201: YouTube & Video Strategies for Law Firms with Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules, Dan Milikow of iShoot Direct, and Clifford Coleman of Coleman Multimedia

[00:00:00] I'm going to talk a little bit about why people don't do video. And it really comes down to one word, and that's confidence, right? At the end of the day, it's confidence that you know what you're doing, that you understand the basics of how to do a video, and confidence that you're going to come out looking good, right? That you're going to be, it's a good proxy for you as a litigator, that you're actually quick on your feet and that you sound good and that it's hard hitting.

[00:00:22] And so during this talk, we're going to try to, we're going to talk about how you overcome that confidence gap and sort of get to where you understand the basics enough that you feel comfortable doing it, and also how to overcome that internal critic that's always grading you and saying, you know, this isn't good enough and I've got to be better and people expect me to be better. Welcome to the Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms Podcast.

[00:00:51] 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 Ten Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz. Welcome to the Ten Golden Rules monthly webinar. And if you're listening to this on our podcast, I'd be remiss if I didn't say good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

[00:01:19] I listen to podcasts all times of the day, so I always think it's funny when people are like, hey, good morning, because sometimes it's night. This is the Ten Golden Rules webinar and podcast series. We do internet marketing for law firms and we have two amazing guests today, Justin Miller and Clifford Coleman. And we're going to learn all about YouTube and video strategies for law firms. So let me just share my screen.

[00:01:47] So welcome to today's live event, YouTube and video strategies for law firms. I'm Jay Berkowitz, the founder and author of Ten Golden Rules, the book, the podcast, the company. And today we're going to talk about really the hottest and most important element of marketing programs. It's often overlooked. And we're going to meet my friend, Julio Oyhanarte, who has over 3.2 billion. Yes, that's billion with a B views.

[00:02:16] And he built an eight figure law firm that started right at the start of COVID. And we're going to meet these two gentlemen. I mentioned Clifford and Dan. We're going to talk about how we shoot a lot of these videos and how you can do this in super easy manner that you can do in your office. We're going to reduce the hurdles. There's no reason not to do some video. And we're going to talk about some new AI.

[00:02:42] This incredible AI translated Javier Malay's entire presentation from Spanish to English using his accent. So we'll talk about AI and the importance of AI in music. And by the way, congratulations for being here because one of the things I've realized, I'll talk to five or ten different law firms every week. And about half the people I meet at conferences and seminars and they come to these kind of webinars. And half the people don't do any of this.

[00:03:11] Half the people have a law firm. They get referrals from their past customers. Maybe they've been in business for 20 years. But if you don't go to the conferences, if you don't put a little bit of time in to read and study a little bit about your craft, I generally find the folks who are here are three or four times ahead of the people who aren't. And so thank you for putting in the time. And congratulations because you're the ones who are way ahead of the other ones.

[00:03:35] Because if you don't do any of this stuff, I find those firms when I get an introduction or recommendation and they don't study at all. They're behind on some super basic things like they don't have a chat on their website. They're definitely not doing video. I talked to an attorney yesterday who's not doing anything with AI. Believe it or not, those folks are out there. So at 10 Golden Rules, we always tell the joke of the week. It's become part of our famous for our personality.

[00:04:01] The joke this week, what's a lawyer's favorite call to action? Smash that like button. Asterix. Liking this video does not constitute an attorney-client relationship. My mission today. Why video? Why is it so important? I'm going to explain to you why it's a game changer and it's been instrumental in our business and so many of our clients' business. I'm going to introduce you to the number two search engine on the internet.

[00:04:30] And a lot of you were probably thinking Google's number one and ChatGPT's number two. It's not. Are you going to meet number two today? Today, we're going to talk about basic, intermediate, and advanced tips. And then we're going to get into some AI strategies. And if I can, I'm going to give you just a quick introduction, a little bit about my background and why we do these things. So again, I'm Jay Berkowitz. I grew up in Winnipeg, Canada.

[00:04:59] And this was my workout when I was a kid in the winters. My job was to shovel the snow. And we used to get a snow drift right in front of our garage door that looked exactly like this. And it was like bigger than me sometimes. I had to do it with a manual shovel. People would say, do you do weights? No. I shoveled snow. But I got super lucky and I moved from cold Winnipeg to beautiful Boca Raton. And there's my beautiful wife, Bonnie, and our little guy, Barker.

[00:05:25] We have been for 23 years enjoying the sunshine in South Florida. Early in my career, I worked on the Winnipeg Jets hockey team. And one of my famous campaigns was we developed the whiteout where everybody wore white in the playoffs. And if you're watching basketball or hockey playoffs right now, all those fans wear the colors of their teams. And we created this and blew it up and became super famous back in the day. But my other big client was McDonald's restaurants.

[00:05:54] I got to sell some of the most delicious, high-fat food in the world. Happy Meals and Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets. And I went directly from promoting Big Macs to promoting diets. And I moved to Florida to work at a company called ediets.com. And we grew ediets to $60 million in revenue. And I was asked to speak at the Direct Marketing Association and tell our story.

[00:06:20] And so I wrote this book and this presentation called The 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing. And a bunch of people came up to me and said, hey, can you help us with our marketing? We hear Google is going to be a big deal. So back in 2003, 10 Golden Rules was formed. And I left ediets at the end of the year. And we've been doing this for the last 23 years. And this is my fifth book called Advanced Marketing for Law Furns. 10 Golden Rules is a marketing company.

[00:06:48] So if your leads are down a little bit or your web guys can't tell you, they don't give you the data. They don't, you don't know what's going on. We'd love to talk to you. And you can find us at 10goldenrules.com. And we do websites, SEO, social media and video, of course, AI, newsletters, stuff like that. Our YouTube channel has become super popular. And these videos have been viewed over a million times.

[00:07:12] So if you want to learn about other topics, we got great content on SEO for law firms, social media. We work with some amazing clients all across the country. Mostly a lot of personal injury, but other stuff. These guys are estate. We do some family law. And so without further ado, let's get into YouTube and video strategies for law firms. Because by the end of the year, over 82% of internet traffic will be video by the end of 2026.

[00:07:41] So it's not a matter of if it's going to be important. It's absolutely now. And it's absolutely super important. Video is where it's at. And why is it so important? Google is the number one website on the internet. Everybody knows that. Not everybody knows that YouTube is by far and away the number two website on the internet. Number three is actually Facebook in terms of daily visitors. But YouTube is four times the size of Facebook's traffic.

[00:08:09] So Google and YouTube combined, and Google owns YouTube, are by far and away the dominant presence on the internet. YouTube has become the number one streaming platform on the internet. And YouTube TV and just YouTube video viewerships has become dominant. 92% of consumers will watch a YouTube video every week. Five billion daily views. And it's become integral in the new SEO and the AI, the artificial intelligence SEO.

[00:08:38] And so I'll talk about how you can use YouTube videos and video to get ranked in the new AI. Not only on Google AI, but we'll also talk about chat GPT and cloud and perplexity. And lastly, it's great for retargeting. We had 65,000 people watch one of these videos in a week, a couple weeks ago, and we're averaging 35 or 45,000 a week. And we have the opportunity to then retarget to those people.

[00:09:07] So if you all have ever watched any of my videos and seen my ads, that's a type of advertising called retargeting. And you can all do that. When you get people to watch your videos, then you have the ability to show them additional videos, additional tips, make additional content available through the Google retargeting program. And you can show those people your ads. So the power of videos is like when you get them to watch your videos, then you can re-engage with those folks.

[00:09:36] So there's basically three kinds of videos. I like to simplify things down. And the three kinds of videos in my mind that we do and we do for our clients and ourselves. The first one is SEO videos. And I'll explain what those are. The second is long form where you're going to engage the audience and get that long viewership. On average, people watch nine and a half minutes of our videos.

[00:09:58] So it's awesome that these webinar format videos, some folks who are watching right now in the future on the recording are going to watch 45 minutes of the video. If you think this is valuable and you're going to learn a lot and you're going to wait and learn from Dan and Clifford, those people watch 45 or 60 minutes. And then some people are going to stay and leave. They've already gone in 30 seconds. But if you average a long viewership, the algorithm loves that. And it's really beneficial.

[00:10:26] And then, of course, the shorts have become mission critical. And a lot of times, if I just have three minutes and I'm waiting for something to download or something, I'll flip through a few shorts. Or if I'm waiting in line at the bank, I'll watch some short videos. YouTube has become huge in terms of traffic. But the same philosophy when I talk about how to develop these shorts, which we'll do in a minute, is the same strategy you're going to use on Instagram shorts, Facebook shorts, TikTok.

[00:10:55] And typically, it's this vertical format, the shorts like you turn your camera right side. You all know what I'm talking about. So what are some of the building blocks, first of all? So the first thing is you want to develop your channel strategy and your branding strategy. Have a great visual identity for the channel. And one thing I talk about in branding, maybe you've heard, if you've seen these videos, you've heard me talk about this before. One of the most important things you want to do for your law firm or your business, if you're not a law firm, is figure out who you are and what you stand for.

[00:11:25] Because number one defense we have against Morgan & Morgan or the biggest competitors in your marketplace is to get your brand figured out and have a consistent messaging through everything you do. That your website, your Facebook, your YouTube channel, obviously, even your signatures in your emails, all of your social media and the community events you participate in.

[00:11:52] If you are consistent with your brand message, it's going to be much more effective. Each little communication is going to build the equity of your brand. So the first thing is figure out your brand, figure out your visual identity, and then you're going to execute that on your YouTube and your other social media channels. The next thing that's become incredibly important is compelling hooks. You've got to start your video out with a good start. And we had a couple quick hitters right at the start of this video.

[00:12:21] So you need compelling hooks that are going to engage people right at the start of your video. We'll talk a little bit about how to do that. And then the other new things become super important is having great thumbnails. So you want to have a great eye-catching visual at the very front of your video. They call it a thumbnail that's going to catch people's attention. You want to have interesting visual settings. Here's my friend, Phil Snyder, and he's actually shooting in his home. And it made for a very compelling background.

[00:12:50] And then you're going to edit images and B-roll into the video. So a lot of times now we speak a video. You can make it look like you're walking or you can do it in your office. Those work really well. And then you can edit in some images. Like here, we edited in chiropractor talking about personal injury. And it's super important to include prompts or include the text that is also valuable for people.

[00:13:17] So the first type of video I'm going to talk about, remember we're going to talk about three SEO videos, long form and short form. And the first one is SEO videos. Now, the reason why this has become so important is because SEO, search engine optimization, has changed. And the reason is because the way we search has changed. And Google basically got better at answering search queries. And what I mean by that is we now can ask a question.

[00:13:45] What should I do if I was in a car accident and the insurance company doesn't want to help me out with my car repairs? People now ask very long questions. And Google is very good at answering those questions. If you think back, it's pretty long now. But if you think back five years ago, if you didn't put in car accident lawyer near me or best car accident lawyer near me, if you just put in lawyer, you would get people from all over the country.

[00:14:13] Or if you just put in personal injury lawyer, you would get videos and companies and lead gen companies. So we had to be very specific with our type of search. But now we can just ask a question. And so we use Siri and Alexa and Google Voice and all kinds of voice-operated queries. Or even when we type in a query, we ask a question.

[00:14:36] So SEO videos, in our parlance of 10 Golden Rules, is we're helping Google answer questions. And if you help Google answer the questions, you can come up in the search results. So this is an example of, is it worth suing after a car accident? And our client is the number one SEO result for that query. And Google's also added PAA, which we call it in the industry, people also ask.

[00:15:03] And they're showing these other questions, similar questions that people ask on the same topic. And so these are great questions to answer in your SEO or your SEO videos. Some other ideas for questions to answer. Look, what are the questions you get asked all the time when your clients first call you up? What are they asking you? What are they asking intake? Here's Google's suggest. Do I need a lawyer if I was rear-ended? If I got rear-ended? If I was rear-ended?

[00:15:32] Do I need a lawyer if I rear-ended someone? Right? So those are all great questions that you're going to ask and answer. And we'll talk about how we do that in a minute. And then you're targeting opportunity keywords. So you can basically pick a keyword that maybe you're ranking for on page two of Google or page three of Google, a keyword phrase. And then you can turn that into a question and do a video about that and then create a blog on your website. And we're going to talk about how to do all this in a minute.

[00:16:01] But essentially what you're doing is you're doing SEO optimization for questions and answers. So essentially what you're going to do is you're going to answer questions people are asking before they hire a lawyer. And you're going to include the question in the video, in the title, and the keywords in the description, and come up with a captivating graphic or thumbnail that people are going to click on. So for example, what steps should I take following an accident on someone else's property?

[00:16:30] And then you're going to weave that into the video. So you're actually going to say the words. So a lot of times people come into our office and they're involved in an accident on someone else's property. And they ask us, what steps should I take following an accident on someone else's property? And so literally you get the exact words of the question into the video. Now Google reads that video, they transcribe it, and you can actually get a transcription. If you click the more button.

[00:17:00] On any YouTube video. You can get the full transcription on YouTube. And I use those a lot actually, because they've already transcribed it for me. But the point here is that Google has actually downloaded what you said in your video, the words, into a transcription. So the words become part of the SEO algorithm. So now we're doing SEO videos. We're answering questions, but we're also asking the question.

[00:17:26] So we've got the question itself in the answer in the video recorded, transcribed by Google. And we're SEO optimizing for questions. And that's kind of like the new SEO.

[00:18:05] So here's an example. So that's just a great example of how you can do these videos.

[00:18:36] Brian's sitting in his office, in his boardroom. We cleaned it up a little bit. We can do that before the shoots. And we'll talk about how we shoot these videos. And it's just a simple one camera shoot, one mic, the little bit of editing where we've got the attorney's name and the call to action phone number there as well. Another way you can do it is with a little bit more personality. And this is my buddy, Darren Stewart and his partner, Nick. And they do these in their boardroom.

[00:19:02] And again, we bring in a videographer for this execution, but we'll talk about how Dan does it with an iPad or an iPhone. And here's another example of how easy this is to do. Darren Stewart with Stewart and Stewart Attorneys with us here today. Nick Wagner is going to talk with us about a couple of different things. We often get client calls about different things, and we love to share them with you and our experiences with talking to clients.

[00:19:27] Just about every call we get has a component of this, Nick, and I thought it would be important to address it. And that is no matter what kind of case it is, no matter how the injury occurred, sometime during that initial conversation with the client, the topic of talking to the insurance adjuster comes up and they'll say, they've been calling me and I haven't gotten back with them yet. What should I do? Should I talk to the insurance company here? What do you share with the clients? Boy, where to start on that? I'd say this. So there's a quick example.

[00:19:56] Obviously, you can see these on YouTube, on the Stewart and Stewart site or the Brian Garrett site. And the execution is relatively simple. We've asked the guys to get the keyword phrase, to get the question into the words at the start of the video. And Google is going to transcribe that. And we're going to get that right into the SEO. The purpose of this is multifold, right? We've got a ton of views on the videos.

[00:20:25] We've optimized for a question and an answer on the number two search engine in the world. But we're also going to incorporate that video onto the website. I'll talk about that in a minute. And the new AI or the new AI SEO is all about questions. Like when we're asking questions of Google now and ChatGPT and Perplexity and Claude and Grok, we're basically, it's a search query.

[00:20:53] We're asking questions to something we don't know the answer to. So next up, I'm going to talk about the AI portion of. And here's how it shows itself on Google AI overviews. And here's the websites and the videos, if you do videos, the websites that Google use to compile the answer. So that's why we're doing the question and answer format. Because if your website is one of the websites Google uses to compile this answer,

[00:21:22] so Google doesn't make up these answers on their own. Google picks the top five or 10 websites that helps them answer this question. And then they use the AI to schmooch it together. That's a technical term, by the way, schmooch. They schmooch it together to answer the question. So the websites they use in the answers, by the way, these little links also link out to your websites. The websites they use to compile this answer are over here on the right-hand side. Here's our client, my friend Jeff McDonald.

[00:21:51] And he's ranking in the SEO. Typically, the front page SEO results are also going to be part of the Google AI results that Google used to compile the answer. And they're also going to link out to your website. So this is the first AI SEO opportunity where when your website shows up, you've got an opportunity to get links to your website if people want more information. Now, ChatGPT is also doing the same thing.

[00:22:21] This is the first one I ever saw with a link out to a lawyer's website, my buddy Spencer Ehrenfeld. And basically, Google's linking to Forbes and Super Lawyers and Avvo, other lawyer sites, to answer the question, who's the best car accident attorney in Miami? Now, originally, ChatGPT wasn't showing any links. And so we were all worried in the marketing community, like, are we going to lose all these links that drive all this SEO traffic?

[00:22:48] But ChatGPT ran into trademark and copyright issues. And so they started showing the content they used to compile the results to. And they give us links from ChatGPT as well. But as I mentioned before, Google and YouTube are the big dog. 19.7 billion searches a day. Now, ChatGPT has become very important. They've become the number five website in terms of daily traffic, 1.1 billion.

[00:23:14] But if you look at that, that's only 5% of the volume of Google and Google AIOs. So in terms of what we're designing for, we're designing for Google. And we're taking the ChatGPT. For example, now, this is the first data point we have on AI results. And Morgan & Morgan, obviously, the biggest personal injury firm, they have about 1,000 AI results and 354 ChatGPTs. One of our friends, Wilhite Law Firm in Denver does great.

[00:23:44] 347 AI results cited and 11 ChatGPTs. So if you want to know your data, we can show you how many AIs you're ranking for. Just reach out to us at 10 Golden Rules. But the question everyone asks, of course, is, okay, how do I get more of these? How do I get more listings in the AI overviews? And we're calling it AEO in the industry, Answer Engine Optimization. And that's what I've been talking about for the last few minutes. We answer questions in video. So here's how we roll it out.

[00:24:13] And here's Jeff McDonald again. And Jeff's answering a question, what happens if I get hit by an Uber or Lyft? And literally the title of the YouTube video is intentional for search engine optimization. We have the question that Jeff's answering as the title of the YouTube video. We also have it in the description. We also have it in the hashtags and whatnot. We're search engine optimizing for a question, right? Like the old SEO mindset was keywords.

[00:24:43] Now it's questions, but we're incorporating a keyword phrase in the question. Then additionally, we get the SEO value by putting this video on YouTube. Very important for the Google algorithm. We saw that YouTube is like four times the size of the number three website. And it's the second biggest search engine in the world. Way, way bigger than ChatGPT. So we want to do our video SEO and our question and answer SEO.

[00:25:10] Then we're also going to take the value of producing that video and put it on the website. And we're going to create a blog or practice area page or a press release or FAQ, frequently asked questions. And we're going to put a video incorporated into the text on the page because a text page is not as good as a video page with text. And the text explains what's in the video. So we've got double the SEO power by including videos on the website. And that's another important way we're using video.

[00:25:40] Like today, we're talking about the power of YouTube and video, right? So number one, we're hitting YouTube for SEO. Number two, we're adding the SEO power and juice in the algorithm of having YouTube video. Also incorporated on the website. And then we're also going to use those videos in social media. We're going to use them in the newsletter because most of the reason people don't put out newsletters is they don't have content. And so now we've got great content that answers the questions of all your prospects and referral partners.

[00:26:07] So those videos become super valuable in the newsletter. So all of the Google algorithms are connected. Google SEO, YouTube SEO, and Google Maps SEO. And so you want to update your Google Maps, your Google business profile, it's called now GBP. You want to update that every week as well. So typically what we do is we shoot a dozen videos. We use one a week for three months, and we only have to tie the lawyer up for an hour and a half to record those videos. We do a dozen videos.

[00:26:36] And then one a week goes on YouTube, on the website, in all the socials, the monthly newsletter, and weekly updates on the Google Maps as well. The second piece of that, answering questions, and now we're getting a little bit out of video, but just quickly to summarize how you come up in the AI answers is you answer questions. And there's two predominant answer sites on the internet after Google and YouTube, and that's Reddit and Quora.

[00:27:05] And these are coming up all the time in the SEO results, in the AI results. And so if we're reverse engineering, how do we become an expert in answering questions? We answer questions in Reddit. And the way Reddit works, people ask questions, people answer questions, and people in the community voted up and down. So we see this one got 2,700 upvotes as the best answer to this question.

[00:27:34] And here's a new question that was asked. It's only got eight answers so far. But do I need to get an attorney in an accident? So those are great opportunities for you to become an expert and answer questions. And the second piece of that is becoming an authority. And we see now in the search, like how do I choose a car accident attorney? Google's actually showing videos where people have answered those questions. So again, we're going to create those videos. We're going to answer questions proactively. And we're going to build up over time.

[00:28:04] As I mentioned, we've had over a million videos on 10 golden rules. Other ways you become an expert is you answer questions in your local bar association. Things like super lawyers. If you can get on Wikipedia or Grokipedia or any of the pedias. And local media is really good. Here's my buddy, Ben Glass, cited in a local media article. So just to sum up that section, why do we do question and answer videos, right?

[00:28:34] Number one is we're pre-positioning for AI SEO. We're answering questions on video, on YouTube. We're adding it to the website. Then we're going to use those videos on socials, on maps, in things like the newsletter. But we're doing SEO or AEO, answer engine optimization, by literally putting the question as the title of the video, answering the question, speaking the question in the words on the video.

[00:29:01] And then the second piece or the second biggest opportunity is shorts. And here's my buddies, Julio and his partner. And they, if you want to go on our YouTube channel, you can listen to a one hour interview with these guys and they talked all about their strategy. But I told you about this in the start. These guys started an immigration law firm, two immigrants themselves, right at the start of COVID. And if you can imagine, there was not a lot of chance for these guys to succeed.

[00:29:32] Imagine starting any business right at the start of COVID, nevermind a law firm that typically people have to come and visit you at the law firm. And originally Julio told the story. He was trying to do some social media. And he told actually a friend or a consultant who told them to do these TikTok videos. He said, I'm not going to dance. I'm not going to do videos. And the person said, no, just help people out, answer questions. And they started trying that.

[00:30:00] And he said his first video was terrible. It was cringeworthy. But they started speaking directly to immigrants and talking about their emotions and their aspirations. And as I mentioned, they have 3.2 billion views now across all their channels. Here's 6.2 million followers on their TikTok. 41 million likes on their videos. 20 million views. 24 million views. 19 more views. So how do they do it? What did they talk about?

[00:30:28] Number one, their best videos tapped into the hope and fear and freedom and family and opportunity of immigrants. Because they're immigration attorneys, obviously. It's not legal theory. They show the American flag. They talk about green cards. They create conversation-style videos instead of lectures. And they do a lot of edutainment as well. Education, entertainment. And where they actually act out situations. So the one partner will play a customs officer or border patrol.

[00:30:57] And the other partner will be the immigrant. So they do border interviews and passport control and work permit questions and asylum conversations. And they do separate videos. They do viral-style videos. And then they do question-and-answer-style videos. So the funny and viral immigration skits, like where the two partners are playing the two roles and they're actually shooting it at an airport or whatever, those explode because they're acted out and they're real immigration situations.

[00:31:27] And they get the sort of massive followers. But then the deeper question-and-answer educational videos about asylum visas, green cards, are the ones that build more viewers and build trust because they get the longer viewership. And those are the ones that actually get the phone calls when someone's ready to take action on a green card application or the green card lottery or whatever type of video they're doing.

[00:31:52] So basically the long and the short of it, these guys are using short videos. They're using humor. They're using edutainment, education, and built an eight-figure law firm off the back of these videos. Some of the other things you need, obviously, you need the great hooks. And these guys talked about the importance of capturing people's attention right away. You're going to use captions, fast edits. And then when we do these shorts for our clients, here's Brian Garrett again.

[00:32:22] This one's a reaction video. And see, this one already has 232,000 views. I think it's way more than that now. But essentially this is a car accident, a video of a car accident where a state trooper actually nudged the car. She had her flashers on and she was going to wait to pull off the highway in an accident. He actually wanted her to pull over to the side. She didn't understand that, didn't want to do that. He nudged her car, spun her, actually flipped the car. The woman was pregnant.

[00:32:51] So Brian goes through this video, explains it. And these reaction videos are very effective. Ballisticles work really well. Here's three mistakes you can make when you get pulled over. Or here's the top three things you need to know about a conciliatory divorce or whatever practice you are hearing. Other things that we do are trending things. There was, for a while, there was like, of course I'm a marketer. Of course I'm a lawyer.

[00:33:16] And we had the attorneys shoot themselves at the courtroom, themselves in their office, themselves at the school where their ads are on the side of the fence at the school. And then, of course, self-improvement tips, things valuable and helpful work really well on these shorts. And then the next piece is what we call long form. So 10 Golden Rules is a great example of that. As I mentioned, we originally didn't have any short videos.

[00:33:42] All we did is we posted these monthly webinars on our channel. And that's how we got up to a million views. And then what we started doing was editing shorts. So you might be watching me talking for 60 seconds. This was edited out of a 60-minute or longer long form video. So we take little clips that we'll edit out of this video. And we'll take some clips from Dan, some clips from Clifford.

[00:34:07] And then we'll turn those into social media videos, both the horizontal format and the vertical format. But essentially, the long form videos, the recommendation is that you don't boost these and you build great content. And that's what we did for a long time. We just did our monthly webinars. We talked about SEO for law firm, video for law firm. Next month was social media for law firms. Next month was EOS for law firms. Next month, we had a panel talking about technology.

[00:34:35] If you're watching this, you know we pulled together great experts and great topics relevant to law firm business and marketing. We got a great audience here today. So we curate longer topics. Of course, we start with the hooks. And you can have scripts and tease what's coming and tell stories. Hopefully, I'm successful today in showing some examples and some stories. My friend Jeff Hampton, who he does criminal and he has an Airbnb law firm, been very successful.

[00:35:04] He'll use the next video feature. He's actually saying like how land trust could save you a million in the Airbnb business. And so it's what's called an end card feature. You can categorize by playlists. So you can get pretty sophisticated in how you're doing these things. Some of the advanced tips for video. So we're going to use tools like Opus Clip or CapCut or Descript to generate those two to three shorts or reels from each long form video.

[00:35:33] And then you can look at the metrics. So in the back end of YouTube, you can see your views, your watch time, your retention, your engagement, and you get all this data. You want to keep your titles short and your descriptions long. So a nice short title, clear and concise and eye-catching, and then a long description with lots of keywords and calls to action right on the top. If you are looking to immigrate to the United States, click here to get our ebook on the U.S. green cards.

[00:36:03] Record videos from the people also ask section. So I talked about that. Google gives you other questions that people are asking on the topic. And use the exact words in the title and in the first five seconds of the video. It works really well. So to sum up my section, YouTube is the number two website in the world. It's the number one streaming platform now where people are watching billions and billions of videos every single day.

[00:36:32] So you have tremendous opportunity to build your business on YouTube. The other thing that I noticed is really successful about YouTube, I'd say they could talk their algorithm. So TikTok was the first social media site that if you liked watching a bunch of stuff on cooking, and you watched two or three cooking videos start to finish, or if you watched it again and took notes on the recipe, then when you're on TikTok, you're going to see lots and lots of cooking videos. And YouTube's done the same thing now.

[00:37:00] So when I'm watching YouTube, I'll see stuff about hockey, stuff about marketing, stuff about law firms, stuff about the Winnipeg Jets, a band I like. I'll see five or six videos from that band or from that concert. So YouTube has become not only embedded in that SEO algorithm we talked about with Google, but it's also the number one streaming platform on the Internet. There's three types of videos I talked about.

[00:37:28] The first is the SEO and AI approach, where you're going to answer questions, and you're literally going to put the question as the title of the video on YouTube, and then use that, cascade that to your blog, to your website, and to your social media. The shorts, you want great hooks and thumbnails. And then the long-form videos, you want to start putting out these great long-form videos. Be patient, be helpful, but it works great over time. My two guests are going to join me shortly.

[00:37:58] First up is going to be Dan, who talks about how you can shoot these in your office on your iPad. And then Clifford's going to talk about how we shoot in your office. Without further ado, introduce my friend Dan. Come on on. There we go. Just like we scripted it, right? So Dan, I think you have a little bit of an intro in your section, but I forget who introduced us, but Dan, we've been working together for a couple of years now,

[00:38:26] and they have a strategy where they send out an iPad. He's a full-time production director, and he directs you on how to do these videos. And then our team will be there to make sure that we're using the questions and the SEO keywords. And we're getting great videos without sending a videographer to the office. And then we're going to meet Clifford in a minute, who's actually a videographer, one of many across the country, but he's done a great job here for us in South Florida.

[00:38:56] So Jay did a great job of covering why you should do video. And I think everybody kind of understands that. I'm going to talk a little bit about why people don't do video. And it really comes down to one word, and that's confidence, right? At the end of the day, it's confidence that you know what you're doing, that you understand the basics of how to do a video, and confidence that you're going to come out looking good, right? That you're going to be, it's a good proxy for you as a litigator,

[00:39:26] that you're actually quick on your feet, and that you sound good, and that it's hard-hitting. And so during this talk, we're going to try to, we're going to talk about how you overcome that confidence gap, and sort of get to where you understand the basics enough that you feel comfortable doing it, and also how to overcome that internal critic that's always grading you, and saying, this isn't good enough, and I've got to be better, a little bit about me first.

[00:39:54] I've been doing this for a really long time. So I started with video in 2002. I was at a company called Gartner, which is a huge technology advisory company with lots and lots of analysts, and the one thing that they have in common with attorneys is that it's subject matter experts who are selected based on their authority, right? And I've been working with experts and filming experts and authorities for a very long time. I started the team.

[00:40:24] I grew into a pretty sizable internal agency while I was there, and there was this sort of big, what I would call an inflection point, around 2007, 2008, when everybody kind of had an iPhone, and people started to ask us as the production team, why do I need to fly out to Stanford, Connecticut to come to your studio or meet you at this event where you have a shoot room? I've got an iPhone.

[00:40:53] I'll just shoot a selfie. And the first couple of times, yeah, you don't understand, whatever, but you have to kind of get with the program when you're working in a corporation and everybody's asking for the same thing. And so we really started to dig into that, and we understood that there were some really challenging workflow issues there. You ask people to film something. It doesn't come back exactly the way that you want it. So you have to ask them to do it again. How much direction do you give them? Do you overwhelm them? How little?

[00:41:22] All these challenges, I really started to think that something has fundamentally changed here in the way that we're doing video. It's consumerizing. It's democratizing. There's an expectation that people can just do this stuff on their own, and they may have been a little ahead of the game in 2007, 2008, but directionally, that was right. And they say when you're in a job for 10 or 15 years and you see an inflection point, that's when you start a business.

[00:41:50] And so I don't know if it's good advice, but I took it. And so I started, I shoot direct in 2018. And the first sort of innovation was being able to look through somebody's phone or iPad while recording them locally. So it's not recording a stream. It's that basically I would interview Jay or something like that. And he's on his phone and I hit the record button, records a nice local file to his phone, and then offloads it to me,

[00:42:20] the full quality file at the speed that the internet allows. Started, I shoot direct. And as Jay said, it's an all remote production company. So we don't always send iPads like we do with Jay's clients. Sometimes we film with people's phones. And a lot of that has to do with the importance of the shoot and the length of the shoot. And so if it's a long, important shoot like Jay's clients, then yes, we're going to send it on an iPad. But if it's just a short, quick soundbite where we're going to get 15 other ones,

[00:42:49] we'll shoot with your phone. All right. Anyway, moving on. So I talked about this kind of inflection point. And so I want to dig into a little bit of what's changed. And hopefully some of this will resonate with you guys. The first thing is that 10 years ago, when you were filming something pre-COVID, you would never think to do this stuff in your own office, just with your own phone. In general, aside from the thought leader analysts that came to us at Gartner,

[00:43:19] people are more comfortable with the crew. A crew is more than just gear and expertise. It's a level of support and confidence. Like these guys know what they're doing. They're going to get the best out of you. Right? And so that was how you did things. Today, all you really need for confidence is another smart pair of eyes. Because you're hiring a crew back in the day and spending all this money and bringing people somewhere and lights and backdrops and all that stuff,

[00:43:48] it became very high stakes. Right? So everything had to go perfectly. So a ton of planning goes into it, a ton of thinking about it. You can't reschedule it. It's very rigid and high pressure. Today, okay. If things don't go, even in our world, where we're still a production company, but if things don't go perfectly, we can always reshoot it tomorrow. It's not the end of the world. And that's a benefit that I'm going to touch on later that actually is pretty significant.

[00:44:18] So again, just on the gear, you guys all are familiar. The studio cameras, the big ones on the beautiful tripods and the teleprompter rigs and the three-point lighting and the soft lights and the backdrops and all that stuff. Today, we're really working with smartphones or iPads and some software and some kind of consumer level gear. You guys have all seen ring lights. Those have also evolved. Mics.

[00:44:47] It's all consumer level at this point. And then a big point that I wanted to dig in on, that high stakes thing, it's like everything must go perfectly at the time, but if it doesn't, it's very hard to remediate because you only see the clips in a professional shoot a week or two after it's already done. Even the people shooting aren't watching the tape. They're not watching the recording, they're watching the live feed.

[00:45:17] And so when we do stuff in more of this consumer model or when we film things remotely with iShootDirect, we're seeing the clips in real time. And so we can respond to things that we observe in them. We could do treatments on them, see how they're, if the content is what's expected, if the delivery is, and then retake the shoot before notice the problem before we have no way to remediate it. So that turns out to be a huge benefit to this sort of workflow that I think people really appreciate. So let's get into setup

[00:45:46] a little bit. Now, all of these things are a little bit interdependent, right? The backdrop, lighting, but you got to start somewhere. And so we'll start with the backdrop. And so what is the backdrop that is probably best for most attorneys? The gold standard is something like this. It's an office with the books. You saw the boardroom that Jay showed earlier. It's very intentional, neat, professional. It looks great. Now, if you don't have an office with the space

[00:46:16] to actually do this or it's cluttered or messy or you're sharing it with two other people, then you can step down to a conference room. So again, it's controlled. It's predictable. It's a little bit bare, but it'll work. The next step down from there, which is still passable, is just a blank backdrop. Now, everybody's got one of those. But the problem with that is that they're a little hard to light. You can see the light bouncing off and darkening our stand-in's face here.

[00:46:46] And also, it's just a little bare and it feels budget. So it's not great. And then, for the advanced players, green screen. I don't recommend this for most people that are just getting into it because there's all these consumer kits that get sold on Amazon or even at B&H. In reality, they're hard to light. They're hard to store. They're usually not big enough to do the job. There's these really funny ones where they're like attached to the chair

[00:47:15] and stuff like that. And you can sometimes make that stuff work. It's rolling the dice. Usually, it's not that great. With the green screen, the light behind the participant, the talent, needs to be really even. It needs to be like with no dark spots and no wrinkles. And you almost have to put lights, not almost, you do. You have to put lights behind the talent that shine on the green screen so that it has that kind of uniform green look. So,

[00:47:44] not super recommended unless you're way into the hobbyist level of video. All right. One lighting tip. This is the one lighting tip that is the most important of all. The lights in front of you, it points at your face, never behind you. Watch out for windows behind you. Watch out for lights that are shining at the camera behind you. 80% of the time, you're going to be okay if you just have a light in front of you. Now, let's go over some of the cases where you might want to tweak a little bit more. So,

[00:48:14] uneven lighting, right? So, typically, it's kind of a two-faced look like that because somebody's got a window maybe right over here and it's darker over there and so you compensate that by adding the fill on the dark side and the fill can be almost anywhere but if you've got two or three LEDs, you can usually, you can usually achieve the fill. Hotspots is another one. Now, if your camera fails to naturally adjust to a shot like this, it just means that there's just tons and tons of light

[00:48:44] hitting your face and so it means you just got to turn down the light or maybe bounce it off a wall. That's a great strategy. It softens it immediately. You can see I've got a light on here. This is what it looks like when it's on me and look at what it looks like when I bounce it off the wall. It's just a lot easier. And then next, another one that that we commonly see is the sort of the seance look or the basement office look where somebody's well lit because there's a window in front of them

[00:49:12] but since there's no light behind them looks like a cave and the way to remediate that is to have maybe some lamps in the background that aren't aimed directly at the camera or blowing out or too in your face where it's like distracting you or another technique that's really simple is there's $25 spotlights on Amazon these little cups that you can put on the floor and you aim those at the bookshelves or the wall and they work great. It's like a it adds a design element

[00:49:42] to it. All right. A couple of other things to be mindful of when you're facing a window people love natural light and so one of the reasons why natural light is so popular is because it lights you evenly from every side but when you're inside of a room natural light can be a little bit harder to work with because you have these clouds that keep changing the level of light and then the lines interact with the light and they sometimes put these patterns on your shirt or whatever and they can become very distracting

[00:50:11] and so you have to be aware of that and mindful and either really carefully shade shade the the window so that you don't get that stuff or shoot somewhere where those dots aren't going to be. Another one is the halo on the top of the head you guys have all seen that especially with bald guys like me there's just a little shine there that's from overhead house lights typically and if you could turn those off great if you can't it's not the worst sin

[00:50:41] in video it's usually okay glasses are a point of contention people really feel uncomfortable sometimes without their glasses if you're one of those people we definitely recommend contacts or trying to do it without glasses but if you absolutely must film with glasses in a studio they use what's called a polarizing filter and there's consumer models of that available they're not perfect but they work it's just basically a filter that you like a lens looks like a lens that you put

[00:51:10] in front of your lens all right so showing up you want to show up before you eat not after you eat it's a little counterintuitive because you think I want to be comfortable right I'll get something to eat it'll relax me but the thing is it's like it also makes you a little bit slower you get a little food and saliva and stuff and it generally is just not a best practice do it before you eat always recommend doing this stuff in the morning right after you get up

[00:51:40] or the first engagement of the day that's when you're going to be at your best if you're tired it shows you get frustrated easily bring stuff with you to the shoot that you're going to need so you won't have to get up and demike and change positions the glass of water always comb have your devices around chargers keep everything on silent and then I think that there's less of an issue now with what you wear than there was a few years ago

[00:52:11] tight patterns especially were something that we generally discourage because they have a way of doing this like marée pattern where it's you move and the pattern seems to stay still like on those old cartoons that's happening a lot less I haven't seen that in a long time even on iPhone shoots but it can happen and so the recommendation the best practice is go with solid colors business casual maybe a jacket and a light blue shirt for the men out there and the women

[00:52:41] out there the feminine equivalent to something like that a business suit you want to avoid bright white dark black in addition to the tight patterns all right this is most of the talk here is focused on delivery and really the issue here is whether you do script or just authentic Q&A Jay characterized it as answering a question and I think there is a bias with most attorneys that they want to do this stuff off the

[00:53:11] cuff because they think it's a proxy for their skill and thinking on their feet and as a litigator and in general and kind of shows that you can roll really quickly and there may be some truth to that but that's also a serious headwind so in the interview style if you're confident on camera somebody asks you the question like basically when is a mediator right for somebody in a divorce and you answer it with a full sentence a mediator is right

[00:53:41] part of that is keywording as Jay mentioned but it's just the format of how you full sentence answer so that it has maximum editability I can show the question if I want to but I don't have to because I'm speaking in full sentences don't use notes because that's going to divide your eyeline between here and there and everywhere else also you want to kind of limit yourself like how many good takes get to or three good takes and then move on now script

[00:54:11] for everybody else script is frowned upon as inauthentic but it has some huge benefits like number one it reduces the risk it gives you a lot more confidence that you know what you're talking about and that you know what you're going to deliver it's easier to edit because I don't have to choose between five clips that are all completely different and figure out what goes where if it's coached properly if that second set of eyes that you have is giving you good advice it's going to come out

[00:54:41] pretty good alright so here's where you really need that second set of eyes because there's certain things that happen in a script that people don't realize when they're doing it as I said earlier you can think on your feet or grade yourself but you can't do both that's one of the biggest problems that we have with attorneys and other subject matter experts is that they know that they have to do really well and so they start grading themselves as they're delivering the takes and it's not a live thing where you can't stop you have to

[00:55:10] you can basically at any point go wait let's just do this again and you would not believe how often that happens almost the better you are at delivering off the cuff the harder it becomes for you because your expectations of yourself are so high the second is the double close right or the triple close where you say if the question is what's your favorite color my favorite color is blue because it's the color of this guy another reason why I love the color blue and it just keeps going and going and so if you've done a lot of these then

[00:55:40] you know what I'm talking about third when you edit together all these different clips of people delivering off the cuff it starts to look like a highlight reel like a trailer not a building insight and those are two different things one is transparently a marketing vehicle and the other is a marketing vehicle disguised as insight where you're actually explaining something and building authority so here's a little bit of what not to do stuff to help you get on the right track

[00:56:10] with a script the first mistake that people make is that they write for the page right so I'm having some fun here with this language notwithstanding the prevalent misconception contract language but people do show how smart they are when they're writing the script when you're writing on a piece of paper you tend to use words that you wouldn't normally use when you're speaking I'm introducing here a fictional attorney named William Hayes a divorce lawyer

[00:56:40] and here he is writing for the written word for the page now if we convert that into human language it's something like this and I'm going to read this the way that people generally tend to do their first read of a script a mediator can't take your side that's not a promise it's the law I'm William Hayes a California family attorney who specializes in divorce and one of the most important questions to ask yourself is could mediation be for me under California law mediators must remain

[00:57:09] impartial if they can't they're required to withdraw and so there's a bunch of stuff that people do right you read it too fast and there's no pauses and so you gotta remember to slow down and once you find the pauses a lot of the intonation problems that you have of everything sounding the same that's not a promise it's the law I'm William Hayes that sort of lilting repeating voice pattern that goes away as soon as you add the pauses it's magic so watch with the pauses

[00:57:39] and there's different kinds right there's three different kinds here visually and that's not too far off a promise it's the law I'm William Hayes a California attorney who specializes in divorce and one of the most important questions to ask yourself is could mediation be for me California law mediators must remain impartial if they can't they're required to withdraw so you can see the difference that the pauses make it also kind of cues me on what

[00:58:09] to do with my voice next now let's move first thing is you don't need a teleprompter to the camera Descript which Jay mentioned earlier can move your eyeballs right back any web free teleprompter is good you can make the type real big if you want

[00:58:45] to my eyes are wide open but if I start looking below the camera they close right and so you can't restore eye line on somebody when their eyes are drooping and so we want to make sure that our scripts are higher up than the camera all right the second one this is the most unnatural act is positioning your face rather than your eyeline so right now I'm looking at my webcam and my script is up here right and so I position my face for the webcam and use my eyes to

[00:59:15] read it's a little unnatural you get used to it you should have 10 or 15 degrees otherwise Descript isn't going to be able to handle it and if you're looking off to the side or anything like that Descript is not going to be able to handle it all right move your pupils again not your face and then use that Descript afterwards to correct the eyeline that's one of the treatments that we do at iShoot when we're filming people remotely is that we have a team in the background that's looking at the eyeline and finding

[00:59:45] where Descript is struggling with something so that it's a technical reason for us to do a retake if we need to all right never ever watch yourself right this is a common temptation everybody wants to do it but you go into grading mode you're using part of your brain for grading and it's just an immediate tailspin of mojo destruction when you start watching yourself not only does it distract your eyeline but it's like you just immediately think

[01:00:17] before make sure you're happy with the shot and then get the monitor away as far as baseline gear light I recommend panels over ring lights in general unless it's for TikTok having one is usually enough for most things two or three and you could

[01:00:47] engineer even the worst audio removing echoes and reverb clipping when the audio starts to go so like it's just gotten really good at all that stuff so the mic is almost optional at this point for video like you're going to probably do okay without it but to eliminate that little bit of risk that there could be a little more echo than you want or some background noise that's creeping in I recommend either a simple

[01:01:16] USB-C lapel mic that you plug right into your recording device your phone or you can have one of those nice desk mics that everybody bought during COVID those are fine too as far as props go for the phone if you use the phone for recording I find the stand is very easy to manage versus a tripod you spend a lot of time trying to get it perfect this is almost zero assembly piece of gear it's 15

[01:01:46] bucks 20 bucks on Amazon very easy to just take out and put away when you need it a note on when and whether to use your phone a lot of people have these great setups that they got during COVID or afterwards with really good webcams one thing I are good for video making a video like the automatic gesture

[01:02:16] recognition stuff and trying to reframe you it's probably not stuff that you really want your webcam doing without you being aware of it while you're filming it in general I recommend using a phone basically they're just expensive cameras with a computer inside of them they perform consistently we definitely prefer them for filming remotely and the results are more consistent and more reliable I

[01:02:45] covered all the software I think ah so in a moment we're going to hear from Clifford who shoots in person and there's still some reasons why you have to do that at times and so one of them is the B-roll and beauty shots Jay mentioned the walk and talks that attorneys love it's very hard to do that you can do it little choppy with a phone you can do it but it's not the same effect as doing it there and getting the B-roll shots of the attorneys and partners talking that's also something that

[01:03:15] it's just very hard for you to do as capably remote artificial backdrops I think rather than getting a green screen if you need an artificial backdrop call the pros that's the talk all right Jay back to you great stuff Dan thank you so much Clifford if you're able to beam in I mentioned to you all that Clifford he was

[01:03:45] actually based right we're in and maybe just off the top of your head Clifford let's talk we're going to do this interview format yes just talk about some of the basics that you do in order to get great shoots

[01:04:15] in the offices the lighting the locations because a lot of times obviously for Clifford and I the country we don't have that luxury yes one of the biggest things I like to do is find out where my light sources are natural light so just like when Dan was speaking about having window lights or even then let's say if we

[01:04:45] had house lights that are how to create more space how to create more depth in the office or the space or even see what space is available for us to create that depth because that's a little mixture between lighting the lens and then also just

[01:05:15] how far is the subject away from the camera third of all depth what you mean is I'm super clear right now my background is just a little bit blurry but you might even go a little bit blurrier on the background with professional camera skills right this is just a webcam sort of setup yes and even from there having that camera or let's say a professional camera with the bigger sensor because let's say the camera that is on your cell phone or within your

[01:05:44] computer the sensor is about maybe this big as opposed to let's say if you can make that depth of field that everyone likes to see and also to give you somewhat of a more perception of having a higher budget or a higher quality of product that you're producing and by the way I apologize for jumping in because you're getting to some probably going to

[01:06:14] these questions anyways one of the I'm pretty wide and pretty tall so we could use this format for the Facebook wide or the YouTube wide or for a vertical so we could just cut out the sides and use it for a vertical for reels and TikTok shorts and stuff like that right yes of course and even then it's just knowing where is the footage going to be

[01:06:50] punch in jay does wipe the punch in and even then so we can format it we start again

[01:07:21] start again at I missed that and then you record the second part and then the punch in basically you zoom in and it feels like a camera switch if you were shooting with two cameras one over here one over here but it's the same camera you just do a zoom in and the cut tells your mind that you cut in right yes it helps with you going into for longer form content or because the attention span of today's

[01:07:52] market is rather short so having those changes on screen especially if you don't have B-roll or you don't have those beauty shots to showcase what's happening or what the topic of discussion is this emphasize that point to go along with whether it be motion text or motion graphics to really hit that point home or take the point home great

[01:08:21] now did you times we shoot testimonials by the way we bring in a couple past clients of the law

[01:08:51] firm and get testimonials in so the trial attorneys should be pretty good at talking on their feet the case study folks might be more nervous in front of the camera so what are some of the tips you use to get those performances out of the folks yes the biggest thing is just to have the energy right and especially let's say if it's a lawyer speaking about the topic be energetic about it because on the back end with the video usually it's if you're being calm and you're being

[01:09:21] assertive of yourself it comes across as maybe you're not energetic about the topic or you are shooting because I have to as opposed to I want to be here I'm here to help you I'm here to tell you my story I'm here to tell you the stories of our past clients that can really showcase what we're doing here and

[01:09:52] what we it's really bringing them in to that way they can remember how they are feeling about it because sometimes you do get the clients that come down from Morgan and Morgan or the bigger fish within your market and they were mistreated they were ignored they felt like they

[01:10:31] all of that can be conveyed through video and even from there it's just to have a natural feeling of it and so that we can lead them to where they will naturally go to I

[01:11:01] somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 of these videos over the last five or six years since we uncovered this question and answer Q&A style format but most of our clients can do this with bullet points they can just answer the question and I'd say nine out of ten especially if they're lawyers and they're trial lawyers they prep for it they can answer a question like what do I do if I get hit by an uber or how long does it take for a consensual divorce depending on the practice area

[01:11:30] right so the nine out of ten can do a great job the one out of ten needs help and needs scripting so talk a little bit about teleprompting and how you get someone through it if they're not as good on their toes if they're not as good on their toes it's basically a strange thing you're not actually having a natural conversation with somebody you're

[01:12:00] presenting your topic and you're talking to a camera that's on stilts you have lights beaming down on you it's very unnatural so with those them it's like trying to break it down into smaller sizes so then that way we can get the best time for a period let them relax come back to it so then that way they can move on to the next part of it because we have had shoots where let's say run just about maybe an hour longer than anticipated but even from there it's just trying to keep

[01:12:30] them comfortable and keep them focused into what's the topic at what we're speaking about right because and even then a lot of that comes also to from what's the work that we've done ahead of time right because the work ahead of time can make you more comfortable with the topic more comfortable with your words more comfortable with just presenting your argument on the screen because when you're there and the lights are on it can get a bit intimidating when let's say the words are not coming out how you want them to or even then

[01:13:00] let's say if we're reviewing film your body language doesn't show the exact confidence that you would like to portray to your audience yeah it's tough because my style these educational format videos work great for my

[01:13:34] and go teleprompter Dan why don't you hop back in I got some questions for the both of you we've got about 10 minutes left and then we'll open it up for the folks who stuck with us in

[01:14:04] or they hate their performance on camera and one of the things that I often encourage people is to stick with it first of all you'll get better and second of all you'll get used to it and somehow you stop hating yourself as much but what advice would each of you

[01:14:34] these are great litigators and they want to it's a proxy for how well they work on their feet but script really helps you focus the internal critic not so much on the words and stuff but maybe you can get to a point where you're on how you're pausing and how you're delivering and it's a little bit easier to take somebody through a flow like that to get them sounding good where they feel good about how they're sounding you're doing full level professional stuff I like the scripting

[01:15:04] on the other hand for what we're doing I really like the authenticity of answer the question what do I do if I get hit by an uninsured driver answer it the way you'd answer it if someone comes into your board why don't you take that one if someone is not comfortable with their voice or their performance on camera no I try to lighten the mood a bit even if it is let's say you cut in a couple of jokes or what not just to get them to not take themselves as seriously right or to understand that

[01:15:33] even then we can bring up not mistakes from other clients but other mistakes that might happen on live television and say hey this is natural this is a part of how things go right but even from there once I got them relaxed or even then just like how Dan mentioned getting multiple tastes three solid good tastes can help as well so then that way we can up a performance or even then find the best natural and mix in between of the takes to get us the best performance out of that but essentially to

[01:16:11] meeting with a potential client they will talk normally they'll talk off the cuff they'll talk generically because even then it doesn't have to be perfect right this isn't and even with movies if you're making films or short films or shooting commercials or television like it doesn't have to be perfect right good enough is good enough yes what's the most important thing in the technological setup if there's one

[01:16:41] cliford same question for you if you're shooting video and you're shooting in an office what's the most important thing of the technical setup lighting is definitely important I'll say the

[01:17:11] you can't really get it or you're going to have to settle in because the sad thing about video even though it is a visual medium if it doesn't sound right no one's going to sit there and watch through the whole take whether it be 30 seconds whether it be a

[01:17:42] much to get something that is very usable one thing we do with audio to deal with the risk management because there is always this small risk that your one recording is going to be complete garbage especially without a good mic is we get two sources right so we record it in two places in two different ways and that can sometimes make up for not having the best mic because you can kind of choose between two different recordings that you have and use the one

[01:18:12] that's better that performs better in podcast yeah understood yeah because I'm doing yeah all my own client shoots essentially shooting scratches going to one camera have a lavalier plugged into another camera and then have a second log plugged into the talent that's going into a task cam or zoom or another audio device so then that way it

[01:18:52] it doesn't matter about the audio but if you want people to listen to answer a question if your audio is crap they're out they're gone question from Keith on LinkedIn thanks Keith if a law firm has never seriously invested in video before what are the first three things they should start doing immediately to stay competitive heading into 2026 Clifford you want to take that one first yes I can take this one the biggest thing is to try to limit that barrier of entry right because what

[01:19:22] a lot of people get caught up in is all that can help out but you have to get started first because a lot of people see it as a chore that this is something additional we don't know if it will work but the thing about it is

[01:19:52] YouTube Instagram LinkedIn all of this is free marketing all it is a lot of it is sweat equity and you have a powerful device just sitting in your pocket which is your cell phone that can take you from a certain level of calls coming in to a whole other level of calls coming in so I'll say the biggest thing is to get started because if you don't have the content you're already behind those who are putting out content awesome Dan did you take that one

[01:20:22] what I would say if you can't get over the hump of actually doing it is get that second pair of eyes somebody that gives you the confidence so that when you actually go through it and ideally it's a professional but even if it's not a professional if it's just significant another or somebody with a good eye in

[01:20:55] nice sound echoey like a studio sound in your room it's not too echoey if not for 10 bucks you can get a lavalier mic that you can plug into your iPhone or any other kind of phone and you just want to try and set it

[01:21:25] and make sure the audio is good and just do a demo pick the four questions you get asked the most when folks come into your office and answer those questions and we talked a lot about the format just how long does it take for a conciliatory divorce and you do that in the form of your answer you get the question in your answer so one of the things we're always asked is how long does it take for a friendly divorce or some people call it a conciliatory divorce

[01:21:55] and so the answer is it depends on a few things you go on and give the answer right you'll find half the time or three quarters of where can always find your nephew or your niece or you can even find someone in your

[01:22:25] local community college who's doing a journalism degree they'll come and shoot it find you if they want to utilize your expertise for shooting dan go

[01:22:55] first so it's not .com it's ishoot dot d-i-r-e-c-t and Clifford how about you if someone wants to shoot down here in Florida yes you can find me out in Arizona right yes you do travel for this stuff yeah

[01:23:25] so last question give us one tip your best tip for someone who's going to do it themselves and they just want to get started dan go first have another pair of eyes so just your wife or your co-worker anybody who whose opinion you value who you can trust to tell you that you're doing well Clifford one tip for someone who wants to get started with video press record because you have to start you have to start every

[01:23:55] everything run a mile you have to take a step right or how you eat an elephant one bite out at a time so you just have to press record and start I was going to say the same thing I call it the Nike strategy just do it put a sheet of paper

[01:24:31] questions they have before they hire you all for their case and do four questions you can do four a week super easily or five then you have one a day if you film every Wednesday and then you do one every business day release it and you can get that second person in the room the twin turn or whatever and just do it guys this was a lot of fun you guys still

[01:25:01] here in the future please give us a comment on YouTube or like or subscribe on iTunes or podbean or wherever you're watching and with that thanks guys have a great

[01:25:31] golden rules dot com