Being visible in AI search is not the same as being chosen, and the work has to reach two audiences at once: the person who watches or reads, and the model that only reads text. Andrew Colsky, founder of Be-Picked, tells Paris Childress how professionals can split owned and earned content, go hyperlocal, and keep a consistent name across the web so AI can actually recommend them.
Andrew Colsky tells Paris Childress that every piece of professional content has to serve two audiences at once. A person will watch the video, read the page, or listen to the voice. An AI engine will not watch the video at all. It reads the text.
You could put up a video of a cat playing with a ball of yarn while you talk about divorce law, and AI will never know. AI reads the text of your video. It reads the content. It doesn't watch your video.
That is the throughline of the episode, and the reason being found online is not the same as being chosen. If the text a model can read is thin, polished production will not save you. If the human experience is lifeless, people will not stay. Both have to be true.
Andrew's path into this work runs through trial practice, an LLM in litigation, a mental health license, and about 11 years working with clients with OCD. Building those small practices forced him to learn YouTube, social, and the rest of getting found, long before GEO had a name. When making content started eating half his day, he founded Be-Picked to help other professionals get found and chosen in AI search without turning their voice into slop.
The product he built around that problem, the Credibility Generator, walks someone through the questions people in their market actually have, offers a draft, and then requires them to put their own meaning into it. The same source can become a LinkedIn post, a Google Business Profile post, a blog, or a YouTube video, recorded in person or with an avatar. Paris maps that onto the entity work he does: a page of clear definitions about the brand and the people in it, because AI can only learn what you have put out. If the information is missing or inconsistent, the model fills the gaps with whatever else it can find.
Andrew's advice is to spend about half the effort on owned content and half on earned mentions. Owned pages matter, but an engine discounts them when no other entity is vouching for you. Board roles, professional associations, conference pages, podcast appearances, and local organizations that publish your name give the model something to corroborate.
He sees podcasting as a practical seed for both sides of that split. One conversation becomes audio, video, clips, social posts, articles, and sometimes a book. He also describes a blank-slate ChatGPT test in which he asked, as a Washington, D.C. law firm, who could help with AI search. Be-Picked came up first at that moment, which he treats as a result of positioning, not a guarantee.
For earned presence in a local market, he points to places where ideal clients already gather: a chamber event for a business lawyer, a community setting for family work, or a county adult education class that then lists the instructor in its materials. Reviews follow the same logic. A five-star rating with no detail tells an AI engine almost nothing. A review that describes the actual work adds substance the model can use.
Andrew argues it is easier to stand out in a tight local market than in a national one. Divorce law may be similar from state to state, but practice is not identical in every courthouse. In the Arlington County example, the useful content is specific: local court rules, docket delays, and practical constraints such as not being able to take a phone into the courthouse.
That is not a license to gossip about named judges or to discuss confidential cases. The point is to publish the procedural knowledge a person in that county actually needs, in the professional's own voice. Paris and Andrew also talk about recording client meetings as a source of information gain. Andrew would rather not lean on recordings at all in a legal setting. The expertise is already in the attorney's head, ethics and confidentiality rules are strict, and helpful general information, even a book, can carry that knowledge without crossing those lines.
Andrew says he used to appear under slightly different versions of his name, including Andrew Colsky, Andrew Colsky JD, and Andrew Colsky LPC. To an AI engine, those can look like different people. His advice is to pick one form of the name and use it everywhere, so the model can attach the evidence to a single person.
On timing, Paris and Andrew agree that the brands that won SEO are not automatically the brands that will win AI citations. Andrew notes that AI search engines have a live mode and a stored knowledge base they can answer from without going back out to the web. If you are not being gathered now, you may later have to hope for a live search. Paris compares the moment to an early period when beliefs are still forming. Both say the window is as open as it will ever be, and that it will not stay that way.
06:26 The Credibility Generator: draft the answer, then force the professional's own voice into it.
14:21 The recommendation gap: little overlap across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
20:28 Two audiences, and why a cat with a ball of yarn would fool an AI engine but not a person.
27:34 Going hyperlocal with Arlington County court rules and local practice.
33:38 Use one consistent name everywhere so AI can tell you are one person.
49:05 Live mode versus the model's stored knowledge base, and why the window is now.
Find Andrew Colsky at be-picked.com. The GEO Show is hosted by Paris Childress of Hop AI and GEOforge.
Paris: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to The GEO Show, brought to you by GEOforge, full self-driving for AI visibility. I have a special guest, Andrew Colsky, and among other things, what Andrew's working on now is a company called Be-Picked. He's the founder of Be-Picked, and which he founded to address a recurring problem across professional services, particularly legal services, where professionals were being found online but not consistently chosen by prospective clients. And that has naturally brought him into the GEO space. So Andrew, welcome to the show
Andrew: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and your audience
Paris: Great. I, uh... Before we dive into your work at Be-Picked, I think you about a little, a little under two years into that new, new company. have been a career entrepreneur, uh, it seems, and before getting into the AI search and visibility GEO space, uh, you were, you were working with obsessive compulsive disorder, um, folks, and that was, uh, ab- about 11 years that you did that prior to Be-Picked. I've gotta ask the question 'cause that's quite a crossover.
Paris: Um, how did you go from OCD work into GEO work? Uh, what is the connection there?
Andrew: Yeah, it's, it's a great question, and I'll, I'll put it into context for you. So I started my, my, you know, professional career out of school as an attorney, specifically a trial attorney. I actually have an LLM in litigation. So after the law degree, I went and spent more time and got another law degree, specifically in litigation. And, um, in that type of work, I always enjoyed understanding how do people think? What makes them make the decisions that they make? How do you persuade people?
Andrew: 'Cause that's all relevant to that particular, uh, field of work. As a result of that, many years later, I had the opportunity to go and get a degree in mental health because I wanted to continue that learning and understand more about the brain and how it works and how people make decisions and things. And so I, I got that degree to add on to the knowledge that I already had.
Andrew: And when you get your degree, in order to get your license, you have to do, uh, a, um, practicum, you have to do an internship, you have to do, you know, all these things. And so in the actual practice, I just came across clients with OCD and found it to be a fascinating area and learned all about it, um, because that's what I do. When I get interested in something, I gotta learn all about it.
Andrew: Um, so I, I, I did that work a lot, really interesting, very rewarding. But the real goal was to be more from the mental health side, understanding what's going on with people's thought processes and, and all that. And as a result, building a practice as an attorney, building a practice as a mental health provider, I had to build small professional service provider practices. In order to do that, I had to learn how to use YouTube. I had to learn how to use social media.
Andrew: I had to learn how to do all the things that are necessary to get found online. And this was all happening before GEO ever existed, before AI really, you know, came on the scene. And I got to a point a couple years ago where I was realizing, "My God, I'm spending so much time on writing content for a video, doing a video, editing a video, putting out and posting a video," all these things. It was eating up half of my day.
Andrew: And so I realized that all of my colleagues had the same problem, whether you're an attorney, whether you're a mental health provider, w-whoever you are, same problem. So that's what got me to launch the company, Be-Picked, which was I gotta take all of this stuff. I gotta do it right now so that it matches AI, and I gotta automate as much of it as possible, yet avoiding AI slop and garbage type of work.
Andrew: So it was a pretty big task to take on, but that, that's what got me to where I am today.
Paris: Thank you for that great background. It's so interesting with the, legal background combined with the mental health, um, background, now here you are as a, as a marketer. But it's interesting that ha- being a small business and having to market yourself, you, you taught yourself marketing effectively.
Paris: you've done a lot of video, it sounds like, and I wanna dig into that a little bit 'cause I'm, I'm doing a lot of video now, more so than I ever have, and trying to push, uh, especially the, the GEO. we have a product called GEOforge, and the GEO Show is a playlist, a podcast playlist within that channel.
Paris: But we're trying to push that as much as possible, and I've been trying to automate as possible with AI, and I think I've got a pretty good workflow now. what k- sort of workflow do you have using AI to optimize, uh, your video marketing?
Andrew: Yeah. So, um, gosh, I got a lot of things going on, so maybe it'll be helpful if I just sort of lay out a menu of kind of how it all fits together in my head. Um, so, so number one, my goal was to understand how does AI search, uh, work? What does it look for? How does someone get listed on AI search? Is it different from SEO and Google? If so, how is it different? So on and so forth.
Andrew: And so that's where I started off doing all of my work. As a result of that, what I came up with is several things. Number one is a product that I call... It's a, it's a software product called The Credibility Generator. And The Credibility Generator has taken me almost two years to build, and I've taken every single lesson about how does one optimize themselves to be found by, uh, GEO or AI search.
Andrew: And then I automated as much of it as I could, intentionally not automating everything 'cause I needed to retain the person's individual voice, the person's individual content, so that we avoided what I was talking about before, the AI slop. So
Paris: Yeah
Andrew: we basically Credibility Generator will walk you through if, if you're, you're an attorney and you wanna market your, you know, divorce practice in Atlanta, Georgia You're not supposed to be perfect at understanding, uh, AI search. You're supposed to be perfect at doing divorce work as an attorney.
Andrew: So we walk you through, and we tell you, "Here's the concepts or the questions that people have that they're interested in about you in your area." And then we help draft a proposed response for you, but then we force you to put your own content, your own meaning, your own voice into it. And ultimately, we then take that, and we help you turn it into a LinkedIn post, a Google Business Profile post, a blog post, even a YouTube video.
Andrew: A YouTube video that you can record yourself or that you can, uh, create an avatar of yourself to record if you don't wanna be in front of the camera yourself. So we make it as easy as possible to kind of click through, but at the same time, in the background where the sausage is being made that you don't see, is everything being optimized for AI search in every way that is possibly conceivable that we can put into that.
Andrew: So that's one piece, which is the stuff that you can put out, the content that you can put out. The second piece of AI search is the content that other people put out about you, and so we offer that service as well. And as a result, we've got Credibility Generator. We do a boot camp where we will walk you through and hold your hand through everything you need to do from both sides.
Andrew: We have a concierge service where we'll do it all for you, um, and we do a deep, deep dive analysis of your presence out there. What does AI see about you now or not? Why? What needs to be fixed? How? We fix it. We do everything necessary. It's like a surgical strike across AI, and we get you out there so that you are in the perfect position to be the one chosen by AI. So I know that's a lot, but that is our focus.
Andrew: So I always tell people we are, we are actually not a marketing company. We are not an advertising company. We are an AI search optimization company, and we're gonna get you out there found on AI.
Paris: Mm-hmm. So you, you don't position yourself as an agency
Andrew: I stay far away from the word marketing and advertising because that's not what our focus is. We're an agency, but our agency is all about the AI part of it. How can you be positioned to be found by AI? What do you need to do? And we help you do it
Paris: Yeah. Excellent. Do you also, as an extension of that, as b- being really an AI-centric, AI-first agency, do you also... and you're avoiding the, the marketing and advertising connotation. Do you also help, uh, law firms use AI to, to make themselves more productive, to get operational excellence, and to transform their, their practices? Or do you stick mainly with the AI visibility piece?
Andrew: Yeah. So it's, it's the AI visibility. I, I use tools for myself. I guess I, I could help law firms with it, but that's not the goal. And, and, and just to c- the way that I explain it to clients when they say, "Well, what's the difference between marketing and advertising and what you're doing?" I say the, the difference is this: marketing and advertising, you are trying to push yourself onto a client. What I do is having clients pull you to them. Totally opposite side. Very different approaches
Paris: Yeah. really like that concept of the credibility generator, and that really forces, uh, a law firm to document w- everything that makes them unique and to document their expertise, right? And I think that's a foundation for
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: visibility you can't just assume that AI knows everything about your business.
Paris: In fact, it probably knows less than you think, and one way to check is just to go to ChatGPT and say, uh, "Tell me everything you know about business XYZ." And, and that, that's often a real eye-opener for people 'cause I've, I've done that with clients and prospects as well, and they, they see that either they're, they're positioned wrongly by AI or AI has omitted some really important aspects about their business that they want to, wanna highlight. And in worst cases, there's straight out hallucinations
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: inaccuracies. And so there's usually a lot of cleanup before even going out um, trying to get yourself visible. it's first just check that AI what AI even knows about your brand because there will be people that come in and they know they've heard about your brand. Let's say it's a, you know, B- Be-Picked. you know, tell me about working with Be-Picked or does Be-Picked offer these services? And if it says the wrong thing, then that could cost you a, what would've been an easy lead probably.
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: um, so I th- I, I liken this concept of the credibility generator to, um, what I've been working on recently is something called an entity map, which is just a page full of details d- kind of definitions of entities that starts with my brand as an entity, and myself as a personal brand entity a, and a few other people, and then all the other main concepts, frameworks, methodologies.
Paris: In your case, the, uh, the credibility generator would be an entity associated with, with Be-Picked, the Be-Picked brand entity. And you, you create this page, a single page that c- you can upload, an HTML page that you upload to your website for AI. It's purely for AI. It's not for any human visitors to crawl through and establish that clear understanding about th- this is the brand, this is exactly who they are, th- th- these are all the entities associated,
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: for. And that to me is a foundation before even getting, going after certain prompts like, you know, who's the best divorce, uh, lawyer in Atlanta or something like that.
Andrew: Right. And I, you're, you know, you're so right there because, you know, look, AI wants to learn about you, but it can only learn what you have out there. So if you don't have the right information about yourself out there, it can't learn it. So, you know, why are you starving AI of the information that it wants when you could be feeding it the information that it wants?
Andrew: But, and I think this is really a benefit of AI over traditional Google search, is AI truly looks for authority signals. And authority signals are... That's, that's a whole show in and of itself. But basically, you have to, y- you have to prove to AI that you are an authority on a subject in order to be, um, recommended by AI.
Andrew: And so, you know, I, I, I have a report that I did that I call the 3% Club because basically, and this goes back to the marketing advertising versus AI search, 97% of the people are not regularly recommended or recommended by AI, 3% are. And of those 97%, they spend their time marketing and advertising. The 3% spend their time building credibility properly online.
Andrew: And when you build proper credibility, as the report said, I, I ran thousands and thousands of queries against, um, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. And there were 3% of law firms that came up in all four searches regularly. And we look at why, and we look at why do the other firms not show up, and then that's what we go and try and fix.
Paris: Yeah. Um, uh, by the way, now that you're have mentioned this, the recommendation gap study, I'll bring it up here on the screen.
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: And, uh, I think this is e-exactly what you're talking about here, right? The
Andrew: is
Paris: twenty-five hundred responses, three percent of the recommended entities were named by all four, uh, direct referrals. Which are the four, uh
Andrew: it was Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT
Paris: Okay. So very, very little overlap, right? little agreement or consensus, yeah
Andrew: Yeah, 'cause they're all They're, they're different companies. They have different algorithms. They have different things that they're doing, and you don't know who your client's gonna be using. Um,
Paris: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: is that, that when people, you know... Let, let's back up even one more step. Why are people looking for you in the first place? Well, if you're an attorney, the reason people are looking for you in the first place probably is because they've got some sort of, of a pain point, whether it be a car accident, a divorce, a bankruptcy, whatever. They don't want to have to use an attorney.
Andrew: They don't look for, "Oh, yay, I get to hire an attorney today." They do it 'cause they've got a pain point, and they want someone who is going to help bring comfort and take away pain. And so you have to put those signals out there on the web. Are you someone who is credible? So you have to have the degree, the license, the so on and so forth.
Andrew: But are you someone who understands my pain, and are you someone who has the ability to help me get back to comfort? And that's where a lot of attorneys fail. They think that just by saying that, "I went to law school. I went to this great law school. I got this great degree. I have this license, therefore, obviously, you should hire me," that's not the way it works.
Andrew: People are gonna hire the guy who went to the law school and has the, um, the license, but not so much, they don't care the grades, they don't care the law school you went to, as much as they care, "Hey, this guy understands my problem. He's been able to help other people get past this problem, and he's been able to bring them back to comfort.
Andrew: And the reason I'm hiring an attorney in the first place is I wanna get back to comfort." So if he can put out all those signals on the web, which is what the credibility builds from, that's what AI is gonna provide in response to the answer when the person types in the query, "I got a divorce pending, and I wanna make sure that I keep my kids.
Andrew: What do I do about it?" They'll say, "Well, this person wrote about that, and here's their answer, and this is someone who's credible."
Paris: Yeah. I love that, and I can see exactly how you're bringing in your, your psychology background into, into marketing here. W- and, and you're exactly right. If, um... I mean, cre-credibility is only the first step that shows that, yeah, this, this person did and graduate and get a degree in this field. So, you know, they have, they have the basic credibility. But then there's, you know, there's probably 50 others that are also with that same degree.
Paris: So then the next step is, yeah, who is, who's the one who can really, uh, e-ease this pain and anxiety? 'Cause yeah, there's always a often negative life event associated with you having to go out and need a, a lawyer. Um, unless it's, you know, just for the, the regular, um... I mean, if you, if you have a lawyer in, in the business that's just doing the regular day, day-to-day stuff.
Paris: But for, for the big life events, it's usually negative, and there's stress, anxiety, um, and pain that, that exists. And the, and the, the one who can say, "I I am credible. I've got the degrees and the, and the, the certifications, but I can, I can ease this pain better than, than the next person," they're, they're gonna win the business.
Andrew: Yeah
Paris: getting back to the, the the, the AI search mechanics here, um, AI is looking for evidence around the web that, that you are, that you're credible, and they're also looking to So they're looking to corroborate what they already know from, primarily from your website, from your own properties. They're looking to corroborate that evidence with, uh, claims that are made about you around the web. there needs to be efforts put towards, of course, your website.
Paris: I talked about the entity map, and then there's also just content that should be published on your website, your YouTube channel, your social media. All that I consider to be owned, uh, as, uh, the owned properties.
Paris: And then you have the earned properties, which is the off-site Um, now if a typical lawyer that comes to you, let's say they're not one of the big names, uh, because I think the, the big name firms that are already doing a lot of advertising and have a ton of brand awareness, I think they already have an advantage in LLMs already because they have more of that, um, coverage has already been established.
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: let's say the, the firm who comes to you is a midsize or even a smaller firm maybe. Uh, how would you advise them to balance their efforts between owned and earned, um, given that they're, they're fighting an uphill battle with some bigger incumbents?
Andrew: Right. And it's a, it's an important question. Um, my advice is you really have to have sort of 50% in each one, and here's why. Because AI is looking for both. If you just put out content that you've put out, that you own, well, that's nice, but you don't have anybody else vouching for you. You don't have any other entities saying, "Hey, yeah, this person's a credible person." And that's gonna be discounted against you.
Andrew: If you have other people vouching for you because you're on the board of a professional association, you belong to credible associations, you've spoken at conferences and they put up information about you, you've, um, been on podcasts and, and, and they've had an opportunity to get information from you, and on and on and on. And we go through all the different things depending on the particular person and where their ideal client would be, so it's different for every attorney. Um, but you have to have both.
Andrew: And, you know, there's t I always tell people there's two audiences that you are speaking to, and you need to remember this, and this, this ties into what you were talking about, Paris. Um, number one, there's the audience of the actual person who comes doing a search, and they're going to look at your YouTube video or they're gonna read your blog or they're gonna read your website or whatever it may be. And then there's the AI search engine that's gonna be looking at you.
Andrew: And so you have to have content that is, um, designed for both because you may have a wonderful YouTube video where you spent thousands of dollars on proper lighting and makeup and editing and all this wonderful stuff, so you have a perfect show, which is probably gonna be the least watched show out there 'cause you're not authentic or real. Um, but let's say you have a great YouTube show. Guess what? AI doesn't watch videos. It doesn't care about your video.
Andrew: You could put up a video of a cat playing with a ball of yarn while you talk about divorce law, and AI will never know. AI reads the text of your video. It reads the content. It doesn't watch your video. Now, the human watches your video, so there's a different audience there. They're not gonna spend their time reading the text of your video. They're gonna watch your video and listen to your voice.
Andrew: So you have to have that balance of both because you have two audiences that you're playing to
Paris: Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, uh, interesting. Do you, do you encourage a lot of your clients to focus a lot on video for,
Andrew: I have come to the conclusion that one of the best ways to do all the things necessary to maximize your opportunity for AI search, I absolutely love the concept of podcasting. Because podcasting lets you put out unique information on your area of expertise. It lets you do it as audio, and it lets you do it as video.
Andrew: And when you do the video, you now have all sorts of clips that you can take from that and put out on social media and on LinkedIn and everywhere else you need to be. You can write a blog based upon it, and then some people will, even after they've done enough shows with enough content, use it to create a book for themself. So it becomes the seed of all of this stuff that you need to match all of the audiences that you're trying to reach.
Andrew: I have my own podcast, and I have it for that reason, because I'm educating people, but I'm also building AI, uh, search. I was, I was a passenger in a car. I went on the ChatGPT, this is like three weeks ago, and I clear... I said, "Forget everything you know about any conversation I've ever had. We are starting from a complete blank slate here." And I said, "I'm a law firm in Washington, D.C., and I need to be found by AI search.
Andrew: Who can help me?" That was basically my query. Guess who came up as the number one answer at that time? My company.
Paris: it was Be-Picked. Was it?
Andrew: It was indeed Be-Picked. Now, I'm not gonna say that it comes up every single time. It just happened to be, but that's because I positioned myself for that to happen
Paris: Mm-hmm. That's, that's great. And you told, at the start of that prompt, you said erase your memory effectively and
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Start from a complete cl... I don't want it to have any idea that I have anything to do with Be-Picked or Be-Picked exists or anything. I say completely clear all memory and start from scratch
Paris: Yeah. Well, that congratulations on that. That's, that sounds great.
Andrew: It, it was nice.
Paris: you've picked is fantastic, um, law firms. A, a lot of, um, SEO agencies and d-digital marketing agencies specialize in law firms, and, uh, it, it seems to me that you're one of the early movers in specializing in law firms for AI search, and I think it's, it's a great niche, especially when you have so much, I think, a lot of parity among, among the firms. Uh, you, you do have, um... For the most part, uh, almost everyone is, is credible, I, I think. They're all gonna pass that credibility
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: Um, but standing out is very difficult, and From what I've seen in every US city that I've ever visited, the, the most successful law firms are the ones that do the best job marketing themselves, and they're out there, not only, um, digital marketing, but they're, they're on billboards, they're on TV commercials, and they're, they're everywhere. And I think that's, uh, that's the name of the game really is, uh, is marketing
Andrew: Well, it's, you know, the, the real challenge is when you are a sole practitioner or you are a small firm, maybe you have a handful of attorneys, you're not gonna have the marketing budget of a large firm. But again, large firms, you know, other than certain PI type of firms, whatever, a lot of large firms are business-to-business firms. Um, it's a lot of the sole practitioners and smaller firms that handle the things that the average consumer is, is dealing with.
Andrew: You know, divorce and the small business issue and bankruptcy and so on and so forth. And one of the things that I learned, um, and I incorporated this into Credibility Generator 'cause it's so important, is think about it. If you're a big, huge national firm, you are drawing clients from all around the nation and maybe even from other nations. If you're the, the solo practitioner or the small firm, you're probably drawing your clients from your community, right?
Andrew: And so when it comes to AI search, there's the whole concept of hyperlocal search. Because if you're competing... Let's go back to the divorce attorney. If you're competing with divorce attorneys who deal with custody issues, well, if you put that across all 50 states, that's a lot of divorce attorneys to compete with.
Andrew: But if you're a divorce attorney who is in Arlington, Virginia, and you're competing for that market, now you can create content and generate content that's what we call hyperlocal content, which will much more easily move you to, to the front of the pack because most of your competitors, 97% of them, aren't doing anything to put themselves out there. So it's a lot easier to become the 3% of a very small number than the 3% of a huge national number.
Andrew: So we have a, a, a program that I took a lot of time writing that's a program within a program which helps you determine specific questions to answer on a hyperlocal search basis for your particular practice, so that then when you generate all the content with Credibility Generator, you're really hitting your market
Paris: Yeah. Could you give me an example of how to, to go hyperlocal f- for a lawyer when, when they're doing the pro- the credibility generator exercise?
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Paris: Um, and maybe we'll take that Arlington, Virginia example.
Andrew: Sure
Paris: what does it mean to go hyper, hyper, hyperlocal if, uh, d- divorce law is relatively the same in Virginia as it is in Virginia and in,
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: I don't know, Maryland?
Andrew: So it's an excellent question, and here's the answer. Divorce law in general across the United States is generally similar, but it's also very different in each state in certain regards. And when it comes to your particular county, I gave you the example of Arlington County, Virginia divorce lawyer.
Andrew: If you if your client is in Arlington County and you practice in Arlington County, Arlington County may have certain rules of court that are different from Richmond, Virginia or somewhere else in Virginia, and the judges are different, and so the processes can be different. So the, the small little things can make a big difference in the outcome of your case even though divorce law set by Virginia is Virginia law.
Andrew: But when it comes down to the local court and the local judges and the local rules of court, those are different. And if, if So when you get into hyperlocal, you can say, "Did you know that in Arlington County divorce, you really need to do X, Y, and Z, which is very different than what you would do in Richmond?" And people would be like, "No, I didn't know that.
Andrew: And that's what caused me to lose the case before, 'cause I didn't know that." But now you can demonstrate your expertise saying, "Well, I do know that. That's what I work with. Let me help you with it."
Paris: Yeah. Interesting. I suppose if there are s- cer- I mean, certain judges always add a, an element of uniqueness to every, every place, but you can't mention those judges by name, I, I suppose, right? I mean,
Andrew: Well, it's
Paris: it anonymous when, um, y- you can't really talk about your cases, particularly because of confidentiality? You can't name judges by name.
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: Uh, there, there may be a, a judge in Arlington that's, you know, very biased towards a, um, towards the ex-wife in every divorce case or something like that. I don't know. But you can't really say that kind of stuff publicly. How do you navigate that?
Andrew: Right. And you're absolutely right in that that's not the type of stuff that I'm suggesting you do say. What I'm suggesting is to say the rules of court in Arlington County require you to do X, whereas the, you know, if you were in Richmond, you would have to do Y. So you, you have to know that there's differences. Um, y- you can say the Arlington County docket typically runs five months behind, whereas in Richmond it runs on time.
Andrew: Well, if there's a five-month period here where you're battling with your spouse and where are the kids gonna be during this time, that matters. So, you know, now, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a divorce attorney and I haven't really looked into it deeply, so I'm just giving broad examples here. But the concepts are the same regardless of whether you're talking divorce or, or whatever it may be. Um, you know, y- y- you think of like personal injury. Well, you either got injured or you didn't.
Andrew: It's the same in all 50 states. Well, actually it's not, because liability is divided differently. In some states y- it's no fault, it's full fault, it's partial fault. It's there's all sorts of different local differences, in that case statewide differences, but then when you get hyperlocal, there's even more differences. Arlington County, don't come to court and bring a cell phone with you and, and have your video on your cell phone 'cause guess what? You're not getting your cell phone into the courthouse.
Andrew: So if you have evidence, you better arrange ahead of time or differently to get that evidence into the courthouse because if you show up on the day of and need to have it in, it's not coming in. That's something you need to know about Arlington County, Virginia. It may not be the same in Richmond, but if you're doing hyperlocal search, that's certainly information I'd wanna know
Paris: Yeah. There's also the whole, the whole ba- the history of, of precedent as well, I guess. So you could, you could report on X number of cases in this county in bankruptcy where, or divorce or whatever. They've gone this way or that way. They've involved companies of this size, they've had this, this types of outcome, just so that you know the, the historical statistics what's, what's happened in the past,
Andrew: Yeah, that's another great example. Sure
Paris: So are you trying to get your, uh, lawyer clients to, to basically to just create all this content and, uh, ideally to, to do it through video
Andrew: Well,
Paris: podcasting?
Andrew: we help guide them through what content are people looking for. So first we identify who's your ideal client profile. We gotta know who that is first. Then we're gonna do a full, and when I say full, I mean surgically full assessment of you on the web, you and your firm. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What needs to be fixed? Um, come up with a plan of how to fix it. Then we start talking about generating the content for half of that picture.
Andrew: And that is, we're gonna help you identify what questions do your ideal clients have this week, what do they wanna know, and we're gonna help you draft that information, but we're going to force you to put your own voice into it, so we don't have just a bunch of repeated AI slop. Um, and so there's a lot of work we do in that.
Andrew: We're gonna work with you to do the other half of, of the content that is not generated by you, but is generated by others. Um, and it's gonna be all cohesive. And I'm gonna give you one simple little example of something that makes a huge difference to AI. If you look at my name on your screen here, you'll see my name says Andrew Colsky, JD, LPC.
Andrew: Not because I want everyone to know all my license, 'cause honestly, I have about ten more letters that go after that. Um, but I don't use 'em 'cause it, it's not about me. W-the reason that is there is because my problem when I started my company was, in some places I was Andrew Colsky, in some places I was Andrew Colsky JD, some places I was Andrew Colsky JD LLM, some places I was Andrew Colsky LPC. I was all these different people.
Andrew: And to AI, it doesn't know, is this the same person or is this a different person? 'Cause he's got different degrees, it must be a different person. So it wasn't able to identify who I was. And so one of the first things that everybody should do, and if you're listening to this show, I encourage you to do it right now for yourself, go to every place you're listed online and choose who you're gonna be, and be that same name a hundred percent of the time everywhere.
Andrew: Because that way AI knows, "Oh, this is the same guy." Not, "Eh, maybe the same guy. I'm not so sure, so I'm not gonna, you know, pick them."
Paris: Especially if, uh... Well, your name is not extremely common, but I'm guessing there, there are other Andrew Colskys in the world
Andrew: AI doesn't know that. AI could think there's an Andrew Colsky JD, and there's a different Andrew Colsky LPC, two different people. According to AI, it has no way of knowing. So why am I gonna confuse it when I can help it? So in, in my audit that I do, when I say a surgical audit, you know what it brings up? It brings up... So I was working with some- I just did an audit of someone who is a, um, licensed marriage and family counselor, LMFC.
Andrew: It brought up her name, it gave it LMFC, LMFC period, LMFC comma, as three different names. That's how surgical we get, and we look to make sure, because we don't wanna confuse AI at all if we can avoid the confusion
Paris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that is pretty surgical. Uh, so Andrew, how about on the offsite stuff? Let's imagine that your, your, your clients have g- done everything perfectly on site uh, and, uh, everything, everything looks great with owned properties, but they've gotta get out there. This is a smaller, firm going up against bigger incumbents with, say, uh, TV and billboard budgets, and they're everywhere. They have the, um... I, I guess they do have an unfair advantage in AI, um, because of their, uh, their presence.
Paris: does that small firm need to do offsite, uh, with citation building and earned media to, to be able to compete?
Andrew: So again, I'm gonna go back to sort of the hyperlocal concept. If, if your office is in a certain local area from, you know, around which you are drawing your clients, then getting out there and speaking at events where your ideal client profile is going to be is important. If you're working with businesses, you're gonna be wanting to speak at your chamber of commerce, for example, or a business organization.
Andrew: If you deal with, um, uh, family issues, maybe you wanna talk where all the young families go to the local coffee shop and things. Um, you know, because if they're dealing with those issues. If you do education law, um, for special ed students, you wanna go where those people congregate. So you wanna get out there and speak and be present.
Andrew: You want to do the things that are gonna get you in front of the community where you are, but also in a way that those organizations are going to put information up about you. You know, a great place You know, I, I remember, um, I actually hired an attorney through this many, many years ago.
Andrew: Uh, I had rental properties and all, and I, I went to the adult education classes that the local, um, uh, counties put on, and I took a class in, you know, landlord law or something, you know. And it was a local attorney who did landlord disputes, and he came in and he taught the class. Well, he had immediate credibility from, you know, that because I could see he knows what he's talking about. He's sharing it with me, you know?
Paris: he volunteering as a,
Andrew: Th-they, they, I, I think they get paid a, a very little amount. It's, it's not about the, the, the, the money, it's about the exposure because now the county is putting your name out there. This is the person who teaches real estate law for us in adult education, and you could write a newsletter for them, put that out in their newsletter. Again, two audiences. One is the person who's gonna read it.
Andrew: The second one, more importantly for this conversation, is the fact that AI is gonna see it. That builds on your credibility. And so there's so many different things that you can do. It depends on your particular type of practice, your ideal client profile, but those are the things that we work with.
Andrew: So it's setting you up so that you are getting to the right places, doing the right type of things, so you get the credibility that then feeds into that whole formula, so you become the one that pops up on AI search
Paris: Yeah. How about reviews? I, there, there are re- uh, l- lawyer review sites out there. Is it important to get your, your clients, uh, to, to leave a review for you?
Andrew: It, it's always helpful to have a review. About reviews, though, it is a big difference when the review talks about the work that you actually did for the client versus someone who gives you five stars. And here's what I here's, here's what I'm getting at. If a review If a client gives you a review and says, "Oh, five stars, great job," done. Well, that review doesn't tell AI much of anything.
Andrew: But if the review is five stars, you know, "So and so took me from a place where I was afraid of losing my kids in my divorce, and we were able to come up with an amicable solution that really worked well for me and my husband and my kids, and I'm so grateful for the help," now they've told specifically what you did. They've added to your credibility, given substance to it. Those are the reviews that AI likes.
Andrew: If you just have a hundred five-star reviews with no information, that's not really helpful. It's, it's a little bit helpful, but it's not really helpful to AI. It's when it has the context.
Paris: of the, the work itself.
Andrew: Yeah.
Paris: Andrew, do you think it's a good idea for attorneys to record their meetings? I know, I know there's a very, um, it's a very delicate, uh, situation with cl- attorney-client privilege, if, if lawyers could record their consultations with clients then put that into some kind of a knowledge base, and of course everything would be an- uh, anonymized, it would be stripped out of any personally identifiable information,
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: would ever be revealed, do you think that would be helpful for them to, to generate that really high information gain content? Because their expertise naturally comes out of those meetings and consultations with, with their clients.
Andrew: Well, I, I understand the, the question, but let me, let me kind of rephrase the concept. If that attorney is working with all those types of clients and dealing with all those types of cases, then they, they know what they're doing. They've learned through it. Maybe they have a case that's a novel case, but they've learned it because they had to to get through that case.
Andrew: So all of that knowledge and experience is in their head, even if they don't have a recording of a specific, you know, client interaction. And then, you know, attorneys have to be very careful about all the ethics rules and things when it comes to advertising, when it comes to, um, you know, keeping the confidentiality and all these things.
Andrew: So rather than even worry about it, m- I always advocate for, look, there's nothing wrong with providing helpful general information about a specific concern or area that people may be asking about on the web.
Andrew: So, you know, and, and, and I, I really think that then turning that into a book, for example, is a great idea as well, because there are certain common questions that people going through a divorce, a bankruptcy, a car accident, whatever, are going to have, and you're not gonna be giving specific advice to a specific person because you run into ethical issues there. But you are gonna be able to say, "Hey, you know what?
Andrew: If you have, um, you know, a, a car accident, here are some of the things you should think about gathering this type of information at the scene, doing this before you speak to an insurance company. You know, these are some basic common things you should be thinking about and, and being prepared to discuss with an attorney." Um, that's helpful information. That's the type of stuff that builds your credibility. That's the type of stuff that your ideal client is gonna be looking for on the web.
Andrew: So then, yeah, put it out as a video, put it out as a blog, put it into a book, put it into whatever. I, I have right here, that's what I do. I've got two books here, The AI Authority Quotient and Left of Trust, and it's all the stuff that I talk about, and I put it into the book so that people can read it and understand it in context.
Andrew: Um, and it becomes helpful, and then the same information, I can talk about it with you on a podcast. I can put it out in a blog, on and on and on
Paris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think a lot of the clien- the clients also would be pretty squeamish if, um... Well, some of these meetings happen in person, other meetings happen online, but w- whether any case, if they're recorded, I think the, the clients would get a little bit squeamish, I think, from that, and
Andrew: Yeah.
Paris: the, the trust.
Andrew: Yeah, and
Paris: you're
Andrew: know that it would even be legal to do it.
Paris: Yeah. Yeah. it's sensitive 'cause, uh, I mean, we're always encouraging our clients to try to record as much as possible because that is what is gonna give the richness of context to AI that information gain, really.
Andrew: Mm-hmm
Paris: I know that in certain industries, it's, it's not always practical, like in this case. It's one thing to have if you're selling software and your sales calls, you can capture all those, those great questions coming from prospects. But, uh, with, with attorneys and es- especially in certain fields of law, it's, uh, it's a little too sensitive. But that doesn't stop them from then just still sharing and recording through a podcast or even just any recorded interview, uh, that same, that same knowledge and expertise and advice.
Andrew: Yeah. And, and think about it from the perspective of a mental health counselor. It's even more sensitive there, right? Because people are not gonna want their sessions, uh, recorded, and you can't and shouldn't talk about them, uh, in open.
Andrew: But if you have a general type of issue that seems to be a something that occurs with depression clients or OCD clients or whatever, there's nothing wrong with speaking about, you know, "I've had clients that I've worked with that have dealt with this type of an issue." Well, I'm not identifying anyone. I'm not specifically calling anyone out, but I am talking about realities of situations that people run into. That's okay. That's something that people need to learn from
Paris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really, really interesting. And, uh, how do you think the fundamental consumer behavior is shifting? Um, do you think more and more people are going to ChatGPT first when they're looking for legal help? Uh, or even if they go to Google, I mean, a lot of times it's, it's AI overviews now, AI mode is, is eventually gonna take over
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
Paris: Do you see, do you see real evidence of that fundamental consumer shift happening?
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, l- look, I, I do a, a weekly live show, and that weekly live show we talk about changes in AI search over the last week. And I, I pick the top five articles. And just looking at the numbers that come out there weekly, the enormous uptick in the amount of usage of AI over not using AI is just exponentially, you know, rising each week. It's, it's crazy to, to watch the numbers go.
Andrew: And what most people do now, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and shorter, and, you know, people go on to ChatGPT or whatever AI engine they use, and they type in the question, the one that causes them the pain that they're looking for comfort to achieve, um, and that's where they're gonna come across people. And that's gonna recommend, you know, one, two, or three people.
Andrew: It's not gonna give you the opportunity to show up on a page of, of, uh, websites 'cause you had good SEO. Even if they go to Google today, Google now, like you said, is gonna give you that whole AI answer first. And so the people who have, you know, lots of money and time and effort built into SEO of their website and they stop there, are basically gonna fall out of favor. I- is it helpful to, to have that? Yeah, it's helpful to have that.
Andrew: Is that fact alone gonna get you pulled up in the answer to an AI search? No. You gotta do all this other stuff, and the other people will surpass you. And the point is that while you sit back thinking about whether you should do it, the other people are doing it. So then you just keep falling further and further behind.
Andrew: This is the time right now today to be jumping in to getting yourself set up properly for AI search optimization, because if you don't, the other people that are doing it are always gonna be ahead of you
Paris: Yeah, I totally agree. This is The, the window of opportunity for this new channel is right now. It's as open as it will ever be. And the, the brands You can't assume that the brands that have won the SEO game are gonna be the default winners of the AI visibility game.
Andrew: Mm-mm.
Paris: There is certainly not the no evidence that I've found that SEO rankings correlate with your citation rate in AI search. They're actually quite, quite different.
Andrew: Very different
Paris: It's a new game, and the, the people that are able to cement their brands in the mental models of AI now, they're gonna have real s-staying power, um, um, because AI is, is in this period I, I think kind of like an infancy period of trying to learn and understand about the world. And as it gets older, let's say, and, and more educated, it's gonna form more cemented beliefs.
Paris: I think just the way that the human brain as it gets older, when you go from infancy into adolescence and then into adulthood, your, uh, your education, your understanding, learning of the world starts to cement around certain concepts, and I think AI will be the same. I mean, maybe to, to make a crude connection with psychology, w-which is more your background, what do, do you agree with that about AI having, like cementing
Andrew: Well, let me give you some actual factual information which supports exactly what you're saying. The fact is that AI search engines have two modes. They have the live mode, and then they have the, I guess they're all coming up with their own terminology now, but offline mode, let's say. And what's the difference?
Andrew: The difference is that AI, um, models are accumulating their own knowledge base, building their own knowledge so that they can answer questions quickly without having to go live and go do search all over the internet for it. And so there are a-and you can specifically, specifically request when you're on AI to do a live search or do an offline search. And they pull from their database of what they've already gathered. So if you're not out there now being gathered, someone else is.
Andrew: And so you then have to hope that it's gonna do a live search to look for you if you start next year or the year later. But the other people are already cemented into its, its, its knowledge base. Now, I'm sure it's continuously cleaning and whatever, but the point is, what you're saying is in fact exactly what's happening
Paris: Yeah. Yeah, the training data. You, you need to get into the training data set because I think increasingly those prompts are gonna be answered with, uh, the inst-instant responses that come straight from the, from the training data because it already knows the answer. It can very confidently predict... Well, it's, I mean, it's a predictive engine a-after all.
Paris: It's predicting the next token, but when it can do that with confidence from its training data, would prefer to do that rather than have to go out and use tools like to go out and simulate, a search and have to do the whole query fan-out process and comb through a bunch of search results when it thinks it already knows the answer.
Paris: And I think as time goes on, uh, as it learns more and more about the world, it's gonna start getting more and more access to data that is even beyond just the internet from what it gathers from crawling the internet. And at some point, the real that real-time search that happens, uh, as a share of, of, of prompt responses, I think it's gonna go further down and down and down, actually.
Andrew: Yeah, and so when you say
Paris: hasn't hardened yet, basically is the, is the advice.
Andrew: Right. And, uh, you know, like, like, like you said, it's, it's the window of opportunity is now, and, um, it, it, it's a wide open window and you just... It pains me if people are not taking advantage of that 'cause they're just putting themselves behind and, and there's no reason to. There's no reason to go behind
Paris: Yeah. And we don't... I've been in marketing my, my whole career, and we don't see these many windows of opportunity come too often when there is a real entire reset or a whole new channel. I think the last time there was really, uh, an opportunity like this was, uh, with social media, but that was 15 years ago maybe.
Andrew: Right
Paris: there was a, there was a few years there, but that window closed. then I guess b- before that it was SEO and, and that was a real window, but, uh, that was long ago. So it's a new, it's a whole new channel. It's a window of opportunity and, uh, I fully agree. Uh, the, the, the people that, that they c- take advantage now, even if they're small, challengers, they're gonna, they're gonna win long term
Andrew: Yeah. And I, I, you know, i- if it's okay with you, I'd love to share a resource for, for people 'cause I think it's really helpful for them.
Paris: please
Andrew: So, so, you know, I love this conversation 'cause it's exactly the stuff that you should be thinking about. And so I had to figure this out for myself, for my own company, and then I had to put it out in a way for others. So I put up on my website a free 20-question assessment that you can take, and it asks all the things that are necessary to help you gauge, am I properly positioned or not to be set up to be found by AI search?
Andrew: And you answer these 20 questions, and it'll give you a report right there. You don't have to wait for any report. You, you, you get a report, and it tells you, "Here's your strengths. Here's where you need to be putting your work in." So at least it gives you an idea of where you should be starting to go, and you can do that at simply, uh, www.getyouraq.com.
Andrew: AQ stands for AI Authority Quotient, which is, lo and behold, the name of my book, AI Authority Quotient, where we get into this in, in a lot more detail. But getyouraq.com, it's free. Answer 20 questions. At least you'll know where you stand. You'll know where to start, and then you could hire someone like Paris. You can work with us. You can work with anybody, but you know where to start
Paris: Mm-hmm. That's great. Thanks for sharing that resource, Andrew, and thank you for coming on the show. This has been a fascinating discussion. weaving, weaving in and out between psychology, law, uh, marketing, and AI search algorithms. It had, it had a little bit of everything, so really enjoyed it, Andrew. Thanks for taking the time to, to share that with our audience
Andrew: Sure. Well, thanks for doing the show and, and helping your audience to, to know where to go and how to build their own businesses, 'cause I love it when I see small businesses succeed. I'm one, and I, I love to see others succeed
Paris: Same here. All right, Andrew, thanks very much
Andrew: Thank you
