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Trade Secrets

There are message boards for many respected consumer bankruptcy groups. The last time I looked, the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys has a 'list serve' which concentrates on professional practice areas. Filing motions, recent court decisions, etc. are the basic topics for discussion. The discussions on this site are all very worthwhile. But one discussion which will never occur on this site will be 'real trade secrets' of getting new clients. It's too public a site and the risks with sharing your strategy with a competitor in your market is too great. Then it's no longer a 'trade secret'.

We have a 'threaded message board' which means you can easily search on a topic. The purpose of this message board is to discuss openly and freely discuss 'trade secrets for getting new clients'. The goal of this message board is to create a 'community' of users. If you have a marketing strategy, you could present this strategy to the group and if you wanted to license it to others, you could do so. Or if you had an idea and another practitioner saw something in it that you didn't, you could partner with that other member and test your ideas and then present them to the whole membership for licensing.

You might be the 'hottest star' in your bankruptcy market for marketing your services. But can you imagine sharing with others either on an informal basis (no licensing fee) or on a formal basis (licensing fee) your unique strategies? Obviously, there would be the guarantee that no one in your market could access or use your strategies because they would not be a member. Membership is restricted by market area and the rule is that no one uses someone's strategies or marketing techniques in another members market area.

Are you required to share your market strategies with the membership? Absolutely, not. It's all voluntary. Let me give you a real example of what I am saying: An attorney shared with myself his experiences in using a marketing strategy which I was about to use. He told me it was a disaster and I saved $10,000 because he was gracious enough to share his experiences with me. And I had once asked a very successful CPA how he made all his money. He owned a chain of steak houses. And he said to me, "I got this from my father and he sold fruit from a cart, 'Better to pass up 10 good deals, then get stuck with one bad one'. I know that I could have lost $10,000 on a gamble in marketing that I was about to take. And on the positive side, this same attorney shared a very simple technique that most attorneys completely over-look and it has improved my business with new clients. And what is that strategy: It's how he answers the phone. There was no charge whatsoever for his advice. And if I had been in his market area, he simply would not have shared his experiences and advice with myself. However, he knew absolutely that since he was out-of-state that there was no possibility of my using his strategies in his market area. Finally, this same attorney advised myself regarding a strategy that is proving itself to be an awesome addition to my marketing. And there was no charge for that advice. I'm helping this same attorney with IVR.