We discuss the importance of using passion in your marketing with Ivette Santaella, Managing Attorney at Santaella Legal Group. Ivette’s life experiences give her passion for her area of the law. That passion has powered the success of her marketing and business development efforts. Listen to her story and pick up some tips from a proven rainmaker!
Alay Yajnik: [00:00:26] 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 three, two, one….
Alay Yajnik: [00:00:41] It’s my pleasure to welcome to the show Ivette Santaella, Managing Shareholder at Santaella Legal Group. Ivette is a fantastic estate planning and elder law attorney. Ivette, welcome to the show!
Ivette Santaella: [00:00:52] Thank you, Alay. Thank you for having me.
Alay Yajnik: [00:00:54] So glad you’re able to join us as well. You and I have known each other for a while, and I know all about your background and the success that you’ve had, but our listeners don’t know. So please give us a quick overview on what made you decide to open up your firm and what made you decide to focus on estate planning and elder care.
Ivette Santaella: [00:01:17] I’d be happy to. I was corporate counsel for many years, and during that time, my mother got ill with Alzheimer’s. So I had to leave my job. And I took care of her. And after she passed, I realized that I wanted to have a change of direction and focus more on helping people instead of just making money for corporations. So I decided to open up my own practice. I started out on my own and then a colleague of mine went of many years, she joined me and the practice slowly grew. We started doing social media. We started doing blogging and started doing more things together to get a lot of exposure. We also hired a very, very good coach, named Alay Yajnik, who really, really helped us, actually. We helped each other a lot, both starting out. And that made quite a difference. Just working hard. Networking, doing good work. Following up with people. Communicating and contributing to the community. Just helped us grow. The word gets out. If you do a good job, people talk. I love what I do. I look forward to doing this every day. I wish I had started this when I was younger. But it’s it’s just a fabulous area law. I’m probably going to continue doing this until I cannot do it anymore.
Alay Yajnik: [00:02:34] That’s awesome, Ivette! What is it that you really enjoy about practicing estate planning and elder law?
Ivette Santaella: [00:02:40] Of course, you make a decent living, but you’re actually seeing the results of your labor. People come to you with problems and you’re able to help them solve these problems. And we see the hope and the gratitude and the joy, knowing that they expressed that to me and I see that and it just make me think that I’ve accomplished something. So not only, you know, making a living, but you’re also really helping somebody. When I used to be in corporate America is doing contracts and negotiations, whereas, you know, I’m actually dealing with people. I’m helping them. And it’s very rewarding.
Alay Yajnik: [00:03:17] And you do a fantastic job of it. You know, a lot of the people that I’ve connected with have said that you’ve done a fantastic job for them. And one of the things that I really appreciated about your approach is that you take a genuine interest in your clients. And I believe that, you’ve got a personal story around that and something that’s pretty near and dear to your heart. Would you mind sharing that with your listeners?
Ivette Santaella: [00:03:40] Yeah. I started talking about my mom.