Speaker 1: That's where I started. I started by scaling up before scaling up. So people look at me in 2022 and 2023 and think, OK, well, he's got a lot of followers. There's there's there's got to be a reason how he was able to grow that fast. Yes, because I had something valuable to give to my audience.

Speaker 2: Ali, so thank you so much for joining us on here. I've been watching your stuff for a long time. I've seen I've seen you popping up, actually, even on like radio ads and stuff. But, you know, I want to can you tell everybody kind of, you know, how many followers you have on Instagram and just kind of like, you know, just give them kind of the real back story about yourself right now before I kind of dig into some of the meat here and ask you some questions.

Speaker 1: Thanks, Andy. My name is Ali Awad, and I help injured people make a lot of money. I started my practice February 13th, 2017 from the trunk of my car with just my phone. I did not have an office, did not have any employees, did not have any sort of real infrastructure. I didn't even have business cards. And in my first full year of business in twenty eighteen, I settled three point two million dollars in cases, which was a little over a million in attorney's fees, all from social media. And over the years, I've developed a system where I realized here's the type of video that you need to create to grab people's attention. What are the types of metrics you need to keep track of? And although the vanity metrics are cool with having a couple of million followers on various platforms, what really matters is that I have a twenty five million dollar a year law firm and that it's growing consistently year after year and that we've used social media as a way to catapult our success and catapult our growth. So there's there's people that have way more followers than me, people that get way more views, way more engagement, way more everything. But I think lawyers should be focused on impacting the community. And you do that by handling more clients, handling more cases. And bringing in more revenue. And so even though our Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and Snapchat all have tons of followers, I think the thing that people should pay attention to is how does it translate into clients? How do we convert views to clients? How do we get engagement to clients? And how do we fulfill on the back end to provide an excellent service? So today, I want to make sure that we go into the meat and bones. You know, there's so many different strategies and so much misinformation out there about social media. So I'd like to dispel those myths. And, you know, the feeling is mutual. Andy, I got I hold a ton of respect for you. I know you're kind of a titan of industry and personal injury. So I'm glad we were able to connect today and let's get the show rolling. I'm excited.

Speaker 2: Thanks. Thanks. I appreciate that. So, you know, the first thing I always ask everybody is like, what what made you get started in social media? Because everybody can hear, you know, millions of followers and all that type of stuff. But at one point, you created a brand new Instagram account and you had zero followers. Right. So what actually what was your motivation? Like, what was the problem that you had that actually caused you to want to start doing social media?

Speaker 1: Yeah, the problem was my bank account was too small. No, I mean, look, I'm going to be completely honest with you guys. I was flat broke and I needed to make money. And I couldn't afford to compete with billboards and radio and TV ads and every other huge player in the industry. What I did have was my phone and I did have a social media. So, yeah, I don't hide from the fact that I needed to make money. I was tired of being two hundred thousand dollars in debt. I was tired of driving a shitty car. I was tired of living in an apartment, paying three hundred bucks a month in rent with a roommate, with a doctorate in law and a master's in business. I was tired of having so many failed businesses. I was tired of not being able to give my mom and my dad, put them on payroll and be able to give them the life that they deserve. I was tired. And I knew that the only way that it would make sense was to find first an industry that had a very high ceiling. So I came from the background of car audio and wheels. I did a lot of online businesses and online sales before I became an attorney. So I have a lot of experience with online, with content marketing, with, you know, creating eBay stores and Shopify stores and things like that. So I realized I could use that knowledge to translate into the P.I. business, into the legal industry. What I found was that most lawyers were not hungry. What I found was most lawyers are not good businessmen. Most lawyers have no idea how to do sales. There are a lot of strong marketers, but the marketers are usually not good lawyers and the great lawyers are usually not good marketers. They just talk trash about each other. So first, I built up my skill set. I became a an expert personal injury lawyer. And you do that by handling a ton of cases. So I took a job out of law school making 40 grand a year. As an attorney and during the and I stayed there for 14 months. During that time, I learned how to handle cases from start to finish. I was marketing myself online. I brought in more cases than anyone else in the firm. And I realized after I did the numbers of just the cases that I brought in on my own compared to the attorney's fees that I brought in, how much I was making myself, I could just do this on my own and get paid a whole lot more. So that's how that's where I started. I started by scaling up before scaling up. So people look at me in 2022 and 2023 and think, OK, well, he's got a lot of followers. There's there's there's got to be a reason how he was able to grow that fast. Yes, because I had something valuable to give to my audience.

Speaker 2: Right. And I was early. Awesome. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Deco.

Speaker 1: No, no. And that's that's all it was was I was early. So I learned how to become a great personal injury lawyer. And then I started giving that information to people on social media. It actually started in law school on Snapchat. Twenty twelve is when I started doing social media heavily. And when I got my first catastrophic injury case from Snapchat, I realized it was time to really spend some money. In fact, the huge pivotal moment in my career was when I boosted a video in like twenty seventeen. I spent twenty dollars boosting it from my phone on Instagram. It was a video about punitive damages. Yeah. And it just said, if you get hit by a drunk driver, do not settle your case unless, you know, this boom, boom, boom. And I explained how punitive damages apply in Georgia. I boosted it for twenty dollars. I got eight cases from it. So talk about a two dollar and fifty cost of client acquisition. And it was like it obviously it was it was a winner. You know, you don't get to get so many of those. But it made me realize the power of social media. And from then on, I built an entire media company, media team around it.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what's interesting is that, you know, you started and you didn't have any money and you just started posting and you started on Snapchat, right? So you kind of got first mover advantage there. But like, what was it like in the early days? How much did you actually have to create? Because I know a lot of people that are thinking, yeah, it's great, but he's got two million followers. You know, that's why it works for him. But he's got two million followers. Well, you didn't always have two million followers. So what was it like? What was it like early in the beginning while you were starting to build your platform up? And how did you do that?

Speaker 1: So, Andy, that's a really good question. And I would like to point everyone's attention not to the CEO lawyer brand, but to the 706 Abogado brand, where I currently have like 600 followers on my Spanish channel. I'd like to point people to the CEO Lawyer Academy, where I only have 2000 followers on TikTok. I'm still a practitioner of this to this in this very day, at this very moment. So the the most important thing that I think people should realize when they're getting into social media is understanding why social media algorithms work a certain way.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Right now, there's obviously a tremendous opportunity on TikTok because you can't get a million views organically on Instagram. It's just so, so, so rare. But on TikTok, it happens all the time. Right? And why is that happening on TikTok? Because TikTok wanted to become the number one video streaming platform in the world. And they did. Well, who, which company saw that as a huge disadvantage? It was Google and YouTube. YouTube saw that, well, we need to create a vertical version of our platform. So they created YouTube Shorts. And now YouTube is promoting the crap out of these YouTube Shorts. And you can get so much more view time and so much more exposure with very little effort. And now Instagram is doing the same thing. Instagram has been pushing Reels for a long time. They just announced in the past month all videos are considered Reels now. They stopped doing long form video. They don't want to compete in that space. Facebook has Reels now. So understanding where your effort is best spent. I don't spend as much effort on Snapchat anymore. Because it doesn't work for my brand. I still do Instagram because it's strong for me. But right now, TikTok and YouTube Shorts are where, you know, where the attention is at. So in telling, in teaching you on how I'm starting my new brands right now, it's creating a vertical video that I can post on all these different platforms simultaneously. And then whichever ones work very well, I'll boost it and throw a little bit of money at it. That's it. And so you shouldn't think about being omnipresent on all the channels. If I was going to tell you where to spend your money right now and all your energy, it would be on TikTok. So, yeah, I don't spend as much time on TikTok as I do on Instagram. I don't spend as much time on Instagram as I do on TikTok.