Today on the Book More show, we're talking with Vanessa Vasquez de Lara, a family attorney in Miami, Florida, about her new book The Florida Man's Guide to Getting Divorced.
Vanessa's expertise in family law and her passion for helping dads navigate this difficult time comes through in the book as she looks to provide support in the divorce process and resources to help much more holistically.
It's a great conversation that highlights the opportunity to engage with potential clients and the people supporting them by leading with something that genuinely adds value.
Her approach in working with other experts to create the book is also a fascinating example of the synergy of working with complementary, non-competing professionals to create a win-win for everyone.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Navigating Divorce for Dads: Vanessa Vasquez de Lara, a family attorney in Miami Florida, discusses her book specifically targeting divorcing dads and the unique challenges they face
Deciding the right level of information: Vanessa shares her approach to providing valuable insights without attempting to cover all possible scenarios in a divorce case
Expert Collaborations for Divorce Support: Vanessa highlights the importance of consulting with experts before, during, and after the divorce case to ensure all issues are considered
Adopting a holistic approach to family law: Vanessa and her team have created resources and collaborated with non-competing businesses to provide a more comprehensive support system for families going through a divorce
Targeting a niche audience: Vanessa's book aims to help divorcing dads and their families beyond the courtroom, providing guidance on various aspects of divorce such as child custody and asset allocation
Creating a valuable resource: Vanessa's book is designed to educate and inform divorcing dads about the issues they may not know to ask about, as well as those they may not realize they don't know
Collaborating with experts: Vanessa's book features contributions from various experts in fields such as mental health, image consulting, and real estate, providing a more comprehensive guide for divorcing dads
Expanding reach through expert collaborations: Vanessa's book provides contact information for all of the experts featured, allowing readers to access additional resources and support
Adapting to changing laws: Vanessa discusses potential changes to family law in Florida and how her book can still serve as a valuable resource for divorcing dads, regardless of the specific laws in place
Building a strong network of support: Vanessa's holistic approach to family law aims to help divorcing dads and their families beyond the courtroom, creating a strong network of support and resources for those in need
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart Hey everyone, welcome back to the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today joined by Vanessa Vasquez de Lara. Vanessa, how are you doing?
Vanessa I'm good. How are you Stuart?
Stuart Fantastic Good, thank you. We're just on a Tuesday after the holiday weekend, so peak energy for recording the podcast and hitting the floor running For sure, for sure. So why don't we start by telling people a bit about the background of the film and what you do and how we can transition into the book? What I really love about this book is we often talk about the specificity of the book and how it targets a particular niche audience, and you also think it's a perfect example. So give us a background on the film and yourself and we'll talk a bit more about the book.
Vanessa Thank you. So I've been practicing for almost 20 years. I'm a family attorney in Miami Florida and I've had the firm. We're actually celebrating 11 years. We're actually having a anniversary and book launch party in a few weeks. I'm really excited about that.
So I've been practicing and doing only family life for quite a bit now and we love helping families, but we especially love helping men and helping and being able to bring some of the different issues that they particularly have to the forefront, which is why, when I decided to write a book, we decided to niche it down and have it be specifically to that target audience. They do tend to be a little bit more concerned, a little bit more surprised. The statistics are that women tend to file more often to start a divorce case. So it's actually something that men sort of sit back and sit around and are a little bit unhappy, but they're not necessarily taking that action and moving forward. So we've actually seen that a lot in our practice and that's why I thought that would be a good way of sort of giving them some of the information that they don't always know to ask and some of the information that they may not realize that they don't know.
Stuart It's such a great insight into the idea that not only do you see it kind of numerically, the numbers of people that you see, but that group of people who you can maybe help more are maybe the ones who are caught in the back foot because they're not correct to be the ones initiating it.
I can imagine I was divorced myself in the UK and unfortunately it was as amicable as it could be, but you definitely see situations where it's absolutely not and I can imagine the person being caught on the back foot of a less than amicable separation. There's so many questions and so many specifics to the individual circumstance. When thinking about writing a book, then how do you decide which is the right level of information to go with? because oftentimes we'll talk to people and we're trying to say or suggest being specific and target it for that perfect avatar and a lot of times the initial response is always well, it depends, this situation, it could be one and this situation could be another. Obviously, we know that people just consuming that information at the first level they're just really after the lay of the land. But did you have a similar challenge? You're deciding what the right level was to write.
Vanessa So this is not a book that's going to tell you exactly what's going to happen in your divorce. There's so many different things that can really affect that. I wasn't interested in trying to talk to everybody and tell them well, if this happens, you know, choose your own adventure. If this happens, then this happens and that happens. But if you go this other route, this happens and this happens, so you know. So there's so many different things that can affect the actual core divorce case. That's actually not what we go through in the book, because I also didn't want to do a disservice to people by not having every possibility. Once you start down that track, you kind of want to, you know, cover every possibility. So what I really wanted to do was to educate these particular consumers, which are divorcing dads, about a lot of the issues that they don't really think about because they are men who typically don't carry that mental load in their homes, or because they've never been divorced before, or because of many different reasons. So I really what I really do is I talk about the process and what you can expect and what you should be thinking about. One of my favorite lines in the book is you can either pay for your kids' college education or my kids' college education, that is. Litigation is really very stressful and expensive And at the end of the day, there are unfortunately some clients that end up spending the equivalent of a college education on their case. So we love to see people settle And the best way to do that is by being an informed consumer, by being able to make sure that you have thought about not necessarily thought about everything, but thought about all of the different things that sometimes we find. You know clients six months and 12 months down the road go, but I didn't even realize that there was a connection there And some of it is not obvious, you know we have. What we did was that we took, that I took experts on things where these are the type of experts that I would consult with or that I would hope my clients would consult with, either before, during or after their divorce case, and I put them all together to kind of share that expertise so that my clients would be better prepared if they're going to be going through a divorce, be prepared while they're going through it And, if it's already happened, kind of some of the things that maybe you didn't think about, that you should be prepared for in, as you know, as time goes on, and some of the less obvious ones are we have an image consultant that talks about how you put your image out there, how you put your image out there for court, how you put your image out there when you're going to start dating again. Those are some of the things that are maybe not obvious and things that people would say wow, i really should be thinking about what I look like on Zoom or what my background looks like on Zoom, since we're still doing so many court hearings on Zoom.
But it's something that's important to think about. We don't always. We sometimes, as attorneys because we do this all the time think well, but it's common sense, you shouldn't be in your pajamas, sitting in your bed, court hearing. But you know, this is a really stressful process for a lot of people, and so sometimes what I think of is common sense. You're so stressed out and anxious about it that you may not realize crap, i really shouldn't be sitting in my pajamas, not my bed, during my court hearing. So sometimes it's about, you know, just kind of giving that reminder about some of the things that you really want to be thinking about, but maybe you haven't thought about.
Stuart So many things are unpacked there, and this is why I'm so excited to jump on this call, because it's such the perfect example. We often talk about the books. It's not that choose your own adventure you're not going to get. You can't deliver all of the information for people to make all of the choices, whether it's a choice to work with you or a choice to do something themselves within the pages of a book. It's just infractical. But there's a perfect opportunity to start the conversation And what you've done is highlighted and picked out the examples of those conversations which are going to position you as their friendly advocate in a somewhat several-country-over-a-word, in a way that I'm obviously still a weekend note, in a way that's just positioned to you as their friend in the environment And whether, as people are listening to this and watching it, whether that's your business or whether your business is as kind of two-sided as divorce cases are, but still positioning yourself as the person who's offering friendly advice into a world that is way more complicated.
Because, just to say, it's common sense to you, because you're in it every day, and even if it's not the most complicated of things, like someone taking two seconds to think about it understands that you should probably put a shirt if they were going to court, then have the same approach of doing on Zoom, but people don't think about it because this is their first-time experience and get and then layer on all the stress as well.
It's an example of providing that friendly information that starts the conversation. So I often talk to people about going deep on one subject rather than superficially broad, because going too superficially broad it seems a bit bait and switch into. Well. Now the next step is you need to come into the office. Well, obviously that's the case, but you want to present it in a friendly way. I think what you've done is walk that line very well between. It is a longer book than traditionally do and the breadth of subjects is maybe slightly wider, but you've still walked the line very well in providing great information at a level that sits well and doesn't feel bait and switchy into well. Here's a couple of throwaway comments, but the only answer is to come in and see us. There's really value provided in the book itself.
Vanessa We are really big on educating our potential clients, and even clients that are not potential clients but who simply need more information. So we have so many videos and so many. We have an online course that can help walk a divorce and dive through a lot of the common questions that they ask. So we felt that this was a way of showcasing a lot of the things that they wouldn't even know to ask, that they wouldn't necessarily know to search for, because if they haven't been through it or if maybe their friends maybe they're younger and their friends haven't been through the same type of issues, maybe their friends didn't own a house or their friends didn't have some of the assets that they have.
So it might just be something that it is a broad swatch of topics so that you can kind of hit the different things that are sort of surrounded, from mental health to coaching, to image, to selling your house, to your bank accounts, to your credit, to your estate planning. There's really a lot of things that people don't always associate with a divorce or haven't kind of thought through that process, and that's what we thought to do is to continue that educational journey for people who are going through such a difficult time that sometimes you don't want to ask your friends, you don't want to ask people that you know you want to understand it better. So that's kind of what we wanted to make sure that we could provide that ability to get that information, send you to a place where you can get more resources and be able to really understand a little bit better about what you're getting yourself into.
Stuart I think that's a great point. We're often talking about I'm not oversimplifying it but helping people get over the barrier from not having anything to creating something that they can get out there. So we're sometimes really trying to help people go with a minimum effective answer, because otherwise they never do anything. We've got people who we talk to and talk to for years and years before they actually get started. But your example is a great one of someone who's coming in and we certainly got a lot of clients like this, but perhaps we don't talk about them enough.
You're coming in with a lot of assets and a lot of resources and a lot of directions that you can support people coming in to the divorce world, but for many different entry points whether it's, like you say, dealing with the kids situation now, or dealing with their asset allocation, or even down to the image and getting back out of their dating I think not only do you have the opportunity to show people, no matter which direction they came in, show people the next step and the next step in this idea of the minimum viable commitment, these small little steps before they become a client. You've got lots of additional resources to put them in that direction. We've also got the opportunity now to reach people in many different ways. So now that the book exists, running ads or having talking points about any of those six or seven core subjects that covered it just gives you such a kind of a tentpole asset to talk about in lots of different environments.
Vanessa Do you go, and then what I love is that, and what I love is that we gave you the information for these people, because maybe you do think crap, i do need to figure out what my image should be.
I need to do better, i need to, i want to get out there. We gave you the information for the image consultant so that maybe you know you already passed your divorce and you don't need an attorney to help you right now. But you kind of wanted to figure out what you maybe you didn't know or what you should have known And that might be a resource that would be really helpful for you. So we provide the contact information for all of the experts in our book so that perhaps, if you don't need an attorney, maybe you already have one. You know that's fine, but now there might be other pieces that you know that you could really use, and we provide access to those experts that maybe you wouldn't have known about or that you would have encountered. You know, because that's not your world. It is my world, but it's not your world.
Stuart And you giving them the access to people where there's a certain amount of I don't want to say vetting is not quite my word but you're talking with people who you know are doing a good job and have experts in their field, so providing additional kind of knowledge layer that the consumer, that the dad, might not know. Yeah, it's another. We could have shows. We should do more shows on this, actually, because there's so much to unpack on this one, that idea that you had of bringing in the experts to talk about their speciality again, in keeping it kind of the most simple version of it, we often talk about people using their own knowledge and putting that out there Did you initially have that idea that you wanted to bring in the other people to share their knowledge, or did you start from the position of I can easily talk about this much, but then there's the next layer out. So did you start from your own work and then build out, or did you start the project really thinking about building those experts in from the start?
Vanessa So this is not my idea. I'm in an amazing coaching group called Had a Manage, a Small Offer, and this was actually one of the things that they had suggested. I don't know that how many of us have actually picked up the idea and ran with it, but it was something that you know that was mentioned during a workshop And I just thought that was such a genius thing to put together some of my most trusted colleagues that you know that were sort of like a wrap around service that if I were to put, you know, my team together on how to help my clients outside of just practicing family law, these would be kind of the team members that would be able to bring to the table a lot of powerful abilities and knowledge and etc. So when I heard that workshop, i immediately started writing out a list of the people that I would want to collaborate with And almost everybody said yes.
And so we started from, you know, from the point of being able to provide that sort of wrap around service where I spoke about, you know the specifics and some of the different things that you need to be considering about during a divorce. But then we sort of wrapped around all the services with all of the experts, so it was one of those things that I thought would be a quick project. It did not turn out to be as quick as I had hoped, but I am super excited that we're finally we have it. I've got my copies that you guys sent me. I've ordered Amazon copies and we are getting ready to launch in two weeks.
Stuart And this idea of complementary, non-competing businesses and building the footprint you've got out in a wider world. This has been on that in a slightly different direction. So we sometimes talk about, once you have your book completed, reaching out to complementary, non-competing businesses where there's the crossover of clients, but starting this project from the other way round, of going out to that broader group. There's so many opportunities now And I think some people think they maybe only think one step ahead So they think, okay, writing a book for me, for my leads, and an immediate funnel. But the approach that you've got now establishes in a very subtle way you guys as the legal experts within this much broader world of all the experts that are involved, and the opportunity that you've got to share the book into those and allow those people to use it as marketing because it promotes you such a great, more strategic play rather than just the tactical writer book get leads.
Vanessa Yeah, i mean we have been collaborating, you know, with our co-authors and working to make sure that they're putting it out there, all of the local ones. One of our contributors is actually based in South Carolina, but all of our local ones are, you know, are coming to our book launch party. We've encouraged them to invite, you know, everybody that they know to put it out on their social media. And it gives them authority as well because now they're in a published book. So it's a, you know, it's really a great give and take where they're able to share that with their clients and their customers on a very specific, you know, kind of piece of advice that they can give their divorceing dad. So it kind of expands on that ability to sort of cross network with, you know, with many experts, while sort of being in a position of authority, because now we have, you know, it's a published book.
I am, i am very hopeful and expectant that we'll be able to reach Amazon bestseller. So, you know, we'll be able to kind of be able to share that with not just our potential clients, our current clients, people who just you know are in our community, but also all of the other co-authors and contributors with their clients as well. So it's kind of a really cool what I'm, what I'm hoping for, a really cool ripple effect.
Stuart Particularly because the book itself is so helpful for people. It's not such a, it's not a how-to book. It's not a book answering specific, narrow questions. It's broadly applicable to such a wide group, and whether the people themselves are going through the experience, the rules is one of those things. So we're only one or two degrees separated from someone going through it. So, knowing that it is such a friendly, accessible introduction to the world, it doesn't take many steps to imagine that orchestrated referral type setup of people remembering that it's available and then being able to give it to other people.
Vanessa Yeah, we're actually experiencing here in Florida. There is quite a few changes in the family laws that we're expecting our governor to you know, to potentially sign into law pretty soon. So if I would have made it into a very specific well, this is what happens, when this happened, i would have been dead in the water in potentially another month when our, when our statutes all potentially change, because there's a big, you know, circle of change that we expect is probably going to come when those laws change. So this way we've kind of provided you with the information that is very universal for Florida laws.
I only practice really in South Florida, which is Miami-Dade County and Brownwood County, but we can help on certain issues. We can help in all of Florida, like prenuptial agreements, things where the location as long as you have Florida law, the location doesn't matter. But the reality is that this is the useful book for anybody in Florida because it is based on what you know, what our laws are with respect to a lot of things, and it relates to things that are outside of the law, like I mentioned, you know, about selling your home and about your image, about your health, about your mental health, which are things that are not specific to and that's really to Florida. It's just sort of tailored to Florida because that's where we are and that's where my experts are.
Stuart Yeah, and that's where I mean when we think about the business case for it there's Florida itself is more than big enough to create as big a business as you could possibly want. I mean, it's the language that you use in there. Even on subjects that are relatively generic and country-wide, there's still the way that you phrase it or the examples that you give. The language they use it's tailored to the county which sorry, the state, which just makes it more accessible and more of a smooth transition into that next step.
I was going to ask about something that's got in my mind but it will come back.
But one of the things he did mention.
It got pushed out by this idea of the law changes later, potentially later in the month or next month, even without the book being specifically written on, whatever the previous laws were or the new laws, the fact that the Rawson family law and the changes are going to be out there as a conversation to be able to topic, bridge off those changes and into the specific book. There's going to be a lot of people who are the subject's going to be front of mind now because of the changes And even though the book doesn't specifically cover those, to bridge off those conversations to have social media posts and videos and send emails out. I mean, you can imagine a scenario where sending an email out to all of the existing lists that you've got, talking in brief about the changes that are coming up or the fact that there are changes coming up, but hey, we just wrote a book that covers all of the fundamental laws or the basics just an opportunity to bridge in those conversations into something that you've got and starts that conversation.
Vanessa Anyway, i'm definitely hopeful that you know that is the conversation that we're having not as wide as I would have thought with all the changes that are coming, but it's definitely something that, if and when these statutes get signed in, we expect that all will be signed in. Even if most are signed in, it's going to, you know, to really revolutionize and change a lot of sort of basic concepts in family law here in Florida, and especially for men. I mean we're talking about they are going to. The biggest change that is being discussed right now is where a dad is going to be the legal father right from the child's birth when they're not married to the mom, and that's complete 180 from how it is now.
Right now our law says that a dad only an unwed mother is the natural guardian of a minor child. Now they're changing that potentially to the unwed mother and the father who has signed the birth certificate are the natural guardians of a minor child. So that's really revolutionary and it's really kind of catching up to what the reality is, which is that many couples now are not married And so that has caused a big issue for our dads where moms could just, you know, sort of have all the rights to the child and the father has to go to court in order to get those rights. So we do expect that those conversations are going to be amplified if those statutes, you know, pass. And we're hopeful that this book, although it's for divorcing dads, it's really for anybody. It is just that we want it to make sure that the people who really need it and who are really, i think, searching for this type of material, would find it and it would call their names, because it is the Florida man's guide to getting divorced.
Stuart Right And that's that specificity of the title to be able to stop someone in their day-to-day conversation.
So whether they're on Facebook or Instagram and they're seeing an ad, or whether they see a piece of material at one of the co-authors place of work, or an email that they send out, something that stops them, that says I want that.
the talent that you've got is nicely specific enough to be very there's no ambiguity about who it's for and to be able to stop that conversation.
Some things that are springing to mind around the law changes and the fact that the book now exists.
there's going to be a demand out there for experts talking about this thing, because news channels and other outlets have to fill a news cycle with something relevant to the moment, so they're going to be looking around for experts to be able to have a commentary on the things that are changing. So the fact that a book exists now reaffirms your establishes you even more as an expert, let alone the 11 years of history of the company and all of the people that you've helped. the niche set up of the title and the book and the fact that it is targeting it maybe not the group of people it's almost like the second group of people everyone kind of thinks I think primarily about the women in the situation which is maybe why you see dance court on the back foot but the fact that you are talking to these people. there's going to be a new cycle coming up in the next couple of weeks that is going to be desperately looking for people, So there's a huge opportunity to actively outreach on things like HR app, the journalists website.
Let's help a reporter out, right, exactly. So all of those opportunities. I mean the timing is almost perfect to bridge off some of those examples. You were talking quickly, a bunch of time. I know you're busy with the day-to-day work, not just chatting to me. So one last question quickly. then You mentioned that writing the book was the idea from the workshop and you jumped on it and ran with it very quickly. The process, as many things, is never quite straightforward as we hope. going into things, did you start the project and now that it's complete, the hope of reaching out to certain groups and engaging in a funnel type thought of reaching out to certain groups of people and engaging with them and then taking them on to the next step? Do you have that funnel kind of clear in your mind about how you use in the book and where you're leading people to the next step? Or is that kind of laid the track as it goes and kind of see what happens over the next few weeks now that it's out there?
Vanessa So I mean we do have. We've created a lot of material for this specific potential client, for a divorceing dad, for that Florida man who's looking to get divorced, and so we do have a website DivorcingDadsGuidetoCourt.com which, prior to the book launch, sort of just gives answers, questions and refers you to other resources, but also adds you to our list if you want to be told when the book launch is happening. Now that we've got the book already on Amazon, we do have the information there so that people are able to directly go and purchase the book. Our hope is to be able to share this with our potential clients and be able to give them a resource that they may have not expected from us, and we will probably be at least initially sending that out to all of our potential clients and anybody who's basically requesting it, because it's important and I want to make sure that the knowledge is out there and, ultimately, that we are able to help people.
Our firm, our initiatives, are really intended to although it seems kind of strange for a family firm, but I'd love to see people stay married.
That's typically not going to be something that I can help with once you get to me, but we have resources and we're trying to make sure that we're offering resources that are not just legal services. We've got a parenting support group that we offer as a free service to the community once a month. It's led by an expert therapist that's able to help parents, clients, non-clients, divorce, non-divorce anybody who's struggling with a parenting issue. We have that resource available for parents to be able to get that kind of support, with other parents having with the therapist and with other parents being available. We strive to really make sure that we are supporting not just our community of clients but really our community as a whole. We're aligned with a foundation that provides scholarships to underprivileged kids. We've got the Supreme Scholars Foundation. I created that after I lost my little brother during COVID. Our firm's mission is not only to impact people as they're coming into our doors but really impact in a much broader way.
Stuart I think that passion for helping people will come through in the book itself and just the approach of what you're trying to do. It's really a number of the conversations around just the tactics and the book creators out there. It's really great to have that conversation about the bigger picture and helping. I think that's what comes through on the podcast. A lot is everyone that we speak to, everyone that gets to the end of a project, everyone that's kind of being engaged enough and enthusiastic enough to come on a podcast is obviously passionate about what they do. The fact that you guys have got such a holistic approach to the family law and the relationships as a whole all that really comes through in the book and I'm sure it's going to be hugely well received by people Because the information it's difficult for people to get hold of and now you've brought that all together in one place Such a great resource.
Vanessa DivorcingDadsGuidetoCourt.com. We wanted to make it simpler and easier to remember.
Stuart DivorcingDadsGuidetoCourt.com. I'll make sure that we put a link in the show notes as well so people can get to it. The law firm itself. If people want to go directly to the law firm website, is there another place that people can go there, Or is that one the best?
Vanessa So once you're in Divorcing Dads guide to court, you will be sort of you know that's a page that puts you into our entire ecosphere, so you'll be able to schedule case evaluation if you need one. Look at our videos, look at our blogs, look at our team. We have an amazing team. I'm the head, but we've got four other associates here and we've got a team of 18 people really making sure that we are helping as many families as possible.
Stuart Fantastic. Thanks again for your time. I know you're super busy. I really appreciate sharing this with people. We'll make sure to put a link to the site and I really recommend people go through and A get a copy of the book and B check out the videos as well. It's a very holistic approach that you've got to support in all of the questions and answers that people might have. So thanks again for your time. We're looking forward to checking in a little bit down the track and see how it's going, but for now, thank you.