14 - Joseph Jones | Mighty Process Server

Full Transcript
0:00Joseph Jones:I was doing surveillance one day, you know, it was, you know, kind of crappy surveillance like most surveillances are. You know, just sitting in the car for hours on end waiting for something to happen. Didn't really have any activity. The next morning I had, we had another one of my guys out there that the guy we were conducting surveillance on came running after him with machete and. Yeah, so, so that, you know, and it was kind of crazy. Like one of his friends like block off the street with his car and he comes running out after him. So got, got pretty hairy. So I wasn't there for that. But that, that got pretty interesting.

0:30Mighty Mike:That's great.

0:32Intro: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 one two three Legal support, mighty Mike Reed. This is your backstage pass to building a profitable process serving empire. Let's get into it.

1:04Mighty Mike:Social media cyber investigation expert Joseph Jones. Welcome to the show.

1:08Joseph Jones:Hey, thanks for having me.

1:10Mighty Mike:So Joe, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry.

1:13Joseph Jones:Yeah, so start. It's a family company. My dad was a private investigator. Started out of our kitchen when, you know, when I was a couple years old. They had grown our business. We now have about 50 employees. We've got a couple offices throughout Southern California, you know, and so I like, like you said, I literally started at the very bottom when I was a kid and have, you know, really learned every piece of what we do and been able to develop some pretty cool stuff.

1:42Mighty Mike:That's really cool. So were you one of the kids that like went to the courthouse by yourself and filed papers?

1:47Joseph Jones:Oh, yeah, yep, definitely. And you know, and when I was, when I was in college, you know, I'd be, I'd be down there at the courthouse doing my homework while I'm waiting to get called at the window. And interestingly enough, you know, I didn't orig plan on sticking with the family company. I was going to become a social worker after I finished college, but some opportunities opened up, some things changed. You know, I decided to get married and start having a bunch of kids and I figured social work wouldn't really, you know, foot the bill, so I stuck with it and have been able to, you know, be a part of some, you know, pretty expansive growth.

2:21Mighty Mike:It's funny that in this industry, so many people end up in this industry and not really a planned way, but it Ended up being such a great turnout for them. Sounds like it worked out for you.

2:30Joseph Jones:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's been a huge blessing.

2:33Mighty Mike:Joseph, there's a reason you're on my show. You have a lot going on right now, full of experiences. But first, tell me about your worst experience working in the field.

2:40Joseph Jones:You know, so I'll say this. It's very rare that I go out in the field anymore. You know, now I, you know, I do a lot of desktop investigation. I also, you know, just kind of do a lot of administration within our company. But when we're talking about, you know, field stuff, you know, one of the. And I never had anything real terrible happening, but I was doing surveillance one day, you know, it was, you know, kind of crappy surveillance like most surveillances are. You know, just sitting in the car for hours on end, waiting for something to happen. Didn't really have any activity. The next morning I had. We had another one of my guys out there that the guy we were conducting surveillance on came running after him with machete and. Yeah, so. So that, you know, and it was kind of crazy. I'd like one of his friends, like, block off the street with his car and he comes running out after him. So got. Got pretty hairy. So I wasn't there for that. But that got pretty interesting.

3:31Mighty Mike:That's crazy. And it's funny because when we start, when we go from stop serving to just going in the office and kind of managing everything. It's funny, the mindset shift. When you start doing more office stuff, you still remember when you were out there serving, and you still remember the different challenges that were out there. I know I still serve. One of the reasons is because I can't find anybody to serve 30, 40 papers in a night. I guess the only way I could do that is if I was to hire somebody full time and to train them, you know, go out with me every day. Is that what you guys kind of done?

4:03Joseph Jones:Yeah. So we. We do the best that we can to have all of our people cross trained. Right. I want my office staff to know what it's like in the field, and I want my field staff to know what it's like in the office. Cause I think when they, you know, when they understand the whole picture, they can do a better job.

4:22Mighty Mike:That's so true. Because, you know, when you go out there in the field, you want to get to the next serve, and so you might not put all the diligence the way that you were supposed to or maybe write down all the license plates Maybe you didn't put a descript of somebody you get back. And if you've ever worked in the office, you know, that's crazy. It's like you got to pick up the phone and call me. Like, what did this person look like? And if they're serving 30 or 40 papers a day, they may not remember.

4:42Joseph Jones:Yeah, no, absolutely. We just, we just hosted a Calspro continuing education thing at our office a week or two ago and I had like 10 of my office people here. You know, most of them are not going to be out serving papers probably ever. But I want them to know what the field guys go through and to get that training.

5:03Mighty Mike:That's awesome. So what I take most from your story is cross training. As your company grows, you gotta cross train people so that they understand the different parts and it can be a better working team. What do you want Server Nation to get most from your worst experience and from your experience growing your company?

5:18Joseph Jones:Yeah. So I mean vigilance is important. Right. Especially when you're out there in the field. You've gotta keep your eyes open, keep your head on a swivel. Especially since I know a lot of your viewers are process servers, A, for safety, but B, just generally speaking, taking really good notes. Right. It helps so much getting plate numbers known if people are coming and going from the house, if they're tagging the doors. Things like that really help you be more efficient and a more valuable asset to your company.

5:53Mighty Mike:That's awesome. Those are some major value bombs. As people grow. It's cool because you see a company go from a one man show and then he goes to a one man show who has help and then you go from that to then. Okay, now I need to hire people, employees. Like there could be a scale. I'm writing a book on process serving, basic training and I'm kind of putting all these different elements in there. So depending on your level will depend on where you're going to fall within that realm. So it's really cool to hear you talk about the cross training and stuff. Right.

6:20Joseph Jones:And I guess one more thing that I'll piggy, I'll piggyback on there. You know, we again, I've been doing this since I was a kid. I've seen a lot of stuff. One of the, one of the challenges I see for companies, you know, who are trying to grow, you know, they start as the one man and are trying to grow. Like you're talking about, you've got to adjust everything as you're growing. Right. You know Especially your price. You know, as a one man show, you probably can charge less than the bigger guys and still make as much money. But as you're growing, your overhead grows, right? And so if you're, if you're not increasing your rates, you know, certainly you're adding more value to your clients. You can just buy higher rates. But if you try and keep those low rates, you know, you're going to be working a lot more and you're going to be making less money.

7:04Mighty Mike:That's true, that's true. I didn't know how when I first started, I was getting like 25 bucks a serve and I didn't know how anybody could do it. And I was getting it from an affiliate and she, I wanted to raise my prices on her and she goes, you know, I don't go serving, like I just give all my serves away and so I need half. And I was like, but she's not really doing any of the work. And then once I started my own business, doing my own marketing, I was like, wow, I gotta pay phones, I gotta Pay for rent, PG&E, someone to answer the phones if I'm not going to be doing it yet. It's crazy. You get a lot, you get a lot of bills, a lot of expenses. So that's awesome, Joseph. So tell me about your greatest experience working in the field.

7:40Joseph Jones:So I'm going to share with you an experience that it actually wasn't in the field. I mean, I've had some good ones, there's always fun stories, but it's actually a cyber investigation that I worked. So it was a fraud case and there were several levels to the fraud that we were looking at. Essentially the case was, it was, you know, it was back east and it's all like public record now. So I can, so I can talk about it. We had, there was a building that was insured as a family style restaurant. The building burned down, you know, a couple million dollar loss for the insurance company. So the insurance company, they thought something smelled funny about, you know, the claim in general. So they brought us on to look at several different things. First was going to be, hey, like, was this, you know, was this arson initiated by, you know, a competitor? Was it initiated by the owner of the building? You know, how did it come about? And then b, was the facility actually a restaurant? Because, you know, when they went in, did the inspection after it had burned down, there were several things that made them think, hey, maybe this wasn't a restaurant. So we did our investigation, we were able to come up with a significant amount of evidence indicating that it was one of the owners of the company that had started the fire. We weren't able to prove that because that end really fell on the local fire marshal and sheriff's department, because they're the ones who have access to the facilities to do all that kind of stuff. But we found a lot of evidence to support that. But what was really interesting is we found that this restaurant wasn't actually a restaurant. It was a strip club, which, when you're talking about insurance coverage, there are two entirely different risks. Right. You know, one did our insurance company. They don't insure strip clubs because they're way too big of a risk. Right. A lot of stabbings, a lot of shootings, a lot of competitors trying to burn their place down. So we were able to, you know, via social media, even though a lot of accounts, you know, they had deleted most of their, you know, accounts, we were able to establish through patrons to the establishment that it was, in fact, a strip club. And we found lots of good stuff, and it was really interesting, but the one piece of evidence that just blew everybody away and, you know, it's the kind of thing you blow up and put in front of a jury if they have the stomach to handle it. We found a photo that a patron had taken inside the establishment of a stripper on a stripper pole with a flamethrower blowing flames out all over the place. And that's, you know, that's the kind of evidence that, like, you know, a lot of this stuff we find, you know, we can't. We can't write this stuff. You know, it's just. It's just too good most of the time. You know, kind of unbelievable unless you're. Unless you're looking at it.

10:25Mighty Mike:Wow, that is so cool. And so. Just so server Nisha knows, you're saying that you work for an insurance company where they paid you to do an investigation and try to figure out if there was any fraud going on, and this is the kind of stuff that you were uncovering?

10:38Joseph Jones:Yep.

10:38Mighty Mike:Wow, that is. That is crazy. So those flame. Flamethrower. Yeah, I doubt they were coded for that.

10:44Joseph Jones:Yeah, yeah, no, they. They weren't. And part of our. Yeah, part of our investigation, too, found that this city had been trying to shut them down for, like, six months. And that's one of the reasons we in the. The fire happened shortly after they had been shut down. So they're trying to get the insurance money because the city is getting so much pushback that they're, they're not able to operate. So they figured, hey, why don't we torch our place and, you know, get a little insurance money out of it?

11:09Mighty Mike:That is an awesome experience.

11:11Joseph Jones:That was a fun one. I remember, man, when I, when I shot that over to the client, I'm like, you are never going to believe what we just found.

11:17Mighty Mike:That is awesome. So, Joseph, tell me, what are you working on right now that has you most fired up, most excited?

11:23Joseph Jones:So, all right, so we'll, you know, we do social media investigations, and we do them in a way that's very, very unique. We're not just looking for their public profile. We're not just looking for, you know, sending, you know, links or a quick report over to a client so they, you know, review somebody's social media. We're going through and we are finding, you know, the individual, their friends, their families. We're legally finding ways to penetrate privacy settings to find hidden content and using that as primary evidence in cases, you know, whereas, you know, everybody's using social media to assist their investigations. Now, if you're not, you know, you're, you know, you're living, you know, 20 years ago, but we're really doing, you know, this thorough dive and then, you know, forensically preserving it and using it for the attorneys to use in their case in chief as they're, you know, prosecuting their cases. And it's been, you know, it's been, it's been game changer. Over the last five years, we've had like 700% growth within our investigations division. And it's been, it's done phenomenal things for our company.

12:30Mighty Mike:I gotta tell you, that's something definitely worth being excited about.

12:33Joseph Jones:Yeah. And, you know, in the next thing that we're looking at, and we've already started and it's come, come by way of recording from clients is where we're getting also into jury consulting and using, using social media to help the attorneys, you know, pick the jurors that they want, keep track of them during trial and, you know, and some other jury consulting type stuff, which that's also, you know, really cutting edge. It's really exciting.

13:00Mighty Mike:So let me see if I understand this. So back in the day, attorneys would just be able to like, interview them and decide, okay, we want you, we don't want you, we want you, we don't. So you're saying that you will say, okay, you get the list of jurors and then you'll go each of them. So that on Face on social media and Then you'll also monitor them going forward. So, you know, if they're talking about the case online.

13:19Joseph Jones:Right, sure. And, you know. Yes. So. And that's still the main way that it's done. Right. It's called voidire. You've got, you know, a couple hours where you've got the attorneys are interviewing all the prospective jurors to pick which. Which one they want. And there's certain questions that they'll ask them that, you know, jurors may or may not be truthful with their answers, and there's certain questions that the attorneys can't ask or don't have the time to ask because it's a condensed timeframe. But there's certain things, like we're working on one right now. Trial starts on Thursday, where you've got our client is a defendant. There's also another public agency that's a defendant. And so we're interested in finding out if the prospective jurors, how they feel about the government. Right. Since, you know, since the government is involved in this case, we're interested to know, hey, are they pro government? Are they anti government? Because that's gonna affect how they view the case. Right. Because they're gonna be really interested to, you know, are they gonna try and stick it to, you know, Big Brother, Right. You know, award some huge, huge verdict because they, you know, they've got a

14:26Mighty Mike:bone to pick with, like, a libertarian or somebody.

14:28Joseph Jones:Yeah.

14:29Mighty Mike:Okay.

14:29Joseph Jones:And so we're able to look at all those things.

14:32Mighty Mike:That's really cool. And so this next part here is an addition. It's called the Server Nation Questionnaire. So for those of you that don't know, you could go on my website, processserverdaily.com podcast and you can ask a question of my guest, and we can play your video clip right here in this episode so that my guest can answer it for you. Today's question, Joseph, is what makes your company different from the others in your area?

14:58Joseph Jones:So it almost depends on what aspect of our business you're looking at. You know, specifically social media investigations. The difference between us and the next guy is really significant because of the level of depth that we're doing our investigation. You know, there is, you know, we're doing nationwide, but let's just stick with California since that's a lot of, you know, companies that watch your stuff. There's probably three, maybe five companies in California and individuals who do the type of investigation that we do at the level we do it. And, you know, so the level of expertise as far as you know, social media investigations goes, that's one of the things that really separates us when we're talking about process serving. I think one of the things that makes us different is the approach that we've been taking to the process serving end of our business. You know, for years we were going for, you know, volume, trying to get as much work as we can, you know, trying to. Trying to, you know, be as busy as we can. We can. Over the last several years, we've really changed that model because it's not successful. Right. I mean, you can get a lot of work, but that doesn't mean you're being profitable. So we've really started, you know, cutting out a lot of clients, you know, ones who were paying their bills even, because, you know, we established, hey, here's how much money we need to make. Here's the type of company that we want to be, here's the type of employees we have, here's the type of clients we want to have. And when we changed all that, it was for sure scary, you know, at first, like, say, like we're cutting out these clients. But it's turned out to be a wonderful thing for us, and it's enabled us to bring on, you know, better staff, people who are more experienced, be able to pay our people better. You know, they give them solid benefits. And so, you know, for us, that's been, you know, kind of one of the differences internally, and then it reflects on our work product. Right? So when our clients are dealing with people who know what the heck they're talking about, they're dealing with people who are three steps ahead of them and, you know, in solving their problems. Whereas before, you know, years ago, you know, there were. There was a couple of us in the office who could do that, but not everybody, right? Because we had to bring on new, less experienced people because of the pay rate. I mean, so we've been able to kind of overcome that, and it's been, you know, phenomenal for our company.

17:22Mighty Mike:This is awesome. You're dropping some major value bombs on us today, I got to tell you, because I'm at a level right now where I'm getting ready to do that. And we're talking about rates and how we can scale and kind of switch things up, go from affiliates to mainly attorneys or even, you know, some of these collection. Collection agencies.

17:39Joseph Jones:So, 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 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.

18:38Mighty Mike:Joseph, are you ready for the rapid fire round?

18:40Joseph Jones:Let's do it.

18:41Mighty Mike:What is your favorite skip trace tactic? And I know this is going to be deep.

18:46Joseph Jones:Yeah. So it may not be what you're expecting, Right. All right, so we do, we, you know, we do. I, we're taking in, you know, I don't know, 10 skip traces a day. We do a ton of skip tracing. And one of my favorite tactics is after we've exhausted all of the normal stuff, you know, after you've done your databases, your pretexting, your utilities, if we're still not able to find them, usually what I'll do is I'll call the person directly, you know, because I, at this point, I've already exhausted my client's budget, right, the initial budget. And so I'll call the person, I'll say, listen, I'm a private investigator. I've been tasked to find you, to get you served with these documents. I'm good at what I do, you know, I'm gonna find you, but I don't want to make this difficult for you, Right. I don't want to jump out of the bushes at you at 2am I don't want to scare your kids. Like, why don't, why don't you just, you know, agree to accept service and we'll do it professionally. And then I find, like, honestly, like 50 to 75% of the time after I have that conversation with them, they'll be like, all right, let's do it. And so, so that I never lead with it. Right. Because you have the potential of burning yourself. But, but I, but I throw that out there as kind of a last ditch effort for the, you know, for the basic methods. So that way, you know, I can, I can gauge their response because at that point, you know, you know, it's not really shooting yourself in the foot because you've already, you've already tried. So, so then if they, if they agree, great, you know, we go, we get it. Done. If they don't agree now I can go back to the client and I can say, listen, we've done all of this stuff. You know, we even tried this. It didn't work. Now I need you to give me budget to do a real investigation on this person. You know, take it past the initial couple hundred bucks for a skip trace. And then usually, you know, that gets the attorney sucked in because they like, you know, they kind of like the story of it. Right. You know, I go, this person has now challenged us. You know, they're saying we can't do it. And then it's fun for me, it's kind of a challenge. Like, all right, you know, they're already good at hiding because I haven't been able to find them using our normal, you know, 20 average skip tracing techniques. Now I got to put on the thinking cap and go get them. And I have budget to get it done, so it's not coming out of my pocket. You know, I'm getting paid for the good work that I'm gonna do.

20:50Mighty Mike:Being able. That's kind of like pretext too, except you're being completely honest with them. You're just telling them, like, this is what I got. I've had one where this lady kept running in the house whenever I'd try to serve her. And I couldn't get close enough to communicate with her. So I found out that her kid went to school at this local school, and so I went to the piano recital, sat next to him and served her right there at the piano. I mean, like, this is reality. That could happen. Why go through that when you can just accept service? So.

21:17Joseph Jones:Right, absolutely. And, you know, and we'll use pretexting as well, for sure. And that's usually. Well, we'll usually have to have somebody different than. Did the pretext make the follow up call? Right. You know, you don't want to mess with that. But yeah, no, you know, and again, nobody likes getting served, you know, but it's a reality. The stuff's there, it has to be dealt with. You know, I prefer before we start making their life miserable. And hey, like I'm. Especially after we've had that conversation, you know, we'll go to funeral, man. You know, we'll serve them at their mother's funeral if we have to, but we don't like to take it there if we don't have to.

21:52Mighty Mike:Right, Definitely. What's your favorite tool for defense?

21:55Joseph Jones:So I will. I'm gonna put a couple caveats before this. My. My process servers I do not allow to carry any kind of a weapon. I think, you know, it can be super problematic. I think a lot of people, when they, when they're carrying some kind of weapon, it emboldens them to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do. And I think that's really problematic. You know, think our greatest as a process server industry as a whole, I think our greatest defense weapon is our words, you know, being able to de escalate situations. So I'll start with that. I am licensed to carry. I carry a 45 Kimber. And you know, and I pray that this situation will never come where I'm gonna have to use it. But certainly, you know, that's that, you know, something available to me in the, you know, the worst of circumstances. I also have a taser that I carry. It's an X too. It's, you know, it's pretty fun. And I've never had to use it on somebody who wasn't willing, but I did have my. In my family, we have six kids and then baby sister. My baby sister a couple years ago decided she was gonna bring her boyfriend home to meet the family. They were talking about getting married. Long story short, he met the business end of my taser and you know, I found out it does work quite well. It turns out he's a really good guy. He actually works for us now. He does marketing for us. But yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on it. But truly though, especially in the process serving situation, it's very, very rare, one out of a million times that you're gonna need some kind of defense other than your words. I found de escalation is always the best way to go.

23:43Mighty Mike:That's good. That's good stuff. I agree wholeheartedly about that. What is the greatest advice you've ever received?

23:48Joseph Jones:Yeah, that's a tough one. I've been blessed to grow up in the. My dad and my oldest brother, who I received a lot of training, you know, from them, you know, both, you know, kind of in conversations and just in watching them. But I would say, you know, so it's probably never said to me, but it's one of the things that I've observed and we've developed as a company over the last 10 years is know your value, right? You know, if you're, if you undervalue what you're doing, everybody else is around you is going to undervalue you as well. You know, when people come to come to me, they come to me because they know that I'm going To be able to help them with their situation and they're willing to pay good money for that help. You know, if I'm trying to beat the next guy's price by, you know, 5 bucks, 20 bucks, 100 bucks, you know, that's going to devalue what I do because my value goes much further beyond the money that I'm getting paid. And that's, I think one of the major challenges I've seen within the process serving industry is so many people become price centered. You know, they think, hey, I've got to be, you know, cheaper than next guy. Hey, man, this, this isn't retail, right? This isn't, you know, Walmart, where everybody's going to try and save, you know, two bucks. I mean, certainly there's, there's law firms out there that are like that. But as more people move away from that model, they're going to, the industry is going to grow as a whole.

25:13Mighty Mike:Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I always beat a dead horse about brand. Brand versus commodity. And if, you know, if all you're doing is thinking about Steve Jobs, I think it was Steve Jobs was talking about Nike. Do you want to be the Nike where you're honoring great athletes and people look up to you, or do you want to be the guy that says, hey, we're the cheapest price and we can get it done the fastest, you know, so I really, I'm really glad you brought that up. We can become a commodity very easily if we're not careful. So you got to step out. And I have no doubt that your company has stepped out in that way with the social media, with the investigation, with some of the stuff that Trent was telling me about, what you're doing with serve manager and stuff. And we'll get into that. But what I take from that is, like you said, know your value. That's where it starts. It's the foundation. Build a brand and work up from there. Good stuff.

25:58Joseph Jones:Yep.

25:59Mighty Mike:Joseph, what would you do if you woke up tomorrow with all the same skills and knowledge, but you didn't know anybody and only had $100, a smartphone and a car? What would you do to regrow your business?

26:10Joseph Jones:We're very growth minded as a company. You know, we're doing a lot of growing. So I think about these things pretty often, you know, all right, what would I do if I, you know, went to a different state, you know, and decided to grow? You know, that guy. There's some other places, you know, that might be kind of fun to. I It's really about networking, right? I would, I would go and I would find, I would find a law firm who would have need of what I can do, you know, And I just say, hey, this is an interesting tie in and might seem to conflict with what I previously said, but I try and get in the door if they, if they wouldn't let me in the door, if they didn't have any cases, they had too many concerns. I'd say, hey, let me, let me do a case for you for free. I'm so confident that what I'm going to bring to the table is better than what you're doing right now, that I'll Invest, you know, 20 hours a week of my time to help show you how valuable it can be. I go, I do the case, they'd be amazed. And then I come on and do all their paying stuff at good rates.

27:05Mighty Mike:That's awesome. Those are, those are valuable. So what would you do in detail? So you're saying you would go into the office and you just drive in there and you. How many offices would you hit? How would you do it?

27:16Joseph Jones:Yeah, so. So, I mean, I think you know the. So, so what I do. So, for example, you know, let's say, let's say we got a big law firm that I'm trying to. I'm getting my foot, get my foot in the door, I go in, I'd find a way to talk with who partner is, right? Whoever, whoever the decision maker is, if I can't get them right, then when I walk in, I'm going to follow up by email. I'm going to follow them on LinkedIn, I'm going to figure out where they go to church. I'm going to show up and sit in the pew next to him. You know, I'm going to figure out who the decision maker and what I can do to establish a relationship with them, and then I'm going to pitch to them. Hey, here's what I can do. You know, social media, here, here's how it's going to affect your case. Here's how it's going to help you. Oftentimes I find with my level of expertise, once I have that conversation with them, they're like, hey, it's worth giving a try. If they're not, then that's. And I'm going to say, hey, you know, your client does want to invest the money. I'm going to do your first case for you, no charge, just so you can see how stinking valuable this is to you.

28:10Mighty Mike:Boom.

28:10Joseph Jones:That is amazing.

28:11Mighty Mike:That is awesome stuff. So, I mean, just when you were saying about sitting next to him in church, I couldn't help but think, like, listen, if I can find where you go to church, I can find where

28:20Joseph Jones:the guy that's frauding you is going to church. Yep. And it's interesting, and I've done a little bit of that before, and I'll tell you, it's a fine line to walk. Right. You don't want your clients to be too creepy, doubt with what you're doing. But there's, you know, there's certainly an element of being able to, you know, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. And if you can show them that you're, you know, you've got the knowledge, you've got the expertise and you're ready to make it happen, they're, you know, they're gonna jump on board.

28:49Mighty Mike:That's good stuff. Joseph. You've really been. Really been rocking it here today. So what is your parting piece of advice for Server Nation?

28:55Joseph Jones:You know, so there's. There's a couple pieces. So first again is know your value. I just, I can't rely on that too much because we see often, you know, and we don't. We don't really consider them competitors because they're working with a different client base. But we see these people who they just, you know, there was a company local to us that they just went out of business. We ended up hiring on most of their staff to help us, but they were company. They went out of business because they didn't know their value. Right. And they, you know, so they were charging way less than they should have been for so many years. It just varied. The other piece is, you know, they weren't elevating the profession because everything was so low. You know, they couldn't afford to give, you know, a good level of service. So, you know, that breaks my heart when I see it. Right? Because, hey, there's. There's enough work for everybody, but there's no reason to put in the kind of work that you do and deal with the kind of stress you do and have a hard time, you know, paying your bills. Right. There's, you know, we're working on cases where we're bringing immense value to, you know, the people with a lot of money. And if you can bring that value, they're happy to pay the good money. And if they're not willing to pay you what they're. What you're worth, find somebody who will. That's a huge part of the advice that I would give, especially, you know, new and upcoming, you know, processors for investigators and for processors as well. The other piece is, you know, know what you're an expert at and focus on that. And if you're not expert at something, don't try and pretend like you are. You got to be transparent with your clients. And some of your clients, they like you so much that they're gonna, they're gonna bring you on to do their stuff that you're not expert on because they want to deal with you. And that's totally fine. You know, that's how we've grown out and branched out to do so many different things because we build these relationships with clients and they'll be like, hey, can you come help us with jury selection? You know, I'll tell them, I'll say, listen, you know, we're experts at social media. We can bank social media for you all day long. We don't, you know, we've never done jury selection before, but I can figure out how to do it. And they'll say, yeah, let's do it. And so like that, you know, a new portion of our business has grown. But you don't want to be the guy who they asked to do something. They're like, oh yeah, we've got that handle. You go out and you botch it and then you look like an idiot

31:11Mighty Mike:and then you lose all their business.

31:13Joseph Jones:Right? And it's just a problem. Right? That's not a good way to do business.

31:17Mighty Mike:That's good. So know your value and. What was the second one?

31:20Joseph Jones:So know your value and know what you're expert at. And don't, you know, don't bill yourself as an expert at something that you really don't know what you're doing.

31:27Mighty Mike:That's awesome, Joseph. That is so cool. That is so awesome. I love, I love everything that you're throwing at us here today. What is the best way that we can connect with you and then we'll say goodbye.

31:35Joseph Jones:LinkedIn's the Best Way to connect with me. Just search Joseph Jones, private investigator, Social Media extrovert. You'll be able to find me, connect with me on there. We can, we can stay in touch.

31:45Mighty Mike:You can also find Joseph's show notes page as processserverdaily.com Joseph.

31:53Outro: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.

14 - Joseph Jones | Mighty Process Server

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