William Grafton: [00:00:00] And Joey, thank you very much for showing up today. Thank you very much for the presentation you put on in Virginia beach and for the time you spent with me talking about the book. And it was really helpful. It's a great book, right? So let's just start, let's just start there. If this is one of the better books that we've done in our book club, because I think it speaks to a lot of us as small business owners.

I think you put together a great system with these eight phases and the six tools. And I think that the language that you use really speaks to a lot of people. Can you just give us a little bit of background On how you came up with these ideas and the tools and the phases.

Joey Coloman: Absolutely. So by, by way of context, as many of you know, especially those that were in Virginia beach I'm a recovering attorney. So after I was a criminal defense lawyer and, you know, kind of grew up in the family practice with my dad was in private practice. [00:01:00] I decided to get into business and I got in, I started an ad agency.

And one of my jobs was to help. Fill the funnel for my clients, help to drive new prospects, get new people to join. And as I was going through this process and helping to build ad campaigns and websites and brand identities and marketing materials, we were really good at it. And people liked the results we were producing and we were really making the bell ring.

And then I had a conversation with one of my clients after we did this huge multi million dollar campaign where I went back to them about three or four months later. And I said, guys, I got to ask how have the revenues changed in the business? How the profits changed. I know we got a bunch of new people in.

I got to imagine you've got more money to work with. You're probably hiring people, et cetera, et cetera. And they were like, well, not exactly. And I said, well, what do you mean? Not exactly. And they said, well, we definitely brought a lot of people in, but we just really haven't seen the growth we were hoping for.

And when we dove into the numbers, we [00:02:00] realized that a huge number of the people we brought in had left. And they had left, not because they weren't a great fit for the product or service, not because they weren't interested in what we were offering, but they had left because they hadn't been. taken care of.

They had been neglected after the sale had been made. And so this led me on this quest to figure out why do customers leave and what can we do to convince them to stay? Which all the research shows, spoiler alert, that if you get those First 100 days of the relationship right from the first time someone becomes a client up to their 100 day anniversary.

Even though we know and especially in a legal setting, the likelihood of the matter being resolved in 100 days is infinitesimally small. I mean, like we all have that one unicorn case that resolved itself out in two or three months, but those are the rare exception. Most of our cases last, if not months, sometimes years, maybe even a decade before we get to full resolution.

[00:03:00] If we get that first foundational hundred days right, clients stay. And once I figured that out from a research point of view, I said, all right, how can I teach law firms, other businesses around the world, how to implement this type of structure in their practice?

Richard James: Yeah, so I just want to like, I think it's so awesome. We're benefiting from the fact that you're a recovering attorney, right? I mean, so if you're doing this interview with other groups, they don't always have that benefit. And so the fact that you can speak right into the hearts and the minds of those that are practicing law, and they realize that you get them, it's, To me is gives you a distinct advantage in our membership for sure, and anybody who might be listening to this.

So for somebody listening, my shout out to you is you're not just hearing a generic piece of advice. You're hearing it from somebody who's lived your life at one point, and they know how to implement this into your world. So we'll go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt.

William Grafton: No, that was great. So Oh. Going [00:04:00] through the book, you cite a lot of examples. It looks like you've done a number of case studies from different businesses, ranging in, you know, in various sizes. But what about the businesses that didn't make the cut, right? Were there, and specifically I'm wondering, did you do any case studies of law firms, other than of course your personal experience, that or businesses that didn't make, maybe they're on the cutting room floor as it were.

Joey Coloman: So as you might imagine, one of the biggest challenges when you write a book that is case study driven, which is really, I don't know if it's the lawyer in me that likes to bring a lot of evidence to the table. I don't know if it's the storyteller in me that likes to just tell a lot of stories. But one of my goals for the book was to really number one.

Make a compelling read that kept propelling people forward through the book, because it's not a short book. This is not a book you read in an hour, right? This is a book that hopefully kind of marinates and you soak it in over [00:05:00] time. But I also wanted to address the fact that often when as leaders, we hear, oh, this is what you should be doing in your practice.

This is what you could be doing in your firm. The first voice that jumps in our head is not usually the voice that says, that's a great idea. Rather, it's the voice that says, I'm skeptical as to whether that would work. See, you don't understand Joey. My firm is located in LA, not Los Angeles, not Louisiana, lower Alabama, for example, that I heard when we were hanging out together.

And I do trust in estates, which is the weird part. I mean, the unique part of a law that nobody really, I mean that lots of people want to do. And so you it's different than what you did. You were a criminal defense lawyer in Iowa and that kind of thing. And so it's a complete different story.

There are a lot of case studies that were on the cutting room floor and part of the. [00:06:00] It's in why a law firm didn't make the book to be completely honest is because most non law firm folks think lawyers are weird and they're like lawyers are just I don't know how much time I want to spend with lawyers.

So as I was thinking about writing a book that was to a global audience I was like, maybe we shouldn't have the focus be on lawyers. Now, that being said, let's talk about some specific examples in case studies of things that I've done with law firm consulting clients that I've worked with to specifically enhance the experience they're having.

Number one, depending on the type of law you practice in almost every circumstance, the client who is coming to you is coming at a low point in their life. If not the lowest point, it's probably one of the lower points, whether that's a personal injury claim, whether that's a content, a contract that they're contesting, whether that's a criminal [00:07:00] lawsuit, you're a criminal case that they're dealing with some type of a lawsuit.

So they're probably not being the best version of themselves. Number two, their perspective of lawyers is based on TV and movies. And isn't that great that they just totally understand what the practice of law is because they've watched TV, you know, although I love watching me an episode of the Lincoln lawyer don't get me wrong.

That is not how most lawyers practice, most of us aren't dealing with multiple high profile murder cases. Every week. Okay. So it's a little bit different than the context the person might have. So it's the lowest point of their life. They have no context for what's going on. And number three, I say this from a place of love.

Most lawyers are dealing with so many different cases that the amount of empathy they bring to an individual client conversation is significantly less. than the amount of emotion that client is dealing with. [00:08:00] So we get this beautiful confluence of the client's overwhelmed and scared. They have this perception of a savior riding in on a white horse.

The savior comes into the room and this is their fifth meeting of the day. This is not a recipe for remarkable experiences. So what do we do? Well, we've worked with clients to do things like slowing the pace, building in more time and more opportunity for personal and emotional connection in the initial conversation, figuring out ways to communicate with clients that are via methodologies.

That maybe you're more familiar with friends and families and close colleagues, as opposed to a lawyer. When I was practicing the law, I'm not proud of this one. We had an entire member of our staff that they're really, their only job was to send out letters every day, letters in the mail. I know I'm dating myself.

It's old school. Such was life. But you know, Hey, the next time you have to be in court is this day, Hey, we just got this response. interrogatories, whatever it was, just paper and [00:09:00] paper and paper. That no one is sitting at home saying, I'm excited to get paper from my lawyer. No one in the history of clients.

So what we started to do is say, can we factor in phone calls? Can we factor in sending a video? Can we factor in sending a personal note? That's handwritten, not typed. Can we do these things that will create more personal and emotional connection with our clients instead of having everything be transactional?

Because while there is certainly a transaction. Transactional aspect of the law, when it comes to client relationships, the more we skew on the meter towards transaction away from personal and emotional connection, the more churn we're going to have in practice, the less Google reviews we're going to have in our practice.

Frankly, the more complaints to the bar association you're going to have in your practice, not to mention the impact it's going to have on your marketing and referrals.

Richard James: Just literally before this call, I was standing in for Michael, my son on the coaching call [00:10:00] for the appointment setting. So we have, we're called the intake room where we coach appointment center.

And in the appointment setting structure, we teach them to build relationship. And inside of that, we teach them to get to their hell, to their heaven, and to accept the possibility that we can find a solution for them. And the person that was, I was role playing with did a great job. They said the words.

And they asked the question about the person's deepest darkest fear. They asked the person about what they thought a win was going to be for them. And they got to the next stage and the person was willing to explore having an appointment. I mean, fundamentally, they check the boxes. And when I said to them, as I said, okay, this is great.

This took us about four and a half to five minutes for this call. I go, ideally, To add time to this, what we really want this call to be is about nine to 12 minutes. And let me tell you why I want you to figure out how to be naturally curious about what's going on when they tell you their why and they're scared and their hell.

I [00:11:00] want you to ask a question or two about what's going on for them and let them tell you more. I want you to ask about their family, about their spouse, about their kids, whatever the situation is based on what they're going through. And I want you to draw some of that out through natural curiosity. And when they started to understand that they were permission, and this is important that they were permissioned to have a longer call.

Because they thought that they were supposed to get off this call to get on the next call as quickly as possible. All of a sudden they were like, Oh, I can do that. And so to your point, Joey purposely putting in the elongated conversation helps build an emotional connection. And that's what this is really all about.

Joey Coloman: You are spot on. And interestingly enough, our conversation started out this way when Richard said, Hey, I'd love it. If everybody would mute for this conversation, because so we don't hear a dog barking in the background. I got to tell you, when I hear a dog barking in the background, I feel like that if you have any of you have watched the Harry Potter movies, right?

They have the golden snitch [00:12:00] that flies around. And if you're not familiar with Harry Potter, they play this game called Quidditch. There's this golden little thing that's flying around and if you catch it, the game ends. You win the game, basically. When I'm on a call and I hear a dog bark, or I hear a kid yell out, I think of it as the golden snitch.

And I grab on, I'm like, did I hear a dog there? And invariably the person will say, "oh yeah, I'm so sorry." I'm like, "Oh no, don't apologize. What's the dog's name?" "Oh, the dog's name Fido." "Oh, fantastic. What kind of dog is Fido?"

And I get them talking about their dog. What I love about this is I'm looking at your faces right now.

The fact that I'm talking about a made up dog has a lot of you smiling and nodding your head. "You're like, Oh my God, I want to meet Fido. What's Fido doing?" This is how humans operate. So when we can cut right to the thing that matters to you, you like me more. Why? Because I care about what's important to you and if I care about what's important [00:13:00] to you by default, the transitive property tells us that must mean you also care about me.

It's a lot easier to show your clients love by loving on the other people in their immediate circle than by loving on them because they're skeptical. They're wondering, Oh, what, why are you wanting to talk to me?

Joey Coloman: Richard, you're 100% spot on. WhYou know, you bill by the hour, you want this call to last longer. Is that so you can run up your numbers? That's why I did all flat fee. I told my clients our very first meeting. Everything's always going to be a flat fee. Why? Because I never want you racing to get off the phone with me. I want to know all the details.

I want to know everything that's going on because the more I learn now, the less likely I'll be surprised in a courtroom, which is a criminal defense lawyer. Never want to be surprised when you're in the courtroom, right? I want the surprise to happen in my office when the jury isn't watching. When I go, you did what?

What? How did that even happen? So I would say you're spot on, Richard. Be careful how you are incentivizing not only your intake people, but your paralegals. [00:14:00] Your associates, your partners, if everything is about volume, we move on that spectrum towards transaction instead of relationship. The more we can push the dial towards relationship, the more we increase our profitability, the more we increase our repeat business, the more we increase our sustainability. So I don't know, Will, if you want, I noticed have been a couple of questions that have dropped in the chat. Do you want me to jump those now or should we get them at the end? I'll leave it up to you. We'll circle them and build them in.

All right, so a couple things. Number one, somebody said the extra stories are in the vault. Oh my gosh, I love that you know about the vault. Here's the thing. When I wrote my second book, Never Lose an Employee Again, which is my newest book. The book we're talking about today is Never Lose a Customer Again.

There were so many stories on the cutting room floor that we created the vault. So the vault does exist for the second book, Never Lose an Employee Again. I'll reveal it here. We're kind of working on a vault for [00:15:00] the first book, a retroactive vault to bring things forward. Cause the response to the vault has been so positive.

So no, there are things like that coming in the future, but the link that was shared in the chat for the vault, that's for the new book, never lose an employee again, which is all about how to create remarkable employee experiences to keep your employees engaged and retained. The next question in the thing from Joe and Joe.

Thanks for this, I just may be happy. Joe says silly question, but Joey had a match set of three colored stripes on his jacket, keyhole and belt. What was that all about? Well, Joe, this is real simple. I knew I was going to be in the presence of the sartorial splendor of Richard James. I was not going to wear a khaki pants and blue shirt to an event being hosted by Richard James.

I knew I needed my best gear. So that's exactly why I wore those clothes. And plus it's more fun to dress up fancy. All right. Joseph says, I missed the event. What is your recommendation to re engage past clients? We've lost touch with, but continue servicing. This is more specifically B2B servicing entity formation and maintenance services.

Ooh, [00:16:00] Joseph love this. So I'd like to break this question into two parts. How do we re engage past clients that we might've lost touch with? And what about the whole kind of B2B model? Let's take part two first. I understand that some of you think you are in a B2B business. With all due respect, I think that is probably causing you a lot of problems.

That mindset, you are in the H2H business. You are in the human to human business and even if your firm, a business is representing a corporate entity, a business. You have humans in your firm and humans in the client business that are actually having all the conversations. So the sooner we can divest ourselves from either a B2B or a B2C nomenclature, the better we're going to be able to serve our people.

Now, when we think about even just shifting our mindset to H2H, [00:17:00] now we're starting to think about not only our point of contact at the company. But the people around that point of contact, whether that's in house counsel, whether that's a manager, whether that's the CEO, head of sales, whoever it is, we also want to be thinking about the other people around them because if that person leaves, and in this day and age, they're going to leave.

They're going to leave before you want them to leave the way you stay representing the business, the entity is because you've already established other relations with the other humans in the room. One of my favorite ways to do this, and this is in some ways, a layup, especially for lawyers. Invariably when a lawyer goes to a meeting at a corporate client or a business client and we walk in, sometimes we go by ourselves, but often we bring somebody else from our team.

Lawyers are notorious for rolling in with 15 other lawyers, right? Let's have a show of power. Often [00:18:00] the other side or who we're meeting with or our client Has multiple people in the room too. They've invited other people to attend, but what usually happens with the typical lawyer, and because you're in this group, I know you are not typical, right?

The typical lawyer focuses all their energy on the key decision maker, the player, the con, the name, contact, the point. You know, the main person who's our point of reference. I like to extend the conversation to the other people in the room. Ask them for their opinion, their feedback, send a private email to them afterwards saying, gosh, I really appreciated the perspective you shared during that meeting when you did ABC.

I like to connect with the junior people in the room on LinkedIn, because the junior people in the room want to connect with you, but they feel awkward about reaching out because they know they were the junior person. If you're the senior person in the room and you reach out to those junior people and say, "Hey, I think you've got a bright future ahead of you. I love the perspective you shared in that meeting. I'd love to stay in [00:19:00] touch so that I can continue to be supportive of your career going forward, as well as open to the ideas and the perspectives you're going to bring to me." You now have an advocate, in that organization, it's not the person signing the contracts, that's not the person processing your retainer fee or your checks, but is going to be an active voice when they say, well, we're thinking about looking at another firm for this one, or I'm not really sure, or when Frank, the person who's the point of contact leaves and this person now gets promoted, they already feel like they have a personal relationship with you.

Let's shift to the second part of that question. The folks we've lost touch where. Let me begin by saying, be gentle with yourself. What do I mean by that? I too am guilty of having lost contact with past clients. And I wrote a book called never lose a customer again. That was a wall street journal, bestseller physician heal thyself, right?

Like I'm just as guilty of this as any of you. Why? [00:20:00] Because we're human. It's okay. So what can we do? Well, we can think about ways that we can rekindle a relationship. There are certain relationships that I imagine you have where you can go weeks, months, years without talking to them. And when you pick up the phone and you get back in a conversation with them, it's as if nothing ever missed.

What is often our hesitation is to pick up the phone because we're embarrassed. Oh, it's been a while. It's been, I haven't thought of it. What I have done in recent years that has helped me a lot is whenever I think of someone who it's been a while since I've talked to them, I did this just earlier today.

I was like, gosh, you know, I wonder what that person's up to. I send him a text. I send him a quick message and the message is as simple as, Hey, I was going through my day today and I saw XYZ that made me think of you and it dawned on me. Gosh, what have you been up to lately? It would be awesome to [00:21:00] connect for a zoom call and see how things are going.

But if you don't have time for that, just fire back two or three sentences about what's most exciting in your life right now. Now we've rekindled and we've got the flow going because. Often the same guilt we feel about losing touch. They have as well. And it's just a question of who's going to be the one that says, Hey, I feel bad that we've lost touch. Let's see if we can make that better.

William Grafton: I love that. Just a personal aside. We implemented the policy that we would reach out to past clients at certain stages after their case was over. Right? And it's all automated now. And we'll get replies saying, I'm so sorry that I, Okay. hadn't updated you with this sooner.

You know, they're just replying to an automated email that I wrote seven years ago and put into a system. But yeah it's very effective. And all right, so let's change gears a little bit. All right. In a couple of different points in the book, you talk [00:22:00] about the importance of gifting, right?

And you make some very strong points that that really Got me that if it's got my logo on it, it's not really a gift, right? I've got these excellent mugs. I've got pens. I've got letter openers, right? And there's a whole backstory behind the letter opener. But they've all got my logo, right?

In terms of gifting though, it appears that lawyers kind of have. Like one hand tied behind our back. We have a lot of restrictions on on gifts that we can give to clients current clients, referral partners and things of that nature. What have you seen if anything successfully done for by lawyers to kind of get around that or not necessarily get around it but accomplish the same goal. Within the confines of our ethical restraints.

Joey Coloman: Well, well, I love this. I love the clarifying that it's not about getting around. It's about being in compliance with the law and the ethics of what we need to do. [00:23:00] Absolutely. And here's the thing. While the legal world is certainly restrictive in terms of what your local bar association or your local jurisdiction or rules might allow or not allow know that it's worse.

In a lot of industries, like you may think it's bad being a lawyer, but oh my gosh, you know, some of the scenarios if you look at financial in financial advisors, sometimes that can be even top doctors can be even tighter on that therapist, forget about it. Like therapist, the rules they have about what they can do or can't do.

It gets even tighter. So know that. Yes, you're in a regulated industry. Yes, there are some rules, but they could be a lot draconian more draconian than they are. The first thing I like to do when we come to gifts is, and I can't believe I'm about to say this, I'm sure I may fall over when I say this is, I want us to actually go to the code.

Go to the law, because so many lawyers are walking around saying, well, we're not allowed to do this. And I'm like, how do you know that? [00:24:00] They're like, well, the senior partner told me, or I heard about that in a CLE I went to. And I'm like, did you go to the code? Did you go to the local rules? Did you read what it actually said?

And it's like, well, no, but that's what everybody does. And I'm like, Oh, I love it. That's malpractice. If you did that with your client and you were like, well, this is just what it is without actually looking at the law and looking at the rules. So the first thing I would do is go to the rules and look, what you will often find is that most of the rules around gifting have to do with inducements, either inducing someone to become a client or inducing a specific favor.

They don't have to do with showing gratitude. So in most jurisdictions, giving a gift to a prospective client wrought with problems and issues and limitations, giving a gift to someone who's already on retainer, who's already signed an agreement. Usually there's no. There's no qualms. Now, in some places they say, Oh, there's a financial limit.

[00:25:00] Okay, great. So let's talk about financial limits. When we look at the financial limits in most jurisdictions, at least based on the case law that I've seen. So again, recovering attorney in me says, check with the lawyer in your local jurisdiction, do your own case law, homework and research. But in most jurisdictions, The way they define the amount of money you spend is based on the price tag of the item and what you paid to get it versus the actual value.

What do I mean by that? Well, if you bought For 20 and got it signed by the author in most jurisdictions they will value that book at 20 the list price you paid, not the enhancement of it being personalized and signed by the author. So there are ways to get creative with your gifting and stay under the price points by adding layers of personalization.

An example of a way [00:26:00] that I saw this done for in many jurisdictions the magic numbers 50. 50. Right. You can't do anything more than 50. So let's for today's conversation use 50 as our barrier. The other thing you want to look at is what are the rules about how many times can you give a 50 gift? Is it 50 per gift?

Is it 50 per year? Is it per interaction? Again, dive into the local rules. But I was working with a company at one point where their rules were 50 and the client happened to mention in passing that they were finally going fly fishing. In this river in Montana. that they had been planning to go fly fishing in this river in Montana for almost a decade.

Now, this was said in passing to a member of the staff, not the key principal who's interacting with this client, just a support team member who noted it, reported it back to the principal. What they did is they remembered the name of the river.

[00:27:00] They then reached out to a local fly fishing outfitter on the river and said, if we were going to buy 10 flies, that would be great for this river, how much would that cost and could we do that? And they're like, well, the flies are like $4.00 a piece. Okay. We're good. Give me 10. Cause now we're at $40. They put them together. They put them in a nice case. And the next time the client came in, they presented them with the flies.

And they said, Hey, by the way, based on our research, these are the best flies for that river you're headed to. These are going to work really well. Our only request, send us some pictures. From the river with what you catch. This client is going to be a client forever. This client will never leave because they felt seen, heard and appreciated by the person who gave the gift.

It's not about the dollars. It's [00:28:00] about the thoughtfulness. It's about, were you paying attention when I was talking? Did you hear the thing that I liked? That's interesting. That matters to me and feed it back to me.

William Grafton: That is a great story and a great. Idea.

Richard James: Yeah. Anytime you can find ways to purposely throughout the client life cycle dig up facts about the client that you can use for lack of a positive or leverage to create this customer experience, like the stories of where they're headed.

And you can, but again, Joey, you have to create an off ramp for this, right? You have to your team has to be permissioned to say, Hey, I heard this about so and so. And so here's the off ramp I want to take. So like, it's not just as good as saying, oh, this is what we're going to do. I mean, if you're going to think this through you're, there's no way for it all to come down to you as the owner.

There's no way for you to do it all, which means you've got to permission your team to take this off ramp. Is that right?

Joey Coloman: Richard, [00:29:00] 100%. And in fact, not only would I give them permission to do that, I would systematize the behavior. What do I mean by this? So that same firm, what we did, what we put in place that led to this moment was they would have a weekly team meeting every Monday and every Monday they'd kick off the meeting and they'd talk about what was happening that week in the agenda.

And I said, great, we're going to add a five minute item to every Monday meeting. I'm like, okay, what's our five minute? And the five minute item is going to be the most interesting thing I heard about a client last week. And every member of the team comes to the meeting with their idea of the most interesting thing they heard.

Oh, I heard that the client went on their honeymoon to Crete. That would get typed into the CRM system. Oh, I heard that their granddaughter is up for a scholarship to play soccer at UVA. That would get typed in and all these things would figure. [00:30:00] And then the leader of the practice at the end of every meeting would say, by the way, the most interesting thing that we heard that I thought was most interesting was that one about the granddaughter.

So here's a prize for you. And they would give out a prize. And so the team is incentivized to walk around with their ears like this, cupped, listening, waiting for those golden snitches, those golden nuggets to fall from the sky to catch onto. And then we're getting them into the CRM immediately. We built a culture of listeners.

We built a culture that was driven by personal and emotional connection. And then the results that you start to see from the type of data you glean is incredible. And then we turned around and we said, No one in this organization. can get on a scheduled phone call with a client without going to the CRM field of interesting things.

And you'd go to that CRM field and you'd read all the interesting things before you picked up the phone and took the call. [00:31:00] So it was fresh in your mind. And so you could see, Oh, well, last time they mentioned the scholarship for the granddaughter. Hey, by the way, whatever happened with that scholarship, I don't know about you.

I have never met a grandmother. Who isn't excited to talk about their grandchildren? Maybe it exists. I just haven't run into those folks. So we're able to connect in a personal and emotional level about things that matter to them. And they're like, how did you remember that? Well, because we wrote it down, we listened and we put it into our CRM. So everyone on the team saw it and felt it and understood it.

William Grafton: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the tools. Okay. In relation to the. admit phase. And just pulling from some data that we got from different members and personal data. A lot of us have found that in person consultations, right?

In person sales meetings close at a [00:32:00] higher rate, right? They get through the affirmation phase at a higher rate. They complete their cases at a higher rate, right? So it appears that for that phase in person would be the best tool. Other than stumbling around and falling on our face in a bunch of different ways. What are the best ways we can find the best tools? In each phase of the client life cycle here.

Joey Coloman: I would posit will that it's not necessarily one tool or another tool works better in a specific phase as much as it is, which are the tools that you're comfortable using and how are you thinking strategically about the use of the tool versus defaulting to a use of a tool at a specific stage?

It used to be an initial consult was almost always done in person. I don't know about you, when I was [00:33:00] practicing law, the initial was almost always done. Then we started saying, well, could we move some of this stuff to the phone as a screening mechanism because our volume was up so high. Well, depending on the firm, that screening then kind of became feeling a little bit like a call center and less like a conversation with somebody who cared about your case.

So maybe we over corrected too far. Then we come along with COVID and guess what? There's no in person and everybody's going to zoom conversations or phone calls and trying to navigate it that way. So I think again, it comes back to that idea of what are you doing to in those interactions, make the most of the medium you're using.

One of the things I always ask when I'm recording a show is, and I'm not sure, like if I'm a guest on a podcast and they have video going, I always ask, is the video for you and me, the host and the guest? Or are you going to be sharing the video later and lots of times in this day and age, they say, Oh, we're going to share the video on the mic.

[00:34:00] Oh, well, then we're going to be a lot more demonstrative. I'm going to use the whole screen I'm going to be moving around because I know when you're doing scrolling through social media to see this 32nd clip, I want you to see just stipulations. The same thing holds true with lawyers, most lawyers, because of the nature of our practice have been taught.

That we should always be buttoned up and we should be, you know, sitting like this and welcome to my amazing office and see the knowledge on the shelves. I have Legos on the shelf behind me. Okay. I have books that are color coded, but I also have Legos. I'm trying to project with the background and the image what the personality is.

When I log onto a call with someone, I'm always curious what's in the background. Like I see some interesting pictures in the back of Will's background that would lead me to believe that there is a better than 70% chance that he's a fan of Star Wars. Now, Will, would that be an accurate [00:35:00] perception on my part?

William Grafton: It would.

Joey Coloman: Great. So now what I probably do is if I'm having a kickoff call with Will, I'm like, Hey, we'll super excited to talk about your situation and you get, but I gotta add before we go any further. Do you have a family member that flew a TIE fighter in the war, or like how does it end up that you have an amazing photo of a TIE fighter shooting down a plane in your office.

Did you see what happened to Will's face? Hopefully you weren't looking at me. Hopefully you're doing it. He gets this huge smile. Why? Because I'm talking about him. I'm talking about something he loves. Guess what? I also love Star Wars. So we can have a really great conversation about that. Now, if I don't like Star Wars, I want to be careful on acting how much I know about what he's talking because I can get into trouble real fast.

Never pretend that you have an interest in something that you don't. But to Richard's comment earlier, I can get curious. I can say, is that like a Star Wars picture in the [00:36:00] background? I feel like I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, forgive my ignorance, but what's going on with that? And now we're having a different type of conversation.

We're having a different type of connection. So That's a long about way of saying and hopefully calling out an example of when we're thinking about the tool in the phase. Think about maximizing your usage of the tool to maximize the experience the person has for you choosing to use that tool. Cause if we would have done a phone call, Will, I never would have seen the picture.

So in the phone call, I want to listen more. If we would have done something where we were just trading emails back and forth. I never would have seen the picture. So now I want to watch for the punctuation or the signature line or the word choice in each medium. We want to focus in on where can I mind the little bits of information or curiosity that allow me to maximize the value of this tool.

Richard James: I've got a plus one question. So, or plus one and so [00:37:00] what I heard you say, Joey was perfect, that we should control our backgrounds. Right now I'm pretending to be a magician. We should control our backgrounds and we should pay attention to what's in their backgrounds and get on their same wavelength.

It's a sales tool, but I do have a question while I'd love to see us get back to more in person consults. Cause I know what the conversion rates are. I don't believe we're going to get fully there for the, just the pure nature of the way life has changed. So, on a scale from 1 being not very important, 10 being like oxygen, how important now is it for us to pay attention to all the other things we do, like video and text and communication and all those things pre and post this consultation because we're limited to how much interaction, personally, kneecap to kneecap we get because it's over Zoom.

en we take away one of our highest converting tools, when we limit the opportunity for the personal and emotional connection that comes from the kneecap to kneecap being in the same room, [00:38:00] we have not only an opportunity, I would posit a responsibility. To double down on maximizing the skill sets we're bringing to the table with the other tools.

Let me give you an example of how I used to use this in my sales career. So I used to be a, basically a traveling salesperson. That's a way to kind of diminish. It was for fortune 500 companies selling, you know, five and six figure consulting engagements and memberships. But I always used to like to go in person.

Well, because I pitched to senior executives at fortune 500 firms, lots of these folks weren't willing to give some 20 something old kid, you know, 30 minutes on their calendar, but they would give me 15 minutes on the phone. And here's what I do. I would actually go to the office. I would get under my desk.

I know this is weird, but this far into the conversation, you know, I'm weird. I'd get under the desk. I'd have my headset on and I'd close my eyes. [00:39:00] So that there were no other inputs coming in to my senses. other than the auditory inputs. And then I would listen for the pauses. I would listen for the hitches in the conversation.

I would listen for the things that the person started to say and then stopped. I would get comfortable with the silences and the gaps between the conversation. And I would really focus on how can I bring my auditory skills to bear at the highest level to maximize the success of this call. So, It's a long about way of saying, I absolutely think as we think about the other tools, whether those are videos, you know, letters, emails, phone calls, gifts, and presents, as we reduce the number of opportunities we have for in person, we have to increase our proficiency with those other tools. If we want to continue to have positive [00:40:00] results.

Richard James: Thanks for providing that clarity. Back to you, Will. Sorry.

William Grafton: One of the questions that we got deals with. That. Very hard to define a firm base, right? People walk out of your office and in the next 2 to 10 days, they're just they're going to change their mind, right?

Yep. And what can we do better to get to them? And there was a lot of good discussion, I think, at the Virginia event about that. A lot of it revolved around You know, a video handoff. I think the, one of the examples was the debt freedom company out of Canada, and they did that great video handoff.

But borrowing from your other book, never lose an employee again. There was one concept in there that you called the 10, 000 phone call. Right. And. You know, I think for some of our clients, right. Some, a lot of them have met with a sales consultant. They haven't necessarily met with an attorney.

[00:41:00] They haven't met with a, definitely not a partner. And you know, one of the ideas that kicked around in my head was a call from the attorney who is going to be representing to, you know, kind of seal that 10, 000 phone call, right. It's a kind of seal that deal and overcome the affirm phase. What other uses for in the affirmed phase. Have you seen that have been effective to kind of bridge that gap and kind of make that connection that doesn't necessarily get there when you don't have the senior guy making that sale.

Joey Coloman: Most of my career and life experience. Any modicum of success I've been able to have stems from trying to really focus in on the human condition.

Why do humans do the things they do and what can we do to convince, persuade, encourage them to [00:42:00] do the things we'd like them to do? As much as everybody's got a good lawyer joke, as much as people make fun of lawyers, Everybody's always ready to bag on the lawyers until they need a lawyer, and then suddenly everybody gets real focused right quick on how valuable a lawyer can be.

Many people, because of the way lawyers navigate in our society, especially here in the United States, have put lawyers up on a pedestal. Now, many lawyers have happily jumped up on that pedestal and looked down on the rest of humanity. Okay, somewhat problematic in both instances. They're right being put on the pedestal as well as looking down once you're up there to your point.

Anything we can do to let the new client know that the senior person, the main lawyer, the name on the door knows who they are. is going to be a good thing. [00:43:00] Anything we can do to let that client know that we are excited and confident about our representation is going to be a good thing. Because here's what's going to happen.

They're going to say, well, they said that the good things in the meeting and they seem like they really cared in the conversation, but you know, am I going to be a number? How many other cases do they have all that fear and doubt and uncertainty when they get a handwritten note? From the managing partner saying, I know you talk to Charles and we're going to be representing you in your auto accident case.

And I got to tell you, after reviewing your case file, I think we're going to be able to get some great results working together. I look forward to our in person kickoff meeting, or I look for those type of little things, allow that person to feel seen valued and appreciated. And that they matter. So I absolutely think wherever we can reach out in that affirm stage is going to be a good thing to do what the other thing I will say in the affirm [00:44:00] stage is for most clients.

Once they've gotten the lawyer, there's a little bit of a sigh of relief because they feel like, oh, there's someone else. I've got an expert. I've got an advocate. I've got someone here in the conversation. Now, who's going to be able to help me and what is the 1st thing? Most law firms do in a representation.

All right. So the first thing I'm going to need is every piece of paper you've ever had about this matter. I'm going to need the report. I'm going to need this. I mean, go find this. Here's the homework answer. These guys, did you do? And we give them a gigantic homework assignment.

Lawyers are weird in that we have an innate comfort with homework because we've done it more recently than most of our clients. Most of our clients graduated high school and never did homework again. Or they went to college and they never did homework again. We kept going. We were fools. We kept pounding our heads against the wall.

And we probably did more homework in law school [00:45:00] than we did in college and high school combined on a weekly basis. So for us, homework is something, Oh, this is how we make progress. This is how we feel self value. This is how we measure worth for most of our clients. They're like, you're bringing up the worst aspect of my life.

Homework. I hated homework. I didn't want to do homework. So what can we do in that reform stage? Pump the brakes on the homework, give smaller homework assignments. You know, all we're going to need before our first meeting, if you could just bring me the ticket. that you got when you were driving and you got pulled over.

Just bring me that. That'll be a great place for us to start. And then they bring the ticket and you're like, Oh, thanks for bringing the ticket. This is actually the core of where this entire thing is going to start from. Now that I have the ticket, let me ask a couple of questions about the ticket on the ticket here.

It says that you showed your license and registration. Do you have your driver's license with you? [00:46:00] Awesome. Let's take that. Can we go get a copy of that made? Do we have the registration? Oh, it's down in your car. You know, when we're done today, I'm going to walk you down to your car just so we can grab your registration.

I'll take a quick little picture of it with my phone. You're helping them to do the homework. And what happens is then when you come to them and say, I need you to answer 38 interrogatories, suddenly we've built to that homework level instead of overwhelming them at the outset.

Richard James: Yeah, so, a couple of things on this that strike me. First is a quick story. So, back way back when I was in multi level marketing and when you sold an opportunity in multi level marketing, this is 1987, 19, 8, 90, 1989. You would convince somebody to sign on the dotted line that night, but almost invariably they would all have buyer's remorse that, what did I do?

Why did I do this? Why, what am [00:47:00] I, gosh, what did I sign up for? And so amongst the many. I'm going to do again, 1988, 89. Technology was limited. So what we tried to do was to address the feelings they were going to have before they ever left that evening. So we would sit down and tell them, here's what your spouse is about to tell you.

Here's what your mom and dad is going to say. Here's what your grandmother, your friends are going to say. Here's what I need to you to tell them in order to otherwise, here's a plan for you to be able to call us and get them on the phone with them. We'll do a three way call. That was as far as technology went.

Here was the plan to overcome these objections before they happen. That's a plus one on. So this idea of sitting down and thinking. From a human perspective, what are they going to feel when they leave your office and doing your best to overcome those objections before they happen? And secondarily, some of the things you're talking about are extremely important and valuable.

And I'll just plus one with this. You've got to make sure you've got enough price elasticity. In [00:48:00] your services so that you can afford to be able to serve the client in the way that you want to serve them. And where a lot of attorneys struggle is they go, Oh, I can't charge this much X, Y. They keep, they tell me why, but what happens is their inability to charge the right number chokes off their inability to serve the client the right way.

And they create this vicious cycle of high churn level because they're, and they can't understand why they didn't leave because, well, I'm the cheapest. Provider, why would they leave? And the answer is because you can't do all these other things to connect an emotional connection, but in order to do that, you have to charge more. So those two positions is what bubbled up for me. As you had this conversation, I don't know if they resonate with you at all.

Joey Coloman: Richard, a hundred percent. I mean, I had the pleasure of practicing law with my father who was a assistant attorney general for. Years, five years, and then a criminal defense lawyer in private practice for about 40 years after that, right?

So I learned from a guy that had been there, done that, got the T-shirt. One of the things he always used to say to me is, Joey, you have to be willing to [00:49:00] ask for the money. And it was probably one of the most valuable skills I learned as a lawyer that had nothing to do with the law. But everything to do with the practice of law and running a business and what we used to say is we had our office was on the third floor of a building and across the street was an eight story building that was pretty much where all the lawyers in town where we were the only we were over here.

They were all over there and if you don't think we use that geography to our advantage, you haven't been paying attention, we came into the conversation and my dad would say so. To represent you in this OWI, Operating While Intoxicated Drunk Driving case, we would say, is going to be a 5, 000 flat fee.

Now you could go over to any of the 80 lawyers in that building, see across, look across the window right there, see all those, we know they've been over to meet with some of those people, right? Any of those people, and the most you're probably going to pay is 1, 500. And if you want to [00:50:00] do that's fine.

Good luck. And we hope it works out well for you. But you need to know if you go over and you hire them and you start going with the case and you realize that you made a mistake and you want to come back over here, the price is now 10, 000. And it's not because we're punishing you for going with someone else.

It's because the things that have to happen in the first 30 days after you've been charged with drunk driving, if they don't do those things exactly right in the first 30 days, it is going to take us over a year to unwind their mistakes. So if you feel confident that they know exactly what to 30 days, hire them.

Great. Good job. If not, we need you to make the investment here so we can take care of you. So then what do you think would happen? Well, 95 plus percent of the people would sign right there. They'd sign in the room. [00:51:00] 5% would leave and the 5% that left, some would go hire them and then they'd come back to us later and we'd get a 10, 000 client.

But what I know from conversations with the other lawyers is they would go over and they'd say, I've heard that the first 30 days after you get a ticket is the most important time. What are you going to do in the first 30 days? And what do you think those other lawyers? Well, we start your case, we get it filed, we enter an appearance in front of the court, and then we start doing research and gathering it, and they give some BS answer that the client knew was BS.

And with speaking in generalizations, and then the client would go, I kind of don't seem like they know what they do, or they'd say, well, 30, nothing happens in the first 30 days, this case is going to take months.

Okay, thanks for doing my marketing. So, to your point, we want to ask for the money, [00:52:00] build in, people ask me all the time, they're like, Joey, what should my budget be for creating great client experiences. I say, Oh, I love this question. What is your current marketing budget? And most organizations say somewhere between 8 and 12% of revenues is what they allocate to marketing.

That's the standard across all industries globally combined law firms. It really varies on the type of practice you have, the size of practice, you know what your clientele is, et cetera. But let's just for giggles use 8 to 12%. I like to carve out at least 1% of that for client experience. So we take the 8% marketing budget, lower it to 7%, and think of 1% of that money as showering love on our existing clients, which by the way is the most effective.

Productive ROI money you can spend on marketing treat your [00:53:00] existing clients well and now we have a line item in the budget because the challenge going back to that fly fishing gift is the employee doesn't think of the fly fishing gift if they don't know they have a budget to spend money on client gifts.

So if you haven't figured out in your firm, how much money are we spending on client experience and gone to every member of your team and said, Hey, this client that's hiring us, it's a 5, 000 case. Over the course of this case, we have 50 to spend on client enhancements and making experiences great for them.

And then you're checking in two months in and we spend any of the client enhancement money. Is there an opportunity to spend any of the client enhancement money? What are we doing? You're not, if you don't have a system and a process for tracking and measuring this stuff, you're not going to end up doing it.

William Grafton: Obviously there's so much content here. I'm hoping we get a chance to talk again. And I appreciate the time and energy put into this. It was a lot of gesticulation and arms waving. And, you know, I know that's going to attract a [00:54:00] lot of eyes. I appreciate that very much.

Joey Coloman: Well, I have absolutely loved the conversation. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks so much to everybody for joining into our conversation and being part of the audience. I think the good news is we made it through the questions that were in the chat, but as you go about navigating your client experiences, if I can be of service, if you have a question, if you have something you're trying to pair.

Don't hesitate to just send me a message. It's really easy to find me. It's Joey, J O E Y like a baby kangaroo or a five year old, you know, Joey at Joey Coleman. com C O L E M a N like the camping equipment, but no relation. Joey at Joey Coleman. com. Send me a message. Happy to help you out in any way I can.

I'll close with this. I know I'm a recovering attorney, but I, and I did we talk about Shakespeare, Richard? Can you remind me if we talked about Shakespeare when we were in Virginia Beach? I don't think we did. We didn't. Okay. So let's talk about Shakespeare. We'll close on a little Shakespeare lesson.

So, [00:55:00] most lawyers are familiar with the Shakespearean phrase, first things first, kill all the lawyers. And everybody's heard this yuck yuck. Oh, we get it. What most people haven't done is actually to go to the play and read what comes before that. I get that you got the soundbite snippet, but what comes before that?

And in the play, what they're talking about is if you wanted to destroy a society. If you wanted to take over a society, what would you do first? Well, you'd kill all the lawyers because the lawyers are the ones who are responsible for keeping the rule of law. The lawyers are the ones who are responsible for avoiding chaos.

The lawyers are the responsible ones. Who have to keep an eye on that the government isn't overstepping their bounds, that the people aren't running amok, that everybody's working in as much harmony as possible. So if you want to create [00:56:00] chaos and anarchy, get rid of all the lawyers, but if you want a successful world, a utopian world, make sure you keep the lawyers around.

I love lawyers. I think the work you're doing is hugely important. I wish you all the best as you go out and create the kind of remarkable experiences that will not only allow you to serve your clients and your colleagues and your team members well, but will hopefully reconnect you to the reason you got into the practice of law in the first place, which is to help other people when they're in times of need and they need help the most.

Richard James: Well, that's around Joey. Thanks so much for your attendance. I appreciate you all of your stories and how you relate to our world, but I appreciate the value you're bringing into the world of small business owners. I can't wait to have you back for your next book. Never lose an employee again. We're gonna be working with that with your team on that shortly.

And I'm excited to have you back into our world. I know our folks have loved you. I from the bottom of my heart, appreciate you. [00:57:00] Thank you for giving your time today. Oh, it's my pleasure, Richard. And thanks to everybody for chiming in and joining us today. I wish you all the very best and look forward to continuing the conversation soon.

If you're listening to this on a podcast, YouTube or whatever, you know, we have a gentleman's agreement around here. Here's the deal. We're going to keep putting out this fantastic, amazing content. Hope that you enjoyed it. All that we ask, if this is not your first listen, you've listened to it before you just go ahead and like, share, comment, do all the things you're supposed to do, depending on the channel that you're on and listening to this and we'll continue to go forward and provide you with the best.

Possible content. We can we appreciate you for listening. We love doing this. We hope you would like to hear more of it. And again, thank you to Joey. Thank you to will for being great hosts today. And I thought that we had a great conversation. We'll see you again next episode.