Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to gold medal moments on Personal Injury Mastermind. This is a special mini-series that highlights my favorite lessons from former PIM guests. Each of these trailblazers and thought leaders will speak live at the inaugural PIMCon, the Personal Injury Mastermind Conference. Trust me, you don't want to miss them live. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer. Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing, can't-miss insights and bite-sized pieces to help get your firm from good to go.
Every law firm needs a unique selling proposition. Now, let's be clear. If words like fights for the client or cares for the clients, bring to mind, those are table stakes, not USPs. A differentiator targets a specific type of client and forms the core of a law firm's branding and messaging. Centering your practice on veterans by hiring former veterans and serving veterans. That is unique selling proposition. Here's why. It's a niche focus that leverages veterans' unique expertise while building community and demonstrating shared values like service, duty, and loyalty. Get ahead of the competition with highlights from the GOAT of distinctive USPs, John Berry, to hear John live at PIMCon secure spot at pimcon.org. Use code PIMJohn for $200 off your ticket. Let the gold medal moments begin.
John Berry:
It's figuring out who our best clients are, right? So if we think about our 10 best clients over the past year, where did they come from? Tell me about where they eat. Tell me about their family. Tell me about whether they have a religious preference, what that religious preference is. Tell me about whether they're veterans, whether they have family members who are veterans. What TV programs do they watch? What sports programs do they follow? Looking at all of that and saying, "Okay, so how do we create a message that resonates with these people? And it doesn't convince them that we're not the right fit." Right? We want to make sure that we're the right fit for them, and we know that that is going to turn off other people. I'm okay with that.
We're pro-veteran, we're pro-athlete. Our avatar is, "Who do we want to represent?" And in my mind, I took this from Dan Sullivan, "But who do you want to be a hero to?" We got to decide who we're a hero to, and that's my avatar. "Who do I want to represent? Who is my ideal client?" And so I build my marketing message around that. Now, I could make it to encompass everyone, but I'm not afraid of alienating people who are not our avatar. I don't want everybody, I'd love to have all the veterans and a lot of the athletes, but I don't want to keep everybody happy. That's not my role in life.
Chris Dreyer:
John has 2,000 plus reviews across his firms. He explains why reviews play a critical role in success of his firm.
John Berry:
In 2016, I'm in Avvo and I'm listening to this thing about reviews and how important reviews are, and I'm like, "Okay. This is garbage." And I'm learning, okay, well, this is kind of crowdsourcing information. And there's the Amazon effect. And then I go back and it's like looking in the mirror and I see our reviews and I'm like, "Wait a minute. I got a two-star review from this guy. I got him over $100,000 back pay award from the VA. And he's saying it took too long. And the realization was that no, that actually we got into him quicker than most people, but he had no frame of reference." And so the thought is by getting these reviews, people will know. So I said, "Okay. Look, we're going to consciously ask for reviews." And it's uncomfortable, but I love being uncomfortable, right?
So that's just part of our culture that we are going to provide five-star service. I'll tell somebody initial consultation. Look, we intend to provide five-star service at any point if we fail to get you what you believe would be five-star services, you tell us, and we will gladly have that conversation with you. But I do think that it keeps the team accountable. And look, every single day, all the reviews at the end of the day get emailed to the entire team. So we got about 110 team members. They all see all the reviews. We let clients know we are going to ask for a review. Now, the other part of it was with our veterans' disability practice, because it's a contingency practice, just like PI, we would see veterans are very loyal. And so we would see people come in and they'd bring us stuff from their garden, or they would send us long thank you notes, like pages of what we did for them, or they'd send us baked goods.
And I thought, "Well, gee, we got all these great stories, but we're not sharing them with the team and we're not sharing them with the public." So I said, "Well, if we just ask for the reviews, what's going to happen?" And we had veterans that were like, "Yeah. Absolutely. I would love to write a review. I would love to tell my story." And some of them were even like, Well, this is important to me because we have people say it's 22, it's more than 22 veterans a day commit suicide. And we've had veterans come to us, say, "I was going to kill myself. I had no money, no hope, no help from the VA. And you guys convinced me to stay in a take this battle seriously. You told me you do the fighting for me." I'm like, "Great. Put that in a review. Let's share that with other veterans."
And so while we have some veterans and some of our personal injury clients who want to keep things very quiet, I understand that, and I completely respect that. We have several who want to tell their story, who kind of are almost like apostles, right? They're like, "We want to spread the good word of Berry Law because had they not helped me, I couldn't have done what I did." And some of them go on to build businesses and do amazing things with now they have some money, now they have some treatment, now they have some resources. And so once I started going after the reviews, the clients are like, "Well, what about testimonial videos? I'd love to do a video. I would love to tell my story to the world so that I can help more veterans get the benefits that they've earned."
Chris Dreyer:
One of the things I love about this is when you are sharing this with your team, it gives them a purpose, like a why, because it has meaning. And there's so many attorneys that I speak to, they really struggle and pay for the reviews, and they try to add it to processes. But I think what you did, what really rings true, is like you share the reviews, and then they get to read those stories, and then brings meaning to their job. Let's talk about your book. So you got a book coming out, Veteran Led Military Leadership Lessons to Help Your Company Survive, Thrive, and Dominate. What's the book about? What inspired you to write it and when's it going to hit the shelves? Do you have a release date?
John Berry:
Yeah. So, I mean, this is not your typical military. I'm going to tell you how to be hard and tough. It's about the simple leadership lessons that all veterans learn going through as a new member of the military. What I really wanted to do was to help our veteran community get out in the business world. And I think if you look at small businesses, the backbone of America, the non-commissioned officers, the backbone of the military, and they know how to execute. Look, anybody can plan. Plans become fantasies and dreams, but military members have been trained how to execute. And so a lot of the skills that they have, they don't understand. They're immediately transferable. And that's what I'm trying to communicate to the military community is you've got what it takes, go out and do this. And so we've had so many great stories from clients.
One of them, he's 100% disabled. He started a CrossFit gym. And you know what? He got other disabled veterans to start coming up. I went there one morning, 5:00 AM, I'm showing up. There are soldiers who are amputees who are working out. It's like, "What's your excuse?" I'm like, "Oh man, these guys are getting after it." There's all these veterans that we've helped them over the years and have said, 'Look, now that I have my benefits, now that I'm getting my education, now that I have some money coming in, I want to do more and I want to do something in my community." And they'll give back to nonprofits and stuff.
But they're like, "But what's next?" I'm like, "Well, build a business. That's what America was founded on, that small business." I said, "You do that, you can be two times a citizen." Go out there, do it again. And for most veterans, we took an oath and we still want to support and defend the constitution. We still want to help our communities. And in my mind, that's through the small business community. And I want to get more veterans out there because here's the deal. We come back from service and you hear a lot about PTSD and some of the mental health conditions. Well, the problem is you came back your life had a purpose in the military, you had a team that would die for you, and you come back. There's no mission. The team's gone. You're back in ordinary life. You're working an eight to five job when you used to be 24/7, right? And it's just the excitement isn't there. The rush isn't there. The team isn't there. The purpose isn't there. I want to give that back.
Chris Dreyer:
That wraps up this gold medal moment featuring the GOAT of distinctive USPs, John Berry. Visit pimcon.org to go From Good to Goat and join me and John live in Scottsdale, September 15th through the 17th. But we will conquer personal injury marketing, network with industry titans, celebrate excellence, and become the greatest of all time in personal injury law. Tickets are limited, so secure your all access pass today. Just head to pimcon.org that's P-I-M-C-O-N. O-R-G. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to these gold medal moments, and I hope to see you in the winner's circle at PIMCon. For $200 off, use code PIMJohn. That's P-I-M-J-O-H-N.
