Leadership In Law Podcast

S03E106 Human-First AI Marketing with Mike Montague

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 3 • Episode 106

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Most AI marketing falls flat because it forgets the human on the other side. We sit down with Mike Montague, agency leader, author, and voice for human-first AI, to unpack a practical playbook that helps law firms reach the right clients at the right moment without resorting to spammy tactics or generic copy.

Mike traces his path from tech and radio to sales and AI-driven marketing, then shows how to flip the script on volume-based outreach. Instead of blasting the internet, we talk about spotting predictive signals, leadership changes, public incidents, address updates, hiring spikes, industry searches, that reveal when a prospect is truly ready to hire counsel. From family law to corporate and cybersecurity, this approach focuses your time where timing and context make the difference. We also dig into the “concentrated orange juice” rule for prompts, where strong inputs and clear POVs expand into useful drafts, while vague direction only produces watery results.

You’ll hear exactly how to operationalize this mindset with tools and workflows. Custom GPTs and projects preserve brand voice and learn from your edits; Gamma spins outlines into polished decks and LinkedIn carousels; Descript lets you edit video by editing text and surgically fix flubbed words; podcast co-host AI reduces busywork so you can ship more consistently; Elementor and AI images speed up web builds without sacrificing quality. We pull these threads together into a three-part plan: clarify your positioning, deeply profile your ideal clients, then design channel and content plays that deliver personal, timely messages and measure success by conversations booked.

Reach Mike here:
https://avenue9.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedmontague/

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Library Law Podcast with host Meryl Dickens. It's actually the website and inspiring stories delivered through your ears. Your ultimate podcast for navigating the ever-changing world of the law for motorship. So whether you're a teacher leader or just starting your journey as a law firm owner, the Leadership in Law Podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Barilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, Mike Montague, to the show today. Mike is the leading voice in human-first AI marketing. His company, Avenue 9, is an AI-powered marketing agency helping small businesses scale without burning bridges or blowing out their budgets. Mike has worked with giant brands like LinkedIn, Uber, Zoom, Bud Light, and the Kansas City Chiefs. He's authored two books, LinkedIn the Sandler Way, and Playful Humans. And his podcasts have over 3.7 million downloads. His decades of past marketing experience and the AI tools of the future to help small businesses amplify their marketing impact. I'm excited to have you here, Mike. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm excited to be here, except for when people read the bio because that sets a high bar. I like a low bar. I've been trying to figure some things out, and I'm happy to share whatever I can today to help your listeners.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. This is going to be a great conversation. Tell us a little bit about your leadership journey. This has been some interesting stuff you've done and companies you've worked with.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's been a wild ride. I always say that I've mixed sort of three different aspects throughout my career. I started out like gifted with computers and got lucky in the late 90s to design like 200 websites and really be a techie nerd, but I didn't want to be nerd stuck in a room behind a computer all day. I wanted to be cool and be on the radio. So I was Romeo on the top 40 station in Kansas City and got to perform open for Billy Idol and do all kinds of crazy things and then became a public speaker. And I wrote the LinkedIn book on social media, which got into there. And that brings me to my kind of third phase of my career is just all been in sales and marketing. So I learned that my dad was a sales trainer. And if I learned how to sell stuff, if I learned how to market on the radio and advertising, that paid much better than the entertainment stuff. And I get to have a lot more fun than just being the techie nerd that puts it all out there. So that's what I do now for companies is combine my sales and marketing expertise with the technical expertise. And any chance I get to have fun along the way, that helps too. But mostly translating between nerd speak and human sales and marketing.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. I love that. Tell us about human first AI marketing. How is what is that? And what does it actually work?

SPEAKER_02:

So I think we've all seen this, but every time there's a new advancement, especially in communications, it ends up getting hit by spammers and salespeople and stuff. So my first book, LinkedIn The Sandler Way, was like 10 years ago now, where LinkedIn's blowing up and everybody was spamming the heck out of everybody. Every LinkedIn book was join 50 groups, add 50 people a day, like post three times a day, and eventually somebody will buy from you. And I was like, that's a horrible way to do it. But also, I was working with large companies like Uber that have over 2,000 salespeople. They can't have 2,000 influencers talking about rides or Uber Eats and stuff. It just doesn't work like that. There's not enough audience on LinkedIn, even with millions, billions of users. I thought about it and I was like, how do I actually use this in sales to start human conversations with somebody that might want to buy to grow my personal network to get introductions and meetings out of this, not just like a following and an influencer. And then fast forward, the same thing happened with AI two years ago, where I started seeing what was capable with AI. And I was like, ooh, I got to get in on this. I got to figure out how to actually use it in my job as a professional marketer to do better. But also I really wanted to go on this mission of teaching people how to use it in a human-first way to save jobs, to create human connection, build your business and not automate stuff. We can now create these Terminator AI agents that just go and send a million spam messages a day. But again, if everybody does that, it doesn't scale. We're going to have to have AI ad blockers, people are going to abuse it. And then most importantly for me, all these things ruin the channel for people trying to do honest, good communication and actually build your business or help people. And it's if there's a million spammers out there, how am I going to stand out with an authentic voice and actually try to do something generous or or heartfelt online? I think we're all feeling that these days.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I see them popping through every now and then, but there for a while it was like, and then people go, Thanks, AI. Because it's clearly they summarize in through the AI comment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's funny when they shot out a previous job that I had 20 years ago. I'm like, oh, deep cut there. You pulled pulled out uh pulled out my job from when I was 27. But no, I think that's exactly it. We're really seeing it in job searching that companies, large companies are using AI to filter the applications, and job applicants are using AI to customize their resumes and cover letters, and now AI is just not giving the job to other AI, and nobody's actually having a conversation. The other one is in education where teachers are using AI to write the exams and to come up with the material, and then students are using AI to write the homework, and then teachers use AI to grade the homework that was created by AI that was subscribed prescribed by the AI. And there's is anybody learning anything, or are we just all passing AI back and forth through the case?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's crazy. I hadn't thought about that. I thought teachers are so short of time, it would make sense, but then you think about the other direction, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and they go we have plagiarism checkers that check to see if AI wrote your essay, but then there's plagiarism breakers that break the algorithms that check the for the AI, and so it's just an way to cheat, it will be found, isn't that true? So ridiculous. But I say all of that to say that there are really good ways to use AI in a human-first manner, and so I put some criteria around that of personalization, I think is huge. We used to just do basic marketing, right? If you go back 50 years, there was four television channels. You create one ad for everybody, you put it on there, and everybody sees that ad. And then we got cable channels, then we got social media channels, we can get more niche. Now we can set up an advertising and account-based marketing to one company or to even one person. And I can create targeted specific ads just written for you that's about your problem and really gets to the heart of reaching the right people at the right time and eliminating all the spam. So now instead of sending a million messages to everybody, I can send a hundred messages to the exact right people who are ready to buy, and I don't annoy anybody that's not qualified to buy for me.

SPEAKER_01:

Because we have come full circle with streaming TV ads. We're now back to the old days, whenever we only had three channels and the kid actually got up to change a channel. Now we're back to watching ads to be able to get TV for free.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, I'm old enough that I was the remote control for my dad growing up for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Like, yeah, yeah, but even on the streaming, I think most people try to take shortcuts and they go, Oh, I can buy an ad on YouTube and just blast everybody that's middle-aged in America that speaks English, and they don't target their ads down to really specific data that we have now. We can use AI and machine learning to find exactly the right person. We're talking on the law podcast today. Real estate is one of my favorites. I'll use a different example, then I'll come back to law. But in real estate, if you look for somebody who's buying or selling a house, it's too late. They already have a real estate agent. If you see the signs on their yard or the post goes up on a real estate listing, right? Where and same thing in law, if you wait till somebody's sued, they probably already have an employer or something. They're gonna figure out. So, what we need to do is use the AI and analytics to find these predictive indicators of when somebody's ready to buy from us. It might be for real estate, I always give the examples of did they get a new job, did they change cities, did they have a baby or become M15 nesters? Are they getting married or getting divorced? When we look at criteria like that, we can start to hone in when people start to buy or sell a house. And I think you can do the same thing for your law practice, depending on which firm it is, and say, okay, these are the leading indicators of if these five things happen, they're going to be switching who their lawyer is, or they're going to start looking for a lawyer. How do I find those and then target those people? And it just it's amazing the amount of information that's out there these days.

SPEAKER_01:

And are you really being a bit more specific to Google PPC or to meta ads or on both?

SPEAKER_02:

All of the above. Really, I try to think more about direct marketing. I like to do direct outreach, so email or a drink direct message on LinkedIn. A lot of times I'll look for social signals and stuff. But for the meta and Google ads, I try to be as specific as possible on those criteria as well. Or put look-alike audiences in there. Have you ever seen that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And you really don't need more than say, what is it, 300 to 1,000 sample to in order to get a good look-alike.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And you can do that really easily now with AI too. You go to a tool like Zoom Info or something else where you can get just upload your current client list and then say, give me 300 companies that are similar to this one. And then you use those 300 to be your look-alike list for advertising.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's a great idea. And is Zoom AI used to be one of the really expensive places to get databases, but I guess using the AI, they are actually becoming more cost effective.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, their prices have changed. I can't tell you where it sits today, but their AI tools have gotten really crazy for enterprise accounts. If one of your accounts is a large dollar amount for you, if it could be$100,000 or more, I would say invest in Zoom Info anyway, because they have some of these really cool predictive indexes. They can map whole organizations. If you're in corporate law or something and you're looking at a large Fortune 500 company, they have all the data and they can tell you what we call intent buying signals that are like, oh, this inside this building that everybody works at, there's a hundred searches going on about cybersecurity right now, and they just had a breach. And so you're like, oh, if you're in cybersecurity law, I probably need to reach out to them. Something happened, and I've seen it. Or I have examples that there's a spike and just go, it goes from nothing or one or two. And then all of a sudden there was 480 searches on cybersecurity in one month. You go, You knew something happened. All right, something happened now. So now when I reach out to them, it's the right people at the right time. They have a problem I can solve. I can hit them with the right message because I know what's going on. And that's really the kind of marketing that I think is capable of doing these days.

SPEAKER_01:

That's interesting. Yeah, being able to use AI to find those buying signals. Because if you're like a divorce attorney, there's obviously things going on. And what we've all been able to lean on is like cookies and what sites have they looked at. Can we inv that that sort of thing? And the keywords define that. Very interesting. Now, what do you think people are doing wrong using it in their market, using AI in their marketing right now?

SPEAKER_02:

I think the biggest problem is everybody thinks about generative AI as just writing things for you. Yeah. And that misses several steps. Or they treat it like Google search. Those are probably the two big ones. Is people just move from asking Google something to asking ChatGPT, and it's wrong up to 40% of the time, which is considerable. So Google probably was too, but at least it was giving you 10 links to go look and sort through, and you could find the right answer in there somewhere. When you're only giving one answer in a search with ChatGPT, or maybe hedging its bets by two or three, or some more contextual type of answer, it can make stuff up or just be flat wrong much more often than a Google search. Same thing happens when you use generative AI. So I think what people miss, I use a concentrated orange juice analogy.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

If you have a really good specific question or a really good hot take on something, you can water it down with AI. And when it spreads out, it's still okay. It's better for most people. You're like, that's a good thing. Nobody drinks concentrated orange juice out of the can. You got to add the water. So if you're doing that with your social and your marketing, that's okay. The problem I see is people take this really general, watered down, weak, generic take on a subject, and then they ask Chat GPT to expand on it. And now you get down to this watery gross mix that doesn't taste good to anybody and it's not going to make a difference.

SPEAKER_01:

So being clear and concise with what you're asking the AI for.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I found one of the things that helps me when I'm say researching something or putting together something is ask me the last part of the prompt, ask me any clarifying questions. Because if you don't say that, it will give you a lot of hallucinations. It's just assuming stuff. Remember, Chat GPT, if you don't tell it even what role to act as, it's acting as an administrative assistant. So, you know, it doesn't have a role unless you're that's my favorite prompt.

SPEAKER_02:

My favorite prompt is act ask me what you need to know to accomplish this task before you move. And we can also do this now in the pro version. It's 20 bucks a month, just pay for it. It's totally worth it. It keeps track of the history of the conversations you've had with it, and you can upload files and give it a lot more criteria for context, which I've been able to train them to do very well now, getting up to like 95-99% accurate because I'm giving it all of the information about previous podcast transcripts I've been on, different speeches I've given, my presentations. You could do previous contracts and other things and say, hey, here's the information that you need in order to give me advice or to answer this question or to write this next part. And once you do that, it starts to get better. The other thing I do is I always, after I make changes, I treat Chat GBT like the first draft. It's never done. It's just like I hand it off to a paralegal or an intern and I said, write the first draft for me. Now I have to go through, review it, fix it, take out all the m-dashes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And in a way, I don't even put it in my settings, never use an M-dash, and it still did it. So at the end of my setting, as it only if use a comma instead of an M-dash, still doesn't it loves M-dashes.

SPEAKER_02:

It does. So I fight with it to finish my thought there. After I do those edits, I take the extra step that people miss of go back to Chat GBT paste and say, here's the version after my edits. Please note the changes that I made for next time. And the pro version will save that in its memory and update your formats, your tone of voice, and what you like. However, it still doesn't get the m-dashes. So I've said in multiple times, and I had a fight with it a couple of weeks ago because it put m-dashes back in. I said, I thought I said never use an M-dash again under any circumstances. And it said, You're right, M-dash. Sorry, it won't happen again. And I was like, You just put sh in there. I mean, then it said it said, oops, M-dash. I'm sorry, I've made noted this. And I was like, I am just gonna freak. So I'm gonna go.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to know who at OpenAI programmed M-dash anywhere.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Who's told AI it's good, it's okay to use that?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know what training data it used to pull that many because it's not even on a keyboard, so it's not a very common uh common thing. I know there are people that love the M-Dash. If you're one of them listening right now, we apologize. That's fine. But your writing got ruined by it too, because now everybody thinks your writing's fake.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. So are you using projects? So when you're saying you you're building these agents, so I've been playing with projects, still uploaded a lot of documents so that it gets a feel for what am I writing, is what my webinars are like, so that then when I ask questions or I'm looking for content, it's more in the way I would speak than in its speak. Is that are you using projects?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, you nailed it. There's three ways to do that. One is in your custom settings. I think even in the free version now, you can set up some of your personal preferences, which is just the baseline tone of voice you want it to use and how you're using Chat GPT. The second one is projects, where you can upload files and background and keep all your information in one area, which is great. The third one, though, is a custom GPT, which I do for my clients, where you can actually set up a G uh Chat GPT instance to do a very specific thing and also add those files and extra contacts instructions for what it's doing. And I found when I use those over and over again, they learn pretty well. If I'm always writing, you have to write a blog every week or an email every week or a social media post every day. When you do it repetitive like that inside of a custom GPT, it learns over time. Now, sometimes that means it can start to become boring and you got to change it up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But I've really through those three tactics been able to hone in and get it to do what I want it to do.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. And the one thing I noticed is we were working on, I can't remember if it was a slide deck or what the team was working on. And it actually, when it came time to suggest the slide prompts, that sort of thing and images, it asked for your brand board. And that was the first time I had seen it ask for the brand colors.

SPEAKER_02:

That's cool. So interesting thing incorporate in the brand colors for images and prompts and really done a great job. I'm surprised.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're not they're so much better than they were even 12 months ago. The the images that are coming out.

SPEAKER_02:

Fingers are better, text is still a little funky where we sit here at the end of 2025. But there's other tools too. Have you seen the Gamma app?

SPEAKER_01:

Not in a long time. I did it when it first came out, and I was really surprised how even surprising then. So it's got to be amazing now to build.

SPEAKER_02:

That's my second favorite tool outside of Chat GPT. Gamma, if you haven't heard of it, it's sound it's a presentation software, but it can also make documents and sales presentations or social graphics now. Okay, but it works like you would picture AI to work for those of you that haven't heard of it before. You can give it a one-line prompt and just say, write me a presentation about whatever bugs, and it'll make it, but it generates all the brand template and theme that you give it. So everything's consistent. It'll generate the images with AI, and they have all the different models. So you can switch back and forth between Google Gemini image, imaging, or ChatGBT image and Picasso and all the others, and really cool graphics. And then you can upload an old presentation and just say rewrite this in for a new client or rewrite this in a new brand template or for a different audience, and it'll rewrite your old one. Or what I like to do is again go through Chat GBT first, have it write an outline for the presentation, then copy and paste that outline into gamma, and it'll just make the whole presentation. It'll do graphic layouts. So if you have a process in there, it'll put it into a wheel or a flow chart or a timeline into a timeline graphic for you. And those are really great for LinkedIn carousels and other social media images, or the biggest one is custom sales presentations. If you got a presentation to give to a client, it should never be your generic go-to-market deck now. It should always be customized because you can do it in two minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And a very large webinar hosting platform just sent a sales pitch to me. Now I'm already a current client, so I don't know why I got this. And the deal was you get this custom GPT to help you write your webinars if you get this deal. So I just for giggles went and searched GPTs. It's there. So they're using it as a hook, but it's there.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a free custom GPT if you search in in Chat GPT's marketplace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. So that was interesting. Yeah. So looking at some of the tools you're you suggest, Gamma sounds amazing to do the sales presentations and slide decks and stuff. And again, your brand board. Obviously, chat GPT, we all love. Talk a little bit about D script. So we're all into video now. Video marketing is the thing. And D script is a game changer.

SPEAKER_02:

It's the coolest one. You can record video in anything now. So if you record in Zoom or StreamYard, SquadCast, Riverside, any of those tools, you can get video. And I recommend even you have to decide what you can legally record. And you all know about consents and that stuff. But I try to record every client conversation, every sales meeting that I have, every presentation and podcast that I do. And I can now upload it to D script, and then I can take the transcript out and do a whole bunch of cool stuff with it. So I could take it over to Chat GBT and say, hey, here's my conversation I had with my client. Uh tell me what I missed or what the top takeaways were from this episode. In podcasts, I create clips out of it. So you can take out a testimonial or a review or really good question and then create social media content out of it. You can change the formats, make them vertical instead of the horizontal for social. And the craziest thing about D script, I think, is that you can edit just by editing the words now. So you can just highlight the part you want to cut out and then make a clip out of that. Or if you you can cut out all the ums and ahs with AI, you can use an AI studio to make it sound like you're in a professional production studio. You can remove retakes when you said something wrong and just cut out all the parts you messed up and just error.

SPEAKER_01:

If you correct yourself and resay it, it'll take the best what the second one or the one that you re-spoke.

SPEAKER_02:

And then one they just added in the last couple of months, which I think is bonkers, is now you can type in new words and it will analyze your voice from the recording and make you say the right word. So if I said chat GPT and chat GBD sometimes instead of chat GPT, I can just go into the transcript, type the right part that I wanted, and it'll change my voice and my lips to say what I put in the transcript.

SPEAKER_01:

That's crazy. The example you were previously using is at the end of the year, the beginning of the new year, we're always the thing was we'll say 2024 in Maine 2025. And but that instance, you just and you don't even have to restate it, you could just type change it in the transcript, and it fixes it.

SPEAKER_02:

I mentioned I've been in broadcasting for a long time, about like 25 years now or so. And it's fine on short commercials if you know it's one minute long or something, you read it, you mess it up, you just read it again, and it's fine to do it six or seven times. But if you're doing an hour-long webinar and in the last five minutes you fumble the website with something and you're like, We've always fell fumbled something in a webinar, right? Yeah, and so there are ways where you could just go back and record the last five minutes and try and piece them together, whatever. But now you just take that one word you messed up, and Magic AI fixes it and said what you meant to say. And that to me just it saved me right there hours of retakes and edits and stuff for my team. So I think that's a super cool tool.

SPEAKER_01:

Amazing. Now you're using I we I use script uh squadcast and chose it because I got involved in podcasting just as d script bought them. So I'm like, okay, amazing. So I felt pretty, pretty bit bonus on that. I'm also using Buzz Sprout, and I noticed that's one of your tools. And we do the co-host AI for our show notes and stuff. What all are you using it for?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the show host, and again, the studio sound is amazing on those, but I have been a podcaster for over 10 years. I've done over a thousand episodes, and I was paying up to at the peak, uh, I think it was over a thousand dollars a month for somebody in the Philippines to listen to all my episodes, write transcripts, write the titles, tag the keywords, create the clips, write the descriptions, write the LinkedIn posts to promote the episodes. Just a ton of content needs to be remixed from any type of uh video you make, whether that's a podcast or a webinar or whatever. And I want to use that, I want to create blog posts out of it. I want to do all kinds of stuff. So anytime there's an AI tool, and again, I think that one's six dollars a month. Yeah, so for six dollars a month, I turn on the co-host thing and it'll make me sound good. It'll write the descriptions, titles, tag the keywords that I need, suggest clips or suggest social media posts. I don't always use them, but for six bucks, would I rather do that than pay six hundred dollars to have human through and listen to the hours of me blabber on about AI?

SPEAKER_01:

And it's pretty incredibly good. It does the first draft of our show notes for each of our episodes. And yeah, we're again six bucks a month is ridiculous. So it's definitely worth it. Now, I've recently been I use Divi for our website. I noticed you use Elementor AI for web WordPress. Now I have not played with Divi with AI yet. So how does that work for you? The Elementor?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I've used both of those tools, a lot of those tools. I didn't use it a ton, but I really did like it because I'm doing client work. It could be that you're making your own website, which is fine too. But I've always found, again, I've done this over 200 times, the hardest part is getting somebody to write the website copy. Because if I'm the advertising agency, I don't know your business. And if you're in the business, you're the lawyer, you don't know marketing and website copy. And you're I gotta take the time to either interview you and then ghost write it or whatever. So now I do a combination of all the above. I can say this page is about this or this block is about this, but the website editors now in both Gamma and in Elementor can do custom layouts for you. So if you put it in a bulleted list and you go, you know what? I don't like that. I want it in a call to action box that has an image on the left and a button on the right. You can just one click and say, suggest a new layout for this page with AI or create a create a box for me and you can type it in, or you can even say it. I use Whisper AI to say it. And I go, try this same content but in a vertical layout instead of a horizontal, and it'll just flip it for you. So you don't have to website design or write the copy. Images is another huge one that it is built in with that subscription that it'll just use AI to generate an image. So if you need a stock photo for somebody in the courtroom, yeah, now you don't have to buy one, you can just go generate your own.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. I love that. I'm not gonna touch on the rest of your tools, but you guys, the there's gonna be a link in the show notes for all the tools he suggests. I do want to be respectful of your time and ask you how a business can use AI to build out a great marketing plan.

SPEAKER_02:

I think for me, there's three parts to any great marketing plan, and AI can really help you with all three. Number one is get really clear on what you're about. That's that concentrated orange juice. Upload everything you've ever made to AI. Upload everything, your website links. You're just you can use Google Notebook or Chat GBT and upload your files, your presentations, your marketing documents, anything you have, conversations with your founder, your top performer, your best client, anything. And then ask AI to whittle down to your concentrated orange use of what are we about? How are we different? Who do we serve? What are our strengths and weaknesses compared to other firms and get really good about what you stand for and what your voice is. Number two, do the same thing for who you serve. Then say, here's our best clients, here's what they have, here's the problems we solve, tell me, re do a deep research on this industry and tell me what the current trends and concerns are for my types of clients in this demographic and get a really good context document on who you serve as well. Then if you have those two things, now you can either hire a marketer and say, this is what we're all about, or you can go to Chat GPT. And if you don't have that and you're starting up or you're trying to get some stuff done, you can say, build this plan to match these two, to separate me. What channels would you use? How often should I message these people? What types of blog posts this month would be great to match my audience based on what I talk about? And you'll get way better information than if you didn't do that hard work up front. But it pays off for the rest of the year. So if you do that concentrated orange juice exercise for yourself and your clients first, then you can design a great plan. But trying to ask it to write everything first without doing that work doesn't. Work. You get the watered down version that's just lame.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's an amazing step towards your, we always talk about what's your client avatar and people get stuck with that. And the I like the idea of taking, if you looked at all of your customers, all of your clients, what are your best customers? What do they have in common? And how do they work with you? And now how do I make a message that appeals to more of them?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And also, if you want to know the questions, ask ChatGBT. Say, yeah, ask me 10 questions about my ideal client to help me come up with an ideal client profile. You know, just talking back.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. I had someone say, I don't know what prompt to use to do this. I said, Why don't you ask it what prompt it would need?

SPEAKER_02:

It's so crazy. We're all in the city.

SPEAKER_01:

They're like, you can ask it to give you the prompt to prompt it with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. It's so funny. And it's for other tools too. So I still think ChatGBT is the best, but I'll ask it to write the image prompt for gamma to generate my social image and stuff or go back and forth.

SPEAKER_01:

So I like ChatGBT, but I also like when it comes to writing, I like Claude a lot. It feels more human-y. A lot of people say that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's better for code and stuff for sure, but try all of them. The Google Notebook one, if that's one we didn't get to. But if you haven't played with that yet, don't snooze on it. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I agree. Do you use the audio file that it comes out?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So I did one for my book, Playful Humans, when it came out. It's about how to add more humanity to your work and your life. And so I thought it'd be funny if I did an AI robot review of the book as podcast launch and had it had it analyzed it. So I've done that. I've used it for a lot of other client stuff. They now have video overviews too. So if you have to teach somebody internally or externally, like a client, you can say, make a 10-minute video clip that explains this legal concept to my client, and it'll make it and they're really good.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll have to dig back into that. I did my book, my latest book in it, and they the podcast episode was actually really great, but they didn't mention my name or the name of the book. That's the only reason I didn't use it. It just talks about this book. But I just I cracked up. I'm like, this sounds like two people really talking about my book.

SPEAKER_02:

You and I are really nerding out here about this, but now AI in the Google AI studio, they have those same voices. You can type a script and have it generate like the intro to that podcast. So you could put your name and name of the book back in, or also just take that over to D script and then I edited it there and D script fixed the parts that I didn't like.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. I love I think the bottom line here is use AI to be more productive for yourself and your clients, but don't take it at face value. Always, if you're gonna have a contract written or something for by uh someone, you need to review that. And this is just gonna save you time. You don't have to pay them to write it the first draft, get your first draft, then move forward in your processes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and don't think about it like a cheat code or a shortcut, because then I think they just don't pay off. But it is an amazing tool to help you go faster. And I think if you think of it about it more like a coworker than a cheat code or a magic wand, I think you'll be approaching it in the right way and get better results.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, perspective. This has been great, Mike. I know that my listeners may want to reach out to you or connect with you. Where would be the best place to do that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the good news is I'm in internet marketing, so I'm not hard to find. If you just type Mike Montague or Avenue9 into whatever platform you're on, you should be able to find me. But LinkedIn is my preferred channel. So if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, look for Mike Montague. I am the bald guy with a beard. And there's a lot of Mike Montague's. And then Avenue9.com talks about our services, AI education, marketing services, and AEO. If you want to find out how to get found and recommended in AI search engines, that is a very popular offering of ours too.

SPEAKER_01:

Very cool. Very cool. We'll make sure that all those links are in the show notes. And again, thank you so much. This has been really good. I really enjoyed the chat today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

I did too. It was fun. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to LawmarketingZone.com to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law Podcast, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at LawMarketingZone.com. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources, and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us to review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.

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Marilyn Jenkins

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