TRP 282: [Legal] Becoming a Visible Expert with Elise Holtzman

[00:00:10] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high stakes headhunter, author, and professional speaker, Scott Love. You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thanks for joining me on the show. Every Thursday, I bring content and ideas that help anybody in professional services.

[00:00:35] It doesn't matter what industry you work in. If you're a professional service provider and you're also responsible for getting business, all of those ideas and all those guests and experts will help you. Several months ago, I decided to release a legal specific series within our show. And that's not every Tuesday, but sometimes Tuesdays. In fact, if you go through the previous shows, whether it's on the website for the podcast, or on Apple Podcasts,

[00:01:01] or any of the other places where you hear the show, you can scroll through and see that the Tuesdays are branded a different color to make it easy to highlight the difference between the two. And I felt this is something that would be very good for those within the legal industry to hear from experts that work solely within legal. Now, this week and next week, we're hearing from Elise Holzman. And our topic today is going to be becoming a visible expert. And next week, we get deeper into it, talking about how to get speaking, panel, and writing opportunities.

[00:01:31] Let me tell you about Elise. She's someone that you need to know. She's dedicated over 16 years to working with lawyers and law firms to help them be proactive about business development, leadership, and career acceleration. She's a former practicing attorney. She's worked at Freed Frank and Morgan Lewis. And with their current company, The Lawyer's Edge, she helps leaders promote a healthy growth-oriented culture in their firms and coaches lawyers on how to bring in more business, retain clients, and communicate effectively.

[00:02:00] She's a frequent speaker and writer on the topics of business development and career acceleration. And she's also the host of The Lawyer's Edge podcast. I put that link to the show on the show notes. Make sure you check that out. I've also put her contact information in the show notes so you can connect directly with Elise as well. This podcast is sponsored by SharePoint Legal Insights, formerly known as Leopard Solutions, turning legal intelligence into opportunity.

[00:02:29] And also sponsored by The Rainmaking Magazine for the intellectually driven and results-focused professional that wants to grow their book of business. Visit therainmakingmagazine.com to chart your course to greater rainmaking success. Thanks for listening, and I hope you get some great ideas from my conversation with Elise. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast. Our guest today is Elise Holtzman. And today we're talking about becoming a visible expert.

[00:03:00] Elise, thanks for joining me on the show today. Scott, thanks so much for having me. Absolutely right. And I like the fact that you're really niched within legal. You speak to law firms and people in the legal industry on rainmaking and leadership. And I have this vision of a visible expert, somebody that is known within their area of specialization, somebody that gets the call, somebody that's seen as having credentials. That's a pretty good vision. How do you think people can get to that vision? How do you think they can achieve that?

[00:03:29] What are some of the primary areas that you think they should focus on in achieving that vision? Yeah, great question. So first of all, I think people need to understand why it's so important to do it. I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, if you are in your office with the door closed doing exceptional work and nobody knows about you, right? Your expertise isn't really serving you. So I have this horrible joke, right? If an expert falls over in the forest and nobody knows about it, you know, are you really an expert? And so, you know, you've got to be great at what you do.

[00:03:58] We know that and we assume that as a professional, you are great at what you do. But we need people to see you and see you as a credible choice and not just a credible choice, but the top credible choice and the one that should get the email, that should get the phone call. So what I tell people is the first thing you need to do, first of all, before you start running around, we don't want you to engage in scattershot marketing and waste your time. We want you to be very focused and because you don't have a lot of time to spare, you've got a lot on your plate.

[00:04:25] So the first thing that I think people should do is have a very clear sense of who their target audience is. You know, I very brilliantly call it your who, what and where, right? Very catchy. So the who takes two parts. Who are your target clients and who are your referral sources? What do you do for them, right? What are the problems you solve for them? What's the information that you provide to them? How can you be of support to them? And then where do those people hang out? And when I say hang out, I'm really talking about where do they get their information?

[00:04:55] What are they reading, right? Are they reading, you know, securities law weekly? Are they going to a particular conference for lenders or borrowers or whatever it may be? So where are those who your clients, potential clients and potential referral sources congregating to get information and to learn? And then where are they going to learn with one another?

[00:05:19] Once you know those things and you identify those things, then it's time to start being proactive about getting yourself writing engagements and speaking engagements. And, you know, perhaps being a guest on a podcast, for example. So, you know, like you, I have a podcast and the guests that come on my podcast want to be seen in the marketplace as a credible expert. So this is really good. And I like the fact that you parsed it into two areas, target clients, referral sources.

[00:05:48] I'd be willing to bet most people that think about this don't even think about referral sources. And what's interesting, because in my work as a legal recruiter, I talk to a lot of partners that say, you know, I don't want to be anything but a really good lawyer. I don't know if I want to build a book. And I think there's some fear going on there. Why do you think people might hesitate on becoming visible and being seen as that visible expert? What do you think the reasons are for that?

[00:06:12] There are a few reasons that I see over and over again. One of them is that people say, well, I don't want to be seen as salesy. You know, I think a lot of people outside and obviously, you know, there are a lot of professionals listening to your show that aren't lawyers. But I think that this this goes across the board. Certainly lawyers don't go into law school because they want to be salespeople. Right. If they wanted to be salespeople, they would have gone and done something else.

[00:06:35] And so the law attracts a certain kind of person and lawyers don't want to be considered to be like that proverbial used car salesman with the loud plaid jacket and the chains around his neck, you know, standing on the side of the highway, yelling at people to come buy the cars. And outside the legal profession, I think a lot of people think about, you know, they call us mouthpieces and they think that we're all aggressive and assertive and all those sorts of things.

[00:06:56] And the truth is that I think the rule is really the opposite. And so part of it is, look, I'm a professional. I'm academic. I'm cerebral. I do really good work. I help my clients. I feel really good about doing that. I don't want to be out there pounding my chest and telling everybody how great I am. That's just unseemly unprofessional and uncomfortable for me. The good news is that's not, as you well know, that's not what rainmaking is about at all. It's not about being salesy.

[00:07:23] It's not about trying to, you know, shove something down people's throats that they don't need. It's really about standing in service of other people. And so I think sometimes when you change that mindset for people, they come around and they see what they're capable of. Another reason that people don't do it is they say, I don't have time. And there's no question that, you know, lawyers are driven by the billable hour and that if you're not working, you're not getting billable hours and maybe you're getting paid on the basis of your billable hours or something close to it.

[00:07:51] So there's that part of it. But we've all got the same 24-7 as everybody else. So I think it's just a question of prioritizing time and protecting time. And then I think there's this other fear that people have that says something along the lines of, I'm not really an expert. Like there are people out there who know more than I do about this topic. And so who do I think I am getting out there and holding myself out as some kind of leading authority?

[00:08:18] And that's where I say to people, listen, if you have something of value to add, there's always going to be somebody who has more experience than you do. You know, if you're 85 years old, there's somebody who's 86 years old. So there's always somebody who has more experience than you do. But it doesn't mean that you don't have value to offer. That's great. I love it the way you say that. Do you think it's become more competitive that people might think, well, gosh, there's more of me now, but there really might not be. It's just they're more visible because of the day of the Internet. What do you think about that?

[00:08:46] That there are more people out there to compete with. Is that what you mean? Or it's become a much more competitive landscape. Yeah, there's no question about it. And yet if you think about it, you know, there are about 1.3 million lawyers in this country. They're not all out there talking about things. And, you know, you can be the visible expert in your corner of your jurisdiction. You could be your visible expert in your corner of Ontario or Idaho or Florida or whatever it may be.

[00:09:12] And keep in mind, you are going to talk about and write about specific topics. So there might be 15 experts out there talking about securities law, but maybe you're the only one out there talking about a particular element of securities law or you're the only one out there talking about a particular element of employment law. And so there's room for everybody. I mean, think about the number of I'm just thinking about you and me, Scott. I mean, think about how many podcasts are out there. And yet, you know, there's a lot of opportunity because you might align.

[00:09:41] Somebody might hear something you say and think, wow, Scott's fantastic. And that at least doesn't know what she's talking about. And somebody else might decide that, you know, Scott's a pretty decent guy, but I really like Elise's podcast. So I think that it's different strokes for different folks and there's opportunity for all of us. That's great. I really like that a lot. And so let's kind of go back to the referral sources, because when you said that, I'm like, oh, I'd love to get more of those. Right. And I'd be willing to bet some people just haven't thought about having an intentional, deliberate strategy to really identify who those referral sources are and connect with them.

[00:10:10] What does that look like? What would you say a referral source would be for a professional that's trying to grow their practice, trying to grow their book? I think it depends on your area of practice. And so we can, you know, we can choose an example and kind of noodle through that together. But to use an example of, I'll just take an employment lawyer as an example, because I happen to be married to one of those. And so it's top of mind for me or a real estate lawyer, which is what I was.

[00:10:36] So taking the employment lawyer, for example, first of all, who are your decision makers? Right. If you're a management side employment lawyer, you could potentially represent any company on the planet that has employees. That's a pretty big you know, it's really hard to find those people. Who's anybody? Who's who's every company? Got to narrow your focus. So maybe you decide that you want to work with people who are in manufacturing. You're really you know, your niche is working with employees and employers in manufacturing.

[00:11:05] Well, who else serves the manufacturing community? Right. Maybe there are people out there who are vendors to manufacturing companies. Maybe there are HR professionals that are outside sources for manufacturing companies. Who are the people that make the decisions internally? Maybe they're general counsel. Maybe they're heads of HR. Maybe those people can't necessarily hire you, but they know somebody internally.

[00:11:30] So, for example, you could say, well, I hang out with HR people and I speak to HR organizations. I give them information that can be helpful to them because even if they can't necessarily hire me in my company, HR professionals talk to one another. They make referrals for one another. And there are a lot of manufacturing companies that send their HR people to this particular conference every year. So I'm going to get known among those HR professionals.

[00:11:54] And when something comes up where somebody needs a lawyer, an employment lawyer for a manufacturing company, they're going to say, well, you know, I'm going to call Scott because he hangs out with these people. I trust him. I know him. I know he's not going to embarrass me. He says a lot of really interesting things and I know he cares about what he does. That's great. Wow. That's just really outstanding. And how have you coached people into doing this? Like, tell me a story of somebody you've worked with. You don't have to mention their name, of course, but they just didn't have any idea about referral sources.

[00:12:22] How did you help them build up this pipeline of referral prospects? Well, I work with a lot of people to do just that. And one of the things that I do with them is, you know, I start the process. And so many times, as you say, they haven't really thought about it. They're thinking about how do I get to the ultimate client? And, you know, you don't understand, Elise. I can't just walk in and start. I can't cold call these people, which, of course, we're not going to do. You know, they don't really have a place where they hang out together on a regular basis.

[00:12:48] They do a conference once a year and it's this enormous conference and it's pay to play. So if you're not a sponsor for $20,000, you're not getting a speaking gig. And so I can't break into this thing. And so, you know, I will often say, well, who else serves them? Right. What about like vendors? What about going to the conference webpage? Do you think there's resources there that they could look at that could help them? Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can see a little bit. You can look at a conference webpage and see who else is going, you know, who else wants to be seen.

[00:13:18] I mean, I can give, you know, a perfect example is from my own practice because that's what comes to mind right away. But if you think about my practice, my ultimate client is typically a lawyer, an individual lawyer or a law firm. I do a lot of work with law firms to develop programming, internal programming for them. Do I have contacts at every single law firm? Absolutely not. But not only do I think about referral sources, but I think about who's making the decision internally.

[00:13:46] So for me, there are referral sources, people like you, people who are recruiters, for example, executive recruiters who talk to the law firm leaders all the time. There might be someone who is doing another kind of coaching for them. There's a coach that I interviewed on my podcast recently who's a billing coach. And she helps people capture more of their billable time because we know that lawyers are terrible about that and they let a lot of billable time go. So it may be coaches that do other kinds of things for my clients.

[00:14:13] And then again, when it comes to decision makers and getting in front of decision makers, I'm an active member of the Legal Marketing Association. The people that hang out in the Legal Marketing Association are both external consultants like me or the internal people who are chief marketing officers or marketing assistants or marketing specialists inside law firms. And the Legal Marketing Association is where they go to congregate and get all their information. And so I do speaking engagements for them.

[00:14:42] I've written an article for their online publication. I also am on the faculty of the Managing Partner Forum, which is for small to mid-sized law firms, managing partners of small to mid-sized law firms, both in the United States and in Canada. And so this is a volunteer position. I'm not getting paid for this. I happen to love it. But I go down every year to Atlanta. I'm on their faculty. You know, I do a dine around and invite people to come out to dinner.

[00:15:07] And so I'm getting to know the decision makers in these law firms, both at the managing partner level and at the marketing level. And then all of the outside consultants. It might be somebody like a website designer for law firm websites. It could be somebody who does search engine optimization for law firms. So those are the kinds of people. And that's what's coming to mind right now for me in this moment. It's using myself as an example. But, you know, with lawyers, it could be accountants. Right. It could be psychologists.

[00:15:37] It depends on, again, it could be engineers, depending on the kind of, it could be investment bankers. It could be anybody that is also interacting with your clients in a way where you're not in competition with them and you could work cooperatively with them. So as an example, I recently did in my local area in the New York metropolitan area, I recently joined together with a couple of other people to do a social event in an evening at a top golf location.

[00:16:06] And we fed everybody and everybody got to swing a golf club and had a good time. But it was basically me and an accounting firm that serves lawyers. And it was somebody who does websites and marketing for lawyers. So none of us were in competition with each other. And that's where there's a lot of beauty, because when you're showing up to serve other people and you're you're basically hitting more than one person at a time,

[00:16:30] you're serving the referral source and in so doing, you're also serving the ultimate client and getting visibility with all of those people. That's great. Do you think in some ways what you described and it can be replicated to a partner in a firm that's trying to grow a book in a certain practice? Because it's almost like this is a cohort of people that have shared connections, share relationships where you even mentioned there's no competition and they're referring business to each other. Would you describe it as a cohort in some ways? It can be.

[00:16:59] And I mean, I know some people who get together and do sort of informal referral groups, right, where you get in a room, for example. Well, let me give you an example. So I've been a member of some bar associations in the state of New Jersey where I live for a very long time. And in the New Jersey State Bar Association, there's a section for solo and small firm lawyers. And when I was trying to many years ago, I was trying not to travel and I was trying to be closer to home for my kids.

[00:17:27] So I got very involved in this solo and small firm section. And they jokingly referred to themselves as a big law firm without all the hassle of having to have partners. And what they would do is they essentially formed a referral group where all of these different lawyers who did different sorts of work would get together and they would create value for each other and for the ultimate client.

[00:17:53] So they would put together programs for clients and you might bring several people into the room. Maybe there's a corporate lawyer and a bankruptcy lawyer and an employment lawyer. And you're talking about a topic or a problem that your ultimate clients are grappling with and giving them ideas for how to solve those challenges or reach the client's goals. Because remember, this is not about selling. We're here to deliver value.

[00:18:17] And if you can get together with other people with potential referral sources and work together, collaborate to deliver value in the form of information, tips, tricks, updates in the law, trends and what's going on in their industry, they're going to want to hear it. And they're not going to view you as somebody who's selling to them. They know why you're there. It's not a secret. But they understand that you're there to deliver value. You want to get to know them. They're interested in getting to know you because you're serving them.

[00:18:45] And so it's kind of a win-win-win for everybody. It's a win for you. It's a win for your collaborator, the referral source. And it's a win for the ultimate clients. That's great. I was explaining this concept to another recruiter friend of mine about trying to help them get more business. And I said, basically, when you get a referral, you're borrowing trust from somebody else. And that's what you get. And when you think about business, everybody likes to do business with people they know, like, and trust. And you're getting that trust.

[00:19:11] You're getting that trust through that introduction, which is why I think these types of alliances, which is what they are, really work well. And then over time, you have history. And that builds depth to the relationship. And then you know. I get a referral from so-and-so. That's a really good referral. I want to reciprocate to that person also. So let me kind of stop right here because, Elise, we've been over one area of how to become a visible expert. And I know there's other things that we're going to talk about.

[00:19:39] So I'm going to invite you back on the show to do a part two to kind of go into this. And we'll talk about that offline here. But let me kind of, as we talked about what we talked about today, which is the two parts of the who, target clients and referral sources. If we could give three action steps to people today to where they can start really building this framework, what would those three action steps be?

[00:20:04] The first thing that you need to do is to sit down, make a little power hour with yourself, and sit down and do a quiet exercise where you figure out and write down your who. So who are your ideal clients? Who are the clients that you most enjoy working with? You could say it's everybody, but pick a direction and put it down on paper, right? So it can't be everybody. It's got to be one particular area or two particular areas. Do the same thing for your referral sources.

[00:20:33] That could be categories of people like accountants, other lawyers who don't do what you do, therapists, something like that. And then write down actual names of people who have already tried to refer to you, right? So those are on your A list because they have already evidenced both a willingness and an ability to refer to you. Those go to the top of your list. Then, again, figure out what value you deliver to other people. So we're doing this who, what, and where exercise. And then where they hang out. That could be an annual conference.

[00:21:03] That could be an organization. There could be a monthly meeting. It could be a periodical or an online magazine or something like that. The second thing to do then is to start letting people know that you're interested in delivering value. Don't sit there and wait to be asked. That is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they wait to be asked. Instead, start reaching out to some people that you know and say, Hey, I noticed that you spoke for this organization.

[00:21:30] I would love to also speak for them because I have a few things that I think they might be interested in. Could you connect me with the person that put you on the dais? So get out there and start asking because they're not going to come. The people who are in charge of these things are not going to come pluck you out of obscurity. And I want to just make a point. Don't write your program before you have a speaking gig. Because you may think that you know what they want you to speak about. And it turns out that they want you to speak about something else that's related.

[00:22:00] But don't spend a lot of your time putting together a program. And then third, make sure that you are publicizing what you do. So when you're talking, you can seed your conversations with things like, Oh, so when I speak for organizations on the topic of whatever, or, Oh, when I'm a podcast guest, I usually talk about this. Right? So you're letting people know you're putting it on your LinkedIn. You're putting it on your website, listing your speaking engagements. But you're also just putting it, dropping it into conversation.

[00:22:30] Oh, you know what? You speak, you know what? We're looking for a speaker for our next event. Would you be interested in the possibility of talking about that? Absolutely. I'd be delighted to discuss it with you. That's great, Elise. This is fantastic. And tell us about your offerings. What do you have? What do you do that you'd like our listeners to know about? Well, so my business is called The Lawyer's Edge. I've been doing this for more than 16 years now. And basically what we do is we work with lawyers and law firms exclusively to help them transform lawyers into leaders and rainmakers.

[00:22:59] And so we do a lot of individual coaching. So if you're an attorney that's looking for someone to help you either get started as a rainmaker or leader or to ramp up what you're already doing, we'd love to talk to you. If we're not a good fit, we'll let you know that. But we'd love to do that.

[00:23:12] We also have a program called Lawyers Making Rain that we bring into law firms so that everybody can get the light bulb turned on for them as soon as possible so that you can start to develop a culture of business development in your firm and not wait for people to suddenly realize at 10 or 15 years that they should be developing business and then they're terrified and don't know how to do it. And then we also have a program called Ignite, which is a women's business development accelerator. And that we draw women from a variety of different law firms and run that on a yearly basis.

[00:23:41] So we've got lots of different programs available. And if you're interested in chatting, you know, no pressure to become a client. Happy to share with you what we do and see if it would be a good fit. And thanks, Scott, for asking the question. Well, Elise, thank you for being a guest on the show. You did a great job sharing these ideas with us. And for everybody listening, tune in next week as we continue on with part two with Elise Holtzman, how to get speaking panel and writing opportunities. Elise, thanks for being on the show and we'll talk with you next week.

[00:24:11] Thank you, Scott. Thank you for listening to the Rainmaking Podcast. For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorneysearchgroup.com. To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting or executive retreat, visit therainmakingpodcast.com.