2026-02-04_abc_growth_strategy_session

Meeting Title: ABC Growth Strategy Session Date: 2026-02-04 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin

WEBVTT

1 00:01:10.840 ⇒ 00:01:26.979 Uttam Kumaran: Did see… so, I was at a meeting years ago, and I got to see Jordan when he was with the Wizards. We went to a game. Oh, okay. Yeah, he had 20-something points. I mean, he was very effective. Yeah. I remember that. This is at the end, and he was still…

2 00:01:27.150 ⇒ 00:01:28.650 Uttam Kumaran: Still Michael Jordan.

3 00:01:29.260 ⇒ 00:01:41.259 Uttam Kumaran: Anyone else coming? Amber will join… no, no one else physically. We’re good, I’m just gonna get this. Luca is one of the most amazing players I’ve ever seen. Yeah. The most exciting player in the NBA.

4 00:01:41.810 ⇒ 00:01:47.180 Uttam Kumaran: He’s just… Yeah.

5 00:01:48.030 ⇒ 00:01:49.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s a lot.

6 00:01:50.000 ⇒ 00:01:51.569 Uttam Kumaran: He’s playing one.

7 00:01:51.710 ⇒ 00:01:57.380 Uttam Kumaran: No, for the Lakers, as long as we get into the playoffs, we have a great… Chance of winning.

8 00:01:57.510 ⇒ 00:01:59.819 Uttam Kumaran: As long as we get into the playoffs.

9 00:02:00.200 ⇒ 00:02:18.989 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, that doesn’t… I don’t know, it doesn’t matter about those people. I only think about Luka. Those are all, like, who… I don’t even know half those… I know Austin Reeves. Yeah. I love Austin Reeves. Yeah, he’s still hurt, yeah. I love Austin Reeves. I hope JJ Redick keeps the job. I like him as a person.

10 00:02:19.130 ⇒ 00:02:20.819 Uttam Kumaran: You know? Yeah, I don’t…

11 00:02:22.940 ⇒ 00:02:27.980 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I have nothing to do with the Spurs. I mean, you guys are the closest thing I have to do with the Spurs.

12 00:02:28.010 ⇒ 00:02:34.560 Uttam Kumaran: Although my dad, when he first came to the States, he lived in Plano, and he’s working for TI.

13 00:02:34.570 ⇒ 00:02:51.090 Uttam Kumaran: And so… and he’s a huge basketball fan, and so he started as kind of, like, watching the Spurs, but then he moved to California, and then we grew up, like, full Kobe Lakers. Kobe, perfect timing. So, that’s what you gotta watch. I told him, and I told him about Cody.

14 00:02:51.480 ⇒ 00:02:56.729 Uttam Kumaran: So I had the flu a week or so ago, so I’m stuck in bed, and I’m watching stuff.

15 00:02:56.990 ⇒ 00:03:00.659 Uttam Kumaran: So, what you need to watch is Best Enemies.

16 00:03:01.330 ⇒ 00:03:11.790 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. It’s the history of the Lakers and the Celtics. Okay. And it’s freaking awesome. I’m in. I’m in. I eat those stocks up.

17 00:03:11.970 ⇒ 00:03:29.360 Uttam Kumaran: as you would expect, is Daniel and Larry Bird. Oh, okay, yeah. And I’m telling you, watching the highlights today of Magic Johnson running Showtime, the fast break, is just a sight of breathtaking. I mean, it’s just amazing.

18 00:03:29.410 ⇒ 00:03:32.340 Uttam Kumaran: Nobody’s running better since or before.

19 00:03:32.680 ⇒ 00:03:50.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Magic Johnson on the Fast Break is with James Worthy on the wing. Did you ever watch the HBO Showtime? I watched a couple episodes. Yeah, I watched the start of it. Yeah, I watched a good chunk of it. Yeah. But this is actual stuff, yeah. And it’s the Celtics, you know, a lot of the Celtics, a lot of the Lakers, I don’t know, and it’s just…

20 00:03:50.380 ⇒ 00:03:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: It’s fantastic. Celtics are still doing really well. They’re relevant. Yeah.

21 00:03:56.700 ⇒ 00:04:12.090 Uttam Kumaran: Houston’s still doing really well, too. I’m happy for Houston. So… yeah. No, I mean, but they were never, like, in super contention, like Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady, and then… Yeah.

22 00:04:12.330 ⇒ 00:04:13.020 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you.

23 00:04:13.140 ⇒ 00:04:16.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The hardened Dwight Howard rockets.

24 00:04:17.079 ⇒ 00:04:25.139 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, they’ve got… again, they’ve swung big so many times.

25 00:04:25.470 ⇒ 00:04:31.010 Uttam Kumaran: Claire Barkley played there? Yeah. And, Pippen played there? Yeah.

26 00:04:31.160 ⇒ 00:04:42.869 Uttam Kumaran: They’ve tried. They’ve swung… They’re the most aggressive. Oh, yeah. They have swung big. They’re like the Aggies. And brought in big money into it. We keep trying. No championships.

27 00:04:46.810 ⇒ 00:04:57.910 Uttam Kumaran: All right, gentlemen. I always would make all my Houston friends mad in college, and I would joke with them, because the Spurs, we were in the heyday still, and they’d try to talk to me about, oh, we got two, and y’all have five.

28 00:04:58.350 ⇒ 00:05:02.450 Uttam Kumaran: I remember year two when Jordan was playing baseball. Like, no, that doesn’t count.

29 00:05:02.830 ⇒ 00:05:14.429 Uttam Kumaran: Isn’t that when Barkley went to try to chase a ring with him, and then Jordan came back and was like, no, sir. You know, but Matt and I would tell you that, you know, King Olajuan

30 00:05:14.840 ⇒ 00:05:19.230 Uttam Kumaran: Is… yeah. I mean, and I love David Robinson.

31 00:05:19.910 ⇒ 00:05:23.050 Uttam Kumaran: Hakeem owned David Rob. Kicked his ass every time.

32 00:05:25.230 ⇒ 00:05:28.240 Uttam Kumaran: Too solid. It’s too much, too much again.

33 00:05:28.900 ⇒ 00:05:31.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect. Let me just…

34 00:05:36.060 ⇒ 00:05:37.450 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, what the heck is.

35 00:05:44.560 ⇒ 00:05:46.130 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so…

36 00:05:46.470 ⇒ 00:05:56.110 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like it’s been a pretty eventful, like, 2 months since we were in this room last, all together, plus Clarence. But I… we’ve really done…

37 00:05:56.280 ⇒ 00:06:04.179 Uttam Kumaran: a world tour of, like, everything ABC. I feel like, we’ve… we started, really.

38 00:06:04.280 ⇒ 00:06:20.160 Uttam Kumaran: the mission was to kind of weave our way into each part of the business, learn what it is that’s working, what it is that’s holding the business back, and then where are there opportunities, and where are the opportunities for us to assist in that. I feel like

39 00:06:20.330 ⇒ 00:06:21.330 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve…

40 00:06:21.830 ⇒ 00:06:39.460 Uttam Kumaran: in many ways, gone really deep, in many ways, like, just scratched the surface, and today we’re gonna walk through a lot of what we… what we found through the whole process, but also just, like, try to align us back to that first meeting, which was, like, what were those core questions that we couldn’t answer, and really was…

41 00:06:39.540 ⇒ 00:06:42.159 Uttam Kumaran: How is this business gonna continue to grow?

42 00:06:42.420 ⇒ 00:07:01.250 Uttam Kumaran: In a grow… really growing market, you know, and so I just want to kind of set the stage, there. And so this was… this was our initial core deliverables, and so really today we’ll be going through this discovery deck. We have, like, the… we do have a series of

43 00:07:01.320 ⇒ 00:07:15.959 Uttam Kumaran: recommendations around growth opportunities, roadmaps, how to achieve those. We have a lot of materials on knowledge transfer, for less, so I know that the CMO sort of interviews are going on right now.

44 00:07:15.960 ⇒ 00:07:21.520 Uttam Kumaran: We interview the final five… Okay. Monday. Monday. Okay. And from there, we…

45 00:07:21.740 ⇒ 00:07:36.389 Uttam Kumaran: hope to make a selection. So what my hope is, is that a lot of what we found really is, like, on a silver platter to that person on, like, we can save you probably 6 months of figuring everything out. So that’s really great. And then.

46 00:07:36.390 ⇒ 00:07:56.139 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve also spent a lot of time with David, spent a lot of time with Julie, spent a lot of time with Tim figuring out the data systems, and so you’ll see a lot of what we were able to achieve in terms of data and reporting, but I will also express how challenging it was to get there. But in the last two months, in order to do what we did here.

47 00:07:56.140 ⇒ 00:08:04.850 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve cut through a lot of those, you know, obstacles, and I think we’ve… we’ve really shown, like, what the power is if you have a lot of that data accessible.

48 00:08:06.170 ⇒ 00:08:22.039 Uttam Kumaran: So, I kind of want to just go through some of what we discovered in… in our discovery process, like, in talking to both of these folks, in talking to Julie, in talking to David, and talking to Les. And so, I just have a little bit of quotes, and I can let you

49 00:08:22.040 ⇒ 00:08:27.859 Uttam Kumaran: read that, but I feel like all of it, is really an extension of what you mentioned, which is

50 00:08:27.900 ⇒ 00:08:31.130 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t know the path to growth.

51 00:08:31.270 ⇒ 00:08:34.549 Uttam Kumaran: And we did see how… how much

52 00:08:34.679 ⇒ 00:08:53.379 Uttam Kumaran: exciting growth there was during COVID, and we saw that clearly in the data, and now we’re thinking about, okay, without, like, an event like that, how does ABC continue to grow not just a few percentage points, or flatline, but how do we grow 5% to 10% a year and do that sustainably, right? Do that without, something, you know, extreme. And so.

53 00:08:53.380 ⇒ 00:08:59.609 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like a lot of these, you know, speak for themselves, which is, like, how do we continue to cross-sell services?

54 00:08:59.610 ⇒ 00:09:00.620 Uttam Kumaran: How do we…

55 00:09:00.620 ⇒ 00:09:12.710 Uttam Kumaran: how do we know on a weekly, on a monthly basis if we’re heading towards our goal? And so a lot of, I think, the items here, Clarence will be presenting on, which is, like, the market and what the market opportunity is.

56 00:09:12.900 ⇒ 00:09:19.440 Uttam Kumaran: In terms of Julie, so I… when I met Julie, I can tell that she’s really, like.

57 00:09:19.520 ⇒ 00:09:31.400 Uttam Kumaran: the heart of, like, a lot of the operations, you know, especially Evolve and making sure that all the systems talk. But she’s also really hyper-aware of the data, and so I think that she was…

58 00:09:31.400 ⇒ 00:09:38.589 Uttam Kumaran: really forward with the fact that there are, like, this is an amazing business, we’re able to serve our customers in a great way.

59 00:09:38.590 ⇒ 00:09:55.120 Uttam Kumaran: But there is still a lack of the higher-level strategic goals, and how on a week-to-week basis are we going to achieve them. And so, of course, like, she was the gatekeeper for Evolve, and we were able to get access to that system, really understand, and what you’ll see today is, like.

60 00:09:55.120 ⇒ 00:10:05.600 Uttam Kumaran: how is ABC growing? How is ABC shrinking? And, like, how do we continue to, you know, make decisions that bring revenue to the business and maintain, like, excellent service?

61 00:10:05.970 ⇒ 00:10:12.479 Uttam Kumaran: And then from David, so when we met with David a few times, really, what we found is

62 00:10:12.490 ⇒ 00:10:20.399 Uttam Kumaran: He’s done a great job with Yvette’s team on implementing metrics and implementing a data-driven process, but when I tell him, great.

63 00:10:20.400 ⇒ 00:10:33.429 Uttam Kumaran: how are we gonna get this to the rest of the company? I could tell, he’s like, I… we don’t… we don’t… what… with what time? Right? And so, part of what I learned from David is, one, like, both of them are… David and Brian are more than capable of

64 00:10:33.470 ⇒ 00:10:50.440 Uttam Kumaran: handling reporting for this business, but there has to be a lot more automation and tooling that serves them, so they switch their time from 80% preparation, Excel, and 20%, like, okay, I’m thinking about their business, to the opposite, where a lot of those reports

65 00:10:50.440 ⇒ 00:10:56.760 Uttam Kumaran: are given to them, and they can actually start to pattern match and bring ideas to the top. So.

66 00:10:57.140 ⇒ 00:11:13.129 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve actually been able to do a lot of this as part of our discovery work, and we’ve brought David along with us, and he’s super, super excited that he’s able to use modern tooling to access data to improve the amount of people he can affect with data in the company.

67 00:11:13.130 ⇒ 00:11:18.259 Uttam Kumaran: And so, this was a… this was great to sort of be able to pair with him through this process.

68 00:11:18.370 ⇒ 00:11:31.290 Uttam Kumaran: And then from Les, I think I learned a lot about the history of how ABC markets and acquires customers from Les. We also, and I think everybody in the room is aware, and we’ll demonstrate through data.

69 00:11:31.290 ⇒ 00:11:38.510 Uttam Kumaran: in how we need to shift some of that, given the changes in customers that we’re seeing. You know, I think right now.

70 00:11:38.690 ⇒ 00:11:46.510 Uttam Kumaran: we saw that within the data, there’s really a lack of understanding of where are ABC customers coming from, how much are we paying for those customers.

71 00:11:46.560 ⇒ 00:12:04.300 Uttam Kumaran: how long are they staying? How much value are they giving to us, and where should we put the next ad dollar, right? And I think a lot of what the next CMO is going to also be thinking a lot about is how to do all those decisions, right? If him or her have a fixed budget.

72 00:12:04.320 ⇒ 00:12:08.919 Uttam Kumaran: where should they be putting dollars in order to get the highest ROI to hit their goals?

73 00:12:10.290 ⇒ 00:12:18.500 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s also for capacity, right? So there’s a lot of things that Les is just maintaining, and I think there’s a lot of systems that can help, you know, organize a lot of that, so…

74 00:12:18.570 ⇒ 00:12:32.539 Uttam Kumaran: These were sort of the cross-cutting themes, that we really identified, right? So, we heard about, like, the phone doesn’t ring as much. We heard about attribution. We don’t know what’s working or what’s not working.

75 00:12:32.540 ⇒ 00:12:43.240 Uttam Kumaran: We know that there’s a refund cancellation problem that is totally, like, we can totally mitigate that, and we can totally win those customers back.

76 00:12:43.320 ⇒ 00:12:51.070 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a multi-service gap, right? We found that on average, people have one and a half services when they should be closer to five to seven.

77 00:12:51.190 ⇒ 00:12:55.679 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s a huge opportunity to do that, where you already paid for the customer.

78 00:12:55.730 ⇒ 00:13:12.989 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We talked about the data team, we also talked about siloed operations, and so what you’re gonna see here, and I think hopefully what, Steve and you and Bo saw, is that being able to see the data at these levels across the business

79 00:13:12.990 ⇒ 00:13:27.299 Uttam Kumaran: you’re able to do things across multiple services, across multiple sales channels. You’re starting to see patterns that we can take from one service to the other, and start to distribute it down to each of the departments, each of the different, you know, locales.

80 00:13:27.980 ⇒ 00:13:34.480 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I would say these are all the questions that, when we were in this room two months ago, that were asked.

81 00:13:34.520 ⇒ 00:13:53.549 Uttam Kumaran: And we have all of these, you know, answered, and I think… I feel really, really confident that today, you’re gonna see not only the answers to these, but the depth at which we can answer them, and our ability to continue to answer them, you know, for the future.

82 00:13:53.780 ⇒ 00:14:01.569 Uttam Kumaran: So I just wanted to pause there. I think next we’ll kind of get into Clarence’s section on competitive landscape, but just any questions or…

83 00:14:01.890 ⇒ 00:14:03.459 Uttam Kumaran: Thoughts so far?

84 00:14:03.670 ⇒ 00:14:07.110 Uttam Kumaran: It’s very accurate. Okay.

85 00:14:08.340 ⇒ 00:14:10.400 Uttam Kumaran: I think so. Yeah.

86 00:14:10.710 ⇒ 00:14:15.010 Uttam Kumaran: So, a lot of the less stuff I need to kind of look at as far as how many

87 00:14:15.590 ⇒ 00:14:31.489 Uttam Kumaran: outside… Yeah, I didn’t see the 25, 25, I’m not aware of that at all. Yes. I’ve got another 25 people that are freelancers. I thought that was 3, 4, 5. So there’s 25. So there’s Monkey Boy, there’s a couple of other agencies that are helping out.

88 00:14:31.720 ⇒ 00:14:43.610 Uttam Kumaran: But this is what we kind of heard from him. But again, there may be parts of those teams, but there is… there is support system. Like, you guys are running an operation on the marketing side very lean internally.

89 00:14:43.780 ⇒ 00:14:48.970 Uttam Kumaran: Why? Yeah. And yet… We do, and I agree with that completely.

90 00:14:49.250 ⇒ 00:15:03.529 Uttam Kumaran: And yet, we do outsource… Yes. …certain aspects of it that another company might do internally. Yes. And so, are we… I guess my question is, of what Les chooses to do.

91 00:15:03.630 ⇒ 00:15:09.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. We do all of them. Yes. I think there are things that Les chooses not to do.

92 00:15:09.350 ⇒ 00:15:11.190 Uttam Kumaran: that we don’t do. Yeah.

93 00:15:11.570 ⇒ 00:15:23.999 Uttam Kumaran: i.e, social media as a consequence. Yeah. Right? Well, he chooses not to do that. Yeah. So, it’s not that we’re not doing it because we don’t have the capability, it’s because it’s a conscious decision on his part

94 00:15:24.220 ⇒ 00:15:25.680 Uttam Kumaran: Did not. Yeah.

95 00:15:27.910 ⇒ 00:15:43.300 Uttam Kumaran: And so we’ll also look at, like, what is the capacity for us to take on any new marketing initiative, and, like, what needs to happen for us to even measure that end-to-end, right? Okay, we have budget, we’re spending in the right area, and within a reasonable amount of time, we’re understanding, are we make… is that making money for us, right?

96 00:15:43.870 ⇒ 00:15:46.670 Uttam Kumaran: great.

97 00:15:47.210 ⇒ 00:15:50.259 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe, Clarence, I could pass it to you,

98 00:15:50.570 ⇒ 00:15:59.269 Uttam Kumaran: You wanna take it from here? Sure, so a lot of the questions that were asked initially were, why are we growing only 2-3%? Can we grow even more?

99 00:15:59.270 ⇒ 00:16:16.229 Uttam Kumaran: how do we do that? Where are the customers going? Because we’re not getting those phone calls, right? So as the team was actually getting access to your data, doing specific analysis for your data sets, I did the market analysis to take a look at what else is happening in the world that ABC is in.

100 00:16:16.230 ⇒ 00:16:24.080 Uttam Kumaran: Specifically in Austin, in San Antonio, right, for the services that you provide in those regions, what is happening?

101 00:16:24.150 ⇒ 00:16:44.050 Uttam Kumaran: Well, the first thing that I explored to answer the question of, you know, where is the growth? We have to answer, where are the new home buyers, or where are the people moving to, right? So, I did this initial analysis showing that the growing demographic of new homeowners are leaning towards that millennial Gen Z.

102 00:16:44.050 ⇒ 00:16:57.469 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of the older generations are maybe just upgrading their homes, or moving down the block, right? And in many of those cases, analytics say that they’ve already formed a relationship with their home service provider.

103 00:16:57.470 ⇒ 00:17:05.450 Uttam Kumaran: So your best, you know, approachable market that’s always growing, that’s probably willing to listen to you, is that millennial Gen Z generation.

104 00:17:07.020 ⇒ 00:17:17.410 Uttam Kumaran: And then we want to ask this generation, how do they want to be reached out to? What do they like, right? What kind of homes are they buying? What kind of jobs do they have?

105 00:17:17.410 ⇒ 00:17:23.700 Uttam Kumaran: Well, a quick analysis of that shows that, you know, your Austin, group, leans to be

106 00:17:23.700 ⇒ 00:17:39.969 Uttam Kumaran: towards slightly older, and are spending a little bit more on their homes, whereas San Antonio has a different, you know, category of military-specific first-time home buyers that are on the younger side, because they are in the military, and lower average home costs all around.

107 00:17:40.090 ⇒ 00:17:43.940 Uttam Kumaran: But, to really answer the question.

108 00:17:43.970 ⇒ 00:18:06.400 Uttam Kumaran: you know, is this category even growing, right? So one of the questions was, like, why can’t we grow more than 2% or 3%? The first thing I would explore is, are others growing, or is this category overall growing? And if you just take a look at that quick summary, you know, nationally, you know, it is growing massively. There’s an average of 4-5% increase happening, and the average spend on maintenance is about,

109 00:18:06.400 ⇒ 00:18:18.069 Uttam Kumaran: $6,800 in Texas, which is actually lower than the national average, but it’s all there, right? So what I establish here in this slide is just make sure there is an opportunity space, and there is an untapped market.

110 00:18:23.190 ⇒ 00:18:47.970 Uttam Kumaran: And I love, you know, surveys like this. By the way, all of these charts came from Angie’s List 2025 homebuyers Analysis, and when we want to sell to this, you know, client group, we need to understand, you know, their worries, their fears, what they’re actually looking for, what services you’re offering that, you know, they would want. So, part of the reasons why, homebuyers are finding it hard to find skilled pros are all of these things, and, you know.

111 00:18:47.970 ⇒ 00:18:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: This is also great information that helps us craft really great messaging, create better marketing strategies, so, some insight on that.

112 00:18:59.370 ⇒ 00:19:17.090 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry. So, spending categories. It’s also really interesting to see how the spending patterns are different from generation to generation. We know that the Gen Z Millennials are newer home buyers, and you’ll notice that they spend a lot less on home improvement all around.

113 00:19:17.110 ⇒ 00:19:28.439 Uttam Kumaran: Right? But they do focus on taking care of their things, and, with a lot of maintenance. The most interesting thing is, they don’t really do their home repairs themselves.

114 00:19:28.440 ⇒ 00:19:37.199 Uttam Kumaran: the amount of emergency grows as the generation gets younger. So, what signals to me is, you know.

115 00:19:37.980 ⇒ 00:19:46.409 Uttam Kumaran: When you message this group, maybe that’s a category or a topic or a, you know, conversation starter that would really resonate with them, right?

116 00:19:46.740 ⇒ 00:20:04.540 Uttam Kumaran: This generation is used to, being able to Uber Eats anything they want in a few minutes, and there’s, like, all of this growing expectation that that happens across all services, right? And it doesn’t. So, like, they end up just having to call for emergencies when they don’t take care of their homes.

117 00:20:04.540 ⇒ 00:20:09.819 Uttam Kumaran: To begin with. Well, and didn’t we look at the younger generations probably buying an older home also?

118 00:20:09.860 ⇒ 00:20:12.820 Uttam Kumaran: The older generations, they’ve probably built a new one.

119 00:20:14.240 ⇒ 00:20:18.889 Uttam Kumaran: I wonder… we don’t have any data on our customers of their age, right?

120 00:20:21.500 ⇒ 00:20:26.609 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think it’s in the data, like, we would have to enrich it. I was wondering, I would think…

121 00:20:26.790 ⇒ 00:20:28.679 Uttam Kumaran: If you were asked for sales guys.

122 00:20:28.910 ⇒ 00:20:34.849 Uttam Kumaran: Which would make sense, it seems like we target more generation stuff. You got sales guys, most teams say, yeah, most people are doing.

123 00:20:35.460 ⇒ 00:20:36.620 Uttam Kumaran: But we’re too big deal.

124 00:20:36.910 ⇒ 00:20:46.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Seeing the names on the compliments. Yeah. A lot of care and Gladys. Oh, yeah, you were mentioning that. Diana.

125 00:20:51.650 ⇒ 00:21:08.909 Uttam Kumaran: Well, the last thing, the next slide, real quick, that we learned is that this group, or this audience that you want to capture are savers. They actually spend a lot less overall, they’re saving up for larger and bigger projects, and they’re actively budgeting for it.

126 00:21:09.090 ⇒ 00:21:18.840 Uttam Kumaran: And I also found it interesting that a lot of those things on the right side, the most in-demand services, according to Angie’s List from 2025, that’s stuff that ABC does.

127 00:21:19.570 ⇒ 00:21:30.390 Uttam Kumaran: So this is really positive for answering the question of, can ABC grow? These are all growth opportunities, right? This is customers that are lining up for services, and you offer almost all of them.

128 00:21:32.160 ⇒ 00:21:50.219 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a part of the… part of the point to make here is that this is a growing segment, and the fact that they don’t… it’s not part of your customer base should indicate the fact that they should be, right? And we’ll talk a little bit about competitors and how

129 00:21:50.350 ⇒ 00:22:00.789 Uttam Kumaran: we’re seeing other folks get to these… get to these people, but this is the growth segment in Texas that’s really going to be looking for a service partner, you know? So these…

130 00:22:00.990 ⇒ 00:22:03.990 Uttam Kumaran: When you say that, those are millennials. Yeah.

131 00:22:07.600 ⇒ 00:22:12.460 Uttam Kumaran: So I took a deep dive into how each generation likes to be reached out to.

132 00:22:12.590 ⇒ 00:22:20.889 Uttam Kumaran: where are they in the world where they’re hearing, you know, from radio or media, or where are they online, right? And if you look at

133 00:22:20.890 ⇒ 00:22:34.640 Uttam Kumaran: the breakdown, it’s… you know, it’s not surprising, right? The youngest generations are on social media, they’re getting their ads from there, they expect instant booking and really heavy tech with whatever that they’re, whatever services you’re buying.

134 00:22:34.800 ⇒ 00:22:52.549 Uttam Kumaran: Millennials, well, they’re… they’re still in that Google era. Maybe they’re picking up some AI tools, right? But they… they will go and look at Google reviews. So, they appreciate transparency, they’ll actually, you know, add things to the cart, see what their total is before they even, like, decide they’re gonna buy.

135 00:22:52.680 ⇒ 00:23:12.259 Uttam Kumaran: And the 2026 service trend for them was, preventations. According to Angie’s List, that’s the number one thing that they’re interested in focusing on for their homes. So, just another set of analysis to understand who your customers are and how they want to hear from you, right? And also, you know, revealing that

136 00:23:12.510 ⇒ 00:23:23.600 Uttam Kumaran: you might have to look for a different discovery channel for each of these groups, right? And talk to them slightly differently, and address different concerns for them. Yeah, what we’ll show you when we’re going through

137 00:23:23.880 ⇒ 00:23:38.500 Uttam Kumaran: the, sort of, how does ABC acquire a customer, and how is a customer aware of ABC, will show you how people are currently finding and not finding. You know, and I think that’ll be really clear, especially when it comes to the

138 00:23:38.500 ⇒ 00:23:48.439 Uttam Kumaran: the millennials, but again, like, I think this is clear in the way that we’ve marketed so far, but it’s also clear in the way we’re not marketing today why we’re missing out on that audience.

139 00:23:52.910 ⇒ 00:24:00.989 Uttam Kumaran: So this is a really fun analysis, because I was able to just take the aggregate of all the data that I had, and just said, give me your average customer.

140 00:24:01.080 ⇒ 00:24:13.559 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Give me their average income, give me their average, you know, marital status, and things like that. So, when we take a look at all the demographical data that’s available in the market.

141 00:24:13.570 ⇒ 00:24:23.040 Uttam Kumaran: your average future customer is probably going to be a 40-something. It’s a 61% chance that they’re married, which is an all-time low, which I thought…

142 00:24:23.390 ⇒ 00:24:24.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

143 00:24:24.460 ⇒ 00:24:40.869 Uttam Kumaran: But also an interesting message to you on how you provide services, you know, when, you know, there’s married couples around, there’s always somebody home to kind of, like, open the door and take care of these services, but when people are single and they’re living alone, you know, scheduling those services becomes more challenging.

144 00:24:41.080 ⇒ 00:24:56.409 Uttam Kumaran: I know a doctor’s office, dentist, actually, they opened up evening hours and weekends, and all of a sudden, their business increased by 60%, because, like, all of this market that they couldn’t capture because, you know, 9-to-5ers, just don’t have time to go to the dentist.

145 00:24:57.160 ⇒ 00:25:08.719 Uttam Kumaran: And then we take a look at, you know, overall, how do they like to, to go through that buying process? So, when they’re discovering who they might actually,

146 00:25:08.720 ⇒ 00:25:12.849 Uttam Kumaran: hire for their home services. They’ll look online.

147 00:25:12.850 ⇒ 00:25:31.170 Uttam Kumaran: like, 98% of them, so that really says a lot about, like, where you’re going to find, you know, your future customers. 17% of them are also now getting into using AI and ChatGPT, so that’s gonna emerge, and I think, you know, in the future, that’s going to balance out and be more AI-focused.

148 00:25:31.190 ⇒ 00:25:46.939 Uttam Kumaran: They vet through, you know, at least 44 different reviews, and they ignore anything less than 4 stars, and then they read the 1 stars at the end. That seems to be… That’s what I did, because I think that’s what I did.

149 00:25:47.170 ⇒ 00:25:59.319 Uttam Kumaran: Like I was telling Matt, like, these slides, I was like, these are survey-says answers, like, family feud answers. So, like, typically, you know, you’ll see the demographic, they’re like, yeah, that’s exactly what I do, right?

150 00:25:59.420 ⇒ 00:26:05.020 Uttam Kumaran: contact. So another thing is, this generation seems to be really shy of using the phone.

151 00:26:05.020 ⇒ 00:26:19.999 Uttam Kumaran: So text seems to be the preferred method at 55%, and I will be willing to make a bet that if you went younger in this category and looked at that same metric, they would lean towards even more, you know, texting and, you know, phoneless contact.

152 00:26:20.900 ⇒ 00:26:34.040 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of them are also really spoiled by technologies like OpenTable, where you can just make a reservation and see all those times and things like that. So 54% of that group really wants that kind of digital experience and convenience.

153 00:26:34.040 ⇒ 00:26:58.179 Uttam Kumaran: And lastly, pricing is the number one factor for this group. You know, like, if you look at historical trends, the Millennial Gen Z just don’t have the same capital, and spending power as prior generations, so they’re super price conscious, but they really do value trust and transparency. So, like, if, you know, they’ve gone through this process with you, they know that, you know, everything works really well.

154 00:26:58.180 ⇒ 00:27:09.119 Uttam Kumaran: They’ll just pick you as the main home services vendor. So, transparency is specifically what? So, so, this modernized, communication

155 00:27:09.120 ⇒ 00:27:27.460 Uttam Kumaran: article actually mentioned, like, being able to accurately, price out an issue. Like, for example, if you go in for a home repair and say, hey, it’ll only take us an hour and, you know, price out $150, and then you get there and you realize, whoa, their AC is, like, so busted and needs to be replaced, a full unit replacement.

156 00:27:27.460 ⇒ 00:27:34.419 Uttam Kumaran: Right, that $150 service repair becomes a couple thousand, or, right, a hundred. They really don’t like that.

157 00:27:35.250 ⇒ 00:27:51.259 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so if you start off saying, like, hey, we’re just gonna come and take a look, we can’t price anything out until we take a look at what’s happening, right? And you show them exactly where in the line, it failed, like, here it is, here’s the condition of it, right? And this is why you need a new AC, like, that transparency is what they’re looking for.

158 00:27:51.400 ⇒ 00:27:55.730 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, why are these companies charging me this much? What are they doing? What do they find?

159 00:27:55.770 ⇒ 00:28:04.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let me give you an example. So, I actually went through and purchased ABC Services, last month, or sort of… actually, this was, like, right around Christmas.

160 00:28:04.410 ⇒ 00:28:20.739 Uttam Kumaran: Just to see, like, both go through the buying funnel, and see the inspector that came out, see the tech meet everybody. And, this is exactly what I felt, because I don’t know… I’m an electrical engineer, but… so I know a little bit about capacitors, but I was curious about, like.

161 00:28:20.740 ⇒ 00:28:30.120 Uttam Kumaran: like, what happens when this fails, and so I actually was able to ask a lot of questions, and it was great. And he was super, super thorough about the way he explained what happens if

162 00:28:30.390 ⇒ 00:28:48.299 Uttam Kumaran: the capacitor goes out, like, why you won’t realize that until, like, peak season, and I felt like that was exactly what I needed to hear, because I’m dealing with an expert to really explain what the cost was, and, like, what going on a maintenance plan looks like. And so I felt this, you know, firsthand.

163 00:28:48.300 ⇒ 00:29:06.480 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think the other piece is, like, look, you can’t… it’s hard to shop around for, like… you can’t call, like, 5 different home… you know who wants to call 5 different home services. So, I think you guys are actually, like, really fairly priced, and I actually don’t think that… that price, which you… you may feel… I think one thing that we’ve heard is, like, oh, maybe we’re more expensive, like.

164 00:29:06.480 ⇒ 00:29:14.740 Uttam Kumaran: I actually think, given the range of services you offer, and given the level of service, it’s gonna trump that price, and people are not

165 00:29:14.790 ⇒ 00:29:32.649 Uttam Kumaran: really shopping, like, they’re not really calling 10 and finding the market price. So it’s actually more about having a great experience with the CSR, or the scheduler, and then having the great tech experience, you know? I think that that’s what, you know, happens with some of our services, where some of our people go, oh, well, we’re this or that, and I’m like.

166 00:29:32.740 ⇒ 00:29:51.870 Uttam Kumaran: you’re comparing us against the one guy… Yes. …who operates out of his garage, who doesn’t have any… and that’s not… That’s not, yeah. That’s what I was saying in today’s meeting. Get 3 competitive bids of a company, and we’re gonna come out great every time. Yeah.

167 00:29:51.870 ⇒ 00:29:55.779 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not gonna be way above, we’re clearly not gonna be way below.

168 00:29:55.780 ⇒ 00:30:13.180 Uttam Kumaran: But the value proposition is better, and the trust proposition, I would submit, is always going to be higher with ABC. But I just don’t think, and we see this all the time on residential, like, pest and lawn, people don’t get multiple bids. It’s usually, they call us, and it’s yes or no.

169 00:30:13.180 ⇒ 00:30:21.909 Uttam Kumaran: Air conditioning, a big landscape project, a big… Projects, yes, but for maintenance… One that I’m getting frustrated with is synthetic turf.

170 00:30:22.340 ⇒ 00:30:26.080 Uttam Kumaran: Right? That’s a project. Yeah. Feet over the head.

171 00:30:26.230 ⇒ 00:30:34.400 Uttam Kumaran: That, oh, you can get it done for $6 a square foot, and I’m like, that’s not a comparable deal. I can’t do anything about that. Yeah.

172 00:30:34.610 ⇒ 00:30:39.099 Uttam Kumaran: And I think we’re in a good place, but it’s been a struggle to get to that place.

173 00:30:40.570 ⇒ 00:30:41.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.

174 00:30:43.130 ⇒ 00:30:46.899 Uttam Kumaran: Because I think if you build… what I would submit.

175 00:30:47.250 ⇒ 00:30:56.259 Uttam Kumaran: Because if you were talking to one of our comfort advisors, you felt, man, this guy knows his stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s knowledgeable. I feel like I can trust him.

176 00:30:56.600 ⇒ 00:31:10.950 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And when he gives me a price, if you ever got to that point, you would probably feel that, well, that’s probably what it costs. Yeah, I… Instead of, I’m gonna go get 5 other bids… No, no, no, no, no. Yes.

177 00:31:11.050 ⇒ 00:31:28.710 Uttam Kumaran: this guy was really smart, he was very knowledgeable, he was very caring. I’m gonna trust that he gave me a fair price. Yes. Do I know that he gave me the cheapest price? No. Do I know that he gave me the highest price? No. But do I feel that I got a fair price? I would submit that people would say yes.

178 00:31:28.710 ⇒ 00:31:49.559 Uttam Kumaran: with the vast majority of our people who are out there giving… doing sales. So I do think it’s fair to say that if we can book the appointment, we pretty much got it. Yeah, because we’ll also see in the… in terms of cancellations, it’s very rare that people cancel for bad services. Yeah. So we’re seeing that. So part of this is also, like, what part… what part of that experience can we float into the marketing? How do we take advantage of this

179 00:31:49.560 ⇒ 00:31:54.920 Uttam Kumaran: these things, and push it into the same way we’re marketing to people, you know, so… Yeah.

180 00:31:58.650 ⇒ 00:32:17.149 Uttam Kumaran: So this slide just summarizes everything we were just talking about, like, you know, this report mentioned, these are four big things that this age group really cares about. Having this 30-minute rule where, like, the service appointment that’s made is actually fulfilled within that time window, and that is predictable.

181 00:32:17.210 ⇒ 00:32:33.869 Uttam Kumaran: Weekend availability is super important, and that’s probably tied to that marital status thing that I mentioned earlier. Payment preferences, right? They are, you know, the tap-to-pay generation, so having that available is super helpful. Which we don’t have. Oh. Auto charge.

182 00:32:35.830 ⇒ 00:32:41.519 Uttam Kumaran: Well, actually, Evolve is pretty close to the top. Well, that’s what I’m… what I was…

183 00:32:41.650 ⇒ 00:32:46.030 Uttam Kumaran: Like, in person to have to pay. Yeah. Yeah.

184 00:32:46.690 ⇒ 00:32:55.300 Uttam Kumaran: But also, the subscription model that we’re coming on is perfectly standard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s good for them, and it’s good for us.

185 00:32:55.580 ⇒ 00:32:57.260 Uttam Kumaran: Venice! Venice.

186 00:32:57.750 ⇒ 00:33:02.900 Uttam Kumaran: Almost payless, because it’s already done. Right, well… Billy.

187 00:33:03.190 ⇒ 00:33:05.340 Uttam Kumaran: Just be members of other inspected vehicles.

188 00:33:10.860 ⇒ 00:33:30.669 Uttam Kumaran: And then we took a deep dive into some category winners. This is my analysis, what my survey said were leaders. Then I took back, you know, feedback from the group and actually did another market analysis for four of the different companies that built it, so we’ll look into that. But, the big takeaway here is

189 00:33:31.690 ⇒ 00:33:47.429 Uttam Kumaran: the hospitality aspect, the soft skills aspect, really sells well. If you look at the companies that are succeeding in this space in an outsized manner, they’re really focusing on, you know, the soft skills.

190 00:33:47.430 ⇒ 00:34:08.980 Uttam Kumaran: And the blue-collar aesthetic, if you look at Pink’s windows, you know, they’ve got a certain style for their uniforms, and their pink hats are more popular than window service themselves, so… People don’t care about their service, they care, that’s cool. It’s the feeling of it that, you know, really does sell a brand. They’re just like 1950s service guys. I know nothing about pinks other than that they park their trucks up in the…

191 00:34:09.650 ⇒ 00:34:25.089 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, they do. They have really cool youth. Do they? Yeah. I hate seeing moms wearing pink’s hats. They don’t even know what Pink’s is, probably. They probably don’t see. They just go, it’s a cool logo, it’s… they dress their employees nice.

192 00:34:25.210 ⇒ 00:34:29.290 Uttam Kumaran: Well, what does that mean? Well, I mean, help me here, because…

193 00:34:29.929 ⇒ 00:34:36.110 Uttam Kumaran: I think our guys show up very professional. This is a tactic in a game that’s, like.

194 00:34:36.110 ⇒ 00:34:47.339 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just, like, not… this isn’t the game I think we’re… we’re playing. Yeah, one thing that… one thing that Clarence… I mean, are you gonna go into, sort of, like, marketing a little bit? Yeah, okay, so I’ll let you…

195 00:34:47.340 ⇒ 00:35:11.710 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we can talk about it now. We can answer the Pink question. So… so Pink’s was designed to actually scale up and become a franchise, so they spent a lot of that money at the core of the business on brand identity and digital technology. They spent less on actually figuring out how to provide, you know, services, because they just assumed whoever’s going to franchise from us is going to, you know, fulfill those services, however.

196 00:35:12.040 ⇒ 00:35:29.240 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, we’re going to provide the uniforms, the technology, and the, you know, the designs and trucks and websites, and everyone else is going to figure it out. So that’s probably why they’ve over-indexed into, you know, pushing that marketing, and the results aren’t actually technically tied. Yeah, it’s a really cool brand.

197 00:35:30.970 ⇒ 00:35:38.309 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, cool. I don’t get it. It’s an old brand that fits well. Does that guy look any better than anyone you put on the doorstep?

198 00:35:38.500 ⇒ 00:35:46.339 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m sincerely asking… That’s the generation guy. What is it that makes… he’s young? He’s… he’s a younger-looking guy.

199 00:35:46.680 ⇒ 00:35:52.210 Uttam Kumaran: So, is that the formula, that they pretend that that’s who’s gonna show up? That is who shows up.

200 00:35:56.040 ⇒ 00:36:05.890 Uttam Kumaran: No, but what you’re seeing is that they don’t have a depth, so they have to win through aggressive marketing tactics, right, through social, which is… that’s…

201 00:36:06.170 ⇒ 00:36:10.240 Uttam Kumaran: Well, all that is. Those hacks get worn all over the place.

202 00:36:10.640 ⇒ 00:36:19.180 Uttam Kumaran: See, I did not know that at all. Well, you’re not hanging out with that.

203 00:36:19.700 ⇒ 00:36:22.350 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so just a little bit cooler shirts.

204 00:36:22.560 ⇒ 00:36:30.069 Uttam Kumaran: And they do social media. Yeah. They have cool videos. There you go. That… that is why, this is what my point is.

205 00:36:30.220 ⇒ 00:36:46.589 Uttam Kumaran: The reason that anyone cares about that is because they do the social media really well, really interesting, really fun. 35 of my friends follow me. How many followers total do they have? 26,000, but 35 of them are my friends, which is interesting to see.

206 00:36:47.500 ⇒ 00:36:49.790 Uttam Kumaran: They just, they go get good content.

207 00:36:49.980 ⇒ 00:37:04.130 Uttam Kumaran: Right, but what I’m circling back to, it now makes more sense to me. It’s not the hat, it’s not the uniform that I’m looking at, it’s the social media component that made that. It’s really both, yeah.

208 00:37:04.130 ⇒ 00:37:11.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. They had a cool brand, and they market it, and they do social media, yeah, it’s all… They said, let’s be cool, and then they marketed that we were cool.

209 00:37:14.440 ⇒ 00:37:24.369 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah, I mean, last note is, you know, predictable reliability is what really does succeed. If you take a look at Two Men in a Truck, when they went to transparent pricing.

210 00:37:24.620 ⇒ 00:37:38.830 Uttam Kumaran: they really, you know, started surpassing their revenue goals. When they, when Authority Brands focused on on-time guarantees and being able to provide better customer service, you know, they were able to expand that, franchise. So,

211 00:37:38.830 ⇒ 00:37:49.299 Uttam Kumaran: that was the core takeaway here. You know, each of these companies are, you know, going with their own strategy, and it’s just to take a look at the playing field to see, you know, how people are specialized.

212 00:37:49.590 ⇒ 00:37:50.319 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great.

213 00:37:51.410 ⇒ 00:37:56.460 Uttam Kumaran: There’s two men in the truck, also, that franchise model.

214 00:37:56.640 ⇒ 00:37:59.620 Uttam Kumaran: Let me know, catalog things.

215 00:37:59.860 ⇒ 00:38:13.770 Uttam Kumaran: Is it 750 million, I bet it is. Yeah. I’m fairly certain, because I’ve seen them in New York a bunch, yeah. It’s a regional franchise, so I guess, like, you get to buy that region.

216 00:38:14.350 ⇒ 00:38:32.099 Uttam Kumaran: So, and again, of those up there, those are things we compete with, but Neighborly is the only one who wants to own… own the home strategy, which is our strategy. Yeah. Right? Yes. Own the home. Yeah. And so, how to get to that is the puzzle for us. Yeah.

217 00:38:34.730 ⇒ 00:38:48.099 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so this is a part two of my presentation where we just took a look at, like, what are the categories that you are in that I can find marketing data for? I can match up everything.

218 00:38:48.120 ⇒ 00:38:58.459 Uttam Kumaran: And, how much are we projecting for it to grow? And especially in Texas. So, these are the numbers that you’re seeing. This is actually coming straight from Statista.

219 00:38:58.460 ⇒ 00:39:13.380 Uttam Kumaran: Those are baseline growth rates. I thought this really interesting. It’s almost a fixed, like, 6% growth rate, right? So I did a little deep dive and said, like, you’re giving me this pretty flat, you know, growth rate, regardless of which vertical I’m picking.

220 00:39:13.380 ⇒ 00:39:19.339 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what is actually happening in this space? Well, if you take a look at, the 10-year,

221 00:39:19.440 ⇒ 00:39:33.869 Uttam Kumaran: projections, and I said, hey, take into account, the growth rate of San Antonio and Austin, right? Taking into account, the, other drivers of people buying new homes, right? And, the…

222 00:39:33.870 ⇒ 00:39:45.190 Uttam Kumaran: the bull case is actually an 8.5% growth overall. So, what we’re taking away here is that, you know, there’s definitely more growth than you’re able to capture right now.

223 00:39:46.060 ⇒ 00:39:59.660 Uttam Kumaran: Well, let me get this with this, that projection, 2025 to 2030, so that’s 6.2 to 7% annually, or is that 6.2 to 7% between 25 and 30? Annually.

224 00:40:00.870 ⇒ 00:40:04.329 Uttam Kumaran: Making sure… yeah, it’s just a compounded annual growth.

225 00:40:07.470 ⇒ 00:40:21.210 Uttam Kumaran: So, the one thing I mentioned when I showed this was Handyman is the one outlier. It’s actually growing a little bit faster than other services, and it proves that the millennials, they just don’t want to do the home stuff, right?

226 00:40:21.290 ⇒ 00:40:40.789 Uttam Kumaran: They don’t know how? No, I don’t know how to do… I’m gonna… I have to call ABC this next month about… this month about something. You’re like, I don’t know how to do something, and I’m like, oh yeah, it’s just… I’m just gonna call them. That right there is what we want to go… Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every customer… Yes, yes. Exactly that. Yeah.

227 00:40:44.280 ⇒ 00:40:57.469 Uttam Kumaran: Now, we wanted to take a look at, that same set of data for Austin, San Antonio, Austin specifically, and San Antonio specifically, but there is no market-specific category data for regions like that.

228 00:40:57.470 ⇒ 00:41:05.719 Uttam Kumaran: what I… what I was able to do is create an extrapolation based on, you know, the population size, amount of homes, and the area itself.

229 00:41:05.720 ⇒ 00:41:21.569 Uttam Kumaran: And come up with these numbers. And, what’s interesting with Austin, Round Rock is, it is almost, like, the average numbers across the board from what we saw in Texas, right? So, nothing really, you know.

230 00:41:21.630 ⇒ 00:41:27.040 Uttam Kumaran: interesting to… to highlight here, I, you know, the…

231 00:41:27.120 ⇒ 00:41:40.949 Uttam Kumaran: the strategic drivers still remain the same. There’s still this demographic shift happening, and there’s mandates that really drive the lawn care part of things. So, yeah. Any questions? I think it’s pretty… I just want to make sure I’m looking at the right thing here.

232 00:41:41.820 ⇒ 00:41:46.020 Uttam Kumaran: So, HVAC, residential…

233 00:41:47.650 ⇒ 00:41:56.960 Uttam Kumaran: 200… the growth is $200 t o$ 250 million? What are we seeing? The total market. Total market. Total market. Total addressable market.

234 00:41:57.210 ⇒ 00:41:58.970 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just fascinated.

235 00:41:59.410 ⇒ 00:42:03.239 Uttam Kumaran: that lawn care is bigger than HVAC.

236 00:42:04.840 ⇒ 00:42:05.670 Uttam Kumaran: bet.

237 00:42:06.090 ⇒ 00:42:14.519 Uttam Kumaran: Lawn care probably includes… they’re probably including mowing. Well, they got landscaping up there. Yeah, lawn care includes mowing, mud. Yeah.

238 00:42:16.220 ⇒ 00:42:17.429 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’m still…

239 00:42:17.480 ⇒ 00:42:27.779 Uttam Kumaran: I’m still surprised that landscape would be that. Yeah, yeah, I mean… Landscaping is the biggest. If you just go back one up.

240 00:42:27.790 ⇒ 00:42:42.959 Uttam Kumaran: If you look at the aggregate that we get from Satista for landscaping, it is larger, you know, overall. Yeah, I wonder what’s included. Does that include mowing? Is that just improvements? Either one of them, and landscaping and lawn care, somewhere in there is mowing.

241 00:42:43.360 ⇒ 00:42:50.289 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And all I’m getting at, it’s by far the biggest. Well, because

242 00:42:50.290 ⇒ 00:43:06.489 Uttam Kumaran: every… you know, HVAC sometimes is once every 10 years, in terms of… You have to maintain a yard. Yeah, yard’s just more often, so… Yeah, and we talked about HOA mandates when we presented this, you know, before, which is, like, all the new planned communities… But if you write this set.

243 00:43:07.040 ⇒ 00:43:13.040 Uttam Kumaran: If you tried to identify, 5 HVAC companies in this market.

244 00:43:13.370 ⇒ 00:43:22.529 Uttam Kumaran: Versus identify 5 lawn landscaping companies. You couldn’t do the lawn, you could easily do the HVAC companies. Yep.

245 00:43:22.740 ⇒ 00:43:33.639 Uttam Kumaran: That’s just interesting to me, and it’s… it’s not near as big. It’s just surprising, is all I’m getting at. I’m going, where… again, for me, where do we put

246 00:43:33.830 ⇒ 00:43:48.559 Uttam Kumaran: the most of our energy that has… I know this is probably going to be part of the conversation, but I’m just surprised… We don’t want to jump slide. That landscape and lawn care is that much surprised clothing is that much.

247 00:43:48.840 ⇒ 00:43:55.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I’m just… It’s plumbing, there’s more opportunities for things to filter.

248 00:43:59.690 ⇒ 00:44:07.030 Uttam Kumaran: And, and then, and then, so look at that. Let’s pay attention. Again, residential pest is the smallest on the group.

249 00:44:07.470 ⇒ 00:44:09.000 Uttam Kumaran: By a lot.

250 00:44:09.760 ⇒ 00:44:11.530 Uttam Kumaran: By a lot.

251 00:44:11.900 ⇒ 00:44:15.369 Uttam Kumaran: Not even in the ballpark of me. Smaller than handyman.

252 00:44:19.760 ⇒ 00:44:30.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. By a lot. And where did… where did you get all these numbers from? So, these are extrapolated from the centralized market data. Which, and the centralized came from… From Statista.

253 00:44:32.400 ⇒ 00:44:36.070 Uttam Kumaran: It’s my favorite way to get the Kaggers. They’re probably the most reliable.

254 00:44:36.250 ⇒ 00:44:41.230 Uttam Kumaran: Am I the only one surprised a resident pests or pest is that small?

255 00:44:42.970 ⇒ 00:44:49.630 Uttam Kumaran: And look at residential pests versus commercial pests. It’s pretty close. But pests…

256 00:44:50.300 ⇒ 00:44:52.439 Uttam Kumaran: It is a lot smaller than

257 00:44:52.820 ⇒ 00:45:15.599 Uttam Kumaran: And look at residential, commercial, and lawn care. Well, add the two of those. Landscaping. Add the two of those? Oh my god! Does that really surprise you that much, when you look at how much one customer might spend with us in each of those categories in a year? Might spend $450 o n p es t s, an d$ 2,000 on lawnmower. Yeah, it’s the average ticket cost. Annual. We dig into that.

258 00:45:15.600 ⇒ 00:45:20.589 Uttam Kumaran: So, obviously, it might not be exact, but these are gonna give you a pretty good… it’s not like Tessa’s actually…

259 00:45:20.730 ⇒ 00:45:21.820 Uttam Kumaran: Quadruple balance.

260 00:45:27.040 ⇒ 00:45:40.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so this… this is where it gets really interesting, because I think we’re going to be able to kind of answer some of your questions here. This is also Statista-based data for the entire Texas market, so we’re zooming back out again real quick.

261 00:45:40.810 ⇒ 00:46:00.209 Uttam Kumaran: What we’re seeing here is you’ve got your services on the left side, that total addressable market, we just saw that in the Texas market aggregate, and the CAGR is the same, but the interesting pieces here are the cost of customer acquisition for each one of these verticals, the lifetime value, and then the lifetime value to how much it costs to acquire them.

262 00:46:00.440 ⇒ 00:46:02.230 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And…

263 00:46:02.460 ⇒ 00:46:12.790 Uttam Kumaran: The interesting takeaway is, even though the cost of acquisition and lifetime value varies between these verticals, when you average it out, it just comes out to 3 to 1.

264 00:46:12.980 ⇒ 00:46:13.820 Uttam Kumaran: -

265 00:46:13.970 ⇒ 00:46:14.810 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.

266 00:46:16.380 ⇒ 00:46:20.039 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, like, for every dollar you’re spending, you should be getting 3 back.

267 00:46:24.960 ⇒ 00:46:26.830 Uttam Kumaran: Any thoughts, questions?

268 00:46:27.100 ⇒ 00:46:29.130 Uttam Kumaran: Pest control, actually, slightly…

269 00:46:29.410 ⇒ 00:46:40.120 Uttam Kumaran: closer between 3 and 4 to 1, so that makes sense. Yeah, so I think… I think the 3 to 1 number is a good thing to hook onto, because when we talk about marketing spend and marketing ROI,

270 00:46:40.270 ⇒ 00:46:50.999 Uttam Kumaran: every marketing channel will start off really high, and as you continue to saturate that, we’ll start to go lower, but at least you have a baseline of what you’ll need to be hitting in terms of

271 00:46:51.090 ⇒ 00:47:04.249 Uttam Kumaran: trying to acquire a customer, and what it’s worth us putting into, right? And so when you’re going and setting revenue targets, and we know for every single service line, how much an average customer is worth.

272 00:47:04.250 ⇒ 00:47:19.969 Uttam Kumaran: we can actually back into, okay, well, how much should we spend, marketing-wise, right? So we’re trying to move us from this, like, fixed marketing budget approach as a percentage of revenue to, well, this amount of money should buy us this.

273 00:47:20.330 ⇒ 00:47:25.119 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And that is the shift that will happen when we start to actually

274 00:47:25.240 ⇒ 00:47:40.930 Uttam Kumaran: be able to understand where every customer is coming from, and do the attribution, right? We’re able to attribute every dollar to a customer, and we’re able to say, that customer paid for these services. So, part of our fallacy and client Ireland, what we do, we measure

275 00:47:41.210 ⇒ 00:47:42.840 Uttam Kumaran: Total revenue. Yeah.

276 00:47:42.980 ⇒ 00:47:47.160 Uttam Kumaran: Well, a whole bunch of our revenues are just maintenance work.

277 00:47:47.440 ⇒ 00:47:57.970 Uttam Kumaran: that our advertising did nothing… Yes. …to bring to the table, because we’ve paid for that years ago. Yes. And so we’ve got to do a better job of counting

278 00:47:57.970 ⇒ 00:48:21.149 Uttam Kumaran: the new stuff, and that’s the measure. That’s the measure. Instead of all this maintenance work… So it’s either net new logo, net new people, or expansion, if you’re… if you are putting money towards expansion-related campaigns, right? So this is retention, this is, hey, we offer more services, but you’re totally right. The money that is coming from those should not be counted.

279 00:48:21.150 ⇒ 00:48:25.500 Uttam Kumaran: Towards customer acquisition, There’s a lot of HVAC companies.

280 00:48:26.570 ⇒ 00:48:27.810 Uttam Kumaran: Spend 12…

281 00:48:29.360 ⇒ 00:48:37.419 Uttam Kumaran: marketing. Yeah. We’re more like 4 or 5. Well, if you took out the maintenance business, we’d be much closer to… Yeah.

282 00:48:37.920 ⇒ 00:48:38.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

283 00:48:39.750 ⇒ 00:48:44.120 Uttam Kumaran: But again, I even think it’s, like, as a percentage of total.

284 00:48:44.300 ⇒ 00:48:53.110 Uttam Kumaran: It’s one thing, but to show that, like, okay, we actually need to be seeing, at minimum, $1,$ 3 for every one put in.

285 00:48:53.260 ⇒ 00:48:58.749 Uttam Kumaran: That is actually really helpful for you to set for your marketing leader as, like, the efficiency.

286 00:48:58.900 ⇒ 00:49:09.840 Uttam Kumaran: What that person will do is they’ll be like, oh, well, we’re getting 10 to 1 here, we’re getting 6 to 1 here, and they’ll start to understand how do we get a blended customer acquisition.

287 00:49:12.470 ⇒ 00:49:19.650 Uttam Kumaran: He doesn’t know what our settings are. He’s never… We’ve never looked back and said, and how did that…

288 00:49:19.650 ⇒ 00:49:36.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so what… what we will show today is that… The judge, are we spending it? Am I doing good? Yeah. Lifetime value, though, again, that’s supposed to take into assumption how long a pest control customer sticks around. Yes, yes. We’re not expecting…

289 00:49:36.000 ⇒ 00:49:42.500 Uttam Kumaran: spend a dollar this year, get $3 back. No, no, no, there is… yeah, you will have what’s called payback periods. You’ll have year one.

290 00:49:42.500 ⇒ 00:49:54.899 Uttam Kumaran: year 2, year 3 LTVs is usually what they do. But this is fairly in line… the LTVs we’re seeing are in line with what we found from looking at the customer LTVs, right? Because I know we…

291 00:49:54.900 ⇒ 00:50:03.730 Uttam Kumaran: kind of came… we felt like our LTV on the pest control customer was lower than we thought. Also, our LTV should be higher per customer, because we can add on other…

292 00:50:03.730 ⇒ 00:50:17.240 Uttam Kumaran: services. Ours is a cumulative of all those LTEs. Yes. Did it say for the assumptions, like, what is it, assuming a pest control? Is it saying an average of 3 years, average of 2 years? Like, I wonder what it’s considered lifetime value, how long

293 00:50:17.970 ⇒ 00:50:31.899 Uttam Kumaran: I can get that for you in a bit. Yeah, I’d be curious to know what they’re assuming is the lifetime. Yeah, and the tough part about this business is, like, because some of the things are yearly, you can basically… one thing I was talking to Amber about yesterday was, like.

294 00:50:31.970 ⇒ 00:50:40.400 Uttam Kumaran: if someone cancels, do we count up to the point they cancel? So there’s some nuance, right? Because if some things aren’t… Yes, customer. Yeah,

295 00:50:40.820 ⇒ 00:50:43.909 Uttam Kumaran: So we can talk about that, but I think the net-net is that

296 00:50:43.950 ⇒ 00:51:01.209 Uttam Kumaran: And what we’ve seen from all of the companies that we work with, and you’ll see even in our recommendations, you need to do… you need to be doing channel-based ROAS, R-O-A-S, which is return on ad spend. For every channel, you need to know how much you’re spending, and how much you’re getting out.

297 00:51:01.210 ⇒ 00:51:15.069 Uttam Kumaran: And it is not… it is totally possible to do in a really reasonable amount of time to get to you that answer. We’ve… we’ve done a pretty good job in the time we’ve had to drive towards that, you’ll see that today, but that should be at your expectation.

298 00:51:15.270 ⇒ 00:51:17.420 Uttam Kumaran: From that, from the marketing department, yeah.

299 00:51:18.110 ⇒ 00:51:31.870 Uttam Kumaran: And they should come to you with, hey, we’re getting great return. They should come to you with the ask of, I think we should put more budget here to grow, right? It should be, it should be, like… Oh, that’s an interesting point. Yeah. Okay, just philosophically about… Yeah.

300 00:51:32.040 ⇒ 00:51:34.330 Uttam Kumaran: Historically run the business.

301 00:51:34.480 ⇒ 00:51:39.980 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we’ve got a P&L. Yeah. And we manage this…

302 00:51:40.220 ⇒ 00:51:57.719 Uttam Kumaran: We have our expectation of what our labor is, what our material’s gonna be, what our fleet is going to be, what our health insurance is gonna be, every… every item. Yes. We have a budget for that. And we have a budgeted number for advertising. Yes. Okay? And we spend that number.

303 00:51:58.040 ⇒ 00:52:08.780 Uttam Kumaran: And so, there is no, in the way we run it, there is no come back to the well… Yes. …to say, I need to spend more. Well, you can adjust next year.

304 00:52:08.900 ⇒ 00:52:22.319 Uttam Kumaran: Right? But we don’t have that because it’s allocated. Yes. So we do it in that… with that mindset, right or wrong, and that, you know, we allocate that budget, and we’re gonna spend that money this year. Yeah. Right? And it is going to be spent

305 00:52:22.650 ⇒ 00:52:42.589 Uttam Kumaran: with thought, as to when, and, you know, seasonality of the business, of when we expect that that’s the best time to spend it to get the highest return. Totally. But we don’t come back to be able to say, give me more money, because I want to spend more here. Yeah. No more money. But if you… as…

306 00:52:42.650 ⇒ 00:52:57.840 Uttam Kumaran: as leadership, if someone were to come to you with a bet that would give you 10 to 1, would you not… So the question would be, would it have to be taken from someplace else, is the point. Makes sense, makes sense. Right? So that, in that context… Yes.

307 00:52:58.390 ⇒ 00:53:12.920 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t spend there, double up here. That is the allocation, yes. But we’re not structured in a way… Makes sense. …to manufacture more money. Totally, totally. But we can… Reality. …off computer to pay Paul. Yeah.

308 00:53:13.470 ⇒ 00:53:16.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Although, if you said, I’m spending

309 00:53:16.700 ⇒ 00:53:18.999 Uttam Kumaran: This much in the first quarter.

310 00:53:19.310 ⇒ 00:53:26.909 Uttam Kumaran: And you felt like you were getting a really good return, you could put more in the second quarter, and more in the third quarter, and so on, depending on

311 00:53:26.910 ⇒ 00:53:48.989 Uttam Kumaran: But if it’s generating 10 times the return, it’s there. If the revenue comes in… It’s not just like… like, kind of like what we do now, say, hey, let’s just throw more money at digital. This is saying, hey, we’re getting a very, very good return on this. It’s selling more services. Yeah.

312 00:53:48.990 ⇒ 00:53:59.030 Uttam Kumaran: But that is… but that is the com… that is the conversation that is not happening. We’re not… We’re telling them, hey, we got a certain number of leads, y’all stop putting in leads.

313 00:54:00.650 ⇒ 00:54:05.839 Uttam Kumaran: Right, and we don’t have the conversations of, this has been real successful, let’s keep doing it.

314 00:54:06.410 ⇒ 00:54:15.799 Uttam Kumaran: And just totally… there’s forecasting, budgeting, re-forecasting, but it is just like anything, a collection of bets that we’re placing with the capital that we have access to.

315 00:54:16.760 ⇒ 00:54:19.400 Uttam Kumaran: like I said, if the return on that capital.

316 00:54:20.140 ⇒ 00:54:30.930 Uttam Kumaran: higher than expected, you could then go, and you knew what was going, and you’d go, I’m damn sure gonna put more money. Right. If all of a sudden, we’re up 15%, you go, the money’s there.

317 00:54:31.180 ⇒ 00:54:44.520 Uttam Kumaran: It depends on the… when it… when it comes in, and if you can… I pulled it off from there and put it on there. This is if you’re performing better than you were expecting.

318 00:54:44.520 ⇒ 00:54:52.640 Uttam Kumaran: But the place that this marketing team has to start is do that just with the money they have, versus thinking about getting it from other… Extra money. Yeah.

319 00:54:52.900 ⇒ 00:54:54.255 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

320 00:54:56.070 ⇒ 00:55:01.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so part two… I’ll keep this really quick, because I also think there’s really interesting data.

321 00:55:01.000 ⇒ 00:55:22.769 Uttam Kumaran: We’re taking those same verticals and taking a look at the total category, average gross margins, net margins, average ticket values, and you’ll see that, like, I was a little confused at first when HVAC was $350, 000 t o$ 12,000. I realized, hey, like, it could just be a simple repair or a complete replacement. So that, I think in many ways, this data seems pretty accurate.

322 00:55:22.770 ⇒ 00:55:35.959 Uttam Kumaran: The most interesting part, to answer your question on, like, how long was somebody a customer, right? We don’t really measure that, we just measure if they’re still a customer in the following year, right? And that gets added to that LTV calculation you saw in the last one.

323 00:55:35.960 ⇒ 00:55:54.429 Uttam Kumaran: And you’ll notice in this category, all of this, aside from maybe plumbing and handymen, like, people really do stick with the vendor that they’ve picked, right? You know, 70-90%, 70% to 85, right? These are all, heavily leaning towards sticking with a decision that’s been made.

324 00:55:55.490 ⇒ 00:56:09.660 Uttam Kumaran: the overall revenue per technician is roughly, you know, there. I’m not sure if this would be a helpful metric to look at, but, you know, this is how much value each technician is bringing. And whose numbers are those? This is market average.

325 00:56:10.040 ⇒ 00:56:22.650 Uttam Kumaran: And it comes from, a bunch of demographic data from FRED, which is St. Louis, like, a federal reserve bank, as well as Axios that’s actually taking a look at that population and giving you a better slice of that.

326 00:56:23.300 ⇒ 00:56:28.279 Uttam Kumaran: And again, Plumbing and handyman specifically.

327 00:56:28.470 ⇒ 00:56:39.810 Uttam Kumaran: are essentially one-time services. Yeah. Which is why you see the retention, right? So on… in some cases, they’re losing 60% of the retention. They’re… yeah, and so…

328 00:56:40.040 ⇒ 00:56:59.900 Uttam Kumaran: you’re totally right in that they’re typically one time, and there’s… there’s less allegiance, right? But what… No, I… so that’s a… that’s a great question. That’s a great question, yeah. Because… because we… we believe, because we don’t have a plumbing program. Yes. We can come out and unclog your drain, we come out and fix your toilet, we come out and do whatever we do.

329 00:57:00.170 ⇒ 00:57:04.509 Uttam Kumaran: And you’re not going to call us again until you have another problem.

330 00:57:04.610 ⇒ 00:57:09.150 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe that’s next month, maybe it’s 2 years from now. The question is.

331 00:57:09.150 ⇒ 00:57:24.990 Uttam Kumaran: Is it sticky enough for them to remember that I had a positive experience from the ABC Plumber, I’m going to call them again. We’ve never looked and seen how much repeat plumbing customers… That’s my point. Yeah. I feel… Go off feelings. …that at least for a long time, I would have made the case

332 00:57:24.990 ⇒ 00:57:31.300 Uttam Kumaran: That is very sticky. Once you find a plumber or a plumbing company you like, you just… they become your plumber.

333 00:57:31.510 ⇒ 00:57:35.989 Uttam Kumaran: since we’ve plateaued, I’ve become a little less certain of that. We grew…

334 00:57:36.210 ⇒ 00:57:39.739 Uttam Kumaran: Like this. Just rock solid for the first

335 00:57:40.210 ⇒ 00:57:56.630 Uttam Kumaran: 15 years, whatever. All but the last two. All but the last two, we’ve plateaued and actually come down. But for everything up to that, it was like, this is the perfect model. It never had a down model. Stacked. So we knew that we were doing business

336 00:57:57.160 ⇒ 00:58:11.240 Uttam Kumaran: we anecdotally knew we were doing business with people we’d previously done business with, without having a service agreement. They called us when they had a problem, but because they liked us, they kept calling us. Well, we just hit this wall of

337 00:58:11.940 ⇒ 00:58:13.440 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m wrong? Yeah.

338 00:58:14.880 ⇒ 00:58:29.079 Uttam Kumaran: Last, last column right there, marketing, marketing percentage. It’s interesting to see that it’s pretty, common across all those verticals that 5% to 15% is being spent, of, of revenue on marketing.

339 00:58:29.770 ⇒ 00:58:34.329 Uttam Kumaran: So again, I think what we need to be talking about here… That’s right.

340 00:58:34.930 ⇒ 00:58:52.020 Uttam Kumaran: We phrase our thought process on this. I have to ask Jim and I, just to see about the total market size, and it’s obviously not the exact same as similar, the test is by far the lowest. Landscaping mowing combined have the biggest, HVAC have HVAC and mowing have the same.

341 00:58:52.020 ⇒ 00:59:07.100 Uttam Kumaran: at Handyman, then actually pool is one I think we haven’t talked a lot about. There’s a huge one. The problem with pool, when I looked into that, they included pool installations, and I didn’t think it would be fair enough. That’s not a fair number. Pool maintenance and repair, didn’t talk about either way, but yeah, pest controls…

342 00:59:07.180 ⇒ 00:59:10.830 Uttam Kumaran: Like, $1.5 bi l l i o n v er s u so t h er$ 6 to $8 billion.

343 00:59:11.570 ⇒ 00:59:16.070 Uttam Kumaran: That’s in the state of Texas, obviously, but either way, kind of feels the same thing.

344 00:59:17.950 ⇒ 00:59:20.099 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s another question.

345 00:59:20.530 ⇒ 00:59:29.389 Uttam Kumaran: And y’all may not have looked at this, but maybe with some of this stuff, we can. And it is our market penetration thought, right? Revenue…

346 00:59:29.390 ⇒ 00:59:48.320 Uttam Kumaran: per segment, per population, right, to get an understanding… Amber got into that a little bit. …of how much penetration we have, and what’s the difference in the markets. Yeah, yeah. So I want to breeze through this, because that, like, the actual specific analysis done by the team is your data, and how that applies to the concept. So, yeah, like, that’s the good stuff, I think.

347 00:59:48.320 ⇒ 01:00:13.060 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, really just giving you a lay of the land, really, what’s happening, right? Just some overall differences between those two, cities that we compared. Austin has higher labor rates. What I found really interesting is Austin has really competitive Google Ad click, prices. So something like, you know, buying ads for a plumber near me is up to $62, so just something to keep in mind when you do a digital marketing push.

348 01:00:13.060 ⇒ 01:00:33.969 Uttam Kumaran: That also matters for the region, right? How much are people actually bidding and investing in it? Overall, higher ticket costs on Austin, but yeah, like, you know, slightly more spend is going to be needed for, you know, that outcome on the Austin side, because things are slightly more expensive.

349 01:00:39.210 ⇒ 01:00:57.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I want to breeze through this. This is… the next stuff is even better than this, but I don’t want to get us… Oh, Matt, I… this is your… your slide. So, like, off the side, last meeting when I saw Matt, he asked, like, hey, all these door-to-door, you know, pest services companies, they’re all over the place, like, is it worth it? What’s going on?

350 01:00:57.820 ⇒ 01:01:15.879 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So I… there was no statistics on this, by the way, but I do know, like, who averages on how successful door-to-door sales are. I know how many homes are in Texas. I know, you know, homeowner occupation rate, right? Like, I want to make sure we only look at people who actually own the homes, because otherwise they wouldn’t buy the best service.

351 01:01:15.930 ⇒ 01:01:20.000 Uttam Kumaran: And you know, I got to the addressable amount of homes.

352 01:01:20.000 ⇒ 01:01:44.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then, on average, like, door-to-door sales, within the region is about 30% success rate, so the overall market value for this approach is $1.2 t o$ 1.45 billion. So it looks huge. It looks like a really good deal until I take a look at how much their average contract values are, and how much they’re actually spending to acquire that customer, and then you’ll see that it costs $450 on average to acquire that customer.

353 01:01:44.460 ⇒ 01:02:06.580 Uttam Kumaran: And even if, you know, their contract is the same amount of money, they’re taking a $50 loss in that first year. And with a retention rate that’s lower when you do door-to-door, because people forget about you, right? At around 55%, like, this doesn’t make sense unless you’re able to retain those customers for more than that first year.

354 01:02:06.580 ⇒ 01:02:08.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then I just compared it to an organic.

355 01:02:08.400 ⇒ 01:02:22.500 Uttam Kumaran: So, Matt, unfortunately, I can’t give you, like, the official answer, but, like, this is an extrapolation from market. So that 55% retention rate is… whose number is that? So this is a total average of door-to-door, home services sales.

356 01:02:22.500 ⇒ 01:02:30.199 Uttam Kumaran: So, it could have been, like, can we clean your windows to, can I, you know, mow your lawn, kind of thing. There wasn’t one just for the categories.

357 01:02:32.350 ⇒ 01:02:33.330 Uttam Kumaran: Expect that.

358 01:02:33.690 ⇒ 01:02:40.470 Uttam Kumaran: Well, again, those companies are typically not as good at service as… They’re not serviced. Yeah, they buy, yeah.

359 01:02:42.550 ⇒ 01:03:05.470 Uttam Kumaran: This is just my caveat and notes about how I do my market analysis, and I say, like, hey, these are estimates, there’s not representative approval values, right? This is the end of the commercial discussion. But they are good because they’re showing the trends, right? They’re showing us relative growth from one group to another group, right? And just, like, generally how much people are spending and what they’re getting from it.

360 01:03:05.470 ⇒ 01:03:10.479 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And just to highlight that, you know, sometimes it doesn’t always, you know.

361 01:03:10.480 ⇒ 01:03:23.399 Uttam Kumaran: come out to what we expect, well, it, like, I like to ask, okay, you know, I’m looking at all of this annual growth rate trends, what has the annual growth rate been predicted and actual in the past?

362 01:03:23.400 ⇒ 01:03:38.450 Uttam Kumaran: Right, that actually tells me how accurate this CAGR number is. And interestingly, if you look at home services from 2020 to 2024, forecasted for 5.7%, but we actually ended up at 11% growth.

363 01:03:39.510 ⇒ 01:03:48.039 Uttam Kumaran: So, while I’m giving you pretty conservative 6% numbers, what we saw in reality from the last time is that it grew much larger.

364 01:03:48.700 ⇒ 01:03:51.130 Uttam Kumaran: So, COVID and that one, yeah.

365 01:03:55.320 ⇒ 01:04:19.049 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Yeah, so this was the competitive analysis for all the other brands, Matt, that you were asking for. So, you know, I just… here’s a quick summary table about each one of them. You know, I dug into who might be owning them if they’re PE-owned or privately owned, the kind of services that they’re offering. This is totally estimated, this is AI analytics, like, market, revenue. Like, we look at articles, news

366 01:04:19.050 ⇒ 01:04:27.179 Uttam Kumaran: Press releases, social media posts, like, we try to find, you know, little bits and pieces of how much they’re actually earning, so that column right there.

367 01:04:27.200 ⇒ 01:04:33.330 Uttam Kumaran: Where they’re operating in, and what makes them… what I think makes them different from, you know, the other services.

368 01:04:33.590 ⇒ 01:04:35.910 Uttam Kumaran: Other companies in that, category.

369 01:04:36.580 ⇒ 01:04:37.270 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm.

370 01:04:38.790 ⇒ 01:04:41.139 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so…

371 01:04:41.590 ⇒ 01:04:53.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, so John Wayne really does that membership play, you know, that big branding, you can’t get rid of that, that pink, fan, it’s still burning my head, I still see it all over the place.

372 01:04:53.240 ⇒ 01:05:08.720 Uttam Kumaran: there’s, you know, a focus on just, like, one vertical, right? Like, beer boys, and we’ll really just focus on, you know, being strong in one area at one or two different verticals, and then, that white glove service that Salt has.

373 01:05:11.830 ⇒ 01:05:31.199 Uttam Kumaran: Matt, I think what’s going to be more interesting is the next two slides, and then I’m actually done. Three slides. Matt, so I looked into, how are these competitors marketing? What do they look like? What are they posting? What are their posts, you know, even doing? So this, this is actually a marketing job for himself.

374 01:05:32.080 ⇒ 01:05:43.470 Uttam Kumaran: I thought that was AIJ. She actually exists? Yeah. Oh, you’ve seen the commercial? Yeah. Oh, okay.

375 01:05:43.950 ⇒ 01:05:45.070 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s…

376 01:05:45.940 ⇒ 01:06:02.509 Uttam Kumaran: So, Meta has a tool that allows us to see if a company has any ads running, and if they are running, I get to… I get this view. So these… these are actual live ads from those 3 different companies, and you’ll notice that, like, one is, like, super, like, pre-recorded and

377 01:06:02.730 ⇒ 01:06:16.359 Uttam Kumaran: professional, whereas, like, Don Wing has, like, the talking head, more social media, TikTok and vertical video. And then, like, Salt has, has been trying a bunch of different approaches. They haven’t really locked into a certain pattern, so…

378 01:06:16.360 ⇒ 01:06:24.040 Uttam Kumaran: Really interesting to look at. But I think what was most interesting, Gens, is that the other two brands that aren’t on this list.

379 01:06:24.110 ⇒ 01:06:28.830 Uttam Kumaran: They didn’t have any meta-marketing at all on Instagram or Facebook.

380 01:06:29.590 ⇒ 01:06:35.990 Uttam Kumaran: So… you know, my curiosity is that I need to know what they’re actually doing there, right? So, Elmer’s…

381 01:06:36.100 ⇒ 01:06:51.769 Uttam Kumaran: is spending more on, paying for, radio and TV placements, you know, their prominent branding, and they are dominating the Google search. They’re spending a lot of money on Google search ad clicks, and they’re doing more, like.

382 01:06:51.840 ⇒ 01:07:06.289 Uttam Kumaran: organic growth for their marketing, where, for social media, they’re talking… they show videos of the team hanging out in the back, right, playing small challenges, or, like, celebrating Christmas together, things like that. So, it’s less about, like.

383 01:07:06.320 ⇒ 01:07:17.730 Uttam Kumaran: peer services that we offer, but more of the culture of Elmer’s that they’re pushing forward. So that’s why they weren’t paying for any ads. So they’re just doing their own organic content? Yeah, yeah.

384 01:07:17.840 ⇒ 01:07:31.299 Uttam Kumaran: So, so, you know, those organic contact pieces are things like somebody going around to different people in the office saying, like, hey, what do you drive, or what did you do when your, you know, sink was clogged last time, right? Just, like, getting, you know, feedback.

385 01:07:33.030 ⇒ 01:07:35.069 Uttam Kumaran: Like, an interaction from people.

386 01:07:35.280 ⇒ 01:07:38.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you can go one more.

387 01:07:38.680 ⇒ 01:07:42.099 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize this wasn’t up, but this is the summary.

388 01:07:42.200 ⇒ 01:07:59.089 Uttam Kumaran: And then my last slide here is Bayer Boys. Yeah, same approach, but except, like, they are even more old school. They’re not touching anything digital at all. They’ve spent a ton on, you know, just paying an agency to take care of, like, their market placements on billboards, on…

389 01:07:59.260 ⇒ 01:08:00.969 Uttam Kumaran: TV, on radio.

390 01:08:00.970 ⇒ 01:08:19.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then for technology, they’re working on a really, you know, working with Service Titans Marketing Pro to actually create, like, that digital experience that, you know, the millennial category really wants with, like, instant booking, texting, communicates, like that. So, huge focus on traditional marketing approaches, but

391 01:08:19.460 ⇒ 01:08:21.500 Uttam Kumaran: Huge investment in cloud technology.

392 01:08:22.279 ⇒ 01:08:25.240 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s what we hear out of… Check.

393 01:08:25.899 ⇒ 01:08:27.770 Uttam Kumaran: We’re just fighting.

394 01:08:27.880 ⇒ 01:08:33.880 Uttam Kumaran: 30… scheduling friendly, I’ll put it that way.

395 01:08:34.630 ⇒ 01:08:35.909 Uttam Kumaran: goes on the website.

396 01:08:36.439 ⇒ 01:08:37.960 Uttam Kumaran: Scheduled a lot of things.

397 01:08:38.200 ⇒ 01:08:39.889 Uttam Kumaran: In the places directly with the starter.

398 01:08:41.620 ⇒ 01:08:42.670 Uttam Kumaran: service.

399 01:08:43.319 ⇒ 01:08:45.459 Uttam Kumaran: Module that allows the customer action.

400 01:08:46.500 ⇒ 01:08:49.010 Uttam Kumaran: timescale stuff. And I think with Google also.

401 01:08:49.140 ⇒ 01:08:49.535 Uttam Kumaran: So.

402 01:08:52.700 ⇒ 01:08:59.310 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m not surprised Buyer Boys is a new homeschool user. Yeah. Three brothers that have been around a long time.

403 01:09:01.319 ⇒ 01:09:03.519 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I don’t… I don’t see any…

404 01:09:03.680 ⇒ 01:09:09.819 Uttam Kumaran: It’s almost like they’re not out there as much, Steven, as they used to be. I have seen a few recently.

405 01:09:09.920 ⇒ 01:09:12.990 Uttam Kumaran: Actually, but… but yeah, no, they’re just more…

406 01:09:13.240 ⇒ 01:09:19.070 Uttam Kumaran: a little bit similar to ABC, just very well, good brand market awareness, you know, new people aren’t going to know about instead of doing it, but…

407 01:09:19.290 ⇒ 01:09:21.529 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, everyone.

408 01:09:24.870 ⇒ 01:09:42.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that ends my analysis. My focus was to figure out, you know, where is ABC, get a lay of the land, look at competitors, look at the market overall, so that there’s actually comparative metrics that we can work towards to create marketing plans, right? And that we can actually say, hey, these goals are reasonable. So, like, when you see, like, these

409 01:09:42.399 ⇒ 01:09:51.209 Uttam Kumaran: growth estimations and our projections on how much you would be able to grow from making these approaches. We’re using a lot of market aggregate data, as well as your data to get those things.

410 01:09:53.130 ⇒ 01:09:53.890 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

411 01:09:54.440 ⇒ 01:09:56.270 Uttam Kumaran: Good, thank you. Cool.

412 01:09:56.380 ⇒ 01:10:02.289 Uttam Kumaran: If we can keep rolling, I’m gonna kind of pass it to Amber,

413 01:10:02.360 ⇒ 01:10:12.599 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, what we want to go through is, all of your data, and so this is not… you know, we’ve spent a bunch of hours over the past

414 01:10:12.660 ⇒ 01:10:23.640 Uttam Kumaran: two months sort of going through, so this is kind of like the hits. I think part of this is going to be you’re going to start to see things about service concentration, where we’re getting customers.

415 01:10:23.640 ⇒ 01:10:38.380 Uttam Kumaran: How much are we paying for them? How much are they worth? What services are they buying? But I also want you to see, like, the level of depth that we were able to get to once we were able to get the Evolve data, get the Dream data, get the Google Analytics data, work with Monkey Boy.

416 01:10:38.690 ⇒ 01:10:41.750 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, maybe, Amber, I can let you,

417 01:10:42.040 ⇒ 01:10:43.610 Uttam Kumaran: Gonna go ahead and take it from here.

418 01:10:51.800 ⇒ 01:10:56.289 Amber Lin: Cool, I’ll get started. Can I share screen instead?

419 01:10:56.490 ⇒ 01:10:57.059 Uttam Kumaran: That’s true.

420 01:10:57.060 ⇒ 01:10:58.430 Amber Lin: different slides.

421 01:10:58.810 ⇒ 01:10:59.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

422 01:11:00.270 ⇒ 01:11:05.799 Uttam Kumaran: Do you want to start with, this… this deck, though, and then we can get to the Evolve… the Dream stuff later?

423 01:11:06.550 ⇒ 01:11:11.810 Amber Lin: Yeah, sure, let me pull up the slides we’re using.

424 01:11:26.740 ⇒ 01:11:39.070 Amber Lin: Okay, so the first… this part is where we looked at Google Analytics, and we were able to see, okay, so the… for the people who came to your website, who bought these services.

425 01:11:39.130 ⇒ 01:11:48.329 Amber Lin: Where are they coming from? So that can help us adjust where are we going to put our efforts next.

426 01:11:48.400 ⇒ 01:11:55.760 Amber Lin: So, from this graph, I think the main takeaway we have to… we should look at is that

427 01:11:55.840 ⇒ 01:12:15.810 Amber Lin: our organic search performs extremely well. From the other businesses we’ve been working with, it’s very hard to have such strong demand in organic. That means you have a really good service, really good brand, people are searching for you, and a lot of your customers are coming from organic search.

428 01:12:15.810 ⇒ 01:12:17.699 Amber Lin: So, that’s a really good sign.

429 01:12:17.930 ⇒ 01:12:30.120 Amber Lin: And then the second one is that, the second biggest source is paid search. So a lot of people is coming in that way, which tells us that we should continue investing there.

430 01:12:31.000 ⇒ 01:12:41.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so what we’re seeing is that there’s a lot of people that are coming to ABC without having to pay for those customers, which is great, and we’re seeing that at your company, it’s way higher than any company we’ve worked with.

431 01:12:41.500 ⇒ 01:12:54.179 Uttam Kumaran: most of the companies we work for are, like, in e-commerce, and they’re buying most of their customers. In your case, you’re actually getting a lot of people coming organic, which the first thing that that tells us is, okay.

432 01:12:54.180 ⇒ 01:13:11.389 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve won at, like, something around brand presence, we now need to capture them, but we’re also seeing that we’re not relying on paid search enough for a company your size. We should actually be leveraging these digital channels, and as a percentage of overall traffic.

433 01:13:11.390 ⇒ 01:13:24.419 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s weak compared to what… what we would traditionally see. And I think really what… what this should come from… So it’s because we’re not spending enough money? Yeah, it’s not… you’re not spending money on these digital channels.

434 01:13:24.950 ⇒ 01:13:32.109 Uttam Kumaran: And part of it is spending money, part of it is also spending on, like, traffic that’s worth getting, and that’s… that’s gonna convert, but yes.

435 01:13:33.520 ⇒ 01:13:34.550 Uttam Kumaran: So is that…

436 01:13:35.480 ⇒ 01:13:51.959 Uttam Kumaran: It’s either spend more or reallocate some of the stuff. Yeah, so… so part of this will be a reallocation, but also we’re gonna go through a little of… of the… just the organic search, like, how do you convert that volume effectively? Because that’s free.

437 01:13:52.170 ⇒ 01:14:10.130 Uttam Kumaran: Right. Or you’ve paid throughout the years in awareness, right? But again, that is your… that is the advantage to capitalize on. You don’t want to have to compete on just paid methods, although you still want to have that so more people can hear about you and more people can come to the

438 01:14:10.310 ⇒ 01:14:11.569 Uttam Kumaran: Come to the company.

439 01:14:11.890 ⇒ 01:14:15.929 Uttam Kumaran: And I think this is the really, like, the key slide, which is…

440 01:14:16.610 ⇒ 01:14:23.169 Uttam Kumaran: that we just have seen organic search traffic really, like, fall off a cliff, since COVID.

441 01:14:23.390 ⇒ 01:14:29.010 Uttam Kumaran: And we… For us specifically? For us, for ABC specifically.

442 01:14:29.120 ⇒ 01:14:40.229 Uttam Kumaran: We saw a huge growth in organic search traffic, and it is the strongest channel, but in the last two years, it’s really, really weakened.

443 01:14:40.290 ⇒ 01:14:59.219 Uttam Kumaran: One is you’re gonna just see less… okay, so there’s probably… there’s probably two things, and I think we will kind of talk a little bit about it, but one is during COVID, overall, this market saw huge growth in search volume, so you are capturing some of that, whether that is… it may or may not be driven by people searching just for ABC, they’re searching for

444 01:14:59.220 ⇒ 01:15:11.420 Uttam Kumaran: home services in general. But what we’re seeing, though, is that we did a poor job at retaining that search, or continuing to capitalize. So, there is going to be a piece of this that we may not ever get to see this level.

445 01:15:11.420 ⇒ 01:15:29.559 Uttam Kumaran: Right? But the fact that it declined to this amount shows that we haven’t done a good job at maintaining that, even some level. There’s gonna be things during COVID that we’re not gonna be able to replicate, right? But what we’re gonna go through today is we’re gonna show you the ways in which you haven’t

446 01:15:29.560 ⇒ 01:15:36.429 Uttam Kumaran: captured that audience in the last two years, and how you’re actually losing to a lot of people that are much weaker, like.

447 01:15:36.620 ⇒ 01:15:45.140 Uttam Kumaran: super weak, no reviews, like, they’re actually getting that share, and it just makes the opportunity really, really clear.

448 01:15:45.250 ⇒ 01:15:54.010 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to understand all this. Sure. This seems like a significant problem. This is a huge problem. Yeah, this is a huge problem, and this is… And I’m trying to understand…

449 01:15:55.100 ⇒ 01:16:02.660 Uttam Kumaran: what… again, they’re in the middle, where it dropped precipitously. Yes. That moment, that time, what was that?

450 01:16:02.980 ⇒ 01:16:06.880 Uttam Kumaran: what changed For that to happen.

451 01:16:07.280 ⇒ 01:16:15.460 Uttam Kumaran: From where we were previous. Could that have been the… could that have been a Google rules change, so to speak, who, Tom, where I know less is missing sometimes that…

452 01:16:15.720 ⇒ 01:16:26.449 Uttam Kumaran: all of a sudden, we’ve got to reprove ourselves that we’re an existing business, reprove that we’ve got brick and mortars, reprove that we actually are, you know… We still have all the reviews.

453 01:16:26.540 ⇒ 01:16:37.380 Uttam Kumaran: 2023, would you have this, back to, like, 2019? Yeah, yeah, we will have it as long as Google Analytics has been in place.

454 01:16:38.250 ⇒ 01:16:40.830 Uttam Kumaran: Because I would expect, obviously, 2023 is actually…

455 01:16:42.260 ⇒ 01:16:54.029 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s… there’s probably a multitude of issues. So one is that there’s all… I would say I… we normalize for the fact that the algorithms are changing, so I’m almost like, yes, but

456 01:16:54.860 ⇒ 01:16:58.090 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not something we could do anything about, so we sort of…

457 01:16:58.270 ⇒ 01:17:11.899 Uttam Kumaran: I would say push that to the… pitches everybody, so put that to the side. There’s probably a couple things. One is, I’m sure there… we should look into this, basically this blip and see what happened, but it… but there’s also one, is there’s gonna be more competition.

458 01:17:11.900 ⇒ 01:17:29.500 Uttam Kumaran: Right. Yeah, so… so when… when… when huge industries like this pop during COVID, you get the money that comes in, and you get the private equity, and their strategy, as we saw, is very marketing-first, meaning they are gonna go get these

459 01:17:29.580 ⇒ 01:17:39.649 Uttam Kumaran: impressions, and they’re gonna go pay for it. …is what we’ve been pontificating about. Yes. That the private influx, all of this private equity money.

460 01:17:39.850 ⇒ 01:17:50.549 Uttam Kumaran: is drowning out our message. It’s one factor. One factor. Is one factor. It is just ABC as a whole, this is not just pest control research. This is ABC as a whole. Yeah, this is ABC as a whole.

461 01:17:50.920 ⇒ 01:18:03.860 Uttam Kumaran: So you’re gonna see that the entrance of people who rely on paid marketing, Google is gonna give them this traffic, because this is organic search traffic. So there, people are gonna be bidding on ABC

462 01:18:03.860 ⇒ 01:18:11.220 Uttam Kumaran: X keywords and getting that from them. So there’s a… and because ABC doesn’t have a paid strategy.

463 01:18:11.350 ⇒ 01:18:29.789 Uttam Kumaran: on… on significant paid search or paid digital, it’s gonna be… and we should have found ways to compete and capture some of this, that now some of these audiences are going to paid, and we just didn’t do that. And so when you… when you get the thing of, oh, the phones aren’t ringing as much, this is the top of funnel

464 01:18:29.800 ⇒ 01:18:36.020 Uttam Kumaran: explanation for why everything downstream slowed down. Are you able to get the analytics on just…

465 01:18:36.700 ⇒ 01:18:48.399 Uttam Kumaran: in general, search volume for home services? We can also get that, yeah. So, obviously, you’re gonna see a spike, I mean, it didn’t go down also. Yeah. But is what you’re saying is what our response should have been

466 01:18:49.380 ⇒ 01:18:52.649 Uttam Kumaran: was to move more money to pay. To pay to make up for it.

467 01:18:52.750 ⇒ 01:19:07.700 Uttam Kumaran: traffic. For the drop. There, there’s… Or determine why you’re okay. Yeah, so there’s a few… there’s a few things we’ll walk through on, like, what we could have done. I think the next slide we’re talking about is, actually the…

468 01:19:07.700 ⇒ 01:19:24.939 Uttam Kumaran: if we talk about, like, what we saw that was positive in this data was location-specific landing pages, like Austin Pest, San Antonio Lawn, drive the highest engagement and conversion rates. So one of the questions was, are people just going to ABC Home and Commercial? We basically said, not really.

469 01:19:25.060 ⇒ 01:19:38.520 Uttam Kumaran: they’re going to the landing page vertical… the landing page service combinations, and those are converting at a super, super great rate. Meaning people are coming there really high intent, wanting to get that service. And we really…

470 01:19:38.740 ⇒ 01:19:56.989 Uttam Kumaran: showed that that was a fact for all engagements coming there. What that should indicate to you is that when you are going to drive traffic and pay for the traffic, you shouldn’t drive them to the ABC Home and Commercial. You should be driving them to a landing page specific for a combination of a geo and a combination of a

471 01:19:56.990 ⇒ 01:20:01.090 Uttam Kumaran: service or multitude of a service, right? An offer. And so…

472 01:20:01.280 ⇒ 01:20:20.059 Uttam Kumaran: as we’re kind of going through this, we tried to check the box on a lot of those questions we had, which is, are people coming to our homepage and seeing all these services getting confused, or are they going to a specific landing page? And we found that they are going to a landing page, and the folks that do go to a landing page are converting way higher than if they were to first land

473 01:20:20.130 ⇒ 01:20:22.979 Uttam Kumaran: on just the ABC Home and Commercial homepage.

474 01:20:24.820 ⇒ 01:20:39.489 Uttam Kumaran: And so, your organic search behavior should indicate what you need to go do when you pay for it, right? So what the people are already telling you works is what then you go pay for to just maximize that… that flywheel.

475 01:20:42.670 ⇒ 01:20:49.239 Uttam Kumaran: I think the next piece, is really on how are we ranking? Like, how is ABC being found?

476 01:20:49.370 ⇒ 01:20:57.469 Uttam Kumaran: And so, one of the things that we found is that we’re not ranking high on our primary services in our primary markets.

477 01:20:57.730 ⇒ 01:21:03.030 Uttam Kumaran: We are losing to businesses with fewer reviews and less authority.

478 01:21:03.310 ⇒ 01:21:04.439 Uttam Kumaran: So how does that happen?

479 01:21:05.040 ⇒ 01:21:08.419 Uttam Kumaran: This is because they are optimizing for

480 01:21:08.580 ⇒ 01:21:14.890 Uttam Kumaran: Google Maps, they’re optimizing for SEO, they’re optimizing for the AI search reviews.

481 01:21:15.260 ⇒ 01:21:19.799 Uttam Kumaran: We have not… we have not done that as effective enough as the competition has done.

482 01:21:20.260 ⇒ 01:21:26.759 Uttam Kumaran: Additionally, you’re seeing that some of those are sponsored, but some of those aren’t, and we’re still not appearing.

483 01:21:26.990 ⇒ 01:21:30.460 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so part of this is…

484 01:21:30.590 ⇒ 01:21:34.119 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Not being found. Yeah. They’re right.

485 01:21:35.090 ⇒ 01:21:48.929 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re right, but again, in all these cases, it’s one thing to prove it, it’s… we are going to talk about how we definitely need to do a lot better on how we’re coming up in SEO, and there’s clear ways of doing that. Like, this is not,

486 01:21:49.230 ⇒ 01:21:52.170 Uttam Kumaran: pseudoscience, like, there is some clear actions that…

487 01:21:52.430 ⇒ 01:22:08.449 Uttam Kumaran: So, Monkey Boy, and this is our time that we spent with Joe, Monkey Boy, at this point, is really just taking direction. They are not spending time looking at the analytics and optimizing.

488 01:22:09.050 ⇒ 01:22:10.340 Uttam Kumaran: Like, who is?

489 01:22:11.580 ⇒ 01:22:12.910 Uttam Kumaran: I thought they were.

490 01:22:13.850 ⇒ 01:22:28.360 Uttam Kumaran: from our discussion with Joe, he is aware that… of these things. However, and this is really focused on the website, most of his job is to make sure that your people are able to update the blog, and that

491 01:22:28.430 ⇒ 01:22:34.979 Uttam Kumaran: that the website is stable. I didn’t… from what I heard from Joe, I’m not hearing any… I thought we were paying them…

492 01:22:35.310 ⇒ 01:22:37.720 Uttam Kumaran: To do all of the optimization.

493 01:22:39.970 ⇒ 01:22:42.240 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I’ve thought all these years.

494 01:22:42.850 ⇒ 01:22:45.600 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we moved it away, then we moved it back. Right!

495 01:22:45.950 ⇒ 01:22:49.789 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’re paying other people for paid search. Okay.

496 01:22:50.590 ⇒ 01:23:06.969 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s worth looking into, because we… we found, like, and we’ll sort of show you what’s possible, but there’s easily a lot of changes to be made pretty fast that will start to push you up. Should Monkey Boy be the person doing that, or is there another provider?

497 01:23:08.000 ⇒ 01:23:24.009 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we’re gonna propose that we take some of that today. However, Monkey Boy is doing a great job at making sure that the website is up, that your tags are set, like, they’re… if… again, I don’t know the scope of, like, what they were signed up to do, but they are… in terms of keeping the website up.

498 01:23:24.010 ⇒ 01:23:34.350 Uttam Kumaran: maintaining it, upgrading it, they are doing a good job. But optimizing it for SEO… Optimizing for… Optimization?

499 01:23:34.990 ⇒ 01:23:38.210 Uttam Kumaran: Then we’re seeing, yeah, we’re seeing a lot of distance.

500 01:23:38.350 ⇒ 01:23:53.310 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we need to be… There needs to be a conversation to clarify from them, are they doing it? It needs to be a clarification, and from our conversation with them, it seems like they are waiting on that direction, and what we found is actually… I know that… Who does Leslink is doing?

501 01:23:54.890 ⇒ 01:24:13.369 Uttam Kumaran: what… well, I think Les thinks that he’s doing it with them, but we’re seeing that there’s just gaps. The results are not there. And when I talk to Monkey Boy, it’s clear that this room is interested in doing it. They’re like, we can go make any landing page changes, optimize, there’s just, like, a middle. You know, there’s just the what to do.

502 01:24:13.620 ⇒ 01:24:18.019 Uttam Kumaran: And so we’ll talk about, sort of, some of the changes, and I think it’s worth going to Monkey Boy and saying.

503 01:24:18.140 ⇒ 01:24:22.530 Uttam Kumaran: Was this on your plate to Duke? Are you guys capable of doing this? I will tell you…

504 01:24:22.740 ⇒ 01:24:25.580 Uttam Kumaran: I thought it was without question.

505 01:24:25.820 ⇒ 01:24:27.570 Uttam Kumaran: On their plate to be doing.

506 01:24:28.260 ⇒ 01:24:29.650 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m befuddled.

507 01:24:33.660 ⇒ 01:24:48.720 Uttam Kumaran: And similarly, on… on, sort of, now looking at all the AI pieces, we’re not ranking in… on most things. And so this is just, like, we have to go make… So tell me about that real quick. Yeah. I learned about this… this piece. Okay.

508 01:24:48.870 ⇒ 01:24:51.040 Uttam Kumaran: In October. Yes.

509 01:24:51.490 ⇒ 01:24:58.540 Uttam Kumaran: asked ChatGPT, who’s the best pest control service in Austin, Texas.

510 01:24:58.750 ⇒ 01:25:14.509 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, what does that mean, and how do you get… how do you get ChatGP to say, oh, you should call ABC? Yeah. I mean, I don’t understand how you… So one… so one thing that… one thing that I told… one thing that I told the team is that,

511 01:25:14.670 ⇒ 01:25:21.359 Uttam Kumaran: ChatGPT is not, like, making a human decision based on all the data on who’s the best.

512 01:25:21.590 ⇒ 01:25:40.790 Uttam Kumaran: they are finding articles that write the best Austin pest control companies, and they are just pushing that to people. And so there are several new formats of articles that we need to write. There are several optimizations we need to make to our landing pages in order to better surface ourselves in those.

513 01:25:40.980 ⇒ 01:25:44.720 Uttam Kumaran: That’s gonna be changing, you know, because they’re, you know, because they’re gonna be sponsoring that.

514 01:25:45.470 ⇒ 01:25:46.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah

515 01:25:46.910 ⇒ 01:25:59.720 Uttam Kumaran: But again, there’s… it’s… the fact that you guys are not appearing at all is really the concern, and you’re appearing… some of these folks are not op… they’re just… the fact that they just got lucky in the way they wrote their content.

516 01:25:59.720 ⇒ 01:26:11.399 Uttam Kumaran: got them there, right? I’m not saying that these guys are optimizing either. In this industry in particular, I would say it will be late to this game than what we’re seeing in e-commerce and other things.

517 01:26:11.400 ⇒ 01:26:20.710 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s the opportunity we have, is if we design the site and the landing pages in a way to do that, you’re gonna see yourself pop up on this within 3 months.

518 01:26:23.480 ⇒ 01:26:24.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

519 01:26:25.560 ⇒ 01:26:28.760 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll quickly look over to that, and I’ll get back to you. Yeah.

520 01:26:28.810 ⇒ 01:26:45.980 Uttam Kumaran: Last year’s survey news, so… Yeah. But you’re gonna see, but again, it’s… what I want to caution us from is that this isn’t, like, a… there is some clear ways in which you can actually improve this. There’s changes to the content on the website.

521 01:26:45.980 ⇒ 01:26:54.350 Uttam Kumaran: there’s changes to how we do tracking and how we serve our pages, and all of those are totally possible in, like, a few month time span to do. So…

522 01:26:54.350 ⇒ 01:27:06.799 Uttam Kumaran: But wouldn’t, if I was right in thinking that I was paying Monkey Boy to optimize my website, wouldn’t this have been a piece of what optimizing my website would have been taken?

523 01:27:06.800 ⇒ 01:27:09.110 Uttam Kumaran: That… that would be my expectation.

524 01:27:09.310 ⇒ 01:27:21.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Sounds like they’re just waiting for direction. So there’s… I think there’s either two things. One is this level of technicality that, like, we do for folks, it may not be in their toolbox.

525 01:27:21.530 ⇒ 01:27:28.100 Uttam Kumaran: Or, they may not feel that this is on their plate. I think it’s one of those two. Right. Right, it’s one of those two.

526 01:27:28.360 ⇒ 01:27:31.529 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and I don’t think it’s… we met with Joe, I don’t think it’s, like.

527 01:27:31.680 ⇒ 01:27:33.549 Uttam Kumaran: Purposely doing anything, but…

528 01:27:33.590 ⇒ 01:27:45.010 Uttam Kumaran: it may be that, look, this… what we do on the SEO and the, like, what’s called GEO, which is generative optimization, is now… it’s like a… it’s just a new thing. And so…

529 01:27:45.010 ⇒ 01:27:53.760 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve been doing it quite significantly. It just may be that they’re… they’re not able to do this. I’m not sure. So, it’s worth talking to Monkey Boy.

530 01:27:59.060 ⇒ 01:27:59.800 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

531 01:28:01.370 ⇒ 01:28:17.650 Uttam Kumaran: If you’re in the MT, that’s what I thought. No question in my mind. And it’s worth… it’s worth also delineating what optimizations, like, optimization for site speed versus, like, are you showing up in organic search versus paid search? So this is where there’s gonna be a line where

532 01:28:17.880 ⇒ 01:28:23.829 Uttam Kumaran: Like, oh, I thought somewhere so was handling paid. Every time.

533 01:28:23.930 ⇒ 01:28:30.750 Uttam Kumaran: That, and I guarantee you this lesson would save you, sitting right here. Every time one of our managers says.

534 01:28:31.390 ⇒ 01:28:35.429 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t show up, but we’re not trying to… you’re not… we’re not who we’re marketing to.

535 01:28:35.590 ⇒ 01:28:49.620 Uttam Kumaran: This is lying, every time. Yeah. No, I don’t expect me to show up when you look. Yeah, I don’t… I don’t… I don’t… yeah. Personally, I don’t agree with that, yeah. I… I think there’s… there’s certainly… if…

536 01:28:49.910 ⇒ 01:28:58.279 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not… like, you are not showing up in the results that you should be, and we’re seeing that really plain and simple. And… and…

537 01:28:58.540 ⇒ 01:29:12.029 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it would be one thing if it’s like, okay, but in order to get that, we have to pay for all those customers. You have a great organic presence. You will find that with some of these optimizations, you’re gonna see the organic come back up

538 01:29:12.090 ⇒ 01:29:27.030 Uttam Kumaran: And those are… you’re not going to have to pay for those customers, as many of your competitors will have, because you have all those reviews, because you have the long history, right? But again, there’s just new methods that people are accessing your website that you have to take advantage of.

539 01:29:29.500 ⇒ 01:29:31.760 Uttam Kumaran: Just, like, the frustrating part of the…

540 01:29:32.600 ⇒ 01:29:35.830 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve started looking at leads we’re not getting for

541 01:29:36.210 ⇒ 01:29:55.519 Uttam Kumaran: generators. Yeah. It’s like in the company that was putting in all these generators. Right at his mom’s house. A brand new little company out of his mom’s house, and we kept Googling it. It was… he was number one, and we’re not even found anymore. Well, that’s been my frustration with a lot of our smaller services, that are smaller services that

542 01:29:56.020 ⇒ 01:30:07.979 Uttam Kumaran: don’t have to stay smaller services, because they have tremendous… Amber will be talking to you about those smaller services in those smaller markets, and how they are going to grow a lot. We have a slide just on that, but yeah.

543 01:30:08.750 ⇒ 01:30:28.820 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, I mean, I think we kind of beat this one, but there’s… there’s a lot of opportunity here for… for you guys to… to be where you deserve to be on the rankings. Yes, yes. Go back to that rule. No, no, no, no, no. 880 conversations…

544 01:30:28.820 ⇒ 01:30:34.700 Uttam Kumaran: 1,276 brands ABC is 4.1%.

545 01:30:35.160 ⇒ 01:30:39.100 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s unbelievably bad. Yeah.

546 01:30:40.740 ⇒ 01:30:55.039 Uttam Kumaran: That’s because we’ve missed the boat. I don’t think you’ve missed the boat. You are not on the… you are… It’s waiting for us. Yes, boat is still there. Boat is within reach, arm’s reach. You gotta go get in the boat.

547 01:30:55.780 ⇒ 01:30:58.260 Uttam Kumaran: Other boats have taken off, we just need to get our boat.

548 01:30:58.700 ⇒ 01:31:05.359 Uttam Kumaran: But also, most people in the industry are not on the boat either.

549 01:31:05.360 ⇒ 01:31:20.459 Uttam Kumaran: the fact that they are showing up is not by design for the most part. In fact, the folks that are just starting, yes, they are doing it by design, but easily all of your experience is gonna… is gonna eat those people alive if you were to just do, like, some of the

550 01:31:20.460 ⇒ 01:31:22.690 Uttam Kumaran: Optimizations that we’re recommending.

551 01:31:22.970 ⇒ 01:31:29.970 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s… that’s sort of, like, the net-net. Yeah, yeah.

552 01:31:30.040 ⇒ 01:31:46.629 Uttam Kumaran: This next… this next piece… this next piece is all on Click2Buy. And so we went through and we got all the data from Clicks2Buy. We looked at, actually, the funnels. So one is… is, we are seeing that there is…

553 01:31:46.900 ⇒ 01:31:55.609 Uttam Kumaran: drop-off, and pretty significant drop-off from folks that start the click-to-buy process who actually make it the completed purchase.

554 01:31:55.800 ⇒ 01:32:08.919 Uttam Kumaran: we are also seeing at which point they are dropping off higher. Most people are dropping off at the service selection, and at reviewing the order. What I’m… what all this is to say is.

555 01:32:08.920 ⇒ 01:32:23.140 Uttam Kumaran: First, we have the data to answer any question about where are people dropping off. The lovely thing about optimizing online purchase funnels is you can test, and you can continue to… Again, I would want to hold accountable

556 01:32:23.650 ⇒ 01:32:24.890 Uttam Kumaran: Monkey Boy.

557 01:32:25.580 ⇒ 01:32:43.980 Uttam Kumaran: They’re the ones who built Click to Buy. Yeah. They then were able to try and take that to other places, and the fact of the matter is, they’re not analyzing it, and they’re not figuring out these kinds of gaps and problems. Yeah, that’s correct. That’s… that’s not acceptable for blood pressure again. Y’all had talked about it last time, although there is…

558 01:32:44.100 ⇒ 01:33:02.380 Uttam Kumaran: drop off, 5% is good. Actually, pretty good. So, so there… so, yeah, so within e-commerce, 5-10% on online purchasing is good. I… but I… but I will say two things. One is, you… and for some cases, you have really high intent buyers. You’re not browsing

559 01:33:02.600 ⇒ 01:33:18.390 Uttam Kumaran: Austin Pest Control landing page. You were there for a reason. You were there for a reason. Yes. You’re selling hats. But to also your piece, I feel like this is the first time in talking to everybody that we’ve been able to see

560 01:33:18.650 ⇒ 01:33:24.519 Uttam Kumaran: a funnel graph like this. And so, to your point, if they were tasked to

561 01:33:25.250 ⇒ 01:33:41.250 Uttam Kumaran: not only implement, but analyze. This has never been on a regular basis. Something got built, and something has now been left to do whatever it does. Yeah. And what you’re doing is, right, that’s not acceptable.

562 01:33:41.480 ⇒ 01:33:42.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

563 01:33:42.620 ⇒ 01:33:46.190 Uttam Kumaran: Because maybe 5% is great, but we’ve never even looked to try to determine.

564 01:33:47.220 ⇒ 01:33:52.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah, but our starting group is a lot more serious, yeah. Tom, where are they?

565 01:33:53.550 ⇒ 01:33:56.420 Uttam Kumaran: Where are they dropping off? One of the things that…

566 01:33:56.770 ⇒ 01:34:11.709 Uttam Kumaran: we had talked about was to say, do we have to enter too much information on the front end? Is that what people are getting frustrated? So, so, so all of those things, the answer is we have to just test it, and it’s very easy to test it. It’s actually very easy to just conduct these tests.

567 01:34:11.710 ⇒ 01:34:18.300 Uttam Kumaran: And we will… we will think… we will look through the data, find out the cohorts that are making it, try to replicate their behavior.

568 01:34:18.400 ⇒ 01:34:24.230 Uttam Kumaran: And so, whether we find out that cert… yes, there’s a… there’s actually a whole science to

569 01:34:24.230 ⇒ 01:34:38.420 Uttam Kumaran: form development and that, but ultimately, yes, we will test our way to the appropriate number. And just, like, all of these things, from the SEO, to the A-B testing, to organic search, to paid search, these are just all

570 01:34:38.440 ⇒ 01:34:55.599 Uttam Kumaran: tools to grow. And so, yes, part of this is going to be optimizing this. In conjunction, you want to make sure you’re still driving traffic to the site, but when you drive the traffic and they lay in there, we’ve got to get them. We have to get them, right? Or we have to get them at the rate that we’re comfortable with.

571 01:34:56.470 ⇒ 01:35:01.020 Uttam Kumaran: We drove them to the site, they looked, Very interesting.

572 01:35:01.350 ⇒ 01:35:11.120 Uttam Kumaran: And now they call us. I mean, again, I don’t know… we didn’t have Click to Buy until not that long ago. So we… so…

573 01:35:12.010 ⇒ 01:35:31.329 Uttam Kumaran: 6, 7, yeah. And we do have the data on… we do have the data, but what we’re gonna see, because of the new types of buyers, this is gonna be their preferred method. I agree with that. Right. And you guys do a great job on the phone, and I think the phones… and you guys have that… it’s getting, you know, I think that’s fine, but even for the phone to ring is the volume problem.

574 01:35:31.330 ⇒ 01:35:32.230 Uttam Kumaran: And…

575 01:35:32.640 ⇒ 01:35:43.740 Uttam Kumaran: If you are already paying for those customers to come here, you need them to finish the funnel at the rate at which you’re happy with. You don’t click to buy, but you click to scheduling a salesperson.

576 01:35:44.070 ⇒ 01:35:51.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. But again, like what we’ve said, you gotta test it out in different markets and see how well it performs compared to our baseline here. Yeah.

577 01:35:51.880 ⇒ 01:35:55.210 Uttam Kumaran: There’s not gonna be a silver bullet, you just test your way to find out. Yeah.

578 01:35:55.710 ⇒ 01:36:03.810 Uttam Kumaran: But we might convert more if they’re getting on their selective service. There are… I think there are… Tom, you alluded to this.

579 01:36:04.170 ⇒ 01:36:12.220 Uttam Kumaran: forms that have already been tested. Yes, yes. I hear what you say, but there are best practices already accepted.

580 01:36:12.220 ⇒ 01:36:29.909 Uttam Kumaran: Correct. I’d like to know, are we or are we not following what our… Well, a great example is we all buy from Amazon. Amazon is maybe the most common purchasing funnel that you go through. Think about how easy that is. That is… that is the holy grail, right? Take that coming, that’s a little… but there are ways for us to get close to that.

581 01:36:29.910 ⇒ 01:36:37.189 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, what you’re seeing on the right is actually a lot of people are getting fairly far and still not buying.

582 01:36:37.230 ⇒ 01:36:40.980 Uttam Kumaran: Which means they wanted to, and there’s some friction. I feel you.

583 01:36:42.640 ⇒ 01:36:56.289 Uttam Kumaran: From my experience in buying, yes, you definitely are. It is life. It says, please see cash. Yeah. Totally, I don’t need anything. But again, I think…

584 01:36:57.170 ⇒ 01:37:09.319 Uttam Kumaran: But you mentioned, Steven, on the BitCleans, the jobber, we’re getting still most… it’s really simple form and easy to do. Right. Boom, boom, boom, boom. One page, yeah.

585 01:37:09.410 ⇒ 01:37:19.500 Uttam Kumaran: So, you can optimize this to hell, but we still have a long ways to go until we’re even close to that. Yeah.

586 01:37:19.810 ⇒ 01:37:21.320 Uttam Kumaran: frustration…

587 01:37:21.800 ⇒ 01:37:35.169 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, Monkey Boy’s position is we built it, and it is what it is. Who should be looking at that and saying, man, that’s really not good, we’re losing a lot, let’s look at this. We should have, but I don’t think we had the tools. I don’t have the knowledge to.

588 01:37:35.800 ⇒ 01:37:51.240 Uttam Kumaran: Where should that role be within this organization? Because we fumbled the ball. You would expect… it would have been nice if Monkey Boy would have told us, hey, let’s try some different things on the ClickBuy page and see if I can get better conversions.

589 01:37:51.610 ⇒ 01:38:00.340 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I would have thought. That’s where I’m going. But I don’t know if they’ve said that to us or only. That’s… Collaboration with the marketing, because we’ve said this.

590 01:38:01.860 ⇒ 01:38:04.560 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve told… I’ve brought this up before, I think our clicked budget.

591 01:38:04.800 ⇒ 01:38:13.910 Uttam Kumaran: Way too busy. But again, do they… can they take that feedback and turn it into a plan and execute and show the results?

592 01:38:14.390 ⇒ 01:38:16.240 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not sure. I’m not sure.

593 01:38:16.690 ⇒ 01:38:21.539 Uttam Kumaran: Conspiracy was right. You made a data team.

594 01:38:22.190 ⇒ 01:38:37.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I was like… I was like, David should present on this once a month, and then maybe David’s going to them, be like, you need to change this, you need to run this test. Like, they’re just… it… part of this has to be internal, has to be partnered with your external team, but again, like, it wasn’t clear to me that

595 01:38:37.760 ⇒ 01:38:43.060 Uttam Kumaran: They had this data in an easy-to-access way, where they could produce this, and that they were actively

596 01:38:43.260 ⇒ 01:38:47.269 Uttam Kumaran: optimizing for this in any… Yeah, this seemed confusing for them to pull.

597 01:38:47.770 ⇒ 01:39:00.799 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I don’t know… What’d you say? Was this hard for, like, Monkey Boy to really, like… Well, I think… I think it was a couple steps for us to get it, but it was just all raw data, like, we modeled it, and we put it together in this format.

598 01:39:02.210 ⇒ 01:39:04.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’ve never really once reviewed Clicked Buy.

599 01:39:08.510 ⇒ 01:39:09.549 Uttam Kumaran: I spoke up.

600 01:39:10.290 ⇒ 01:39:15.880 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So yeah, maybe, Amber, I can hand it to you. Thanks, sorry for,

601 01:39:15.990 ⇒ 01:39:29.340 Uttam Kumaran: I did, but I realized that she didn’t put these together, another guy on our team did, so I was like, let me… let me move… let me just move us through that. This is really, I think, I think the meat of it, so yeah, go ahead, Amber.

602 01:39:29.480 ⇒ 01:39:40.079 Amber Lin: Cool. So I have mainly three sections. So, one, we’re gonna look at our, current services, we’re gonna look at our different geographies.

603 01:39:40.080 ⇒ 01:39:58.099 Amber Lin: And then I have a section on Evolve, which is our current, like, how we’re currently doing, and a section on, Dream, which is our lead funnel, which kind of relates to the click-to-buy stuff, the online advertising, the stuff that we just talked about.

604 01:39:58.100 ⇒ 01:40:15.110 Amber Lin: But we’ll start here, and we go to the next slide. So this is an overview of how our sales or revenue are currently distributed. I used the 2024 data for this, but I checked for 2025, it was very similar. And we can see that

605 01:40:15.460 ⇒ 01:40:32.700 Amber Lin: Of course, residential pests is our biggest service, but HVAC is actually right behind. It takes up 14% of our services, and that tells us of, okay, what market should we look at next? Which service

606 01:40:32.770 ⇒ 01:40:45.210 Amber Lin: is already concentrated, and which service has more room to grow? Because the key question we’re thinking about is, okay, where do I put my next dollar?

607 01:40:45.620 ⇒ 01:40:51.440 Amber Lin: So, if we look at the next slide, we can see that

608 01:40:52.730 ⇒ 01:41:07.890 Amber Lin: So this one, I believe Clarence has also shown, so this is a estimate of how big the market is for the different… for the different services. And HVAC is really up there, because it’s Texas, people need their ACs, and it…

609 01:41:07.890 ⇒ 01:41:27.169 Amber Lin: I don’t think we’ve reached a potential as much in HVAC than what we have in residential pests, so that is really good news, that even though there’s a lot of competitors, the market is… the cake is big enough for people to share, and that means we can still invest our dollars there, and still receive a return.

610 01:41:27.630 ⇒ 01:41:40.980 Amber Lin: So, in the next slide, you can see that for the past few years, our HVAC service has really gone up. It has almost reached in parallel with residential pest, and

611 01:41:40.980 ⇒ 01:41:59.940 Amber Lin: I feel like that’s just a natural growth of us doing the services. We haven’t invested disproportionately into HVAC. It was always just a percentage of revenue, but even with that, we’ve been able to grow much faster in HVAC, and I think that tells us something of, okay,

612 01:41:59.950 ⇒ 01:42:14.309 Amber Lin: what if we were to put more money into HVAC? What would happen? Would we be able to take up more market share? How do we go against those competitors? Like, what market should we look into?

613 01:42:14.450 ⇒ 01:42:21.180 Amber Lin: So that’s a notable point of this slide. And then, of course, our other services, such as

614 01:42:21.190 ⇒ 01:42:38.619 Amber Lin: When we look at plumbing, when we look at the lawn services, lawn care, lawn mowing, and landscaping, we’ve also seen that they have… they have been growing, especially during COVID, at a very high rate. So we also wanted to see, is…

615 01:42:38.720 ⇒ 01:42:46.570 Amber Lin: any other service is also worth investing in. So I’ll go into that a little bit deeper.

616 01:42:46.840 ⇒ 01:42:48.430 Amber Lin: And the next slide.

617 01:42:48.600 ⇒ 01:42:52.789 Amber Lin: I think this is, the next one is,

618 01:42:52.900 ⇒ 01:42:56.330 Amber Lin: Wait, who’s controlling this slide? Can you go to the next one?

619 01:42:58.300 ⇒ 01:43:13.509 Amber Lin: Awesome. So this is something that we talked about, I think we were all very interested in seeing, a rough model of ROI. So, for every dollar that we put into acquiring that new customer.

620 01:43:13.790 ⇒ 01:43:25.409 Amber Lin: how much would they bring back? Because a customer usually may have one or may have multiple services, in the span of years, and

621 01:43:25.410 ⇒ 01:43:44.619 Amber Lin: While… while the cost we need to acquire them is different, because, say, residential pests, it’s a lot easier for us to acquire them, because they know that ABC does this really well, they might even search for it, we might not even need to spend for a certain customer to come to us for pests.

622 01:43:44.620 ⇒ 01:43:59.070 Amber Lin: But for other services, such as, for tree, or for landscaping, or for commercial, those are things that we will need to spend more to acquire those customers, because we’re… because we’re still relatively new in the market.

623 01:43:59.450 ⇒ 01:44:00.680 Amber Lin: And so…

624 01:44:00.800 ⇒ 01:44:12.639 Amber Lin: when we think about this, so we have the cost to acquire the customer, which is different. We have the value of the customer, which is based on

625 01:44:12.640 ⇒ 01:44:32.639 Amber Lin: how big the ticket is. Say HVAC is a much bigger ticket. How often does the customer repeat? That depends on, okay, are they usually on a monthly contract, on an annual contract, or how long do they stay with us? So that determines how… what the value of the customer is.

626 01:44:32.670 ⇒ 01:44:43.010 Amber Lin: And with… also with the margin that we have for 2025, I was able to estimate, okay, so what would the return be?

627 01:44:43.340 ⇒ 01:44:45.860 Amber Lin: For each of the services.

628 01:44:46.020 ⇒ 01:44:59.759 Amber Lin: And right here, I have, on the high end, so we have residential pest control and commercial pest controls on the high end of the ROI. And then following that, we have

629 01:45:00.000 ⇒ 01:45:03.720 Amber Lin: the lawn care and lawn mowing services. And…

630 01:45:04.240 ⇒ 01:45:17.159 Amber Lin: The reason why I think that is, is one, we’re much more well-known for commercial pests and residential pests, and people do repeat these services very often.

631 01:45:17.310 ⇒ 01:45:30.470 Amber Lin: And we also have a very high margin on them. And then second, for lawn care, same thing, very high margin. People do it very often, and relatively low cost to acquire them.

632 01:45:30.480 ⇒ 01:45:40.219 Amber Lin: So, I’m gonna pause here for any questions. This is sort of our mental model of if we were to invest, where would we invest first?

633 01:45:43.090 ⇒ 01:45:52.680 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we were saying earlier today, we were surprised at how few overall lawn care customers we have relative to our entire customer base. Yes.

634 01:45:52.860 ⇒ 01:45:57.040 Uttam Kumaran: And lung care is. It’s got a nice margin.

635 01:45:57.550 ⇒ 01:45:59.870 Uttam Kumaran: And we think we have a good service.

636 01:46:00.380 ⇒ 01:46:06.520 Uttam Kumaran: Both the… Net promoter scores for

637 01:46:06.850 ⇒ 01:46:15.440 Uttam Kumaran: care are high. Right. And I think mowing is high relative to the industry. Yeah. It’s just such a visual service, it’s hard to have that really high.

638 01:46:15.580 ⇒ 01:46:21.740 Uttam Kumaran: Net Promoter Score, but ours have gone up nicely, so… So, so…

639 01:46:22.150 ⇒ 01:46:26.480 Uttam Kumaran: When I see something like this, where my head goes to right now.

640 01:46:26.880 ⇒ 01:46:31.450 Uttam Kumaran: As soon as you’re saying, so… We talked about this.

641 01:46:31.850 ⇒ 01:46:40.240 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve built this business on the back of the relationship of the pest control technician with our customers, okay?

642 01:46:40.850 ⇒ 01:46:42.010 Uttam Kumaran: And…

643 01:46:42.640 ⇒ 01:46:51.610 Uttam Kumaran: The best customer is an existing customer. Just a couple of statements that are truisms no matter what, right? We close highest with the existing customers.

644 01:46:52.860 ⇒ 01:46:56.769 Uttam Kumaran: And marketing to an existing customer costs us virtually nothing.

645 01:46:58.920 ⇒ 01:47:07.629 Uttam Kumaran: So, it’s almost like if I thought, and I’m thinking out loud here, so don’t hold me to it, but if I thought that our best service to market

646 01:47:07.880 ⇒ 01:47:09.279 Uttam Kumaran: was pest control.

647 01:47:10.040 ⇒ 01:47:13.230 Uttam Kumaran: I think I could make a case, almost.

648 01:47:13.370 ⇒ 01:47:16.480 Uttam Kumaran: It says, the only service I’m gonna market is pest control.

649 01:47:16.610 ⇒ 01:47:35.690 Uttam Kumaran: And everyone’s gonna enter the ABC funnel through pest control, and then we’re gonna do the great job that we do with LeadLine and our marketing to our existing customers, because now they’re part of the AV… they’re with ABC, and now I can very, very, very, very, very efficiently market to them and all the other services we do.

650 01:47:37.080 ⇒ 01:47:58.620 Uttam Kumaran: I’d throw in lawn care also, but yeah. What comes in in Austin is that, is your market share… San Antonio, I think you could make the case for sure. I think Austin, you gotta factor in… That’s what I’m trying to market. I believe that there’s another… endless amount of pest control to go get. If that’s the case, then yeah… We went into the other services because we were worried we were topping out in the market in pest control. Right.

651 01:47:58.900 ⇒ 01:48:06.650 Uttam Kumaran: I would say… Go for lawn care. Almost each division, you would do the residential pest control, lawn care, pool, and AMP.

652 01:48:06.840 ⇒ 01:48:21.140 Uttam Kumaran: You go in with the maintenance services, almost. It also may be dependent on, you know, each locale, and it’s the propensity for, like, what do we push? But you’re exactly right, like, all this should show you is, first.

653 01:48:21.140 ⇒ 01:48:46.089 Uttam Kumaran: service to get people in the door, and then what should be add-on, and then how do you construct the offer, right? And so we’ll talk about, later in our slides, about customers who their first service was one of these, how much they’re worth versus a bundle of services, and like, okay, how do we get people to the 5 to 7 service mark faster, depending on what they come in the door to? I think getting everybody to pass.

654 01:48:46.090 ⇒ 01:49:10.560 Uttam Kumaran: You could consider that, like, yes, the most extreme version of this. There are… But yes, it is a version, and yes, there are ways of either cutting that by what should we do in San Antonio versus Austin, what should we do for our paid marketing versus organic. Those are all the different sort of campaigns that need to get tested. It’s interesting on the timing of when that organic search seemed to drop.

655 01:49:10.790 ⇒ 01:49:14.300 Uttam Kumaran: That’s about the time you’re… You’re…

656 01:49:14.500 ⇒ 01:49:22.610 Uttam Kumaran: plumbing in your HVAC started to plateau. Plateau. You just weren’t getting as many leads, because your organic search was dropping. It’s all tied together. Yeah.

657 01:49:23.230 ⇒ 01:49:33.669 Uttam Kumaran: Because for a while, you know, I know Esler pointed out at one point, because he did look, he said, of the new pes… of the new plumbing customers we got when we were growing plumbing.

658 01:49:33.930 ⇒ 01:49:36.340 Uttam Kumaran: 50% of them were not pest control customers.

659 01:49:36.650 ⇒ 01:49:49.299 Uttam Kumaran: 50%. He went out and looked, and just analyzed every single… Right, which was a great feeling, that people were entering the ABC service channel. That’s probably 4 years ago, 3 to 4 years ago.

660 01:49:49.370 ⇒ 01:49:59.849 Uttam Kumaran: when I think we were higher on organic search for those particular services. But what we found is those are not sticky customers, necessarily. Right. On their own. Now what our plumbing manager would say is.

661 01:50:00.850 ⇒ 01:50:02.019 Uttam Kumaran: I got no leads.

662 01:50:02.440 ⇒ 01:50:09.119 Uttam Kumaran: We’re great when we run a lead. I just need more leads. Yeah. Well, our organic is down here. Yes.

663 01:50:09.270 ⇒ 01:50:10.960 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

664 01:50:13.310 ⇒ 01:50:14.340 Uttam Kumaran: Great.

665 01:50:15.690 ⇒ 01:50:19.639 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’ve tried to… to…

666 01:50:19.830 ⇒ 01:50:26.859 Uttam Kumaran: You know, to Bobby’s point, though, if we just did pest control, we, unfortunately, or fortunately, we tried to brand ourselves

667 01:50:27.370 ⇒ 01:50:28.540 Uttam Kumaran: More than that.

668 01:50:28.690 ⇒ 01:50:39.410 Uttam Kumaran: Totally. Totally use only commercial services. But if you only advertise for pest control, people will just call us ABC Pest Control. Right, they’re just gonna… that’s gonna hurt… I think that would hurt the other services more.

669 01:50:39.630 ⇒ 01:50:42.910 Uttam Kumaran: Agree for new people entering.

670 01:50:42.910 ⇒ 01:51:07.720 Uttam Kumaran: The question is, can you sell more… if you… You would have to have a really slick internal campaign. If you grew your pest control… Very slick. Not just email blasts. You put your money there. Yes. If you grew… instead of growing pest control 6%, you grow it 13%, right? Because you put the muscle and the resources there, right, to grow our best base of customers.

671 01:51:07.720 ⇒ 01:51:19.249 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Right? That off of those additional, now you’re selling all the other stuff, and to your point, you’ve got to do a great job of it. I’m not saying it just magically happens.

672 01:51:19.250 ⇒ 01:51:36.900 Uttam Kumaran: But I tell you, we got a formula with LeadLine that no other company has anywhere, and we do it better than anyone anywhere else does, so that’s a giant advantage to us. And yes, our email campaign is lame now, we’re not doing other things, we’re not doing any direct mail to them about other things.

673 01:51:36.900 ⇒ 01:52:01.050 Uttam Kumaran: But, we could… You could put the horsepower there. So what you’re gonna see, and I think it’s probably towards the end, so, but, like, to kind of steal the story there is, yes, like, your more valuable customers are the ones that add on more services, and that they stay around longer, right? But the stay around longer piece indicates that they’re more satisfied, and that they’re better for ABC. What this should indicate to you is, yes, there is a new

674 01:52:01.050 ⇒ 01:52:11.169 Uttam Kumaran: customer acquisition strategy, and then there is a expansion strategy, and then there’s also a retention strategy. Completely agree. They have to be… I’m not sure I got the first two.

675 01:52:11.250 ⇒ 01:52:24.979 Uttam Kumaran: the… I mean, a retention strategy… Retention is, like, making sure that the folks don’t leave. No question. Expansion is adding services. Okay. And then acquisition is bringing them… but those are different and distinct. So the question would be…

676 01:52:25.140 ⇒ 01:52:39.259 Uttam Kumaran: is, and it is fun to play with, I’m not advocating it, but that our expansion, or the new acquisition one, was all pest control, and then a very, very focused

677 01:52:39.260 ⇒ 01:53:03.640 Uttam Kumaran: expansion of all the new customers and the existing customers, and then, of course, the retention one is what we do do. We do provide damn good service. And to even put more emphasis on that, the customer acquisition cost for those other services, so if you were to go get those without, is way higher. So it’s actually even… it’s more efficient to get them after. Yes.

678 01:53:03.640 ⇒ 01:53:15.140 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I’m getting at. Yes. That’s why I’m sitting there going, I don’t have to spend that money, I don’t have to spend that money, I can spend that money. You can spend that money, and then, again, it’s much easier to expand.

679 01:53:15.140 ⇒ 01:53:16.910 Uttam Kumaran: And retain, once you have them.

680 01:53:16.910 ⇒ 01:53:38.679 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yes. Versus getting the new customer. And you said it, you know, it is easier to sell a new service to an existing customer than any service to a non-existing customer. But I think it’s like, what is the offer, right? What is the discount that we can offer that still gets us the ROI? So it’s the discounts, the offer formation, the bundling, to put together that campaign.

681 01:53:38.680 ⇒ 01:53:39.400 Uttam Kumaran: you know.

682 01:53:39.470 ⇒ 01:53:47.029 Uttam Kumaran: And then, do we have the tools to run the campaign? Do we… can we measure the fact that it’s… it’s working? That would be so much fun to just sell pest control.

683 01:53:47.650 ⇒ 01:53:50.579 Uttam Kumaran: I thought it long. It’d be so much fun.

684 01:53:51.500 ⇒ 01:53:56.110 Uttam Kumaran: Well, you’re still gonna get… let me just play this out a little bit, I mean…

685 01:53:56.530 ⇒ 01:54:04.280 Uttam Kumaran: Where we are today, people are still gonna call, even if I didn’t spend another dollar, Marketing HVAC.

686 01:54:05.160 ⇒ 01:54:09.870 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. I would disagree with that. We are spending money, and it is declining.

687 01:54:10.880 ⇒ 01:54:16.610 Uttam Kumaran: I think what you can say is if you don’t spend another dollar, you still get some calls. People are still gonna call us, just cause they know.

688 01:54:17.130 ⇒ 01:54:18.310 Uttam Kumaran: And…

689 01:54:18.650 ⇒ 01:54:37.620 Uttam Kumaran: again, and I’m trying to figure out where those dollars, what kind of dollars are we talking about, right? There’s broadcast dollars, there’s search dollars, there’s optimization dollars. It’s like, well, wait a minute. I think there’s… all of this is fantastic conversation of where’s the dial, where’s this?

690 01:54:37.620 ⇒ 01:54:39.060 Uttam Kumaran: Where do you put your…

691 01:54:39.310 ⇒ 01:54:52.619 Uttam Kumaran: big dollars, and where do you put your support, almost support knowledge? Yeah. Well, keep it falling off a cliff, and then someone will grow. Well, and we’re also not utilizing all avenues, like social media, which are very cheap to buy. Yeah.

692 01:54:52.750 ⇒ 01:55:07.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and so what you’ll find is that there are avenues where not only the data you get is better, you’re gonna see 5 to 10X on your money versus what you’re seeing on some traditional forms, but you’re also not gonna get the data on where they’re coming from. So…

693 01:55:07.910 ⇒ 01:55:19.499 Uttam Kumaran: This is exactly right. Just, you have a bunch of dials. Within marketing, you have dials, but now even outside, on the service bundling, what services the market, it all has to, kind of.

694 01:55:19.620 ⇒ 01:55:27.550 Uttam Kumaran: tie into each other, right? So this is where I think one of the big themes is we’ve seen that marketing has been very disconnected from

695 01:55:27.550 ⇒ 01:55:43.320 Uttam Kumaran: the sales side. And, like, that really cannot… it just can’t be that way. It is all… it all affects each other. You can’t… You can’t market to one, and then how do you expect to capitalize? How does the delivery and the sales team expect to capitalize?

696 01:55:43.710 ⇒ 01:55:47.330 Uttam Kumaran: Sure. It’s typically… Yeah. Sales and marketing.

697 01:55:47.480 ⇒ 01:55:57.719 Uttam Kumaran: Well, and I’m not trying to kick anyone now, but you can kick us. Since COVID, he’s just not been engaged in the same way. He’s never came back.

698 01:55:58.560 ⇒ 01:56:03.089 Uttam Kumaran: Since COVID, because he was gone from COVID and never came back.

699 01:56:03.220 ⇒ 01:56:17.629 Uttam Kumaran: Well, there’s some of that, and his position on a lot of this was separate, and he just never got the same level of engagement that we had for your pressure that the phone and sales are down, and…

700 01:56:17.810 ⇒ 01:56:29.809 Uttam Kumaran: you’d think he’d be stressed out trying everything else, and it’s just… But COVID should have showed you that… one thing that’s exciting for me is that you guys and the business operations can sustain COVID-level traffic.

701 01:56:29.870 ⇒ 01:56:40.909 Uttam Kumaran: like, that is not very common, right? Most people blew up, everything blew up. So for me, I’m like, oh my gosh, like, the internals are built in a way to sustain that, those numbers.

702 01:56:40.910 ⇒ 01:56:50.379 Uttam Kumaran: okay, like, I’m actually so happy. Like, really, that’s what makes me happy, because you can do some of these changes, and the delivery of the services will have no problem

703 01:56:50.440 ⇒ 01:56:55.199 Uttam Kumaran: you know, ramping to sustain it, you know?

704 01:56:56.590 ⇒ 01:57:02.740 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Amber, I can let you, continue.

705 01:57:02.740 ⇒ 01:57:08.920 Amber Lin: Alright, so the next one is just a brief touch on, the different branches.

706 01:57:09.330 ⇒ 01:57:18.930 Amber Lin: So, you can see here that most of our sales are coming from Austin, and our second most… second biggest market, which is San Antonio, is about…

707 01:57:19.930 ⇒ 01:57:42.990 Amber Lin: 30% of that, but as Clarence has shown earlier, these markets are pretty equaled in size, and honestly, the markets such as Rio Grande and Waco, they’re not as small as we think they are. They’re currently 0.1% of our total sales, but that market is about, say, half or two-thirds of

708 01:57:43.000 ⇒ 01:57:58.519 Amber Lin: Austin, and I just think there’s a lot of opportunity we can do there. We have our… we have our brand already. It’s just, I don’t think we spend a lot of money in those markets, as you can see in the next slide.

709 01:57:58.690 ⇒ 01:58:00.330 Amber Lin: So, our…

710 01:58:00.810 ⇒ 01:58:14.809 Amber Lin: Yeah, that’s the comparison of, say, Austin and San Antonio, and you can see that they’re pretty similar, in their market sizes. But San Antonio, we just… we’re just so much smaller there.

711 01:58:14.860 ⇒ 01:58:21.450 Amber Lin: And in the next slide is the marketing budget. Oh, wait.

712 01:58:21.450 ⇒ 01:58:27.789 Uttam Kumaran: I may have a… yeah, I may move some of your stuff around. Okay, all good, all good.

713 01:58:27.790 ⇒ 01:58:34.919 Amber Lin: So, this is our marketing budget. You can see that we’re really spending very, very little,

714 01:58:34.960 ⇒ 01:58:46.319 Amber Lin: in, RGV in Waco compared to San Antonio and compared to Austin. Of course, like, when we spend on marketing.

715 01:58:46.320 ⇒ 01:59:01.499 Amber Lin: we either spend offensively, or we spend defensively. And a lot… a big part of Austin’s spending is playing defense. If we don’t spend, other people will spend, and then they will take our market share. So, like,

716 01:59:01.670 ⇒ 01:59:08.239 Amber Lin: A lot of this is we have to spend, but a lot of, we could have been spending more

717 01:59:08.240 ⇒ 01:59:26.909 Amber Lin: strategically, playing offense on, say, smaller markets, playing offense on San Antonio, so we wanted to see, so the next step that I wanted to look at is, hey, if we were to allocate more to San Antonio, would we… will we get a reasonable return?

718 01:59:26.910 ⇒ 01:59:40.010 Amber Lin: when do we start getting diminishing returns? And I don’t think we should stop spending until we reach that, because every dollar spent is gonna get us $3,$ 5, $10 back, so…

719 01:59:40.270 ⇒ 01:59:42.110 Amber Lin: That’s my… that’s my…

720 01:59:42.110 ⇒ 01:59:48.260 Uttam Kumaran: I have those… I think I have those slides for you, Amber, if you want to present on, like, sort of the forecast.

721 01:59:51.910 ⇒ 01:59:54.120 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t know if you wanted to share this at all.

722 01:59:54.120 ⇒ 02:00:04.899 Amber Lin: Oh, yeah, yeah. So this is a… still a rough model on per service, how much will we get, say, in a 5-year period?

723 02:00:05.480 ⇒ 02:00:17.380 Amber Lin: I made this model based on what we looked at before of the market size, our current penetration, so that’s based on what markets we cover in Texas.

724 02:00:17.380 ⇒ 02:00:30.639 Amber Lin: what services do we cover, and what price range do we cover? So, based on that and our current revenue, we have approximate market penetration. And our goal is to increase that, because each incremental

725 02:00:30.740 ⇒ 02:00:35.920 Amber Lin: Increase in market share will give us a lot of, new revenue.

726 02:00:36.360 ⇒ 02:00:37.239 Amber Lin: And so what?

727 02:00:37.240 ⇒ 02:00:49.819 Uttam Kumaran: Well, yeah, one thing just to align, because I know it’s a lot of numbers. This is hard to look at. Yes, it’s very hard to look at, but I did want to… now that we’re talking about ROI, all this is modeling is

728 02:00:50.120 ⇒ 02:01:00.199 Uttam Kumaran: How much does it take to acquire a customer in those services? And given our assumptions on the money we’re spending in those services, how much money should you expect coming out?

729 02:01:00.200 ⇒ 02:01:18.309 Uttam Kumaran: And so when we talk about expectations from a marketing team on, okay, you gave me 6%, here’s how that’s gonna translate this year to the next 5 years of revenue, this is, like, what you should be expecting, right? And we went even further, and we broke it down by service.

730 02:01:18.310 ⇒ 02:01:32.370 Uttam Kumaran: we understand, okay, like, how penetrated are we? Because you don’t want to… you can’t just buy endlessly, right? So we factored a lot of that, like, plateauing in. But really, like, ultimately, beyond, like, any of these specific numbers.

731 02:01:32.370 ⇒ 02:01:56.499 Uttam Kumaran: I want to share with you what a sophisticated marketing team should be delivering for the leadership team, and showing the ROI of the budgets that they’re spending, right? We looked at how much is being spent per service, but exactly right. Are we spending money in the services that line up to where the growth is? Right? This, to me, looks like, yes, we are spending a lot in Austin and San Antonio.

732 02:01:56.540 ⇒ 02:02:21.510 Uttam Kumaran: we’re spending a lot in pest, lawn, and mechanical, but was there a why to these numbers, right? How much of the spending is defensive? How much is for offensive customer acquisition? You’re gonna see in Austin, yes, because it’s a competitive market, there’s a lot of people here, there’s also a lot of people spending here, there will be some amount of money you have to spend just to maintain. But in San Antonio, we saw that it’s not that competitive, and certainly

733 02:02:21.510 ⇒ 02:02:22.640 Uttam Kumaran: other markets.

734 02:02:22.640 ⇒ 02:02:28.860 Uttam Kumaran: So, when you talk about the dollar, is this the way we want to split up the pie?

735 02:02:28.860 ⇒ 02:02:50.859 Uttam Kumaran: And have we had a discussion on that, right? And that’s… That’s a big piece, like Amber said, you gotta, you know, obviously you’re not gonna take 100% of everything, just go all towards pest control. You gotta decide how to be defensive, and say, we gotta at least be flat in Austin, because even if we grew 20% San Antonio, 0% Austin, like, it just can’t make up the numbers, so yeah, how much do we need to be defensive? Maybe that’s 90% of the budget, but that’s 10% of the budget.

736 02:02:50.860 ⇒ 02:03:05.429 Uttam Kumaran: okay, now, strategically, where do we place that to grow? Do we place a San Antonio? Do we put it in a pool to grow? Do we put it in pests to grow? And to go from the other side, right, if you look… talk about, like, the… the branch managers, for them to request…

737 02:03:05.610 ⇒ 02:03:28.430 Uttam Kumaran: part of the budget should come from numbers that are like, well, look, I’m… we’re growing, and we’re growing efficiently, right? And so, actually, we should consider allocating more dollars here, because I’m able to get a customer at a great price, and we’re able to service it at a great margin. And so, it looks like in Austin, hey, actually, Austin Pest, maybe we are saturated, why are we adding another dollar there?

738 02:03:28.430 ⇒ 02:03:52.960 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so how do we get… part of this is, how do we get some of these to even out, right? We don’t want to be seeing a huge concentration, right? This is almost 80% is coming from just two cities, which we all know, right? But our goal should be to even out. Some of these are showing great growth trajectories in certain services. All that should say is, okay, let’s get out a landing page.

739 02:03:53.070 ⇒ 02:04:09.639 Uttam Kumaran: for that service in that geo, and start marketing and acquire those customers at a great ROI. Like, that’s how the campaign should get formed, right? So there’s a little bit of sales, there’s a little bit of finance and understanding the margin, and then there’s the marketing and putting together the campaign.

740 02:04:09.640 ⇒ 02:04:15.560 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s how, like, camp… marketing campaign formation has to happen. It can’t happen

741 02:04:15.600 ⇒ 02:04:29.100 Uttam Kumaran: isolated, or it can happen, okay, let’s just put the budget where the dollar… where the splits already are, right? Which is what we’ve been doing. Which is what you’re seeing, basically, is what’s happening. Austin, San Antonio,

742 02:04:29.100 ⇒ 02:04:40.899 Uttam Kumaran: BCS, CC, Bell, you know, it’s basically matching… Revenue. Yes. Because we do it as a percentage of revenue. Like you said, then there’s got to be accountability. Okay, if we give Waco another…

743 02:04:40.990 ⇒ 02:04:56.659 Uttam Kumaran: 2%, or whatever it is, okay, how… what’s the strategy? How are we gonna grow? What are the expectations to grow? Totally. But the question is, that 2% came from someplace else. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that’s always the issue. Yes. Is to… to…

744 02:04:56.940 ⇒ 02:05:13.340 Uttam Kumaran: forward spend in RGV, I’ve got to take away from Austin, or someplace, to go disproportionately spend, because we don’t… we’re very, very, very small there. Yes. Right? So, okay, we’re going to spend 22%

745 02:05:13.650 ⇒ 02:05:33.430 Uttam Kumaran: Well, it’s still a manageable number, because it’s small, but that money came from somebody else’s pocket. Yeah. Is the battle. Backwards and say, was it worth it, or was it first, you look forward to see how should it impact you if it worked or didn’t work? Well, the point is, the problem is, and not problem, but I mean.

746 02:05:33.740 ⇒ 02:05:36.770 Uttam Kumaran: And I think your point is, we have to look at this

747 02:05:36.770 ⇒ 02:06:01.449 Uttam Kumaran: as one singular company. Yeah. Okay? And where the investment should go within it. Our problem is, I have managers that are tied to their part of the company. Definitely. So when I take away from that there to put over here, that’s a, well, you took my… I can’t do what I did before because you took away. Everybody’s told, we have to

748 02:06:01.450 ⇒ 02:06:02.140 Uttam Kumaran: growth.

749 02:06:02.350 ⇒ 02:06:20.550 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s gonna be two pieces. One is, like, there’s gonna be what we call, like, platform. There’s gonna be things that impact every dollar spent on marketing across ABC, regardless, right? This is better attribution, this is better click-to-buy, right? That goes to everybody in the platform. So one thing is just…

750 02:06:20.550 ⇒ 02:06:30.950 Uttam Kumaran: you have the fixed budget. I kind of want to avoid thinking too much about, okay, we need to spend more money. I actually think you’re spending a fine amount. Yeah, but it’s part of that is, like, okay, can we get…

751 02:06:30.950 ⇒ 02:06:36.390 Uttam Kumaran: like, 3 times more value from the same dollar. Right. There’s these platform improvements.

752 02:06:36.390 ⇒ 02:07:00.250 Uttam Kumaran: then… so once you complete those, then it’s like, okay, now we have to play the game of allocating it to the right places. But again, it’s also like what we said, there’s acquisition, then there’s the expansion aspect of it. You might say, I’m gonna take away some money off the top, but our expansion program’s a lot better. You’ll get that customer just after they’ve gone… And very commonly, most teams, they’re inundated with thinking only about

753 02:07:00.250 ⇒ 02:07:12.899 Uttam Kumaran: top of funnel, new customer, when there is so much available on existing customer, and there’s a lot of people going out the door that are not being caught. Well, we know that. And we should talk about them

754 02:07:12.900 ⇒ 02:07:36.669 Uttam Kumaran: equally, or if not more, because that’s the LTV. And so when… this is where, when folks are competing on… and it’s expected that each branch come and says, I need more money, but then you have to understand, okay, tell me about your… are you even trying to expand? Is there a retention? So there’s all these other tactics than just the spend money on the top. Right, because they’ve always… we’ve just been black and white.

755 02:07:36.670 ⇒ 02:07:41.500 Uttam Kumaran: money advertising. Money, yeah, and so now when you give a range of tools.

756 02:07:41.630 ⇒ 02:07:47.569 Uttam Kumaran: I’m telling you, everybody can continue to support their business without increasing… Problem is what you said earlier.

757 02:07:47.740 ⇒ 02:08:07.029 Uttam Kumaran: we haven’t been able to measure what’s working. Yes. We don’t have to spend much more money, just take away from what’s not working, and react to what’s working, and flip some switches, and boom. Yeah. Like, in Austin, you may find, okay, most of our effort and our energy may have to go to expansion, because we already paid, we have a huge customer base.

758 02:08:07.030 ⇒ 02:08:14.750 Uttam Kumaran: and we’ve… just as big as our customer base is, we’ve lost a proportionally big amount of them. Okay, maybe now our time should move from

759 02:08:14.910 ⇒ 02:08:33.809 Uttam Kumaran: top-of-funnel marketing to those, versus some of these new branches, they’re gonna be more on the other side. Actually, we haven’t penetrated. That’s how it’s gonna go. So now, instead of all debating around one part of that, you have 3 different areas of bets that people can do, so hopefully that turns down the noise of…

760 02:08:33.840 ⇒ 02:08:41.410 Uttam Kumaran: well, my dollars are going away. It’s like, well, there’s a slew of options that you can… tools that you can use to grow now.

761 02:08:41.490 ⇒ 02:08:42.199 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

762 02:08:49.670 ⇒ 02:08:52.490 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Amber, you want to go into Evolve?

763 02:08:52.660 ⇒ 02:09:03.829 Amber Lin: Yeah, cool. So, Evolve is… when we talk about Evolve, we’ll talk about what’s the best combination, what happens when people combine stuff, and…

764 02:09:03.860 ⇒ 02:09:15.499 Amber Lin: How long they stay with us, what… what happens when they come in on different first products, which is what we were discussing before. So this is the picture of

765 02:09:15.630 ⇒ 02:09:19.769 Amber Lin: Like, after the customers come in, what’s… what’s happening?

766 02:09:19.940 ⇒ 02:09:35.420 Uttam Kumaran: And also, just before we talk, like, I know there’s been a lot of talk about Evolve as a system. The system works great. I don’t think any part of our recommendation is to move off of any of the core systems that you’re running the stuff on. We do have some things about improving, especially some things on the Google Analytics side.

767 02:09:35.460 ⇒ 02:09:45.659 Uttam Kumaran: But I want to sort of nip in the bud, like, is Evolve the thing? It’s working fine, we got all the data we need. The team worked with us well, Julie has a good grasp on that. I feel like…

768 02:09:45.710 ⇒ 02:10:01.469 Uttam Kumaran: We were happy with… it took a while to get to this point, we scrambled to… and Amber did most of the scrambling to get all this together, like, so… but I will say we got all the data to answer all these questions, so… Yeah, it’s there. Yes, yes, it’s there.

769 02:10:01.670 ⇒ 02:10:09.260 Amber Lin: Yeah. So, this slide, what it’s saying is just that as you get more products per customer.

770 02:10:09.430 ⇒ 02:10:16.129 Amber Lin: their lifetime value goes up. I think it’s, the bottom line is…

771 02:10:16.210 ⇒ 02:10:19.290 Amber Lin: Pretty straightforward when you get… a customer has

772 02:10:19.350 ⇒ 02:10:37.429 Amber Lin: about 4 products, then they are at 1,000 of revenue. And of course, like, right now, we’re counting the one time or the initials as its own product, but I think this still shows you of if we were to be able to

773 02:10:37.580 ⇒ 02:10:51.159 Amber Lin: market to existing customers, get them to get more services with us, then you see a disproportional jump in their LTV, say, for example, from

774 02:10:51.230 ⇒ 02:11:07.020 Amber Lin: 4 products to five products, you see an almost $1,000 jump, whereas you wouldn’t be spending that much on marketing for those customers. So, this just tells us, like, hey, this is a direction we should be working… working towards.

775 02:11:07.020 ⇒ 02:11:10.089 Uttam Kumaran: The fundamental, what we have.

776 02:11:10.360 ⇒ 02:11:30.010 Uttam Kumaran: at a level that nobody else has at this level. Others have it this much. We’ve got it this much. Other companies can’t get past 3 or 4. Yes. And really, to Amber’s point, right, the jump from 4 to 5 is $1, 000. Y e ah . Y o u^{'} r e n o t g o nna s p e n d$ 1,000 on getting them that one more.

777 02:11:30.010 ⇒ 02:11:31.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Right?

778 02:11:31.460 ⇒ 02:11:40.999 Uttam Kumaran: So, let’s say you spend $100 end-to-end on, like, the additional marketing or whatever to get them, you’re getting 9X on your dollars on a…

779 02:11:41.470 ⇒ 02:11:44.279 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, for me, this is really…

780 02:11:44.460 ⇒ 02:11:54.609 Uttam Kumaran: the… the slide to answer what we debated a lot, which was the… why should people be buying more services, and what is the impact? Yeah, and I think the question is…

781 02:11:55.400 ⇒ 02:12:10.810 Uttam Kumaran: what more can we do to enhance that? Because we’re doing email, we’re doing, oh, by the way, and we’re doing lead line. Is there another thing we can do, Utom, to say, well, now you can really increase your effectiveness if you’ll also do

782 02:12:10.820 ⇒ 02:12:34.300 Uttam Kumaran: this, or is it just do these three things better? No, there is a whole host of improvements on email alone that will start to improve this. Good. And that is incredibly cost-effective. Yeah, and is it instead of email, is it more text? And again, we gotta play by the rules of texting. Yes. But we know most people respond more to a text than an email nowadays, so how can we

783 02:12:34.620 ⇒ 02:12:54.179 Uttam Kumaran: take advantage of that. Yeah. Even on our texting, we texted everybody with Mosquito if they wanted an early pre-season service. Yeah, you said this was… We sold 170 new customers in 2 days. We barely scratched the list. But we played by the rules, because they’re an existing Mosquito customer. This was an additional Mosquito service, I guess.

784 02:12:54.210 ⇒ 02:13:05.319 Uttam Kumaran: So one on email… What rules? On email, there’s way more to do, and we’re not saturated on all the things to do. So we’re not doing our email rule what?

785 02:13:05.600 ⇒ 02:13:23.179 Uttam Kumaran: You can be honest. I think you’re not doing your email real well, yeah. I think you’re doing… Which is my field. Yeah. Right? I feel like we did this, and now our email is just… Well, let me tell you, there’s two types of emails, right? So I want to cross off one, which is called transactional emails. Your service is coming up. Here’s a survey.

786 02:13:23.320 ⇒ 02:13:28.290 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s one. There is this… this is marketing emails.

787 02:13:28.600 ⇒ 02:13:45.630 Uttam Kumaran: which we send every week, we send one to three to four different emails to different people in different markets for different services. Yes. And so one is, we have to do a little bit more analysis on the email program, on

788 02:13:45.630 ⇒ 02:13:47.080 Uttam Kumaran: marketing emails.

789 02:13:47.080 ⇒ 02:14:12.069 Uttam Kumaran: But Amber literally did this for, we had a customer that’s a big, cookie company, and they send a ton of emails, and there is a way to get… to get that to the point where, it’s insomnia cookies. Oh, yeah. So we did a whole bunch of work for them on their email program, so there’s a lot of things to do, but you’re right.

790 02:14:12.070 ⇒ 02:14:29.080 Uttam Kumaran: It’s targeting based on what they bought, based on what channel they came from, so there’s a whole… we do very little SMS here as well, so there’s a whole thing to do there. But part of it is actually not the fact that, yes, you could do that once, but what is ABC’s capability to do that

791 02:14:29.100 ⇒ 02:14:43.619 Uttam Kumaran: on a recurring basis to bring it up, what was the impact, right? And so, yes, there are regulations and rules on both email and this, but there’s a whole opportunity for service expansion, and this is exactly

792 02:14:43.640 ⇒ 02:15:03.570 Uttam Kumaran: that middle category of expansion that we need to be spending more time talking about, because this is much more impactful on long-term revenue than spending more energy on talking about top-of-funnel advertising. Could we use… and it’s a cost, but it’s already, in fact, a sunk cost in a way. Could we use reward points for…

793 02:15:03.780 ⇒ 02:15:28.290 Uttam Kumaran: Reward points is another thing where we… I don’t know, Amber, if I included the slides, but we… there’s a whole lot of stuff to do on rewards points that we’re not taking advantage of, but all of that has to go into the email campaigns, which is, you have these reward points sitting, can you use it? So, again, this is the campaign formation. It shows taking a customer from 4 to 5 if we invested more in our email campaign. A different provider.

794 02:15:28.290 ⇒ 02:15:53.270 Uttam Kumaran: target those email… or those customers with the most reward points? Yes. But also, what you should do is, you should say, like, look, getting someone from 2 to 3… Yeah. So, can we just send an email just to folks with 2 services within X amount of time? 2 to 3 or 4 to 5 is probably really subtract one, because they have an initial, let’s counting 2 to… like, initial… Yeah, yeah, yeah. Either way, but… Yeah, 3 to 4 is the target.

795 02:15:53.270 ⇒ 02:16:17.749 Uttam Kumaran: But again, it’s like, just because we can, like, sales may know this, but then marketing has to take this, form the campaign, watch the results from sales, and then surface it back up. I’m like, did it work? So those people… Those people, it has to be that way. It has to be that way. Marketing will never see this, unless they’re going to evolve.

796 02:16:17.750 ⇒ 02:16:29.240 Uttam Kumaran: and looking at this data, and Evolve is… But on sales and delivery, they have no capabilities to put together the campaign, use the tools effectively to get it out, right?

797 02:16:29.240 ⇒ 02:16:43.900 Uttam Kumaran: So instead, what often does Les know how we’re doing? He doesn’t come to the weekly meeting, he doesn’t know how to access Evolve, but the point is, what’s never taken place was…

798 02:16:45.080 ⇒ 02:17:02.459 Uttam Kumaran: Les does meet with each of the division managers, what do you want to send this week? Yes. Yeah. That’s the conversation. Oh, I need some electrical. Okay, so they put together an electrical offer of some sort or fashion, and they blanket send it.

799 02:17:02.780 ⇒ 02:17:17.410 Uttam Kumaran: to everybody that week. There’s no… there’s no thought or strategy to it, it’s just… sent. Yeah. So, okay, those that have 1 service, 2 services, five servers, they get it. Everyone gets it. It’s a low effort.

800 02:17:18.620 ⇒ 02:17:42.820 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a strategy behind it. There’s no… did it work? Well, that’s the main thing, is that there’s no follow-up to see today. It’s a box checker to say, we do an email blast. It’s also, does that branch manager need to even be involved? Like, you can see this from the data, and marketing can go put that campaign… Well, that’s my point. I’m sitting there going, this just seems like marketing’s in charge of the email campaign. They go, they find it, they…

801 02:17:42.820 ⇒ 02:17:51.600 Uttam Kumaran: That’s who’s sending it. Yeah, and marketing should… they should say, hey, this quarter, we’ve now moved… because of our emails, the people that receive this email

802 02:17:51.600 ⇒ 02:17:55.180 Uttam Kumaran: They’ve now jumped 3 services on average versus the people that haven’t.

803 02:17:55.200 ⇒ 02:18:08.759 Uttam Kumaran: that’s how you prove, right? And so without that, it’s… it’s tough. But, like, this is, for me, really is like, okay, there’s so much money left on the table if we could just move people up a couple services.

804 02:18:08.760 ⇒ 02:18:15.370 Uttam Kumaran: And you have the services to do so, you have the capabilities to do the volume… Yes.

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