Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.
Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.
If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.
Ryan Webber 00:00:05 On test, test, test, test. You get to turn it on fire. So, Tyson texted me. I don't know, a couple months ago, I was like, hey, man, you want to speak at Max lock on? Sure, dude. What do you want me to talk about? And his words were, I don't care. Make it fun. Here I am, dance puppet. so I made a presentation. Lawyers. You guys. Smart people. I'm married to one. Dumb excuses. I hear them all. So this should be fun. Let's get to, seeing the reality check. So if you guys are running a law firm in 2025 and running a 2015 marketing playbook, you're probably getting past, let's think about 2015. What was happening like the internet was just a thing. I had Barely. I graduated college, but, you know, like, social media was like just becoming a thing. I think Instagram, like, barely had a video on there. So big difference.
Ryan Webber 00:01:10 Now it's like you can only do videos. I also didn't wear my glasses, so I may peek around the corner to see. so what's happening is your competitors are already doing things on the internet. If you're trying to be what you were in 2015, you are getting past. And if you are not evolving with what's happening in the world, you are going to get passes. Every other speaker that talked about this today. They are correct. And I'm not just making it up, it's just data over time. the the clients nowadays are using the internet to research you guys way more than before, and they're doing it before they even call you. They're going to the internet, they're typing in your name. They're trying to find out if I like this person before they even call the reach out. So we should probably have a presence on the internet that would help make some sales. The last thing. Brooks talked about the robots. They are indeed coming. They are here. And what makes you different is you.
Ryan Webber 00:02:24 You are different than the robots because you have a personality. They do not. So raise of hands we're going to get a little hand raising. So who loves recording videos in here. Can't see because there's light over there. But cool. Very few people. Very few people. it's just common. Like people don't like it. And this is why these excuses are why you don't like recording video. In my little intro here. I've recorded over 10,000 videos, talked a lot of people about recording videos. Here are your excuses. This is where it gets fun. I'll sound dumb. We debunked this in the title of this presentation. Because your lawyers, your smart people. You won't sound dumb because your smart people, the general public, thinks you guys are super smart. So you won't sound dumb. If you sound dumb, that's because you're not good at what you do. But we know you are. So this silly excuse. I don't like how I look. I have another secret to tell you.
Ryan Webber 00:03:37 You look the same on camera as you do in person. So if you don't like how you look, that's a you problem. Don't say I can't record videos because of that. Because that means you don't want to meet clients either. Debunked. I don't like how I sound. This is genetics or smoking. Can't change that. Someone else has already made a video like that. Great. That's another person. You're this person. You say things different than they say things you can tell. I'm not the lawyer. I have to talk like I'm the dummy in the room. So it's, like, really simple here. But here we go. I don't want to dance on camera. Do I look like I dance on camera? No. Have I made money from videos? Yes. Don't need a dance on camera. Don't suggest you doing it either. Actually, I'm too old. You guys are like, what is he going to say about this? Yeah, it's just a silly excuse. Like, my wife's law partner was 63 years old and he was recording videos for YouTube.
Ryan Webber 00:04:59 My clients aren't on social media. This is silly. You know, why would a property intellectual business owner be on social media? They are. They're not going to tell you that. They're like scrolling TikTok at night. But they are. My wife's law partner came to me after we started recording videos and he said, you'll never believe it. I said, what, dude? I was just in a closing with an 80 year old man, and he was buying a property. And I said, how'd you find me, sir? And he said, well, I got on Facebook and I saw your video, and I said, damn, I like that guy. I want to do business with him. And so I closed at your office and he was like, people are finding us on the internet. And he was 80. Yeah, man. Everyone's on the internet. Debunked. I don't have a nice camera, So who doesn't have a cell phone in here? Great. You have a nice enough camera.
Ryan Webber 00:06:06 Okay, cool. I don't know how to edit. Great. Hopefully you guys have a law practice that makes a little bit of money. You could pay somebody that knows how to edit and do all this for you. Don't. I don't know what to talk about. You are lawyers. You have clients you talk to every single day. They ask you questions. You guys send emails. After they ask you a question and you answer their questions. Video like this is easy. Let's keep doing excuses. So another one this is the big one. I was talking to Jerry the other night and he was like, yeah, I make the excuse, I don't have time. Like cool. Love it. Love this excuse because my response is, you tell me you don't have time to make more money because we know video makes us more money. I don't have time to make more money. Cool. Good for you. I like more money, so I'm going to make time. So here's the truth.
Ryan Webber 00:07:03 Every excuse we have, I mean we can keep going on excuses. Every excuse we have is a reason for you to miss opportunities to make more money, get more clients, build your brand. Can we all agree with that? Yes. Thank you. so my wife is back there, much smarter than me. Does a YouTube channel, I manage it, she talks. She is my puppet that I have dance. It's perfect. It's the right camera. Brooks. so we are not Jeff. But we do have 88,000 subscribers. That is peanuts in the YouTube world. But for us, that's huge, because who in here knows and likes anything about real estate law? My real estate attorneys. How exciting is that? Not very. So we have 88,000 people that have said, I want to learn about real estate law. Boy oh boy, they are just a ball of fire. I bet it is the most boring practice to try and make content about. Why is Jeff doing good? Because he can talk about police knocking down doors and coming in and be like, I'm going to tell you what to say.
Ryan Webber 00:08:17 What is she going to say? Like, here's the contract updates for 2025. But you know what? That video got 80,000 views because it was timely and no one else made a video about it. Win for us. the other thing you can't see up here, I also can't see. Which is why I'm right here. We have made $23,000 in ads for YouTube, paying us to market our own business by putting them on YouTube. That is peanuts in YouTube world. That's not like I'm going to retire. I wish, do some more closings. but but I take that $23,000, and that's where my marketing budget comes from. So I have $23,000 in free ad spend to make me more money. That's nice. That's fun. What it does for our law firm so we don't want to be YouTubers. We actually would not use social media if it didn't make us money. We don't like it and I get it. A lot of you guys feel the same way, but it makes us money. We have gotten approximately 15 phone calls every single week from people across the country that call our office and say, I saw a video, I want Tiffany to be my lawyer.
Ryan Webber 00:09:35 Whoa. We went away. It's back. That's cool. And what's that done for our business? When we started, when I got there in 2018, I sold my gym and I said, I'm going to get into this marketing thing for the law firm. I sold my gym and I said, how are we doing? We had done 14% of the closings in Mooresville, which is the city we live in, living for 14% of all the closings. Every closing that happened, 14% of them happened in our office. There's ten other law firms on our road that does real estate closings. I was like, seems like a cool number. 2020 we started the YouTube channel number grew last year. We did 37% of all the real estate closings in Mooresville. That's pretty cool. What did we do different? We made videos. I'm a marketing guy of the most simple marketing plan. We make consistent videos over and over again. So why video? I don't need to go long on this because a lot of people have talked about it.
Ryan Webber 00:10:38 It builds trust. They see your face, it builds your credibility. They see you, they know you, they like you. People want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. This is a marketing phrase that's used across everywhere. But it's true. So this is why we do video. Who in this room raise of hints has spoken to 50 humans in one room at one time this year. Excellent. This is way more than I thought. Cool. This is what a room looks like. This room has about 150 humans. How about 100? 100 people at once? Good. Now let's think about this. If you got a video that got viewed 100 times, do we think that did bad? Kind of sad. Makes us a bad video. Yeah, but there was only like 20, maybe 15 people that have spoken to 100 people one time. Very, very bad video gets us that many, many times. 500. This looks like a movie theater. Very few people.
Ryan Webber 00:11:52 Thousand people. This is, I don't know, a bigger movie theater, but a thousand views on a video is very common when you start doing good. And this is three times a week, four times a week, every single day, 1000 views, 1000 people, you're in front of that. You didn't have the opportunity to very few of you 10,000 people speaking in front of a tennis stadium, probably nobody. If there is good for you, you're better than me. 100,000 people. The big house, biggest college football stadium. There will be zero people in this room that will speak in front of 100,000 people. Unless you're like a politician and I haven't met you. But we have one video that has over a million views. That's ten of the big houses it was posted in 2020. As posted in 2022, in 2020 for that video, for some reason, hit the algorithm. Don't know why. And overnight that video got 10,000 views and it's grown and grown and grown. To this day, it's still getting 2000 views a day and it has over a million.
Ryan Webber 00:12:56 I have ten big houses that TIFF's face has been in. Pretty cool. So all that to be said is video just allows you to reach more people at once. So every person you reach can refer others creating exponential growth. Who's like finance? Who likes financial stuff like compounding interest. That's cool. That's video. So how do I stand out in a crowded social media market? This is where I usually am, like, here's how to record video, get your lighting right and your cameras and it doesn't matter. This is just kind of like I've changed this presentation to now be like, here's some weird marketing things that I do when I think about posting on social media. In general, educational videos equals money. Educational videos are also very boring and people don't want to watch them. But if you post educational videos, we know that that will result in making you dollars Entertainment videos. Equal eyeballs. People want to be entertained, but it's very unlikely that an entertainment person will also make money. There are TikTokers that have millions of followers because they don't know how to do education.
Ryan Webber 00:14:13 I don't trust them. I just like them. I pay them money. So when we can combine both of those entertainment education, that's when the magic happens. I should have had like a magic. so here's our philosophy. When we are coming up with our marketing plan, we want to be the one person on one platform solving one big problem consistently. Which platform should I be on? And I hear like, oh, our marketing channels go across everything. Great. That's really hard. If you've never done it before, just do one. We are the real estate lawyer on YouTube. There's none others. Sorry. Like, don't do it. That's fine, I keep winning, I like that. Go, me. But if you want to do that, there is opportunity there. So should I be on TikTok? Yes. Just do the one that you're good at and you like, and you enjoy the most and just do one and get really good at it. Then you can multiply after that.
Ryan Webber 00:15:13 Here's my big marketing philosophy. Be the opposite of your competition. So let's close our eyes. Let's, let's let's imagine here our clients are sitting there and they're they're picturing a lawyer. What do they picture? An old white guy and his beautiful suit looking like Brooks Derek sitting at his mahogany desk with his books behind him. Right. That's that's what our that's that's what clients think you guys are and you're not. So we try to be opposite in all of our videos because people generally don't like lawyers. I do. I'm weird because I'm married one, but like they don't want to. Like I woke up this morning and good golly, I can't wait to go see a lawyer. It just doesn't happen. So we try to be opposite like we have females. Young. Generally fun. Entertaining. We don't wear the suits we don't sit in front of like stuffy desks. We do everything opposite of what the perception is because we don't want to look like everyone else. We try to be different and stand out.
Ryan Webber 00:16:17 That's one of our philosophies. Every time we go on camera. This is a new one that I've started, kind of like building into. It's building a moat with AI and all the stuff that you can do with that. A moat essentially just means what are you doing different and unique that AI or your competition cannot do? It makes it very challenging for somebody to copy and imitate you, because it's going to allow you to stand out the most, the longest. So a moat could be, well, essentially, I'm just smarter than my competition. It's fine. It still works. It's a moat. It could be that I'm more creative. It could be that I have the best quality camera. Like, there's plenty of things that you can do that will help you stand out and make it harder for others to copy you. So create your moat that you can own. Find your format. I'm gonna kind of cruise through this because the time thing. so formats are essentially just something that you can repeat.
Ryan Webber 00:17:18 So it could be titles of videos to, to figure out your topic. It could be styles of videos. It could be anything that you can find and change. One little factor to repeat an example would be for our video titles. We've been using how to do a thing that somebody wants. Insert their parentheses legally because that's what they want. So example for Tiff would be like how to fill out or sorry, how to back out of a real estate contract legally. Really simple, broad, easy to understand and just keep changing the one thing in there. And then dance. Puppet talk. so to wrap this whole thing up, I titled this slide, what Have You Got to lose? And so I like to kind of go through this scenario. Many of you are not recording video right now. And so you're sitting there and you're thinking, what if I record? I'm so scared. Scary. What could happen? We record videos. They could work or they could not. If they work, we have 88,000 subscribers.
Ryan Webber 00:18:29 We have 15 phone calls. Jeff makes hundreds of thousands of dollars off his YouTube channel or nothing. You're just where you're at. And you recorded videos. So it's not really the question of what have you got to lose is what do you stand to gain? I have questions. Talk to me out there. Really, I just wanted to leave a picture of our daughter up here, so thanks.