[00:00:00.000] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris Nordyke, and Brandon is missing. We moved offices, and we're still in the process of setting up our studio. So I'm actually in my personal office, recording on my normal microphone here. But you'll have Brandon back on the next intro. Anyway, today we've got a really great show. The topic is AI. The company is Distance. You can find them online at .https://distance.so/ Distance is an AI company. Ai, it is so popular to talk about AI and all the cool things, and all of us are beginning to use AI. But I think we've yet to really see a concrete path to implementing AI in a restoration company or a service company where it's really truly moving the needle in terms of revenue gen or significant meaningful cost savings. I think all of us are still trying to figure out what is that magic combo and what are the use cases for how we start to adopt these tools into our processes and into our operations. This is probably the most robust conversation that Brandon and I have had around AI, and it's turnkey. Distance is actively doing these things in restoration companies, plumbing companies, HVAC companies.
[00:01:21.360] - Chris
In fact, we were so impressed with the product offering and the team and with nick, who you're going to hear here in this show, that we decided to hire them at Floodlight. And so we've been integrating distance into our sales process and our call intake and client intake process. And we're really stoked about what it's going to do for us and so forth. So we're drinking the Kool-Aid here ourselves. But really, truly, this is one of the best AI conversations I think Brandon and I have been a part of. If you're into that and you're looking for ways to be cutting edge and to stay ahead of the pack and take full advantage of these tools as they come online, distance could be a really great partner for you. So check this out with CRO and co founder of distance. So, Nick D'Urbano. 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.
[00:02:19.400] - 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.
[00:02:29.100] - Chris
I'm noticing I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:02:32.180] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. All right, let's rock and roll. Man, nick, we just got into like...
[00:02:40.530] - Chris
nick D'Urbano.
[00:02:41.000] - Nick
Hello.
[00:02:41.240] - Brandon
It was a 30-second back and forth on how to appropriately pronounce your last name. I think I screwed it up at least.
[00:02:48.400] - Chris
I'm afraid we're still going to mess it up. Nick D'Urbano from Distance.
[00:02:53.740] - Brandon
That's right. That's right. Well, thanks, brother, for joining us, man. This is going to be, I think, a fun conversation.
[00:02:58.940] - Nick
Yeah, man, I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited to have you. Thank you.
[00:03:02.450] - Brandon
It's all right. Let's do a little table setting for everybody. First and foremost, here's what this episode is going to be about, growing revenue. Let's just get that out of the way. Distance is doing some very interesting things that we're going to eventually get into as part of this discussion. But at the end of the day, Nick's background is all about driving growth and revenue. I think a perfect place to start, nick, is just bring us up to speed to the current problems that you're solving with distance, but give us the background. What was the trajectory that to get you into this position where I'm going to continue to solve revenue problems, but I'm going to do it in this way, in this methodology? Give us the back story.
[00:03:37.050] - Nick
Sure. I'll take you back. I won't start when I was born, so I'll take you back a little further up the timeline. But I studied finance in university and started my career at Deloitte, which is a consultancy. I did a lot of sell-side M&A, which basically means I helped companies like restoration businesses, etc, get ready for a sale, raise capital, so all that fun stuff. So not directly sales, but you can call investment bankers salespeople in really nice suits. I guess that's where I started. Then from there, I ended up doing a lot of investing. The early parts of my career were actually more finance-oriented. I moved to New York and spent the better part of a decade building and scaling technology and e-commerce businesses. I had some pretty wild experiences there. I was the head of growth for Victoria's Secret across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. My job there was based in New York, help expand on a franchise model, the brand across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. There's some really great stories about expanding a lingerie brand in some of the most conservative countries in the world. That's a whole separate podcast that we can get into.
[00:04:41.520] - Nick
But after that, I ended up joining some more technology-oriented businesses, also in the retail space and e-commerce and companies that have raised $100, $200 million and helped them in similar roles, actually always in growth and/or international expansion, global expansion. I spent basically a decade cutting my teeth, looking through that growth lens. Then after After that experience, ended up moving back up to Montreal and building businesses with that same vein. Starting a variety of technology businesses. Obviously, my background, I'm not going to sit behind a screen and code. I think we'd have a really crummy product if that was the case. I spent my time focused on the revenue side of the business. My energy has always been spent there. We've had some really big successes growing tech companies. In 2019, was a crazy time. 2020, COVID's happening. We ended My business partner and I ended up raising a lot of capital to start a technology company, which is now called Distance. It is exactly that. Our whole MO is how do we help restore folks in the trades, service businesses in particular. How do we help you grow revenue? How do we help you book more leads and drive more conversions, more book jobs?
[00:05:50.420] - Nick
Using this little thing that I'm not sure if you guys have heard of, it's a thing called AI, which is all the rage now. A little, yeah, exactly. Inklings of it. Obviously, there's a lot to dissect with that, but at a high level, that's my background in a nutshell.
[00:06:04.040] - Brandon
What's the connection to service companies? How did that... Sounded mainly SaaS and stuff like that.
[00:06:10.420] - Nick
Yeah, SaaS, e-commerce. What is this technology e-com guy talking about services? Business businesses has even lifted a hammer. No, I would actually argue that in e-commerce, if you actually take a step back and look at those business models, consumer-facing business models. What is e-commerce? If we had to strip it down to its bare essentials, you have an organization that is trying to drive traffic to a website through different channels, through advertising, through lead generation, through word of mouth, through referrals. They get to a website and they go through another conversion cycle, which is, okay, I need you to add some to cart, check out, pay. Now, let's compare that to restoration. You have multiple inputs into, usually a website or a Google LSA, a Google landing page, et cetera. You're driving traffic there, you get someone there. What's the difference? Well, instead of adding to cart, I now have another funnel, which is call, how many rings? Who's picking up? What's that conversion cycle look like? But it is effectively the same thing. If you think of this almost like a math equation, multiple inputs driving to some centralized page or some centralized call to action, and then another funnel, which is now driving from there into a closed deal.
[00:07:18.200] - Nick
When you start thinking about it like that, you say, Okay, well, what industry is excelling at that? I would say there's no industry better at that than e-commerce. Every pixel is measured. Every decision is A/B tested nine ways from Sunday. They are so good, so clinical about how to run that experiment, how to run that exercise. Folks in the trades, folks in restoration are years behind adopting some of those methodologies. Our contention was, can we go out? Can we build technology? Can we build a product that helps you start thinking in that way? If you start implementing some of those strategies, can we help you start moving the needle for your business? That's really the It's taking a model that worked in another industry and then applying it to one where it would benefit from it.
[00:08:06.740] - Brandon
I think the crazy thing about that is that you and several other entities that we've had the opportunity to begin working alongside is they're doing that. They're bringing these solutions that in some way, shape, or form were already proving to be effective in other environments, and they're now leveraging those in this industry with a ton of upside potential because so many of these problems aren't adequately addressed in our current state. That's just a really clear connection and opportunity. There's a couple of things that you said that I'm hoping that maybe without it being a full-blown rabbit trail, we can talk about a little bit. Sure. One of the things that we wrestle with a ton, I think, in this industry is This industry, specifically just with what Chris and I's teams do, is we're always trying to find the lever that when we pull on it, it's going to yield the largest return for that client as possible. Often we're trying to do that with this little spend, and in often In cases, as little energy as possible because it's just difficult. At the end of the day, business owners are trying to keep the train on the tracks.
[00:09:08.160] - Brandon
We were just talking about this this morning. Eighty % of their week is going to the things to keep it from starting on fire. We only have so much bandwidth to give towards creating new solutions or updating service offerings or changing stuff strategically in the business. One of these places or initiatives that we try to key in right away is this idea really increasing, first understanding, and then increasing closing and conversion rates. It's just one of these things where it's like we tend to be very quick to say we want to hire a new salesperson or add more business development or spend more on marketing. But if we were to just slow down long enough and look at what's happening with the opportunities that are coming in the door, we often find there's this raging gap of opportunity that actually doesn't require much in the way of spend. It doesn't even require necessarily adding on any or personnel. It's just a matter of updating our process to ensure that we're taking advantage of more opportunities.
[00:10:05.990] - Nick
100%.
[00:10:06.740] - Brandon
Without jumping the gun right to distance, right? Because there's a reality. This is part of what you're solving. Talk to us about your perspective and your experience with that and what you're doing currently to solve part of that problem.
[00:10:19.100] - Nick
I think it's a really good question and a good point that you brought up. There are two levers to drive revenue into a business. Well, technically, there are three. If you think of it as a math equation, I can drive leads at the top. Hiring an agency, spending money on marketing, all those things will start to drive top of funnel, start to drive leads into the business. Then we call that Tofu or top of funnel. Then there's middle of funnel, which is really your conversion layer, how good I am at converting those things. Then you have your contract value. How am I upselling? What am I charging? A times B times C, the number of clients that you get at the top of your funnel, your conversion times your price. As you When you start to play with those, you start to increase revenue. I can't really affect price. That's not my domain. I think every organization has their pricing strategy. They upsell, they do their thing there. There's still plenty of opportunities with that. But where we focus on is really those first two lovers, but mainly the second one, conversion. Before you go out and start playing with the price and playing with the top of funnel, it's really important that you make sure the middle part works well.
[00:11:28.960] - Nick
Because if not, what's happening is you're just driving leads and opportunities into a leaky bucket. We see a lot of folks who are like, Hey, you know what? I'm spending so much money on advertising and it's not working. Why isn't it working? Are the quality of the leads bad? No, the quality of the leads are great. Or my conversion rate is terrible. Why is your conversion rate terrible? Are you answering the phone instantly? Sometimes, maybe not all the time. Do you have 24/7 coverage? Maybe not. Are your CSRs good? Who's answering the phone at night? We use an after-hour call center solution. They're not that good. I'm like, Okay, well. I think fundamentally, you don't actually have to dig that hard. Most owner operators know where they're deficient. What's interesting is they already know the answers to these questions. I think the challenge is like, Okay, what do I do about it? Do I switch providers? Do I hire more people? What is it about my process that needs to change? I think there's some confusion or challenges around, Okay, what's next? I know my call center is not good, or I know I miss calls.
[00:12:32.560] - Nick
I can't afford to hire another CSR, or whatever the case may be. I think it's that solution that is the problem. That's a big part of what we're trying to do is make it really easy to start tightening that ship. How does that funnel not start bleeding leads when you start putting them through it?
[00:12:49.890] - Chris
This whole call intake thing, Brandon and I have talked about this ad nauseam. When we were operating in the field, at one point we lost our receptionist. I can't remember if they got pregnant or we had transition in a receptionist, and we're getting ready to rehire that role. And part of our conversation really centered around, with us all, is probably a lot more important than we've previously considered it. When we think about how much... Because at that time, we become a more sophisticated company in terms of our ad spend and the number of sales reps we had in the field, trying to make the phone ring and so forth, to where we realized, holy cow, this is not just a $15 an hour, set it and forget it role. We give them a call script, they do their thing, they schedule the and whatnot. This is really critical path. And so that started to help us think differently about that role and how we equip them and support them and all that stuff. But it's funny because now I do the majority of our outbound sales activity for our company. I'm reaching out to restore constantly, and I'm still shocked to this day, especially with all the resources like answerforce and other independent call centers and so forth that we can utilize as a business.
[00:13:54.440] - Chris
How many people I call and I go to voicemail in the middle of the day?
[00:13:58.780] - Nick
It's terrible. As far as I'm concerned, voicemail is where deals go to die in this industry.
[00:14:03.040] - Chris
Yeah, but it's even worse than that, right? Because the quality of the interactions, the methodology with which people are using when they answer the calls and like rapport build, just like the overall experience of when I actually get a hold of somebody is really hit or miss. It's because so many of them were like Brandon and I, pre having this come to Jesus moment, so to speak, around the receptionist role, where it just seems like one of the lesser important things to focus on in the I think a lot of the industry, we just aren't applying the proper focus. My point being is I'm curious for you just to talk around this call intake paradigm and how AI right now potentially can address that function in our businesses, because my impression is that we're not quite at the place where we can turnkey replace a human receptionist, but it seems like we're getting really close.
[00:14:57.060] - Nick
We are very close.
[00:14:58.060] - Chris
Then how could we augment that that typical call intake process where it's just simply a phone call with things like text message follow-ups and really in a digital sense, holding the customer's hand all the way up until the technician shows up for that initial in-person interaction? How How can we support that call intake with technology as well? Post-call, I'm just curious for you to elaborate and give us a picture of where we can start to plug in technology and however distance relates to that. That's awesome.
[00:15:26.540] - Nick
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a really It's an important concept to keep in mind here, which every lead matters, especially in restoration. We've had stories of clients missing a call on a Saturday morning and then learning later that that was a six-figure job that they let slip through their crack. It happens. These could be really massive opportunities. If you start to think through that and say, Okay, well, how many calls are going to the third ring, the fourth ring? Not even going to voicemail, just to hang up. They don't even hit voicemail. You start to really analyze your call flow, you start to realize where you have deficiencies, and you could start figuring out where to plug those in. What's my conversion rate on calls that I answer during the day versus that night? How effective and efficient are my after-hour CSRs and dispatchers, et cetera, when they're operating? You could start to analyze. There's data there, and a lot of folks are not looking at the data. But I could tell you, if you don't have the data, I'll tell you this, the calls you miss, you convert zero % of them. The calls that go to voicemail, you convert very, very few.
[00:16:30.000] - Nick
After-hours is typically an order of magnitude less than what it is during the day. With that in mind, how do you use technology to help you cover these blind spots? One way that we've seen as a really successful use case, which is the most obvious one, which is I don't have an after-hour call center solution, or the one that I have is not sticking to the script, it's not consistent, it's really a hit or miss. Well, great. How can we let AI come in and handle those conversations? Our objective is not How to replace a human? Our objective is to do a job, which is to triage a conversation. I think there's a misnomer. I am trying to get a human equivalent experience with AI for this particular role. That's not the objective. We're not saying you're going to replace a human for account management. What is that intake? That intake, I'm sure you guys have done it. You ask the same questions over and over. The next steps are always the same. This is a very repeatable job. Repeatable jobs are great for automation. Where you add value is in that account management. Is once that client is in your coffers, how are you treating them?
[00:17:40.580] - Nick
How are you servicing them? You and your team should be spending a lot of your energy on that side of the equation. You should use technology to ensure that all clients get answered promptly. If you miss something, you have a backup system in place. After hours, if you don't have a solution in place, this is a very easy thing to turn on. To turn on, to measure, you get full visibility, you get all the analytics, you get the transcripts, pops up on your phone after it happens, you can listen, you can create feedback. The way I like to think about it, it's like a really sophisticated PhD intern. They're really smart, but you got to teach them. You got to teach them. They don't come out of the box like genius. They know everything about your business. They're perfect. You got to train it, you got to tell it what to say. But then it listens. It listens, it doesn't make mistakes. After you've taught it once, it remembers it, et cetera. That's one Another really good use case is, okay, well, what happens when during business hours I miss a call or the phone rings on the third ring or the fourth ring?
[00:18:37.900] - Nick
I know that I'm going to lose a lot of those leads. Well, great plug in the AI as a backup. Everyone has like Dialpad or RingCentral They're using some solution that there's a tree diagram of, okay, Ring once, it goes to John, Ring two, it goes to Bobby, Ring three, it goes to Jill. Then at Ring four, you're hoping that they're still on the line. Well, maybe at Ring three, it's a good AI. That drop off doesn't happen. That's another use case. A third use case that we see quite a bit of, especially in restoration, is demand surges. What happens when there's a flood in the area and you got 30 people calling you in five minutes? There's no way you're able to answer all those calls. What happens? You answer the first ones that come in and the rest go to voicemail, you try to claw them back, you're going to miss them, most of them are going to go to your competitors, etc. Now, if you were to answer all 30 of those calls, what would that enable you to do? Well, if you had the capacity, now you have more jobs. If you didn't have additional capacity, well, now it gives you the opportunity to evaluate which of those jobs you should take.
[00:19:36.840] - Nick
What are the highest margin jobs? What are the best opportunities to deploy my team? In there might be a seven-figure job. You have no idea. There might be a huge, huge opportunity in there. You just answered the first call that came in. This might have been the fourth call. It empowers you to make better decisions. It empowers you to see through the fog and get clarity on who are these folks that are calling that otherwise I wouldn't have had the opportunity to pitch. In that sense, this is not necessarily about closing a deal, you could train an AI to say, Okay, my objective is to triage and qualify. That's my objective. My objective is to make sure I understand what you need, and I'm going to give you a very clear CTA, call to action on next steps, so that you're less likely to call a competitor. I want to keep you warm. I can also qualify you and transfer you to a human to give me a second shot at having that conversation. I missed a call, now I have a second shot because now my secretary, my AI assistant, answered the call, asked me for some information, put me on hold and did a transfer.
[00:20:36.820] - Nick
I missed that call once, it dialed three times, it went to the AI, and now it's coming back to me. I got a second shot. I was in the shower. Okay, now I'm all dried up. I'm not going to miss that again. There's different use cases. I think people think of AI and they're like, Oh, I don't want my phone to be answered by a robot 24/7, 365. I want that human touch. That's not what anyone is trying to do. I mean, there are organizations that profess that they're doing that. I don't think that's the right approach. What is the objective? Everyone has a different objective. Everyone has a different playbook that they're using. We need to understand that so we can build a solution that fits that need in that use case.
[00:21:11.630] - Brandon
Dude, the net return on that. I just went through my mental rolodex of storm surge. I'm thinking to myself, how many times I was frustrated because we didn't have something like this. We took the calls in the order they came in. Once you've relationally committed, that's what you're going to do. A hundred %. The reality of it is, you can't control, you often don't know specifically which opportunities we could choose to maximize. Now, we used to build storm sheets, and so we were taking in the call and answering them and gathering some basic information as quickly as possible so that we could at least have some working version of a prioritization opportunity. But I'm just thinking at scale, with not having to have somebody in a leadership team reviewing that list to establish what the priorities will be so that don't accidentally burn our entire team out on the small jobs, which happens very easily and very routinely. The return on this is not only are you keeping them, but you're then also potentially using this to leverage and find the best opportunities in those surge environments. It's probably hard to quantify what that net return to that year's business is with something like this in place.
[00:22:23.180] - Brandon
Again, it's the closing conversion opportunity on top of being able to choose the six-figure over the 85-figure losses. Unbelievable. A really, really powerful asset.
[00:22:32.580] - Nick
The ROI on this is almost immediate. It doesn't take long. We work with a bunch of franchises, large organizations. We work with one truck businesses. We work from everything from a surf bro and a Paul Davis. We It's down to that one guy who's also doing the work, who's got the sledgehammer and goes in and does break and drywall and is unable to even answer any call because he's the one doing the work. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter how big or small you are, everyone has the same problem just at a different scale. Everyone has some challenge with this. Probably no one's perfect. When the stakes are high, every opportunity is pretty meaningful to drive revenue. The way I like to think about it is there's offensive use cases Then there are defensive use cases. The storm search thing is like a defensive use case. Like an offensive use case would be, let me put additional calls to action on my website. If someone lands on my page and doesn't want to call, now they see an SMS or now they see a live chat, and now they can click one of those buttons, and now I'm engaging with them through a different funnel, but still to the same place.
[00:23:35.200] - Nick
That's a more offensive use of the technology. It doesn't have to come through voice. It can come through other medians. In restoration, 95% of the time, it's through voice. But actually, there are some that come through other channels as well, which always surprises people, which is interesting. But I think we live in a world where you don't know what people have going on in their lives. They can't talk. They got two screaming kids in the back like, I'm just going to text. They're just creating more mousetraps, creating more opportunities is the name of the game.
[00:23:59.590] - Chris
I have growing expectation of companies that I deal with online, retailers that I buy from and services and SaaS things that I subscribe to and whatnot, that if I've got a question or a problem with their product or their service, that I can reach them through direct message on social channels. Oh, yeah. I'm always disappointed. I find myself more and more disappointed when I do that and I either never get a response or it takes a day to get back. I think the presumption that most of us have, thanks to Amazon and the likes, is immediacy. If I don't get an immediate response, I'm with a negative sentiment towards that brand and/or I potentially stop buying from them because I'm not getting the service at the rate of response that I expect. Everybody's going to have a different expectation, but it seems like everybody has an expectation of immediacy now. In every single genre of their life. I'm curious because I think this example you gave of the 30 calls in five minutes. Every single restore listening to this felt that in their guts when they did. They think about the last storm experience they had in their market and they had this holy shit moment of, how much business did we leave on the table?
[00:25:05.890] - Chris
Or did we have flee to our competitors during that last surge? We made three, $4 million during the last storm surge, but could we have made 10? If we'd have been able to actually master the intake of every call that came and prioritize that work and so forth. I'm curious right now, if you can speak to the AI capability and maybe how distance fits into this, how far can somebody go with this distance tool in that example? You've got one receptionist, let's say, you have 30 calls coming in in five minutes. First objective is, I want to answer all 30 of those calls. But how far can the AI go? Can the AI map, task map, the various steps of creating a new job in their job management software, filling that, creating a job intake or a job order, sending it to the person who then schedules the technician? Just how far can the AI go independent of a human? I'm curious.
[00:25:58.540] - Nick
Yeah, so it can go pretty far is the answer to that question. Now, to go through it as a flow, you get 30 calls, you have a call system like a dial pad or RingCentral. So first call comes in, secretary answers, everyone else gets a one ring, two rings. Now, the third ring happens, the AI answers. Now the AI is answering 29 calls at the same time, and triaging and handling those conversations instantly while whoever's on the first call, the human, is handling the first one. Now, whatever that script is, and we have clients that have- Can Can you just...
[00:26:30.220] - Brandon
Hold on just a second, nick. I'm thinking to myself listening to what you just said, and I'm a simple man. I'm like, okay, wait a minute. Did he just say it's going to answer the other 29 calls simultaneously? Can you help me understand physically what just happened there? Because I think that is part of the magic that we don't fully understand.
[00:26:48.680] - Nick
Yeah, it's an infinitely scalable solution. It can multitask. It can handle multiple conversations at once. There isn't a queue that is waiting for the second person, the third person, the We're not keeping people on hold. If you ask ChatGPT something and you ask ChatGPT something, it's not going to wait until it finishes answering one person to answer the second person. It can do two things at once. It can tie a shoe and chew bubble gum or whatever that saying is at the same time. That's part of the magic. It's infinitely scalable. It can triage all those leads at the same time. It depends what your strategy is, what your script is. I'll give you one example. My strategy might be, I want to qualify the lead, make sure they're a qualified lead, understand if they're a homeowner, what damage is there, is this an emergency situation? I'm going to ask a few leading questions, and then I might do one of two or three things. I might say, If it meets certain criteria, we're going to dispatch someone ASAP within the next few hours, and we're going to call you back, hopefully within the next 15 minutes to confirm the exact time.
[00:27:55.560] - Nick
Now you know you're expecting a call back. The AI is giving you directives and has given you directives and have set expectations that should prevent you from having to pick up the phone and call someone else because you're going to wait the 15 minutes or the 30 minutes or whatever for someone to come. That's one strategy. The next strategy is we might just go ahead and book a job or schedule a visit. Hey, are you available now? Can we come? Or is the afternoon better? Is it urgent, urgent? Or is it something that can wait till the morning? We'll triage exactly when the availabilities are appropriately. Another use case might be, okay, we are actually going to take the highest value opportunities. How do we rank that? Maybe it's by zip code, maybe it's if it's a commercial business versus a residential business, and we will take those and they will put the client on hold and then call Chris and then merge the call together. It'll wake up Chris in the middle of the night with a hot lead who's a commercial business, potential six-figure contract, and you'll wake up in the middle of the night to take that call appropriately.
[00:28:53.040] - Nick
There's all these different workflows that can happen. That's on the answering and triage side. That answer is part of your question. The next part of your question is like, Okay, great. Now, what happens with all this information, with all this data? Well, great. We have all that info. We have the transcript, we have the name, we have the answers to the questions, we have the callback information. We can put that into a ticket and push that into your CRM platform or your field service management tool. Let's say you're using ALBI, great. Push that in, new contact, et cetera. Now the workflow of, hey, I had the conversation, I qualified the deal, I set expectations for next steps, I recorded the information, I uploaded the information, and then I'll take it one step further. I then also turned around and sent an SMS or an email to Chris, who is the owner operator, or John, who's the Ops Manager, or whatever the case may be, with a summary of what just took place, either instantly or at the end of the day with a digest. Think of the entire workflow as end-to-end. We are having the convo, capturing the info, and then that information into the appropriate people and systems.
[00:30:03.260] - Nick
Once you actually tie that knot and go 360, it starts to become a really powerful tool because it starts to do multiple jobs at the same time. Now, can you go one step further and actually move that data further into your systems and further into your pipeline? Yes, but you do need some more integrations or you have to have the right systems that are talking to each other. But as a baseline, what I just described to you, that's something our platform does. That end-to-end system of having the conversation, triaging and pushing the data, et cetera, that's all something that you can get out of the box with a good solution provider.
[00:30:36.180] - Brandon
One thing, just real quick, I want to add to this is because I'm thinking about... I know this has been happening for years, but in the last 15 years of at least my minimum exposure to the industry, I feel like there has been an explosion in startups related to the industry. It's probably just because I'm more aware, but I'm just thinking about friends at One Tom Plumber, Puro Clean, the serve pro franchise Some of the bigger legacy ones, they're probably not as aggressive about startup locations or new members, but I'm thinking Voda. I'm thinking all these platforms where they're really aggressively growing their franchise count. You have all these newer teams coming to formation. I know in the early stages, it is very difficult to balance the answer the phone and be on site, answer the phone being an operational leader. I'm just thinking like, years and years ago, I was in construction and I had a contractor friend of mine just basically tell me, my secret to my business growth is I just answer my cell phone. This is way back in the flip-flops days. It's like, and he would. Sometimes I would even find myself getting frustrated because I'm just the labor guy on the job and I can barely know how to tie my shoes without direction.
[00:31:48.640] - Brandon
How many times my owner of this small company was answering the phone, it would get a little agitating. But the reality of it is we always had work to go to. We always had work to go to because he was answering the damn phone. For the Chuck in the truck, for our startups, where you're just trying to spend your money as wisely as possible, this is one of those scenarios where eventually, I think we'll cover some of this in terms of what you guys do specifically at distances. This is a super cost-effective way to make sure that your money where it goes is returning tenfold on the opportunities it's securing for you.
[00:32:21.640] - Nick
100%. I was listening to a podcast. I'm a soccer fan. The D'Urbano in my name, it sounds ethnic. I'm from Italy, right? I We do watch football or soccer, as we say here in North America. The podcast was interesting because they were talking about what makes an exceptional footballer or soccer player. What makes someone truly exceptional? You would think it's like, Oh, they're the fastest or they got the craziest moves or their aim is superb. You know what it is? It's they're good at the basics. They're exceptional at stopping the ball. They're exceptional at passing the ball. It's like the ball comes in, doesn't matter what angle it is, 99. 999% of the time, they can stop it on a dime. That's what makes someone exceptional because there's a level of consistency there. They don't miss opportunities. When you get to a high level, if you're starting to, whether it's sports or business, when you're starting to play at a high level. I mean, look at Steph Curry. Look at guys that are just incredible at doing something. They've practiced a million times. They don't miss. They don't miss. I think that should be our motto.
[00:33:25.940] - Nick
We don't miss. I just created a new tagline for our business. But that really is the whole value here is how do you just get good at the basic blocking and tackling and do it consistently and good things start to happen.
[00:33:37.760] - Chris
Okay, so I have to address the elephant in the room, though, as we're talking about this. I'm curious what the elephant is. Well, because I think a lot of people listening to this, they've had some experience with an AI chatbot or an AI vocal bot or whatever it's called. They've called Chase Bank or they've called... Oh, God. And whatever. And they've engaged with a virtual receptionist or a virtual CSR. And there's lag in the responses. The responses are a little obtuse, a little like, well, it's not exactly what I asked, and it's weird and robotic, but I don't think that's true anymore. I'd love for you to speak to what does the quality of that interaction become in the current state of AI Does it feel natural enough that somebody who's very customer experience-focused would be willing to deploy this technology?
[00:34:22.780] - Nick
Yeah, I mean, is it effective at triaging these conversations? The answer is absolutely. It's effective enough that some of the largest franchise organizations in the world for restoration businesses are using it, handling 10, 15, 20, 30 calls a night as the first touch response on after-hour. There certainly is an adoption that is happening right now in the surge in folks using this technology. I think if you were to ask me this question six or twelve months ago, I would say, yeah, it's a bit laggy. Maybe two or three or four out of 10 folks will maybe want to ask to speak to a human. We're just not seeing that anymore. I think two things are happening. People are getting more and more used to speaking to things that are not human. Two is the nonhuman things are getting more and more human. As those two things start to converge, you get this adoption rate that starts to tick upwards. The efficacy of like, and that's the first thing that it does really well is the latency that you mentioned, Chris, is exactly that. As soon as, maybe four months ago, there's been a bunch of really big updates with LLMs that have made that latency vanish almost.
[00:35:24.360] - Nick
In our product, we've actually had to add a little bit of latency because we found it to be too fast in in communicating. I think that issue has gone away. Where we're seeing a lot of gains right now with some of the new models is in the voice, the conversations. I can tell you it sounds realistic, but I can also play you on my phone. I was going to ask you. Yeah, I'll do that. I have the latest model here. I'll just give you a snippet of what it sounds like. Let's put your mic. Yeah, I'll put it close to the mic here. I'll play with you a few. I was hoping you would do that, actually. Yeah, we're going to try this. Okay, so this is being released soon. You guys are getting a sneak peek. Here, let's try this one. We'll do a full clean, swap the filter, and run through our full 21-point check all in the same visit.
[00:36:09.990] - Chris
Do you guys hear that? I love those natural language.
[00:36:12.510] - Nick
Those little ums. Now, it can also pick up different languages, too. That's another big update. Now, that's actually currently live. If a client is speaking French or Spanish, it'll just.... That's pretty cool. All of a sudden, you have a client speaking Spanish and it starts to rip in. It's really magical in that sense. If you can close your eyes and envision where we're going to be at in 6 or 12 months from now, the sky's the limit. But this is the surface area that we're skating in today.
[00:36:46.250] - Chris
Do you guys have the flexibility to use our clients in Atlanta, the Southeast, the Deep South, the twang, the local side? We've got...
[00:36:56.920] - Nick
There is a lot of customization that you can do on the back-end. What we found is if you give folks too much choice, they get stuck in the mud. They get a little overwhelmed. We've had all kinds of requests, and some are pretty funny. Some are like, I actually don't want you to speak Spanish. I want you to speak English with a Spanish accent. Oh, yeah. I'm like, okay, that's a very unique request. You do get all these funny requests. Over time, yes, different. You can personalize it more and more. But for the sake of making it simple for our clients, at least, we've narrowed it down to... Also, there are some that perform better than others. There are some voices that naturally sound a little bit more natural. It's the same technology. It's just that voice quality, those intonations on that particular model work better. It's not just the voice, it's also the model. I think a lot of folks think of this as, oh, AI, they're using ChatGPT. No, the really sophisticated tools in this space are what we call multimodal AI. They're using different AI models for different functions. On the customer level, it all looks the It's like I'm talking to someone.
[00:38:01.760] - Nick
But on the back end, we're tooling different types of models to deliver a specific outcome. For example, if you're using 33 Mile or you're using a lead gen agency and you need to pick it up and you need to qualify that lead in 30 or 60 seconds, if not, you're going to get charged. Well, we have clients using that and we use a model that's really good at hanging up because we need to get really good at knowing when to finish a conversation and cut the cord. If not, they're going to get charged. There's all these nuances of how you build your product that make it relevant for customers and the devil is in the detail.
[00:38:37.820] - Chris
Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team, or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. How do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of Sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market. They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owners meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep, their plan to actual results, what performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, Hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well.
[00:39:32.630] - Chris
How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep, and it's only 2,500 bucks a month? If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over 250 million in revenue, supported by, advised by an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment, and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story.
[00:40:06.220] - Brandon
I think what's interesting about this, and I think some of this, I'm a little tainted right now on the whole AI conversation across the board. Part of it is because I'm still very intimidated about what I know and don't know. But one of the things I'm trying to be honest about is I don't know. I think the challenge I have currently across the many fronts is that there's a lot of us that are acting as if we've got a grip on AI and we don't. Then therefore, it's giving folks, I think, a false impression of what's in our hands available right now. I think it also makes it difficult for us to make good decisions on, really, where should I be applying AI for full effectiveness, not just so I socially feel like I fit in. An example of this is that I think everybody's starting to buy into this idea that chat tools and things like that are great for doing some internal research, getting some information, maybe summarizing content from stuff, and it's good. That's great. It helps us become more efficient. But at the end of the day, you're not really leveraging that resource in a way that's having a profound effect on the business.
[00:41:09.250] - Brandon
I think that this is a very receivable, approachable first line of really engaging AI where it's being leveraged to a very effective state, and it's actually having a profoundly positive impact on the business. Go ahead.
[00:41:24.750] - Nick
I have one story that came to my head as you were saying this, and a A lot of restoration companies also own a carpet cleaning business or a cleaning company or a plumbing franchise like One Tom or whatever the case may be. We have one client that runs a cleaning company. Cleaning companies work a bit differently. You don't see a lot of restores advertising on Facebook. It's like, Hey, is your house burning down? That doesn't make a lot of sense. But in the cleaning space, a lot of folks are advertising on Meta. This one client, they were advertising, and we have an AI chat We do AI voice, we do AI chat, chat across a bunch of modalities, live chat, SMS, Facebook, Instagram, we're connected to everything. We're a Facebook and Meta partner. What they were doing, imagine this flow. I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine I see an ad on Facebook. I click it, I go to a website, I have to read about that website, I have to find the phone number, I got to click the phone number, I got a call, it's got to ring two times or one time or whatever, and then it answers.
[00:42:26.060] - Nick
There are a ton of steps from point A to point B. I'll tell you, as someone that comes from the e-commerce space, every time you add a level of friction to your sales funnel, an extra click, an extra scroll, an extra second, whatever it is, you decrease conversion by about 30%. So think of that funnel and how many drop off points there are. Now, imagine that same experience you click on an ad and you go directly into Facebook Messenger. You're not even leaving the app. I click on an ad, I stay in the app, and now I'm in the Facebook DM. But instead of saying, How can I help you? We'll be back with you soon. It says, Hey, John, what can I do you for? And he says, Hey, I'm looking for a cleaning. Okay, no problem. I'm going to ask you some questions. But in very natural language, it takes them through the journey. What do you think ends up happening? The time to value is effectively zero. I'm going from six steps to one step. As a result, you have more conversations, you qualify more leads, you book more jobs. The cost to acquire those customers goes down.
[00:43:22.370] - Nick
The return on investment goes up. You spend more money on a more effective channel. You make more money. That is going back to what I said earlier of defensive versus offensive strategies. I mean, this is a very offensive strategy, right? But my goodness, does it work? There are a ton of examples of how you can implement these tools across different channels. What is the best way for this client to engage with me? An advertising client. You can apply the same thing to Google LSAs, to referrals that you get from plumbing clients. Are you measuring the most effective path from point A to point B? Is this the best way to close that client from that source? I think you got to start thinking in that way if you really want to start moving the needle. Luckily, we have a bunch of playbooks that are prebuilt because we do this day in and day out. What I can tell you is folks are just leaving a ton of money on the table because they're not thinking critically about what that flow looks like. Once you start opening up your eyes to some of these examples, you're like, Oh, my goodness, I do that.
[00:44:21.040] - Nick
I should do it that way. That sounds much better than the way that I'm doing it today. Then you make that switch and it's like you never look back. There's just a ton of examples like that. I always love that one because it's maybe less relevant to restores unless they own a secondary business, but it really shows you the power in the same way as the demand surge example of the power of this technology and how it can really move the needle for you.
[00:44:43.090] - Brandon
Well, I think a real easy doc connector here for a lot of restores is mold. It's one of those things when folks really start to lean into digital spend in marketing, one of the things that inevitably happens, I think, is they start getting lots of mold calls, even maybe over their water volume or any of that smoke, fire volume. They start getting all these mold calls. The challenge with that is coverage is different, policy information is different. A lot of times because it is more out of pocket and expense, it's one of these things that if the emotion is still engaged, the likelihood of us selling that opportunity and doing something with it's very high. But in our current state, there's a lot of got to go see it, got to put a number together. We put the number together. We don't do a good job of providing the number while we're there, and so we email it later. The The reality of it is I've already spent the money, I got the lead, came into the system, and the effectiveness or our ability to convert that work in a lot of cases is low.
[00:45:38.680] - Brandon
I think that this is one of those perfect examples where those are still viable loss opportunities. A lot of times when we find a legitimate mold loss, there's water, and there's an actual water loss that we have the opportunity to engage in as well. My point here is that this might be one of those solutions that helps us become way more effective in capturing and converting that call on a mold front, which I think many of us, if we look back at our performance, I think there's more heartburn related to mold opportunities than anything else in the industry. At scale, I think there's some companies just rock and roll for sure. But I think it's one of those things where we're wrestling with how do we effectively close those and convert them. Man, what opportunity do we have? It could ask a series of questions and really help the homeowner or the property owner understand what they're about to engage in. Maybe it filters the look you lose right away.
[00:46:30.880] - Nick
A hundred %. It's a great lead qualifier. Make sure that people that are serious... I mean, we see... It's funny because every time you ask someone to fill out a form on the internet, every time you add a field, you reduce conversion. There's this tension that exists when you're trying to build something, where you're like, I don't want to ask too much. They're going to drop off. But as soon as you engage them in an SMS conversation, because it's asynchronous and they can put it down and pick it back up a little later or whatever, they do it. They do it, you prompt them a little bit, but it gets done. You can take that model into different channels. If that's a strategy, SMS might be a really good tool to use to actually convert and qualify those types of deals. You bring up a really good point, which is even the Not just the channel, but the type of product that you're selling, you should consider what channel to navigate leads into to help you drive better outcomes. That's a really good one.
[00:47:23.690] - Chris
But I'm just thinking about these questions. I'm like, your comment about maximizing our response rate while they still have a felt need or concern. Exactly. There's a reason why they're calling about mold. They're afraid, they're associating some symptoms that wife or kids or them are experiencing. Then they have a visual discovery of the mold, and there's something driving that outreach. Or they're trying to sell their house and they're like, Oh, my gosh, we have mold. What capitalizing on identifying what was the reason for the call to highlight the gravity of what we're going to do for them?
[00:47:59.240] - Nick
We Actually, I have some pest control operators that are part of our customer base as well. A lot of them don't have after-hour solutions. What I always tell them is if someone's calling a pest control business at 2: 00 in the morning, it's because they saw something. Oh, yeah, that's right. They saw something. Even if you don't have emergency dispatch, I think just having that conversation, which is like, Hey, here's what you can do. Stay calm. We're going to ping you in the morning. If you're the first call, we're going to get out. Don't worry. That's great customer service. That is a really good customer experience. Something Sometimes chat is better than phone. It really depends. I think you got to really internalize the empathy. We can be empathetic to the customer and it's like, All right, everyone's on a different journey. Everyone's calling with different constraints. But I think that also makes the case for being multi-channel. In a world where everything's going in via the phone, we talked a lot about AI voice, but I think there's still a huge opportunity to connect with customers in different ways. Because you never know. If you force everyone to go down path A, there are people that just don't have the ability, time, energy, for whatever reason to go down that path.
[00:49:02.900] - Nick
But if you start giving them options, again, more netting to capture these customers, you end up actually capturing more leads. That's not even a question of conversion. That's actually capture. I think people understate the amount of leads that they're getting at the top of their funnel. Hey, I got 100 leads. I'm like, really? What about the guy that came to your website and never called but had the intention to? You just got distracted. Is that not part of your funnel? He's like, Well, no, I only consider the ones that called. I'm like, okay, but this guy, he found you, he was a referral, came to your website, I saw it. There's a bunch of those. Those are like the unknown unknowns. What does that look like? You never know. You never know until you start putting some netting around to see what all these other apples that fall from this tree start delivering. There's just a ton of value there that I think is under looked and underserved for this category.
[00:49:48.380] - Brandon
I got one more tactical area I'd like to just go back and forth with you a little bit. I think we need to turn a corner and really get clear on what it is that you're doing because there's real value in terms of what you and your team are actively up to. Sure. Before we jump into that, man, help me think through a little bit of customer support. Let me stage set this a little bit. One of the things that we've just been huge proponents of for years is a more proactive client check-in process. In fact, we believe in it so much. We're actually, just for the sake of clarity, we've been partnering with distance and we're just getting our working relationship underway. There's several different of these categories that your team is going to be aggressively helping us solve. But one of the things that we talk a lot about with folks is that, hey, a project manager is busting their butt. They're out there working, grinding, trying to deliver for the customer. Often, they're one of the relationships that the client's not honest with. It's for that reason. I think there's some sense of, hey, this person's doing the best they can.
[00:50:51.740] - Brandon
They're working their butt off, but I am not happy in certain areas. I've got some frustration, some concerns. I don't say anything about it. We get to the end of the job and it's time to collect. We said, what are we going to talk about as part of this is growing revenue. We go to collect and this unspoken friction now boils up to the surface or they stop calling us back. They stop returning calls. All of a sudden, they're slow paying bills. The longer that invoice sits in aging, the likelihood of collecting the entire amount goes down. So not only is that affecting our top line, but inevitably it's shrinking our bottom line as well. We talk very aggressively about this idea of, can we be more proactive in doing a client check-in that gives them a safer place to be honest about the experience they're having. If we can do that early and often enough, then what power do we have to shift that experience and make the changes necessary to make that client happy? What's happening on this front? Where do you see AI and maybe potentially your guys' work that you're doing help solve this problem or effectively make it better?
[00:51:55.680] - Nick
Yeah, I think you're touching on a couple of interesting points there. I mean, there are already tools that exist with AR and receivables to help you collect. But really what that means is it's an automated system to ping, whether it's by message or by voice, and remind people that they owe something. There are things that you can do today. I I mean, you don't actually even need AI to do that. You could just reminders and things of that nature. But what we find, too, is there's some really novel use cases to this technology, because what we're delivering is a conversation. That's our product. Our product is a conversation. It is an end-to-end conversation with a client. That's a big piece of it. Those conversations could be anything. If you wanted to connect with a customer and collect feedback and have them talk, you ask a few leading questions and you want to understand something, well, then great, you can create a pathway to do that with AI, which is much better than a survey because it's a bit more responsive, feels a bit more personal, and you can also guide the conversation appropriately. If this, then that.
[00:52:58.710] - Nick
I'm being vague here, but ultimately, the way I would think about answering that question is there are tools that you can use today that are more automation tools that can help you maybe churn out more efficient numbers on receivables. Then there are some more innovative creative ways that you can use this technology to connect with customers, collect feedback, get insight on what's going on, and they might be more receptive to have that conversation if it was more engaging than just filling out a survey online. Going back to what I said earlier, people don't like forms. People don't like to do work, but people have no problem chit-chatting. They love to talk more often than not. There's certainly some opportunities there for sure.
[00:53:42.060] - Chris
Okay, so you didn't go into detail about this, but Brandon and I, we worked with a company that had a location in Southern California that they prioritized a role on their team. I don't know exactly how many of these callers they had, but they had very, you could think of as entry-level, very small-scope callers that would call every single active job in their book of business every day and ask a simple question, Hey, this is Sally. Hey, this is John. Just calling to see if you had any questions or concerns about the project we're doing for you right now. And to suss out if there's any consternation, irritation. Oh, well, yeah, so and so never followed up with me. We were expecting an email, never got it. Oh, hey, no problem, Mrs. Jones. I'm really sorry. I'm going to get somebody on that right away. Boom. And they're able to capture those jobs that otherwise might ultimately go sideways, customer like Brandon is describing. And us not know. And instead, draw that feedback out, the micro feedback out before it becomes macro feedback. Now we've got a service recovery. We catch it before recovery is required.
[00:54:38.280] - Chris
And what I'm hearing you say is, and this is really exciting because we used to tell our clients about this, about this role. And, hey, this really might make sense at a certain scale for you to have a team of callers that does this. What I'm hearing from you is you could deploy distance to where distance is tapping into a current active customer list and is robo-calling, so to speak, in a very natural human language.
[00:54:59.400] - Brandon
Well, let's be careful that we don't paint nick into a corner. The idea is that AI as a tool could be deployed in this way. But is this a use case?
[00:55:07.560] - Nick
Yes, it is a use case. Right now, our product is focused on inbound only. Just to be clear, if you're calling or messaging inbound, we'll be able to respond. Now, are we building out the capability to outbound? Maybe. Wink, wing, hush, hush. We'll see. But there's definitely stuff coming out in the future that make some of these use cases feasible. But we actually have some clients using that today. For example, we have one client in a totally different industry, totally different sector. They send out a text message once a month to their clients asking for feedback, and they send that automated message. They say, Hey, we'd love your feedback. If you have five minutes, call this number and just give us five minutes of your time. We'd love to hear your thoughts. They call that number. Now, an inbound call, and now we're engaging with them. There is a way to still take an inbound and turn it into an outbound. There are ways that we can cleverly create that workflow even before having the outbound piece. Yes, technically speaking, Chris, that is something we can do. By virtue of that workflow. But you're right.
[00:56:02.900] - Nick
I mean, there are tons of... What's fun about this business is you build a set of tools, right? And those tools can be used. It's like a hammer, right? You could do a lot of stuff with a hammer. And so it's been fun to see folks using our playbooks with success, but then also being creative and creating interesting use cases that we didn't think about. And that really gives me a lot of pleasure when I see that because it's like, okay, there's a lot of flexibility here. There's a lot of creativity that can come out of this to try to move business results in one way, shape, or form.
[00:56:32.530] - Brandon
I love it. All right, man, let's get down and dirty here. What is it that you actually do a job?
[00:56:40.160] - Nick
Yeah, that's a great question. I've been skating circles around trying not to answer that question. I don't know. Who is this guy? Distance is a sales platform, but that doesn't tell you much. Our objective is to help you capture more leads and book more jobs using AI, and we have three ways of doing that. We have an AI and conversion-optimized website. A lot of websites today, they are really bad at conversion. We have a really good, really solid battle-tested template that we roll out to a lot of our customers that just immediately help them suss out better conversion numbers, more people visiting them into calls. Because we also have all of our calls to action prebuilt on those sites. So call, text, SMS, live chat, all of it is all prebuilt. That's one. But it also does one more thing, which is really cool. Have you guys heard of AEO? Ai, basically engine optimization. Think of like SEO, which is what everyone spent the past 20 years trying to figure out. Well, there's a totally new modality. Consumers are now asking ChatGPT and different AI agents, Hey, I got mold in my house, who should I see?
[00:57:43.700] - Nick
And guess what? They populate companies. How do you ensure that you get your name on that list? You can hire an agency to help you, et cetera. There's a bunch of stuff you could do that are very expensive. Our tool baked into it gives you that edge and helps you rank in chat. That's a really cool feature. The website feature, I think, is really, really, really impactful and is part of a suite of, Hey, how do I drive leads and convert leads in my business? That's piece number one. Piece number two is AI Chat. Ai Chat is really focused on how do we go out and connect with new leads across chat, live chat, SMS. We talked a little bit about that. Then the third bucket is AI voice, which we've spent most of the time talking about here, which is, all right, we're going to help you with converting those demand surges after-hours, calls that more the next time is using an AI voice assistant. When you start to mix all those up together, it's a suite of products that you can mix and match to drive particular outcomes. But at a high level, that's what we're all about.
[00:58:42.100] - Brandon
I dig it. We said this already. Just in full transparency, we are working with your team actively right now. You're investigating some of these things on our behalf to make sure that we can take advantage of these things the same way. One of the things that Chris and I have chose to do is we've built Floodlight and as we've participated leading HHB is we've just been honest about our own journey and what we're doing as a business. We're no different than any of the restores or service providers that listen to us is you, too, have a moment where you have considered something a dysfunction or frustration in your business. You have this moment where your emotion is high enough that you do what is hard to do, and that is you go to reach out and ask for help. I know that we've failed, technically, to be able to have consistency. We've created too much friction in someone's ability to just get on the phone or begin interacting with somebody in a meaningful way to live out that moment that they're wrestling with. I'm saying some of this because I want to be very clear to these restores.
[00:59:42.190] - Brandon
That's not manipulation. That's not taking advantage. That is we're all business leaders and owners. There are these moments where we come to terms with our own need, professionally or internally for our business. If we don't have a chance to interact with somebody in a meaningful way in that moment, we're going to go to work the next day, and the immediacy, the tyranny of the urgent is going to take over. This thing that I really do need to prioritize gets unprioritised based on the necessity of demand and time spent. I'm saying that out loud, because I think that we missed the mark here that when people are in a need, they need to access us. When they don't, there's all these things that happen in life that begin to divert or their attention or distract them. It's now not only have we lost the opportunity, but more importantly for many of us, you've also lost the opportunity to have impact and to provide help. That person really did legitimately and does legitimately need that help. I'm saying that out loud for folks because I think we need to remember that you're not outsmarting people, you're just making it easier for them to make a decision that they already need to make.
[01:00:53.360] - Nick
100%. What I always find this quite interesting, when we start working with clients, part of our job, we're providing a service We're providing a software and a service at the same time. We are giving you a technology that's doing a job for you. You got to think of us as a contractor. Part of that is training. Part of that is training our clients and training the AI to effectively triage and respond to leads. One interesting observation that I've made is a lot of our clients have scripts or have ways of connecting with their customer. In going through an onboarding session where we revisit that and we start injecting that into AI, you start to notice a lot of gaps. Oh, these This is not an efficient set of questions. Why do we ask that? You start to reevaluate how those conversations are happening. It's been really interesting, psychologically, to see the way organizations are actually adjusting how they engage with clients as a result of this exercise. That's been fun.
[01:01:47.840] - Brandon
I love it, dude. I love it. Okay, we're going to close up shop. You got a business to run. Okay, where are we sending people? If folks want to go out and chat with you, we've got a little bit of a space that we can point them, right? Distance.
[01:02:01.600] - Nick
So. Yeah, slash.
[01:02:03.860] - Brandon
H-h-b. Forward/hhb. I want to point out that one component in there. Distance. So. I think a lot of times we think I-O, but distance. So, forward H-H-B. Go figure out what these guys are doing. We're going to be talking about it more. There are some very interesting problems that you're solving. As we grow to have more of an experience with you, we're going to be sharing transparently what it's helped us do and achieve as well. Well, thanks, nick. We appreciate you, brother.
[01:02:31.490] - Nick
Thank you guys for having us on and for being distance customers. Appreciate you guys as always and looking forward to many more podcasts in the future.
[01:02:37.750] - Brandon
That's right, man. All right. All right. Thanks, buddy. Cheers, guys. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:02:47.160] - Chris
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