In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Rafi Arbel discuss:
- Persistence is a key element in long-term marketing and outreach
- The impact of in-person networking on professional relationships
- Blending digital tools with personal follow-up strategies
- System-building as a solution for scaling and stabilizing a business
Key Takeaways:
- Attending legal trade shows and following up with structured CRM tools like HubSpot or even a spreadsheet is crucial for relationship-driven client acquisition.
- AI tools like Fathom are effectively used post-Zoom calls to generate meeting summaries, action items, and even tailored follow-up emails.
- A major operational failure—losing a key employee without SOPs—led to the implementation of structured daily team meetings and detailed task documentation using ClickUp and SweetProcess.
- Personalized outreach, such as sending curated articles based on someone’s interests or social media activity, is a highly effective way to maintain engagement with referral sources.
“The reason the water cuts through the rock is that it is a constant, constantly hitting it with small forces. And that’s really what we’re doing in marketing.” — Rafi Arbel
Unlock the secrets of the industry’s top rainmakers with Be That Lawyer: 101 Top Rainmakers’ Secrets to Growing a Successful Law Practice. Grab your ultimate guide to building a thriving law firm now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F78HXJHT
Ready to go from good to GOAT in your legal marketing game? Don’t miss PIMCON—where the brightest minds in professional services gather to share what really works. Lock in your spot now: https://www.pimcon.org/
Thank you to our Sponsors!
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/
About Rafi Arbel: Rafi Arbel is the founder of Market JD, a digital marketing agency for consumer law firms. A former trial attorney, Rafi helps personal injury, criminal defense, family, and immigration lawyers grow their practices through SEO, PPC, and high-converting websites. He’s a recognized voice on legal marketing strategy, referral network building, and law firm growth.
Connect with Rafi Arbel:
Website: https://marketjd.com
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafiarbel/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/market-jd-inc-/
Twitter: https://x.com/rarbel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rafi.arbel/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rafi.arbel/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
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]
Hey everybody. Before we get to the show, another announcement that I will be speaking at pimcon on the stage with some of the greatest lawyer experts in the world. Go from good to goat and join us at pimcon in October at the beautiful Phoenician hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can sign up and register and check out all the information and [email protected] p, i, m, c o n, dot, O R, G, thanks, everybody. Take care and enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:28]
You’re 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 Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:50]
Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin, and welcome back to be that lawyer. I’m so happy that you’re here. We are here, as you know, twice a week, helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Holy mackerel, we have now the be that lawyer book, 101 top Rainmaker, secrets to growing a successful law practice. Obviously, the podcast. We’ve got a YouTube channel under Steve Fretzin, right for above the law, if you want to check out my many articles, and we are posting many of our podcast videos up on above the law. So check that out. Really good stuff. Rafi, how you doing? Man, so good to see you. We had a great lunch, and we took a walk. I think that’s a great way to spend a lunch, taking a walk.
Rafi Arbel [01:26]
I loved it. Yes, it was great. Catching up with you. And I can’t sit for too long. I can do lunch.
Steve Fretzin [01:31]
Yeah, I mean, I’m sitting too much. I have a standing desk, and I need to use it more. I’m struggling with it. My chair is so good. I bought a chair. It’s like an expensive chair, and it’s it, boy, it really it’s worth the money, but I can’t get out of it now. But, yeah, nice salad for lunch, and then take a walk. That’s the way most networking meetings should be, right? And catching up old friends, catching up good stuff. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your quote of the show. This is one that hasn’t come on the show yet, and I absolutely love it. I want to hear your take on it. A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence. So welcome to the show Rafi and tell us a little bit about that quote.
Rafi Arbel [02:05]
Well, I think that sort of sums up digital marketing in a nutshell. And maybe not just digital marketing, but all marketing, because the reason the water cuts through the rock is that it is a constant, constantly hitting it with small forces. And that’s really what we’re doing in marketing. We want to find our clients wherever they are and repeat the same message in different forms over and over again until our ideal client market understands who we are and what our value proposition is. So I really think that’s the best analogy for everything we do, and that’s why that’s my favorite quote.
Steve Fretzin [02:41]
Okay, and I would flip that over to the business development side, right? So it’s like, how do we become successful at developing relationships and bringing in business similar to marketing, right? It’s a constant pressure of staying out there and staying active, five emails a week, three emails a week. Whatever you got to do to just stay out there having lunch and meeting people and developing those relationships. And so I love the quote, and I agree. I think persistence is it’s a quality that I’m finding isn’t as easy to teach kids today as it was. Maybe for us, because we were Gen X, we had a grind to get everything right, yeah, just kind of left to it. We didn’t have. We didn’t have, we didn’t have the bowling gutters with the tunes in or whatever that tell us called.
Rafi Arbel [03:26]
The guardrails.
Steve Fretzin [03:26]
The guardrails. Yeah.
Rafi Arbel [03:27]
No guardrails.
Steve Fretzin [03:29]
I was sent out and they said just, hey, just stay away from weird looking vans. And I don’t even know that to said that. So that was our guardrail when I was growing up. Well, welcome to the show, man. And for everybody, Rafi Arbel is the president of market. JD, give us a little background on how you got into digital, because you’re also like me, a non lawyer, right?
Rafi Arbel [03:46]
So I know I’m a lawyer. Oh, you are a lawyer. Oh, yeah, I graduated law school in Chicago and practiced law for six years.
Steve Fretzin [03:53]
Yeah, I totally screwed the pooch on that. Sorry about that. Okay, okay, I forgot. Because you play, well, you play a non lawyer so well.
Rafi Arbel [04:00]
Thank you. I appreciate that’s a concept. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. So then I went to work for Thomson Reuters, and I sold there, and I learned really about marketing there, more than even undergrad business. And I really enjoyed my time there. I sold Westlaw and I sold fine law. And you know, Thompson, Reuters has certainly had a lot going for it in terms of understanding messaging and marketing. And then I went back to business school. I went to the University of Chicago, I graduated, and in 2009 I started market JD, and all we do is focus on consumer lawyer marketing for pi, lawyers, workers comp, Social Security, Immigration, criminal and family lawyers.
Steve Fretzin [04:47]
Okay, wonderful. And so how have you in growing your own business? You know, what are some of the things that have worked for you? Like, you know, you’re out there, you know, you decide at some point to start your own company. Scary, right? Like most, there’s a lot of lawyers want to go out on their own. Very scary. What were some of the things that you did to kind of get off the ground and get things moving?
Rafi Arbel [05:07]
So I, you know, I learned that it was all about activity. And really, for the first I’d say, maybe 10 years of my agency, most of my leads came from face to face marketing, and it was always a function of activity. So even if I didn’t get the activity exactly right, as long as I was doing it, I always saw a positive return. You know, it’s all about the calls and the follow ups and the events, and collectively, it just built momentum. Whether it almost was like the opportunities would come from the strangest places, but they always came from effort, and that consistent effort.
Steve Fretzin [05:43]
Yeah, and I think that there’s a place for marketing, there’s a place for business development. I’m always talking and a fan of how they work well together, when you can engage in both at the same time. And that’s not for everybody. I know some people just want to throw money in that works. I was talking to a personal bankruptcy attorney a bunch of years ago, and he was telling me about his spend and his ROI on getting bankruptcy cases. And, you know, he was meeting with me to learn more about my services. And I remember, at one point I stopped the meeting and I went, you know, I don’t think we need to keep talking like you’re fine, like just, you don’t need to join a chamber of commerce or a networking group. You don’t need to do XYZ. Just, you know, as long as you can is get that kind of return on an ROI, and you’ve got more leads coming in than you can handle. Like, what am I going to do? Give you more leads? Like, you’re right, just keep paying the money.
Rafi Arbel [06:29]
Right? And isn’t it interesting how it differs from lawyer to lawyer and industry to industry? Yeah, because that’s not true for most people. He’s kind of in a unique position where his market and his service was in enough demand that he didn’t need to do more than what he was already doing.
Steve Fretzin [06:46]
Yeah, well, I think he also found the right, you know, payment plan and the right pay per click campaign, and the right kind of right he had someone in his corner, like you really helping to make sure that the leads were going to roll in at a certain level. So, you know, I like the idea of people doing both, but it’s not, you know, like some people, you know, the same thing, pay per click. And marketing may not be as powerful or as effective as, you know, face to face marketing like it was for you when you started.
Rafi Arbel [07:11]
For sure, and at least in the lawyer space, you know, one of my clients likes to say, one of the guys who’s on your show a few weeks ago likes to say that in the personal injury space, it’s a gaining the clients is a game of inches, and most of the lawyers are doing 85% of the stuff right. It the ones who really succeed, the ones who really can scale their business, are doing that extra three or 4% so I think in the old days, maybe you could get away with not doing the face to face, but I think increasingly, with the competition as ratcheted up as it is, I think those are fewer and fewer people.
Steve Fretzin [07:49]
Right? And you’re you know clearly in knowing you in our lunch, and then you just invited me to come to a lunch and all that. I mean, you’re a big relationship guy, and building a referral network and building relationships has sort of been your jam before we get to what you’re doing that makes you successful doing that. Why do you feel or think that lawyers sometimes struggle with that part of the business development and growing an individual practice?
Rafi Arbel [08:13]
That’s a great question. I think lawyers want to focus on being a lawyer. I would say, if I had to guess, 80 to 90% of lawyers would rather not have to do any marketing or business development, development. They don’t see it as part of their day to day activity. And I think if you’re an employee, that’s fine, but if you own your own firm, it has to be as much a part of your day to day routine as going to court or communicating with clients.
Steve Fretzin [08:41]
Yeah. And if you own your own if you are an attorney at a mid market firm or a large firm, you own your own firm. I mean, you might be under their name, but ultimately, you own your book, and you own your clients. And that’s, you know, that’s why you’re doing it. It’s because, first of all, it’s fun to build relationships. It’s, it’s, um, it. I think for me, it gives my life a lot more meaning to know great people, to have relationships, and the fact that we do business together, sometimes that needs to happen to be to build a great friendship. I mean, when you have someone where you’re working together to accomplish something great, whether that’s a referral partner, whether that’s a client, and you become friends, and then you end up having all these wonderful relationships that would not have happened if you’re just waiting for someone to send you a matter.
Rafi Arbel [09:27]
I you know, and I feel that way. In my own business, I consider all of my clients friends, and I enjoy the relationship, and I enjoy that we have something in common that we can talk about and a common goal, that we’re all paddling in the same direction. Yeah, I agree. It’s actually much more enjoyable when you do it together and and to your point, I think if, even if you’re an employee, if you’re not in control of your own book, then you’re dispensable. You’re a commodity. They can hire somebody less expensively, two years out of law school, three years out of law school, and without a book, you have no protection.
Steve Fretzin [10:00]
Well. Now, from your mouth to lawyers ears, I can’t harp on that more than I have, because people would get mad at me because I’m constantly pushing that point. And I think the good news is, the folks that listen to this show, they know it, and they’re doing it like they’re not hiding under their desks. Or they wouldn’t be listening to the show. They’d be listening to a show about the law, not about the business of the law. Yes, I think that’s what makes our our listenership, so unique, is that these are all high functioning rainmaking or potential rainmaking folks. What are some things that you’ve done in your career to build those strong relationships, to bring in new clients and develop a deep, long, lasting relationship?
Rafi Arbel [10:38]
I think that historically, I’ve relied on, and now I’m doing it even more so going to the trade shows, going to, you know, the State Trial Lawyer associations, or the National Trial Lawyer Association, or TLU Trial Lawyers University, or aaj, all the big national legal marketing. Well, not all of them are legal marketing, but they’re all national legal trade shows. So that’s a starting point, because if the you know, it’s the know, like trust, and oftentimes you can’t reach everybody digitally. Sometimes the only way you’re going to reach people is face to face. Yeah, so that’s sort of my starting point. But then I you know, you want to layer up on top of that and build your digital marketing around your face to face market.
Steve Fretzin [11:23]
Yeah, take that further. I mean, when you say something like layer on, I’ve got a bunch of things going through my head. What do you mean by that?
Rafi Arbel [11:29]
So it’s, you know, whether you’re going to a trade show or you’re intentionally scheduling meetings with prospective referrals, it needs to be part of a system. It can’t be a hopeful system. It has to be an engineered system. So, you know, ideally, what I would suggest to a lawyer is that they have key performance indicators, and they track how many times they’re doing outreach every week and how many meetings they’re having, and then once they have those meetings, they need to have a system for follow up. So whether it’s a customer relationship management tool like HubSpot or even an Excel sheet or a Google sheet, you have to have some way of keeping track of these folks that you’ve spent time with. And so I think that the best way to keep in contact with them is adding value, and it’s sharing of yourself, sharing of articles that they might be interested in, inviting them to events. But one way or the other, you have to stay in touch with them, and you have to provide value, otherwise, it’s superficial. No one likes the idea of networking. For the sake of networking, we all want to see if we can help others by helping them in their personal lives and their careers, connecting them with other people, and doing it with intentionality. And that’s the only way I’ve found that really works.
Steve Fretzin [12:55]
Hey, pi attorneys, if you’re serious about scaling your firm, there’s one event you can’t afford to miss pimcon 2025 happening October 5 through the eighth at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Pimcon isn’t your average legal conference. It’s an experience. Learn how to take your firm from good to goat with some of the biggest trailblazers in the PI space, including yours truly, as we share our elite marketing and brand building strategies. Tickets on sale [email protected] that’s p i m, c o n.org, or just hit the link in the show notes. Your climb to the top starts at PIM con 2025 let’s go from good to go. Hey everybody. It’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast. And if you’re serious about growing your law 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. Hey, you feel like playing a game? Sure, let’s play a game. It’s called the follow up game, and I just made this up on the spot, and here’s how the game is played. You and I are going to go back and forth with different ideas about how to keep in touch and how to follow up with people and stay top of mind. I’ll go, and then you’ll go, and we’ll just go until we, like, run out of words, or something like that. All right, we’ll see who runs out first. The simplest one is all right, so I’ve met with someone I thought they were great, and I’m going to send them a thank you email with, you know, following up on what I had said I was going to do for them. So that might be inviting them to an event, that might be a contact I was going to make, but the follow up email that happens after meeting someone has to happen, versus meeting with someone and just going off on your own merry way. No follow up email at all, which I think a lot of people miss the boat on that that’s nice. All right, you’re up.
Rafi Arbel [14:53]
So I like to what I really love is when I have a zoom or a teams meeting, I use fathom. Com, which is an AI tool, and it records the meeting, and it gives me a transcript of the meeting, and it gives me a summary of the meeting, and I liked and fathom, will allow me to ask questions. So I might say, you know, what were the salient points from this meeting that I should be following up on? Write me an email summary, summarizing the meeting, and give me checklist items that I need to do going forward. And it is fantastic, because the emails that it writes are so thorough, and they don’t miss anything, because it’s a computer. And what I love about it is you can even say, I want you to analyze this as though you were Steve Fretzin, what would Steve Fretzin and say I did wrong with this meeting? And what would Steve Fretzin and say I did right now, you have to program it, maybe give him that book, be that lawyer to read, and then it can analyze it as if it was you. Okay, but that’s a great way to get better at what you do.
Steve Fretzin [15:59]
I love in touch. Okay, so you send the summary to them, right?
Rafi Arbel [16:03]
Yeah, in an email.
Steve Fretzin [16:04]
So, great tool, yeah. So great I would say, another thing that I like to do when I meet someone and I really like them and want to offer them value is I run a few networking groups here in Chicagoland, and some nationally and internationally. And so the idea that I’m going to say, hey, you know what, I’ve got a bunch of really great networkers and lawyers that I’d like you to meet. Are you free on, you know, one of these dates that can be done at the end of the meeting, or that would be done as an email follow up after I’d mentioned that I would love to invite them. So now I’m introducing them to some of my best referral partners and a bunch of lawyers all in a one hour Zoom meeting. And so like, yeah, yeah. So right off the bat, they’re getting great value from meeting with me. And there’s a next step of how I’m offering value beyond the meeting. Yeah, thank you. One up that then.
Rafi Arbel [16:50]
Okay, then, well, I would say, I would say that if you want to be sophisticated about it, and you have a digital marketer, or you’re you do your own digital marketing. You can retarget those people on Facebook and a DSP, a demand service platform, which is kind of a network actually. You know, if you’re a lawyer and you’re targeting other lawyers, you can do it right on Google, the retargeting so they can the exact people that you’ve met with. Can start to see your ads on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even they’re at the Chicago Tribune reading a story, and they see your ad up there that’s highly targeted and very effective at building brand recognition.
Steve Fretzin [17:35]
Okay, that might be more for like, for example, let’s say I’m doing that with people I meet. So they’re, they’re seeing my stuff everywhere more than they already do. Is that for them, or is that for me? That might be more for me, unless it’s inviting them to things like, unless it’s like, promoting something that they get value out of.
Rafi Arbel [17:52]
Well, part of it, I guess, is just a branding play that could just be, you know, learn how to do business development better. By Steve Fretzin, okay, just to see you and keep you top of mind.
Steve Fretzin [18:01]
Okay, I like that. Another one I was thinking about, too, was inviting them to do something with you. Like, for example, I have a local, a friend of mine, David. Shout out to David talisman. He’s been on the show. You know, David? He’s in the North Shore, yeah, for sure, yeah, you know. Well, so he’s, like, a content guy. So, like, he and I co authored an article, and we published it on above the law, and he was absolutely over the moon with it. And it was a great article about, you know, where marketing and business development come together. By the way, you can find that if you type in, go to above the law and type in Steve Fretzin, but, you know, having someone on my podcast, co authoring an article, you know, trying to figure out, like, how do I get content created for them and help them through something that could be another way to deepen a relationship with someone new.
Rafi Arbel [18:46]
That’s interesting. Well, you are now. I have to think the ball’s now in my court, because I was going to talk about podcasting. I’ll be starting one soon. And our mutual friend Jeremy Wise, who owns, yeah, rise 25 you know, when I when he talked to me about doing a podcast, I said, Who’s going to want to listen to this guy? I just won’t get any engagements. I won’t get anybody listening. He’s like Rafi. It’s not about how many people listen. It’s about building relationships. And he actually maps a blueprint where he talks about 17 different types of relationships you might want to foster through podcasting. One might be prospective clients, one might be trade show organizers, whatever it is, there are so many people in the world you want to connect with, and having that podcast as you do so well is one of the best ways, I think.
Steve Fretzin [19:35]
Well, thank you. All right. Why don’t we wrap up on that point, and let’s move on to an area that you really focus in, which is, you know how digital marketing and referral, networking, building kind of work together instead of being separate strategies, because people are always thinking about things separately, I try to bring them together on the show and talk about how business development and marketing really should work together when done properly.
Rafi Arbel [19:58]
So I think among. Among the most successful marketers and people who do business development lawyers that engage in both are those that lay a strategy that corporates both parts. So you know, if I were advising a lawyer, I would suggest coming up with a list of all those people who could be prospective refers and for actively going after them with a schedule. So perhaps they send out 20 emails per week and they say, Hey, let’s get together. I’d love to talk about your business, and maybe we could be mutually beneficial partners at this and ask for lunch or ask for a Zoom meeting, and then the following week, go through and call those people up and see if you can get a meeting, and if you do then do any of the following techniques that we already talked about to stay in touch, and then layer that up with the social media and use social media to stay top of mind. I think newsletter articles are also fantastic. And then, you know John Morris, who ran an agency, I’m actually part of his master.
Steve Fretzin [21:00]
He’s been on the show. John has, yeah, and he was, I think he was in my first 50, Oh, way down, way back. He’s great.
Rafi Arbel [21:07]
He’s tremendous, really, tremendous. What he does is, when he goes on that networking meeting, he is writing down and putting in his CRM, his customer and relationship management tool, all the information he can about that person, their kids, their ages, their hobbies, their interests. Do they go to a country club, whatever it is. And every time he meets with them, he reads through that to make sure that he’s doesn’t sound like his medium for the first time. And he also finds out what they’re interested in. And then he consciously sends them, looks for articles related to those specifically, and then sends those when he can. Sometimes he’ll text them. Sometimes he’ll email them, but he he’s very persistent about continuously adding value. And sometimes those meetings guide an article that he’s going to write personally, and he’ll add it to a repertoire of articles, and he has this arsenal of A through Z of articles, and he’ll go through, and I’ll just keep knocking off the articles and sending them to his prospects, or his referring, you know, partners, depending on what their interests are, always trying to think about how we could add value.
Steve Fretzin [22:14]
Well, I think the future with AI, and there’s already postalized, was on my show not that long ago, and they’ve got a software where AI works to essentially not only dig through the entire internet to find articles and information and new things that are popping up for your clients and your network, but also crafting them the emails where it’s all like, ready to go and you just hit edit, or you hit send, and so, like, let’s say Yeah, somebody gets promoted to equity partner. Someone wins Super Lawyer, someone, it’s their birthday, maybe it’s they’re into fishing, and they get there’s a new world record for bass, and so that would pop up, and it would just be literally an email that shows up, and you just hit, yep, send that out to that person. Send that out to that person. So, I mean, that’s the future of how we keep in touch, I think. And it’s going to be really sophisticated, really fast.
Rafi Arbel [22:59]
That’s amazing. Do you use postalize?
Steve Fretzin [23:02]
I do not. I think they’re primarily focused on, like, mid market firms and all that. Jody was on the show. He was great. And again, I think there’s so many AI tools coming out right now, and I’m always curious to know which ones are still going to be relevant in six months or a year, because, like, what you come up with now for AI, and what comes out in six months are going to be, I think, very, very different.
Rafi Arbel [23:25]
Vastly different, right? Yeah, that’s a great tool. I’m going to check it out.
Steve Fretzin [23:30]
Yeah. So I think what we’re getting to is the idea that we need to leverage digital marketing, social media, as a part of how we’re developing relationships, maintaining relationships. Anything else you’d want to add in particular, maybe about LinkedIn?
Rafi Arbel [23:44]
Well, you know, I think that those meetings that you have with prospective refers can also guide your social media. So I just came back from Ken hardison’s pilma, and there is a great law firm marketer. He does YouTube marketing, and he creates really great long form content, and he only creates four videos a month for YouTube, and then he looks at the analytics, and YouTube has really detailed analytics about what’s watched and where they stop, and you gain huge insights on that. And based on those analytics, he cuts up his long form content into social media content. So you know, that’s a technique, but the strategy can really evolve from who your prospective refers are and who your prospective clients are and what their needs are. That’s really the messaging that drives the videos, that drives the social media, and it’s all part of one system of staying in touch with prospective clients and prospective refers.
Steve Fretzin [24:43]
Yeah, some people don’t even know this, and this is kind of basic for LinkedIn, but if you go to like, let’s say you meet with someone new that you met at a networking event, and you go on their LinkedIn after the fact, and you say, this is someone I want to keep in touch with. There’s a little bell on their profile. You can click that then. Shows you their posts when they post. Do you have more, a more greater opportunity to see their stuff when they post? Oh, I didn’t know that. Oh, yeah. And then the idea that you should be commenting and sharing other people’s posts, not all of them, but if there’s one that’s really good and you want to make an impact on a relationship, you know for you to just share their post with some kind words and say, This is my new friend Rafi, and he posted this amazing thing about how lawyers can do better with their relationships in digital you should, everybody should check it out now. It’s I’m putting it out to my 20,000 you know network, and whether that comes back to you or it doesn’t really matter, it’s really more about the fact that I’m stepping up and trying to add value in your world and develop a stronger relationship in the process.
Rafi Arbel [25:44]
And I think LinkedIn sees that activity, and I think they reward you for that, for being an active member, for liking and engaging. And I learned that really from you, and you’re really doing those people a huge favor, because when you like and engage with their content, it shows up on their network of people. And yeah, you really showed me the way on LinkedIn. That was those were great suggestions.
Steve Fretzin [26:03]
Well, and everybody can check out. If you go to my LinkedIn profile and go down a feature, there’s a tutorial I do on LinkedIn. It’s about 17 minutes. I think it’s super helpful just to kind of break it down into the nuts and bolts of how to set it up and use it and not waste a lot of time and get great value. So check that out. Everybody on my LinkedIn profile Rafi. Let’s wrap up with our new ish segment called rafi’s Big mistake. What’s a big mistake you made in your career or in life that you had and that then how you fixed it and how you resolved it.
Rafi Arbel [26:31]
So I think really, the hardest time I’ve had at market, JD, was when a key employee left that was responsible for so many central functions in the company, and I didn’t have SOPs, and I didn’t have standard operating procedures, and I didn’t have the right team around that person who could assume those roles. The other part that made this so difficult is we didn’t have really many meetings. We had some individual one on one meetings, but really not enough to spread the knowledge, and that was an extremely painful time in my career. From that, I learned to have all of our standard operating procedures documented, and every day at market. JD, we have a three hour meeting, one for SEO, one for Pay Per Click, one for websites, one for Admin, one for sales and marketing, and each one of these has tasks assigned to individuals on the team, and we problem solve together on these calls. And that has just so radically changed the culture and the productivity of market. JD, that, but it wouldn’t have happened if that key employee didn’t leave. And so we I didn’t know if I was going to continue. I almost thought we would have to fold now as a result of that, even if somebody were to leave, all of our team members know what everybody else does, and everybody’s responsibilities are broken down into tasks that we put into clickup, and now we’re going through and we’re creating a sweet process which explains how to do every task. So when you go through our list of tasks, everyone will have a little link into an explainer video, or explainer series of steps that explains how you do these things.
Steve Fretzin [28:17]
Yeah. Wow. What a great comeback, because I know how difficult and just earth shattering it can be when a key employee leaves and you’re not prepared for it, and it’s one of the reasons I don’t have any employees, right? Nobody’s gonna leave me, and I just have to keep keep my marriage strong. No one’s leaving me. Now my son’s leaving me. He’s going to Colorado State in the fall, and I’m thrilled about it. He can leave anytime he wants. He could leave now he got that’s okay. We’re ready, ready to be empty nesters. Thank you. Thank you. All right, you heard it first, everybody. All right. So let’s take a moment thank our wonderful sponsors. Of course, we’ve got the great pi pimcon conference coming up in October. We want to check that out and and then also want to just shout out to Sonia over at the law her podcast. Everybody can check that out. Rafi. People want to learn more about market. JD, and you and they want to talk to you about your services. What are the best digits?
Rafi Arbel [29:07]
You can call me anytime, 312-970-9353, you want to learn more about market. JD, it’s market. JD, like Jack daniels.com or you can send me an email at Rafi. Rafi at marketJd.com.
Steve Fretzin [29:20]
All right, very, very good. And thanks for being on the show, man, sharing your wisdom, and for playing along with my stupid game that I came up with. I think, by the way, it would be very helpful to the folks listening who wonder, what am I going to do to stay in touch and keep relationships moving forward? And again, it’s hard when you don’t have anything produced or built or ways to connect others. So I think you have to start thinking about some systems to add value and to connect and stay connected with people. So great stuff all around Rafi.
Rafi Arbel [29:48]
Likewise, thanks for having me, and I look forward to having you on my podcast.
Steve Fretzin [29:52]
Yeah, I’d love to be on your podcast. That’s always a pleasure as well. Hey everybody, thank you for hanging out with Rafi for 30 minutes and and just, you know, get. And working on your business, not in your business, take care. Everybody. Be safe, be well. We will talk again soon.
Narrator [30:09]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website. Fredson.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.