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The Personal
Injury Mastermind

The Podcast

195. Alexander Limontes – Relentless Determination: A Financial Playbook for Forward Momentums

Grit and determination will get you farther than you think. When a firm first starts out or changes ownership, it’s not uncommon for the cash flow to become unpredictable. Some cases can take two to three years to settle. The rent is due every month. It is easy for expenses to outpace revenue. So, how do you transform a firm with inconsistent income into a trusted powerhouse? 

Managing partner at Hurst Limontes Indiana Injury Lawyers (@hurstlimontesllc), Alexander Limontes, shares the financial steps he took to get his newly acquired firm to succeed. Today Alex explains:

  • Why choosing clients over cash will make you rich.
  • How peer reviews attract more referrals. 
  • The importance of taking the very next step. 

Links

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What’s in This Episode:

  • Who is Alexander Limontes?
  • The advantages of solving for the individual client. 
  • Why hiring carefully and caring for your team, even in lean times, will set you ahead.
  • The importance of building a strong marketing foundation of great content early on.

Past Guests

Past guests on Personal Injury Mastermind: Brent Sibley, Sam Glover, Larry Nussbaum, Michael Mogill, Brian Chase, Jay Kelley, Alvaro Arauz, Eric Chaffin, Brian Panish, John Gomez, Sol Weiss, Matthew Dolman, Gabriel Levin, Seth Godin, David Craig, Pete Strom, John Ruhlin, Andrew Finkelstein, Harry Morton, Shay Rowbottom, Maria Monroy, Dave Thomas, Marc Anidjar, Bob Simon, Seth Price, John Gomez, Megan Hargroder, Brandon Yosha, Mike Mandell, Brett Sachs, Paul Faust, Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

Transcript

Alex Limontes:

And he said that and I was like, shit, that’s like a moment. What a revelation. And he was absolutely right. Absolutely right.

Chris Dreyer:

Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the preeminent personal injury marketing agency. Each week you get insights and wisdom from some of the best in the industry. Before we get started, hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. Ready to dominate your market? Let’s go.

To build a firm on referrals and reputation, put the client at the center of every decision. Alex Limontes is laser focused on service over profit.

Alex Limontes:

I don’t care if your case is worth a thousand dollars or a million dollars, you will get the same service here from day one.

Chris Dreyer:

For Alex, this means that lawyers are the first to talk to potential clients. His clients have become raving fans who refer their loved ones to Alex’s firm, Hurst Limontes. But this success didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t easy. In 2011, Alex started working with Bill Hurst, and by 2019, Alex was ready to take over the reins.

Alex Limontes:

That was tough. 2019 was the hardest year financially of my life.

Chris Dreyer:

Alex dug deep and put one foot in front of the other and kept moving forward. Today he offers a candid conversation revealing the financial steps he took to get his newly acquired firm to succeed, how to build a base of raising fans through excellent client service, and why every firm should tap into peer trust marketing. Here’s Alex Limontes, managing partner at Hurst Limontes.

Alex Limontes:

I went to a small school in southern Indiana, a small private school, and I played football there. I started playing football when I was seven. And freshman year I blew out my knee, and then junior year at Hanover, I realized I just wasn’t the same and I couldn’t play the way I used to play.

And so I decided to go to Washington DC. There was a program where they sent people, it’s called the Washington Centre. And so they would send us there, we’d take a class and then we’d do an internship, and I did an internship with the Office of the Corporation Council for the district for Washington DC. And I got to work hand in hand with a guy named, I’ll never forget him, his name’s Bob, Great, great lawyer, great trial lawyer. I saw my first trial, and it was an excessive force case and we were defending the district. Ended up winning that case.

And I just remember watching everything go down in the courtroom, back in the gallery, and I was like, this is so cool. He had the plaintiff doing roundhouse kicks in front of the jury. It was so much going on, and I loved it. And it’s funny because when I first started that internship, there was some other lawyers that had been there for a while and they were like, well, asking me questions like, “Well, you know what discovery is right?” And I was like, “No, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

So I literally had no experience in the legal field. I’m first generation lawyer in my family. I’m first generation Cuban American. My family, they’re Cuban immigrants. I saw that trial, and I was like, this is just so cool. And really kind of ignited that flame. And when I was in school, I’d always wanted to be a social worker. I love helping people. That’s why I do what I do. That’s my main driving force.

And so I actually took a year off, based on advice from lawyers, between undergrad and grad school and law school. And I was a social worker for a year, and that was pretty wild. I was 22 years old, teaching parenting classes. And these people are looking at me like, what the hell do you know? You don’t know anything, you don’t have any kids. And you know, you’ve got kids, you have a child now. And I mean, I’ve got four of them. And it’s a game changer.

Chris Dreyer:

It’s a game changer.

Alex Limontes:

That motivated me really to start exploring law schools. And it gave me, I had that year cushion where I could take the LSAT and I really got ready to go. And then I was accepted to my number one choice law school, which was downtown Indianapolis, IU. IU McKinney School of Law is what it is now, but it was IU Indianapolis back then.

Chris Dreyer:

Wow, wow. I’ve got to imagine, a lot of times when I talk to attorneys, many of them have a background in sports, and it’s a competition. Did you feel some of that when you saw that first trial?

Alex Limontes:

Oh, yeah. Oh, without a doubt, man. Without a doubt. I mean, that’s what got me excited about it. And you’re right, a lot of, especially trial lawyers, they have some sort of sports competitive background because it is competitive and it’s adversarial. The process is, and you have to want to win. I think sports played a big role. And our football team, I don’t know if any of my high school buddies will be listening to this, and they know we were not very good. And mostly because in high school, at least, mostly because we had 22 guys on the team. Eight of us played both ways.

Chris Dreyer:

Wow. That sounds like my high school.

Alex Limontes:

Yeah, it was nuts, man. And so by the third quarter we were gassed, we were done. So that last year, my senior year in high school, more than anything, playing sports taught me how to lose because we got our asses handed to us a lot, and how to do it graciously and how to learn from it.

Chris Dreyer:

And you took that discipline and it allowed you to pursue and train and get the college opportunity. You had that bad injury. So you got through law school, and take me through, give me the fast track to where now to Hurst Limontes, give me those before that and your journey of joining forces with Bill.

Alex Limontes:

Sure. It was funny, when I was in law school, I told myself, Alex, you’re never going to be a trial lawyer and you’re never going to do criminal defense. And my first job was at the public defender agency as a public defender. I took all these international commercial arbitration classes. I did a summer in Europe. I was going to be this hot shot international business lawyer. And I realized quickly that that market was really tough to get into. And I knew I wanted to stay here in Indy.

And frankly, I just got a job offer and I had to have a job. And I was, man, I was $175,000 in student loan debt because I had to pay out of state tuition. And I was a walking mortgage, as a public defender making 40 something thousand dollars a year. So when I started there, I tried my first case two weeks after I became a lawyer and it was like a duck to water. I was naturally drawn to it. I loved doing it. I loved being in the courtroom, I loved talking to judges and lawyers and arguing my points and witnesses and jurors. It was just something that just came naturally to me.

And so I tried my first case and then I tried a bunch after that, as you can imagine, as a public defender. And so when I moved up in the public defender agency, you start at the misdemeanors level and as a misdemeanor public defender in Indianapolis, this was years ago, we would see like 70 people a day. I mean, it was a factory.

Chris Dreyer:

Wow.

Alex Limontes:

And so you start misdemeanor, I moved up to domestic violence in felony court. And then I got to work with a great, fantastic lawyer named Jane Rumley, who’s a fantastic defense attorney. She was in the major felony division, and I was working with her on a child molest case. And we took a statement from our client, and that day I went into the chief public defender’s office and I gave my resignation because I knew that I couldn’t do the best job as this person’s lawyer because I just was not capable of representing him.

And I didn’t have any kids at the time, nieces and nephews for sure. But I knew that I wasn’t going to be the best version of myself as a litigator and a trial lawyer if I was put in this position to represent these people. And frankly, I couldn’t pick my clients. I was a public defender. So I handed my resignation and they immediately offered me a contract to do CHINS work. CHINS work here in Indiana is basically a child in need of services. So if a child is removed by DCS and then we try to reunify the family … It’s crazy because it’s the same thing I did as a social worker. So I was doing that. I was basically a glorified social worker with a law degree.

And so I did that for about a year. I started my own practice. I was 28. I did criminal work, family law, just kind of piecemealed what I could, and my ability to speak Spanish helped. And I was that, oh, that’s always helped. And so I did that and I was at a mediation for a termination of parental rights case. And it was such a sad, sad case, man, because it was like my dad, or not my dad, my client was the dad and he was a Hispanic fellow and he essentially had a one night stand with a drug addict at a bar. He didn’t even know that it was his baby. He didn’t even know that she had a baby. The baby was born with meth in their system, and it was really sad.

And so there was a foster family, they wanted to adopt her, and we had to go through the termination process and the dad was crying and everything, and I’m crying with him and it’s just a big mess. And then Bill Hurst calls me out of the blue that day. I step out of the mediation to answer the call. And Bill, you know Bill, he’s very direct, so he basically just said to me, he’s like, “Hey, do you want to come and interview with me because I’m looking for someone to work with me?” And it was just the right moment. I was like, “Yes, absolutely. I just don’t think that I can do this and do these other types of cases.” So I went in there, talked to him. And another thing I did forget to mention was I was a law clerk with Bill.

Chris Dreyer:

Got it.

Alex Limontes:

So when I was in law school, I clerked there. Bill helped me get my public defender job. He told me, he was like, “You’ve got to go try cases, learn how to try cases, and then if you want to come back here later on, maybe we can revisit.” And I did. I did that. I was gone for four years before he called me back.

And then I came back. That was in 2011. I came back, started working with him, and really just took off. We did a lot in the Spanish market. I started with small cases, four or $5,000 trip and fall cases, because that’s kind of how you dip your toe in the water. And worked my way up, got my first seven figure case three years after that. Drunk driver almost killed a guy, my client. And then in 2015, 16, and 17, we had three cases that we resolved for $24 million total. So those three years were big.

And then in 2018, I told Bill, I said, hey, I mean he was getting older and I can’t imagine that he wanted to do it forever, which I was wrong about that. But I told Bill, I was like, “Hey, I want to take over this firm.” And I bought it from him in 2019. That was tough. 2019 was the hardest year financially of my life.

Chris Dreyer:

Well, you were thrown to the gauntlet. Let’s talk about that because not a lot of people talk about that. And you worked your way up the ladder and you essentially had a job, but now, hey, now you’re the owner. And talk about the financing. Talk about some of those initial pains that maybe you weren’t accustomed to and some of those pains that you had at that point.

Alex Limontes:

Yeah, I mean, I would say that my first concern, and you see, I think that’s where I made a mistake, was because I was so focused on the leads. I was like, we’ve got to get cases in, we’ve got to get cases in, but we were sitting on them. We had a pile of them. And so that was really my primary focus. I was fortunate because I inherited a bookkeeper who was very, very good at her job and very strict and very by the book and very trustworthy. She since then, she was older, so she retired and I’ve got someone else that’s amazing as well.

But the finances, particularly in this industry, were a struggle. And I think they continue to be a struggle for me because it’s such a rollercoaster. You don’t know when that next big case is coming in. And these cases, some of them could take a year to resolve. Some of them could take three, four years. And so when I purchased the firm, I had the cases, but they take a while to materialize and I didn’t have that base to start with. And so that was my own capital, my own money that I had put into it.

And that first year, if you look at my taxes, there’s nothing there. The bookkeeper called me and they were asking me about turning in my taxes and stuff and they were like, “Is this right?” And I was like, “Yeah, it is.” So I had to buy the law firm that year. So it was a tough year. It was scary. You know what they say, that businesses usually die out in the first six months. And I felt it at that six month mark. And fortunately my wife is great, she’s very supportive, and she had a lot of faith in me. I’ve got kids. Finding Dory, just keep swimming. She says that. Yeah, that’s me. I’m like, just keep going. Just keep going and move forward. So that was just the mindset that I had.

And I had, there was a lot of growing pains. There was a lot of learning. I inherited CRM software from the nineties and accounting software from the nineties. It looked like an old DOS shell program. Since then, we’ve made a lot of changes. We had an old hard line server.

Chris Dreyer:

In the building.

Alex Limontes:

Yes, in our office, that was loud as hell with the fans going and everything, all of that stuff. And I mean, that’s just the way that it was.

Chris Dreyer:

And to jump in there, Bill was actually on the forefront of digital. He actually embraced it.

Alex Limontes:

He was.

Chris Dreyer:

Ranked really well in Indie. The server, I mean, that’s what you used to have to do. And I think we mentioned it was Needles, the CRM, that was one of the main CRMs for the PI space. I think they’ve modified and made some adjustments now, but back then, that’s what everyone used. I think, I was talking to Weitz & Luxenberg, I think they were using Needles back in the day.

Alex Limontes:

Bill’s great, but he had his systems, he’s been practicing law for 50 years and he had his way of doing things. And my thought was, there’s so much technology out there, there’s so many opportunities out there. And you were right, we one of the first digital marketers here in Indianapolis. I’m talking about back in the circle of legal trust days. I don’t know if you remember those guys.

Chris Dreyer:

What’s funny is I think right when you, I was a member, geez, that was like 2016, I was a member and I briefly joined those guys. Yeah.

Alex Limontes:

Yeah. And those guys, that’s how we got to work with you. I loved listening to them on your show. I text Matt Doleman every once in a while just to talk to him and get advice because the man is a genius. We went out to Vegas and we did a seminar there. We talked a lot about digital marketing and stuff.

And I had the same mindset that you do, that content is king. I think that that still is something that resonates today, even though some of the long form content can be shortened. But we were very big on content. We still have a ton of content on the site and that’s why we were able to do well. And the content was written by lawyers, which is really, I think very-

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, that shines bright for the expertise, the experience, the authoritativeness and trustworthiness, that key component that was looking at that actually, that’s where ChatGPT kind of fails sometimes. Some of the legalese is incorrect, and I know that it’s improving on the fourth version based upon the prompts that you enter. But yeah, you’re ahead of the game there for sure.

Alex Limontes:

We were marketing from a digital perspective well before a lot of these other players came in, and I hear you talk about it on your show, it’s saturated. And especially this market, it’s so easy to get a website, put it up and do a ton of social media and do it affordably if you have the time, especially as a young lawyer or startup, and really drum up business that way and drive business.

Chris Dreyer:

When a firm changes ownership, it’s not uncommon for cashflow to change or to become unpredictable. Alex explains how we work to solve the problem of inconsistent cashflow.

Alex Limontes:

So I like to have a diversified approach. So the war chest is there, but it’s not all in one big pile. You know what I mean? So I’ve got a line of credit that I don’t draw from, but that first year, you better believe that I was drawing from it all the time. And I remember after, I think that was 2019, in 2020 I settled a case and made about, I think it was a three or $400,000 fee in January of 2020. And I was like, thank God I’m paying off the line of credit.

So I haven’t touched that since then, but you’ve got to have something like that. So I’ve got that. We do, the great thing about a lot of these systems and third party companies and people that you can use, you can pay them via credit card. And so we do a lot. It was crazy. I used to sit down and sign like 30 checks every day. That was like my job. It’s like, time to sign checks. So I’d sit down and sign all these checks, and that’s gone down because now we’re paying a lot of these vendors via credit card. And then that obviously is something that we try to get points and benefits and stuff from that. And it’s automated and it makes it faster.

And then I like to have in the operating account several months worth of expenses. And then I’ve also got an account where I save money for cases that require a lot of litigation expenses.

Chris Dreyer:

Smart.

Alex Limontes:

Because some of these cases, you never know. I mean, I’ve got a case right now where we may end up filing against a major auto manufacturer. A baby was killed. And got another case against a major pharmaceutical company here in town. And I mean, those companies, they’ve got more money than anyone. And they know that if you don’t have the resources to back it up and to really get into that long fight with them, that you’re going to fold early and you’re going to settle your case for nothing and try to convince the client.

So like I said, I’ve got a diversified approach, and I try to make sure that we are in a position to be able to fight and support our clients and to support my staff. Going back to 2019, I mean, the one thing I know that I did, I made payroll and I gave bonuses.

Chris Dreyer:

Fantastic.

Alex Limontes:

For sure. I was like, I’ve got to keep all these people here, and they rely on me. That’s the one shift that was for me at first difficult, understanding that now I’ve got my family at home that rely on me, but now I’ve got this work family that looks to me and relies on me to make sure that they are getting the tools that they need and the resources they need to support their families.

Chris Dreyer:

And as entrepreneurs and owners, you spend a tremendous amount of time with these individuals and when your back’s against the wall, the loyalty increases when you’re taking care of them. I was checking out the website and I noticed you had peer testimonials, and that’s a bit different. Being a litigating firm that you are, I haven’t seen that. And I think it’s super smart. It’s like, hey, not only is the consumer saying how good this firm is, here are other attorneys saying this firm is good. Have you had your consumers talk about that? Have they mentioned these peer testimonials?

Alex Limontes:

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny you said that. I’m actually ramping up those efforts. I’m getting videos now from lawyers that have referred me cases, and that’ll be the next step. The website is actually undergoing, we’re changing our domain name to hurstlimontes.com. It was billhurst.com for a while. And that’s going to happen in the next couple of weeks. And then we’re going to be doing a lot of upgrading on the video end. And I think that, you know, you work with a lot of lawyers. You know lawyers. I’m a lawyer, I know lawyers. And really, the best lawyer is the one that is recommended to you by another lawyer.

And people, just lay people, have that same general understanding. And I’ve had people say to me, so and so told me to call you. I’ve inherited cases from those big advertising firms. I mean, God bless them, that’s how they do their work and they dump a bunch of money into advertising. But I mean, we just had one the other day, the client fired the firm because the firm wanted them to settle for like $15,000 and we got them 60 grand. Because we fight, you know what I mean? And sometimes we don’t settle these cases until four weeks before trial because I know that that’s how I’m going to get the maximum value for the client.

Chris Dreyer:

One thing that’s resonated so clear to me recently is I heard this on the productized pre-lit firm that doesn’t try any cases versus the trial firm is the productized is solving for the average, not that individual, very customer, very widget. They’re going to look, this is what that case is worth. They’re comparing it to the average, versus you, the trial, you’re getting maximum compensation for the individual, the client.

And I think that distinction, I think it’s lost. I don’t think it’s … A lot of times you hear the pre-lit firm talking about client service and things, but it’s kind of a little misleading. And look, there are some great pre-lit firms, absolutely. But I just wanted to make that distinction that the productized is typically solving for the average, where you’re solving for the individual.

Alex Limontes:

Clients matter. That’s really what matters, the people that we help, because the fact is I’ll get a call from a Chicago lawyer who’s trying to settle a small run-of-the-mill case and that he’s got an offer for about 15 grand, but he knows that it’s probably worth closer to 25 or $30,000. And so calls me and we file it and then we go get that for the client.

And that’s a small case, but that’s okay because I don’t hate on the size of the case. Any case, if it’s a big deal to the client, then it’s a big deal to us regardless of the amount of money, because I understand that helping that person, even with their case that’s worth three or $4,000, I understand that that person will become my best advertiser, my best marketer, and they’ll sing my praises because they probably had to go to three or four other pre-lit big business firms before they found us, someone that was willing to go to bat for them and fight for them regardless of the size of the case.

I mean, I tell everyone, all my new clients, I don’t care if your case is worth a thousand dollars or a million dollars, you will get the same service here from day one. The moment they call and we get the phone call, we do a quick intake and they are immediately sent to a lawyer. Every new call talks to a lawyer, unless it’s someone that’s like, “I need a divorce,” or something, then we refer them out to our partners.

And usually that first lawyer that talks to them, that’s not like an intake lawyer. Those are trial lawyers and they are there from the beginning to the end. It’s an old school approach, but I love it, and I like it because it’s a personal touch to the client. It’s the same person. It’s not … I think you had Joey Coleman on.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, yeah. Never lose a customer.

Alex Limontes:

And he was yeah, I love that analogy about you’re courting someone and then you’re like, “Hey, here’s Bob.”

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, I love that too.

Alex Limontes:

So yeah, it’s awesome. And it’s so true. I love analogies. I’m a lawyer. But anyways, yeah, I don’t want people to feel like that. And for them, the reality is, man, it’s apples to oranges. I’m getting them money for an injury or a death. It’s a poor substitute, but it’s the only substitute we have.

And so most of my clients, it’s not the amount of money, it’s not about the amount. It’s about being done with this and feeling validated and feeling listened to and supported. And for them, that experience, that’s why they keep coming back to us or tell their friend, because they know that our firm is going to be there for them from day one. I mean, even if we’ve got to go fight bills and Medicaid liens and all this, everything, we do it all. Every one of our clients gets the same guarantee, if we settle your case, because when you go to trial, all bets are off because you don’t know what a jury’s going to do. If we settle your case, the attorney fee will never exceed what you get in your pocket, period, the end. It’s been that way from day one and I’m never going to let that go.

And we don’t have sliding scale attorney fees either. We charge a third. If we go to trial, we charge a third. If we appeal the case, we charge a third. We don’t charge 35, 40% because the risk does go up. And the reason that was something that we did that we’ve been doing for years, and I want to keep it going because frankly, a third is more than enough. It is. I understand that there’s a lot of effort and work that goes into this. I’ve spent countless weekends getting ready, nights getting ready for a trial. I had a Supreme Court argument years back, and I mean, I killed myself doing that.

And so it is, it’s a lot of work, but at the end of the day, if you do it for the client, you’re doing it for the right reason. That’s one of the first things Bill told me when I first started working there with him in 2011. He said, because I was so worried about making money because I had just had my own practice and I was kind of piecemealing family law, criminal law. And so he told me, he was like, “Alex, don’t worry about making money. Help these people, and the money will come.” And he said that and I was like, shit, that’s like a moment. What a revelation. And it’s true. He was absolutely right. Absolutely right.

Chris Dreyer:

That’s the go-giver type, give without expecting anything in return. But those who give often receive the lion’s share of the return. And then asking for those reviews and those referrals and those testimonials, that’s a piece of cake. It’s not this thorn in your side, like ah, I’ve got to ask these people. No, they’re happy. It’s an easy conversation.

Alex Limontes:

The reviews, they’re so big. We’ve got a pretty good review profile. We’ve got over a hundred reviews. We had someone change one. There was an old client, they gave us a five star review. Then they went to go talk to their new doctor who gave them another opinion, and then they changed their review three years after-

Chris Dreyer:

Wow.

Alex Limontes:

… we settled, three years. And then we had a 5.0 rating, took us down to 4.9. I even did, like I called her, talked to her, I even thought about doing the old John Morgan, showing up with a fruit basket at her house. You talk about it on your show, not everyone’s going to be happy. Sometimes people call and they’re like, “Can you do this?” And we can’t really take this case. And they may have never even been a client, but they give you that one star review.

And the one thing, I don’t know if people are still doing this, but we used to get the people that would canvas businesses to try to increase their Google rating or something. So they would dump like 20, 30 reviews on businesses in an area within a day.

Chris Dreyer:

They’re still doing that.

Alex Limontes:

They are?

Chris Dreyer:

It’s a plague of, you’ll get a competitor or something, and they’ll go drop one star reviews on everybody else to lift them. And for those listening, file a report to Google support. We just had one literally yesterday that was taken down. It was like, they’re not a client, they’re not in this location. They go look at all, what they do is they investigate all the other reviews they’re leaving and they could tell it’s spam and they’ll remove it.

The challenge is if you get somebody from the location, they don’t do a bunch of reviews, and they don’t say anything. Those are the hardest ones to get removed. If they just do a one star and they don’t say anything, sometimes those are a nightmare to get removed.

Alex Limontes:

Yeah. And that’s that one client that came back three years after the fact. She removed what she said and put one star and it doesn’t say anything. And we have Google, I mean, that’s trying to pick up the phone and call God, right?

Chris Dreyer:

It is, it is like that.

Alex Limontes:

I mean, those reviews, and that’s really one of our bigger driving forces as far as marketing and advertising. People want to hear what other people have to say. That’s the first thing I do. I mean, you talk about it on your show. When I’m on Amazon, I’m an Amazon-aholic. I love Amazon. And my brother would kill me, because he works in retail. He’s a mall manager.

Chris Dreyer:

I’ll tell you-

Alex Limontes:

And I look at the reviews, right?

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah. And you probably sort, let me read the one stars. Let’s see what the one stars … Because what I’ll do is I’ll read the one stars. I’m like, that’s an okay point for why he left a one star, but it’s not applicable to me. Versus, this guy treated me like crap or this product exploded.

Alex, this has been fantastic. You’re going to have to come on the show again. Where can those who want to connect with you, what’s the best way to reach you?

Alex Limontes:

Sure. Well, you can go to the website. We are now, I mentioned we’re going to change the domain name to hurstlimontes.com. You can give us a call, 317-636-0808. I love talking shop. I love talking business and marketing. But more importantly, I love talking about the law. I love looking at a situation and trying to figure out what happened. And frankly, I’m really good at it. I’m really good at car crashes, especially those.

And so people will call me, people that have been doing this for years will call me and ask me a question. So call the office, find us online. We’ve got a pretty heavy social media presence. We are the daily posters, so maybe it drives some people nuts, but we like to make sure we get our message out there. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well, LinkedIn, any one of those places. I reached out to you on LinkedIn so you can find us there.

Chris Dreyer:

Thanks so much to Alex for sharing his wisdom today. Let’s hit the takeaways. Time for the pinpoints. Keep moving forward and spread that money around. Grit and determination will take you farther than you think. Alex never gave up, even when it was tough. He used debt when he needed, but paid it back quickly. He now uses a mix of cash and credit cards to put his money to work for him.

Alex Limontes:

I used to sit down and sign like 30 checks every day. That was like my job. It’s like, time to sign checks. So I’d sit down and sign all these checks, and that’s gone down because now we’re paying a lot of these vendors via credit card. And then that obviously is something that we try to get points and benefits and stuff from that. And it’s automated and it makes it faster. And then I like to have in the operating account several months worth of expenses. And then I’ve also got an account where I save money for cases that require a lot of litigation expenses.

Chris Dreyer:

Smart. Become a champion for your clients. Put their needs ahead of profits. When you make service your mission, success will follow. Be the firm that goes to bat for clients even when others won’t. Alex doesn’t let the size of the case determine the level of service a client receives. When you wow each client, you build a network of raving fans.

Alex Limontes:

I understand that helping that person, even with their case that’s worth three or $4,000, I understand that that person will become my best advertiser, my best marketer, and they’ll sing my praises because they probably had to go to three or four other pre-lit big business firms before they found us, someone that was willing to go to bat for them and fight for them.

Chris Dreyer:

Leverage peer trust. Client reviews are powerful, but recommendations from fellow attorneys can be game changing. This is because trust is transitive. If a client sees another lawyer placing their trust in you, then you reap the rewards. Let potential clients hear from respected legal peers why your firm should be trusted.

Alex Limontes:

I’m getting videos now from lawyers that have referred me cases. Really the best lawyer is the one that is recommended to you by another lawyer.

Chris Dreyer:

For more information about Alex, check out the show notes. While you’re there, please hit that follow button so you never miss an episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I’m out.