Ep 226 - "Listen to Win, with Nick D'Urbano"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. All right, dude. I've I've been looking forward to this. I mean, we probably say that all the time. Yeah, but Nick, I mean, for the hours that we've been logging, you've actually become like a real friend to Chris and I. I think most of the people that are listening to the show, they have at least a broad idea of of who you are and if they've listened to you.

0:50 the show we recorded together in the past they have a better idea really quickly though just give you some acknowledgement formal acknowledgement so founder are you ceo titled with distance i can't remember how you guys no i'm a chief revenue officer okay that's right that's right you want to do real work everything he does i just say yes he is i can't i cannot be that my thing So then you piggyback off of what is already proven to be a successful platform and business endeavor. You wanted to chase another opportunity. And so you've recently, you and Ethan, right? Partnership have recently launched Porter, runporter.com.

1:34 And for those that haven't heard that phrase yet, you will. This is something that our team believed in so much that, Not only have you become a partner with the show, HHB itself, but obviously our consulting team believes in this heavily. And it is very quickly becoming a mandatory part of what we do because of how valuable it's proven to be to our clients and us as a team. So right out of the gate, runporter.com. Go check it out. Learn more about it. Inevitably, it may come up in our conversation today. But I know for us, it's a major point of interest. And I know you're super passionate about it. I think maybe anything prior to those two companies, because the list goes on.

2:16 I think we may get into a little bit live. Yeah, maybe actually a good launching point for us is, could you just give us the origin story? Yeah. Of Porter? Okay, of Porter specifically. I think so. Yeah, sure. He's like, which one? Yeah. No, no. Because when you say origin story, I don't know how far back I should go. So with Porter in particular, we had been eyeing this space for quite a bit of time, in large part because when we have clients on the on the distance side, we, you know, in our discovery, we always ask them, what are some of your challenges? You know, where are you struggling? And as we really dug into these companies, it was clear to us that within the trades in particular, and then within that group, within Restoration, there's there was a real lack of visibility into the sales process.

3:03 And as someone who comes from the software space, we kind of take this for granted because we've had visibility into what people say on calls, getting really deep on sales craft and getting better at delivering communications, convincing people, hearing their issues, kind of going through the rigmarole of what a good sales conversation is. And it's just, I don't know how you can do that without data, without hearing the actual conversations. And so we actually went out and we acquired a company that was doing this in a different category. And we wanted to take some of that technology, rebrand it, and bring it into our ecosystem.

3:49 And that's effectively a kind of high-level view of what Porter, or the impetus for Porter. You guys were accustomed to having your SDR teams and stuff and other startups you guys have done with distance. You can listen in. You can aggregate the data from stuff like Otter. Were you guys using Gong or Fathom? Yeah, we use Granola and just a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the same story for us on the consulting side. It's like we every single client session we've had for the last five years, we've had either recorded. I think we started in Otter. Yeah. And then moved to Fathom. And it was an incredible source of intel of what's happening at the ground level with clients.

4:29 OK, so so you guys figure this out in your discovery. you acquire a team, you do an acqui-hire. Yeah, as they say. A bunch of developers and stuff like that. I'm a little bit sad that this was on your radar for a long time, because I actually thought I might have instigated this. We came and we're like, man, there's this other platform, but it's really expensive. Can you help us develop something that's more accessible for small business? You know? Well, the truth is when you're, you know, We're constantly kind of poking and prodding at where we can add value, right? And some of that stuff is within the existing ecosystem of our products. Sometimes it's a different tool or solution that you're testing. There's a graveyard of ideas and products and things that we've done that we've not brought to light.

5:13 So this was just one of those where it was very clear that there was a huge need and that it deserved an investment and it deserved a real big push. And so obviously I'm giving the biggest investment, which is my time, into this project for me, which is kind of telling, which is that... That's what it's worth. So in a nutshell, just like, you know, describe what Porter does. Yeah. So what Porter does is really simple. We record conversations that happen in the field. We make those conversations visible to sales leadership coaches and we make them coachable. So, you know, when you're talking to Mr. Mrs. Smith in front of a, you know, kitchen counter and your team is negotiating a deal that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars on the reconstruction side or at the very least five to ten thousand dollars on the mitigation side.

6:02 How do you know whether they're doing the things that they should be doing? How do they know that they're doing the things that they should be doing? They're not VPs of sales. They are learning. They're in their journey to become the best versions of themselves professionally. They need the training and feedback. The leadership team needs the visibility to provide that training and feedback. That's what we do. And, you know, one thing I just want to pile on to that is it's been unbelievable to recognize how often we look at a conversation in reverse and in our mind. we have a perception of how that conversation went.

6:43 And we kind of, I think at times, can skip over some details. We can miss some of the elements that end up becoming really vital to doing some key behavior change to increase our chance of success. But I think sometimes we're just a little bit more optimistic about how the conversation went than warrants. And so it's tough to get behavior change because you kind of look back, you're a little bit optimistic about how it went. You kind of hit the highlights with whatever it be, a direct line supervisor or a peer leader. And you think you've done the best you could to recall that conversation. And therefore, it limits my ability to really tackle any significant element. If I hear from you, hey, optimistically, it went pretty good.

7:23 I kind of did all the thing. And I don't know. I don't really know unless I've got something like this to really hear the truth of the situation. Well, I think what's really interesting about this is when you frame it from an analytical standpoint, you say, hey, what's your conversion rate? People are like, oh, it's 45, 50 percent. Okay, that's maybe average, maybe slightly below average, depending on how we're slicing and dicing it. But excellence looks like what, Chris? Like 70? 70 plus. 70%. Okay. So that tells me, if your conversion rate's 50, there's a 20% skill gap that exists. Yeah. It's a skill gap. Yeah. Like they are not performing at the top end of the spectrum.

8:05 That's a fixable problem. Yeah. That's not a... That's not something that can't be overcome. You're not a victim of. No, of course not. There is lack of knowledge, lack of sales craft, lack of process. That is... killing deals effectively. Deals that many of these organizations are paying a lot of money for, right? From a lead standpoint. And so, you know, our whole job is to just help folks get better at closing those deals and making more money on the individual side, right? With commissions and with the owners from a profit standpoint. I got to be honest, like leveraging this technology has been incredibly humble as, you know, running a consulting company.

8:49 And having consultants in the field, I mean, we're working with companies that are, you know, everywhere from like $2 million a year in revenue to 50 plus or a hundred plus million dollars. And I think as we started leveraging this tool, what's been humbling about it is, is that I look back over the last five years of consulting that we've been doing with our teams. And I realized that if we're really honest, we've been consulting and advising out of Really two things are our own lived experience, which admittedly, like, you know, we've been running flood life for five years, which means we haven't been operating a restoration company or a roofing company or blue collar business for five years.

9:32 So we're, we're operating from, you could say old information to some degree, aging. And then, and then of course, we're taking the wisdom of the crowd of all of these companies that we're currently working with. And there's a lot of wisdom and a lot of knowledge and information from that. But what we lacked was this visibility into our client businesses that told us what's really happening. And when we started listening to the recordings, it was incredibly humbling because, but here's another example. One of the clients we deployed this tech with, we, as part of our onboarding process, we met with all their mitigation managers, their multiplications, and they were struggling with close rate.

10:14 So we're like, okay, a normal discovery process, we meet with the direct line supervisors. sharp. They're really good. And we're asking them questions about what their existing training looks like. And they're talking about how they have a monthly group training they do. They have in their morning stand twos. They do soft skills training on a weekly basis. Yeah, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're expecting like, and of course there's a part of us is like, man, why are they suffering so much from close rate? And we're thinking, well, it's just people are doing more direct pay work. They haven't figured out how to sell the financing options. But then we start listening to these recordings and we're like, there isn't a single congruent, consistent process that any of these technicians are doing for these inspections.

11:04 It's all willy nilly. And we're like, how is this possible? We have these really professional, experienced mitigation managers. And this is the takeaway that I think we were just hitting the nose with is Christy, who is our consultant on this one I'm thinking of. is this idea that training often doesn't survive the field. We get people in our training room, our monthly all company meeting, we teach them something, or we're in a team meeting, or we're doing our morning stand to and we teach a soft skill bit. And maybe even we have a role play at once. But the reality is when people get out in the field to go do the thing, They're not like many of us as owners or department where we've been talking and teaching for the better part of our career.

11:54 And they get out there and they try to translate or they try to imitate what they just learned in the training. And they can't. They feel awkward. They feel uncomfortable. They stumble a little bit. And then they just revert to whatever feels right. And it was just a – it's very humbling, man, to start to get some of this field intel involved. and realize, wow, all the training we've done, it's to some degree, it's been effective, I think what it also turned on a light bulb and it felt incredibly empowering because now like Christy in this example, we were able to just listen. Okay, what are people doing? Is there anything good they're doing?

12:34 And we were able to ask the AI. Are there any good discovery questions people are asking? And then we began our coaching by hyper fixating on the handful of texts that had really good discovery questions they were asking. And then we were able to evangelize those questions to everyone. Right. So now instead of three technicians asking this great discovery question, we were able to get closer to, we had 20 we were working with. We were able to get more of those 20 all asking the good questions. Sure. Yeah. And then also fill in the gaps and be like, oh my God, nobody's asking, nobody's setting an agenda, but they're just walking right into this inspection, pulling out their tools. And so then we're able to slowly start coaching specifically to what was happening.

13:14 But, I got to tell you, man, the last several months as we've been doing this stuff, it's... I mean, it's funny. We have a protest happening here. There's like a union strike outside of our building by City Hall, which is a block away. All 20 of them. Yeah, all 20 of them with the megaphone. But I think all that has led me to really see this technology as... truly transformational, vital, particularly for field businesses, trades companies. And we've talked about retail earlier. Even it's like any of our, any of our companies that are providing a service to a Mr. And Mrs. Jones or a, a commercial facility manager, whatever, anybody that's delivering service with people, um, It like there's all of a sudden this visibility and data that none of us have ever had ever in the history of running service companies.

14:14 Which is which is crazy, because if you know, I'll give you a different way of looking at this, which I always find interesting, because this is how most businesses today look at it. Right. They see a conversion number. And they try to figure out where there are issues by basically coaching top down saying, okay, well, here's a training manual and here's all the things that you need. Three quarters of those things a person already knows maybe they're doing quite well. And there's really like very pernicious issues, like things that they're forgetting or things they think they're doing, but they're not. And the equivalency would be like coaching a football team. by just looking at the score, but not watching the tape. Like not watching the game, being like, we lost by seven points.

14:55 So I guess we should play better on offense and play better on defense and we'll do better next time. You have no idea that it's, oh, the quarterback dropped back too many times, took too long with the ball, the receiver didn't run his route, we need to adjust. There's all this nuance, and that's where the value happens. If your conversion rate's 20%, There's probably some very obvious things that you need to do. You don't need to record to know that maybe you don't have the right people in place. There's some big issues. But if you're at like 40%, 45%, 50%, that's like the average. The devil's in the detail. The devil's in the detail. And as you get better, it gets harder. The nuance is what makes this like, it's like a big Rubik's Cube and you got to solve it. It's really hard to do that if you don't have it.

15:37 I think something I'd just add to what you just said, because I think you're spot on, is this idea that, It's hard to solve when you're guessing. Or let me rephrase that. It's hard to be motivated and committed to solve something when you're guessing. And I think that one of the things that we see is like when you know specifically what it is that you're trying to correct or fix, and then you know specifically what it is that you can be looking for post to make sure that the team's headed in the right direction, just looking at the number itself, that closing rate or conversion rate or however you want to slice it, that's not enough. But now that we have the ability to see very specific details, what piece of the pie are they just not getting?

16:19 What key behavior? What's the timing initiative that we need to fix? It's a lot more motivating when you can see it and now you know what to look for. So even inspecting what we expect gets so much easier when you're looking for the thing with that individual that you've identified keeps rearing its head during the sales process. Yeah. So I think for me, it's like the reason I'm so bullish on it is that now I know what I'm one, I know what I'm trying to correct more specifically. Now I also know like it's a lot easier for me to follow up and follow through on something when it's not all the variables. It's like one that I need to look for in Tommy. And so anyways, exponentially.

17:00 I'm so fascinated too by like the detail piece, right? There's these little things that we've learned listening to these recordings. I mean, right now we've probably listened or processed with Claude and the AIs, like probably close to 2000 conversations between Mr. and Mrs. Jones and a technician or a PM or whatever, whatever you call them in your business, a comfort advisor or whatever. Right. And one of the themes that we saw come up was really interesting. is that some percentage of the time, Mrs. Jones, because statistically home service providers are going to be working with Mrs. Jones, um, even still today, Mrs. Jones would do this thing because she was trained by other home service companies where in this case, the restoration tech would show up, knock on the door.

17:52 And of course, the software's recording. Mrs. Jones would say, Oh, Hey, are you there with, are you with the restoration company? And they're like, yeah, I'm Sam with XYZ. And then the customer would immediately say, oh, okay, well, let me show you where it's at. And they would turn in and they would walk into the house to the affected area and the technician would just kind of bebop along like, okay, you know. And it seems rather innocent because most of us that are homeowners and whatever, we've had electricians come to like put in a couple new outlets or a plumber come to unclog a toilet or install a new fixture or something like that. And that's how most of us have experienced a home service provider problem.

18:33 And we'd never really thought about it. I don't think we ever would have thought to train our people around this if we hadn't heard this in the recordings, which is what happens when that homeowner gets to that flooded kitchen floor or flooded basement or smoked out granny apartment where she had a kitchen fire or something. They get to the affected area and the homeowner naturally says, hey, what do you think this is going to cost? Now, people in here that aren't in restoration, they're in like roofing or something else, They may be like, yeah, what's the big deal? Get your price sheet out or take some measurements and give them a price.

19:14 Well, with restoration, it's so nuanced. What is this going to cost? Well, I don't even know. I haven't put my tools on it for one thing. The moisture meter is probably still sitting in the rig. They just followed the customer in. So, like, What we found is when the customer does that, if the technician follows them in and just bebops along and goes with the flow, it almost always ended in a think it over, which ended up them calling for a second opinion, calling their uncle who's a contractor. Oh, I can do this for you. You don't need ServPro or you don't, you know. But a simple behavior modification was, hey, if a customer tries to take you in to do the inspection right off the bat.

19:57 Here's what we were able to train them. We were able to say, hey, whoa, Mrs. Jones, I don't have my booties yet. I got to put booties on my shoes. I don't want to walk in. You know what I mean? We could find a reason to pause. walk the customer through our process and then lead them to the affected area where, where then we have an opportunity to walk them through our process along the way, explaining how, Hey, we're going to create a plan, right? And we're going to help you reach out to your insurance agent, right? Get things set up, right? Because there is a process. There's an education that needs to happen. There's an education that needs to happen. And the same could probably be said for HVAC and some of these other skilled trades, right?

20:38 But I think unfortunately, like we would have never known that if we hadn't heard this dialogue it's many dialogues between homeowner and service provider. That would have just been that nuance where we'd be left in the office. Like, you know, God, Johnny, we sent him five leads today and he only came back with two of them. He must not be, we're making assumptions. He must not have done X. He must not have done the good, better, best. He must. Sure. Yeah. Whereas now, now we know, now we know exactly what it was. Yeah. You know, and we know how the customer works. The other thing that I've just found that is so profound with this technology is we get to hear the real voice of the customer.

21:19 Like there's stuff like that that we're learning just about every week where these little things are coming up where like, here's what customers are afraid of when we try to get them to sign the work authorization. You know, this is the most common question they ask. Yeah. And we can prepare technicians. And people don't realize tone is a huge thing. You might be saying the right thing, but saying it the wrong way. Yeah. Right. We also see scenarios where folks are, you know, they think they said something. They didn't actually say it. They have bad recall. There's all these little edge cases that result in a poor experience. Yeah. Again, there's no way to know it. Yeah, you wouldn't without it.

22:00 As a leader, you wouldn't know how to coach it because you don't know it exists. As an individual, as a rep, you don't even know you're doing it sometimes. It's just natural. You develop bad habits. You forget things. There's like a panoply of reasons why the best in the game. record themselves, watch the game tape, get better. It's like it's a very simple premise, you know, and you don't have to look far. Any sports team you look at, the best of the best are just, they're reviewing tape. They're reviewing tape during game day. They're reviewing the practice game tape. They're just constantly trying to get better. Yeah, 100%. It's kind of funny. I don't know where you fall in this because now you've done enough work in sales roles, whether it be leadership or providing some of the baseline tools that people need to succeed.

22:51 But I've realized this. I can't remember who we were talking to, but they were kind of highlighting the relationship inside there. Dude, I can't remember who this was, but they were talking about their company and we got caught on this idea, this topic of training. And we identified kind of together in this conversation how it seems like it should be really obvious that our training to execution in the field should be like a 10 to 1 ratio. Like if you think about, oh, I know what it was. It was our podcast with Clinton. He was just on. And he was talking about. Coaching sports. Yeah, coaching sports. Long time sports guy. He played it up really highly competitive level. Super hard ass maniacal in practice.

23:34 Games are fun. Maniacal in practice. Games are fun. Yeah, that was it. And it just kind of led us to believe we got on this vein about how often in our businesses, how little training we do in comparison to playing the game. Yeah. Because every day you go put yourself in front of the client. That's game day. You're on it for real. The risk, somebody's keeping points. We're either making money, we're not, we're selling, we're not. And yet we really under emphasize the training point. Yeah. So in your experience, like one, I guess the question is, have you experienced something similar? And then how do you see something like Porter being able to, for lack of a better way to describe it, at least help us make up some of that difference, some of that gap?

24:19 Yeah. So we, I mean, I find most of these organizations that we work with are severely under-trained. Yeah. Because training doesn't happen to vacuum. You can't, you can't be like, Hey, I'm going to train you for 30 days and that's it. And I kind of shirk responsibility after that point. No. Training is a continuous process that happens. Even if you're at a very high level, there's always ways to get better things to improve. For sure. Now, you know, using a technology like this, how does that help with training? Well, we talked about top down, you know, learning and development, right? Saying, hey, where are the issues? I mean, bottoms up would look something like this. I've got 10 reps in the field and I can coach each individual rep, ask AI, hey, how did they do on the past 10 conversations, past 30 days, et cetera.

25:08 Or I can look at the entirety of my team and say, where is my team struggling as a unit? Where are they bringing, like where is the conversion leaking from the group? And it might be that there's a particular part of the conversation. Maybe it's the opener, maybe it's objection handling, maybe it's the close, whatever it is. where on average, that number is suffering. And it could be that it's suffering because everyone is weak, could be suffering because two or three people are really weak and two or three are strong, but the overall number is low. So now we have some information and we have some data around whether this is pervasive across the entire team or just certain people.

25:51 And now we can coach to that particular thing. So for that week, we can say, hey, guys, I noticed last week that the openers were really poor across the board. That said, Chris did a really great job. So we're going to have Chris come in and kind of present his framework. Yeah. Learn from that. We're now going to look at this as a unit, and we're going to try to get better together around this particular subject. It's very difficult to do that with that level of precision. Hmm. surgical precision. Yeah. If you don't know what, what, you know, how, how a number wouldn't tell you that, right? Like even if Tommy's good at it, in fact, the numbers would probably lie because you're going to be using people's opinions on how things are going rather than the actual data.

26:36 So if there's one guy in the room or a gal in the room who's very, you know, opinionated or has a strong voice, like, oh, we crushed this. I did. Oh, yeah. OK, that's not an issue. Right. Like, it's clear that that person speaking for the group understands what's going on. So we tend to kind of like brush aside when you don't have the data. You're using anecdotes. Yeah, for sure. Decide whether something is an issue or a non-issue. And it's really hard. It's like you don't realize how easily you get swayed into misinterpreting what's actually happening on the field. You know what this also reminds me of is like I just remember over time, you know, dealing with, let's say, for example, lots of projectors.

27:16 And you might be in a case, there's the dots connect. So you might be in a case where let's say you have two project managers, and one person consistently just gets, it seems like they're pumping 50 plus percent gross profit margin on every single job. And it's like easy street. Well, maybe that's a KPI we track and keep a pulse on. So obviously, this individual just happens to get more gross profit margin. If I were then to actually look at the detail of how that individual does that, I may find out that projects tend to take too long. because he's or she isn't as good at pushing the subs. Well, they're not as good at pushing the subs because they're taking a lot of margin.

27:58 And so they don't have the ability to negotiate or maybe force the schedule as tightly as they could. Or maybe they tend to only use one specific sub that they've got a relationship with. And that relationship somehow will say yes. to, you know, larger more margins, but there's this fallout. They're not very good at their follow up. They leave a dirty job. Like there's all these things that even though somebody may consistently potentially create some higher margin, are we still happy with the entire client experience that that individual provides? Well, I wouldn't know that by looking at the GP. But if I was hearing their engagement with the client, I guess in this particular example, I would say if I'm taking in additional data points that I have access to, and I'm using that to really take a holistic perspective of how this is winning, and do I agree with it?

28:49 Does it align with our culture? Is it something I want them to share with other teammates? Like by the example that you're sharing, we're able to do that. Like if somebody's slaying it and you're looking at how the detail of how they're slaying and it aligns, you agree with it. It's good. It's consistent. It's trainable. Then for you to put somebody in this position. To be a voice of, hey, man, these people are crushing. Now I'm doing all sorts of things. I'm putting in some succession training, natural. I'm creating stickiness with my team member because they get to see that they're good and why they're good. And I'm also promoting somebody potentially into a state of influence that I validated. No, they're a great team member.

29:30 They don't just have like one number that tends to make them look good. Great. So anyways, a little preachy, but that's just something I think I'm experiencing and hearing you say. That's some of the potential I see too, both with salespeople and like you bring a project manager. I mean, in the restoration industry, but probably in a lot of home service trades, that project manager role is such a significant interaction that the customer has with the brand. Right. But the potential, as we start recording this field data, to understand why our successful people are successful. You know, we just take for granted so often, like, what are some of the things, what are some of the behavior patterns, the questions that they ask, the way they ask questions that are maybe leading to these higher success levels?

30:22 And then I was just thinking... Like, these are your SOPs in making. Yes. Well, not only that, but like, you brought up the question of training, like... The ability for us to create playlists, and I'm actually curious to see where you guys are taking the software, if this is going to be a part of it, but the ability to take playlists of our top performers – And then when we have a new project manager start, for example, I mean, we have our normal stuff they need to know about the trade or our standards and so forth, KPIs and whatnot. But then also to provide them a playlist in their very first week of our top three best project managers.

31:03 And three or four recordings of them doing a scope walk with the client and a dinner table conversation with them about the project and what they'd like to do and hearing them cross sell and say, hey, well, we're going to have to take that wall out anyways. Have you guys ever considered remodeling your kitchen? You know, this might be a good time for you to do the most cost advantageous time. And they get to hear these top performers that are getting 50 plus percent gross profit. how they do it, what it sounds like, the kind of things that they say in their very first week on the job. Yeah. Not just hang out with, not just hang out in the truck, you know? Pretty sure you could do that today. Actually, we have two ways of doing that. You can just like pin a conversation or you could just ask the AI, hey, like show me the best performing conversations.

31:47 Give me the top three. Yeah. Today, building software today in the age of AI is like less user interface and more actual, like, what do you want? What do you want? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which actually begs the question, like, where a lot of the value accrues is in the data, right? So as an organization, if you are not collecting information and getting better, you are at a significant disadvantage in this ecosystem. Like, people are going to run a lapse around you. And, like, today we're at a unique point, right, where right now, if you take advantage of a technology like this, you're actually ahead of the curve. Yeah, 100%. but the pendulum swings so quickly that it could be like in a week from now.

32:31 If you're not on it, if you're not doing this kind of stuff, you're now behind the curve. And that shift is going to happen a lot faster than other technology adoption cycles. You know, like there were some people that got away with for a very long time not having a website. Yeah. You know, in the early 2000s and stuff. And they're like, I could push this off. It wasn't a huge word of mouth. Yeah, exactly. That obviously, I don't know of any organization. that can get away with that today. I'd like to hang in that if you're cool with it. Because I think you just actually tiptoed into something. I'm kind of like, oh man, I've really been worrying about that. So, okay. Our audience is predominantly restoration companies, blue collar home service.

33:13 And again, we make overreaching assumptions a lot, but it's for the sake of conversation. slower to think of their business as a data collection point. Okay. And some of the fuel behind that is, as I feel like broadly, the folks that we tend to run into, be in similar circles with, We're a little bit more blue collar in the way that we approach the world too, where there's a heavy emphasis on the quality of work, our reputation in the field. All these very native and long time standing priorities inside the business.

33:57 And I'm not knocking any of those. But I can feel pressure when someone begins to say in my social feed, in a conference, in conversations with guys like you, there needs to be a growing emphasis on your business understanding the gobs of data that's available to it. And then understanding that the future of your business is actually very much... going to be dependent on the quality of data and what you are doing proactively to leverage that data in the favor of the business. Let me paint a picture. Yeah. Okay. An organization that is completely, it's always good to paint like very opposite pictures so you can get a sense of what I'm trying to say.

34:41 Yeah. If you have an organization that is so against collecting data, they're setting their ways, they're going to just do the status quo. Let's fast forward an organization that is the opposite of that. How are they going to improve? And at what rate of improvement are they going to improve? Okay. So on the sales side, we've already established that now they're going to take their conversion rate from 50% because that is a focus. They're going to train their team better. They're going to be more prescriptive in the things that those individuals need to do to get better faster. I think we can all agree. those people are going to improve at a faster clip than not doing that. Right. I don't think anyone listening to this would be like, no, you know what I mean?

35:22 Like that's not a sensical argument. So, okay. So on the revenue side, they're going to be much more efficient. What does that mean? Well, they're going to be able to hire better talent because those people are going to be able to convert more jobs and make more commission. And, They're going to be able to grow revenue faster because now they're going to be advertising. And whatever acquisition channel they're using is going to look better on paper, right? Because all of a sudden, if I'm spending money on advertising and I'm converting at a higher number, well, guess what? my advertising return on investment looks great. And so now I'm investing more money in sales and marketing. You're more bullish or more aggressive. I'm gonna spend more money in sales and marketing because all of a sudden if I'm spending $100 and I'm, you know, like a better example, I'm spending $1,000 and I get two leads and I only convert one of them, right?

36:08 Well, okay, that's 50%. But if I'm converting 80% of them, well then, hey, you know, I'm making $850 off that thousand bucks instead of 500, right? So there's that piece, which now I'm spending more money, I'm making more money. Now there's also this efficiency thing where how much time is my team taking to upload their information into the CRM? What if it was just a click of a button? Now my team is like, well, I want to work for an organization that isn't going to have me like, you know, chisel the information into a rock and spend half my time doing administrative work where that's not fun. Like nobody wants to be that person, you know. Imagine working for an organization that like refuses to use computers.

36:48 You got to write everything by hand. Like that's insane. Or AI in the common. So my point is, if you kind of look at technology as a driver for getting better faster, for having a better quality of life in terms of how you're spending your time, I can get more done. I can be more profitable, right? And at no point are we talking about replacing humans or any of that nonsense. Like we are just talking about making an organization and its people better. And that is, I think, the difference between someone who is, you know... Jumping on this train and using it to drive momentum, in a way that's more than just I'm asking ChadGPT a few questions and it's helping me write an email or a social post.

37:33 I think a lot of people start there and stop there. You got to go like 10 layers deeper into this in order to, and you don't need a PhD in AI to figure this stuff out. So anyways, a long-winded explanation, but ultimately I think it's important for people to understand like, the delta there is going to become really obvious very quickly. And I think that's part of my motivation behind, our motivation behind working with you guys too is, is, This is approachable. Like in some ways, if you told me that even three or four months ago, or when I was hearing the same kind of drumbeat, it's like, okay, I get it.

38:14 But what are we talking about? Are we talking about the data that's stored in my spreadsheets that I have in Google Drive? Or are we talking about my CRM information that I don't own really? You know, like, what are we talking about? And what do I do with the data? And I think one of the things that we're seeing, let's say, for example, inside RunPorter, Porter is this idea that now I've got data, it's mine, meaning this is a representation of my business in its current and potentially recent historical state. And I can ask it questions. I can leverage this information and I can immediately take action with it. So I think for the first time for a lot of people, we've probably been hearing drivers about how important customer data is, for example, for a long time.

39:00 But I think we're finally in a place where teams like yours are empowering us to actually own and then do something, quarry that data in a meaningful way that I can apply it right now. It's not 30,000 feet. It's not some distant concept that I got to like, you know, call in the Hubble telescope. Where did Joe struggle last week in his conversation? here are five areas here are five clips that you can listen to for three minutes and here's some feedback you can give him and like now you can have that conversation now you can inform your one-on-one meeting now you can build training protocols that are actually going to move the needle. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. I think it's, I cannot express how critical this is for companies to implement in some way, shape or form.

39:46 Yeah. Like you just, you know, if you're flying blind without this, it's a business critical. You know, the other area that has become kind of a growing area of work for us is in multi-site. Like there's been so much consolidation has been happening, all the home service trades, right. Where, private equity companies are coming in and buying up, you know, independent locations, uh, strategics, big, huge, you know, current companies are acquiring independence and assuming them into their businesses. And, you know, Brandon and I experienced going from one location to two to three, and we've worked with clients, you know, going to, in some cases, 10, 12, 14 locations, uh, It becomes exponentially hard to do like what got you, like that old adage, what got you here won't get you there.

40:40 Well, like one of the major breakdowns is it is so hard to keep a pulse on what's happening in your company. Not just like there's nuance to different markets too. Every market's a little bit different. You know, it's like Phoenix, radically different market than Portland, Oregon. or San Francisco or Knoxville, Tennessee, right? And yet we can make a bunch of assumptions about what we believe those differences to be. We can even Google a little bit. But what I'm seeing with this tool is that it gives business owners the ability to, with relatively little labor, to get a sense for what's going on across all of their teams and, in a way that was just kind of a black box up until very recently.

41:32 I think of when we were at minimum inaccurate at best. Oh my God. We were running a restoration company. And when we first expanded to a second location, it's like we were rapidly trying to figure out, because we used to do all company meetings, where everybody was in the same room. And you could have a lot of influence. It still required all the repetition and patience and everything else that you learn in leadership. But then you go to a second location, And we're trying to figure out like sound systems and projectors so we can like have meetings at the same time and try to make it feel the same and get a sense for what's going on over there and how people are feeling and what they're saying and what they're talking about.

42:12 And it was so hard. I mean, you just feel like you're flying blind. What we've seen is we've been rolling out Porter and we've been using this technology. It's like now all of a sudden you can hear something. What is, you can hear how those technicians are talking to those customers. And in that case, that example I was giving, we had one side of our business on one side of the mountain. And the other business was literally on like a two-hour drive over a 10,000-foot mountain into a completely different market. And so, unfortunately, we didn't have this technology then, but... we're starting to see this now with client work, the ability for them to get visibility in what's actually happening and then craft training, adapt their processes potentially.

43:02 It's just like, again, I go back to what I said in the beginning, which is this feels really transformational, much like all the other AI stuff. It's like, holy cow. There's almost this mindset I was texting with Clinton after setting out the playbooks for one of his clients. And I did it in like 15 minutes just based on I had the AI crawl our knowledge base of everything we've, all the trainings and things we've done. And he was able to help me produce those playbooks in like 10 minutes. And he's like, how did we ever survive? How did we ever do business without AI? Without Claude, without Grok, you know, bot. That exercise would have taken you like four days.

43:44 Oh my gosh. It would have been like a whole exercise, right? I'm going to get back to you on the next Monday. Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah. And there would have been a certain amount of inertia you had to overcome just because it was just the enormity of like putting together a playbook and making sure it's the right one and all this stuff. And it's like, no, now we have the bots crawl all of the training tools we've created in the last five years and in five minutes – populated playbook for us. And so his question was like, how in the world did we do consulting or really anything in business before AI? And that's a lot of how I feel too. And we think about the value of these, these field recordings, you know, it's like, how, how did any company expand beyond one or two locations?

44:24 Yeah. I don't know that I know the answer to that. Well, I think that kind of shifts us a little bit. And this is kind of, for the listeners, this wasn't intended to be a product pitch, but there's just kind of like these points in a conversation where just one and one is three here. So it's kind of dumb to act like it's not happening. Well, I think kind of to piggyback off what Chris is pointing to is, we've had conversations about, We're amped about something like Porter. And you're showing people very concretely the value of something like this. And yet, there can be a little bit of this mental gymnastics that we're doing in terms of, one, is timing right for me to buy a tool that helps me see the inside of my business?

45:14 That in and of itself might be a... a question that if you're asking, you might want to sit on that for a minute. But two, it's like, then you get kind of this adoption paralysis where people see a shiny thing. They might get real excited during the demo because it's hard not to because it's real black and white. And then there's just this absolute lack of commitment. So you've been in a call and you've seen the value of how this can have an immediate impact on your business. But then when it comes time to say maybe a short-term no to all the things that are asking for our time as a key leader or the owner of our business to prioritize something that we've seen in a really black and white way is going to have a profound positive impact on the business.

46:02 We haven't even talked about all the indirect ways that something like this benefits the business. Yeah. Why is that happening? What are you guys seeing? What have you seen? I mean, dude, you've been around. No, I think a lot of folks are very, well, they get caught in the mud of the day to day, right? What are your priorities? I think ultimately, as a leader, you need to be bought into the initiatives that you're forward. But ultimately, you have to ask yourself, like from a resource allocation standpoint, there's a really great leadership lesson, which is like, go find the biggest bottleneck in your business and destroy it.

46:42 And then find the next biggest bottleneck in your business. and destroy it and just keep running that process yeah continuously yeah until there are no more well there's always going to be bottlenecks until the next one emerges you know like yeah and I cannot think of a bigger bottleneck for most people then I am losing. Because there's a thing of like, hey, I can improve my conversion rate. That's one way to look at it. Sure. I can go from 50 to 70. The other way to look at it is I am losing 20% of my deals right now to incompetence. Yeah. Right? To like self-directed, self-directed lack of competence that is trainable and coachable. And I'm making that decision to not prioritize that and prioritize something else.

47:26 That's interesting. And that is like you're making these decisions on a daily basis of where to spend your time and your money and your team's time and energy. And I mean, there could be scenarios where there are legitimately bigger fires, right? Like, hey, my whole team turned over. Okay, well, you have a hiring problem right now. I think that's where you got to focus your energy. Yeah. But I think you need to ask that question and have a really honest discussion about where you're putting your energy. And it becomes very black and white when you start to look at the math of like what can really move the needle. What I find really ironic is if you say, hey, I'm not going to work on something like this, but my focus is on going to build a new revenue channel.

48:06 Or my focus is on trying to get my advertisement. Or my focus is... It's like you're throwing money into a boat that has holes in it. And so it's like... Why? Why not fix the thing? Because there's actually revenue that you're getting today that you're losing. Yeah. You've technically spent on it. You've spent on it. Yeah. You're already spending that money for those leads. So, you know, you need to, you need to figure that out. But ultimately I do think, you know, there is a need for some guidance. Yeah. You know, there is a need for, you know, Help. A lot of folks need help. They don't have time. And I think that's a very challenging place to be, especially in restoration.

48:46 You're running around like a chicken without your head. You got emergencies. You could legitimately just not have time to do anything because you're just you're doing the bare minimum. Just put your head above water. Yeah. Right. But at that point, like you need to start reallocating your energy or you got to reallocate your capital to solve some of these problems. So I often hear like, hey, we don't have time to do this. Great. If there's a very if I told you Hey, you put a dollar in, you get $2 out. Whether you got to stand at that slot machine or you got to get someone on your team to stand at that slot machine. Or you got to hire someone to stand at that slot machine. If it costs less than a dollar to turn that lever, you should be putting someone in that slot machine every single day.

49:27 So it's a very simple math equation. Can you find help to do this? Hire an organization or individuals to help you effectively get that value if you can't do it yourself. So that's what I see day in and day out where there are some challenges. But I think it's a natural part of being a business owner for an SMB. Your small business is tough. I'm not trying to downplay that. There's a lot of challenges. But I think when you start to look at it from that perspective, it helps make the decisions of how to operate a little bit of it, but be clean enough. Yeah, it's challenging because I think ultimately what you're pointing to is this idea of sometimes we have to push out that horizon on what it is that we're looking at to make those decisions.

50:17 I think sometimes when we get... in full blown in the weeds and we're totally swept up in the tyranny of the urgent, it's just really difficult to even honestly assess where your time's going and why. And then you almost like begin to wear this badge of honor of man, I'm 20 hour days. I'm working my ass off. I'm like, I couldn't possibly give any more. And to a certain extent, like all of that's super true. But then being able to kind of like pull yourself up long enough to say, okay, it is true. Like I'm spending every day dedicated to this business. I'm burning the candle. Like there's certainly not a lack of effort. But just evaluating and saying, okay, and though, what is that effort producing in terms of a result?

51:03 I kind of think about it this way. I had a past client return. And I think it's great. I missed them, to be honest. And I'm just doing some personal work with them myself. Our very first client. Yeah, literally our very first person that ever wrote us a formal check. Circled back around. I've been partnering with them recently. And like any business, they've got legitimate things that they're worried about and that they are trying or attempting to prioritize as they just kind of solve this problem. There are several companies under one ownership group. It's fairly complicated. And every time I'm talking with them, I'm just trying to remind them, and if I'm fully transparent myself as well, is this is an elephant in front of us.

51:48 And we're just going to be taking one bite at a time. And I've noticed, and I had a recent experience that reminded me very concretely, there is a difference sometimes when you're sitting outside of that business emotionally and when you're in the throes of it. And so, again, I'm not trying to turn this into a consulting ad, but it is important to have someone outside of your sphere or outside of the business itself to help remind you where to put your eyes. And that could be a peer in the industry. It could be a close friend. It could be someone that understands, though.

52:28 for real what it is that you're wrestling and just can say like, I agree with you. That thing is important. But if we focus our attention over here, there's a strong potential. We're actually not only going to solve that problem, but we're going to get a couple hours this week back. It's a mindset thing, right? Like there's a reason why you guys are familiar with like Tony Robbins and that, you know, there's a reason why some of the best athletes in the world hire athletes Coaches. Yeah, for sure. We have one, man. It's fun to make. Yeah, well, I mean, everyone should have one, right? In some capacity, you need a mentor, a coach, you need someone to help unlock. A lot of this stuff is mental. It is. It's not something that you don't control. Like, you control how you spend your time.

53:10 I tell my son that all the time. Like, you control your actions and your reactions. You know, like, that's what you control. And ultimately, as a business owner, it's true. We feel like, hey, this thing is taking me. But you make decisions day in and day out. You can change those decisions. And it's hard. It's a mental thing. It's not a physical thing. And so, you know, you got to have the right mindset to go into that battle with yourself, you know, and get to the other side. It's so true. I want to circle back on something you said because you said this potentially is sounding like a bit of a product pitch. Yeah. And I think, you know, so Porter is one of our Headheart sponsor partners. Yeah.

53:51 But I wanted to unpack that a little bit because I've referred to this many times as the technology, this type of recording technology. Sure. Like the reality is like everybody is seen in their, like their Facebook feeds, ads for pocket AI, clever little night safe. Oh sure, get them all the time, man. All the time. You know, it's like in our team, as we initially were deploying Plod devices with a lot of our clients trying to utilize that technology for all the purposes where we've been discussing here. Rilla is a big enterprise, you know, software platform. Zero is another one. So it's like, this is not, this is no longer- Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is no longer novel. Yeah. But I think what we kept hitting our head against, Fieldy was another one that's based out of Estonia, I'm pretty sure.

54:35 I was talking with their development team at one point, an always-on recorder. So there's a number of these things. And I think what we kept, and some of the people listening to this right now, in fact, I literally was meeting with a client this morning who held up their pocket. Oh, yeah, we've been doing that. I'm like, well, I know exactly what that feels like, looks like. None of these things. Not exactly the same. So many of these recording devices, they're all in a vacuum. They can all do the same thing. Yeah. Right. They're all recording things and then applying some sort of AI layer. Yep. To summarize and whatever, make the information useful. Fathom's been doing it. Fathom's been doing it for long.

55:16 Otter before that. For that deliverable. Over and over and over again. Gemini can record all your Google Meets, right? So... But I think what we kept hitting our head against is they weren't designed for service businesses like we work with and we do in the sense of we, in every case, we have multiple people we want recording these situations and we're not going to do that. And ideally, we need to be able to view all those recordings in aggregate and ask questions about what's happening across the team. And we were having to sort of cobble together these Claude skills to like automations to have so-and-so's, you know, Claude device, email it into our Claude.

56:02 And then the Claude would grab it from my email and then it would create this session prep tool for our Claude. Oh, it's brutal. And the same thing was true with our clients who were trying to deploy this. Which they didn't because of it. And listen, it's fair. There are some other enterprise platforms, but we couldn't find one we could recommend to our clients because they were so expensive. Upwards of $20,000 minimum starting point per year to deploy this software. And so we were forced to try to cobble together these PLOD devices that are $150 each. All this to say, there's a reason why Porter is a partner and why you guys are here is because you guys have somehow managed to thread the needle, both in terms of the cost to deploy Porter in a small business.

56:50 but centralizing, like making the data useful without having to go through all of these gyrations and set up all these custom AI flows to get the information where you need it. 100%. If you add, like, so some of those products that you were talking about are like individual user products. And look, if you have a lot of time and or a lot of technical capability and you want to cobble together your own thing, You can't. You could build your own CRM, you know, but I don't see most restorers like replacing Albie or Dash with their own CRM. It's like there's a lot of energy that goes into building and maintaining software and also getting utilization from your team.

57:35 I ask my team to start doing A, B, and C they're just never going to do it. As soon as you start adding roadblocks, there's another five things I need to do. I got to upload. I got to then download it. I got to put it into, forget it. It's never going to get done. So ultimately, you have to, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, like as an owner, you got to make a resource allocation decision of like, where do I spend my time? We have this funny joke, which like, especially with AI these days, it's like, Hey, I just coded. I just spent my whole weekend coding a calendar app. And you're like, you mean like the one that costs five bucks or the one that's free with Google? It's like, yeah, I did it all by myself. And you're just like, why would you waste like two full days? The DIY. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like there's certain things that are just like not worth... doing. You know what I mean?

58:15 Like it's just, it's, it's, it's not, it doesn't make sense for one individual to spend a lot of time doing and maintaining something versus just buying something if the price is right. And I think that is the question with software today is, can you deliver a lot of value in a very tight economic? footprint. And that's really where the sandbox that we're trying to play in. I think it is a testament to how important these devices are. You're going to start seeing these things pop up. They're already very, very popular in the medical community. So there's a bunch of companies that are very focused on the medical space and they're transcribing like doctor's note. You know how much of a pain for a doctor it is to take notes and then have to transcribe that at the end for you guys?

58:55 I mean, like Grey's Anatomy or any of those shows, they always complain about, oh, I got to do my notes. I have a bunch of friends who are physicians and it's a huge, huge time cycle. And so ultimately, you're going to see this percolate in law firms and schools and It's already very much adopted in certain technology communities or Zoom meetings. I think everyone who's at a Zoom meeting has seen those things pop up. So it's obviously already being used ad nauseum in those sectors, and it's just a matter of time. Where it's used everywhere else. Okay, so one of the last things, maybe we quiz you.

59:35 Sure. I've got some personal questions before we close the loop here. Yeah, I know. You know, I think another area that you guys have decided to sort of link up inside Porter, it's calling. Yeah. And, you know, we've, this has come up many, many times on the podcast where I think as a service sector, we've undervalued call and take, our receptionist, the receptionist on our team, right? And now at the very same time, many of us as companies are using voice over IP technology, telephony products like RingCentral, Grasshopper, where we have like special numbers for our Google ads and billboards and things like that.

1:00:20 So we know where our leads are coming from and so forth. And yet many of us are still not reviewing any of our call records. Those are recorded. They're all recorded. I was almost as a default. Yeah. I was talking to somebody recently. They're on the CSR side of, of this rather large business, service business at 30 and their manager came to them and just said, Hey, you're doing a great job. Listen, all I care, this is literally what they said. They came to this frontline CSR person and said, Hey, you're doing a really great job. Listen, all that's important to me is that you show up on time and you're answering the phone. I don't listen to your call recordings.

1:01:01 All I care about is that you show up on time and you're on the phone. It's such a funny thing to say. But aren't we living like that most of the time? And at the same time, like I get it. As a leader, it's like focus on the controllables. You only have so much time. This company is rapidly growing all the things. But my point of bringing that up is, Right now, many companies have had access to this data, call intake, being able to listen to calls. And some of these platforms, presumably there's ways you can sort and filter and stuff like that. But you guys decided to build that in to Porter. So it's not just field recordings. No. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, well, you can, like, the whole goal here is to look at the entire lifecycle of a deal.

1:01:43 So from intake into the field. So we integrate with all those voiceover IP solutions. We'll pull that data in. We can run it through the same process. we can also record conversations that are happening outbound as well over the phone. So you might have a sales rep who's, you know, 80% of their job is in the field, but maybe 20% of their job is follow-ups. Yeah, callbacks. And that's a very important part of the equation. Like how good are you doing at a callback has a direct proportion on your conversion rate. That's a job that wasn't closed, right, on site. And you got to chase it. How good are we winning back those opportunities? So what we're trying to really understand is in a service-based business where you're talking to the customer, There are all these different touch points that happen.

1:02:26 Sometimes it's with a cell phone. Sometimes it's with an intake number with your CSR. Sometimes it's in front of a kitchen counter with Mr. or Mrs. Smith. Sometimes it's with a BDR who's actually outbound prospecting with, you know, a hotel manager or whatever the case may be. All of those conversations. need some level of coaching and you need some level of disability on, on what's being said and being able to query it and ask questions, et cetera. So ultimately that's, that's the idea is to kind of plug into all these different conversations, analyze them differently, provide feedback, make it really easy to deliver the value. Yeah, that's huge. It seems like we're getting to the point where if we lose a deal, um, same day we can query inside the tool.

1:03:10 100%. Yeah. Why did we lose this deal? And then perhaps even, I think AI is now starting to enable us to ask the question, is there a potential for us to still win this deal? Yeah. Is there a follow-up approach that we should use based on the recordings from Cradle to Grave? What happened? What was said? What wasn't said? What questions were asked, weren't asked? Is there a strategy for us to go back and still try to get that deal? Yeah. I also think there's a lot of value in understanding those conversations and making sure the information flows appropriately. So, for example, it's a really bad customer experience. If you talk to someone over the phone, you give some information, someone comes to your door, you have to repeat said information.

1:03:55 And then you're constantly having to repeat yourself. You're like, is this organization not listening to me? You know what I mean? Yeah. There's a great, and I think, Chris, I think you talked about like, you know, restoration being like a, like a, like a hotel experience. Like it's, it's, you know, experience. Hospitality. Hospitality, yeah. Some of the best hospitality experiences are ones where it feels like magic. It feels like they know you, right? Like you've been there. It's like, hey, Mr. Carvano, do you want that room on the seventh floor again? Hey, we left you out that biscuit that you like last time. That's amazing. It does. It makes you feel like a million bucks. You get one of those interactions in your life, and all of a sudden, you're chirping away to all your friends. Oh, yeah. There's this great hotel company. Yeah. Gave me my favorite cookie. What did it take?

1:04:36 I gave you a cookie. You know what I mean? I bought your loyalty and free advertising with a $1 purchase. I was just very thoughtful about how I build my system to enable that experience. But that's applicable to any organization. Yeah. I think this is a little piggyback here, and I think I'm going to do a hard 90 with us, but we've had a brand new HVAC system put in not that long ago. It's been a month or something. And we've had some recent issues that we're working through. And it's not exactly the same, but it's this similar vein of when someone takes the time to leverage information that they have access to in your favor as the client.

1:05:17 Yeah. Okay. Because that's what this stuff is doing. If I'm the Porter client, I have access now to information that I can use, right? And communicate internally to effect change. Same with my client. Well, today, the different experience than I've had with the other techs that came from the same business is that the individual stopped before he left and he walked me through the entire history of what we've tried. So it wasn't me. But he had gotten on the phone at some point and he had contacted each one of the technicians that have come out so far to help problem solve this to include the internal leadership and the carrier. Carrier meaning the manufacturer, sorry, of the unit that we had installed.

1:06:01 And he was able to come downstairs and he shared with me what he identified, how the common thread comes together, and that now the team believes they have a way to solve it because they connected A through Z. And I will just tell you, as an individual who just had now the, this will be our third tech, I think, that's come out to the home. to help us fix a $17,000 purchase that's less than 30 days old. I was beginning to experience buyer remorse. I'm not going to lie about it. That individual that was able to connect all the dots for me and ensure that the left hand was talking to the right and then tell me what they're going to do about it gave me a ton of... I'm in. I'm back in. They're going to fix it for me. Everything's going to be okay.

1:06:41 And I'm very confident in that. It's just a very real life example of a service business leveraging information and taking the time to share with me as the client, what they know, why they know it, and why it's valuable for me. It was huge. It was massive. I listened to a conversation recently. It was really interesting. So it was a water mitt job. And someone was very clear that the water was leaking in a place of their home that they had a lot of concern about. Like there were some antiques and things that meant a lot to them that they couldn't replace. So you have this information on the intake call. When the person goes there, it was such a miss. Like, what a great opportunity to be like, hey, Mrs. Smith, listen, I know this is stressful for you.

1:07:25 And I know that this stuff means a lot to you. This is how we're going to help. I'm not changing. I am just mirroring your concern to say, hey, I hear you. I understand you. And this is what's important to you. It's important to us as well. Yeah. Right. And that takes nothing. That's free. That's information that is now being flowed, consistent. So it's like it's this is like, you know, basic blocking and tackling. This is not like a miracle. Doesn't. You don't need to be a genius to do this stuff. You know what I mean? Exponential return though. Just like small things that just move the needle. Yeah. You know what I mean? So anyway. So it's funny because we have several partners that HHB, the platform, works with.

1:08:09 If we didn't have sponsors, then Chris and I don't get to show up and do this. And for us, we're really passionate about what we do here because we believe for a lot of people, it's like a low risk thing that they can invest a little bit of time to when they're in route to the next job. And who knows? A lot of times we create a ton of value. If anything, we just remind them they're not alone. Right? Anyways, in that... There's two partners. We love them all. But there's two partners right now that we have a lot of excitement around. And that is you guys, Porter and Distance, by the way, as a partnership, and Liftify. And the reason is, is it exactly what you just said? We have several partners that provide a way to have a holistic look at at exactly what a customer is experiencing when they do business with you, which then empowers our clients to take a direct action on fixing, implementing, supporting, and modifying what they do with that client.

1:09:10 One, to secure it the first time, take good care of it while they got it in their hands, and then be able to look later and go back to that person and say, hey, what else can we do for you? And what else can we do for your And that's what you just said. That is an example of when intake does a great job of taking the information because they have a system that empowers them to collect it. And then they use that internal experience to share that data point with a person who then goes and is the first one on site. And they leverage that information that they already collected at the very beginning to continue to embed really great customer experience. Those are the teams, like, at the end of the day, they will outpace us.

1:09:51 A hundred percent. A hundred percent. They are going to crush your face. And there's other ways to do that, too. It could also be, like, hey, after the, you know, as you're going through the walkthrough, in your discovery, like, are you listening? Do you have, like, are you actively listening? Yeah. And then, you know, making sure you follow up on it. Like, there's, it's, I totally agree. It costs a lot of money to borrow someone's trust long enough for you to have a big enough window to earn it. Yeah. And this is a way for us to reduce the spend that we have to try to get the attention and then really maximize that spend to not only keep and retain their attention, but get them to point to someone else's attention at us, which is really valuable.

1:10:34 Okay, listen. So here's what I know about your life in a nutshell. And this is where my question is going. So several businesses that you are founding partner, obviously a primary way to that business to find a way to sell so it can operate. You have several different partners in that sphere. So you have several key critically important relationships that you're responsible for giving time and attention to. You have a littles, littles, plural, at home. Yeah, with an S. You have a wife who is crazy, is successful in a high-risk environment in the architectural world. You guys were in the middle of converting an old downtown building into what has to be from limited exposure.

1:11:18 One of the coolest houses I think I've ever seen. And somehow you flew out to Oregon to spend time with us. I mean, part of me is kind of like, how the F do you... Like, how are you doing that? You're a motivating leader to watch and you're contributing a lot to our industry, to the, to the, uh, you know, the broader trades in general. How the fuck do that? So I'm not going to lie. I'm very tired. Yeah. And I've had a lot of coffee, uh, over the past, you know, 24 hours, but ultimately I, I believe you need to show up. Right. And I think if you want to build impactful relationships with employees, with partners, with customers, you need to show up.

1:12:00 So I'm just trying to show up. That's it. As simple as that. That's kind of like a core philosophy. And by virtue of that, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. And we've seen it. For those that haven't had any kind of direct experience with you, super proactive, very thoughtful. You've spent as much time thinking about our company and what we do and how we show up as you have your own in any form of a relationship we've ever had. It's super important. And it's kind of tier one. I've never experienced a ton of that firsthand. So, you know, you have told me stories about how you're reading with the kids at bedtime. Like, you play a major participative role. The showing up. Jiu-jitsu.

1:12:40 Holy crap. A lot of stuff. I mean, bro, there's 24 hours in the day. Yeah. What are – is there any secret at home? Do you and your wife have an operating agreement that you're leveraging to, like – fill in for each other like how are you balancing that i was gonna say you must be good at saying no to things what do you say no to i yeah listen i'll i'll be honest we there's like seasons of life right and like i'm in a season of life right now where i don't i don't do much outside of work and family you know what i mean an exercise which i try to squeeze in as much as i possibly can So there's always like trade-offs that you're going to have to do. I think, I don't know if it was the CEO of Pepsi that said like, you have like five, I'm going to screw this up, but you can Google it.

1:13:24 It's like, I have three, five cups. I can only fill two of them up or something like that. And you got to choose like health, family, work, you know, friends or whatever. So you got to make two of the, if you want to be excellent, you got to pick one. If you want to be great, you can pick two, you know, so on and so forth. So it dilutes it every time you add more things to that pile. But, you know, look, I'm a big family guy. I try, even with my crazy travel schedule, I try to make sure that in the mornings and in the evenings, that's like family time. You know, if that means I got to go to bed later and sacrifice sleep, that's the season that I'm in. You know, I got young kids. at some point they're going to want to spend time with me after school. You know what I mean? So I'm, I'm just very aware of hyper aware of what season of life I'm in.

1:14:07 And I'm trying to make, I'm trying to make time concessions based on that as much as possible. I love that dude. Personal entertainment. What does that look like for you? Personal entertainment. Okay, so my wife and I don't watch a lot of TV, as you can imagine, but we do indulge in like a Friday night ritual where we put our phones away after the kids go to bed, and we're like, okay, we're going to dig into one thing. And we have been absolutely flabbergasted by Mobland, if anyone hasn't seen. If we're in. Oh, my God. I'm a big Tom Hardy fan. He's also a jiu-jitsu guy. Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren. I mean, this is... just like absolutely gobsmacked by that thing it's legit yeah yeah yeah actually when you watch something like that you almost can't watch almost anything else because the bar is just so high and you're just like you know my diet for media is just like you know what i mean like how do you compete it's just not obland i've not checked it out my son and i've been going through the gentleman Oh, that's actually a Guy Ritchie.

1:15:06 So this is also Guy Ritchie. Mobland is Guy Ritchie? Guy Ritchie as well. Oh, that's movie. Chris is sold now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because the gentleman is an incredible series. It's good. This would be an upgrade from that. Mobland is an upgrade. For sure. Really? Oh, 100%. Oh, it's really good. Okay. All right. How do you, how do you do the fitness thing? Cause you're a fit guy and I know you've been like, I think in a previous conversation, you described yourself as a bit of an extremist. Like you tend towards like ultra version of things. Like where are you at now with that? Yeah. So I used to do a lot of, I used to play a lot of sports. I, then I did a lot of black belt in Taekwondo. I used to do a lot of martial arts when I was younger. Then I took a step back and I said, you know what? I'm just going to just run for very long distances for very long time.

1:15:50 So I was in an Ironman's for a while. And that was a great season of life because I was in my 20s and I didn't have kids. So you can spend 30 hours a week working out. Yeah, exactly. I couldn't do that today. And so now I'm very much into jujitsu. That's been my most recent obsession, which is a very tech thing to say because they got like Mark Zuckerberg and all these guys who are obsessed with it. But it is like body chess, as I like to describe it. It is. And it's been really fun. I do that with my son. So we go together. It's even better. So, yeah, I try to maximize. You know, I go running with him as well. So we'll do runs together and stuff like that. So just trying to maximize, you know, time in productive ways, not just staring at a TV.

1:16:31 It's beautiful. Yeah. Sweating, showing them good instincts. That's good. That's what I've been convicted about lately. So y'all catch myself saying I don't have time for this or that. I can't fit. Okay. And then you do just a self-assessment and you're like, I just, I waste, I killed a bunch of time this morning, you know, scrolling or, you know, whatever. And there usually is enough time to fit the things you really want. Absolutely. Absolutely. If I assess that off this weekend, I'm feeling super, super. I know, right? No, but that is, I actually did this thing this year where I substituted, I like deleted all the apps from my phone. I made it really annoying. So if I want to check Instagram, I got to go to like the website, Instagram.com.

1:17:14 Yeah. You know, it's very janky. It's not great. Yeah. Keeps telling me, download the app. I'm like, nope. Ain't going to do it. Not going to download the app. Nope. But I try to like, anytime you want to reach for your phone, I just like, I reached for a book instead. And, you know, I got through some like, there's always these things that you want to do. You want to read. You want to whatever. And so I was like, okay, I have like a couple of just like, they're like bricks that are sitting there like teasing me. They've been teasing me for years. And I finally got, last week I finished it. Wow. What's the book? Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Like that was a book that I had, it's been sitting in my desk for like 20 years. Yeah. I'm like, I should read this. And it's like, you know, 1100 pages. It's a big thing. It's very small writing. It's like, okay, as someone who doesn't have a lot of time, that's, but you just chip away at it.

1:17:56 And it was, now I got, okay, finally, I finally, I finally did it. It's been a while, but. Yeah, small little adjustments, I think, are hugely impactful. Love it, dude. Bro, thanks for giving us your time and space. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you. Appreciate it, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Thanks. Real treat for me. Friendship and partnership's been awesome. Looking forward to more. Appreciate you guys. Thank you. Okay, brother. All right. See you, everybody.