- CEO Story: After graduating from law school Brittany worked in a big firm and handled cases for insurance claims which for her, was no fun and very exhausting. At one point she represented the side of homeowners and landowners which she noticed she did really well and fell in love with. After some time she worked for another firm and began to think of pursuing her dream of having her own business and sparking that entrepreneurial spirit within her. With a little push from her fiancé, she started marketing herself on social media posting videos that gained a lot of traction and bringing in clients. And so on October 1st, 2020, she opened her own firm.
- Business Service: Help homeowners and property owners if the insurance company won't pay or doesn’t pay enough to repair their home after damage from a storm, fire, etc. Brittany’s podcast is where she shares her knowledge and passion for business as well as helping clients in her law firm.
- Secret Sauce: Modern law firm, 100% remote. Using modern techniques and tools. Communication and efficiency. Very intentional, strategic, and focused on the values. Crafting the client experience through communication and efficiency.
- CEO Hack: Thought shifting – taking something negative thought/belief into something positive.
- CEO Nugget: Get confident in your abilities and you will get confident in your executions.
- CEO Defined: Being able to design and run a company that has value and integrity in the outcome that you wish to see in the business in your industry.
Website: lawyerbritt.co
Instagram: lawyer.britt
TikTok: lawyer.britt
YouTube: Lawyer Britt
Facebook: Lawyer Britt
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Transcription
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00:29 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:56 – Gresham Harkless
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today, Brittany Alexander of Premier Property Law and the Modern Professional Podcast. Brittany, super excited to have you on the show.
01:08 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Thanks, Crash, excited to be here.
01:10 – Gresham Harkless
Yes, I love everything that you're doing. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Brittany So you can hear about some of the awesome things that she's doing. Brittany Alexander Esquire, founder and CEO of Premier Property Law and the host of the modern professional podcast is revolutionizing the virtual practice of law and teaching other professionals how to create 7 figure businesses with the power of personal branding and content creation. She launched her firm as a 1 woman show in October 2020 and signed 100 clients within her first 100 days. And through her strategic use of social media platforms like Instagram, she grew her company to 1.78 million in year 1 with an advertising budget of 0. Brittany, excited again to have you on the show here about all the awesome things you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
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01:55 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
I sure am.
01:57 – Gresham Harkless
Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock. I know I touched on a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
02:05 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
So I actually got started. I mean, you know, I'm a lawyer, right? So it goes all the way back to law school. When I had no idea what I was going to do, I joined a big firm out of law school. They had a really big insurance defense division, if you will, department. And I'd never read an insurance policy before and never even really knew anything about property insurance. But I kind of fell into handling these insurance defense cases, and quickly learned that working for the insurance companies is absolutely no fun. It was just draining and exhausting. And I felt like I wasn't really doing the good that I had set out to do when I actually started going to law school. So I flip-flopped, went to the plaintiff's side, and loved it. It was amazing. It was so much fun. I love working for the homeowners and property owners. And I actually, got pretty good at representing them and knowing what the intricacies of insurance law were.
So after some time doing that on the plaintiff's side, working for another firm, I started thinking to myself, you know what, I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I've always wanted to have my own business. And it kind of came to me and my fiance nudged me a little bit saying, Hey, open your own law firm, you could do this for yourself. So a little bit before that, about 3 months before I started marketing myself on social media. So I started posting videos about like, what happens if your roof is leaking and how you report insurance claims like not sexy stuff at all. But I started to get a lot of traction. There were not a lot of people talking about this on social media at that time. It's about June, or July of 2020. It got such great traction. I started bringing in leads 3 months later. I opened my own firm on October 1st, 2020, almost 2 years ago.
03:35 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that. Especially to hear, you know, I think so many times we don't hear like the behind-the-scenes of, you know, everything that leads you to success. Obviously, it wasn't like in 2020 you had the expertise and knowledge you already built that up and you had those experiences and found out what you didn't like to do as much and found out what you love to do. And then you were able to kind of lean into that and be able to kind of share your insight, the knowledge, the expertise that other people can kind of hit the ground running with.
04:01 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Exactly.
04:02 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about how you serve your clients. I know you touched on it a little bit but also wanted to hear a little bit more about your podcast and what you're doing to kind of help support your audience there.
04:13 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Right. So I kind of feel like I have 2 businesses, and I kind of do at this point. So my law firm, Premier Property Law, helps homeowners and property owners when their insurance companies don't pay or don't pay enough to repair their home after damage. So there's a, you know, a storm or tornado or a fire or leak or something happens where they need repairs done, the insurance company tries to lowball them or just to say, well, we don't think we have to cover this at all, but we think there's coverage and we think they need more money, we'll go forward in the claim and the lawsuit to get them compensated for that loss. So that's how we help homeowners and property owners on my law firm side. So like I touched on a little bit before, a few months before I started my own law firm for my property law, I was marketing on social media.
So I kind of like, you know, pandemic, not a ton of things to do, tons of time, had this idea that sparked and I was like, you know what, let me start recording videos. So I just set up a tripod and my iPhone in my living room and I started recording videos about how to report insurance claims. What's my claim worth? How does this process work? Well, things that I knew and that were very basic to me, but that I realized that my clients didn't know and my prospective clients didn't know. And I started posting those on my personal Instagram page, just writing to everybody that I knew and already followed me, put that out there. And I started getting such good feedback and traction that I, you know, continued doing it, created systems and processes for creating and posting this content. And that's what allowed me to open my own firm.
And once that happened, I started getting flooded, it's just the flood of DMs and messages and emails and calls saying, how did you do this? And How did you figure this out? How you just like posting on Instagram and all of a sudden you have a firm. I didn't even have a website when I hit that first hundred days in my firm. I had a hundred clients. I need my website yet. So, you know, social media was really powerful. I really built it up and I was getting all these messages from people saying, how did this happen? You know, like walk me through this. And I found myself, you know, the same answers over and over, same kind of voice message, same conversation. I was like, you know what? Let me make a podcast. Then I can refer people to that 1 recording. Right. And so that's where it kind of birthed from, as I could share my knowledge, share my passion for business, as well as helping my clients at my law firm.
06:23 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I love the organic nature, how everything's grown about, and how you've been able to kind of make that impact. And I think definitely, I don't know if you would consider the law being a little bit more old school, so to speak, in terms of how the marketing and everything happened. But I feel like as a result of the pandemic, just about everything has been disrupted in some form, shape, or fashion. And people aren't really sure what to do or how to do it. But I love that, first of all, you were able to execute on that to build your practice, but 2, you're able to kind of take that information, that knowledge, all the success that you've had and be able to kind of help other people be able to have that same success.
06:57 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
And it's funny that you mentioned old school because we are completely remote. We are a 100% remote law firm located all throughout the US and even abroad. Some of our team members and people are always flabbergasted when they ask me, Oh, where's your office? I'm like, well, I have a mailing address, but if you want to stop by, no one's going to be there.
07:15 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. And it's kind of like what Gandhi says, be the change you just want to see in the world. I think if you kind of around the same people that are doing the same things and, you know, not looking at innovation, either just thinking differently about things, then you don't realize that that could be a reality until you hear that you've been able to kind of do that and have so much success doing it.
07:34 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Right, I agree.
07:35 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for your businesses, yourself, or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?
07:45 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
So as you know, we brand ourselves as a modern law firm. I always say that modern law firms, you know, like I said, we're a hundred percent remote. So that's already very different from your traditional old school big office with the staff and mahogany desks and a bunch of books. I don't even think I have any books in this room. So we brand ourselves as a very modern law firm. And in conjunction with that, we're using very modern techniques and tools. I always preach to my team communication and efficiency. Those are our 2 biggest values. And I think that's really our secret sauce is we're very intentional and strategic and we focus on those values of being communicative. Lawyers are notoriously terrible communicators. They're working the file, they're doing all this stuff, but I think the culture of being an attorney is just like, I've decided to go to this hearing and this deposition, file this thing, and draft this that we're never actually telling the client what we're doing. And that was a big disconnect, right? Cause you're getting calls from a client saying, I haven't heard from you in too long. What are you doing?
You know, nothing's happening in my case. Well, actually a lot is happening, right? So we've set up systems that make it super easy and simple for our team to communicate with our clients very consistently. So they know exactly what's happening in their case. They understand it beyond that, right? We have very simple education for our clients about what's going on, and how it's affecting their case. And we're also doing that efficiently. So I said we have systems and procedures set up for communication. We have that for the entire firm to make it easy because if you're starting from scratch every time or you have to have the attorney review and do everything, you end up with a bottleneck or you end up with things that fall through the cracks and don't get done. So we use our communication and our efficiency as kind of our secret sauce put together to create a client experience, which I mean, a lot of law firms don't even think about, right? And it just becomes a poor experience, really. So that's our secret sauce, is like crafting that client experience through communication and efficiency.
09:40 – Gresham Harkless
That's awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
09:51 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
This is what I call thought shifting. And this has helped me at every level from, you know, before I even started posting, you know, marketing on social media to start my firm before I started my firm before I started hiring people. Thought shifting has gotten me to where I am today. In a nutshell, this is kind of like an energetics manifestation principle, but I'm a lawyer, so we're going to put in more type-A terms. So thought shifting is taking a negative thought or a negative belief or, or, you know, a negative thought or belief and shifting it into something that is more positive for you. And I don't mean blind optimism. I'm like, oh, it's a beautiful day. This is wonderful. Everything's working out. I mean, taking that, that thought of like, oh my gosh, if this client doesn't sign with me, I'm never going to make another client again. I'm never going to hit my income goals.
And you say, wait a second, is that actually true? Or Is that my, you know, my fear brain, my animal brain saying, oh my gosh, protect yourself because it usually is right? You could switch that thought into, you know what, if this person doesn't sign, they, you know, just were not meant to be for my company. Maybe they don't align with us, but they're making room for the people that do align with us, to the people that we do wanna serve who are going to appreciate us. And I can't wait for those people to get to us. So you can kind of shift your thoughts because we have all these emotions and thoughts that are running through our heads all the time. So if we get good at recognizing them, we can then shift them to something more helpful.
And while that might sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo stuff, it does work even in a practical sense, because if you're spending all your time thinking about the negatives about this isn't going to work that this is terrible. Oh my gosh, what if, what if, what if, and you're focusing on that. That's where all your focus is going to go. You're not going to see and recognize the good opportunities. And like when it's something presents itself, that's going to help you. You're not going to see it. You're going to say, oh my gosh, it's never going to work out. But if you're thinking on the other side, this is great. This is working out. It's all happening to me. And an opportunity presents itself or something happens and you're like, hey, I can take advantage of that. Or hey, that's an open door for me. Then you're going in the right direction. You're focusing on what's good for you. So thought shifting has helped me so much.
And this kind of goes back to principles that I learned in a book called Rich SF, FCK by Amanda Francis. And I mean, that book, her work just changed my life and she's you can buy it on Amazon here audiobook is also great I mean that book kind of like sets the foundation for what I'm talking about that thought shifting is the most basic principle in what I'm talking about but there's a whole world of like energetics and you know mindset is what people call it although I think there are better terms for it, that really will help you just in the very basic core get to your goals and what you want to do because they're putting practical advice about time management and everything else. But really it all comes down to you and how you think and how you perceive the world because if you don't see the opportunities and you don't see where you can act, you're never going to get anywhere.
12:51 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell your favorite client to mention or your podcast and potentially would tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine.
13:06 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Oh man, hop into a time machine. I feel like everybody would always say, you know, start before you're ready, but I feel like that is misguided advice because I think you need to be confident in your abilities, although maybe not confident in your execution. So when I was first seriously considering opening my own firm, I was like terrified. I was like, Oh my gosh, like, what if I screwed this up? Like what happens? This is terrible. And you know, my fiance sat me down and he's like, what's the worst thing that happens if you fail? If you get no clients, what do you do? And I was like, well, I'd have to go back to get a job as a lawyer. And he was kind of pointing out there that, Hey, okay.
So the worst thing that happens is what you're doing right now. So your ability to actually perform the work is not in question. Like, you know what I mean? You're, you're, you're already able. It's like, do you believe in yourself enough to just go for the execution? So you know, I that whole like start before you're ready. It's like when is that though you know what I mean? What type of ready? I think the ready is like OK. I have my abilities. I know I can do this in a sense, but I'm not sure if it's going to work out. So get confident in your abilities and then you'll be confident in your execution.
14:20 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Brittany, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:30 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
CEO means being able to design and run a company that has the values and integrity and outcome that you wish to see in the world, in business, in your industry.
14:42 – Gresham Harkless
I love that values, integrity, and outcome. And I think that so many times we can look at the work that we do and we could just get really kind of focused on we're just serving this client, we're just doing this case, we're just creating this whatever that we sometimes don't see the domino effect that happens from the things that we're doing. So what I want to do now is pass you the message to see if there's anything can let our readers and l of course how best people about all the awesome thi working on.
15:11 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Yes, so I'm m You can find me at lawyer That's LAWYER dot BRITT. Shoot me a DM. I actually have a workshop going on right now that is on demand. You can watch it anytime talking about how I create content and how specifically I create 1 week's worth of content in 1 hour so that I can focus on the income-generating side of my business and that's how I built my 7 figure law firm.
15:39 – Gresham Harkless
Nice, I absolutely love that. And we'll be able to get that through DM.
15:43 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Yes, just DM me the workshop and my team will get it over to make it even easier have the links and information as well too, so that's with you.
15:46 – Gresham Harkless
But definitely, the awesome thing is that you took today, I keep talking about this we don't know what we hear and see. So I love that you're kind of trailblazing and reminding us of how important it is to trailblaze too. So thank you so much again, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:10 – Atty. Brittany Alexander
Thanks, Gresh, you too.
16:12 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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