Raquel Gomes

Kevin Daisey (00:33)
Raquel, welcome to the show. Real quick, everyone, welcome to the show. Me and Raquel actually met at, what is it, National Trial Lawyers in Miami at 2025, so the beginning of this year. And just had a great conversation, got to learn more about how she's up in law firms and her company, her background, her story, just incredible. So I wanted to have her on the podcast to...

Raquel Gomes (00:36)
Thank you.

Kevin Daisey (01:00)
share with you all about her and her companies, but also just her story and what she's done and what she's accomplished. I think will be great for everyone here to hear. So I wanted to ask you right off the bat too, for all my ladies out there, all the women listening to the show, what's something you would like to share? What's just a word of wisdom from you?

Raquel Gomes (01:21)
Well, as a business woman, I would say that we as women can have

everything we desire from life and live the life of our dreams, but only if we don't do everything in our business and for our business. Only if we can learn to delegate effectively. And that's my, that's the code I was able to crack. And that's what I love helping other women and especially female law firm owners to achieve as well in their lives and in their business.

Kevin Daisey (01:51)
Love it. I love that. It's such a powerful thing and a hard thing to do in the beginning. think as someone that's headstrong and likes to take charge and lead and, you know, to delegate and to get out of your own way sometimes. So a great tip, great message. And, and we're going to learn more about that too, as we, talk here today. So, Raquel tell us, tell us about yourself and your story and

Raquel Gomes (02:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (02:16)
and how you got to be here today.

Raquel Gomes (02:20)
All right. So I grew up in the south of Brazil in a very traditional family where my father was an entrepreneur and my mom was fully dedicated to her family. And I heard often that because I was a woman, I had to choose, that I couldn't have everything I wanted from life. And my mom lived her life like that. And I love and admire my mom dearly. She is an incredible lady. But that never set well with me.

that created a meaner fire and I studied psychology actually to challenge those limiting beliefs. And I decided early on that my mission was to help women believe that they could get to live a full life with everything that they dreamed and desire. And that we can have a profitable business while having time to do the things that we love, while being able to be present for our families, while being able to stop work early because...

I enjoy picking up my daughter from school, for example, or take those guilt-free vacations where you're bonding with your family and your friends who were just discussing that you were in New York with your family recently while I was in Spain with my family for spring break. So those things are so valuable in life. And I feel that time is our most valuable asset and that being able to be present.

is the most expensive luxury that there is. And if you are doing everything yourself or your business, you're killing yourself. That's not the life that I want to live. And that's not a life that I want any law firm owner to leave either. And that's what we do here at Stafi We provide you with the support your business needs in order for you to be able not only to grow your businesses financially, but also to live the life of your dreams.

And we do this by providing the best talent that there is in Latin America. They're fully bilingual, college educated, trained and ready to go. But we also provide the support to alleviate you from onboarding, training and managing of that VA. Because anyone can tell you that they can provide you with a VA talent, but then it's on you to onboard, to train, to coach and to incorporate your VA into your law firm. And that's challenging because VA's are in another country. They're living at different

culture with different pays, different expectations. So we go one step further and we have built a methodology that provides all of that support to the law firms. And I'll pause here because I can keep on talking and talking.

Kevin Daisey (04:44)
no, you are absolutely fine. And no, it's that's what, I, when I met her, and having had VA's in the past and, Philippines and other countries, it's work to, you know, to onboard them, to get to know them, to understand each other, you know, processes and getting them on board with what you need done. So I think you can deter a lot of people from using a VA because they,

Raquel Gomes (04:54)
you

Absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (05:12)
They're like, that's work. Yeah,

Raquel Gomes (05:12)
You know, right? Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (05:14)
I could do it myself by the time I got them up to speed and, you know, there's a time difference in all these other things.

Raquel Gomes (05:24)
And it's

very time consuming to be able to, you you have to have processes and procedures in order to incorporate, do the onboarding properly. And a lot of law firm owners, especially the smaller ones, they don't have those things in place, right? A lot of the mistakes also the law firm owners do is like, they're thinking, they bring a VA and they think the VA is gonna figure things out on their own. They won't.

They won't. They're going to fail big time. Another big mistake they do is isolating that VA and only giving specific tasks, not incorporating them fully into their law firm.

You know, another mistake is waiting too long to bring that VA. So you're like so desperate that you're not taking the time to properly vet screen, make sure you assign and put in the right person in the right seats. That's like number one thing to do before bringing anyone, including a VA as well. VA is no different than any other hire. So I think where law firms, they have a bad experience, I would say, is when they think that a VA is going to be different.

than any other hiring. They're not taking the proper measures that they would if they were hiring someone in person. It should be the same type of processes, you know? And actually, I'm going to be appealing with the presentation that I'm going to be presenting there. It's really giving that formula that we've identified that you should follow to have a successful journey with bringing VA's into your law firm.

Array Digital (06:58)
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Kevin Daisey (08:02)
for law firm out there listening, mean, you know, being able to grow your team and scale and get things done efficiently is a major factor, especially if you're trying, trying to grow. You're up in your mark and you're, you're bringing in more leads. You're up in new offices. And to me in this day and age, like someone, you know, connecting with someone like her or her company is you have to take a look at this. You have to be doing this just like using AI, just like,

Raquel Gomes (08:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (08:27)
doing

digital marketing or anything like that, that you have to be playing the game. You have to be on social. You have to be doing these things to win these days. And from experience, I have an AE or VA in Colombia. Her name is Daniela. She's on every morning huddle with my whole team. She's a full-time employee of this company.

Raquel Gomes (08:33)
Right.

Incorporating

her to your culture, that's when you have the most successful experience with your VAs too.

Kevin Daisey (08:54)
100 % she gets kudos, rewards, kind of thing we do internally with core values in our Slack channels, all the meetings with all my employees that, and most of my employees around the country, Florida, Miami, all over the place, it's no different. And for me, she's the same time zone too, it's even.

Raquel Gomes (09:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It's no different

just they're going to cost one third of what you will pay locally. So you'll be able to hire three people for the price of one. That's why you're back to what you were saying. It's something you have to do because other law firms are doing. So if you're not, your costs are so high that you're not being able to keep up. You're not scaling at the same pace. You're not as profitable. So then you're going to fall behind.

Right? So that's one of the things. And I have built my entire business leveraging top notch talent from Latin America. You know, we've built an eight figure business and that's what we do for law firms. You know, the same methodology that we apply within ourselves is the methodology that we apply to our

law firm clients as well so that ensure that they have a successful experience and they can we have law firms that have 20 VA's with us you know so you start with one and you see how incredible it is and then you start adding and adding and covering different areas within your law firm too.

Kevin Daisey (10:11)
Yeah. So no, it's again, it's from experience. I want to say we have, you know, I have three companies and we have one or two per, in the central era, South America. And these folks are, mean, just amazing. And I have, internally, you know, in array digital, think we have three or four, in Spanish, Americans that are fluent.

But you don't have to be like literally I'm talking about this. These are just some of the their friends of mine at this point, their employees, their team members. They're very skilled. And again, for me, it's been just an amazing experience. And again, something I get some of the law firms out there, they're like, well, we're in the office and we show up here trying to hire someone locally takes 10 times as long. They have to be able to drive to the office. They have to be nearby you.

Um, and with a program like what she's got, um, you can scale that very quickly, uh, for the positions that you can fill like that. So again, trying to hire someone locally is, it's just a lot more challenges that go along with it. Um,

Raquel Gomes (11:04)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, the

employment tax, all the insurance in some states is like extremely expensive. Like look into California, right? To hire New York too. So, and even in states that are cheaper like Florida is still like, I don't know, the minimum wage now is $15 an hour. Like you get someone that works at a McDonald's type of thing. In California, I was talking to someone's like $22 or something like that.

But then those are not the type of talent that you want representing yourself, right? Your law firm, talking to your clients, you need to have skilled workers. So not only is important to look for the best talent there is and be able to truly vet them and screen them. And when I say vet them and screen them, it's not only looking to their resume and looking to their background.

and experience, but we are big into looking into testing their personalities and soft skills as well, besides doing all that, calling the past years, the five years of previous employers to make sure they would be rehired, validating those diplomas. We only work with people that are graduated. When we're placing a paralegal, there are lawyers in their home country with years of experience. So these are top-notch employees, but let me tell you, even the most qualified people, so we only hire 1 % of everyone,

They're not ready to go. You have to train them. You have to, you know, so we have a university that we have over 400 modules. And if you are a personal injury attorney, they're going to be trained and ready to go in the personal injury field, you know, collecting medical documents, insurance verification, things like that. There's a lot of courses. So you have to get them trained so they're ready to go to get the most value of them. But

Kevin Daisey (12:34)
He

Wow.

Raquel Gomes (12:57)
Not only that, once they're placed with you, you have to train them, the whole onboarding, making sure that, okay, do you have a process for that? Probably most law firms don't. Coaching them, mentoring them. These people, they're working from home. They feel lonely, they feel anxious. I'm a psychologist. We have mindset coaches. They're working with our VA's day in and day out to make sure they have a safe space to talk about their feelings because I know that if you're not doing well here and here,

That's why you're not producing good work. We have senior paralegal coaches with expertise in different areas of law to serve as escalation points. So for example, in personal injury, family law, immigration, probate and state planning, we have different coaches that they go to so that they don't have to go to the lawyer with questions every 30 minutes. They go to our coaches. And if you have SOPs in place already,

You provide those to us and our coaches will use those SOPs to train your VA specifically to your processes and procedures. Guess what? If you don't have SOPs, we have the task and organizational coach.

who will help the VA put together those SOPs for your law firm specifically. And all of this sits in the delegation hub, which is a proprietary software platform that we've created that allows for clients, our VAs and coaching team to be always connected. And it's a place where the VAs will input their daily recaps. So you have easy access to everything your VA is doing day in and day out. You can escalate issues. You can request additional training to the staff university.

What else? Every time the coaches meet with the VAs, you're going to find a summary there, everything that was covered. So it's really incredible. It's like we've created this methodology that I'm very, very passionate about and it's because of my background in psychology and is to really free up the law firm owner's time. Our average client tells us that it gives them back about five hours in a week.

on that support alone. So it's really like you have a, when you work with staff, you're not only just having a VA, you have an entire team backing you up. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (14:59)
That's,

that's amazing. So I was going to ask you what makes you different, but I think you just told us. Well, I mean, okay, there's a lot of things that are like, um, you know, I think I'm, I've ever 15, we're bound 50 employees, which I don't manage myself. Thankfully. I think I was removed from that for reasons, but, um, it's a lot of people, right? And so as a law firm, you're growing your, know, uh, whether you have one person or you have.

Raquel Gomes (15:04)
Just thought we'd do hahaha.

Okay.

Right.

Kevin Daisey (15:29)
dozens of people, it takes your time. know, you're the, they want to, everyone wants to get to you for questions or your attention or whatever it may be. And I think some of the reluctance of folks to use a VA or to use someone outside, as we were talking before we were recording, is that, well, I got to tell them what to do and I have to get them up to speed and then have to, and then you just start talking yourself out of it that.

Yeah, I could probably just hire someone that's here or I just don't do it at all and we'll just keep doing this work that is work that we shouldn't be doing or as an owner that you shouldn't be doing.

Raquel Gomes (15:56)
Yeah.

You burn out or

until you burn out others in the team that you end up quitting. So those are the things you want to avoid. So that's why so important to hire early and take the time to think through what are the tasks that you want to be delegating to that VA. And that's why going back to, run an initial strategy session that is actually for free and our clients tell us that it's very valuable. So we divide the law for me into four different areas of work. Admin, legal,

client facing and marketing. And we've identified 80 tasks that can easily be delegated that fall into each one of these areas. And the initial strategy session that one of our HR specialists sits down with you, it's great because you take the time to think about what are the things that I want this VA to master the first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And based on that, we're going to look for the ideal match to fulfill those tasks.

And that's so important because that goes back to the personality. for example, let's say you need someone to cover client facing work. That person needs to be highly empathetic. The person needs to come with a background in sales and client care. We need to pass to their personality to make sure that they are very good at communicating and they have to have a type of personality who tries from human interaction. So those things, if you're not taking into account when hiring someone to do client facing work, that's why.

they're not gonna stay and they're not gonna do a good job and they're gonna hurt your law firm's reputation. So you need to really take, that's why I like to say hire early and take the time to think through before you hire, what do you want that person to take on? And I find that, so that's something actually that no strings attached. Like if you're interested in knowing who your next hire should be, that's something we do. And I like to say not because I'm trying to...

sell anything is because you just so you can find out who your next hire should be. Because if most of the tasks fall under legal, that person also needs to have very high attention to detail, be highly organized. And that's why for legal we only place.

Kevin Daisey (18:05)
Mm-hmm.

Raquel Gomes (18:10)
people who are lawyers in their home country doing that type of work. But it's so important and one of the biggest mistakes the law firm owners do is they hire when they're desperate and they need someone, anyone. They're too far past and then what happens, it turns into failure and wasted time and then they have a bad experience and they think it's because VA's don't work. But that's not what it is. If you do it right,

Kevin Daisey (18:24)
Or too far past.

Raquel Gomes (18:37)
If you follow a process, there's a formula that if you follow, you're to be very successful and you're going to be able to scale your business very quickly by leveraging incredible talent from Latin America. And there's this myth that, people from Latin America, are not as qualified or smart and wow, my entire business is leveraging these incredible professionals.

Kevin Daisey (18:49)
I love that.

Raquel Gomes (19:05)
I mean, I'm from Brazil myself. And it's, those are myths and they're wrong.

Kevin Daisey (19:11)
Yeah, I, I backed that up because again, Daniela probably listening to this because she edits and runs this whole podcast. She runs this whole podcast and, does, you know, all our promotional stuff, you know, marketing, social media, videos, processes, lots of stuff beyond this is just one of the pieces, but, sales support, you know, I mean, you name it. and half the time I find myself.

Raquel Gomes (19:17)
Hello.

She's a rock star.

Kevin Daisey (19:37)
You know, having to give her more stuff to do because she's just so efficient and fast. mean, graphic design, Adobe products, or stuff. She's like, yeah, I'll go figure that out. And we're doing all kinds of new stuff with new softwares and, and things along the way, for more that we can do because she's that fast and that's that skilled. So, it's been a, it's been a pleasure. So yeah, I would say if, if law firm's listening right now, you're wanting to be competitive.

Raquel Gomes (19:41)
amazing.

Kevin Daisey (20:04)
In your market. One of that's you got to grow and scale. You have to get more leads in marketing. You have to backfill that with, with, with intake folks. need to have, know, paralegals and folks who do the work. You keep up with that, but then at the same time, your costs, right? So, you want to put more money towards advertising, marketing, lawyers that you need to have, as partners to grow certain areas of practice. this is a great.

Raquel Gomes (20:16)
Right.

Kevin Daisey (20:28)
A great strategy that you need to tap into in my opinion. So and i'm not trying to sell her services I don't get nothing from this.

Raquel Gomes (20:35)
No.

benefit from it at all. works

for you,

Kevin Daisey (20:41)
It works for me and it's impressive. It works for me, but I think, you know, the cool thing of what you've put in place is so much more like the training, the coaching, the SPS. mean, that all that right there is just another layer on top of it. That makes you that more impressive to me.

Raquel Gomes (20:43)
way too.

Yeah.

And that's why people come to us in conferences

and they ask, what makes it different from the, you know, there's someone else that are doing virtual staffing and what, what your competitors like, no, we're not competitors. We do something completely different here. We don't compete. Yep.

Kevin Daisey (21:19)
And just,

you know, just having processes and documenting and all that stuff, that's, that's, that's a big part of any business to be successful. And one that usually lacks and, or they might have some core ones, but they don't keep up with it. so just think about you're getting the help and you're getting processes developed along the way and you're getting coaching and you can scale. And you, you can do all that in one spot. mean, just the value that that's, that's adding.

Raquel Gomes (21:28)
Absolutely.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you mentioned

a very valuable point there that SOPs, are leaving documents, They're always...

constantly have to be updated. And there's law firms, they're like, okay, we have a service, but they're five years old and we haven't done anything. Then we help them, we take a look at them. Anything if the VA is involved in doing those processes will help get them updated. And that's the, we have a specific coach that does that and works on that with the VA. So yeah, you get a lot of support and all of this was built.

having the female law firm owner in mind because that's my passion is to help women. I was talking about my background a little bit, but my passion is really to help women be extremely successful, but also be able to live the life of their dreams. And I feel like if you are...

If you, because a lot of us going to building a business because we want to have more control of our life, of our lives and our time. And then in the end, we end up not getting that because we've, we work so much harder when we are starting our business. then some of, some of us, that was me also 10 years ago, but some of us can get out of it. Right. But some of us can't, we're staying in a trap.

Kevin Daisey (23:03)
Mm-hmm.

Raquel Gomes (23:03)
And then you have to go back to why did I start my firm? Why did I start my business? Go back to that and work on our mindset. Why is it that it's getting, it's so difficult to delegate, you know? And I feel that you can build a successful firm.

But then you're doing, you're overworking. You are not being able to take the time away. You're not being able to be present. You're missing out on a lot of things from your kids and your family. Is that the life you want? Right? So you're not, you're being successful, but you're not being as successful as you could be if you had a team behind you. And that team should be growing and growing and growing every whatever month, three months. We're constantly hiring.

Kevin Daisey (23:32)
Mm-hmm.

Raquel Gomes (23:46)
But that goal is also having the right processes, procedures, platforms, right? Not only the people. And I feel that, so that's my passion is really to help women achieve everything in life. So I went for every.

Women, I specifically work with lawyers because I saw myself in the law, in the female law firm owner. You know, I come from a career in large corporate America. I was very successful. Like I started as a sales rep. became a VP. became an executive. I was managing large teams and I was able to prove to my family, to myself that as a Latino woman, I could be successful, but I was miserable. You know, I was, I wasn't enjoying my

Kevin Daisey (24:25)
you

Raquel Gomes (24:26)
I was traveling every week home on weekends. I was missing out on a lot of things I wasn't being able to truly take care of myself physically mentally emotionally. I was just work work work work work and That's when I you know, I reached my breaking point and I took a break and then and then staff he was born So yeah, I feel like my mission is to really help

Kevin Daisey (24:46)
That's awesome.

Raquel Gomes (24:49)
women reconnect, like be able to, we can have everything we want. We can live the life with desires. It all starts in our mind. Really. Our minds are, I feel like can be our best friends, but also our worst enemies. And we got to work with our minds, know, hire coaching, do therapy, whatever you have to, to be able to, because I'm telling you, can, you can, you can have a full life. And that's what I'm here to help you achieve.

Kevin Daisey (25:16)
I love it. I appreciate you sharing all that and what you've done is impressive. And how long you've been in business yourself? 10 years. And how many folks there at stage that eight figure at an eight figure company? Yeah.

Raquel Gomes (25:22)
Ten years. Yeah.

Yeah, we have

about, I lose count. I was at an event and I said, we have 200 law firm clients and they're like, no, it's much more now. So I think we're about 250, I have to check. We have two services though. We have the fully dedicated service that is the VA that assigned to you with all of the training, the coaching and the subscription.

Kevin Daisey (25:40)
you

Raquel Gomes (25:51)
We also have a 24-7 live receptionist in the intake service exclusively to law firms as well. So between both services we're like about 250 clients. About 350 representatives right now assigned And we have a large team internally to be able to provide Incredible service to our to our law firm clients. We are about 90 people internally Yeah

Kevin Daisey (26:14)
Impressive. That's awesome. mean, obviously anyone listening to hit the eight figure mark, to have that many folks on the team, depending on where you are, some bigger firms that listen in, that's, that's big. That's, that's moving. So I'm at 50 or so, it's crazy.

Raquel Gomes (26:26)
Thank you. And I do what I love.

Kevin Daisey (26:31)
Yeah, let's say you've done what you you're you're living the dream and you're you're inspiring others and women listening to do to do big things and they can get it done and they can do what they want. So I love it. What is the best way to find out about Stafi or best way to connect with you if someone wants to connect with you personally or on social? What's the best way to check you out other than Stafi? You can share that website address to be good.

Raquel Gomes (26:40)
Yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Okay, so Stafi's website is www.stafi.cc. I'm also very active on LinkedIn. I love sharing personal stories and really inspiring women out there. That's my thing. So you can look me up as Raquel Gomes with an S.

And we love to stay connected. Feel free to send a direct message. I love connecting with other women out there who are aiming to live a full life. And maybe you're struggling, maybe you're in a different, whatever phase you are in, life is full of phases and ups and downs. And I'm here to help you, motivate you. And we're never alone. That's the truth. There's always...

Hundreds of other women out there, we might not know the struggles, we might not know what they're going through, but there's always, I feel like it's very important to build a community. So that's what I aim with my LinkedIn is to build a community where we can support each other.

Kevin Daisey (27:59)
Excellent. Yeah. Well, appreciate that. And if anyone wants to connect with her, have, you know, can connect you by email, by LinkedIn, drop a comment. Also, if you have any questions too about VA's or intake or Stafi or whatever, if you're looking at this, if you're watching this on LinkedIn or if you're on YouTube, whatever, you know, leave a comment. I can tag her and we can make sure we answer your question. So yeah, drop a comment if you want to connect with her.

Raquel Gomes (28:05)
yeah.

Kevin Daisey (28:24)
Obviously she should be tagged here in this as well. but awesome company, great service. Check her out. if you're a law firm, you're looking to grow and scale, hopefully that's why you're listening to this podcast. you know, the virtual assistant, I mean, it's something that you need to incorporate into your business going into the future, just like AI it's here. It's going to help you, figure out how to leverage it and make use of it. in, you know,

Raquel Gomes (28:35)
Hahaha!

Kevin Daisey (28:49)
We're helping amazing people in South America. These are great folks, again, friends, employees of mine and my team members. it's just...

Raquel Gomes (28:57)
Yeah, and that's something

I didn't mention here, helping, especially we hire a lot of women in Latin America. I there was a lot of gender inequality.

I know that's something we live in the US as well, but it's very strong in Latin America. So for me, it's very close to my heart being able to change lives of women in Latin America and provide them with a living that changes their lives. since you mentioned, is, yes, you're buying cuisine based, not only is helping you scale your business more rapidly, but also you're helping change lives of people in Latin America and create a social impact. So it's a wonderful thing.

Kevin Daisey (29:33)
Yeah, it's just been great. so we do like a core value award every quarter for each of our core values. And we have these like really nice, they cost a couple hundred dollars each or hand blown glass like awards. And we send them down to, you know, wherever Colombia or whatever country our folks might be in. And again, they're included in everything that we would do for anyone that works in the office or.

Raquel Gomes (29:57)
I love that.

Kevin Daisey (29:59)
in the state in the US. So that's how we've done it and that seems like what she's recommending you do and I think that's the right way to go.

Raquel Gomes (30:09)
Yeah, I was one last thing if you're gonna be in PILMMA, I'm gonna be there. I'm speaking one of the days. I forgot right now which day, but I think it's the Thursday and we have a booth. So if you are there, please stop by to say hello. I'm gonna be there personally. So yeah, we'd love to connect in person.

Kevin Daisey (30:26)
Yeah. And PILMMA Denver, please find her, connect and go see her talk. I'm sure she's got a lot of good things to share outside of what we just talked about. impressive. Thank you for coming on today and share everyone else. Thank you for listening. Thanks for tuning in and please connect with her. she's, it sounds like she has a way to help if it just having a chat or talking, any of our women out there listening, she would love to connect. So please do so.

Raquel Gomes (30:35)
Hahaha.
Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin Daisey (30:51)
All right, everyone. Thank you. Raquel, you say all with me and we'll say goodbye. See you.

Raquel Gomes (30:56)
Goodbye, see you.