Pitch Please

00:02.46
mike_flywheel
What's up everybody. It's Mike we're back here on the pitch please podcast and today I've got Daniel from law broker. They're a screening software that helps law firms qualify new leads or something like that I'm looking forward to learning more not just about law broker but about Daniel's pretty cool past. Um, so maybe to kick us off Daniel maybe like let's start with a quick introduction about yourself and maybe kick us off with where your career journey started. Yeah.

00:26.30
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, sure. Mike thanks again for having me. Um I think I've counted on like the fourth or fifth legal tech company on this pod. So I know you're gonna you're going down that specific niche. But yeah, just um. Quick introduction about myself. My name's Daniel Steinberg I'm the founder and Ceo of a company here in Toronto called wallbroker um, you know my career path was always very focused on becoming an entrepreneur and very focused in on how I could be a really strong operator as a first -time founder so I actually found myself. In a career in accounting early days was working in private practice at ey really understanding how ceos and cos naturally run a business and execute on it quickly decided that that wasn't for me I was just doing it to do it and quickly pivoted into tech sales i. Sales is obviously incredibly important in order to understand how to sell yourself sell a business communicate with multiple different stakeholders within an organization and actually started my career at a company in toronto called influidive it was an advocacy marketing software which plays nicely once we. Into pitch please about you know what lawbroker truly does but it was very focused on really creating your best advocates from your customers and champions and being able to sell software to large enterprises like salesforce cisco oracle etc

01:48.94
Daniel Steinberg
On how to turn those advocates into and into champions and did that for a couple of years again for me becoming an operator was very focused on how do you get the full scope of ah organization in business and was very focused in on becoming rounding out excuse me that experience on the partnership side. To get a better grasp of how to work cross departmentally internally and externally and naturally that led me to a career at cleo 1 of the largest legal tech companies throughout North America operating system for law firms and I you know went over to Cleo to. Manage and run the affiliate program working with third -party consultants on scaling up cleo's business and alternative revenue streams and naturally that progressed into managing and running the app ecosystem as well where I managed 200 plus app partners some as small as law broker all the way through to. Companies as large as google microsoft dialpad and into it you and I never worked together but from ah from you know that perspective how this all led to law broker was I was working directly with google on digitizing a law firm's online presence and that was as simply as. Building out a google my business profile which as we know is sort of get online 1 ah 1 and at the time it was very focused in on how can we help support law firms be found and just found this massive gap between my past experience and consumer psychology and how people shop for everyday goods and services and how it was.

03:22.70
Daniel Steinberg
Very broken within the legal industry.

03:23.56
mike_flywheel
So so it's interesting that you you identified this problem kind of on a journey from being in a more of a legal space. But if we like rewind all the way when you were in school and then starting your journey at ewide like it doesn't sound like you had intended to ever. Specifically become an entrepreneur is that the case or were you like listen I want to go learn some skills I probably do have some entrepreneurial this to me there I see myself as going on and doing this someday. But first I want to go build up some skill sets like what would do is a car chicken before the egg here or what how did it kind of work out for you.

03:53.94
Daniel Steinberg
yeah yeah yeah I think from an early age I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur as I used to call it like an inventor I was an ideas person the amount of ideas I've had that I'm sure. You know, many people listening to this podcast have had and have aspirations of becoming an entrepreneur versus jumping into it ah was me the amount of ideas that I would write down and pitch and go and whatever somehow they always turned into finding articles about companies that were just like that that raised hundreds of millions of dollars and I think that's what pushed me to finally sort of move forward. But I got some really good advice from who's now our lead investor probably about eight years ago I had come up with this idea for an app and I thought it was brilliant and he looked at me and he said it. It needs a lot of work and there's you'll understand. Once you go and get some experience as to why this doesn't make sense for you now and it was probably one of the biggest lessons I had learned as an entrepreneur early on and the reason it wasn't the right time then was because there was no prescriptive reason why Daniel Steinberg or that company could be successful. Any entrant could come in there and do the same thing and it's very hard to drive conviction as to why I'm doing this outside of the fact that it was an idea that I'm sure hundreds of people have had in the past which naturally becomes challenging to do things like raise money drive conviction from an acquisition perspective and so many things because you don't have.

05:22.30
Daniel Steinberg
Experience that you naturally need to pitch um and when I came to him with this idea of law broker which started actually as a marketplace it made sense why I was doing it I had this sales background on the marketing advocacy side. I was transitioning that from a legal tech perspective where I had just worked for 2 years at the largest legal tech company and there was a reason why I should be the one to do this versus just some random Joe Schmo that you know comes off the street and has a legal tech idea.

05:53.47
mike_flywheel
Yeah I think it's an important piece to talk about like can we just unpack that advice a little bit because I think what you're saying is definitely anybody could be an entrepreneur and if they've got an idea. Action is probably the most important piece because otherwise you like you said you'll find it a newspaper one day ah people and read newspapers. But you'll find it somewhere online and you'll be like ah I should have started and you definitely can, but especially when you're looking for investment if you're not looking to bootstrap it if you're looking at a bootstrap you can do whatever the hell you want cause.

06:10.78
Daniel Steinberg
Sir.

06:24.73
mike_flywheel
You You know you'll build it based on your own but investors really do look for some of these elements which is what makes you and this idea specifically unique ah versus others. Why is this idea unique and what's the moat and why are you uniquely positioned to make it succeed. Can you talk about that and um, you know how some of that feedback landed and how you knew that this was the right thing you talked a little bit about some of those experiences but like what's what's the right amount of experience or things to make you unique and have you thought through that for yourself.

06:58.25
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, again as I'm sure everyone says on these conversations like everyone's journeys very different I don't think there's like a line in the sand that says until you have 6 years of experience and 2 years sales experience and so on and so forth. You're officially going to be an incredible operator. It's not like that. There's no line in the sand that says that but I think you recognize that you have enough conviction to be able to sell yourself obviously like you mentioned if you're bootstrapping something you can pick up and do whatever you so choose and you can do it part time in all these good things. It's just hard. You know if you're going to dive into something and build a consumer facing product where it does take a lot of capital to do so you need people to bet on you and you as a first time founder and if you want to do that. You're selling someone on yourself. And a vision and the roadmap and the reason why it should be successful and 99.9 of these angel investors and people putting funds behind something is the individual behind it. So I just happened to have a great legal tech experience that helped me with my. Specific pitch since this is you know going to be the the star of the show that that 1 word, but that's really what it came down to right and for me I I found a gap. It wasn't that I thought I would be the best operator at that moment in time but I had so much conversation. Um, and and.

08:29.65
Daniel Steinberg
Visuals around what that major gap was just from an out insider perspective that all of a sudden I took the experience of being an individual from an external perspective and paired that with my experience that I had internally at a very successful legal Tech company. And it felt as though it was the right time and.

08:49.19
mike_flywheel
You got it and um I think it's like so useful to know because like there isn't a right time but is like are there are you convicted? Can you position the value that you've got in this scenario and like you said you don't have to but it helps. It's definitely something that's going to be helpful and it sounds like you had a conversation with someone who's your investor now that that gave you that feedback at some point in time. So then you you were at Cleo you're working on channel and partnerships. Ah. And then somewhere in there. You either decided to leave Cleo or you started seeing these gaps as you were setting up. You know the online profile for many of these legal firms where was the aha moment and when did that turn from like. Something you were doing regularly to hey there's a way to solve this and starting to go down the path of law broker.

09:39.18
Daniel Steinberg
yeah yeah I think there's so many people that say like covid sparked x y and z and and truly it was right at the cusp of covid um, it was really focused on and the digital transformation of a law firm which again. Was as basic as getting an online profile which most people listening to this conversation. That's like get online 1 ah 1 you can't really have ah an online presence without Google my business or your virtual storefront if you will and for me, um, the laggardness behind. Getting online seemed broken like that seemed so yesterday's problem not tomorrow's problem that it must have been the only industry remaining that had issues around. How do I get online and and one of the challenges is because a lot of these legal experts are people that become. Legal entrepreneurs and law firms. They can spin up their own storefront or excuse me own shingle in the us as soon as they graduate school. They don't have to like similarly to that in Canada article for a year or anything like that they can snap their fingers and say I want to open up my own shingle and there's about a million solo practitioners in the us alone. And because of that they're not learning how to run a business in law school. They're learning how to be lawyers and that's one of the biggest challenges that a lot of these law firms have from a competition perspective and growth perspective and things like that and there is this natural disconnect between we're telling you that you can be found on Google.

11:07.66
Daniel Steinberg
By opening up a Google my business but what does that mean from the other side of things right? How does it support the accessibility from the consumer mindset because a lot of these law firms think about themselves but not necessarily what the mindset is from the consumer and it it seemed like there was this this open opportunity to explore. Um, and I started looking into it like how do consumers shop online. How do they interact? There's this whole focus around digital transformation. Why is there this broken system of if it's seven zero Pm and I need a lawyer. How do I call someone. There was no engagement from a digital perspective similarly to that of what we would do every single day ourselves. Um, and that was kind of that moment that I started to push through and say it's time for me to to you know, try something.

11:52.74
mike_flywheel
Got it makes makes sense so you were seeing these gaps I think this is probably the right crossover moment for us to hear your pitch because there's a whole bunch of questions I have about the legal space about the getting online the getting found in the connection points. So. Yeah, on a show called pitch please Daniel it sounds like you've got something ready for us your best pitch please.

12:15.96
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, definitely so just to you know lay the foundations here Law Brokers really it's a marketing platform. It helps firms pre-qualify individual consumers wherever they come from from a digital transformation perspective. It creates distinctive buying journeys to help clients self-diagnose what their true issues are and then guides them down a path of question flows through things like gamification and alternative consumer psychology functions that naturally help guide them down what the legal experience should be from that first point of interaction. We funnel all that data to the lawyer and law firm directly so that they can determine who the right fit for them is if they can support them within their jurisdiction if. It's a good quality case for their business and ultimately prioritize their time which is the number one metric for a law firm and that's really what law brokekers focused on. 100 % frontend experience for a lawyer.

13:11.81
mike_flywheel
So that's cool. So there's a whole bunch of questions I have about law broker. But before let's maybe even set that foundation then in the industry you talked a little bit about most don't have digital storefronts but let's even widen the aperrieve even more like what are the. Spectrums of lawyers like what do you mean like don't I just I need a lawyer I get a lawyer right? or you know like let's help people understand sort of the the matching component that you're talking about and the screening component of why that's valuable and how people even try to do that today other than maybe looking at a billboard and calling the number because they see a personal injury lawyer I got hurt. Okay, but.

13:44.56
Daniel Steinberg
Um, yeah.

13:48.36
Daniel Steinberg
For sure. So I just want to lay the foundation just quickly because you threw me off when I had to pitch right away but there there's 2 elements of law broker here. So law brokeker started as a recommendation and matching platform. So I don't want to confuse the matching piece to that. That's no longer what we do.

13:50.25
mike_flywheel
There's obviously way more to it. Yeah.

14:06.17
Daniel Steinberg
100 % of software that sells direct to law firms to help them pre-qualify the leads that they generate across the internet when we were starting and I hadn't finished the the lag story here Mike but you know we jumped right into it. But when we had started the business when I had quit Cleo the the hypothesis and thesis was. How do we create this recommendation and matching platform similar to that of an uber where a law broker would ingest data understand the new responses of that consumer because like you just said how does someone know who the right lawyer is or anything in between and then pass that through the appropriate lawyer from there. And recommend that to the end consumer so we played in that more lead generation space. We pivoted fairly early and the reason for that is from a consumer marketplace perspective. It's incredibly capital intensive and without you know tens of millions of dollars. It's very challenging to scale into different markets and things of that nature. So we were specifically operating within the ontario space which is fine but it became incredibly challenging to create a sustainable business model. So we learned a lot in those first six to eight months and shifted quickly and the reason for that was. What we recognized early on was there's so many different ways that lawyers get new business as one of your questions was just now which is probably 7 to 10 different ways Google my business social media google ads 90% of the time referral sources other marketplaces. Um, you know so on and so forth contact us forms on your website.

15:32.56
Daniel Steinberg
Etc etc that there didn't really make a ah need for lawroker to own that and be that source of truth so we wanted to do is dissect our software still provide the elements that were successful which was the pre-qualification element that all law firms want to know and provide that software to the law firms directly. That they can naturally create a standard and repeatable process of ingesting client data no matter where they found them across the internet and that's where it shifted to so I just wanted to clarify that early on in this conversation.

16:01.48
mike_flywheel
Um, no, no, that's good. No no, that's good because I think it's like we talked about those elements and then we got your pitch and so now I think we're tying it together which was there's this initial hypothesis now. There's what law broker is but that came after a pivot. And I think that's a valuable insight in itself right? You talked about this b to c offering and how hard it is without lots of money to go make a big impact in a b two c way and so you found a b two b pivot to focus on. Similar problem. But from the other side which is okay when they are getting demand. How are they sorting through it and the sorting today is is poorly organized and maybe not as streamlined or as a grade of a customer service experience as people would desire so that's that's where you're focusing. So. You sell directly to the law firms any type of lawyer and you have this offering now why help us understand a little bit about why the intake process needs to be streamlined like what does that even look like if I go see a lawyer I assumed I just. Call them and and get rolling. But I guess it's not like that. But.

17:07.38
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, it's a really good question. So the problem that that exists today is there's no unfortunate, good and bad. But. You know, traditionally a consumer uses a lawyer 1 to 3 times in their lives. It's not a transactional product that you're purchasing like ah you know the sweatshirt on our backs right now which means that naturally a consumer doesn't know the needs of what the lawyer needs them to tell them so they think they have a legal problem they may or may not but the lawyer can't have that conversation until they understand specific qualifiers that are very important and we relate that back to every industry again I came from sales you can never sell someone until you understand their problems and pain points. Otherwise you're going to be selling them on price sensitivity and that's naturally what happens within the legal space. It's a race to the bottom. Well who's the cheapest and the reason that happens is because they have these static contact forms where consumers are naturally now shifting online 78% of legal consumers start their search on Google and they. They start their search on Google They click on either an advertisement or a lawyer through organic Seo or they searched a law from that someone told them about they land on their website traditionally consumers are searching for lawyers after hours. So that construct of picking up the phone is only as good as if it's during hours because you're likely not you know.

18:30.00
Daniel Steinberg
Leaving a voice message and they're clicking I need a free consultation. It's taking them to traditional contact us forms which I don't know about you but I don't think anyone's filled out a contact us form for 15 years and the reason for that is it goes into an abyss. It goes into junk you're asking the consumer to tell you what their story is. But they don't know what you need to them to tell you so a consumer starts sharing about 5 paragraphs about their problem space. But there's actually only one trigger point that the lawyer needed to know to to understand whether they can support you and that's the missing piece and that's the element where law broker takes into consideration. We allow law firms to create these dedicated buying journeys whether you're doing again it it goes broad into granularity. So let's say you do family law. Well guess what family law has 5 different service offerings at my law firm if you don't see it then you don't come to my law firm right? It's this choice of self-diagnosis. That doesn't exist today that allows consumers to naturally funnel themselves into your funnel versus funnel themselves out and not waste. Everyone's time.

19:30.66
mike_flywheel
Got it and so there's like unique qualifiers to intake so and I mean I know I'm extremely simplifying it. But it's like getting the intake form custom built for every single type of lawyer to make sure that the intake process is good.

19:46.20
Daniel Steinberg
I call it pre I call it pre intake and the reason for that is intake is super frictional so we don't replace intake intake typically happens when Mike says hey lawyer I'm ready to retain you which happens after 1 or 2 conversations we support.

19:47.27
mike_flywheel
But there's a whole other bunch of pieces here marketing. Ah.

19:51.87
mike_flywheel
But got it.

20:00.51
mike_flywheel
Got it.

20:03.97
Daniel Steinberg
How do you know when to have that initial consultation. That's where we sit. We're almost like a glorified if you know if there's business people on this call. We're glorified Bdr on the internet right? We want to capture as much data as possible. So that you can take that conversation and elevate the experience at much better.

20:19.40
mike_flywheel
Got it. It's really helping pre-qualify the customer so that when you hop on the call. It can be much more effective which I imagine and and maybe this is the big piece here lawyers time Generally their bill rates is worth a lot and so getting to clarity on a lead.

20:25.26
Daniel Steinberg
Yep.

20:37.32
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah.

20:38.49
mike_flywheel
Or an opportunity in business Espeak is is super important. How are they doing this before law broker like what did this look like was it literally just that contact us form and then they'd have to get on a call burn a bunch of sales cycles in time take away from other billable.

20:54.38
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, yeah, so what happens is yeah so so typically um, what would happen is they would either generate phone conversations and you know front desk staff aren't.

20:55.45
mike_flywheel
Engagements is that sort of like the norm. But.

21:06.89
Daniel Steinberg
Great salespeople. They're not trained to be sales individuals so they they don't have a standard question template or anything like that. So you've now created this experience where no matter wherever the client comes from you might get scratchpad nodes or something like that. That's not standardized so you can't create a prop or process within that specific domain. But the other element was yeah, people are filling out contact us for sharing their story and then naturally or or saying something along the lines of I need help and the lawyer has to pick up the phone because that might be a case worth $1000000 or a case not at all and um I think the the other important element that law broker. Functions on is we're a web traffic conversion tool so by creating a distinctive new process that consumers are used to actually increases the volume of individuals coming into your inbox because it makes it really simple for the consumer to engage with you but what it does for the law firm is. You know, allows you to take the conversation at much more high level or sorry much more much more focused on that specific individual because what happens is a consumer will reach out to 2 to 3 different law firms and whoever picks up the phone first. Then wait for the next law firm to call them and the next law firm to call them and they typically just go off price period. So when it does it gives them a bit of a competitive advantage because you're not playing 21 questions anymore. We know your issue and now we can drive conviction to share our internal operating processes and how we've dealt with other individuals just like you.

22:36.72
Daniel Steinberg
So we've taken that conversation 1 step further than what a traditional conversation would look like at a law firm.

22:41.51
mike_flywheel
Super interesting. So I guess a piece that I'd love to learn because you're obviously understand the space super deep and you would have learned maybe some of this at Cleo but especially after the pivot. Where and how did you get such rich insights around this you know when when founders are making a pivot in in their business. They have some knowledge but to get like deep level expert in the whole process of the things. These lawyers are dealing with where their pain points exist. What sort of things did you have to go through to help to build up some of that and informed understanding to really. Tailor your product. So.

23:15.74
Daniel Steinberg
I never got complacent like we had thousands of consumers coming through our workflows on the b two c product and I never thought we were successful every single day I said what's bad about the product. Why doesn't it work. What's not good. Oh the leads aren't good. Why aren't they good the second you think you're successful. Because there's driven demand through your product is the second that it becomes very challenging to continue to innovate and and engage with your customers and we would have never pivoted if I if I thought that we were being successful like thousands of consumers in you know, 3 to six months is incredible for a b to c product in my opinion at least. And for someone just coming onto the scene and at the end of the day some of those leads weren't good and we wouldn't have known that if we didn't talk to our customers and understand what was happening behind the scenes and what we naturally started to understand was what is that exact thing. Exact moment that the customer says law broker is valuable and that one value piece to the to the law firm was the rich data that we would provide them because before they had no standardized way to inject. Um the qualifiers that mattered to them and we took that and said okay, we're gonna go. We're gonna. You know strip this apart completely and we're going to say this is what we're really good at pre-qualification and now eight months later into this new product. We're saying we're a web traffic conversion tool. We really focused in on the the marketing elements of a law firm right? because we continue to listen and.

24:47.74
Daniel Steinberg
As we went upmarket and sold to larger law firms. They didn't necessarily care about like the pre-qulifis they cared about getting more at-bats and lawb broker was converting at a 5 x rate than their traditional you know, contact us form without changing a thing except for a couple of buttons on their website and ads and things of that nature. So.

24:54.36
mike_flywheel
The main.

25:06.34
Daniel Steinberg
It's a lot of listening um and a lot of not being complacent and saying you know we're good.

25:10.26
mike_flywheel
Yeah, and it's a patience to to even modify it like that because what I'm hearing as you go through? This is some startups ah oftentimes just chase more features what you are identifying is which of our features is like. The most important to drive value right? So instead of just you will have a roadmap of new things you add but in asking questions not being complacent. You were finding the opportunity where is the most value in this chain today and let's double down on that. Because that's gonna be our our best path to success which is really really cool. Um, maybe let's talk a little bit about how the product actually works like is this software. Do you plug it on your website walk us through like in a perfect world. We have visuals but like help help.

26:00.55
Daniel Steinberg
Um, yeah.

26:02.11
mike_flywheel
Kind of build us through or walk us through as if ah, you're part of the customer journey Maybe and then we'll talk about how that shows up on on the lawyers end to law firms end. So.

26:07.30
Daniel Steinberg
Um, sure.

26:12.85
Daniel Steinberg
So yeah, so we're we're a cloud solution as I guess everything is and I'm not sure you have to use that language anymore except it's you know, still used in the legal space. But we're a cloud-based ah platform. Um, the backend really looks again. It's very focused on keep it simple stupid. So what we're really focused on is allowing law firms to create different campaigns based off different practice areas under the umbrella of a campaign you're going to have different buying journey. So again, a campaign could look something like family law and under the umbrella of a campaign. You then might have divorce child custody child support prenups, etc, etc and it allows law firms to go in there create their templa size solutions on what their key qualifiers are law broker does have prebuilt templates that are used across different law firms where we've seen success across different service types. That they can implement very quickly and then from there we're a linking structure so we're not an embedded solution. The reason for that is similar. You know at the beginning of this conversation I talked about 7 to 10 different sources of truth of how clients can find law firms so we want to be able to capture that moment in time no matter where the client finds you. So because we're a hyperlink solution. It can live anywhere across the internet that clients can find you Google ads social media google my business contact us buttons so on and so forth and it can get as granular as you want to create distinctive find journeys so if you're on a practice area specific page on your website and someone's reading about again.

27:40.52
Daniel Steinberg
Ah, divorce. Well, we naturally know if they say schedule consultation that that's a divorce problem and we take them right into the funnel from there outside of that. So again, we operate very focus on the front end experience the way that it looks is. It's an embedded landing page with or sorry it's a landing page excuse me with embedded workflows. Where the client can essentially self- diagnosagnoe their their pain points of their legal case on the backside of it law firms will traditionally use law broker as a plugin to their operating system like a Cleo lomatics hubspot so on and so forth. So again, we funnel all the data into the tools they already use so that they don't have to. Onboard train new staff have downtime migrate or anything in between our onboarding process is about 48 hours or less which is super important. Um in order to drive conviction within the legal space and get buy-in across different parties because it's very hard to adopt new software. You have to train a full staff of individuals and then because we're a plugin into different solutions. You're really then coming into law broker on a monthly cadence to review the data analytics around the law broker platform. How are people engaging with your specific workflows. Which campaigns are succeeding where are the bounce rates. How much time are people spending on it. What's your conversion rate across the platform and then we're syncing all of that with your Google analytics so that you can retarget and remarket accordingly.

29:07.50
mike_flywheel
It's interesting. So as you focus I guess on ah law firms is there like a ah sweet spot of size like some of the things you're talking about and maybe this is part of your service offering. You know, connected to Hubspot and and Cleo and. I've got a website and they have some of these things is there like a minimum size that ah a lawyer a single individual lawyer or a law firm might wish to be to to recognize the value. Or is there a spectrum where it supports all and maybe you lean in in different ways as law broker to help them on their journey.

29:41.14
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, we have customers as small as a solo practitioner and as large as a hundred person firm and I think it's just the way that individuals use it based off the size. Naturally, our sweet spot is likely a 10 person firm or higher the like. The reason excuse me is because they naturally focus on spend management to actually drive traffic to their businesses and as you get below and bleed below a 10 person firm the affordability of spending to drive new traffic to your business becomes more more costly. Um, and harder for those individuals to do or at least buy into so naturally we trend a little bit more at least in the legal space what we would refer to as upmarket. That being said, you know you can really be any type of law firm. We are agnostic. Our biggest success is with transactional law firms because they're very focused on 1 ne-off transactions with a consumer so those would be things like wills and estates family law. Um, you know, personal injury criminal defense. Um real estate things where. They're spending online and they're not having a business relationship like a corporate lawyer for example with law broker doesn't mean that we don't have corporate lawyers on the platform. But it's very good for transactional law firms that drive a lot of growth and traffic to their businesses.

31:00.92
mike_flywheel
And got it and I guess those are transactional things that you need very infrequently. It sounds like rather than someone that needs to stay with you for a multi month year journey.

31:11.10
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, so 90% of law firms have you know infrequent business operations and they're focused on again someone you know in a slip and fall case or something along those lines which is why you see those billboards and and a lot of spend spend and money on those.

31:22.17
mike_flywheel
Got.

31:28.89
Daniel Steinberg
Those individual law firms.

31:30.59
mike_flywheel
Got it. So I Love the efficiency. Um, it sounds super intuitive is there and you don't have to name drop them. We don't have to do that on this show but is there competitors in this space or alternatives or is this like. Pretty unique and where where what are maybe the um types of things that you know a law firm that that is going to embark on a journey with law broker should consider before kind of giving you a call because you we want to get you qualified.

31:59.80
Daniel Steinberg
Um, yeah, hey it's a It's a great question. It's a great. It's a great question and I'm not shy about naming competitors or anything like that I think it's up to the law firm to actually do due diligence when they're evaluating different technologies. That being said I think.

32:03.79
mike_flywheel
Leads to right? So we want to make sure that the right people. Yeah.

32:17.42
Daniel Steinberg
Niche from a specific perspective of a legal solution I wouldn't say that we're competing in that domain. Um, you know what I would say is that if you look at different solutions across different markets things like I'd say we we focus on embedding sort of like ah a. 4 pronged business into our solution. So what I mean by that is if you take a landing page solution like an unbalance and then you take a workflow management solution like a type form and then you take a Google analytics or an agency analytics and then you um, you know use zapier as an integration. You're taking four solutions together and sort of duct taping them together to build what lawb brokekers become I think the reason that law firms aren't naturally looking towards quote unquote those competitors or adjacent products is because we make it so simple for them to onboard and be legal specific. That it's really an out of the box solution for them to onboard and adopt right away and make it very simple for them to not think about how to optimize how clients engage with them online. Um, truly our biggest competitor is a contact us form.

33:23.90
mike_flywheel
And it's interesting because even the piece that you're talking there about like to achieve the same success. You're bundling multiple solutions together and I don't know many law firms that are equally trying to become technology firms unless you're a legal tech like yourself. So the integration work is definitely not something that they want to spend time energy or cycles on so you're giving them a suite of everything packaged in one solution that allows them to achieve those goals and that's that's an interesting kind of closing comment which is like yeah like most I guess. Basic websites and hubspot would have a contact us form so that's like hey if you don't want qualified leads do a contact us form. But if you want to really get tighter about how your funnel works and get that pre-screening and get it integrated ah the integration elements that you talked about where it integrates into hubspot it integrates into Cleo. Super critical this this is the easiest thing to turn on for a law firm to start really pre-screening their clients and getting more qualified leads. So. It's super super cool and it's good to see that you kind of got this. Um this unique space in the market. But it's also for people that want to seek that value right? There's probably people yeah contact us form is fine I'm willing to hop on a call every single time but you're like if time is of the essence and you want to have your best foot forward prequalifying has been done in every style of business forever and so that's going to help you show up.

34:43.79
Daniel Steinberg
Okay.

34:46.88
mike_flywheel
And the best way possible in the most efficient way possible which is really cool. Yeah.

34:50.81
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, it's also key like to just you know a lot of law firms leave money on the table through contact us foreigns because people aren't engaging with it. Um, you know the typical law firm that I talked to they're getting a ton of traffic and they're having about a point one and a half percent conversion rate on all traffic across the board and that's. That's broken. That's money on the table. You know the best part about being a lawyer is that if you are advertising online and someone is virtually raising their hand to engage with you. They likely have a problem. It's not like they're shopping for a t-shirt leaving in their cart and waiting for the 20% email off. Go back and purchase from there right? So you know people aren't just landing on lawyers websites for the fun of it. They have a potential problem or at least they think they do um and your job as a law firm is naturally to engage with them and make sure that you can either support them or you know ship them somewhere else.

35:40.00
mike_flywheel
Yeah,, that's actually a really good point where if you're seeking this out. You probably need it pretty immediately. It's sort of like if your furnace breaks down and you're looking for furnace Repair. You're not doing it Casually. It's like there's an immediacy to the qualification process. Um, and and that's really important to act upon now the product itself. How? Um, how does law broker charge is it like an annual one-time package is it based on number of people through the pre-qualification or pre-screening process. How does. Ah, law firm think about paying for something like lawbroker.

36:16.64
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, so we sign annual contracts I'm big on annualizing things because we're a factor of your marketing spend. So we're as good as your marketing can be so I don't look at that as short-term solutions. Firms can pay monthly or upfront Annually, um, and you know it's it's tiered based off size of firm. Um, we kind of bake in that model instead of being a usage-based firm. We kind ah product excuse me. We kind of take into consideration. How a larger firm and how much they would drive in a package priced but it is a one time annualized fee that gives you everything that we've talked about today.

36:51.42
mike_flywheel
That's cool too because it gives you the peace of mind that you're not paying more like to bring in more clients. Um, you're sort of you've got a fee based on your size but you don't have the stress of like oh if I have like 700 pre-screenings this month I'm going to pay more next month if it's a thousand like ah.

37:05.40
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, which naturally most people most yeah, which naturally most law firms would be happy about. But there's also a ton of regulations in the legal space that doesn't allow for fee split or revenue shares or things like that. So it's actually on a per state by State basis.

37:07.69
mike_flywheel
You never want them to feel bad about growing right.

37:13.69
mike_flywheel
Okay.

37:23.22
Daniel Steinberg
On different regulatory models that allow for technology companies to fee split or if you're not a law firm to fee split or take rev sharere or things like that. So you have to be super cognizant about that which actually impacted our business model when we were a marketplace because we couldn't create a standardized way to um, you know. Um, drive revenue if we opened up in New States

37:46.10
mike_flywheel
Interesting well and speaking of New States where's law broker offered today is this like just in Canada across different provinces. You've said states. So I imagine you're in the us too.

37:57.50
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah.

37:58.72
mike_flywheel
But sort of like your your area that you can operate to today or maybe it's completely unbound and you're just focusing on some regions and areas today. So.

38:05.98
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, we're throughout North America we're about eighty twenty right now. Naturally our earliest adopters were in Canada that's where I am so when you can go and shake hands in person and share a little bit more about your product. It becomes easier but it's the classic. Saas model which is usually ninety ten just based off you know the actual market size. So we're trending more towards you know a 90% us 10 percent Canada um, but you know it can really be sold throughout North America

38:37.33
mike_flywheel
That's super cool so where where are you guys at in this journey. It sounds like you've been working on it since you think you mentioned like 2021 so we're on the cusp time this gets released 2024 s like 2 years sounds like you've got some great market traction. You made that pivot pretty early.

38:43.87
Daniel Steinberg
2 years

38:52.87
mike_flywheel
And you've been seeing some great success where where are you at in the journey today and if you look at the next year ahead what's sort of ah on the horizon for law broker.

39:01.85
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, so from a journey perspective. We're at the point of scale. Um, we've we've got a good base of customers right now with a lot of success metrics from those individuals to understand how people are using our product. Um, now it's more about pouring fuel on the fire and growing from there hopefully scaling the team if you know dollars permit but the next sort of year out. Looks more from turning our product into this you know web traffic conversion tool into more of a full-fledged marketing platform for law firms to support the way that they can grow their firms. Not just be a factor of your marketing spend and how good you are at marketing but being more of ah, an impact of how law firms can naturally grow. And build different strategies and structures for digital transformation and that's sort of where we see ourselves over the next you know twelve months

39:56.89
mike_flywheel
That's cool. So expanding up scaling it sounds like I think we're talking to be is this like a fundraising year for you 2024 as part of that scale or are you able to kind of do it under the wind of every piece of momentum you've sort got in motion right now. So.

40:11.74
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, it's tbd. Um, we're always you know, open to conversations and seeing what makes the most sense for our business. This is the most political answer of all time but like it's you know it's unclear markets change every single day. It's not the best time to be fundraising I think.

40:20.17
mike_flywheel
Yeah, so.

40:27.23
Daniel Steinberg
That whatever makes the most sense for our business over the next twelve month period is something that we evaluate every single day but it's you know again without necessarily showing cards. It's it's unclear what that necessarily looks like for the next little bit.

40:44.71
mike_flywheel
That's fair, totally fair. Um, and if people are looking to find out more and we'll we'll link everything in the description in the comments section. But if you are interested to maybe help law broker or to get started with law broker where should people be heading to to sign Up. Or connect.

41:04.80
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, you can head to lawbroker.com spelt the classic tech way l a w b r o k r try and remove that e for fun of it and you're welcome to connect with me on Linkedin I'm super active there linkedin.com/dsteinbergnine um, always happy to sort of connect and hear from individuals if they're either looking to become an entrepreneur need advice from an operations perspective or you know, just want to chat I'm always open to sort of building out that community and go from there.

41:34.20
mike_flywheel
Um, yeah I love that and we talked about that bit earlier right? like this piece of community and how valuable it is as you're building a startup to grow with the ecosystem and how you're so well connected even with a bunch of other legal tech firms who are all marching in the same direction having that community is really important as ah as a founder. As part of this journey. You know as we kind of come to the the tail end are there pieces of advice that you would say um, you'd find useful and maybe it's good to talk about them in two ways one maybe like a challenge that you know you you overcame or some of the biggest or most challenging things and starting as a first -time founder ah, law broker and then it'd also begin to you know contrast that with some of the most special moments or things that you wanted to make sure other people you know, really pay attention to and don't miss out on as as part of their journey. So.

42:25.33
Daniel Steinberg
Those are tough questions. Um I think the first first piece like from an an I'll tackle it in 3 questions but the first piece from an advice perspective is you have to dive right in. Um, it's very hard to do something like this on the side. It's it's very challenging to build a business and start from scratch. Um. Without a you know a partner but really even from a standpoint of currently working another job. It's it's almost impossible. So I really urge people to jump right in and dive right into it if that's something that you ultimately determined you want to do? Um, you know, no one ever doesn't no one ever. Um. Faults themselves for becoming an entrepreneur. There's always you know a look back to go back and and be corporate and you know similar to what you had done right? So it's always a great experience to to get that um from a challenge perspective. Um, one of the biggest challenges we had was during our pivot. We were pretty much out of cache. And we couldn't you know because again like I was mentioning so we had raised seven hundred and eighty five thousand dollars which obviously seems like a lot and I'm very thankful for it when you're running a b two c company that money goes very quickly because you're essentially advertising against every other law firm that spends. Far more money than you online and no one knows about your brand yet. Um, so it's super capital intensive and we used a lot of those funds to do that and grow our brand and grow our business and when we made a decision to pivot to actually save cash and grow sustainably.

43:54.67
Daniel Steinberg
Um, we obviously needed cash to be able to continue forward and it became challenging because I was a first -time founder we were back in this preseed camp. It was another idea and we haven't proved the market and I share that story because not from overcoming per se but 1 1 f the best things that happened was not being able to raise. Ah, bridge round at the time or enough money. Um, at the time we ended up doing a bridge but we couldn't go the venture route. Um, but the the reason it was so valuable not to raise capital is because it really lights a fire under you to acquire new customers and generate revenue. Um and it I you know. Not that if you raise capital you wouldn't do that. But it's a lot more pressure pressure cooker when you don't have the money behind you and you start charging annual contracts and payments upfront and things like that and it helped us scale like crazy. Um, and I think you just get put in a pressure cooker and need to figure it out if you truly want to thrive and I think that. You know, overcoming a challenge like that was phenomenal and I'd recommend to everyone like focus on generating revenue and getting customers that want to pay for your product if they you know giving it away for free to drive acquisition. Typically when people don't use your product but when someone actually puts skin in the game and pays for it. It becomes a lot more lucrative but also a lot more successful in that perspective and um.

45:13.91
mike_flywheel
Yeah I think demonstrating profitability is so important now sort of cut you off whereas so many startups of past we're able to just do it on user bases that were all you know on a free tier. But I think this piece that you talked about about being able to figure out to get cash in the door to keep going. Even Hacks like charging annual upfront are brilliant ways to make sure that you as a startup can continue to thrive and it you know that you needed the fire but it sounds like if someone can take some advice away right Now. It's don't even wait to the fire. There's some immediate things you can do to make sure that you start profitable from day one and there's small tweaks along the way. If the fire happens embrace it use it to your advantage but as it can do to even get ahead of that based on your own learnings through the Journey. So.

45:57.12
Daniel Steinberg
Yeah, no for sure big fan of charging you know, find your worth and that's that's what people should be paying for.

46:05.59
mike_flywheel
That's cool. What's been like the most memorable or you know, warm fuzzies experience of of your journey so far.

46:15.20
Daniel Steinberg
Ah there's a lot of milestones I think you you take every milestone and it's hard to sit back and celebrate them because you're so early and there's always more that you have to do but you have to appreciate. You know every time you bring on a new customer or hit serious milestones that are just so so exciting for you and the team and I I don't have like a profound memory of 1 specific thing that I can sit here and say but when you start to hit some serious revenue bands that you know show proof of of. Model and things of that nature. It's just incredible I guess you know if I had to pinpoint it to 1 thing. Naturally, we're not a backend tool. We're a frontend tool and I can point to 50 plus websites that law broker sits on and when I go and click on those websites and I know that that's powered by Lawb Broker it's one of the coolest experiences you know that you know you've put 5000 consumers through these journeys and your ui and your ux and it's powering these law firms and working and it's just it's super cool.

47:16.39
mike_flywheel
That is super cool and it's super neat when you start to run into things that you've built in in the world around you. So amazing work Daniel and thank you for sharing like the details today I think like you said I've had a few different law tech. Companies and each one's been interestingly unique I love this concept of bringing the you know the sales qualification funnel into a digital sphere and really helping lawyers and their firms get a little bit more precise in advance with capabilities that you know maybe. People like you and I have been more fortunate to see at some some larger tech companies that have a lot of discipline around that it's a core capability for us and it might not be for a legal firm and that's why you've built something. Allows them to take advantage of digital to to embrace that themselves rather than standing up a Bdr team or an entire sales team for their firm There's a more efficient way to do that as we kind of come to close any final advice for our listeners who shared so much already. But. I never leave to close like to close the door before we at least give you 1 more last say if there is something that we missed to share with our audience today.

48:25.95
Daniel Steinberg
Now I think this was great I think you know 50 minutes of you guys hearing me talk is a lot but honestly like if you again if you're an aspiring entrepreneur or are an entrepreneur. Um, enjoy the journey and like don't forget about elements that are so. You know every every moment that you have to enjoy the journey and look at what you've done are successes in their own right? and you know you you look? don't don't look at what's around you and what other people are doing because that's where you know you can naturally put your head down and you know be discouraged. But. Each one of you has a different milestone that you're charging towards and you should celebrate those wind and milestones and I try and do it as often as I can but you know you don't have to you know be a billion dollar company tomorrow to have minor successes within your business directly.

49:15.28
mike_flywheel
Celebrate the milestones. What an amazing way to close Daniel Thank you so much for joining us on the pitch please podcast today. Everyone make sure to check out law broker lawbrokr. Um, and make sure to join us on the next pitch please podcast. Thanks again for everyone that tuned in and have a good one Thanks.