John Corcoran: 10:20
Reading, learning, learning about these things wherever. Yeah, attending.
Brian Hansen: 10:24
Conferences and interfacing with, you know, other industry professionals and just it’s.
John Corcoran: 10:30
Yeah. Yeah. And how did you do when you started the firm, was it initially focused on law firms or did you now pivot into that niche?
Brian Hansen: 10:40
I niched down into that. When we first started, we had a couple different industries, assisted living communities, addiction recovery Facilities, home improvement companies. I know that’s broad, but mostly like construction companies, things like that, you know, kitchen remodeling and lawyers. And then, you know, a little bit of the school of the hard knocks when you first, you know, start your agency, everybody needs to get like the black eyes and make the adjustments. So my black eye was like, you know, just trying to do too much to do too many different audiences.
Yeah. Right. So it was easy to make the decision. You know, we just kind of looked at the results and we were just doing much better. We’re getting better results for law firms. Right. So we just decided to rebrand, make the pivot, and then not only narrow down who we work with, but also like to skinny down our service offering. So that way everything we do, we do with absolute excellence. And you know, we don’t you know, we don’t do things that we just don’t have a deep expertise in.
John Corcoran: 11:50
I like that term skinning down. It sounds like it’s kind of focusing and like it’s not it’s not eliminating stuff, but it’s just focusing. Yeah.
Brian Hansen: 11:58
Yeah. I mean, I think most entrepreneurs probably learn this lesson the hard way. Right. But you just don’t want to do too much. Right? It’s very difficult to have too big of a product line. And it’s very difficult to have all these different audiences that you’re trying to serve. You probably just will not end up with that, like a nuanced kind of tribal knowledge. You know that your really good clients are going to admire you for it.
John Corcoran: 12:33
Yeah, yeah. And I have to ask this because I’m a recovering lawyer. Lawyers can be really hard as clients. They can be extremely demanding. They can be litigious. They can be combative, you know. Talk to me a little bit about how you manage. Like is it, is it in your personality? You’re just really good at working with difficult personalities. Do you do a very good job of screening out people that you feel are going to be too much trouble? How do you deal with a difficult personality as a client?
Brian Hansen: 13:01
I’m glad you brought this up, because I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone that I work exclusively with lawyers and not got some sort of joke back at that, right? But I gotta tell you, you know, I’ve had a very positive experience with the, the, the legal community in general. And I think what a lot of people don’t realize about attorneys is, you know, they went to get a higher education to be like a practitioner, right? Kind of like, you know, a doctor that wants to work on medicine. And then they have this rude awakening that they’re like, wait a second.
I also have to be an entrepreneur, a business owner. I have to be head of HR. Like, there’s actually a lot that I don’t know, right? So the most, you know, successful relationships we have are these attorneys that actually kind of have this like, humility to them. Right.
And they’re like, hey, like, you know, I might be really good at moving this pie. This civil litigation through, you know, the process and representing my client really well. But, you know, I have a lot to learn in these other disciplines. So they tend to be pretty receptive to, you know, working with specialists and experts at whatever problems they’re trying to solve. So all in all, it’s been a good ride.
John Corcoran: 14:23
Yeah, yeah. Tell me about you’ve got this client that is in a midwestern state and they for their digital marketing mix or rather marketing mix, they were sending mailers. And what people don’t understand about law firms in particular, is that the regulations around advertising and marketing can be really strict, unlike other industries. It varies a lot by state, too. state too. Sometimes you go to a different state and you see all these big billboards and stuff like that, and you don’t see it in the state that you live in.
And even, like I learned when I went to law school, is that like, I don’t know, 50, 80 or 100 years ago or something like that. There was no advertising period for law firms like it was restricted. But you had this client that depended on mailers and then all of a sudden they updated the regulations and they can’t send mailers anymore. And so they have to completely switch and modernize. Talk about that.
Brian Hansen: 15:14
Yeah. This is a really fun story. So and by the way, this is actually an instance of a kind of AI gone bad. Right. Because the reason why what ended up happening is they lost the ability to access the individuals like the listings of these folks that had been in an accident.
Right. And the state pulled them because people were using AI technology to run like scams on them. So really just kind of unfortunate. So. yeah. So the firm was devastated. Right. Because they had been so accustomed to, you know, kind of this case count. They had predictability. They had expertise in the language and the mailers and everything.
So yeah, it’s it’s a fun project because we’re kind of more broadly, you know, advising them on all sorts of stuff, lead generation partners, marketing tech stacks to implement and then rolling out, you know, all this different marketing, doing a lot of multi-location SEO, things like that. And yeah, it’s going to be what I think of as an amazing case story. I’ll have to really put some time into, you know, writing it all up. But yeah.
John Corcoran: 16:36
Yeah, yeah.
Brian Hansen: 16:37
Going well.
John Corcoran: 16:38
It goes to show you the importance of not being dependent on any one particular thing. You know, my business partner Jeremy often says the most dangerous number in business is one lead source, one referral source, one whatever. Because you’re just totally, totally dependent on that.
Brian Hansen: 16:55
Yeah, it’s the single point of failure, right? In any business I think it is dangerous. But I think another lesson here is to think about, like, you know, your business in whatever industry you’re in can be very mature, right? It can be going along for an extended time period. But, you know, these kinds of micro black swan events can happen, right?
So a lot of it is just, you know, being prepared and then having the right approach to problem-solving. My client in this particular case is doing a great job at surrounding himself with a number of different people, you know, that are experts in different areas of the business to help out. So yeah.
John Corcoran: 17:41
Cool. Talk about Case Connect. This is an interesting company. It’s a law firm, marketing company that also is owned by a lawyer. And, and, you know, there’s a lot of marketing companies out there for law firms that, you know, send traffic or send leads or run ads or stuff like that, but they actually acquire the case. So, so, you know, these potential clients who are looking to hire a law firm, see an ad and then they do intake on it and acquire the case and then hand it over to a law firm. How does that work?
Brian Hansen: 18:13
Yeah, really really interesting. So Tyler Wilke, who I was with at a law firm out of Pennsylvania, was a long time client. We’ve built an amazing relationship, have become friends, have helped him, you know, scale up his marketing and are also a partner in case we connect. Right. Which, just like you said, is very interesting.
Right. Because most of the time, like if you’re if you’re buying leads, you’re doing exactly that, right? They’re coming in through form submissions, maybe their live transfers, but you know, your team as a law firm is doing the intake fielding those calls. Right. The sales component of it if you will with Case Connect you’re literally just like paying and getting the retainer back right.
So yeah, you know, it kind of applies to firms who are even if they don’t have additional resources for intake. Or they’ve gone really deep with their marketing and they’re like, hey, I want to like, you know, pack something else on. So really, really kind of innovative in the sense that they’re taking care of the retainer portion for the client. So, so.
John Corcoran: 19:29
For a company like Case Connect one, you got to be it’s it’s more complicated. You got to be good at intake and signing up the clients. That’s a little more complicated.
Brian Hansen: 19:38
That’s right.
John Corcoran: 19:39
Yeah. And yeah I got to be good at that. But I guess the trade off for them is then they can charge more because you’re handing something that is literally already signed up.
Brian Hansen: 19:48
You nailed it, right? So and you know, when you said they got to be good at it, this is a part of law firms that is often kind of overlooked. Right.
John Corcoran: 20:00
So everybody totally thinks that there’s another big value add for them because many of you know that no one answers the phone. If they do answer the phone they don’t have a defined process for it. And the lawyers are busy with something else. So maybe they wait a day or two to call back, and then by then it’s too late.
Brian Hansen: 20:16
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and if you audit some of these law firms, it’s like literally like just I it’s jaw dropping. You’re like, yeah, I didn’t hear back.
John Corcoran: 20:26
This is why you’re not getting clients. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. It’s funny you know, but because they, they don’t teach that stuff in law school, you know, lawyers don’t learn that stuff in law school, you know, and then all of a sudden they, they, you know, they’re out practicing law and they admittedly, they have some crazy stuff on their minds. You know, when they’re, it’s a very stressful profession I found when I was doing it. And so they’re spending a lot of energy on that. So to have to then divert it to like making sure that we answer the phone on this before the third ring, you know, like it just it’s beyond their scope of like really they realize they need to focus on.
Brian Hansen: 21:02
Yeah. And just like, you know, also like the name they use, right. It’s like our intake department, right? It makes it sound kind of like an order taker.
John Corcoran: 21:14
Yeah.
Brian Hansen: 21:16
There’s this transformation that’s kind of slowly happening. And there’s some specialists, right, that have boutique companies around this topic. But they have to look at it as salespeople. That’s what they are. These are inside salespeople that know how to articulate the value proposition, why the law firm is different, right?
And be able to retain them on the spot. And if they’re not able to, you know, get Ahold of the lead. They literally should be treating it just as like an SDR or a BDR would that’s working for like a software company, right? And what is that person going to do? They’re going to be on a commission model, and they’re going to be calling relentlessly, daily until they get that person on the phone or decide they never are right. So when we use the word intake, you know, it it it’s kind of yeah, it’s.
John Corcoran: 22:07
It’s not a great word. Yeah. It’s not a good word.
Brian Hansen: 22:09
It’s got the wrong connotation.
John Corcoran: 22:10
Right, right. So you’re advising a company like that on all those different pieces of it.
Brian Hansen: 22:16
So we don’t have it as a formal professional service. You know, we just have some experience that will kind of help where we can. But we will bring in third parties that that’s all they do. Right. And they’ll help with, you know, training, formally training their current intake staff.
And then, you know, implementation of some technology. And then you know what? What should they be measuring? Right. So they can, you know, get the reporting and stuff so that’s it’s a whole different section of the law firm that needs attention and needs professional consulting. Right.
John Corcoran: 22:54
Yeah. You mentioned Black Swan events. Tell me about 2020. What was that like for you when you know you’ve been in business for about four years, 3 or 4 years at that point, and then all of a sudden the pandemic hits.
Brian Hansen: 23:05
I was terrified and relieved that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. And if you think about it right, a lot of the people we work with, some of their events, like the events that happen in the people’s lives that they service, were still kind of going on even though it was Covid, right? So I’m a family law attorney. That stuff was still happening. It was criminal defense, right?
There was still, you know, crimes being committed. You know, I think on the personal injury side, there’s definitely some. It slowed down a little bit. Right. Because if you think about it like motor vehicle accidents.
All right. Well there were less cars on the road, things like that. But I was you know, I was fortunate to be in a relatively evergreen field. I think really what I noticed is people were reserved to, you know, go bigger with their marketing, but it makes perfect sense, right? We had never experienced this before, and we just didn’t know what was going on.
John Corcoran: 24:11
To happen at least early on. Yeah, yeah. And then, once they got the PGP money, some of them might have changed their mind.
Brian Hansen: 24:17
Yeah, things changed a little bit. Right. We all felt a little bit better about the future but. Yeah. So yeah.
John Corcoran: 24:22
But that must have been a scary time for you.
Brian Hansen: 24:24
Yeah. I mean, yeah, just like every other entrepreneur or anybody with a business, I think we were all just, you know, terrified of the unknown and just, you know. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 24:31
And I guess from a business standpoint, you know what you do. I don’t think there are certain things that lawyers do that will be sped up or replaced by AI, but I think personal injury probably isn’t because the legal profession and the courts are the slowest to adapt to new technologies. And I don’t think we’re going to have AI lawyers arguing cases or negotiating cases really anytime soon.
Brian Hansen: 24:59
I mean, I think it’s back to our conversation about open AI, right? There’s tools. Right? So there’s a tool called Even Up that will, you know, help you with your demand letter. Right.
Because it’s a time-consuming process. And I think it taps into something like a database. So it’s got some intelligence, you know, kind of like worked in and things like that. So but still like there’s still a human right. That’s like working on the demand. But they’re just using this tool. So. Right.
John Corcoran: 25:30
Honestly lawyers have done that for a long time, had templates from other letters that they bring in. It’s just a more efficient version of that. And yeah, I certainly hope that actually this will make lawyers and the law more accessible for people because it’s been so inaccessible for so many people, not just in personal injury but other areas of the law.
Brian Hansen: 25:54
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and of course, there’s always going to be the law firms that, you know, want to push the envelope. Right. And like how much I like it, I’ve seen some services where the AI will answer the phone.
Right. And it’s being trained on you could take it as far to do a full intake. I wouldn’t recommend it. Or to like. Yeah, almost like a call centre to take a message and stuff. So you know, there’s also I think a lot has to do with the company culture of the firm. Like, you know, do these align with our goals? Where do we want to use it? Where do we want to draw the line?
John Corcoran: 26:33
Right, right, right , right. Yeah. This has been great, Brian. It’s really interesting. Like, you know, for a company like yours to have to, like, evolve and change and be scrappy. And, you know, it’s like nothing stays the same year after year. It’s like a complete new set of challenges from one year to the next for you.
Brian Hansen: 26:55
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, there’s always more competition. There’s always things changing with the search engine results page. There’s regulatory compliance that affects how our clients operate and things like that. So yeah, I think I’ve just become accustomed to it.
Right. So we have a good company culture at Rocket Pilots. Right. Everybody is ready to observe what’s going on in the market and then assess, you know, what do we need to do to, you know, update our whether it’s our client fulfillment guidebook or our training documentation or our product so we can continue to serve our clients at the highest level.
John Corcoran: 27:40
What do you know, this world has become more interconnected, and it’s getting to the point where, you know, we can hire different digital marketing agencies that are on the other side of the globe from you. And that kind of puts some commoditization pressure on the market. So how do you deal with that? Like how do you position yourself to deal with commoditization pressure and digital marketing?
Brian Hansen: 28:03
Yeah. So I’d say a couple ways because I couldn’t agree with that statement more. Right. It seems like, you know, everybody and their mother today has an SEO agency, right. So one way is just going back to the deep specialization, right?
Because there’s just certain nuances that you learn when you go really deep into one vertical, right, that, you know, we can show those results. And then, you know, kind of apply our system for really what our system is, is to. It’s not even just like SEO or PPC. It’s really like case acquisition, right? So I say that because the conversations we’re having with our clients are grossly different than if they were to hire a general agency that services like ten different industries, right?
So we’re having those conversations where like, you know, you spent X amount on this source. This is how many cases you got. This is your cost per case. This is your return on ad spend. This is your return on SEO because it’s fully integrated right.
We have attribution modeling software, things like that. I’d say the other thing is on the actual, you know, product deliverable side, we do some interesting things. We help law firms find new markets to go into. And this is always a really interesting topic of conversation for me because like if you ask an attorney like, hey, why do you have your office in, you know, Boston, Baltimore, XYZ city, right? The answer is always like, well, what do you mean? I mean, that’s just where I live, right? My family’s convenience. Like, okay, that might be a fine answer, but like, was it strategic? Right. Like, can you win in that market? Right. Or did you know, right, that.
John Corcoran: 29:58
Is the market the best market for you? Maybe it isn’t. Right. Yeah.
Brian Hansen: 30:02
Yeah. Are your clients in that market right? Can you have a market message fit there? All these things are right. So we help them find these markets that they can enter and win in.
John Corcoran: 30:16
And then they can enter more easily these days now. Right. They could have a virtual office address or something like that. And they can serve these clients sometimes from a distance.
Brian Hansen: 30:27
Well, I think if anything, like that’s kind of what COVID helped with if you think about it right. Now, pre-COVID, more people wanted to, you know, physically come into the office. Yeah. Right now everybody is calling. You know, maybe they get an attorney on the phone, maybe they don’t. Right. And signing a retainer via DocuSign from their phone. Right. Yeah. And now it’s a client. So, yeah, this world is more conducive to that structure. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 30:57
So why not be more deliberate about where you expand to. So are these law firms like that. Seems a little bit of a radical idea I imagine to some law firms. So the idea to like, well, why wouldn’t we go to the next big city in our state versus like, no, actually it would make more sense to go over here instead.
Brian Hansen: 31:14
Yeah, a lot for a lot of them, it’s eye-opening. They had never even thought it right. Thought about it. Right. And then they start seeing the data. So we go over things like, you know, population socioeconomics. And then we look at the competition, like who’s there. How mature is their marketing. So we can start to predict things like, you know, what it’s going to take to win, how long it’s going to take, things like that. And then real estate of course is a consideration. Right. So you know what’s available. We get very granular like even where it should be in the city. Right.
John Corcoran: 31:48
So how do you figure that out? Like, is that because like you, you’ve figured out that digital marketing is going to be cheaper in a particular neighborhood or what is it?
Brian Hansen: 31:57
You know what? It has a lot to do with how Google interprets what the center of the city is. Right? And so.
John Corcoran: 32:06
How’s that working?
Brian Hansen: 32:08
Well, it’s like if you do if you search like, you know, whatever car accident lawyer plus city, right? And you’re not physically there. Yeah. Google is more likely to show the listings for the folks that are closer to the center of the city.
John Corcoran: 32:26
Right. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.
Brian Hansen: 32:28
And then if you are there. Right. But maybe you’re not in the center of center of the city. You’re in a different area. You’re more likely to see law firms that are closer to you. Right? So and then we look at clusters of like where their competitors are. So we’re just I mean you’d be surprised. I mean, there’s a lot of places in America where people have offices and you look at like, you know, the east end of it, like, say they’re in Florida and it’s like it’s in the water, right? Somewhere else. And you look at the West End, it’s like, well, there’s nothing over there.
John Corcoran: 33:00
Yeah, right.
Brian Hansen: 33:01
You’re ranking into nowhere. You know what I mean?
John Corcoran: 33:04
Right.
Brian Hansen: 33:04
Yeah. So we just add this, this level of detail that they have just never considered before. Right.
John Corcoran: 33:12
That’s interesting. Yeah, I’m sure that is never considered that. I mean, like, if, if you were, like, Starbucks or something or like a sophisticated bagel shop or donut shop or something, you’re looking at a big metropolitan area, you know, you’d probably look at that like, where are the coffee shops in relation to the population and where could there probably. Would there be demand for more of them? Just common sense type of stuff. But I’m sure law firms are not really putting that kind of thought.
Brian Hansen: 33:38
In comparison to these, these sophisticated franchises. Yeah, they invest in that data and they know like, you know, car traffic and all these different data points. And I think they put a lot of stock in it.
John Corcoran: 33:53
I even listened to a podcast interview with a woman who opened peach stands. I think it was mostly in the South, like Texas and stuff like that. And she was doing this by trying to figure out where to locate these, like summertime peach stands on busy corners with traffic going by. And she knew traffic counts and all this kind of stuff, very sophisticated stuff, you know, and and like, life or death decisions because, like, if you locate in the right, you know, location with a lot of traffic going by, you’ll make tons of money. If you don’t, you’re going to be out of business. Right? So these things make a big difference.
Brian Hansen: 34:24
And you. Know it’s.
John Corcoran: 34:25
Real. When you think about cars driving by, you know, and the digital world, it might be a little bit different, but different, but it’s still just as important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian, this has been great. I want to wrap up with my last question, which is my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of gratitude and giving my guests the opportunity to shout out any particular people, mentors, peers, contemporaries that have helped you in your journey.
Brian Hansen: 34:49
All right. Yeah. Good question. There’s definitely a few of them. I didn’t I didn’t get here on my own. So let’s see. Most recently I’ve hired a coach who’s helping me to, you know, implement this kind of macro system for running the business. His name is Frank Cao of Revenue Ranch. So definitely grateful for him. So the way I know you is through Jason Swenk.
So the mastermind. So you know, Jason and Darby and in fact, just, you know, other relationships I’ve forged through that, you know, I’m grateful for. And then, you know what? I have some clients that have just been, you know, really supportive of the journey and whether it’s from a mentorship perspective or connecting me to, to other ones. I mentioned one of them earlier, Tyler Wilke out of Pennsylvania. And then another one is Mark Wingo out of Southern California. So yeah, it’s it’s.
John Corcoran: 35:55
Nice, nice gratitude.
Brian Hansen: 35:56
For everyone that’s helped along the way.
John Corcoran: 35:58
So, Brian, where can people go to learn more about you and Rocket Pilots?
Brian Hansen: 36:02
Best way is rocketpilots.com. And then I’m relatively active on LinkedIn. If anyone wants to reach out there.
John Corcoran: 36:11
Excellent. Brian, thanks so much.
Brian Hansen: 36:13
Thanks for having me.
Outro: 36:16
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.