Marketing, Operations, and Onboarding from Zaira Solano

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 12: Radio Advertisting Success and Scaling a Passionate Practice with Zaira Solano

Last week we met with Kay and we spoke about how prioritizing complex cases can lead to high profits

Zaira Solano: [00:00:00] Even law firms who are growing don't actually pay attention to this. And I wonder if I did at the very beginning, we would be even bigger today.

Narrator: 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.

Narrator: Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Casefuel Podcast. I'm your host, Jan Roos, and I'm here today with Zaira Solano of the Solano Law Firm. So this is the third episode in our series with the Law Firm 500, fastest growing law firms in the country.

Jan Roos: And we have some really great podcasts lined up today with Zaira, who's been doing some very interesting stuff around immigration law. So she's hailing originally from Hackensack, New Jersey, but has set up a fantastic practice in Atlanta. Engage close to 150 percent growth last year. So we're really excited to see what she has to say.

Jan Roos: And thanks for coming on to the [00:01:00] podcast, Zaira.

Zaira Solano: Absolutely. Yon, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here and shed light on the questions that you'll be asking me and how we can help other law firm entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Jan Roos: All right. Fantastic. So we've got a little bit of a high level overview.

Jan Roos: Of what ended up happening to get to the point. But would you mind telling us a little bit more about the story of how you got to the point where you're at with the Solano law firm? That's kind of sort of the origin story of, of how you got here.

Zaira Solano: Sure. So the origin story goes really back, really far back to my childhood at a very young age, I knew that I wanted to own a business and work for myself.

Zaira Solano: And for a long time, I was interested in the medical field. And when I got to high school, I discovered mock trial. For those of you listening who don't know what that is, it is basically teams from different schools compete against each other. And you form the team by having witnesses and attorneys, and you get this big binder with all the case facts and details and you compete.

Zaira Solano: And that really ignited. My passion for the law and throughout the time that I was in high school, in [00:02:00] college, and in law school, I always worked for attorneys. I was looking for opportunities all the time and looking for internships and really learning as much as I could about the law because I knew that the day I had my bar license, I was going to open up a business.

Zaira Solano: So I graduated from law school in May, 2011, and I was working for an immigration law firm at the time and had just finished an externship with the public defender's office in Atlanta. And I was offered an associate position at both places, but I was extremely passionate about running my own business, particularly because I saw that Latinos.

Zaira Solano: We're not getting the representation that they deserve, that they were not learning anything about their process. They weren't making decisions on their files. They weren't, no one was communicating with them about the steps and procedures. And I just felt that there not only were their rights being violated, but at the same time, they didn't have attorneys who were best representing their interests.

Zaira Solano: So I started my own firm with a hundred dollars in November of 2011. When I made a [00:03:00] decision, I went to office depot and bought some office supplies that I. Needed to properly submit paperwork to the immigration court, found an alumni attorney who had some office space available and pretty much negotiated really low rent for a few months until I can get some business and pay him back.

Zaira Solano: And that was the starting point of the firm. And I had a laptop and a Google voice number and that's it.

Jan Roos: Well, that's fantastic. We'll talk about a classic American entrepreneur story, starting from really humble beginnings and scaling up to the point where you've got a firm that's doing a lot of business right now.

Jan Roos: So immigration, obviously a pretty hot topic with the political climate being what it is in 2018. Beyond that, one of the things we like to talk about is sort of the importance of having a niche. And it sounds like one of the directions that you've been going in is, is being able to serve the Latino community.

Jan Roos: Could you tell us a little bit more about how that's been working out for you or any other sort of niching things that you've been doing to differentiate your practice?

Zaira Solano: Yeah, so we help immigrants live and work legally in the United States so they can build a better future. And the, that is the mission statement behind [00:04:00] our law firm and myself as a person.

Zaira Solano: I am the daughter of immigrants and the sacrifices that my parents made in leaving their careers behind was not in vain because I've been able to live what I believe is the American dream. Every day have the opportunities and the ability to work towards my goals. And that is something that America offers to everyone, whether you're a citizen, a permanent resident, or you have no status at all.

Zaira Solano: You know, and I really take that to heart. And I, and the reason I do what I do is because I'm not special. Everyone else has the same opportunities that I can, and America is the place to do it. And Latinos particularly. Are really hardworking class of people and they don't come here just to come here for no reason.

Zaira Solano: Like most immigrants, they come to the United States to seek new opportunities, to seek better opportunities, to have a family, to give their children the education that they didn't have when they were young. And to also live in a place where you are protected by the police, to live in a place [00:05:00] where you can have absolutely nothing and build an empire.

Zaira Solano: And so. With the Latino community that we help, that is our goal in representing them. It's not just about getting a green card or becoming a citizen. It's really about what do we do on a daily basis in representing a client that's getting them one step closer to living the dream that they envisioned before they came to this country.

Zaira Solano: So although we do immigration and yes, we argue in court, we litigate. We prepare all of their applications. We walk them through the entire process in the end. What really matters is that removing that obstacle of not having legal status will further help them achieve their dreams and work on their goals.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that sounds fantastic. And I want to point out to anyone that's listening, you know, there's, there's a difference between people that are picking a niche and people that are really living it. And, you know, it actually really comes across in the way that you kind of talk about this stuff, Zaira, that it's not only just, Hey, look it looks like there was a big opportunity in immigration law and this is the place we want to go.

Jan Roos: But, you know, having [00:06:00] those values and having really the reason behind it is something that's coming across in the way that you're positioning yourself in the market, obviously, but also, you know, the kind of experience that people are getting from your clients and, you know, that's going to end up helping out anyone who's thinking about niching.

Jan Roos: Similarly, if you can really think about the ways that That you can help yourself get like a genuine position on that. It really makes the entire process a lot easier. So it's, it's absolutely fantastic to hear about that. Now as far as the way that you've been getting, I mean, I mean, it sounds like you do fantastic work, so I'm sure referrals are a huge part of your business, Saira, but how was you getting clients these days and what really contributed to that massive growth that you were able to post in 2017?

Zaira Solano: So when we first started. That was November 2011 and in January of 2012, so just about two months into practice, I had the opportunity to record a live radio show every single Wednesday on one of the premier Latino stations in Atlanta, where I was sharing valuable information about immigration [00:07:00] processes with the community.

Zaira Solano: So that they can hear it from an attorney and not their neighbor or their mechanic or someone who has no experience in this area, which is extremely complex. And also accept phone calls with questions and help them as much as I could, obviously over the radio. And for many issues, they were too complicated or I gave them a simple answer to help them into the right direction.

Zaira Solano: But that eventually led to. To them calling the office of scheduling an appointment. So for about five to six months, after I opened the business, I was on the radio offering discounted consultations. I've always charged for consultations. It was ingrained in me by one of my mentors. So that's one of the things that really helped me get off the ground.

Zaira Solano: After about six months, I was no longer on that particular radio station. I also hustle market selled. Those were like. The top three things that I was focusing on in the beginning, because it's not like I was in court all the time or in different immigration interviews, I had a lot of time on my hands.

Zaira Solano: So everyone I knew, [00:08:00] every friend, every network I had, whether it was on Facebook or my family or whoever it was, I could, I never stopped talking about what I was doing and that I had just gotten started through that I was able to. Get a lot of clients. And then from there, clients have been referring business for the last seven years that the firm has existed.

Zaira Solano: But the things that are helping me now are radio station in the state of Alabama, where the newscaster every day, he provides the news to the community. And we endorse that particular segment on the radio. And at least once a week, he focuses only on immigration. And I go on the show with him and. answer some of his questions about those pressing issues.

Zaira Solano: We do a lot of back end marketing. So, yes, we get a lot of referrals from our existing clients and that doesn't just come from doing good work. It also comes from remaining in contact with them. So, from time to time, we will call former clients and just see how they're doing, check in on them. We're also sending out monthly newsletters that mostly only go to our current clients.

Zaira Solano: [00:09:00] And we're also doing social media, not as much as I would like, but trying our best to engage the audience and also stay on top of immigration. And then lastly, a lot of networking my own referral network from people I know from law school and attorneys that do not practice immigration. I do my best to foster those relationships and also send them an email, send them a Facebook message, LinkedIn message, and just stay in contact.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's very interesting. And now I want to kind of dig in and this is why it's always great to have these interviews, because I feel it seems like every single time we speak to a successful attorney, it's almost a different way that every single time. And you might be the first person that we've spoken to that's been able to get traction with radio as a channel.

Jan Roos: I've got a couple of questions on that because, you know, the thing is that it's, it's sort of a broadcast medium where we've seen things traditionally fall by the wayside for people. I mean, this is mostly in the realm of advertising on TV or radio, but it's sort of becomes a challenge sometimes to track the direct.

Jan Roos: Efforts of what ends up getting generated for this. So do you mind telling me how you guys were able to track that and kind of keep everything square within your own [00:10:00] marketing metrics?

Zaira Solano: So one of the interesting things, Jan, is that despite the fact that we've, we've grown so much over the existence of the firm, which is seven years, it wasn't really until 2017 and even more into 20 at the beginning of this year that we began actually tracking All of our referral sources and the leads that were contacting our office.

Zaira Solano: And what you said about radio, I completely agree with. So what I mentioned at first is that in Atlanta, we were on a premier radio station. I had a couple of commercials during the day, and then I had this one hour show every, I think it was Wednesday and having that consistency was really helpful. And I think at first.

Zaira Solano: They were probably airing more commercials than I was actually paying for so that I could get those results and they could see it because after about six months or so it just wasn't as effective anymore and we never quite understood if it was due to the volume of commercials or because the actual audience had already heard me long enough and really, you know, there wasn't that many new listeners to reach [00:11:00] out to.

Zaira Solano: But the particular radio station I'm on in Alabama, I don't even have a contract with the radio station. They outsource their news to a third party, and whenever he announces the news on a daily basis, he's the one that is advertising for us. That radio station independently probably has like two or three other attorneys that also advertise directly through the station, and I believe we're all getting business from it.

Zaira Solano: But with radio, it really just depends. I tried a few other stations in Atlanta within the last few years. And I just, I think I gave up maybe two or three years ago, just because it was not as effective as it was when we first started. So my advice regarding that is to track the leads. You want to know how we do it.

Zaira Solano: Now we use a CRM where we have different fields that we fill out and outside of that, we also have really detailed excels that my intake person, as well as my client services specialist keep on a daily basis and update so that we can see, okay, last month we [00:12:00] had 20 calls from the radio station as a referral source.

Zaira Solano: 10 of them were the wrong legal problem. Cause they had nothing to do with immigration. You know, five of them were. Qualified leads and three were scheduled, but the other two weren't. And five were some other things. So we're tracking them now. And because we're tracking it, we're able to confirm that the investment that we're making into the radio is actually paying off.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's fantastic. And one of the things is that, you know, we're obviously marketing people and, you know, firm owners and all that. So the term CRM is something that's kind of common in the world that we live in. But for the benefit of anyone who might just Would you mind telling us a little bit about kind of like the process that you used to get started with that?

Jan Roos: Any tools you might've been using, like what CRM do you guys use in particular?

Zaira Solano: Sure. So we currently use Lexicata, which is marketed and created for law firms, if I'm not mistaken. And it is not as complex as I think Salesforce is another one that's very popular. It's not as complex [00:13:00] as. I can't remember the name right now, but basically in there, we were able to work with their team to customize the information that goes into this platform.

Zaira Solano: So just like you guys would have client management software where you keep track of your case notes and your billable hours and your anything related to the case, this particular program is specifically created for leads and that's it. So when we put them in, we have a variety of categories, for example, where they're calling from, who referred them to their.

Zaira Solano: To our office or how they heard about us and then we have that they were approved or that they were the wrong legal problem that they got scheduled that they showed up but didn't hire or that they showed up and hired and that their files pending to be open just a variety of things and you can run reports to see this information lexicata.

Zaira Solano: gov. just updated their reporting feature less than a month ago. It was pretty non existent before beforehand where you really couldn't filter [00:14:00] and pull the information that you needed. But now you can actually see all of those categories that I just mentioned and really analyze the metrics of your marketing and.

Zaira Solano: What is giving you a return on investment and what's not and where you may want to shift some of your expenses So it's awesome. You can really see the results that you're getting from your different marketing efforts,

Jan Roos: right? And just to tease this a little bit for anyone who might be on this offense about this stuff What kind of investment did it take in terms of your own time to get this set up?

Jan Roos: And I just want to also paste the you know, it happened to coincide with one of your guys's biggest growth year So, you know what people always say what is? You know, what is measured is what ends up improving. So what kind of time did it take for you guys to get up and running with this?

Zaira Solano: It actually took at a minimum, just a week to update our own intake and have several onboarding calls with their team so that they understand what are we trying to get out of the program so they can meet our needs, right?

Zaira Solano: So we already had an intake [00:15:00] before using Lexicata. We were. Just type it. We had a Microsoft Word template. The intake person would do all the screening questions on the phone to qualify or disqualify a client from coming in for a consultation. And the intake person would just save them on in a folder that we had every single lead saved with Lex.

Zaira Solano: And there was no way to pull information. We basically would like have to print and organize and whatnot. So we had to update the actual intake questionnaire so that we could pull that. type of information that I wanted to get in reports. And once we sent that to them, they were able to create our platform.

Zaira Solano: I think we paid a little bit extra just to have them do it. When I did the analysis, the time it was going to take me to figure out the program, key in all the fields for the intake, and then probably have to call them back when a million and one questions, the few hundred extra dollars it costs to have their team build it for us was totally worth And then once it was in there, like I said before, we had a few onboarding calls where you think you've got it and then you start [00:16:00] actually doing the intakes and a couple other things come here and there.

Zaira Solano: So all in all, although it may have taken about a week's worth of manpower between myself and some of my support team, and then, As well as the Lexicata team. It took a few weeks to really understand the software and use it to the best of our ability. I think there's even things now we could be doing to make better use of it.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really interesting. And then look, the benefit on the other side of that is having this total transparency into where your marketing efforts are actually going. And it's shocking to find out how few people are actually taking the time to do it. Interestingly enough, it seems to be less of a challenge with the firms that are growing really fast, which I wonder is a coincidence.

Jan Roos: Yeah. But basically, you know, it's a little bit of a time investment. And I also want to point out another thing too. I mean this is something that vanishingly few attorneys take a look at in terms of getting these systems set up for themselves, whether it's something like this operations, marketing, you name it, but you know, when you're doing the analysis of how much time this would take in terms of your own personal time, a lot of people just kind of assume that's free.

Jan Roos: But the reality is, you know, you've got billable hours, you've got things that you could be working on that are going to bring in revenue to the company. [00:17:00] So if it's a couple hundred dollars here. To save you, you know, a couple thousand dollars in billable hours, it's it's an easy decision to make and, you know, in terms of also, you know, the potential of lost ROI from not getting these things implemented sooner.

Jan Roos: I mean, it sounds like you made the right decision on

Zaira Solano: there may be law firms listening, experiencing this as well. We have been consistently growing since day one. And I was not keeping track of any of these metrics. We didn't even have an intake person. We just had people come in. If anybody wanted a consultation, they paid a fee, they came in.

Zaira Solano: And then when we find out in the first five, 10 minutes that they actually don't have an immigration problem that we can solve, or they don't have an option to get legal status, we would have to send them on their way and whether it was that, or the person hired, they were just scanned somewhere. I wasn't analyzing them.

Zaira Solano: I wasn't looking at them. So although we were growing, even law firms who are growing, don't actually pay attention to this. And. I wonder if I did at the very beginning, we would be even bigger today, not that we haven't grown at a good rate, but still, it's just [00:18:00] amazing what quantifying that information on a monthly and or weekly basis does.

Zaira Solano: And we analyze it on a weekly basis. Every Tuesday we have a sales meeting. We look at all these numbers for the past week.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's really important too, because I think this is another thing that more law firms need to focus on is, you know, if you get to the point where you have a lot of people time tend to look at the top level metrics, you know, how many calls are we getting a week?

Jan Roos: How many calls are we getting a month? But you know, the thing is that the ultimately what what's going to convert those into case files is the process that happens with your intake and your sales. And it's signed as, you know, sales is sort of a four letter word within the legal industry, but yeah, if you can get the reality, yeah, you can close one in 10 and you get that up to three in 10, then, you know, without spending an additional dime on your marketing efforts, you can get three times as much return.

Zaira Solano: Right, because for us, and I'm sure this is the same for everyone else, people who just search us on Google that haven't been referred by anyone don't know us, like us, and trust us yet. So when we are looking at the numbers, if we're like, okay, last week we had 30 leads and 20 of them were not qualified or whatever the reason is that they're calling us, not only is our marketing not doing [00:19:00] its job by bringing the right lead to the door and SEO pay per click and all that.

Zaira Solano: It's a whole nother conversation, but at the same time. If they are not aware ahead of time that we do have a consultation fee and that we have a process for intake and for the actual consultation, they are generally the ones we convert at the lowest, whereas everyone that's referred by a client, I don't want to say 100%, but we have a higher conversion rate for them.

Zaira Solano: So, yes, we need to Thank you. Always improve our online presence, make sure we maintain reviews and everything related to our presence on the web. But at the same time, you also have to spend time with your existing clients and the referrals that they send you, because I believe that's always the number one and best client for our firm to explore working with.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, referrals are one of the strongest sources that any law firm can have, and it's kind of fortunate that a lot of attorneys are able to start out with that. But it's also, you know, one of the things that you mentioned a bit earlier, Zaira, was the fact that you guys have a pretty robust system for staying on top of these.

Jan Roos: So would you mind telling us a little bit more about [00:20:00] how you're doing this in terms of your email marketing, phone marketing, that kind of thing to stay on top of mind for the people that may have worked with you before.

Zaira Solano: Sure, so one of them that is pretty easy because we work with a company that does it is the newsletter.

Zaira Solano: We were doing it ourselves probably for the past year and some months it was done and some months it wasn't done. It was only sent via email and just tracking how many got the email. Bounce back and who opted out and all that is, is a job. It takes time. So we now have a company that does it and they are physically sending them in the mail, which for whatever reason with the Latino community makes a difference.

Zaira Solano: And I'd love to, you know, know if that is the same for non Spanish speaking clients. There's just something about receiving that piece of paper in the mail. That's on a monthly basis. They're touched. They have a An article for me answering questions related to immigration or something about myself, some information about immigration, and then just other things.

Zaira Solano: We have a corner that talks about family one month, and then [00:21:00] on another month, it talks about owning a business. We have a lot of small business owners that we represent. And so the newsletter is definitely top of mind awareness. They are touched on a monthly basis for our former clients. We have on a weekly basis, we set a goal for how many former clients we want to reach out to and see how they're doing.

Zaira Solano: Sometimes that leads to a referral from their neighbor or friend or someone they know, or if they're actually coming up for another case process that we could potentially. represent them in. We call them as well and that is handled by my intake person. I know other firms that don't necessarily have intake and they have a staff of several people and they'll take like a Friday morning and divide up the closed case list and every paralegal, attorney, legal assistant is responsible to call like five former clients and just see how they're doing and those generate referrals and then we try to stay in contact with them on social media.

Zaira Solano: Also when we close a file part of our checklist for Closing a file [00:22:00] is the drafted letter that the attorney signs off on, terminating representation and just kind of summarizing what we've done. But then the legal assistant is also responsible for just writing out a thank you card for the attorney and the attorney approves it, signs off on it, and that goes to our receptionist and she keeps them in a folder per month.

Zaira Solano: And every single month at the beginning of the month, she opens up the folder and every thank you card that's in there goes out to the clients that we closed a month ago. And so just little things like that. We're also currently working on some pop sockets and like a small gift to give to our clients in the middle of representation because we touched them at the beginning.

Zaira Solano: We touched them throughout representation with the newsletter and case status letters, but we also want to give them something else. And then lastly, when a client hires our firm, the client services specialist, who's the person that meets with them during the consultation, she is doing quality control calls at 15 and 60 days of representation to make sure that we are living up to the promise of [00:23:00] client service that we have told the client they should expect.

Zaira Solano: So they're getting touched all the time.

Jan Roos: This is something that we've gone over in one of our first seasons. Basically, a lot of these small touches can potentially add up to a really, really big effect. And I'm sure if you, you know, put the, put it into numbers, as far as what kind of business you guys are getting from your referral channel, I'm sure that there's a pretty serious return in what's actually coming from all these efforts.

Jan Roos: But, you know, it can sort of be the aggregate of. You know, all of these different touches kind of making you guys seem like the ones that are the most on the ball of any, you know, law firms, they may potentially be reaching out to or in contact with, but also a lot of the times if, you know, some person might not be responsive to an email newsletter, but, you know, when they get that physical newsletter in the mail, maybe that's what ends up.

Jan Roos: Picking them up and then, you know, getting them to pick up the phone and call you. So it sounds like a really interesting system you guys have going. I want to switch gears a little bit though. So we've got a lot of business coming into the firm. You guys have consistently posting growth for the last six, seven years.

Jan Roos: So what's it look like from an operations perspective? How are you ending up fulfilling all this business that that you guys are generating these days?

Zaira Solano: So right now we are [00:24:00] properly staffed for the amount of business that we're generating. We have a business plan that we update as much as possible, and it's based on the marketing.

Zaira Solano: So depending on our marketing hypothesis, which is what I call it, because until the actual work gets done and the clients come through, you don't have a final answer. But historically, if radio Brings in this many leads that convert to paid consultations, you know, at this rate or the same for client referrals or newsletter source.

Zaira Solano: That is what we start off with to then figure out how many cases we expect to bring in on a given month. And then from there, we're still working on this. We don't have the perfect math, but really understanding. How much revenue a team can actually work. Although we have been growing consistently for seven years, staffing has been a big issue and it's just now that we are finally able to form the different teams with an attorney, a paralegal and two legal assistants.

Zaira Solano: per team, and we're not 100 percent sure how much work [00:25:00] they can handle, but we have a calculation and an estimate that we've made. And basically, probably in 2019, moving forward, based on the marketing information and what our teams historically produced in 2018 is how we'll be able to figure out if we can keep up with the work.

Zaira Solano: I can tell you that another huge factor in how you can. Determine that as the efficiency of your team. Last year in 2016 and 2017, I had to make a decision which was either I keep waiting, you know, for the unicorn perfect immigration paralegal with immigration experience, Spanish and English writing and speaking skills.

Zaira Solano: Good attitude and a bunch of other qualifications. Wait till that person comes around or hire people without experience. Well, what did I need to hire people without experience and onboarding and training system, which we didn't have before. So we implemented and created policies and procedures for everything related to operations.

Zaira Solano: But one in particular, that's really made a difference are the procedures for actually getting the legal work done. So [00:26:00] if you train, we've trained people with no legal or immigration experience who are able to. Follow the procedures, there's frequently asked questions on there, what to do, how to do it, and they're able to produce work like someone who was, had more experience than them.

Zaira Solano: So from an operational standpoint, it is a combination of knowing what we expect we're going to bring in from the marketing that we're implementing, how much our teams can actually handle, and then lastly, are there procedures in place? Because if we're growing this fast, it's just hard to find extremely qualified people and they need something to follow.

Jan Roos: Right. So a couple of things I want to point out there, you know, this is sort of one of the side effects of getting insight into the marketing numbers. There's so many people out there that are really, really confused and it's always kind of a harrowing decision, whether they want to move to a new office or bring on another associate.

Jan Roos: But you know, when you guys have the numbers that you do, it's a pretty quantitative, you know, straight up, like clean cut problem. And it's just an easy way to look at the numbers and say, Hey, look, this is what we should do based on what we're going to get. And again, that's, [00:27:00] that's like one of the benefits that you're going to get from, from having the level of detail that you guys have.

Jan Roos: Another thing I want to ask about is, you know, from an operations perspective, like I said, it's one of those other things, a lot of the business operations stuff is kind of anathema to the legal space. What kind of resources were you looking into? Whether, I don't know, it was books or consultants you guys are working with.

Jan Roos: Like, how did you get this expertise to, to build a system that really works for onboarding people?

Zaira Solano: So for the system to onboard people, it was a little bit of trial and error. And it also. was developed as we had different employees start along the way. So starting off with learning the business side of a law practice and not just focusing on the legal, I've worked with how to manage a small law firm, which is a company that specifically works with entrepreneur law firm owners whose focus and goal is not just to go to court or to practice law, but to actually build a business that works for The lawyer, the business owner, their [00:28:00] team, their clients, and their family.

Zaira Solano: And how can we build a business that does not require my attention all day long? That people don't have to come to me with questions and that it actually is up and running. So when it came to onboarding, I had some training procedures that I had. just probably for like the first five years. And I was the one that physically sat with and trained every single paralegal that worked with us.

Zaira Solano: We had employees who were with us three and four years since the very beginning of when I started. And when it got to the point, like I said before, that we had to hire people without experience is really where I had to understand how to properly onboard someone. And at first I thought it was mostly legal, like how can we train them to do a naturalization?

Zaira Solano: case. How can we train them to, you know, prepare the files for the attorneys before they go litigate? But that's really not the only thing. Onboarding a employee is like bringing home a new puppy. There's a lot of things that you have to prepare for. There's a lot of things from an operational standpoint.

Zaira Solano: Our entire [00:29:00] first week doesn't matter whether you're a receptionist, a paralegal, a salesperson, the firm administrator. You just learn on operations, like how does this whole thing work? What are the systems that we use? What are the softwares that we use? Where do we have offices? Cause we're in two locations.

Zaira Solano: What languages do we speak? Who's who, what are your professional financial goals? All that's just week one. So for onboarding, I've broken it down to operational. And then depending on whether you're on the legal team, the admin team, or the sales team, that's where you get your own team. Technical training for the work that you'll be doing.

Jan Roos: That's fantastic. The whole sum effort of this, and it's kind of interesting how you came about this from, from waiting for the perfect person to actually creating the systems. But like, you know, when you get this stuff figured out, it's kind of like that old little metaphor about the philosopher's stone.

Jan Roos: Do you have a system that, you know, they can actually take some of these inexperience and take them up to speed? You know, you're essentially, you know, you're almost turning lead into gold with that, because there's obviously a much larger universe of people that you could potentially work with that you could make into the proper person than the other proper people.

Jan Roos: And I'm sure, you know, as far as. What you guys are able to access in [00:30:00] terms of the volume of people, as well as, you know, probably having to not pay the salary to somebody who's such a in demand quantity, I'm sure the benefits for, for the business has been fantastic because

Zaira Solano: staffing has been our number one issue.

Zaira Solano: It's just always been. And when you're growing fast and you're the practitioner, but you're also the. The business owner too, then staffing becomes an issue. So you put all your efforts into that and then you neglect marketing. Like I have this, this quarter, the end of quarter two, beginning of quarter three is marketing for me.

Zaira Solano: That's what I've been focusing on. So it's great to grow Yon, but some of the challenges you don't expect to Them, you, you kind of learn as you go along.

Jan Roos: Growing pains is a very appropriate term for things. I mean, nothing. Nothing comes easy . If we gotta like wave a magic, I bitter. Yeah, it bittersweet. And you're

Zaira Solano: like, okay, so this weekend I'm not doing legal work, I'm not working on this file, but I know that if I work on this other thing related to operations, it will relieve me of so much headache for months to come.

Zaira Solano: So I'm just gonna spend five hours and knock this out real quick. That's a really unsexy part of running a business [00:31:00] that people don't understand. And. It's great though, when it all pays off and things just get done without you all the time.

Jan Roos: Yeah, it's going to be tough though. Cause a lot of times, and this is, you know, a huge issues.

Jan Roos: A lot of the solos we'll face is like, you know, you kind of have the opportunity to, you know, close a case file, get some immediate cash, or, you know, potentially invest into systems, invest your own time. But ultimately, you know, the aggregate of what this looks like on the other end is you have this machine that can potentially run without you.

Jan Roos: And a lot of the times I realized, you know, if, if a lot of people aspire to eventually selling a practice, you're not selling your name on that practice. You're selling the systems that you're going to build. So if you want to have something that's going to actually become an asset that you could sell and potentially have something for generational wealth, this is really the kind of work that has to be done, even if it's not sexy.

Zaira Solano: And if I can add, John, I, now that you say. solos, and you've said it a few times, for the solos listening, you really have to decide, do I just want to be an attorney and practice law all day long, or do I want to build this machine that works without me and helps more people in our community and [00:32:00] provides more jobs to the people in our community and provides a better life for myself and my family.

Zaira Solano: Everybody wins. I think when you make the decision to focus on one thing, that doesn't mean you stop being a lawyer if you're the CEO of your firm, but you're able to Focus on all these things that we're talking about today that will allow you to grow the practice. Imagine having to make a decision on a case when you're really stressed out about how you're going to make payroll or if the money you just put into marketing is or it's not going to work.

Zaira Solano: You're, you're working with measurable goals, metrics, and really key information and you're clear on your focus. So Solos, make a decision, come to the CEO side. It's a lot of fun.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's a really, really great advice. Now as far as the you know, we, we've gone through a lot of the history with the firm, what's next for the Solano law firm.

Zaira Solano: So my dream and goal is to be recognized as one of the leading immigration firms in the Southeast particularly among the Latino community, because that is our niche, but we, I would love to grow into some of the [00:33:00] other cultures as well. And the way I truly believe we're going to do that is by focusing on three things.

Zaira Solano: One of them is customer service, AKA our client experience. How do we make our clients feel throughout their entire process? From the first time they contact our office until years later, when they call asking for their own help or help for someone else, number two, Hiring, onboarding, training, and really investing in my team and what we do to retain them and what we do to find good talent and their overall happiness and aligning their goals with the firm goals.

Zaira Solano: And then number three, constantly working and updating policies and procedures. We currently have an office in Georgia and Atlanta. We have another office in Birmingham, Alabama. There are other pockets of both of those States that we want to explore. I currently live in Tampa, Florida. My husband works for the government and we constantly move.

Zaira Solano: So pretty much for the next 10 years, we move about every two years. And the goal is to start [00:34:00] a another branch office of Solano law firm in every city that we've been moving to. So those are really the goals. I don't know at what point I want to stop growing at this point. It's. Indefinitely, growth is, it means a lot of positive things for everyone involved in it.

Zaira Solano: And I do foresee that we will be doing family based and deportation defense in the long term future.

Jan Roos: Well, that's actually really interesting to kind of put a cap on this whole discussion. And we've clearly invested a lot of times into making sure that this growth is healthy. I know that there's people out there, if you're listening to this and you can imagine what your law firm would look like if it doubled in size.

Jan Roos: I You know, it's kind of a scary prospect because you got some systems that might blow up. You got a lot of stuff that could potentially go wrong, but you know, if you're doing things the way that Zaira's done at her firm, you know, you can be at the same position in terms of, you know, not, no fear about what it's going to look like if you guys scale.

Jan Roos: And ultimately, you know, the scale kind of comes easy when you have the capacity to do it. And if it ends up coming the other way, then, you know, you're going to get to a position where you can't scale because of limits. So that's really good to hear all the kinds of stuff that you've been doing Zaira.

Jan Roos: Now as far as finding you, what's the best place to find you [00:35:00] online and what kind of people should be reaching out?

Zaira Solano: So you can find us on our website, Solano firm. com and also on Facebook. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I just look for Zaira Solano. And also if you are seeking services related to immigration, or, you know, someone who needs help, you can also just give them my email.

Zaira Solano: Zaira at Solano firm. com. And we do everything possible to respond to everyone as As soon as we can, but outside of that, outside of immigration services, since we are talking about law firm growth and owning a business, I have a lot of people who always help me and giving me their time to answer my questions.

Zaira Solano: I still have mentors, coaches, and people that I work with because it's a long way before I get this all figured out. So if you want to contact me directly, I'd be happy to share any knowledge I have and any advice I can give you in growing your own business.

Jan Roos: Fantastic. Well, sorry. Thank you so much for that offer.

Jan Roos: I'm sure, you know, if anyone has a need for that, then, you know, you got the contact information there and it's a [00:36:00] really, really generous of you. So yeah. And also, you know, generous of your time in general. This has been a super awesome, you know, as far as the series so far, one of the most tactical nuts and bolts episodes that we've had.

Jan Roos: So I wanted to say thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us and I'm helping out anyone who might be in the same position.

Zaira Solano: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on.

Jan Roos: Okay. My pleasure, Zaira. All right. So thanks everybody. I hope everyone who's seriously considering scaling up this is probably one of those episodes that's worth a re listen.

Jan Roos: So until next time, this is the CaseFuel podcast, and we'll see you soon.

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