In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Tom Ciesielka discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"Don’t get mad, get proactive." — Tom Ciesielka
Connect with Tom Ciesielka:
Twitter: @Tomciesielka
Facebook: TC Public Relations
Website: TCPR.net
LinkedIn: Thomas Ciesielka
Phone: 312-422-1333
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Tom Ciecielka 0:00
Most attorneys I've experienced get really upset when they read a story and they realize they were the better source for the article right? Okay. So you know, don't get mad get proactive is the way you handle that.
Narrator 0:16
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time, greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin!
Steve Fretzin 0:38
Hello there, everyone, and welcome to BE THAT LAWYER. My name is Steve Fretzin. And welcome to the show. If you haven't met me already, I am a business development coach for lawyers, helping them with their law, practice growth and everything from social media, to networking to you name it. And this is an opportunity for us to meet some wonderful people. One of the top PR guys in Chicago that I've known for many years is Tom selca. He's here with TC public relations. And I want to welcome you to my show.
Tom Ciecielka 1:07
Well, thank you so much, Steve.
Steve Fretzin 1:09
Awesome. And so is a fun way to start. I thought if there's something fun or interesting that you may want to share that maybe not everyone knows about you anything jump out that you want. I didn't tell you about that before the surprise questions I get to enjoy watching you squirm a little bit.
Tom Ciecielka 1:25
Yeah, well, people don't know that I'm a graduate of the Second City. Oh, I didn't know that. That's awesome. I'm graduate Second City, which has been an immeasurable assistance in PR, because you sometimes get mixed up as you go. You know, the client doesn't give you all the information. And the reporter says, Well, what about this, this, this and I go, well, like, this is what I can tell you. Now I'm gonna get right back to you with the rest of the information. So that's one thing I probably the second thing is that more later into being a clown going to nursing homes, I was what they call a caring clown, caring clown, caring clown. And I would just visit folks at nursing homes, and they were just happy to have you visit them and tell a joke or sing a Silly Song. And they, you know, get the wig and the makeup and everything and go room to room. And it's wonderful. And one of the things I learned was, and this is taught by my clown mentor, she taught me that you know what, these people in nursing homes don't have a lot of control over their lives. And so if you walk in there, and they hate you, and they tell you to get out, you've given them a gift, because they normally can't tell people to get out.
Steve Fretzin 2:21
Right. So and now let me ask you this question. Because you mentioned Second City. Does that mean you can't say no. You always have to say yeah, and then, right. Yes. And go with it. Right. And yeah. Right, checking right. All right. Well, I'm going to come up with more things that you that I'm going to try to get you to say no to, no, we're not going to do that. And of course, those are very cool things. And I know you as being a very generous person is a giver. And maybe give a little bit of your background as as a PR guy for many years. So so people can really understand not only your background, but also how that relates to legal because, you know, that's what this show is all about.
Tom Ciecielka 2:57
Sure. Well, the way my background and latest legal is in several ways. First of all, you're right. I love doing things that help people, you know, so over the years, I've worked with medical malpractice, personal injury, some other lawyers, you know, working with the City of Chicago for consumer advocacy. And when I love is when you're doing the work, you're publicizing the work of the attorneys, and it's for a good cause. And that's something I've just found over the years that the folks I work with have high credibility. They're honest. And in most cases, even when they win that big $10 million settlement, you know, we read about against a hospital or medical malpractice, they given money back to fix that problem, because they realized it was negligence, and that maybe there was an education that was not being done at the hospitals and they actually pay to help fix it. So it doesn't happen again.
Steve Fretzin 3:42
Yeah, really, really great. So and then translate that to more about your background and PR and specifically, you know, kind of how you got started with all this?
Tom Ciecielka 3:51
Oh, sure. Well, the way I got started was years ago, I was actually a producer for national public television special, which won an Emmy Award and couldn't afford a publicist. So I was doing the publicity for that. And I was getting on, you know, CNN, the Associated Press, you know, all over the country and national media. And people said, Can you do that for me? And then eventually, that morphed into, I can't say the name, but one of the 800 pound gorilla law firms, I was working for a PR agency at the time that worked for one of these big firms in Chicago. And I just learned that public relations is getting that positive message out there, regardless of whether it's entertainment, or mergers and acquisitions, and I just sort of transitioned into it.
Steve Fretzin 4:29
Okay, got it. Got it. And then you up to your current business you're working with with lawyers and law firms, what are some of the things that you focus on? helping them with?
Tom Ciecielka 4:39
Well, I always joke I go, you guys write a brief and you just handed me 100 page document. And so the joke is, I have to take that 100 page document with you know, 10,000 words on it and turn it into a 300 word, pitch to the media. Yeah. How do I distill it? How do I boil it down, hideaway, distill it, and you have to remember if we're talking about consumer media, you So if we're talking about the people who might hire you as a medical malpractice, real estate attorney transaction, maybe even trusts and estates, that you can't use big words, you know, they've done some studies, and they find that the reading level for most media is around the fifth grade, fourth grade reading level. And obviously, that's not where lawyers are with their academic background and the words that they have to use in the legal documents. So I find that I have to be the translator.
Steve Fretzin 5:25
Right, right. And what types of problems and challenges are you seeing with lawyers and law firms where they would need you or work with you?
Tom Ciecielka 5:33
Well, you know, yeah, I was just talking to a lawyer I'm working with out in New York City. And I just started working with him, and he did a great job of give me all this copy. And I said that this is terrific. We're going to work on, you know, publicizing these cases in the litigation. And, and I said, you know, we just started working together, you know, what's been your experience with the media goes, No comment. And I said, Well, that's good. However, we have to remember, depending upon what we're doing, we might have to make a comment. And it might be an interest of our clients, depending on the case. So that's probably one of the, you know, the biggest challenges and, and I get it, you know, lawyers are too busy doing other things, you know, thinking about logistics with the press release the quotes, but you have to remember, my words have to be just as precise as what they put into a brief where any kind of legal filing, so I have to get it right. And I have to get it right from them. So they no chasing them down. I remember years ago, I was talking to a professional marketer inside a law firm. And actually, she was doing something pretty benign, just need the lawyer to sign off on business cards, and could never get him to sign off on his business card. So she actually waited for him outside the restroom, and got his approval. So I don't go to that extreme. But you know, a lot of times I find it's just having to understand that there's a timing to this. So if you're filing tomorrow in federal court, it's time to get good to the media's probably a week in advance. So it hits the day you're filing hits the courts.
Steve Fretzin 6:49
Okay, so there's a level of publicity that law firms and lawyers are going to want to use you to whether it's, you know, wins in court, whether it's just how does someone you know, get their get the word out about their expertise and their specialization and their success? And then is there also another side of it that might involve avoiding risk or trying to minimize bad press?
Tom Ciecielka 7:11
Absolutely. I think there's, you know, we talk about things called crisis communications, right. And, and for the most part, every business is subject to a certain type of crisis situation. You have the head of the firm does something bad, yeah, that becomes public or is posted on social media by an employee or former employee, you have a situation where it's a national disaster, you know, there's a fire, there's a flood. You know, it's interesting, I was just walking into my building today, and I've never seen a hand sanitizer at the middle of the elevator lobby. And I know why that's there. Because the Coronavirus, right. So there's that kind of risk that just is within your business. And secondly, a lot of times your client, which might already be in trouble creates additional liabilities, because you know, they're going to take a document that maybe is for attorneys eyes only, and pull something out of it and share that with a friend put on social media, you know, talk about it in public, or maybe the media gets to them directly, and had did not talk to the attorney attorney first. So that now your your client has now created, you know, a crisis situation that you're going to have to get ahead of, right.
Steve Fretzin 8:10
So there's things that you can, you can sort of mitigate on one end. And on the other end, there's things that can be promoted in publicize is a way to expand, you know, the people's awareness of it. Do you have a particularly interesting story of on both sides, maybe starting off with one where it was really about that? Risk Management, and then another side where it was something where someone had something really great to publicize, and you were able to help them really take it to another level?
Tom Ciecielka 8:38
Sure. I mean, in the risk management side, I got a call from an attorney, he had a client in Illinois, we'll just say a service business, okay. And the the CEO, which was the founder of the of the service business, a closely held family company, unfortunately, had one too many DUIs. And it was going to go from a slap on the wrist or fines to now he's going to have to do jail time. And the concern was, Oh, this gets out in the public, our competitors are going to jump on it. Yeah, our clients are going to be questioning our integrity. And so literally, what I had to do is I had to walk through every audience that matter to that company, everywhere from his bank, where they had, obviously their mortgages and loans to the media who might be calling when this became public, to what do you do when you bring in the employees into the conference room to in the bad news that, you know, our CEO and founder is going to be locked up for the next you know, two years. And so the good news there was we totally mitigated that we manage the message, we kept it quiet, we communicated with employees, and they were respectful that they honored the owner. And I'm happy to say he he's he's out and he's in a good place and and and nobody was able to capitalize unfortunately on we all make mistakes and he he paid his debt and it came came clear. Now I talked about you know, the you know, the other side, you know, a lot of times When I'm working with medical malpractice or personal injury or things of that nature, one of the key factors is Who's first? You know, so I've had some, you know, public transportation accidents, I've had some sexual abuse cases, where the attorneys were the first one to file the lawsuit, get the complaint in register, you know, whatever court, they were gonna, you know, file this lawsuit against the company or file the police report. And once they're the first one, they often kind of set the tone for the case going forward, because they were first, or they had the biggest client. And so in that case, the positive side is number one is the information gets out number two, because that lawyer is the first one associated with that incident. They're the ones getting the calls for additional plaintiffs
Steve Fretzin 10:41
Got it. Got it. So so getting out first getting in or out first, however we want to look at it is a great way to, to kind of put yourself in front of the others. Absolutely. Great, great. And um, you know, one of the things that I know attorneys are regularly confused about, and maybe I am as well, at times, it's really about social media. How does public relations fit in with social media?
Tom Ciecielka 11:03
Yeah, well, a lot of times you have to remember that when something appears in one medium, it can't translate to another medium. So we know that what you put on Facebook versus Twitter, versus LinkedIn versus Instagram versus tik tok. And you know what, let's keep going through the alphabet, right? It's all very different. So for example, we had a law firm client had a big story in a online news publication about the free speech and civil rights. And it was great. It was it was on the homepage for a while, but it doesn't stay on the home page for a while, obviously, stories move. However, on social media, they had close to 1 million followers, you know, this particular news outlet that dealt with you know, free speech and things like that. So we wanted to make sure that we were capitalizing on that certainly making sure that that was being shared, encouraging our followers who to share it, and obviously getting out there are networks, and then sending it out and blasting it to our clients and prospective clients so they could see the great publicity we're getting. So I think as we know, there's certain politicians whose names we won't bring up obviously has an understanding of Twitter. And they realize that when you read even the mainstream media, many times it's the social media that's driving the mainstream media, not so much the other way around.
Steve Fretzin 12:09
Right, right. In are there things that you're either seeing or that you're identifying on social media that are hazardous as it relates to how people represent themselves versus maybe safer place?
Tom Ciecielka 12:22
Yeah, well, there's the first place since we're talking to lawyers on this podcast is, and it's a national international podcast, is you do have to first look at whatever the rules are in your state as far as Attorney advertising, Attorney marketing, right public opinion, so or what you say in the public. So we know the American Bar Association has their their rules and guidelines. And many states typically, for the most part will copy it with some modifications, you know, pretty much here in Illinois, they pretty much use what the APA says as far as pretrial publicity, and you know, things of that nature. So I would say that's one of the first things you want to do. Most law firms do set up a social media policy within their firm. So make sure we're having loose cannons with within our ranks, so to speak. Sure. And then And then secondly, a lot of firms will will clamp on like, for example, when we had that case that I mentioned with the CEO had that, you know, the the UI issue, the first thing we had to do was to get a good monitoring system in place, so that we were literally real time monitoring Yelp, their Google page, you know, the Google business page, Facebook, you know, Twitter linked anything that was public that we could monitor, only because we went to see where things popped up first, to decide whether we had to respond to it or not.
Steve Fretzin 13:30
Right? And are there things about social media that you recommend helps people build their brand or helps get them publicity, that might be more than just the standard post that really just kind of comes and goes and doesn't really have legs?
Tom Ciecielka 13:45
Well, what I find is, is that with social media, particularly since we're talking about media relations, and publicity is is that many times the people you want to talk to so for example, let's say to somebody at the Wall Street Journal, who writes about mergers and acquisitions, and you go, I really want to connect with that person, because I've got this big deal coming up in Chicago, or Detroit or New York, whatever that is, is that it's a wonderful tool to get the people because, you know, so often their email addresses if they're made public, you can't find, but yet, you know, friending them direct messaging them, whether it be on Facebook, or Twitter, or, you know, particularly LinkedIn, you know, I find, you know, people sometimes forget, LinkedIn is still somewhat social, both professional. And for me, a lot of lawyers are getting business from that, because what they're doing is going into the networks, they're using very sophisticated searches to find people who can introduce them to say, in this case, maybe to media contacts, or in some cases, they're going to publish the story, you know, on LinkedIn, and then their friends are going to share that or people are going to find it. You know, I even myself, I know a lot of times when I publish on on LinkedIn, you know, I'm monitoring, you know, who's looking at it, and then I see who's looking at it many times I go back to them and touch base and see if I can give him some more information.
Steve Fretzin 14:54
So it sounds like the proactive side of LinkedIn is a big deal. Something that I've been doing lately. has been also reaching out to people, when I have a post that I think is valuable, educational, etc, to ask some of the people that I know that are big LinkedIn users or that are clients of mine that you know, that are willing to just share it, and to share it with their network and like it and, you know, plot it and all the different buttons that exist, then that's been really helpful to get posts that are maybe again, beyond the ordinary that you want to get promoted viral, a little more viral than maybe they would would be, you know, naturally. So I think that that there's some proactive things that you can do on LinkedIn, whether it's advanced searching, whether it's it's again, going after a particular piece of person, the media, or just just making sure that your posts are going a little more viral, that all sort of adds up?
Tom Ciecielka 15:45
Well, I'll tell you something, I know if I should tell you the secrets the secret?
Steve Fretzin 15:48
Well, I want secret. I know my community wants secret. So
Tom Ciecielka 15:52
why do I do it to you? You probably don't even know it. Okay, is I actually have my assistant, go into my LinkedIn profile. Because bottom line is, I mean, it was, as we were talking, before we started the interview, we're booked right now, and I can't, you know, I don't stay up all night in my LinkedIn, you know, so. So she literally goes into my LinkedIn profile every day, looks at my feed. And I've given her list of all my contacts. And I said, Now look at my contacts that I want you to focus on. And when you see interesting news that they have, you save that for me, because it's a save function for, you know, posts or articles, so that when I have time I batch reaching out to them. So if it's a reporter, The Wall Street Journal, just, you know, posted some article you want to brag about, yeah, she'll pull that for me. And I'll say, hey, Bob, great, I'm glad you picked up on you know what, you know, what's going to happen with federal regulations with litigation for communications companies, or something like that. And it's a way to keep that relationship going. And that's what attorneys can do. They could literally give some directive to their assistants, or admin, whoever that is, and say, you know, here's what we look for, you save it, and then obviously, they can go in and make and personalize it, they just have time to scan all the feeds all the time.
Steve Fretzin 16:56
Yeah, so it sounds like you're, you're doing something and I've done a little bit of this. And again, I think it's it's about maybe to some degree reciprocation, but you've got, um, proactive, you know, sharing and proactive commenting on the people that are influencers and the people that are, you know, unique in a space. And I think by doing that, you know, they're saying, oh, here's Tom paying attention to me, and being very positive about something that I posted. And, you know, maybe when you post something, they'll turn around and do and, you know, return the favor. So I think there's a lot of that, and maybe that's what makes social media social, right? It's the interaction between people versus just putting content out there. And just, you know, just continually putting it out there and hoping that something happens with it, when in reality, I think we're all kind of blinded by just the total mass of content that's being put out there, that it's amazing, isn't relevant to us, or it's just, we're just kind of scrolling through it, that we find ourselves scrolling through things these days, and not really paying attention. But if something has 1020 3050 comments on it, it's interesting to you, I think the likelihood that you're going to check it out is also you know, greater.
Tom Ciecielka 18:02
Well, it's interesting, I had a client this past week that wrote an op ed and he wanted to, he wanted it to be in a big place, he wanted to be the New York Times, we want to be the Wall Street Journal or USA Today. Now, there's ways you can throw it over the transom. And I'm not saying it doesn't work, certainly go to a web page and say this is I submit an op ed or a letter, you know, things like that. But through LinkedIn, I know a lot of the op ed editors and all those places. And I just dropped my notes, say, Hey, I got this thing going on with this client, which we'll check it out. And what would normally take three days to get a response, I get a response within an hour. So if I need to move on to somebody else to talk to them about this, I'm not waiting three days under the standard operating procedure I'm getting, I'm going right to the right person, getting an answer in a third of the time, so that I can be more effective in my outreach for the client.
Steve Fretzin 18:47
Okay. And let me ask you this. I mean, you know, again, is the PR expert, working with lawyers and law firms. Maybe you can share like one or two things, I'm going to give you two different scenarios. You can't say no to a second city. Number, no, give me two things that you believe lawyers can do on their own to help build their brand to get press out there and they don't need you. They don't need me. They can do it grassroots, through social media, whatever, okay. And then I'd like you to also share two things, or maybe the scenario or the situation where maybe there's two different scenarios where they would need to hire you or someone like you, hopefully you right, but that give me the two the two on their own and the two that you know, you're in this situation, you're going to need someone like me, and here's why.
Tom Ciecielka 19:32
Right. Okay, so the first one is what can do on your own? Yeah, the first thing most attorneys I've experienced get really upset when they read a story and they realize they were the better source for the article. Right? Okay. So you know, don't get mad get proactive is the way you handle that. And the first thing they can do is, is to reach out to those news contacts. And say, you know, and this is and I have a lot of times when you and I have spoken at events, I actually pass this out at the presentation dear editor do your writer saw this article really appreciated? And then you offer them a piece of complementarity? You mentioned three things. But there's two other points you should have added or something contrarian? Well, that's true. Most experts are saying this, this is what I've experienced in my practice in that direct area, so that you strike that bridge that you can do, you know, by yourself. The second thing is, you mentioned earlier about like putting on a monitoring service, okay, those things can be kind of expensive, you can spend $500,000 a month for a very sophisticated dashboard, you can start right off with Google Alerts. Okay. Right. So number one is you better have your name and your firm's name set up in Google Alerts, to I would do a Google Alerts search for the topics that matter most to you. So that when those stories come up, you know, so for example, if you do, you know, litigation with environmental pollution, okay, that you are watching for those stories. So that gives you a clue about who you might want to talk to, as opposed to saying, Okay, I got to go searching, now it comes to you, and then you get your feed every day, and then maybe once a week, you reach out to those folks. So those are, those are two things you can do, you know, right away,
Steve Fretzin 21:07
and it sounds like a one two punch, meaning you can, you know, get the Google Alerts and have that all ready to go. And then now you're getting all these notifications, where then you can be proactive to reach out to the media source, and, and maybe, you know, talk to them or improve something that you know, offer some ideas or add value for them.
Tom Ciecielka 21:24
And particularly if you're dealing with a national, you know, so So for example, if you're dealing with issues in the workplace, okay, so right now rich concern is my workplace safe. We just saw in Chicago, they're shutting down major conferences that normally come to the city 1000s of people, right. So if you're in Chicago, you're an expert in certain areas, you can be, you know, looking for that, you can reach out to the folks and then you're timely with, you know, you know, certainly with Breaking News, and if it's a trending topic, and sadly, you know, they'll say the Coronavirus is going to be a trending topic, you can then take that message, sort of copy and paste it for all these people gonna be reaching out to and simply obviously change their name, change the story that you're bad, so it's a little personalized, because the biggest mistake that people can make is you blast something out. Because even if you create your own media list, you send a blast this out, and that tends to get lost. So you can certainly be personal when you're reaching out to folks, that's certainly one of the big things you can do on your own.
Steve Fretzin 22:16
Gotcha, gotcha. And then Alright, so there's two scenarios, I'm just gonna limit it to two to make sure we can cover it. Two things where a lawyer is looking to go next level, and you know, and there might be something where, you know, they might need to hire you and they can't do it themselves. What would that look like?
Tom Ciecielka 22:32
Well, usually, when a lawyer wants to go next level, they want to be top of mind, in the media's eyes, you know, so for example, I'm not going to mention names, but there's a personal injury lawyer here, who was on vacation in Florida, he happens to do a lot of aviation accidents.
Steve Fretzin 22:46
Okay, I think I know who you're talking about.
Tom Ciecielka 22:48
But we won't name names, they won't name names. And he was on vacation in Florida. And for some reason, NBC News or ABC or CNN, I can't remember who called upon him while he was on vacation in Florida to talk about this accident, you know, this plane crash in the Andes, or wherever it was, yep. Only because he was, you know, top of mind. Now, this particular attorney didn't get there overnight, you know, they just do a Google search and say, who's the best attorney to interview on this, it was three years in the making. So I would say the first thing is, is to think of the long, you know, the long haul, if you know, if you're gonna specialize in a particular area of law that you want to be known for, you know, I was working with the intellectual property law firm some years back. And one of the things they were great at, which is very interesting now is they were great at how American businesses can deal with China, particularly with intellectual property, which doesn't quite have the same rules and regulations as we have in the US with protecting intellectual sharing, but at the same time, you can't be afraid. So they were the ones who could always talk about are you afraid to do business in China? Well, here's how you overcome that and how you can still protect intellectual property. But to be known for that expertise, could take three, six months, maybe a year, and then you're known as intellectual property expert, and for us businesses doing business in China. So you know, probably the first the first scenario, okay. And I think the the second scenario is having them literally coming in and meeting with the attorneys and just talking to them about what we're working on. Maybe you've seen this, do you go into a firm? And you realize nobody's talking to each other? Right, that cross selling within the firm?
Steve Fretzin 24:13
Yeah, yeah. Right. It's rampant.
Tom Ciecielka 24:14
Right? Well, that happens in PR, too. You know, when I mentioned this example, about the intellectual property issue, and with the Chinese, you know, US firms in China, it turns out that there were three areas because you know, intellectual property have trademark, you have copyright, you have other kinds of infringements, right? Well, all those are three separate departments or four separate areas in the law firm, they weren't talking to each other. I was able to draw the thread together. So I would say long term, you actually need someone to come in, listen to what you're going on. Because so often the minor is really the major, you know, for the media, and you can't you just don't see it, you have a blind spot, because you're too you know, head down in the weeds with getting all the the words right on the on the filings with the litigation, and you're forgetting there's something that could be really newsworthy within that.
Steve Fretzin 25:00
Yeah, really interesting stuff you know? appreciate your being on the show I think we're going to kind of wrap things up Is there anything that you'd like to share or promote your website anything that how do people reach you sure.
Tom Ciecielka 25:11
They want to reach me to externally go to the website it's tcpr.net like top cat public relations that any tea certainly welcome to give me a call you know 3124221333
Steve Fretzin 25:26
Well, that's it so everybody that's looking to take their law firm law practice to the next level looking for some real professional help Tom's the guy I've known Tom for many years, and I always hear great things about him and, and I always enjoy talking with you. So thanks for thanks for being my guest.
Tom Ciecielka 25:42
Well, thank you.
Steve Fretzin 25:43
For those of you listening if you enjoyed today's show, please tell your attorney friends and colleagues about it as well as liking us on all the different mediums, the stitchers in the Spotify and the Googles and all that and also if you feel that there's someone that you know, it could be you it could be someone you know, that'd be a great guest for my show. Please email me at Steve@fretzin.com can always visit my website Fretzin.com as well. And again, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the show and that you're one step closer to being that lawyer confident organized a skilled Rainmaker. Take care everybody.
Narrator 26:21
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.