Speaker 1: Hi everyone. Hello. It's been hot minutes since we've done our last video on YouTube and we've been getting a lot of questions from students and perspective students if we're still alive, and we are. It's just really busy. Really busy. Really busy. But we decided that we're going to get back into videos and giving you some tips for transcription and stories and a whole bunch of other stuff. So let's start at the beginning. First of all, who the heck are we? I am Misty. A lot of you know me. My hair is a lot longer now. You'll see when it's down in some videos. It's been a couple years. We started doing videos

Speaker 2: in COVID, but we've actually been around as a company since... 2009. 2008-2009. Yeah.

Speaker 1: So crazy story of how this all got started. I want to go way back. First of

Speaker 2: all, I'm Misty. I introduced myself. Oh yes. This is Anthony. Anthony Morelli. I am the owner and manager of ALM Transcription, which is our partner parent company of

Speaker 1: Learn Legal Transcription. So the course came out of owning the business and wanting to teach other people how to start in transcription and own your own business. So you've been doing this since 2008. What was this crazy story of

Speaker 2: how this started? Well, the short story really is that I had been downsized from my corporate position back in 2007. And we were on vacation at your sister's in Florida. And she was pregnant. Very close. Very pregnant. Yeah. Really close. I'm going to show you a photo here. About to give birth. And she was working for a company out of Florida and was about to go on maternity leave. And her boss was really, really concerned because Carly is just outstanding. She's an outstanding teacher. She's an outstanding transcriber and an outstanding business manager. Just vast knowledge. She's really incredible. So being unemployed, I also just by sheer coincidence, I'm a touch typist and I'm really good at grammar and punctuation and spelling. I said, well, I'm not doing anything at the moment. I could cover your maternity leave, which was set to begin just in a couple of weeks. So our vacation turned into a training session for me. And that's what happened. I really, she crash-coursed me in about that week. I think we were down for a week or ten days. I would say maybe we spent seven hard days training and getting ready to cover her. And that's how I, that's essentially how I got

Speaker 1: started. And that just grew from there. Yeah, so I basically forced you to start

Speaker 2: an actual business. Yes, the brains of the operation, you know, the one with the business savvy and the vision to think bigger. After, I don't even think we waited a year. It might have been three or four or five months after I started covering. Essentially, when I covered for Carly, I fell in love with the job, essentially. I'm a big fan of arguing with people and a big fan of debate. And what better forum than the legal arena to enjoy the best and the worst of professional arguers. And if you're a big fan of legal shows, Law & Order. I always describe it to people as it's like Law & Order in your ears, but you're just real, you're listening to real-life cases. And they are real-life

Speaker 1: cases. We're going to be talking about this a lot, but it's intense. And if you like that sort of

Speaker 2: thing, you know, imagine yourself watching Law & Order and making some money while doing it. That's essentially what what you're going to be doing. And then some. It really depends on what your long-term goals are, whether you just want to be a solo transcriber, whether you want to build a business. It's really limited only by your enthusiasm, your desire, your... Yeah, I think that's, that

Speaker 1: covers it. So, I don't remember, so that was 2008, so I think we started the core. Well, I started the core. So, basically my role in the company was training all of the oncoming transcribers that we hired at that point. Now, a few had experience, so it was just, you know, every jurisdiction, every client has their own style guidelines and all of that. So, training them on everything, but also training people from ground zero, like had no experience bringing them on. So, I did all of the, not all of it, but most of the training, putting the materials together, and the marketing. And I was like, well, we can't hire everyone, and there are so many people that want to work from home and start in legal transcription. I was like, well, we should just put our materials together and offer them to other people so that they could learn, and you could go find your own business and all of that. So, I did that unbeknownst to you. Right, for

Speaker 2: several years, actually. Unbeknownst to me. And keep in mind, a part of our history, when I first, or when we first started to branch out beyond me just being a solo transcriber, finding clients where I could, and just doing whatever I could in any given, you know, the amount of time that you're afforded in any given day, was we were training people via email and phone, the combination of the technology at the time. And not only did it take hours and hours and hours, it literally, I would say, took about a year to get people where we needed them to be. And the thing that has gotten me so excited about Learn Legal Transcription is, it has the preparation of the student clients who come out of the course are so much more well-prepared. You know, we talk about giving you the training, and then depending upon what level of course you take, you could have a placement, and then you do continuing education with whoever you happen to be placed with. And you could be placed with multiple, you could be working with multiple clients down the road, who knows what the future brings. But, essentially, you could, depending upon how much time you have, and how much initiative that you have, you could finish the course in a couple weeks, as fast as a couple weeks. Yeah, depending on your background. Depending upon your background, your ability to type. Yeah. You know, we're not teaching people how to type. If you're not already a touch typist, this is probably not the place for you to start. You would take a keyboarding course and really get that understanding. And we do have those resources if you really are

Speaker 1: starting from zero. That is all in the course. But, essentially, what happened is, you know, you wanted to grow, and I was like, well, I have this course, and people have been completing it, like, getting a test, and you can, like, hire them. So, we did that, and then we put together the, what do we call it, the apprentice. Yes, the apprentice, of course. So, there you are really working with someone on our team, typically Anthony or Carly or someone, and getting a lot more involved. And then when you come out of that, you are hired by our company. So, you are earning immediately, which has been such a great way to not only help our students, but to grow our business. And you don't have to think about anything. You don't have to go find the clients and all of that. But the difference between when we started this, you know, 14, 15, I can't do math. More than 10. More than 10 years ago. And how long it took to get people up to speed, and now coming out of the class is just incredible. So, we wanted to get back into the videos and start talking to you all, giving you tips and ideas if this might be a course of action for you. And, you know, what our course involves, we are, I believe, still the cheapest legal transcription course that is available online. We've always tried to keep that because it's not our main business. We do actually do, I don't do transcription. These guys do transcription and all the team. But what we're going to do going forward is we're going to have a ton of videos on YouTube here, TikTok, Instagram. And we're actually going to follow a group of our students that have come out of the class and see what they're doing every day, how many pages they're completing, questions that come up. So, we're going to document all of that for you so you can follow along. And then if you're interested in it, you could possibly, you know, come on, be a student and eventually work with us. So, we hope to see more of you. You'll definitely be seeing our faces more. But we welcome questions that you have about maybe getting started or even if you are already a transcriber. I know a lot of people try to do things without any training. And while that is kind of possible in, like, general transcription for legal, you really need to know what's happening. You have to hit the ground running. Yeah. You can't go in. No one's going to hire you with no experience. You don't know what a transcript even looks like. You just can't. You have to do a course somewhere. I'm just

Speaker 2: going to tell you that straight up. Yeah. I can tell you that several people in the course said that, you know, they had tried for a very long time to get on, you know. There's few areas where you're not going to have to do a test to see if you can qualify to become a transcriber for a particular company. And a common piece of feedback that I get is from prospective students and several of our successful and now placed students talking about how they take the test and then they never hear from anybody again. I get it. I've experienced it. And we'll talk about why that is in future videos. Awesome. Well, I hope that was a, I know, if you've watched the other ones,

Speaker 1: I think there were only, like, four videos, but we have quite a few subscribers and everyone watching. So we're here. We're back. We're going to have lots of content for you. And we can't wait to see you. But you can visit us, of course, at LearnLegalTranscription.com. And yeah, here we go.

Speaker 2: We'll see you.