Lawyer Business Advantage

Lawyer Business Advantage


Authentic Marketing with Valerie Fenchel

March 19, 2020

In this episode of Lawyer Business Advantage, we have a conversation with Valerie Fenchel, owner of Fenchel Family Law. Valerie shares how her authentic approach to business development and to running her firm drive the success of her marketing, including community service, networking, email newsletters and online marketing. Valerie’s approach is authentic. It’s sincere and genuine and vulnerable, and it’s incredibly effective.
Alay Yajnik: [00:00:43] Welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage, your source for biz dev tips, wisdom and inspiration. I’m your host, Alay Yajnik. We’re unleashing your inner rainmaker in 3…2…1….
[00:00:58] It’s my pleasure today to have Valerie Fenchel, the founder of Fenchel Family Law with us on Lawyer Business Advantage today. Valerie, thank you so much for joining us.
Valerie Fenchel: [00:01:07] Oh, thanks for having me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
Alay Yajnik: [00:01:10] Well, likewise, I’m super excited to have you on the podcast today. I remember the first time we actually work together on an event. It was on a speaking event for a fierce female founders in San Francisco, and it was great hearing how dynamic of a speaker you are. And also some of the great things you’re doing to build your own practice. So congratulations on all your success and moving forward checking today.
Valerie Fenchel: [00:01:35] Thanks, me too. That was a great event. And I look forward to hopefully having it next year with you as well.
Alay Yajnik: [00:01:40] Something I hear about a lot from potential clients. I was hoping you could shed some light on it. It’s around this idea of community service, of using community service for business development. And the thing that I always stress with my clients is that, you know, if you’re going to do that, you should really be looking to serve first and the business development opportunities, if any, that come out of that are just gravy. But you’re in a community service organization to serve. That’s just my perspective. But I know you’re really active in the Jewish community as the lead attorney for Shalom Byit’s pro-bono legal panel. The secretary of the Jewish Bar Association of San Francisco.
Valerie Fenchel: [00:02:21] I think all of the activities that I’ve been a part of, I do because I enjoy them. And I’ve kind of learned to experience the difference between doing activities solely for the purpose of hoping that they bring in business versus doing activities because I genuinely enjoy the people. I’m doing them with any passion about the cause. And when I’m passionate about a cause, I, you know, I’m much more excitedto do those activities. And I think it’s apparent to everyone I’m doing those activities with. So while I might not be doing the activity for the purpose of bringing in business, that seems to be the end result.
Valerie Fenchel: [00:03:03] I called off my wedding a couple years ago. When I did, I was really excited about the idea of helping other women, you know, be able to get divorced for free because I felt really privileged to be able to call off my wedding because I had, you know, a firm that was very successful financially where I didn’t feel tied to anyone in particular in order to have financial stability in my life. And it made me realize about, you know, there’s a lot of women. I see my practice and in general that don’t feel that same freedom, to get out of relationships. So I planned a fundraiser in order to raise money for this cause. Since I had a wedding that was already paid for to use as a venue and I didn’t think about it at the time. But by putting on this fundraiser where we luckily had 100 people attend and we we...