Mike Seely

Kevin Daisey (00:32)
What’s up, what’s up. Welcome to the show.

Mike Seely (00:33)
Hey, how’s it going, Kevin?

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Kevin Daisey (00:35)
Mike Seely, man. Nice to see you. Got to have you on the show. Mike was actually referred to me by Will over at Leduc Entertainment. Great guys, great crew over there. Work a lot in the legal space and connect with Mike. Mike is in an interesting niche ⁓ area and excited to have him on the show to kind of talk about really what he does and how he helps firms.

Mike Seely (00:50)
We are.

Kevin Daisey (00:57)
with kind of a unique service that he offers, but also just learn more about his business, what he’s done and you know, how we can learn from what he’s doing in a very niche area. So, Mike, welcome to the show,

Mike Seely (01:08)
Well, you nailed it. mean,

we’re certainly a niche product. I appreciate you having us on. It takes a lot of eyeballs in our business and getting exposure to people that we don’t know and people using our names and rooms that we’re not in is all part of the game. So I appreciate the time letting me be here.

Kevin Daisey (01:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, just looking at Mike and added him on Facebook and, he knows a lot of folks that I know and it’s in some good circles. I saw him with Bob Simon the other day hanging out in Austin. And, so,

Mike Seely (01:35)
Yeah.

I know if that’s necessarily

good or not, but I was definitely there.

Kevin Daisey (01:40)
Might not be a good thing, hanging out with Bob or me.

Mike Seely (01:42)
You’re right. Absolutely.

Well, I’ll take it. Guilty by association.

Kevin Daisey (01:46)
And then also Mike just told me when I jumped on the show here that he’s going to be going to Law-Di-Gras. So if you’re not going to Law-Di-Gras, you better get a ticket because I’ll be there, Mike will be there, Bob will be there, all the great people will be there. So looking forward to it.

Mike Seely (01:51)
I am.

Absolutely.

That’s quite a hair. I it’s

going to be fantastic. I’ve never been before. I’m looking forward to it.

Kevin Daisey (02:01)
We will have a good time, 100%. And we’ll meet some good people.

Mike Seely (02:03)
I’m

pretty much sure that’s guaranteed. This doesn’t say it in writing, but I’m pretty sure that’s part of the guarantee.

Kevin Daisey (02:08)
It’s guaranteed. well, Mike, just tell me, tell us a little bit about your business, Spear Investigations. And, yeah, what’s that about and how, how do you help firms?

Mike Seely (02:12)
Sure. Yeah, so. ⁓

Yeah, we’re business called Spear Investigations and we kind of operate. It’s a digital investigation product or suite of products. We operate outside of the normal discovery process. We have four main products that we that we kind of specialize in. First of those being former employee searches. So we’re able to through our resources we go through and we’re able to collect former employees based on their position that you’re looking for within the company.

their employment time, the tenure that they were there and location and then we provide a verified contact information. We bundle that all up into a package for attorneys. It allows them to have some kind of insight into the company they may have litigation pending against into you know corporate training and culture and all sorts of anything. If you’ve ever done a case where you’re like hey I wish I had somebody on the inside this is your opportunity. Really give you a chance to invest in an insider. That’s kind of the tagline that we have. So get this

list, we turn it over to the attorneys if they want to make these phone calls themselves to these verified numbers, they can do so. If they want us to help them. We also have trained investigators or sorry, interviewers that go through the list and can make these calls guided by usually five to 10 questions that the attorneys want worked into the conversation. I know it comes to a real shocker. Not everybody wants to talk to an attorney over the phone. So we kind of act as a middleman to kind of

you

know kind of softly bring them into the fold with the ultimate goal of them agreeing to talk to the attorney or a member of their staff.

So we feel like we bring some value in that place. And then the other products that we offer are social media collection in a core admissible format. We offer corporate structure research. So if you’ve got a company you’re like, hey, something doesn’t seem quite right here. We can go through and break that company down by its LLCs and partnerships to identify recoverable assets and or hidden insurance monies that may be out there as well. And the final thing that we do is a individual deep dive.

Kevin Daisey (04:04)
well.

Mike Seely (04:12)
So if your your wanting to maybe there’s somebody on the defense, maybe it’s an expert, you know, like hey, I’d really like to know Everything there is to know about this guy or this lady we can go through and do a complete search on them and give the attorneys a basically a list of their digital footprint

If they have something that’s online, it’s in a public record, we can collect this and basically create a file on them. Maybe whenever they were a resident, they wrote a paper that says this, and now they’re saying that on the stand. Well, why is there a difference? Give you a chance to impeach somebody on the stand maybe and have that big aha moment.

Kevin Daisey (04:44)
wow, that’s impressive.

Mike Seely (04:44)
And that’s kind of

the four products that we do that are wrapped up kind of in a nice bow. That’s what’s on the brochure. We have some other things that aren’t on the brochure, including finding people. We find people also. So if you’re having some problems with any of these or like some insight into some people that you have cases against, give us a shout. We’d love to help.

Kevin Daisey (05:02)
Sometimes you can’t find people. I had a

Mike Seely (05:04)
It is,

is. People start to get real quiet whenever you say what you do. They’re like, damn, I wish I wouldn’t have given you my last name.

Kevin Daisey (05:09)
Wait, you have my information now.

Mike Seely (05:11)
I do, but it’s the only user for good.

Kevin Daisey (05:13)
I’m easy to find. Um, it’s funny. I have a quick story. I had a, uh, personal injury attorney client of mine. Um, call me, call me a few months ago. It was like, Hey, how’s it going? Kevin. I’m like, what’s up, man? He’s like, pretty good. Hey, uh, I know you’re from this area, you know, small hometown. I’m like, yep. Yep. Cool. Um, I’m looking for some, you know, looking for someone. He kind of described, he kind of just started to give some descriptive things. And I said, is it this person? And he was like, how the hell do you know that?

Mike Seely (05:18)
Mm-hmm.

You

Okay.

⁓ Like this is my hometown baby, I know everybody here.

Kevin Daisey (05:40)
Well…

Plus it made sense, know, that you’re looking for. Yeah.

Mike Seely (05:45)
That’s funny. That’s funny.

Now

I will tell you that most of the times when we come across one, it’s not quite that easy. You know, we’re looking for somebody that’s a real kind of outlier. You know, I’ve had people that have, you know, had people served out of state, different places and they’re like, hey, the server showed up and this guy clearly doesn’t live there. So we’ve had to go back and do a little bit more deep digging and actually find out where these people are so they could get, you know, legitimately served in some cases.

Kevin Daisey (06:14)
Well, yeah, I’m sure some people are legitimately trying to elude or not be found. yeah, this person I’m talking about would be pretty easy to find. Visit local bar and you find them.

Mike Seely (06:18)
yeah, 100 % they are. 100%. But we haven’t. That’s right.

Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

Kevin Daisey (06:27)
That’s funny. So is it spearinvestigations.com to check out your.

Mike Seely (06:31)
Spearinvestigations.com like spear like you’re throwing. We wanted something that sounded you know a little bit aggressive. I think that’s what we ended up with. Business has been growing as my wife says directionally correct. We’re in our third year of business right now And we are you know growing our social media presence, you know making connections I’m based in Texas. My business partner is in Atlanta, Georgia right outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

We cover the country nationwide. East to West, North to South, even to a few cases down in Mexico and some in Canada as well. So pretty nice footprint. Yeah, it’s been a great journey so far and I’m really enjoying being part of it.

Kevin Daisey (07:05)
Wow, awesome.

Making grasp on, know, jumping out, doing your own thing. And also, you know, pretty niche area. And, you know, me and you talked before a little bit, but, know, like, how did you, how did you get into this? How’d you know this was a need and how’d you, you know, know that, Hey, I could go work with these attorneys.

Mike Seely (07:23)
Yeah, I…

Array Digital (07:34)
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Now back to the show.

Mike Seely (08:04)
Sure, and I’ll have to start that maybe going back a little further. I was still with spinal implants and orthopedic devices, pain pumps for about 25 plus years. I had my own distributorship. Had a great deal of success in that field, loved it. But I was constantly kind of picking up products and losing them because I was kind of a small shop.

And I had a recruiter call me kind of on one of those days when we were kind of in a downturn and say, hey, I’ve got this opportunity working for a medical funding company. We need somebody that knows the medical side. We’ll teach you the legal side. So I had lots of relationships and knew lots of folks. So I took a job with a funding company that was kind of a startup.

Worked there for a few years, had some success. But then the company just kind of up and decided that they didn’t want to be in the space anymore. So they pretty much closed shop. I went to work for another funding company and had a great experience with a company called HMR Servicing. Still have some great connections there, some great friendships with those guys. And through my time going to legal conferences and, you know, attending different webinars and stuff like that, made some relationships. Ran into my business partner, who’s a young guy.

And we started having some conversations about the space and what was needed. There was a company that was doing something similar in the space. We thought that we could add some value to that and have a better product. And that’s what we did. We took our relationships that we knew that we’ve been cultivating over the last few years. And we started a new business and turned ourselves into Spear Investigations. Now, neither one of us are private investigators. We work with licensed investigators nationwide.

that are contractors for us. We own and manage the relationships with those investigators. A lot of times people say, you’re PI and I’m like, no I’m not. Those are different folks and their credential, I don’t have that type of credential. What I do have is the relationships and that’s what I’m trying to grow. Absolutely, absolutely, exactly.

Kevin Daisey (09:49)
Yeah. And the data side. yeah,

that’s, that’s awesome. I mean, I think, well, yeah, for, for any business, I mean, you look at the landscape, or for anyone listening, that’s going to start a law firm in a local town or area, there’s always room for you to come in and to do something different with targeted online advertising for law firms and to, be better or provide a better service, and have a different brand and serve a different type of clientele. So, you know, law firms are starting all

Mike Seely (10:11)
Right. And that’s

Kevin Daisey (10:13)
All day, every day too

in the legal space.

Mike Seely (10:16)
Exactly, you know people

there’s some very niche attorneys out there too, you know, I never thought that there was guys that just did X type of cases but but they’re out there, you know There’s people that just that just work on certain types of you know Automotive manufacture cases like a small niche like manufactured for like X amount of years and that’s that’s where they operate But they are that they are the 100 % expert in that area and that’s what we want to that’s what we want to try to Try to be as well You know, we want to add value to these

Kevin Daisey (10:45)
I love it.

Mike Seely (10:46)
We want to bring something to the table. We want to have a powerful statement for attorneys that we want to help you win. We’re on the same side. know, attorneys tend to get a bad rap.

I didn’t know that coming into this space, but now I see this side of it and attorneys are the hardest working people. They work hard for these injured people and you know they stick up to these big companies and it gives us a great deal of pride to be part of that too. Now we’re a smaller part, we’re a wheel in the cog and they’re the whole cog, but we’re still a part of it and I think that’s valuable.

Kevin Daisey (11:15)
100 % the same way we I feel and we’re just a small part we get someone to call the firm or find out about the firm and just make that connection right with an attorney that can help them out.

Mike Seely (11:22)
Sure. 100%.

100 % I

had a friend of a friend call me about a case last night It’s very rare that I get to call another attorney that I know and send them something and refer them something and it was a great feeling Yeah, I’ve known this guy for eight years and he’s done me several He’s done me several solids but to give him to call him up say hey, man I’ve got a case you want to take a look at this. He’s like, of course I said, I don’t know much about it You know if there’s anything there, but you’re literally the first call you are in this you’re in the town where these people are and you’d be a great

Kevin Daisey (11:36)
Yeah.

Mike Seely (11:55)
for them. So that was gratifying to me.

Kevin Daisey (11:57)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s all I ever want. So I’ll get those calls like, Hey, Kevin, you know, it’d be like a client saying, Hey, do you have a client attorney in Florida or Georgia or whatever? And just connect them and they do their thing. don’t, you know, usually know what comes of it from there, but, um, it’s just great when you can be like, yeah, I got somebody.

Mike Seely (12:10)
Sure. You know, and if you’re using your… Of course.

Yeah, and if you get the chance to kind of use your relationship capital to pass that along to somebody else, man, that’s a good feeling. I don’t even want anything for it. I just want you to be like, hey man, thanks for thinking of me. I really appreciate that. You know, if I can help you out in any way, I’d be happy to. You know, I’m a big believer in kind of all ships rising in a high tide.

And I do that for my other legal service provider partners. You know, I’d like to send them something if I can, if I hear something that may be in their kind of in their wheelhouse. And I want to jump on that because that’s such a good feeling. And vice versa, if somebody sends me something, that’s the highest priority for me. You know, I want to I want to make sure that I don’t waste that opportunity that I follow through with that and give them an update and let them know how appreciative I am.

Kevin Daisey (12:57)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And, you know, for me, and this might not be for you or for others, but I don’t really care about referral fees and stuff like that. So someone’s like, Hey, Kevin, can, know, if you refer me some work, I’ll send you a fee or I will pay you, you know, if I’m going to refer you, just take care of them. I don’t really care too much. and then same, like if they were, but if they refer me, I’m happy to pay them, but I don’t really care to, to receive back just.

Mike Seely (13:04)
Mm-hmm.

All right.

Kevin Daisey (13:20)
If you give me a referral, that’s the biggest thing you can do for me. I don’t really care to exchange cash or money for it. You know what mean? So.

Mike Seely (13:24)
Sure. And… Sure.

Usually like I try to repay that either with, you know, something in kind or I do a little woodworking on the side as a hobby. I usually try to send them like I make these charcuterie boards with their name on them. That’s, you know, laser engraved. I usually try to do something like that. You know, maybe a bottle of whiskey shows up at your house, something like that. Something personalized that you…

Kevin Daisey (13:41)
Sweet

Mike Seely (13:52)
You can’t go out and pick up for yourself. know, it’s this… Right, of course, of course, you me too. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. Absolutely, man. You should see some of these things. They do some pretty good stuff. Now, I only work in two dimensions, right? So nothing with legs on it. Like, tabletops, coffee tables, charcuterie boards, cutting boards. If you want legs, something with legs, you gotta buy your own legs.

Kevin Daisey (13:54)
Yeah, and I’d really get some surprise like that any day. I gotta send Mike some referrals, man. I need to some whiskey and some cutting boards.

you

Mike Seely (14:16)
Yeah, so just metal legs. Two dimensions is my space, my wheelhouse. Nice. So I do like the live edge, the big live edge tables and stuff like that. That’s kind of my, yeah.

Kevin Daisey (14:21)
I do some woodworking, so that’s cool, I didn’t know that. ⁓ I’ve built a bunch of tables, islands.

that’s awesome.

I’ve only done it for like our own stuff and properties that we own. So I’ve built some tables, some islands and stuff like that.

Mike Seely (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s a

time. I like to kind of zero in on that. guess that tickles a certain part of my brain that I stimulating. And I enjoy it.

Kevin Daisey (14:46)
That’s all my dad was a decoy carver made like ducks that look real. and so I grew up with a wood shop and a paint shop and I have a wood shop at my house here. I don’t have too much time to mess with it, anything in the, in the garage or the shop, if mechanical or wood, I enjoy.

Mike Seely (14:49)
cool.

wow.

Nice.

Yep. Okay. Okay. Now I feel like my

mechanical starts dropping off pretty quick. You know, I can kind of run into limitations. You know, I have better ideas than I have skills and or tools to accomplish. So I have an idea, man. That’s why I probably stick to more two dimensional type stuff. But my wife has said, seriously, like no more wood stuff in the house, dude. Like no more. Like we’re done.

Kevin Daisey (15:05)
you

Mike Seely (15:22)
I don’t need any more cutting boards. I don’t need any more tables. No more, you know, so now I’m like make them and just like stash them out in the garage and I’m, you know, we need a gift or something. She’s like, I need it. She’s like, I need a gift or something. I’m like, Oh, I got you. Let me go ahead and check the, check the stock room in the outside.

Kevin Daisey (15:32)
He’s warning.

See, you’re resourceful.

Mike Seely (15:40)
Yes, yes.

Kevin Daisey (15:41)
when you’re needed.

Mike Seely (15:42)
Absolutely within a certain within a certain frame, I

Kevin Daisey (15:45)
Well, I love the business model you have and the niche that you have within it. Hopefully, word catches on and people see how they can use your services.

Mike Seely (15:52)
For sure. so we go to like, we go to legal conferences. have a pretty decent presence on LinkedIn. Yeah, I’m up to about 5,000 plus followers now, which feels pretty good. You know, I started about two years ago, growing that up. Of course I was using it like everybody else for job announcements and hunt for jobs occasionally. But then I realized it was so much bigger than that. I really lead into the online legal community and I’ve tried to.

try to grow my brand there and try to help others grow theirs as well with varying success.

Kevin Daisey (16:21)
Yeah. mean, LinkedIn has been amazing and you know, it’s funny because I’ll see like a post by like a lawyer that I know. Um, and I look at the, LinkedIn kind of shows you who you might know that’s liked or commented. And it’s like, the list is huge. I’m like, know every one of these people and there’s a client of mine. There’s a friend of mine, there’s a client of mine. It’s, um, for lawyers, if you’re anyone that’s listening, if you’re just not a business lawyer, but I can, like a plaintiff. Um,

Mike Seely (16:30)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

Kevin Daisey (16:48)
This connections you can make with other attorneys that can send you referrals, make connections, help you with your business. ⁓ It’s a great place to spend some time. I think, you most people think, you know, the video base or Instagram or TikTok, it’s like, that’s where you can get clients, but LinkedIn spending time connecting with lawyers is huge.

Mike Seely (16:55)
Sure.

Sure, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that’s

what I always see too whenever I see it. I was like, oh, this is, you know, this is a client based, you know, kind of post or, you know, video and, um, you know, like you said, like a Facebook or an Instagram or a TikTok is really, to me, seems like the best place to gather clients. I’m not going to LinkedIn to look for an attorney if I need one. Uh, but the business to business, I don’t think it can be beat. Uh, and that’s where I, that’s where my customers are. You know, I don’t need to do this giant shotgun blast where I’m showing up on your

page with my business posts you know the pace the Facebook pages you know for me is more kind of entertainment and Instagram as well I don’t really do too much on TikTok except probably spend too much time there looking at you know Fantasy Football videos but you know this time of year nice so that’s another thing I’ve got a I’m doing a sponsoring a law firm versus law firm nationwide Fantasy Football League right now

Kevin Daisey (17:53)
I won my week this week. That’s right. yeah

Mike Seely (18:04)
Yeah, so it’s firm versus firm. You can have up to two managers on your team. So we’ve got, I literally have guys in California, I’ve guys in Ohio, Louisiana, Texas, scattered kind of all around the country. We’re gonna do a…

course we’re do it you know a trophy for bragging rights with their name on it that’ll travel the name of the trophy is the nuclear verdict trophy so we’re gonna be competing for the nuclear verdict trophy traveling trophy like I said championship rings and then we’re making a charitable donation to the winners charity of choice

Kevin Daisey (18:34)
That’s

Mike Seely (18:35)
And then most importantly, the bragging rights. I’ve had some, we’ve

Kevin Daisey (18:36)
a great idea. What happens to the loser?

Mike Seely (18:39)
got like group texts. Maybe they have to go back to be a doctor for a day or something, I don’t know. Something humiliating, I guess. Maybe you gotta like dress up as your favorite surgeon, Dr. Shaky Hands. I don’t know. Maybe something like that, we’ll see.

haven’t integrated a punishment

Kevin Daisey (18:54)
That’s a great idea.

Mike Seely (18:55)
yet you know after the i got so many questions regarding the draft order i just felt like i was going to be served at any moment you know over the order of the draft it’s like you know

This is not the group of people you want to like upset. But yeah, it’s been pretty fun so far. Most of the guys didn’t know each other. And now we’re two weeks into a group text chat thread. And these guys that don’t even know each other are talking smack on each other and, I’ve got this, or, I should send you this case. I’ve got this. so it’s really been, that was my hope, that would be something that we could have and do some networking off of.

Kevin Daisey (19:16)
Yeah.

Mike Seely (19:28)
little fun, donate a little bit of money to charity and you know make some connections that’s what I’m about a big connector.

Kevin Daisey (19:34)
Excellent idea. love it. anyone listening, lawyers out there, you might want to get in line for next year.

Mike Seely (19:40)
Yeah, that’s what we talked about for a punishment. The bottom four people are out. And we’ll bring in four new people next year. So we’ll see how it goes. But it’s been so far. It’s been so far so good. Yeah, 100%. It’s the motion to tackle Fantasy Football League. So everybody’s got a great legal football name and a great theme for the league. And it’s been pretty fun so far.

Kevin Daisey (19:49)
You’re going to get served.

That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m actually, I’m in the, I’m in a group with some lawyers and Armando and Will over at Leduc. and, it’s been fun so far, so we’ll see how it goes.

Mike Seely (20:08)
Right? Right.

Yeah, I had

I had to cap it this year at two leagues, know, you know If you get too many going you’re like, you know kind of competing against yourself, you know I’ve got this guy on this team, but I’m playing him on this team. So I don’t really know who to cheer for So I’m avoiding that by only having two leagues this year and I’m actually not in the attorney league I’m just I’m on one of the teams because you have to be in the league to be the commissioner But I’m just I’m just the commissioner. So

Kevin Daisey (20:26)
That’s true.

Sure. Nice. You’re

just moderating. I love it, Well.

Mike Seely (20:38)
That’s right. That’s right. hasn’t been that too

terribly difficult so far.

Kevin Daisey (20:44)
Good tip right there for folks if you’re into Fantasy Football, if you want to get all your referral partners or all your lawyers that refer your business in your state or town or whatever, good idea to get everyone together and do your own kind of thing like that.

Mike Seely (20:57)
Absolutely,

absolutely. We’re posting about ours on LinkedIn so everybody can kind of see it. was like, if you do good, if you do bad, we’re going to post about it. So I hope you do good because I’m going to trash you if you don’t. Right? That’s accidental success. I like it. As you know, there’s a huge degree of luck that goes into it. Somebody gets hurt.

Kevin Daisey (21:07)
I was supposed to lose the first week, like by a lot, and I ended up winning. So we’ll see. See if I can continue.

But that’s probably the only way I’m gonna…

Yeah

Mike Seely (21:22)
So who knows especially to start off the year

Kevin Daisey (21:23)
I’m running on all

luck at this point.

Well, Mike, thanks so much for joining me on the show and unique business. I love when some people, when people find a niche area that they can go into. And it’s always just interesting to learn like how they came about that and how that’s going. And very success, a lot of success in, in niching. Niching has been huge for me, of course. And it allows you to build that community.

Mike Seely (21:27)
Yeah, absolutely. Sure.

Yeah, no, we definitely want to

jump in there with for sure. I mean, we definitely want to jump in there and help folks and I think we can make a big difference. Some of these cases add value to cases, increase your verdicts and help you win. That’s the ultimate goal is to help you win and get the most that we can get for these injured clients. It matters to regular people and that’s what I love seeing about from the attorneys, man. These guys, they fight hard.

They fight hard and they care about these people. So anytime I’m around somewhere a bunch of non-lawyer folks and I hear them, you know, kind of dogging on attorneys about that or somebody sees one of these ads where you know they got ten million dollars I’m like it’s not the way that works you got ten million dollars you wouldn’t take that ten million dollars for what these people had to go through usually you know this isn’t this isn’t a lottery winner this is somebody that got seriously injured

and somebody got something from them or some company’s, know, egregious acts. So.

Kevin Daisey (22:32)
or killed.

Well, out there fighting the good fight, man. I appreciate it and great meeting you. Great learning about your business. can’t wait to see you in person and at Law-Di-Gras

Mike Seely (22:40)
Yeah, course. I appreciate it, Kevin. Thank you. Yeah, man, sounds good.

It sounds good. We’ll see you out there, OK? Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate your time,

Kevin Daisey (22:48)
Yes sir, well

stick on with me for a sec and everyone have a great day. Thanks for tuning in. Check out Mike, check out his company, connect with him and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Mike Seely (22:51)
Yeah.

Thanks for having me.