My Pink Lawyer’s Road to Success Is Paved in Pink
From her Northeast Florida office inside the building she bought, decorated exactly the way she wants, complete with a pink couch in the waiting room, Kristen Marks talks about her journey to zero debt, a comfortable lifestyle she loves, and making more money with more time off than ever before.
If you ask, Kristen will tell you the road to her success as an attorney took many curves and the victory was made using GKIC skills, knowledge, and education. Kristen opened her practice in 2008 as a premier law firm that caters to discerning women and their families for estate planning, probate, and guardianship needs.
Just another lawyer, you might say. Noooo, we reply—far, far from it. You’ll recognize that the minute you walk in the door and have a seat on the pink couch.
Kristen had been working as a lawyer for seven years when in 2002 she quit her job to become a Mary Kay Director. This was a step out of her comfort zone in a big way, but she felt she had to do it in order to grow. She had not felt challenged in her job for a while and knew that dramatic change was the only way she was going to evolve.
As a successful Mary Kay Director, Kristen earned four free cars—yes, including the pink Cadillac. But more importantly, she credits her success to the saying “If you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to be in the same place 20 years from now.” It was that thought that initially brought her into Mary Kay and would become her mantra for all future business endeavors.
Despite all the accolades and pink cars, Kristen found she was working harder and harder, evenings and weekends, and the net profits weren’t what she had hoped they would be. It was at this point that Kristen decided to go back into law and opened her practice, My Pink Lawyer. The clever name was originally a placeholder because of her connection to Mary Kay, but it stuck.
Kristen had attained a celebrity-type status within Mary Kay because of her boldness to leave lawyering to build her direct sales business. People knew her history and respected it. Although she named her business My Pink Lawyer, she had always intended to change it later on, but when people would approach her in the grocery store and ask if she was the “My Pink Lawyer lady,” she knew she was on to something that she shouldn’t alter.
Her practice has grown yearly. However, it was in 2015 when she discovered GKIC and that things really took off. According to Kristen, “I just started reading every No B.S. book I could get my hands on and started implementing,” often, she admits, even when she didn’t entirely know what she was doing. Based on GKIC principles, Kristen revamped her website, hired a second assistant, and started getting more consistent with sending her email newsletters.
In 2016, Kristen attended her first GKIC SuperConference, the annual international, direct-response marketing event for small-business owners, and began thinking even more out of the box. Immediately upon returning home, Kristen began mailing Shock-and-Awe packages, started a print newsletter, and wrote her first book. Through all these big and little changes, Kristen’s practice grew 52% in 2016—enough to warrant adding a second attorney.
Kristen again attended GKIC’s SuperConference in 2017 and came back to her business fired up with even more valuable ideas. She started adding a live-streaming “TV show,” turning her training into evergreen webinars, ramping up videos on her website (www.mypinklawyer.com) and writing the second book to use as a business card to other professionals for referral purposes. And she finished 2017 with 70% growth. Not bad, Kristen—not bad at all.
While these are some pretty impressive growth numbers for the last two years, Kristen is not resting on her laurels. She is committed to continuing to grow, learn, and improve her business. The number-one challenge Kristen has overcome, with the assistance of GKIC, is learning to leverage everything she does to maximize her marketing power. This skill has helped her scale her business up and make better use of her time. Today, if Kristen does a live event, she records it, and it becomes a video that she can post online. When she has that same video transcribed, it can then become a chapter in a book or used in blog posts or audio programs.
Another significant challenge Kristen is working to overcome is dedicating specific and uninterrupted time exclusively for marketing. She now has set “Marketing Mondays” for herself—time away from the office to allow her to focus solely on improving and enhancing the marketing of her business. She works Tuesdays in the office preparing for clients. Wednesday through Friday are reserved for back-to-back client appointments. Her goal is to ultimately scale back to seeing clients only two days a week so she can implement more marketing.
While Kristen admits she is a perfectionist at heart, she has also realized that sometimes it is more important to just get something out there. “You’ve got to at least start doing something,” she says, reiterating the critical lesson she’s learned from GKIC. She strives more for getting materials out the door and then making changes and adjustments as the campaign goes along. At GKIC, we often caution against paralysis by analysis, wanting something to be perfect but, in the process, losing the window to take action. By dedicating at least one full day a week to her marketing, Kristen is giving herself the time and space to be creative, yet recognizing the value of “good enough is good enough.”
When it comes to marketing, Kristen identifies that every marketing piece must have a call to action. This means every blog post, every mailing, every email—everything has got to have a call to action. For example, with her book (see Figure 18.1 on page 223), Wise Women Protect Their Assets: Essential Estate Planning Guide for Smart Women, she realized not only was she giving the book to people who already have her contact information, but they very likely might share her book with others who did not. Kristen had bookmarks printed and an intro on the very first page that says, “Hey! Register this book online to get free additional bonuses.” See Figure 18.2 on page 224. Driven to a landing page, people put in their contact information so Kristen can continue to market to them, and they receive bonuses they wouldn’t have received otherwise.
FIGURE 18.1
FIGURE 18.2
Another big lesson for Kristen has been about pricing. She, like many other business owners, had a fear of raising her prices. She started by charging a consultation fee, whereas her competition offers a free initial consultation. Calling them “reservation fees” to hold client appointments, she found while it turned some people off, for the most part, she hasn’t noticed any significant drop-off. As a bonus, this approach often guarantees clients will show up for a scheduled appointment—it’s a strategy that can give you a better chance to demonstrate why they should choose your product over someone else’s.
Kristen has discovered that the people who are turned off by her marketing wouldn’t be good clients for her anyway. It goes back to the GKIC foundational concept that the more hoops people have to jump through before they get to you, the more likely they are to hire you. They are primed to be your client. Adding the fee for initial consultation has doubled Kristen’s closing rate.
Although she caters to women and families, helping them avoid government interference, time delays, high legal fees, and disputes down the road, Kristen is wise enough to not limit her legal services to women only. She has widowers, divorced men, and single guys who all seek out her counsel.
“If you’re man enough to go to somebody who calls herself My Pink Lawyer, then I’m woman enough to work with you,” she laughs.
Some other professionals in her town have given her grief for marketing to half the population, but Kristen doesn’t let that bother her, as they haven’t experienced the growth that her business has.
A final gem of wisdom that Kristen has gleaned from her GKIC membership is to “put systems in place.” Having different systems in place for how clients go through estate planning, probate, guardianship, etc., keeps Kristen organized—and her clients appreciate it. Using systems also streamlines the training of new employees and allows her business to run on “auto-pilot” when she is away.
So, what’s next for Kristen Marks, My Pink Lawyer? Her ultimate goal: “I’d like to have the My Pink Lawyer brand expand across the entire U.S. When you think My Pink Lawyer, every woman thinks: ‘Oh my gosh, I have this legal problem; I’m going to call My Pink Lawyer!’”