Announcer: 0:02

You're about to tap into the digital marketing strategies that separate thriving law firms from the ones struggling to keep up. Join James Campbell as we break down the roadblocks holding your practice back and reveal the insider tactics attorneys are using to scale past seven figures. From cutting-edge digital marketing tips to exclusive interviews with industry leaders, we're giving you the playbook to attract higher quality clients, dominate your market and build a firm that runs like a growth machine. Your next breakthrough starts now. This is the Marketing Lawcast.

James Campbell: 0:35

Hello and welcome to the Marketing Lawcast. I'm James Campbell, your host, and I'm thrilled to welcome our guest, Amy Hsiao. Amy is the founder of Hsiao Law, with a mission to help families avoid collapse after the death of disability of a loved one. After experiencing firsthand how traditional estate planning sort of failed her own family, Amy set out to build a firm that truly serves growing families, offering a flat rate pricing model, ongoing support and plans that actually work when they're needed. We'll talk about how she built a client-centered practice, the challenges that she's overcome along the way, and her experience of working with IMS and her pursuit of growth. Amy, welcome to the show.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 1:18

Hi, welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

James Campbell: 1:21

Yeah, we're very excited to have you on the show and appreciate you spending the time with us today, and we're going to go ahead and dive right in. We want to help listeners learn more about you and about your practice. So, amy, tell us a little bit about your background and what sort of inspired you to start your estate planning firm.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 1:40

Yeah, so I am actually originally from Taiwan and I came to San Diego, california, for law school and after that I went to law school wanting to do intellectual property law because that's my background, doing trademark litigation and all that kind of thing, and I did work in a big law firm in IP for a while.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 2:01

But the reason why I wanted to start an estate planning law firm had to do with my family. At that time I was pregnant with my son and I was just trying to figure out a better way to practice law, because in the big law firm that I was working at I was working nonstop, like 80 hours a week and it just was not sustainable for me at that time. So I was trying to figure out, exploring different practice areas, and then I just stumbled upon estate planning as a practice area and I, you know, there was the this personal family lawyer a new law business model that I started looking into and that really piqued my interest and that just kind of opened up my horizon and I decided eventually to go into this practice area.

James Campbell: 2:50

Very good, so it sort of came about naturally for you.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 2:55

You would say specifically on the type of lifestyle I want as an attorney. I just didn't want to end up in a rat race of just working and working and working and not having a quality of life and losing my family. From very early on I knew that that's not what I want for my life, and it became pretty clear to me after working in a big law firm for a year and also being pregnant with my son. So and then I just looked into talk to different people about different areas of law and estate planning seems to be. At that time I didn't know much about estate planning but after talking to a lot of people it feels like a practice area that I can really enjoy and I can feel good about what I do and it also fits my personality. I like to help people prevent litigation rather than at the end, so I love just the concept of helping families plan in advance so they can be in the best position possible.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 4:04

And in my own family my cousin has special needs and, long story short, he got his 30s, he got into a car accident and became totally disabled and his mental state became only five years old and my aunt having to spend so much time and just all the energy, spend money on taking care of my cousin and it really gave me a lot of reflection on what can I do as an attorney to help my family and the people around me. And at that time I was also working in the conservatorship court locally here in San Diego and it just gave me a lot of perspective. And then I became I just had this realization this is the practice area I want to devote my life to estate planning, with specialty and special needs planning and elder law practice. So that's the long story short.

James Campbell: 5:05

Yeah, I love that you have a mission. It seems that you have a mission to keep families out of court and out of conflict. I see that throughout your marketing and I hear you talk about helping people avoid that litigious aspect of life. Can you walk us through what that means in real life terms for your clients, for example, to stay out of court and out of conflict, what's that mean to you?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 5:28

Yeah, so out of court, out of conflict, really means an estate plan that's well set up. 80% of the estate plans that I have reviewed that came into my office whether it's by LegalZoom or whatever platform, it is almost all of them 80%, I would say fail to some degree because either their assets are not properly put in the trust, and then maybe they go to an attorney and they set up this fancy trust. They maybe spent thousands of dollars setting it up even. But life evolves and maybe they bought a new house. They never put the house into their trust, or maybe they created some bank accounts, or maybe the husband just has some bank accounts under his name, never bothered to put it in their joint trust or never bothered to add the spouse's name on it, and then he passed away. And then all of a sudden there's this dispute about whether that's the husband's name on it, and then he passed away. And then all of a sudden there's this dispute about whether that's the husband's separate property or community property, where the surviving spouse should have it. All of that leads to court and maybe as innocent as if somebody maybe a father really planning for his son like a 12-year-old boy and bought a life insurance and put the 12-year-old's name on the beneficiary of the life insurance policy and that's a guarantee for court and because the minor child cannot take that asset. And so all of this nuance.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 6:56

It happens so often that so many people overlook, and I just, you know, in my, in my planning sessions, I like I really go into the different types of assets to advise them.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 7:09

Okay, you got to do this, you got it.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 7:11

And we have a process in place where we begin with identifying what they need to do and then in the middle we check in and then at the end of it they walk away with a fully funded trust of trust report. And so that's what I mean by really helping the estate plans and the clients out of court and out of conflict, because having the document itself is not enough. We all know that the probate court exists not because people don't have wills or trust, because there are tons of wills or trust that are either improperly drafted or maybe there are some conflicting language, all sorts of reasons that end up in court. And so having that awareness and giving the clients the proper advice and having a follow through system, a sort of like, you know, a family care system, so that you could be there with the client life you know kind of. You know become a personal family lawyer for the client, like a family doctor concept, so that the client can have that peace of mind knowing that, no matter what happens, no matter how old their kids are.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 8:18

No matter if they're married, they're single. Their assets will always be protected. They will never end up in court. So that's the real motivation of me doing the work that I do and me creating the system that I have. It is truly so. Nobody has to go to court.

James Campbell: 8:38

Well, I think we're going to get into some of those challenges that comes along creating that, but I think it starts with the intentionality of wanting to help serve families and not just be a transactional law firm that sells trusts. I know a lot of firms that do that, where they just hand an instruction letter and say, well, I did my part, I created the trust. It sounds like your firm goes above and beyond to make sure that the family stays out of court and out of conflict, as your mission states.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 9:06

Yes, and because we also. A part of our practice is trust administration and probate. We do do probate administration as well, so we see from the back end of how an estate plan is actually administered right, and so that really gives me perspective, because oftentimes in trust administration, the more well-funded a trust is, the easier it is for trust administration. And so I bring all of that experience to my estate planning clients and I'm like, hey, I know this is tedious when we're talking through, you got to go through the bank and retitle the bank accounts to the trust that's going to change account numbers and some people don't like that. They're going to have to update all of their utility bills and all of that. They don't like that. But I just have to go through line by line. We create this family wealth inventory where we have every account number listed and then I give them my funding recommendation and every time we meet throughout the whole planning process, we go through each one of them. I like to guilt trip my clients. I'm like, oh, did you do this?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 10:14

Yeah, did you do this.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 10:15

And then, at the end of it, most of them all of them, I would say were able to complete their funding, so to speak. And we do have funding support in our firm. We have a dedicated funding coordinator, and so if the client is dragging their feet by the second meeting they still haven't gotten the funding done then I would really recommend that they hire us. We have a dedicated funding coordinator to help them. Specifically. That's all he does all day is to help people fill out that beneficiary form, you know, fill out the bank forms, to get everything ready so that the client can complete their funding.

James Campbell: 10:52

Yeah, I think it's such a benefit to have that funding pro on your team, because people don't want to make a mistake and it's better to go ahead and spend the money with a funding pro to make sure that it's done If you have any trepidation about getting it done whatsoever. It's better to have that trust properly funded. Amy, your firm clearly is focused on growing families. Not just you do help seniors and retirees and you do the long term care stuff, but you have sort of a soft spot in your practice for the growing families. Why is this demographic so important to you and how do you sort of tailor your services for their unique needs? What do you think about those folks?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 11:33

I mean from a personal level, I'm a mom and you know, when I set up my practice, I was pregnant and then I had my baby and so it was just very easy for me to talk to other moms. I belong to several moms group in a prenatal yoga, you know, we just did a lot of mom stuff and so for me it was just very easy and natural and I relate to other moms so easily and, you know, have play days and all of that. So that's how I started and as my son grows with his different age developments, I connect with different age groups. You know moms with different age kids, and it just is natural.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 12:13

And I find it's such an underserved demographic because I feel that parents are so busy I mean myself included with the day in and day out, they forget that we got to guard what we have, in the sense that we have to protect our assets, our hard-earned monies. We're working so hard to provide for our little ones, yet when, if something happened to us, if we get sick, if we get into a car accident and then we're no longer here, who's there to provide for our little ones? Nobody, we are. We are the ones, and so how can we ensure and how can it just? I just had this.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 12:56

I just wanted to make it easy for parents, because I know it's so difficult for me to even do anything outside of work it's hard right.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 13:05

So I wanted to intentionally create a system so that it's easy for parents.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 13:10

It's very relatable and oftentimes we have moms who come to us because moms tend to sometimes be the ones thinking about these kinds of things, and so I want to make it very easy to understand, relatable and that it's a very systematic process.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 13:26

So they get it done, you know, like and so yeah, and I can really come from a mom's perspective and really coach my clients through this process and helping them to see the consequence of them not doing it properly, because a lot of the times people would ask me oh, I can just do this, I can just create a will myself or whatnot, and I have to tell them hey, this is a consequence of not doing it properly. And I even you know, even my godmom she created her own estate plan with this law firm and then, you know, I was still in law school back then when she created this and now I'm. You know, she passed away a few years ago, and now I'm helping her family, going to court, doing some probate work and doing some trust administration work for her estate, and so I just can't emphasize how important it is, especially for parents, to really get this thing correctly done so that they can have that peace of mind, knowing that everything that they work so hard for is properly protected.

James Campbell: 14:42

Yeah, and that you're going to be there for them throughout, like it's not just a transaction thing, but now you're their resource, you're their person that they're going to turn to when they have questions, concerns or any updates or changes in life you're there, yeah, and I really positioned myself to be a personal family lawyer because I think it's just so important.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 15:04

I feel life changes and people just have different assets, or maybe they sell assets, or kids grow up, and so we send out constant reminders to the clients based on the different milestones, like when kids turn 18, we say, hey, come to us, we have a birthday present for you.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 15:19

Like, celebrate your 18th with us.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 15:20

You know, we give them the power of attorney, the health care power of attorney, a hip hop, advanced health care doctor for their 18 year olds, and then you know so things like that.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 15:30

And we have a family care VIP program where when people join our VIP program, then we meet with them every year, we do a periodic review every year, and when we do the periodic review, we look at their assets and talk to them about life, what's going on, and you know that's how we keep in touch and I find that to be the best way to help my clients because I don't want them to just go off like, and 10 years later, 20 years later, then all of a sudden the children came to me and realizing, oh, some of these assets are still out of the trust and it may not be the attorney's fault. It may be that the client just go out and about and on with their days and never come back and talk to the attorney again. So I want it to be a systematic approach so that the client can be reminded to come back and talk to the attorney. We always have like. Click the button here to schedule your complimentary phone call with attorney Amy, things like that, yeah, I love it.

James Campbell: 16:28

You know, when you talk about these services that you provide, it sounds like above and beyond compared to your traditional law firm. So building a law firm that sort of challenges that traditional model, that can't be easy. What are some of the biggest obstacles that you faced in making this vision of your firm a reality?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 16:49

Yeah. So I was very lucky to be part of the new law business model personal founding lawyer program and they really, I would say, were instrumental when I first started my firm because they had Allie. The founder is a very hard-based attorney and so when she created the system, I was able to kind of hop on the wagon and join this whole program and that really helped me structure my whole process. It also got me into thinking more long-term of how I want to serve my clients instead of just crunching out a bunch of paperwork right. Very early on, I was lucky to have met some mentors and they told me the last thing you want to do is to create a bunch of documents, and so I'm very grateful to have heard that very early on when I started my estate planning practice, and so they told me you know the mentors that I have kind of talked to. At the beginning they said because once you go down the document route, you're going to be competing with the machines and with AI booming now, like I mean everybody, like it's, it's so. So the human element is that the key to the sustainability of the practice. And and even me I mean even, as I'm talking about the family care program, even though it's different from the traditional model.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 18:18

But what I have found is that people really want that.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 18:22

They want having somebody that they can trust, that they can lean on for a lifetime.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 18:31

Because even myself, even when I'm looking for different services, I prefer the niche services that I can trust long term, not just some cheap product from whatever. And so what I have found even though it's different from what the traditional model is, it's actually lacking and much needed and much in demand in the market. And once you have those and the clients, you may not attract every client, but the client that you attract are good clients. They are the ones that love and adore you, they want to be with you long-term and they're willing to pay the annual membership fee to be with you, and that just is so invaluable to me. And as I am creating my own, you know, it's really important to me that my law firm is in alignment with my personal lifestyle. And as I am focusing on the quality of life for myself and my family, I want good quality clients too for my practice. And so, even though it's different from the traditional model, I find it's worked just perfectly for me.

James Campbell: 19:46

Yeah, especially if you have that care for your clients and I think a lot of estate planning attorneys do care about their clients but they see that extra layer of service as being too difficult to provide. And so you're saying that maybe plugging in with the place that has some of that stuff figured out, maybe has a roadmap of sorts to help you see that it's not impossible, it's not overwhelming, it just requires these certain things to be done and to follow through. That'd be fair, yeah.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 20:18

Yes, it definitely takes a system and it definitely took me a while to just get all the system in place. And the system doesn't stop there, right? You're like for me, every day I'm looking at my system. Every week we have our team meeting, every month we have our case cleanup meeting, right? So it takes maintenance, it takes the build up, it takes the maintenance and refinement. It takes maintenance, it takes the build up, it takes the maintenance and refinement. And then also, I've gone through different types of membership programs over the years. I've gone with the three different type pricing model to one pricing model.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 20:51

So, anyways, what I'm saying is it's also part, part of it is also an experiment. As an entrepreneur, you're trying things out, kind of trial and error, and seeing what sticks and what works better for clients. And I also want to really be able to provide as much value as possible to my clients without eating away too much of my time, right? So I want my time as an attorney to be spent on the highest leverage tasks, like items, like marketing, and also speaking with my clients, giving the legal advice that they need, and so I have to structure it so that I can hand off a lot of that maintenance of the VIP to my assistant, so I have a team who does all of that for me, and then we build automated systems to remind people through emails and all of that. You cannot possibly do it all by yourself. That's just not possible.

James Campbell: 21:46

Yeah, I love that. So it's not taking the bull by the horns, but not being a one-man army. Right, you have to recruit and delegate and know what things move the needle the most and focus your attention on those. You've been working with us, with Integrity Marketing, for a little over a year now. Can you share with the audience what made you decide to work with us in the first place? What was sort of the kicker moment for you?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 22:14

Yeah, and it took me a while to decide. So I was one of those painful prospects. But the reason why that I finally made this switch or at the beginning I was working with um Victoria. I was at a point in my practice where I wanted to um position my practice for sale. One day I wanted to be able to sell my law firm five years or 10 years from now. I was just just. I just wanted to step back from my practice and I started homeschooling my son like a couple years before, so I wanted to be able to just work four hours a day.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 22:51

And so I was trying to figure out and I got also kind of tired of my previous marketing company because I felt like it just felt very transactional with each and every. It just felt very transactional with each and every marketing event. Like every webinar there's a marketing spend. It's like very event oriented. And when I was figuring out, when I was talking with my coach on how to set my practice for sale, later she mentioned something that was really crucial in my decision making. She said you want to be building assets right, and so your website is your asset, my website is my website and all this marketing effort. They should also become an asset, not just a transaction thing, like if you spend money, then it works, if you don't spend money, then it doesn't work, then it works. If you don't spend money, then it doesn't work.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 23:46

And so that was really the key in me, looking at, you know, when I was talking with IMS, making that final decision is, I was able to see how your services can help my you know, my website become a self-generating asset. Become a self-generating asset, and so one day, if I step out of the firm, this website is valuable. I have data to show how many more leads are coming in. I love the data and that was what was lacking in the previous.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 24:18

I had worked with previous multiple marketing law firms and they just tended to be more transactional and I was never able to get a handle of everything and I really wanted to have just a central, like a dashboard, of a place where I know what's going on with each and every pipeline that I'm doing, like how, what is the ROI of this particular like webinar, or or, or this particular lead generation magnet like a ebook, right? I want to know. I want to see the numbers. I want to be able to make that CEO decision on how much more money should I spend on this and that, and you know. So that was the key in making that the transition to IMS the key in making that, the transition to IMS.

James Campbell: 25:05

Yeah, great, and that's. That's sort of the. The outlook that we have is work on this to build it right, to build the brand and have it be a self-perpetuating asset. So it's like building a flywheel kind of hard to get going at first as we're ironing out all those details, working through all the automations, but once it's running, it's supposed to run. Do you see? I mean, without a lot, of, a lot of effort anymore, what, what could you say changed in your practice over the last year since partnering with us is it visibility, client quality growth kind of outlined, oh yeah, so, so definitely financial growth of 20 percent of revenue and gross revenue immediately, like in the last year.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 25:45

I do, you know, I have my own internal financial monitoring and we saw that immediately. So that's very, that's pretty concrete. And then, when I dived into the reasons why, I think it's because with the marketing we increase the exposure.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 26:01

It's because with the marketing we increase the exposure and it's really funny to me because with just even last year I had a marketing company work on my social media engagement and I had a lot of exposure. People were coming to me, they like my post. They were like, oh, your son is so cute and a lot of social media engagement but not a lot of conversion. And this last year I worked with IMS.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 26:27

We didn't actually do a lot of like none of that social media engagement yet our revenue went up 20% and so I was looking at, okay, what we were, amber and I were looking at the dashboard. Okay, what was the reason? Is because we added that something you did on my website and we increase that intake phone call. The more people are booking the 15 minute phone calls and so Nico, my assistant, all these 15 minute phone calls just pop up on his calendar. All he had to do was simply call those people. They just pop up, and whereas previously he would have to like manually, painstakingly call people, like cold calling people, whereas over the last year we've seen those calls just come in without us having to do anything. So definitely, yeah, that's a great that's a great point, you know.

James Campbell: 27:18

I'll give a little bit of insight, because our viewers or listeners might think, well, how the heck does that happen, right? Well, if the exposure a little bit of insight, because our viewers or listeners might think, well, how the heck does that happen, right? Well, if the exposure of their social media engagement was not as robust as these other campaigns but the conversions were extraordinarily higher. Why is that? And I'll give a little bit of insight is one is having a client like Amy, who understands their avatar who are the people that they work with, who are the best clients, their avatar, who are the people that they work with, who are the best clients and what problems does my firm solve for those clients? And then having the ability to communicate that to the marketing team, so for us to understand.

James Campbell: 27:51

That's the information that we need to have to reach what I would call the buyers in pain, or the high intent leads, people that want help solving a problem, not just want free information. So the marketing efforts and the strategies you put in place on the Internet cater to those buyers in pain. That's who we're going to have more of. So I'm glad that you've seen that and it does. It reflects in the revenue just the ease of more people getting booked that are qualified Right and then less time spent following other people, so more efficiency. If other attorney asked you whether they should join Integrity Marketing, if it was worth the investment or worth the time, what would you tell them? What would be your response to them?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 28:36

Oh, I would definitely recommend it and I would really come in from the perspective like similar.

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 28:41

You know what I said. It's about building the asset, it's about a long term, Like I want something that just works without me, Like I want to have that longevity going. I don't want to keep having to just the. And then I also want to make an educated decision about where my money is going. And even as we were just recently discussing my firm growth and I just love how you guys are able to pinpoint and tell me what is going to be the highest leverage of the results if I spend money here and there, rather than just tell me okay, I want you to up another thousand on your budget, right? That's very different from the other marketing companies approach, and so I just I like that strategy and I am a data and strategy person, and so I feel that if even another attorney asked me if that's important to them, they want to be able to be in a CEO position to create strategies for their firm so that they can step out of the daily grunt work of their firm, then that's definitely worth the investment.

James Campbell: 29:48

I love that. You have an amazing firm, amy, and I really appreciate your time today Looking ahead. What's sort of on the horizon for your law firm? What's the next phase of growth for you?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 30:00

Yeah, phase of growth for you. Yeah. So next year our goal is to grow another 28% and then another 28% to reach to our ultimate goal, and so continuously building up to that and then also having good clients right. So at this point, I really just want to have a quality law firm practice. Right? So, at this point, I really just want to have a quality law firm practice. I want to work with people that I love and who also love me, and so that's my growth and my targeted focus in terms of avatar and then. So we're working, working towards that.

James Campbell: 30:39

I love it. Amy. Where can people find you? What's your website address so people can check you out online?

Attorney Amy Hsiao: 30:49

Yeah, so they can go to wwwshalllawcom. Shaw is my last name, which is spelled as H-S-I-A-O shalllawcom.

James Campbell: 30:58

Very good. Go check out Amy's website. See how she changes the game from the traditional law firm to really be able to focus on solving issues for family, building her brand and growing her law firm at the same time. Thank you for tuning in today to the Marketing Lawcast. We'll catch you next time.

Announcer: 31:13

That's a wrap on this edition of the Marketing Lawcast. Thanks for joining us Head over to imsrockscom. If you're ready to skyrocket your firm's marketing, don't hesitate to book a free strategy call with our team right on our website. Here's to your success.