Profitability First: How a Criminal Defense Firm Scaled Without Chasing Every Case

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Because we're a litigation heavy firm and we invest a lot of hours. Certain cases are just not as profitable as others. For instance, like DUIs, of course, if they come to us organically, we take them. But my marketing dollars, I say, hey, you know what? I don't want to target DUIs. I want to target the cases that are higher average case value, the cases that we really like to sink our teeth into. And then if a DUI comes along, of course we'll take it. And of course we'll do a good job. I've seen that have, like, a really good impact on profitability and, of course, client control. So staying clear of, like, unprofitable clients or unprofitable cases in that sense, because sometimes, like a case that has a good dollar sign in front of it may end up draining your resources and energy and draining the team because it's just like, not a profitable cl. Foreign. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Most firms survive. The best ones scale. Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast, where law firm leaders learn to think bigger. I'm Kevin Daisy. Let's jump in. What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode, the Managing Partners podcast. Kevin Daisy here, coming from one of my Airbnb properties here, the podcast goes where I go. And I love that about this podcast, too. So welcome. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I have Joanna Nieves out of California. She has a criminal defense firm. She's figured a lot of things out. She's got a lot of cool things to share today about her business, her law firm, what she's done, what's been successful for her now, and just excited to have her join the show and share. So welcome. [00:01:58] Speaker A: Thanks, Kevin. And I don't know how much I figured out. I've kind of stumbled my way through it, but still, it's working at this point. There's something that's working for me and, [00:02:08] Speaker B: you know, and sometimes that's. That's how it goes, right? We're push through, get up, keep doing it. Sometimes we figure things out, sometimes we fail a lot. And that allows us to figure out what not to do. But, yeah, that's what it's all about, you know, just kind of keeping going and staying positive and taking the wins when you can. So no matter how far you are, doesn't matter because there are people listening that wish they were where you are, and we want to give them a little information, what they can do, things that might work for them. So tell us about your firm and where you're focused and your location. For those listening that. That could use a good referral in that area. [00:02:45] Speaker A: Sure. So, okay, as you mentioned, Joanna Nieves, I own the Nieves law firm. It's based in Oakland, California. And we like to say we take the criminal out of criminal defense. I have office location, so Oakland is the primary office, but then we have offices throughout the Bay Area of Northern California. And then about 50 or so team members right now. And it's a hybrid team, so from remote, offshore, remote within the United States, in office employees. And then of course, we're leveraging a bit of the AI agents these days. So I'm from Florida. I went to Florida State. I graduated undergrad with a degree in finance and multinational business really early. Decided to go to law school, did some work in the DA's office, and then I opened my firm around 2012. Since then, we've grown pretty, pretty fast and learned a lot of things along the way. Like I mentioned, this week it was just announced we made the Inc 5000 list for the fourth year in a row. So just like I said, learning, trying new things, growing and trying to keep up with the ever changing environment these days. [00:03:57] Speaker B: So she just said she's like, I don't know how, how well we're doing. She sounds like she's doing pretty well. I mean, criminal defense firms, you know, that's a good sized criminal defense firm in my opinion. And it's hard to grow a criminal defense firm to that size. And, and what you just said too, you're using all the pieces like, you know, some remote, some AI, some offshore in house staff, office locations. So you got a mix of all those things. And I think that's kind of, you know, the secret and what works right now is like you, you have brick and mortar where some people are all remote, which you, you know, so you kind of have, you know, a little bit of all of it. And it has different benefits. Right. So if you have brick and mortar, Google business profile locations, more local SEO. If you don't have brick and mortar, then you kind of miss out on those opportunities. So, yeah, I kind of love what you just shared about how you operated and figured it out. And again, for a criminal defense firm, that's, that's pretty big, I think. Thanks. In 5,000, we just got it for the second time. [00:05:02] Speaker A: Congrats. [00:05:03] Speaker B: I just found out about that. So we were number 660 on the list. So. [00:05:07] Speaker A: Wow, that's huge. Good job. [00:05:09] Speaker B: The Inc 5000, I mean, it's one of those things like it's not a pay to play, it's you know, it's not super lawyers where you're like, I'll, I'll pay you and, and we'll get on the list. It's, it's really comes down to like your books, your profitability and real numbers. Yeah, real growth they take. What is it? I think it's like the last two years they look at where you were and like the growth over two year period. I think that's what they did. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it might be three actually. It might be three, but, but still either way, I mean it's measuring the acceleration in growth and I think that's a big thing for us to, to keep in mind. I, sometimes we just look at that top line number. So I don't like to get too excited about that big top line revenue number when really the bottom line profitability number is what drives it all. And that's one thing that I've learned over the years. I think when I was first starting out it was about like, oh, how can I get like a seven figure firm and how can I now how can I get an eight figure firm and all the nine, ten figures that you hear people pitching these days and it's like, yeah, that is really cool and important, but how are we operating effic gently to keep more of that money in our pockets? [00:06:24] Speaker B: 100%. And you know, we know, we both, you know, Louise Scott and, and Val and eight figure firm and yeah, eight figures got this like, ooh, eight figures. That's 10 million plus. Right. And so while it's cool, it doesn't tell the whole story and you could be at eight figures and about to be crumbling and going out of business. So I think, yeah, it's, it's peeling it back and saying, okay, where are you truly at? How profitable are you so that you can bring in the right people, pay people well, take care of them, you know, benefits and things like that. Invest in technology. If you're not profitable, you know, none of those things are going to be, be possible and you're going to be at risk of going out of business even at eight figures, whatever it is, you know, so, so profitability is for you and that I love that. So, and we can talk a little bit about kind of, you know, what you focused on there and you know, what you've been able to achieve on the profitability side. [00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So I've seen my profit margins grow over the years. So as the revenue is increasing, the profit margins are growing and that, that's great. Right, because it's no longer like how much money did we make, but how much money did we actually keep? And some of the key things that I do every year is, okay, I' and look at the prices. This is the easy lever to turn, right? Like, what are our prices and how are we setting them? And can we do any adjustments and increase to keep up with what's going on in not just the industry, but like in the world? And then from there, what I've done too is really hone in on like case types. As a criminal defense firm, yes. We handle everything from like petty theft to murder. And over time I've noticed, like, because we're a litigation heavy firm and we invest a lot of hours, so certain cases are just not as profitable as others. So for instance, like DUIs, we'll, we'll litigate the mess out of a DUI. We win them, we win suppression, suppression motions, we get great results. But they are not profitable cases. And so we're, we got a price appropriately, but then you're almost pricing yourself out the market because they can go someplace to get it cheaper. And not everybody sees the, the value all the time in spending the top dollar. But what I've done, of course, if they come to us organically, we take them. But my marketing dollars, I say, hey, you know what? I don't want to target DUIs. I want to target the cases that are the higher average case value, the cases that we really like to sink our teeth into, those serious violent felonies. And then if a DUI comes along, of course we'll take it and of course we'll do a good job. So I've seen that have like a really good impact on profitability. And then of course, client control. So staying, staying clear of like unprofitable clients or unprofitable cases in that sense. Because sometimes like a case that has a good dollar sign in front of it may end up draining your resources and energy and draining the team because it's just like not a profitable client. So that, that was one of those big lesson items too, over the years. [00:09:39] Speaker B: I think it's big to understand your ideal client case types versus being in a mode of we gotta take anything that comes through and not. And taking time to do an analysis of like, okay, we had all these cases that came through. How do these work out? What types of cases are those profitable, you know, which ones soaked up too much of our team's time. So I think if you don't stop to do that. Same with, we do marketing, right? For law firms, we got really great law firm clients. We got some really not so great. [00:10:17] Speaker A: There's no way. Law firm owners are demanding. [00:10:20] Speaker B: I mean, sometimes. Why do we pick this industry? I don't know. No, but it's, you know, we're doing a lot of things ourselves to, like, evaluate that. Like, during the sales calls, we got transcripts. We can run that through chat, CBT or CLAUDE projects that we built. Hey, what's their temperament? Were they always late? Did they show up? You know, are they involved in the marketing? Do they, you know, are they engaged, paying attention, responsive? All the things they were looking for. And so, yeah, I think that's, that's an. A great thing to do. And the best firms that I know, that are the most profitable have dialed that in. Like personal injury firms. They'll just refer the case out if it's not exactly this and they don't say this on the phone. Not a fit for us. But we'll, we'll ship it over to someone that can help you. So I think that's, that takes. It's strong. It's hard to do just like, niching into law firms. Like, I used to work with everybody. Now it's, It's a little scary to focus, but it pays off. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you can leverage yourself as an expert in that particular area. Like, I'm not dabbling over here and dabbling over there. Like, I do criminal defense. I do it really well, and I do really serious, violent felony cases even better. And it just so happens that that's the thing. The type of cases that carry the higher average case value. [00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Lean right into. And then when that, when that potential client does reach out, like, this is exactly what I'm looking for. You do exactly what I'm. My situation. And you can speak that loudly and lean into it. Versus. Oh, well, we, you know, we handle everything, you know, and then you're. You're going to get a lot of those lawsuiters, those cases that take a lot of time, energy, and, and money and then have no profit. So I think it's an important lesson, especially for anyone, anyone's listening. That's new. They're trying to figure out what practice area maybe that they even want to focus on. I, I don't know how many lawyers I've had on this show that go, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I ended up at a law school working for blah, blah, blah. And they, it's usually a couple different firms until they kind of hone in on what, what area they. They're passionate about. I guess. [00:12:46] Speaker A: So, yeah, this is just taking that [00:12:48] Speaker B: to the next level, you know, for sure. [00:12:50] Speaker A: And I think it's important to try things out, you know, when you're. Before you start out or when you're in law school and you intern and you try all those things and you say, you weed out the things that, you know, you don't want to do and you never want to touch. So then if you ever get tempted, you know, like, oh, this case comes to the door and you just remind yourself, no, you really, really hate this. So just don't take it because you're just going to, you know, stressing yourself out for the initial dollar is really going to turn out to be an unprofitable case. Bad business. You're going to be mad at yourself for taking it. And it's not only those things that are outside your practice area, but even within your practice area. So maturing to the point where you're saying a bad fit type of revenue is not necessarily going to be quality revenue. And so I don't want that revenue. [00:13:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, nothing. Having some of those reminders, too, you know, put it on a sticky note on your wall, like, but it happens to us, you know, it happens to us. Like we'll, you know, sometimes we have slower months where, you know, you know, lead might come through for a law firm. And it's like, well, you know, it's not quite perfect, but, you know, and I have salespeople that want. They want to make money, they get a commission. Right. So it's, you know, sometimes it's a little bit like, well, I think it's going to work out fine, I think, you know, and it's like, red flags, red flags, you know, so. And sometimes we'll let it slide, but then it's a lessons learned later, like, all right, let's go through why this deal goes south. Why were they not a fit? And we kind of open it up and then that takes a lot of time and we have to bring in multiple team members that were involved to be like, hey, why. Why did this law firm, you know, off board with us? Because we're losing that money now. So we do something like that. That's. And once you do that, you know, every time, then people are. Start to be like, okay, I don't want to. I don't want to sign these kinds of deals anymore because it's painful for everyone else, not just the owner's pocket. [00:14:45] Speaker A: I mean, it's funny you mentioned the sales team and the Commissions and things like that. Because ultimately, you know, even in the long run that's gonna, that might end up being a rollback for them or something that they, you know, lose credit on or because they weren't just paying attention to those red flags. We call them red flags also in office. And I'm like, please do not onboard any red flag. But you know, the thing is like part of the profitability conversation is like I've, I've, you know, my goal is to not touch any cases. You know, I oversee the firm, I oversee what's happening with the cases. We have a managing attorney that reports up to me, but I don't carry a caseload. And so the minute a case goes sour or client is upset, you know, I get all the, I get all the person in charge problems and those are the things that get escalated up to me and I'm like, okay, well now what seemed profitable no longer is because I have to get involved. And so the goal is the less I have to touch, the better. And you know, getting that trickle down agreement through everybody in the firm so that they understand, you know, let's keep it in the right hands at all times. And Joanna's hand is not the right hand. [00:15:58] Speaker B: I love that. I mean that's what you're just where you got to go with your, with any company, right, is you, the owner of the visionary, you know, have to start getting yourself out of the way and, and, and the team needs to know like what, what you should be doing, where your strengths are and what, you know, what you need from them to build a, a great company that they spend most of their time at. I would assume they want to work at a place they want to work at that's profitable. That comes with all the other rewards. So which it sounds like you've done a great job that I was just, I just had Val for mate figure on our mastermind the other day and we were going through like, she was going through like the different stages of ownership. And you got the operator, which is, you know, I'm a lawyer, I started my own firm. You're the operator. You do everything, you know, and, and kind of moving up through the manager, the leader, strategist and architect. And I should never heard of the architect one before, but you know, that's where you're truly disconnected from your business. You're just working on like future planning type of stuff. So it sounds like you're like in the strategist zone at the moment, which is great place for anyone to get trying Hard. [00:17:09] Speaker A: And, you know, my goal for the rest of this year as I'm, like, starting to work on 2027 plans and, and so on, and set the goal for the kickoff meeting, it's really about optimization. Right? So we've gotten to a point where, yeah, we've got a good team and we've got a steady stream, and there's this predictable amount of money that's each month. And yes, the firm is profitable, but how can we make the systems that are existing better? How can we make our performers perform just incrementally better? Our sales team, our intake team, the lawyers. And so now, without having to just, like, add on people, our team is just performing and producing better with what we already have. And that's, that's the name of the game for, for 2027, even, like, where we're leveraging these AI tools, like, no, we're not going to replace everybody with AI, but how can we make sure that we can do things even faster than we were doing them before? [00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's what it's all about. Like, hey, we're in a good spot. We're comfortable now. Let's optimize. How do we get better? How do we do more? And I took one of them. We had like, our head of SEO here. He's like, super sharp, smart, obviously. Well, we had an opportunity to. We were looking for automation specialist, and he raised his hand and we, we've now built out an automation team. He has now three on that team, and they literally go around to each department processes, and they're, they're meeting with all the team members kind of constantly and just going, rotating through and like, you know, Joanna, like, tell me what you do all day, what you hate doing, what you shouldn't be doing. And then they're, they're figuring out how to automate it, use AI, whatever. And they're just kind of constantly cycling through the departments and like, figuring out how do we improve, how do we improve, how do we improve? And we're hiring people. We're not firing or replacing people, but we're taking the stuff off their plate that they didn't want to do in the first place. [00:19:07] Speaker A: 100%. I mean, and the thing too, I love that, that idea of just like having somebody dedicated to doing that because, like, so many of our problems are not necessarily always people problems or marketing problems. It's like process problems. And as you're auditing it, then you're like, oh, I didn't realize this was happening. And, or here's the bottleneck. Here's how we can improve the process. So even if you're not automating it, even if it's still something that's remaining manual or remaining with that particular team member, now, you can streamline it in a way so they're performing better. But yeah, big, big push for the first half of this year was doing the same thing, implementing a bunch of automation so we can get rid of like a lot of the manual tasks that people were doing and so that they can focus on the higher level, more substantive work without having to be the one that like documents the voicemail notes in there. No, the voicemail just flies into the notes section now, which I love. [00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just, you know, we're really, it's again, not replacing people, replacing mindless tasks that are smart people shouldn't have to deal with. And two, for like law firm clients these days, like they're exposed to Uber dominoes, you know, SaaS, kind of style companies that you know exactly what's happening all the time. You're in control, you get notifications, your car's on the way, they're here, they're picking you up, you're, you know, and so you call a law firm and it's like the opposite experience. It's clunky. You don't know what's going on. You know, am I going to jail? Or what's happening. And it's all the communication problems a lot. But they're expecting a different experience or hoping for one. And law firms have to start getting on board to optimize that or they, you know, someone, they're going to call someone else. [00:20:56] Speaker A: I think there's, you know, there's always going to be a place for those people who, who don't want to change and who want to keep their business the size that it is and they want to just have this kind of little solo or very small boutique type practice. And you know what? This is how it is. It's the way it's always been and I'm not going to change. Right. But then if you're really thinking about like growth and I want something, you know, for, for my team, myself, the firm, like I want to build the brand more like just kind of thinking bigger and scaling. We just kind of have to adapt to what is happening around us. Even if we don't go, go full on, like to the wall. Just saying, like, yes, I'm going to put everything in all at once because that can be dangerous too. And break what you've already built just being open minded and trying those things. And I have seen at least in my firm, this is this year, this year with a lot of those automations and those practices, improvement in profitability and production. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, it's, I hear all, I talk to some firms all the time. They're like, yeah, that's just not me. I, I don't want to grow because I have to have a team and a team's responsibility and blah blah blah blah. And so yeah, if you want to grow, you want to go step up every time. Yeah, you're committed, you got to be committed like you, you, you have. But, but we're all looking at those future goals and dreams that we have and that's what's driving it. Right. So it's not like I'm just gonna do this because I have to. So yeah, I think there's an argument on both sides. If you wanna be small and stay small. Cool. Be really good at what you're at. Cool. But you can still benefit from some automation and AI and you know, not breaking your back and having to be tied to your desk every day. Just get more efficient and then maybe you get a taste of some of the growth and the profitability and, and want to kind of continue on. But it's not for everybody I think, you know, to want to go to eight figures or, or beyond but it's pretty rewarding too. And I think if, if I'm employing a lot of people, they want to know that they have a future growth opportunity because if you say small and like hey, I want, we're going to stay small, you know, then there's not a lot of opportunity for them. And so I think it's also if they're cool with that, like hey, I'm, I like being here small but just me and you, the attorney and assistant, whatever, that's cool. But odds are they, they're probably hoping they could get more out of their career. Which means we gotta grow. Which means we have to have new leadership opportunities, pay increases, benefits. [00:23:38] Speaker A: Yep. And all of that costs money. [00:23:39] Speaker B: All that costs money and it's going up, so. [00:23:42] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [00:23:45] Speaker B: It's good to have a culture, a growth culture. Like we're, hey, we're growing and here's the benefits of all of it to everyone and then they, they want to help, you know, contribute to that. That's where you get your A players. That's where you know you got to have a growth culture and people will figure out you don't have to do it all yourself. They will come up with ideas, they'll figure things out. And that's the cool stuff to, to watch, in my opinion. [00:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And they feel more, more open to share. The more I feel like the more transparent you are in the culture. So one of the things I do every Monday we go over the, the monthly numbers, but we go over them weekly. Like, where are we tracking towards the goal? Where are we, you know, where are we with leads? Where are we with qualified leads? Where are we with scheduled show up conversions? What type of cases did we get in? We go for that every single Monday. And where are we with revenue? And so the team knows what we're doing and it's all like, you know, I keep it transparent because they also know like, okay, yeah, guys, remember that's top line revenue. That does not mean that all of those millions are going in my pocket. Right. Like we're working hard towards a goal, but there's also all of you. And you all cost money and you all want raises and you all want to grow and you guys want. And we have more offices and all of those things. But I think if you have that kind of open communication with the team, that helps with the buy in and the performance as well. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Oh yeah, I love that. I bet a lot of firms don't do that. Transparency is one of our core values here. We do that too. We have monthly company meetings where we show the numbers, the revenue, client signs, everything like that. How much new revenue come in? We don't. They know if we've lost revenue, but we tend to keep our company. Means more of a prep rally, if you will, but very transparent. And that's helped a ton. And, but sometimes we come to where like, well, we weren't. They don't know we're doing this. And so now we're like everything. So we have like a management meeting every Friday where we talk about big things and now we publish that list of things to the whole company to say, hey, here's what we're meeting about this Friday. Because we had some team like, hey, I didn't know this decision was getting made. It's like, well, it came from top and then to supervisors and then it rolled out. Now it's like, okay, well we gotta be transparent with every single person. So. And that can be hard to do sometimes. But that's, that's worked very well for us and the team really appreciates it. [00:26:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know how it's so important for us like as owners to know the numbers to like Understand the financial reports, not drown in them, but actually be familiar with them and, you know, hold ourselves accountable. And I think this is just like another way of like, okay, if every. Even though I have a weekly meeting with my CFO and I have a weekly financial meeting with my director of operations, but now I've got a weekly essentially like Metric Finance meeting with the team. And it's not a long one. It's just a quick. During our 15 minute huddle, we go over this and they see the numbers up on the chart, but it holds me accountable to. I've got to look at this. I got to. I'm reporting on it because it's like a state of the union address essentially, but I'm actually paying attention to the numbers. And that has also contributed to what's the. The shift in the firm making decisions faster and making them based on numbers, not just gut. [00:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll. You're doing all the things right. So, yeah, I love that we do a 15 minute team huddle every week as well, plus a company meeting. And then we used to do huddles every single morning for 15 minutes, but we've switched to just weekly at this point. But that's all through, you know, survey and the team. We also do anonymous surveys and that's been very helpful because some people won't speak up. [00:27:24] Speaker A: But I kind of stick with closed mouths, don't get fed. I know the surveys are there. You know, the surveys actually happen. I just, I let my director of operations look at them and she can report it over to me. [00:27:40] Speaker B: That's fine. Yeah, I think. But it's. It's been good for like, we'll do it for like we had like a big company meeting in person where we took everyone to Chicago actually. We were the same eight figure firm event, I think, but we just took our team to Wrigley Field in Chicago for like three days. But you know, hey, feedback on how that that event was cost us a ton of money. Ton of money, ton of time. The whole team, 60 some people, [00:28:04] Speaker A: you [00:28:04] Speaker B: know, but we still get feedback. You know, this could have been better. This could have done, you know, this or whatever. Or yeah, we could have used more per day for like Ubers or, you know, whatever. You know, some of it, we're not changing. Some it's like, okay, that makes sense, you know, so it's been helpful. But the fact that you're doing that, the fact that you're having these transparent weekly meetings, you're doing the financial meetings. A lot of law firms don't have a monthly financial meeting with their finance people. So. Which blows me away. [00:28:32] Speaker A: I'm a little obsessed, though. My undergrad was in finance, and so I'm probably that anomaly when it comes to lawyers that I actually like the numbers and I like the spreadsheets. Most of them back up and, you know, shy away from math, but I'm just like, bring on the numbers. So I enjoy those meetings and, like, kind of looking at each bucket and seeing, like, if there was a shift or if I missed something and, you know, like I said, making those, like, intelligent decisions based on the actual numbers, because I think that's really what drives growth. Growth. And again, it's just one of those, like, you know, once you start implementing something and you see that it's working, you're like, oh, why wasn't I doing this before? [00:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. And it's. The funny thing is, you know, the. All the answers and all the things that you're doing and you've done. Well, it's all in books. It's all out there. We just don't soak it in and actually do it. And I think until you're to a point where, you know, you do do it and you're like, oh, man. Like, you know, you might have learned that 10 years ago in a book or at a conference, but we're not ready to accept it or receive it and, like, do something about it. And so when we do these things, we're like, gosh, why wasn't I doing this for so long? [00:29:45] Speaker A: I think it's like we. We're wary about, you know, what people will think or if. Whether or not we're going to understand it fully. I think a lot of times lawyers too, you know, it's like the ego thing. If I don't understand something, maybe I'm just, like, not going to try it. I'm not going to do it because I don't want to be embarrassed or I don't want to look like I'm not equipped for. For the task. Good example was, you know, I attended a conference last week, last year, and at the time, I did have a YouTube channel. It probably had like a couple, like 2,000 subscribers. And at that conference, it was talking about how to leverage your YouTube, what to do, you know, what kind of things to implement, consistency and so on. And I walked away from the conference and I said, I am going to do this. I don't care what I put out there. Good is good enough. The content is better than being perfect. Let's Just get it published. Right? And from there until now, we went from 2,000 subscribers to, I think about almost 600,000 at this point. We're over half a million subscribers at this point. I started, you know, being on all different, like, national media outlets, appearing on things like abc, cbs, Nancy Grace. I'm. I've got a regular spot on Court TV now, like there every Wednesday. And so. And then I take all of that content and I re publish it on my YouTube to just kind of consistently keep the engagement. But I share that because it's like, like the, that was just me making a move. Right. It was like I heard the information, I was like, I'm pretty coachable. I've always liked, like, to absorb things from, you know, my coaches and try to implement them. But that was a scary one, right? Because it's like, okay, now people are going to be looking at me, judging me, thinking about the things that I'm saying, and it's like, you know what? Get it out the way, because it's going to be profitable in the long run. And now the brand itself just like, has so much more reach before people even talk to anyone on my team. [00:31:31] Speaker B: That's. I mean, that's a big win in a short amount of time. That's crazy. And this, it sounds like you met. I think we talked about this. My friend Jeff Hampton. [00:31:39] Speaker A: Yep, that's exactly who was speaking. Yep. [00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah, Jeff's awesome. But, you know, when I first met Jeff too, and he's, you know, older guy, lawyer, criminal defense lawyer out of Texas, like, he shouldn't have a YouTube channel that's successful. Right. And he just talked about how he did it. And you, you literally just did it in a year. That's, you know, 600,000 almost. You said a million. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Half a million. [00:32:01] Speaker B: Yeah. That's. That's insane. So anyone listening, you think a channel won't work for you or TikTok won't work for you, or YouTube, Instagram, whatever, all of them can work for you. You just gotta have a plan, stick to it, and not to be afraid you're gonna fail at lots of things. And so, you know, our best clients, like, are the ones that are like, I know we don't know everything. We're here to listen and, and do what we need to do. And they're the ones that have the most success, in my opinion. But if you're trying not to fail and trying not to do something that you're not sure about, you know, you'll unlikely have those, those big breakthroughs like you're having. [00:32:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree, I agree. And it's really been, you know, I took a lot of time and invested in getting business coaching and being a member of, you know, different law firm coaching companies and that you can, you can attend or you can attend and implement. Right. And sometimes it's procrastination that keeps you from doing it. Sometimes it is the fear, sometimes it's a lack of understanding. But really it's like, I think it's Luis who really says, you know, your success is. I kind of tied to the speed of implementation. And ever since I started working there, I was just like, just do it, do it, do it. You know, like working with that, with eight figure coaching, I'm like, eight just needs to get out the door. No matter how, you know how it is, obviously it's not gonna, I don't want it to be a mess, but let's at least produce something so we can say we did it and then we can iterate from there. [00:33:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, yeah. Anyone that goes to conferences and you show up and you know, you go back and implement anything, like, if not, you wasted a ton of time, energy, money, everything, you know, it's just coming back and trying to implement it. Figure out one thing you can take from a conference or a coaching session and implement it today. And just doing that over time with speed, you know? Podcast. I started a podcast. A lot of people ask me about that. I'm sitting here on my laptop, no mic, no nothing, my laptop camera. But people are like, oh well, I gotta get a studio and I gotta have all this stuff and I get all this equipment and they'll spend months and months and never record anything. You're gonna hate the sound of your voice at first. You're not going to like yourself on camera. The podcast won't be the best thing. It has no audience until you just start doing it and next thing you know it's successful. Yeah, but you know, and I still [00:34:18] Speaker A: hate the sound of my voice and I still don't like myself on camera, but I do it. [00:34:22] Speaker B: Same here. So. But, but it's easy now. It's just repetition of it's right. It makes it easy. But I hear people overthinking over planning, looking for perfection and that's never going to work out for you. So just if you want to do YouTube, start doing it. If you want to do a podcast, start doing it. The thing is cool, like with what you have. Jenna, like when we talk about SEO and AI search and everyone peppers me with Questions about that, what you've done and created a brand and mentions and social media influence and then media coverage across different platforms. What others say about you is way more important than your website content or your own social media. We need secure third party mentions to really build your brand and your firm and be found in search and AI. That's just the name of the game these days. And so if you're a law firm that's not willing to get out and put yourself out there and get exposure and be mentioned, then you're really going to fall behind. So this is kind of of non negotiable at this point. But what you've done is, you know, you can compete with big firms really quickly if you can do what she's done. [00:35:38] Speaker A: And I didn't make this up. Like I didn't invent this wheel. Right. It was just like hearing how it can be done and taking the step towards doing it. And that's with every single thing that we've talked about. Right. Like being coached on what kind of cases are profitable and you know, calculating the cost of a case and how can I, what can I keep out of it versus expending all of those resources, how to make my team more profitable, how to divert my marketing funds into the right type of sources and the right case types. Every single thing that we talked about is just stuff that I've been coached along the way and now I can sit here and be like, I implemented it, I did it, it worked. And so it's almost like a testimony to the coaching. [00:36:22] Speaker B: Yes. That's amazing. Yeah, we covered a lot of things and you know, running a business, there's a lot of things, a lot of moving parts, things you have to keep looking at, optimizing. I, I love your point about the processes. We are constantly changing processes and implementing new ones or just tweaking them. And this should never be perfect like onboarding a client. Like we're changing the client onboarding experience. We probably three times in the last year. Um, and so you know, you're, you're kind of constantly looking like, hey, what can we fine tune and optimize and, and tweak or automate completely. So yeah, I love it a lot, lot we covered here. And I really appreciate your time. Yeah, I'm excited for what people might have got out of this episode. What's the best way for folks to connect with you? Because I'm sure a lot of people would love to. And have questions. Sure. [00:37:15] Speaker A: I mean definitely you can ask questions or connect on our YouTube channel, which is the Nieves Law Firm APC on YouTube. It's tied to the firm, not to my personal brand. I could talk about that too, but the. And also the website. You're right. Exactly. And www.thenavislawfirm.com. [00:37:33] Speaker B: awesome. Well, yeah, everyone go check her out. Check out her YouTube. Connect with her. As always, I say this on every episode. If you want a personal introduction, if you're a lawyer that would love to be introduced to her, I can arrange that and make that happen. And yeah, go subscribe to her YouTube and check her out. And yeah, I just appreciate what you had to share. You're crushing it. Everything you've shared is spot on. And we'll give all the credit to Louise, Scott and Nathan. I like the sound of that. [00:38:07] Speaker A: That. [00:38:07] Speaker B: But right. No. Any coaching, any groups. You know, there's so much you can gain from being a group of others that have done similar things, failed, or if they're doing something new. There's just so much value in that. So find a group. Talk to a. A coaching company. Eight figure firm's a great one. There's plenty of other ones out there too, but I think that's a testament right here from Joanna. So cool. Well, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. Joanna, thank you so much for sharing today. [00:38:39] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:38:40] Speaker B: And we'll see you all on the next episode.