Speaker 0What's the password?
Speaker 5Don't talk about it. Be about it.
Speaker 0Welcome 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 2Hey, what's up everybody, welcome to the point home services VIP room. And we have a VIP in the room today. I'm excited to share him with you guys. My favorite month of a few other podcasts and who knows for down in Texas, you've been in the church. My favorite church once more. I want to twice. But A. G. I got one cohost on here today because Chad ditched now. I'm not going to talk any smack because you guys held it down for me last week and I appreciate that.
Speaker 4I just start backing your voices doing well today.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's because it's numb, you know, because I had an ENT appointment this morning and they put that numbing stuff up your nose and they shove this like tube down if you're, it sounds amazing. So I can't film my teeth or like my face is all all numb right now and my throat was hurting before I went in, but now it doesn't hurt because it's numb. So look at what a rip on here. It sounds like our guests has got the sniffles we've got, but thermon on here today is the president of Baker Brothers. plumbing, air and electrical down in Dallas, what where it takes us, but uh, it's good to finally get you on. I know it's my fault. I think I've had this book like four times with you. We found the way to happen. We're excited to have you on the show, brother.
Speaker 1Hi, today's the day. I'm going to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2Yeah, but hey, before we get into anything, you know, there's something that was brought up to me last week that, you know, I used to do the dad jokes, you know, early on. And then I started doing some idioms like, you know, idioms are, you know, and stop. I just kind of forget to do them. But one came up, and because I know that you are an avid hunter as am I, But, and you usually, the last time I talked to you, you get to, you know, deer heads up on the wall behind you, but you're in a different location right now. And I thought, what, what a good idiom that came to mind today as I was thinking through this. And this literally came to me as I was driving from my ENT appointment to here because a song come on the radio. by an old classic country called bluegrass e-banned by the name Alabama. Sure you guys heard of them. And there's a part in Alabama. There's a song called Mountain Music. Okay, so listen Aaron. Okay, I know we grew up a little differently. I'm looking at the countries and I think so. Guess I listen to a lot of Alabama. Let's say a lot of great hits.
Speaker 4Yeah, I know that a bad man is, I know who they are, but okay, when say was on it's to be on my playlist, but I know who they are. Yeah.
Speaker 2Well, there's a part of the song and not music that says, uh, bend it over skin and cats, skin and cats. And you get maybe think of the idiom, the idiom that is there's more than one way to skin a cat. Which sounds kind of morbid, right? So, but if you were a hunter or a frontiersman back in the mid 1800s, which neither of you were, but your ancestors probably were, then they'd talk about skin and cats. Well, it doesn't mean house cats, right? That's not what skin and cats mean. It meant that it was like, Bob cats and stuff, so hunters would skin, the cats to use the fur. But what I found out now, Bama, was that actually has nothing at all to do with skin and cats, and what it meant was they would bend over these old hickory trees because they didn't have playgrounds to play on, say, play on the trees. And I guess the, those playgrounds, the way that the bark is, there's something on the trees would cut them all up and skin them up and stuff like that. I don't know, they're completely different versions. But The version of more than one way to skin the cat, the popular way of saying is there's more one way to accomplish a goal or a task. That's what today's term means. So fun fact is yeah, one one way is going to cat, it's back to the mid 1800s. Um, and I figured that would make sense to you, Baba.
Speaker 1It does. I actually thought that that song growing up in Texas, I thought that
Speaker 2Why would I actually like one?
Speaker 1Yeah, you brought a whole different perspective to it, but I thought about skin and catfish.
Speaker 2I'm not 100% sure that I even understand still how they come up with skin and cats, means like you, you know, you're hanging on trees and you're getting, you know, marked, I don't know. I can't connect the dots on it, but whatever. That was a couple of minutes of your guys' life it should never get back. So you're welcome to that. I want to go and jump into this too, because it's interesting that I think Baker Brothers was either 1944, 1945, somewhere around there was originally established as I write above.
Speaker 1Yeah, 1945.
Speaker 2Super well-known, well-respected, you know, big brand down in Texas and, you know, joined the rich group back in 2017. And, you guys don't know who Jimmy Dale is. Like Jimmy Dale is a predecessor for a bubble like fantastic human beings. Still never been on this pipe. I have to get him on here. Great guy. I love to get him on here. Interesting, you know, Baba, they'll get present today.
Speaker 1It is. Jimmy's dad passed away recently and I was asked to speak at his funeral and that was one of the things that just saying that in front of that crowd because Jim Dell, Jimmy's dad was he was quite a character and they built a legacy business, three generations. Jimmy's grandfather, Jimmy's dad and Jimmy and that was something that I pointed out at his service that it was just an by the family to kind of be at the helm of something that they put their heart and soul in for, you know, a long time.
Speaker 2Yeah, pretty honorable position to be in, um, and um, um, I would cool moment for you to be able to have that to be able to do that. And that's it's pretty, especially what's kind of interesting is, you know, I introduced you guys right before we had started, but, prior to bigger brothers, I mean, you were in ministry for like, what, a couple of decades, just something like, uh, you're in the past, you're in ministry years.
Speaker 1Yeah, 22 years, you know, 22 years, And this will be by 14th anniversary here this coming here.
Speaker 2Yeah, and what's nice is bigger brothers today. Just out of curiosity, I have no idea.
Speaker 1We have little over 400 employees we're, you know, slated to do about 110 million this year. Revenue.
Speaker 2Yeah, got it. So super, obviously crazy competitive market. I competed against you guys for a while because the Berkeley's was a customer of mine. This is an, an a prior life thing. Yeah. But every time we got to work with you guys, Um, and then last week another one of your guys down there, you know, with Josh Campbell on Um, good friend of ours, you know, so it's cool to have him on. I'm well, I had to miss that episode because, I mean, I was, those were all friends. So it was like, that was going to be a fun episode. I had to miss it. And it gave these, it gave Aaron a chat for your ring to bust my chops while I wasn't there to defend myself.
Speaker 4Josh is going to catch up with all next our buddy through Josh and we just saw Josh couple weeks ago too. And you mentioned that you have a good relationship with Josh and you guys talk probably every week or so. So that's that's great to hear that people in the market plays. Stay friends and even through the private equity model of each of you sold the different companies that you stay pulse, you have communication and stay connected. So that was great to I think sometimes there are things different ways and then you kind of the communication relationships of breaks, especially in a really competitive market like Dallas, right?
Speaker 1Yeah, Josh and Gus both are just great partners, like, you know, we're both in the trenches. Obviously we compete against each other. But I think our our friendship super seeds all that and we try to, you know, sharpen each other, even. But you know, it's definitely good to call guys outside of this building sometimes when you feel like man, we're not getting calls or what's going on. You know, there's a sense of reassurance like, hey, we're in the same boat here. And I actually spent some time with Josh up in Connecticut, not long ago, we were at a conference together, flew home together. And so really got to hang out with him a little more than I normally do, you had dinner. And just really have a lot of respect. For both him and Gus, you know, they just are high character guys. They do things the right way. They care about their people. And you know, so, when we're you know having an issue here in our market it's really great to go have not crazy you know they're they're they're they're having the same thing so we kind of do a Monday check in usually how's it going and how it calls and I probably would surprise a lot of people to be honest but for me that's you know really important to have guys outside of our building that that kind of keep me grounded.
Speaker 2Kind of, what kind of conversation did you guys have? And I was like, if you're able to share like, because you're basically, you're all, you're kind of open about the stuff that you're dealing with in the moment. And so do you have that weekly check? I mean, like, these are like pretty current topics that you're dealing with, are current situations.
Speaker 1Yeah, we talk about, like, calls a lot, like, you know, we've, obviously we've had some head wins in the industry in general, but our market in particular is just super crowded. It's so competitive, and so we, you know, we kind of check in on. each trade, sometimes, you know, gussle, send a text and go, hey, do you have, you guys have any electrical calls a day or house plumb and do winter, you know, calls in general. That's kind of the check in, but we talk about other things. I mean, there, there have been text to me since I set down on this call. And, you know, we, we check in and go, hey, is there anything I'm pray for you about, like they're both guys who, you know, were grounded in their faith. And so, uh... that's kind of a cool thing too uh... and i've known guss i met jost through the business but i've known guss prior even to come into work for jimmy uh... i knew guss we live like a mile apart uh... new each other in the community and actually you know would meet occasionally for lots of breakfast and so i've known guss for guss probably over twenty years now
Speaker 4I think that's interesting to know that for people to keep talking hearing this story as even as these relationship scale and the businesses are gusts private, other guys gone equity, you're running one in there that the relationships are there that in their report and they have this open flow in your in your market because I don't you know I wouldn't say that many of us always do that especially in our own market a lot of times you're connected to people in other areas but I guess Dallas Fortland areas. a giant area right with a lot of stuff and so that's just three guys that come up know each other and just would rather to see the three of you guys win than anybody else and you stay on the same pulse like yeah I mean we're pretty open like about what we're doing and not in a way that you know we're not doing anything detrimental to the business but I mean
Speaker 1Even with Gus's team, Gus has had me over to speak at his company, and that's crazy. He brought me in to speak on their family day, and I'm in front of all his 500 employees doing a talk, just nothing to do with like business or not. We have a gentleman's agreement, like I would never approach anybody from Joshua Gus and they would fill the same way. If someone applies, Gus will call me and go, hey, what's going on this person showed up over here and I would do the same. This might come here from milestone. I'll call him and go, hey, what's the story here? Is this somebody? Do you care if I leave? Do you want me to pass or you know, we just kind of have a really cool gentleman's agreement? I think the commonality we've all been very involved in certain paths used to be SGI. We've all kind of met through that, and so, you know, about twice a year, we go to Expo and go to dinner and hang out, and so I think it's something that just kind of feeds to continue the conversation, even though we're competitors, I think it's good to sharpen, just leadership, like what book are you reading? You know, what are you learning? What kind of, you know, do anything new in the market? Like, if you all have had Gus on an interact with him a lot, I mean, he's an idea just guru. He just constantly thinks outside the box. And I love to pick his brain. Like, hey, what are you seeing? What are you doing? And, you know, he's he's pretty open. like I've even interacted with their journal manager on certain things like how we're doing, we just exchanged communication just on underground work the other day. Because we see our market, there's people in our market that are doing like lifetime warranty now on underground sewer pairs and so kind of like hey It's a limited lifetime warranty. So I'm trying to get my head around, what does that look like, you know? So I reached out to them and said, are y'all doing this? And if so, what are the conditions? And so they're pretty, you know? We're definitely not guarded against, I don't feel like, you know, there is anything malicious, obviously we're competing in the same market, but we can still sharpen each other and not, you know, doing things detrimental to the business. So it's just a great camaraderie. Yeah, Aaron Sharp, who's Aaron? Absolutely.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think it was very important for people to think about it. They haven't reached out to people in the market or build friends with people in the industry. I mean, that I've got a chance to visit Gus at milestone. It's just a great guy, saw him in New York. I don't know, maybe a few months ago. We even text and said, we should reconnect. We haven't talked to the while. genuinely just great. Yeah, so I'm glad to finally get a chance to meet you because I know those two guys I've never got a chance to meet or hear from you So when I think I think one thing we do want to know is a little bit more about I guess probably jump into Baker we jump right into this random relationship right conversation, but maybe sharing a little bit of the story of what you're doing today, what do you guys up against or the major market? You know, what are you thinking about today at a hundred million dollar business? Sounds like me and you are pretty much the exact same business size, employees, everything. So I'm I'm curious from myself. I'm be selfish on this one, Chris. I'm curious to think like at this size and operating your business today, like what are you thinking about? like what's the most important thing for you every day when you show up and you're trying to grow this business to whatever your goals are right now. I'm operating this business besides just networking and asking questions about call volumes. What are you doing in the business today?
Speaker 1Yeah. So I really think the most glaring thing that I would say to that it's relevant to, you know, obviously we have the same size business as a lot of symmetry, but what I see is AI and what AI is doing the background. I've been real curious about that and so my takeaway is that AI is creating exposure. So nothing's hidden. Like there's no, you're not able to manipulate reviews, you're not able to hide a traffic incident. You're just going to be exposed. And so I think we can do one or two things. We can hide from it or we can embrace it. And so the message for me to our company is that we truly have always said that we want to be the best. Like our B-hags to be the best service company in the world. And, you know, every day we got to go to a polldown, every customer matters more than ever, because if AI is going to be, you know, price transparency, bad reviews, lawsuits, any of that stuff is now going to be front and center because of AI. And so, I think what we have to do is just be better than anybody else. And so that's kind of been our focus lately, is we want to be good drivers, we want to be safe, we want to be dressed properly, we want to, all the small things, you know, we've talked about them for years, but I think they're becoming more and more important that we actually execute at a really high level, because sentiment is really going to matter, I think in the next 18 months, as AI becomes more a search engine. And so, we're really focused on, like, hey, who are we really? Like, let's not, you know, try to pretend or let's, if we're going to be like a four, you know, you know how restaurants are rated on price, you see the little dollar signs at the bottom. Google's already calling behind and going, hey, what service do you have done? What did you pay for to feel mommy asking? They're already gathering data on price. Well, you guys know this as well as I do. It's hard to give a price over the phone for a plumbing issue. right you just don't know what's going on and so it's always been standard to go let us get a technician out and then we'll tell you but we're getting more and more pressure to give the price like we have people calling go hey what would it cost me to replace a four-time air conditioner and instead of like resisting that I think we got to lean in and go hey what can we price over the phone? We've sold water here's over the phone forever. That's been our strategy and now we're kind of going hey what items can we completely talk about on the phone and and so I think AI is really changing that and it's causing me to be reflective and to hey instead of like you know going, oh god, AS gonna expose everything, I'm going, this is a great opportunity for us to literally when they do that search to be top in the market to be really good and, you know, the guys, those guys are good operators, Josh is a good operator, they're several in the market that are really sharp and so I know that I'm gonna have to be really good to compete in this market You could go buy calls, right? You could go put money into Google. And obviously, the ROI has changed drastically on that. I mean, it's become a deal where you can go spend 10 and go, we need electrical calls. You might just as well go give $10,000 to a homeless person. Some days, you go get 10 grand more. It does generate one call. And so, man, that is something, the way we go to market, I would say is a big deal. I'm the little worried about that and I say worry, I'm not worried. I'm concerned enough to go, hey, what could we do different? Is there something disruptive in regard to how we market ourselves? And I do think there's a movement toward partnering with communities, sponsoring football teams, being visible that I think has more teeth than it did 10 years ago, five years ago, and so I think, you know, PPC, you know, LSA, all that stuff's changing drastically, and I think it's AI at the end of the day, when does AI become the primary search engine? You know, that's kind of what is on the front of my mind. I'm hoping that didn't over and so now that's no that's great.
Speaker 4No, I think this is topic people don't think about it a lot And I've been Chris is probably heard me beating on this drum a little bit too like people always like AI in my business I'm more worried not AI in the search and how you show up and how you develop it right night Because AI in the business is inevitable most of our companies with you software with both fine tools and resources to help us whether you are a Surface Titan or broccoli or a bokeh or whoever right so she's sponsored. Sorry But you know, all of them are going to help kind of navigate that the one place that you're on your own is in this place right and that's still the traditional deliver a great service your pricing alignment. How you structure your site how you structure your pricing model how you do pricing online how you do all these things and I do believe that you need to lean into this or you will be a race and. I do think there's a big movement in the AI area. And I think you hit something that are great, too. People still want to feel part of something. And I think community presence is building again. Because there's a lot of this all like that in an area. And all this different, you know, social stuff. And now it's like, oh, the response from my local football team or the community, the high school or like we have, we have our name on billboards that I have some of the local high schools. in some of the local school stuff right we started doing some of that last couple of years we probably could do a lot more but you're starting to see some of that start to find its way back and in many different ways as this has this machine is changing so i imagine Chris has a lot more thoughts that's due to his background and experience but but i'm aligned with that i think i think it was a great thoughts and i'd like to pick you brain a little more but Chris what you got on this
Speaker 2No, I'm just going to say, I'm 100% on board with this grassroots stuff, and on the roofing side of the business for Chad and I's company, that's like what we did around the gate. It was we hit all the local high schools, the parades, the Lions group, or the B&I's. With all the stuff that everybody doesn't want to do, but relationship matters so much, and it's not a quick fix. So you just got to do it and let it build and run and I'm. You know, I'm a big believer in all those and all those things and I just want to address the the PPC piece that it's so nice to be able to hear that from my seat today because now I'm like, yeah. Maybe, I don't know, not my problem, but I just want to share a lot of money in the PC for my own business at Redbird Roofing, but I also hedge my bet on who's running for me. So I know what I got, but I think that there's, it's right, it has changed drastically. And my hope is that more people get scared to spend money, because it's not like volume's gone. It's not gone. It's gotten more expensive, but people get nervous and don't spend money great. I'll continue to go down as long as the money, as long as the the number of shit got and make enough sense to keep my board full. I'm fine. Now the LLMs, the large language models, the chats, the clouds, the whatever's. Yeah, I'm paying attention to that for a long time now. And now they're rolling out the paid version of chat GPT, which is, which is the net the wave. That's when things are really going to start to push because people who are saying, I'm not going to do PPC, but it's like a 100 grand minimum to put into it, but I'm going to let that thing figure itself out first before I jump into it because I don't know what that's going to look like either and to drop, you know, 100 grand on the test stereo. I'm not sure I want to play that geologist yet. especially because if you have go to a good organic ranking, but you certainly should be paying it listeners, you should for sure be paying attention to it. The worst thing you can do is me like don't get it, don't understand it, it's scary and you do nothing with it. Like that is the ultimate mistake to make because it's you may sound good right here in the moment, you can ignore it. It's kind of like if you get in a fight with your spouse, you can't just keep ignoring it, with the shit just builds behind the scene like you You can't just ignore these things because you're scared of them or you don't know enough about it to make a decision or you don't know how to implement the things you can do something otherwise it's going to move on without you and so is market share right you're going to start to lose just the way it is like this isn't a this isn't like a theory this is fat guys agree
Speaker 4I agree I agree so I like to follow up on something that you said either because it's like I like you said It exposes a lot of stuff AI because it's the way the search is good stuff So right now when you're bringing that stuff and I heard you mentioned customer sentiment, which I think is a metric people need to start to really understand. And I've stopped really a metric that can be measured because it doesn't up to star rating. It's just customer sediment. Trying to figure out how you can measure that. But as you went through this with your, I'm assuming you've talked to your leadership and you're having all these conversations throughout the organization. How what where are you starting? How about that? Where are you starting through this journey to help kind of help anybody include like I'm interested So where are you starting in this journey to work through that? Are you starting in customer settlement or you start?
Speaker 1We kind of got a whole docket of stuff. So we partner with a company called Pixie and one of the things that they do is provide like where we are in the market, like they do, and competitive analysis. And it pulls everything out of AI. And so then it kind of tells us, you know, where we're good, where we're struggling. And I definitely think we're starting at the level of how are we trusted? Like we want to be a trusted brand. We promise great service. We've been a business. It's 1945. We have a huge, we have, you know, 20,000 members. And so how do we maintain a level of trust? Like we're not. I think to another thing that we have to focus on is if we're going to be a four, you know, we're not the cheapest, we're not even the middle of the road, we're on the higher end price-wise, and we have to deliver on that. Like we have to provide service that equals what the investment is. And so I think there's a little bit of area right there to improve. I think we've had a couple You know, miss, miss fires where somebody has, you know, posted that, hey, we're too expensive and you know, I don't, I don't take that as we're too expensive. I take that as we failed to provide the value that we charged. And so I think that would be an area. But I definitely think customer sentiment like who are we, you know, who's who's Baker? What is our identity in the marketplace? And I think as AI becomes more prevalent, we have to, we have to tell our own story. Like we have to get out there and blog and talk about who we are. To share those things that I was talking about, like we're making a donation here. We're partnering with the organization here. I think people are attracted to that. You know, to know that literally like no, we're not crooks. We're not a rip off. We're not, you know, the whole PE non PE thing has become a big topic. I see it every day. It's somebody posts about it. And I always want to jump in, but I'm really has to get, you know, into the comment sections. I'll just like bite my tongue. And I go, we have it. I know this isn't true. There's a ton of PE companies. But I know here, have things changed. Yes, they have certain levels for the technician, for our core values, for how we go to market, no. Like, their pay plans haven't changed, their manager, we haven't had any major turnover. We have it changed, our mission, what we're trying to do or we're still taking care of people. Like, we're 100% customer satisfaction guarantee. Like, if you're not happy, we'll give you a money back. And so, I think we have to, instead of being defensive, I think we have to be offensive and tell our story to, you know, when AI goes and gets that information, we have to participate and go and, hey, no, we're a good company. We're, you know, we have good values here. We do care about people. We want to do it the right way. We want to land the right way. And I think when you're up against, you know, people get in every piece of data possible, it's really easy for them to compile that and tell a story about who you are that's inaccurate or not fully the truth. So I do think that's probably priority number one is to maintain our brand reputation. Whatever we have to do to make sure people still trust Baker Brothers is really important. And then I think around the price stuff, I think we really have to be careful and how we present that, you know, how do we talk about, you know, whether we're, you know, top third of the market, top 10% in price, because you have to talk about things and you understand this running a big organization. Dude, I mean, the value is we warranty our work, we won't leave you hanging, we'll come back 10 times if we have to to get it right. And I think people do appreciate that. I tell people this all the time. I don't like to buy cheap things. Like I'm not some wealthy person, but if I'm, you know, Chris, I'm out hunting. I don't like cheap hunting gear. I don't go to a academy to buy a firearm. Like I don't. I wanna custom-built rifle. I wanna go, I like nice guns. I like nice sporting equipment. I don't buy, you know, I don't go to the second hand, stored in my golf clubs. and you know, I have a nice truck. I have a really nice diesel truck. And so I think there's a huge sentiment in our population who, you know, they'll appreciate that. I have this conversation with my friend. He's like, man, y'all's air conditioner's too expensive. And I'm like, bro, you drive a King Ranch F350 year old. I've drives an X7. You live in a gated neighborhood. And all of a sudden, you want to be cheap when it comes to buying air conditioner. Like nothing else in your life is cheap.
Speaker 4But, you know, I think it's funny that sometimes that's what people do and I think it's sort of getting people value things differently, right, you value all you buy for your hunting versus this, but most of the majority of the time that home is the most biggest investment people make in their life, right, and the largest payment that they're paying every month and they should want to invest in good equipment. But let me ask you this question on the fall up is like, how'd you get down this journey? What's sent you down this and how'd you get into this too? Because I don't hear a lot of people talking I think is picking up momentum. Or seems like you're talking about all the right things from what I've been hearing in the industry myself. I've been on this journey for probably about a year and a half similar to where you are as a AI switch shift in this case and did stuff. So I think it comes to footwork.
Speaker 1I've just been in circles where it's come up. Jimmy, you know, his son has recreate AI to company. And he works with us on our web traffic. So when somebody logs in our website and asks a question, he captures that his booking rate is incredible. And so Tyler went to Colorado School of Minds. He graduated 2019, same age as my middle son. he played football there but he's really brilliant on computers and stuff and so he brought some new information that Jimmy and I were able to kind of talk to him about and this has been a couple years back and then a friend of ours named Puan who you know I don't know if you ever heard of Paul Sand before Paul Sin was really a good online reputation management and what they did was they ranked your technicians based upon their reviews and it was a powerful deal that we used for a long time, but he is local, he's in Dallas, and so I interact with him a lot as well and he founded Pete C. And you know, he's been telling me for years, hey, I was going to change, you know, how you guys market, how people find out who you are. And so those were just early conversations. And then, you know, and I'm kind of old school dude, I'm not very technical. When I have a marketing call, Chris, you'll appreciate this. They'll bring these massive data sets, right? So ranch is a big organization. And so there's a lot of horsepower around data and talking to Tanudi and talking to these organizations. Dude, here's where I'm at. I'm like, I need three calls a day per tech. Like, that's my marketing strategy. I don't care how you get them. I really don't. Like, I'm disinterested. I don't want to see you the data sets. I got other things to do. So as an operator, I'm kind of like, what is the most practical? And so I heard AI really didn't understand it. Then one day I go and look at Claude and I can't even sleep that night because I'm like, that was frightening. I mean, dude, wow. This AI stuff is weird and so then I start leaning in and going, well, I need to pay attention. People didn't tell me this. So about six months ago, I would say my temperature kind of went up. And I was like, you know what, if I don't get ahead of this, I'm going to get left behind. And so I really feel like, How do I capitalize on it? Like, we have a iron or call center now. And we use a company called LACE. And so our agent is LACEY. If you call, you might talk to the phones, our answer, you might get to talk to LACEY. But if you'd asked me like five years ago, if we'd have a bot answer in the phone, I would have been like, what, this ain't the Jetsons yet. ride a drone to work one day, you know, I'm like, that might happen or I die. My park is about maybe a drone. So I think it's just kind of, it's like, The longer it goes, the more momentum it gets. And so now I feel like it's imminent. Like we have to embrace the say I movement or we're gonna not be relevant in the market. Not even still go right on a good service company. You can not do any technology and put ads out and probably still make $10 million. because people need the services. But I think to optimize, you know, you probably feel the pressure I do. Like I have 400 families depending on me to make good decisions.
Speaker 4100%. And instead of that pressure, I can't afford to believe that.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 4Every can't go to fill up. I can't afford those goals.
Speaker 1Yeah. That's where I always tell the marketing, like the big marketing people I might do come here for a week and go out into the yard and tell the electrician that he's got to go home because I don't have enough calls. We go tell four plumbers that they're on call, you know, you just hang out with us for a little Bible. Sorry, we don't have calls. To me, that is like the one thing that just really eats at me. is when I got to walk the yard in the morning and go, hey, I'm sorry, it's slow. You know, I wish I could go, hey, guys, he can work as long as you want. We got calls till 10 o'clock. You know, and I think to do that, we're in a transition from where, you know, PPC LSA, that was the play that worked. In our market, Chris, what's amazing is the competition's driven the price per lead, so high, that you almost go, man, is it worth it to have an $800 lead? I mean, $800 lead, I got a $300 ticket. Well, that's, that's really not good business.
Speaker 2No, you get your call equations. You have to be off the charts and your average ticket for that person running that call needs to be high. Like there's something these apps line up perfectly. I get it.
Speaker 1And right now we're doing good. Like we, you know, we had a terrible May and June's crushing it. Um, but, you know, the thing we can't ever talk about is the weather, which always blows my mind, you know, you have meetings to go. We can't talk about the weather. I'm like, and that's like having an uncle with a fake leg and he comes over Thanksgiving and you tell your whole family, don't talk about his leg. You know, it's like, like he does it. No, he has a fake leg. Yeah, I think he's fully aware that he has a fake leg. And you're like, don't say anything about the weather. And I'm like, it's a part of what we do.
Speaker 4We talked about the weather a lot more than we should but is a reality to what happens in the business and what goes up or down You know, I know we want to be very much like our membership. We want to sustain. We want to be able to operate all the time But we don't want to turn hands, right? We are all very much weather and hands and that's really I know we can't do it on the weather But we have to be weather enhanced as an industry in all trades, really. I mean, really all the trades have their own time in the weather. HVC, a little bit in our plumbing drain, because, you know, I don't know much about electrical. We're still figuring that out over here at Hico, but what do you think about, let me know.
Speaker 1That's the hardest space to figure out. Like I'm like, why do people call it?
Speaker 4Great. Oversail when you can get in there and do some good stuff. But there's a lot of opportunity in that. For sure, the electrical and I think it's just been one of those trades that have been under Undervalued between the big two trades and plumbing in Hback right for say. Now it's starting to get some momentum. But I know we've hung out in this AI area for a while. And I do think that AdWords are just a spike to a level really high. I do think there's a potential that those costs get so high. That it kind of collapses. That people just start failing on it more and more. And that Google is going to Google or AdWords, you know, we're going to have a reality that this is just not a sustainable cost. Now, I do know that they've been losing traffic in that area to LLMs, and I think that that's also drove the price up in some of these areas, but I think over time, going to have to have a fall out. There's just no no sustainable way that I think that these prices stay the way they are with the way that margins are, the competitive environment, all these things are going on. I think you're speaking to that right now and you're adapting that through looking through these AI sediment things and I'm assuming you probably spend a lot of time on Gemini or other sources just talking and asking questions about your own business right to understand what we're saying and I've got a lot of that I beat down on that for hours and hours at times right You do, you do, you do all this research on AI and then I'll download it into like a PDF or something or a Google Doc and send it and blast it to all of my managers so they know it. Have you done that?
Speaker 1Yes. I sent it yesterday. I can send you the same email. I sit yesterday in my leadership team. I said, check this out.
Speaker 3Please do send it to me. I want to see if it's similar to what I do. I love that.
Speaker 1So we're going to meet this week and talk about it. Because I want to know, what's our five biggest threat? Like, where are we missing the mark? And I will tell you quickly. like that's what's cool about it like me yeah and key words this is fascinating to me like we always talk about hey what key words we need to use and I'm like hey what if a odd tells us what are the most predominant key words in the market yesterday like that's kind of weird to think I can get this information like now used to you know you had to do a market study and it was a lot
Speaker 4for Chris to get a call with you a month from now and then tell you a bunch of whatever and done it now, I'm joking.
Speaker 2Man, I'll tell you what, I mean, let's look at your attention to it just because I'm not in the business anymore. I mean, I pay attention to it because I'm just genuinely interested in what's gonna play out. and like how, because there's still so much theory around what are we doing to manipulate? Because that's what really all this is of manipulation of the key words of the results. It's what is actually going to prove itself out. Because nothing is really had enough time to prove itself out yet. So we're seeing some success from things everything's changing so fast still like you can't there's no so I just want to see like all these AI agent AI Only agencies I got to keep your people talking about damn our talk to talk about it. Tell me turn me on to him But I don't know that I've seen it actually play out with consistent success on the client and enough to be like, yeah, okay, somebody's got to figure it out. I just don't think it's there yet. And people won't say they have it, they have it's not been long enough yet. So, hey, real quick, Aaron, you know what time it is?
Speaker 4It's time for some questions to wrap up here, right?
Speaker 2The, it is, for the VIP final three. What do you think, Aaron? You need that one. We'll stick the VIP final ring.
Speaker 4All right, you got him.
Speaker 2The VIP final three. Baba, what this means is we have three remaining questions that inquiring minds in the industry want to know need to know from your perspective. Are you ready to tackle these last three questions, Baba? Absolutely. Okay, I think you are. We're going to find a shot. How's that at part of it? It's like, I'm all I'm asking for is the most honest answer out of you, which I know you will give. Okay. So number one is what part of the home services industry is broken?
Speaker 1But nobody wants to admit it. Um, what part of the industry's broken, but nobody wants to admit it? Um, I would say transparency. Like, I would say that there is a lot of people that, you know, do things that probably they'd be terrified of people new. And I think that Tarnish is, you know, the whole, I think people are like skeptical sometimes when we show up like they're already, you know, it's like, oh, no, the contractors coming over and I think that's something that we could overcome.
Speaker 2Okay, that was a very PC answer, but you're talking about when you say you're talking about decisions that companies might be making that might potentially could lean on the unethical side or side they'd be embarrassed if someone actually knew that they ran their business that way and there that also gives the industry a bad name. So when they show up there's this preconceived notion of what's happening down.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think just transparency around how you, this is who we are, we have an opportunity to go and provide a service at a high level and exchange for, you know, compensation for that. And I think just being above board, I know, you know, just talking to guys, I've heard ideas thrown out that I'm just like, man, I wouldn't do that, you know, it's manipulative. It's not honest. And so, you know, PC would, you know, like you said, I'm just, I'm saying there are there are things that are broken around you know how pricing is done or you know warranty stuff that's not real and I just think the we need to fix that I would like for not just baker's reputation to be good but home services in general like that we're trusted people that our guys are professional that we're going to do things the right way that you can be a trusted partner for your family
Speaker 2Yeah, and what people are like people would you'll Google reviews. There's one way, but now like, let's not make cloth every day, every day. I use cloth for something, every single day. And when I go to use, you use something, I'll ask it, you know, to give me the reviews. And the way it breaks down reviews is so amazing for companies. and that what's interesting is I believe the consumer that uses it actually trusts it more than a Google search. And whatever reason, like I'm like, oh okay, cool, you know, cloud or chatgy, but see or whatever you're using, gave me the breakdown and yours to bullet points on why they gave me the breakdown and yours to positives the negatives. And like, To me, it's like, oh well, okay, cool, and now I just believe it, and so decisions being made faster based off of the result of the search on the LL diverse, it's interesting place to live in. So I agree with you, this kind of goes back to everything you've just been saying about being transparent about how you run your business and just being about true legit value, and it's going to find all the little things and it's going to take it and bungle all up for you, and you don't end about two seconds and spit it out the answer to you and uncover everything. So maybe a lot of ways that transparency actually helps start to change the narrative of the industry.
Speaker 4No, I think that's what I wanted to say on that one over there.
Speaker 1What would I say? Yeah, or Anne. What would you say is broken?
Speaker 4Raskin Chris. Chris is now.
Speaker 1What would you say is broken?
Speaker 4I got to come to the shell every week.
Speaker 2Well, I can only speak for my perspective, right? Because I've never run a business as big as your contracting business, as big as yours or in a marketing company, you know, of similar size, but here's my perspective. And you actually talk a little bit about this on the show. And I think that there's some brokenness in what you said around marketing. And I do think that as a guy who lived in that space, not now, preface us by saying, I ran, when Ann and I ran the business of Rhino. When we really scaled it, we looked at the same lens that both you guys do about your employees, like you have a mouth to feed, and we would run the business the same way. It wasn't just a logo that they saw. There's human beings behind that logo that are depending on us, and their livelihood is depending on us. and how we show up each day to fill their board. That's legit how we run, how we ran the business. So, but there were only times when even if we gave our best that we could not get it done because there was nothing to go get based on either maybe spend or if it was competitors, spin it, you have no control over like there's variables that we have no control over even if we're at our best. So that's why people get pissed at marketing because they're like, oh, well, we're slowing down. How do you feel about like, I, I'd be like, don't know, like, we, we've, we've gave it a 100%. And we still couldn't get it done. Maybe that wasn't enough. I don't, I don't know. I still think that marketing in today's world. should still, it's, it's a, you both got to participate in it. It's not, you know, it's, you can't just spend the money with the agency and then let them spit out their beautiful words to you like, you have to be participated in it. It's not 2021. It's not 2022 or like the faucet was just gone. That shit, that ship failed.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So, so, but everyone still wants to, to blame marking. In some cases, it's probably true. I know tenuity. I've had lots of common faces around tenuity for a lot of years. And because of some of the other players who had to use tenuity and I had to work through things with them. And the early years when tenuity came on, Geiger used them early on. So I just don't think there's some brokenness around how your partnership to marketing company is supposed to be and what you're responsible for as a contractor versus a marketing company.
Speaker 1Yeah. I would agree. And look, all of our partners, I want to say this to be honest about things that are broken. I don't think that people are like not trying. Like I think it's a complex market and it's not easy to solve. You know, digital used to be easy and it's not. It's complicated and we're trying to figure it out. We're still spinning a lot of money on an area where I'm going. We're just not getting the same. So I do think that there's probably something that'll be a breakthrough, maybe it's AI, maybe it's, you know, a movement. Mark Cuban, I want to say this because it's important to this conversation. Mark Cuban said something that I read last week. And he was talking about over the next three years, AI is going to be super aggressive. And he said there's going to be a revolution or a awakening that drives us back to conversations. and he talked about human interactions or could probably come more important. I mean, we all complain about our kids. I'm out and how would your kids are? But we talk about, you know, they text, they don't call, they don't interact, they grew up in this digital generation where I grew up, gradually in the 80s, I still knew what a handshake was, how to sit down, have a conversation. And I think there's gonna be a resurgence around that. And I think that also impact marketing. Like, you know, we talked about organic. We talked about just being present in the community. So I do think that maybe that's been broken for a while. But I do think that Ayah is going to push us toward craving more human interaction at some point. And I think that's a good thing for the industry. 100% of good. Yeah.
Speaker 2We're not going to get the three. I don't think Chad or Jesus Aaron. I don't think we're going to get the three questions, buddy. So we're going to have to just pick one. I think one of the last two, what's, what's, sorry for all of you.
Speaker 4It's not going to stay on it. What hill are you willing to die on as an operator, no matter what. As you operate Baker, brothers, like, what is the hill you're willing to die on?
Speaker 1We'll always do what we say. Like I'll down the hill of guaranteed, like, There's no limit to not making it right. If we make a mistake, we'll own it. I don't care much about your costs. Just the integrity hills, what I would say.
Speaker 2And that's a long play, right? Because, yeah, you have to be able to sustain, well, you hopefully you don't make a bunch of mistakes. You're having it. But I think that you're 100% cashbacker is satisfaction guarantee represents that. If it's truly what it is, and you're truly going to say, oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm a big believer in, Yeah, and our my mantra had had to have been for so long reputation of gravity reputation of our avenues with this business. It legit believes that and man, I had to write some big checks that were super scary times because of an employee made a mistake, well, I'm still responsible for it and it's like But I genuinely believe like that's what helped build our reputation as we same hill. We would die on that same hill. Like it's just, well, it's right. And try to encourage your team to speak up faster if they made a mistake. Make it safe enough to for them to speak up that to say, hey, I made a mistake. So that way we can actually get to those things from faster.
Speaker 4I think it's important over time we make mistakes, I've owned some big ones, but I've also tried to tell our team is like, look, I'm never going to terminate somebody from making the steak. Sure. Obviously, tell me, right? You tell me you talk to me, share it. You get ahead of it quickly. Let's go. Let's get ahead of this. Let's not try to. cover up something that there is, right? And I think that that's important that they understand that too, and that that's a cultural thing in the business. And so as I used that your organization spent decades building that relationship. And we, I agree. I think that that's something you want to diagnose. If you're running a repital organization and there's a mistake, need you just own it. And I always tell our team, I was like, look, we make a lot of it. We make mistakes, but I think the one thing that we've done really, really well, at least in our market against a lot of our competition, I guess I'll use for lack of better terms that we never run from it. We never hide from it, we try to avoid it, we lean right into it and you solve it. I'm assuming very much a reputation you've built in that's the reason why you've been all the half and sustained a business that you guys have culturally wise for so long.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't want to be the guy that blows it. We started in 45. I don't want to be on the news. I don't want to be the Titanic legacy.
Speaker 4I started just, and I don't want to be the guy to blow it. So I guess.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm like, no, it's not going down with me. That's a great question. I would say if I had a mini hill, another hill would be people like people mad or morning things else. People run our business and I think we got to really be attentive to the people that we call teammates.
Speaker 2This isn't one of, by the way, that's actually a common answer that I think that we'll probably hear quite a bit about it being the people. I'm almost a bit in one more week that's not technically part of the VIP final three. We usually ask you a question about more margin leakage, but I don't want to ask right now. I'm actually going to ask something else because Well, I listened to a podcast when I was prepping for this. You had, when you come from preaching, right, from ministry into plumbing, right? And so, you know, 20, 20 years of it, that's a heck of a change. And so, to make that drastic of a change, you come into this now, contracting a world. I mean, you're in, I think I listened to, you're in like maybe six, seven months, something like that, where's where you first started to feel like, oh, man, that I make the right call here at my, like, is this actually going to be what I thought it's going to be as impactful here as a heck of a change? And so I think I think it was situation where you had somebody who just wouldn't, didn't want to hear what you had to say or didn't want to, you know, do what you were suggesting to do or whatever that thing was. But you kind of ran into your first moment of like, oh, did I make a bad decision? Now, you've seen, obviously, this has been many, many years ago at this point, and I think what it happened is you were still trying to earn some trust, you know, of people to want to listen to you. I don't know the situation, but, but now to think all, you know, that was early early on and you're entry into the business that seemed like that was the first like trip up that you had in your journey from, you know, ministry into the trades. So here's what I want to ask you, what advice would you give your younger self before starting your business? Like to those maybe who are out there that are new in business or just getting started or still early on the business like what advice would you give your younger self if you were in their shoes?
Speaker 1I would write down the non-negotiables, like right out of the gate, hey, what, you asked me what hill I'd down? I would go, hey, what is it that I'm trying to achieve here? And is it an impact goal? Is it to provide a life for families? Is it to reach a certain valuation? Is it to provide service that's extraordinary? I would write down those things that you say, hey, these are the things that I want to achieve. And I would like, hold that in, and I would just be not willing to negotiate around those things. Like, where you go, I think when you're a young guy in the business, shiny objects, or huge temptation. You hear about this new idea or this thing and I think the simplicity of our businesses, we are a service to people and we go and we provide a service and we get paid for it and we come back and I think when you start complicating it, you lose your way. Like Jimmy, you always say this. If you make a really good hamburger, you need to keep making hamburgers. And sometimes, you know, you go, well, maybe we could get into this. I see young guys all the time, they get multifaceted before they're ready, like they haven't mastered one thing. and then they want to do four things. And you're like, now they're doing pest control, and now they're doing lawn care, and they're going, you know, and then all of a sudden it was their plumbing they were good at, and that starts slipping, because they took their eyes off the main thing. So if I told a young person, it'd be keep the main thing, the main thing, define what the main thing is to you, it'd be absolutely committed to it no matter what.
Speaker 2I love the thought around non-negotiables. I think that's so important. And I remember whenever we were going into our deal with Rida, when we were going into our private equity partnership is I had was able to be put in the position to give my non-negotiables. That was a cool feeling. And I'm glad we did stop that over all these years because then you feel good about when you go to bed, like I know I built a business to right way because how you make your money is as important as how much money you make, right? If not more important and I truly believe that. That's something I'm glad to finally get you on here. I'm sorry. I took me so damn long to to get it on this thing. All right. It's all good it supposed to be the day. Yeah, I suppose today.
Speaker 4Absolutely, appreciate the conversation, love the insight and adds an all your success that you've had individually and the success you're having in the market that you guys are doing today. So really great to go to Chanda to follow up with you. Love to get that email. So I can see if there's similar to what I send out.
Speaker 1I love to work. Yeah, we have a lot of the same size businesses and be great to benchmark with you.
Speaker 4Let's do it. We'll connect. Crystal get us an attack together and we'll chat. All right, appreciate your time today, my man. Thank you. Great.
Speaker 2Appreciate it, guys. Yeah, man, appreciate you. Make keep on doing your thing. I think it's cool, man, that you've got to do. Now you get through preaching and just you get to do it through preaching through the pipes, right? Just move flow before.
Speaker 1Yeah. Anyway, the youth ministry looks way different, but they're still here. That's a great job. We've ever here. We'll get launched. Good to see you all.
Speaker 2absolutely. And to our listeners, look, man, this is so cool. I mean, this guy come from Ministry and to the now preaching to the, you know, the technicians and now is it that, you know, he's, he's run the big business down that we're incredibly competitive market. He's got a peer grippy leans on, like all these things are not complicated. You just got to find your group, you know, And to Aaron's point, I don't know how easy this to find someone local who's willing to kind of openly share, but it certainly doesn't hurt to ask right and I think see because you can find someone across the United States guaranteed like unless you just don't try you could you could easily create your own peer group. But finding someone in your own market that understands your exact, your market situation, I think there's a lot of value in that if you could, I think now's better than any time than ever to ask, right? You know, given it's hard for probably everyone. So, but, you know, even even a simple as things of just being a, you know, being transparent, you know, and doing it, running the business a clean way and and understanding that maybe Marky looks a little bit different today like you know just you maybe don't focus on all the things like find one thing and just keep chipping away at it and then I'd say to you know Baba's point you know to as young yourself like maybe just try and get your first trade down and feel really good about it before you start trying to move on to something else and making you more complicated so Well, listen, you don't tell next time to we see you back here in the VIP room news with a surprise guest will be on the next episode But I appreciate you mama appreciate you a G into our listeners You know, don't talk about it.
Speaker 0Be about it What's the password?
Speaker 5Don't talk about it me about it
