This is Michael Cowan and welcome to trial and lawyer nation. You are the leader in the court and you want the jury to be looking to you for the answers. When you figure out your theory, never deviate. You want the facts to be consistent, complete, incredible. The defense has no problem running out the clock. Delay is the friend of the defense. It's tough to grow up from by trying to hold on in my command. You've got to front load a simple structure for jurors to be able to hold onto. What types of creative things can we do as lawyers, even though we don't have for trial setting? Whatever you've got to do to make it real, you've got to do to make it real, but the person who needs convincing is you. Welcome to the award-winning podcast, "Trial Lawyer Nation." Your source to win bigger verdicts, get more cases, and manage your law firm. And now here's your host, No Or The Author, sought after speaker, and renowned trial lawyer, Michael Cowan. Welcome to "Trial Lawyer Nation." Normally I start off by thinking law pods, but this time I'm actually talking to Rob Engels. Rob is the owner of law pods. He also produces this podcast. He's been great to work with, but that's not the reason I'm having him on the podcast. The reason I'm having on is the last episode we did with Guy. He was talking about how people don't really get cases through their podcasts, and Rob says, "That's not true. I know people get cases with their podcasts." I want to learn how to get cases with my podcast. And I think other people might be interested on how they can actually use podcasts to get cases from consumers at that, and some other things that'll be really interesting to have you on. So how are you doing today, Rob? Man, I'm well. I really appreciate you having me. We were talking about this just before we got on, but you started publishing episodes in January of 2018. That was so close to coinciding with me getting my very first client as a podcast producer. I got that November of 17 and decided around January. I think I can make a go of this. And so we've kind of been at it about the same length of time. So before we dive in, I want to know a little bit more about you. What's your pre-podcasting background? What did you do before you got into podcasting? So I was a lawyer. I started out in criminal defense and had a small firm with a couple of employees and made it in criminal defense for about three years. It was a parent pretty quick. I did not have the constitution for it. I don't have that magic power that some lawyers seem to have where they can leave the office and turn it off because I would go to sleep with it and wake up with it. And for better or for worse, I like it on a day-to-day basis when everyone that I come in contact with kind of likes me. And that was not the case. So it was tough and criminal and then I got into General Civil for a while. But it was overall just the conflict, which I think lawyers know well, was not a great fit for me. So how did you find podcasting? You always think like where did the thing happen? And I trace it back to six words. And those are, I want to have a baby. And yeah, I think a lot of interesting stories started there. But I was just very newly married just a few months and my wife walks in while I'm packing to go to the lake for vacation. And she says, I want to have a baby. And it became a parent within a couple of seconds. She meant like now, like I would like to start yesterday. And that hit me kind of hard because first we had gotten married with the maybe we will, maybe we won't, which made it future guys problem. And then all of a sudden in this moment, I'm realizing somebody might live here next year. And I had a proper freak out mostly. I'm bonnanced to her. But it shined a light on how thin the thread was that I was hanging by with wall. It's just I was overwhelmed and anxious. And I wasn't paying attention to my mental health at that point. I was pushing it all down and acting like everything was fine. And that kind of cracked me. And I realized I, everything's now fine. Like everything's chaos. And I had to kind of stop after I gathered myself. I stopped and I sat down and I started to assess. And I thought, what do I need to do with my life in order to be able to be here in a way that I can welcome this baby and take care of it? And at the top of the list that I made was money because money was bad shape. I had not figured out how to make it or keep it. So I bought a money book. And I read this money book. It was excellent. It was Dave Ramsey book. I just never got my head around money. So it was nice. Which one? The total money makeover. Which I'll admit, I am not a close adherent of now. But it was very nice to get me into the mindset of like, what do I need to do? How do I get my head around money at all? And then he had a another book called Entree Leadership. And I was like, all right, I'll read that one too because I was running a law office not well. Employees coming in whenever they wanted to. Things like that just not handling it well. And so I read that and I really liked it. And at the end, it said you should listen to our podcast, the Entree Leadership podcast. At this point in time, I've never listened to a podcast. And I just, I opened up Apple podcasts. And this is September of 2015. And I listened to it. And it wasn't, it was fine. But it wasn't anything. I was like, yeah, I'll see what else is out there. I searched leadership podcast, I think. And this podcast called Awesome Office comes up. And the first guest was Tom Bill, you founder of Quest Nutrition. And it was a two part episode. There's like before I listened to it. And after I listened to it, because he said the real boil down takeaway from the episodes was you can do anything that you want with your life. And that's right. We've heard it a million times, but I heard it. I heard it. And I thought for the first time, I think I don't think I have to keep doing what I'm doing. Now I had no idea what it was going to be. I didn't even know that it might not be law. But it was like it gave me that license to think outside the lane that I've been thinking on for decades. And within a month, I owned a thousand dollars worth of podcast gear. Because just hearing that episode made me that was so great. And then I felt like I had something to say, surprise to anybody who's listening to me talking length. But I love the meeting. And I love that he had had that conversation at some point. And then in this moment, I went, I found it just by happenstance. And it was meaningful and impactful. And I said, I want to be a part of this. Like I didn't even understand the medium that well, but I want to be a part and I bought a mixer this back in the day when this was a lot harder to pull off than it is now. And this microphone that I'm talking into, I bought that too, which I feel like says a lot about my personality, like go bigger, go home. And it worked out. I just started tinkering in my spare bedroom nights and weekends and playing around. And over a little bit of time, I just came the guy who did it. Everybody kind of saw me. You're the guy that does the podcast. And it was, you know, started one out of my law firm. That was my first one. It didn't last inside the law firm for about 10 episodes because it turned out I didn't want to talk about law. I found it very difficult to talk about law. I want to talk about other things that I was passionate about. So that's where the start happened. And then it's just people saw me doing it. And a couple of years in, another lawyer came up to me at a networking event and said, I see you doing that. Will you help me start one? And I said, I would love to do that. And he said, well, come over in the morning. Great client, right? Like, let's do it right now. That was my start. It was just, okay, maybe there's something here. And Bill Powers always give him a shout out just because that's the first guy that took a gamble on me. And he's a Charlotte attorney. And so many amazing things have happened because of that. So that's the short story. Do you still do your own podcast? I don't. It's coming back this year, though. So I stopped it very intentionally in March of 18 because that podcast was a lot about, it was called the Future Self Podcast. It's out there. It's still out there. And it will be. But it was a lot about how do you do things in mindset work? And it was time for me to stop talking at that moment and start doing. And so I put it on hiatus, but I am bringing you back this year. It's sporadically when I have the time to do it. But I felt like now is the time because I have done it. Like, it's called Future Self Podcast because the idea is, what are you doing today that your future self, the person you are in five years, 10 years is going to turn around and give you a nod like, man, I really appreciate what you did that helped me be where I am today, right? Because that's the hard part is doing it. We just finished a couple weeks ago, or you know, one, three and five year visions. So we started with five. And then what do we, where do we have to be in three to get there? Where do we have to be in one to get beyond track? And then what do we have to do now to get there for the one? It's a really great thing. The other thing I just started doing, we did like a transformation exercise, where you know, you talk about where you want to be for at the end of the year, what we did help, we did financial, we did firm, we did development. And then we're all holding each other accountable, meeting with each other, my parents once a month to talk about what I just did at this morning. Where am I so far in the first 24 days of this year on moving towards my goals? You know, because one thing to dream about and talk about it, but I think you're right, you got to do it. Right. And one of my problems was my whole life, I've been writing ideas, I have this idea. And I was so excited about the idea. I would feel like I had value. And it just stayed on the paper. And it really became what, what are you going to do? Because when you choose an idea to run with like Lollpods, it's to the exclusion of a lot.
of other ideas that you have, but that's the trade-off that you have to make. And then what is it that I have to do step by step? Like you nailed it. What do I have to do? Who do I have to even be next year to get my three-year goal? Because I'm not that person right now. So for the listeners, I know because I'm a client of yours, but for the listeners, what is it you love you and love odds to do? So if somebody wants to have a podcast and they're not really sure where to start or how to do it, what do we talk about? Why should we do it? Then once we have those things I earned out, what do we do? How do we do it? How do we make all of this? Like we go to Michael Cowan's website and his social, how does that come to life? That's us is ideating because a lot of people say, I heard I should have a podcast. Somebody else has one. My marketing person tells me I should have one. But why? Why would I have one? And that's a lot of times the first conversation. Is what are we trying to accomplish with this? What are our goals? And then what can we create that will help further those, whether it is generating more referrals. If it's nurturing the leads in your funnel, if it's brand awareness and then thinking about creating something that will make that work and then making it easy to record. I'm probably a typical customer then because I had a pretty well established podcast, but didn't want to deal with producing it. Yeah. I mean, we have quite a few shows that have started that way too because people will start and they'll get it going and they'll find success with it. But you can probably speak to this. It's a lot in order to pull off all those steps. It's a lot. Yeah. You know, we had someone in house that knew how to do it all, but when we lost that person and we looked at like, what would it take to get someone that knows how to do audio recording? Yeah. Now we put those YouTube do video recording, do editing to make sure the sound stuff sounds well to sometimes clean up background sound when there's background noises. You want to try to edit out then to create graphics and advertisements and to cut it up into clips and then to upload it and then to figure out how do you get the statistics to see is is anyone listening to this? It was a lot. And you know, and frankly, we had someone help us, a marketing company actually helped us get off the ground when we started. Then we kind of went on our own and then we looked at when we said, when then employee, the problem with having really good employees, especially in a law firm, if you're they're not lawyers, there's only so far for them to move up. And you know, I still love the guy. I wish he was still with us, but he had better opportunities and you know, where he could do bigger and better things and get paid more money than working for a law firm. So you know, I'm happy for him, but we at that point needed probably higher two or three people in house are to work with someone like you and you know, you were well-work amended. So luckily, it's worked out well. I'm glad to hear that. Made my life a lot. It's just one less thing to worry about in my life. Yeah. Well, and it's worked out well for me because anybody that hired me as a lawyer could probably attest. I am significantly more well-suited for this role. So let's just talk about then let's just say anybody, listen to this or are toying with the idea of whether or not they might want to have a podcast. Why would a lawyer want to have a podcast? And I'm going to ask you two part questions. I'm going to start with and I'm going to say both parts now because I'm going to forget the second part of it on. So what are some of the reasons why a lawyer would want to have a podcast? And then what are some reasons that you think are not good reasons to start a podcast? So things that you know aren't going to help aren't going to work. Sure. So back to that question of why would you want to do it? There's a handful of reasons that almost all of my clients fall into like buckets of why they would want to have a podcast. We'll start with yours. There's some brand awareness there and there's generating referrals and you know elevating your brand generating referrals is a big one. You're creating content for people who are looking to learn things about trial. Like you're talking about you how to run the office. You're talking about all these trial techniques. You're also breaking down real trials that you did, but you're also bringing on guests that did these things like what happened? Like how did you invoite do you tell me about that moment? And that's really interesting and valuable for other lawyers, especially younger lawyers and they're listening to it. They're getting to know you. So many people I've seen it at conferences come up. They've never met you before and you can tell just by the way they talk to you. They feel like they already know you because they've listened to you for probably thousands of hours at this point. And you've taught them so much. They've gone into court. They've sat out and they've pulled out something that they learned from you and it worked. And they, I mean, there's that reciprocity feeling like so much good things in my life have come from this. And so they have this attachment. And so when things come up, when they can offer you anything no matter what it is, they're going to do their best to reciprocate whether that's, you know, send you a case, bring you some co-counsel because you know what you're doing. When I know from hearing from you when your book came out, I know plenty of people that bought it. I had a conversation with somebody a couple months ago who bought it. They don't even practice that area of law. They bought it because you wrote it and they wanted to buy the book that you wrote. Oh wow. I mean, that's a test. That's awesome. Thank you. Whoever you are. Exactly. Thank you. So that's one really important way. And then one of the ways that you are also leveraging this that I didn't even consider when I started the company was the network effect. How many lawyers now do you know because of the podcast that you just wouldn't have known otherwise? They came on, you had a conversation, you got to know them, and now they're part of your network. You know who they are. And you can refer cases to them. You can have lunch with them when you're in town. They're, they're people that are adding value to your network and vice versa. And that has been huge, especially because I just didn't even see it coming until it was happening around me. I was like, Oh wow. This is something I need to be marketing this specific value point. So that's one of the ways that people do it. But the bulk of my clients are using it as a way to nurture leads in the funnel. And this is a way that when I talk to people, they'll say, who would ever listen to a lawyer's podcast? Who would listen? Who would subscribe? And I say, well, no one until they get into car accident, until their mother dies without a will and everybody's fighting. Whatever the case is, until the bad thing happens or until the thing happens and they have a problem, that's why they go to our website. That's why they read our articles. They want to know the answers to their pain point. What happened? What do I do about it? And even when they get a nice warm referral, they go to the website frequently and they just browse around. They want to see what's what, what do you have there? Can you answer their questions? Can you make them feel better about the bad thing? And the podcast is very valuable there because people will ask me frequently, what would I talk about on my podcast? Simple as question I ever have to answer. What are your clients? What are your prospects want to know? We know what they want to know because they ask you in every console, they ask you when they're typing it in and you see it on your SEO report. That's why we're making blog content. We know what people want to know and we speak to those things. Now we can speak to other things too as like what's the process going to look like? But we're answering questions a lot of the time that are going to get them to know you like you trust you, to get over that threshold of this is my person. This is the person I want to call and at least sit down and have a conversation with. And the podcast goes a long way to help them do that because they get to hear your voice. They get a sense for who you are, your sense of humor and they kind of qualify and I think that's really, really helpful. And then I have one lawyer who uses a lot of foul language and he uses it on his podcast and when I first started working with him asking if he wanted to cut that out and he was basically like, no, that's who I am. And I love that though because he's not hurting for business. Yeah, he's going to turn some people off. But he's also going to have a lot of people that go, he's like me. I like that. Even if that's like that's a real person right there. And that's who he's going to be when they go to his office. He's going to be three years later when they're trying to make a hard decision about whether they should push it to trial or settle it. That's their person. They know he's not bullshitting with them. So I love that. I love that ability to be authentic with the client. Then we get to know you a little bit. And so that's a really valuable way is to nurture that lead that came in. And then your thought leadership is a big one. You see a lot of big firms do that is where they're the first person talking about the thing. There's new legislation. There's regulatory movement. We are on top of that. We're talking about that. And people, whether it happens to be investment bankers, deal people, whoever, whoever is the intended audience, they're listening to that stuff. They get to know these people and know that this is the authority on this subject, whatever it happens to be. Even if you came to trial law, there's certainly a place for that kind of thing. What's developing? What's changing? And a lot of that's jurisdictional. But those are some of the big ways that people will leverage their podcast. There's different ways. I mean, on your last podcast, you talked about one of them, where community stuff. We're doing things in the community. And I love that. However, I tell people that that's very dependent on where you are as a company. Because if you're looking at something with a little bit faster than ROI, that's going to be tougher. Because that's very much a branding exercise. And it's harder to get people to listen to that. Because when you, you know, you have a podcast that's solving a very specific problem. I need to be better at law. It's entertaining as well. But I need to be better at this. I want to learn from people who know things, who understand things. And then if I've been in a truck accident, I have a problem. And I want answers. So I would listen to a podcast about that. But when it's about, you know, Antonio's New Pizza restaurant, maybe. But like, what's my pain point? It's a little more difficult. Like, how do you get people to [BLANK_AUDIO]
about it because they're not really going to look for that. They're looking for your kind of thing. They really are. People ask me all the time. People who listen, they'll say, you know, they listen to yours and they listen to several other things that we do and they'll say, what else? They're already listening to all that. What else? Are you doing anything else? And that's not the same case when it's something that's more in the community. I think there's a great place for it, but it's harder to gain traction with it and you're competing. You know, you're competing for Saturday afternoon mo in the grass time. You know, that's Bernat Brown's time. That's Joe Rogan's time. For a lot of people, that's Michael Cowan's time. Like, they've already got stuff they're listening to and now you're competing with the entire market to provide something that isn't really a strong pain point for a lot of people. I think it can be great, but I think that is, I tend to see stuff like that with a larger firm, larger budgets and a lot more time where they can do these big branding exercises. - I've actually talked with that idea a little bit, you know, it'd have to be a separate podcast, but-- - Oh, absolutely. - The layout of time and money before you had any ROI. The thought is you wanna go, if you wanna go to a community where a lot of people don't know you and you want them to know you before they need a lawyer, basically, you know, branding. - Yeah. - So you'd have to go find people in the community that each have their own little following, that their follow-up always would wanna listen to your podcast. You would somehow have to be an entertaining enough person to engage them so they wouldn't hear you listen to talk, to, you know, when you're talking to people who they're not part of that person's tribe, to keep them listening. And then I think you need a pretty massive marketing push to get anyone in the community to even know about it and listen to it. It could work, but I think it would be probably a multi-year, at least a multi-mid-five figure, probably a six-figure budget over a period of years before you ever got a case off it. So I mean, if you wanna, you know, one day become a dominant lawyer in that community, I can see that being part of a strategy, but to just get cases from it right away, I don't know how well that would work. Maybe it would, but I just, maybe if you're in such a small community, but it's a small town full of podcasts, let's just, that's the. - Right, I'll be the first to say that there's a lot of things that work that are probably contrary to anything I'm saying right now. - Yeah. - But from my perspective on that, it is harder. And I talked about all the reasons of getting listenership at harder. Now, but some of the ways you name several of them that have benefit outside the actual listener, 'cause think about you, you're networking. That's outside, if nobody listen, you still got to talk to some of these lawyers. That's where some of the value can be as you're out in the community doing these things, talking to these business owners, forming these relationships. There's a lot of value in that. And then tapping into other people, bringing them on that they'll share it with their community. So if you go and talk to a restaurant that has a huge following, they're like, "Hey, we did this with this firm." And blah, blah. So there's a lot of value even if nobody listens. I wanted to fill that out. - And frankly, I would do this podcast even if no one listened because when I started, I didn't know if anyone would ever listen, but I figured I was connected enough to get some people to talk to me that I wanted to learn from. So the amount of benefit I've had from being able to interview these people, I'm frankly asking what I'm curious about and just bringing the listener along with me. And my trial results and the way I run my business have exponentially benefited from learning from the people we've had on here. I wanna go back to the, let's say you wanna get a podcast where you actually wanna get, quick error return on investment, you wanna actually get people to hire you as a personal injury lawyer. So you talked about you wanna do, they're probably shorter podcasts I would think than this one, answering the questions that those people would have. How do you get those people to listen to it? - So frequently, and it's been our experience with our clients, a lot of them are finding it on their first engaging it, either on the social media feeds with the clips where they're seeing it first and realizing, oh, that's a thing that exists or they're seeing it on the website because it's presented as really an FAQ if you wanna think about it that way. Here are the things that you want to know about and you wanna make it easy to find on the website. So people understand that it's a resource for them and that's where they're gonna find it usually because consumer behavior is shifting. Very much is around what a podcast is and where you go to find information. But by and large, we're still not seeing a lot of people going to their podcast player and typing in personal injury attorney Tampa. And so a lot of people aren't gonna first discover it there. They're first gonna discover it on the website, on social feeds, sometimes on places that other people might share it, like your guests will share it and they'll see that and go, oh, that's something that is interesting to me right now. But that kind of thing is the billboard approach and somebody else shares it. I hope the right person sees it, which is still good. But that is where most people are finding it. But what's nice and we have a client using this right now is taking those clips from the podcast and running ads behind those, running targeted ads. Some like there's mass litigation going on around Suboxone right now. Where are the people? Let's bring them in, let's sign them and take clips from the podcast, run them as ads. To drive back to your CTA, get people signed up. So there's a few different ways that people are finding it initially. And that's what we're seeing right now. - And so just to make sure understand it right, just doing a podcast and nothing else and putting on the podcast app is probably not gonna get you any people that have been a car crash. Just I'm gonna go look and have a podcast for San Antonio Texas car crash attorney. They're probably not gonna happen, but if you make it part of your overall marketing funnel, they've heard of you, they go to your website or they see your social media ad or they saw a TikTok or YouTube video. And I like this person and then you have a link to get more and then they start listening to you, getting to know you better so they choose to hire you over someone else because now I'm comfortable with this lawyer 'cause now I feel like I know him. The other person I've just seen the slick 32nd ads, this is someone that is answering my questions. So I already know that they're thinking about the things I care about. They care about what I care about. And I think I'd like this person. - Yeah, and I mean, that last part is huge is I like them. That's someone that gives me that feeling. 'Cause I mean, we all know that. We wanna do business with somebody that we're like, yeah, that's my person. And the podcast is able to do that for a lot of people in a way that almost nothing else other than in person can do. 'Cause even video, I feel like the video the way we're doing it here is really helpful, but a lot of lawyers, I mean, you've seen it. - Two scripted. They spend all that money. The big team comes in and they've got this kind of one shot at it and they got their hands, they got their books, and that doesn't communicate who they are. They don't pause and think and have a motion in their voice the same way as you tend to on a longer form podcast where you're just kind of settling and have a conversation. So yeah, I mean, to your first point, if someone came to me and they said, I think I just wanna have a podcast and put it on Apple and here's the results I wanna get. I would say, I don't think we're probably the right people to help you and I don't think you're gonna get what you want by doing it that way. I mean, at a minimum, this should be on the website, at a minimum. Even if you're not pushing it on social, it should be on your website. - So I've heard two different kinds of podcasts and I'm gonna get back to why not two in a minute, but I just wanna fall up and wanna think 'cause I'm curious about it. I've seen the, I've listened to podcasts where it's just one person talking, it's like a monologue and I've listened to them where there's two or more people having a conversation. Do you have any thoughts one way or another on the pros and cons of each? - I really like the monologue if it can be done well. I have found trial lawyers more so maybe than other types of attorneys that I've worked with can nail that because having been a trial lawyer, we are trained in talking to people in that fashion, communicating information, being able to do it in a way that feels a little effortless and friendly and persuasive. And I think it can be just like that format. I think it can be really helpful because especially with emotional issues with something that you want to pay a little bit of extra attention to and let people hear how you feel. I think those can be incredibly impactful. But if they're not done well, I think they can be really, really boring. People will script what they're gonna say. They will read the script, you can tell that they're reading and a little monotone and that's kinda podcast you gotta hide a body in 'cause no one's making it to the end. It's just your brain, even if it wants that information. I mean, we've all been in the CLE that we desperately wanted that information and our brain just refused to let us get it because it's just, you just gone. You can't stay focused. And I think that that's not gonna get you too far. The conversation format is a lot easier from building the plan. It's easier. What do you wanna talk about? Let's talk about this issue. Well, we both know this issue inside out. So it takes about three minutes of prep to talk about what we're gonna talk about and then sit down and talk about it. And we're just bouncing off each other. I ask you a question and then you go, "Well, here I'm the expert here, so I will go on for several minutes about that and give you the ins and outs." And then I'll ask another pointed question, well, what about this? And you have 15 minutes of content that is valuable and you're done. So I think there is very, a lot of upside to both, but the conversational format, whether it be with somebody internal who's the way you do with Mallory and your other associates and partners or bringing somebody else in and having that conversation with them, it makes it flow. It's a lot easier to pull off and I think it can be very valuable. So I mean, that's the one I see done 95% of the time. Yeah, for me, the conversational format,
I'll be honest with you, I don't think unless I could have like a face like someone on the other end that I'm talking to. So like we're doing a teleprompter song, I'm looking at a person's face. For me to talk and not get any feedback from the person on the other side is really hard for me. I tried doing some Facebook lives for a while and you know there's like a, even with like the Q&A, there's like a delay of like 30 seconds for some reason Facebook live. And I really struggled with just doing a monologue. Yeah. And then the prep time must have been a lot more. And for those of us who have busy practices and have families and trying to have a personal life. Just being able to come up with the broad topics if you already know enough about the topic of talking about is a lot better. Whereas you know do something scripted enough where I'm providing useful content and not just ramping but not so scripted that I'm boring and just reading. Sounds like a lot of work. You know, I think I'm going to keep doing this. The other thing for us to try work my direct exams have gotten much better because of podcasting. I love that. I haven't heard anybody say that before because I've learned to listen to just to follow my curiosity. I go back to my own. I do say anything. I have my outline of big topics, but I'm going to follow the topic through curiosity. What I think that you're you might be curious about instead of just going to the next question. I was going to give a pro tip for anybody listening who is interested in anything monologue is what I do is I have somebody on my team. Ask me the question. Give me the prompt and then I talk to them. You know, I'll look at the camera, but I talk to the person that asked me the question. And so it feels conversational, but it is direct camera. So that's just one easy one that helps. I will also say for you know, when you want to build your audience, getting well known people helps you build and then you stay interesting enough where people keep listening, but if you're not already someone like you know when Keith Bittnick does this. Next month, the brush soaps. I mean, he's a legendary trial lawyer. He's got great books. He's already got a following. So yeah, I will go listen to just keep it. I'm perfectly fine with it. He doesn't need anyone else on there. But if you're you know Joe Smith from Peoria, I've never heard of I'm probably not going to listen to your podcast unless I've heard something good about it, but if you're Joe Smith interviewing, you know Rex Parrish or Lisa blue or someone that's like a huge name that I want to learn from. Well, I might listen and then if I like you on my listen again. Yeah, I mean, I'd listen to Keith read recipes. He's got such a great voice. And he was actually even kind enough to like make a congratulations video when we hit our five years either anniversary or so many podcasts from that he's just been such a great person. Nice. We've had him on a couple of times. So I'm sure we'll help him again someday. Each year, the law firm of Cowan Road Regais Peacock pays millions of dollars in co-counsel fees to attorneys nationwide on trucking and commercial vehicle cases. If you have an injury case involving death or catastrophic injuries and would like to partner with our firm, please contact us by calling 210-941-1301 to discuss the case in detail and see where we can add value in a partnership. And now back to the show. What are some reasons not to have a podcast and what are some things like if this is your goal, this is probably not going to work out for you. Yeah, immediate ROI, I think is a big one. And I mean, it's content marketing. I mean, I think most people are familiar with content marketing at this point. And I tell people think about it that way. It's audio content, but it's content marketing. And it's meant to create content. You have it on your website. You have it on your feed. You're establishing yourself as an authority. You're creating content for your website. And that's great. It's going to help nurture leads, but it's not the kind of thing that you can expect to drive leads in a way that is going to start converting things tomorrow. I try to stay in my lane. So take this with the grain of salt with which it's intended, but it's not the same as PPC. Where if somebody clicks on it, there's probably high intent there, right? There's your chances of a conversion on that I would say are significantly higher than maybe with other ways of landing on your website. But with content marketing, you're building this repository of information that over a period of time is going to have again staying in my lane, but it's going to have some effect on your SEO. And your ability to convert those listeners when they get there because even with a PPC campaign, you're dropping people on your website, how fast today bouncing, how fast today leaving and not coming back. One of the things that keeps them there is content is content that speaks to the intent of why they showed up and ultimately converts them makes them not leave makes them call you said an appointment. So if you're looking for that immediate ROI and you have a budget that you're like, look, I can spend X number of dollars, I can spend $3,000 a month. And you're not doing other areas and you really do need that to convert faster, I'd say that is probably not the way to go about it. And if you're not looking to commit to something with a relatively long term strategy, because if you're doing this twice a month and you make eight of them. Now you might speak directly to eight of the most important questions that are coming out, but from a content perspective, you're not putting fresh content out regularly and you're not going past those eight. There's not much there's you can't hit but so many specific questions with that. And one of the most lovely parts of having a podcast is all of that content that you can then repurpose onto YouTube and onto your social feeds. So you're constantly with fresh information that is speaking to specific problems, some new problems. So you have your branding on those clips and titles on them and captions and you're filling your feeds with those. And so it's creating so much. I mean, you went on or earlier you were talking about it. It goes from this to this to this. And it all starts if you know if you're working with an agency, it all starts with that 15 minute conversation that you had you hopped on the mic. You might have done a few minutes of prep, hopped on the mic, get that conversation. And for a lot of our clients, that's the last time they think about it. It's done after that, especially some of our injury clients will send it to them and say for review and they'll say no, I always there. I know what I said. I don't need to hear it again. That's me. Right. One and done. Yep. Right. I trust you on editing guide. I don't listen to the beginner read them. I know some of your big law clients, one are very particular but. Yeah, a little bit. It's a podcast. So how do you pick like which clips? Like you know, let's say we're going to cook clips in the podcast. We're going to put them on social media. Maybe put them on our website. TikTok. Where we're going to put them. How do you pick which clips to put on? Love it. And I love that you ask that because I don't get asked that a lot. And it's a really important part of what we do. We're always thinking who's the listener? What do they want? What's valuable? Because for your podcast, you are a trial lawyer. But if you talk about something related to the law that might be interesting to a casual listener, that's not what we're looking for. It might be really interesting, but your listener is a trial lawyer by and large. And they want to know specific things. And if we go in thinking general public and we pull something to general public will find someone that you are looking to target that is common knowledge to them. They will not stop and look at that and care about that. And so it always starts with who's the listener and what's valuable. Where's the value? What will make them stop too? And if the episode's about XYZ, we're trying to find a clip that will grab somebody. We'll make them stop scrolling. It's titled in a way that makes them go, hmm, I'd like to know that. Now we got them just long enough to make them pause for a second. And then the captions. Because if you don't have captions, it can be hard to get people to stop because they realize there's no captions. And they're like, well, I'm not going to trust that this is good enough to tap the screen and start the noise. And so the captions now they're qualifying themselves a little bit more. Oh, okay. They might keep, they might even tap it in here. And then they'll go, I need to hear the rest of that conversation. And when possible, we try to make all of that work together. We want it to reflect a little bit about what the overall episode was. And but also be interesting enough, but also not give away the farm. Like make them go, there's more there that I want to know about. And think about that for each clip that can we solve all of that? And then ultimately we're thinking who show is this? And what is success for them? What do they want people to know that will make them look good, that will help them with the goal of this podcast? Because they might get a ton of views on something. It might not drive conversions that view. Somebody might not go listen to the rest of the episode. Oh, that was really cool. But now they know the thing. And it's not from a brand awareness perspective, great. And it might work. And that might be the best thing we have from that episode. But if we're looking to convert somebody to a listener, try to get into call. It might not be the right clip. Every episode is different. And you have to think, and not every episode is easy to do that. We have a lot of conversations internally about this is not an easy one. Let's see what we can figure out here that works. And you're taking a conversation that isn't always streamlined, that goes and goes on tangents, and trying to find something cohesive in it. So it can be a challenge, but I enjoy it. And I think it's one of the best ways to promote the podcast as well. Because when you, how many times has somebody come up to you and told you about a podcast? You got to listen to this. And you trust them. You still don't listen. Because who has the time? But when we, I can see a clip, and we've all been like this, we see a clip of something.
And then at the end of that clip, I need that episode now. Like, that's the thing I care about. And that converts a listener in a way that even one of their friends telling them they should listen can't convert a listener. Yeah. So you've got the clips, you put the captions, whatever graphics you want to put on there, you've got just the perfect clip that's going to draw people in. So you're going to, let's say we're going to put it on social media. We think that we know whatever Instagram, Facebook, paying an age range, whatever TikTok, maybe whatever social media platform we want to use. How do we get it in front of the people that we want to have listened to it? Sure. In your case, you've done a very good job of creating a podcast and a brand at the same time. It's separate from the firm. It's its own channel. And so the people that follow that follow that because they're looking for that. They follow that specifically because they want to know this information. And so I think you have a very unique situation where anything that you put out on that channel is for those right people. But when you're thinking about a firm, people follow the firm. But if we're thinking of an injury firm, I mean, for the most part, people don't need your thing. That's good until they need it. So it can be a more challenging to say, okay, I made this clip. And now I want to get it in front of these people. But that's where the ads come in. You can run ads on those clips to nail it. Like, hey, let's use all this content we made and run those clips. And those video clips are doing very well as ads because it's something people are either used to watching video and it's clip down. It speaks to the pain point that they're having. And then you have your CTA on that that drives them to call or drives them to a landing page for what they're doing. And those are the good ways. But a lot of times the clips are just filling up your feed as well. People go to your feed while they're researching you. And they're finding this. They're seeing all of these things that you're doing. And from an outside perspective is very helpful. Because when you're vetting any business and you see, okay, this is a legitimate business. They're up to stuff. That can look really good. But it also is answering questions there. Let's them know the podcast exists when they go to your feed and they see all of these pieces. And these pieces speak to the very real problems that somebody who's been in a truck accident has. And it's part of nurturing that lead that's already in your funnel. Yeah, one thing I do like about social media is you can't really target the ads. Although, you know, personal interest is a little harder to target because you don't know who's been hurt due to someone else's negligence and not already represented. But you do know there's like, there's demographics that are more likely or less likely to hire a person who needs your lawyer. Demographics that are more likely or less likely to already know a lawyer. Geographic, I mean, you can make sure you're only getting people in the city or even the part of the city that you want. The other thing if you're doing B to B here during a little secret, you can actually come up with a list of email addresses and target those people specifically social media accounts. Sometimes even like their YouTube TV and other types of it. If they use a streaming service other than regular cable TV, you can even target that where you know, I know some people have seen some of my ads. I didn't know this, but some people actually see some of my ads while they're watching television, which I had no idea. For my big rig boot camp. So it's there's all kinds of neat things you can do once you have the content. And now the thing is the content has to be engaging up that once you do them, people will listen and keep listening, but there is a lot nowadays with the targeting. Yeah, and then the retargeting like if somebody has been searching for an attorney or personal injury attorney. Now if they're in Google doing that, that's connected to the rest of the ecosystem again, stay in my lane, talk to your ad person about that. But now you can run ads to that person based on the intent that they've been having. You know, one thing I hear about podcasting, everybody, you know, everything else in almost every advertising medium, but there are so many podcasts out there. I mean, isn't this over saturated? I mean, is there really room for another podcast? What I hear when people ask me that is, you know, every wine 25 years. And I hear people saying, do I really need a website? That's how absurd that starts to sound in my brain because it's your personal brand. And the idea that John has a podcast, so why would I have one? Well, if John's nurturing leads with his podcast, I think that that's a really good reason to have one because it's your thing, it's your personal thing. But even away from a nurturing leads model, let's take the Michael Cowan model. You've been doing this for six years this month, happy anniversary. Yep, thank you. What if somebody said, oh, well, they don't need another there are a number of other podcasts that talk about similar things were involved with some of them. And none of that has major numbers go down. Yeah. And like I said earlier, not only are your numbers not going down, but people say, are there more? The appetite for more is there because yours comes out twice a month and you know, was that roughly two hours of content per month. Think about how much time the average podcast listener listen to a lot of podcasts is listening to multiple hours every week. So there's a lot of space in there for people that care about a specific thing. So right now, especially in this hyper niche space that we're in, there is a lot of room for these things. I mean, there's some that are about Pennsylvania trial law and or very specific things. I mean, this is a good opportunity. I'll talk about we have several original content shows about trial law coming out this year. And they're going to be about niche topics about making the ask about what year real closings that attorneys gave that led to pretty incredible verdicts. And we're doing that because we've talked to people and there's an appetite for content that they can use and learn from outside of hopping on a webinar or flying to a conference like things that they can do on their jog on their commute. And I mean, I think the fact that we're doing that, I think speaks to my belief in their not even close to the saturation point. There's a hunger for this kind of content. And one of the reasons I think is that audio does what no other form of marketing can do. It sells you time. You know, it doesn't say stop and watch sit down and read says, what are you doing? I'll come with you. And we love that. And until we can until neural link can start be even stuff in our head, I think audio is going to continue to grow. Yeah, I would also agree that for a slightly different reason, I don't think it's saturated and that is there are a lot of bad podcasts out there. There are a lot of podcasts that are just so promotional. They're not providing useful content to the listener rather. They're just talking about how great the speaker is and how people should give the speaker money. No one wants to hear that. The other thing is it takes some discipline. Honestly, if I didn't have a good team that makes me do it sometimes, I love doing it, but just keeping my schedule, you know, and we've never missed an episode. But so many of them you see there, they'll go hot for a few months and then they get sporadic and then they stop and they may start again for one or two than another year goes by and they stop. So good content. Someone is actually thinking about how do I provide value to my listener rather than how to have value in myself and the willingness to be consistent and for that I really recommend record five or six episodes before you release one. And that's if you're doing like by a month like me, if you're going to do weekly, I'd probably say 10 or 15 episodes before you release the first one and then tried to always stay a few episodes ahead because. And you've seen the panic we have when we've got to find something real quick, you know, with our schedules, especially if you're a trial lawyer, I mean, I'm hopefully going to start a trial and we wait to see if we get reached out, but I'm hopefully about to start a two week plus trial. I mean, I'm not going to be stopping the record of podcast while I'm in trial. I need to get all that done in the can that way I can go think about being a trial lawyer and then come back and think about podcasting what I'm done. So I really do recommend you want to do this again, think of something you can do. Think of who your listener is what you can do to provide value to the listener. The value to you will come just through the law reciprocity. Don't worry about selling on your podcast. Provide value to the listener and then, you know, be consistent. You know, find a way to make sure those things are regularly going out because if someone expects it to come like mine, it's the 15th of the month and just like payday. And you know, we started skipping episodes people would stop looking for them. No, yeah, I mean, you're so right on there. Except for Mittnik, he gets away with it. He does a season and he stops and he doesn't know the season. I kind of like these Netflix, you know, series. All right, but I think also I mean, there's a model there too is people understand this is coming now and there will be more later. And I also don't think he's I don't think he's hurting for business. I don't think that's maybe his necessarily is angle. I think he's doing it for fun and to give back. I don't think he's doing it to build and it does help build his brand. But I think of course his brand is when your brand is that well built when you if you're you know, if you're Keith Mittnik, Mark linear, Rex Paris, you can do things different. But for those of us who are coming up through the ranks building our brand, he need to have that consistency. Yeah, I'll hammer on the one thing you said that I mean, all of it was spot on, but always be thinking about the listener. Why are they there? Because if you start wavering and start thinking about yourself a little too much, you're going to lose them. They're not there for an ad. People don't want they will suffer through an ad for good content, but they will not show up for you to talk about how great you are. What's in it for them? That's always the question I'm asking myself. I mean, that was the question I asked myself before I talk to you today. Yeah. What's in it for the listener of Michael show? Because that is who I want them to walk away feeling like they got as much value as I could provide them whether they ever hear from me again.
And you've done a really good job of not trying to sell law pods on this podcast and providing valuable content. And I appreciate it. I'm sure I'm sure listeners do, but if someone does decide, hey, I either want to hire or offer law pods, or I want to talk to you, just to add some questions, I want to learn more. How can people find you? Lawpods.com is the easiest way. And when I started the company, turns out I was kind of a born marketer. I just didn't know that that was the thing you could do. But I started out, I mean, law pods anywhere. If you type law pods in any search bar, you really should be able to find us. But I spend most of my social media time on LinkedIn these days, which if you told me that 10 years ago, I'd have been like, you're crazy. But feel free to connect with me there. I'd love that. And shoot me an email too. I'm always happy to chat.
[email protected]. And then you can set up a time and chat on our website if you want to chat, whether you want to talk about having a podcast, I'm always happy to come on your podcast. And that's L-A-W-P-O-D-S.com. And I will, like I said, I endorse you every every episode. I will pitch you. It made my life easier. It's a lot of fun to work with you and your nice human being. So if I have to give money to someone, I'd rather give money to someone I like than someone that is a pain in the ass. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed talking to you. To our listeners, a couple of things. We have our big rig bootcamp coming up. That is the annual seminar I do. San Antonio, Texas July 12th. The registration is open. Just go to bigrigbootcamp.com. We've been working really hard on the content already. It's going to be really special this year. We're going to do some really cool things. We've been trucking, for example. We bought a telematics program and put it on a truck and we're going to show you what the carriers can, what they see from their computer, how they can program it, all the things they can do to monitor and for safety through that. We're going to do some other really neat, unique things. We're going to announce more and more. But it's going to be exciting. It's going to be unique. Honestly, I think it's going to be stuff that you're not going to get at any other trucking program because honestly, it just takes a ton of time and work and when you're just given like a 30 minute seminar speech, you prepare for a 30 minute seminar speech, but we want to do something special, give incredible value and I really hope you come join us. So that being said, thank you for listening and join us next time on Trial Law and Nation. Thank you for joining us on Trial Law or Nation. I hope you enjoyed our show. If you'd like to receive updates, insider information and more from Trial Law or Nation, sign up for our mailing list at triallawordination.com. You could also visit our episodes page on the website for show notes and direct links to any resources in this or any past episode. To help more attorneys find our podcast, please like, share and subscribe to our podcast on any of our social media outlets. If you'd like access to exclusive, plan if lawyer-only content, and live monthly discussions with me, send a request to join the Trial Law or Nation Insider Circle Facebook group. Thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to having you with us next time on Trial Law or Nation. Each year, the law firm of Cowan Road Regas Peacock pays millions of dollars in co-counsel fees to attorneys nationwide on trucking and commercial vehicle cases. This podcast has been hosted by Michael Cowan and is not intended to nor doesn't create the attorney-client privilege between our host, guest, and any listener for any reason. Content from the podcast is not to be interpreted as legal advice. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are only those from which they came.
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