#88 - From Steno Machine to CEO: How Two Court Reporters Built a 200-Reporter Agency from a Parking Lot

HOST INTRO

Today we’re going back to the true roots of the Court Reporter Podcast, which actually started as the Entrepreneurial Court Reporter Podcast because I was fascinated by the fact that court reporters suddenly have to become business owners when they start working and go through this process of learning all the tools to how to run your business.

You know, it’s definitely a work in progress for most of us, but today we are going to hear from successful business owners in the court reporting industry. I’m Brynn Seymour, and you’re listening to the Court Reporter Podcast. Welcome.

All right, so most court reporters don’t go to school thinking they’re going to become entrepreneurs. You go because you love the machine, you love the speed, the precision, the idea of being the person in the room who captures everything. You can make great money. Set your own schedule. Be your own boss. But what they didn’t tell you is that “be your own boss” is just a polite way of saying you’re about to run a business and nobody’s gonna teach you how. No class on how to get clients. No training on what to do when an attorney owes you $40,000 and stops returning your calls. No mentor pulling you aside to explain that being the best reporter in the room means nothing if you can’t figure out invoicing, scheduling, scope management, and how to build a team around yourself so you’re not the bottleneck of everything.

Today’s guests figured all of that out the fun way — in public, while pregnant, with their parents following them in a separate car in the law firm parking lot. Whitney Kumar and Kamryn Villegas are identical twins, one minute apart, and for the past 13 years they’ve been running KW Court Reporting, one of Southern California’s most respected agencies, with a roster of 200 reporters and a reputation built on actually treating those reporters like partners. Whitney has also spent the last four seasons as the official court reporter on Judy Justice, Judge Judy Sheindlin’s Amazon Prime show. By the way, she’s a real judge. Kamryn has spent her career covering the most technically demanding depositions in the business.

In this episode, they’re going to walk you through exactly how they built it — from a $350-a-month office where literally only one person could sit at the desk — how they got their first clients with no connections and not even any business cards, how they kept reporters loyal, and the one mindset shift that Kamryn says made the difference between people who make it and people who don’t. And it has nothing to do with how fast you write.

If you’re a court reporter who’s ever thought about building something of your own, or you’re already in it and wondering how people actually figured this stuff out, this one’s for you.

Let’s get into it.

TRANSCRIPT

Brynn: Thank you for joining us today.

Whitney & Kamryn: Thank you for having us. It’s an honor to be a part of this.

Brynn: It’s so nice to actually be here in Los Angeles at the Biltmore. I have so many questions. Let’s start with Whitney.

Whitney: Okay, yeah. I’m Whitney Kumar and I’ve been a court reporter for the last 20 years. I started my career as a deposition reporter for about a year and a half, and then I went into court and I worked for LA Superior Court for five years, and I was an official. And then the last almost 13 years we’ve been running KW Court Reporting. We had our own agency. And the last few years while doing that, I’m also Judge Judy’s court reporter on her show called Judy Justice. And so I’ve gotten to do that and that’s been fun.

Brynn: Did she change it from Judge Judy to Judy Justice?

Whitney: Well, she retired from Judge Judy. And then Amazon Prime picked her up and wants to do a show. And so she said, hey, if I’m gonna do a new show, I want a real court reporter. I want a real clerk. I want this to be more like a real courtroom setting. And so it’s a brand new show. It’s called Judy Justice and it’s on Amazon Prime. She has a clerk and she has me as a court reporter. She has a bailiff. And we hear cases, and it’s like real — they’re all real cases.

Brynn: So she’s actually making real rulings?

Whitney: Oh yeah. And she was a real judge. Everyone always asks that. She was a real judge in New York. She was actually a family law judge, which is my specialty. I was in family law for five years when I worked for LA Superior Court. And then she got discovered at 52 years old, became a TV judge, and she’s been doing that now for like 30 years.

Kamryn: And when I’m out now, I get confused for my sister. Like, are you the court reporter from Judge Judy? And I’m like, yes I am. And they go, are you actually reporting? And I say, I am. We’re identical twins. One minute apart.

Whitney: So we always knew — we thought we were identical. My mom said we were identical, but the doctor wasn’t sure. And then so she was like, I don’t know, I think you guys might be fraternal. So we did take the DNA test and they said identical.

Brynn: I love the vibe of you together. Do you know what they call you in the legal field?

Kamryn: When we first started our company — the Twinadoes. Someone goes, what just happened? They go, that was like the Twinadoes. It’s a lot. 13 years later, they still call us the Twinadoes when we walk in a room.

Brynn: Running a firm together, being together all the time, growing up together — how have you navigated that to stay close and build that bond so that you can also do business together?

Whitney: You know, it’s been really fun. The thing is, we get to do so many cool things being business owners. We’ve gotten to travel, do a lot of conferences. And we both have our own families, so when we’ve gotten to go do all these little things together over the years, we always go, oh my God, how lucky are we? Like, we’re twins, plus we own a business — we would have so much fun.

Kamryn: Specifically for court reporters — we’re basically thrown into running a business. I thought I was just gonna be typing all day.

Whitney: That’s so true. I didn’t want to run a business.

Kamryn: But in order to run it well, you have to build a team, right?

Brynn: And without a co-founder, it’s all on you. I would become the bottleneck — like with the podcast, I hired a bunch of freelancers to help with all different kinds of things, and then I became the bottleneck and it didn’t work out. So it’s just trial and error. Fail forward.

Kamryn: I would say, if you start a business, you have to realize when you go into it how many people try to start businesses and they don’t succeed. You have to go into the business like, this is all I have. There’s no other option. It’s my life mission. If I don’t succeed in this, then I’ll go broke and hungry. There should not be a backup plan. You can’t start a business and think, oh, if it doesn’t work I guess I’ll get money from my parents, or go back to this other job, or do this part-time. If you’re gonna start a business, it has to be like — that’s your business. There’s no other option. If you fail, then you’re destitute. You’re not going to feed yourself. That has to be the only option, otherwise everybody would do it. If I don’t do this, I don’t have a way to feed myself or my kids. That’s it.

HOST COMMENTARY

There’s a business school term for what Whitney and Kamryn did here — bootstrapping. But that word doesn’t quite capture what it actually looks like in practice: two new moms, a PO box standing in for an office address, a $350-a-month space so small that only one person could sit at the desk, and their parents’ car following them to law firms with a tin of homemade cookies. How many businesses never make it past this phase? Definitely not because the idea was bad, but because the founder just had a backup plan.

Brynn: So did you start off working for another agency?

Whitney: Oh yeah. We were both working for other agencies. She was doing depos for agencies, I was doing depos for agencies. And then I did become an official, then I got laid off, so I went back to working for other agencies.

Kamryn: She was a court reporter first. She got hired in court. So the golden girl leaves and the agencies are like devastated because they’re like —

Whitney: Don’t worry. Guess what? I have an identical twin sister who’s getting out of court reporting school. Replacement.

Kamryn: Whitney has a twin. I go, that’s me. I go, can you start tomorrow? Boom. Got in. And it was like very easy to follow up as a reporter after my sister, who was like known for being like the best of the best. Then I come in, I’m like, oh, I’m her identical twin sister. And next day, I know.

Whitney: So we were doing everything. Kamryn’s doing depos, I’m doing the trials.

Kamryn: So when we started our business, it was so funny, because I’d be doing the depos. We were the only two court reporters for our business. We didn’t put any money into it, we just kept making money from the transcripts and putting it in. So I’d do the depos and then it would go to trial, Whitney would take over. And the attorneys were like, it was so nice having the same reporter. We’d have to do all the proper spelling, all this. And I go, oh no — you had two court reporters. I’m like, we’re twins. They did not know that.

Brynn: How well you worked together, just seamlessly sharing information.

Whitney: Yeah, sharing our dictionaries and the case info and attorney info. And so we just kind of built our business. The two of us were just reporting everything and clients were happy. And then we just kind of grew from there.

Brynn: Was there ever a moment where an attorney reached out to you directly instead of to whatever agency you were working for?

Brynn: That’s a really good question.

Kamryn: Yeah, in the beginning it did happen. Especially working for my first agency — I would never have betrayed her. She ended up selling and at some point I felt it was a little bit of free game when I started my own. But yeah.

Whitney: You know, you used the word betrayed, and I feel like that’s how reporters feel — I don’t wanna betray. But it’s true, it’s like you have loyalty to your agency. But technically, you are an independent contractor, and someone has to get a start somewhere. ‘Cause if an attorney asks, can I have your business card? And you’re like, well, I don’t wanna say no ‘cause I kind of want their business.

Kamryn: We really respect other agency owners. I may not go, hey, I feel really weird, here’s the agency’s info. We wouldn’t do that. But I was okay with opposing counsel who did not hire us. That was where I’d be like, okay, I’m okay giving you my information ‘cause I’m not betraying anyone — you’re not their client. I don’t know whose client you normally are, I don’t know who you normally would use. So I felt comfortable giving them my information. But for the person that hired us, that to me felt like crossing a line. I always say, no, just request me through the agency.

Whitney: There’s something to be said about loyalty, treating people well, respecting the industry, respecting the profession, giving back. I think we were lucky because we did all that. And so no court reporter ever felt like it would be right to betray us or to take a client from us.

Brynn: How many court reporters do you have working for KW?

Kamryn: 200.

Brynn: 200! Wow.

Kamryn: Like freelancers, not all working at the same time. But like our main roster — about 40 constantly. So you have like a list of about 200 that you’ll nationwide blast out. But I would say on average 50. 50 every two weeks.

Brynn: And do you yourselves still cover jobs? How often?

Kamryn: The last time I took a job was when I was five months pregnant with my daughter, who is now 12. I remember — the word was ‘nutrients.’

Whitney: And so I was taking trials and motions for clients all the way up until I started Judy Justice. I think I even had a trial the week before. And that’s when I realized I can’t do both. ‘Cause our attorneys — some of them were so used to me doing their trials and they really liked me doing their trials. She was already kind of tapering down like, this is too much. And then this call came, and I was like, I just — it was a lot. I’d be on the record all day and I’m seeing my phone blow up and my emails. I’m like, I can’t do it. So when I started Judy Justice, we taped two days a week. And I was like, I can’t be doing this plus trials. So now I’ve been doing the show for four seasons and I’m just like, okay, I’m gonna take a break from reporting for clients. I’m gonna report for the show.

Brynn: Has anyone ever offered like, I want Whitney, I want Kamryn themselves — I’ll pay an extra $10,000?

Kamryn: I would easily get back into it if that was the case.

Whitney: No one’s ever offered that.

Kamryn: That’s a hard thing when you do create such a personal brand. People expect to see you. And it’s like we started it with the two of us — you were always going to encounter one of us at some point. And then when we were like, all right, no, we’re running a business now, you’re not gonna get one of us. That wasn’t really hard. So I kept doing some motions and trials for our top clients and I still enjoyed it. I really do love to report — kind of miss my machine right now. It’s been a while. But yeah, it’s like they expect it. And so you do lose some clients where they’re like, I left this other agency ‘cause I was getting you, and now I’m not.

Brynn: I’m in your office taking your depo.

Whitney: They want you in all capacities. And that’s like 13 years later still. I was at a networking event just the other day, talking to this one attorney — we’re good friends, we travel together — and I go, why aren’t you using us anymore? And she goes, oh, well I use so-and-so because if I can’t get you personally, I’m just not gonna use you. And it’s like, but you’re using this other agency that’s not even court-reporter-owned. Don’t you wanna support us? People just assume if they’re going to use a court-reporter-owned company, they want to get you.

Brynn: You guys are funny. Oh my gosh, the personality! Love it. So yeah, I can see why they might be a little upset. I guess we’ll pivot into the wellness part, because we were kind of already talking about the difficulty of managing a business on your own — them expecting you to show up when you’re also trying to run a business.

Whitney: There’s so much to do to run a business. Unless you have the perfect team and all the delegation is covered and everyone’s doing their jobs amazingly — that’s just not really realistic.

Kamryn: Do you know how many times Whitney showed up to a depo and they said, God, we wish Kamryn was here?

Whitney: That never happened. Never. Just kidding.

Brynn: So it’s not easy to run a business and get those systems and processes streamlined. What I would do, even as an independent contractor, even as a small business owner when it’s just myself — I wanted to hire someone to not just scope and proofread, but to be a super scopist, which I call a VTM. Are you a depo reporter or a trial reporter?

Whitney: I’ve done both.

Brynn: I worked in Supreme Court for two years and that was a little bit too rigid, you know. But even as just me, I don’t have a lot of my own clients or reporters working for me ‘cause I didn’t even get that far. But I still wanted to hire a transcript manager.

Whitney: What’s a transcript manager? I’ve never heard of that before.

Brynn: So I talk a lot about it. I felt like, wow, this really helped me a lot. It was in 2018 and I hosted interviews in person and put the job up on Indeed. It’s basically like a project manager for a court reporter — someone to manage the deadlines.

Whitney: Oh, I can use that.

Kamryn: Because I always — I just wanna type and that’s it. I just wanna be a machine.

Whitney: When I got into court reporting first and then she got me into it like two years later. I was in junior college and I wanted to be a special ed teacher. And then my sister goes to court reporting school and every time she’s like, I just like to type. I just wanted to do that. That’s so funny. I’d never met anyone else who said that.

Kamryn: That’s what I thought we were doing! Like, oh, I could do this cool machine. And then I gotta go home and do homework. I did not like that part.

Brynn: And it’s funny ‘cause I talk to a lot of court reporting schools. Students are always asking me, what’s a tip you can give new reporters? And I’m like, time management. Like, you’re gonna love the machine and you do it, but you have homework. You go home and you have homework. There’s a lot to do when you get home. So some sort of transcript process management — that would be amazing. But definitely using a scopist, using a proofreader, getting that help so you can focus on being on the record all day. Time management is so important. Even if you don’t own your own firm, just being an independent contractor — it’s totally worth the money. You can take more jobs, you have peace of mind.

Kamryn: It’s hard being a court reporter. Your work-life balance is really hard. People think it sounds great to be a freelancer, but it’s actually a shock to the system. I think that structure — having a certain time you have to be somewhere — is actually easier. It is harder to be a freelancer and manage your time. I know it sounds great. Oh, you can manage your time — but can you really manage your time? It’s harder than people think.

Whitney: I put my machine away and I’m like, oh my God, I have three transcripts due in two days.

Brynn: Especially if you’re an entrepreneur and you have all these creative things going on. I love to create content and do the podcast. But then you need to go back into scoping mode. It’s so hard to get out of it because it really pulls you in. It’s a complete change of what part of your brain you’re using. And so it is really hard.

Brynn: So let’s talk about the acquisition. So what happened?

Kamryn: That was like a world of its own. From starting our business to — yeah. There was a lot in between.

Whitney: Before we get to that, I will say we can jump to it, but we would be remiss if we did not talk about this one part of our business.

Brynn: Oh, please tell me.

Kamryn: So when we started — because our parents were so heavily involved — I was six months pregnant, Whitney had a little boy, and they were like, let’s start a business. And so when we started, my mom — our whole lives she’s been known for her chocolate chip cookies. She just gets the recipe off the back of the Toll House bag, but she makes it phenomenally. Everyone always goes, where does your mom get this recipe? And she’s always like, I get it off the back of the bag of Toll House chocolate chips, but nobody uses it like she does.

Kamryn: I remember when I worked at Nordstrom and someone left a note at our old apartment in Orange. I walk in and there’s a note that says, can you ask your mom to bring those cookies? Anyways, they’re famous.

Whitney: Everybody’s always asked my mom to make these cookies. So we start our business — we’re so close with our parents — and my parents were gung-ho, like, we’ll do what we can. So my parents would follow us in their cars to law firms and parking lots. My mom would bake cookies. We had these babies, and our parents would follow us, and my mom made these cookies she’s famous for and put ‘em in tins. So we’d park and my mom would give us the little tin of cookies and then they’d watch our kids in the car.

Kamryn: We needed someone to watch our little kids while we were talking to law firms. And we’re like, hi, we’re KW. For the first time a firm said, come on in, come talk to the partner. We’re like, oh my God, what do we say? We’ve never done that. We don’t even know what to say. So we bring our cookies and we sit down with this partner. He’s asking us questions like we have no answers to. Rates? I don’t know. Who’ll you send ‘em to? We would just show up. We would just knock on the door. We wrote our names on note cards — we didn’t even have business cards.

Whitney: Everybody blew us off. Everybody. Because one time we go to the receptionist and she’s like, well, you can leave your information. And we’re like, we wrote our names on note cards. We didn’t even have business cards. And so my mom came with us with cookies and they’re like, that’s so nice. So we sit down, we’re like, oh my God, what do we say? What do we say? And we’re sitting there and we see Whitney’s son in this little Spiderman costume running past the window.

Kamryn: And then my son started chasing him. And then my dad’s chasing him. And the attorney goes, where did those kids just come from? And we go — that’s strange. So then we come out and I go, Dad, you cannot — you can’t bring the kids. And then they just like followed us from LA, San Diego. My parents did everything for us. And every time I got a new client, my mom baked cookies and they’d babysit our kids in the parking lot.

Brynn: Was your mom in the legal industry as well?

Kamryn: No. My dad was in the produce industry. He was a produce buyer — international produce buyer.

Whitney: I remember we were younger. He said one time, I can still remember this — I don’t remember how old we were. And he said, my biggest regret is I gave you too much, ‘cause now you guys have no drive. I remember him telling me that.

Kamryn: And oh my God. That’s probably true. I mean, I don’t think we were real driven at the time. But we have a strong desire to make our dad happy. We have a strong desire to please my dad and my mom. So make ‘em proud. Dad, we will make you proud. Like, you don’t say that — we will give you, just watch. Well, Dad, we’ll do it. I promise. I think my dad didn’t get to live that life like he probably could have, but because of the times and where he was from, he didn’t get to do that. But I think he probably would’ve been a very successful entrepreneur, or at least creative in some way. He just couldn’t. He had to take care of kids and the family. And in Texas, in a town where they weren’t welcome. So I don’t think he got the opportunity. So I think with us now — when my parents see us, man, you can feel the pride. When they see anything with us, just pride.

Brynn: A business powered by just pure parental love. That’s so beautiful. I love that.

Whitney: It’s like — people ask us, and it’s like, yeah. I mean, I think what we bring is just this kind of love for the profession, love for our reporters, love for our clients. And I think people can feel it. And we just grew very fast because of it.

Brynn: I actually have one more question before the acquisition. How do you make sure that court reporters feel not like a cog in a machine, but like they feel taken care of, as you said?

Kamryn: I actually think we’re still court reporters. I mean, honest to God, it’s actually pretty simple. We are court reporters too. Don’t work for any other agency — see how many of them are owned by court reporters. They’re not. It’s very simple. We feel you, we hear you, we see you, we understand you. We get the rates, we get your complaints. But now that we own an agency, we’re also getting the other side. So please, can we work together? I think the most simple way to answer that is: we are court reporters ourselves.

Brynn: I wish that — I grew up in LA so I’ve worked for a lot of agencies. Being in a little area above New York City — it’s not like I had enough work to work for one agency. I had so many different agencies, and some of them were owned by reporters, but I never — I always wanted an agency where I could feel like this is my partner. This is my business. This is my agency. I’m gonna get clients for them because we’re a team. That feeling, that partnership, that transparency — I always looked for that.

Kamryn: That was important to us. And I think our reporters feel it ‘cause we’re available. And it’s like, hey, you had a bad experience with a client? We’re gonna talk to that client, or we’re just not gonna work with that client anymore. We always have that perspective. And working with them on their rates — we know how you feel. And I think reporters have felt it.

Whitney: And the thing is, we’ll have an attorney event, but every one of our court reporters is invited also. We don’t differentiate, we don’t separate them. It’s like, hey, get to know all the attorneys. Let the attorneys get to know you.

HOST COMMENTARY

What they’re describing here is actually a pretty radical idea in the service industry — deliberately collapsing the wall between the people doing the work and the people paying for it. Most agencies keep those two groups very separate. It protects the business. Whitney and Kamryn did the opposite. And it worked. Whether that philosophy survives at Veritext’s scale is, of course, a different question.

Whitney: And they’re equally important. We’re not just gonna cater to attorneys and give ‘em a special event. Our court reporters are equal — they deserve the same thing. So we always combine them, but we also like them to know each other. We’ve got this client over here — go meet this reporter. Just go talk and meet. Recognize each other. When you show up for a depo or a trial and go, I know you.

Kamryn: And it is fun when we have an event and you’ll hear one of our court reporters go up to the attorney and go, what was with that witness yesterday? That’s exactly what we want. A personal relationship.

Whitney: So we really try to bridge that attorney-versus-reporter divide. Every event we do for attorneys, our court reporters are always invited. Always. They’re equally as important — actually more important. If the court reporters feel like they don’t exist or they’re neglected, and you’re only focused on attorneys, it feels like you’re embarrassed of the court reporters. We are all working together.

Kamryn: The company became so successful so fast not only because we had that fun, personal relationship with clients, but we also did the same thing with our court reporters. We developed that relationship. We nurtured it. We loved them. And when we were smaller, we were able to match them — oh, that court reporter would be great with that attorney. That one’s gonna think he’s so funny. We would match them. And it was like this really nice, symbiotic, organic relationship.

Brynn: Personality test.

Brynn: Okay. So then going to the acquisition — talk about why Veritext. How did you come to that decision?

OUTRO

And that’s where we’ll leave off on this episode. Tune in for part two coming next week, where you’ll hear the full story of that merger. They spent 13 years building it up, and then they merged — or were acquired. We had that discussion on the record for this episode. Catch us next week for the acquisition story.

Find Whitney and Kamryn:

Website: kwcourtreporting.com

Email: whitney@kwcourtreporting.com

Instagram & Facebook: @kwcourtreporting