Ep. 12July 16, 2018· 26:51
12 - Gary Clayton | Mighty Process Server
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Episode Highlights
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In this gripping episode of "Process Server Daily," Mighty Mike Reid welcomes Gary Clayton, the owner of On Time Process Services, who shares intense stories from the field of process serving. From being held at gunpoint during a challenging serve to delivering life-changing news of a $2 million inheritance, Gary's experiences highlight the unpredictable nature of the job and the critical importance of preparation and safety.
- 00:00 — Podcast intro by Mighty Mike Reid.
- 01:45 — Gary Clayton recounts being held at gunpoint during a serve.
- 04:30 — Details of the armed confrontation and eventual rescue by the sheriff.
- 08:15 — Discussion on the importance of being connected to dispatch for safety.
- 12:00 — Gary's experience following a defendant into California.
- 15:45 — Gary advises on the decision regarding carrying firearms during serves.
- 18:30 — Importance of preparation and staying calm in dangerous situations.
- 22:00 — Gary's greatest experience: notifying a man of a $2 million inheritance.
Full Transcript
Gary Clayton:Doing a serve for a divorce party. Kind of what our majority of our serves are. And we were actually, there was two of us servers out there, me and 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. That was probably our worst experience as far as serving.
Intro: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.
Mighty Mike: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. It's kind of just a side gig as I worked for years, for approximately 10 years. I went through a divorce myself. And during the process of the divorce, I had to hire a process server to serve my ex wife. It took him about five minutes, cost $125. And 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 to 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, wife. And being in this industry or 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, with the wife more.
Mighty Mike:Yeah, family's definitely most important. And that's one of the reasons I started my own business because I didn't want someone to tell me that my life would be turned upside down. You because I miss 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. So, Gary, there's a reason why you're on the show. As I always say, everybody's got different things going on. But I've noticed you over the last few months 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 in the field?
Gary Clayton:So probably our worst experience was doing a serve or divorce party, kind of what our majority of our serves are. And we were actually. There was two of us servers out there, me and 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. That was probably our worst experience as far as serving.
Mighty Mike:Wow. So tell me more about that. So. And I don't want to take you back to, you know, too much trauma, but take me back to the moment when they were. When, like, 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 going to be a difficult serve, and we were warned that there. 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. Me and my colleague, we proceeded just to back out of the situation. But as soon as we backed out, two individuals come from around the side of the house. Both of them had pistols as well. So we were kind of 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, but we were pretty well trapped. They had us go around to the back of the house and we were stuck there.
Mighty Mike:Oh, my gosh. Like, what do you think they were going to do? What were they?
Gary Clayton:Well, there's so many things that. That go through your head at that time. We were. We were both confident that we were going to get out safe, but. 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. When we got. When we. When the sheriff's department pulled up there and finally got us out of that situation, it was. It felt like, you know, a ton of bricks off of your shoulders.
Mighty Mike:Wow. So. 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 kind of realized what was, he retreated back to his car. And then that's when they just started coming in from every angle. And his two, into the two individuals that was with him, they, they came to their senses fairly quick, put their guns down and surrendered.
Mighty Mike:Okay, good. Yeah, that's a. That's a pretty. Man, that's an intense situation. I've actually never had something that intense. You know, I got to tell you, being able to have in the pre show, we had a little bit of a little conversation about, you know, being connected to DISP 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, we all have radios here. 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 that we're checking in with them and they're checking in with us and. And if we need backup, depending on what it is, they'll send, they'll send a sheriff out. We had the incident last week that I had seen on online about me following an individual down into California. We had actually radioed to dispatch to see if they would assist us and stopping the vehicle. And they were like, no, 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, HP or the state police?
Gary Clayton:Yeah, we were waiting at the individual, the defendant's house, and as soon as we seen him pull in, we pulled in behind him and he was able to wedge himself around my car and so I pulled out, followed him through town. He jumped on Highway 97, which is the highway here, and started heading towards south. A lot of the individuals here in climate, since we're so close to California, they think that if they go into California that they can't be served. So they're. As soon as they get on 97, we automatically know that they're heading into California. So we contact the Department of Agriculture down there because they have the transfer station and substation, we call them and they'll typically assist us in stopping them. However, this day there was a CHP officer that was actually passing through about 10 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. However, it ended up being a pretty scary 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? I know that's a very simplified version, but, you know, I mean, 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. Insane. What can happen if you're trigger happy? That's one thing. Yeah, it's insane. I mean, it ended up. Did anyone end up getting shot that day?
Gary Clayton:No, there was no gunfire. And actually, we don't carry him. I have each one of my process servers. I allow them to make the decision. However, I. I strongly. I strongly discourage my individuals or my process servers from carrying. Maybe keeping it in a vehicle or like that 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. 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. Based on their ability to handle different situations. And I think that's, you know, it's commendable that you get that you made that decision. I think maybe to 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 service, they do, can still carry. We just try to. 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, you know, to be able to get your phone like that and, you know, to 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 have done thought to do something. Like that, because had you not done that, you'd have been at their mercy for who knows how long, Right?
Gary Clayton:Yeah. And so the idea was, is that when we went into this, we were prepared because we had gotten, we had gotten word beforehand that the individual may act like this. So before we had even gotten to the house, we had already had, you know, 911 dialed into our phones because we didn't know, we didn't know we were walking into. And you never know what you're walking into. You can, 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:Sometimes you walk into a conversation, have a five minute conversation, then they find out you're there to serve them, and then they're pulling out guns. Yeah, that can happen too. And so. So 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 about this actually just happened not too long ago. We had a locate, Esther Locate. It was kind of like a will where an individual here in Klamath county was getting an inheritance from relative out of Texas. And we were hired to do a locate and then to do the cerp. When we, 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. In this, this instance, it wasn't bad news. It was kind of a cool story where this guy has been living a mediocre life, working nine to five and now he no longer has to. So it was kind of a cool experience to have.
Mighty Mike:That's a really cool experience since how much money was it?
Gary Clayton:You know, I don't remember right off hand, but I think we're. It was a little over $2 million.
Mighty Mike:Oh, man. How much did you make on that one?
Gary Clayton:Well, first we quoted it at 65 for the serve, and then it's, you know, 65 an hour to do a locator. 125, whichever, whatever, which one we went to afterwards, we're like, wow, we don't think we charged enough for this one.
Mighty Mike:Exactly. You Were more like private security for that. For that delivery.
Gary Clayton:Yeah. You know, the funny thing is, is the. The individual, when we were going to serve him, he was. He avoided us for several weeks. He av. We had a location for him. We tried to explain to him what it was, and he didn't believe it. He kind of 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 was. 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 going to get, you know, Know, one day, you know, I don't know, you get to some of the same things over and over. And those. 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. You know, 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, but.
Gary Clayton:And challenging.
Mighty Mike:Yeah, and challenging. We're up here in the sticks. You're. You're further up in the sticks, but I'm 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 it's always. You always should change things up. So even though we're typically, as I call doing the devil's work or bearing bad news for people, you're just a messenger. It's all we are for messengers. We're just out here to do our job and be positive with it. 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 going to get a negative, negative reaction. 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.
Mighty Mike:That's right.
Gary Clayton: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 want to take this nationwide with the approach that what on time process service 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 want to 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 some even fathom that when they're just starting out? Like, how do you, 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 going to be slim. Know your area, know what you're doing, read, do a lot of research, reach out to mentors. NAPS is a very good platform for new process servers to reach out to and get the education that they need.
Mighty Mike:That's great.
Gary Clayton:Your local associations is also huge. You know, reaching out to your local associations.
Mighty Mike:Now, Gary, does, does Oregon have an association?
Gary Clayton:Yeah, Oregon has an association of places. I think that they're 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 like, we're working on our business. Our next would be 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 organ process server, definitely go and check out the the Oregon association, the national association of Process Servers.
Gary Clayton:Hey, quick break from the episode to tell you about something that's changing the game for 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
Mighty Mike:on the discussion board, direct message members
Gary Clayton:and become part of One of the most engaged communities for process servers. Don't wait. Go to mightyprocessserver.com and join today. The those who get verified, get listed and start bidding on jobs same day. Now let's get back to the show.
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, another, they've either had a traffic violation or some type of a civil case. And you can pull a lot of information just from your local court record. I know Oregon is huge. We're set up with Taylor hosting, which they pull. We get to pull all the records for that. And then of course, we run plates. DMV is really good here. We can run plates, we can run names and first and last name with a possible date of birth. And they give us a lot of information from that as well too.
Mighty Mike:Yeah, California's got it pretty locked up. Unless you have, I think there's maybe 500 certificates or something like that, it's much, very difficult to get that kind of information here. That's pretty cool that Oregon does that. Are you able to just search it right on the database or do you have to call them or.
Gary Clayton:Yeah, so we have. There's multiple different platforms. So you can. For dmv, we can call in. So if we're in the field and we have an individual who we believe 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 them with that. We can call in, we can fax it in or we have. They'll have online access. Come 2000, I think it was 2020, they're going to go online for DMV court documents. We can, 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 the show and mentioned the court documents. So I want to dig it a little deep. I know this is rapid fire round, but I want people to learn from, you know it as well. So when it comes to a court document, do you go. So you get Michael Reed. How do you use the court documents? You search my name via the court record.
Gary Clayton:Yeah. So you can. We can pull up records with just a name, first and last name, and then we can kind of 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 because there's a lot of Gary Clayton, there's a lot of Michaels out there. You have to pinpoint. If we have a small claims document we're serving, we can see that they have the small claim. 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, that we were working for, they were trying to find this individual for almost a year and then they contacted us. 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 very good tactic to be able to use that. And the credit union didn't have that information. What is your favorite skip tracing tool? Favorite tool? I like Delft Point, I think it is, or idi, I like both of those programs I really use. Probably 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. 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 defenses is one our dispatch. Being able to reach out to dispatch, that's huge for defense for us. I don't carry a firearm, but I do carry a baton or asp. I carry a fair 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 NAPS 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 them out to all the members. What is the greatest advice you have ever received?
Gary Clayton:So the greatest advice 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 his contract that he had. And he said always be pleasant. Always be pleasant to the person you're serving. Don't ever come at him with judgment. If you're judging the individual, it's not your place to judge. Whatever they're going through is there is their own bill. It's not your deal. So don't ever judge them.
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, that's great advice. Gary, what parting piece of advice do you have for the struggling server out there where his business is circling the drain? What, what advice do you have for that server?
Gary Clayton:Always pay. If you're outsourcing serves, always pay your outsourced companies in advance or fairly quickly. Customer service is huge. If you're making your customers or your clients happy, they're going to come back and use you every time. We're fairly expensive for our area, roughly $35 more than any other server in our area. But we have a majority of the business just because they can track our information online. We send them regularly updates and they know they can call and get one of us on the phone at any time of the day. I'm not saying answering your phone at 10 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 that, from what you just said, is that because you said to pay your servers on time and to pay them or pay them ahead of time, many times if you deal with these big process serving companies, many times that's how a lot of servers get stuck, right? They contact all these companies all over the country and say, hey, I can do serves. But even though they're doing serves so inexpensive, they end up still being owed, you know, 5,000, 7,000, 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, 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 still got to be done. And if they can't get that big company to do that serve, who are they going to call? They're going to call you and you're going to get that business and you're not going to be paying the middle person. I, I started out doing serves for ABC and a lot of other proves and other big companies, and then I slowly kind of backed out because I was paying them for what I was going to do.
Mighty Mike:Any hey brother, one man's failure is another man's success. You get, you got to capitalize on that stuff. So that's good. Gary, I really feel like Server Nation has, you know, gained a lot from this interview. Gary, what is the best way that we could, that we can connect with you and then we can say goodbye?
Gary Clayton:So you can go to www.ontimeproservithout the e@the end.com or 541-810-3411. Look up process servers for Oregon. We come up typically number one. Or if you want to get directly to me, call our office in Klamath Falls, 541-810-2172. 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 want to 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.
Outro: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
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Outro:From the field to the courtroom.
Outro:This is Process Server Daily. Until next time, stay safe out there and live Mighty.
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