You know those people whose brains never turn off?

Who see every problem and come up with a solution? They know their strengths & can serve a LOT of different types of people?

(I'd bet this might even describe YOU! Your brain won't stop creating!)

Well - today I'm interviewing one of these people. Bobby Klinck is a colleague of mine in the online business space, and I highly respect him.

He is a lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-marketer-turned- business coach -

turned back to lawyer.

I wanted to share his story & his insights with you because Bobby did what Bobby does:

1. He sees a need or a hole in the market, and then uses his brain to fill & fix it.

2. He takes action on on his ideas quickly, in the most rebellious, honest, authentic way he can.

3. He evolves and iterates and keeps going to achieve his goals.

The thing is, like me (and maybe like you), at some point constantly churning and solving and DOING becomes...

UNSUSTAINABLE.

I've watched Bobby's business from its start and have followed his journey closely because his capacity for ideas AND implementation has always been incredible...

And in late 2022, he knew he needed to switch things up, get back to center, decide what was realistic for him, and pivot to a business model he could maintain...

that makes him money AND brings him happiness.

Because our conversation was SO long (he shares SO much wisdom woven into his stories & rebellious honesty)

that I cut it into 2 parts.

Listen to Part 1 to hear how how his business came to be (from Harvard law school to fancy lawyer-y jobs to online business coach!)...

The evolution we make when we know our strengths...

And what he did that always went against the grain to bring him success.

In part 2 we dive into what made everything unsustainable & how to get back to center...

PLUS a ton about how to clear up your messaging, how to lift off the weight of what "you're supposed to do", and how to create strategic & purposeful content!

You can find Bobby today as The Online Legal Guy at www.bobbyklinck.com - where he's got tools galore to help keep you safe in your business!

Connect with Bobby

Website: www.bobbyklinck.com

Special Offers:
https://bobbyklinck.com/courseguide/ (How To Create Course Terms)
https://www.bobbyklinck.com/pp  (Free Privacy Policy)

Links Mentioned

Hubspot Academy
https://academy.hubspot.com/

Interview Connections
https://interviewconnections.com/

Amy Porterfield Podcasts
https://www.amyporterfield.com/2018/11/bobby-klinck/ 
https://www.amyporterfield.com/2018/04/gdpr/ 

Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast
https://www.eofire.com/podcast/bobbyklinck/

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Full Transcript

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Jen Liddy

Hey, I'm really glad you're here today for the Content Creation Made Easy podcast!

I am talking to Bobby Klinck, who this is my first time actually talking with Bobby voice on voice, but I feel like I have known him forever. I'm gonna tell you that he's a Harvard law grad lawyer, but he's not a typical lawyer. I love calling him like he's the Online Legal Guy like if you need anything legal, he is your guy.

The reason I'm asking Bobby to come on today is not necessarily to talk about legal stuff, though I think we will. It's because he made a huge pivot in his business back to some of his roots.

That kind of thing takes a lot of contemplation and courage and confidence and it's a big ship to steer.

In our growth as content creators, we might be looking at our own platforms or our own businesses and saying, what's working for me, what's not working for me, and I just think Bobby's insights are gonna be really helpful.

I want to tell you a little bit about Bobby, he has an extensive legal background, he's got 20 plus years in the legal background. He's focusing now on making the legal stuff simple for you, kind of like dummy-proof legal templates that you can buy.

I own his legal templates - they are fantastic, and I use them a lot. He basically helps online business owners protect what is theirs so that they can grow their businesses and have legal peace of mind, so thanks, Bobby, for being on here today.

Really appreciate it!

Bobby Klinck

Thanks.

I'm looking forward to the conversation like you said, I mean, we have interacted so many times online that it's kind of weird.

It is great to finally be talking with you in person, or I guess not in person - it's close to.

Jen Liddy

You're in Dallas right now?

Bobby Klinck

I'm in Washington, DC. I'm in the suburbs of DC.

Jen Liddy

Did you move from Dallas to DC? Why did I think of Dallas at all?

Bobby Klinck

I'm originally from Deep South Texas, McAllen, which is near the Mexican border. It's about five miles all the way to the Southern tip. Then I went back, and I lived in Fort Worth for a period when I was a federal prosecutor.

That was 14 years ago or 13 years ago at this point, so now I consider myself a DC native, although now I'm in the suburbs, but I've lived here off and on since 2003.

Jen Liddy

Okay, we're both on the East Coast!

I'm up in Syracuse, New York, so can you tell us a little bit about how you went from this journey to federal prosecutor lawyer with the suit to online business owner that first shift? I'm curious about that first shift?

Bobby Klinck

Yeah, so my legal career really started, and it's the kind of career, at least early on, that most lawyers would dream up. I worked for a Court of Appeals judge who he's now passed away, but he was widely considered one of the best liberal judges never to make it to the Supreme Court, and Bill Clinton considered him both times that he had an appointment.

So that's where I started my career after law school, then I worked at two law firms here in the Washington area. One was a big mega-firm, and then I went to a more niche, smaller firm, where the guy who recruited me to that firm was my mentor.

I call him Neil, now we would have to call him Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, I mean, this was the guy who recruited me.

I mean, I've worked for a liberal, you know, Judge, and then a future very conservative Supreme Court justice, and so I had that experience. I did that, then I was a prosecutor, but I'm the son of an entrepreneur.

Okay, and also, what you need to know about me is when I do any kind of personality test that has rebellion, as one of the things I score very high on rebellion or very low on compliance, like on the DISC, my C is basically nonexistent.

I am not a compliant person - never have been.

As I was coming out of the gig as a prosecutor, I had the option to go back to the firm I've been at, but I decided to do something different. I joined a small entrepreneurial firm, and I made one of the classic mistakes that business owners make. I joined this firm without a written agreement that really codified how I would ever become a partner or owner in the firm.

It was problematic because I had all the downside risk. It was a contingency firm, our contingency fee type of law firm.

I would go six, eight months without getting paid. I mean, I get paid, and they treated me fairly, but the problem was, I had no guaranteed upside. Then my wife got pregnant, and at that point, I said, hey, guys, we need to formalize this, and we couldn't because the problem is three or four years into a relationship.

It's kind of a zero-sum game - every percentage point you give me as a percentage point you don't get in, so it didn't end well. I went out and started a law firm called Klinck LLC, and I made all of the horrible mistakes where I tried to be everything to everybody.

My messaging was all over the place.

I would do anything people want, and so people didn't even know what I did, like my friends who were lawyers had no idea how to refer people to hear or what to send people to.

Also, I only had one client, and that got resolved pretty quickly. So sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, and being a lawyer does not teach you how to market at all. I mean, you are actually very bad at marketing.

So I dug in, and I first read books about marketing for lawyers - those are dumb, and I'm saying with a capital D. After I threw those out, I started just searching, and I found this company HubSpot.

If people here don't know, HubSpot is a software that's too expensive for almost all of us solopreneurs or small business owners. It is kind of thought of as the software that is the king of inbound marketing, the idea of creating content, people are attracted with the content, then they go deeper and deeper and deeper, and I loved it.

HubSpot had a Free Academy, I think they still do back in 2014 or 2015, and I became HubSpot certified as an inbound marketer. I was using online marketing to build my law firm. I had an Amazon best-selling book called patent litigation primer, which don't ever buy it no one should read that. I was doing that, and then I guess, I don't know if it was midlife or what I was, I was coming up on, I guess it was coming up on 40.

I'm just kind of feeling eh about life, and so I started working with a life coach and this life coach. First, we talked about relationships, personal life,l and now, six or seven months, and she asked, she said we kind of shifted the business. She asked, "Do you like what you do for a living?"

For the first time, I admitted to someone other than my wife that I didn't, and it wasn't that I don't love it. I love the law, it's fun, it's intellectual, and all that, but I had built a career where I fought with people all the time.

Just sitting around and fighting all the time was problematic separately. Back in those days, when I got an email, it was very rarely going to be good news. It was always going to be opposing counsel doing something, a judge doing something that either meant I lost the case or meant that my life was thrown upside down for the next there's a problem you need to fix.

It was like I was constantly sitting there waiting for the next year. Separately I had seen a lot of things happen where people came to me because they'd gone without legal protection at the beginning. Then bad stuff happened, and the problem is they would come to me and about, I mean, you could hire me, but it's gonna cost you more to pay me than it's worth.

That pattern came up over and over again, which I hated. After I admitted it to the life coach, I didn't like it. The next question is, and I blame life coaches for this because they won't let you just wallow.

She said, "Okay, what are we gonna do about that?" And I said, "I don't know."

In that conversation, she said something like, well, I can see you going on to radio shows and podcasts and giving people quick tips and advising them about the legal stuff. I met with that life coach every two weeks by our next meeting, I had already hired it. There's a company called, I think, interview connections, but I had hired them to start booking me on podcasts.

I had no business at that point, other than my law firm, I had no idea what the plan was, but I got an action. That's where it started, and that was 2017, and throughout 2017, I appeared on a bunch of podcasts, a bunch of big-name podcasts that aren't as big in our space, but things like Entrepreneur on Fire. I was on that show and a bunch of other ones talking about these things, leading to my launch of an online course in November of 2017.

I tell this story pretty frequently. I have the best, I don't say the best, but I have a failed launch story to rival almost anybody's failed launch story. It's one of those things where I didn't know what I didn't know, but that's where it all started.

It's been uphill since then.

Jen Liddy

I found you on, I think, it was an Amy Porterfield podcast episode a very long time ago. I bought your legal templates.

I'm like one of the I think you refer to them as the OG people who bought your legal templates. I still follow you, I'm in your group, and I've watched you pivot.

I've watched you taking action - I feel like it is your specialty. You are decisive, and you take action and the other thing I do I think you do an incredible job at communicating with people.

You always let people know what's going on, and I think that's also part of what makes you a great content creator. I know you've written a book called email marketing that doesn't suck  Email Marketing That Doesn't Suck, which I also own.

So I would love to dive into once you launched the legal templates and was that successful, and then you moved into business coaching? Is that how that happened?

Bobby Klinck

The first failed launch was, and I copy my original buyer's "online genius" because my original brand name was your online genius, which was kind of a funny thing. People thought that I was saying I am your online genius, which is not at all.

My launch, I named my business, created my LLC, and I tried to come up with a name for my course, which was going to safeguard your Online Genius. So again, it was very much about you and that, but that was the launch that I did in November 2017.

I dumped I think 25 to 30,000 into the launch, specifically, but I had spent 10s of 1000s of dollars on stuff before that. I made one sale - I think I was selling it for 600 and something dollars at the time. That person asked for a refund on day 29 of the 30-day, no questions asked refund policy, never having looked at it.

Now looking back, I don't mind because I wouldn't have really wanted that person in, so I stumbled around until 2018 early 2018, I started shifting things. My first success, really, as an online business owner, was May 1st of 2018, which is when I launched at the time I called it my Online Genius Membership. I don't know why I called it a membership, it was never a membership. It was always a buy at once, and you get it, but it was basically a combination of training and legal templates, and that's where things started.

But ultimately, then later in 2018, I decided that, let's be honest, people don't really want to buy legal training. The templates are what they wanted, they wanted to solve the problem, get it done, etcetera. So I broke it out, and the training part became free, and then I was just selling legal templates, and that's been my model on the legal template basis since late 2018.

I got single templates all the way up to the All Access Pass, which is what you have. Speaking of how I shifted into business coaching, one of the great things was because, in those early phases, I was never, like, I didn't even envision becoming a business coach, or marketing coach, or anything like that.

So again, I was focused on this legal stuff, but the reason that worked out was that I could be 100% transparent and talk about all of the things I screwed up in business. But also, like, I could talk about successful launches that weren't six figures, and these huge numbers like most business coaches are talking about, right?

What happened is people started to say, Bobby, we connect with you because you talk about a successful launch as making $40,000 with not, you know, million dollar launches, and you tell us the stuff you screwed up. So over time, I was doing that, and people kept asking me about things.

I ventured into kind of the marketing business coaching stuff in, I guess it would have been 2019 is, when I first launched something called the Fans for Society. It was based on this idea that I have a very different view of online marketing than most of the online marketers.

I think online marketing isn't online marketing, it's marketing that we do online, and we should still use the basic principles of marketing. These things have kind of been learned from my dad, which is you put people first, you treat them right, you serve the heck out of people, and then they will buy from you naturally. And so the fans versus it was really about the concept of doing that and generating your 1000 true fans.

I think it was a TED talk, but also an article about how, as an online creator, all you need are 1000 true fans, and you don't even really need that number. It was this idea that you don't need millions or hundreds of 1000s people, you just need that group of core people.

So I created that, then I would do training as part of that, and I would ask people what kind of training they want. Over time, people kept saying, email, email, email and so I launched an email course, and then I had my email marketing book, etc.

But also, over time, I just because I'm a rebel because I don't mind causing trouble. I would talk about marketing and business in a way that was very different from the typical online marketing world. I would be talking about how do you build? I mean, I would say a real business but in a lot of ways.

What happens is people would see this as a very different way and my audience in a lot of ways, like I had a lot of people in my audience who are part of my true fans, who had corporate experience, who had a business degree, who had worked in traditional marketing Instead, what you're teaching is actually marketing, it's actually business.

It's not the, let's get rich quick, or let's launch a product type of thing. That's kind of how it came about, and that's how I just kind of organically transitioned into this thing and I like to say that I blame my coach because I was working with a business coach in early 2019.

The fans versus it only came about because what happened was I did my first true launch of my all-access packs back when I was a closed card, open cart, closed card, open cart. In early 2019, I presented the results of that, which were good, and I was talking about stuff, but my coach said, and part of the mastermind, "Okay, well, what are you gonna offer the people who didn't buy? "and I said, "I don't know, there's not much I can do. "

There's no up from that because I don't want to practice law, and he said, "I didn't say it has to be legal."

So I blame him for doing that because, in many ways, it was business malpractice for me to venture off of the legal stuff. And I don't blame him - I was the one who did it but looking back, it was a dumb decision to do.

Jen Liddy

Are you saying you wish you had never done the Fans First Membership and then venturing into email marketing - that you regret that?

Bobby Klinck

I don't have regrets.

I'm someone who doesn't have regrets because I'm happy. I say, "Hey, if I'd done anything differently, I wouldn't be where I am."

But there's no question that I think I can say without question or without hesitation I would be making more money. My business would be further along if I had not.

Jen Liddy

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting - it was like a little side jaunt.

Bobby Klinck

Well, it was a side jaunt but separate from that, let's talk about what most people want to create in the online world. They want to create something that is truly scalable, that it's not in any way trading dollars for at times.

My legal templates were that I mean, there's no question. They are 100% scalable, now, people who get the all-access pass get access to a Facebook group and all that stuff.

I'll just be honest with you - I mean, that part of my business on the actual fulfillment and delivery, I mean, it takes me and my team, I don't know, maybe a couple hours a month, that we have to spend on that. It's always been that, but not only that, it is a protected market.

If you think about it, you either got to be a lawyer, or you got to say, you know what, I'm gonna go to law school and spend all of this money all this time to really have any credibility doing this. Separately, my legal credentials are very good, so I have a differentiator even among the lawyers who do these things.

I have all of these advantages…so why in the world would I go from that to the reddest of red oceans in the online marketing space of talking about building a business. Then on top of that, doing it in a way that I'm essentially delivering a message that people don't want to hear?

Jen Liddy

I'm going to disagree with you on that because I think that one of the things that makes you so special is that you were delivering that message that people didn't want to hear.

What I see a lot online is me first, I'm the messenger, this is my personality, put me on the stage. I agree with you, I think it's the audience first, and you do it with fans first, but what I think is you were three years ahead of yourself.

Bobby Klinck

Yeah, well, I was three years ahead of myself, I was also way ahead of the market.

Jen Liddy

That's what I mean!

That's what I mean - I mean, the market is just starting to catch up to this message of what you're saying. I watch what the people talk about in your group, and I listen to how people respond to you.

They absolutely sop it up with a biscuit - that you are telling the truth and that you have a different way of going about it. I have to ask, was it fun at all? Did it edify it for you?

You know, like, oh, look at this thing I created, I wrote this book, and I did this thing. Did it satisfy you in any of those ways?

Bobby Klinck

It was a lot of fun, let's be clear.

I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed the work, and here's what I'll tell you, the people in my world once they found me and the people who resonated with me, you're right, they were kind of all in with what I said.

The problem I found, quite honestly, was when I'm competing with people who are telling you, I'm going to teach you how to make you know how to have a five-figure launch in a month, and I would say to people good luck with that.

I mean, if you got a great product and you got a lot of experience, you got a great audience - we can do that!

Jen Liddy

Huge audience.

You need a huge audience.

Bobby Klinck

That was the problem.

What I'm saying is for people who are first hearing my message versus the promise that other business coaches were making.

I would say it was illusory, it was never going to work, so my people tended to be the people who had become disillusioned because they bought into that stuff -

Jen Liddy

And had been burned by it.

Bobby Klinck

That was part of it, and there was definitely fun, and seeing people have success and all that was great.

The problem was that, in a lot of ways, I positioned myself where I had to, like, be the person rocking the boat.

Jen Liddy

Which is tiring!

Bobby Klinck

Yeah, it's tiring.

Separately from being tiring, it's, you know, like, I don't mind being, you know, I say being polarizing. I'm polarizing by nature. I don't do it on purpose. I don't go out there. I'm gonna be polarizing.

There's this concept of doing a thought reversal video, I'm like, and I always thought it was funny because, like, I would see people teaching this. I'm like, well, that's what I just do all the time. It's just like a normal state. But again, I was in high school debate, so I've been doing this stuff my entire life.

I was just like, well, that's just the way I think, so I don't have to think that, but I get a framework for people. But there's a level of that, but I mean, at some point, like, even some of my early, like, you know, mentors and supporters, they then I, like, those relationships got fractured, not because I called them out. I would never call any person out specifically, I was very clear about it.

But they didn't like that I was delivering a message that what they were teaching was BS, so that started happening. Here's where he said, kind of, in some sense, it was I don't say, a mistake, but if I hadn't done that, if I had just continued to be the legal guy, and maybe talked about the stuff a little bit about how to build a business, but was not rocking the boat.

I could have some of, I mean, I won't say the biggest names online, but a lot of the big names in this online knowledge base as my affiliates that are actively promoting my stuff, right?

If you think about it, they're not going to do that when I'm telling people literally business stuff that they're teaching you is BS.

Jen Liddy

I think that's the thing, especially when you're new, it's so shiny, and it's like, there's such a potential that's painted by the people who have a big audience.

I don't think either one of us is saying it's not possible, it's just not likely.

Bobby Klinck

What most people are being fed and taught in this industry and believing is the equivalent of someone saying, I'm going to teach you how to be the next music superstar. 

In that context, I think we all know that the chances you're going to be the next pick, you know, whoever you want to pick as, like, you know, that person, Beyonce, whatever, is very low.

But let's be clear, you can make a very good living as a musician doing being a studio musician, doing all kinds of different things, and so I was almost saying, look, let's just be realistic here.

Most people are going to be studio musicians, not the superstars, and there's nothing wrong with that. Most people I know in the online space don't really want a seven or eight or nine-figure business, they want to make a living, they want to be able to replace what they could make working with someone else with the freedom and control.

Jen Liddy

I love that we've gotten onto this topic because I had this epiphany like two weeks ago on the massage table. It just kind of hit me like I don't even want to be famous, and I don't want a huge business where I have to run a lot of people or manage a lot of people.

It was so freeing for me to have this epiphany, and I started sharing it with my audience. I thought maybe this is my really narrow lane because there's plenty of people out there who want to have a successful business and don't want to be a superstar with the spotlight on them.

I feel like if people are listening, and this is resonating, that this might be the permission you need to give yourself.

You are saying you can have a very lovely life and you don't have to be standing on a stage with the spotlight on you.

Bobby Klinck

Yeah, exactly.

The funny thing to me is that we are talking about this because I didn't know where to talk about this whole spotlight thing. I was thinking I didn't earlier this week, and I don't know what made me think about it, I guess I was on Instagram.

I haven't posted on Instagram in a long time but I was just like scrolling through something and I saw this example of people posting their pictures they took posed with a business coach and I'm like are they a celebrity? Or are they someone who's giving you good information?

And again, like, I don't want to say that those have to be different things, but there is this very kind of celebrity culture about stuff, and I would much rather that, you know, the things people take for me are the lessons, the information, not a picture with me. 

I mean, get people to take a picture with you. Sure, I'll take a picture with anybody, but that shouldn't be your takeaway. The takeaway should be Oh, Bobby said this, and you know what that's going to help me.

Jen Liddy

I do think you always have incredibly thought provoking ways of thinking. So on the DISC, I'm a high C, and so my brain really is attracted to the ways that people like you think because I don't think that way naturally. That gets me thinking, and then I'll churn some stuff from there.

What I'm hearing is that when you moved into the Fans First Society and all of the content that you created, and you hired an integrator, and she was your right-hand person.

I was watching it because I know what it's like to do that. It's a churn, and it's a churn, and it's a turn, and it's a lot of management and direction. How long did it take before you kind of tapped into, like, I don't think I want to do this particular thing anymore?

Bobby Klinck

It was a long time.

I launched the Fans First Society in May of 2019, and at that time, I'm trying to remember I did some kind of coaching program. In 2020, I did a very informal but small group coaching program for six people or something like that.

But I hired my team, my integrator came on first, she was an OBM, for me, a contract online business manager for a couple of months. Then I brought her in house at the beginning of 2020, so we were doing that.

At the time, I built a monstrosity, where we did a training every month in the Fans First Society, but it wasn't just that we did a training, we had this idea that we'll do this training and we'll give people a 14-day free trial of the Fans First Society.

So a week before the training, we would start marketing and say if you join now, you get a 14-day free trial to get in and try the thing. You do that, and then you would, you know, could get out, so every month we were on this and doing well.

Jen Liddy

It's like a dreadmill.

Bobby Klinck

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

We were doing that, and then the idea really came to create an email marketing course, sometime like March-April of that time, because everybody's asking me about email.

So I said, I'll just teach a course about it because courses are great and courses are scalable.

Of course, it's 2020 now.