Podcast

Marketing on the Record Episode 1: Building a Legal Marketing Agency for the AI Era

by Keith Edwards • July 1st, 2026 • Podcast

What happens when AI rewrites the rules of legal marketing?

For the very first episode of Marketing on the Record, host Keith Edwards, Good2bSocial’s President & CBDO sits down with his own partner, CEO Belinda DiGiambattista. Together, they unpack what it really takes to build, grow, and lead a marketing agency built for law firms.

Inside this episode:

  • How AI visibility and AIO strategies are shaking up SEO
  • The generational divide shaping AI adoption
  • Building culture and leading a remote team across nine states
  • Hard-won lessons from entrepreneurship
  • Good2bSocial’s vision for proprietary AI agents

Press play and join the conversation.

Read the Full Transcript:

Keith Edwards (00:07)

Welcome to Marketing on the Record. I’m Keith Edwards, and I’m so happy you’re here. Every episode, I sit down with top experts for honest, unfiltered conversation about what’s actually happening in legal marketing right now. From AIO and SEO to content, social and paid ads, we’re unpacking cutting-edge strategies, actionable insights, and practical takeaways that will help you succeed in today’s fast-moving, increasingly competitive legal marketplace. Let’s dive in.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the very first episode of Legal Marketing on the Record. I’m Keith Edwards, and I’m your host! For many years, the founders of Good2bSocial did a podcast, and they sat down with people who are defining the legal marketing industry, people whose conversations change the way that we think about this space. And I am proud to carry that tradition forward! So this is our very first version of our podcast, Legal Marketing on the Record, built for really a new era of legal marketing. The landscape has changed dramatically. Everything is different. On each episode, we’re going to dive into the trends, big ideas that are affecting the legal services industry right now. So whether you’re a marketing director at a large firm, a solo practitioner trying to grow your practice, or a legal marketing vendor staying ahead of the curve, this show is for you.

So let’s get into it. It is no surprise that we are going to start with our very first guest, Belinda DiGiambattista, the CEO of Good2bSocial. Belinda is leading an incredible team of marketing professionals that are delivering strategies, ideas, products that are helping law firms and legal service providers grow their business.

Belinda is a serial entrepreneur, an Exited founder, a mentor with NYU’s Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship and Connectologies Investment Agency in Lisbon, Portugal. Her wide range in business expertise covers strategy, operations, you’ve worked in financial services, including roles with Moody’s Investor Services, BDO Sideman, and Truist. Belinda – and I can attest to this – is really a champion of building winning company cultures and working with a group of people to achieve uncommon results. And so today I’m really thrilled to be here with my business partner, and co-pilot, and really best friend at work, Belinda. So, welcome to the podcast.

Belinda DiGiambattista (03:06)

Thank you so much. I’m also so excited to be here with you, my co-agenteer. Right.

Keith Edwards (03:12)

We joke that we got married on our first date. But I want you to talk a little bit about, just diving right into it, talk a little bit about how the journey began with you working at Good2bSocial and then how we came to be an independent agency.

Belinda DiGiambattista (03:30)

Yeah. So at the time that I came across Good2bSocial, I was running my company, Choose Your Metric, which is a coaching and consulting company for businesses. And I was brought in to help with the integration of Good2bSocial into – at the time – their parent company Best Lawyers.

And there were a lot of interesting opportunities for those two organizations to work together, and to make a long story short, I was there for about a year, and leadership made the decision that it made sense for these two companies, even though they both are in the legal marketing space, to function independently because they were different in their operational processes. So, was determined that the synergies weren’t making sense enough for them to be together. And so that’s when the opportunity presented itself to me to become the next owner of Good2bSocial. And so, as I was determining whether or not I wanted to take it forward, what that meant, I got very excited about, like you said, this pivotal change, what’s going on in the industry, and thought there’s a lot of really cool opportunities here, and that could be interesting.

And then I got introduced to you. I knew one of the things that Good2bSocial was going to need in order to be successful was a really strong sales setup. And that’s your background. And so that’s why at first I was like, hmm, maybe Keith would like to do sales for Good2bSocial. But then after we started talking, it made sense to make that more than just a sales relationship, but a more solidified partnership. So and then you said yes, and so here we are.

Keith Edwards (05:31)

It’s been, I mean, it was the call that changed my life. We all talk about you were like the Hollywood producer that changed my life. Thank you for taking a chance on an unknown kid.

Belinda DiGiambattista (05:41)

That’s me, Hollywood. I would cast you again tomorrow.

Keith Edwards (05:49)

Thank you. No, I mean it’s been amazing. We acquired the company in August of 2025. What made you bet on this business?

Belinda DiGiambattista (05:58)

So, you know, I think this is gonna be a theme throughout some of the conversation. Hopefully, not every single question is gonna come to this. But like I said, the era that this industry is heading into, that era being led by artificial intelligence and all of the new capabilities is what really got me excited. I remember the founder of Good2bSocial, who was with the organization when I first started, would talk a lot about that.

You know, because remember, I did not come from a legal marketing background. You know, I come from a business background, how to run a business, how to build a culture. And so I was kind of learning about digital marketing from him when I first started. And he talked a lot about how, for the last 15, 20 years, SEO was the name of the game. Making sure that everything was visible, that you were a blue link on the first page. And he told me, AI is going to change that.

It’s going to really make this a different world. And it hadn’t quite happened yet, but it was certainly a lot of people talking about it. This was, you know, over a year ago, and so I knew that it was going to be exciting and that there was going to be an opportunity. And I didn’t really understand how I was going to necessarily jump into AI with Choose Your Metric, but I thought, I want to be in this AI game. I want to know what’s going on. I want to be a part of this. This is a great opportunity. So I would say just the opportunity to learn something new, to be creative, to find a way to be a leader in a space where technology makes a difference, that was really appealing to me.

Keith Edwards (07:45)

Yeah. I was at a recent networking event and there was a discussion of everybody go around and say a trend that you see happening right now, but no more AI. And I thought, okay, but that IS the trend. I mean, I do think that, you know, there have been a lot of trends, and we’ll talk a lot about this on the podcast later, but like there have been a lot of trends that have come up, you know, where we’ve been told this is gonna change everything.

And then sometimes it changes some stuff, but it doesn’t really change everything. But AI is changing everything. I mean, it is here, at least in my view. So talk a little bit about – I know that you’re entrenched in it – but talk a little bit about what that means. You’ve talked a lot about AI visibility for our clients. Talk a little bit about how AI has already changed the world, and what does AI visibility really mean?

Belinda DiGiambattista (08:46)

So here’s the thing: everybody knows that whenever you go to do a search, whether you’re doing a traditional search on Google, there’s going to be more often than not an AI overview answering your question. And in the legal space where we’re focused, it’s more than 50% of those searches. You’re going to get an AI overview initially. And it’s going to prompt you with some questions: did you also want to know this since you asked that? All of that is happening on the first page. So those blue links that you used to get are no longer even on the first page. So what it means to be visible in an AI world is to be a part of that authority. Right. It means to be a part of the authority that Google and whenever you’re going to an LLM such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, et cetera, that they deem what you have to say credible enough to include you in that answer, in what they’re coming up with. And if you’re really on top of it, to cite your site.

That is from a very high level what it means to be visible. So we are wanting to make sure that our clients are making that leap. If they have a good, solid foundation of all of their infrastructure for their digital, you know, presence, they are able to build on top of that. And what gets you there is being unique. If there are a lot of content farms out there right now, they’re just pumping out the content, people publishing 50 plus pieces of content per month. But if it’s just AI generated and there’s no human in the loop and it’s just more of the same thing, that is not going to be known as authoritative by all of these different algorithms. So what we’re really helping our clients do is dig deep, understand what sets them apart, what makes them different, what’s unique about them, that they can talk about in their content, in a reasonable amount, that they are publishing so that they can show up. And it’s and it seems to be working.

Keith Edwards (10:43)

And I know that you and I work with law firms directly and you have some deep relationships at law firms and people in the legal industry. How is AI interrupting the legal industry?

Belinda DiGiambattista (10:56)

In so many ways. The legal industry as a whole is coming at it, from a couple of different angles, primarily on the actual, you know, work of law. Because the legal industry in the US alone is about a four hundred billion dollar industry, which is huge. And just in the last two years, technology companies, venture capital has invested more than ten billion dollars in legal tech.

Keith Edwards (11:30)

Amazing.

Belinda DiGiambattista (11:32)

Just to try to sort out how they can upend how the legal work has been done all of this time by making it more efficient, right? By introducing AI processes and systems. There is a company called Harvey AI that was valued at the end of December in 2025 at eight or nine billion dollars. That’s huge.

Keith Edwards (11:53)

And I saw their billboards in Times Square. I mean they’re like they’re everywhere.

Belinda DiGiambattista (11:57)

It’s a pretty new company for such a huge valuation. They are working with, you know, big law, and they are helping them to, like I said, transform their operations and their systems on the legal side. You know, our industry is much smaller. We’re talking like maybe 20 billion compared to that, right? Like it’s a fraction. So on the marketing side, there’s an opportunity for legal to be more on top of things.

More in the know, getting their posts out on their social media platforms, whether it’s LinkedIn or Facebook – you still need a human in the loop to review all of the things that are gonna be put out there – So I’m not in the business of helping people to use AI, set it and forget it and go to the beach. It’s not that. But you can create opportunities for AI to assist you in helping you to have a little bit more of the busy work done for you so that you can do more of the thinking and the brain powered work, spend more time on that. Even if you don’t spend less time overall, you’re spending more quality time, more curiosity time to make the work more timely and and just better.

Keith Edwards (13:12)

Are people growing tired of AI already? Even though it’s a new technology, there is some cynicism. And I’m curious because I know a bit about how your brain works. And talk a little bit about that. Like, what do you say to those people who are like, ug, AI again?

Belinda DiGiambattista (13:28)

Yes, people are so over it. And you can really tell, there’s a massive divide between the generations. Our generation, the Gen Xers, and above, we are all in. We are like, give me the AI. Like where have you been all my life? The younger generation, the Gen Z, maybe the Millennials, they are not as excited about this.

Keith Edwards (13:53)

Interesting.

Belinda DiGiambattista (13:55)

Which is the opposite I expected. Right? Like because whenever you give somebody older than us a new thing, like when the iPhone update happens, they’re like, “why did you break my phone? This is ridiculous.” But when you do that to a younger generation person, they’re like, it’s just the buttons here now instead of there, right? Like so they immediately pick it up. Like technology is so easy for them, making a TikTok video takes 30 seconds where it would take me three days.

Keith Edwards (14:05)

How do I make a call?

Belinda DiGiambattista (14:20)

But when it comes to AI, it is the complete opposite from an embracing perspective. And you can see that with all of the news around college campuses and when you have people coming in and giving commencement speeches, the people that are there saying, AI is changing the world, they’re getting booed. And then you had, I forgot his name, but there’s a comedian that went in and did the keynote commencement, I wanna say even at Harvard, and he was like, I hate AI. And they were like, “Yay!” So yes, people are really over it. At the same time, I think that the world has changed in terms of how communication works and how things work. And there’s been a lot of conversation around it taking jobs. And so it’s understandable why a younger generation would say, I don’t want it to take my job. Like I’m scared of this actually preventing me and my friends from getting employment. So I can fully appreciate that.

I have to say the same exact rhetoric was communicated when email came out. And I remember that. And it told us all, you’re gonna take the afternoon off. You’re gonna send an email and we’ll be done for the day. Just leave. You’re gonna be working less. Nothing is further from the truth. And I think the same thing is here with AI as well, from my perspective. I do think you’re gonna be able to get more done, but it’s gonna be better quality as opposed to less work. Yeah. And I think that that’s really what people need to understand.

I have spoken to people that have started to implement AI in their organizations, and the younger people are not really on board. They’re not really there for like, “yeah, show me how to use that.”. I have to say, I’m so pleasantly surprised that we are not experiencing that in our own organization. We had a meeting just today where we met with the production team and I asked them, What are your ideas if we were to create our first AI agent that would help you make your job more efficient and it take you less time to do things, they could not tell me enough things. They were like, “what about that? this takes a long time. That takes a long time. I hate doing this. Can it do that for me?” So they are all in and they are on board. So, I have to say, I’m really excited about that, at least for us. But I think we might be one of the exceptions.

Keith Edwards (16:43)

Well, and we have a fantastic team. We really do. And they’re creative and solve problems. And I had a similar meeting today where the idea came up and we made a list of requirements for a new AI agent. You know, We are all thinking about it, which is, it’s fun to be part of an organization like that. Let’s talk a little bit about your background. Talk about, tell me about Butterbeans. I know that you founded Butterbeans up from the ground to over a hundred employees before exiting. What lessons from running that company apply to Good2bsocial?

Belinda DiGiambattista (17:24)

So many, you know. I have to say, I’m very fortunate that I did have about a decade or a little more in corporate America before I started to become an entrepreneur because I got a chance to see how things work. Like I understood there’s a marketing department, there’s a sales department, there’s an IT department. I understood that these are each professions within their own right. And then I was able to apply those best practices to small business, like with Butterbeans launching that startup. And one of the things that we did at the very beginning of that organization – and it takes time – we’re doing it with this one too, is to really set your mission, vision, and values. And we did that with Butterbeans, and a big part of our values was knowing the ingredients meant a lot to us, making sure that we had healthy ingredients, that they were fresh ingredients, not processed ingredients.

That really taught me how making decisions later can become easier whenever you have a guiding star. And so that is something that I feel like, you know, I’m also applying to Good2B Social. Whenever you know what kind of culture you’re going for and you understand how to make everything good for the employees and good for yourself, that is a huge lesson. That was something I definitely took away from Butterbeans, just knowing that if you put the employee and their needs equal to the needs of the company, it works so much better for everyone.

And I have to say, our staff, they comment to me about that, particularly people that are still in their twenties and they’re a couple of years out of college. And they say, you know, “I spoke to my friend about what it’s like at their company, and they’re like, wow, you’re so lucky that at your company they care about this and they care about you doing that. Because we don’t have that.”

And I think that that really makes us unique and I definitely did that at Butterbeans, and saw that it was successful, and wanted to continue that.

Keith Edwards (19:29)

I love that. Before we get back to the show, I want to take a quick minute to talk about Good2bSocial, the team behind this podcast, and the agency I’m proud to call home. If you’re tuning in, you probably already know that legal marketing is in constant flux. What worked yesterday is never guaranteed to work today. At Good2bSocial, staying ahead of the curve is what we’re all about. We’re privileged to work with all kinds of clients, from AmLaw 100 firms and boutique practices to legal technology companies, and even bar associations. And in every case, we bring the latest thinking and most effective cutting edge strategies to the table. When AI started reshaping how consumers find and evaluate legal services online, we were already on it, developing AIO strategies to help our clients stay visible and competitive in our new zero-click reality.

From SEO, AIO, and content marketing to social media, paid advertising and website design, everything we do is built around what’s working right now and what’s coming next, with a singular focus on driving measurable results. Are you looking to establish thought leadership? We can help with that too. From professionally produced podcasts and videos to blogs and long form articles crafted by our legal writers bureau.

A team of experienced writers, editors, and attorneys who specialize in creating high impact legal content. No matter your practice areas or niche, we’re ready to showcase what makes you unique and help you gain a competitive edge. If you’d like to learn more, head on over to Good2bSocial.com and schedule a consultation with my team. We’d love to connect. That’s good, the number 2, the letter B, Social.com. Now let’s get back to the show.

Speaking of mission, vision, and values, we have worked on our own for Good2bSocial. Talk about what they are. And what and what they mean.

Belinda DiGiambattista (21:32)

All right. So our mission is really to deliver the most quality and most technically advanced and you know creative solutions for digital marketing to clients that want to take it to the next level. So, it kind of ties into our vision and feeds our vision and serves our vision because we believe that, you know, companies and firms that want to be leaders in their space, that want to be the change makers – as opposed to the adopters of what other people set the stage for – are the ones that are going to be the most visible, embrace the technology as it’s changing, and do the things that they need to do to upscale and bring their staff along, you know, not letting people go necessarily, but bringing them along and helping them to be the next best version of themselves to serve the firm, et cetera. And so our mission is to serve that group.

We want to be in there right up front, front row seat with the folks that are like, yeah, we’re the leaders. So our mission is to serve that group of firms that are interested in leading the change, being the change to help transform the legal industry overall because it is changing.

I recognize that different parts of the industry are going to change at different paces, But, like with startups, for example, there’s already a lot of firms that are offering fixed fee packages because they can’t afford the expensive hourly rates. And those firms know they’re never gonna get those clients foot in the door if they’re if they can’t be competitive. So law firms that are making decisions to address their business model to the target market that they are looking to serve; those are going to be the leaders, those are the ones that have a clarity around what they’re offering, what their value proposition is, who they’re offering it for.

That sets us up perfectly to create a marketing system, inclusive of digital marketing, offline marketing, et cetera, to help them be visible everywhere.

So that gets a little bit towards the mission and the vision. When we think about our values, our values are, you know, they include things like authoritative. That’s very important for a law firm. They want to make sure that they are the voice that is trusted, that is heard, that is used, that their clients are gonna wanna say, listen, even though I use ChatGPT to get me 80% of the way here on my contract, I need that authoritative attorney to come in and get me over the finish line here. We wanna make sure that we communicate to our clients that we appreciate that and we respect that authoritative, you know, quality.

And that is one of our core values: that we are authoritative when it comes to best practices in digital marketing, best practices in websites, best practices in communication and branding and so on. So that’s a big one. Another big one for us is win-win. That comes back to what we were describing earlier with our employees. The other thing to think about with win-win is that there are a lot of stakeholders that are involved. So we have our clients as stakeholders, our clients’ clients are stakeholders.

If we have vendors that we’re working with, we’re working with a variety of vendors. We work with SEMrush, we work with Jasper, we work with SigParser, we work with Hubspot, we work with a lot of different partners. Those are stakeholders in the work we do. Our employees are stakeholders in the work we do. Our community, they are stakeholders in the work we do. In each one of our communities, you know, we have employees in nine states, all of our communities? Stakeholders.

So I believe that that win-win really needs to be all encompassing of all of the people that we could possibly touch. That’s what makes us have an impact beyond what any one of us could do on our own. So those are a couple of our core values that are really important.

Keith Edwards (25:37)

I love that. I love that. You gave a keynote speech, a talk at our recent off-site. And you talked about our little logo. We did little pins. What does the logo mean?

Belinda DiGiambattista (25:47)

The logo is a molecule. And it has been the identity of Good2bSocial for some time. But you’re right, now it has a new meaning. Because we, as we talked about earlier, we’re gonna bring AI back into the conversation now, are embracing the technology. And what we talked about in that keynote is that we are taking our company and we’re going to the other side of this, you know, proverbial river, that the AI current is quickly helping people down to get to. And we want to be doing that proactively.

And so our molecule represents us, the human, in the center, with the little bubbles on the outside as AI agents that are augmenting and supplementing the human piece, which is critical and will never go away. And that human piece brings the partnership to our clients, it brings the strategy to the plan, and it brings the judgment that is necessary to make sure that we are putting out the best work possible. And if you take that and augment it with an AI agent that can help us do the things that we don’t really want to do as humans, then we are going to be operating at a very high level. So we’re very excited about our logo and the meaning that it represents.

Keith Edwards (27:17)

Yeah. So speaking of firm culture and the team, you just led 15 people from through a company ownership change. It has not been easy. Talk a little bit about that.

Belinda DiGiambattista (27:33)

There was a company ownership change and then there was also one two years prior. So they’d been through this before. I think that the good news is in this particular case, I had at least been there for a year. So I was a known entity. It wasn’t a brand new, like when I sold Butterbeans and I introduced, you know, Pat to the team for the first time, they were like, that was the first time they’d met him. So this was a little bit different. I think that what was really critical to get right here is helping our clients understand that the team really wasn’t changing, and that we were bringing on new leadership and that we were really dedicated to the success of everyone involved.

Now, with any change like this, it gives people an opportunity to say, Hey, I was already thinking about doing something different, so I might just go ahead and take this opportunity. And I’m really glad that people felt comfortable that that is something that they should do. I think everybody should be making good decisions for themselves. So we did have a little bit of turnover in that transition, which makes perfect sense. The timing makes sense. But since then I think that it’s been really important to constantly support each employee in their support of our clients.

And show up for them, show up for all of the clients in a way that they understood that we are really here to take everything to the next level and to make everything better. So what we’re doing today and how we will do it three months from now, it should be better because that’s what we’re constantly working towards. And I think that the people that we attract as our employees are the type of employees that are wanting that type of culture and wanting to be in that type of organization. So I feel like we’re in a really good place right now with our team.

Keith Edwards (29:27)

I think we are. And I think our clients have been fantastically supportive of us through not just through the change, but also they’ve understood that this is giving us now the freedom to level up our services and deliver more value. And there’s been some transition, but, and I know you agree because we’ve talked about it, but isn’t it interesting how people have found some of the positive results from the changes that we’ve been able to make.

Belinda DiGiambattista (29:59)

Absolutely. And we definitely get feedback. And I think that that is actually what best lawyers foresaw. Like they knew that if Good2bSocial was its own entity, we could really just focus on what our mandate was, and that was part of why they realized that this was going to be a good move for the clients, a good move for them, and whoever the owners ultimately were. And fortunately for us, it ended up being us!

Keith Edwards (30:25)

Yeah. It’s also been cool that we have an ongoing partnership with Best Lawyers. I think that, as we’ve talked about many times, with the new AI visibility and the way searches have changed, it is having a positive impact on the rankings industry in general, specifically in best lawyers.

Where do you see Good2bSocial in two to three years? What does success look like at the far bank?

Belinda DiGiambattista (30:45)

Success looks like us having definitely created a batch of AI agents, Good2bSocial AI agents, that are not only leveraged by our internal team, but for large law and larger organizations that have their own marketing teams will be able to deploy internally using our technology.

That is definitely where I see Good2bSocial going in the next couple of years. And really just empowering anybody who’s interested in scaling some really powerful marketing expertise quickly, our technology is going to enable them to do that.

Keith Edwards (31:48)

Exciting. Belinda, we’ve touched on your background from financial services, entrepreneurship, now legal marketing in all these different environments. And they’re very different. I mean, there’s a huge difference between working at Moody’s and working on school lunches. You’ve found a way to succeed in all of them. What do you attribute that to?

Belinda DiGiambattista (31:49)

So you know what? I attribute that to an attitude that I can just figure it out. And honestly, it’s worked. And I feel like anybody can do it. I don’t think it’s special to me. I think if anybody put their mind to figuring something out and then just took the time to dedicate to executing that, they can do it.

Because in my view, having been around entrepreneurship for such a long time, like you mentioned, like I volunteer at the Berkeley Center, at NYU with Kinectology. I have seen a lot of business plans. And it’s hilarious because now when we’re going through the first round of the business plans every year at the Berkeley Center, it’s like, this is the fifth time I’ve seen this plan. Because no idea is new. Digital marketing for lawyers, not new. Right? School lunch, not new. None of these things are new.

What is different is the execution. What is different is Making sure that all of your stakeholders matter. What is different is making sure that you have a mission, vision, and values and a decision making framework that will enable what sets you apart to come alive and whoever your clients are supposed to be, to find you. That is what’s different. In any of our companies, in any of these industries, we serve a very specific group of law firms that have a specific need. If you have a you know, there’s gonna be some type of law firm that aren’t for us.

There’s gonna be a law firm that’s like “I only really wanna focus on, you know, public relations and I wanna make sure that I’m in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, every single-” that’s not us. Like that’s a different firm. And that’s fine. And that’s good for them. And it was the same thing for Butterbeans. Like we had a really specific offering. Child walks through line, tells you what they want to put on their plate, server puts it on the plate, they go sit down and eat. There was another school that would say, Well, we want them to just have everything in a box, pre-boxed.

Great, there’s a service for you. It’s not Butterbeans. So you really have to understand what your value proposition is and all of those things. Once you figure that out, it’s execution. And I am here for the execution. I stand up for that every time and I will work relentlessly to figure it out. That is why I feel like I’m successful.

Keith Edwards (34:32)

Speaking of working relentlessly, I have to ask you, because it’s my – this is based on my personal observation – but I have been very happy and very honored to visit the DiGiambattista home. You are married to an entrepreneur, your son is an entrepreneur, and your daughter is an entrepreneur in her own right, an up-and-coming, amazingly talented artist.

Belinda DiGiambattista (34:59)

Yes.

Keith Edwards (34:59)

Your values of hard work and entrepreneurship really do start at home. Talk a little bit about that home life that nurtures you and that has nurtured the other people in your family.

Belinda DiGiambattista (35:04)

And I come from that, right? Like my grandparents, they had a farm and they literally worked on the farm sunup to sundown. And that was my summer job for 10 years when I was a kid on the farm, working for them and you know, making money from Granny and Paul. And my dad, entrepreneur. He owned his own business, continues to create his own projects. So I feel like I knew exactly what it looked like, which is why even when I had a job in corporate America, I always had it in the back of my mind, I’m gonna own my own business one day because you know, you have just so much more freedom to make decisions, to do things better, to do things differently, and reap the rewards, right?

So I think it’s no surprise or accident that I’ve kind of raised a family of entrepreneurs. You know, when my son was in high school, he was in the tenth grade, and he everybody was talking about probably the PSAT at that time, and where do you want to go to college, and what do you want to be? And everybody was starting to think about that. And he was thinking about that. And he was like, well, I don’t really want to be a lawyer or an investment banker. That sounds like a lot of work. I don’t want to be a doctor. I guess I’ll have to own a business. And he really started to think about that. And he has had these inklings his entire life. You should have seen him at a stoop sale at three years old selling stuff.

He had a skateboard company he started at ten years old, which is by the way where the name Indersity started. So we bought that URL when he was ten and kept it ’cause I knew one day he would probably need it. I had no idea what for, but now we do. So yeah, he decided to start a company at sixteen years old, and here we are later.

Keith Edwards (37:04)

It’s amazing. Four years. I’ve told you before, it reminds me Caroline Kennedy used to talk about, you know, growing up around the dinner table, right? Being kind of, lively discussions about what was done in the service of the public. But I think that dinner conversations at your house are different than most.

Belinda DiGiambattista (37:25)

Very. And when it comes to my daughter, you know, she’s an actor. She’s a singer songwriter. She is a working professional and has been since she was eight or nine. And I have told her from the beginning, if you’re gonna take this as seriously as you’re telling me you wanna take it and be involved in all of these things, this is not a hobby. This is a business. And you have to treat it that way. So she’s very aware.

She knows how much money she makes from a gig, how much money it costs to book a rehearsal room and all the things. So they very much are clear on their own goals and what they want to accomplish and they’re putting in the work.

So Keith.

Keith Edwards (38:06)

Yes, Belinda.

Belinda DiGiambattista (38:11)

What excites you the most about working today in this new way that we’re working, this hybrid world where we actually have employees in nine different states? I personally find it challenging. You know, the last time I worked in an organization with this many people, we were all in the same city, and now we’re not.

So what do you find about this new world of working and what do you think are the pros and cons and how we’re adjusting?

Keith Edwards (38:41)

I think it’s phenomenal. I spend a lot of time thinking about it and talking about it. We recently had our first big national company meeting. Yes. And it was so exciting because we’re all so close, but we’d never been in the same room together. And so there were, you know, there are just things that are lost by not being in person, you know?

And I have close working relationships with the entire team, but sometimes I don’t know as many things about their personal lives or just little little pieces about them because we don’t see each other every day. And I think we do a relatively good job of having happy hours and hangouts and you know, trying to build that. But being in person was really helpful for a lot of that. I think we accomplished a lot in that setting. I think it is still relatively new.

And I don’t think that we have, as a society, as a business world, settled on how we’re gonna approach this. I hear law firms talking about junior talent and the challenges with building junior talent now. With people being remote. Or, you know, maybe in some organizations there is some kind of slowdown in hiring lower level people because of AI agents and the ability to outsource things. So it is a real issue.

I often talk about it and we’ve talked about it. My first job, you had to wear a suit and tie every day. And be on time to work, or else it was, we had a little saying it’s like eight thirty-five is late. We started at eight thirty, you know. So it was not exact – and everybody operated in the business world in that way. Everything was starting. And there are pieces of it that are nice that we don’t have to enforce as we used to. Right. But also there’s a little piece of discipline and work ethic that gets instilled that we maybe aren’t as rigid about as we once were.

Belinda DiGiambattista (40:52)

Right. Yeah, I know. It’s really tough. I will say one of the things I love that our team does is that a couple of people will sometimes take the initiative to start a shout out in the group team chat. And they’re like, okay, we’re gonna do shout-outs. And they’ll start shouting out and then other people go and they pile in and they say, I’m gonna shout out to this person. I’m like, this is such a great team. Right. Everybody is so supportive of one another and looking to constantly help. So I love that they do that.

Keith Edwards (41:22)

And I think in this kind of virtual world, we all are looking for a personal connection. And I think people may even in their own personal lives be a little bit starved for that and for that connection with others. And so, I don’t know, I think we can have a positive impact on people if we do things like that and if we really make an effort to connect with people on a personal level.

Belinda DiGiambattista (41:47)

I agree. Yeah. All right. Well, this has been fun.

Keith Edwards (41:52)

This has been a lot of fun!

Well Belinda, thank you. We couldn’t start this, of course, without you as our first guest. We’ve got some exciting episodes coming up, so I’m really excited about the new podcast and where this is heading. I want to thank all of you for joining us today. from our office here in Lower Manhattan, this is Keith and Belinda. Thank you very much for joining us on the record.

Belinda DiGiambattista (41:57)

Thank you.

Keith Edwards (42:23)

That’s a wrap on this episode of Marketing on the Record. Thanks for hanging out with us. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, don’t forget to hit subscribe so you’ll never miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take your legal marketing to the next level, head on over to Good2bSocial.com. We’d love to help. Until next time, I’m Keith Edwards, and we’ll see you on the record.

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