20 years, Deja

By: Nevin Sanli, President and Founder

Sanli Pastore & Hill, Inc.

"You'll never make it; Are you out of your mind; challenging the establishment...Look at yourselves: wet behind the ears, blind to risk and poor"...that's what many people told us. Nevertheless, Tom Pastore, Clinton Hill and I plowed ahead; ignoring the naysayers and focusing on only one thing: how can we build a better widget? We figured that if we did, people would find us.

Also, we were willing to work VERY hard to reach our goals. Looking back, in the first 3 years or so, we worked late nights, Saturdays and Sundays and even Holidays. We knew that we would not have the luxury of going back in time to make up wasted minutes; especially in light of our meager financial reserves.

This was August of 1992 when we started in that living room of my one bedroom apartment in the Palms neighborhood of West Los Angeles. We had three fold-out desks and chairs bought cheap from Staples and 3 computers and 2 printers (1 laser and 1 color) all bought on credit. We shipped out all my furniture except for my bed.

From the get go, we knew that to perform better business valuations for litigation, we needed better technology and research. We invested heavily (almost all our money) in state of the art on-line databases, internet access and software. At that time, our competitors were using hard copies of Standard & Poor's and Value Line and sending analysts to libraries to check out books. From day one, we adopted technology-driven best practices and solutions. Our reports and trial exhibits immediately made a splash.

We wanted to build a firm with employees, procedures and systems and we wanted to be known for quality, excellence and results and to become the leading boutique firm in California. And, we thought that if we did right by our clients, we should end up making a good living.

Well, 20 years later, SP&H is at the cusp of the next phase of its growth. This year, we opened a 4th office in Istanbul and are looking to unveil a fifth location. We are also developing strategic partnerships with other firms to further grow the services and resources available to SP&H clients.

Nothing came easy: from gaining new clients, to collecting payments, to hiring and retaining people, to figuring out how to manage growth, to paying our bills. We had a lot of growing pains. In the first 5-10 years, employee turnover was horrendous. It seemed like we could not keep anyone. And yet, we continued to gain new clients and get repeat business from all our existing clients. I think what saved us was the three partners unwavering and fanatical commitment to make this work or die doing it. And to make it work, our salvation was the quality of the opinions, client uber satisfaction, and the results. We got great results in trials and whenever our clients were in trouble. Quickly, we developed a strong reputation in the legal community. Often, people said "if you need a solid team to stand by you and help you survive the hurricane, you need SP&H." Since then we have bolstered that reputation by providing our clients with high quality work and sticking to our core values of honesty, integrity and excellence. Thank you to our clients and business associates, as well as my partners and the SP&H team for making the past 20 years so successful for us!