Charlie: Welcome to the CMO Series podcast, where we discuss all things marketing and business development in professional services. This very special edition of the series was recorded live at the Lex Mundi annual conference in Toronto, where Alistair Bone had the pleasure of speaking to Iris Jones, the Chief Marketing and Client Development Officer at Akerman, about how to stand up, stand out, and take accountability for your legal, marketing, and BD results.So let's dive straight into the session.

Ali: Good afternoon, everybody. It'd be very easy to make the joke about standing in the way of everybody and having a drink, but very kindly, Lex Mundi, you've obviously given everyone a glass of champagne to make this a bit more bearable. So hopefully you can all enjoy that and enjoy this conversation. Interestingly, I've been listening to all of the conversations that we've had today and all the various presentations. Funnily enough, a lot of it is going to be wrapped up really neatly in the conversation I'm about to have with Iris. And I think when we were planning this, we actually had no idea that that'd be the case. So it's all worked out rather nicely. Today's topic is all going to be really around accountability. And it's fair to say that at the heart of all marketing and business development, particularly within the world of legal, there's that sort of constant need to prove yourself, to show that you're really driving the right outcome within your firm. Today on this live edition of the Passle CMO Series podcast, and for those of you who are going to be listening in, we're at the Lex Mundi Annual Conference here in Toronto. We're going to be diving into how to stand up, to stand out, and to take accountability for your results that you're bringing to the firm in marketing and business development. And so to cover this hugely important topic, we are fortunate enough to be joined by one of Legal Marketing's stars, Iris Jones, the Chief Marketing and Client Development Officer at Sacrament. Iris, welcome.

Iris: Thank you very much, Alistair. It's great to be here. Please sip up, because the more you sip, the better I sound. 

Ali: Well, as I shared yesterday, I have no doubt this is going to be absolutely wonderful. And I should probably not say that at the top of the podcast, but I know that it's going to be a great conversation. So to kick us off, Iris, why is standing out something that marketers and BD professionals should be thinking about?

Iris: Well, first of all, to be where you are, you obviously are very ambitious people. You're not slackers. You're not folks who want to hide under a rock. I think that it's really difficult what we do every day. It's really difficult to measure it. And we have to be very intentional about the value that we bring to our positions.

When it's hard to measure what we do and how that relates to the firm, we have to be very careful about that because it's not about us. It's about the deliverables, what kind of services we're providing, what kind of support we're providing. I think there are many contributing factors to the revolving door for CMOs in particular. But I also think that if we're not very careful, we will be part of that revolving door after two, three, or four years. We are one of the C-suite professionals that has the greatest turnover, as we all know. There's lots written about it. It has to do with the fact that it's really hard to measure what we are doing for the firm and how we are contributing to the firm's success. So we have to be very intentional about it because all of us in this room and all of our colleagues want to be successful and want to drive success for the firm. To do that, accountability has to be part of our everyday thinking and everyday deliverables. When I say accountability, it's not about saying, "Look at me, let me tell you what I did for you today." It's about how we're driving success for the firm as a whole and for our individual attorneys. Myself, having been in the workplace for over 45 years, I've always had to, and many women in the room can probably relate to this, go the extra mile and demonstrate our value. There's not an automatic presumption of competence. We have to provide that as individuals. When I started practicing law in 1978 and practiced for over 25 years, it was an everyday thing. I wanted to go that extra mile to demonstrate that, yes, I belonged wherever I was, whether it was the attorney general's office or being the first city attorney for the city of Austin, Texas—first woman, first person of color. That's a tall order, it’s really tough. But all of us can relate and have our own stories to tell. I've always known that everything I do should be measured and demonstrated. I always tell myself, don't be shy about being a bit of a self-promoter because no one's going to come up and ask, "Hey Iris, what did you do last year? How do you think you measured up?" We have to let people know what our team is doing to make a difference. It's not about me, but about leading a group of people who want to be validated every day, who want to be seen, and who deserve recognition for driving the needle.

Ali: That's really interesting. Two of the things you touched on there were the value you need to show and the importance of self-promotion. During your career, were there moments when you realized how important it was to demonstrate the impact you're having? And how do you demonstrate that to the firm so they understand the value of what you're doing?

Iris: I think with every step of the way. It's especially important when you're supporting or supervising others to show how your team is impacting the organization. Whether it be a state agency, whether it be a city like the city of Austin law department or whether it's department within a firm like we're all in most of us. Or if it's with an entity, I think that whatever you're doing, in order to be a good leader, you have to make sure you elevate your people and give them a purpose in being there and make them feel like they're contributing to the bottom line. Right now, the question you asked was about how would I do that at Akerman. It's pretty much what I've applied across the board. However, every firm, every company, every entity is going to be different. So this one-size-fits-all application, you should never do. So the first thing I did with respect to my current firm is observe, listen, watch, and understand what the firm's needs are. Sometimes they're spoken, sometimes you learn about it at the interview and then later you are you hear the real story when you get there we all know what that feels like. I think that the most important thing is to not go in as a know-it-all like I've got your answer or the solution for you. We've all been there, we've had people do that, it's like wait a minute, hold up let us educate you a little bit and tell you what is the real story before you start moving the chairs around a minute before you start rearranging the photos or the pictures on the wall. Okay. So it's observing, listening, and not wanting to tell people what to do because you have a title, but it's about listening and learning from other people. And you actually, you get more buy-in when people know that they're being heard from you and that they have something to contribute. Just because you come in with a cheap title doesn't mean you have all the answers. That was the first order of business. 

The second thing is, is we all know this. So I don't want you to think I'm telling you the answer. You all have answers. We all know that when you come in, they will tell you specific, the firm leadership will tell you specific tasks or solutions that they're seeking. But then there's those unknowns, okay? Those unknowns that you've observed that the firm needs. And in time, at the appropriate time, you have to have the courage to make recommendations, raise your hand, and offer some solutions, hopefully with the folks who have a stake in the outcome. In other words, if you're a CMO, don't just go in there alone. Moment, for example, an alumni program I talked about briefly yesterday, I got with the chief talent officer. I connected with the CIO and I talked to the CHRO before I made recommendations to the chairman because they all have a stake in the outcome of that alumni program that I wanted to recommend. But I waited two years, took me two years. To discover that no one was going to do anything if I didn't push for that program. So I decided, okay, nobody sees the value in this or doesn't want to take it on. So guess what? I'm going to do it. But I did it with their knowledge. So I didn't look like a hot dog going in there to say, oh, great solution for the firm. Listen to my brilliance. I went in saying that with the help of the others I just mentioned, we could do a really wonderful job in advancing the needle and bringing in brand ambassadors from our alum, as well as potential new clients. But they all were aware of what I was doing. And I gave them attribution during the executive committee meeting that I presented this idea to. And it was unanimous that they wanted us to start the program. But I brought my colleagues along by name and title. They were included in my presentation. So it wasn't just my deal. So it was one of those things that took two years, but I made sure that no one else was going to pursue it or I wasn't trying to elbow anyone out of the way. So that's just one way I have been able to move the needle, if you will, and demonstrate our value and observe how important it's going to be to the bottom line to have a formal alumni program. That's one example.

Ali: With that, you talk about this whole idea of, you know, observing, listening, watching, it takes a little bit of time. And to me, sort of two years to to implement the alumni program seems like quite a long time. Let's say you're kind of new into the position as the CMO or maybe something more junior. At what point do you feel you can turn around and go, you know what, this is when I'm going to step forward. I'm going to start putting myself in the position to have an impact. Do you think there's a particular timeline around that or is it something that's just got to go with a little bit of gut feel? You've built that trust and the respect within the firm?

Iris: That particular program, for example, took two years in the making, percolating. But I would not recommend that you begin the accountability process for yourself and the team. I wouldn't recommend that you wait that long. After making observations, asking questions, and determining not only what they gave you the marching orders for, Alistair, but also what you observe is very, very important to the firm's elevation, if you will, and acceleration. There are a number of different areas that, no, I started within a couple of months. The most glaring was when a couple of very high-level executive committee members said to me, why is it that every time one of our partners leaves our firm, you hear about it in every medium. You see the press release the other firm has distributed. But when somebody comes to our firm, we get a lateral, nothing happens. And so I said, let me check on that. That was within two weeks of my joining. So I checked on it and I discovered that we had two people in the media. I discovered that we were averaging two, just giving you the straight skinny, two press releases a month. And I inquired, it was June and the person responded, oh, it's just a slow month.

So I discovered very quickly that the team, full transparency, the team basically waited for someone to ask for a press release. The passive show up for work and do whatever you're told as opposed to being proactive, going out looking for the news and just being very intentional about getting producing press releases on in a timely manner. Press releases are pressing. If you don't get it out soon, it's old news and nobody cares. So we were able to change that very, very rapidly and it was important to me that they, the firm leadership, but also important to me that the firm itself benefited from our proactivity from that point on. It was very easy to do. Didn't require any new tools, didn't require new staff at that point. We never had a director of communications until I recommended it the following year because it was just two people doing their best, turning out the news and responding to inquiries from reporters. And it was just not enough and not a high enough level. 

So that was within two months. We started reporting the outcomes on a quarterly basis. Now we have what I call the weekly review. I did bring one copy in case anyone was interested in taking a gander. It's a weekly review that provides information about the events that are coming up. That provides the press releases and a live link. So you could read about it because a lot of lawyers don't have time to gather up the news and take a look at what was reported about our firm or about our attorneys every single week. And it includes information about our RFPs so that if you know someone at GE or you know someone at Coca-Cola or you want to work there, you may want to chime in and be part of that proposal team. The pitch team, whatever you want to call it. So we provide pertinent information every single week now, and it includes obviously the press releases. So we're averaging probably six to eight press releases per week, but we're not churning out press releases just for the sake of it, but that's what it turns out to be. So as you can imagine, one or two a month versus eight to 10 a week, that's quite a significant jump. But what we also measure, that's great. How many widgets did you create this week? But what's even better is when we break it down by how many partners were quoted in tier one publications. Before, it was more like occupational therapy, where a hundred people get the circulation. If they go to the doctor, they can pick it up on the magazine rack. But now we're looking at tier one, where it makes a difference, where the circulation is high and our targeted audiences are reading about us. 

And that's one of the measurables, and it was important to not just those two attorneys who kind of accosted me when I first joined and told me this very shocking news, but it was for all firm leadership and for all attorneys. And you know what it did? It helped to motivate our attorneys because they saw that Mary or Sally, George were doing XYZ, and it's like, wait a minute, how did they do that? Can you help me? And they started paying attention to what we were reporting about the activity of the firm and the events. You know, Charlie may be in New York, but guess what? Max, Wes, Cece, they may be producing a really exciting, engaging event in Las Vegas or Los Angeles. And you have clients, Charlie, and you want to send them to that event. So you get a chance to have an idea of what's happening in your own firm, even though you're thousands of miles away. But you could still have an impact and make a difference by extending that invitation. So we've been the glue, the networking arm of the firm, if you will, bringing folks together with just making sure that we are giving them the pertinent information that they need, not flooding them, because there's a difference between data analytics and sharing of information and dumping data. You want to make sure that you're giving them the information that's useful and that they can do something about it on a weekly basis.

Ali: Yeah, I think that's a really lovely example of how you can bring ultimately an impact to everybody. It's not just demonstrating the impact of what you're delivering to the firm, but also when you start to think about the direct implications that has for each of the attorneys and the motivation around that. And something else pulled out of that was you're talking a couple of times about being proactive, and that's almost the answer to what's the moment that you can start demonstrating the value and impact to everyone. It's actually just taking it into your own hands and being super proactive about it, which leads nicely into the following question, which is why do you think marketing BD needs to be better at self-promotion? When you think about that, are there any particular useful tips or examples that you have in terms of how to do that right away?

Iris: Absolutely. Every firm I've worked in, this may come as a shock to you, but there are so many attorneys who have no idea what we do or what we're capable of. You're kind of chuckling, so I'm assuming you believe and understand that. So that's one reason. We can't serve you if we don't, if, you know, nobody goes to a restaurant and goes, hey, I don't know what you're serving in here, but it smells pretty good. Give me whatever. You have a menu or you know what they're known for. You know what the reputation is. You look at the marquee and you go, wow, they're serving scallops tonight. That sounds bad. Or if you're allergic to shellfish, you keep moving. But the bottom line is, there's so many of us, every time I've joined a firm, so often do I find that no one knows what's on our menu. No one knows what we can serve. They don't know who we have. We're high-level business strategists. They don't know that I've practiced law for 20-plus years. They don't know that we have a lawyer who was just at the IBA, a Mexican lawyer who works in West Palm Beach now. She led a delegation down there and introduced them to countless people she's known forever. Had 84 meetings for seven people. It was magical. But they don't know that unless we promote. So when I say self-promotion, I don't mean like, "Look at us, we're so cool," but it's, "This is what we can do for you." And you can't just say it. You have to show it. 

As we discussed earlier, you got to demonstrate that. You can't just do it on, put a directory together and throw your org chart on the intranet. That helps. It helps, but you really have to do that. And I think that the more they know what we're capable of doing for them, I've heard them say, "Oh my, I didn't know we had that." It's like, okay, why do you guys keep this under the, you know, under the table or under the rug? Why? Well, we're afraid we're going to get so busy. That's the whole point. You know, we want to be so darn busy that when it comes to budget time, we can expand our team, but we keep serving them because this is why we exist. So we've been able to do that. Somebody mentioned earlier, the budget constraints. The budget constraints. And I believe you asked the question about the budget constraint. It was a great question. And not many people raised their hands, but you know, a lot of our budgets are going down. They're declining. A lot of our teams are dwindling. I just received word from my marketing and marketing operations director just a little bit ago that we got everything we asked for. We had our budget presentation last Wednesday. I asked for five more members of my team just to fight everything like I was arguing a case to the jury. And I also asked for more money, got everything we wanted because, not because we're so cool, not because they're so generous and just have money to throw around, but we've demonstrated how we use every single penny and how we use every single person on our team. Can I tell you how we do that? 

Ali: I'd love to. I was going to ask a few quickfire questions around that.

Iris: Well, if you don't mind, I'll just tell you very quickly that we provide monthly training to our lawyers. Yeah, we provide monthly training. And guess who does the training? Sorry for you consultants out there, but we do it ourselves because we are awesome, awesome, awesome team of talented people with excellent skills. And the training involves, we just had one on media. We had one on branding and October 8th. We do the second Tuesday of every month. We'll have it on competitive intelligence and what can it do to help you advance your business opportunities. We have three people on our competitive intelligence team. Bottom line is this. We have the monthly trainings and they are not these little lame, you know, read from cards or PowerPoint. We prepare them. They have to just present to me twice for rehearsals. And we demonstrate our skills and we introduce our team. It's not just me doing it. I did the first one on pursuit teams and the value of that. I led a pursuit team exercise during our retreat in April. We won't go into the details, but let me tell you, people are like all over it. But guess what? That's what we're there for. Don't be afraid of more hard work or additional demands for our time. Be afraid when they don't call you or they don't answer your call. That's what you should be afraid of. If the phone's ringing off the hook, you're doing some great stuff and the firm is noticing. So we do the monthly training we have and we record them so if anyone misses we archive them. There are 45 minutes with 15 minutes for questions and we hold to that. We have rehearsals like I said, we have powerpoint we make darn sure that we keep our time commitment to our lawyers because we wanted them to know that you can get in and out or you can get the reporting. We have what the weekly review I just mentioned that has pertinent information about what's happening with the firm with live links to every press release. We have weekly tips and insights. And the weekly tips and insights is something they can do within that week. Have you looked at your profile lately? Did you include all your notable works? If somebody read it, what would they think of you? Does your partner profile look like an associate who just graduated from law school? You know, are you telling your story? Well, and then we always, at the end of the tip, we tell Tell them who they can go to for help. Because we don't want to just leave them high and dry and go, "yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I don't know what to do next." Well, we give you the name of a person and that person is ready, willing, and able to help them with that. I could go on and on about our weekly tips.

Let me tell you what happened. We just got a new intranet. It's called Connections. And the intranet's beautiful. But guess what? We checked it out. And guess how many people in two weeks in a row read the weekly tips? 14. And I was like, oh, no. This can't happen, guys. I mean, we're not touching the folks, but we need to touch with this weekly tip. The phone wasn't ringing off the wall. We had one or two lawyers going, yeah, I need help with this. Yes, I read the weekly tip, but it was like a handful of people. So we put the weekly tip at the very top of our weekly review with a big red button. It said weekly tip, click here. It went up. We had like the first time we did it, 150 clicks. Okay. And it's soaring. And then the phone's ringing off the hook. Okay, that's fine and dandy. That's probably why I'm getting this extra five people. But here's what's cool is they know, not only do they know who to call for the weekly tip, but we're elevating our team members. The team members feel excited. They feel validated. They feel like they have a purpose in life. They're not just showing up at work and feel like an invisible woman or man. They know that they are driving they're driving the needle and they're doing something they feel very very fulfilled and they're very very excited and some are very very scared but guess what that's fear kind of sometimes drives you as well but guess what they're moving and they're elevating themselves in a way they never dreamed possible the chairman knows their name you know it's really really cool what's happening. And then I'll just say to you that, who was it that said was it you, Mark, that said leveraging the voice of the client and how important that you said that yesterday, leveraging the voice of the client? Well, how we've leveraged the voice of the client, and I'm going to let you ask your question. 

Ali: Thank you. It's fine. 

Iris: Sorry. 

Ali: I'm enjoying this.

Iris: Leveraging the voice of the client. You know how we're doing it? What we offered to the attorneys in the spring, in April, we said, we're going to start, if you'll give us permission, we'd like to start putting the quotes from the clients. We're talking about legit. It's not your mom sending a quote in about you. My son is the greatest. No, we're getting this from Chambers, Legal 500, et cetera. Client says something about our attorney right under his or her picture on the website. Is the quote and then there's a turner if you will a rotation excuse me my terminology wrote to any more champagne rotation we can get up to three or four quotes and it rotates and they're in love with it. I presented it to the board not knowing if they were going to go oh that's so you know but they I used a couple of board members and they just jumped out of their chairs and one board member who's incredibly powerful he came up to me goes why didn't you use me? And I said, well, I couldn't get ahold of you, but you know, I'm happy to do it. We can make it happen today. He's like, thank you so much. So folks were scrambling. So we now have that offering of a profile quote from a client and they love it. So, you know, everything we do, it's about elevating the firm, elevating the attorneys. It's not about us, but guess what? In the process of all of what I just shared with you, it does elevate us. It makes us more relevant than we've ever been before.

Ali: Wonderful. And then before getting into sort of the next question around the maybe not so glamorous side of things, you spoke about obviously making it a career and you mentioned how you've just successfully secured all the budget that you need. You're going to get another five people on your team. If we're looking at it from a quick fire point, there's obviously some very tangible metrics that you're putting in front of people. So just on sort of almost like a bullet point list, we'd love to hear firstly, like, what are you measuring? Are there any particular items that you're measuring? How often are you sending that around? And who are you particularly sending it to? Again, also, the reason I mentioned that is because you said how, and we spoke about this beforehand, was that the managing partner, other people know who your team are. They're building their career. They're not just there to pick up a paycheck and move on. They're there actually really trying to facilitate themselves moving forward.

Iris: It goes to all the attorneys, by the way. I didn't mention that. The weekly review goes to all the attorneys and consultants. That's a distribution list, attorneys and consultants so that's over 750 people. I'll give you a few examples now this i know you guys are probably thinking you had two press releases a month that's crazy what is wrong with you guys well you know what i'm just being honest with you because that's where we were now we have attorneys who are jumping at the opportunity to talk to New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and they're jumping at the opportunity to be quoted or mentioned before we couldn't find them. They were running from the press, but we gave them media training. I don't want to digress, but the bottom line is we measure the percentage of partners, and it went up like 10 times, the percentage of partners who were quoted in tier one publications. That's one of them that's really important. And we do it every single year. The mentions, we report it and our data is precise. We don't play around. I told my team, if one year we go down or we flatline, it's okay, but we never will deviate from the truth. Because once we do, once we exaggerate and they say, what's the underlying data? And we hand it to them and they're like, oh, wow. Okay. So you rounded 37% up to 50. Come on. We won't ever do that. So we always measure and provide the information about percentages of our partners. And then, of course, we do all attorneys. But let's face it, the partners are the ones with the skill set who are typically mentioned and quoted. So we provide that every year. As far as events are concerned, the same thing with events. 

Now, I joined and we were still in the middle of COVID in 2021. But one of the things that is very, very critical and very, very important are events, live events. We provide a map, a map of the United States, 125 cities around the country, from L.A. to New York, down to Miami, Chicago, Salt Lake City, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, what we do is provide a map and color the map as to where we held events, sponsored and hosted events, and the number of attendees live that show up, not invited, but that show up. There's thousands. We keep track of the names, but after every single event, it's very critical and important to us to make sure that we get in front of the attorney hosting or co-hosting the event to give us a tier one. Top 10, I would love to have them as clients. They showed up at your event. What are you going to do? No, you're not sending out some mass bulk. Thank you for coming. No, you've got to do something very customized and tailored. And we help them with that. We coach them through that. And we report that to management. Not just the number of attendees coming live, not just the number of events, not just the number of people, but the ROI being new clients as a result of that event. New clients or the expansion of new business directly there's got to be a direct correlation, because you know attorneys are they'll say no no I talked to George at a coffee in New York corner of 49th and Lexington no we're doing direct correlation no no no grey areas and we provide the information about every single increase in in revenue based on the events we host and guess what we're finding. It's wonderful. Just one client matter more than pays for the event that we hosted or sponsored.

Ali: Yeah, I love that as an example. I think it's a brilliant example simply because it's one very tangible, particularly being able to look at something that's visual and you can understand what you can take away from it. But also, as we spoke about beforehand, you're not necessarily directly responsible for bringing in the business. However, you have a huge impact on that. And that is another example of showing where the ROI comes from. You say, you know, one client matter on the back of that has paid for the event, which is really wonderful. And I think a lot of what we've been speaking about today so far is very much putting people outside of their comfort zone. It'd be probably fair to say that, depending on various levels, it's a little bit of, you know, putting your neck out on the line. So it'd be great to see if there's anything that you've done to overcome that intimidating nature of it, and whether there's been anything either personally that you've been able to achieve or you've seen other people do, where they've overcome that sort of element of, should we call it fear?

Iris: Yeah. What's that? False evidence appearing real. I'm from a family of nine kids, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad was a laborer, a blue-collar worker. So I've always had this thing called grit, which, in talking to some of you last night, you come from similar backgrounds, and there's nothing you can fear but failure. And failure comes from not trying. And "try" is such a powerless word. It's not in my vocabulary, except to demonstrate to you today that that's the only thing you should fear—just being mediocre and not doing anything. So I don't fear offering ideas, making suggestions, and making recommendations that make sense, that are well-researched and well-thought-out. I usually call my colleagues, CMOs, and talk to my team, really vetting ideas carefully and including anyone and everyone who should have some involvement so that I don't leave anyone out of the equation. Fear being one of those CMOs that is let go because they have no clue what the heck you're doing or how you've added value to the firm. That's what you should fear. So when you think about that—especially since we're all making pretty damn good money, let's face it—I fear letting go of that. And so my thought is, I'm going to make a difference, and I'm going to be proactive. You don't have to do anything magnanimous, but let them know you care. Let them know you've done your homework, and let them know you're offering a solution to a real problem that sometimes they don't even know they have. Sometimes they're latent, and they have no clue, but you're bringing to their attention what your thoughts are. You're bringing third-party validation if necessary, or consultants. Bottom line: what you must do is act. What you must do is move the needle. A lot of firms are busy being successful despite everything else. And one day, it's going to end. Then they'll look at you and go, "Well, where were you? You're supposed to be helping me." So if you see a problem, speak up. If you see something that needs fixing, propose a fix. 

Ali: No, that's lovely. One of the things we spoke about before that I really liked, in terms of maybe sometimes avoiding being pushed out the door, was that you mentioned before you joined Akerman, there were five CMOs in four years or something like that. You made quite a funny joke about the door moving so fast, it could have been used as a fan. Maybe we need to cut that bit out, I'm not too sure. One of the things you talked about was that for a lot of these people, it was probably just a miscommunication. It doesn't matter what level you're at, it's important to come in and set accountability yourself. So make sure there's a joined-up conversation between what management expects, what the partners expect, and what you're going to deliver, which I thought was really lovely advice.  Before we get toward the end, I just wanted to open it up to the floor and see if there were any audience questions. We have a mic here. You all had a glass of champagne.

Iris: One more thing I forgot to mention, guys. Just one more thing. I'll be very brief, I promise. First-time-ever wins. To demonstrate your proactivity, you don't have to go, "Hey, we're proactive." You can do things like this: we decided that we were going to push the envelope with all of our attorneys in every location. And I'm not talking about TiddlyWinks winners; we're talking about some major, major awards, like the Burton Award that three of our women won this year. Some other really first-time-ever awards, like Mike Goldberg in Florida, Attorney of the Year in the state of Florida. Bottom line: we pushed, we researched, and we submitted very compelling submissions. So we provided a whole slew of first-time-ever wins for 2023, and we're doing it again this year, and the list is even longer than last year. It's just phenomenal. But guess what that demonstrates? That we are pushing and finding those incredible opportunities for attorneys because we're not doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. We're doing new stuff. So that new category really resonated with the lawyers in our firm. They're like, "Wow." And they know who did it. We don't have to tell them. We don't have to put our name on it. They know. So those are the kinds of things you look for—first-time-ever or something unique. 

The last thing I'll say very quickly, I promise, is the chairman said to me, "Could you go ahead and put our stats together for our fiscal year highlights report?" We do a fiscal year highlights report, and it was two weeks before the end of the fiscal year. Our fiscal year ends October 31st. This was in 2021. I said, "Yeah, no problem." Then I said to my team, "Let me have the last couple of years so I can find out what he's talking about." It was just a memo—an email. Just words about the year. Well, I ended up churning out something that you're welcome to look at. It looks like this. And he said, "How did you put this together so quickly?" And I said, "Well, I just had everybody who contributed—all the C-suite people and all of the practice groups—just give me two highlights for the year. And I put this together, got my creative designers to do this, and it blew his mind. So we went from an email to this. And this year, we're giving him the page-turner that goes, and we're embedding a video from our retreat. So I'm going to blow his mind next week when he gets this thing. But all of our team, all of our team contributed to it. It's our team that did this. But wait till this year. It's even better. So look for ways to make your leader look great. Look for ways to elevate her or him you know what I mean and they'll love you forever and they'll be loyal to you forever.

Ali: no no it's a classic element of you know surround yourself with great people and that's a wonderful example of collaboration are there any questions now that everybody's had a glass champagne are there any thoughts bubbling away?

Iris: Keep drinking.

Charles: It was going back to your point, Iris, about no one knows your menu. Have you got some examples of some quick wins, how you can really get across the offering and what you do? Some quick wins or some quick examples of how you can demonstrate the function better or some things you've done?

Iris: I think that the main, well, it depends on what the firm needs, you know, and how large the firm is. But I think that the firm needs to know that there is a department. I think that doing anything that can make you more visible, it took a year before they invited me to talk to the board. Now they want me to show up at every meeting and do my presentation. But you've got to put yourself out there and ask, and may I present, give you just a summary of our year, what we're doing, and highlight some of the things we're working on for you. But always make it about them. 

The other thing is the directory. Do people know who's on your team or how many you have on your team or what your team is comprised of? And have the directory with one little short bio of what every person does. Do you have your org chart out there? It's basically basic and simple things like that. But it doesn't take any money and doesn't take a lot of time to put together a weekly tip and put it out there on the intranet or whatever you have to make sure that people know that you have something of value to offer and that you're waiting to serve them but you can't wait for the phone to ring like the make tag man you got to get out there and let them know you exist those are the basics but if I knew more about your firm we could collaborate and talk about a few ideas not I know one size does not fit all and you guys are far away you know you're far ahead of my firm and and what I'm proposing here today so I don't propose to be the one that knows everything or has the answers but if this is what is working for us and we'll keep doing what we do oh and by the way Guy Alvarez is my dear friend out there we hired guy because we didn't even have a social media person so Guy was our social media person and I was so astounded that we had people going hey can you help us post something on social media. You got time, we would pick and, you know, we would get people in our department that had nothing to do with social media, that had a little knowledge. We know the younger people and, hey, you know how to post? Can you post this? We had no one. Guy was my guy. And I finally said to him, seriously, I said to him, would you, would you come with me to a meeting with the chairman and the COO so we could pitch that I need a full-time person? Guy was kind enough to say three people, but we have one person down. And the person's been here for a year and I proposed it for a digital media person. And I'm getting that person. But it's because Guy helped me shape the argument about what we need. The truth of the matter is, when you see a need, you got to ask. And if you need a third-party validation or validator, get the person and get in there and get it done. You know what you need. And I am no social media guru, but I sure knew what we needed. And thanks to Guy, I was able to cross the finish line.

Ali: Well, look, as is Passle tradition, we round off with one final question. That is simply asking what your one piece of advice would be or maybe that takeaway for anybody looking to go away and take accountability and ultimately have an impact.

Iris: I think that, you know, don't be, well, obviously none of you in this room are shy. I've met most of you and had a chance to chat with you and I've seen you in action. So I'm not even worried about you. I would say, you know, don't worry about whether or not they're going to agree with you. But demonstrate to them like we tell them about when they go see a client make sure that you've done the research make sure you know their business don't ask them “Hi what do you do?” No you have to know so make sure that you you research whatever you're going to recommend that you have you can anticipate the answer the questions to the end you have the answers and goes let's just start small but don't be afraid to get out there and let let your light shine if you are sitting back thinking somebody's going to notice that you're making a difference, you're wrong. And if you think LA is going to tell New York that you had a great event, you're wrong. Put that stuff together, but demonstrate how does it drive the firm? And please, whatever you do, when I say start small, I mean start small because nobody's going to care about the impressions or the algorithms. Sorry, Guy. But the bottom line is they're going to know, how did this help Akerman? How did this help me? And if it doesn't make sense, leave it out of the report. Just Just keep it straightforward, keep it simple, but please do something.

Ali: Wonderful note to finish on. It's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you ever so much, Iris. I knew that this would be great. And just want to get everybody in the room to thank her for being such a wonderful guest and imparting so much wonderful knowledge. 

Charlie: That's all for this episode. You can subscribe to the CMO Series podcast on your favorite podcast platform. And to learn how Passle makes thought leadership simple, scalable, and effective, visit Passle.net. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.