Karin Conroy (00:04.12)
Welcome back to Counsel Cast. I’m Karin Conroy and today we are getting into something that most law firms underestimate and frankly, they’re getting wrong. Most marketing people are starting with SEO and you know, it’s not entirely wrong. If you picture this marketing funnel and you’ve got it upside down and the top of the marketing funnel is to kind of make people aware of you, not entirely wrong, but it’s one piece of the puzzle and

Everybody we talk to wants to be found better SEO. Sometimes they’re talking about more reviews, but mainly it’s SEO. What should I do with SEO? Should I do local? Should I do organic? How do I do AI SEO? And what they’re missing is what comes next, what comes before and how to make that actually work for your firm. so, and they’re also putting their entire budget into that, which also not exactly.

what I would recommend and not what I see that actually works. So here’s the part that nobody wants to admit. Being found and being chosen are two totally different things. And the gap between them is where most firms are quietly losing business. And maybe not even so quietly. Maybe it’s kind of a loud sounding voice in your head and you can’t quite figure it out. So my guest today is Andrew Kolsky. He calls this

left of trust, which I love this idea. It’s that sort of moment before trust happens, how to manage it and what to do about it. And he’s also a a former trial attorney and mental health professional. So we’ve got this kind of combination of all these things that I think perfectly align for this conversation. He found it B picked and built something called the credibility generator.

And his whole premise is that clients decide who to hire way before they pick up the phone. And my friends, this is something you’ve heard me talk about over and over that it’s happening. There’s a psychology to these decisions and it’s not just Googling for no reason. So by the time they reach out, the decision is mostly already made. So today we are going to get into what’s actually happening in their head before they contact you and how

Karin Conroy (02:25.282)
just visibility without credibility. Sorry, let me clarify that. Visibility without credibility is a waste of marketing dollars. So let’s get into it. Andrew, thank you for being here. Sorry for that long intro, but it’s good stuff. I want people to kind of know what they’re getting into and what we’re gonna be talking about. So let’s start with the idea that SEO’s not bad. Not wrong. Right?

Andrew Colsky (02:30.894)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Colsky (02:52.59)
There’s so much in what you shared there. So first off, thank you so much, Karin, for having me on the show. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. you know, a great way to think about this, I think, is if you have a rash on your arm and you don’t know what it is and you’re concerned about it, you you may think, I need to go see the doctor. I want to get this checked out. And you go…

Karin Conroy (02:59.488)
Absolutely. I’m excited for this one.

Karin Conroy (03:16.142)
Yes

Andrew Colsky (03:21.612)
and you get to the doctor’s office and you get into the waiting room and you sign up on the waiting list and you know the doctor is behind the door and then you leave. That’s SEO. SEO gets you to find the thing, but it does not get the person to walk in the door or do anything further. And that is the when I when people ask me what’s the biggest mistake that lawyers make when it comes to marketing and building their practice, I say there’s two.

Karin Conroy (03:30.101)
Yes!

Karin Conroy (03:40.845)
Right.

Andrew Colsky (03:51.778)
The number one biggest mistake they make is they are so overwhelmed with what they should be doing and all the different options and all the different things that they do nothing. That’s the number one thing that they do. And the second thing they do, and I can’t fault them. I’m one of you. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been there, done that. Second thing they do is they go online. And I want you to think about this because this is relevant as we get into the conversation.

Karin Conroy (04:02.582)
Yes. Right.

Andrew Colsky (04:19.714)
They go online and they look up and they go into Reddit and chat rooms and things and they talk to other lawyers. What do you do? How do you get clients? All these things. And if you read pretty much all of them, which I try to do, you will see, and I’m sure Karen has talked about this on prior shows, you will see, you got to have SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO. That’s the answer to everything. As soon as you get SEO, your whole world turns into this utopia, apparently, but it doesn’t seem to happen.

Karin Conroy (04:26.924)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (04:38.274)
Yes. Right.

Karin Conroy (04:43.54)
Right. Golden ticket. Yeah. You are in the chocolate factory. Yeah. Right.

Andrew Colsky (04:47.82)
Yeah, yeah And you know it it those are the two biggest mistakes now not that seo is a mistake But seo alone is a mistake

Karin Conroy (04:55.662)
Yes. Right. Yes, 100%. Okay, so I don’t even know where to begin because we’ve got so much to cover, but let’s talk about why we need to have this combination of like thinking about your legal expertise and the psychological process of this decision-making. And this I think is…

combination of what’s happening when we talk about SEO alone is not what’s happening because SEO seems like a thing that you can just plug in. It’s technical. There’s reports. There’s numbers. There’s budgets. It just seems like an easy tactical move that you can just hook in and then run with it. But my argument is that, yes, it is a relatively easy tactical move, but you’re missing the strategy in the background and whatever.

Let’s talk about this kind of core problem in terms of the difference that you’re talking about in terms of being found and being chosen. What is that the gap in between there?

Andrew Colsky (06:06.286)
So it’s a big difference in mindset. So let me see if I can lay this out. Let’s say you are at home and you’re really hungry and you have this desire for a dill pickle. So great. See? So you’re already salivating for it. So you say, man, I’m in a strange area. I’m traveling. Let me look up where the grocery stores are.

Karin Conroy (06:22.188)
I love dill pickles. So I’m with you. I’m in the story.

Andrew Colsky (06:36.206)
find grocery store. And then you get to the grocery store and you say to the person, man, do you have food here? And they say, yeah, we have food here. And he said, great. And then you stand there stunned because you have no idea what to do from there. And that’s SEO. Lawyers who focus on SEO are focusing on, I do this type of law. I have this type of license. And that’s important. But what they don’t focus on, and this is the credibility part, and I’m going to

Karin Conroy (06:59.554)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (07:04.557)
talk to you about the difference between cognitive trust and affective trust. What lawyers focus on is, I have this degree, I have this license, this is the area of law that I practice. What potential clients focus on is not that. They’re not looking for the grocery store. They’re looking for a dill pickle. How do they do that? Let me give you an example that I think will make this point. Random woman, we’ll call her Jane.

Karin Conroy (07:14.272)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (07:18.926)
You bright.

Yes. Yes.

Andrew Colsky (07:33.134)
Jane is out driving her car. She’s driving on the way home. She’s in rush hour traffic car in front of her stop short. She rear ends the car. Now she’s like, oh my God, I just rear ended a car. It’s so obvious. I was at fault. What am I going to do? Are they going to sue me? Are they going to take my house? Do I have the right insurance? Do I even tell my insurance company? She’s got all these questions and she goes home and she’s nervous and she’s upset and she’s talking to her friends and.

Karin Conroy (07:49.847)
Yes.

Andrew Colsky (08:02.358)
nighttime comes and she gets into bed and she can’t sleep so she picks up her phone and she starts searching. Now is she searching for grocery store or accident attorney? Probably not. It’s possible but probably not. What she’s searching for is I just got into a car accident and it ended somebody what do I have to be worried about? Well if you’re not and now I’m talking to the attorneys if you’re not in that space and you don’t have

Karin Conroy (08:14.252)
No. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (08:23.128)
Right.

Andrew Colsky (08:32.088)
blog posts, YouTube videos, social media posts, different types of material out there on the web. She’s not going to find you because she’s not looking for attorneys. She’s looking for what do do in this problem. AI search isn’t going to find you because it’s looking for her question, not for an attorney. And this is the mistake. This is the difference between visibility and credibility. Visibility, SEL, I have a website that says I do accident law. OK, great.

Karin Conroy (08:40.94)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (08:47.213)
right.

Andrew Colsky (09:01.848)
But she’s not there yet. So I just did a video the other day that I put out about, I use the metaphor of leading a horse to water and trying to make it drink. So real quick, marketing is knowing that you have water and then going out there trying to corral the whole bunch of horses and make them come and drink, except most of those horses aren’t thirsty. Credibility and trust is

Karin Conroy (09:03.469)
Right.

Karin Conroy (09:20.738)
Right. Yeah. Or maybe some of them aren’t even horses. Some of them are like donkeys and, you know, or like a rabbit thrown in and they’re just not the horses you want.

Andrew Colsky (09:28.684)
That is very true too.

Andrew Colsky (09:34.06)
Yes, but if you do credibility and if you do it right, which is all the stuff that I talk about in my book and what we’re talking about here, you recognize that number one, you are the water. Number two, your ideal client is a thirsty horse. And if you recognize those two things, then you’re going to put out materials and breadcrumbs that lead thirsty horses to your wife.

Karin Conroy (09:45.752)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (09:50.22)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (09:59.116)
Okay, that is a perfect example because while you’re describing the theory and talking about the idea of the woman in the car accident, I, a marketing person, hear you talking about her pain points and the things that are keeping her up at night. And honestly, I do think that most lawyers are inherently aware that this is the thing that they need to talk about. Like they know when someone calls the questions that they’re asking.

But where it’s getting lost from what I can see is that understanding of it and the translation into their actual marketing materials. So where it’s getting lost is they get a blog post from someone who’s drafting at their SEO provider or whoever it is, and it talks about car accidents in general. And it’s not addressing that woman who is at two in the morning asking these

like very fear-driven questions, or it’s not addressing the thirsty horse. And so there is what I see over and over. They understand when I talk to them that this is the thing they should be doing. But when I look at their website, that translation’s not happening. how do we, first of all, how do you look at a website, if you’re a law firm, how do you look at your website objectively and say, okay,

where this is the place, these are the areas where we’re not doing it right. Or maybe it’s not your website, maybe it’s your social media, whatever your marketing avenue is. And then how do you really seriously take a objective look at it and say, okay, we need to change X, and Z.

Andrew Colsky (11:40.846)
Excellent, excellent question. And the good news is that there’s answers to it. this is going to sound as if we prepped this, but we didn’t.

Karin Conroy (11:44.558)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:53.474)
Well, I did a little bit of prep, I didn’t come completely blind.

Andrew Colsky (11:55.662)
But I mean this part. On my website at BPICT, B-E-P-I-C-K-E-D dot com, as soon as you come there, front page, there’s a yellow button that says you can check your credibility gaps. And if you click that button, you’re going to get 15 questions to answer. And you’re going to answer those 15 questions. It’s free. There’s no cost for this. You’ll get a report at the end and it says, here’s your strengths, here’s your weaknesses. I guarantee you.

Karin Conroy (11:59.118)
Okay, okay.

Karin Conroy (12:11.991)
Nice.

Andrew Colsky (12:25.366)
If you answer those questions and you look at what’s there, you will immediately know where your gaps are, what you don’t have on your website, what you don’t have out there in the world and where you are good, what you do have already. So you’ll know what to focus on. And, you know,

Karin Conroy (12:37.795)
Yeah.

So tell me more about what’s happening in that evaluation. Like what is it asking and what is it evaluating in order to get that result?

Andrew Colsky (12:48.972)
Right. Well, the easiest way to explain it is this. If I’m talking with an attorney and they say, what am I doing wrong? I paid all this money for this beautiful website. Look, it’s beautiful. And I say, OK, let’s do this. And we just get on the computer. We get on Google. Don’t believe me. Let’s just go do it. And you get on Google and you say, who’s your ideal client? Well, it’s this woman who was coming home from work who got into a car accident and doesn’t know what to do. OK. All right.

What might she be concerned about? Well, I mean, she wants to know whether or not she’s going to get sued and lose her home. OK, so let’s go type that in to Google. I got into a car accident. I’m worried about getting sued. And will I get home? And by the way, I live in, I don’t know, Dayton, Ohio. Whatever. Pick the place you are. And then we see what comes up. You know what doesn’t come up? That attorney. Because they’re not advertising that.

Karin Conroy (13:42.422)
Yeah, of course, because they are not talking to you.

Andrew Colsky (13:46.574)
So there’s the gap right there. I mean, that answers all the questions. the next question the attorney has then is, well, how do I fix that gap? That’s all the 15 things that are in the assessment.

Karin Conroy (13:55.821)
Yes.

Yeah. Okay. So what is it looking at though? It’s looking at their website or what? Give me more. Tell me more about that.

Andrew Colsky (14:06.254)
OK, so nowadays when you go onto Google and you type in something, what’s the first thing that comes up? You get that Google Gemini AI answer, right? And then you get stuff underneath. And what is that AI overview doing? What it’s doing is it’s looking at the questions that people are typing in, because that’s how people search these days, is they put in the question they have. And then it’s searching the web for material that has those questions and answers to those questions, not

Karin Conroy (14:13.314)
The AI overview, yes. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (14:34.772)
here’s a beautiful website about this law firm that is accident law. Gemini doesn’t care. Sorry, they don’t. They care about this is the question I was asked. Let me go find information. So when you are writing blogs, when you’re doing YouTube videos, when you’re putting out LinkedIn posts, whatever channels you choose to use, you need to understand that I need to be focused on things that are going to be found by AI because that’s where they’re going to find me.

Karin Conroy (14:36.374)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Andrew Colsky (15:00.054)
And so I need to be using question answer format in the right way, and I need to learn how that works. That is not SEO. That is GEO, which is a totally different thing. And this is where, you know, SEO is important as a small piece of the puzzle. It is not like you said, the golden.

Karin Conroy (15:05.474)
Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (15:15.608)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, and I think, so to be fair, you’re not, this is a huge change. Like this is where AI has come in and this has been a huge change. And so firms who were doing it in the old way, where it was keyword based and like you weren’t wrong. You weren’t wrong then, but, you’re not entirely wrong now. It’s just that there’s a huge change and we need to be aware of it. And the other thing I wanted to clarify is that

I know you’re not saying this and I’m not saying that SEO is dead because this is a big kind of headline thing that I see every single day. And people are using this, especially people kind of marketing people as kind of, I feel like it’s sort of fear-mongering and stuff, but let’s just be real. Google is not giving up the fight on this and, but things are changed. So.

You need to be aware of this change and kind of roll with it because you will be left in the dust if you stick with the old way. So SEO is not dead. SEO is not bad. It is one piece of the pie in all of this, but it is changed. And the way it’s changed is even think about how you search. Like I used to search with keywords. I used to search for like brown shoes near me or

Karin Conroy (16:43.032)
The near me is actually probably more recent in the last three to five years. But even before that, was like brown shoes, brown women’s shoes. Or brown high heeled women’s shoes, some kind of keyword driven search. Now it’s a full sort of sentence and it’s a question. It’s almost always a question. Where can I find brown women’s shoes near me?

that I need to wear for this type of an event. It’s because I realized that if I put, we’ve been trained basically, if I put those details about what I’m searching for in there, it’s gonna give me a better result. So because we’ve been trained, those results are trained also. So to get down off of my soapbox for a moment, I just wanna kind of frame this in this kind of scope of where things have been, where they’re going, why you need to think about this differently and also not to get left in the dust.

So how do we kind of think in terms of how to look at this going forward? And what happens if you stay in those sort of, because there’s a lot of firms I’m talking to that are still stuck in that I just want to do local SEO, some organic, maybe some local service ads. I saw it this morning and I mentioned it to you on Reddit that an entire firm was evaluating their marketing strategy and saying,

that exact thing, some local service ads, some local stuff, some organic. And my response to them was, wait a minute, is this your whole marketing strategy? Because why are you only focusing on SEO? Like that’s fine, but not entirely. So let’s kind of pull back and think about, you know, what happens when, you know, in order to get those leads.

Andrew Colsky (18:25.934)
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy (18:34.402)
How should, I was gonna start with a negative thing, like what happens when they do that, but I think we’ve already talked about that. So let’s kind of go more, spin it to a positive side. Like how do we kind of capture those signals and the questions and all of that?

Andrew Colsky (18:43.192)
Sure.

Andrew Colsky (18:49.164)
Yeah, yeah. So I’m going to give you sort of the psychology behind this, but let me…

Karin Conroy (18:54.538)
Yeah, think, yeah, tell me a little bit more also about like, I know you’ve got this background in both law and so tell us about that. then this, I love the psychology stuff. let’s, let’s talk about that.

Andrew Colsky (19:05.996)
Yeah, well, it’s so. So let me start with this. So you were saying today you might search for where do I find women’s brown shoes near me or something? I’m going to say to you if you were in a room of 100 women today and you ask them, you know about looking for shoes, they might type in what are the best shoes for me to use when I have a beige outfit with a colorful scarf. So.

Karin Conroy (19:14.508)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (19:32.18)
Yes. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (19:35.074)
They’re looking more for ideas, more general, more things like that. And this is where AI comes in and it starts to give these broader answers. So let’s talk about how that translates to attorneys.

The one thing that is crucial to understand is all people are always seeking comfort. Comfort is our most desired state. So if we have something that’s making us nervous, in pain, know, jealous, pick any other emotion, we’re always trying to resolve it so we get back to comfort. Now,

We can get into the whole conversation if you want about the studies behind this and what proves that at all, and I’m happy to do it, but let’s just start with that part. So if you under…

Karin Conroy (20:20.632)
but we don’t want a three hour show. there is so much and I know you’ve read all the books and I’ve read all the books, but you know this inherently just as a human. know, anytime there’s sort of an agitation in your human system, you want to resolve that and come back to that, that kind of point of comfort. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (20:31.118)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Colsky (20:44.11)
Right, right. So if you understand that that’s what your potential clients are doing when they get online to search, is they’re searching for how do I get myself back to comfort? Then they’re gonna be asking questions related to their pain point that are questions related to how do I take this pain point and get myself back to comfort? And when you put out information,

Karin Conroy (20:57.069)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (21:06.925)
Yes.

Andrew Colsky (21:10.86)
with that understanding that that is what your ideal client is looking for, then you’re creating what I call TICS. TICS stand for Trust is the Inevitable Conclusion. And what happens is if you start putting out a consistent message addressing the types of questions that your ideal client has and they start searching, a couple things happen. Number one, at some point when you have enough information out there, they’re going to come across

Karin Conroy (21:18.967)
Yeah.

Okay.

Andrew Colsky (21:40.31)
your video or your blog or whatever it is that you’ve put out there. And there’s something that I call vocabulary seating. And it’s based on another psychological concept related to the Bader-Meinhof frequency illusion. But again, three hour show. The point is when I talk about whatever technical issue I’m talking about as an attorney, I may have my way of saying something, calling it a certain thing, you know.

Karin Conroy (21:55.468)
Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (22:07.95)
one of your phrases is golden ticket because I know I’ve read some of your stuff and I see you use that. So I might start, you know, just for argument’s sake, I might start looking for what is the golden ticket when it comes to, you know, my auto accident thing and what am I going to find? I’m going to start finding more of your content. And so now I’m seeing you more. So I’m like, man, this car and person, she’s all over the place on this stuff. Let me find more of her stuff. So I start finding more of her stuff. And you know what? She’s actually

Karin Conroy (22:10.712)
Yes.

Yeah

Karin Conroy (22:26.701)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (22:31.414)
Everywhere. Yes.

Andrew Colsky (22:37.452)
giving me information that answers my question and starting to make me feel a little bit more comfortable about this thing. So by time I start finding all those ticks, all that information, I’ve already decided at a certain point, okay, this is the person I need to hire. She understands my problem, she’s done it, she gets it, she’s laid it all out here. I don’t even need to look for anybody, forget their website, forget their SEO, forget anything. What’s her number?

Karin Conroy (22:43.2)
Yes. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (23:04.332)
Yep. Right.

Andrew Colsky (23:05.526)
And so they’re going to call you and they’ve already hired you. haven’t even spoken to you, but they’ve already hired

Karin Conroy (23:08.77)
Yeah, right. Now we’re just negotiating the terms. Can you talk kind of briefly about the difference between fear-mongering and building trust in that content? Because like I mentioned a few minutes ago, a lot of marketing people, I know you’ve seen this too, are talking a lot about how like SEO is dead. And that is sort of this fear-mongering leading headline to pull people in. And that’s one approach. And people think that’s the way to get traffic. And you do get traffic. I just…

don’t feel like it works. And so in that decision process that you were just describing, what happens when you lead with the fear? And I think people hear pain points and they align that fear tactic really quickly. Like you see it, I see it all the time. And it’s a, to me, it’s a subtle kind of adjustment. It’s not like flipping the conversation 180. It’s just like you’re choosing

kind of a subtle difference, but it makes a huge difference in that kind of thought process that the potential client is going through.

Andrew Colsky (24:15.116)
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, mean, look, when we talk about the broad phrase marketing, you know, one of the tactics is the fear mongering to get people’s attention and try and get them to, you know, trying to get the unthirsty horses to taste this water. Right? Right. Trying to make them thirsty. And actually they’re not even trying to make them thirsty. They’re just trying to attract them that, well, if you might be thirsty one day, you may want to try this water. But

Karin Conroy (24:21.144)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:32.13)
To be thirsty, right? Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:43.051)
Right.

Andrew Colsky (24:45.046)
You know, your audience to this podcast is attorneys and attorneys are used to doing research, looking for facts, looking for data. Right. And so I encourage all of your listeners to think about that. What is your true goal? Yeah, you hear stuff. Maybe they say SEO is dead. It’s scary and all. But what does that mean? I bet you don’t know if you haven’t researched it. So do your homework.

Karin Conroy (24:54.156)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (25:06.54)
Right. Right.

Andrew Colsky (25:10.412)
research what does this really mean and you’re going to find things like this podcast we’re going to talk about the fact that SEO isn’t dead it’s just not the golden ticket either it’s a piece of the formula. So when you do your homework you’re going to start to find more credible information and you’re going to start to have a better understanding just like everything we’re talking about here and then you’re going to have to decide OK which direction do I want to go and I had a teacher in one of my classes once.

Karin Conroy (25:20.108)
Right. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (25:40.118)
say something that I’ve always remembered and always used. And it was purpose drives practice. What is your purpose? Because that’s gonna drive the practice that you’re pursuing. If your purpose is, my God, I’m scared. I don’t know how to get clients. I’m gonna do anything, whatever. I really haven’t come up with a clear purpose. Then you’re gonna get, it’s funny that there’s, I don’t know how many billion people on the planet, but I guarantee you that if there’s

Karin Conroy (25:45.645)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (25:55.924)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (25:59.629)
Right.

Andrew Colsky (26:07.822)
3 billion people, I’ve received 3 billion and 1 emails from people who going do SEO for me. Everybody does SEO and they’re going to get me number one on Google. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (26:13.666)
Right. Three billion like last week, I got them all. I get three billion. Yes. But the way you’re describing that kind of research process of, you know, if you see kind of a fear-driven headline, it pulls that person away from that kind of research process, staying with the firm or whoever it is that’s saying that thing.

So if I were saying SEO is dead, when I’m thinking about my thought process, if I’m reading my own article, I feel like this is kind of confusing the way I’m describing it. But my first thought is, it? And then I’m gonna question that and go outside to find supporting document instead of staying with the source and staying with them. Because if it’s so kind of,

inflammatory, this kind of question or, you know, high drama question I’m asking, you’re going to go out and question that and then you’re going to leave, right? Like it just seems like that’s not as clean and clear and trust building of a path to do that fear mongering process. Cause you’re saying, okay, yeah, definitely go out and do the research and find out if it’s true what they’re saying. But that’s, that sounds messy.

Andrew Colsky (27:37.772)
Yeah. And look, it comes down to exactly what you’re saying. unfortunately not all people, but people in general know when you’re being honest and when you’re being dishonest. They know when you’re being evasive to answering a question and when you’re being straight. And to be honest, that was my strength as a trial attorney is I didn’t bring stuff that I didn’t believe in. I truly believed in what I was saying and bringing in

Karin Conroy (27:53.132)
Yes. Yep.

Andrew Colsky (28:07.662)
presenting in front of the jury. And I got comment after comment after comment after comment. Wow, we really, really could see that you really believed what you were saying. And it’s like, yeah, I did. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (28:16.502)
Yeah, they could just feel it. Yeah. And I think this comes back to this human psychology side of it where you can feel, you know, the honesty of a person and the trustworthy and the tone of their voice and all of those things that are happening in your head that seem just sort of instinctual. They’re not there. It’s the psychology and it’s these kind of gut feelings and things that you’ve learned a million years ago.

that have just been embedded in your brain and they’re helping you to make faster, faster decisions like that you don’t even, you’re not even really cognizant of. Okay, so let’s talk about how to build trust and that sort of consistent message, the credibility. I know your system is called the credibility generator. So let’s get into that part, but how do you do that? How do you generate credibility and trust? This is a million dollar question that comes up over and over where

But I think we’re tying it in this episode and what you do to the difference of just being found and then pulling that finding through to the being chosen through trust and credibility. So how does that happen? How do people do it better? And let’s start there. I’ve got other questions to ask about it too.

Andrew Colsky (29:30.296)
Sure, So, you know, taking into consideration all the things we’ve talked about already and we, if we accept the premise that people are always looking for comfort and we accept the premise that when people are, you know, having a problem that they want to solve, they’re going online and they’re asking questions related to what their problem is. Then we have to make sure that, like I said, we know that that’s what they’re asking. We know who our ideal client is.

and then we start to fill that space, we provide the clean water that that thirsty horse is looking for. We don’t worry about the other horses. We worry about the thirsty horse. And the problem is, now this is the backstory of where the credibility generator came from and what it does. I understood that because my focus is psychology, law, and obviously I had to get clients because that’s my practice. And so I learned that

Karin Conroy (30:05.197)
Yeah.

Right.

Andrew Colsky (30:26.648)
thing that I’m telling you that I had to kind of fill that void. And the way that I started doing that is writing blog articles, having a YouTube channel, putting out things on LinkedIn, setting up a proper Google business page, all these things. And in order to do that, okay, now I had to go learn how do I find SEO terms that I’m going to use in my blog article in my YouTube video? What’s the right type of script to write for YouTube video? How long should it be? Where do I put the words?

How do I do all this? Then I had to go buy cameras and lighting and proper microphones and all this stuff. Then I had to get editing software and know how to edit. I had to teach myself all these things. What are hashtags? How do they work? know, on and on and on and on. Then I had to figure out, my God, this AI search, that changed everything. Now how do I, how do I get down there? So literally I was spending hours and hours of every day just trying to do these things because if I didn’t do them,

Karin Conroy (31:02.286)
A million things. Right.

Karin Conroy (31:12.032)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (31:22.752)
Other people are and I tried paying people to help me do it and it just it didn’t work It was so frustrating and it I wasn’t getting what I needed So me being the the person that I am I said, all right, I got to fix this because I can’t stand it anymore So I looked at everything that was necessary and let me tell you it’s it’s the making sausage part that we’re not going to get into here because it’ll be hours and hours But I took all that and I automated it

Karin Conroy (31:24.28)
Right.

Karin Conroy (31:47.368)
Right? Right.

Andrew Colsky (31:51.649)
And I said, there’s got to be and I did this for me. I didn’t do it to sell this. I did it for me. And I automated the process where one time I could figure out all the things that were necessary and how to properly write videos and how to be found and how to do all the things that were necessary. And I put it in a package so that I could go in and say, OK, what are the questions that people are asking this week? And the credibility generators now piece of software. And it says, you know, welcome.

Here’s the top five questions that people are asking this week about personal injury law, whatever your topic is. And I say, wow, okay, yeah, I really want to write about that one. Am I going to lose my house if I rerun somebody? And so I click the button and with AI, but lots of work on the prompts for AI, it’ll give me a worded blog post with a design with SEO, designed for AI search, designed to keep the user’s attention.

Karin Conroy (32:32.365)
Right.

Andrew Colsky (32:50.392)
questions, all the stuff that’s necessary. And then I can go in and I can edit it as I wish, or I can leave it as is, my choice. And once I’m good with it, I click a button and it goes and it automatically posts it on a website called Win2E, which is what I need to understand is. And it’s a library of these types of things people are searching for, but you can also download it, put it on your website, put it wherever you want to do it. And then once you finish that, it will go ahead and it’ll generate a LinkedIn post for you, proper.

Karin Conroy (33:10.04)
questions.

Karin Conroy (33:20.114)
nice! Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (33:20.514)
format for LinkedIn and some pictures that you can use. say, I want picture number two to be added to my LinkedIn post. Click approve. It automatically posts it on LinkedIn for you. Then it’ll automatically post a listing on your Google business profile saying, hey, new blog is out. Take a look at it, you know, so on and so forth. Then it goes to the next step, which is really cool, which is if you upload a picture of your face and a sample of your voice,

Karin Conroy (33:30.543)
amazing. Nice.

Karin Conroy (33:41.824)
Nice.

Andrew Colsky (33:49.569)
It makes a clone of you that nobody knows is not you, and it will write the video script for YouTube. All properly written and you get to choose what are you going to be wearing? What’s the background that you’re standing in front of? Is this a headshot or a full body shot? You get to choose what type of voice am I using? Is it going to be, you know, totally serious? A little bit humorous? You get to choose all these things and once you’ve chosen your settings, you click OK and then.

Karin Conroy (33:53.464)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (34:03.022)
Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (34:18.242)
The little hamsters in the computer start running at full speed and they create this video for YouTube of you giving this talk about this material and then it automatically posted on YouTube. So all these things are done automatically free of the background that would have taken hours and hours and hours in a matter of a couple minutes it’s done. And there’s even more that it does. I’ll tell you one more piece of it, but there’s still more. But one more piece is

Karin Conroy (34:35.808)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nice.

Andrew Colsky (34:45.9)
When you are a client of the credibility generator, you also get a listing on a directory that we have, best professional near me. And the listing gives all this information about you and how to contact you and your office and all this. You can put your blog articles there. You can add videos there. You can do all sorts of stuff. But the main reason we have that is because when your blog article goes out, when other things go out, it links.

Karin Conroy (34:52.871)
nice. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (35:12.312)
to your directory listing. So when somebody reads that information, they say, wow, I really want to find this current person. look, there’s a link to her directory. Click, and now they find you. So that’s a real quick version.

Karin Conroy (35:18.85)
Yeah, yeah. Nice, yeah. Nice, and you get some nice backlinks and all of that. Yeah, think, you know, like I’m also saying that I’m not anti-SEO, I’m definitely not. I wanna be clear that I’m not anti-AI and we do a lot of things with AI and there is a big, big difference between just going in cold and doing some very generic

quick, not well thought out search and the kind of work that you’re talking about where it takes months and months and months and all of this backend work to customize the kind of work that you’re talking about. And I think this is going to be the separation going forward between the people who are really using and getting AI and they’re on board and getting positive

results and it’s growing and expanding their businesses and the people who get left behind because they tried it once or twice and they did some kind of garbage, you know, not very thoughtful experiment with it. And then they just decided to walk away from it. And this, this is also where I think once again, that the businesses are not going to lose out because of AI, maybe low level administrative roles.

are either gonna be expanded or changed or lost. But high level customization with AI is so much work. And I know you have spent tons and tons of time on this. The work that I do with AI takes me so much time. And I would never do generic garbage because the stuff, and I also expect that my clients know that the quality of my work

is not going to be hindered. It’s only going to be helped by the stuff that I’m doing. And they don’t have time to figure out this stuff. The amount of time that you and I have put into this, nobody else has time to do this. They’re busy being a lawyer. So once again, I’m up on a soapbox about this, I just, want it, I feel like when I’m listening to it, the one kind of argument that I hear people kind of thinking through as they’re just hearing you say that it’s AI is,

Karin Conroy (37:42.926)
kind of like the stevia argument in my mind, I cannot handle stevia. gives me an instant migraine. So when I see any product and I have to search for it and I look and I see stevia instantly, it’s that’s an instant no for me. And so I think people kind of align that with AI. If they hear you say that this is AI driven, they’re like an instant no, which I’m trying to suggest that they should number one, calm down.

and number two, recognize that this is not just AI garbage slop kind of work. So that’s my long version of a short response to that.

Andrew Colsky (38:17.44)
Yeah, yeah.

Well, it’s it’s look that the things you’re saying are true. People do have this fear in some cases of it. But let me let me kind of put this in perspective. Number one, everything that we do has human in the loop. That’s why I said we generate the draft. You can go and edit it as you wish and then put it out. Future versions of credibility generator are going to have some amazing things I’m not going to talk about yet that are much more

Karin Conroy (38:37.517)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (38:41.494)
Right. Yes.

Karin Conroy (38:48.588)
Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (38:50.656)
interactive with the user, not just AI. Second thing is if you’re not doing it, your competitor is who’s going to get the business. Third thing is I’m old enough to know that when cell phones came out, my God, the world’s going to end. When the Internet came out, my God, the world’s going to end. When email came out, my God, the world’s going to end. And now AI comes out, my God, the world’s guess what AI is creating a whole bunch of different jobs.

Karin Conroy (38:58.956)
Yes, yes, 100%.

Karin Conroy (39:06.914)
Yeah. Right. Yes. Yes.

Andrew Colsky (39:20.654)
that didn’t exist. The world is not going to end. I’m using AI. You, the listener, are using AI millions of times today. You just don’t know it because any business you interact with, you’re using AI. And, you know, the point is that even though I’m using it a lot, you know, it’s moving so fast. I know this much about it, you know, a tiny little fraction, but it hasn’t changed the fact that I still have, you know, people that are doing jobs for me because there are certain things that

Karin Conroy (39:20.674)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (39:28.683)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (39:40.096)
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Colsky (39:44.093)
that I still have, you know, people that are doing jobs for me because there are certain things that humans have to do, can do better, whatever it may be.

Karin Conroy (39:49.314)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (39:50.518)
humans have to do, can do better, whatever it may be.

Karin Conroy (39:55.214)
Of course, well, 100%. And I do think that this to me, in my experience, is the difference between Claude and ChatGPT. And not to get too much in the weeds on this, but the way that Claude has a conversation with you and will often pop up like a little multi-question quiz about something, that’s that human in the loop part. like, don’t overthink this. It’s mainly like Claude is gonna have more of a conversation with you. I personally…

think that, and I have not abandoned chat GPT, but it’s more like my second option. But think about it in the way that you have those conversations with Claude, where you kind of start a thing and then Claude has like four or five follow-up questions. This is where it gets better. This is that idea of human in the loop. It’s not like you have to sit and now all of sudden spend hours and hours on this. You just need to refine it. You need to answer a couple of questions. You need to just make it better and make sure that

Like the things that you’re not probably even thinking of that Claude’s going to address with you, like that it’s done well and thoughtful and with like kind of your own experience brought into that process. Okay, so it is time for the book review. I know you have a good one for this also. So what is the book that you’re going to add to the library today?

Andrew Colsky (41:14.896)
Well, obviously the first book I’m going to put in is my own book left of trust because obviously every library has to have that. But if I had to give you someone else’s book, I like to recommend Simon Sinek and one of his books is Start With Why. And the reason I recommend that book is because the book that I wrote left of trust is sort of an add on. It’s Start With Why and don’t forget to add this too.

Karin Conroy (41:19.134)
yes, of course, we will link to that. Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (41:32.301)
Yeah.

Andrew Colsky (41:44.177)
And start with why the real basic premise is, he says over and over and over, if you watch any of his videos, people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And that is getting to that psychological aspect of things again, right? And so he was focusing on companies. People don’t buy what the company does, they buy why the company does it. And what I said is the part that he doesn’t look at, not that…

Karin Conroy (41:55.007)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (41:59.222)
Yeah, a hundred percent.

Andrew Colsky (42:12.568)
sure he’s quite capable of this, but I said the part that that’s not in the book is, well, why does the consumer do what they do? So he’s looking at what the company does. I’m saying what is a consumer and the consumer has that approach that we’ve been talking about here, which is they have a pain point and they start asking questions to try to resolve that pain point. So it’s, it’s sort of a, it’s a Simon Sinek and book is what I wrote.

Karin Conroy (42:15.011)
Right.

Karin Conroy (42:21.71)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (42:40.044)
Yeah, it’s like filling in the gaps of, Okay, so the book is start with why Simon Sinek and we will obviously have that on the show notes and the show page and all of that good stuff. Okay, so before we wrap up, I want to leave the listeners with something that they can kind of walk away with and something they can think about doing in the next week or so as they’re thinking about this whole process, their whole, the whole marketing pie and how

SEO is only one piece of that. this is honestly, I think this is a bigger piece, this getting to the psychology of the decision and the buying process and the decision process. So what do you think is your big takeaway, whether it’s just something they should think about or something they should actually do after they’ve kind of thought and processed this episode?

Andrew Colsky (43:31.888)
Yeah, yeah. that’s to me, that’s an easy one because like we talked about, you know, your listeners are attorneys and attorneys typically, like I said, either do nothing because they don’t know where to start or they, you know, focus on this SEO only approach. And my takeaway is just like anything, even a case you’re working on, if you’re going to solve the problem, you need to understand what the problem is first. Right. So go to www.

Karin Conroy (43:57.42)
Yes, yes.

Andrew Colsky (44:01.808)
be picked, B E hyphen P I C K E D dot com. Look for that golden button on the home page and answer 15 questions. And I promise you it will be incredibly enlightening. And the report that you get at the end is going to show you exactly where your strengths and weaknesses are. And that’ll tell you here’s where to start. And so you don’t have to sit there wondering and hiring consultants that are going to spend weeks.

Karin Conroy (44:07.662)
You’re right.

Andrew Colsky (44:30.416)
diving through all your stuff. It’s right there in front of you. It takes you know how many minutes does it take to answer 15 questions? Just four choices each one. Click, click, click, click. You’re done. Here’s your.

Karin Conroy (44:42.274)
Yeah, I think this ties into at the end of business school, we had to do a strengths finder thing. was originally done by Gallup. I don’t know. I think they sold it anyway. It doesn’t matter. But the focus of this strengths finder quiz, I think goes hand in hand. I don’t think it’s exactly the same. I think it’s kind of a precursor to what you’re talking about, but it was basically more of a personality test and like, what are you good at? And at the end it said,

that the goal is not to balance out your strengths, it’s to kind of fill in your weaknesses with other people. So basically, it was kind of aligning you to go be a consultant somewhere. So if you’re gonna be a consultant, be on a consulting group where other people fill in your weaknesses and you are super solid in your strengths. And so this is kind of understanding where your strengths are, but then aligning that with how to

optimize that for that decision process. kind of being aware was that first step that I did in grad school with that Gallup test. But then this is more about how to use that in terms of knowing what that decision process is, how it’s happening and how to kind of bring that into your marketing. it’s even better than that Gallup thing in terms, as far as I’m concerned. But okay, so awesome.

Andrew Colsky (46:04.582)
Hahaha

Karin Conroy (46:09.64)
Andrew Kolsky is the founder of BePicked, which people, you get nothing else aside from the quiz, understand the difference between being seen and being picked. And this is marketing. This is the kind of it in a nutshell. So thank you so much for being here. This was such a good conversation.

Andrew Colsky (46:28.22)
Thanks for giving me the opportunity. It’s so important that people understand this stuff, you know, in general. I don’t care whether they work with me or not, just understand it and put it to use for yourself.

Karin Conroy (46:36.929)
Yeah.

Absolutely.