In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Steven Lefkoff discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"You don’t have to have everything written down in perfect form before you do everything. That is not reality and it thwarts the ability to just do it." — Steven Lefkoff
Connect with Steven Lefkoff:
Website: SmallClaimsAcademy.com & Gavel.Legal
Email: Steven@Gavel.Legal
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevenlefkoff
Twitter: twitter.com/slefkoff
Facebook: facebook.com/gavelsca
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Steven Lefkoff 0:00
It's so true and we're all lawyers are such type a people that you want it to look perfect. You want your office to look perfect. You want your business cards to look perfect your letterhead and your videos. And the truth is that perfection stops a lot of folks from even doing it.
Narrator 0:18
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin!
Steve Fretzin 0:42
Hello, everybody. Welcome to be that lawyer. As you heard from the announcer I'm Steve Fretzin. I'm a business development coach and trainer for attorneys who are highly committed to growing their law practices. I appreciate you taking some time today. My guest today is Steven Lefkoff who has his own business called gavel by small claims Academy also is an attorney. How are you doing, Steven?
Steven Lefkoff 1:05
I'm doing well. Steve, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for your time, man. This is gonna be fun.
Steve Fretzin 1:09
Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. And I appreciate it. So do me a favor and just take a minute or two and share a little bit more about your background as a lawyer and as a as a business professional.
Steven Lefkoff 1:18
Yeah, you bet. So I am a Georgia licensed attorney here in Atlanta, Georgia. And I have a law firm left cough law where I practice pretty much a general business practice focusing on representing companies in the car space dealers, finance repair auction repo, that area of law. And it's like I said, pretty general representation. In representing those clients. I was attending a lot of small claims court hearings, for them a lot of consumer disputes where the consumer paid $3,000 for a car that was malfunctioning or had some other complaint that was in Georgia less than 15,000. And so I would go to these cases. And I saw over and over people losing cases that they should win. People not having the right documents, not having the right witnesses just generally not knowing what they were doing. Which makes sense because they haven't gone to law school. They haven't been to court. This is not their profession. Right. So just in the last couple of months, I released a new business. It's called gavel powered by small claims Academy. And it's an online learning program with over 70 videos, which I know we're going to get into directed and aimed at teaching people and business owners how to do small claims court.
Steve Fretzin 2:28
And how did you get into video? Like how did you how did you were you doing video before you came up with this concept for an E learning program for small claims?
Steven Lefkoff 2:37
So I was I was doing a fair amount of video for my clients already on things that were monotonous or or I don't even know if that's I'm a lawyer. I'm supposed to know the right words, but the right word, but the things that I would be, yeah, stuff that I would be saying over and over and over again, right. And I realized, well, rather than me having the same phone call every time or the same meeting every time to talk about things like deposition prep and discovery responses and stuff. That's, you know, a lot of folks have paralegals have these calls, or even legal assistants send out the documents with instructions, right, I was finding that I got much better engagement. When I was sending out video instructions. Here's how to respond to discovery, you're going to get these sets of interrogatory his request for production of documents, requests for admissions, here's what each one means. Here's how you respond to them. I need your responses within X number of days of this of sending this video I'll follow up with more in the coming days. Same with deposition prep, right? I mean, how many times have we had these conversations with clients? That is exactly the same conversation. Here's what a deposition is. Here's how you dress. Here's what time I need you to be here. Here are the kinds of answers to get the way to frame your answers right how to, to answer the question, don't answer more than the question, you know, these things that we go through over and over again. And I found if I can turn those into videos, then I don't have to be involved every single time. And I can really control the message as well.
Steve Fretzin 4:07
Yeah, that's really great. And so what do you put into a video that makes it watchable, that makes it good that people are willing to sit and take in that content?
Steven Lefkoff 4:16
Now that's a loaded question, because I don't know the answer to it. Um, I think they're watchable. But that's my own ego, right? And clients give me feedback, saying they're great, and that they're very informative. And so that's really helpful. But really, it's like starting anything new with a new idea. What makes them watchable is that I've done that, right. I mean, if you if you really think about it sure. Are there. Can there be graphics on them? Yeah, there can our mind. No, they're actually not to clients. When I've already signed the client up. It's not a sales video. It's an informational video. And there's differences, right and you could pay folks 10, 15, 20,000 or more for sales videos, or for a set of informational videos. All You take out your iPhone, and in 20 minutes, you've recorded yourself saying exactly the video you want for free. And you know, there's a theory behind both there folks that would advocate for either one, and we can talk about the differences. Absolutely. But the most important thing is just to do it.
Steve Fretzin 5:17
Yeah, I think I think video has the sort of the snoot array or the snobbery of it has kind of diminished significantly as videos become everywhere, everything YouTube is is, you know, is is everything these days. So I think how a video gets shot is, is maybe less important than the way it used to be. But I will say this, that I am, I am a bit of a snob in the sense that I'm all about the sound if the sound is clear, if the conversation you and I are having right now is clear, I feel like that's a watchable listenable video. And if the sound is like horrible and hard to listen, and you're struggling to like, catch the next word, I think then, you know, that's where sort of I draw the line. But I don't know if other people feel the same way.
Steven Lefkoff 6:00
I agree with you 100%. And it's not a hard thing to do. Right? I mean, microphones, you can get them on Amazon for 30, $40. Up to I mean, obviously there are some that are very, very expensive, but it doesn't take much to just slightly increase your audio in a video, it doesn't take much.
Steve Fretzin 6:18
Yeah. And so you've actually built an entire business around creating content videos that people can can, you know, basically sign up for and get and then learn the law.
Steven Lefkoff 6:30
That's right, that's exactly what gavel is. So this is a little bit different. Because these videos are animated. Nobody wants to watch 70 videos of me sitting in front of a webcam talking, I wouldn't want to watch two of them, my wife would tell you, she wouldn't even watch one of them. So definitely not 70. So these are animated videos. But it's a whole series broken up into pre trial trial and post trial of video. It's a video information and education series to teach those processes and those tips and tricks in small claims court.
Steve Fretzin 7:02
got it got it. So that's the mean, but putting that content together and being prepared to produce 70 videos, whether it's with an iPhone, or animated or whatever. And that takes a lot of work. So what how did you plan and execute on that to get to get it up to snuff?
Steven Lefkoff 7:15
It's a great story, because there were some errors along the way. So when I when I had the idea, and this comes again, from my law, practice it This was not just something that I just thought of in last week, saying that I had seen over and over again, and a lot of the things we do as lawyers and solve problems based on what we see. And that's exactly what what I've done here with gamma. So I had this idea, I had the idea to now move it into video, because now in We're in 2020, we're recording this, this couldn't have been done 15 years ago. But there are services and vendors out there that that will hold all your videos and set up the checkout process and design the website. And it makes it far easier to set up an online course. But I started by setting out the table of contents. And it started with about 10 videos. And then with each video on the table of contents, think about that. And don't know, wait, I'm forgetting this issue, or I'm forgetting that issue. Excellent. Oh, 10, turn to 20, 20 turned to 40. And here we are at over 70. And then I started and then once I had the Table of Contents down, I started scripting them. And that took an immense amount of time. I mean, a lot of time. And I did that for the first about 15 videos, and I invested. Here's a tip for your listeners don't do what I did. I'll tell you in a minute what it is. But I invested in a green screen. I bought a new like gimbal I don't know if people know what gimbals are, but it's basically a camera holder that will track you and follow you and keeps everything stable. Yeah. Okay, so there's no jitters or jitters in the screen or whatever the right word is. It's a very stable filming filming camera. And I invested in microphones, which that's the one thing I'm really glad I did invest in. But all of this stuff, thinking I'm gonna make this like real production out of my living room. And I set it all up. And I had my wife This was after the kids went to bed. So it's like nine o'clock at night. I have my wife helped me set it all up. She pushes record, I start the first video thinking I'm going to be face to face talking to people. And I press stop. I looked at her. I said how to go. She goes, you read the transcript? And I said, Well, that's why I wrote a transcript. She goes, nobody wants to see you reading a transcript, right? So I say okay, let's try that again. So we do a second take where I'm now staring at the camera trying to remember parts of the transcript. And I said How was that one? She goes terrible. You you It sounded like you were reading the transcript even though you weren't. And I said, gosh, this is so we went on for three hours. It was about midnight. By the time I got the 15 videos done. I thought they were all going to be great. She said they were all tired. The next morning I wake up, I load the memory card into my computer. I watched the first video, and like wives usually are, she was spot on. They were terrible, Steve. So I started over, I scratched all the transcripts. And I said, You know what, I know this stuff, I'm gonna verify a couple interesting pieces of law that came up in my table of contents. And then I'm just going to talk, right? Because we all have our areas of expertise, whatever that area is, if you're the expert in that area, you should know that stuff. And so I said, I'm just going to talk. And so that's what I did. I made 70 videos in about six or seven hours, just talking. Yeah, which would have taken it would have taken months if I had written out transcripts and recorded and done all the things I tried to do before. And yeah, that's part of just do it. Right?
Steve Fretzin 10:52
Right. So you know, your stuff like the back of your hand. But when you try to get organized with it, and specific with how its laid out, that's where things kind of get, you know, fall into trouble.
Steven Lefkoff 11:03
It's so true. And we're all lawyers are such type a people that you want it to look perfect, you want your office to look perfect, you want your business cards to look perfect your letterhead, and your videos. And the truth is that perfection stops a lot of folks from even doing it.
Steve Fretzin 11:17
I came up with an idea a few years ago, and this was one of those more expensive endeavors that I went into, but I produced some videos, where was me and I brought a client in and did sort of a roleplay with the client where I would bring up a business development challenge. Or he would say the challenge or she would say the challenge, and then I would handle it, but that way, I was talking to a client and explaining how to overcome a challenge. And I didn't have to script it because it's I have it. But But that was a way that I could express my knowledge in in an individual meeting or conversation with someone, because if I just had a look at the screen and and read the answer, right, it would have been a disaster. So I totally get where you're coming from.
Steven Lefkoff 11:57
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And sometimes ad libbing is okay, you know, we don't have to have everything written down in perfect form, before we do something, and I know that's a, that's a struggle for a lot of attorneys that are very, you know, buttoned up very dot your I's cross your T's don't want to put out anything unless it is, you know, produced by Paramount Pictures. But that's not reality. And it does work the ability to just do it.
Steve Fretzin 12:25
But again, I think you have to go back and look at the timing of of this, and you know, 2020 2021, we are all now adjusted to the new way that videos look in the way that people are more themselves more authentic, more, you know, iPhone shots, where is maybe five or 10 years ago, where that really wasn't a big play. Yeah, we had to have a professional video with the green screen. And with cutaways and things that made it look really professional and, and that's all changed, which is a shame for the a lot of the video, people who, you know, kind of made their money on that. So.
Steven Lefkoff 13:01
But it's a struggle, like change in anything else. I mean, if you think about the change from WordPerfect, to word, I know a lot of attorneys that are still using WordPerfect, because that's what they know. And they know the keyboard shortcuts and they know something, they are just not going to learn where they don't want to. But that that's happening in technology, it always does.
Steve Fretzin 13:18
So let's say that there's a lawyer that does personal injury that says, Look, I am the king of helping people with slip and fall. And I have all this knowledge, all this information. And I think I could leverage that content. What else could you tell an attorney that is looked at as considering video for 20, You know, 2021 marketing plan that they want to do that? What are some additional things that you would that you would suggest?
Steven Lefkoff 13:45
Okay, so number one is commit, okay? And when I say that, I mean, don't just make one video, put it up there on the internet and say, Well, look what I've done, right? Or don't make three videos. And then when you're not getting any calls go, Okay, that was a bad idea. Right? It's like any other, it's no different in that regard than any other source of marketing, have a plan. Have a number of videos that you intend to make covering whatever topics you want to cover, and make them all don't quit. Don't quit. I don't care if you make them all in the first day, and then drip them out once a week or once a month on YouTube. Or if you make them once a week and drip them out live on Facebook, it doesn't matter. The point is, it's not a fly by night activity. It is like any other piece of content. It's something you have to commit to.
Steve Fretzin 14:33
Yeah, I think that's really, really critical. And as far as, again, production, you're not suggesting it has to be anything highly produced. It can be something with an iPhone and you know, 30 What's the time is it? Is it 30 seconds? Is it 10 minutes? What's the average attention span of a lawyer or non lawyer these days?
Steven Lefkoff 14:53
Yeah, it's a funny question because it really depends on the way you're putting it. Right and the type of video I mean, these Tick Tock videos are what like 15 seconds. And I know a lawyer Mike Albion, Texas, I'll name drop, he did a tik tock video of himself in shorts and a T shirt on a skateboard holding an umbrella and an eco leaf blower and blowing the blower into the umbrella to make it look like that was powering his skateboard. What that has to do with being a personal injury attorney, I have no idea. It has not like nothing to do with it.
Steve Fretzin 15:26
Well, wait a second. Let me stop you there. It could have something to do with how to get injured.
Steven Lefkoff 15:31
Sure, sure. Yeah, higher. But But what I did so Mike, in his 12 second video that got picked up by Echo, the leaf blowing company, of him on a skateboard with a leaf blower blowing into an umbrella probably got over 12 million impressions. Okay, meaning over 12 million people, or at least 12 million views happened of that video of a personal injury attorney in the Dallas area, riding a skateboard with a leaf blower. Right? These aren't and they made on his iPhone, right? This is not some fancy production it was it was something he probably thought or his kids thought was funny. Let me video you doing that. And he did. Right? So so that's on the one end, the TIC Tock side right is 10 seconds or 15 seconds. And there are a lot of attorneys that are starting to dabble in that. And then the other side, there's the long form sales video, right? Where you see the attorney in front of the building and the background music and it's the same stick every time. And then they show them in court. And then they show them walking down the street with their team, you know, in their suits. Everybody seen those videos, right? And those are longer. And there's everything in between and he have Facebook videos that are 30 seconds to a minute. Instagram similar. I mean, I think I can tell you from personal experience for gavel, each video is between about a minute and four minutes. When you get above that kind of four minute threshold, people are starting to tune out.
Steve Fretzin 16:59
Yeah, so it's interesting, like I can listen to Joe Rogan's podcast for hours, if I if I have that time in a car or something like I don't know how I'm able to have that type of attention to listen, or even stop and come back to it, then if there's, you know, you know, a two minute video that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, like I'm out. So it's interesting how we sort of have evolved to, to to what our attention span is based on the topic, the criteria, and this goes for social media too. Like I could write three or four lot like I could do a two minute video on a LinkedIn post, and no one watches it. Okay. But I can have a rant that someone would have to sit and read for maybe a minute, the whole thing through and for some reason that gets a tremendous amount of hits or tremendous amount of traction. Have you found anything about the timing? Or the maybe it's the people that are looking at are the certain types of people that that influence or impact? what's what's taken in?
Steven Lefkoff 17:57
You know, it's really, I don't think there's a magic formula to that goes again, to commitment, like I said before, yeah, some of these things are going to hit they are and some just aren't, I mean, you go to some of the best, biggest, brightest minds in production, that there are the Gary V's of the world, right that we've all heard of, and go through his YouTube playlist, or hit the videos that he's produced on YouTube, you'll see some that have over 10 million views, then you'll see others that have 10,000, same guy, same amount of subscribers, same list, but it's just some hit and some don't, which is part of the reason why you just have to keep going.
Steve Fretzin 18:35
I think the angle though that is maybe that is hitting, right. And I think we would agree on this is authenticity, you know, people that are showing their their real sides, people that are willing to put themselves out there. I mean, there's things that I do that I think are very authentic. But when it comes to video, I haven't really hit it yet. I feel like I could take an iPhone and I could you know, walk down a hallway in an office building in the city of Chicago and pay him you know, walk into my class I'm about to teach lawyers this that in the other here. Let's check it out. And just kind of like but I don't know, like I'm just a part of me feels like that. That also seems a little stage and maybe not authentic even though it would be a video of me walking down a hallway. So I don't know how Gary Vee gets away with it. Because it seems like he, you know, he just does like him getting into a car him getting out of a car and talking in the car. Like, for some reason that's interesting to people. But a professional video that gives tactical actionable things that you could do that would improve something maybe is less interesting.
Steven Lefkoff 19:35
Let's think of it this way. If you're you know, this podcast goes out to a lot of law firm owners and a lot of partners in law firms. And when they're hiring somebody, what's the first thing you do right you Google their name and find their social media find information about them, you know, pictures of people there with Are you are you finding anything inappropriate in any of these pictures, right? You're looking to see who is this person before they ever walk into your office? Same thing with clients, it's the same thing with potential with with potential clients, they're looking at you before they ever walk into your office. Who is this person? What does this person look like? What does this person do? What can I find out. And so when you have things, audio is one thing you hear the voice, photos are another thing. But when you have video, you can really discover who somebody is and kind of learn a little bit about their personality, which really helps when somebody is considering whether or not to walk into your office and sign up with you as their new attorney.
Steve Fretzin 20:33
Yeah, and I just want to kind of wrap things up with one more point that we've kind of gotten into, but I want to take maybe a little bit further, okay, it's one thing to plan, create a table of contents, plan the videos, what you know, what am I trying to accomplish? How am I going to make this sustainable as a marketing arm producing the videos, we've talked about authenticity we've talked about, you don't need to have, you know, highly produced it based on what you're doing things like that. And then the last piece of it is the marketing. And I think that's where a lot of lawyers struggle, is, Hey, I can put together a one or two minute video, but what am I doing with that video? How am I making that go viral? Or how am I getting some traction around it? What are your thoughts there?
Steven Lefkoff 21:13
So again, like everything else, there's so many choices, right? When you have a video, you can put it on Facebook, you can put it on Instagram, you should put it on your website you have as you should have a section of your website dedicated to videos and have your web developer if you do your website yourself, figure out a plugin that you can use so that it can automatically go there. Seo right if you want to use Google if you want to even on TV, if you want TV ads, it just depends on what you're looking for. But the point is like a video in a vacuum it's like anything else in a vacuum if nobody's there to watch it does it matter? Right so so it's it's all part of the grand scheme of getting it out there and getting it in front of people.
Steve Fretzin 21:54
Yeah, I think social media and again, if you can get away with Instagram, for example, personal injury or family attorney, there's certain social medias that might be better than others. I don't see out labor an employment attorney that does defense side for big corporate you know, counsels you know, doing Instagram right, like that's not gonna probably play out the same way as having a professional you know, educational video or entertaining video that's legal focus, like on you know, LinkedIn.
Steven Lefkoff 22:21
That's right. And they're big studies about that each each social media channel has its own sort of target audience and when you're producing marketing things a Facebook is going to be different than the viewers on Instagram and they're going to be very different than the viewers on LinkedIn. And so you know, figuring out that and a lot of that is is just reading and learning about the differences between them and your market. A lot of it is trial and error. right you're just going to get more traction in the certain videos on different channels than you would other
Steve Fretzin 22:50
Yeah, no, I totally get it give a plug I mean, I would love to see the Small Claims Academy and what you're doing really develop out so how can people find you what where should they be sending people that have a need for you know, Small Claims education?
Steven Lefkoff 23:06
Sure, Steve thanks thanks first again for having me on but they can go to www.gavel.legal. And that's the homepage for the gavel program. You're welcome to email me directly if anybody wants more tips, tricks, advice or follow up on this conversation. I'm Steven@gavel.legal
Steve Fretzin 23:27
that's really generous of you to come on the show and also to share that information and again, helping people create video which I think is for many attorneys are a real mystery. You know, they figured out how to write an article but video is a whole other subject that I think this this is super helpful too. So thanks again for for spending some time with me today.
Steven Lefkoff 23:47
You bet Steve, this was fun. Thank you.
Steve Fretzin 23:49
Yeah, no, my pleasure. My pleasure. And listen everybody. Hopefully you got some great tips and takeaways and ideas from the show and again the ideas to you know to be that lawyer someone who's confident organized a skilled Rainmaker. Be safe and stay well. Take care everybody. Bye Bye.
Narrator 24:08
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website frentzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.