Back when I started my law firm in 2019, I was really taken by the first vendor that I hired, the one that created my website that sold me on the idea, that rather than meeting a bunch of strangers on the internet and trying this search engine optimization play, which is a much longer term play, it takes a lot more time, a lot more money than is really going to move the needle in the short term, that I should instead be staying in touch with my network. They, in addition to setting up my website and recording videos of me, also ran an email marketing campaign for me. And this looked like an email newsletter. It talked about my speeches and what I wrote, and it showed some videos from my website, and it had some blog posts. And there was always some personal content. I remember I did one where I talked about how I drove my family to Florida from Chicago during COVID, and there was a picture of our suburban, and I joked about how the suburban’s name is Coco.

And the number of people that received my email newsletter that came up years later, these are CEOs of companies that I desire as clients and my clients saying like, “Oh, how’s Coco?” And I’m like, “What are you talking about? ” And they’re like, “Your car.” People care about this stuff. And so the right mix of links to your website, your videos, your content, this sort of thing, this is a very powerful tool for staying in touch with the people that you already know. And let me tell you, when I first thought about this, I was allergic to the idea. It felt so uncomfortable for me because who wants to get more email? I mean, I like you am just fighting a spam onslaught of all kinds of different, unwelcome advertising from all kinds of different sources every day. It’s more and more junk. But you know what?

My email newsletters and my email marketing, it doesn’t really get flagged as junk. I mean, I can see with the programs that I use to send these out, who unsubscribes and who doesn’t. And if you’ve got good content and if you’re really trying to educate and you’re generously giving information that people care about, people don’t unsubscribe. In the last three months, I have sent four or 5,000 emails out of my CRM and these have an unsubscribe link talking about stuff that I’m up to, attaching book chapters I’ve written, linking the videos, things of that nature. And I have only had five, count them five people unsubscribed because this isn’t spam. This is substantive stuff that people like. And I could tell you the first time that I was about to have an email newsletter sent, I almost went into cardiac arrest. I mean, my heart almost leapt out of my chest with the idea that 5,000 people are about to simultaneously get an email from me and it was going to be embarrassing and they’re going to unsubscribe and all these things.

And I literally thought that I needed to sit down because I was so stressed out. And it’s so funny when you launch one of these because if you send it to a few thousand people, you will immediately get 50 out of offices. So as soon as you send it, you’re ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And even after I got kind of used to sending them, every time before the moment that they’re going to be triggered, I just thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest because I’m not comfortable with the like, “Look at me, look at me, me, me, me, here’s my email in your inbox.” But boy, oh boy, I can tell you that I got a ton of work from email marketing. People like the newsletters. When you send them out from the right CRM, you can see what people are doing, you can see what pages they go to, what links they click.

You can get a sense for who on your email list is actually really interested in something that you’re up to right now. And you can differentiate between people that don’t care about your message and those that do and might be good clients versus other people who might be further back on their path of realizing that they need to hire you. And so I was so uncomfortable with the idea of email marketing and an email newsletter, even though it’s considered table stakes for almost all small law firms. In the event that you are, as I was working at a big law firm and leaving without many clients and thinking about what do I do in order to get the right kind of attention to stay top of mind with my network, I can tell you right now that email marketing and email newsletters, no matter how uncomfortable you might feel about it, they’re wonderful.

And it is something that I neglected at my peril after several years of being on my own, I had a sufficient client base where I was like, okay, it’s getting to be a little bit of a hassle. I kind of let it fall by the wayside. And then once you miss a few months, they kind of go away and a year or two went by. And it took me a little while to realize that I was missing out and that a lot of the growth goals for my firm that I had set for myself really ought to be advanced by getting back into that. And so now email marketing, newsletter marketing is a big part of what I do. You might think that people don’t want to get spammed, but let me tell you that as long as what you have is really great content and as long as it’s got a personal spin on what your family’s up to, what you’re up to, what you’re into.

I did one just for kicks where the first thing was about how I love the Seinfeld episode where Larry David is the Cape lawyer. He’s like George’s dad’s lawyer and people thought that was hysterical. I mean, I did it about when we got a new dog during the pandemic. And look at our pandemic pup named Kaya. People eat that stuff up as long as it’s got, and Jeremy’s teaching this course and Jeremy’s given this speech and look at this video and look at this blog post. So if you don’t want to do email marketing, if you don’t want to do newsletter marketing, but you are leaving a firm and you need to develop your client base, my three words of advice to you are get over it because it is a great idea. It is table stakes for most small law firms. I’ve had seasons where I’ve done it.

I’ve had seasons where I didn’t do it. When I didn’t do it, I regret it. And I am 100% committed to pouring myself in email marketing for the rest of the time that I’m a lawyer. It is a very huge part of what I’m going to be sinking my time into in 2026, particularly because I really want to get people onto my new website, which just rolled out a few months ago and it’s got 500 or so pages of content that don’t do me any good unless I’ve got eyeballs on it. So do email marketing, do newsletter marketing, get over yourself. It’s a good idea. It’s not a good idea to keep what you do. A big secret when you sell professional services, so get over it and do it would be my advice to you.