Speaker 1What's the password?
Speaker 0Don't talk about it. Be about it.
Speaker 1Welcome in to the two-of-the-point home services VIP room. Where we invite you, the listeners in to hang alongside some of the biggest, baddest and most successful VIPs of the home services industries. You never know, it surprised guests will show up next. So let's get this party started.
Speaker 4Hey, what's up, Home Service VIPs? It's your boy, Chris, along with my wonderful co-hosts. The elegant and right-gainer with his glasses on today. In chat, you've been always dressing like it's winter and Indiana even some time. Boys, what's up?
Speaker 5It's going on.
Speaker 4For ice, how you doing today, buddy?
Speaker 2I'm doing well, man. How are you doing? I know you. I'm good.
Speaker 4I'm good.
Speaker 2I'm good.
Speaker 4I'm good. I'm good
Speaker 2Vogue it through man, you're a trooper, you're held with trooper. I know I got to see you in person last week.
Speaker 4Well, dude, it was good to see you.
Speaker 2Hang out chat with you in the nanosense of photos of you doing your chemo, which was interesting to see. Man, I got to give you a lot of credit. It was great to see you and Anna the other day. So enjoy the times. Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 4I'm glad we are about cut these things out. You guys just take the show. Good thing is we add in another ghost there. So we got Special VIP guest co-host by my new friend Mo Mo, who is the CEO of a sales ask which is who Chad and I use over at a reparard and Mo and I've got the catch up a few times and super sharp guys I'm excited to hear the questions that he asked Patrick but Mo hey welcome to the show man you are a VIP guest co-host buddy.
Speaker 6I appreciate you all man and excited to be here and the Yes, sir, up in San Francisco right now.
Speaker 4Okay. Well, I don't have any fancy idiom today for no other reason then I just didn't prepare one so I couldn't think of it on the way down here except for how was I going to drink an insure shake today and actually be able to swallow it. It's it is interesting when your taste buds don't work. That's one major problem. It's not like when you had the only figures all got COVID, but whenever COVID hit, I actually got it and you can't taste anything. That's actually better than what I've got because everything I ate tastes like shit. So nothing tastes good. And now I can nothing tastes good and I can't hardly swallow. So they realize the problem. Um, but I guess so podcast or timing. So let's just keep letting it rip. So we have a guest on today too. Would you have actually had Frank Garrison on before from general, uh, general air conditioning plumbing. You guys are in electrical. So you guys are multi trade. Yeah, over in Cachele Valley, Palm Springs, Frank is a trip, if you heard him on that episode. I think Rusty Cocker was on that episode with us as well, as a co-host. Do you still like 80-something water-skiing, like horror-fame guy, quite crazy? Such a good, such a good guy. Super involved in the community out there, like just a good, good group, nice business over there. And Patrick is our guest on the show today, who is now the current CEO, is that right, Patrick?
Speaker 3Correct.
Speaker 4And so maybe what we can do is, um, I mean, Frank, I feel like it's like a little legend over there and I could tell a value. So it like wrapped up in the community. I'm curious. I don't know when you do, you and I have never, have never met before, um, but, uh, you know, maybe we can start with a little bit of, oh shit. Before, do I got to make sure I mentioned our sponsors too?
Speaker 3So, um, but that by what I want to go into is a little bit of, um,
Speaker 4Um, you know, when you took over kind of a little bit of your background, but then like, what did you start changing your company and when did you like really get to take over from friend like, let's, I won't talk about that part of it, but then what are some of the changes and things that you, you that you experienced that you did bake, um, or that you, you know, like maybe the hiccups you run into just because of how involved he is like, what kind of game to some of that. Um, but first off, welcome my friend, um, happy to have you.
Speaker 3Good to be here. Very good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 4And you've done this before, so you should be a professional. There's some, I can't wait for all of you guys to take over the show for me. So that way I can just be quiet in the majority of it. But until I get to that point, I just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors. That's, yo, yo, that's right. I said, yo, yo. come on board in a big way and a man there episodes we didn't do any really really well. Obviously too, Mo and sales ask and really appreciate you coming on board in a big way as well. And that doesn't require me having to bring you on here, but after our conversation I thought it was good to bring you on as our subject matter expert. This is obviously something a lot of companies are rolling out. And you have a great opinion, but you have a great business mine too, so I'm sure you'll ask a lot of other questions I want to give a shout out to Chad Scott and group can't stop the gross Another great group the part of and then also the basic capital so 401k stuff So anyway got that out of the way oh, and by the way guys We have our Facebook community group that's the home home services VIP room Join that stuff while it gets stuff. We've got a Hoffman in there talking which is nice So, all right, we'll jump into it. I got the pleasantries out the way. Okay, so a Patrick, are you ready to let it rip?
Speaker 3That's rock?
Speaker 4Okay, so maybe what we can do for the listeners is let's just go ahead and share. I didn't ask you to say that time. Maybe just share kind of the size of general today. The size of the general is today for a frame of reference. And then maybe let's just talk briefly kind of about your come up into into a general and then maybe your progression through it. And let's start there.
Speaker 3Yeah. General is 17 million, tracking for 20 million this year. God willing, we maintain. Got a long way to go before the end of the year.
Speaker 4And California is never like it's like not nice. You're in like this weird spot in the Coachella Valley where you really also need some weather to help you out.
Speaker 3Yeah, we in the Coachella Valley were like an island, right? So We've got about 300,000 people in the valley right now. They're the locals. And then in about October, we will welcome in about a million people from Canada and the Midwest. And they will stay here until April. Maybe March just depends. We had a really hot March. So people were loading up their cars and heading out quick. So the weather definitely helps, for sure, adding the other trades, of course, helped as well. But we don't go outside the valley either. Everything we do is organic, and it's within the valley, and we're growing within the valley. So we're about 11 miles wide, let's say 35 miles long. And if you think of us as an island and the bridge in is interstate 10 from the east and the bridge out is interstate 10 from the west and there's one other way in it's called highway 74 a windy road takes you up a steep elevation pretty quick and you're into the mountains and you can take a long backway to San Diego that way, but that's pretty much the Coachel of Ali. So I came to the general in 2010 as an entry-level maintenance tech. I had a dry cleaning business. That's a long story in and of itself how I got in the dry cleaning. Something I never thought I'd do. did that for ten years basically bought myself a job and then two thousand eight two thousand nine came along and you want to know how the economies doing ask a dry cleaner because people that were selling real estate were now waiting tables people that came in twice a week were coming in once a week or once every other week a lot more synthetic fabrics those type of thing. So I I left with the idea I was going to go into service and sales and dry cleaning equipment needed to learn refrigeration, started going to school at night. Nobody was buying equipment. Nobody was buying and building cleaners. They were closing down. So I answered an ad on Craigslist in December of 2009 for an entry-level maintenance tech I came in and I was interviewing against a another individual, an experienced technician and as if you know Frank, he likes to do it up so you'd come into a company meeting and you present in front of the company meeting and I ended up getting the job off for the other guy, didn't and I sat in Frank's office, which is now my office and he said, I liked But there's other ways to make money. Don't worry about the money. And I said, sir, I've never taken a job for the money. I only take a job for opportunity. And so my opportunity was to get five years experience, to get my contractors license, start my own business. never really knowing that I'd have an opportunity to buy this business. So, I quickly promoted, you want to hear something funny, is here's an entry level maintenance tech, riding with other techs, learning how to be a technician, and eight months later, Frank announces me as a service manager. And the looks on these guys faces, like they didn't know if I was a plant that was the whole idea to come in and scope things out and then get to that raw. I had business experience, I had management experience. So if you can manage and if you can manage people and you know business, you can run a service department. So I then quickly promoted the ops manager as general manager form and he came to Francisco my business partner and I he was a sales manager time and said hey I want to retire when I'm 75 you guys want to buy the business I'd like to have you guys buy the business he said yeah of course so we put a session plan in place and in April 2018 we bought the business and you know it's we've been rocking and rolling
Speaker 6Yeah, I actually have a question for you, Pat. How, why do you think you could have chosen to be a manager? And when you became a manager, how do you get the theme as buying because you start off as a peer? So now they've got to look at you as a leader. What do you do differently to do that in that position?
Speaker 3I, it comes down to experience and understanding people and being able to manage and motivate people. And they, you know, it wasn't like just one day I was announced. We had lost our service manager to a competitor. So Frank, he did something really interesting. He has signed each technician, each day of the week. They were going to present training to the team. And what really made me stand out to the team was the first day I presented training. Everybody was training on technical stuff and and how to fix this, how to diagnose this. And I did a whole story of the the Notre Dame game against USC when coach sat the number one wide receiver number one running back on the team and they still won the championship. And the lessons to be taken from that. So little things like that happened. And I think the team was was wanting leadership because they didn't have any. They didn't have any before me, even though we had a service manager, a manager is not a leader. I think we all know that and can agree on that. And so I just threw my experience in my ups and downs and ins and outs coming up through the years. I was able to appeal to what they needed, what they wanted, And they knew that I was out there hustling doing what I should do. I was one of the first ones here in the morning, and I say one of, because Frank was always the first one here. And then I started getting here before him. So he started getting here earlier than me. So it was like this little competition. And so it's really just how do you approach people and show up to serve? You know, we're going to build this company. We're going to build this team. We're going to build the service department. And how do you win if we do that? And part of that process was I got rid of probably four people rather quickly that were they were kind of their own little click. And that carried a lot of weight because the other guys saw that they kind of ran the way they wanted to run. and weren't really pulling their full wind. So that was, I'm a big believer in cut ahead off early. You know? Somebody will always present their head to you. You just have to make sure you take the opportunity and cut it off.
Speaker 5I love that.
Speaker 6That's super helpful. Thank you.
Speaker 5Patrick, what would you say, obviously you guys have like a, you know, and a unique weather pattern, you also have like a unique thing where you have like a massive, that's crazy number a million people transcend the, you know, descend on your guys' towns so they're only there part of the year. Like what would you say like talking to other business owners like what's one, what's maybe one or two things that you guys definitely have to do a little bit different to capitalize on just what's happening in your market. as maybe opposed to, you know, Aaron or I were, you know, not, yeah, people leave Indianapolis, but it's not in droves during the winter months to go to Florida or wherever they go. But like, what would you say, how do you guys kind of look at the business maybe a little bit differently? Because of that?
Speaker 3That, you know, I don't know if we so much looking at differently, we just, kind of the need to really get good at certain things like when you're in the home for a second time, when you're on those maintenance visits, those club visits, being able to really get in there and maximize, you know, I preached to the technicians all the time, I said, listen, when we're on a service call, run a service call like a maintenance call. But definitely run a maintenance called like a DO, a doctor of osteopathic medicine versus an MD, where we're treating the body as a whole, we're treating the home as a whole. Look at every opportunity in there, and your responsibility is to communicate bad news to the homeowner. Tell them the things they don't want to hear. that's your more obligation and you just we just have to do it that much better and be able to communicate that much better when the need is not there and then being able to help paint the picture of what waiting looks like so and I think any good company should should be doing that and should be able to do it but it's kind of like When you're in a situation where the need dictates, you can't wait for those cold spells. You can wait for the hot spells, but you're gonna dry up in between, right? But so you can't wait for those, those weather to drive those moments. And you've just gotta get really, really good. And it all comes down to our culture, you know? We all know how important culture is. And culture is critical. and communicating daily, the vision, the mission, and the values is critical. And at the end of the day, what I tell the team is it's alignment that wins the day. If we're aligned, we will win. And the great thing is, there's days, we had a hurricane come through here, believe, or not. I think it's probably been four years ago now, maybe five. for free five feet under mud, shut down interstate 10. Businesses, our competitors were making announcements they were closed for the day. I was making announcements we were open because it affected a part of the valley. The rest of the valley was just wet. And we ended up doing a record day on that day. And then we have other days where it's, the weather's not there, the weather's not cooperating, and we crush it, and then you have other days where the weather is cooperating, and you don't crush it. And to me, the takeaway is on those days, it's the alignment of the team. Everybody's focused, everybody's committed. And on those days, regardless of the weather, we win.
Speaker 6How do you coach your team along those lines? Like you mentioned, you know, the increasing contract values is a really big deal, especially because you have a market that's kind of defined geographically 300,000 people. And you get this influx once a year. But if you're really going to go to the business, you have to have a more product line. Ultimately, you're going to increase contract values and You mentioned something really interesting, which is you diagnose the whole house, you act kind of like a doctor, and your team has to go in there and look at, you know, not just a specific problem that they're to address, but look at the whole house, how do you teach them that?
Speaker 3One day at a time, one training session at a time, really painting the picture of what it looks At the end of the day, though, it's really getting the right people that will absorb and take in that message. We have been hiring these kids that are coming out of this college prep school. My son's one of them, and every one of these kids has the ability to go to college. They got a really good education. And I've got about five of them that came to work at general. and these guys get it. I've got plumbers turning over air conditioning systems and panels and I've got AC guys turning over plumbing and electrical and it's really their mindset and they're they're open and they see what what opportunity there is, but even the guys who've been around a while, they eventually start to see what's happening these younger guys are doing and it does influence and impact them. But it's really having that conversation every single day and making them understand. You know, one of the big things obviously is technicians always feel, I'm not a salesperson, I don't want to sell. And I am constantly telling you, you're a salesperson, 100% you're a salesperson. I've met your wife, you can sell, you can close, everything we do is sales, right? Everything, it to some extent. And so really focusing on and teaching them that there's no shame and selling. There's shame in doing the wrong thing, but not in doing the right thing. We always lead with, and every one of the technicians knows this, first thing we're looking for in the home is ways to improve safety, because safety comes first. Then it's comfort, then it's efficiency. We used to have a lot of guys leading with efficiency. And if you went to SoCal Edison home, efficiency might be really important to them because utilities are crazy. Then you go to another house in IDI territory, And it's a, it's a, it's a moot point talking efficiency because they're hardly panning thing in electricity. So, always, to me, efficiency's last. And we always talk safety. We always take, talk comfort. Because that's why we have, I said, look at, I tell the team, if you do, if, if, if comfort's not important, somebody doesn't care about comfort, they can get to get rid of electricity, hot showers, and air conditioning and heat. right away. It obviously matters. Everything we do is comfort. But we got to make sure it's done safely. So when you're messaging that and you're flipping it to find the bad news, communicate the bad news, tell them the things they don't want to hear. And why you got to tell them it's no different than a doctor telling you bad news. She rather have the doctor tell you bad news so you can take action on it. And if you choose to, or choose not to, that's on you. But don't let it be on you because you failed to communicate things that are concerned. And it can certainly be how I can just make your life better. But it's a daily, everyday communication.
Speaker 2I don't know pick up on some, you said, I don't know, last couple episodes we had a lot of talk about trade turnovers between each other. It kind of came up in a bunch of different conversations. I heard you mentioned in your, I got plumber's turnover panels. I got electricians turn it over. At least, this by thinking he said, something along those lines. You had another trade's turnover, other stuff. And there's been a lot of talk and no chads been really on this too. I think I don't know what happened. We just feet fell off the call here for a moment. But, But tell me a little bit more about how you've made that happen because I think that's always a challenge in the business and think what I think you see is the business gets larger it gets harder but when you're a little bit smaller by kind of nose each other and one of the things we've picked up on a couple of calls is people are doing real group meetings with all the trades getting them to know each other really get to build rapport between the trades and when a lot of locations including ours there's sometimes these trade guys they never even see each other. they literally just don't. They're in plumbing, age, back, drains, or electrical. The odds of them seeing each other about very small or even knowing who they are at this point. So what have you done to be able to make that a real thing? Is there a center plan? Is it a cultural thing? Is it a, what is it? Maybe give us a little bit about what you've been able to do to have that success. And if it is successful, maybe give us an idea about if you have any statistics around how often that happens.
Speaker 3Well, it's everything lives and dies on culture and leadership, right? So those are two prominent. factors in it. And we are not to the level we need to be by any means. You might have some people in the organization say we're doing great. To me, we're never doing great, right? The day we're doing great is a day I don't have to be here anymore. So the technicians, the how we got them and we constantly continue to get them to look at things is you've got to get a few that get it and want to do it. And you've got a really showcase what they've done. So we meet every single morning. Everybody comes and starts here. That's one of the advantages we have being in the Coachella Valley. So two to three meetings a week are All technicians together, and we're going to train on things that apply to all the technicians. Okay. And then we break them apart the other days to do specific training for their trade. If we do, we just had water treatment training, one of the manufacturers in and tankless water heaters. We had all the technicians in that training. And we have IQ training. we bring bring them in. We have all the technicians in that training. And you'll get you always get some that are better at it than others. But when you get somebody that's actually starts getting traction and starts making it happen, the others pay attention. So we always highlight it in the meetings. We always say, I always ask for wins, you know, what's a personal win, We just talk about when it's when it's a turnover win, we really say, okay, tell us how you did that. How did you get this to happen? And they'll walk through and explain it to all the technicians sitting there. So they hear firsthand from the people that are doing it. And it finally, you know, you get traction in it. Not everybody's gonna do phenomenal it, not everybody's gonna even do it. You know, it's like you can't build a winning football team with superstar quarterbacks as your entire team, right? Everybody's got a position and if you got somebody that's great at being the water boy, don't try and make them a tight end. Let them, let them be the water boy and tape ankles or whatever they'll do. And if you got somebody that's good at receiving, let them receive. Don't try and make them a kicker. If you can make somebody a better kicker or better receiver, then focus on that. And so, that's pretty much what we do, and we also have a monthly master we call it. And there will highlight everybody's performance. It's just about wins. What are the wins? And we'll really focus on those cross-sale opportunities. But it's by no means easy. The minute we stop talking about it, they stop doing it, except for a select few.
Speaker 4I want to ask you a question, Magic, and actually it's a couple things that you've mentioned in me think a bit and plus we have Mo on here, so I love to cap in who I hum one getting to this AI sales coaching space, whatever, in the first place, but you talk about efficiencies but because of the swing of population makes total sense, so like you're trying to max. max opportunity when you're in the home, always, but even more so when you've got, you know, many people there makes total sense. One of those things being is it's so nice now to have these, like a sales ask at tool to leverage the in-home sales process and coaching to that sales process and hearing are they offering up? a another service the right way or the wrong way. All the things that you can learn to maximize while they're in that, in that home. So, you know, chat, I don't know what happened to Jabba. He it, that solves for us. I am a sales guy by nature as well, marketing and sales, but I'm a very good sales person. And so when I listen to salespeople, like I have a very specific way I like to hear it go needs to be very authentic and not salesy. The best salespeople aren't salesy, that makes sense. They're educators, but when my certain when we implement to sales ask to our roofing company, Chad and I also own a roofing business in Indianapolis. listening to the sales process. It was like no consistency to it across the different sales reps. Like there was kind of some directional stuff that was going right, but there was no consistency to like the questions that you're asking and where at and like and so for us that was huge on not even producing another lead to go run on just maximizing what we already had coming in house. and being able to like coach specifically to the individual sales rep to then even find out if they were even going to make it or not, right? Because you're going to coach the same thing so many times right? Okay, they're not going to get it. But leveraging using that tool was such a huge win for us on efficiency and that and also helped us max our average ticket because we learned how to And then how to maybe lead with financing first instead of where they implement it and to the process all the things to say like for us That was a huge when a huge when at Reber Grouping because it's you know, we've seen it not like from a coaching perspective quicker so more more salespeople are selling more frequently and they're also selling larger average tickets Are you I'm assuming you got to do the same thing that's probably mission critical because Well, that bucket, the volume of your competitors didn't change, just the volume of your opportunity changed. So how are you leveraging that, General?
Speaker 3Yeah, well, it's, you know, back to the change of population and what we do differently and to lead into this, you know, I'm a hunter. Now, it's, if I had the hunt for survival, I'd probably be a much better hunter, right? And if you had times that there was abundance, you might not pay as much attention. You might be a little bit more careless versus those times where, hey, it's winter time. It's gonna be harder to find something, right? And that's what we, that's what we deal with. And so how do you, short of, now I'm a firm believer in ride-along. I don't think anything replaces a ride-along There's body language, there's proper vehicle placement. All of those type of things, are they doing a diagnostic in the correct procedure, but you're not gonna do ride-alongs to any extent that you should, even with the grandiose lofty as goals, you're not gonna do it, it's just a reality. So how do you know what's happening in the home? When you're putting people out there You got to know what they're doing. And if they're doing it to your point, are they following the program and the system that we have played out? And so one of the great ways to do it is through the technology we have, which we do happen to use sales ask. And what this does? It is amazing because, The biggest takeaway for me is I can use this sales ask AI and I can really find out who I need to spend time with to train and get in alignment with the process that we have. Without it, what you do and you want to talk about crushing morale for your champions is you you see some metrics that are wrong or you see something that's not right or somebody's you go on one ride along and somebody's not falling the process. Next thing you know you're training entire company. on this one process, proceed your technique that this group of people over here are now in it and they're doing great and you got them sitting through this training because this group of people isn't. Whereas this sales ask, I can coach Dean, coach Dean, man, I'm wait for coach Dean to be able to genetically be made real or something. into a person, coach deans amazing. I ask coach deans all these questions and it will just tell me that the answers to these questions and I can really get laser focused, you know, the typical training method is let's carpet bomb the technicians with all of this knowledge and data and process and procedure so that they all comply. Now, It's may not be a popular analogy in today's world, but now I can use cruise missile strikes and be very laser-focused on who I need to attack with additional training and process and procedure instead of kind of punishing everyone. And so for me personally, that is one of the greatest takeaways of using the sales ASC AI. I'm getting all kinds of insight on things. So it's really a game changer.
Speaker 4I want to explain what Coach Dean is.
Speaker 3Oh, yes. So Coach Dean, Coach Dean is the AI personality that lives within sales ask AI, right? It is the most entertaining thing to role play with Coach Dean. We go out on a call. Technician goes out on a call. We have technicians at role play with coach dean all the time. And all role play with coach dean. And front of the technicians, just because I enjoy it. But the AI learns the persona of the client. They know what their buying motives are. they know what their concerns are. It picks up the stuff that we a lot of times when we're in the home we just miss. Or we don't really, we might pick up on it, but we don't really realize how important it is. And so you can go and role play with Coach Dean with that call, with that customer's persona, with the actual things that were presented and the rejections or objections you got and role play through that. And Coach Dean is not a lay down. Let me just be clear about that. It's gonna give you a run for your money,
Speaker 2So just so maybe I get an understanding, because I'm obviously familiar with these types of softwares, but what you're explaining there, maybe for my ignorance on this, just in general, as you said, it listens to the call, and then they understand the customer, do they go out after recording of the call? And then the tech goes back and forth with the software about the call that the customer just had to build it so not like, what do you mean by coaching? Because I know we can, I know what, you just do roleplay or something like that.
Speaker 3We have two one they leave and they're going to do a follow up and they'll roll play the call before doing follow up other times we have Texas stop the recording will go out to their truck. Maybe they're going to, you know, put something again, maybe they're doing a sales proposal or something and they'll they'll do a quick. review of it, a quick roll plate, then they're going back in the house. So we have to, the former is done less. It's usually done by the comfort advisors, but the basically the roll plane is done when they're gonna follow up, when they have to follow up. But it's also done just to discover what they could have done better, what they missed out on. And what that does is it tunes them in to a lot of the stuff we try and tell them, we try and train them, we send them to training to learn and you know, but when you're actually, when they're actually sitting on their own in privacy, doing this, to me it's just so much more impactful. And I've got some two really good performers. They are the biggest users of it. And it shows, I'm convinced, it's why their numbers are where they're at.
Speaker 2So there's always a lot of belief in these areas that these recordings are gonna change the game. In general, and I think there's some people that buy in some don't, you know, I think it's good for sales is good for service, good for anybody, but what kind of statistics do you have that have actually support that the recordings done is a customer service has got better is it offerings of got better is it conversion average sale got better like what is actually better.
Speaker 3Yeah, on the two guys that the two guys that are using it, they're they're closing rate. has improved. They were good closers, but they've gotten much better. And the deals they're closing after they leave the house has significantly improved.
Speaker 2I don't want to hold you to this factory. We don't have exact numbers. I know sometimes we know people are no better. Is it a 10 point increase? A 20 point increase like what do we mean by significant just kind of give me an idea to a what I think we've always understand is this software really going to be worth the dollars any software not just not just I'm not going to I could make my dad always said if if you if you can impress him with facts Baffle with bullshit okay, so but I'm not going to baffle you with bullshit.
Speaker 3I don't have the exact I didn't bring the exact I could as coach Dean and coach Dean could probably told but it's a significant, it's a significant improvement to the point that when I look at what we're spending on the investment in this, it easily makes it affordable to me. It easily justifies it as the right investment for us. The one of the biggest challenges I have in this is getting everybody to use it. And it's just, and it's not just software, right? We have that same problem with what we were talking about earlier. Our processes are procedures. How do you get people to adapt? I've always told people, like when we were on paper and then we went to tablets, everybody thought that things were going to get so much better because technicians are going to use tablets. I'm like, no, if you change the medium, the performance doesn't change. The behavior doesn't change and the discipline doesn't change. You have to figure out how to change that and then they'll be great on paper. They'll be great on a tablet. They'll be great with technology without it. But the insights that what I like is the technicians can see the insights. but we can see them too. It's like anything else, so if you don't use it, you might as well not have it. You're wasting your money. But if you do use it, and I'm telling you, I'm speaking as somebody, I've used one of the other products out there, previously, and I, And I wasn't happy with it. I wasn't happy with it. In all fairness, it may have been too early. I may have been too early of an adapter to it. But this one, to me, the game changers coach, Dean.
Speaker 6Yeah, I'm the time of that for Patrick, I appreciate you. Patrick is definitely amazing user sales ask and that's really good insights there. I mean, the technology has come the long way. If you look at where AI is today, where it was a year or two years ago, it's an order of magnitude better. You can actually do real simulated role plays that sound exactly like a really even being using conversational data so you're not. It's not a fake scenario. It's a real scenario that happened with the customer. So if you're trying to increase contract values and a rep keeps having trouble asking or diagnosing or handling objections and You know, they you wanted to get better very rapidly. They could roll play. They could improve. They could do that before they even get to that meeting. They can do it after that specific call that they were on. As far as our coach Dean goes, even the coach Dean like when you look at a year ago where that technology was to where it is today, you could not get organizational insights a year ago. You could not ask how is my rep doing and where shall I focus my coaching on because you could only hold one meeting in context. So there's the context when they're problem. There's still limited context window, but now you could ask across all of your meetings, which ones did my reps struggle on last week? What were the main objections that they faced? Which steps of the processes are they are they skipping out on? Which one of my reps did my attention? what's the best way of increasing my contract value? So Coach Gene is like this super intelligent that exists that has all of your sales and service data available. They can answer questions that can give you insights and that's available to you, it's available to RAPS, that's available on every call. It's available in real time. We also not have it in real time. So as a client, as a RAP is dealing with a client, you could listen to that conversation in real time, Or they can just talk to Coach Dean, you know, Patrick mentioned rep's going to the truck. They can go to the truck. They can ask a few questions. They can figure out what products I present. You know, what's the mean concern of this customer? Are they more, you know, safety being a big one? How do I present? the offer in a way that really hits on the safety element of things, right? So all this is possible today when you have that recording and the conversation on data like it's it's wild what the AI can do and that's today. I know it's coming in the pipeline. There are things that are being rolled out that are going to blow everyone's minds. that are brand new novel, they don't exist, that use the conversational data, and these are agents. So the next evolution you're going to see in the AI is, it's not just going to give you like this insights. The AI will think actions on your behalf. It will do the follow-up. It'll use a conversational data. It could build even a website in real time. It could build, you know, we have something that we're working on. It's called the Home Plan. We think it's going to be a total game changer. And it pulls the conversational data up, pulls from your website, from your org, from that client history, from market data. And it builds the plan for them in real time that a rep may or may not have, you know, they may have missed some of the objections. They may have missed some of the needs, they have missed some of the upsells. But the whole plan, covers it all. And it's going to be available. It's a gented. It's going to be able to converse with the customers while there are some things coming with AI. But it all starts with the absolute basics, which is recording the conversations, right, doing the coaching, having the discipline, the team, like one thing I think Patrick does, exceptional, which I think everyone can take away from his The analogy is using it on sports and coaching and change management, right? That's super rare and really dialed out of no. So I actually have a question unrelated to this. I think how you did an excellent job of talking about your coaching. You mentioned that you bought the company. It was kind of earlier in the conversation. I'm super curious, how did you finance? It's a dream for a lot of employees to be able to own You know, the companies they work in. How did you make that a reality?
Speaker 3Well, the the owner Frank, we went through four or five attorneys. And we finally got what we needed and some other people. But basically we put a succession plan in place that had a bonus structure. And so he created Golden Hand Cuffs while also creating a financial vehicle or a down payment. So basically each year, Francisco and I received bonuses from the company. that went into a insurance policy. And we could not touch that policy, obviously. Policy did two things. If anything happened to one of us, the company got money and then our spouses got obviously got money. And then at the time that we were to close, we both were able to withdraw. the cash value of that policy and use it as the down payment. We had to come up with some of our own money on our own too. Frank wanted to make sure we had some skin in the game. Well, you know, my skin in the game was the blood sweat tears, life, no vacation that I gave the company. Joking aside, Frank was very big about. making sure you got your time. He would come by my office late in the day, and he was walking out and he was saying, uh, it's time to go home, big boy. You can't stay here all night. So anyways, um, so that that was that was there for us. And then if we chose not to to sell, then that money was ours after a period of time, we could, we could access that. So, um, we got And then, okay, five years from now, you can access that money, but not. And then he held the paper. He held the note for eight years.
Speaker 4Interesting. So, it's because he's a, such a good deal anyway, man. He was, he was trying to figure out a seller carry, uh, yeah, I'm trying to sing to help you guys get, yeah, okay. I make sense.
Speaker 3He, uh, I often say, what was really important to him. And it's important to, uh, Francisco and I, and he knows that is, that the general continues. So I always, I always use, if you remember the movie from the 80s, the Princess Bride. That's a secret. Yeah, a dreadpired Roberts, right? That's kind of so there's always a general, right? There's always a dreadpired Roberts. There's always a general. So that's kind of how we did it. But and let me if I can just say one more thing about the coach Dean, the sales ask that I really, really love. because before sales ask, then before coach dean, which coach dean, what coach dean does is it makes it very easy for me to extract the data? I would ask everybody, what do you run it up against out there? What are your objections? Everyone's number one objection, you know it is price. It's price, it's price. So I just ask coach dean. You know, list out our top five objections, and then I'll have it broken down by technician, by business unit, what not. And of course, you find out that that is not the number one objection. It's in the top five. But now I ask them that and I said, really, you don't think it's this or you don't think it's that. And so, you know, knowledge is power and you can better, you can better coach and train when you have the insights. you know, the data that you can go and have a conversation around. And then you can actually build the training to overcome those objections because you really know what they're facing. And what you find is, if you go back and listen, the price wasn't really the objection, the lack of the value you built. before giving the price, is the issue. So let's work on that.
Speaker 5On the Patrick he mentioned something about it's minute ago on like it helps them with their follow-ups. Are your technicians following up on unsold work? Do you have someone that does that? I know. In our business, we have people inside that are just following up on all the leads, but like I didn't know if you have like a different arrangement and how that works.
Speaker 3Yeah, we have people inside following up, but they, they also follow up. And basically inside, we give, we give a certain time period before the team inside can touch anything. And so once, and they really want to follow up, because once that time hits, they know there's a team inside just go on out after everything they can and so they they will follow up and again it's just like anything else we got some guys that are fantastic at it and some that are just like not good at all and that's why you need the team inside well I want to do something real quick because we got that we're almost an hour into the thing too so before I go to the close I got to understand my distance directly for you before I
Speaker 2Why coach Dean, right? What to the legendary basketball? That's my thought, but why does the correct thought? So what do Dean Smith, Dean Smith? Yeah, yeah, you've got to tell your heels, right? Yeah, you took some people know about sports around here Chris, maybe something like that. Yeah, I mean, I know you got that Purdue basketball, but maybe it's got a little bit about some history.
Speaker 6You know that we actually took the persona of Dean Smith. So we we saw we we said what do we want to exemplify what is the coaching we think is the right type of coaching and when we look at it like Dean Smith took Michael Jordan who is known as Mike Jordan at the time. I'm not Michael Jordan And he turned it into the greatest basketball player of all time. It didn't just do this with Michael Jordan. He had one of the best teams of all times, one of the best coaches of all times. But he didn't take championship players. Like he didn't take a Tom Brady. He was already, you know, a championship player and one another championship with him. He took a... a new, you know, an entrant that somebody who's just starting their career, somebody who could use the coaching, like arguably level of coaching involved in taking an average player and making a good player and making a great player, is greater than an excellent player to like an even more excellent player, right, to really bigger delta. So, we trained our AI. to coach like coach team, but to be honest, you could change the name of coach team. So everything in sales ask is not customizable. If you don't like the way that the coach coaches, you don't like coach team SNID because you're against Atari Hills for some reason. It's not your team. You can change the name and you can change the method as well.
Speaker 4Okay, all right, now we now we know I didn't want to assume anything actually ironically I just watched the movie. We're guessing that movie that Nike if it's getting it's about Mike Jordan But about the Nike deal. That was pretty cool. It's awesome. Yeah, for the name of it's when they created air Jordan Like that was a pretty good movie if you haven't checked if I haven't seen it checked check it out I can give two shits about Darryl's also So I wouldn't know I'm a pretty boy my girlfriend Okay, listen we're gonna I'm gonna hammer you with a few questions here Patrick and these are this is pretty simple. You actually just said this or that and ironically this segment is called This or that are you ready? I'm ready. This is how we're gonna close it out. Okay, just five easy questions Profit or gross profit visionary or integrator. Visionary. Bootstrapping or investors. Bootstrapping. Promote from within or higher outside.
Speaker 3both. It's just this or that path.
Speaker 4It's one fucking roll here. It's this for that.
Speaker 3I feel like I feel like I'm out from within when possible.
Speaker 4Okay. And last one, sales are marketing marketing. Okay, all right, easy enough. That's an easy little round of this or that last time we did, would you rather, I don't know what I'm gonna do next time, but this or that felt good. And you just said it right before it. So I wish I could have segueed from that into it, but then some other questions and then I had to know about Coach Dean, but listen, hey, glad to have you all on your map. Appreciate you kind of sharing your experience and with the general over there and just giving us an hour and saying with you, I appreciate you guys coming on here and sharing with our listeners.
Speaker 6You're awesome. I appreciate you. Patrick, great story telling man. I was really thoroughly enjoyed listening to you and learning from you as well. Thank you all the other hosts as well.
Speaker 3Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Have a may. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2Do a great job in articulating stuff with sports and using house. You're really good to connect the unknown to the known. It's really a really important skill for people to learn. So even if anybody listening this is picking up on that would be enough to take back when you are communicating with your team in general. So nice work by math. Congrats on all of you guys. Success. And also we're forwarding here a little bit more about your sales ask. I wrote down just to connect with you at some point. Modest here a little bit about what you do too.
Speaker 4Chad and thanks for joining us for about three quarters of the show.
Speaker 5Well, after literally like the whole thing just like completely shut down and ploded. I'm like, oh god, I like walked out in the hall. I was like, really else internet's working. They're like, yeah, mine's fine. I'm like, great, mine's not. But I'm doing something recorded. So I'll be right down. Here we go.
Speaker 4Just another opportunity to best your child. So it feels good.
Speaker 5Yeah. Hey, I'm no tech, no tech nerd. That is for sure.
Speaker 4Um, and anyway, so anyway, I appreciate you guys coming on your another good episode and don't worry listeners know if anything you just got to take one thing away from this thing, but whatever you do, don't talk about it. Be about it.
Speaker 3Until next time, we'll see ya.
Speaker 1What's the password?
Speaker 0Don't talk about it. Be about it.
