay. And I got to say too, I don't know if I'm going to get a pithy run to the conversation. And we're also getting to the end of the hour.

Jan Roos: Yeah, Jordan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I definitely know as far as what's the best place what's the best place for people to get in touch and get in your world,

Jordan Ostroff: sure. My ideal spot to connect is on LinkedIn. So basically what I looked at is. I think attorneys need to have about 5, 000 a month to have a disposable, to have enough stuff to put into marketing, to try different channels solutions, get enough volume to figure out whether it works.

Jordan Ostroff: So my question became, how do you help people get to that level at scale? And so my goal on LinkedIn is to share the knowledge that a law firm owner needs to run a better firm, build a better business, make more money for free at scale from musings inside my brain. On LinkedIn.

Jan Roos: That's awesome. And I follow these all the time.

Jan Roos: Hashtag Jordan. Oh, in the know. Thank [00:43:00] you.

Jordan Ostroff: Somebody gave me that advice and I was like, this is the most vain thing I've ever done. Let's see what happens. I think now I have two followers. One of them is me on it. So there's somebody else out there.

Jan Roos: You're living rent free in my head, man. So it's working on at least three.

Jan Roos: Hey, I appreciate it. All right. Let's do that other one. You might just be the second one. Double check. But Jordan, I appreciate you for taking the time to talk to some of the listeners today and yeah, for everyone else, we'll see you guys next week Tuesday, 8 AM Eastern on The Law Firm Growth podcast.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Grove podcast. For show notes, free resources, and more, head on over to casefuel.com/podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.