Nicole Scott

Kevin Daisey (host):

Hey everyone. We are live in front of the live recording of the managing partner’s podcast. My name is Kevin Daisey, and I’ll be your host. Also the founder of Array Digital. We exist to help firms grow their case pipeline using digital marketing. So if you need that kind of help please reach out to us, but today I have a special guest coming out of Chicago, Nicole Scott. Welcome to the show, and thanks for joining me.

Nicole Scott:

Thank you for having me.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Yeah. So we were talking a little bit backstage. So Nicole’s actually been out of the hunt, so she’s got a bit of her Friday left ahead of her and we talked about how it’s cold. It’s cold outside. So as we’re recording this anyway, it’s… Temperatures have dropped quite a bit. And in Virginia here, it’s in the fifties and it is there too. It looks like fall’s in full swing. So, so tell us, we want to hear your story, how you became an attorney, what got you started? And of course, you run your own firm, your own practice.

Nicole Scott:

Yes.

Kevin Daisey (host):

So give us kind of that story of how you got started and how you ended up with your own practice.

Nicole Scott:

Okay. So I am an attorney. I, I say this was kind of destined for me. Just quick on my background. I come from two parents who were both on drugs when they had me. And so that resulted in me residing between my maternal and paternal grandparents. And when my mother, my father was deported, he’s from Jamaica originally. So he got deported back to Jamaica and…

Kevin Daisey (host):

Wow.

Nicole Scott:

My mother was got clean and sober. She went to court to try to fight for custody of me again. And at that time I was residing primarily with my paternal grandmother. And so through that custody battle, there was an attorney that was appointed to me and I was able to very much tell her everything. I was able to be honest with her. She was the only person in the situation. I was able to be completely honest and completely myself with.

Nicole Scott:

I was like eight, about between the ages of six and eight. This was going on that I remember. So at that time I didn’t have an outlet both my paternal grandmother and maternal grandmother. And my mother were just always asking me who I wanted to live with. And I was, of course, as a child just telling everybody, yeah, I want to live with you just to make it. Okay.

Nicole Scott:

But my attorney, I was able to tell her everything. And she was young at the time she was in her early twenties, just getting out of law school. And she was very blunt with me, me a little eight year old about her job and how stressful it was and things like that. But she made a difference for me. And so after that, I knew I wanted to kind of help children and then kind of develop more into, I want to do family law. And so that’s kind of how I became an attorney and how my path kind of started.

Nicole Scott:

Fast forwarding to me owning my own firm. I knew, I always knew that I wanted to own my own firm, just my personality.

Kevin Daisey (host):

You know, when you know, right.

Nicole Scott:

Yeah, you know, just me being my own boss. And so I kind of, again, it was destiny. I kind of was pushed out to do it. Me and another colleague, we actually got fired and a lot of people don’t know that. So we got fired from our jobs for something. It wasn’t something that we did on our, our work or anything. It was very much personality conflicts.

Nicole Scott:

We weren’t getting treated fairly. And so it started to kind of show in how we approached our positionings. And so from that day we had no choice. We had to kind of go out on our own. And so I was grateful enough to be able to have, at least I would say 15 to 20 clients wanted to follow me when I left. And so that’s kind of how I got my footing and I was able to build from there.

Kevin Daisey (host):

That’s…Well, amazing story. Sorry. You have to go through that and it put you on the track that you’re on, but are you familiar with court appointed special advocates?

Nicole Scott:

Yes, I am. So we don’t call it that here we call them either one of three things; either child representatives, guardian ad litems, or attorneys for the child.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Okay. So here in Virginia, the, the Virginia state one, there’s a few dozen probably throughout the state, but we actually did a charity giveaway, a website marketing, all this other stuff and, and that’s, that was our winner a few years ago. So we have a great relationship with them. We built their website and it’s for the whole of Virginia for the CASA, if you will.

Nicole Scott:

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (host):

So I got to learn a lot more about that. So it was very interesting and a great, you know, great thing to help out that we were able to do that here recently. So…

Nicole Scott:

We have CASA, we do have a CASA program here as well, so.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Okay.

Nicole Scott:

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Is that similar to what you experienced as a child?

Nicole Scott:

Kind of. It was more so of, it’s kind of a mix of both. So here, you know, we have CASA and we have CASA representatives. I don’t work a lot with a lot of representatives from CASA, but you know, it definitely was a court-appointed individual who was helping on my case. And so it’s more synonymous to what we have here. I t’s like the Office of the Public Guardian.

Nicole Scott:

And the Office of the Public Guardian, they do, you know, custody, they appoint attorneys to help with custody issues, but they do an array of things. So not just custody, they deal with probate and wherever you can appoint an attorney, the Office of the Public Guardian handles that. So I would say it was kind of, kind of like CASA, but more of like the Office of Public Guardian here.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Okay. Excellent. Well, I was just, that’s my only knowledge of that. So just figure out, throw that out. So tell me more about your firm, what you really focus on and you know, what you’ve come to specialize in.

Nicole Scott:

Okay. So my focus throughout my career has been family law. Like I said, kind of from my background, I’ve always known that that’s what I wanted to get into. So that’s what my firm does. We do divorce custody, child support, visitation, orders of protection, we’ve ventured into estate planning. So, that’s what we focus on.

Kevin Daisey (host):

The reason I ask is [inaudible 00:06:43] an areas in, you know, some do estate planning and some do. So, but, you know, makes a lot of sense to transition to that as well. So, what are some of the ways that, you started out with twenty clients which came with you, which is awesome. And when did you get started? What year did you found the firm?

Nicole Scott:

2018. August 20th, 2018.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Okay. But she had some clients came with you, which gave some good footing. From there, what has really been something that’s worked well for you to, to get in front of clients, to get clients, any marketing activities or things like that? What has worked well for you to continue to grow?

Nicole Scott:

Outside of word of mouth and, you know, constantly getting referrals from either colleagues or past clients, I try to stay relevant. Right. So a lot of that comes from social media. Social media is an under minded tool. I don’t think a lot of attorneys, it’s kind of foreign for them. And so a lot of attorneys don’t market on social media, as much as they should, as much as they could. And they don’t maximize that as a tool of marketing.

Nicole Scott:

And so I’ve tried to use that as kind of a niche for me, especially because I’m a younger attorney, right? I can go in there and make a real and, you know, do TikTok and things like that. And, and, and kind of get some attention from there. So that has been very beneficial to kind of helping me stay fresh and stay as a face at the firm. So to say.

Kevin Daisey (host):

That’s awesome. I’m glad hear that. Cause obviously we do digital offers and most advantage of certain things, or, and it’s not like a company like mine can’t just do reels and TikToks for clients. They have to be willing, and able, and actually it’s pretty funny we were actually doing reels today in the office. So we were just recording a bunch that’ll go live next week, actually. So me and my business partner.

Kevin Daisey (host):

So, so you know we try to take advantage of it as much as we can, but we’re kind of new to doing the reels ourself so, and we’re a marketing company. So it’s just, you know, where’s your audience, you know, you got to try to know who’s watching, who’s checking it out. I think for you, it makes a lot of sense for sure. For us as attorneys on Instagram. Of course they are so we, we know that that’s going to be a good spot. TikTok maybe not so much.

Kevin Daisey (host):

I’ve a lot attorneys of some that you would not even expect. There’s a, a gentleman we had on older gentleman attorney who has like five hundred thousand followers on TikTok. It works very well for him. Reels, TikTok, so yeah, it’s cool to see what some attorneys are doing.

Nicole Scott:

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (host):

But you’re correct that the vast majority are not, you know, not really investing and, and don’t really see that it’s a place that they should spend any time. Right. I’m glad to see that you’re doing that, it’s impressive.

Nicole Scott:

Thank you.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Are things, obviously there is things like word of mouth. And then of course, social media. You’re doing that, which is awesome. Has anything you’ve done in the past that you feel like didn’t work or things you’ve tried?

Nicole Scott:

Yeah. So kind of going on the realm of social media, you got to have to really know how to use it in order for it to be beneficial. So I did hire a company because obviously it’s time consuming, like, right. Like you talked about how you guys were recording those today. And that can be very frustrating. I remember the first reel I recorded, which actually went kind of viral, but I remember how difficult it was just to get the first one done and to get it timed out, right with the wording and things. It was just a mess, right. It took us hours to kind figure it out.

Nicole Scott:

So it can be time consuming and just even keeping up with the posting, right. People want to see, you know, the consistency, that’s the key to social media is, you know, figuring out the algorithm and getting the consistency down packed. That takes time. I don’t have that time. So I hired a company to help me. And it was like one of the worst. I think I wasted so much money doing that. Just them, the posts that they were making, didn’t resonate with the type of clients that I want, nor are the type of clients that are attracted to our firm. So a lot of the posts were very generic. I saw that they were also helping my friend as well. They were posting the same things on her page. So I’m like that doesn’t help.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Oh, wow. That’s not good.

Nicole Scott:

You know like those type of things. And I’m like, I just, and then they wanted to have a lot of meetings and obviously I’m hiring you cause I don’t have time. So for you to want to have 12 meetings a week is not, you’re not helping me. Right. I could use this time for something else. And so that didn’t help. So I think that was one of the things that I not regret, but you know, I wish I didn’t have used the money that way.

Kevin Daisey (host):

No, a hundred percent. And that’s a good, you know, for me. We say that a lot and a lot of our attorneys, they don’t have time. And you know, we, we try to, I know for us, my firm that’s, that would be a big mistake is one putting out generic content, reusing content for someone else that’s not good at all. And then we try to keep in mind that the attorneys are busy, and that we’re a done-for-you service, not, you know. We need some like approval maybe, but other than that we need to take up as much least amount of your time as possible.

Kevin Daisey (host):

So, well, sorry that, that was the experience you had with, with that company. But, but I love what you’re doing with all the reels. I took a look at your Instagram, and everyone, if you’re tuning in right now on the screen, if you’re on YouTube, LinkedIn and watching this, Nicole’s website is just below, if you’re listening on audio on the podcast, it’s NMSfamilylaw.com. So it’s NMSfamilylaw.com. Check that out, check on the phone. And I assume Nicole, you have Instagram or other things connected off there probably somewhere. Right?

Nicole Scott:

I think so. I think so. I’ll have to look, but I’m sure it should be .

Kevin Daisey (host):

Well, if not, what’s your Instagram?

Nicole Scott:

Our Instagram is NMS Family Law. So it’s my initials. NMS Family Law, that’s our Instagram. You should be able to also see some of the videos that we did on there, as well as my personal page. You can look it’s love live life. So it’s LOVELIVELIFE_15. You can find some of the reels that we did on there as well.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Awesome. So it’s basically the same as your other page too, your Instagram.

Nicole Scott:

Yep.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Perfect. I’m going to check that out. You’ll see some reels coming from me here soon. Watch out. Trying you know. Well, so what’s kind of the next step? What’s the growth plans the next couple years or coming out of COVID. Hopefully might get worse for a little bit, but then hopefully that’s gone. But besides that, what does the next couple years look like? What do you have on the radar?

Nicole Scott:

Well, I want to, I envision my firm, you know, being one of the largest family law firms, and so that’s going to require me to kind of step out of my shell of well, not shell, but kind of role of doing the day to day. And so that’s kind of where I’m transitioning now. Trying to hire, you know, another attorney to come on and help with the caseload so that I can, you know, be the Rainmaker essentially, and kind of bring in, bring in the clients on a more higher, you know, a larger scale.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Oh, that’s excellent. And so would you, you kind of bringing, bring in the work and if you have other attorneys you can pass it down to, or yeah. Right, right. Awesome. Yeah. Well, you know, we got big goals too, trying to grow. If you’re not growing or dying. Right. So…

Nicole Scott:

Yeah. That’s it.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Well, and dude, you can help more people make a bigger impact.

Nicole Scott:

Absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (host):

You know, if you’re just working with a couple clients in you’re small. That’s how I try to look at it is the more, the bigger I am, the more people we can help. So yeah. That’s awesome. Well, I appreciate you sharing all this today with me. I want to check out your, your reels for sure. I’m going to definitely do that. Anything else you wanted share with the audience before we go? Any tip you would give to a, maybe a young person or younger attorney thinking about going on their own?

Nicole Scott:

If you’re going to do it, just do it scared. Right? Do it afraid. People don’t do things because of fear, but just do it. You’ll be surprised.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Yeah. I think conditions will never be perfect.

Nicole Scott:

No, never.

Kevin Daisey (host):

You’ll you’ll never have, you know, enough money saved up. You’ll never have anything just right. So, just, I know the [inaudible 00:16:08]

Nicole Scott:

That’s true. Even like coming out, even though, you know, I was blessed with having clients coming out, a lot of people are not they’re coming out kind of just trying to wing it. I was able to have those clients as my, as my footing. You still have issues. I remember it’s going to be a struggle at first. Right. I remember not having to pay myself and to pay my staff in the beginning. So those are humbling beginnings, but it’s necessary to kind of see your growth. So don’t worry about the struggle one day, you know, we’re all examples that it doesn’t last forever.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Love. Great message. Everyone out there. If you’re listening, if you’re thinking about going out on your own just, just do it, get out there. You know, do a little bit of planning, but you can’t just wait forever. You just got to do it. So love the message.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Thanks, Nicole, appreciate you sharing that today with us. Everyone listening, you can check out Nicole’s episode soon. It’ll be up on our website, it’ll also be on YouTube and you can check it out on our website thisisarray.com. Click on the Podcast. It’ll also be up on my LinkedIn and we’re going to create some really cool content for Instagram and other platforms as well.

Kevin Daisey (host):

Nicole, we’ll share that with you and we’ll tag you when we post. And so look for that from our team, and then if you need any help, the audience, with websites, marketing, those kind of things. That’s what we do. We help you get found on Google, online, professional websites. So anyone needs that kind of help. Please reach out to us. Happy to collaborate and share if you got any questions and that’s all you have, that’s fine too. So just reach out and happy to help. Nicole. Anything else before we go?

Nicole Scott:

No. Just thank you for the opportunity to speak to your audience.

Kevin Daisey (host):

No, absolutely. I appreciate your tips and, and what you’ve done and the experience you’ve had. Just stay on with me for a second. Everyone else, have a great day and we will talk to you soon.