01 - Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support | Mighty Process Server

Full Transcript
0:00Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I learned not to ever turn my back on somebody.

0:03Intro:You're listening to Process Server Daily, the show where hustle meets strategy in the high stakes world of process serving. From elite pros to the new servers taking massive action, these are the voices of a rising industry, hosted by the founder of 1, 2, 3 Legal Support, Mighty Mike Reed. This is your backstage pass to building a profitable process serving empire. Let's get into it.

0:35Mighty Mike:Well, speaking of those kind of rough experiences that we might have out in the field, tell me about the worst experience you've had in the field.

0:42Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Well, the worst experience I had was in 1988. I had to serve some divorce documents on a guy that owned an exterminating company. And I've had a couple of different assaults, but this one sticks in my mind because it actually put me in the hospital.

0:55Mighty Mike:Oh, my God.

0:56Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I went to in 1988. I served the guy divorce papers, knocked on the door, guy answered the door, said it was him, no problem. Took the papers from me, turned around and started walking my car. And all of a sudden I got hit in the back of the head, knocked out unconscious, and don't remember a thing after they stopped waking up in a hospital and how it was all seen as the lady across the street, the neighbor saw it all from her window. Saw him hit me with some kind of bat and cracked me in the back corner of my head, knocked me unconscious, took my car that was running in the driveway or partially in the driveway, partially on the street and went down. Took my car and drove it down the street and parked my car and came back up the street. I'm still laying unconscious and ran back in the house and closed the door. Neighbor called the sheriff. Sheriff showed up at the house. Of course, she told him what happened and they arrested him first. First degree. They originally had charged him with attempted murder.

1:51Mighty Mike:How old did you say you were?

1:53Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I was 19.

1:55Mighty Mike:Oh, wow.

1:55Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Fresh cracked in the back of my head. It was pretty bad.

2:00Mighty Mike:That's terrible.

2:01Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:But it ensued later on. It got a little worse later on. So they charged him. He had to go to. He had to go to jail. He went to prison.

2:08Mighty Mike:Oh, my gosh.

2:09Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I collected from his homeowner's insurance quite heavily. Believe it or not, when he got out of prison several years later, I saw the same man in Baskin Robbins several years later. He knew exactly who I was. Never said a word again. I learned not to ever turn my back on somebody. You know, you learn that at an early age. Of course, I had to pay a price for it. I Got ahead and get hurt to find that out.

2:32Mighty Mike:Well, I tell you, Mike, I haven't had an experience that bad yet, but I've had situations where I heard footsteps coming up behind me and I really thought for a second, like, is this guy, could this guy, you know, do? So I'm glad that you shared that story with us because that's something that, you know, you always want to watch them. And don't underestimate people, either guy or girl. You never know what you're going to get.

2:57Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Well, you know, and that's, that's another thing. You know, I always try to tell people that, you know, you gotta. You gotta be prepared for anything that could possibly happen because you don't know who's behind that door. I always tell people, I don't know how many processors, I see it over and over, that they go right to the front door, they ring the doorbell and they're standing directly in front of it. There's no way for you to know that there's not a gun on the other side of that door. I never stand in front of the door. That's a good adjacent to the door. I knock, I ring. Who are you? I say what I am, but I never stand in front of the door because I just. I don't take those kind of precautions. You don't know if someone's gonna open the door real quick and then they'll surprise and it's too late. Yeah, but people just don't expect that to happen to them. I think a lot has to do with your manner and the way you talk to someone. If you're aggressive with someone, they're gonna be aggressive with you. I've had people where they're aggressive and I'm talking them very calmly. I'm so sorry this is happening. I wish I didn't have to give it to you. Unfortunately, this is my job. You know, if it's not me, it's somebody else, right? You know, call the number. I hope it all works out for you. If you act professional, you're more than likely not gonna have an encounter. You always have those situations. You also gotta know your area. What area should you not be in at certain hours? What areas will give you more problems than others? You know, I usually don't go into certain sections where I know there's gang areas or late at night. You don't show up in the gang area at 11 o' clock at night when the crash units are floating in the neighborhood. You're some kind of drug dealer. You're A process server. So you just gotta use common sense. You gotta know your facility in your area on where you should be at what hours, and that way you can maximize your efforts at the same time. So.

4:33Mighty Mike:Well, Mike, that's good. You know, we take the good with the bad. There's something that keeps us going with all of this. I've had a few bad experiences myself, but I've also had. I want to say I've had more good experiences than bad. Tell me about the greatest experience you've ever had in the field.

4:47Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I've had a couple of them, but one of them that comes to mind is where a lady was getting all her money stolen from her. And they needed to get this guy in an injunction, and once he got served, it would freeze all his assets. And she had lost a lot of money. And they. I didn't get paid enough for it for all the work that we had to do. But I had that personal feeling that I just felt so bad for what this man had done to this particular lady or this. This client.

5:14Mighty Mike:Yeah.

5:15Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:And I spent extra time. I did some little stakeout. I did a lot of extra stuff just to get him served. And she was so appreciative it. And so that sticks in my mind. I've had several. I had several different ones that people were very appreciative or they felt bad that they had to. That I had to come serve them, like, as. And yet I'm giving them the bad news, and they're trying. They're telling me they're sorry. You know, you'll get different situations. I think the toughest ones to serve, really, to be honest, is divorce papers. Especially when the. When one of them doesn't know that it's coming. And that's where it gets very hard.

5:49Mighty Mike:Yeah. I've once served a lady at a Taco Bell, and I had just served three other papers before that one. And they were just routine, you know, collection cases. And then there's this Taco Bell lady, and I served her just like anybody else. And she passed out on the floor right there in Taco Bell. She didn't know she was getting divorced. And after that, that taught me to, okay, look at the paperwork, make sure, you know, divorce cases. Handle them a little more discreetly. A little more. You should always have discreet. But with divorce especially.

6:22Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Right. I think sometimes the other rewarding one is when you serve celebrities.

6:27Mighty Mike:Oh, yeah.

6:28Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Especially if it's someone you like, and then they're a true gentleman. Yeah. Those are the ones that really do it for you, you know, so, I mean, those are the ones that I really get excited about because I've served a lot of celebrities, served Danny DeVito, Danny DeVita and Rhea Pearlman. We serve them. I come in the house and they want to offer me cookies and coffee and the whole thing. Oh, yeah, they're really nice.

6:47Mighty Mike:That's so cool.

6:48Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:But then you'll get other people that are not very n to sit down with, which I'm not going to name who those are, but some of them are not the most nicest people. They are exactly what you think they are.

6:58Mighty Mike:That's funny. That would. That's a really cool experience.

7:01Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Yeah.

7:01Mighty Mike:Wow. That. But you lived down in that area, Louisiana and Hollywood, and.

7:05Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Yeah, it's tough to serve in some of those areas, especially up in Hollywood Hills. And you get in the mansions and they got the private estates and Beverly Hills, and you got the Beverly Hills police forums. Very protective. All the celebrities, they don't know if you're a, you know, groupie or you're obsessed fan or you're the paparazzi. They have no idea. So whenever I do stakeouts and those kind of things, I usually call the police department, let them know, hey, I'm gonna be sitting on the street. I'm waiting for so and so. And it's always worked out pretty well that way.

7:32Mighty Mike:And they're pretty supportive of you.

7:33Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:They are. As long as they know you're there, then they won't hassle you.

7:37Mighty Mike:Nice. Well, Mike, you got a lot of things going on, and so I just want you to kind of focus on maybe one thing that has you most fired up right now. Tell us about that.

7:48Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Okay. What I'm working on right now that I think is going to be the future is E filing. I'm big into E filing. I'm promoting E filing. I've got people using my software. And the other thing that we're cross promoting is where we're doing foreign deposition out of state subpoenas. Those are the two big things I think a lot of people focus on process serving. I started to focus on auxiliary services that I can offer because, one, there's a lot less of it, of people doing it and that are an expert in that, in those fields. So I decided that was a realm I was gonna go. Plus, it usually pays a lot more than a regular process. Okay. So, like, for example, we consider ourselves the expert in out of state deposition subpoenas in all 50 states. We do lots of them every day. They got different rules and regulations for every state. You know, what you can do in California, you can't necessarily do in Texas or Arizona or whatever. So we have all the prescribing rules and sometimes it's not even by the state, it's by the county. You can go to one county, they have a totally different rule than the rest of the state complies with. There's about 32 different states right now that have the Foreign Deposition Subpoena act. And so we do quite a bit of those. And the other one that we do a lot of is E filing. Obviously in California we don't really do it out of state, but it's becoming more and more prevalent here in this state in California, as you know. And we do a lot of that. I think last month we filed just over 2,000 clean 29 ports, I think. Hey, quick break from the episode to tell you about something that's changing the game for processing process servers across the country. It's called Mighty Process Servers. And yeah, you can join absolutely free inside. You'll get full access to every course, every download, and the educational tools that we use to help process servers build profitable companies. We meet every Tuesday at 1pm Eastern for our live Mighty Mastermind call. Come join the conversation. You can connect with other professionals, post on the discussion board, direct message members and become part of one of the most engaged communities for process servers. Don't wait. Go to mightyprocess server.com and join today. Those who get verified, get listed and start bidding on jobs same day. Now let's get back to the show.

10:10Mighty Mike:What advice would you give to a struggling server out there that was just trying to trying to build his business?

10:14Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Well, I see a lot of servers when they first become a server, they want to do it for the cheapest price so they can get the account. I tell people that price doesn't always dictate the service. You can do things cheap and then at the same time, and then all of a sudden when they have extraordinary measures or they want something done, they want it for that cheap price. You got to charge a fair price to get a fair job done. What you want to do is to say, this is the service I will offer. Just like when someone calls me up and says, I'm not happy with so and so. And I say, okay, what's the problem you're having then? I don't downgrade that process serving company. I say, okay, I'm sorry you had that problem, but this is what I would do or this is how we would handle it, or these are the benefits of using my company or my process serving process, service versus the competitor. And I'll give you the comparison. And then they decide for themselves. I think it's unprofessional. Very unprofessional. When you hear another person, just so they get the account, they'll. They'll agree with the client and say whatever they have to say so they can get it. That is not a proper way. You know, you go in, you're. You're energized. This is what we can do. Give me a try. Half off on that first service. Give me a try. See if you like me, you know.


11:18Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:You want to offer something, benefit that you're going to do something more than what they're currently using. Otherwise, if you're going to just do the same, there's no benefit. There's people that. There's three different ways a client is motivated. One is money. Sometimes they want to get the cheapest price in town. They don't care about quality. There's another one that'll pay whatever. That doesn't matter how much it costs. They just want service. And then there's the person in the middle that you get what you get for the price. This middle of the road, if they get it, great. They don't. Great too. It all depends on the clientele. And you got to know your clientele, what they expect. There's an old saying, inspect what you expect. Inspect what you expect. I expect you to. I paid you for a job. I expect you to do the job. You're not. Then you got to make a change.

11:55Mighty Mike:I don't think we expected any less from the great Mike Kern. As far as quotes go, we're going to have to put that one on the show. Notes. Inspect what you expect. That's great.

12:07Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:That's right. Inspect what you expect.

12:09Mighty Mike:So, Mike, what's the greatest advice you've ever received?

12:12Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Well, I'll tell you one that was. Never go in anybody's house. No matter if it's a little old lady standing at the door behind the screen door, never go in the house.

12:20Mighty Mike:Amen.

12:22Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I cannot emphasize that enough. Never go in the house. I was a young man, my father used to tell me, never go in the house. I thought, oh, you're crazy. What's the big deal? Granny came to the door. Well, you don't know who else she's in there with. Well, I had to serve her husband and he was deranged. I went in the house, and when I went to serve it, handle the papers. He goes, I'm getting my gun. Man literally jumped off the couch and started running to his bedroom. I couldn't get the screen door open. I actually kicked the screen, broke their screen door,

12:50Mighty Mike:and ran to my car

12:51Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:out on the driveway. And the man standing at the door with his gun.

12:55Mighty Mike:Oh, boy.

12:56Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:So I learned right then and there, never go in the house, no matter what the person looks like. Even if they tell you if the person's disabled, bring them to the door, bring them in a wheelchair. I cannot go in the house for

13:08Mighty Mike:new servers out there. They may not know this, but, you know, if they're. If they're disabled and you can see them and be able to communicate with them, you don't have to necessarily hand it to them. You can set it on the. You know, inside the room or hand it to someone else to hand to them. As long as you can communicate with them. That's the key.

13:23Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I've. And it's funny, it was just brought up yesterday. I served down. I'm down in Palm Springs on business this week, and I went to serve a notice of default, and they have to be served personally. I've already served the wife, but now the husband has to be served. Well, he's disabled. He's in a wheelchair. The lady says, I have power of attorney. I go, ma', am, you may have power of attorney, but you are not him. I have to serve him. She goes, are you gonna keep coming back? I said, I'm gonna keep coming back. You're gonna have to bring him to the door so I can see him and give him the papers and we can be on our way. She goes, well, he's not ready to come to the door right now, okay? So I come back later that night. She goes, you're just gonna keep coming. Told you before, I'm gonna keep coming. Finally, last night, I served her. She brought him in a wheelchair, and I served him at the door. So, you know, sometimes you have to serve that person personally. It's just what it is, is the job. Prior to substitute service back in the 70s, there was no substitute service. There was only personal service. Today, I think prostitute service today, take it to another dimension. They think because they go and serve a subpoena, and it's for a doctor, for personal appearance, oh, I can accept. No, you can't. It has to be personally served. I don't care what they say. Personal service is personal service, and I have to constantly teach that to. And believe it or not, you'll have it across the state with other affiliates and other processors they think because someone says they're authorized, it's like you trying to serve me a subpoena. Oh, Mike's my. Mike's my rep. He'll just take it. Just go serve him up in Northern California. I mean, it's just. That's how ridiculous it is.

14:41Mighty Mike:Well, we have a couple of doctor's offices that the doctor's never available. And they say, oh, we're authorized. And it's like, okay, I just seen him walk by with his coat. You know, can he just wave at me? And I'll call it personal service.

14:55Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:I always tell him, okay, well, I guess we'll serve him at home. What do you mean serve him at home? I say, yeah, he's got his home address. I'm going to serve him at home tonight. So then his home address is going to be public record. Do you want me to serve him now at his business or do you want his home address? Public record?

15:07Mighty Mike:Oh, that's a good one.

15:07Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Oh, let me tell the doctor. And they come. They. Sometimes they get really pissed about it because I don't appreciate the threat. It wasn't a threat. It's a promise. I was going to come to your house and serve you there. You don't want to be served here. Okay, I'll serve you at home. Come home sometime. So sometimes you have to leverage. I've even done that with lawyers. I've called a lawyer where they're playing games. I call them up. You want to set an appointment, I can come survey. Or do you want me serving at home? Your choice. Just tell me which way you want it. Most attorneys don't want to have any problems, so they'll end up making it where they don't make a scene.

15:34Mighty Mike:So for the. So for the new process server, trying to build his business and all he has is $500 and he wants to go out. What's the first thing he should do?

15:42Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:He's got to build a website. Most important, got to set up an email address. Another thing I always see processors do, they always use Gmail. To me, I think that's the worst thing to do. First of all, you can go on GoDaddy or any of these domains, buy a. Buy a name for your company, whatever you want to call it. XYZ Process. Okay. And then you get an email that's hooked with. Because you get a free email. You get up to 10 free emails with it. Put it@mikeyzprocess.com. why would you want to market Gmail? I'd rather market my company. So there's process serving companies out there that have been processing. They don't know why they're not getting business. They don't have a website. So how's anybody going to know who you are? So the most inexpensive thing you can do is a website. And I'm not saying you have to spend $10,000. You can spend 3, $400, build your own and have a website and then when you start making money, you build another website. A website is the number one thing a processor has to have.


16:31Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:You have to spend money to make money.

16:33Mighty Mike:That's right. That's right. Well, Mike, I appreciate you staying up late with me here today and getting this first episode out of the way. You know what? You've really rocked us. Drop some major value bombs. I'm sure that the audience is going to be happy to listen to it and re listen to it and we're going to share it and we're going to blast this thing across the country and try to get as many people listenership as we can. Mike, what is the best way that we can connect with you and then we'll say goodbye.

16:57Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support:Okay, well, I'm the owner of Direct Legal Support in Los Angeles. We have four offices throughout the state of California. You can reach me by email@mediadirectlegal.com you can visit our website at www.directdirectlegal.com. i can be reached any way different shape or form. You can call us at our 800 number. 800-675-5376.

17:20Outro:That's a wrap on another episode of Process Server Daily where the legal support industry levels up. Want to grow your process serving business with the best marketing tools, the most engaged community and the highest ranking directory online. Visit mightyprocessserver.com claim your listing. Join our free community. Surround yourself with process servers who get it and build something real. From the field to the courtroom. This is Process Server Daily. Until next time, stay safe out there and live mighty.

01 - Michael Kern, Direct Legal Support | Mighty Process Server

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