Mitch Jackson - The Streaming Lawyer

Full Episode Transcript:

Social Media Expert Mitch Jackson: The Streaming Lawyer

Are you still trying to figure out how to use Social Media to drive more business? On this episode of Dealcasters we talk to theSocial Media. Mitch is one of the most well-known active trial lawyers on social media. He’s been profiled in best-selling marketing books and dozens of publications and platforms including INC., Mashable, and The Wall Street Journal. Not only that, he’s blazing a trail for other content creators on the hot new app Clubhouse and shares his strategies with you! The court is now in session!

So let's bring Mitch on Mitch Jackson, the streaming you guys are awesome. Jim and Chris, thanks for having me on. It's good to be on the show guys. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. And Mitch what got you into social media to begin with? You've got to spend a lot of hours prepping for your clients, spending time in court.

As my wife being a court reporter, she knows what you guys go through as lawyers. How do you do it? I do it to keep my sanity. I do it because I became a lawyer, Jim, to help people. I met my wife in law school and Lisa and I practice together. We have for the last 33, 34 years. Okay.

is history. That was back in: 1988

That's why I decided to become a lawyer. First-generation lawyer didn't know what I was getting myself into, but what I quickly realized is it's about helping people and the reason I've embraced social and digital and the internet is back in the day. Jim and Chris, we used to meet one-on-one. The clients used to have to get in their car and drive down to the office, come in, meet with us, and we'd be able to answer their legal questions.

alized quickly, especially in: 1996

We're talking to people right now, across all the different time zones around the world. And this is where the power is. It's in not just information, but in knowing how to use the information. And so one of the things I'm excited about today is sharing. At least what's working for us. And some of the tools and devices that we're using to embrace the power of the internet to use and enjoy and benefit from live video shows like this and create the community and the audience that the three of us.

You guys. Okay. Thank you very much for the kind words, but you guys are also killing it online video, and I've been watching what you're doing and we're all building communities, not just across the street, but from the other side of the world. So that's the short answer. Believe it or not. You ask a lawyer question.

I could take hours answering it. That's the short answer. And so it's good to be here and I'm excited to talk about some of the things we're going to be talking about today. I love how you have completely, not only leaned in, but have gone all in, on social media. And so what what I noticed, and of course we touched on it.

We touched on clubhouse earlier, but Mitch Jackson just doesn't lean in. You've taken advantage of this, first in a co let's call it a social media thing for now, we know it's a number of things, but you leaned in big time, but I noticed how effectively you're utilizing it.

Yeah. For clubhouse for you as a lawyer what are you noticing is the most effective way to utilize it? To make new contacts to build new relationships, to touch base with leaders of industry, whether they're CEOs of major companies, entertainment, icons, venture, capitalist some of the top marketing and branding experts in the world are on clubhouse right now.

Silicon Valley business owners. Investors are on clubhouse right now. So what I'm doing is instead of spending time in the lawyer rooms, instead of spending time in the traditional marketing rooms, which I enjoy because times, it's a limited asset for all of us. It's probably one of our most important assets when I'm doing with purpose.

And with intent is I'm actually finding rooms. Being managed and run by people who I want to get to know better. And I'm joining the rooms. I'm raising my hand for those of you that haven't been on clubhouse, you tap a button, you raise your digital hand and you're invited up onto the stage. And you can have conversations with people that you may have not ever had a chance to meet before.

. And I started practicing in: 1986

First year lawyer started my practice out of the back of my car realized that. It was going to be tough to compete against some of the more well-established law firms here in orange County, California. Some of the best lawyers in the country are here in orange County, California. A lot of the cases you guys hear about on TV it's orange County firms.

And so I'm starting to build my practice out. I only had a couple of files. I kept them in the back of my car and playing basketball down at main beach every single day. But I was networking and I was starting to meet people that needed legal help, right? Criminal defense clients small business owners trying to start up a new tennis shoe line, whatever it might be.

And so I started in built my business the old way and the hard way, one person at a time spending money on advertising, we were spending thousands and thousands of dollars a month on traditional marketing advertising, keeping our law library, up to date. And when the internet rolled around when social media rolled around, the reason I'm so motivated Chris is because I realized I can do everything I used to do times 10 more effectively and communicate with more people almost for free.

And so I've never been accused of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. But when that happened, I'm like, okay, I need to just dive in head first and just, embrace this technology. Maybe push the comfort envelope a little bit because lawyers weren't using live video. They weren't using social media.

And then I jumped on a platform and we're going to talk about some of these platforms, but I jumped on a platform. It was started by a gentleman named Jeff Flor. He's the co-founder of StubHub before he sold it. And then Jeff started a company called spree cast. It was one of the, it was the first live video platform before Blab, before a lot of other platforms.

And they actually reached out to me and they wanted a lawyer on the platform. And I said, that sounds exciting. And within a month I found myself on shows with Anderson Cooper, Katie Kirk, Peter Diamandis Gabby stern in the wall street journal. People I would not have ever met had I not given myself permission to dip my toe into this live streaming sandbox.

And like I said, once that happened, I'm like, okay, there's power to what's happening right now in the world. Which has led me full circle to new friends like you and Jim. And so that's the motivation. That's the why behind why I'm all in on social. When a new platform like clubhouse comes out.

I don't know if it's going to be hot. Six months from now or 12 months from now. But right now it's the hot platform. And so I'm all in, and I'm making an intentional effort to maximize my time, to maximize my effectiveness on that platform to make new connections, to continue building my personal brand.

And I got to tell you guys something and you already know this. It's a powerful platform. It's been working out very well. What I loved about what you said initially, and then you talked about why you got into. The business that you're in is that you want it to help people. And I think a lot of people, whether they're in sales or whether they're in law or whether, whatever business and they have customers, clients, they don't think.

About their customers or their client's problems and how they can solve them. But I loved how you your mindset is about how can I help people. I really like to do this. I, I'm passionate about helping people. What are some, maybe some experiences that you have you've had over the years, whether it's streaming or not streaming that you as a lawyer where you were able to help someone that they had a problem and you in your profession, you were able to help them through that.

Sure. It's I think in today's business world, if you don't have this mindset, I don't care what you do for a living, whatever your product or services. If you're not working very hard right now to create an exemplary client experience. A unique, entertaining, memorable, easy tap, swipe, click type of experience that hopefully they can, they can enjoy on their phone.

I think your positioning yourself, to eventually go out of business. So part of my motivation is to try to stay ahead of the curve to try to be unique and make it as easy and simple for my clients. The major part of my motivation and leases is to help people. And I would say out of the thousands of cases that we've handled over the last 34 years, many of them going to trial.

Every single one, Chris not to, avoid answering the question directly, every single one in its own unique way, whether it's a small case or a big case has been a rewarding experience. It's why I'm still excited today to get up in the morning and practice law. I think we're doing it the right way.

If you most lawyers after 10, 15 years, they're ready. They're ready to do something else. Think about this, every case we have, someone's got a major life changing challenge that they're dealing with and we have to step in and help them. There's a lot of stress in the room. There's a lot of stress down at the courthouse.

And so unless you've got the right mindset to, to deal with these challenges and approach these cases in a certain way, it can be overwhelming and it can take it out of you. I've got a lot of friends of mine that, after about 10 years, they were done. They couldn't do it anymore. It's like being a heavyweight fighter.

You've got to have the right mentality and you're not getting punched physically, but you gotta have the right mentality. So what we're doing is we focus on combining what we're doing in the courtroom with serving our community through our rotary clubs and other organizations. For me, getting outside and back in the day, 38, 39 years of riding motocross.

A lot of times while I was practicing law with other lawyers, a couple of local judges balancing that with paddle boarding and running and doing some other things is like this Buller. Throughout the course of the day, that keeps me from going cross-eyed or drooling over my pleadings answering discovery responses.

You pepper that with the right trials and the right juries and it gets exciting. I think one of, one of the the two most memorable cases just that come to mind right now, just because there's something attached to each one, just super quick was I had a case for about five years where. It was a wrongful death case.

I'm not going to go into the details, but Johnny Cochran's office because of a conflict of interest, wasn't able to help the family. They were referred to my firm. We took the case, litigated it for five years. We had a settlement offer of $1 and a wrongful death case that went up to I think, 10 or $15,000 before trial.

nowledged in me being named a: 2009

rs, I was one of California's: 2013

And now the best part is our daughter. Is in her second year of practicing law at Sheppard Mullin up in century city, which is in Los Angeles. And when we asked AGA why do you want to be a lawyer? Because it wasn't something we were pushing. She said I've watched you and mom help a lot of people over the years.

And I want to help people too. Okay. When you combine all of that, as a dad, everything I've done, I don't care about that. Just I'm like, okay. So cool. So that's another long answer to a short question. Sorry, Chris, but that's one. No. Don't apologize for that, man. We're all dads here, man.

That's a, that's amazing. It's all about family, right? Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. So Mitch what drove you to create a book about social media? You would have maybe thought the first book would have been like social media for lawyers, somebody already written social media for dummies, right?

Yeah. I believe me. I've got that one. I tried Jim, I, you know what, I, wasn't smart enough to write the book on my own. Let me show you if there are a couple of different versions. This is one version. Okay. I think the most recent one has me in a suit on the cover, but Jim, as you well know, my secret to this book was I reached out to 44 top experts from around the country.

Who contributed chapters to the book, which was the best thing I ever did. I tried to write the book on my own and my cases and my trials just gotten away. And then once I reached out to some friends of mine who were all very kind and contributed chapters the book started to come together.

And the reason I did it to him was because I had a lot of friends of mine asking, how do you do this? How do you live stream? What platforms are you live streaming on? How do you use Instagram? What's Twitter. How do you tweet? And so I was answering the same questions over and over.

So I decided, you know what I'm going to do. We'll just sit down for about six months, put this together, and now I've got something that I can literally just hand someone or I can steer them to where. Amazon right. It's available. It has a book, audible and Kindle versions, and they can literally get as of today.

This book's two years old, but it's more relevant today than it was two years ago. Why? Because people are understanding now because of COVID-19 because of social distancing, because of working from home because of the importance of housing, having a brand. And having a cloud-based business, this stuff right here is more important than it's ever been.

And so that, that's why I put it together. It's and if you notice, the title to the book, it's the ultimate guide to social media, for business owners, professionals, and entrepreneurs. I didn't even mention lawyers. And I did that on purpose because what I wanted to do is empower other business owners.

Other professionals, whether you're an accountant, a doctor, a lawyer a CPA. I wanted them to understand that it's okay to build out a brand on social it's okay. To help more than one person at a time by sharing your secret sauce. And by having that Bob Burg co-author of the Go-Giver having that Bob Burg mentality of just being a giver, give, and then give some more.

Before you ever asked for anything. And one of the contributing authors to my book was Mark Schaefer. Mark Schaefer shared a chapter about being known. He wrote a book called known, which was outstanding. I read it on my way back from Amsterdam on a family trip. And Mark shared a chapter just for the book.

Really consolidating many of the things in the book known just for social media and for this book, but Mark's got a new book out. And I think before we went live, we're going to talk about that yet. This new book is called cumulative advantage. How to build momentum for your ideas business.

And life against all odds. And I know he's super excited about this book. I think he thinks it's probably one of his best. I can't wait to get it, but for example, what's fun is when somebody reaches out to me to purchase my book on Amazon, I'm going to direct them. Over to Mark's books, over to Bob Burg's books, over to David Mirman Scott's books over to Jay Baer's books, because I know lawyers and other professionals that tap into this information that has nothing to do with our industries, nothing to do with what we do, but it has everything to do with connecting with people.

It has everything to do with closing that deal. Winning that case. I know it's going to enrich their lives. And so I love sharing this stuff with everyone else. And I think the unintended benefit of this is that it's also allowed me to meet some really cool people from all over the world and form new relationships.

irst met back around probably: 2010

And what it's all about was lawyers showing their human side. And back then lawyers weren't showing their homicide, but Chrissy and I hit it off and we stayed in touch. And so when my family took a trip to London two years ago, year and a half ago we all got to sit down and have lunch together.

And when she comes out here, we're going to go paddle boarding down at Dana point Harbor. So what's fun about this is when I see the two of you and you're in South orange County, or here in Southern California, we're going to do some stuff together, right? Yeah. And this wouldn't have happened.

Had it not been for. Live video, social media, a lot of the conferences that we go to, none of this wouldn't have happened unless we had stepped up and made the effort to embrace this new technology, embrace these new opportunities. Yeah. And I loved your book. I got to read it cover to cover, and it was funny.

Cause as I was reading it as like I've met this person, I know. And it was just really cool. How you put that together. Madalyn Sklar Mike Alton and Stephanie loo. I'll just not just good content, but good people. And I think right. That was a requirement. Yeah. Just so you know, I got some knuckleheads that wanted to contribute chapters.

I see that affectionately. That's a term. We, it's a Latin term. We've learned in law school a long time ago. And I'll tell you, there were five or six chapters that did not make it into the book. And that's just the way it is, that's actually a term that we like to use in the Marines as well as, you knuckle heads.

Yeah. That's it. I did not know that it was derived in Latin that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Okay. Okay. This HEDIS for hard-headed right. And I'm glad you clarified a lot of that stuff. It's just because, I think. Social media, amongst other things, technology and whatnot, changes so rapidly.

There's always new developments. There's always Oh, did you know that a Instagram's not doing this and Twitter's doing this, but the book isn't just about that kind of stuff, because it just dates itself because by the time it's published, it's like, it's not, it's. Concepts it's mentalities it's mindset.

It's like you're talking about, you mentioned Bob Burg, the, the giving mentality, social media is social media. It's not just something you can trumpet from wherever you actually need to be social on it. And I love how the book touches on those things and th the. The fact that you reached out to people that, contributed to the book is giving in and of itself.

ook and they were to say it's: 2021

Whatever you want to find about that. It's the concepts of what you want to do and what you want to deliver on. So social media, which is not just relevant today, but which will be irrelevant years from now. I'm so glad you brought that up, Chris, because the book's broken down, just wrapping up the book real quick into three section you guys.

And the first section is understanding the mindset of social. That's why I started off with Bob Burg, chapter two, having a Go-Giver mentality. Because unless you've got the right mindset for social, it's not going to work unless you've got the right mindset for life or business, that's not going to work for you either.

So the content in the first section applies to all of the above. The section. Second section is all about understanding the personalities of the platforms. The last section you guys is my favorite section, it's 14 or 15 chapters on how to communicate. These are different approaches that we use in court.

During mediations arbitrations, I've got top keynote speakers that talk in front of thousands of people at Tony Robbins who have contributed their speaking styles and tips and approaches to the third section of the book. One of them is karma and Gallo who wrote the book talk like Ted and karma and interviewed 200 Ted speakers and to find out what makes you know, what makes the top Ted speakers.

So good. And I think they're all great. But what karma did is he wrote a chapter just for this book on how to take the tips he learned after interviewing these Ted speakers and apply them to social media. And he broke it down into three components. I can share them with you real quick. If you'd I think it's really important.

So what car mine basically says and talk like Ted and in the chapter. Is you want to create social media that has three components to it. Number one, you want your social media to be entertaining? And we all like to watch entertaining social media. It has to be appropriately entertaining. If I'm talking about a serious wrongful death case, obviously that's not entertaining to any anyone, except if the circumstances behind what happened are unique.

It's a Tesla that was self-driving the collided into the side of a semi-tractor trailer. That's interesting to a lot of people, right? So you want to craft your message, your post, your store, your live stream, and have some type of appropriate, entertaining component to it. Number two, you want it to be unique?

There's a reason why I'm not in a suit and tie right now in addition to COVID and working from home. But I want my viewers and my audience to people who know me to understand that I'm just the guy next door. So you're always going to see me, in a casual attire. I want to be unique as a lawyer when I'm out running, when I'm down on the paddle board, back when we were racing motocross, that's unique.

A lot of lawyers aren't doing that stuff they should be. And I think they will, after they watch this show because it really works, be unique in your content. And then the last component is create memorable content, create content in a way where people are going to go, you know what. You need to watch this, let me send you the link.

One way you create memorable content is do your live video like this, and then repurpose the content on different platforms. Converted into an audio for a podcast. Take clips of the highlights of your last year of videos and clip those highlights together. To create an entirely new video that addresses a specific issue.

If you're a lawyer and you're asked the same 10 questions each month, take that highlight clip, make it about. 10 or 15 minutes long and have 10 or 15 experts, but it's going to be memorable to the recipient of the message. And so I think, using a lot of the technology you guys are sharing here on Amazon live, we may or may not talk about some of it today using the approaches and the books that we've already mentioned.

ong-term success, not only in: 2021

Yeah. And Mitch you may not know this, but we like you use lately AI. So shout out to Jane. If she comes and watches this later to repurpose content like this, cause you're right. It just makes it so cool to be able to take these things and re you know, cause like today, right? We do this live show.

You've done it too. It don't let it just sit on the shelf. That's right. A lot of times the, what literally does in the war pulse too. I'm a, I'm a brand ambassador for a Gore pulse. I love that platform. Also. They allow you to Jim. I want you to tell everybody what lately does, but before you do, let me share something about Agorapulse.

So I'm sitting in court, you guys we're halfway through a two week trial. It's like a Wednesday morning break, probably about 10 30 in the morning. The jury is dismissed. We're sitting at counsel table and the other attorney leans over to me with his phone. He goes, how did you just tweet this out?

Because I've been sitting in a trial for a week and a half, and my phones I'm following you on Twitter and you're tweeting like four or five times a day and I'm sitting next to you in trial. How are you doing that? And so I explained to him how on Sunday nights during Sunday night football, which is when we were trying these cases I'll sit down and just schedule a lot of content in Agorapulse or have my team members do it for me so that it goes out during the week lately allows you to do the same thing, but it allows you to do a couple of other things using AI.

Yeah. And that's where, yeah. We take our videos, we upload them and then it finds those nuggets. And I love how they say they get you to third base and then your voice takes it home. And so it's same thing, you're able to schedule through lately. You can even take that stuff, put it into Gora pulse, which which I use as well.

And because this stuff is. Is stuff you got to remind. I Some of it, we'd like to use the term evergreen, that what you say is good at any time, sometimes, maybe even more and I think Mitch too, something that I don't think any of us maybe anticipated was interesting.

What you were saying about where now maybe like more, what does say professionals in general are going to say, I need a personal brand. Is. We accidentally were prepared for what happened the last nine months, because we had been doing this before it happened, like live streaming. Wasn't something new to us.

We weren't like, Oh my gosh, how do I go live? And and I don't think it's too late for people to get started. In fact, I'd say they should get started. And And, I want it, I wanted to Mitch, we talked about this before the show. Let's talk a little bit more about clubhouse. Cause you said you had a seven I think seven things you wanted to talk about regarding that.

e're doing to move forward in: 2021

Some of these ideas have come from watching what our clients are doing or how we're using technology. Just as Jim mentioned such as live video, how we've used it the last eight or nine, 10 years, and how, when COVID hit. It was just a couple of minor speed bumps here at the firm because how we're set up, we're still able to communicate with the clients in the cloud and using some of the other approaches.

ly important. Looking back at: 2020

Okay, this is key right now. Everybody's under a lot of pressure stress. If somebody wants you to communicate with them using text messages or an email, or picking up the phone, have your business set up so that you can communicate with that person. In that fashion, eliminate the friction, make it easy.

It's super simple to do yet. I see a lot of professionals say we don't text our clients. We can mail you a letter or we can FedEx you a document, or we might be able to figure out how to use an email attachment, believe it or not. The key here you guys is communicate with the clients.

ere's one thing we learned in: 2020

We're doing the best we can to protect their rights and move their case along as best possible. I think the takeaway for all of us is if we're all servicing our clients in that fashion, and there's another virus, there's another event that just shuts everything down. By having those valued relationships where your clients know and trust you, they're going to be easy with you.

They're going to give you a break. They're going to want to continue using your products and services as opposed to going someplace else. I think relationships. We've now learned, even though a lot of us knew this, I think it was a gentle reminder. There's never been anything more important. Totally important.

ng more. So moving forward in: 2021

We do that with all of our clients so that we can personalize our communications. If my Arizona Wildcats basketball season right now are playing Stanford, for example, I can easily click and send a text and email or BombBomb. Email video email to a group of clients and friends and acquaintances who either went to Arizona, went to Stanford or like college basketball.

And we can all bust each other's chops and have some fun. That's how you create Mitch in case you don't know Chris is a big blue fan of Michigan. So if you want to be prepared to stir that pot sometime just like that, Arizona is very comfortable with beating up on anybody. So if we have to roll into Ann Arbor and take care of business, there we'd be more than happy to, although this may not be the year.

Chris. I was going to say, I was going to say this we only had one loss in basketball, but yeah, in Arizona football we were happy to allow you to to hire rich Rodriguez as your coach. That was, those were dark days for Michigan football. So anyway, I'm just going to leave that.

Yeah, duty being the doer of the pack 12, it's our pleasure, right? Riches, long gone as you well know. Let's see. Number four is, do you want to be agile and you want to take your business right now? You guys and using. A lot of products and services available on Amazon, build out a cloud component of your business so that if something happens and you can't go into work, or everyone has to work from home, make sure you've got a cloud centered or focused type of service.

So your clients can be serviced via their smartphones via their tablets. We use a Cleo, which is a practice management software. That allows us to set up 24, seven portals for our clients so they can access the software to get their case information and exchange documents. Look at the calendars. They don't have to call us or Texas.

Everything's just a click away at three in the morning. I think now more than ever. I think clients really appreciate that. The fifth item and I'll just go through these quickly is it's really important. I think for businesses to diversify, if you have all your eggs in one basket and somebody takes that basket away from you.

Maybe it's the state of California telling you, you can't open up your shop and cut hair or let people work out in your gym. Do you have a backup plan? And I talked a little bit about maybe thinking about how can you set up, and this is the sixth tip, some type of online subscription or membership service, some type of online consulting service that compliments what you do.

Lawyers, any business can do this. But it might be another revenue source so that if revenue source number one gets shut down, for whatever reason, you've still got revenue source number two, one of the secrets with creating an online membership, a mastermind or subscription-based service is also have a strong community and networking component to that service.

People will go there and I'm noticing this right now. People get together in my mastermind because we can all visit and just talk. And we can talk about, Michigan basketball or Notre Dame basketball. I'm trying to think of some of the guys and gals in the group, big time, Alabama football guys.

And then we have the PAC 12. And sometimes we talk about law. Sometimes we talk about technology, but there's always something to talk about. I think everybody feels. Good and better after that one hour conversation. The last thing is just to always remember, we're building our digital 24 seven.

Global brands we're dealing with multiple time zones. I'm here in California. There may be someone on the other side of the world watching this live or recorded show. And we all know that is happening. And so think, start thinking that way, start thinking globally, whatever you're doing, how can you build out that brand?

On the show last night in clubhouse? Was a long time friend of mine, chocolate Johnny. He's got a chocolate shop in Australia John compost, and what John has done over the years, starting off with Periscope fast forward to today is he's taken this. He's a third generation chocolate tier, but he's taken this chocolate store and he's created a global brand where he's now shipping chocolate all over the world.

And this started back with the. When Periscope originally came out, which was the original kind of live video, which Twitter now has taken over and it's going to be discontinuing. John's took advantage of this technology to expand his brand. And I think we can all do the same thing. I think if we do so ensure our human side and pull back the curtain and let people into our lives or what really happens behind the scenes, which is something I'm really going to focus on.

Once things open back up, and we can get back down to the courthouse. I'm going to take people back into the judges chambers. They're going to talk to the jurors. After our cases, we've got motions, we've set up and stipulations we've set up so that we can all agree to a film in videotape and live feeds some portions of our trials to the rest of the world.

And it's pretty complicated stuff. As far as the judge and opposing counsel giving us permission to do this, but there's a way to do it. And so we're already preparing for that because I know this is content that my audience is going to want to see. And I feel like once they see us in court, Dropping gloves, throwing punches and taking names.

I think it's going to help with more business coming in. I also think it's going to help give young students in college, an idea of if they want to be a lawyer, what's it really like to be a trial lawyer because it's nothing like what on TV. And so there'll be able to, like I said, look through that curtain and get a better idea of what happens in the courtroom.

of these seven approaches in: 2021

Right Mitch. I love how you always you talk about like the personal side and if you maybe want to talk about it a little bit, some of the tools you use to do that, I know like you've got the GoPro is one of the things that you'd like to use. Cause if you've never seen it, you gotta follow Mitch on social Mitch's is running.

Are you sometimes I think he's just got done with a paddle board or something but he's using this. To communicate to everyone. And you see it everywhere, even on LinkedIn, right? Mitch. It's not like you said it. I love the fact that I don't usually see you. I think in a suit. You're usually like, like you said you're just like everybody else you don't want to.

I don't want to Trump my way to take it off. Hey, I'm actually the seek the secret and everyone, will tell you if they're being honest with you, we all prefer. A casual shirt and shorts. Right now, we had a mediation where we knew the judge went to law school with the judge, and I knew the other lawyers pretty well.

So when we were done with the mediation, which was just basically a zoom, everyone, the judge said, I've got a, I'm not going to go into details, but basically he said, I'm going to do something for our for the winner. If you have pants on, stand up and I will do something for you. Maybe it was a donation to a local charity.

Just having fun. We're all done with the case. None of the lawyers stood up. None of us had pants on. We all had shorts on. My running shorts. And yeah, so I prefer this tool right here, which is a GoPro guys. This is my hero, nine digital stabilizer. When I go off for a run, I just, use my arc-on Mount.

So I can wrap this around a fence pole, a tree branch, or put it on the ground, or I can just hold it out like this while I'm running in. I'll usually think of something, whether it's a breaking news story that I read about that morning, whether it's maybe a trial tip for a young trial lawyer, maybe it's how lawyers can embrace social media or live video.

And I'll just run in, just talk to my GoPro. The video's outstanding. The audio on the newer GoPros are, is excellent. And I'll create a short three to five, sometimes 10 minute video that I'll then share and repurpose on all the platforms, right? YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, whatever it might be. And it really gets a lot of engagement people.

Aren't used to seeing this for me, I'm multitasking. I want to go for a run. It takes time to create videos. So why not do both at the same time, you'll usually see me running by chapter Rosa, which is where, I coached little league for many years. With my son. And so I'll usually stop and show the little league field and talk about a memory, but I think, for professionals or anyone else, whether you're using your phone, whether you're using a GoPro, it's just a great way to create unique content.

That works really well. The other thing, Jimmy and Chris, you've got down there as the Samsung go mic mobile, and this is pretty cool. You guys we use the Samsung. Device this clips on to your belt. Okay. Or you can put it in your pocket, this clips onto the back of your phone, or if you're using a tripod, you can just Velcro it to the tie, to the tripod.

It doesn't necessarily need to connect to your phone. There's a little arrow that connects to your phone. And what happens is whether you're 10 feet away or 50 feet away, or a hundred feet away. Shooting video on your phone. It allows for critical, crystal clear audio, like you're two feet away from the phone.

It is really cool, especially when I'm down on the beach. And I was doing some of the original virtual keynote when COVID first hit, none of us were appearing on stage anymore. So I thought to myself, all right, I'm I still need to do this keynote. And we're recording them. I use this technology to do a keynote with the waves behind me.

That noisy surf sound. But because I was using the Samsung, the audio is crystal clear. It also comes with an accessory, which is a Mike. That hooks up the same way. So you can use this and just talking to it like this whether you're interviewing someone else or you're just holding the mic yourself, and you're 15 feet away from the, from your iPhone or Android device.

And you've got crystal clear sound. So little things like this that aren't expensive, I think makes all the difference in the world. And you guys know better than anyone. A lot of people don't pay attention to the audio component. Of their videos and that's where they're really dropping the ball, right?

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. You gave me a great idea, Mitch. I had never thought of this until, because I didn't realize that's what this thing did. So I'm in Toastmasters and a lot of Toastmasters struggle with doing visual presentation. If I can have my phone attached to zoom and now I can stand back, now I can have that audio.

Yes. And not have to sit there and worry about, Oh, I've got to be near my microphone, cause a lot of times we talk about you want to be a little further back. So I love the idea of using that as a way to be able to make sure that, you get yourself framed, you can be further away.

You don't have to necessarily have this long cord attached to your phone, your tripod. I mean that's yeah. And you used to use a little Pell lapel mic, just like this. Oh, it's the reason we got it is so when I'm on stage and Lisa's two or three rows away, but it's literally 30 feet away, especially on a big stage.

I wanted to have my own video content independent of what the company was producing. And so that's why we originally went this route jam and it really works well. You've got the nine, but it's not your first GoPro. Like I think every time a new one comes out, you get the next one. Not every time, but almost so the the nine you guys, like the nine is the digital stabilizer is outstanding. The audio is outstanding, the front screen. So when you're doing a selfie, you can frame yourself and actually see yourself in the front. The older GoPros don't have this, but it doesn't really matter because it's such a wide lens.

Wide angle lens that when you hold the GoPro out like this, whether you're walking or running, it's pretty easy to catch a good correctly framed video or picture of yourself. But the nine has this function. Before this I had the GoPro seven, I didn't have the eight. It was fantastic. It is fantastic. It works great.

I just had a chance to upgrade to a nine. And so I was able to give the seven to my son and he's going to use that up at, he tells me he's going to use it up at the fraternity house at SC when he goes back up. But I advised him on the advice of counsel. I will keep the video to a minimum, but we'll see if he listens to me.

Advice of counsel. Oh yeah. On the advice of counsel. Thank goodness. We didn't have this stuff when we were in college. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Tell me more, John. Yeah. So I, maybe maybe a final question. So if you were advising like, say someone will just say, business owners entrepreneurs how, what would you recommend to them to get.

Started first, like what should they do? How do they kinda overcome that fear? One day there'll be, like Mitch Jackson. I don't want them to be like me. They don't want to be like me. It took me long, too long to get to where I am. But first thing, Jim and Chris, as you guys know, I would tell them be yourself, right?

That's something that none of us can ever duplicate. And I just shared a video last night with a public defender in San Diego, who I met on clubhouse, who's into his practice about five years. And I shared a video with him that I'd be happy to share with you guys sometimes. But basically just That moment when I realized quit trying to be like everyone else and just be yourself and just stay true to your internal compass when it comes to values and ethics.

And once I figured out I that's, when the magic started to happen, that's when I started being more comfortable in core. That's when the types of clients that I wanted to represent started showing up at the office. And the reason being is I started sharing. My hobbies, my interests and passions, people gravitated towards that.

And then they come in and we friends, or they become clients. I would suggest that lawyers or anyone grab either my book or a book like mine and get a good feeling for how social media works, how digital works, and then have a game plan to build out your digital brand. Okay, everybody, all the lawyers know the evidence code of civil procedure, rules of court.

You learn how to try a case, at least the fundamentals, knowing that stuff's not going to separate you from everyone else. So how can you separate yourself from everyone else? I think you can do it easily and cost-effectively by embracing social media and digital. And then Jim, what I was suggesting once you understand the dynamics of social, generally speaking, I would absolutely start a weekly live video show.

I would start a show and start interviewing movers and shakers in your community. If you're a business litigation lawyer, I would have a weekly show shining, a bright light on a new CEO on a new business owner, both large and small in your community. Every single week and ask them what makes them tick?

Why did they start their companies? Why do they enjoy being an entrepreneur? What are some of the challenges that they've had and how do they overcome them? I've got some friends of mine that started Bomani, which is an alcohol infused coffee drink. They started up their company just before COVID 19 hit.

Okay. It's hugely successful. And I got them on clubhouse this Friday. To talk about their entrepreneurial journey. Now, Sam Manny went to high school with my daughter, so they're family, friends. And I think the world of Sam and his partners, and I've got Sam in our men on his, one of his co-founders to talk about their journey.

I think other lawyers can do the same thing, whether you're using live video, whether you're podcast, whether you're on clubhouse, doing this. You can share other people's stories, but guess what happens? Do this? When you do this you start to connect with other people. You might hit it off and start doing business together.

They're sharing your interview with their audience. So when you have on that might be well-known, they might have a large audience. Those are all potential clients that are watching your interview. Those are all potential referral sources. And if you do it right, and you don't make it about you, you make it about your guest and once you figure out how to do that, it's fine.

And it's easy to do. I think that's the quickest way to build your brand is the quickest way to connect with the people that you'll want to connect with, especially in business. And I think it's something that everybody can do. I think lawyer really good at this. I think lawyers are good at standing in front of 12 people.

They never met before. And understanding just using people skills. And by the way, Bob Burg's book, adversaries into allies is the best people, skills, soft skills book I've ever read. But using the people skills in court, they're able to come back on social media and really create some really cool videos.

And so it's just a matter of showing them how to do this. So that they go about it the right way enough boy, you don't want to look like that late night lawyer at, he likes looking at those, not even. And I think that's what I would recommend you, him and Chris, this is to just to embrace live video or maybe podcasting.

I think video's even better for what we're talking about and do a weekly show and interview other movers and shakers, and be surprised at how that will accelerate. Their S their path towards success. So instead of it taking 20 years, maybe it'll take five years. It's still a long term play. Exactly. And I think a lot of people, they want that quick fix, like here's five ways for you to make a million dollars in four weeks, or whatever the headline is. And they don't realize there is work here. There is some time there. This is somewhat of a long game.

But this could be the quickest way. And I love how you sculpted this to say, listen, be vulnerable, be transparent, be yourself, be authentic. And then you'll get the right clients. You'll get the right attention. And the more you're alive and you're doing that. And you're working those reps in and you're interviewing people.

People can see you working with other prospective clients and go, you know what. That person is someone I can see me working with the more you're doing it. Yeah, I think so. I look, the older, we get the wiser we get, this is not stuff that I could have shared with you 20 years ago. I'm at the other end of the spectrum, right?

And I'm a better human being than I was 25 years ago. I'm a better father and husband. And I'm a better business owner. I'm a better lawyer just because of the mistakes. And the unexpected outcomes eight. And so I'm sharing through a different lens than I would have shared, 25 or 30 years ago.

I will tell you when this book came out the first week he came in Sunday morning, my son comes downstairs with a pad dad. My, my buddies think you're a rock star. And I'm like, what are you talking about? It's 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning. He goes, Gary V just tweeted out your book. To 1.8 million people on Twitter.

And they didn't know that you knew Gary and this is so cool. And I said first of all, I'm not a rockstar because somebody tweeted something out, I'm a rockstar because I'm your dad. Let's get that straight right now. So I had to recenter him and I was just busting his chops a little bit.

And he goes, what? And I said no, you don't understand. This goes back eight years earlier. Two, when Gary was just getting started, his first book crush, it came out a buddy of mine at a cross country meet his daughter. And my daughter were two of probably Sheridan was the top runner.

AGA was her third. We had four runners our senior year with a top all time, top 10 times in a school that was 50 years old, there were state champs their freshman year. So they're in one and two in this meet against San Clemente. And Steve comes over and enhanced me. Crush it by Gary Vaynerchuk, he goes, you're going to like this book, so I'm checking it out.

And I'm like, yeah, this is pretty cool. I had just started doing videos and I liked Gary's approach a month or two later. He was in orange County at what's called a linked OSI event of friend of mine. Brian Elliott had LinkedIn se. So we went down and got a chance to add and bullshit with Gary for awhile.

And it turns out Mark Sanchez. Football NBA hall. High school was a quarterback at USC and the jets had just drafted Mark's uncle is a fire captain who is a friend of my buddy. All right. And this just all came out during the conversation, but we connected about football and Sanchez and the jets.

And I had no idea he was a big fan of that yet, or he may be the future owner, but it was a dance, that started a long time ago. So when he did that and he doesn't normally tweet out other people's products or services, you had nothing to do with the book or anything else they had to deal with.

He's want to show Mitch some love. I haven't read the book, but there's a new mountain. Here's the Amazon link. Yeah. Look where we are Amazon. That was pretty huge. And everything just exploded after that. So oftentimes this is a longterm play, it's not a sprint, there's no finish line.

It's not even a marathon. There's no some finish line. This is more like working out. It's more like exercise. It's more just trying to improve on a daily basis. And I think the sessionals and business owners that. Treat social media that way and just understand it's a daily activity that if you embrace it and bring it into your life and into your business and take advantage of new platforms like you guys have, I think that's how you can stand out above all the noise.

I think that's how you can create top of mind awareness. And I think that's how you can create long-term success. You just have to take action and that's where everyone drops the ball. Awesome stuff, man. Mitch, thank you so much for joining us today. You're welcome to come back any time we can have conversations about other stuff, cause you are a wealth of knowledge.

Your, and I love how you're always like doing cutting edge. Stuff was social, right? It's like you said, you dive in, clubhouse may not be here in six months, but let's get what we can out of it now, but it's, I think it's it's the fundamentals, right? It's just like when we played sports, get the metals in place.

And you can adjust to whatever comes up next. It's getting into those habits. So do me a favor. I want to do a clubhouse room with three of us, three of us co moderating, a room. You guys pick the topic and let's blow it up. Awesome. I love it. All right. All right. Everyone heard that's called an offer and acceptance there's consideration.

We're good to go. And we put it out there. The only thing left is we got to put money on it. That's it. And then it's done. It's going to happen. We'll save the money for the next year's Michigan. Arizona game. Okay. Now we're talking. There we go. Mitch. Thank you so much for taking so much of your time and not just that, but just the amazing wisdom that you've been able to share.

And I hope everyone out there, and we talked about this earlier. This content that we did is live it's happening right now in this moment, but it lives forever. And so we're going to be using lately and everything else. And I just can't wait for, the world, the rest of the world to hear these stories and to be able to share in this go giving mentality that you've you brought on the platform.

Thanks again, Mitch. This has been just amazing. You're welcome, Chris. Thank you, Jim. It's my pleasure. Thanks guys.