MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!
Wow! That snuck up on me. Here I was running around, trying to close new deals, ordering a present for my beautiful bride, and all of a sudden—CHRISTMAS IS HERE! Holy moly! I'm writing this before the fun-filled day of presents, family, and love, and I hope you're enjoying YOUR day! I'm planning on only checking email once (or twice) on Christmas. That's pretty good for me, LOL! I hope you're able to completely detach from work for a FULL DAY, but if you're stuck working, I hope you're wracking up that DOUBLE TIME! I used to love holiday pay back when I worked for K-Mart and cargo at Delta
Airlines. Holidays would come along, and I'd work long days to save money for important things like video cards, motherboards, and CPUs to build and upgrade my computers! Super nerd for the win!
On the work side of things, we had an incredible time planning out 2019. Sarah, Courtney, Steve, and I all put our heads together, with Scott De Long leading to figure out how the heck to meet our aggressive goals for 2019. After a lot of hours hammering through ideas, processes, procedures and more we had goals SET, business owners for each one, and a clear vision
of how we will kick major butt in 2019. We'll be expanding the team by hiring more super awesome people, adding more functionality to the website, increasing the effectiveness of our reporting and expanding our reach to MORE Americans! I LOVE it! We also updated our core values, and guess what??? LOVE is one of them.
How can a company have LOVE as one of their core values? Easy! I LOVE YOU! Yes, YOU! You're the reason I can work every day in a job I love. Your support and readership allowed me to build Top Class Actions from a website with a few thousand viewers every month to 1.25 MILLION viewers per month! That makes you someone I LOVE! I also LOVE our clients! I don't work with anyone that I don't like. I enjoy spending time with every single one of
them, whether it's dinner, coffee or just a phone call once a month, I smile every time I talk to them! Yes, sometimes the conversations are difficult if something isn't working well, but we always work together to solve it. I also love my TEAM! Every writer, assistant editor, community manager, IT ninja and leader I LOVE! They're amazing people who work their butts off for you, and me, every single week. That's why Love is a core value, we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't, and big props to Courtney for calling it out at our retreat!
One more thing. I mentioned my friend Mike Papantonio's (Pap as his friends call him) books last week, and a LOT of you picked them up! I hope
you're enjoying them! I've read Pap's books Law and Disorder and Law and Vengeance and they give you a LOT of insight into how these cases we report on everyday work. If you're curious how these cases really work, you can get into the mindset of the lawyers trying them from Pap's books. The main character Deke's connection to his clients in the books really happens. There are real people who are suffering and the trial
lawyers we work with, like Pap (or Deke in the books,) know their clients, care about their clients and fight for their clients. I've spoken to my friends about cases and they tear up when they talk about the suffering that's taken place. It's HARD to work these cases when you see the damage that negligence has caused. Families lose children, and children lose parents to undisclosed side effects from drugs while the drug companies spend more on their marketing than they do on research. Johnson & Johnson spent $17.5 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $8.2 billion for research and development in 2013. A little more R&D could save a lot
of lives, and a lot of these lawsuits from being filed. So pick up Pap's books! Find out what happens on the INSIDE of these big cases, and be ready for book #3 coming out early 2019! Each book gets better, so I can't wait for #3!
OK, that's all from me for now. On to some more lawsuit and settlement updates!
Merry Christmas, everyone! I'll write to you on New Years Day! See you soon!
Warm Regards,
Scott Hardy
President & CEO