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PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

| 42 minute read

Rainmakers: EP1 - Jeffrey Greenbaum of FKKS on Mastering Thought Leadership for Growth

Welcome to the first episode of the Rainmakers podcast, where we explore how the legal industry’s most influential leaders have leveraged thought leadership to build their brands, drive business growth, and strengthen client relationships.

In each episode, our esteemed guests reveal how they create and harness their unique insights to shape their firms’ success, influence the market, and, ultimately, drive revenue.

In this debut episode, Connor Kinnear sits down with Jeffrey Greenbaum, Managing Partner of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, for an insightful conversation recorded live in New York. Jeff shares how his strategic approach to thought leadership helped FKKS’s blog achieve over 720,000 views.

Jeff dives into his strategies for maintaining a consistent and impactful thought leadership presence, how he’s integrated business development into his daily routine, and the successes he’s seen from a well-executed thought leadership strategy.

Transcription

Charlie: Welcome to CMO Series Rainmakers, brought to you by Passle. In this series, we sit down with some of the legal industry's most influential leaders to explore how they've successfully used thought leadership to build their brands, drive business growth, and promote their firm's services. In Episode 1, we have the honor of hearing from Jeffrey Greenbaum, Managing Partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. Through thought leadership, Jeff has driven remarkable business development, helping the firm's blog, powered by Passle, reach an impressive 720,000 views. In this session, recorded live in New York City, Jeff joins Passle's CMO, Connor Kinnear, to share his strategies for maintaining a consistent, impactful thought leadership presence and the successes he's seen from a well-executed thought leadership strategy. So let's dive in.

Connor: Hi everyone. Thanks, Jeff, for joining us We always have three rules at Passle events, does anyone remember them? No? Okay One, we've got lots of clever people in the audience So we like to make it nice and interactive So if you've got questions throughout Please ask them, if you've got your own stories, please tell us those as well. Secondly, we always ask everyone to try and learn just one thing at least one thing, so something You can bring back to your office tomorrow and say I've got this great new idea And three, we're trying to build a bit of a community here. So afterwards, you all have to stay for at least one or two drinks and you have to introduce yourselves to each other. Say hi, tell everyone who you are, build those strong relationships because there's always great networking in a room like this. So, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. We are delighted to have Jeff here because we often talk to CMOs and marketing leaders across law firms. and we're often being asked, please, can you get more lawyers and more attorneys talking at your events? So when we thought about this, the first person we thought of was Jeff, because when you look at the stats in the Passle platform, no one has better performing content than Jeff. So before we begin, Jeff, maybe just tell everyone a bit about you, who you are, where you come from, what you do, and a bit of background in your career to dates. 

Jeff: That's a big open-ended question. I am a managing partner of Frankfurt Kurnit, which is about a hundred and five hundred and ten lawyer firm. We're based in New York and LA. It's a media and entertainment firm. You know, we do some other things too, but really the brand is media and entertainment. I've been there for most of my career. I spent the first couple years at a big firm and then realized that was not for me and have just been extraordinarily happy for whatever now, something like 27 years at Frankfurt Kurnit. I'm an advertising lawyer. I didn't plan out on being an advertising lawyer. Literally, I was doing litigation and I was like, what am I going to do next? And maybe I'm going to have to go become an architect or something. And then literally a friend of mine just said well do you want to become an advertising lawyer and then a month later I was there and then and here we are. 

Connor: Great stuff thank you and I mentioned earlier on I had a look at your stats on our platform we'll maybe start giving awards out next year to the best performing people across the platform but your stats are amazing so you clearly recognize the importance of thought leadership on building your brand on driving business development in what point in your career did you realize and what inspired you to start creating content and sharing your expert insights?

Jeff: Well I think a couple things I think that as a young lawyer wanting to build a career wanting to build a practice it was really obvious to me when I looked at who the successful lawyers were that they had brands that they were really recognizable out there in the world like they weren't just good at what they did but they were they people knew who they were and they knew who they were because they were everywhere and you know you would go to a conference and you would see them speaking and you'd look at the new york large journal and there'd be they'd be writing the monthly column about the second circuit or whatever it was yeah there'd be they would just be everywhere and they figured out a way to be everywhere so it was it was very very clear to me that it wasn't enough just to do a good job and it wasn't enough to just like network and do things but that you really did need to think about kind of brand building. But I also think that there was also this sense of, and it was just obvious very early on that people really wanted to go to people that knew what they were talking about and they were really experts. And so I understood very early on that I needed to do those things. I wasn't quite exactly sure how to do it, but it was obvious to me early on that you needed to be out there and you needed to be out there a lot. And so I really tried to emulate the people who were doing what I did, but who had really established themselves 30 years before. So I knew that that's what was important. And then sort of as I became more senior as a lawyer, and it was very clear to me as a firm and as a lawyer that thought leadership was really important that you really did need to be out there and explain and show to people that you were the expert and clients really wanted to go to the expert and they wanted to sort of be talking to with a person that really knew this stuff. And so, you know, over the years, we experimented with a lot of different ways to do it. I mean, I was a big proponent of, you know, doing client alerts and we used to do lots of client alerts. And, you know, we were creating content in all kinds of different ways. But then, you know, you get into this thing where you don't want to over email the clients because then we're just spamming them and you don't want to post on LinkedIn all the time because then you got too much stuff on LinkedIn and it's not registering people. So I think we definitely were struggling with sort of the available technology at the time to do it. So I think that I think a lot of the process was trying to figure out how to establish thought leadership and the ways you could do it efficiently.

Connor: Okay, great. and I work with loads of CMOs and they often are pulling their hair out trying to get attorneys to engage in thought leadership to to write a blog post to write an insight to do a podcast, or whatever it might be how have you managed to do that and what can you tell the people what why have you engaged in or how have you managed to do that?

Jeff: Well I think there's so many things that are going on here I think first of all I'm in the unique position is that you know when we kicked off Passle. I was managing partner of the firm as I still am. And so I'm also an advertising lawyer, and I'm practicing full-time as a lawyer too. And so when I made the decision that I wanted to do it, I had to make sure it was successful, right? I couldn't be the managing partner and kick off this thing and have it peter out. Like, it had to work. And so part of that led to sort of my investment in it. But I do think there's an important lesson there, right? Which is if you don't have buy-in from the top, if you don't have people who are champions of these projects, they're just never really going to work. And, you know, we have launched other, so the sort of the parcel that I work on is an advertising law one, and we have several of them at the firm, and we've had several more, some of which have worked and some of which have not worked. And I really think at the end of the day, it's about having somebody that's a champion of it. And, you know, this sort of this idea that like, oh, we're going to create this thing, and, you know, we're going to invite people to participate in it. And I'm kind of like, that just doesn't work right like you have to actually have a person or two who says I believe in this thing I want to do it I'm going to make it successful and then people want to be part of it right. I mean we have incredible participation sort of in our group outside of our group of people who write for it now do they write for it as much as maybe I do no not necessarily but people are participating because it is one of the things that we do in our group like it is just it is a part of what the Frankfurt Kurnit Advertising Group is, is writing for this blog. So I think that that, and it was definitely part of, it's coming from me. I'm leading it. I believe in it. I talk about it. I send weekly emails out to the firm about firm developments, and I'll talk about the success of the Passle. It is a big part of what we do. And I think the other thing is that when people do write for it, they really do see the results. I mean, that is the thing that's shocking to me. I mean, people write for this thing, and they really do get incredible feedback. 

Connor: That's great. And then before you did it, then what, what were the barriers to stopping you writing regularly before? I mean, before eight years ago, were you, were you writing, you know, you're doing these client alerts. So what were the barriers to stopping you writing regularly? And how have you overcome those? 

Jeff: Well, I try to think about it from the sort of perspective, well, sort of from two things. One from the client perspective, which is what does the client want to get and what is going to be useful to the client. And I remember hearing, talking to the consultants and reading the stuff that clients wanted value, right? They wanted you to provide extra value and they wanted you to feel like you were a good partner to their business. And yes, they wanted to be dealing with the experts. That's part of it too. But I think we also have this incredible sense of information overload, right? We get newsletters from everybody. We get too much content from everybody. They say they want it, but they actually are getting way too much of it. And I feel that way too. So to me, what was really important was, and what really resonated with me, was this idea of creating content that wasn't overwhelming to read, right? I mean, often, when people would write these long alerts that go on, and it's like the New York Times Magazine, and you keep going, and you're like, no one's going to read that. And I'm like, people want to know, they want a sentence or two. They just want to know this thing happened, and then they can file it away, and if they really want to get deeper into it. And so, to me, what really resonated with me about it was, from a client perspective. It was in a format that was sort of easily digestible. It wasn't intended to be this sort of, I'm going to write that article in the Law Journal about the developments in, I don't know, environmental law and the whole last year. It's like literally something happened. You can write about it. You don't have to make it any bigger than it is. And I thought that that was something that what I've seen with clients is they like the idea of they can look at it. They look at it for a minute or less. They register what the development is and they move on and then, or they share it with people, which they frequently do. I think the second thing is, is that sort of the internal barrier, which is, you know, I think that lawyers writing articles, right, there are all of these barriers, which is number one, their first instinct is who's going to do it for me, right? That's the first question they ask, like, is the associate going to do for me? Is there going to be a business development person doing it for me? Are you going to hire somebody to write it for me? Right? That's like, they're just looking for someone else to do it. And I think one of the nice thing about this is it's not this overwhelming task. I mean, I frequently will write a blog post kind of as I'm having my morning coffee. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, one of the things that our marketing director does, which is great, and now I get a lot of it just from newsletters and Law360 and things like that, but, you know, I will get. Someone will feed me ideas right so Mark who's our terrific marketing director except that he didn't come today is that you know he'll shoot me like developments, he sends me some interesting cases so i'll have in my inbox you know hey here's some things you might want to write about I'll look at them you know depending if it's something for me or something for somebody else I'll sort of farm them out to people and suggest hey you could write about this or I'll write about this and something like that, and then I just write about it. And by design, if it takes longer than it takes to drink a cup of coffee or two, it's just taking too long because I got to go on my day. So I think that it worked both from a strategic standpoint, which was you were getting the message out to clients in a digestible form that they could understand. And at the same time, it was something that the lawyers can really do themselves, that we're not asking them to create this law review article. We're just getting them to write content that's meaningful to them, that makes sense for their practice, but at the same time, it's something that they can just do. 

Connor: And that stuff that Mark sends you, is he curating that?

Jeff: So Mark sends me cases when they come up and his ticker. I get a bunch of newsletters that I skim through every day and look and see what's going on. There's also people I follow on Twitter and LinkedIn. And I also have some, I'm writing about advertising law. And I'm really writing out about a subset of advertising law that I'm particularly interested in, that's sort of what my brand is or what my expertise is in. So I know where to go to look for those things. So I'm focused on, you know, sort of particular topics and what I'm writing about.

Connor: No, it's interesting. I see other firms, they maybe use Manzama or they use Google alerts to try and shimmy the attorneys on a bit and just trigger ideas in their head. And I love the bit you mentioned about digestible and the snackable content, because you're right. I think if you look at a law firm's website so many pieces are so long and and kind of stodgy and that idea of snackable digestible so it's got to be easy for you to write but really easy for your clients to engage with it reminds me of my kids on tiktok you know they can consume it in 20 seconds and and skim on to to the next thing.

Jeff: Look I think it. I mean I think it depends on the industry it depends on who you're talking to it depends on what the kinds of developments are, but I do think that lawyers spend a lot of time creating very, very long, detailed content. And I don't really understand who the audience is for that content.

Connor: Yeah, no so we've done we've done research looking at shorter form content through Lexology and Mondaq and JD Supra and we can actually pitch it against those longer form content and and you can see the shorter form content gets more reads gets more engagement people do more with it once once they've read it because they they never get to the end of this longer form. 

Jeff: No no I mean look I send so during the pandemic I started sending a weekly email on fridays to the firm sort of you know keeping us all together and updating people and stuff like that. And I have a format that I use and it's numbered. And people don't, how many numbers? Four or five things I say and people don't make it to the end. Like someone will say to me, I'll run into somebody in the hall and they'll be like, so are we, when is the holiday party? I was like, it was in my email. They're like, I don't read past three. So it's like, yeah, I think you do need to pay attention to how long the content is. 

Connor: That's great. And when you say snack, when you talk about being snackable and that's what your clients want. Do they tell you that? Have they told you this is great, Jeff? Or are you guessing? Or how do you know that's good for them?

Jeff: Well, I will say that the response to the blog has been incredible, right? Like not just in terms of, yes, obviously we see it gets lots of views and there's that. But I would say that people really do find it interesting and they want the content. And as a result of it, I would say, you know people are responding all of the time to it right either I will get an email from a client following up asking a question ask and set up a call saying they want to talk about this issue more so I will get I will absolutely get that the second thing is i will get someone responding and saying hey can you add these people to the list I want them to be getting this content I think I've told you you guys this story but. I mean literally it happens to me all the time I get stopped at industry conferences and people come up to me and introduce themselves to me and say I love your blog like I you know I love your blog and you know a woman who teaches says oh yeah I assign it to my class like you know it people see the content as being useful and you keep hearing people sort of talk about how useful they see it is and people read it you know so you get lots and lots of feedback your reporters calling me all the time to talk about stuff because of the content. New clients call because of the content. I also think, look, I'm also a big believer in, you know, trying to focus a little bit. Like when I sort of say to people in the group, my group is. You know, I want to write for the blog, right? And you can write whatever you want. But I also think it's a good idea to sort of pick some topics and try to dig deep into those topics because it's not just for show. Like it's actually, like this isn't, I don't see this as just, yes, it's marketing, but I also see it as actually professional development, right? Which is like, and I will say, you know, one of the amazing things that has for Passle, is I've never read so many cases in my life, right? I've never been as up to date on all of the sort of the things that are going on in my field, you know, because I'm reading the case, I'm reading cases that, you know, I wouldn't necessarily have needed to read because it's not like they're the biggest change in law, But you're just so staying up to date on it because I'm looking for content. And as a result of that, I've become just so familiar with things in a way that you just wouldn't have been before. And so I really encourage lawyers in my group to, hey, if you're really interested in this topic, dig deep into that. Be the one who's going to write all of the cases on this topic and then really feel like you're going to build an expertise. And I think that really resonates with clients as well. I mean, if you look at what the topics are that I've tracked, that I've focused on writing about on Passle, it tracks so closely with the things people call me about now.

Connor: Okay. And when you're reading those cases or those bits of the law, are you reading them and are you thinking of them in a different way? Because are you always thinking, I'm going to write something about that. I've got something to say about that. Do you think about it in a different way when you're reading those articles? 

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it's a case about like a snack food or Entenmann's, any case about Entenmann's I'm going to write about, just for the obvious reasons, I would say that, yes, you want it to be interesting, right? Like, you know, some really long case about some weird insurance thing. Sorry for if you're working on insurance. But like, you know, I'm just like, it's hard for me to get that excited about. But like, something that's really interesting that I feel like people are going to want to read. Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely thinking about it from that perspective as well. No question.

Connor: Great stuff. And when you have those other people in your practice doing it, so you've got maybe a new lawyer's come in or the other lawyers across the AdLaw practice. Are they engaging now are they doing it because well the boss is doing this we he says we have to do it or are they really getting engaged and are they seeing the impact that you're you've seen.

Jeff: So I think that absolutely. I think that you know people across the firm have incredible stories about how the content they've written has resonated with clients and with people out there so I think that people don't need to be convinced that it's useful i think it's you know look there's only so many hours in the day, and people have to decide how they want to spend their time. But what I would say is that there are people in my group who are very devoted to it, and in their minds, they're writing once a month or once a week or however much they want to, or they're only writing about copyright law. And if there's a good copyright case, then they'll write about that. So I think there's that group of people. Then there's people that write occasionally when there's something that they're interested in. And then also, if I see a good case or something, I'll send it to an associate and say, here's a good thing for you to write about and they usually do it if I ask them to.

Connor: And with your demanding schedule how often are you doing this, are you doing this every day?

Jeff: You know I would say I would say in the beginning again I really didn't I really wanted it to be successful right I'm spending money on it i'm saying hey this is this project that I'm taking on and so I did not want it to be a failure. So in the beginning I was doing it every day I mean literally for the first couple years I was doing it every day. And it was a big commitment, but I was trying to get it to the point where I felt like we had a readership and I felt like people in my group and in my firm were devoted to it and that it sort of would, you know, I didn't need to be the one writing on it every day, but I wanted people to see that this was going to be an active enough thing that they were interested in reading it and interested in writing for it. So now, you know, now maybe I write twice a week, you know, sometimes I'll write more, but I would say that we'd probably post on the blog almost every day right I mean someone's posting on it and I'm not I mean maybe once every other week I'll send something to someone and suggest that they write it most of it's just all self generated they find things they want to write about and they do.

Connor: Great and so you've created this content um how do you at the firm how are you distributing it how are you actually getting and we talked about hundreds of thousands of reads of your content but actually you probably don't need hundreds of thousands of people reading it you need the right people so how you get how are you distributing that and how you're getting the right people reading and engaging with it then?

Jeff: Well, so I would say, you know, if I look at, if I look at the sort of hierarchy of things that are on my mind, right, the first is. I'm an expert in advertising law. I want to be an expert in advertising law. I don't want clients to think of me as that way. Like, I want to be able to help people when they call me. So, honestly, in many ways, the driver now at this point is like, I want to know everything that's going on that's important. So, like, even before you get to the blog, you know, someone sends me a new case or I look on Law360 that there's this development. I'm reading it now because I've gotten myself in that habit of like, I want to be on top of all these things. So, that's kind of number one. It's, you know, it's, I want to have the expertise and I want to be helpful to the clients. Like that's even before I get to the marketing piece of it. Then from a marketing piece standpoint, I try to be strategic, which is I try to write about something that I think is consistent with who I am and who I'm out there telling clients that I am. But then I also try to think about how that would be useful. Like I'm, I'm a big proponent of that when you do business development, you shouldn't just do something as a standalone thing. Meaning, if you're just writing a blog post as a blog post, okay, that's fine. But if you're writing a blog post that is also a blog post that you know will be interesting to some people and you can send it to them, and then you'll be helping them. Putting aside the marketing effort, you're going to be helping them and they're going to appreciate your partnership and doing that. And then you go, well, you know, I've got this speaking thing on environmental marketing coming up next month. And so every blog post I write about environmental marketing is helping me get ready for that presentation right and so I'm really thinking about it as okay if I'm doing this hopefully I'm doing it for multiple purposes to educate myself because i want to write the blog post because I know there's a couple clients who I'd like to send this to because this is an important development for them because I know that I've got these things coming up in the next couple months that i can use it for or you know I'm looking at what multiple ways to do it for everyone things and sometimes I'll write a blog post. Literally for a particular client like I'll see I'll see a development be like let me process it by writing the blog post and then I'll send this to the client and I don't care whether anybody else is reading it I'm just doing it because I wanted a reason to reach out to that person.

Connor: Great I'm looking at the marketeers here wouldn't you love to have Jeff and leading the charge at your firm's guys wouldn't this be lovely make your jobs a lot easier so you've talked about publishing thought leadership and how it helps you maintain relevance, show you're the expert in this niche area that you specialize in. Do you have any real life examples of your insights actually leading directly to new client relationships or new business opportunities?

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I would say the first thing is I think that they're really, I mean, you don't need me to tell you, there's stuff happening in the world, you know? And I think it, you know, I mean, I think that there are developments that happen that people need to know about, and clients actually want you to tell them about them when they happen. So it is extraordinarily efficient, right? Like when there's a new law passed in California that affects environmental marketing, which is one of the things I spent a lot of time on, you know, it's so easy for me to write a blog post about it and then shoot it to those dozen clients that need to know about it. And this is exactly what they want. I'm being a good partner to them. And at the same time, it's absolutely leading to them asking us to help them think about those issues. So I think that there's that aspect of it. I think the second thing is that when there are important issues going on, I think demonstrating that you're an expert in the area brings people to you. And all the time. All the time, people who are looking for somebody who needs help on environmental marketing or needs help with counseling about the Federal Trade Commission or something, whatever the topics that I'm writing about, people find me like they absolutely do. And look, I'm, I'm good about, you know, I posted on Passle. We, we, we amplify the content in all of the ways that people amplify content. I mean, we are, if we're creating it, we're going to make sure that we're going to maximize the impact on it, of it. So, you know, absolutely people are coming to me. and you know I would say that both my experience and the experience of so many you know people my firm is you know is you know clients come to us out of the blue and say you know you read about this problem you wrote about and it's exactly the problem we're having and we want to hire you so absolutely I mean I would even without those stories I would think it was valuable but you do see the kind of very very direct ROI as well.

Connor:  If you get the direct ROI it makes you want to do it again i suppose so you said there you shoot it out you'll do this post you shoot it to six or seven clients how are you doing that are you you do have you got a newsletter you send it out in or how do you do that?

Jeff: We do send a weekly book a summary of I think what we I think what we do is we send the sort of top 10 most viewed posts every month to our entire mailing list so we do that so that's one way to get it to people but if i'm writing something that's a particular interest to a particular group of clients I'll just take a few minutes and send it to them you know share it on LinkedIn you know those kinds of things.

Connor: Okay great and are you ever looking at the competition do you ever see what there did you feel you've got by being engaged with this by getting your team engaged do you feel like we're ahead of the competition here because they're maybe not doing than what you're doing?

Jeff: I'm not really a, I'm not a competitive person in that way. Like, I'm not, I don't look at the competition. If you asked me what are the people who do what I do, how are they marketing? I really honestly have no idea. I think that I think that I believe I built one of the reasons that Passle has been so good as I feel like it meets it does all of the things that we wanted to do which is educate the lawyers help lawyers build a brand help lawyers reach out help lawyers provide extra value to clients like it's doing all of those things at the same time so to reroute our our website homepage yeah so thanks you know so from that perspective like it works you know maybe there are other people that do it other ways, you know, like people are doing, you know, friends of mine, I do what I do. I see they post their like podcast or their like video, their blog or whatever on LinkedIn. And I think if that's working for you, that's great. Like to me, I mean, I don't want to do that. Like I'm not, I, to me, I think one of the things that is so, has been so good for me about this is you can make it as long and shorter as you want. And you can also do it whenever. And I can do it early in the morning or late at night or on the train or, you know, while I'm having a sandwich, like I'm not, I'm not so, I'm not dependent on other people and a camera and a microphone and all those kinds of things. Like it just, it's the kind of thing you can just, you can sort of fit in. So for me, it, it also, look, I'm a big proponent of if you're going to be committed to business development, you have to do it every day. Like it has to just be a part of your life. Like it can't be the thing that you save for when you've got extra time on Friday afternoon. And so to me, part of it is when I'm giving advice to lawyers about business development is tactics. Like you have to develop the tactics that you are going to follow. It's going to be different for everybody. Everyone's going to have some things that are more comfortable for them and work better. And it depends on the types of clients they work with. There's all kinds of strategies that work. But I think that if you have things that keep you on track that says, hey, these are things I'm going to do every day or every week, I think that that's really useful. So I think for us, this has worked really, really well.

Connor: Great. And so for lawyers looking to enhance business development through thought leadership, what would be your top, maybe three tips, what would be your top tips for getting started and getting sustaining successful thought leadership strategy?

Jeff: Well, I guess the first question is, you know, the first question, I guess, when I'm talking to a lawyer about wanting to do business development and they're sort of saying, well, I really want to do business development. The first question is, do you really? I know you're saying that, but do you really want to do it? Someone's like, well, maybe I'll go hire a coach. And I'm like, that's great. A coach could be great for people, but then you're going to have to do the stuff that the coach wants you to do. So I think the first question is, are you going to be committed to it? And is this something you really want to do? That's, I think, number one. I think the second question I ask is, what's the lawyer you want to be? You can't do business development unless you decide what it is the business you want and what kind of lawyer you want to be and what kind of clients you want to work with. And so you have to sort of, I sort of think it's like, don't just start writing and don't start speaking and don't start running out there and having lunch with people do this. First, who are you? What's your brand? And I often go through this exercise with lawyers and I say, let's look at your bio and your website. Not because I think the bio is such an important marketing tool, but it's how they've described themselves to the outside world. Right and and i say does that really describe who you want to be let's figure out what your strategy is and articulate who you want to be and then let's build a strategy around that so then i sort of say like look if you're going to then do business development then i sort of say well okay who are the clients you want to work with what are the things you want to work with them on and what would be helpful to them like what's the stuff what's the ways in which you can engage with them and so for some clients like this is you know like a lot of people like i work with people at advertising agencies and advertising agency people, they want to know what's going on and they want to hear about the developments and they want to, they want to be up to date on if there's been some change in advertising regulation, or if there's been some copyright case that impacts the advice that they're going to be giving to their clients. So for us, we know what kind of content is going to be useful to them and we sort of give it to them. So I think you have to sort of figure that out. I also think there's just no question that more than ever, you know, clients are coming to us with the heart questions, right? The easy questions they'll answer themselves, the routine stuff they're going to do themselves. They don't need. High-end lawyers for that stuff. So, you have to really stay ahead of them. And you have to say, I'm going to dig into that question before you even ask it to me. So, when you come to me, this is something I'm already an expert in. So, I really, I think that lawyers have to really decide what it is you're going to be an expert in and then be committed to doing it. And I'm like, and I'm sort of like, look, if this is not what you want to do, then don't do it. Like, if that's, you know, whatever, wait for somebody to ask you to help them on something. You know, that's fine. But if you want to do it, I think that there are so many tools out there. I think this is a great tool. There's other tools too. There's other ways to do it. I have partners who would never write a blog post in their whole life and would never speak at a conference  in their whole life and have incredible careers and reputations and they have their own ways that they do it. And I think that's great. Like, I think that there are absolutely many different ways you can do it. I just think if you want to do it, you have to pick away. But I do think you have to have a strategy too.

Connor: Okay. and for all these marketeers in the room have you any tips for them about how to get busy attorneys behind affiliation program maybe how to get the managing partner engaged how do you think they should do that.

Jeff: Well look I do I do. I do think, you know, for any firm initiative, buy-in is going to involve, you know, you know, you know, leadership from the top, right? If the managing partner, if the practice group leader, if the people who are, these people are working for, with, whatever, if they're not committed to it because they're too busy, they're not, it's not important to them, whatever, no one else is really going to buy in either, right? Like, you know, they're not, they're just not going to, they're not going to be committed to it. So I think you really have to get the buy-in. I think the second thing is, is I just, I am not one of those people who believes that you get other people to do the thing that you just have to do yourself. Like, I think this sort of fantasy that, like, I'm going to give a speech and some associate's going to deliver a presentation to me that I can just show up and present makes any sense, right? To me, like, yeah, you can do that. And I certainly have help with people who help me prepare things and help people. We write things together and we do all kinds of things like that but I think that people have to really be committed to actually making this a part of who they are as a lawyer I think it's hard like i think you can't lead somebody who doesn't want to be led and i think you can't help somebody that doesn't want to be held and I think that to me I think the biggest complaint that I hear about like the marketing function is I don't understand why they can't just do it like why aren't they just doing it for me and I'm just like i don't know what it is you think that they could do like this is you have to you have to understand the issue and write about it so you can talk about it and so to me but i don't know I don't that that I don't know how to solve, a mallet. I don't know I'm not sure how you do it.

Connor: I see a few people out there who I know keep mallets in their bags jeff that's been amazing insightful everyone yeah have we got some questions from our crew While we have Jeff here, maybe ask some questions that he can help you with. 

Phill: Hi, Jeff. Phill McGowan, formerly Reed Smith and legal marketing consultant right now. I wanted to ask you about the client feedback component. So you're putting content out into the world and you talked earlier about the feedback that you are getting or people are coming to you. How much are you engaging with clients and others about how you should be refining what you're saying the frequency all of that the crowdsourcing components?

Jeff: So did you work with Doug Wood? No? He didn't work with Doug, so who was a great mentor to me from Reed Smith and had many helpful things say I would say that the the we don't we don't spend we don't spend a lot of time surveying the clients and asking them for stuff and I know that that is one of the things that people do and we We probably should do more of that. I would say that we do get a lot of direct just sort of feedback from the clients about the content we're creating. So I would say, you know, at least with respect to this type of content, we tend to get very good feedback that this is the kind of content that they're looking for. I mean, I would say that, you know, people want practical, useful stuff that is easy to digest. And so I think that, you know, we kind of, we get the positive reinforcement of like, oh, yeah, it was really interesting. Or, you know, clients love it when they call me with a question. I'm like, look, I've just done a blog on this. I'll send that to you. Like, they love that. Like, they feel like, oh, they're getting such value. It's already been thought through. We already know what we're talking about here. And then it leads to follow ups and we get deeper into that. So I would say that the, you know, we're not writing, we don't spend a lot of time writing about like esoteric things that are never going to come up. We try to really write about the stuff that's happening now and that's relevant to people and try to get ahead of it.

Connor: Do you still do the big client alerts then sometimes? Or is that longer form stuff you more focus on the digestible items? 

Jeff: I don't, I personally do not do any client alerts anymore. Like I, there are people at my firm that still send out client alerts. Some of them write for blogs and use blogs and all that kind of stuff, but they just feel like, Hey, this is something we want to send out to the clients. Like to me, like, I'm like, if you want to know what I have to say about this stuff there, you know where it is. That's kind of where I am. 

Connor: Okay.

Jeff: I'm also, I'm also, you know, I also don't love emailing clients out of the blue. Like, unless I'm like, I just, I sort of feel like if the client's getting an email from me, it's important. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's, and so I just don't really like sending them junk mail. 

Connor: Okay. So, would you send them at, like, say, I just wrote this blog, I thought it might be of interest?

Jeff: Yeah, but I'm not sending it to my mailing list. I'm sending it to six people who I know actually will not think of it as a marketing email, which it's not. They'll think of it as, oh, this is helpful to me, and this is what I need, and that's what a good partner does. 

Connor: And that's what good thought leadership's about as moves as well. Anyone else? 

Liz: Hi, I'm Liz Lockett. So some of the pushback I would get from lawyers was that they were continuing to sort of saturate their current marketing lists. How did you organically expand that target audience?

Jeff: Well, you know, I think some of it is that, you know, we do the weekly newsletter to everybody, right? So we do the weekly newsletter to our entire list that has everything on there. And so we're not sending it out every day. We're just sending it out once a week. We're only sending the top 10 most read blogs, so in theory, it's hitting the things that are most likely to be interesting to people. So we're sending it to them. Then what we do is we do a lot of promotion of the blog as like a brand itself. So, you know, if I'm speaking at a conference and we're giving away something, we're putting our blog URL on there or promoting the blog as like, this is a place to go get information from us. And so we work on building the audience that way. Then we, you know, we amplify it. I mean, everything we post on Passle gets sent out through Mondack, it gets sent out through Luxology, it gets shared on social media. So we're putting it in all the places that we can reasonably think to place it. That's kind of how we built the audience.

Connor: Thanks, Liz. Anyone else? 

Audience Member: One question just on, you obviously create and share your own insights. Do you do the same with your colleagues? And if so, how do you do that?

Jeff: You mean, do I share what they're doing? Yes. So a couple things one, you know, I think there's a couple ways to do that number one. You know we're all if if we post something on Passle that is relevant or my colleagues post something i might share that with clients as well right or share on social media and stuff like that. i mean i'm i'm cognizant of not over sharing right like like like so i'm i'm thinking about how often i'm posting on twitter or i'm posting on whatever it's called now, how often i'm posting on linkedin like i'm thoughtful about that, but also if one of my colleagues posts something that's really important you know i'll share that or i'll send it to some people. I mean you know i think there are some firms where they really try to like share everything that everyone does and it's just a little bit too much so i try to just be thoughtful about it, but absolutely and frequently i will post blog post and my clients my partners will send it to clients and cc me and things like that. So we do that i mean another nice thing is is um you know we learned about Passel from this firm Lewis Silicon in the UK, who also was posting a little bit before us. And, you know, frequently, we will repost their things on our blog as well, because they're also posting on, you know, advertising law topics, but from a British perspective. So we'll share their content. There's some other firms that we work with that also have Passles that we might share content with. So I love that. I love this sort of particularly for firms with, you know, just a US based firm, we've got all of these, you know, really good relationships with firms around the world who are using it. So we'll often repost content that way to share that content too.

Connor: And you guys are sharing work and you're sharing business, I assume then as well, Jeff. Yeah. Great. Anyone else? 

Audience Member 2: Hi, Jeff. You mentioned earlier when you were getting started using Passle, did you already have a definitive approach in mind or did you fire a few shots of the gun and then find your way from there?

Jeff: Well, I think in the beginning, I really was just desperate for it to be successful, right? And, you know, because I didn't want to be embarrassed, right? And so I was writing about anything. Like, I literally, I was literally trying to post every day because I really wanted the thing to build both an audience. Like, I wanted to build an internal audience who was going to then write for it with me. And I wanted to build an external audience and interest and stuff like that. So I would write about, like, if it was related to advertising, I was writing about it, regardless of whether it's my own sort of interest or not. Like, I was just, and, you know, and I was really committed to writing every day. So, like, I mean, sometimes, you know, sometimes it would be a small development. You know what I mean? Like, I would really try to come up with stuff, and I'd do Wessel searches, and I'd be like, I've got to come up with something for today. So there was, I was definitely casting a very, very wide net in terms of getting the content out there. And so I think that where I'm right now is I'm not trying to write on by any means every day. And I'm also trying to be strategic, right? I think that one of the things that I've noticed is that it really resonates with the outside world when the content I'm writing has a theme to it and is related. And I mean, yes, it's all advertising law, but I think that what resonates most with both clients and prospective clients and reporters and government officials and all these people who are professors, all these people that are reading it is they sort of say, oh, you are this expert in this and this, and they're really interested in what I have to say about those things. And so that seems to be where I am right now. So something comes up that's about. Subscription renewal laws. And like, that's not really my thing. I could write about it. I help clients with it, but it's not really my thing. So I'd have one of my colleagues who writes about that, write about that and that seems to work a little bit better.

Connor: Hi, at the back there.

Audience Member 3: Have you had any sort of drawbacks on editorial oversight or maybe some partner stepping out of their lane and how do you, how did you manage that and sort of what's your approach on that?

Jeff: And so, so I'm, I am definitely, you know. You know, if you, if this were the, you know, the managing partner podcast and, you know, we, we talking about the fact that maybe I'm a little bit too much of a micromanager and I don't let things go, but I also review and edit all the other things that get posted on our blog. And so and i did it mostly because again i was trying to say like i'm committed to this thing i'm gonna put the time in i'm gonna do it, and sometimes it's a drag you know sometimes someone writes something and you're like like really you you you're this this this year's old and you don't know how to write. And so there's moments where i'm i'm dreading having to write it and there are times where i'll be like send it to somebody and ask somebody else to edit it first. So like i'm not saying i'm perfect but, i will say that one of the i would say that it's a time commitment i mean that's one of the drawbacks. i would say that you know getting people to to do it and make sure that it's good and get it out the door. I mean i think the other problem is is the bottleneck like i'm not going to be a bottleneck, right, so it doesn't do any good if you convince somebody to write a blog post and then it sits in your desk for a week like i will get it out within a couple hours like I will stop what I'm doing and make sure that it gets out because they've taken the time to do it. Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think, you know, I think one of the funniest things that happens is, is that the parties in the cases often read the blog posts, right? So we write about a new case, and I will get feedback directly, like, from the parties, either agreeing or disagreeing with what I said, or wanting to, whatever, you know, so, but that's all part of it, you know? I mean, I would say, look, we are thoughtful about it. We run conflict checks before we write everything. So we make sure that we're not writing about stuff we're not supposed to be writing about. Sometimes we make decisions that this is not something we want to write about, or we write about it in a particular way. My own particular style or our own particular style is not to be super opinionated about it. It's much more about just reporting on it and giving people what the developments are. I think, you know, I learned, so I, so I forgot about this, but for earlier in my career, I wrote a weekly column, monthly column, I don't remember what it was, in a trade magazine about advertising law. And I loved doing it. And it was great. And, but it was, you know, it was harder because it was on a very specific schedule. It had to be a very specific length because it was going in a specific spot. And there was this one time where I wrote this article, and the defendant's argument was so ridiculous. Like, it was just, it was, it was, like, embarrassing. And I kind of made fun of them in the article about it. And, you know, the defendant was a friend of one of my partners, and emailed him and said, was that really necessary? And he was right. It wasn't necessary. So like I've kind of, like we try to really have a nice tone about it too, you know, which is like, even if we really disagree or think that someone's doing, it's a bad decision, you know, I think there's ways to communicate that, like, you know. If a judge issues a decision so plainly wrong you know might just say something like you know unclear whether other courts are gonna decide it the same way you know what i mean, like we try to which we try to be like a nice member have it come across as being a nice thing as opposed to this snarky thing.

Connor: Do you have written down editorial guidelines in that or is it just everyone kind of knows and knows what the line is?

Jeff: You know, look i think that i think that i think that we've expressed some of that i don't think we haven't i'm not a big i'm not a big fan of writing policies that no one's gonna read, so like you know we express it. I mean like i think there have been moments over the last couple of years where some of the blog posts have veered toward the political you know which as they should in a way but i i think also it has to fit within the context of what we're writing about and has to make sense so yeah.

Connor: Great, Thanks Jeff.  Anyone else, any final questions? Great. Well, listen Jeff it's been amazing having you here today talking and, so often with, I think, thought leadership and content program, people think it's a marketing and communications thing. But hopefully what we've seen from Jeff, it is marketing communication, but it's linking it so tightly with business development, and you wouldn't do it if it wasn't going to drive business and drive the brand and the firm. So it's been amazing. So please, everyone, a big round of applause. Thank you so much for coming, Jeff.

Charlie: The CMO Series Rainmakers podcast is brought to you by Passle. Passle makes thought leadership simple, scalable and effective, so professional services firms can stay front of mind with their clients and prospects when it matters most. Find out more and request a demo at passle.net. You can subscribe to the CMO Series Podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for listening and we will see you next time. 

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