0:00

Welcome to the profitable painter podcast

0:02

. The mission of this podcast is

0:04

simple To help you navigate the financial

0:06

and tax aspects of starting , running

0:08

and scaling a professional painting business , from

0:11

the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance

0:13

sheets . We've got you covered . But before

0:15

we dive in , a quick word of caution . While

0:17

we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial

0:20

and tax information , nothing you hear on

0:22

this podcast should be considered as financial

0:24

advice specifically for you or your

0:26

business . We're here to share general knowledge and

0:28

experiences , not to replace the tailored

0:30

advice you get from a professional financial

0:32

advisor or tax consultant . We

0:35

strongly recommend you seeking individualized

0:38

advice before making any significant

0:40

financial decisions .

0:41

This is Daniel , the founder of Bookkeeping for

0:43

Painters , and today I'm here

0:45

with Chris Kiefer . Chris Kiefer

0:47

is an engineer , entrepreneur and

0:50

thought leader . In 2013

0:52

, he founded Sky Media , a

0:54

top medical marketing and branding

0:56

agency , followed by the launch

0:58

of Boolean Review , the highest

1:01

converting Google review software

1:03

in the market , and in 2022

1:05

, created Boolean Automation

1:07

, a consulting arm that helps residential

1:10

and commercial painting companies implement

1:12

no-code automation solutions . He

1:15

is also the host of Pursuit

1:17

of Purpose , a celebrated podcast

1:19

that interviews successful entrepreneurs and

1:22

inspirational people worldwide

1:24

. How's it going , chris ? Welcome

1:26

to the podcast .

1:28

Yeah , thank you so much , Daniel . I'm looking forward to today's

1:30

conversation . Thanks for having me on .

1:32

Absolutely glad to have you here . So

1:35

when

1:38

did your entrepreneurial journey begin and

1:40

what took you down that path ?

1:42

Yeah . So I feel

1:44

like from an early age I always I

1:46

had friends . My parents were both teachers

1:49

, but I had friends whose parents

1:51

were business people

1:53

and I've always

1:55

been intrigued by leadership and

1:58

I just was like I feel like I want to start a

2:00

business , I want to have a business , but I didn't know what it was . And

2:03

at the same time , I also loved

2:06

when I was a kid , and Lego . I

2:08

mean , I still do secretly love Legos , kinex

2:10

, building , you know , just

2:12

building stuff . And so my whole life

2:15

people had told me oh , you're going to be an

2:17

engineer , you're going to be an engineer , you're

2:19

going to be an engineer . I got an engineering

2:21

degree , went into the real world

2:23

as an engineer and very quickly was like

2:25

I don't , this is like

2:27

, I just didn't like it . So

2:30

there's more of a story there . But

2:32

, jumping to the end , I basically

2:34

left that job and started

2:36

a media company

2:38

at the time and I had never

2:40

taken a business class . But I just felt

2:43

like as a 23-year old , like

2:45

I wanted to try

2:47

my hand at business . Before , you

2:49

know , I got married and had kids and and

2:51

like had more responsibility . So

2:53

basically that was the beginning

2:55

of like jumping into the deep

2:57

end and learning how to swim . And that was 10

3:00

years ago and , yeah

3:03

, ever since I mean , I learned a lot along

3:05

the way . I took a break from the entrepreneurial

3:08

world which at the time

3:10

I thought was like permanent . I felt like I was

3:12

a failure in the in

3:14

the marketing world and went

3:16

into take a marketing job as

3:18

a marketing director for a painting

3:20

company . And then that was like

3:23

again looking back realizing

3:25

like , wow , this is that like

3:27

my . The way that my life has played

3:30

out of getting my hands dirty

3:32

and working and building a media company

3:34

, a marketing company , for six years

3:37

and then leaving that and then going

3:39

and working as a marketing director and

3:41

then leaving that role and now doing what I

3:43

do today is just like this

3:45

perfect mixture of skills

3:47

. I still think like an engineer , I'm

3:50

very nerdy , I love technology and

3:53

in my current seat as

3:55

the owner of Boolean and

3:57

doing , we basically have the Boolean

4:00

review software , which we could talk about if you want

4:02

, or the Boolean automation services

4:04

, which again

4:06

is just like . I love tech and

4:08

I think I want to help robots

4:11

take over all the parts of our lives that we don't

4:13

like . My personal

4:15

mission is to champion

4:17

the relentless pursuit of purpose , and

4:20

that's my podcast is how I

4:23

explore that and talk to people . But

4:26

I'm just I would say I'm a pretty intentional

4:28

person that loves deeper

4:30

conversations and I really

4:33

don't think that people should be

4:35

doing tasks that computers

4:37

are capable of doing . The

4:40

computers should free us up to do what we love doing

4:42

, which is solving more problems , talking to people , hanging

4:44

out with our family , going fishing or

4:46

whatever .

4:49

Yeah , what inspired you to create

4:51

that company focused on Google

4:54

reviews like specific

4:56

?

4:56

Yeah , yeah . So I

4:59

was a this marketing company

5:01

, sky Media , that I had built . We

5:03

were just here , typical like

5:05

millennial digital marketing company

5:08

that we would , you know , we'd

5:10

help with websites , and it started with videos

5:12

. And then people were like , oh , this video is cool , like our

5:14

website's old , could you make us a new website ? And we were

5:16

like , yeah , we could do that . And they're like , what

5:19

about Google ads or Facebook ads ? And it just kept

5:21

growing . And then it was this one

5:23

dentist was like an

5:25

oral surgeon actually and said , hey , I

5:27

want to get more reviews , could you help me

5:29

do that ? And so it was very organic

5:31

. Initially we built this , this

5:34

little like mini it's . I don't even know

5:36

if I would have called it a software in

5:38

the early , early days , but we built

5:40

this thing and it started getting Google

5:42

reviews for them . And then we were like , well , maybe

5:44

, instead of just using email , what if we texted

5:46

people as well ? And then we're like Well , it's

5:48

ad pictures . And then it just slowly evolved

5:51

into a more robust app . Then

5:53

we started selling it to other dentists

5:55

and that

5:57

, I would say , is a lesson I learned in business

6:00

is , when you first

6:03

of all like , it's hard to just like

6:05

invent a product from scratch . But

6:07

it's very easy to look in the world around

6:10

you and say I see a bunch of different pain

6:12

points that people are having and answering

6:14

like what am I most suited to solve

6:16

for people ? So that's what I feel

6:18

like I did on , like unintentionally

6:21

, was like , hey , someone needs reviews

6:23

. I think I could solve that . I solved

6:25

it . It worked great , but it was a manual process

6:27

and because of the medical space

6:30

and Hippolos and how lockdown

6:32

APIs are for just

6:35

medical software , we weren't ever able

6:37

to integrate . And this

6:39

is my second big takeaway is looking

6:42

back . I had this amazing software

6:45

and it truly was like high converting

6:47

, really great for a number of different reasons

6:49

, but in the dental

6:51

space it was . It required physical

6:54

behavior change of the employees

6:56

in the business . Because we couldn't integrate

6:58

with the software . Is that the practice management

7:00

systems that the painters or the dentist were using

7:03

? And so , foolishly , as

7:05

an entrepreneur , I was like , well , I

7:07

guess they can't get this off the ground

7:09

. Like we had 50 dentists using it and it was like

7:11

some nice passive income

7:13

. But it was just like beating my head into

7:15

the wall , like trying to get people to sign

7:17

up and then they find out that their people have

7:19

to manually type in phone numbers and

7:22

emails of their patients and it just

7:24

was a hard sell zip

7:27

forward to . I was like you know what I'm

7:29

gonna stop like trying to

7:31

make this work . It's clearly not working . And

7:34

I took a marketing job as a director

7:37

for this painting company and it was

7:39

at that , at that painting company

7:42

roles . Two months into my job I asked the owners

7:44

hey , could I connect my software to

7:47

? And they're like you have a software like what

7:49

? Like your ? This didn't come

7:51

up in the interview and I was like , well , it's for dentists

7:53

and I made this thing , but I feel like it would work

7:55

. And this other reputation software that we

7:57

were using was terrible and

7:59

it wasn't like we had the business literally

8:02

had 60 reviews , 67

8:04

reviews after 15 years of painting

8:06

, and they were like an $8 million , $9

8:08

million company . And so I plugged in

8:11

my software and it was like overnight

8:13

, this flood , like we were getting reviews daily

8:16

and in the matter of like two

8:18

years they surpassed 700

8:21

and 750 . And then all of a sudden , all

8:23

these other painting companies started asking

8:25

like , hey , what are you guys doing for

8:27

reviews ? How did you get so many reviews and

8:30

it literally it was just like this organic

8:32

thing that had been created because

8:34

I wanted to solve a problem . I did

8:36

, I tried to sell it to dentists , couldn't integrate

8:39

and then I literally like gave up

8:41

. I was like , well , I'm just gonna take a marketing

8:43

director job . And it wasn't until I was in that

8:45

role and then saw the

8:47

results that I was like , whoa

8:49

, this is crazy . And so that company

8:52

is called Webfoot . You can look them up online Webfoot

8:54

painting . They are now the highest

8:56

rated painting company in

8:59

the entire country , based on Google

9:01

reviews for quantity and quality . They have

9:03

over a thousand and they

9:05

had 67 about three years

9:07

ago and it's like it's unbo

9:09

, like I couldn't

9:11

have orchestrated it , I couldn't

9:14

have planned for that to happen . But since

9:16

then there's now , you know , we

9:19

have many , many painters in particular that

9:21

use the software , and then we've started

9:23

to branch out into other home service spaces to

9:25

use that as well .

9:26

Yeah , that's awesome . So it sounds like you

9:29

didn't have to deal with the HIPAA rules . So it pulls

9:31

it in from the CRM automatically and basically

9:34

pulls like their email and phone number

9:36

and follows up with them to get the Google reviews

9:38

that kind of how it works .

9:40

Yeah , so I am . I don't

9:42

know if you are familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk

9:44

, but I am a believer in everything

9:47

in my life that there's no secret

9:49

sauce . Ideas are

9:51

. The phrase that Gary Vee

9:53

says is ideas are shit , execution

9:56

is the game , and so I

9:58

free , like I give away all my knowledge

10:01

, I try , and I have a YouTube channel just sharing

10:03

everything that I know about automation and trying

10:05

to teach people . And so

10:08

, yeah , as far as I'll tell you exactly what we do with

10:10

the review software , we integrate deeply

10:12

into the CRM

10:15

the project . Ideally it's a project management

10:17

software because there's typically

10:19

the crews that worked on it . We

10:21

can get the estimator , the receptionist

10:24

, like anyone that the person interacted with . We

10:26

include in that review request and

10:29

then we encourage , based

10:31

on the services that the company offers

10:33

, our requests that go out to

10:36

painting companies includes

10:38

the names of the people

10:41

that that person interacted with , and then it

10:43

also encourages them to use keywords like

10:46

residential painting or

10:48

interior or

10:51

kitchen cabinets , things like that , Because

10:53

a lot of people don't realize this , because

10:55

they're so focused on getting quantity of

10:57

reviews , they don't realize that the quality

10:59

of what is in the review

11:01

content is actually just

11:04

as , if not more , important than

11:06

getting a lot of them . If you get a bunch of stars

11:08

that say thumbs up , we love

11:10

these guys , that is not nearly

11:13

the same impact that a review

11:15

that says Susan was so nice

11:17

from the first time . I called the business . John was

11:19

very informative on my estimate . I

11:21

got my kitchen cabinets painted . They look

11:24

amazing . Like diving into

11:26

all that rich information and

11:28

mentioning the services . If

11:30

you go onto Google right now and you type in

11:33

pepperoni pizza , you're

11:35

gonna see like pizza

11:38

shops that show up that have customers

11:40

reviewing pepperoni pizza in

11:42

their reviews and everything

11:44

that you read about that business is going to be

11:47

showing you reviews of other people that mentioned

11:49

pepperoni . And it's the same thing in

11:51

painting .

11:54

Yeah , that's really interesting . So

11:57

the software actually kind of incorporates

12:00

the staff name

12:02

to the folks and also it sounds like maybe

12:04

the services that they provided as well

12:06

, to have like a recommended review

12:08

. Is that what it's doing ? Is kind of like giving

12:10

a recommended hey , you know , it

12:12

would be great if you give us a Google review . I

12:15

know you worked with Sally and got

12:17

your interior painted , so here's a recommended

12:20

review . Is that kind of what it's doing , or is it

12:22

?

12:22

Yeah , very close , and we

12:24

also include headshots of whoever

12:27

the crew leader was . So the whole thing is

12:29

like I , literally I

12:31

architected this entire thing when

12:33

I and this is I did this for painters and they

12:36

are for dentists , and then when I got into the painting

12:38

industry , I was like , oh , this is even better

12:40

because now I can get even more information

12:42

from the CRM system , whereas I

12:44

couldn't do that in the dental

12:46

world . And so what we're literally

12:49

bringing in is we personalize

12:51

everything . So it's coming from the you

12:53

know , the crew leaders email or the sales reps email

12:56

, depending on who , like , the lead person is

12:58

that takes point with this customer . So

13:00

ideally it's someone that you've communicated with

13:02

, often back and forth . One of

13:04

the biggest problems with review softwares

13:07

. Actually , I'll say this is a couple

13:09

of key things here . One is most

13:12

people , when they connect

13:14

one of these , like big name reputation

13:18

management , and I won't mention any , but there's dozens

13:20

and dozens and dozens of reputation

13:22

management softwares I don't know of

13:24

any that are targeting the home service

13:27

space , like we are , and we're trying

13:29

to craft every single aspect

13:31

of this with one primary

13:33

goal in mind . I would say two one

13:35

is how easy can we

13:37

make this for the homeowner to leave a review

13:40

. It's like the old adage like

13:42

don't make it hard for your customers to give you money

13:44

. The same thing like don't

13:46

make it hard for your customers to give you positive

13:48

feedback , because most of your customers love

13:50

you . And it can't take

13:52

minutes , it needs to take seconds to do it

13:54

. So , first of all , that

13:56

means that we've thought of , like , who should be

13:58

sending this . So it's the person that I have a relationship

14:01

with , that is . It's not coming

14:03

from like admin , or like the

14:05

owner of the company that I never met . It's like

14:08

hey , my name's Chris . I just painted your

14:10

house . Would you mind leaving me some feedback ? And

14:12

then you give some instruction , right ? So

14:14

that's the first thing . The other thing is this

14:18

is an interesting topic . Are you familiar with review

14:20

gates ?

14:23

review gates . Is that like screening folks before

14:25

you send them a review request ?

14:27

Yeah , yeah , so that is a

14:29

terrible , terrible idea to

14:32

have those . The interesting

14:34

thing is that , from a marketing side , if

14:36

I'm a sales rep of a software that's

14:39

trying to sell you to my feature

14:41

of a review gate , it sounds amazing . Hey

14:43

, by the way , daniel , if you

14:45

ever have someone that wasn't happy , we're

14:48

going to ask them on a scale from one to five

14:50

did you enjoy working with us ? And then

14:52

if they say four or five , then we send them

14:54

to Google as if it's like some

14:57

secret that people don't realize

15:00

what you're doing . But in reality , all

15:02

that you're doing is doing like a review

15:04

that someone's filling out and

15:06

they'll write in some feedback and they've

15:08

already exerted all that energy to leave your review

15:11

. And , by the way , you're lengthening the amount

15:13

of time it's taking them to actually leave a review

15:15

. And then they have to go

15:17

to Google afterwards to leave the review

15:19

that you wanted in the first place . And every

15:21

time someone asks us about this , I

15:23

ask them have

15:26

you used a software like this in the past ? And

15:28

if they have , they say yep , and it makes them

15:30

feel really good because there's some security that

15:32

bad reviews aren't getting out under the web . And

15:35

then I asked them how many times in the last year

15:37

have you actually had someone leave you a negative

15:39

review that came into your internal

15:41

system ? And generally the answer

15:43

is like never or once

15:45

. So then the

15:47

question just becomes like so you're making

15:50

thousands of your customers

15:52

or hundreds , depending on the size of your business

15:54

jump through all these extra hoops because

15:57

you're afraid of one person that might leave

15:59

you a bad review . And

16:01

like you just , and not only

16:04

that , you're also the . There's

16:06

a attrition of people

16:08

that are willing to go through multiple steps

16:10

. So maybe instead of 20 reviews

16:13

getting posted online now , you're down

16:15

to 16 or 15 , because

16:17

some people are like oh , what the heck , I'm not , I don't

16:19

have time for this . And then there's also like

16:21

just loading times , like how often

16:23

do you click on a button and it takes , you

16:26

know , 10 seconds for it to pull up the preliminary

16:28

page and then another 10 seconds to pull up to Google

16:30

page . It's just like you're losing people

16:32

by by doing that . So , that's one thing

16:34

that we are very bullish . We have one customer

16:37

who said I am , I know that

16:39

I'm getting a lower conversion on Google reviews

16:41

and I would like to have this feature

16:44

the review gate and so they knowingly

16:46

went in . They did it . After

16:49

a few months we're like Okay , can

16:51

you trust us and let us show you you're

16:53

not going to start getting a bunch of bad reviews ? And

16:56

we turn that off . And ever saying I mean

16:58

it's more reviews

17:00

beats out the fear of

17:02

like what if I get a bad one ? Because

17:04

a bad review from a bad customer is a good

17:06

review . Like everybody

17:09

can read a bad review and realize

17:11

that the person that's leaving the review is

17:13

either crazy or they're complaining about price

17:15

or something like

17:17

. Something that literally is like that's a great

17:19

thing to get a one star review on . You know what

17:21

I mean .

17:23

Yeah , and some would

17:25

argue it's an opportunity to show your customer

17:27

service and respond in a respectful way and

17:29

kind of show you

17:31

know how you take

17:34

those , their situations and try to

17:36

turn them around .

17:36

So , kind of some food

17:38

say , is the opportunity to showcase your

17:41

customer service on the internet basically

17:43

yeah , and I like to always think back to

17:45

yourself , just like ask yourself have you

17:47

ever left a one star review for a business before

17:49

? Yeah , never

17:51

. So yeah , I have

17:53

. And I'll tell you the one time that I did

17:56

it was because we went to this restaurant

17:58

that claimed to be a family friendly restaurant

18:00

. We have four little kids we had

18:02

a newborn at the time and

18:04

we went in and my wife

18:06

like had to change a diaper . We go into the bathroom

18:09

and there was no changing table . So

18:11

she's like on the floor in the bathroom and

18:13

I like tried to tell the

18:15

server and they're like oh , yeah , you know the

18:18

owner , but whatever , and it's

18:20

like the server's job isn't to

18:22

like go tell the owner hey , someone wants

18:24

a changing table . So I left

18:26

a one star review for this restaurant that said

18:28

hey , you know , we love

18:30

coming to your restaurant , you guys have great food , you

18:33

claim that you're a family friendly restaurant

18:35

and you don't have a changing

18:37

table for a family Like

18:39

. It'd be great if you guys could do that . And I even

18:41

linked , like here's a changing table that

18:44

you can buy on Amazon for $150

18:46

. And if you once you do this

18:48

, please let me know , because we'd be happy to come

18:50

back in and change our review to experience

18:52

your you know , newly upgraded facilities

18:55

for a newborn . You know , yeah , and

18:57

what do you know ? They ? They

18:59

eventually fit , put the thing

19:01

in . We went back to the restaurant and I changed my

19:03

review . It's like I'm not doing it . It's like

19:05

how else ? I think

19:07

business owners need to think about Google

19:09

reviews , as it's just like a direct line

19:12

to get feedback to the person

19:14

that needs to hear it . And again , for

19:16

normal people , they're

19:18

not doing it to like destroy

19:21

your reputation or ruin you . They're

19:24

just trying to say like , hey , I'm not happy

19:26

and I'm like this . We've been through

19:28

the ringer a couple of times . Can somebody just

19:30

call me that actually cares and wants to resolve

19:32

my issue ? And so , again

19:35

, there's ways to do that . But and we're experimenting

19:38

with some awesome stuff , with AI responding

19:40

to reviews and alerting

19:43

the owner , texting people saying , hey , so

19:45

and so , just left a bad review so the owner can

19:47

call that person . You know , within

19:49

an hour of a one star review coming in , you want

19:51

to talk about , like , wowing people

19:53

. It's not like this

19:56

. Having a successful home service business

19:59

is not about being perfect

20:01

. It's about recovery . Like you're

20:03

going to make mistakes ? How

20:06

fast can you recover and then

20:08

deliver that second time ? And people are

20:10

like I had a problem , I

20:12

voiced my frustration and then they

20:14

were amazing . And how much better is a

20:16

review like that ? That was like yeah , I

20:18

was mad because they got paint on my door

20:20

. They came out the next day and replaced

20:22

my door or they fixed it or whatever , and it's

20:24

like that's a great company .

20:27

Yeah , now that's a really

20:30

interesting perspective and you

20:33

know I was kind of before

20:35

you kind of laid out the argument there . If

20:37

you would have asked me , I would have said that

20:40

it would have been prudent to have a

20:42

review gate , you know .

20:44

but I like the way you put it , like

20:46

getting that volume and then allowing

20:49

the opportunity to showcase your

20:51

customer service , you know and

20:54

I got a couple other things on that , and that is there

20:57

was a study that was done and

20:59

it's just true for Amazon as well . I

21:01

want you to . This is just the thought experiment , and

21:04

this is the thought experiment is proves

21:06

the study , which I'll tell you in a second . But if you go on

21:08

to Amazon and you're looking at two

21:11

t-shirts okay , or pick a random

21:14

product , and one of the t-shirt

21:16

has 10,000 reviews

21:19

, 10,000 , all five stars

21:21

, and again we're saying thousands because

21:23

on Amazon generally there's more for a painting company

21:25

, let's say it's 100 , 200

21:27

, whatever all five star reviews

21:30

, not a single negative

21:32

review , versus another

21:34

t-shirt that's got you know 5,000

21:37

, 7,000 , somewhere in the realm of

21:39

the same , and has

21:41

, you know , a 4.8

21:43

average and has

21:46

equivalent , whether it's more or less

21:48

. They're like okay , it's about the same . You know which

21:51

one do you trust more ?

21:55

Yeah , the 4.8 looks more

21:57

legit . It's

22:01

hard to imagine 5,000 people being all on the same

22:03

page .

22:05

Right , and that's exactly . It's like what kind of bot

22:07

or system are they using to

22:09

get rid of bad reviews ? Or

22:13

I honestly think that one of the biggest shifts

22:15

that needs to happen in the home service world

22:17

is understanding that people aren't

22:19

working with you because you're perfect . They're working with

22:21

you because of your customer service , and what

22:23

better way to show that than to

22:25

have a lot of reviews , because

22:27

this is the other key thing . I'm not saying that

22:30

you want a one-star review . If you've got 15

22:32

reviews , that's bad

22:34

, but if you've got a couple hundred reviews

22:36

, I expect you to have

22:39

like . I ran into a

22:41

three sour people on the way to the grocery

22:43

store . You know what I mean . There are people

22:46

all around us that are crazy and unhappy

22:48

about services , and you're telling

22:50

me that you've worked with 500 people and not

22:52

a single person was even mad

22:55

about your pricing or like the way

22:57

that someone looked , or I just

22:59

feel like the idea of like

23:01

we have to have perfection is just

23:03

holding you back and you really need to focus on like

23:06

it's all . Feedback is a learning

23:08

opportunity and most of the people like

23:10

if you're a painter , listening to this podcast , I

23:13

can already guarantee you that you have a good business

23:15

. The painters that are terrible painters

23:17

. They're not trying to improve their bookkeeping

23:20

and automating processes . They're working on coaching

23:22

people like you have a good business

23:24

. You need to trust your people and just start making

23:26

it easy for people to give you positive feedback .

23:29

Yeah , yeah , I think that's a great

23:31

point , cool

23:33

, well , pivoting a little bit away

23:35

from Google reviews . The

23:38

other thing that bullying that you

23:41

mentioned , that you guys do , is helping folks

23:43

with their automation , like automating their

23:45

processes and their systems , and

23:49

in the past year there's

23:51

been a huge influx of AI as

23:55

well , which I imagine would impact

23:57

the ability and capability of automation

24:00

. Can you elaborate

24:03

how AI , what's

24:06

impact AI has on the

24:10

potential for automation either now

24:12

or in the future , and how that can benefit

24:14

small business owners ?

24:16

Yeah , so there's a popular

24:18

business coach and strategist

24:21

, dan Sullivan . Have you heard of Dan Sullivan ? He's

24:24

written a couple of popular books like 10X is easier

24:26

than 2X . Who not now ?

24:27

Okay , yeah , yeah .

24:28

Yeah . So Dan

24:30

Sullivan , on a podcast recently , said

24:33

something that just was

24:35

it's like when you have that belief in your mind

24:37

and you had never been able to quite articulate

24:39

it . Well , he said that

24:42

AI is just electrification

24:44

and it's an efficiency

24:46

tool . So AI

24:49

is just going to make every role , every

24:52

job in the world is going to be affected

24:54

by AI . It is . It's just like saying

24:57

no or like plugging your ears or

24:59

saying like , oh , it's not going to affect us . We're painters

25:01

Like are they going to paint our house for

25:04

us ? Like that's 100 years away from now

25:06

. It's like we're not talking about that

25:08

, but it is going to affect emails

25:11

, phone calls , communication , data

25:14

entry , analysis

25:16

of the business , drafting

25:20

like marketing strategy . Like

25:22

it's going to affect so many different things

25:24

, but the way that it's going to affect it , it's going to

25:26

take an hour long task and turn

25:28

it into a five minute task , or a 15

25:31

minute task and turn it into a 60 second

25:33

task . Like if you

25:35

are not paying attention

25:37

to AI , I

25:40

would caution you , or if you've never

25:42

. This is a little bit

25:44

of a tangent , but I would say I went to a TEDx talk

25:46

about two months ago and

25:49

two of the speakers . Out of the 11 speakers that

25:52

spoke , two of the speakers talked about AI . One

25:54

of them was Hap Klopp

25:56

, who is the founder of North Face and

25:59

he's now 85 years old , or something

26:01

like that , and he's on

26:03

stage talking about AI and how AI

26:05

is going to like we're all going to have a personal

26:08

assistant . That's basically like an AI bot , and

26:10

he was just trying to get everybody to see

26:12

different possibilities that this could be

26:14

used and he asked the audience out

26:17

of this , 600 people raise your hand

26:19

if you have ever used

26:21

or interacted with chat

26:24

, gpt or a similar tool

26:26

like that . And this is where I was

26:28

like oh my goodness

26:30

, how many people do you think raised

26:32

your hand Out of 600

26:35

?

26:37

I guess the audience I'm

26:39

assuming these are not entrepreneurs . So

26:41

I would you know , because I think entrepreneurs

26:43

like I would imagine that'd be a very high percentage

26:46

, but if it's just like normal

26:48

folks that are not kind of tied

26:50

into that community , it

26:53

might be , I would say , under

26:56

50% .

26:57

Which , yeah . So I love how your analytical

27:00

approach this , this is . We're going to be good friends . So

27:02

, yes , I was thinking , okay , who's in the

27:05

room ? Who comes to TEDx talks , right ? So

27:07

I was like I don't know the answer . But I was thinking

27:09

similarly to you , like , okay , I'm an entrepreneur

27:11

, I use chat GPT like

27:13

10 times a day . Like I'm using it

27:15

more than I use Google . I just everything

27:18

. I'm like I wonder if we can help me with this . It's like I'm just

27:20

trying to learn . There was

27:22

maybe 30 people that raised their

27:24

hand in the entire place and

27:26

I was just like , and this was two months ago

27:28

, so maybe after that talk , they all went home and

27:30

made an account , but still I was like this

27:32

has been like chat GPT came out , the

27:35

open AI came out , you know , four or five

27:37

years ago , but chat GPT came out in November

27:39

of 22 . So it's been out for like

27:41

a year and all these people

27:43

are just like thinking it's another crypto

27:46

, like , oh , it's just , this is just a flash of the pan

27:48

, it's going to go away and like I'm

27:50

telling you like it's not going

27:52

anywhere . And the punchline

27:54

to what Dan Sullivan said was

27:56

in 10 years there's going to

27:58

be two types of businesses the

28:00

businesses that are using AI

28:03

in their business and the businesses going

28:05

out of business and I feel

28:07

like I completely agree with

28:09

it , and when you start to play around with

28:11

it , the more that you start to use the random

28:13

scenarios for it . It's just

28:16

a time saving tool . That's all that it is

28:18

. It's like it can I

28:20

mean I could go into . I'd be curious to know

28:22

what random examples or the

28:24

things have you been like . Oh , did you know you could

28:27

do it for this , like the people that

28:29

you're using AI ? I love hearing

28:31

these random instances that are

28:34

like it's just literally like

28:36

it took this , what did it take me three hours and it

28:38

got me got done in 10 minutes , you know

28:40

.

28:40

Yeah , yeah

28:43

, I use chat GPT pretty

28:45

frequently every day and

28:49

a lot of it's for

28:52

marketing type emails

28:54

that sort of thing . I've

28:57

tried it with data analysis a

28:59

little bit , trying to figure out how we could use

29:02

AI for data analysis as well , and

29:09

then just playing around with it , like having

29:11

it come up with stories with my kids , like

29:13

you know , give

29:16

them my , give chat GPT

29:18

my kids names and then have

29:20

it come up with some ridiculous story , so

29:23

for entertainment , just yeah

29:25

, just random things have

29:27

you used the data analyzer

29:30

tool , where you just upload a spreadsheet

29:32

, a CSV file , and let it work

29:34

. Yeah , that was the new upgrade

29:36

right .

29:38

Or chat GPT for .

29:39

Yeah , I have

29:41

a little bit when

29:44

it first came out and it

29:47

kind of reads it and gives you a lot of like , hey

29:49

, this is what it is and you have to kind of really

29:51

dig into it . But yes , I have

29:53

messed with that and it can now

29:56

search Bing , which is kind of cool , but

29:59

yeah , it's hard

30:01

to , and then also look at images

30:03

, which is crazy , but

30:06

yeah , there's so much capability there it's

30:08

hard to , especially

30:11

for I think for a lot of folks listening , like as a

30:13

painting business , how can I actually

30:15

use that in my business ? I

30:17

think a lot of folks have that kind

30:19

of thought .

30:22

Well , I will tell you , this is just

30:24

my the Pursuit of Purpose podcast

30:26

. If you're interested in AI , I

30:28

have a 10 part series that will

30:30

be coming out . I don't know when this episode

30:32

is gonna get published , but in Q1 of 2024

30:35

, I'll have this series out . One of the

30:37

guys I'm interviewing is an expert , and

30:39

he's an expert in what I would say

30:41

is making this attainable and

30:44

tangible for , like , the average

30:46

business owner . So really simplifying

30:48

it down and turning this into like okay

30:51

, here's seven ways that

30:53

today you can start using this to save

30:55

yourself time or have people in your business to save

30:57

yourself time . So when

30:59

that comes out , that's one thing I would say . But

31:01

as far as like

31:05

, how this is gonna impact things , back

31:07

to this broader question of like

31:09

, what I think

31:12

is more interesting to take note

31:14

of is that AI

31:16

is it's

31:19

making the act of developing

31:21

software much more easy

31:23

, and there are more and more

31:26

software is getting created all the time

31:28

to solve

31:30

very particular purposes , right . One

31:33

thing that I had looked up was the

31:35

number of softwares that was being developed

31:37

and how that's changed

31:39

over time , and I wish I had the statistic

31:42

, but it's the

31:44

trend is what's important . But

31:46

basically , on the app store

31:48

alone . There was some . It

31:50

was an ungodly amount like hundreds

31:53

and hundreds and hundreds of apps . It might have been

31:55

thousands I don't wanna over exaggerate , but

31:57

hundreds of apps are being developed

31:59

every single day , like publish new apps

32:01

that have never existed before , just on the app store

32:04

on iOS . So what

32:06

I take that to mean is like okay , that's , we're

32:08

just talking about the app store . How many other

32:10

things are getting developed ? And this is like in

32:12

2019 , this was the metric

32:15

. Now that chatGPT

32:17

has come out , I've listened to podcasts on how

32:19

it's changing developers' jobs and

32:22

how much faster they're able to go and iterate

32:24

through things . So my belief

32:26

is that softwares

32:28

are going to be built to solve very niche

32:31

things like analysis , forecasting

32:33

, even estimating . Like I'm

32:35

a big fan of PaintScout . That's a great estimating

32:38

tool To me . I feel like it

32:40

doesn't seem out of the ordinary that you

32:42

could just take a picture of your house soon

32:44

and , based on

32:46

a huge database of other things

32:48

and a bunch of like just the analysis that you

32:50

can do to be able to say we think

32:52

that it's gonna be between this and this to paint the house

32:54

and it's gonna get more

32:57

and more accurate , and then you could have a particular

32:59

company that just takes pictures of all

33:01

the houses that they work on and

33:03

they put in the square footage of the

33:06

house and all the details

33:08

. It's not we

33:10

like to think that stuff is more complicated

33:14

than it is or that there's more to our job than

33:16

there is , but it's all just like we're

33:18

making decisions inside of our heads that

33:21

other people or computers can

33:23

be taught if you systemize

33:25

those things and it's going to be able to

33:27

do that much more quickly and

33:29

faster than you can . And so I would

33:31

say , from the big

33:34

, big picture , in

33:36

order to leverage all of these apps

33:38

that are going to be coming out and I don't even

33:41

know what the apps are , I just know that when you

33:43

start to pay attention to what is happening

33:45

and how rapidly AI and

33:47

again , chatchapiti is the main one , but Google

33:50

I just saw a video from Google's

33:52

new tool called Gemini . Look

33:54

that up . There's a 30 minute overview . Gemini

33:57

is able to take an audio video

33:59

and written word , and

34:02

it's able to take . You can just talk

34:04

to it and have a conversation , and the stuff that is

34:06

happening in this Gemini unveiling

34:08

video is like a

34:11

hundred times more mind

34:13

blowing than Chatchapiti . So

34:15

all I'm saying is , start

34:18

looking under the covers and

34:20

just start to see what's happening

34:22

. And that's where I would say my

34:26

belief right now is that AI

34:28

is going to completely transform many

34:31

, many roles , including roles of painters

34:33

or painting businesses . I

34:35

don't think that AI is gonna affect the guy

34:37

that's putting the paint on the house

34:39

for some time , but the rest of your business

34:42

is going to be massively

34:44

impacted , and it comes

34:46

down to three things , in my opinion . You

34:49

need clean data in your business for

34:51

ROI on marketing , because you

34:53

can iterate and

34:55

experiment more quickly when

34:57

you're using AI for reporting and analysis

35:00

and A-B testing and all that stuff . The

35:02

second thing is so you can do more with less , so

35:05

you don't need five employees

35:07

when you can do it with two . And then

35:09

the third thing is enabling

35:12

, like , when the new software , the

35:14

new tech comes out , if you have

35:16

clean systems and

35:19

structure in your business , you'll be able to

35:21

add on these additional automation or

35:23

additional tools much more easily

35:25

because you've built a foundation

35:27

that can take and just like , adapt

35:30

and add new things . Some businesses that I

35:32

talked to they've got some data

35:35

over in this app , some data in this app

35:37

, some data down here and in order to

35:39

run a report , they've got to extract CSV

35:41

files from three different things consolidate

35:43

it , put it into an Excel sheet . Like that's

35:46

terrible , like that . You have to have a source

35:48

of truth that has all the information

35:51

for your painting project in one location

35:53

, and that's what software

35:55

and AI will be able to work with . Does that make

35:57

sense ?

35:58

Yeah , absolutely . I mean a lot of folks that we work with

36:00

. They are not there yet , so

36:03

they want to be there , but they might

36:05

have several different apps

36:07

where they'll have some data in their

36:09

CRM , some data in their SMA software , some data

36:12

in their Equipix online . It's not

36:14

talking to each other . Then there's no central

36:16

database that has all

36:18

the information together . So

36:21

what would you recommend

36:23

to someone who's in that situation

36:25

where they might have several

36:28

pieces of software but there's no part

36:31

of it's in their CRM , part of it's in their production management

36:33

software , part of it's in their Equipix online ? Do

36:35

they need to have like a another

36:38

piece of like a database

36:40

setup in that that

36:42

is like this setup

36:44

and then that's like the source of truth

36:46

that you said , or like what or that

36:48

? Should they assign one

36:50

of those things to be the source of truth

36:53

? How should that work ?

36:54

Yeah . So I would say , depending

36:56

on it's going to vary for every business

37:00

, but I would say there's three things

37:02

. To run an efficient operation

37:05

from a tech side , you need to

37:07

have three aspects . The

37:09

first is a database tool , so

37:12

making sure that you have all

37:14

of your information in one area , and there's

37:16

lots of them . My personal

37:18

favorite is Airtable , but you

37:20

can use whatever you want Like . Smartsheets

37:23

is an older one , not a big fan , it's

37:25

a more dated system , but a lot of people use

37:28

it . And if you're curious , why is Smartsheets

37:30

not good ? It has to do with relational

37:32

databases , which we could talk about in another

37:34

episode . But that's the first thing is you need a database

37:37

tool . The second thing that you need is

37:39

automation tools . Some

37:41

database tools have some automation capabilities

37:43

, but Zapier Make those

37:46

are the two popular ones that everybody knows about

37:48

. That's going to simplify the integrating

37:50

of the apps . But your database

37:53

, the automation tools , and

37:55

then the third thing that you need is an interface

37:57

to use the database tool . So

38:00

you still are going to need

38:02

other applications in your business . I actually

38:04

am not a fan of trying to consolidate

38:07

down to the one software that does

38:09

it all because , just like the

38:12

saying goes when you're the master or when

38:14

you're the jack of all trades , you're the master of none

38:16

. I think you should find the master

38:18

of one and integrate it with the rest

38:20

of your other master of one apps

38:22

and then make sure they're all talking together

38:24

and then that database tool is

38:26

like your source of truth , where you

38:29

can go to one place and see every

38:31

single piece of information about

38:33

a business in one spot , and

38:35

that is like might be mind boggling

38:37

to people , but we have built

38:39

for customers databases

38:43

that have 500 properties for

38:45

a single project , and the reason that

38:48

in the past people have steered away from that

38:50

is because if you're doing this in Google

38:52

Sheets or Excel , that's really freaking

38:54

, overwhelming to have 500 columns and

38:56

that doesn't sound logical . But

38:59

the reason that you need to find a tool that is

39:01

built for this is because there

39:03

is that much data for a given project

39:06

. But when your resource

39:08

coordinator or your receptionist

39:10

is interfacing with that tool , you

39:13

need to give them the simplified down

39:15

view of what is important for their job

39:17

so they can work quickly and don't

39:20

like no one needs to look at the database

39:22

except for the person working on

39:24

it . Everybody should have their like

39:27

you know control system of like when

39:30

I'm scheduling jobs , this is what I'm to see when I'm

39:32

a crew leader . Like we've built apps

39:34

interfaces and

39:36

I'm a big fan of like . Whenever possible

39:39

, let's go no code . So built apps

39:41

that crew leaders can have on their phone . That's

39:43

referencing the database of

39:45

that of like , the projects , and

39:48

it's allowing the crew leader just to see

39:50

and only edit the things that he needs

39:52

to edit . But when he does , it

39:55

updates the source of truth so

39:57

that when your controller is running an analysis

39:59

, you have that information

40:01

there . Like you have all the information

40:03

in one place and it could have been updated minutes

40:06

ago by what the crew leader did in

40:08

the field . Like the idea of having

40:11

it have to flow through or have other people

40:13

export import stuff not

40:15

a recipe for success .

40:18

Yeah , and I think it's a good point that

40:21

you said like a lot of folks , I feel like , are trying

40:23

to find one thing or that's

40:26

going to solve all their issues one software

40:28

, or have some software built to

40:30

their specifications or whatever . But

40:33

, like you said earlier , there's

40:35

going to be so much . There already is so many apps

40:37

coming out all the time , but there's going to be

40:39

even more with the AI revolution

40:41

, and so you're going to

40:43

you're going to want to

40:46

take advantage of those new apps coming

40:48

out , and so if you're , if you're relying

40:50

on one software trying to do everything

40:52

, you're going to be kind of limited . So

40:55

I think that's

40:57

kind of something that I see often

40:59

is someone's always looking for kind of one

41:02

solution to solve all their problems .

41:04

Yeah , and I have a couple of thoughts on

41:06

that . And , by the way , I can run about

41:09

20 minutes long . I don't know if

41:11

you have a hard stop , but I have the flexibility

41:13

if you want to , and you can cut this out , but

41:16

it's up to you . One thing I want to

41:18

say on app selection . So

41:20

when you're trying to decide

41:22

what software is to use in your business , this

41:25

is the thought process that I

41:27

go through when , if a client wants

41:29

us to do this for them or that anybody

41:31

can do , and that is step

41:34

number one does the software that you're looking

41:36

at ? First of all , do you like the features ? Is the usability

41:39

or something , is that good , right ? Obviously , if it's terrible

41:41

, throw it out . You wouldn't use it . But if it

41:43

has features or interface that you're like

41:45

, man , this is cool , we could really use this great . So

41:48

you check the first box . Second

41:50

thing is doesn't integrate with Zapier . If

41:52

it doesn't , that's OK . But

41:54

the third thing doesn't integrate with make . It

41:57

doesn't integrate with make . We're not looking too good . But

41:59

the final one that would be the nail

42:02

in the coffin is does it have an open

42:04

API ? And if it does

42:06

not have , if , if the first answer is

42:08

yes and anyone , or , sorry , you

42:10

don't . If all three of those , those next ones

42:12

are no , do

42:14

run away from that software as fast as you can

42:16

, because you are setting

42:19

yourself up for a literal

42:21

like barrier to data

42:23

flowing in your business . And I cannot

42:26

, like I can't tell you how

42:28

many softwares I have looked

42:30

at and people have been like oh well , we love

42:32

this tool , like this is the best estimating

42:34

tool ever or whatever , or product project management

42:37

. And you go in and look , it's

42:39

like I don't know what these companies are thinking

42:41

, but you're literally just like handcuffed

42:44

to whatever that that development

42:46

team has time to develop . And

42:49

most of these companies are very small

42:51

and they've got three to five developers

42:53

and it's like how long do you think it's going to

42:55

take them to get around to improving that

42:58

one little feature that you're requesting and

43:00

it's just getting thrown into the backlog of the

43:03

other 400 requests that people have . Versus

43:05

, like you

43:07

take a company like paint scout they're

43:10

a tool for estimating just

43:12

for painters and they have developers

43:14

that are just trying to solve estimating and

43:17

that's it . And I would say like again

43:20

, it's just like it . To me it's so logical

43:22

. But like if , if the

43:25

software is not prioritizing

43:27

its ability to talk to other

43:29

softwares , that software

43:31

is going to be dying , like it . I don't

43:34

know how it's going to be able to be valuable

43:36

in the near future because everybody

43:38

is niching down , like the example

43:40

would be Boolean , the review software that we made

43:43

10 years ago . If you said that you could

43:45

have a software business that just does reviews

43:47

, and not only that , but just in

43:49

home service , that that's a pretty narrow niche

43:52

and there we just keep going deeper

43:54

and deeper and deeper to the point . Now

43:56

back to AI . We're saying

43:58

all this information that we know about the project , let's

44:01

just have chat , you bet , write a

44:03

draft review for the customer and

44:05

feed in the image from company cam . So it reads

44:07

the image and then spit out here's

44:09

a review that you could leave if it looks good . And

44:12

what do you know ? It looks exactly like

44:14

what I would have written and we just saved the

44:16

business , the customer , even more time . So it's like

44:18

that level of optimization

44:20

exists and it's . The

44:22

depth is there for everything for

44:24

accounting , for estimating , for

44:26

project management , for CRM , for marketing , for

44:28

reporting , like there's all these things

44:30

that need optimization . And

44:32

so I'm just a huge believer in

44:34

find the tools because there's

44:37

going to be a set of them and make

44:39

sure that they check those boxes that I said , and

44:42

if they check more than one , that's great . But

44:46

yeah , they have to integrate . If they

44:48

don't integrate , that's bad news .

44:50

Yeah , yeah , and I think paint scout , like you

44:52

said , is a great example , because they're there's app

44:54

, here integration is really robust .

44:56

They have a lot of actions

44:58

and triggers that that

45:00

make it really easy

45:02

to integrate with your CRM , with Quip

45:05

looks online , whatever , whatever company

45:07

cam , I still I hope

45:09

that John or Bryce listens to this

45:11

from paint scout , because I've still been putting

45:13

pressure on them that I'd love to see an

45:16

open API from paint scout to

45:18

just free up some other things for

45:20

the more advanced users . But I talk

45:23

with them all the time . I love the guys

45:25

over at paint scout and I

45:27

like that they're innovating and it keeps getting better . But

45:30

yeah , I just think they're in

45:32

there A fantastic example of

45:34

going deeper and deeper into

45:37

the well as opposed to trying to start

45:39

digging new wells .

45:42

All right . So so

45:44

we we talked about , you know , getting

45:46

your database set up with

45:49

, with a source of truth in your business

45:51

, so you can go one place to find out any kind

45:53

of information using

45:56

no code automation

45:58

like Zapier make to

46:01

connect all the things together . Are

46:04

there any other things that

46:06

folks should be doing or trends

46:09

they should be aware of , prepared for , with

46:12

this fast moving AI and automation

46:15

train that we're seeing ?

46:17

Yeah , I would say the biggest thing , that

46:20

and this is coming from now doing

46:22

over 30 discovery calls in

46:24

the last 18 months with other

46:26

painting companies there's

46:29

a temptation because these are no code

46:31

tools to just say

46:34

, hey , you know , sarah is pretty

46:36

smart , she likes technical stuff

46:38

, maybe she can just start connecting things together

46:40

with Zapier . And there's

46:43

a . It's a it's kind

46:45

of it's hard to or this could come

46:47

across the wrong way but there's

46:50

more to you

46:53

know being a designer , then like

46:55

knowing how to use Canva you know

46:57

what I mean Like there's more

47:00

to driving a car

47:02

than like understanding

47:04

, like the gas pedal and like steering

47:07

, and like there's just like at

47:09

the surface level you can look at something and be like

47:11

I could do that . But there's always

47:13

more strategy and

47:15

intentionality behind the

47:17

thing . Whatever it is we're talking

47:19

about and the danger that can

47:21

happen with companies

47:23

that just jump into these tools

47:25

without a plan . First

47:28

of all , I'm not opposed to like

47:30

getting your feet wet and just like getting your hands or you start

47:32

building stuff , but the moment

47:34

that it gets into and it's a slippery slope

47:37

because you can automate , like sending

47:39

some information from this to this when the job

47:41

is won or when a deal

47:43

is sent , we want to create an invoice

47:45

, whatever the thing is like . There's . Those are easy

47:47

, but the thing that people

47:49

fail to do is create a data

47:51

blueprint , what is what I call it of

47:54

making a plan of how

47:56

data exists and how it needs

47:58

to move around in your business . And

48:01

if you jump into these tools before

48:03

you have a blueprint , to me

48:05

it seems like the most ludicrous thing that

48:07

you could possibly do , but that's because I'm in it every

48:09

day , so I'll use an analogy , if

48:12

you like . Who

48:15

in their wildest dreams would ever

48:17

start building a house without blueprints

48:19

? If you did that , you'd

48:21

have like you know you'd start building

48:24

. Your drywaller comes up and he's , you

48:26

know , drywalling out the house , and then the electrician

48:28

shows up . It's like wait , I can't even access the studs

48:30

now . Like what are you doing ? And they're like wait , we're

48:33

putting on a second floor and the foundation's

48:35

not even been laid . It's just like insanity

48:37

. Like you need to have how many bedrooms

48:40

you're going to have . Who's working in those

48:42

bedrooms ? Who's sleeping there ? Where are the

48:44

faucets and water ? Like , where does all

48:46

the intake and outtakes and all that stuff need

48:48

to be ? You have to have a plan

48:51

and then that's like

48:53

that's again , the analogy is picking the softwares

48:55

and all that stuff . But even before you

48:57

pick the softwares you have to know what

48:59

data you're using and

49:01

how that data is going to evolve and exist inside

49:04

your business . So that

49:06

is like I can't stress

49:08

that enough that there's the temptation

49:10

to just go plug this in , and I want to clarify

49:13

that . You will get that dopamine

49:15

hit of like , hey , we just saved ourselves 10

49:17

minutes . You might even like optimize

49:20

a good portion of the process , but

49:22

the danger is that you then

49:24

build a house halfway and

49:27

you're going to put the second story on and

49:29

because you never built the foundation , you

49:31

now have people working inside that house which

49:34

are your employees . They're depending on

49:36

all the automations that you've built and the only way

49:39

to improve your system is to scrap

49:41

the whole thing . But how are you going to do that ? Because you

49:43

have core processes that are functioning

49:46

like use being used in your business , and then you're

49:48

in a real world of hurt because

49:51

you know you've . You didn't have a

49:53

plan when you started . And then you're like

49:55

, oh , I sunk so much money and time into this

49:57

. Do we just live with it ? Do we keep tacking

49:59

on more duct tape and I've seen

50:02

some pretty duct tape together , zapier systems , so

50:05

there's a pretty like never

50:07

ending you know

50:09

route that you can go down . But

50:11

yeah , I would say , talk to someone

50:14

like you , come , talk to us

50:16

. Like this is , we literally work

50:18

in automation all day with

50:20

painters , and I just think

50:22

that's my biggest section . The other thing I would say is , if

50:24

this is intriguing , that's

50:27

our YouTube channel , boolean Automation . I'm

50:29

literally trying to put out as many secrets

50:32

, so to speak , like I said earlier

50:34

, about what we do , because I'm

50:36

a firm believer that I can

50:38

tell everybody exactly how we do what we do

50:40

today , because next year it's going to be different

50:43

, and so we're just going

50:45

to try and keep up with the technology

50:47

wave as it goes and bring as many people

50:49

along for the ride that want to .

50:50

Yeah , that's awesome , one

50:54

of the things that I've seen . You know you

50:56

have a painting business that

50:59

they maybe they have several

51:01

different softwares

51:03

and they're doing a lot of manual data entry . They want to change

51:05

, they want to get streamlined

51:08

and automated . But

51:11

then they have folks in the organization

51:13

that are used to doing data

51:15

entry and they kind of get afraid , if we automated , I'm

51:18

not going to have a job anymore , something

51:21

like that . What

51:23

would you say to the

51:25

painting business owner or to their team to kind of

51:28

alleviate those concerns

51:31

, the fear of losing your job ? Yeah , basically

51:33

, yeah , I would say this actually

51:36

came up .

51:37

I'll tell another story . At

51:39

Webfoot we had a resource coordinator and we were

51:43

talking about you know , hey , walk

51:45

me through what you do and show me . So she's

51:47

sharing her screen

51:49

and going and copying this piece of data here and all that stuff

51:51

. And I'm thinking to myself like

51:53

, okay , we could automate that . That's , that's easy . Okay , do that

51:55

, that makes sense . Going through all

51:58

this stuff , and she finishes and I was like

52:00

I feel like the only thing that we can't automate was

52:03

, you know , this one particular process , but

52:05

I'm pretty sure all the other stuff we could . And she

52:08

was like are you serious

52:10

? And I was like , yeah , what's like ? I'm thinking like that's sweet

52:12

, like we just

52:14

bought back so much time . But she's thinking

52:17

from the employee perspective . She literally , because

52:20

the owner wasn't there . She was like Chris , if

52:22

you do that like I won't have a job . Like I

52:26

literally copy and paste stuff all

52:28

day . And I was like , okay

52:31

, this is like a little crazy . I don't know

52:34

why you're like confiding in me . But I

52:36

was like I won't say your name , but I was like you realize

52:40

that there's a lot

52:42

of other problems and things that are happening in this business . She's just

52:46

like in tunnel vision on like her job and

52:48

I was like plus it what we weren't ever , you're never

52:52

going to be able to eliminate like 100%

52:54

. There needs to be some eyes on it . But I said , like

52:57

you process , you know

52:59

, $9 million in revenue this

53:01

year with another person . What if you personally

53:05

could process 12 or 14

53:07

or 15 million in revenue ? Do you think they'd be able to pay you a little

53:10

bit more , you know ? Or

53:12

like what if you could talk to customers

53:14

more often on the phone because

53:17

all this other stuff wasn't

53:19

was getting done for you ? And she's like oh yeah , I do , you know , I never

53:21

have time to make my phone calls

53:23

, exactly , you know . It's like there's

53:25

other pieces that you need to deploy

53:28

your talent to . But that question

53:30

is a great one , because oftentimes

53:32

people come to us and say like hey , we're trying

53:34

to justify the cost of automating all

53:36

these processes

53:39

and how many people are we going to be able

53:41

to fire ? Like

53:43

whoa , I don't like . First of all

53:46

, you need your people to implement the technology

53:49

and the automation . So if you don't paint the vision

53:52

of how your company is going to grow and how people

53:54

are going to be deployed to do more interesting

53:57

projects , make the company more profitable , they're going to start

53:59

telling themselves their own stories

54:01

, and that's when you end up in a situation like what you're talking about

54:03

. And in this situation , with this one coworker

54:06

of mine , I was like look , I can tell

54:08

you like there's so

54:10

many things that I'm aware of just after going

54:12

through this process that we're dropping

54:14

the ball on , and it all generally

54:17

like revolves around communicating

54:19

with the customer , being

54:21

personable on the phone , and the

54:23

last thing I would say is that I think that , if you really think

54:25

about it , there's a great way of like

54:28

is the task that you're doing

54:30

right now adding to the value

54:32

that the customer is experiencing ? Right

54:34

Like talking and communicating

54:37

and texting the customer ? That's

54:39

increasing the value of working with us . Because they like to be in

54:41

the know . You copying

54:43

their email address to the fourth software because

54:45

they're not talking to each other , they

54:48

don't care , it has literally no

54:50

effect on their project . That's what you have computers

54:53

do . And then you focus your employees

54:56

to be like how do we make an even better experience

54:58

so that we're spending

55:00

more time with our customers and talking to them

55:02

and making them feel heard and listened to

55:05

and educating them instead

55:07

of all this data stuff that literally

55:09

like people don't understand what

55:11

it takes to paint a house , especially

55:13

with like invoicing and all that stuff , and

55:16

that's the part that they don't really care how you

55:18

do it and you'd be better off as a business to

55:20

make sure all that's automated and then deploy your

55:22

people to do the human stuff .

55:25

Yeah , that's an excellent point

55:27

. Well , I appreciate

55:30

your generosity with your

55:32

time , and how

55:34

can folks get ahold of you or learn more about Boolean ?

55:38

Yeah , so I am recommending

55:40

to everybody . Obviously I'm on LinkedIn . You can also

55:42

go to my website , chriskiefercom

55:46

, so that's C-H-R-I-S-K-I-E-F-E-Rcom

55:51

, and that's like that's the

55:53

. The Chris Kiefer website is

55:55

just the home of everything that I'm

55:57

involved in , so my podcast , the Boolean Automation Services

55:59

, the review software

56:02

and the YouTube channel , so you'll

56:04

be able to find all of it from there . But

56:06

, yeah , if you're , if you like

56:09

, I said I'm just a big believer in . I'm super glad that we're

56:11

able to connect with

56:13

you , daniel . It seems like we have very similar

56:15

mindsets and thoughts in this space and

56:18

, yeah , I just feel like there's

56:21

so much opportunity and there's

56:23

I come from the place of abundance

56:26

that I'm trying to give away as much value

56:28

as I possibly can , and I know that because of

56:31

that , I'll have a good reputation and there'll be

56:33

plenty of people that want to work with me , that want to work with us . And

56:36

, yeah , I'm just going to stay on that

56:38

technology wave and try and be on

56:40

the cutting edge of what's being developed

56:43

and worked on so we can keep making processes

56:45

better and come up with new uses for the

56:47

cool apps that are getting made .

56:50

Awesome . Appreciate your time , chris , and

56:52

for the listeners , we'll see you

56:54

next week .