[00:00:00.000] - Brandon
What up?
[00:00:00.610] - Chris
Yo.
[00:00:00.980] - Brandon
Are you ready to go on the road?
[00:00:03.330] - Chris
I need a beard trim. That's my next stop after the office here. Yeah. Then I'll feel travel ready.
[00:00:08.560] - Brandon
This is a strategic objective prior to leaving tomorrow morning. A little bit. Trim, trim the beard.
[00:00:13.830] - Chris
I need a good edge back on this beard. That's right.
[00:00:16.540] - Brandon
Give it some shape.
[00:00:17.590] - Chris
We got a fun guest, brand of the podcast. Yeah, I dig him. Yeah, Zach Garrett , founder and CEO of Liftify. They are exploding. Holy cow. It's really fun when you get a chance to meet other small business owners that are almost paralleling you a little bit. I think-It's bloating. Yeah. Over the last few years since we first met Zach, it's like, wow, it's been fun to watch his team grow from he and two or three other people to now. What did he What did he tell us during the podcast? Are they up to 15 or so on their team?
[00:00:48.620] - Brandon
Their team's blown up. You know what's cool about Zach? Hopefully, people don't underestimate this. As a CEO or a leader, he is so dang strategic. Yeah, he I think that comes out in this episode more than ever, just because we intentionally, and otherwise, we're not really talking about Liftify from a Liftify perspective, but it's really just talking to him as a CEO that's leading a very vast, growing and he closely related to our industry. I just respect the things he says. It's like, Zach, to me, is one of those dudes where you can trust him. He walks what he talks. I mean, we've seen it even fundamentally all the way to his personal life. He's just so He's always fun to hear, just talking about his business.
[00:01:33.810] - Chris
I also think, man, this is a guy, he's young. Oh, yeah. I'm one of those people that over and over, age is just a number. Oh, yeah. At that very same time, it's exciting to watch somebody who's at the very beginning of their heroic journey. He's going to found other companies. He's like, this is almost like rep one. It's incredibly inspiring to see where he's at already and the way that he's thinking about the business. We end up in the conversation, too. We talk about what does it look like for us to be customer-centric in how we're building and developing our products and services. We spend a fair bit of time talking about customer experience. I got pretty nerdy, and you guys reined me back in.
[00:02:18.510] - Brandon
That's so unlike you.
[00:02:19.710] - Chris
Yeah. But anyway, it's a great conversation. We covered a fair bit of ground. I think this would be especially interesting to owners, but probably a lot for anybody to take away from. So here we go. Let's talk to Zach.
[00:02:29.860] - Brandon
Let's get it.
[00:02:30.420] - Chris
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that react, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:02:41.610] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:02:51.250] - Chris
I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:02:54.480] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. Hey, all, thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so and ultimately share. The coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members. Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help us a ton.
[00:03:28.510] - Chris
Right on. And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's business opportunity audit. It's free. We provided it no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110 point assessment for your business. And we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp. Com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now. And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out floodlightgrp. Com/audit, and take the Boa. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. All right, man. Welcome back to the show, dude.
[00:04:10.510] - Zach
Yeah. Thanks for having me. Good to see you guys.
[00:04:12.240] - Brandon
We were just talking about it. It's been a hot minute. We've been connecting, but we just haven't done it formally.
[00:04:17.770] - Zach
Yeah. You guys have been running. We've been running. So we've seen each other at a couple of events. I feel like over the last couple of years and some emails. But yeah, it's been a while.
[00:04:25.630] - Brandon
Yeah. You guys have been jamming, dude. Actually, I think Chris was talking Before we hit record, we'd like to hear about what's going on just because I think one of the things that we forget about is, look, most of our strategic partners are the folks that we're bringing into this show. A lot of times, they're entrepreneurs. They're all operating and growing businesses just like we are. I think one of the values in hearing you bring us up to speed, even on what's going on behind the scenes at Liftify, is that it's good intel for us. You're very intentional in your decision making. You're very strategic minded. I I think the way that you process what you guys are doing as you grow is helpful. Anyway, all that to be said, we'd love to hear the update, and then we can dive into some of the other stuff we're anticipating covering together. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:11.200] - Zach
Well, I think, as a quick recap, like Liftify is traditionally helped companies drive more online reviews. We saw that need in the market four years ago, and it bootstrapped a business to solve that need. And really spent three and a half years only focused on that, and becoming the best at doing that product. We'll talk more about, I think, where do we go and where's the vision? What are people saying they need in the market today? But that's where we started. We've bootstrapped our business from nothing and just reinvested back in. A lot of our business is not necessarily in the restoration space. Probably only about 10% of Our current customers are in the restoration space, and we do a lot of work in HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical, other parts of the trades, which I think is a huge advantage because some of those other markets, like HVAC, is very market-forward. They're investing heavily. They are typically leading on tech, on trends, on marketing. That's been helpful for us to push the envelope going forward. Working with franchises was always part of our strategy from the beginning. But one big shift for us is we've scaled to more than a thousand locations now that we're working with has also been private equity or investment groups.
[00:06:19.330] - Zach
There's been a lot of consolidation in the trades in the last, probably in restoration as well. But as interest rates and different things were low in the last few years, businesses started to be acquired and groups started to put together We found a great niche for ourselves there when we can tell a story of how we've helped standardize and really accelerate large enterprises or franchise systems and bringing that to conglomerate businesses that have multiple brands, multiple systems and processes, and partnering with those corporate teams. There's been a big part of our growth and journey over the last probably 12 to 18 months is really working with a lot of those larger organizations who maybe have five brands in 12 states, a bunch of locations, a lot of complexity. And we've been doing more and more of that.
[00:07:03.450] - Brandon
That's super cool. The interesting thing about that is our business model has actually started to shift quite a bit into more like what I hear you calling those is almost more like strategic partners. It's this captivated audience, right? When you go and establish a way to create value for them, it gives you access to a bigger fishing pond for us to return to and farm and look for new opportunities. And I think even as restores, the connection for us often is MSAs, some of these things where we can think through a strategic partnership where they've got ultimately a body made up of our audience or people that we want to do business with, and then leveraging a way to create value for them at their tier, which then in turn, earn us the opportunity to get access to the rest of that member group. And I think as restorers, we may not leverage that relationship very well. And so anyways, that's super relevant, obviously.
[00:07:58.810] - Zach
Two things that I've wrestling with, that I think probably a lot of other entrepreneurs, you guys are probably going through this too, is like, how much of our energy do we put into being great at what we do and furthering investing time, resource, energy into that core solution versus looking at the other things people are asking us for, maybe the other ways that we can add value that people are asking us for. There's no perfect answer, right or wrong answer. It's just you got to gut check. I think I'm wrestling with that every day. Then I think also just even with my time as our team is scaled from 1:00 to 3:00 to 5:00 to 10:00 plus. There's a lot of different things. We have to set up reporting lines now and what can I truly let go of and building in the processes. I'm the visionary guy. If you're an EOS person, not the implementer. How do we do that in our business and have it actually evolve? How do I evolve as a leader to actually accomplish what we want to accomplish? I think both those things are really hard. I don't have answers for those, but transparently, as you grow, as you change or people ask stuff It's just the biggest tension is like, what do I need to do today and who do I need to be to take this business to the next level?
[00:09:06.060] - Zach
And that's the fun, but it's also probably the biggest underlying stressor that if you don't run a business and you've never done that, you just can't understand what that's like.
[00:09:14.890] - Brandon
Yeah, dude, I want to nerd out on a topic. Maybe we'll have time to touch on it, but I know you were getting ready to ask something. I want to come back to that topic. So let's maybe hold on to that. Where do we spend our time and energy to create that return?
[00:09:28.400] - Chris
Well, I was just curious before we move on. You mentioned that 10% of the business is restoration. I'm just curious because Brandon and I are always keeping our ear to the ground with friends we know in other trades and other service verticals. We had Tim Fitzpatrick on recently, who's a pretty large-scale painter in Oregon and has expanded into other lines like construction and so forth. It's always interesting hearing from leaders in these other businesses, and one, recognizing it's all the same thing on some level, running a service company. So I'm just curious, as you've been diving into these other service lines, I guess, where do you see the most innovation and the most progressive business thinking or customer service orientation? Are there any of these verticals that you guys are in that you're just like, man, this is super pro. In general, this industry sector just seems to be a little bit further ahead, maybe, of some of the other service trades. Anything stand out to you offhand?
[00:10:26.250] - Zach
Yeah, HVAC. Really? They are 5-10 years ahead. Big ones. If you're talking multi-location businesses, some of those business could be 50, 100 million, 200 million, 300 million. They can be very large in their footprint. And because they have those resources, I think what we see is their digital strategy, the way that they run their paid advertising campaigns, even their organic. Their focus on local, adding satellite locations, Google pages, different pins. They really have that dialed in really good. And then I think the customer service element, just completely We work with a great HVAC company that their average response time is three minutes to a customer request. They have an in-house team that just sits there and just engages with the customer back and forth all day long. In their world, they're not the cheapest, right? But their brand is their reputation, their customer service, all of that stuff. I think they earn it, and they really center around it. I think for any of your listeners, if you want to see what the next iteration, especially with marketing or even tech, the way that they're investing in tech, investing in AI in those things, look at your big like A-Track companies in your market.
[00:11:35.990] - Zach
And a lot of times, those will be the people from a trade's perspective that are really cutting edge.
[00:11:41.010] - Brandon
Do you think some of that's just driven? But you said the resources. Companies just grutted through it, right? And started creating mass and scale and figuring that out. And so then they're like, what do we do with these additional resources? Invest them back into tech and knowledge, things like that. Is there something else? I mean, because for somebody listening, you say, well, they have more money to spend. Okay. But is there a mentality? Is there some influence or a driver behind that? It's so that they know when they create these extra resources, that it's a wise decision to invest this way? Yeah.
[00:12:12.640] - Zach
Well, I think certainly the resources help, If you compare it to a restoration project, you can install a new furnace in four hours and have multiple guys do multiple things, and you don't even have to do that again. And so the revenue that comes from those versus a recon job, just a different level of effort to do that. But also the other thing that you have is you also have a ton of competition in those markets. You have hundreds of small guys, right? And then you have some big players. Now you have private equity that's in it, and making every paid lead is dramatically more expensive than it used to be. Every Google click, every paid lead. And so you have to be great at the brand building. You've got to be great at the customer service. It's forcing companies to level up because that competition is so fierce. There's more companies than there is jobs in a lot of those sectors. I don't know, that may be true in certain industries, even in restoration. But I think from a competitiveness, probably because of the profit margins and the speed and how the low level of effort it takes to get into some of those business, the competition is fierce.
[00:13:15.790] - Zach
Just like anything, when the competition is fierce, it forces you to level up.
[00:13:19.740] - Brandon
That is interesting because I'm not sure that I've ever, and this might just be naive on my part, but I don't know that I've ever had that feeling about competition in the industry where I was worried that due to the fact that XYZ restores in our market, we're not going to be able to make progress. We can't grow. It's going to be difficult. I've never really, I think, had context where I was worried about that. I'm not saying it doesn't exist or anything because it does, but it just didn't ever feel that much of an issue. It felt more like I was always competing against ourselves versus competing against another company. And so I think that is interesting I think one of the ways that showed up was things like we're not often bidding against somebody, let's say, for emergency services. Maybe more so we get into the recon side of the business, more so, obviously, in commercial, there's more ROM demand, all the different things. But there is where this shows up is when we start talking to people about scaling into commercial and they start talking about wanting to do more work, let's say, with multifamily or these larger commercial companies, and they're like, no, we want bids.
[00:14:28.280] - Brandon
We want Roms before we'll say and allow you to start conducting services. The pushback on the contractor's part, they're so blown away that they have to compete for the job that I think to me, that's just a reminder that, yes, there's competition, but I'm not sure the average restore is really worried about their competition. It's part of, I think, at times, what gives us the ability to be a little lazy about leveling up that demand. I'm just thinking the way that we're not very great often about precreating schedules for construction jobs. We don't need to work into our standard process, we're going to develop a number, a scope, a ROM right away. Feeling the friction in trying to install those kinds of behaviors in the restoration companies at large, that to me feels like a factor we're not very cognizant of or influenced by. And so that is interesting to me that we have an opportunity to learn from our counterparts where competition is very aggressive, then monitor what they spend their money on. And that could be a good reminder for us to shift some of our strategic initiatives around that idea. That's a long freaking way to say that.
[00:15:35.000] - Chris
I think it goes back to what you initially said about this one particular HVAC company that has a whole team of people that's basically just waiting on the phones. A three-minute response time. I think one of the things that we observe, both within our client, our book of clients, and then just externally, that comes up a lot is call intake. And it's surprising for a business like ours that thrives on the unplanned and unexpected, for 24/7 operators, how poor, generally, is an industry we are at our call intake and follow-up. It's not uncommon for people to pay $500 or $1,000 for a lead, like a water damage lead or a fire damage lead or something like that. And often, those leads don't get executed on. People will call in, somebody will be off to the bathroom. They don't have a really clearly defined call forwarding system, or they have a single receptionist, and nobody else is trained on call in intake. You've undoubtedly heard our ads for Answer Force on the podcast, and we're big believers. You're not just an answer force, great team, but just the concept of having a redundant call intake system is just so important.
[00:16:43.570] - Chris
And yet for some reason, As an industry, we're so hyper-focused on the tradecraft and the certified type of work and service we do and the technicality of it and all of that stuff. But I think as an industry, we haven't yet, I guess, developed a pride in the business the business and really drilled in on those details. And certainly, I think there was a time where we weren't as zeroed in on it either. I remember distinctly when we were first operating together, it came up in a leadership meeting because I think we were losing our receptionists. They were taking another job somewhere else, and we were considering that next hire. And there was this whole conversation around how, man, we probably need to elevate this role. I think traditionally, when you hire a receptionist, it's one of your cheapest hires you make in the business. It's like, how hard can it be?
[00:17:29.460] - Brandon
It's It's very entry-level.
[00:17:31.110] - Chris
Yeah, we maybe put a script in their hands, a checklist of ask them this and then do that. And it's like, man, how much money did we spend to get the phone to ring? And I think part of the disconnect, too, is that so many restores are really driven. They're not very sophisticated. That sounds derogatory. They haven't felt the need to get into pay-per-click or paid advertising. And so it's all reputation. It's all market demand. Maybe they're in a market where they don't have a ton competition, and the phone just rings. It just rings enough to make their business work, and maybe they do some TPA stuff. I think they don't have a connection to how much they're spending or every single phone call that comes in. They don't think about, gosh, all of the overhead expense, all of the sunk cost that goes into having their operation open, and what does that mean in terms of the cost of every one of those calls that comes through the phone? I think as an industry, we've done a poor job educating ourselves around that. And so it sounds like, anyway, the HVAC space, because of competition, is way more hyper-focused on capturing those leads, conversion rate, and all that stuff.
[00:18:38.690] - Chris
So I'm curious for context, because some people are saying, well, God, I can't afford to have more than one receptionist, or who has time to do all that training? I barely have enough text to do the work we have blah, blah, blah. For context, what size of business is this one you're referring to that has a team of people monitoring the phones and follow up and all that stuff?
[00:18:56.700] - Zach
Yeah, I mean, this one I'm thinking of is 17 location, $100 million Okay. You know business, right?
[00:19:02.590] - Chris
I thought you were going to say, well, they're like four million. They got 25 employees.
[00:19:07.950] - Zach
But I will tell you, I think we also work with even single location businesses in that space that they don't have a whole team, right? But because there's urgency and that phone is only going to ring so many times, and it's very much weather dependent in their world, somewhat similar to restoration, depending on what's going on, where when it's hot, it's hot. Everybody needs you right there. When it's cold, it's cold. Furnaces are breaking. They need you now. So there's real urgency. They're like, get back to that lead. I think it is a lot of a culture, a culture thing. But yeah, I would just say, look at that. The other thing HVAC companies do is memberships. I don't know how that could apply to restoration. But a lot of HVAC companies we work with now, they have a constant monthly revenue stream from people that have signed up for memberships for quarterly maintenance. It's a subscription model. They're layering in new revenue streams for people coming in, checking on them, seeing how that goes. I think there's a lot to learn from if you just get out of your industry, even listen to some of their content.
[00:20:06.600] - Zach
There's podcasts, different resources that just might be different than something that you're thinking. Some apply, some doesn't. But I always get a lot of value from doing that stuff. Sometimes I think we work in the painting space with the big franchise, hundreds of locations. Sometimes I think, just get out of the painting industry. Get out of that and go listen to Head, Heart, and Boots or go listen to other stuff. You're going to learn from just what other people are doing.
[00:20:28.860] - Brandon
Yeah. Well, It's interesting that you say that in terms of this idea of them coming up with some more consistent rev models. Here's an idea, too. How many of us as restorers have really good partnerships with HVAC companies? If maybe all your existing relationships or with some of the smaller teams, doesn't mean you guys can't think creatively out of the box together. But don't be afraid also to make some connections with some of those larger entities. I know we're cost-conscious, but maybe what we would offset Some of that higher premium cost using that particular sub is what relationship access and/or monthly opportunity could we partner with them on? In these maintenance contracts, there's an opportunity for us to create more value by that maintenance contract being more comprehensive in nature. Maybe there's a way for us to add our service delivery or specialty to the mix when it comes to, let's say, some duct cleaning, or whatever those things that we could potentially partner with them on. So get I think there is an opportunity here for us to lean into something like that. I think some of the stuff that we do on the restoration side in the residential space may not be as easy to create that monthly maintenance type relationship.
[00:21:43.730] - Brandon
But I bet you if you partnered with some of your subs, you could come up with something that actually makes a whole lot of sense for everybody involved. Anyways, that's a great nugget, man, that you had there.
[00:21:53.040] - Zach
Maybe one way, too, to just begin those conversations is I feel like, especially the larger companies, one of the benefits they have is they do have more capacity. They have more professional staff. They're not running on the treadmill as much as a local operator. So even just saying, Hey, if you have a connection, even it's loose, Hey, will you give me 30 minutes to sit down and just explain to me, how do you handle your intake and measure it. I just want to learn from you. I've seen you guys are great at it. People love that. When you talk about how good they are, I think people would be surprised at how that may even just open a conversation to a larger thing of just, Hey, I want to learn from you on how do you measure how long that call What does it look like? I'm in a different industry, not competing with you. I just want to learn from you. Try to have those conversations. I just think there's not enough of that that goes on cross-industry, at least from what we see. People are very siloed in their little niches and tribes.
[00:22:45.700] - Zach
It's probably part of our human nature. They just stay in their lanes. But I think just not being afraid to ask that, what's the worst thing that happens? They just don't do it. Then you're at where you're at anyway.
[00:22:54.530] - Brandon
It's the hole you have not because you ask not mentality. I'm really curious. I'm I'm interested to go down a line of thought here. So one of the things that you mentioned early was you flexing a little bit, just trying to stay focused on the right things as you guys scale and grow. I mean, you guys are moving into new market spaces. You're having to learn how to market to a whole new group, right? And that group often isn't completely great at buying services. I'm talking about our industry. There's a lot of educating, I think, when you're a service delivery or service provider to our industry. Okay, all that being said, One of the things that we've admired about you, and this has nothing to do with the tech that Liftify is responsible for, but you as an operator is you remain creative and curious. You are building a business with the aggressive pursuit of expansion. And so that drives some certain types of behaviors and posture in you. The three of us were talking about some of the things that you're strategically engaged in and thinking through. And here's what stood out to me.
[00:23:58.570] - Brandon
And then I'd love to just hear what's driving some of this research and what you guys are learning. But here's what I felt like I took away from one of our last catch-ups, and that was, okay, the thing about Zach that I admire is he's willing to be creative and not be completely married to the system and process that you've leveraged to get you here, which is good. It's like we can't build our entire businesses on maybe. We have to make commitments. We have to toe those lines. And though, if we're a growing organization and leveling up as part of our pursuit, we also have to hold on to old ways with a loose hand. I feel like your guys' organization, whether it's been forced to or not, lives that out. And you were telling us all the fun stuff that you guys are doing at Liftify. I want you to do that for us today Today, and the reason I just want to set the stage is for us as listeners, just think, okay, what do I do with this in my own business? Because we all have an opportunity, and of course, we're going to hear about what Liftify is doing, but there's a purpose behind it.
[00:24:58.110] - Brandon
And that purpose is universal, meaning us as entrepreneurs and key leaders, we can leverage the same mentality to get gains in our teams, our business, our book of business, whatever we're doing. So anyways, I just want to set that so that we don't get into this thing where it's a fucking pitch fest because I hate that crap. So anyways, talk to us. You were really excited about what you're doing, but walk us through some of those core components and what drove it.
[00:25:20.830] - Zach
Yeah, I think really candidly for us, I mean, like you said, Brandon, I hope that that comes off like our brand with all of our customers, like innovation. I think when we came in and we blew through some new things people weren't doing around the review space and did some innovative things around that. That was core to what we do. But now we've been doing that for a long time. You want to continue to innovate in that lane, in that space, and we are, and you're continuing to do that. But also what happened for us, very transparently, is we have two different customer buckets. I put it in a discretionary spend bucket. That's the painting your house, putting in custom closets, doing things, making purchases that you don't have to do. Then there's the non-discretionary, more like the EMS services, HVAC, restoration, those things that happen. A lot of our business was in the discretionary bucket. For years, they didn't need leads. Post-covid, people had cash. They're spending a ton of money on their homes, and they had leads. That wasn't a problem. We were helping them capitalize on those jobs and build for the future.
[00:26:20.680] - Zach
But all of a sudden in 2023, that turned dramatically. Those markets are down significantly year over year, and back to 2019 levels, a lot of them, which if you'd have told them they'd had a four-year run, that was awesome. They would have taken it five years ago. But now, once you're used to that, it hurts, right? To fall back down to that, and they're having to adjust. I think for me, the first thing was just listening to our customers, being intentional, having businesses who were struggling, either challenging the value we're providing or the ROI on each thing, just doing it. It's frustrating because you believe in what you're doing. You know that it drives value, and maybe your customers don't see why they should pay you and what it's worth or maybe the value you've provided. I think comparing it to a restoration job, when the job goes great and you do the restoration right and all of that, people sometimes don't appreciate what they could have gotten if they would have gone with a bad contractor. That would have screwed it up. They just don't see that because you did a good job. They maybe don't value the cost that you're charging for that that is worth it.
[00:27:23.270] - Zach
But I think very similarly for us, we had businesses that had earned hundreds of Google reviews. They had more organic leads than they've ever had, but they didn't have as many as last year because their markets are down. All of a sudden, they're questioning everything. I think the first thing for us was just getting outside of my own head and just being willing to just hear people out on saying, Hey, I need more from you. If I'm going to pay Liftify X amount per month for this, I need you to do more than reviews. I need you to help me drive leads. I need you to help me improve my customer experience. Increase the number of touch points we're doing, create this, and just listening. I think you do enough listening and you carve out the time, and it's not easy to do, but you carve out the time, you start to get themes. What are the core things that keep coming up in people's journeys, and not just even your customers, but even partners. Chris, you and I had a conversation in December that was the exact conversation I was having with a franchisor CEO and a local one location business.
[00:28:29.470] - Zach
In a two-week span and your conversation, they were all pretty similar in what they were desiring or felt like companies needed as a next evolution. So that provides clarity. And it's messy and it's frustrating. It's hard to get out of your day-to-day to just listen to your customers on what should we really do? Then you have to have some level of discernment on what are the things we're just not going to do or get into or be good at that's just not in our lane? What are the things that are really where we're going? I don't know if that answers your question, but just I think the first step for us was, one, there's practical need of markets change, and you have to be willing to say, Hey, people don't feel the same about you or about the product or service you provided because those markets are shifting. How do you respond to that? I think you just got to listen to them and say, Hey, we built a good relationship here. You believe in us as a company, but what do you need from me to add value to you? And that value changes as markets change, and that's hard.
[00:29:24.860] - Brandon
Yeah, I think that's an awesome answer. It's totally comprehensive and it totally makes sense and it's universally effective. All the language that you just used is business 101 is absolutely universally applicable to all of us and what we're considering in our business. We just went through this, Chris and I and our team Same thing. We're just looking at the consulting that's available in the space, and we're looking at how people and teams are doing that, and we're asking ourselves the question, and we're hearing input from our current book and from prospects of, yeah, it's good, But. And it's like that we want to find out why did it stop at but. Why is it only good? Why are we not hearing my mind is blown from the relationship and from the experience? And so that's caused us to go back to work. And we've been behind the scenes making some very huge strategic shifts in how we deliver and what we're investing time and money into to prepare for Q4. So it's universal. It's like the same cause and effect scenario for us in a service offering business or like a white collar in quotes business.
[00:30:29.980] - Brandon
It's universal, man. Same thing. There's cause, and it puts us in a position where we can either dig in and allow our ego to hold to, Oh, this is the thing. This is what we built. And or we can go back and remain curious and flexible and be like, Okay, well, the client, the people we're trying to serve is telling us that we need to moderate. There's an opportunity to do something slightly different to create a higher level of demand or value.
[00:30:54.310] - Chris
This is good. So I've had this conversation in my head, percolating pretty much since ours, back in December. Remember, whenever that was, about customer experience. And I think it really ties in with the service you guys provide. I think part of what Brandon and I have learned to take more and more seriously as floodlights grown is that part of our job, because I feel like part of our value proposition to our clients and ultimately to our headhart boots audience in the industry and so forth, is that at any given time, we have access and we're observing dozens of companies of various sizes. That gives us a certain picture of the industry that very few who other people have. And likewise with you, I mean, with all the different industries and companies you guys work with, you have a certain amount of visibility into patterns and stuff that you see, too. And when it relates to customer experience and five-star Google reviews, I've been thinking a lot about this because I think there's something that's been progressively happening with online reviews where they hold less and less value to the consumer who's using them to make a decision.
[00:31:54.510] - Chris
The SEO value is still very obvious and obviously massive. And we've seen it over and over again. We'll recommend Liftify to our clients. And within 30 days, they're seeing lift in terms of their inbound call volume and all this stuff. So there is without a doubt massive business value in the five-star Google review. But what I mean by that is when I, for example, go shopping on Amazon, everything has 4.9 star reviews. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, there's rare exceptions where it's like somebody's reviews really suck. But I think the potentially a problem, I guess, with reviews, say 10 years from now or five years from now, is that the cost to the customer to give a five-star review is nil. There's no investment on their part to give you a raving review, except for a very, very small amount of time on their part to click the five stars and potentially just do the five-star click and not even say anything. So I think one of the things that happens with service companies, and ours included, to be honest, is that we look at our average Google review score and we think, well, gosh, we must be doing something right.
[00:33:00.000] - Chris
Because we've got 100, we've got 500, we have a thousand Google reviews, average 4.9 stars. And yet we have potentially no idea what our customer experience actually is. Does that make sense at all? An example of this is when I think that there's a lot of companies in our industry and probably elsewhere that have a practice and maybe even incentivize their technicians or their project managers asking for Google reviews. And I've been asked as a homeowner by service professionals to give them a five-star review. And there's been some script like, Hey, it means a lot to me and my team. In fact, I get judged based on my average Google reviews and my customers give. So I'd really appreciate it if you'd consider giving me a five-star Google review. And as a consumer, even if I got, I'm not wowed. I don't want to let down that frontline guy or gal. And so I'm inclined to give that five-star review, as long as I didn't receive a really crappy service. I'm probably going to scan the QR code, do the five-star review, because I I want Johnny to get a good report from his boss.
[00:34:03.830] - Chris
I'm not, to be honest, I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I think that there's a huge missed opportunity for businesses in the way that we think about Google reviews and we think about customer experience right now, because most companies I think, are flying blind as to what their actual lived customer experience is like to the customer. Does that make sense? It does. It does. Google reviews can tell a really imperfect story about how our customer experience really is in our business. Because everybody gives five-star reviews.
[00:34:32.090] - Zach
Yeah, we see that in the data. When people get online reviews, it's either a five or a one. There's no threes. Less than one % of any company's reviews will be three-star reviews. But some of them probably had a three-star experience. So are those people not responding to that request, or are they leaving a five-star because they like Johnny, to your point? I think I'll do a live confession with you on how I've learned and changed. If you listen to even podcasts that I joined three years ago, I was railing against the idea of internal surveys. I know you just run an internal survey process at a global company. I got into this whole space as I learned Net Promoter Score and studied that and understood that. I thought, Man, the world is going to this public feedback and validation. That's how algorithms are made. And that's part of our consumer behavior. And companies just need to do that. And all that is still true. But that's not customer experience measurement. That's marketing. That is brand building. It's marketing. You're not learning your customer experience. Maybe you're learning what people do well. If they leave comments on why they're leaving that five-star review, there's learning there.
[00:35:35.750] - Zach
But you're not learning on the little things and how to get better. Because let's be honest, even the one-star reviews, a lot of them are either unreasonable or someone who wasn't a real customer, whatever. We don't see a lot of really substantive, valuable one-star reviews that tell you how you need to get better. Certainly, there are some of those. So I think one way to look at it, Chris, this is part of our conversation, certainly where I've evolved and we've evolved as a company, and what people were telling us is great. I have hundreds or thousands of reviews now. Can you also help me understand what my customer actually thinks about me? Can you help me understand what points in the project maybe didn't go as well as they thought? And maybe we're not getting that at the end of that job. How can you help me understand that? How we're really doing on our job, how I can really get better? Because I love all this public feedback. That's great for my marketing. I can use that. All of our campaigns. It's going to help our conversion generate, get found more. And that's where we started.
[00:36:32.500] - Zach
But I think as we started being asked that question, Chris, I think that's one of the things you asked me, right? How do I use your crews experience, right? Overall, you just didn't respond because you just had a bunch of little negative experiences. And how can we help every company not just get a Google review, but measure the experience, identify those points, really get better as an organization? And that's where really we've evolved in what we want to accomplish.
[00:36:57.380] - Chris
Liftify. Com/bloodlight. You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe you even heard our episode with Zach Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25 % conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding, right now, 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify. Com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify.
[00:37:40.530] - Brandon
Com/bloodlight. We spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like answerforce. Com is we can systemize that, we can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help. Somebody goes on vacation, somebody's out sick. We get a storm search, we get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so answerforce. Com can support you, be a bolt on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So answer cnrforce. Com/bloodlight.
[00:38:32.870] - Chris
That's great. Cnr magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully. She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. Cnr is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject experts in our industry. It is the water-cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine. Com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, you're The best destination is cnrmagazine. Com.
[00:39:17.610] - Brandon
You guys, many of you have already heard about Actionable Insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the Actionable Insights, file for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered. All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope, and it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. It also helps the grizzled vets add back that few % that we've just forgot over time. So actionableinsights, getinsights. Org/ floodlight, and take a look at what the Actionable Insights Xactimate profile could be doing for you and your team.
[00:40:12.890] - Chris
I think ultimately where this is headed is that the substance in reviews is going to become more and more and more important in terms of what are the specific things that people are saying about this particular business's people or process, the narrative, the things that people are saying in of Google reviews are going to become more important in terms of how people make buying decisions. Because again, it's just more and more, everybody has a 4.8 rating or a 4.9 and hundreds of Google reviews because people are starting to realize, holy crap, this has an influence on my SEO, my organic inbound lead gen, all this stuff. And I was thinking about a really positive experience I had. And to be perfectly honest, I can't remember the business. So how terrible of an example is this? But it stuck out in my mind this experience with a service provider Where at the front end of the service experience, when they initially responded as part of their introduction and rapport building and stage setting for doing the bid, providing the service to us, they said, hey, part of my goal in delivering service to you and doing this for you guys is that by the end of it, I would have earned a five-star Google review.
[00:41:19.490] - Chris
I would have actually earned it based on the service level that I'm going to provide you guys. So if at any point in the process, there's confusion or frustration or anything else that would to prevent you from hauling this five-star service experience, would you please let me know? And I thought, Man, that is a really cool way to set the stage for not only what service should I expect, they're essentially telling me, Hey, you should expect this above and beyond five-star, awesome, 100% A+ experience for me. And if it ever ceases to be that, please let me know so that I can correct it. It was just such an awesome stage setting. And then I thought to myself, Well, how is that in contrast to what a lot of people are doing in terms of their Google reviews. And I described that earlier. It's like Johnny Technician at the very end, Hey, please give me a good review because my boss pays attention. I wonder how much more that would improve not only the quality of the review that we get in the end in terms of the specificity and them identifying the service person, specifically they work with.
[00:42:24.590] - Chris
Like, oh, my God, Johnny was so great. He checked in with us every day before they left the job site. It's more contextual and it's more relevant to the actual experience they got. But then I also wonder if companies put that into practice, how that would drive the actual service delivery, right? When that expectation is set up front, it's like, hey, part of my goal here is to provide a five-star experience. At the end, I'm not going to ask you for a five-star Google review. My hope is that you want to give us a five-star Google review based on the service you experience compared to other services you've received in the past. You know what I'm saying? That the way that we pursue Google of reviews, if we shifted that a little bit, that it actually would drive better behavior on the part of the team, too. And so I'm curious about your thoughts in what Liftify might be doing or having your product roadmap that might feed this thing in terms of customer experience. Because one of the things that I've been preaching against with our clients is incentivizing people on the team to collect reviews, because I think it's a bad behavior.
[00:43:25.950] - Chris
And I'm sticking my neck out of your saying, that may be an unpopular opinion. And I know that There are some companies that have lots and lots of five-star reviews, and they swear by, we give out Amazon gift cards and all this for every review. And I'm just like, look, the reviews ought to be a reflection of the experience people had, not because we're essentially putting pressure on them so that Johnny gets a good job review by his boss, right? Or the team is going to be really happy that you gave up. You know what I mean? Yeah.
[00:43:53.720] - Zach
Well, that's part of why any of the listeners work with us. You know that a lot of our messaging comes from the business owner, not the technician, right? And the framing is usually, Hey, would you help our business? How is your experience from the owner's perspective? Because it's not about the technician, right? You know who's there. You're trying to do it from a different lens. I think in general, I agree. We're not opposed to incentivizing the teams. I think there can be a place for that. I think you incentivize the behaviors you want. I think what hasn't changed, Chris, is you need those reviews. If you start losing to your competitor, you're going to fall in the rankings. It's a marketing tool that has gone from really innovative to table stakes. You got be there. You got to do that. But I think what we're doing is one of our value props are really good at running campaigns and getting people to respond. Historically, for a Google review, we figured that out. Well, we've taken that and applied that to internal feedback as well. Now I would say confidently, we are great at helping companies get feedback from their customers, whether that's internally, meaning through a survey on data that just comes back to you and that public data.
[00:44:57.890] - Zach
If you can maximize the volume of feedback that you're getting about your business throughout the job, after the job, the jobs you won, the jobs you lost, whatever, we can just help you maximize the amount of feedback. If you had that data from surveys and from reviews and all of that, and then using AI with visualization, what we're doing now is helping companies make sense of that data. They can look at, Hey, in the water mitt phase of my job. As an example, if I do a touch point with a customer in that phase, just an internal quick survey or quick text. Hey, how's it going? Give us a quick rating. How's it going? Or actual text feedback. How can you actually look at that data later and say, Hey, here's the things that are good about this part of our business. Here's the things that are not going as well. And I think, candidly, from our value prop to the company's goes up insurmountably when you're not just helping them on the marketing and get a Google review, but now you're helping me get feedback around my whole company, my business, and helping me make sense of it and actualize it so I can get better or so I can just reward the things that are really good.
[00:45:59.620] - Zach
Okay, Man, 70% of the feedback is about our team and how great they are, whatever. Man, I should really lean into that with the team and not just on the negatives, but also the positives.
[00:46:08.880] - Brandon
Yeah, it's really interesting because I feel like part of this conversation topic also sits in just the prioritization of time. I think one of the things that we lose a grasp of, and this is absolutely the case for me, I really struggle with taking the time to sit down with the data, with information and analyze it and really think proactively and strategically. What is this saying to me? How should it modify the behavior of my organization? What does it need to change in terms of process implementation and some of these core behaviors? Because one, I'm really wired more to gut. My natural instinct is I'm going to feel the situation and I'm going to respond accordingly to what I'm feeling and experiencing versus being driven by data. I think the other thing is that I can easily get swept up and I know I'm many in this tribe of I just am so caught up in doing business, doing the business, that I'm not thinking that way. I'm not taking the time to prioritize, looking at that information and saying to myself, this time spent has all the value and probably a lot more than any other thing I could be doing today in the business.
[00:47:24.570] - Brandon
Because it doesn't feel like you're doing when you're looking at information and thinking, in quotes. And So maybe just to get from your perspective, I know you're more analytical than I am by default, just in your natural wiring. But what happened in your business's trajectory or your professional development where it became as important to you and you could be equally convicted spending time and energy on the strategy versus doing the work in your business? What triggers that threshold for you? And what are you doing to maintain that cadence?
[00:47:58.210] - Zach
Yeah, well, it's certainly a work in progress for all of us. But I think just the first thing you have to do is you have to admit that you can't trust yourself in that gut completely on how things are actually going. I'll give you a good example from a restoration company we work with just with their public reviews. I got to A message from the CEO. It's a large company that we work with. The team, they turn it on, whatever they got going. Teams freaking out about their bad reviews. They want to find a way to filter out all of these reviews. That's not a great email to get with this new big multi-location independent company we're working with that's a restore. We looked at the data and 7% of the reviews they'd earned were negative. 93% were positive. They thought it, I mean, literally joined a call with them and they said, We thought it was like half and half. He actually hadn't looked at the data. They just would see five stars dinging in. But when that one star came in, all of a sudden, that's all they talked about. We had the conversation.
[00:48:56.430] - Zach
They just needed to see the data. It was like, yes, I will trade 93 good responses for seven negative, and two of them we can fix. Okay, now it's fine. Okay, I feel better about this. But that's a good example of how we just lie to ourselves. We're imperfect at it. A good example for us in the restoration space is, I push hard on restoration over the last year, and our team had to come to me, and I ignored them three times in saying, restoration companies that don't have a good CRM integration, I think it's evolving and changing. But restoration CRMs are typically behind other industries and their ability to have APIs and data flow. They are not getting us data, and this is causing us problems. We're just not able to succeed for them because we can't get them to give us data. It has taken a lot of bandwidth from our team. I ignored that for too long. Some of it's just stubbornness. Somebody just has to get through to you. But if I had actually looked at that data and thought, Man, all of our customers who we call them unengaged, we track people who don't send, Man, restorations, 10% of our business was 70% of the people who are unengaged, right or whatever.
[00:49:59.000] - Zach
I just needed to look at data, but somebody had to put it in my face and to look at it. Those are just examples of you just have to recognize that maybe your stubbornness or whatever you think, you just have to be humble enough to say, Let me prove it to myself with the data. Let me let the data tell me what I need to do. Then I think, actually, if you're willing to do that, it's just how do I actually see a clear picture of the data? Because I don't know if you guys do this. I certainly do this in my life. I can make the data say whatever I want it to say. I can make that narrative work on why we should put all of our energy into restoration companies that don't have a CRM. But you're just stepping back and saying, what is it actually telling me? What is it actually telling me? And just getting other input from other people, too, whether that's people on your team or peers, just talking it out. And just saying, hey, what are you seeing? And just helps you see it in a different way that you've got.
[00:50:53.940] - Zach
I think that's been big for me just personally is recognizing that maybe I should not be stubborn. And to just look at it, but also that your mind isn't always telling you the truth about what the data actually says. You might want to just look at it.
[00:51:08.810] - Brandon
It's so funny. I know when I hear you say those things, my initial response is, well, duh. But then it's like, it's so freaking hard to live out, though. It's so hard to live out. I'm literally putting together a webinar that we'll be putting out later today. After we record, we'll be hanging with the rebels, and we're going to walk through a webinar. One of the things I'm trying to do with that webinar is give people some new tools to create a value for their time, to create context for the value of their time. This concept, like what we're talking about right now is so relevant, even for me, because As we continue to build floodlight, I'm a service provider still in my own business. I'm just like most people that run a company. Most of us, if we're in our development phase or mom-paw phase, if you will, you're part of the service delivery offering It's crazy to me, things that I can get caught up in. For instance, it's very easy for me to get isolated in this year's PnL when I'm trying to make a financial decision or a decision on where to spend my time and energy.
[00:52:13.810] - Brandon
So example would be It's like, sometimes me doing something is cheaper, which therefore makes my PnL look a little better this year, and I get to keep a little bit more profit this year. If I'm just thinking about my decision making in the context of this year's PnL, That was very sound decision making. But one of the things we're trying to talk with entrepreneurs about is, yeah, but where are you trying to go? What is the value or the thing that you're trying to accomplish and build? And was there opportunity cost associated with the fact that you made a decision based on this year's PnL and not that target out on the horizon? So like example, as a team, we're really leaning hard into this model of creating an assessment of our company based on its enterprise value, meaning a comprehensive look at what your company is worth based on top-line, bottom-line, but then taking into real consideration these scalable elements of the strategic initiatives in your business, the stuff that somebody post-LOI is going to dig into as part of their due diligence and begin taking away the value of your company because you're doing everything.
[00:53:23.220] - Brandon
It's all about your great personality and the strong arm that you hold around your team, all this stuff that's not actually a system. Anyways, here's my point. If I look out on the horizon and I say, hey, floodlight could be worth, let's call it whatever the number is, $10 million. And today it's worth who? There's $8 million of earning that I can spend my time and my attention on. And if I get too focused on this year's PnL, I'm going to not give my time to the things that get me closer to that $8 million gap I'm trying to earn. And if you think about the value of your time spent in this year's PnL versus trying to gain an additional $8 million in value in your company, enterprise value, let me tell you, it reframes what you should prioritize your time with, big time. And I got my face kicked in a couple of weeks ago when we went up to Chicago to do some training with a strategic partner on this thing. Because I just like every other entrepreneur can get caught up in, though, yeah, but I'm a service provider. I'm doing the work.
[00:54:24.680] - Brandon
I'm doing the $80 an hour thing, and I'm missing the point that I could be doing the $600 an hour thing, getting me and my ass closer to that $8 million gap I'm trying to close, right? Okay, that was pretty winded. But how are you thinking about that in the strategic initiatives of your business and making sure you're spending your time and energy on the highest, Roy, things inside your company? How are you combating that mind battle, if you will, of the now versus where I'm going?
[00:54:54.290] - Zach
Yeah, it's really hard. It's the hardest thing, I think. For me, one of the things I started to do listening to customers more, just versus running a race and onboarding a customer is not listening to them. That's the beginning. Listening is calling the customer that you've had for a year or two years or people that you've worked with and talking to them. You are talking to partners and just carving out time in my day to say, I'm just going to listen. I don't even necessarily have an agenda. I'm not showing them a new product. What's going on? What's keeping you up at night? Just being curious, carving out intentional time to ask. I think the other thing I've done is I'm a younger... This first tech company that I've founded, I'm younger in general, and I don't know what I don't know. We're all faking it until we make it to some extent. For me, it's been getting people around me that have ran these races before. I'm currently working with a consultant, I guess, who has been a part of many scale-ups. He's working with me. We meet every Friday just to do three-year strategy planning.
[00:55:52.430] - Zach
I'm in two executive coaching groups, where it's just pure groups. I was with them yesterday. We did a Lakehouse retreat with eight other We're leaders, these companies. It's still hard for me to take time to do that because I feel like I should be working in my business every day. I've learned that those relationships and just even being able to call those people and just the questions they'll ask, it just gets you thinking about What are we actually doing? Where are we going? For me, I don't know if anybody else can relate to this, but a big question has been, I want to hit this number this year, and in three years, I want to hit this number. Just people asking me the question of why. What are you trying to do beyond just the number? You can get to the number, that's fine. But what are you really passionate about doing with this business? For me, my dad ran a small business. I love small business owners. I have a heart for that. I want to help companies succeed. If you ask that, it's like, Man, I need to figure out. I need to listen to them.
[00:56:47.850] - Zach
We need to add value to them. It's not about reviews. It's about how do we help drive value because that's what actually drives me. If we do those things, we're still going to have numbers. We're going to chase those. But just bringing people around me, I think, is helping really broaden my lens and just have clarity into where are we going. The other thing I see a lot, too, is I think one of the things I'm learning is just run your own race. You don't have to run other people's race. You don't have to try to get acquired in three years because you're a tech company just because other people did that. You don't have to get funding. You can do your own thing. If you want to run this for the long haul, you can do that. Just whatever that is for you, just run your own race. It's like any of us in life. If you're on Instagram or whatever, you're just looking at the other person and trying to put yourself in their lane, in their shoes. And it's like, it's your race. What do you want to do with it? And get around people.
[00:57:40.600] - Zach
It can help you think through that. And then I think those priorities become clearer. It's not perfect, But it becomes clearer the more you just talk it out and build relationships with people that can just pour into you.
[00:57:50.540] - Brandon
I dig that. I think that's fair. I think that's a reasonable approach. I think sometimes we hear stuff like that and it's like, as of tomorrow, I'm going to be the most strategic decision maker ever, and I'm always going to be working on my business. I just find right now, you know what? I'm happy that I can monitor and track. I get 15 hours a week to work on my business right now. And I can commit to that, and I protect that 15 hours. Well, that was a lot more than four months ago when I wasn't measuring what I expect and expecting what I measure. So that 15 hours is the most productive I've ever been in terms of strategically thinking and planning the organization. That's a great start, right? So I think just making the bar realistic for us to take some of the initial steps into that, surrounding yourself with the right people. I think coaching and consulting, we have one. I don't know if our listeners know that, but we practice what we preach. We've hired a consultant that's in our corner, and it changes our business. It gives us a leg up.
[00:58:44.410] - Brandon
But anyways, Thanks for going there with me. I think it's a very interesting topic right now.
[00:58:48.120] - Zach
If I can add one final thing, I think just if you're carving out that time, make sure your team knows why you're doing that. I went to a Lakehouse yesterday for six hours. The rest of my team is working. I'm sitting in a Lakehouse, sell these guys. Or every month, every Thursday, pretty much every Thursday, I'm at one of these things. It's like Thursday morning, I'm doing that. Why? It must be nice for him. He's just out talking to people. We're just in these things. But if you actually say, Hey, the business, the problem with it is me. It's like the John Maxwell law of the lid. I'm the lid on the business, and I can't create opportunities for you. I can't make this business better. I can't provide more income opportunity for all of you unless I grow. I'm the problem, so I'm trying to work on me. I need you to give me the space to be able to do that because it's really an investment in you and me and the business and where we're going. And I felt like we've done that well. When I joined these two things, it was a big time commitment.
[00:59:43.940] - Zach
It's a lot of time compared to what I was in the business. But I feel like we did a good job of telling the team, This is why we're doing this, and this is why I'm here. And then they'll rally around it. They want those things. But I think just doing it, just being gone or doing other things, don't assume they're going to get it. Unless you tell them.
[01:00:01.260] - Brandon
I think that's massive. That was a good bow on that. I think that's a huge element, that transparency, for sure. I feel like I've been keeping you in the corner. Do you have some thought that's trying to break out?
[01:00:14.550] - Chris
I feel like I got a little too nerded out on the whole customer experience thing. But I am curious. I mean, it's just where my head's been at in the business lately is, really, as companies, how do we come to terms with what's real? How do we better understand the actual customer experience we're providing in our clients? Because I think there's this concept that we've been teaching our clients for a while and we've written about and talked about in the podcast of micro-disappointments. The reality is, you guys report to convert 20 to 25 % of requested reviews into actual reviews. Is that still pretty much the metric, which is much higher than the rest of the other platforms, right? Which means that 75 plus % of clients don't provide a review, which means we don't necessarily know what those other 75 % of clients felt or experienced with our team. I think there's an opportunity for all of us to get better at sussing out what is going on for our client in the midst of the service delivery. Just we It's just pointing back to something you mentioned there, that that's an aspect of your platform that you guys have recently developed.
[01:01:20.320] - Chris
So is that in place or is that something you guys are beta testing? What does that look like?
[01:01:23.510] - Zach
It's in place. I think the catch is, in order to do it well, it has to be automated. I think investing as a restoration company, make sure wherever you're investing in your technology, that it's in things that can talk to each other. Our stuff or other stuff. The more you can connect to open API platforms, you're going to get more value out of that. We talk about HVAC. They're there. They're platforms like they're there, and now they're able to talk to each other. I think where this is going from an evolution of reputation, which is the lane we live in, is there's been this huge focus on Google reviews that will continue. That's a marketing thing that's just baked in. You got to do that. But now your and your reputation provider that you work with, it's going to be setting up other automated touch points with your customer that can check in at various parts in a job or with jobs that you didn't win, asking why didn't we win, just getting more insight and having that data come back to you, typically it's a survey or it could be a tech survey or whatever.
[01:02:18.910] - Zach
But we execute those now with customers and figure out where are those touch points in your journey, where's the points of tension and friction, and collecting that feedback so that you can actualize it and I would say, Chris, to your point, even those 25% that leave a review, maybe they're happy with how that job ended, but maybe there's three times during that job that it wasn't great. And that's actually happened on half your jobs. And you don't really know because you're not in the field. But if you could just get a touch point on, Hey, this part in the process, they just don't know what's going on. We go too long without communicating with them or whatever. You know it is. You can start to close those gaps in your business. And also, figure out where the real highlights are. When is it the people just love you? For us, it's like 30 days in and they got more reviews they've ever got in their whole life in the last 30 days. They're just like, Man, I love this company. This is great. Where are those points? Is it the people on your team? How can you help you figure out who on your team is the people that you really need to invest in that you want on your team.
[01:03:15.850] - Zach
I think for us, the technology is there. It's not hard to execute that, but I think we've got a pretty good lens on with restoration, we still have some pretty entrenched larger companies. We figured out the process and it's messy, it's more complicated. How to both extract five-star reviews, but also get touch points at those different steps in the journey and help companies really gain the insight they need to make their business better. Because to bring it back to the beginning of the conversation, and I think for restoration companies, if you want to look forward five years to what HVAC companies are doing, they are selling on the fact that they provide amazing customer experience and that you will just love every part of the experience. I don't know that every restoration company currently has that dialed in or feels like that's part of their value prop. Yeah.
[01:04:01.400] - Chris
No, I think that culture is emerging, I think, because the industry is becoming more competitive. And again, just maybe a few steps behind HVAC and so forth. But I think that automation piece is actually really important. It's funny. I think some of us now with us seeing and reading chat That GPT content all over the place, there's a little bit of an angst maybe when it comes to automated things. They seem fake or whatever. But I think in this context, automation is really useful for gathering those touch points from clients because, again, there's a general Real tendency, I think in almost all of us, we don't want to be the winer. And so unless something is just egregious, our inclination is when Sally or Johnny calls from the service business that we're working with, Hey, how's it going today, Mr. And Mrs. Jones? Our default behavior is, oh, it's good. It's all good. Even though there may be these little quibbles or irritations, micro-disappointments, as we call them. And the problem is, of course, those stack up. And then by the end of that three-week service that we got or three-month service, depending on what you're doing, all those little micro-disappointments have turned into a cloud of disappointment.
[01:05:06.000] - Chris
And so this idea of pinging somebody with a text message of, Hey, how are things going today? Any questions, concerns, or frustrations? And I think it's even better, almost, if it's perceived as a bot, because then they aren't complaining to a person, and they may be more likely to actually give some real feedback. I think about, I'm sure people have seen this in airports and other public restrooms and stuff. This was a trend that started a few years ago, where there's these three buttons, red, green, yellow, and it's a smiley face, like a...
[01:05:34.210] - Brandon
Kind of neutral.
[01:05:35.120] - Chris
A flat face, right? And then an unhappy face. Have you seen these in the airports and things? Yeah, it basically is asking you to judge what your experience was in the bathroom. And it doesn't even qualify how clean it was or whatever. But just what do you think of our bathrooms essentially? Happy, neutral, sad. I've done it. And usually, I do it when the bathroom is terrible. I'll be like, hit the sad face. But I don't have that holdback that if there was a steward standing outside, I might be less inclined to wine because of other people will hear me bitch about it, and then I just feel like that guy. You know what I mean? So anyways.
[01:06:09.490] - Zach
Yeah. I think the challenge digitally, though, is that there is a real survey fatigue, where you get asked about your experience everywhere. You go on a flight, you get four things from them automated. So it's attention of that versus... I think our approach is more like, come at it from the business owner and have advanced logic. Why don't companies, when you get a five-star review, we could do this now through our platform. When you get a five-star review, trigger a text or an email to that customer and just say, Thanks for that review. We could link it to the job and then say, Is there anything we could have done better? I appreciate you leaving that review, but is there anything we could have done better? Just ask that question. Are those other things? It could be in the beginning or at the end. Obviously, with the one start, you're like, Okay, we got to figure out what went wrong. But what about that? Can you learn little insights? We're pulling all that data into our platform Obviously for the companies, but even at a macro level to see trends and data on, Hey, here's the things that aren't going well, but also here's the things that are going well.
[01:07:08.710] - Zach
Here's the things our teams really great at. People talk about our people all the time. Maybe we should market that. We have great people or whatever it is.
[01:07:17.420] - Brandon
I think one of the things that always struck me as a way to define you, Zach, just in our limited exposure to you is there is an element of consistency and a conviction for outcome. So being less worried about how we got there and really being keyed in on, again, it's data. We're able to measure something and we're using that measurement to make a decision or change behavior. I think when we're talking about some of these automations and whether or not we do something like hire a partner like Liftify or something like that, we can get caught up in maybe a decision that's more about short term perspective, or maybe it's a little more ego driven, or we should be able to do this on our own, or whatever the things are. I think the encouragement I would have for listeners as part of this show is just, let's get really convicted on building behaviors and making decisions around the outcome. Meaning, what will it take to get the thing that makes your team better, more consistent, provide a better customer experience, and just hold on to the how with loose hands. Because if hiring some automation strokes your ego a little bit, there's a little bit of conflict that our team should be able to be whatever motivated to do XYZ, you know what, man?
[01:08:29.290] - Brandon
Don't spend a lot of time and energy in that hole. Outcome is what you're seeking. What are the options that will give you the most consistent outcome? And bank on that because in return, it's going to pay you back. There's going to be a net gain on that. And I think some of these solutions and partners, strategic partnerships, that's what it boils down to. Will it give you the outcome you're looking for? Then just do it. Invest the time and energy. It's worth it, right? I don't know. That's how I see it.
[01:08:52.730] - Chris
And with that said, I think we got to land the plane. We got a hard stop. And I imagine you got things tugging at your sleep, too. This is fun, man. This obviously won't be the last time When we have you on. It's really fun to watch your heroic journey as you grow the company. It's really inspiring to us as we grow Floedlight, and I'm sure the listeners, too. It's really fun for them, many of whom are customers for yours, and to hear a little bit of the behind the scenes. So thanks for joining us. I appreciate it.
[01:09:17.650] - Zach
Yeah, I appreciate you having us. I think, Brandon, just to land it on my side, I think I would just... One of the things I'm learning is to be comfortable with the change, right? There's no sacred cows. I tell our team that all the time. Our business has changed. External markets, internal markets, what we're solving for. Your guys' business has changed since we met years ago. That's okay, right? Make that fun. Don't make that a stressor. It's a game at the end of the day. I'm telling myself that, right? At the end of the day, this isn't life or death, right? This is a game. Make it fun. We get to do this. We don't have to do this. We get to build this. I think just telling yourself that it changes your lens, right? It's like, hey, what place do we need to run? How do we need to adjust the strategy to win the game?
[01:09:57.640] - Brandon
I love that, dude. That's good. That's an excellent place to land the plane. All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with us. Zach, thanks, of course, my friend, for joining us. Appreciate you.
[01:10:05.520] - Zach
Absolutely. Thanks, guys.
[01:10:08.970] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:10:13.600] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, if you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.
