198: TGR Live 2026: Immigration Lawyer Julio Oyhanarte on Using Social Media to Drive Law Firm Growth

So one guy, the marketing expert that I hired in September 2020 told me, "Julio, you should do TikTok. Some context: family of lawyers, my father, two siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, great great grandfather. I say this probably, I'm named after my grandfather, who was a Supreme Court justice in Argentina, so all the lawyers in Argentina know my name because of him. I won really hard scholarships to study in the US to get another master's degree in the UK. I worked in Congress in Argentina in the judiciary investigating judicial corruption and presenting appointees, federal judge to be named as a federal judge appointed, and you're telling me to do TikTok, that's for little kids dancing, was my answer, my stupid answer.

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10 Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz.

So, I've been a lawyer for too many years now, 18 years. I come from a family of lawyers since my great great grandfather, and after studying many years, I came to the US in 2015 for a Master of Laws. I met John Franco, my business partner, and so in January 2020 we started our firm. Terrible timing for an immigration lawyer, obviously, you will know why. And at first, we tried everything, you know. We tried SEO. I remember writing, writing investor visas articles, hoping someone will click that one day. I tried many things. I tried paid ads on Meta, basically 40% no-shows, 60% showing up were saying 10 other colleagues told me I don't qualify. What do you say? You know, I respect my colleagues, so if they're saying you don't qualify, you probably don't. And be careful, you're waiting to be scammed because you're looking for a yes and there's a no here. So that was a waste of time, money, and effort, and a lot of frustration. So then we tried everything. I remember creating my first social media. We created also our beautiful logo. I spent a lot of money creating that. Now you can do it in a second, but I spent money doing that, and I was really proud of my logo. Anyways, 2020 March, we all know what happened. I'm not going to go deep in this, because it's horrible, but the pandemic hit, and for an immigration lawyer was for everyone, especially for us US consulates across the country were closed. John Franco, my business partner, used to work for DOJ, then he did detention, and he had a lot of clients in his previous firm, so we're detention centers were closed, the border was closed, and guess what? I was in Argentina waiting for my investor visa appointment, so the immigration lawyer didn't have the visa and couldn't get it. So I was locked down in Argentina with my family's house, waiting to get my appointment, and I couldn't get it, and we were not getting any business. Thank God, John Franco was here in the US to handle a few

cases that we had to handle here. We didn't have a lot, and so we tried it all until one thing that I think we did correctly, and I do this to this day, even if we didn't have any money, because I invested all my life savings as a lawyer to start this firm in Los Angeles. We started, we continue investing in our own education in things that we don't know, and in mentors and experts in marketing and other areas. I think that's valuable, super valuable. And so one guy, the marketing expert that I hired in September 2020 told me, Julio, you should do TikTok, some context, family of lawyers, my father, two siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, great great grandfather. I say this proudly. I'm named after my grandfather, who was a Supreme Court justice in Argentina, so all the lawyers in Argentina know my name because of him. I want really hard scholarships to study in the US, to get another master's degree in the UK. I worked in Congress in Argentina in the judiciary investigating judicial corruption and presenting appointees, federal judge to be named as a federal judge appointed, and you're telling me to do TikTok, that's for little kids dancing, was my answer, my stupid answer, but one thing that I have, and I'm proud of, is I'm curious, and for some reason I was always curious about why things work on a mess in a massive way, even if I am not interested in that. That's where my curiosity is. This is working massively, and I don't like it. Reggaeton music, I'm sorry, I don't understand. I like ACDC, The Beatles. Why everyone likes this thing. So I get into it. So I had TikTok already, but I wasn't using it, because I heard people were using it. And so this guy is telling me this before jumping in the platform, because I started watching YouTube videos about TikTok. I started consuming the app. I started to do research about who were the lawyers that were already there, and I found a few that I respected, that I respect to this day, that were doing good, and there

were no dancing. A few were these guys were, and so I took my, the way I am, I took all the spreadsheets, top 10 lawyers on immigration, lawyers on TikTok, their top 10 videos, trying to find patterns, you know, the average video that goes viral is 3034 seconds, they're not using a tie or they are the background blah blah blah the topics, and with all in my mind that in my mind I started doing some work and trying to understand what could be my first video, and so I took my phone, I was again in my family's house in a garden. I took my iPhone, I was using a T-shirt, sitting on a plastic chair, got my phone and said, "Do you want a green card? These are four ways to get it. I'm Julio, immigration lawyer, and number one is if you marry a US citizen. Number two, number four. Follow me for more with some emojis and the US, beautiful US flag, all in Spanish. Okay, I posted that, and I went to take a nap. Fast forward a few hours, 300,000 views. I didn't have any follower, nothing. 300,000 views, emails nonstop, and I don't know you guys, but my family, my parents raised me in a way that if someone asked me something, I answer right. So I started having anxiety because I couldn't handle the volume with a few videos. I was answering emails on a Saturday night until 3am non stop. I was like, I'm gonna die. So I know I knew instantly that my life changed forever, and maybe I am not a typical lawyer anymore, and maybe I'm a TikTok lawyer without dancing, and so again, I didn't have any budget. I was stuck in Argentina, I didn't have a studio, I have my iPhone. Fast forward, today 15 million followers, 2.5 I think, right now billion views, which is ridiculous, and we are signing, we're getting 220 plus clients every month, our first firm, we scale it to seven figures in three years and a half, and based on what we learned, I created a second firm doing different stuff within immigration, and we scaled that to eight figures in a year and a half, only using

social media, no paid ads, nothing, just me on video giving value to people. Now I'm going to go fast about this next slide, because I'm in a place where everyone's interested in marketing, so you know that social media is important for any business, let alone a law firm. But just in case, let me say something. Chen C millennials use TikTok. This is insane, but this is going on right now as we speak. And YouTube and other platforms as a search engine, so they're looking for legal advice on TikTok, which is full of garbage, misinformation, and scammers. Actually, we block five to 10 accounts using my face every day. I have a team dedicated just to do that, so there's a lot of scamming going on there, but people are doing it, and they're watching TV with their phones here. The TV's on the back, and the phone is here. So, if you're not here, where are you? So, I'm going to challenge you guys today. Okay, I'm going to.. that's what I.. who I am, anyways. So, people are searching on these platforms, and they're searching for any legal question, because sometimes I hear the objection. Okay, yeah. Well, immigration is different from estate planning or PR, and it is, but someone that has a pain and needs legal help, they're searching for that information. I don't care what you do in the legal space, they're searching that right now, and if your videos don't appear, so TikTok is a search engine, but when I say TikTok, this applies to YouTube, this applies to Instagram, this applies to Facebook as well, and so they're looking for these questions, and your videos should be answering those questions, giving value and optimized for things that we're going to discuss later. Now, let me show you something here. Depending on the session, it's not always the same, but sometimes different. But if you Google Asilo Eros Tados Unidos, which means Asylum Mistakes USA, sometimes you have an AI overview answering that question, but sometimes you have videos before that or

after that. In this case, it's after look at the videos. Oh, sorry, look at the videos here, for the ones that are on the background, and don't read it. Read it, I want to describe it. So, one video is a TikTok, another is an Instagram, another video is on Facebook, and another one's on YouTube. Sometimes it's the same video. You're right, but on four different platforms, so I filmed once and I posted the four, and more. Also, I don't know if you've seen this, because this is kind of new, and I talk to dozens of law firms every week, and they don't know this, maybe you guys do, but just in case, the top bottoms on Google says the results, then you have images, news, videos, we all know that, right? Shopping, and then short videos. This is a new thing. I don't know if you've seen it, maybe you did, but short videos, why? Because that's the game right now. Short form content video, that's why Google is putting this. And below these results, you start seeing the guys that are paying for the click, and they're also investing not millions but maybe or hundreds of 1000s of dollars on SEO through the years just to appear below my 29 second video answering the same question. So what do you think people will click first a video 29 seconds answering and being valuable no pitching or SAC attorneys llp whatever who sounds like they're going to sell me something, and I don't trust them, because unfortunately people don't trust us guys. So, if you're valuable on video, that's the game, and Google is answering this question for us. That's why I appear before the clicks, the links, so obviously I'm not saying you shouldn't do ads, I'm not saying you shouldn't do SEO. Obviously, responsible business owner, law firm owner, probably must explore all avenues, that's how it is. But if you're not doing organic video that is free, then what are you doing? What are you doing? And now also we started experimenting with ads after many years I would say since October of last

year and the people that are helping me with this are telling me that I'm paying a 71% less than my peers competing in the same market I think this is due to at least two reasons the first one is the warm leads that I have from that already know me from social media and already trust me, so by the time they see an ad, this is an extra paid marketing touch point that is in place. You know, the journey of a lead, depending on the area of practice. Nowadays, back in the day, a billboard could be enough, or appearing the radio could be enough. Nowadays, a lot of people, most people, I would say, need to see you many times before they buy. They go on social media, they read your Google reviews, they enter your beautiful website, they see the billboard, and eventually they say, "Okay, this is the lawyer I want. So I'm paying less because people already trust me through video on social media, and they feel like they know me, and in a way they do, because I go live and I show my personality there as well. The second reason is even the code leads, I think we have a higher conversion because I don't do ads like ads, I do ads like I do my organic video, in which meaning I give value in those ads, so for example, if an ad could be my face and asylum, click here and hire. Good luck if they don't know you. Another one could be a video saying, 'Do you want asylum? These are the three mistakes you should avoid, something like that, creating curiosity and stuff. We're going to discuss that later, and so you're giving at least some value in that ad, then they can click and watch more videos, and eventually convert the good news. Sorry if I'm trolling, but the good news is most lawyers aren't even doing video, they're not doing it, or they are doing it in the wrong way, but most law firms don't even probably have social media, so I think there's a massive opportunity for the people that are willing to jump into this, although I know that most lawyers don't even want

to film themselves. I get it. I was one of those, as I said. And also, the funny thing is, in 2020 my objection was, but that's for little kids dancing, and we exploded. I already have millions of followers in Spanish, and in 2022 John Franco, my business partner, said, Julio, you should do it in English as well, and I was like, Yeah, but I have an accent. Who's going to hire a lawyer that cannot even speak perfect English? As you can tell, I have an accent, and I make mistakes when I speak in English. I promise you, I'm much more intelligent in Spanish. But anyways, I had that little demon in my mind, and guess what, now out of the 15 million followers, 5 million are in English, and nobody ever said anything about my accent or not being great at English. Nobody ever said that they were caring about me giving value to them, and actually they saw me as an immigrant like them, so that was actually an edge, I would say, but whenever you have an objection in your mind to stop doing things, maybe that's only in your mind and it's not in the real world. So, and I think this applies to anything in life that you want to achieve, bottom line attention is on social media, at least a big chunk of it, so if you're. Not there, you don't exist for a large part of the market. You don't. You can have a successful law firm just with referrals or with word of mouth, that may take years to scale. If it even scales, you can do a lot of money with pay ads, for sure, for with SEO, the same. But social media is there, lawyers are not doing it, most of them, or they are not doing it correctly. So, now let's go to practical tips. Let's say hopefully out of this you get something, some value. That's my aspiration here. So, and these are mistakes that I made. Okay, when I created my firm, my last name is impossible. It's from the southern part of France, a little town is Oya Narte, it's southern French Basque. Okay, it's in IntelliJ. My business partner is Italian, it's

Gianfranco de Girolamo. So we had to come up with a name or initials or something, so we came up with DGO De Girolamo Janarte Legal with the logo, beautiful stuff. So I created my first what I call now the Institutional Instagram. The Institutional Instagram, and probably many of you have had, is the logo of your firm, the name of your firm, stock photos that everyone's using. In my case, a beautiful US flag or the green card, get your green card, DGO legal LLP. Spoiler about my my only followers, as you can imagine, were friends and family that support me and interested in US immigration law. They love Argentina, they come to the US to Miami for vacation, that's it. So zero hiring out of that until I thought, like, hey, maybe people connect with people more than brands or law firms, because guys, we are the most expensive lawyers in the planet, so people know we are expensive, right? So when they see the name of a law firm, they are like, what's going to happen next? You know, everyone hear horror stories about it, that's the truth. And so now I'm Julio Abogado de migration in every video, I'm Julio, the immigration attorney. I say that in every single video. I film every video as thinking that the person is watching me has no idea who I am, has no idea about the topic I'm about to discuss, and that's how we explode it on social media. But I talk to dozens of law firm owners every week, and when I ask for the social media accounts, I see my old institutional account, and I tell them, How many leads are you getting from this? Nothing. So, let me ask you a question here. Can you please raise your hand if you have a Facebook account for your law firm? Please raise your hand and keep it raised. Great. Do you also have an Instagram? If you do, keep it raised. Otherwise, put it down. Good. Do you also have a YouTube account? Keep it raised if you have Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. Okay, good. Do you also have a TikTok? Keep it raced if you have

the four accounts. Okay, a lot of you, I'm glad this is happening, but many of you put the hand down, and so if I'm asking quite to each kick, probably you don't have it, but I don't want to drive anyone crazy. So, the thing here is, why don't you have those other accounts if you already have the content? Why not just create one piece and post it in four platforms at the same time, at least four at the same time? And so, second mistake, pitching instead of teaching. In other words, no value at all. And think about this: when people use social media, we - everyone knows that the ad, the price we have to pay for using social media is watching ads because nothing's free in life, right? And so people tend to scroll past content that they sense is an ad. If you appear like an ad, people will raise their defense and will try to scroll past. Why? Well, you're competing with NFL videos, Lionel Messi, best restaurants in Paris, and Rolex watches. Good luck, sounding like a boring ad like a lawyer, if you do that. So, most lawyers do that. They start pitching, they say, "Hi, I'm Julio, the immigration lawyer from DGO Legal LLP. This is my phone number. Nobody knows who I am. Who do they care? What's in for them? I'm talking about what I care about myself, but not about them. And we always need to focus about the client, right? So, most lawyers pitch, they put the phone number on the video, you're killing trust before even starting, and this is a business of creating trust, that's what you need to create if you want clients, and so mistake number three, boring openings, this is a killer, guys, you have one second, maybe two, for what to stop the scroll, right? So, when you use for people that are not using social media or short form content, people scroll like crazy, boom, boom, and the algorithms are designed to give you dopamine and give you what you want, so they know a. Like soccer videos, because I'm from Argentina, a world champion, and then they know I like

this given type of music, this whatever, and so if your video appears and you're boring or looks like an ad, they're going to scroll past it, and when you see the metrics, the data, the retention is the percentage of the video that's been watched, and also the curves. Most videos die immediately, right? So, they do like this: you need to try to make it not that bad, so they, you can keep them until the end. We're going to talk more about that. Then, mistake number four already spoiled this one is posting just in one platform. If you're creating a video, just post it on four platforms at least, and then obviously optimize your platforms. What do I mean by that? Before I had my law firm's logo, now I have my face in my case as an immigration lawyer. The US flag before, because behind me, because that's aspirational to my ideal client, obviously. But then also, who do I help? Who am I? I'm immigration lawyer. Who do I serve? And an easy way to go and hire me. I see many lawyers, because you can master social media, but if you don't master your bio on social media, and you're making it difficult for people to hire and contact you, you're in trouble. I see many lawyers that, when I click in their link in bio, they have 20 links, they're driving people to other social media platforms. Why keep them in the funnel? Make it easy and simple, easier and simple for them. They want to hire you. Make it easy for them. The result of these mistakes, or other mistakes, is that lawyers get frustrated. We get frustrated because maybe you don't like to be on camera, and you, you have to do it because they told you to do it, and then you don't know what you're doing, you're putting some videos there, teaching, not giving value with a boring hook, stuff like that, and then you don't get the results, and then you feel, well, I was right, I was not made for social media, I'm an introverted, you know, because it's true, I'm more extroverted than some people, but I always put

the example of Gianfranco, my business partner. I met him at UCLA when we studied there. We were two nerds. We were sitting in the front row at the immigration law class, and we became friends because he's Italian, and he likes soccer, like me, immediately, but the guy was an introverted until he would speak. You think this guy is, I don't know, shy or whatever. He knew more than the professor, right? He was working with five judges writing the legal decisions, and when he quit the DOJ, they were crying all over the place. So he's a genius, but he's introverted. And when you turn on the camera, he speaks like this. Hi, I'm Jim Franco. It's like, come on, I was kicking below the table when we were live, so he could speak up. And so, a technique that we use that could be useful for you guys, if you're shy and you think you're not good in camera, is get a script, optimize it as much as you can, giving value, no pitch, and then film phrase after phrase until you nail the energy of the phrase. Let me give you an example. If I don't know what I'm going to say on social media, and you turn on the camera, I'll get nervous. I will have filler words while I'm speaking. My energy will decrease as I speak, and I make mistakes, and I will look out of the camera frame, etc. If you have a script, you can optimize it, make it easy for people to understand those words, because we speak in different, in a difficult, different, different language from the lay person. Remember that, and if they don't understand you, they will not bond, and so you can, you can say phrase after phrase with 10% 15% higher energy, catching your breath. And so, for example, if the script says, 'Do you want a green card? These are four ways to get it. I'm Julio, the immigration lawyer. Number one, number two, I say, 'Do you want a green card? until I nail the hook, especially the first second, right? If it's not perfect, I'll film it. Film it again. Do you want to green? No. Do you want to

know? Do you want a green card? Love it. Next one. Boom, boom. The editor puts everything together, and the end product is you speaking in higher energy, no filler words, no guessing, and to the point. But the key here is optimizing the script, and then filming in little phrases. If you are introverted, try this. John Franco did it, and now people are asking for photos on the street to John Franco, the introverted guy, right? He cannot believe it, and his wife is like, I cannot believe you're speaking like this on social media. That's the secret. So, what you should do instead. These are some of the rules that build what we are doing. You have one, two seconds to stop the hook. I would say there's one key element that every hook must have, and it's the following: create curiosity. If you're not creating. Curiosity, your video, I promise, will fail. You must create that second. You must trigger one of these two emotions. This is going to sound bad. The first one is fear, but in an unethical way. I'm going to explain what I mean, and the other one is aspiration or hope, so I can say, do you want a green card? These are the four mistakes you should avoid. If you want a green card, you don't want to make a mistake. I need to watch that. Also, I want a green card, so I'm creating curiosity. What are the four mistakes? Right, I'm creating fear of missing. I don't want to make the mistakes, and also it's aspiration. I want a green card, so this. I'm nailing the three elements in a phrase. This applies to any video you want to make, not only legal videos. Then second tip, we can - we already discussed this: give value, never pitch. At first, I'm going to confess, I wasn't the best immigration lawyer in the world. Also, I was working with John Franco, who is a genius, so I felt like, hey, I don't, I don't feel like I know a lot, and also I know a lot of great lawyers out there that they're, do you know, they're geniuses, and I felt like, who am I to go on

social media talking about these topics when I am not even one of the best lawyers or not even a top, whatever, but then I saw a video about some different stuff about YouTube, and this idea stood in my mind, and maybe it's helpful for one or two of you guys. This is the person that knows the most about immigration law in the world, or personal injury, or whatever. This is you, and this is the amount of knowledge, right? This is the best one. This is me, let's say, and this is the person that knows zero about it. This is the line of, let's say, knowledge. I was looking to the best lawyer instead of looking to the person that knows nothing, and this line between me and the person that knows nothing is valuable to the person that knows nothing. Who cares about the best lawyer in the world? Probably that person is not even on camera, and so that helped me to put myself out there and be more confident. And then I thought, well, maybe people won't like it. If you give value, people will like it. And so, at the beginning, this was my intuition was telling me, well, you're not the best, so don't pitch, at least give value and see people like, and it exploded. I was like, yeah, well, and then I understood that I was not pitching, I was teaching, or I was giving the value that I had, and people found it valuable, and it was in their own language, in the way they speak, so they can understand it. And so that's called value-based marketing. I know we work hard for our licenses. The bar exam in California is crazy insane, especially if English is not your first language. We work hard for our law school with our experience, and I understand that many lawyers want to add gatekeeping what they know. It makes sense, right? You work hard for it. Well, it doesn't on social media. Some lawyers are afraid that they, if they teach what they know, then who's going to hire me, right? They can use the videos and do it on their own, especially in immigration, that you don't

need a lawyer, it's not mandatory. In other areas of the law, maybe it's different, but that doesn't work that way. People cannot do, they understand it's so complex, and they say, "Oh, that's complex, I need a lawyer, right? Even if you give away everything you want, so one video, 5x distribution, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and also you may appear on Google if you know what you're doing, and your video is good. What's happening right now? A lot of Latin American newspapers are using my videos to create articles, and they embed my video. It's an amazing signal for Google that DR of these news outlets are to the roof. This is organic. This is the value, the power of branding, you know. Not to brag, guys, but thanks to this, I never hired a PR person. Probably I should, but this allowed us to go on to Harvard to talk about this stuff. I got into MIT to develop AI with engineers, all thanks to my social media. This is ridiculous. I don't even speak perfect English, and I'm from another country, you know. But also, one thing that is not being shown here is that what videos are food for AI chat bots directly, probably not now, but they're being transcripted, and if they're embedded in these new media outlets, you're creating authority. I'm not an expert in SEO, right, but I know that because they appear, you know why. Well, I always thought about optimizing everything I say on my video, putting subtitles and trying to use for the same term two different words, example green card. When I make a video, I say green card, and in somewhere else I say permanent residency, which is the same, right? In case someone googles that, or that I may appear, and I do that in my language, but also in what I write when I post the videos, and in the. Subtitles and in the hashtags. Hashtags are not very important, no good, crazy, but at least, so you will appear with the same video in five places, at least, and also eventually you may appear in the

LLMs, chatbots like Cloud. Google owns YouTube, and they own Gemini, right? Okay, are you ready for the YouTube formula for virality? I'm going to give it to you. Okay, two years ago I went to Dallas for a YouTube convention that they have every year. The organizer is mr. Beast, and another guy, for you living people are living under a rock. mr. Beast is the most followed person on YouTube, with over 400 million subscribers, only in his English channel, and they invited Todd Bupro, which is this guy who is the engineer responsible for discovery on on YouTube, meaning the algorithm guy. These guys' algorithms are deciding who's watching what, and this guy said that what YouTube wants, and I think that this applies to all platforms. Everyone knows that you should try to keep people watching until the end, right? You probably heard about it, and that's true, but that's not enough. They want people to enjoy what they watched. How do they know that infinite data points they do surveys sometimes randomly after the video? If they watch another video, if they liked, if they comment, what did they comment? If they subscribe or follow, think about it. If you're the YouTube CEO or Instagram, whatever you want people to stay in your platform, so if you have creators click baiting, meaning promising something, but they trick people into watching 30 minutes, and then they don't deliver the value proposition. What would be the experience of the viewer that's got tricked into watching 30 minutes and got nothing? They will say, I won't go on YouTube again, this is full of scammers that are click baiting, they don't deliver. I'll go to Instagram, so they want quality on every platform. So you should never use click bait because it's ethically wrong, because you're lying, but also will hurt you. So from a moral perspective and from a utilitarian perspective, you shouldn't do it. So try to create the elements of emotional elements to stop the scroll, promise

something of value for the people, and then deliver that value in simple words. Some techniques that I use on YouTube that is different from other platforms, if you want to know, is for example, I want to talk about green cards, and so I can make a generic family green card video, so a US citizen can petition these five family members, and at the end, at the end of the video, before and finishing the video, I tell, oh, by the way, if you want to petition your spouse and you want to know more, you can see this video, so what I'm doing here, they're watching one, and they may be watching two, so then you have one people watching two videos, that's more ad, but ads for you, you're creating more bond, and it's a great signal for the algorithm, because you to be saying, oh, apparently John liked what he watched, because he's watching two videos, and then at the end of the second video, I convince you to watch a third one, always within the same, obviously relevant topic. If I talk about asylum, and I want to convince you, watch a green card video, you're not going to watch it within the same. So I plan my videos, my long form videos on YouTube with this strategy in mind. And if you don't have a channel yet, you should have one, and you should start a channel with at least five videos, not with one. I see this mistake again and again and again. Why? If I find you and you only have one video, I already watch it. What should I follow you? Right, there's no extra value, but if I see more stuff, I say, okay, I'm going to follow this guy. That's a strategy. If you want to start on YouTube, guys, you just need your phone. The camera on your phone right now is better than the camera I used to film The Godfather 123, Scarface, etc. There's no excuses. Look at my face here. I cannot believe I'm showing this to an auditorium. My God, what did you do to me, Jay? Anyway, I'm going to tell you why. A few months ago, I got interviewed by CNN and Espanol, Spanish

CNN, and in my studio I cannot show you here, but I have these fancy lights that are creating this effect. I have a super expensive lens on my camera, everything's in place, looks great. I went live television using that. I posted that on my accounts later to create, you know, social proof authority. Blah, two people left a comment on Facebook saying this looks like AI. I was like, no, it took me a long time to create this, you know, image, so I reached. Out to these two guys, because if two people left a comment, probably there are 20 people thinking about it that didn't leave the comment, right? So I reach out and they say, well, it looks AI, because your background looks too perfect. It's like, what's going on here? Probably I should just grab my phone in my backyard again. So this phase is because I was moving from LA to Miami. I was living in an Airbnb until I got my apartment in Miami. I didn't sleep, I didn't shave, but there were some breaking news that I had to give in immigration. People were expecting that, or so I thought. That video was filmed with my MacBook camera, which is crap. I didn't have.. I had a microphone, because I traveled with a microphone. Yeah, I know, I'm crazy. That video got 19 point 3 million views. It's a 10 minute video. This single video on TikTok gave my firms millions of dollars. That single video with that white random wall behind me, this video was posted also on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, with millions of reviews across the board? Imagine 19 million people watching you for 10 minutes explaining complex law in a simple way. So, by the time they reached the firm, they couldn't - they, it was already sold. So, you just need your phone. There are no excuses, honestly. There's no. So to sum it up, using your firm's name and not putting your face, I, in my opinion, is a mistake. I made that mistake, and I see a lot of beautiful logos, gobbles, stock photos. We fight for you, a lot of people wearing suits, guys. No one

connects with that. Nobody does. If you want to do social media, show up with your face, your name, and be helpful. Do not pitch, teach, give value. Even if you feel well, immigration, you know the time, the total addressable market of immigration, meaning people interested in this topic is massive. That's true. Maybe you're doing personal injury in South Carolina, and that time is smaller. That's true, but you should have those videos in place for TikTok search, SEO, LLMs, YouTube search, because people at 2am when they cannot sleep because they are in pain, and they search for a law firm personal injury lawyer in their jurisdiction, your videos should be there waiting for them, giving them value when they need value the most. And it's true that the journey of a PI lead is shorter than a journey of an immigration lead. That's true, but why don't put the videos there to help them? And so, by the time they get to you, the power of that branding will buy you time, in case you're not fast enough with your intake, and you are the lawyer they want in other areas of the law. You also will step out of the commodity game. What's the commodity game when you're another lawyer competing on what, competing on price or other terms? So, by the time the elite talks to you, they already spoke with five other lawyers, and they're going to talk about with three other lawyers, and so they're comparing your terms, whatever they are. If you connect on social media, you will be the lawyer they trust, and you can charge more, and I charge more. And now this is going to sound really bad, guys, but I don't look for the clients, they look for me in the last year and a half. 200,000 people clicking the link in my bio and the sub button that says asylum. 200,000 people click there. These cases start at $10,000 Obviously, most of these people are disqualified for multiple reasons. They are outside the US, they are inside, but they don't, afraid of returning to the country. They

don't have the money, whatever. But that's how we scale in a year and a half. I obsess with the psychographics of my ideal client, meaning their psychology, demographics, everything. What keeps them at night? What are they looking for on social media? How is the late day looking like? And then I talk to those problems in a simple way they can understand without pitching, they watch a video, they watch a second video, a third one, and then it's like Netflix for them, for that person. So I did 1000s of consultations all my life. I don't do it anymore. I don't work as a lawyer anymore. I don't do legal work anymore for the last year and a half, because I'm a TikTok lawyer now, I do live streaming and videos, because that's more valuable for my firm than working for the case of Juan and Maria, than any competent immigration lawyer can do. But when I go live, I get a lot of leads, so let's do lives right. So boring openings, posting on just one platforms, you have one second, maybe two, hopefully attention spans are shrinking. Give value never pitch. Post on four platforms and use retention storytelling plus satisfaction at the end of the video, that will help you a lot. If you guys want to connect, we have this. Consulting, that's next level lawyer, and we help lawyers do what we are doing. You can scan this or visit our website if you want. And Maria Callas, famous opera singer, said people will only remember two things when you present or where they interact with you, how you enter the stage with ACDC, or how you leave the stage. So I want to leave you with that phrase that helped me a lot in tough times when I was not executing fast enough, which is done is better than perfect. If you're waiting for perfection, you're trying to hide your insecurity, so execute, put yourself out there, a lot of people will like you. I promise you. Thank you.

Stay there, don't go anywhere. I have to make one more note, because that's maybe the best one of all, and I like to make notes, as you guys know. Done is better than perfect.

Yeah,

and like Julio, if you saw my first videos, they were very cringy. And our first webinar, I think we maybe had three people, and now we've had a million YouTube views. But this, the importance is, get started and get it going. You said also said, give value, never pitch, publish on our publish on all four socials: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok shorts and verticals. You talked a little bit about that.

Yeah,

explain. You said it's becoming very important. Why is it? I understand, as a consumer,

yeah, so TikTok changed the game forever. And then Meta, meaning Facebook and Instagram, had to adapt the same as YouTube. They had to adapt to TikTok's revolution, which is short-form vertical content nonstop, crazy algorithm that knows what you like, so they're feeding your dopamine all the time. And so it's a video that is less, now it's less than three minutes. If you make a video less than three minutes, you can post it on these four platforms, and you will be in the deck of short form fast content. Disclaimer, or some warnings: short form is great for top of the funnel marketing, right? So, to create awareness, attention, that's great. Obviously, you don't connect a lot in 30 seconds, but you connect a bit, they get to know you, they may follow you, they may watch another one, and what's also really helpful for me, Jay, is doing also long form and live streaming, at least in immigration, because that's where you connect more. I can also show my personality a little more. They asked me about my soccer team, I don't know, they tell me they're from Colombia, and I was like, 'Oh, I've been to Medellin, but people ask you that, they want to know you more, and live streaming is great for that. And also, they would mention the live streaming during the consultations more than the short form. I always watch your live streams, Julio. It's like they connect more there. So, I would say you need to understand what you're doing with each piece of content. Do not expect things that are not tied to what you're doing, you know, short form awareness, followers, views, those could be what we call vanity metrics, followers, views, we want clients. Okay, this is good for social proof and old stuff, but then going longer in the content can create more depth and connection.

It's interesting, Jeff Hampton, who we had last year as our YouTube expert, he said same thing. He said short form for the attention and long form for the view time, which the algorithm really likes.

Yeah,

you know, speak to both those parts of that, the short form for attention, the long form. How long is long form, and how important is that data, that view time data?

Yeah, so long short form used to be less than 60 seconds across platforms, then a few platforms changed, the rest adapted is at up to three minutes. The typical question is, How long should a short form content be? And the answer, again and again and again, depends on many factors, your audience, but also if you can deliver the message without fluffing or without filler stuff, just deliver and nail the concept in whatever seconds you have to, and then try and test, put things out. I do analysis for one moment, it was around 40 something seconds for me, then I realized it was over a minute. That would depend. Long form content is not like up to from three minutes to whatever you want to do it. There's no limit, obviously. You need to deliver the value, the proposition, and then use storytelling to try to maximize your retention, meaning how much people are watching of that video. The longer the video, the more you are allowed to have lower retention, you know. In a five second video, they need to watch it five times in order to, for it to explode, long form video, they can watch 60% and that's fine, you know. So they will forgive you more the longer the video, the more forgiveness.

There's another story you told on my podcast. I thought it was great that you came up with some ebooks for the US Green Card lottery, because people who are trying to win the lottery. You obviously aren't ready to pay an attorney,

yeah,

but you were getting all these phone calls about the lottery and how to fill out the lottery, and so you created ebooks, and you were selling them overnight, and you made money in your sleep.

Absolutely, that was beautiful. The green card lottery is a program by US Congress, now it's suspended for now, but you can get a green card if you fill out a simple form, and you see it, it's like this is really simple, right. Well, yeah, if you know English, and I saw data that said that 40% of the people were disqualified because they made a mistake. I was like, how? Yeah, well, it's in English, man. So I created for the Spanish speaking community an online course, really cheap to guide them to do it, because I wasn't doing that as an attorney, it's a simple form, but maybe they want it, so we make a lot of money, but that was a problem afterwards, because why did I make, did we make a lot of money? Because there's a natural deadline by US Congress, that is, it's only one month, so they need to buy it before the deadline. Deadlines are great for great urgency, and it's not fabricated, it is the government, that was the first thing. Second, it had a transformation, meaning you do this and you may get a green card and change your life. I remember having a call with a 70 something year old Guatemalan grandmother who won the green card thanks to my course, and now she's living in Miami, having a great life, you know. So that transformed your life dramatically, and so low effort, high transformation urgency, and so when I saw that, I didn't know that those were the elements, and I created other courses that didn't work that well, but again, Why not? Well, it's making money while you sleep.