Matt Aulsbrook:
I'm not a fan of pissing away marketing dollars if I'm not closing the leads that I'm getting.
Chris Dreyer:
Some of the most impressive PI owners I've met didn't start with a perfect runway. Matt Aulsbrook is one of them. When he moved to Fort Worth, he didn't have a law degree, he didn't have a driver's license. He was riding the bus to DWI classes and sleeping on a blow-up mattress. No safety net, no head start, and he still built a firm that tried more cases in Tarrant County last year than anyone else.
Matt Aulsbrook:
We've got 50 people, 30 here, 20 virtual, remote.
Chris Dreyer:
This is a guy who built a firm by focusing on the numbers that matter, not the ones that people brag about.
Matt Aulsbrook:
If you can't wait 18 to 24 months without seeing a real ROI...
Chris Dreyer:
This is Personal Injury Mastermind, powered by Rankings.io, and I'm Chris Dreyer. Today, we get into the decisions that helped him scale from nothing, the brand identity that made him stand out, and the KPI he uses to keep the firm healthy in a tough market. Let's go.
Matt Aulsbrook:
The pace with which AI is moving is just shifting everything. I just think if you're not embracing it, then you're going to get left behind.
Chris Dreyer:
I've probably done about 50 ChatGPTs today already, the day of, but who knows, maybe more. I heard something recently. Your litigation team was told by a district judge that you've tried more cases in Tarrant County than any other firm last year, so that's got to feel good.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Yeah, I'd like to think that we're doing good work. We do a decent amount of volume. When we sign up a case, I tell folks that, 80%, 85% of the time, we're able to settle this without a lawsuit, but it's important to know that our firm does file lawsuits, and more importantly than that, that we try cases, and that's important to you, the client, because the insurance company tracks that data and those metrics, and they know who tries cases and who doesn't. We're able to get some better deals upfront pre-lit because they know we'll hold their feet to the fire, and they know which firms will and which firms won't. It's not always the case. Sometimes, they're just going to dig their feet in and we're too far apart and we got to go try the case.
Chris Dreyer:
There's so much tech and SaaS, and it seems like the pre-lit stuff is just getting beat down and the margins are getting thinner and thinner as the case acquisition cross, rise. So you got to get some of those asynchronous cases to balance out your CAC. Did you guys start out a trial-first firm, or was that something that developed? Talk me through that thought process of being a trial-first firm.
Matt Aulsbrook:
So, I personally never wanted to be the trial guy. I'm a business guy. This is a second career for me. I didn't go to law school until I was 34, graduated at 37, passed the bar at 38. I didn't have my head on right. I'm in recovery for drugs and alcohol. And so, drugs and alcohol beat me up pretty bad. And when I moved to Fort Worth in Tarrant County, I didn't have a driver's license because the state of Texas didn't see fit for me to have one. I was riding the bus to DWI classes. I was walking across the street to a minimum wage job at a call center. I had a blow-up mattress and a folding chair, and I wasn't on a winning streak.
Shortly after that, I decided that I needed to try something different because drugs and alcohol wasn't working for me. And so, sobered up and I opened my first business, which was an insurance agency in 2009, and had some success there and scaled those to three agencies, mainly property and casualty, mainly cars. And typically, the auto policies that we don't like to see as plaintiff lawyers, a lot of maybe people that don't have driver's licenses or people that can't afford really good insurance, but it was some insurance. In my opinion, some insurance is better than nothing, and so I grew those a little bit. In the meantime, got an MBA along the way and saw that my folks that I was insuring didn't always get a fair shake when they had an insurance claim.
And so, after I got my MBA, I took a year away from school and then decided I'd go to law school full-time. And did that, passed law school, but I went and leased a office space. And before I got the passing results, turned out I failed the bar exam. And in Texas, they only allow you to take the bar exam once every six months, so I had to pay rent for six months while I couldn't even practice law. So, that was a hard lesson to learn, but it gave it certainly a little bit more motivation to get it right the second go around. I set out to run a law firm, personal injury firm, that tries cases that wasn't going to be me as the trial lawyer. I know and I have friends that try big cases and manage a firm, too. I just don't think dividing that up... Some people are good at it. I don't think many are good at doing both. And I find joy and satisfaction in the business, the marketing, the management more so than the trials. I'd rather high five them when they go get a good verdict.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. Thanks for the transparency, and you've clearly turned it around and been wildly successful.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Well, I share the sobriety thing because our industry is up there amongst the worst. It's doctors and lawyers that have the highest substance abuse rates, and that's generally because people don't call us on a good day. And we deal with stressful things, and that's why a lot of lawyers tend to abuse substances. So, I'm very active in lawyer recovery here in Texas. And if you happen to listen to this podcast and want to talk about any of those issues, feel free to reach out. I'm very passionate about that.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you, Matt. Thank you for that. I wanted to talk to you about just briefly on the insurance side of the business. A lot of times, we hear the insurance defense, or they start off as a criminal defense lawyer, then they move over to PI. Did you package that up with an operator, sell it, and that gave you the capital to jump in and own your own thing? Did you bootstrap? Those are still working. So how did that transition go, especially while you're going to law school, right? I guess I'd assume you had an operator.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Oh, yeah, I had a key woman that was running everything, and I was going to package them up to sell and then she said she'd like to buy them. I said, "Well, let's see if we can work out financing." Lenders love when the key person is going to maintain management and control. So, that was easy sell for the lender, and she was able to sell her house to come up with a down payment, and I financed 20% note myself and got 80% upfront. And she's making 5X what she was making when she was working for me and has grown it tremendously since then. And it was just a win-win and-
Chris Dreyer:
That's awesome, that's awesome.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I used all personal money, my PI shop. It's slim pickings when you start out. It takes a while for the money to come in. And yeah, I bootstrapped it. Fortunately, I had money from the exit of that business, and I was able to use that and had some lines of credit from that prior business. Because as a new entity, nobody is giving you no money without any tax returns, but I didn't have to tap into that, but it was nice to have that as a safety net. I didn't have any big cases up real early on. Shocking, you didn't get any big cases when you open your door. I guess some people are lucky when they spin off and they've already been practicing, but that wasn't my experience. But since then, we've established the line of credit and case expense line of credit, and all the things.
Chris Dreyer:
Quick note here, Matt did not want to endorse any lender in public, but if you're thinking about securing a line of credit, he will happily talk to you. His contact info will be at the end of our conversation. All right, back to it.
So talk to me about the iteration of marketing. Did you start off Texas Law Dog? Since you had your previous business, you're like, "Hey, I need to stand out and be distinctive," so roll with that, or was that an iterative process? Talk to me, last few years, how your marketing is evolved.
How to understand the ROI timelines for digital, radio, and TV marketing, and how to tell if your law firm’s advertising spend is actually working
Matt Aulsbrook:
Nobody can spell my last name. I have had to spell it for people my entire life, so having a URL with my last name just wasn't the play for me. When I started law school, I bought the domain as a 1L, thetexaslawdog.com. So, I think you can find appreciation to that in the business that you're in, having that seasoned a little bit before I actually rolled it out. As I've grown, the marketing changed. I started out with a newsletter, still doing newsletter. Don't know that I can track ROI on it, but I know I get repeat and referral cases. Would I get as many of them if I didn't send that newsletter? I don't know, but it's pretty cheap and I'm going to keep doing it. I used to do it monthly, and I only do it every other month, but I've been doing that since I've been licensed, which may have been seven years since I've been licensed. So, yeah, seven years.
Started out, within six months, with 5,000 a month digital, and there is no money coming in, Chris. This is 5,000 a month that I said I'd pay, but there is no money coming in. That was a lot of money to agree to pay to a digital agency. And in fairness, it's one of your colleagues that I'm sure you got respect for, and they shot me straight. They said, "If you can't wait 18 to 24 months without seeing a real ROI, I don't want you to sign up with us." Now, they didn't put me on a contract. You free to leave at any point in time, but they said, "For you to really see benefit, it's going to take 18 to 24 months." And I'd rather a vendor underpromise and overperform than the opposite, and that's what they did. And I went to radio, on a couple of stations.
Chris Dreyer:
Do you play that demo up? Like the country stations, you got the cowboy hat?
Matt Aulsbrook:
That's who I am, I grew up on a farm. And somebody asked me yesterday, where am I from? Nobody ever mistakes me from being from New York. I am who I am. And so, yes, I advertise on a country station. That's who I think I resonate with, so it is what it is. Also, I started in the country station, and I did that because there was real estate there. I like to go where I see an opportunity. I don't want to go and be the fifth person in... It's a blue ocean, or whatever, the purple cow where I see an opportunity. And now, there's a lot more people on the station than when I started, but I've already committed. And they're going to have to spend a lot of money to catch up with me, but some of them are bigger than me anyway. But I try not to compare myself to other firms. I'm just trying to do my deal and be a little bit better than I was yesterday, and there's no magic bullet on this marketing thing. If you're trying to build a brand, it just takes time.
And I never took private equity money like some of my competitors, and they come in guns blazing, but I sleep better at night knowing I don't owe any money. I started with one media company and expanded with the same company over to sports radio. And since then, the next thing I moved into was streaming on the TV, and we've just dipped into some broadcasts, did some Texas Rangers games. I just bought some Dallas Stars games on network TV. And I just think that overlaps with the talk radio, sports listener, and people tend to watch sports live. So, this is just the way things get consumed now. It's a lot more challenging than folks who were doing it back in the '90s.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I like the strategy, right? The market strategy, the crossover, I think it all makes sense.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I will add to the radio, man. Three years, three years for a good ROI, that was a big check to cut on a monthly basis. I think that's why a lot of people don't do it. It's expensive and it takes time. I'm not three years in on the TV stuff yet, and I think I'll need to be before I start seeing a huge ROI. I don't have the super budget of, I guess, the biggest player in Texas market. Far as marketing, it's Thomas J. Henry. I don't have anything near his budget.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. It's interesting, too, because Thomas and Adler, and a lot of these guys, they hammer the TV side pretty hard at the Texas market, but I think the radio is a little bit more open. So I think I agree with you on the blue ocean, especially on the country compared to the urban channels.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I haven't done boards yet. I'm thinking about doing some strategically around my offices. Man, I just see so many competition on the billboards. And I don't know, I haven't done it yet, but that's going to be the next step. But like that billboard right outside my office, you can see behind me, it's an interstate, and these billboards right here go for 5,000 a month. That's 60,000 a year for one billboard.
Chris Dreyer:
There's a hell of a lot of cars driving behind you, though, so I don't know. I noticed that when we were talking.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Oh, yeah. By the way, that exit of those insurance agencies allowed me to purchase this building. So, that was great.
Chris Dreyer:
Oh, so you're doing the real estate play. That's awesome.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Yeah, I had single family rentals as I went along. I'm a gambler. When I was getting my MBA, I was using student loan money to flip houses.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm in the real estate. I've done some flips. I got about 99.
Matt Aulsbrook:
The margins just got too small for a while, and then my margins are pretty good in this game here right now. So, I was renting... There's three buildings in a row, I was renting from one, and the guy owned the two buildings. They're all identical, and he wouldn't sell to me. Although they're both empty, he wouldn't sell. He's still sitting on two empty buildings next to me. This guy was almost fully occupied where I'm at, and I just came and said, "Will you sell me your building?" And he's like, "Sure." And there was some tenants, him being one of them. And as those leases came up, I kicked them out.
And so, we've got 12,000 foot building here, and I just built it out to seat 75 people. Currently, we only have 30 in office, so we've got room to at least double. My current structure is we've got 50 people, 30 here, 20 virtual, remote, so we got a team of 50. If we can double here, I know that we can at least double virtually. So, I've got room to grow. I didn't think I was going to have as many years... I thought I was going to have less of a runway here on this building. But back to our earlier AI discussion, with the way AI is going, I think we'll be able to do more work with less people.
Chris Dreyer:
Oh, I 100% agree. It's the ultimate form of leverage. It's the next iteration. So, one more question on the building. You're so close, and I see it in the background. I know all audience can. Listen, you got any signage on the building? You got a big... Have you thought about that?
Matt Aulsbrook:
Man, that's... Yeah, 100% I've thought about it. So, I wanted to put a digital sign right above me, nice sign, digital billboard type thing. Daktronics is the manufacturer. The city said no. I went to my city councilman. He said, "You got my vote, but there's eight people on the council. I'm only one vote. You haven't got the rest of them." I had a political strategist in here today, and he was asking me about local politics. I was like, "It doesn't get any more local than my sign right here. Can you help me with that?" So, we'll see.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's the first thing that came to mind. I'm like-
Matt Aulsbrook:
No, they'll let me put regular channel letters up there. But I thought from helping the public out, I could at least put time and temp, or something, up there to public policy help standpoint. But I don't know, they're telling me no.
Chris Dreyer:
You stick your big ass tractor-trailer with some signage on and just park it in the front of it.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I thought about that, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's another thing. I sue truck drivers, and that's part of my marketing is my dad drove a truck all his life and my brother owns a trucking company. And I love truckers, but they need to be safe and need to follow the law. And so, it's a unique story. So I grew up around trucks. I know it better than most because I grew up around it.
Chris Dreyer:
Knowing your KPI is a non-negotiable at a PI firm, but not every KPI tells you the truth or the whole story. Instead of chasing top-line metrics, he breaks down the KPIs that actually guide how he runs the firm and what he watches more than anything else.
What a simple KPI mix can reveal about whether your PI firm is healthy, overstaffed, or running too lean
Matt Aulsbrook:
Everybody always is like, "What's your revenue? What's your top-line revenue?" And man, I know some people that got some big top-line revenues that don't make a damn bit of profit. So, the KPI that I look at the most, that's the most important to me, is a pie chart, and it has my payroll... It's always a percentage. It has my payroll, and that's broken down into attorney payroll and non-attorney payroll, and then it has my marketing spend, and then it has my ops spend, and then it has my cut as an owner, and then it has a piece of pie for profit/taxes. And I got to make sure that, traditionally, that payroll hadn't gone over 40%, 20 and 20. I think, again, as AI continues to go, that we may be able to get that down a little further, maybe 35%, and I've been there.
Chris Dreyer:
Do you do revenue per head? Do you do a subcategory of that? That's one that I've been tracking in addition to the payroll.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I geek out on KPIs, man. I've probably got over 100 built out on a program we use called Domo, but the only one I can think that we still haven't gone digital on is profit center analysis, and that's per producer. People say, "Oh, eight-figure firm, I want to do $10 million." And okay, that's great, but I never wanted to do 10 million in fees and not make any money. I'd rather do 5 million in fees and make $2 million. I think that gets lost. And I think there are some charlatans out there pitching courses and stuff to teach you how to be the next biggest, greatest thing ever and want to paint the picture that they've had successful firms, when in reality, their firms may not have been as successful as they portray it. And I just encourage people to do their due diligence.
Chris Dreyer:
I get hit with them on Facebook all the time. Yeah, I see it. So, that pie chart, you got the... Where do you throw facilities, admin? You throw that in ops? Yeah.
Why PI firms are turning to AI tools and mass-tort diversification to stay resilient in unpredictable markets and reduce revenue risk
Matt Aulsbrook:
Oh, that's in operations. So, I want that 10%. Marketing, it just depends on where you want to go. This year, I just had cash hitting and I've expended more marketing. But in a non-traditional way, I've started investing in mass torts. So, that's actually a marketing spend, but not counting it towards my single event practice.
Chris Dreyer:
Is that a hedge for auto?
Matt Aulsbrook:
Yes. Yes, it is. For me, tort reform is a real deal, and we have battled it. We have a session here, a legislative session in Texas every two years. We just wrapped up one a couple of months ago, and it was the greatest attack on personal injury and torts that people in my circle here in Texas said they've ever seen, and they date that back to when they came and took Med Mile away in 2003. And even when they took work comp away in Texas way back then, they said what they tried to do last session was greater than what they did taking away those. Fortunately, we had some patriots, some Republicans stand firm against our arch nemesis here in Texas, which is Texans For Lawsuit Reform.
Texans For Lawsuit Reform is the largest campaign contributor to Texas politics, bigger than anybody else. I think most people in Texas would be shocked to know Texans For Lawsuit Reform gives more money to more political candidates than any other organization, and it's unfathomable the millions of dollars they spend to get their people elected. And we had some Republican freshmen this last time stand up to them, and we got enough of the Rs to side with the Ds, which we carry most of, to fend off huge, huge attack. It's the first time TLR had lost in... In my memory, they usually just able to steamroll everything they want because nobody wants to vote against their bill because they don't want to get primaried out the next go round because they have so much money.
Chris Dreyer:
I talked to Michael Cowan, I think Angel Reyes, a couple other Texas attorneys that were really, "Hey, we're watching this close. It's either going to go this way or that," or, "Hey, we're going to have to start looking at another state."
Matt Aulsbrook:
Yeah. So, that's exactly what I did was a little hedge for me was the mass torts. So, I don't want to go to another state, so that's the route I took.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that makes sense. So you got your Domo, Lead Docket stuff. On the KPIs, you're tracking your wanted percentage, stuff like that. You're trying to hit 90-plus. Any other KPIs you'd like to share? Because the reason I'm asking on the KPIs... And you said you're excited to talk about it, but most of the time, my audience doesn't want to talk about the KPIs. They just want to talk about the bigger picture. So I'd love to hear any others that you would share or try to target.
How high-performing intake teams use process and structure to consistently convert qualified personal injury leads
Matt Aulsbrook:
Well, I'm not a fan of pissing away marketing dollars if I'm not closing the leads that I'm getting. I'm probably the most involved with intake as far as any aspect of the business, intake and marketing. And in my experience, even outside of personal injury, any business that I've seen have tremendous growth and scale, the owner is usually driving the sales and marketing, and that's my wheelhouse, that's what I enjoy doing. And yeah, we're consistently above 90% on closing the wanted leads of... I've got some people who have been in the industry a couple of decades handling my intakes, they know. And I look at most everyone and they're asking me, "Do you want to take this?"
And you mentioned earlier about the margins being reduced on the pre-lit, and I didn't get to speak to that and I agree with that. I think we may be trending towards more of a litigation type thing as maybe... I'm talking about as an industry, as firms, big firms that do a lot of cases, I think maybe shifting that route. Because traditionally, 80% of our money comes from the top 20% of our cases and 50% of the money comes from the top 5% of our cases. That's traditional plaintiff work as a whole. So, yeah, I think that may be a shift. But yeah, I'm totally in with the intake, that's where I live. I know we run Filevine, but many days, I never login to Filevine because I don't work cases.
Chris Dreyer:
So you're just in the Domo, you're listening to the call, yeah.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Yeah, I've got a big TV in my office, and it sits there and scrolls KPIs, and we use those across various departments. Each departments have their KPIs, their individual KPIs, and we blast that on the screens in those departments because I think people are inherently competitive and I don't think they want to be the low man on the totem pole. So, I think a little healthy competition is good.
Chris Dreyer:
I agree, I agree. Only thing that pisses me off about Domo is they don't refresh fast enough. But yeah, that's something that you got to fight with them to get that. Sometimes, they just don't refresh.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I went to the Domo conference last year, and wow, that thing was huge. There was probably less than five plaintiff lawyers there. I just did not know how big and how many organizations that they help, man. They're big time.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Aulsbrook:
To know that I have the ability to track data like Life Time Fitness or like the MBA, for example, it's just mind-blowing that I can have the same stuff that those big organizations can have.
Chris Dreyer:
On the intake side, of course, we all know speed to lead and answering the phone, not missing any calls, and all that stuff. I understand your tech stack with the Filevine, Lead Docket stuff. How do you think about... And you're in the eight figures. The staffing of the intake, do you do the full cycle reps? Do you have a chase team? Do you have a team that's... How do you think about the workforce management at night and weekends? Do you do combo nearshore? Talk to me about the intake a little bit. Since you're so involved and you get a passion about it, how do you think about those components?
Matt Aulsbrook:
It's pretty amazing the amount of leads that we take in and that we sign that I only have two intake professionals.
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Matt Aulsbrook:
They are workhorses, and they trade off nights weekends and they back each other up nights weekends. And 100%, 100% us, all in-house. I don't have any backup. No backup, nothing. Occasionally, it's been a long time, but if I see something sitting, I may call it myself, but I can't remember the last time I've had to do that.
Chris Dreyer:
So you keep it lean and mean, and that speaks to the profit, too.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I do, but I don't know that that's the way it's going to stay. I built out a whole room for intake to grow, but seems like AI may be changing the game with the intake, I don't know. I've always been a school of thought that people want to talk to a real person, and I wanted my clients to have an experience that I would like to have. And I know I don't like the overseas and I don't like the PhoneTree, and I don't like that experience for me. So, I have pushed back on that as of yet.
I'm not saying I won't change, and I know there are people out there in the industry that are having great success with it. I just haven't got there yet, personally. Just because it works for somebody or somebody else likes it doesn't mean it's a fit for me, and I'm okay with that. I'm not into the new shiny object. They're making all this AI seem like it's awesome, but there's so much work and build out, and it's not always what it's cracked up to be once you get in there in the nuts and bolts.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I heard something recently, like everything starts out as software. Even the oil and the cars, you get classified as software until it's not software. And then software is iterative and exploratory. You know what I mean? Until the thing actually works, it's not software anymore.
Matt Aulsbrook:
As we mentioned software, I know... Don't know when this will be released and when people may listen to it, they may listen to it a long time down the road, but as of yesterday, I just saw the news release that Filevine just got $400 million in capital. So, be interested to see what they do with that.
Chris Dreyer:
Look, if there's a bubble, it's this tech and AI bubble valuations and what's carrying the Nasdaq-100. Clio just raised their Series F, or whatever the hell it's on now, and it's like, "Hey!" So, who knows what they'll do a big... Maybe it's a big acquisition play, or maybe they'll go hire the top AI people to implement it on their tech. Who knows? But it's interesting to see how they're going to deploy that much capital.
Matt Aulsbrook:
Yeah. We use most of their AI stuff, and I don't think that they've necessarily been on the cutting edge of some of maybe the competitors in that space, but I just didn't want another platform if I didn't have to have another platform. So, hey, if my people don't have to log-in to another software, I think with $400 million, they can do some catch up.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Yeah, I'd say, I'd say. And look, I'm a big proponent, Lead Docket, Filevine. I'm a huge proponent. I think the Salesforce and Litify, then you got to get your own Salesforce engineer and stuff just to do the tech implementation, like you're saying. So I think out of the box, especially for PI and the capabilities for the chase sequences and the turndowns, and all that, I think it's a very good tech stack.
Matt Aulsbrook:
I would argue now that you need an internal person to build out Filevine. I would make that argument. I would hate to have to do it now. Litify is up there. Filevine is good. I encourage people that are a small shop, if they don't want to do a lot of tweaking, to look at CasePeer. I don't personally use it, but ready to go out of the box.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. And I just appreciate you sharing and your transparency. But for our audience listening that had some questions for you and wants to connect, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Matt Aulsbrook:
My cellphone is 903-348-2154. Email is matt@thetexaslawdog.com. Happy to chat with anybody, happy to geek out over anything that we've covered here. I love talking shop. So, I love this stuff. I come in the office every day because I love it. I think we're doing good work. I'm really passionate about what we do. I think insurance companies are greedy bastards and but for plaintiff lawyers, then they wouldn't be held accountable.
Chris Dreyer:
Matt's story is a good reminder that clear positioning and the right metrics can change the trajectory of a firm. If you want the best performance marketing for your own practice, that's the work we do every day at Rankings, helping PI firms build a brand that stands out and a pipeline that delivers. Check us out at Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening.
