22 - Tim Santoni | Mighty Process Server

Full Transcript
0:00Mighty Mike:What's up, Server Nation? My name is Michael Reed, the podcast server and you are listening to Process Server daily. On this podcast, we interview the top legal support professionals and get the tips, tools and tactics that they use to get the job done and build a successful company. I'm a big fan of storytelling and I'm excited about today's guest. Before we get started, let's give a big shout out to my new sponsor, serve manager. They have a special gift for all of my listeners at the end of today's episode. Okay. So our guest today is the president and CEO of Santoni Investigations, a risk mitigation expert and business consultant that anyone would be proud to meet with. Mr. Santoni, welcome to the show.

1:06Tim Santoni:Thanks for having me.

1:07Mighty Mike:Awesome. Well, it's so good to have you on. I've been watching you on Instagram and I think LinkedIn and just all over the place you got your own podcast. It's just really roaring. Great content that you're providing and definitely help me and my business.

1:20Tim Santoni:No problem. We try to push out some decent content on a regular basis and all the different platforms. This is a challenge, as you know.

1:28Mighty Mike:Definitely, definitely. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the industry.

1:33Tim Santoni:Yeah. So I'm currently the president and CEO at San Antonio Investigations. We're a risk mitigation investigation background screening company. I got started in the business. It's a family run business. It's been around since 75. I got involved in 2001 doing field research, undercover buys, process serving, surveillance, skip tracing, all the day to day operational things in an investigation agency. We do mostly civil work and I really prided myself in learning more about the legal and ethical issues surrounding what we do and how we do it as it impacted the rules of evidence and the information and evidence that we put together in our reports. Because whether it were for the wcab, the state court, federal court, or other administrative courts, really what I found was is that what we do, how we do it, impacts the admissibility and how it will work, get leverage in a case, whether that's evidence in court or negotiations. And then I worked in the business for quite some time, learning ins and outs of intellectual property, brand protection, general civil litigation. Like I said, workers computer. And then I realized I really was passionate about helping clients mitigate risk before they need our services. And that's when I formalized and really launched the employment background screening platform in division. Help our clients mitigate risk in the hiring process, contain issues related to employees, extended workforce, suppliers, distributors, and things like that. And now kind of a full service offering of services to help our clients, you know, do what they need to do in their business, hopefully before litigation ensues or claims, but also able to consult and assist when those risks do occur and claims occur and litigation occurs, unfortunately.

2:59Mighty Mike:Well, that's awesome. I mean taking something when you have one style, one service that you're offering and you start building onto that and you start to see that you're really trying to provide real value to the client, you're not just trying to find what's going to make me an extra buck like an add on service. It's more like how can I keep my clients attacking their true pain point? How can I keep my clients from ever needing this kind of like corrective service? You know, it's almost like preventive maintenance.

3:28Tim Santoni:Right, right, right. And I mean as we know whether, whether it's any type of business, all of them have different risk factors. HR hiring, if you will, extended workforce that they sub work out their supply chain as they have competitors, they do acquisitions, they have internal, external theft, they have all these different factors within the business. And so as we've really seen the underlying issues that impact businesses, working with them to really focus on those things that can cause issues and lead to, you know, brand issues, reputation problems, litigation. In the end, it's bottom, you know, bottom, bottom line losses that they don't want to see. And there's, there's a lot, you know, there's a, there's the main one is that workers comp stuff. But really if you can, we operate in California, which is a pre litigious state and the employment laws are, you know, very much pro employee. So it's not so much of if, how do we say, it's not a question of if something's going to happen, it's a question of when. And when you do, when that does happen, the claim, you know, EDD case, civil litigation, whatever it is, slip and fall, you got to be prepared. And what we found is that being prepared is great and it works really well. The challenge is that a lot of clients don't do that until they've gone through litigation. They've had claims, they've had issues. So you know, our job is to educate, be a guide to that and show them how it, you know, it adds value and how it could decrease their costs and decrease expenses and headaches and increase their bottom line and keep their employees at the end of the day safe and their customers safe from those things that could be harmful that's awesome, Tim.

5:04Mighty Mike:Well, it's good to hear. It's good to hear all about the different things that you're doing, but let's take a step back for a second. Like you have you get a family?

5:12Tim Santoni:Yep. I've got four kids and a wife. My youngest is six, my oldest is 13. Very active in sports. And, you know, we spend a lot of time on the baseball field, volleyball courts, golf course, mountain biking, and try to stay as active as humanly possible, so. Keeps us super busy between my wife and I, and we enjoy every minute

5:31Mighty Mike:of it and keeps you healthy. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. I've seen pictures, I think. Do you have twin boys?

5:40Tim Santoni:My boys are like Irish twins. They're 10 and 11. They're 15 months apart. So most people assume they're twins, but they're actually just spitting images of one another.

5:49Mighty Mike:Yeah, I saw a thing on Instagram at a baseball game or something. I was like, wow. Because I have twins too. I got two nine year olds. Well, yours aren't twins, but yeah, I

5:57Tim Santoni:have nine year olds, so yeah, that's brave. I prefer to have them one at a time. But not everyone can have the skills that you have.

6:06Mighty Mike:Well, you know, the doctor called me a stud, so I'll take that.

6:09Tim Santoni:You gotta remind your wife of that all the time.

6:11Mighty Mike:That's right. Be like, by the way, remember, I'm a stud.

6:13Tim Santoni:No, let's record that.

6:16Mighty Mike:Right, right. That's on recording. So. So there's. So you got a lot going on and you, you know, you're doing the business. What I find in the, in the, in the legal industry anyways, there's not a whole lot of people doing what you and I are doing. Right. The whole marketing side of things. And I get people telling me, like, why are you taking, like, what's the ROI on providing all this value? And like interviewing and to me, well, I want to hear what you have to say first. It's kind of off the cuff here because I think it's very relatable to what you and I are both doing. That's one of the things we have in common. What makes you dedicate so much of your time? What is the ROI in providing this value and going out and creating a podcast and things like that. What's the ROI for you?

6:55Tim Santoni:Yeah, so, I mean, I would say it's a great question. And it's something I get a lot because there's a lot of people that I that come across and they say, well, that's cool. You know, have we do a lot of content creation you're referring to as our Santoni Spotlight, which we kind of run on. It lives on YouTube, but usually the focus is distribution through LinkedIn and other kind of sites. But I guess it's hard to measure in terms of dollar or dollars and cents. But what I can tell you is that inferentially when you're out talking to clients and you're networking and I'm at trade shows and I come up to people that have never met me before and like, oh, I've seen your videos, or hey, we operate in a business that's very intangible. What we do, process serving, investigations, background checks. You can't put your hands on that and say, oh, that's really cool. That's really cool features. So all they can get to know is who you are, what you're about, what you care about. And people are doing that on our websites, on our social media platforms, on LinkedIn all the time. So why not provide them and give them a sense of who you are? Because they're gonna find out eventually anyway, and good or bad, they need to have it out there. So I see it as useful in terms of brand recognition, client acquisition. Easy. And also, if you can believe it, people always tell me, oh, well, it'll help when you're hiring. I was like, well, how would that work? And, you know, I would say 90% or more people that I interview, oh, I saw your videos. Oh, I agree with that. Or they want to agree that. Understand that they have the same beliefs and ideologies before they come and work with you. And that's a great way to do it because you don't have. You can put out hundreds of videos or hundreds of podcasts or pieces of content. It's a great way for people to understand what you're all about, both internally, inside your organization and externally.

8:39Mighty Mike:That's great. That's great. And if you're interviewing people who could be your potential clients, that's one of the things I took note of you is I'm interviewing a lot of other process servers, people that do what I do. I know in this whole realm we get a lot of what's called affiliate work. I do get work from those people. But what I admire about what you're doing is you're interviewing potential clients. Am I right?

9:02Tim Santoni:Yeah. So part of my thing was is to kind of give it back. So there's a lot of referral partners that refer us business and that people are always talking about how they want to create More content and have better marketing and videos, one of those things. So I thought, gosh, I'll bring them on, I'll spotlight them, I can leverage their network and my network and highlight what they are. So one, I get to learn more about them, they get to learn more about me in a one to one environment. And I get to have the chance to give them what I thought everyone wanted, which was a lot more content, especially video related content they can use to advertise for themselves and promote themselves. And you know, most people like, oh, that's really cool. And then I have some people will say, well, what do you expect in return? And you know, there's a lot of theories about reciprocity. And I say, really, I don't want anything, but at some point might need something, right? I might need a favor, I might need introduction, I might, right? And I want to be top of mind. And so really I expect nothing in return. But I know that that's, you know, in the grand scheme of life and business that good things are going to come out of that. And obviously I get to meet their network virtually when those things happen and they promote and share what's going on. And in different areas and with different tools that are available, we can connect with people all over the, the country and the globe for that matter. And you know, and connect with clients that I would never have access to unless I knew that person. I'm sure there's people in your network that I don't know that I would, that I would love to get to know. I just don't even know they're out there, right. And there's a ton of ways to go about doing that. And I just see that's one of them that's pretty manageable for us to do, right?

10:31Mighty Mike:And this like, what we're doing right now, there's gonna be a whole group of people that are like, who's this Tim guy? Now all of a sudden you're. Whether it's your Santoni Spotlight or whether they just reach out to you for business, you know, we have a lot of people that do that. You know, it's like, well, I heard you do skip tracing and what's your rates? I get that all the time. I'll get a random voicemail. I'm like, I don't know where they found me, but I watched your video and I wanted to see what you charge for skip tracing. It's like, oh, all right.

10:58Tim Santoni:It's the state of affairs as it is now and it's where people Go. And you know, if you're an expert in it, you better have, have some content about it. And you know, the more real you can make it, the more relatable you can be. You know, it's just gotta have the content and you gotta have the distribution and you know, the variable is the creative on the content. Right. But you know, the only way to get good at creating it is to do it over and over again. When I first started, I look back, I'm like, oh my gosh, what was I doing? Right? And then over time, it gets better and better. But there's no secret. To be like, oh, I'm gonna be an expert at it tomorrow only is to just kind of put one foot in front of the other and give it a go.

11:34Mighty Mike:And you always feel worse than you then, then you actually are. Yeah, you get out there and you feel nervous. So I know you're, I know you got a short amount of time. So let's go ahead and go to the next question. So what is your worst experience working in the field? Whether it's your worst case, your worst experience.

11:54Tim Santoni:Worst experience. I guess I mean in, in general. Right. If it's a surveillance case, looking way back, it's following the wrong person thinking that, hey, you know, I'm on surveillance and I'm all geeked up and the person's active and then I follow the wrong car or the wrong person. I was in a case early, early. There was a need for a two man tail. I was at the very proficient surveillance operative. And it was a situation where he knew exactly what he was doing and I had no clue when I was able to. At that time, I think we were on next walkie talkies or radios or something. By the time I connected with him, he's like, where are you? And I'm like, where are you? And he had already been. He was with the subject back on the freeway and I was still, you know, off on a side street side of the freeway. And it was pretty embarrassing. But yeah, that was, it was a learning moment, right?

12:38Mighty Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And so in moments like that, actually funny you say that I just had one, you know, because I'm a new PI I've been doing process everything for a while and skip tracing all that. But you know, someone just hired me as a PI and I started with surveillance and same thing, I thought I had the guy. I thought, well, I'm gonna put one car in between us. It was on a highway, but it was a diesel. And it wasn't smart because it was a two lane highway. So I got behind this semi and this guy took off. He was gone. Like I couldn't even see him and I couldn't pass the sim. It was terrible. So I lost, I thought to myself, how do people lose them? Like, how do you lose them? Like I'll go over a curb, I'll go through the field to get after. But that time you lose them. So good stuff. Okay, well that's what I take from your story. You know, it just happens, you just learn from it and move on. So what is your best experience? Experience, let's say when you're 70 years old and you're sitting back in your recliner and you're talking to your grandkids, what is the story you're gonna tell them about your greatest experience?

13:39Tim Santoni:You know, I mean I think that people in our industry think of like those kind of, I don't know, field experiences I've had that I've had the opportunity to work on some pretty, pretty cool cases. And I guess the ones that come to mind have to do with, we've done some like ex parti raids and seizures where marshals and law enforcement are involved in serving like you know, with coordinating like multi location seizures at the same time for counterfeit infringing goods, coordinating those cases, executing on them, working with law enforcement. Those are pretty, you know, until you've done one, you don't realize how much goes into it. But they're pretty rewarding when you know, you come across and you get three warehouses and you're taking a ton of product and you're just counting up the dollars and you look back and say, wow, that was pretty impactful. And in terms of taking infringing, counterfeit or dangerous goods out of the marketplace. So those are the ones that come to mind. What I really like doing is helping. Most rewarding internally would be for an internal case is working with clients to help them really decrease settlements. In cases, whether it's workers comp case or other employment litigation where people have filed frivolous suits and they're just exaggerated things. So I've had cases where we've uncovered information, evidence that saves our clients 2, 3, $400,000, meaning the difference between what the settlement was before mediation, arbitration or trial and what they settled for. And to me, at the end of the day, if we're not helping drive down the costs of litigation and settlements, you know, then what, what value are we bringing? And that's really the only way that in our business we can, we can really measure roi I did seven days of surveillance and I got six days of footage. But was that useful in actually winning the case or decreasing the settlement costs or getting a fraud charge? Those things are sometimes out of our control.

15:26Mighty Mike:Right. And so a couple things I take from that, from your greatest experiences are, number one, you never know what you're going to learn from different experiences. Be open and be malleable to learning new things. And no matter what the situation is, I do want to probe because I feel like if I were listening to this, I would want to know more about the money counting. So tell me more about the experience where. What was your role? What was your position in that particular one? You're talking about where you guys busted someone? Take us to that experience in terms

15:58Tim Santoni:of the raids and the seizures.

15:59Mighty Mike:Yeah, maybe just one of them. What is your role in that?

16:04Tim Santoni:So our role is typically making the undercover trap buys to verify that the product where it's coming from and that it's in fact counterfeit, infringing or subject to enforcement. Then submitting declarations and affidavits in support of the seizure order to get filed with the court. And then once the judge issues the order, we're coordinating with law enforcement and our legal teams to get those teams ready to execute on that and then taken to the streets to actually execute those. So while law enforcement serves it, we're coordinating document review, computer forensics, inventory in the product. So literally getting the product off the, you know, out of the factories or out of the warehouses, into the trucks, inventorying all those items, making sure that we do entrance and exit videos to make sure that everything is the way we didn't destroy anything or hurt anything further down the road. And then reviewing documents and interviewing people to try and figure out, you know, how we can stop the flow of the goods, where they're getting them from, where shipments might be or have been leaked. And then when it's all said and done, we're maintaining the product in time for the court to do what they need to do and then maintaining chain account so that there's no question we can. Then once the case is done, typically the product is either destroyed, which we coordinate through shredding or some other process, recycling, if it's electronics and things like that, and making sure that that product does not make its way back into the marketplace.

17:30Mighty Mike:That's cool. That's really cool. So in a very practical, hands on explanation, you could be sitting in a car waiting for a guy to come and check out the good, or you're going to check out some money that you're going to exchange, take it to one of the individual role. I know you're the top dog, you're

17:50Tim Santoni:the boss, but yeah, I mean, well, back then that was, you know, it could be surveillance on that location to see what kind of trucks are coming and going. It could be being the guy that goes in and makes the buy, you know, you know, taking them. When I say make the buy, you know, getting the cash or credit card or money order to make purchase of the goods, asking them questions at the time. And then, you know, there's obviously then a requirement for, you know, a skip tracer, someone doing locate work inside the office to figure out who these people are, where they live, do they have other locations that need to be included in the seizure order. And then doing field work on those locations to find out, are these legitimate locations? Is it a mailbox store? Is it a warehouse? How much manpower would be required to go there and seize? And then potentially doing some background research and really understanding who you're up against so that when you go to law enforcement, you can get their attention. Right? Law enforcement wants to deal with people that have prior issues. And if you can show them that there's prior issues of whether it's civil, criminal, or federal issues, they're more inclined to act and cooperate. Because remember, we're trying to execute a civil order using criminal law enforcement to assist. And so they don't interpret those things well. So you have to then be a liaison between what those civil documents say and law enforcement who have no clue, like, this is a civil matter. I can't help with this. And so you have to help them understand that. So there's multiple parts to it, different people on the team that are doing that, and then, you know, logistics, people that are actually doing the actual, you know, accounting.

19:17Mighty Mike:I mean, this is. This is pretty cool. I mean, I sound like a newbie here. I'm just the host of the show here. You know, you're like, taking it away. So tell me. This is so cool for me, because this is like, you know, I don't want to get. I'm gonna get real nerdy here. But, like, the, you know, the CSI stuff, right? This is legitimately what you've built. So let's take it back. I know we kind of skip through this and we run out of time. You just tell me, okay, but how does someone get into a situation and build this kind of empire, this thing that you're in? Like, what kind of schooling did you have? I know we didn't really get touch on your. On the. On the father thing. You want to go into that a little bit. Like, how did you get into this further?

19:55Tim Santoni:Yeah. So, I mean, as people, you know, going back a step in order to be a licensed private investigator in California, you work for a licensed agency for a period of, what's equivalent, about three years. You take a test. You come from the private sector. You don't come from law enforcement or military or whatever. So really it's incumbent upon you to learn. So I learned from my dad. At the time, we purchased a company called National Trademark Investigations, and the two owners of that company were pioneers in kind of IP and brand protection. So I got to literally work under them, listen in the office, be involved in these situations with big brands and see what they were doing and then be able to implement those things with other clients. So really, I would say it's odd. Process serving was kind of the foundational element of what that. Because that requires you to be able to track down, serve them, you know, be in the field in a, you know, in an environment that's uncomfortable, potentially be able to communicate and speak well and defend yourself with your lips, as I always say, like verbal judo, if you will. You know, being able to be responsive and then learning all those different aspects and doing them so that then I could then manage what was going on. So in order to manage surveillance team, I need to know what surveillance people are up against, what information they need to be successful in the field. Same with the process server or anyone doing a trap buy hours of operation. What do you need to know? Do you need to have a resale permit? Is this. Do they sell to retailers, wholesalers, distributors? You know, profiling, really? And that's what, you know, as an investigator, I think that is crucial, is it knowing how to profile people effectively quickly and understand what information is necessary to have that conversation and in that process. You know, I always say a really solid investigator has a toolbox of a few things. One is the tools and databases they would use. You know, they have to have some sort of go to pretext or cover stories that they're going to use, and they have to be able to navigate public records really well. And once you have that going, you can, you can then use those skills in a lot of different areas in order to get the information and intelligence you're going to need in a variety of cases.

21:50Mighty Mike:That's awesome. So your dad was doing it. You had these other people, these big brands. Do you want to throw out a couple of the Names or is that. No, no, no.

21:57Tim Santoni:I mean, we can talk about those. There's some cases that have been in the public record. So I mean, we've done work from Microsoft over the years doing anti piracy, anti counterfeiting work. There's cases that involving Chloe, which is a luxury designer handbag. We've done work for top movie companies, electronics, you name them, anyone that's a valuable brand that monetizes it through ip. We probably have worked with them at some point in time. And, you know, everything from luxury goods to food to, you know, very obscure things that you would never really think of as, you know, a brand or intellectual property that's worth enforcing. When we've done Caesars, you know, for brands that sell furniture, you know, like wooden furniture, stuff you'd never think of. And we've done things like soy sauce and things like that. But you know what's cool is that you have to quickly understand and learn about their business, their supply chain, how they sell, what their areas of, you know, their vulnerabilities are, and be able to speak very clearly and accurately about them. So you get to become an expert very quickly. We did a lot of work around the razor scooters when those were blowing up and people were having those issues with those. Not the scooters, the hoverboards, Segways or hoverboards or you call them during those times. So trying to take the bad ones out of the marketplace and protect things so we have opportunity to work with some great brands and great businesses.

23:15Mighty Mike:That is so cool. So you're doing a lot of different things right now. And so if you had to narrow it down to just one or two things, what are you working on right now that has you most fired up, most excited?

23:26Tim Santoni:You know, I guess it goes back to the biggest thorn in the client side, which the big brand stories and the raids are fun and then those are great, right? But at the end of the day, I think that what we're doing more and more of is consulting with businesses when it relates to workers comp claims and fraud. So when the carriers and the attorneys are not delivering, they're coming up to us to help put together strategies to help discover, as I always say, there's elements of fraud in any kind of workers comp claim or case. The issue is always defining what that is and knowing if that evidence will help them get leverage. And then working with businesses to really protect their supply chain, their personnel, and contain those risks so that hopefully the people they hire don't file. Workers comp claims and the suppliers, distributors and manufacturers they work with are not abusing those relationships financially or the brand and creating counterfeits or diverted gray market goods. And so really doing that due diligence on that, on that end. And I guess the other thing that I guess is more and more common nowadays is more competitive intelligence. So we're doing work with clients to help them understand the operations of their competitors. From trucks in and trucks out to products in, to shift changes to, I mean, even in certain situations, trash runs and different things that are just kind of gumshoe investigative techniques that give businesses intel. Right. Those are the fun ones.

24:40Mighty Mike:That is fun. You know that, that's actually really fun. So I got a couple process serving companies down in la. I'm gonna hire you to go through their.

24:50Tim Santoni:They're always out in the field. So you're getting. Go and get their trash anytime.

24:53Mighty Mike:That's right. That's funny. That's awesome. Well, that's cool. Yeah, some. Always thinking outside the box, you know. That's great. That's good stuff.

25:01Tim Santoni:Got things like TLO and IRB and Accurate and Westlawn, all these different database tools, Skip Smasher and Lexus. Right. That are out there, which is just aggregators of credit header data. That's, you know, unfortunately the data sets are getting worse and worse over time because people, you know, the younger generation are not buying houses and credit cards and so their data is elsewhere. It's with Venmo and eBay and PayPal and other electronic payment processors and stuff like that. But I would say one of the tools that is valuable across a lot of different cases is a vehicle sightings report. And we're finding them great for domestic infidelity, trade secrets, theft cases, counting cars, counting trucks. You know, if you have the plate or event and you can figure out where that vehicle has been over a period of time, it's a very valuable tool. And when it comes to process serving, I mean the tool itself isn't all that expensive. But if you're trying to figure out where somebody you know works because you need to serve them there and you've got their plate and that puts you in the vicinity. If you can go to a business park and find their car, hey man, that's where they work. That sometimes is super valuable if you're serving like a garnishment, a wage garnishment or something like that. So to me that's a tool that has a lot of different valuable uses. Just a question of how it's applied and how it's Used.

26:13Sponsor:That's awesome. So Server Nation Tim has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Server Nation. Imagine what you could do with another 25 minutes per job. This is how much time process servers who use Server Manager are saving. At just 100 jobs per month, that's over 40 hours that can be spent growing your business or doing more important things like spending time with your family. From job creation to affidavit generation, Server Manager is fully featured and hands down, the most intuitive process serving software on the market. I use it for my business. I think you should use it too. In my firm it's important for me to be able to automate the systems that get things done. ServeMGR has done just that with their API integration where you can set up literally any app that integrates with zapier will integrate with Server Manager. I love it. I've set my whole firm up. Go to processserverdaily.com servermanager to get your free trial. If you like it, after the 14 day free trial, they've offered to give you another 60 days for free as a thank you for being a process server daily listener. That's processserverdaily.com servemanager welcome back to the show, Tim. Are you ready for the rapid fire round?

27:30Tim Santoni:I'm ready. I'm ready.

27:31Mighty Mike:What is your favorite skip trace tactic?

27:33Tim Santoni:I think that my favorite tactic would be the pretext call. Right? That's the tactic that you gotta master and that's the one that seals the deal, right?

27:41Mighty Mike:Yeah, definitely. So what is your favorite? And you don't have to share us. I know these are kind of trade secrets, but what is your favorite pretext? Like Persona?

27:49Tim Santoni:I mean, I would say as a percentage the one that has worked the best is the package pretext. It's evolved and changed over time, so that one's very useful. But another one that works really, really well is just. It sounds funny, but especially when you have common names and you're trying to track down someone is someone who's investigating accidents for insurance companies. And I could literally be an investigator and tell them, look, I'm investigating accidents. Your name came out, I'm guessing it's not you. You didn't live at this address, did you? And as long as the person doesn't think they're in any kind of trouble and they think they can help and they're helping me, I play super dumb and they'll tell me you weren't in the vicinity of this area around this accident? Oh, no, no. I don't even live there. I live there. And then, you know, where they lived. And so people will be helpful to the degree when they think that you need help. So the packet pretext is great because, you know, people. That still works. And I like the. Off the top of my head, the accident investigator. That's good with a big list. And that's my job. I'm really new at this. You know, I'm going through this list of names. It's probably not you. And then you just start rattling off all these things that really tie it to them because you have a pretty good sense. And then, man, they are like, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, it's not two, three, two. It's two, three, three. Oh, perfect.

29:02Mighty Mike:Oh, yeah. Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate for you. Tell me everything I wanted to know. Good stuff. So how do you track your cases? I imagine you got a bunch of them.

29:11Tim Santoni:Yeah, it's a great question. So several years back, we invested in. We run on the back of Salesforce, and we have a proprietary plugin that runs native in there that helps manage all of our cases. So we're able to input, you know, information about the case, the type of case, who's involved, investigator handling all the details about that. So we can manage it very easily. And it also handles all the. All of our payments, invoices, and collections. So it's a custom system.

29:36Mighty Mike:Very cool. Salesforce is a great plugin for helping to manage that. That's great. What book would you recommend?

29:44Tim Santoni:You know, in the last year, I've read several books. I would say that from an entrepreneurial perspective, you're looking at starting a business, whether it's investigation, skip tracing, or any other business. But there's a book out there called the Four Obsessions of an Executive by Patrick Lencioni. And I like that book because it talks about business practices from a story perspective. Perspective tells the story of two different businesses and how they operate and the kind of crossover their competitors. And I like books where they illustrate points through stories and real things as opposed to just theory.

30:14Mighty Mike:That's good. That's good. Kind of like little parables. That's awesome.

30:17Tim Santoni:Yeah.

30:18Mighty Mike:All right, Cool. All right. And then what is the greatest advice you've ever received?

30:24Tim Santoni:I guess, you know, being really good at what you do is important in understanding your business. But one of the things I think that I try to live by is that the saying is that numbers aren't the most important Thing, they're the only thing. The metrics in your business, the financials, your P and L, your balance sheet, your statement of cash flows, that's the only thing that matters. And understanding how to run your business from that perspective, by looking at the numbers and in every business, the metrics are a little bit different. Is it number of orders, is it revenue per customer, is it profit, whatever it is. But figuring that out and knowing what to measure is super important.

31:03Mighty Mike:So just to kind of drill on that just for a little bit. So QuickBooks online accountant.

31:11Tim Santoni:Yeah, so my recommendation on that is obviously you got to have some sort of accounting software backend to kind of run your numbers. But whether you call them KPIs, key performance indicators, or vital factors or whatever it is, you know, figure out what metrics in your business are important to measure. And measure those. You don't need to be an expert in the P and L, you don't need to be an expert in, you know, in the, in the balance sheet and how all that stuff goes. But what things are you going to measure? Hey, you know, I had a thousand serves this year and I got 900 of them served on the first try. Is that important to you? Yes. Okay. Well, I had, you know, I set up three new clients every month. Whatever the metrics are, don't try and measure them all at once, but just start getting those in place and then look at your P and L. Not you don't need to know how to put information into the QuickBooks to get your P and L, but you know how to interpret it and make sure whoever's doing that for you, if it's not you, is doing it correctly. So it gives you valuable information. And I would give one tip. So there's a lot of people that we work with that are in the process serving investigation industry. And I can tell you across the board, one thing they're usually terrible at is accounting. Okay? And the clients we work with are typically attorneys, and they're usually terrible at accounting. So you really need to keep track of how much people owe you and how to collect faster. And there's a lot of tools to do that, whether it's retainers, credit cards, whatever else, using a system, an online system to manage your serves or your investigations. But be careful because in our industry, my tip is accounts receivable kill you if you don't have cash flow coming in. You could have tons of cases, you could have tons of invoices out there, but until they get you paid, you've got a problem. And so I would say for investigators and process servers out there, you know, accounts receivable and understand how that works and collections is vital.

32:50Mighty Mike:So I love that tip for a couple reasons. One, one example I can think of is when I found out I was getting a bunch of cases, I don't know how many, let's just say 100 cases, and about 80 of them were coming from one of these clients where I would have to. Where I'd have to do five or six attempts when I normally only provide three attempts. And they were, they were the one client that was only. That was paying me half of what I was charging everyone else. And I was always so busy, but I was always so broke. And I realized. And so those kind of metrics, if you can figure out, wait a minute, I'm spinning my wheels to serve these. Yeah, they're giving me the most work that I have, but I'm spinning my wheels just to get them done versus these other clients where it's one and done and I'm getting paid double. The 80, 20 rule is another way to put it.

33:36Tim Santoni:Right, right, right. And that's the, you know, when it comes to your time and doing serves. And again, there's different reasons why you may do those because they promise you more in the future or whatever else. But at the end of what my experience has been is that typically the client that wants to pay less for more. That's a trend. They're going to continue to press on it and it's going to require more admin and support, even despite the cutting in rate. And they're going to expect more and more information on the proofs, more follow up. They're going to be disorganized copies of different things. So that's a tough one.

34:08Mighty Mike:Yeah, definitely. Okay, good, good. That was a great piece of advice. So this is a doozy. Okay, this is one of the last ones here. What would you do if you woke up tomorrow with all the same skills and knowledge, but you didn't know anybody, you had $100, a smartphone and a car. How would you regrow your awesome business to be the one it is today?

34:31Tim Santoni:I guess what I've learned is that networking, getting out there is the most important thing. So I'd probably find the closest networking groups I could get to on the bus or train or some other way that doesn't require gas because gas is expensive in California. Right. And use the hundred bucks that hopefully you can go to the free one. So I'd start growing my network and talk to Influential people about my skill set and start building that back up. Because you can offer great service, but if you don't know anyone to offer it to, you're gonna have a challenge. And then I think that the other part is that you're gonna have to start calling those people people you don't know and trying to get invited in and get those introductions. And you got to do that pretty quickly. So you're going to combine your, and then you're probably going to use your, I mean speaking from experience to take my phone and make some videos. Between networking, making videos and calling people, you have everything you need. Now these smartphones have an HD camera built right in. So you don't anything else, you can edit it right on the phone and upload it to those, those platforms don't cost you any money and start growing it that way. So that's, that would be my, my approach.

35:36Mighty Mike:That's good. I love that because you know, your network is your net worth. You know, if you can network with enough people like you said. I like how you said influential people too. Because if you're networking with, you know, they say the average of the five people you spend the most time with, that's, you know, that's what you become. So if you're just networking with people at the bar that aren't really trying to go anywhere with their lives

35:59Tim Santoni:and I would say too is that finding the right networking organization. So find the right people that in people say it's not that, it's not the what kind of job they have or who they work for, but the type of people, other people that are, well networked is super important. So talking to someone that's a plumber, but they have a huge network because they have commercial contract with hospitals and insurance companies. And that is different than a plumber that relies on the community and the chamber of commerce to refer in business. So once you understand those people that really look, well networked, you ask them, hey, what are you guys doing? And then it starts to self propel and you can use that leverage and get some intel from them. And people like that are always willing to help. Look at us, we're giving away all the secrets right here on the show. I mean, I guess parting piece of advice. I know for your audience there's a lot of solopreneurs and small business operators which is, you know, look, keep going forward, look at ways to grow value in your business, make yourself marketable to competitors and don't, you know, really connect and don't treat anyone as a competitor because they could be your best ally, they may need your services. A lot of times people don't do the same things like process server. Some people do levies and wage garbage hunts and other people don't do criminal under. So know your competition, you know, build your brand. You know, get out there to people and, and never be be afraid to connect with or reach out to people that are a lot more successful. Those people are willing to share nuggets of information that'll be super useful. And I've had the luxury of talking to so many people. They've given me a lot of the really good advice and that doesn't cost anything.

37:28Mighty Mike:That's good, that's good, Tim. I appreciate everything. What is the best way that we can connect with you and then we can say goodbye.

37:35Tim Santoni:Awesome. So you know, online our company website is SantonyServices.com if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn. Tim Santoni Santoni Investigations and backgrounds is a great way to connect message there. And then if you want to see my personal websites@tim santoni.com awesome.

37:53Mighty Mike:Tim, I want to personally thank you for being on the show. I've been impressed with your story. Everything you're doing on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, YouTube. I'm excited to share it with the world.

38:02Tim Santoni:Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

38:03Outro:Until next time, Server Nation, you've been served up some awesomeness by Tim the Slim Santoni and the tenacious Mighty Mike the podcast server. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode with Mr. Tim Santoni. Don't forget to head over to processserverdaily.com servemanager to get your 60 day free trial. That 60 days start after your 14 day free trial that they already give you. If you like the service after the 14 days because you're a listener, they give you an additional 60 days. Isn't that awesome? You just gotta sign up for their service, put a card on file and you're ready to rock. So Server Manager is a great software and I hope you give it a chance. Check it out and let me know what you think because the people that support the sponsors to sponsor this show help me to be able to get this out, get the awesome stories that you guys are hearing on a regular basis. So support the sponsors, support the show. Thank you so much for your time. You guys stay safe out there. Sam.

22 - Tim Santoni | Mighty Process Server

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