EPISODE 381 – Empowered with Gina Zapanta: Unveiling the Secret Sauce of Legal Success and Marketing

What’s your law firm’s “secret sauce”—the perfect combination of ingredients that time and again persuade clients to trust you, buy into what you have to offer, and ultimately retain you as their lawyer?

If you aren’t sure, or realize you have no secret sauce at all, this episode is for you.

After graduating from Loyola School of Law and passing the bar exam, Gina Zapanta knew she wanted to use her degree in a unique way. A longstanding fascination with industry growth in general motivated her to start a business right out of law school, assisting doctors who treated injured workers with legal claims.

In 2020, she co-founded Z.A. Lawyers with her husband Mike Alder, where she continues to use her marketing skills and expertise to help attorneys thrive.

Press play and learn:

• The inextricable link between mindset, lifestyle, and marketing successfully as a business
  owner
• The indispensable value of social media as a marketing tool (and why you do not need to
  reinvent the wheel!)
• Characteristics and qualities that make clients and customers gravitate toward particular businesses and business owners

Tune in for more insights and get in touch via Instagram (@GinaZapanta_ or @Mike.Alder), by emailing Gina at Gina@ZALawyers.com, or by searching “Empowered with Gina” across all platforms.

Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Secrets of Attorney Marketing Podcast. My guest is Attorney Gina Zapanta. She’s the founder of ZA Lawyers.  Gina doesn’t take an active role. She’s more of a silent partner, but her focus and her skill is now marketing. So, some of what we’ll talk about will apply to law firms. And having worked with lawyers myself for about 15 years, I know that they’d rather work on the law side of it and not the marketing side. And sometimes they tend to get taken advantage of by marketers and they have a real hard time with it. So, I’m hoping that, I think, actually, I’m confident we’re going to get some great insights from Gina on that for lawyers that are listening.  So welcome, Gina. Thank you for coming.

Gina Zapanta: Thank you for having me.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah. Tell me a bit about your journey. What made you go into the law first of all, and what was it like when you were starting out versus now?

Gina Zapanta: Well, I went into the law. I come from a family of physicians, and I realised I wasn’t very good at math and science. And so, after being at USC here in Los Angeles for a while, I truly did not know what I wanted to do. And the dean of my international relations programme said, why don’t you look at law school? Sky’s the limit once you become a lawyer and you can go any which way. And truly it was his recommendation that got me there. So, I went to Loyola Law School here in Los Angeles as well. And my second year of law school, I immediately knew that I did not want to take the traditional route of a practising lawyer. And so, I kept not.

Richard Jacobs: So, what was it about the law that made you say, I want to do this differently?

Gina Zapanta: Because what I understood of the law at that point and what I understood as far as what were job opportunities for lawyers at that point was very limited because what media and what the schools teach us, especially if you go to school like Loyola Law School, which is very litigation heavy, they want to pump out these plaintiff litigators usually. That’s one option. Or the other option is an associate working with billable hours, sitting in at an office doing paperwork and desk work. And that just did not resonate with me. That did not speak to me. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I knew then and there I said, well, that sounds like torture. And I don’t want to do that. But I knew I always wanted to serve and help people, but I wouldn’t do it by selling out and trying to fit into a box, if you will, that I already knew it was just going to drain the life out of me. And so, I understood, though, the value of having a law degree. And so, I graduated, and I passed the bar and always understood the value and leverage I would have no matter what I ended up doing in saying that I’m a lawyer.

Richard Jacobs: Great, how have you observed that women versus men work in and around the law? Are women treated very differently? Do they have an easier time, a harder time? Are there certain practise areas that are more amenable to them? What’s been your observation from the inside?

Gina Zapanta: Well, from my personal experience, I walk in a room, and I just see lawyers and I see that I’m a lawyer and I don’t realise that they’re men or women. I’m there to get the job done. I’m there to sell or get the client or do whatever.  So, I put myself on an even playing field with whoever’s in that room. I don’t care what they are, who they look like, whatever. I don’t care. Let’s get to business. Let’s make this happen. As far as the reality of what women lawyers, which again, I don’t like talking like that because women lawyers are just lawyers, their lawyers, but there are certainly pay discrepancies. There’s certainly the age old being dismissed, being undervalued, being spoken over, not getting credit for ideas or concepts that are clearly yours. And that has happened to me. It still happens to me. And so that’s the lay of the land right now. And it’s a lot better than it was, but certainly not as wonderful and perfect as it can be.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I’m neither a lawyer nor a woman, so that’s why I wanted the insight. I wanted to see what the difference was. Well, Erin, in terms of marketing, when did that first come into your mind? You started out as an attorney, and then when did the marketing piece come in and how? And how did you migrate towards thinking that way?

Gina Zapanta: I’ve always been fascinated with industry growth of any business, any type of industry business, and understanding what it takes and the secret sauce from like McDonald’s or Google or Amazon, or just the mom-and-pop shop down the road. What is the secret ingredient? What is that magic sauce to communicate your service or product effectively, to persuade a consumer to number one, trust you, and number two, buy into your brand, and number three, follow through and close the deal, whether it’s selling a product or getting them to sign up as your client. So fascinating to me. And that’s always been interesting. And so, I started a business out of law school, not as a lawyer. I had passed the bar. I was a lawyer, but I intentionally deactivated my licence because I was working at the time for orthopaedic surgeons. And I saw an opportunity to leverage my, again, my bar card and create a business as a concierge, personal injury, lien-based medical facility. And so, I saw that me being a lawyer would get me into lawyer-only events or be able to talk to colleagues much more quickly than a vendor, a non-lawyer vendor could. So, I saw opportunity with leverage there. I believed in the product. I believed in the surgeons offered, which were helping injured clients who had lawyers in the personal injury space here in California. And so, I’m a natural networker. I’m very comfortable, socially, around people. So, I would just put myself out there, put myself in front of people and sell the wares of this company, which I created for the doctors. And that was my first, I guess, taste, if you will, at working in the law, but from the medical side as I grew out this medical concierge, lien-based practise. So having a foot in both medical-legal world and understanding how the cases worked, how they came in, the nuances and the damp between doctors, providers, and clients and their lawyers. I’m sure you know the whole personal injury world. And that was very interesting. So, I got to see a little bit of all of it. And I did that for about two, 10 years. And then, so that’s how I got my start in the marketing side of it is really just getting out there, pounding the pavement and looking to other businesses outside of the legal medical industries and picking and choosing what I saw that they were doing and how I could apply it to the world I was in.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah. In law school, I would guess they probably don’t teach you much selling. And it seems like a lawyer has got a tough job because they got to be a lawyer. They have to have those skills. And they have to also kind of be like a psychologist for their clients. And then they also have to do marketing and sell each client on them to get them to retain them. So, I would guess those skills aren’t taught in law school. What do lawyers do? When does it hit them? Oh no, I got to do all these things too.

Gina Zapanta: Yeah. So, it’s a big disservice that most law schools do not teach the business of law. And in fact, my husband is a litigator and has his own firm as well. We understand that. And we see so many brilliant, brilliant lawyers come out and a lot want to go solo, but they face exactly what you’re talking about. No one taught them the business of law. You’re a business owner. The lawyer is a whole other department. You are a business owner. You’re the founder, the CEO, the accountant, the HR, the marketer, all of it. So, we have started mentoring programmes for lawyers in that space that want kind of a one-on-one coaching situation because we’ve done it. We’ve launched multiple businesses. We have three law firms across two states. And the, I would say a resource for any person seeking information is how they’re listening to this podcast now. Their phone, their laptop. We have one of the most, if any, the most powerful, powerful devices known to mankind to get us information in nanoseconds. You want information about anything, anything you could think of, it’s there in nanoseconds. So, I think people getting past realising, one, understanding they need to be educated about tax, marketing, whatever it is for them in the business realm. And then putting that question into Google, into a forum, into a, what do they call those things? With those closed chat rooms? What are those things? Oh, I forgot. List serves. There are resources beyond their imagination at their fingertips, literally. So, I think getting over the fact that, woe is me. Nobody taught me in law school how to be a business owner. I don’t know any business owners. Ooh, who cares? Solution is, you have opportunity, resource, and at least a starting point in your hands.

Richard Jacobs: Do you think even if a lawyer had the right mindset, if they’re a solo practitioner, is there literally enough time in the day for them to attract clients, service clients, and do marketing, and do all the other functions they’re supposed to do?

Gina Zapanta: Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s being done. Many people do it. And again, I appreciate that you said mindset, because that’s exactly what it is. We are our own worst enemies. We are our own worst obstacles, because people will get hung up in, I didn’t learn business school. I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t learn this stuff. I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t want to feel dumb, especially lawyers. We don’t want to feel dumb, right? Because we’re supposed to be the smartest people in the room, but we’re not, okay? In certain areas. And so, getting past that mindset and putting yourself in, I am a sponge. I want to absorb everything I can. And looking at the lifestyle you have to create for yourself to create the extra hours in the day to be able to do it. For instance, my husband and I wake up at 4 a.m. every day. Every single day we’re up at 4 a.m. Why? Because it’s healthy. But two, we have between 4 and 7 a.m. when the rest of the world is asleep, sound asleep, barely getting up, almost getting up, rushing out of the house, already waking up in a tizzy, pressed for time. By 7, 8, 9 o’clock in the morning, we have already churned out so much work. We’ve gotten our workouts in. We’ve meditated. We’ve checked our emails. We’ve worked on our marketing plan. We’ve sent out all the to-do stuff and it’s silent and nobody’s going to be answering you. Your phone’s not going to be going off. So, it’s all an intentional choice because to have a successful business and to market successfully is beyond just the business. It starts with you and your lifestyle. The mindset and lifestyle have to match the business, or it will not work.

Richard Jacobs: In the training itself in law school, do you think any of it actually counteracts the lawyer’s ability to do marketing and counteracts their seeing it as a business? Does it skew their mind in the wrong direction.

Gina Zapanta: Totally. I totally believe it does because it doesn’t encourage it. It doesn’t educate. There’s no emphasis on the business of law. So, you’re already setting them up to be little soldiers becoming associates in these big firms or not to be self-sufficient. You’re not setting them up for success in these law schools to do that. And so, they people are left on to their own devices really to seek out the information and learn. They’ll learn along the way if they really go for it, but they’ll make a lot of mistakes. But again, my husband and I see that and that’s why we offer this to lawyers who are going solo or are new to solo practise so we can help them shortcut to certain levels without having to make the mistakes, the costly mistakes that we’ve made along the way.

Richard Jacobs: So, when you’re consulting with, I don’t know if you directly do, but when you speak to other attorneys, what are some of the first things they need to change or think about when they want to do marketing or contemplate it?

Gina Zapanta: Again, it’s the mindset, the lifestyle. Take a look at your lifestyle. If you’re waking up at 6, 7 a.m. and then likely most people at this stage in the game have families, have a partner or some sort of relationship, and then there’s usually kids involved, you’ve got to run a tight ship with yourself. And so, the very first thing is they need to make sure that we go over their schedule. What is your schedule? Because there’s no sense us giving you the secrets and the keys to the kingdom if you have absolutely no wherewithal or bandwidth to even practise them. It’s a futile attempt. So, we need to understand it for what it is. You have to have your life set up to be ready to be a business owner, to be able to be a marketer, to be able to go to marketing events, to find time to go to the networking things without saying, well, I have this to do. I have to go to the kid’s game. I have to do this. I have to work at all this stuff. And our lives are like that. Our lives are extremely busy, but we have the mindset, and we’ve created the lifestyle to make it all fit.

Richard Jacobs: So, what are some of the common things that you have to tell other attorneys to get them into the business mindset, get them into shape? What are some of the mechanics now that you see successful attorneys do in their day-to-day office versus the unsuccessful ones?

Gina Zapanta: Understanding and not being scared of social media as a marketing tool. This is, if anything, if you could take anything from marketing for your law firm, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube. We have learned over the last three and a half years, we took a deep dive into it because in COVID, we were all forced to not do anything. And so, we had the opportunity to learn what the social media thing was. I just thought it was a place where you connect with your friends and see what everyone’s doing on the weekend, right? But that’s not what it is. And that’s not how, again, the big businesses, any business sees it. They see it as a vehicle to market. And so, putting yourself in that mindset as that business owner, selling your wares, selling your services, why are you the best lawyer? Why should somebody call you versus somebody else? Well, first of all, you need to get in front of them. And so, we have a very robust social media presence. Personally, my husband and I each have our own pages, which are growing exponentially and the firms separately. We didn’t start that way, but for someone just starting out, start your page for your firm. This is a free tool that gets you in front of masses of people in an instant. Secondly, only you know your brand best. Marketing companies are going to promise you the world. They’re going to promise you the moon and the stars, but who knows your brand better than you? If you’re starting out or you’re midway through, you need to be the one doing the marketing. You have to understand your brand and you won’t understand it until you actually get out there and get the reception from the audience. How are people taking your posts? What posts are more popular? Are the tech only posts with like an FYI? Hey, did you know that your rights are when you get pulled over, that these are your rights? Bam, bam, bam. Or do your videos perform better? And all that it requires is your time and your cell phone to do this. And so, it’s basically free.

Richard Jacobs: Well, I’ve seen a lot of attorneys talk about themselves when they’re on social media. We here at the law firm of X and Y have 50 years’ experience and we care about you and blah, blah, blah. What types of posts have you found make it work? Is it the frequency of posting? Would you put in the posts? What’s the formula look like for success in social media for a lawyer?

Gina Zapanta: Our formula for success is a few things. Consistency is king. Consistency is king. Out of sight is out of mind. You are in a saturated market going up against a tonne of other lawyers who either have a marketing budget or who have been marketing on social media for a while. So, you’re posting once a day or every other day or once a week. You’re not making any waves. Nobody’s noticing you. We, our strategy as far as posting, we do at least two posts a day and then multiple stories. And I’m talking about Instagram and multiple stories throughout our day. And we now at this point, because we’ve grown so much, we now have a team that helps us. But Mike and I are still very, very involved in our posting because that’s our, that’s our billboard, if you will, that’s our virtual billboard. So, we want to always have a tight handle on what is being put out for our image. Secondly, and this is so funny because it sounds so weird, is don’t reinvent the wheel. The second part of it is do not reinvent the wheel. A lot of lawyers get intimidated about social media because they say, well, I’m not an influencer and I don’t feel comfortable in front of the camera, and I don’t want to do silly dances. And I don’t know, I freeze in front of the camera. Stop that. Again, mindset. Stop. Nobody needs to know about you. We need to know about your firm. And you better go to bat for your firm, and you better be talking about that firm. And guess what? You don’t even have to think of the concept. Just go on Instagram, TikTok, whatever you want your platform to be. Start looking at pages and other lawyers whose style you like. It’ll resonate with you. You’ll see lawyer styles that you don’t like. The ones that like make law look like a jackpot in Las Vegas. That’s not my favourite because that does a massive disservice to our industry. But then I love other lawyers’ pages who are actually providing information in a very layman’s way because the audience they’re trying to hit are lay people who do not speak legalese, who don’t understand. And so, you need to understand your audience, but copy, copy, copy. Do not reinvent the wheel. Copy the style. Copy the words you’re using. It’s 100%, a billion percent okay to do. Do it. Just copy it. Take the work. Work smarter, not harder.

Richard Jacobs: Another tact I’ve seen is the lawyers are overly serious. Everything is edit. That doesn’t seem to go over well either. Maybe it’s just because they’re uncomfortable, but some of them are so deadly serious. I would say it’s a turnoff to potential clients.

Gina Zapanta: Oh yeah, we don’t do that. You have to be authentic to yourself. And that was going to be my last point is please do not try to put on that power suit and keep that serious face. I’m going to win you a million dollars. Please don’t do that. It doesn’t come up exactly what you’re saying. It does not resonate. Times have changed. Authenticity is everything. People can see you. I mean, you see it when you, if you go through social media, you’ll see pages where you’re like, they’re fakers or they’re just, it looks so staged and not real. And as humans, psychologically, humans will only want to align with people that are relatable, that people are like them, people that seem friendly and not a threat and not too smart for them. So psychologically, you want to be relatable. You want to be kind. You want to show you’re smart. You want to show you know what you’re talking about, of course, but coming off like I’m so smart and powerful and look at me in my suit and I’m going to win you $400 million. It’s kind of cheesy, but that’s just, some people love that. I do not, but that’s just my personal.

Richard Jacobs: Well, also too, I mean, no one, for the most part, no one calls a lawyer if they’re having a great day and want to share it because they have a problem. Someone died, divorce, bankruptcy, auto accident, whatever it is. So, I think the feeling of being in trouble probably scares people from calling lawyers. And then when they call them, if they’re very serious and very like brusque and they interrogate them as soon as they answer the phone, then they want to run away even more because they’re feeling bad in the first place.

Gina Zapanta: Exactly. And it’s intimidating. And then you bring in maybe population of people who don’t speak English as a first language, who have maybe documentation, questionable documentation status. So, you have layers upon layers of people who are very scared, insecure, not sure they have no idea about the law. And I appreciate that you said that because that’s absolutely true. And like I said, you need to know your audience, you are talking to people who have never even met a lawyer likely, right? So, our I know our magic sauce is that we are very authentic and we put ourselves out there. We put our lives out there, but that’s our magic because we’re so relatable and people love it. Like we talk about our divorce, our children, our remarriage, facing the day every day. Like I don’t want to wake up at four and work out. This is so hard, but I’m going to do it. And if I can do it, you can do it. And we become people’s friends, like people and you reach out to your friend. The first person you call, if it’s not your family, is your friend when you’re in trouble or you need something. And so fortunately, and it’s authentic, like Mike and I very much love putting ourselves out there and we get the reception from the people because they feel connected or safe, if that makes sense.

Richard Jacobs: Do lawyers allow you to help them work on their initial phone consult? Because I would think that’s a very like, you know, when someone calls, you know, criminal defence or PI or whatever, and they do that initial consult with the person, you know, a lot of times it’s free and they’re hoping that they’ll retain them. And I would guess that’s a very, you know, it’s my, you can’t touch that type thing. It’s a very personal thing to a lawyer. And I don’t know if they would allow you to help them work on their pitch. I mean, they could sell better and get more clients.

Gina Zapanta: A lot of lawyers are very greedy with their proprietary information. And I say greedy in a non-judgemental way, if you know what I mean. You’re right. It’s theirs. They’ve worked hard at it. It’s the dog-eat-dog world. I’m not going share anything with you. But again, my husband and I do not think that way. We are a wide-open book. Any of our tools or any of our lessons or anything we can share to help empower other lawyers, especially lawyers that are solo and all they need is just advice or, you know, someone to review their intake sheet or someone to tell them like when a case comes in, especially in the personal injury and employment space, that’s our jam. That’s what we do. Workers comp as well. So don’t call me with criminal defence stuff. I can’t help you. But we’re a wide-open book. And people know that. People in our industry know that. We’re very well known for give and expect nothing in return because that’s just how the industry is better by sharing our knowledge, by sharing what we know works. And so absolutely, we’ll look at people’s intakes forms and we’ll say, well, this is what we would do. We could do a mock client call even. It doesn’t take any of our time. If anything, we’re helping. We’re making a brand-new connection. And, you know, especially my husband and he’s been on the game for a while. His record speaks for itself. You know, he’s almost a 2.1 billion in recovery for his clients in personal injury and employment. So, the record speaks for itself. We know what we’re doing. We have nothing to hide or hoard or not share. That’s not at all our philosophy.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. What are some aspects of turning the practise into a business that just seem to be like the most difficult for lawyers to overcome?

Gina Zapanta: Again, being able to balance all of it, being able to balance all of it, it is absolutely do-able. You have to go back to the foundation. What’s your lifestyle like? You don’t have room for it in your lifestyle. It’s not going to happen. You’re going to turn to drinking. You’re going to turn to, you know, devices or methods to try to buffer it and just escape. Like that whole that’s a whole psychology podcast for another day. But then the second part is to understand that failure is the way. Failure is not a defining moment. It is simply a lesson. And we like to say the reason we are so successful is because we are willing to fail way more than most people. Because we understand failure is how we will grow, is how we will be successful. Because if I don’t fail, then I’m not learning. I have to fail. I have to learn what works, what doesn’t work. It doesn’t define me. But I’m embarrassed. Aren’t you embarrassed, Gina? Embarrassed of what? I have nobody to answer to but myself.

Richard Jacobs: That’s a good way to put it. It’s a mindset. Well, I mean, you know, as an attorney, you can’t win the amounts and the cases. You can’t win every single one. I think that attorneys have, you know, it’s like baseball, I guess, a batting record. Are there any statistics? I’m curious. I never thought about this. You know, in different practise areas, how do you know that you’re more successful than other attorneys in a given practise area? Like what’s the win rates or the amount of win rates you have?

Gina Zapanta: I don’t think there’s actual like statistics like baseball, but I guess people’s records of settlements and verdicts in the personal injury employment space, certainly. Other specialities, I’m not, I wouldn’t know. But certainly, in this world, you know, because this is the, this is the type of law where it can be very lucrative. And so, a lawyer’s success and ability directly correlates with the settlements and verdicts because it’s extremely difficult to get those kinds of numbers.

Richard Jacobs: Well, I can tell you, I did, you know, generated and sold DUI leads for a long time, like about 40,000 of them. And I saw, you know, the average attorney would convert like one in 10, you know, they would retain. The best ones I ever saw were like one in three. And some people were so bad, you can get 100 leads, they couldn’t convert it even if you stapled it to their forehead. So, it’s like a range of ability.

Gina Zapanta: Sure. Sure. And it all went, like you said, back to the person. What’s their lifestyle like? Do they set up? Are they set up for success? And so, understanding how to build that success and create that success, that’s something we’d love to share. And we know how to do really well. So, if anybody’s interested, they can reach out and contact me.

Richard Jacobs: I was about to ask you that. So, how can they reach out. What are the best ways?

Gina Zapanta: Okay. So, I encourage, well, obviously, please follow me on my Instagram, which is my name, GinaZapanta_(underscore). Or you can find me as well typing in empowered with Gina, and that’s across all platforms because I also have this women’s empowerment platform that’s, you know, a pivot from the law part. And then I would suggest that they follow my husband, Mike.Alder. His page pumps out a tonne of excellent information, motivational information, business, marketing advice for lawyers, especially solo lawyers, on the know-how and insight to how he does it, how we do it. Reaching out to either one of them, or you can email me at Gina@thealawyers.com.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. Excellent. Any other things I should have asked you, Gina, that we left out, or do you think that’s good?

Gina Zapanta: No, I think it was excellent. I appreciate you asking the really insightful questions, and I hope it has been helpful for people.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah, definitely. Well, excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Gina Zapanta: Thank you for having me.

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