Maximum Lawyer

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:02 This is maximum lawyer with your host, Tyson Matrix.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:11 All right, so with the Rise Up guys here today I'm going to be asking some questions. So we've got Travis invite us. And I'm really excited to have you all and ask you some of these questions. But before we kind of get into that, I think this questions may be more for Travis, but you've spent decades really working directly with law firms and really on their marketing. And so what do you think is the biggest shift that you've seen in the last few years when it comes to how chains have firms have changed how they get their clients?

Travis Hoechlin 00:00:44 Yeah. Well, I mean, like you said, I've been doing this for almost two decades. And I remember back in the day we were having to convince attorneys that they need a website. We don't hear that very much anymore. But I really think it's just, you know, after Covid, But people were realizing that they needed to jump on the internet. They needed to expand their footprint and and really get more visibility.

Travis Hoechlin 00:01:08 And so we've seen more acceptance of that over the last five years or so to where, you know, even folks, that I mean, the personal injury attorneys were always first to market and all that good stuff and, accepting of, of marketing, but all the other practice areas as well as now they realize that people are using their phones, people are jumping online and really accepting the, the idea of of having a digital footprint.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:34 Yeah. I remember early on, whenever I got in, when I started my firm, it was I couldn't really compete with the Pi people at the time, right? So I was doing criminal defense and personal injury. And so criminal defense was like shooting fish in a barrel, like no one was doing it. It was super easy. The Google ads were super cheap. From an SEO standpoint, I was ranking very quickly and I was just doing it all myself. All that has changed substantially. Especially nowadays. It's completely different. I do wonder where, because I think you all have a massive advantage because you all say stay up to speed on things when it comes to like the LMS and how the search is changing and all that.

Tyson Mutrux 00:02:14 I guess where do you all see that head? I mean, that that seems like it's kind of like a wild West right now.

Travis Hoechlin 00:02:18 It is a wild, wild, wild West, for sure. I mean, the good thing right now, as we sit here in August of 2025, much of the things that you do for SEO are very similar to get to get getting a firm to show up on ChatGPT and things of that nature. It's still all about publishing content and making it authoritative. Right? So those things have not changed. But if I were just like, I run this business, my what I tell people is stay diversified, right? Like the same thing that your, your stock guy or your investment guy would tell you is you don't put all your eggs in one basket, right? I mean, we've seen this over the last 3 or 4 years. Where Elsa's came into the picture is if your budget allows and as you grow, you don't keep all your eggs in one basket.

Travis Hoechlin 00:03:04 You know, having SEO and PPC and LSA and social, having all those revenue streams up and going is, is what what's going to help you survive. As, as time keeps going. And then when as ChatGPT, it's pulling market share, it's pulling traffic away from Google. You definitely want to make sure that you're you're investing in that or being able to, you know, as, as as things get more clear of how that works, certainly there's going to be I can't imagine there's not going to be ads on on a lot of these LMS that's coming. I can't imagine that that's not going to be the case. So that would be my big if you can afford to do so, make sure you diversify and not have everything in one one bucket.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:47 It's got to be kind of an exciting time for you all though, because you're it's it's changing so much. And you so your company is going to have to adapt. You're probably already adapting substantially to to the new reality. And so, I mean, is this part of it's kind of exciting for you all because it's it's not like you're just going to be doing SEO like it's going to be it's there's going to be so much more to it.

Travis Hoechlin 00:04:07 No, it's it's definitely an exciting time. There's going to be some big winners for sure. And we want our clients to be there 100%. Like there's no question about it. Like we're we're excited as a company and investing a lot of time and resources to figure all this stuff out so we can take our clients. I mean, we have close to 600 clients. If they win, we win. As as I think we've said on this podcast before, everything we do is month to month. So, you know, we have to earn our paycheck every single month. So it's a, you know, a lot of people are scared of what's coming with AI. And I understand all those those things. But I think there's a huge advantage, like it always has been as technology, as advanced, there's going to be winners. And how do we get our clients to be those those firms that are winning.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:55 Yeah. I think it's really cool how you always approach things where it's, you know, like we're in this together.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:00 You know, I think a lot of companies they view it's like us versus them and you all view it as like, hey, now, like you just mentioned like we you know, we have we have 600 customers, you know, like. And I think that that's really cool how you do view it as like we're all in this together, you know, we're trying to do everything we can to win for our people. I think that that's that's really, really cool. But I'm going to shift gears because there are you all probably seen a lot over the years about this where there's some firms where they just they say, you know, all I want is referrals. They rely heavily on referrals. And I know Travis, you'd mentioned, you know, diversifying and all that. But and this may be more of a question for Vitus, but at what point do you see that that strategy start to limit growth?

Vaidas C. 00:05:41 Well, the firms that typically say they get all their business from referrals also say I don't need to market and it doesn't matter.

Vaidas C. 00:05:48 And that's really a very limiting approach because one referrals, you don't know when the next one's coming in, so there's no consistency to it. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's feast or famine. Right. And the other thing that's really important is that, you know, we know referrals come in threes. Typically people don't get one referral. They get a couple 2 or 3. And the first thing that they're going to do is go Google you, go research you online, see what you know, what they find out about you. And numerous conversations are always about, you know, would would you tell somebody, if they're considering hiring you to go to your website to validate who you are? In other words, are you proud enough of your website? Does it say all the right things to represent you as the first impression? And a lot of times they're like, oh no, no, we don't. We don't want that going on. Well, then you're just literally shooting yourself in the foot there, because most people's first impression of you as a lawyer or a law firm is going to be your website, because they're going to go Google you and see what they find.

Travis Hoechlin 00:06:49 And how do you grow? You know, with firms that are growth minded, right. Which I would assume many of your clients, your listeners are. It's like, how do you go scale your business 25% next year, just off referrals or 50% or 100%? Like, you have no control over that. And so you better have a line in the water with some type of marketing that you can scale if truly you want to grow. I mean, if you're if they have enough business and they're not trying to grow, then sure, work off referrals. That's that's fine. But I know our business. Listen, we have ten sales reps that work with us that all have been in this business for ten, 15 plus years. Like, we don't hire folks who don't have tons of experience. And they we still need to market. Right. We we spend the same type of money and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on marketing just to keep this thing rolling.

Vaidas C. 00:07:40 And on top of that, actually.

Vaidas C. 00:07:42 And this is mostly sort of in the pie specific market, right, where, you know, I get all my business from referrals. Well, typically they're paying a referral fee or a percentage, right. And it seems to be happening more often than not now where they're like, you know, I am really tired of doing all the work and then having to cut a check to somebody just because they gave me a lead. You know, Steve, my colleague at Rise Up, who goes all the max love and his his whole point is, is like, would you pay on referral fees last year that that should be your marketing budget because that's what you're paying for marketing. You're just writing them a check versus, you know, marketing for yourself as a firm.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:18 Yeah. I think there's another problem that a lot of people that don't think they think about is that you see a lot of firms that have plateaued over the years, and a lot of those firms are the ones that they don't really focus on marketing.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:30 They say they get their cases from referrals and they do start to plateau. And the problem with the plateau is it's really hard to get out of that plateau if you let it go too long because you start to see, okay, everything's stagnant. They start to hire more and more people, so their profit margins get slimmer and slimmer, so then they have less money to spend on marketing. And by the time they hit that backslide, they don't have money for the marketing. And now they're having to slash everything. So it's it's a it's a really big problem if you let the plateau go too far. And and that's where that's where I think that that approach, although it can be effective at some to to some extent, there's a point where you're going to plateau because you're not focusing on marketing and it's really going to hurt you. And, and so I and you make a really good point, though, about when it comes to just spending money on the marketing continue to market and all that too.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:17 But it's I think it's the it's the back side of things that people don't think about too much.

Travis Hoechlin 00:09:22 It's digging your well before you're thirsty. Right.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:25 I like that I like the I like that phrase. That's that's that's exactly what it is.

Travis Hoechlin 00:09:29 I mean, we see we see this, you know, doing this for so long, like we see this right where it's the firm a little longer in the tooth seeing this, you know, worked off referral and we get the call, the panic call like, hey, these young whippersnappers down the road are grabbing some cases that we, quote unquote, should be getting right. And I know why they're doing that, because they're they've been investing in their online presence. And we have completely neglected that. And now they're forced with having to play some catchup, which they never had to do before. And then the expectation on us is like to make up for ten, 15 years of not marketing and try to get the.

Vaidas C. 00:10:06 Years of not doing anything.

Travis Hoechlin 00:10:08 To try to try to get them caught up.

Travis Hoechlin 00:10:11 And then you're, you know, then they need to have patience to make sure that they're, you know, get caught up with with the folks who've been doing this for 10 or 15 years. And in investing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into their marketing.

Vaidas C. 00:10:24 And there's also just to add to that, Tyson, it's really a dynamic shift that's going on from a old school versus new school way of doing things. I would argue that, again, I've been doing this 25 years. The lawyers that I started working with 20, 25 years ago, they're either set in their ways, winding down their practice or to Travis's point. They have some younger attorneys they need to feed, but like, they're fine, right? But most firms, if they haven't participated, are lacking in that. And the younger generation of lawyers that may not hold a candle to them as far as experience they grew up with, with digital phones and marketing and social media, and that's all they know. So they're jumping into it like a year into practice.

Vaidas C. 00:11:09 They've got a website that crushes what this firm that has 30 lawyers or 30 years of experience has and their like to Travis's point, how are they getting those clients? Well, they're getting those clients because they're on the first page of Google. They're running local service ads. They're doing all the right things. The only way anyone hires you, Mr. Attorney, is if they're referred to you. Because I can't find you, you know, with a magnifying glass, because you have no onsite or no online presence. And that's a conversation that typically is a bit of an eye opener to them, because they don't really know what they're missing until they see it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:11:43 It makes me think about so. I've heard actually multiple stories. This is kind of a plug for you all where, people started using you all and got results really quickly. And so I do wonder what it is that you, whenever a firm that is in that similar position, like what is it you all are doing to get them results so quickly? Because I know that SEO is is more of a like a long term strategy.

Tyson Mutrux 00:12:04 But I have heard multiple stories of people, you know, hiring rise up and saying, hey, like I've gotten pretty quick results. And so I am curious about that part of it.

Travis Hoechlin 00:12:13 I think it really comes down to this, like talking to the talking to the attorney and figuring out what is their budget, what what do they want? Where do they want it and how much of it do they want? Right? And then figuring out what is your budget? And have they thought through thought this through like if the P.I. client's employment work comp like they get paid on contingency, has a sales person or a marketing person ever walk them through what that looks like? And I tell every, every one of them that I talked to, I was like, even if I came onto this call with five cases over my shoulder, you're not seeing money on that for 6 or 12 months. Best case scenario. And they go, yeah, yeah, you're right. I'm all, so have you thought this through? Like, I'm going to go do a bunch of research and figure out what it's going to take to get your site to rank.

Travis Hoechlin 00:12:56 And if you're just starting, you're you're looking at probably depending on the market and so on and so forth. But you know, can you pallet paying X amount of dollars for a year before even case number one comes in and then cases come in and and now you're waiting for it to get paid for another 6 or 12 months. Have you thought that through or and that's more of a long term strategy. Or do we need to implement pay per click ads or LSA ads or social media where the phone is going to ring right away? And maybe we go maybe we go a little conservative on the website. Just let's get you a fancy brochure online. So you're, you're the the fish that are trying to jump in the boat, which are your referrals. Do do that. Right. And do we incorporate some more? I wouldn't say short term strategy because that would imply that you you should shut it off after some time. But more of an instant gratification type of strategy where we can get some cases in the door.

Travis Hoechlin 00:13:46 Let's get cash flow in the door and let's help you scale your business. I think a lot of folks, myself included, you know, us all starting businesses before. Like you, you don't know everything and you haven't thought this through. Do you have somebody experienced that will walk you through what that looks like and set the right expectation? You know, I'll give you a perfect example. I have a client that I worked with for a long time. He's a he's a criminal defense DUI attorney here in Southern California. And he was newer to the game, had a website. It was god awful. But it'll do for the time being. He had some content on there that we could we could utilize. We he had the $3,500 budget. We put a thousand bucks toward the website just to give him a fancy brochure online, took another $2,500 and put it into license. He was able to get 17 calls that first month. Seven of them turned into cases. He charges $3,500 for for a DUI.

Travis Hoechlin 00:14:36 So off of that $3,500 you made 2005. And then I'm getting goosebumps right now. Think about it like he's like, I just had the best month I ever had. Thank you so much for doing that. I could have took that. Listen, we put a majority of that money and gave it to Google, right? That we could have done. I could have done that. Take that same budget, put it all into a website, knowing that it's going to take them a year and a half to get caught up in LA, Southern California with DUIs, and probably would have quit along the way at some point because his finances would, I'm guessing, would probably not be able to keep up with that. But because we had his best interests in line in mind, and I want his business for the long term, not just for a month or two, we switch that and we're able and understood his needs, even though he didn't wasn't able to think it, didn't have the knowledge to think it through what, what what expectations to have, but put him in a position to where? Now here we are, three, four years later, and now his website's killing it.

Travis Hoechlin 00:15:36 He put more money into that. If he expanded, expanded his LSA and he's cooking now. That is how a marketing company is looking. Who's looking out for their clients. Should do should do business in my opinion.

Vaidas C. 00:15:48 Yeah. And to answer, I think your question in a slightly different way was how are we able to get fast results? I think that's what started the question. Is that right?

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:59 Pretty. Yeah, pretty much because it's I mean, it's interesting how you're able to make little tweaks so quickly or like do little adjustments and do do fast things to get get fast results. And I, I just think it's an interesting thing that you're able to do.

Vaidas C. 00:16:12 Yeah. And without giving away the secret sauce, if you will, I think.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:15 No, I want you to give all the secrets, give us every single secret.

Vaidas C. 00:16:19 I mean, this sounds sort of one sided, but it's amazing to me to this day of how many people that we talked to that are being told that they're getting certain services, whether, oh, yeah, we're getting SEO or we're getting this and we're getting that.

Vaidas C. 00:16:33 And then when we look under the hood, there's really not a whole lot going on. And, you know, their content isn't competitive, and their blog posts or whatever they're paying for is so low on the what's required scale that by us just doing it right, doing what we do as a company, we're able to improve on that very quickly because we actually take a look at the entire picture and again, whether it's, hey, you know what, you need to move the needle quickly. We're going to run losses. We can get those turned on within a few days because you've got a good GMV going. And and more importantly, we have we look at our relationships with our clients as partnerships. This isn't a transaction where we build you something and hey, we'll call you in a year. We have a very partnership centric, team centric approach with our clients. Some of our clients we talked to honestly a couple every couple of weeks. If it's like a new ramp up, some of them are scheduled once a month, once a quarter, but it is an ongoing relationship so that we can show them the results of what we're doing and the strategy that we implement every single month.

Vaidas C. 00:17:35 There's a lot of companies that once a website's been built, there's really almost nothing going on on an ongoing basis, which in this day and age and the competitive nature of Google is you're treading water or sinking so bluntly. Most of the people we end up working with are in some level of that. So when we bring on our services and our approach, it has a pretty significant impact pretty quickly.

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:58 You know, I hear something, a couple phrases all the time where, you know, I tried Google AdWords, it didn't work. I tried LSI as it didn't work, I tried SEO, it didn't work. I mean, is there anything that you all could point to? That usually is like a common thread as to why those things didn't work for those firms.

Vaidas C. 00:18:14 Tracking it, you ain't taking.

Travis Hoechlin 00:18:16 Yeah. One one of two things lack of budget or lack of effort on the marketing person's marketing agencies. End. Right. Like what we do is not it's not inexpensive, right. It's just it's not simple, you know, like in each of those different things, there's a different reason for it.

Travis Hoechlin 00:18:34 PPC you can spend too, a little bit of money, right? Like if it's, you know, we get calls frequently where people go, hey, like in Southern California, for example, like, hey, I want to go after car accidents in Los Angeles. And I have ten grand a month and I, I spend it with XYZ company and I'm not getting anything. And I said, you should take your wife on a vacation or out to dinner or go put it on red or black in Vegas because it's not going to work with us either. Right. Because, you know, out here it's 350 to $500 a click. Let's say it's $500 a click. You can do the math if you're giving Google. And that's not one dime going into our pocket. You give Google ten grand and it's 500 bucks a click. A good conversion rate, for example, is like for every five people that click your ad, one person calls, you're a 20% conversion rate. Google will tell you 10%.

Travis Hoechlin 00:19:18 I would tell you that's not what we shoot for, but let's say 20%. So if you're only getting X amount of clicks, you're not you're not turning over enough cards to find the ace. Like in a silly example, like if you had a deck of cards and you're looking for aces, like, you know, there's four aces in the deck, right? And if you're only turning over 3 or 4 cards, you're only buying 3 or 4 cards off the top of the deck and crossing your fingers hoping you found an ace. I don't like those odds. You know, if I were a betting man, which I am, I'm not taking those odds. So having a big enough budget to at least go through how the firms that are doing well do it is they buy 30, 40, 50 cards off the deck and they're flipping them over, and now they get all the aces and they're able to make scale that business. Does that make sense? LSA is a little bit different. The only way that really doesn't work is if the phone doesn't ring right.

Travis Hoechlin 00:20:07 If your phone doesn't ring, you don't spend any money. So there's some safety rails in there right? Type of thing. And then the big thing is, is, is answering the phone. We work with almost 600 firms. I would say on average across the board, if you put them all in a big bucket, like firms typically answer their phone 65, 70% of the time, and there's like 30% that they miss. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Typically, most firms like one call can pay for their marketing. Right. If I'm generalizing. So like making sure you're answering the phone, making sure there's multiple ways to, to communicate with your office. Right. Phone calls, emails, texts. Like especially the younger generation. Like I have a younger brother that works works with me. Like if I call him, he's probably not going to answer the phone. But if I text him, he like texted me right back and I'm like, dude. Like, I don't talk on the phone.

Travis Hoechlin 00:20:58 There's just that. There's just that big.

Vaidas C. 00:21:00 That's a generational thing, no question. Like, the younger generation doesn't talk. They want immediate texting messaging, but I don't have time to talk to you, so I agree.

Tyson Mutrux 00:21:10 Well, how do you all educate your your customers then. Because you you've probably run into situations where you've done all this work, where you're generating the leads and then they've got these massive holes in their boat where they they're not capturing those leads in some way and not following up. so it's got to be extremely frustrating for you all. I bet because you've done this work too, and they've paid you the money to do it. You've done what your what you needed to do. The leads are coming in, their calls are coming in. They're getting things to their submissions through their website. So how do you all convey that to your to your clients? You got it. You got to fix these holes in your bucket.

Travis Hoechlin 00:21:46 We record every call everyone. If you're a client of ours, I would turn the screen on and we use the thing called call rail.

Travis Hoechlin 00:21:52 There's tons of different options out there, but literally this listen to every call and we will do the legwork of listening to their calls. I say they're getting 100 calls. We'll go back 90 days or whatever it takes, and we'll have somebody listen to all the calls and put notes on there and bring them a scorecard of like, and we've actually developed some AI that will do. Listen, we just build a tool that we're about to launch that will do it all for them, where I'll give them a call and go, hey, listen, hear these hundred calls? You know, 30 of them are missed. 20 of them were hit a voicemail. 17 appointments were set or whatever, and then we were able to give it to. But it's really just answering the phone and converting those calls and showing them it's an moment, I don't remember. I've been on the phone with thousands of law firms I don't know of one that's showed up to the Congo. Hey, listen, my intake sucks, but I would like to do more.

Travis Hoechlin 00:22:44 Like it's denial, right? It's complete denial. So it's a little bit of showing them like listen and we tell them ahead of time, are you okay with us listening and critiquing your intake? Can we secret shop your office, like doing all these things? Because listen, our our relationship has a small timeline. If we don't fix those. I wish, Tyson that we could just do what we do best, market and get the phone to ring and everything else would work itself out because it's not in our job description. So we've had to make relationships with answering services, with chat services and things of that nature and roll up our sleeves and get involved with these guys to help them. Because 85%. 80 some odd percent of our clients are solo practitioners, up to about 2 or 3 attorneys. So they're the chef, they're the waiter, they're the cook. They're, you know, they're the the host. And they got a million things. Like, are we every business owner can relate to this.

Travis Hoechlin 00:23:38 You have a million things and you got a to do list and you get to like seven of them of the 20 on your list every day. Right. And so it's it's up to us to fill the gap and bring to the table like, here's what's going on. There's been some tough conversations over the years that we've had to have where people, you know, have their mother in law answering the phone and they've had to delegate her to a different task because they don't realize that how rude that person is answering the phone. And like, you know what I mean? Like, so anyway, that that's the that's the big piece that we if I could give any piece of advice, as funny as it may sound, because it doesn't put any we don't make any money off it. Figure out your intake and you'll spend half the money in marketing. Get twice the results, in my opinion.

Vaidas C. 00:24:20 Yeah. And if I could just kind of piggyback off that because, you know, you said how how frustrating is it for us and, you know, how do we handle that? And kind of what I said earlier about we have very constant communication with our clients.

Vaidas C. 00:24:33 Like every time we get on the on a zoom call with our clients, we go through this stuff, we go through the analytics of the website, through the calls and all that stuff. And it's a very humbling experience to them when we show up. Okay. Well, you had 50 phone calls last week, but 25 of them all went to voicemail. The other ones, do you want to listen how your intake was? Because I wouldn't hire you if this person answered this way. And just you know, Travis's point, whether it's the mother in law or or or even worse, you know, hey, I listen to this phone call. This sounds like a really good case. What do you think? And the attorney listens to it, and he's confused as to why his intake said we don't take those kind of cases or referred them to another lawyer in the area when he's like, Holy crap that we take those cases, right? So it's an educational tool for one. And more importantly, most like like Travis said, they've got all these hats to wear.

Vaidas C. 00:25:26 Most of them just assume the phone is being answered correctly or well, or in a way that they'd be happy with. And not to say that that happens all the time, but there's always room for improvement. And we and we approach it with like, look, this isn't here to get somebody in trouble or get somebody fired. But I think that there's some lessons to the best way to handle these intakes. You know, one thing I tell them, like your your staff's job when they get that phone call, is typically not to educate them, not to answer a ton of questions, but to get them on the on the calendar for you. You want to book an appointment. And, you know, I've listened to ten minutes of a paralegal or a receptionist going through all sorts of stuff, and at the end it's like, okay, well, I appreciate it. Thanks. You know, like, you didn't do your job, like your job is to get the attorney scheduled, right? So those types of things.

Vaidas C. 00:26:11 But it all stems to we have the analytics and the tools to show them what we're delivering. And if the ball is being dropped, we can show that to them. And in most cases, whether it's an eye opener or not, it's it's a thankful conversation because they had no idea.

Tyson Mutrux 00:26:28 So I know I know this story from kind of I know some of some back chain links. I'm not going to mention the firms, but there's a there's a guy I know who got like an $18 million verdict a few years ago, and afterwards he did this big social media post about how all of the all of the bigger firms in town had had rejected it and, you know, the reasons why, yada, yada, yada. And, the one of those big firms, they went in and looked in all their intake records and they found that client and they had they saw that they had rejected that case. It was a whopper of a case. It was just one of those. It was one of those ones that wasn't like a cookie cutter case.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:06 And so they got it, got rejected. And so they revamped everything and how they handled their, their intake because of that case, because that's one of those things you don't want to find out whenever someone else gets an $18 million verdict that your intake.

Speaker 5 00:27:19 You had it first.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:22 Yes. That's. That would. That's, That's one of those ones that would be sickening. But so there's other situations too, where there might be other holes in the bucket where let's say that you're generating they're generating the traffic, but they're not getting the phone calls or the web or the website submissions. So which would probably indicate that there's some sort of a conversion issue on the website. So is there, is there maybe, you know, 1 or 2 tips that you all might be able to give people when it comes to how to increase conversion from the website?

Vaidas C. 00:27:51 Yeah, I it kind of stems to just what I said, you know, conversion is basically closing, getting an appointment scheduled, not giving away free advice.

Vaidas C. 00:28:00 Right. A lot of attorneys, family law specific. Like I just got a quick question for you. You know, they're shopping for input, but they don't want to pay anything for it, that sort of thing. So, you know, conversion comes to, you know, some attorneys say, hey, my first 15 minutes is free. After that, you know, you're going to pay to, to meet with me or for me to give you advice, but it's closing the deal. It's getting people to set up an appointment. There's always the tire kickers. There's always the people that don't have enough money. I mean, that's just the nature of it's like fishing. You're not always going to catch a marlin. You got to throw back a bunch of stuff before you get the good stuff. But I think that there's a lack of trying to close the deal by the receptionist, the paralegal, or whoever's calling, because it's typically not the lawyer that's on the phone with the the person that's calling.

Vaidas C. 00:28:44 I mean, sure, sometimes there's a rollover to a cell phone or that sort of thing, but he's usually got staff to handle that sort of thing. And again, at that point it's like you've got a fish on the line. You've got someone calling about something that you do make sure that the job is to get them to talk to you. It's not to answer their questions on the phone or for them, or to give them pricing or that sort of thing. It's to get them. Get them scheduled. Drive. I don't know if you want to jump.

Travis Hoechlin 00:29:08 Yeah. So there's a couple. So just for your listeners. So when we use our lingo, when we talk about conversion, there's a couple different things, right? There's colors. People colors and form fills that convert into clients. That's one conversion that we you want to take a look at. But to I think what you're talking about is traffic into callers. Like how do we convert more of the folks that are finding your website to pick up the phone or, or email in? And so a couple things.

Travis Hoechlin 00:29:37 There is mobile first. Take a look at your website and is the phone number available. Is it easy to find you? Right. Don't make it tough for people to find you or get Ahold of you, I should say. And if they want to chat, make sure that's available. So look at your website is the phone. I can't tell you how many times. A couple different things. I can't tell you how many times I've went to a website and I can't find the phone number. Right? And I do this for a living. Right. Like when a sales call coming up and I take a look at their website and I'm like, are they plaintiff or defense? Like, and if I'm having that trouble and I'm. And I'm selfishly looking. Trying to figure out what you do. You think the consumer is going to take that time, they're going to scan it and you better appeal to them are they're your biggest competition. Is the back button. Right. And so make sure you're able your website is set up to convert.

Travis Hoechlin 00:30:30 Well there's times where I've looked at websites and I look at it on the phone. I'm like, you can't even read it. You know, how do you so make sure you're you're optimizing your website and all of your marketing, mobile thinking, mobile first and do a little secret shop on your own office. Is it easy? Is it easy to get Ahold of you? Can you find the phone number right. Can you can you email very, very effectively? And are you getting back to those phone calls and emails quickly? Because that's another thing. If you're opening the door to text messaging and emails, there's stats out there that you can look up. You got to the golden hour is a five minute window, you know, and then the and converting that drops off dramatically as every minute passed that. So if you can afford to do so, either you or delegate that to somebody, that if somebody emails in that you get back to them lightning quickly. That's who's going to win.

Vaidas C. 00:31:21 Yeah.

Vaidas C. 00:31:21 Let me kind of piggyback off that. It's not just emails but but phone calls. Like I can't tell you how many times. And it seems to be typically the solo criminal attorney. It's like, well, yeah, I'm in court all day. I can't answer the phone, so I go to voicemail. Voicemail is the kiss of death in this society that we live in, people have a patience of they want immediate results. If I can't get Ahold of somebody, I'm calling somebody else. And if you're calling me back, if I even left your voicemail hours later, I've already called somebody else. So again, what we recommend a lot of our firms that have we can see how many calls they got missed or how many went to voicemail. Like if you can't answer the phone, find somebody that can. If you are closed on the weekends, have some intake, some chat features on your website, some way that if someone is engaging with you that they can reach you, but voicemails are just that's just a black hole.

Vaidas C. 00:32:16 No one, by the time you call them back, they've already hired somebody else most of the time. So have somebody answer the phone if you can't.

Travis Hoechlin 00:32:23 Because we hear this a lot. Well, if they really want to hire me, they'll leave a message. I'm like, what are we talking about? Like and where that comes from. I joke about it, but I understand where it comes from is that when they work off referrals, typically it would like if I was referred to you, Tyson, if I said, hey, call Tyson. He's the greatest at what he does, whatever, I would call and leave a message because my alternative would be jump online and talk to a perfect stranger, right? So I'm going to leave a message. But what we're talking about is folks who don't know you and I know there's going to be tough egos. A few of them have a few lawyers have some egos out there. I don't know if you've got they don't know who you are, right.

Travis Hoechlin 00:33:00 These folks do not know who you are. They don't know the verdicts and settlements or all the, you know, all the awards you've won. They don't know that they. They event in their life happen. Car crash, divorce committed a crime. Allegedly. Whatever or Anita estate planned on. And they jumped. They don't know attorneys. I didn't know any attorneys. My dad was a doctor. We didn't know any attorneys. He had one golfing buddy that was an attorney. I didn't know anybody, and I didn't realize how specialized people are. Right. It's the reason why, you know, attorneys will say, I do, P.I. and I go, yeah, you know, even your friends and family don't really know what you do. Oh, yeah, they do. I'm all, really, why do they call you when they get a DUI? Or why do they call you right over, you know, Thanksgiving dinner. You know, folks who do transactional work, they ask you how, how how are some of your cases going? You know what I mean? Like, they don't know.

Travis Hoechlin 00:33:48 They don't put it together. So make sure that they're able to contact you. Clear, clear statement of what you do. All those kinds of good things.

Tyson Mutrux 00:33:57 My my family does finally know what I do. They. So the questions I get are hey, what are there any interesting cases that you're working on? That's usually that's usually the question I get now is the so the is that one. But yeah, over the years it took me a little bit of time to kind of educate them on. No, I don't do that. But they they will call me for recommendations for other people. So that's that's fine. Before I start to wrap things up, I do want to give you an opportunity to to let people know how to get in touch with you if they do want to work with you all, because I do want to let everyone know. Like you all are a sponsor of Maxwell Icon. You are a title title sponsor. You all been a great partner. You are amazing. I hear great things about you all the time.

Tyson Mutrux 00:34:36 So part of me I want to thank you all because you have been great partners over the years and I want to keep keep that going forward because you all have been really great and we we're very we're very when it comes to who we work with and who we're not, we're very selective. And so having a good partner is really, really important to us. So thank you for that. But but I do want to if people want to reach out to you, what's the best way of of them reaching out to you if they want to work with rise up.

Travis Hoechlin 00:34:58 Well our our website is Rise up media com spelled with a Z. I don't know how to spell over here obviously. But yeah, reach out and ask for Vitus and and Steve and we'll get you connected.

Vaidas C. 00:35:11 Yeah. So and we've done this on the past podcast. I don't know if you can put it at the bottom, but like I tell people to text me, call me. We don't work 9 to 5. I know a lot of people don't have time till the weekends.

Vaidas C. 00:35:21 Send us a text, be happy to set up a time to talk, whatever works. And if you go to Rise Up com, we even have a box that says, hey, you're, you know, you heard about us from Max law. The partnership with you guys and Rise Up has been fantastic. So we're really happy to continue that. Looking forward to Max Kohn and experiencing that for the first time. But, I know that we've, I don't know the number, but I have a lot of really good Max law clients, and that continues to grow every month.

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:48 So we'll put the number in the show notes so people have it. So people will have that. I don't have the capability on this platform to put it on the screen. But the other platform you were on, I did have it, but not not on this one.

Speaker 5 00:35:58 All right. My phone number.

Vaidas C. 00:35:59 Is 7051, so feel free to text me or call.

Travis Hoechlin 00:36:06 Me. Midnight call my midnight.

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:08 Folks love it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:09 Very good it is. I did not think about the fact that this is your first max lock on, because we we were on hiatus for a few years, so that's because we've done all the other events. So that's that's really cool. That's the the fact that you're going to get to experience it for the first time. That's pretty awesome. Pretty excited about.

Travis Hoechlin 00:36:23 That. We're stoked. We're stoked. Absolutely.

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:26 All right. Well, so if when people come to the booth in Nashville in October, what's something that they should come and ask you about? Because I, because sometimes people I think are afraid to kind of go to a booth and ask questions. So what are some things they should ask you about?

Speaker 5 00:36:39 I love this question.

Vaidas C. 00:36:40 Yeah. This is this is we do a lot of trade show. This is the first thing we're doing with you guys. It's trade show esque, right. Versus just the normal masterminds. What I tell people is like, if you just want to look under the hood, we are the least pushy people you'll ever talk to.

Vaidas C. 00:36:55 We're not going to try to force you to buy something or shove something down your throat. But if you want to know what you're doing. Is it working? We can. We have tools that we can take a look at of how your websites valued by Google. If you want to know what your competitors are doing, like, hey, there's this firm that just opened up last year, they're killing it. Can you look under their hood? We can give you all of that information, give you some feedback, give you some suggestions. If it's something that you want help with, we can obviously do that. But we give free advice and that tends to be very well received and unfortunately not the norm. A lot of people, I think to Travis's point, they approach, you know, a company at a trade show and they kind of feel like they're they're just bombarded with, you know, a sales pitch. We're here to help. We're here to inform. And so if somebody's going to come up to us at Max Kohn, just what questions do you have? Do you want to know if you're doing a good job? Do you want to know if you're the company you're with is doing a good job? We'll give you an honest opinion with no obligation as far as what we see.

Travis Hoechlin 00:37:52 And figure out what what what is it you want to do and what I tell everybody when I first start talking to them. Where do you want to be? How do you want to see your firm better or different than you are right now in 6 to 12 months. And then let's put a plan together, whether we're lucky enough to work with them or somebody else, like put a plan together of how to accomplish that. And maybe, you know, some people have champagne tastes and a beer budget and that's fine. But let's let's figure it out. And, and bite sized pieces, if you will. And how do we scale? Like, that's what we do every single day. And so if we can, we can help lead them in the right direction and be happy to do so.

Tyson Mutrux 00:38:23 Love it. All right. We'll leave it at that. Really appreciate it. Rise up. Mediacom with a rise with a Z. So make sure you check them out with Rise Up medium.com with Rise Up With a Z.

Tyson Mutrux 00:38:33 Very very important. Thank you both for doing this Travis. Invite us. Really appreciate it. We'll see you all in Nashville. If you want tickets go to Max. Com you can get your tickets there, but we'll see you in Nashville. Thanks guys.

Travis Hoechlin 00:38:44 Thank you, thank you.