Robert Ingalls is a trailblazing entrepreneur, recovering attorney, and the visionary founder of LawPods, one of the pioneering podcast marketing agencies specifically tailored for law firms. After confronting the immense pressures of legal practice that jeopardized both his career and mental health, Robert made the bold decision to exchange the courtroom for the entrepreneurial world. What began as a humble podcasting hobby in his spare bedroom evolved into a thriving marketing agency that now serves some of the most prominent law firms in the industry.
Robert’s journey is a testament to resilience and innovation, showcasing his ability to turn passion into a profession. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, beloved daughters, and an ever-growing collection of microphones and skateboards. Through his work at LawPods, Robert not only assists law firms in harnessing the power of podcasting to reach broader audiences but also shares his story and expertise at conferences, inspiring others to find balance and purpose in their professional lives.
Robert is now a sought-after speaker, known for his engaging and insightful talks that resonate with audiences ranging from small boardrooms to large conferences. His unique blend of legal experience and marketing acumen provides valuable insights for law firms looking to expand their reach and impact in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
LINKS:
- LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertingalls
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lawpods
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawpods
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawpods
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Interview Transcript
Casey
Hello everyone and welcome to the Lawyer Mastermind podcast Today I’m excited to welcome Robert Ingalls father of Law pods, a pioneering podcast marketing agency for law firms. Robert, thanks for joining us today.
Robert
Hey, it’s my pleasure.
Casey
Well, Robert, it seems like nowadays everybody on social media like this podcast content, kind of what we’re doing exactly right now, you see a lot of it out there, but I don’t see a ton of attorneys doing it yet. I talk to attorneys every day who struggle with their marketing. So can we start off with just the most basic of questions and what’s the importance of having a podcast for law firms and law firm owners?
Robert
Well, I think it starts with the question of why would you do it? What do you need? Because that really is the beginning of it is what are you looking to accomplish? Because sometimes you’re driving a lot of referrals, sometimes you have an SEO strategy that is dumping a lot of leads, or you have a lead gen agency. And so figuring out what you’re doing and how a podcast could help because not all podcasts are created equal. There’s a lot of different reasons for doing one, and I think the biggest misconception I see is attorneys will think, okay, I need a podcast that people would listen to generally just about Poughkeepsie. This is the Poughkeepsie podcast and we’re going to make stuff about town and it’s going to be interesting and we’re funny. People will listen and then when they need an attorney, they will know that we are also attorneys.
And I don’t hate that model, but I have zero clients at this moment doing that model. And the reason is that’s a really long play a, it’s hard because when you have the Poughkeepsie podcast, you are now asking for entertainment time. You’re asking for time that people use where they can be. Let’s say we’re not even competing with Netflix. Let’s just say we’re on the lawnmower, we’re at the gym, we’re driving, we have to listen to something. We’re competing with Joe Rogan, we’re competing with the New York Times and Brene Brown and all the people that are making content in the entire world. And that is a really tough market to compete in. And I tell people, if you can compete in that market, you should go to that market and stop practicing law. And so while most people are doing it is to convert leads or attract leads or educate referral sources, that will send us more leads. And so it’s thinking about what we’re trying to accomplish and then why would we do the podcast? What do we want from it? That’s really the first step.
Casey
Sure, that makes sense. And I really like that you started with the why because we talk to attorneys every day who think they might need SEO or they might need something they haven’t really clearly defined what that goal is, what that outcome they actually need is.
Robert
I need money.
Casey
Yeah, exactly. And that’s what it is kind of at the end of the day, a lot of these people, can you give us some examples of your clients, for example, their wises?
Robert
Sure. So I have a personal injury firm in the Tampa area, and they’ve been around for years. They’ve created a solid brand for themselves and they wanted something that would help them speak immediately to issues that were popping up. These when lawsuits are coming up, if Suboxone’s a good example, these things are happening. People want information. They wanted an easy way to directly and within days get this information to people, but they were getting a lot of leads driving. They created a lead driving mechanism where they’re getting a ton of SEO leads, a ton of referrals, and they were looking for ways to convert those leads at a higher clip. And we know content does that. People drop onto our website, they find that they get answers to our questions and historically written content that was doing that and video content and audio was something people hadn’t really gotten into.
But it’s one of the reason audio has grown so much is because it does in the marketing world, it does what no other form of marketing can do. It sells you time. It doesn’t make you stop what you’re doing to get your information. It says, what are you doing and I’m going to come with you. And so now they’ve taken advantage of that and they’ve created this FAQ catalog of content. They know exactly what their prospects want to know. They know the pain points they’re experiencing right now and they’re making small pieces of content that speak directly to that. They have a little bit of personality in it. They let ’em know, Hey, this is who we are. They make ’em feel better about the bad thing and then they get to know them and that drives up the conversions and that’s the FAQ model. And a lot of firms use that as a way to speak directly to pain points and nurture that lead, if you will.
Casey
I think you make a good point there. There’s a lot of different types of marketing, maybe with more SEO type stuff. They have done some research and they’ve already maybe decided, Hey, this is the firm I want to hire before they do that. Now if it’s an ad or something like that or they find you a different way and they know nothing about you, we know that people want to work with people they know or trust. And so you’re using this as a way to kind of get in front of people and show that expertise. Is that right?
Robert
Yeah, show that expertise and show ’em a little who you are. Your sense of humor comes out a little bit on there. I found on podcast after the first couple of episodes, you’ve probably found the same thing. You just throw in your headphones, you sit down in front of your computer and there’s not that same pressure of you’re sitting in your chair over in the middle of the office and they’ve set up a camera and they’ve got the lights and you go, okay, alright, I can do this. And you put on your video voice and that’s hard for people. And when they sit down at their desk, they’re in their spot that they understand that it’s not a whole big production. They plug their mic in and they’re just talking. So they get comfortable really fast and that comfort comes through. That’s what we want.
We want people to listen. We want ’em to feel better about the bad thing, but we want to be relatable. We want them to hear us and think, that’s the lady I want to work with. That’s who I want. And I tell people frequently, not that you need to delve into your personal life, but little anecdotes. We had an early tea time or whatever. Whatever is going on in your life, feel free to mention little things about it because that makes you relatable. You’re not just this person on a billboard, and I’m not hating on billboards because they’re part of a great marketing strategy if it works for you, but you’re not just this person counting your money at your third mansion. You’re someone who has kids and a life and you’re someone that they think that’s a person I could work with. The example I had in Florida, I have the client in Florida says, fuck a lot.
And when I first started working with him, we reached out and we were like, do you want us to beep these or cut these? And he was like, fuck no. He’s like, that’s who I am. He said, if somebody is not going to hire me based on this, they’re never going to make it through working with me. And I love that because he brings his whole self to it because he’s going to have a personal relationship with these people. They’re going to work together for perhaps years and they need to understand this is my person, this is someone that I want to go on this journey with.
Casey
And that’s the problem. Let’s start with the law firm websites. What came first to my mind here, they all look the same. Nobody is standing out. It’s like, Hey, let me wear our suit. Let’s take the picture in front of the courthouse. My I’m all my books the same. My books, yeah, look at my law books. Obviously I can read, so I’ve got your case. You’re going to get it. We’re going to win. But also that reflects I think on set too. I’ve been on a lot of onsite set shootings for different client testimonials or interview videos that we used to do over the years, and it’s that what you talked about, the big production value. Let’s set up the lights, do all the stuff, and then they’re talking like this and I’m the most professional in the world, and that’s a lot of pressure. You’re not even letting your personality out at that point, are you?
Robert
Right. Frequently, I’ve been in those positions where somebody practiced law for a number of years, but I’d see people around the office and talking and shooting the shit and just being really affable people. And then I would see that same person in court and they’re so tight and just they can barely breathe. And it was like, you need to find that person earlier and bring that person. It’s the same kind of idea is that is the person that’s going to serve you better. You already know what you’re talking about. Just talk about it in the way that you are.
Casey
Sure. Yeah. With any marketing, it’s a lot easier to stand out if you’re just different. It’s good to be better, but just being different, you can stand out and somewhere that got lost along the way, I feel like.
Robert
Yeah, Mike Malowitz has a good book called Get Different, and that’s the idea. It’s like stop trying to look like everybody else. People when they start businesses, they think, well, I need to look like everybody. So I’m respected. People think that I’m a professional lawyer. You need to be professional and give people trust. But what makes them, when they look at four websites or watch four videos, what makes them go, that’s my lawyer. That’s where you get different.
Casey
Yeah, I worked with an attorney one time who was obsessed with just what his competitors were doing and he just tried too hard to blend in with what they were doing and the end result of that wasn’t standing out. And I like Mike’s books. I love Profit First and so that’s good. I haven’t read this one that you spoke of yet though.
Robert
Yeah, it’s good. Profit First was instrumental in teaching me how to actually get money from my business because I kind of just took whatever was left and that was the worst way because if you do it that way somehow there’s never anything left.
Casey
Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s it. We need to have a whole nother episode I think on that at some point. So you were talking about with the FAQ content that it’s particularly valuable. Can we go back to that real quickly and tell me why you think that’s a good way to nurture people that have just learned about you?
Robert
Sure. Well, I mean they have these questions. They landed on the website where most people will encounter the podcast is they’ve landed on the website or they’ve landed on your social feeds and you’ve made video clips from it, things like that because they have a pain point already, they’re already in some stage. And then you are going to create content that is easy for them to engage with that speaks directly to it. And a lot of the competitors are not going to be making that. You said it, a lot of lawyers aren’t doing it yet. More and more are, but still the vast majority are not because we know how lawyers are. That wouldn’t work for me. That’s not what we do. We heard it with social media blogs far as back his websites. I remember that I had a professor in college that told me a lawyer worth assault doesn’t need to advertise.
People will know. What are you talking about? Even then, I wasn’t even a marketer yet and I’m like, this guy’s crazy. And it does help you get different because it’s a way for you to sit out there, speak directly to pain points, make it easy. You’re cutting down the friction in getting people to pick up the phone. What we want ’em to do, we want them to get to that point where they go, okay, I’m going to set an appointment here first. Because if they set an appointment somewhere else first and you’re their backup plan, first firm does a good job, they’re not coming, you’re never going to hear from ’em. And once they set that appointment, they’re yours to lose. If it is a good fit, there’s a good chance they’re going to sign with you once they’ve set that appointment, and the better they get to know you with that content, they listen to 2, 3, 4 episodes that cover the different problems they’re having, make them feel better, get ’em over that friction hump when you open your mouth and start talking, they already have a sense of who you are and that is powerful.
Think about the podcast host that you follow closely. Like Sam Harris is one for me. I could be anywhere and if he opened his mouth in the room, I would know it immediately. And that happened to me with John Lee Dumas the first time I was in a room with him. And I’d listened to his content for a couple years at that point and he started talking and it struck me. I’m like, I know who that is. And I already had familiarity with him. I’d listened to probably a hundred hours of his voice at that point. And the level of familiarity and trust that you have with someone when you’ve gotten to know them that way is it’s got to be a little bit strange for the person on the other side because they’re talking to a stranger and this person already feels like they know you and trust you a little bit, which when you’re in a business relationship that’s invaluable.
Casey
And you talked about the benefits of the client generation and the nurturing of that. Are there any other benefits like expanding your network or what are the other benefits?
Robert
I’m glad you asked. Yes. So there’s a few different angles. I’ll stick on the FAQ model first. The additional benefits of that are you’re creating content for your website, that’s good. But then you’re taking this right now you and I are on webcams. So we record the video and then we take that full video. That full video goes to YouTube, second largest search engine in the world. And some people like to watch things as opposed to, we see that by the numbers, by the numbers from our clients, but overall we see how many people are watching their podcast on YouTube and it’s massive. But then we take that a step further and we take that video and clip it down into video clips that you are using across your social channels. So when people are on your social channels, that’s another point of contact where they can just, okay, oh, that is a problem I’m having.
Let me see that. And that’s a really low friction way of getting some of that content to ’em because at the end of the day, getting ’em to press play on a podcast episode, still a little bit of friction there, but on social, just getting ’em to flip through five or six videos to establish yourself as someone they might want to hear a little bit more from real, real easy. And it creates this wealth of content for your social channels, establishes you as an authority and it shows that you’re a legit firm out there really engaging in marketing. And that’s going to give comfort right there by itself. That’s a little bit more of the FAQ model. And then to the networking side, if you have a podcast, I’ll use an example. Michael Cowan has a podcast called Trial Lawyer Nation and he’s in San Antonio.
He started that podcast just a few months after I started this business. He’s been at it almost as long as I have. And every twice a month he has an episode where he interviews another lawyer, talks to another lawyer frequently, these are people he’s never met before and they’re talking about big cases and voir dire strategies and all the things that it takes to be a good trial lawyer, different tactics, how to learn and grow. And he is creating a listenership of people, of trial lawyers. He’s got a massive listenership at this point. People are getting to know him like him and trust him and they send him referrals, bring him co-counsel when he has a conference. He can sell tickets that way now that he’s built that trust when he writes a book, people are buying the book, but he’s also expanding his network to every single attorney that he brings on and gets to know.
And so he reaches out, he’s got this platform, they have this case, they want to talk about it. So it’s a win-win for everybody involved. And it’s also a win for the listener, which is a really important part when you’re thinking about making a podcast, how do we make sure everybody involved in it is winning? That’s the intersection that you want because you can bring on guests and it can be good for you and it can be good for your audience, but is the guest also getting something because it’s going to be hard to get high value guests if there’s not something usually in it for them. And of course there’s a lot of people out there that want to give back, right? And that’s great, but at the end of the day, if there is a positive in it for them, you’re going to have a lot easier time collecting those people.
That’s a different model that really can expand your network. That’s the one thing I consistently hear from people that they really underestimated how valuable that part of it was going to be. Because you’re on the phone with somebody who would probably never take your call sometimes just, Hey, you want to shoot the shit for 30 minutes? No, I’m really busy. Well, how about this podcast where we have these listeners and look at all these other people that you know have been on it? Oh, I’d love to do that. You’re giving them a platform access to your audience, and they come on there and they get to know you over 30, 40, 60 minutes. And at the end of that conversation, they know you better and hopefully at the end they kind of like you a little bit, somebody they’d like to keep in touch with. And you take that and map that out over several years and the size of your network just really explodes.
Casey
Yeah, that’s a really good point. And of course a lot of attorneys rely on those referrals and I mean, that’s good business. You’re talking about real marketing, which somehow got missed over the years with all of the digital marketing that kind of has come play. And that kind of just gets me thinking. I have a question for you and that’s tying it back. Let’s say that I start a podcast and I have a smart goal in mind. How measurable is that goal and does it matter?
Robert
So you say you have a smart goal in mind, I’m guessing. Give me an example and let’s beat on that one.
Casey
Yeah. Let’s say that I want to start a podcast and I’m hoping through the FAQ content that I can have a measurable goal of, it’s going to increase a certain percentage of inquiries or maybe close a higher percentage of them because we’re getting it in front of more people or something like that. Sure.
Robert
Podcasting is a little different than some strategies where your ability to tie a specific listener and follow their journey, not as easy as marketers might want it to be. And the consumer in me likes that. The marketer in me thinks, Hey, how can we be doing this better? But one of the ways that our clients are tracking that and getting an understanding is in intake, asking them about that to really understand, okay, who is engaging with this? What percentage of people have engaged with our podcast prior to landing in our office? And understanding that now obviously you’re going to have the download numbers, you’re going to see the number of people that are interacting with your content. You’re going to see where they’re doing it. Are they doing it on your website? Are they listening on Apple, Spotify, wherever they’re listening, we’re going to see those numbers and understand that.
We’ll see the website visits of people that are visiting the podcast pages and then understanding if it’s an initiative people are even engaging with because we already know we already have numbers for how many website visits we’re getting, what our other content, the amount of value that’s bringing to people, how many page visits things are getting so we understand how well our other content is performing, how well is this performing? And then understanding the people that are converting, that are landing in your office that have engaged with the podcast as well. That really helps us. We know people are going there, they’re listening to it. Is it affecting their conversions at all?
Casey
But that makes total sense. And the reason that I was asking is because I have more of an SEO guy than anything else over the years. I’ve always driven home, oh, data, data. But I would say I’ve taken a couple steps back recently and I’ve seen different examples where we’re seeing benefits from things we can’t track. An example that comes to mind is somebody that was doing podcasting and doing videos and all that stuff, and they turn it off and their leads we’re still flying, climbing, climbing, climbing. But then six months down the line that started to drop off. And so it had a long-term effect, and I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything like that in your dealings.
Robert
Absolutely. And then you flip it around and the same thing’s going to be true when you turn it on, you’re not going to see immediate uptick, not how content works. Content gets exponential as it grows the tail on that. It’s we’re creating it. We’re creating catalog over a period of time and it gets more and more vast. We’re filling out our social channels, people are getting to know us, and the more that we stay at it, the better it’s going to serve us. But yes, when people turn it off, it is going to have that effect. I mean, I think people see that with content in general. I’ve seen colleagues that were spending money on SEO and just didn’t think, oh, it’s just not working yet. And they had no concept of how much money they needed to be spending or what they needed to be doing, but when they turned it off, they realized now I got no leads.
And it was a real struggle for ’em. And I get that. I’ve been in that position where you are, especially if you’re a young lawyer who’s really pinching the pennies laying out, marketing dollars hurts. But one of my clients framed it in a way that I hadn’t previously thought about it. He said, marketing is a named partner. Every year marketing gets paid. Sometimes we don’t get paid as much, but marketing gets paid every time because if marketing doesn’t get paid, nobody gets paid. And I was like, that’s such a good way to look at it and go back to profit first. That’s how I handle it in my business too. Profit comes out first, but marketing gets paid. Every dollar gets segmented. Marketing gets their portion of every dollar profit gets their portion of every dollar, and that way I’m not scrambling for money to find a way to pay for marketing because marketing got paid.
Casey
Exactly. Yeah. And that’s so essential, and I think that a lot of firm owners started off maybe being just a great practitioner, a great lawyer, and then they go in and they start their own firm and they may not have the business training. Those nuggets of information are very valuable.
Robert
Have you read the E-Myth? Oh, I
Casey
Loveth one of the first books that I read.
Robert
Oh, it’s so good. I’ve been through it several times. But that’s kind of what you were describing is I’m really good at this thing. I should do this thing for myself. And then you start doing it and it gets tough because there’s a lot of moving pieces, being a business owner, being a lawyer, two very different skill sets.
Casey
Absolutely. I think that’s what the e myth is all about. It’s just so typical. It’s kind of funny to me, but let’s say that you convinced me not Robert, I want to start a podcast, is step number one, go out and spend $90,000 on podcasting gear.
Robert
Absolutely. Of course. How do we
Casey
Start?
Robert
Let’s go back to why. Let’s make sure that if we’ve been sold on that, we’ve thought about why we’re doing it, who we’re doing it for, what we’re going to talk about, how this whole thing turns into money for us at the end of that rainbow, then we want to start doing it. If you want to do it yourself, having been a lawyer who started a podcast at his law firm, I’m going to almost invariably say, no, I don’t think it’s a great use of your time. Even if you start with an intern or somebody off Upwork, somebody should be editing your podcast for you. Just the idea that you should be learning how to do all these things is not a great use of time. I had a mentor that always said, what’s your hourly? Exactly. And you’ve got to establish it. Anything under that, don’t do it.
Pay someone to do it. And I can promise anybody listening that you can pay someone far less than your hourly rate to do all of these things and do them better. But a good first step to see if you even like it, buy a $50 microphone, the A TR 2100 X on Amazon. I think right now over the last six to eight months, it’s been around 48 to $50. It’s a great mic. It’s going to sound virtually indistinguishable from the way I sound right now with all my fancy gear and it’s super portable. It’s good for home recording, office recording. It doesn’t pick up a ton of background noise and just sit on your computer and record yourself. Start talking and see if you like that. Listen back and get on a zoom call with somebody else and do a podcast episode. Just record your zoom call and do an episode.
And if you’re doing that FAQ model where you might want to speak directly to a client, sit down, hit record, talk directly to that client and see if you like it. And I think if you try that out a little bit, give it a few turns. I think you’ll find out it’s not very difficult to do. Just sitting down and recording your voice is pretty simple to do. These microphones are so easy. They’re plug and play. They plug right in the inside of your computer and they sound great. And if you like that, start thinking more about it. Reach out to your marketing team, talk some strategy and consider how this might fit into your schedule. I would definitely recommend outsourcing it. And I say that whatever level of agency works for you at this moment, there’s levels all over the place. There’s some that’ll charge you 500 a month, some are going to charge you 12,000 a month and find one that you’re comfortable with and I would work with an agency because it’s going to be a much better use of your time.
I’ve taken over a lot of podcasts for people that started themselves, started with a smaller agency, but I’ve also taken over a lot for people that hired someone to come in and help do their podcast. And the trouble there is when that person leaves, they hold the keys to the entire kingdom and the odds that one person can do all the things that your podcast needs to have done and do them exceptionally well is really low. I say that as somebody who has spent years in the industry, I hate to call myself an expert, but I’m as close as it gets in this relatively new industry. And there are things I have no business doing in my business because they’re just outside my area of expertise. I could do them, I should not be. And that’s going to be true across the board. There’s going to be very few people that are going to be helping you record your audio well, making sure they understand the gear, doing audio engineering so you actually sounds good, doing a serviceable job of editing, mixing soundtracks, then doing video edits and understanding any of that. Then writing titles and descriptions and knowing how to do that in a way that’s going to attract a listener and perhaps have some kind of search engine value to it. Transcribing things, I mean, there’s so many different steps and when you hire one person or two people to do that and then your podcast team leaves, your podcast is kind of dead in the water. That’s where we end up with a client is they go, we need some help.
Casey
We got you covered. I absolutely agree with you. You shouldn’t be doing it yourself. There’s a lot of resources out there, but I would think that a lot of attorneys that are looking to do this, is that something that you help with and tell me a little bit about that.
Robert
Sure. I mean, we are very much a done for you. Our motto with our clients is you do the talking and we’ll do the rest. Love it, love it. And we stick to that pretty tight. You shouldn’t be thinking about your podcast outside the time. Maybe we’re going to, okay, what are we going to talk about on the next episode? But we’re not talking about things that are hyper complicated. We’re answering questions frequently about things we’ve talked about a thousand times. And so the amount of preparation that goes into that for the vast majority of my clients is very small. I have a lot of clients that show up and go, alright, Jeff, what are we talking about today? And Jeff will say, let’s talk about what happens if you get hurt at a theme park. Alright, that kind of thing. And so they sit, they talk, they have the conversation, they hang up and that’s it.
Love, they’re done. I love that. Now they can be as involved in posts as they want to, the opportunity to listen to the audio and make sure that it sounds the way you want it to. And we have a lot of big firm clients that are going to do that every time. They’re going to listen to every second. We have a lot of mid-size firms that never want to hear it again. They’re like, no, I was there. And then we take it and do the audio, the video edit, the video clips, the quote images, the promotional images, titles, descriptions, transcripts, publishing it on YouTube website, social media platforms. It’s just podcasts and all the accessories in the box.
Casey
That’s awesome and I love that you mentioned it several times throughout the podcast, but really one of the top things I want to reinforce is the importance of a podcast, maybe even especially with AI now, but just the repurposing of that content. You’re recording one thing, whether you do it yourself or you hire somebody, but you’re getting a lot out of that time in so many different media formats, so many different channels. There’s probably, I might argue to say if you do commit to that, there’s probably no better use of time that will get you the same type of output in terms of media that you can share on different platforms.
Robert
Oh, you nailed it. I mean, maximum output from minimal effort if you have an agency doing the rest of the work is pretty astounding. I think that’s the thing that keeps people in is they are so used to having these business development plans that require X, Y, and Z and this number of blog posts and they know how much time that takes and then they sit down and they record. What I like to tell people is batch sit down, record several at once and that way you’ve got a lot of content and you don’t have to keep making these appointments. And they’ll sit down and they’ll spend an hour and a half recording a few episodes and then they see on the backend how much comes out of that. Just the number of videos and video clips and quotes that they had, they’re now on images. It’s astounding.
Casey
That’s incredible. And there’s no doubt that it’s an amazing use of time. What are a couple tips that you would give somebody that is interested in this? What’s something that we didn’t talk about that are just like some rapid fire tips or suggestions, things we should know that we didn’t talk about?
Robert
Keep your avatar in mind when every episode you make, you are thinking about the person you’re talking to and don’t wander. Try to really stick to that. And this can vary a little bit depending on your podcast. You might do an episode if you’re doing FA Q1 episode might be about trucking, right? It’s not going to be quite the same avatar, but if you’re doing one for trial lawyers, that’s pretty specific. And having a well-defined avatar and understanding who that person is allows you to make decisions about your content a lot easier. This is what speaks to my avatar. It’s not something that I’m just interested in. It’s something that would actually be valuable for the person who’s listening. And to go back to your $90,000 gear question, don’t get caught in that trap of thinking. You have to have all the things you don’t.
The bare minimum you need is a USB microphone. You already have a webcam and just try not to have your face completely dark on that webcam. That’s pretty easy these days. Webcams are, a lot of ’em are automatically brightening your face now. But I mean you can get a really cheap ring light that’ll just throw a little glow on your face and that’s really it. That’s everything that you need to get started. And if you just want to try it yourself, there’s free hosting platforms that will let you do it for free. I’m not a fan of that model because I think you should own your content, you should host it yourself and it’s very cheap. 15, $20 a month you can get this done for, but don’t get in the trap of thinking you need to buy all the things. It really is easy.
You can record on Zoom. Riverside FM is where we record all of our podcasts for our clients, large and small across the world, and it gets high quality audio, high quality video without having to understand how any of this works. And everybody’s on separate tracks so that way your editor is going to be able to cut out background noise if somebody shows up in their sitting on their phone in traffic and you can mute their track anytime they’re not talking. So the amount of tools that are just plug and play easy to use that can create high quality content from anywhere in the world is exceptional. It’s very different than when I bought this microphone in 2015 and started podcasting. The world is, it’s much easier to make good content now.
Casey
Yeah, that’s awesome. And I really appreciate you sharing your insights and those tips. And the reason I said the money thing too, well, first of all, I love your advice of really just do it. I think that’s the mistake. I worked with an attorney who was doing these big video sets and getting all these client interviews and they spent probably a hundred thousand dollars on the set and they used it for two filming days and the intention was to do it, but they never even really got it started after that. Thank you, Robert, for sharing your insights with us today. I think that a lot of people are going to find this valuable. I hope that you’ve convinced more people to get involved in podcasts and then also if they want to learn more about you and your services at Law Pods, where can they find you?
Robert
Yeah, if you type law pods in any search browser across the internet, you should find us immediately. I thought a lot about that when I was starting the business. I wanted something that made sense. It was going to be really easy to find, not a lot of name confusion. Didn’t want to put my name in it. So yeah, lopa.com is the easy way to find me. I am most active on LinkedIn of any social network. 10 years ago I’ve been like, you’re insane. I hate LinkedIn, but that’s where you can find me. I spend a good amount of time there talking about podcasting, and so I’m always happy to connect there. Please reach out and I’m happy to just kick the tires on things. I’m not a hard salesman. I want the industry to thrive. I want people to believe in it, to lean into it, to get value from it, and that’s going to bring up all the boats in the industry.
Casey
I love that. And legal tech. It’s ripe for change right now, so the timing is right now. So I love that. And again, thank you so much for joining us today and I really appreciate your insights and look forward to catching up again in the future.
Robert
Such a pleasure. Thank you.
Casey
Thanks. Bye.
