Alban Brooke - The Journey from Law to Podcasting

Louis Goodman / Alban Brooke - Transcript

[00:00:03] Louis Goodman: Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer, where we talk with attorneys about their lives and careers. I'm your host, Louis Goodman. Today, we welcome Alban Brooke to the podcast. Mr. Brooke is currently the head of marketing at Buzzsprout, one of the world's largest podcast hosting companies with over 120,000 active podcasts, including this one.

Before joining Buzzsprout, Mr. Brooke had a fairly conventional legal journey. Law School, Summer Associate, Judicial Extern, Associate Attorney. He also taught school in Haiti. For reasons that will soon be apparent, I am a huge fan of his and am very honored to have him on the podcast. Alban Brookee, welcome to Love Thy Lawyer.

[00:00:51] Alban Brooke: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. 

[00:00:54] Louis Goodman: It is so much fun to talk to you on my podcast. I listened to your Buzzsprout podcast all the time. And one thing that I wanted to say to you is that one of the reasons I'm a podcaster is because I learned a podcast from yours and Kevin's podcast explaining how to set up a podcast.

And what I did is I listened to the whole eight-episode series or nine or 10, whatever it is, while I was riding my bicycle, and I just listened to the whole thing through and I didn't do anything. And then I listened to it a second time and each step of the way I did what you told me to do and at the end of it, I had a podcast.

[00:01:34] Alban Brooke: That's phenomenal. That was the hope with the podcast and it's funny, even years later, it still gets decent download numbers. We've updated it a couple of times. And I love hearing when people actually went through the process and launched because, you know, in the very beginning, you know, we were teaching it, but we didn't know how useful it would be.

And years later, still people are launching shows with it. 

[00:01:57] Louis Goodman: Well, it's a great tool. Can you tell us in your words what sort of work you are doing now? 

[00:02:05] Alban Brooke: Well one of the things I love about working in software and working on a small team, we have 120,000 active shows, but we are a team of 21. We are intentionally probably something like a quarter of the size or maybe even smaller than a typical software company would be for how many customers we have.

And so what I really enjoy is that I get to work in a lot of different things. Today I was writing copy for a new feature we're about to launch. Then we had some work on an AI product that we have. And so I was working on prompt engineering and now I'm recording a podcast with you. So, a lot of it is conventional management on the marketing side, but you get pulled into lots of different types of projects. And that's always been where I thrive and where I find the most joy. 

[00:02:54] Louis Goodman: You're based in Florida now, where are you from originally? 

[00:02:57] Alban Brooke: Born in Texas, and moved to Florida fairly early, left a couple times, once for law school. I thought when I left for law school that I would join a big firm and probably make my way to New York.

And I realized that I missed the water incredibly, I missed the sun. And even Georgia was too far north for me, so. I've moved back to the south, and I don't think I will ever live away from the ocean again. If it's not Florida, it would have to be somewhere else on the coast, because, you know, the sunshine is where I'm supposed to be.

[00:03:28] Louis Goodman: Where did you go to college? 

[00:03:31] Alban Brooke: I went to University of North Florida. That's in Jacksonville. I did that. I was homeschooled in high school and my last year of high school; I did early admissions and went to UNF and never applied for another school. I feel like that's something that surprises me in retrospect.

I don't know why I decided to do that or what the thought process was but went to university in North Florida and got an English and religion and yes, psychology minor or something. But just, you know, reading a lot of books. 

[00:04:04] Louis Goodman: You ultimately went to law school. Did you take some time off between college and law school, or did you go straight through?

[00:04:09] Alban Brooke: That was when I taught school. So, I had been on a mission trip when I was, I don't know, something like 13, to Haiti. My dad had a friend who was Haitian, who had moved back to this small rural town, and started a school, and had a ministry, and feeding program, and all sorts of stuff. So, I'd done that when I was 13.

And then when I'm graduating college, I sent him an email and he called me immediately and within two minutes of answering the phone call, I had agreed to move to Haiti one way ticket. I didn't anticipate moving to Haiti. I think I was just kind of saying like, oh, I want to see what opportunities there are.

And he said, Yeah, if you can be in Tampa in two weeks, you can fly in with me. And so, I ended up moving there and teaching school for a few semesters. 

[00:04:56] Louis Goodman: What was that experience like? I mean, teaching in Haiti is different, I would imagine. 

[00:05:01] Alban Brooke: One of the most important and, you know, transformational times in my life. You have no electricity, the town I was in didn't have a paved road, no running water, very, very poor. Even for Haiti, we weren't in Port au Prince or Capetian. We were in the central plateau. I really, really loved it, though. I mean, you're getting to teach students. Everyone is really bright. They want to learn.

Now I miss it in so many ways, especially, you know, not having all the technology, not having all the distractions, just tons of time to spend with, you know, friends and meet people. Tons of interesting stories. Everything is just a very different way of life. And I really, really am fortunate that I had that experience.

[00:05:44] Louis Goodman: Where'd you go to law school? 

[00:05:46] Alban Brooke: So while I'm in Haiti, I am thinking, you know, this is not going to be what I do long-term. And I start facing the prospects that an English major there, you don't make a lot of money. And so, I'm like, okay, I've got to figure out what is next. I'd always thought I'd go back to school.

And my dad's an attorney. My grandfather was a judge. And there's other attorneys in the family. So I'd always been aware of the law. And started taking the LSAT and eventually went to University of Georgia. I'd worked in a firm though, two different firms for a few years between Haiti and going to Georgia.

Just to get a feel for, is this something I would want to do? And the two firms I worked in, I really enjoyed. I worked as a paralegal and helped start a firm. I was the first employee of a, you know, solo practitioner. Now is actually a pretty large firm in Jacksonville, but it was, you know, kind of the same, getting to wear a lot of hats, getting a lot of different experiences, getting to see cases all the way from talking to somebody on the phone, client intake all the way through, but sometimes mostly it was litigation and all the way to a resolution.

So I got all this great experience and thought that seems like a blast and then I went to Georgia. 

[00:07:00] Louis Goodman: So how much time went by between the time you graduated from college and the time you ended up in law school? 

[00:07:06] Alban Brooke: Just two and a half, three years. It was not very long. 

[00:07:11] Louis Goodman: Yeah, but do you think that that, I ask this to a lot of people, but do you think that having that experience working in a legally related field, actually working for law firms, gave you a better sense of focus about being in law school?

[00:07:26] Alban Brooke: It did some ways, I think in others, it might have actually made me worse at law school. I think I was much more aware of what ended up mattering in the law. And I was very frustrated L1 year or 1L year because I, like, we're reading cases to learn pretty much one rule and what they're really teaching you is how to read quickly and with a lot of attention to detail, then how to think on your feet when your professor is using the Socratic method with you. But I've been used to, we, I'm trying to learn about construction lien law and so I can just go read everything about it and know the answers and now I can go and, you know, work in this practice area and then in law school it felt like a lot of quizzes that kind of led you to an answer. And so I remember calling my dad and being so frustrated and be like, yeah, I just want to learn the law.

I don't want to learn this strange quiz version of learning the law in class. 

[00:08:26] Louis Goodman: What sort of lawyerly answer did your dad give you? 

[00:08:29] Alban Brooke: I think he was saying, you know, someday you're going to be in front of a judge and they're going to ask you something and you may think you're implying something, and you need to be able to have the answer and not be intimidated and that's what you're learning. But I think, you know, having an English degree was pretty valuable for me because that was also attention to detail, textual analysis, grew up in the church and a type of church we grew up in was very close readings of the Bible, textual analysis, and they all had a lot of similar elements really trying to understand what is the intent here, what are these words mean, you know, what words are being emitted, what does that signal that is intended by this text, and just a lot of that ended up coming pretty naturally just because I'd been reading a lot my whole life and reading very carefully, I think. So, those were some of the benefits I think I had going into law school. 

[00:09:25] Louis Goodman: When did you first really decide, yeah, I want to go to law school I want to be a lawyer? Was that when you were in Haiti, or did you have some sense of being born a lawyer earlier than that? 

[00:09:36] Alban Brooke: Well, some of these answers will be red flags that I missed. So if any of your listeners hear me say this and go, what a bad reason to go to law school, you're going to turn out to be right as we go on in this conversation. The moment that I went, Oh, I think I'm going to go to law school was when I took my first LSAT test in Haiti and whatever it was, I went, Oh, I can get into a pretty good school right now.

And if I study, I could probably get into a really good school. And I think that was very encouraging, and that was probably what pushed me over the edge. Funny enough, my dad was like, you should not become a lawyer. He, like, no, he didn't caveat it at all. He just was confident, he was like, this is not for you.

You would rather work with people. You don't want to get stuck in some of the things in law that can feel a little bit petty or a little bit wasteful. He's like, you're not going to like that. And I think I was much more excited about the prospect of I can go somewhere good, I can have a prestigious career, I could find an area of law that I really loved.

And so my act of rebellion as a, I don't know, 22 year old or so was, no dad, you don't know me, I'm going to law school! 

[00:10:45] Louis Goodman: So, as I mentioned in the introduction, it seems like you went to law school, you got out of law school, and you had for at least a while a fairly conventional legal career. And then you ended up going to Buzzsprout, and I'm wondering if you could just kind of walk us through your legal career and what made you decide to go into the podcasting industry?

[00:11:10] Alban Brooke: Yeah, so I was very fortunate. I ended up working for a really good firm. It was a small construction law firm, and I really liked everyone there. But I really did not enjoy the work. We had a really, really big case where we represented the Port Authority in Jacksonville. And there was a big issue with a construction project that had gone wrong.

And I was just doing tons of document review. And was probably doing about 10 to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. And long hours, I think, lots of professions have long hours. But there was something about the, how is so such a strong routine, was wearing a suit and tie to work every day, I was stuck inside and I was reading documents and would often have multiple days in a row where I didn't seem to find anything that was of value and then the whole time watching my billable hours go up and feel like I don't know if the client has gotten their money's worth from the work I've done. And, you know, over that time seeing there are aspects of law that I enjoy, but I wasn't enjoying the litigation piece. I didn't enjoy working with opposing counsel. And I was seeing that the lifestyle of a lawyer was pretty far from what I wanted to have. It was right when my wife and I were getting engaged and then later on got married.

And I'm looking around going, I really like all the people I work with. They're all really good people. And yet I don't want to have the family life that law has afforded them. 

[00:12:48] Louis Goodman: So how did the podcasting thing come up? 

[00:12:51] Alban Brooke: So I was living with three other guys. We rented a house and I was very fortunate by this.

I had the perfect group of guys to see different professions give you different amount of money, different amounts of prestige, different lifestyles, and they're very different. And it's not always harder working is making more money. So the four of us, we had one guy who was a groundskeeper and he worked really long hours and didn't make much money.

I was practicing law and was working really long hours and making good money. We had one guy who was in sales who wasn't making a ton but had a lifestyle he really enjoyed. And then one who seemed to work the least, but was a programmer and the leverage of software allowed him to do a really focused amount of work.

And when he figured something out and it started working, then it could be scaled up and there was just a ton of value there. And so he could work shorter hours and make really good money. And I'm looking around going, Whoa, I'm on this path to, you know, I have not made it there yet, but the golden handcuffs are out there.

I know there's a point where you pretty much can't work or sorry, you get to a point where you don't feel like you could ever live on less than $200,000 a year. The position a lot of lawyers find themselves in is you work a ton, but now you have so many obligations. You don't feel like you could ever switch careers.

And fortunately, I was still single and I was. Also, you know, we, I had not started making much money and I went, you know, this is about the last time to leave. Pretty soon I'm going to feel like I can't go back out just because it'd be too much of a pay cut. So I would talk to anybody who would listen about, Oh, I want to get into software.

And my roommate at the time was working for Higher Pixels, which developed Buzzsprout. And they were having issues with marketing specifically on the podcasting product. And I was like, Oh, I love podcasting. It's so amazing. Here's what's great about it. And I was like, you know, if you could get me a law interview there, I would crush it.

And I would talk this big game because I was so frustrated with law. And one day he came home and he said, All right, I've got you an interview. Our marketing guy just decided to leave. You could come in, there's four of us that work there, we work out of this tiny little office, this is your opportunity. And pretty quickly went, oh man, I can't believe I just said this, but I guess I'll take, I gotta take the interview because I can't, I said it, and it ended up being a really big pay cut, ended up being a pretty big hit, I think, to my ego, not saying that I was a lawyer anymore, instead saying, oh, I do like customer support and marketing work for a little startup.

But it ended up being like the very, very best thing that I could have done much more aligned with my values and what I wanted to do in life and my skill set and it's been extremely rewarding over the last 10 years. 

[00:15:55] Louis Goodman: So I just want to straighten out my timeline here a little bit. So you practiced law for what, about three years? 

[00:16:02] Alban Brooke: A year and a half. 

[00:16:03] Louis Goodman: A year and a half. Okay. 

[00:16:04] Alban Brooke: And I barely made, everybody was telling me, you know, you've got to go try another few jobs. And I was like, Oh, no, no, I'm confident. The people I worked with were wonderful.

And it was the practice of law that I was really not enjoying. 

[00:16:19] Louis Goodman: Okay. So a year and a half in actually practicing. And then you went over to Higher Pixels, Buzzsprout. And now you knew you were getting into the podcast space. Had you been listening to a lot of podcasts? Is it something that you'd been enjoying doing?

[00:16:34] Alban Brooke: Yes, I probably started listening to podcasts about 2006. I think one of the moments where I really noticed the value of podcasting was when I was in Haiti. So that's 2008. And I would connect to the internet once in a blue moon, you know, when we would get Satellite internet access at the internet cafe, and I would download podcasts and then I would have just these audio files and I would listen to them and I'd often listen to a multiple times and feel really connected with the hosts and, you know, love the shows and kept that habit up all through law school, especially when I would be exercising or something.

And so always had been a big fan of podcasts and yeah, became a really big, you know, ended up being pretty good to me that later on, I'm, you know, super excited about podcasting and the prospect of working at a podcasting company. 

[00:17:29] Louis Goodman: Now that you're very involved in one of the major podcasting platforms, what do you like about that world and how is it different from the legal world?

[00:17:38] Alban Brooke: Well, for podcasting, what I love is the human connection. You know, the people are putting out episodic content, and inviting their listeners, you know, into their ears. You're often doing something else while you're podcasting. You're out for a run, you're on a bike, like you were, you can be doing the dishes or mowing the lawn.

And so, you're somewhat occupied. And what that means is that the attention that is given to podcasts is often much longer than the attention given to a YouTube video or social media. And what I noticed was people were engaging so much more deeply and their affinity for podcasts was much higher than it was for other media types, and I noticed that in myself.

So those are a few of the things that I really liked about podcasting. A lot of the things I really enjoy in my work are related to software, where a lot of the incentives felt like they were often misaligned. At some point it's escalated now to what's really at stake are attorney's fees plus maybe two, three thousand dollars and it felt so wasteful and frustrating where software you can go in and work and you're you could spend two days working on something and nothing comes out of it.

But you could also work two hours and have the biggest windfall ever. So I really liked that smart work was really appreciated and valued in podcasting, not hard work. Because if I'm being honest, my goal is to work really smart and do really good work. And not do very much work. 

[00:19:18] Louis Goodman: I can't tell you how much I share that sentiment. Where do you see podcasting going, like, in the next 10 years? 

[00:19:25] Alban Brooke: It's, there's been a lot of shifts. Podcasting is moving heavily to video. I am still very excited about the audio piece because the audio piece of podcasting is what afford the longer listen time. As soon as it moves to video, you're now competing with Netflix, you're competing with YouTube, you're competing with social media, you're competing with books, all these things are visual mediums. But podcasting being audio first is really valuable because there's lots of things in life you have to be engaged with physically and you enjoy being able to listen to the radio or listen to music or a podcast or an audiobook. And podcasts are a unique format that can enter into that area of life. 

There's tons of changes now we're seeing with media and AI, and I could see there being a future where we see a pretty strong, I don't know if it's like a Luddite movement or if it's just people who are resistant to the AI-fication of everything.

You know, we're gonna have AI video on all our social channels. We're gonna see tons of content that's created directly for us. And I think we'll have a bit of a craving for this thing that's very different. And I think that very different thing can be the authenticity and the connection and the human element that's in podcasting. And so what I would really hope would be that we'd embrace kind of the craftsmanship of audio podcasting as opposed to kind of just this mass generated AI content, which I find to be incredibly compelling if I go on TikTok or Instagram or something and start watching the short form videos, they can grab me for hours, but I never feel a sense of fulfillment after it, where with podcasting, you know, I'm often listening to people who I've met or people I would like to meet or I've had a ongoing, you know, I've listened to the same show for years and there's a much deeper sense of connection and fulfillment that comes out of listening to a deep podcast episode that does not come out of watching two hours of kind of AI generated video. 

[00:21:44] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I'm certainly not the first person that said this, but there's something about having that voice right in your ear while you're doing something else, you know, walking the dog, going for a bike ride, whatever, and there's an intimacy to it.

For example, I've never met you in person. I'm seeing you now on my screen, but because I've listened to so many of your podcasts, I mean, I really almost feel like I know you and I know who you are. I think that's sort of a common reaction to podcasters in general, that people who listen to podcasts, they really have a sense that they have a connection to a podcaster who they listen to regularly. 

[00:22:30] Alban Brooke: And I've met people online who I've known through video content or met people online that I've known through text, like maybe Twitter, there was no sense that I knew that person, you know, I know that I watched them perform for years, but it didn't feel like I knew them, but I haven't met podcasters who I've listened to, and it's so funny because, you know their cadence, you know their style, you know some of their vocabulary and, you know their tone. And then if you're in person, you actually start picking up on other things. So one of my examples of this was I listened to Decoder with Nilay Patel for years and then saw him do a show in person.

And it was funny to me because I recognized the pauses in the way spoke in his cadence, but in person, I realized it was not an intentional pause. What it was actually a little bit, it seemed to be he was insecure about what he's gonna say. He was thinking through it a little bit more, and it was so it's so much fun to see, oh, there's more data here in real life. And I felt so familiar, but then there's this extra piece that was totally new. 

[00:23:40] Louis Goodman: Sometimes I've seen someone who I've listened to a lot on a podcast and then watch them, like when they were a guest on a late night television show or something, and I go, why are they doing this whole performance thing?

They're so good just when they're being themselves on their podcast. And now they're seeming to have to project something sort of an overused term, but there is a certain kind of authenticity, I suppose to people on podcasts that I appreciate and that I think is kind of fun and that I think comes across I don't know so much for me, but certainly from a lot of the guests that i've had on my program 

[00:24:14] Alban Brooke: There's something happens when you turn on a mic and camera. I think a lot of people, as soon as the camera's on they feel much more, they're much more aware that this is being recorded and it's permanent and it could be used for your benefit or it could be used against you and it triggers this thing that kind of sits on top of your mind going, what are you about to say?

What are you going to say this wrong? How are people going to twist this to make you look bad? Oh, how does that going to look? Are you going to look charming or are you going to look dumb? What kind of facial expression could you do? And you think that that makes you perform well, it doesn't. What it really makes you do is like sound really insecure and cautious. I've seen it a lot when I've turned the camera on just to record myself. And you just, I don't feel that ever turn on for me when I turn on just the microphone, I feel like I'm just talking to my friends and there happened to be people who do listen in on the conversation sometimes, and it's almost like surprising when people write in to the podcast and say like, Oh, I really enjoyed this podcast.

It doesn't even feel real because I feel like I've been doing a show for five years and just talking to my friends. And then every once in a while, someone said, Oh, I've been listening in on this conversation and I've enjoyed it. I guess I, it's almost like the expectation of people listening is not really there.

[00:25:34] Louis Goodman: I had mentioned earlier how much the, How To Start A Podcast podcast that you guys did influenced me and really allowed me to get this podcast up and running. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you developed that program and updated that series and what sort of feedback you've gotten about it, other than from me. 

[00:25:55] Alban Brooke: I think what happened was I started by writing a guide on how to start a podcast and over years of refining it, I realized there's like 10 steps here and so then at some point we say, well, we should have a podcast about this and so we did a 10 step process for, you know, the podcast and I'm like, this really would be great on video. And so we turned it into video. We said, Oh, this video can become a course. We create a course. And each of them has been getting iterated over the years, but the core piece of it started with writing and what I like about the way we scaled it from writing to audio to video to course.

Was each of those is more permanent than the one that's before it, you know, text is so malleable. And so when we wrote it and people would write in, they have questions about picking your podcast topic. Well, that was great because then I could go in and I can edit it and refine it until it felt really good.

And so you start noticing kind of the holes in the argument or holes in what you're teaching. And then we scaled up from there. The podcast itself, I want to say it was like a two week process total to map out those episodes, to record them, to edit all of them, to get artwork and everything and press publish.

And it's, the first version of that I think came out, I don't know, maybe 2016, 2018. And millions of downloads later, it still continues to do very well for us. I never would have expected that those two weeks would be the two weeks that really mattered. 

[00:27:28] Louis Goodman: You have two other co hosts who work with you on your current podcast that you put out on a, I think, weekly basis.

How did you come up with that format with the three hosts? And what is it that you think about makes that podcast work so well? 

[00:27:43] Alban Brooke: I've done other shows that are interview shows and done other shows that are two people. I like the three of us. You have somebody who's kind of directing traffic and then you can have two different perspectives. So Jordan is the host of the show and she directs traffic. She has the outline. She has some points. She also is a podcaster and is really smart. So she knows the industry, but mostly she's setting this outline. 

Kevin and I just naturally take a little bit different perspectives and we're just reacting to what's happening. We're trying to create a show that is for a specific audience, people who are on Buzzsprout, who are indie podcasters. They're probably not getting millions of downloads; they're probably getting hundreds to thousands. And we're trying to help people become better podcasters. And so we have that lens to filter all the news around podcasting. And once we've filtered it down then we're trying to give our perspective. 

As far as you know, why does it work? I think a few things that tell people to watch for when they're coming up with a show. Find a show that you want to do because you really don't want to end up doing a show you because you think it will be popular. It's succeeding and now you're doing something you didn't want to do to begin with. The reward for good work is more work. And so make sure you're doing the work that you want to be doing, because you will be rewarded with more of it if you ever do a good job. So find something you actually are going to enjoy. 

And your co hosts, there's just a bit of natural chemistry that you either have or you don't have with people. Some of it can be cleaned up in audio, but it's going to be a lot easier if you feel comfortable with these people, they have the same sense of style. They want the same thing out of the show. It can be tough if one of you wants to be presented as really likable and funny and one of you wants to be presented as authoritative and really well put together, then your styles are going to clash.

So I try to find somebody who at least the tone and how the podcasts have been presented, at least are going to be similar. So those were a few of the things that I think helped make our show better than it could have been if we had not had those. 

[00:29:57] Louis Goodman: Well, it is a good show and it does work. And for anyone who's kind of interested in podcasting and what podcasters think about, I certainly recommend it.

What about the business of podcasting? How has that gone for you? You know, you're in a basically a small business, you know, 21 people. It's a small business and there are plenty of law firms that have 20 lawyers in them and it's a small business. And I'm wondering how that has gone for you and, and for Buzzsprout and can you just comment about the business of it?

[00:30:27] Alban Brooke: Sure. We are a software shop where we build solutions to different problems that we've seen, and some of those have been helping nonprofits raise money and track their donations. We built software to help doctors dispense medication and run state reporting and manage inventory. We've built software to help people track time towards proposals that they've given out.

So we've built lots of different pieces of software. It's been very good to us because we have a few things that make us a little bit different. One, we're 100 percent bootstrap, so we've never taken outside investment. We've never looked at venture capital. There are industries that clearly need it. They have a really big bet.

They want to build the next AI platform. They need billions of dollars to be able to do that. Go ahead and take a bunch of investment, but for us, we were operating in a world where we're just trying to help people get their podcasts out to the world. It's a little bit of a smaller market and the barrier to entry wasn't massive, especially when we started back in 2008 and launched in 2009.

So we were able to kind of grow up with the industry and we intentionally stayed small because when you stay small, you have a lot more flexibility. You don't have to lay people off when the economy slows down, or maybe we're podcasting slows down, but you're able to be a bit more creative and you don't have to follow all the trends of the industry. 

We've been in through quite a few silly trends in podcasting. One right now is everything's going to video, which I don't think is valuable for a lot of creators. But there was a period where it was all about live audio. Everybody wanted to live stream to clubhouse or to Twitter spaces. LinkedIn was adding live audio to their platform. Everybody had it. And there was a period where everyone's going, you've got to build this.

It's going to kill podcasting. And because we're not VC funded, we didn't have all that pressure. We were able to say, if we have a sustainable business, I think we're going to pass on the opportunity of jumping into live audio, only because it's not what we're excited about. So it's allowed us to be in a way a bit more disciplined and a little bit more principled, even if it's maybe not moral principles, just that these are our principles.

We don't think it would be fun to do live audio. We think that that would be better done in a video format. And so we're able to steer clear of some things that turned out to not be the most important trend of the day. 

[00:33:01] Louis Goodman: What do you think's the best advice you've ever received, and what advice would you give to a young person just maybe thinking about transitioning out of the law and into something else?

And you could answer that in either one or both contexts. 

[00:33:18] Alban Brooke: A piece of advice that I've been thinking about a lot, or at least a phrase, comes from the artist Tom Sachs. The reward for good work is more work. And I love the phrase because at once it seems a little bit funny. You know, it makes you think of if you're good at shoveling snow, you just get more snow to shovel.

But what it means is the reward for really good work is the opportunity to do that work more. And it reminds me, do not climb a ladder that you're not interested of reaching the top of that ladder. When I had the clarity that I did not want to be, you know, the partners of the firm I was at, they were good people, they were doing good work, I liked them.

And yet, people who were ten years my senior, I went, I do not want the lifestyle that they have. I do not want to call my children and have to say goodnight to them. I want to be able to be there. Realizing the reward for doing a really good job in law was going to be to be partners with those guys and to be able to do the same lifestyle they had.

And I realized I didn't want it. Then it allowed me to go and find something like what is the type of work that I would be excited that the reward was to be able to do more of that. So that would be maybe the piece of advice I wish I'd receive, or I could give myself. Find something that you really want to be doing. It doesn't have to be a passion. It just has to be something that you would be, you find fulfilling on an ongoing basis. 

[00:34:50] Louis Goodman: I want to shift gears here a little bit. You recently really impressed me by going with your brother and running a 50k, roughly 30-mile race in, I guess a trail run sort of thing without having done as much training as one might like to think of, you know, it's more than a marathon.

A marathon is 26.2 miles. And this is longer than a marathon, at least from what my understanding is, what you had said on the podcast to Kevin, I guess, is that you hadn't really been training at those kinds of distances and yet you accompanied your brother who had been doing that kind of training and finished this 50 K.

So tell us a little bit about that. That just sort of interests me on a personal level and maybe you can kind of segue that into the sorts of things that you like to do recreationally to get your mind off of podcasting and law once in a while. 

[00:35:45] Alban Brooke: I just like challenges and so that was one my brother was like I want to do this. He had a friend that wanted to run a 50k and so probably nine months out I was like sure I'm running a decent amount, but then I got injured and so I wasn't running at all and about five weeks out from the race.

I had done enough rehab that I wasn't in pain anymore and I was like, all right let me see how much I can do in the next five weeks. Knowing that I'm not going to be at the top of the pack, but I could probably finish. I was kind of thinking I could hike 32 miles is what it ended up being is 31, but I was like, I could hike 31 miles.

So finishing should be within reach and I just ended up doing a few longer and longer runs. So I'd gotten to one that was 21 miles and I was running extremely slow, but I was like, all right, I could do that. And then I could walk 10 miles. So it's doable. It's my brother who doesn't live nearby. And so it was just an opportunity for us to do something together.

And I thought, you know, this is one of the few things I could do this year that I would remember 30 years from now. And so we ended up doing it, ran very strong for about 22 miles. Got the worst cramps I have ever had. And by the end of it was barely walking, you know, if you're walking with a child and you're saying like, keep walking.

And they're like, I am walking. And that's how fast you're going. Like one, two miles an hour. That's the speed I was going. I was completely legs locked up and just kind of hobbling towards the line at the end. But it was a fun experience. It was way past what I trained for, and I'm sure we will do it again and hopefully beat the tide that we had last this time.

[00:37:37] Louis Goodman: What other sorts of things do you like to do recreationally, you and your family? 

[00:37:40] Alban Brooke: Lots of traveling. I've always enjoyed, you know, just being in different environments, being able to go to Haiti, things like that, seeing different cultures, meeting different people, going to cool national parks. So we do a good bit of travel.

Last few years, I've started doing quite a bit more with fitness. So I think I'd always been much more of like a brain person. And now I'm trying to remember that I have a body now that I'm in my late thirties. I want to take care of it before it all starts falling apart. 

[00:38:11] Louis Goodman: Let's say you came into some real money, three or 4 billion dollars. What, if anything, would you do differently in your life?

[00:38:19] Alban Brooke: I'd definitely move to Haiti. I'd move back and I would try to help start businesses in the town that I lived in. It's such a big project, having a, building a stable government, building the infrastructure, helping support schools more, and to just allow so many people the opportunities that I had.

I try to express this to my daughter a lot. She was, you know, born in Florida and just a few hundred miles away. Another little girl was born on the same day. Not far from where I lived in Haiti and their lives could not be more different. It's not by any virtue of my daughter or lack of virtue on this other girl's part.

It's just, we all get so different of opportunities. I always really loved the work that the guy I worked for in Haiti and a lot of different organizations there do where they're not just trying to give people money or solve the problem of starvation for one season, but are trying to help people kind of take their, you know, get opportunities to build businesses or to start new farms or do new manufacturing or something so that they can put all of their smarts and all of their ingenuity towards good work.

So yeah, anything on the order of billions of dollars, I think that's where it would have to go. 

[00:39:47] Louis Goodman: Let's say you had a magic wand, there was one thing in the world, the podcasting world, the legal world, the world in general, and you could change one thing, what would that be? 

[00:39:55] Alban Brooke: Double the amount of natural kindness that people have. I think that kindness is one of these virtues or one of these traits that informs so many of your decisions. If you think about how to be a good parent, if you're being a kind parent, you're naturally, most of your decisions are going to be better. If you are being kind of business, it removes so many of the worst traits that you might have.

If you're being a kind litigator, you're going to shy away from a lot of tactics that really give law a bad name. So many contractual disputes could be solved if either of the parties had had like a tiny piece of kindness towards each other. Maybe that would be it. Yeah, if I'm waving a magic wand, there's gonna be something about kindness in there, I'm sure.

[00:40:43] Louis Goodman: You have a fairly big microphone in the sense that you have a successful podcast. But let's say you had a really big microphone, like 60 seconds on a Super Bowl ad, and what would you want to say in your 60 second Super Bowl ad that went out to, you know, hundreds of millions of people? 

[00:41:04] Alban Brooke: I think a lot about the idea of redemption and forgiveness and how often people are not willing to forgive themselves, mistakes they make end up hanging around for the rest of their lives.

If I could craft a 60 second message around stories of people who really were able to move past something terrible that they'd done and become better people and get what they wanted out of life, maybe I would do that. But if not, then I'm sure there's a, the marketing side of me then wins out. And I'm going to tell everybody they should be starting a podcast.

[00:41:36] Louis Goodman: Alban, if someone wants to get in touch with your organization, with you, with Buzzsprout, what's the best way to do that? 

[00:41:45] Alban Brooke: For Buzzsprout, go to Buzzsprout.com and you could sign up and you could start a podcast or you could read any of the guides that we've written. You could also check out our YouTube channel where we're posting videos.

If you want to reach out to me, the best way is probably on Twitter. It's the one social media that I at least monitor, if not post all the time. You could reach out to me there. I'm @AlbanBrooke and I see almost everything some and so I respond to most of it. 

[00:42:14] Louis Goodman: By the way, I'm just going to put in another little plug for Buzzsprout here. And I mentioned this to you earlier off mic. The Buzzsprout website where you upload your information and you upload your audio and you upload your pictures and the transcripts and all that stuff. It is without a doubt, the cleanest, best, easiest to use website that I have encountered anywhere for any reason whatsoever.

I just take my hat off to you and your colleagues who've put that together because it really is one of the best things about my podcasting is I know that if it has to do with the Buzzsprout website, it's going to work flawlessly. 

[00:42:53] Alban Brooke: We are very fortunate that we've had so many good customers who've given us just tons of feedback and advice.

And so we can constantly refine it. I'm sure many of the things that you might find to be easy or polished now started off pretty rough and just over the years, you know, 15 years of being in business doing this, we had the opportunity to just keep refining it and make it a little bit more straightforward and hopefully continue to do that for 15 years to come.

[00:43:21] Louis Goodman: Alban, is there anything that you would like to talk about, discuss, bring up anything at all that we haven't touched on that you would like to say or talk about? 

[00:43:32] Alban Brooke: Only that I apologize that I've come on a podcast talking to lawyers and said so many things that are negative about the legal profession. My dad is still an attorney and it really is a wonderful profession. It just did not end up lining up with what I wanted out of life and I don't think I would have been very great at it. So yeah, to everybody who is practicing law and enjoying it, I wish you the best. 

[00:43:57] Louis Goodman: Alban Brookee, thank you so much for joining me today on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

[00:44:04] Alban Brooke: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:44:07] Louis Goodman: That's it for today's episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email. Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs, and information.

Thanks to my guests and to Joel Katz for music, Brian Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media, and Tracy Harvey. I'm Louis Goodman.

[00:44:48] Alban Brooke: Oh, cool. You're a podcaster. Oh, you have millions of downloads an episode. I've never listened to it.