Norm Hulcher, Hulcher & Hays, LLC

"So, how did you get into law firm marketing?"

I get asked this question often – perhaps second in frequency only to "Who's Hays?" The short answer: In 1989 a law firm offered me a marketing job and I said OK.

The longer answer begins nine years earlier, when my dad decided to sell his limestone quarry in Illinois and asked me to help him with the sale. Over the next few years, I also helped him sell his trucking company, start a crushed aggregate operation in Colorado, and buy and sell a mobile home park in Arizona, serving as his financial officer and, more to the point of this tale, his liaison with a myriad of law firms.

Like many entrepreneurs of his generation, my dad had an aversion to attorneys. He determined that, since I didn't share his antipathy for lawyers and actually seemed to enjoy being in their presence, I was the better candidate to interact with them. As a consequence, I learned a lot about what it was like to be a client of some very good law firms, e.g., Husch Eppenberger Donohue Elson & Cornfeld (St. Louis); O'Connor Cavanagh Anderson Killingsworth & Beshears, and Snell & Wilmer (Phoenix); and Dorsey Windhorst Hannaford Whitney & Halladay (Denver). To this day, many of the concepts that I share with attorneys about what to do – and not do – in dealing with clients I formulated as a client of those firms.

My dad passed away suddenly in 1984, and I spent much of 1985 cleaning up his affairs and, consequently, interacting with still more law firms. For the next few years I stayed as far away from the business world and attorneys as circumstances would allow, until one day a well-connected friend called to tell me that a Mesa, Arizona, law firm – Killian Legg Nicholas Fischer Wirken Cook & Pew – had created a marketing position, and he suggested that I talk to them. I did, we negotiated a salary, and I became  a law firm marketing director.

In Visioneering, Andy Stanley writes, "Visions are born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be." In my fourth year at the Killian firm, I started feeling that tension, and in September 1993 I left to start Hulcher & Hays, to help attorneys attract and keep good clients.

The Killian law firm became my first client and was my best client until it dissolved in 1997. In many respects it remains my favorite client, both for sentimental reasons and because of who was there. The partners were Vernon Nicholas (personal injury law), Paul Fischer (divorce and criminal defense), Chas Wirken (commercial litigation and appeals), Doug Cook (tax and corporate law), Ralph Pew (zoning and real estate law), Gail Ledward (construction law) and Wilford Taylor (estate planning). All continue to practice law, and they are excellent lawyers and terrific people.

In fall 1993, another Killian attorney, Dave Baker, introduced me to Kent Lang, a Phoenix construction attorney. That introduction was the first in a series of introductions and referrals that, more than 15 years later, continues to account for more than 50% of Hulcher & Hays' client base.

Since I started Hulcher & Hays in 1993, God has blessed me with an abundance of wonderful clients in the legal profession and other professions, including accounting, business valuation, consulting and engineering, and I have sought to thank Him by being a reliable, trustworthy and effective asset for professionals who feel, as I did when I decided to start my marketing consulting firm, "the tension between what is and what could be."