Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is gonna be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Business RadioX. If you’re a business coach or consultant who’s tired of being a best kept secret, set up a call with Stone Payton at brookstone.com to unlock your perpetual prospect pipeline. Today on this show, we have the CEO and founding attorney with Hembree Bell Law Firm, Hannah Hembree Bell. Welcome.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Hi there. Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited to learn about your practice. How are you serving folks over there at Henry Bell Law Firm?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Well, our slogan is that we help marriages end well, and we do that in the greater Austin and San Antonio areas through divorce and custody representation.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Oh, goodness. It’s like, how long do we have? Uh, but generally speaking, I got here through my own messy divorce and custody situation. Um, when I first got out of law school, I worked in big law in like a big skyscraper kind of building down in San Antonio. I mean, I guess to the extent those are skyscrapers, but big tall building in San Antonio and went through my own custody trial and through that experience realized that I really cared about this sort of work and needed to go back and help those people be the sort of lawyer I wished I would have had from the beginning. I had a great attorney, but he he is more of a sort of hired gun at the end to go into the courtroom and not as much the hold your hand, you know, through every, um, emotional thing that comes in divorce. So that’s what I decided to do, is go back and be that sort of lawyer. And, and it, you know, it started working. And we’ve just been growing and doing that since.

Lee Kantor: So can you talk us through what it was like when you have that kind of epiphany, like, okay, maybe I should move on to family law rather than kind of the corporate law that I’m in. What what does it take to make a switch of that magnitude? Can you share some of the trade offs or some of the at least kind of the mental math you were debating when you made the switch?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Oh, yeah. I think it takes a lot of chutzpah and a lot of naivete, they say. Um, but for me, I was in big law and I, I enjoyed it. You know, I got a piece of advice one time from an unlikely source, like another associate who was just a year or two ahead of me. And he said, you know what you’re supposed to do. What you need to do is look at the people who already have what you’re working toward. And then ask yourself, do I want their life? Would I trade places? Do I want that life? It’s like, huh? And I looked and I really loved that. I had really amazing partners that I worked under, but I, I didn’t want to be in that same spot and big law firm with those same requirements, doing that same sort of work. And so I thought, huh, not really. So I, you know, that was one one step along the way. And then I had my own jury trial about custody issues. So in Texas, um, certain issues about child custody and divorce go to a jury, which is usually surprising to people. Um, and through that experience, you know, it’s one of those experiences. There’s a before and an after. And in part of the after for me, I initially thought, okay, I’ve got to go do this for other people, but I also knew better than to sort of jump in in any kind of an emotional reaction to something, right? I knew that it’s sort of like when you go on vacation and all of a sudden you want to move to Key West, you’re like, ah, Maybe I don’t actually want to move to Key West.

Hannah Hembree Bell: I just had a good time, you know? Um, but this is kind of like the opposite of that because it’s divorce and stuff. But anyway, so I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t making some sort of a rash decision and decided to wait it out, sit with that. And it’s kind of uncharacteristic of me because I’m a very decisive, quick acting person, but waited it out for a bit and then went on a trip to visit my then boyfriend. Now husband drew on an airplane and the airplane had no Wi-Fi and I didn’t have anything else to do. So I got out of pen and paper and brainstormed how I could start my own firm. And I just did the basic math, um, of what what that would look like. What would I need to make that work? And just sort of like, what would it, how, what would income look like? How many clients? I started just thinking through the basic, you know, a plus B equals C of the whole thing.

Hannah Hembree Bell: And I guess to some extent solved my own question because by the end of the time I was done with that airplane ride, I decided I wanted to do it. I wanted to start the firm, and I thought I could make it work. So it was like the and for me, the analysis was not, you know, how to create a business plan and launch a business and get funding. And I don’t know the way the way people do it. I didn’t do it like that. It was more like, can I figure out a way to make ends meet, bring in the same amount of money that I was making at the big law firm? Can I figure out how to replace that income? That was the whole question for me when I started the firm, and that was kind of as far as I ever thought I would get. Was that far? Um, and so did that math, got off the plane and told drew, hey, um, I, I’m maybe I was engaged. I was like fiance drew by then, but I said, okay, I think I want to do it, but I need a loan. Would you loan me $10,000 to start this business, and the $10,000 was just so I’d have $5,000 a month of income.

Hannah Hembree Bell: It had nothing to do with business expenses or advertising. Nothing. Um, it was just to replace my money so I could pay my bills. So I kind of that’s why I say that, that I was so naive about the whole thing, but hey, it worked. And so it was sort of weighing the burden in my hand at the big law firm. It’s a big career ahead of me. You could just sort of ride out every step that was laid out in front of me. And I was weighing that against this, this sense of calling and sense of purpose and really needing that my professional life, that, that work I did, um, you know, really had meaning and purpose and sort of weighing those two things and finally saying, you know, pretty early in my career, it was only two years in, in the big law firm and now would be the time to make the move. Because if I get too much farther down this road, it might be harder to do. And if it doesn’t work out, I can just go back. Um, and the rest is kind of history. As I say, I didn’t have to go back. I paid drew back his loan, um, within a couple months, um, of doing it and yeah. And here I sit.

Lee Kantor: So when you made the switch, were you still working at the big law firm and then doing this kind of to see if it would work out? Or did you say, okay, I’m, I’m all in. I’m here’s my notice. And now here we go.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah. I just said, hey, here’s my note. I so that was in Labor Day. I didn’t leave until the end of the year and I gave a month’s notice. So I kind of sat on this information for a couple of months. But the thing is, lawyers can’t really moonlight, um, without jeopardizing their firms and their licenses because of conflicts of interest. So if I would have tried to dabble in this on the side, every new client I talked to would arguably have been a client, a conflict for the firm I was at. Like, it doesn’t really work to start your new thing ethically while you’re working at the other thing. Things. So it was sort of an either or decision for me, and it was just all in, you know, burn the boats mentality. I really think like a lot of things in life, you know, closing your exit doors, um, so you don’t have that sort of easy path out is the way because things do get hard, they get tough, they’re challenging. And if your escape route was easy, um, you might be more willing to take it. So I think that’s part of what fueled my success. Some of those early days and nights, you know, I definitely, definitely thought, huh, I wonder if I should call up Donna, who was the partner I worked under mostly. Should I call up Donna and go back and get a real job? I mean, I definitely thought about that along the way.

Lee Kantor: Now, what was it like the first time you sat at your desk or a chair and you were like, all right, no clients, you know, nothing coming in. Uh, it’s it’s it’s my show now. I’m driving the bus. Um. What? Like, what do you do first?

Hannah Hembree Bell: I think I was, you know, I was thinking about this the other day. I think what I did was just started probably posting on LinkedIn and on Facebook that I was going to be doing that. Um, and this would have been back in 2018, um, and attending networking events and things like that, just trying to get the word out. I didn’t have any marketing budget. I didn’t even know you needed a marketing budget at the time. And so just trying to let people know that I was doing it, I think is how, how it started. Oh, you know what? I just remembered something actually, um, I’ve almost forgotten this. There was a brief period between. So I was leaving and starting my own firm and then at the last minute got recruited to join a local firm who she’d started her firm and said, hey, you can do family law and still do some employment law while you build up your family law practice. I just forgot all about this for a second. Um, and so I did that with her for a minute. That helped because I was able to get the family law practice kind of started for a few months, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t do family law and um, the other, the other practice at the same time. And so that helped me, I guess, get a little bit up and going with some income still coming in. But then when I sat down, that was the $10,000 loan, um, part, that piece, you know, sitting down for the first time, um, like, okay, I, I just started making some noise as I do, telling everybody that I knew, even if it was kind of a cringe feeling, um, what I was doing and, and, you know, content and things like that just weren’t quite the same back then. So it wasn’t the same level of stuff we all put on the internet now, but I was just telling people I was doing it. And then that kind of snowballs getting the first few clients is hard, but it gets easier.

Lee Kantor: So now were you kind of representing the clients. And you were also trying to find new clients and you were also running the the whole shop. Like, is it kind of a one man band at the beginning.

Hannah Hembree Bell: For well, you know what I did? I’m trying to remember I, my sister, I think, started with me when I went out on my own. So she was my, I called her my legal assistant, but she was really all things not lawyer. She put stuff on my calendar. She would do intake, she would help manage the billing going out. So it was sort of a two woman band to, in the very, very beginning to get it off the ground and starting. And I think at least as a lawyer, that was really essential because I’d be in court all day, um, and have clients to get back to and things to put on the calendar and all of that. I think it would be very hard to be a true solo as an attorney. Um, and so I needed that second set of hands to help just like get through the work and get that done. But I was doing. I had a lot to work to do relatively quickly. So I was really focused on the delivery of legal services, talking to the clients and all of that. And she took care of a lot of the back end. I think it would be difficult if you didn’t have that sort of person to start.

Lee Kantor: And then is it is the next milestone, one in which you’re just slammed and you got to kind of replicate yourself. And at some point I got to get another me in here.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah. Well, I think the next milestone, at least in a legal practice, is getting some more support underneath me so I could do more of what I was doing. And I think that’s true in a lot of places, a lot of different fields. But it was me getting a paralegal on board and getting some paralegal support. So that was sort of the first thing.

Lee Kantor: So you could maximize kind of what you can produce.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Right? Right. To free me up to do things that only lawyers could do. And it was best for the clients. I only, I always have since the beginning committed to my clients. We will use the least expensive available professional for the job. And so there’s a whole swath of work that a paralegal can do that’s less expensive, etc.. So I got them started, which freed me up to do more of the higher, you know, value, um, things that I was qualified for. And then once we had that, then the next thing was, okay, I need to get, um, and the paralegal getting the paralegal right was hard at first. I think I used contractors like people a bit of this and that. And then, you know, getting that position stuck took a while. And along the way, adding another lawyer because, you know, in the beginning when you’re starting to build, um, it’s, it may not be easy to attract someone. You can just like hand over all of the, whatever it is that you produce, um, hand that all over to them. And so, um, the, the being able to, you know, keep going, keep trying till I found the right people. I think that was sort of the little engine that could. But yeah, then it was getting an associate under me and that that took a minute, you know, and then that’s sort of that phase of can you get a few people around you who can expand your reach and gain some stability where everything isn’t sitting right on your shoulders?

Lee Kantor: Now, while you were doing that, were you kind of, um, being mindful of I better have tight systems and processes and there has to be kind of a Henry Bell way of doing something. No.

Hannah Hembree Bell: It was not. No, sir, I am not. Uh, I mean, that would be a better way, probably, but I’m not gifted with a systems brain, um, or SOPs, policies and procedures. I mean, honestly, I didn’t even know enough for that to be on my radar as a thing. I mean, like, generally speaking, I’ve heard of handbooks, but I never it never occurred to me I needed to write up the whole process and the whole system for how to do something. And I’d be about the last person on the planet you would want to do that. Um, and so SOPs and things like that didn’t come until much later when there was a lot more team, but the people I was hiring were a lot more experienced and knew more than me. Um, and really, when I first started the firm, my experience in divorce and family law was my own personal experience. So I wouldn’t have even known what to tell him. The Henry Bell way was because I was still learning and figuring it out. They had more experience than me coming in, so it took a bit before we had enough people and realized, hey, we do have a Henry Bell way. Somebody should write that down. We should put it into an outline and into a format. You know, we have all that stuff now, but I was probably slower to have that than a lot of firm owners just because of my natural, like, complete ineptitude at it.

Lee Kantor: But you must have been good at attracting quality people. I mean, that you don’t build a firm of the size you have just by luck. Yeah.

Hannah Hembree Bell: No, that’s exactly right. That’s been one of my skills is, um. I just sort of know my limitations, you know? But my skill set would have been attracting great people, um, pointing them towards a mission, adhering to core values. Um, I’m a natural leader leading people towards a goal that. Yes. And then let those people do what they’re amazing at. We have several team members now who are excellent, excellent at systems and SOPs, and they can turn it around and enjoy it in, you know, 1/100 of the amount of time it would take me to do it. So I think early on, I understood I needed to hire people who were great at the things I’m not great at, who are smarter than me, um, in their area of expertise. And then sort of, you know, send them, let them loose on that. That’s exactly right.

Lee Kantor: So when, so it doesn’t sound like delegation is really an issue for you. That seems to come natural. How do you kind of. How do you kind of I don’t want to say worry, but at least manage the other side of giving somebody so much autonomy where to make sure they’re still on point to the, you know, outcome that you and the whole firm desires. You know, it’s it’s a balance on whether you’re a control person or a non controlled person. There’s ramifications of each.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah. Well, it’s delegation, not abdication. And for me, it was bumpy in the beginning. Um, and partially because I was out ahead of my skis with, with how much I knew and how much I had experienced. I got a lot of that quickly, but especially in the beginning. So and that’s gotten better and better. You know, I started this out a natural born leader, a horrible manager. I didn’t I didn’t know the difference. I would have thought they’re the same thing. Um, which anybody who’s ever managed people in their life knows that they are not. Um and so I think what ended up happening as time went on, I had a few really core amazing people join the team who then my job became to lead and manage them while they led and manage more of the process driven work that got done. They had the expertise and the skill and the technique to do that and to stay on top of people. Like as I started getting sort of a middle level of management, that started getting a lot better. And part of it would be, you know, checking some work as it came and the clients will, will tell you, um, you will hear from them if something isn’t going right or whatever. So that was probably in the beginning. That feedback loop was part of it, but then paying my dues and learning lessons of you can’t just hand something over to someone and assume they’ve got it handled, and assume they would do it in a manner that you would approve of and walk away. That’s not going to work out what gets measured. You can manage. And so I started getting a lot clearer and cleaner on KPIs and what are our targets and quality control checks. And especially once I had that middle level of people to help manage the front line folks in their skill set, that started getting a lot smoother and better. But it was it was bumpy for me to learn all of that, for sure.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned one of your superpowers is kind of attracting talent. Is there any advice you can give to another, maybe an emerging leader like you were in your firm? Like, what are your kind of, um, how do you, how do you attract and find the a players that you are able to attract and find?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Well, I think it’s a few things. I mean, first thing pray. Um, and I’m saying that kind of half joking, like just of you doing the work on yourself and sort of putting the call out into the universe for the sort of people you want to be around. Become the sort of person you want to be around. Ah, you want these high quality people. Are you a high quality person? Do you? You want people with integrity? Do you behave with integrity? Do you want people who are excellent lawyers or doctors or clinicians? Whatever your job is? Are you an excellent technician in your field? Um, things like that. So it’s like becoming that person. And then for me, a big part of it truthfully is just speaking that into the universe through prayer. And for me, it’s just kind of turning it over to the universe and hope that helps. Okay, so that’s sort of like a hope. Um, but hope is not a full strategy. So there’s that. But then there’s also, I think being yourself out loud. And what I mean by that, we put a lot of stuff on the internet, on social media and everything that we, um, it’s very clear when someone’s considering working with our firm, what I’m about, what this firm is about and what we’re not about, and that attracts the right people and repels the wrong people.

Hannah Hembree Bell: So you being you out loud where people can see it and observe it is really going to help because. And then it’s just it’s also grit it. These people are not going to just like show up from the sky. I said, yeah, pray and like trust about it, but do your part. Do your work. So for me, that’s getting ads out there, talking to people, going to networking events and being around it and just putting in what it seems like to me are the right inputs to get those outputs, because all I can control are my inputs. I cannot control the outcome, but I can control what work I do. So I made sure, because I see people talk all the time about wanting to recruit great people, I’m like, okay, how much time did you spend this last week on it? Goose egg zero. No? Okay. Well, how many ads did you have posted? None. How many emails? None. None. Like, okay, so you don’t do you want to do it or not? Make up your mind. Your calendar should reflect that. Your behaviors will reflect that. So it’s like you got to work hard at it. And I think, um, being open minded would be the last thing I would say about that is I was able to build a team around me by being open minded and not getting super set on what everybody had to be, how they had to work, what their hours had to be, the money full time, part time contract or not.

Hannah Hembree Bell: I was pretty open to great people and I’ve always been like that. Um, and still to this day, being pretty open minded to the people that can join the team and meeting them where they are. And I think what that allowed me to do is bring some people on board sooner who needed a little bit of an exception here or there for whatever thing they had going on in their life. And had I been more rigid, they wouldn’t have come and it would have stunted my growth. Now that those exceptions and things didn’t always work out, like it may not have been a forever solution, but you got to remember, as you’re building, it’d be great to be able to keep every single person who ever worked with you for the rest of forever, but a lot of those people are going to be there. Year two, three, maybe five is a long time these days. Um, and so can this person help me to need that you have right now? And even if they’re not somebody you see here for the rest of forever, that’s okay.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Let’s get it going for now. Like for instance, a good example would be now we’ll hire legal assistants who want to go to law school like they’re a college grad who wants to go to law school and they’re working on their Lsat. That’s the test we take to get into law school. They’re working on that, and it takes some time, um, for them to get all of that ready, but maybe a year or two tops. And a lot of people don’t want to hire them because like, oh, it’s only one year. I’m like, look, one year I’ve got a great, smart, sharp person who’s on their way to law school. And then I see that as an investment in the future. If they do well as a legal assistant and then they go to law school, my hope would be they want to come back. I’ve got two right now who are in law school, um, who are former paralegals or legal assistants with me, and they know my door is open for them. They want to come back. When they’re done, they’re hired. The end. It is done. Um, so I think just being open minded about your requirements can also help a lot.

Lee Kantor: Now in the growth of your business. How have you been leveraging technology like AI? How has that impacted how you do what you do?

Hannah Hembree Bell: It’s, it’s ever present, and we’re doing it in a strategic and methodical way, which I’m glad I’m doing it this way. The jury’s still out. I think everybody’s rushed to AI ify everything. Um, is, is a bit, um, I get the intention behind it, but I wonder if it’s the right move. So I have a strategic partner that I work with operations.com, um, which is owned by Austin Netzley and his team, uh, is amazing. And they help me to think through the priorities because what do we want AI to do? Ai for AI sake is just going to create a big old mess. Or it could for us. There are certain where I always talk about Styrofoam in my foundation. In my ops, there was some Styrofoam in my foundation, and the worst thing I could do is layer AI on top of it. Later the Styrofoam crumbles so all the AI crumbles and I have to start over. So for me, the methodical approach has been to get some of these pieces of my operations more, you know, filled in with concrete and some of those more organized and then layer AI in on top of that, which is why I like partnering with operations.com because they help walk you through the, um, the operational piece and they have are backed by Austin at a company or has a company doing business coaching called two X.

Hannah Hembree Bell: And so he has all of this ops and business expertise. So I love that versus some AI product sort of consultants. What they’re doing is awesome, but they wouldn’t be one to tell me, hey, you already. You have your intake set up in an upside down way. Let’s not AI that. Let’s get it right side up and then let’s do these processes. Does that make sense? So I’m, I’m going a little slower than is my natural tendency so that I can go faster for longer because we’re, we’re here for the long term. And I’m not just trying to, you know, replace half my staff with, um, AI robo agents, you know, that’s, that’s not how we’re doing every and everything we’re doing is leveraging and focus on building things that make AI work for the humans so that the humans can do what only humans can do. Um, and we’re not trying to use it to reduce headcount or things like that.

Lee Kantor: But are you finding that your people are kind of tinkering and experimenting with it? Is that, uh, okay, so, um.

Hannah Hembree Bell: We have so there are lawyer, um, tools that have AI integrated now, like, for instance, um, co-counsel inside of Westlaw. We have that. So our legal team uses that. Some people are using some copilot inside of Microsoft. Part of the team has clawed. Um, we use clawed to interface with a couple of our, um, programs for data and analysis reporting. So a little bit, we’re trying to be methodical in how we roll out to the whole team as well. Um, and what we’re doing too, I also started another law firm called my confident Divorce, which is subscription based divorce for women only. And we’re using it to some extent as a bit of a test kitchen and trying out some of our AI ideas and learning and getting it built there in a much smaller, controllable environment than our team now has something like 65 employees. And to roll out something that we want to do to all those people, I really need to know what’s going to work real good before I invest all those people’s time. So that’s one of the ways we’re going about it to test.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think that’s a great I mean, I think that’s a great way to look at it is to look at it as kind of one big experiment and do little teeny experiments.

Hannah Hembree Bell: And then that’s what I’m trying to do.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And then just let it play out and then do more of what works and don’t, you know, do less of what doesn’t.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah. Somebody should put that on a bumper sticker. I think that’s the whole idea. Right?

Lee Kantor: You know, it’s I mean, I think what happens is people think of AI in this holistic way. And I think it’s really very narrow and it’s team by team and individual by individual how they’re going to leverage it.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah, I think that’s right.

Lee Kantor: So tell me about this. Um, my confident divorce and my confident life like a subscription based program. What, what’s the thinking behind that?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Um, well, I realized that women divorce differently. That’s our slogan for my divorce. So it’s really a reimagined way of doing divorce for women, So I am a woman. Like I have my own divorce and custody drama situation that really shaped how I built Embry Bail Law. And still, it’s all built on the way. It’s been done for a long time, which we love, and it’s working and we do amazing work for our clients. Um, and there’s just been this part of me with AI here and consumer expectations changing and just women’s experience. Um, with the rise of everything happening on the internet, divorce coaches and all this, there was a lot more of the emotional side of things that, um, people and that women in particular were really needing more support with. So we’ve re-envisioned it to, to meet the whole woman where she at is at we have sort of like coaching meets divorce. We have a mindset calls, in-person events, virtual events that they get as part of being a member of that, um, of that enterprise of my confident divorce And it we’ve done some fun stuff that that women would love kind of along the way, a tiny bit of gamification to the. And that seems that seems like a silly thing I’m saying. So I don’t mean to minimize the experience. Like we’re turning it into a game. It’s not obviously a game, but, um, just giving some little small rewards and things like that along the way to, to motivate and, and, you know, honestly, because it sounded fun, uh, to build and to do, and I think that women will love it. It’s very pink, um, very Elle woods coated, um, girl stuff. And so far the women have seen it are going, going crazy for it. We’ve got our very base level, um, started out, uh, now and our, you know, working through our minimum viable product, make sure we’ve got it and then going to layer on different levels and complexities as we develop it along the way.

Lee Kantor: Now, is it a community for people going through divorce or women going through divorce, or is this going to actually take them through the legal process of divorcing?

Hannah Hembree Bell: I have both. So, um, through my women’s circle, through my confident life, which is sort of the parent brand through the women’s circle, women all over the country are already in there. Um, have access to a divorce prep course that I made. It’s free. Um, and each other and some, some calls and things like that. So that’s the community of women, my Confident Divorce plc. So it’s a professional LLC, um, is an actual law firm. And right now we’re taking cases in Texas only and pretty specific to Austin or San Antonio. Um, we have a little bit more room on that, but we’re building that out. So it’ll actually get, you know, do lawyer stuff, file petitions or complaints as they’re called. In some states. We work them through the process, get them divorced and have decrees and all the documents and all of that, while also offering some tail services for people who’ve been divorced. They know just because your decree is signed does not mean that this is done. You’ve only really just begun. So keeping them in that loop and in that energy and that environment, that’s, that’s the idea.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, does it end with the divorce or then they can go into the, into the community after the divorce. Is that like.

Hannah Hembree Bell: They can stay? Um, we have, and we haven’t, we haven’t worked anybody all the way through it just yet. Um, so, but the intention is that they’re going to have the option to stay in what we’re calling a perennial plan so they can stay in, uh, with us for a low fee each month to have access for like a call a month with a legal professional because things come up. How do I deal with this custody issue? He didn’t show up on Friday. What do I do? Um, what is this provision mean about school dates? And, um, what about soccer? How do I things like that that come up? But there are usually questions you can’t just call your lawyer about because your engagement’s over and it’s this kind of black hole. So the idea is we’ll have some ongoing support for them, and then they can stay a member of the community and have access to all those resources as well.

Lee Kantor: Well, what a great idea.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Thanks. I think so. I mean, I think it’s I think it’s going to be I hope that we’re talking again in a year. And, and um, this is, is the huge success. I think it’s going to be, I think it’s an idea whose time has come. And I, I’m honored to just help bring it forward into life with my pink paintbrush.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Well, I mean, you had a unique lens on this between your, you know, background as a lawyer and going through it personally and, and creating the whole firm around kind of your experiences. So you were the right person at the right time, I guess.

Hannah Hembree Bell: I hope so. I think so. I’m trying. You know, that’s that’s a real entrepreneur says, these are my theories. And I, you know, I’m all in my chips are all in on it. And you know, we’ll get to we’ll have to do a follow up, uh, to see what happens six months or a year out.

Lee Kantor: So now is there a story you can share in your practice? Don’t name the individual, but maybe a story that illustrates. What’s it like working with you and your team? Uh, can you share what somebody was going through and how you were able to help them kind of maybe get an outcome that was better than they imagined or even you imagined?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah, sure. I mean, one thing just happened a couple weeks ago that really, I think epitomizes who we are and what we’re about. There was a woman, um, let’s just call her Rachel there. Always. Rachel in my pretend stories. Um, Rachel and Rachel had been working with our team with the paralegal, a legal assistant, a lawyer. Everybody works with the with the team. And she had been, uh, trying to get divorced. It was a relatively simple and I’m using air quotes like simple divorce as far as the legal component, um, they didn’t have that much, uh, stuff, assets or debts to split up. There were no children involved. It really should have been a pretty straightforward up and down divorce and done. However, it had languished on for months, and what was happening was this young woman was being influenced by the man. She was trying to divorce, her church and her family, and she was stuck in this sort of, um, lose lose sort of Bermuda Triangle of them trying to gaslight her and convince her that somehow she should undo everything she’d done. And it was against God’s law and her family didn’t support it. And really, she needed to get back married, to stay married to this guy and then go to counseling and then do all these things that they’d already tried. It didn’t work. Um, and then if she wanted to get him divorced later, she could, but she’d already gone through mediation. She’d gotten a very solid deal. Um, that was very fair for everybody. And, you know, I think to the, to the plus side of fair for her, um, but she was stuck on getting the divorce all the way through. And so, uh, that team called me in and said, hey, Hannah, we need you to talk to this client, to Rachel.

Hannah Hembree Bell: She is stuck. And I said, okay, yeah, I’m happy to had a conversation and really just helped her to see, look, I think talked about how to draw boundaries of what she would talk with her family about and with the church, and just talk to her about the idea that anybody who requires you to behave in, in some way that they deem to be best for your life in order to stay supportive and in your life and, and to give you love, if that’s a requirement. They were never yours to begin with. If they walk away, they turn their back on you. They were never yours. Because love doesn’t have strings like that. Support from friends, real friends, real church support doesn’t have those strings. And do you really want to be surrounded by all these people who don’t love and support you in that way? And so anyway, we just had a whole conversation about that helped her to see, um, the deal that she’d already made kind of picked apart some of the gaslighting, shined a light on some of the darkness that these people had been spreading towards her. And, you know, I think it it really or she says it really helped her to see and to understand it differently. She took the actions and the steps that we talked about. And I think her divorce is going to be final in the next week or two. Um, and just sort of shut all that down and is going to be able to move forward with the next chapter of, of her life.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re in the doing the kind of work you’re doing, is there, do you have relationships with partners that refer people to you? Because like when you’re trying to find people who are getting divorced seems like kind of a needle in a haystack. Um, are there like, what’s the path for a person to find you? Like how do you get them into your world?

Hannah Hembree Bell: Yeah, lots of ways. Um, so I always love someone who comes in through a referral who a friend or a colleague or a family member sends them our way. I think that is the biggest vote of confidence. It makes me so happy. We have really great referral partners. We actually have a referral partner program now where there are people who we have a relationship with. When they send their people in, we’re able to move them to the front of the line, um, and really take care of those people. I love that, uh, because it shows how much that person trusts us to protect and work with their people. Um.

Lee Kantor: And are they like therapists or counselors? Like, is that.

Hannah Hembree Bell: All of it? Um, in our would be financial planners, CPAs, their therapist, counselor sorts, um, uh, all, all, all kinds of psychologists, bankers, um, other lawyers, uh, all of that. So then having all of those people, they, because the people who come to them have a relationship of trust and then they’re going through a divorce and they’re telling their accountant and their accountants like, oh, I need somewhere to send you. Um, and anytime you give a well intentioned referral that works out, I think that that gives the person who’s giving the referral a lot of benefit and a lot of goodwill with that, that person. Um, and so we’ve strategically built that out and then vice versa. We have a lot of people come through us who need referrals for financial planners, therapists, house cleaners, um, you know, babysitters, babysitting services, styling, like all kinds of things, um, that once they’ve gotten divorced and are moving on with the next chapter or even in the middle of it, movers organizers, like we need to give those referrals out. So it’s a, it’s a win win from the referral perspective for us. Um, and the, the rest of it, I mean, we do all kinds of marketing all over the internet.

Hannah Hembree Bell: People can follow me at Hannah Hembree Bell, just my name. It’s on the firm. It’s Hannah Hembree Bell law, my confident divorce is the law firm. So through social media, I think it helps us stay top of mind with referral sources. But then we also have a suite of paid services that we use, paid ads and things. So like Google PPC, LSA SEO GEO, things like that that we do, um, that enable us to be strategic in the growth and the people coming into the firm as well. Um, I do now a decent bit of public relations sort of work where I have conversations all over this planet, um, with people about what we’re about and divorce and what we’re building. Um, so that, that our theory is that helps with GEO and helps get the word out too. So that’s sort of the latest thing that we’re, we’re doing more with, but it’s a, it’s a whole multifaceted approach. Now remember when I started, I didn’t know any of this and all I did was tell everybody I already knew what I was doing. So like it just you sort of gain the information and build out your tools in your tool belt as you grow.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, what is the website the best? Is there a kind of a central location to find all the stuff that’s going on? Yeah.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Sure. Just Hannah Bell, my name, HEMBREE Bell like ring a bell, hannahhembreebell.com. And we can direct them all of the places. From there, they can get information about the circle. Um, and we’d be happy to direct them, um, everywhere from there.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Hannah Hembree Bell: Oh, thanks, Leigh. Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.