(0:00:00) Andre: Challenges are part of what we built. If you don’t go through this, then you’re not going to build something sustainable. You got to go through the challenges and as an entrepreneur, I don’t see them as challenges. I see them as lesson learned. What do you learn? Because every challenge that comes in, you have to learn something from it.
(0:00:19) Andre: If you’re not learning something, I don’t think you can be an entrepreneur.
(0:00:22) Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney and welcome to how they scaled it, where scaling is done with both sides of the brain. Today I’m excited to welcome Andre Wouansi with a passion for entrepreneurship and transforming legal operations. Andre has built an impressive career in the legal tech space. He’s founded Accurate Legal Billing, a cutting edge, AI powered time tracking and billing platform designed to help law firms improve billing accuracy, enhance operational efficiency and optimize revenue.
(0:00:52) Courtney: Andre’s deep understanding of legal industry and his drive for innovation has made accurate legal billing a game changer for firms looking to streamline their financial processes and increase profitability. Andre, it is such an honor to have you here today. Welcome to how they scaled it.
(0:01:09) Andre: Then. Thank you Courtney. Thank you. Such a pleasure to be on your show today.
(0:01:14) Courtney: Amazing. Well, I want to start with kind of where accurate legal billing came from. I know that you had a background in accounting and financial services, and now you’re in legal tech. So what led you to start accurate legal billing and how do you make that transition?
(0:01:32) Andre: Well, that’s a very interesting question. Considering the background that I have, coming from, being a tax advisor, a in the UK to becoming an entrepreneur and, billing delegate in the bigger, 22 years ago, I owned a company that audited bills. For lawful law firm bills and across about 65 countries, we work for some of the largest carriers in TPA, self-insured corporations across the United States, Canada, UK and Australia, etc. so I worked with these guys and I save them to my company billions of dollars.
(0:02:26) Andre: Over the course of two decades. So I saw law firm making the same mistakes again and again and again and again, which means that not only their invoices get delayed because of no payments, they’re spending time back to forward with you being an auditor like monetary years etc.. So this is as casual a nightmare for some law firms.
(0:02:57) Andre: Yeah. So I let my previous company say, you know what, I’m going to do something about this. I’m going to help these people. Right. Timing these and better describe the, the, the the tasks so that they can get paid and they don’t have to be going through it is not me just disputing reductions on their bills. So I came from reviewing bills to, help law firm prevent somebody like me from cutting their bills.
(0:03:32) Courtney: So you kind of work yourself out of a job a little bit.
(0:03:39) Andre: Well.
(0:03:42) Courtney: With that. I am sorry. Go ahead.
(0:03:46) Andre: Yeah, I, I believe, but, sometimes, you know, you realize certain things. Some problems that you probably part of, of the problem. If I can see that. And, you could also be part of the solution. And that’s exactly what happened in this scenario. You know, I was part of the things that happened with the issues that we know from experience and to becoming, the main, the leader of the solution to that problem.
(0:04:25) Courtney: Yeah. It’s almost like you kind of saw, like in the future, you knew that someone was going to solve this problem, someone was going to eliminate this role that you are currently in. And so it’s better to be part of that solution than to be the thing like it’s designed right?
(0:04:41) Andre: Exactly. And like I say to lawyers, you know, would you trust somebody? He had no experience to go and defend you. Or would you want someone who’s been there, done it to defend you?
(0:04:58) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:04:58) Andre: So and sometimes people said to me, Andrew, when I presume our platform and say this solution can only be created by someone who only to Bill or someone who was sophisticated, why do people refer to that bill’s. Yeah. So you want.
(0:05:19) Courtney: You’re the man for the job. I’ve been so, going from accounting and financial services to legal. I mean, that’s like a pretty big jump, and that’s. Were you a developer? Do you have, like, experience in developing or did you just work with developers, like with your vision?
(0:05:41) Andre: Never been a developer in my life. Never wanted to be one. It’s a great job. I love it. I love seeing people and do what they do. I’m more of a visionary post. I can set a bit of things in my head and. And then the people bring that to life. And that’s exactly what happened.
(0:06:08) Andre: Was able to, as an accountant, you have you get trained to think in a logical fashion, just like the developer do. I think there’s a kind of synergy between what I did as an accountant last and tax advisor, to what a developer do. So it was a very, I wouldn’t say easy, but easy enough transition from being, an accountant to, what I was doing.
(0:06:45) Andre: So my previous company, I took the position of, finance. I was the CFO and the CEO of our group. And then when I left, I created the job. Just saw that. But the problem with OCG is.
(0:07:05) Courtney: Yeah. Awesome. And, so it kind of sounds like you align really well with web developers just because of that. Like logical analytical thinking that you both have. So your vision was able to be translated pretty well into accurately. Correct. The platform we see today. But we’re seeing like challenges as you guys were getting started with building out the initial product.
(0:07:32) Andre: Well, like in any where there is any company, any business, they start the tremendous amount of challenges. I remember you going to see someone, when I spoke to him and said, hey, I’m going to add somebody I’m not going to name you because is well-known in, in the industry. I saw him. I said, look, I have this vision and I’m going to build it, to help law firm.
(0:08:04) Andre: His reply was, I’m not sure that’s going to work. I said, what? This person. This person tells me that he’s not sure is going to work, that the law firm going to appreciate it. And I like, well, I helped you over the past two decades saving tons of money. So are you saying that you feel me?
(0:08:33) Andre: That’s the way I looked at it. I’m like, here’s here’s what I’m going to breach the market. What impact that is going to have on company like he’s right. Because then I’m going to show people how they can comply. So they don’t give away their money. Right, right. So this reduction does not happen. So for me challenges are part of what we built.
(0:09:06) Andre: If you don’t go through this then you’re not going to build something sustainable. You got to go through the challenges. And as an entrepreneur I don’t see them as challenges. I see them as lesson learned. What do you learn? Because every challenge that comes in, you have to learn something from it. If you’re not learning something, I don’t think you can be an entrepreneur.
(0:09:30) Andre: You gotta learning from every step that comes in.
(0:09:34) Courtney: Right. And also, just like the mindset of you’re looking at challenges is a bad thing. Like it’s going to get pretty hard pretty quick because there’s so much of it. So if you’re you’re able to shift that mindset and really see it as an opportunity and to learn, grow. That’s a lot easier to to take as a person day in and day out.
(0:09:54) Andre: Yes, that’s true. And quite often when, you know, one of those entrepreneurs that if you say no to me, I don’t hear it as a no, why here? It’s a yes. You say to me that something is no good. What I’m here is is very good. Yeah. Yeah. So because you cannot allow people to bring you down, you can’t keep us sometimes and not understand the ideas that you have in your head.
(0:10:22) Andre: They don’t know your vision. They don’t know where you got. And if you just get people feedback, based on that feedback, you decide to do, go left or right might end up in the wrong place. So you got to make your own decisions. And every feedback for me is a positive feedback. You got to have a positive mindset.
(0:10:46) Andre: Yeah. You you not going to crush me by giving me a negative feedback? Because for me, as I say, it’s called lesson learned. I have to decide when you giving me feedback where I come from. What is the place that feedbacks come. If this comes from a good place I’ll take it. If you come from a bad place, I’ll leave it exactly where it is in Korea.
(0:11:13) Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. So having that perspective is like, not everybody knows all the context. And it is important to like, understand constructive feedback and make those changes. But you don’t really need to be kind of the eternal optimist as an entrepreneur.
(0:11:30) Andre: And, and and that’s one of the lessons that I tried to teach your entrepreneurs today. Let never take to heart and it’s you, but it’s been given to you because nobody knows where you’re going to end up tomorrow. Only you and Godness because at the end of the day, you got to do your work. You got to keep it going.
(0:11:52) Andre: If not, you never going to reach it. And people quite often give up before they get to the point where the companies can return. And be successful and they give up.
(0:12:02) Courtney: Yeah. Well, so your original vision of accurate legal billing to where it is today, like how much that means over the the time that you have been in business.
(0:12:13) Andre: Oh, wow. Over a past decade. I would tell you a lot of things have happened. When I look at the original design of AOB, literally just less than ten years ago. Yeah. Just to show you how the vision has changed lot. I don’t recognize that I’m here. Recognize it. Because over the past, just over the past four years, the the innovative technology that happened made us much better.
(0:12:47) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:12:48) Andre: Today, for example, I have a mobile app. Now I can just hold it on. My attorneys can both be recorded time entry and ultimately populate that on the dashboard. And they can edit. I have a tool that will write time entries for their attorneys. Make sure that entry is compliant with the client guidelines. So which one’s not the same?
(0:13:13) Andre: You know we used machine learning, but today we’ve some of the latest tools out there. Some of the latest technology. I looked at the application that I had, five years ago, even just five years ago, let alone at the beginning of a job. And that don’t, Rick. Not. I looked at the design. I looked at everything. Wow.
(0:13:33) Andre: What were we doing there? You know, but that was a starting point, I’d say over the past of five years, at least, a lots of things that happened. The technology so much. And today AI is more, accepted, widely accepted. We have better technology wise. After. So we are also taking advantage of, of everything that was out of date that we can, to make sure that we give our customers the best product.
(0:14:10) Andre: Not too badly.
(0:14:11) Courtney: Yeah. I think with a I mean, because you guys started ten years ago. Yeah. I mean, just the technology has changed so much. And so when you look at the original version, the version five years ago, that was probably the best technology that was possible. Yeah. And it’s just rapidly evolving. So, you know, your job is really just to stay to not be to not rest essentially to not be okay with where it’s at.
(0:14:37) Courtney: And you.
(0:14:38) Andre: Can always.
(0:14:38) Courtney: Forward.
(0:14:40) Andre: You can’t rest in my industry. Yeah. You when others also to show how things have changed over the last ten years. When I usually go to conferences, whether it’s the elite, whether it is they’re idiots, tech people. Oh, you should talk about my product when people observe. Oh, wow. We didn’t do something like that existed that big. Fast forward ten years later.
(0:15:04) Andre: When I go to conferences these days, everybody is oh, time entry compliance. Yeah, we know that. Oh, these people do these people. You know, things have changed. People learn the industry is not what it was ten years anymore, because now people fully aware of what we do and now we have companies out there, and I know a few of them who are trying to copy what we do.
(0:15:31) Andre: And someone once say to me, a very wise man once said to me, how was big issue to the Up, why people copy my ideas? He said, Andre. And this was, a director of a very well-known company, RoboCop. He said to me under you, I tell you what, it you know that you good? What you built is very good.
(0:15:57) Andre: When people start copy, there’s nobody copies your product. Don’t worry about it. You know, some. And then us, you know, even with 20 plus year experience to panic. Why people copying my ideas? But these wise men told me. Don’t worry about. Yeah, it’s. People don’t copy ideas, and they. You don’t have you don’t have something good.
(0:16:20) Courtney: Yeah. I think also like, you want other people. It’s like you want to see what other companies do and how they take it. And, you know, there’s no me. There’s like, there’s a lot of positivity and competition, I think. And yes, it’s also spreading the word about what your product is. So as long as your what you’re producing is, you know, top of the line and the best option, these other companies, when they’re promoting, you know, the time compliance.
(0:16:46) Courtney: They’re actually also like supporting your business a little bit easier, because I imagine in the early days when you were just launching, like you said, you had to educate a lot. So how did you get those first few customers to, like, buy in and start using the product?
(0:17:00) Andre: It was very, very difficult to get them to actually use the product. People love the idea, but we are in an industry where if you ever want, we know for changing their mind. Changing the static is really, really hard. Yeah, they love the idea. They can see that they’re losing money, but for some reason people are not willing to change.
(0:17:28) Andre: Yeah, you want you gaining the industry where you want to change people’s habits and it’s very difficult. People don’t want to change. So we faced that initially, and we were fortunate enough to have 2 or 3 very large law firm. He believed in us. Oh, nice.
(0:17:51) Courtney: You just were those connections you had made in your previous, work, or were those, like, brand new connections that you were bringing out?
(0:18:01) Andre: So we reached out to managing partner at those firms, and then we said, look, we have a fantastic application. We can help you do this, do that. And they say, okay, CFO, get on the court, talk to and see what he and we had other companies that did not want to integrate with us, but they larger than us.
(0:18:23) Andre: They saw us as competitors even though they did not have a product. If we had in the background or same company wanted to buy my software but shrunk, they did not want to integrate us. I don’t know if it was a tactic to try to make me sell the companies that you should, but one particular law firm am 200 of.
(0:18:51) Andre: They’ve really opened up the door for us because the CFO got on a call with us and then said to that particular big company about, they’re not going to advertise. Then he said to that we need you to integrate with are.
(0:19:10) Andre: And the management of that company say, well, we’re going to charge you fees. And there are certain, of course, and that we’re not going to charge you anything. They’re not going to charge you anything because we’re going to do all the work. I decided to do the entire to invest my money, to do the entire integration. I want you to prove it.
(0:19:32) Andre: And 200 law firm. We can do this. Second, we would generate the solution, the result that we promised you. You see, if we set up. If you do, you have us for a very long time.
(0:19:47) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:19:49) Andre: And we did that to our platform.
(0:19:55) Courtney: It’s, it’s such an important risk to take. And because ultimately, like, what you were, what you got at the end of it as being successful is a case study, which then you could take to other law firms, and you have this big money behind you and this relationship with we got a great testimonial out of it. But when you took that risk, did you feel like it was a risk or did you feel like, well, this is just what we have to do right now?
(0:20:18) Andre: I didn’t see as a result. For me, it was an opportunity I was dreaming for having the opportunity to just go up there, give me a chance. It was all about giving me a chance and I’m going to prove to you what we can do, right? So I will invest my money to prove to you, to show you what we can do.
(0:20:37) Andre: Once we dig the law firm back talks, they were given references to the big law firm, the CFO pick up course and say this. Said I used to sign up with Andrew. You can sign up that software is being generated results for us. And as I said, that firm believed in us. You know, there’s still a customer over these years that’s still using ERP application.
(0:21:05) Andre: And for some reason, they’re not made to do well in Hatton’s version. They were not telling their about the enhanced version. We show it to them recently said, you know, here’s the latest technology. They are so happy they are. This works for us. And he’s been giving us a tremendous result. You know, we are achieving 98%, 99% compliance, but we don’t know what the other new software is going to do better than this one is doing for us today.
(0:21:35) Andre: Said they not interested in changing even though we said this is much better than what you have. When I said that the result is there. So for them it’s not need for them to move to a later technology if what we have. Which tells me that even though that was our initial application, was the best, yeah, I thought.
(0:22:01) Courtney: Yeah, well in it and it’s still performing for them. So I think it’s right. That’s amazing.
(0:22:08) Andre: And we, we can’t try every three years. So we’re happy I’m happy.
(0:22:12) Courtney: Yeah. And that that client did you, you were just doing cold outreach. You were just calling up random. Not random, but you were just calling up law firms and just trying to get us on a third strike.
(0:22:25) Andre: Initially, I tried different ways to approach law firm. First, I tried calling people. Yeah. And where you trying to call? You not going to reach a managing partner? You’re not going to reach a CFO or even a regional assistant. They’re probably not going to pass on the message. Yeah. So I try different things, different things. And I let you try something which was I’m going to stop because at one point I was going even to the building.
(0:22:55) Andre: Managers say these are the people who seen the issues. They know the problems. So there will bring this to the executive and say, give us this tool, which is going to help us. Yeah, yeah, it was a good time. We will realize is I’m going to try something different. I now when from the managing partners now decide I go for managing partners.
(0:23:22) Andre: And now I’m going to ask them to push it down. And then once I push it down, those people are going to reach out. Because now if we go through the top and the top, I believe that this is something that they’re interested in. They’re going to push it out, say they can expect somebody to come back and tell them what they thought about AOP.
(0:23:47) Andre: So I always went to the managing partners. We said, please give me report. You just allow me to show you what the platform produced. I just want to show to YouTube why platform could be if it doesn’t work for you, but thought give me a half an hour of your time, you’re okay. CFO, SEO, billing director, get a look and see what this technology is all about.
(0:24:10) Andre: And now I have opportunity to actually show people the solution. We go over the problems that you have and we show you how we fix those problem feet. Now you have to report it back to the managing partner. So we find, by going from the top where you are very successful, you can get some projects.
(0:24:32) Courtney: You were able to reach those people. Even if it was just to be like, let’s talk to people below you and then they’ll come back. But yeah, that is that still the, strategy you take, or is it a lot easier now that you have a reputation? You have, you know, notable clients? Is is it still kind of this cold outreach that you, that you get the word out these.
(0:24:55) Andre: Days is still part of our strategy today. We have customers come in word of mouth that we show we have consulting that then working with us that with, businesses, we have other management partners. CFO so now lots of new client also come for references, right. From about other firms. So but we still, we still doing the same thing.
(0:25:22) Andre: We are still reaching out to managing partners and, and and get started conversation from there and and it’s still very successful doing it. I was to get quite now.
(0:25:35) Courtney: Yeah. That’s really interesting. And so, when you first started as a ten years ago, you said everyone’s very hesitant. No one wants to change, but now they’re everyone knows what like compliance I compliance, that kind of thing is it’s is it a lot easier to sell. You have to do less education then, our law firms seem to be changing culturally to, like, be more accepting of a.
(0:26:00) Andre: I believe that is lot easier today. Because at some point it’s something that I mentioned earlier. Having competitors also makes you make it easy because now other people, it’s not just a job that is going out there and talking about org compliance, talking about AI. There’s other companies also talking about it. So now we also being put into some meeting that maybe another company started.
(0:26:29) Andre: They like okay we need to talk to another vendor. We need to talk to another company that do some similar thing. So we’re now also being called to the table because of our competitors. So is lot easier today than it was ten years ago. People are more accepting and also believe that Cuzthey also kind of help in the processing.
(0:26:53) Andre: Initially it hurts us a little bit at the beginning. But, I think once people settle and then understood that, hey. We could shut down the offices and then go work from home. Now, we can also use this it because everything before there was server base, everything was locked on the server in our base in a law firm, somewhat.
(0:27:19) Andre: So there was no cloud. People weren’t using the cloud. So. So for us coming into the market was, are you going to be cloud? Yes. Oh no no, no, we don’t want cloud services. We want on prem. Everything is on prem. Everything is on a machine somewhere locked into it. So nowadays, because a lot of things in the cloud is in, makes you also a little bit easier for us and for people to accept that, okay, you already in the cloud.
(0:27:47) Andre: Your business cloud. We can do business together. Yeah.
(0:27:51) Courtney: That’s all that’s very interesting that Covid had that kind of impact, where it just opened up people’s minds a little bit to like, let’s people. And what could be secure is and I wonder if I’m sure a lot of other tech companies experience not sure that I have an uptick with, with a pandemic.
(0:28:09) Andre: Yeah, I know originally it was it was a bit difficult. It was a bit difficult for, you know, but, when people started coming back into the office, we realized that there was a shift in mentality. People are now open to on to, to to talk about, okay, how can we do this Apsa, offer is something ever happened that place we don’t want to be stuck.
(0:28:34) Andre: You know, lots of law firm today. Moving to cloud. Compared to what was ten years ago, or if imagine Covid, you know, five, seven years, so is much better today and people are more accepting. Yeah. Little industry I would say they’re still a little bit reluctant to is not like any other industry. Are very, very reluctant to accept new things.
(0:29:02) Andre: The incidence rate has changed. It’s increased a lot over the past ten years, and I still believe that it’s still a long way to go.
(0:29:11) Courtney: Yeah, well, I imagine that like, as generations, like, enter the workforce, like younger generations, the more the way they look at these things, it’s just different. Because if you grow up with technology, you’re not as, like, nervous. Yes. Adopt it. And ten years ago you’re probably talking to people who like, they’d have to be an early adopter to to accept it.
(0:29:31) Courtney: So yes, hopefully this gets easier and easier.
(0:29:34) Andre: And those are that’s that’s true. Because when you look at the law firms of a, the youngsters coming out of law school, came out ten years ago. Five years ago, they made that technology. Right. We still have some partners, some senior partners of firm who used to write their time on the, on the sheep and paper and then give it to the assistant to try to create a time entry that way.
(0:29:59) Andre: So we see a lot of people doing that. Which is the reason why we came out. We built this mobile app technology that can help partners, attorney such to, to dictate. And the AI is going to capture that interest for you. You don’t need to see that on right timing. Yeah. Because sometimes we we came across people where the systems struggle with the timing because the handwriting of the partner is not as beautiful.
(0:30:32) Courtney: Right.
(0:30:33) Andre: We could be so they’re trying to figure out they go two, three time with the managing partner. Oh, with, senior attorneys and say, oh, what did you say here? What do you say that? And, so it just a waste of time. A lot between the parties. So with our mobile app, they can, record time entries.
(0:30:54) Andre: Just. Okay.
(0:30:55) Courtney: Yeah. So what? Because you’ve obviously been doing this for a long time there, and for about ten years. How do you measure success now for Alfie? Is that do you have, like, growth goals or are you trying to just produce the best product possible? Like, are there specific metrics or milestones that for you indicate sustainable growth?
(0:31:18) Andre: Well, personally growth for me because growth you know everybody has a definition of growth. What is growth from a company might not be groups for somebody else. For me growth is where are we today compared to ten years a bit. When I look at my company and I see all the wonderful things that we’ve done for our customers.
(0:31:46) Andre: The new opportunities that we created for people today with over 100 employees, over 130 or something employees, we would say that for me, given the opportunity to give you an opportunity to return to work mothers, a to me is growth. I created this company to help people, giving this opportunity. I have graduate in my companies.
(0:32:16) Andre: I have returned to work mums that been home. They were at the working IT environment. They went home to look after their kid for 14 years and they come back to the workforce. Nobody can take them. I said, don’t worry. You have a place to be. We have a number of ladies like that in our offices. Gina works for me.
(0:32:38) Andre: That is growth. That is. How can I help these people? A second? When we look financially, we look at our customers, what we generated for them over the past five years. We realized that we generate over $225 million CDs. Okay. That for me is growth. Growth for me is also looking at these people, customers say, wow, we done this for you.
(0:33:06) Andre: Because of us. You are $245 million better off today. And the time that you save, which is, you know, we can’t quantify it, you know, because one thing we have to understand is when an attorney what’s a time injury and then you get billed eight weeks late, you get four weeks for five weeks later. And then that bills gets audited eight weeks later.
(0:33:36) Andre: And they you have to come back to that and you can say, hey, we need you to provide a better narrative just due to the time you need. We need all this information eight weeks later. We see them that time. Yeah, we prevented you from doing that for going through that hassle. And because we done that, your bills gets paid faster.
(0:33:59) Andre: So you better cash flow lawful. So I can’t quantify everything, but the ones that we can, we know we save them over $225 million over the past five years. And so it would be a lot more over the past ten years. We don’t know how many hours of, you know, a pure time between the all these attorneys, we say we don’t know how many hours we saved the billing team, the billing department.
(0:34:30) Andre: We don’t know what we’ve done for their cash flow, because we improved that tremendously. So there’s some of those growth, that will come quantified today.
(0:34:41) Courtney: Yeah. That’s, so you’re really thinking about growth more in like, impact rather than like hard numbers. I mean, I’m sure the numbers of your business like those are important to you, but it seems like you care more about impact that you’re making on your team and on your clients. And that’s really what you focus on when you’re thinking about success for me, right?
(0:35:01) Andre: Yeah.
(0:35:01) Courtney: That’s amazing. Well, and like, speaking of kind of your team, yes. You’ve been the leader, even like the CEO, the founder of this company. How has your leadership style changed over the years and what has been like the most effective, kind of leadership strategy that you’ve taken?
(0:35:21) Andre: Well, I would say learning. One thing that I do is learning every day and, and, and then transfer that to my staff. So is, Some of the things that I’ve been putting in place, my company is helping Numpy’s to understand is I’m going to do that and also to understand the value that to bring to the person and not, for example, I help them change the way that they speak about themselves, about their colleagues, about what they do.
(0:36:07) Andre: And I’ll show them how being positive not only impact your work, so not only impact your work, but also impact your personal life. And there’s certain phrases that you no longer allow to use in our company. For example, you can’t say, I would try my best. Because when someone says, I try my best, what you put on on your side is that 50% of you mind already saying you’re going to fail.
(0:36:46) Andre: Yeah. Can you tell yourself you’re going to fail before you even go out to do what you say you’re going to do? I said to my staff, switch that. You say, I will make you happy.
(0:36:57) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:36:57) Andre: The magic happens. Yeah. So I spend a lot time and mentoring my employees, changing their mindset how they see their work, how they see themselves. And I’ve realized that over the past few years that change is impacted a lot in our growth. We now can deploy some of those faster with the same people.
(0:37:28) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:37:29) Andre: Just be to change the mind. The way that we look at something when a task been given, nobody can say, oh, I’ll try my best to make this, to complete this. No. They say, oh we do it.
(0:37:43) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:37:44) Andre: And you cannot imagine 100 people say I would do it. I would do it as 100 times as. Yeah. So to me that is one of my major impact on my staff. Over the past, 2 or 3 years. And we deploy, one of our latest technology law firm and, in Philadelphia, the firm was very instrumental in analytic notion, but my team deliver within the time frame.
(0:38:21) Andre: Yeah. For the first time. Yeah, we have the full technology. This is a brand new technology. We deliver exactly. And even a week ahead of time.
(0:38:34) Courtney: That’s amazing. I mean, with tech, everything’s delayed all the time. So that’s that’s pretty incredible. But it’s like I’m not it’s all about the mindset. And like having people just be more positive and honestly like even just saying let’s let’s say I’ll try to say I will do like that’s just like forcing yourself to believe in yourself. Exactly.
(0:38:58) Courtney: So hold yourself accountable and hold yourself to a higher standard, which, I think is, is probably why you’ve had such a huge impact since language is so important, the way that we talk about ourselves, like you said.
(0:39:12) Andre: Is, is because you talking to people and, sometimes we we don’t appreciate is. But you talk to yourself more than you talk to people even, you know, same the same way you seen a lot of things in your head. You yourself. I lead people to just change to we are they talk to themselves. They see they easily have better life.
(0:39:32) Andre: They improve, they will grow. Just by changing the way that you think, the way you talk to you. So, yeah. Tremendous impact on on our personal life and our business at ours. Coach my staff and say, look, there’s no difference between what you say, personal life and, work. Now, people might look over and say, no, there’s a, there’s a there’s a set.
(0:39:58) Andre: There is no. Because we all spend in majority of our time what. Right. So if you spend some of your time doing something you don’t love, doing something you don’t like, you are spending your joy of your time being sad, miserable. Yeah. What kind of like is this something you love? Change the way you talk about yourself. You change the way you talk about people and you see how you live.
(0:40:31) Andre: So there is such change.
(0:40:33) Courtney: Yeah, I love that. I think it’s that again, it’s as you get it insight. It’s that, it’s not that it’s easy, but it’s it’s simple and like the goal, it’s an easy thing to identify negative self-talk. It’s really easy to identify when you’re being negative or not, not approaching things the right way. So yeah, that’s a really good piece of advice for, for other entrepreneurs or or leaders out there, is that it can make such a huge impact so quickly.
(0:41:01) Andre: Because if you if you are there and you’re a young entrepreneur, my advice is always being that you got your say on goals. You got to know why you going into what are you going into, what it should not be only because I want to make money. Yeah, because if you going I never seen an entrepreneurs start saying, oh, I’m doing this because I want to make money.
(0:41:28) Andre: You will fail because there’s going to be some challenges that you need something more than money to pull you up. Yeah. Make you keep going. And if you a is money Michelle. Yeah I guarantee you fail because not that there’s so many challenges. As we discussed earlier, you need to take.
(0:41:58) Andre: Your goal and set them up right. And also you need to know how to find what you define as success. Right? Success as I make as I told you earlier, growth for me is different from growth from somebody else. Success for me is different from success from somebody else. Initially, those small goals, very, very tiny go. My goal could have been, hey, I done a demo today and somebody say this application is good, even if you don’t buy it.
(0:42:30) Courtney: Right?
(0:42:31) Andre: You give me positive feedback. I hold on to it. Yeah. Neighborhood on the.
(0:42:39) Andre: So and that for me was my small very very small go go system to high. Just a time. It could be just somebody telling you something positive. You say thank you very much. I choose something really good. Hold on to that. Yeah, bear on that. Because tomorrow somebody is someone else and say, hey, this is rubbish, right? Right.
(0:43:07) Courtney: But you brought all the good stuff too. Yeah. Evens it out way more.
(0:43:12) Andre: And that’s again where your mindset is, comes in. Because when you hear the word that is rubbish, you think about the one that told you two weeks ago. That’s fantastic. Yeah. Are you brought on?
(0:43:24) Courtney: Yeah.
(0:43:25) Andre: Again it’s your mind.
(0:43:27) Courtney: It’s all. Yeah.
(0:43:28) Andre: You got to know the right mind. And it’s something that I believe a lot people can do. If you offer this challenge, if you also let us not. Deny the fact that you going to be prepared to work very long hours. Yeah. Okay. You have to work very long hours. There are times that I worked 18 hours, 20 hours, 21 hours.
(0:43:55) Andre: Yeah. All right, so it happens, right? You also have to be prepared for that and also be prepared to work. You know, hours are not getting paid for it.
(0:44:06) Courtney: And that’s your main goal is money. Like it’s is that it’s yeah. That’s where you’re going to fall apart and you’re going to give up. So use that to have a bigger goal in mind, some kind of impact that you’re making to.
(0:44:17) Andre: Yes.
(0:44:18) Courtney: Keep moving forward. And
(0:44:21) Andre: Yeah, that drives you right. You have to have something that drives you far better than, you know, doing for yourself. Yeah, I set goals. You know, I looked I looked around and I was like, okay, I’m happy. It’s funny. I’m happy. Must be used in a better position. The family is in a better position. That makes me get out of paid every day.
(0:44:43) Andre: And yeah, I sometimes you also have to look at it and think, all right, every decision that I take impacts hundreds of thousands of people. Yeah. Like you try not to think about that. What the. Trying to think more positively. Okay? I’m going to change their life. Whatever we do here is going to change. The life is going to change the way, and people are going to use this, joining our company as a stepping stone to get into the work of, you know, work, you and to work and, and everything.
(0:45:18) Andre: So you had to find your own ways, if you can say it. What do you believe to be the reason for you to do this? And if you don’t have that, this is going to be a struggle.
(0:45:33) Courtney: Yeah. Well, so, looking ahead, then next, we think about your impact. And, you know, you’ve had all this experience over the last ten years. What do you what are your plans for accurate legal billing billing in the next five years?
(0:45:48) Andre: Wonderful. That’s a very interesting question. I don’t know what they’re planning for five years. I’m going to be I’m going to tell you.
(0:45:54) Courtney: It’s really hard to have five year plans now just with the way.
(0:45:57) Andre: Yeah, I understand people are saying, oh, are we going to plan for this? I plan for that. I think somebody, an investor, were talking to me. So today I’ll come back to a question and then you ask me for a business plan. Said, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I don’t need to present a business, but go to the people and graduate from school in a bill.
(0:46:19) Andre: Server companies don’t ask me for business, but because I’ll never give you what my business plan is. My vision. Me? Look at everything that I built. So I don’t really know where we going to be five years from now. But what I could tell you is that we continue to innovate, we continue to support our client. We continue to grow our business.
(0:46:45) Andre: Right now, we’re adding another company to our portfolio, because they’re new. We want to challenge to other big players in the market today in the building world. So we using AI to eventually view invoices. And you know, we going to disrupt things that so much I can tell you. Yeah we got technology that we’re building and we deploying and we’re going to disrupt a lot of the injured.
(0:47:16) Courtney: So that’s that sounds good to me. I think you have the proven track record and, kind of a clear path forward just to kind of stay on top of the technology and keep talking to your clients, figure out what they need so that, that’s all make sense. Active. So where can people find you online if they want to connect?
(0:47:41) Andre: You can visit our website accurately billing.com. You can, find on LinkedIn. And that’s the only social media platform, LinkedIn or Twitter. Those are the only social media platform. I don’t have time for a lot this year. I wouldn’t even know. Yeah, the. But certain things, I never had an account for, like, Instagram. All these kind of things.
(0:48:05) Andre: Yeah. So my kids always say that we can’t find your social media.
(0:48:10) Courtney: Well, that’s. That’s okay.
(0:48:13) Andre: But it’s a good thing for me. So, you can go to our website. And then you find me there. My website. I get a bigger building. You can easily reach out to me. On linting, responsive to, to my messages. And also we we certainly. And the next week or so, we’re going to have our new, our new US company, live online with people.
(0:48:45) Andre: So there’s going to be a lot, disrupter into the building and it’s all EBS submissions. We’re going to make it really easy and, better and cheaper for fun to as some of the bills into the even systems. You imagine today being a little fun. Let’s say you submit 400 invoices, and you have to email, and then you have 35 even systems that you have to go to say, what law firm doing today is that they have to do with 2 or 3 people in-house to do that.
(0:49:25) Andre: With our technology, you can have one person and that can upload these invoices into all the various application, and they can see all the results, and they can do a lot more than that. Yeah. In terms of metrics and also in terms of feedback that they get from gossip in system. So you no longer have people going to 35 different people in Porto to do the same thing 35 times.
(0:49:52) Andre: Not. They can go into one portal, open it up, do what they have to do, see the results come back. And we been listening to law firms. The ping pong. See these new technologies? A new solution, a is going to, cover a lot about who’s going to be a relief for a lot of firms, whether you big or small.
(0:50:18) Andre: And we know that, compared to do not have that solution because the firm that used in our bits day coming to us and say we love to have this and this is how we start to build the list for then copy is go now is going live ready for them to use. And we’ve been, we’ve been doing a press release, in a couple new new weeks ahead and to let know that the platform being cup amazing.
(0:50:49) Courtney: Well, congratulations on that. On that launch and interesting, exciting time for you guys right now. And hopefully will lead to a lot more growth and a lot more impact overall.
(0:51:01) Andre: Thank you.
(0:51:02) Courtney: So I’ll we’ll also link to your website. Answer your link. Yes. When we post this so people can find you pretty easily. And thank you so much for being on the show today Andre.
(0:51:11) Andre: You’re welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
(0:51:15) Courtney: Thank you. And thank you, everyone. At home or on the go for listening. And you enjoyed today’s episode. Please make sure to subscribe, share with us and leave us a review if there’s anything you’d like to hear on an upcoming episode, just let us know. And for more insights and and stories of success, please follow us on LinkedIn.
(0:51:34) Courtney: Or is it right left agency.com and we’ll be back next time with more stories of innovation and marketing strategies to help you grow. See you on the next one.
