08 - Amanda Curran | Mighty Process Server

Full Transcript
0:00Amanda Curran:He said, well, I'm not taking your papers. And I said, okay, well, in South Carolina, you know, you know about the drop serve. You could 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 gonna take it out and shoot you. And I was like, listen, dude, that is not in your best interest right now. And then

0:29Intro:you're listening to Process Server Daily, the show where hustle meets strategy in the high stakes world of process. 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.

0:55Mighty Mike:Amanda, Corinne, welcome to the show.

0:58Amanda Curran:Hello. How are you, Michael?

1:00Mighty 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.

1:06Amanda 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, utmost respect for the person I worked for and given me the opportunity, but I needed to branch off on my own. And so Apex Legal Support Services was born.

1:28Mighty Mike:That's excellent. So, 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.

1:36Amanda Curran:Well, 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 and they actually were a big influence in me opening my own business too. I just wanted to be able to pass something on to them, you know, 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. And 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 and we are, you know, as thick as thieves. You know, our blood runs strong. So it's a great experience. It's a challenging experience at times, but it's awesome.

2:18Mighty Mike:It 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.

2:32Amanda Curran:It's absolutely the truth.

2:35Mighty 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.

2:44Amanda Curran:So I think anytime 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 kind of recently I served a foreclosure notice on somebody's home, and he was handicapped and his wife's handicapped. And it was just, you know, I think a lot of people move down here to live the dream, the retirement life, you know, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, specifically. And I, you know, I just felt bad about the whole thing, and he was not happy about it. So he was threatening me. And it was just a very. It had gone through, I think the sheriff. It had gone through two other process servers. And it was one of those ones where I, you know, 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. You know, I said, here you go. I have some legal papers for you. And he tried to deny who he was. And obviously I had a picture of him and everything else, so there was no denying it. And, you know, he kept on with it. He followed me back to my car, and we tried 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. You know, 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, you know, it was just left a bad taste in my mouth. But it's take the good with the bad in this profession for sure.

4:19Mighty 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, you know, a guy with schizophrenia getting a restraining order. Like, as a process server, you literally get everything. You get the grandma and grandpa. They're so sweet. They just baked cookies and want to invite you in. You know, you get it right. You get it all. And in the situation, it sounds like you sympathize like I do for a lot of these people. You sympathize for their situation, but at the same time you have a job to do and so it sounds like you were able to do it.

4:54Amanda Curran:Exactly. And you know, 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. Just, you know, I just wanted to. We left off on a bad note, so. And it went much better the second time. But you know, it was just. I like to leave everyone with a good feeling, you know, I don't like to leave off on a bad note. And that one just. There is no reasoning with him. So you get the job done and you walk away from it and let it be, I guess.

5:21Mighty Mike:What do you want Server Nation to take from your story? Your bad experience? What do you want them to learn from that?

5:28Amanda 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. And the best thing you can do is remain calm and sometimes just not say anything. Sometimes you just get in your car and you leave and you write on your affidavit exactly what happened. And you know, if need be, if you have to serve them again, then like you know, we did, you call your local police department or your sheriff's department and have them go out there with you.

6:02Mighty Mike:That's perfect. So Amanda, tell me about your greatest experience working in the field.

6:08Amanda Curran:Well, I always love the hard to serve people that can't be found. So that's. Any of those are good. I would say my greatest, like feel good experience is we served a individual who owed, I think it was 10, it was almost a decade, nine or 10 years of child support. And 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. And this specific attorney kept hiring the sheriff to go out there. And they don't work, you know, 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 an non service, that's it. 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 were end up, you know, we ended up getting them served and she was able to get back all that child support. So it was like, 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.

7:12Mighty Mike:What a cool experience. Amanda, what are you working on right now that you're most excited about?

7:17Amanda 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. And like I said, I come from a PI background, so it was just a natural next step. But I would say as far as process serving goes, I'm really excited about all the social media groups that have kind of sprouted up. I think social media, 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.

7:51Mighty 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. But. And 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, you know, or just after was Facebook. Right, right, exactly. 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?

8:19Amanda Curran:But it's true. Like I had to go to my younger brother to learn about Instagram. I didn't have a clue.

8:24Mighty Mike:But yeah, exactly.

8:25Amanda Curran:Instagram, he's got like 3,000 followers on there for posting truck pictures. I'm like, well, you need to teach me. So he mentored me in Instagram.

8:33Mighty Mike:And let me tell you, Instagram is an amazing tool to be able to, to be able gain followers and to gain an audience, a specific audience that you're after. 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?

8:50Amanda Curran:Yes. And I mean, 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.

8:59Mighty Mike:Right. And that's, that's how you can your revenue. That's how you can build your revenue because you're basically the branch out, right?

9:06Amanda Curran: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 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.

10:04Mighty Mike:Welcome back to the show. Amanda, are you ready for the rapid fire round?

10:08Amanda Curran:I hope so.

10:09Mighty Mike:If you could recommend one app, what would it be and why?

10:12Amanda 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 could snap a picture, there's a timestamp and a lot of them have GPS now and they're free.

10:23Mighty Mike:So what's the name of that one? Is it just timestamp I just use?

10:27Amanda Curran:I think it's called Free Timestamp camera and it's for Android. I think there's an iPhone version as well.

10:33Mighty Mike:I use the app called APD Timestamp. The TriStar 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 serve manager?

10:52Amanda Curran:Absolutely. Hands down.

10:53Mighty Mike:A lot of people love servemanager. What's your favorite thing about it?

10:56Amanda Curran:Customer service. I can literally call and they are actually in a different time zone. I think they're in mountain time zone over there but and I have it time. They're like 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.

11:10Mighty Mike:That's awesome. Amanda, what is your favorite skip trace tip or trick?

11:15Amanda Curran:Yeah and it sounds, you know, it sounds kind of cliche but social media, it's my always go to and then obviously I have my databases. I use Dell Point and tracer. But social media is priceless. It really is. And it's free.

11:28Mighty Mike:Social media is kind of the link. Yeah, so you said Delve Point and tracers.

11:33Amanda Curran:Yeah, Delve Point I use and tracers. Tracers is really good for kind of obscure information such as cell phone numbers. You can even type in, you know, put in a cell phone search on there and get who owns that cell phone or who's using that cell phone. So they have a couple things that the other databases don't offer.

11:50Mighty Mike:That's awesome. So what is your favorite tool for defense?

11:54Amanda 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 be my favorite. Yeah.

12:07Mighty Mike:Okay. So what. What book would you recommend?

12:10Amanda Curran:Actually, I don't. I haven't found an actual process serving book, you know, in that that I actually like. That's worth the money, to be honest. I think experience would be the best teacher in that aspect. 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 Damon John. I don't know if you watch Shark Tank at all, but he's the shark on there. And that book is absolutely awesome. I think I've read it a coup. I have it on audible. I listen to it all the time. And it's just a very inspirational motivational book.

12:44Mighty 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.

12:50Amanda Curran:Yeah, I love Shark Tank.

12:52Mighty Mike:Yeah.

12:53Amanda Curran:So Damon's book, if you haven't read it, you have to read it. It's awesome.

12:56Mighty Mike:And I love Damon. He's such a cool guy. Like, he's the guy who a lot of times doesn't step out and actually invest. And then all of a sudden, when nobody else wants to invest, he's like, I'll invest. Like it's something that he sees the difference.

13:09Amanda Curran:Yeah, he's in his book, he talks about that and he says that he's been labeled the people shark. And it's absolutely true.

13:15Mighty Mike:Yeah, that's good. What is the greatest advice you've ever received?

13:19Amanda 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.

13:35Mighty 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 smartphone, a car, and only $100, what would you do in the next week?

13:48Amanda 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. His mobile home. So the first thing I did personally, going back, I mean, 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. 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 in business cards. Obviously, it makes you look professional, but, yeah, that's what I did. It was $20 for the Uber inspection, they call it, to inspect your car and make sure it's suitable to drive. And I Ubered my way around the Myrtle beach area and introduced myself, and I got, you know, I built my business primarily off that. Once we became more established, you know, I had other things, obviously, to help enhance my website and, you know, make us up on Google listings, that sort of thing. 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.

15:32Mighty Mike:That's great, Amanda. I tell you what, first of all, you're cruising around Myrtle Beach. It could be worse, which is awesome.

15:39Amanda Curran:Exactly. That's always how I looked at it.

15:43Mighty 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. I'm in heaven. I could drive all day.

15:52Amanda Curran:Exactly. And I've gotten clients that, like, okay, I don't want to call anyone out, but attorneys that I've picked up from the bar or whatever and brought them home. And they get to talking in my car. And their attorneys, well, here's my car. They have called me. I have one of my best friends, clients I met in my Uber. Like, it's just. It's a good way to connect with people, and you get paid to do it. So I'm gonna get paid for my marketing one way or another.

16:16Mighty Mike:As a process server, you're out there serving papers, and eventually, and you probably hear people talking about, oh, I have too many serves, and I have these 30 serves, this and that. That's a great problem to have.

16:26Amanda Curran:But exactly.

16:28Mighty Mike:If you don't have that problem, think outside the box. Get being an Uber driver, a Lyft driver. Did you ever go to Lyft?

16:34Amanda Curran:Oh, I do. Yeah. I did both of them.

16:36Mighty Mike:Yeah.

16:36Amanda Curran:Yep. Absolutely. I had both apps on 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.

16:51Mighty 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. They were staking out this bar, and then someone wanted an Uber ride, so he said, okay, I'll just take. Do the Uber. So he pulls up and the person gets in the car, and it's a person who was trying to serve.

17:06Amanda Curran:That's awesome. And, you know, it's great to get into, like, gated communities. You know, many times I've tried to get into a gated community, and they just wave me along because I have an Uber sticker. I mean, it's a good cover.

17:18Mighty Mike:It's a good cover. And you get a little extra cash for doing what you're already doing. So that's good.

17:24Amanda Curran:Exactly.

17:25Mighty 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 in any way that you can. Amanda, what is your final parting piece of advice for the struggling server out there?

17:39Amanda 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.

18:00Mighty Mike:Amanda, what is the best way that we can connect with you and then we'll say goodbye?

18:05Amanda Curran:Sure. All my information is on our website. It's www.apexlss and that's limasierra sierra.com that is excellent.

18:15Mighty Mike: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 with the world.

18:23Outro: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 this is Process Server Daily. Until next time, stay safe out there and live Mighty.

08 - Amanda Curran | Mighty Process Server

Episode Highlights

Want to Be a Guest?

Need a Process Server?