Process Server Daily

Jessica Jester Saucedo is a certified Process Server in Texas and she is leading up the TXAPPS expo. She is an experienced Process Server and we have a great conversation. 

Jason Burke is the President of DR Legal Process Service LLC is a pro at getting good reviews on Google. Listen to this episode and learn how a fellow Process Server dominates his area using google reviews. 

Rob Henderson from Austin Texas drops some major value on us in this todays episode. Give it a listen and tell me what you think. 

Dan is the President and CEO of Express Process, He’s the Training Director for the Texas Process Servers Association, and has been serving papers since 96 when he left the security police for the United States AirForce. He loves to teach and mentor and he has a great training in store for us! Show Sponsor: www.processserverdaily.com/servemanager

Celebrity Server Tells His Story and Pranks Some Fellow Servers! Brandon really brings some great tips for identifying the servee at the door and he is an ethnic word ninja with his different accents.  Our Guest Website: https://www.oncalllegal.com/  Who Did We Prank: Michael Santos: http://www.superiorprocessservers.net  Commercial Process: https://www.comproserve.net/  Show Sponsor: www.processserverdaily.com/servemanager    *The Views and commentary expressed on the show do not reflect the views or beliefs of PSD University and/or it's sponsors. This show is for educational and entertainment purposes only!     

Robin comes from a family of Law Enforcers and she has fostered and developed that in her own family. She is a highly accomplished Investigator that has worked on a variety of high profile cases and appearing on the news and various talk shows. Her story is amazing and her techniques for growing a brand and tactically finding information is unparalleled. Listen to the episode and tell us what you think.    Sponsor:  PSDUNIVERSITY.COM  

My conversation with Mr. Santoni revitalized my passion for wanting to become a private investigator. He and his team are doing things at a next level but It's important to understand the risk your clients incur can be minimized and even eliminated with the proper training. As a family and business man, Tim and I agree that the ROI on creating a podcast may not be Immediately evident to others but the networking power is exponentially valuable. 

Michael Santos is a career process server that knows how to tell a good story. He started as a young man in California and has recently expanded to Salem, Oregon where he is pounding the pavement and building the empire similar to what he has accomplished in California. Michael tells of his sad moments when the job can seem too difficult and how he wishes he didn't have to serve a person that was having a hard time but with a sense of duty he gets the job done. Every time. Michael Goes on to tell about his experience trying to get by the bouncer and how he ended up serving a headline stripper using some tough guy tactics that you have to hear for yourself. He tells us about the difference between California and Oregon for building a business and his plans for getting it done. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. You can reach Michael at his information below. You can read the show notes below: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry? My oldest sister was a process server then ended up starting her own company. When I was 16 or so, I would go out regularly with my brother in law who also was a process server more so just to get out of the house and as such, he taught me the documents, what could be served in what manner, most importantly he taught me my navigational skills, this is back in the day before GPS where Thomas Bros. mapbooks were your co-pilot. So once I turned 18, I was quite able to hit the ground running. So in effect, I have more or less being in this industry my entire adult life and for a bit before becoming an adult. Tell me about your WORST experience working in the field? I went to serve a wage garnishment to this travel agency, and when I went in, I served the owner, who also happened to be the sister of the garnishee. I get that quite often and didn't think twice about it. What made this one odd, was the owner asked if she paid the sheriff's office the full judgment amount, would she have to still inform the garnishee of this order. I told her I can't give any legal advice, the law requires you to as it is stated on the order, but if the judgment is satisfied in full, I can't see anyone having any grounds to do anything and then I asked her why would she do that other than if for helping her sister. The owner stated that their mother had just passed away the week prior, and after the services, they were all back at the mortuary, and her father sat down...and died. It was as if his will to live after his wife died only lasted long enough to make sure she was taken care of and then gave up. At the time of service, she had just returned from her father's funeral. It could have been a story, but the look on her face, the tone of voice and body language gave it the ring of truth. I couldn't work anymore that day and wished I could have just shredded that order. Tell me about your GREATEST experience working in the field? Every day is a ticket to a new show. The freedom of schedule mostly is what I like most. As to an actual serving experience. I wouldn't call it the greatest experience, but it was without a doubt the funniest. I had the subpoena to serve on a stripper at a strip club. Basically, there had been a fight where big guy beat the snot out of little guy, and she witnessed it and was being called to testify at the civil trial that ensued from the little guy getting mud stomped. I had no desire to go in there, more so I had no desire to go back and back over and over again attempting service which was personal only. So I arrive at the location, I park down the block and I call the club. A man answers and I asked if she was working tonight, being "she's my favorite." The man answer yes, she's on stage right now. I'm like "Awesome" and ended the call. I then go up to the door and the guy taking the entrance fee and I start to talk when I asked for her by name, he notices my clipboard, and answers, she's off tonight. I told him, I know she's here. He responds, she isn't. I said I know she's here, because I just talked to you on the phone, I recognize your voice, and "she's my favorite". The look on his face was a hallmark moment. So he starts with that I have to deal with her on her own time. I tell him, look, we can do this one of two ways. The easy way or the hard way, but one way or another we will be doing it. He asks what the easy way, I said she comes up here dressed in something that would at least be suitable for the beach, I take 30 seconds of her time, and I am gone. He asks what the hard way means. I said I go back to my vehicle, put in a call for a civil stand by from the sheriff's office, being it's Wednesday night about 6pm, probably not much going on and considering where this is, entertainment is where you find it and I wouldn't be surprised if 3-4 units roll here. Do you want the front of your place looking like a first responder's convention? Imagine your customers coming here, pull up, see that, they are going to keep on trucking and how much do you charge per person? Well comprehension struck him finally and he had her come up, I served her, and left. Absolutely priceless. What are you working on right now that has you most excited? Recently I have relocated to Salem Oregon and have recently started the process of building a business here in Salem. The differences in the serving industry between California where I had served for 26 years and the 2 years I have been in Oregon are night and day different. I never thought I would say I miss the California court system, but I do. At least the code sections in California are pretty cut and dry, the code sections here in Oregon are exceptionally vague and open to interpretation. That said, I am glad I moved here and wish on hind sight moved here a very long time ago. ___________ Sponsor ____________ Rapid Fire Round What is your favorite skip trace tactic? I use IRB Search for online skip tracing, for in the field, I talk to neighbors, co-residents, etc. What is your favorite tool for defense? Sig-Sauer or H&K, whichever I decide to bring with me. Thankfully I have never had need to use it. How do you track your Serves? Favorite software? I have used a variety of different server databases, the one I use right now is WinservePlus from Tristar. The software is a little bit more expensive than others software packages, but like anything, you get what you pay for and the service support has been excellent. I am quite pleased so far. What book would you recommend? I like Tom Clancy, R.A. Salvatore, and pretty much anything that has to do with history, mostly WWII history. To pick a specific book, I would say "Without Remorse" by Tom Clancy. What is the greatest advice you've ever received? Be honest. First time and everytime. If you screw up, own it. What would you do if you woke up tomorrow, with all of the same skills and knowledge but you didn't know anybody and only had $100, a smart phone, and a car. How would you re-grow your business? Print some business cards at home, and start canvassing the local law firms, collection agencies, property management companies, and call all the other process serving companies in the area to see who needed a subcontractor. In a way, other than the $100 part, I have done that by my relocation to a new state. What is your parting piece of advice? The two biggest skills a server needs to to first, know your navigational skills, how to get from point a to point b, etc as well as know the area you operate in. Next would be learn how to talk with people and not at them. Treat them the way you would want to be treated and that will solve alot of your problems before they escalate. What is the best way that we can connect with you, and then we can say goodbye? Our website is www.superiorprocessservers.net which lists our services and contact information.

Working for 11 years in Australia government sector he decided to enter the field of Private Investigations and comes on the show to tell his story! Thank you, Olie for dropping some major value bombs on ServerNation! Follow him on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-laurence-72125b10a/

Retired FBI Special Agent in Charge. Former Kansas Gubernatorial Candidate. Host, Crimes and Times, and renouned speaker joins the program to tell us his journey, how to successfully manage a situation with Law Enforcement and he tells some really cool stories!  He tells us about his three books and then about his awesome show, "crimes and times." Crimes and Times is a weekly live stream talk show that airs at 8pm CST. It is hosted by retired FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Tabman. The show features expert guests such as forensic scientists, FBI agents and other law enforcement personnel as well as prosecutors, defense attorneys, subject matter experts and politicians. The show is centered around discussing the current hot topics in crime and politics across the country and around the globe.  

Tennessee Mom turned private investigator that solved her roommate's murder has helped to find answers for families in need. She has some great stories about her journey and is leading the way with crowdsource investigations with her new podcast. "Without Warning" Go check it out and see if you can help solve her case. She gives us some great tips and Shiela is genuinely an amazing person to share her experience and knowledge. After listening to her podcast, "Without Warning" you have any ideas that might help to solve the case, Call Her Hot Tip Line: 888-599-0008

The Windy City Server gives an insiders look at working in the corporate world and his take on moving to the cloud as a business looking to move forward.    Show Notes Coming Soon!   Sponsor: ServeManager: www.processserverdaily.com/servemanager 

From Repo to Pretext we get the Skip Trace Secrets you've been dying to hear from the skip trace goddess herself.   Show Notes Coming Soon...

Coming Soon...

Mike: Welcome back, server nation, to Process Server Daily, the number-one podcast for legal support professionals. I am your host, Mighty Mike, the podcast server. I'm excited about today's episode, and I look forward to knocking your socks off. Let's get right to it. Mike: Welcome back to the show, server nation. We are joined by the owner of Alaska Investigation Agency, located in Palmer, Alaska. He started out his career in the Army Reserves and transitioned into private investigation in 2001. Since then, he has owned and operated numerous investigative agencies across the country. Luke Smith, welcome to the show. Luke: Thank you, Michael. Glad to be here. Mike: Thanks. So Luke, tell us a little bit about how you got started in the industry. Luke: About 15 years ago, 16, 17 years ago, a friend of mine was a police officer in Mississippi. He invited me to go do some surveillance with him on some private cases that he was doing, and I fell in love with it. The investigations morphed into process serving, and so now I do both. Mike: That's excellent. Do you remember your first job, your first investigation job? Luke: My first investigation job, I remember it very well. It was a cheating spouse, and I lost the husband in, like, the first block of trying to follow him. Mike: But you've learned a lot since then, right? Luke: I have learned so much since then. I haven't been burned in quite a while. Knock on wood. And I like to think that I'm pretty good at what I do now. Mike: That's awesome. So we don't like to focus on the negative stuff. As humans, we get a lot out of the negative and rising out of the negative and going into the positive, like finding your path in life. And so my first question always starts out with, tell us about your worst experience working in the field. Luke: My absolute worst experience, I was working a child custody case one time, and I was part of the team that located a mother, and I helped the troopers physically take the child away from the mom. Although it was what was best for the child, it absolutely broke my heart, and I realized then that child custody was not for me. Mike: How do you deal with that, Luke? Luke: You go home, and you hug your kids a little bit tighter and a little bit longer, and you move forward. I know it was what was best for the child, but it still was just heartbreaking, and I even tear up now sometimes when I think back to that child screaming and yelling and wanting his mommy. Mike: Yeah, as a parent we always relate it to our own relationships, and you want to be able to help them. But like you said, it was probably what was best. If the mom spends a few weeks without her kid, a few months without her kid, she might turn things around. You know? Luke: Absolutely. Mike: Luke, what do you want server nation to take from your story? Luke: What I want server nation to take from that particular story is just do right by your kids. Yeah, just be good parents. Mike: That's awesome. Yeah, being good parents is a great thing, and so you can ... Being in this job, one of the beautiful things about this job is you get to see the worst of the worst and you know where things could go. I don't know. In some respects, it makes you happier. You know? Luke: It does. Mike: Let's go to the positive now, Luke. Tell me about your greatest experience working in the field. Luke: I tell you what. I did a job a couple of weeks ago, and I followed a gentleman to a restaurant, and I sat down at the bar two people away from him, and I videoed him eating lunch. And then I followed him to his hotel. Six hours later, I followed him to another restaurant, where I sat right next to him at the bar, and we had dinner together. Mike: Wow. Luke: And then I followed him back to the hotel, and I rode up the elevator with him to find out which room he was in in the hotel. In that particular job, I think I pushed it to the limits just to see how far I could go, and it was such a satisfying feeling because he never had a clue I was even there watching him. Mike: So I'm going to sound like a total new, but did you feel like a CIA agent or something? Luke: Every day. Mike: Oh, that's awesome. Luke: No, I feel that way every day. Mike: What I take most from your story is enjoy what you're doing and go after it. What do you want server nation to take from your greatest experience? Luke: Take a few risks, ask that person that you're following to hold the elevator for you, and if you're trying to find someone and serve someone, ask questions. People love to talk, and they will give you just about all the information you need if you sound like you are supposed to have that information. Mike: Interesting. So I've heard it said before that you ask a question, not a direct question, but a related question that some stranger might actually ask. Luke: Absolutely. Mike: That's a pretty cool ... Do you guys still call that sub rosa? Luke: Yes. Mike: Okay, cool. Look at me knowing all the terms. Okay. So Luke, tell me what you're working on right now that you're most excited about. Luke: I guess probably one thing that I love that I have coming up is I'm adding a canine unit to my business. Mike: That's definitely something worth being excited about. Are you getting German shepherds or ... Luke: I'm getting Belgian Malinois. And actually, I have the opportunity to hire a handler that already has two Mals that are already trained. Mike: Wow. Luke: So I'm super excited about that. Mike: So Luke, tell me, why would you need a canine unit? And I think I know the answer, but could you just tell the audience, as a private investigator, what would you use a canine unit for? Luke: There's so many different uses for a canine. Here recently, Alaska has become one of the states that marijuana is now legal. However, you have a lot of corporations up here that it's still against company policy. So we can run the dogs through the companies to ensure that the employees are not breaking policy. There's no law enforcement side to it, but we are not law enforcement officers, so that's okay. The other area is we found that there are a lot of real estate agents that will have us run the dog through a house to make sure that there's no drugs in the house or there was no meth lab in the house or anything like that, just to limit their liability. Mike: Oh, I never thought about that perspective. Just the civil service. Luke: Sure, yeah, absolutely. So we're really excited to get that up and running. We've already nailed down a few contracts, and so we're really excited about that being a part of our business. Mike: Well, that's definitely worth being excited about. I am excited to hear about how you go and serve people on a snowmobile. How does that happen? Luke: Yeah. So Alaska offers unique challenges to the lower 48. Where are you from, Michael? Mike: I'm from New Mexico, but I'm based in Chico right now, in Chico, California. Luke: We're the largest ... obviously, the largest state in the United States. Here's a good comparison. Denver, Colorado, has one and a half million people. Alaska, there's 700,000 people. So we're the largest state in America, but we have the fewest people per acre or per square mile even of any other state. And so of course, if you call me and say, "Hey, what counties do you serve?" we don't have counties. We have boroughs. And we're statewide, but let's say, for instance, I serve the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is the size of West Virginia, so we have maybe 300,000 people that live in the borough. And so if you could imagine West Virginia and 300,000 people, they're pretty spread out. Mike: Wow. Luke: So there are tons, I mean, hundreds of villages across Alaska that are only accessible in the summertime via plane or boat or a four-wheeler. In the wintertime, you either take a plane or a dog sled or a snow machine. I mean, that's just part of what we do, and we have planes and snow machines and four-wheelers all at our disposal for serving papers and working cases. Mike: That's why you feel like a CIA agent when you're out there because you're in planes and ... You ever jump out of a plane to go serve someone? Luke: No. Mike: Come on! Luke: No. I did jump off of a four-wheeler once. Mike: Wow! And then I heard something about a moose chasing you. Luke: We have wildlife scattered across Alaska. And inside the city of Anchorage, there's a very large population of moose. I've been chased by moose. I've turned corners and been staring a moose face to face, and you just slowly back away. You don't need that 1,800-pound animal trying to trample you. We have bears that you have to deal with sometimes. Luke: So obviously, everywhere we go, we're armed to the teeth, ready for really the wildlife, not the people. But yeah, I've been chased by moose. I've never been chased by wolves, but I've felt them kind of breathing down my neck, if you will. That one was interesting, a little bit scary. The moose aren't really scary. You just know what to expect from them, and you respect them. This was their land first, so we're just visitors on their land anyway, and they believe that. Mike: It's the truth. Luke: Yes. I have video of moose walking down the street in Anchorage in the middle of traffic, and they just do not care. Mike: That is awesome. Server nation, Luke has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, telling us all about Alaska and the crazy private investigation stuff that he's got going on, from the canines to the planes and the quads, you name it. But prepare yourself, because we're headed into the rapid-fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Recording: Server nation, I know you're with the times, and you want to do whatever you can to have all of the resources for your client. That is why I created 123efile.com. As a process server, attorney, or even an [inaudible 00:10:59], you can visit the website and file your documents in any of the Tyler courts in California. With its easy-to-use, one-page operation, you can have your e-filing done in a matter of minutes and get back to what really matters. If your time is important to you, visit 123efile.com. Mike: Okay. Welcome back to the show. Luke, are you ready for the rapid-fire round? Luke: I am, Michael. Mike: What is your favorite skip-trace tactic? I imagine it's got to be a little bit different in Alaska. Luke: My favorite skip-trace tactic is going and asking the wildlife if they've seen my skip. Mike: You said asking the wildlife? I had to think about that for a minute. I was like, did you just say ask the wildlife? Luke: All right. You know, my favorite skip-trace tactic, I think, pretending to be a guide because there's so many fishing and hunting guides in Alaska that you can call just about anyone up and say, "Hey, I'm a guide, and I'm looking for this person. They booked a thing with me, and I'm just trying to confirm," and they will tell you where they're at, where their mom and dad are at, how to get in touch with them, what they drive, when they come home. They'll give you everything because, up here, hunting and fishing is a big business, and it's a big deal. Mike: So who do you call for that? Luke: The skip that I'm looking for. Mike: Oh, you call the person. Oh, wow! Luke: Or their family members. Mike: Oh, wow! So they're like, "Yeah. Oh, you're a guide. Yeah, let me get him over here." What's the incentive for them to help you, though? They're like ... because it's their friend or family, and they want to connect them to the guide? Luke: So many people up here need to hunt and fish just to feed their family. It's the sustenance thing. So maybe this isn't the best wording, but I prey on that a little bit, if you will. Mike: No, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, we manipulate things all the time. People say, "Hey, what are you doing stalking that girl?" I go, "Oh, that's my job. That's what I do." What is your favorite tool for defense? I know you said you're armed to the teeth. What does that entail? Luke: You know, my favorite tool for defense depends really on where I'm going and what I'm doing. I always carry a firearm everywhere I go. I am a certified firearms instructor. But if I'm going out to some of the remote locations, I'll carry a shotgun along with my sidearm. I do carry concealed when I'm in most areas because I don't want to approach people looking like law enforcement. Mike: Yeah. Luke: And in Alaska, everybody carries a gun. It's legal to carry a gun here concealed or otherwise, and so everybody has one. So even people walking around showing their sidearms, it's not really that big of a deal. My personal preference is to keep it concealed, though. But if I'm going, like I say, out to remote locations, I'll carry a shotgun mainly for bear protection. Mike: Well, that's awesome. That's some cool defense. What kind of pistol do you carry? Luke: I carry a Glock 19-9 millimeter. Mike: Luke, what book would you recommend? Luke: What book would I recommend? Mike: From guns to books. Luke: I know a couple of different people that have written books, and one is a skip-trace queen. Her name is Valerie. She wrote a book, "Skip Trace Secrets." That's a very, very good book. And then also another friend of mine, Kimberly, wrote a book about process serving and mayhem, and she's got tons of funny stories in those. I can't remember the exact name of that book, though. Mike: That's okay. I'll look them up, and I'll link them in the show notes. Anybody who's interested can go to processserverdaily.com/Luke, and they'll see all the show notes word for word and the links and everything. Luke: Perfect. Mike: Luke, what is the greatest advice you've ever received? Luke: I think the greatest advice that I ever received was be professional, be respectful, and be ready to take care of business regardless of what that is. Mike: To close this awesome episode, can you tell me what parting piece of advice would you give the servers out there that are ... Maybe they're struggling. Maybe they're new. Maybe their business is circling the drain, and they don't know what they're doing wrong. What advice would you give them? Luke: My advice to all the servers out there across the board is be professional, do not be judgmental. We don't know what people's stories are. Do what you say you're going to do in a timely fashion, and hang in there and just keep pounding the pavement. Mike: That's awesome. So if you had to start your business over again, Luke, how would you ... What would be the first thing you would do? Luke: I would go get a job somewhere. Mike: So you would work for another company? Luke: If I had to start my business all over again, I think I would probably have made a lot of contacts prior to opening my business because, in this business, that's what is very, very important, is your contacts. Mike: That's perfect. They say your net worth is your network. Build your network, and you'll grow your business. Luke: Absolutely. Mike: Luke, what is the best way that we can connect with you? And then we can say good-bye. Luke: You can connect with me through Facebook or my website, alaskaaia.com. Mike: So Luke, I want to personally thank you for coming on this show, man. This has been really cool. I'm excited to share it with the world. Luke: Thanks for having me, Michael. Mike: Well, I'm going to have to come visit one day. Luke: You do that, buddy. Mike: All right, partner. Well, until next time, server nation, you've been served up some awesomeness by Alaska Luke and Mighty Mike, the podcast server. Server nation, I want to personally thank you for listening to today's episode and ask you a question. Do you or your staff need additional training? Can you handle more clients, but you're not sure where to get them? I've developed a solution. Psduniversity.com offers a step-by-step online training by the top legal support professionals in the industry. Visit psduniversity.com.

Mighty Mike: What's up, Server Nation? My name is Michael Reid, the Podcast Server. You are listening to Process Server Daily. On this podcast, we interview the top legal support professionals and get the tips, tools and tactics that they use to get the job done and build a successful company. I'm a big fan of storytelling and I'm excited about today's guest. Mighty Mike: Before we get started, let's give a big shout out to my new sponsor, ServeManager. They have a special gift for all of my listeners at the end of today's episode. Mighty Mike: Okay, Server Nation. We are joined by the owner of On Time Process Services, located in Klamath Falls, Oregon. He specializes in skip trace investigation and serving hard to find individuals. Gary Clayton, welcome to the show. Gary Clayton: Thank you. Mighty Mike: It's good to have you on. Gary, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry. Gary Clayton: So I started in 2014, as kind of a just a side gig as I worked for Sears for approximately 10 years. I went through a divorce myself and during the processes of the divorce, I had to hire a process server to serve my ex-wife. It took him about five minutes, cost $125 that was the moment that said I was in the wrong industry. Mighty Mike: That's so funny, because that's exactly how I got started. Except for he got paid ... Actually, I'm the one who got served and he told me he got paid 50 bucks. How funny. It's crazy. Gary Clayton: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Some of the saddest moments in our lives end up giving us the greatest joys, so that's pretty cool. And so, how about now, you got a family? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so I got five kids, a wife. Being in this industry and being a business owner, sometimes it's got its ups and its downs, and I like the idea of being able to make my own schedule to be with the kids more or with the wife more. Mighty Mike: Yeah, family's definitely the most important and that's one of the reasons I started my own business because I didn't someone to tell me that my life would be turned upside down because I missed one day to go to my daughter's dance recital or something like that. I didn't want anyone to have that kind of control over me and so I'm with you there, brother. Mighty Mike: So Gary, there's a reason why you're on this show, as I always say, you know everybody's got different things going on, but I noticed you over the last doing a lot of really cool things, and so sometimes in the most tragic things come out the greatest triumphs, and so what is your worst experience working the field? Gary Clayton: So probably our worst experience was doing a serve for a divorce party kind of like that are what a majority of our serves are. And we were actually, there two of us servers out there, me and a colleague and we had actually gotten held at gunpoint by three individuals, two males and a female, for about two hours before we had actually gotten rescued. Gary Clayton: That was probably our worst experience as far as serving goes. Mighty Mike: Wow, so tell me more about that. And I don't wanna take you back to you know, much trauma, but take me back to the moment when they were ... did they just pull the gun out, you were at the door, knocking on the door? How did it happen? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so we walked up, we knew it was gonna be a difficult serve, and we were warned that the defendant actually had firearms and was hostile. So we went in a team. We knocked on the door, as soon as we knocked on the door, the defendant opened the door and had had a pistol in his hand right, both me and my colleague. Gary Clayton: We proceeded just to back out of the situation, but as soon as we backed out, two individuals come around the side of house, and both of them had pistols as well. So we were kinda trapped. I was able to reach down and hit real quick on my phone for dispatch, and I threw the phone into the bed of my truck and it took them a little while to get out there to us. Gary Clayton: But we were pretty well trapped, they had us go around to the back of that house and we were stuck there. Mighty Mike: Oh my gosh, what do you think they were gonna do? What were they saying? Gary Clayton: Well there's so many things that go through your head at that time. We were both confident that we were gonna get out safe, but when you're in the moment, five minutes turns into five hours in a couple of seconds. You know it's just crazy how fast it goes. Gary Clayton: When the sheriff's department pulled up there, and finally got us out of that situation, it felt like a ton of bricks off of your shoulders. Mighty Mike: Wow, so tell me about when the sheriff arrived. I mean, they had to have came out guns blazing, right? I mean, hey, "Put your guns down," this type of thing, or? Gary Clayton: Well, actually what happened was, because they didn't have any communication back and forth through the phone, it was just an open line, they didn't really know what was going on. So they came in being cautious, but they didn't bring nearly enough manpower with them. And so it was one officer that came out and once he kinda realized what was going on, he retreated back to his car and then that's when they just started coming in from every angle. Gary Clayton: The defendant and his team, the two individuals that was with him, they came to their senses fairly quick, put their guns down, and surrendered. Mighty Mike: Oh, okay, good. Yeah. That's a pretty ... man that's an intense situation. I've actually never had something that intense. Mighty Mike: You know, I gotta tell you, being able to have ... in the pre-show, we had a little conversation about, you know, being connected to dispatch and stuff. You guys have that privilege I guess you could call it, to be able to speak directly to dispatch, right? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so we all have radios here, where we had to go to actually a pretty extensive training class, each one of us, to be able to connect with dispatch. And when we're out in the areas where cell phones don't work, that's our only communication and so dispatch is pretty good at making sure we're checking in with them and they're checking in with us. Gary Clayton: And if we need backup, depending on what it is, they'll send a sheriff out. We had the incident last week that you had seen online about me following an individual down into California. We had actually radioed to dispatch to see if they would assist us in stopping the vehicle and they were like, "Nope, it's civil, follow them until he stops or you run out of gas." Mighty Mike: Wow, that's crazy. And then, in that story, you followed him down there and then the, what is it, CHP, the state police? Gary Clayton: Yeah, we were originally at the individual, the defendant's house, and as soon as we'd seen him pull in, we pulled in behind him and he was able to wedge his self around my car. And so I pulled out, followed him through town, he jumped on Highway 97, which a highway here, and he started heading towards south. Gary Clayton: A lot of the individuals here Klamath, since we're so close to California, they think that if they go into California, that they can't be served. So as soon as they get on 97 South, we automatically know that they're heading into California, so we contact the Department of Agriculture down there, 'cause they have the transfer station, the bus station we call 'em. Gary Clayton: And they'll typically assist us in stopping 'em, however this day, there was a CHP officer that was actually passing through about ten minutes before we were coming through, and the transfer station supervisor actually stopped CHP and asked him if he would hang out to assist with that. And they did, they were really good at helping us with it. Gary Clayton: However it ended up being a pretty serious situation, they did step in and help us. Mighty Mike: So, a couple things I want to say about your worst experience. First of all, do everything you can to be prepared, because when you think, "Oh, it's probably just one guy, and we got this handled. You know, I got my gun, if he has a gun then we'll handle it," right? Mighty Mike: I know that's a very simplified version, but you know, in this case there were multiple people and then if you did have a gun, now you're having a shootout with three guys. I mean, it's insane what can happen if you're trigger happy. That's one thing. Mighty Mike: It's insane, I mean, did anyone end up getting shot that day? Gary Clayton: No, there was no gunfire and actually we don't carry here. Each one of my process servers, I allow them to make the decision, however, I strongly discourage my individuals or my process servers from carrying, maybe keeping it in a vehicle or something like that. Gary Clayton: We've seen in the past with open carry or concealed carry if the defendant or the individual we're serving sees it, it brings a higher threat. And so we were seeing a lot of pushback from it, so without having a firearm ... Gary Clayton: And yeah, it's a dangerous industry, but we were able to eliminate a lot of problems just by taking the firearms out of the equation. Mighty Mike: Yeah that's, I mean, each business has to make the decision based on their area, based on their ability to handle different situations and I think that's commendable that you made that decision. Mighty Mike: I think maybe too, another way could be to have a concealed weapons permit so that ... I'm not familiar with Oregon's laws on that. Are you able to, is it a law where you can conceal carry? Gary Clayton: Yeah, you can conceal carry. And my process servers, they do conceal carry. We just try to keep the intensity between a firearm and open carry at a bay. Mighty Mike: Well what I get from your story most is be prepared, and be cool and calm and collected and then to be able to get your phone like that and hit it and throw it in the back of the truck the way that you did, I don't know that I could have or would've done, thought to do something like that. 'Cause had you not done that, you'd have been at their mercy for who knows how long. Gary Clayton: Right yeah, and so the idea was that when we went into this group, we were prepared because we had gotten word beforehand that the individual may act like this. So before we'd even gotten to the house, we had already had 911 dialed into our phones. 'Cause we didn't know what we were walking into. And you never know what you're walking into. You can walk in and they can have a conversation with you for 20 minutes about their day, or you can walk into guns. Mighty Mike: And sometimes you walk in to have a five-minute conversation, and then they find out you're there to serve them, and then they're pulling out guns. That can happen too. Mighty Mike: Well, that's great. So Gary, what do you want Server Nation to get from your story, your worst experience? Gary Clayton: Well, just to be safe and always be prepared. And the idea is to go home, if you have a family, to go home to your family every day, or if you don't have a family to go home alive every day. You know, stay safe and always be prepared for the worst. Mighty Mike: So Gary, that's awesome. Tell me your greatest experience working in the field? Gary Clayton: So this actually just happened not too long ago. We had a locate, a serve locate. It was kind of like a will, where an individual here in Klamath County was getting an inheritance from relatives out of Texas, and we were hired to do a locate and then to do the serve. Gary Clayton: And when we did the locate and found that this individual who was inheriting a large amount of money had to be notified of it, we were kind of intrigued that most of the time we're bringing bad news to people and this instance, it wasn't bad news, it was kind of a cool story where this guy has been living a mediocre life working 9 to 5, and now he no longer has to. Gary Clayton: So it was kind of a cool experience to have. Mighty Mike: That's a really cool experience. How much money was it? Gary Clayton: Oh, you know, I don't remember right off hand, but I think we're ... it was well over $2,000,000. Mighty Mike: Oh man, how much did you make on that one? Gary Clayton: Well, first we quoted it at 65 for this serve, and then at 65 an hour to do the locator, 125, whichever one we went to. Afterward we were like, wow, we don't think we charged enough for this one. Mighty Mike: Exactly. You were more like private security for that delivery. Gary Clayton: Yeah, you know the funny thing is, is that the individual when we were going to serve them, he avoided us. For several weeks he avoided us. We had a location form, we tried to explain to him what it was and he didn't believe it, he kinda blew us off. And then finally when we got him pinned down to actually get him served with the notice of what he needed to do next, it was ... he still didn't believe it. It took him several minutes to actually comprehend what was going on. Mighty Mike: Wow. And so you just never know, that's one of the other cool things that I love about this industry, is you never know what you're gonna get. You know one day, you know ... I don't know. You get some of the same things over and over, and I look at it like those keep the lights on. And then other days you get things you're like, yeah, this is cool. And I get to serve a pro-NBA player, you know? Or you know, Fergie or you know you go serve some celebrity that's always fun. Gary Clayton: And challenging. Mighty Mike: And challenging. We're up here in the sticks, you're further up in the sticks, but I'm up in Chico and it's still pretty far up here, so the best we get is I guess, Tom Hanks. He lives in Redding. Gary Clayton: That's always fun. Mighty Mike: Yeah, good deal. So that's great, that's what I get from your story. What do you want Server Nation to get from your greatest experience? Gary Clayton: Take everything positive. And enjoy what you're doing. If you don't enjoy what you're doing in a career, then you always should change things up. So even though we're typically, as I call doing this devil's work, or bearing bad news for people, you're just a messenger. It's all we are is we're messengers. We're just out here to do our job and be positive with it. Gary Clayton: If you're ... Most of the time if you go out, and you're negative when you're going out to do these serves, you're gonna get a negative reaction. If you go out and you be positive with these individuals or these defendants, they're only defendants to somebody else, they're not a defendant to you. So being positive can take you a long way. Mighty Mike: That's great. Gary, what are you working on right now that has you most excited? Gary Clayton: So we're actually expanding. Our biggest thing right now is that we want to move from just Klamath County or Oregon, we serve all of Oregon, but we wanna take this nationwide with the approach that what On Time Process Services has been doing for multiple years. You can go to our Facebook page or our Google page, and you can see our reviews that we've even had positive reviews from individuals that we've served. And we wanna be able to take that across the nation and open it up across the nation and we're working, doing our due diligence to make everything work right. Mighty Mike: What I take from what you're most excited about, you say you're growing nationwide. How does somebody even fathom that when they're just starting out. How do they go from just starting out to where you're at, where you're like, "Okay, we're getting ready to set off on a nationwide jaunt."? Gary Clayton: So I would say, starting out, definitely get used to your area, the law, the restrictions, and the way service is done before you even approach going nationwide. If you can't make your local customers happy, the chances of you going nationwide and making customers all across the country happy is probably gonna be slim. Gary Clayton: Know your area, know what you're doing, read, do a lot of research, reach out to mentors. NAPPS is a very good platform for new process servers to reach out to and get the education that they need. Gary Clayton: Your local associations is also huge, you know reaching out to your local associations. Mighty Mike: Yeah, Gary does Oregon have an association? Gary Clayton: Yeah, Oregon has the Oregon Association of Process Servers. I think the people that's been sitting on the board has been doing it for quite a long time, and we're not too involved with the association, we're members of the association, but we're working on our business, our [inaudible 00:16:32], our PR, to work with that, to start moving that in the direction we want it to. Mighty Mike: That's great, so if you're an Oregon process server, definitely go and check out the Oregon Association, the National Association of Process Servers. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, Gary has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, imagine what you could do with another 25 minutes per job. This is how much time process servers who use ServeManager are saving. At just 100 jobs per month, that's over 40 hours that can be spent growing your business but doing more important things like spending time with your family. From job creation to affidavit generation, ServeManager is fully featured and hands down the most intuitive process serving software on the market. I use it for my business, I think you should use it too. Mighty Mike: In my firm it's important for me to be able to automate the systems that get things done. ServeManager has done just that with their API integration, where you can set up literally any app that integrates with Zapier will integrate with ServeManager. I love it. I have set my whole firm up. Mighty Mike: Go to ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager to get your free trial. If you like it after the 14 day free trial, they've offered to give you another 60 days for free as a thank you for being a Process Server Daily listener. That's ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager. Mighty Mike: Okay, welcome back to the show. Gary, are you ready for the rapid fire round? Gary Clayton: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: Awesome. What is your favorite skip trace tactic? Gary Clayton: I would definitely say that we use court records a lot. Most of the defendants that we're trying to locate at one point in time or another they've either had a traffic violation or some of type of a civil case. Gary Clayton: And you can pull a lot of information just from your local court records. I know Oregon is huge, we're set up with tailor hosting, which we get to pull all the records for that. And then of course we run plates. DMV's really good here, we can link [inaudible 00:18:46], we can run names and first and last name with a possible date of birth, and they give us a lotta information from that as well too. Mighty Mike: Yeah, California's got it pretty locked up unless you have a, I think there's maybe 500 certificates or something like that. It's very difficult to get that kind of information here. That's pretty cool that Oregon does that. Are you able to just be able to just search it right on the database or do you have to call 'em, or? Gary Clayton: There are multiple platforms so you can, for DMV we can call in, so if we're in the field and we have an individual who believes is there, we have a car in the driveway, we'll run the plate right there and if it comes back to that individual, we'll go up and confront him that. Gary Clayton: We can call in, we can fax it in, or they'll have an online access come 2020, they're gonna go online for DMV. Court documents, we can call or we can access it online for court documents. Mighty Mike: Wow, that's really cool. So you're the first person who's come on this show and mentioned the court documents, so I wanna dig a little ... I know this is rapid fire round but I want people to learn from it as well. Mighty Mike: So when it comes to a court document, do you go ... so you get Michael Reid, how do you use the court documents. Do you search for my name via the court record? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so we can pull up records with just a name, first and last name, and then we can kinda plug and play to see where it's at. It's not just putting in somebody's name, and then you get just that individual, 'cause there's a lot of Gary Claytons and there's a lot of Michaels out there. Gary Clayton: You have to pinpoint ... if we have a small claims document we're serving, we can see that they have this small claims, so we can link it to that individual and then we go back and ... We had a hard to find individual, the credit union, that we were looking for. They were trying to find this individual for almost a year, and then they contacted us. Gary Clayton: We put him into the court records, and come to find out, he had a restraining order put on him a couple weeks ago and so we were able to link the address to where he was served by the sheriff's department to link right back to him. So it was a very good tactic to be able to use that and the credit union didn't have that information. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite skip tracing tool? Gary Clayton: Favorite tool ... I like Delvepoint, I think it is? Or IDI, I like both of those programs. I really use, I try to go for what is inexpensive first. There's actually a program out there called SpyFly.com and it's very inexpensive, and it gives you pretty good record information. Gary Clayton: Sometimes you have to look through and go through different things, but SpyFly was our number one platform that we used for a long time. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite tool for defense? Gary Clayton: So, favorite tool for defense is for one, our dispatch. Being able to reach out to dispatch, that's huge for defense for us. Gary Clayton: I use ... I don't carry a firearm, but I do carry a baton or ASP. I carry a bear mace just in case. And also, my flashlight. I have a high powered flashlight and if I'm serving at night, ain't nobody gonna see me once that goes into their eyes. Mighty Mike: Is it like a spotlight? Gary Clayton: It's not really a spotlight, it's Bushnell, it's just a high powered, high Lumens Flashlight. Mighty Mike: What book would you recommend? Gary Clayton: The NAPPS book, that's what I would recommend. Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's a good one, no that's a good one. It's actually kind of shocking that those books are huge, and they ship 'em out to all the members. Mighty Mike: What is the greatest advice you have ever received? Gary Clayton: So, the greatest advice that I have ever received, I have a mentor that's been in the industry for about 35 years that retired out and I ended up purchasing his business from him just to basically let him out and take over the contracts that he had. And he said, "Always be pleasant. Always be pleasant to the person you're serving, don't ever come at 'em with judgment. If you're judging the individual, it's not your place to judge, whatever they're going through is their own deal, it's not your deal, so don't ever judge 'em." Mighty Mike: Yeah Gary, that's perfect. Being able to go out and to be able to handle yourself well around people and not judging them. Okay, that's great advice. Mighty Mike: Gary, what parting piece of advice do you have for the struggling server out there, where his business is circling the drain? What advice do you have for that server? Gary Clayton: Always pay, if you're outsourcing serves, always pay your outsource companies in advance or fairly quickly. Customer service is huge. If you're making your customers or your clients happy, they're gonna come back and use you every time. Gary Clayton: We're fairly expensive for our area, roughly $35 more than any other server in our area. So we have a majority of the business just because they can track our information online. We send them regularly updates, and they know that they can call and get one of us on the phone at any time of the day. Gary Clayton: I'm not saying answer your phone at ten o'clock at night, but customer service is huge and it's key for this industry. Mighty Mike: So Gary, what I take most from what you just said is that, 'cause you said to pay your servers on time and to pay them ahead of time, many times if you deal with these big process serving companies, many times how a lot of severs get started, right? They contact all these companies all over the country and say, "Hey, I can do your serves." Mighty Mike: But even though they're doing serves so inexpensive, they end up still being owed, you know, five thousand, seven thousand, some outrageous amount by this huge company that should be able to pay them on time. Gary Clayton: Yeah, definitely. You know, I have a philosophy about the big companies out there. It's different for different areas. My area is small, we don't have a lot of people, a lot of process servers to choose from here. But if you're in a secluded area where you don't have a lot of competition, if you are not using those big companies, then that serve's still gotta be done. And if they can't get that big company to do that serve, who are they gonna call? They're gonna call you, and you're gonna get that business, and you're not gonna be paying the middle person. Gary Clayton: I started out doing serves for ABC and a lot of other pro reps and other big companies, and then I slowly kind of backed out because I was paying them for what I was gonna do anyway. Mighty Mike: Hey brother, one man's failure is another man's success, you gotta capitalize on that stuff, so that's good Gary. I really feel Server Nation has gained a lot from this interview. Mighty Mike: Gary, what is the best that we can connect with you? And then we can say goodbye. Gary Clayton: You can go to www.ontimeproserv.com without the e at the end, or 541-810-3411. Look up process servers for Oregon, we come up typically #1. Or if you wanna get directly to me, call our office in Klamath Falls, 541-810-2172. Gary Clayton: I'd be more than happy to, if anybody's out there that's wanting to get into process serving, or has questions about it, give me a call, I'll sit down. I'm all about working for yourself and mentoring with the information that I have. Mighty Mike: Gary, I wanna personally thank you for being on the show today. I've been impressed with your story and I'm excited to share it with the world. Gary Clayton: Thank you Michael for having me on the show. It was a pleasure. Mighty Mike: Until next time Server Nation, you've been served up some awesomeness On Time Gary, and Mighty Mike, the Podcast Server. Mighty Mike: Don't forget to get your free 14 day free trial of ServeManager. If you like it, you get another 60 days for free, Server Nation. Even if you love your current software, you should at least check it out. ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager

Coming Soon...

Mighty Mike: What's up Server Nation? My name is Michael Reid, the podcast server. You are listening to Process Server Daily. On this podcast, we interview the top legal support professionals and get the tips, tools, and tactics that they use to get the job done and build a successful company. I'm a big fan of storytelling and I'm excited about today's guest. Mighty Mike: Before we get started, let's give a big shout out to my new sponsor, Server Manager. We have a special gift for all of my listeners at the end of today's episode. Mighty Mike: Okay, Server Nation. We are joined here by the owner of Love to Serve Them, LLC. He has 20 years of experience serving papers both privately and for Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He has covered Los Angeles County and surrounding counties in Southern California since March of 2012. Dave Luce, welcome to the show. Dave Luce: Thanks Mike, glad to be here. Mighty Mike: Awesome, Dave. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the industry? Dave Luce: Well, I started serving papers in 1996. What had happened is the company I was working for ... The Northridge Earthquake happened and basically imploded the owner's house. So that business went away. And I was in the bar one night talking to one of my high school friends who had an attorney service. He was like, "Why don't you go come work for me for a while?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm not doing anything else right now." Dave Luce: And within a couple of months I started noticing that these attorneys were asking, "Hey, we want this Dave guy to go serve it." And probably about six months later, that business went belly-up. So I'm like, "Well hey, I'll just go get the license and bond." And then I went back to all these attorneys and was like, "Hey, I'm in business for me now. I just do the process service. Let the attorney service do your other stuff." So I already had a built-in clientele. Mighty Mike: That's awesome, Dave. Do you have a family? Dave Luce: Yeah, I have a family. One daughter. Was a single parent for her. We moved back in with my mom a couple years ago to help take care of her. She's 83 now. Mighty Mike: That's really cool, yeah. Family's really important. How old's your daughter? Dave Luce: She's 21. Mighty Mike: Whoa, that's cool. Adult kids. I look forward to that day. Dave Luce: Cherish the time now. Mighty Mike: That's what I hear. So, Dave, there's a reason why you're on the show. You have a lot going on. You're ... I watch you on Facebook and the different things, hearing your posts about the different awards that you've won and things like that. So I'm really excited to hear your story. Lots of good stories, I'm sure, that you have. But we always start here at Process Server Daily, we start with your worst experience working in the field. Tell us a little bit about that. Dave Luce: My worst experience definitely has to be with the Sheriff's Department. In 2003, I was serving a criminal subpoena on a lady for probably the 300th time in three years, and she sicked her 70-pound Chow on me. And I ended up putting two fractures in an ankle, 20 fractures in my knee, unit broke my wrist and got a nerve disease that spread body-wide from there. They were going after her for 8-10 for assault with intent, and she pled out to a year and a half in the state. But that's gotta definitely be my absolute worst because that ended that career. I was not able ... Because I had nerve disease, I could not return to active duty. Mighty Mike: Oh my gosh. And that was while you were with the Sheriff's Department? Dave Luce: Yes. Mighty Mike: Oh man. So it was a Chow Chow, the black ones with the purple tongue? Dave Luce: Yeah, yeah. I was about halfway back to my unit and I heard her open the door and was like, "Sick him." I used to carry a little micro cassette recorder in my pocket, because people would call in and say I said a derogatory name or whatever. And even though it's a he said-she said, something will go on my file. So I'm like, "Oh, no, no, no, no. This ain't happening." So I turn that on, radio in, and then continue on serving case number so-and-so on such-and-such and let it run. And then when I would get one of these complaints, I'd play that tape for my sergeant and my lieutenant. There's my proof that none of this happened, so nothing goes into my file. It's not for legal reasons, it's more just to CYA for me. Mighty Mike: Yeah, no. That's smart. Dave Luce: And you hear all of that on that tape. Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's smart. So you were able to hear the, "Sick him?" Dave Luce: Oh yeah. Mighty Mike: Okay. Dave Luce: And the funny thing is, is she came out and she's laughing because I couldn't get up off the ground. I couldn't even reach the microphone on my shoulder. I just had to hit the red button, what we call the EPIRB button, which as far as the department's concerned, I've just been shot. And you hear her laughing and then all of a sudden you hear her stop and literally every point on the compass sirens are screaming in. I'm right on the border of Altadena, so I've got Altadena sheriffs coming, Pasadena PD coming, fire, ambulance, helicopter. Mighty Mike: Wow. Dave Luce: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Oh, man. And now, did you already tell me? Did she do jail time? Dave Luce: She pled out to a year and a half. So I was like, "Welcome to the family." That's why I served her so many times. She wasn't a criminal, but her all her family and relatives were. And in LA County, only the Sheriffs can serve criminal subpoenas from the DAs and public defenders. And so at least once a week for three years, sometimes two or three times a week, just where she lived, I'd be banging on her door about 10 after five in the morning with one of these subpoenas. And she just went crazy that morning. Mighty Mike: I can't tell you how many times I've interviewed people and the response I got was, "You know, I served her a bunch of times," or, "I served him a bunch of times and I thought, it's gonna be fine. It's been fine every time before. And then this one time." Mighty Mike: And I gotta tell you, dogs are my biggest concern when I'm out serving. I carry a little taser. I don't carry it as much anymore. Maybe just I think I can handle myself more by having a gun and things, but I try not to ... I really don't carry very often. And as far as tasers go, have you ever carried a taser, Dave? Dave Luce: No. No. When needed I'll take a weapon with me, or I have body armor. I'll wear my body armor. But for the most part I just try to keep very low-key. And I've gotta say, I've had way more problems serving for the Sheriff's Department than I've ever had serving privately. Mighty Mike: So what I take privately from your story Dave, for the most part, is to CYA. Having that recorder on you allowed you to be able to prove that she wanted her dog to do that. In some circumstances, the dog could have bit you and she could have gotten in no trouble at all. The dog broke out of the gate, or whatever, depending on what her defense might be, so that was a really good thing. So this was an audio recorder, or a video recorder? Dave Luce: No, no, an audio. It's one of those little tiny cassette recorders where the cassette is maybe an inch. Totally old school. This 2003 when this happened, but I started doing it in 2001. Mighty Mike: Oh, okay. Dave Luce: Well no, 2000, because I started with the Sheriff's Department in 2000. Mighty Mike: But that's the technology that they had at that time and you guys were utilizing it, luckily, so that's a great story. What do you want Server Nation to get from your story? Dave Luce: Well for me, I think the best thing for any process server is to have total situational awareness. Be aware of what's going on around you, what's going on in front of you and what's going on behind you. Because I have some areas that I go into, covering all of Los Angeles County, that are really nasty areas. I've served down in Watts and Compton. I've never even felt fearful down there. Mighty Mike: Wow. Either that's because it's not as bad as they say or you're just a bad mamma jamma... Dave Luce: It can be as bad as they say, but like I said, I keep situational awareness. I see what's going on when I first pull up in front of the property. And if there's stuff going on that I don't feel safe doing it, I'll call for backup. I'll call LAPD or I'll call the local PD and say, "Hey, I'm a registered process server. I'm here to serve eviction papers. I just need some backup to keep the peace." And they respond. Mighty Mike: I was gonna say, do they ... Because in a lot of counties they're like, "Well, we'll see if we can send someone out." And you're there for an hour. Almost doesn't make sense to even sit around, because sometimes you wonder if they're even gonna show. So they were pretty supportive down there? Dave Luce: Yeah, they're very supportive. And you just tell them not, "I'm just here to serve this." It's, "I'm registered LA County." I give them my number. "And I'm here to serve such and such. This is what's going on. I just need some backup." Or, if I show up at say a private community, which as you know here in California, they have to allow us access when there's a guard at the gate. There have been some times where the guard doesn't want to let me in, and it's like, "Here's the deal. Either you let me in or I'm gonna call the PD. One, you're required by state law, and two, you could end up getting arrested for obstruction." Dave Luce: And every now and then they'll be like, "Yeah. No, go ahead and call." I had one, it was hilarious. I waited probably an hour, hour and a half for them to come. It was right up at the top of the mountains in Mulholland in the Hollywood Hills. The unit they dispatched was from Santa Monica, and it was a sergeant and a senior officer. And I said, "Yeah, I'm here. I showed them my ID and the papers and he wouldn't let me in. I even showed him the statute." He's like, "Wait a minute. You showed him the statute and he's still not letting you in?" No. Went right over to him. "You're gonna open this gate or I'm gonna put the cuffs on you. He showed you you're required to let him in." Dave Luce: "But they said we're not supposed to." "I don't care." And I went in and I served the papers and I came out, he was still lecturing this kid. Mighty Mike: That's cool. You like those little wins when you can stick it to them like that. That's awesome, Dave. Tell me about your greatest experience working in the field? Dave Luce: Well, my fondest one where I get the most satisfaction is where I get those people that just absolutely think I'm not gonna be able to get them. And that one I was just telling you about was actually one of those. And I had six bad addresses. And it was for a debtor examination, so I had to get her personally. Dave Luce: ... and it was for a debtor examination. So I had to get her personally and finally came up with this address and when I served her she was just ... Because I had another guard go with me, she's just screaming and losing her mind about, "You're not supposed to let them on here." I was like, "LAPD's out there, they said we have to let him go on." "Well, I'm going to have you fired." "I'm not getting fired over you." And I'd actually talked to her on the phone and she said, "Good luck finding me." And hung up. Mighty Mike: Oh wow. Dave Luce: So those are the ones that I'm just like, "Yeah." You know, the ones that I also really enjoy are when I can get somebody that is an abuser, someone that abuses women or children that I can get them served and get that restraining order on them. So that there's at least something to stop this abuse from going on. Those are the ones I get a really good satisfaction out of. Mighty Mike: Those are good ones. So, Dave, I gotta call you out on this one man. I know that you have a story in your back pocket that you call the greatest story of all time. We gotta hear it. Dave Luce: 20 years in this business, this story will never be beat. I've got an attorney-client that his ... one of his clients, he shares an office with a modeling agency and they've discovered that a lot of their models their images are being used without their knowledge and consent to advertise for strip clubs and swingers clubs and sex magazines. So in the last three years, I've probably served every stripper club, nudey bar, gentleman's club, sex rag in LA and Orange County. Mighty Mike: You poor guy. Dave Luce: And I got this one ... I got this one and it was for a swingers club down by USC campus and my family knows what I'm doing and when I get an amusing one I'll be like, "Oh this ought to be interesting." And I told my daughter, and so she actually looked the place up and I was out in the field and she called me and she's like, "Dad, Dad, guess what night it is at that place you're going." "I don't know, what night is it?" "It's pantsless night, what are you wearing?" "I'm not there to participate, I'm wearing my pants of course." So I get there and while I'm waiting for the owner to come out, this big white limousine, stretch limo pulls up and this fine woman, I mean a perfect ten gets out of the car holding a dog leash and I think, "Well it's going to be a little Pomeranian or something come out of the car." No. This guy comes out of the car wearing a leather hood and no top and assless chaps. Dave Luce: So I start laughing and this guy goes running up to me till he gets to the end of the dog leash and it's like eek, and now I'm busting a gut, I can hardly stand I'm laughing so hard, he's like "Officer, officer, I want your badge number, I'm reporting you to your supervisor." It's like, "Good luck with that, I own the company, besides that you're the one on the end of a dog collar wearing a leather hood and assless chaps. You earned the laugh." Mighty Mike: Oh man, that must have been quite an experience. Dave Luce: It was funny, like I said, 20 years in this business that story will never be beat. Mighty Mike: I don't think ... I'm going to put it on the show notes and we're going to see as time goes on, we'll see if anybody ... that'll be the challenge. Dave Luce: Okay, yeah, there you go. Mighty Mike: So Dave, what are you working on right now that has you most fired up? Dave Luce: Well as far as things in the industry, the thing that has me most fired up are the unscrupulous people that pass themselves off as professional servers. You know that they go out and they'll promise service or no payment or they charge a ridiculously small price. I mean I had a friend that she lost her house because of fraudulent service. Dave Luce: And she contacted me, she was in the middle of her house and got a notice that the house had been foreclosed and auctioned off and they had 30 days to leave. So she called me and I said, "Well the first thing you gotta do is you gotta get in that file and look at that proof of service because of your schedule, you're all over the place. And if you can prove you were not there and it says Personal Service you've got a case." So they've got a huge lawsuit going against the process server, the attorney service, the attorneys and the bank, but because it was already sold in auction she has no prayer of getting this house back and she was really devastated because three of her five kids were home birthed in that house. Mighty Mike: That's terrible. I experienced that same situation with a lot of the unlawful detainers I do in mobile home parks. A lot of times the mobile home park people, they do the eviction. I've actually done an eviction on a friend of mine because they were saying she was a nuisance, I told her, "You need to get an attorney." And she waited too long till the last minute and she ended up having to move out of the house. They get the property and they make it difficult, so even in the auction, you'd have to ... If you won the auction you'd have to move the trailer off the park, that's the way they word it. Mighty Mike: So sewer service has been running rampant, in a few other states I noticed that they were talking about passing a law to have cameras on process servers, it's one of the ideas that I saw that was proposed, and I'm not sure exactly what state it is, I'll have to look it up maybe post it in the show notes for this episode, but what do you think about that? Making something like that required for process servers? Dave Luce: Well, I think it was New York that actually changed their law that the anything that is served in attempts has to have some sort of a photo that's date, time and geocoded stamped and that's because of all the sewer service and I think the one, in particular, was ABC Legal got a huge judgment against them for that. Mighty Mike: I heard about that, yeah, ABC Legal. Dave Luce: And it's like ... Really the only attorney service that I do work for is called Firefly Legal, they've got 16 offices in the Midwest and the east coast and I'm contracted to do all their LA County stuff, and the reason I work for them is they pay me my rate. They don't pay me some pittance, they pay me my rate and when I do the attempts and stuff, as I've filling it out in their software it shows the geocode. You know, 'cause I have to put in all the other information, but right at the bottom, it shows the geocode where I'm at, the GPS location. So they have a record of that, so I think that kind of stuff is a really good idea. On my own if I'm doing a posting I just take a picture on my camera phone and that has that on that and then I'll print the picture out and sent it to the attorney so they've got it. Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's really good and now most of the apps have an option to be able to take a photograph and attach it right there on the job. You know, ServeManager, Tristar and I'm sure there are others that do the same thing. Mighty Mike: So Dave what do you want Server Nation to get from what you're working on right now? What do you think that the servers out there should be thinking about when it comes all of this sewer service talk? Dave Luce: I think the best thing is to keep very detailed notes. I keep hard copy notes of all my attempts, all service situations, who I've served, what their description is, and probably once a year I'll get called into court because of somebody's challenging service. And about half those times, once I write up my declaration and send it to the attorney I don't even have to show up, they just drop it and other times when I've actually had to go in and testify I've had the judge look them dead in the eyes and say, "You say you were out of town, I want to see some receipts and notes because according to his testimony and his description of you, you were absolutely served." Mighty Mike: That's good yeah, I always love when I go in there and they say they weren't served the notice, they always like to contest the notice, and I have a date and time and GPS stamped photograph of the posting on their house, you know, in some cases them walking into the door or whatever. And the judge just shakes his head like, "So you never saw this man. You know, come on." Dave Luce: I mean, another thing that I also do when I have to do a mailing is I send my clients back the receipt that shows that at this post office on this date at this time to this city and this zip code there was a letter sent. So that's further back up that the mailing went out. Mighty Mike: Are you talking about the certification, or are you just put them as the return address? Dave Luce: No when you do a posting and mailing. Mighty Mike: Yeah. Dave Luce: Or when you do a subserve and have to mail the copy. Mighty Mike: Oh the certified, yeah. Dave Luce: What I have to put on the proof of service, you know, I mailed a copy on this date from this location to the address where served. I'd make sure that I don't just ... You know I pay for it at the post office so I get that mailing receipt and then I send my clients that too so they've got more back up. Mighty Mike: Right, that's good. Yeah what we started doing was printing a ... You know how when you send certified, not certified, but just a first-class mail when you subserve something, we started putting our clients as the return address so we don't have to shred the documents and it's like a double verification when it gets sent back, 'cause a lot of times a lot of the evictions that we do it's a vacant property, so it ends up the certified stuff ends up getting send back to our client. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, Dave has been dropping some major value bombs on us so far today, but prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, imagine what you could do with another 25 minutes per job. This is how much time process servers who use ServeManager are saving. At just 100 jobs per month that's over 40 hours that can be spent growing your business or doing more important things like spending time with your family. From job creation to affidavit generation, ServeManager is a full featured and hands down the most intuitive process serving software on the market. I use it for my business, I think you should use it too. Mighty Mike: In my firm, it's important for me to be able to automate the systems and get things done. ServeManager has done just that with their- Mighty Mike: They get things done. ServeManager has done just that with their API integration. When you can set up literally app to integrate with Zapier or integrate with ServeManager. I love it. I've set my whole firm up. Go to ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager to get your free trial. If you like it after the 14-day free trial, they've offered to give you another 60 days for free, as a thank-you for being a Process Server Daily listener. That's ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager. ServeManager Special Offer Get an Extra 60 Days Free! Listeners of the Process Server Daily podcast get a total of 74 days to try ServeManager free of charge. That’s an additional 60 days longer than ServeManager’s typical 14 day trial.   To receive an additional 60 days, you must provide a credit card at the end of your 14 day trial. Your card will NOT be billed until the end of your additional 60 days. You can cancel at anytime before that date. After your additional 60 days, your card will be billed. This offer is only valid for new Servemanager users.*   Mighty Mike: Welcome back to the show. Dave, are you ready for the Rapid Fire Round? Dave Luce: Yes, I am. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite skip trace tactic? Dave Luce: My favorite tactic is to definitely find out where they were before, get whatever information that I from the client first. Because then that allows me to do a better skip trace. Because it might be that one little piece of information that leads me to the correct information that I'm looking for. Mighty Mike: That's good. Do you use a form, or are you just working with email? Dave Luce: No, I just work it with email and whatever information. That's how I get most of my jobs is by email. They mail them to me by email, and I tell them I've printed and received OK, and then I keep them advised throughout the whole process. Mighty Mike: That's great. Dave, what's your favorite tool for defense? Dave Luce: Definitely would have to be my fists. I don't play around. Again, my first defense is situational awareness. But if somebody takes that first swing, mine's going to break your nose and my second one's going in your throat. You're not getting up. We're done. Mighty Mike: So Dave, I want to know more about that really fast. Are you a ninja? Dave Luce: No. I've just had a lot of good training over the years. I spent most of the 80s running security for most of the NFL and all the Super Bowls, concert tours all over the country. I've been in riots from 50 people to 5,000 people. Mighty Mike: That's good stuff, Dave. What book would you recommend? Dave Luce: For the Process Servers, I would recommend whatever your code of civil procedure is. Know exactly what you can do and when you can do it, and how you can do it. Mighty Mike: That's good. Dave, what is the greatest advice you've ever received? Dave Luce: Greatest advice I ever got was from my grandfather, who's actually the man I considered to be my father, because he taught me what it was to be a man, and how to be a father. And he always said, "Having integrity is doing the right thing even when nobody's looking." And we as Process Servers, we have to have integrity. Number one, our clients have to know that, when we do something and we say that we did something, they have absolute confidence that it happened exactly the way we said it did. Mighty Mike: That's a good one. One of my favorite quotes is, "Your actions are speaking so loud, I can't hear what you're saying." Dave, what would you do if you woke up today, you had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smartphone, a car, and only $100, what would you do in the next week? Dave Luce: Definitely it would be to get a website, to get a website and then take whatever I've got left from that and get some nice flyers printed up. And the way that I got a lot of clients when I first started back in '96 is, I would stand out in front of courthouses, dress nice, and give them my card and a flyer, and let them know what I do. And I've picked up a lot of clients like that, especially a lot of those coming out from doing the self-filings for small claims. Mighty Mike: That's good. I've always said that when I retire, I'm going to go stand in front of the courthouse and I'm going to have a new company. It's going to be called The Bad News Bear. And I'm just going to have a big bear suit on and going to stand in front of the courthouse and hand out cards. It'll be a little plastic bear that'll be like, "I serve people." And then a, because you're retired. You could do whatever you want to do when you're retired. Dave Luce: Technically, I am retired. This is my retirement job, was to go back into this. I finally got my pension and benefits for life from the Sheriff's Department, because it was injured in the line of duty. And I really enjoy process serving. I've always liked helping people, and I've always viewed what we do as process servers as, we're helping start the wheels of justice for the person that got screwed over to begin with. Because they can't get any justice until somebody serves somebody else. Mighty Mike: That's good. Yeah, that's good. Some of my attorney clients' friends will say, well, as soon as we get in the courtroom, the first thing they say is, "Do you have a proof of service?" And if you don't have a proof of service, you got to have a reason or a declaration or something to continue the hearing. And sometimes, it just means you lose your case. So that's good. Yeah, we get the wheels of justice moving. We got quite a few good quotes going here. So Dave, so we talked about the website. We talked about standing out in front of the courthouse. Would you agree that networking is one of the most important things? Dave Luce: It definitely is important. Join your local Chamber of Commerce, join some of the national associations, if you can afford it. But definitely get your name out there, and make sure that the name you're getting out there is a good one. Because that's how I get most of my referrals. I mean, I had one of my clients actually referred me to the Michigan Office to the Attorney General, that I now serve stuff that they send out here to LA. Mighty Mike: Wow. Dave Luce: I mean, I thought it was a joke when I got the email, and I replied back and was like, "No." It actually is the Michigan Office to the Attorney General. Mighty Mike: Well, I got to tell you, I was going to say, because networking, to me, seems like one of your big strengths. Anybody that I'd talk to that I asked serving in that area, they go, "Go to Dave, go to Dave Luce." So that's a- Dave Luce: Yeah. And my clients, especially the ones that are new, one thing they really appreciate is that, they don't have to think about it. Once they give it to me, it doesn't go into that black hole and they don't know the progress with it or the attempts or anything like that. I mean, I have clients that will, like I said, [inaudible 00:25:50], they'll pay me a lot of money to go as far south as San Diego and as far north as Santa Barbara. Mighty Mike: Wow. Dave Luce: They know they can find somebody else cheaper, but they know they're not going to find anybody better. Mighty Mike: Right. Dave Luce: So they'll send me and pay me several hundred dollars. Mighty Mike: Well, Dave, you are the man. And what I take most from that story is, to watch your name and your credibility. What are some of the main things that Process Servers do to ruin their credibility? Dave Luce: I would say, promising the moon and not delivering it. Saying, "Oh, well I'll get this done within x amount of time," and then not doing it. Mighty Mike: That's good. Dave Luce: The way I base my regular service is, three attempts done within a week of me getting the papers. And so, sometimes it's a lot faster. But I'm not going to say, "Oh, well, I'll get to it tomorrow," because I may have a rush that's going 30 miles the other way, and I can't get to it. So I just give them a range of dates. They're also happy that I get it done so quickly. Mighty Mike: So Dave, what is the best way that we can connect with you, and then we'll say goodbye? Dave Luce: Well, my website is www.LoveToServeThem, all one word, .com. You can find me on Facebook at LoveToServeThemLLC. You can also find on Yelp at Love To Serve Them. I try to, I'm on LinkedIn under the same. I try to keep it fairly simple, because again, I'm a one-man operation. Mighty Mike: Yeah. Dave Luce: And I would much prefer that I get. Like with Yelp, I almost never get a client off Yelp. The ones that call me off Yelp, they're looking for an attorney or they want something for nothing, or I'll tell them my price and it's like, "Well, do you guarantee service?" "No." "Well, I've talked to others that guarantee a service for less." And I'm like, "Run, run. Do not use that." Because of course they're going to say they served it when they didn't, because they want to get paid. Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's one element that people don't really recognize sometimes is like, this isn't a McDonald's drive-thru. Right? You're not just like, transactionally paying them and then they're doing something that's. If it's important to you, then pay the money. Right? Like, I've noticed that most of the time, attorneys and paralegals, they don't even blink an eye at my $79, $99 rates. They don't even blink an eye. They'd just say, "Okay," because they'd pass it on their clients and they know that you're a professional and you're going to take care of it so. I love that Dave. All of Dave's information is going to be available in the show notes on his page. You can go to ProcessServerDaily.com/dave and that'll take you to his show notes page. Dave, I want to personally thank you for being on the show. I have been impressed with your story and I'm excited to share it with the world. Dave Luce: I appreciate it, Michael. I see all your posts all the time, and you definitely keep me laughing, but you also have a lot of great information, especially for those new servers. Mighty Mike: That's good, it- Dave Luce: I would say that one thing for somebody that's new coming into this that doesn't know what process serving is all about is, you just have to remember that you're blindsiding people with legal notices. And yes, they're going to get upset, but don't take it personally. You have to have a thick skin to do this job. Mighty Mike: That's good. Thank you for that, and now, Dave, I appreciate it. So until next time, Server Nation, you've been served up some awesomeness by Dave Luce, the Process Server, and Mighty Mike, the Podcast Server. Mighty Mike: Don't forget to get your free 60-day trial from ServeManager at ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager. Server Nation, I want to personally thank you for listening to today's episode, and ask you a question: Do you or your staff need additional training? Can you handle more clients, but not sure where to get them? I've developed a solution, PSDUniversity.com offers a step-by-step online training by the top legal support professionals in the industry. Visit www.PSDUniversity.com 

This Episodes Sponsosr: ServeManager Special Offer Get an Extra 60 Days Free! Listeners of the Process Server Daily podcast get a total of 74 days to try ServeManager free of charge. That’s an additional 60 days longer than ServeManager’s typical 14 day trial.   To receive an additional 60 days, you must provide a credit card at the end of your 14 day trial. Your card will NOT be billed until the end of your additional 60 days. You can cancel at anytime before that date. After your additional 60 days, your card will be billed. **THIS OFFER IS VALID FOR NEW CUSTOMERS ONLY** ---------------------------- Server Nation, welcome back to the show! Our guest today is none other than the man, the myth, the legend, and the Sasquatch of the Northwest. The owner of Central Washington Legal Services, he has 10 years of experience serving papers and can bowl his butt off with a regular score of 300. Chris Svelnys, welcome to the show.     Hey. Thanks a lot, brother. I appreciate it.   Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry?     Well, it all started back in 2000 ... I want to say around 2007. I was working at Wal-Mart and I kind of befriended the department manager really quick. That's how I roll, make new friends with the bosses. He's a little ... He's just a couple years older than me and he's a nice guy. He just ... He asked me one day, after working for him for about six months to a year, he's like, "Hey, you want to make some extra money on the side?" I kind of knew what he did on the side and I said, "Oh, doing what?" He's like, "Serving papers," and I'm like, "Oh, man. Okay. I've seen the movie "Pineapple Express," it is kind of like that?" and he's like, "No, no, no. Well, sometimes."He's like, "Tell you what." He's like ...   His mom kind of half-ran the office, It used to be her business 30 years ago. Her and this guy, Junior, was helping out this older lady that was doing it. She only had 10 customers, just barely making a few hundred bucks a month. Well, they took it over and she passed away, so they took it over and they ran it 10 times fold and grew the business exponentially.    Her son, Derek, my boss, he was helping out, and so he was like, "Well, just swing by the office and the guy will take you out for a day. I'll text you and make sure your mind is all cleared and you're not a crazy person, which I know you're not," that's why he was telling me about it, kind of like who you know, not what you know. I said, "Okay."   Took me out for a day and went up North to Oroville, to the border of USA and Canada, and we maybe hit three or four houses, all of which he went out of the car and I didn't get to see any of the dialogue so I'm getting super nervous and wondering how I'm actually going to serve papers if I don't know what the dialogue is like. He comes back and we just ... He asks me about my whole life story, the 12 hours that we drove, and i came back that night. The next day, I guess he told the owner, said, "Hey, yeah, he's a good guy. Hire him." The rest is history.     The first few days, I went ... I started out as an independent contractor for a few months. I was only doing it part-time so it really wasn't worth my time, especially being new to the areas and not knowing where everything was at and new to the business. I ended up going on the books with the company for eight, nine years until last year. We took over the business again, my buddy and his mom, because she shared the business with another owner in Alaska, in the west-side, and he broke off. He's doing his own thing so they took it over last summer, so now I became an independent contractor again. It just ... It's more fortunate for me now, since I know everywhere, all the counties and all the clients and the clientele and the process and everything. That's pretty much how I started it.     Well, that's awesome, Chris. You got a family?     I do, yeah. I have a dad out here, I have a mom ... I'm from Connecticut, born and raised. I moved out here in '05. After 9/11, my dad moved out here and I have a bunch of step-family out here. One of my middle brothers is out here. My oldest brother is back east with my mom, so I got family up and down the east coast and New York and New England area, and then I have a bunch of step-family out here in Washington state, Idaho, and parts of Oregon.     That's awesome.     Super blessed. Just awesome people out here in the west coast.     That's awesome, Chris. I've got to tell you that one of the main reasons I wanted you to come on the show is when I heard your story. We may get to that. If you want to share that same story, that's fine, but you got a lot going on. With these kind of stories, you got to be able to share it, man. You can't keep them to yourself!     I know, I know. Really, really quick on that one story, if I do get into it, my boss was actually at a NAPPS meeting, N-A-P-P-S meeting, a couple states away. After it happened, I was so distraught and I called her up and she just starts busting out laughing. She's like, "Hold on, repeat what you just said to me. You're on speakerphone with about 10 other NAPPS members. Go ahead, Chris. What happened?" I told them and they were all just around a bonfire or something, just dying laughing. They're like, "How does this happen?"     Then, from that point on, just the most bizarre, craziest stuff happens to me, and it's just laughable.     Yeah. Well, we always like to get started ... We don't want to focus on the negative things in life, but there's a reason why you're on this show. You got a lot going on, you got a lot of great stories.    First, we're going to start with your worst experience in the field. Can you tell us about that?     Yeah. My worst experience by far would have to be ... I was going to a house and I'd been there a couple times before. It's a repeater house. Every time I go there, something bad happens.    The first time, I got bit by a dog. Flesh wound, cut the skin. Second time I went there, I locked my keys in my car. The guy I served was the boyfriend of the lady I was serving and he was nice enough to accept the papers and help me get back in my car. I had to break into my car.   Then, the third time, which was the worst serve ever, I was going ... It just rained out and it was like a single-wide trailer. I walked around the corner and I ended up slipping on the mud and pretty much thought I broke my leg. I did a full half split, right to the ground, screaming bloody murder. I thought I broke my leg. I'm rolling around in the mud, in the grass, yelling for help from anybody. No one's around, so I ended up crawling back to my Chevy Tracker that I had and hoisting myself up. Called my boss, got to my phone, called my boss. Screaming at her, telling her I broke my leg, I broke my leg, I need to go to the hospital, and she's like, "Oh, my God." She's like, "Okay, just call 911 and have the ambulance come there." I'm like, "No, I'm already in the car."   All of a sudden, the people come up and they pull up, the owners of the property, and they're ... I'm screaming at them. Not at them directly, but just in pain.    I was in so much pain. They said, "Did you want us to bring you to the hospital?" I was like, "No, I'm already in here," and they're like, "Oh, my God. I'm sorry." You could see the streak of where my leg came out under me on their property there and I just said, "Yeah, I got to go now. I got to go now." I just ... All I could think about was getting to the hospital. I was going, "Hey, by the way, is so-and-so here?" They're like, "Yeah." I said, "Here you go. You've been served."     I got the papers served, that was all that matters, and I drove to the hospital, which was just five minutes away from there. I couldn't get out of the car. I saw a couple EMTs washing the EMT van, the hospital track, and I yelled at them. They came and got a wheelchair for me. I ended up pulling the worst hammy of all times, from my lower back down to behind my leg and my knee. Just completely black and blue. I couldn't walk for about three weeks, had to go on unemployment for a few weeks and physical therapy and ...Yeah, so I have yet to be back to that property.    I'm prepared to wear all body armor and just go back there again. That was by far the worst, painful experience, serve I've ever had to deal with.     Now, would you say that you fell because of the rain, the mud, or ...     Oh, yeah, that was the rain and the mud.     Right on.     There was really nothing they could do about it. People say, "Oh, you go after the property owners." I'm like, "Nah, it was pure accident, myself." There's nothing they could have done about it. The way their low land is at, it's just mud and grass everywhere.     That's a pretty terrible experience.    What do you want Server Nation to get from your story?   Oh, with that experience, just to really watch where you're going and tread lightly on all different kinds of terrain and property. That's not the only time I fell in the 10 years I've been doing this. I fell a lot, but that was definitely the worst. It can happen in our line of work. Just to really be careful. Safety is your number one concern, as always. Just to be careful and just watch where you're walking, watch where you're stepping.     No, that's great. I got to tell you, people so often think, "Oh, have you ever had a gun in your face?" No, but I stepped wrong and went down a flight of stairs, and not just any, concrete stairs with the little rocks on them. I think that's worse.     Right.    Funny, I've actually had a few guns pulled on me over 10 years, all of which were really respectful once they found out who ... They knew who I was, they disengaged their weapon and put it in their holster or away from me, and they were super nice. I was way out in the country. I wouldn't expect anything less from the owners out there. Nothing still as far as scarier as that. I literally thought I broke my leg bad.     Yeah, that's a terrible experience. Yeah, Server Nation, watch where you're going and be prepared.     I got to tell you, wearing the right shoes, Sometimes, I wear dress shoes if I know I'm serving businesses. If I go up to the mountains, I don't just carry a .38, I carry a cannon     Right.   Right.     It just depends on each ... Every situation is different.     Right. Yeah.     Being prepared for all those situations ... It's hard to prepare for something like mud. If you slip in the mud, I guess just having your cell phone on you always, because you could've ...     True, yeah.     You could've called from the mud if you had to.     Right, yeah. crawling around and getting back into the vehicle, yeah.   That's true.     Yeah. Chris, that's a good story to start with. Tell us about your greatest experience working in the field.     I serve papers as professionally as I can. I try and treat others the way I want to be treated, respect. This one is a little different than most, I would say. My grandmother passed away ... My last known grandparent ...   My grandmother passed away last ... My last known grandparent passed away last September and I got the news at the start of my day. She lives back East in Connecticut with my other family over there and I was driving, I was heading to my first job, just a couple minutes away my stepdad calls me up. Everything was good with her health-wise, but she ended up passing away right then and there that morning. I was just really in shock and I get to my first serve and I try to compose myself and really didn't get emotional. I was still kind of in shock. I get to the door and this older lady who kind of reminded me of my grandmother answered the door and I just bawled right when she came to the porch on the steps.     Oh wow.   She had no idea why I was there and I just bawl for about five, ten minutes and she just hugged me and held me. Told her that I ... Finally, it took me about 10, 15 minutes to tell her who I am, why I'm there, and why I'm bawling like a baby. I served the papers. She was super nice, super friendly, one of the nicest people that I ever served. To show that kind of compassion, you know, being served papers from one human being to another, she just knew that I needed a hug and a shoulder to cry on. I tell people about her all the time. Well, I just went and served her again a few weeks ago and I pull up, and as soon as I get out of my car and turn around to face her house, she's already outside with her arms wide open to give me a hug.     I just ... You know, of course, I was more composed this time and I just told her, I said, "I tell people about you all the time, this lady who I served who was there for me when I needed somebody, just a human interaction." That's definitely one of my best serves that I can ever think. After that, after I served her, and composed myself, I had one of the best serving days ever. It's almost like my grandma was like, "You know what? It's okay, Chris. I'm gone, but I'm going to make sure everybody's home today," and I knocked out over 35 jobs that day.   Oh, wow.     It was just like she was with me. I could have gone home and taken the day off. I said, "No, this job needs to get done. Clients need attempts and statuses and everything, so I'm going for it." It was like one of the best serving days I've ever had.     That's the part of this job that we don't talk about a whole lot that ... I think in both of your experiences that you've shared today, what I've taken from it is that we're people too. The people who we're serving are people; like the guys that pulled up in the car, imagine if they were what everybody else portrays people that we're serving to be. They pull up in their car and they're like, "What the hell are you doing on my property?"     Absolutely.     "I'm injured." "I don't care. Get off my property."     Exactly, yep.     That's cool.   "Get injured somewhere else."     "Yeah, not on my property." "Are you so and so?" "No." You're like having to deal with all that. You know, I think you were fortunate, blessed, lucky, whatever you want to call it. I call it blessed. But, the elderly lady, I have a lot of respect for elderly people and the wisdom that they can share with us.     Absolutely.     That's good. What do you want Server Nation to take from your story?     Again, back to the beginning of that story, I just try and serve everybody with respect. A lot of times when I serve people that have not been served in the past by other servers, and I'm not trying to put down other Process Server companies and any other independent contract servers, but a lot of them tell me that a lot of them just get the papers served and the server is super rude, sometimes nasty, and throw the papers in their face. I never do that. I'm always professional with every serve. I take it ... I don't know where everybody else serves if there's like no cell service or connection, but when I'm serving people up in the mountains and I'm super nice to them like I am with everybody, if your car breaks down and you were nice to that person, you can go back to that house and say, "Hey."     It's happened to me before. They gave me shelter, and they gave me a phone, they gave me water, they let me use their restroom. They remembered me serving them as a professional and it goes a lot way by treating people with respect. Treating people ... You're serving, no matter what the paperwork with the utmost respect that you wanted to be treated with.     That's awesome. I love that story and I love that perspective. I like to say, "Treat others the way that you want to be treated." They're a human. When you're out there serving papers, of course, be prepared, be respectful, number one things. Chris, what are you working on right now that has you most fired up?     Getting to jobs that are way up in the mountains that there's just no way, again, to the jobs, and keeping the clients happy, keeping the clients as customers, and trying my hardest to get to properties that I can get to with all the snow up here in the Pacific Northwest and the terrain of the mountains the way they are. Every winter I look forward to this. It's really tough to try and get to these. I've had jobs, I'm not going to lie, that I've had since the middle of November and beginning of December that I just cannot get to. With the three, four feet of snow, I don't own a snowmobile so I can't park up and get a truck, and get up and get my snowmobile onto the terrain and get up there. Now with the snowmelt, it's ... Spring's right around the corner, everything's melting, so now clients are getting happy where I can finally get to these jobs that I haven't been able to get to just because of the terrain that we have jobs for.     Right. Well, that's awesome. I've got to tell you, there's a guy up in Alaska who, on most of his jobs, he was telling me that he goes up to the mountain on-     Helicopter?     Snowmobile.   Oh.     Helicopter. No, he did say that. He said that on some of them he does have to go wait until the ice is actually frozen so that he can go on a snowmobile over the ice.     Wow.     Yeah, and then also he'll ride quads and things like that. Most of the serves that he does is on quad or snowmobile. I'm just like, wow. What I wanted to ask you is, how bad do these clients want these people served? Because one time I had a situation where I had to serve a pot grower and they wanted me to get pictures and I said, "Well, there's gates and I might be able to serve them, but as far as the pictures go, you know, you're probably not going to get very good pictures because they have these big, old fences with tarps up and stuff," and they wanted to get pictures of the pot. I was like, "You know, I could get a drone and fly it over and take pictures." They said, "Okay, yeah, do that." I said, "Well, I'm going to have to charge the expense for the drone to you." I was able to do that $750 drone.   Wow, I'm actually really impressed.   Yeah, so maybe you want to call your client and go, "Look, between you and this guy, we could get ourselves a snowmobile up here and then we'll be in operation."   No, that's correct. For the most part, all clients ... We've had the same clients for years, and years, and years, they know us, they trust us, and as long as they know that I am trying at least every few days or once a week to go to these impossible areas ... I mean, every time I get a little bit closer, a little bit closer, I'll take a picture of the road, the street sign, "Okay, I'm getting this close or this close." They see that we're working and they're really good with that. Clients are really relaxed with that and they're like, "Okay, this company, they're trying. Chris is trying." They just sit on the paperwork and know that I'll get it done when I can get up there.   Server Nation, Chris has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors.   SPONSOR: Servemanager   Server Nation, imagine what you could do with another 25 minutes per job? This is how much time processors at ServeManager are saving. At just 100 jobs per month, that's over 40 hours that can be spent growing your business or doing more important things like spending time with your family. From job creation to affidavit generations, ServeManagers full featured and hands down the most intuitive process serving software on the market. I use it for my business. I think you should use it too.     In my firm, it's important for me to be able to automate the systems that get things done. ServeManager has done just that with their API integration where you can set up literally any app that integrates with Zapier, will integrate with ServeManager. I love it. I set my whole firm up. Go to processserverdaily.com/servemanager to get your free trial. If you like it after the 14 day free trial, they've offered to give you another 60 days for free as a thank you for being a Process Server Daily listener. That's processerverdaily.com/servemanager     Welcome back to the show.    Chris, are you ready for the rapid fire round?     I'm ready now. Sasquatch of the Northwest is ready.     Yes. That's what I'm talking about. That's awesome. What is your favorite tool for defense?     My mind and my mouth. I've gotten into many, many altercations that could have ended up being physical. If I was talked my way out of them because of a couple things of advice I was always taught by the veteran server who trained me for that day was that, one, no paper is worth getting punched, stabbed, shot, or killed over, and no paper is worth spending a night in jail with Bubba. That's for you and the person you're serving. I mean, if they start to get angry say, "Hey, you know what? I'm a legal courier. I'm just trying to do my job." When I worked for the old owner, for the good eight years right there, we weren't even allowed to have a weapon on us. We weren't even allowed to have bug spray. We weren't allowed to have any weapons.     Now that I'm an IC, I've always had my concealed weapons permit, but I never really brought it with me because I learned to not have to use weapons. I just use my mind, and my quick talking, and talk my way out of every possible physical confrontation. I've never been swung at. I've been, of course, yelled at and pretty close to being spit at, and people in my face to get me off the property. I just put my hands up and say, "Okay, sorry to bother you. Just trying to do my job."     Yeah. I've got to tell you, situational awareness and being able to look at a situation and come at it from a perspective of, "I'm just trying to do a job." Just yesterday I was down in Yuba City and I had a situation where I pulled up to a property and everyone's outside, everyone and their mother's outside. I think they were even cooking on an actual stove in the front yard. There's a car parked sideways and another one, a car parked out of the window. It's just insane. It was an insane ...    You're walking up there thinking, "I shouldn't be walking up here." Because I'm a little bit stubborn and I have like 40 serves to do, I don't want to come back.     Right.     In this situation, I just walk up. Before I could even get out of my car though, one guy's like peeking over my shoulder in the car to see what I'm doing-     One guy is like peeking over my shoulder in the car to see what I'm doing. Am I getting out? Am I an officer? I don't do anything to make people think that I am a cop for multiple reasons, but this situation I got out, and I just said, "Hey, guys. How's it going guys?" And you just be like that nice guy that's like, "Hey, what's going on? Do you know the people that live in that house?" This guy yesterday was like, "No, nobody by that name lives in there. Some lady named Tina lives in there," and I said, "Oh, okay and what's your name?" And he just walked away.     He walks inside the house that I was talking about, but then there's this young kid like 16 something, somewhere around there, and he's like, "No, that girl moved out. She's my age. She moved out a long time ago," and he seemed a little bit more ...     It's crazy situation awareness being able to see a situation where there's like five guys, and you see they're carrying guns, don't stop, just keep going, like it's not worth your life.    Chris, what is the greatest advice you have ever received?     On top of no paper is worth getting killed over or spending a night in jail with over, but the greatest advice, everybody talked about it before is just to treat people the way you want to be treated, and it goes so far with everything, you know, not just this job, but in your in period, in general, but that is definitely. You want to definitely be sociable, be friendly, be professional, and that will just go a long way.     This next question, it trips up a lot of people when they come on here. They're not sure how to go about it, but I know that with your awesome skills, the man, the myth, the legend, the Sasquatch of the North.     That's right.     What would you do if you woke up today, had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smartphone, a car, and only $100, what would you do in the next week?     In the next week, with just that I would immediately start making friends with all the local attorney offices, all the local courthouses, the clerks are your best friends at all the courts, the district courts, superior court, clerks offices. I can't tell you how much I love all of them over here in the six counties that I cover. They are a huge resource for you. So, definitely befriend them. Most of them are good people. A lot of them can get a little frustrated with the people they deal with, and even the service they deal with, but definitely with making revenue, generate a lot of business for you.     They turn a lot of people your way, because they get a bunch of walk-ins every day, all different counties. Different, you know, I said district or superior court. So, that would be like your first step is just to befriend the clerks offices, and then make your way into the attorney's offices, and just be very professional, very sociable, and have just a good persona of what you're doing and what you plan to do with your business, and you'll see it grow, just exponentially.     That's awesome, Chris. That's great advice. I have a question. So, when you talk about going to clerks and things like that, what is the best way? Because in many counties they don't allow you to, they're not allowed to promote any individual, independent contractors, or any companies, they usually just send people to the sheriff. Do you find it's different in your county or is there something you're doing that I'm not doing?   You know, some of the courts, they actually have business card slots there.     Oh, wow.     You put your business cards next to the window of the clerk's office windows. Their rules is they can't give any legal advice to people, that's their biggest rule, but as far as referring to people to process servers, I haven't had a problem in any of the counties here in Washington state. They say, "Hey, check out the servers here." There's a list of business cards here, and if you develop more of a better relationship with them, a more personal relationship with them by seeing them every week, day in and day out, they kind of know you personally, and they'll say, "Hey, this guy, he's a good guy, a good server. Go send the business that way."     Yeah, and I've said this a 1,000 times. I'll say it again. The court clerks have all the power.     They do.     If you go there, if you make an enemy out of a court clerk ...     Oh, yeah. No. We've had our run ins with some of the clerk's offices and even our clerk's offices, there might be one or two, they're having a bad day and you step on the wrong toe, and man it's no help at all.     Yeah, you'll show up to their window, and they'll take a lunch.   Yeah, oh yeah. Most of them do here, like from 12:00 to 1:00, you can't get help, but even if I'm running a little bit late, I can just call a direct number here and there, and I'll talk to my favorite person, and they'll wait for me and file my paperwork before they go to lunch.     That's awesome.     It helps if you're just really friendly with the clerk's offices.   That's a really good tip.    So, what I take most from your story, like we talked about before, you treat others the way you want to be treated, get out there and make friends with people. You just find situations to be able to grow your network. They say your network is your network. You know, if you don't know anybody, nobody knows you, you're probably working a minimum wage job. It's just usually how it works.     Yep.     So, that's what I get most from your story. Chris, we're going to go ahead and wrap it up.    What is your parting piece of advice for Server Nation?     Is just to network, treat people with respect, treat your affiliates with respect, your neighboring partners in businesses. We do so much work for neighboring county affiliates of ours, and they really, without them, you know, we wouldn't see quite a bit of business that we do see, and I'm so grateful to just have that kind of connection and networking capabilities with the neighboring affiliates and other serving companies in this state and surrounding counties, and just to draw out there everyday and there's no sick days in this job.     Isn't that the truth?     You're in your car for most the day, so it's fine, and just go out there and be safe, and just every day is a new day. Every paper is a new paper. Every person is a new person, and that's one of the reasons that I love this job is because you meet all different kinds of characters. Mostly good. Some bad. Some interesting, but enjoy what you do.     Chris, what is the best that we can connect with you, and then we'll say good-bye.     The best way to connect with me is my email, which is chrissvelyns@gmail.com, and my phone number is 509-770-3336 and call me day or night, I will always be around. If anybody has any questions or needs advice, I'm here, and I'm located here Mosaic, Washington, and another email would be A2Zlegalcouriers@gmail.com   That's awesome. Is that your web domain as well? Legal Couriers?   Yeah, A to Z Legal Couriers, yeah, that's where I'm contracted for.     Chris, I want to personally thank you for coming on the show. I have been so impressed with your story, and I'm excited to share it with the world.     Thank you for the opportunity.     Until next time, Server Nation. You have been served up some awesomeness by the man, the myth, the legend, the Sasquatch of the northwest, and Mighty Mike the Podcast Server.    Server Nation, I want to personally thank you for listening to that episode, and I want to invite you to visit the website. ProcessServerDaily.Com/Podcast. Check out the episodes, you can even ask a question. I will air your voice clip on my podcast so that my guests can answer your question directly.    www.ProcessServerDaily.com  

Mighty Mike: Our guest today was a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and served for a brief time in law enforcement. She gained a bachelor's degree in business while working the private sector as a private investigator and process server. Amanda Curran, welcome to the show. Amanda Curran: Hello, how are you, Michael? Mighty Mike: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Amanda, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry. Amanda Curran: Well, I mean you pretty much hit the nail on the head there. I got into it actually as a private investigator and I was serving papers for the private investigator I worked for on the side. And then I decided, just due to some circumstances. I have the utmost respect for the person I worked for in giving me the opportunity, but I needed to branch off on my own. So Apex Legal Support Services was born. Mighty Mike: That's excellent. Amanda, there's a reason why you're on the show. You're full of great experiences, but first, tell me a little bit about your family. Amanda Curran: My family is awesome. My family is everything to me. My two kids, I have a six-year-old daughter named Cassandra, and a four-year-old boy named William, and they are my world. They actually were a big influence on me opening my own business too. I just wanted to be able to pass something on to them, for their future and secure their future a little bit more than working for somebody and have the flexibility to be able to work for myself. Amanda Curran: We are a family-owned business. So all my employees, if that's what you want to call them, I prefer colleagues or associates, are family members. We are as thick as thieves. Our blood runs strong. It's a great experience. It's a challenging experience at times, but it's awesome. Mighty Mike: That is awesome, being able to run your own schedule and to own your own business is something that they say that entrepreneurs were the only ones crazy enough to work 80 hours a week for ourselves to avoid 40 hours a week for somebody else. Amanda Curran: It's absolutely the truth. Mighty Mike: So we're not all about negativity here, but we do like to start it off with your worst experience. Tell us about your worst experience working in the field. Amanda Curran: So I think any time I have to serve somebody that is either handicapped or an elderly person, I have a personal, moral problem with it. You know, I mean I still do it and obviously, it's part of the justice system, it has to be done. But I would say the worst specific experience would be actually recently. Amanda Curran: I served a foreclosure notice on some body's home. He was handicapped and his wife was handicapped, and it was just ... You know I think a lot of people move down here to live the dream, the retirement life, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina specifically. I just felt bad about the whole thing, and he was not happy about it. So he was threatening me. It was just a very ... Amanda Curran: It had gone through, I think the sheriff. It had gone through two other processors and it was one of those ones where I pulled up, he came home from work. I was conducting surveillance down the street, so I obviously knew what he drove. He pulled in his driveway. I pulled in behind him. I said, "Here you go. I have some legal papers for you." And he tried to deny who he was. Obviously, I had a picture of him and everything else, so there was no denying it. Amanda Curran: He said, "Well I'm not taking your papers." And I said, "Okay. Well in South Carolina, you know about the drop serve, you can drop it at their feet and be done with it." So that's what I did. And after he realized he was getting served without having to actually take the papers he went off. "Well I have a gun in my back pocket and I'm going to take it out and shoot you." And I was like, "Listen, dude. That is not in your best interest right now." He kept on with it. He followed me back to my car. Amanda Curran: We try to remain professional obviously at all times. So I had to convince him it wasn't in his best interest to do anything and he just needed to go inside, which he eventually did. But I just, some people you can do that and walk away from it and feel okay about it, but with that one, it was just the circumstances and the fact that they were older and handicapped and disabled. It was just, left a bad taste in my mouth. But it takes the good with the bad in this profession for sure. Mighty Mike: So Amanda, what I take from your story the most is, we're all people and when you get out there, it's amazing whether it's a single mom getting evicted, or whether it's a guy with schizophrenia getting a restraining order. As a processor, you literally get everything. You get the grandma and grandpa that are so sweet, they just baked cookies and want to invite you in. Amanda Curran: Right. Mighty Mike: You get it all. And in this situation, it sounds like you sympathize like I do, for a lot of these people. You sympathize with their situation, but at the same time, you have a job to do. So it sounds like you were able to do it. Amanda Curran: Exactly. And you know, the next time we went out there, I had our local police department come out there with us and I wasn't the one to serve him, it was somebody who worked with me to serve him. I just wanted to. We left off on a bad note. So and it went much better the second time. Amanda Curran: You know, it was just, I like to leave everyone with a good feeling. I don't like to leave off on a bad note. And that one, there was just no reasoning with him. So you get the job done and you walk away from it and let it be, I guess. Mighty Mike: What do you want Server Nation to take from your story, your bad experience? What do you want them to learn from that? Amanda Curran: I would say the best thing that you could possibly do in a situation where the person that you are serving is utterly unreasonable is to remain calm. Because nothing good is going to come out of you escalating your attitude to match theirs. It's going to end badly. The best thing you can do is remain calm and sometimes just not say anything. Amanda Curran: Sometimes you just get in your car and you leave and you write on your affidavit exactly what happened. If need be, if you have to serve them again, like we did, you call your local police department or your sheriff's department and have them go out there with you. Mighty Mike: That's perfect. Amanda, tell me about your greatest experience working in the field. Amanda Curran: I always love the hard to serve people that can't be found. So many of those are good. I would say my greatest feel-good experience is we served an individual who owed, I think it was 10, it was almost a decade, 9 or 10 years of child support. Amanda Curran: The reason why the woman wasn't receiving the child support is because he had a job, I think it was in a prison or somewhere where he worked an odd schedule. This specific attorney kept hiring the sheriff to go out there. They don't work, they won't sit like we do. They work very few hours during the day, and if they don't get them it's just a non-service, that's it. Amanda Curran: So for years this was going on, and every year she would hire an attorney and they would always hire the sheriff's department and they could never serve the individual. So finally, they hired us and we ended up getting him served and she was able to get back all that child support. So it was, I don't know how much money it was, but like I said, it was about a decade. So it was a large lump sum. Mighty Mike: What a cool experience. Amanda, what are you working on right now that you're most excited about? Amanda Curran: Well personally, in our company we are being certified right now through SLED, to be a licensed PI firm, so that'll be coming within the next couple months. Like I said, I come from a PI background, so it was just a natural next step. Amanda Curran: But I would say as far as process serving goes, I'm really excited about all the social media groups that have sprouted up. I think social media is a great way to network, number one it's free. Number two, it connects you to people that you would obviously otherwise not be connected to. So I'm really excited about all the groups that are popping up, just as far as information sharing and networking goes. Mighty Mike: Yeah, social media is the new marketing. A lot of people say, "Oh I'm not really into social media." Or, "What's Snapchat? I don't need Snapchat." Maybe Snapchat isn't essential for you right now, but the social media that teenagers are using right now is Snapchat. Just like the social media that we were using when we were teenagers, or just after was Facebook, right? Amanda Curran: Right, exactly. Mighty Mike: And if you talk to a young person right now, they'll tell you, "Oh, Facebook is for old people." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Amanda Curran: But it's true. I had to go to my younger brother to learn about Instagram. I didn't have a clue. Mighty Mike: Yep. Yeah, exactly Instagram is a- Amanda Curran: He's got like 3,000 followers on there for posting Trump pictures. I'm like, "Well you need to teach me." So he mentored me in Instagram. Mighty Mike: Yeah, and let me tell you, Instagram is an amazing tool to be able to gain followers and to gain an audience. A specific audience that you're after. Amanda Curran: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: So that's awesome. So you guys are going to be a private investigation firm, so you can hire employees to work under you that aren't necessarily private investigators that are learning, right? Amanda Curran: Yes. And like I said, we are a family run business, so we keep it in the family for the most part. I would say that would be a good five-year goal for us to hire outsiders if you will. Mighty Mike: Right. And that's how you can build your revenue. 'Cause you're basically duplicating- Amanda Curran: exactly, the grandchild, right. For sure. Mighty Mike: That's awesome. So Server Nation, Amanda has been dropping some major value bombs on us today. But prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, I know you're with the times and you want to do whatever you can to have all the resources for your client. That is why I created 123efile.com. As a process server, attorney, or even an in proper, you can visit the website and file your documents in any of the Tyler courts in California with its easy to use one-page operation, you can have your efiling done in a matter of minutes and get back to what really matters. If your time is important to you, visit 123efile.com Mighty Mike: Server Nation welcome back to the show. Amanda, are you ready for the rapid-fire round? Amanda Curran: I hope so. Mighty Mike: If you could recommend one app, what would it be and why? Amanda Curran: I'm a big fan of the timestamp camera on my phone. Just because I don't have to hook up a body-cam, it's simple. I can snap a picture. There's a timestamp and a lot of them have GPS now, and they're free. Mighty Mike: So what's the name of that one? Is it just Timestamp? Amanda Curran: I just use, I think it's called Free Timestamp Camera. And it's for Android. I think there's an iPhone version as well. Mighty Mike: I use the app called APD Timestamp. The Tri-Star mobile software that I use has the date and time and GPS stamped in it. But for situations where my phone is about to die, I just want to take one photo, I use the APD Timestamp, it works really well for Android. Amanda, what case tracking software would you recommend as the best? Amanda Curran: Serve Manager, absolutely, hands down. Mighty Mike: A lot of people love Serve Manager. What's your favorite thing about it? Amanda Curran: Customer service. I can literally call and they're actually in a different time zone. I think they're in Mountain time zone over there. I have it timed, they're two hours behind me. But I will call at their 8 o'clock in the morning, somebody picks up and my problem is solved by 8:10. Mighty Mike: That's awesome. Amanda, what is your favorite skip trace tip or trick? Amanda Curran: Yeah, and it sounds kind of cliché, but social media it's my always go-to. And then obviously I have my databases, I use Delvepoint and Tracers. But social media is priceless, it really is, and it's free. Mighty Mike: Social media is kind of the link, yeah. So you said Delvepoint and Tracers? Amanda Curran: Yeah, Delvepoint, I use and Tracers. Tracers is really good for obscure information, such as cell phone numbers. You can even put in a cell phone search on there and get who owns that cell phone or who's using that cell phone. They have a couple things that the other databases don't offer. Mighty Mike: That's awesome. So what is your favorite tool for defense? Amanda Curran: Well my wonderful personality would be first. But as a last resort, we have our concealed carries and I use my Smith & Wesson Shield .40 would be my favorite. Mighty Mike: Oh watch out. Amanda Curran: Yep. Mighty Mike: Okay, so what book would you recommend? Amanda Curran: Actually, I haven't found an actual process serving book that I actually like that's worth the money, to be honest. I think experience would be the best teacher in that aspect. Amanda Curran: But as far as business goes, my favorite book actually is not related to process serving at all, it's called The Power of Broke, by Daymond John. I don't know if you watch Shark Tank at all, but he's the shark on there. That book is absolutely awesome. I think I've read it a couple times. I have it on audible. I listen to it all the time. It's just a very inspirational motivational book. Mighty Mike: Well I'll tell you, Shark Tank, I'm either watching Dog the Bounty Hunter, or I'm watching Shark Tank, those are my two shows. Amanda Curran: That's a good one too, yeah. I love Shark Tank. So Daymond's book, if you haven't read it, you have to read it. It's awesome. Mighty Mike: And I love Daymond. He's such a cool guy. He's the guy who a lot of times doesn't step out and actually invest and the all of a sudden when nobody else wants to invest, he's like, "I'll invest." It's something that he sees the difference. Amanda Curran: Yeah, and in his book, he talks about that and he says that he's been labeled the people shark and it's absolutely true. Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's good. What is the greatest advice you've ever received? Amanda Curran: The greatest advice I ever received was from an attorney who I never got business from because it's just not really, he's a criminal defense attorney, but whatever. We have a good relationship. But his advice was, "Your goal for the first year is to keep your doors open. If you can do that, everything else is easy." And he was absolutely right. Mighty Mike: Yeah, and every year after that. Amanda, what would you do if you woke up today, had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smart phone, a car, and only $100, what would you do in the next week? Amanda Curran: This question actually cracks me up and I'm going to tell you why. I think I started my business with less than $100. In that exact situation. I had a car. I had a smartphone. I knew nobody. I had no friends, no clients, and I was actually homeless at the time. I was sleeping on my father's floor of his mobile home. Amanda Curran: So the first thing I did, personally going back to that area in my life that wasn't so great, I signed up for Uber with the understanding that obviously I was not going to be an Uber driver forever. But as I was going and introducing myself to attorneys, I was getting paid to do it. Amanda Curran: So anytime I Ubered, I would look up and see where I stopped and see where the nearest attorney's office was, and I would go in there and I would introduce myself, with obviously the $100 would be towards my business cards and a website, absolutely vital things that you have to have for anyone to take you seriously. If you don't have a website, you're not getting business, good luck. It's just not even worth it. And business cards, obviously it makes you look professional. But yeah, that's what I did. Amanda Curran: It was $20 for the Uber inspection, they call it, to inspect your car and make sure it's suitable to drive. I Ubered my way around the Myrtle Beach area and introduced myself and I got, I built my business primarily off that. Once we became more established, I had other things obviously to help enhance my website and make us up on Google listings, that sort of thing. Amanda Curran: But there's a lot of stuff you can do for free that doesn't cost money, social media. If you're willing to do it and you're willing to put in the hours and put yourself out on the line, get out of your comfort zone, you don't need a lot of money to start off. Mighty Mike: That's great Amanda. I tell you what, first of all, you're cruising around Myrtle Beach, it could be worse. Amanda Curran: Which is awesome, exactly. And that's always how I looked at it. Mighty Mike: Right yeah, and second of all, you get to drive around. I don't know about you, but I'm the type of person when I'm driving, I got my music on, I'm in heaven. I could drive all day. Amanda Curran: Exactly. And I've got clients that, okay, I don't want to call anyone out. But attorneys that I picked up from the bar or whatever and brought them home and they get to talking and they're attorneys, "Well here's my card." They have called me. One of my best clients I met in my Uber. It's a good way to connect with people and you get paid to do it. So I'm going to get paid for my marketing in one way or another. Mighty Mike: As a process server you're out there serving papers and eventually you probably hear people talking about, "Oh, I had too many serves." And, "Oh, I have this 30 serves." This and that. That's a great problem to have. Amanda Curran: Exactly. Mighty Mike: But if you don't have that problem, think outside the box. Being an Uber driver, a Lyft driver. Did you ever go to Lyft? Amanda Curran: Oh yeah. I did both of them. Yep, absolutely. I had both apps on at the same time. And like I said, anytime I stopped anywhere I would just Google attorneys near me, and Google has that nice little thing where it pulls up on the map by distance and I would just walk myself in there and introduce myself and hand them my card, and that's literally how I built my business. Mighty Mike: That's so funny. In the Facebook group, one of the people, I don't remember who it was, but they said that they were staking out this bar and then someone wanted an Uber ride, so he said, "Okay, I'll just do the Uber." So he pulls up and the person gets in the car, and it's the person he was trying to serve. Amanda Curran: That's awesome. And you know, it's great to get into gated communities. Do you know how many times I've tried to get into a gated community and they just wave me along because I have an Uber sticker? It's a good cover. Mighty Mike: It's a good cover and you get a little extra cash for doing what you're already doing. Amanda Curran: Right. Mighty Mike: So that's good. Amanda Curran: Exactly. Mighty Mike: Good stuff Amanda. That's awesome. So what I take most from your story is think outside the box. Guys go out there and tackle it any way that you can. Amanda, what is your final parting piece of advice for the struggling server out there? Amanda Curran: I would say, in this industry, especially in the beginning, it is very apparent that it is feast or famine. So you are going to have very high highs and very low lows. And I think the most important thing you can take from that is during the low lows to understand that it can't be like that forever and it's going to turn around. So just hang on, don't give up. Keep pushing and it will get better. Mighty Mike: Amanda, what is the best way that we can connect with you? And then we'll say goodbye. Amanda Curran: Sure. All my information is on our website, it's www.apex.lss and that's Lima, Sierra, sierra.com Mighty Mike: That is excellent. Amanda, I want to personally thank you for coming on the show. And I've been impressed with your story and I'm excited to share it with the world. Until next time Server Nation, you've been served up some awesomeness by Amanda, the Myrtle Beach Uber driver. Amanda Curran: Love it, love it. Mighty Mike: And Mighty Mike, the Podcast Server.

Our guest is an expert in servicing process, performing bank levies, wage garnishments, and skip trace investigations for California, Idaho, Hawaii, and Utah. He owns findmylegal.com, a legal professional directory, Stephen Snyder, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. How did you get started in this industry? Back in 1991 I was at church with a friend of mine. He was a process server. I didn't know that's what he did for a living. But, he and I were just talking one day in nursery because I was the person in charge of the nursery and his kid was in there, so we were just chit chatting and I said, "I've been kind of looking for a part-time job, something on the side to make some extra money." Yeah. And he says, "Well, I know something that you might be interested in and that's processoring." And I'm like, "What is processoring?" I'd never heard of it before. Anyways, he was working for a company in San Jose, California with a company called TMB legal, which was owned by Tom Bowman. Now his new company is called Sterling Massive. Oh yeah. His company hired my friend, and my friend was quitting because his job promoted him, and he didn't need to work extra hours anymore. So, I said, "Okay, let me go talk to Tom and see if we can work out something." I did and he hired me and I started working in south San Jose in the Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Hollister area. Then I just got to thinking, "I bet there's other companies that need someone in this area too," because I was the only one. Pretty soon it just blossomed and I had bunch of companies sending me work. I was kind of like an independent contractor for them. I didn't do any work for attorneys or paralegals directly. I was just working for other companies. That's kind of how I started. You have a lot going on right now and you're full of great experiences. But first, tell me about your worst experience working the field. I have been assaulted once. I think it was probably mid-nineties. I was trying to serve some small claims paper to an individual that owed some money to a jeweler. He bought a ring or something and didn't pay for it. Well, I knocked on the door and I spoke to the guy's son, and I told him what I was there for and I asked him where's his father to serve him. He said, "His dad wasn't there." And I said, "Well, according to California civil procedure I can serve the documents to you." He got pretty irate about it and ended up doing a drop serve on him and just saying, "You're being served. It's not really a choice that you have. You're being served." So I dropped them and I started walking away, and I had this feeling to turn around. As I turned around, this guy was coming at me with a beer bottle. It hit me. So I'm a fairly a big guy and this guy was a smaller guy, and I just kind of blocked him. I ended up calling the police, they came out and cited him. I went to the court hearing for his plea, how he's gonna plea. Well, he didn't show up. The judge issued a bench warrant for $20,000. I immediately went back to my office, prepared a small claims document, filed it with the court and we served him in small claims. He showed up to that. And then, we just kind of talked and found out that he, cost him a lot more than what the jeweler bail was, just to try to defend himself. He learned something the hard way. I let him off, except for $150. That's crazy. So you let him off with a $150? Well, he was quite remorseful at this point. I think he learned his lesson. I guess so, yeah. He had a misdemeanor on his record. As a server, when you're knocking on the door and you're going to walk away from the door, always be aware of what's behind you and what's coming at you. Yes, especially when you're dealing with someone like I was dealing with, became very irate and he was young. Kind of wanna keep your eyes on the back of your head a little bit. What would you have Server Nation take from your story the most? Just be aware of your surroundings. Be smart. Steve, tell me about your greatest experience about working in the field. I think that the greatest experience is when I'm able to deal with persons directly. What we call In Pro Per. Someone that's representing themselves, and we're able to be successful in helping them get something that they're owed. For example, I had a plaintiff come to me with a $30,000 judgment and he didn't know how to collect from this guy. We did a few things, including recording the judgment, and it attached to the fellows to the defendant's property, so that when he refinanced or sold, it would force him into paying the judgment. It was just a matter of preparing the abstract of judgment, recording it, and then within a few months, this guy ended up refinancing his home and my client got $3,000 judgment. Oh wow. I've been able to take people to the point of judgment very successfully like getting them and their papers filed, getting them served, getting a judgment, and then kind of, other than evictions, obviously, getting a red and lock out. But other than that its been pretty, I don't know, you got to find their bank accounts. For servers like me, how I've been in the past, would you be a good contact then to say, hey I know this guy, go ahead and contact this guy. He will be able to find their bank. Well we actually, I do have a service for finding bank accounts. I work with a private investigator out of Montana. They got some kind of software that they've developed and they can find bank accounts. That's cool. Then once we find out what that bank account is, then as the registered processor in California, I can prepare notice of levies and get documents ready for doing a bank levies. That's right. That's why its so important, I think, to collaborate and communicate with other servers in the industry. Yes, sometimes we might be direct competition with each other, but more often than not, we end up helping each other in this grand scheme that's processed. Yah definitely networking with other legal professionals is the way to go. That's an awesome story, Steve. Tell me about what you're working on right now that has you most fired up. I have been in the business since 1991. I've learned how to build a business, and I own several of them. Hawaii process servers, Utah process servers, Idaho precess servers, I could go on and on and just keep extending my business. Personally, I don't have the time to manage them all. So what I have been excited about doing is finding young process servers that are not found on the web. They need help to build their business. So, I work in conjunction with my company findmylegal.com in helping new process servers build their business and get noticed on the internet, because that is pretty much key. People, when they do a search, they go under Google and they look up the city, the state, and then the word process server. If your website is ranked on Google, they will find you, and we help the young process server build their new business. Well, Steve, you guys are being excited about, what did you say it was? Findmylegal.com? Yes. Findmylegal.com. So, Server Nation, you're a new server out there, go to findmylegal.com and roughly what does it cost, Steve? Well to list your company in the entire state, $6.99 per month. If you want us to help build a website, between $100.00-$200.00 depending on how many cities you want to advertise your company in. That's very inexpensive. That's possible for pretty much any server to be able to afford. There are other directories, I know, out there that charge just for one county, you know $20.00 and such. So, Steve, what advice would you give for the struggling server out there right now? What I would do, is I would Google Legal Professional Directory, and get your name on as many free websites as possible. There are others you can pay for, which rank very high on Google. If budget is an issue, the first thing to do is to get hooked up with some legal professional directories. They have a link directly from their website to yours, which assumes that you have one. So, that would be one thing that you would want to do, is make sure to get yourself a website. I use GoDaddy.com. They're great. They help solve all my websites, and they have a pretty cool program in there that helps you create the website. If you don't want to do that, findmylegal.com can help you do that. I usually just buy them and build a website on them, search engine, optimize them, and off and running. So Server Nation, Steve has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round after a word from our sponsors. Server Nation, I know you're with the times and you want to do whatever you can to have all the resources for your client. That is why I created 123efile.com as a process server, attorney, or even an in pro per. You can visit the website and file your documents in any of the pylor courts in California. With its easy to use one page operation, you can have your e-filing done in a matter of minutes and get back to working matters. If your time is important to you 123efile.com. Okay. Welcome back to the show. Steve are you ready for the rapid fire round? Excited about it. If you could recommend one app, what would it be and why? You know I'm a pretty simple guy. I just use Goggle maps and it just tells me where to go. After I finish a serve, I put in the next address and it tells me where to go. You know what they say, keep it super simple, Kiss. Right? Yah. That's awesome. So, what case tracking software would you recommend as the best? For many years, I used QuickBooks. It just kept track of how much people owed me. That's primarily because I worked for other processor companies. As my business developed, where I was working for attorneys directly, I needed to keep track of information specifically on them, and the jobs, and the proofs of service. I investigated several companies, worked with one I didn't care for, but I fund the best one that works for me is sermanager.com. I definitely recommend them. One thing that it helps me to do is to manage all the different companies that I have. So, I can create a job, make a server, the other company, if I want to.some of my customers are here in Utah, and they have a job in California. So, I will receive the job in Utah process service, then I'll assign it to California company, which is Hollister process service, and then my secretary there will assign it to a process server. So, you can kid of keep track of that chain of how the job is hiring out. So, you're using also internally and not just like me getting a job, sending it out. This case tracking software not only tracks the serve to send it to people, but you're also, with all of these softwares, you're able to create a proof of service, which for many servers is some of the biggest challenges. They're trying to find what documents are put their proof of service on. Yes, the servemanager.com has a bunch of different proof of service a lot in California. For someone's complaints, small claims, a proof of service, you can prepare all those proofs of service within the serve manager program and then save them. As the company that's prepared it, I can then email it to my server for them to print out or electronically sign directly within the software. Then I can forward that proof of service directly to the customer. It's been a great resource for us here at find process servers. What is your favorite skip trace tip or trick? I use a company called IRB Search. Usually check someone out there first. If the information on their is not really clear, they'll need something deeper, like maybe going to the post office to verify some address with the postal verification form. That's great. Yah, I also check Facebook. Check out to see where people might be working, because they're always real proud of where they work and they put down where it is. So, then you can link to it. Yah, another great Facebook tip or trick that I found is, if you feel like their super secretive but they usually will have their relationship status and they'll say married to Jane or whoever. You can go into Jane's and a lot of the time Jane isn't a secret and you can then go to their profile and then you find out actually what street they live on based on photographs. I feel like as servers, sometimes we become professional stalkers, and we can find anybody. That's kind of the goal, is to find them, just to give them the papers and that's it but you still fund them. Yah. Any little bit of information that you can get will start to pin point where this person is and that's the whole idea of skip tracing. That's right. You know I feel like I made the theme of this episode is going to be keep it super simple and keep it back to the basics, because it's so important to at least know what you need to do. IRV is a great resource. It's one of my skip tracing softwares that I use as well. What is your favorite tool for defense? I would say common sense. That's a good idea. The common sense thing isn't too common anymore. What book would you recommend? That's a good question. I think any kind of book that's can help you to focus on the days activities, if that's the Bible or the book of Mormon or whatever you like to read. Just to send some time in the morning, before you go out, and take some time on reading something that's going to be uplifting to you. So you can clear your mind and so that you can be aware of your surroundings during the day. There are many different books that help you become a better person. I feel like as a server and just having a well balanced life is really important. As a process server, we spend a lot of time on the road and the car, maybe sometimes a lot of times away from our family, and I think starting your day off right, whether it's reading scriptures, or meditating, those different types of things to help zero yourself. Give yourself a foundation to build on is very important. Thank you for that, Steve. Would you say that you have a mentor? Well, I always try to, if I have a question about something, I'll usually go back to my source company. If I have a question about something I will go to another process server that I respect. I have used Tom Bowman's office, and I've used attorney Silverson, they're pretty experienced too. I will usually bounce some ideas off of other process servers that have been in the business awhile. As far as process serving, I went to California to get my CCPS license when I first started out. The speaker there said that after you serve someone, get in the car and drive away. Don't try to do your notes right there. I think there's wisdom in that, because if this guy figures out what yo just did to them, you just served them papers, he might become upset and try to give them back to you. If you're gone down the street, it's going to be harder for him to get to you. I always try to drive 100 a couple 100 yards down the road and then write my notes. Yah. That's been a good one. That's something that I learned as well. That's really a great tip, a great thing that every server needs to learn. You don't spend time sitting in front of the house. You don't spend time in a place that you may be in danger. If you're looking down at your notes, you're not really watching the house or watching the person that you just served. Just turn around the corner. I have a two corner policy. When I leave the house, I go one corner another corner and then I can pull over. I'm going until I can pull down a side street somewhere, because safety is number one. Safety is the most important thing. Exactly. Jim Rones said that we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with. I'm really happy to hear that you have mentors. I know that I have certainly had mentors in different process serving companies and things. Like I said, before you would consider competition, but they actually end up being some of your greatest resources. Steve, this next question is one of our last questions, is a doozie. What would you do if you woke up today, had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smart phone, a car, and only $100.00, what would you do in the next 7 days? As far as process serving goes, I would first get myself a website. You can do that for under $100.00. If I was a brand new server, that's what I would do, is get myself a website and then develop it and help me move forward in starting process server company. Myself during my 25 plus years, I have been diversified in other types of businesses. I'm also a tax preparer, I've driven Uber, sometimes your business is a little slow at some times, and so you want to make sure that you're diversified so that if your company does tank, you have something else to fall back on. Steve, what I take most from your story, is the idea that as a precess server, you can't completely depend solely on getting a job every day, that you're going to go out and serve. It might be good to go out and get another. I know when I first started I went and got my notary, notary license. It wasn't a whole lot but if it gave me three or four extra jobs a week, then it was worth it. So that's great. Preparing taxes, it doesn't necessary correlate, but what's interesting is, I bought a domain name on efiletoday.com. I'm just going to run with this e-file thing and then I started realizing that e-file is almost more recognizable to the tax file industry then it is for the legal industry. The knowledge that I've gained from all the different employment has just been beneficial. There are things that I have learned with being tax prepared that have helped me with being a process server and vice versa. Whatever you can do to gain knowledge, that's important. That's great, Steve. You have been dropping some awesome, major value bombs on us today. Teaching us that keeping it simple is the most important, building a foundation for each day, finding ways to market yourself to other process serving companies, and then feeding off of each other, building a network, being able to get your name out there is really important. Steve, what is the best way that we can connect with you? And then we can say goodbye. Depending on which company you want to hire. You can go onto the web and look us up. My company in California is Hollister Process Service. You can phone me on my cell phone, I'll give that to yah, 808-557-5615. If you have any questions about wanting some help building your new process serve company, I'd be glad to sit down and talk to you, no charge. We can go over what your goals are. Then I can make some suggestions on what you can do, and if you want to use my services to help build your website, I would be glad to help you out. Wow. Server Nation, if you heard that, you just heard Mr. Snider is willing to personally help you build your business. Steve, thank you again, you have a great day. We appreciate you being on. I'm glad that you had me on. It was an awesome experience. Server Nation, I know that you know all about directories and that you know the important ace of getting yourself on the web, in as many places as possible, but it;'s more than that Server Nation. It's about putting yourself on the websites that get ranked on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I'm excited about a new program that I'm starting. Really quickly let me tell you. As a process server, I don't cover the whole country, right? We send server out that already process servers and we call that affiliates. My new program is going to incorporate existence. My customers come under my website and they do a location search, try to find a process server in a specific location. Many times I do not serve that area and so I might hire an affiliate in another area and manage to serve that way. That takes time and effort away from my local customers and the local efforts that I have here in northern California. I want to personally invite each and every member of Server Nation to add themselves to my directory on my website. This is what's going to happen, my customers who come to me loyally, will search a specific location. If I don't cover a specific location, but you do, guess who shows up? You do. How great is that, Server Nation? I'm going to share something that means so much to me, my customers. I believe that this will benefit my customers, because they will have a resource to go to to find process servers and to get the best rates nationwide. Oh but there's a catch, Server Nation. There is always a catch. My directory is free for any affiliate, just sign up and get the basic affiliate level, but if you do not perform when my customers come and they see that it is not me or one of my employees or contractors, and they see that its you, you're going to see a rating next to your name. If your rating falls, you may not get any business. Server Nation, give it a shot. Sign up to the listing. Take care of my customers. I love them like they're family. Visit processserversdaily.com/affiliates. Server Nation stay safe out there.

Mighty Mike: What's up, Server Nation? This is Mighty Mike, the Podcast Server, and you are listening to www.ProcessServerDaily.com Mighty Mike: You guys, I'm super excited about today's episode. If you have a story that you want to tell, that you're excited about. Maybe a dog chased you, maybe a guy tried to shoot you with his gun, maybe you had a heart-warming story where you helped somebody in need. Guys, I want to hear the story on this show. Go to www.ProcessServerDaily.Com/BeAGuest.html Find some studio time, go to www.ProcessServerDaily.Com/BeAGuest.html Mighty Mike: I look forward to speaking to you and hearing your story! Let's get to the show. Mighty Mike: What's up, Server Nation? You are listening to Process Server Daily, and I am your host, Mighty Mike the Podcast Server. Our guest today has recently appeared on Vice TV where he has been on the hunt for the most notorious Neo-Nazi of our time. He has been in business for 25 years and he owns and operates Encore Delivery Systems located in Columbus, Ohio. Mighty Mike: Jeff Cremeans, welcome to the show. Jeff C.: Pleasure to be here, Mike. Mighty Mike: Awesome, Jeff. I want to hear from you, Jeff! Tell us a little bit about yourself that wasn't in the intro. Take it away. Jeff C.: Sure. My name is Jeff Cremeans. I've been a process server for about 25 years. I started off, giving my age here, back in 1989 working for a law firm in Columbus, Ohio. Started off as a messenger working in the mail room. Did filings at the court house. Started to do the subpoenas, that type of thing. I'll make a long story short. I had an attorney, of the many duties I did in the mail room, wanted me to go get him a hotdog. So I went and got him a hotdog, I brought it back and he yelled at me, he said, "Why wasn't there mustard on it?" I thought, "You know, I'm gonna start my own business and I'm gonna charge this guy 25 bucks to go get his hotdog." Jeff C.: So I started a company out of law firm called City Wide Legal Messenger Service. Took off really well in Columbus, Ohio. There's a need for that type of thing here. I owned that for a few years. I sold that company to another company. I worked there for 11 years and then I've owned Encore since then. So I've had Encore for about 14 years. So ... Mighty Mike: That's awesome. Yeah, when I was watching the show, it's really cool, your office looks really cool. It looks like you got a pretty good size operation going on there. Jeff C.: Yeah, doing good. In any given time, we'll have eight or nine servers out, serving anything from child support papers to foreclosures. I don't get out as much and serve, certainly on this big case I'm helping out on, the Andrew Anglin case. But, yeah, I have a great group of servers. Very hard workers and do a great job. So ... Mighty Mike: Jeff, one of the most important things as process servers, for anybody, actually, is family. You got a family? Jeff C.: Sure do. I have a daughter at Ken State. Freshman at Ken State University. I've a son that's a sophomore. Yeah, they're pretty much my world, so ... Yeah. Mighty Mike: That's awesome. Jeff, there's a reason why you're on my show. You have a lot going on right now. Full of great experiences. But first, tell me about your worst experience working in the field. Jeff C.: You know, I think a lot of the process servers cross and that start talking about bad stories. Everybody's got a lot of bad stories. I think the one that really stood out to me was one, believe it or not, where I wasn't out in the field. Long story short, I'm sitting in my office, I had let everybody go early. I'm in the office by myself, just doing paperwork and in walks four people. I won't put their description out, but they were not very nice-looking people. I said, "Can I help you?" They said, "Yeah. One of your servers have been pounding on the door at my grandmother's house. We're here to see what's going on." Course, they were not so nice about it. I thought, "Well," I looked up and I saw these four guys. They meant business and they were there to do some damage or something. I thought, "Well, gosh, here we go." I can hold my own, but not with four guys. They were really upset that the server ... Now, how they go to where we were, they did some diligence on finding who we were and our address and everything. I got to give 'em that. Jeff C.: Anyway, I'll be honest with you, I was scared for my life. I thought if these guys want to start one me, there's not a whole lot I can do, but I explained to them. I calmed 'em down, I said, "Look, I'm sorry. This is not the way we do business and I apologize that your grandmother was scared," and all this stuff. Turns out that the server that went out, he was a newbie. He was trained and everything, but he had it to where he thought he could pound on doors and maybe even intimidate people, scare people to come to the door. Boy, did I have a long talk with after him that. I told him, "Hey, look, you're gonna go out, you're gonna go looking for trouble. You're gonna get it." Jeff C.: Fortunately, the trouble came to the office and it affected me. Nothing ended up happening. I talked to these guys and they end up not hurting me, which is a good thing. So the moral of the story, and for everybody out there, whether you're training a server or you're serving yourself, you don't have to ... there's times you have to get creative and aggressive. We can talk about that later in the podcast, but the big thing is, I explained to the server, "There was an old lady in there. You were scaring her to death. She had her grandkids come here and threaten me and want to know what's going on. Take it easy, man. You don't have to do that. If they don't answer the door, you don't have to pound on it." The lady wasn't even avoiding servers, so he learned a big lesson. He learned from that and turned out to be a great server. Not so aggressive anymore after that. Mighty Mike: I've recounted an experience that I've had too in a previous podcast about knocking on a door and being really gung-ho, and then realizing it was a 14 year old girl in there, terrified! She's told not to answer the door and it really helped correct my perspective that you never know ... I just had one yesterday. They told me she's an elderly lady and I've been there at all different times during the day. So I decided to come at night. Sure enough, her car was there, but she wasn't answering the door. The neighbors said, "Oh, she's in there." But I thought, "Man, I'm just gonna come back again at night and maybe she won't be in the shower or in the back room or wherever. Whatever she's doing to keep her from answering the door, giving her the benefit of the doubt- Jeff C.: Right. Mighty Mike: That she might actually answer the door if I come in a different time. Jeff C.: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Yeah, what I take from your story is prudence. Have a little bit of prudence when you come to the door. It's one of the most valuable asset in any industry. Mighty Mike: Jeff, tell us about your greatest experience working in the field. Jeff C.: Well, as many as there are bad, there are some good experiences out there. I think one that stands out to me is, and this is back in my City Wide Legal Messenger Service days, I was young and I was just new to the industry and learning, and doing stuff. I got a job to serve a wealthy person in a domestic case. Long story short, I had attempted many times. Pulled out all the tricks. I dressed up for Halloween, did the whole pizza delivery thing. Nothing worked. This guy, he was a dodger and he knew the game. He had been served before. Jeff C.: I pulled up one day, I just happened to be around the neighborhood. I thought, "Let me go try this guy again." I got there and he was out back, washing one of his expensive cars with his brother. I pulled up and he looked at me and started to run. Then he stopped and he's like, "You got me." He put out his hand and he shook my hand. He's like, "Congratulations, man. You played a good game." He was serious, very nice. We ended up talking there for a minute, so it was kind of ... never had that happen before, but it was nice to know that old game of hide and seek, he was not a sore loser, you know? So, yeah, that's kind of a good story. Mighty Mike: That's cool when they're like that. Some people just have a habit of dodging and ducking and hiding under couches, and things like that. Every once in a while, you'll get that guy that's probably like you would be when you're retired or something like that, or if someone else was trying to serve you. Ultimately, you're gonna accept the responsibility for your own problems, but you don't mind giving 'em a little run for his money. Jeff C.: Sure. Mighty Mike: That's a great experience. Mighty Mike: Jeff, tell me what you're working on right now that you're most excited about. Jeff C.: Well, in the past few years, we've gotten accounts with the Children's Services and the child support. It's a lot of work. It's lucrative, but dodging has increased with the child support papers as everybody knows, especially at that end of the stuff that we serve. So I've been able to hire more servers, it's broadened our horizons as far as learning more about the industry and finding people, the skip tracing, that type of thing. Jeff C.: Then, of course, there's the case we're trying to serve, the famous neo-Nazi. That has been the most challenging serve in my career in 25 plus years. So the reason why this case is so challenging to serve, this guy, he's a national, if not worldly-known neo-Nazi. He's got his own website, the Daily Stormer, that's been very controversial, but he has so much help hiding out. I've never seen anybody have so much support in hiding out. Anything from his father with all his property he owns, and people putting him up in places, this type of thing. But, yeah, it's been a very challenging serve. Worked very hard and done all the skip tracing. Done everything we possibly can to this point. Right now, we're relying on tips from a lot of different people that have maybe spotted him or know where he's at. We had a pretty good tip, as you saw in the Vice show. That's probably our best tip and missed him there. But, so, yeah. Jeff C.: There's a lot of things going on, a lot of good things. Growing at a steady pace and, again, I think any processor out there will tell you each case is different, each server's different. You don't want to get too emotionally involved, especially when someone's dodging, but there comes a time where, "Ask us for help," you know. One person can't do everything. If you feel like you've exhausted all your efforts in getting the serve, get somebody else on it. Get a fresh face, that type of thing. So ... Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's good, Jeff. I'll tell you, when I was watching the video, and you were going over the footage in the store where you were watching him with his protein powder, I got this feeling, almost like that's happened to me before where I've seen someone I was hunting for three months. He was a pot farmer up in [inaudible 00:09:36] Creek. Anyone knows you go up there, you gotta go up there with the AKs and [inaudible 00:09:40] dogs, and ready to go. Mighty Mike: I saw him in a park. He was apparently getting visitation with his kids, and I didn't have the papers, so I ran back, I drove back to my house. By the time I got there, he wasn't there. I was so mad at myself. How did you feel when that- Jeff C.: First, it was just shock and awe seeing him there. My son and I were just walking through the store and it was one of those things, when I first saw him, I thought, "Oh, man. That guy looks familiar," and I got closer. As I got closer, I thought, "Oh my gosh, that's him." No doubt in my mind whatsoever. In fact, I submitted a declaration to the court for the attorney's request to explain that I saw him. I got up, I was watching him. I was standing there as you could see in the video, watching him. Very nervous. He was kind of looking behind his shoulders and just kind of looked really, really paranoid, that type of thing. I thought, "You know, I don't have the papers. They're not even in my car. They're at home. By the time I get it and do that, it's not gonna happen." Plus, I had my son with me. It was really not a whole lot I could have done, like I couldn't leave him there. Jeff C.: As he was checking out, I proceeded to go through the store, past self check out lines. I looked over and I just thought, "You know, I gotta say something to him. I gotta go talk to him. I just can't" ... So as he was walking out, I pulled up right in front of him with my car. My exact words to him was like, "You know, you look like somebody I know. Is your name Andrew?" "Nope." He was gone. He was not gonna hang around. It was him, it was definitely him. Now- Jeff: He was not going to hang around, and it was him. It was definitely him. Now, people, especially his attorney ... What are the odds? What are the odds of tracking somebody down for almost a year and you see them at a grocery store? I don't know, but it happened and it was ... Needless to say, I have the papers with me every time. I have them in my briefcase, I have them in my car, I have them at work. I have other people that have them. All my servers have a copy of this stuff [inaudible 00:11:24] just in case something like that were to happen again. Don't think I'll ever get that opportunity again, but you never know. Mighty Mike: Yeah, I actually keep a bucket now, because of that experience that I had. I'll tell you one fun experience. I was in the courthouse and I'd been hunting this ... trying to serve this professor of Chico State University. He was retired. And so, I had served him like three times before and then he moved. We go to court every day to file papers at the courthouse. And so, I was in line at the courthouse and I heard this voice, and I was like, "I know that voice." And I listened and I heard it. He's just shooting it with a couple guys, "Yeah, no, I'm a professor down over at Chico State." And I thought, "That's him." And I didn't have the documents, but I was at the courthouse. So I said ... I looked it up on my phone, and I bought a copy of the paperwork at the courthouse. I checked the box individual and said, "Here you go." Jeff: Oh, nice. Very nice. Mighty Mike: I felt like such a ninja when I did that. It was cool. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: So I mean, if I would have saw him at the store I would have been in trouble. What I wanted to know, and I'm sure other servers are the same, is what's the next step? You can only skip trace them so much, right? Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: You can only- Jeff: Yeah, there's a lot of people looking for this guy for one reason or another. It's not just to serve him papers. As you can imagine, he's made a lot of people upset with his comments and his viewpoints. Hey, you know, I believe in the first amendment. I think everybody can believe in whatever they want to believe in. You believe clowns should make more money when they go to parties? Fine. Just the fact that threaten violence and harass people I don't think bodes well. Jeff: So anyway, with that being said, a lot of people look for him. We're all trying to put feelers out there and we're all going off tips, whether it be the media, reporters, and other process servers. And from here, where do we go? Waiting on a tip. There's been rumor that he claims he's in Cambodia, then he was in Nigeria, then he was in Russia. Personally, my opinion, I think he's right here, whether it be in town or the state of Ohio, at least in the United States. He's not overseas. So it's going to be off a tip. It's going to get lucky. Somebody's going to see him, he's going to show his self somewhere. That's pretty much all we can do right now, just sit back and wait. Mighty Mike: Yeah, you just have got to post somebody up over by the protein powder. That's what you have got to do. Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Mighty Mike: Okay. So I hope you get him and when you do get him, maybe we'll have you back on the show or even we'll do a Facebook Live so that'll just be [inaudible 00:13:49]. Jeff: I look forward to the day, believe me. Mighty Mike: Now dreams of the day. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, Jeff has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself, because we are headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, I know you're with the times and you want to do whatever you can to have all of the resources for your client. That is why I created 123efile.com. As a process server, attorney, or even an improper you can visit the website and file your documents in any of the Tyler courts in California. With it's easy to use one-page operation, you can have your e-filing done in a matter of minutes and get back to what really matters. If your time is important to you, visit 123efile.com. Mighty Mike: Welcome back to the show. Jeff, are you ready for the rapid fire round? Jeff: I think I am. Mighty Mike: If you could recommend one app, what would it be and why? Jeff: I think Road Warrior's a good app. I'm not a humongous app fan. I kind of do a lot of things old school. I think if you're diligent enough and you really want it bad, you can find the right app and it'll get you where you need to be. Mighty Mike: Very good. Road Warrior is ... I swear by the Road Warrior. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: I mean, if another one came out I would try it, but I haven't found any other app like that. Jeff: Yeah, it's a good app. Mighty Mike: And if you have it set to go straight into the Waze app, it works really good in the city. You can pick different navigators, but yeah, Road Warrior's a great one. What case tracking software would you recommend as the best? I would take you as a Process Server Toolbox guy. Jeff: Yeah, yeah, Process Server's Toolbox or like Serve Manager. Again, I don't even ... To be honest with you, I don't use them. Again, I'm- Mighty Mike: Really? Jeff: Yeah, I'm a firm believer in the old fashioned way of doing things, and my customers seem to like it. I've tried to offer them the different softwares and the Process Server's Tool and everything, and my customers like, you know, "Just use the court's return. We don't want this. We don't want that." And I've just kind of been doing that for years, and it works for me so far. Mighty Mike: No, I'm intrigued, Jeff, because, let me tell you something, there's a beauty in simplicity. So I'm just curious, we don't have to go too far into it, but you have like a service request form? Jeff: Yes. Mighty Mike: And they fill that out. And is your return or your field sheet, if you were, is that a part of the same form? Jeff: No, that's a different form in fact. And that's the thing, we kind of create our own affidavits and our own returns of service if they want. For anybody that has just your federal district return of service, we'll start off with that. If somebody wants something different, we've created so many different types of affidavits and non-serve affidavits and returns of service. We've had people say, "Yep, we don't want this notarized. You don't have to notarize it," so we'll just make it a simple proof of service. Mighty Mike: Yeah. Jeff: Of course, as you know, in California they have their own and New York wants certain things. A lot of the different states and people want different things. Mighty Mike: Definitely. Jeff: So we kind of have a variety of affidavits and stuff we use. Mighty Mike: That's cool. Yeah, that's cheaper. Jeff: Yeah, it is. It is. Mighty Mike: I tell you, there's beauty in simplicity. When I first started out, I had a form and I thought I was a genius because I had my service request area on top where I gave the customer's info and special instructions, and then at the bottom it had four spots for first attempt, second attempt, third attempt. And I only did four attempts because most of my customers were for unlawful detainers. In our local area, you had to get three attempts for diligence before you could post or subserve. So yeah, there's beauty in simplicity. I appreciate that. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite skip trace tactic? Jeff: I think what's worked for us over the years are the neighbors. Knocking on the doors next to it. I tell you, there's ... We have had more nosy neighbors help us get people served than anything. It's a simple skip tracing tool. There's a lot of ways of skip tracing, but, boy, just I don't know how many times ... And I'm sure a lot of servers have experienced this. The neighbor's out washing the car, you go over, "Hey, is so-and-so here?" "Oh, you know what? No, they're down the street at this park at the baseball game." "Oh, really? Which park is that?" "You know, blah, blah, blah park." You go down there. Now, if somebody's been dodging for a few weeks and you really want to get them served, I don't mind going to a park at a ballgame and getting them served. It may be the only opportunity to get them. So yeah, I think neighbors are very informative, and can be very helpful for getting somebody. Mighty Mike: Yeah, and actually, you can skip trace a specific address, not a person, and it'll give you the people that live in that general area. Or you can go on Google and find out what the nextdoor neighbor's address is and skip trace them and get the phone number. And then call them up, say, "Hi, is this ..." So if you're looking for Jill, you call up the neighbor and say, "Hi, is this Jill?" And then she's going to go, "Oh no, Jill lives nextdoor." "Okay. Oh, sorry about that." You know? Jeff: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mighty Mike: That's a good one that works a lot. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Jeff, what is your favorite tool for defense? Jeff: I think there's weapons and there's this and there's that. I firmly believe in being human with people, talking to them. One thing that taught me about that bad experience, I think if you're there and you're calm and you hear them, and you're honest with them, say, "Hey, look, I got these papers," well I think that's worked more than anything. To be, for lack of a better word, aggressive or cocky or pushy and doing too much, I don't think that's going to help you out. I think really trying to talk to people. And there's a lot of different ways of doing that. Jeff: My biggest thing is somebody that's wanting to avoid service, I try to tell them, "Hey, look, I'm going to come back. I'm going to keep coming back. I'm not going to go away and this is not going to go away." I'm not a lawyer, I can't give them legal advice, but I try to tell them, "Hey, look, you're best off taking this now." So things like that and that nature, that to be me has been the best tool. Call it a tool. Call it whatever you want. I think it's a really good tool to use. Mighty Mike: Yeah, I did a poll on Facebook and, "What was the best tool for defense?" And people came back ... And actually, I gave some options and I gave like a gun, and a knife, and all these things. And then, I gave a few options. It was like common sense ... Jeff: Yes. Mighty Mike: Those things that are inside of you, like in your brain and in your habits, and the way that you treat people, the way that you talk to people, those are the things that had the most hits. I think one of them had like 64. Common sense had like 64, and the next one had 30. And the actual gun I think only had like 16. We all like to talk about the guns that we own, but the truth is, when you're out there serving, using your gift of gab or your ability to control a situation with your words is way more powerful than a gun. Jeff: Absolutely Mighty Mike: A gun is an immediate ... It's not an answer. It's not a resolution. It's a tragedy if you did have to pull it out. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-gun. I'm just saying I agree with you. That's absolutely correct. Jeff: And yeah, guns can be dangerous and they can promote ... get you into a situation where somebody could get hurt or killed. Again, I'm totally not anti-gun either. I totally believe in that, and a lot of people should have one for their protection. I've never been a really big badge guy. Again, I'm just kind of human, old fashioned way of doing things. Mighty Mike: Yeah, in California it's actually become quite a ... most of the server companies, it's quite anti-badge, because a lot of people are getting convicted and charged, and potentially convicted for impersonating an officer. Jeff: Yes. Mighty Mike: Throwing around words like, "Officer of the court," and things like that. Jeff: Mm-hmm Mighty Mike: You know, I used to do it when I first started because that's what they said in my training class, and really we're not. Joe down the street could serve papers, but he can't serve more than 10 in California. I know it's different in every state, but ... Jeff: Mm-hmm Mighty Mike: Jeff, what book would you recommend? Jeff: Anything John Grisham. I'm a huge John Grisham fan. In fact, the older I get, I'm doing a lot more reading. And I love to read, it's just like a lot of people, you just don't have the time. But John Grisham, really just the fact ... You know, he's mentioned process servers in his stories and subpoenas being served. I always kind of liked that part of it, but just his work is just I think is amazing. And the legal aspect of it, I'm really interested in that part of it. http://www.jgrisham.com/books/ Mighty Mike: That's really cool. I'm going to have to check it out, John Grisham. I'm actually writing a book. It's going to be done here in about 90 days is my goal. And it's going to be on process server safety and best business practices. It's going to be great! Jeff: That's awesome! Mighty Mike: Yeah, you can get a free copy at www.processserverdaily.com/freebook.html when it comes out. Mighty Mike: Jeff, did you have a mentor? Jeff: I started off at a young age. I’m the second youngest of 10 children. Growing up, it was one of those things where, as you can imagine, you either go off to college or go get a job. You're not going to hang around the house, that type of thing. My mentor was no doubt about it my father. He was a hard-working man, raising 10 kids, him and my mother. To me, they’re the most awesome people in the planet, but nevertheless, he said, “Work hard and be nice and don’t ever give up.” He was always supportive of all my brothers and sisters, whatever road they took. He was so excited for me when I started City Wide Legal Messenger Service. He loaned me $1,000, which I had to pay him back by the way. He wasn’t that nice! Jeff: He was truly my mentor. Did he know anything about filing stuff at the courthouses, doing certain papers? Absolutely not. Just his life lessons taught me, even to this day, I still use them. It has really taught me a lot and just got me far. Mighty Mike: That’s great. You answered one of the questions. What’s the greatest advice you’ve ever received? Jeff: The greatest advice I’ve ever received is definitely from my father. Be humbler. Be nice. Work hard. I taught my own kids that. I’d tell you. If you're nice … Don’t be too nice. You're going to be taken advantage of. I’m not saying that, but I’d say being nice, being compassionate, being humble will get so you much further in life. I truly believe that, and that’s the way I try to live my life and do my work. Mighty Mike: To provide an abundance of value without expectation just as a business practice, but also just as a person. There are many examples of that, whether it’s in your love life or with your family. If you provide value without expectation, it will come back to you. Like you said, don’t be taken advantage of, but sometimes it might feel like it and then the next day, you're like, wow, I didn’t expect you to do all these nice things for me. Jeff: Right. Mighty Mike: That’s the idea. Jeff, what would you do if you woke up today, had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smartphone, a car and only $100? What would you do in the next week? Jeff: I would definitely do some work reaching out to other people, advertising to a certain extent. I’d tell you. The best thing that I would do is to get out there and do a good job for folks. I think word of mouth advertisement has been a key for me to my success. It’s one thing to go out and say you're a process server or say you're going to do this and do that, but if you do it, it takes that one paralegal that you do a great job for. You communicate the whole time. You're doing everything you need to be doing. That paralegal could be involved in a group that tells another paralegal and so on and so forth. Jeff: I think part of doing that good job is communicating. Somebody sends you a paper. Don’t take three days to get back to them if it’s a rush and what’s going on. Certainly don’t take another week to send them back to return a service, that type of thing because again, that word of mouth could also hurt you too. It could be a very valuable factor. It could also hurt your business. I would pound the pavement and get out there and try to talk to as many people as I could, talk to paralegal groups, bar association, that type of thing. Mighty Mike: That’s good. One of the things that I take from your story is that, from your methods, is that be diligent. Get out there. Sometimes it’s nice to have a little hand-up, not a hand-out, but the truth is in this example, you only have $100. You have a car. You have the knowledge that you already have, and you have a smartphone so you can give the internet … You can search things. Guys, anybody can do this. You get out there and go after it. I say anybody can do it, like anybody who wants to build a business. Some people, they’re not cut out for serving papers, and if that’s the case, build the business; have someone else serve the papers. There’s a lot of really good husband and wife teams out there. Jeff, what is a parting piece of guidance you want to give to the servers out there? Jeff: Again, what we’ve talked about previously. Stay humble. Treat people with kindness. You have a job to do and certainly do it. In doing so, just remember this thing is bigger than you. Don’t go out there thinking you're Captain Bob, the process server and think that you're better than everybody, that type of thing. Just go out and communicate with your customer. Take good care of your customer. Communication is key. Jeff: I touched base on it earlier. I don't know how times I’ve used servers across the nation where they do 75% of the job. What I mean by that is, hey man, I got this rush. I need to serve right away. This is a big customer, blah, blah, blah. By gosh. They went out and they got it served right away, did a great job. A week later, hey, where is my return of service? I got to get this filed. The attorney is screaming at me. They got to get this filed. Follow through on your job. Do what it all right, not just half of it. Definitely get in the network groups. Meeting new guys and get involved with this and NAPPS members and stuff, a great, great tool. It’s great to get advice to people. Jeff: Again, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years. I still seek advice. I’ll call a server that I’ve been dealing with for 20 years and say, “Hey, man. How would you do this? What’s your viewpoint on this?” Never stop learning because I’d tell you. There’s a lot to learn in this industry. Mighty Mike: You're right, Jeff. There is. A big part of the industry for process servers, what I find most often is that they find themselves in a chasm alone by themselves and the way that they think that every other processor is their competition. The truth is that many process servers out there have too much work and they would be more than glad to give you the work if you can give them a discount. Jeff: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: If that’s what you need to get off the ground and to get your business rolling so you can raise your prices and have some more customers, more attorney clients come in, then that’s what you got to do. Jeff: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: I started out making $20 a paper. How about you? Jeff: When I worked at the law firm, I think I made about $4 an hour. Whether that’d be filing at the courthouse or serve a paper even add to that, yeah, it’s … I think then after that, as time went on, I think I was getting $20 a paper at that point. It’s been a long road. I certainly charge more for that these days. Mighty Mike: Jeff, I appreciate your story. I want to personally thank you for being on the show. I’ve been really impressed with your story and the whole situation with the neo-Nazi. That’s just a side thing. Watching the video and seeing your operation going on, it’s definitely worth being excited about. I’m excited to share it with the world. Jeff, what’s the best way that we can connect with you and then we’ll say goodbye? Jeff: Sure. You can reach us via email. Our email address is jeffENCORE@sbcglobal.net. Definitely a phone a call away, (614) 414-0730. Mighty Mike: Excellent. You can get that information in the show notes at www.processserverdaily.com/jeff.html Until next time, server nation, you’ve been served up some awesomeness by Jeff, the Nazi hunter and Mighty Mike, the podcast server. Mighty Mike: Server nation, I know that you know all about directories and that you know the importance of getting yourself on the web in as many places as possible, but it’s more than that, server nation. It’s about putting yourself on the websites that get ranked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. I’m excited about a new program that I’m starting. Really quickly, let me tell you. As a process server, I don’t cover the whole country, right? We send servers out to other process servers and we call that affiliates. My new program is going to incorporate a system. When my customers come on to my website and they do a location search, try to find a process server in a specific location, many times, I do not serve that area and so I might hire an affiliate in another area and manage to serve that way. That takes time and effort away from my local customers and the local efforts that I have here in Northern California. I want to personally invite each and every member of server nation to add themselves to my directory on my website. This is what’s going to happen. My customers who come to me loyally will search a specific location. If I don’t cover a specific location but you do, guess who shows up? You do. How great is that, server nation? I’m going to share something that means so much to me, my customers. I believe that this will benefit my customers because they will have a resource to go to, to find process servers and to get the best rates nationwide. Oh, but there’s a catch, server nation. There’s always a catch... My directory is free for an affiliate to sign up and get the basic affiliate level. If you do not perform when my customers come and they see that it’s not me or one of my employees or contractors and they see that it’s you, they’re going to see a rating next to your name. If your rating falls, you may not get any business. Server nation, give it a shot. Sign up for the free listing, but please, take care of my customers. I love them like they’re family. Visit www.processserverdaily.com/affiliates.html Mighty Mike: Until next time, server nation, stay safe out there!

What's up server nation this is Mighty Mike, the podcast server and you are listening to processserverdaily.com. Guys, I'm super excited about today's episode and if you have a story that you want to tell that you're excited about, maybe a dog chased you, maybe a guy tried to shoot you with his gun, maybe you had a heart warming story where you helped somebody in need, guys, I want to hear that story on this show. Go to processserverdaily.com/beaguest find some studio time. Go to processserverdaily.com/beaguest. I look forward to speaking to you and hearing your story. Let's get to the show. Our guest today is a private investigator rocking the great state of Texas. He went from being a police officer to receiving training from the FBI. He's hyper involved in the legal community and has even put out a few fires. Ken Ringo, welcome to the show. Thank you. Happy to be here. Ken tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the industry. Well, I started out as a police officer in 2009 and part of my duties was serving paper work for different parts of the court system all the way down to even serving our city council with their papers before it was time to met up, which they would put a lot of stress on us that way. I worked as a firefighter too in my spare time, as a volunteer fire fighter. I was also trained as a medic and my last position as a police officer, I was also one of the medics that would respond to calls. I was a fire fighter as well in Muerte, New Mexico. Our closest hospital was an hour away and we're the only ambulance in that area. When I was just a fire fighter and we got funding to get a new ambulance and that was like the funnest day. We got this big old, huge, red ambulance that had air bags in the back, it's fancy lights and everything, and it was cool. Definitely a cool, not a hobby, but a way to give back to your community. That's cool. Oh, certainly. Tell me about this FBI training. Well, I took training at active shooter response. I took it back in 2013 due to everything that was going on. We were having more active shooters, more incidents. The FBI ended up training a lot of police officers in certain ways to respond with that. That was the main reason behind that. Any training is good training. Ken, I just want to ask you, do you got a family? Yes, I do. I have a wife. I've been married 13 years. She's also an investigator with us and a process server. I have two kids, 10 and 11. They're boy and girl. They're typical kids. Ken, how is it working with your wife every day? We're probably the only two people that can put up with each other and I think that's the reason why we work really well together. That's awesome and that's a great answer. Good job. Ken, there's a reason why you're on my show. You have a lot going on right now, some good experiences, some bad ones, but first tell me about your worst experience working in the field. Let's see. One of the worst ones as far as being a process server, I went to go serve this one individual that was being sued and I just had to serve a subpoena on them, which subpoena's not that big of a deal, you would think. It was in the middle of nowhere. I show up, drive down his driveway to get to his house. He wasn't there yet. He had a friend in the yard doing yard work. I ask him, I say, "Hey, do you know where Pat's at," and he tells me, "Yeah, he's pulling up right now." Sure enough, here comes this Dodge Dully rolling down the driveway. He gets out, big old guy. He's at least 6'4. Now, I'm 5'7, 140 pounds. So, typically, I try to be as calm and nice as possible with these folks and I tell them, "Hey, I just got a subpoena for you real quick." He gets pretty upset and irate and starts telling me, "Well, I'm not accepting nothing here. You come on my property threatening me." I said, "Sir, I'm not threatening you." He said, "Well, that's not what my wife's gonna say in the truck. That's not what he's gonna say." Well, "Guess what this body cam's gonna say?" So, he then shoves me and says, "Well, you're not leaving I've called the Sheriff, and the Sheriff is coming." I said, "Here's your subpoena." I dropped it on the hood of his truck and said, "Nah, I'm going." He says, "Were you ever a police officer?" "Yes sir, and right now this is unlawful detention." He's like, "Well, I'm a cop. I can hold you here. It's like, "No, sir, you can't. Its unlawful detention. I'm gone." I get in my car and cut a nice little donut in his front yard because he blocked the roadway. So, I just went though the grass, made a nice little rivets. I was happy about that. Get down the roadway and I end up calling the Sheriff's department, let them know what happened and they come to me and they said, "You said that he said he was a cop?" "Yeah." "Yeah, he's never been a cop. Did you get that on video?" "Yeah.""Can we get that?" "Yeah, here you go." Wow. Impersonating a police officer. That guy was the one that really got me worked up because I didn't have body armor on that day and he had a very large revolver on his hip and it was just one of those days I thought it was going to be simple because he was a business owner. That's the thing, you never know. What I find is so funny, is you talk to thee attorneys who say, "Oh, it's gonna be an easy one. It's gonna be an easy one and done." I don't tell them this because they're not gonna understand but as a processor I'm like you just jinxed it. I'm gonna go out there and she would have been the nice old lady that answered the door and received service but now, since you said that, I'm gonna go out there and she's not gonna answer the door. That's exactly right and the ones that they always say is gonna be violent, you need to be careful and prepared, are the ones that hug you at the end and say, "I have been waiting for these divorce papers forever. Thank you." That happened on Valentine's Day just recently. What do you want Server Nation to ger from your story? Be prepared. It's better to be over prepared than under prepared. You never know what people are going to act like and I've found that going up to these doors, knocking on these houses, is far worse than any traffic stop. I've had more people pull guns on me serving papers than I ever did as a police officer. Oh man. No, do you ... Is it brandishing. In California, they get arrested for that, how about where you're at? In Texas, it's considered disorderly conduct to an extent. Most of the time they'll let it slide, which is unfortunate but typically they would consider it disorderly conduct. If it's pointed directly at you it's deadly conduct. Deadly conduct is a class A misdemeanor here in Texas. So, even then you might not get arrested, even in ... Yeah. That sucks. Now tell me about your greatest experience working in the field. I think my favorite one was, we get a call from a Georgia Deputy. He was trying to locate a family member of his. It was his granddaughter. His son had gotten all the court papers taken care of. He had full custody. The deputies down here were trying to serve a rid of attachment to try to get the baby back in his custody. They had spent months searching. They've gotten other deputies, other counties involved. We got involved at that point because the local deputies, they exhausted all their resources. So, we kind of got involved in it and she had family scattered throughout Texas, so, I was able to enlist a couple of other people I had met throughout the Facebook groups. I think even one of them's on Process Server Nation and we started trying to hunt her down and after about two weeks, we managed to finally locate her and was able to help the deputies effect service on that rit. That one I didn't charge nearly what I could have. I cut it down way low because that's one of those stories that ... That's one of those cases that it just meant something. It wasn't, "Oh, I think my spouse is cheating on me and I want you to go find him." It wasn't anything like that. It was somebody that hadn't seen his 18 month old child in six, seven months. That one meant something. Yeah. A lot of times the experiences that we have out in the field will result in happy warm feelings but I think it's important that we have those because so often we have the negative experiences where you have to serve a single mom, who's unemployed, eviction papers. So, it goes both ways but that's a great story. What do you want Server Nation to get from your story, you're greatest experience in the filed? No matter how bad a situation seems, no matter how difficult the situation that you may be brought into may be, there's always an outcome that best fits the situation. There's always an outcome for that person that you're working for that needs your help. They have to come to you and they need what your experience. They need your help to effect what they're trying to do, whether it's finding a missing child, whether it's serving divorce papers, whether it's serving custody papers to where ... Serving a TRO, a temporary restraining order, that needs to be done. They need your help with it and no matter how bad it may look, in the end, you did something that's gonna help. Server Nation this is your only opportunity. You're only as good as your last serve. So many opportunities I've had where I thought, "I haven't heard from them in a while," and I always think, "What was the last serve?" "Oh yeah, it was personal service and I got them to proof right away," but there are times where I've slipped or my office has slipped and we didn't get a proof back right away and you don't hear from them for a while and I call them and I go, "Hey, I'll give you the next three services free." Your opportunity, your greatest experience, what I've taken from that is, every opportunity you have to be able to serve the public and be able to help others is an opportunity for your business to shine. I don't know what that resulted in but for me I always say, the greatest review you can give is a referral. Tell your friends and family. It's weird in this business but it's not that weird. Honestly, people go through divorces, small claims. I'm my church, all the time, people come up to me like, "Hey, this guy owes me money." I got a couple car dealership clients from that. They're like, "I just want you to do all my small claims paperwork." So, we handle all the small claim's paperwork. We sue them. We help them sue people in small claims. That's great Ken. So, tell me about what you're working on right now that has you most fired up? Well, I'm trying to get my website more mobile friendly because it looks great on a desktop. I've worked rally hard on that but how many people really have a desktop anymore? Everybody's looking at everything on their phones. You can't walk down the street without seeing every person looking straight down in their phone, walking into telephone polls, or even if you're driving unfortunately, everybody's still got their heads buried in their phones. I wasn't a big fan if Wix but it's one of the newer ones that advertising a lot. It's pretty nice. I like a lot of the features. I don't really like how it's not super user friendly. I started out using Weebly, Word Press, and now the go to run for email marketing is clickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a rally good site for building a reoccurring web and new business. I don't use it now but if I was going to build a website from scratch I would probably use either Wix or ClickFunnels. I built mine directly from scratch. I went out and I took all the photos during a big storm that we had had because it looks neat to have nice ... Of course my websites kind of a little darker than some because I like it that way. Some of the stuff that we do whether it's missing persons ... One of the photos in the missing persons section is actually a photo of a little girl hiding inside of an old fireplace in the middle of an old abandoned house and that's actually my own daughter and then for ... In Texas private investigators can serve [inaudible 00:12:04] warrants. We traveled out to a little town called Milano, Texas, which still has a jail standing from the 1800s, which there's a picture of ... It's actually my wife's hand sitting through the bars handcuffed. Little things like that. It's a personal touch to it. Ken, what I take from yours story about the website building and Google and things like that is, your website is like your real estate, your internet real estate and if you don't have internet real estate, no one's gonna pull over and check out your business. That's the way to look at it. If you're one of these guys and I say this in the most loving terms. If you're one of these old school guys that are like, "Oh, I just go by word of mouth." Well, guess what, you're only gonna have the clients that you've ever had because nowadays, attorneys, they want to have somebody that knows how to do an efiling. They want to have somebody that can do a proof of service, have their proof of service automated and get it back to them within one day at least, at the most. I love all the marketing tips. It's great. Server Nation, Ken has been dropping some major value bombs on us today but prepare yourself because we're heading into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Server Nation I know you're with the times and you want to do whatever you can to have all the resources for your client, that is why I created onetwothreeefile.com. It has a process server, attorney, or even an in pro per. You can visit the website and file your documents in any of the Tyler Courts in California with its easy to use, one page operation, you can have your efiling done in a matter of minutes and get back to what really matters. If your time is important to you, visit onetwothreeefile.com. Server nation welcome back to the show. Ken, are you ready for the rapid fire round? Let's do it. Ken, if you could recommend just one app what would it be and why? I would suggest having an app for locating folks, whether it be a database to locate, running addresses, licenses, license plates, that sort of thing, to me is one of the most important things to have and then of course, Google maps because without a map, we don't know where we're going. That's right and I would just plug my favorite map tool, which is Waze app. What is your favorite skip trace tactic and then what is your favorite database? My favorite skip trace tactic is simply talking. You knock on a door, and they say, "Oh no, he's not here." "Do you know where he's at?" "Yeah, he's at work right now." "Where's he working at?" "Oh, he's working at AT&T." "Oh, which AT&T there's like six of them." "Oh, the one on Main Street." "Oh cool. You think he's there right now?" "Yeah, he said he was going to be home in about two hours." "Cool." That's my favorite. When you can talk them through because you sound really inquisitive, "Are you for real? Wow, that's cool." What do you when inevitably they say, "Who are you?" Typically, I'll tell them. I was like, "I'm a process server. I've got court papers for them. It's not anything bad. This is what happened. They just need to take care of it real quick, nothing bad. Happens to me to. Its happened to me. It's no big deal." Keep them talking. What is your favorite tool for defense. For defense there's several different tools that I utilize. Typically, a gift of gab is usually one of the best tools you can have for defense. I also wear a body cam for every serve, which not only protects me, it protects them and nobody's gonna question the serve whenever you say, "Oh well just watch the video." I use a transcend. It's a transcend body ten. They have a couple of different versions out right now but this little sucker, it's water proof. It's got night vision on it so you can press ... It has one button so you can take a photo while it's still recording. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, you can have it right on your chest. You can hold the papers out right in front of the guy, press the button real quick and it snaps a photo. I've been using this since I was a police officer and I got in the habit of pressing that button whenever I was looking at licenses so I'd automatically have it. So, Ken, I want to drive down a little deeper here. We're almost to the end here. You said about defense. I want to know more about how you defend yourself. Well, given my nature, coming from law enforcement end of this, I typically wear body armor to just about every serve and I'm also armed with a firearm as per Texas state law. The reason behind this really has to do because I lost someone I knew, Constable Brian Bachmann. He was serving civil papers, walked up to a door just to serve a notice and he was shot and killed before he even realized what was going on and he's the reason why I make sure that I'm wearing body armor because sadly his family ... It's been several years now and his family's had to live without hm and I won't do that to my family. I wore body armor whenever I was a police officer and to me there's no difference in making a traffic stop to ... We had to go up to houses all the time as police officers and I wouldn't do it without body armor and a weapon and I don't see a reason why there's any difference now. No, that's really good. I know a lot of people say, "We're not officers. We're not cops. We're not SWAT. We don't need body armor," things like that but you know, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. That's for sure. Clarify. On the body armor I wear it's not one of those tactical looking SWAT vests. It's a nice looking over shirt that has our logo on it. The same logo, Ringo's Detective Service. It's something that looks professional. It doesn't look like SWAT or anything tactical. That's awesome, yeah. Thank you for clarifying. That's true. You don't want to go to the door looking like you're gonna kick it in. Right. What kind of gun are you packing usually? I carry a Ruger SR40, which I started out as a police officer carrying Glock's like all the others. During one time whenever we had to use our weapons, I dropped a magazine and it shattered on me and I wasn't happy with that. I carried it for a little longer and then I got promoted to a supervisory position and all the supervisors wore 1911's. Carrying a 1911 for 12 hours, that's not fun. That's a heavy gun. I started looking around for another weapon to replace that with and I looked at the Ruger's to see ... Glock's patent ran out and Ruger basically made a copy. It's a center fire like the Glock is. Has the same kind of trigger safety on it but it also has a thumb safety on it, which my muscle memory from carrying the 1911, transferred over to this but it's a lot lighter weapon and it's a very accurate weapon and thankfully it fits in the Glock holsters, which the holster I carry is a safari land duty holster that's properly retention level four holster. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I know a lot of the guys that are gun enthusiasts, they'll appreciate you sharing that knowledge. Ken, what book would you recommend and why? Well, it depends on where you're at. As far as books goes, I think one thing that we should all do is study up on our local laws and to see what laws affect you in your areas because it goes all the way down to city ordinances because you always want to make sure that you're following the laws and making sure that nobody can question the way that you served them. That's good. Not to make too much light of that but here in Chico, it's illegal to spit on the sidewalk. We have a law similar to that in Texas. It's actually illegal to walk in the grass when a sidewalk is provided. Oh wow. I kind of like that one, you know, people walking on your lawn all the time, that sucks. Yeah, that's really important, knowing the laws in your local area, different places you can park, things like that. Different cities have different laws that affect us as processors. That's good Ken. Thank you. What is the greatest advice you've ever received? It's kind of a weird one but it's ... My dad, he always told us that you've got to work for everything that you want. Everything that you do, you need to put in all your effort and the way he always would tell us was whenever I was a kid, whenever I would go out hunting for jobs, he would tell us, "You need to just go up there, tell them what you want to do and offer to work that day and give him a reason to want you." I kind of took that to hear and ever since then that's something that I always have done with clients, attorneys, what have you. I've given them a chance to try out what I can do. Give them a reason to want me. I think that's probably my best advice, is what my dad always told them. Give them reason to want you. That's great advice ken. The same aspect, I would not be the person I am today if it wasn't for my wife. She's the one that pushed me to be a police officer. She's the one that pushed me to start this business and Ringo's Detective Service would not be Ringo's Detective service without her. So, as silly as it sounds, both those two are my mentors. That's great Ken. Keep it close to the vest, that's for sure. Having your wife backing you up in your business is big time. My wife backs me up as well and definitely better for it. Ken, what would you do if you woke up today, had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smart phone, a car, and only $100, what would you do in the next week. I would go park myself in downtown near the courthouse, where all the attorneys are and I would walk up and down every street, go inside, and introduce myself, and tell them what I can do to help their business. That's how I got started in the first place. I spent every penny I had getting this business started. We were down to our last hundred bucks. I was able to make us some business cards. We had some business cards made up, me and wife. We went into every attorney's office that we could find in town, asked to talk to the receptionist and then to the attorney and say, "Hey, this is us. This is what we can do," and I think I would follow that again because that's worked so well. That's a great story. I Love that, just getting out there and pounding the pavement, going and talking to attorneys, going in the courthouse, that's all good stuff Ken. What do you want Server Nation to take from your story and what would be your parting piece of advice? Don't give up. Don't let other people tell you that, "Oh, well, you should be doing it my way because my ways working for me." Get out there. Do it a way that you're comfortable with. Work the way you're comfortable with but in the same aspect, stay safe because there's always gonna be somebody out there that cares for you, that's gonna want to talk to you tomorrow and if you're not being safe out there ... This goes all the way don to not just worrying about what's on the other side of that door but worry about what's creeping around the corner on four legs that may come after you. It's being aware of your surroundings but in the same aspect, don't give up if you're having a slow month, you're having a slow week, or even a slow year. Things will pick up and in those times that you have nothing else to do, go out, talk to attorneys. See if there's somebody out there that may need your help. I love your story. I want to personally thank you for coming on the show. I'm impressed with your story and I'm excited to share it with the world. What is the best way that we can connect with you and then we can say goodbye. You can find me on Facebook. It's Facebook/DetectiveRingo. You can find us online at Detectiveringo.com. We're on Google plus, which is also Detective Ringo, just hashtag Detective Ringo, you'll find us. We're on Instagram. That'd be the best way to contact us. It's Ken@detectiveringo.com. Until next time Server Nation, you've been served up some awesomeness by Detective Ringo and Mighty Mike, the podcast server. Server nation, I know that you know all about directories and that you know the importance of getting yourself on the web in as many places as possible but it's more than that server nation. It's about putting yourself on the websites that get ranked on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I'm excited about a new program IM starting. Really quickly, let me tell you. As a process server, I don't cover the whole country. We send serves out to other process servers and we call that affiliates. My new program is going to incorporate a system, when my customers come onto my website and the do a location search to try to find a process server in a specific location, many times I do not serve that areae and so I might hire an affiliate in another area and manage the serve that way. That takes time and effort away from my local customers and the local efforts that I have here in Northern California. I want to personally invite each and every member of Server Nation to add themselves to my directory on my website. This is what's going to happen. My customers who come to me loyally will search a specific location. If I don't cover a specific location but you do, guess who shows up? You do. How great is that Server Nation? I'm gonna share something that means so much to me, my customers. I believe that this will benefit my customers because they will have a resource to go to, to find process servers and to get the best rates nationwide. Oh, but there's a catch Server Nation. There is always a catch. My directory is free for an affiliate to sign up and get the basic affiliate level but if you do not perform when my customers come and they see that it's not me or one of my employees or contractors and they see that it's you, they're going to see a rating next to your name. If your rating falls you may not get any business. Server Nation give it a shot. Sign up for the free listing but please take care of my customers. I love them like they're family. Visit processerverdaily.com/affiliates. Until next time Server Nation, stay safe out there.

Coming Soon. 

Show Notes Coming Soon.. 

Show Notes Coming Soon...

Episode #1 - Michael Kern Our guest today has been a Professional Process Server for over 30 years, Michael Kern has just been elected our 2017 President of the National Association of Professional Process Servers (www.napps.org) and is a proud and longtime board member of the California Association of Legal Support Professionals (www.calspro.org) and since its inception, formally known as CAPPS, CALSPRO was founded on the simple principles of providing continuing education, membership, legislative protection and improving on the professionalism to the process serving the industry.

What is up, Server Nation? I'd like to introduce myself. This is Episode 0, and my name is Michael Reid. I am known as the Podcast Server. I'm a process server by trade. I own a legal support company in northern California, and I just started this podcasting journey as I started sharing my story with other process servers and private investigators. I've met a lot of really cool people over the last eight years. We're up to about eight episodes now, and I thought that it might be appropriate to share my story with my audience. I appreciate the time that you're taking to listen to this episode and to learn more about me and about my show. First, about me, I'm a father of eight beautiful children named Michael, Nicola, Kyle, Kylie, Braxton, Schuyler, Millie, and Brian. They're ranging from 17 years old down to 6 years old. They keep me busy at home. I'd be amiss if I didn't mention my beautiful wife, Allie. Allie supports me in all of the endeavors that I'm doing, and I couldn't do it without her. I appreciate her very much. My background started out in sales. I earned the nickname "Ace" when my friend and I were companion salesmen out there in the field. He and I would go to grocery stores and stand inside the stores. Patrons would come in to do their grocery shopping, and we would solicit them to have a free portrait taken with our studio. My friend, Mike, and I blew all the sales records in the history of this old company that we worked for. Many things happened between that time and the time that I decided to serve papers. More recently, I was going to school for nursing, and as I was going to school, I had a part-time job delivering prescriptions in my local town of Chico, California. I would get about $2 for each prescription that I would deliver. I was pretty good at delivering about 30 or 40 prescriptions each evening, as I had my route down pretty good. Well, one day I was blindsided when there was a knock at my door and it was a process server to serve me divorce papers. The guy was really cool. And so, I asked him, "How much did you get paid to deliver this today?" He told me that he got paid $50 to deliver that one piece of paper to me. Most people would have looked down at the papers and stared at them for a while and thought, "Man, I'm getting divorced. This sucks." Not me. I looked at the guy and I said, "How can I get involved in this?" He said, "You've got to know somebody. You've got to know the right people, and you've got to go get trained." The guy wasn't very helpful, but I'll tell you, he planted the seed. About a week later, I had a live scan into the Tehama County Clerk-Recorder when they gave me a call and said that I needed to register in my local county. I was so excited that since I was near that court, I did it right then and there without researching it. I decided to go to my local county. I got registered here in Butte County, and I started serving papers almost right away. The person who did my live scan told me about a lady here in my local area who gave away serves, but you had to serve them pretty cheap. I thought, hey, I'll give it a shot. I went down and spoke to this woman. She was a crabby lady. She didn't want to give me any work until I went to the CALSPro training. I told her. I said, "I don't know what that is. Where do I go?" She said, "Well, they're usually down in Sacramento, and it's about a two-day, or one- or two-day course." I thought, well, that's fine. I want to start serving papers right away, though. At that time, she had five servers working for her. Two years later, she started having a lot of health problems, and I was there for her the whole way. All of the other servers at that point had dropped off, being unreliable or unwilling to put up with her crabby nature. I was the only one left. I'm sad to say that she died. She started her business in 1982, which was the year I was born. She knew every attorney, and she had a good name with the attorneys in town. I went from having three or four of my own attorney clients to 30. My business skyrocketed overnight, and it was a bittersweet beginning to my new legal service company. I was able to take her business of only 30 attorneys and turn it into over 100 attorneys and started accepting work from affiliate companies. My business now generates over $500,000 a year, and I only have three local servers and two part-time employees. I'm able to do this because I still serve myself, and I'm able to go out and serve 20 or 30 papers in a single evening. We've been able to get some county contracts and some collection contracts, which has been very helpful. In short, that is my story. My specialty is in marketing and sales, as you can imagine, and my goal here is to be able to create this type of opportunity and success for others across the nation. This podcast is not for profit. I do not charge anyone for coming on the podcast, and those that come on the podcast really just come on because we're friends. We have conversations about how they make their business better. I give my two cents. They give their two cents. I do have a set list of questions because I want them to know what to expect. Ultimately, it is my goal to pull out the best stories from these guys. Some of them have been serving papers for over 30 years. I relish the opportunities to be able to speak to those that have the experience and knowledge to be able to help me in my business; and if they can help me in my business, I know they can help you in yours. The goal is to post about one episode a week every Monday. If you visit the website at www.processserverdaily.com/podcast, you guys can listen to the episodes each week on Monday. Guys, if you want to be on the podcast, visit my website, processserverdaily.com/beaguest. Find some time that works for you, and I look forward to hearing you on the show. Guys, this has been a pleasure being able to record this Episode 0. I feel more connected to you guys already. Please, visit our website, processserverdaily.com, and follow us on social media at podcastserver. That's my tagline on all the social media channels. As always, Server Nation, stay safe out there. Server Nation, I know that you know all about directories and that you know the importance of getting yourself on the web in as many places as possible, but it's more than that, Server Nation. It's about putting yourself on the websites that get ranked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. I'm excited about a new program that I'm starting. Really quickly, let me tell you. As a process server, I don't cover the whole country, right? We send servers out to other process servers, and we call that affiliates. My new program is going to incorporate a system. When my customers come to my website and they do a location search, try to find a process server in a specific location, many times I do not serve that area. And so, I might hire an affiliate in another area and manage the serve that way. That takes time and effort away from my local customers and the local efforts that I have here in northern California. I want to personally invite each and every member of Server Nation to add themselves to my directory on my website. This is what's going to happen. My customers, who come to me loyally, will search a specific location. If I don't cover a specific location but you do, guess who shows up? You do. How great is that, Server Nation? I'm going to share something that means so much to me, my customers. I believe that this will benefit my customers because they will have a resource to go to, to find process servers and to get the best rates nationwide. Oh, but there's a catch, Server Nation. There's always a catch. My directory is free for an affiliate to sign up and get the basic affiliate level, but if you do not perform when my customers come and they see that it's not me or one of my employees or contractors, and they see that it's you, they're going to see a rating next to your name. If your rating falls, you may not get any business. Server Nation, give it a shot. Sign up for their free listing, but please take care of my customers. I love them like they're family. Visit processserverdaily.com/affiliates I I look forward to interviewing you one day.