Ep 192 - "The Silent Killer of Restoration Company Growth: Poor Client Experience"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Hard and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that react 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. Good morning, my friend. Yo. Little morning record sesh. Yeah, this is earlier than we normally do it. I know... You've been coming to the office really early. Yes.

0:40 I come in selectively early. I kind of bounce back and forth between a morning and afternoon schedule. But yeah, today was an early morning one. Yeah. I got the old, I was running into some problems committing to afternoon workouts. Yeah. I'll actually say it the way the truth is. I suck at being committed to afternoon workouts. So man, dude, I did an overhaul on the old calendar. And we're getting up pretty early. We've got a 3.45 start to the day. You're doing workouts at 3.45? Well, 4.30. It opens at 4.30. Wow. So I got to wake up, pull my head together, and drive into town. So how did you get here by 6 if you're working out at 4.30 to 5.30? Well, I haven't yet.

1:21 This is... Oh, you haven't started this. I haven't started this yet. So this is a plan. Yeah. Because I can't. I'm not doing afternoons. So it's a wild commitment. But, you know, it's weird too. Because when I look at my morning schedule, there's like this massive set of hours between getting up and then being able to sit in on my first session or meeting. Yeah. But with drive times to the shop and to all the things, it's just what is required. So... So I'm digging in and I'm excited about it because I really love a morning workout routine. So anyway, so that's not what we're talking about today. I got a direction I want to go. I had an interesting thing happen over the weekend. We were visiting family and friends. We have a brand new, our niece and nephew had the first of the babies and the kids.

2:06 And so we got to go hang out with a four week old, what would that be? Our great nephew. Yeah. His name's Calvin. Yeah, you're the great uncle. We're the great. Yeah. And his name's Calvin. And it was amazing. So I don't know how many hours I logged, but essentially the goal was to hold that little dude as much as possible. And we were successful and it was magical. So anyways, while I was there, I got a message from a family member that used a company that we've referred over the years, maybe out of habit, part of it, and then some sense of loyalty. The conversation was not a warm and fuzzy one. It was him ultimately kind of unpacking what the experience over the last 90 days has looked like.

2:52 And it brought up several things. One, I was a little disheartened. And two, it just served as a fantastic reminder. And it ultimately ended up as a message that I sent out to our team at FP at the start of the week. And so here's kind of a rundown of what was communicated. And I know that for many of our listeners, you're... Either the owners or leaders of restoration companies or service businesses, or you're one of those team members that helps create the experience. It runs the gambit. And so this is a little bit of a something for all of us for certain. So he essentially spent about 15 minutes just unpacking what his experience had looked like. And the themes are this.

3:33 Long delays between having people on the project physically doing anything of substance. A lack of consistent and proactive communication. Essentially, it was like if he asked a question, he would eventually get a response. And in that response, he would hear something that would make some element of the next step a little clearer. And I used all that language very intentionally. He also experienced several times where people would show up And they themselves didn't know what they were being prepared to do. And when they would show up, they would ultimately identify they didn't even have the skill set or the resources to complete the phase or the task that supposedly they had been scheduled out to produce.

4:18 So imagine you're in a claims experience. You're in a project experience. You're very rarely getting any proactive communication. It requires you to ultimately pull and prod and poke to get any level of information. Yeah. You're experiencing long delays. This is a project that was in a small bathroom that's gone on now for almost three months. In addition to that, when people show up, they actually talk to you and say, oh, well, I didn't know this was what I was doing and I can't do this. I'm actually not capable of doing this kind of work. Then there was an outreach to leadership. And leadership ultimately said, I'll be the hero. Okay. And then failed to deliver on any of the pain points that the client communicated to said leader when asking for help on their project.

5:06 It's a bummer when I hear something like that because that's a crappy client experience. There's nothing in that experience that will motivate this individual to refer this company. But more importantly, if we all just kind of slow down for a minute... put our ego to the side. There was me going, okay, I've been a project manager for years in this industry. I've been a leader in this industry now for a long time. And isn't it safe to say that my team and myself have created experience like that before? And the answer is yes. Right? If I'm honest, the answer is yes. And so it was just, and again, it's like I know I didn't say anything now that's blowing anybody's hair back, but it's just crazy sometimes how we'll have an experience And how it can serve as such a heavy reminder of, hey, when you pull yourself out of the equation and just think open-mindedly about your client's experience, regardless of how many times you've been engaged in a loss or a project, is that client's experiencing something that you're proud of?

6:09 And the reality of it is, is that over time, slowly but surely, it is so common for our level of service and our commitment to client experience to erode because we just get in these behavior patterns. where we grow numb to the uniqueness of every one of these situations for our client because we've done it a million times. And so we start acting and treating the client as if they've been through it a million times, meaning we don't communicate. We don't explain process. We don't keep them up to date because we just start to assume that they know these things. And I don't even think it's a conscious thought of, I assume they know.

6:52 It's, we just forget they don't. And so we don't control the controllables. And we let those things slide out from under us. I'm kind of on a little bit of a pedestal here preaching a bit. But there's a reality check for all of us in 2024 and 2025. We've had several guests on to include some teams from big corporate vendors to guys like Mark Springer, where we've talked about what is shifting in the industry now. that's creating more friction on our growth and our top line. And the reality of it is, is a lot of those factors are fixed and or overcome by being critically keyed in on what kind of experience we're creating for the client.

7:34 And so just really quick before we kind of unpack more of this conversation, here are some of the things top of mind for us at FP and us as consultants in the industry right now in terms of what's impacting claim volume and opportunity project volume. One, we have very sophisticated leaders coming into this space right now. So, right, I'm talking specifically about restoration. You know, PE brings a lot of things. Yep. But one of the things it will bring is sophisticated business leaders that know how to manage companies and create scaling systems. There's power when you come with money, talent, and resources. And that creates a different level of competitiveness in our industry that many of us have not experienced before. Another thing that you're seeing is that the client, and I think a big influence on this is 1% deductibles.

8:21 1% deductibles now are very common, if not the standard. And there's a reality check that now there's a whole lot of friction in the decision process now for someone to decide whether or not to process a claim. And so when you're likely to spend three, four, seven grand on a loss, a lot of people are saying, A, I don't want this on my insurance because my rates will go up. And two, I will barely get over the deductible for this dry out or whatever this case may be. And so I'm going to pay for this out of pocket. And our consumers now have access to unlimited information. And chat does a phenomenal job of helping a consumer educate themselves on the buying process.

9:04 And so now you have a more educated client that expects a lot more from you in terms of transparency and process engagement, right? And all those things. And then I think third, I think there's a reality where there's so much additional scrutiny that is beginning to get leveled at our industry that it requires a higher level of transparency and commitment to delivering a good product. Meaning you have to professionally deploy and create that experience, not haphazardly do it because people don't know better in quotes. Like everyone's watching now. And they understand at a level that they've never understood before. And so now there's just a lot more scrutiny on what we do and how we do it.

9:45 So anyways, my point is that when I hear about that example, there's kind of two things that well up in me. One, holy hell, I know we've created an experience like that in the past. And we have to be absolutely aggressive about never letting something like that happen again under our... our leadership. And then two, it's just an unbelievable reminder as a whole that us as operators and business leaders, we have a responsibility to create a phenomenal client experience or you're not going to grow. Because what happens is it's like the building the sandcastle. You know what I mean? And so every single time we have a crappy experience, we deliver a crappy experience, our truth erodes the trust and prevents that client from being someone who adds to our ecosystem.

10:37 They will actively be taking, when they get asked at a bar, they get asked at a church meeting or whatever, they will actively be speaking against your brand. Yeah. So as our sales teams go out and try to generate new doors to knock on and new opportunities to persuade someone to give us a chance, if we even a fraction of the time create that kind of client experience, you're ultimately eroding. It's no different than churn inside some kind of contracted sales process, right? Floodlight, perfect example. The more often I'm turning a new client through the system and they're not staying with me, the more expensive and more difficult it is for me as a company to scale and grow.

11:22 And we're no different on the service side. Right. And so anyways, I just was processing this all weekend and I sent out some communication to our team and we didn't do anything wrong. This wasn't our company. No. But it was just, guys, remember, it's how we make them feel in the process that differentiates us from the rest. Period. Our gear is the same. Our trucks are the same. Lease rates are similar. Like, we do not differentiate our brand from how we do what we do in terms of infrastructure. But we do separate ourselves from the pack when we create a client experience that motivates them to want to share and talk about how awesome it was that they were taking care of.

12:05 Okay, I'm almost done preaching. There was a couple of things that stuck out to me that I think as organizations we can really focus on. And one is we have to remember that for our client, they literally could give zero shits about anything else happening in our ecosystem. They don't care about how busy we are. They don't care about how many commercial clients that we have. They don't care about how great of a job we've done for somebody else. All they care about is the claim they're engaged in right now. Right? Like that's it. It doesn't, it's like, it's whole Wayne's, a river's a river, a mountain's a mountain. Yeah. Clients don't give a shit about anything else other than how are you taking care of their claim, period.

12:50 Yeah. And how often do we approach our client experience from the fact that we're busy? Hmm. We have lots of clients. In fact, this client's kind of a pain in the ass and I love the other 12 clients a lot more. And it comes out. That client experiences the fact that you're reacting to their job instead of prioritizing their job like it's important to you too. So anyways, I don't even know where I was going to go with a couple things. But that just, man, it was such a good reminder as he was telling me his experience. Because I'm thinking in my mind like the other 100 claims that our company currently has. But you don't care. Right? You know, you and I had burgers yesterday. Yeah. And we went to this one burger joint where we order basically the same thing every time.

13:34 And it's this weird process. Yeah, it is. Of like, of kind of adjudicating this whole experience. And meaning the person who's supposedly trained to take our order and give us what we want at the restaurant doesn't know how... To take our order and give us what we want. And this has happened to you and I three or four times at this particular restaurant. Like, hey, we don't eat the bun. Can we have a burger bowl? And they look at us funny. Yeah. Like, do you mean a salad? No, I just put what you'd normally put on the burger. Slap that baby in a bowl.

14:15 Put it all in a bowl. That's it. That's it. That's it. Wait, so you want the burger in a bowl? Yeah. What you would normally put on the burger, put it in a bowl. Okay, well, so just for future reference, that's going to be a salad. So just to... Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit but now you've got to build a sales team or maybe you just hired your first sales rep but you don't really know how to manage them. Like how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market.

15:02 They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well. How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only $2,500 a month? If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over $250 million in revenue.

15:45 Supported by, advised by, an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment, and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. Like we, I think our tendency sometimes as businesses is we don't think through what it's like for somebody to do business with us. And I think this is true in all services. And I experience this in all kinds of stores that I walk into and services. Like my wife and I, we hired a guy to come fix our heater. Yeah. And it's turned into this whole debacle.

16:27 Two, three weeks ago, my wife called this guy to just repair. Our pilot light was out. And so our heater wasn't working. It's a 25-year-old furnace. And this guy comes and he's like, okay. He looks at it. He's like, yeah, I got to order a part for this. And we find out after the fact, we hear nothing about cost or price, nothing. And then we get an invoice for $1,100. This guy was on site for 30 minutes. Anyway, it was just a crazy experience. But this guy didn't set the table at all. We had no idea what to expect. We just thought, fix our furnace so it turns on again. It's an old piece, whatever. The guy didn't at all talk about, hey, have you guys thought about replacing this?

17:10 What's your intention? It was nothing. It was just like, hey, this little control panel's out, need to be replaced. I'll order it. I'll bring it by when it's ready. And so we're thinking he's so casual and cavalier about it. We're thinking, oh, this is a couple hundred dollar service visit, but $30 part, da-da-da. And then our mind is blown and then we're pissed off and we're like, what the, you know? Yeah. So now we're fighting him and he's getting weird. But it all comes back to like, I think we typically do a really poor job of helping our clients know what to expect. Yeah. And so they end up feeling like they have to manage the job. Mm-hmm. And the moment that starts happening, it all goes downhill.

17:51 That's right. When they feel like they have to reach out for information, that they have to ask questions, it just feels more and more terrible for the client. And then every time we try to collect from that client, they're thinking about, well, I'm the one that's been doing the work. Yeah, that's right. It makes it very difficult to cut a check when you feel like you've managed your own project. When you feel like you've either been having to do the work, you've been tasked essentially with work, you've got to chase down the project manager to find out what's going on. You've got to connect with the company so that you can plan your personal schedule as the homeowner or whatever.

18:31 Yeah. That's where things really start to break down. I think one thing that you and I have been working on behind the scenes at FP, I think helps solve for this, our damage repair roadmap that we've been building. Mm-hmm. And this is not like, like tons of companies have these damage repair roadmaps. Yeah, for sure. This isn't like fancy, but it's basically just a roadmap of what a typical damage repair is going to look like, feel like for a Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Sure. Right? It's like initial response, talks about the silent phase. Hey, we're negotiating with your adjuster scope. We're lining up our trades and subs. It feels like nothing's happening, but trust me.

19:12 It kind of walks people through all the things. And one of the things that you and I got really good at teaching our team to do, and I think when you were a PM, you did this, is if you get really good at talking about the stuff that tends to break and be hard and be annoying and being frustrating ahead of time. Yeah. Because there's certain things that happen in our industry. And I imagine if you really dug into the details of this family member's experience. Yeah. you would probably identify things that you're like, oh yeah, that happens all the time. It sucks, but it happens. Yeah, you'd be like, I bet I know what happened behind the scenes that led to this freaking bathroom taking 90 plus days and it's still not done kind of deal.

19:58 There are probably elements to that job that if they'd just been communicated ahead of time, the client wouldn't have so much heartburn over it. Yeah, there's certainly some. But it's the fact that all that stuff was neither not mentioned or glossed over. Yeah. And then on top of that, there's a lack of proactive communication, a lack of follow through and all of that stuff. And then I think it's also a reality that we all deal with, which is none of us have perfect teams. Yeah. So you can have everything systemized out and processed out. You're going to have some people that refuse to follow the process. Yep. You know? Yep. And so the question is, is do you have... Or failure to... Do you have a system?

20:41 Because the other thing I heard when you were talking about this experience is, there was a lack of inspection along the way where that leader, instead of them having to jump in and try to play hero and then screw it all up because they didn't follow through and they failed to actually execute, you have a leader coming in at the very end trying to clean up a massive mess and... they probably have other massive messes they're helping deal with. And so they dropped the ball. And now it turns into... Now it's just compounded. Now it turns into something that can't be salvaged. Yeah, yeah. At that point, there's not any factor left to trust. Yeah. Right? Like if leadership fails, well then who else do I go to at this point?

21:22 It turns into the situation where you're making big invoice credits to try to keep somebody from bad-mouthing you online. That's right. Right? Yeah, so it's interesting. I don't know if I told you, I have a water loss right now I'm dealing with. So, tis the season, baby. So, my truck was rear-ended a couple weeks ago. My daughter's engine needs to be replaced and I have an active water loss. I'm having a great time right now. Anyway, so, but it's interesting. So, I called out Freddy Bosquez Wolf Restoration. So, first off, we've known Freddy for literally years. He's a technician, Fred. Yeah, I mean, it's so fun watching him go out with his wife and just crush owning their own restoration company.

22:04 And he's awesome. And so anyways, like shout out obviously to Freddie. But and by the way, his social media is really fun. He made a commitment to his social media. So he's on all the time and their videos are hilarious. So Anyways, contrast of this experience, you were talking about like when you can proactively address some of the not so good parts to get in front of it to mitigate that negative impact. Well, one of the very first things that they told me is holidays, And he went out of his way to help me. I'm not like right in the prime of their market. I'm definitely on the outskirts of it. And so they were both just very upfront with me in terms of this is what we can realistically do.

22:46 We understand if that won't work for your timing and we don't want, you to make a decision that's basically in, you know, ill-informed. Yeah. And so they told me, this is what's going to happen with timing because of these factors, want you to know ahead of time. And I made a decision to move forward with them because I trust them. Yeah. Well, almost immediately within days, they were able to, because of a cancellation, blah, blah, blah. They're going to get a jump on my job faster than I was anticipating. So I was set right. I had the right mentality because they prepped me for kind of a worst case scenario. You were pleasantly surprised when they were running out faster. And I'm like, cool, right? Like I'm excited about that.

23:27 Another kudos. I, you know, as part of this process, I had a limb come down from a really tall tree and it basically speared my roof. And so I called Paul's team over at Ironhead Roofing, another local contractor. Killer. Super responsive. Great follow through and follow up. I got an immediate response where they said, this person's going to reach out to you and set a time to come out. Again, they under promise. So it's not likely to be until then. And then I get a call from my person. Let me know. Again, cancellation. Love to come out early. Those are examples of you can set the stage that stuff is not going to go great in every phase of the project.

24:07 But when you do, and then you're proactive, meaning they saw an opportunity to over-deliver on what they stated, and then they proactively take advantage of that, the bar just kept going up with both of those companies and experiences. Now, we got to do some work. So we'll live through that and we'll have some feedback. Watch yourself, Freddie. No, I'm just kidding. But it was just fun to experience that firsthand on the back of having this other conversation. And so you can just kind of see the contrast between the two. But as a company like right now, we've really looked inside FP and said, look, there's spaces. I want to be very clear. We just got done with our OPSP planning, so our strategic planning for 2026.

24:52 And I just want to say this very confidently because I know a lot of our team listens to our show. Is that, you know, there was several fundamental strengths that we see inside the organization. One is just grit. Like, we have a tough-ass team, dude. Another one is we have a team that once they get clarity and direction, they will work themselves into the ground if it matters. You know what I mean? And so I want to be clear. That is a known strength inside our organization. What I'm about to say is not an example of ill intent or a lack of caring. It just can happen, right? A lot of it's procedural. we identified there were some opportunities where we created paths where a client could have a poor experience.

25:36 And we were leveraging too much on the individual to overcome institutional friction or failures in the system in terms of good planning and process. Yeah. And so we've been really grinding gears to get rid of that stuff prior to the new year kicking off because we want to marry really good systems and processes up with a team that, again, we already said, has a ton of grit, a ton of high work ethic, and really do care. They want to do the right thing. But we have to give them a way to succeed at that consistently and at scale. And I think that one of the things that we've aggressively keyed in on is, you engineer a client experience.

26:17 You don't train one. Training is part of how you execute on it, but you engineer it. And for a lot of folks that have worked with Floodlight in the past, they know that part of our process, often with them, especially in our scale model, so right out of the gate, the first 90 days, a lot of times we're working through helping you create workflows or engineer a client experience. And the intentionality of that is now you know what your team needs to be trained on. They know how to win. And we can hold them accountable and help them support them. And creating a great client experience.

26:58 It's really interesting that connection you just made, which is one I don't know that we've actually said out loud before. When we've been working with clients on developing their mitigation process flow, right? Or the recon process outline. I think, frankly, we've made the mistake in the past of not making that connection for them. That it feels really, for a lot of these teams, they get frustrated at slow work. Yeah, sure. In the midst of doing the business of the business. Yeah. It's like now we give them this assignment and they're supposed to map out all these process steps and it can feel really sterile. It can feel like, why is this worth my time? My guys know what to do, you know, or this kind of stuff. Yep. Yep.

27:38 The connection you just made is what we're actually doing with them is we're designing the customer experience process. And I think that's actually, it's worth us. We could almost do a whole other show on that of like, what are the critical moments in time that we're trying to build a process around? Yeah. Honestly, in our early work with clients, I don't know that we did a great job of connecting those dots for them. By the way, this is what we're actually doing. That's right. Because instead, I think at the time, we were so oriented around the importance of having a documented process that everybody's trained on. And all that's true. Yeah. But more and more, I too am starting to think about how do we create certain kinds of feelings within the customer?

28:24 Yep. at different intervals in the project. You and I did a keynote, I guess we've talked a couple talks around this, this idea of Daniel Kahneman's peak end rule. And just how relevant it is to our industry and our type of work because there's so many things that inevitably get screwed up in our projects. Yeah. And often, even out of our control, the actions, behaviors, and words of adjusters, right? The just particular program maybe that we're doing work for or within, materials, backorder. I mean, there's just so many things that go wrong. Yeah. Not the least of which is having team members quit in the middle of a project, plugging, all the things that happen.

29:04 But Kahneman basically says, look, people remember the peak emotional experience during the customer service, and they remember the end. And I think if we take that more seriously, one of the things we do is we think really, really hard about how we start projects and what we're telling the customer it's going to be like. And we've already said it, but I think arguably the most important thing we can possibly do is tell people all the bad stuff. You know? Yeah. And you used to sell this way. Like you used to steal fires this way. You know, it's like other people, I think when they're fire chasing, come in with the hero, like the white horse mentality.

29:46 Oh, don't worry about it. Yeah. Well, yeah. we're going to take care of everything for you. Everything's going to be fine. You're going to be great. Yeah, don't worry about it, Mrs. Jones. And whereas you would take more of the tact and taught up me and the rest of our team this of, no, no, no, no, no. They need to understand what's actually going to happen in front of them. This will be one of the hardest things they go through. It doesn't matter how rad of a company they work with. This is an emotional experience. The process of navigating the insurance claim, negotiating scope. This stuff's freaking hard. In most cases, displaced from your home and you still have your life to carry on. Your mortgage isn't suspended while you have an insurance claim.

30:28 Going through and helping people see clearly just how hard it's going to be builds so much trust. It does. And it also softens the blow when the frustrating shit happens later that we know is going to happen. We know it's coming. Here's the reality. This is how recently I've just kind of been reminded how distant from this or disconnected we can be from this. As we've kind of looked at our internal process at FP, right? One of the things that will come up from time to time is a little bit of pushback from some of our downline leadership in terms of, well, why are we doing this? What's this new action? What's the point? Here's an example. And I know some of our team will be listening and they'll have a knee-jerk response to this.

31:12 We put in a requirement as we're getting ready to prep to go into the new year around this idea of putting in a blood pressure note. Okay. And the idea is, I think we had some jokes around. It's like, this is how you keep a leader's blood pressure down is when we can see these things or understand the current atmosphere of this particular project, right? Like, what are we doing about these key factors that make a difference in the job? And at the beginning, it felt like just a new task on top of tasks. And I think what we're starting to get some clarity with the team on is, no, wait a minute. The idea here, and again, I want to reiterate, our team wants to win like this. It's not an ill intent or a lack of caring.

31:54 They just help me understand, basically, right? And the idea is, is that we're trying to identify where in the client experience or the project phases, do we have these moments that if we're really clear that that part is okay, then it's a high likelihood that that client is receiving the kind of experience they need to, right? And so just kind of help like turn this tactical. There's like several phases to this and I would encourage all of you to dig in and Maybe try to do some of this over the holidays where maybe there's just a little bit of less chaos, maybe. And the idea is, one, first outline the entire current project process from first call to final invoice collection.

32:42 What are the big nuts and bolts that happens inside your business from start to finish? Right? And then identify in those processes what tends to go wrong. What is it that happens, right? Is it we don't communicate where monies are going to come from and so we end up inevitably having to stop the project because there's no funds available? Okay, how can we prepare the client for that? And what can we do in our process to mitigate or eliminate that from happening? As an example. So if you just, again, start on a whiteboard, a piece of paper, an Excel spreadsheet, I don't care. Outline the big elements of what transpires in a project process and then go through it and help identify with you and your team.

33:29 Where can this create negativity for my client and for us as an organization and the referral partner? And then try to work with your team to engineer an update, a maneuver, a leading indicator that you can put into place to prevent that or mitigate the negativity of that impact. And then when you're done with that and you begin to train and deploy that in the field, I know I'm way oversimplifying this, then we're following it up and we're doing a really great job of conducting these after-action reviews to help the team identify where the fix is working and maybe where our fix isn't good and that we need to make some adjustments and reprioritize, right?

34:12 But the point of doing that is that if you can start the whole cycle and say, look, As an organization, our number one job is to create an excellent client experience as they go through this. And then you engineer a service flow that in all its priorities, effort, and strategy are attempting to mitigate the negative things that happen in a project. We are going to be failing forward. I guarantee it. And the reason I'm encouraging all of us to double down on this is that it's never going to be harder to retain and get more clients than it will be over the next several years as claim and project transparency becomes more and more obvious.

34:56 Because you're going to have to create an excellent customer experience or people will keep hunting until they find the one that will. Yeah. And someone is going to do this, right? Someone in every market, and often cases many of us, are going to slow down, put our ego to the side, and we're going to dissect our current workflow and build one and update one that mitigates the friction for our client. One of the things I just wrote down here is that one of the behaviors I think that we often lean into, especially when we talk about scaling a business or growing a business, is how can we make this easier for us? And I think in a lot of ways, it's the exact opposite.

35:39 You need to be the kind of company that's really good at solving the most difficult problems and elements of a client experience and lean in, man. Yeah. Lean in embracing the suck and creating something, systems, process, people, behaviors that address those most difficult pain points to overcome. And every time you get that much closer or address one more of those really significant pain points, you're going to get farther and farther from your competition. And it's going to be painfully obvious. And then people will start telling the story about that experience. And it will look in such contrast to what your competitors are doing.

36:19 I guarantee you, your business will begin to grow. You'll get clients that maybe have been cold back online. You're going to earn new relationships and keep them because your team's going to excel. So anyways, easier said than done, but... definitely worth our time, especially as we close out the year and prepare for the new one. This might be the best place to start. Yeah. I think it's a good way to end. Cool. All right, gang. Thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you on the next one. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend.

37:01 Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.