Travis Hoechlin is the CEO of RizeUp Media, an agency specializing in helping law firms generate new clients, increase revenue, and grow their businesses through online marketing strategies. With over 15 years of experience in legal marketing, he has significantly contributed to the company’s rapid success, including making the Inc. 5000 list two years in a row. His expertise lies in managing various aspects of marketing, from website development to SEO and pay-per-click advertising. Travis previously worked in the mortgage business before channeling his competitive spirit and sales acumen into founding RizeUp Media.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:14] Travis Hoechlin’s early years playing baseball and mowing lawns in an entrepreneurial family
- [7:04] Travis discusses starting a mortgage company during the 2007-2008 financial crisis
- [10:52] Challenges of establishing credibility in the legal marketing industry
- [13:08] The three-partner structure and early growth strategy of RizeUp Media
- [16:34] How RizeUp Media is preparing for the impact of AI on law firm marketing
- [20:59] Why face-to-face connections outperform digital outreach in acquiring attorney clients
- [26:30] Coaching law firms on intake processes to prevent lost leads
- [33:27] How COVID-19 impacted RizeUp Media’s business model and remote team growth
In this episode…
Many law firms struggle to attract new clients beyond referrals, leaving them unable to scale consistently or predictably. They often lack strong intake processes, fail to respond quickly to leads, and resist adopting modern marketing strategies. How can attorneys shift from reactive, referral-dependent growth to a proactive approach that drives steady business?
Travis Hoechlin explains how attorneys can strengthen their client acquisition efforts by refining intake systems, embracing targeted online strategies, and focusing on relationship-driven growth. Travis emphasizes the importance of speed-to-lead, tracking conversion data, and coaching legal teams on handling inbound inquiries. He also shares how in-person networking, trade shows, and a seasoned sales team can outperform purely digital outreach for reaching attorneys.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Travis Hoechlin, Co-founder and CEO of RizeUp Media, about scaling law firm visibility and client acquisition. Travis discusses lessons from his baseball and mortgage careers, how to gain credibility with lawyers, and the role of intake in converting leads. He also covers the impact of AI on marketing, strategies for client retention, and the importance of diversification.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Travis Hoechlin on LinkedIn
- RizeUp Media
- Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast with Jason Swenk
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “Failure is a friend; fail forward, fail quickly, fail fast, and figure it out.”
- “Lawyers need to promote their service; they’re selling just like everyone else.”
- “You can’t scale your business next quarter 50% on referrals alone.”
- “It’s like reeling a fish to the boat and then cutting the line before you net it.”
- “We know how to grow our clients’ businesses better than our own, and that’s okay.”
Action Steps:
- Audit your intake process: Many law firms lose leads due to slow follow-up. Optimizing intake ensures more prospects convert into paying clients.
- Leverage in-person networking: Trade shows and conferences remain powerful tools for building trust and winning clients, especially in relationship-driven industries.
- Diversify marketing channels: Relying solely on referrals limits growth. Invest in SEO, PPC, and emerging AI-driven tools to generate steady leads.
- Track and analyze calls: Recording and reviewing client calls reveals conversion gaps and opportunities for staff training.
- Embrace adaptability: Industry changes like AI and search engine shifts are inevitable. Stay informed, test new approaches, and pivot quickly when needed.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to get more traffic and visibility online for your business. My guest today is Travis Hoechlin of RizeUp Media. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:12
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:29
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And you, every week we have smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.
And we’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, lots of great episodes if you check out the archives. And of course, before we get into this episode, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for a company to launch and run your podcast.
We do three things: strategy, accountability, and full execution. In fact, we invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform, Podcast Copilot, which is so much more than just a relationship building. It’s also about nurturing your best relationships and clients and referral partners so you can learn more by going to Rise25.com or emailing us at [email protected]. All right.
A quick shout out to Jason Swenk of digital agency Elite and the Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast. He’s a long time friend and through that community we met today’s guest, whose name is Travis Hoechlin. He’s the Co-founder and CEO of RizeUp Media. It’s a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping law firms to grow their client base through tailored online strategies. He’s got about 15 years of experience in the legal marketing industry.
He’s from Southern California in an entrepreneurial family. And we’re going to hear about his background, how he got into this in the first place, and especially what you should be doing today if you want to get traffic and visibility online. Travis, I want to hear about what you were like as a kid. I always like to get to know my guests a little bit of what they were like when they were younger. You grew up playing baseball, mowing lawns, and you also were in an entrepreneurial family.
So I want to hear about all those things. But baseball and lawns were definitely a big part of your childhood. Tell us about that.
Travis Hoechlin: 02:14
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I yeah, I played baseball since the time I could hold a bat all the way through college and even signed a professional contract for a quick minute. But yeah. No, if you had asked me when I was a kid what I’d be doing at this age, I would have told you. I just, you know, like every other kid out there thought I would play baseball until I fell over and then coached.
John Corcoran: 02:37
Yeah. Now, did you ever end up in the minor leagues? I know in baseball, at least the way it used to be that they went like hundreds of rounds and everyone got drafted. Even while you’re in college, was it like that or did you end up doing any minor league time?
Travis Hoechlin: 02:50
Yeah, and I played. I signed a contract with an independent company. I didn’t get drafted, but I signed a contract with an independent professional team in Ohio and went out there for spring training, got hurt and came back and that was what I wanted to be when I grew up.
John Corcoran: 03:06
I went to an independent professional baseball team game last Friday with my kids, and I did. Yeah. And there were probably 100 people in the stands. Super, super local. I just find it so much fun.
It’s like really one of those small town, Americana type things that I really enjoy doing, and I hope to do a couple over the course of the summer.
Travis Hoechlin: 03:28
What was the name of the team?
John Corcoran: 03:29
The San Rafael Pacifics. It is independent, not affiliated with any of the major league teams. Yeah. You know, and I’ve been many times before and they’ve had little small town promotions. You know, actually from an entrepreneurial perspective, I think it’s fascinating how they get butts in seats for something that’s, you know, these days, it’s honestly difficult to compete with with screen time and compete with all the array of entertainment sources that we have to get people out of their homes to come down to visit the ballpark and enjoy themselves. It’s not easy.
Travis Hoechlin: 04:00
Where was the stadium? Out of curiosity.
John Corcoran: 04:02
It’s in San Rafael, California. Marin County, just north of San Francisco.
Travis Hoechlin: 04:05
Yeah, I played, I think I played. Is it an old stadium? Yes.
John Corcoran: 04:10
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very old. Unfortunately they haven’t. They haven’t fixed it up in a while.
Travis Hoechlin: 04:13
Small world. So when I played baseball at Cal State Hayward it’s called Cal State East Bay.
John Corcoran: 04:17
Now yes. My wife worked there actually.
Travis Hoechlin: 04:19
Yeah. So I played there for two seasons. In the summer when you play college baseball, they disperse you out to all different places. The Alaska League, Cape Cod, Pacific League, all these different places. And I played for a team called the San Francisco Seals, and that was our home field.
John Corcoran: 04:35
Really?
Travis Hoechlin: 04:36
Yes.
John Corcoran: 04:37
Wow. Oh, that’s so funny.
Travis Hoechlin: 04:39
For two, two summers, I played in that stadium, traveled all across the country. That’s right. And, yeah, it was a great time. Probably the funnest baseball time of my life.
John Corcoran: 04:50
Well, the game we went to last Friday, they won in the bottom of the 10th and you would have thought they won the World Series. It was like the third game of the year and these guys went nuts. I mean, just mobbed the guy who hit the single that got the RBI, that got the winning run, and it was. And then my kids ran out onto the field and they got autographs and pictures with the kids. And it was super fun.
Travis Hoechlin: 05:11
I’ll tell you a funny story. I don’t know if this is appropriate for this podcast or not, but I spent my 21st birthday on that field, and when I showed up to the field, my teammates, I was on deck. I was batting second or third, and they made me and some one of my teammates pull a bottle of gin out of his trunk, and I had to take a shot before every at bat.
John Corcoran: 05:32
At bat. Oh, jeez.
Travis Hoechlin: 05:34
I ended up going up. I ended up going, I think I ended up going four for five for five, two doubles, six six RBIs. They took me out to the bar down the street at the end of the game after the game called the Flat Iron Grill. I think so.
John Corcoran: 05:49
Was. Yeah. There’s one nearby. Yeah, yeah, I.
Travis Hoechlin: 05:51
Don’t remember much of the night after that. I woke up in the morning and my host family threw the newspaper at me, and I was on the front page of whatever that paper was there in Santa Rosa.
John Corcoran: 06:02
Yeah, yeah.
Travis Hoechlin: 06:03
And said heckling goes four for five.
John Corcoran: 06:06
And oh my gosh.
Travis Hoechlin: 06:07
The seals win or whatever. So yeah that was my.
John Corcoran: 06:09
That is an amazing 21st birthday. I had to drink that.
Travis Hoechlin: 06:13
But the later endings got a little wacky trying to catch the ball at first base.
John Corcoran: 06:18
But it’s my 21st. I had the drinking part, but not the successful baseball part. So that’s really impressive that you did that. That is really cool. What a small world.
So let’s talk a little bit about how you mow lawns. You also bought blow pops from Costco and sold them at school. Lots of guests on my podcast have done that sort of thing. Did you get busted by the principal or your teacher or anything like that?
Travis Hoechlin: 06:40
No, I think no, I don’t think I got in any trouble. I just made a few bucks and bought baseball cards and it kind of all worked out.
John Corcoran: 06:47
I still have a bunch of baseball cards in my garage waiting for them to come up in value. One of these days you end up starting a mortgage company. That is another thing. I’ve had a lot of guests that did that and had a rough time around 0708. Yeah. What year did you start that?
Travis Hoechlin: 07:04
We actually were in the wholesale mortgage business. And so we did hard money loans. And then we actually started what ended up happening was, zero seven. Whenever there used to be a website like this, it was called the mortgage implode meter. Or when every time they would post, every time a mortgage company, a mortgage bank would go out of business.
So we were representatives of a bank. And so we had brokers that were. Would you send us loans or what have you. And so when zero seven hit oh eight hit, all the banks were going out of business and there wasn’t any place. But we still had the audience of brokers.
And so we, we actually ended up being basically an outsourced sales force for many of these banks that didn’t want to hire full time reps. And so we were basically brokering all kinds of different loans and trying to keep these guys afloat. We ended up doing loan mods and debt settlement and all kinds of different things. And then we kind of woke up one morning and went, okay, this is what we are doing here? This is what we do.
John Corcoran: 08:07
So I was an attorney practicing law around then and had a lot of clients that had large real estate portfolios and that were out of, you know, upside down. And the whole loan modification world became its own thing. And the banks refused to play ball with anyone. And it was just it was really I look back on that period of time, it was very gratifying to help people that were underwater that didn’t know where to turn. They came to us.
They didn’t have much money. It was really gratifying helping them. But it was also a very frustrating time because these very large banks, many of which had got bailed out, were turning around and were just like screwing the, the retail investors who thought, you know, they kind of many of them didn’t know what they were doing and they got upside down. Not really. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t greed or anything like that. They were just doing what they thought they would do to, you know, earn up a nest egg for their family.
Travis Hoechlin: 08:59
Yeah, we got into the loan mod part of things in the same way. I think we were helping people and we certainly were. But like you said, the banks weren’t playing ball. There was regulation there. And it was really hard. It was.
John Corcoran: 09:10
Yeah.
Travis Hoechlin: 09:11
It felt like they kept moving the goalposts quite a bit. And so it was like finally we just said, you know what? Let’s go do something different.
John Corcoran: 09:19
So it sounds like sales is a common thread. You know, that’s kind of where your speciality is now. How did you end up in the legal marketing world?
Travis Hoechlin: 09:31
Literally it was out of out or I didn’t know what we were going to do next. So when the mortgage when the mortgage thing kind of ended, we’re like, okay, we wanted at that time no one wanted to hire a mortgage salesperson just because there were so many of us out there trying to find gigs? And so an old mentor of mine was working for a big box store legal marketing company, and he goes, hey, I know you can sell. I need a sales rep in Orange County. And I said, I don’t know anything about law or lawyers, and I know very little except what we did with our own company as far as SEO goes.
He said, listen, I can, you’ll hustle and do what you do in the sales world. I can teach you all the rest of the stuff. So eight and a half years later at that big company, we, you know, I was the top sales rep for 6 or 7 years in a row and. Yeah. And then decided to do our own thing.
John Corcoran: 10:23
Now, how did you establish credibility with this? With lawyers, with law firms, especially larger law firms? There’s this weird thing in the legal world where a lot of times lawyers want to get marketing advice from other lawyers. It doesn’t make any sense, but for some reason they do. And so it can be really hard for people outside.
We don’t have a law degree to establish credibility, no matter how much credibility they have in that particular realm. So how did you get over that in the early days?
Travis Hoechlin: 10:52
Well, I think I think what ended up happening was just my background of owning my own business. I could talk business with them and, you know, how to scale a business and kind of what? Understanding how they got paid. And look, looking at their practice through the lens of a business owner, I think gained credibility with a lot of these folks because most lawyers, like my dad said, he’s like, you know, he went through medical school and never took one business class, right? Yeah. And I find that many lawyers are very similar.
John Corcoran: 11:25
Yeah.
Travis Hoechlin: 11:26
For sure. Yeah. No one taught me how to do online marketing or marketing market practice or what have you. I know the law and I know that well, but I really need to find somebody I trust that can guide me through these waters and help me build my business. And so that’s really where I think, you know.
Certainly took some kicks to the teeth when trying to understand the law and how things worked and figure out the vocabulary and all that good stuff. But once I learned a little bit about that, then it was smooth sailing from there.
John Corcoran: 11:59
And you mentioned your father. Your dad had a family practice. He was a doctor. Still is a doctor. How much were you around that? How much did you absorb from that as a kid? Learn from your father’s experience running his own business.