In today’s episode we’re sharing a presentation from MacLawCon 2020. Our originally scheduled MaxLawCon 2020 speaker Bernard Nomberg presented LIVE to the Maximum Lawyer Guild community and today we share his talk: Going Live!
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Transcript: “Going Live” with Bernard Nomberg
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Unknown Speaker
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. Our originally scheduled Max slot con speaker, Bernard Nonnberg, presented live to the maximum lawyer guild community. And today we share his talk on going live. Let’s get to it.
Bernard Nomberg
I’m Bernard Nonnberg. With the Nonnberg law firm in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ve been a max law member for I guess, three years now, however long they’ve had it, and attended the previous conferences and just loved them and have just gotten I can’t say enough good things about Tyson. Jim, I’m a little suspect on. But now I love those guys to death and what they’ve created here and I want to thank you guys, they invited me to speak at this year’s conference. But this is the next best thing since we’re not having it. But what my topic is, is talking about Facebook Live, when we decided about four years ago to start going live. We we took a few months actually to figure out how we were going to do it, what we were going to do our format, who our audience was, there’s just so many things that you have to take into consideration. But before we even got to that we wanted to figure out what’s our topic? What’s our way of presenting it? Well, the first couple of episodes that we did, were just about workers compensation law. That’s the main focus of our practice. Well, we quickly realized when two lawyers start talking about one specific area of the law, it is a snoozefest. Unless you have that same type of case and being represented by a lawyer. Nobody really wants to hear lawyers talking about lawyerly things for more than five minutes. So we learned from our first few episodes that we needed to pivot and we needed to pivot very quickly or it was not going to go where we wanted it to go. So what we decided to do was instead of focusing on our firm and focusing on what we do, we’re focusing on others. We’re focusing on experts in the industry, we wanted to figure out how we can kind of separate ourselves from our competition. We don’t do TV, we don’t do billboards, but we can do internet hopefully is very well as we possibly can. So we came up with Nonnberg law live Nonnberg law live is a weekly show on Tuesdays that at 10 o’clock we’ve been doing I think we’ve done about 160 or 170 episodes in more than three years. haven’t had anybody duplicate just yet. We may be headed there. But many of the max law members have been my guest. And there’s it’s a long list and I’ll show you in a few minutes. Guys, this is not a comprehensive, it’s not everything. It’s just the highlights.
So the why in the what we determined the theme and the topic. So the theme, and the way we’re doing this, it’s about almost 30 minutes or so per show. We’re highlighting our guests and one of my taglines is interesting conversations with people in their areas of expertise. And our subjects have ranged from yoga instructors, athletic directors at major Southeastern Conference, university presidents, not presidents, but department heads at universities who are professors. Of course, we’ve had lawyers, I’ve had high school kids, I’ve had college kids, sports anchors, lots and lots of different segments of society dealing with cancer diagnosis, you name the topic, we’ve probably covered it, or we will cover it. The last one that I did two weeks ago was with a local store owner, who has a it’s Jim reads books and museum of memories are treasures. And it’s the most unbelievable bookstore I’ve ever been in. And it’s books that it’s tchotchkes and it’s keepsakes, and just Jim just led us into his world for 30 minutes. And I was mesmerized and all kinds of great feedback. Not all of the episodes are as engaging as Jim Reid and his bookstore. Some of them can be quite quite dry. But so we have to, we have to cut those down a little bit shorter and some are some are longer, but we can’t we’ve come up with an agenda a a content calendar, if you will, where I plan it out. I’ve got lined up on my calendar all the way into August. So this is May so that’s I’ve got June and I’ve got July and parts of August already covered. And we start promoting through Facebook events, a few weeks out and I’ll show you those things in just a few minutes. But as you’re going through your content, Chris Aisha, maybe you’re creating, maybe you’re coming up with themes, maybe one month you concentrate on mental health and physical health and well being, maybe one month you concentrate on, it could be as a themed of taking vacations in the summer and all the concerns that you may have. There’s just a whole, there’s a never ending list. But you got to come up with what how you want to present and what you want to present. I think that and be consistent about it. As you’re going through your interview process, practice, before you actually go live.
Facebook has a way zoom, all of these presenting platforms has a way for you to practice offline, so that you’re not out there and the public is seeing you doing you’re practicing. Many times even before I did that, I just use my iPhone, and recorded myself, I put it on simple tripod and just recorded five and 10 minute segments. I still don’t like the way I look on on on that. But it’s you know, I’ll just deal with it. But the more you practice, like anything else, the better you get with it. And when you’re finally ready to show your presentation to have your first show, you need to promote the heck out of it in the months and weeks leading up to it. And it may be that your mom or your dad is your only audience member first. Or you could have 50 or 60 people you never know. And I still don’t know. But a lot of it is determined by who my guest is and whether they have a big following, whether they have a nice, a large audience on social media. And you’ll eventually you’ll learn how to promote your show using their social media by tagging them or having them retweet, or tag or repost. And everybody’s different. Because everybody’s privacy settings are different everybody’s approach to these things, some people will do an awesome job of helping you promote, others won’t do a single thing. So you’re not going to start by having a huge audience to begin with, I still have shows where there’s only a couple of people on there, I don’t care about that it’s getting the content out. And then you can repurpose the content. So the why and the what and again, I’m not going to be reading through these y’all can read this later on Becca can share this out through the guild. And again, I’m just going to keep talking. So if y’all have questions, build them to back out and we can I can answer them as we go along.
How how maybe one of the more difficult things because you got to figure out the technology. If you don’t know how to deal with the technology, educate yourself, go to YouTube and start watching videos, or go to the websites for the different companies you may be using. Like if you subscribe to zoom or blue jeans or whatever platform. Now, if you’re going to have a guest on and they’re not live with you in the physical space with you, then you’re going to need a third party to be able to push it live. And that’s where zoom Bluejeans and other competitors come in. And we’ll get into that in just a minute. But if you’re going to have either just yourself doing this, or you may have a guest sitting next to you live with you, then you can just go live straight to Facebook, and do it that way. So that you have to decide how you’re format. And I’ve done it all different ways. I’ve gone to people’s offices locally here in town, or I’ve had most of them are done either through I used to use Bluejeans quite a bit, but I’ve gone to zoom, it seems a lot more trusting. They’ve put hopefully they’ve dealt with all their security issues. But I have less issues, less problems pushing it live with Zoom than I do blue jeans are some of the competitors. So you have to there’s a lot of prep work that goes into this before you actually start doing your show. But you got to figure out your platform.
You also have to figure out what device you’re going to be using many, many episodes I have done just using my iPhone, if you’re out and about. It doesn’t take anything more than an iPhone and maybe let me see if I even have it with me I have one of my tripods but you could find a whole host of tripods that are less than 50 bucks that are completely usable and great to just they break down the put them in your satchel, your backpack or whatever you use, and you’re good to go.
But whatever device you use, whether it’s your desktop, laptop, tablet, iPhone, whatever it is, it’s got to have a good microphone and it’s got to have good audio and excuse me video and you got to have some good lighting now, obviously I have a virtual background behind me I’m not outdoors that’s our building where our office is located. But in front of me and behind my camera is just a cheap spotlight and again, I got it at Office Depot, I think it was 20 bucks. So your lighting doesn’t need to be behind you because it’ll create the halo effect. Use natural lighting as best that you can when you can and you want to be facing the windows if you have natural lighting. Not with it to your back.
Because again, all it will do was blur you out or darken you. And you might have the background depends on the time of the day and the lighting, but lighting, microphone, and video, those are some of the key things that you need to have together, when you’re doing your practicing, get somebody in your office or get a family member home and practice with them, they might enjoy the attention a little bit Plus, you get to practice with what you’re doing and just come up. I don’t I don’t script these I did in the beginning, but I just found that it was very much a formula I felt like Frankenstein just for you know, just the free flow of conversation always seems to work best. Now, I may do a little homework on my subjects, because I don’t know them all. And I don’t want to sound like an uninformed. So I have a little note cards in front of me that may have some bullet points or some key things or reminders, hey, you got to remember to push record, if you don’t have it automatically set or you got to go off of the live stream before you go off of the Zoom feed. Because that really will mess you up. If you don’t, there’s just lots of little nuances that once you get practicing these, it becomes a lot more like anything else, it just becomes a lot more natural to you. Let’s see if I covered all the house. Let’s see, I think I’ve covered most of the house. And there’s two pages of house.
And again, here’s where you’re going live. And you’ll just go step by step instructions. And that’s why we’ve put it up this way. And that’s why I’m not going to read this whole thing to you. I don’t want anybody else to fall asleep while we’re doing this. But the how part shows you that really, it’s kind of a step by step on how to do this. And I want to thank Emily who’s on here, one of our paralegal she has put together this for us, again, you’re identifying which platform or group you want to be broadcasting to, you don’t have to just do this through Facebook, you can do this through YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, there’s all each of these social media platforms. Now depending on the type of service that you subscribe to with them, whether it’s free or paid service, each of them has its own different formats about allowing you to go on a live video, I’m just talking about Facebook. But I heard Nancy, Maryland at Indianapolis yesterday, she spoke to one of my groups talking about LinkedIn live. And the application process takes weeks, if not months, even over a year to be approved for that. For LinkedIn, they’re just rolling it out. But it’s different than Facebook, it’s different from YouTube, etc. Now, you’ve identified your target audience, not many people at 10 o’clock in the middle of a Tuesday are going to be watching me because they’re at work, hopefully, who’s usually watching or people who have a different work schedules or maybe flexible schedules. But we don’t get most of our play live, we get most of our play when we on replay. And so in a minute, I’m going to show you our YouTube channel where all of our videos are kept. Not only are they kept in our Facebook page, or good page for our law firm, but also cross posted to my professional page. But our number, it’s not my personal page, but it’s a professional page where most of this goes, but on YouTube. And then we re broadcast it, we repurpose it through Twitter, and Instagram and all the platforms that our firm is on. And that’s where the most of the play comes in.
And it’s over the days and weeks and months afterward. Now let’s see via a friend and a host that that is so key. And that’s been the hardest thing for me to how to learn. It’s one thing to have a conversation with another person and get into the topic and really be focused on that. But I have two screens open while I’m doing these if I’m doing them at my desktop. And the reason why I have the second screen open is I’m monitoring our Facebook feed, I can see the guests as they come in. I can feel the questions, I can add comments myself like links to websites or things that maybe the host is referring to. And that’s what’s so important that when I’ve got people rolling in, whether they’re friends of mine colleagues or people I don’t know, as we reset the show every five to 15 minutes, I’ll reintroduce the guest. And then I’ll acknowledge who’s rolled in Tyson from St. Louis. Thanks for rolling in and spending a few minutes with us.
I know you’re interested in what Mitch from California My guest has to say about personal injury law you know, I may know Tyson I may know a little bit about him and throw something out there for people who are also who are also watching may not know Tyson, but now I’m bringing him in so to speak as part of the show. So not only being a host but being a friend to those and if I see ugly comments are meant to be funny getting at me I’ll just ignore or delete Those supposed to be a positive experience for the guest. And not a complaint session about me, they can do that offline or later on. So that’s that’s the who, let’s see, let me keep rolling down here. And when admittedly 10 o’clock on a Tuesday is a terrible time, but there is no perfect time. You know, we can’t all be prime time seven o’clock on a Thursday night. That’s bad childhood, that’s when all the best shows are on TV. So you got to pick a time and you got to be consistent with it. And you got to pound it and pound and pound it when for your social and your social media. So the audiences will know, people know, because we’ve been doing this for three years.
If for whatever reason, we’re five minutes late and starting, I’m getting a text or I’m getting messages, hey, what, where are you? And that’s because you’re building a consistency with your audience. They know that number goal, five is going to be at 10 o’clock on Tuesdays 10 o’clock Central 8am. Pacific, every Tuesday. And that’s why that’s how we’ve been able to do this for the last three years. So like I said, from a win, you really have got to be consistent, and you’ve got to promote the heck out of it. You really do.
Unknown Speaker
Hey, guys, it’s Becca here. I’m sure you’ve heard Jim and Tyson mentioned the guild on the podcast and in the Facebook group. That’s because we’re seeing some really exciting things happening with guild members and their businesses. The Guild is this perfect mix of a community group coaching and a mastermind. Inside you’ll gain support, tap into a network of connections, and continue learning a common theme among successful entrepreneurs. There are so many benefits inside the guild, including weekly live events and discounts to all maximum lawyer events, head over to maximum lawyer.com forward slash the guild to check out all of the benefits and watch a few testimonials from current members. Investing in a community is like the self care of business ownership. Being in a community with other people who get it is crucial when you’re creating a rock solid foundation to build your business on one that’s strong enough to withstand setbacks, transitions and growth. So head to maximum lawyer.com and click on the guild page to join us. Now let’s get back to the episode. All right,
Unknown Speaker
now we’re gonna go over to the Facebook page. This is my professional page. And this is not my private page. But this is where our, as I scroll down through here, these are other shows that we’ve done. I’m doing a whole bunch of different shows. I don’t mean to confuse you guys. But we’re also doing a series of shows twice a week about how different segments of society is dealing with the pandemic. So I’ve done a series of these. And here’s some of the ones that we’ve done with bankruptcy, small business, home, etc. That’s not my normal show. That’s not Nonnberg law alive. This is something completely different only dealing with the pandemic. Now I wanted to show you what one of the Nonnberg law live looks like. Well, here’s how I promote it right here. Let me pull this up. Let’s see, this is one of the events with Jim Reed from a few weeks ago. If you want to put comments in here, you can you put as much information as you can you try to tag your guests see where I’ve tagged Jim store, I guess I may be a little bit all over the place. But there’s so much to share here. But I want to go back and show you the events section of my professional page, which is different than your personal page here is the upcoming events that I’ve created. And we’ve already sent invites out. And when I say invite anybody who’s in your contacts list, and Facebook, I send, I target different ones.
But that’s what it is, let’s say hold on just a second. You can see, you can see upcoming events that we’ve created. And then you can see all the past events. And these are all the ones every week that have already rolled through. And that’s what’s so great about the pub, the the professional or public page that allows you to create these events and invite people out. And a lot of times I’ll hit my friends who are in the max law, who I know that the subject matter may be something of interest to them. So let me go back to the page. I want to show you what an example of one of the videos looks like. And then I’m going to show you the YouTube then I’m going to be quiet and see if there’s any questions out there. So all of these are just the different different ones that we’ve been doing. And here we go. Bakari Sellers, who you guys may know of Bukhari is out of South Carolina. He’s been in the House of Representatives. He’s gonna run for Congress. He’s a lawyer. He is a fantastic storyteller. He is so relatable. You may have seen him on CNN and many other public tape, maybe MSNBC and just a great guy. Well, he promoted the heck out of this. And just on Facebook alone, we had about 800 views and I’ve got a ton of views on YouTube, but he promoted it out. But this is when you can see comments that have rolled through here. This is people live at the time, seven different times it was shared out, which only increases your engagement. Now, it has nothing to do in my opinion with Bernard Nonnberg. The Nonnberg law firm is everything to do with my guest. People don’t know me, they sure know Bakari Sellers.
So that’s what it looks like on the feed. I was doing this at the time through blue jeans, as you can see up here. But the Zoom logo is usually down here. And as I said, I’ve really moved full time into zoom. Now, let’s move over to the next screen. And I want to show you now here’s where I house, all of our videos. And I don’t want to get too far off of the topic. But if you guys are familiar with how YouTube works, here’s our page for the Nonnberg law firm. And you can pull it up, here’s all the videos just in I’ve got it set up there in date order, well, you can get lost in the hundreds of videos. So what we have done is we’ve created playlists. Playlists are kind of what I’ll call chapters of like kind. We’re doing a series on the Coronavirus, and the pandemic.
So here are all of those videos. But now we’re gonna go down to Nonnberg law live, you play list, and there’s 153 of them that happened to be in this playlist. So from here, here’s where we house them all. And this is going back. And as you can see in the thumbnail is that same promo thumbnail that we created in the event. So let me let me click on Jim’s and just show you what the finished product on YouTube looks like without you having to hear it. But here is Jim, here’s our here’s the same feed that I just downloaded from Facebook and uploaded it to YouTube. I put in all my key language and all the all the good stuff that they tell you for YouTube. And then I have shared it out to all the platforms that we do. But that’s how you continue to get more views. That’s a mouthful. And Becca, if you got any questions or anything, I’ll be glad to chat further.
Unknown Speaker
Of course, I was just gonna ask when you decided to start video? I mean, was it something that you were comfortable doing already? I think a lot of people Yeah, they hesitate because they don’t want to be on video. So what would you say about that?
Unknown Speaker
Just start, you have to just start, it doesn’t matter how pretty you are or how well spoken you are, you are your own person. And that’s the uniqueness you bring to your show. And that’s why I said I practice many, many times just into my phone, and then watched it, cringed, deleted, and then kept doing it. And then I got members of the firm to be my guests. And then we went live and all of a sudden, hey, I’m doing it. And then three years later, we’re still doing it. And I will tell you that that is been probably our biggest marketing tool in the last three years and changed the dynamics of our practice, not just being a member of Max law, where we’ve learned from so many experts in this now with over 3000 I think when I joined there were less than 200. But it has just exploded. And there’s so many awesome resources in Max law. And I applaud as a side note upon Jim and, and Tyson all the time about it.
But that’s been one if if not our biggest marketing tool is doing this show. And for the first six months that we were doing it, we’re just why are we doing this, it takes up so much time? Well, we’re not going to stop doing it, even though it takes up so much time because about a third of my practices. Now social media and digital marketing. We don’t outsource most of it is not outsourced our SEO guy, we outsource that kind of stuff to him. But all of this stuff is done in house with me and I don’t have hundreds and 1000s of dollars of equipment. It really can be done on a budget. But before you get into that, you have to just decide yourself that you’re going to do it.
Unknown Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that’s great for other people to hear too. Like you said for six months. I mean to some people that’s a long time you really question should you be doing this? And you should because look where it got you. So that’s really great.
Unknown Speaker
It is Becca it is, and I’ve heard this many times, but much more experienced and much smarter marketers and lawyers who do this. It is not a sprint by any stretch of the imagination. It is a marathon and it has to build over and over. And you will see lawyers like Mitch Jackson, who sets the gold standard. And you guys all know Mitch, he’s been doing this for 2530 years. And you go look at his followers and subscribers and friends on the various platforms and he knows him and he wrote the book. That’s where you ought to start if you want to learn about social Your media as a whole for lawyers.
