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- [00:02]
A
Hey, I've got a question for you. When was the last time you drove over to another law firm near you, sat down over lunch and traded every business tip you've got? Talked about what's working, what's not, and what to do next? No, see, that's what Maxlukan is for. It's real conversations with law firm owners who are actually doing this. Building, leading, scaling, and willing to share what's working right now. You could keep doing it alone, but let's be honest, it's slower, harder, and way more expensive than getting in the room and shortcutting the learning curve. Curve. As of this recording, we've got 20 seats left to this year's event. Skip the guesswork, go to maxl.com and grab your ticket before they're gone.
- [00:46]
B
This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Eric, I find you to be really interesting because you own two companies. You own Meet Gabby and then Arrow Effect Marketing. Make sure I say that right. I don't know if it's Aro or Arrow Effect Marketing.
- [01:07]
C
Yep, you got it.
- [01:08]
B
So can you, can you share the story of how you went from the one company to then seeing a gap in the market and starting the other company?
- [01:17]
C
Yeah. So, you know, with Arrow Effect, and you had it right there. It's actually kind of a fun fact. The Arrow is actually my son's initials. And when I became an entrepreneur, I knew the tough road that was ahead just through some of my friends and just, you know, reading about just the world of entrepreneurship, that it was going to be one that's very easily one that you may want to avoid or try to quit. And so I knew by having those initials, there were a great reminder to keep going. And I'm glad I did. So I started Aero Effect Marketing. It's been, I've been doing it for well over a decade now, but I've always had, you know, a niche for storytelling. And so what I found was even when I was working in corporate or working with other law firms, I was constantly getting, you know, poached. You know, whether it be at a conference or someone, you know, grabbing me to the side saying, hey, you know, what do you think about this? And I really loved the ability to tell those stories through advertising and marketing. So I started doing that. That then evolved into lead generation because, you know, at the end of the day, that's. That's what people want. They want good, quality leads to help generate new business. Right. And really, what, how, what, how it paved from Arrow into me. Gabby was when we were doing lead gen, we noticed very consistent issues with intake and reception. And I noticed this too from my world. I worked in house at law firms for a number of years prior to going and doing my own thing full time. And that was that there was a lot of slow response times when leads would come in. There was a lot of issues with any. Some firms just didn't have, they don't have the personnel. You know, it might have just been, you know, things that were out of their control. And so fortunately this came at a time where technology just was advancing rapidly. And so I became obsessed with this, you know, the, this notion of voice technology and these AI agents and we started rolling this out with an Arrow. So me Gabby really started off as kind of like an additional, you know, offering through our Arrow product. But we noticed the clients that were utilizing it were converting 20, 30% more cat cases, all because of the speed delete. And so that's really the story of how, you know, Meet Gabby started. And then from there me Gabby just continued to grow through word of mouth, through, you know, obviously the conference circuit, and brought us to where we're at today.
- [03:27]
B
I'm always in situations like this. I'm more curious about like how you manage the two companies and really anything else because that can be the hard part. Because I mean, Arrow's your baby, right? And you don't want to neglect that. But which one gets more of your time, I wonder?
- [03:43]
C
Oh yeah. Well, the trick is you try to sleep as much as you can, but it's, it's. I'm burning the midnight oil constantly, but without a doubt, meet Gabby. That's the world I live in. So actually what I did with Arrow is I had a great relationship with someone that was in the legal industry. New legal advertising. Legal advertising. Her name is Hope Wagner and she came on and joined Arrow as the CEO to help run the day to day activities. And while I'm still involved, Hope is really the one leading the charge right now with Arrow and she's doing a great job. We're, we're continuing to innovate, but I put most of my time towards Meet Gabby because I love the world of innovation. I let our team focus on the products for today while I'm focused on the products for tomorrow. So Meet Gabby's definitely getting the majority of the time from me, but we've got a great team over at Arrow that's, that's fortunately allowed me to do that.
- [04:32]
B
Was it difficult to let go of the reins and, and let someone else Take the take over Arrow.
- [04:37]
C
Yeah, it was, you know, it is tough, especially as you mentioned, it's your baby. So you get really nervous, like if it's not, you're not touching everything, you know, and having that, you know, specific love the TLC involved with every conversation, every piece of art or creatives that you're putting together. But I got to a point where it's just like you, you had no choice, right? I got to a point where I'm like, I can't. I'm only human. As much as like, we like to think, oh, we could do it all. I fortunately came to it the realization that I need some help. And again, just finding the right people and putting them in the right positions really has allowed me to focus on the things that I enjoy doing. So definitely, you know, I've been through the wringer with trying to find, you know, the right people to match the right roles. But I've been very fortunate, certainly at Arrow that has allowed me to get. Meet Gabby, where it is today.
- [05:23]
B
That's awesome. Now I know that the legal space, it's been hard to find talent when it comes to hiring and it seems like it's getting harder and harder. I wonder if you're having the same issue with, when it comes to like a legal adjacent space like that.
- [05:36]
C
Yeah, you know, it's so crazy. So I'll tell you this. So we just put out probably within the last month and a half and we had over 600 res, like submissions for different positions we were hiring for, but we were getting submissions from like people that were working at SpaceX. And I share that with you because I think the world that we're in, even though it is legal, I think this like agentic AI in this world, again, people know this is where the future is and they're interested in it. We only scratched the surface, I believe, with, with where this is going. And we're going to see a lot more of this in other industries, but, you know, the legal industry specifically for us. One of the things about me, Gabby, is we at one point were thinking about doing healthcare. The intakes are very, while it's very different, they're very similar in the way they approach them. But we quickly realized there's a lot of hoops in the healthcare world that, you know, certainly we could, we could have tackled, but we realized legal is where it's where it's at. It's where the space that I'm comfortable with. I've been working in the legal industry for well over a decade and, you know, it's a space we decided to, you know, stay in. In the lane to stay in and solve these issues.
- [06:40]
B
So why do you feel that the legal space is so safe?
- [06:43]
C
You know, actually, I wouldn't say safe. I feel it is safe. I feel like it's a good fit for us, I think for a couple reasons. This is the. I working in the legal industry, I could tell you from what I've seen that we're not always pioneers. The legal industry isn't exactly out there pioneering and adopting new technology rapidly. But for the first time, at least in my career, I'm seeing law firms interested in adopting quicker. They're recognizing that we got to make some change and adapt. And I've just really enjoyed it. It's odd, but I come from a family that, you know, my uncle's a lawyer. I'm very close with him. And so I grew up in the space. Again, I took a weird pivot early on in my career. Career where I was. I just happened to, you know, find some marketing work. And I was working at. In house as director of marketing at law firms. It's a space I felt very comfortable with. I've always enjoyed talking to lawyers because you're dealing with people that they're extremely smart, but they're extremely busy and they love, you know, finding solutions like ones at Arrow with Legion or ones that meet Gabby, that help them save time and continue to generate revenue.
- [07:44]
B
Yeah, I. The reason I was asking, because I do think that there's a bit of a fence that we have. I think of all of the spaces that are being touched by AI And I've. I'm already on record of predicting there's going to be a bit of a contraction. Not. I'm not a huge one. I do think there's going to be a contraction, but our roles are going to shift dramatically over the next decade. Dramatically. But it doesn't mean we're going to have less people or a lot less people. There's gonna be less people. There's gonna be people that are gonna leave the legal space. But I think that there's a bit of a fence when it comes to the court system. You have the court system. It is. It is fenced off. The courts have been very resistant to AI and rightfully so, because there's been a lot of cases that have been cited that are fake, that are hallucinated cases, not real cases. But I do think there's a bit of offense which. Which does protect us a little bit. Now, my concern and this is. I don't know if I've had a conversation about this on the show. This might freak out people. I know I've had this conversation outside of the show, but I'm kind of thinking about neural link, like something like neuralink. And it's interesting. So I was having this conversation with some attorneys after a depot and they'd never heard of neuralink. My client hadn't heard of neuralink. And I'm kind of thinking about this, think about this scenario and this kind of terrifies me. And I hadn't thought about it until recently where imagine you're in court, right? You don't want neural link. You don't want some. This chip attached to your brain. But then you've got. And I'm. I'm just using neuralink generally. I mean, there could be a lot of different companies that pop up, but let's say you're arguing emotion, no neural link. The person next to you has neural link, has every access to everything that they would need at their. Just boom, thinking about it, boom. Or maybe they've got some AI glasses or whatever where they've got it on their screen or whatever. But that's it. That terrifies me a little bit because that. Now you're talking about a substantial shift in. And, and what we're doing inside the court system. It is.
- [09:43]
C
That's really crazy. And it's scary. I mean that, you know, think about how people are going to adopt that, you know, technology with neural link. And, and, you know, right now it's crazy to think about stuff. I mean, we're. Sometimes I have to stop and pinch myself when we're building these or I'm like, I spend 10 hours a day talking to robots that know me by my name, that greet me. And I remember watching stuff like this, you know, when I was younger, like this superhero movies with my son. I'm like, this is reality like this. I'm living in this every day. And yeah, even just the big shift, I, I always talk about too, like, you know, just coming from the world of social media advertising is, you know, Mark Zuckerberg. He's definitely putting a lot of emphasis on the glasses and going all in, which I think we're going to see some really cool stuff. We actually are starting to. Again, part of my innovation and thinking of what's coming tomorrow. Or we're trying to figure out, figure out ways we can actually adapt some of that, especially with helping with things like depositions where you can, you know, put on a pair of glasses. And be transformed into, you know, a space where you can build some comfort levels and you know, practice those, you know, just depositions with maybe you got some younger attorneys. But yeah, certainly to your point, I mean it, it shifts the balance. I mean it gives a huge advantage and you know, we could run from it or, you know, just, just try to, you know, be in denial with AI, but it's, it, I mean I, I, I thought to myself the other day, going back, you know, five, 10 years ago, working some of the stuff that would take me weeks, I'm getting done in minutes and I'm like, I, I couldn't imagine like if this just went away now because I've become so dependent on AI as far as just my everyday, you know, workload or helping to schedule things, keep things organized. And it's, it's truly fantastic. I will say, you know, from my perspective too, especially, especially building me. Gabby, we, you know, there is a big misconception, I think with just voice AI and like agentic AI is that we're all trying to replace human jobs. I mean AI in general, it's inevitable, it's going to replace certain positions. But I can tell you we built, we built Mikabi specifically to work in tandem with human personnel and there still is a big need for that. But again, going off what you said, I think, yeah, there's definitely some scary times ahead head when it comes to things like neural link and how that's going to shift the balance in the courtroom.
- [11:53]
B
Yeah, I, I think with the AI, I don't think it's where the reason why I don't think it's going to be a replacement. I think what it's going to do is it's going to get rid of the mundane stuff and it's going to, it's going to allow that to be AI to do all that. And then you, you shift the firms shift more into like that customer service focus where they can focus on the human part of it, the only thing that humans can do and not the other part of it. But I guess the only, but what I would have is do you ever have, have conversations with Chat, GPT or, or GROK or any of the other ones?
- [12:22]
C
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean there's certainly things I'll go out to like outside of, you know, just, hey, how do I do this? How do I develop code for this? How would you approach this? I sometimes just go to it and be like, hey, you know, I'm dealing with this issue how if you were, you know, in this situation. How would you recommend. And it sometimes gives, like, recommendations. I'm like, this is, this is pretty good. I try not to rely on, you know, chat, GBT or Groker or any of these other ones is technically my therapy because then my, my minutes would be astronomical. But yeah, no, it's. Again, it's, it's scary. I have a, you know, app. We have like a personalized Gabby app on my phone where I can just click and she, she knows me and I can talk to her. And I try not to abuse that too much just because I don't want to become too reliant. But, yeah, it's definitely something that's become a daily part of my life.
- [13:06]
B
Yeah, the conversations have gotten really good now. I, I don't. It's not at the point where it really, it replaced that human element, but it is one of those things where you could, you could have. You even said she and her like those. That's how you described it. You know, I, and I try to intentionally force myself to call it it that way. I don't, I don't fall into that because it is one of those things where it's. It's scary good sometimes, for sure.
- [13:28]
C
Yeah, it is. You know, as far as, you know, how I, I think you made a really good point is I think people, it's. Those are that are going to adapt. Right. I think what I love and what I'm seeing in the AI space, it's. It's forcing people to get more creative.
- [13:43]
B
Right.
- [13:44]
C
We know it's there. We know everyone's, you know, using it to some degree for the most part. If you're not, then, you know, again, you're. You're probably losing out. But it's something where I think, like, why I'm enjoying it is because creative folks like myself and just the just creative people in general can really thrive in this space because, you know, that's the one thing I mean, as creative as AI can get and it will continue to be, it's the people behind it. It's the prompts and how you can, you know, get creative the way you're styling things that, that really make this, I think this, this technology powerful. And I'm certainly having fun with it. It doesn't always go, you know, exactly how I want it to when I'm, when I'm playing around, but I spend a lot of time in R D with, with, with our good old me. Gabby.
- [14:24]
B
Yeah, the thing about the creative point, about that, it's really important. There was. I'M trying to. I can't remember the guy's name. There's a guy that does a lot on vibe coding. He's got a YouTube channel. He does these, you know, he basically builds these companies live doing vibe coding. And I think it's, it's pretty cool. Then he does these podcasts. But he, he was talking about, like, we're in this weird age where the creatives are the ones that have a lot more control because they can just pop the idea out of their head into an AI and the AI can then build the thing that they're wanting. And that is pretty cool. Where it is, your point about, about creativity is, is well taken because we can get so creative. And that may be my, my favorite part about right now is just being able to take this idea, put it down, and then watch the AI build it is, is really, really just incredible. So I think you're right about that. I do want to, I want to shift gears a little bit. We have a mutual friend, and he's an investor in Meet Gabby and Adam Ross. And so he invested, and that's how we first learned about Meet Gabby was, was through Adam. And, and I think that, I think that does give you some, some instant credibility in the legal space. Knowing someone like Adam. Adam, I'd say is pretty influential. So I, I wonder how that, how did that partnership come about?
- [15:40]
C
Yeah, no, Adam's awesome. Him and along with Tom, Tom Tona from Tonalaw, those two have become great strategic partners of ours. Actually, the way they came on board was they actually found, like, one of our ads and demoed us. And, you know, we came to find out that they demoed many other companies and they said that they, you know, liked us the best and they were very interested in signing up. And as this conversations continued, you know, for me, I, I, you know, I come from the legal background. This wasn't something I just created and said, hey, let's go after lawyers. You know, let's go after law firms. I knew how the space work. I knew how to build, especially coming from the marketing side. Lawyers are getting inundated every single day with spam and, and, you know, solicitations on who the best, you know, with the marketing, who the best, you know, AI is, and they go with the ones they trust. It's a very in as large of.
- [16:28]
B
A, of a community.
- [16:29]
C
It is, it's. It's actually a lot smaller than I think a lot of people realize. Word spreads very fast in this community. So I was very excited at the Idea of having strategic partners like Adam and Tom join because I knew that not only from an R and D perspective and getting advice, what do you think about this? How would you do, how should we do this with your system and how we can we then roll it out and you know, our updated model and also just having a product that I, we're trying to brand and just kind of promote as you know, a product built for lawyers, vetted by lawyers. I think you're absolutely right. I think our brand equity and just the trust goes way up. And I, I think in with AI in general, there, there still is, while people are adopting, there's still a lot of distrust. You know, one of the, some of the common things we get. Okay, I remember when we first started going around the conversation conference circuit and promoting it, everyone loved it. But some of the feedback we got was I think it'll be good in about a year. I don't think it's there yet. Or like the technology in general, I don't, I don't see it doing this or that. And even in that short period of time, you know, nine to 12 months, it's certainly beyond being there. But it's, you know, again, it's something where having partnerships and having people like Adam and Tom on board I think are going to just, you know, build that, that credibility of bit more behind the product because we know we can deliver on the product. I mean that's something that we certainly put a lot of time and effort into. But I think having someone like Adam and Tom involved too, not only just from a trust and equity standpoint, but just also how can we continue to innovate? How can we continue to solve real world issues for real law firms? And they've been great at doing that.
- [18:03]
B
Having that is really important. Having someone having creative people like Tom and Adam are really important too because they're open to, to changing things up, but they also will give you that connection to legal space to kind of, to kind of fill the gaps. And I know you've got, you've got the background where you've, you know, you were raised around lawyers and you've worked in law firms and all that, but it does, you know, give you that connection as a lawyer too because there, I'm not going to mention the name of the company, but there's a company and I, I don't know if the case management system is still around. I haven't heard about them in a while, but it was really interesting whenever I was talking to them about like they were basically saying, and I was talking to the CEO and their development people. Well, though, this is the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to do it this way. And, and I'm like, your user interface is terrible. Like, I don't know how to use this because you don't understand the law. So they had all these things positioned in places that they shouldn't have been. And so they just, they were just ignoring the, what, the way we practice law. And I find that really interesting. And I'm not, so I'm not surprised. I've not really heard much about that company recently. I, I, My guess is they're probably gone. So have they been able to give you that sort of perspective or. And I wonder if there's any specific thing you can think of where you maybe thought one thing and they're like, no, don't do it that way, because that sucks. You know, have you, have you had anything like that?
- [19:24]
C
Yeah. Well, I tell you, I did it a test run the other day. And one of the newer features, we just launched a new voice model that we call Gabby Motion Plus. It's a great speech to speech model with our custom LLM technology and it has the ability to select different accents. So we get, we had a, you know, we've nailed the Boston accent, the Southern accent, but according to them, you know, the New York accent, they said, yeah, this is one that, it's definitely New York accent, but not the one that's going to come off the right way. So, no, they've been great. And especially with the pricing structure, you know, as we continue, we have a great sales team that led by, we actually were able to get a great sales lead there and very seasoned in the world of entrepreneurship and great with this technology and just the way we're pricing and selling it and positioning it. At the end of the day, I think Tom and Adam have been really crucial and, you know, explaining this is really where what we want to see. I'm the type of guy when it comes to like, sales or doing any of this, it's all about, again, storytelling and how, you know, I try not to sell or position a product, you know, and that's even with Arrow. The thing that I kind of fell out of love with, you know, for a while was, you know, how could we continue to become innovative? You know, what made Arrow innovative for a while, at least up until, you know, now we've made a lot of adjustments was Gabby was the AI, you know, infusion of that. But I think with Gabby, you know, again with, with Adam and Tom, we've been able to push the envelope. They've been able to help position us in the way. We're not only selling the product, but really what lawyers want to see. One of the things, you know, that I recognize too, and I know Tom and Adam attested to this as well, is you when you're working with other softwares, like if you have a case management. So we know how hard it is to get some of those stuff up and running. You know, technically, meet Gabby is more than just a voice AI system. And I think that's another big misconception. And we, our new model and the way our new brand positioning is, we're more than that. We're a lead management system. We can do X, Y and Z, but we also didn't want to lose the fact that they may not want to just go and use our system and drop their other systems. And I'm a big proponent. Why try to fix what's not broken? So for us, and even with the help of Adam and Tom, we're still working and playing well with other softwares trying to ease that integration. So whatever flows into our system can flow into to others. And that's something that I think they, they, they, They've, you know, really promoted with us and, and you know, I think we're all on the same page with that.
- [21:43]
B
You mentioned innovation. And that is something that I have observed just kind of casually over the years on the show where I see these law firms and they, they will stick to kind of one thing and then like, like a case management system is a, is a great example where you've got, know this, this case management system that they've been using for two decades. They should definitely get out of it because it is so old. It's like on an old server or something like that. And they just, they just won't because they're so stuck in their ways and it's such an inefficient thing and because it can be really hard to switch case management system, it's a painful thing. So I'm, I'm not trying to discount that part of it, but I, this is more about innovation. How can law firms make sure that they're focusing on innovating and making sure and, and for not just for innovation's sake, but for actually improving the firm. So do you have any tips for, for how to, how maybe you will do it? Maybe did it at Arrow or maybe how you do it at me, Gabby Reese, you make sure that you're always innovating in a positive way.
- [22:43]
C
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, the way I approach innovation, I mean, it, it's probably, I don't know, I don't want to say unique, but I, I put me, put it this way. I'm not the type of guy that's always going out there and looking what others are doing. I think I'm pretty blessed in the sense that ideas come to my head. And as you mentioned, I thought it was a great point. I no longer have to just write it on pen or paper I'll make. I go, and I just go. I think the biggest thing for innovation is action, is taking action, doing something with that, right? Not just putting it, you know, in the, on the back burner and saying, I'll come back to that. I mean, that's, that's, I, as I really boil it down, what it has helped me if I have an idea and not being afraid to fail, not every idea is going to work. Or if you innovate something, you might end up hitting a roadblock. I've put weeks into certain things and I said, you know what? The hell with this, this isn't it. And, and I don't look at it sometimes I'm hard on myself. Like I just wasted, you know, X amount of hours on trying to get this going. But I've now come to the point now where I don't look at that as a waste of time. That was great. R D. I've realized what doesn't work. So, I mean, I guess if I had to pin down the advice from my perspective of it's really action and not looking at it in a way where you're afraid to, you know, waste your time because these are things that even if it doesn't work out, will still help develop a better model, will still help you in finding the right path that's going to lead to innovation. I think as it pertains to other softwares though, and if I was in their position, there's a lot of great products out there. And you know, even with us, like, you know, we're more than just voice. There's a lot of great voice AI. There's a lot of great, you know, the document AI companies out there and, you know, it's always great to see what's out there. I personally don't spend a lot of time out there, always looking, hey, what are these guys doing? What are they doing? I try to just, you know, really focus on our innovation. But I think in their Case too. Just kind of seeing what's out there. Because I, I will tell you, I've seen some softwares and things we don't do and I'm like, I had no idea that was out there. That's really cool. If I was a law firm, I'd be using that. So there's, there's some really cool tools too. And I know I've provided, promoted these on the podcast. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but there's, there's sites out there that actually list like, it's particularly an AI, the latest in AI based on like what your need is. So if it's like presentation building, it'll list ones by being free or paid. And I think those two have just can help spark some ideas and innovation in ways you can innovate for your firm.
- [24:58]
B
Yeah, I've had to force myself to, to not try out as many tools anymore because every week I was doing and we have a live show that we do in the, in the guild that, that we then turned into a Saturday podcast after a couple weeks. And I, so I, that kind of forces me to test some more things or at least, at least look into them. But I've, I've kind of forced myself to not test as much. And because it is one of those things where it is a, it is that shiny object syndrome that can be really, it's not a part of some integrated, well thought out plan. Whenever you do that, like when you start to implement something new, it just, it's just something new. You know, it doesn't mean it's part of some, some integrated plan which can be, can be difficult. You, you mentioned storytelling a couple times and I'm curious where that comes from because you, you've, you mentioned it whenever you're talking about Arrow and how you, you really like the storytelling. You mentioned the storytelling just not too long ago too. So I wonder where does the storytelling part come from?
- [25:58]
C
Oh yeah, well, very specifically, I mean I, when I, I studied film in college for a while. I'm a huge film buff. I actually before I started doing all this, I was convinced. I graduated high school, going to college. I was going to be the next Steven Spielberg. I wanted to get into film. I actually did a lot of documentaries. That is what got me started in Arrow because I was doing, doing videos and then at one point I got poached to do commercials and I loved that portion of it because being forced to take, tell a story within 30 to 45 to you know, 60 seconds. It was a challenge, but it was one that I, I really loved. I'm like, this is, this is great. So I basically found a love for that storytelling through video and just, that means of, of being able to, you know, connect with audiences and pull out the emotional cord. So for me, I kind of translated that over to, you know, on the advertising side, when we were doing creatives or doing different types of, you know, just campaigns for them, I knew that storytelling was going to be the biggest piece. That's how you're going to stand out from the competition. Because this is a. Especially in the legal industry, you might see one person's out of the next and you can barely tell the difference between them. And the big key thing for us that I have, I at least found success not only with clients we've worked with, but certainly with my companies is being able to tell that story.
- [27:14]
B
I'm trying to find the name of this, this movie producer. I actually did a podcast episode about the structure of a good movie, and I, I'm drawing a blank on it. Gruber. I can't think of his name. First name, but last name is Gruber. Gosh, I'm drawing a blank. But he talked about. I saw him speak and then he. He's got a couple books and stuff, and so I. It's really interesting because he said, I'm going to ruin. Whenever I saw him speak, he said, I'm going to ruin movies forever for you. Or something like that. Because he talks about how at the beginning of a movie, it's going to tell you how the end. What the end is going to be. And if you look at all blockbuster movies, they say they follow the same formula. So it's really funny because it's. He said it's always the opposite of how the movie starts. So in it, the beginning of the movie can be a little bit relative, but you go, so if the person is down on their luck at the beginning, has no money, everything's terrible. At the end of the movie, it's going to be the complete opposite. And I will say it is pretty. That's a pretty damn accurate description of how movies are go. So I do wonder if you, when you design things, do you. Do you use any sort of formula that, that is based on some of the things that you learned?
- [28:26]
C
Yeah, I think I, you know, it's. It's funny because as I design things, you know, again, as, as I used to do this for clients, or even as I'm doing them for promotional stuff for the companies. It's the cinematic approach that I always try to take. You know, how can, you know, we tell that story in just a short period of time. You know, it is harder when you only have, especially on social media.
- [28:46]
B
I mean, it's.
- [28:46]
C
It's a different form of storytelling because you only have to stop the scroll, you know, five seconds. So you gotta be like, right out of the gate, right? So the formula is really, that's pretty much like, how can we, within the first five seconds, be clear with what we do or why they should stop and listen, you know, to something like that with us? But it is. It's funny because as I'm telling you, I'm thinking in the back of my head just some recent movies I saw. And it's absolutely true. You know, you obviously have outliers. Some of Tarantino's films are a little, you know, wild with the way they. The way they start and finish. But it's funny too, just on a creative and just as we're talking about cinema and the creativity, you know, and as it relates to AI. So I know I shared this on a few other podcasts I've done, but one cool thing that I did, which was just out there when I used to have some more spare time. Me and my son were all into, like, the superhero stuff. We both love movies. So we started to utilize and play around with some of the latest video, AI generated video, things where you can go on. And as someone that used to do film, I used to be on film sets. I used to direct short films. I could tell you the. The idea that I could go in there and prompt a scene and it generates in five minutes versus it would take me two days to shoot a scene that would look just like that is insane. So I became. Found my obsession with. With that piece of that technology, and so we started doing like, cinematic trailers. Next thing I know, I had like a small cult following, you know, on YouTube from some of the cinematic trailers. Like, we did one, and it had. I think, I don't. You know, he's like a big YouTube guru, but we had like over 50k, like, organic views on, like, on one of our channels. And it's growing. I haven't even looked at it. But we started getting like, like followers and all this stuff. And my son tells me that I'm now monetized on YouTube because of the following. So. But my point is, is that, yeah, it's that the ability, I think, you know, the. The fact that we have all these. The way to answer Your question that you asked earlier, how I approach it, I. I do think a lot about the tools I have in my resource, too. That does make a big difference with what I'm doing. You know, the world of just going to these stock photos or video sites where anyone can grab a photo of this, I'm thinking, how can I tell that story, story in this scene? You know, how can I do that? And you also have to know, like, the medium is. Is a still visual going to be your better, you know, performer on this or that, or is it going to be video? We all know video is the best format for storytelling. And it's funny because Arrow, one of the new offerings, like, as I mentioned earlier, I found the company at one point I was like, you know, the thing that drove me crazy. What's unique about us? Like, what makes us different besides me? It can't just be about me. It's got to be, you know, the product, the brand. And, you know, again, we. We found that kind of temporarily with. With Megaby, that became its own thing. And so we spent a lot of time figuring out how we can make, you know, Arrow innovative too. And one of the things that we recently launched was the ability for law firms to go in and generate commercials. You know, we basically kind of utilize some of that technology. We tried to build our own, but to help them build storytelling components so you can go on there, drop a photo of you and put yourself in a scene and generate that commercial. So that's something that's pretty cool that we're continuing to innovate and launch. But that's. These are the things that I enjoy doing. I want to spend my time. And that's what I realized over, you know, certainly the last year is I think that's where my time's best spent. How can we continue to be innovative and, you know, solve these issues through things that do storytelling and, you know, solve real, real world problems that law firms are facing?
- [32:08]
B
That's really cool. I've got a couple more questions, but will you tell people if they want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch with you if they're interested in an Arrow marketing or in meat? Gabby, give the. Give the ur URLs to that as well.
- [32:19]
C
Yeah. So for Arrow effect, just. It's aro E-F-F ect.com/effect.com got our site there. And again, Hope Wagner, who's the CEO. CEO and running that show, she's fantastic and is ready to, you know, connect with anyone that that's interested in anything or just have a chat about the latest and greatest in, you know, that world. And then for me, Gabby, we've got a site, actually a pretty new one that we just launched launched which you could actually go and test out some of the new features which is demo.meetgabby sales.com and Gabby's is G A B B I. So be a great resource if you just want to play around with some, some pretty cool stuff and anyone could reach out to the me directly. Eric meat gabby.com and I'm happy to connect and just chat. I'll tell you that, that I love, I love just doing things like this and just chatting about these, both these worlds. It's, it's weird because I was just telling someone the other day, they're like, you know, take some time off, you're burning the midnight oil, you're doing this. But I actually, I, I enjoy it. Like I, I genuinely, I feel really lucky because I enjoy what I'm doing. I enjoy the create the creativity, the innovation that comes with both of these products and brands. And yeah, it's, it's doesn't mean I can't keep at the pace I'm going. But certainly I'm fortunate that I'm enjoying the, the time I'm spending in it.
- [33:32]
B
And you'll have plenty of opportunities to do that out in Nashville at maxlocan because both Meet Gabby and, and Arrow are going to be out there as sponsors. So definitely appreciate you all, you all doing that. I've got a couple more questions and the first one is I wonder if you have any bold predictions for either the legal space or AI in general.
- [33:51]
C
Yeah, well, I, as I mentioned, I think, I think glass, I'll just say this, I think glasses are going to be a big part of what we're going to see. And you know, we're already starting to do some R and D with some of that technology. I tell there's a reason Mark Zuckerberg is shifting all his focus and you always see him with those Ray Ban glasses on anymore. I don't think it's going to adopt. Right. You know, people are going to think, but it's going to give us the ability to have more interactions, different types of interactions that aren't just audible but they're more visual. I think we're going to see a lot more of the agentic AI start to be able to actually take more actions, you know, than what we're seeing right now. But you know, again it's, it's it's. What's crazy about the space is I call them like the AI wars. I mean, they're all trying to compete. And we saw that big blitz where, you know, open AI was launching something. The next thing you know, grok was then you had anthropic, you know, coming up out doing this same thing with Facebook. And what's great for, you know, folks like me and companies like mine is it's helping to give us some of the best resources we could ever ask for. And so I think this rapid innovation that's happening with some of the big players in the space are going to create just more products and possibilities for law firms, whether it be agentic AI or just, you know, tools and resources that'll make their lives easier.
- [35:07]
B
Love it. The glass. I have the. I have the meta glasses now. The new ones seem pretty awesome. What's really cool, because I have the ones that are just the sunglasses and I bought some. Some transition lenses to. But they didn't. They weren't. They weren't very good. You can't buy any straight from a Ray Ban, so you can't. But they don't sell just those lenses by themselves. You have to get them on Amazon and they weren't very good. So I would switch them back to the. To the regular sunglasses. Yeah, the AI is not super great. But in. I've watched some reviews of the new ones. It's really cool just because the amount that they can fit into it without. They didn't increase the size much at all. They increase it slightly. But the camera is fantastic. On the one I have, it's really. The video, the audio, everything. The picture on. If you just take a picture, really great. When I'm listening to them, when I'm listening to music or something or podcasts, it is. It's really good. The battery life is not great. I would say that. But on the new ones, it's cool because you can see like whenever. If you're looking at something in the lens, the. And even if it's. If, let's say you're inside. So it's a. It's a clear lens. It's not the dark lens. You can't see the. On the other side, you can't see what the person's looking at. It is still. You have zero idea that they're looking at something inside the lens. That part is really, really cool. So I think you're right. I'm hoping that the AI is a little better than what it is now. I'm guessing it probably is, but unless it's using the same AI, then it's not. Because I do think that it's got. It is not nearly as good as some of the other ones, for sure.
- [36:33]
C
He just had a demo fail. Mark Zuckerberg. They just did one with the glasses and it failed. Which it happens. I mean, have. Yeah, I just saw it. He had one that they, they were. They were trying to promote something and that. Yeah, the demo completely crashed. So I think they still have some work to do, but they'll figure it out. But the biggest thing is, I think augmented reality with virtual reality with artificial intelligence. I think that those are the three, like, things that are going to all merge to give us more of that immersive and interactive experience with AI that, that we're already seeing.
- [37:01]
B
I was watching some of the. The, the top 10 tech fails of all time, and one of them was Microsoft's. Whenever they. They revealed the Surface and the Surface wasn't working, so he was pretending like it was working, but it really wasn't working. And you could tell he was he. Because he was showing the screen to the audience. And then when it stopped, like it wasn't reading his finger when he was touching it, so he turned it away from the audience, it was pretending like it was working. It was like it was cringeworthy. It was awful.
- [37:27]
C
Fake. Fake it till you make it.
- [37:28]
B
You know, it's one of those things. I have respect for those people. Like, like, for example, whenever Musk went and he, you know, they, that, that, that metal ball and they, they broke the wind. I don't know. You. You've got to give them some credit for taking that risk. You know, that's a. It's a really risky thing to do. And hey, let's. You win some, you lose some not. And Steve Jobs even had, he was, He's. He was legendary for having amazing reveals, but also he had some really big flops too. And that just. That's just how it goes sometimes. It's just. That's. That's the life we live in.
- [37:56]
C
Hey, I've had. We've had plenty of ours early on too. So when you're doing live demos, you know, fortunately we've remedied a lot of things since then, but it happens in the innovative space when you're revealing new stuff, things, you know, there's things that happen that you don't account for and do what you do what you have to do, but you know, it's. Fake it till you make it, right?
- [38:15]
B
You got to fail fast. And keep moving. Fail fast. Keep moving. The last thing I want to ask you about is I wonder. And you can't say meet Gabby. You can't say Aero Marketing. Right. What's one tool or strategy that you think every law firm owner should, should be using by the end of this year?
- [38:33]
C
Well, here's. This is probably pretty specific, but it's a tool that I don't think many people utilize. And it's going to be specific more to like social because the obviously the word illegal. I've yet to meet a firm that's not doing some type of social presence or advertising. But I think one tool that's readily available is Facebook's ad library, where you could actually go on there and search for law firm ads or competitor ads just to see what else is out there. And what. I like to look at that too, because when you go down on that page, you can actually see if someone's been running, you know, a certain ad for, let's say, six months. It's working for them and it's working for a reason. So it helps you decide because sometimes too I found this not only the most creative ad doesn't always win. Right. And I share this too for many experiences. Not only doing it for clients in the past, but certainly doing any ads for me, Gabby, or promoting Arrow. But I think tools like that, that I don't think from my conversations, a lot of people are always utilizing and they're free and they're just there and it's not always heavily promoted. But again, it's Facebook ads library. You can go on there and see what's going on. And you know, I think gives you a good idea of what others are running, what's working, what types of creatives are out there. And it does spark ideas too. And I just share that with because that's one that I just recently had a conversation with someone on. But as far as, you know, AI tools, you know, I think I, I use. I'm. I'm the same way. I think you said it perfectly earlier. I tend to jump from like different software sometimes because I'll see a new feature. I'm like, oh, let me try that. But there's some really cool AI presentation tools out there anymore that are just fantastic that can help put together things. And I think, you know, again, we use other tools to like Runway, which is one of the tools that we're working with as far as generating video content and even visuals. That's one of the creme de la cremes of kind of that storytelling component and that's another one that I've really have enjoyed using and I would highly recommend checking it out if you're lacking it. Finding good creative where you can just prompt something and boom, it comes up.
- [40:33]
B
When it comes to presentation software, Gamma app is really great. If you're going to do like slides, that's pretty nice. But apparently description. So I pulled up Runway on my browser and they're running an ad saying better than Runway. So Descript is saying that they're better than Runway. I doubt that. But we, we shall see. But, but Eric, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Can't wait to talk to you in Nashville. Thank you for being a sponsor. For anyone that wants to check you out, meet Gabby and then also Aero Marketing. Check them out. Hopefully you will visit their sites and check them out. They're doing great things so Guild members are using them. Guild members are investors in the company. So hopefully we'll you'll check it out. But thanks Eric. Appreciate it.
- [41:12]
C
Awesome. Tyson, I appreciate.
- [41:29]
A
Real quick, before you head out, have you checked out the Guild yet? If you've been listening to this podcast or hanging out in the Maximum Lawyer Facebook group, you've probably heard us mention it. But if you haven't taken the next step, let me tell you, you're missing the best part of this community. The Guild is where law firm owners like you go to level up. It's not just more content. It's a powerful mix of weekly live trainings, group coaching, accountability, and a tight knit community of people who actually get what you're building. You'll be able to tap into real conversations with people who are in the trenches with you and scaling their firms, testing ideas, solving problems, and growing fast. If you're serious about building a firm that runs like a business and not just a job, this is where you want to be. Go to maxloguild.com and take that next step. We'll see you inside.