Jeremy Weisz 17:28
What were some of the indicators at the time? Because it’s almost like, you put a frog in a pot, and you slowly turn up the heat, and all of a sudden, it’s boiling, and they don’t feel that. So I feel like someone’s been in a position for four years. What were some of those indicators, like, hey, I need to have this part conversation. At that point, what were you seeing?
Lauren Von 17:53
So you would see different departments just completely plummeting in their numbers, or we use Traction, so it’s an EOS system. And so we were seeing too deep to dues not being met weekly, we were seeing rocks not being met. And you would be able to look on the accountability chart and see who wasn’t meeting the rocks. And then when you would ask them about it, it was very defensive. It’s like, well, I was busy doing ABC and D. And so that’s when you could tell, okay, you’re not doing the three to five things you’re specialized in. You’re wearing multiple hats, you’re in multiple seeds. We’ve got a course correct, really quick.
Jeremy Weisz 18:31
Yeah. And I want to encourage we have an episode on the podcast with Gino Wickman, who started Traction and also Marc Winters, who co-authored with Gino Wickman Rocket Fuel. And that’s kind of, Lauren, you remind me of you and your husband is kind of like with Rocket Fuel. You have the visionary, and you have the integrator. And that creates that rocket fuel. Right? So check those episodes out. No, I love how you said that. So each of the team has rocks. And it’s very measurable, right? Because they’re working towards rocks. So you can know. Is this getting done? Or is it not getting done? You give away half your profit. We do. Talk about that.
Lauren Von 19:18
It’s always a dramatic pause. It is something that first month we ever did it. It was COVID. So now we didn’t know that but I was sitting at Life Church with my husband and there was someone who was talking about giving. And I’ve always had a pretty generous heart. That’s something that my parents raised me to be it’s just something that’s kind of innate in me. But it was never pointed. And there was never a hey, this is the percentage it was what did you feel like giving right and more than 10% and this is what I feel like giving but there was is no rhyme or rhythm. So as I was sitting in this sermon and hearing this guy talking, and seeing how freeing it almost was, for him to say like, this is just part of my DNA, and I mean, it almost made me break out in hives hearing how much he was giving away. So after that sermon, I sat with Leo, my husband. And I said, hey, I really want to give away, I don’t know, like my mind spinning at this point, right? The visionary starts talking. And that’s when you have 27 ideas, and only once good, like, slow down. Yeah. And I said, Well, what if we gave away half our revenue? He’s like, Well, you’re not a 50% profit. So you can’t do that. And I was like, okay, what about the first, money that comes in every the first of the month? And so we went back and forth, and he’s really good at working with me through my ideas. And he was like, what about? Let’s take it off of the bottom, let’s talk it off your profit. That’s it. Okay. What about half our profit? What does that look like? And so this is when we’re very small. So this is in February, right as COVID, like, kind of starting, but everyone’s like, that’s not a real virus. This is in China, whatever. And so this was like, middle February. So we’re like, okay, we’re already halfway through the month, we’re gonna do it in March. So March hits, and we start getting phone calls from clients. Like, hey, we’re in LA, we’re in New York, we can even go to the office, we’re having to shut down our law firm right now. So I’m losing clients, but I had committed, like, to my husband, and to myself, we’re gonna give away half a profit. And so we start talking this through. And I am like, writing the check end of March, like, I wish I had like a picture of it, because it probably was the worst handwriting just from shaking, because I was so nervous, because it was so much money. And it was money we didn’t really have. So it was like a $10,000, check. Turn around, gave it up. And I mailed it in. And I was really just praying for a favor just for a direction of like, hey, listen, I’d like this is my heart. I know, you put it in there. I don’t want to second guess. But just give me some sort of security here. So I did it. I wrote it. And a couple hours later, I get a call from a California firm saying, hey, I heard that you can produce leads. We’re not shutting down, we’re sending everyone remote. But our affiliates have shut down because they’re in California. So I need to spend 500,000, can you give me $500,000 worth of leads. And it was a couple hours later after that check. And, I don’t believe in coincidences, and I was like, okay, like, I see where you’re going here. So after that, it became a part of our DNA of, hey, listen, irrespective of what happens, we’re gonna give away half her profit. So when we were having really bad months, still gave it away. Because it’s just bigger than us. Quintessa has to be able to help people and do different things than just make profit and put money in our pockets. And so once we took that stance, it really made a difference.
Jeremy Weisz 23:12
Lauren, do you choose different courses? Or how do you decide how to distribute that?
Lauren Von 23:17
I do. So we partner with a lot of different charities. So one of the biggest ones is the Bible app. So they want to be able to pretty much everyone in the world, people have access to a Bible in their language. So when I was first, I went to a private Christian school. And initially, I wanted to go to be an international business and be a missionary. That was what I wanted to do. And so it was really funny seeing how God kind of brought me back to being a part of that and being able to give money, which can do way more than what I could have ever done as a person. So that’s one that I’m partnered with Infant Crisis Center. So it’s making sure that in Oklahoma families, they can come four times each child can come up to four times in a year for food for clothing, just to make sure that they’re trying to help out diapers. And then ReMerge is all about taking women with nonviolent crimes, who they may have gone to prison or maybe close to go into prison, and rehabilitating them and actually teaching them a skill. And so those are things to me, it’s breaking generational curses. Because at any point in anyone’s life, if you, my parents were really great, but I’ve made some poor decisions. And if they weren’t there to pick me up, who’s to say where I would have ended up. So the goal is, hey, I’m gonna give someone this opportunity and break these curses. And so those are the three that we partner with, but there’s probably 25 that we give to at any given time.
Jeremy Weisz 24:51
What’s the website for the ReMerge?
Lauren Von 24:54
I believe it’s ReMerge OKC. Yeah, it’s a pretty, it’s the only one in Oklahoma City that actually does it. So it’s pretty amazing. And so we’ve gotten to hire a couple of, its remergeok.org. But we’ve got to hire a couple of people, a couple of women from there. But what’s great is she made enough on her first bonus to get her driver’s license and to get a car. And she was taking the bus. And so that to me was really cool. Being able to be a part of that story.
Jeremy Weisz 25:30
Yeah, that’s life-changing, I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, I had a guy on Dave Durocher of The Other Side Academy. It sounds like a similar thing where they have a place where they can essentially, rehab people have been in and out of the prison system. And he was on the brink of a 29-year prison sentence he talks about now there were choppers coming down on him at that time. And he now is executive director of The Other Side Academy. Is was really cool. So I appreciate you sharing that, and people can check out remergeok.org. Your why is changed from when you started till now?
Lauren Von 26:15
Yes, it has. My why was I mean, to be honest, it was very, I mean, it was very selfish, it was about me, it was, hey, I need to be able to make X amount per month, I need to take care of my daughter.
Jeremy Weisz 26:29
I don’t know about selfish wanting to take care of yourself and your daughter.
Lauren Von 26:34
I mean, well, the thing is, I think when you start a company, you’re focused on, I mean, unless you’re starting a charity or something, focusing on myself in it was the byproduct of, I didn’t care how I got there, I had to be able to do this to take care of. So I think you end up in some poor decision-making whenever the focus is just on you. And because it became very personal, like if someone’s not hitting goals, and it feels like you’re wrong in your family, right. And like, there was no like Godfather-style things that happened after, but it was really just, hey, that’s what I started it for. And now, it is a we want to give opportunities to people to be able to have make life-changing money here, we want to be able to help people that have been in an accident, get with the right attorney, and we want to help the right attorney, bring in a lot of cases and be able to add, you know, profit to them. So the goal is, we’re really affecting and changing three different people’s lives at any given time. So yeah, that’s our why that’s what’s changed.
Jeremy Weisz 27:45
Lauren, you change your model, your profit tripled. What happened with that?
Lauren Von 27:52
So in 21, December of 21, the profit that just the model used to be I would send leads, and then an attorney would ask for a refund, and then we would grant it. So it used to be a lot of back and forth a lot of tension. So let’s say an attorney said, hey, you should refund this and like, oh, by the contract, it’s not in there. It’s like, well, you should add it in there. And it was trying to tell an attorney he’s wrong, which no one likes to be told that but then an attorney who fights for a living definitely does. So it was a problem. So we saw our profit margin, it really hit the ceiling of complexity, because we couldn’t scale it was going like this. And our profit margin would be great one month and horrible the next and there was no predictability. And so what we did is we took our average of four years and said, hey, what’s the average refund rate? And then we said, okay, let’s take that 35%, which is the number let’s discount our price. And then let’s put it out there. And so that’s what we did. And then that’s when we got a really large client. And immediately they scaled from like 25,000 a month to over a million. And it was because they were able to see the scalability, because there was no back and forth. It was all about how do we make numbers better? How do we make metrics better? So we came in at a wholesale price.
Jeremy Weisz 29:15
So you lowered pricing? And did you get pushed back?
Lauren Von 29:22
Yes. So all of my team really thought this was just going to plummet us because they were seeing the profit margin, and seeing that it was thin, and anyone would be this way, you know, looking at it say Okay, so I just want to make sure you’re clear, we’re barely profiting and you want to lower your price, and you’re thinking you’re going to profit more. No, you’re gonna have to get all new clients, how are you going to get them, and I just want to say, guys, let’s just look let’s just watch, let’s try it. And so we tried it with a few and then they were happy and now some of our other clients who were getting 70% refund, whenever I told them, we were changing the model, they were very upset. They were and so we lost them. And they came back, some of them did. But it’s also I just explained to them the model is broken. And it can’t be that you’re making a ton of money and we’re making or losing money we can’t do it has to be a partnership. So it reframed the entire Quintessa, we’re a partner, we’re not your marketer. So if you’re looking for a marketer go buy leads. But if you want a partner to help develop processes, and help your people and to make sure and really identify a problem and get a solution, then come to us and that’s what we’re here for.
Jeremy Weisz 30:37
So Lauren, what you did was you lowered pricing, but you also changed the terms a little bit. So people couldn’t refund off of leads you’re sending, were they paying a set amount every month on?
Lauren Von 30:51
What they were doing, it was deducted on a per lead price. So let’s say for instance, in a market, they were paying 1600, for an motor vehicle accident, and then 5000 for a commercial with a commercial policy. And then we lower the price to like 1100 for a motor vehicle and 3000 for a commercial. But there were no refunds. But because it was lower it allowed them to look at it more holistically as opposed to one by one or lead by lead.
Jeremy Weisz 31:20
Got it. And so yeah, if they have 100, they average out over 100 people, then it makes sense. Like, if you look at an individual basis, it’s a little painful if like, well, that person didn’t work out and we paid for, is that accurate?
Lauren Von 31:36
Yeah, it is. So what we look at, and what our people coach to every week when they’re talking to him is hey, what’s your conversion rate? And what’s your CPA? What is your cost per acquisition? Are you hitting your numbers, and if it is, then let’s not get into the nitty-gritty, let’s look at the big picture.
Jeremy Weisz 31:54
What you do is really tough in a sense that you only control certain things. And you may get blamed for things you don’t control. Okay. And which I mentioned, right? You do. So what do you do to kind of shore that up with the company? We talked about the intake department, and development and training, talk about the challenges and mistakes people make with that, that you maybe go into and help shore up? Because you’re gonna get blamed for it? I imagine.
Lauren Von 32:26
Yes. So we actually just had something happened last month, where we had a client on the West Coast, sending a lot of leads over great leads, cost per acquisition was really good. But it was falling out in their intake process. Well, when we started digging into it, and looking at live transfers and looking at what was going on, we were seeing that they weren’t able to complete their side of the intake, which is a more in-depth version of what we do. And they weren’t able to get the client on the phone. So we had to reconnect a bunch of people over there. But then what I also asked was, I said, give me your questions, like, I want to see your questions, because let’s say it takes me five more minutes to get their questions answered while I’m on the phone. But it ensures them being able to scale to over a million a month, well, I’m going to spend an extra five minutes on each one of the leads, I send them. And in the type A and me I’m like, I want to be able to take out their hands and control everything that I can, that I know we’re good at or that we’re already doing. And we have a 65-person intake staff. So it just makes more sense. So that’s one thing we’re adding on to our model and not charging, that’s a partner. And that’s how we want to do it. We want to be able to be the best that we can for them so they can scale.
Jeremy Weisz 33:44
What are the mistakes people are making law firms making with intake process, and maybe not just law firms, but other companies.
Lauren Von 33:51
I think performance bonus is to me the biggest thing, so hiring the right people, and then making sure they’re incentivized and held to a culture of accountability. So if you have someone coming in late every single day, not hitting quota, they are just dragging you down and your team down and they’re going to be a cancer. So I think it’s being able to hire slow and fire fast. But then it’s also giving back to your employee. So we end up in our intake floor bonusing, sometimes up to 50 grand in a month. But I mean, when you see how much ROI they’ve produced, they should and we have no problem writing that check every month. So I’m waiting for the day I read a 10 grand check to one and take it still hasn’t happened yet. And that’s the challenge right now on the floor. But I’d say implementing those bonus structures are big.
Jeremy Weisz 34:43
It’s interesting you say that because that was not the answer. I was expecting. Because back to people I was expecting more of a process. Answer but starting with the people, the hiring the right people and then incentivizing those people.
Lauren Von 35:00
I’d say I mean, our processes are clean. But if you don’t have the right people, then their processes don’t matter, because they can’t even get past the first 30 seconds of the phone call. So you will have no cases. So the processes don’t matter after that. Because you can’t really teach tone, right? You can’t really correct salespeople. So you have to be able to motivate them.
Jeremy Weisz 35:20
How do you have a hard conversation with the company you’re working with? Because you may find, hey, you know that person that’s been working for you for five years? They aren’t performing, they aren’t doing good job and intakes? How do you approach that with them?
Lauren Von 35:38
Well, so what I look at is, again, on a try to look at on a holistic approach. So if their team as a whole is really good, and they’re a great partner, but let’s say we keep getting complaints from one person. So what I’m doing is I’m emailing ahead attorney, and I’m saying, hey, listen, I had five cases, here’s my evaluation of these five cases, these five cases were handled by this intake rep. And this intake rep, fumbled the ball on four. So your ROI is lost from this person. And this is what was said on the call, this is what was done. And if it would have been handled by your other intake rep, John Doe, who handles us all the time, you wouldn’t have lost these cases, which you’re losing ROI on that because you have to pay for the leads. And so it’s an a very, not personal…
Jeremy Weisz 36:26
It’s a very objective factual, here’s what we’re seeing. And it’s not a judgment, or it’s not a subjective thing, you’re bringing up some objective measurements.
Lauren Von 36:39
Well, and if you listen to our call center, you may, someone has a bad day, right? They broke up with their boyfriend last night, they have a bad tone, but you have to have procedures in place to be able to watch that. So like for us, if we’re not hitting a certain conversion rates, we pull people off the phone, and we put them on rounds, because we just hate today’s not your day, and that’s okay, we’re gonna listen to it, give you feedback on it. But you get to a certain point, if you’re not hitting conversion rates, then you’re off.
Jeremy Weisz 37:08
You mentioned you change your model a little bit the pricing, but your model is different from a lot of agencies in general that I’ve seen. So what made you decide to really handle everything, take the intake in-house, and charge per lead, as opposed to hey, we’re just gonna do a flat fee, and just send them all your way.
Lauren Von 37:30
So I had done the TV commercials, but then I also started our SEO division. And then when I started the SEO division for attorneys, we started listening to phone calls, because we would see their clicks go up, their calls go up, but the cases not go up as much. And that’s whenever I started to see, they were paying their intake reps minimum wage to handle a possible, million-dollar case made no sense to me, just in very backwards. So I was actually 30th birthday with my best friend at the Quintessa winery. That’s why it’s him Quintessa. So I was at the Quintessa winery in Sonoma, when I decided to start my company. And so I was, I guess, all good thoughts, all good ideas come after a glass of wine. So day drinking at 10 am wine tasting. And I look over at her, and we’re hearing about the processes of Quintessa. And how he threw out like his first five or six batches of wine, because they weren’t to his par. And so he would refine his processes and refine everything that he went around. And when he put it out, it was triple the price of most any other wine bottle. And so I’m sitting here hearing that story, wine induced from the Quintessa. And I look over at her and I said, hey, I’m going to start my own company. And she was like, Okay, let’s go eat a burger. Because we’ve been wine tasting from nine to 11, with no food. And let’s really talk this through. And so it was, I know I can do better. It was a I’m a problem solver. I’m looking out. I’m seeing what I’ve done over the years. What is something I’m innately good at? And how can I help people? And that was really the evolution of it.
Jeremy Weisz 39:13
No, I love that, Lauren, you know, the more you can take off of a client’s plate to make it easier for them, the better. We talked about, I want to really dig deeper into what you do. And so people can understand. There was a PI law firm across the US. And what were some of the things that you did with them, and they also had to when they were expanding too?
Lauren Von 39:40
Yeah, so one of the pie law firms that we work with. Their goal is to grow. And so one thing that Quintessa has enabled law firms to do, especially this one is if you go into a new market, a lot of times you have to sign a year lease, you have to buy a building, you have to find people And that takes a lot of time here, you’re building your own business again. So let’s say it’s six to nine months, and then you have to start filling the pipeline. So you could be close to 500,000 to a million dollars in with no ROI, no cases. And so what we are able to do is go into a market because we don’t advertise their brand and we advertise our own to where in 24 hours, they are getting in leads that are converting into cases for them. So they can start filling their pipeline in filling with people at the same time. And so it’s allowed there, the scalability model for them to where they already have the ROI proven out. And they know how the model is before they start hiring a ton of people are buying a building. So we brought them into a really large state. And when we did that, they were flooded with over 200 cases, and they had to just hire a ton of people, but they wouldn’t have had that opportunity unless they weren’t with Quintessa.
Jeremy Weisz 40:59
What are some things that are working today in terms of getting leads? Not just be in law firms, but obviously expand across other markets, too.
Lauren Von 41:10
What I’d say is, anyone can advertise? It’s really to me who answers the phone. So we’re on every platform. So we’re on Google, we’re on TikTok, we’re on Facebook and Instagram. But to me, it’s who’s answering the phone? How are they handling it? What’s your follow up process? That to me is really core and processes. Everyone’s had horrible customer service experience, and then everyone’s had a really good one. And so I’d say, you can spend a lot of money on a lot of different channels. But if you don’t have your back end handled, it won’t matter how much you spend.
Jeremy Weisz 41:47
Yeah, Lauren, I have one last question. And before I ask it, I want to point people to learn more, they can check out quintessamarketing.com to learn more, I don’t know if there’s any other places online, we should have people check out.
Lauren Von 42:02
No, that’s it right now. That’s where everything is.
Jeremy Weisz 42:05
I love to hear resources, it could be books, it could be software that you love, we mentioned Traction. What are some of the resources books or software that you like to use in your team?
Lauren Von 42:18
So I listened to Pastor Craig Groeschel, his Leadership Podcast a lot. So he’s been a really good asset for me, because he has a lot of different leaders kind of like you on these different ones. So I love listening to him. Traction for us has been big, Rocket Fuel has been really big. Because then you’re not taking on the world by yourself. And I would say any type of accountability software that you can come up with to keep your goals in line. Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a really big thing. So yeah, so I’d say those are probably my go-to’s. Anyone that has a leadership what I think what we look at is, the new book comes out. I love reading it and you can always take one nugget of wisdom. And if you can get one thing from it, then it’s worth it.
Jeremy Weisz 43:10
Awesome. Lauren, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey, your story. It’s been a winding road and really appreciate it. Everyone check out more episodes of the podcast and Quintessa Marketing. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks, everyone.
Lauren Von 43:24
Yeah, thanks so much.
