Pooya Abka: [00:00:00] if you are in a practice area that is, that requires new, clients, every week, every month, every year. And then if you stop, advertising, marketing, stop bringing in new leads, your business is going to die. Maybe a few months later, it's air to your life.
It's that important
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest Pooya
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MPS: Hey, law firm owners. Welcome to the, Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts. I'm MPS. And
Richard James: I'm Richard James. And MPS today, we have a great show because, we met this gentleman through a relationship. And then we ended up realizing, wow, wait, he had a better product, better service for the legal industry. And so, we, started building a relationship with Intaker, but then we got to know Pooya and we started to hear his story as a founder and learn some of his marketing techniques and sales techniques.
And I just realized, oh my gosh, this guy's the real deal. [00:01:00] So MPS, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited to have a conversation with Pooya today about all things, sales and marketing and the legal industry.
MPS: Oh, it's going to be great. You guys are going to get action and value packed material today. And before we jump into it, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button, depending on where you're listening or watching. But Pooya, thank you very much for taking the time to be here today. We're excited to have you.
Pooya Abka: Richard, MPS. I'm excited to be here.
MPS: We
We appreciate it.
Richard James: I'm so excited to hear to tell everybody here, some of your story today, Pooya. As you know, we talked a little bit off camera, this is a conversation to that attorney who's out there that's, wherever they are right now. We're trying to speak a little bit of hope into them that the entrepreneurial journey that they may or may not realize they are on is normal, it's part of the process. And hopefully we're going to give them a little bit of insight, a little bit of inspiration, and obviously some hope today for them to be able to get to the next level. So, I can't wait to be able to weave your story together and patch it over to what it looks like for them and working with a law firm.
MPS, where do you want to go from here?
MPS: I mean, [00:02:00]
Getting to Know Pooya: The Man Behind Intaker
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MPS: Pooya, for people that don't know anything about you yet, what's maybe something that not everybody knows about you?
Pooya Abka: That's a very good question. Something outside of work is that I run. I run every day for 3 miles. It's been a few years. Since I got married, it's a little bit, you know, I used to run like, every other week like, 10, 8, 10 miles every weekend. But now that is kind of out of the picture understandably. But yeah, I try my best to run and it's not really because I want to work out, that's just a side effect, but when I run, I stop thinking.
I think, it's important. Your heart rate goes up, it passes 120, 130, and then you start getting into you kind of get into a different stage. I don't know if it might be helpful for some people out there.
But, especially when things are very stressful, when things are not going the way you want them to go. That routine of morning run, it puts you in a [00:03:00] different mood. And it makes you stop thinking for a good 30 minutes. I mean, That's pretty much 3 miles. That's what I do every morning before getting into office.
Richard James: So, what is it a morning routine? Are you like, okay, I get up, I go to bed at the same time and I get up at the same time every day, or is it whenever it happens? How does your life work for you?
Are more structured
Pooya Abka: mean, I wish it could, I wish it could be like, whenever it happens. But, when we were kind of working remotely, Richard, before coming into office. I'm sure a lot of business owners resonate with this. I was like, I would go even run on the beach in the morning cause, I knew I could show up at work at 9.
Sometimes you don't have the chance to take a shower and that's just fine. You're not in room with anyone. But yeah, But now yes, it's more like a routine of doing it. Between 6 to 7 in the morning and then taking the shower and be ready to be at work.
Richard James: That's good. So you guys have moved in office now?
Pooya Abka: Yeah, Yeah, it's. uh,
Richard James: How many do you have now?
Pooya Abka: Next week we're going to be 34, [00:04:00] we're 33 now, next week we're going to be 34. But we're kind of, this year we're going to be hiring, by the end of the year we are planning on to be around 50 to 55.
Richard James: We could probably make an entire podcast around your decision to move back to in office as compared to remote, but I don't think that would be fair to MPS. Cause he probably has some other questions he wants to ask. So Michael, let me toss it back to you.
MPS: All good for natural conversation and going in the direction we decide.
Pooya's Entrepreneurial Journey: From Failures to Success
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MPS: But, just so the law firm owners get a little perspective, Pooya, why don't you give a kind of a high level of your journey as an entrepreneur? It could either be, from the start in the legal field, or just generally speaking, the high points along the journey?
Pooya Abka: Yeah, that's also a very good question. So, I am 33 now. I started my first company when I was 22. I failed, I believe, 4 legit businesses that we actually filed, right? And [00:05:00] then 6 or 7 projects that we thought they're going to be businesses and they never ended up. The failures are, that they definitely outranked the one success.
Richard James: That makes you normal.
Pooya Abka: So yeah, it was 6 to 7 7 projects that we failed before this. I worked in Internet of things. I worked in hardware, I worked in projects in AI in 2016. In 2014, we created a smartwatch, before 2015, the rollout of Apple Watch and then we had to wind that down.
And there were a whole bunch of other apps and projects. And it was around mid 2018, that I was giving up. I started to do some proper, I used to consulting before that, like, that how I would pay the bills. After some point, it was mid 2018, believe it or not, we knew that the startup, we were barely living and the startup we were doing, like, barely making paying the bills.
And everything was not working. And then mid 2018, [00:06:00] I came up with this idea, I called up my co founder at the time. And we're like, Hey, and then there was a whole thing about, just coming up with the idea, And I can't share that with you guys. But, I came up with the idea, I called up Irfan and he was like, this might be actually good. And at the same time I was in the process of interviewing Google to go there as a product manager. And I was like, this is not like, any person in their right mind would not think this thing would work at that point. Cause you always go back and say, Hey, the last one worked, that the one before maybe worked, it's like everything, the universe was telling me, this is the wrong move.
But Irfan said, Hey, we're naturally optimistic all of us, right? All of us founders were like, we think that we can, everything's going to work. But he is also optimist and he was like, I think there's something there. So yeah, but this time we were like, all right, let's do it right, let's not start building immediately. Let's build a prototype or something. Then before [00:07:00] prototype, let's just run some ads. And see, without even writing the first line of code. Let's see how people would react to this. If anyone even wants to join a waitlist and pay 10 bucks or nothing, just to learn about something and then we got 70 lawyers to join our waitlist in just a couple of weeks from some very simple Facebook ads that we just paid, I think 70 bucks on Fiverr.
To some lady to say something for us. And I came up with the script in a couple of hours. And that was like, kind of very exciting and we started selling the product. Once the prototype was out, the very first version, it was out. We started selling it. I did the very first demo. It was a family lawyer in Chicago, his name was Zach, I remember. By the end of it, I was not even ready. I didn't know pricing. We had no clue how much we're going to sell this thing. And Zach asked me, I was like, all right, I get it, man. How much is this? And I was like, I [00:08:00] just remembered, I had a conversation with my co founder and was like, let's do anywhere from $100 to $200 a month.
And I told him, $150 a month. And he was like, heck yeah, let's, do it, let's see if it works. And I was like, what? And it was very interesting. We sold 10 accounts over the first couple of weeks of rolling out. So I don't know, I can go on and on, MPS. You can stop me whenever with questions, but this was the beginning of Intaker.
Richard James: No I,
MPS: So many nuggets.
Richard James: If anybody's listening, it could be difficult for them to maybe relate instantly because they think oftentimes, well, I've got a license, I go open my store and maybe they even brought some clients with them from their last job, because they are allowed to do that one way or another. And not judging that one way or the other, but they don't always have to create an idea and start it from scratch. And so, their idea is they're going to practice law. But, there's failures along the way for them in many cases, mostly because they don't know a lot [00:09:00] about business, they know a lot about law. And so they make a lot of fundamental business mistakes. And you too were probably making some fundamental business mistakes along the way.
One of the key ones that you identified was, you know what, let's go see if there's a market for this thing, before we go put a bunch of energy, time and money and resources into designing and building it, Pooya. And that's what I loved. And interestingly enough, when you get the right idea that matches the right market. And you present it in a way that's non threatening and probably almost came across as if, you know, here's what it does. I don't know if you're going to want it, you know, in the back of your head, you're like, probably not. Nobody wanted all the other ones I built before. Right. You know, and So, it was very innocuous, probably not very salesy at all. And then the guy asked the price and you just picked it out of thin air or whatever thin air was when you and your partner talked about it. And it was a price point that made sense to them. And you're like, Oh my gosh. And then you got 10 and [00:10:00] before you know it, you got $1,500 MRR in your first day or 10 days or whatever it was when you find signed your first 10. And you and your partner look at each other going, Google be damned.
We're going to go with this thing, it works. Right.
Pooya Abka: Yeah, it is crazy when you think about it and then it was not, I want to also mention and again, business owners will resonate with this. When we sold those 10 accounts there is, we call it, The Black Friday. Not Black Friday in the sense of like, Black Friday with all the discounts. Black Friday in some sense of a very bad Friday we had. A few months in like, black meaning, awful Friday, right?
We had an awful Friday a couple months in. We lost, I think we had, 10, 15 maybe accounts at that point. We lost half of them in one day. It was crazy. We were like, all charged up like, in the sales, selling this very basic MVP that we thought [00:11:00] that's minimum viable product.
That's like in tech. like the very first version that we roll out. So we were like, super pumped up, excited about this new thing that we had going on. And then we lost almost half, I think it was almost half of our MRR over one day and that was really hard. But the interesting thing, this is like a highlight for me and I don't think about it in a bad way right now. when I, At that point it was awful, but now I think it was a turning point.
Because then I remember, we met with my co founder halfway in between where I live and where, he used to live. It was a WeWork, a co working space in Playa Vista for all those folks that live in L. A. And we sat there for hours, I don't remember exactly how many, but many hours.
And we went through everything, all the reasons behind the reasons and we figured them out and we shipped the next version within a couple weeks and [00:12:00] that changed a lot of things. It was not the last version that we rolled out, but it basically prevented this incident from happening ever again, that we lose half of our customer base in a single day.
Which was, it's been like that. We adapted that mentality of, Hey, let's hear the feedbacks. Let's have a process and let's have ops around bringing feedback in, analyzing the feedback, creating iterations of the product. Obviously it's not all customers and kind of partners.
They talk about things and they provide a lot of very good, great feedback, but it's also the creativity of our team that's comes up with, like, Hey, this is the problem that's coming in, but what's the most creative way to solve this problem? And we have that as a system, as a process in the business. That was the lesson, it doesn't happen when half of a customer base kind of churn. It happens on [00:13:00] a daily, weekly basis in a predictable system that is designed to create these iterations. And I think that's one of our advantages over, maybe companies do this, but they do it at a later stage. They keep it very organic without systems in place. But I think one of the things we did early on from that kind of history and the experience was that, we tried to embed a system and a engine for that within the company that we can go back to this and utilize this feedback on and on. So that was one of the stories.
MPS: Yeah, that feedback loop, I think is essential. I don't think every company takes the feedback and actually implements it. So, the fact that you guys actually had a feedback loop, implemented it. And then obviously saw the rewards from it, I think is awesome. I'm curious, Pooya.
The Importance of Speed to Lead in the Legal Industry
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MPS: So, one of the things I believe Intaker solves really well is, speed to lead. How important do you feel speed to lead is in the [00:14:00] legal field?
Pooya Abka: How important do you think breathing air is to life? That's how important this thing is. I haven't seen many successful law firms, frankly, that are nailing their business without having this, without nailing the time to lead part of things.
I wouldn't even call it important. It's a pillar, you just have to have it. Without having it, there's no way, there are part of law firms who would survive without it.
And like, those who are referral based, like they do over time, they work 10 years really hard. And then they have a base and then they get maybe, 20% new leads or new clients and 70% is like, recurring existing folks. Yeah, those people, will they'll be fine.
Growth will be not exciting, but they'll be fine. But if you are in a practice area that requires new clients every week, every month every year. And then if you stop advertising, marketing, stop [00:15:00] bringing in new leads, your business is going to die. Maybe a few months later, it's air to your life. It's that important in my opinion.
Richard James: I absolutely agree. This is 2009, I'm recording my first module. And I remember one of the things I taught in lead conversion was the three S's of lead conversion. And one of those S's was speed. This is 2009 and back then it was, the reports were about, if you connect within the first 5 minutes, if you connect within the first 15 minutes, if you connect within the first hour and so on and so forth, what the deterioration is in conversion. what's interesting, Pooya, is that you know it, and maybe you always knew it and we know it. And the people who listen to us know it. But there are so many law firms who don't have that as a [00:16:00] pillar, who don't understand the necessity of speed. There are so many law firm owners who their leads still go to their cell phone. And the cell phone goes to voicemail and the voicemail box is full.
They don't even have a way to get back to them, even though they missed the call. And what happens is, the lawyer will do his or her lawyer work all day long. Be in court, work with clients, whatever. And then at night, after dinner or shoving a piece of pizza down their throat. They will then pick up the phone and try to call those people back on the calls that they missed. Some 8 to 10 hours earlier. And that is what a very normal new law firm looks like. And some of them don't figure out that behavior in and of itself is cancerous to the business, ability to grow and they never fix it. And they go fixing all the other [00:17:00] things that seem exciting and shiny or new or what they're drawn to. And they ignore this issue of speed and as you said, If we rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not very important, 10 being like oxygen, It's like an 11, right? and
So I wish, like if we could stop here and everybody who is listening could just go back to their office and fix, focus highly on shrinking the amount of time it takes for their firm to connect with a brand new lead that comes in. They will immediately see an impact in their business. Would you agree with that statement? Pouya?
Pooya Abka: Yes, I do. Most people, they focus on marketing services, which is great. It's also another pillar. However, nailing the funnel, making sure that, I always say it, Hey, keep it simple. You don't need 10 ways for future clients to contact you. That's great. If you want 10 ways, [00:18:00] it's great, but you need to have a lot of different. You need to be way down the line in terms of your growth to be able to handle 10 ways. If you are just starting or if you are kind of just thinking about growth. I would keep things in my business.
That's how I do things. I keep things simple and manageable. If I have 2 ways or even frankly, just 1 way of folks contacting me. I want to make sure that 1 way works really well, right? If you think about it, troubleshooting, even testing the funnel, it's easy because there's only one funnel I'm dealing with. Let's say I only take calls. We don't buy leads from anywhere else. We only make sure that the only way of contacting our firm is calls, that I make sure that, Hey, on that 1 call channel, we nail it the best way we can, right? We miss 0 calls during the day. Even the number of rings matter, right?
It doesn't have [00:19:00] to ring. 4 times it rings, 2 times or 1 time and then once they take it then, the next step is optimized. Like, I know what being said. I know what's the communications, all of it, it's controlled. I check them on a weekly basis, I have checkpoints. And then, once I nail this funnel, Then I'm gonna introduce another way of contacting me. Let's say, if that way is website chats or whatever it is, right?
If it's website chats, then let's make sure they come in and there is an integration to my slack or to my teams. They pop up, someone calls them back or someone qualifies them. It happens within 5 to 10 seconds. And then once it's there, I'm going to make sure the integration is in place with my CRM.
That's my chat funnel. And the next thing would be, Oh, I want to also, I'm in, in a space that makes sense for us to add email as a channel. Then I think it true that, Hey, I have one group email or however it is. It's not just, I'm going to publish my own cell phone, [00:20:00] my own email, my own, whatever on my website and people are going to start contacting me, no. Every single funnel is well thought. I decide to roll those funnels out, roll those channels out. And when we roll it out. Every step of the way is optimized. That's how at least I do it in my business. And I'm We're different, we're in a tech company.
However, in terms of the way we generate leads or remake sales or we, there's consultations in the legal kind of world and our demos in our world, it's pretty much the same. It's just optimizing every step of the way, Richard.
Richard James: My business is not different from yours. That is the oath that our clients must take. And so Michael, he nailed that, didn't he?
MPS: Everyone pulls their pants up the same way every morning. Yeah, he nailed that. know, Law firm owners listening could cut this right here and you've got an action item that you could go implement right now. And that action item alone will move the needle in your [00:21:00] practice. And even if you are kind of, optimizing speed to lead right now, just even from what Pooya just said, there's probably opportunity to optimize that even further.
And so, I know for a fact that's a needle mover for you. Pooya, we talked about this a little bit pre show but what's got you excited and fired up right now?
Pooya Abka: we,
Exploring the Future: AI and Its Impact on the Legal Field
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Pooya Abka: Talked about it a little bit and kind of, I think for us founders, the reason, there needs to be something that kind of excites us. And that's something for me right now is AI, I was just talking about it with you guys offline. I think it's God's work for us that we are at this point and in the company and all these things are happening across a number of different industries. I think it's just, we're being lucky with the fact that we're in this industry that is hungry for innovation, for change that is the foundations of the industry is, there are so many properties that this industry has that makes it a great [00:22:00] fit for AI innovation.
I wake up in the morning, feeling super excited about how things are going to change. I wouldn't say, it's next month or by the end of this year. It takes a little longer, but I think it's Bill Gates that says, that people overestimate what happens over a year and underestimate what happens over a decade.
It is one of those things, I think over the next 5 to 10 years. The practice of law is going to be entirely different. Marketing legal services is going to be even more different than the practice. And then, I'm just personally very excited to be playing this role here, that we're kind of shipping products that are powered by AI. And we are, the stuff that we come up with through this paradigm shift change lives. It's just very exciting for me personally to be around. At this time, we were not planning this. It just [00:23:00] happened and I think that's simply God's work.
Richard James: I love that you say that, Michael and I both wear God on our sleeve and we believe that he's in control of many things in our life, if not all things in our life, maybe it gives us the illusion that we're in control of some of it, so for our own joy, our own joy, But the fact that you can see this as an opportune, you know, one of the luckiest times on earth to be in business. Especially with your positioning, with your background of understanding language models, with your customer base that is rabid for great forward moving innovation and change that is going to position them in the right way. So, you're combining those 2 things together and I'm, excited about what Intaker is going to do to bring that to the forefront. And I think we need to have a whole nother episode, Pooya, just to talk about all things AI, that either you've done or you see coming forward. So we could share that with them. I, We invite you [00:24:00] back, Michael, you you okay with that? Invite Pooya back?
MPS: Absolutely. That would be a fun episode.
Richard James: Just to talk about AI.
Closing Thoughts and Invitations for Further Discussion
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Richard James: But just so we don't miss this, Pooya, if people wanna learn more about Intaker or where would you like them to go?
Pooya Abka: Intaker.com, that would be where they can go to learn about uh, Intaker products. We do have a great team that is more than happy to answer questions, to talk about Intaker, to talk about innovations and yeah, Intaker.com would be the best place.
Richard James: Great.
MPS: Perfect.
Richard James: We're users of Intaker for sure. We believe in what you do and we're excited to watch. and we started when your growth was, you know, not certainly not MVP but not too many versions, probably after MVP. And it's been fun to watch your journey so far and what you're doing for firm.
So, thank you for coming on today and sharing your insight. This time goes by so quickly. We only have 30 minutes together to do this episodes. As I said, there are two big topics I would love to unpack with you [00:25:00] in more episodes. One is this whole idea of why did you decide to put everybody in an office again?
I can't wait to hear that, especially in California. Are you kidding me? And then this whole idea of what is in front of us for AI, but for today, for the listeners. They just got this taste of this idea, that you know, a couple of the big lessons. One, don't give up, keep trying, you're only inches from gold. No matter how frustrated it might feel for you. If you're the one listening to this at two o'clock in the morning, and you're wondering why you decided to open up your own firm, I promise you, you're only inches from finding that gold pile at the end of the rainbow. And yes, it's work. And yes, it's hard.
But it's there and two, if there's one thing you want to take out of this and fix, if you just go back and re optimize or optimize for more speed between the time in which a lead comes in. And somebody from your world is communicating with that lead and make sure you nail it all the way [00:26:00] through each particular channel, you're allowing them to contact you through. That will make all the difference in the world and your practice and Pooya, those are huge writer downers. And if somebody takes them and does them, it's going to affect their practice and it's going to affect their life. So, thank you for sharing that with them today.
Pooya Abka: Thank you, Richard. Thank you, MPS. I was honored to be here.
Richard James: Cool.
MPS: Absolutely, it was our pleasure. And to the law firm owners listening, thank you. Thank you for investing the time. We love doing this stuff. We love bringing on guests to provide a bunch of value like, Pooya. If you enjoyed it, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button depending on where you're listening or watching. And then show Pooya some love down in the comments.
Let us know if you have any questions, but thank you again for investing some time with us today. And Pooya, thank you again for investing your time with us.
Richard James: All right. That's the pod.