Building a Business on Attorney Referrals, with David Notowitz

0:02 Welcome to Probate Weekly. I'm your host, Bill Gross, Bill Gross Probate on social media, and we do this every week. We issue a new episode. Really excited to have a return guest who also is one of my closest friends who actually was here recently. But more than that, also help guide me on how to build my business based on attorney referrals. Now, he's not a probate attorney. He's not a real estate agent in the probate space, but he is in a business and he's built a very successful business based on his relationship with attorneys and repeat business. David Notice is the founder of the National Center for Audio and Video Forensics. David, thank you so much for coming back. My pleasure, Bill. Good to see you. And you were literally here last week here in LA, but now you're back home. So, we have you here on our video. So glad to have time with you. Yeah, I got to see your studio in person. It was amazing. It was such a great setup you have there. I feel like people should see it. Like you have Why don't you show them? I would like them to see what you got behind the scenes. The other stand up I have there and it has some other equipment and I got a bunch of stuff for a lot of screens and sound screens. Yeah, I have three screens here that I use and then I have over there no stand up with three screens to record from there. And I love all the high-tech stuff. I love it. It's fun. You know, I think the differentiator is more the content, the knowledge, but the technology makes it fun, makes it convenient and easier and stuff. So now your business is audio and video forensics, which is used, I believe, primarily in criminal at least in your case. While audio visual forensics are used in a lot of things, your business is primarily now based on audio and video forensic evidence in I think primarily criminal trials. And I think primarily that involves law enforcement. Is that is that fair to say? We do a lot with law enforcement both investigating law enforcement to be quite honest. Internal investigations of police departments but also when

2:05 There's a police officer who's charged that attorney will call us. But we work on a lot of civil cases too. A lot of civil cases. We work on family law cases, federal, state. We help some work with DAS or attorney generals on their investigations. It's a really a lot of variety of different areas involving court situations. And just to kind of get that off the table because really this doesn't really relate directly to probate, but your business is about taking in some cases audio and video and either deeply analyzing it or combining several piece of evidence to create a contextual picture for whoever is investigating or the criminal trial or whoever's involved. So you really are taking this evidence, this information and help analyze it at a deep technical level as an expert in that particular field. Yes. Yeah. And then after we do that, we'll present it in court. Sometimes we'll testify. And even after all these years, I get very nervous in court. I'm not nervous because I'm going to be making something up. I'm just nervous because the stakes are so high for people. And I'm sure you see this, too. And your clients and listeners, I should say, and viewers, they are facing sometimes millions and millions of dollars of that's at stake.

3:27 And so it's a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure. Well, I would I would phrase the same thing that people call as fear as energy or excitement, right? It's the same physical component and it's how I learned in competitive speech that you can label it either way that same energy can be excitement. And so I try to use it that way. So in your case, you know, I remember you started with video production doing like wedding videos and personal videos and family videos and so but at some point you kind of got into this area and developed and again for those who are watching in real estate. This is very important. You developed in expertise. I mean there's a million wedding videographers. I remember going to weddings as you were later in your career and you stopped doing it. Seeing other people still doing that because you had moved on to something that was both more valuable business-wise but more valuable to the customer. They're willing to pay you more money because you're doing more work. Talk about that transition from kind of a generalist to a specialist. Well, my dad has always been a businessman and I've seen him transition from different jobs, different businesses over the years. So that example to me was huge to see my dad started off as a pharmacist and then he bought a pharmacy as a owner. Then he became so he went from being like you know an hourly worker to owning the business as a as an expert and a pharmacist and then he transitioned from that to something else he loved which was rare coins and gold and silver. And so I saw this businessman adjusting based on his interest, based on what he thought the opportunity was. So I didn't feel I wasn't as scared about taking big changes in my life, you know, and making big jumps in business. So when I saw an opportunity, and I liked seeing opportunity, I like looking around, seeing what I could do, seeing where I could fit in, what was interesting to me, I jumped to it, you know, right away. Saw from working in like wedding video stuff and bar mitzvah, you know,

5:33 And I and then seeing my the future which was that everywhere video was popping up. Yeah. Surveillance video, handheld video on phones. Police were having video in their cars and wearing them even. So all those opportunity I just saw wait a minute I know video maybe I can you know and a friend of mine asked me to help him on a case and then from there I just said wow this is a great opportunity so I wasn't afraid of taking a big chance I was you know people can be afraid they're like they want to take the safe route you know I don't believe in taking the safe route so just to recap this and again apply this to those who are in real estate or attorneys right what David chronicled was first the mindset shift of being open to you know where can I create more value where is there an area for expertise and then you'll notice he said in passing and this is a struggle for most real estate agents his first piece of business was from a friend in fact I know that friend but his friend knew what he did for a living now it was a little easier in his case because probably he'd been to a wedding bar or several and seen you doing video and knew that you did some editing but he wouldn't necessarily know that you did final product. He must have he probably found it through some other professional I'm guessing whatever it was somehow the friend is and I think for all of us the friend is the first foray into the niche because they know like and trust us and I'm sure he knew you knew video he didn't think you as the expert in that minor niche of in that case I think it was law enforcement video but he trusted you and knew you if you wouldn't do it you come back to him right to talk about you were a little nervous you got that first assignment but what was that like? Yeah. When my friend called and said, you know, I have this video. Can you help me? I'm like, well, I know video, but you know, I'm not sure I can help you, but bring it on over. Sure. And so he came over with this video that was on

7:38 VHS tape, actually, and he's Gosh, for those who don't know that, it's a long time ago. That was great stuff when it first came out, by the That was rocket VHS, right? It allowed you to record all your own shows. You could watch them later. Now, we got you on YouTube, you know, and all these different sources you can watch anytime you want. Yeah. But you had to have this tape. So, that was what the evidence was on was on this VHS tape, but I knew VHS really well. I knew lots of different technologies because of my work. So, the biggest So, all that stuff was easy. The problem, the scary thing for me was once it was all done and I was very, you know, careful with all the evidence throughout the whole process because I knew this guy, this police officer's life was on the line in terms of not life literally, but his marriage, his family, his kids, his job, his reputation, facing prison, facing Yeah. Everything was visual prison. Because if you're a law enforcement, you go to prison, it's a whole different experience, right? Yeah. Yeah, scary stuff. So, you know, I was I knew I'd probably have to testify and it was just you know, I want to be really careful with my evidence. So, that was a scary thing. But I loved it and lots of press was involved outside the courthouse and you know, it was kind of overwhelming a little bit and then I realized I could go into this.

9:07 This is going to be the future. You know, this is going to be the future of courts. You know, I helped set up the court playback system because the court didn't know what it's doing. And that's something I wanted to talk about was attorneys really are lack in technology. They're really they're very well not everyone but a lot of attorneys are focused on reading transcripts looking at the law understanding the law and they don't know the technology that could help them. Hold on one second. Let me translate this from a little bit which is attorneys want to do the legal work only and I think the now the best ones understand they're a business and their job is to satisfy their client but most of them struggle with that and want to just be attorneys and they need us as vendors sometimes to step out of our primary job into the areas that support them because they just don't either don't want to do it, don't know how to do it, don't have enough experience to do it well. And we have to look for those opportunities where we can add value to the relationship the so that's again to the real estate agents listening or the attorneys who are listening. That's always the situation. Try to find ways to better serve your customer. I'm sorry. Go ahead, David. Yeah, you're right. When you have some of you just you're talking with a client, you realize there's a big hole in their knowledge. Maybe it has nothing to do with exactly what I do like video and audio, but it might have to do with technology and I can help them and I can say, "Look, we before you go into court, test your computer and maybe go in the day before, plug it into the system in the courthouse." like things like that where I give him advice like go into the courthouse, plug your system in with the exact same connection, the same room, make sure it's actually recognizing your computer and it's actually playing the video or the document on the screen.

10:55 It's simple like that. And they test it and they're so thankful. Maybe a week before they test it or a day before or half a day before just go in during lunch maybe or just before break make sure everything's working smoothly because that's going to be a big frustrating hassle if you try to let's say I'll just give you another example logging in online and your audio is not turned on you know like happens every day I see people do that every day there you go so it makes you laugh but it's also really sad and it looks really bad from a judge to a judge, it would it looks worse to, you know, if it's me because I'm supposed to know technology. So, if it's me doing it's even worse. But it's it looks really bad in front of a jury. You'll see you're standing there in person trying to show a simple thing to them on a screen and it doesn't work right and you're fumbling right. It's horrible situation. Right now, one of the things you said and I think we have to it's probably a skill that you've developed is communicating with the attorney where those gaps are because my experience is attorneys for the most part are very smart, right? They went to college, they went to law school, they passed the bar. You can't it's hard to be stupid and do all that, right? You've got to be pretty smart at some level. And also, they have a right to feel proud of their intellectual ability. They've accomplished something that most people can't do and deserve credit for that.

12:18 Yet, it doesn't translate to being able to, you know, run a laptop computer or run a monitor. And so, sometimes I find I kind of tiptoe when I want to share with them some advice on what to do. Meaning, it sound to you or me is very elementary plugging. Did you check the plugin? Did you reboot it? And sometimes you say to an attorney and they if you say it wrong, they're going to hear, "Oh, I'm stupid. Is that what you're saying?" And it's not the case. It's just I do this all the time. You do this all the time. They don't. And that's why they selected us. So talk a little bit about how you communicate and how you be maybe a little careful sometimes in that communication. And same with a judge, too. For sure with a judge. Yeah. I'll give you something else that's related to this. How about and we'll talk about whatever you want. But sometimes you have evidence. You know the as one of my attorney friends calls it, you have facts. They're bad facts. Okay? You're working for a client and their case is not good. But how do you kind of tiptoe? You can't tiptoe around that. You have you just have to be straight with them and say this is what I see. This is what I hear. And the and you know it can if it's with a client directly like it's not the attorney sometimes I deal with the client they can get mad you know they can get they want me to lie. They want me to say things that Yeah. They want me to say things that aren't true and they want me to kind of not say other things. You know, it's it can be very frustrating when attorneys pressure you in that way. And that's when I have to tell an attorney I can't tiptoe around that. I just say I don't see it that way. Like that's not, you know, and sometimes, you know, they won't come back after that, you know, because they can't. Yeah. You know, but I'm glad because I don't want a client like that.

14:09 I don't want a client to tell me to lie. So, let's broaden that a little bit in that and you've built a successful business. So much of it now is repeat and referral business, which is the goal of everybody, but you only got there by doing a really good job. So, but you can't do a good job if you're working with bad clients. So, talk a little bit about it takes some courage sometimes to fire a client like that. I have I've lost a couple hundred thousand dollars honestly from firing a client. I don't know if I call it firing client but just not doing what they wanted me to do. Right. They had ongoing business. I'm just going to not going to say who. I'm not going to say even the med even the type. It doesn't matter. We're not that's not market anyhow. Yeah. But it's and it's always been on my shoulder going, "Wow, you know, this client brought me a lot of business over the years and then wanted me to do X and I'm just not going to do that. I'm doing I'm going to keep doing what I think is right." Right. And so it wasn't like I fired them, but they stopped right away with me. They were very upset and no longer gave me business. And that's I probably lost a couple literally a couple hundred,000 in the last four years from doing that. But along the way, you probably weren't either as strong or as clear of what a bad client was and we're stuck working with a difficult client. Talk about that and how that really hold We think at the time, well, I need the commission or I need the fee or whatever you call it, but at the end of the day, it really holds us back. It hurts us emotionally. It hurts us spiritually. It hurts us physically. Talk about that process of where you kind of I'm sure there's a case where you learned the lesson and said I'm not going to do this anymore these kind of people. Yeah. Sometimes you don't know right away, right? Sometimes you work with a client for a year and it's fine and then they somehow go against you know, like there somehow something comes out and they So, but yeah, it's it can be

16:14 Very stressful to work with a client who's gets angry, who gets abusive with their words, who, you know, threatens you I had a client I literally had a client call one of my other my co-experts so on a case the client through another party called that expert and threatened them said if you ever do blah right then you'll never work with us again and he was he was saying it to me he was saying it to me and I just said even though he wasn't saying it to me he said it to my expert but it was so it was couched very carefully to not say my name, but they knew exactly who it was for, right? And the message got through and those kind of things are really odd. Really odd and stressful. But I'm really glad not to be part of that anymore. Yeah. Right. Because those people it at the time you look at the commission or the hours and or the money and you think, well, I have to endure this. But the truth is they hold you back from something else. My experiences were never kept in those people. Something else popped up right away that otherwise would have been crowded out. So, yeah. So, now your business has grown to where you're you get referrals and you get repeat customers, but you still actively do business development. So, talk about the things you do specifically for business development with attorneys. Sure. So, I think obvious is really important. Is so important because we have such an esoteric or a niche, you know, business that how does someone really hear about us? There number one hopefully they'll maybe at a conference that I go to when I teach at a conference or I go to a bar association meeting and I present examples of what we do case studies to people show a lot of really interesting video and audio and how we

18:17 Adapted it and changed it and clarified it and prepared it for court creating exhibits there's that there's them of course attorneys have networks where they have their friends and they talk about well they're looking for a certain type of person so they will call on us when they tell their friend about us you know that's how those things happen but for new business for brand new business I also because of the niche nature of our work I do Google ads as well and that's something a lot of people pro probably don't even think about but if you can target the ads carefully based on the search that they do then it can be very helpful. I spend thousands of dollars a month on Google ads. Now is this something that you do on your own or do you have a consultant that works with you on the Google ads? How do you approach that? Because I know there a lot in real estate there's a lot of companies approach us and say well they'll run the campaign but they want to charge you know 20% commission or more. They want fees up front. Those kinds of things. Yeah, I pay a set amount per month to someone who helps me to, you know, I've already had this going for many years. So, I've gone through different stages. One was just on my own just writing up all the terms that I think someone like a parallegal who's actually doing the search, not the attorney themselves. If they're doing a search online, it's obviously an assistant usually or parallegal who's been assigned by the attorney. The attorney says,"I need a video and audio expert. I need a video expert to do this." So the paralegal types it in and I have to think of kind of simple terms, the terms that they would be using in their search, right? So I made a huge list of that and then we created ads out of that. Then I hired someone to help me modify that, refine it, and manage now quite a big bunch of ads that I have for every search because every search term

20:23 That you type in, a different ad pops up, a different some different landing pages they call them. So once they click on the ad then the view the person who's searching for our services goes to a particular page on our website that talks about that particular type of help that we would provide and yeah we so I pay them every month a certain amount and they help me and I found it to be really helpful. Do the people who click on the ads and go through this process end up with you or do you have a sales team that they talk to and book or how what's the process look like? So, I have a case manager. So, I almost never talk to clients when they first call. They talk to my case manager who's full-time employee. He handles all the incoming inquiries. He worked for me for four years now. It's ve I don't how do I put it? It's a very laid-back technique. So, I just want because a lot of people call us are not the attorney necessarily. Sometimes it's a client who's being represented by an attorney in our case. So, they're very stressed. They're facing loss of a huge amount of money or the gain of a bunch of money or they're facing 20 years in jail or they're already in jail and they're trying to appeal.

21:49 We get all kinds of calls from police departments doing initial research, initial analysis, initial work on evidence, collection even of evidence. So, but my case manager, he knows what's going on now, and he's very good. He just listens as long as necessary to the person who's calling, gives them an idea of what they're talking about. If they're just trying to find like a single text message that they erased on their phone, which sometimes happens. He tells them, "What's going to be this much money to work on your and they're like, "Oh," and they immediately the call's over, but I don't have to deal with any of that, you know, that's it's too much for me. I can't handle all that. That's not for me. Once it's been gone through a few stages of conversation, then I might talk to the client, the potential client. Now, did you start that way or you built to that? Meaning, did you always have a case manager to handle the ads or initially did you have to handle those lead conversion calls? We would call them in real estate sales and then over time as you got more successful, you could cut your work hours and delegate that to somebody else. Yeah, I started off doing all of it myself. I was a one-man band. And that's the key thing I think if you have a lot of excess money, it's one thing to start with right ads and a case manager or sales manager or partner, but most of us have to kind of do the thing.

23:14 And also as you talk as you mentioned a learning process. You learn about it as you do it. You also learn what to train your case manager in your case or in our case maybe a salesperson to say because you can't you can't hire them and really train them unless you really know that you've done that at a high level. So, how long was it from when you started before you were able to hire somebody to delegate to? Oh, that's a good question. Well, I was a oneman band starting in 2000. I mean, for many years, but like say 2001 was my first case and that was an accident. Just as you said, my friend asking me to help him. Then 2005 and six, 2006. One of the greatest human beings in my lifetime. He's not just it just happens to be of your client. Is one of the nicest, most decent human beings the world has created. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I'm very blessed. Yeah. I was also the best man at his wedding. But so we're very close. But that's important because he trusted you and liked you and wanted you to help him. He also wanted to help you. That's important. Yeah, it was fun. It was a fun process. So 2006 was our first our second case together. So 2001 then 2006 2007 was the end of that case. So between one and six were you doing this work or still doing weddings and bar mitzvah and other stuff? A lot of weddings and bar mitzvah. Yeah. Okay. So still scrambling kind of to build your business. Yeah.

24:40 And 2007 when I finally decided I'm going in on this. This is where I'm going. So 2007 2008 2009 2010 a lot of that was by myself. I would say 2010, maybe before that, a little bit. I don't remember exactly what year to be honest, but somewhere 2009 or so, probably hired someone to help me as you know, run the office, answer the phones, but it was a slow process. I remember writing up a plan for my business, you know, it took maybe a year to do it really well. I still have it where I have all these jobs. I imagined all these different jobs for the business broken up so that one person could take multiple of those jobs, right? Depending on their personality, their expertise, what their interests were. I knew I could break off those different jobs into different pieces and give them to different people. So that was my little fantasy thing that actually pretty, you know, came pretty well true. Things that I was bad at, for example, like financial stuff, which I'm not that good at. I'm not the best at, I knew I'd have to hire someone else to help me with that. Marketing and writing, I knew I was very good at, so I could handle that. Handling calls when they came in, I didn't want to deal with that anymore if I could help it. So, I hired someone to do that. So, I broke off different things, bookkeeping, you know, taxes, of course, dealing with Google ads. I knew I could hire someone eventually to do all that.

26:16 So, a lot of I don't have it in front of me, but there was a lot of pieces to the business, which was fun to write up. I wrote up a paragraph, wrote up a title for each thing, and a paragraph for each thing. And breaking it down, you know, many pages became my business plan. But again, you started doing all this stuff yourself and you only were able to delegate effectively because you had done it yourself. You knew what had to be done for the most part, right? Or areas you didn't know so well. You knew you could hire somebody to improve, but you knew the parameters of the job. And that and that's the thing I think oftenimes we in business, real estate agents, attorneys, we're about scaling. We don't understand is it's really hard to hire people to do a job that you didn't do and train them properly. It's not impossible but it's pretty hard to do effectively particularly in the core functions of selling and u establishing new relationships. Well, also I didn't have any money to hire anyone in the beginning like I'm trying to pay myself you know and earn a living and pay rent and insurance and taxes. It was as you run a business, it's insane amount of different government like forms and you know this the state of I can't remember I have like every couple months there's like a new form I have to you know fill out again and renew taxes physical business like property taxes is crazy. So all that stuff I had to figure out and I had to pay all that and I couldn't afford it. So as the business grew organically, which is what happened with me, as it grew organically and I got too busy to do something, I could then break off and hire someone to do that particular job.

27:59 Right now in your business there, you know, are there a lot of people who do some video, some audio, and they can create a website, create a name, say they're an expert in this stuff. It's, you know, unless you're an expert, you don't know how to distinguish between experts, right? I mean, a lay person can't really tell between you and that other person. You can, same in real estate, right? There's agents who are probate experts and they haven't done a probate case or they've done one or two, but they didn't really delve into the deep issues of that. I had a I had a agent on the other side of my a deal recently mocking me as being a probate expert because he thought I made a mistake on something where he was wrong. But how is it that you Yeah. You know, do you brag about being the expert? Do you not brag? But how do you put forth your expertise to attorneys in a way that they get you're an expert without sounding or appearing immodest? Or is it okay to appear modest? I think there's a definition of what we're talking about. What does the word immodest mean? What's humility? And what is it's all it is that you know what you're good at doing. You're honest with yourself about that and you tell them straight up what you can help them to do. I think that you know humil like being arrogant means it's kind of like fake you have fake skills right it's faking it. Being humble sometimes has the connotation of lowering yourself make you know talking down about yourself falsely yeah false that's the problem people may be you know overinflating what you can do or underinflating what you can do I just help I listen to my attorneys when they call me I tell them what we can do I tell them what we can't do I tell them straight up and as I discuss their case and their issues they realize I know what I'm talking about because I might bring up things that

30:02 They've experienced in court they've seen and I can help them avoid that this time. I tell them about the evidence they have right now do and ask questions about their evidence that they might not even had thought of. So all that stuff together just it's just helping them. That's all it is. It's just helping them from my experience and I have a lot of experience now. So I feel confident about that and I feel com comfortable also to admit when I don't know or when I can't help them. And so I think what David highlights is, you know, there's two schools of thought. One is, you know, fake it till you make it. Pretend as though you're an expert. You know, try to figure out the talk. And I've always said the opposite. Be the expert. Expert just means you know a little bit more than your prospect or a little bit more than your customer, right? Using Frank Ebagnol from Catch Me If You Can, how did he pass himself off as a high school teacher when he was in high school? The answer was he just read one chapter ahead of the other students and he knew that chapter and so that's why I tell people go online to your county, learn the forms, learn the procedures, go to the courthouse, walk the courthouse, where's the coffee shop, where's the bulletin board, who are the clerks, what's the security situation, what's the parking like? So that you when something comes up, you can, like David said, you can ask questions. What courtroom are you in or what department are you in? And you sound knowledgeable because you are knowledgeable, not because you're faking it, but because you are. So, I really encourage agents in this business and attorneys as well. If you want to specialize in estate planning and probate to get referrals from other attorneys, you've got to, you know, do the work of being the expert rather than just talk about being an expert rather than the website and the Google ads and the fancy graphics and marketing materials. Just do the work. It's not that hard. And I think like in your case, so David in your case is there particular technical tools or processes that you know learn during the year or ongoing basis or procedures and stuff that you are always work on to sharpen your skills and stay up to date or conferences you go to. What is

32:04 It you do that helps you stay a breast of the expertise area which is what's really driving your business I think. And then I want to hear the answer from your from your perspective too. How do you stay up on the information that comes across? Because in my situation, I'm sure it's similar. Things are constantly evolving. Yes. You know, the situations are evolving, the courtrooms are evolving, everything technology is evolving. So, we have companies that provided us software that go out of business because they're so niche, right? They're so small. And then they get bought by another company who then incorporates their software into a different software. And now we have to learn just right now there's a new piece of software because the company got bought and literally they came out with a new version a month ago. But it's not just a new version. It's a complete different user interface. Completely different. And the only way we can do the work is learn this new piece of software. We have to. So if a person said to me, do you know how to use this new software? I would be like, no, I don't. But I've used the software that came right before them for, you know, for 10 years and I can figure it out. I can figure it out. And that's what happens. People ask us to do something and no, I don't know how to do it right this second, but I can figure it out, right? I feel comfortable about that and I accept the job. In fact, I rarely turn down a job anymore at all from not knowing how to do something. When if it's related to video or audio or 3D imaging, cell phone work, hard drive analysis, whatever, I just usually I mean, if it's way off base, I can't do it. But I can usually say yes and then I figure it out, right? Yeah. I, you know, I have real estate agents that I coach and they'll say, "Well, I don't feel comfortable because I don't have a full rolodex of all the different players for each of the things that may that might come up, right?" So, what might come up? And they say, "Well, for example, estate sales." I said, "Okay, if I gave you a million dollars and said, you have 20 minutes, but you

34:06 Have to find an estate sale person who's great to serve your customer. Can you find a great one?" Well, yeah, of course. There you go. So, it's not about can you, it's about how committed are you to this process? And to answer your question, you know, part of the way that I, you know, stay on point with the business is I talk to people all the time. I do these podcasts and I learn from, you know, I only I primarily do podcasts where I interview somebody else. And I'll share with you the truth is I only interview people that I want to interview. I only do episodes of people who I want to talk to because I'm going to learn. If I can learn even if nobody watched it, I've learned. I spent a half hour, an hour learning from an expert in the business. I've improved myself. Now, by the way, people watch my videos and as a result find me to be helpful and call me and refer me business. And that's important. That's critical, too. But if I wasn't improving at it would just be a big a time suck. That's why I think cold calling, you know, I tell people I don't I used to cold call for three, four hours a day to build my business. And yeah, I remember that. I remember you talking about it. Well, in those days though, I had to learn the process of talking to people and effectively listening and being able to help solve their needs at the basic fund mail level. Now, once you do that, it's no longer productive to cold call and somebody else could do it for me or there's other ways to generate those leads. But, you know, I think as long as the process is making you stronger if you're an athlete, you know, you don't just lift weights because you have to play football. You lift weights because it also makes you stronger for whatever position you're playing in football. I think that you have to do the process that makes you better along the way and it helps in multiple things. So again, I'm constantly talking to people and then learn and then really just two days ago, I'm interviewing this guy and he mentions this website in a niche area and I go online. I go, "Oh my gosh, there's a whole world here. I didn't know about this." Guy had a podcast. He has a blog.

36:00 He has some resources. I there vendors to call. All of a sudden like I had hours of work to do I didn't know existed because I in talking to a colleague found a whole resource. So I for me I just am constantly talking to people who are really good at their business. When I like going to conferences too with lots of other experts in my field because then I have someone to call who's not a competitor although theoretically they could be a competitor but somewhere across the country who does the same thing I do let's say and we can call each other and we can rely on each other we can ask for advice would you take a look at this or do you have any person that can do like you said you know sale sales of a property maybe that you don't have access to they have they know someone else who can do that particular job. So the expertise you can once you meet people at these conferences then you can call them and get advice and people and that's all that matters. It's just another person. I think the most important thing in my business really is that when I've found people that I really like and I trust and I can call them for advice and resources and they just give it to me and I give them stuff. Yeah, I love conferences. I love being at conferences. I'm like going to and coming from and my favorite part of the conference is always the exhibit hall because you can meet a bunch of people like in an hour you can meet 20 30 different people and different companies the speeches I find almost always you can see them on video or online like yeah they're good and they're interesting to be in a big room but I don't ever learn anything there I couldn't have learned some other way but to meet people at the exhibit hall and usually you meet the actual person who does the work like you meet the actual on software the technicians at the conference at the exhibit hall you can meet, you know, so the guy the owner will tell you how great the software is, but then you meet the guy who's in charge of sales and he'll tell you how it really works and what the limits are and the strategies and all that stuff.

37:53 So, I do love going to conferences as well. Okay. So, let's talk a bit about when you get a referral from another attorney, right? So, you have you've worked hard and you built some business and attorney X thinks a lot of you. Attorney White calls him and says, "Hey, I need some help with video or maybe it's a paralegal." And the attorney, the paralegal say, "Oh, the best is Dave Notowitz. You should call him." NCAVF phone number blah. And they call you. What if anything do you do to the people refer you business? How do you keep that network tight? How do you or you know what or what do you do if anything to kind of keep that process going? I should do more. Honestly, I should do better. I'm very thankful of course. I try to email them and say, "Thank you so much." I try to keep track of that and I might send them a bottle of wine or maybe I forget to send them a bottle of wine, but I try to send them a thank you. One time we got a really big job and I had it custom, you know, alcohol custom etched, you know, with, you know, a thank you on there. And nice. I said I said, get here's to clarity, you know, and send him some alcohol. I knew it was his favorite, too, because I asked a friend of his what his favorite drink was and that kind of stuff. It's just thoughtful. I've But you know, the bottom line is my best way of saying thank you is doing a good job for that client. Yeah. Because I've found that now what does it mean to do a good job? The I've touched on this already. Sometimes doing a job means doing a good job for the evidence and it might not help the client. And that's a bit frustrating for them. And but they remember you. They remember that you're honest and that you're going to do a good job and that they can rely on you next time to also be honest and be real with them. They'll know what they're going to face when they're in court.

39:50 When once they've come to us, they know what the other side might have, right? So, it's important for us to be completely transparent with our work. But sometimes the best way to say thank you is just really do a good job. And that makes that other person who referred them happy and good. If you do a bad job, it makes them look really bad. Like, right, you referred David to you know, to me and look what he did. You know, I'm just saying that can be bad for that, you know, that friendship that he had with his other attorney. So we have a big responsibility everyone who comes in the door to do the best we can think outside the box try to help them like you said with technology even that's not in our main job but to give them advice and that makes everyone happy. Last question because we're coming up in the time you mentioned a word and on your website you say get clarity. Now, when I think of you and I think of your business, I was surprised that would be the words on your website to explain to me what that means to you in your business in terms of getting clarity. Yeah. So, the phrases that I came up with was get clarity. Now, we're playing a little bit with yes, I see you put brought it up. So, we're play a little pun on words. I believe that, you know, some we get a lot of audio evidence and video evidence and the attorneys don't even know what's in their hands. They don't know the details. They don't know how much information is embedded in that in those pieces of evidence. So, we help let's say they have two videos from different angles. Well, one angle shows one aspect of the incident. Another angle has another aspect of the incident. But when you sync them together and you can see them in unison playing, then it brings out a whole another level of meaning and understanding of what happened. When someone was looking, what are they looking at, right? When they're looking,

41:52 You know, when they're reacting, what are they reacting to? That means they heard something. Oh, okay. So, when he's testifying that he heard da, that's that moment. So it can really help justify or prove the their client's testimony in a lot of different ways. We also clarify audio. We take out noise and clarify video by bringing but getting clarity also means in kind of a more general sense get clarity on your case. Understand fully what you're facing so that when the other side brings it up, you are ready. You are clearheaded. You're not surprised and how to react and how to react in court, in front of a judge, whether it's trial or it's just a hearing. You're ready for all eventualities. And that's what I'm very careful about. I would say, yeah, I spend a lot more time on these cases than most people would. Most people they bring in a video they clarify send it back in the you know online never hear from them again. I'm kind of obsessed over the details and we give it the first class service. We also charge for the first class service. You know I think what's again to take away from that for all of us is you're giving you're offering the customer what they're looking for. It's not I'm the expert. I'm this I won this case. You see a lot of self-promotion in all businesses. Here you have somebody who's looking has a problem looks and stumbles onto your website as a result of whatever referral or Google ads and you're offering them what they're looking for and I think that's the thing we have to always focus on the true northstar is what sols a customer have how do we solve it if we do that over time we build a business maybe we're not all as successful as the national center for audio and visual forensics founded by David Owens but we can certainly make a charge towards that David I know I've kept you a little longer than I promised but I really you know I love talking to you for again for those you who don't

43:54 Know he's my closest personal friends literally stayed at my house here last week we had we had a great time with him and have seen him over years and my wife taught his daughter in high school and we've been friends with the Notowitzes I think it's with not actually with because your brother Sam as well and your family but thank you so much for taking time today to share with our agents and attorneys on this and I just really appreciate you and helping us out my pleasure thank you for asking me to be here Dave No is the founder National Center for Audio and Visual Forensics. And you can find him if you're an attorney or involved with the audio forensic evidence, ncavvf.com's website right there. You can make a connection with him and his staff. David, thank again, thank you so much. Have a great one, everyone. And for the rest of you, I'm Bill Gross. This is Probate Weekly. We do this every week and I'd love to have you come back again sometime. If you go to probateweekly.com, you can sign up and get reminders, sign up to get, additional content as well. We're in audio formats, video formats, all the different places, primarily YouTube. We're at YouTube or at Billgross Probroate on YouTube. If I can help any way, please let me know. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.