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The best-performing company executives are those who can fall in love with their brand. That’s what we hear from EAG chief marketing officer Jeff Randolph, with a nod to Steve Jobs. If your company is hiring, look for employees who already love what your company stands for.
Speaking of falling in love, and out of love, Jeff introduces us to Kelisen Binder of The Binder Firm. Kelisen is an attorney who specializes in collaborative, uncontested and mediated divorces. Not all divorces are messy and expensive. Kelisen makes the process as painless as possible, with sensitivity for the family and a desire to achieve an amicable outcome for all parties. Kelisen Binder, a delightful divorce attorney with a sense of humor. Don’t miss this episode!
[WARNING: Explicit Content]
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising & Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs, and we have marketing news and advice the business owners can use to keep moving forward.
Don’t miss our featured interview with Kelisen Binder of the Binder Firm. She’s an attorney specializing in collaborative, uncontested, and mediated divorces. We will catch up with her right after this marketing tip.
For today’s marketing tip, I’m going to talk about brand fans. And really this is an HR component. It’s hiring a real brand fan and what that can do for you, somebody who really, truly loves and admires your brand. That may be easier in some professions or some organizations, certainly nonprofit organizations than in others.
But I’m going to turn to our good friend Steve Jobs, who famously was in charge of Apple for, I don’t know, a while. Steve Jobs had a quote, and I’m going to read this off to you and we’ll talk about it just a little bit. Steve Jobs said, “When I hire somebody, really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart, but the real issue for me is are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them or what’s best for Steve, or what’s best for anybody else.”
Steve Jobs is really talking about how do I hire fans of the brand. If I do, we’re good. Competence is the ante, as Steve said. They have to be capable of doing the job, but if they’ve already fallen in love with your brand, you’re going to have some synergistic alignment that can really take you to new places.
In your hiring process, in that interview process, ask them how they feel. See if you can figure out how much love they have for the brand. If there are two people competing for that job, assuming all things are equal and they can both do that job, hire the one who loves it and wants it more.
Welcome back to the podcast. This is our interview time with Kelisen Binder from the Binder Firm. Welcome to the podcast.
Kelisen Binder:
Thank you so much, Jeff. I’m happy to be here and I’m happy to be having a conversation with you.
Jeff Randolph:
What a good time to do it. Collaborative, contested, and mediated divorce is our topic today. Give us an overview of your firm and what you specialize in.
Kelisen Binder:
Sure. We are a law firm that specializes in divorce. We in particular specialize in more amicable divorces. I have been practicing for nearly 10 years now, and I started out like most family law firms where we’re taking in all kinds of cases, some more contested. There’s that scale of uncontested to contested.
As time went on, I found that I really liked working with and wanted to really look at families who considered themselves to be families even after divorce, and they wanted to be treated with that kind of respect and transparency. That’s what our law firm really tries to do is help people who are separating do so amicably and with respect to their family in the future and how that might look different but still together in some sense.
We handle mediated divorces, uncontested divorces I mentioned, mediation in general, and I know it’s all kind of loosey goosey terminology. And then collaborative divorces, which is something I’m really enjoying and I’m relatively new to now and is relatively new to the Kansas City market.
Jeff Randolph:
Define the collaborative divorce thing for me. Is it just where we both know this is where we want to go and let’s just figure it out together and you’re going to help us figure it out? Is that how that is defined or-
Kelisen Binder:
I would use that definition for probably every divorce that I do.
Jeff Randolph:
Sure, okay.
Kelisen Binder:
I’d like to slap that one on all of them. Collaborative is really unique because there are several professionals involved. As you can imagine, in a divorce, we’re dealing with taxes, we’re dealing with real estate, we’re dealing with mental health, we’re dealing with all kinds of things. I am an attorney, and so I’m really good at that thing. I’m not a CPA.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, gotcha. Yeah.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. In a collaborative divorce, we have other neutral professionals. For example, a neutral financial advisor and a neutral mental health coach. They step in. Typically, the parties will sign on to do this collaborative divorce process.
I would say that the defining factor that sets it apart from a more typical divorce is that we have not filed anything. The goal would be to reach a full agreement with the help of these other neutral professionals, and then and only then once that agreement is reached, would we move forward with filing anything. If an agreement can’t be reached through that process, then the attorneys and the professionals involved in the collaborative process don’t move on with the clients.
There’s a lot of incentives to work together, and there are a lot of professionals involved that make those gray areas where we go, “I don’t know, let’s just agree to this.” The tax implication is a huge issue, and so there’s these other people involved to look at that and provide that information. It makes a huge difference.
I really love having the mental health professional with us.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure. Yeah.
Kelisen Binder:
… because they’re dealing a lot of times with parenting plans, and so that’s when children are involved in divorce. Giving the parents the assurances from a professional of how this might impact their child and what makes the most sense for a child of their particular age with regards to frequent contact and things like that is priceless.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s a good professional to have around in this process.
Kelisen Binder:
Hell yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re talking amicable divorces. What are the biggest challenges in keeping a divorce amicable?
Kelisen Binder:
I would say the biggest challenges, as you can imagine, the biggest challenge in most relationships is communication.
Jeff Randolph:
That makes sense. Sure, sure.
Kelisen Binder:
I would apply that to divorces as well. I mean, we’re talking about a relationship that is probably at one of its most critical points. The ability to communicate with the other party, that transparency and the trust.
I mean there are a lot of people that come to me for maybe a mediated divorce in Kansas or they say, “We’re uncontested. We have the agreement. Kelison, can you just get us across the finish line?” I will almost always tell the other party, if they’re not already on the call or if there’s some reason, that this trust isn’t to me. They’re not going to trust me. I’m an attorney, so strike one. They’ve never met me.
Jeff Randolph:
But you seem like a nice person.
Kelisen Binder:
I do. Yeah. I really try. The trust is going to have to be between the two of you, and so I’m going to be as transparent as I can. I see cases that start uncontested and turn contested almost always do because we’re playing a massive game of telephone, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure. Yeah.
Kelisen Binder:
If you’re my client, you’re communicating a message to me that I’m then communicating to the opposing counsel that they’re then communicating to their client, and then those two meet back in the middle and they’re like, “You said…” whatever it might be. They’re going, “I never said any of that.”
And so there’s a lot of that triangulation and telephone game that kind of can get in the way, I think. If we can all be on the same page and build that trust through transparency, then those are the cases that I see successfully cross that finish line as quote, unquote “uncontested”-
Jeff Randolph:
Uncontested.
Kelisen Binder:
… or amicable.
Jeff Randolph:
You’re guiding them through. On that same topic though, let’s talk prices and fees for a second because from a marketing perspective, price is one of marketing’s famous four Ps of marketing. Price is one of those Ps.
A Forbes article just told me that the average cost of divorce in fees is $7,000. You have pricing listed on your website for an uncontested divorce and mediated divorce between $3500 and $4500, around half the cost of a contested divorce. That’s a very strong value proposition. Obviously if it’s a collaborative divorce, you’re mediating and negotiating, then the hours start to add up once somebody gets off track a little bit.
Is that just kind of keeping them on focus so that they say, “Hey, if we start negotiating here, this is no longer going to fit this price point”? Do you have that conversation with them, or is it really a, “Hey, let’s start this process and keep moving forward and if we run into trouble, I’ll let you know that this is going to have a price implication if we start talking about this”?
Kelisen Binder:
First of all, what a steal.
Jeff Randolph:
I know. What a good value proposition.
Kelisen Binder:
Man, it almost makes me want to get divorced knowing that it’s such a great price.
Jeff Randolph:
Why don’t you do it every year just for fun?
Kelisen Binder:
We do offer you get the first two full price. The third one is free. I would say it depends. It depends is the famous response of an attorney. There are some counties and even judges, to get more specific, that it is really clear when this case becomes contested. There are some where it is loosey goosey.
I would say first off, my answer is yes, I do have that conversation with people. There are times where I really put in some elbow grease for what I would consider to be a very reasonable price to ensure that people get across that finish line. Because as with anybody, I’m a human, once we develop that relationship and I understand the goal of the parties involved, I want to help them get across that finish line. That is the goal. That to me is success, is like let’s get us there.
If a case does become contested, and that usually involves, for example, in Jackson County Missouri, we would have to notice this as contested. So that means we have to tell the court, “Hey, we are now categorizing this as a contested case.”
Jeff Randolph:
Gotcha, okay.
Kelisen Binder:
That’s what I mean when I say there’s some places where it’s really obvious. We had to tell somebody we had to write it on a piece of paper, sign it, send it to them. When that moment comes, there’s then a renegotiation or a conversation that’s opened again of, okay, do we want to continue working together? Because There are times where I can’t continue working with them.
If I’ve really been working maybe for one client, but I’ve met with both of them on several occasions and said, “Listen, I’m Sue’s attorney and other person, partner, Sue’s partner, I want to help you guys reach this resolution,” if that turned sour, I don’t feel like that it’s appropriate for me to then continue on the case and go, “Sue’s partner, we were cool and now we’re not.”
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah. Interesting. That’s interesting. I’m going to go to a different question, but I know that they’re all related in a way. You live in this world every day of divorce. What does the average person not know about this process? What are clients typically surprised by when they go through this?
Kelisen Binder:
I think that there are a lot of surprises that clients can experience throughout the divorce.
Jeff Randolph:
Because we don’t do this all the time. Like we were joking about earlier, this shouldn’t be an every-year occasion.
Kelisen Binder:
Right. And if it is, they’re like the jailhouse attorneys that come back to me and they’re like, “This is what we need to be doing.”
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right.
Kelisen Binder:
I would say one of the things that is typically surprising, and it’s a good surprise, which I like, is that you don’t have to go to court. If you guys are in agreement, you never have to go to court, you never have to testify. You don’t have that moment.
You could essentially get divorced through email. I mean, it can be as efficient and low contact as possible, to the extent even that now I’ve started to preface that in some of my consultations, like I’m not trying to not ever see you. If you want to know that I’m a real person with a beating heart, that’s cool. I am. There’s no gimmick there.
And I understand that I am probably a less exciting visit than the dentist. And so I don’t want you to feel like you have to come here and sign every single document, or you have to come here and review every single thing or meet with me at every point. I want this to be as low contact or handholding as you need it to be.
Everyone’s different. There are plenty of people who have hired me literally from the time that their plane took off to the point that they hit an elevation they couldn’t talk to me anymore, that was the extent of our conversation. And then I didn’t really hear from them much until this case was finalized.
Jeff Randolph:
Wow.
Kelisen Binder:
… because it was exchanged with by email. We never had that in person. We never talked on the phone. That’s the way that that person wanted it.
Jeff Randolph:
Interesting.
Kelisen Binder:
She was like, “If I didn’t ever have to know you existed and I could go on without ever having to put a face to a name, that would be great.”
Jeff Randolph:
Man. I like my dentist, but you’re a cool person to talk to. I mean, I would go to you a couple times a year, but not for professional reasons, just to hang out. We can have a cup of coffee.
Kelisen Binder:
But imagine if this friendly face embodied the breakdown of your family.
Jeff Randolph:
I know. Then it would be a different experience.
Jeff Randolph:
It would be a different experience altogether.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. This is a casual conversation between friends.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, let’s continue talking about the casual dissolution of a family for a second. More stats for you, 41% of first marriages in divorce, 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. That is a trend, it looks like.
What changes when people have more experience with divorce? Is it easier for you? Is it more difficult for you because they have a certain thing that they are demanding? Or is this like, no, no, this didn’t work out. I’ve been through this before. Here’s what needs to happen.
Kelisen Binder:
I am going to tell you a little story.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, good. I’ll settle back in.
Kelisen Binder:
No. My mom was married and divorced seven times.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. I think that might be why I ended up going into family law. I mean, you kind of go with what you know. I thought, I seem to know how to talk somebody out of this chaotic situation. I’m just going to do that for my job.
My mom’s bit of marriage advice, which as you can imagine, seven rounds in was either super valuable or not the most valuable advice, it depends on how you want to take it, but her advice to me was that your first marriage is going to be the hardest one for you to leave. You absolutely put everything into that first marriage because once you’ve done it, I mean it’s probably similar with anything, once you’ve weight lifted anything, whatever the task is, that second time’s a little bit easier, that third time’s a lot easier. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, boom. Hey, we can do this over the weekend.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right.
Kelisen Binder:
No big deal. And so my mom’s little bit of advice, for whatever it’s worth, was really put a lot of effort in that first one. If you think, gosh, this guy’s super annoying, or this gal is whatever, insert whatever, I’ve heard a million different things, there very well may not be anything better out there. You’re going to want to just see and push this through.
Jeff Randolph:
Wow. See if you can work this out.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah, yeah. Really put a lot of effort into that first relationship and obviously future relationships as well. But I think the underlying message was it just gets easier to step away.
With regards to if it’s easier or harder for me, it can be both. I think emotionally, the hand holding portion of it for me as the attorney is there’s less of a burden there because again, they’ve done it before. They’re like, “This Band-Aid has been ripped off. I know what this feels like and I’m prepared for it, and to whatever extent I can be.”
The other piece of it, there’s always that comparison. So they’re going to look back and go, “Last time it was over the weekend. It was so fast, and this guy was really easy to deal with,” or this girl was blah, blah, blah. And this time it’s different. And so there’s always that comparison that you kind of have to mitigate those expectations. But the emotional toll on the person, I think is a little.
Jeff Randolph:
A little bit less, yeah.
Kelisen Binder:
… less of just shell shock.
Jeff Randolph:
If we use that dentist analogy, it’s I’ve been to the dentist before, I’ve gotten a root canal, I’ve gotten a filling, I’ve had whatever procedure done, and in my second time around, I know what to expect. I know at least that emotional part of it’s there, even if the rest of pain and suffering from your dentist office is the same.
Kelisen Binder:
Well, and it reminds me of this idea of grabbing your fear by putting it in a choke hold and going, “How bad could this possibly be?” I think it has a lot to do with that too is the idea of divorce for most people is one of the scariest things they can imagine because what would my life even look like?
Jeff Randolph:
Exactly. Yeah. For that first one especially, you have no idea.
Kelisen Binder:
Exactly. And so we’re so intertwined. I don’t know where I’ll live. I don’t know how to make money. I mean, there are so many fears involved. And then if you’ve done it once, you realize, okay, I’m still alive. I still have food to eat.
Jeff Randolph:
Things went on.
Kelisen Binder:
I live in a place. Okay. Yeah. And so it’s not as scary.
Jeff Randolph:
Interesting. Tell me about growth because people are paying to talk to you. Do you know how to grow and scale from there? Is that a matter of bringing on new attorneys to work with you and grow that firm? Or do you have a path planned out there? What are your thoughts around all of that?
Kelisen Binder:
No.
Jeff Randolph:
Got it.
Kelisen Binder:
No is the short answer. I mean, that for me has been the biggest struggle in being a small business owner and growing because I’m very grateful that my business has grown and I have more clients and consistent clients and the phone continues to ring. That is nothing I’m complaining about.
As you said, it’s my name on the door and it’s my face on the website. We were talking about Google reviews earlier, and the Google reviews say, “Kelison’s got great jokes and she’s…” whatever, blah, blah, blah. But it’s about me specifically.
And so typically when people call and they want to interact and they want to hire our firm, I have people that work for me and they’re great and they’re funny and they’re all the things that I am and then some in a lot of ways. And they’re less stressed, so they’re way more pleasant.
People don’t realize that. And so they’re like, “No, I need to speak with Kelison. I can’t get my question answered.” That process of delegating to someone else has been the hardest process for me because obviously there are only so many hours in a day. And so while I want to continue to build and grow, I can only squeak out so many minutes to be on the phone with somebody.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, right.
Kelisen Binder:
If they want me to sit on the phone with them for 40 minutes so they can really just kind of verbally process what their experience was yesterday with a text exchange with someone, that cuts into a big part of the day. While I wish I could do that with everyone because I really do like these people-
Jeff Randolph:
Sure, sure.
Kelisen Binder:
… I can’t. And so I’ve had to learn how to delegate that without the client feeling like they’re being undercut as far as the value of what they’re receiving.
Jeff Randolph:
Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m going to pivot now into the lightning round because I think there’s a question in there that just kind of really, really works with what you just said.
Let me first explain about the lightning round first.
Kelisen Binder:
Oh, good.
Jeff Randolph:
Are you frightened about the lightning round?
Kelisen Binder:
Terrified.
Jeff Randolph:
No pain, no suffering. Lightning round is easy. Lightning round is one of those things that we do where we throw a question at you. You have no previous knowledge of anything that I’m going to throw at you. We’re looking for your sound bite answer or short answer or whatever. I’ll ask follow-up questions if I need to.
But the first lightning round question is, what’s the best part of your job? Because you’re dealing with some pretty weighty moments in someone’s life, and that can have an emotional toll, and you do it all the time. Sometimes kids are involved. I think you just came from a deposition where a child is testifying. What are the bright spots? What is it that makes you say, “Yep, this was a good day”?
Kelisen Binder:
I like people. I genuinely like people, and I like interacting with people. That makes it fun. Even this morning, I was in Clay County, and I’m at a court hearing, and the individuals I’m interacting with are nice people. Even in the despair of their situation, they’re fun.
I like talking to people. That has made a huge difference because that is the bulk of what I do, is meeting new people and interacting with them and seeing their humanity. And I really, really like people generally.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, that makes it worthwhile. How do you recharge from a challenging day? What does self-care look like?
Kelisen Binder:
I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure.
Kelisen Binder:
So I self-care with just kind of getting knocked around, physically assaulted mostly at home by my children.
Jeff Randolph:
Good, good.
Kelisen Binder:
No, I mean, I’m very lucky because I have a very self-sufficient husband. On a weekday, at the end of the day, you’re not wrong. Even in a lovely day where I’ve had great conversations with people, it’s a lot of active listening.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure.
Kelisen Binder:
And so at the end of the day, I come home and I’m a strong compartmentalizer and I go, “Okay, that’s beyond me.” And I sit down with my kids and I enjoy that time with my children. And then once they go to bed, that sweet, sweet eight o’clock time-
Jeff Randolph:
Then it’s on.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. Then I’m like, “Okay.” Will go in the hot tub or hang out with my husband or whatever it might be. But yeah, I just push through till eight o’clock.
Jeff Randolph:
Kind to let the cares of the world melt away at that point. Man.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah, sweat them out.
Jeff Randolph:
You mentioned husband. You are married. How does your day job impact your life as a married person? I don’t know what I’m going for here exactly, other than-
Kelisen Binder:
Oh, I know what you’re going for, Jeff.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m thinking it’s either the extreme of a very concerted effort toward great communication so that everything goes well with your partner or it’s the other extreme of knowing that I’m like five signatures away from being done with this if he ever upsets me. How does that impact your day-to-day life?
Kelisen Binder:
Oh, the juicy details. Okay. No, honestly, I joke with my husband because I think it benefits him a ton because the stories that I hear, I’m like, “This f*****g guy is a saint.” I’m like, “Holy s**t.”
Jeff Randolph:
I picked a good one.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. I mean, it’s our joke. I’m like, I always know. He comes home after work. I know where he is 99% of the time, and if I don’t, it’s probably Home Depot. And he doesn’t get angry. Are there annoyances? 100%. We’re married. We live in the same house. We have to manage two children together. Absolutely.
And he’s great. I don’t worry about him coming to me and being like, “I just threw a camera in the guest bedroom, even though your sister’s coming, but it’s not a big deal. It’s for security.” And I’m like, “What the hell are you talking about?” But those are the stories I hear.
Jeff Randolph:
Those are the stories you hear.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. Or I’m like, “Sis, you bought that? Okay. I mean, here we are. Let’s just do it.” So no, I think if anything, it makes me go, “Man, I’m so lucky.”
Jeff Randolph:
Wow. Well, that’s maybe the best possible news. It’s so much better than saying, “No, and because of that, I really spend three hours a day just focusing on my own skills as a communicator to make sure that we’re where we need to be.”
Kelisen Binder:
Oh yeah. No, honestly, I’m like, “This is great. Set it and forget it.”
Jeff Randolph:
Set it and forget.
Kelisen Binder:
And put a lot of effort into it because I don’t want this guy to go anywhere. He is good stuff.
Jeff Randolph:
This is it. Well, I’m going to close out the lightning round with this question, because I’m going to go back in time a bit to a time way back in the days of yore where you interned as a legal analyst for US Senator Roy Blunt’s office in Washington DC, and as a legislative analyst for the Missouri House of Representatives. What impression did that make, or what kind of takeaways do you have from your time with the legislative process and how a bill becomes a law?
Kelisen Binder:
Oh, man. Okay. Lightning round, first impression, I think that I became incredibly aware of how few attorneys are actually writing these laws. And so the legislative analysts are attorneys and they are looking at this and going, “This is not enforceable,” or “This is illegal, sir, madam.”
Jeff Randolph:
You cannot say this.
Kelisen Binder:
You may not. Right, yeah. We’re going to need to workshop this a little bit before we present it. That was pretty surprising to me how much work needed to be put into some of this language in order to make it even work. At Roy Blunt’s office in DC, honestly, I was like, “What am I doing here?” I think they had me answering some phones and then giving tours. So I was an integral part.
Jeff Randolph:
The gears of politics really worked around you as a tour guide.
Kelisen Binder:
Without me, he would be nothing, is the sound bite I want to be taken from this.
Jeff Randolph:
I think we can do a pull quote of that for social media.
Kelisen Binder:
Perfect.
Jeff Randolph:
Roy Blunt’s office would not have existed had I not been there to answer a phone and give a tour. Well, the legislative work, that is really kind of interesting that our lawmakers really just don’t do great with law. That’s a challenge.
Kelisen Binder:
Yeah. They’ve trained in it. And so they’re like, “I don’t know. Why can’t we just make this work?” It’s like, for a lot of reasons, and we’ll start from the beginning. It’s rough meetings, as you can imagine.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. Well, I’ll end it, and we’ll say, hey, how can people find you? If they do find themselves in that situation where, hey, we need to start talking about where we go from here, where can they find you?
Kelisen Binder:
Call me, beat me. If you want to reach me, you can call me at (816) 866-8264, and that’s our law firm. You’ll speak with the beautiful and kind Alejandra, and she’ll get you in touch with me. Or you can go to our website. That’s probably the easiest thing. That is thebinderfirm.com. Binder is spelled with an I, B-I-N-D-E-R. And so don’t go off to that B-E-N-D-E-R-
Jeff Randolph:
No, that’s different.
Kelisen Binder:
… website. That’s a very different thing.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s a different website.
Kelisen Binder:
You’re not going to want to go there. Go to B-I-N-D-E-R, thebinderfirm.com. You can schedule an appointment there, and you can look at pictures of me and my staff, and you can read the blog and whatever you want to do. Hang out for a while.
Jeff Randolph:
It is a solid blog with lots of great advice, so do some checking out of the blog. All right. Kelisen Binder from The Binder Firm, thanks for being with us today.
Kelisen Binder:
Thanks for having me. It was fun chatting with you, Jeff.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to Kelisen for being here. We appreciate her dropping by. Thanks for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at EagAdv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.