Francois McKinnon: Welcome back to the show. Hi, Oscar. It’s episode 26. How are you doing this week?
Oscar Santamaria: I’m doing good. Doing good. You?
Francois McKinnon: I’m doing great, buddy. You know, the same. You and I talked a couple of days ago and this week we kind of worked on websites and try to get some search engine optimization. It actually seemed like it worked, but it didn’t. Because I was rated second in the three pack on Google business page. And obviously the next day I was at the bottom. Not the bottom.
Oscar Santamaria: Well, not at the bottom. You just weren’t as high as you were. And that’s always kind of like an algorithm change.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, obviously. But it was very encouraging in the morning. And then around four or five o’clock in the afternoon, not so much. But it is what it is. What have you been up to, my friend?
Oscar Santamaria: Not too much. You know, same thing, plugging away, plugging away. I was thinking about, you know, what we should talk about today. And it’s the beginning of the year and everybody has, you know, the same, I guess, resolutions in mind, losing weight and making more money. It’s the beginning of the year and you should really try to set goals for yourself. I mean, see where you were last year, see where you want to be this year. If you track how much you did in sales last year, try to outperform it this year. It’s a layered approach. We’ve spoken about the online presence, the search engine optimization of your website, adding yourself to as many free local listings as you can and, you know, go on social media marketing. Now, when I say that, I’m not really saying Facebook and Instagram. Those things are very tricky for our profession. You know, if you’re something in like, I don’t know, maybe like a dog boarding or something or dog walking or just something that is really something that people like to see you do in that profession.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, the grooming type of thing. We can’t really put what we’re doing out there, you know.
Oscar Santamaria: Yeah, you know, you have these things, you know, during COVID, everybody was doing these dances, all these TikTok. Nobody’s going to take us seriously doing that. So, you know, you got to be very careful what you, you don’t want to be, you don’t want to be cringey. But I do suggest as far as social media goes is LinkedIn. I mean, that’s a professional platform.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, it’s a professional platform.
Oscar Santamaria: And, you know, try to join as many groups as you possibly can. If you have a link to your website, you know, put it in there and then just say, you know, if you’re looking for a good private investigator, click the link below and just keep doing it. Just keep putting your name out there. You know, there’s a couple of other sites. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with these, Francois. There’s one called, it’s kind of like Angie’s List, but there’s one called Thumbtack.
Francois McKinnon: Now, I’m Oh, I’ve heard of that. Is that for private investigators as well?
Oscar Santamaria: Well, it’s, yes, you can have, that’s part of the services that they provide, but it’s, it’s kind of like some sort of thing like Angie’s List where you go and the thing about Thumbtack, I haven’t been dealing with that in almost 10 years, but I can tell you that when it started out, I was never somebody who, who really went in and I was aware of it. I had a friend of mine. She was a PI. She was really struggling at the time, hard getting people to pay her receivables. You know, she called me up, asked her, I don’t know what to do. You know, what should I do? So, you know, I told her some of my suggestions, but I also bought a Thumbtack. I said, listen, I don’t know a lot about it, but this is what it is. It’s some place. And back then, I don’t know, I don’t know what the protocols are of it now, like how much it is, but back then it was pretty reasonable. What it was, was, you know, they got service providers. They got somebody who needed a, let’s say a private investigator for an infidelity case and, and they would put out, they would put out the bid and the first five investigators would be able to contact that person and money would come out of a little bit of a fund. So it was only five and, and your chances are.
Francois McKinnon: What do you mean when you say only five, you mean they took money out of your account when you signed up for them?
Oscar Santamaria: Right. Only five, only five PIs could respond to that ad to that particular bid. So it wasn’t like you had a hundred going in there. So this girl made, she told me that first year alone off Thumbtack, $86,000. It changed her life. She called me all the time. Oscar, I can’t believe I didn’t do this before. And thank you so much. I’m going to name my next dog after you. She had a really old dog and it turns out she was so grateful about that. I really didn’t do nothing. I just said, try Thumbtack. I heard it works, whatever. She actually named her dog after me and she didn’t just name the first name. She named the whole thing. I’m Oscar Santamaria, Jr. She named this damn dog, Oscar Santamaria, the third.
Francois McKinnon: So who’s the second?
Oscar Santamaria: I’m just asking. No, I think it would be the third, right? I would be the, I don’t know.
Francois McKinnon: But $80,000 for a single private investigator is pretty impressive.
Oscar Santamaria: Yeah. But see, the problem was this, is that she started getting rid of all of her subcontractors in the meantime. And I said, don’t do that. Keep them. No, hell no. I don’t ever want to write another report. This is great. I’m going to make more money next year. And I warned her, listen, this is just one avenue of getting work. You have to go out and kind of hunt for it. With your subcontracting job, you can work it as need be. You can schedule it when you’re not doing these Thumbtack cases and Thumbtack cases aren’t going to keep you busy. Maybe one case a week, maybe, if you’re lucky and you can close the deal. She did well, but then they changed the kind of the whole method of it. And she wasn’t doing as much volume as she did. And it turns out she ended up getting herself in a little bit of a bind. So just never put your eggs, all your eggs in one basket.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, all in one basket. Absolutely. I’ve learned that a couple of times in my life where I took on huge clients and whenever you do something like this, they expect you to stop running your business and only be concentrated on them. So lesson learned. Don’t do that. So it’s, like I said, lesson learned on my behalf.
Oscar Santamaria: Yeah, for sure. Just keep plugging away always. Don’t take a hiatus of that. And even if you can, now you know a lot more people probably in the industry than you knew before. So if that ever happens again, just leave it in capable hands. Get the call, get the email, farm that out.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, exactly. And keep networking. It’s very important to keep networking because I’ve done this for over 30 years and I keep networking all the time. And it’s important to reach out to other private investigative agency, bodyguard companies and to tell them, hey, I’m available. If I get jobs, how many people can you provide? Men and women, armed security, drivers, details, vehicles. All of this is very important and you have to stay in touch with these people. And stay with your, keep continuing trying to do some local business networking. You know, there’s always some kind of a dinner meeting somewhere and it’s important to do this as private investigators, even if it’s meeting a client or a friend for a drink or two. The idea is to keep your name out there and letting them know. You know, what I used to do on Fridays, I would spend, if I didn’t work on Fridays myself, I would contact all lawyers. I would take care of my social media, whatever it was back then. But I would reach out to a bunch of lawyers that I knew. By Monday, I had emails coming in and jobs because, you know, they’re busy and they forget about it. You know, oh, I could use this guy to do this case. So, I think it’s kind of important.
Oscar Santamaria: It’s always good to keep your name out there, always. So, you know, as far as networking is concerned, every once in a while, I don’t know, maybe once a month or every other month, they have those FALI meetings where they invite you to come and meet other investigators. You know, they’re trying to sign you up.
Francois McKinnon: And FALI stands for Florida Association of Licensed Investigators, for the people who don’t know.
Oscar Santamaria: Right. Well, yeah. And by the way, they’re not the only ones. There’s FAPI and there’s NALI and there’s just a whole bunch. But that’s a good place to meet other PIs. You know, just go out there. Even if you don’t want to join, you go out there, you meet other PIs, you exchange business cards, you let them know what kind of services you provide, what your rates are at the time, maybe give them a sample report of, you know, an investigation that you may have done. And that really goes far. So, it’s all these little things combined that are going to, you know, get you more work. So, just continue to do that. By the way, speaking of Thumbtack, there’s also another one. It’s called BARK.
Francois McKinnon: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch it. BARK? B A R K?
Oscar Santamaria: B A R K. I’m not familiar with that one as much, but it’s another one of these things. Very familiar to Thumbtack. And, you know, just look at it because it’s not Google Ads, but it’s also a really good possible way to get work because it’s somebody that definitely needs the work and they’re not allowing a lot of bidders. So, if you think you’re a good closer, this might be the thing for you. Remember, somebody made $86,000 in just less than a year, actually. I told her in about April of, I think, 2015 or thereabouts. And by December, she had told me she had made that much money.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, I believe that. But you can catch a wealthy client or somebody that has more issues and they’ll extend the surveillance to two to three men and women surveillance. And that gets the money going. And I totally believe in that. And I believe it’s important also, you were talking about family meetings, but to reach out to other PI companies and executive protection specialists and explain to them that you’re available, find out what they have available, get your rates, then follow up with an email to say, oh, yeah, I can do this at this rate or whatever. But the important thing is communicating with your colleagues out in the field and the owners of the company as you own your own company and I do. And it’s important that they may have some interns that are really, really good. And they’ll say, well, I can give you a special rate because I want that person to get experience and work and be out in the field instead of sitting here at the office, not getting paid or making minimal amount of money. So I always believed in giving a hand to interns. That’s how pretty much I learned from you and many other people. But this is how you have to be. You have to be out there and do the do the job and be out in the field. That’s all it is. So it’s not the end of the world.
Oscar Santamaria: I totally agree. Totally agree with that. You know, you just want to get you want to get that that money rolling in. And, you know, the beginning of the year is the time really to set your plan in place. You know, if you haven’t done it already, just just look at what your books were last year and and try to beat that and continue it. It’s it’s the little things that you do consistently that are going to matter. You know, ask for reviews. If you have like an online presence, you want to build trust in your company. That’s how you do it. The first thing people do, especially in this type of profession, is they look for reviews and, you know, just make cold calls if you have to send out emails in those emails, put a sample report, but just always be doing something like offer a free consultation, get them into the ideas that you want these clients to reach out to you and be able to speak to them on the phone.
Francois McKinnon: And if you can listen to their issues that they have and and with the experience that you have and I, we can figure out what their problems will be fairly pretty quickly. And then you give them your professional opinion of how this should do, how much it’s going to cost, how it’s going to how long it’s going to take. And of course, we provide a full detail report and videos that they can literally have access an hour after we come back from the job. But I think it’s important to the most important thing is once you get a phone call, whether you’re a multi million dollar agency or a new starter at this, remember this the first time you get a phone call and somebody asks you questions, whatever it is you’re doing, stop doing what you’re doing and pay attention of what they’re saying and listen to their issues so you can guide them properly and professionally into what they should do, you know, because most people don’t know, you know, most people think that their husband or wife may be cheating or something, but you have to keep them calm and guide them through this process of hiring a private investigator and how to do it properly and what it’s going to get. And you have to also give them reality checks of what they’re going to be able to, what you think you’ll be able to get. But as I said before, we can’t make people do things they don’t want to do or they don’t do. So with that being said, I think it’s the number one most important thing to do when you’re talking to a client that reaches out, whether it’s on Thumbtack or the other one you said, what is it called?
Oscar Santamaria: Bark.
Francois McKinnon: Bark. So yeah, I think that once the client reaches out to you and talks to you on the phone, I think you should have that and you should be good at what you’re saying and just be a professional, positive, and a good listener.
Oscar Santamaria: Yes, you can’t go wrong doing that. You know, something I want to go back to, if any of you decide to try that Thumbtack and that Bark, you know, only do it if you’re very responsive because, you know, when somebody, when you get that bid that’s out there, you’ve got to jump on it. You got to be right there because there’s other people wanting to bid for it. And this is the type of business where people are emotional, especially the ones that are going to be using that type of platform and they want somebody to respond right away. So if you’re not that person, you know what, maybe those platforms aren’t for you because you have to be highly responsive.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, I get that and that’s kind of important. And thank you for bringing that up because somebody was talking about Thumbtack and they said something to the effect, well, you got to be on your game. It becomes like kind of playing like some kind of a game on your phone. You have to go as fast as you can because somebody else will pick up that job. And if you don’t, somebody else will be invited to bid on that job. So that’s also very important to know. And what else, my dear friend, Oscar, we’re talking about?
Oscar Santamaria: As a general rule, just before we get off that topic, you know, do that. But always understand that you’ve always got to be doing something to sell. They say that a good budget for a small business could be anywhere between five and seven percent of your sales should go into marketing. So, you know, put something towards it. If you can’t put that, put something. If not, put sweat equity into it. If you really want to get work, you’re not going to just have to sit back and wish for it to happen. Sometimes you got to be proactive and make it happen. And I’m telling you, it’s the consistent things that are going to pay off.
Francois McKinnon: Oh, absolutely. You know, like we both know, a lot of times you do jobs over and over again with companies, insurance companies, law firm and stuff, and you don’t get paid right away. So sometimes you have to learn how to be to pace yourself, to be able to include those jobs. And, you know, they’re from professionals. You know, you’re going to get paid eventually. And then after a certain amount of time and you do other jobs in between, I’m not saying just stick with that, but you get, you know, upfront costs. And then at one point you receive a nice check and it feels good. But you’ve already, you know, in this kind of work, you have to get clients, then you meet with the clients, you get paid for the job, you do the job, you get reports, you get videos, you load everything up, and then you finish up with that client, always trying to keep a good relationship for the future.
Oscar Santamaria: Agreed. And, you know, as you’re getting this work, you also want to make sure you have things in place. You want to make sure you have your contracts in place so that you want to make sure that you have your payment apps in place. You want to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Like, you know, pretend you’ve done it before if you’re a novice at this. So if you don’t have any work right now, just make sure, do some little test runs. Okay. I want to see how I can, you know, let me take a look at this contract and make sure that everything is in order that I think that should be there. And also, let me make sure that these payment apps go through. So even if you have to test it with a family member or something.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah, with a dollar. Yeah.
Oscar Santamaria: The last thing you want to do is, you know, have a bunch of different apps and not know how to use them. Because, you know, some people are going to use some apps, are more comfortable using some apps than others. So you want to be, you know, you want to be familiar with all of them so that, you know, there’s no delays in getting paid.
Francois McKinnon: Totally agree. That’s a very good point, by the way, because it’s happened to me before, again, with a credit card payment. And now you have Venmo and CashApp and a bunch of other apps. But it’s very convenient, by the way. We all take them and they’re very convenient.
Oscar Santamaria: Yeah. You know, never use PayPal for this business. You know, somebody doesn’t get exactly what they want on a surveillance at no fault of your own. They can make, I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them do chargebacks. And the problem is with PayPal is that in order for no chargebacks to occur, you’re going to have to send something tangible to the house, like through something like, something where you have to sign, like a cash on delivery or certified. And that’s the only way that you’ll be able to do it. Because one of the things with PayPal is, well, you have to, you have to have something, you know, in writing that you sent them something, some sort of good or service that you actually sent to them. And an email is not going to do it. So just to cover your bases, and let’s face it, who’s going to send, who’s going to send a certified letter of a private investigation agency, you know, to the home of, you know, a wife who’s checking up on her husband, what if her husband finds it? So just do yourself a favor. Just don’t use PayPal. I’ve seen it backfire many times.
Francois McKinnon: Listen, PayPal, I consider with credit card companies, like American Express, PayPal is kind of like this, they’ll take the customer side. And then you have to explain everything to somebody that you don’t know. Like, I’m a member of American Express, so I can, I have some kind of saying, and I’ve been having it forever. But the problem is that when you’re, when American Express protects you as the card user, it’s totally different. And they, this could wait, this could last for 45 days, you know, or longer.
Oscar Santamaria: So speech take a while. You know, I would say, though, the only exception I would say to PayPal, if they insist, oh, I want, I have to use PayPal, I don’t know how to use anything else, say fine. But we’re going to do it friends and family. That way, there’s no fees, and they can’t take it back. If not that way, don’t do it at all.
Francois McKinnon: I’m not sure what friends and families are.
Oscar Santamaria: Oh, it’s just like you give a gift, like to your family or a little, or a little birthday gift through PayPal, and they don’t take out. But that’s the only way I would, I would do it through PayPal, because people can be a little bit shady.
Francois McKinnon: But now you listen, you can sell $20,000 to somebody in a few minutes. And there’s not really any fees that are, you know, it’s not like wiring or, you know, transferring money. So things have changed quite a bit.
Oscar Santamaria: Zelle is the best. Yes. If you can, if you can get people to pay you through Zelle, that’s the way to go. You got no fees, and it goes straight into your account, and they can’t take it back. So when all else fails, you know, just ask them, please send me Zelle. And that’s about it. I don’t think that, I think we’ve covered pretty much everything for today. Just wanted to say one thing. One thing we’re going to do moving forward is we’re going to be having a lot more interviews. You know, we’re going to be interviewing people, local PIs here in the South Florida area.
Francois McKinnon: And they’re going to share, they’re going to share with us the exact same thing that we started doing in the beginning of the show, is share their experiences, where they want to go in the future, what 2025 brings to them. And I look forward to that. It was very fun with Criminal Attorney Jonathan Friedman to have him on, as well as our Marine buddy. Michael. Mikey. He’s a great guy.
Oscar Santamaria: See him on LinkedIn a lot these days.
Francois McKinnon: So next week, we’re going to have some fairly younger PIs than we are, but some that are really hustlers and doing well in life, and their business seems to be going the right way. And we encourage that. This is why we created this show. So we’re going to try to help them get their names out there, and also find out their special memorable cases that they’ve done, because everybody asks me about this. Can you get somebody else to talk about memorable or crazy or wild cases? People love that stuff. And we’ve done it all our life. We go, oh, they’re all the same. Apparently, they’re not.
Oscar Santamaria: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. I really am. A lot of these people, I’ve known for a while, and they’re a great group of people. And if anybody else wants to be on the show anywhere, just email us at Francois. I want to give out Miami PI Chronicles at gmail.com. Yeah, we’d love to have you. Again, we want to hear stories. We want to hear people, how they got into the business, what their journey has been, and what they hope the rest of their journey encompasses. So just give us a call.
Francois McKinnon: Reach out to us. We’re here to help, and we’re here to talk about your company. If you’re a man or a woman, we want to help you out. Anybody out there, we want to showcase your services and what you think you’re doing better or to share with other private investigative agency and to see what other people should do or should not do and also share with us some memorable PI stories, which people seem to love.
Oscar Santamaria: I know you love those, Francois. Anyways, Oscar, thank you so much for joining the show again. And we have some nice, fun interviews coming up next week. So thank you for listening, and please share the show with your friends.
Francois McKinnon: Good night, Oscar. Thank you for listening to the Miami P.I. Chronicles podcast. For all of your investigative needs and a free consultation, please call the McKinnon Investigative Group at 954 513 7414. That’s 954 513 7414.
Thank you for listening to the Miami P.I. Chronicles podcast. For all of your investigative needs in Miami, please contact McKinnon Investigative Group at 954-513-7414 or visit us at www.miginvestigations.com. Please remember to share, follow, and like.
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