Sophie Alcorn

Kevin Daisey (00:02):

Okay. We are live. Welcome everyone to another live recording of the managing partners podcast. My name’s Kevin Daisey, and I’ll be your host. I’m also the founder of array digital. We specialize in digital marketing for law firms today. I got a special guest coming out of California, Sophie. Welcome to the show.

Sophie Alcorn (00:22):

Hi Kevin. Thank you.

Kevin Daisey (00:24):

Yes. So thanks for joining us over there. I know you haven’t had lunch yet, but we have on the east coast here. So

Sophie Alcorn (00:30):

So I’m hungry and you need a nap.

Kevin Daisey (00:33):

Exactly. I need a I need a coffee and you need a,

Sophie Alcorn (00:37):

Some lunch. I just had my second, so good morning.

Kevin Daisey (00:41):

Good morning. So yeah, Sophie, thanks for coming on and sharing your story today and about your firm and all the cool things that you’re doing. I was able to take a look at some of that stuff. And before we jump into some of the conversations here, you can check out her firm and her website is alcorn.law. So if you’re listening, it’s not.com, it’s alcorn.law. You can go take a look at the website, lots of cool things going on. You’ll kind of get a feel for what they’re up to. And I’ll further do I really, I like to get into the first question is really about you. Sophie is tell us your story. What does you know, what triggered you to become an attorney or go, go to law school and become an attorney?

Sophie Alcorn (01:31):

Hmm, thank you, Kevin. I appreciate being here. My story started in the womb. I’m the daughter of an immigration lawyer and his immigrant client from Germany. So my dad was an immigration lawyer. He practiced in Southern California, starting in the late seventies, early eighties. Had a 35 year immigration law career and his own small law practice and my mom’s from Germany. And <laugh> when I think it was this like Pavlovian training because when I was a kid and I got to do daddy and me time on Saturdays and go to his office, I got to push the buttons on the photocopier and send faxes. And the only food in his office was sugar cubes by the coffee machine <laugh>. So I got trained early that it was very special to go to an immigration law firm and get to help doing things.

Sophie Alcorn (02:28):

And I had my first summer jobs and internships there. I started off as a file clerk, adding pocket parts to old law books that would, you know, come in the mail every month to update lawyers on the law before the internet had like case case databases. And when I was 15, I convinced him to let me do some legal work and I helped him write, or I wrote a petition for a wri of habeas Corpus to help free a Cuban man from indefinite detention in violation of the constitution. Basically this guy had committed manslaughter. He had already served his criminal sentence and there was no expatriation treaty with Cuba at the time. So they were just holding him indefinitely in immigration jail. And we went to federal district, oh, wow. Court. It was a pro bono case and we got him released.

Sophie Alcorn (03:30):

And after that I was hooked and I, I tried in college and law school to find something else to do in turn for the a C L U and really loved appellate law and looked at some other legal areas, but ultimately just kept coming back to, I love meeting people from different cultures who have different languages and different, different views of the world. I wanna help people who are making the world a better place. And that’s how I ended up in my current practice with a focus on tech immigration for the world’s best and brightest startup founders and rapidly scaling tech technology companies in Silicon valley.

Kevin Daisey (04:14):

That’s awesome. So that’s a really cool story and, and how young you got exposed to it and started. And I always like to hear everyone’s story because they’re all so different. And and it’s funny, cuz even though you were already on that path, you still try to get you something different within the law. Yeah, I

Sophie Alcorn (04:33):

Didn’t wanna just copy him. I wanted to, I wanted to find my own way, but I just didn’t realize that everything I loved was all the things he stood for. And so finally I admitted to myself that I wanted to do this, but I didn’t, I didn’t start my law practice Alcorn immigration law until after he, he died which was very unexpected and sad. That was about gosh coming up on eight years ago now. And I started the firm about six and a half years ago. I wanted to find a way to carry on his legacy. And I was, I was living in Silicon valley and just saw all the need around me with my international friends. So yes, it’s quite a excellent credit journey.

Kevin Daisey (05:18):

Glad you decided to do that. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You’re sharing your story with us. Thank you. So let’s, we’ll talk a little bit about your firm now. So and you told me this, you, you really focus your big focus is on business immigration.

Sophie Alcorn (05:33):

Yes. Business immigration, primarily within the technology sector. There’s a lot of types of immigration law. So although I have a passion for asylum and deportation family immigration those are passion projects that I hope to be able to do and fund in a nonprofit way after I, it really big with my tech immigration practice. So yeah, tech immigration, business, immigration, we’re mostly doing visas and green cards for the world’s best and brightest entrepreneurs and inventors as well as helping them get the right talent for their tech companies. Once they have investors and through their, their rapid hockey stick growth scaling process in the startup world.

Kevin Daisey (06:25):

Excellent. And that’s huge. I know my side side note, my wife is a it recruiter.

Sophie Alcorn (06:31):

Oh wow.

Kevin Daisey (06:32):

And so she works in like the DC Washington DC space, a lot of big companies, but most of her con contractors, if you will, that are going into these fo places or from other countries green cards, visas. So she has to kind of deal with all that plus, you know, ones that need security clearances and, and things like that. So

Sophie Alcorn (06:54):

All of that, all of that.

Kevin Daisey (06:55):

Exactly. And I assume out there in California and Silicon valley, it’s a pretty big, pretty big business out there.

Sophie Alcorn (07:02):

Yes, it is. A huge, the, the largest percentage of the world’s venture capital comes out of this area. And although startups are heading to other markets with a lower cost of living like Austin or older Portland, even Miami leaving, you know, San Francisco and New York and Boston for, for more fair climates with

Kevin Daisey (07:32):

Salt lake city I’ve effort, that’s a big,

Sophie Alcorn (07:33):

Yeah. Just cheaper housing. We’re kind of like the, the gateway for people anywhere in the world to be able to live and work legally in that ecosystem anywhere in the United States.

Kevin Daisey (07:47):

Yeah. Excellent. Well, let’s talk about some of the things you’re doing to to establish yourself as a, as a firm. And some of the things that have worked well for you. I know some things we can talk about, but I know you have the podcast.

Sophie Alcorn (08:02):

Yes.

Kevin Daisey (08:03):

And so I always love having ex podcasters on my podcast, which is cool. And so yeah. Tell us, you know, what has worked well for you is from a, you know, a marketing or branding perspective what’s, what’s worked well yeah.

Sophie Alcorn (08:20):

To

Kevin Daisey (08:20):

Get your name out there.

Sophie Alcorn (08:22):

Well, when I started the firm six years ago, I was a stay at home mom. I had two little kids. I hadn’t practiced law in four and a half years, and I did not have a professional network in Northern California because I had previously practiced in Southern California. So and, and frankly, I started my practice because I didn’t even think a law firm would give me a job at that point.

Kevin Daisey (08:47):

You’re starting from scratch

Sophie Alcorn (08:48):

<Laugh> I started from scratch. Yeah. And I started with a, a, a little website but in my, in my area at the time, and it’s changed a little bit since COVID, but I was able to go to events at hacker homes and meetups, and I would attend other, you know, free talks at different startup organizations. And I would go find the organizer and say, Hey, I’m a speaker. Do you ever have questions about immigration for startups? And they would say, oh my gosh, can you be next month’s guest? And although I <laugh>, I had to talk myself through my nervousness because my imposter syndrome was definitely kicking in, but, but it worked. So I got all these speaking events at groups and I would go to networking parties. And about two years ago, I realized that wouldn’t scale because I could only be in San Francisco or San Jose or Palo Alto, you know, so many times in a, in a week to go meet people. So I launched the podcast, immigration law for tech startups. You can find us on apples, Spotify, Google, wherever you get your podcast. It’s

Kevin Daisey (10:08):

Also on the website. If you look down below.

Sophie Alcorn (10:11):

Yep. Thank you. It’s on our, it’s on our website as well. Thank you. Alcorn.Law. So I started the podcast as a marketing strategy for our target audience of startup founders, aspiring startup founders, people running immigration at early stage and later stage tech startups. And about the first 50 or so episodes were all about the nuts and bolts and of immigration basics for people who needed to understand the case types. Later I diversified it to interviews, talking to futurists talking to clients who are startup founders, who’ve made it, and that’s been really fun. And the other thing I was able to do, there’s a online technology newspaper called tech crunch, which is pretty big in this sector. And I got I applied and I, I became a verified expert through this program that they launched and through that I was able to develop relationships and pitch them.

Sophie Alcorn (11:15):

And so for the last two years, I’ve had a weekly immigration advice column called dear Sophie, where people from around the world, right. And their immigration questions. And I, wow. That’s huge answering. It’s huge. I mean, it’s part of like of Yahoo. And so these articles are seen by hundreds of thousands of people around the world every week, and it’s been really fun. And then I created, this is like the backend legal office ops of it all. I created a, a cadence where I can I, I tie the questions that I’m answering to my podcast content and I link to my podcasts in the articles. And so we have this whole streamlined operation of content planning that we do in our marketing team, in the firm.

Kevin Daisey (12:04):

That is awesome. I love that my, my brain was kind of turning as you were talking about that. So, and, and my SDO mind is going, oh, backlinks from tech crunch. That’s yeah. That’s a huge, that’s huge.

Sophie Alcorn (12:16):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and there’s other ways to do it, right? Like you can, you can become, I think a lot of people become Forbes council experts for this type of writing opportunity. So there’s a lot of creative ways to do it. I think the biggest thing that helped us stick with it for, you know, a hundred, 130 weeks now is that we engineered this system to consistently create the content. We figure out all the content for a whole quarter at a time so that I can have people deploy it. So on my end, I’m showing up at, at the microphone with an outline of the podcast. And so my time is knock

Kevin Daisey (12:58):

It out

Sophie Alcorn (12:59):

35 minutes to knock out the podcast once a week. And then my team also prepares the draft of the article for me. So I go in and I edit it and I put my personality, spin on it and make sure all of the details are correct, but it, but they’ve already put together the answers to the questions that I’ve directed them towards. So I’ve tried to minimize my, my personal effort on the process as well.

Kevin Daisey (13:21):

I love it. I love it. I love it. And that is exactly what we’ve we do here. <Laugh>’Ve done here. Great. So you know, so if you’ve probably got emails, that’ll be on the show and back and forth, then she’ll get a bunch more and editing and, you know, we’ll create a bunch of content and graphics and this will be published and

Sophie Alcorn (13:37):

Yeah, you guys make it really easy,

Kevin Daisey (13:38):

So it’ll be continuing to happen. But if, if it was up to me to do all that, there’s no way any other.

Sophie Alcorn (13:42):

Yeah, no. And, and as, as, as lawyers executing marketing cadences, we are, we do not have our brains trained to be able to like, deliver all of that consistently and on time without procrastinating or getting bored. So

Kevin Daisey (13:57):

Well, so, and I just gave a talk. So I’m getting back to going in person talks and, and trying to either summer zoom and stuff at summer at their local, I try to go to arrange talks to business owners cause we, that’s what we focus on our law firms specifically. But we still have some local clients that we, we work with. And you know, I was talking about social media, how to really do well at social media right now today. Right. And what’s going on. And it really all comes down to having a system and a process. Everything is a lot easier. Well, I don’t understand how Instagram works and I can’t figure it out. Like just come up with a plan, have a, a, a program or a management software arrange everything. Like you just said, I’ll have someone come in our office and be like, today, we’re taking photos and filming for like an hour or two and we got content for weeks. And then yes, they gave us an outline and here we’re gonna go do this. We’re gonna do some reels for Instagram. We’re gonna go do this and that. And they come in and we pay them and they, you know, they, and we’re a marketing company and we still bring in people to help me and my business partner do this stuff because my employees, my team members, they focus on client work, not our own stuff necessarily. And so we got a clear separation between the two.

Sophie Alcorn (15:19):

That’s great.

Kevin Daisey (15:20):

But what you just said, I mean is you have to, you have a plan, you have a system. And the reason tech crunch is keeping you is cause you can consistently deliver.

Sophie Alcorn (15:29):

And so, yeah, exactly. I’m always getting my article to them. It’s basically publishable. It’s delivered by the same time every week, they, I ask for feedback on how I can improve. And they said, you’re, <laugh> more consistent than some of our staff writers. So it’s, it’s working

Kevin Daisey (15:45):

Well, imagine if you were always late and it needed a bunch of edits and tweaks, they

Sophie Alcorn (15:50):

Would, yeah. They wouldn’t be interested

Kevin Daisey (15:51):

Eventually. They’d be like, yeah, we’re done with this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, congrats on that. That’s awesome. And I think so if someone’s not a business attorney or in the business space, B2B, if you will there’s other ways you can do this, there’s other ink Forbes, or if it’s, if you’re just local, like to a state or even to a city level, look for localized publications, things that you can write for. I know here we, we have like a it’s called inside business. It’s a business magazine or newspaper mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative> it’s online too, of course, but we write stuff and send it to ’em and they usually publish it because they’re looking for good content. Exactly. And we can talk about all kinds of different things, but as much as we send ’em, they usually, they they’ll put out there. So it’s yeah. Find somewhere that will work for you. If you’re in family law, maybe, you know, I’m not really sure off the top of my head, but there’s no way to,

Sophie Alcorn (16:45):

Well, if you’re doing prenups, maybe you try to get some guest content into a wedding online publication, like the knot where people are looking for advice on how to plan their flowers for their wedding. You know, they might need a prenup while they’re at it. Right. and there’s, well, that’s a good

Kevin Daisey (17:01):

Point,

Sophie Alcorn (17:02):

Probably websites for divorcing parents. If you need to get out, you know, how to do like a custody plan or something. On the flip side,

Kevin Daisey (17:10):

I had a a guest months back as a divorce attorney pretty, they’re pretty large, but they’re in Colorado. So they’ve like Aspen and that area. And they have a podcast for divorce and they get tons of clients out of it. And, you know, with podcasts and you can’t really target necessarily, but started

Sophie Alcorn (17:31):

Through the content like through the topic, people, self select if they’re interested,

Kevin Daisey (17:35):

But they were doing very, very well with it and getting a lot of clients from their podcast locally. And so I,

Sophie Alcorn (17:43):

I mean, my firm has a very niche market and our podcast statistics sort of indicate that we’ve saturated, saturated the market of international startup founders because we’re not gaining users as rapidly anymore. So that’s cool. So, but it’s so interesting. The ways I get clients from the podcast, because it’s not just listeners, but it’s like I have some die hard fans who like, write me, thank you, emails and stuff. <Laugh> and also it’s a wonderful resource library to be able to send to potential new clients who you meet in other contexts of like, Hey, just wanted to share some links. It was so great talking to you. If you have more questions on this subject, check out my two podcasts that I did that have a related topic. And so it’s, it’s a way to build rapport as well and show people that you’re creating resources cuz you really care about your clients.

Kevin Daisey (18:44):

No, a hundred percent. I think it’s there’s so many uses to it. And I think the other thing too is most people think it’s the podcast. It stops there, right? Or it’s that one piece maybe like if you blog every, every week, right? Oh, I gotta do this article every week. And what does it really do for me? But it should never be just an article. It should be a, a podcast or a video. It could be YouTube. It also be an article SEO. Right, right. It’s it could be submitted to other places. It could be 20 social media post out an you

Sophie Alcorn (19:12):

Do one podcast with audio and video recording a month and turn it into 10 to 15 pieces of content for all of those channels.

Kevin Daisey (19:20):

A hundred percent. And I so, and I think, so say from a local family attorney, why, why would they not be helpful to me? Well, think about SEO. You wanna rank locally and be number one for family attorney, the backlinks from the not are gonna help you from a Localist perspective, crush it because no one else is gonna have those kinds of authority back links. There’s just so many ways you can justify how all the benefits, I guess. Oh,

Sophie Alcorn (19:47):

And really practically speaking. I have invited people onto my podcast who I would like to become a client in the future. So that’s another tip that I think a lot of podcasts hosts do. It’s a wonderful way. It’s a wonderful excuse to get, to add new people to your network.

Kevin Daisey (20:06):

That’s what I’m doing right here. <Laugh> so

Sophie Alcorn (20:08):

<Laugh>

Kevin Daisey (20:09):

Sophie, I got a contract for you to sign right after this.

Kevin Daisey (20:14):

Well, I mean, that’s gotta, you know, more marketers we do marketing for law firms, so yeah. Which is a, a big business and you know, everyone’s knocking down everyone’s door, especially like the personal injury space and all that stuff. But you know, we, we’re not a bang down the door sales organization. We, we like people, we had re relationships with our clients, but for us, the podcast was exactly that, Hey, we have a podcast, we wanna talk about you. I wanna learn about you and we’re being a hundred percent transparent. And then now you at least know who we are. Exactly. And Hey, we do marketing for law firms. And we’ve, we got our name out there, but we’re doing it in a very organic way, if you will. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I can’t take, I can’t do like 10 podcasts a day. Right. But right. You make 50 cold calls a day, but I ain’t gonna get you very far.

Sophie Alcorn (21:02):

Right. What’s which, which option.

Kevin Daisey (21:06):

Yeah. Which one you

Sophie Alcorn (21:07):

Gives you more life force

Kevin Daisey (21:09):

Like well, and, and then we have all the other benefits of it and that is that our clients are law firms. Okay. I’m asking you how you run your firm and, and what do you care about and, and how’d you get started and, and that is kind the thing. What’s your plans for growth, which I’m gonna get to in a second mm-hmm <affirmative> and you know, that helps me and then it helps my whole team understand, you know, what are, you know, how these people act and operate and what do they care about at the end of the day, our, your goals are what we’re trying to accomplish. If you are a client. Right.

Sophie Alcorn (21:40):

Yeah. And I love working with entrepreneurs because I’ve learned so much from my clients about how to successfully set up and operate a business so we can learn disciplines as well.

Kevin Daisey (21:53):

Exactly. So I, I learned stuff from, from guests on here all the time that I apply here at our company. Yeah. And I take notes all the time. I get referrals. I was gonna Palm beach last week and I got a referral to a restaurant to that. He knew the owner of that. He cuz he lived there and you know, so I was like, all I’m gonna go to this restaurant. So it’s, there’s so many good things that I get out of this it’s it’s just great having a conversation with a business owner. And so for me, the, the benefits are, are endless doing a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Like this.

Sophie Alcorn (22:22):

Cool.

Kevin Daisey (22:23):

Well, let’s switch gears a little bit to really what your plans are going forward. What, what big goals do you have anything you know, any big plans coming up for the next year or two?

Sophie Alcorn (22:37):

Yes. Many big plans. My firm has hit about 25 20 employees, but I should be at 25, probably in the next three months. So we’re growing very fast. The name of the game this year for me is operational efficiency refining our software systems, tools, procedures, training programs, onboarding so that we can continue to grow and meet our clients’ needs. Because when I started, it was a bunch of scrappy startup founders who I was their lawyer, but now my clients are raising, you know, $40 million from big venture capital firms. And so some of them are gonna IPO in the coming years and I don’t, yeah, I don’t take equity yet. So that’s one of the things I’m working on with my lawyers is how do I take equity in my client’s companies, advisory shares when I’m helping them. But I, you know, I wanna, I wanna keep up with their growth and I wanna continue to deliver the same level of service that they received as startup founders when they have teams of a hundred, 500, 5,000, 50,000.

Sophie Alcorn (23:55):

So we are growing. So we’re doing that through software, which very exciting onboarding and training programs, building all of that out. It’s a big commitment, but I, I wouldn’t be happy with a solo firm and the impact I wanna have in the world requires this foundation. And then in parallel with all of that, I’m also looking at going into the immigrant startup founder space with potentially forming an accelerator for startups that would be a separate business, not legal advice, not the law firm. And I’ve had a tremendous outpouring of interest for that. Since I started talking about it, so big things to come very exciting.

Kevin Daisey (24:43):

Now you’re committed <laugh> yes, that, that’s excellent. It’s actually pretty interesting that we’re kind of in the same spot where you are. Okay. So we’re, we’re on 2025 hiring currently a few more positions. So we’re right about the same size, but same with us. What got us to where we were, ain’t gonna get us to where we want to go. Right. And so operational is, has been a big kind of last four Mo you know, three or four months has been really focused on structural team lay, you know, org chart a few people that, you know, maybe weren’t the right fit that we’ve kinda bring in some different folks,

Sophie Alcorn (25:26):

Right? Not everybody you started with are the people who can, who you can grow with.

Kevin Daisey (25:31):

Yeah. A hundred percent. So that’s been the last, the last four months with us. And we’re just kind of seeing the light on the, of the side, which has really been great and processes. So really formalizing and documenting. Well, we had always had stuff written down, but just now it’s been flushed out one at a time. So that’s just been a good experience, but that’s, that’s our same focus right now. It’s like the, I dunno if you’ve read the book scaling up, but burn varnish he’s the founder of entrepreneurs organization. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> another great group. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> well, there’s like the valleys of death. So like it, you know, one or 2 million you kinda, and then you’re trying to, they have 5 million, you kind of plate again and you start to fall off and it’s like 10 million, but it’s, you’re gonna have, have these value, like these moments of, okay, we need to restructure, we need different software, new technologies people. Right.

Sophie Alcorn (26:27):

And when I was a baby lawyer and I was just sitting in the office late nights, trying to get cases done it, even if I wanted to be an overachiever and like write down job descriptions for imaginary employees, I didn’t have yet like that. Wasn’t a good use of my time. And it’s yeah. It’s gosh, the entre, the, the mindset required to be a successful business owner and an entrepreneur is so diametrically opposed to what we’re we learn in law school about thinking about the worst case scenario and the slippery slope and how to mitigate risk. Because there’s, there’s,

Kevin Daisey (27:06):

<Laugh>

Sophie Alcorn (27:07):

No point in just looking at all the risks, if you have nothing to risk. So it’s this shift of, of, of mindset and thinking to think about possibilities and growth and realize that it might be messy, but you will have the chance to refine. But if you obsess about getting things right from the beginning, you’re never gonna have a chance to grow. So I’ve invested what you don’t get from when you don’t get what you want, you get experience. So I have a lot of experience

Kevin Daisey (27:37):

<Laugh> no, I love it. Well all good things there. And that sounds from same mindset, same thinking. And yeah. I talked to a lot of attorneys, obviously on the show here and you know, some have figured it out some haven’t some won’t, I don’t think but yeah, you’re not a business center because you went to law school or, or taught how to run a business necessarily. So but I like when I see the ones that get it, and then you’re like, okay, they, they got it. I had a gentleman on here not too long ago. He had, you know, he had a CEO, a CFO, a whole C-suite, he owned the company solely, but he was like, he was operating like, you know, a big tech company, you

Sophie Alcorn (28:17):

Know, and I have a recruiter handling my COO search right now. We had 200 applicants. I’m gonna be delivered with 12 candidates for culture fit screening interviews in the next couple weeks. And I hope to have them onboarded in the next eight weeks. So it’s very exciting.

Kevin Daisey (28:35):

Excellent. Well, hopefully my name made it in the list of 12

Sophie Alcorn (28:38):

<Laugh>.

Kevin Daisey (28:40):

Well, that’s awesome.

Sophie Alcorn (28:40):

You got your own good thing going <laugh> absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (28:43):

I’m just kidding. I’m stuck here. <Laugh> no, one’s gonna hire me ever that’s for sure. I’ve been self-employed since 2006, so excellent. I told my wife I’m unhireable so this has to work

Sophie Alcorn (28:57):

<Laugh> yeah, I don’t, I don’t think I could deal with a Bo with a boss, so I get it. And now, but now it’s really just like, how do I, how do I cuz a law firm it’s just so easy to be trapped in it forever and never get out of the, the grind of it will take whatever you can give it. And if you’re a smart lawyer who knows how to do all the cases it’s, it’s hard to get freedom. So you have to be very deliberate about taking steps to free yourself. If your goal is to have a four hour work week or a different business, that’s also separate or whatever. It doesn’t happen magically. You have to take steps

Kevin Daisey (29:44):

A hundred percent. And just to, on to add to that, cause on the show here, I don’t, we don’t just invite like, you know, we, we, we try to cherry pick and, and hand pick all our guests. But sometimes we’ll have like single sole proprietors that we wanted to show. And just because we, you know, we reached out to them, they looked like a good fit. And but the sole, you know, the individuals that never added staff or other attorneys or instructor in place, most of them are older and most of them decline to get on the show or they just don’t show up or they have to reschedule because they work six, seven days a week. And again, I’m too busy. I can’t do nothing same with prospects like that. They, oh, I can’t do anything. I can’t mark it. And they’re just trapped. They’re they’re by themselves. They might have an assistant, but they’re maybe they’re doing okay, but they’re working themselves to death. Yeah. And so they can’t even take time to do something like this because it’s no benefit to them because it’s work they could be doing. So mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, but I see that a lot.

Sophie Alcorn (30:47):

Well, it’s really, it’s really common. And if you hit a certain level of income where you’re comfortable, then it’s really easy to fall into the mental traps of like, well, I don’t trust people. How would I delegate? They’re not gonna be as smart as me. I know how to do this really quickly. Yeah. There’s all of these limiting beliefs that, that keep us

Kevin Daisey (31:07):

Comfortable. Oh yeah. What if I lose that income? Because they did something there’s mental.

Sophie Alcorn (31:11):

Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (31:13):

So they’re really protecting, but now they’re just trapping themselves even more. <Laugh>

Sophie Alcorn (31:17):

Right. And, and, and having the courage to change things, and one way is being an entrepreneur, but like, if you want, if you want personal growth and developing yourself and, and you decide to turn your law firm into a business that doesn’t require you. That is a, a large journey of, of you you’ll face a lot of things and grow as a person. So it is not for the faint of heart. It takes a commitment.

Kevin Daisey (31:51):

Yeah. Yeah. But that’s, that’s just what you gotta do. Right. So well, Sophie, I don’t have any other questions for you. I think we’ve covered a lot here and I don’t wanna waste anymore of your time, but this,

Sophie Alcorn (32:03):

This was lovely. Thank you.

Kevin Daisey (32:05):

Yeah. So I think, you know, few takeaways, huge on what you’re doing with your, the podcast. You know, if you’re, if you have a firm don’t write off being, having a podcast, because maybe you’re in there specific niche or, you know, you’re in family law or something like that. There’s so many things that it can help and maybe not a podcast. It could be a video series on YouTube. It could be going live on Facebook. It doesn’t have to be a podcast, but just any kind of content like this, or whatever, strong considerate, there’s so many positives to it. And even if it’s just sending to prospective client, like you said, oh yeah, actually I did a whole segment on that question, you have boom, here you go. And they, they get to, and maybe the assistant even does that, or the paralegal says, oh, Hey you know, here’s Sophie answering this question.

Kevin Daisey (32:56):

They get to hear her, see her and feel like they have a connection with her eventually. And then say, you know what, I’m gonna use them because I feel like I know who they are and I’ve gotten clients like that. That tell me that. Yeah. They’re like, I feel like I know you Kevin. And I’m like, oh, and they’re like, yeah, but I just watch you on LinkedIn or something like that. So <laugh> and so it, when it works like that, you’re like, wow, that’s super cool. And, and so I just think there’s a huge takeaway of get yourself out there, put yourself out there, do these kinds of things. Whatever it could, whatever platform you’re interested in doing, just do it. And it will work well and have a system process and run your law firm like a business. That was, I think my big takeaway too, from this is, you know, you’ve gotta put yourself out there. You gotta take those chances and, and be able to delegate if you want to get out of the grind.

Sophie Alcorn (33:50):

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (33:54):

Well see, is there anything

Sophie Alcorn (33:55):

Else wanna, I have one more burning thing that I really wanna add to this discussion, Kevin? Absolutely. from a marketing perspective, clients, don’t like, nobody cares how sausage is made. Nobody cares if I am doing an L one or an E two or an O one, a if it’s counselor processing, if it’s status, what the filing fees are, nobody cares clients wanna know, can you solve my problem? How long will it take? How much money do I have to spend? How risky is it? Can I sleep at night? Can you help me? And so from, if you’re gonna start a podcast, if you’re gonna do content marketing, if you’re, if you’re gonna put a, if you’re gonna start your TikTok thing I think that an, an easy way to be more successful. And it’s scary. It’s super scary to have a niche as a lawyer because I’m like, oh God, if I, what if a university comes or a hospital?

Sophie Alcorn (34:51):

And I say that I do tech immigration. Will they not wanna hire me anymore? But I got so many more clients in the startup world when I committed to tech immigration. And I understood that client’s pain points and needs. And when you start talking to people like humans who have problems that need solutions and not about all the lawyer, mumbo jumbo stuff, like that’s our job that happens in our factories behind the scenes, but we’re changing people’s lives and delivering solutions to them. So if you’re gonna start a podcast, like maybe more than family law would be or be, be more specific, be willing to narrow your focus. So like instead of the family law podcast, you could be the podcast for mothers of preschoolers going through divorce. And, and like, there you go, you’re gonna get that whole segment of, of clients then

Kevin Daisey (35:44):

No, a hundred percent. I, I completely agree. And even in my space, we do digital marketing and, you know, for law firms, but still, you know, I look at like we’re actually getting ready to redo our site which is we’ve actually brought in some outside folks and we’re, we’re doing a whole strategy, but you know, it’s, everyone gets caught up in the same thing in our space too, is we we specialize in websites, SEO, social media, blah, blah. It’s like this, well, that’s not specialize in anything. So, but so you know, all our stuff is gonna be focused is really like, what is, what, what problems do we solve? Like that’s our whole website concept is that’s all, that’s all we do. That’s all we care about. And there’s a book they ask you answer by gentleman here was a pool company, but is crushed it blown up. And he just started blogging about anything. Any client ever asked, all transparency, pricing, everyth, anything you wanna know. And that’s kinda the whole basis of, of content marketing and blogging. It’s what it should be about. But but you know, so what problems do you solve? Talk about that on a level that they can understand? Yeah. because they don’t get it. If I could talk about SEO and algorithms and, and Google and all that stuff, like, I

Sophie Alcorn (37:01):

Just wanna know if you’re gonna deliver high quality leads to my law practice. Right. That’s it like, I don’t care how you do it. Well, don’t break the law, but yeah. <Laugh>

Kevin Daisey (37:12):

So, yeah, so that’s exactly what we’re what we’re doing, but we see that all the time and, and a lot of our law firms prospects are we go, and I don’t even know what they do. I can’t even tell you, you know, what they do, but if you go to your website and everyone go take a look at her site again, alcorn.law, connect with her, reach out. But it clearly says on there that they do business immigration. I don’t have it upper the second, but yeah. It’s super clear right up front and it’s not a bunch of technical stuff. So yeah, visas green cards, citizenship, boom kind know what I can get. So I would encourage everyone to connect with Sophie and especially if in the tech space business immigration, that’s what she’s looking for. If you have a client that has a need, please connect with her.

Kevin Daisey (38:03):

We also have the management partners newsletter that goes out every week which features our guest and all kinds of other stuff. We will sure feature your podcast Sophie in the newsletter. So don’t forget to mention that to me. But we have all kinds of resources in there from our guest books that our attorneys have have wrote if they have podcast. So the newsletter has a ton of information and helpful things in there too. So, so if you know any other way that people can connect with you directly

Sophie Alcorn (38:36):

Linkedin is great. If you wanna personally stay in touch Sophie Alcorn, and if you have a, a client who needs help with their tech or business immigration needs, you can reach out to us at Alcorn dot slash contact. And we would love to take a look and see how we can support you.

Kevin Daisey (38:51):

Well, excellent. Well, I appreciate you again, coming on here and sharing everything. I love what you’re doing. We have a lot of the same thinking and sounds like we’ve, you know, learned the, kind of the same things and learned the same path. So I’m interested to follow back up with you and see what you’re up to in the next time we talk. So

Sophie Alcorn (39:10):

Thank you, Kevin. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. This is very fun. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Kevin Daisey (39:16):

Absolutely. Well, just took on for a second. Everyone to get this episode now or in the future, if you’ve already seen this, you wanna find it again. It’ll be up soon on our website, thisisarray.com for such podcast. You can sort by practice area in this case for, so if you can search sort by immigration and or you can search by location, whether it’s a state or we’ve had international guests as well. So you can sort for different attorneys, see what they’re doing, how they’re growing their firms, and hopefully get some information there. If you’re interested in any kind of marketing, SEO leads, whatever it may be information on podcast. We don’t do that as a service, but happy to talk to you, Ray law.com reach out to me and we’ll help you with anything you need. And that’s it now. So if you can go eat some lunch

Sophie Alcorn (40:08):

<Laugh> thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Daisey (40:10):

All right, everyone. Have a great day. We’ll see you soon.