Matthew Dolman

Matthew A. Dolman, Founder & Senior Partner of Dolman Law Group is a nationally recognized advocate for injury victims and a relentless litigator. Best known for challenging corporations, Dolman maximizes client compensation, aggressively litigating cases and taking cases to trial when necessary. After earning a B.S. in Communications from Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, Dolman received his Juris Doctor from Stetson University College of Law. He is a lifetime member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, has a perfect 10.0 score by Avvo.com; and was recognized with their “Client Choice Award.”

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

My days differ greatly based on what projects or commitments I have on my calendar. However, I typically allocate at least four hours of my day to work on the business as opposed to working in the business. In other words, I set aside this time to focus on marketing and finance related tasks as opposed to the management or handling of cases /clients.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I take copious notes when new ideas or plans concerning the business come to mind. The key is execution. Upon generating notes on a new idea, I then discuss it with my partners and determine whether it is worth implementing and how that would look. What I avoid is procrastination and paralysis by over analysis.

What’s one trend that excites you?

Artificial intelligence excites me, but we are treading cautiously. It is always important to embrace new technology. However, I am wary of relying solely on AI for content (we tend to blog a lot) as it cannot fake human emotion such as empathy.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

I tend to be very decisive and persistent. This can sometimes lead to quick decisions. However, my partners remain a sounding board and prevent me from impulse based decisions. Being decisive avoids paralysis by over analysis. Persistence allows for the implementation of my/our ideas as it is vital to not give up easily and enables me to be taken seriously as I tend not to go away easily.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Devote more time to your children as they grow up quickly and start your day earlier.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.

If you stay persistent and consistent with content marketing ; you will reap the rewards. Far too many of your competitors want instantaneous results. They lack the patience to play the long game. Content marketing takes time and one typically sees results between months 12-15.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

I constantly research my competition and analyze their marketing strategy. This is vital to understand how to target consumers and take notice of what is working in your industry.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

We try to run in the opposite direction of our competition. Beginning in 2009 we embraced digital marketing and remained consistent in our efforts to create as much content as possible centered around either personal injury or mass torts. By the time our competitors focused their efforts on digital marketing; we had already run many laps around the proverbial track

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

We grew too fast and did not have a truly defined organizational chart. Further, we did not measure the efficiency of all team members by key performance indicators. In turn, we brought in a consultant who taught us how to properly run and scale our law firm. We were previously successful in spite of ourselves due to our marketing.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

I recommend bringing in a good videographer or video production team and capture video of members of your team answering questions that consumers will likely pose and topics of interest.  Once the video is edited, it can be repurposed for many different mediums including youtube, and a wide variety of social media sites.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

I love Surfer SEO for content drafting. It enables our writers to focus on a set of keywords we desire to rank for and this tool analyzes our competition for word usage, how many times specific terms are used and the structure of their content.

What is the best $100 you recently spent?

I purchased a subscription for frase.io. This is a new AI based content tool we have had success with.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?

Hire slow and Fire Fast…. This is a tremendous book concerning staffing, talent acquisition and managing a staff while scaling your business.

Key learnings:

• If you stay persistent and consistent with content marketing, you will reap the rewards.