Mike Mandell - Principal Attorney at Mandell Law | The #1 Lawyer on Social Media

Today, my guest is Mike Mandel. You may have seen him on TikTok, but behind the scenes he's a lawyer, social media influencer, and founder of Mandel Law affirm the transforms the process of legal advocacy. He graduated from USC School of Communications in 2009 and Duke University School of Law in 2012. He has over eight years of experience in various areas of law, including personal injury, criminal defense, sexual abuse, and entertainment law. He is passionate about redefining the justice system and empowering his clients with unprecedented choice, unparalleled expert access and pioneering technology. He is also known as the number one lawyer on TikTok, where he's amassed over seven million followers by sharing legal advice and tips in an entertaining and informative way. He also has a strong presence on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, where he posts videos, podcasts, and testimonials about his work and life. He is on a mission to connect with a younger internet savvy audience and educate them about their legal rights and options. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. Quick shout out to HubSpot before we get started. HubSpot has an incredible tool called sales hub. If you haven't checked it out now, you got to why? Well, you know what time it is. It is sweater weather, football season, Q4. This is the home stretch for your business. It is time to close out another year of growth, another year of business building strong and to prep for the next year of more revenue, more customers, more deals. To bring in more business, this Q4 and beyond, you need sales software that helps you score and top tools are all inside the new HubSpot sales hub with the customizable prospecting workspace, smart deal management, and AI-powered apps. You can take total control of your sales operation and manage your people and your pipeline with ease. They've built it and designed it all into an accelerated workflow baked right into your HubSpot CRM. And when you pair sales hub, with other hubs like HubSpot smart CRM, your team will be on the same page across the entire customer journey. Leads don't slip through the cracks. Stop sticking to the same old strategies and start closing more deals because the best time to score is Q4. Make the switch to HubSpot sales hub at HubSpot.com slash sales. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely the most recent fork in the road, essentially, which was when I graduated Duke Law School went to go work for a big corporate law firm for nearly eight years, and my family had a law firm that, you know, you just don't go to a small little law firm like that after going to Duke Law. So I, you know, didn't go to my family's law firm, but eventually decided that, you know, what wanted to be closer to family would learn more from family, you know, people that really care and nurture. And so I went to my family's firm and that that was 2000, end of 2020. And that's when I could first start using social media to market. And I decided, you know, because before when I worked at a big law firm, it was too much red tape, too many permissions you had to ask for, you had to act a certain way, be a certain way, you couldn't do it, right? Basically. But with my family's firm, I had a little more leeway, although they still didn't want me to associate their firm with me. So, but I started doing it. And within a month posting on social media, I blew up and ended up leaving my family's firm after only two months of working there. And really took a, what my family thought was insane was, you know, decided to fully go into this social media, influencer, legal influencer thing that was happening, you know, this went from a million to two million, you know, within, you know, like 10 days and it just has kept growing. I think we're at 14 million now. But it was considered pretty crazy, you know, to go to law school, go through all all this work. And then, and then decided to be, you know, influencer in a sense. That's wild. So that's that was a pivotal change because I never thought my life was going to go on that track. And, but the moment I saw, you know, something special, like, you know, how often does something like this happen? I knew I had to jump on it. Whether I would be successful or fail, I had to take that risk because these opportunities don't happen that often. What made you, so when you were going through law school at Duke and you worked for a huge law firm and then you worked for your family's law firm, why did you, how did you have a mind for marketing? How did you think, oh, social is it? Because how many other lost, lost school students, you know, peers, classmates that you graduate with, all same age, all grew up a social. Now they're working for, you know, small, mid-larged law firms and no one's really doing this. So what made you like sort of the outlier? Well, I mean, I went to University Southern California where I majored in communications. So, you know, at that time, Facebook had just come out for university. USC was one of the schools that was added, you know, they expanded from Ivy leagues to additional colleges. And so there was no discussion in communications major about social media or the power of social media because it was literally brand new. But there was a lot of discussion about mass media marketing and things like that. And, you know, I really learned a lot about, you know, communications and things of that nature. So I went into law school knowing that. Also, just being aware of how much social media kept taking over our lives, you know, over the years from then when I graduated undergraduate school to now. But I think, you know, it's looking a lot of the lawyers that are in big law or mid-law firms, they don't have the ability, you know, to advertise themselves. There's still a thing with lawyers about having to look and present themselves a certain way and a concern that kind of steers them away from social media. But I can't say that after, you know, starting to post, I got a lot of copycats out there. There's a lot more lawyers out there now than there were when I first started. When I first started posting on TikTok in December of 2020, there was only one lawyer that had a million followers, maybe five or six lawyers that had like a decent following. And the lawyer with a million followers was just doing TikTok dances. So I saw an opportunity to, you know, educate people. And now that's not my passion, you know, is it's kind of gone from being this lawyer, you know, I used to think of successes, winning for my clients, you know, me, me, me, being the best lawyer I can, which is, you know, it's right just in its own way. But once I started using social media and getting people message, you mean saying, your tips helped me and all sorts of different scenarios that this educational educational tips have helped people. I felt a new purpose, you know, which was to really help everyone, you know, as much as I can because the law is not taught. You know, it's not taught. No, it's complicated. And you have the platform now. And now I am curious, so because all those big law firms, they have all these, they have this red tape in place for a reason. It's so that when you're marketing in an industry like law, you don't want something to be misconstrued or misunderstood. So that makes sense, that, you know, that that element of safety in your marketing, right, the same with like banks and finance and all these different heavily regulated, even like not heavily regulated, but very serious industries where something's misconstrued that could be disastrous and you can get in a lot of trouble. So, you know, it takes a lot of balls to do what you did because you're paving the way. You're doing, you're giving advice online. And, I mean, with with with online legal advice, that's a very scary thing to put out there. And like online financial advice, like people could misinterpret it. Oh, we refer to it as tips. So, you don't see a lot of lawyers will make it very clear, including myself that like it's tips and not advice. Because if we say advice, that puts us in a relationship with, you know, every single person watching it. So, it's just tips, you know, but yeah, there is, you know, a lot of works that goes into, you know, researching the words I'm using. I have, you know, I think more so than any other creator, I spend a lot of time scripting and making sure that I'm able to fit all this knowledge and make sure it's not inaccurate in something less than 60 seconds, which is an art and an end of itself, you know. But yeah, and financial people have to be just as careful, you know, and make sure that they're following the rules. When you have any profession, you follow those rules. No, no, of course. Now, this is something that I think a lot of small business owners, mid-sized business owners can learn from you. Even, I mean, even large organizations where I really believe a CEO or an executive should put themselves out there, you look at, you look at some companies like Duolingo. Like, Duolingo absolutely killed it, right, with their marketing, but a lot of companies don't. So, I think that if you are doing it in the legal profession, which is obviously like a stuffy old school, you know, quote unquote, boring category industry, then most other businesses could probably do this if they put themselves out there. What were the first things that you had to think of when you created your first, like, what was that first piece of content you created? Did it suck? I'm sure it wasn't great. Like, what was that thought process? Yeah, it sucked. It definitely sucked. But it was, if I can remember correctly, gosh, it was, it just was not filmed exciting. It was just spouting out the information. It was before I really, you know, the last three years I have essentially focused in on learning the algorithms, learning all these tricks, you know, through trial and error of social media. And there's really a formula to it when you, when you analyze enough people and enough things, you start to understand, especially with the short form content, which is what we use the most and what has been the greatest thing for getting leads in business is you start to notice the things that work and the things that don't. And in the beginning, there's a lot of things that don't. And now, you know, I feel like I know how to pump these things out. And, you know, we even have a course where we are teaching people from all different backgrounds, all different industries, this type of stuff, because it is a formulaic in some sense. There's a formula to follow, and there's the, the park of having to be yourself and create something different so that you stand out and you're not just a copycat. But within that is, is kind of the formula that you can see on all shorts. That's so interesting, because you, you do blend both, right? You blend your personality plus you blend industry specific knowledge. And in your opinion, you think it's like a 50, 50 split, or is one more important than the other? Like, could you, could you take somebody that has no personality, put them in front of a camera, and if they edit it the right way, can you make that person go viral? Yeah, I mean, we have students that we, you know, it's all about playing into your characteristics. I have students that, you know, said, I want to be like this person. And that's just not who their personality is. And they said, I can act like them. No, we don't want you doing that. You know, play, if you're soft spoken, then be soft spoken. You know, talk, you talk lighter, you give your value differently. The key is to give value, right? And we talk about value as being to educate, inspire, entertain. And if you can do one of those, then you're probably going to have some successful content. If you can do a combination of those are all three of them, you're increasing your chances of that content being viral. And so with, with my content, you'll see a lot like, it's obviously educational, but we tried it and put in that entertainment value as well. And that's why they tend to do better than, you know, everyone else out. And, and, you know, when you first started going viral, because even the way you grew is like phenomenal, right? Many people don't grow to the size that you're at in, in 10 plus years of creating content. So what do you think the, because obviously you have a little bit of a formula, but now you now you know what works and what doesn't. So, you know, hindsight's 2020, when you're looking back outside of the editing, because I, you know, you look at your clips. And if anybody has not looked into your content or doesn't follow you on TikTok, like please go, obviously, you know, check out like a lot by Mike, Mike Mandel, but you have to see the way you edit. Very quick, very, you jump from scene to scene, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really, it's really captivating. It keeps you, it keeps you, you know, it keeps you paying attention. But outside of that, it's obviously educational. Is there, is there certain topics that are like more emotional, that drive more engagement or what's the outside of the quick edits and the, and the, and the, and the helpful topics, like what else is it that makes it truly viral? Yeah, I mean, look, we have our style, which from the beginning has been, you know, edited a certain way. I can tell you who looking back on it, you know, I, it's created more work for, for me, because there's a standard that we have to always put out. But there's other creators out there, other lawyers, other people in different industries that simply put up a green screen and, you know, talk to themselves. There's, and they get views. There's ways of doing it without having to do this crazy editing. That's just our style, which is, you know, why I say you want to create your own style in something that fits within your framework. But I believe you said the, the question was, well, it was like, I say, asking again, so you have like the, you have this great editing, but you also have the, the helpful content. Is there anything else like the certain type of topics that are more emotionally charging than others? Yeah, good topics. Yeah, the, the topics, you want to think about things no matter what your industry is from a standpoint of what would be useful for someone that they can act on right now. The, the concept that we use that helps drive business and get leads and clients is that we're not directly selling to people. We're not saying go call me, you know, do this by this. No, we're just giving value. And then people come, right? It's, it's kind of like the, the velvet hammer we like to call it. You just kind of lightly tapping people on the head. And then, you know, when something bigger comes up, they'll be, that person gave me all these good tips. You know, they gave me all these good tips that I can use. And I was able to use them right away. But now I got this big issue. Then I need, I need the real estate agent for that or I need the tax guy CPA for that, you know, whatever it is. That's what you want. And then the, you know, the alternate to the velvet hammer is the real hammer. And if you hit someone over the head with a real hammer, it hurts, right? So it's not, it's not a good outcome. So that's the, that's the kind of concept there. And so, you know, I give examples like if you're a bankruptcy lawyer, like you could be boring and talk about new bankruptcy laws. No one cares about that. No one can act on that, right? But if you say, hey, this is how you can increase your credit score or these are some tips to help pay off your debt, you know, still related to bankruptcies, but at the same time, real value that people can use right then and there. And then if they do go bankrupt, because, you know, who they're going to call, right? But hopefully your tips help them. I was going to just ask like just on that point, like lawyers. Okay. So I always hear personal injury lawyers. I always hear personal injury lawyers on like radios and whatnot. And it seems like these are like the most archaic marketing strategies in the world. And they always have a jingle. And it's always like, and I don't know why lawyers do that. And it's not a solid. I mean, like if you go to a big law firm, you'll probably, if you, if you go to their website, it'll probably be retargeted with paid ads and a much more complex strategy. But some lawyers, yeah, just use the most old school marketing tactics. Well, the thing is, is that those marketing tactics do work, right? They, they still work the radio ads, the billboards. I mean, I can, I'm here in LA and I can drive down the street. And it's almost like the lawyers put the billboards on the same side of the street or facing each other. Like you have a billboard there. I'm going to have one here against you. Like it's just crazy. But the thing that the old school way of advertising is old school for a reason. And that's because, you know, you can put out television advertisements, radio advertisements, billboards. It's a one way street. It says, Hey, call me. Hey, do this, right? But with social media, you're creating a two way street. You're, you're putting out content of value, but also opening up dialogue. You have the opportunity to talk with someone who goes, I don't understand this, or I want to learn more information. You don't get that, you know, the same way with, with a billboard. You're, you're literally just shouting at the person, right? So that's the thing that, you know, when it comes to small businesses, midsize businesses, if you don't have a huge marketing budget, the key is to be using social media. You know, I, all social media costs is your time, right? You just need an iPhone. You know, we teach this in our course as well. Like all you need is an iPhone in some time. That's what I started out on. You know, verse, you want to do radio ads, you want to do paid advertising online, you want to do any of that stuff that's not organic, you got to have a big bankroll for that, you know? So this is the easiest way to get, you know, the outcome you want without having to spend the money. Yeah. And another thing too that I think you're a really great example of because social media is great at taking very complex issues and simplifying them. And I think if we're talking to business owners that are sort of on the fence about putting themselves out there, they're trying to figure out, well, you know, all I need is time and an iPhone, but my time has, you know, a cost associated with it. And if I'm going to spend time filming, what else could I be spending on for my business? But when you, when you think about the ability that you have to take complex issues and simplify them and educate an audience, I think that business owners should understand that they actually, they actually can simplify some of the more complex topics that they, they know inside and out because to their target audience, depending on the complexity of the audience or the potential customer, but to their audience, they may not need to know it at the same level as a business owner. So business owners are going to get inside their own head and they're going to say, well, how can I possibly talk about whatever product or service in its entirety in 30 to 60, like that's not what you're doing at all, at all, at all. And it's not what people want. And you know, there's, this goes back to that point I was making that, you know, you want to provide value to people, something that they can act on now. You know, if it's, if you're getting too much into the weeds, you know, that's the type of thing they should be calling you for, right? You know, my, to give an example with the legal content, it's like, you know, hey, you don't have to answer the cops questions and vote the fifth. I mean, that's simple, quick tips that again, they don't teach you in school, right? But it's, it's a very quick way and simple way of explaining a right you have. Of course, there's all these different exceptions and things and, you know, all, all different things with that. And that's, you know, maybe a different video. Talk about those. But I think there's no matter what your industry is, there's a way to present things in a simple way. And we, you know, we have different ways that we think about topic ideation, whether it be, you know, visually showing someone like you, you had in the act of doing something first, giving insider tips, you know, kind of like my content first, you know, answering frequently asked questions or questions that people are constantly googling that they don't understand like the basics. There's just so many different ways of presenting stuff that, you know, you can really figure out a way to connect with your audience by doing it correctly. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about the time investment as well, because people are trying to figure out, is it, is it worth my time? So when somebody sort of gets on the social media train and, and social media content, you know, it lasts for 30 seconds and then the consumer is on to something else like they scroll through it, they watch it, they scroll through it. And it does take a lot of exposure to a particular person or a business or a certain brand before somebody starts to remember them and it starts to, you know, really resonate so that when they have a legal issue, they think of Mike that's going to take a couple pieces of content over a period of time. So the business owners like, well, okay, how much time do I actually have to put out two, three, four, five, six plus pieces of content per week? And I have all these different platforms after worry about. So what's the, what's the strategy for somebody who just wants to start? Doesn't have tons of time wants to show up in front of an audience again and again, because I know that one piece is really not going to make a big difference. It has some sort of sort of predictable strategy and, and, and schedule, right? So how do you, how do you get them just started with some sort of content schedule? Yeah, we, we talk about this in our course, you know, the bare minimum that I would like to see someone post is, is once a week, you know, for probably more like twice a week. But, you know, we, we organize stuff and we, we explain this in our course. It's about blocking and, and putting tasks together where we essentially say that if you can devote, you know, four hours a week, you can get two videos done. And when it comes to the posting of, and that's, I'm talking about that's from topic ideation, scripting, editing and filming, assuming you're doing all of that. You know, there's, depending on your funding and what you have available, you can outsource certain things and make it easier on you. But that's what we, we've, have figured out. And the idea is to constantly post the same time every day, same time each week on that day. You want to think of your content like a TV show. If people are, are used to watching their favorite TV show Sunday evening and all of a sudden you start posting Wednesdays or take a week off and then post three weeks later, no one can get any consistency there. So it's about figuring out what you can handle. And if that's once a week, fine, you know, start there and then build into more if you need to. And as far as the scheduling for different platforms, it's actually easier than you think. There's a lot of different what they call Omni tools out there where you can upload a single video. And then it can auto post to, you know, all the platforms. You certainly want to take advantage of all the platforms. The good news is with short form content, which is why I love it so much. You create one piece of content, you know, under 60 seconds. It's going to go on TikTok, YouTube shorts, Facebook, and Instagram. That's four platforms. You know, you just quadrupled the amount of people that would be looking at this because it's on four different platforms. And, you know, I think it's, it's just the easiest way to, you know, really take advantage of the time you put into that one content. As far as, you know, the the time commitment you're saying that people that it takes a while, right, they have to constantly see your face. I think there's some truth to that, but there's also, you know, in my experience, I'll put out a post on a certain topic and sometimes someone just calls me right away because it's on that topic. So sometimes it's it's it is because you're talking about something that someone is going through that issue right now or has that that kind of, you know, problem they need solved or looking for whatever product it is, whatever it may be. But the key is is the consistency of putting out the post engaging with your audience, building a community. And if you have a community of like even even if it's only like 100 people, but they like love your brand, that is better than any advertising will ever give you because these people also go out, I've gotten referrals and and clients from people that found me online, but now through word of mouth told someone else who's never seen me online. So as now it's going like at different level, you know, so there's it's just a if you're not taking advantage of this, it's 2023. You got it to do it. You got to do it. It's like, yeah, I know, I know, I know, and I know where I mean, we're both believers in this. I mean, we're creating content non-stop. I mean, I so I took a different approach and I'm actually curious about your opinion on this. So I thought when I first started this podcast, for complicated issues, it would make sense to do long form. That way you can have a conversation about it. You can get into nuances and context. And you took the opposite approach. You went super short form and you kicked ass. By the way, like you you have much larger following. So I know that I have to focus more on short form stuff, but I'm wondering if you know, maybe it's the comfort level of the person with the medium as well. Because some people like to write, some people like to have casual conversation on long form podcasts and people don't mind dabbling in the editing and they they they mess around with like short form editing. So do you think that there is a certain type like I mean, I guess it would just be the platforms that have the best chance of going viral. If you can manage, because I want those, that's the best opportunity. Yeah. So it's we our course focuses on short form content for a reason because it is the fastest way to grow. There's nothing wrong with doing the long form content that you're doing. But you will never even if it's as good as you know, the best content ever will never grow as fast as how short form content grows. And the reason behind that is, you know, when it used to be only at Instagram, Facebook, in YouTube, TikTok comes in and TikTok's algorithm essentially revolutionized everything. It was all sudden of one any one video someone could become famous, right viral sensation. And that didn't exist before with Instagram. You had to build following over years and years and same thing with Facebook and YouTube. And so that's what got so many people attracted to TikTok because they each video is taken separately. You know, if you have a larger following on TikTok, yeah, I will get more initial views. But essentially, each video is determined how how long are people watching it? And that's, you know, it will go viral. And so once that happened with TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, in YouTube, sorry, going, oh, crap, everyone's taking everyone's going to TikTok and taking away our views. So then they all created their own versions of it, which all do the same thing, which lead to more more eyeballs quicker than has ever been before before TikTok showed up. More eyeballs seen it, faster growth. And you know, because the platforms are competing, they are kind of pushing this content out more than any other content. So it really is like the prime time to be taking advantage of it. And with your, you know, what you're doing, you know, you just, you can do long foreign content and cut it up into shorts. No, you just got to get good at it. Exactly. And that's the way you do it. And you'll see a lot of that, you know, online. I'm still, my preference still is to create specific short form content because I know it does better, but you can still create good content doing long forming and making it into shorts. Yeah. And also, you know, I think that another thing that is very important for business owners that are trying to start to create content, if they haven't already, like, to your point, you're answering questions that people care about. So this will allow to monetize quicker. So if you are creating that very specific content for a short form platform, like TikTok, Reels, YouTube, whatever, I mean, I know they even have like Snapchat spotlights, which I don't mess around with, but I know that's a thing. If you're answering these very specific questions that the buyer could have, then that's going to turn into a lead much quicker than just a brand play, giving very, you know, ambiguous, almost general information that maybe isn't so specified. Or if, for example, I cut a 30 second clip out of this, well, you know, that's great. It could, it could go viral, but it may not. It may be like a very, you know, part of a conversation. It's not the most useful thing to somebody. It's a nice thing to listen to, but it's really not going to drive a point home like if I scripted out a 30 to 60 second show, right? It's a little bit different. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's why we focus with our students so much on the scripting, coming up with the topic ideas. We have what we call the heartbeat method, and it's an acronym where each letter stands for a different thing that you can go down the list, and, you know, figure out a topic idea. Like you never run out of topic ideas on it. And the, and then with the scripting, it's, it's really, you know, get all the information down, then you, then you want to make it shorter, make it shorter. And then when we teach all of that, you know, but it is starting from, you know, the value, then then getting it down, you know, it's a different process than a podcast like this, where we're just talking, and you don't have that straightforward, you know, like almost like beginning, middle end, which you would have with a script. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like if you, if you've, you know, Mr. Beast, when he makes long foreign content, he starts with a title. And then, and then from the title creates the content. It's kind of a similar process. Start with the value and then create the content. When you're doing podcasts, you know, they just don't work in that way. And that's not to say that you can't get a viral clip in there, but there's just a different methodology when we're doing it with short. And, and then you mentioned as well, like this was a great lead gen tool for you. So obviously, you start putting your content, um, leads start coming in. Let's talk about monetization, because I think sometimes when you're building an audience, people think, okay, so how do I actually make money out of this? Again, it all ties back to the time investing from the business owner. So one of this is actually going to turn into leads. So if we, if we sort of, you know, agreed on the fact that if the content is answering questions, eventually they will turn into leads. But, you know, the business owner is going to try and get that content, turn into leads as quick as possible. How do you balance the monetization of the content and not being too salesy and, but still getting that end result? Yeah. I think, you know, from time to time, depending on your industry, um, you can, you know, ask people to reach out. The, the reason why I say depending on your industry is as a lawyer, if, if I say something like, call me, uh, it becomes an advertisement and there's all these disclosure requirements and things you need to do if you're, if you're asking people to contact you versus just giving tips out. Um, but depending on what your niche and, and industry is, you may not have those restrictions, uh, this still, you know, you don't want to, uh, go overboard with telling people to reach out to you, um, you know, you can say DM me for more information, things like that. But if you're doing it too much, then you become a sales pitch, right? Uh, but with the monetization, you know, we, within our program, we, you know, we have automation, uh, I have a chatbot I use, um, that, you know, answer like at least figures out what people want when they DM me. Um, and, uh, you know, there's, there's ways to make life easier when it comes to, how do you take viewers to, to, uh, to actual customers and clients? Um, and so, uh, I think, you know, that, those type of tools have been incredibly useful for me, uh, because it, it's nearly impossible for me to read and answer every single DM I get nowadays. Uh, but the, the bot, you know, is able to collect, uh, you know, contact information, figure out what they're inquiries about and then send it to the right person. Um, and so that's, you know, a, a credibly time-saving thing. Um, and I think, uh, you know, when you're first starting out, you really just want to make sure that you, you may not need that, uh, eat, or, uh, let me strike that. When you're first starting out, your focus should be on building that community, uh, because you might, you may not get someone reaching out right away, but you're building your brand presence, you know, and it's, uh, yeah, it's a time commitment, but like we said, you know, two to four hours a week, I mean, come on, you can, you can make that time. Um, and I can promise you, you know, the, the money that you have to spend on ads is not going to build a community because they are only seeing the ads and not like coming back your page. Yeah. So, you know, you're paying per, per, you know, view, and that's it. And, and maybe someone clicks on it because they have, uh, that concern or issue, but in general, uh, you're not adding to your brand and building your brand and, and, you know, you keep doing this for one, two years. Now your community's bigger and bigger and bigger and, um, things keep going. But, you know, from when I started doing this, um, you know, I instantly started getting, uh, messages, uh, you know, and I think, uh, everyone has that ability. It's just putting out consistent content. We're just going to take a quick break. Thank the long time friend and sponsor of the show, the HubSpot podcast network. They have incredible podcasts. One of my favorites, one you have to check out this month is Nudge hosted by Phil Agnew. Now, if you've ever noticed, the smallest changes always seem to have the biggest impact on Nudge. You learn simple evidence back tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, grow a business. The point is every bite-sized 20-minute show comes packed with practical advice from these incredible entrepreneurs, behavioral scientists, and everybody in between. Nudge is fast paced, but very insightful and a must listen if you're a podcast fan. Make sure you listen and nudge wherever you love to get your podcasts. When, when you talk about like the success metrics that you track, obviously, leads and revenues, a great success metric, but that's a lagging indicator, right? Somebody's putting out content and they're starting to build. This is sort of like the, I want to get people off the ground. That's really the goal. It's like to get people from zero to one, and not everything goes viral, and they put out some content, and it's not going viral, but it's not missing. It's just not going viral. What are those success KPIs that they should look for? What is there tools that you use? Is there, if it gets a couple of likes and a comment, what is the thing that you look for in good content if it's not going viral? Obviously, viral is the best option, but not everyone gets it right away. I like to look at bad content as well because you can learn a lot from your bad content, too, but there's certain metrics that are really important. On TikTok and YouTube, you can see retention graphs, which show how long were people watching, and then when did they drop off? That's pretty important to understand what part of your video did you lose people? Did you talk for too long? Did your hook suck, and they people just dropped off right away? Those little things you want to analyze, what's working? How can I say this video better if I was to do it again based off the retention graph? There's other metrics to consider that, honestly, one of the least important things is the amount of views, although that's what everyone just focuses on. But really, you want to look at comments, shares, saves. There's a strategy involved for all of those. Whether you're asking, talking about a topic that is debatable and controversial, you may get more comments. If it's something very useful, people will save it or share it. Depending on what your goal is, whether it's to communicate more with your community, build a more loyal community, or just to have your videos out there that people are saving because they're so useful and then they come back to it later, that kind of can guide your strategy as to what type of content as well. But you just want to take note of what's working, what's not working, looking at the retention graphs. I would say are definitely the most important parts. I was looking over a lot of your content, obviously, before this show. Obviously, you have the very helpful content. That's sort of evergreen. A lot of that stuff is evergreen. But then you also have commentary on trending stories and topics that you know a lot about or you can comment on because of your legal training and whatnot in your schooling. What do you think? Is it a mix of both? Do you think you should do one more than the other? Is it more helpful? More trending? What works better? Well, I mean, for it depends on the person, what they feel comfortable talking about, obviously, right? When I was talking about the heartbeat method and the different topic ideas, just to give you a quick preview, H stands for history, E stands for explain, and one of the things T, the T and it stands for trending. These are all different ideas that you can come up with in trending being current events. Current events are something to tap into as long as you feel comfortable talking about it, but also you have to be able to provide something with it, whether it's explaining it so people understand it better, because it relates to your niche, putting your opinion towards it, or because it relates to your niche, explaining it to people who may not understand it related to your niche as much. As you can tell, I'm not putting out videos about soccer, leagues, and stuff like that. It doesn't mesh with what I'm doing, but anything about legal lawsuits or current events when the Johnny Depp thing was going on, those things are a good idea to hop on if you can provide something, some input on it, and because if something is trending, it's going to be pushed out more because people are looking at it more at that time, but it doesn't say evergreen, that's the trade-off. It's not going to be looked at for ages, but it will have a higher chance of probably going viral or getting more views at that moment. You mentioned as well, there's an ability for anybody, regardless of personality, to put themselves out there, and you really work with all types of individuals, but are there any drawbacks to putting yourself out there? It's a leading question, of course, there are, but I am curious about your particular experience is putting yourself out there, and just to sort of have a real discussion with somebody who's thinking about doing this, not to scare them or dissuade them, but to help them understand that if it works, it really works, and you have to be aware of putting your face out there, and I mean, whatever, 14 million people, you get recognized, you obviously get recognized as you're walking around, and it's great sometimes, and I'm sure it's not great a lot of other times, so what is your experience been as you get this massive amount of following in such a short period of time? I mean, I haven't had any bad experiences, you know, just asked to take photographs, like at weird times, but a lot of our students have that fear of being on camera, fear of social media and putting themselves out there. You know, the first thing we talk about with them is, you know, you have to, you'll get more comfortable with the camera as you go, if you watch my very old videos, I'm not the same person, it took a while to get, you know, more use to and comfortable with it, and then the fear of, you know, social media, you know, some people are like, well, what about if people say negative comments, you know, it's social media, there's trolls out there, they're going to say negative stuff. At the end of the day, if you're putting out value, and you're going to see positive results, and you're going to hear from the people that you are helping, and if someone comes in and says something bad or comments on how you look, you know, just ignore it, you know, it's part of social media, you know, there's, if you're really against, you know, being on camera, you can maybe hire an actor to represent your brand, but without a doubt, there needs to be a face for this type of short form content, there needs to be a face representing the brand, because people relate to people, not to, not to an object. So that's, that's kind of the key to it, but for anyone just starting out, you know, just stick with it, don't get discouraged, and things will become more natural as you keep going, and, you know, haters gonna hate. It's also, it's also, you know, I think those, those are great, you know, words of wisdom for somebody who's just starting, because again, your success is incredible, and well-deserved, and obviously you've really leaned into being on camera, but it's not like it's hasn't been like a learning curve for you, but still the amount of followers in a short period of time is incredible. Not everybody is going to get 14 million followers in two to three years, but to your point, if you're selling a product or service, you don't need 14 million people to make a shitload of money off social media if you have a great community of people that can buy your product or service. You need a couple thousand at most in all seriousness, and that could be a huge net positive for your business. So I don't think, like, you are a special example of what could happen, but it is not what needs to happen at all. Yeah, I mean, we out to one of our students get from zero to 60,000 followers. Also, people lose sight of like, how many people that actually is. Like, if you saw 60,000 people in a room, like, that'd be a big-ass audience. Yeah, and he gets a lot of business from it. So, you know, it doesn't have to be the numbers that you see, you know, with me, but our courses, you know, basically about, we take students that we believe we can get them a million views in a hundred days. So that's kind of, you know, our goal with all of these things is just get your content out there. But again, don't get caught up on the numbers. It's more important to get caught up on creating a good community, because what is it the business that says like relationships are something like it's something like business is based on relationships or something like that, right? You know, it's one thing to get a view. It's another thing to create a connection. But you can only create that connection by putting out this content, right? And then engaging with people. And, you know, that's how you do it, because that's how you make a last scene bond with people that come back, you know. And when you, and, you know, well, obviously, we'll drop the link to the course and what you're basically building now in the show notes. But just so that people understand, if people actually did want to work with you and and work with your course, the way you set it up, they don't need to hire an editor. They don't need to outsource like day, day zero is just them in a phone, right? Because I know there's, you know, you can go on upwork or fiverr or you can spend a lot more money building out a little team or finding somebody to hire. But right now you're teaching somebody phone record at it. Yeah. Yeah. Our course, we wanted to make essentially like a masterclass, right? When it comes to creating organic social media content. And so it starts off with, you know, defining, defining your brand, defining your ideal audience, then we get into, you know, the basics like what you, what equipment you need, which is essentially your phone. And then the topic idea is the scripting. We teach you how to edit on cat like we actually teach you how to edit on two different types of software. One is more advanced, which is, you know, final cut and that type stuff. But the easy one is cap cut, which anyone and my mom could do it. You know, it can use and we teach how to edit on that. And then, you know, all the techniques for posting and, you know, maximizing your videos through hashtags and titles and then finally, you know, analyzing the analytics. But it is, you know, it's something that one person can do. We even teach you how to film as if, you know, we show you how to do it. If you're one person, how to do transitions, show you how to do it. If you're two people, show you how to film, you know, different ways. If you're all you have is you in a tripod, or if you can get, you know, a family member to help you out, you know, whatever it may be, we wanted to make sure that we had something that would take someone from A to Z who doesn't really understand social media, who doesn't have editing or or filming experience. But still teach them how to do all this. I love that. If you had to, if you had to do one thing differently when you were starting to post, starting to create content after all that you've learned, what was that one thing that had the biggest impact? One thing differently. Let's see. It's tough at the tough question because the success is like the endless iteration of a thousand different things. But I'm putting you on the spot and I'm forcing you to try and think of one, what take away? I think, hold on, let me think of this for a second. There's just so many different things I could say. I think, I mean, when there's, I guess there's a couple of things. When I first started out like on TikTok, I was also posting on Instagram, but I tried posting the YouTube shorts in the beginning and didn't see success right away. Like I had seen on on TikTok, you know, within two months. So I stopped posting on YouTube shorts and didn't return back till a friend of mine was talking about how they were growing so much. So I decided to go back to do it eight months later. Now we're at 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube. But, you know, I gave up too early, right? And I think that goes back to the point for everyone that don't get discouraged. You know, you got to keep putting the content out. If you feel good about what you're putting out, then you'll care less about the results and just know that you're putting out something good. It will come eventually. Like I said, the algorithms are set to find people that will like your content, right? So as long as you're not putting out trash, you know, it's going to find the people that are right for it. It just takes a little time. I think that's, you know, one of the things I wish I would have done differently, but also the other thing being really, I think in the beginning, I didn't have a good schedule for making this content. It was like, it was constantly like, just going to put out a video. I got a video like video. And it was like manic. And over time, I developed like, okay, this is my scripting day. This is my filming day. This is when it's editing. This is when I plan, you know, and it just changed everything, you know, and made this into a machine. But before in the beginning, it was like, it was crazy, you know, and it was something that when what we were doing, we were trying to post a lot. So it was, you know, it was crazy not to have good organization there. And just another tip to throw out there for everyone. If you're just starting or haven't started yet, one thing that will make your life easier is to build an inventory before you start posting. Once you start posting, you'll want to keep posting like I was saying, the same cadence, you know, once a week or twice a week, whatever. But if you haven't really started yet or just going to start, you can build up 10 videos. And then, you know, you just got 10 weeks done. And now you don't have to stress. You know, don't put yourself what I went through. So that's kind of, you know, I guess the two things that I would have done differently is, you know, being more, you know, willing to consistently post and try things out when they weren't working on YouTube shorts, which applies to any platform, you know, keep going with it and also making sure that you are organized in doing this, no matter what amount of content you're trying to put out of those systems, those systems can make or break you. And those systems can be, yeah. Well, it's because, you know, most people try and do this on top of their day job or on top of running their business, right? So if you don't have those systems locked down, that's where people fall off because they don't, and it's silly because people build systems in every other part of the life. They have their morning routines, they have their gym routines, they have their business routines, they have their work routines, but they think, oh, I'll just ad hoc create stuff to post. And it doesn't, I mean, you'll get two, three, four, whatever thing you're like, oh my god, this is too much work. So, and I think that exactly, that 10 piece tip is almost like forcing somebody to block, create batch, create content before they even start. Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly it, you know, get yourself some padding and then, you know, we, it's important to put down time slots for whatever the task may be, um, in your calendar, like you do everything else, to keep yourself on track and organized. If people want to, okay, so I love this and I want to, I want to give you a second to drop some of your handles. If people some reason have not seen you yet or haven't followed you, where should they go? But also, where should people go to reach out about the course? Where should people go to reach out to you? Like, where do you want to send people if they want to connect? Yeah, um, if, if you haven't seen my social media, you can go to Facebook, YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, at law by Mike. So same, same name across all the platforms. If you are interested in our course, I think you're going to drop the QR code on, on this, right? But it's just impact and influence. Dot net, our, our course is called impact and influence. We, we actually just want an award for it. So, um, that's how you can access the course. And then, if you have, if you want to reach out to me about the course in any way, you can email Mike at impact and influence.net. Awesome. And okay, last question I asked everyone. So obviously, you've had like many seasons to your life and your career. I mean, between law school to big law, to family law, to now social media and whatnot. So it's been a lot of different, it's been a lot of different things. But at this point in your life, what does success mean to you? Yeah, I think this kind of goes back to what I was saying. And the beginning where, you know, my mindset as someone coming out of due law school as being a lawyer was success as being the best lawyer, winning the cases, learning, you know, how to be the best, what I was, you know, becoming was the, you know, trial lawyer, right? Becoming the best, you know, trial lawyer, speaking, you know, to jurors, convincing them, et cetera, and winning cases. But because of this fork in the road that happened with social media, I saw a change, which was helping people who reach out, seeing how my, my content, you know, is changing lives and for the better and educating people about things they don't know so that they know their rights when they're pulled over by the cops. They know, you know, they're better equipped to handle the legal system. That was the definition of success for me, the more people I can help. And, you know, by putting out this information that is essentially under lock and key, you know, unless you go to law school, you know this, or you find out way too late when you're, you know, in court, whether you've been arrested or you're fighting your neighbor, you find out things way too late. Why don't we know this stuff beforehand? So that's my mission, you know, is to teach this to everyone and we kind of like to relate, you know, our brand to like a Bill Nye of law, right? Just trying to, to kind of spread that knowledge, you know, and it's fun for me. I have a great time doing it and helping people in that success, you know, making an impact.