In this episode, Alay Yajnik and Kevin Brodehl, partner at Patton Sullivan Brodehl, discuss how Kevin is using his two blogs, Money and Dirt and the LLC Jungle, to attract his ideal clients to his law firm. Takeaways from our conversation include:

  • When you’re building your book, you should be visible, be memorable, and be helpful.
  • Give your blog a name, and get the “.com” domain on the internet for the name.
  • You have time to write a blog each month. Make it a priority, make it a commitment, and stick to it!
  • Basic blogs (like the kind that may companies write for you) attract basic clients. Sophisticated blogs (like the ones that only you can write) attract sophisticated clients.
  • Writing a blog can be effective, but it isn’t a substitute for getting out there and connecting with people.
  • There is no blueprint for marketing, so do what you enjoy and give yourself permission to try lots of different things.
  • A good business coach will help you discover your niche.

Alay Yajnik: Welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage. This podcast is dedicated to helping attorneys earn more money, get better clients and spend more time with family. I’m your host, Alay Yajnik, founder of Law Firm Success Group. Smart Business Guidance for small law firms begins in 3…2…1….

Alay Yajnik: And it’s my pleasure to welcome to the show Kevin Brodehl, partner at Patton Sullivan Brodehl and author of the LLC Jungle and Money and Dirt blogs. Kevin, welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage.

Kevin Brodehl: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Alay Yajnik: I’m glad we have a chance to chat here. We don’t get a chance to talk as often as we used to. So thanks again for joining the show. And tell us a little bit about yourself, your practice and your blogs.

Kevin Brodehl: Sure. Thank you for having me again. It’s a pleasure. We’ve known each other for a while now, so I’m very happy to see you doing a podcast and very honored to be a guest. I’ve been a litigator my entire career. Started practicing in 1998 and I’ve focused entirely on real estate and business disputes from a broad perspective. And when you drill down, most of my cases are relatively high stakes. Most of them involve real estate in one form or another. And then more recently, I’ve noticed that a lot have involved LLC disputes and a lot of those are real estate-related. Some are not: they can be from industries all across the board. And I don’t do any transactional work, don’t do anything that doesn’t involve a courtroom or an arbitration room. And so that’s what I’ve done and I love it.

Alay Yajnik: Very cool, how did you get this idea for doing blogs as a business dev tactic?

Kevin Brodehl: So the blogs came to me. The first one was Money and Dirt. That came to me around, I think, 2014. I started that. And that was really the result of a lot of trying different things and seeing what I liked and maybe what worked. I think it was the recession that kind of put me into a marketing framework, as it did a lot of attorneys at that time. Up until then, I was a 10 or 11 year attorney when the recession hit. And up until then, I was perfectly happy just doing the work. Just feed me the work. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Well, I like to read the research and I like to write. But right around the recession, it became pretty clear that that wasn’t going to be enough to really have the kind of career that I wanted to have and I wanted to go out and develop business. So I started trying a lot of different things. And one of my former partners at a prior firm had started a very well recognized construction law blog. And I thought, that is so cool. And not only is it accessible, but it just seems like he had a really fun time doing it and so it was right around 2014 that I decided upon starting the Money and Dirt blog because I figured, you know, a lot of people are doing real estate stuff, but not a lot of people are dealing with the intersection of money, both in the form of big deals that have gone bad, but also secured lending and foreclosure type litigation between big banks and sophisticated developer borrowers. Not a lot of people are writing about that. So I decided to try it out and it’s stuck with it ever since then.

Alay Yajnik: What did you find so interesting about that topic that you felt that, OK, here’s something that I need to write about because I’m excited about it, and there’s other people as well that are out there who might also be excited about it.

Kevin Brodehl: I think maybe one reason that the blog idea or the concept of a blog turned me on so much was that there was no real – I mean, there are industry groups for developers and such, but a lot of my clients, they’re not so big that they’re participating in these big nationwide commercial real estate developer groups that kind of keep to themselves. And the same thing on the L.L.C. jungle area. Those are even smaller clients. Most of those LLC’s are maybe four to 10 people, mostly real estate investors. There is no systematic and organized way to reach those people by just joining an industry group or some association. And so I looked at blogging as a way of, well, OK, they can find me if I’m putting relevant material out there and helpful material out there for them, they can find me that way.

Alay Yajnik: There’s something you do differently than probably ninety five percent of the other attorneys who blog, and it’s really one of the first questions I get as a business coach, my clients will say, “I want to do a blog!” And they’re so excited about doing one and they attach the blog to the website and that’s all it is. It’s just a blog that’s on the website. But you have it named: the LLC Jungle is one, Money and Dirt is a second. They’re named. They’re different. Tell me a little bit about how you came up with titling those blogs the way you did.

Kevin Brodehl: Well, a lot of thinking, brainstorming! Anyone who knows me knows I’m a night owl and I do a lot of my best work at night. So do a lot of my best thinking at night. Sometimes at night when I’m done with my billable work somewhere around midnight or so, my brain will be too revved up to fall asleep. And so that’s when I start thinking about different marketing ideas. Honestly, the title of those two blogs just kind of came to me in different late night thought sessions laying down waiting to get tired. Money and Dirt struck me as I mean, I’ve always heard of real estate litigators referred to as dirt lawyers because they deal with their real estate. But to me, I was always more interested in that intersection between big deals gone bad, big loans gone bad, and that’s money. And then the LLC jungle. I really wasn’t looking to start a second blog, but it was around 2018 that I realized, wow, for the last maybe half of my career have been LLC disputes some of them real estate, some of them not. And so I was debating between two titles for that. One was the LLC Jungle. The other was the LLC Whisperer which – I mean – all these titles are a bit corny but corny does get remembered and I’m glad I picked the jungle over the whisperer.

Alay Yajnik: I think it fits well too, with your firm’s brand, which is pretty intense, aggressive, sharp litigating law firm. LLC Jungle certainly fits in there are a lot better than whisperer. So yeah.

Kevin Brodehl: And I think Jungle also conveyed – with respect to the LLC litigation that I do, there are just so many traps and unknowns and an under-appreciated aspects to LLC law that I thought Jungle better summarized those risks.

Alay Yajnik: We can definitely see the tigers lurking in the underbrush. And so you did Money and Dirt and presumably you enjoyed that. And there were some signs there that it was working for you. We’ll get to that in a minute. But what was it that actually made you say to yourself, OK, you know what, I’m going to do this second blog, The LLC Jungle. I’m going to double down and spend more time doing blogs, and I’m going to launch a separate blog instead of just doing more Money and Dirt posts.

Kevin Brodehl: Yeah, it was such a challenge for me to actually pull the trigger on it because it was right around the time that I was leaving my bigger, comfortable regional firm to start up with my partners now in a smaller firm. My two partners now, Randy and John, they had been together for a decade. So it was really neat joining them. But we also changed a lot when I came aboard. I had new ideas to implement. So there were a lot of entrepreneurial efforts going into my career at that point in time. So that’s another reason I didn’t have time for a second blog, but maybe it was just having on all those entrepreneurial thoughts, like how do we run a firm better? How do we build a better firm, how do we build a better practice that I just couldn’t ignore the massive opportunity that I saw in niching out on this L.L.C. stuff. And I actually reached out to a former partner at a big San Francisco firm that I had gotten to know through the UC Davis Law Alumni. And I told her what I was going through and I got enough on my plate already. But there’s this opportunity with this L.L.C. stuff. And she said, “Kevin, you have to go for it.” And so I did, right around the same time we we started the new firm.

Alay Yajnik: And so now that you’re in a few years into it, into both of these blogs, how have those blogs actually helped to practice?

Kevin Brodehl: So I’ll admit that probably the one deficiency I have is any real systematic, organized way of tracking things. However, yeah, I’ve noticed more and more lately that when I get calls or referrals, people will mention the blog. Now, a lot of the time – I would say most of the time – the blogs serve as, you know, confirmation or verification that I might know what I’m talking about instead of just, oh, I found you through your blog. But there’s been a lot of instances in the past couple of years where they actually have found me through my blog and these are not small cases, they’re bigger matters and they’re sophisticated clients who – you know, in this day and age, a lot of our sophisticated clients are doing their own research and they’re not going to represent themselves proper in a case, but they’re certainly going to do a lot of digging and figure out as much as they can before they hire an attorney. And so to me, the blogs provide credibility more than that direct pipeline of business, but it’s worked both ways.

Alay Yajnik: There’s a couple of things that you mentioned. There were fantastic points. I want to make sure the audience remembers these. The first is that you cannot necessarily draw a line from a blog post to potential clients, that line is hard to draw. It does happen and it’s happened with you, but you can’t always make that direct connection. That’s first thing to bear in mind.

Alay Yajnik: The second that you mentioned is your blogs are not basic topics. They’re sophisticated blogs written for a sophisticated audience. And so maybe it’s not as surprising when the people that read those blogs contact you and they’re good cases because you’re talking about complex topics. And so just a word to attorneys that are doing blogs. If you want to attract a basic audience – and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if who you want to attract, write a basic blog. If you want to attract a sophisticated audience, write a sophisticated blog, because what you put out there is what you’re going to get back. And I love that you really took an intentional approach to doing that.

Kevin Brodehl: Yeah. And I think another kind of comment that dovetails with that, Alay, is the importance of having a niche and really having subject matter expertise. I know that a lot of my earlier marketing efforts were writing an article about this new appeal case about evidence or attorney fees or some really nuts and bolts procedural stuff that frankly would really only interest other attorneys. And I think that having a niche, having the subject matter expertise in my case with the LLC’s and with the, you know, the money and dirt type cases, that’s going to help a lot, too. It just helps you be more memorable when you’re writing about things that are in a very narrow lane. And to me, that’s probably one of the hardest things to to get past as a younger attorney trying to market. You just you want to spread it out so broadly to make sure you don’t miss any opportunities. And one of the first things I read about and learned about when I started getting into this marketing thing was the value of a niche that the narrower you get, the bigger your opportunities actually are going to be. And that’s been one hundred percent true for me.

Alay Yajnik: I love that. And so how did you find your niches if you think back?

Kevin Brodehl: So it’s funny because it was not really an intentional “I’m going to dive into this practice area” type thing. And for many years I struggled with the niche concept because I could see how it would be valuable to have a niche. But I always just thought of myself, and I’m just a business and real estate litigator. I do a whole bunch of business and real estate related cases. I can’t narrow it down any further than that. But it was really only after just a lot of reflection over the types of cases I was doing and drilling down and seeing how other attorneys who did business in real estate litigation, whose practice looked nothing like mine, it just took some thinking about how to appreciate how is my practice different, how are my cases different? And it was really a process of deduction more than anything else. I realized, these are the two areas that I kind of own with my practice.

Alay Yajnik: I thank you for being so honest about that because so many attorneys that I work with, they think that, OK, we’re going to go on this offsite and there’s going to be this this white board, and we’re going to go through this big analytical exercise about opportunities and strategy and come up with this brilliant, brilliant move. Oftentimes, that’s not the case. That’s been my experience too. My focus on attorneys was literally just reflecting on my clients and saying, “Oh, my gosh. I have a ton of clients who are lawyers and law firms, maybe I should focus on that.” And you were open to finding a niche for a long time before you deduced where your sweet spot was and where your niche should be. And so oftentimes that’s really what it is. It’s reflecting, being open to it, thinking about it.

Kevin Brodehl: Yeah. And at my prior firm, we had a marketing coach that would work with groups of attorneys at a time for a short period. But I remember one comment he made to me when I was kind of griping about this. “You know, I’m just a business real estate lawyer. You can’t ask me out any more than that, man.” And he said, “Kevin, if you were in North Dakota, maybe you could be the business and real estate litigator and that would really stand out. But you’re in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area of California. There are thousands of other business and real estate litigators that basically brand themselves that way. In your area, you need to drill down.” And I think that really inspired me to to get a little deeper.

Alay Yajnik: Outstanding. That is terrific. And it is a process that you go through. I remember one of my clients, an estate planning attorney, we had to figure out what made her unique, what was the unique value proposition. And it turned out she did not have a specialization like you do. It was just general estate planning. But in her area, in her geographic area, at her price point and with her background, she was the only attorney in the area that kind of checked those three pieces of criteria. And so that’s how she marketed herself and it worked out really well for her. So, yeah, that you’re finding a way to differentiate yourself is awesome. And just out of curiosity, now that you’ve got these blogs and you have these niches, what has that done to simplify your marketing?

Kevin Brodehl: Oh, it’s helped immensely. It really has. Whereas before I used to just pitch across the broad spectrum of real estate and business issues. Now I just pitched super narrow and the LLC was actually even narrower than the money and dirt because money and dirt still encompasses quite a few different types of cases. You have your real estate investors maybe fighting with each other. You have a purchase and sale agreement that’s gone bad between a developer and a big landowner. They’re still kind of a big variety. They’re the LLC jungle. It’s about as narrow as it gets. It’s, hey, if you’re a member or a manager in an LLC and you’re having internal problems, I mean, that’s what I do. And people remember that much easier than just, oh, Brodehl’s the business and real estate litigator. It’s so much more specific.

Alay Yajnik: Yeah. And clearly you put a lot of thought into what you post. I don’t appreciate all the nuances, but I’ve gone through and read some of those posts. I can tell they’re very well thought out and well articulated, which begs the question, when I look at a lot of attorney websites, they have had one blog post in the last three months. Now with with the pandemic, they might not have blogged in 2020 at all. How do you find the time to not just blog on one but do two blogs.

Kevin Brodehl: Well, so when I started the second blog I had Money and Dirt for a couple of years, 2014 until 2018. 2018 is when I started the LLC Jungle. Back when I just did Money and Dirt my goal was to post twice per month and I hit that. And when I started the LLC Jungle I figured, well if I post twice per month on both blogs then I kill myself. It’s just too much. And so I shifted to twice per month, one for one blog, one for the other blog. And that’s what I’ve maintained pretty much every month since they started. The way I make time for it, it’s just the same way to make time for anything else. You habitualize it. It’s a goal of mine. And oftentimes if you look at my blogs, you’ll see that a post might be on the 30th or 31st of the month because I hold myself accountable. Each blog needs one post per month and so I’ve held myself to that the same way you hold yourself to workouts or any other habit that you want to have. Even when I’m busy, even when I’m in trial, I’ll get one done.

Alay Yajnik: Well, that’s the point I was going to mention is you’re a litigator. And so at times your workload can get pretty intense. Plus, you’re a partner at the firm. And just so everyone here knows, just so you all know when you’re listening, Kevin doesn’t just sit in his office and blog as his only business development tactic. I mean, you are out, right, Kevin? You’re out and about as far as other marketing that you do.

Kevin Brodehl: Yeah. Yeah. The blogs are just one component. My favorite thing to do is just go out and meet people and talk to people. In fact, one of the first marketing books I’ve read, the quote that I’ll never forget was “business is best done belly to belly.” It just means get out of your office and go meet people because it’s only really when you have that one to one or maybe in a three person lunch dialog that you really get to know people. And so, yeah, it’s in person communications. It’s networking groups. You and I are both involved in ProVisors. That’s been a great group. I’ve been involved in other industry groups from here and there. But those regular coffees, lunches and small group meetings – there’s no substitute for those.

Alay Yajnik: So Kevin spends hours probably every week networking, whether it’s on Zoom or whether it’s in person, and he’s a partner at his firm, so he helps run that. He’s involved with hiring for his law firm and he’s a litigator – and a very active and busy one. And Kevin still finds the time to do two blog posts a month. So for all of you out there who are saying, “I don’t have the time to do a blog post,” you do have the time. You just have to prioritize it.

Alay Yajnik: And so, Kevin, you know, many attorneys have blogs, but their blogs don’t seem to help them. And we’ve talked quite a bit about some things that you’re doing differently. But as you reflect on that, what do you think might be different about your approach?

Kevin Brodehl: Well, I think in all my thinking about marketing in my own head, at least have distilled it to three things. One is to be visible. Two is to be memorable. And three is to be helpful. And there’s no real secret to any of those. Being helpful speaks for itself. The first one, being visible, just means you got to get out there and do stuff, whether it’s write or talk to people. It’s the middle one, I think, where you can really go with the blogs being memorable, it really just means writing about something that matters. You know, my earlier efforts, I think, probably lacked that component because, again, I was just writing about generic issues that pop up and might be of some vague interest to maybe every attorney in the world, but not that interesting. And now having the focus and the niche, when I write about things, it might not be interesting to ninety or ninety five percent of the world population out there, but for anyone swimming in the L.L.C. jungle streams that I’m in or in the money and dirt streams, it’s going to hit, it’s going to hit with at least some group of people. And so I think being memorable goes hand in hand with having that niche.

Alay Yajnik: That’s a terrific point. I love how you broke it down into those three things, visible and memorable and helpful. That’s awesome. And the nice thing about blogs is they live into perpetuity. So once you write it, it’s out there, it’s on the Internet, it’s there forever. For those of you that are looking to get started with a blog, as Kevin said, your early blogs might not be great. They might suck. But Kevin, I’m sure you’re finding now it’s a lot easier to write a blog than maybe it was before it got started, right?

Kevin Brodehl: It does. You get your formula down. For me, it’s just a matter of new cases being published by the Courts of Appeal in California, kind of the backbone of my blogs. It’s not always about a new case, but it usually is. And so I just keep track of cases. I save the cases that look interesting. And then each week I’ll go back and look at them closer and figure out which one is it, blog worthy. And it’s kind of built into my daily and weekly grind at this point.

Alay Yajnik: And because you’re doing that, because you’re constantly going back and looking at these cases to determine which ones are interesting and which ones we’re publishing, has that had any impact on your ability to keep up to date and current as an attorney?

Kevin Brodehl: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I always joke with people that I’m finding more and more now I’ll come across a situation and a case, a real life case, one that I’m handling as an attorney. And I’ll think, you know, I’ve seen this fact pattern emerge somewhere else before. And I think I blogged about a case that would help me here. And I’ll search back. And sure enough, like five years ago, I blogged about a case that’s applicable to the current dispute. So it’s actually been helpful for my own education to look back and have that kind of library resources that I’ve already thought about.

Alay Yajnik: And as you were thinking about starting up these blogs or continuing with the blogs, one of the things I’ve heard a lot about attorneys that they tend to be perfectionists. And so how did you overcome that? “I’ve got to make this thing perfect, but I also have a deadline and it’s the 30th of the month and I’ve got to get this done.” How did you get past that, get the blog published and continue to move forward?

Kevin Brodehl: Boy, it is hard because attorneys are perfectionists. I think you just have to keep reminding yourself this is not a brief. This is not going to result in a win or a loss for your client. It does reflect on you. So, of course, you can’t be too cavalier about it. You do have to put in thought. But, you know, sometimes less is more. I always aim for a pretty brief blog post, even if it’s a really complicated forty page appellate decision. I know that there are going to be many issues that just don’t connect with anyone reading it. And so I usually try to distill it down to the one or two important things about that case. And then as I’m writing it, I’m always trying to keep the audience in mind: this is not for me. This is not necessarily for other attorneys. This is for people who just want to get the gist, get the punch line. Have it be something that sits with them and affects them, and you’re not going to get that by writing a law review article, every blog post.

Alay Yajnik: Absolutely. What do you think about – this is something I’ve been thinking about as this topic came up. There’s a lot of companies out there. When they’re doing the SEO stuff, they also offer to write blogs. And I don’t think you use those services. Correct me if you do, but I don’t know that you do.

Kevin Brodehl: You are right about that. I do not use them. And it’s funny you mention that, because when I came and joined John and Randy to make Patton Sullivan Brodehl, one of the first things I wanted to do was revamp our website. And so I took on the lead of figuring out how do we do this? And boy, I spoke with probably 10 different shops that said, “We specialize in law firm websites. That’s all we do. We know how to do this.” I found that very appealing. And I talked to all of them and they all wanted to sell this: We’ll write your blog post for you, SEO and SEO and we’ll write it. We know what keywords to include. And I just thought to myself, “I don’t want you to write my blog posts.” I mean, it would be easier to have someone else write all this stuff for me, but that’s not why I do it. I do it for myself partly. And once you lose authorship of the blog, to me it’s like, what are you doing it for? I guess it would work maybe with them, I don’t know, more consumer-focused, that consumer-facing type practice where maybe the issues you really are just trying to appeal to a mass audience. But for me and my practice areas, they’re just so narrow and specific and they’re pretty complex, too, to figure out that I just needed to maintain authorship. So we ended up not using any of those national websites / blogging firms, and we found a local option that was much better, a great option and kept full control of the blogs.

Alay Yajnik: Terrific. That’s awesome, because if you’re just blogging for SEO locally in your market and you want to do something that’s just out there, that’s going to maybe throw off a few leads and a basic blog service where you outsource, it might be the way to go. But that’s not what you’re doing with the LLC Jungle and Money and Dirt. You’re building something special and you’re putting a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of sophistication into the content. And the return you get is commensurate with that. I don’t know that you could outsource these to other organizations and have anywhere near the return on your investment as you’re getting by doing it yourself. It does take more time and more of your effort. But there are so many rewards as we’ve been talking through here today.

Kevin Brodehl: Yep, I agree.

Alay Yajnik: Well, as attorneys are looking to really get their business development on track or if they’re looking to really upgrade it and take it to the next level, I know we’ve been talking about blogs here today, but it’s part of your overall business development strategy. What is some advice that you have for those people that are just looking to get started or to really take it to the next level?

Kevin Brodehl: One thing I would advise younger attorneys looking to get started is just don’t be afraid to try a lot of different stuff, because there are there are so many ways to market your practice. And I mean, maybe they can be boiled down to some fundamentals. You do have to meet people. You have to get to know people. And you can’t really do that effectively by being a hermit and doing nothing but research and writing your briefs. So you do have to get out there. But beyond that, it’s so customizable. And I don’t think that there is one blueprint for success. And I know I searched I mean, back when I started thinking about marketing, I wanted someone to give me a blueprint and I was ready to charge into it. But no one ever gave me a blueprint. They just had these suggestions about, well, maybe this maybe that even the mentor partners at my firm who had wild success with their practices, even they said, well, I don’t have a formula, but here’s a few things you might try, and it depends on what you want to do. And so it really is free form. It’s so customizable. And I think it starts with the the motivation, frankly, to just want to build a practice. And some people don’t want to. They’re comfortable just doing the work and doing the work. But like I said, the recession in 2008 really changed my attitude about how comfortable I was doing the work, because for many, many years I thought of myself as the technician. I would be the best writer and the best researcher and the best arguer in court. And that’s all I needed out of my career. And the recession came and everyone took massive pay cuts. And I had a third kid on the way. And I thought to myself, you know what, maybe I should start thinking about this. So advice is to just do what works for you, try out reading and writing and try out speaking, because I’ve also focused a lot on speaking gigs that kind of revolve around my blogs. So that’s been a natural evolution. And since COVID hit, I’ve been giving webinars on the L.L.C. Jungle, which used to be in-person seminars. But there are so many different things to try. You just have to try them and maybe there is an industry group or organization that would be super valuable for other practices. For me, it didn’t have a ton of appeal, but that could be very valuable, depending on what industry you’re in and what kind of practice you’re in. But I think the number one tip is to just get out and start trying stuff and don’t be afraid of failing because seven out of 10 might go absolutely nowhere and another two out of 10 might just be kind of vague and you don’t really know if they’re working or not. And so the best gauge is, are you having fun doing it? Are you being helpful for other people? And are other people remembering what you do through your marketing efforts? To me, that’s the key.

Alay Yajnik: Yeah, I love it. I love it. And by the way, I’d be suspicious if anyone does have a blueprint to give you because it may have worked well for one person, but it will not work well for the majority of people. You’re absolutely right. And the faster they try things, the faster you might call it failure. I call it learning, but the faster they get to what they really enjoy doing, what they’re good at, what puts them in front of the right people, the faster they can go to practice. That’s terrific advice. So Patton Sullivan Brodehl and then the L.L.C. Jungle and Money and Dirt blogs, you have a lot of irons in the fire with the growing law firm and these two blogs that are attracting a lot of attention. What excites you about Patton Sullivan Brodehl and the blogs and the future?

Kevin Brodehl: Well, I’m having more fun at this smaller platform than I’ve had in my whole career. I’m excited about the entrepreneurial angles that having a smaller firm brings. And I am excited for the future, because I will say that since I started up at the smaller firm, it just feels like people want to give me business. More people, I think, respect the other entrepreneurs in their community. And I think just in general, something I’ve noticed for many years is a lot of clients have lost their lust for the big firm practice. I think clients are kind of catching on to the fact that, you know, these big firms with huge overheads, they’re paying for that. The clients are paying for that. And so there is to me, there’s a huge opportunity for smaller firms to really take very good, valuable work from some of the work that’s traditionally been done by the bigger firms in the area. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. We’ve been growing. I hired our first associate in January of 2020 this year. And it’s been a great ride. And I think our firm is one of several that I have gotten to know around the area with really excellent attorneys, because I think the misperception and I spent my whole career at bigger regional firms and I always thought, oh, why would anyone want to be at a smaller firm? It’s like you feel so unsupported and naked at a smaller firm. But now I’m seeing, like, a lot of really, really smart attorneys with good, strong practices have left and started smaller firms. And everyone I’ve talked to, they’re happier than they’ve ever been, and that includes me.

Alay Yajnik: Well, in the past, maybe there wasn’t as much of a choice because technology didn’t enable that as well. You needed a lot more to start a firm 20 years ago than you do today. And you’re absolutely right. A lot of firms have figured that out and a lot of attorneys have figured that out and they figure they can bill fewer hours and make more money than they could at if they worked at a large firm. So totally get it. And that is exciting. If people want to read up on your blogs, where should they go?

Kevin Brodehl: I’m an easy person to find on the Internet. You can go to either of the blogs: MoneyandDirt.Com or thellcjungle.com. You can also check out our firm Web site at psblegal.com or you can just Google my name, Kevin Brodehl. You’ll find me pretty easily.

Alay Yajnik: Awesome. Awesome. Well, Kevin, thank you very much. Really appreciate your time today. Thanks for all your advice and insight and for being on the show.

Kevin Brodehl: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and good luck.

Alay Yajnik: And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Lawyer Business Advantage podcast. One thing that would really help both us and other new potential listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a comment in iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you tune in to listen. And I want to hear from you. So connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know what you think of this episode. And if you are a solo or an owner of a small law firm and you’re looking to earn more money, attract better clients or reduce your stress, we would love to talk with you to see how we can help request your free law firm assessment by visiting lawfirmsuccessgroup.com. We look forward to talking with you soon. Thank you for listening. My name is Alay Yajnik. Until next time, remember: you can seize freedom. You can embrace happiness. You CAN build your perfect practice.