[Top Agency Series] Pareto Legal’s Success Journey With Bo Royal

Bo Royal is the CEO and Co-founder of Pareto Legal, a growth marketing agency specializing in digital advertising, conversion rate optimization, and analytics for small- and medium-sized law firms. Under Bo’s leadership, Pareto Legal has achieved numerous milestones, helping clients add seven figures in cases to their pipeline and managing ad spends as high as $30 million a month during his tenure with Fortune 500 brands like Calvin Klein and eBay. Bo holds degrees in Marketing and International Business Administration from the Fox School of Business at Temple University and has helped scale digital ad efforts for various industries.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:54] How Pareto Legal came to specialize in legal marketing
• [8:39] Bo Royal’s career shift from eBay to a medium-sized law firm
• [14:57] Bo’s approach to pricing when starting his agency
• [21:23] How clarity of role and expectations are key in hiring
• [26:59] Bringing big agency strategies to Pareto Legal’s operations
• [30:19] Insights into the specialized sales process for Pareto Legal’s clients
• [34:39] Bo shares the successful case study with Schneider Law Group
• [41:33] Bo recommends valuable resources for personal and professional growth

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how a shift from broad spectrum marketing to a niche focus could transform a business? What if you discovered a substantial chunk of your advertising budget was being wasted? Wouldn’t you want to know how to reallocate those funds more efficiently in order to grow your business?

Bo shares his journey of transitioning from the fast-paced corporate advertising environment to becoming co-owner of Pareto Legal, a growth marketing agency for law firms. By focusing on digital advertising, conversion rate optimization, and analytics, Bo has been instrumental in scaling numerous injury law firms. He emphasizes the importance of niching down, noting that his early years were marked by taking on any client in any industry, leading to a lack of specialization. It was only after the e-commerce wave during the pandemic and subsequent budget cuts that Bo realized the saturated market needed a different approach, leading him to refocus on legal marketing.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Bo Royal, CEO and Co-founder of Pareto Legal, to delve into strategic shifts and operational lessons learned. Bo discusses the importance of specialization in attaining sustainable growth, the structure of incentivizing staff through a revenue-sharing model, and the critical need for qualifying potential clients through initial paid assessments. He also touches on the balance of client servicing and internal efficiency, highlighting the use of tools like Asana and ClickUp for project management and the Freedom app for minimizing distractions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Bo Royal on LinkedIn
• Build a Better Agency Podcast
• Freedom App
• Loom
• ClickUp
• HubSpot
• Asana
• The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns
• Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall

Special Mention(s):

• Jake Barufkin on LinkedIn
• Schneider Law Group

Related episode(s):

• [Top Agency Series] How To Scale Your Agency With Confidence With Corey Quinn on Inspired Insider Podcast
• Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast on Inspired Insider Podcast
• [Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech on Inspired Insider Podcast
• How to Have Your Business Run Without You with Mike Michalowicz, Author Fix This Next on Inspired Insider Podcast
• Does God Exist? with Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0 on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “We realized that the only way to scale profitably was by focusing on a specific business type and being intentional about our actions.”
• “If you want to be noticed, you have to be willing to go the extra mile relative to others.”
• “We are not going to work with a client until they let us look under the hood of what they’re currently doing.”
• “The purpose of the call is to understand if this is a right fit, not to give away free strategy or recommendations.”
• “Over-servicing clients, when done in a controlled way, can be a very positive thing.”

Action Steps:

1. Identify your niche and focus: Specialization can significantly enhance your service standards and clients’ growth.
2. Balance work with delegation: hiring capable team members for execution allows you to focus on growth strategies.
3. Implement a revenue share model: Bo’s incentive structure aligns team efforts with client success, encouraging performance while scaling the agency.
4. Invest time in deep work: Utilize tools like Freedom to eliminate distractions, allowing for productivity in essential tasks.
5. Audit existing processes: Regular assessments can prevent wastage and optimize resources for better returns.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Bo Royal of Pareto Legal. Bo before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out the podcast. And, you know, I had, so this is part of the Top Agency Series, I’ve Corey Quinn on, Corey Quinn really talks about niching down, and he helped grow a large, I don’t know you’ve probably heard of them. Scorpion in a big way. But he really talks about niching down, we’re gonna talk about niching down on this. He gave some interesting things that he did to help grow the company and even grow a company agency. Also another good one was Kevin Hourigan. He’s had an agency since 1995. So he really talks about the landscape of the internet, business and agency life throughout a couple decades. So super interesting episode, another one, Jason Swenk, who we both know mutually, Bo he talks about how he grew his agencies to eight figures, and then sold it and then how he had a separate company that was buying up agencies. So it’s interesting to hear as well, that many more on InspiredInsider.com.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25, at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcasts are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution. So we’re kind of like the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the company so they can create amazing content and amazing relationships, most importantly, focus on running their business. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I’m always looking for ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I am excited to introduce Bo Royal. He’s a former Fortune 500 advertising agency executive turned law firm marketing expert. And after holding leadership positions at eBay is the Marketing Solutions division. And he really helped scale online advertising revenues for a variety of well known brands, Calvin Klein, many others. I think, Bo, I think I read somewhere that people are spending like 30 or plus million dollars a month on their ad spend. Okay, a month. Bo actually pivoted into the world of legal marketing many years ago and just didn’t look back and he co owns and operates Pareto Legal, you could find them at Legal.ParetoPPC.com. I love that name. Because I’m all about AD20. And their growth marketing agency position to help small and medium sized law firms add an extra seven figures in cases to their pipeline. They do that via digital advertising, conversion, optimization, analytics, and much more. So Bo, thanks for joining me.

Bo Royal 3:37

Thank you so much for having me on, Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz 3:39

We’ll just have to talk about how you run a campaign that they’re spending like $30 million a month, but just start off talking about Pareto Legal. And what you do, and if you’re listening to the audio, there was a video version, I’m gonna share their website and we’ll poke around there.

Bo Royal 3:54

Yeah, I think you kind of intro to it perfectly. We are an agency that focuses on scaling injury law firms, with digital advertising, conversion rate optimization and analytics. So in terms of digital advertising, our sweet spot there is Google Meta and Microsoft Ads. Conversion Rate Optimization is just a fancy way of saying that we help our clients with their landing pages and their user experiences to promote more and more conversion. And then we tie it all together with reporting, attribution, pull all the numbers together and you know, make it actionable for them in a dashboard and really guide them through the decision making after the data is collected. Right. So those are the real three, three sweet spots that we focus on with our clients.

Jeremy Weisz 4:43

You know, when we were talking before we hit record, you were saying? You just wish you would have known about niching. Back when you first started. So we’ll go back. We’ll maybe go in reverse order so far. Talk about what you meant by that.

Bo Royal  5:04

Yeah, I think that, you know —

Jeremy Weisz 5:06

Why it would have saved you headaches.

Bo Royal 5:08

I think, you know, like, like I said before, we could go back in time, we would have picked a niche earlier on. And the reason for that is we could have developed more specialization, we could have developed more thought leadership and process specifically for a vertical. We, you know, in our early years, we were candidly revenue hungry, we would work with anyone, if they wanted to advertise online, if they wanted help of the landing page, if they needed help with their tracking, we would say yes, without really kind of understanding what we were saying yes to.

And as we grew, we realized that that wasn’t a viable strategy long term, right, the only way that we were going to continue to scale profitably was if we really focused on a specific business type. And we’re very intentional about the things that we were doing to help that type of business, right. So we originally actually thought that was going to be ecommerce. And because of my background at eBays, Marketing Solutions Division, I had developed a lot of chops, my Co-founder had developed a lot of shops, and like the ecommerce, advertising and analytics realm, and we got to ride that wave up during COVID. 

You know, once once, like March, April 2020 hit, it was like a gold rush to start advertising your products online, because everyone was just no one was going to stores. Right? Everyone was on lockdown. So we’ve got to benefit from that, that that rise in ecommerce sales. But then, you know, that only lasted about 18-24 months, and a lot of our ecommerce clients, their budgets got cut, unfortunately, lost those clients. And the other kind of realization was ecommerce right now. And going forward is kind of a red ocean, it’s just so saturated with agencies that are all doing the same thing. 

And it forces us to kind of take a hard look in the mirror and be like, what, what industry can we truly, you know, excel at serving for the long term. And I should give some context that, you know, during this whole time that we’re building our agency, my Co-founder and I are SMO and CEO at a large injury law firm in Philadelphia. So this was kind of our side hustle five or four or five years ago, right, that we’re building this agency up. And meanwhile, we’re developing skills and chops in the legal marketing field. And it wasn’t until honestly, early last year, that we kind of had the realization: Wait a minute, we know a ton about legal marketing, some of our best success stories are with, you know, law firms. 

This is it, we’re sitting on the golden ticket right now it’s time for us to double down on this and, you know, focus on these types of clients. And that’s where Pareto Legal was born. That’s why we made the decision to build a separate entity. In addition, the original agency was called Pareto PPC; it’s still in operation. We still have clients, you know, outside of the legal niche. But all of you know, the go to market focus these days is on lawyers, specifically Injury Lawyers.

Jeremy Weisz 8:33

So did you go from eBay into working with a law firm, then?

Bo Royal 8:39

Yes. So I guess I would have been 28 years old when I made the decision to leave the big agency world. I candidly was burned out. I, you know, had been working 60, 70, 80 hour weeks for years and was just like, there’s gotta be more to life than this. And candidly, when I made that decision, the CFO at the agency called me into his office, and he said, Hey, I think you’re making a mistake. You know, this is kind of a, this isn’t a conventional career path you’re taking, you’re leaving the Fortune 500 world and you’re going to a law firm, a medium-sized law firm in Philadelphia, what, what’s your thinking here? And to be totally honest with you, I at the time, I just wanted to get out of you know, the churn and burn agency world that I was in. I didn’t really give much thought to it.

But honestly, the one of the best decisions I made was to go to that law firm because not only did I get to make more of an immediate impact on that business, I got to learn a lot of other things outside of my domain of expertise, which at the time, I was pretty much exclusively like the Google Ads expert, that’s what people knew me as I ran, like you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, my biggest client was spending $30 million a month just on Google advertising. Like, insane, insane budget, right? But I was kind of unfulfilled with that specialization, and I wanted to broaden my, you know, my horizons and learn more about these other channels, and, you know, the marketing funnel as a whole.

And so, this law firm granted me that opportunity. I was actually their first marketing hire, and joined that firm as their CMO. And this was like 2017-2018. And that firm, just, you know, after a matter of like, 12-18 months of me, helping them revamp their website to find their positioning, optimize their advertising campaigns, help them with their intake and call center, the firm just grew significantly, I think, when I joined, they were in mid seven figures, they’re now in mid eight figures. So that was a great experience, it gave me the confidence to now be doing what I’m doing in the legal niche. 

Jeremy Weisz 11:13

How do you navigate your time and balance things when you were working and growing this large law firm, and then actually, you are having to bring in clients to?

Bo Royal  11:26

Yes, so the first six to 12 months, I’ll be honest, I did not manage my time. Well, I ended up leaving eBay to escape 70 to 80 hour workweeks, and within a matter of six to 12 months, they were back into my life. So I made the decision in 2019, to bring on a business partner, that’s Jake Barufkin. He’s my COO and Co-founder. And that really helped me save some time, right? To have another, another me if you will. And then we quickly brought on contractors to help with a lot of the minutiae of account management, you know, managing campaigns, creating ads, so on and so forth.

So that pain of having the 70-80 hour work weeks again, quickly got me working in high gear to bring on more help delegate delegate delegate, and I was able to juggle both of those businesses because of the fact that I brought more people on to help. I will be honest, though, the agency was a minority of my time, pretty much up until March, April 20. March to April 2020, when COVID hit, because then I was able to work 100% remote, I was you know, it just gave me the freedom and flexibility to do as much work as I wanted to on the agency. So that really benefited me.

Jeremy Weisz 12:55

And then I find a lot of times, Bo that someone starts their company from a client, I actually sometimes have an employment relationship. Did that company then stick with you? I mean, you can still continue to work with that company, as you know, you grow your agency.

Bo Royal 13:19

The law firm. Yeah, I’m still affiliated with a law firm. I’m an Advisory Board Member there now. But yeah, I mean, the way that I got into the agency business is two of my former clients at eBay. When I left, two separate clients reached out to me about a month after I had put in my notice. And they said, Would you like to freelance for us, and I didn’t even think of, you know, owning a business or running an agency as a career path for me up till that point. And when they reached out, that’s kind of when the entrepreneurial, you know, juices started flowing, and things started kicking in.

And I was like, wait a minute, maybe I am good enough at this to do it, you know, as a business. And within that, you know, six months after leaving, I ended up going from two clients to like eight clients or something like that, because I just ended up tapping my network, telling people I’m doing this, you know, freelance. Now, if you want to pay me directly, it’s going to be cheaper than an agency, so on and so forth. And that’s how I ended up going right back to 70- 80 hour weeks. But yeah, it happened by accident. I’m one of many of the accidental agency owners out there. And if I were to tell you that this was all part of my grand plan, I’d be lying. It just kind of happened by chance.

Jeremy Weisz 14:40

So when you went from you know, you’re working with big clients, eBay to basically starting to freelance and start your own agency. How did you think about and decide on pricing?

Bo Royal 14:57

That’s a really good question. Honestly it’s still something I think about and we, you know, make adjustments to at the time, I was simply selling my time. It was all hourly based. I was charging, maybe like $50-70-100 bucks. I think I increased it incrementally as I got more and more clients, right. But yeah, I had to sell my time to start, right.

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