Before I started my law firm, I spent a couple years digesting all of the content that I possibly could find about running law firms, launching law firms, marketing systems, business plans, operations, delivery, everything. It is something that was very interesting to me and I fell down a deep hole. And there were a lot of people at the time, and we’re talking about 2016, 2017, 2018, as I was sort of coming around to the idea that I was really going to do this. And a lot of these people are trying to sell something to me. And there were a lot of vendors out there that were saying, “Jeremy, you should buy ads on Facebook or on Instagram, or you should buy Google ads.” Or there was a thing called local service ads. Basically, these are things that can get you at the top of a search where you pay to have your law firm and your profile at the top of a Google search or on Facebook or whatever.

And there were other people that were saying, “No, pour all this content into a website and organically people will find you through searching.” And then there was actually another company, and this is the first vendor that I hired. And it was really the moment that I knew that I was going to start the law firm. I was actually on vacation with my wife in Arizona when I signed the contract handshaking for the development of my website. And I’m actually still using this company right now for certain aspects of my social media that had a message for me that really resonated. And I realized immediately, I’m like, “Yes, this is it. ” And what they said to me is that, Jeremy, that you have a big network. You’ve been a lawyer for 20 years, you’ve got all your former partners, all the people that you used to work with, you’ve got your clients, you’ve got opposing counsels.

There’s a lot of people that know you. And it is a much better idea for you at the beginning to be in their ear and to stay top of mind to the people that already know you as a way of getting business rather than screaming into the yawning void that is the internet and hoping that strangers find their way to my law firm and hire me. And so I said, “That’s it. Absolutely. What do we do? ” And so this is a company that built my website. They did a great job, but they were very clear from the get- go. They said, “This is not search engine optimization. We are not creating a website that is intended to be first in a Google search.” Now that what they created for me was ready to be taken down that path. And that’s very important because I have gone extraordinarily deep down that path.

As a matter of fact, these days, my main marketing play is having an outstanding website with answers to questions that my potential clients are going to need answered. And I am pouring a ton of money into having an organic content-rich website and having strangers on the internet that need the sort of thing that I do find me. But at the time, I knew that that is a very expensive thing to do. It is a very long play. It’s not something that was going to bring me revenue. And I am not a consumer lawyer. It’s not everyone that walks down the street that is going to be able to hire me. I work with businesses and it maybe isn’t even the general counsel that can hire me if the CEO’s brother-in-law is a lawyer, maybe the general counsel can’t hire me. So it’s a very narrow subset of people that could hire me.

And so I said, “I am going to double down on my network.” And so what we did was we passed up on all that paid advertising, we passed up on all that expensive and very time intensive effort to try to make the website perform. And I created an outstanding website that had 10 videos on it. At the time, I wasn’t shooting videos like this in my office. I was literally having a cameraman come and put makeup on me and ready, action. And I was literally being filmed by a videographer. You can see these early videos on my website still.

And I took those videos and I pushed them out on LinkedIn and I did email newsletters. And I did a lot of stuff where I said to myself, the people who already know, like, and trust me, the people who are likely to refer work to me right away, I’m going to go bag that first. I’m going to stay top of mind with them. I’m going to live rent free in their head. I’m going to make sure that they can’t forget about me. They’re going to see me on LinkedIn. They’re going to see me on YouTube. They’re going to see me in email and newsletters, and then I’m going to worry about everything else later. And to me, it was a great thing. My network really came through for me. It wasn’t who I thought in my network that would come through for me. As a matter of fact, there’s quite a few people who were not even not in the inner circle and not in the circle around that and not even the circle around that.

I mean, we’re talking about people that were orbiting way outside of my inner circle and my network that really came through for me. And that was the secret to my success in the early going. And so if you are like me, a business to business lawyer, not a business to consumer lawyer, if you’re selling to businesses and you’ve been a lawyer for a while, if you like me or leaving a law firm where you’ve been at a long time, I would say that you should really think about making sure that you get in the face of your network consistently every day, every week, every month for six months or a year as a way of getting the ball rolling. I took two clients with me from the big law firm. I needed to get that ball rolling. That was a much quicker way to revenue for me than it would’ve been to try that paid search approach, which people can differ in their opinions about this, but I think that paid search is extraordinarily challenging for somebody who’s a business to business lawyer.

I mean, paid search for a business to consumer lawyer, like my wife is an estate planning lawyer.

Paid search, paid Google ads, paid Facebook ads, paid Instagram ads, that’s the kind of thing that can really help if you’re seeking consumers, individual people as clients. But if you’re seeking out businesses like me, paid search is a much harder road to go down. I toyed with paid search for a very brief period of time, but I mean, I abandoned it. And after I was able to stay top of mind with my network, then I pivoted over to getting hired by strangers on the internet. In other words, saying playing the long-term organic search engine optimization card, having an awesome website, trying to make sure that I had vendors that knew how to make the backend perform to get the attention of Google and now we’re in an AI world and you’re trying to get the attention of Grock and ChatGPT and Gemini, and it isn’t all that different.

But if you are a business-to-business lawyer and you’re thinking about what you’re going to do, I would highly encourage you to make sure that your network knows about what you’re doing first. Paid advertisements might not ever work for you. And if you want to play that organic search website game, I would encourage you to do it after your website has stabilized after your practice is stabilized, but that is more year one to five. The first 12 months, the first six months for sure of your practice is making sure that nobody who already knows what a good lawyer you are, nobody who has already got that know, like, and trust factor for you, nobody who would be a candidate to refer work to you. Make sure that you are top of mind with them first. That’s kind of marketing 1.0. Marketing 2.0 is some of this other stuff down the road.

So what’s best, staying top of mind with your network, getting hired by internet strangers or both? Definitely both, but your law firm could fail. If you double down on paid advertisements or hoping that people are going to find you on the internet, that’s a long play, that’s expensive. It takes time. Go and make sure that everybody who could refer you work that you already know right now, make sure that you go get that low hanging fruit first. It’s cheapest, it’s easiest, and it’s absolutely the way to go. If you are anything like me, somebody rolling out with a big Rolodex figuratively, a lot of digital connections, a lot of experience, a lot of goodwill, that’s your greatest asset. And then move on to those other seasons of marketing your firm after your firm is stabilized and you’ve come out of any initial debt that you’ve incurred to launch the firm as you move forward into the second phases of your operations.