ο»ΏStaci Rivera-Nichols β Full Interview Transcript
What Does Thriving Mean to You?
AJ: The title of this podcast is Thriving Through. What does thriving mean to you?
Staci: In a business capacity, I think it's really about feeling a dynamic presence β and also a real sense of satisfaction. Because if you're not feeling that joy, you definitely can't be thriving. And if there isn't a dynamic component to it, I feel like maybe we're just going through the motions, just getting from A to Z.
Growing Up Around Self-Employment
AJ: You grew up watching your dad run a tire company, so self-employment was just normal for you. But there's a big difference between knowing self-employment exists and actually choosing it. When you graduated college and started your first business within the month, what was going through your head?
Staci: To me, it really didn't seem like a big deal. I had a vision for what I wanted to do. I happened to have a lawsuit settlement right at the same time I was graduating from college. So there I was at that brink of finally starting my career, and I made a business plan and started the business. The only thing going through my head was how can I make the world a better place and use the skills and experience I'd been gathering through school. And that's what I did.
Do It Yourself Documents: A Visionary First Business
AJ: So what was that first business, and what did it teach you?
Staci: It was called Do It Yourself Documents, and it's still thriving, as you might say. It became a multi-state franchise. I don't think there are any more franchises open now, because laws have continued to change in various states around independent paralegal regulation.
The original vision was to be a middle point between a law firm and a legal aid clinic. The vast majority of people aren't on either extreme. They're people who agree on their divorce, don't have a lot of debts and assets, and just need to get the paperwork done. A lawyer seems like overkill, and they probably don't qualify for legal aid. There was just really this gap in the middle.
So I had fill-in-the-blank legal forms, legal stationery, a whole bookstore of self-help books β Nolo Press type of books β where an attorney walks you through how to complete different documents. We did notarizing, document typing for divorces and bankruptcies, process serving. I also sold prepaid legal insurance β a membership that gave you access to a provider law firm, and they'd do a will for you for free. It was voted Best New Business and Best New Website by the local newspaper.
AJ: You were visionary. You were ahead of your time. Now LegalZoom and those services are doing what you did, without the tools you had back then.
Staci: All that was really starting to crop up around that time. This particular business was one level up from LegalZoom because you could get everything in one place β the notary, the process serving β really taking down a lot of those intimidating barriers for people to get their legal needs met.
The First Big Business Lesson: Track Everything
AJ: What did that first business teach you?
Staci: I think one of the most important things was the importance of keeping track of your sales and your records. Especially when you're first starting out and there are a million things to do, it becomes so easy to overlook keeping track of your calls, your conversions β in my day, which phone book ads were working. But I found that was absolutely invaluable.
The second thing would probably be just to have more money saved than you think you're going to need. These are the kinds of things you only learn when you turn that sign around on the front door.
2009: Losing Two Houses, a Father, and Finding a Fresh Start
AJ: I want to fast forward to 2009, because you described that as a really hard year. You lost two houses and your dad almost simultaneously. How did that experience shape the direction you took with your work?
Staci: I just felt like I had done everything I was supposed to do. There's this fishbowl effect when you're in your twenties β everyone, all your family and friends, are watching: are you going to grow up, are you going to be a contributing citizen? And I felt I had done all of it. Then I arrived at my 30th birthday and it all got taken away.
I actually lost my houses because of fraud. The grand jury of the state of California sued my mortgage company. We all got settlements β but the settlement came ten years later, and for all those years of mortgage payments on two houses, I got maybe two thousand, two thousand five hundred dollars. I wasted tens of thousands of dollars of equity.
So it wasn't just that I was broke financially, or broke in a family sense with losing my dad. I was really broke spiritually. I felt like the whole world had violated me. I did everything you asked me to do, and none of it mattered.
I wanted a completely fresh and new start. That's when I got into freelancing and consulting work. I needed something where I felt a little more in control.
Building a Multi-Passionate Consulting Practice
AJ: You wear three different hats. Tell me about your multi-passions.
Staci: My consulting and marketing work is my main thing β that's where my nine-to-five hours go. I'm also a DJ, which is primarily on weekends, so that's a creative outlet. And I'm also a track coach; I primarily coach high jump, which is seasonal and afternoons.
I use the term from Marie Forleo β multi-passionate. I feel blessed that I'm able to create a life where I don't have to give up music. A lot of people feel like it's time to get serious and make money, so music has to go. I've been lucky enough to be able to keep that.
The Blog Comment That Opened Every Door
AJ: Tell me about the Social Media Marketing World blog comment story β when your DJing and consulting worlds intersected.
Staci: Over ten years ago, I was writing for a website called Book More Brides β marketing content for wedding professionals. I was looking up research, found a great blog article, and at the bottom it said they were having a conference in San Diego. Leave a comment to win a ticket.
So I left a comment and said: if you pick me, because I write for this marketing publication, whatever I learn at the conference I'll turn around and share with this audience of wedding professionals. It's not really giving away one ticket β it's like giving away hundreds.
A couple of days later I get a phone call. It's Phil Merchan from Social Media Marketing World. I'm thinking I won β I'm so excited. He says, well, not exactly. He'd seen on my comment that I was a DJ, and they could actually use a DJ for the conference. They'd pay me with a free ticket, and the times I'd be DJing would be mornings and evening parties, so I wouldn't miss the content.
I said, I'm in, where do I sign? I ended up DJing there for a good ten years. I got to know New York Times bestselling authors, Gary Vaynerchuk was the keynote my first year, and I met these people not just on stage but sitting around chatting over drinks afterward. It was an amazing experience.
And as I promised, I turned around and shared what I learned with the wedding and event industry. I ended up speaking at basically every major DJ or wedding professional conference β started with Pinterest marketing and then it kept expanding. I had opportunities to write for all kinds of DJ and wedding blogs and magazines.
Networking as the Lifeblood of Business Development
AJ: Your consulting practice grew out of your writing and DJing in a pretty organic way. But organic doesn't mean effortless. What were you doing intentionally to turn those moments into consulting work?
Staci: Networking. It's just an absolute lifeblood of any business β and it's something that isn't really talked about in grad school. Go out and meet other consultants, talk to other people in your industry. You put the work in every single day, and you don't always see all the little ways it ripples out, but it is just absolutely essential.
A story that shows how organic-but-not-effortless it is: I took a blogging course, maybe seven years ago, because I wanted to learn more about SEO, categories, tagging. At the end of the class, I casually mentioned an idea I had about a news item to the instructor. She said, why don't you just write up a blog post about that and we'll put it on our site? I thought, I just took this blogging class from you, so sure. That turned into me being a regular contributor to their blog for years, being paid for it. And all it was, again, was networking and putting in the work. I wasn't even approaching them thinking about a job β it was just conversational.
How COVID Pivoted Staci Into Legal Content
AJ: You mentioned attorneys are now a big part of your client base. Was that intentional, or did it find you?
Staci: It kind of found me. I did pre-law in college, got a paralegal certificate, and worked in legal aid β I was in that arena until I lost my houses in the mortgage crisis. Then COVID hit, another big game changer. There was no DJing for almost two years.
It completely obliterated my industry. A lot of DJs I knew had to get other jobs. I started looking for new writing clients and opened the net a little wider β for so long I'd been writing primarily for the wedding, event, and DJ space. I got in contact with Lexicon Legal Content, they were looking for writers, and that became my main commitment for probably three years. Then it expanded and I started working for other law firm marketing agencies.
As I got deeper into it, I realized there's a massive need. In certain cities, for certain search terms, lawyers are willing to spend fifty dollars a click on a Google ad. Law firms that twenty years ago might not have had a website now have full in-house marketing teams. It's been a really big shift. And lawyers are still, for the most part, behind the curve compared to other industries β so there's a lot of room for growth.
The AI Disruption That Shook Her Business
AJ: You mentioned last year felt like some real disruption. Describe what that was like with your legal and law firm marketing clients.
Staci: Let me take it back to the beginning of 2024. AI arrived, and clients were demanding we use it. They wanted lower prices because we'd be using AI to assist. There was no roadmap at all β we had to put it together as we went. We made a lot of mistakes, had some really horrible content coming out initially. I'd spend as much time rewriting the AI output as it would have taken to write from scratch. It was hallucinating everywhere.
But we kept working through it, kept hammering it out. By the end of 2024 I was feeling like I really knew what I was doing β AI was actually improving the quality of the writing.
Then we went into 2025. Most of these law firm marketing agencies had clients on one-year contracts, all renewing at the same time. We went on Christmas vacation and just... never came back. Clients were not renewing. Across multiple agencies I was working for. It was industry-wide β law firms just dropping off, saying, we're going to write our own stuff with AI now, we don't need you anymore.
It was a really scary time. I was freaking out about money. Not prepared for this at all.
But within just a few months β maybe by June, July β we were already seeing the backlash. The number one thing coming in was law firms asking us to fix their bad AI content that had ruined their websites and destroyed their traffic. I spent my whole summer fact-checking and humanizing blog posts that law firms had put together on their own, and they were just really bad.
The good news is that backlash created an uptick of law firms looking to hire subject matter experts to run their blogs, and now the push is for thought leadership. Not just five divorce tips β actual thought leadership, day in and day out. That's a really exciting result. It was a difficult wave to ride, but attorneys are now appreciating that AI can actually be a very powerful tool when used correctly.
Building a 23-Rule AI System That Preserves Expert Voice
AJ: How do you use AI as a tool and still maintain the human, expert voice?
Staci: I can tell you my way of doing it. After going through all those growth pains in 2024, what I ended up doing was creating a master document β or in Claude, you can create a project β that has all the requirements for what I need from a piece of content.
For legal content, I tell it: don't use 'may' or 'might,' because the law is pretty black and white β be definitive. That's one of the weak spots of AI: it never wants to say anything definitively, especially in YMYL content. I also noticed it constantly using phrases like 'navigate the complexities' and using 'face' as a verb when referring to difficult life situations. So all those little idiosyncrasies I had observed β we're not doing this, take that out.
Then I create a little file for each firm with their case results, the awards they've won, highlights from the founder bios. I tell AI to weave in those details. You end up with a much more personalized piece of content.
One of the places I write for now uses AI to create TLDR summaries at the beginning of each article β essentially marketing back to AI engines in their own language. AI engines love those bullet-point summary-style answers, so we give it to them.
The bottom line is it all came down to taking the time upfront to create a system. Every time I noticed something AI did that I didn't like, I added it to my list of writing guidelines. I now have twenty-three guidelines. It took a while to compile that list, but it means every project starts with a solid foundation. And if you're the one driving the ship, AI will do what you ask it to do β but you have to create firm boundaries and stay within them.