Marketing Therapy for Law Firms: How to Brand, Build & Boost Business with Less Stress with Lorrie Thomas Ross

Lorrie Thomas Ross (00:01.483)
I’m Lorrie Thomas Ross, the marketing therapist and CEO of Web Marketing Therapy.

Karin Conroy (00:07.064)
Lorrie, thank you for being here. This is gonna be a fun conversation. We have a lot to talk about. The title for today’s show is Marketing Therapy for Law Firms, How to Brand, Build and Boost Business with Less Stress. So I love your approach, this idea that we’re gonna start with less stress. Like let’s not have the overwhelm and…

All of the things that I feel like people when they sit down to think about their marketing, it’s five million different directions that they’re all going. so let’s start first with what is this idea of marketing therapy and why?

Lorrie Thomas Ross (00:53.699)
I did not set out to have a company called Web Marketing Therapy when I began my business. In 2005, my clients would say things like, whoa, that was like a therapy session or girl, I got to get on your couch again. Like that was epic or oh my gosh, you just mediated the most awkward like thing where our web guy was holding our website hostage and you like you’re our therapist, therapy, all these things. And while I love to talk a lot,

Karin Conroy (01:06.302)
Night.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (01:22.275)
my super secret ninja trick is I’m a great listener. And my clients didn’t know each other. And so the fact that they were all saying these things repeatedly, even down to, my gosh, I used to be so stressed and now I feel so much better. I actually like marketing now. so I bought the domain web marketing therapy and I sat on it for two years. I’m like, it’s kind of weird. It’s kind of different. And then I went down this path and I just, was like, you know what? I need to own what I do. I need to align my magic.

Karin Conroy (01:37.749)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (01:49.898)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (01:51.499)
with what I do. And the beauty of branding is that it can not only appeal to your ideal audience, but it can repel the wrong people. it was a blue ocean and we don’t believe in competition. I work arm in arm with legal marketing firms all the time that may already be in place. And they’re like, you know, we just don’t have the capacity to do social media or whatever it is you’re doing or like, we just need someone with more high touch and you guys have that capacity. And so this

Karin Conroy (02:01.28)
Yes. my gosh, I love that. Yep.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (02:20.693)
idea of being a support system to our clients really just took off. And even like we don’t, on a web marketing therapies website, we don’t have a list of clients because do therapists list all the people who come into session? No, no, that would be really horrible.

Karin Conroy (02:31.096)
Yeah. No, that would be weird. Yeah. Talk about repelling the people. I just want to go back to this, that, that initial part of your path though, because that alone is a marketing strategy. This idea of like listening to this thing that keeps repeating itself. And, and then also how common is it with your own clients that you hear that I sat on it for two years.

And like, I just have this kind of inkling almost like the beginning of a cold where it’s this tickle in the back of your throat and it just keeps coming. And you know that there’s this cold on its way. This is a recent experience for me. I’m just kind of getting over a cold. So was like, that came top of mind. But so, you know, for however many years you’ve got this feeling, you know that

what people come to you for and those words that keep repeating. And this is the core little nugget of your positioning and your messaging and what makes you different and that marketing strategy that if you’re not using it, you’re really kind of missing the ball.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (03:49.347)
for sure and I think some of it was I had, no matter what industry you’re in, you get should on like, oh, you shouldn’t do that or that’s therapy and it was kind of weird. And it’s okay to incubate on things. I’m actually really fortunate that I did because at the time we were trying to find the right messaging and the right branding and you know, our icon literally communicates what we do and we put the puzzle pieces together so it clicks.

Karin Conroy (03:55.87)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (04:18.805)
If that means it’s a 4,000 page website and we need to find a big bodacious firm to get this site from one platform to another, we can do that. Finding the PR folks, all that. And it is about being a support system. And that’s where the taking the stress out of marketing comes in. Marketing shouldn’t feel icky, yucky, stressful, expensive, overwhelming. mean, marketing is about maximizing relationships. Unfortunately, when you Google

Karin Conroy (04:39.596)
Yeah. Yep.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (04:46.659)
definition of marketing, you still see that old school definition of pushing products and services. I still see that out there. This is the era of SEO and social and all of this AI. We can also pull in ideal audiences. I mean, I think about certain industries, like, I mean, think about family law. Like you don’t go to your besties or maybe your husband’s best friend and go, hey, do you need a good, I need a good divorce lawyer. No, you go to Google, right? Like, and you’re kind of doing a little quiet fact finding for a while.

Karin Conroy (04:50.678)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (04:57.528)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (05:10.156)
You guys need a divorce. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Right.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (05:16.941)
So how do we not only get people to us, but how do we get the right people through? And that’s the power of messaging. And actually, I just thought about a call we had the other day with someone where he’s like, I’m not squishy. I don’t have that story of why I got into this. He’s like, I just want to get people to that next phase of life. And I was like, that’s the way we need to write. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (05:23.264)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (05:34.049)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (05:38.894)
That’s your story. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I’m the same way. Whenever I have an appearance or have to talk about something, I start with like, I’m not gonna go through my journey because I really am a believer, not because I don’t wanna talk about it, because I can, but I am a believer that people don’t really care that I worked in this internet cafe and a beach.

unless it somehow relates to something that I’m gonna do for them. And it kind of doesn’t, you it’s like, that’s just a thing I did, you know, in my twenties. And I feel like I have a lot of other things that are more important and more relatable. And that’s just my deal. Like I just, don’t, it’s, that’s just, I also think it’s sort of woo woo and I don’t love doing that. But I have plenty of other stories that kind of lead to the more important stuff.

So I wanna get to this idea of like what not to include and tie it back to what you talked about a minute ago with repelling the wrong people, like getting the right people through your funnel. But with that in mind, what are some of those pain points that, so you talked about people repeating this idea of like, know, this is therapy idea. What were some of those pain points that you were working through those clients

on. Like when they were, know, that this therapy kind of process helps them with where you then translated that into the marketing therapist.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (07:12.375)
The beauty of the idea of therapy, it’s about healing. It’s about being the best you can possibly be. And it’s a growth thing, right? Like, you you don’t go one time and you’re done, but to have someone who’s truly on your team that is going to empower you. I I think about even like child psychology, you know, the kid who’s having a hard time at school, but a therapist can empower that child with some, you know, what do you call it? The toolkit of like, I know how to respond to this now, or if this triggers me, I actually know.

Karin Conroy (07:20.642)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (07:42.303)
one to start breathing. With marketing, it’s how do we empower our clients with tools and strategies and, you know, or just being that sounding board of here’s what I’m thinking. and, and also actually think the biggest core of it is that you want a firm that isn’t trying to sell you their services, but instead listening and talking about solutions and

Karin Conroy (07:54.454)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (08:10.392)
Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (08:11.331)
if someone can approach marketing for you that way, and that was a big piece of it, especially when it comes to, know, doctors and lawyers are the most preyed upon when it comes to marketing agencies. The emails I get forwarded by, whether it’s my trademark attorney or client, I’m like, your scientist is nowhere to be found in the search engines. I’m like, actually it is. And that’s really funny. But it’s, know, like when you fall victim to that type of fear-based marketing, that’s not a healthy relationship to go into.

Karin Conroy (08:26.136)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (08:40.234)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (08:41.275)
And but to have that like, well, actually, let’s look at it this way. And this is your model and this is your strategy, prioritizing the need to have over the nice to have and someone that really wants to be there for you and make sure that you’re going where you want to go and growing in a way that is really not only on brand, but also on purpose. And, that is not there is no stress or overwhelm or, I don’t know how I’m going to afford this. You know,

Karin Conroy (09:02.549)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (09:09.867)
We have so many choices, right? Like there’s so many ways we can approach it. And when you’re empowered with options, then you can really understand like, I never thought of that. Or, gosh, actually there really is nothing wrong with my site right now. Or the opposite of someone comes to us for search optimization or like your site is the structure of it is so old. There’s no, like we are not going to take your money because of this. And they’re like, didn’t know. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (09:11.533)
Right.

Karin Conroy (09:20.087)
Right.

Karin Conroy (09:35.894)
Right, yeah. I think that’s a perfect transition into this bigger bulk of what I wanna talk about, which is an audit, because so many of these audits are exactly what you described. They are just very technical and they are fear-based. And I literally was on a call earlier this week, was it this week? Yeah, with a client who has one of those audits. And this is what triggered him to

reach out and he started by saying, I have talked to 41 agencies. I know. But that’s exactly, so from the beginning, to be honest, that was a red flag for me because I was thinking, why? What level of fear have they driven you to? And what is making you so insecure about this decision? mean,

Lorrie Thomas Ross (10:11.683)
Who has time for that?

Karin Conroy (10:31.054)
And this is not someone who has been a lawyer for six months. They’ve been a lawyer for decades. so they’re clearly, they know their business. They know what’s working and they’re a successful firm. So what is freaking them out so badly that they felt like they needed to get 41 opinions on it? Like at some point after about, I’d say eight, you’re starting to hear the same thing, right?

But he was talking about some of these audits that he eventually could see that some of this was just BS. so let’s talk about that. How do you kind of figure that out? Because even I get the kind of generic audit spam myself, and I am always kind of interested to see what does that look like? What is this approach and how much garbage is in there?

versus I’m assuming your audit is totally different as is mine. It’s very human based. so let’s talk about that. Let’s dig into the kind of bad versus good audits and like what you should be doing.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (11:35.477)
Yeah. it, when marketing therapy, my team and I always say, it’s not lazy, crazy or bad. It’s just different. Although some of my coworkers are like, well, actually it is bad. Not always, not always. We don’t want to judge. don’t want to judge. So the automated, you know, your site has an SEO score of two out of a thousand. Those are the things that I love it when a client will come to us. And it’s often they attended a conference or they had, you know, some

Karin Conroy (11:40.973)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:44.335)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but sometimes, yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:55.712)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (12:05.379)
person do this. And it is kind of like hook to get to make that conversation. And so we can educate. And then I’ll ask questions like, how is your practice? We have more business than we know what to do with or whatever. It’s like, well, we always ask, how’d you hear about us? And it is Google and we haven’t purchased Google ads. And so we know it’s this. Our audits like yours are 100 % human.

Karin Conroy (12:09.581)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (12:30.249)
We believe that there are five factors that you need to have in place to make your marketing click. And that’s credibility, usability, visibility, sellability, scalability. And when we are doing these audits, we never do them without talking with the owners, founders, partners first and having that intake. And then going back and our team looks at these various five factors and we start to note our observations and recommendations. And then we come back and we’ll say, based on what we heard,

Karin Conroy (12:52.744)
fascinating. Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (12:59.317)
and what we see, like as if we are a prospective client, here’s the areas that we recommend you prioritize. And these are the need to haves, these are the nice to haves. And optimization first, right? Like you don’t want to start, in a former life I sold cosmetics. I was one of my get my bum through college jobs. And I always remember the clients who were like, I just need more foundation to cover. I’m like, well, actually we need to like talk about cleansing and skincare. And they’re like, no, I don’t want to do that.

Karin Conroy (13:05.737)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (13:10.36)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (13:14.638)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (13:23.34)
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (13:25.411)
And here I am in marketing. I’m like, we actually need to cleanse and tone some things first before we layer on more stuff. so we make it like, whether you call it like a tree or having that rooted tree, you know, if your Facebook profile description is cut off and you haven’t posted there, your cover photo looks like a 12 year old did it. We’re going to clean that bleep up so that we can move on to other things. So the client is incredibly empowered.

Karin Conroy (13:28.653)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (13:46.658)
Yeah, right, yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (13:55.023)
and they can take or leave that information. And that also becomes that launch pad for further discussion and more education. And education is our foundation of everything. It’s the North Star. It’s the reason we do what we do. And we actually went so far to trademark the term Mark-Edding, M-A-R-K-E-D for education, I-N-G. Because when I was in the classroom at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley through their extension programs with entrepreneurs and business owners years ago,

Karin Conroy (14:15.649)
Nice.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (14:23.275)
all the fear and anxiety about marketing came up. my gosh, I’m not good at this. I really don’t want to write my bio page and whatever, I’m afraid to hire this company or I’m afraid I’m gonna make the wrong decision. And I would just say, what do you want to help your audience understand? What are their pain points? you know, and they’d answer the question easily. And I would say, well, that’s what we want on the homepage. That’s what we put here. That’s what, know, tell them, tell them what you told them, tell them one more time. So we always are in different.

Karin Conroy (14:45.399)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (14:52.183)
phases of our practice and so how do we continually, we create ideas, we execute them, we monitor them, then we rinse repeat. So an audit from five years ago is going to be very different, but it doesn’t have to be this catastrophic, dramatic thing. It’s just…

Karin Conroy (15:09.632)
Yeah, the way they’re making it sound in that marketing email where it’s like, your business is on fire, you know, like in a bad way. So, okay, so I feel like that’s so important that like, first of all, take a step back. It is probably not as bad as those emails lead you to believe, but there is a potential for some of that to be things that we need to address. So I’m not saying it’s all wrong.

But it’s like, is it the level of importance that they’re saying? well, first of all, is it right? And then is it the level of importance that they’re saying? But with all of that in mind, like typically a lot of that stuff is, you know, easily fixed a lot of times, not always. but how do you figure out what not to do? Like when you take that audit and you say, you put it in the two categories, need to have, nice to have, how, how do you figure out those? How do you figure that out?

And then how do you talk to your clients about what not to do? Because I’m guessing there’s times you put things in that nice to have column that they’ve got their heart set on and they’ve come to you thinking, I really feel like my calling and like my future life is in TikTok. you and like you determined that that’s not it. How do you have those conversations?

Lorrie Thomas Ross (16:33.803)
I’m seriously, the example I was gonna use was recently TikTok and I did find a phenomenal video production company and they do all virtual recording and one of the employees of this company was talking with our client about how he had done great work with TikTok and how impactful it was. Well, mind you, the impact was with actors and influencers and not lawyers.

Karin Conroy (16:39.192)
Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (17:01.187)
But going back to education, right? And I was just like, well, there could be a lot of negative responses. TikTok success does not happen overnight. shared, experience shared some really powerful clients of ours. Like one in particular has been thriving with TikTok, but the partners at the firm are of a personality style and comfort level of technology where it’s just so natural.

Karin Conroy (17:03.128)
Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (17:30.275)
and it’s consistent and it’s real and their audience loves it and that’s not for everyone. And so I think one of the like, how do you, I don’t know if the right word is prioritize or like what not to do. I’d say what not to do, look at your personality, right? Going back to psychology, if you’re an introvert, maybe doing TikToks and recording yourself is not for you. Or like for me, I’m so busy running my firm.

Karin Conroy (17:46.966)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (17:59.457)
I need that accountability. need someone physically behind a camera to make sure my videos happen and who have the confidence to say like, and I have cuckoo crazy gray hair of like, whoa, we got to fix this. I need that, but I need that accountability. And so I know what my personality style is. And a lot of our lawyers, like they need to be lawyering, right? And so do they have the bandwidth to schedule a two day video shoot? No, but can we find things that

Karin Conroy (18:11.244)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (18:19.064)
Right.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (18:26.691)
allow our clients to still have their thought leadership come through in a way that’s easy. And, you know, like this virtual video production company has been a godsend. And so that’s been just amazing. So yeah, we are always looking at how do we align the ideas with not just the personality of the brand and the firm, but also the sustainability of it, right? Because, you know, great ideas are only great when they’re executed brilliantly and

Karin Conroy (18:36.535)
Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (18:56.279)
You know, we don’t want to do something quick and have it fall. Like, what’s the longevity of it? What’s the long game? How does it fit into the overall strategy? Will it support what’s happening? yeah, but like what not to do? I also say compare to spare. Don’t have compare to spare. Like, you know, our competitors are doing this or this other firm’s doing this. We have to think critically. And just because one…

firm is doing something one way doesn’t mean that that’s going to work for you. There may be a different intake process. may be a different billing process. There may be a different niche ideal client. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (19:33.848)
They just have different personalities. I like how you were talking about the personality thing. And I also just want to come back to the longevity idea that you were kind of point that you were making. Because for me, I feel like I have to try pretty much every marketing thing that comes out so that I can have an opinion on it. And I can say to firms, well, we tried it. This is what happened. You know, my business is oftentimes not that much different than the clients that I’m working with.

And so I can say, okay, here’s what we saw and whatever. But when it comes to making a decision to actually use this as part of our strategy in our agency, I will sit down and say, how is this long-term going to fit into my schedule, my team’s schedule, the plan? What is, how does this tie to all the other pieces? And if I can’t make it work, I am not going to go forward because of what you described a minute ago where like,

You try things out and it drops off and it looks so haphazard and it makes you look really kind of fragmented and like you have no plan and it doesn’t make sense. And the last thing you want to have is these people who are experiencing your brand and they have this reaction where they’re thinking, what? Like, what are they doing over there? What is that? What is she thinking? What is that? So before I do anything, even when it comes to

writing for a certain publication that is going to require an ongoing agreement or things like that. I make sure that I can commit and I can commit for like the required amount of time, whatever that may be. So I feel like the two things that people undervalue when it comes to marketing are patience and consistency and this consistency idea.

I say it all the time, but people want to gloss over it. And so that’s why I’m kind of spending an extra minute saying, make sure you can do it.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (21:30.679)
Yeah. Yeah. In the name of consistency too, you know, we can always start small and snowball, you know, you don’t have to be posting on, you know, LinkedIn eight times a week. You know, I’ll even say to someone like, let’s just start with one quality post a month or let’s get some really amazing blog content going because that’s going to build not only your visibility with search, but your credibility. And that gives us something to post. Like how can we, how can we do

Karin Conroy (21:37.965)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (22:00.991)
more with less? Like how can we work smart, not hard? And that’s also where the creativity comes in too. And that goes back to like the services versus solutions. know, whether it’s that email newsletter that’s, you know, so difficult to populate, like could it be flipped where it’s blog posts that are written throughout the month that then become the newsletter? what are, you know, how can we, how can we, you know, think in a way that, you know, allows us to…

Karin Conroy (22:02.475)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (22:21.741)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (22:30.529)
do more of what we enjoy.

Karin Conroy (22:32.27)
Well, that was actually my next question was like, how do we build these marketing strategies and plans around being less stressful? I feel like that’s a brilliant answer where you take a look at these elements and feel like, and look at them in a way that’s like, okay, how can I make this easier? Do you have other like pointers or tips around this idea of looking at

Probably I would guess it’s more like in those initial meetings where people are coming to you and they’ve got this big, I’m picturing like a big pile of like all these different things they’re doing and ways of kind of fine tuning it and removing the layers of extra stuff that’s creating all this stress.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (23:16.555)
Yeah, and it’s taking the drama out of it. If things feel like, I I hear they’re like, you know, we have this company and it’s gonna, you know, we always have to edit everything they send. And I was like, okay, so maybe it’s time to break up and see other people. Like, wait, what? I’m like, well, you don’t deserve that. And if you’re paying someone in there and your shoulders are going up to your earlobes when that email comes in through the inbox, then maybe that’s not serving you. Or could we reallocate dollars from?

Karin Conroy (23:32.01)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (23:40.821)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (23:46.197)
something you’re doing to something else. And it’s just having that open mind. And I don’t always bust out the F word on podcasts, but fun, there I said it. If it’s not enjoyable, whether it’s the partners that you’re paying or the service providers, there’s always ways to do something in a way that is more enjoyable. And I think about whether we’re doing a business card for someone or…

you know, someone wins an award or there’s a blog post, like there needs to be, there just needs to be a really enjoyable relationship. And that goes back to what marketing is. Marketing is about relationships and when relationships are enjoyable, it’s win, win, win. Right. And so why shouldn’t it be the same with marketing? I mean, I’ve, I’ve had things where, you know, I’m just like, I’m not enjoying this. And now I have partners, whether it’s

Karin Conroy (24:21.461)
Yes!

Yes.

Karin Conroy (24:38.222)
100%.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (24:39.799)
videographers or social media, even like my team, I freaking love my team. We have fun, we laugh. Even when times are stressful, we’re still having fun because that’s what it’s all about. that’s where the brain works best. Brene Brown, know, so poignantly said that creativity metastasizes. you know, it’s just like…

Karin Conroy (24:43.788)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:56.705)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (25:03.691)
Yes!

Lorrie Thomas Ross (25:05.056)
Yeah, we’ve got to be, you’ve got to make sure that folks on your team are able to be proactive and also reactive that, you know, you’re not like, my gosh, everything I’m asking for is, you know, going to be a pain or it’s going to take me, I have to wait 48 hours to hear back from someone like, no, like we deserve to surround ourselves with the best possible relationships.

Karin Conroy (25:21.43)
Yeah, I think this is.

With the, yes, okay, and I think this is important. And we were talking before we started recording very briefly about how we both are kind of have this crossover in probably a lot of our relationships and contacts and we work with lawyers and the fun that that can bring and the less fun that that can also sometimes bring. But when, you know, I’ve been doing this probably, you know, similar amount of time as you have, and when things break down,

it’s almost always because of some communication issue. It’s not usually the actual work. And I just wanted to spend a minute talking about the difference between that that you were describing where the work quality is at the point where you need to consider the breakup versus the communication. So what I usually will have, you know, when we have this moment where people, you can tell that

there’s a level of frustration. get on a call and and usually I like to do it zoom so we can look at each other’s face and have, you know, somewhat of a normal face to face. And we start talking through what’s actually going on. And I say, listen, when you have this sense that you need to step in and micromanage and tell us, then there’s, then we need to have a different conversation. We need to figure out what’s really going on and why.

why you have a sense that that is the case. And I say that the same thing, I say the same thing to clients that are coming in and they describe what you were saying, where they feel like they need to review and edit and basically do the work for their agency and micromanage. And in any work relationship, when it’s broken down to that level, it’s a different problem. It’s probably somebody needs to be fired. So,

Karin Conroy (27:15.726)
What are some signs other than those kind of obvious things where either they need to be fired or you need to address it in a communication? Where do you know when it’s one or the other?

Lorrie Thomas Ross (27:28.895)
When that North Star, that guiding light is not something that everyone is marching towards in unison, that’s when usually our flags go up. And there may be times when a firm is growing to the point where they may need to start building an in-house team. There may be times when other partners aren’t performing. There’s also times where

you know, in-house employees maybe that are the point of contact, whether it’s the lawyer or the, you know, marketing manager may not maybe be working in the best interest. And I have always believed wholeheartedly that, you know, my role is to be great. And sometimes that means not nice. And I would much rather speak my truth and go to sleep at night knowing that, you know, even if it means that maybe we don’t stay doing what we’re doing that

you we’ve been of service. And so, yeah, I’m a big communicator. I’m terribly irreverent. I say what I think and then, you know, you know, call it whatever you want to call it. But it’s, you know, I lead with love. And so if someone is being a danger to themselves and others or they are micromanaging, then it’s like, you know what? This isn’t your magic, right? Like you do what you do best. There’s others who do the rest.

Karin Conroy (28:51.576)
Yep. Yes. Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (28:54.817)
And if I’ve given you any reason to make you feel like this or like, know, is there something like, you know, is there a bigger business issue that we need to talk about? But often there is something that often has nothing to do with the actual blog post or social media post. And that’s where it’s like, hey, look, let’s let’s just get in. Like, we’re here to support you. And yeah.

Karin Conroy (29:18.092)
Yeah. Yeah. What’s going on? Is it something in your personal life and you’re, you know, just kind of venting or is there something that you can’t figure out how to say? Like sometimes when it comes to marketing and design and elements, that we’ll get words like, you’re the creative, you figure it out or, you know, things like that. Like it just doesn’t pop. And it’s like, that doesn’t help. Right? Yeah. Right.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (29:44.541)
I think we were the other day, like, we wanted to sizzle. I’m like, okay.

Karin Conroy (29:48.166)
Okay, I don’t have a sizzle button. I can’t wait for when I get that button. But yeah, but so we have scripts that we use to try to help with the communication and they’re literally here’s how to provide great feedback. We want you to say it’s too much of this, less, too little of this, it’s too dark, it’s this or whatever. what doesn’t help and you this isn’t actually part of the script that we use when we send designs over.

What doesn’t help is things like we need it to pop or like I just said, you’re the creative, you figure it out. We don’t know your firm as well as you do and this is a mutual relationship where we need you to say, my clients say X, Y, Z and this is reflecting F and that doesn’t work and so we need more of X or whatever that.

But the marketing language is not natural for a lot of people and that’s fine and we understand that. And so we need to, in the same way that legal language is not often familiar for your clients. And so you have to guide them through that process as well. And I mean you in terms of the audience, not you.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (31:01.291)
Yeah, but I think about legal language, it varies from state to state and yeah, what we actually say when we get that, like, it’s not what I want. It’s like, well, we are here to serve you. And actually we say like, this is the great part of the creative process. Like this is, and I will say like, know, creative direction is one of the most unappreciated parts of the marketing puzzle. And, and I don’t expect a leader, founder, partner to necessarily be able to creative direct, but

Karin Conroy (31:04.694)
Yeah!

Karin Conroy (31:12.193)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (31:16.618)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (31:30.911)
It is a gift when someone says it’s not what I’m envisioning. Then it’s like, great, help me understand. That’s my favorite phrase. Like help me understand what that looks like because we are brilliant designers, but we’re not mind readers is what I say. And, you know, I need to get in your head a little bit more. And the great thing about like the creative process can be a little imperfect and messy. But once we get through this, we’re going to get it better and we’re going to be able to nail this moving forward. And so it is that education.

Karin Conroy (31:35.405)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (31:39.789)
Why?

Karin Conroy (31:45.609)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (32:01.437)
of how the process works. And especially like, you know, we’re very cautious when we start working with firms who’ve never engaged agencies before, because we know, and we’ll say upfront, like, this is gonna be new for you. It’s also gonna be more for us because we’re gonna be educating you more throughout the process because this is a whole new working relationship. And so, you know, it’s a dance and I look at it as a gift. was actually just thinking of a, you we did a project for

Karin Conroy (32:04.067)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (32:20.322)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (32:30.387)
It was a beautiful website and the lawyer was like, it just isn’t right. she’s like, and woman, she was like, I’m sorry. And women over-apologize. I’m like, please do not apologize. Mike, there’s a reason the designers aren’t on these calls. I’m not a designer. I’m here to work for you. Let’s just talk through it. And she was like, it just looks like, it looks like so many other lawyer websites. And my colleague was like, it’s because your branding is lawyer blue. And we didn’t build the brand. And so we actually,

Karin Conroy (32:36.888)
Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, no.

Karin Conroy (32:45.058)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (32:55.584)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (32:59.765)
went back to the drawing board and we’re like, we think you need a whole new color palette and we need something. And we’re like, and the great thing is that this is actually the best time to have this because let’s just nail it. And so, yeah, we actually went back, we went through her photography, we know this person super well and our designers came up with this very distinct color palette that just set the tone. But that’s the beauty of that process. And when someone can…

Karin Conroy (33:04.682)
Nice.

Karin Conroy (33:09.848)
to do it. Yes.

Karin Conroy (33:23.757)
I love it.

Karin Conroy (33:27.457)
Right!

Lorrie Thomas Ross (33:28.021)
understand that it’s like, I can’t expect them to make it perfect the first time. I can trust them to say like, you know, I don’t love it and I don’t even know why. Well, let’s play with it.

Karin Conroy (33:39.98)
Yeah, let’s work it out because that negative, what I’m going to kind of put in air quotes, negative feedback is not bad. It’s data and it’s getting us to the right answer. And in the same way that looking, you know, what we were talking about earlier, looking at all of the stuff that you’re doing and deciding what not to do is just as important. And what is, you know, the design that we’re not going to have is just as important to know because it’s

It’s information about it that’s going to take us on the same path. That’s going to take us down the same road that we’ll get there. But we need to kind of clear through. It’s sort of like this highway full of all of these obstacles. We have to go through them. And then it doesn’t indicate failure. It doesn’t indicate that we don’t know what we’re talking about. It indicates part of the process, period. Like take the emotion out of it. This is, yeah.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (34:33.419)
It’s the relationships and any, read data on what makes marriages successful. And so many studies show that it’s couples that are able to have healthy conflict and the couples that don’t have conflict actually are more doomed. And that is part of a relationship. And when you’re both ready and willing to have those creative conflict, you know, conversations, magic comes out of that. So yeah, the marketing geek in me, and I don’t know if I’m probably missing a gene or something or two, but.

Karin Conroy (34:42.367)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (35:01.783)
But when these, I don’t love it, I’m like, yeah, let’s roll up our sleeves. And my coworkers are like, you crazy. I clearly love what I do. yeah, I mean, there’s so much magic in that. And it goes back to the personality. Well, great, let’s extract more of that. And you know.

Karin Conroy (35:05.038)
Okay, let’s, why? Yeah, that’s it.

Karin Conroy (35:21.098)
Yes. That’s an indication of confidence and experience in your work though, because to be able to take that kind of feedback and not as the agency be freaked out by that, much less the law firm looking at it thinking, I don’t love it. And both the law firm and you, the agency have to think, okay, this is okay. We’re not gonna be scared by the fact that they don’t like it on either end. We’re gonna take that

move forward with it and like take that as as you know this just stepping stone in in the process. Yeah awesome okay so it’s time for the book review section. If you have not checked out our website we have a whole library of the books that all of our guests have recommended. So Lori what’s the book that you’re going to add to the library today?

Lorrie Thomas Ross (36:12.535)
I actually had two, so I’ll start with one and I’m gonna go with the one actually based on our conversation. I think this ties in perfectly. It’s The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. And it is the most simple, beautiful book that helps you navigate yourself personally and professionally. And I think based on everything we’ve talked about, some of these agreements are just like the four agreements are all so perfect with how we navigate relationships.

Karin Conroy (36:38.518)
They are. Yeah. Okay. We will link to that book, but do you want to give like a kind of highlight bullet point of one or two of those and how you think it kind of ties into everything we’re talking about?

Lorrie Thomas Ross (36:52.179)
Yeah, so it’s don’t take anything personally, be impeccable with your word, always do your best. And there is one more amazing one and it’s because I’m not caffeinated at the end of the day for me, but those agreements are like the most amazing things to fall back on in conversations to navigate your marketing vendor relationships, to navigate how you engage with clients and just

you know, to be your best and they never go out of style. I read that book probably every year or two and it’s just so instrumental in how we can be leaders in our law firms and how we lead our practices.

Karin Conroy (37:31.971)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (37:35.65)
Yeah, I think just before we went to this book section, everything we were talking about is so in line with don’t take anything personally. If you’re looking at this design and you think, it’s not quite right, just don’t take it personally. Don’t add a whole layer of emotion and you know, whatever, just go back and say, here’s what I don’t like about it. And here’s what I think needs work or, you know, just keep it with this open communication between you and your agency. And it’s going to be amazing. And don’t

don’t add all this negativity and don’t add, you know, whatever negative direction you could go because what I’ve seen in the past is it ends up shutting people down. It’s like, I don’t want to do my best work for someone who is, you know, coming at me in that way. But the relationships, you know, that we keep coming back to, the relationships that I have with clients that have gone on for years and years and years are the ones that where there’s a level of trust. They come to me.

and they say, even when something’s not great, like this thing, you know, we don’t really like how this looks or whatever, I’m gonna come back with 10 variations that, you know, go in all these different directions because I want it to be great for this person I have a relationship with. So I feel like that’s a great example. That’s a great book.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (38:55.139)
Yeah. And the last one is the last agreement that I couldn’t think of, which is actually perfect, is never make assumptions. And that is like, whether you assume a company is going to do XYZ, you know, I love the phrase, help me understand, right? You know, like, and the three most dangerous words are, know that. We don’t know everything. We all work in a different way. And it’s a two-way street. And so, yeah, you know, don’t assume you’re going to magically be number one on Google or, you know, whatever.

Karin Conroy (39:02.856)
Yes! That’s it.

Karin Conroy (39:09.762)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (39:23.556)
And yeah, mean, it’s just such a great book.

Karin Conroy (39:26.434)
Yeah, and don’t assume that things are gonna come back in the first draft as though they’re a final, you know, ready version. And also, you know, comparing that to a final ready version, you know, it’s a process. We’ve all kind of talked through that. feel like we’re kind of beat that. It’s kind of a dead horse at this point. got it. So with that in mind, Lori, what’s the first thing that people should do?

after they’ve listened to this episode as that first action item, they’re like excited, you know, hear everything that you’re talking about. What’s the first thing they should do?

Lorrie Thomas Ross (40:01.473)
breathe. Seriously. It’s seriously right. Like let’s let’s step away from your computer.

Karin Conroy (40:02.734)
Hahaha!

That’s so true though!

Karin Conroy (40:11.947)
Yes.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (40:13.853)
Be in a place where you can be creative and think critically. as you’re breathing and as you’re, mean, like, you know, all woo talk aside, critically evaluating what is serving you, you know, what is enjoyable? What is like, like this actually, you know, time and time again, this is an amazing source of

leads for us, or we love working with these people and why. And it’s really evaluating not only results, but evaluating relationships.

Karin Conroy (40:43.832)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (40:52.876)
Yes, I love that. That’s amazing. Laurie Thomas Ross is the CEO of Web Marketing Therapy with such a cool approach and such a different, unique, I mean, I feel like, I don’t know that I’ve kind of talked to anybody that has this type of thought. It seems so obvious and logical, but nobody does it. So, good job for kind of owning that little piece of, know, I know you mentioned the blue ocean.

earlier and I love that. And we didn’t have time to get into it, but it’s amazing. But thank you so much for being here.

Lorrie Thomas Ross (41:29.805)
Thank you so much.