Leonard Scheiner with Geek Haus

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for such a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with guest house. Mr.Leonard Scheiner. How are you, man?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:00:35] Hello, Stone. It’s a pleasure to be here. Doing very well today.

Stone Payton: [00:00:39] I have so been looking forward to this conversation. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but maybe a good place to start is if you could articulate for us mission purpose. What what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:00:58] Well, I love that I am able to get up every single day and help people help people. Now, what does that mean? Well, I run a law firm, marketing, Branding and Public Relations Agency, which is Geek Haus. And we help law firms, lawyers, attorneys help people at a higher scale. And what that means is we get them more clients, we get them a better digital presence so that they look awesome online. We get them looking better in all aspects, really.

Stone Payton: [00:01:35] So was that a very early decision or even before launching your organization to focus on that niche of law firms?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:01:45] Well. Stone It kind of evolved pretty organically. So my first internship when I was in undergrad was at a law firm, and I absolutely loved it. I loved that we could make a wrong situation, right? I absolutely loved the professional environment and how everyone was tremendously not just professional, but intelligent. And I loved that culture of working with attorneys and those who had gone to school to help people. And so that was over ten years of my professional career working in-house at law firms in different marketing capacities, from personal injury firms to bankruptcy firms to civil litigation and business divorces and marriage divorces and immigration and pretty much any area of law. I’ve touched it, and so it evolved pretty organically. Having spent so much time in law firms doing their marketing and also having a little bit of hand in the legal work that I really understood who these people are, who who an attorney is, how they operate, how they think about their business. And so it was around 2019 that I looked to begin my own agency, and that is Geek House. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:03:15] So so was it at least just a little bit scary stepping out on your own on this entrepreneurial venture?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:03:24] I think there’s a famous saying that says when you choose to make a decision, go and burn your boats. Right. The analogy is you want to go to an island, go to the island and then burn the boat so you can’t go back. And I’d love to say that I was graciously making that transition, and I did for some time. I was a I had a small consultancy where it was the Leonard show and that was great. I had a few clients, but I really saw that there was an opportunity to serve the legal industry at a much more more a deeper level of expertise in marketing, a deeper level of expertise and PR a deeper level of experience really, when it comes to developing a law firm brand or a solo attorney brand. And so I could only do so much having private clients in my own consultancy. And so when I made that jump, no, it was very scary. It was extremely scary. And just like any good business owner, you ride the crest of the wave and you ride the dip of the wave and you ride the crest of the wave and then the dip of the wave. But hopefully you’re trending upwards. And that’s what we’ve done over the past few years.

Stone Payton: [00:04:46] Now, do you guys sometimes get involved as early as helping a firm create their name or maybe help a more established firm recreate the firm name?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:04:59] In terms of the firm name, it’s interesting you bring that up. I am in consultation. We were just speaking about that a few days ago and they actually are now a coaching client of the agencies and I handle most of the coaching clients of the agency myself directly. And we were going back and forth between a name, a few name options, and there’s a competitor with a similar name in a next door geographic market. And so exactly what you had mentioned, we start with the brand name. That is where we we start the firm name, the brand name, and that could be for someone new. Maybe they’re a seasoned attorney coming from a big firm and they want to branch out on their own. Or maybe they have graduated law school four or five or six years ago, maybe even two or three years ago, and they’re just ready to do their own thing. So if there isn’t one existing, we do start with that. And then to the second half of your question of what about if they are existing, how do we do we help with transitioning a brand name? There was a pretty well known personal injury firm in central California, and I think it’s a generational firm.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:06:14] It’s the dad was was the founder and then the son is is same last name and he’s kind of now the managing attorney and they’ve been in the business for 35, 40 years. And they and I were having a conversation about what is the legacy of this firm look like and does it really make sense to market the firm under the partners names if they might not be there in 15 years? So we do a little bit of that deep dive in terms of the law firm name from the branding aspect, whether it’s new or established, usually the established firms, we like to keep that because they’ve marketed and done a tremendous amount of brand awareness and they’ve got equity with that name. But we also do succession planning in the sense of, Look, is this something that you’re going to keep and die with or is this something that you are looking to sell? And if those are very different conversations. So it’s really driven by the partners or the partner in terms of what they want to do and where they see that going for themselves.

Stone Payton: [00:07:26] Well, I got to say, because of your own focus on a very specific ideal client to work with, you’re probably the perfect person to ask this question. And I’d love to get any insight we could from you on on pinpointing that ideal that that target client. And I think the term you use in your world is an avatar. Yeah. Anything you can help us with on that front.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:07:54] So the ideal avatar for the agency for geek House or for law firms.

Stone Payton: [00:07:59] For law firms or any of us that are out there trying to kind of hone in our focus a little bit. Is there is there some structure, some rigor, some discipline, some approach to really pinpointing?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:08:11] Yeah. So for a law firm that’s going to look very different for every different law firm, right? You could have two P.I. firms. One of them focuses on catastrophic injury where there are limbs that are no longer there or there’s a traumatic brain injury, a TBI. And then you also have other P.I. firms that focus on your everyday fender bender. Right. So you span the gamut, even within the same practice area for a law firm. And that’s something that we dive into with our clients to understand who is your ideal client because we don’t want to talk to everyone. If you’re running ads and you’re talking to everyone, it gets really expensive. Why are we going to waste your ad budget talking to a million people when we could really talk to 100,000 people? Right. And so I gave the example of of personal injury. But even in a practice area like divorce. Right. And most people think, oh, well, there’s regular person divorce and then there’s high net worth individual or high net worth family divorce. And that’s absolutely true. But what about military divorce? What about gay couple? Divorce? What about divorce with adopted children? Right. So there’s all these nuances to any given practice area, and that’s based upon the preference and expertise from the attorney themselves about one, what they feel is the best business decision to be making. So what type of client is is their ideal? What do they have their expertise in? What do they want more of? What do they feel that they’re most comfortable handling? So it really depends on the individual attorney or the individual law firm.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:10:01] And then in terms of house. And the agency and what our ideal type of law firm attorney client is. Typically, we’re working with firms that have three partners down to the solo. Typically, when you have more partners than that, you’ve got an in-house marketing team, so we can still come in and help, but it’s definitely less help that you need from an outside agency if you have inside people handling your marketing. And really when it comes down to it, we’re looking for the people who want to level up, right? If you’ve already got things and a marketing team, you’ve already got your campaigns and things rolling away, that’s well and good. Of course we can come in and optimize and support and create new channels and get more visibility. But the the attorney or partner, two partners that are looking for that outside help to just handle it, I really enjoy and it’s really most beneficial to the firms when I’m able to step in as the fractional CMO for that firm and lay out a strategy, lay out a plan and present the roadmap that’s going to get them from where they are today to where they need to be.

Stone Payton: [00:11:20] All the things you were describing in the work with clients to help them really pinpoint that that ideal client avatar for them, that that’s got to impact how you define and articulate the unique selling proposition for them, whether they’re B to b, b to C, whether they’re in those niches. I mean that’s I mean, now the work’s just getting started, isn’t it?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:11:44] Very much so. Their unique selling proposition or what us in marketing land call USP, it’s going to depend on what sets them apart. And usually we can’t see the label of the jar that we’re in and we all have blind spots. So my expertise is going in there and really teasing out those qualities, those facts, those expertise, the the different levels of expertise or the different aspects of expertise, because, you know, every attorney is an expert, right? They went to school. They they trudged through every single class. They trudged through the bar exam. And now most of them are under the impression most attorneys think I can hang my shingle, People are going to come and then we’re going to create this great practice. And I’m here to tell you that’s just not true. The best attorneys are not the ones that have the biggest practices. The best attorneys are usually the ones that are grinding away, doing the work, giving their time selflessly to organizations and the community or other groups. And so they get to step up and leverage what their unique qualities are. And the right way to do that is to have a market marketing agency, a brand, some type of public relations efforts that are really exploding and shining a spotlight on what that expertise is.

Stone Payton: [00:13:19] So you’ve got the focus, you’ve got the language. But then, I mean, there’s also this whole visual element that is just so important, maybe more so now than than ever before, right? There’s a whole visual aspect to the brand, right?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:13:35] There is. And when we talk about brand, most people think, oh, that’s logo and colors. And while yes, that is very true, it doesn’t stop there. Right? That’s like saying a hamburger is is the meat in the bun. Well, yeah, but how is it cooked? What type of meat is it. What is the bun made of? What are the sauces, What are we putting grilled onions on it or like there’s so much more deeper. And so my response to many attorneys who think that a brand is very simple is we really dive into it is everything you think it is. But I’m looking at the perception because perception is reality. And typically for the consumer firms, consumers are not skilled at hiring attorneys if you’re a business focused firm. So a B2B firm, the person, the client who’s making the buying decision or the hiring decision to retain the firm probably has done this a few times. Right? If they’re hiring an attorney, they’re in business. You’re probably not their first rodeo. But a consumer who has just gotten in a car accident or who has just wanted to file for divorce or who is looking to emigrate, someone in their family or really any of the consumer practice areas. We’re looking for something in that potential attorney that we’re going to hire. And so as an attorney, we need to be cognizant of that perception that we’re giving out.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:15:11] So if our colors don’t match or our messaging doesn’t match, yeah, that’s that’s a part of it, right? We need to have a good logo, good colors, awesome things that match and go together, but even goes down to look at your phone number. Does it end in four random characters or does it end in 5600 or 4200? It needs to look like a business number, right? And if you’re giving a a potential client your business card, which business card is one of the last things of this digital new world that we live in that we actually exchange. Right. And so when we’re giving someone that is the direct dial, say our our main line is 5600 is our direct dial 5610 Great. Now, my perception as a consumer looking to hire this attorney is that they have their stuff together. It all makes sense. But if it’s four random numbers on your main line and then your direct dial has a totally different set of numbers, a different prefix, even sometimes it just looks a little discombobulated. So when they have a choice of choosing attorney A or attorney B, or let’s be real attorney B, C, D, E, and F, we need to stand out as the most best option for that potential client. And so that’s what we help them do with the brand. It goes goes pretty deep into all those aspects of things.

Stone Payton: [00:16:46] I really don’t think I realized until this conversation just how competitive the the attorney landscape that arena must be. I I’d never really thought about I’m operating under the impression that what I would call content marketing where you’re educating your informing would be would be an important in a lot of these processes is that accurate in this so could you speak to that a little bit in how you approach that aspect of things?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:17:19] Stone You’re absolutely right. The content that a law firm puts out speaks a lot about two things one, their expertise and two, their internal processes. So if I see a blog, if I’m a consumer looking to hire an attorney and I see a blog that was updated in 2014, which at the time of this recording is what, eight years ago, I know that we have a problem because they don’t put time into any of those details, right? I know that they don’t have an internal process to regularly produce content, to constantly be a thought leader, to be putting forth what is the new law, What is this new thing that came out a few months ago? What is this new condition about this county or this state? So there’s definitely the the internal process side of it. But then to really what what is striking to most people is the expertise that we can share. Right. I, I always tell clients if you’re going to write a blog post or we produce content for probably 80% of our clients and when we’re doing that, it’s not what to do after a car accident or what to do about your when you’re thinking about divorce, it’s.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:18:34] Not that because that article has been written umpteen trillion of times, but instead we’re thinking about how do you keep your kids safe around Halloween? Right. It’s more pointed and it’s more competitive in the sense that it’s going to resonate with your ideal potential client more than a blog post that is just pretty generic cookie cutter. And so we take the approach that we want it to be educational and also entertaining. So edutainment is what we’re looking for, and our process allows the attorney to streamline that process because we’re mostly producing the content for them. Of course, we present it to them for review because the attorney needs to be aware of what their their firm is communicating. Also, we’re not the subject matter expertise. We need that attorney to lend their eyes and any anecdotal, anecdotal details to that content itself. And so we do that in the form of long form blogs, and we’re able through our process to then parse out different pieces of that content that they’ve already approved that they didn’t have to draft. And then that trickles down into social content on the various platforms.

Stone Payton: [00:19:56] You clearly. I mean, you could just hear it in your voice, find the work incredibly rewarding. What are you enjoying the most right now about the work?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:20:09] I appreciate your compliment and I think if I could do branding all day, every day, that would be my my utmost joy. But I also know that branding is not what grows the firm. I know that branding is not what brings in new clients. I also know that branding doesn’t optimize revenue. And so branding is my true love. I like to think that that’s half the creative, half your brain write, half of it is creative. And so that’s where I love because it is. Some of it is technical. Most of it is. Some of it is technical. Some of it is subjective. But when we can marry those two together and put on the lens or wear the hat of the ideal potential client, things become more clear. But I’m the expert at that. They’re not. And that’s totally okay. But let me take you by the hand and shepherd you through that process. And so the branding is really the most rewarding part of that. But what I know is that branding, if you just do that alone, it will go in a drawer and never be seen again. And it is not shared with clients. It’s not used to its fullest, fullest extent. And a brand really needs to be alive, right? So a few years ago it was Instagram, Facebook, maybe YouTube, and now today we’ve I can’t even tell you how many consultations I’ve had where the the desire for the attorney to be on TikTok is there. Right. And so I’m always like, you’re the captain of the ship. I’m your co captain, you’re the captain of the ship. But at the end of the day, just because you have all these followers on Tik Tok doesn’t mean that that’s going to convert to clients. So I’m always very transparent in the fastest path to cash or the fastest path to clients for the firm, because ultimately their business is a firm is not a charity, and businesses need to be run with the idea of improving the bottom line.

Stone Payton: [00:22:22] Well, let’s stay on that money path for a moment, if we could. Do you have a feel for I don’t know if rule of thumb is the right phrase for what a marketing budget should look like or how we should arrive at a at a marketing budget at a law firm.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:22:39] Yeah. I always encourage the the attorney or the managing attorney, the partners to look at what makes sense. So it’s not as much as an arbitrary number as it is a formula. All marketing is speculative, right? Business. Let’s just take a step back. Business is speculative, right? Facebook didn’t turn a profit until a year ago. Right. And they’ve been having billions of dollars of revenue every single year. So when we think about a marketing budget for a firm, we’re typically looking at what is what are the current finances and whether they choose to share those or not is fine. But what is comfortable in the current finances to. To earmark for marketing. Now, once we’ve come up with that amount, maybe it’s 10,000. Maybe it’s 2000. Maybe it’s 40,000. Maybe it’s 200,000. It’s going to vary. But depending on what that marketing budget is, then that’s our agency’s responsibility to run that as its own pal. So what do I mean by that? If we’ve got a marketing budget and we’re doing, let’s say, Google ads and Facebook ads and some organic marketing. Well, if the Google ads are outperforming our Facebook ads, let’s just say on Facebook, we’re getting a4x return. But our Google ads, we’re getting a 12 X return. Well, then we need to look at that and say, let’s double down on what’s working and reallocate the budget to produce more return on investment. So it’s not really a straight number. It’s more of a formula and it is a strategy. It’s a strategic conversation. When we’re looking at what is it going to be this month, this quarter, this year, and then again, painting that roadmap of what it’s going to look like for them going forward.

Stone Payton: [00:24:47] Well, you bring up an interesting point, and there’s nothing complicated about it, but I think many times those of us who get a little bit distracted by shiny objects from time to time need to keep it in mind. It’s so important that we track the results that we’re getting, that we make the the the shifts. We watch the trends and stay on top of it. If we’re going to invest time, energy, resources, money in these activities, we ought to be paying a lot of attention to the results that are generating and adapt accordingly.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:25:18] Exactly. When I talk to an attorney and they don’t know what their cost per acquisition is, I know that they’re not tracking when I ask them what their marketing budget is and they say they just flat out tell me I don’t have one. When I talk to an attorney and they don’t know how many clients or they usually know how many clients, let me take that back when they don’t know how many leads came in that converted to clients or they don’t know their consultation to client conversion rate or they don’t know their lead to consultation conversion rate. I know that there’s details within their intake process or within their sales process that get to be better defined, and that’s something that we help them with through coaching, through systems, and we make sure that they have good metrics or a good tracking system for metrics to be able to say, okay, we need to pinpoint the problem. We’re not getting enough clients or we want more clients, right? Well, do we need more leads or do we need a better closing attorney or do we need a better intake person or team? Because if the leads are there but they’re not being closed, then we need to we need to know specifically where in the process we get to peer into.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:26:37] Is that the quality of leads? Is it the firm’s ability to close them? Is it that they they churn out and ask for refunds or that they sub out and hire another attorney for their case? Where is it in that process and when we can paint by numbers, really that funnel of this is how many people we we had impressions with. This is how many leads we got, This is how many consultations we had, this is how many fee agreements were sent out. This is how many came back signs. So how many clients, how long do they stay along? What’s our client lifetime value? When we’re looking at that, we can really understand where is the hitting gold within our firm? To give an example, I was speaking with an immigration firm in Texas the other week and. They were oscillating between individual immigration cases or corporate immigration cases. And in our discussions, we we learned together with them that their corporate clients are much, much, much, much, much more lucrative. Why? Because you’ve got to make one connection with the head of h.r. And then they send you ten, 2200 cases. Well, that’s easier because now you don’t have 200 clients, but you have 200 cases.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:28:05] You’ve got one client. That’s the company versus dealing with individual cases. When you’ve got questions and you’re answering the same questions and they’re all individual clients. So we look at the model of the firm as well. And look, there’s nothing wrong with doing individual cases, right? If that was your passion, power to you. But just understand that it is more lucrative to do corporate and if you don’t want to. Fantastic, right? Let’s evaluate that or contrast that rather with doing flat fee versus hourly. If you’re doing flat fee, it needs to be a very well defined scope because there is always going to be a little scope creep. Or what if it’s supposed to take six weeks and it takes six months? You’ve definitely spent more time in communication with that client than you had budgeted for. So then we we want to talk about, okay, maybe it is flat fee or maybe it is hourly or whatever that looks like, but we’re always pretty transparent and attune to how is this going to affect your business and not just the cash collected today, but how is this going to build a sustainable foundation for a firm to grow your firm to grow into the future.

Stone Payton: [00:29:22] The tools and the technology available to us, and some of which we don’t even know about yet, and will keep coming down the pike and having someone with with your experience and expertise in your organization to fully leverage those tools, I got to believe that there are also tools, technology, automation out there that can help us after we land the client to, to, to to make that client experience better and better, which in turn, of course, is going to end up helping us grow the business as well. Do you agree? Have you begun to see some of that, too?

Leonard Scheiner: [00:29:58] Very much so. Oftentimes, an attorney will think that once they have a client and they’ve signed the rep agreement, the fee agreement, and now they’re a client, that they’re going to stick around forever. And that’s just simply not true. So when we look at marketing for a law firm, we’re typically focused on that front end, right, generating new clients for the firm, because that’s usually the first goal. But we also want to think about the full lifecycle of a client. So that’s before they’re a client. That is while they’re a client and that’s after they are a client. So when we talk about lifecycle of a client in a law firm that before they’re a client period is usually what we’re talking about, that’s, that’s 90% of the time we’re talking about a lead came in and they weren’t ready to sign. So let’s do an automated email sequence to them or let’s push our blogs to them. Let’s have something automated where we can continue to nurture that potential client over time in the hopes that they then become a client of the firm. Wonderful. That’s 90% of the conversation. But really, where the missing pieces and many of the puzzles, especially legal marketing puzzle, is while they’re a client. The service that they’re being provided with from who answers your phone, who the reception is, is to who’s their case manager or who’s their paralegal or who’s their attorney.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:31:33] Right. That that process is not usually not automated. But all of that plays into it’s marketing for the firm. It’s the brand of the firm. If everyone’s crabby and not happy at the firm, that’s going to come out, the culture matters. But if everyone’s great, there’s a great team culture. There is open door policies in terms of the paralegals and secretaries being able to ask questions that they have, you know, that is portrayed and it does whether you choose to believe it or not, it does come out in the calls, in the emails, in the client experience. So that’s kind of more the culture, tangible aspect of things and client service. But even while they’re a client, they are already a client. That relationship is the best it’s ever going to get, right? Because you’ve already earned their business and they haven’t left the firm yet. So we want to take the opportunity to inform them about other things that are going on in their life that they might need help with. Right. So. If they have issues, if you’re if they came to you because they’re being sued. I’m thinking about a business who’s being sued by maybe an employee, a wage and hour claim, and they come to the law firm to defend them or to represent them in that case? Well, they probably need help with their employment agreements. They also might need help with their lease negotiation for their office.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:33:06] They might need help with a benefit plan. Right. So there’s all these other ancillary things that are kind of legs that are off of the central issue that they came in for. So as a firm, we want to be marketing, and that could be as simple as sending emails that are informative, write education and entertainment. So we want to put some personality in there because we don’t want it to be another legal document that they have to read. But these edutainment emails, while they’re a client talking about the things that matter to them, that’s golden. So we’ve talked about the front end piece then while they’re a client portion now what about after they’re a client? Most firms think, well, they were a former client. They’re kind of dead to us now, right, for just putting it boldly. But people know people. And if they had a great experience and they were treated well, they likely might become a client again themselves or they could refer someone. And we know that building a firm off of word of mouth and referrals is not great because it puts your. Growth and and bank account in the hands of someone else to do a favor. So I’m not saying that’s a total 100% go all in on that strategy. But if these people have been treated well and you did great work for them and you’ve got great rapport, why not continue to inform them about things that are happening in the firm, things that are happening in the local area, things that are happening nationally that might affect them, things that are happening in the state.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:34:45] What about things that they didn’t even think about? Right. We want to be continuously positioned as an expert in their mind so that whether they need help or their daughter needs help or their coworker needs help or the checker at at the local grocery store needs help, and they’re in conversation, you know, hey, go hire Smith and Smith. You know, Johnny Smith really helped me out and they will advocate for you and your firm. And when we’re talking about referrals, as I mentioned, it’s not a 100% solid strategy, but. A warm referral or a word of mouth referral. The barriers for them to become a client are so much less than when you do any other type of marketing, because we believe what other people say. We believe what those closest to us say. So if my mom or my coworker had great results at that law firm, I’m going to expect that they’re going to treat me the same way and I’m going to get the same results or similar results. Of course, results are never guaranteed for a law firm, but that that that connection cannot be replaced.

Stone Payton: [00:35:57] I am so glad that I asked that question. Okay. Let’s make sure that our listeners have an easy path to connect with you. Maybe have a conversation with you or someone on your team. I just wanted to be able to tap into your work, so whatever you feel like is appropriate, whether it’s LinkedIn, email, website, I just want to make it real easy for these folks to to learn more and and tap into your work, man.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:36:24] Awesome. Thanks so much for the opportunity. So I will give our website and I’ll share the spelling of my name so that they can connect on LinkedIn if they so choose. So our website ah, the agency name is Geek House and the website is Go Geek House. So go. Go geek. G e k and house. We spell h a us. We spell it the German way. So go geek house us dot com and I am on LinkedIn. Have a I’m on LinkedIn probably three times a day in different conversations engaging and supporting the community. So on LinkedIn I’m Leonard Shriner. I’m pretty much Leonard Shriner everywhere, even in person too. So Leonard Leo in a r D and last name Scheiner Se as in Sam c h e i n as a Nancy e. R.

Stone Payton: [00:37:31] Well, Leonard, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you so much for investing the time and the energy to share your experience and perspective. This has been an informative, inspiring conversation, a marvelous way to to invest a Thursday afternoon. Keep up the good work, man, and just know that we that we sincerely appreciate you.

Leonard Scheiner: [00:37:56] It’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:37:58] Stone All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Leonard Shiner with Geckos and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.