Karen Renee, CEO of eCourtReporters, says that she and her business partner Judy Gerulat run their business the same way they ride their Harleys — full-speed ahead, with no reverse.
Renee joined The Savvy Entrepreneur to share some of the bumps in the road, as well as some of the many successes as eCourt Reporters got started and has grown rapidly. eCourt Reporters was founded to help lawyers more easily find available and qualified court reporters. Finding those reporters is not always easy, something that Renee, who formerly ran her own court reporter agency, knew from personal experience. She wanted eCourt Reporters to be essentially an “Uber” for court reporters.
She also felt that court reporters deserved a bigger piece of the pie, because agencies take up to 50% of the fees paid by lawyers.
eCourt Reporters now sources qualified court reporters in all 50 states, and is growing quickly. The lawyer/court reporter matching platform is appealing because it is free for both court reporters (and legal videographers) and lawyers to use — eCourt Reporters only gets paid when a court reporting job is successfully completed & the court reporter is paid.
A complex matching platform like theirs, one with hundreds of users and growing, and with many different parameters that can be searched, wasn’t easily built and took resources of all kinds.
Renee found as well that pitching was a challenge, although (like everything in her business), she ultimately found success.
She talks about the helpful resources she found along the way, and offers some very candid tips for entrepreneurs — especially for women entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs needing to build a tech platform, and for those pitching for funding.
The following is a transcript of the show, but you can go here if you’d prefer to listen to the show & interview. Either way, you’ll be drawn in by Karen Renee’s candor and no-nonsense style, along with her sparkling sense of humor!
Doris Nagel 0:42
Good morning all you entrepreneurs and small businesspeople!
You’re listening to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show. I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour.
The show has two goals. The first is to share information and resources. I’m an entrepreneur myself, and have had several crash and burn ventures. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And if I can help one of you out there, not make some of the mistakes I’ve made or that I’ve seen clients and friends make, then I’ve been successful.
The second goal is to inspire. I’ve found being entrepreneur, confusing, and often lonely. You sometimes have no idea if you’re on the right track or not, or where to turn for good advice.
So I have guests on the show every week who share their stories and advice to help with both of those goals.
This week’s guest is Karen Renee. She is the CEO and co-owner of eCourt Reporters, based in Burlington, Wisconsin. She joins me this week to share her journey as an entrepreneur.
Karen, thanks so much for being with me today. Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show.
Karen Renee
Thank you, Doris, for having me. I’m very pleased to be here today.
Doris Nagel
I am delighted you are here.
Tell our listeners a little bit about you. What’s your background? What should people know about you? What makes you tick?
Karen Renee 2:05
I’m Karen Renee and I am the CEO of eCourt Reporters, and I am a working court reporter. So part of my history is that I’ve been with the court reporting industry since 2004. And that’s actually what sparked my need and want to create eCourt Reporters.
I agree with you when you say there’s many bumps when creating a new business. And we’ve certainly been through a few.
But part of what I’ve learned is that I’m a court reporter. I’m fascinated by the law, and have been since way back when.
And I’m excited to keep moving further into what we can do to help law firms locate court reporters, because that is a really difficult thing in the industry today. Right now we struggle finding certified court reporters across the United States. I myself owned a court reporting agency, and I found that very difficult. So we set on our own little mission of finding and locating court reporters throughout the United States.
A little bit about myself personally. I am a Harley Davidson rider, as is my co founder. That’s how we met.
Doris Nagel
I saw the picture on your website of the two of you on your Harleys, and that looked like fun. And I was just thinking of the great analogies of riding Harleys with starting a business. You know, off roading maybe a little bit with the Harley hitting the bumps, and then the straight, flat areas where you can just really rev the engine up and just fly is a little bit.
Karen Renee 3:50
It’s funny you say that because Judy, my co founder, and I originally met as friends riding Harley Davidsons. And we are two strong independent women. We were not happy riding on the back of our significant others’ Harley Davidsons – we needed to drive our own. And we started off as friends and Harley riders that ended up blooming into a beautiful relationship with owning a business together.
But one of the things that Judy says is that we run our business like we ride our motorcycles: which is there is no reverse, and that really describes starting a business quite well.
Doris Nagel
And there are some there are some bumps along the way, and you want to hang on tight so you don’t go flying off and get too banged up!
It’s interesting that you owned a court reporter agency. So tell our listeners a little bit about the court reporter business. I always thought that court reporters worked for the courthouse. They just kind of follow the judge and the bailiff into the courtroom. So I guess I always assumed that court reporters work for the court? Is that not correct?
Karen Renee 5:06
Well, it’s you’re not alone in thinking that. Most everyone tends to be familiar with the courthouse court reporter because that is what you see on TV. It’s what we see, you know, in drama shows, right, that that’s what we know.
Doris Nagel
That’s what I see on “Judge Judy”!
Karen Renee 5:25
Judge Judy is a perfect example, because she has her own court reporter, who is a real court reporter, too. I actually know her — not personally, but I know her through the connections that we have. She’s a real certified Court Reporter. So that’s not just for TV purposes, she is a real serving court reporter.
But there’s a whole other world of court reporting business that happens for freelance court reporters that cover depositions, hearings, and arbitrations that are held outside of the courthouse. And that’s the part of the business that not many know of unless — and unfortunately– if they’ve been involved in a lawsuit.
I’ll give you an example. If you were in a car accident, and there were five witnesses to your car accident and then there’s a lawsuit, the lawyers will soon try to figure out who’s at fault in this car accident. Long before that car accident lawsuit gets to the courthouse, your attorney has to find out who knows what, what your injuries are, who are all the parties to the lawsuit, what kind of dollar amount were the injuries, what the damage was to the car damage and to you.
To find out that information out, there is sworn testimony by those people that witnessed or were involved in the car accident. So each one of those people will be called by your lawyer for a deposition. And in that deposition is usually the opposing counsel. In other words, the other person that’s being sued, or that’s involved in lawsuit, yourself, your attorney, the other attorney, and then whoever is being deposed. And the only other person that’s in the room is a certified court reporter. And what is key is that the court reporter is certified and is not employed by either attorney. They have to be a third party, without any bias in the case so that they don’t slant the transcript to one side or the other.
But those people are hard to find, you know. Court reporters just don’t advertise our business out there. And that’s where the difficulty of locating those court reporters comes in. So, unless you’ve been involved in a lawsuit, it’s a world that many aren’t aware of.
Doris Nagel
Do the two lawyers have to agree on the court reporter or just whoever called the deposition?
Karen Renee 8:01
It’s the usually the person that calls a deposition who hires a freelance court reporter out in the market. But they can’t have any other connection to the lawsuit. Although this has only happened to me once that I can recall, I quickly realized when we arrived at the proceeding that I knew the person being deposed. I didn’t know them personally, but I knew the person’s father.
So I had to disclose that to both attorneys and say,”Hey, just so you know, I was unaware until I walked in the room that I do know this person’s father.” And then the attorneys can either agree or disagree to let me carry on with the proceeding. In the case they did, and so I was still the certified court reporter for that event.
But if I was too close to that person, and they said, “You know what, we don’t feel comfortable that you’re unbiased,” then they’ll bring somebody else in.
Doris Nagel
All the behind the scenes stuff in a lawsuit is interesting.
How much of court reporters work is the in courtroom versus the out of courtroom things that you mentioned?
Karen Renee 9:16
I would say it’s probably 50/50. Meaning that for every court trial that you see, just about every person, if not every person, that goes on the witness stand has been deposed prior to getting to the trial.
That’s because the attorney who brings you as a witness that saw your accident wants to know when you go up on the stand what you’re going to say. And the opposing attorney also wants to know what they’re going to say.
They don’t want to be surprised at something, so they already have been deposed. So however many people are witnesses at any given trial already have been deposed outside of the courthouse prior to the trial.
Doris Nagel
A friend of mine who’s a longtime litigator said his rule of thumb is never ever ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.
Karen Renee 10:13
Exactly. And that’s a perfect explanation of why there’s the depositions beforehand. So those attorneys know what they’re going to ask. [And if they don’t say what they expect,] it’s also how they impeach a person — meaning they’ll catch them in a lie. So they’ll ask a question that they know the answer to from the deposition, but let’s say that person now says something different. At that point, they’ll refer back to the transcript and the deposition held, you know, six months ago and say, you know, back on such and such date when I asked you that question…?”
Doris Nagel
[Laughing] “Karen, may I draw your attention to this document here from the court reporter, your deposition dated such and such, does it or does it not or not say, blah, blah, blah? Just like on TV.
Karen Renee
They always get into those “Isn’t it true?” questions.
Doris Nagel
Why is it so hard to find court reporters? It seems like it would be great work. Is it training? Is it the pay? Why is it so hard to find good court reporters?
Karen Renee 11:21
It’s not the pay — it’s a very lucrative profession. And it’s a fascinating profession — you learn something new every day, or you are involved in something new every day. Today might be a case about a murder, and tomorrow might be two neighbors fighting about a fence in the backyard, so every day is different. The finances are phenomenal. The problem comes in when we step back a little bit.
Colleges like numbers. Colleges want to see a 98% graduation rate, but we placed 97%. The problem with court reporting is that it’s not easy to get to through the certification process. So many candidate don’t make it through the college courses.
As a result, a lot of colleges have taken the curriculum out of their offerings, because it makes them look bad when we only graduate 70% out of this course. And so the course gets looked down upon. So, unfortunately, a lot of colleges have closed over the years.
The good news — and partly this has to do with COVID — remote colleges have popped up to fill the void again, [because it really is] a great profession is. But it’s really not an easy course to finish.
Once you get that course finished, oh my gosh, it’s a phenomenal profession. But really, it’s it comes down to the numbers.
And then it also comes down to the fact that court reporters, like I said, don’t advertise themselves per se. It’s not like there are billboards saying, ”Hey, I’m a court reporter — Come and hire me.”
Doris Nagel
No, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a billboard like that. I’ve also never seen an ad on TV for your friendly bankruptcy specialized court reporter, like there are for lawyers.
Let’s go back to eCourt Reporters. You had an agency where you helped place a number of these independent court reporters, but then you decided to start eCourt Reporters. What was the idea behind that? And what prompted you to pivot to do that?
Karen Renee 14:00
I actually have to give credit to my older brother, which I always hate doing.
My brother was traveling to California to see his children. And he’s old school. He had a flip phone at the time. And he was just transitioning over to a smartphone. And this is not that many years ago.
When he came back from California, I picked him up from the airport and had lunch with him. And during lunch, he was showing me how he had ordered an Uber out in California on his smart phone. He was so proud. He was like, “I spoke to my smartphone, and I just clicked here, and then you can watch the car come, and you can pick whatever car you want!” And he was just acting all smug about the fact that he ordered an Uber.
And I had a real light bulb moments sitting there. Thinking aloud, I said, “Boy, I wish I could find certified reporters that easy.
Doris Nagel
You needed to Uber a court reporter, right?
Karen Renee 15:13
Right! And I went home that night, and I couldn’t sleep. I literally could not sleep.
And the next morning, I said to myself that I just had to do something that day. Why can’t we find court reporters that easy? As a court reporter agency, I had trouble finding overflow jobs or filling overflow jobs. I had my own court reporters that would fill in, but you can only have so many bodies to fill so many positions. And then I’d have all these other jobs that I’d be scrambling and calling and emailing and texting, and it was just a nightmare.
So I thought, “Why can’t I find a court reporter that easy?” And that was literally the beginning of eCourt Reporters. And I went right to work on our first rendition. The next morning, I started looking for ways to build a website, which I knew nothing about.
I can tell you the biggest bump in the road was my first rendition of a website. It was over promised and under delivered, partly because I didn’t know what I was looking for, I didn’t know what to ask for. And so, it very quickly [became apparent] that what was being developed was not going to work for the type of platform that we needed. We’re dealing with confidentiality, we’re dealing with some sensitive information.
That was in 2017. A year later, 2018, I went back to the drawing board and created a custom site, which has now become eCourt Reporters. It’s an amazing site, secure, and exactly what we needed. It was custom built for our needs. So that’s a little bit of a history of how we got to where we are.
I will tell you that if you asked me as little as five years ago if I’d be the owner of a technology company, the answer would be: “Absolutely not.” And yet, here I am.
Doris Nagel 17:07
It’s interesting you say that, because there are a lot of people who say Uber is really not a rideshare company — it’s a technology company. Because the platform that they have built is so, so slick, and so much thought and work went into it and probably money to develop it and refine it, that it’s essentially a technology company.
So I think what you’re saying is that, to be the Uber of court reporters required a significant investment in technology. And I suspect, you are far from alone.
In fact, I just chatted with another entrepreneur a couple days ago, and he had the same issue. He had an idea he wasn’t quite sure how to build the platform he wanted. And it became clear very quickly that the technology underpinning his website, behind the scenes, was quickly outgrown. To the point where — just like you — almost overnight he realized the investment he made was just not gonna cut it. It wasn’t what his customers wanted, and it’s not what he wanted, so he had start over again.
So just a word of advice to entrepreneurs out there: there are so many business models that really are going to depend on great technology. You may be able to find something off the shelf, or you may be a great programmer, or you may be lucky and have a buddy or a good friend or a family member who is whiz bang at designing this kind of stuff.
But you need to think long and hard about what you really want and the money you might need to have to be able to develop and refine them.
Karen Renee 19:06
Right. Exactly. It still hurts to this day. It happened a couple years ago and it still hurts. It shows just how difficult it is to get the platform right the first time. Partly it was my own fault, because I came up with this idea, but that idea required a lot of technology that I knew nothing about. So I didn’t know how to go about asking for what I needed. I knew what I knew what I wanted it to be when it was done, but I had no idea how to get there.
And what we needed was not a plug and play type solution. Some businesses can use plugins and just kind of plug them in and make it work. But that was not going to work at all for us.
Doris Nagel
I think a lot of people just really underestimate how challenging it is, and how often you need to update it and patch it for security risks and software bugs and things like that. So, find a really good developer.
You’ve described your model as kind of the Uber of court reporting.
How do you get court reporters to sign up? And how do you make sure that they’re qualified? Because you’re standing really behind them, right? Your name and reputation is on the line.
Karen Renee 20:24
Great question. We do we do a lot of social media, we are heavily into the social media world, which I also learned to be good at. Which I didn’t do a lot of before. We do weekly emails, we do blogs.
But to answer your question about standing behind people, everybody on our site, including the attorney searching for court reporters, too, is that we, we’ve had everybody before their game they have they can gain access.
In other words, if you’re a court reporter, you know, we cover all 50 states and I can have that. And we have representation in all 50 states. We were had a lone holdout North Dakota for a while, and we actually have all 50 states now. That was a big milestone for us.
But everybody that applies submits a free application. We charge them nothing to list their profiles, but they must be a certified court reporter, and they must be an actual law firm on the other end.
An example we had not too long ago was an old boyfriend who said he was looking for a court reporter, but he actually just wanted to look through our database and find that car for like, no, that’s not the basis for
Most every state has an association of court reporting Association attached to their state because each state has different rules and regulations. And then there’s national agency or national associations that have go through the process of certifying court reporters. So we utilize those associations on both the court reporter and the law firm side.
We actually vet the law firms, too, just like we do, the court reporters. For lawyers, each lawyer has a lawyer number where you can search if they’re in good standing with their state. We also utilize social media. If somebody they’re an attorney, the first thing we do look on LinkedIn to see if they really are an attorney and what law firm they’re with. There are Bar Associations that they’re associated with that we can also check.
There’s a number of people that can be vetted very quickly. And then other ones may take us a little longer. But each person goes through that process before they are given permission to go in and use the emails and passwords on our site in processes that they get credentials to go into the to utilize the system. And it’s free for court reporters to sign up.
Doris Nagel
I’m guessing as you become more well known, you’re getting more and more court reporters to sign up. But if it’s free for them to register – which is good because obviously they’re more likely to sign up – how do you monetize your business?
Karen Renee 23:39
We’re actually free for law firms to use as well. We do not charge the law firms to register and search our database.
We make money after a job is complete. We retain a percentage of the job assignment. So nobody has to worry about anything coming out of their pay. There’s no monthly membership fee — nothing until you’re actually given a job and it’s completed.
Now, there are many agencies that work as a third party booking agency. And they can take up to 50% of the court reporters’ pay. And that’s how most court reporters are booked today, or have been booked in the past.
But by going direct through our platform, more of the court reporters’ pay is going direct from the attorney to the court reporters in our system. What we’ve done is eliminate that third party booking agency. And now the court reporter can make up to 95% of their pay or their value. The difference for them is phenomenal.
And then because it doesn’t cost you anything to list your services, at the very least you get free advertising for yourself and your certification. We don’t take anything out of anybody’s pocket until the connection is made and the court reporter has actually gotten work.
Doris Nagel 25:02
I’m familiar with Upwork, where you can hire freelancers — find freelance graphic designers or somebody to do your logo or update your website. And Upwork tracks the projects. It’ll say, “Doris Nagel has completed 37 projects, and her average rating is 3.9 stars.” Does your platform do anything like that?
Karen Renee 25:34
There is. After the job is complete – the law firm has their transcript and the court reporter has done the job — there’s a rating that so the law firm gets an instant notification that hey, your court reporter indicated that they did everything that you requested. Did he or she do everything that there were asked to do? Please rate your service. So they get rated on whether they arrived on time. Did they do the transcript nicely? Did you have good communication?
They can rate from anything a five star rating, and that shows up on the profiles, then of the court reporter for the next time they get booked or the next law firm that searching for somebody that, you know, they need service in need. And the law firm can filter by five star ratingss, or by price, maybe they choose by certifications.
Doris Nagel
What about by expertise? Some of the terms that are used in some of these lawsuits – especially medical or technical — you can barely even understand what they’re talking about, there’s so much jargon or specialized terms.
Karen Renee 26:55
That’s an interesting point, too, because our court reporters can actually put their preferences in their profile.
Let’s say they’re really good at, or really just really enjoy or have some history in, the medical profession. Maybe they just really like medical malpractice cases. They can note that on their profile.
Similarly, if somebody else hates medical terminology, because there’s a lot of medical terminology, they would not put that on their profile.
When an attorney goes in and searches — because maybe they’re going to be deposing a doctor — we’re going to sync them up to those court reporters that do medical cases, are efficient and have a five star ratings in the medical field. That saves everybody from trying to talk with court reporters who have no interest at all in doing medical, eliminating all the back and forth of you know, “I need a court reporter next Tuesday at three o’clock. And the court reporter says, “Yeah, I’m available, I can cover” and then the lawyer tells them it’s a doctor deposition, only to have the court reporter say, “Oh, well, I’m not doing that.”
We’ve taken away all that. So then the law firm can select the best suited court reporter for the proceeding at hand. And that’s eliminated a lot of back and forth and a lot of frustration on both ends. It doesn’t waste anybody’s time. You get exactly the court reporter that you need for the for the proceeding.
Doris Nagel
How has the business grown since you started it? Are there more and more court reporters that have joined and more law firms that use your platform?
Karen Renee 28:33
We’ve grown tremendously. As I said before, we are in all 50 states now, which wasa big milestone, I will say that. We don’t have a big presence in North Dakota, because population equals litigation. So our biggest presence is actually in places like California, Florida, New York, and Texas. We do we do very well here in the Midwest, because we started here.
Our biggest demand is just based on population, because you’re going to have more car accidents and disputes where there’s more people and less car accidents where there’s less people. So we do really well in the heavy populated states.
I can tell you that more and more court reporters come to us. We offer a lot of different variables for the court reporter.
I just talked to gal today that is retiring from working in the courthouse, but she doesn’t want to quit court reporting all together. And so her, our platform helps her make herself available when she does want to work. Our system is based on a live calendar availability.
So in her case, it allows her the flexibility to say she wants to work two days this week, and maybe next week, she doesn’t want to work at all. So she makes herself available only on the days that she wants to work.
So those kinds of things have really made our business explode. Another example is we have court reporters that travel, or perhaps they are snowbirds from the Midwest that go to Florida for the winter time. Those court reporters can actually make themselves available in Florida, provided they’re certified there, and then in Wisconsin or Illinois or wherever, when they’re back home.
We also have court reporters that can make themselves available in multiple states for remote work. We’re all familiar with the remote world these days and video conferencing, and that has opened up a whole new opportunity for court reporters that didn’t exist pre COVID.
So pre-Covid, most of the depositions were in person. But then the emergency orders went into place in most states, if not all, during COVID. And that opened up the ability to have these remote video conferences, which turned out to be a real game changer in the legal industry, not just for the court reporters, but also for the attorneys.
So if you can imagine pre COVID If we had a case where let’s say the witness was in Wisconsin, but the accident happened in California. So the attorney from California would need to come to Wisconsin to depose witnesses. So they’re going to fly in and they’re going to spend two or three nights in a hotel for the deposition and spend all this money.
Today, that attorney stays in California, the witnesses stay here in Wisconsin, the court reporter is remote and everybody’s saving all that time of being on the road and the costs of overnight stays.
Doris Nagel
How does that work, though, if they’re licensed by state? So in the situation you described, does the court reporter have to be Wisconsin certified, or California licensed? Or with things being virtual, does it start to not matter so much?
Karen Renee 32:06
The court reporter has to be licensed in the state that the opponent is in. And the reason being is — I’ll use myself as an example — I have to be able to swear in the witness per the notary rules of Wisconsin, because that’s what I’m licensed for.
I am not licensed in the state of California. So if that same scenario played out but the witness was in California, I in Wisconsin cannot take that case as a court reporter.
So there are state requirements, but what’s helped us grow our business is the fact that the court reporters on E court reporters can actually make themselves available in multiple states. So if I went and got my California license, I could cover California’s jobs as well. And more and more court reporters are finding that, with an extra certification in another state, they’ve opened themselves up for a whole bunch more jobs.
Doris Nagel
Especially with things being virtual, which you alluded to. I recently had as a guest a lawyer who’s running for judge in Cook County, and she was talking about how COVID has changed the court proceedings. It was her belief that probably going forward there will still be a lot of virtual hearings.
Do you agree with that?
Karen Renee 33:35
Yes, every indication is the attorneys are more productive, the court reporters are more productive. You’ve opened up so much more time. And honestly, it makes lives easier for the opponents. Imagine if you had to be deposed for an hour or two hours out of your day, and it took four or five hours of travel time to get to the lawyer’s office for that.
Now, you don’t have to do that. You’ve opened up four hours or five hours of your day because you don’t have to travel to the attorney’s office for that deposition. You can stay home and do it right from your home computer.
And you actually end up with more engagement from the opponents, more engagement from the people involved in lawsuits, because otherwise it can be an inconvenience, right? It’s hard to schedule people have jobs or are working. They can’t go and stop everything for deposition.
We did [a remote deposition] not too long ago with it. Literally. the deposition was held during lunch hour. They knew the deposition was going to be short, because they only had a few questions. So you can literally take your lunch hour, and you don’t take any time off work. The guy [being deposed] was sitting in his car on his phone.
Doris Nagel
It’s good that the court systems and he practice of law is flexible enough to evolve. And that sounds like that’s going to be a good thing for your business going forward, and probably already has been,right?
Karen Renee 35:01
Yes, that remote aspect has been great for our business. It’s been a real game changer, like I said for growth of our business.
We actually didn’t even have that piece within our original [platform] design. The remote option wasn’t there because it wasn’t as prevalent. But then COVID hit, and we had to pivot and added that service in, and it just changed everything. And it has continued to change everything for the court reporters for that very reason.
Doris Nagel
I’m glad to hear that.
I’m sure, though, it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns as you’ve built your business. Talk about some of the challenges maybe especially early on. You touched on the technology. But I bet that wasn’t the only bump in the road.
Karen Renee 35:53
The technology was the big one. But yes, you’re right. That was not the only one. And it still even to this day. I mean, nothing runs smoothly, right? Technology is beautiful when it works. It’s not always when it doesn’t.
But I think our biggest pain point today is just the access to law firms. Law firms don’t want to be bothered with emails, they don’t want to be bothered with phone calls. It’s hard to get past the secretary or the gatekeeper to talk to the attorney that might use our system.
So that’s one of the pain points that we feel today is getting through to the attorney themselves.
Doris Nagel
That’s interesting, because when they need a court reporter they need one STAT.
Karen Renee 36:41
Yes, when they need a court reporter they [need it now]. We need to let them know there’s another there’s a better way. That’s the key. So right now, they can find a court reporter by going through those agencies that will take up to 50% of the court reporter’s pay.
And not only do they take up to 50% of the court reporters pay, but they can also upcharge the law firm. And some lawyers don’t even know that, and when you get into big law firms, the lawyer may never see the bill.
Doris Nagel
Absolutely. They just pass it on to the client, and they don’t care.
Karen Renee 37:18
Exactly. And that’s what we like to let them you know about our system. We tell them you can compare whether it’s you paying the bill, or whether it’s somebody else writing a check at the end of the day, your client ultimately pays more.
[For that reason], we focus heavily on client-centered law firms for that reason. So when your client asks, “How much is that going to cost?” you can actually look at court reporters [in our system] and know exactly what it’s going to cost you, and which court reporter is going to be the best for your case.
You don’t get that service when you’re hiring through a third party. You just get somebody and you’re going to get charged. But the client-centered law firms will take pay attention and say, “I want a good price, I want the best of the best, I want the ones that are…. whatever the case may be, I want them to have medical proficiency,” whatever, and they can select.
But we have to get to the law firms to let them know that that there’s a better way out there. And going back to the example I gave earlier about law firms wasting time, [the old way wastes paralegals’ time as well]. Paralegals do a lot of the really hard work behind [the scenes] in the law firms. And they are often frustrated.
So in the example I gave earlier, where the lawyer says, “I need a court reporter.” [And the court reporter agency says, “Okay, we have a court reporter for you.” “Well, we’re going to depose a doctor.” And the agency then says, “Well, no, we don’t have a court reporter for you to do that.” And so on to the next. That means lots of emails, phone calls, text messages. I’ve even seen social media blasts, looking for court reporter services.
So what we’ve done is created a way for law firms to quickly and easily search a free database of vetted certified court reporters throughout the United States. And literally in a matter of five minutes, they can book the best of the best for their needs.
That’s the message we have to get out. But we don’t always have that open door to get that message through. Because many lawyers just think, “I’m not paying the bill. And I need a court reporter.”
So we need to get our message out that there’s a better way.
Doris Nagel
You mentioned client-centric law firms. Do you find that big law firms are more likely to use your service? Or is it smaller law firms?
Karen Renee 39:23
The smaller solo firms definitely see big value in what we do. But it really depends on the lawyer. Because some lawyers are more attuned to their clients, and some just aren’t.
We like to focus on the client-centered ones, because at the end of the day, lawsuits change people’s lives. And I wouldn’t want the lawyer that just decides that “Hey, this is a cash cow case, and I’m going to make lots of money, because I’m going to depose lots of people, and it’s going to cost all this money.”
I want the lawyer that’s going to say, “Whatever the results of this lawsuit are, it’s going to change your life. So we’re going to get you the best value as we’re leading up to the lawsuit.”
I do think that technology and the Internet has allowed clients some of this information that they didn’t have before. Twenty years ago, either that they wouldn’t know the difference — myself included – between an attorney that was client centric versus an attorney that was big law that only cared about billable hours.
Now, it’s more and more out there. And clients can be a little more choosy.
So just as selective as the client is in finding the perfect attorney for their case, we created a way for law firms to be just as picky, just as is interested and aware of the court reporter and the service that you’re getting for your client. Just like your clients selected you, you need to select your court reporter the same way and have the same interest at heart.
Doris Nagel
How did you find found funding for the business? Because you had to make a fairly substantial technology investment in order to create your platform before generating any revenue.
Karen Renee 41:20
You’re going back to that painful part? [laughing]
So when I had that light bulb moment, sitting across the dinner table from my brother, I had no idea how much technology would cost.
And we are bootstrapped. So my co-founder, Judy Gerulat, and I have primarily bootstrapped our business. We do have one investor and — hopefully Eric’s not listening to this — I will tell you, we did a lot of pitching.
We were involved in gBeta, which is part of Gener8tor, which is absolutely great for startup companies. For people that are looking to start a business. I encourage you to look into them. They are in Madison, but expanding to other cities. So check them out if you’re interested, [because they have] a wonderful incubator system. We learned a lot from them.
We were in their spring cohort in 2019. We learned a bunch and I can tell you that when we started pitching.
Up until then we were, and we are primarily still bootstrapped. But at that point, we started pitching to investors. And we got a lot of “Nos.” Many, many “Nos.” It got to be almost routine. It’s like, oh, we’re gonna pitch again, and we’re gonna get another “No.”
Doris Nagel
Like “Groundhog Day,” right?
Karen Renee 42:47
At that point, we were asking ourselves, “What are we going to do?”
And I said, “I know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna do another one.”
Then the strangest thing happened. I had an interested investor from Cedar Rapids, Iowa that wanted to meet with me, and it was a Thursday night. And I said, “Sure, I’ll jump on a call with him.”
But it was also a Packer Thursday night game, and I’m a big Packers’ fan. And I remember distinctly that I actually had apologized to him about the background noise.
And I feel bad, I have to say, but I confess that I spent a lot of talking to him and pitching my business and looking over the top of the my computer at the Packer game. And I apologized for that, too, but I said, “The Packers are playing.” I felt really bad, but at the same time, I didn’t care anymore.
And strangely, it was the easiest money that we got to invest in our company. And I tell that story only because I think when it came to pitching, for the longest time, it was nerve racking. It was frustrating. You feel like, “I’ve got this great business, but I can’t seem to get anybody interested.”
I think what I was missing when I was pitching before was that I was never really myself. I was just always thinking, this is what I have to have.
But that night, I was just watching the Packer game, and just talking about my business. And I think Eric saw not just a great business, but he also saw the personality behind the business and me as a person.
Doris Nagel
That makes sense. And I’m surely glad that you took that away as the moral of the story, and not the advice that people need to become Packers fans in order to get funding [laughing].
Karen Renee 44:40
I’m telling you, it helped. The pitching world, the investment world, and finding funding is very difficult for founders. And we certainly learned that it’s very difficult. It doesn’t come easy, and rightfully so, because investors are very savvy and protective of their money, as they should be.
Doris Nagel
Unfortunately, it’s especially tough for women owned businesses.
I saw a statistic that less than 2% of venture capital money goes to women owned businesses, and that number actually has been declining, which is really sad.
I don’t know what the number is for funding other than vet that was venture capital, money. You know, I don’t know what the numbers are right, for angel funding or family offices or things like that. But my guess is, is it’s quite low.
Have you seen obstacles, in particular, for women owned businesses? Is it? Is it the way we present? Is it that we just don’t come up with the same kind of business models?
What do you attribute that to?
Karen Renee 45:46
If I were to summarize it, I would say that, for me, it’s that I am not strong in saying my value. So you know, I think it comes easier for men to say, hey, I have this company, and it’s worth $2 million. And then I come along, and I say, I have this company, and I think it’s worth about, you know, maybe 200 You know, the presentation is a lot different. And I think we as women, value ourselves. That’s what I would summarize it with, I would blame myself in that I don’t always come off as strong and confident as a man and, you know, millions of dollars, you know, 10s of 20s millions of dollars were men who have no problem asking for and women, I think have struggle more and asking for it.
So I believe that’s one problem, there’s probably many more. That’s one, I think I find myself locked into that I always do value our business, not necessarily because I don’t think it’s a great business, because I know it is.
I know it has value. And I know where it can go — I’ve seen the numbers. I know what it can do, and I know where it’s going and all those things.
But I have a hard time asking somebody else to understand and see that same value that I see with that same strength where I think men in general have absolutely no problem not only asking but asking for more, much more than than maybe what the bill the business is worth and getting it, you know, yeah. Yeah, there’s certainly the salesy pitch of things.
Doris Nagel
I was reading a study not too long ago that said thatunqualified men are three or four times more likely to apply for a job they’re not remotely qualified for than a woman would be. I find that fascinating.
Looking back end your journey, what advice would you give your younger self? Or what might you have done differently?
Karen Renee 47:44
Oh, gosh, what might I have done differently?
I would have brought in a partner way sooner. I brought my partner Judy in with me about a year and a half after I made the terrible mistake of of the over promise underdeveloped website.
I would also have slowed down. And I would have looked at the development of what I would have asked better questions at the beginning. But, you know, hindsight is always easy, right.
But I know, looking back at it today, I would have looked, done more due diligence on the company I was hiring to build our website. But at the time, I just didn’t know. And I think I would have liked to have spent more time learning a little bit more behind the scenes. I just jumped in with both feet ready to go.
And because I knew what I needed, I knew what it had to be. And I knew it was a great opportunity. And it was, you know And it was time and everything was falling into place. But I think I have, if I could do it again, I would have done more due diligence at the beginning stages.
But I don’t know. Looking back, if I was aware of all that I know now, I might not have done it.
Because as many of the headaches — you know, how many times the technology fails, how much time we spend fixing things…. I mean, every day we’re fixing things and we’re tweaking things, and finding new things we want to do. It’s just a constant. There’s so many times it is not running 100% the way we like it. And we always want to tweak things, we always move things and then then every time we move something, then we have to move something else. And it’s a constant, constant thing.
So if I knew that when I first started, maybe I would have been scared me off. So when I tell my younger self to be aware of what I was in for, maybe I wouldn’t have gone forward.
But looking back at it now, I’m extremely pleased I did what I did, but it certainly didn’t come easy. And it didn’t go smoothly without bumps along the way.
So ultimately, I don’t think I would change anything, other than just knowing a little bit more about technology. I think .
Doris Nagel
From personal experience, I’m a SCORE mentor — SCORE being the volunteer arm of the Small Business Association that provides free counseling to startups.
And I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve chatted with who said they wanted to start a business, but spent so much time noodling and thinking that they never did anything. They were the most frustrating clients.
Maybe the lesson is really that you can’t overthink things if you’re sure you’ve got a really great idea.
But expect that it may not be the smoothest of rides, and know that you’ll just figure it out as you go.
Karen Renee 50:41
There’s definitely something to be said for tenacity. You have to stick with it. Because as much frustration as there is, the wins are so much more rewarding.
Sometimes I think we should be further along. We should be doing this. We should be doing that.
But then when I look back a year or two years ago, I’m amazed at how far we’ve come.
Doris Nagel
The glass is half full, not half-empty, right?
Where do you see eCourt Reporters headed? Where’s it going to be in three years if you’re fulfilling your vision for the company?
Karen Renee 51:18
We started with court reporters and legal videographers, which we didn’t even get a chance to touch on. But legal videographers are part of the deposition process, too, at times. So those two are our primary service providers today.
But we have plans to extend to process servers and interpreters. There’s much more that goes into a deposition than just the court reporter. When you have somebody that doesn’t speak English, or somebody that you know, needs an interpreter. And a videographer comes in when you have testimony in print in black and white, but it doesn’t show the mannerisms.
Doris Nagel
That’s for sure. I actually read a transcript at some point for something. And it’s kind of hard to figure out what’s going on, because you lack all the context.
Karen Renee 52:10
Exactly. Videographers have to be certified, too. So if you put a certified legal videographer in the same room with the court reporter, now what your attorney can do is put that black and white print up against a visual of that person saying those exact words.
You can see shoulder shrugs, eye rolls, whatever mannerisms – how they use their arms and eyes, and whether they stutter. Things like sarcasm don’t come out in print. But it certainly comes out when you see somebody saying something.
And those kinds of things mean a lot in testimony.
And as I mentioned, we also have plans to bring on process servers. Those are the people that come to your door and say, hey, you’ve been subpoenaed for this deposition next Tuesday, at three o’clock. They knock on your door, and say, “You’ve been served,” just like you see on TV.
And then again, interpreters. Because if you have somebody that doesn’t speak the language –you know, there’s a lot of languages because we’re a very diverse country. So at different times, interpreters are needed to depose people.
So those, those services will also be part of eCourt Reporters, hopefully sooner versus later. That’s one of our goals.
Doris Nagel
Fantastic!
How should people reach you if they’re interested in eCourt Reporter’s services? Maybe they maybe they’re a court reporter. Maybe they have a friend who is one, maybe they’re a law firm? Or maybe they’re just interested in chatting with you about things entrepreneurial like pitching or Gener8tor or just brainstorming.
Kare Renee
I love to help entrepreneurs at any time I’m actually a coach for Doyenne, which is a women’s entrepreneurship out of Wisconsin.
So I love helping businesses grow. Definitely reach out to me if you’re an entrepreneur, definitely reach out to me if you’re a court reporter, and definitely reach out to me if you’re an attorney.
My direct email is krenee@ecourtreporters.com.
I primarily focus on the court reporter perspective of the business. My co founder Judy Garulat, or jgarulat@ecourtreporters.com is the business guru – in things business-related, she is way smarter than me.
We make a great partnership for that very reason. But you can reach either one of us at any time. Our phone number is 262-210-3915.
And you can always reach out to us at office@ecourtreporters.com – that also will eventually get to us if it’s any question that we need to answer directly.
And go to our website, ecourtreporters.com and check it out. Even if you’re not in the legal industry and just want to see a really cool website, go check it out. It’s dynamic.
We have an app within the website that does all this scheduling. And we’ve had some great videos there. So please contact us – I’m happy to talk with anybody.
Doris Nagel
Karen, thank you so much for being with me today. It’s really been a delight having you.
Karen Renee
Thank you, Doris.
Doris Nagel
And thanks to all my listeners, you’re the reason I do this.
You can find more helpful information and resources on my consulting website global Audacity. services.com, as well as my new radio show website, the savvy entrepreneur.org You’ll find lots of tools, podcasts, and other resources that are free for entrepreneurs and small businesspeople. My door is always open for comments, questions or suggestions: email me at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org.
Be sure to join me again next Saturday 11am Central noon Eastern.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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