TRP 313: Building a Pipeline Through Online Connections with Fin Wycherley

[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. Before we get to our guest and our topic today, which is one you definitely want to listen to, let me go over a couple of conference updates for you.

[00:00:34] First, in May 14th and 15th, SharePoint is putting on the Law Firm Leadership Lab. Originally, this was opened just to managing partners of law firms, but now anybody in leadership, if you're a COO, CFO, if you're in a leadership role, maybe you're the head of strategy growth, this is a conference that you don't want to miss. All the information is on the show notes for this podcast, so go there and you'll be able to register directly. It's May 14th and 15th.

[00:01:01] I'll also be speaking there on the topic of lateral partner recruiting. Another conference that's worth considering is Rain Dance, put on by the Legal Sales and Service Organization, LSSO. That's going to be June 3rd and 4th in Chicago, Illinois. I'll be facilitating a session there. Also, if you're a member of the Association for Corporate Growth, and if you're going to be attending DealMax, I'll be there as well. Reach out to me. In fact, if you're a member of ACG, connect with me anyways.

[00:01:28] I've got a vast network of over 25,000 people on LinkedIn, and if you want introductions to any of them, please reach out to me. I keep a well-connected network and those in the area of funds, investments, etc. Let's get to our show today. Our topic title is Building a Pipeline Through Online Connections with Finn Witcherly. Finn is the founder of Supersize Media, a BBC commentator, and a keynote speaker.

[00:01:53] She works at the intersection of law, finance, and influence, helping high-performing professionals turn expertise into visibility and visibility into revenue. Her clients are not beginners. They're lawyers, partners, consultants, executives who are already exceptional at what they do, but increasingly invisible, where it now matters the most. Online. She fixes that.

[00:02:16] You're going to get some great ideas, both in terms of strategy and also in terms of tactics related to your online connection from our conversation with Finn today. Make sure you go to the show notes and connect with her directly. We put her LinkedIn information or contact info and also a free authority reset where you can fix your positioning in 10 minutes. Make sure you take advantage of that link as well. As always, this show is sponsored by SurePoint Legal Insights, formerly known as Leopard Solutions, turning legal intelligence into opportunity.

[00:02:46] The show is also sponsored by The Rainmaking Magazine. Now, I've mentioned this to you before. I don't know if you've had a chance to check it out. Just go to therainmakingmagazine.com today. You'll see articles written by our guests on this podcast. That's our sister publication. It's less than $200 a year for an annual subscription. So don't lose business to the competition. Read this publication and keep business development top of mind. And I'll tell you why I started that.

[00:03:14] The problem this solves is that you're busy. You're dealing with your clients. How are you going to have time to make rain? Well, if you subscribe to the publication, it keeps business development top of mind. Visit therainmakingmagazine.com today to chart your course to greater rainmaking success. Thanks for listening, and I hope you get some great ideas from my conversation with Finn Witcherly today. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast.

[00:03:40] Our guest today is Finn Witcherly, and we're talking about building a pipeline through online connections. Finn, thank you for joining me on the show. Hi. Nice to see you, Scott. This is great. And so I wanted to kind of get some definitions here first. When we talk about a pipeline, I want to find out what that means exactly. For those in professional services, what is that and why is that important to them?

[00:04:04] It's basically having a good amount of people calling you up, making inquiries, and being specific about what they're looking for. So normally, a lot of law firms make the mistake of just relying on directories and billboards and things like that. But you don't necessarily know anybody in the firm, whereas what we try to do is make sure that every senior and junior person is beginning to build a personal brand so that they're all operating as sales magnets online.

[00:04:35] Yeah, right, right. And so let me kind of go a little bit deeper on that. You talked about some people, they might be advertising. Let's say if it's a B2C, business to consumer attorney, they're doing family law, they're doing slip and fall, plaintiff's attorneys, things like that. What about those that do B2B, those that are selling their services to companies that might need them? What do you think about where they should be hanging out in terms of online connections? Well, you'd be surprised.

[00:05:01] I mean, obviously, the default for most lawyers is LinkedIn and X. But the reality is that you can build a profile across all of the platforms pretty easily. Because like 90% of the work is on creating that great piece of content that's going to inform and educate and inspire people to pick up the phone. So why would you just send it out to one fishing pond? Do you know what I mean?

[00:05:26] You need to set up your rod in all the fishing ponds and distributing it across all the channels is such a no-brainer, you know. And so once you know that you're going to be creating one piece of content, for example, per day, and it goes out across all of the platforms with a slight tweak to make sure it's appropriate and in the right culture for that particular platform, then you're maximizing your opportunities for getting a return on investment, basically. Yeah, right.

[00:05:55] Let's talk about these fishing ponds then. And let's kind of break our listeners into B2C and B2B. Let's start with the B2B, those that are selling to companies. What are the fishing ponds for online connections that they should be looking at? So obviously, the main one for them, for B2B, is LinkedIn. So if we just look at LinkedIn by itself, right? So the vast majority of lawyers on LinkedIn are atrocious in terms of their marketing.

[00:06:23] So they will do what we call BTS marketing, behind the scenes. I'm delighted to announce. Yeah. So it's just like a day in the life activity. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. With that type of content, it stays within a very small echo chamber because the algorithms are there to source content that's objectively speaking going to be of value to a wider community.

[00:06:52] Obviously, you can have your little cohort of friends, colleagues, stakeholders, you know, responding to your wee messages in your niche. But if you're actually trying to make sure that that content goes out to actual prospects, then you have to do a different strategy, which is going to break out of the echo chamber and provide top of the funnel content that actually brings people through all the way to the bottom of the funnel, basically.

[00:07:22] Yeah, right, right. So I want to come back to LinkedIn here. Are there any other fishing ponds for those in B2B? And I definitely want to hit on some of the things they can do besides the behind the scenes with LinkedIn. But what are some other fishing ponds that B2B professionals should look at?

[00:07:37] I mean, although TikTok has changed in America a lot in the last couple of months, it's still extremely progressive and viable because of the fact that it actually just by itself, it changed the way that people do social media. So in the past, in the medieval era, which was basically last year, it was that you had to have a good following in order to make sure that your content actually surfaced.

[00:08:05] Whereas now in 2026, the opportunity for your content to get 5,000, 50,000, 100,000 views and obviously capturing the attention of your actual ideal client as a result is much higher when you're providing very high quality content, essentially. So therefore, it's now less about social media.

[00:08:28] You don't need to be that social in a way like you used to, but you do have to have great, great quality content that is answering all the FAQs, all the SEO keywords and basically informing, educating and entertaining as the BBC would call it. Okay, good. So I'm going to come back to this FAQs and keywords here in a second. Getting back to the fishing ponds for B2B, we've got LinkedIn, TikTok. And by the way, I don't dance, but I can still be on TikTok. Is that right?

[00:08:58] Yeah, obviously 99% of our clients are always like, we're not doing TikTok. I'm sorry. I'm not going to dance. I'm not going to lip sync. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. Go and find somebody else to work. Because if you're working with me, this is the strategy and the reason why I'm so successful and I can give you 65 booked qualified appointments per month, basically, is because I know how to work the fishing ponds, basically. Yeah, yeah, good, good.

[00:09:26] So what are the fishing ponds for B2B? LinkedIn, TikTok, you mentioned X before. Yeah, and then Facebook and Instagram, essentially. And YouTube as well, of course. YouTube is an absolute beast when it comes to keywords. And the way that all the platforms now are desperately trying to help you to create really quality content is unreal. So for example, on YouTube, we have a couple of lawyers who are obviously coming up with lots of ideas with us.

[00:09:55] But they've noticed that even within YouTube, they're saying in one of their kind of dashboards, based on the kind of content that you've already done, here's a couple of ideas of content that you should be doing based on the kind of questions that people are asking on YouTube. You know what I mean? So all of the platforms are bending over backwards to try and help create that quality content, as opposed to the usual, I'm delighted to announce content.

[00:10:22] I know, I know. I'm humble that I would be selected for Chambers the seventh year in a row. Okay, so LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And those are the same for those that are selling to consumers. Is that correct? Same, I mean, same fishing ponds. Are there any others that are just B2B or just B2C that we should be paying attention to? No, those are the main ones. I mean, ultimately, it's P2P nowadays.

[00:10:48] It's person to person because most people imagine that people are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn. The stats just aren't there. You know, even though it got taken over by Microsoft, they're still not releasing the stats on the daily active users, which means we know that the vast majority of people are there whenever they need a job. You know, and it's a small little echo chamber networking place. And if you know how to use it as a marketing tool, it's phenomenal.

[00:11:15] But 99% of them don't know how to make that transition. Yeah, okay. Okay, so let's kind of dig into some of these platforms with the idea that I want to build a pipeline through my online connections. I'm a professional services provider. And I have a very specialized niche where I'm really good at this and I want people to know who I am. And let's just start with B2B. Let's kind of dig into what you mentioned with keywords in the context of YouTube.

[00:11:43] You mentioned it's a beast with keywords and then also some of the other platforms. What should we be doing? You mentioned keywords and FAQs. Tell me what that means and how can we implement that across all those different fishing ponds? Yeah, so essentially, that's a great question. So what happens when you go on to TikTok? Obviously, if you've never spent any time on TikTok or you've never spent any time on X or you've never spent any time on all the Instagrams and all the rest of them,

[00:12:12] then the default is garbage because the algorithms haven't worked out what you like. You're going to see all kinds of stupid pop videos, some kind of random dog videos. You know, they'll just try and feed you anything to try and gauge what are you interested in. And as soon as you spend a bit of time dwelling on a piece, instantly the algorithms are like, ooh, he likes fishing.

[00:12:34] And then if you look at another piece, which is like somebody talking about wealth and investment and, you know, is Dubai a place to invest in if you're interested in high risk, for example? And you're like, oh, this is an interesting one. So then they're beginning to gauge the kind of stuff that you're interested in. And then they're going to be able to feed you more and more of the content that you like. So if you spend all your time researching something to do with the commercial lawyers or contracts and things like that, well, guess what's going to be coming up in your newsfeed all the time?

[00:13:04] It's a bit like doing something on Amazon. You know, they're going to suggest and keep on suggesting other, you know, really good pieces of content based on what you've already been looking at. Yeah, right, right. So how should we, if I'm a busy professional services provider, I know I've got a marketing team. They help coordinate conferences. They've gotten me a couple of panel speaking opportunities at two or three conferences a year. Our firm has a robust social media presence.

[00:13:33] But I'm just, I'm one of 600 people there. I'm just not getting the attention. What can I do to really, you know, do the things that you mentioned? Are there any cadences or rituals or different types of things that I should post where and how often? Yeah, that's a phenomenal question. So the main thing to remember is that your local community is not your audience if you are trying to use it as a marketing tool.

[00:14:00] So everything you need to focus on is what does my ideal client need to know? So if you're a divorce lawyer or a family lawyer or anything like that, then you are going to have to say, like, this is how you make sure you maintain custody of your child in fractious situations. Here's your plan on what to do.

[00:14:22] Or if ICE is knocking at the door, you know, these are the 10 things you need to make sure you've got in your possession and why you don't answer the door. You know, so you're always thinking about that type of content. And what happens is that when people see that, they're like, wow, this is really important. So we've got a number of cybersecurity lawyers as well that we're working with. And rather than going, oh, yes, we went to a conference. It was really great. There were some big names there.

[00:14:50] We're helping them to understand that you must lead with the pain and obviously the promise. So obviously, if you're not paying attention to cybersecurity, this is the implications of what's going to happen. Why should it not be looked at the management level? Why it should be looked at the board level? What are the consequences of leaving it to the IT people to think about cybersecurity and things like that? The dangers, the disasters, you know, don't rely on the IT people to give you the right information.

[00:15:19] This stuff has to happen at board level. So if you begin to have that kind of framework, right, but not just that, you're actually creating a kind of cheat sheet from it. Like an infographic, right? So what happens is somebody is going to be scrolling away on LinkedIn or one of the other platforms and go, wow, this is really important. I love this.

[00:15:43] I'm going to share it with my WhatsApp group of investors or my WhatsApp group of the board and make sure that we raise this because it's a fantastic little PDF that covers all the points. And we need to actually make sure we're addressing all of those points. And then once we've addressed that, we need to call this guy and bring him in or whoever. Interesting. Right, right, right. So you mentioned something. I wanted to make sure I got that right. You said lead.

[00:16:12] Did you say lead with the pain and include the promise? Is that what you said? A hundred percent. Yeah. Tell me about that. What does that mean exactly? So, I mean, the hook when it comes to any type of post has got to be the most important. So if you'll notice on LinkedIn, you've got like a sentence and a half to be able to make your point. And then it goes to see more. Right. And of course, 95% of people are not going to click on the see more because at the top, it's just not juicy enough. Right.

[00:16:41] So therefore, your hook, whether it's on LinkedIn or YouTube, your title essentially, including the kind of visual that you've got accompanying that piece, has got to be, you know, hitting that pain point of, yeah, this is really a pain that I'm experiencing right now. Plus, you're not actually trying to just depress me. You know, you're also offering the possibility of I've got, you know, some quick answers that's going to help you address this issue.

[00:17:11] And then if you want to go deeper into it, then let's talk or download my PDF or sign up for my newsletter or book a call, et cetera, et cetera. This is great. So let's kind of workshop this a little bit. Let's say that we're coaching an M&A attorney that does private equity deals within the context of he's doing more of the sell side. He wants to do the buy side, which is more repeat work where he's working with the PE companies or acquiring organizations.

[00:17:39] And he knows that he can get introductions to those entities through the investment banking network that he has. So let's kind of workshop that. What would be pain points that he or she should be promoting to say, these are the reasons why M&A deals don't close. And these are the five things you need to do to keep that from happening if you're an executive in a private equity company. So kind of workshop that.

[00:18:03] What would be a piece of advice you'd give to that person to where they can lead with the pain and include the promise in their social media outreach? Yeah, this is so great. I love this. So creative. I can see where you've got to where you've got to because we're filling the presents. Yeah. So what we do with the client then is we will always book up like 90 minutes often with them once a month. And we will interview the crap out of them. Excuse my language. Because we need to find that information.

[00:18:32] They've got all of the information there, but they don't know how to be able to package it in the right way. So we will make sure we understand what are the myths? What are the misconceptions? What is it in the industry most people don't know? What is it that they assume? You know what I mean? So we really need to go in to the detail.

[00:18:51] And instantly, once you lead with that kind of nuance or secret or however you want to phrase it, you know, you're beginning to start juicing up some energies that allow people to click through because they're now you've peaked their curiosity. And then you deliver, you know, you go in, you can go as intense as you need to in order to make sure you're demonstrating your high level understanding of the topic.

[00:19:18] So, for example, because I work with a lot of lawyers, I do quite a lot of content on law firms and a lot of the mistakes that they made that they make. And I was talking about the demise of Cadwallader and that piece, for example, on just on LinkedIn alone, got shared around so many law firms across the world. I got new followers from Papua New Guinea. I got calls from Liechtenstein. And I even got messages from Cadwallader people going, that was spot on. You nailed it.

[00:19:48] You know what I mean? And that's because you're creating incredible objective value that people want to share. And that's the difference. The behind-the-scenes day-in-the-life stuff, that's your little cohort of stakeholders, mates, and everything like that. But the stuff that people want to share, repost, putting out into their board, putting out into their investor community, that's the stuff that's the gold, really. That's great. So this is a real structure that we could take.

[00:20:18] What you mentioned, digging down. What are the myths? What is it that they don't know? What are the things that they assume that might not be true? And you can build a plan. Okay, these are the 10 points that I've come with with this. I'm going to write short content. And I'm going to do a series of three- to four-minute videos in an afternoon. And I'm going to have my social media person release that one a week for the next 12 weeks. And that'll take me through several months' worth of social media content.

[00:20:45] And I'm going to take those five to 10 different points, and I'm going to take the top three, and I'm going to reach out to trade associations about sitting on a panel delivering topics to discuss this. And I'm going to see if they can record it. And I'm going to create social media content out of that. So it's this propagated cycle that just continues. How does that sound, Vino? Are we on to something here? You are rocking it hard there. I would even add, though, that we need to take them offline as quickly as possible or off-platform.

[00:21:15] So what that means is if you've given them a teaser of how intense your knowledge is, why not get them to download the PDF? Why not get them to download a more expansive report, for example? And that way, because I kind of look at it in the dating kind of level, really, which was from a long, long time ago. So if you're going into the club and then you're just looking around, then people is really like, whatever.

[00:21:42] But when you actually hand over your number, like if somebody hands over their email, that means, OK, we're talking, you know. But the fact that they actually give your email in order to download that report or check out that PDF in more detail, because it's difficult to read, perhaps, because there's so many elements on that infographic. Then now you've got that email, which is an invitation to treat. It's an invitation to nurture that person.

[00:22:07] So what happens is once you've got that lead, now you have them on your inner circle. And it behoves you now to really nurture those people, because by the very fact that they've handed over an email that says they're a warm prospect. Right. Now it's up to you to keep on nurturing them until they reach what we call the zero moment of truth. Right now, they are curious and interested, but, you know, things are happening.

[00:22:37] It's not the right time to, you know, make a call. But because you're sending out incredibly valuable emails on the regular and I know you're always in my inbox, even though I'm not reading everything, I'm always going to be able to find you. Whereas in three months time, I'm like, yeah, I read this great article. What the hell was his name? What firm was it? I can't find him on social media. It's just not going to happen.

[00:23:00] So therefore, you have to actually find a way to get them to sign up for an even more valuable piece of content, which expands from what you were already doing at the top of the funnel. This is fantastic, Finn. And I really appreciate you being on the show. I want to have you come on back because we can go deeper on these things. And let me ask you this. If you were to give advice to someone, let's say you're coaching someone, they're just getting started, but you can only tell them three steps.

[00:23:28] What are three action steps they can take to really implement some of these ideas you shared with us today? Okay. So I would say that it's an absolute no brainer to build a personal brand because if that M&A lawyer, for example, is now instead of having like a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand local people that they've actually met.

[00:23:49] Now, if you're moving into the 10, 20, 30, 150,000 people that are now following you because you're actually bringing great insights into the industry and the community, already you're building a massive community. And what happens is because of the fact that you're consistently creating great content, people will trust you more than anything that the business page will ever come out with. And that's the big struggle.

[00:24:16] That's the big tension within the law firms, because the law firms understand if the individual lawyers get more powerful and more visible than the law firms, we're going to have to start negotiating. They're literally becoming rainmakers from nowhere, right? And this is literally what I teach is how to become a rainmaker, even if you're just at the beginning of your career.

[00:24:41] But you could be that person now in 10, 20, 30,000 followers just on LinkedIn. But because you're really focusing on this particular niche and then you're becoming that go-to person in a way that all the senior consultants, all the senior partners are not able to muster in the online space. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. That really does. I like that.

[00:25:05] You know, I think that we can kind of parse this out into understand your niche, understand what the problems are that people have, reach out to people like you to help them see how they can really put this together. Because these are busy people. They're not going to mean people like to be do-it-yourselfers with some things, but I'm not going to go to my dentist and say, I think I'm going to try this next crown on my own.

[00:25:28] And so, no, it's, although lawyers are the most brilliant in terms of mind, creativity, communication skills, they're wedded to billable hours. And this is, this is outside of the comfort zone. So if they have the best intentions of the world, and I get a lot of law firms ask me to come and do some LinkedIn training. I'm like, it's a waste of time. And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I know lawyers. They're going to go, yes, take box. I did the annual LinkedIn workshop. Right.

[00:25:57] So I've told the latest, they ain't going to do nothing with it. You know, it requires too much effort. So what I do do is I will set up a Rainmaker cohort within the organization. Ten weeks, we've got leaderboard. How many posts have you done? What were the impressions? What were the number of leads came in? And that actually galvanizes a lot of the fantastic competitive spirit that lawyers actually have. That's great. That's great.

[00:26:24] And Finn, we're going to put all of your contact information on the show notes. Everybody listening, you want to connect with Finn, reach out to her directly. And is there anything else about your services, your offerings that you'd like our listeners to know about today? Yeah. So I've got obviously one-to-one coaching available. And then I'm going to be launching a 10-week cohort to make sure that people are understanding how to build all of the elements of a personal brand so that they can put their senior partners to shame. That's great. This is great.

[00:26:54] Finn, thank you for being here, for your insights and your energy. This is real substance I know people will use. And like I said, let's get you back on the show in the future. Thank you so much, Finn. Thank you so much, 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.

[00:27:21] To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting, or executive retreat, visit theraanmakingpodcast.com.