Acting skills can transform legal outcomes in ways most trial attorneys never consider.
Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers Podcast, we’re talking with Olivia and Steve from Trial Haus Consulting, who met in college theater and now help attorneys deliver more compelling courtroom performances.
They've seen remarkable results helping attorneys shift from traditional impeachment approaches to more conversational techniques, contributing to over $40 million in verdicts since 2022 and even helping secure an acquittal in a potential life sentence case.
We had a fascinating discussion about moving beyond hourly billing to align their interests with attorneys through contingency arrangements, plus creating systems to document and scale their unique approach.
This conversation really demonstrates how bringing specialized expertise from one field into another can create breakthrough value. It's a great example of using my VCR (Vision plus Capabilities times Reach) formula to expand impact.
Key Takeaways:
We’re talking with Olivia and Steve, co-founders of Trial Haus Consulting, who have developed innovative programs blending theatrical techniques with legal practice. Their eight-week program aims to enhance advocacy and storytelling skills in the courtroom by integrating improv and scripted acting methods.
Olivia and Steve explain their focus on cross-examination strategies, highlighting techniques like the "yes and no" method. They share a case study of a seasoned attorney who achieved a significant verdict using these skills, showcasing the transformative potential of their approach.
We explore Trial House Consulting's business dynamics, including the benefits of remote work and balancing billable hours with business development. Olivia and Steve discuss the shift from in-person sessions to online courses, which allows for greater flexibility and client interaction.
The episode delves into the challenges of operating in high-stakes environments, emphasizing the need to align service delivery with clients' financial constraints. Olivia and Steve consider strategies to demonstrate their value in the American legal system, where payments are often contingent on case outcomes.
We examine the email marketing strategies employed by Trial House Consulting to manage and engage their list of trial attorneys. Olivia and Steve focus on retaining top-tier clients and leveraging marketing investments to drive repeat business, emphasizing the importance of adding value to their communications.
Olivia and Steve discuss the concept of viewing excess capacity as "investable hours" and how collaborating with trial attorneys on a contingency basis can lead to strategic growth. They highlight the potential benefits of offering their services as a strategic asset to enhance client outcomes.
The episode concludes with Olivia and Steve expressing gratitude for the collaborative journey and their excitement for future opportunities. They share their commitment to maintaining communication and fostering a sense of camaraderie and optimism within the legal consulting community.
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 262
Dean: So, Olivia, I know that you are here. Who do we have with us?
Olivia: This is my husband and co-founder of Trial Haus Consulting, Steve.
Dean: Okay, Steve, nice to see you, nice to meet you too. I am excited. I took a look at your website when I knew we were going to be talking, so I think you guys have something pretty fascinating that you're doing. I think you guys have something pretty fascinating that you're doing, so this you guys have probably seen enough of the episodes to know we're rolling right now. We got the whole hour. We're just going to apply the eight profit activators to your business, and so let's start with you know, tell us the story, who you are, what you do and, hopefully, what you're hoping to get out of our time today.
Olivia: Yeah, so we are actors.
We met in college in the theater department at San Diego State and have a career basically in acting.
I'm a director and a playwright and we are also teaching artists, so educators as well.
And some time ago, while Steve was doing improv, we met a trial attorney, a very famous one, who does constructive cross trial skills, and Steve started to notice all of the crossover between improv and constructive cross, where you make the opposing witness a tool for your narrative through more conversational techniques versus kind of trying to beat them down and impeach them. And so we started to create a program and meanwhile we were traveling around the country with this attorney for about seven years and we've tallied that we've been cross-examined at least 1,500 times by some pretty top trial attorneys. So we've seen pretty much everything. And because we're educators, we can kind of put the tools together to take what we do in the theater and translate that to the courtroom in a way that makes attorneys a better advocate, better storytellers and really just all around sort of just really kind of giving them the confidence that they need when they're not really learning some of these things in law school, like presenting and storytelling, things like that.
Steve: So yeah, that's pretty much what we do. In the last five years we've I mean, when we talk about creating programs for lawyers, I mean since the pandemic, we just we started working with this group of lawyers and we were literally creating like tools and programs to fit their needs. And now we have this. We just launched it and it's like an eight week program where we've kind of put everything that we've learned in the last five years together. We are really confident. We know it because we've seen, really like, from people who are like, have had careers for decades to people that are brand new, we've seen how we can help them, and so it's about taking that next step. Basically, I love it.
Dean: So this is. I mean I love all the. I study, you know, legal things, just in a persuasion kind of standpoint as a marketer. I mean, one of the most impactful books I ever read was how to Argue and Win Every Time by Jerry Spence, which is fantastic right Like he's, and he talks about the importance of story, of telling a story that resonates with someone, and there were so many great lessons from that, so I'm excited to hear all about it. How did we get connected?
Olivia: So I actually found you from I was in Dream Club and so your millionaire throwdown and the nine word email was just hooked from there.
Steve: Yeah, okay, perfect. And while she's watching that, I was over her shoulder going. Oh yeah, this is good.
Dean: Oh yeah, oh yeah, this is good, okay, perfect, I love it. So tell me about the business, then, of what you do and how do you yeah.
Olivia: Because we started out really as improv base and kind of thinking that one day we would have a brick and mortar improv Our name was house ofrov and as we started to work with trial attorneys and that really got accelerated and moving forward. You know, even as an actor I was afraid of improvisation and so when attorneys hear that, it's, you know, an even greater kind of fear or just kind of out of the box a little bit of everything when it comes to hearing the word improv.
Steve: Yeah, it was my, that was my part of it. Like it really started because of just out of necessity. We had ideas, like Olivia said, about a theater, but like that was my part and what she brings is a whole different.
Olivia: He's an improv actor and a scripted actor, yeah, and a director and she yeah, and all like a lot more than that, yeah.
So we started to kind of shift and see that you know, people were nervous about that improv and so we kind of even changed the names of our program to let be less improv based and also even our marketing not necessarily put improv out there in terms of how the sausage was being made. And then, uh, attorneys started to tell us too yeah, we have this program with you coming up. I didn't tell anybody it was going to be about improv, so hopefully everybody will show up, because we started to see people just weren't showing up. So when we changed in about February, january to February, trial house consulting, it was already kind of a shift, to be honest, with you, pretty not over the top noticeable, but enough to be like, okay, this is the right direction, because it's also what we do. We're more than just improv.
Steve: We help, you know, coach witnesses, we help opening statements. So, yeah, people are approaching us now about hey, I have this case. What are all the things that you can do for us? Now, we have, we know, all the things that we can do for them, and there's a number of services. It's not just an improv class for lawyers, which is really great, and that's something we don't ever, you know, I don't think we should ever get rid of, and we definitely use that in the other services that we do, but we're starting to get approached like that and it seems to have a positive effect.
Dean: So with enough of this like that, it's a really interesting thing that you know you could probably see the benefits just on the top level of improv, of being able to think on your feet, be able to respond and react and, you know, have formulas kind of thing for knowing what to do, but that would. I could see how they might look at that as just like a qualitative thing. That is just a soft skill that may or may not make a difference. But what I'm hearing from you is that you seemed pretty excited, steve, about the ability to that. You know that this makes an improvement. The only way to measure an improvement is quantitatively.
So what would be? What kind of evidence do you have? Because all the attorneys, of course, are evidence-based. And I look at what we're trying to do. When you're starting a relationship with someone who could potentially be a client is you're kind of presenting your argument and you're building the case for this and you're hoping to have them come to the same conclusion, the verdict that you guys would be an advantage for them and if you can quantify that advantage, it makes the investment in whatever they're doing, something that has an ROI on it, you know. So tell me about how, what impact you've been able to have.
Olivia: Yeah. So everything from you know, in 30 minutes we can get somebody just this last week thinking about some of the bad facts quote unquote bad facts that they talked to other attorneys about their case. And we look at it and we're like, oh no, these are huge advantages. So being able to just in 30 minutes, flip somebody's idea of their case and even potentially increase the value to somebody in 90 minutes, taking them from being a robot when it comes to presenting, to having personality, having connection with their audience, and then all responding to us and giving us testimonials in that way, but we've also verdict wise. We're at 40.
Steve: 40.6 million Since 2022. That we've been a part of as far as cases have gone to trial or have settled right before. So yeah, and then we've also cause. We work with plaintiff's attorneys doing like injury claim or injury cases and some family law and some criminal defense as well. So we were also a part of a case where a guy was up for a hundred year prison sentence and through the work that we did we were able to help that case and get them acquitted and pretty proud of that.
Olivia: A life-saving sentence. And even the attorney emailed us saying I think that the state knew that I was working with you and was really working hard on this and backed out also, so yeah, oh, that's interesting.
Dean: Sometimes just seeing you guys in the mix is a deterrent. That's kind of great. Do you typically work with plaintiff's attorneys or?
Olivia: Yeah, plaintiffs, so yeah, mostly plaintiffs in criminal defense Criminal defense yeah. Okay, so large accidents, MTBIs or just even some injuries on the job.
Dean: Yeah, and trust litigation as well, so if we look at the business of this, what you're doing here, how does the business side of it work? What is it that you offer? How do you charge for that? How do you find people that kind of thing?
Olivia: Yeah, so we up until this last year, we were doing online classes. When it comes to just like our improv class, it was a four hour class, maybe once a quarter. We also had a four week class, maybe a little bit less than that per year. At the beginning of last year, we also created acting for trial lawyers, where it was an on demand course where they could just purchase it. That was through Kajabi. The rest of it the other live courses were through just our website via PayPal, but we do have a Kajabi course and this program that we're starting this week, our eight week course, is also a live course through Kajabi as well.
Steve: So go and we'll travel, work with firms and do like half day workshops or longer. So that's another thing that we'll do.
Olivia: We also do witness preparation. So we did that this week as well, where we meet for 90 minutes at least three times with a witness and preparing them for a deposition or trial. And we've also done this last week too, directing opening statements. So somebody who's going into a trial that needs help with their opening statement.
Steve: And another big thing that we're doing. We have a lot of things that we do, dean, but the other thing that is really exciting is that we, because we've have all this cross examination experience and in all these simulations, we can write really strong. They call them chapters, but basically question organization. We're able to organize it and build it out. So through cross-examination or deposition, we know how to organize it and build it out. So, through cross-examination or deposition, we know how to construct it to like kind of build I don't want to call them traps, but basically box in the witness and we can write those better than most attorneys actually. We're actually doing a lot of that now the tongue.
Dean: Foo people with your words, yeah yeah I love that. It's very jedi mind trick kind of like exactly, yeah, yeah, thinking like a chess master two or three steps towards yeah, yes, okay, that's exactly right okay, and so do you. What's the top level thing that you do? Do you go on as a consultant to a specific for a specific trial, or like working one-on-one with the attorneys, or what is the price point of relationship people can have with you, like from an online course? I guess you're just you're acting for a trial attorney.
Olivia: So the eight week course that we have coming up, that was two nine nine seven and the price point of our like acting on demand, I think is one ninety nine. That's the purchase. But in terms of the witness simulations we do right now, we haven't done like a full trial, We've just done pieces like we'll do an opening statement for this attorney.
Steve: We'll do witness prep for this one. But if it went all together, the way that we would do it is we would do the witness prep, we would do cross-examination prep and writing out and helping construct that cross-examination to the very key witness that would be or key witnesses, and as well as helping construct and coach the opening statement.
Dean: It's interesting because you mentioned cross-examination more than direct. Is that something that? What's the reasoning for that?
Steve: The attorney that we worked with for a number of years. That was his specialty and so that became our specialty, because that was the entry point where we really understood how our art can affect or can really help ingrain those skills that attorney was teaching. We kind of learned how to teach it better. I mean it's kind of blasphemous to say that, but we can teach it better than he can. I so believe that. But that's that first thing that we did and probably what we've worked on the most during our time working with attorneys.
Olivia: I think it's really it has to do with the control, because everything in the trial that the attorney is trying to do is build somebody's case, but in a cross-examination you know they're trying to make that witness also part of their case, when it's normally not that way. Right, they're normally trying to take down everything, but they're really using even what is a contentious part of trial, using it to their advantage. That's where that art comes in.
Steve: Yeah, and turning that person into turn that opposing witness into a teaching tool that can, with things that are easily agreed upon, getting that entered into the mind of the jury. So they're saying, hey, it's not my witness that's agreeing with us, their witness agrees with us too, and in fact they agree with us so much that when they got to the part where they disagree, you kind of don't believe them anymore. And that's the idea.
Olivia: So we call it the yes and method.
Steve: That's where the improv comes in the yes and method of cross, that we talk about it and those improv skills help you kind of navigate, and we call it a carrot and stick approach to the witness, so you can punish them a little bit, you can reward them and basically you always have a tool that will always help you get to your goal. Your cross is never ruined. There's always an opportunity there.
Dean: Got it, I think about F Lee Bailey in the OJ Simpson trial with Mark Furman. You know, turning that into that's very interesting what you guys are doing. You know, turning that into that's that's very interesting what you guys are doing. So how do you charge for working with an attorney on a specific case like that?
Olivia: Do you charge like that could be by invoice and they would pay by PayPal or by check.
Steve: But like the hourly rate.
Olivia: Yeah.
Steve: That's yeah. Then with we have prep hours and then we have like when we're actually working with them or their clients. So it'd be it's $200 for prep hours and then $300 when we're working with them on their case.
Dean: Okay, and do you ever come on board for like a, a personal injury case, for instance, and become part of the process, like the and get paid like the personal injury attorneys get?
Steve: paid? Oh, not yet. Oh yeah, no, there was one time it got offered to us and we're too chicken to do that.
Olivia: I don't think we're at the point yet to do that.
Dean: Yeah, financially, what you're doing works. Tell me more about that, about how. What evidence do you have that the work that you do has an impact?
Steve: One of my favorite, the client that we had that we worked with her for gosh over a year prepping for this case and she's an older, you know, more experienced attorney and she's at the point where she only takes cases that she really believes in and so she was putting a lot of time and effort and she this is one of those clients that we were creating programs for her, thinking about her, you know, and now she's kind of like our avatar for our client, but we saw her she was already skilled, so it wasn't about her like not having skill, but she went from kind of being buttoned up and real tight.
Olivia: Almost apologetic too, sometimes during the surgery.
Steve: Yeah, because she didn't want to come off too strong as a woman and an older woman and all this stuff. And we're working with her and we're like, no, you're super engaging, don't worry about it, be yourself, go for it, go for it. But through our, especially the cross-examination stuff, she not only was more comfortable in cross-examination, she could write like she could do one on the fly. And that's really what our attorneys can do. They can improvise cross-examination. We do a lot of improvised cross-examinations. And so during that case a really big case she was going against three opposing attorneys because there was that it was a commercial case, there was multiple people involved and they started throwing I think they threw two or three, two surprise witnesses at her that she wasn't expecting and she wound up crossing them and absolutely wiping the floor and she sent us what's a great quote. She sent us an email that day or a text message. She's like I just improvised crosses and just killed the opposing, these surprise witnesses.
Olivia: And so her case actually. The jury came back and told her I would have awarded you millions more had I been allowed to.
Steve: And it was tens of millions of dollars in the verdict, so it was a really big deal. It was like the signature win of hers and a lot of people celebrated that win. Wow, that's pretty amazing.
Dean: Yeah, I would love like I just kind of plant that seed for you to think that way, that it may be, even you know. If you look at how booked are you in terms of like, if you look at your capacity for what you're doing, where are you at and what's the goal, you know it's actually interesting, like this year has been different for us.
Olivia: We were normally like thinking oh God, we got to just take December and January off and just write it off because nobody's doing anything. This year has been a little bit different, however, I would say what we have is pretty sporadic, and so our schedule is, from week to week, like this week is crazy busy, next week not so much, and it's not. It doesn't always feel sustainable in that way, right.
Cause it's a little bit and then a lot and then nothing, so consistency is not really there. But, honestly, after this eight week program and the current little things that we have right now, we don't really have something that we're, like you know, solid on.
Steve: So it's really about bringing in those consulting one-on-one gigs which we found in the last year and a half is really where we're going as far as you know, getting new clients and whatnot they. It just is easier to work with an attorney schedule one-on-one than trying to get them to commit to a multi-week type of training.
Olivia: So yeah and it's more lucrative.
Dean: Yeah, and they're much more probably focused on a specific thing. What are you guys in California You're in like? Is it primarily?
Olivia: in southern california or it's actually all on zoom.
Dean: So we work with attorneys even in london, where okay yeah, for any advantage to it being in southern california like. Is that a preference or is it a better experience?
Olivia: is there I mean, we have like one attorney here in san diego we work with, like. Is that a preference or is it a better experience? Is there? I mean, we have like one attorney here in San Diego we work with, like in person. We go to LA every once in a while. We're going, we're flying to Arizona on Friday for something, so there's not really. I don't necessarily think, you know, being here specifically is an advantage, but definitely, zoom, we can work anywhere. We've only met like two of our clients actually in person, even though we've known them for years.
Steve: Yeah, people that are like, we consider them friends more than just clients, yeah, and yeah, we're just starting to get to meet a lot of those people, so Okay.
Dean: So I look at it. So you're in a situation where when you're doing things that are primarily billable hours, you're like an attorney in a lot of ways. Right that you have a certain number of allocated hours that you could work, and let's call it at a max of 2,000, but nobody's getting 2,000 billable hours, right. But if you said, if you were looking at a benchmark of 1,000 billable hours, if you look at that as your 20 hours a week, basically if you had 20 billable hours, do you ever calculate your effective hourly rate? If you think about what you, you, if your bottom line you're going to, you know, you know, look at those hours. And you said you took the amount of revenue that you generated in the last 12 months and divided it by a thousand as your baseline billable core hours, or do you bill more than a thousand hours?
Steve: No, I don't think we've gotten to that part yet.
Olivia: No, in terms of the scope of the work. It's just been like incremental things.
Steve: Yeah, we haven't, really we haven't done that equation. I'll tell you this before this last year and a half we were probably doing really great on that equation as far as the amount of prep work that we're doing. But we just we weren't we had. We just we were in this, we had these clients coming to us and we were, we kind of had a built in like little clientele base and they were, they would bring people and that was fine. But things switched and I think it's just because people are busier now and where we were, you know, doing all these classes and a little bit of a little bit of, you know, trial prep and that kind of like personal stuff, now it's kind of flipped on its head and now we're spending a way more time figuring out our marketing and so we're putting you know, this year has been really tough that way but we're also.
We've learned a lot, and so we're. You know I couldn't tell you what that number is, but I can tell you it's upside down big time right now. So we spend most of our time working on trying to attract clients.
Olivia: Behind the scenes stuff.
Steve: Yeah, behind the scenes, which is not the stuff that we love, and of course that's running a business and whatnot.
Dean: Look at that Like it's very interesting. What would you say like as a percentage shift would be course income. Are these recorded like courses that, or are they live courses that you're that you're doing?
Olivia: The eight week course coming up. We only have one recorded course, that's. That's on demand. They can just buy anytime the live. The course that we start on Wednesday for eight weeks is live. We will record them so they can have the recordings. But it is live, it is active participation.
Dean: I got it Okay. And so if you look at those, the course work, how many people in a cohort or in a class do you typically?
Olivia: Well, we were hoping for eight. We do have four.
Steve: Yeah, okay, and that's a. You know it's a pretty, it's not a cheap ticket item in in the world that we are in, I hour course Like, luckily, probably, the curriculum and the support materials and everything is all done.
Dean: Are you literally like showing up and you're off book kind of thing is that you're just doing the play, you're doing the performance.
Olivia: For the most part at this point, yes, but because we we rebranded, we're going to redo the slides, you know to be more of our thing, but yeah, pretty much we've taught this stuff over and over again at this point and, yeah, we kind of know it it's like a item at taco bell.
Steve: It's the same eight things that we were really good at and we now. It's they're all together and in like look, we've got cheese and beef and, yeah, yeah, exactly Quesadilla and the taco with the corn tortilla.
Dean: Yeah, that's great. So how many hours is your commitment in the eight week program?
Steve: This one we're offering. We're actually made it so they could hit a couple times a week. So there could be up to five hours of actual teaching a week. So two, two hours and one one hour session and then really there's probably an hour of prep at this point, just because we know the material so well maybe two hours with emailing and making sure that you know we're corresponding with them and getting them ready.
Dean: They got maybe 50 hours max in the eight week in the eight week thing. And if you're thinking, if you did one of those quarterly that's you run four cohorts a year of those, there's 200 of your thousand billable hours kind of thing. If you had 10 people for that, I'm just like just doing the straight math If you had 10 people that would be $30,000 for the course, which would put you at a effective of about $600 an hour, right to do the thing. But if you have four you're at something less than that. 250 probably is the number right. So you see, I guess that's kind of like you're within your band of your minimum, like your prep hour rate there. So part of that thing is like to maximize what you can do within those allowable kind of billable hours that you have to create that lifestyle that you want.
So what I was saying about a way to think about going into contingency work, like the way these attorneys do, is to start thinking about your excess capacity as an asset that you have. That's, you know, collaboration, currency is what I've been calling it. Right that you have these units. If you don't have somebody paying for that hour, it's perishable, right? It's like you're not getting anything for it. And so this idea of we're only going to do billable hour work but you're spending a lot of time trying to get people to purchase those billable hours so that you can invest them. And I'm thinking that if you know that you can deliver a outcome, imagine if you had a model where you work along with a personal injury attorney to really go above and beyond to have the best impact that you could have and you get 5% of the total award.
That if you did that, if they got a million dollar award, you got $50,000. That would be a really interesting type of arrangement, right? So part of the thing when you're doing this it's about the way that the personal injuries attorneys work. It's really about case selection. It's about they're the buyer. They're choosing that this is a case that we can win their you know high probability and they're going to invest the time and the resources and the stuff. So if you think about that, you would be willing to do. How many hours do you typically engage in in one trial like that that you're working with them on cross-examination or opening arguments or whatever?
Olivia: the yeah, it had. I'm trying to think of even maybe just Susie, cause we kind of did a little bit of everything with her, but everybody else has been just this or this.
Steve: Well, I'm just like the three or four different attorneys that we're working with right now. If we put those together, there was like five with Mike and then three with any witness, and these are all 90 minute sessions without the prep time. So I'm just trying to do the math, you know whatever. So those are. You know anywhere from like if we were doing everything on a case, it could be anywhere from 11, 90 minute sessions doing live stuff to 15. I think 15 would be like a reasonable thing if we were really diving in there and coaching and helping construct and then probably another 15 hours of prep time, and I can't do them. I would have to get my calculator out, but if that's-.
Dean: Well, your engagement with an attorney on a specific case is in the $10,000 range, $8,000 overall billable hours kind of thing Do you. Over what period of time would it typically be?
Steve: It would depend on how.
Olivia: Sometimes even just a month, to be honest.
Steve: Yeah, it could be a month.
Dean: Okay.
So, so if you look at that. So if you look at that 10,000, $10,000, and that's an average of you know what typically works out with these, with these trials, Do you feel like that you could have a bigger impact with more involvement? Are there, like often in situations like that, when you are just economics 101, when people are buying something in advance, they're going to be more, you know, tied into, like well, we only really need this. They're trying to minimize the expense of the thing because there's still uncertainty, Anybody taking risk on something right.
So a lot of times you get into situations where you are you have this fire hydrant of value that you could add, but you're being forced to meter it out through a garden hose of their affordability, right, and cheerfully, like they're making that as an investment, hoping that this is going to tip things in their favor, that they're going to get a third of the total awards of that, for let's call it 46 million and that's divided by three, so 22 million in things. And imagine if you got five percent of their awarded thing, that would be a million dollars over a million dollars that you would have gotten. And have you ever calculated like, how much did you get paid out of that $40?
Olivia: million Us personally out of that. Oh gosh.
Steve: I mean probably you know it was a couple. Well, because I'm thinking about the actual work that we did. But I mean there was a time when we were working.
Olivia: I bet that attorney that you were talking about maybe 10,000, the attorney that we're talking about that 125 million.
Steve: Oh yeah, the attorney that we're talking about that 125 million. Oh yeah, 10 000, maybe, with that one in particular, because she was taking classes and those are not as as good as the the actual personal work that we were doing and we had been doing.
Dean: So, I mean, with all of the classes and everything, you know, we're talking not that much, we're talking about a couple hundred thousand, you know, yeah, um, so this is that there's potential, like if you stop thinking about like, oh no, we can't afford to do this, like you're coming from a place where we need people to for our life or for our, you know, for living, that's true, for you know, I think, that continuing to do that for whoever you're able to. But I think, if you look at the other end, I think it would be safe to say that you probably have 25% excess capacity, that you, I mean you know, if you look at it on the other end, that you have the hours that are not being allocated towards anything.
Right, if you just take in the last 30 days you wouldn't have the time to do it Right, but you don't have the engagement, you don't have the person Right, and so I look at these things like there's no way that personal injury attorneys would make as much money as they do if they were required to be paid up front. If they said to, there would be far less lawsuits. There would be far less people who choose to pursue these things because they don't have the money to invest in potentially getting the outcome right.
Steve: So yeah, we were talking to one of the attorneys that actually came from Chile and he's working here now and that's the way the system is in Chile, and he's like people will do lawsuits, they'll win and they'll lose money, and so it's just not profitable. It's a very unique situation in America to do that.
Dean: Yeah, so I think that there's something there.
So if we could plant a seed that let's say that one of your strategies is to allocate 10% or 20% 10% to start of your available hours to pursue and look into see what you're really capable of, you know, delivering the results and I've been using this analogy lately of going most businesses are going to the purchasing department of a company and they're trying to get them to write a purchase order for some consulting or improv training or all those things.
You're trying to get people to write a purchase order. You have to convince them in advance that this is worth investing in for a potential future outcome and you're competing against all the other things that they're that are trying to get purchase orders for. Right, and I say, if you just start thinking, if you go around, bypass the purchase department and go to the receiving dock, you're met with open arms. Right, every single person on every level is 100% authorized to bring money into the business and they're much more generous with future money than with present money, right, and that's something that if you think about that, you know that could be. How long are the, how long is the cycle of a case like that, like where you're getting involved, and when the actual trial is, do they bring you in? You know how long is the cycle.
Olivia: Well, it depends, because this last week we've had oh, I'm going to start a trial on Monday and it's Thursday. That happened twice this week with two different trials, but then we've got one that we're starting this week, that I think we have a month lead way.
Steve: Yeah, but this is the thing, even if, and for the woman we worked on with her in the big, that big settle or the big verdict that she got the company or the defendants, they're pushing it off. He pushed it off. That was about a year we worked with her it was another year and a half before she got the settlement and they settled it.
Olivia: So there's always yeah, for example, the one that we got on Thursday saying I have opening statements, or board year on Monday that just got pushed to June.
Steve: Yeah, so that happens too. So there's a lot of we never know how long it's going to take, and that's why settlements happen all the time, because it's guaranteed and there's not this whole appeals thing that can last years and years. That's the other like tricky thing with that.
Olivia: But there are times when, like you know, we listen in on trial or they send us the recording after and we're like oh, you only worked with us on this and your opening statement yeah, we could have really helped you there, you know. But that idea that like it's only this one thing, but there's actually these other things that we could have totally helped with that they didn't notice or see.
Dean: Yeah, we can probably build a case that, listen, you're best on in the 30 days before trial or the. If you were to say this is the, do all of your research, build your core case, build your, build all of your argument and then let's refine it in the last 30 days or the last two weeks or whatever the or during trial often. I mean, how much of an advantage would it be, because if you were on tap to be able to you know, in the moment or in day by day give somebody some coaching on how to, on how to do it during the actual trial, you know oh sorry, dean, I was even thinking, you know, there's a lot of attorneys that are in that, that they don't do the multimillion dollar cases.
Steve: They're doing a bunch of them that are 200,000, 500,000, you know, in that kind of an area, you know or under a million, and those are more likely to get settled or to get paid quickly and not have constant appeals. If we were doing that, that kind of contingency plan, especially on those smaller ones that might be I mean, you add that up that 5% on a bunch of smaller cases and that could be really lucrative too. So it doesn't have to be just the big case that could take a long time, right?
Dean: That's what I'm thinking, anyway, of just like planting that seed for you and otherwise you're going to constantly be on that billable hour hamster wheel, right that you're going to just get into a trap of. Right now you have the luxury of having that excess capacity. Probably the worst thing that could happen is that you get on the other end of that, where you don't have the time and yet you're capped, you're stuck. The three things that you can invest that excess time into is the preparing courses, like a documenting IP that is something that you could asynchronously get paid for, and investing those hours in contingency type things would be a great thing and marketing of the system. That brings you new people to work with, you know. So let's talk about the marketing. How do you get people? Now? What's your process for finding people to work with?
Steve: We've had a lot of fortunate. I'm trying to think of the ways that we've been very fortunate sorry about that. To think of the ways that we've been very fortunate, sorry about that. We've been very fortunate that we've been able to be a part of some big early on, some big podcasts during the pandemic that if you were on there, you got, you were shared the leads for the people who signed up.
Olivia: Conferences as well In conferences.
Steve: So we were able to build up a mailing list. That's, you know, it's very specific, so it's not really huge, it's a couple thousand, but it's a very specific, you know, niche. It's our clientele, basically. And then we had Google ads going, but because we had changed so many programs and we're rebuilding our website right now, I've stopped those, and I can tell, because there's not people signing up for our newsletters Not that there was a lot, but it's really slowed down. So that was another way that we were bringing people in. And the other thing that we're investing actually some money into is a podcast right now that is partnered with a company called Law Pods and they're platforming us and they do a lot of big law podcasts. But we're doing something that's different than anybody else. We're doing live simulations and I got Law Pods that was-.
Law Pods.
Olivia: Oh that's funny yeah.
Dean: So 2,000 emails. How often do you email them? Are they trial attorneys? Is that who's on the-?
Olivia: Yeah, they're all. Yeah, we email them every Wednesday and the last couple of weeks or well, every Wednesday and then when we have a podcast, it's every Wednesday and then every like Friday, I think we do two a week when we have a podcast every other week and this last couple of weeks we were doing when we had open cart for a week, it was like nine emails in a week and we actually did pretty good as far as like not having too many unsubscribes, to be honest.
Steve: I was expecting like maybe a hundred unsubscribes and we probably had like 50 and I was expecting that. So I was like actually that's pretty good and the emails we've sent since there's like no unsubscribes.
Dean: So I feel like we kind of just weeded out some people who are never going to probably buy. Well, that's part of the thing. I would say that, right, you got to be willing to polarize, that you're going to attract the top 20%, you're going to eliminate the bottom 20%, but you never. My whole policy around it is never like limit what you could value that you can add to the top 20% for fear of losing the bottom 20%. Right, they say, well, but what if people end up? We got to hold back on this Always.
If your thing is to add value, continue to add value. Do something that the top 20% are going to find super valuable. So two questions your, the email list that you have. If one of the numbers that I look at is your, I call this your revenue per unconverted prospect. So if we take your top line revenue, divide it by the number of prospects that you have.
Like everybody that everybody, assuming that you're doing business was coming through that process where they're on your list as an unconverted prospect first, and then they either come to a class or hire you to do consulting, or take a class and then hire you to do consulting. So I look at that as one thing on your before unit and then on the after unit. How much of your business is repeat and referral People who you've already done work with and then they bring you in on another trial, or they've taken a course and then they hire you to do consulting, or they loved what you did and they introduced you to someone else. How much of your business is what we would call after unit?
90% probably there you go.
Olivia: Referrals not so much. I don't think we've really had too many referrals unless it's like oh hey, I did a class with them and they've got a group do an in-person one. It's kind of random, it's more sporadic, the referrals.
Steve: Yeah, but the repeat for sure, the repeat like that's. We wouldn't be here if we didn't have constant repeat from a really strong small group of clientele.
Dean: Yeah, that's great. Clientele yeah Well, that's great. Do you have any arrangements where you're like special counsel to the law firm, where you're on a retainer as a you know, an ongoing thing to tap in for all?
Olivia: of their cases. I feel like we're getting this close to one. Like we're, we're trying to seal the deal on one.
Steve: Yeah, yeah.
Olivia: There is actually yeah.
Steve: Yeah, but but no, we have not been able to do that.
Dean: So maybe I mean you could see how that might be a that might be a good path too. Right so of the. So you're getting all these new people coming in 2000 of them. How many of the 2000 turned into new clients, let's say, in the last 12 months? Or how old is email number one? How long has it been growing this list?
Steve: Five years, yeah, five years.
Dean: And so we have been growing at a rate of 400 a year, or is it that it was small, small and then all of a sudden you got a big surge?
Steve: Yeah, when we did conferences, we get a big surge and that's really where the growth has come from in our email list.
Dean: Part of the thing that is precarious about that is that you're kind of putting yourself in a position where you are hoping to be selected. You know we talk about, you know, profit activator number one in our model is select, a single target market, and so that means I'm talking about proactively doing the selecting versus putting yourself out there and hoping to be selected. And that's where it's kind of like the difference between getting your name out there or getting their name in here. That's what's really the most, the most valuable, right. Do you have a sense of how much it costs you to add a subscriber? Like do you have a? Do you allocate money to this? Like are you spending money on marketing? Are you paying money to be of these podcasts? Like, all of the investment that you're doing in marketing has turned into 2000 emails. So if you were to take that money and divide it by 2000, you would have a. How much does it cost you to get a subscriber? That's a good question?
Steve: I don't know. I know we were at one time when we were doing Google ads last year, in the years before. You know, for the last three or four years we were spending under $200 a month. But they were very specific ads and so they were well placed and we were getting people in. But, like I said, we had to stop those because they just didn't make. They're not lined up correctly anymore, especially with the change in all the programs.
But right now it's the early part of the podcast, we're only on episode five and but we are spending and this is a great deal because I have, we have friends in the industry, so we have somebody editing it and we're getting two episodes a month and we're spending $600 on that, plus the equipment that we had to buy. So we're down a couple thousand on that to do like a couple hundred bucks a month to have somebody consistently do our social media, which we have not been good at as far as consistently pumping out stuff. But now we have a lot of clips from our podcast. It's a really good way to to use our social media to get more people. So, yeah, so we're probably spending now $800 a month on on marketing, just on that. And then, if we get, I would like to get Google ads going again in that targeted way again, and so it could be, you know, 900, yeah, 900 to a thousand dollars a month.
Dean: So if you look at this, so you know you're, yeah, yeah, looking at that to be able to see how many new leads you're generating, right, Like in the terms of what are you doing to, because the bankable result of this is getting a new subscriber, a new hopefully trial attorney who is now you are is a visible prospect for you. You know, do you have a book or do you have anything that would be that you could use as a lead generator?
Olivia: that would oh yeah, so we have two downloadable PDFs we have that are storytelling based. So it's one that's about asking the right questions to get storytelling gold from your witness or from your client to help, kind of your case narrative, and then another one that is about fact-based storytelling. So those are they're not books, but they are like PDFs, downloadable PDFs.
Dean: But you could put a cover on them and they're you know that visually cuing, that this is some digital or some you know content that you can do.
So part of the thing that I would look at is I would look at doing something like that where it's a direct exchange, where you're trying to at the minimum thing that you're trying to do is get a trial attorney to just raise their hand and be interested in kind of. It's an interesting juxtaposition of fact based storytelling. Seems a little bit. There's some intrigue in that too. Right, that's, that's a.
That's an interesting thing for for attorneys that there's probably a you know, but I guess there's a really like you think about Jerry Spence's book that how to Argue and Win Every model is about is getting in conversation with the right people.
In order for someone to hire you, they have to know that you exist. So that's job. One is just you hear people talk about this. They've got to know you, like you, trust you, but they always read it as one destination and they don't properly revere the giant leap of not knowing you to knowing you. And once they know that you exist, that's a much shorter distance to liking you and then even shorter distance then to trusting you. And so you've got to just kind of get more people into that know you and, over time, what you're doing already with the podcast and the emails and the documenting, telling the stories of evidence-based results that you're getting and unpacking them, contentimonials or even redacted like things of sharing things in action, your principles that are, you know, being shared. That would be a super valuable little mechanism, you know, and then making it super easy for people to take the next step, you know, yeah yeah, thank you.
Olivia: This is so exciting I yeah, because we've even been asked before and we're like, oh, as far as the contingency thing, I just yeah, we've always been afraid to do that, just because but it makes total sense because we're spending all of this time and not doing anything, right that's?
Dean: exactly that's my point. When you think about it like that, how much have you you've already you've lost by? There's a 0% chance that you're getting any return on those hours that you don't invest, invest. And so I would look at it of setting up around a thousand hour. You know, like core block of billable hours. That's about three hours a day, right? Or you know overall and that, if you really like, do the audit, do the, have that awareness of how many billable hours you're actually spending, whatever that gap is, you know it's 20 hours a week, basically right, it's three hours a day on a seven day week, but 20, you know, four hours a day on a five day week, kind of thing. That's all really anybody could hope for or want to invest in billable hours of doing the actual work you know. And so I think that those, if you can start thinking about the you know the bottom 20%, your excess capacity of those as investable hours, of those as investable hours, be so much better to, strategically, you be the buyer you select.
You'd have a selection criteria and one of the things you always ask if I were going to do this would have to be true.
Whatever your fears are about the things right Like you're not just willy nilly going to do it, but you're going to do it on cases, and I think that the odds are working with a trial attorney who's already working on a contingency basis and trusting their, you know, imagine if somebody had you in their back pocket for 5% of all the outcome and you're with them on every trial that they're doing. I think that would be a real, that would be a really great and exciting place to come from and everything that you're doing there, you know, getting towards creating your protocols and documenting your systems, that you could train associates to do the same. You almost take the contingent law firm, model yourself, yeah, and model it for your own thing. Imagine, you know, if you had like morgan, and morgan, as the you know, they're the largest contingent law firm in the country, right based right here in orlando yeah and we've worked with one of their one of their lawyers recently.
Yeah, imagine that. You know, if you had a contingent lawyer, attorney, that if they had you as an asset and they didn't, they could you know they would be much more liberal and excited about the use of you if you were working on the same side with them, that you're getting paid for the result.
you're betting on them and that's part of the thing and maybe that could be something that you propose to people you already know, like and trust that you've already worked with. And you're saying I was thinking about you and I know you've already done some work with. And you're saying I was thinking about you and I know you've got so many other things going on. And here's what we're thinking Imagine if we could team up with you and be an asset for you. And you look at the when you even if it's you know it's hard to truly quantify the, your component or your contribution to it, but even anecdotally they might feel like this the confidence level, knowing that you've got the best messaging. Yeah, it's a pretty neat thing. That's really exciting. Thank you.
Olivia: Yeah, it's really exciting because I think it's like we've just been leading to this, but it's like it's a huge leap, and I think that's part of why the idea of House of Improv to trial, house consulting, like part of that, was also not just like people revering us as, oh, they're just actors, but we also revered ourselves that way because we've been treated that way, and also just the confidence level in ourselves. But we know that this is so worthwhile and we've seen it, that we're ready for that.
Dean: So thank you, I love it. That's kind of like improv science, you know. It's kind of you're taking an art and putting a science element to it. There's something to that, you know. Yeah so what's your takeaways, oh?
Steve: my gosh, being brave and entrusting ourselves and believing ourselves by really taking that leap and I'm already thinking about those criterias as far as what would we do for contingency and there's a case right now that it's we were like oh my God, this is such a great case, Like it's, those cases where it's like yeah, but so so I mean that just opening our eyes to that possibility was a huge takeaway for me today.
Olivia: Yeah, I think I've always like oh, like you know we're going to work smarter, not harder, but then like, what does that mean? And then, looking at the you know the way that you kind of just put it out in front of us on the table, it's like, oh, wait a second, like we're still working harder, right, but it's just like it's not. You know, we have a family and we have there is like this week we are actually full. So what is our capacity? When we're at capacity and somebody comes to us, we were just like no, sorry, we can't do that. But this kind of allows that balance that we've been looking for but didn't know how.
Steve: And seeing that through that idea of a thousand billable hours and the. You know, it's something that I was kind of thinking and I didn't put it into that concrete equation or number that you did was our classes doing that quarterly such a nice bedrock to, to to being able to do all these other things too? I was kind of imagining it that way too. You know, the you know doing getting those classes just to be that, that that base, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, the difference between four and 10 people, you know, is that you're at $600 an hour billable hour and the app with 10 people at 3000 is 30,000 by the 50 hours that you're gonna invest in running it. That's so. It's anything you can do, you know to get, and those people are going to come from growing those 2000 emails to 5,000 emails you know that's the.
Steve: I love it.
Olivia: Well, this has been so much yeah.
Dean: I can't wait to tell Marie, I've got to talk to you too, so that's good.
Olivia: Likewise. Yes, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
Dean: Awesome guys, keep me posted, okay, absolutely.
Steve: Thank you.