Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

I think the wild card in any law firm is the owner and their mindset

Chris Dreyer

When you lift the ceilings – drive and ambition will push you to the next level.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

And so if you’re playing all in, like success is just almost guaranteed because 90% of the population is not playing all in

Chris Dreyer

You’re listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, where we give you the tools you need to take your personal injury practice to the next level. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. And few know how to grow a firm quite like Jennifer Gore -Cuthbery. Her firm, Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group has been dubbed one of the fastest growing in America, for three years running. But operating four brick-and-mortar offices is just the beginning – this Super Lawyers Rising Star is also a business coach for female entrepreneurs. Today, we discuss how a personal brand will differentiate you and your firm, building digital assets that convert, and what makes a great referral partner. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the forefront of marketing is all about understanding people. So let’s get to know our guest. Here’s Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert , Founder at Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group as she shares with us the moment that she knew she wanted to help others through personal injury law.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

Dealing with the insurance companies. Was not an easy situation. And I felt very disempowered and I considered myself like a smart person, but anybody that’s outside of the legal industry, if you’re going through a legal process, it can be very like foreign. And Through that experience that made me think, I don’t want to be in this situation again. I really need to consider, maybe I need to become a lawyer. Maybe the universe is sending me in that direction. And then actually there was a couple other things that sealed my fate there because my boss stole my identity when I was about 20 and loved in a really big lawsuit where I had to deal with being deposed and going through litigation. And that really was horrible from, a person that you know was young and had no idea about the legal system. And all I got got at the end, honestly, was your innocence. And we had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get to defend myself in that lawsuit, because she had stolen my identity. And I think sometimes the universe just chooses you to become a lawyer. And it, I was like, I’m never going to be in this situation again, I had a boyfriend at the time from when I was about 16 to 19, who was really into motorcycles. Of course my parents were thrilled and he ended up dying in a motorcycle accident and I had already broken up with him, maybe. Like a year prior, but he was in my life for a significant period of time. And he was very involved with my family. And, we knew him, he was like part of the family at that point, cause he had been around for three years. And so when he died from that, being in a low speed motorcycle accident where he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He was in an accident that was not really his fault, but because he didn’t have a helmet on he suffered a significant brain injury. And so being in my own accident where I was almost killed in my accident, I was almost paralyzed. Because I broke my pelvis in three places from the impact. And then dealing with his whole situation and how traumatic that was for everyone who was left behind, including his parents. And then I ended up working for a personal injury attorney. So it just felt like that was the direction or the area of law that I was continually having Connection to. And yeah, it was just pretty, pretty much a given that I was going to do that area. That’s a ton, that’s a ton to have those experiences and that weight. I can’t even imagine, My life wasn’t going that well from when I was like 18 to 21 it was a Rocky few years. I think my parents used to say you’re either going way up or you’re going way down.

Chris Dreyer

What I see on the outside is you are in a laundry list of organizations. And you’re very involved and you’re very like on the cutting edge and like surrounding yourself with other top performers, did that start in high school? Did you do sports? Did you, were you involved in organizations in law school or did that just, Hey, through these experiences, Hey, if I’m going to be a personal injury attorney, if I’m going to own my own firm, I’m going to go all in. Like where did that come from? Tell us that part of yourself.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

So I w I was thinking about this actually the other day how much of being a driven person is like nature versus nurture. And I think there’s a part of my personality that is definitely genetic. My dad was an entrepreneur and he would always speak about, being driven and being ambitious. And it was a very like part of my upbringing in that way. And he would talk to me and say like, when you own a business and it was sometimes frustrating because he would be like if I would get an a, he’d be like why didn’t you get an a plus you’re so smart. And so I just always had this point of view that I could do anything because my parents made me feel that way. And so I did have. That ambition at a young age, but I went through a really rebellious period, which often happens with personality types, like my own. And then I went off track and I just was, I like, I, like I said there was a few years that were not super fabulous. And I was also always a worker. Like I started working when I was 14. And so I always it sounds terrible, but I didn’t take work school as seriously as I probably should have, because I was always working. I worked all throughout high school. I worked all throughout college, even when I was on a collegate team I was working and my parents I think we’re partly responsible for that because they always said like an education is just the foundation. It’s what you do with it. That really matters. And my parents actually started their own businesses without even going to college. So there was this attitude, like school is really good, but working is more important. When I went to law school is when I was like, okay, no more messing around. I need to get down to business. And I need to be really serious because I think in college I just worked too much and I missed a lot of opportunities. I did not intern during college. I just did the bare, like I didn’t go all. So in law school, I was like, I’m going to go all in. I’m going to do everything. And pretty much that was my law school experience. I was like the president of the student body. I was on every organization. I was running the school store. I was doing all the things I did externship to Scotland. I lived over there. And I just felt like I wanted to leave that law school experience, like no box unchecked, and I started to think what if I like really played all in, in life? Like how, what would my results be? And I started realizing like, most people aren’t really playing all in. And so if you’re playing all in, like success is just almost guaranteed because 90% of the population is not playingall in

Chris Dreyer

Was that a, self-awareness like to do this come to you or did you know you had your parents, were you listening to the Tony Robbins is the Jim Roams and people like that and was it all pulling together or was this like a self-awareness that, Hey, I have a lot to offer and I need to goall in?

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

I started to see it just in results in law school. I was like, okay, I’m going to do, I’m going to go all in. I’m going to do this thing a hundred percent. And I just noticed if you even put in that effort or. The results came and you started to become the person that people would recommend for the opportunity. And you start to become the person that people feel comfortable putting your name out there, or they’re calling you and you start to become a person of value. Yeah. When you position yourself that way and you start building what you can. I consider everyone has a personal brand. And when I went to law school, like I did weird stuff. Like I would try to dress professionally every day to school because I wanted to position myself as a lawyer. And at one point I worked in the school and, you just never knew you met judges, you met all kinds of people. And I saw people there in their pajamas and you’re meeting a judge like this could be open 10 doors for you. So I started thinking about the concept of personal branding and making it easy for people to recommend opportunities for you and put your name out there as somebody that’s gonna deliver. And then as I started my law firm, I hired a lot of coaches from the very beginning, pretty much from like year two. And the coaching thing has just become part of my DNA,Jennifer understood how to craft a personal brand early on. She explains why having a cohesive brand for your law firm is so important.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

Intuitively to me, I always felt like the brand should be cohesive. I think it was a pet peeve of mine. I just saw other people not doing that. And I, I was like, from the beginning, we’ve got to have a point of view here. I think initially a lot of the coaching was not centered on marketing. It was centered more on like systems, processes, financials, but then at one point I started getting heavy into mindset coaching, and that’s like a whole nother topic, but I think the wild card in any law firm is the owner and their mindset because that’s really the person making a lot of the decisions about the law firm..

Chris Dreyer

I, I would like to go deeper on that I recently read Chris Crohn’s book he’s a real estate investor and he made this clear distinction between even coaches, mentors and then, mindset coaches where I had always looked at him the same. Tell me about that in terms of mindset and like lifting those ceilings.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

What I think I’m good at is seeing okay, this person has results. What are they doing? And then I mimic that or I’m near that. And so I was noticing people were having a lot of results are doing mindset coaching. And I met this coach that a lot of people I knew were involved with. And, you work through your limiting beliefs and things that are in your blind spots, like things that might be operating in your peripheral, that you have no idea that are stopping you from going to the next level. And just everyone has a financial set point. They have a area that. That’s where their comfort kind of dies, where they don’t really want to go beyond that. And then, you have to do things continually to increase your financial set point. Otherwise you’ll probably stop growing and stop taking risks.

Chris Dreyer

And I liked the idea of the mindset coach, because I’ve had these experiences like where they’re like what’s a revenue target. And they’ll say that. They’re like why not this? And I’m like I didn’t think about that.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

They challenge you. And it all centers back on the book Think and Grow Rich and like some of the work from those era, As A Man Thinketh all of those like old school books, they just, they’re still applicable today.

Chris Dreyer

You’re very aware of what’s working in the personal injury space, you’re doing a lot. So those individuals listening, the biggest thing that you always hear throughout more and more leads right now, sometimes they have a sales or intake problem. Sometimes they have an operations client success problem, or just, there’s a lot of other issues, but on the marketing side, Just big picture, what do you see working for personal injury law firms? What’s just like your overall view there?

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

I think it really depends depending on the level that you’re at. I see some people jumping into marketing channels that they’re not prepared to jump into to have data and reporting on. And I think that you need to have an understanding of the difference between branding and marketing. Generally, because. When I was younger, I do think I’ve always had an eye for branding, but it, I struggled with branding because branding is hard to get attribution on. And, people withdraw from doing branding stuff because they’re like I can’t attribute direct calls or cases from it. But one of the biggest things that social media has really taught us is how powerful branding is because. We see cases come in, that we can attribute and we hear people saying, Hey, I see you all the time on social media and. You have to understand that there’s multiple factors work, move, involved in marketing and branding. And at the same time, we do have very specific data and reporting and measuring on other types of marketing, like PPC and SEO and, referral marketing campaigns that we do. If you don’t have the data on those types of platforms, it can be. Very detrimental because you need to know when to pour more gas on the fire. But I think, marketing, it’s not just one thing. It’s 20 things. People want to know the magic pill. It’s a lot of different things working all at the same time.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, that, that flywheel, right? So it’s the, the radio campaign with the billboard, the pay-per-click with the maps, the LSA and the SEO, that kind of cohesiveness. The thing that I see differently from my side being, owning a marketing agency is like back in the day, it was very easy to do like a one-to-one like that direct attribution, but now consumer behaviors change cause it’s social. So they’ll see. Maybe they see your billboard first, but then they go to social to see how active you are there. See if they like you to, then they go read reviews. And I heard recently, and we implemented this ourselves is we put, how did you hear about us? Nothing, no dropdown. They have to fill it in just so we could get into their mind how they think they heard about us, even though it might be a little different. And it’s been really intriguing people put

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

yeah. The other thing I do think is that with what you do Google is, and the internet is the wave of the way of the future, right? So we have to understand that even when you’re doing PPC, you’re really renting space on the internet versus I think a SEO you’re staking your flag in the ground and building your real estate and, And that can only pay dividends in the long run. And I think people are not looking at the long game on building their online presence in the SEO. And I think that’s very dangerous.

Chris Dreyer

Think of SEO as building an owned asset – the content needs to build up and compound over time. And as te digital space evolves – law firsm have to keep up. Platforms like TikTok are immediate – Jennifer explains what TikTok marketing has worked for her firm.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

You have to constantly evolve. And I think that’s what makes it tricky. And even we were talking about our content, we were filming like in January, we’re like, oh, that’s so outdated now. Like we hate it. And getting comfortable on camera was a big thing. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable on camera and I feel like you get over that when you. We’ve been doing this thing called shock and awe, which is we’re doing two reels a day since January, which is a lot of content. And I think you’re seeing the transition from old marketing where you did one branding video, or you did, one major piece of content. And that was good enough, but in the distracted world that we live in, what you need is a lot of little short content. Because people are looking in that feed every day. That’s where the attention is. That’s what Gary V has been saying for years is the asset is the attention. And people don’t have the attention span, honestly, to watch five 20, 20 minute videos. You need to hit them, frequently with something that they will. Be able to, watch quick. And that is a big mindset shift to creating that amount of content and being creative. You have to be a kind of creative. You have to think of new things. You have to. Put your spin on other ideas that are out there. And you also have to put yourself out there because I swear the cringy highest ones or the ones that you’re like, nobody is going to like this at all. This is silly or like the ones that take off or. The one you think is going to do great. It’s like horrible. But as a marketer, when people put up TV ads years ago, you didn’t really have feedback. You didn’t know. Nobody liked this. So I tell all of like my friends in the masterminds, like you’re just now able to get data that you couldn’t before.I think that’s one of the strongest things about social is like you have a direct line, the consumer versus TV, like they’re going to tell you, they will troll the comment bar. They will tell you if they liked something or if they think it’s funny. The, and I love the, I always fight with my social team too, because I’ve got that Cardone Gary Vaynerchuk mentality of as I want to do 10 X more and your mouth, Michael Mogill, if you’re listening and a hit and seen some of my competitors, we do track against the amount, the quantitative actions that we take versus them to make sure that we’re doing more than them. And so I think it is, quantitative and qualitative, to get in that rhythm, to do two a day. Do, is it like. You and a couple team members, like how are you getting a brainstorming session in the morning? Like how does that process work. we have a marketing team that is scrolling through. TikTok, looking at what’s trending coming up with ideas, saving ideas, and then we put our own spin on it. We do different stuff like we’ll do w what we’ve been doing is some legal stuff, and then some more fun stuff. So it’s a mix and. The reason why we’re doing that is because we’re also running Facebook ads. And so a lot of our ads are more serious. We don’t do as many of the sillier ones as ads. But we run Facebook ads against our list. And that’s very powerful and effective if you have a list. And you can, you have someone who’s really good at Facebook ads. That’s something I learned at a conference that we went to. So we’re creating content for YouTube. Tik TOK, Instagram, and we have an in-house videographer who shoots all our content, edits all of our content and creates, word, different things you have to do for the different platforms you have to format them all very differently. And so that’s been an evolution just trying to shoot all that. We usually batch shoot. So like I’ll shoot for five hours. One day, for a week or two, and I have to bring like multiple outfits. I have to look different in all the videos. And so that’s, that’s, it’s a lot of commitment. I know a lot of people just don’t have that bandwidth, but if you were going to, if you’re going to do it, it’s easier to batch it than to do it every day.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, there’s so much there about the teams. You have a team that’s helping you. You’ve got your mapping out your editorial calendar and your notes. And so there’s a lot of strategy. You’ve got your videographer, making sure the quality and the different platforms are there. I do think what you said about Facebook and hitting the list is grossly neglected by PI attorneys because you can’t retarget on Google ads. And ad roll and some of these retargeting platforms with the same effectiveness that you can on Facebook. So I think that’s super effective. And I guess you’re building this giant content library, so I saw, when I was looking at you, you’ve got stuff on, like how to avoid getting a speeding ticket. And you’ve got some just practical lawyer stuff. When people think of lawyers, they think of like the speeding ticket, or. So I think that’s really exciting that you do both. So you hit the broad audience and then you hit the really PI specific stuff too.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

What’s been annoying and as an, as a lawyer and the evolution of our journey has been unfortunately, or fortunately. A lot of people don’t actually care about hearing about legal content on social. And I don’t know if you’ve ever, you’re doing a lot of marketing content, but it’s not like an interest, like law is not technically like an interest. You see someone put as like their hobby or their interests. If we were in the fitness industry or the beauty industry, there’s people that follow that because that’s actually their. It’s pretty rare that someone’s oh, interest personal injury. Unless they’re dealing with something. But I’ve seen this with a lot of other, a lot of my friends who are doing tick-tock, you have to create other content. To see what sticks and what works and people know you’re a law firm, but you could be creating content around other topics. And that’s where you have to get out of your comfort zone. Because initially I was like, I’m only making legal content. And then you’re like, okay, but people don’t really care about that. So some of my friends make videos about their outfit of the day or their. Their food, what they eat for lunch and these videos get hundreds of thousands of views. And I can’t actually give you a real good reason for why, but they know the person’s a lawyer.

Chris Dreyer

Cause I’m near St. Louis as I think of brown and Krupin they have their show, three lawyers eating sandwiches. I’m like, okay. And they just talk about the food they’re eating, but you know the name, it’s just three lawyers, but it’s not, what are the steps I need to take after a car accident? Like you can have some of those in that like middle of the funnel. Someone’s already interested, but I think you do need those top of funnel. You need to drive awareness that you even exist and that you can help them if they do happen to have an accident.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

Yeah. And I think that’s the mistake that you’re seeing a lot of people on social, especially when they first jump in, is there they’re making purely legal videos that get one. And they’re heavy. They’re not interesting. So how can you engage people in other avenues and then remind them that you do personal injury law?

Chris Dreyer

When thinking about who should be in the videos – you cant argue with data.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

When you look at the data, which we love data. The people that historically have somebody as the face of the brand does better. I’ve seen some people try to have, their assistant be the face or whatever, but I do think that poses some vulnerabilities. For your brand, because if you make somebody who’s not a vested partner owner, the brand of the face, they could leave. But at the same time we do have a trade name, so I’m trying to position the firm in a way where it’s not just all about me. We do involve the staff in a ton of the content that we do, but I still do think that for some reason, human minds. To attribute like a person with a brand.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I think so. And I. Also those referral opportunities and being known quantity within the industry for your peers, I would imagine for the B2B play, that would be very important. Maybe the B2C, they could recognize the firm name.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

Although I, one of my concerns initially and making myself the face, because there was a little bit of time where I really resisted doing that, especially when I first changed the name of the firm to Atlanta Personal Injury. I was concerned that the clients would only want to work with me, but in all of the friends and mentors and colleagues that I have that have massive firms I really have never seen that to be an issue. I think that if you have amazing lawyers that work at your law firm who are really specialists in all the different things that they do it, the client really understands that. The owner may be involved in some aspects of the case, but there are other lawyers that are very competent working there. So I think if anyone has that concern, I haven’t seen that personally be an issue.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah. I think a couple of years ago I was at a Crisp conference and Gary Vaynerchuk was asked something about that. They’re like he’s I got amazing employees, but if they want me, this is my rate. So you have that opportunity too, is and you can be selective. You are the owner. If you want to take certain cases, then you take them. I wanted to talk, just a little bit about intake. What do you see? a lot of people outsource their intake and there’s pros and cons of each. Have you looked at both? What’s how does your firm handle intake and what’s your thoughtson it?

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

So intake is the lifeblood of the firm. I think you see a lot of people doing more marketing and they haven’t dialed in their intake. And that is a huge mistake. Intake is. Such a huge opportunity for most firms out there. We pride ourselves on having an amazing intake team that we’ve built over the years. One of my mentors, Mike Morris last year ghosts called my firm and I was so proud of our team because he’s like, Y’all were relentless. Like he’s I thought you were going to show up on my doorstep. We chase, that’s one thing we chase every lead. We have a really robust system of follow-up. We have a dedicated intake software. We have automated drip campaigns and follow-up sequences for every single lead. There is no reason a single lead should ever go on answered or not identified as to what, what happened with that lead. There’s obviously still opportunity as we grow. I think historically like most law firms don’t have a great intake solution overnight. And we do have a backup answering service and things, but I do think there is that occasional call. That’s a high dollar case and it’s after your regular answering team hours and that, is a lost opportunity because the lead does not remain hot, but we have multiple people. You can burn intake people out. If you don’t have a good schedule, that’s a mistake we’ve made. And we have pretty much like. A significant portion of 24 hours covered with people live signing cases. And then great backup answering system that does more than answering like an answering service that it really gets into the intake with them to the point where they can, almost sign, I think intake is so critical and a lot of firms misunderstand it.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah. I would say one of the biggest things, that’s a frustration on our part. Being a lead gen company is like, we’ll generate the leads and then the phone isn’t answered or there’s no follow up. And it’s oh, we didn’t do our job. That’s actually what you didn’t answer the phone or that, or there’s no empathy. I’m not anti outsourcing. I think you should definitely use strategic partners when they make sense. But on the intake side, the one thing I’ve always questioned is how do they handle referrals situations, right? Because referrals, it may not be the. Case for you, but it may be someone perfect case for someone else. And I’ve never understood how, like an outsourced partner could, transition those two other individuals in the same manner as in-house, Inside of our intake software, we have a referrals section and we have all the firms that are in our VIP referral list. And so they would just click a button and make that referral. But I do. You still don’t have total control on the mannerism that attitude. Even with great answering services, you have to audit things. You should be listening to your intake calls. Our intake manager does that on a consistent basis. And I will tell you even like in the labor and employment environment, we are in a lot of these answering services are having staffing issues and. I don’t always love the way the calls are handled and we just don’t have as much control where you’re seeing a lot of law firms build their own, overseas person who works dedicated for your law firm so that you have more control. I think that’s something that you’re going to see more and more of, but yeah there’s no excuse. Unfortunately, in, in this profession, You go call 20 law firms. It’s a likelihood that some of them will go to an answering machine. That’s crazy to me. That’s absolutely crazy. Especially in personal injury where the person may be calling in crisis. And if they, you don’t answer they may immediately call someone else. how do they make the VIP list for the referral partners? Is that something you’re intentionally trying to find the best litigators and their respective, city, state, how does, how do you handle that?

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

We like to have a personal injury law firm referral in every state that we can refer or co-counsel cases on. And we’re constantly building that list. But I’m going to tell you, it’s not just about being the greatest litigator. It’s do you answer your phone because I’m not going to send clients to you. If they’re calling me back saying, Joe is a great lawyer, but he never answered when I called his firm or followed up. So to me, a great referral partner is someone who’s on it and has their intake dialed in because it makes my my firm look bad if I’m referring people and you guys are not answering or handling the lead.

Chris Dreyer

Expanding a practice to serve the Spanish speaking community can increase your bottom line. Jennifer shares with us her best practices for bilingual intake at her firm.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

We only hire intake people that are bilingual at this point. It’s just too much of a pain point to not have that person be able to communicate with the leads and all the calls that are coming in. That’s been our strategy. I think it really depends market to market. I have other friends in other areas that they just don’t have a significant bilingual client base or even, the demographics are different, but here in Atlanta we have a significant Spanish speaking population. And I think they know if the person can communicate with them when they initially call in. So you don’t want to make that a point where they turn away.

Chris Dreyer

That’s super smart. And that’s the way to do it, as opposed to like making this awkward transition to a different individual that the individual that takes it, anytime you have a handoff, there could be an issue. I’ve got one final question here, what’s next for Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group?.

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

We are growing really, fast here we are. Just constantly trying to evolve and attract better talent. What I’m really excited about is to get to the next level and to have a more robust leadership team. We’ve been building our leadership team or the last year, and we’re now running on EOS. Fireproof and all of those different systems and just all the amazing things you can do when you have, more serious, higher level professionals that come work there. So I’m just really excited for all of the hires we’re going to make in the next year and all the people we’re going to help. And, constantly thinking, how can we tear this thing down and rebuild it and make it better and make the client experience better. And, that’s part of it that you gotta like that game to do this. Cause it’s not really about the destination. It’s just about the process.

Chris Dreyer

It’s never too early to craft your personal and professional brand. Remember, if you don’t do it – someone will do it for you. And while the branding may be difficult for case attribution, its impact is powerful and lasting. Invest in assets for your firm like branding and SEO to plant your flag in the digital space. I’d like to thank Jennifer from Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group for sharing her story with us, and I hope you gained some valuable insights from the conversation. You’ve been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We love to hear from our listeners. I’ll catch you on next week’s PIMM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury marketing.