The better your plan the better your results. If you take a rush at the problem you can do more harm than good. Our aim is to get fit and stay fit. The number one reason that people fail is that they go full speed into changing their diet and getting to the gym and quickly burn out. If you rush into a get fit and healthy regime and the results are not instant you can become dispirited and slip back into your old ways.

You are going to have to clean up your diet and, although this is essential, don’t go crazy. There is time enough later to count calories and regulate the balance between carbohydrates and proteins. For now eat healthy non-processed foods.

Next you have to confirm your goals. This will determine the actions that you must make and the decisions that you take. Many of us start with just wanting to feel good by looking good. By looking good we usually mean getting a beach body. You know, gaining some muscular definition, or looking “ripped” as they say.

Stay regular but start small. You will need to do weight training three to four times per week and cardio three times per week. Keep the weights light but the repetitions fairly high and alternate between upper and lower body on different days. Limit the cardio to twenty minutes for the first few weeks. Do the cardio after, but on the same day as the weight training.

Continue your dietary improvements and as your body becomes used to the changes you will notice a remarkable change in your feeling of fitness and well-being. As for the training, resist the temptation to increase the amount of weights too soon. Once you can visibly notice the improvement is the time to increase the repetitions and the amount of weight alternatively.

Although you started with the goal of looking ripped, it is perfectly normal to start considering the other two goals that usually occur. They are gaining strength and gaining size. It is not necessary to wait for months on your first goal before changing your routine.

Introducing some strength training will mean heavier weights at fewer repetitions. This will necessitate an increase in the food intake to fuel the increase in effort and to feed the growth of muscle. This is also the case for building bulk. Many students find that they get the most benefit by alternating every few months.

In all cases a steady increase in work rate produces the maximum reward.

Here are the 9 most important things you need to ask any video production company:

1. How long will my video shoot be?
2. How many actual video clips will I get for that length of video shoot?
3. How long will each video clip be?
4. Will you upload my video clip(s) to my website and blog?
5. Do you upload my videos to the video sharing sites?
6. Do you blog about my videos?
7. Do you put my videos on your own website and blog about the newest video you created?
8. Do you use your social networks to tell the world about my new video?
9. How much will you charge me to create another series of video clips?

If the video company you’re choosing doesn’t do all of those things with an all-in-one, turn-key system, ask them “Why Not?”

AM I TOO EXPENSIVE?

You’ve decided to produce videos to market your law practice. You’re now looking for a video production company. Here are 3 reasons why you won’t hire me:

1. I’m too expensive
2. I’m an attorney with years of experience creating and producing educational videos
3. You don’t want the commitment of creating video over 6 or 12 months

There. I’ve said it. These are the main reasons why you will not hire me. Now, I’m going to address each one and by the end of this article, you decide who you need to hire.

Most video production companies charge anywhere from $500-$35,000 to create attorney video. At the low end of the spectrum, you can get the cookie-cutter video where they use a fixed template that you cannot change and get only one video clip for your money. At the other end of the spectrum, you get a custom video channel with 3 or 4 video clips.

In the Lawyers’ Video Studio I shoot one hour of video. From that one hour I am able to get about 4-5 usable video clips lasting 2-3 minutes each! I do not recommend having video clips less than one minute; that’s a waste of your time and money. That will not give you enough time to explain to your viewers the information that they need to know.

Most video studios only offer an a-la-carte menu, where you pick and choose your options. That’s not the way we work in the Lawyers’ Video Studio. Contrary to most video production studios, we create a turn-key system where all you have to do is show up and start talking. You do not need to know anything about how the video is created, edited, compressed, uploaded or distributed. It’s totally done for you.

WHO IS YOUR VIDEO PRODUCER?

Ask any of the video companies you are considering whether their video producers are practicing trial lawyers. Why is that important? It’s only important if you want someone to create video that online viewers want to watch. If you just want to create a video to ‘get your name out there’ and give the world a verbal resume of who you are, then you don’t need a producer who is also an attorney. That would be a waste of your time and money. There are plenty of good video producers out there who can create that type of video for you.

A video producer must have experience creating LAWYER video. Not wedding video. Not commercials. Not verbal resumes that do not help a viewer understand how you can solve THEIR legal problem. They may have won awards for work they did in TV or film, but you must ask any video producer these 3 IMPORTANT questions:

1. Do you know what a [fill in your specialty] lawyer (immigration, workers comp, DUI, personal injury, business transactions, etc.) does?
2. Do you know who my ideal client is?
3. Do you know what an online viewer looks for when searching for a lawyer in my specialty?

A producer who is a practicing attorney will know the answers to these questions. Other producers will likely not know the answers.

YOU DON’T WANT TO CREATE 24 to 60 VIDEO CLIPS THAT WILL GET VIEWERS TO CALL YOU

Ok, I understand. You’d rather stick with your very expensive (and useless) yellow pages ad that does not distinguish you from any other lawyer. Maybe you want to try some display ads in the newspaper again. Maybe you’ll try TV commercials or direct mail. Maybe even dabble in radio spots. That’s fine. One year from now I’d like you to come back to this article and objectively look at your stats to see how many calls you received from your other advertising; how many turned into actual clients; how much revenue you generated from that advertising and what your actual return on investment is.

One year from now, you will have lost the opportunity to create 6 months worth of videos. You might even have lost the opportunity to create 12 months of videos. Just think about how many viewers come to YouTube alone: Over 100 million people EACH MONTH! The goal of creating video is to greatly improve the likelihood that an online viewer will call you instead of your competitor. Anything you do to increase those chances will place you ahead and distinguish you from all of your colleagues.

By creating new video every month for six months, you create 4-5 video clips PER MONTH. That gives you 24 to 30 actual videos that will be online. For attorneys who realize how incredible that value is and the tremendous savings you receive, they will eagerly take advantage of the 12 month video incentive program and create 48 to 60 videos by the end of one year. That’s a huge number of videos.

Creating video is the best thing to have happened to me in my law practice. I receive calls from people across the country every day thanking me for educating them and asking me for legal help. Obviously not all callers have valid cases, but just think…if they hadn’t seen my videos, they would have never called.

So, are you willing to create useful video that will get viewers to raise their hands for more information and seek your counsel, or do you want to wait and let every other attorney get the opportunities you’re passing up? The choice, as always, is up to you. My goal is to make you an informed attorney and let you make an educated decision about which path you want to travel.