1635 – Marketing for Elder Law & Estate Planning Attorneys with BamBiz’s Jim Blake

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now. It's the founder and CEO of Bambiz marketing. It is Jim Blake. Jim, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh, for having me.

Jim (00:01:09) - Happy to be here.

Josh (00:01:10) - Yes. Your website is B&M business. And what is B&M biz?

Jim (00:01:17) - Yeah, that's a good question. Right.

Jim (00:01:18) - What what are we. We actually help elder law and estate planning law firms all over the United States with all aspects of their online marketing. We're most famous for helping them fill live workshops and webinars and their. Dirty. We've been doing it for that industry exclusively for over six years now.

Josh (00:01:40) - Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the kind of the culture of elder law attorneys. Now, I will say, full disclosure, I know a little bit about this. This world, this community, we have a client that we've gone we I've actually been we were kind of joking, right, that I went to an event last year and we set up a podcast booth there. But the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys and I was kind of joking with people. I'm like, going to be wild. And truth be told, that is a group that actually knows how to party.

Jim (00:02:12) - Yeah. You know, it's a it's a great group of people. They had the one last year that you were at in Arizona and then this last year, a couple of months ago it was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Jim (00:02:22) - It was a great time.

Josh (00:02:23) - I think if I were to stereotype attorneys, you know, and I were to put maybe the kind of the P.I. attorneys and again, total stereotyping might be a little bit it's just a different energy. You know, I don't want to say, you know, more Saul Goodman, but definitely elder law elder law attorney, community not at all like a Saul Goodman. I find that people care very deeply about what they do, Like this is very, very important to them, and they see that the work that they do just is really vital and helpful for a lot of great folks. How did you settle on Elder being, you know, kind of working with elder law attorneys, Right? Yeah.

Jim (00:03:04) - So to be transparent, you know, seven, eight years ago, I had no idea what Elder Law even was. And so if you would have asked me, Hey, Jim, have you ever heard of an elder law attorney? I would have said I have. No.

Jim (00:03:17) - What is that? Explain it to me. So my wife, Andrea, actually is an event planner. She actually went kind of out by you. She went to the University of Central Florida and she is like an event planner, like a corporate event planner. She went to the hospitality school there. And so she was working for the Hilton and she moved over to a company that does continuing legal education for elder law attorneys all over the country. And as she got that position, me being her spouse, I went to some of these events. I started interacting with these elder law attorneys. Yeah. And the really cool thing was like a lot of them struggled with that. They were brand new, right? So they started practicing elder law. They hung their shingle up right on the door, you know, Jim Blake, Elder law. And it's like, where are the people? How do I get people to come find me now? You know, I'm an attorney. I'm educated, I can help you.

Jim (00:04:09) - How do I get them to come in? And so I was my background was in sales and marketing. I'm like, let me just help you with them, some of this stuff for free. And I had no idea what I was doing for Elder Law. I started helping attorneys for free. Eventually, someone's like their attorneys. Jim You should probably charge them something for what you're doing for them because you're getting a lot of clients and it's scaled into what it is today, believe it or not. So it just started by helping people. And now we have this business. We've got seven people and we're helping law firms all over the country. It's been great.

Josh (00:04:40) - Yeah. So you'd mentioned a couple of things right up at the top as we started here regarding marketing marketing that would be effective for elder law. You know, again, typically when we think of some areas of the law, you know, bus billboards, you know, billboards, you know, I mean, we are in. So I don't know if you want to talk about this because it's kind of unique.

Josh (00:05:04) - Um, central Florida, it has some notoriety when it comes to the intersection between kind of the whole legal industry and advertising. Do you mind kind of sharing what we're known for?

Jim (00:05:17) - I mean, I'm assuming you're talking like the. Morgan and.

Josh (00:05:19) - Morgan Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim (00:05:21) - Some of those are real pushing the edge of what is because I don't know. I mean, the legal industry has rules. Yeah, marketing. It's not like if I want to just go do a bunch of stuff with marketing, I can go do whatever I want to do and best of luck to me. They have guidelines that they have to follow with their marketing and and yeah, Florida's kind of known for pushing the edge of that. And I mean, some of those firms have a lot of millions and millions of dollars.

Josh (00:05:47) - Yeah. Yeah. My my understanding is I think some of the biggest spending attorneys on the planet are based in Orlando, Florida. I could be wrong on that. So I don't quote me on that.

Josh (00:05:58) - But that's that's kind of what what I can tell you is, you know, those who do not live in central Florida. Yeah. You're going to see billboards everywhere. I mean, it's either a billboard for Disney Universal or Morgan and Morgan. Right. Right.

Jim (00:06:10) - And I mean, those are yeah, we kind of touched on it briefly at the beginning, but, you know, those are the ones where, like the attorneys rolling up their sleeves, I'm going, oh, yeah, yeah. Or the Morgan and Morgan ones where he's like laying on a beach with, like, a cartoon head. Yes. Right, right. That's not not marketing. That works for elder law and estate planning, obviously.

Josh (00:06:26) - Yeah, I wouldn't think so. Right. So what does work for elder law estate planning attorneys? Yeah, and.

Jim (00:06:31) - That's that's one of the things that I had to kind of refine when I first started this. I mean. It's not like they're an auto dealer, right? It's not like they're trying to get more people to buy pizza from them.

Jim (00:06:41) - A lot of people need their services and they have no idea that they need their services. Pretty much everyone at some point in their life is going to need the assistance of an estate planning or an elder law attorney. You just don't know it. So the marketing that we do helps trigger those thoughts in their mind when they're they unknowingly are online, you know, scrolling the feed, right? And it's like, oh, I need help with this. Oh, that is something that unfortunately my grandmother is going through right now. And then they are able to click on those ads, learn more, get their questions answered, and then engage with the attorney. So it's it's been rewarding because for us and our team, our marketing for these law firms kind of changes the legacy's for people families all over the country. We're you know, kind of people say like, what's your why? What's your why? The why is we can help thousands, tens of thousands of families all over the country by working with hundreds of law firms and doing this for them.

Jim (00:07:43) - So it's it's a feel good area of the law.

Josh (00:07:46) - Yeah. And you talked about kind of the power of content. Can you share more about that? Like and you mentioned webinars. Is that working?

Jim (00:07:59) - Yeah. So, I mean, there was this thing called the pandemic, but. Yeah.

Josh (00:08:05) - I'm sorry. I just woke up. What happened?

Jim (00:08:07) - Right, Right. Yeah. Yeah. So. So when we first started, Bambiz one of the things we started with was like, Hey, let's do the lead magnet thing, right? You give somebody something and they download it, they give you their name, their phone number, their email address. And then one of the attorneys that we were working with was like, Hey, I do these workshops and so can you get people to instead of download this document or checklist or whatever you want to call it, let's get them to register for a live event where I'm going to be speaking at a library or a hotel ballroom or whatever that may be.

Jim (00:08:34) - And we did that very successfully. We were on a projection, a growth projection that was unbelievable because we're helping these people get these rooms filled with potential clients. And then March 2020, are we going to get senior citizens in a room, right. And have this conversation? So we moved into webinars and that kept us pretty much flatline, a little bit of growth, but not the same growth curve that we were on. Um, now people are pretty much back to doing the live in person events. And the thing is when these attorneys are able to get real people in a room asking questions and interacting with them, it really builds trust. Like if me and you weren't on Zoom right now and we were just hanging out in the same room, there would be a different dynamic even to this conversation, right? And so that especially with the seniors and the baby boomers, that's very important to them. So that that still is where we see now. Within the past year, those events have really skyrocketed again.

Jim (00:09:37) - But there is a subset of people that still want to do webinars for whatever reason, and those those do work to. It's just harder to build that relationship one on one with them.

Josh (00:09:47) - What would you say to someone, you know, again, practicing elder law or estate planning attorney Let's say they've put on an elder or they've put on an event or, you know, just, you know, a virtual event, zoom event or in person. They put a lot of work into it. They send out a lot of emails, postcards, etcetera. Nobody showed up or maybe one person showed up and it was even more embarrassing. Um, what would you say to them or what questions might you ask to kind of, kind of troubleshoot that to see if maybe they can have another go at it?

Jim (00:10:17) - Yeah. I mean, the thing is, if you are targeting the right people with the right message, right. And they're and they're actually taking the time, if it's online, right. They stop the scroll, they click the ad, they went to the landing page, they registered for the event.

Jim (00:10:30) - They got their confirmation. The the the the crutch to all of that is following up with people. And my you know, we have a whole entire process where we're like this is the recommendations for you. If you want to get 70 to 80% of the people that actually register to to show up. And that's kind of like the gauge for success for a live. Whereas a webinar, if you're pushing 50 to 60%, that's probably that's probably pretty successful. So those are those are the success gauges following up with them and getting them engaged. So for example, if somebody registers for your live event, you need somebody to get on the phone with them from the firm as soon as possible and just say things to them like, Thank you so much, Mrs. Smith, for signing up for our event. What prompted you to to actually register for this event? Was there a particular question or issue that you were hoping that the attorney can address? Get them to write that answer down? Okay. I'm going to you know, if it's the attorney saying it, I'll address this for you at the event.

Jim (00:11:27) - If it's a person in their office, we'll make sure that attorney so-and-so addressed this for you at the event and then keep them engaged with the process. We're saving your seat. This is limited. If you have to cancel, let us know. And and doing stuff like that's going to get you more people to show up. Now, if you don't have people to show up, that's a bigger issue. And I would say it's either really bad marketing or or you just didn't follow up with the people. You were kind of like rolling dice and hoping that either 100% of the people showed up or nobody showed up.

Josh (00:11:56) - So yeah, your website is Bam Business Net, I would assume. Well, yeah, look at that. So one thing again, it sounds like you're advocating and you absolutely follow your own advice. You have a lot of free resources. Can can you talk about why, you know, giving away so much? And again, if I'm going to go, I'm just going to point this out because I think this is really interesting.

Josh (00:12:24) - So when I hover over your free resources, I get Elder Law Growth Podcast, Unstoppable Growth eBook How to Attract Clients Free Training Webinar, Free SEO Audit, Video Library Write emails actually get Open Lawyers Guide to Marketing Newsletter. Subscribe like you got a lot of things. Uh, you know, again, just resources where people can spend time with you. I don't mean to start leading the witness here, but tell me more about, you know, why it's so important to, you know, kind of what we're talking about here. Why does this work?

Jim (00:12:59) - Yeah, yeah. I mean those, those items are there honestly to to help the attorneys. We I mean, I know that not every attorney that visits our website is going to hire Bam is right. But maybe they know somebody that's a tight group. I mean, you've been to Nala.

Josh (00:13:12) - That's. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a very tight community, you know.

Jim (00:13:15) - So if they get one thing from something that we've provided to them at one point, maybe they've shared that with a colleague and that person ends up reaching out to us, setting up a conference, having a conversation, and we're able to help them.

Jim (00:13:27) - But, I mean, you can't give away too much stuff. And honestly, I get I mean, we give away all the secret sauce. There's no secret sauce in what we do. I mean, I'll tell you exactly what it is. The issue is, does the law firm want to spend the time figuring out all of this marketing stuff and implementing all of this marketing stuff, or should we take the time and practice law? Right. I don't want to practice law. I want to do marketing, right? I don't want to do right. So I give that to somebody else and so we give it to them. There's going to be a subset of that group that takes it and goes with it and has success on their own, and there's going to be another side of them. Well, there's basically three. There's the do it yourselfers, there's the people that need the help, and then there's the the huge law firms like that. Morgan and Morgan, if they were in state planning, that they have their own marketing team and they don't need us anyways, So maybe some of their teammates get some inspiration from what we have to offer.

Jim (00:14:21) - And that's great, too.

Josh (00:14:22) - Yeah. So say part of, you know, a practicing attorneys research, they're listening to our podcast, they stumbled upon this and, and well, I mentioned a lot of free things that they can absolutely take advantage of. But talk about what, you know, how does how does engagement typically begin? Like what's discovery? Like, how do you kind of ease into working together?

Jim (00:14:46) - Yeah, I mean, we're really transparent. So I mean, if you go on our website, you can literally click on pricing and we don't make you opt in to see pricing. Like you can see our pricing, you can see what's included and it's there. If you like it, you can schedule a call with our team. Our team would be happy to discuss things with you and move forward. But really at the end of the day, go and use the tools and the resources that we have. You know, I did release a book recently that you can get on Amazon or you can go on our website.

Jim (00:15:13) - There's a big red bar at the top of the website that says Get our book. And so you can click that link and and get this copy Unstoppable Growth. It's kind of like the the Master guide or like the Bible for estate planning and elder law marketing. It's exactly what they should do for things like paid ads, website SEO, generating reviews, social media, YouTube, email management workshops, like we had talked about webinars and just converting webinar traffic because that's been a tough one for a lot of attorneys. Personally.

Josh (00:15:45) - Yeah, I bet. Again, your website, Bambiz Net, I mentioned your free resources. What should folks click on?

Jim (00:15:53) - Yeah. So if you go to Bambiz net at the top, there's a big red bar. Get our free book. That's where I would say start click that. We do charge 9.99 shipping. If you want to go to Amazon, you can search Unstoppable Growth. Jim Blake and it's also on there and you can get it right from Amazon.

Josh (00:16:07) - Yeah, yeah.

Josh (00:16:08) - The book's title is Unstoppable Growth Stop Wasting Time and Money Attract great clients you love and grow the Practice of your dreams. Jim Blake, again, you're the founder and CEO of Bambiz. The website again is Bambiz net. It's been a great conversation. Jim, thank you so much for joining us.

Jim (00:16:25) - Thanks, Josh, for having me. Have a great day.

Josh (00:16:32) - Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for the thoughtful entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love even if you just stopped by to say Hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community, who listens and shares our program every day.

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