Montina Portis
Montina Portis, Video Marketing Expert
Author: How to Market Your Law Firm Business Online
Helping lawyers and law firms create engaging videos
Interview Transcript
Pamela: Welcome to Lawyer of the Week. I’m so pleased today to introduce you to Montina Portis. As lawyers, you know marketing is a very important part of your practice because you have to build your business. And Montina is going to explain to you how she can help you to do that. Montina, hello. I’m so glad to have you here with the lawyer of the week today.
Montina: Hi Pamela. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I really appreciate it.
Pamela: Oh I’m just so pleased. Let me just tell you a little bit about Montina. Montina is the CEO of Creative Internet Authority an award winning digital marketing company specializing in video production and promotion for lawyers and law firms. With a strong blend of education, technology, and marketing, with her fifteen years in the business world, Montina is focused on targeted and efficient results. So she will give you efficient results for your marketing dollar. Her company information is creativeinternetauthority.com. I’ll say that again. It’s creativeinternetauthority.com. Welcome, Montina.
Montina: Thank you. Lawyers are some of my favorite people. They’re, in my world, super heroes so I’m excited to be here and to just share with your audience today.
Pamela: Great. I’d like to ask you a few questions. First of all, when and what made you decide to begin working with lawyers?
Montina: Well you know I used to say I began working with lawyers because my first client that was a lawyer was smart, he was… I always called him a smart ass. But really you know a few years ago, really many years ago, my first hero was a lawyer. Her name was Jennifer. Unfortunately, I was a victim of domestic violence and she was my hope when I was hopeless. And one of my heroes is when I was going through a divorce that got a little ugly; well I had my divorce attorney there. And then later when I had to actually file bankruptcy because of that divorce after a hundred plus thousand dollars’ worth of debt on a school teacher’s salary, there was another hero as I sat in the office and that attorney really helped me understand the way of getting all the debt off of me. I felt so bad about it. And then later, years later when I founded my business, I had to get a business attorney. So attorneys have been so influential in my life.
They are heroes in my book. I believe that they are hope for the hopeless, and they are great advocates. I love working with them. They are some of the smartest badass people that I’ve ever met. But that’s how I got started working with attorneys. Met one and decided I want to be the person in the company that helps you get your word out to other people in a very authentic and real way.
Pamela: Well that’s really a wonderful story. Are you still in contact with any of those lawyers?
Montina: I have one that I’m still in contact with yes. Yes I am.
Pamela: Wonderful. That’s a great story. Tell us a little bit about your company and your biggest wins and your biggest challenges.
Montina: Well my company is pretty simple. We call ourselves the CIA. We’re Creative Internet Authority and we’re a digital marketing company that specializes in video marketing for lawyers and law firms.
So what we do is quite simple. We don’t believe in the one and then done kind of service. We know that lawyers need to consistently market and it needs to be high quality, whatever they do because that’s the perception.
When people see something that’s not high quality they think that you’re not going to be good for them. And they also need to market a great reputation online to make more money.
So we’ll go ahead and do multiple videos. Frequently Asked Questions, the should ask questions, thought leadership videos, authoritative videos, anything that positions them as credible, authorities, experts and thought leaders in their industries. Then we publish that content everywhere: on their social media, the websites, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, we make sure their clients everywhere see the video, but we also transcribe it Pamela and make sure they have guides, books, and reports. We have some that we help with speaking engagements, so that’s really what we do. We’re not just a one and done, ‘hey nice to meet you.’ We are a strategic partner with our clients and that’s what we do.
Pamela: So can you tell us about maybe a success story with one of your clients?
Montina: Well our success stories really range from our clients. We always say when they win, we win. And it really is a firm that we have. It’s one of the largest firms in one of our counties here in Georgia. And it started off really just a website. It was old you know, it’s fifteen, twenty years old so this is a dated firm. And within a year’s time, we had over fifty videos online for this client. We had positioned them as a thought leader, did some website work for them. I mean there’s a buzz in the city. They were able to get more cases of course, to help more clients, and of course, make more money. But just from a positioning standpoint, the brand awareness is there.
Some of the challenges that we’ve had is really some of the same challenges that my clients have. And it’s just growing pains. We’re a young company, we’re growing. I’ve had to hire staff, a lot of people like my personality and some may not. But the growing pain is we have to expand and we have to grow. And so we’re all about systems. And so out of the challenge, I have learned how to develop systems within the company to make sure that our clients still get the best service, and so that we’re efficient with our process and what we do. Because our attorneys have billable hours, we can’t take six hours to shoot one video. That just doesn’t work for our clients that we serve. So we make sure that we’re very efficient with our processes and our systems and our workflow.
Pamela: Great. So when you work with a law firm, do you initially go in and have a consultation or… how do you operate your packages?
Montina: So what we do is, of course, a free consultation first because I’m a small business owner. I want to make sure that we are a good fit for them and they’re a good fit for us. And then we do a discovery. We have a CIA; we call it a domination methodology. We don’t come in… and it’s not to say that we don’t want to play nice, but our goal is really to dominate an industry. So we go in and we get an adoption attorney, we want the front page, second page. We want to have all of their content there. So we first, after they come on as a client, we do what’s called a discovery. We need to discover what’s already said out there about you and you know what type of contents already there so we can actually market a great reputation and then we go into our methodology a little more. But that is just how we get started. We have a fun quiz that we have on the site which basically says… it’s a quiz about video marketing. Are you stuck in the mud? Are you sparking a movement or are you going to get left behind?
And Pamela, the real reality is some of the lawyers, some of the law firms, are going to be left behind because they’re not moving into the current reality where they can’t just rely on referrals. And even if they are, other attorneys refer to other attorneys based on thought leadership, expert status, authority, consistency you know. You got to see attorneys being consistent and everything must be high quality.
Pamela: So do you just have clients in Georgia? Where do you provide services?
Montina: We provide services all across the United States and we do have clients outside of Georgia. And I guess that we’re unique because we’re a smaller company but we are expanding. We have lots of clients. But, we’re able to travel anywhere. I mean, this is video equipment. We hop on a plane and we can drive and we go wherever our clients are because, again, we are more of a partnership so that all of our clients are on a retainer. We don’t come in and pour on the videos and walk away. We come in and we form a partnership.
One of my favorite authors out there, I should have my book over here, but I’ve authored How to Market Your Law Firm Online, but one of my favorite resources is actually Renegade Lawyer Marketing by Ben Glass, because he talks about not just the importance of high-quality consistent marketing to protect the reputation, but just different ways to market. Newsletters, direct mail, you know; if you need to be on the radio fine. But your Justia, Avvo, website, your videos. There’s so many ways to market right now that there’s just not one that’s a hundred percent you know the secret magic pill. I can go on and on… I love marketing. I love the fact that the people I help and the people that I serve make a big difference in the lives of other people. It really makes me feel good.
Pamela: That’s wonderful. Who’s a perfect referral for you?
Montina: The types of clients that we serve best are really you know a solo law firm. Not one just starting out but one that has some clients because you have to have money to invest in your marketing. But one that really wants to grow. And really up to about twenty partners. We have clients that have one hundred attorneys, not twenty partners, twenty attorneys. We have clients that have two hundred attorneys, so we work well with CMO’s or Chief Marketing Officers. Great referrals, a nice sweet spot is really that small and mid-sized firm for us or a larger firm that has a marketing department that has a need for what we call vendor services and they want to provide some videos for their attorneys.
Pamela: Great. Okay that’s good to know. Montina, what legacy do you want to leave in your company?
Montina: Pamela, when I think about legacy for me it’s much different than for others. My children of course, are who I want to leave a legacy for because for me they are so important. At the time of this I have two in college and I have one at home but I was an abandoned child. My mother abandoned me at eighteen months old. My father was in prison where he died after serving nineteen or twenty years. Lived with my aunt. She kicked me out at sixteen, I was homeless. That aunt was later murdered. I have to leave something for my children. I have to leave honor and integrity for them. Of course, I’m going to leave some money for them too, but I want them to know that mom worked hard and that she made a difference in the lives… not just for them but in the lives of others in the community.
Pamela: That’s a really touching story. A lot of tragedy but it seems that out of that tragedy there is a lot of strength that you have that you are imparting to your children and your family and making a difference in the world.
Montina: Yes Ma’am. You know what when I first had to get that G.E.D. and then later you know my Bachelor’s and later a Master’s, I told my children the one thing that I want them to be able to do in their lives is to look up to the heavens and say, “What in the world am I on the earth for?” And I’m so excited because one of my daughter’s, (I can’t really announce it yet) but she’s actually moving out of state to pursue her dream and I’m so excited for her because one thing I can say to her I said, “You’ll never be homeless. As long as you’ve got a mama, you’ll never be homeless.” That’s the legacy. I really wanted children that could live and breathe in this life and be all that they were born to be versus thinking, I have to work for a living. That just doesn’t feel good to me.
Pamela: You are such an inspiration and such a success story, so any lawyer would be really lucky to have your energy and your enthusiasm to help them to market because you can help them go far.
Montina: Yes Ma’am. We believe that we can and we do. And you know just like with what we’re doing here we believe in video and so I’m so glad to see that you are using videos because people want to see us, they want to hear us and they want to see our mannerism and things like that. It builds a lot of trust and credibility.
Pamela: Yes to tell the audience she gave me a few tips before we began so. {laughter}. She knows her stuff!
Montina: And she looks fabulous. Again, it’ so important. Pamela, even something as simple as this interview the lighting has to be good and you can’t be like looking down at people. The positioning has to be right and the mic has to be right you know, the background has to right.
Pamela: Yes. Absolutely. So now let me ask you our final question. What are some things that you do to manage your stress levels?
Montina: Oh boy. I wish I could say I had no stress. But one thing I found is an app that I really like called Brain.fm, and I found that for me, meditation and journaling have been great for me to manage my stress levels. Another thing that I actually had to do recently was to hire an accountability coach. I’ve learned that …
Pamela: What kind of coach is that?
Montina: An Accountability coach
Pamela: Oh good. Yes.
Montina: I hired an accountability coach and I believe in business coaches. I have and have had and also of course have. But that has helped me deal with… One thing I’ve learned and this deals with stress is that I had to understand what works for me. And I am so busy all the time and everyone sees me all the time and no one ever stops to say, great job. And that’s part of my love language. I said you know what, I really want an accountability coach. At the end of the day to just kind of pat me on the back and say, “Montina, oh my gosh. You’ve accomplished so much.” And it helps relieve stress. I know it sounds crazy but I think that when it comes to stress you have to recognize really where our anxiety is and do something to deal with it. So, Brain.fm I love and as I said an accountability coach and journaling really helps me. And at end of the day to relieve stress, I have lunch or dinner with my children and we just laugh and laugh and have a great time.
Pamela: Wonderful. Montina we are so happy to have you as our lawyer of the week. Better yet said, lawyer support for marketing this week and please join us next week, we will have another interviewee for the lawyer of the week. Thank you.
Montina: Thank you Pamela
Montina’s Links:
Montina’s Links:
https://creativeinternetauthority.com/ (on the homepage)
https://creativeinternetauthority.com/testimonials-state-bar-georgia-follow/
Contact info:
Montina Portis
678-435-9373
Thank you for joining Lawyer of the Week!
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