Jason Melton:

I want them to know that it’s going to be a long day. They see my name on a file. They’re going to have to really work for it. I’m not giving away anything.

Chris Dreyer:

When you’re just starting out, don’t back down from a fight. Go the extra mile for clients, even if their case is tough, word will spread that you’re a fierce advocate that can’t be bullied. As your practice grows, don’t be afraid to pivot.

Jason Melton:

I felt like I need to get younger and younger fast so I can have the longstanding growth. I was like, “Well, let’s just eat the frog and get on social media.”

Chris Dreyer:

Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing agency that’s all about proof, not promises. Each week you get insights and wisdom from some of the best in the industry. Hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. All right, let’s dive in. Jason Melton’s career has been defined by steady and strategic growth. After establishing his firm in Florida over two decades ago, he took on as many cases as he could, building his skills and reputation with each new client. His commitment paid off. Today, Whittel and Melton has grown to a team of 12 attorneys, and Jason himself has been nationally recognized, named among the top 100 High Stakes Litigators and a Top 20 Motorcycle Injury Lawyer in the United States.

But a few years ago, Jason’s practice hit a plateau. He realized he needed to expand his client base to spark new growth. That’s when he joined the National Academy of Motorcycle Injury Lawyers as a founding member to attract clients from the motorcycle community. He now serves as the president. But the crazy thing, Jason has never ridden a motorcycle. Jason shows that genuine care for a community and showing up in an honest way can lead to expansion in new markets. Jason shares how he successfully used social media niche marketing and proactive relationship building to shape his reputation, expand referral networks, and find high value cases. He provides strategies any attorney can use to amplify their voice, collaborate within a specialty area, and kickstart new growth. With consistency and care, Jason proves lawyers can overcome a slow period and reach new heights. Here’s Jason Melton, co-founder of Whittel and Melton.

Jason Melton:

I grew up next to an insurance defense lawyer, a very successful one, and he was kind of like my idol growing up, but I had other friends whose dads were lawyers and they were all just so interesting. I remember him, I remember that guy, I wanted to be just like him. That kind of stuff creeps into your head as you start to make decisions about how you want to spend your time as a young adult and if you want to make some sacrifices to do something, and Lord knows it was a sacrifice going to law school. It was really tough. I have a lot of friends who are wealthy and grew up wealthy, and their law school experience was slightly different than mine, but it’s humbling and that’s one of the best character traits you can have, being a lawyer. One of my favorite mediators always likes to tell me, “I don’t build them, I just fly them.”

As a lawyer, you have to be humble because sometimes you don’t have the best facts or your clients aren’t the best at maybe telling you everything. You can’t walk into every room thinking there’s nothing better than what I have to say. Sometimes somebody else has something better to say.

Chris Dreyer:

I want to just dig right in. A lot of our listeners are trying to grow, they’re trying to get leads, they’re trying to get more cases. You’ve got 170,000 plus followers on Instagram. You’re posting on LinkedIn frequently. You’re doing really well on social media. That is uncommon in the legal space. Not a lot of people are. Where have you found success? Is it a cadence? Is it the hook? Where have you found success in these different channels?

Jason Melton:

For me, I think it was important to just pick a channel and just run as fast as you could in that channel. I think it’s a mistake mostly when starting from nothing to try to do Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, all at the same time. I think it’s too much. They’re not the same. Oh, and then YouTube, I mean they’re not the same. They’re not even filmed the same. I think it’s important just pick one and try to do your best at that one. Right? I did that. Now I do have a TikTok channel, but I’m not on there very often and I just post stuff when I’m bored and I repost my Instagram stuff to Facebook. But my Facebook has never really done that much.

I felt like I was in a bit of a crisis. I practice law mostly in West Central Florida. If you know, Florida is a very blue collar retirement area, and that’s the best way to describe it. There are other ways to describe it, it’s also pretty poor. That’s why blue collar folks from the Northeast can retire there. They can buy a modular home in a modular community that maybe has some private law enforcement and has a feeling of security and there’s other folks that come from the same background. The original marketing for Spring Hill, Florida, which is where my office is, it was from a corporation and they were advertising in New York City for folks making their commute home and to work, and that’s how they got started. That’s kind of why the place developed the way it did because that’s where it started. It’s an interesting area.

I felt like I was going through a bit of a crisis because I don’t have the benefit of my dad was a lawyer or I grew up in the community. I grew up in Texas. I did not grow up in Florida. None of my relatives are professionals that are older than me, certainly not in the legal profession. My community of lawyers I knew in Florida, when I started as a prosecutor in Miami, I had that network of folks. Then when I moved up to Spring Hill, I just met everybody as I worked. I didn’t have the benefits that a lot of people have in starting a business. Over time we did well. The thing about that area is a good percentage of the community, they didn’t grow up there either. Legacy advertising, it doesn’t mean anything. You can find people from advertising to them for five days because they didn’t have 20 years of getting beat over the head with your message. Now that’s becoming less the case as Spring Hill becomes more of a normalized community with kids growing up there and staying there and developing offices there and things like that.

But when I moved there first, that’s how it was. I’ve noticed over time that a lot of my clients and the clients who they refer to me, candidly they’re dying. They’re getting so old that they’re actually dying, or they’re not who they were when they were 58. Now they’re 70 and their life has changed. I felt like there was a crisis somewhat in who my people were. I felt like I need to get younger and younger fast so I can have the longstanding growth. I was like, “Well, let’s just eat the frog and get on social media.” It’s the most opposite of everything I do. I am not on TV. I do some terrestrial radio.

Most consumers, I think they want their problems resolved. They don’t really want to know all of the legal reasons. For the same reasons. when we go to the doctor’s offices, we ask good questions, maybe because we’re interested in our body, but at some point our brains click off just like they clicked off when we were in science class in 11th grade. We wanted to know the reason why, but after a while, the teacher starts talking and you can’t keep up.

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