TLH EP.28 The Legal Podcast Revolution with Robert Ingalls
We had a great time in our new episode of The Legal Helm! Our host Bim Dave is joined by special guest Robert Ingalls CEO, and founder of LawPods, a pioneering podcast production agency for law firms. With a background as a recovering attorney and professional speaker, Robert and his team at Law Pods assist some of the world’s leading law firms in launching and growing branded podcasts that foster relationships and drive revenue.
In today’s episode, Bim and Robert have an interesting discussion about how to transform your firm’s podcast into a powerful content marketing tool. We cover a wide range of topics, from the intersection of law and mental health to exploring the audience for legal podcasts. Plus, we even dive into a bit of Dr. Who fandom! It was an incredibly engaging conversation, and we can’t wait for you to tune in and hear it for yourself. Stay tuned!
Your host
Bim Dave is Helm360’s Executive Vice President. With 15+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.
Our Guest
Robert Ingalls is a recovering attorney, professional speaker, and the founder of LawPods, one of the first podcast production agencies for law firms. At LawPods, Robert and his team help some of the premier law firms in the world launch and grow branded podcasts that build relationships and drive revenue.
Robert frequently speaks on topics including Creating a Law Firm Podcast That Converts, Putting Mental Health First, Mindset, and Entrepreneurship. In his spare time, he enjoys tinkering with all things audio/video, traveling with his wife and daughters, and longboard skateboarding.
Transcript
Bim Dave: Hello Legal Helm listeners today I am delighted to be speaking with Robert Ingalls, CEO, and founder of LawPods, one of the first podcast production agencies for law firms. Robert is also a recovering attorney, a professional speaker. And at LawPods Robert and his team help some of the premier law firms in the world launch and grow branded podcasts that build relationships and drive revenue. In this podcast, I’m going to be talking to Robert about how to Turn Your Firm podcast into a content marketing machine. Robert. Hello and welcome to the show.
Robert Ingalls: Hey, thanks. It’s so good to be here. Appreciate it.
Bim Dave: So you describe yourself, um, and I love this you describe yourself as a recovering attorney. Please tell our audience a little bit about your journey that led you to LawPods.
Robert Ingalls: Sure. Well, first, full disclosure, I stole that. I have no idea where I stole it from, but I saw somebody else, there’s quite a few of us out there that have done the law track and then said, I’m gonna chase my dreams.
And so it’s, uh, it’s certainly something I stole. But the, the short story is I was in, I, I went to law school for perhaps the wrong reasons.
Law was always something I was interested in. And coming from a low income community. It was also very prestigious. Like lawyers just, wow. Doctors, lawyers such, right? And so that was kind of part of it. And also once I was done with college, I was like, what am I, what am I gonna do now? Like I, I didn’t really have any understanding of what was next.
And I’d gotten pretty good at school at that point. So, Hey, let’s, let’s do some more school. Let’s do law school. And I went to school. I became a criminal defense attorney. Um. Really didn’t like almost any part of the process. Didn’t really like school. Ugh. And well every, I don’t know. You get to law school and just everybody’s smart no matter where you go.
Like everybody’s pretty brilliant. And I wasn’t used to that. [00:02:00] And then I got into practicing law. And criminal law especially was hard on me. It was, I, my emotions are always right here at the surface. There’s no turning it off. They would say, oh, you have to compartmentalize. You have to leave it at work.
It’s not a skill I developed then. It’s not one I have now, nor do I really want now. And so it got really hard doing the kind of things I was doing. I kind of felt on a daily basis, like I was the villain in somebody’s movie that day and, oh, I don’t like that. Oh, I like, I kind of like it on a day-to-day basis where everybody I see kind of, kind of just enjoys my presence.
And that was tough on me. And just the law in general was not good for my mental health. I had a lot of anxiety. And then after I’d been married a very short period of time, my wife kind of spur on me, Hey, I would think we should start having a baby right this second. And I mean, she was right. We were not as young as we thought we were.
But at that moment it had been future guy’s problem and now all of a sudden it was like, today guy’s problem. And that kind of broke me. And but that moment also sent me on this path of self discovery. Like, I need to figure something out because what’s happening right now is not gonna work with a family.
It was barely working when it was kind of just us as a couple. And yeah, that sent me on the path and I started just looking for knowledge of like, Hey, how do I make money? I was, I had a law firm, but I didn’t know how to make any money. And it started with reading books, and then books led to podcasts.
And within a month of listening to my first podcast, I bought this mic that I’m talking into. I was just taken by the medium and over a period of years, my hobby started to get noticed by other people and they asked me for help and. I mean, it was 2015 when I listened to that podcast. And what are we in 24 now?
So in under nine years, I’m sitting here doing a completely different thing for some of the biggest companies in the world, and it blows my mind. So that’s the short story, if that tells you anything about me.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, I love it and I love the fact that there you are absolutely right. There’s so many, um, ex-law that I speak to that have gone off on their own little journeys and ended up, you know, either being, um, you know, CEO of, of marketing, um, companies that still, still in the legal space helping, um, helping law firms, uh, in some shape or fashion, but also. Some of them are going off in the technology space, right? And actually building products that, that then can serve, um, the legal market. So not necessarily like taking a full step away, but still, you know, having a finger in the pie, but maybe a less, less stressful, uh, version, which I, I can totally appreciate having been, um, immersed from a technology perspective in a law firm and dealing with some of the dynamics and some of the, um, you know, just some of the pressure and, and some of the. the. just the aspects of a law firm that, that I can’t, I can’t compare it to anything else. It’s, it’s a very different, it’s a different dynamic to deal with. So you being a lawyer in that mode, I can totally understand why you’ve ended up going this, um, this path. And, and I’m, I’m very keen to just kind of learn a little bit more in terms of why, why podcasts.
Right. So you obviously like focusing on the marketing side of things of a law firm. Is there, is there something that drew you to podcasts specifically versus, you know, the overall marketing strategy of a law firm?
Robert Ingalls: So the, the first podcast I really listened to was. With the founder of Quest Nutrition, his name’s Tom biu. Um, he’s since sold his stake in it and he has a podcast and production called Impact Theory Now, and he said something on that podcast, I could boil it down its most basic form of can do anything you want with your life.
And we’ve heard that so many times. It’s trite, but I heard it and I believed it. In that moment, I was in this place in my life where that message, I was ready for it and I heard it. And for me it was one of those clear moments in life where there was before and there was after it was like the blinders came off and I saw all this possibility and I took off running.
Every book that I could get my hands on about mindset and self-improvement. And, And, I just wanted it all so bad, and I realized that all of that came from a conversation that two people sat down and had at some point in the past, and they put it on the internet and hoped it would have value. And I, I, your listeners may have recognized this by now, but.
I like to hear myself talk. I have things I think that need to be said, and I did. I said, I, I wanna be a part of this. I wanna be a part of these conversations. And I bought this mic, which I feel like says something about me as well go big or go home and, ’cause I could not afford this mic at the time, and I’m in my spare bedroom.
I’m learning how to do all this stuff, and I end up starting a podcast in my law firm. And I immediately start to see the value. People are listening to it, people are talking to me about it. And I’m seeing that when I talk to people, they already have a sense for who I am because they’ve listened to me.
They’ve gotten a little of my sense of humor and they’ve started to trust me a little bit ’cause they have heard me talk and they, okay, this guy already knows what he’s talking about. And I found that really powerful. I’d like to tell you that I immediately saw the path. I did not, you know, at the time I had no.
Belief that this is where I would end up because I, I hadn’t opened my mind that far yet where I believed, like somebody who did criminal justice, some poli sci went to law school, no business, no communications, no marketing, like this wasn’t an area I belonged in to me at that time. but I did understand the power of it.
And then over a period of years. People were asking me to do it. And I saw that as a unique opportunity for lawyers because of I, I’d seen the success I’d had with it, but I was also seeing the success in the market of B2C, B2B podcast and other major players were starting to invest in the space. But I was also keeping up with the, I think, Edison research.
Does every year they do state of the industry. They do podcasting, radio, every kind of media. And I was keeping up with that. And I was watching the way consumption was growing and the demographics of consumption as well, who was listening the ages that were listening. And one of the things I noticed was people that were making more money we’re listening at a higher rate.
And that was interesting to me. And then we were seeing consumer behavior change to where people were starting to understand that they could get information from a podcast, they could learn something. And I was very early at the time, and I still think it’s, I, I still believe it’s a little early, but people.
Now, I mean, we see it. People understand that podcasts are a place to get that, and I believed at the moment that this is where it was gonna go, could have been wrong. Um, it, it worked out. But I really did see that in the marketplace and there was so much, uh, white space, no one was really doing it. And the people that were doing it, there’s a lot of ’em, weren’t doing it well and. I, I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted, I knew I wanted to do something different. I’d already, at this point, decided to leave law behind, but I wasn’t positive what it was gonna be. And I think what really allowed me to take that step was a lawyer in my community came up to me at a networking event and he said, I see that you’re doing this podcast stuff.
Do you think you could help me do that? And I said, I’d love to help you. And he said, okay, come by tomorrow. That was my first chance. That was the first person who gave me money to do the thing for them. I learned a lot from it. I really enjoyed it. I saw that he saw value in it and it just, little by little over years kept growing until I was able to, in, on March 2nd, 2020, quit my full-time job that I’d taken to build the company and go all in.
Bim Dave: Fantastic. What a great, great story. Um, I’m, I’m interested to know a little bit more about the typ, like what you see as the typical audience for a law firm, because when, when I think about podcasts like a, as you kind of alluded to earlier, I. I, I do think about self-help some, um, fiction staff, some comedy staff, right?
But it wouldn’t occur to me to go and listen to a, to a podcast from a law firm. Right. So helpus understand like what, what’s, what’s the typical audience and what kind of, what kind of content works for a law firm that is engaging?
Robert Ingalls: And I think that always starts with why. Why are we doing it? What do we hope to get from it? Because one of the questions that lawyers will inevitably ask me is, you know, I’ve heard that I should do a podcast, but who would listen to a lawyer’s podcast? And I tell them, no one until, until the bad thing happens, until their wife gets hit by a car.
Until they are dealing with a will contest because one of their parents died without a will and now there’s a fight, they have a problem. They don’t know the answer to that problem. They go to the lawyer’s website. That’s why we’ve been blogging for so long. That’s why we’ve been creating content of all kinds to answer questions, and that’s one of the biggest ways that my clients and I see other lawyers doing it, is they’re using it.
Almost an FAQ model. We know what you want to know. Here’s the answer. You’re also getting to know me a little bit while I’m giving you that answer. Getting to understand who I am. Oh, I like, I like the cut of his jib and feeling you out and saying, this is somebody I’d like to at least call. And then you sit down with them, they talk to you.
They already feel like they have a sense for you. They’re farther down the road. We have effectively nurtured that lead with this podcast, and that’s one of the biggest ways that my clients do it. And then another is providing education and or entertainment for your referral sources. We have a podcast, uh, called Trial Lawyer Nation, and it’s exactly what it sounds like.
It’s about trial lawyer things. How to run a trial practice, but also how to try cases different unique things, talking to accomplished trial lawyers
about the cases that they have tried and the unique tactics and how this happened, and how did jury selection work and other trial lawyers are listening to that. They’re getting to know the host and see the host as somebody who they can trust in authority. And now when they have cases that come up, maybe the case is a little too big for them, they wanna refer it out, they wanna co-counsel it.
Who are they gonna send that to? And that is an excellent tool also for networking. You’ve got this big listenership and you are bringing on all these other lawyers and you’re getting to meet them in real time. Me and you are doing it right now. We are networking in real time. We’ve never met before. We talk for a couple minutes off the mic, and then here we are.
We’re getting to know each other during this conversation. And there’s so much value in that in getting to know somebody, adding them to your network across the world that you likely would’ve never met before because of this platform that you have. And then another angle is thought leadership. Lawyers love thought leadership, but this is where we see a lot of my big firm clients.
Are effectively using this. They are the first person talking about the thing, whether that thing is, you know, transfer pricing or ai. There’s a lot of, uh, you know, regulatory things, uh, issues between the EU and the uk. There’s so many different things that are developing all the time and these law firms are taking the opportunity to be the first voice out there talking about this and they’re gaining a following, being the first people talking about these things.
And so there’s so many different ways lawyers can capitalize on the medium. It’s not just one way and, and in one way I didn’t talk about that can be done well but is a little harder I think, than the other models, is you can do something community based. Where it’s a show in your community, about your community.
You’re getting to know people in the community and people will listen, get to know you, and then you’re also a lawyer. You talk about that a little bit. Maybe your law firm sponsors the podcast. They’re hearing you over and over kind of the the big shotgun branding approach of people are gonna get to know me by that.
They’re gonna start to trust me, and when they do need me, that’s who I’m, they’re gonna think about. Right? That one’s a longer play. It’s not the same as, Hey, I’m answering your question that you have, because somebody who has a question, who’s listening to a podcast, that’s somebody who could be your client tomorrow.
Um, so that’s, you know, uh, from an ROI perspective, that’s the kind of podcast that can drive leads a little bit faster. But those are just a few of the different methods that I have clients that are doing.
Bim Dave: Brilliant. I, I love, I love the, the kind of correlation between blog content in particular, because, because you’re right, like there’s so much content. That we produce, whether it be a law firm or any, any company for that matter. And I think think to our, uh, website as examples where blog, blog content is constantly being put out there, but actually how easy is that to consume, right?
When we are being, um, battered with information from everywhere And actually just being able to take some time out on your walk with your, your Apple AirPods in and listening to a lawyer. Explain things so that you’ve got that kind of FAQ and awareness makes, um, makes total sense. Like it, it really does. Um, so, so podcasts, podcasts are part of a law firm’s strategy, um, in, in kind of the world that you are, you are living in. And if you, if you were to rank podcasts in an overall marketing strategy, like how high up in the, in the list does it come? And how do, you mentioned, you kind of mentioned, um, ROI, and I’m, I’m keen to learn a little bit more about that.
How do you measure ROI when you are part of like a bigger marketing strategy, which could have website content and other stuff that you’re doing? How do you, how do you determine what’s working?
Robert Ingalls: Sure. I will preface this with, I like to stay in my lane when it comes to overall marketing strategy because, you know, I said at the outset this, this area was new to me just. Eight years ago. Um, however, since that time I’ve been face first in it. I love it. I am a, a lot of my, uh, my network and the people that I work around every day are deep in it.
And for me, podcasting can, can effectively be the cornerstone of a firm’s content marketing machine if they choose.
As far as where it slots in, I think that that’s gonna be an individual decision that a firm’s gonna need to make based on what their strategy already is as it exists. If I’m a small firm, I’m just starting out and I have to think about where every dollar goes. If I waste $10,000 one year, that’s crippling.
Whereas for a firm of some size, they’re not. I’m really gonna notice that now they’re gonna hope they don’t lose it again, but it’s not gonna hurt ’em in any appreciable way. And a lot of firms that are starting out wanna do a podcast and the ones that are doing it when they’re small, end up usually doing a lot of it in-House.
And I think that can be tough is if, if they’re okay just sitting down hitting record and getting it out without doing a ton of editing, a ton of sound design, things like that. Because it seems, when you listen to a podcast, it sounds like, oh, that’s not gonna be that hard. Right. I, I think you probably know the ins and outs of that.
Well, it, it, it can be a little more difficult to pull something like that off and then you start looking to hire people and it can start to add up a little bit. But once a firm passes that threshold where they can afford to spend, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month putting a, a good product together, then it can really start to drive results.
So, one of the things that I find to be most powerful about the podcast is you sit down for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, you have a conversation, and then if you have a team working on that, the lawyer stands up, they walk away, and that’s it.
That’s the, that’s the extent of the lawyer’s involvement in the podcast frequently. And now it gets edited and it becomes a podcast. It goes on Spotify and Apple and all the places. And on the website. We’re also capturing, you know, you and I are on Riverside right now. We’re capturing the high quality video of this interaction.
That’s the, that’s taThat’s gonna get edited and put on YouTube where we are seeing for a lot of clients, we’re seeing a solid 25% bump in listenership just by putting the video on YouTube and that, that’s incredible. That’s higher than I thought it was going to be. So now we’ve got that content there and we are also taking this and we’re finding those nuggets in there and we’re clipping them.he extent of the lawyer’s involvement in the podcast frequently. And now it gets edited and it becomes a podcast. It goes on Spotify and Apple and all the places. And on the website. We’re also capturing, you know, you and I are on Riverside right now. We’re capturing the high quality video of this interaction.
We’re putting them in vertical format, landscape square on social media. We have little quotes that we have that we’re pulling out that have solid impact and putting an image on those and put sharing those on social media as well. If we bring a guest on, we make, we take that stuff and we send it to the guest as well so they can share it because the stuff makes them look really good and who doesn’t like looking really good, especially when they don’t have to do any of the work.
They can just grab the stuff and share it. And then it goes on the website with the player, with the video embedded. Coming back on there with the show notes, you can also transcribe it and add that there as well. And so you have this plethora of content by having a lawyer sit down for 20, 30, maybe an hour.
Bim Dave: with, with regard to, um, PO podcasts in general, when I look at, like, when I, when I scroll my podcast, um, app. There are hundreds, thousands of different podcasts to select. What would you say are the key ingredients to a stand out in the crowd?
Like how do you get them there, um, in the first place to, to, to listen to a, a podcast and what are the key ingredients that need to be in the podcast to, or the production to make it, you know, some, something that you’re gonna go back to, right. Like re really that part of it, because I guess. Co content makes up a lot of it in terms of like who’s, who’s presenting and the topic that’s presenting, being presented. But there’s a, there’s a draw to kind of get you in there. And I think you kind of touched on this with the, the YouTube, uh, publishing and all and all that fun stuff. Um, but are there any other tips that you can share with the audience that, that could be valuable to, to make that happen?
Robert Ingalls: So you said, where are people gonna find it? It has been, a lot of people are finding it on the website. Because they’re, especially if it’s the kind of podcast that is nurturing leads, if it’s that first kind we talked about where we’re nurturing leads, people have a problem. They may have found you through S-E-O-P-P-C-A referral.
They landed on your website and they have a question. There are episodes there that’re answering their questions when they’re browsing around and they found you there. So a lot of times people will find it on the website for that way, your social channels as well. If you’re filling up your social channels with these clips that have titles that speak directly to the pain points of the prospect, they’re gonna find it there.
They’re gonna see that, and that clip is gonna say. Listen to the episode to hear more. So now you’re converting that person into a listener by getting them in through the website, getting them in through your social channels. And if it’s the Trial Lawyer Nation style, where we are educating our referral sources, there’s a lot of word of mouth there.
Now we wanna have it on the website. We wanna make sure that we’re filling up social channels, that we’re sending this content to our guests so they can share it and show people and recruit listeners that way. But we also wanna make sure that. We are building that listenership by encouraging other people to share it.
And one of the best ways that we encourage people to share it is by just consistently making good content, valuable content. ’cause all of us, if we’re listening here, we’re clearly a podcast listener. All of us are podcast listeners. And when we have a podcast that we like, I have a handful that I know when I press play, it’s not gonna disappoint me.
I come back for every episode because every episode is for me. But we also have a lot of podcasts that we like, but we kind of forget about. We listen to an episode and we’re like, oh, that was so good. And then we listen to a couple more and we’re like, eh, lukewarm. And even though we love a couple episodes, we don’t make ’em a habit.
Because it, it’s hit or miss, and then we might come back, but we also might forget because every day there’s something new. And by consistently creating content that’s valuable for your niche, for that niche of listeners that you have created, it’s one of the best ways to grow your audience with that style of podcast.
You know, the first style, you’re not really looking for subscribers. ’cause once they hire you, for the most part, you might make stuff about walking ’em through the case or you know, what to expect at mediation, stuff like that. But in general, they’re one and dones. They’re coming in, they’re getting in, they hire you.
That’s it. But when you’re looking for the subscribers, it really is important to make sure it’s easy to find sound quality is good, which will come in. You know, I’ll answer kind of the second part of your question is how are we making content That’s good. One of the easiest things you can do to make good content is buy a USB microphone.
Buy a microphone that plugs right into your computer. Now, feel free to go big if you want, but if you, if you have more, uh, money than you have time. And when I say money, it’s like 50, 60 bucks to buy a really good USB microphone plugs right the inside of your computer. And it’s gonna sound virtually indistinguishable to the untrained ear from how I sound right now with a much more expensive setup.
And that is going to make all the difference in your podcast quality. You’re gonna have something that sounds good. It’s not gonna pick up a ton of background noise. There’s a couple that I recommend just to ha, you know, give some value. Right here is the A TR 2100 x. Pretty solid microphone at the price.
You can usually find it around 50 or 60 bucks. Samsung Q2 U. The biggest things I tell people is you want a dynamic cardioid microphone. Don’t worry about what those things mean. Dynamic cardio microphone. And that is gonna be good for your spare bedroom, your conference room, wherever you happen to need to record.
That’s gonna be a good mic. A lot of people like to blot to buy the Blue Yeti. I know it’s very sexy. I get it. It’s like super big and you feel like Walter Cronkite. Um, but the problem you run into with a mic like that is, it’s a great mic for a sound condition environment. But when you put it into a conference room with the HVAC running, it’s gonna sound like, and that’s not great.
And so that’s, that’s an easy way is to get that microphone, make sure it sounds halfway decent. Use a, you know, we’re on Riverside right now. This is a relatively cheap service to use and it records both participants on separate tracks and. Does the video, the audio in high quality, so the way I sound right now is not going to get distorted by a weak internet connection.
So, if you bring a guest in, they have an internet connection that kinda wobbles generally, that’s not gonna get affected here because it’s recording locally, then uploading. Same with the video. So if you’re on Zoom, you’re going to, you’ll see those differences. You’ll see those. The audio go in and out a little.
The video will jump. It’ll get grainy. Um, little things like that can be really easy to do and cheap, and they will bring up the production value of the podcast and when that production value comes up. It says something when somebody hears that and they hear, uh, an intro with a voiceover and some sound design to it, which isn’t that hard, isn’t that expensive?
If you’re working with a, you know, any, almost any agency and those little things tell people, these people are serious. Like, this is legit content and it’s so much. Easier and more inexpensive. I think a lot of lawyers find than a lot of other content that they’re used to making. So there’s just a few ways that lawyers can make content that’s gonna resonate with people and make it good.
Bim Dave: Brilliant. There’s a lot, a lot of tips in there and really useful ones, so I appreciate that. Um, I’m sure the audience will, will benefit from that wisdom. So just, um, final question here and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll just kind of go through some wrap up stuff. Just interested to get your take on what, what you see as future for podcasting in the legal space in particular. Any trends that you are seeing? There’s a whole, obviously there’s so much happening in the technology side of. Uh, with regard to ai, et cetera, that can, you know, enhance, improve, uh, or allegedly improve some of the stuff that we do day in, day out. Is any of that impacting the way that you work or the way that you advise, um, law firms in terms of how to do production?
Robert Ingalls: Yeah, it, it definitely is. And we are leveraging tools because why would we not? I’m one of those people that. You know, there, every time there’s a tech revolution, there’s the people who complain about it and say, oh, it, it ate my lunch. And then there’s the people who figured out how to use it and, and they made a fortune.
And I’m not gonna be one of those agencies who gets, you know, who has their lunch eaten. But we use it a lot. One of the most valuable ways I’ve seen to use it is with transcripts. And you, you can get a perf a, a pre perfect’s the wrong word, you can get a very serviceable transcript and then use that. To ask questions to, to find out main ideas and keyword searches and, and finding things and organizing things so you can get really far down the road in organizing the content that you want to take and turn into written content and turn into video clips and, and even title ideas for different things.
There’s so many different things you can do with whatever AI tool that you’re using. And every day GPT is getting better and all of the services are getting better to where you can start to have your own custom. You can build your own custom GPTs where you can just add all of the things that you want to add and it knows what to do with that.
It knows how to go here, here, here, here, and, and take off like a spider web. And that is incredible. It saves a lot of time learning how to use those tools. There’s a lot. That you can use as well for audio and video. I don’t think most of those are there yet. Uh, I’m, I’m also not one of those people who’s like, it’ll never be better than a human.
I think it’ll be much better than a human at some point, but we’re not there yet. But there, you know, Adobe podcast is pretty good. Like, if you just need a podcast to get out there and you’re, you’re not getting too hung up on perfection, which I think is fine. Then yeah, tools like that are great. Um, descrip is really cool.
Um, I will, I will caution people. You can end up spending a lot of time. They sound easy, but you can spend a lot of time in, in those tools. And if you’re, if you’re starting out and you do have way more time than money, I get that. I’ve been there. Um, like I said, I created a podcast at my law firm and it was all me.
Um, I will, I will caution people. You can end up spending a lot of time. They sound easy, but you can spend a lot of time in, in those tools. And if you’re, if you’re starting out and you do have way more time than money, I get that. I’ve been there. Um, like I said, I created a podcast at my law firm and it was all me.
Then it, it may be worth doing it that way, but some of those tools, uh, they can be really great. Although on the audio and video side, we don’t really leverage most of those yet. ’cause as a professional agency, we are into every moment and making sure that cuts are smooth and that we understand context because a lot of these, like Descrip is an example, they’ll take out every, um, I don’t want to take out every, um.
I wanna take out the ones that shouldn’t be there. The ones that don’t add value, the ones that are distracting. But if you ask me a question and it it, it might be a bit personal and I might take a breath like that. Usually we’ll reduce a breath, like day, moment to moment, we’re gonna reduce that stuff.
So, you don’t, you’re not hearing it being distracted by it. But if I take a second and I, oh, that’s staying, but AI doesn’t know that that’s staying. It doesn’t realize the impact of that yet, yet. And the same with filler words I might go, um, that had that, that means something. And so those are the areas where we are very thoughtful about creating content that is, that reflects exactly what people were trying to say that isn’t losing context and also doesn’t have hard cuts.
When, when, you know, our editing philosophy is make someone sound like they’re having their best public speaking day while leaving Zero trace that we were there. And so if we can’t make a cut on something that doesn’t tell the listener, they might not even know what happened, but they’ll go, Hmm, that didn’t feel right.
Your ear heard something. Don’t make the cut. And right now that. Requires a person to, to review and go in and make those cuts and understand them. But AI tools are coming a long way. Um, especially on that, the written content side. It’s, it, it really helps. I I would never run our content through GPT and then just spit it out to a client.
Of course not. Um, there’s always our team is you start there and, and let it do a lot of the piecing together for you. That might take you an hour or two. Then you take it and use it. That that is how we’re using a lot of it right now. And it’s one of those areas you probably know better than me, it is growing so fast every day.
Like one process that we use is obsolete next week, and we have to figure out the new process, which is really exciting for somebody like me though, like I’m, I’m down in the rabbit hole on it.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, I love it. I I love that you are embracing it as well, and I, I say this a lot to people and it’s kind of like, um, what Iron Man Suit does for him, right? It’s basically the same thing. You’ve got an op opportunity to put, to put that suit on. Do some amazing things. Why, why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you give it a bash?
Right. So it’s, it’s definitely worth it. And I, I was smiling when you were, when you were talking about the ums and ahs, because I actually had some feedback early on when we were doing our podcast production, and somebody actually said to me, they gave me some feedback on one of the episodes that we put out there where we just did not do any edits.
We just decided just to see what happens if we don’t do any edits. And we got some feedback saying that was the most naturally sounding one that we’ve ever heard. Do more of those, right? Like we don’t want to hear the perfect version of a podcast. We want to hear people being normal, having chats and you know, how, how, how, what you can relate to at the end of the day.
Cause people make mistakes and that’s normal, right? So, they didn’t want it, they didn’t want it to be overly polished. So yeah, there’s definitely a balance there. There’s a balance to that for sure. Um, thank you for that.
Robert Ingalls: used to hearing that in their everyday life. They’re used to hearing that kind of conversation, and it’s, it gets, we’ve all had those people that we listen to where you’re like, that’s too much. It’s so distracting.
And, and that’s where you, you know, I encourage people to clean that up a little bit, but don’t be heavy handed.
Bim Dave: Yeah. Very true, very true. Thank you, Robert. That was very insightful, very helpful. Um, for, for the audience, I just have a couple of wrap up questions.
Um, the, the first one being if you could borrow Dr. Who’s time machine and go back to yourself when you were 18 years old, what advice would you give yourself?
Robert Ingalls: First, which doctor? Who
Bim Dave: Well that
Robert Ingalls: era? In the modern era, who is
Bim Dave: I, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll leave that to you. To you. ’cause that’s a
Robert Ingalls: Oh, it’s Matt Smith. It’s always Matt
Bim Dave: okay. Okay.
Robert Ingalls: okay, so I, I love this question so much. We will, the fact that I can tell you who the 11th doctor is, tells you a little bit about my relationship to the show. Um, so we, uh, I, I love it. First I would say I would never do anything to impact that because wife, my daughter, um, all of that.
Uh, but I think the thing I would do. To myself. Is that what we’re saying?
Bim Dave: Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
Robert Ingalls: Yeah. Learn the growth mindset immediately and, and, and everything that around it. I think that would be the, the piece of advice is, that’s been the most impactful thing for me is learning how to change the way I see the world and, and telling that human who had so much potential, but was so just. Closed in, in the way that he saw the world. I think just saying, find out what the growth mindset is and learn everything you can about it. I think that would, uh, would, would be incredible. Hopefully, uh, I don’t know, 18-year-old me was a jackass, so I don’t know if he’d listen. He’d be Screw you old man.
Bim Dave: Weren’t, weren’t we all, weren’t we all?
Robert Ingalls: Yeah.
Bim Dave: Excellent. And, and you, you, when you were talking about some of your, um, early career and some of the, the kind of mental health challenges that you were dealing with, um, any, any, if there’s someone in the audience experiencing the same thing, what would your advice be to them?
Like what’s the one thing that they could do? Today to kind of change the dynamic the way that you have to get to where you are today and get out of that kind of hole that you are in.
Robert Ingalls: I think I, I, I think col like society’s come a long way with this, but just be okay with. Having a mental health problem. It’s, uh, that I, I grew up in a time when it, it just wasn’t, I mean, it was starting to get talked about, but it wasn’t something that you had, like, that was ultimately the, the subtext was, that’s weakness.
And I think that’s still a little more pervasive than it should be, but just making the space in your own. Mind to say, yeah, I, I struggle. And to me, at this point in my life, I treat mental health the same way I treat physical health. It’s not something that I’m just guaranteed. It’s something I have to focus on.
I am mindful every day, and I talk to my therapist at least once a month, every month, no matter how good my life is going, because I don’t look at it as fixing something. I look at it as doing routine maintenance. Making sure that I am staying on top of things that I’m not letting my own bs, um, rule me as well, because we can get into these ideas about reality that just aren’t true.
And sometimes you need somebody to hear you and ask you a very pointed question and allow you to go, oh yeah, that’s, yeah. Thank you. Like, and, and so just paying attention to your mental health, being okay. Making it a priority and and getting help. I I would be devastated if my therapist, uh, like retired, uh, because oh, I gotta find a new person.
Cause it’s such an important part of my life and I don’t know what, like, it would be crazy to me. It would be like not exercising. Like I can’t live my life like that. And, and so I think for me, that’s, that’s a big part of it. Be okay having it be okay talking to somebody and, and really addressing it, being thoughtful about it.
Bim Dave: Thank you so much. I really appreciate, appreciate your time today, both in, uh, professional capacity, sharing your expertise, but also being a bit vulnerable and actually telling us, you know, something personal, which I think a lot of us can relate to. So I really do appreciate that. Robert, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show, and thanks for coming.
Robert Ingalls: Hey, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the, the kinds of questions you’ve asked. I’ve been able to talk about some things that I haven’t really addressed before, so thanks for making that space.
Bim Dave: Great. Thank you.