Building Success with Compassion: Givelle Lamano on Law, Leadership, and Lasting Impact

[00:00:00.00] – Viktoria Altman
Hey, guys. Welcome to the Law Firm Accelerator. Today with me, I have, I hope I’m pronouncing this correctly, Givelle Lamano.

[00:00:07.18] – Givelle Lamano
Givelle.

[00:00:08.20] – Viktoria Altman
I’m sorry. You just told me, and I have the worst memory. Givelle Lamano. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Givelle is a criminal attorney located in sunny California. Welcome to the show. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, Givelle?

[00:00:28.06] – Givelle Lamano
Sure. On a personal level, I am a criminal defense attorney in the Bay Area, California. We help people who have been accused of crimes. On a personal level, I am in this era right now, as you and I were discussing before we went on record of In this era, I’m just believing peace of mind is priceless and really trying to stay present in the moment right now, because I think for most lawyers, going to law school is just like going to war. You can’t undo the logical and the training that you’ve learned. I’m trying really hard to listen more to my heart and my spirit and my body more than nurturing the intellectual side that us attorneys are really good at. That’s me in a nutshell.

[00:01:15.14] – Viktoria Altman
I love it. Well, I have lawyer clients, lawyer friends who really struggle with staying present because as an attorney, you just get pulled into so many directions. Now, do you, many Is your practice on this philosophy or staying present in the moment a calm? Is this how you got started with your practice?

[00:01:39.16] – Givelle Lamano
It’s definitely not how I got started with the practice. That’s a different approach. But we’ve been in business for 12 years now, and our firm observes a four-day work week. We do it still not necessarily being present as one of our company values, but effectively Efficiency and using technology as a tool is one of our values. In other words, try to automate as much as we can so that we can also provide the other values, which is our North Star, of compassion and connection to our clients on top of delivering the results because we do have a 98% success rate and serve over a thousand clients. Do we try to instill presence in the firm? No, I think that’s a personal journey. Some people want to hustle and some people want to… You’re from New York, the New York minute, you can get a lot done in every second counts. For me, when I say every second counts, that means just pausing and breathing, but I don’t instill that on my team. I try to support them by giving them a four-day work week and letting them get paid full-time. I think that employees essentially want four things.

[00:02:55.06] – Givelle Lamano
They want autonomy, which is me not telling them how they should live their it’s to be present or hustle. They want to like the people they work with, and that means me just staying out of their way and letting them do what they’re really good at. Everybody that works for me is, I think, in many ways smarter than me. They want fair pay and they want some type of growth. So if they want to be present and meditate with me, they can join, but I’m not instilling it on them. And then as far as how I got started, I got started basically out of grit and resilience. I didn’t go to a top-tier law school that I was waitlisted for, and I graduated at the bottom 2% of my class. So when I graduated, I really wasn’t the best of the best. I did what a lot of people did, which is just try to find any work out there. I ended up doing contract work for a bunch of different attorneys, many of them being criminal defense, just being able to go to court for them and continue appearances. I mean, I was hungry in comparison to how I am now where I’m saying no to everything.

[00:04:11.29] – Givelle Lamano
But back then, if an attorney said, Drive three hours for me, round trip, so you can say on the record, I’d like to continue this. I did it without any pay, just so I can say I had some experience. Yeah, that’s how I got started in criminal defense through other criminal defense attorneys that were willing to give me a shot and let me drive three hours back and forth for them for free. And I didn’t even have a car.

[00:04:34.20] – Viktoria Altman
So how did you get around? Bicycle? Or did you rent a car?

[00:04:42.17] – Givelle Lamano
I didn’t even have money to rent a car. I mean, I barely had $50 in my bank account and had to go to Ross to buy a pair of black pants and a black jacket that I remember trying to hem myself, and I cut too short. So I looked really dumb in court. But how How I figured it out is, I think that once you make a decision, the universe helps you figure it out. So if somebody said, Can you appear for me next week? I’m like, I have a week to figure out how I’m going to get a car, even though I only have $40 in my account. There’s also the power of people in business. People want to help other people. I remember a mentor said to me, If you want to get into criminal defense, just go to the criminal courthouse and watch people and approach them and tell them what you liked about that. It’s like, what’s that book? How to Influence Friends and- How to Win Friends and Influence People. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, people love hearing their names. People love talking about themselves. So if you’re genuinely and truly interested in people and how they do things, people will appreciate that and will want to help you out.

[00:05:53.29] – Givelle Lamano
So I had a couple of options for people to loan me their car as long as I filled it up and watched it, which they didn’t ask for, but I did anyway.

[00:06:02.23] – Viktoria Altman
I love it. So, Givelle, I have to tell you that my research team is very good. This is one of the first times that I had to email them back and I had to say, Please double check your facts, because I saw that they told me you have a 98% success rate, and I was like, Are you sure? Because that sounds crazy high. You have a 98% success rate. They confirmed. I would like for everybody to know, what is your secret? How do you keep your success rate so high?

[00:06:34.11] – Givelle Lamano
Well, first of all, I think that there are a lot of our competitors who also have a 98% success rate and probably even have a 99% success rate. I think the difference in that is that a lot of people, as far as business owners and lawyers we know that there are some great lawyers out there who don’t have the best business acumen. What I mean by that is they’re so great in that they’re not busy calculating their success rate. I do want to give credit to where it’s due to a lot of my competitors and to a lot of my mentors and people who have been practicing longer than I have. They probably have a 90% or 99% success rate, too. They just haven’t measured it. Let’s start there. As far as our success rate is concerned, a lot of it has to do with geographically, the areas that we’re in. I was telling my husband earlier, I’m like, If you’re in Louisiana or if you’re in an area that doesn’t have as many resources judicially, the scales of justice are imbalanced. I think in the United States, the more money you have, the more freedom you have, especially when it comes to the legal system.

[00:07:44.29] – Givelle Lamano
We have to recognize that we’re not public defenders. We’re not the gladiators of the courtroom who are day in and day out representing the public and people who are indigent and don’t have money. We’re representing people with financial resources. When you have financial resources, you can hire experts and investigators who help us with our success rate. I also have to give credit to our clients who have the resources for that. The other thing is with the geography, we practice in the Bay Area where a lot of the misdemeanor cases, for example, low-level offenses, even though by law, the maximum amount of jail time is one year, we know that in actual practice, that you get credit for two days when you serve one day in jail. So one year is actually six months. We know that in certain counties, if it’s your first offense, you’ve never been arrested, there was no victims, there were no vulnerable parties, and you meet all these other criteria. But the likelihood of you going to jail is really low unless you commit another crime. It’s not like we have a 98 100% success rate of things that are hard, especially when you consider misdemeanor cases.

[00:08:51.24] – Givelle Lamano
But it is something that is, what’s the word I’m looking for? I don’t want to say honorable, but it is something that is impressive when you’re looking at felony cases where the minimum is 16 months in prison up to life without the possibility of parole. That is impressive when you look at felony cases. We have done more felony cases in the past five years, but the 98% success rate is data from the past twelve years. That’s the summary.

[00:09:24.23] – Viktoria Altman
What’s the reason for your success in the federal cases?

[00:09:29.15] – Givelle Lamano
Well, it’s not federal cases. You mean the felony cases?

[00:09:31.25] – Viktoria Altman
Sorry, the felony case.

[00:09:34.06] – Givelle Lamano
Well, I would have to say that it’s a mixture of things. One is the attorneys that do the work. It’s not me that does a lot of the work in our firm. It’s attorneys that have been practicing longer than me, that have more experience than me, that have worked as district attorneys that had their own practices before me. It’s the other attorneys, and I can’t answer to how they get a high success rate for them. That’s something that they would have to answer Because it’s their skill set. Our law firm does have a 150-point inspection list, which means we don’t shoot from the hip. We’re very strategic in making sure that we are crossing all of our T’s and dotting all of our I’s. I think the other thing about a 98% success rate is a lot of times it’s not in the hands of the jury. In other words, most cases don’t go to trial for two reasons. Well, many reasons, but two that I strongly believe. One is that people They don’t have the financial resources for trial when they hire private counsel. Two, a good attorney will negotiate a deal so that you don’t have to roll the dice and go to trial where it’s left in the hands of the jury.

[00:10:42.29] – Givelle Lamano
If you have a 98% success rate on pure jury trials, kudos to you. I bow down to that and I ask you what you did to do that because people spend a lot of money on focus groups and how to select a jury and what the jury is thinking and what happens behind closed doors. I mean, yeah, we have a 98% success rate, but I think the pudding is in the fact that we actually have the time to measure that and know how many clients we have.

[00:11:12.05] – Viktoria Altman
I love that you’re giving credit to all your folks. In my experience, the best business owners are the ones who go, Everybody around me is smarter than me, and they’re better at a lot of things. But as a business owner, it sounds like you’ve done a lot of things right. You’ve hired good people, you have good standards and procedures. How did you go from a small law firm that you opened and you basically didn’t really have that much of a background rate to running this very successful firm with several defense lawyers who are apparently great lawyers?

[00:11:49.21] – Givelle Lamano
I know that a majority of your audience are attorneys from different walks of life, whether they’re new in practice under five years or whether they’re experienced and going into retirement. I think that all solo practitioners or owners of mid or even large law firms can agree that being an entrepreneur is not for the faint-hearted. In other words, there’s a lot of great attorneys out there that just wouldn’t be a good fit for being a business owner, because in every business, you have to deal with people, strategy, cash, and execution, and you’re the wild card as the owner. Some people are really good at just writing or arguing law, and they want to do that, and they don’t want to think about how to bring in business. For me, personally, I started working at a very young age, at 14. I went to continuation schools, which is basically the high schools where people who get pregnant at an early young age or end up having a criminal record go to. I grew up on the streets, and that leads me to Malcolm Gladwell, a famous author who talks about the 10,000 Hours in order to be an expert at something.

[00:13:02.26] – Givelle Lamano
Do I have 10,000 hours of practicing law? Yes, probably more than that. But I’m pretty sure I have about 500,000 hours, if not a million hours of practicing customer service because I’ve had over 45 jobs in my life. I’ve learned from a very early age the importance of service, not just to customers, but to others coming from a Filipino background. To me, it lights up my heart to think about how I can be of service to others. That’s why I was able to grow my firm, because that was my focus versus understanding legislative intent.

[00:13:43.06] – Viktoria Altman
Got it. That’s an interesting It’s an interesting way to approach business. Certainly, I’ve also read a few books on the topic of if you’re looking to serve and you’re looking to do the right thing and you have a specific niche you’re targeting, then that works really well.

[00:13:59.21] – Givelle Lamano
I’m speaking- Victoria, let me also say, because I have to give credit where credit’s due again, business coaching. If you want to start a business, get a business coach, because if you want to work out and be a gym rat, get a trainer. If you want to be a cook, go to a cooking class. I didn’t know how to freaking run a business. I thought every dollar that came in was mine. No, now I know 33% goes to the government, 33% goes to overhead, and 33% goes to me, and then that gets tacked again.

[00:14:27.26] – Viktoria Altman
If you’re lucky, 33% goes to the government. So business coaching. Yes, that’s a great tip because quite a few people I speak with, the most successful people, have a great business I’m going to say this, Coach. When it comes to growing your firm, this is a podcast about marketing. Let’s talk about marketing. What marketing have you done that’s worked out really well for you? What have your best ROI been What has worked and what’s been the best ROI?

[00:15:04.08] – Givelle Lamano
The best ROI is word of mouth, straight up, because it costs your time, which is oftentimes more valuable than money, but the conversion rate for a word of mouth referral is so high. And so I think what really works is newsletters. And I’m not talking about boring newsletters, like fresh off the press with what’s going on in law. Nobody cares about that, really. I mean, most people… I don’t want to say nobody cares about that. A lot of people care about that. But most people that are going to be referring business to you, whether it’s other lawyers or people that are not in the legal field, generally they’re at work from 9:00 to 5:00 or working from home at their leisure. But every Monday and Wednesday at 10:00 AM and at 2:00 PM, they’re just looking at the clock for the most part, thinking, What am I going to have for dinner? What’s What’s going to be for lunch? At 10:00 AM, they’re like, What’s for lunch? At 3:00 PM, they’re like, What am I going to be done with work? And what’s for dinner? And what am I going to do? And then boom, they get a newsletter from you.

[00:16:09.25] – Givelle Lamano
They don’t want to read your newsletter about how great you are and new laws and boring stuff. They want to interesting thing that’s making interesting things that’s making time go by faster. So top five mistakes that people have made. People love to see people fail more than they love to see people succeed. So send out a newsletter to everybody and give them information that they could appreciate that’s going to make their day brighter or go by faster while also sprinkling it in with information about you personally because I can tell you, I have, I don’t know, probably like 3,000 friends on Facebook, a thousand of them attorneys. I probably don’t know what 800 of them do, those attorneys, because I don’t know. People know that I keep people out of jail. I’m a criminal lawyer that keeps people out of jail. Keep it simple. That’s my elevator pitch. But when you’re top of mind and visible to and you’re saying, Hey, I’m Givelle. I’m a criminal lawyer. I keep people out of jail. Here’s a newsletter with information that you’re probably going to click on or not. I’m just that word of mouth. People are going to remember that you’re a criminal lawyer.

[00:17:13.29] – Givelle Lamano
So newsletter Newspons, interesting ones, short ones. Don’t spend a lot of time on it, even if there’s just two blocks that says, What’s been going on with us? I’ll post pictures of what my husband and I cooked recently and how bad it was. People will respond and say, Oh, God, I know this is the best way I make chicken. Newsletters have the best worth ROI for word of mouth for me, only if you have a larger network. If you don’t have a larger network, then join BNI, Provisors, networking groups, referral groups, that type of thing, because word of mouth is high. Now, what has worked for me is omnichannel marketing. I joined a group called Young Entrepreneur Council, YEC, along with other groups like entrepreneur organization and other business coach groups. But I remember at the YEC group, I posted something that said, I’ve been with the same SEO company for eight years, and he’s a surfer who’s great, but he can’t give me the attention that I want. And then I went with a large agency, and it was like Goldilocks and the three little bears. One was too cold, one was too hot.

[00:18:24.14] – Givelle Lamano
How am I trying to find the SEO company that’s just right? And oh, my God, all these people started, these are people who have CEOs of their businesses, and I was humbled. So many people said omnichannel marketing. I thought, what’s omnichannel marketing? At least for attorneys, Omnichannel marketing is you’re everywhere. You’re on all the ways that people find you. People don’t look for a criminal defense attorney on Facebook. People look for a criminal defense attorney through Google or through somebody they know. My goal is to show at the top of those places. So what’s worked is omnichannel marketing, best return of investment, word of mouth. But keep in mind that this is all through hardship of ups and downs and trying to figure it out. My advice is don’t do something and think it’s going to work. At some point, the golden goose is going to stop laying eggs. You’re going to have to make a lot of pivots. And that’s why I said entrepreneurship is not for the faint-hearted. You’re going to have to stay on top of things all the time. That means if it can’t be measured, it can’t be improved. You got to measure your ROI.

[00:19:34.29] – Givelle Lamano
You got to measure all the things that I hated doing, but now I do.

[00:19:39.27] – Viktoria Altman
Love it. There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, you might be one of the first criminal lawyers I’ve spoken to who relies on newsletters. That is an unusual strategy, and I would love to learn more about it. You are not emailing potential clients. You’re emailing potential sources of referral, correct? You’re emailing other I’m emailing my personal list that I’ve curated over the course of how many years.

[00:20:11.18] – Givelle Lamano
I’ve been an attorney for almost 13 years, so these are all the people that I’ve interacted with, whether they’re former clients that are on that list, current clients that are on that list, attorneys that I’ve met through networking. But a majority of that, I would say 75% of it, are just people that I’ve met through life. Because Because most people, when they’re looking for an attorney, they’re either going to go to the only attorney they know or they’re going to go online. It’s a majority of different people. But our biggest word of mouth referrals did not come from attorneys. They came from people that we know, family members, friends, friends of friends, friends of family.

[00:20:56.25] – Viktoria Altman
Really?

[00:20:57.11] – Givelle Lamano
That remember us, yeah.

[00:20:59.20] – Viktoria Altman
When you make your emails, talk to me about the things you put in there. You’re clearly not going. The Supreme Court case said XYZ, you’re not doing that. What do you say is making it fun? What are you doing to make it fun?

[00:21:13.20] – Givelle Lamano
I can’t even take credit I don’t know that either, Victoria, because I don’t even write my newsletters anymore. I just.

[00:21:19.14] – Viktoria Altman
But you guide somebody to do it, right? Just like, I don’t demand research, but I’ve created a system for it, and I bet you’ve created a system.

[00:21:28.10] – Givelle Lamano
Well, so I talked about Monday Today and Wednesday, 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, but I learned from a business coach. Another good strategy is the subject line of the newsletter. Don’t make it June 2024 newsletter. Who cares? If Bank of America is sending you a newsletter, are you going to open it up if it says Bank of America, a statement of facts? If you send it with a question or with something more informal, Have you this question mark smiley emoji, you’re more likely to open it, and then you can decide from when you open it, whether you want to continue reading it. So I think the subject line of the email is really important. Questions often have a high open rate. Things with emojis have a high open rate but don’t make it spammy. Guess what? Question mark smiley face. If that’s coming from Bank of America, I’m not going to open it because I’m like, Oh, God, spam. I don’t want to get… But if it’s coming from Givelle Lomano, the girl that you see on Facebook who’s posting about the bad chicken that she tried to put the other day, you’re going to be like, What does this funny girl have to say today?

[00:22:37.20] – Givelle Lamano
And click on it. So questions. Another thing is value. We used to put a calendar of events of all the places that we’d be so that people had an idea of the type of work that we do. We don’t do that anymore because we try to keep it short now. But hyperlinks are also important because you We’re not going to measure click rates. I find that a lot of people will watch YouTube video links because they want to pass time. They’ll click on our link tree to see where they can follow us on socials. Humor. People love humor, but keep it wholesome, keep it professional. Keep up with the times. Right now, there’s people on social media saying, very demure, very mindful. Everybody wants to know what’s going on with Pup Daddy, with Keep it current.

[00:23:32.11] – Viktoria Altman
What’s in the newsletter?

[00:23:36.09] – Givelle Lamano
Let’s see. Let me look at what was in this yesterday’s newsletter. We also don’t send out a lot of newsletters, once every three to four weeks. Probably that’s smart.

[00:23:47.12] – Viktoria Altman
Because I feel like if you send them out too much, people are going to start unsubscribing.

[00:23:52.02] – Givelle Lamano
Yeah, exactly. In our last newsletter, the tagline was, How good does it feel to celebrate? I think the word celebrate probably is like, Is she pregnant? Is she getting married? We always want to see what people are celebrating so that we can compare ourselves because comparison is the biggest deep of joy, and we want to take away our joy and compare ourselves. Then the first block was pictures of our retreat. It’s like you’re on Facebook, you’re just seeing pictures of people. Then I put snacks from Honduras, where our office manager lives. She brought us snacks, and people love to see food-related stuff. Then we had another big block that said that we were celebrating and honoring our managing attorney who’s had 10 years of service with our firm. I think a lot of people who have worked with her want to congratulate her because 10 years is a long time to work in a place. Then we put some job opportunities for people who are looking for work that is related to the type of work that we do. Then we put a Save the Date for a virtual wealth summit that I’m speaking at. Then we put a video of a real client testimonial.

[00:25:03.04] – Givelle Lamano
It says, Real Clients, Real Testimonials. It’s like a 30 or 45 second video of something that our client said. That actually got a lot of clicks from other attorneys. I think because they were looking at the real clients, real testimonials and thinking, Oh, I know I should get reviews, but I haven’t thought about getting videos. Let me see what this one says. Again, compare. Yeah, so that’s what it says.

[00:25:28.11] – Viktoria Altman
Very smart. Very good. Yeah, that’s an excellent strategy. I really appreciate you sharing that, Givelle.

[00:25:34.16] – Givelle Lamano
Yeah, of course. Thank you, Victoria.

[00:25:36.25] – Viktoria Altman
All right. Talk to me about what else. Now, I see you’ve done some work on your website. Is there a specific strategy? Do you do this in-house? Do you have an SEO agency? How does it work for you?

[00:25:53.17] – Givelle Lamano
Yeah, definitely not in-house. I feel like all the questions that you’re asking about how I’m doing things back to somebody else who has done it. So I think the theme of this podcast is to hire smarter people.

[00:26:06.10] – Viktoria Altman
That’s the theme of my entire life, though. Everybody who works for me is smarter than me.

[00:26:11.20] – Givelle Lamano
When I first started, I think I used Squarespace to create a website, and it was like, I looked like a freaking flight attendant on a website saying, Welcome to Cafe Pacific. Can I get you water? It was just so Mickey Mouse. Now, my website is a result of different vendors. One, it has feedback from my SEO guy for search engine optimization. I thought I’d been doing this for so long and I still don’t remember it, like the H1 tag, all that stuff. My SEO guy is the ultimate one who approves it because we wanted to show up on the first page of Google. Now, we have to also recognize that this is because my website is not a landing page. There are a lot of people who just need a landing page because they get mostly word-of-mouth referrals, and the goal of their website is not to convert leads. The goal of my website is to inform people about us and to nurture them before they call us. And for them to convert as leads when they call us. There are a lot of things on my website that do that, but I’ll get into it in a second.

[00:27:20.10] – Givelle Lamano
But my SEO guy approves it. We also have the name of the… It’s called State Creative. They manage our website as far as monitoring it for any bugs. They also add information on there whenever we have a new blog and want to change things. We also had a designer look at it so that it’s a lot of information, but it’s still user-friendly and the user experience is seamless. There are a lot of different people who contribute to the overall website, but it’s ultimately my decision of how the end product looks. And I think this has to do more with trusting yourself. And I can totally see an attorney who’s super smart and logical going, This is incorrect and this is that. Think of it from a user perspective. If you’re a family lawyer and you’re serving divorce clients or custody issues, I like to do what’s called evil brainstorming. What is the worst thing that people will say about hiring a lawyer? I hate going to the dealership to buy a car. Why? Because everybody’s sleazy, everybody Everybody wants to just take my money. Everybody wants to upsell me. I hate going to car dealerships.

[00:28:50.17] – Givelle Lamano
So let’s do evil brainstorming, and let’s talk about what those pain points are and how to address them early on in your marketing. So For my website, I’ve had to make a lot of pivots I launched a new site and then did some A/B testing and then changed some things here and there based on heat maps and where you can see people are clicking, how long they’re on your page for. Does that answer your question?

[00:29:16.21] – Viktoria Altman
Sort of, yeah. There are a couple of interesting things there. You have an unusual set-up. Most people, when they design a website, generally, it’s done by one of two entities. It is done by a designer who is a very visual person all about the pretty, or it’s done by an SEO agency who tries to still make it pretty, but build it the right way from the ground up. Having multiple agencies There are agencies or contractors in there is unusual. I don’t know what the situation is. You may be doing extra work there if you’re having multiple people do it. It sounds like there’s a lot of coordination going on. Generally speaking, if you have a good agency, they should be able to handle the ads, the website, and the SEO. Social media, generally, it’s a whole different subset. I wouldn’t recommend having one agency handle social media and do SEO because usually if they’re handling both, then… Because they’re so different, they’re not generally going to do the best job. But overall, if it’s working for you, then that’s what matters. We have a saying in SEO, If a thing breaks, don’t fix it. I think that also you have an interesting approach to management.

[00:30:44.15] – Viktoria Altman
It sounds like you’re really supervising all the marketing, you’re supervising the attorneys, and you do a lot of boss-level work, whereas a lot of folks who are listening are probably doing lawyer-level work. How do you balance the two? How do you balance the management versus the lawyering?

[00:31:02.28] – Givelle Lamano
Well, first off, I don’t supervise any of the attorneys. Our managing attorney does that. The marketing, I don’t want to say I manage. I want to say I consult because they’re all vendors. I have to say that I disagree that an ad agency can be able to do the ads, the website, and the SEOs. That’s just for me getting burned by a bunch of different agencies that I’ve worked with in the past. The thing is, for me personally, you have to understand that my business is a small boutique law firm. We’re not a large or even mid-size firm. For me personally, boutique services work for the boutique offerings that we have. In my experience with large agencies, you have too many cooks in the kitchen, and you have a bunch of people on the factory line doing all sorts of things. I can’t even imagine. I can’t even begin to tell you how many unnecessary meetings I’ve had with so many different parties and how much turnover there is with all the different people that are coming in and like, Now this is your new account manager, and also this and also that, and how long it takes for things to get done.

[00:32:09.02] – Givelle Lamano
So yes, you can hire an agency if that makes sense for the type of firm that you have. For me, as a boutique law firm, it all boils down to the user experience for me. And we’ve identified who our four core value clients are and what their pain points are and what they need. And we configure our website website based on that. In other words, marketing and sales to me is all about love. Let’s show them the love that they want because most people that contact us, they’ve already seen our YouTube videos or our Yelp page and our AVO reviews, and they’ve seen everything. But now when they call us and they’re like, Oh, you charge a $250 consultation fee when none of your competitors don’t, they know the value in it based on our marketing, including our homepage and our website, which basically He says, We’re here to just give you information to let you figure out if it’s a good fit. And there’s a theme with all of our branding, and that is that we really care, and we get the job done. So when it comes to criminal law, you want somebody who is going to think about your case in the middle of the night.

[00:33:17.08] – Givelle Lamano
It’s not me who’s doing it. It’s the attorneys who are doing it because they’re the ones doing the work. I agree with you. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. That’s why I went back with my SEO guy that I was working with for eight years after leaving him for three years, because ultimately, he was good at what he did with his SEO for my specific niche, for my specific geographical area. But that’s all he does, SEO. The design and the management and all that other stuff, it’s done by others. And yes, I manage and consult with them, but it doesn’t take up a lot of time because it’s on autopilot. And also we’re not an art and law firm. We’re small, we’re boutique. I’m not trying to make $10 million. I’m happy with the four-day work.

[00:34:01.25] – Viktoria Altman
Not that you would mind, right? When you talk about large agencies, what happens with a big agency is, generally speaking, they have big clients and they have small clients. As a small client, unless you have a big spend, chances are you’re going to get lost. I’d probably know the agency you’re referring to, just based on your description, there are three or four that fit that profile. The other thing that happens is when you have a truly great SEO, in general, they will be able to make 10 times the amount of money on their own that they will with an agency because they generally will have their own agency. Fco is my expertise, and There’s no agency that could afford to hire me. You certainly are correct in the state that if you went with a big agency, chances are, unless you had a very big spend, you will not have the best results you really want. When it comes to agencies, there are different sizes of agencies. There are small agencies, large agencies, and medium agencies. As a lawyer, you should generally seek the agency that you are. If you’re a small law firm, you should go for a small agency.

[00:35:15.15] – Viktoria Altman
If you’re a medium law firm, you should go for a medium agency because that’s when you get to be the big fish in the big fund. I wouldn’t even recommend anybody to go to a big agency, to be honest. Because like you said, there’s the turnover so high. Even with the big guys, no matter how much you spend, you may get lost. Something to keep in mind. Now, when you went with this big agency when you made that decision, were there any red flags in hindsight that you say, You know what? Maybe I would have known had I seen this before, and something you could share with our listeners.

[00:35:49.15] – Givelle Lamano
Yeah, give me one second, to let this down. A few things before I address the red flags, my advice to So looking at your marketing spend and strategy and approach is to work backward. It took me a while to figure out that we don’t have a lead problem. We have a conversion problem. So you can throw money at the universe and try to get your phones to ring. But if you have an intake issue, if you have a conversion issue in-house, it doesn’t matter. You can spend all the money in the world on the best therapist to help your marriage. But if you’re with a jerk, it’s not going to matter unless that jerk wants to work it out. So I think what I like to say is to work backward. What I mean by work backward is there are smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable results, or relevant time-based goals that you can work backward from. And for me, when I looked at my goals, I was very clear that what I want back is my time. I wake up when I’m rested, and I work four hours a day, four days a week. And yeah, those four hours, four days, I It’s intense.

[00:37:00.29] – Givelle Lamano
I’m doing all the stuff, not managing the firm as far as the legal stuff, but all the things. So work backward and ask yourself, what type of life do you want? Because if you want to go hard, and if you want to grow, and if you want to go ham, yeah, go, do it. Hire slow, fire fast, figure it out. But if you’re in a season of life where you’re like, I just need to make X amount of dollars with X amount of profit margin, and I just want to go fishing, then that’s another thing. Now, some of the red flags for me is in an agency, my experience is almost every agency is like, Oh, you got to sign these long-term contracts. I’m just like, Okay, I get it. But if you’re doing good work, I’ll work with you for eight years. You don’t need to lock me into a contract. I think a three-month contract is ideal. But I signed an 18-month contract, and in the third month, they immensely screwed up. And what they did was they gave me the remaining 18 months for free. I took it because I was like, Oh, I’m saving $10,000 a month.

[00:38:04.26] – Givelle Lamano
That’s $180,000, even though they lost me $100,000. I was like, Let me do it. But you get what you pay for. And so looking back in hindsight, I would have just said, You know what? Up the three-month mark, thank you, but no, thank you. You guys have an insurance policy, and you guys need to go to your insurance policy to get me back the money that I lost as a result of your negligence. And no, I’ll see you in court. I’m not going to give you the rest of the 18 months just because you’re offering it for free, because it just didn’t make sense. So a red flag for me is the contract. Attorneys know that contracts are meant to be broken. So if somebody says you have to sign up for 18 months, consider why. I mean, I get it. Some agencies are like, Look, we know sophisticated marketers know SEO is a long haul game. Sophisticated marketers know that you have to pay to play with PPC and LSA. Sophisticated marketers know that it’s all sorts of things. But if you’re going to work with an agency, ask yourself, who’s the owner of that agency?
Are they the wild card? What are their values? Because you can take years to build a good reputation and minutes to ruin it. And if that person has done something shady, then are they really going to root for you as a client? So red flags are long-term contracts. Another red flag, I hate this. It’s like, okay, you want to sign up with our agency? We got to read your whole website, and it’s going to be an additional $5,000. But for you, we’ll give it for a discount and only do it at 2,500. And it’s going to take a month. And also when you leave, that website is ours. It’s like, no, that website is yours. And if you want to create a whole new mini website, go ahead. But no, this is my website. So that’s another red flag. Also, if you’re a good judge of character, you can just read between the lines. You can tell when someone has integrity and if they’re bullshit and if they’re not. I just met with a vendor. I just met with a vendor today, and my first question was, what are your unique selling propositions and your competitive advantages?

[00:40:09.08] – Givelle Lamano
And he gave me one. But then after that, I was like, well, what are your other ones? And he’s like, Well, I think the question is, what do you need? And I was like, Dude, don’t try to sell me a pen. Don’t sell me your- He’s selling a pen.

[00:40:23.03] – Viktoria Altman
He’s selling a pen. I’m like, Just be…

[00:40:27.08] – Givelle Lamano
If he had honestly said, if he Honestly said, Jamal, no, it’s really… Or most people don’t ask us what our competitive advantage is and what makes us the opposite of a commodity. But we have one and it’s X. And now that I think about it, we should really think about what that is. So thank you for saying that. Then I go, Look at this guy with integrity. I want to work with him. Instead of, Don’t try to sell me a pen, bro.

[00:40:52.28] – Viktoria Altman
I love it. A couple of things there. A long-term contract is always, always, always a red flag. In fact, in my agency, I don’t have any contract, not for even two months. The reason why is because number one, I know that lawyers aren’t going to stick with the contract unless they want to, and two, more importantly, if you don’t want to be with me, then you don’t have to be with me. But we have a weekly list, so it’s never been an issue. I am very anti-contract. If you’re going to do the right thing, that’s all the contract you need. That’s all the contract you need. Website redesign I have to disagree with you a little bit there. A lot of times as an attorney, you will look at your website from the viewpoint of, Do I like my website? As a marketing professional, I can look at a website and I can say, This, this, this, this, and this. While it’s all pretty, I can see conversion issues here, here, here, and here, and here. Just by glancing at a website. Sometimes you can fix them, and sometimes cheaper and faster to take the site and just redesign it with the conversion implemented.

[00:42:07.11] – Viktoria Altman
Sometimes it’s easier to make something from scratch than it is to fix the things that are broken, and it’ll actually cost less. That really just depends on the site, and it depends on a lot of other factors. But certainly, if you are being forced to redesign and you have a very high-converting website, then that’s a red flag. If you track and you convert it to Google Analytics and you have a 15% conversion rate and somebody’s like, Let’s redesign, then that could certainly be a red flag. The owner thing is a very good point. Now, one of the reasons I mentioned this before, the reason why I started this podcast is that we have a lot of folks in this industry who may not be delivering what they promise. As a result, the rest of us are tagged as negatives. I’ll I’ll talk to people and they’ll literally freak out. I happen to be somebody who does my very best to always deliver what I promise. It’s nice to have that. I love working with trial lawyers because as soon as they start talking to me, they can read me very quickly. I feel like it’s easier to prove yourself to a trial attorney because they’re good and you guys are good at reading people.

[00:43:27.27] – Viktoria Altman
I really appreciate your wisdom and you’ve shared some amazing tips. Jibril, tell me, what’s next for you, love, from where are you looking to grow or not grow as it was?

[00:43:40.23] – Givelle Lamano
Thank you. Also, I appreciate you, Victoria, saying that you disagree with hate YES people. I’m a recovering people pleaser. That’s why integrity is so important to me. Say what you mean and mean what you say. I’m going to ask you to look at my website and tell me what conversion issues you might see there. I used to be such an I see you. Thank you. You got to tell me. And you know what? It’s crazy because I used to be such a yes, girl. Somebody would be like, Oh, do this, and I would change this. And someone says, Do that. And I would change that. And I was just trusting everybody without verifying anything. And so I think that’s important to note that if you have an in-house marketer, you can leave that to that person knowing that you hired the right person for it. But a lot of it has to do with experience. I, today, after 12 years, know that I have confidence in my decisions when somebody… If you’re going to give me a bite and say, You need to do this, or you need to do that, I have enough confidence based on my experience to say, That’s good information.

[00:44:39.24] – Givelle Lamano
Let me ask other people what they think. If three people say the same thing, then it’s probably right. Everybody has a different opinion. It’s like going to a doctor. You have cancer, someone’s going to say, Sorry, you’re going to die. Another one might say, No, you’re going to take a holistic approach. With any professional service, you have to look at the bigger picture of things. I appreciate you saying that. Then also all the people that I work with, not all. My husband is teaching me to stop saying all and never. A lot of the people that I work with have a waitlist. A lot of the people that I work with, people find them through word of mouth. That is a green flag indicator. It’s like, you didn’t… That’s another thing on weight loss, word of mouth. We talked about in-house marketing and conversion issues. All right. You talked about trial attorneys and how you love working with them because they’re good judges of character. I have a trial down under my belt, but I don’t identify as a trial attorney. I identify as somebody who can just read through BS, and that’s just talking to people.

[00:45:43.18] – Viktoria Altman
That’s the school of hard knocks coming from. We have a very similar background in that sense. When you have to survive, you have to survive.

[00:45:53.00] – Givelle Lamano
It’s like when your mom’s friend comes over, kids can see, I don’t like this person. It’s like that. The reason I’m saying this since we are called, I approach everything from a Filipino part. I’m Filipino. When you work with agencies and you look at the owner, you’re like, I’m not saying that you should give, give, give, and do, do, But really, it’s all about love. Show love. I was on the phone with a potentially new client yesterday, and she was like, I really want to hire you guys. I just don’t have the financial resources, even though I paid the consultation fee. My fridge went out and I’ve had to go grocery shopping three and the landlord won’t fix it. I was like, Where do you live? I was like, I’m going to send over somebody to bring you our extra fridge in the garage. She was like, Oh, my God. I was like, It’s just sitting in the garage. Let me just send it to her. It’ll cost me 100 bucks to send this mother for a fridge that she needs right now. You know what? The lifetime value of that client, not because I was trying to make it a lifetime value of the client, but because I genuinely wanted to help without doing anything, that’s important.

[00:46:56.11] – Givelle Lamano
And you see that all through life. When you want to help people without asking for anything in return, they want to help you back. So just do that. The karma counts. What was that?

[00:47:07.03] – Viktoria Altman
The karma counts.

[00:47:08.18] – Givelle Lamano
Karma counts, yeah. What’s next for me? Well, Personally or professionally or both?

[00:47:17.10] – Viktoria Altman
Well, for your firm, but sure, we could talk personally or professionally, whichever way you want to go.

[00:47:22.17] – Givelle Lamano
Well, for the firm… God, I shouldn’t know the answer to this. Let me look at my board because I don’t remember what I had for dinner last night.

[00:47:34.21] – Viktoria Altman
I’m going to challenge you because if you don’t know if you don’t remember, then it’s probably not that important to you right now.

[00:47:41.10] – Givelle Lamano
I have one thing that’s important to me every day. One thing, and that’s to be gentle with myself. Because coming from the school of hard knocks, I do a lot of scolding to myself. I can be my own best friend and my own worst enemy. I’m like, But did you die? Get it done. Let’s go. Hustle. And you know what? It’s gotten me this life that I have right now, and it’s great. But I’m in my era of soft girl energy. I’m not trying to be demure or I’m trying to be mindful, and I don’t mean soft girl energy. I mean, I’m trying to get into my feminine energy because it’s a very male-energy world. Most of my competitors are older white men, so I had to sink or swim. So my number one goal for myself today is just to practice gentleness with myself and say I did the best that I can. Now, as far as my goals are concerned, I don’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday. I think I had Mexican food because my husband picked it up. But I do have a deck where everybody is clear in our firm, what their key performance indicators are, what our big hairy audacious goal is for the quarter, for the year.

[00:48:42.10] – Givelle Lamano
I’m going to go back to the summary of my board deck right now and tell you what it is. It’s essentially revenue. We have X amount of leads that come in every month. Half of them are qualified. Our conversion rate, our goal is to have 30% qualified leads that come in, and we’ve met that goal. We have the right amount of leads, we have the right of qualified leads. The gap needs to be filled in the paid consultations because we want to have 25% of qualified leads paying for a consultation. I need to do an analysis because we don’t want to be on the phone with people who are using the last $250 in their account to talk to an attorney because it’s not going to be a good fit. But at the same time, we’re not aggressive in our intake. In other words, I think I could be training our office manager and a virtual assistant better, I don’t want to say more aggressively, but to show more love. In other words, we’re quick to just say $250 consultation fee, and they’re like, Oh, that’s a lot. We’re like, We understand. Can we send you some resources that you can watch for free?

[00:49:50.23] – Givelle Lamano
We wish you the best buy. I want to work on better scripting for that so that we can essentially increase our new client conversion list. But our firm has been in a chill. Since I got engaged and got married, like I said, the owner is a wild card. As soon as I got engaged, I was like, Four-day work week. Everybody take as many breaks as you want. The next step for us is to increase our conversion rate of paid consultations. That’s a big one. Then on a personal level, just be more gentle with myself.

[00:50:24.20] – Viktoria Altman
I love it. I think a lot of us women and immigrants, I think a lot of us can use that as a personal goal. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Do you have any last words of wisdom for anybody who might be listening?

[00:50:40.15] – Givelle Lamano
Do it good. Make it better. Perfection is the biggest enemy of progress. Can I talk to you after this call, Victoria?

[00:50:48.20] – Viktoria Altman
Yeah. Let me just stop the recording. Thank you.