2026-01-05_brainforge_x_abc_discovery_feedback

Meeting Title: Brainforge x ABC: Discovery Feedback Date: 2026-01-05 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin

WEBVTT

1 00:00:44.090 ⇒ 00:00:45.830 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Amber, can you hear us?

2 00:00:47.010 ⇒ 00:00:49.039 Amber Lin: Yep, I can hear you.

3 00:00:49.360 ⇒ 00:00:54.260 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’m in the room with, with Matt, Steven, Bobby…

4 00:00:54.730 ⇒ 00:01:02.550 Uttam Kumaran: Bo, yeah. So let’s, okay, so let’s,

5 00:01:02.980 ⇒ 00:01:05.179 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ll just share my screen so you have it.

6 00:01:05.780 ⇒ 00:01:06.810 Amber Lin: Awesome.

7 00:01:12.880 ⇒ 00:01:20.059 Uttam Kumaran: owns thermostats here.

8 00:01:22.700 ⇒ 00:01:24.250 Uttam Kumaran: That’s our CFO.

9 00:01:26.690 ⇒ 00:01:31.949 Uttam Kumaran: 70 doesn’t always feel like 70 in Texas, though. No, it’s not. It’s a different set.

10 00:01:34.110 ⇒ 00:01:37.159 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if there is video exceeded.

11 00:01:38.340 ⇒ 00:01:39.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

12 00:01:42.610 ⇒ 00:01:51.829 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So, Matt, we were just going over, like, kind of, like, where we are in the project. Maybe this will kind of be another summary of, like.

13 00:01:52.060 ⇒ 00:02:02.630 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, we’re waiting on, like, two more pieces of access to Dreamer or Evolve. We actually do have quite a bit of, historical data from Julie, so we’re already starting on looking at

14 00:02:02.630 ⇒ 00:02:13.439 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of the sales data. On the marketing side, we got access to Google Analytics, and so I feel good about the tranche of access that we got. There’s still some stuff that we’re going to continue to push forward, but

15 00:02:13.580 ⇒ 00:02:17.800 Uttam Kumaran: In a… in a timeline like this, for me, it’s always, like.

16 00:02:17.910 ⇒ 00:02:27.119 Uttam Kumaran: perfect is, like, the enemy of good, so we’re gonna keep driving. I… we got the minimum amount that we need to still drive towards really cool recommendations.

17 00:02:27.120 ⇒ 00:02:35.500 Uttam Kumaran: it’s gonna be really nice if we can get some of these further access, but I still feel… feel good. On the marketing side, we do have, the budgets.

18 00:02:35.500 ⇒ 00:02:47.600 Uttam Kumaran: And access to GA. There are a few other things that I’ll continue to request access to as we go, but again, I feel good about everything. Additionally, I think we did a good job. We got able to meet all the characters before Christmas.

19 00:02:47.640 ⇒ 00:02:52.180 Uttam Kumaran: So in terms of, like, I’ve already met the Evolve team, met the Dream team, met everybody internally.

20 00:02:52.180 ⇒ 00:03:10.549 Uttam Kumaran: Of course, we’re still talking to the CSR team about stuff on the Andy side. So then I think right now, where we’re… where we’re basically starting as our team is back from break as well, is starting to look at the… each piece of the customer journey. So today, you’ll… we’ll be presenting a little bit about

21 00:03:10.600 ⇒ 00:03:16.819 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the buyer, and the kind of the conditions for the buyer, and talking a little bit about

22 00:03:16.980 ⇒ 00:03:36.220 Uttam Kumaran: marketing and awareness. I actually went and bought, ABC for my house, like, right… actually, they came in the Friday after Christmas, which was also great. And so I’ll talk about, like, my purchasing journey, and then we’ll sort of talk about, you know, the next few weeks, but…

23 00:03:36.220 ⇒ 00:03:53.170 Uttam Kumaran: Overall, I still feel pretty good. I think after this week, Amber and Zoran, who’s on our team, are starting to look at a lot of the data. In addition, we’ve… we’ve also made a lot of progress on the data infrastructure side, so we worked with Tim. We have a… what’s called a data warehouse setup, which is like a… it’s…

24 00:03:53.170 ⇒ 00:03:58.530 Uttam Kumaran: Google’s BigQuery product, it’s a place for us to land and visualize, start to visualize things.

25 00:03:58.610 ⇒ 00:04:05.559 Uttam Kumaran: So again, like, sort of hitting on, all four of these sort of at the same time.

26 00:04:05.710 ⇒ 00:04:13.140 Uttam Kumaran: I think the other thing, Matt, I mentioned is, I know there are marketing interviews going on, so if we want to, like, try and accelerate

27 00:04:13.480 ⇒ 00:04:26.870 Uttam Kumaran: Item 3, or if you need that information from us, which is helping on, like, the knowledge transfer memo, and whether anything that we’ve learned is important to those interviews, we can… we can do that.

28 00:04:26.980 ⇒ 00:04:29.070 Uttam Kumaran: Instead of waiting, I don’t know…

29 00:04:29.290 ⇒ 00:04:38.160 Uttam Kumaran: where those interviews are in the state, or if it’s, you know, maybe it’s another question. I think it’s early. Okay. Okay, okay. All right.

30 00:04:38.540 ⇒ 00:04:49.029 Uttam Kumaran: Then I… I think for… for us, for me, it’ll be… if… if we’ve got all the access on the marketing side, that we’re gonna get, then I’m just gonna go…

31 00:04:49.850 ⇒ 00:04:56.349 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’m gonna… so that’s what I’m gonna… I’ll tell you at the end of today, kind of, like, a couple things that I still need.

32 00:04:56.890 ⇒ 00:05:02.210 Uttam Kumaran: But if interviews are happening, then I want to make sure that’s in your hands.

33 00:05:02.590 ⇒ 00:05:08.039 Uttam Kumaran: You know, because that’ll be important for whoever, whoever, you know, is kind of seeing the role.

34 00:05:10.050 ⇒ 00:05:17.910 Uttam Kumaran: Great, so, I mean, Clarence, I could pass it to you to kind of go through the industry work, and then in terms of that, we’re going to go through the, sort of.

35 00:05:18.100 ⇒ 00:05:25.029 Uttam Kumaran: this, like, industry analytics, kind of talk through my purchasing journey, and I’ll sort of discuss

36 00:05:25.030 ⇒ 00:05:41.020 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ll… and then the last piece is, we already have, I think, some feelings around expected recommendations, so I don’t want this… this doesn’t need to be, like, okay, wait until the end. Like, I want to share some things that I’m a lot more confident in, and then there’s still some things that we’re going to discover.

37 00:05:41.780 ⇒ 00:05:45.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe I can… do you want to run on yours? Go ahead.

38 00:05:46.140 ⇒ 00:05:46.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

39 00:05:47.250 ⇒ 00:05:57.759 Uttam Kumaran: So, Matt, I need to get a chance to introduce myself. My background is in innovation consulting for Young, and I recently left to start working with you now, and…

40 00:05:57.860 ⇒ 00:06:17.049 Uttam Kumaran: Part of what we do… my sector focus was financial services, but in anything that we do in terms of improving data or taking a look at what the strategy should be, we’d like to take a look at the entire institutional data set of what the market drivers are, the environment that you’re operating.

41 00:06:17.050 ⇒ 00:06:22.629 Uttam Kumaran: the upcoming trends that are going to matter to the decision-making process and strategy. So,

42 00:06:23.390 ⇒ 00:06:26.770 Uttam Kumaran: This is for me to share with you, you know.

43 00:06:26.950 ⇒ 00:06:34.399 Uttam Kumaran: What’s available in that public data, and also to get your reaction, your gut experience reaction, and whether that data is true.

44 00:06:34.450 ⇒ 00:06:58.289 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ll say it in a really funny way, you guys ever watch Family Feud? And, people give an answer, and you go like, that’s gotta be top 10, and it wasn’t at all, right? So, this might be wrong, right? This is just institutional data, so, our, like, best output for this conversation is stop me anytime, ask for clarifications if anything kind of looks fishy, but also tell me if you agree or completely agree.

45 00:06:58.290 ⇒ 00:07:00.580 Uttam Kumaran: disagree with some of these trends.

46 00:07:04.180 ⇒ 00:07:08.270 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s pretty much exactly it.

47 00:07:09.010 ⇒ 00:07:24.049 Uttam Kumaran: So, let’s just start real top level. When we take a look at, you know, your address on the market, who might be buying home services today, I’d like to take a look at the trends of homeowners, especially first-time new homeowners. These are national statistics.

48 00:07:24.160 ⇒ 00:07:38.969 Uttam Kumaran: And what we’re seeing is, for first-time homebuyers, 32% of them are Millennials or Gen Z, and that growing demographic is actually 61%, if you just look at first-time buyers, are that same Millennial and Gen Z.

49 00:07:39.160 ⇒ 00:07:46.250 Uttam Kumaran: So, I like to look at the metrics for first-time homebuyers, because, you know, people who already have homes probably have their gut.

50 00:07:46.670 ⇒ 00:07:50.340 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the person’s able to build a relationship.

51 00:07:50.370 ⇒ 00:08:09.950 Uttam Kumaran: So, 61% of this demographic doesn’t have a gap yet. They don’t have a point of contact. This would be the market that I would explore and see what you can attain. And the great news is, like, we can really log in on this growing segment and say, this is what matters for future growth. This is nationwide, right? This is nationwide. We’re going to zoom in Texas.

52 00:08:11.140 ⇒ 00:08:17.650 Uttam Kumaran: Any, any feedback? Does that make sense to what you guys are seeing? Okay, so you said 32%, that’s 32%.

53 00:08:17.820 ⇒ 00:08:29.400 Uttam Kumaran: Millennial, oldest is, like, 40-ish? Yeah, it moves out at, like, either 44 or 40, depending on which survey, but…

54 00:08:31.940 ⇒ 00:08:43.509 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so let’s zoom into… I love when you guys are waiting on. So, if we take a look at trends for awesome things, I just want to clear everything out and really focus on your… on your two largest market drivers.

55 00:08:44.280 ⇒ 00:08:49.599 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we’re seeing that this actually is, you know, younger than the average national trend.

56 00:08:49.720 ⇒ 00:09:07.189 Uttam Kumaran: Your average home buyer in Austin is 32 to 44. They’re spending almost half a million dollars on the median home price, and in San Antonio, it’s a little bit less in the home price, but your demographic is even younger, because that lower home price, you know, offers capabilities for people to buy.

57 00:09:07.190 ⇒ 00:09:24.859 Uttam Kumaran: And a lot of these people are probably military, and that matters, in my mind, because, you know, I’m also a former service member, but, like, from my personal experience, when you’re leaving for training, and, or you’re deployed, or whatever, getting home services is actually quite a challenge.

58 00:09:24.860 ⇒ 00:09:33.770 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, you know, knowing that there’s a unique, demographic in one of the areas that you searched, could be helpful in coming up with some strategies.

59 00:09:35.140 ⇒ 00:09:36.080 Uttam Kumaran: I know.

60 00:09:37.470 ⇒ 00:09:38.200 Uttam Kumaran: Terry.

61 00:09:39.420 ⇒ 00:09:40.200 Uttam Kumaran: No.

62 00:09:41.020 ⇒ 00:09:44.079 Uttam Kumaran: Directly by… not an advertising by company.

63 00:09:44.190 ⇒ 00:09:47.300 Uttam Kumaran: Discount that’s coming back, so yeah.

64 00:09:48.480 ⇒ 00:09:49.940 Uttam Kumaran: And not publicized.

65 00:09:52.100 ⇒ 00:10:12.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and we’ll just dive a little bit deeper into, like, Texas specifically compared to the nation, right? You’re looking at a $50 bi l l i o nann u a l ma r k e t s i z e p r e d i c t e df or t hi s u p co min g y e a r, an d co m p a r e d t o t h e na t i o n o f a t o t a l o f$ 526 billion, like, Texas actually has 10%. That is massive.

66 00:10:12.280 ⇒ 00:10:18.319 Uttam Kumaran: So the addressable market is huge, and the predicted growth is twice what national averages seem to be.

67 00:10:18.410 ⇒ 00:10:33.930 Uttam Kumaran: But the really interesting statistic here is that your Texas homebuyer is… homeowner is actually spending less on maintenance overall compared to national statistics, and the surprising part is they end up having more hidden costs.

68 00:10:34.100 ⇒ 00:10:49.590 Uttam Kumaran: And when I took a look into that data, it was because, AC repairs are, like, the number one surprise cost. Therefore, like, just Texas as an average ends up having a lot of additional hidden costs that, don’t apply nationally.

69 00:10:49.730 ⇒ 00:11:03.829 Uttam Kumaran: What that matters to strategy, I mean, it’s important to think about, you know, maybe using this message as a lever to say, hey, we understand that, you know, Texas is really common to have these unexpected costs.

70 00:11:03.830 ⇒ 00:11:10.299 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And if you, you know, invest early in getting your AC maintenance toned, you’re covering costs.

71 00:11:11.000 ⇒ 00:11:15.619 Uttam Kumaran: So, just a Texas-specific perspective, any thoughts?

72 00:11:15.940 ⇒ 00:11:18.669 Uttam Kumaran: So, maintenance would be your ongoing, you know.

73 00:11:19.240 ⇒ 00:11:33.400 Uttam Kumaran: expected, you know, pest control, AC maintenance. Yeah, the hidden costs are things like, oh, I need to get my roof replaced, rebrand fell, right?

74 00:11:35.300 ⇒ 00:11:39.570 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I know with our… HVAC maintenance plan.

75 00:11:39.860 ⇒ 00:11:42.740 Uttam Kumaran: Emphasizing… you’re covered.

76 00:11:43.580 ⇒ 00:11:55.659 Uttam Kumaran: you’re not going to have an unexpected cost because you’re covered for it. Yeah. You’re paying as you go, and you’re building value towards your placement. I think that’s one of the keys of our

77 00:11:56.000 ⇒ 00:11:59.510 Uttam Kumaran: AMP, which is our… basically our HVAC.

78 00:11:59.550 ⇒ 00:12:18.509 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think… but I think it’s really putting this in the messaging is also something clear, like, from… in my house, so I called to get a capacitor replaced, but we already knew that capacitor was sort of dying, and I’m renting, but the homeowner was like, I’m gonna buy this, and like, I can call someone out.

79 00:12:18.530 ⇒ 00:12:37.420 Uttam Kumaran: And then when I called, he’s like, I’ll take a look at it, and I was asking him questions, but it was something that should have got caught on a maintenance thing, and it would have gone out this… probably this next summer. Usually the most common. Yeah, yeah, and I’m… I’m… my background’s in electrical engineering, so I know exactly, like, why there’s a capacitor and why it’s… it’s that way, but I do think that

80 00:12:37.680 ⇒ 00:12:46.700 Uttam Kumaran: he… the way he explained it, he’s like, you probably want to went out, and this is what would have happened. He’s like, the reason for the maintenance plan, but even putting it at this cost.

81 00:12:46.720 ⇒ 00:13:01.539 Uttam Kumaran: is a good way of us to take what’s… what’s happening, like, what happened in my home when he explained it to me, you need to scale that in your marketing messaging, right? And it is sort of like an insurance plan, but also the numbers, like, totally speak. It’s not like…

82 00:13:01.590 ⇒ 00:13:20.329 Uttam Kumaran: this is, like, so this will happen to you, you know, versus there may be other services that may be more optional. If you’re in Texas, like, you really, really need this, you know? Yeah, and I think that delta in national spending compared to Texas, it shows that homeowners do have that money available.

83 00:13:20.410 ⇒ 00:13:21.140 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not happening.

84 00:13:22.780 ⇒ 00:13:24.240 Uttam Kumaran: Fit that budget, too.

85 00:13:24.700 ⇒ 00:13:32.399 Uttam Kumaran: you know, maintaining… Any insight into why the, you know, the total is more, but the average maintenance is less?

86 00:13:32.720 ⇒ 00:13:48.219 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, I don’t know if we have that on our side, but there is a statistic from Angie’s List that shows that the millennial and Gen Z population spend a lot more on maintenance in comparison.

87 00:13:49.100 ⇒ 00:14:07.070 Uttam Kumaran: And that is because they typically buy older homes. They fall into, you know, price brackets where they don’t, you know, have the ability to spend it on improvements. And that’s probably why the national average in maintenance spending is relatively low. You still have a lot of legacy homes.

88 00:14:08.330 ⇒ 00:14:14.059 Uttam Kumaran: other large groups, right? Because, like, if you look at total home ownership, Millennium Gen Z are still in the average.

89 00:14:15.620 ⇒ 00:14:18.150 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s really where that weird number comes from.

90 00:14:18.730 ⇒ 00:14:24.430 Uttam Kumaran: But it does signal that, you know, there is an opportunity to capture more of that.

91 00:14:25.640 ⇒ 00:14:26.530 Uttam Kumaran: meetings.

92 00:14:26.730 ⇒ 00:14:29.249 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and one thing I want to highlight also is

93 00:14:29.260 ⇒ 00:14:43.930 Uttam Kumaran: And we do this in our business, and a lot of people we support, is you have to set up what’s called ICPs, which is, like, your ideal customer profile, and the messaging to each of these categories is most likely to be different.

94 00:14:43.930 ⇒ 00:14:50.320 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so this is exactly what happens, is you have one landing page, you’re serving all these people, then you’re serving nobody.

95 00:14:50.320 ⇒ 00:15:09.989 Uttam Kumaran: And so we have to think about messaging that hits each of these people in particular ways, depending on how they buy, why they buy. And so the reason a millennial or a Gen Z buys is going to be very different than another reason. And so when we think about marketing campaigns to run, the messaging has to hit that person where they are.

96 00:15:10.000 ⇒ 00:15:18.419 Uttam Kumaran: If you market to everybody, you sort of market to nobody. And I think, again, these are all things that should come at, like, oh yeah, it should be obvious.

97 00:15:18.420 ⇒ 00:15:32.410 Uttam Kumaran: But what we didn’t see is marketing budget or messaging tailored towards each of these types of buyers. What we saw is, like, an entire marketing budget, a set of all these campaigns that are going to everybody, right? And so.

98 00:15:32.410 ⇒ 00:15:51.690 Uttam Kumaran: you may find, you know, that we do messaging to millennials, it should not… it should not result in people older buying. Like, it should be targeted to them. And what you’re going to find is the messaging hits with them, it hits exactly at their, what they’re worried about in their home, why they buy, and then they convert with ABC.

99 00:15:51.690 ⇒ 00:15:58.100 Uttam Kumaran: And so there’s a lot to happen that can happen on conversion rate optimization, the way we set up landing pages, but ultimately.

100 00:15:58.100 ⇒ 00:16:11.020 Uttam Kumaran: ABC needs to have sets of messaging for each of these categories, whether it is all of those, whether we just focus on a couple. If the way the industry breaks this down is in this manner, then this is most likely what we should…

101 00:16:11.150 ⇒ 00:16:12.490 Uttam Kumaran: What we should go with.

102 00:16:14.170 ⇒ 00:16:24.379 Uttam Kumaran: And you called it. Okay. So, it says, each of these demographics, do we get their attention from different places?

103 00:16:24.600 ⇒ 00:16:42.750 Uttam Kumaran: And, I personally think after you look at your website, social media, the presence, like, you’re definitely doing great with legacy, brand loyalty, right? Being able to pop up on searches, and, show up on, you know, sites like Nextdoor, and people do recommend and stuff.

104 00:16:42.820 ⇒ 00:16:46.320 Uttam Kumaran: You know, as a key verdict search in those communities.

105 00:16:46.320 ⇒ 00:17:07.190 Uttam Kumaran: But, if you look at the growing trend for Millennials and Gen Z, Gen Z spends their time in apps that we don’t even go to, right? They spend most of their time on TikTok and Instagram, and even TikTok Shop is now a e-commerce site engine that’s built into where they are, right? They have different expectations of, like, high availability.

106 00:17:07.190 ⇒ 00:17:12.429 Uttam Kumaran: Speed, this expectation that they can book immediately and have the services done.

107 00:17:12.530 ⇒ 00:17:27.890 Uttam Kumaran: this is all incited on, you know, based on the fact that this generation is the first one that grew up with all this Uber Eats and, like, you know, things like that. Right? Same thing with millennials, you know…

108 00:17:27.890 ⇒ 00:17:46.830 Uttam Kumaran: They have no idea. They’ve never heard a… Yeah, I mean, same thing goes for these millennials, though, right? Like, this group typically uses Google Search and local service ads, that pop up on that, you know, that first Google search, but now that’s being dominated within iSearch.

109 00:17:47.230 ⇒ 00:17:51.450 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And a lot of that same core audience, 294 are…

110 00:17:51.490 ⇒ 00:18:09.269 Uttam Kumaran: So, targeting, you know, those spaces and making sure that your brand is there as an available mechanism is also another interesting strategy. But this is really just to reinforce what Tom was just saying,

111 00:18:09.270 ⇒ 00:18:12.720 Uttam Kumaran: We gotta reach out to these different segments, right?

112 00:18:12.720 ⇒ 00:18:19.370 Uttam Kumaran: and even down to their interests, actually vastly differ. I, I mentioned before that,

113 00:18:19.460 ⇒ 00:18:23.760 Uttam Kumaran: the anxious list survey said millennials really are into that event.

114 00:18:24.510 ⇒ 00:18:26.319 Uttam Kumaran: about that.

115 00:18:26.760 ⇒ 00:18:35.220 Uttam Kumaran: Whereas, like, GenX and Big Boomers are looking to upgrade, renovate, or even do some hybrid-type DIY.

116 00:18:36.890 ⇒ 00:18:38.420 Uttam Kumaran: People love me as an only…

117 00:18:38.630 ⇒ 00:18:42.849 Uttam Kumaran: I’m 35. You live in San Antonio?

118 00:18:43.550 ⇒ 00:18:51.890 Uttam Kumaran: Have you heard of ABC before? Yes. Okay. But tell them what I told you.

119 00:18:56.780 ⇒ 00:18:59.229 Uttam Kumaran: Like, just out of my house across the street.

120 00:18:59.860 ⇒ 00:19:01.730 Uttam Kumaran: Home’s owned by Ninja Blast Center.

121 00:19:02.210 ⇒ 00:19:02.980 Uttam Kumaran: Steve.

122 00:19:05.390 ⇒ 00:19:20.560 Uttam Kumaran: And there it is, ABC truck, digging out garbage cans. It’s like… I told him the moment you start talking with us, as soon as you go home, you’re gonna see a truck. I swear, you have not seen it. Five years in San Antonio.

123 00:19:20.670 ⇒ 00:19:21.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

124 00:19:22.270 ⇒ 00:19:23.969 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just a quick takeaway.

125 00:19:24.350 ⇒ 00:19:25.589 Uttam Kumaran: Spending at this point.

126 00:19:29.030 ⇒ 00:19:34.830 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I think so. I mean, we’re… I think so. Like, I mean, in Gen X, you know, to serve…

127 00:19:35.020 ⇒ 00:19:40.849 Uttam Kumaran: look at who runs our company. Yeah. And we touch on…

128 00:19:41.150 ⇒ 00:19:46.139 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. But as a percentage, I don’t think we’re spending… it’s almost like we’re spending too much

129 00:19:46.290 ⇒ 00:20:04.499 Uttam Kumaran: And if you say baby boomers, when you go back to your first title, those are the people who are not first time. They’re not first time, yeah. So they either… they may have already churned, or they may have a competitor, and it’s much more expensive to purchase that lead than it is to just get the people who are coming out. But it’s… it’s not to say you do one or the other, you have to do both.

130 00:20:04.500 ⇒ 00:20:08.650 Uttam Kumaran: But actually, any of your new customer acquisition spend

131 00:20:08.670 ⇒ 00:20:24.260 Uttam Kumaran: The spend should actually match what we saw, here, which is, like, you should see that your percentage of spend should match the percentage of the new home buyers for any sort of marketing spend that’s going to new customer acquisition.

132 00:20:26.500 ⇒ 00:20:27.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

133 00:20:28.880 ⇒ 00:20:40.399 Uttam Kumaran: And anecdotally, I think it’s always been the case. Again, maybe every week, every person I meet who has a house, I ask who they’re using. And so, yeah, it’s actually… it’s basically matched this, like.

134 00:20:40.560 ⇒ 00:20:55.130 Uttam Kumaran: the late millennial or Gen Z, they’re not aware of ABC. And then for everybody that’s… So that’s… this is my… my next point, is a lot of them, I don’t… and this is where I don’t know whether it’s me, but, like.

135 00:20:55.490 ⇒ 00:21:05.629 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if they even know that they need to do this, or their home didn’t come with a manual, they’re, like, Googling. Basically, they’re waiting for something to go wrong, and then they figure it out.

136 00:21:06.510 ⇒ 00:21:10.500 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly, exactly. And so…

137 00:21:14.310 ⇒ 00:21:18.830 Uttam Kumaran: How do you… do you have maintenance services? I do everything by myself.

138 00:21:19.240 ⇒ 00:21:21.810 Uttam Kumaran: All the food caps, just and stuff.

139 00:21:25.900 ⇒ 00:21:27.750 Uttam Kumaran: Oh. Oh? Yeah. Okay.

140 00:21:27.880 ⇒ 00:21:39.510 Uttam Kumaran: And I was like, maybe I should have been doing this on myself. It works, and I tested everything in my full ears, everything’s great. There’s definitely moments where…

141 00:21:45.040 ⇒ 00:21:56.179 Uttam Kumaran: Like, say the AC went out of your house tomorrow. Who would you call? I actually… that actually happened to me. One of my breakers went out. Oh. And I just diagnosed it and swapped it myself.

142 00:21:56.380 ⇒ 00:22:03.390 Uttam Kumaran: You’re a do-it-yourself. Yeah, but that’s really because, like, I… I just kind of direct the concept…

143 00:22:03.540 ⇒ 00:22:04.750 Uttam Kumaran: too, randomly pick.

144 00:22:05.010 ⇒ 00:22:21.690 Uttam Kumaran: phone during the day when I have meetings like this, like, you want another action item. And you have to shop it. You do feel like you have to shop. It’s a process. It’s a process, and it’s not clear, and you don’t know how much these things typically cost. You don’t really know if, like, okay, is this, like.

145 00:22:21.770 ⇒ 00:22:39.889 Uttam Kumaran: just a random person? Did I just get the first result? Like, there’s all these things that… I think millennials have this nervousness. This… also, you see this when you… you see this in the dealerships. Any type of big purchase, I feel like, you know, they… they end up… I don’t know, there’s something that… that happens, but…

146 00:22:40.880 ⇒ 00:22:43.389 Uttam Kumaran: But no one’s…

147 00:22:48.940 ⇒ 00:22:49.640 Uttam Kumaran: Slow.

148 00:22:50.840 ⇒ 00:22:55.740 Uttam Kumaran: turn over that rock, so I don’t know what kind of, like, repairs that are in there, like, I just haven’t done it.

149 00:22:56.170 ⇒ 00:23:01.130 Uttam Kumaran: you know, most millennials buy a car after talking to their parents, or… Yes. Yes.

150 00:23:01.320 ⇒ 00:23:02.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

151 00:23:04.560 ⇒ 00:23:12.459 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll talk a little bit about, you know, when I… when I got ABC Service, kind of, like, my experience, and they did a good job explaining

152 00:23:12.500 ⇒ 00:23:14.519 Uttam Kumaran: But, you know, in that moment.

153 00:23:14.520 ⇒ 00:23:32.589 Uttam Kumaran: he probably had a good opportunity to sell me on a bunch of other stuff, and again, when I… when I looked at ABC’s list of services, it immediately be like, okay, what is wrong in my house that I’ve just been, like, kind of putting aside? Like, for example, I plug in… I know when I plug in the vacuum in a certain plug in the kitchen, the breaker goes off. That’s a great one to fix.

154 00:23:32.660 ⇒ 00:23:42.860 Uttam Kumaran: like, something just happened today where my… the reason I was late is my garage didn’t open, something got tripped, and I was like, what happened there? So someone… someone just has to come… there’s some electrical stuff that…

155 00:23:42.860 ⇒ 00:23:53.169 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m… again, I work in a… I can’t… I’m not gonna touch any of that. I’m not gonna do any of that. I, so that’s, like, a… that’s something that I totally want to fix, but yeah, it’s…

156 00:23:53.170 ⇒ 00:24:04.939 Uttam Kumaran: So there… but see, this is really the creative part of marketing, is understanding your buyer, understanding their securities, understanding how they buy, and matching, you know, it to them. The only thing I would…

157 00:24:04.950 ⇒ 00:24:06.780 Uttam Kumaran: Say, on the first slide.

158 00:24:06.800 ⇒ 00:24:10.519 Uttam Kumaran: Well… That shit here.

159 00:24:10.860 ⇒ 00:24:17.430 Uttam Kumaran: or going after the first-time home buyer. Yes. Would you also be going after the first-time home buyer?

160 00:24:17.650 ⇒ 00:24:20.080 Uttam Kumaran: in our market. In other words.

161 00:24:20.550 ⇒ 00:24:33.319 Uttam Kumaran: They might even be not… they may be trans… transferring into our market, so we do need… Oh, I see. They’re not… it’s not the first home, but it’s their first home in our market.

162 00:24:33.430 ⇒ 00:24:44.909 Uttam Kumaran: Right. Yeah, the guy that they have is in Colorado. Yeah, one thing we should look at is, transfers, basically, parents. Right.

163 00:24:45.140 ⇒ 00:24:55.090 Uttam Kumaran: They probably have a little bit more… Yeah.

164 00:24:55.750 ⇒ 00:24:58.729 Uttam Kumaran: And they don’t know that, because they’re in a new mark. Yeah, yeah.

165 00:24:59.220 ⇒ 00:25:02.760 Uttam Kumaran: Because, you know, when they get there, if they use it somewhere else, they’re coming, probably…

166 00:25:02.950 ⇒ 00:25:09.269 Uttam Kumaran: some Googling, you know, how do you, yeah, how do you capture that before they go next door? Yeah.

167 00:25:12.230 ⇒ 00:25:15.440 Uttam Kumaran: But in one respect, you go, okay, Or…

168 00:25:16.380 ⇒ 00:25:19.239 Uttam Kumaran: conundrum has been, well, our market’s growing

169 00:25:19.390 ⇒ 00:25:25.899 Uttam Kumaran: But our leads aren’t, so our… Mark is our usual marketing.

170 00:25:26.540 ⇒ 00:25:27.610 Uttam Kumaran: plan.

171 00:25:28.100 ⇒ 00:25:39.710 Uttam Kumaran: kind of what we’ve been doing all along, and now our customer’s kind of aging out around capturing younger folks. Yeah, I’ll put… I’d bet the money on that. I…

172 00:25:40.180 ⇒ 00:25:45.909 Uttam Kumaran: I think after seeing this slide, it made me really realize that, yeah, like, our marketing has

173 00:25:45.980 ⇒ 00:25:56.599 Uttam Kumaran: more focused here, but again, these folks shifted. It used to be the case, and they all shift down. They are still a percent, and there’s still people that are buying.

174 00:25:56.600 ⇒ 00:26:14.940 Uttam Kumaran: And I think it’s… the marketing is most likely still working for them, but they are… they are, a smaller share of the new… of the new home buyer, and the new home buyer, the way they purchase and the messaging is actually really distinctly different.

175 00:26:16.560 ⇒ 00:26:27.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Matt, that’s a great call-out. I’ll also pull some demographics. On the people outside of this area that are moving in, that are outside of the Gen Z

176 00:26:27.840 ⇒ 00:26:33.119 Uttam Kumaran: That’d be really interesting to see how did San Antonio have a lot of people moving in, I’m sure that’s…

177 00:26:35.810 ⇒ 00:26:51.249 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and one thing Tom said a little earlier was, like, acquiring your first-time, customers are… it’s a lot cheaper than trying to steal a customer from another company, right? So, we want to focus on that new, and also have a different strategy.

178 00:26:51.430 ⇒ 00:26:57.069 Uttam Kumaran: To kind of, you know, guard your keep and… Keep the customer story.

179 00:26:57.650 ⇒ 00:27:12.920 Uttam Kumaran: So you said that, on average, millennials spend more on maintenance services than Ubers do? Yeah. They’re the largest segment that, spends money on vehicles, so I wonder, though… if you were to dig deeper.

180 00:27:13.520 ⇒ 00:27:16.070 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, because you would assume their houses are.

181 00:27:16.210 ⇒ 00:27:19.890 Uttam Kumaran: maybe nice and super expensive to look at.

182 00:27:20.120 ⇒ 00:27:31.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, another thing is, like, maybe they’re not as, open to doing DIY. That’s always been my line that, you know, like I said, I say, I’m not as handy as my father was.

183 00:27:31.410 ⇒ 00:27:33.469 Uttam Kumaran: My kids are not attacking time.

184 00:27:33.650 ⇒ 00:27:36.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Now, you’re the exception.

185 00:27:36.530 ⇒ 00:27:47.409 Uttam Kumaran: By fixing your air conditioner, but most people are not… I wish you were my neighbor. Yeah, but most people aren’t going to do that. My kids will… they’ll pull up something.

186 00:27:48.240 ⇒ 00:28:04.930 Uttam Kumaran: for… it’s an easy fix, or even fixing something on the car, like how to change your wiper blades. Well, they’re not handy, they can’t figure it out, but they watch it on a YouTube video, they can do it. And everything’s on a YouTube video. Most things now will have a QR code by it, and it’ll take you to a YouTube page.

187 00:28:05.520 ⇒ 00:28:07.550 Uttam Kumaran: There’s almost, like, a lower rung.

188 00:28:09.710 ⇒ 00:28:15.640 Uttam Kumaran: there’s almost, like, a lower rung of services that I feel like people are doing themselves.

189 00:28:15.800 ⇒ 00:28:22.640 Uttam Kumaran: But actually, there’s a higher rung of things that you guys are experts on that you can’t… there’s no way they would do by themselves. Yeah, I wonder if…

190 00:28:23.270 ⇒ 00:28:24.700 Uttam Kumaran: I use tests…

191 00:28:25.080 ⇒ 00:28:35.699 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s another one. What’s that? Sorry again? Two or three of the studies recently said they just switched samples.

192 00:28:38.280 ⇒ 00:28:43.829 Uttam Kumaran: Is that the one you showed me? Yeah, it’s like a free bag.

193 00:28:46.760 ⇒ 00:28:50.190 Uttam Kumaran: think it’s… Pretty neat.

194 00:28:50.430 ⇒ 00:28:51.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

195 00:28:51.850 ⇒ 00:28:54.910 Uttam Kumaran: But you can modify it, so I was like, hey, I’m noticing you off.

196 00:28:55.660 ⇒ 00:28:59.240 Uttam Kumaran: X, Y, and Z, and they’ll give you a different mixture,

197 00:28:59.520 ⇒ 00:29:01.040 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I’ve been using, but…

198 00:29:01.660 ⇒ 00:29:10.860 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve seen that there. You can buy a kit for them on. Supposedly, they tailor it to where you…

199 00:29:19.470 ⇒ 00:29:24.989 Uttam Kumaran: And, it’s like Gutam has seen these slides before.

200 00:29:28.830 ⇒ 00:29:31.969 Uttam Kumaran: So, I actually showed all the insights that I used on

201 00:29:32.190 ⇒ 00:29:39.469 Uttam Kumaran: As well as net new data, and just say, make me an aggregate pretend customer that matches all of these, you know.

202 00:29:39.800 ⇒ 00:29:41.950 Uttam Kumaran: compete, opportunities.

203 00:29:42.140 ⇒ 00:29:56.669 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s what you can get. Somebody’s average, 40 years old. Surprisingly, only 64% of them are married, which is an all-time low, so you might actually have households where people live alone, which makes scheduling a little bit more difficult for…

204 00:29:58.580 ⇒ 00:30:03.939 Uttam Kumaran: Income is, is, you know, definitely different based on region as well.

205 00:30:04.250 ⇒ 00:30:22.580 Uttam Kumaran: that little note that I put there, you guys don’t have to squint to read it, but one thing I was going to say is I do understand that you’re not going direct to customer, right? There’s also tons of B2B deals, and the reason why this data is still relevant is the average age of facility and property managers has gone down to 47.

206 00:30:22.580 ⇒ 00:30:34.070 Uttam Kumaran: from 53. So that, that was data from last year from the Martel Group, so, even your B2B customers are getting a little bit younger and starting to slide into this demographic direction.

207 00:30:34.130 ⇒ 00:30:38.120 Uttam Kumaran: So, they’re a little bit older than this group, but close to 9.

208 00:30:38.440 ⇒ 00:30:39.140 Uttam Kumaran: April.

209 00:30:41.210 ⇒ 00:30:42.570 Uttam Kumaran: 55%.

210 00:30:44.010 ⇒ 00:30:50.160 Uttam Kumaran: 5… So, not as good at that as we should be.

211 00:30:50.490 ⇒ 00:30:55.680 Uttam Kumaran: survey kind of split up that whole entire journey, the journey that Ms. I talked to you about.

212 00:30:55.680 ⇒ 00:31:11.779 Uttam Kumaran: into these five phases, right? Starting with discovery, how do they find you guys, right? And this composite buyer probably is going to find you from an online platform, like Angie’s List, or even something like AI-powered search answers, to find a perfect professional.

213 00:31:11.780 ⇒ 00:31:14.879 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re gonna really rely on reviews.

214 00:31:14.920 ⇒ 00:31:23.949 Uttam Kumaran: Before calling. Interestingly, Bright Local says 95% of buyers just ignore everything that has less than 4 stars. I’m not sure about that. I do shop around a little bit more.

215 00:31:23.950 ⇒ 00:31:36.040 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Contact is… this is a really interesting part. You weren’t kidding that, millennials are really antisocial. 55, almost 55% of them prefer texting.

216 00:31:36.060 ⇒ 00:31:39.779 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And only 25 actually want to talk.

217 00:31:40.270 ⇒ 00:31:53.560 Uttam Kumaran: No, for me, it’s not as much as the antiso, it’s more… when you do make a phone call, you know you’re gonna… half the time, AT&T or whoever you call, they ask for your info, and then you’re gonna finally get a hold, then you get a live agent, they ask for your info again, it’s just a frustrating.

218 00:31:53.670 ⇒ 00:31:58.669 Uttam Kumaran: Whereas texting, I can still be doing my work, and then text is just quicker and efficient.

219 00:31:59.510 ⇒ 00:32:02.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s a great point.

220 00:32:02.570 ⇒ 00:32:13.499 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, I’ll put a pin on this, but there’s a lot of things changing in that contact environment as well. Google is starting to pilot AI-based

221 00:32:13.690 ⇒ 00:32:22.609 Uttam Kumaran: calls, where, me as a buyer can say how I’m looking for control services, and I want you to just call all the companies that are near me?

222 00:32:22.790 ⇒ 00:32:24.600 Uttam Kumaran: And it’ll just do that.

223 00:32:26.630 ⇒ 00:32:28.689 Uttam Kumaran: It’s your name. All that stuff.

224 00:32:32.670 ⇒ 00:32:37.829 Uttam Kumaran: So, the cool thing to mention about that is, like, if you decide to invest in integrating

225 00:32:39.660 ⇒ 00:32:42.500 Uttam Kumaran: sway groups, actually, prior to these transit.

226 00:32:42.730 ⇒ 00:32:51.270 Uttam Kumaran: Probably taking into account, you know, like, they’ll probably say, hey, this is the cheapest, but it’s also a 3-point, you know, they’ll probably try it.

227 00:32:51.430 ⇒ 00:32:59.429 Uttam Kumaran: Use ratings as well, but yeah, the fact is that if you’ve got 7 companies all own four and a half stars, they’re gonna choose the cheapest company.

228 00:33:02.190 ⇒ 00:33:14.399 Uttam Kumaran: And again, millennials are quite spoiled, where we’ve got, like, all of this digital, you know, availability and everything else that happens, and 45% of them, 44% of them, expect to be able to schedule

229 00:33:14.620 ⇒ 00:33:16.589 Uttam Kumaran: I’m being able to see the pictures.

230 00:33:17.050 ⇒ 00:33:18.200 Uttam Kumaran: Do everything.

231 00:33:19.840 ⇒ 00:33:33.559 Uttam Kumaran: And, at the end, actually deciding, right? But you’re absolutely right. Price is the number one factor, regardless of my survey I looked at. This demographic really cares about price, and also the transparency on if that price is…

232 00:33:34.390 ⇒ 00:33:45.199 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, like, if you break down that, that kind of, journey that somebody like this would take before even actually getting the service in Frederick, this is what it’s…

233 00:33:46.800 ⇒ 00:33:51.379 Uttam Kumaran: Anything, you know, stand out for you guys, and anything different from what you’re seeing?

234 00:33:52.850 ⇒ 00:34:08.179 Uttam Kumaran: ChatGPT, I think that’s gonna be one that’s gonna reach someone over the next few years. To me, it’s like Google search, except you have a better trust with ChatGPT or M&I that you feel like it’s a recommendation, not just an advertisement.

235 00:34:08.440 ⇒ 00:34:13.740 Uttam Kumaran: Whereas, yeah, I’m sure it’ll turn in… Yeah, it’ll be interesting in two years with that 17%.

236 00:34:16.500 ⇒ 00:34:25.360 Uttam Kumaran: And he said this weekend, this was somebody who said, well, we’re talking to Dallas, and they keep saying, let’s have a plan. We’ve got food recommendations, where we should go.

237 00:34:25.989 ⇒ 00:34:29.379 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it has, actually.

238 00:34:43.190 ⇒ 00:34:47.099 Uttam Kumaran: And I think we’re just like, hey, come to the restaurant.

239 00:34:47.750 ⇒ 00:34:49.639 Uttam Kumaran: I didn’t made a whole website for me.

240 00:34:50.020 ⇒ 00:34:54.490 Uttam Kumaran: really changing… Portland, New Hampshire. I got a new suitcase.

241 00:34:55.270 ⇒ 00:34:59.229 Uttam Kumaran: Creative size, and it came where it looked like it was already locked.

242 00:34:59.470 ⇒ 00:35:01.919 Uttam Kumaran: You know how there’s, like, the lock on it that you pushes it for a second?

243 00:35:02.170 ⇒ 00:35:17.509 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m freaking out, trying to pack, and I’m gonna get these done, and my kids had already messed with power. So I literally took a picture of it, of the suitcase, put it in the Gemini, and then he told me, said, hey, haven’t sent the code, factory default is 000. Yeah.

244 00:35:18.000 ⇒ 00:35:18.750 Uttam Kumaran: Fox.

245 00:35:21.260 ⇒ 00:35:31.509 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just, it’s so… You can also open it up, and then take a picture of your pile of clothes, and take a picture of it, and say, hey, how’s helping? I mean, even, like, Dad’s thing about taking him to New Hampshire.

246 00:35:33.190 ⇒ 00:35:36.579 Uttam Kumaran: How much do you think it costs to ship a vehicle, freight?

247 00:35:37.170 ⇒ 00:35:42.319 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, but I know how to find it. I know somebody who does.

248 00:35:43.110 ⇒ 00:35:43.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

249 00:35:45.330 ⇒ 00:35:50.760 Uttam Kumaran: It’s pretty Transitioning more from Google

250 00:35:52.590 ⇒ 00:35:55.369 Uttam Kumaran: I would have 30 years ago, I had to Google.

251 00:35:55.570 ⇒ 00:35:59.300 Uttam Kumaran: Ted, PPT could do more complicated.

252 00:35:59.880 ⇒ 00:36:08.269 Uttam Kumaran: And again, showed you trust that they’re not, in fact, it’s putting you trust that you feel like it’s…

253 00:36:08.270 ⇒ 00:36:11.899 Uttam Kumaran: Like, a next-door recommendation, not just a list of…

254 00:36:11.900 ⇒ 00:36:29.090 Uttam Kumaran: Well, oftentimes, sometimes I’ll be looking for something in Austin, and then I said, okay, like, so tell me who can do that, you know? Because I want to learn what it takes, and then immediately after learning what it takes, I’m like, this is overwhelming. Your next question is, who can do this for me? And so that’s what I think, one of the things

255 00:36:29.170 ⇒ 00:36:37.940 Uttam Kumaran: is we’ll do a little bit of an audit on, like, how KPC shows up across a slew of different requests in ChatGPT and Gemini.

256 00:36:38.290 ⇒ 00:36:45.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. It’s just crazy how it bailed me out with my suitcase. I just took a picture of the suitcase.

257 00:36:48.290 ⇒ 00:36:51.310 Uttam Kumaran: Very common.

258 00:36:52.530 ⇒ 00:36:58.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that… I think this next slide is gonna be pretty obvious things. I really just took the insights and just gave you

259 00:37:00.180 ⇒ 00:37:16.659 Uttam Kumaran: this demographic, and one, they’re super impatient. There’s a whole thing of the 30 minutes or less, like, do you want services on time? Weekend availability, this is a huge thing. One of the biggest complaints that surveys say are that

260 00:37:16.690 ⇒ 00:37:27.170 Uttam Kumaran: this demographic is that they’re expecting these services outside of business hours, right? So the whole sentiment is, if I’m working at 9 to 5, then how am I working?

261 00:37:27.370 ⇒ 00:37:31.109 Uttam Kumaran: So I have to start working around them, and…

262 00:37:31.360 ⇒ 00:37:36.199 Uttam Kumaran: By the way, at different times when I work with their doctor offices.

263 00:37:37.000 ⇒ 00:37:39.520 Uttam Kumaran: Hours and weekends, right?

264 00:37:45.050 ⇒ 00:37:50.689 Uttam Kumaran: payment preferences, I, you know, I think that’s pretty, obvious, right?

265 00:37:51.680 ⇒ 00:37:52.480 Uttam Kumaran: Fantastic.

266 00:37:54.230 ⇒ 00:37:56.519 Uttam Kumaran: When can you prefer, even if there’s a charge?

267 00:37:57.640 ⇒ 00:37:58.690 Uttam Kumaran: more contingent.

268 00:37:59.080 ⇒ 00:37:59.910 Uttam Kumaran: I love it.

269 00:38:00.620 ⇒ 00:38:06.530 Uttam Kumaran: And lastly, sustainability, it’s still a thing, you know, there’s a lot of consideration.

270 00:38:07.090 ⇒ 00:38:09.320 Uttam Kumaran: Is the chemical solar plastic truck.

271 00:38:09.630 ⇒ 00:38:11.040 Uttam Kumaran: To be an issue.

272 00:38:11.660 ⇒ 00:38:17.490 Uttam Kumaran: So, having a couple comments, and being your clients’ systems.

273 00:38:20.530 ⇒ 00:38:23.830 Uttam Kumaran: And when you say touchless digital penis, do you think just,

274 00:38:24.560 ⇒ 00:38:35.870 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of our stuff is maintenance, just automatic monthly auto charge. It’s kind of that same realm. Perfect. Yeah, like, I didn’t pay anything… everything for me was done prior to service, yeah.

275 00:38:36.500 ⇒ 00:38:39.449 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so I think that’s exactly it.

276 00:38:42.660 ⇒ 00:38:45.569 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so we talk a lot about Europe.

277 00:38:46.750 ⇒ 00:38:55.250 Uttam Kumaran: We didn’t talk about all the other players in the market, and we didn’t talk about, you know, some of the category winners that I’ve been taking my

278 00:38:56.490 ⇒ 00:39:13.790 Uttam Kumaran: I know. And, you know, before I even dive into each one of these things, what I want to express to you is, like, the growing trend is a lot of… it doesn’t matter what company you have, you end up turning into a partial data and technology.

279 00:39:14.240 ⇒ 00:39:32.020 Uttam Kumaran: You’re also partially a marketing engine, and that’s… those are the two factors that it really takes to compete effectively in this space, because, you’ll see, just when we deep dive into some of these companies, it’s not the actual services that they’re rendering that makes the difference, it’s…

280 00:39:32.020 ⇒ 00:39:49.409 Uttam Kumaran: everything else around it that, makes them the preference for a lot of, the audience. So, yeah, I mean, not much more to say about Pinks, like, they make making appointments really easy. I think the most interesting thing is they hire people outside of, the,

281 00:39:49.450 ⇒ 00:40:04.740 Uttam Kumaran: traditional, service professionals. They got people who work in, you know, like, hospitality and everything so that, like, customer care becomes appropriate. And they’re… they’re just killing it, right? 70 more locations,

282 00:40:04.740 ⇒ 00:40:10.999 Uttam Kumaran: They work on, you know, a kind of a model where people set up

283 00:40:11.600 ⇒ 00:40:16.850 Uttam Kumaran: I wonder what business they do in Austin, including what

284 00:40:16.850 ⇒ 00:40:38.700 Uttam Kumaran: Because sometimes I look at these, and they look great, because they’re all on Instagram, just like, our business might be Google? Yeah, so I was wondering the same thing, and I couldn’t find the exact numbers for every single location, but, I was told that their biggest affiliate locations are in the Austin area. And based on statistics, the highest earners in the affiliate location.

285 00:40:38.710 ⇒ 00:40:40.457 Uttam Kumaran: A curl up.

286 00:40:56.410 ⇒ 00:41:04.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ve got other, you know, digital platforms that have started to actually render services, like,

287 00:41:04.960 ⇒ 00:41:28.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, everything, that own your home strategy, right? Like, a lot of the things that we’re talking about, how maintenance really stress over maintenance, they turned, kind of, maintenance into a subscription plan. And by doing that, they captured a ton of new customers, and this is a global company, so I…

288 00:41:28.540 ⇒ 00:41:34.180 Uttam Kumaran: was only able to get global statistics, and that’s where you’re getting that 4 billion consistent sales.

289 00:41:35.400 ⇒ 00:41:55.349 Uttam Kumaran: And then, there’s also, you know, your cottage industries of two men and a truck that end up being massive organizations because they really just focus on doing one thing incredibly well, which is just moving things, right? Whether you’re moving it or just throwing out the junk, these guys have, you know, estimated almost $750 million for 2025.

290 00:41:55.690 ⇒ 00:42:02.229 Uttam Kumaran: And a lot of it is based on price transparency and being able to know exactly how much you’re gonna pay from the get-go.

291 00:42:02.240 ⇒ 00:42:06.930 Uttam Kumaran: And, I, I don’t know if y’all have had to go through the, the…

292 00:42:06.930 ⇒ 00:42:31.309 Uttam Kumaran: process of moving. It sucks. It’s awful, right? And I had to go through, like, 3 or 4 vendors to even find one or two that are willing to do the move for all my stuff in New York all the way down to Texas. So I got a couple that, like, I went through the whole thing, and they still declined me, and then, like, it’s really hard to actually price compare at that point, because I’m just like, I’m… yeah, just give me anybody to do it, right? So I went with…

293 00:42:31.310 ⇒ 00:42:44.059 Uttam Kumaran: you know, the cheaper of the two options. But with two men in a Truck here, you’re getting better visibility. Trying to work with Ubers, obviously still moving, they’re just bumped out to home buyer.

294 00:42:44.080 ⇒ 00:42:57.799 Uttam Kumaran: Obviously, we tried new realtors, just this thing really worked out. I was really trying inspectors, title companies, moving. I mean, to me, like, a moving company is, like, the same ideal client as us.

295 00:42:58.850 ⇒ 00:43:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yep, people are gonna pay somebody to do the movie for them.

296 00:43:03.840 ⇒ 00:43:16.749 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so you may find that a lot of those folks, they have partnerships, and so it’s very similar in our business. Like, we, we do a lot of data and AI work, but I don’t build data warehouses, but

297 00:43:16.750 ⇒ 00:43:36.029 Uttam Kumaran: I go call the data warehouse, I say, when you sell a data warehouse, someone needs to do this stuff. You should… can we work? And so, it’s actually very similar, so you find a complimentary service where it’s the exact same customer. In fact, there’s a couple things to learn. You learn exactly how they market. If you can go through and look at people that are leaving reviews for them, you can get people that probably just bought

298 00:43:36.190 ⇒ 00:43:46.540 Uttam Kumaran: stuff, so there’s all these strategies to kind of, like, win off of their backs, and it’s actually really complimentary. Yeah.

299 00:43:46.640 ⇒ 00:44:06.009 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, we have, you know, 100,000 people calling, so they were moving this year. Exactly, right? And so you may find that there are these really… and they may say, oh, great, like, when we sell this, it’s actually, we want to advertise that we sell you a larger package as we have partners in many different areas. Yeah. I mean, that’s an amazing point. It’s not unusual.

300 00:44:06.290 ⇒ 00:44:26.820 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s so branded, and, you know, there’s a lot of surface area where there’s a lot of similarities and moving companies, but for you guys, like, the first thing that keeps my mind to me is working with realtors. I would love it in my realtors.

301 00:44:26.960 ⇒ 00:44:36.980 Uttam Kumaran: I recommend that. Here’s, you know, next, you know, 5-10% off your first couple years.

302 00:44:38.530 ⇒ 00:44:59.770 Uttam Kumaran: And lastly, I think it’s important to really just highlight that authority grants is a really interesting kind of dynamic that’s going on, where they’re just accumulating a lot of essential trade service companies, bringing them to a high level of standard, where they’re bringing on-time guarantees, background checks, and, like, non-negotiable benefits that millennials love.

303 00:44:59.770 ⇒ 00:45:09.210 Uttam Kumaran: And just by combining these 15 franchises under one umbrella, over the past 6, 7 years, they’re… they’ve generated over…

304 00:45:10.690 ⇒ 00:45:13.970 Uttam Kumaran: Another interesting strategy.

305 00:45:14.260 ⇒ 00:45:38.909 Uttam Kumaran: If I were to just summarize all this for you, though, like, the growing trend is exactly what I kind of, you know, intro’d with, saying, this is turning into a lot of the higher demand in marketing, right? That unknown color aesthetic, you guys, all new pinks because it wasn’t the window washing that people were buying within the first few years, it was all the pink hats that you saw all over Austin. You couldn’t avoid them, right?

306 00:45:38.910 ⇒ 00:45:43.710 Uttam Kumaran: The marketing is so heavy, and… It’s the only service company for ASP.

307 00:45:43.710 ⇒ 00:45:46.230 Uttam Kumaran: aware.

308 00:45:46.290 ⇒ 00:45:49.740 Uttam Kumaran: A bit of school functions are pretty important.

309 00:45:50.470 ⇒ 00:45:52.660 Uttam Kumaran: Just… just bothers me.

310 00:45:53.250 ⇒ 00:45:56.769 Uttam Kumaran: And, and that goes hand-in-hand with…

311 00:45:57.780 ⇒ 00:46:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: And by the way, those hats aren’t cheap. They’re charging you a huge market, like $35,$ 40 hats. Yeah. The jackets are, like, $100. Everybody’s wearing them. People love them.

312 00:46:10.510 ⇒ 00:46:20.559 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re selling them to the customer. Yes! You know, all these fence moms are, like, wearing pinks that. It’s a cool… It’s a brand. It’s a brand.

313 00:46:26.820 ⇒ 00:46:34.289 Uttam Kumaran: The other trends there? Hospitality over handymen, right? They want somebody who’s gonna answer questions for them.

314 00:46:35.430 ⇒ 00:46:53.849 Uttam Kumaran: That’s no longer, the bar. We talked about that. Predictable reliability, right? Like, these availability windows and, servicing at the appropriate timing,

315 00:46:54.380 ⇒ 00:47:14.309 Uttam Kumaran: care about that, and I knew that for sure just by looking at the winners in the market, right? Well, what are they doing? Well, they’re really focused on, you know, that high level of customer service packiness. So, this is sort of the competitive landscape. What do y’all think? Did I miss any companies that I should dive deep into next time?

316 00:47:14.370 ⇒ 00:47:16.529 Uttam Kumaran: Is there any concepts that I’ve missed here?

317 00:47:17.970 ⇒ 00:47:27.870 Uttam Kumaran: Nothing here shocks me, because you look at it and you go, yeah, I can see why people like this. I mean, on-time guarantees, we know they like that. We haven’t been able to…

318 00:47:28.040 ⇒ 00:47:35.730 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we can most times give a 2-hour window or an arrival window, You know, I know,

319 00:47:36.110 ⇒ 00:47:37.170 Uttam Kumaran: some of our…

320 00:47:37.590 ⇒ 00:47:47.310 Uttam Kumaran: mechanical services we were upset with, because they were not getting that. There would be more of a, we can get you in, but it’s 8 to 5. What time window did we get?

321 00:47:47.710 ⇒ 00:47:58.389 Uttam Kumaran: They said morning, and then I missed… well, I’ll talk about kind of how I… I bought two services a little bit differently, but… I’d be curious, you know, we know…

322 00:47:58.620 ⇒ 00:48:07.069 Uttam Kumaran: Bobby talks quite a bit about it. There are several companies that are… seem like some of the highest growth companies on the pest control side, specifically, do a lot of door-to-work.

323 00:48:07.710 ⇒ 00:48:11.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright, I’ll look into that. Yes.

324 00:48:12.420 ⇒ 00:48:13.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, because we find…

325 00:48:14.010 ⇒ 00:48:31.519 Uttam Kumaran: the people that go door-to-door, I mean, we’ve got most listing sign on our door. I want you not coming. And I still get them. And they still, they don’t do, actually. I don’t understand how they’re successful. Which pisses me off. I’ll have to bring a gift for you guys next time. I started 3D printing privacy covers for your doorbell.

326 00:48:31.670 ⇒ 00:48:35.190 Uttam Kumaran: And he just says, unless you’re Amazon, please don’t recommend them out.

327 00:48:35.190 ⇒ 00:48:58.010 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it’s just a little thing that you can flip over. From what we’ve seen, especially the pest side, it doesn’t work as, you know, mechanical, you know, whatever, but obviously the solar industry’s being in it. Security. Pest control, security. Yeah, internet. It hasn’t been taken off in a long time. Yeah, anyway, there’s… they seem to be growing really fast, I think.

328 00:48:58.010 ⇒ 00:49:02.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, some of the top companies in the country for pest control are that have been

329 00:49:03.080 ⇒ 00:49:20.850 Uttam Kumaran: popped up in the last 10 years. So here’s the thing, if somebody left me a flyer with very clear pricing, I would be… That’s different, yeah. But if you’re just gonna ring my bell and tell me a whole story, I’m not that interested. I don’t know how it works. We all feel like, I don’t want to… I’m not gonna…

330 00:49:21.050 ⇒ 00:49:34.809 Uttam Kumaran: I think they’re just maybe… they’re very aggressive. Yeah, and I have zero… I have no interest. Like, you’ll… I don’t even pick up my phone. I don’t pick up… don’t have any notifications. I can’t…

331 00:49:34.810 ⇒ 00:49:43.659 Uttam Kumaran: deal with it, and so… I don’t know, I feel like, yes, that’s probably working, but you may look at the LTV on those customers may not be great, or… yeah.

332 00:49:43.660 ⇒ 00:49:50.270 Uttam Kumaran: Certainly those companies want to gear up, get the revenue, they’re not a great service company, and then sell the contracts, yeah.

333 00:49:50.900 ⇒ 00:49:59.049 Uttam Kumaran: But a lot of this makes… I mean, it certainly makes sense, the unblue-collar aesthetic, yeah, frictionless tech, yeah, yeah.

334 00:50:01.130 ⇒ 00:50:15.020 Uttam Kumaran: We were inciting that meeting this morning. It is a lot about the soft skills. It’s the communication, it’s the imparting of information that makes it… and we get those compliments a lot on our guys. I said, hey, your guy not only a lot…

335 00:50:15.020 ⇒ 00:50:36.520 Uttam Kumaran: and installed it, but explain to me how it worked, show me what I could do, showed me how, you know, that’s the whole, the whole key. It’s not usually about how good we are at killing bugs, it’s usually about how the customer service was. Yeah. I’m curious, too, I don’t know, I know we’re gonna talk at some point about, kind of, you know, hopefully get to the point where, hey, you spend a dollar on marketing in this avenue on pool versus…

336 00:50:37.090 ⇒ 00:50:53.619 Uttam Kumaran: Air conditioning, what’s your return, but also more industry-specific, maybe you have that, but what are other companies, industry-wise, spending, you know, our budgets around 4% or so? What are the other industries spending? Yeah, 5%, but…

337 00:50:53.620 ⇒ 00:51:07.620 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have that today, but I can definitely look that up. That’s a great point, right? Market spend based on service category, especially regional. Because a lot of what we face… most of our stuff around is pest control, and that’s because of the associations we’re part of, and there’s a lot of share.

338 00:51:07.730 ⇒ 00:51:11.520 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s kind of how we most of the time got our numbers.

339 00:51:13.070 ⇒ 00:51:29.749 Uttam Kumaran: I got a few more slides. Sorry, it’s taking a long time. But, just to close out, there’s also some bonus slides, I don’t know if we want to take a look at them, but… Yeah, yeah. My takeaway here is just to take… oh yeah, let’s actually talk about this. This is really cool. I took a look at…

340 00:51:29.980 ⇒ 00:51:38.850 Uttam Kumaran: this survey, from Angie’s List, talking about, by demographic age group, what they’re actively budgeting and spending.

341 00:51:38.950 ⇒ 00:52:03.709 Uttam Kumaran: So if you take a look at the 35 to 44, they’re actively budgeting for projects. And what projects are they budgeting for? You can look at the website panel and see, based on percentage, what they’re budgeting for. So, of the 65-ish percent of millennials that are spending… that are saving up, these are the things that they’re spending that money on. And what’s really cool is I just took up that green bubble and said, these are the things that

342 00:52:03.710 ⇒ 00:52:16.829 Uttam Kumaran: One of our faster-growing areas is our hanging in, just do the Type 3 right there. That’s what I was saying.

343 00:52:17.040 ⇒ 00:52:18.120 Uttam Kumaran: All three of them.

344 00:52:18.800 ⇒ 00:52:26.579 Uttam Kumaran: That lines up with what they’re spending… No, that’s awesome.

345 00:52:26.700 ⇒ 00:52:38.239 Uttam Kumaran: You also see this is… this is really matched up with, trends, in content. Like, there’s a lot of, content around, like, DIY fixes, or, like.

346 00:52:38.360 ⇒ 00:52:44.080 Uttam Kumaran: Sprucing up a bedroom, and it’s a lot of, like, what’s trending.

347 00:52:44.220 ⇒ 00:53:02.690 Uttam Kumaran: And if they don’t do it themselves, they say, I want to do that. Oh, I want this, yeah, I want this. Again, we’re kind of back to your point earlier, is that, you know, saving up for a new AC isn’t something that… these are all… these are things that don’t have to be done. Yeah, yeah. They want to save up to get a new bathroom. They’re not thinking of saving up to get a new AC, because they’re hoping that doesn’t happen.

348 00:53:02.700 ⇒ 00:53:16.959 Uttam Kumaran: Or a plumbing leak, or a… faces aren’t sexy. Well, actually, if you can push to the next slide, it’ll actually give you a… one more, sorry, so this is really interesting.

349 00:53:16.960 ⇒ 00:53:28.849 Uttam Kumaran: how much they’re actually spending per category, a ton on improvement compared to the rest. But if you look at maintenance and millennials, they spend the most on maintenance.

350 00:53:30.730 ⇒ 00:53:44.199 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And look at the emergencies that happen for millennials and Genesis in comparison to the rest of the generations, right? Yeah, so you said they’re buying an older home, yeah. And they’re not quite handy.

351 00:53:44.200 ⇒ 00:54:03.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I hope this kind of gives you a snapshot picture of, like, you know, where all the spending is going. Like, if you talk about projects, this is everything else that’s happening, right? And you’ll see maintenance and emergency things are a growing sector of the younger population, whereas, like, improvement is really, like, the older generation.

352 00:54:04.090 ⇒ 00:54:12.039 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve got one more, if you can go back one time. Sorry, this is a silent generation, what is that?

353 00:54:12.310 ⇒ 00:54:19.830 Uttam Kumaran: Is that really old people? Silent Generator? That’s before the universe. Before the universe, okay, so really old. Silent.

354 00:54:20.070 ⇒ 00:54:28.020 Uttam Kumaran: Gotcha. Speaking. Crazy generational.

355 00:54:28.790 ⇒ 00:54:49.670 Uttam Kumaran: I also think this statistic was really interesting to take a look at. Homeowners were surveyed on why they struggle so much on finding the right professional. And the number one thing, like you were marking on, price is always a factor, but, next to that is, I mean, there’s just… it’s not easy to find people in this profession.

356 00:54:50.130 ⇒ 00:54:52.089 Uttam Kumaran: Especially for skilled.

357 00:54:52.540 ⇒ 00:55:03.579 Uttam Kumaran: And then, billions and projects are what everybody dreads, but, so, it’s really interesting to just understand as a whole what you’re…

358 00:55:03.580 ⇒ 00:55:13.979 Uttam Kumaran: concern that helps you craft the right messaging to kind of cover those situations. Anything kind of stand out to you that doesn’t kind of line up?

359 00:55:16.720 ⇒ 00:55:20.830 Uttam Kumaran: Again, I… it points out to me why our handyman

360 00:55:20.960 ⇒ 00:55:35.959 Uttam Kumaran: service is popular and works well, because we check a lot of boxes for positive on handyman service. We are a qualified pro, and we’re more visible than other handyman, because we’re just bigger, we’re more reputable, we’ve got

361 00:55:36.430 ⇒ 00:55:50.739 Uttam Kumaran: you know, lots of reviews… Good-looking trucks. Another thing that goes into a lot of this is the real estate market in general. I think a lot of our services tend to do better when people are moving more often, because they just first…

362 00:55:51.080 ⇒ 00:56:05.370 Uttam Kumaran: If they were going to switch provider, it’s easier to do. They can’t even who aren’t moving. We kind of follow it, though, that, hey, instead of moving, I’m gonna spend some money on

363 00:56:05.710 ⇒ 00:56:06.980 Uttam Kumaran: Operating stuff.

364 00:56:07.100 ⇒ 00:56:08.680 Uttam Kumaran: Landscape handy-hand.

365 00:56:11.200 ⇒ 00:56:26.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think I can give you that trend on, you know, who’s moving when I look at the demographics map that I said, like, we gotta look into that demographic of people outside of Millennial, Gen Z, who are moving, obviously, I think it’s gonna be a really interesting statistic.

366 00:56:26.430 ⇒ 00:56:32.440 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, if you can bring us the closing slides, sorry, Tom, I jumped around. Yeah, yeah.

367 00:56:32.560 ⇒ 00:56:42.570 Uttam Kumaran: So, this was really a session to kind of show you the lay of the land, the analysis of the data that’s available publicly with your…

368 00:56:43.120 ⇒ 00:56:50.199 Uttam Kumaran: This just shows you the why, right? We’re not really sure about the why of why these things are happening.

369 00:56:50.430 ⇒ 00:57:05.260 Uttam Kumaran: The purpose here was for us to make sure that we have this shared understanding, because the things that I’m seeing are the things that you guys see on the ground, right? That the data and the reality kind of matches, and it felt like today we’d be…

370 00:57:05.260 ⇒ 00:57:11.289 Uttam Kumaran: kind of agree on what’s happening in this segment. But what I would ask is,

371 00:57:11.300 ⇒ 00:57:28.590 Uttam Kumaran: you know, throughout this whole phase, like, feel free to reach out when you have even more deeper, specific questions on these market segments. I, you know, can’t always get the most specific data, but I’ll do my best to see if I can make a good prospect. One, you know, just validate,

372 00:57:28.590 ⇒ 00:57:42.169 Uttam Kumaran: things in this slide, if something kind of stands out to you, let me know, we can chat about it. If there’s a specific, like, company that you want me to look into to give you some understanding on how they’re, succeeding in an outsized way.

373 00:57:42.170 ⇒ 00:57:56.849 Uttam Kumaran: I can do that as well. I have in my notes to take a look at how the door-to-door pest control segment is kind of viewing as a whole, right? LTV is probably going to be incredibly expensive. The lifetime value is probably going to be lower, because it takes so much pain.

374 00:57:56.980 ⇒ 00:58:11.659 Uttam Kumaran: So, let’s see how it shakes out. Let’s see what those financials look like. I would be curious to… would you be able to get a little more, kind of, market share, like, total market size of pest control in Austin versus San Antonio, to kind of see where our market share? Because again.

375 00:58:12.200 ⇒ 00:58:18.350 Uttam Kumaran: you know, maybe our market share in San with…

376 00:58:18.680 ⇒ 00:58:22.710 Uttam Kumaran: That total market size, the different industries, what’s the total…

377 00:58:22.980 ⇒ 00:58:36.469 Uttam Kumaran: window market in Austin, and our share of that is… I know we’re 80% market share in window and Austin. Well, I’m not gonna do a whole lot better than that.

378 00:58:36.470 ⇒ 00:58:47.509 Uttam Kumaran: So, you want me to hone in on pest control as a specific market size segment. Every category you could, just be curious to kind of see what the…

379 00:58:47.860 ⇒ 00:58:49.680 Uttam Kumaran: Market for those services.

380 00:58:51.350 ⇒ 00:59:11.130 Uttam Kumaran: You should take a look at, you know, workforce.

381 00:59:11.230 ⇒ 00:59:18.739 Uttam Kumaran: point to the market share, and 8 out of our 14 services, why are we only 5%?

382 00:59:18.800 ⇒ 00:59:34.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and, different perspectives, if you want me to… I just took a look at your 40-year-old, that’s the growing segment, but there’s other segments you want me to dive into, let me know. I already have here that we want to take a look at that demographic that’s moving in Austin, San Antonio.

383 00:59:34.990 ⇒ 00:59:38.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and, sorry, the last one was,

384 00:59:40.160 ⇒ 00:59:55.910 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, one thing I was gonna, say is I can get… I’ll give you… I can probably give you… we’ll see what demographic data we have in Evolve on folks, but one thing I would like us to end up with is, like.

385 00:59:56.080 ⇒ 01:00:02.240 Uttam Kumaran: being able to classify, pick, like, who our ICPs are. Ideally, it’s, like, 3 to 5.

386 01:00:02.310 ⇒ 01:00:15.360 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to know, like, how… if we were to say, okay, ABC’s ICPs are X, and we basically create 3 to 5 slides like this, that literally shows, like, this is John, he is this, here’s how…

387 01:00:15.380 ⇒ 01:00:28.120 Uttam Kumaran: here’s how or how we don’t advertise to him, here’s how we don’t do or don’t serve to him, here’s how much money to spend to him, so that’s what I kind of would like to end up with. And I do think that these are good segments,

388 01:00:28.150 ⇒ 01:00:31.740 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not sure what data is in Evolve,

389 01:00:32.940 ⇒ 01:00:48.119 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t think you’re gonna have the customer’s age, but ultimately, like, we could… we’ll have the address, we could go get the home value, I don’t know what to see. Show us, like, Amex gave us a bunch of our customer data a couple years ago.

390 01:00:49.700 ⇒ 01:00:54.680 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve got a bunch of consumer information from Amex. Okay. Has he shared that with you?

391 01:00:55.270 ⇒ 01:01:08.079 Uttam Kumaran: I remember he went over something with us, maybe in the last 5 years. Okay. It was information from the credit cards. Okay. That’s on our… yeah, those silver ones. Okay, I can ask him for that, yeah. Is that the chicken or the egg? Do we have?

392 01:01:08.200 ⇒ 01:01:13.560 Uttam Kumaran: you know, do boomers buy from us because they like us, or is it because that’s who we advertise to? That’s just what we have. Yeah, yeah.

393 01:01:13.750 ⇒ 01:01:30.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then the other thing is, I want… when we look through the cancellation data, we’re gonna create a chart very similar to this. And so ideally, we want to think about, like, some of, like, the way, Clarence, that you highlighted it here.

394 01:01:31.300 ⇒ 01:01:32.340 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like…

395 01:01:32.470 ⇒ 01:01:41.529 Uttam Kumaran: basically most… all of it we can do. Similarly here, it’s like, what are… what are, you sort of call… they… they call it, like,

396 01:01:42.060 ⇒ 01:01:49.269 Uttam Kumaran: un… unplanned churn, or, like, churn you’re not okay with, or, like, we could… preventable churn, right? So we’ll… we’ll look at, like.

397 01:01:49.290 ⇒ 01:02:00.449 Uttam Kumaran: Some of the cancellation examples. Some of it, for example, like moving out of state, things like that, we may not be able to affect, but we want to look at the categories that we can affect, and even on this,

398 01:02:00.450 ⇒ 01:02:13.080 Uttam Kumaran: you know, a lot of, like, for example, expense. Okay, what can we do? Offer a discount? I don’t know, but a lack of qualified pros, poor comms, poor work quality, these are all, you know, totally,

399 01:02:13.080 ⇒ 01:02:17.100 Uttam Kumaran: avoidable, totally things that ABC can overcome, you know, so…

400 01:02:22.620 ⇒ 01:02:27.359 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I like this, this, competitive chart. I don’t know if we need to go…

401 01:02:27.560 ⇒ 01:02:44.070 Uttam Kumaran: further on this, I think the biggest thing is I would like to see industry marketing spend by category, you know, if we can see something like that. But ultimately, knowing what we know from how people spend marketing, they are spending,

402 01:02:44.070 ⇒ 01:02:51.419 Uttam Kumaran: They’re… they’re gonna divide their spend on new or existing, and they’re gonna divide their spend by their…

403 01:02:51.600 ⇒ 01:03:07.429 Uttam Kumaran: who their customer profile is, so it will most likely match this directionally. Yeah, so I can look… you can look at some two for me on the mechanical space. Sure. One is called Abacus.

404 01:03:11.410 ⇒ 01:03:24.940 Uttam Kumaran: Well, Abacus… They’re out in Houston, but they’re also part…

405 01:03:25.010 ⇒ 01:03:33.429 Uttam Kumaran: They’re spending a ton of money. Salt has also been around a while, but all of a sudden, they’re spending a ton of money, and they’re very vague on

406 01:03:33.690 ⇒ 01:03:41.929 Uttam Kumaran: whether they are indeed primarily, I said they are now on their website, so they indicate that they’re

407 01:03:42.760 ⇒ 01:03:47.070 Uttam Kumaran: locally owned, or something is given that not private, but…

408 01:03:47.270 ⇒ 01:03:50.040 Uttam Kumaran: I think private equity has to stay.

409 01:03:51.710 ⇒ 01:04:05.020 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, they’re both… we just see them so prominent in the last couple years, and we’re wondering, is that taking some of our business? Because we didn’t used to see that local advertising for those two particular companies.

410 01:04:05.510 ⇒ 01:04:06.899 Uttam Kumaran: Just curious.

411 01:04:07.410 ⇒ 01:04:12.139 Uttam Kumaran: there’s anything there that should win, Santa?

412 01:04:12.240 ⇒ 01:04:29.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would, because they sold out, so I haven’t seen them quite as much. Elmer sold out, so I don’t see him quite as much either, but then that’s, like… Two in San Antonio, Elmer’s in John Lane. And the Bayer Boys, too, is interesting. I would like, yeah, Bayer…

413 01:04:29.620 ⇒ 01:04:36.320 Uttam Kumaran: boys as well. Is there… B-E-Y-E-R-E-E-Y-E-R?

414 01:04:36.430 ⇒ 01:04:44.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I know several of them. They had, like, over a thousand foot at one point, but I don’t really see a ton, so I don’t know, they do…

415 01:04:44.930 ⇒ 01:04:53.340 Uttam Kumaran: There were, like, 3 brothers, one of them just does air conditioning, the other one does plumbing. They’re just for the plumbing, like, AC, and commercial.

416 01:04:54.360 ⇒ 01:04:56.370 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a big problem. Yeah.

417 01:04:57.770 ⇒ 01:04:58.840 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

418 01:04:59.050 ⇒ 01:05:08.610 Uttam Kumaran: Elders, Fire Boys, Abacus, and Salt. Any other ones in Austin? Those are two.

419 01:05:09.290 ⇒ 01:05:14.019 Uttam Kumaran: My core clientele at…

420 01:05:14.210 ⇒ 01:05:23.850 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is a really common trend. They are online, a lot of them call our service companies, they’re trying to kind of get towards that

421 01:05:23.980 ⇒ 01:05:39.849 Uttam Kumaran: integrated end-to-end, where you just talk to one person, and you just get distributed to somebody else, right? And speaking of one of the prior clients, their strategy was that they want to be able to just have the… let’s say it’s a lot of attrition.

422 01:05:39.920 ⇒ 01:05:44.449 Uttam Kumaran: They should just wake up, look at their phone, and see their whole entire schedule, and just do…

423 01:05:44.450 ⇒ 01:06:01.210 Uttam Kumaran: you know, what’s on that list. They don’t have to worry about, you know, billables, they don’t have to worry about finding clients, right? So, they’re working towards a completely different model, where they think, you know, they can distribute those services by owning an entire stack of workloads. I saw a crazy graphic. I just sent it to y’all.

424 01:06:01.360 ⇒ 01:06:05.620 Uttam Kumaran: Where it was all the private equity companies. They did it for HVAC, but also one for plumbing.

425 01:06:05.720 ⇒ 01:06:25.640 Uttam Kumaran: It showed, like, the four, you know, PE groups that are, like, real big, and then it showed all the companies underneath them, and it was hundreds of them. It’s just crazy, the amount, and it showed, like, how much, like, the wrench group, like, how many they own, all the other, like, 6 different ones, and then just all the small logos behind. I think…

426 01:06:26.070 ⇒ 01:06:47.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so is there a strategy, though, to buy these, boost up the revenues, and try to turn around and sell them to a different fee? So, it depends on that PE’s entire strategy. For example, you’ll know that a lot of them are also buying real estate. So, if they have real estate that’s kind of decaying, the cost of maintenance and keeping that alive is starting to grow.

427 01:06:47.410 ⇒ 01:06:56.030 Uttam Kumaran: the sensible thing to do is just own the other company that’s gonna go and maintain it, right? So, this kind of grew out of a strategy

428 01:06:56.030 ⇒ 01:07:12.580 Uttam Kumaran: that was needed to maintain an entire asset group that’s not doing so well, right? How do you balance that? Because they bought companies to fill the real estate that they couldn’t… Yeah, yeah, so, and a lot of property management companies are also being acquired, just because, hey, we’re not going to be able to sell these homes.

429 01:07:12.650 ⇒ 01:07:13.850 Uttam Kumaran: What about that table?

430 01:07:13.940 ⇒ 01:07:19.700 Uttam Kumaran: Right? If we rent them out, so we maintain that volume of the property, you know, service expedited.

431 01:07:23.180 ⇒ 01:07:34.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yeah. So a lot of numbers we saw, so back to a real-life experience. Yeah,

432 01:07:37.770 ⇒ 01:07:47.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, mine’s not gonna be as… and I do have a… I actually did two things. One is I have a video of me going through the entire, like, purchasing journey, and so I,

433 01:07:48.190 ⇒ 01:07:52.549 Uttam Kumaran: I purchased both mechanical and HVAC.

434 01:07:52.710 ⇒ 01:07:59.450 Uttam Kumaran: I did one through Click to Buy, one through… phone.

435 01:07:59.480 ⇒ 01:08:18.440 Uttam Kumaran: And I walked through the entire process, and so I know, Amber and team will be, like, kind of looking through that to see on my purchasing journey. But it was… it was kind of complicated. Like, I… for me as a buyer, I said, okay, what is wrong in my house? We have this electrical thing, and I know I have to replace this capacitor.

436 01:08:18.439 ⇒ 01:08:21.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let me go try and do that, and

437 01:08:21.540 ⇒ 01:08:39.569 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I will send the video, but, it’s… it was difficult. I walked through exactly, like, hey, I’m gonna go look for this, let me try to purchase this, let me try to purchase both of them, try to book both of them, and it was a bit… it was a bit joint… just… just disjointed. So, are you renting a house? I’m renting a house. Okay, so…

438 01:08:40.040 ⇒ 01:08:42.669 Uttam Kumaran: Normally, my impression would be

439 01:08:43.380 ⇒ 01:08:58.680 Uttam Kumaran: Did you just try and shop to see what would happen? No, I called them, I said, I’m going to be purchasing, like, what do we… what do we need done again? So you’ve acted like the future homeowner? Yes, correct, correct, correct. In this situation, yes.

440 01:08:58.680 ⇒ 01:09:12.559 Uttam Kumaran: And so I already knew that these things were there, and so I said, let’s walk through this process. And so I think one is, like, it was a disjointed purchasing flow for multiple services. I think additionally,

441 01:09:12.560 ⇒ 01:09:24.939 Uttam Kumaran: and I do talk through this in the video, there are just, like, there are some times where you’re giving the customer, like, quite a bit of options to decide things. You’re collecting a lot of information that, I don’t know, as…

442 01:09:25.439 ⇒ 01:09:35.189 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know how relevant it was to me actually, meet, like, just as… I don’t think some of the information was relevant to me just clicking by and trying to get it booked.

443 01:09:35.270 ⇒ 01:09:48.869 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so there were certain things that… another example is I… when I booked Mechanical, the date that they could come was, like, 3 weeks, but then when I called, they were like, oh yeah, I can send someone out, like…

444 01:09:49.080 ⇒ 01:10:03.539 Uttam Kumaran: the next two days. And so, there was some… The first day was online, or… Online. So I went online to see the, booking. It was farther in advance. I booked it, and then when they called me to confirm, I was like.

445 01:10:03.710 ⇒ 01:10:19.770 Uttam Kumaran: Can this… can you guys come, like, any earlier? Yeah, well, totally, we can come earlier. And so, that was… Because we’re kind of doing online phantom scheduling. Yes. I’m surprised it’s that far out. It should have been more like 3 or 4 days. Yeah, yeah. Weeks. This was for AC maintenance?

446 01:10:20.000 ⇒ 01:10:29.489 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it may have been for electrical. Oh, electrical? Yeah. But it was… but I called maybe, like, the 20… We have run into that in the past, on HVAC.

447 01:10:29.810 ⇒ 01:10:31.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

448 01:10:31.750 ⇒ 01:10:43.699 Uttam Kumaran: So, but again, this is where it might be interesting to… to A-B test, like, having the scheduling versus not, and seeing the impact of phantom. The second thing is call-based. So, as I mentioned, like,

449 01:10:43.800 ⇒ 01:10:57.590 Uttam Kumaran: Well, fortunately or not, like, I just, like, very busy, so I rarely pick up the phone. Also, I get a lot of spam calls, and so it’s incredibly hard for me, between the hours of 8 to 6, to…

450 01:10:57.590 ⇒ 01:11:10.670 Uttam Kumaran: to do anything on my phone. So a lot of the ABC purchasing process hinges on me picking up that additional phone call. So texting would have made that much easier. I would have… would have been everything. I would have… Yeah.

451 01:11:10.670 ⇒ 01:11:17.750 Uttam Kumaran: We asked, how would you prefer to be contacted, right? Yeah, and I think I did put… I mean, I watched the whole video.

452 01:11:17.780 ⇒ 01:11:26.549 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s also the fact that even if I was to put phone, and I don’t pick it up, and I don’t pick up the third one,

453 01:11:26.680 ⇒ 01:11:35.279 Uttam Kumaran: I might as well try the text, because I would eat… and this is… this happens to me for a doctor’s office and things like that, where I’m… I tell them, I said.

454 01:11:35.280 ⇒ 01:11:47.249 Uttam Kumaran: I emailed them back, and I’m like, I can’t call you. But if you text me, we can do this whole thing over text. Like, that’s what I… that’s what I’m… otherwise, I can’t figure this out until I get the time. And so,

455 01:11:47.250 ⇒ 01:12:07.489 Uttam Kumaran: that… I would… I think the first… the first for the AC, it worked out well, but the mechanical, I just kept missing the call, and so I didn’t… we didn’t end up doing it. And so that’s still on me. I think I got… may have gotten a call this morning, but again, it’s still, like, at these odd times where I’m in meetings, or I’m here, I can’t do that. So for me, it’s extremely paramount that we test some type of

456 01:12:07.530 ⇒ 01:12:21.649 Uttam Kumaran: SMS booking or rescheduling flow. Additionally, there are ways to do self-service booking and rescheduling that we should totally try to do. You know, my, like, haircut person now uses a simple square booking app.

457 01:12:21.660 ⇒ 01:12:32.570 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so I don’t even talk to him to kind of get on his… he’s, like, one guy at one stop, so someone that small can have booking. I think it’s worth thinking about. Some people may still get calls.

458 01:12:32.570 ⇒ 01:12:42.440 Uttam Kumaran: But first me, it was simply, like, I missed the first call. I was still at home, I could have received the service, I just didn’t confirm it. And so, I think…

459 01:12:42.480 ⇒ 01:12:50.020 Uttam Kumaran: what we need to think about is, like, something around how to move booking and rescheduling into something more digital.

460 01:12:50.440 ⇒ 01:12:55.720 Uttam Kumaran: And similarly for the call and email-based flows, again, I think, like.

461 01:12:55.720 ⇒ 01:13:10.870 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if I received an email for a survey, but that could have been done through text as well. Additionally, I could have easily been texted to purchase additional services. So a lot of that, I think, can happen through text-based flows, and

462 01:13:10.870 ⇒ 01:13:20.789 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, for me, that was the biggest finding. I think that the tech who came out did a great job. Like, I talked to him about his experience working with y’all.

463 01:13:20.800 ⇒ 01:13:33.170 Uttam Kumaran: I talked to him about what he was doing, like, that was, like, totally perfect, so no problems there. But again, I think even in the… in the moment, I think it would have been interesting for,

464 01:13:33.580 ⇒ 01:13:52.910 Uttam Kumaran: for him to… like, I think he did a good job, like, walking me through the maintenance plan and what I bought. I think that was actually really, really good. So I understand, cool, like, the next time he’s gonna be coming through and, like, what we’re looking at. But he didn’t… I would say he… he… I don’t know whether they’re trained when they come in on the AC side, to also sell additional

465 01:13:52.910 ⇒ 01:13:58.239 Uttam Kumaran: services, or whether, like, it’s mainly focused on HVAC and, like, once he’s in the HVAC world.

466 01:13:59.300 ⇒ 01:14:04.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean… But it is a lot to ask. I’m trying to get a service tech.

467 01:14:05.100 ⇒ 01:14:11.049 Uttam Kumaran: who’s trying to do his service to do other things. It is, yeah. It’s tough. Now, that’s why…

468 01:14:11.200 ⇒ 01:14:15.120 Uttam Kumaran: with Leadline, it is more of a… I’m gonna put a lead in on this, I’m not gonna…

469 01:14:15.280 ⇒ 01:14:22.989 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but… or if he notices something obvious or whatever. Yeah. It is tough to get… And what is the lead line,

470 01:14:22.990 ⇒ 01:14:38.759 Uttam Kumaran: like, the… how does that actually… is that an email? How do they submit that? It’s all through, like, a portal, all through… So, it’s through Evolve. It’s all through Evolve, that’s right. So that’s the nice part about it. It syncs with Evolve, so if they’re there, and they notice, you know, the back gate’s broken, talk to the customer, hey, we can get this fixed.

471 01:14:38.930 ⇒ 01:14:48.829 Uttam Kumaran: Part of the flow, right? Like, before they close out the ticket, do they have to answer? It does ask them, would you like to submit a lead line for this? So then, on lead line.

472 01:14:48.830 ⇒ 01:15:02.330 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll be like, we can put in pictures, customer count, notes about it, is it hot, warm, or cold, or urgent? Yeah. And then they submit that, and then that goes to a team here where they reach out to the customer. Right. And say, hey, what are…

473 01:15:02.330 ⇒ 01:15:04.070 Uttam Kumaran: Technician was there, they noticed.

474 01:15:04.070 ⇒ 01:15:23.830 Uttam Kumaran: If your back gate was busted, you want a handyman to come out here to fix it. Yes. We can schedule somebody out. Yes. Yeah, like you said, so this was the AC guy, what was the other services? This was the AC, and I booked electrical. Okay, so did either of them talk about any other services, or did they ask you if you need help with anything else, or try to educate you on other services? I mean, we talked broadly about just HVAC.

475 01:15:25.370 ⇒ 01:15:28.549 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s where I think just the whole, you know, try to automate all the time.

476 01:15:28.630 ⇒ 01:15:35.119 Uttam Kumaran: Obviously, you need to be looking for a need. There’s probably some need at your place, like, if they’re not going to inspect your home, but…

477 01:15:35.120 ⇒ 01:15:52.040 Uttam Kumaran: But at least mention, hey, by the way, you might not know that we do more than just mechanical service. We also do pest control on, you know, just throw out there that we do a test service. But I think about it very similar to the CSRs. We’re now really encouraging, and Andy now, on a daily basis… Andy’s pinging them.

478 01:15:52.040 ⇒ 01:16:00.209 Uttam Kumaran: to tell them what other things… I’m wondering about what is the training around LeadLine, and if there’s something we could learn from

479 01:16:00.510 ⇒ 01:16:03.599 Uttam Kumaran: their work on Andy, where maybe it is something

480 01:16:03.840 ⇒ 01:16:07.789 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know how we’re currently getting their face now about doing this, but…

481 01:16:08.010 ⇒ 01:16:24.100 Uttam Kumaran: Because, yeah, I mean, he could have… it’s not like… I mean, the house is in decent shape, but the gate is definitely not working. I don’t know, he probably could have seen a couple… I think he probably could have seen a couple things. I’ve seen the workflow at the end that says if you smith, or you need to smith, but it’s almost like a beginning. Is there a way, even, are there…

482 01:16:24.290 ⇒ 01:16:26.090 Uttam Kumaran: Any reminder…

483 01:16:26.160 ⇒ 01:16:39.610 Uttam Kumaran: should we remind of what the power off… like, when they first opened the ticket, reminder, tree used the power off for today. Yeah, I mean, like, 80s and once a day… In the morning, it’ll depend, like… Right, because what we do today is to drive focus on lead lane.

484 01:16:39.610 ⇒ 01:16:57.990 Uttam Kumaran: It’s better than we were last year. We know it’s just one step. It’s on our weekly meetings, it’s one of the three big metrics that we go over. Revenue, accidents, and then also how each group is doing with legal. For the overall sense. When they open their… they have to open the ticket, is there something that we… And then what… what is the… what is the commission on…

485 01:16:57.990 ⇒ 01:17:22.349 Uttam Kumaran: So, they get 10 bucks, finder’s fee, whether the job gets sold or not, if we’re able to schedule somebody out, it’s a nice one. We do have some high perform… on the grand scheme of it all, there’s a lot of opportunity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s kind of what we looked at last year instead. So, we’ll look at… we’ll look at the lead line, who’s submitting the most, and we can talk to them about, like, how they’re… Yeah, some power offers each month, based on the time of year, what services they need.

486 01:17:22.350 ⇒ 01:17:36.279 Uttam Kumaran: Christmas lights was, like, a big power. They open up, hey, reminder, right now. But I just love with Andy, or a way, when they get open and evolved on the first part of their day, to just…

487 01:17:36.280 ⇒ 01:17:39.820 Uttam Kumaran: You know, or even with… if you could somehow sync with Evolve.

488 01:17:40.050 ⇒ 01:17:53.770 Uttam Kumaran: when they mark on their way for their first job of the day, they get a text message reminder from somebody saying, don’t forget to look for… Yeah. Well, I don’t know if… are the… I don’t know if the texts are in Google Chat? Yeah, they are. They are?

489 01:17:54.080 ⇒ 01:18:01.749 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there is, yeah, yeah. Should be. Okay. Well, one thing I was talking to Amber about today is, like, starting to use the same functionality, maybe?

490 01:18:01.750 ⇒ 01:18:16.049 Uttam Kumaran: maybe we should try pushing a blast to them. Yeah. You know, and we just do that, because all they have to do is see it, and they just swipe it. Yeah, and that’s it, it’s just something every day. It’s internal marketing. It’s pretty unavoidable, it’s internal marketing? Yeah. Yeah. Opportunities.

491 01:18:17.040 ⇒ 01:18:40.099 Uttam Kumaran: And again, maybe… and then this is the… this is the nice thing about any of these things, we test. So from here on out, it’s not a rollout that everyone see it, it’s like, okay, let’s pick a group, let’s start to test it, let’s show, and then we’ll roll it. Or is it also… do we change the message on Andy every morning? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could push other big announcements. Yes, yes. Right, that’s your own internal messaging. Yeah.

492 01:18:40.210 ⇒ 01:18:53.029 Uttam Kumaran: But again, also, what happens is, like, if you start pushing too much, then they all kind of… The CSRs can’t avoid using it now, so they’re gonna read every single one of them.

493 01:18:53.170 ⇒ 01:18:58.330 Uttam Kumaran: I’m also saying we should push… we should try to push more, and Andy’s gonna start to push in the middle there.

494 01:18:58.450 ⇒ 01:18:59.260 Uttam Kumaran: What are you doing, like…

495 01:18:59.310 ⇒ 01:19:18.480 Uttam Kumaran: It’s everywhere. It’s really unavoidable to know what offers. I’d be surprised if any of the CSRs can’t say… tell you what the offers are. Yeah, same with, like, one of our email marketing glasses that we… $50 off tree trimming, does that pop up on the technician’s phone, and they have to show it to… I don’t know, is there a way… Yeah, hey, here’s this new guy, or maybe just have it on…

496 01:19:18.570 ⇒ 01:19:25.009 Uttam Kumaran: you start off with having on a Monday, hey, here’s the power offer, here’s this week’s email thoughts. So, again, there’s a way to that.

497 01:19:25.220 ⇒ 01:19:34.320 Uttam Kumaran: Or even when the customer… And do people batch it, or are they always, at the end of the thing, when they’re closing out, they then submit it? Like, they don’t wait till the end of the day?

498 01:19:34.360 ⇒ 01:19:46.380 Uttam Kumaran: Ideally, it’s when they’re at the customer’s house, because the whole… we have the team of lead line, where they will call out. Yeah. And that’s the idea. I mean, really, we push them to be like.

499 01:19:46.870 ⇒ 01:19:51.359 Uttam Kumaran: The time that, you know, especially if it’s a hot lead where, like, the customer’s expecting a phone call.

500 01:19:51.650 ⇒ 01:20:03.549 Uttam Kumaran: We want to handle that within an hour, ideally 30 minutes. That’s when the customer’s like, oh wow, this is good. The technician just told me, now you guys are calling, that’s a good service right there. The hard part is obviously we kind of skip over

501 01:20:04.060 ⇒ 01:20:20.750 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, the office is always talking to the customer. A lot of, like, a lawn side, most… 90% of the time, they’re not even seeing or talking to the customer. They come and do it if it’s outside work, they’re pulling the lawn and getting out of there. Yeah, yeah. But it’s a… every mechanical job. Essentially, a customer meets up there. Yeah. Right?

502 01:20:21.010 ⇒ 01:20:24.820 Uttam Kumaran: most handy, obviously, handyman, although…

503 01:20:25.180 ⇒ 01:20:32.230 Uttam Kumaran: window, a lot of times, yes. Our sales team has been huge on lead. That’s been the biggest group, because all those points are confirmed.

504 01:20:32.600 ⇒ 01:20:34.440 Uttam Kumaran: They’re sales guys. Yeah.

505 01:20:37.080 ⇒ 01:20:43.679 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, lawn mowing, lawn care, most pest… I mean, I don’t know what percentage of pest guys actually talk to a customer that I’m at, probably.

506 01:20:45.160 ⇒ 01:20:47.989 Uttam Kumaran: They say 40-50% customers are hungry.

507 01:20:51.050 ⇒ 01:21:07.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so one thing is, like, I think we’re gonna… definitely part of, like, our… our recommendation is gonna involve some type of SMS involving, but we will most likely recommend starting something slow, where you’re just replicating some of the easy flows via SMS.

508 01:21:07.590 ⇒ 01:21:19.860 Uttam Kumaran: But I don’t know, like, I feel like it’s a huge miss to not… to not have that. Yeah. And especially given what Clarence presented on with the audience, it’s like, I will…

509 01:21:19.970 ⇒ 01:21:36.010 Uttam Kumaran: bet everything, that they’re gonna miss a lot of customers who just won’t use their phone. And the phone as a channel is getting… it’s just a lot of… there’s a lot of spam blockers, a lot of things that are going into it. It’s very similar to what happened with, like, Adblock and things like that, and so SMS is…

510 01:21:36.010 ⇒ 01:21:40.260 Uttam Kumaran: is an easy way to get right to the customer. Yeah. You already have their phone number.

511 01:21:40.300 ⇒ 01:21:51.430 Uttam Kumaran: You can do… there’s a… and depending on the service provider you use, it’s actually really easy to set up these flows. Yeah. Yeah, because I remember, you might have been talking about that already, with your experience. Last time I used our plumbing.

512 01:21:51.610 ⇒ 01:22:07.870 Uttam Kumaran: they, when they dispatched them, they called me, had an answer, I left a voicemail, said, hey, we’ll call back in 10 more minutes, they’re on the way to confirm, and then called back in 10 minutes, and… or no, I guess I called back, they got ahold of reception. Anyways, yeah, I was like, they just texted me, said, you confirmed you’re gonna be home? Yeah. Yes, and then none of that. Yeah, yeah.

513 01:22:10.910 ⇒ 01:22:12.509 Uttam Kumaran: And I know there are…

514 01:22:12.760 ⇒ 01:22:22.879 Uttam Kumaran: restrictions in terms of marketing. Yes, so this is all for transactional scheduling. Correct, correct. Yeah, that just is just talking back. Yeah.

515 01:22:23.090 ⇒ 01:22:23.760 Uttam Kumaran: Agreed.

516 01:22:25.820 ⇒ 01:22:44.879 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And I actually don’t think the CSRs… I actually don’t think it’s… that you can still adapt some of them to do some of the support via text. Like, I think it’s actually totally fair. I think you just have to… we have to figure out the right vendor, and figure out the couple things to bite off, and test it out.

517 01:22:45.830 ⇒ 01:22:53.210 Uttam Kumaran: Got me. This is, to me, similar to the way… Yeah, and really…

518 01:22:53.650 ⇒ 01:23:03.789 Uttam Kumaran: We haven’t changed the strategy on marketing, and we haven’t changed the strategy enough on customer contact. Yeah. They’re both a little bit…

519 01:23:03.900 ⇒ 01:23:09.600 Uttam Kumaran: outdated, if you will. Yeah. And not reaching the newer buyers. Yeah.

520 01:23:09.600 ⇒ 01:23:30.860 Uttam Kumaran: And you’re gonna see, like, part of the reason to do it is, again, fueled by the graph you showed, which scheduling difficulties are one of the top five reasons, right? And it just takes a lot longer to make the damn phone call, too. Yeah. For our… internally, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, we say one of our biggest issues is calling a customer and hoping that they… I wonder how many minutes and hours of…

521 01:23:30.870 ⇒ 01:23:48.380 Uttam Kumaran: time is wasted, they have our CSR’s sitting to hear the phone ring 5 times, then there’s a voicemail, and… No, it’s not like I didn’t get a lot of calls, I just… I’m like, I can’t, I can’t do it, I can’t… I’m sure, while I’ve been here, I missed from a hundred calls.

522 01:23:48.380 ⇒ 01:24:09.849 Uttam Kumaran: That’s exactly right for your day. Yeah, and they’re work from home, they’re in meetings… For the 60-year-old boomer, they’re at the home, they’re gonna answer the phone. Yeah, they’re saying… Smaller and smaller percentage of our customers. Hourly, you think about how much of their day is sitting there positioning the phones. Yeah.

523 01:24:09.870 ⇒ 01:24:10.949 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s true.

524 01:24:11.030 ⇒ 01:24:14.180 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Millennials aren’t gonna listen to us about. Yeah.

525 01:24:14.330 ⇒ 01:24:20.169 Uttam Kumaran: So, while it’s top of my mind, I do want, like, this is a great moment to start thinking, really, you know.

526 01:24:20.310 ⇒ 01:24:38.469 Uttam Kumaran: innovatively and start thinking of patterns that are going to apply to the same customer base. A lot of this stuff, like Utom says, we’re going to go baby steps as each one, but if you take a look at the experiences that millennials are enjoying in their digital lives, think about something like Uber Eats, that’s saying, after you make the

527 01:24:38.470 ⇒ 01:25:02.889 Uttam Kumaran: order. It’s like, hey, free of service charge, you can also add donuts, or ice cream, or whatever, right? And if you think about your company in the future, right, you can take a look at the demand side of who’s available, and just massively discount follow-on services, saying, if you just order this right now, pool cleaning, it’ll be 50% off, because it’s literally somebody who’s just sitting around.

528 01:25:03.180 ⇒ 01:25:27.209 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s complex, because he’s right down the street. Data maturity allows you to be able to control the demand side, not on a weekly basis, but on an instantaneous basis, understanding where all your resourcing is available, and actually just making that 30 bucks that you might not have made at all. Well, it’s kind of like, I mean, because that’s essentially the same thing as, like, an OBI way. Maureen says it, like, oh, by the way, do you want us to add anything else to your mosquito texting is a good deal.

529 01:25:27.210 ⇒ 01:25:29.760 Uttam Kumaran: You know, our pesky’s already out there, we’ll do a mosquito…

530 01:25:29.770 ⇒ 01:25:38.539 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, by the way, on the click device. Yes. Right? Or if it’s not buying, it’s at least scheduling, say, hey, here are the other services we have.

531 01:25:38.540 ⇒ 01:26:03.359 Uttam Kumaran: any of these of interest to you. Yeah, but where does that start? That starts just rolling out the, oh, by the ways without any… no dynamic nature, just being able to bundle, and being able to configure those bundles. And then, as you start to get data on what bundles perform, then you start to automate, and you kind of… that’s the way it goes. You know, I think, certainly, when a customer is purchasing from y’all, they’re thinking about that.

532 01:26:03.360 ⇒ 01:26:08.660 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s probably a couple other things that you can easily bundle, and this is where, when we look at

533 01:26:08.660 ⇒ 01:26:31.479 Uttam Kumaran: when we’re going to look at how customers have purchased different services, we may find that, as we discussed, some customers only purchase some services as follow-on, some people always purchase something as net new, right? Because if you have a broken AC, you’re calling just to fix that, versus some other things, it’s going to be more, you know, they want to… as needed, and so we’re going to see, like, okay.

534 01:26:31.480 ⇒ 01:26:36.089 Uttam Kumaran: Some things only get purchased as bundles, so we need to push that, you know, at the bundle level.

535 01:26:36.170 ⇒ 01:26:44.660 Uttam Kumaran: But I think there’s a lot, you know, that I think has to get improved on the digital purchasing side, and then the scheduling side.

536 01:26:44.660 ⇒ 01:27:01.239 Uttam Kumaran: And so to just cross those off as reasons for people to not go to ABC, and that… that requires… I think those are very low-hanging fruit, like, I don’t… knocking on her door. Yeah, I think those are things that are totally in the company’s wheelhouse to do, and don’t require any broad changes

537 01:27:01.240 ⇒ 01:27:14.410 Uttam Kumaran: too much. It’s fact just, like, investing in that, and I think you’ll find that when we look at the cancellation reasons, or we look at the reasons that people didn’t end up getting scheduling, it’ll attack… it’ll attack a lot of that, you know?

538 01:27:14.570 ⇒ 01:27:21.039 Uttam Kumaran: So when we look through GA and we look through the data, we’ll go… we’re gonna tell you how many are getting to purchasing and then not purchasing.

539 01:27:21.250 ⇒ 01:27:27.839 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll have a conversation about what do they do? And, like, that’ll be the number we focus on changing. So…

540 01:27:28.070 ⇒ 01:27:33.180 Uttam Kumaran: I know Amber’s on the line, but that’s what… that’s what her and Sauron are gonna be working on, so…

541 01:27:33.350 ⇒ 01:27:34.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

542 01:27:35.180 ⇒ 01:27:53.150 Uttam Kumaran: So I think, you know, kind of, like, a couple of recommendations that we’re already thinking about is, one, is we just need a lot more clear reporting and, like, review meetings. So we will… we’ll think about, like, what the best structure is to report, what we’re gonna… what you’re gonna see, Matt, in our upcoming, like,

543 01:27:53.150 ⇒ 01:28:01.830 Uttam Kumaran: sprint on Andy work, is we’re gonna start to spend a lot more time on data, and we’re gonna start to loop in David and Brian on a lot more data, and so you’re gonna see

544 01:28:01.830 ⇒ 01:28:18.959 Uttam Kumaran: you’re gonna see a microcosm of how we run a great, you know, kind of business review meeting, purely on the CSR side, but that’s something that we need for anything we do, we just need extremely clear reporting. So, all of the things we’re finding, we’re gonna make sure that that’s available

545 01:28:18.960 ⇒ 01:28:29.730 Uttam Kumaran: to update and to report on, so this is why we’re building out the data warehouse, this is why we’re getting API access to everything, because this is not just for this project, it’s, like, it has to be able to

546 01:28:29.730 ⇒ 01:28:37.590 Uttam Kumaran: So, if we want to ask a question about how many people are dropping off from Click to Buy, we need to answer that now, and next month, and the months to come.

547 01:28:37.590 ⇒ 01:29:02.429 Uttam Kumaran: The second thing is we just need goals, right? So in order to do goals, we need to know where the numbers are right now. So we need to have some of those charts about what are our cancellation reasons, what are our drop-off rates, and then it’s easy to set these operational goals beyond just revenue and marketing spend, but also non-goals. Like, to set… to say, hey, this… we are focusing on Austin, we’re focusing on San Antonio.

548 01:29:02.680 ⇒ 01:29:09.749 Uttam Kumaran: We’re focusing on these services. Yes, broadly, we’re focusing on growth across all categories, but here’s also the things we’re not doing.

549 01:29:09.860 ⇒ 01:29:27.009 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and that way you sort of… this is one thing in my business I think a lot about, it’s like, what are we not doing? It’s almost as helpful to say as, like, what are we really focused on? There will be things, for example, if Clarence were to be in a meeting and propose, we need to do, like, super dynamic pricing and all this, we can say.

550 01:29:27.010 ⇒ 01:29:37.319 Uttam Kumaran: there’s no way we can do that this year. So we’re not doing that. So next time it comes up, we’re like, we’re not doing that, right? And so these are the things that I think will have goals and non-goals.

551 01:29:37.320 ⇒ 01:29:53.249 Uttam Kumaran: Third thing is improved top of funnel and, like, digital activation. This is… we need… we… most likely, and this is Zoran’s whole world, is figuring out where people are coming from, and how that impacts the way they’re converting on your website. And so his…

552 01:29:53.250 ⇒ 01:30:03.630 Uttam Kumaran: that’s all he does for Brainforge, and we do that across a bunch of companies, is identity resolution, figuring out who this person is, where they came from, not at, like, a 50-60%, like.

553 01:30:03.630 ⇒ 01:30:22.130 Uttam Kumaran: 80-90% of people, we should understand where they came from, and then what they’re doing on the page. So we’re looking for 90% of users we need to know. Like, so this is more of, like, we just need to know attribution, and then how are they getting activated? Like, how are they actually getting to the final goal?

554 01:30:22.230 ⇒ 01:30:46.929 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I think the fourth piece is sort of, like, how do we help, you know, bring in a team around this? So again, there’s going to be some stuff in that menu of takeaways that Brainforge is going to be able to do, but there’s going to be a lot of things that we’re not able to do, and so how do we… how does our work support that new leader that’s coming in and that team? And, like, what have we seen work? One thing that you haven’t seen here is that we haven’t talked

555 01:30:46.930 ⇒ 01:30:54.960 Uttam Kumaran: at all about, bringing canceled people back, right? So, like, what we call, like, resurrecting or re… reactivation.

556 01:30:54.960 ⇒ 01:30:58.810 Uttam Kumaran: We also haven’t talked anywhere on this list about, like.

557 01:30:58.810 ⇒ 01:31:03.120 Uttam Kumaran: San Antonio versus Austin, and, like, geo-specific things. So those are, like.

558 01:31:03.380 ⇒ 01:31:06.890 Uttam Kumaran: sort of to come, but these are all sort of things I’m pretty…

559 01:31:07.350 ⇒ 01:31:11.879 Uttam Kumaran: confident, like, this list is not… this list is not really gonna change.

560 01:31:11.940 ⇒ 01:31:31.170 Uttam Kumaran: as we… as we sort of roll out more reporting to Andy, one thing is I’m going to really try to empower David and Brian over the next few weeks to get a lot stronger, and hopefully what you’ll see is, like, in whatever meetings they’re in, their ability to report should get better, so every step along the way, they’re… they’re alongside of us.

561 01:31:31.850 ⇒ 01:31:38.490 Uttam Kumaran: And so this is kind of, like, where we’re at now. I guess, like, for me, it’s important to also just get feedback on

562 01:31:38.500 ⇒ 01:31:43.590 Uttam Kumaran: like, what you guys thought about that presentation that Clarence ran.

563 01:31:43.590 ⇒ 01:31:49.350 Uttam Kumaran: we… we… you know, we can go into… I like that level of depth.

564 01:31:49.350 ⇒ 01:32:07.150 Uttam Kumaran: And we will start to do that in different areas and leave those as assets. As we’re going in, this is everything around the industry, right? There’s some follow-ups on competitors, some more follow-ups on demographics, but we’re going to do a very similar thing about Google Analytics. This type of thing is, like, how are people getting to the site and converting? We’re gonna go through a deck on just that.

565 01:32:07.270 ⇒ 01:32:26.180 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We’re gonna go through a deck on the services people are buying. Does that format, like, is that a good format? Okay, cool. Then that’s, like, what you can expect from us. This is how I think this is all storytelling, and all, like, sitting, looking at the data, understanding, like, what’s right. And that’s all part of, like.

566 01:32:26.410 ⇒ 01:32:38.480 Uttam Kumaran: our deliverable is, like, this lives now with y’all. You know, so anytime there’s a question about, like, what is it about the industry trends, or can we update the industry trends report, like, that’s all living there, so…

567 01:32:38.480 ⇒ 01:32:51.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and if you guys are interested in actually reading the source documents, I also link everything that I mention on each of the tables. So nice. And by the way, Angie is the best one. I highly recommend it. It’s, it’s…

568 01:32:51.650 ⇒ 01:33:00.500 Uttam Kumaran: like, almost a nice coffee table book. You just go up there and look at the statistics. So, yeah, things like that are all over the slide deck, so feel free to dive into this table.

569 01:33:00.710 ⇒ 01:33:06.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would be interested, kind of, deep down on the data side, too, on where business…

570 01:33:06.770 ⇒ 01:33:16.819 Uttam Kumaran: per industry kind of is in the city, and where our leads are coming from. Yeah. I know we talk a lot about that this year. Austin was down flat to down for the year, but the

571 01:33:16.960 ⇒ 01:33:22.429 Uttam Kumaran: outside of Austin grew, and, you know, trying to understand why is that. Is it because we have such high market share already?

572 01:33:22.740 ⇒ 01:33:28.489 Uttam Kumaran: Is that… is there just more growth in the exterior markets, the satellites, all that? I don’t know, just kind of…

573 01:33:28.490 ⇒ 01:33:45.619 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Too much traffic. My gut is that San Antonio’s gonna be a pure, like, growth acquisition story. Austin is gonna be more of a, like, a reactivation. Yeah. Like…

574 01:33:46.580 ⇒ 01:33:57.959 Uttam Kumaran: Across the board, we want to get our messaging tighter on those people, but when we talk about those regions, I think Austin’s… we may have already churned through a lot of people, it’s going to be about getting them… getting a lot of them back.

575 01:33:57.960 ⇒ 01:34:16.129 Uttam Kumaran: And then we also have not talked yet at all about the commercial side of the business. There will be a whole, kind of, presentation about that, about growing that. I think that’ll also be a huge growth story. The story there is going to be, like, what capacity do we have to go after those, and how does B2B… how is B2B

576 01:34:16.130 ⇒ 01:34:30.269 Uttam Kumaran: selling and marketing gonna be something totally different than this. Like, we work with a lot of people who do a lot of business in wholesale, and so we’ll look… we’ll look to see, you know, how we’ve done a lot of that work. But again, for the CMO,

577 01:34:30.290 ⇒ 01:34:38.580 Uttam Kumaran: it’s gonna be asking… asking them, like, okay, is this under your purview to market to B2B? Where does this fall under the responsibilities? And then.

578 01:34:38.670 ⇒ 01:34:49.700 Uttam Kumaran: we’re, again, as a menu of options, we may say, like, okay, like, there are 5 things ahead of B2B that we can clearly see that we’re gonna nail that, so maybe this gets put off.

579 01:34:49.940 ⇒ 01:34:55.719 Uttam Kumaran: What is our capacity to act on it? And I think the B2B is gonna be an interesting one, because our…

580 01:34:57.170 ⇒ 01:35:02.430 Uttam Kumaran: Current and previous strategy for 30 years in B2B.

581 01:35:02.890 ⇒ 01:35:10.369 Uttam Kumaran: Is to be hire a commercial salesman, and let him join organizations, and get involved in the community, do whatever.

582 01:35:11.050 ⇒ 01:35:12.599 Uttam Kumaran: But if that’s not…

583 01:35:13.230 ⇒ 01:35:21.080 Uttam Kumaran: a popular way to do it anymore, or there’s been advances, or there’s been changes. We haven’t kept up with those changes on the B2B side at all. We’ve always relied on

584 01:35:21.430 ⇒ 01:35:23.169 Uttam Kumaran: A commercial sales guy.

585 01:35:23.560 ⇒ 01:35:40.770 Uttam Kumaran: knock doors and go get… Well, is there a better way to do that now? Well, I would say that the pest control industry goes that way. I don’t imagine much pest control companies are marketing B2B, which would put us ahead of the competition. Yeah, because we do feel like there’s… and our…

586 01:35:41.600 ⇒ 01:36:00.940 Uttam Kumaran: recent growth trends have been more in commercial, particularly on the pest side, than residential. Higher percentage, whatever. But are there other strategies we need to employ, rather than just using a commercial sales guy to do it? And there’s other ways he needs to approach things. It’s interesting that

587 01:36:01.250 ⇒ 01:36:05.550 Uttam Kumaran: Steve Gray is our… Manager…

588 01:36:07.950 ⇒ 01:36:10.419 Uttam Kumaran: We went in Waco cold by just…

589 01:36:10.520 ⇒ 01:36:14.869 Uttam Kumaran: Sending Steve Gray up there, who’s an experienced commercial sales guy.

590 01:36:15.200 ⇒ 01:36:16.860 Uttam Kumaran: peace recognized.

591 01:36:17.080 ⇒ 01:36:24.140 Uttam Kumaran: hey, they don’t let me on the property anymore. I’ve got to find other ways to get at the decision makers

592 01:36:24.330 ⇒ 01:36:30.759 Uttam Kumaran: Other than knocking on the door, because whether it’s… Security concerns, or just…

593 01:36:32.300 ⇒ 01:36:35.810 Uttam Kumaran: Whatever, it’s harder to get the bigger accounts

594 01:36:36.430 ⇒ 01:36:45.659 Uttam Kumaran: Can’t just knock on the door. Yeah, I almost want to show you… we’re… it’s so funny, we’re… we’re just doing this in our company right now, actually doing, like, what…

595 01:36:45.720 ⇒ 01:37:05.229 Uttam Kumaran: who are our ICPs, and so we’re in the… we’re completely B2B, and so we think a lot about this problem, and I’ll just show you a screenshot of a message that came in today. So this is Luke, he’s on our, he’s a… he’s on our go-to-market team, and so he’s… he’s basically talking about

596 01:37:05.400 ⇒ 01:37:13.209 Uttam Kumaran: I want to start to think about the pain points that we speak to as we start doing content for BrainForge, and here are the different,

597 01:37:13.350 ⇒ 01:37:18.820 Uttam Kumaran: sort of, like, ICPs that we’re thinking about, right? People that,

598 01:37:18.820 ⇒ 01:37:25.349 Uttam Kumaran: the job performance is judged on solving, like, a data or AI problem. They have veto products, they have budget access, some people who

599 01:37:25.350 ⇒ 01:37:42.409 Uttam Kumaran: kind of already have a data AI problem, but they have pressure, maybe their job’s under pressure. We’re also thinking about buying behavior skills, so are they already asking questions on Google? Are they thinking about trying to, like, in the way they buy, are they open to bringing other people in?

600 01:37:42.470 ⇒ 01:38:00.210 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re… we’re thinking about our B2B buyers in this way, you know, and we’re actually creating ICP, which is the customer profiles, based on the way that they, they buy. And so, yeah, like, this is, like, totally,

601 01:38:00.220 ⇒ 01:38:04.080 Uttam Kumaran: Possible, and it’s totally complementary to your existing

602 01:38:04.140 ⇒ 01:38:17.119 Uttam Kumaran: like, direct strategy. It’s like a… yeah, and those people are actually going to benefit from all the materials and marketing that comes out of it. That’s what I’m thinking. Can we empower the existing commercial sales guys with more

603 01:38:17.600 ⇒ 01:38:25.249 Uttam Kumaran: options of how to get more business, as opposed to just driving up and knocking on the door. What else can they do? Yes. Yeah.

604 01:38:25.450 ⇒ 01:38:39.160 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s not the fact that your buyers, they still are going to have intent, they want to find a partner for this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s… we’ve never really…

605 01:38:40.140 ⇒ 01:38:45.469 Uttam Kumaran: I know certain sales guys Maybe have their… their…

606 01:38:45.680 ⇒ 01:39:01.049 Uttam Kumaran: preferred customers and whatever, but you’re right. Targeting things by industry, you really get to know that industry well and know, okay, this is what I need to do for hospitals to get hospitals. This is what I need to do to get property managers, this is what I need to do to get whatever. You know, like, we have, like, the city

607 01:39:01.050 ⇒ 01:39:15.180 Uttam Kumaran: divided by territory, right? Yeah. This guy is our healthcare. Exactly. You get to see a specialist, you get to tell that the hospitality group… Well, and yeah, in my business, like.

608 01:39:15.180 ⇒ 01:39:38.890 Uttam Kumaran: we sell to e-commerce, we sell a lot to software companies, we sell a lot to health. They’re interested in their nuanced problems, and so all of the way I’m pushing my team is, like, we have general decks on the type of work that we do. Now that we have that, I said, I need one that’s purely e-commerce focused. All the messaging, all the case studies, everything needs to be about e-commerce.

609 01:39:38.960 ⇒ 01:39:48.670 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, that’s… but in my… and for my buyer, it matters that it’s very focused that way. You may find that other industries, it is more about geo, but

610 01:39:48.670 ⇒ 01:40:04.639 Uttam Kumaran: I would say, most likely the hotel person is like, what are the hotels you work with? What are… what are kind of the way that ABC services are all, like, hotel-oriented, or the delivery is sort of hotel-oriented, when in fact, it’s more just marketing? It’s actually… nothing really changes on the back end, right? For us.

611 01:40:04.640 ⇒ 01:40:21.440 Uttam Kumaran: Actually, the data work that we do for y’all is no different than the data work that we do for any of those people I mentioned. No different at all. But it’s… it’s not helpful for me to sell… I can’t sell a generic solution. I only sell… I sell a… I sell a very bespoke solution, but in fact.

612 01:40:21.440 ⇒ 01:40:39.520 Uttam Kumaran: the reason why, like, Amber can go work on an e-commerce company, and work on ABC, and work on a software company, for me, it’s just sales data, it’s transactions, subscription. So, the way I execute it is very horizontal, but I market it in a very industry-specific way, yeah.

613 01:40:39.520 ⇒ 01:40:54.259 Uttam Kumaran: So for me, it’s industry-specific, and then it’s finding the buyer at the right moment, the right buyer at the right moment. So there’s these, like, maybe that’s something we could visualize, is, like, that cut, right? But in consumer, it’s very, very different. Consumer’s very different.

614 01:40:54.290 ⇒ 01:41:02.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, because they don’t have this type of budget, they may not shop it, the sales cycles are different,

615 01:41:02.350 ⇒ 01:41:07.949 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve never, we’ve never geared virtually any of our advertising.

616 01:41:09.180 ⇒ 01:41:21.089 Uttam Kumaran: to a commercial. Yeah. With the exception of, okay, we put an ad in the Austin Business Journal before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 95% of our advertising is consumer-related. Yeah.

617 01:41:21.270 ⇒ 01:41:24.649 Uttam Kumaran: So, again, we won’t rely on the inspector.

618 01:41:24.930 ⇒ 01:41:33.009 Uttam Kumaran: But internally, you know, let’s say you were gonna start to do some, like, light marketing around

619 01:41:33.290 ⇒ 01:41:36.020 Uttam Kumaran: like, commercial. Who owns that?

620 01:41:36.470 ⇒ 01:41:42.430 Uttam Kumaran: Like, does that… do we try to put that under, like, the commercials… commercial sales, basically?

621 01:41:42.620 ⇒ 01:41:50.679 Uttam Kumaran: I think it still would be marketing. Okay. But, yeah, I mean, depending on what the strategy is.

622 01:41:50.930 ⇒ 01:42:02.619 Uttam Kumaran: But probably under marketing, but maybe it would then fall a little bit on commercial sales, too, depending on what the strategy is. Yeah, yeah. Probably more involvement on commercial for that marketing site than we would for residential.

623 01:42:03.270 ⇒ 01:42:04.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, essentially we wouldn’t…

624 01:42:05.290 ⇒ 01:42:13.999 Uttam Kumaran: even asking for their input on marketing. Commercially, you probably would. So let’s take… if we take hotels, for example, right? The way this would work is, one.

625 01:42:14.390 ⇒ 01:42:21.329 Uttam Kumaran: We come and deliver, basically a lead list of every hotel, all the contact info for people in

626 01:42:21.330 ⇒ 01:42:38.779 Uttam Kumaran: We basically… we look at our Rolodex, who has bought from hotels from us, what are all their titles, like, what were the buying characteristics, we try to find out as much, and then we basically say, cool, go find me all those people in Austin. And then it’s like, okay, now that we have that list, we think about the way in.

627 01:42:38.780 ⇒ 01:42:42.450 Uttam Kumaran: So, we need pamph… we need all the marketing materials.

628 01:42:42.450 ⇒ 01:42:47.190 Uttam Kumaran: do we… now that… the lovely thing about B2B is it’s easy to get their emails, because it’s all, like.

629 01:42:47.370 ⇒ 01:43:01.349 Uttam Kumaran: So, let’s just figure out the format. So we send them an email with the pamphlet, hey, we’ve been doing this great work, here’s… we worked with X hotel, Y hotel, Z hotel, we’re running a hotel offer, here’s our hotel brochure, happy to come out to you this week.

630 01:43:01.400 ⇒ 01:43:11.659 Uttam Kumaran: that’s something that then immediately gets just delivered to the commercial person, right? Yeah, because I don’t think any of our commercial salespeople have those tools, right? Yeah, yeah.

631 01:43:11.830 ⇒ 01:43:15.269 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yep, we do some, we do work with the Fairmont.

632 01:43:15.270 ⇒ 01:43:39.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. But see, exactly, if you do work at the Fairmont, who wouldn’t… that’s the perfect case study, right? We’re doing work for the Fairmont, like… Yeah, exactly. It’s also great because those folks are not… It’s also, they’re not shy about explaining how much they’re getting, what they’re getting, they’ll tell you everything. In B2B, especially at that level, they’re great, because they just tell you.

633 01:43:39.660 ⇒ 01:43:45.310 Uttam Kumaran: If you can match, or do better, and you’re better service, our guys are unreliable, or we’re in between people.

634 01:43:45.350 ⇒ 01:43:53.850 Uttam Kumaran: they’d sort of tell you everything, and so even in our business, as we’ve moved, we were doing a lot of work in, like, smaller startups, so we moved up.

635 01:43:53.850 ⇒ 01:44:07.820 Uttam Kumaran: we found it’s actually more about, like, can you deliver the right services at the right time, but also, do you have staying power? And so, it’s a no-brainer to work with you guys. But this is where it’s like, we have to equip… nothing happens without a commercial salesperson.

636 01:44:07.950 ⇒ 01:44:14.719 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So they still have to go make the call, get all the information and prep, but there is… are… there’s…

637 01:44:14.880 ⇒ 01:44:38.849 Uttam Kumaran: is there an industry that we can focus on to build a sort of B2B campaign around? And so, still for us, like, we have all these different channels, but we’re… we’re now trying to build these timely campaigns. For example, e-commerce is a very seasonal business, because it’s all around when people purchase, but B2B software is, like, there’s no seasonality. But B2B software, especially, it’s a lot about growing faster. And so, as soon as someone raises money.

638 01:44:38.850 ⇒ 01:44:42.060 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a good time for us to get in, because they just have all this budget.

639 01:44:42.060 ⇒ 01:44:55.559 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re being asked to grow, and so we need to find them, right? And so there’s these signals. In e-commerce, right? With 90 days before Black Friday, we get a lot of phone calls, because they’re about to get jammed, their data is really messed up, they’re about to spend, like.

640 01:44:55.610 ⇒ 01:45:12.729 Uttam Kumaran: some ungodly amount of money on marketing within a probably 5-7 day window, and they don’t know whether they’re gonna get the ROI on it. They had a data partner that’s kind of like SOL, and they’re like, okay, cool, we’re in, right? Some of what happens at the end of the year as well, around planning.

641 01:45:12.730 ⇒ 01:45:20.460 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s how we find these, like, events to sort of target around. But it does take a marketing person to orchestrate the marketing, and then the

642 01:45:20.580 ⇒ 01:45:23.419 Uttam Kumaran: The sales team to actually go, you know?

643 01:45:23.720 ⇒ 01:45:40.790 Uttam Kumaran: like, Luke is not making… I’m still the one on the sales call, but Luke is now thinking about our strategy, like, okay, finding these pockets to sort of go after. But it’s just funny, because this message came in today, like, we’re thinking about what are the characteristics and pain points of people that

644 01:45:41.090 ⇒ 01:45:42.920 Uttam Kumaran: We’re, we’re gonna start hitting.

645 01:45:44.520 ⇒ 01:45:49.250 Uttam Kumaran: You haven’t looked at all yet, really, at our… Terminesh.

646 01:45:49.680 ⇒ 01:45:51.180 Uttam Kumaran: No.

647 01:45:53.600 ⇒ 01:45:59.959 Uttam Kumaran: Just 5 minutes on this. Sure. Attorney Mish, we partnered initially with a group out of Australia.

648 01:46:00.710 ⇒ 01:46:04.600 Uttam Kumaran: It’s Tony Mesh, Australia. T-E-R-M-I-N-E-S-H.

649 01:46:05.880 ⇒ 01:46:12.160 Uttam Kumaran: We have the proprietary rights, if you will, to determine this product.

650 01:46:13.590 ⇒ 01:46:24.839 Uttam Kumaran: arguably throughout the United States, but primarily in Texas, but we could sell it anywhere. And what we’ve tried to do… what TuringMesh is, it’s a stainless steel…

651 01:46:25.340 ⇒ 01:46:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: Product is a collar that fits around pipe.

652 01:46:31.480 ⇒ 01:46:33.399 Uttam Kumaran: Poured into the slab.

653 01:46:33.890 ⇒ 01:46:40.069 Uttam Kumaran: So the termites cannot get into the house. I see. And it’s a permanent… Solution for termite control.

654 01:46:40.580 ⇒ 01:46:54.910 Uttam Kumaran: There’s other, there’s other flange uses. You can put it in a bath trap and whatever. Yeah, yeah. But what we’ve tried to do, we’ve done in the last

655 01:46:54.940 ⇒ 01:47:10.490 Uttam Kumaran: year and a half, just to say, look, we’re… we tried the strategies, go back 20 years. Okay. Partnering with pest control companies to sell it, to do… no, no, no, no. So, we have it now where it’s a product that can be purchased online.

656 01:47:10.900 ⇒ 01:47:20.320 Uttam Kumaran: There’s online training, so somebody can do it, because it’s easy to do, but we haven’t moved the needle. I’ve been telling our Termesh guys, look.

657 01:47:20.490 ⇒ 01:47:25.269 Uttam Kumaran: And Les and I worked a little bit with the guys at Monkey Boy, Joe and Monkey Boy, to say, look.

658 01:47:25.850 ⇒ 01:47:28.029 Uttam Kumaran: The way we can make termination

659 01:47:28.500 ⇒ 01:47:37.980 Uttam Kumaran: really explode is selling the products online. Yeah. And right now, we’re selling maybe $8, 000 t o$ 12,000 a month. Yeah. Returnish online.

660 01:47:38.420 ⇒ 01:47:41.169 Uttam Kumaran: That could be 10, 20, 50,

661 01:47:41.490 ⇒ 01:47:46.729 Uttam Kumaran: The world is our oyster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we’ll box it up, ship it to them.

662 01:47:47.010 ⇒ 01:47:51.480 Uttam Kumaran: And they can learn how to do it and put it on themselves. Yeah. We’ve not moved the needle, so just…

663 01:47:51.670 ⇒ 01:48:07.800 Uttam Kumaran: something that… Yeah, we should take a look, maybe, Clarence, another thing. So we… I mentioned before, we work with this company, Pool Parts2Go, their Pool Parts company. They really innovated because they’re all self… a lot of self-install stuff that they took advantage of going direct.

664 01:48:07.800 ⇒ 01:48:12.159 Uttam Kumaran: So, we’ll… I’ll show you all, kind of, like, the marketing that they did, because they’re now selling

665 01:48:12.160 ⇒ 01:48:20.889 Uttam Kumaran: in some situations, pretty heavy, expensive equipment that comes with installs, they connect you with customer service, and we have not been able to move before.

666 01:48:21.530 ⇒ 01:48:30.800 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s a profitable thing for us, it’s a valuable service, and nobody else can tell me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have the rights to determine that. Yeah.

667 01:48:31.150 ⇒ 01:48:37.219 Uttam Kumaran: and the Australians, are really good about protecting that brand. If a competitive

668 01:48:37.350 ⇒ 01:48:45.799 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Violated their, patent or whatever, they would hammer them. Yeah. Because it’s real successful in Australia.

669 01:48:46.250 ⇒ 01:48:48.659 Uttam Kumaran: It’s the number one termite preventative system

670 01:48:49.050 ⇒ 01:49:00.190 Uttam Kumaran: in Australia, which has a heavy pressure around the coast for Formosa termites. And Formosa termites are the most destructive, and they are getting a bigger foothold in the United States.

671 01:49:00.360 ⇒ 01:49:02.389 Uttam Kumaran: So, Turning mesh could become

672 01:49:02.550 ⇒ 01:49:09.429 Uttam Kumaran: a better… Are there any other… Are there any other, ad hoc products that… There are some other things that…

673 01:49:09.660 ⇒ 01:49:16.109 Uttam Kumaran: people market, like, some of the, vapor barrier type… No, no, no, that ABC is actually currently selling.

674 01:49:16.650 ⇒ 01:49:23.299 Uttam Kumaran: Is the term you match the only one of, like, of product? Yes, yes, I think that’s the only product. Okay, that’s right.

675 01:49:23.640 ⇒ 01:49:25.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but it could…

676 01:49:25.840 ⇒ 01:49:45.099 Uttam Kumaran: Do we sell, or do anything? I mean, it sounds like that’s human, we sell in the whole United States. We sell it throughout the United States. We’ll get an inquiry from somebody somewhere, just wanted to… either the homeowner has researched it, because it’s a green product as well, it’s sustainable, it’s green, it’s non-chemical.

677 01:49:45.190 ⇒ 01:49:51.949 Uttam Kumaran: Like, when you buy pets, you should just say, do you want the turning mesh? Yeah.

678 01:49:51.950 ⇒ 01:50:10.759 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gotta be during nude construction. Oh, okay. It’s in a tough spot. But it looks like they have mesh that goes on the side. We can put it on the side, too. I can turn mesh from coming over the perimeter. We do that, too. Terminesh can be sold to do that, but this particular device, the collar.

679 01:50:10.850 ⇒ 01:50:20.259 Uttam Kumaran: And the bath trap is more for the areas you can’t see. Yeah, I see that. This is the picture with the bigger picture frame? I think that’s them putting it around a plumbing pipe.

680 01:50:20.260 ⇒ 01:50:32.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Oh, nice. So anyway, just, if you get a chance, take a look at it, see what you think, and go… Do you know where all the data for that is, for term… is it all evolved, too? I can ask truly.

681 01:50:33.800 ⇒ 01:50:34.500 Uttam Kumaran: Actually, no.

682 01:50:34.670 ⇒ 01:50:39.259 Uttam Kumaran: Like, all the… who purchased it, where it got shipped, when they bought…

683 01:50:39.790 ⇒ 01:50:50.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, that’s in Evolve. Okay. Yeah, that’s in Evolve. Okay, I’m gonna probably direct you to it. Okay, great. But maybe even a 30-minute conversation with Joel Brandling, our furniture manager, Mike.

684 01:50:51.220 ⇒ 01:50:54.769 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. And just so I understand this right, like.

685 01:50:54.940 ⇒ 01:51:09.390 Uttam Kumaran: when you say online sales interpretation, you’re talking about people reaching out to you first, and then, like, going through a separate sales channel. It’s not like what we imagine as, like, Amazon and Walmart, where you just add 10 and check out right away.

686 01:51:09.390 ⇒ 01:51:24.330 Uttam Kumaran: You can… you can purchase, and you can check out… You can do that, yes, you can do it all online. Tourney Mesh website? Under Tourney Stop USA. Attorney Stop USA website. Oh, but it doesn’t come back to ABC at all.

687 01:51:24.420 ⇒ 01:51:26.650 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all purchased through Termistop.

688 01:51:27.270 ⇒ 01:51:37.229 Uttam Kumaran: Well, it’s just a division of ABC. That’s what I… yes, okay. Or look at it on the website. Okay. Yeah, we keep it… we keep it kind of separate from ABC.

689 01:51:38.230 ⇒ 01:51:39.310 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great.

690 01:51:40.940 ⇒ 01:51:41.710 Uttam Kumaran: It’s true.

691 01:51:42.470 ⇒ 01:51:44.080 Uttam Kumaran: It could be something that could…

692 01:51:44.580 ⇒ 01:51:47.360 Uttam Kumaran: It has a big opportunity. It has a big opportunity.

693 01:51:48.420 ⇒ 01:51:51.060 Uttam Kumaran: Turning Stop USA, it’s the website.

694 01:51:51.570 ⇒ 01:51:54.189 Uttam Kumaran: You can get accredited

695 01:51:54.400 ⇒ 01:52:05.439 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, because you have to learn how to do it, but you can do that easy enough online. But I have heard, Clarence, there’s some rough patches on, okay, wait a minute, I tried to do this in Corpus… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

696 01:52:06.210 ⇒ 01:52:11.999 Uttam Kumaran: you know, Monkey Boy has tried to look at it and help it. I think it goes through,

697 01:52:13.860 ⇒ 01:52:14.710 Uttam Kumaran: for reasonable.

698 01:52:15.700 ⇒ 01:52:17.880 Uttam Kumaran: Square, Shopify, or something.

699 01:52:18.760 ⇒ 01:52:21.899 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so why would other businesses not follow up?

700 01:52:22.790 ⇒ 01:52:30.179 Uttam Kumaran: Because it involves training your people up, and they just… they haven’t made the commitment to do it, the investment.

701 01:52:30.790 ⇒ 01:52:32.720 Uttam Kumaran: To do it, so that’s why we’ve kind of…

702 01:52:33.030 ⇒ 01:52:38.509 Uttam Kumaran: Moved away from that, more toward the, let’s sell the easier stuff online.

703 01:52:38.710 ⇒ 01:52:50.059 Uttam Kumaran: Because the plumbing penetrations and so on are easy to do, and a plumber can do it, a homeowner can do it if they read through it, a builder can do it. There’s a lot of avenues that we can

704 01:52:51.000 ⇒ 01:52:56.510 Uttam Kumaran: we can get the sales from. Yeah. Again, a homeowner, a builder, an architect.

705 01:52:57.940 ⇒ 01:52:59.909 Uttam Kumaran: And a lot of times, we’re specced into it.

706 01:52:59.910 ⇒ 01:53:22.510 Uttam Kumaran: by an architect. But they’re finding out just because they’re… they’ve heard the brand, and they’re searching for… They’ve done their own little bit of research, we’ve worked with them now for 20 years in certain cases. So they search… you’re the only people selling in the U.S? That’s right. Oh, so they search and it’s the only place to go. That’s right. Oh, perfect. Easily, we should just be… okay.

707 01:53:22.510 ⇒ 01:53:28.469 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. Okay. I think all the transaction data is gonna be in Square. This is a square site. Okay.

708 01:53:29.050 ⇒ 01:53:38.100 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, we should totally consider running, like, always-on marketing or keywords.

709 01:53:38.820 ⇒ 01:53:43.519 Uttam Kumaran: Depending on what it’s called for. What we’ve really moved away from is, like.

710 01:53:43.520 ⇒ 01:54:00.949 Uttam Kumaran: Terminesh is a tool. There’s lots of things you can do for termite control pre-construction, or in addition, remodels. We do work on remodels and emissions, because that… if you pour a slab next to an existing slab, you’ve made an entry point for termites. So we can key into the slab so that

711 01:54:01.270 ⇒ 01:54:07.399 Uttam Kumaran: Prevents termites from coming up, because the hardest place to get rid of termites is where you can’t see them coming in.

712 01:54:07.710 ⇒ 01:54:19.449 Uttam Kumaran: can’t see them once the bathroom’s done. Yeah. You’ve got the ceramic tile down, you’ve got the tub, the shower, and I got termites in this wall where they come in. They’re coming from your plumbing, but I can’t access it through tile. Yeah.

713 01:54:19.710 ⇒ 01:54:22.270 Uttam Kumaran: Customer as a platform. Yeah. Like that.

714 01:54:23.280 ⇒ 01:54:25.659 Uttam Kumaran: So, look at it. Great.

715 01:54:27.470 ⇒ 01:54:34.230 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think that’s… I think that’s it for today. No, that’s great. Well, again, I think you’re definitely on the right…

716 01:54:34.520 ⇒ 01:54:45.759 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this has been exciting. Showing us a lot of stuff where we’re going down, yeah, yeah, that’s right. And it’s not meant to… we’re not meant to disagree a lot about it, but we’re meant to kind of, like.

717 01:54:45.990 ⇒ 01:54:51.120 Uttam Kumaran: show the answer, and then be like, okay, we crossed one up, crossed one up. We’re sort of building this…

718 01:54:51.120 ⇒ 01:55:12.159 Uttam Kumaran: repository of the story, and so again, think back to our first meeting, all those questions we had, we gotta have answers for, like, what are our top categories? Who is our buyer? How do we sell to them? And so we’re working… I think we’re working towards… I think by, you know, next week, we’ll have a lot more information about Google Analytics, and so we’ll do another thing about

719 01:55:12.160 ⇒ 01:55:15.440 Uttam Kumaran: how people are coming on the website, and so that buying process.

720 01:55:17.410 ⇒ 01:55:36.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Well, if you need something specific from last… Yeah, I’ll look through again. Cool, of course. Yeah. Yeah, so I’m gonna wait till Zoran gets back to me, and I got enough of the Google My Business stuff, so we’ll kind of see, and then he’ll come back to me with, like.

721 01:55:36.650 ⇒ 01:55:53.659 Uttam Kumaran: what the attribution situation is, like, what we’re seeing in Google Analytics, recommendations, and so then, you know… Yeah. Cool man, yeah. Never met anybody. He’s great, yeah, Zoran’s great. Oh, he’s in Croatia, he’s in Split Croatia.

722 01:55:53.700 ⇒ 01:56:00.530 Uttam Kumaran: Greg is awesome. Yeah, he’s doing so much work on the attribution side for a lot of folks for us. Yeah.

723 01:56:00.710 ⇒ 01:56:02.160 Uttam Kumaran: That’s awesome. Yeah.

724 01:56:02.400 ⇒ 01:56:07.369 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, alright. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for the time.

725 01:56:07.600 ⇒ 01:56:14.080 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you for the info. No worries. Thanks, Amber. Thanks, Matt.

726 01:56:14.080 ⇒ 01:56:15.090 Amber Lin: Thanks, everyone!

727 01:56:15.260 ⇒ 01:56:17.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, not too often.

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