Show Notes:

Building a brand. “You start where you are with what you have — and I started with nothing. You never know where your next case or client is going to come from. We had to do a lot of hands-on marketing and networking, and with each step, you get to another step, and another, and so on. So when we started our marketing, it probably began with the Yellow Pages, and then television, and then digital, and so forth. Some of the conversations I have regarding marketing usually take a long time coming. For instance, it might have taken me 25 years to get to this point. Though it might have taken me a long time to reach this point, once you get past a barrier, you finally reach a certain level of security simply because of the long buildup.”

The two Ps of Monge team members. “Positivity and performance are what I look for when determining whether someone will be a good fit to work with us. I want to find the nicest people on the planet that will be great to work with who simultaneously have an amazing work ethic.”

It starts today. “Day one of my legal journey looked like me signing a 12-month office lease, having no clients, and people congratulating me — and then I decided it was time to get to work. It was all new and overall a really great lesson, but I eventually got used to it. After a while, you build up your risk tolerance and make decisions more swiftly and quickly.”

Team first. “We are the sum of the energy of the people with whom we surround ourselves. When I look back in terms of things that pointed me in the legal direction, I have so many people that have been positive influences on me. There are very few things in this world that I do well, so anything that you see within my organization, just know that there are many people involved in making it successful.”

Silver linings. “If you’re looking to source the best talent for your team, why limit yourself to your hometown? One of the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it forced innovation in a very short amount of time. As a result of that, it forced us to think in new ways of looking for talent beyond our immediate, convenient geography. That’s when we began integrating talent from all over into our organization and moving forward with that style of working.”

The keys to growing your practice. “In terms of marketing, there are two ways to grow a practice: you can either expand your geography or expand what you do regarding practice areas. For us, one of our biggest distinguishers is our geography, and it’s really helped us grow. The introduction of the internet has opened up a whole new world of exciting possibilities as well. So when we’re looking at doing things, we always want to make sure we’re doing it differently from everyone else. We try not to use familiar legal jargon and slogans — even though we offer those things still, but we’ll say it in a way that’s different. If we say it like everyone else, that just means we’re going to have to spend more time trying to get to the top of the heap.”

How Monge thinks differently. “One of the greatest challenges in America today is attracting quality talent for your business. Unemployment is at a record low nationally and even lower in other places. What we look at now isn’t so much where a person is but what they produce. As long as we find someone who’s producing and adding value, then it doesn’t really matter where they live. That brings up another point of prioritizing culture when you have a hybrid work environment. We do it in every way we can, including by offering incentives for our current employees to recommend us to their friends and family members.”