Dennis Meador | Conversations as Authority: How FAQ Podcasts Help Lawyers Differentiate and Attract Clients

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It’s Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer’s Edge podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Most lawyers are experts in their fields, but expertise alone isn’t what gets you hired. In a crowded market, the lawyers who win business are the ones who are known, trusted, and remembered for what they do. That requires more than great work.

In this episode, we’re going to explore how lawyers can use conversations, not sales tactics, to build authority, deepen relationships, and create opportunities.

Before we get started, today’s episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession.

Registration is now open for the 2026 Ignite cohort, and early bird pricing is available. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

I’m excited to welcome my guest today, Dennis Meador, the CEO of The Legal Podcast Network, also known as DM. DM has been an entrepreneur since he was a teenager, building businesses in everything from shoveling snow to SEO before finding his fit helping attorneys share their voices. A lifelong communicator, from his years as a pastor to his decades in marketing, DM believes the best ideas don’t come from selling, they come from conversations. DM, welcome to The Lawyer’s Edge.

Dennis Meador: Thank you very much for having me, Elise. Good to be here.

Elise Holtzman: Absolutely. I’m thrilled to have you, partly because we’re about to talk about something I’m really passionate about. I want to hear your perspective on things that I talk about on a fairly regular basis. It’s always better to get perspectives from multiple people.

Lawyers are usually experts, right? They know what they’re doing. They often assume that their expertise speaks for itself. In your experience, why is that not the case?

Dennis Meador: Very simply because 82% of people solely use the internet to find their attorney. So if your expertise, your positioning, your intelligence, your skill set is hidden off of the internet, that means only 18% of people have a chance to experience it in consideration to work with an attorney.

Elise Holtzman: Is that data people who are looking to find somebody in the first instance, or does it also include people who might meet you and then look you up afterwards to make sure you know what you’re talking about?

Dennis Meador: I don’t have an answer for that. I just have that as last year I came across that data set. So do people check people out online after they’ve already talked to them? Yes. But my understanding of the statistic as it was written was that people solely use the internet beginning to end and then call and hire, basically.

Elise Holtzman: If you think about it, it’s understandable. I mean, I work with very large firms and also very small firms. Most people, especially if you’re in a B2C marketplace where you’re dealing with consumers or customers that are individuals or families or something like that, rather than big companies, most people don’t know a lawyer, right? So if you’re in one of those kinds of practices where you’re not necessarily dealing with people who work with lawyers on a day-to-day basis, why would you know somebody who’s a lawyer? How would you even know where to find them without using the internet?

Dennis Meador: You don’t. That’s why what’s happened in the industry over my career—I mean, I’ve worked with the legal industry in marketing for over 20 years now—that’s why we’ve seen what we have. You talked about communication and communicating who you are. There has been a huge commoditization of the industry. I just don’t hear attorneys talk about this.

I’m like, "I'm a marketer. I understand. I’m not of the"—whatever that phrase is—but at the same time, I’ve talked to so many attorneys. I know hourly rates or fees and structures based on where they are, size of the market, product offerings. So what I will do a lot of times in conversations with an attorney is I’ll say, “Oh, so you’ve been practicing for 22 years. You’re a family lawyer in a good-size market, a top 10 market. I would imagine you’re charging, what, $400, $425 an hour?”

And I cannot tell you the number of times over the last five to seven years I’ve heard an attorney, when asked a question similar to that, say something like, “I wish. It used to be that I could get $425 an hour, but now I actually have to charge closer to $350, $325.”

So the legal field is one of the few industries that has actually regressed in expertise over the last 10, 15 years or so because of the commoditization of the internet. Because like you said, if I don’t know an attorney, I just type in either a broad search or even a more query-based search—Atlanta personal injury or Atlanta divorce lawyer—how many results do you think I’m going to have? Hundreds? If I look at the directories and I go in a page or two, I’m going to see hundreds, if not thousands, of law firms to pick from.

That is the extent that most people have in knowing an attorney. So then, with all things being equal, in other words, every attorney I look at looks the same to me, the only differentiating factor can be cost. Which is another thing that I hear attorneys say to me all the time, which is, “I don’t even want leads. I answer my phone and the person on the other end, the first question they ask me is, ‘How much is it?’ I’m not a pound of beef at the supermarket. Why are you calling me just asking my price right up front?”

But that’s, again, been because people have trusted the internet to do their expression for them instead of participating in it. So that’s why I think overall there’s been a watermark that’s lowered for the industry as a whole.

Elise Holtzman: Going back to this idea of expertise not being enough, they’re not really able to distinguish one expert from another. They’re just seeing all of these lawyers all over the place. Yes, they’re going straight to the money.

So you’re suggesting that people do something different. You talk about this idea of conversations as the root of authority, right? Being a leading authority in your field rather than marketing or sales. So what does that mean to you? What do you mean by conversations being the root of authority?

Dennis Meador: There are a few things. So one thing is, if you think about marketing as a whole right now, founder-led, real people, authentic marketing—that is what is resonating. Ten, twenty years ago, we were okay buying from a logo. But now we are so isolated from humanity as a whole that we want to see humanity in the people that we work with.

I gave this illustration the other day, or I had this thought the other day. Most people know more about their five favorite influencers than they do about their neighbors on either side of them. So people want to identify with these attorneys.

So what we try to do—and yes, conversations are important, but the right kinds of conversations, right? So it’s not just them getting on a microphone and talking about playing pickleball last weekend and going to their favorite restaurant and trying a new craft beer that they’ve never tried. It’s really conversations about the people that they would be helping.

We don’t just do podcasts this way. We have very much formatted like this as well, where it’s a question-and-answer conversation fill out. But the vast majority, 75% to 80% of our clients who come to us and say, “I want to find more clients or find a higher quality of client. So cultivate these individuals. How do I do that?” we simply say podcasting in an FAQ format is really the best way to differentiate yourself.

Because at that point, when you start answering questions that have to do with the specific issue of the person, people are used to tailor-made solutions for themselves. So it’s not enough for me to say, “Oh, that’s a divorce lawyer.” I want a divorce lawyer who works with men in their 40s that have high assets. That’s who I want for my attorney.

In consumer-facing, but even in business, if I’m a business attorney or if I’m a business owner—and I am—I’m going to be more apt to go with a technology-focused or a marketing-focused or a marketing-agency-focused attorney than I am just a plain old, “I’m a business attorney.”

What this does is it gives these attorneys the opportunity to, instead of saying, “Me too,” “Yeah, oh, I do that,” “Hey, over here, over here,” they’re literally assuaging fears, giving clarity to people’s situations, niching down, and showing these people that they specifically can help them with their problems. Then what we do is we just build off of that.

So it’s not, “Come on down to the best PI guy west of the Pecos River.” It’s like, “Oh, you were in a car accident. Were you driving? Oh, it was both of your fault. You have handled hundreds of those. Typically, what you want to do is there are three things you want to make sure—this, this, and this.” And now, all of a sudden, they feel like, even though that attorney has never heard them, that attorney hears them.

So that’s why conversations have become so important, because we have got to get out from behind our desks and locking our knowledge into a 10-by-10 room, or whatever size your office is, and we’ve got to start projecting how we can help the very people that we want to help.

Elise Holtzman: I think it’s fair to say that lawyers—and I say this with love, because I am one—are not the fastest adopters of the newest thing out there.

Dennis Meador: Correct.

Elise Holtzman: Even today, what are some of the concerns or objections that you tend to hear from lawyers when it comes to the idea of podcasting or, in some other way, sharing expertise on a regular basis?

Dennis Meador: Well, there are two that I hear from them after we’ve removed all the other ones, because it’s my job to remove things like, “Hey, don’t worry about content. We have content writers who actually write up these questions based on your client profile.” “Oh, you don’t want to be the primary driver of the conversation. You just feel more comfortable answering questions. Well, here’s a host for you.” “Oh, well, you don’t know how to market your show. Well, we market the show for you.”

So we take care of those aspects of it. What we really hear from attorneys—and I think it’s funny—one is, “I’m not going to give away my knowledge for free,” which it’s like, yes, you are currently making no money with your knowledge. That is correct.

In the day and age in which we live, there’s no “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” Wizard of Oz approach to marketing. People want to see who they’re interacting with, hear who they're interacting with, and no one’s going to be like, “I just watched this 20-minute podcast on high-asset divorces. I probably don’t need an attorney.”

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, that’s the thing that’s so fascinating to me. It’s not like if you give away a little bit of information and share how things work, or five steps to something, or how to do this—if you get a demand letter or your spouse files for divorce—what you’re going to do, that somehow they’re suddenly going to handle it all themselves.

I think that because lawyers are so used to getting paid for their knowledge, some of them are afraid that if they’re giving something away, they’re not going to get any return on the investment. Something else that you said is really fascinating to me, because you said this thing about people don’t want Oz behind the curtain, and they want to know who they’re dealing with.

One of the things I’ve noticed recently, even for myself, is that if I go visit a website and it’s, like, such-and-such marketing company or PR company or whoever I might be looking for for myself or my clients, and there are no people on there, it doesn’t say anything about “our team.” It’s like, “What we do. Fill out this form.” I’m like, “Who are these people?” It seems like this nameless, faceless monolith.

I can tell you, I have never been interested in working with anybody where I can’t figure out who’s behind the whole thing.

Dennis Meador: I just read a statistic—and I’m going to give you a general understanding, because I don’t have it quotable yet—but it essentially said, in the B2B sector, over 70%, maybe high 60s, but I remember it being somewhere around 70% of people expect the owners to have a presence where they can relate to them. There is an expectation of authenticity, and there’s an expectation of accessibility, even if I’m not giving you money.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I’m not surprised, because as you described it, I remembered that I’ve had these experiences. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I’m turned off by that. I don’t know if that would have been true 25 years ago. But as you say, the world has changed, and people are looking for connection. Let’s go back to this idea of the objections or the fears that people have around this stuff.

Dennis Meador: The first one is, “I don’t want to give away my stuff for free.” But the second one that I hear is, “I don’t want to bombard people with my content. I don’t want to have so much content that they just get tired of me and unfollow me.”

It harkens back to the days—I remember this, and I used to think it was so funny—with Facebook pages. People would have these Facebook pages, and they would build them up to 400, 500, 2,000, 3,000 followers. Then they would come to me and be like, “Well, we need to do something with this.” So I would start posting, and then they would be like, “Oh, well, I think we lost two followers yesterday. Stop posting so often. What are you doing?”

And I’m like, “You lost contact with people who didn’t want to hear you. That leaves room for people who do.”

First of all, in all my years of doing this, I’ve never had somebody say to me, “You post too much on social media. I don’t want to work with you.” Now, sure, I’m a marketing company, and I’ve specialized in social media, so maybe that’s the expectation. But none of my clients have really said the same thing either.

Gone are the days of a three-section, 27-page newspaper, where if you have 18 ads in that newspaper, sure, people are going to be like, “Oh, there’s that attorney again.” But this isn’t the case. People are constantly scrolling through feeds.

For you to be there once, twice, even three times a day, first of all, that’s going to increase your reach and increase your opportunity to reach your audience. Because what most people don’t think about is, if I post at nine o’clock in the morning and it only has so much legs, people that are always on in the evening—if they don’t often engage with my content—it’s not going to show up that evening.

So if I don’t post that evening, people that look at content in the evening aren’t going to have any access to me.

But those are probably, other than the things that we’ve tried to overcome and the process being turnkey, doing everything for them, all the things that we do in our service, we’ve tried to remove every single friction point. We do “better, faster, less friction” internally with ourselves and our processes, but especially with and for our clients. We want as little friction as possible for them.

Those are the two main things. It really boils down to, “I don’t want to chase people off because I’m posting too much,” and, “I don’t want to give my stuff away for free.”

Elise Holtzman: Some of the objections that I’ve heard over the years include things like, “I don’t want to be bragging or salesy,” or, “I don’t know that I have something interesting to say on a regular basis.” Like, “I know my stuff, but I don’t think I could come up with content on a regular basis.”

Have you heard those objections? It sounds like, as you say, you’ve tried to deal with some of the objections that come up.

Dennis Meador: So let’s talk about content. Well, let’s first talk about, “I don’t want to seem like I’m bragging,” or whatever. These are what we’re calling authority podcasts. They’re solely designed for the purpose of you establishing yourself in your niche, answering questions for their specific problems.

So I gave the illustration of the high-asset male in his 40s getting a divorce in whatever market I said at that moment, maybe Atlanta. The type of question that somebody like that might ask is, “What happens to my lake house in a divorce?” “What happens to my boat in a divorce?”

And so when that question is searched and there’s a podcast, “What to do if divorce is imminent and there are things you want,” that’s the type of content that we build for our clients. So yeah, they might talk a little bit about how they’ve helped people with that situation, but this isn’t a, “Today’s show is on Super Lawyers and how Bob has been on Super Lawyers for the eighth year in a row. He only had to pay $1,200 each year. Good job, Bob.”

That’s not what we’re doing. That’s not the purpose of the podcast. It’s really to inform the potential client. The good thing is, when you do an authority-based FAQ podcast, or whatever you want to call it, it’s evergreen. If you and I start talking about AI today and maybe we go granular on a marketing product that is AI-based, in two years, this podcast is obsolete.

But for the attorney that sits down and shares situations, how they deal with things, all of that, that doesn’t change for the foreseeable future.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah. What you’re doing is you’re delivering value to the people who need it and want it. Yes, along the way, you’re making it clear to them that you’re an authority in this area, but you’re actually providing value rather than beating your chest and telling everybody how great you are.

Dennis Meador: Exactly.

Elise Holtzman: What about this idea of not having enough content?

Dennis Meador: First of all, there’s no such thing. But let’s talk about how there is no such thing.

First of all, when we come on, we do at least a three-month, usually a one-year, content plan for our clients. Again, they come on, and we look at their client profile, their brand profile, and their jurisdictional profile, and how the three of those go together to do a show.

So with the client profile, it’s that niched-down client. With the brand profile, what we're really doing is it’s who is the attorney, what is the look and feel of their branding. But then there’s that third one, which is the jurisdictional profile.

I like to use this illustration. Let’s say I am an attorney, and I work out of Podunksville, Arkansas. I cover a 10-county radius with a whole whopping 112,000 in all 10 counties combined. I had decided that my ideal client is billionaires, and the chances, jurisdictionally, of that being my client base probably isn’t good. So we use those three things to then build a content plan.

So if your client is, or if your niche is divorce, and then you have three or four or five different archetypes, one episode is five to seven questions, about 20 minutes, that deal with a very specific issue. So content goes deep before it goes wide. So in the beginning, you’re establishing your foundation. We’re talking about divorce in Georgia now, and this is the 10 things you need to know. But then later you could say, we’re talking about divorce for men in Georgia who want custody, and this is what you need to know.

Later you could go, this is for men who are going through a divorce in Georgia that want custody and want certain—you know, like the boat and the lake house. So each one of those, although in essence it’s the same subject, there are really three different sets of content and three different answers and three different ways to approach things.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I love that. I also think that when you talk about communication, part of communication is telling stories. Obviously, you’re not going to share confidential information about your clients, but people like to hear about other people. These illustrative things help them understand their own situation better.

So as an example, I know a trusts and estates lawyer who used to write articles using celebrities who were in the press, who were going through crazy divorce-type situations and custody situations, and saying something along the lines of, “This is what’s going on with celebrity number 12.” In a situation like this, if you were in this state Georgia, this would have to happen, but he’s in the state of California, so instead this might happen.

People are attracted to stories. So I think there’s always that opportunity to expand on it and tell some stories and give some situations that they might not have thought of or that they’re going through themselves.

Dennis Meador: Absolutely. One of the things that I’ve noticed is it’s not the stories, it’s the patterns in the stories that we resonate with. So attorneys can easily tell stories without breaking confidentiality, because they can say things like, “I’ve worked with a few guys in a situation just like you, and what I’ve seen and what they’ve told me that they felt was X, Y, and Z, and how I’ve handled it is X and Y.”

So again, when people feel familiarity in the pattern, in the story, it doesn’t have to be a specific, “John Jones came into my door. John Jones’s wife hated him.” It can definitely be patterns. So what he did was that same thing. He took the pattern of divorce in a public setting and then applied the patterns down to everyday living.

You know, in this one there was infidelity. In this one there was some financial frustration. That’s going to resonate with some people. Absolutely. But what I tell attorneys is, think about the patterns and the situations more than the exact people. Then you don’t have to fear saying something you shouldn’t have or shouldn’t be saying.

Elise Holtzman: Well, and that’s what you’re able to do as somebody with this podcasting business. You’re able to say, “Look, I typically find that attorneys worry about this or are concerned about that.” So we try to eliminate all of those obstacles for them, right? You said something along those lines.

I do something similar when I’m talking about, “I understand why lawyers struggle with business development. Here are the reasons that typically come up. Here are some of the objections I hear over and over again.” So as you go through your career as a lawyer and you’re running into some of the same things over and over again, it becomes a lot easier to talk about the patterns, as you say, that you’re seeing. It really does establish authority. “Oh, well, DM sees this stuff all the time. My situation isn’t going to scare him. He’s the guy that I want to go to.”

Dennis Meador: Exactly.

Elise Holtzman: Let’s talk a little bit more about podcasting itself, right? The nuts and bolts of what you’re trying to get from podcasting and how you do it. I’ve been doing this since 2020, and I’ve got just over 200 episodes now.

I remember when I started, I had absolutely no idea. First of all, I don’t think I had ever listened to a podcast. I just had this bee in my bonnet that I was going to start a podcast. I was very concerned about things like, “Do I need advertisers and how am I going to make money with this thing?” and was set straight by some people like you who really knew what they were talking about.

What is it that lawyers who want to establish their authority should be thinking about when it comes to getting a return on investment from a podcast? And what do they not have to be worrying about?

Dennis Meador: Well, I don’t think they need to worry about, number one, going viral. Because if I am an estate planning attorney in the Birmingham, Alabama market, why on earth do I care that somebody in Bangladesh, Michigan, Mexico, and all over the world have seen my podcast? It literally does me no good.

Understanding that the monetization strategy of getting eyeballs is not a monetization strategy that a professional should be thinking about when they are establishing a podcast. Where the monetization comes in is in cultivating more or higher-quality clients.

So I like to use this illustration. Let’s say that you have a podcast and you’re an estate planning attorney. Your package costs—let’s say you’re in a good market with decent demographics—you’re charging $10K for an estate planning package. So you put out this podcast, and all of a sudden, one week—let’s say your third episode—for some reason, you say something funny on it and it goes viral. Two million people see it on YouTube. Hundreds of thousands see it on whatever.

Let’s say you get a nice, fat, huge check. You know how much you’ll get from YouTube approximately if you have about two million views, Elise?

Elise Holtzman: I don’t know, but I’m afraid to hear.

Dennis Meador: It’s about $1,000 to $2,000 per million, depending on your demographic. So let’s just split the difference and say that you’re going to get $3,000 from that two million views.

So let’s flip that same episode around and say, instead of two or three million people saw it, let’s just say that 20 or 30 people saw it. But of those 20 to 30 people, they’re all local. It resonated with them. Ten of them called you. Seven of them hired you.

Now, I’m not a math whiz, but I’m pretty sure $70,000 is much more valuable than $2,000 or $3,000 for an attorney.

I think that sometimes we get so caught up in seeing that kid who opened up presents and made $26 million last year. We think, “Well, I mean, I’m smarter than an eight-year-old. I’ve got much more value to bring than opening a stupid present. Certainly, my knowledge and my interests, my speech, and everything I’m going to do on a podcast, certainly it’s worth more than that.”

It is, but only in that it would attract the clients that come to you and become your client. So that’s only the second monetization strategy, though.

So you’ve got your standard monetization, which is through the outlets. You’ve got sponsorship, which is really your second one that you mentioned, most people are familiar with. You’ve got where you're actually reaching out, positioning yourself to potential clients so that they come to you and hire you.

But then there’s also a fourth way, and that is if your podcast is a way to build referral partners. I’ve done a hundred podcast guest spots this year. From the hundred podcast guest spots, I’ve probably had 10 to 15 clients that have directly called me and said, “Hey, I want to work with you,” which I’m not complaining about.

But do you know how many referral partnerships I have, and how many more clients I’ve gotten from my relationships, like sitting down with you, with marketing agencies, being on podcasts? So there’s that fourth way of basically a referral relationship that is built out of it.

Now let me ask you a question. If you sit down and go to coffee with a referral relationship, shake hands, and decide to send each other business, are you mad that you didn’t record it and put it on YouTube? Even though you do record it, you see what I’m saying?

And then the last one is using a podcast specifically to work with specific people and specific clients. So there’s the relationship partnership-building, but then there’s actually inviting somebody who could be your client on.

There are several people that do that to break the ice on that relationship. Because think about it, “Hey, Elise, would you like to meet for coffee sometime this week? I want to tell you about my program and what we’re doing.” “Hey, Elise, would you like to be on my podcast? We talk about law, the law firm life, and it’s all about this. We’ve got a few thousand attorneys that are really plugged into it. We’re constantly growing, and we’re in all these outlets. Would you like to come on?” You see the difference?

Elise Holtzman: Yeah. I mean, and it’s such a great example. Look, some of the examples that you’ve given are exactly how I use my podcast. I don’t have sponsorships, and I don’t worry about—I don’t make any money on my podcast, and I don’t care. That’s not what I’m doing it for. As you say, it would be cents on the dollar.

I have had the privilege of developing unbelievably fabulous relationships with people who have become my clients—could be managing partner, could be a chief marketing officer—and then get referrals.

Yes, people also will say—oh, I had this one woman years ago, before I even started my own podcast. Just being on a podcast, as you were talking about, I went to do a speaking engagement for a law firm. This woman said to me something like, “Oh, I’m really excited that you’re going to be speaking for us. I know you always say X, Y, and Z, and that’s really something I want to hear more about.”

I looked at this woman. I was in a state that is not my own. I had traveled a thousand miles to get there. I had never met her before.

I could not, for the life of me, understand—this was very early in my practice—why she thought she knew me and said, “Elise Holtzman always says…” Well, it turns out I had been a guest on one or two podcasts, and she had heard me say something a couple of times because she decided to do a deep dive on the person that was going to be coming and running their retreat.

So I have gotten a lot of referrals, and people say, “Oh, you know what? It was so fun being on your podcast. I really think you should talk to so-and-so. He or she is fantastic.” So there are so many different ways to create value when you’re delivering value to other people, to create value for yourself.

Dennis Meador: Absolutely.

Elise Holtzman: So I love your explanation because I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about what that looks like, and to your point, seeing people on Instagram, TikTok, and all of those sorts of places, not really understanding what this can be used for.

I recently invited someone to be on my podcast, and she came back to me and she said, “Well, how many subscribers do you have?” And I thought, first of all, I have absolutely no idea. I’m going to actually have to go look it up because I don’t care, right? I mean, hopefully it’s more than three, but that’s not what I’m doing it for. I’m not doing it to feel good about myself that I have a certain number of subscribers. I want to be impacting the people that are in my community and in my industry.

Dennis Meador: Well, let me ask you this. Do you know of any other way where somebody who’s either a potential client or a potential co, whatever peer of yours, do you know of any other way where they will sit and listen to you straight for 20, 30, 40 minutes?

And that’s the other thing people don’t even think about. Just the fact that somebody in your market, whether it’s 10 or 30 or whatever, just the fact that people in your market will sit down and listen to what you have to say about a very narrow niche subject, you literally cannot buy that sort of—because, yeah, you could pay five grand and be on the local channel.

First of all, you’ll probably reach less people. It’s so funny, somebody told me the other day, this was like primetime CNN a couple months ago, they were like, “Do you know how many viewers they had primetime CNN two nights ago?” Eighty thousand people.

Terrestrial TV is literally—who do you know that watches regular TV? Not streaming, not Netflix, not HBO Max, but actual television.

Elise Holtzman: That’s a shockingly low number.

Dennis Meador: I mean, do the research. If I’m wrong, send me something and I’ll correct.

Elise Holtzman: No, I believe you. I’m just surprised. Yeah.

Dennis Meador: But I remember I used to have this media social, I called it that. It was like a hyperlocal social media outlet focused on a town outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. We would see more people every day consuming our content than the whole week at the local newspaper. That’s if you assume that every paper got read, you know what I mean? We would have more in a day than the whole week because of digital.

That’s the other thing we forget about, is the power of multiplying opportunity and time. Because you and I are going to sit here for a half hour, hour, whatever. You’re going to edit this, whatever you need to do, make us sound good, change the voice modulation, all of that. Then you’re going to come back three years from now, and it’s still going to be just as relevant and as helpful to your business.

Whereas if I spend $1,500 on a quarter-page ad in the local paper, it ends up in the bottom of the birdcage tonight, and I’m done. So that’s just from a pure marketing standpoint, there are so many benefits to this vehicle.

But beyond that, what can be done with it? You know, it multiplies your time because of it being evergreen. But then, like for us, with a 30-minute podcast, we can do a month’s worth of videos and different types of posts. So literally, for 30 minutes, they’re getting 30 days of marketing.

That’s just because we’re taking a 45-minute segment where the attorney said something that can really resonate with their client and cutting that into a video, then another minute and 12 seconds and cutting that here and there and doing all of that. We’re not marketing as much as we’re just educating, either little by little or a lot at a time.

Elise Holtzman: Well, and what I love most about this is that all we’re talking about is you as a lawyer talking about the things you already deal with on a day-to-day basis anyway.

Dennis Meador: I say that every day.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah. It’s not like you’re coming up with new stuff and you’ve got to go do research and all this stuff. You’re literally taking the things you talk about on a day-to-day basis, putting them in a consumable format, and sharing information and ideas with other people out there. Then people can do what they want with it.

But if you’re talking about this stuff already—obviously, I’m a big proponent of this. I’m a proponent of having your own podcast, and I’m a proponent of being on podcasts. Like you, I am a guest on podcasts frequently, certainly not 100 times a year, so that’s superhuman. But I think it goes both ways. It’s so easy for me and for you. We turn on the audio tape and we just talk about the stuff that we love and we think is cool and see if there’s a way to be helpful to other people.

So I love this idea, and I’m really glad that you’re able to share your perspective on all of this. As we wrap up our time together today, I want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show.

There’s a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to using conversations—perhaps in a podcast—instead of marketing to establish yourself as a leading authority, what’s a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for people to hear?

Dennis Meador: I think the ability to explain everything as if you’re explaining it to an eight-year-old is a tremendous ability. Being a pastor for 20 years—youth pastor, missionary—I learned what cumulative teaching has, what effect cumulative teaching has.

So being able to just go in and understand that I could just talk about this subject, but then I can hit the pause button, come back, talk about this subject, that’s the thing that I think we don’t see because we don’t see cumulative effect from it.

I mean, you talked about that, you did two guest spots, and then that lady knew you as if you were some influencer hero to her. That’s the other thing that podcasting does, is it removes social barriers. So the conversion rate on people who come to you through a podcast, they already know what you do. They already know your skill set. They already like you as a person. All they need to do is confirm trust at that point.

Are you who you are pretending to be on the microphone? If you’re, “Yeah, everybody, good to see you today. Oh man, it’s a sunny day,” and then they walk into your office and you’re like, “Susan, get over here. What did you do? The coffee tastes terrible today,” you know what I mean? You’re going to be like, “Yeah, that’s not who I signed up for.”

So as long as you’re genuine and who you are, then that gives you the opportunity to build bridges, convert, hire, and get the right type of clients through this outlet.

Elise Holtzman: Before we wrap up, I just want to pick up on that thing you talked about, the cumulative learning idea. You probably feel this way sometimes, and I feel this way frequently, is that I tend to say similar things over and over and over again because I am focused on a particular niche. It’s lawyers, it’s business development, and it’s leadership.

Other people are not sitting around thinking about this stuff all the time. So you get to choose this niche that you’re in. You get to talk about the same things or similar things over and over and over again. Even if you feel like you sound like a broken record, you’re still delivering value on a regular basis to people. They’re hearing a different story, a different perspective.

People can’t hear something once necessarily and be expected to remember it and implement it. So I love that idea of the cumulative learning concept and that podcasting and writing articles and some of these other things can be a great way to do that.

Dennis Meador: I literally create a content plan. I’ll tell my VA, “Hey, let me do some shows about this. Let’s talk about AI.” That’s the other thing about podcasting. You know, even if you’re an attorney, yes, for cultivating clients, you need to do an authority podcast, in my humble opinion. I’m sorry, I had to be a little salesy there for just a second, Elise.

As an attorney, you can speak to so many other things that then people are like, “Oh, he’s interesting. He’s funny. Let me check.” Then, “Oh, he’s got his own podcast. Oh, that’s a divorce—oh, well she hasn’t been very nice to me lately. Maybe I’ll listen to one episode.” You know, I’m just joking, but I think you get my point.

It breaks down barriers and it breaks down walls, and you can talk about much more than just your own area. That’s one of the things that we’re looking to do—we are doing in beta, Q1 launch, Q2—is a matching service. And they’re out there, but not just for the legal realm, where we’re just like, “Hey, if you’re talking about legal on your show or you want to talk about legal on a show, we can connect people with that.”

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, there’s a lot of opportunity out there. So I encourage people to not necessarily immediately jump into podcasting, but think about the effort that you’re expending in other areas and whether something like this could be valuable for you.

Sometimes you can start being a podcast guest, and then you might get bitten by the format and think it’s a good idea for you. But what used to be, I think, a really challenging thing of feeling like you had to have a studio and you had to have this whole setup, I still talk to law firms and say, “Oh, we’re putting together this whole studio.” It doesn’t need to be that way.

I mean, you and I are literally sitting in our sweats or whatever, having this conversation in our own homes. I don’t know if you’re in your own home, but I’m in my own home, sitting with a fancy-looking microphone on my desk that I ordered from Amazon and making this happen.

So it’s so accessible to everybody now that I think it’s something that lawyers who want to differentiate themselves and want to make things easier for themselves should consider. So thank you so much for being here today, DM.

Dennis Meador: Absolutely.

Elise Holtzman: It’s been a pleasure. I’m going to thank our listeners for tuning in as well. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We’ll see you next time.