The Video Podcast Studio: From Marketing Agency to Quilia (Full Episode)

Yeah, that's cool. So, yeah, we're already rolling anyways. Okay. I figured you probably were. I don't think, like, when I do mine, we're not going to be like, welcome to the podcast. Today we hear from Kenny. I always wonder how they start, you know, like you watch whatever podcast and all of a sudden they're started. It's like, did you not talk at all before you sat down? Or were you talking and then somebody just decided that someone just turned off? Well, some of them, they just record as soon as they sit down. And then, like, they'll start talking like, wait, oh, we already started? Like, when they asked the first question. Yeah, we've been rolling. Wait, all of it. We'll cut it out with what we don't want, don't worry. And then there's a podcast I listen to called The Nine Club. It's about skateboarding. And they just start the same with everything. There's, like, a little intro. And the guy just goes, well, welcome back to The Nine Club. And today we have a special, special, special guest. It's the same thing. Well, they have three different shows, and they say well differently for each show. So it's like, well, or it's like, well, we're back. Oh, funny. Hey, you've got to have your things, huh? Yeah. I don't really know how to start. So we'll just start talking. I'm here. I'm ready. We go way back. Yeah, we've known each other for a long time. I was thinking about driving over here. It's been like 14 years, maybe? 2000 years. 2010, I think. It's probably late, early 2011, I think. So I've known you almost since the start of Canicle Media. Right. Yeah. I think you started Canicle right before. Yeah, I think you started Canicle right before we started Neon. And I think, technically, I think it wasn't even called Canicle when we met. Oof. I know it wasn't Canicle Media, because Canicle Media was like right before I married Malia. Yes, that's right. You called it something else. Canicle. Was it just Canicle? Well, it was Canicle Studios. That's what it was. And that was like weddings and stuff like that. So I was thinking about that. I was like, I think you are probably the longest standing person I know from doing my company. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Back in the early days. It's crazy. We were so young. What made you want to get into marketing in the first place and start your marketing company? Because that's what you did. That was your first company ever, right? Was the marketing? Yeah, that was probably my first company. Yeah. What made me want to do that? Well, I had just failed out of law school. And I moved back to Las Vegas. And I was always a, my dad was always into marketing. And so we would drive around thinking about marketing stuff all the time. Why is somebody putting that on a billboard? Why is that store doing that? So when I came back from law school and I wasn't going to be doing law anymore, I loved marketing and I loved technology. So it was kind of a perfect match. Also, I had a good friend, Chad Ramos, who's a mutual friend of ours, who already had a marketing agency that I had used on my dad's companies. My dad on Flippin' Out Trampoline Park. And we had hired Chad's company to work with them. And I really liked what they were doing. So when I came back, I hit up Chad. Everything worked out to where we were able to come together and create Neon Brand. And yeah, that was, that's kind of the genesis of it. Yeah. And that's how we called you to come make videos for us. Yeah. And that's how we met. Because before you, it was called Engaged Media. Yes, exactly. That's right. And you did work with them. Yeah. And I met Chad there. That's right. Right. And then you came in the picture. I'm like, oh, great. Some new guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What am I getting into? And then Chad disappeared. And I was like, oh, great. The guy I knew was gone. But then we stayed in contact. And we did, I mean, I don't even know how many projects we did over any years together. Hundreds. All the way up until you leaving. But like, what do you think? Like, because you built it. I mean, you guys had employees. Like, you guys were like a legitimate company. You know, like, not like me. And so. I don't know about that. What do you think along that journey of building it? What was something like maybe the hardest parts of building a marketing company? What was the hardest part of, you know, for me, the hardest part that I get stuck with building mechanical media is it revolves so much around my brain. Right. And I feel like marketing is probably similar. So for me, I'd be scared because you're building websites. You're doing social media marketing. For me, it's like, how do you get past that fear of like, it has to be the way I do it in my brain? How are you able to get past that? How are you able to grow the company beyond yourself? It's interesting now that I'm not in that company anymore because now I have hindsight to kind of analyze it from. If you'd asked me that a couple of years ago when I was still building the company, 100%, it's all about the people you're working with. And it's really hard. No offense to your guys that may be in the room with us right now, but it's really hard to find people that have the same drive and energy and desire as the founder, the owner. Like, that's just reality. And so when we would find good people, usually those people are in high demand and they ended up leaving or because we just couldn't afford them because we're an agency. So keep finding the right people and then keeping the right people on the team, probably one of the hardest things of running an agency. Because like you said, the conveyance of my goals and desires was really hard. That being said, though, it's also one of the weaknesses in my mind of an agency is it's really hard to scale because you can't scale yourself. Like, there's only so many hours in a day. And no matter how great an employee is, they're not you. They're never going to have that same desire. And so it's just a really hard, it's really hard to build a service-based industry like or company like a marketing agency because of your physical limitations. You can't do it. You can't be everywhere all the time doing everything you want to be doing. How are you able to get past or how did you ever figure out a process that was like, this is how we hire to find those people that are going to be good fits and say, because I mean, you guys had people that stayed with you guys for a long time that I worked with. I mean, obviously, there's always a flow of people leaving because they want to do something else. But you guys, it seemed like you stayed pretty consistent. I'm a big culture fan. And that was probably the reason we had people stay as long as they did. I mean, there's probably a lot of people out there that didn't stay as long because they didn't like the culture. But I'm a silly, random guy that likes to do weird things. And so we tried to... Like American Wars. Yeah. Oh, man. That's a whole story week though. So the culture that we tried to create was to keep people there. And that's kind of... I mean, that was our... It's probably our biggest attractor was we had a lot of fun. People wanted to come work with us because we were having a good time. Pay was always hard. You know, it's hard to pay people what you want to pay them in an agency life. You only have so much to pay people with in an agency. But yeah, culture was a big part of what we did to keep people around. Well, and I think that's true. Like, I always thought, right? I mean, we had that moment in time where we were downtown and I was like sharing office space and I was there. That was early days, right? And we played like slam ball. Slam ball. And all that stuff. And like being around you guys was always like really fun. I don't know how we made any money in those first few years. We played more slam ball than we did anything else. Yeah. Slam ball is a variation on ping pong. But I think we invented it. But it was a lot of fun. Yeah. And then also like, you know, when you guys owned Work in Progress as well. I mean, we shoot those videos and the whole Nerf war and we were trying to shoot a video and then you got shot in the eye. You were there. Oh, yeah, that's right. You filmed that one. Oh, my gosh. You filmed it when you got shot in the eye. Oh, that was so bad. But you guys always were really good at creating that environment. And so, you know, one thing that I've always found impressive about you is one, what you've built, but then you continue to build, right? You're looking for other options. Like, I know that you guys were leveraging your marketing company to potentially be in some other stuff too. But you guys also then did Work in Progress. And I mean, I know that's a whole nother beast. It's all great. Yeah, we did a lot of different. We used our marketing agency to do a lot of different businesses. Like, I had a window cleaning company at one point that was part of the marketing agency. We had a tiny home company that we were building as part of the agency. We had, there's more, I can't, CBD company, investment company, financial investing company. I mean, we had all these companies that we used, that we were part owners in because of the marketing agency. But really, I think more than anything, what you were kind of pointing at is the difference maker for me, especially, and it still carries on into what I'm doing today, is the people component. Like, I love people. I have always been a huge fan of, you know, helping people do better and helping people be better. And the focus on the people, whether it's our employees or our customers, you know, at the end of the day, even though we were a B2B business to business company, you know, there's people inside of those businesses. And if we could talk to the people, then we could usually do a lot of good things. So across the board, even today, my biggest driver has been focusing on people. What's been your favorite thing about building a company? Huh. Managing my own time. I can't even imagine having a nine to five job anymore because it's been over a decade and I work when I want and I work when I don't want, or I don't work when I don't want to. And I can't even imagine any other way. So that's definitely perk number one. Now, that being said, it does not sound as glorious as it might seem. No, it's not even close to it. It sounds all great, but I work 40 hours plus every single week. It's just on different time schedules that might outside the nine to five, which makes it nice. You know, I can go to that kid thing in the morning, the award ceremony, and still make up the time later in the day. So by far, that's been my favorite thing, though, is time management. You know, do what I want when I want. Yeah. And I think that's something that's funny. That when you own a company, right? Everyone's like, oh, you got to do whatever you want, whenever you want. You just have this amazing life. And it's like, first off, my life is never ending stress. Especially when it was like the marketing agency, right? Because, you know, I mean, you have clients on retainers, but it's also project-based. And so, like, for me, for example, everything's project-based. We don't do any retainers with anyone. So I've never really found a way to make that work for, like, where I feel good that we're not taking advantage of people, you know, with what I do. And, you know, it's like, no, like, yeah, I get to work whenever I want to a degree. But then there's also, like, I have to make the clients go. And I do work way more than what I would on a 9 to 5, most likely, and way harder. And it's more stressful. And there's more care behind it all. And, yeah. It's a lot. And my fun thing to tell people is, like, especially in an agency life, and I count what you're doing as kind of an agency as well, when you have clients, you may not have a boss, but your clients are your boss. And they dictate when and where you work. And sometimes in an agency life, they call you at 9 p.m. on a Friday, and you have no choice because the website's down. Or, you know, some marketing went up that shouldn't have or something. You know, there's always something at some random time. And you're the one they call, and you got to help. In reverse, a 9 to 5, you clock out at 5, you don't have to worry about stuff. You know your work's contained to a finite period of time. So it's got its ups and downs. I happen to like the idea of working whenever I need to and then having the occasional time where I have to dedicate a little extra. What do you think, right? Because, I mean, you've built a company. You've exited a company, right? Yeah. And so... Exited, sure. We call that. But what do you think is, for anyone out there watching, which we probably have nobody watching this ever, but... My mom. Yeah. My mom. You know, well, she's exited successfully. That's true. She doesn't care. But for me, when I go watch this and I try to get, you know, powered up to go build something, what kind of advice could you give someone, like, you know, if maybe they want to start a marketing company or just a company in general, like, what advice do you have going out there and getting it done? Back to the previous point of focus on people. Like, you got to be able to talk to people. They have to trust you. I think that was one of our strengths compared to other agencies out there back in the day was when people met with us, they could feel that we were trustworthy and honest. And if we had bad news, we tell them bad news. If we had good news, we tell them good news. You know, we weren't afraid to say, sorry, that's not actually a good idea. You don't want to actually do pay-per-click or whatever it was at that time. You might want to do this instead. And people respected that. They felt like we were actually honest with them and not just selling them a lot of goods. You know, they really felt the sincerity there. So people, man, if you can, your network, there's probably some, what's his name, saying about, you know, how important your network is, you know, being good to people. I'm a big karma-based fan too. I do a lot of stuff for free, especially with the agency, actually, to that point. We ran meetups for seven years or eight years. Once a month, I bought pizza on my own dime. 20 people would come out and I taught them everything there was to know about search engine and optimization, everything. I was an open book. Ask me any questions, I would tell them. And, you know, on the surface, people might be like, why would you do that? Of course, now you're teaching. I mean, I had competitors come. Like, people who ran other agencies would come and sit in on the lesson and we'd talk and have a good time and they'd go home and they'd get clients to do the stuff that I just taught them how to do. How does that work? And my big point is, if your job is so easy that anyone can pick it up and learn it, then you're probably not doing something right. You know, like, I can teach people all day long. And at the end of the day, I'm the expert that they're going to remember taught them how to do it. And when it comes time where they can't do it themselves, I'm the guy that they're going to call. So there's a big karma component to it all too. Trust them. So have a great network. Teach them and love them and help them do everything that they need to do to succeed, whether or not you're paid for it or not. And then watch the magic happen. It'll start working. People will start, you know, knowing your name. And it takes time. I mean, we weren't overnight successes. We took a long time to make it finally start working, but dedicated to it and made it happen. And I think that's one of the things that people like tend to forget about, right? This is a process. It's a journey. Like I, yeah, you see the TikTokers and it's like, you just do these five things and you'll be famous and rich. And no, no, no. It ain't like that. It takes time. Like I've been doing my own thing for like 14 years or 15 years or something like that, you know? It's crazy. And I have people that look at it and they're like, oh, like all you do is just start a company. And then all of a sudden you started making money. It's like, dude, you don't know how much, how many $500 websites I've made. You know, like, I don't know how many videos where I'm like, I'll pay you to let me do this. Yeah, exactly. Like I'm trying to work, you know, all right, $20, I'll do it to get to where I am today. Yep. You know, or even like building like a podcast studio, right? Like a lot of people just like, oh, well, you just put it up like overnight. Like, well, first off, this took me like 15 years of filming. Yeah, right. You didn't just decide to do this. And understanding the marketing and having clients that I know need this. Like, that's why I built this is because I have so many clients that like, this is so valuable for them and so much more affordable to come here versus setting my company, Canaco, out. Yeah, setting up a whole, setting this up in their office is way more expensive endeavor than just coming here and sit down and film. Yeah. And I don't even feel good like offering that service because I'm like, dude, this isn't, like, don't pay me for this. Right, right, right. Which is why we built this, you know, and you have people that see it. Like, I had a friend recently tell me that they're hanging out with some friends and they all started their own companies and they were complaining that I make way, that I make way more than them. Uh-huh. Like, well, Trevin, you know, all he does is take pictures and film things. And, you know, I'm a lawyer and I'm this and, and I don't even make close to what he makes. And I'm like, you started a year ago. Yeah, right. I started 10 years ago at that time. Yeah. Like, there's a huge, this wasn't an overnight thing. And so, you know, you built your marketing company and then, you know, I mean, I was a little bit surprised when I found out you were leaving the marketing company, but not so surprised when I found out was going back to the legal field and who you were teaming up with. Then it made a little bit more sense to me, but like, what are you doing now? And what kind of led you to going down the path of creating record? Record. Um, COVID, like everybody else is like, so, uh, we were aligned to COVID time. So we had our coworking space before COVID. We had our coworking space, which I loved. I was an early member at work in progress. We ended up purchasing at work in progress in 2017, ran it all the way up through COVID. Um, love to that place, deep, deep love for work in progress. Um, and so things were going great. We had a marketing team. There were like 15 employees, tons of clients, tons of work. We were top of the world, right? March, 2020 happens and everything goes to crap. It was an interesting time for the marketing agency. Then maybe for you too, um, with all the COVID money that was put into businesses, even though we've let everybody go pretty soon after that, I mean, definitely clients stopped paying and maybe three or months, three, three or so months later because of the business dollars from the government, all of a sudden, all these businesses had a ton of extra cash and a ton of free time on their hands and they needed customers. So where do you go when you need customers and you have money and you have time on your hand? And so all of a sudden, pretty quick after we saw this big uptick in, in work, all of a sudden people want a new websites cause they hadn't done it in 15 years and they had money in time. Let's build a website. You know, we haven't done a marketing plan. Let's do all this stuff. So different than the first time around with work or neon brand though, where we were very, um, focused on building the company. We wanted to take as little as we could and build the team and, you know, grow it to this great thing. And we said, you know what, let's pay us first this time. Like, so we kept our team small. We took most of the revenue. We did a lot more work than we were doing before. A lot of times what's, what's funny though, is we were working our butts off before, but it was really on managing the team. Exactly. And now we shifted instead of hiring team. We just said, we'll just do more of the work. We can actually do the work. Let's do the work. So we only brought on a few people. And then, um, so there were like three of us, me and my business partner at the time. And we were getting a ton of work done and making a ton of money. It was great. But the problem was in like summer of 2021, I was finding myself most days at work. We had, we had left our work in progress location downtown, which was where my heart was and had to move because of the stupid landlord situation, which whole frustrating thing. And we were up in a new place. My business partner was gone on trips a lot. And I found myself in my office by myself with three remote workers bored out of my mind. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know what, back to my previous points. I love people, right? Like I'm missing that element of my job now. Could I do this? I thought multiple times, could I do this rest of my career? Yes. I was making plenty of money. I could have done that forever. But did I want to? I don't really want to. This isn't fun to me. I want to be around people. I want to help. I want to do things that are more involved than zoom calling and doing that kind of stuff. So fall of 2021, I started just kind of just on the surface looking into doing a startup. I had always wanted to. Actually, when I started Neon Brand, I went to Chad. I said, Chad, here's what we got to do. I mean, this is conversation one. When I came back from law school, when I sat down with Chad at Casa Don Juan's in downtown Las Vegas, I said, bro, let's build a company. Let's build a team of really awesome people. And then once we get to a point where we can use that team to build our own stuff, we'll stop doing client work and we'll start building our own stuff. That was my plan from day one with the whole marketing agency. It never happened. So I really wanted to get back into a software startup. I really wanted to do it. So I started just kind of just looking like very light looking. I was doing our Neon Brand stuff full time. And I would like maybe attend a Zoom call or something with somebody that was doing startups and just kind of getting my feelers out there. Well, while I'm kind of doing this, I'm not really entertaining the idea. I'm not really trying to leave Neon Brand or do anything like that. In late in 2021, I get a phone call or a text message from my old boss, Dean Tingey. Dean texts me every once in a while over the past 12 years. We worked together a long time ago. And most of the time I was like, hey, you ready to come back and work for me? I'm like, no, man, I got Neon Brand. I'm good. But this time he texts me and it was a different text. He said, hey, we've been working on software in our law firm and we want to take it to the market. Can you come help us? We're like, I'm listening. So we went and met a couple times. And one thing led to another. Ended up figuring out that we wanted to build some software. And I had to make the decision to leave Neon Brand, which was one of the hardest things ever. I mean, I built that company. I was there on day one. Lots of clients, lots of revenue. Had to walk away from a lot of good people. That was the hardest part. And left it in my partner's hand. And I mean, it's still in existence. He's still running it. I think I've done work with him. And he's doing good things. He's got great clients. And so the company lives on. But I left and partnered with Dean, Tingey, and a couple other guys to start record. Or record, if you would like to call it that. But yeah, we started record then. So that's kind of the process that gets us to record. Yeah. And so tell me about record. Yeah. I always want to say record. I don't care. But the nice part about it is you're thinking about my name. It's hard to remember. I don't care. You can call it whatever you want. Yeah. Record record. We're recording your record. Yeah, exactly. Recording the records. Yeah. And so tell me about that, right? I mean, we got lunch and we talked about it. And I mean, I love where you guys are at right now with it and what you're accomplishing. I know it's different. You guys pivoted a couple of times. Yeah. Right. And I saw your LinkedIn post talking about those pivoting points. But where it's at now, I mean, like you were talking and I was like, man, I wish I had a ton of money. Like that you would take my money. Yeah. Because it's pretty cool. I'll go. But so what is record? So we did this huge process, like you mentioned, pivoted a bunch of times. And throughout the process, I was interviewing personal injury attorneys. I was trying to just figure out what they needed help with. Like we had an idea. It didn't work out at the beginning. So that's when we started pivoting. And I went through six ideas. And I was kind of at the end of my rope. I was like, man, what the freak are we going to do? Nobody wants any of these ideas we're coming up with. And so I'm interviewing one of my buddies. And he mentions, let me tell you about my favorite client. He said, oh, tell me about your favorite client. You know, I'm kind of out of questions at this point. Tell me about your favorite. Oh, this client. He was so good. He would always text me before and after appointments. And it was great because he didn't want me to reply. He would just keep me updated of what was going on. And then at the end of the case, he showed up with a spreadsheet. Every appointment that he'd ever been to, the work they did, the date time, which doctor, all of it. And just handed me the spreadsheet. He made it so easy to just put the demand together and send off a letter. I was like, okay. And in my mind, I'm thinking, I can do that really easy with technology. And then for whatever reason, I thought, well, tell me about your least favorite client. And personal injury attorneys out there will probably have the same reaction. He's like, oh, I got a lot of those. And it was nothing against the people that he worked with, but it's just hard to be a personal injury client. Like personal injury attorneys are doing the same thing day in and day out, which is hard too. But as a personal injury client, most people, not everybody, but most people, if they're in a car accident, it's usually their first car accident. And they have no idea what to do on their case. So it creates this weird contention, but not really contention, this weird issue inside of personal injury that has to be solved, but it doesn't have a real good medium right now. Most law firms are super overstaffed on people. It's also one of the hardest things for a law firm to do is find good people, just like everywhere, right? So you have a hard time hiring the right people. You end up often either understaffed and not able to support enough people, or you're overstaffed and people are just kind of twiddling their thumbs. So to the point of being people-oriented, so I started thinking, okay, how can we help these people in these car accident cases be better clients? Do they want to be better clients? Does everybody want to be better? And I started asking clients. I was able to actually access some of my friends' clients that they had, and they had the same disconnect with their personal injury attorney. They wanted to help. They didn't know what questions to ask, so it often left them in the dark. And they were actually kind of afraid to talk to their attorneys. It's just reality. We don't know if attorneys are nice. We watch TV, and they're all so tough. I think a lot of people get scared of attorneys because they also wonder, am I going to get billed for every single second I even say hi to them? Exactly. And so they don't want to ask dumb questions and then get a $250 bill for that dumb question. That is something they could have Googled. Exactly. People are very afraid. With personal injury, it's actually nice. There's no billing, but people don't understand that. Exactly. People don't understand that. They think, what if we charge them more? So we got that problem there. And then on the opposite side, the poor attorneys, they're sitting there answering the same dumb questions over and over and over. And it sucks. It's not fun for them to do that. You know, like, well, who's going to pay for my medical bills? Like, okay, I've said this 1,000 times. Let me say it 1,001. You know, like, it's hard. And so we started kind of putting these two problems together. It's like, what can we put in between this that might solve the problem for both parties? And we came up with records. So it's an app that the client actually installs on their phone. And when they install it on their phone, what it does is it helps them do two things. It helps them log their own case information. So it helps them track all their medical appointments and wage loss and property damage and pain scores and attorney updates. All this stuff that's built into the app for them to track. But it also does a really good job at educating them on why they're doing the things they're doing. I'm a big why guy. People who know me. Total PETA. Like, they, I just, nobody, nobody likes me when I ask my questions. Because I want to know why I'm doing the things I'm doing. And clients are no different. Like, they want to know, like, why am I going to get this MRI? Why am I going to the chiro again? Why do I have to go four times a week at the beginning? Like, I don't have time for this. So we're filling in that education gap where an attorney could answer all of those questions. They have the answers. But to do it at scale, it is a huge time commitment. Yeah. So we're building it right into the app. So they schedule a chiropractor appointment. We say, here's why you're going to the chiropractor. And we give them some education on it. Or the MRI gets scheduled. Here's how the MRI works. And why that's important to your case. Hey, have you missed any work? Here's why that's important to track your work missed. And all this stuff. So we're educating clients so they become more informed. Which results in a better quality case. So more information means you can make better analysis on the facts of the accident. And then usually a better settlement. Because you have a better argument to be made. And you have a happier client. Because the client feels like they helped the whole way through. It's a really nice symbiotic relationship with all of it. Where it actually helps the whole entire relationship be better. Yeah. No, I think it's amazing. Like I said, when we met up for lunch downtown. And you're telling me about it. I'm like, man, this is so genius. Because it's true, right? I mean, I've worked with a few lawyers. My dad's a lawyer. You know, who just recently switched over to PI. And it's that thing, right? You know, we did the videos for T&E. Where it's like, there's a video telling you, go to your doctor's visits. Because if you don't go, your case could have been worth a million. But now it's worth $60,000. And that's because of you not going, right? And so that's going to help. And most of the time, the client didn't know that they should have gone. And that it could have that detrimental of an impact on it. And they've been told, but they forgot. Or they forget, yeah. And they're not going to remember everything that they hear. And they're also, I mean, there's anxiety. Because you're dealing with lawyers. You have the medical pains. Nobody wants to be in a car accident. Nobody wants to do this stuff. You never choose to do it. And so going on, like, you know, building this. What do you think has been one of the hardest parts? I know nothing about software. I imagine just coding, it's incredibly confusing and hard. For someone like me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I go in there, I'm just like, well, maybe not with ChatGPT. Yeah, I was going to say, just ChatGPT it now. Anybody can build it with ChatGPT. But, like, what do you think building this, right? And I know you guys are launching in, like, a couple months or two weeks. Two weeks. May 3rd is launch day. And so what's been the hardest part, building this and getting it ready? Definitely, I spent nine months interviewing attorneys to really two things. Learn about the industry, which I already knew a lot about. I spent 10 years in personal injury pretty much running a law firm. You know, I knew it pretty well. I didn't know it inside of the firm. So I spent nine months interviewing, which those interviews were long and hard. I mean, it was hard to get them, and then it was hard to have them, and then it was hard to follow up on them. I mean, it was hard. Pivoting all those times, like, coming up with new ideas, definitely the hardest. Once we figured out the idea, the problem we were going to solve, and that people actually wanted the solution, things got surprisingly easier, except it's a people problem again. Finding the right people to do the right things. I had to let go of my CTO two months in, which was terrible for all the reasons anyone can imagine. On top of the fact that he was a really good friend of mine. We'd known each other for a long time. We're still good friends. But life circumstances made it to where I had to let him go, which sucked. Sucked bad. And which really we thought was going to put us way behind. Luckily, I found another guy that was able, that has had time, Peter. He's phenomenal. He's doing great work with us. So the coding part, while, yes, difficult, actually, I'm probably understating how difficult it actually is, because I know what they're doing. I'm a programmer myself, and it is phenomenal work that they're doing. I just happened to get lucky and find really good help to make it a little less painful than it could be. Right now, though, the biggest issue, the hardest thing for me on my plate right now is we're trying to raise our next fund, our next investment into the company. And so going through the process of due diligence and contacting investors and trying to raise the next round of money is a lot of work. It's a lot of work. All of it's hard. It's just whatever you're working on right now, it's hard. It's hard to stay motivated. It's hard to... Some days, it's hard to find the right thing to work on, which is a weird thing, right? There's like, I have this infinite list of things I should be working on. And it's almost like the analysis paralysis. It's just like, which thing should I work on? There's so many of them and it's hard to pick. Exactly. It's like, but like real estate, even like I had a conversation with my mom not too long ago, asking her some advice, but like, I mean, it was like buying real estate and she's, I'm like, okay, I have this option. I can do this option. She's like, well, they're all good problems to have. And no step is necessarily the wrong step because you're still taking those steps forward. So don't be just paralyzed and not do anything. Just move forward. They all have their pros. They all have their cons. So just go, you know? And I feel like one thing you mentioned, right? Like you spent nine months researching. I feel like too many people are just like, oh, I can just start a business. People want this, right? And then they just start doing it. And I mean, I'm that way, right? I'm like, most people are. Well, I'm like, oh, my clients need podcasting. I'm going to build a studio for them. I never really, I mean, I did sit down. I've had a conversation with a few clients, so I do know there was a need for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the same time, I'm like, I think this will do well. And I think what people don't realize is like, you can do that, but you also then need to sit down. And my plan with the podcast is we get going and every person we have in here doing their podcast shows, I ask them, what do you need differently? And what can we do to improve? What are you really looking for? What services do you need? And get that feedback because you can't build a company if people don't actually need what you are selling. Just because you think people need it doesn't mean they actually need it. I've seen that with clients of mine where there's a company we were shooting for and the marketing company, which was not you guys, that they were using, it's a bigger company in town. And I got there and they're like, hey, we want to do a shoot. We want all these young people. We want sexy and cool and upbeat. And I'm like, looking around, I'm like, everyone in your studio is like 55 plus. Like, why are we doing this? Like, and talking to the business owner, you know, and a very, walking a very thin line of not talking bad about that marketing company because I'm not here to do that. But asking them, has the marketing company been here to meet your clients? No. Have they asked why they even come here? No. Right. Well, before you spend the money on a video with me, can I do that? Yeah, right. To make sure that this is going to make sense for you? Because right now it doesn't make sense to me. And I don't want to, I don't want to take your money and give you a video that isn't going to help you. Yeah. And then we sat down with them and they're like, well, we came here because my doctor told me I'm going to die if I don't. Okay. Well, that's a whole different marketing tactic than young, sexy people. Totally. Right. And so I think that's really good that you did that. And that transformed what you did to the point where when you first told me about it, I'm like, holy crap, this is a good idea. Like I see the value and then I'm dumb. You know? Yeah. I try that. No, that's funny because, well, I'll plug where I got the whole process from. Startup Ignition, startupignition.com. We, day one, when we started the company, the four co-founders went and attended Startup Ignition. It was my fourth time, I think I'd been a bunch of times, longer story for another time. But I really, really enjoyed it previously. And I was excited for the whole team to be on the bandwagon. And one of the things that they teach about, John Richards and Tyler Richards teach about during the podcast is that the process for doing startups the traditional way is broken, right? Most people, like you said, the process is, I have an idea. Okay. I'm going to spend a lot of money. I'm going to build the thing that I want to build. Let's say it's a widget. You know, I'm going to build this thing. I'm going to finish the thing and then I'm going to take it to Trevin and I'm going to show it to him and say, Trevin, do you like it? And Trevin's going to say, no. Oh, great. Okay. What can I do better? And he's going to give me feedback. And then I'm going to have to try to like retrofit this onto there. Exactly. And then, Trevin, how do you like it? Oh, maybe. Okay. A little more retrofit. And maybe I figure it out eventually. Some people do. It's not an impossible way to do it. But a lot of people go that route and end up with something that's not workable. They should have started and done it completely different. Maybe they learned what the actual solution is, but they were already too far down. They've wasted a million dollars and they can't pivot into the right thing now where the correct way of doing a startup is I have an idea. Okay. I have an idea. I'm going to build a widget. Well, before I build the widget, I'm just going to draw it on a napkin or I'm going to make it out of cardboard and I'm going to go explain it to Trevin. I'm going to say, Trevin, this isn't it. Obviously this is a prototype. This is just a cardboard box. But imagine that this box does this, this, and this, and this. If it did those things, would that be a value to you? No, not really. Oh, well tell me more. Oh, okay. So if I move this thing here, you know, I just rip the box and tweak it around a little bit. Now would you like it? Yeah, that's a lot better. Oh, you know, you do that 20 times. The, the kind of, you have to have a statistical norm of answers. A sample size of one is not good enough, but if you do 20 interviews with people, now you're getting some real good data. You can actually make decisions on, on those interviews. So getting the 20 interviews hard, getting the feedback sometimes harder, harder because people tell you your idea is dumb, which I'd much rather than tell me that when I haven't spent any money on it yet. Then after I spend a million dollars on it, they're much more likely to give you that honest feedback too. That's another problem with spending a million dollars upfront. Somebody knows you've spent a million dollars on a prototype. They're going to be like, yeah, it's really nice. I think you should do good things with that. When really in the back of their mind, they're thinking, oh no, he wasted a million dollars, you know? And they're not going to tell you that. Yeah. Oh, with the cardboard box, they will. Oh, don't do that, bro. That's a terrible idea. Stop. Oh, okay. And then you can change. So the old way is broken. Don't build a thing first and show it later. Start at the beginning by showing your customers your idea, you know, put it right out there. And if you're afraid of people stealing your idea, then your idea probably isn't good enough to start with. If anybody can run away with it, you should do something else anyway. So yeah, that process is really important. And I think everybody should do it. I love what your example was. Cause like when we had the agency, that was kind of our difference maker too. It was like, I wanted to know the experience that customers were going to have. Cause without it, like you, you can't tell the story of what the customers are going to have without actually like knowing it firsthand. So making sure you know what your customers want, which is kind of what we're doing now with record. You know, we're, we know the pain that clients are feeling. We know the pain that the attorneys are feeling. We feel like we can bring that together and make it better. Yeah. And you guys have, I mean, like, like I said, I know a little bit about that industry and hearing it, the solution, I'm like, this is so smart. Why does this not exist already? Yeah. You know, like you guys really are creating something that is going to transform. That industry for the better. And not just for the lawyers, but also for the people hiring the lawyers and the, that were in the car accidents, you know, it really is going to be like life changing. Cause now these people that would have had a hundred thousand dollar settlement are getting half a million or a million instead. And that's good for those lawyers too. But more importantly, it's good for those people whose lives got uprooted due to a slip and fall or a work accident or a car accident, you know, cause nobody's planning on having an accident. You know, nobody wants to. Yeah. I mean, to your point it's an especially actually let's talk to the pain. The attorneys are feeling right now. Attorneys have a really hard time. And really what we're talking about is what's called pre-litigation or pre-lit for anybody that's not personal injury related. So pre-litigation means the time that you're in the claims process with the insurance company up until a lawsuit is filed. So most cases, 95% plus, maybe even higher, probably higher than that. 99% of cases settle before they go to court. And that's called pre-litigation. And during the pre-litigation process, it is a lot of the same types of issues over and over and over again. And it's also one of the least favorite parts of an attorney job because there's no, I mean, anybody can do that. You don't necessarily have to have a law degree to handle a claim. You have to have your law degree to do litigation. You can't go to court without being an attorney, you know, like you have to have these credentials at that point. And so that, that beginning part, that pre-litigation part often gets neglected inside of personal injury firms. Usually it's left to a couple of paralegals or case managers or legal assistants, whatever they're titled in the office you're working in. And they're doing their best. Bless their hearts. They're not degreed people. Usually they're sometimes experienced in the field. Some of them have, I mean, people are career case managers. They'll spend their entire career handling pre-litigation cases, which is great, but it's not where the focus of the firm really is. But if you can do a better pre-litigation process, which is essentially what we're offering to people is a higher quality pre-litigation process. A few things will happen for the attorney. You'll get higher settlements up front, which is great because you actually don't, litigation is expensive and takes a lot of time. So you want to avoid it when you can. And the way you avoid that is by getting the right amount of settlement dollars out of the case in pre-litigation. So if you can improve the quality of the case, improve the quality of the settlements, then you can avoid having to go to litigation as often as you want. What we're also offering is a lighter staff load, which, and a higher quantity of cases. So you can do more with less. Fewer assistants handling more cases because the clients themselves are actually willing participants on the case and they're totally underutilized. I've been in cases myself. I was actually in a car accident in May. My wife was in a medical malpractice injury a few months before that. And it's an interesting thing. We actually had different attorneys for the two cases. The attorney I went with was really, really good at keeping in touch with me and kept me updated all along the way. And her attorney, it's been a little harder to get communications from. Not necessarily his fault. It's just a lot of dead air kind of because there's not a lot happening on the case. But if she had an app, she would feel still connected to him. She could log in and check status at any time, be able to see what's going on without bothering the attorney and potentially billing and all those other things that come with it. So we're improving the client's relationship with the attorney. We're allowing the client to do more inside of the case, which allows you to have fewer people inside the firm that you got to pay for. So we're lowering the cost of doing business and we're increasing the quality of the case, which increases the amount of settlement dollars that you get in pre-litigation. Ergo, avoiding more costly litigation prices. I mean, it's just kind of crazy. It's like I'm saying it because I came up with it, but it's like a no-brainer thing. Like it's so weird to me that it hasn't been created yet. Like it just has come together so well. So anyway. Yeah. Well, I mean, I already said that earlier. Like really we met and you told me about it. I'm like, I wish I had a lot of money to offer you to be part of this. It's crazy. Because I know this is going to transform that industry and it's an industry that needs to be transformed. Kind of like the medical field, right? Where they're just so far behind. Yeah. That stuff that is so common to all of us. That's like a no-brainer. Well, of course there's an app for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There isn't. Yeah. And we're in that world now. That's another one of the good points of this crux, the time that we're at right now is there's an app for everything. There's not an app for your personal injury attorney. Like, why not? Why can't there be? And we think we found the spot. So yeah, it's another one of those things, especially post-COVID. We actually expect it even more. There's like studies out that say we have a higher, well, and it's obvious. Everybody, nobody wants to touch anybody anymore. You know, anytime we can avoid interacting with humans, we like that now apparently. I've always liked that. I don't like people. I pretend to be social, but if I can hide and not have to see people. And so many people are like that. And so here's another way for you to not have to interact with people. It's great. So anyway, crazy time. And so, you know, congrats on the app. Congrats on the launching of the app. You know, I'm excited for it. It's going to be huge. It's going to transform the industry. Let's talk about AI. Want to talk about AI? Let's do it. Because AI is also another cool thing that we're working on inside of our app. Because in the past three months, everybody, if you're involved in technology, your job has changed in the last three months. My developers, there's times where you get stuck on code and you can take your little GitHub co-pilot and ask it a couple questions and it'll spit out the correct code for you. Now, I mean, we are in a totally different world than we were four months ago. How does that affect record? It's actually pretty freaking awesome. So no matter what AI system we have that's out there, there's always got to be a layer of data collection. So without the data collection layer, which has been happening from the ChatGPT level for the past, since the Internet was born, ChatGPT relies on all the data that we've fed into the Internet to create its language learning models. Well, with what we're doing, personal injury cases, there's still got to be somebody collecting data. And we're that person. So we're going to be at the bottom. You know, the client is the closest person to the data that is needed in order to settle a case. So we're at that collection point. It also gives us some really cool opportunities. Like we're embedding AI to where the clients have a button on the app that say, what's the status of my case? No longer do they have to go to the attorney. The AI knows all the facts of the case already because it's built into the case. They know how the attorney handles their cases because we have a number of cases from the attorney. And in a blip of a second, the AI generates, oh, you've been to the chiropractor 15 times and now you're ready to get an MRI. This is because, and it just breaks down the entire status of the case. So at any moment, without even having to talk to your attorney, you can get an accurate analysis of where you're at in your case because of AI. So it's been a huge upgrade for what we were doing already. So, and you guys could probably leverage that as well, like using AI to take all that data. And then the lawyer knows based off of these circumstances, this is what that case should be worth, which is huge too, because then they can know whether or not it's even worth their time to take it or if it's something that they should pass on to somebody else because it's not the type of case that they normally take on. Right. Right. Like, so that's pretty huge too. Like, so one of our first pivots was going to be an intake analysis tool that used predictive AI to say with this basic level of information, I can predict what the quality or amount of settlement this case will have at the end of the case, just based on bare minimum factors. Um, we have pivoted off of that and we probably won't include that level of detail yet because attorneys weren't ready for that. We actually showed it to a couple of attorneys. I drew it on it. I actually did an Excel spreadsheet where I said, here, tell me these 10 things. And they'd answer these 10 things and I would spit out a number and the number would, and then I'd ask them, we'd actually use old cases. So they'd give me the data from an old case. They would know the settlement of that case. And I would see how close my predicted settlement amount was. And I was always within the range, but no attorneys wanted it because they, the feedback was like, well, that's cool, I guess. But what would I do if your software is doing that? They basically felt like it was, I was coming for their job essentially. Like that's what an attorney's for. And I get it, right? Like if I'm predicting settlements, then what do you have an attorney for at all? And attorneys wouldn't have bought it, which was an interesting pivot because it functionally worked. I could build it and they knew it worked. It was accurate enough to where, and I only would have got better using AI and other things I wanted to do. But had I not done those interviews, I would have built that software. And then I would try to sell it to an attorney and they would have had those thoughts and I would have wasted all my time and energy because they wouldn't have actually bought it. So they heard it was later on. But you bring up a bigger point, which is actually a second step of what we're doing. It's actually Grand Master Plan Part 2, which will be some level of analysis for the attorneys. Right now it's just basic, basic stuff. Here's where my case is. Because you think you'd want that information because then it allows you to say no to cases that aren't going to be the cases that you want to take on. Yeah. And it doesn't take away your job. And at some point they'll understand that, right? Where it's like, this isn't taken away from you. You still have to build the case. You still have to do all these things. And this is letting you know within a few seconds of a phone call or them inputting their data into the app of, you know, record that this case is a case that you want to take on. Or you hand it off to this lawyer in your practice because he's a newer one. Yes. And he has a time for the smaller one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know there's a lot of opportunities. That's awesome. Our main point right now, before we get to that, and we may never get to that if we don't have to. We're pushing into existing case management software for the attorneys. So Filevine, Case Peer, Smokeball, there's a bunch of them out there. Our goal is to get the data from the client and then get it into the case management software so that the attorneys can keep doing all the good things that they're good at doing without having to call and talk to the clients as often. We still want to maintain relationships. There's still a high level of personal touch that needs to go into every single client because that's just how it works. We're just hoping to make those times they do get in contact with the attorney much higher quality than spending time saying, well, how did the car get fixed? You know, like that's stuff that a quick answer in a text or whatever can be done. I want to know, like, how are you feeling? Like, what's hurting? How's your relationship? Do you have any mental health struggles? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. It'll allow the lawyers to have a real relationship with their clients. It'll allow the clients to feel like the lawyer actually cares. Yeah. And allow more quality time. Instead of just bookkeeping time. And also less time if that client doesn't want to spend all this time at the law office. Yeah. There's going to be some people that are just like, here, yeah. Oh, you don't ever have to talk to you. I don't ever have to show up to the law office and tell you guys what's going on. I prefer to stay home. Exactly. Or do what I need to do. Exactly. Right. So, like, for me, it'd be awesome because I'm like, I get that communication. And then when I do see them, yeah, it's more quality. Oh, how are the kids? How are this? It's more just conversational and, like, cool. Like, we're moving this progress. Let me tell you another problem we found. And you're kind of highlighting it. What you just reminded me of what you were saying. Law firms are open from 9 to 5. Very few are open outside of that time frame. Some of them have emergency lines. Guess what every client's doing from 9 to 5, too? They're working as well. And so in the current system, you often cannot get in touch with your attorney or legal assistant because time just doesn't allow it. But what we're offering is an app that when they're sitting on the couch or getting ready to go to bed, they log in and send a couple things into the app. And now the attorney's completely updated on what's going on in the case. If they want, they can send a message back or whatever. We actually don't have two-way messaging built in because most firms use text. But it allows outside of normal office hours for the client to work on their case. So another reason. Which is awesome. Because I don't want to take off work. Yeah, you're busy. We all have things to do. And I already missed out on work because of my car accident. Yeah. I had a car accident. I had to go to the doctor's appointment. Everything else. If it helps my case, then I'll come to the office as much as I need to. Yeah, that's right. Right. So if that helps, then yeah. But no, it solves that problem of they're working 9 to 5, but most people's lives are already taken up through 9 to 5. They have the kids. They have the work. And so yeah, you guys are killing it with what you've created. Like I've said, it's a no-brainer. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. But it's not a no-brainer. It's only a no-brainer when you hear it. Right. That's the thing. You have to do all that work to get it to the point where it was a no-brainer. Exactly. Right. Which I think, going back to what we talked about earlier, people just assume like, oh, that's so easy. Like, of course, I didn't want to have thought about that. But no, you had to pivot. I think it was like seven-ish times. Seven total times. That you guys pivoted the direction of the app through nine months of conversation to get it to the point where it is an absolute no-brainer that somebody like me with a little bit of knowledge of the industry is like, take my money. Yeah. Right. Like, this makes sense, you know. Which is the simplicity is a sign of perfection, hopefully. So it's so easy. It's a no-brainer. We hope that it conveys that way. It seems to. People we show it to now, attorneys, not including Trevin, say, you know, can I? That was the difference. That was when we knew we finally landed on a good idea. Was attorneys I was interviewing finally started saying, is this available right now? Can I sign up today? Like, oh, no, no, no. Sorry. This is just a prototype I drew. You know, like, this is not ready yet. It was a computer version prototype. But, yeah. When we started hearing, can I buy it? Then we knew, okay, we got something here. Let's build this sucker and get it to market. Let's go, man. That's awesome, man. It's fun. So kind of wrap this up, I guess, would be, you know, three things that you could tell somebody out there that wants to build a business, whether that's using AI, whether that's a marketing, whether that's a software development thing, because, I mean, you kind of done a lot, right? What are three takeaways that you've learned through the whole thing that you can be like, you know what? Maybe it's trust yourself. Do the research. I mean, some stuff that we've talked about, but what are three things that you think you could give as advice? Three things. So I've said it a few times already during this conversation, but people are the most important thing. Even starting this startup, my 12 years of prior business relationships are absolutely essential to the success of this business. And most of those people have nothing to do with personal injury. Most of my friends that I've made over the past 10 years could care less about car accidents, but because they know me and trust me and like me, and I've done good things with them in the past, they want me to win. And what happens there is it's not even just like an energy thing. Like there's just good energy around it. But it's because, you know, they know somebody or they want somebody else to participate or they, somebody they know gets in a car accident. You got to talk to Kenny. You know, it's this whole ecosystem of friends. Actually, we used to call them, or Engage used to call them back in the day with Chad. Um, and then I loved it. I adopted it after that. It's raving fans. You want raving fans on whatever you're doing. So don't work in the dark, meaning let your product shine, you know, from day one. If you're building something, tell people, and if it's good enough that they're going to steal it, build something else. Um, trust a lot of people and, and give people reasons to trust you work hard to make sure that they know that you're a good person and ethical and hard worker and all those things. And then, so that's two, I guess, right? Put number three, um, put in the time. It takes a lot of time. Um, actually from the early days, I have four kids, you know, like our kids play hockey together. Um, I have had since day one, and it is not easy, a big effort on trying to keep my family as the first priority and everything. And so while we're talking about working insane hours and doing all these things, you know, because that's just what life demands, I've had to put really good rail guards up that say, you know, when I'm home, I, you know, from the time I'm home to the time everybody goes to bed, my phone automatically goes into home mode. It blocks all my texts. It automatically doesn't let phone calls through unless it's family. Um, because I know that if that thing dings, I'm going to have, my brain can't handle it. So I, I automate, I use technology to my benefit so that I can be focused on them when I'm there. I also really try to help me do a 40 hour week. I'm, somebody said at some point, I don't know who, there's probably a quote, but you know, if you can't get it done in 40 hours, then you're doing something wrong. Like 40 hours is a lot of time. It's a lot. And if you're not dinking around and wasting time during the day, then you're going to need more time than 40. So use those 40 hours so that you, to your maximum potential. So you don't have to spend 60. And so the times when you do have to spend 60, it's a little easier for your spouse to say, it's okay. You can go like, I know this is different. You know, you've been home and you try to keep the 40 as it is. So keep family first and it will help pay off in the long run. Awesome. Well, where can people, personal injury lawyers out there get recorded? You know, that's exactly where get record.com. So get record.com. Come check it out. I'll, we're doing a free beta right now. If anybody wants to look at it right now, I can get you on with test out with a few clients. Hopefully launching on May 3rd. We're going back and forth with Apple right now to get approved. They take a lot of data privacy in mind and Apple. And so we're making sure that they know that how, how secure we are right now. And hopefully it should be done by May 3rd. So yeah. Get record.com. Awesome, man. Well, thank you for coming out. That was awesome, man. Your studio is beautiful. I love it. Thank you, man. It's coming. Which is great success. We still got more stuff to do to it, but it's, it's coming together. It looks good. So I didn't do all the research I should have, you know, I just kind of built it. You've been doing it for 15 years. You've been doing the research. But for me too, it was also like, if I sit into the research, I'm not going to do this. I, well, for me, I, I had this idea five years ago with my clients and I'm like, cool. Yeah. I'm going to do that one day. Let me tell you the difference so that you're not worried about this because what you're doing, you, this is a proven business model where people have made podcast studios. So you don't have to do the same level of research. Your play is going to be more of a marketing play. Like, is this the best studio in town? Yes. This is the best podcasting studio in Las Vegas. Right. And if people know that, then they're going to come because they know what podcasting studios are. So you didn't have to go through the research. Yeah. Now your research, like you said, is getting the feedback from people that use the space and make it better and better and better. It's building it for the people. And I already had, I had clients in mind when I built it and I did do the research because we talked about building it in their office for them. Oh yeah. But then talking to people, I realized that some of those people are like, well, but I need that office space because my company is always growing. Right. All right. Then I have to train somebody how to do all this. I'm like, okay, well, I'll just build a place. Yeah. It's easier for you to come here and just do this. It's easier for you to bring people and way less expensive. And so. Yeah. I'm figuring it out. I like it, man. Appreciate it. Hope you kill it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.