Entrepreneurship, Lead Response Speed, and AI Innovations in the Legal Industry | YPM Podcast

Pooya Abka: [: 00:00:00

It's that important

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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.

h, this guy's the real deal. [: 00:01:00

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.

orning run, it puts you in a [: 00:03:00

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?

, [: 00:04:00

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?

e actually filed, right? And [: 00:05:00

Richard James: That makes you normal.

I worked in projects in AI in: 2016

ojects. And it was around mid: 2018

was not working. And then mid: 2018

pe or something. Then before [: 00:07:00

h is this? And I was like, I [: 00:08:00

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.

ecause they don't know a lot [: 00:09:00

and [: 00:10:00

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?

ry basic MVP that we thought [: 00:11:00

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.

on within a couple weeks and [: 00:12:00

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.

kind of churn. It happens on [: 00:13:00

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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feel speed to lead is in the [: 00:14:00

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.

advertising, marketing, stop [: 00:15:00

: I absolutely agree. This is: 2009

they go fixing all the other [: 00:17:00

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?

ways, [: 00:18:00

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

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.

o publish my own cell phone, [: 00:20:00

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?

will move the needle in your [: 00:21:00

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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ry has that makes it a great [: 00:22:00

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.

e not planning this. It just [: 00:23:00

with them. I, We invite you [: 00:24:00

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.

ould love to unpack with you [: 00:25:00

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.

sure you nail it all the way [: 00:26:00

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.