In the latest installment of Brand Building in 15 Minutes, Builden Founder Jocelyn Brumbaugh shared steps attorneys can take to kickstart 2022 marketing and business development goals.

Jocelyn emphasized the importance of plans that set clear, realistic goals and outlined how attorneys can leverage their network and effectively track their progress to boost business in 2022 and beyond.   

Watch the full webinar here:

The Brand Building in 15 Minutes webinar series gives attorneys, marketers and legal administrators practical tips for efficiently executing marketing and business development efforts in a bite-sized timeframe. The program topics focus on process-driven best practices that raise law firm profiles.

Builden is changing the way law firms think about marketing by turning random acts of marketing into strategies that drive business development. Our seasoned team of legal marketers help firms of all sizes better engage with clients, prospects and talent.

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Video Transcription

Jocelyn Brumbaugh (00:02):
Happy 2022, everyone. Good to see you. We are excited to be back in action with our Brand Building in 15 minutes series. I’m Jocelyn Brumbaugh, the founder of Builden Partners, and today we’re going to spend our 15 minutes together planning your year. So, we’ll set some marketing goals, we’ll send secret notes to future you to remind you what you need to do all year, and we’ll put together a tracking system that will make you actually want to meet your goals all in 15 minutes. Can we do it? Yes, we can. You might think that we can’t, but we can’t. And also, I won’t swear once because cleaning up my language is my New Year’s resolution. Will I succeed? Find out that and so much more before we hit the quarter hour.

(00:47)
And you know us, we’re Builden Partners, we do marketing strategy for law firms, exclusively. We serve as an outsourced marketing department. For firms typically with about 15 to 100 attorneys. And we also do a lot of project work for AMLaw firms, there’s a lot of openings right now in marketing and communications departments at law firms and we are doing a lot of work filling interim roles. So, if you’re an AMLaw firm and need some help, let us know. Our senior team, we all grew up in large law firms, so we get it. Alright, so kicking off your goals for 2022. First thing you need to do is think about what you want to look differently. What in your world, in your marketing and business development world, needs to look different by December 31st, 2022. And only you really know what needs to change in terms of marketing and business development and it can look different for everybody.

(01:42)
So maybe you want to have three new clients, maybe you want to have 50 coffees with potential business sources. Maybe you want to raise your profile within a certain trade organization that you have found that could be very beneficial to you. All of these are great, but you need to make sure that your goals are SMART and that means specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and realistic and time bound. And that’s really important. Now we already know the T, right? We’ve got 12 months, but we need to focus on the SMAR. We need to focus on the other elements. So , if your goal is to become famous within a trade organization, what might that really look like? Well, it might look like you’re going to get one speaking event, you’re going to get one opportunity to be on a steering committee, maybe you want to have one article that you’re going to have in their newsletter.

(02:33)
Maybe you’re going to engage at least twice a month with the content that this organization posts on LinkedIn. Those are smart goals. SMART, right? That is how far you really have to drill down with these goals in order for them to be the kinds of things that you can achieve and really track your progress through for the rest of 2022. So, once you figure out where you want to be, you need to figure out how much time it’s going to take. What time and resources do you need to dedicate to this? Is it 10 minutes a week? Is it 30 minutes a week? Do you need to hire a coach? Do you need to join an organization so you can find 50 people to have coffee with all year? Do you need to start attending the meetings of the conference that the organization that you already belong to?

(03:18)
All of these things are legit and good ideas for how you can spend your time. So, once you get clear on the time and the dollars that you need to spend, you really need to commit to it. Nothing is going to change if throughout the year you continue to do the things that you did in 2021. So really honor that commitment that you’re saying that you’re going to make for yourself and continue that throughout 2022. It’s not going to be different unless you commit to it now. So, let’s talk about what your 2022 resolution is going to be. It really needs to be leveraging your network because no matter what the goals are that you put down for 2022, they’re going to involve people, right? So, let’s talk about the people that you already know and how we can best leverage them. This is really a great time.

(04:06)
January is a great time to reach out to people that you haven’t talked to in a while. Now for me today is the last day that I’m going to send any emails that say Happy New Year, but you can milk that for much longer if that makes you feel more comfortable about reaching out to people that you haven’t spoken to in a while. January is also a great time to go through your contact list and figure out who might be able to help you reach your goals. A really important thing to think about are these weak ties, and we talk about weak ties a lot at Brand Building. These are the people that are outside your close circle of people that you talk to every week or every month. They’re the people who are not in those networking meetings that you go to all the time.

(04:44)
Maybe it’s an old law school or college friend. Maybe it’s someone that you worked with at a previous job. People who are at one point part of that close circle of yours, but now they’re off talking to other people every day and so they know people you don’t. And that is so important. I get a lot of LinkedIn connections that’ll say, “hey, it looks like we know a ton of people in common. Let’s connect.” So that’s the opposite of what I’m looking for, right? If someone were to come to me and say, “hey, I know a ton of people that you don’t, that might be interested in your services,” yes. Those kind of weak ties, those are much more valuable in your network. So, make sure that you make an effort to keep those warm and your goal of this outreach once you get it done.

(05:26)
And it doesn’t matter how you do it, you can do text or email or phone or a LinkedIn message. Reach out to folks and they will really appreciate hearing from you. Find out how they’re doing. Find out what percentage of their household currently has Covid. It is a great time to reach out to people and it makes people feel really warm that you were thinking about them and want to know how they’re doing. When you talk to them it’s really not about just that phone call or email or text, it’s about setting up a time to talk more. And maybe that’s in person, maybe it’s Zoom, maybe it is a phone call. But set up a time to connect and really find out what their goals are for 2022. What are their challenges? What are they planning to do this year that you could potentially help them with?

(06:08)
And be sure to take notes of that. Is today their kids’ first day back at school because they’re in CPS? Are they wintering somewhere outside of Chicago, which is very smart. I’m not doing it, but it would be very smart. Make sure that you write that down because it adds so much value to future conversations when you can reflect on the things that you’ve talked about in your last conversation. So, then you want to be sure to utilize your calendar. So, let’s talk about what that means. So, if you know where you want to be 12 months from now, you need to work backwards and figure out the couple of things that you need to do each month to get you there. So, if your goal is 50 coffees, that’s just math, right? It’s like four or five coffees a week, a month, about one a week.

(06:54)
That’s pretty easy. If your goal though is that you want to raise your profile in a niche area, you’ve got some more work to do. You have to figure out your elevator pitch, you have to figure out who needs to hear your elevator pitch. So just a couple of different tactics that you need to take in the earlier months of the year, but you want to take one aspect of your goals and calendar that throughout the year, put it on the first day of the month of the rest of the months for 2022, and really be kind to future you and remind you what you plan to do that month. Future you is very busy and he or she is going to not love it if they say, “what was this even about?” Make sure that you put those two or three things that you know need to do that month on the first day of the month in your calendar.

(07:40)
That will go a long way in making sure that you get it done. Okay? Now you need to revisit the time commitment that you said that this was going to take. Is it going to take 30 minutes a week for you to reach your goals by the end of 2022? Then you need to calendar that, put it in your calendar now and really honor that time. And I recommend put it at, I’m smarter in the morning, right? So, I’ll put it at 9:30, do it on a boring day like a Wednesday. And then when your calendar goes off on 9:30 on Wednesdays, remember what you felt like in January when things felt new and you felt like you could get so much done and really honor that time.

(08:18)
All the time. My calendar will ding, and I don’t want to do the thing that comes up. And so, a trick that I have is I set my timer on my phone for 20 minutes and I close Outlook and I close teams and I say, I’m going to work on this and not be distracted for 20 minutes. And then I can stop doing it as soon as the timer goes off. And what inevitably happens is that I’m done in six minutes, or my timer goes off and I’m on a roll and I hit the snooze on the timer, and I keep working for it. It’s just making time to dedicate to these things that you know have to do these things that are important but not urgent that you want to get done for the year.

(08:59)
And January is also a great time for you to look at these people that you know and calendar the ones that you want to reach out to. Please don’t tell yourself that you’re going to reach out to all 30 of the people you want to contact this year in January. You’ll make yourself insane. But calendar that for future months and give yourself a little bit of a steer, right? Don’t just say, “hey, reach out to Francine.” Say, “reach out to Francine about co-presenting with you on a panel that you want to pitch to this organization,” or maybe it was her birthday. Make sure to be specific. Future you, again, very busy, let’s give that person a steer, because you really just have to get started. If you just do these couple of things in January, it will really start paving the way for all the things you need to get done.

(09:41)
Take that timer for 20 minutes and use this planning exercise as what you need to get done in January. It will make such a difference. Now this slide, this is the secret sauce to making sure that you meet your goals in 2022. It’s all about tracking and we have a lot of secret sauce slides at Builden. If you are familiar with our five step model, we always talk about number four, the fourth step as being that money step. The secret one that if you do this thing, all the other things fall into place. Tracking your progress is the same as that. It’s the one that people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t really think it would be that great. And when they use it, it is so powerful, it becomes the best marketing thing they’ve ever seen. So really think about how you can track your progress. Because when December 2022 comes around, it might not be evident about the progress that you made along the way unless you send yourself secret messages along the way about the progress that you’re making and it will definitely motivate you.

(10:41)
So the metrics, the things that you’re tracking, they have to align with the goals that you laid out. So, if you’re looking to get more referral sources, make your goal be those 50 coffees and track the number of coffees that you have along the year. If your goal is to raise your profile on LinkedIn, right? Then social media analytics, those are going to be your friends when you’re looking at the metrics. But whatever you decide is the right metric, it’s really important to look at that metric once a month or so, and make sure that it’s doing what you want it to do. You don’t want to go for 12 months doing something that isn’t serving you well. So take a look at it each month and adjust it along the way to make sure that it’s helping you get to where you want to get.

(11:21)
Now, if you love metrics, you already have a way to track what you do. Maybe you use an app on your phone. There’s plenty of ways. If you are new to metrics, all you need is Excel, right? You just need an Excel doc that has the months and the couple of things that you need to do each month. And as you go through the months, you turn them green. And there’s something about turning these cells green. Turning the cells green in Excel is such a high, there’s some hidden dopamine inside Excel that makes such a difference. As you see the progress that you’re going to make and hitting your goal starts to become addictive. When you look at the progress that you’re making and you turn it green, it makes such a difference. And so, there’s a reason that you didn’t plan in 2021.

(12:03)
Okay, there’s a lot of reasons that you didn’t plan in 2021, but one of them was because it wasn’t fun. So, turn the cells green, make it fun. It goes such a long way in having you stay motivated for your goals along the way. And as you update this tracker, this Excel document, attach it to the first day of the next month. So, when future you goes and looks at the things that you have to do that month, they can say, “Hey look, we’ve made so much progress, I know I’m busy, but I shouldn’t give up on them,” because you can see what you’ve already started to turn green.

(12:34)
Okay? So, we’ve talked about how whatever your goals are, they’re going to involve people, and people like to look at the internet. So, you need to get ahead of this one. So, you need to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is updated. And if you’re not already using Builden’s five-step marketing infrastructure model, you should definitely go make sure that you’re doing that. Now, if these two things sound mysterious that you’d like to know more about them, go to the Brand Building section of buildenpartners.com. And we have other tutorials, other 15-minute tutorials on how you can do these things. But beware, your website might also need to be freshened up. It might be old, it might be starting to smell, and it might be time that you need to update that as well in order to have this elevated brand that you know need in 2022 and never fear, we’ve got a Brand Building in 15 minutes planned on how to update your website coming up for later in the year.

(13:29)
So one more thing that’s important to do in January, and that’s to stamp out your firm’s marketing black holes, that are these things that you spend a lot of money on, right? Conferences and seats and other things that you and other big black holes, other events. Are they serving you well? Please take a look at them from last year and make sure that you’re getting the ROI you need out of them. Oh, what you say, “you did not track the ROI last year?” Hey, what a great time to make sure that you track the ROI on these in 2022. So, a year from now, you can decide what are the marketing budget sucks that pull out all of the great stuff from our marketing budget. Maybe you can switch those into something that’s going to serve you better. It’s a great time to look at that.

(14:14)
Okay, well, we really met 15 minutes and here’s how you’re going to spend your 15 minutes planning your year. First, you’re going to spend five minutes identifying your goals and planning what you want to be different at the end of 2022. Then, you’re going to spend five minutes figuring out what you need to do each month and calendaring them. And then you’re going to take five minutes to develop a tracking system that you’re going to use. And that’s it. And it really only took 15 minutes. It actually took 30 because you listened to me for 15 minutes, but you still have 500,000 minutes left in 2022. And we did it in time and I didn’t swear once. Hey, yes, good for me. And also, you have a plan for 2022. So, guess what? We already have a date in the books for our February Brand Building series. My colleague Devon Pine is going to tell you how to crush spring conferences, virtual or not. And if you enjoy a lot of marketing insights crammed into a very small slice of time, you can sign up for our newsletter at Hello@BuildenPartners.com. Thanks everybody. Have a great year.