Kyle Hebenstreit: Boutique Law in Motion with Private Equity Client Personas and Digital Platforms

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Kyle Hebenstreit discuss:

• The evolving legal industry landscape due to institutional capital and Big Four involvement
• Rising competition and channel fragmentation in legal marketing
• Strategic marketing approaches tailored to client personas and firm types
• Operational and budgetary decisions that influence long-term law firm growth

Key Takeaways:

• Private equity and institutional capital are transforming the legal industry, creating new acquisition and exit opportunities for small, consumer-facing law firms.
• Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Meta hold high potential for law firms, yet are underutilized, especially with organic content for referrals and paid campaigns for brand awareness.
• Law firms should begin their marketing strategy by analyzing successful recent clients and understanding how they found them before setting a marketing budget.
• When choosing a marketing partner, inquire about client-to-manager ratios, review actual KPIs, and check references, much like when hiring a full-time employee.

“If you’re staying top of mind for your professional network… you can help augment referral traffic that way.” —  Kyle Hebenstreit

Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at steve@fretzin.com with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!

Thank you to our Sponsor!

Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/

Ready to grow your law practice without selling or chasing? Book your free 30-minute strategy session now—let’s make this your breakout year: https://fretzin.com/

Episode References: 

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

About Kyle Hebenstreit: Kyle Hebenstreit is the Chief Executive Officer of PracticeMadePerfect (PMP), where he leads a team dedicated to helping law firms grow through tailored, data-driven marketing solutions. With nearly 20 years of experience across consulting, media, and entrepreneurship, Kyle brings a strategic mindset and a passion for client success. Before joining PMP, he held leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting, Skydance Productions, and served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at NextGen Growth Partners.

Connect with Kyle Hebenstreit:  

Website: http://www.pmpmg.com/

Email: khebenstreit@pmpmg.com

Phone: 3174109640

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hhebenstreit/

& https://www.linkedin.com/company/pmpmg

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pmpmg

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pmpmarketinggroup/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. We’ve got a secret, a really good one. It’s bold, it’s fresh, and it’s dropping soon, but you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer. Stick around, you’ll hear about it. Enjoy the show.

Narrator: You are listening to be that lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach Steve Reson, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Rezi.

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody. Guess what? It’s Steve Fretzin and you’re here on the Be That Lawyer podcast. Hopefully you’re listening every week, twice a week to continue to get great ideas and takeaways that are gonna help you be that lawyer, confident, organized in a skilled rainmaker. Why are you being shy telling people about this show?

Let’s think. You just want to keep all the [00:01:00] good stuff to yourself. That’s very selfish of you. Don’t do that. All right. Kyle. We need people to share the love. That’s what this world’s all about, right?

Kyle Hebenstreit: Absolutely. It’s all about giving. You get what you, it’s all about you get what you give. Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So listen, you might not be given enough to enough people, but think about if there’s a streaming show that you really love and you’re watching it like religiously, you tell everybody about it. And so this show should be the same way. So give us a kind review and tell others about it and let’s spread the word and spread the love about be that lawyer, everybody.

And we’ll do that and we’ll continue to bring you great guests like I have today. And Kyle, welcome to the show. Good to see you, man. Great to see you, and thanks for having me, Steve. Yeah, we’re gonna have a lot of fun today. We’re gonna get in deep in the marketing space and give a lot of great ideas to to you the listening audience as we enjoy doing.

We’re going to start with our quote of the show. Be kind to People, be Ruthless to Systems. And Mike, I don’t know who’s Michael Brooks? I don’t know Michael Brooks. He’s

Kyle Hebenstreit: actually a political commentator. Did a lot with Rolling Stone. Okay. Is no longer with [00:02:00] us. And I think that quote is much more applicable to, in his mind, political systems.

But I lift and apply it to business because I think that you should be kind to the people both. On your team and your clients. But if we’re really doing the best thing by our team and our clients, we’re being ruthless with the systems we use to provide value for our clients. It helps our team work better and it helps our clients succeed to a greater extent.

So I think delineating those things is important and sets how I think about our culture at PNP. I

Steve Fretzin: kind

Kyle Hebenstreit: of

Steve Fretzin: wonder, if be ruthless to systems, if that means be like not nice to systems or be ruthless in following systems. That’s the way I wanna take it.

Kyle Hebenstreit: Yeah. I think, you need to pressure test systems the right way.

So if a system is broken and maybe it’s not the right system, you should be pressure testing these things. But then once you find something, that works to break, yeah, you should be adhering closely to that system to make sure it works. But I think that particularly with what we do.

It’s constantly changing, like what worked for our clients three years ago is not gonna necessarily [00:03:00] work next year. So if we’re not testing what we’re doing and our assumptions, then we might be leaving something on the table and putting on blinders that we shouldn’t be.

Steve Fretzin: The interesting thing is that we have a system for how we brush our teeth in the morning or how we get dressed.

Then the order that we do it, and we usually do it the same way and we have. Systems for business development that I’m teaching every day, as opposed to just winging it and doing something different or maybe improperly each time you’re putting on your pants first and then your underwear probably not a good idea.

So I think the power of a good system is really critical, whether it’s business development, marketing, or how you run a trial. Having a good system is it? Listen man, I’m excited that you’re here, everybody listening. Kyle ban Street is the CEO of practice made. Perfect. And give us a little bit of a flavor of your background too, how you got into legal.

Kyle Hebenstreit: Sure, absolutely. As a kid, I was raised by two lawyers. My mom’s a judge. My dad’s an attorney. My sister’s a former prosecutor. I chose to my

Steve Fretzin: apologies, only

Kyle Hebenstreit: mackerel surrounded my debate [00:04:00] skills and oratory skills were well tested over the dinner table each night. But I a pursuit and interest in creativity took me to USC where I studied film and business, and I worked in the entertainment industry at a company called Skydance Media for several years.

I started in creative development and then transitioned more to the business side as we were growing. And that’s when my kind of interest in entrepreneurship was activated and I felt like I was deficient in some skills and experiences that would help me, live out some future vision for myself.

And so I went to business school and then subsequently worked as a management consultant in Deloitte’s consulting practice in Chicago. And I did a lot of media and telecommunications and technology work there, and largely how people or how companies should be using audience and consumer data to enrich their media products which includes advertising in a lot of ways.

So I was there for a couple years and then an old entrepreneurship professor put me in touch with an investment firm in Chicago that had a little bit of an entrepreneurial DNA to it. And I created a partnership with this firm called [00:05:00] Next Gen Growth Partners. That focuses on buying really great small to medium sized B2B businesses, installing executives like myself as a CEO and invest in those businesses to grow over the long term.

I worked with them to identify a great business and legal services because I think the market is behind other industries and can take learnings from those other industries. And if you are providing. Effective guidance to a lawyer client, you can stay a step ahead of the competition if you’re smart about it.

And so I found PMP and that was probably Humble, yeah. Three years ago. And acquired PMP in March of 2022 and have been leading PMP ever since.

Steve Fretzin: Now I want to bring something up that, because it’s based off of something you said, but you mentioned Deloitte and the new in the news recently, KPMG just started doing legal services in Arizona where it can be, there’s non-lawyer owned.

Opportunities there. And then there’s a number of other states where that exists as well. How do you see that changing the landscape of legal as it [00:06:00] continues to expand out in different states and just having the big four involved in that? I. I

Kyle Hebenstreit: think it’s too early to tell. I think Earl, if you ask that same question a couple years ago I think a lot of the intelligence was around institutional capital being injected primarily in like mass torts and mass tort marketing.

And that was the. The nature of con conversation around the a BS legislation in Arizona and some other states. I think that overlooked where the real influence is gonna come from in transitioning legislation countrywide. And it’s gonna be the KPMGs and the Deloittes and large national and multinational professional services organizations who have an economic incentive to want to provide legal services that are gonna really.

Make a meaningful dent in changing legislation. Today, if you were to ask me, I would say I think that change is inevitable. I think the real sort of question that’s too early to tell on is the pace of change. I think it’s gonna happen probably over closer to a [00:07:00] period of a decade, then a period over a couple years from now, Uhhuh.

But I think that, it’s already affecting in some ways how our clients do business and how we do business. With our clients. In some instances private equity firms and institutional capital become the clients of marketing firms, and that’s just a really interesting shift. It also places pressures on all law firms to be more professionalized in their operations and treat their law firms like businesses because the competitive set is becoming more and more sophisticated, and you have to respond to that accordingly.

Yeah. Too early to tell, but like a very fundamental trend that is gonna shape the future of legal.

Steve Fretzin: And I’ve been bringing this up on the show for a while now that you know when you start getting organizations that get the business side at another level and provide services. In, in other fields and they move into legal and what if you start getting Amazon and Google and even some of the, that just have unlimited money that buy up, [00:08:00] Dentons or buy up, some of the bigger players, just absorb them into their behemoth.

It’s gonna be very difficult for people to compete. So I’m using that as a point of reference to say, Hey lawyers, you may not want to. Play ball with those guys. You may want to go out on your own, you may wanna get into a smaller firm, but you’re gonna need the marketing and the business development and the business acumen to compete even if you are in or out of that space.

And don’t wait 10 years I think. I think you have to start building your knowledge and client base and in, in business development acumen now. So that’s my spin on it, but I’m. Not wrong, but I, again, to your point, the timing of it is when I, and I’m just like we can wait and find out, or you can get ahead of it.

Kyle Hebenstreit: I think a good comparison here too is not just saying there’s what’s gonna happen at like the Amla 200 level, our business is focused on boutique consumer facing law firms and those small businesses, I think they’re gonna undergo transformation. Assuming this trend [00:09:00] continues.

It looks a lot like what you’ve seen in dentistry or optometry or physician’s offices where you have large private equity firms that come in and acquire individual practices. And they find back office systems. That work. And they effectively put all of these individual businesses onto this backbone that’s maybe gonna have a common case management system and intake function and things of that nature.

And that’s where they get their return on investment is rolling up is the private equity term. These different practices. And so that’s another area that. A, pushes you to have a smart operation, but also provides an exit opportunity for a law firm that maybe they didn’t have before.

If you’re thinking about retiring, you may actually end up exiting your business and selling to a large institutional and having a bit of a windfall, if you will, at the end of your career, your practice that may not have existed in sort of previous generations. So that’s another certification.

But I think the lesson is be smart about your business operations and how you think about competition. [00:10:00] Regardless of where you are in the market because the institutional capital is gonna shape that and apply pressure that’s, gonna force people to evolve. And to your point, you should get ahead of it instead of wait for it to happen to you.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So we’re, we’re talking about some trends in legal, but I would like to flip the switch because your expertise is in Yes. In business and systems, but also in marketing. And I think I’d be curious to hear what you’re seeing and I’m very happy that I’m interviewing you and interviewing a lot of people as well as working with lawyers all over the world to understand what’s going on in the marketing space.

But what’s your spin on what’s going on in the field of play in legal marketing specifically?

Kyle Hebenstreit: Sure. And I guess just to define this, PMP or practice made perfect, like we offer marketing services again for boutique pri, primarily consumer facing law firms. And that sort of is different, again, from other parts of the legal market and it’s worth drawing that distinction.

But what we see a lot of is a. First of all, increasing competition. A lot of our clients are focused in personal injury. And we [00:11:00] just re released a white paper on this, and we hypothesize a couple of themes as to why there’s increase in competition. But at a high level, if you were aggressively advertising your law firm, say 10 to 15 years ago, you likely had a lot of low hanging fruit and were able to grow your practice pretty well in your market.

And success breeds competition. So we’re seeing those existing firms who. Have grown to be sizable firms over the last 10 to 15 years. Attracting another set of smaller players who are again, seeing kind of the playbook of advertising for their law firm and looking to grow. Meanwhile, the sort of supply, if you will, of cases is relatively flat.

We don’t want to, and we don’t manufacture accidents for instance. It’s the trend line is fairly consistent and so addressable cases. Remain the same, but the advertising dollars and number of firms chasing those cases increases. And that’s just a simple supply and demand function that creates competitive tension for what we do.

So that’s one sort of big trend that we see. [00:12:00] Another is channel fragmentation. And what I mean by that is, similarly, if you started, 10, 15 years ago, you could be on daytime broadcast TV and do pretty well over time. SEO pay per click local services ads, which is a Google ad product and others proliferate.

We’re seeing an acceleration of that with new ai enriched search engines. We see that with social media and others. So what might have been one tV budget is now split across a number of different platforms, and you have to be really smart about where you’re investing your marketing dollars as opposed to, focus on the one to two, big channels that are gonna get your brand name out there.

And it takes a little bit more elbow grease and time and attention. But, there’s still a tremendous opportunity if you can do that.

Steve Fretzin: Is the, okay, I’m with you and I’m getting what you’re saying. And we’re taking these big budgets that go into one thing, let’s say TV or billboards, and we’re then proliferating it along with a bunch in a bunch of different areas.

Is social media marketing now and in the [00:13:00] future kind of where things are headed? That seems to be like, YouTube and LinkedIn and all the different channels. Whether that’s advertising or whether that’s the, what’s it called? Like the, where you don’t spend the money, you just do it nationally.

Organic. Organic or Yeah. More. Yeah. That took me a minute to get to it, but yeah. Yeah. Thank you for your help. But yeah, the organic stuff that you’re producing and putting up on, on there is that happening and is that the future of where investments should be made?

Kyle Hebenstreit: Yes. Is the short answer. Okay. Earlier when I said, legal might follow other industries and that provides opportunities. It’s not new to be doing effective organic or paid social strategies in other industries, but it’s a very unsaturated part of the market for what we focus on for our clients. And so breaking that into a couple different categories.

One I think is focused on who your audience is. I’ve seen some really smart attorneys, some of whom are our clients. Spending a lot of time doing organic LinkedIn content that’s really focused on driving referrals for their businesses. And that’s a way of it. You’re [00:14:00] not putting advertising dollars behind it, but you’re routinely posting smart, compelling, relevant pieces of content, either text or video or image on your LinkedIn profile.

It costs time certainly, but it doesn’t cost money. And if you’re staying top of mind for your professional network. Either in your region or just, practice area, you can help augment your referral traffic that way. That’s one really smart thing that lawyers can do that’s relatively low cost, but even from a paid advertising standpoint.

Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram, has a really robust. Advertising platform that allows you to create various campaigns at scale that kind of replace or augment, depending on how you look at it, like billboards. So if you think about it from an advertising, or, excuse me, brand awareness, advertising perspective, I.

You can get in front of a lot of people in a unique way with unique different types of content. And a lot of folks in law firms aren’t necessarily doing that or haven’t done that historically. So we think there’s a lot of potential [00:15:00] in both the organic and the paid side on, on social media, certainly.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. So there’s people listening right now that are big firm attorneys. They’re solos, they’re personal injury, they’re corporate, they’re doing all these different things. What are some practical marketing tips that a law firm or an individual lawyer can do to improve its competitiveness when they’re maybe not doing anything, like they’re just just doing the law.

Kyle Hebenstreit: Absolutely. I think it’s important to identify your firm’s strategy first. What’s the type of firm you’re part of? You just listed a bunch of different categories that are gonna have different, corporate strategies, if you will, but then definitely marketing strategies. But I think at a high level, you wanna understand the market to which you’re marketing.

So I would advise, thinking about. Five clients you’ve worked with in the past year or two that you feel represent your sweet spot as a firm. There was a really positive relationship and likely a positive outcome for the client and the firm. [00:16:00] You wanna start shaping who’s the archetype of client I’m going after and how did they find me?

How did those people actually find me? And try to do some learnings from that sort of client journey and that experience working with that client. ’cause you wanna shape who am I speaking to in a crowded world and how the people I spoke to in the past hear my message. So I think that’s very clear of understanding which clients you’re going after.

And then you wanna define your competition. I think this is a thing that a lot of law firms don’t necessarily know how to think about. And again, we just. Wrote a white paper on this. So it’s a bit top of mind for me. But you want, a lot of people think the 800 pound gorilla is their competition when they’re really a minnow.

Just ’cause the 800 pound gorilla is in everybody’s space. But if you’re thinking about navigating a part of the pond, I might be stretching a metaphor too far here, but if you’re thinking about navigating a certain part of the pond, you wanna be clear about. Who’s really going after that area as opposed to, I need to, face off against the biggest guy in my market.

You wanna define who we’re going after? [00:17:00] Those clients I’ve identified as attractive to me for the cases that I’m really good at managing. And that’s your competitive set? I think sometimes people get wrapped up, particularly because a lot of times these are local businesses. And lawyers know the lawyers in the other law firm, and there’s a personal relationship that creates an emotional tie to business decisions that can cloud judgment on where you chase opportunity and resources.

But if you take a bit more of a dispassionate view of those firms that are your actual competition, I think it’ll clarify what you should be doing from a marketing standpoint.

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The best firms hire rankings.io when they want rankings, traffic in cases other law firm marketing agencies. Can’t deliver, get more rankings, get cases, and schedule a free consultation@rankings.io today. Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin as the, I’m the host of the Be That Lawyer Podcast. And if you’re [00:18:00] serious about growing your law of practice, let’s talk.

I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling, chasing, or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a real 30 minute. Strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to Fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you and let’s make this your breakout year.

And Kyle, I just wanna mention before we go any further, that what I really like about what you’re saying is you’re not telling people to jump in and say, this is the hot thing, go do it. Or this is what, where my people are spending money, go do it. You’re saying, take a step back, identify your best client’s, client personas, who are the people that you would like to work with, who are gonna pay you, who are gonna appreciate you?

And then look at your competition and recognize you know, who they really are and what they’re doing. I’m not saying you have to like. Focus on your competition. But it’s good to know what they’re doing and who they are and where they’re, what they’re going with it. And I think before you get into investing money and time and energy [00:19:00] to take the effort, a little bit of effort and time to do those first things, I think is so wise and important.

And many lawyers, I think skip it and they just go right to what’s the hot marketing trend or what’s the random act of marketing I’m gonna do today?

Kyle Hebenstreit: Yep. That’s, we talk about random acts marketing a lot. I, it’s been

Steve Fretzin: mentioned on the show a ton, so I use it, but it’s frustrating because there’s so much money that should not be spent.

Because I wanna have this tchotchke, or I want to have that billboard, or I want to have what someone else has instead of what I should be doing to figure it out for myself.

Kyle Hebenstreit: Absolutely. You’re solving someone else’s problem instead of. Think about your own problem. Yeah, I love that. And the reality is good marketing is intentional and long term.

That’s another thing is you know, people we in of. Tight feedback, low patience sort of world. And the idea is I want leads today. And there’s a lot of companies out there that’ll sell you leads, whether [00:20:00] those leads are actually compensable cases and good for your firm is a whole other discussion. The firms that really are successful are those that define what do I want out of my law firm as a business and as a lifestyle.

And then that crafts their overall business strategy. And only after that do you really start framing your marketing strategy. I think people move into marketing without thinking about where they want the ship to go. And thus they do a bunch of disorganized testing. The waters that aren’t ultimately productive, the ones that are good, take a long-term view, have curiosity, and most importantly have discipline about sticking to that long-term view.

That’s how you need to be thinking about.

Steve Fretzin: So we but so we have. Taking the time to evaluate the best buyers, we’ve evaluated our competition. Then how do we make a decision to and execute on what we should do for ourselves and for our firms?

Kyle Hebenstreit: It really practically comes down to budget allocation.

We think about it in [00:21:00] terms of a percentage of revenue and that percentage of revenue depends on where you wanna be next year. And three years from now, it’s gonna be a larger percentage and you’re gonna have less cash flow and less margin if you wanna aggressively grow. It’s gonna be a smaller percentage if you want to moderately grow.

So that’s again, where the overall strategy comes in and feeds the smart marketing budget. But based on that. We have a couple kind of starting blocks of if you have a modest budget, where should you really focus those marketing dollars? And then you can build up to the sort of larger ticket items like tv.

I think jumping into the larger ticket items out of the gates is another thing that people do wrong without getting their website their reputation management. Community engagement, those types of foundational marketing activities in a secure place. And they get too top heavy.

And they’re not driving like the near term or long-term results that they want.

Steve Fretzin: And the other thing, and my audience and my clients know this about me ’cause I talk about it all the time, it’s there are two sides of a [00:22:00] mountain, and you wanna climb both sides at the same time. The marketing side and the business development side.

And so I think if you just do one and not the other and that can go both ways. You’re not really getting the full opportunity and ROI that you could be getting. So for example, I’m out helping my clients with business development, growing their law practices, and the reputation and the word of mouth, that’s all happening.

That’s great. But while that’s going on, I’m all over social media. I’ve got the podcast, I’m writing books. I’ve got articles for above the Law, like all this other stuff that’s backing up, validating and adding onto the work that I’m putting out on the ground. Talk to that because I think sometimes they, lawyers don’t understand how important it is to hit both sides at the same time.

Kyle Hebenstreit: Absolutely. I mentioned, community engagement as Yeah, you

Steve Fretzin: sure did.

Kyle Hebenstreit: I also think about legal intake. A lot of our firms are driving a high volume of inbound interest, and if you don’t know what to do and that inbound interest comes to your firm, you’re gonna be [00:23:00] wasting marketing dollars. And it’s. Operationally challenging to get that right for legal because for a variety of reasons, but primarily because cases are so nuanced. There’s high degree of empathy involved in engaging with clients in their first touchpoint with the firm, and that’s really difficult to execute at scale for law firms.

But it’s huge if you get it right in terms of maximizing the investment dollars that you have within your marketing. Yeah. So I would say from a business development standpoint, we think about how you’re receiving inbound interest. But also how are you as a managing partner and to the extent you’ve got more junior attorneys or staff, how are you empowering them to get out into the market and do physical world, things of going to events, networking, doing legal clinics, partnering with local universities, and establishing your credibility that way and engaging with people who might be your clients, but are more likely gonna be positive sort of referral sources or words of [00:24:00] mouth contacts for your firm.

Steve Fretzin: Let’s wrap up with a question I have and I’ve asked a number of folks in legal marketing this question. I’d love to get your take on it. There are a lot of people doing what you do. All right. And there’s a lot of good actors, and there’s even more bad actors. And I don’t mean they’re nefariously bad, I think they’re just, they’re new or they’re bad, or they just don’t get it.

They don’t have the same experience that other people have. What should, let’s just take, use an example of a small law firm. What should they be looking for? What questions should they be asking? What should they be doing to validate that a marketing organization is a good fit?

Kyle Hebenstreit: Yeah, I think one question that we don’t get asked very often, but it’s something that we think about operationally, is the ratio of client to, we call them client success managers, our account representative.

What ratio some, firms are gonna have a massive ratio of clients to individual managing those accounts, and it’s really difficult to create a good strategy or [00:25:00] manage quality control when that ratio is. So far off base. And so you wanna make sure you’ve got somebody who’s regularly looking at your account and looking after your firm.

And you can only do that if that person has the right capacity to do so that’s one operational question that doesn’t get asked a lot that I would advise. And for what it’s worth, we try to aim for about eight to 12 clients per point of contact. We try to keep that sort of boutique model. Larger agencies can go up to 50 to.

Close to a hundred of clients per account person, depending on sort of the future of the services that they offer. So I think that’s important. I also think social proof in marketing is important, and I think having referral conversations, I, we don’t hire anybody at our company without doing at least two reference checks.

And, we position ourselves as an outsourced marketing department for our clients. So while we’re not a full-time employee of our client’s firms. They should think about us as though we are an employee and do reference checks on us with our clients. Yeah. We’re, free with our client information.

[00:26:00] We’ll set up introductions, but our clients are free to contact. Any of our clients can just ask about their experience, and I would encourage folks who are shopping to take the extra time to speak to other clients of these vendors. Yeah,

Steve Fretzin: that’s really important. I I have lawyers that wanna work with me, come and audit a class, sit through my 90 minute weekly class, meet the clients in the room, and it might draw out questions.

It might draw out, engagement, it might draw out. Skepticism. That’s all good because it’s helping you learn is this a good fit or not, and then talking to references. Absolutely. And try to get people in front of one or two references. Should they also be asking about how the communication is?

Because I think one of the biggest concerns with marketing is. You pay the money, it’s, 5,000 a month. And what’s the level of communication and what’s the level of reporting and how are you getting feedback and improvements in knowing that this is working? How are you guys dealing with that?

Kyle Hebenstreit: Great question. I wish we were in a place that’s not [00:27:00] currently where we are. We’re in the middle of a bit of a transformation going through what can our clients expect in the first 30, 60, 90 days. And then thereafter, so we do now have an established playbook or activation in place of here’s what, 30, 60, 90 days.

These are the KPIs that we’re looking at. This is, these are the touch points you’ll have with us in this process. And then we transition to quarterly business reviews. Annual presentations. We have monthly reporting meetings, so we’ve got live dashboards built for each of our clients. And so we’ll either meet with our clients if they want to, or if they’re too busy, we provide a recording and an executive summary of what are the KPIs we’re monitoring and what are we seeing within their marketing campaign at that given time.

We’re getting better about documenting and setting those expectations of this is what you’re about to experience working with PMP. I can’t say it was always that way, but I think we’re in a pretty good spot now. But I think that’s key. And that’s another sort of, adjacent concept to how many people are my, point of contact managing.

’cause it’s gonna give that person more [00:28:00] bandwidth to be open and free with communication and hopefully the type of communication channel that, you know, you as a law firm client are looking for. Whether that’s email, call, text, yeah. You want

Steve Fretzin: what’s the best communication style. I think that’s really important.

Let’s wrap up though, with our game changing book. The hard thing about hard things that’s been mentioned on the show before. I think it’s really great. Ben Horowitz, will you talk just for 30 seconds about what that book means to you, why it’s your game changing book? Absolutely.

Kyle Hebenstreit: I think at its core it’s about the resilience required to be an effective entrepreneur and the reality of challenges faced as an entrepreneur.

And it is tough, I think of our clients all as entrepreneurs. They’re betting on themselves and their sort of economic future and in law firms and they’re faced with a ton of challenges. And it’s not for the faint of heart. And for me it provided anecdotes and validation of. Narrative of what other people go through in this journey, which can sometimes feel a bit isolating as an entrepreneur.

I thought it just emboldened me in terms of [00:29:00] the risks I want to take the challenges that I’ve got the fortitude to stand up against and just the. The length of time that I’m going to be doing this, and then the resilience required to do it well. And I, has made my life and my sort of mental happiness better in how I relate to this journey.

But I think it has made me better at being an entrepreneur as well. And so it’s really like an autobiographical tale about Ben Ho’s journey. But that’s how it really related to me and spoke to me because it is a journey of resilience and that was. Important for me.

Steve Fretzin: Awesome.

Appreciate that. And check out that book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things. Everybody take a moment to thank our sponsors, of course. The PIM Con coming up with our friend Chris Dryer out in October in Scottsdale, Arizona. And then the Law, her podcast. Check out my friend Sonya Palmer. And that podcast, whenever you get a chance, Kyle, if people wanna get in touch with you, they want to hear more about PMP and say, Hey, I, I need to talk to this guy.

What are the best digits for them to reach you?

Kyle Hebenstreit: They can either [00:30:00] email me at Kyle KYL e@pmpmg.com, pmp mg.com, or they can call my cell (317) 410-9640. Even if you’re not in the market looking for marketing services. I always find conversations with attorneys about what they’re doing in their practice.

Enriching and interesting. So feel free to reach out and would love to talk with anybody who’d like to speak.

Steve Fretzin: Awesome. I appreciate you coming on the show and really having a, an honest and straightforward conversation about. Legal and marketing and giving some great tips and ideas for folks that are maybe doing those random acts of marketing or maybe they’re not doing Jack and they need some encouragement to get out there and start putting themselves forward.

And as we talked about earlier, hey, these big co corporations and other folks are gonna get involved in legal that. Our trained assassins at growing business and you’re either kind of part of the game or you’re out sitting on the sidelines. So anyway, thanks again, Kyle. Now don’t mean to get on a soapbox, but I do [00:31:00] sometimes.

But I appreciate you and I appreciate you coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. This was fun. Yeah, good times man. And thank you everybody for spending some time and hanging out with Kyle and I for, a little over half an hour. Talk and shop and we’re gonna to help you be that lawyer, a confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker.

Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. We’ll talk again soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening. To be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice, visit steve’s website Fretzin.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.