Doug Bradley

President & Founder – Everest Legal Marketing, LLC

I got my first car when I was 16 in 1994. It was all of $750 and beautiful (to me). It was a 1979 Camaro – white with a flat black hood bulge; it had a small block 350 with an automatic Turbo 350 transmission. Super cool. The only problem was it was a huge piece of crap. It broke down constantly, but as a newly minted driver, and car owner, I did everything I could to keep it on the road. As a 16 year old on a budget, I did all of the work at home. Once, with the help of a group of friends, we had to put it on jack stands and pulled the transmission to be rebuilt not knowing anything about removing a transmission, and having access only to the hand tools four or five less-than-wealthy kids from the Inland Empire area of California could scrape together.

Cutting to the chase, we figured it out. This is a common theme throughout my career. I like to know how things work, how they fail and what impacts either scenario.

I went to college at the University of La Verne and I double majored in Business Administration and Broadcasting with an emphasis in Television. During this time I was working a full time job and a part time job, got married and purchased my first home with my wife. Many semesters I went to work 5 or 6 days a week while juggling 12-18 units and managed to hustle a 3.4 GPA – not bragging material I know, but I think that process built a character and work ethic that I would never trade for anything in the world.

After college I jumped at the opportunity to work for an advertising firm (SuperMedia, now Dex). I made some great life-long friends, and learned a lot about sales, rejection, success and failure. Eventually I came to the realization that yellow page ads day’s were numbered; during the height of the Great Recession I knew I had to get out. When the opportunity came up to work for Lawyers.com (Martindale-Hubbell) I again dove in and learned a whole new industry. Within 2 years I turned around a failing territory and earned the trust of some very good lawyers. During this time, I taught myself the “how to” of SEO using the tools I had, and the tenacity to learn how it worked. It was like changing a transmission again – a lot of bloody knuckles, frustration and curse words. But I got really good at it. Then Martindale-Hubbell sold Lawyers.com to a large advertising conglomerate, and one day I and about 200 other people had no job.

That was the day that I vowed that I would never rely on one source of income for the rest of my life, and if I were going to be financially independent it had to be something under my ownership, something I believed in, and something I really liked doing. However, I had financial responsibilities and was recruited to a fantastic company, working for an incredible manager selling Chapter 11 restructuring tools and banking services to fiduciaries & trustees. I was really good at that too, but I knew that it wasn’t inline with my long term goals. Ultimately, with the support of my wife, I made an incredibly difficult decision and took a leap of faith, leaving a very nice corporate gig with the promise of only 3 clients to work with – clients from Martindale-Hubbell. I launched “Bradley SEO Marketing” and subsequently changed the name to Everest Legal Marketing, LLC when I incorporated. Since then, our lawyer SEO company has fostered relationships with attorneys throughout the country and in a wide variety of practices.

I got a lot of requests for pictures, this was the best one I could find!

Here’s the deal – I get the job done and take my relationships seriously. Many lawyers have been duped by sales reps at unethical advertising companies promising riches with no accountability or any reputation to uphold with the mindset that there’s always another lawyer to sell around the corner. That’s not me, and those aren’t the values of anyone I would ever employ. I often become friends with many clients I work with and it would go against my grain to “sell” anyone on something I didn’t believe wholeheartedly I could deliver.

If you’re reading this because you want to avoid or relieve your own bloody knuckles, frustration and cursing, contact me today. Here’s my Linktree.

Education

University of La Verne, BS – Business Administration – 2005
University of La Verne, BA – Communications (Emphasis in Television Broadcasting) – 2005

Speaking Engagements

University of La Verne – “Life After La Verne” Panelist (April 2021)
WSBCBA – Co-Presenter “Legal & Ethical Concerns for Marketing a Law Firm” (Jan. 2021)
RCBA – Guest Speaker: “Ethics in Online Attorney Marketing” (2019)
The Hon. Joseph B. Campbell American Inn of Court – Keynote Speaker: “Ethics in Online Attorney Marketing” (2017)