Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Relay, the legal show for personal injury law firm owners, presented by Lexamica, the number one attorney referral network. I'm your host, Gabriel Sterritz. Our industry is transforming before our eyes. Private equity pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars, national firms expanding into every market, and marketing budgets that make independent growth seem possible. That's why I've brought on Ben Glass today, the original renegade lawyer who spent 40 years not just fighting insurance companies, but, but creating a blueprint for how independent firms can thrive despite being outspent by bigger players. And has built multiple seven figure businesses while raising nine children. That's right, nine. And maintaining complete independence. And more importantly, he's helped hundreds of law firm owners create sustainable competitive advantages that mega firms can't easily replicate. If you're feeling squeezed by rising marketing costs, industry consolidation, Ben's practical playbook is exactly what you need. Ben, welcome to the Relay. I'm thrilled to have you on today.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: It's going to be, it's going to be fun. We saw each other in Miami a few weeks ago and it's good to reconnect and to dive into this because I think it's an important issue and there's, there's just so many lawyers who are not spending $80 million a year on advertising.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think just to set the scene, 20 years ago, it felt as simple as I'm entering into a new market, I'm going to go buy TV ads and then money's going to start coming in the door. And I think it's getting more complex than that. So first of all, what is your take on where the industry is right now? What are the big trends you're seeing?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: So if you were in Miami national trials, which is a great event, and I encourage people to be in rooms of people doing things bigger, better, faster than they are. But if you were a new law firm owner sitting and watching those talks, you'd be like, I want to go start a pizza shop. Because how could I ever compete with this kind of money?
Our experience. And so people will say to us, Ben and Brian at Ben Glasslaw in Northern Virginia, like how, how do you deal? Because, you know, you watch daytime tv, Morgan. Morgan. It's everywhere. And there's, you know, it's a bunch of local firms that are, that I've seen everywhere. It hasn't affected us at all. 80% of our money, Gabe. So we do auto PI. And I do, I have this niche and ERISA long term disability insurance claims. So that's the only two Things we know anything at all about.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, which, which is great because Autopi is the most competitive space right now. This is where the money's all going.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: And it's driving up the cost, so it's driving up the cost of advertising. But here's what I think your listeners will appreciate over 80% of our money.
That buying path begins because somebody mentioned my name or Brian's name or the firm's name to a friend. Now they may then go through our digital properties and we have like every other a bunch of digital properties but this, the conversation started with a human being relationship.
And so in 2024, except for about a eight week test of local service ads which we have now stopped, we spent $0, Gabe, on digital advertising.
Zero now. And, and had year over year, 50% growth. So how's that possible?
Well, we spend, we invest a lot of money in coaching, personal coaching, corporate coaching, we do eos.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: When you say coaching, you're saying getting. Receiving coaching.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Receiving coaching. Yes. Business coaching, mindset coaching, personal coaching. We invest, we invested heavily at the beginning of 2024, end of 2023 in technology, like really making sure that we could figure out where our leads were coming from which led to this discovery that really they come from a human being.
And, and then, and the third thing is, bar none, we believe we deliver the very best customer experience, client experience of any law firm in our area. And we're proud of that and we say it all the time. And that's reflected in our online reviews which, which are not about hey, you got me the most money I deserved and you know, sort typical stuff. No, it's how, how we treated. And so those things like gave any lawyer, you can either compete dollar for dollar and there is a space like money works, money counts. And the biggest spenders are going to make money from that.
But most of us, most firms in America are not that and they're competing against 800 pound gorillas or 800 ton gorillas. So you got to figure out what can I do. And we believe, Brian and I believe and we're proving it in our own practice and through great little marketing. It's human being relationships. It's working on referral sources, it's having a things that we have a Dream 100 program for our PI referral sources, both medical and legal people who send us cases in our long term disability. Like who are the other lawyers that have our, our case in their portfolio because they're doing work that's adjacent to ERISA long term disability. And so we're very deliberate. We, we, we're old school direct mail marketing lunches. Boom. Things that we're never going to compete. TV or, or even digital ad spend. The other thing we invested in, have.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: You diversified away entirely from TV, digital PPC, LSAs? Is that part of your spend at all in terms of creating brand awareness at a local level or have you moved away?
[00:05:26] Speaker B: So the answer is, would have been no diversification, no spend. However, because I run, I run two companies, Ben Glass Law and Gray Legal Marketing. So every once in a while, Gabe, we'll go, we'll be pitched.
We tell people if we buy your service, buy your lead gen, whatever, like we're going to tell people either we're going to help you make your next million dollars because it really worked or we're going to tell people what our experience is because of our stage, great legal marketing stage. So we do like we're getting ready and I forget what company is, but we're getting ready to buy, you know, quote, buy leads that are generated online.
We know our cost of acquisition and so if we can find a source that lowers the cost of acquisition, we'll run with it.
And if they're great, we'll tell the world about it. And if they're mediocre, like you know, most experiences will also tell the world about it. But that gets back to knowing your numbers. Like most lawyers gave, like they think they have a lead gen problem, they don't. They have a sales and conversion problem and they don't know their number. They don't know how much it costs to get a case. You gotta know that.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Of course, of course. So I think one of the questions that, that I would immediately run to is I think people view Morgan and Morgan essentially as the Walmart. When Walmart moves into town, everyone else goes out of business. I have my own thoughts on that. But, but what is your, what is your reaction to, to the idea that when a big shop comes into town it's going to start to put everybody else out of business?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: To be true, this has happened across industries, across businesses. Right. And so you know Home Depot, around every Home Depot there is a thriving hardware store. There may be five other hardware stores that did go out of business, but the hardware store that stayed in business did something differently. And usually at least my experiences, they up their customer service like you can trust them. Their people know what the heck they're doing and they have stuff in stock. Right. Kind of simple. And so you know, Amazon is out there, but there are still independent bookstores. That are thriving. Many went away. But you and I both know the ones that are like, hey, this is a cool place. I go there, I spend my money.
And so, you know, the Morgan and Morgan thing hasn't. People say, well, you know, they're in Northern Virginia and D.C. area. Does it affect you? No. Like our, we're growing 50% year over year. We don't see it. I think, I think our clients are different. I think we're not trying to attract maybe the type of client that we call TV adloy. And I'm not saying that that's bad. I'm saying we have chosen to do business in a certain way with certain people. And whatever you decide, if you're running a firm, like whatever you decide is the client you want to see walking through the door. If that's right for you, that that's right for you. Like, so we're not critical of that. We're just saying.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: And I think one of my things. Yeah. And I think one of the things, and I agree with your metaphor, like, yes, there may be. There are hardware stores that went out of business. There are still thriving local stores. There are some regional chains and there's still. And then home depone lows. Yes, they've eaten a lot of market share. I think now is the time to act with conviction in the direction that is best for you. I think the firms that are going to do and are doing the worst are the ones that are looking up market and trying to do upmarket plays with less budget because that's the recipe for failure. What you're saying is I have chosen a position in a local market. You may or may not be, you may be top of market in your local market. I'm not saying that. But you're, you're a smaller presence. And so you have to behave differently and act with conviction in that direction. Otherwise you're going to fail because you're going to poorly replicate a larger strategy.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Right. So if you're only going to do what everybody else is doing and try to keep up with them, dollar for dollar, that's fail. I mean, you, you know, my, my mentor Dan Kennedy said, look, if you're going into a market and you don't know the messaging to put out there, like look around what everybody else is doing and at least don't do that. Right. And so you said 20 years ago, people worry about TV. We were doing, still doing yellow Pages. Right. So I would. Very first thing I did is I went to the regional library here and had volumes and volumes of yellow Pages. And I said, well, Dan's right. Look, every ad is exactly the same. We started advertising actually our books about personal injury, about Carson cases inside the yellow pages and did well with that.
So. But you're right. So this begins with what kind of life do I want, Gabe? What type of firm supports that life?
What type of client supports that firm? Now, now how do I go get that client? And so we talk about the avatar client and writing for or creating video for that person, and people will say, gabe, well, it's automobile. Like you don't know. It's kind of random.
Not really. I mean, there's, you know, there's clients that have a lot of insurance and have health insurance and, and, and those cases are, you know, easier to resolve. And if they're significant cases, they're easier to get the full value out of the case than, than are, than, you know, marketing to people that have low insurance and, and no health insurance. Those are just harder cases.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think one of the things that like, has really stuck out to me about your smaller, you can create bin. You can create a hyper local brand that appeals to people who want to, to know who they're doing business with, know the, the full extent of the law firm.
They're going to choose to do business with you in a way that, that just large firms can't compete with that. Some people want the big, the volume, you know, whatever it is brand. But yeah, I, and one of the great examples that I point to a lot is Josh, Josh Hodges over Krueger Hodges. He does a lot of social media content. He just reviews local restaurants. Like, yes, you're not going to get a national player reviewing local restaurants, but that creates a bond with an audience that you can't replicate at scale. So it's figuring out like, where are the, what are the things that you can do that a giant law firm can't do and then go and spend time niching in those.
And one of the things that also is true is branded content. Branded cases tend to have higher values. People in really tragic accidents, they want to call someone that they know or they know. Hey, a friend told me, ben, you're a good guy. I'm going to hire Ben Glass because, you know, he's around the corner like. So I think that kind of strategy really works as well. And like you said, selecting for better clientele, people who understand that they're going to have to work together with you is, is important here. Have you seen any of the strategies that worked for you two years ago or any of them not working for you today. Has, is there anything you've had to jettison recently or have you been able to stay the course? Generally we double down because.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Look, look, Abe. So that person who's seriously hurt, they're going to start asking people they trust. They may ask their, their religious leader, they may ask their divorce lawyer, they may ask their wealth planner. And so, you know, we try to create relationships with all of those potential referral sources. And again, we, you know, we'll invest time, energy and money in those relationships because people want to work with people that they trust. Most people have not dealt with a personal injury attorney before. They really don't know where to turn. It's kind of like the Internet is a, or even TV ads is sort of a last resort. Like if you don't know anybody, you don't have any friends to ask, you go and start calling TV ads again. I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm saying our clients, when they come through, someone who, who knows us, who knows our story too. And here's the cool thing, Gabe, everybody. So every lawyer who's listening to this has their own unique story, right? So when you are known in the community for something other than personal injury lawyer. So what has been known for dad to nine run, sue businesses, Soccer referee, sportsmanship, advocate, public speaker and people. So, so many people know those things about me. They may not even know I do personal injury or ERISA cases. Right. But they, but they feel they know me enough to trust. Call Ben. He will help you. He will send you in the right direction. And so lawyers, I mean, this is a great. The magic wand for most small firm lawyers is everybody has a story, everybody has a special interest outside of law. And now we have to be comfortable talking about that. And that's why our social media is more. My social media is more towards sportsmanship and CrossFit and being healthy at, you know, and bike. Recovering from bypass surgery. Right. Like those things. Other than, you know. Yeah. What is contributory negligence in Virginia, which is a very, is a very boring topic actually.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So. No, and I think that's like one of the most interesting things that I found. I've met with so many personal injury lawyers and when I, I love visiting them and I love going out to eat with personal injury law firms who have a local presence because you guys are, are just local celebrities. And it's so I love going into a restaurant and then, you know, sitting down to eat with Ben, Ben at the table. And then the waitress comes up. Oh, can I get a photo with you? You know, I, I saw you and it's like, it's so awesome because it's such a local presence and you can't replicate that. Like, sure, like if a big national player came into the room, people would like that too. But like, there's a real connection of like, I've seen you around town, people know your name and they love that. But that's a, that's a great representation of how powerful these local brands can be to your local community. And like you said, the storytelling side, hey, how's the heart surgery been? How's the recovery been? Like, people love that connecting point. To be able to engage in a real conversation with someone and just feel like they know you and they can.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Remember those stories better, of course, than the story of, oh, you know, he got X dollars in a dog bite case, which is interesting to us, but it's not interesting to you because you haven't been bitten by a dog.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Well, your waitress, where your waitress at a restaurant is never going to walk up and say, hey, Ben, congrats on the great dog bite case.
Right. Like, that's not something that people talk about.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: My wife was impressed. We were flying and the flight attendant. So one of us had a Ben Glass law shirt on and this flight attendant was like, oh man, like, you guys are famous. And I, I said to Sandy, I said, hey, just listen, like, we're famous.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: No, I love it. I, I had a flight attendant. You know, I'm obsessed with billboards. Every time I go into a new city, I look who's facing the billboard. So I was flying out one, one time and I said, hey, this is the billboard attorney in the town. Do you know who he is? And she was like, yes. And just started singing the jingle because she'd grown up hearing it and it's like you, you know, she's like 25 years old and this person's embedded in her mind since her childhood. Like, that's really powerful. Local brands. And I think you've taken it to another level because again, like, if you look back in time, that storytelling that you're doing was not nearly as sophisticated or powerful or personal. And that's not easy. It's easier to get on and do a 30 second TV spot than to be open the way that you are.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: But I do think there's a lot of power in the way that you're approaching it.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: It's easy to whip out your credit card to do that. You know, another example is we have an eight page full color monthly mailed, printed, stamped newsletter that goes out. And so, and it's mainly our team telling stories of what they've been involved in. Is there is some legal in it, but not a whole lot. And this is something that, you know, if, honestly, God, like if the big firms figured this out, like they would crush it. But they're not interested. They're interested in, you know, market recognition through tv. And again, I'm not saying any of that is bad. I, I'm showing other lawyers how they can create a great life without trying to compete dollar for dollar on the advertising spend. Now again, we spend money. They talked about the things we spend money on. But our, you know, our referral brand is very strong here in Northern Virginia.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah, which, which is fantastic. I mean the thing that I drawing out here is how do you compete when big dollars are coming in? There's a, there's abs where the starting budget is 200, $300 million to do national case acquisition. That's scary to hear that that's happening. How do you sleep well at night? And what I'm hearing from you is that you double down on the local connection, the local presence. That somebody can't just come in and sweep out your market just because they have the budget to start advertising on television. But it really means creating the personal connection in the, in the local markets that you're in with people and not just saying, hey, I'm scared of these big people, so I'm going to be like them. It's, I'm scared of them and I'm going to be different than them. I'm going to be more of myself rather than crap. There's a bunch of money, maybe I should try to be like it 100%.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: And then, you know, online reviews are very powerful for us and you know, we do it all by human being. We don't use any sort of automation. Right. And what we tell people, Gabe, is we want you to write about our team. We want you to write about the experience of working with us. And we just want people to know that we are friendly and we will try to help. So then when someone, because we know even if you get a referral, I'm going to go and look at your online reviews like just like you do on Amazon. Right. And so that's, that's an easy thing to go get. Most lawyers don't do this very well. They don't respond to all of them. They don't teach how to write great online.
You know, call it reviews, call it commentary, whatever. And, and again, like if, if you have a thousand people who can tell your story, then when they're telling it to someone who's got a case like that person's, not even their brain doesn't even hear the TV ad right. Because they don't need it. I, I know someone who can give me a referral.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So last question, since you're coming up on time here. How large does your strategy, how large do you think that that can scale? So obviously it works at like a city level. Can you do it state, can you do it multi state? How big theoretically do you think you could take this before it starts to break down? And I'm sure it varies by region, but I'd love your thoughts.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Strategic. So in our ERISA long term disability space, we're national, so we're, we're the biggest in the mid Atlantic. But I talk to clients and potential clients from across the country. Now how do we do that? So we have taken some advertising dollars and here's where we've gone. We've gone to the people who are gurus, who are financial planning gurus to wealthy people, financial planning gurus to doctors. So people want to go toWhite Coat investors.com to their blog. And so we have space there. And so it's, it's, again, it's, it's aligning with people who your next client may be consulting for something adjacent.
So it's not as easy as hyperlocal Northern Virginia for sure. But the reality is, Gabe, for most people, here's the thing. Brian and I discovered this.
Rather than trying to dominate all of Virginia for PI, what if we just got 15% more of all the cases in Fairfax county, like the 10 miles right around our office. But, and you think of all the PI lawyers who are in this space right now in Northern Virginia, like what if we just got a few more percentage points of that makes us fat and happy? So lawyers, they'll say, I want the whole market area, I want the whole state. You don't need it, you just need to be better at where you are. And then you're. Then the other thing that we're working on is being strategic about expansion. So if we're going to go open up another, a satellite business, you know, we're looking for a place that's Internet weak, right. Where if we moved in there and had a physical space, we could pretty easily dominate the search there. And that's a whole nother strategy. That's a different podcast episode, but that's a space lawyers can think about. Like, why are you moving into a space where there's 800 lawyers, like right around the courthouse and then now trying to compete digitally with 800 lawyers who are all in the same block? Like, that's nutso.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: No, not. But, but just to go back to something I thought you said, it was fascinating and I think like wildly underappreciated is this hyperlocal approach, to the extent that we're talking about ways to kind of counteract national, national approaches. That one, there's a few people that are doing that. Your approach of saying, because so let's call that like a hyperverticalized, hyper localized approach.
You just mentioned a totally different strategy that I think has absolutely massive potential, which I would call a highly demographically aligned approach. Right. So the goal is not necessarily just to be hyperlocal, but you find what's the smallest demographic where I can get a high, high frequency.
Because that's the easiest way to do that is to go hyper local. Right? Oh, there's a town of 50,000 people. Everyone can know my name in that town for not so much money. But the other way is to go and pick the most like localized, like hey, it's like female deer hunters in western North Virginia could be a demographic. Right. And you become that person. And there's some really cool brand plays in like that region which are kind of hyper localized. Like if you look at Amanda to Manda, who's really rolled up like the Cuban market in Miami, it's genius. And I think you can do that in a non geographically focused way if that's what you're into.
I just love, I think that's. We could do a whole podcast about that approach which is finding tiny hyper aligned demographics and just dominating that. But there's an almost endless supply of small groups of people that congregate in the same place or that's a digital or physical space. And then dominating that. And there are like some really, really massive, massively profitable opportunities where the scale is small enough that a national brand's never going to touch it. So I think you just opened a whole other can of worms that I'd love to chat about.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: You just have to think deeply and you know, Gabe, some of the best ideas come when you're not hanging out with lawyers. So hang out with other successful business owners. Someone selling a product or service to another human being. Right? That's business, product or service another human being. Like hanging out with them and Asking them, how do you do it? How. How do you have a coffee shop in a place where there's a Starbucks on every corner? Oh, well, here's what we do. Great. How do you have a hair salon? There's other hair salons or car dealerships. Those are the people you want to hang out with. And finding those people in your local area is really important. And if you can't find a group, you start a group and you. You bring them to your office and you buy them the pizza and you ask, how do you do it? That's another thing that most lawyers aren't used to, like, just hanging with other small biz owners and being curious about what they do. So there's a ton of stuff. We cover a lot. We've just published the Renegade Lawyer Marketing book. People can find that at Renegade Lawyer Marketing. We have our conference in October every year. And so we're just having fun. Brian and I have fun. We're. We're playing the game of life. We're playing the game of business. And we're doing it. We're fortunate to do it with people that we really like. Like, our teams are good. And when the lawyers are happy and the teams are happy, Gabe, the clients will be well served. And that's why we're unabashedly, like, number one, we believe in customer service, client services.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: I love it, Ben. And you are playing the game of life well. Nine children, and you're working with your family. I really respect that and love that we can. And really thank you for being on the podcast. Always a wealth of wisdom. Ben mentioned he's got a book out, he's got a podcast, he's got a conference. You'll hear him speaking at other conferences anytime you can listen to him. Really good guy. And he's practicing what he preaches, which you can't say about everybody, so I'd encourage you to go check that out. Ben, thanks so much for being on the show.
