{"id":13986,"date":"2011-01-14T11:43:19","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T18:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=13986"},"modified":"2011-01-14T11:47:09","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T18:47:09","slug":"hiring-a-new-employee-when-your-personal-and-business-lives-coincide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13986\/hiring-a-new-employee-when-your-personal-and-business-lives-coincide\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiring a new employee. When your personal and business lives coincide."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written here before about my experiences with web marketing. In general, it’s been a resounding success. But getting 90 to 95 percent of my clients from the web puts a lot of my eggs in one basket. Sure, it’s a pretty diverse basket – the various search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, the various legal-reference websites, Facebook, YouTube – are unlikely all to collapse at once. <\/p>\n

But I’d like to be diversified. Fortunately the past year means I can add an employee. I’ve thought about the kind of employee: an attorney to handle additional case load? a legal assistant who can do basic administrative work and keep my Quickbooks?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I needed to think about what I’d ideally want. I’d ideally want someone who can be great on the phone. So much of being hired depends on the front-line person who can answer the phone in a welcoming manner, sort calls and provide basic information, and – this is key – identify the callers who need to speak to the lawyer. A great front-line person is precious. A lousy front-line person can actively drive away potential clients.<\/p>\n

I also wanted someone who can appear in court alongside me, deal with paralegal issues, and handle filings. That paralegal work – keeping calendars, making sure clients show up for court dates, dealing with other lawyers’ and prosecutors’ requests and inquiries – is time consuming, but crucial.<\/p>\n

Ideally, though, I wanted someone who could help me grow the business. Someone who could help me reach beyond the web. Someone who could help me grow my local referral network. Someone who could think about new avenues for expansion (adding new practice areas? how about consulting with other lawyers or professionals about how to grow their businesses? how about hosting seminars gear toward recent grads or lawyers about how to take advantage of the web and social networking?)<\/p>\n

To find that person would be something special. But I was lucky enough to do so.<\/p>\n

My wife – who is currently a senior consultant with a multinational corporation – has Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written here before about my experiences with web marketing. In general, it’s been a resounding success. But getting 90 to 95 percent of my clients from the web puts a lot of my eggs in one basket. Sure, it’s a pretty diverse basket – the various search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, the various […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-flourishing","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7672,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/7672\/i-need-software-advice-for-bloodhoundblog-unchained\/","url_meta":{"origin":13986,"position":0},"title":"I need software advice for BloodhoundBlog Unchained","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We're getting ready to start handing out homework assignments for the folks coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. As has been noted, my piece of the program will entail doing hard-headed stuff at the server level. To do that work, students will need a web browser, which everyone has, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/photography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7167,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/7167\/the-twitter-experiment-swrake-seeks-companion-for-possible-ltr\/","url_meta":{"origin":13986,"position":1},"title":"The Twitter Experiment: SWRake Seeks Companion for Possible LTR","author":"Chris Johnson","date":"February 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Alright.\u00a0 I talked about posting my results on this post. Today's pay pal of $575.00 allowed me to cross the finish line, early.\u00a0\u00a0 I have blogs to build, SEO to SEO, copy to write, PHP to PHP and more work than I can possibly do.\u00a0 And way more than that,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10552,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10552\/into-the-belly-of-the-beast\/","url_meta":{"origin":13986,"position":2},"title":"Into the belly of the beast…","author":"Damon Chetson","date":"December 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"So I've been building a criminal practice... I've now reached the point that I'm bringing in enough clients to make that self-sustaining in terms of paying the bills and generating some income. Criminal practice is fun, but limited in terms of compensation. My intention has always been to add at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8371,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/8371\/a-quick-random-thought\/","url_meta":{"origin":13986,"position":3},"title":"A quick, random thought","author":"Geno Petro","date":"May 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not that I couldn't somehow get my hands on a late model Ferrari if I really wanted one (and I doubt I'm any different than most happily married men of my demographic in this regard). 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Stated simply -- Relying on savings + a free and clear home + Social Security will land you in the poor house not too many years after your retirement party is long\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Investment"","block_context":{"text":"Investment","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/investment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4192,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4192\/tech-talk-chrome-a-theoretical-mactablet-session-tracking-and-a-cheap-and-reliable-phone-based-amanuensis-is-that-too-much-to-ask\/","url_meta":{"origin":13986,"position":5},"title":"Tech talk: Chrome, a theoretical MacTablet, session tracking and a cheap and reliable phone-based amanuensis — is that too much to ask?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Chrome: Yawn. Firefox, OTOH, is coming along nicely. I now run it side-by-side with Safari on my Mac. 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The user interface of the iPhone is actually a hugely subversive paradigm shift in computer design: Tapping,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13986"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13991,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13986\/revisions\/13991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}