Welcome, Guest, And Sponsors

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Welcome to the Market It With Netma podcast, where we give you the tips, tools, and strategies you need to be successful. My name is Brian, and I'll be your host today, and today we have a very special guest joining us. His name is Haim Vasquez, and he's an immigration attorney, entrepreneur, and nationally recognized voice in the immigration law. Originally from Colombia, Haim immigrated to the United States with his family and built his career with a deep understanding of the challenges immigrant families faced. He is the founder of Jaim Vasquez Legal Group, a bilingual client-centered law firm based in Irving, Texas, serving families across the United States. His firm specializes in immigration law, including family petition, asylum, removal defense, and complex cases involving criminal history. Before launching his firm, Haim worked at one of the most prestigious immigration law firms in the country and served as an assistant district attorney in Dallas County, where he also acted as a Hispanic community liaison. Today, he is a trusted legal expert, frequently featured on Telemunda and Unovision, and he continues to educate and advocate for immigrant communities through media, outreach, and his legal work. Haim, welcome to the show. But before we get to the show, let's say thank you to our sponsors. Today's episode is sponsored by NouveauxDesk Coworking, the home of Arlington's most accessible production-ready podcast studio. Whether you're launching your first show or leveling up your content game, Nouveau Desk gives you a professional studio environment where you can walk in, hit record, and create. But Nouveau Desk is more than just a podcast room. It's fully equipped business hub with private offices, conference rooms, and workshop and event spaces designed to help you host, collaborate, and grow. If you're ready to elevate your brand, your business, or your voice, book your next recording or your next tour at nuvodesk.com. Create here, work here, build here. Today's episode is brought to you by Nuvio, the all-in-one business platform designed to help you build, manage, and scale with confidence. With NuVio, you can build your own website in minutes, manage all of your leads and customers through a powerful CRM. And if you're in the restaurant industry, you can run your entire operations using Nuvio's modern point of sale system. Whether you're a startup, a service provider, or a full-scale restaurant, Nuvio gives you everything you need in one place. Simple, connected, and built to grow with you. Discover why entrepreneurs are switching to Nuvio. Visit Nuvio.com and run your entire business on one platform. Well, welcome back to the Atma podcast. And like I said,

Immigrant Roots And Career Path

SPEAKER_02 2:55

today we have a very special guest, and his name is Haim. He's an immigration law firm, and he's going to be talking to us a little bit about how he's built launch growth and scale his business. So we're super excited. Um, Haim, welcome to the show. Thank you for jumping on. Um, just tell us a little, just I know I did an introduction for you, but tell us who you are and and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Well, Brian, thank you for having me on your podcast. It's really a pleasure. Well, Jaim Vasquez, that's me. Um, an immigration attorney who recently we developed uh criminal defense practice also within our law firm. I've been an attorney for over 15, 16 years already. Wow, time flies.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

And I had different jobs. I my first role was as a prosecutor for Dallas County, where I was not just a simple prosecutor in a court, but I was assigned a couple of different tasks that allow me to work with the community, to develop some relationships with law enforcement and community. And that is what led me to seek a path in immigration, doing that work as you know, community prosecution, which was the title of my unit, allow me to work directly with the community in the Dallas County, Dallas Fort Worth area, and that way um develop an interest. And that's how I landed into immigration and today.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Nice. Well, so so you are which is an immigration law firm, but you're an immigrant yourself, right? You came from uh Colombia. I am, yeah. So and so how was how you know, first off, talk about that experience um and how that shaped your mission for your practice in your law firm.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Look, um, who I am, the process that I went through, it's really what has shaped me. Um to tell you the truth, I never thought about being an immigration attorney. When I went to law school, I didn't even take a class in immigration. And to make a point fair, in law school, you don't take classes about topics that you're really gonna practice because law school is not really about learning the subjects, it's about learning the processes, right? Learning how to read, how to write, learning how to think, what you know, what kind of questions you want to ask. Everything related to the field that you're gonna practice, you're gonna learn it with practice. That's why they call it the practice of law. So I didn't have an interest, I didn't have any interest about immigration. Why? Because we had a rough immigration history. Um so I came here in 1999, okay, and we were the victims of one of those bad immigration lawyers in that time, where you know it was very difficult. We went through a tough situation in our immigration process that it was, you know, uh put us uh in danger, but we were able to solve it. But because of that experience, I didn't want anything to do with immigration. Um so being an immigrant, as you mentioned, I came from Colombia, um, from the Caribbean side of Colombia. That's why when people talk to me in Spanish, sometimes they don't recognize my accent. Because usually they see the telenovelas, you know, the Spanish media shows, and the accent is more like the center of the country. Yeah, mine is more Caribbean. Um, so I moved to Miami, I was there for two years, then I moved to Dallas to the DFW. I live in Fort Worth, in Denton, in Dallas, Texas, and then um took a break from Texas, went three years to law

Leaving Security To Launch

SPEAKER_00 6:05

school in Louisiana and came back.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Nice. So talk to me about like when you started the business. Um you you you were you you went actually, you were an assistant district attorney, and then you were like what made you make the jump to start your own practice?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Yeah, so I went through a process. So when I was at the DA's office, um, it was very rewarding. My job was not to put people in jail like a regular prosecutor. I was tasked with creating uh programs to basically stop that from happening, working with the community, working with the youth, working with people with mental health issues to stop the process of getting in trouble with the law. So when I jumped into immigration, my first job was for a law firm where I worked for eight years and I, you know, I worked many positions as an attorney in that firm, and then COVID hit. And I think many of us had one of those existential crises about what's the next step. If something like this were to happen again, am I happy where I am? Am I doing what I want to do? Like with my career, not about salary or work hours. It's about am I helping people the right way I want to. So I went through the process. I went through the process of going, you know, internally and thinking about that, and I made the decision to go on my own, which was very scary. I had a job that, you know, paid me good and that I was comfortable with. You know, I've been doing it for eight years at that firm, and I already had my schedule, the cases that I'm taking. Uh, you know, I supervise attorneys, and I I had a very comfortable job, but I think being comfortable is the the worst enemy of success.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

And that's when I thought, you know what, I'm gonna go on my own. It was scary because you know, I walk out with a box and my things inside. Next day I show up, and I'm the one picking up the phone, making consoles, you know, doing the contracts. I was a one-man show, but quickly from there it grew to what we are today.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yeah. So you so you started the the practice, like what did that look like? What did your journey look like when you launched? Like you're like, okay, we're we're here. You said, and we and I had conversations, you did a lot of marketing. Yeah, yeah, right. What

Marketing That Created Immediate Calls

SPEAKER_02 8:25

what what is what did tell me a little bit about this?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah, so I it was like uh like a Darwinism, right? It's like modify yourself or you know, or die, kind of thing. And it was, I think, uh guerrilla marketing in the sense that I started doing TV interviews uh when I was at the DA's office. So I had many roles. I was not just a prosecutor, I was a Hispanic community liaison for the DA for some time. I worked as the special prosecutor for election fraud. So I had different roles at the DA. But one of those roles led me to do press conferences every time there was a major crime, like I was speaking Spanish to the media. Uh I will sign press releases from the DA's office in Spanish, and I did TV interviews. Okay. And those contacts, when I went, you know, private, when I went to an immigration uh firm, they start contacting me now to ask me questions and interviews for immigration. So for those eight years and the two years that I was at the DA, I built that relationship with many um local media, national media, and international media. And I, you know, it's it's very exciting when you know you start building a business and all that, and now you get a phone call from the radio, like the public radio station in Australia for an interview. Or I have been interviewed, you know, for TV stations back home in my country. So it's kind of rewarding that you know the life of an immigrant has taken me now to be on national TV here and been recognized as somebody who knows what I'm speaking about. Yeah. So going back to the question, all those tools that I say, the TV interviews and going into social media, basically was I have to make this work. Yeah. You know, I remember like it was yesterday, first day, I didn't have consoles on the schedule. Um, you know, I had followers on my social media. So I went, went to the parking lot, did one of the videos that if you, you know, if somebody follows me on social media, they will see that I like to do like walking videos because uh it reminds me when I was in law school, I would go with my pieces of paper and walk through the city studying, the same I do with the the cell phone. I walk around and I speak about a topic that is happening or the news that is happening. And I did one of those in the parking lot of the place that I was, you know, uh in my office at the moment. And then I start getting calls for consults. And I start doing more videos and connecting here and connecting there, and four years later, you know, it's where we at with now a clear path about advertising and trying to work through it, you know, uh

Community Relationships That Scale

SPEAKER_00 11:00

on a weekly and monthly basis.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Nice, nice. Well, you said you know, you built a lot of relationships, yeah, yeah. And then um you use those relationships to to launch the business, basically. Yeah. I think it's a a lot of people forget that business, no matter whether it's business consumer, business to business, it's about relationships, right? 100%.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

But they have to be honest relationships, right? People see-through. And we all have encountered people who are just you know fake in the front, and you know they have a different interest, or anything like that. And those relationships that I built, they were not just with the media, but it was also with police departments, it was with uh city councils, with school district boards, with school districts, with churches and places of worship. And throughout these years, you know, I get invited to speak at churches, get invited to work, you know. We have we have developed different programs with different uh religious organizations to assist the people who belong to those organizations in immigration and do pro bono cases. We have developed relationships with school districts to mentor students, to work with the parents of the kids. Um, I have campaigns where I have done pro bono cases for naturalizations for employees of schools. Um, so those relationships that you build that allow you to connect with other people, to learn from other people, um, to build your business, they have to be honest, they have to be truthful.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Right. And I think that's a lot of you know mistakes that a lot of businesses make is when they they want to launch, launch, launch, they want to make money, money, money. And um, you know, what what advice would you give to people that are trying to skip those processes?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, no, basically it's like you're trying to ride a bicycle without the wheel, thinking that you are gonna be able to do it the first time, and then you get broken bones and scratches and you know, everything, right? And that's what it is. It's this is not about you know, building a business, and I learn every day. I'm learning. And part of those relationships that I try to build on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, is to learn from other people. I think we're all in a path, right? When you start meeting other people who also have other businesses, and I have colleagues who have law firms, and I don't see them as rivals. You know, we all learn from each other and also people in other businesses. I sell a service, the service is the knowledge and the procedures and processes that we have built to represent clients, whether it's on immigration law or criminal defense. But I sell a service, and I see myself the same way that somebody else who sells something else, like widgets, like we say in law school, right? Anything. Um, well, we have to take care of our clients and we have to learn how to build those steps. And if you try to skip, you know, building relationships and involvement in community and the procedures inside your office, you are going to be destined to crash and get up. The question is whether you will be able to get up. Because I have crashed and I have gotten up. I'm not saying that I'm unique or anything, but I think that my experiences and going through those processes that allow me to sometimes see a little bit in the future, see when something bad is coming, or if he's coming, or if it happened, how am I gonna pick the pieces and continue going?

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Yeah, no. I think that's part of the the growth phase. A lot of people when they go into growth phase, they think, and this happens in marketing too. You know, you get things built, you get launched, and you're in a grow phase. Well, in the grow phase, people think grow, they just think this. Yeah, right. And so and and in the grow phase, really, it's trials and errors and and so you're you're really, you know, um, you're going through the ups and downs, right? And so talk to us about your growing pains and how, you know, um because I know you've started criminal defense, yeah, right? And

Hiring Fast Without Breaking Quality

SPEAKER_02 14:50

so talk about those those growing pains.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

So so the firm has been open for a little bit over three years, uh four years. So we opened uh March 2022. And as I mentioned a moment ago, it was me. That's it. I was in a desk. About a month later, I got a legal assistant receptionist, and then about a month later, I got another legal assistant. Today we're over 30 people in my office, six attorneys.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

That's growing fast.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, and you know, we continue to grow. But if I had just opened the faucet, we probably have grown more, but without a stable ground, a stable base. And that's what I see a lot of my colleagues thinking that is growth is just going up and taking everything that you can. Well, even in the pace that we go trying to build a structure inside, you're busy. Like I, you know, sometimes the days are not enough. Um, but you have to through that process know that you have different areas that you have to build. It's not about building a clientele, it's not about building marketing, it's about building your own staff inside. Like I went recently to questions about whether I will open a second location or whether I will continue to build a little bit more my structure of my staff and then put that second location on the side and see if it's you know the right time. Yeah, and at the same time, you have to be comfortable with saying no to yourself. Look, as humans, yeah, ego is fantastic to help you go forward, but also can play tricks on you. And you have to be able to check yourself, not only with what you think is uh the right next step or the right step, or where should I be, but also with the people that you associate around. I think that's sometimes we forget about that. It's you have to associate with people that are not just yes, yes, yes, yes, that check you, right? Is it the right thing? What if we do this and also listen to them and implement, you know, if it's okay what they're telling you.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think that most businesses and most business leaders, um, and just businesses in general, um, whether you're an employee or a leader, you know, uh I think ego and pride is something that we all face and we all have to fight, yeah. Especially when we're growing. Yeah, right. Um you you you have the blinders, the horse blinders on, and I'm like, hey, you gotta you gotta take those things off because you're seeing all these you see the race, but you don't see the other horses and what they're doing, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

I don't know. He always comes to me, and there's a video that is, you know, it's recently I saw it in social media. Um and it's a guy who is running a marathon, and it's just recently happened, I believe. Running a marathon, he already has his arms up, like getting close to the end line. And just from behind, there is another running sprinting. And that runner, that second one that he was coming, passed the guy who was just gonna win the race and end up winning the race, the other guy. And it's basically that. Sometimes we're so focused on what we think we are accomplishing and the ideas that we have that we don't see the peripheral, they don't see you know um opportunities, we don't see issues, we don't see what's happened with our own staff. And I think those all those elements are important to always keep in mind.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Yeah, it's very important for a leader, right? So you're scaling, you're you're basically um in the scale phase, yeah. Yeah. Um and this is Which is super exciting. This is so biased because we we actually help you with your marketing advertising, but it's it's been an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Like being having you be part of the growth uh of where we are right now and where I see the firm,

Intake Systems, Automation, And AI

SPEAKER_00 18:40

you know, six months, a year, five years from now, uh you guys are an integral part of it. Like, you know, you're you're part of accomplishing this task.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Well, we started helping you with your scale and automation, and so um you know, talk to me about the volume of calls of forms, and you know, where we where were you before and now how we're working through this?

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah, so it's crazy because I started with one person answering the phone, uh, then two, and then so on. And the thing is that leads, phone calls, and you know, leads in general, right? They come from a referral, the traditional lead of somebody giving your number to somebody, or a social media lead, which is now, in my opinion, um the number one, regardless of what you're doing in your life, whether you're selling lemonade in a in a corner or you have a law firm like me, um, social media and and and the whole digital space, it's the number one way of searching for leads, right? Um, that that doesn't mean that traditional media or you know, like the TV interviews that I do, that's also an immense amount of outreach. But we have buses with the you know, the site of our you know, uh firm information, we have billboards and all that. But social media is basically where everybody goes, it has his goods and his bads, right? So the idea is to be able to create a good product where now we get that volume of calls. Yeah, so the automatic that you know and all these processes that we have put in place is basically to be able to absorb all those leads, but it's a race, it's a race that you are never uh comfortable with, right? Right? I can never tell you that I will have staff that is sitting looking to the ceiling, because you you want to be able to get enough leads for the staff you have so they can focus on that and and assist with follow-ups and so on. So, one of the most exciting things right now, and I think that it's not only um the processes that we have implemented, but it's what the future will bring. You know, everything with social media and AI, you know, the use of AI to develop lead management, um, all those things are incredible. It's it's amazing, and also um things that we have implemented that probably in our business because we're growing, we had not in the past implemented, but the tools for clients to uh schedule their own appointments uh so we can bypass in somewhat that wait time, or I'm gonna wait until the office is open. You know, if it's 2 a.m. and I'm an insoniac and I found an ad in social media and I want to schedule a console, I can go ahead and do that right away.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Well, well, people, I mean, this is unfortunately, but fortunately, right? Unfortunately, people are um now it's a it's a now thing. Yeah, it's not a later thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

And so, like I think the big I'm I'm not gonna mention names, but I think one of those big um, you know, order online, send it to your house, destroy our waiting time, right? I want it now. If I cannot have it by 5 p.m., then I go into another place to get it.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Same thing. You know, I've been on on a lot of calls lately. Um we have a call center, right? Um, and so that call center, it's so funny because Because I've jumped on a few of my consultations and the first thing that they say w when I ask them, So so what made you inquire with us? He said, Well, you picked up the phone. Yeah, yeah. It's so crazy that um that small thing, like if and they said it multiple times to us, like it's not one or two people, it's it's multiple people that have said this because you answered the phone, which is not me, I mean it's the call center, but because we answered the phone, they scheduled a consultation. And it's crazy, but I I don't think it's just us, I think it's just how behavior happens in general. I think that that's important that um you have to have systems in place, you have to have people in place. Um because if you don't answer the phone or if you don't make it easy for the consumer to book an appointment, they're on to the next.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, exactly. And we are in an ever-evolving time right now. I think that uh we are living through times where things are changing at a faster pace, right? It's not it's we can see it everywhere. Like in the past, decades ago, you know, things will change. The way that you do business will change with time. It wasn't instantly, yeah. Right now it's changing, man, weekly, monthly. Yeah, you have to be on top of it. And that creates a stress and anxieties as a business owner, but but you cannot see it that way. I think you have to see it with the filter of excitement because you cannot just stay put, you know. You can't you have to start evolving yourself and thinking about okay, well, we do it right now, but in sometime in the future, I want to do it this different way, or how can I jump into this new thing kind

Bilingual Content And Criminal Defense

SPEAKER_00 23:35

of thing?

SPEAKER_02 23:35

Yeah. You know, there's a question I I kind of was going off the uh script here, but um you obviously are a lot of Spanish and a lot of English. How do you balance uh Spanish and English market?

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Well, I you know, I start as an immigration lawyer, so and and being bilingual and being on TV in Spanish, that led me to get a greater amount of clients that were, you know, Spanish speaking, Latin Americans, or Spanish from Spain or countries where they speak Spanish. And but I also had clients from other places, like in immigration, it was not only you know Hispanics. I know that lately with the immigration conversation has been one of the main focus, but there are immigrants in this country from everywhere, right? And they're coming from everywhere, and they're an essential, existential part and an essential part of the economy and society, because the families are here, so we had, but it was not at the same proportion as Spanish speaking. Yeah, with developing the practice of criminal defense, and and why we did that is because we thought that, and I being a former prosecutor, um, that was something that I always enjoy, the criminal defense side.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

But with everything that is going on right now in our practice, I thought we needed to be able to provide that service. Okay. It's like if I have a hamburger place, but I don't sell you the soda, right? You're gonna have to buy the hamburger from me and go down the street and get the soda from the convenience store. You know, sooner or later, the amount of hamburgers I'm gonna sell, they're gonna go down. Or, you know, people are gonna go and find if the convenience store sells something so they can just do one transaction. But that's really what we did. It's opening criminal defense was an idea that we can provide a service to clients that we already have, but also open the doors to new clients and clients that are not immigrants, you know, not just because we are an immigration firm or we started as an immigration firm. Those criminal defense clients are immigrants. We have clients now, so we start creating more content in English. We stop from being just Spanish-oriented uh footprint in social media to have more English oriented. Uh, we're looking at what we discussed a moment ago, creating those relationships with community organizations now and festivals in the community that are other areas that we didn't think before. Right. And that is gonna lead us to my main goal in the future. And the main goal was, well, I'll say the second main goal. The main goal was that we would be a multi-practice law firm. Since I went on my own, um, even the name of the website, yeah, it wasn't Heim Vasquez Immigration or it was immigration today or anything, it was Heim Vasquez Legal. Because I opened the firm as Heim Vasquez Immigration Law Group, uh log, but the goal was that it was gonna be a different name. And I already had the name pick. Yeah. This year, when we developed the introduction of criminal defense, we went Heim Vasquez Legal Group, and this is that part that we connected to developing the firm, being open to ideas and all that. Yeah, yeah.

Where To Find Haim

SPEAKER_02 26:40

And you guys are moving rapidly. I mean, you guys are moving really fast. So it's exciting. It's exciting to be a part of that journey. Um, where can people find you? Well, they can find me on social media.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

It's heim is h-a-i-m. And the last name is V-A-S-Q-U-E-Z, Vasquez. So if you search, you'll see, you know, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X. But they can also find me at Chaim Vasquez Legal Group. Uh I'm sorry, Fahaim Vasquez Legal.com. And uh the name of the firm is Heim Vasquez Legal Group. And um, and yeah, and they can from the website, from social media, request of and we do free consultations, and that's another thing that developing the relationship with the community, developing the marketing, and developing who we are as a firm, we thought that yeah, we could charge a consult, but somebody who really needed help, right, who might not have the means, might not call for a consult. So, in a way of doing a little bit of service to the community, we have done for four years no charge consults. Because if I cannot help you, regardless of the case you have, at least you're gonna walk out with information that is gonna help you and assist your family.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Awesome, awesome. Well, Jaim, it was a pleasure. You probably gave us a lot of insight. And um, if you don't know, Haim is growing extremely fast and a wealth of knowledge. Um, you know, this is somebody that you should check out. Haim, thank you for jumping on uh to our podcast. We greatly appreciate you being here. Um, so go ahead and check out uh Haim Vasquez and his immigration law firm and criminal defense and check them out. Um, so thank you guys for joining us. Hopefully, you guys got some insight on how to build, launch, grow, and scale your business. Uh, and we will see you guys in the