Thomas G. Martin appeared as a guest on the School for Startups Radio podcast with host Jim Beach to discuss what it’s like to own and operate a private investigative firm.
A transcript of Martin’s portion of the podcast follows:
Jim:
Hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of school for startups radio. It is Friday the 24th of April and I hope you are having a great day staying safe and I hope your business is staying alive, that you have figured out a way, a path, some way to make it out of this quagmire, this living hell that we are in [inaudible]. We have a fantastic show for you today and we really do appreciate you being with us. We’re going to start off with something very interesting. I know nothing about the private investigative industry is that pie. The only thing that I really know is Magnum P I and never hired one, never been pursued by one that I know of. But anyway, I’m excited today to welcome Martin Thomas to the show. He runs one of the largest PI agencies in the country and I think you’re going to enjoy he and some of the stories after that, we’re going to speak with the laughing billionaire Eliyahu Yon [inaudible] is with us.
Jim:
Great conversation. We have a lot of fun and I think you will enjoy it. It is perfect for a Friday afternoon when we need a little relaxation and a little laughter, a little recovery from the this junk that we’re going through. All right. I wanted before the show started today to give you a word of thought, maybe not wisdom, just a word of thought about the current situation that we are in and how to respond. So for those of you who do not know, our thesis here is very simple that anyone, it’d be an entrepreneur when you forget about creativity, risk, or passion. Now. I know that most of you, I would define entrepreneurship as creative people who take risks, doing things they’re passionate about, right? Oh, good enough. But I disagree with that definition entirely, right? Creativity is useless. 93% of business ideas are stolen from other businesses.
Jim:
There’s no reason to go out and be unique, different. That’s almost never happens. Facebook wasn’t isn’t. So why should you try to be right? Microsoft blatantly stolen from other people. All right, so why are we trying to be unique and different? There’s no reason. So that means just go copy, borrow, or steal someone else’s idea. Now of course, I’m being a tiny bit facetious. I don’t you to steal any copyrights, trademarks, or patents, any intellectual property. That’s none of your business. But I do want you to go out there and find a model and simply copy it. And in today’s world, that is the perfect solution. So many models work are going to go out of business simply because of the macro. Micro is just fine. Copy that business and just don’t accumulate as much debt as they did and you’ll be just fine risk.
Jim:
I hate risk and risk is bad. Anything we can do to reduce risk to ameliorate it, we are going to do other people’s money, bootstrapping, pre-selling, anything we can do to reduce our risks. I am going to sign up for [inaudible]. So having said that, this is one of the least risky times in our lifetimes. I know that sounds crazy to start a business now. That was the perfect time. Think about it. Everything was going to be going bad. Tons of businesses are going to be failing. You’re going to be picking up the Slack from these failing businesses. The demand will be there. People still want stuff. I’m dying or not only a haircut to go out to dinner, but I need a new phone. I need a new computer or I need new shoes. I need new clothes. I got a lot of stuff I need.
Jim:
I’m going to buy. Someone’s going to sell it to me. Be the person who sells it to me. In other words, go out there, find a model, copy it and start executing it. Now your risk now is going to be small. I wouldn’t spend much money to get started. As a matter of fact, I’d spend it as little as possible under $5,000 but if you can sell now, I think how easy it will be to sell a year from now, right? That is the idea that now is the most difficult time to start within to actually get a sale, which means now it’s the best time to start your business. If you can succeed now when things are going badly, you will do great when things pick up and there’s going to be so much failure out there, and I hate this, I hate to even, I think this, but it’s true.
Jim:
There’s going to be so many carcasses out there. There’s going to be people that need stuff, goods and services, and I can’t find someone to supply it. I really do believe that now is going to be one of the best times ever to start a business. Get through this time, the next six months from now until Christmas and your business will continue to succeed. Now, if you have an existing business, the game is a little different. You’re going to have to dig out of the hole and if you can do that for the next six months, well God, speed to you, you will deserve all of this success as you, uh, receive. Also passion. I love passion for my wife, for my kids, for church when I’m a good boy, right? I love passion. Passion though is not something that I reserve for my work.
Jim:
I like my work. I love everything else. I would rather be at Disney with my family. Then at work, which means that there are levels of passion, right? And work doesn’t qualify. That makes it easier. That means I can do anything that I like and still be happy. I don’t have to love it. I like it. I am passionate about the lifestyle, the freedom, the opportunity to succeed, the opportunity to grow a business, the opportunity to be successful and do whatever I want. Wear whatever I want. Drive nowhere, not have a commute every day. Imagine how much time you would save if you dropped your 30 minute commute every day. Anyway, we’ve got a great show for you today. First aid being with us and God speed to you in the weekend. We’ll be right back.
Jim:
we are back and yes, we really do appreciate you being with us. Very excited to introduce you to my first guest today. I think this is going to be fun. He’s in an industry I know absolutely nothing about. His name is Thomas Martin. He is a very decorated D. a agent was also with I guess maybe at the same time the us department of justice and there he was awarded several of their highest awards and worked in over 60 countries and I’m sure he arrested a bunch of really bad guys that you’ve seen on in CIS. He also helped the FBI, the IRS, the secret service and all of their tangental offices. And now though he is out there and he started his own companies, become an entrepreneur, which we love. He is, uh, worlds are one of the top leading PI agents, private investigators, [inaudible] investigative services. Yeah. He has 22 agents that work with him and today we’re going to talk about not only that industry and stuff, but the changes that have happened, some interesting things have happened because of the Corona virus. Thomas, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Tom:
Doing great Jim. Thanks for that great introduction. It’s really a pleasure to be with you.
Jim:
Uh, I’m excited. So everything we know about your industry, we learned from Magnum PI, so big mustaches, really great cars. [inaudible] never pay your bills. Marginal business qualities.
Tom:
The reality. I wish. I wish only at all the girls. I wish even one or two of those, there’s two, no mustache, no Ferrari as I often say when people compare a sir Lincoln or yeah, sexiest man alive. And uh, uh, so we say to put it into perspective for your listeners a Jim, it’s more like Colombo than it is Magnum though. Got the girls too. Well, he got a couple, but he was married so he had to be very, very careful in his pursuit. But uh, we, I still watch Columbo reruns, believe it or not. What is it really like? Is it really a lot of computer work these days? Just like everything else. Well, you would think that part of it is the computer work. When I first started, I got hurt as an agent in 1981 so I’ve been at it almost 40 years.
Tom:
They, there was no such thing as the internet or computers, but most private investigators a little different than us because when I started, I didn’t have any business. I was starving and I had two young kids. Um, and so I took anything I could get and therefore the whole system ended up being a full service investigative agency. Most guys, you know, they, they do civil cases, criminal cases, surveillance backgrounds. They specialize in, in one thing. Uh, the greatest part about the business and why, uh, a lot of people like to get it. Uh, we help a lot of people to try to get into the end of the industry is every day is something different. The only thing I really knew about today is that you were kind enough to invite me on your show. I knew at one o’clock I’m going to be on that show.
Tom:
Other than that, I didn’t know what I was going to do before or after. That’s cause you’re on stakeouts all day after bad guy [inaudible] acts, you get kidnapped. Well, there was more shootouts in my first life though. Now you can control wrong. How often have you been put in the trunk? That’s what I really need to know. Well, the causes I ever got to be in. Twitter’s in the trunk. I was at a young age at one time we were working undercover and he got very excited because the bad guys brought the cocaine and the bus saving along those days, and maybe even today is that you, you have $1 million in a briefcase and you have it in the trunk, so you open the trunk once, show the money dude, bad guy. Then you shut the truck down. Well, if he ever opened the trunk a second time, then all hell breaks loose because that means they’re trying to rip you off.
Tom:
Well, when we opened the trunk for the first time, he got so excited and nervous to shut it. He shut the trunk door or trunk lid on my hand and to end the two class one violators that we were buying the dope from looked at us and said, well, there’s no way these guys are DEA agents. I mean, didn’t say these guys gotta be the most unorthodox. The undercover agents don’t want to talk about the bad news bears. We were at that day anyway, they got arrested and I went off to the hospital to get my hand and soaked in ice and stitched up and everything. So that’s the closest we got to the trunk. All right, so let me see if I get this right. You had your 30 years, 25 20 years with the feds, and so you qualified for a pension. You decided to go out on your own and double dip.
Tom:
Am I right? Is all of this ringing a bell? Well, it’s, what happened was, is I spent 12 years a part of that undercover part of that in international trade and blah, blah, blah. So after 12 years I got hurt and I had to retire. And then the government, I’m sorry. Well, yeah, well, no, no problem. This is so it’s, it’s all good. Uh, so the government, believe it or not, has to retrain you and then they have to retrain your, to make sure you make the same amount of money. Well, they wanted me to go to law school. They wanted me to go get my doctorate degree. And I said, no, no. I only know one thing in life. That’s how to be a private investigator. I don’t know if I’m a very good entrepreneur, but we’ll find out because I waved all, they’re helping me.
Tom:
If I fail, I fail. So that was a great incentive for Beijing. I didn’t know what at the time, but I’m thinking, why did I do that? Boy, I better make this thing go. So I was really hungry. I was really ready to make this just a goal. And you know, I didn’t, I got an office, you know, had an empty your Rolodex, a phone that didn’t ring and no business. And I sat there and read the paper every day for about a month. And finally, you know, just plugging along got a couple of cases and that led to something else. And, and to, to the point now where, uh, you know, we’re very fortunate to be recognized as one of the better agencies in the United States. Okay. How’d you get the first customer then? Actually, the first customer I got, uh, was from another private investigator in another area.
Tom:
Said that, uh, he knew I wasn’t busy. I had a lot of time on my hands and I said, I’ll try to while I’m trying to cut nothing. I didn’t, I was, yeah, I said, great, I’ll take the case. What is it? He said, well, it’s the guy’s already been convicted of raping his stepdaughter and doing a bunch of bad things to her. And I go, Oh man, I didn’t want to do a case like that. And he goes up, well, the guy’s got some money. Said, okay. So I talked to the guy and my brilliant analysis of the case, I told him, I’m not taking it because you’re guilty. I read all the transcripts and it’s painfully obvious that you’re, you’re guilty. And he thought through a trial, given 25 years to life and, but he was insistent. I didn’t have a lot going on.
Tom:
I took the case and the short version is I found out that his stepdaughter and, and her mother made the story up to get all the assets in the marriage because they were getting into divorce. Uh, I found her diary and it said Greg had Virginized me on August 13th, if that was true. Everything that she told the police was a lie. Uh, I found her boyfriend. He said she made it up. Um, I took all this and put it together. Like I was a federal agent in a case taken to the United States attorney’s office and I presented that to the court and to the district attorney orange County. And they basically, they let the charges go. They did not even go back to a new trial. So he was a free man and never had to serve a day in jail. That in itself would be one of the a career case that would,
Jim:
yeah, that’s an amazing story. We make movies out of it.
Tom:
Crap like that. They actually, they actually hear her 100%. Right. But there’s more to the story if you could believe it. What happened was when I was interviewing one of the quote victims, the stepdaughters a friend, she told me, Mr. Martin, when we were in the district attorney’s office, the district attorney who prosecuted your client, I’ve got a picture of his life behind his desk, I a credenza. I go, well, that’s not unusual. What’s the big deal? He goes, well, I just wanted to let you go. He was dating the 16 year old girl and I w scares me. I want to excuse me. The district attorney, the lawyer for the County is dating the victim. Uh, and he was the one that put my guy and is going to put him in jail for 25 years. Yes. So I did what? I only knew to be the right thing.
Tom:
Then the department of justice, they teach you to clean your own linen. So I took it all together. I took it over to the district attorney’s office. I said, you’ve got a problem here with one of your guys, you need to get rid of him and clean it up. I didn’t hear anything for four weeks, so I decided that I would call a press conference. Well, nobody knew me from Adam and nobody’s really showed up except one radio station, K FWB and one girl. And I told them my little story and the next day it was in national headlines and all the papers and they ended up firing the a attorney. He was just barred and the rest is kind of history. So as they say in some of the business circles that that was a great case to start and we’ve gone downhill from there. That’s a pretty, that’s a pretty tough case to start with. You try to match up. So it was, it was a great start.
Jim:
Well that’s an amazing story and it’s heartwarming, you know, I guess because of television we think of the industry as you, no cheating wives and things like that and not actually going the other way. And getting guilty are innocent people freed from a wrong convictions. So Tom, talk to me about growing the business. You finally get successful enough that you can support yourself,
Tom:
right? [inaudible]
Jim:
your next Magnum Palumbo.
Tom:
Who’d you go after? Kojak or who was next?
Jim:
Oh seriously. Talk to me about getting number two, three, four. Talk to me about the growth.
Tom:
Okay, well it was really an easy, easy choice. I was very fortunate that I had spent part of my adult life in being an agent that was asked to go back to the academies, which, you know, like the FBI Academy justice, the, the three letter agencies where they train the guys. And I taught there. And that’s supposedly, if you’ve done that after 10 years of being an agent, it’s supposed to be some of the best agents in the country. So I you a lot of the guys. So after about two years, three years, I needed help. So I went back to those guys in the justice and treasury who had taught other agents and said, Hey, would you like to join me? So that was an easy a basket of fruit to pick from. And so I, I, to this day, 40 years later when I need people, um, and I don’t lose too many people cause I, I, they’re all world-class investigators.
Tom:
I go back to the DEA, the FBI, the IRS or secret service pool of people. And I get my pick of the best of the best. So at one point in time we had 46 investigators and 2005, 2006, um, that were working full time. So, um, a lot of tremendous investigators from that pool of people. So we’re very fortunate. And what, uh, what are the different buckets? So there’s cheating spouses, you know, I’ve lost $1 million in his head and in my aunt’s closet, that bucket. So what are the different buckets of investigations? Okay. Well, there’s a, there’s, there’s really four that, that kind of permeate all the private investigators, which is 100,000 in the United States, believe it or not. So the top notch guys and primary focuses in corporate America for people stealing time, money or product number two are lawyers, civil cases, criminal cases, probate, employment, whatever, whatever they specialize, they call us.
Tom:
We probably have 1500 to 2000 lawyers across the country that use our services. Next is the insurance industry where we’re catching the bad guys, you know, hitting golf balls after they said they hurt their back. Uh, investigating accidents, investigating whatever claims that they submit to the insurance company. And then the last pillar that we say of the four is the public where we do some of the things that you’ve, you’ve mentioned where we’re doing, um, you know, marital surveillances and we’re doing background checks or we’re doing locates, uh, or doing something that the public needs. And so whatever area you’re in, um, our business, there’s no gray area. Either I get the guy off for murder or I don’t, either you catch the cheating spouse or you don’t. If you find the assets or you don’t, or you do a complete background or you don’t.
Tom:
So every day we have to hit the ball out of the parking. And one of the things that kind of overshadows everything is we do all our work product with the idea that one day it’s going to be in front of a judge or a jury. So that’s the motivating factor that tries to keep our product is perceived as possible. So hopefully you’ll think we’re, you know, peering around corners was not a flip door in and in a pipe and that’s, and that represents only about five or 6% of our business, the marital stuff. But, um, let’s, there’s a great need for it. We’d probably get 20 to 25 calls a week in the offices regarding marital surveillances. So a lot of people want that service. Oh my wife and I have our iPhone set on follow each other, find my whatever. And so I know we had nowhere where we’d see another art and we were both too boring to cheat.
Tom:
All right, so, well I didn’t want you to tell your listeners, but we did follow you and we followed you to a church meeting, which I told you why exactly. And I went from there to the librarian. There you go. There you go. And from there I worked at the carbon, the covenant anyway. What percent of the accusations or are true? So a hundred people come in with a hundred different things. All of the buckets, what percent of them actually turn out to be correct? The hunches? Well, the, the, the majority of the, of the cases that we get when you put a percentage on it, B, are they spouses? Are they guilty or not? Believe it or not, 97% of the people that we follow, we catch the other 3% we either lost them or they were having a bad day or they just didn’t do what they’re supposed to do.
Tom:
So it’s pretty, pretty clear cut that when a woman and women’s intuition feels that her husband’s cheating, she’s right. We just got to do our job and catch it when it’s a man and it went and man, it’s called a gut reaction. They’re there. They’re there 100%, like to when a male or female or anybody picks up the phone and calls a private investigator, they got a problem, no question about that because that’s kind of the last thing. And many of the females, their husbands telling me, you’re crazy, you know, Rolex, you’re talking about your magic things and um, and they come to us for finality and that’s how they do it. Um, of course everybody on the criminal side that comes to us, please help me. I didn’t really do the murder. I was framed. I really didn’t do the white collar crime. Uh, I really didn’t do.
Tom:
Most of all of them are guilty and so we have to give them a defense. And sometimes it’s pretty tough when you’re sitting at a table and you know, the guy did the murder and you know, we shot the guy in the alley and shot applied times and you, you work up your, your best evidence against the case and the jury comes back and says to you, not guilty. That’s kind of gut wrenching for a former agent, to be honest with you. But I was taught early on by a very wise criminal attorney. He goes, look, don’t take it personal. It’s not not your problem. We did our job. The district attorney didn’t do his, he didn’t prosecute this case correctly. And that’s why the guy’s a free guy. So, and then, you know, we, we’d get on the other side where we’ve had many murder cases, over 500 where are their cold cases? And we’d go out and, you know, try to solve that and actually catch the bad guys that did the murder. Those are great cases to work, very time consuming and you gotta be on your a game and know what you’re doing. But they’re great cases. We do. It’s one of the things that we’re kind of known for is cold case murder cases.
Jim:
Interesting. So do you spend most of your time now managing the business? Are you, yeah, I would suspect that you spend your time interviewing new employees, taking care of tax filings and all the other boring stuff that us business people do.
Tom:
You’re, you’re pretty pretty right on with that. But I th I, I have a rule that I learned when I became a supervisor in the government when I had like 35 40 agents in my group. What I learned early on and what I tried to do in this practice is stay out of my guys away. [inaudible] they’re all, they don’t need me out there guiding them. They don’t need me looking over your shoulders and I just try to keep the engine going up. My, my, my basic goal and when I get up every morning is to make sure when those requests come in, which are many, many every day, sometimes 25 or 30 a day or two, 300 a week to separate those out to ones that we can help the client. And then I take, take out those cases in and give them out. I don’t have, I don’t spend much time with new employees because, um, I, I can’t remember, maybe the last employee was maybe four years ago, one of our guys retired. So our guys stay. So that part of the business, which I think is something that when you start up a business, hopefully that’s a problem. Um, my guy is some gal stay with me, you know, pretty much through thick and thin. So
Jim:
what kind of marketing do you do now? Are you on the sides of buses or what?
Tom:
No, I haven’t done that. I’m not, I, I heard your interview, I think with, uh, maybe it was Peter economy, but I listened to a number of your, your interviews, the lawyer, I forget his name. Forgive me. But uh, yeah, Peter ASSEAN doesn’t make, you’re a bad guy if you’re on the side of a bus, but I made a lot of mistakes and I think you have to, if that’s okay to make the mistakes, but you got to learn by them. Like I spent, ah, I don’t even want to tell you how much money I spent a month on Google because I thought that would be great. And I was number one on the list and you put in PGI and going, I was really impressed. Look at me at number one. And I’m going, well, how much money am I actually? What’s the ROI ROI on this stuff?
Tom:
I’m going, I’m putting in only 10 grand a month. I’m getting back 10 grand a month. This, geez, I don’t think that’s a smart use of my money. So what we’ve done, now, our marketing is more SEO driven. Uh, we’re trying to keep ourselves up on the engine optimization, about 150 keywords and we have done 450 blogs. That’s a great tip. If you’re just starting out, you know, write a blog, dang it to your website, uh, if you get a podcast, do a podcast, have that, have that, you know, put up on YouTube. If it’s a video, if it’s a, if it’s transcribed, put that on your website and that’s, uh, has a great impact. So all I’ve told was if anybody knows what Google and all their all tourism’s what they actually mean. I don’t think anybody in my office understands it. But we’re, we’re, we, we try that and that seems to be working. So when you put in the keywords, we pop up. And of course that doesn’t cost anything with Google now.
Jim:
Interesting. Interesting. No, no other ads really other than that then
Tom:
we don’t, well, I mean, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been fortunate to, I mean in the old days when I first started out, I didn’t have any mentors. I didn’t have any anybody to look up to because there was really nobody in the business. And I started in yellow pages. So I used to take out a half page and all the books in Southern California, which costs me in those days. So four or five, $6,000. And that was great. I mean, it would just, you know, it was like going to the bank and Robyn it. Um, but then, you know, the yellow pages kind of faded out and that was the main main advertising for plumbers. She had private investigators there. And, um, now, uh, you know, with the change of the internet around 1995 to 2000, I don’t know what to advertise and everything seemed to be not so great.
Tom:
And then, uh, you know, you just, you just have to try and I always say, test the waters a little bit, give it three to four months, don’t spend a fortune. If it doesn’t work, pull out. Don’t be afraid to, you know, uh, you know, fold your cards and go on to the next gate. And I see a lot of guys, you know, they don’t advertise, they don’t have their name out there. Then I see the extreme where they, they get into it and, uh, they, they, they don’t stop it, you know, and they, they advertise, you know, with the local golf course company will punch you just like cigars with the money. It’d be a better use of it. So it’s, it’s interesting in, in, um, every business old habits, little niche or what they do. And, and, um, from with us, it has been now with SEO, that’s, that’s our, our, our main driven, main driving force for our advertising.
Jim:
Interesting. Thomas. Very fascinating business. I hope I never need your services, but if I ever do, you will be the guy that I can
Tom:
call.
Jim:
Mmm. No, I had a kid run away from home one time and he could only get a half mile before he got picked up by the cops. Oh, my kids aren’t smart enough to run away. My wife and I don’t cheat and, uh, we don’t have enough money to have any financial.
Tom:
So, uh, well here’s, here’s the deal on that. And they always say, it’s better to know me and not need me than to need me and not know. There you go. Well, it’s great. It was fun and I enjoyed it. And uh, uh, hopefully if your listeners need anything, they can just go to our free podcast listener page and there’s a lot of free stuff for them to pick up. What’s the URL? I just got a Martinpi.com M-A-R-T-I-N-P (like private) I (like investigator) and then they just click on the page there it says podcast listeners and there’s all kinds of, there’s free websites they can go to. We don’t want your emails, we don’t collect emails. Just go there and you’re my first books on the line for free and a lot of good stuff about divorces and 20 ways to know if you’re making cheating. It’s, it’s all on there at no charge. Just free.
Jim:
Fantastic. Thomas Martin. Thank you so very much. Martinpi.com, and we will be right back.
