Podcasts about david yeah

As the property management industry continues to evolve, it's important to stay up to date on the latest innovations in technology. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David Normand from Vendoroo to talk about AI's role in the future of property management. You'll Learn [01:29] The AI Revolution [08:47] The Importance of Empathy and Human Touch [22:21] Decreasing the Cost of Maintenance Coordination [32:29] New Features Coming to Vendoroo Quotables “As any property manager believes, we know how to do it the best.” “If you're not reading articles and studying up on this, I think that's going to catch you by surprise pretty quickly.” “Empathy is the magic lubrication that makes everything better.” “Empathetic reflection and empathy is a magical ingredient.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] David: If you're not building AI tools from working with your partners, from being on the ground floor with them and using the data and building tools based upon the data and their pain points and their failures, buyer beware. If somebody's coming to you and saying, Hey, we figured this all out in the lab. [00:00:14] David: Come use it. Yeah. Right. Buyer beware. [00:00:18] Jason: All right. Welcome property management entrepreneurs to the DoorGrow Show or the Property Management Growth podcast. I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive group coaching mastermind for residential property management entrepreneurs. We've been doing this for over a decade and a half. [00:00:39] Jason: I've brought innovative strategies and optimizations to the property management industry. I have spoken to thousands of property management companies. I've coached over 600 businesses. I've rebranded over 300 companies like Bar Rescue for property managers, cleaning up their businesses, and we would love to help coach you and support you and your growth. [00:01:01] Jason: We have innovative strategies for building out growth engines, for building out your operational challenges, for helping you figure out how to get to the next level in your business and one of the cool tools that I'm excited to showcase today with my guest here, David Norman, is Vendoroo. We've had you on the show before. [00:01:19] Jason: Welcome back David.  [00:01:20] David: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It felt like years ago, it was only about, I think eight months ago since we did this, so much has changed over the time, so it's great to be back. Yeah, it's great to be back.  [00:01:29] Jason: Good to have you. I know you're in the middle of this AI revolution, which AI is just innovating and changing so rapidly. It probably does feel like years ago, so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been crazy. You guys have made a lot of changes too, so, you even changed your brand name from the last time we had you on the show. Yeah. Which was I think Tulu. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah. So why don't you get us caught up on what's going on 'cause, you know, there's been a lot.  [00:01:55] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you first of all for having me here today, Jason, and from the entire Vendoroo group of us, which, you know, the team has grown 10 x over the past eight months, which has been awesome. And I just also wanted to start in thanking everybody from what we call our client partners who have jumped in into this great unknown that is AI and is going to be like, how is this going to work in our industry? And so that's really what we've been focusing on the past eight months. You know, it's been a unbelievable journey of both failures, successes learnings and insights. And ultimately we're getting excited here at the NARPM broker owner which is in Denver to unveil Vendoroo. Like this is the coming out party. And so we're super excited if you're going to be there. We have a massive booth that we have set up that we have the ai alliance with other people that are working in the AI space, and I really hope that you guys come over and check it out. I promise this. [00:02:53] David: You'll never see a booth or a display like we have set up. At the NARPM broker owner. So.  [00:02:58] Jason: Now I want to go attend it. Yeah. Just so I can see your booth.  [00:03:01] David: So, let me put it this way. You may see the robot from the Jetsons walking around the booth walking around the NARPM broker owner, so, okay. [00:03:07] David: Yeah. Rosie? Yeah. You may see something like that. So she'll be vacuuming with her apron? Yeah. She'll be doing a little social engagement. It'll be cool. So, okay. Okay.  [00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, so catch us up on what, like, let's get into the kind of the background and the overview for people that have never heard about Vendoroo and what you guys do and how you got into this. [00:03:29] Jason: Yeah. Give people kind of the backstory. Yeah.  [00:03:31] David: Yeah. Thank you for that. So really the backstory is that, you know, we know of this AI economy that's coming, right? And there was a few of us, you know, I've been in this industry for 18 years. You know, I've managed you know, portfolios of 40,000 doors. [00:03:47] David: I've managed them for governments. You know, I started off with our own property management. Much like you guys. We started off with 80 doors. We grew to 550 doors in four years. So it was exciting to know that technology that was coming that promised duplication because, you know, as any property manager believes, we know how to do it the best, right. [00:04:05] David: And so what we decided to do is to come together and say, Hey, if AI's coming, there's two things that we need to figure out. Number one is how is this going to help us show value in this new industry to this new generation of property owners that is here, that is coming, that has been raised in the technology world too, right? [00:04:25] David: And two, can it actually duplicate our efforts? Can it actually be an employee for us? Right? And I don't care what people are promising about ai, you don't know until you get into what we call like, you know, get into the weeds, you got to get into the trenches. And so that's what we did, right? We went out and we were the guys that grabbed the torch and we said, we are going to take all the risk. [00:04:46] David: We are going to jump into the mix. We're going to ask people to jump onto the bandwagon with us and we're going to figure this out. And oh my gosh, what an unbelievable eight months it has been in learning and insights. And I can't wait to get into all the things that we've learned about the property management industry. [00:05:01] David: But that's really what we've been focusing on here the past eight months, right? So we started off with well hey, can the AI assist the va? Can it turn them into a super va? Is that what it's going to be? And, you know, some people were like, yay. And some people were like nay, you know? And so, and you know, because that human failure still was there, right? [00:05:21] David: And you know, what happens if they left? There was that inconsistency. And then it was like, all right, well what can the AI own? Right? What can it do? What can it perfect? And you know, can AI actually be the last employee that I ever hire? Right. That's really, that's a really cool thing to do. [00:05:39] David: But the property managing community had some really specific demands that they said that if this is going to be the last employee that I've had, it has to do this. And that's what I'm excited about our new technology 'cause it's doing those things. You know? [00:05:52] Jason: Yeah. And now you guys have made some big moves. I know, like I've, I have clients that we've sent over to you and they've shared some incredible stories. Like one client, I think he had 154 units or something like under management, and he said in the first day you're of turning on Vendoroo, like it closed out like 80 something work orders. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah, like, it was crazy. Another client, they had a little more doors. They said it was like 50 something work orders were closed out in the first day of turning it on. And so, I mean, you're creating some dramatic stuff. Like this is a very different thing than what people are used to in maintenance. [00:06:27] David: Yeah. Yeah. And really what the exciting part about this, Jason, is that maintenance is actually really easy. And I know people laugh when I say that it's managing communications that is extremely difficult. Okay. Okay. Right, because you have, you know what AI told us about our industry over the last eight months is when we dove in with it and it took a step back and it said, whoa, you guys don't have a data problem here. [00:06:51] David: You guys have a emotion problem here. There's very specific categories of emotion that are in this space, right? Like, how do you build a technology that senses something? And I know this relates with property managers, 'cause I know this for myself. A property manager can walk into their office, sit down at their desk, and their spidey senses go off and they know something's wrong. [00:07:15] David: There's no screen that's telling them anything. There's no spreadsheet. They know something's off. Right. And so the AI is like, well, the statuses really don't matter that much to me based upon the feedback that I'm seeing from the property managers. Because the status and the communication all seem to be in order, but there's a disruption somewhere. [00:07:35] David: So I need to know about people's emotions. I need to understand about is the resident happy? Does the owner feel supported? Is the vendor being directed? And does the property manager believe that I can own the outcome for this? And it was really cool to start seeing its learning and understanding and picking up on these cues where, you know, people say that this is a data-driven industry. [00:07:55] David: It's really in an emotion driven industry.  [00:07:57] Jason: Oh yeah. It's a relationship and emotion industry for sure. Yeah. Yeah, big time.  [00:08:01] David: And it's really cool to see, and it's really started happening over this past last 60 days, the amount of residents, I was actually just looking at one before I jumped on here, that are like thanking the system, right? [00:08:15] David: Imagine that, like think of all of us that actually worked with the chat bot at like Verizon. I've never thanked that chatbot at Verizon for being their customer service. Right.  [00:08:25] Jason: And how do I get a representative? Representative. Representative!  [00:08:28] David: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Versus you seeing people, you know, seeing individuals saying to the, you know, saying to the Vendoroo maintenance coordinator, Hey, I really appreciate feeling supported and how fast you acted because you know, there's empathy that's inside of its law and learning. So I don't want to get too much into the details on there. But yeah, these are some of the exciting things that we're working on.  [00:08:47] Jason: I mean, empathy is the magic lubrication that makes everything better. [00:08:52] David: Yeah,  [00:08:52] Jason: I mean they, they've done studies. Teams, even in working in warehouses, are more productive if the team has a higher level of empathy. Yeah. And doctors perform better. Yeah. If there's a higher level of empathy, there's less malpractice suits, like empathetic reflection and empathy is a magical ingredient. [00:09:10] Jason: I coach clients to add that in during sales. Yeah. 'cause their close rate goes up dramatically. Yeah. Right. So yeah. So leveraging and like getting the AI to actually be empathetic in its communication. Yeah. When that's probably not a natural skill for a lot of maintenance coordinators to be empathetic. [00:09:26] David: It's not, it's not a natural skill for a lot of people in the maintenance industry. Right? Yes. Especially when you talk about burnout. People begin developing views of the rental community, right? Like, oh my gosh, they're calling again, and that empathy meter goes lower and lower and lower. [00:09:41] David: Yeah. As people have been in the industry longer. But isn't it great that you have an employee now that knows that, yeah, it's my duty, rain or shine, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 a year to always operate at the highest level of empathy? I never have a bad day. I never take a day off. [00:09:57] David: I'm never upset. I'm never short with somebody on the phone, never tired, never like, oh my gosh, Susan is calling me again. I'm going to let the phone just ring because I'm annoyed of talking to her. And it just is constantly hitting that same level of standard. And this is what's exciting to me, is that there are people that that have played around with this and have been a part of what I call the pain phase, right? [00:10:20] David: The pain phase is that understanding the way that agentic AI works, right? It's input in output. Input, output, right? The more that you're putting into it, the better the results are that you're going to get out of it, okay? Right. It's just like training an employee. So over the last eight months, what we've seen is that the community has trained this to be the level of a person that has now been working in the industry for five years. [00:10:46] David: In eight months. It's got five years of learning in eight months. Okay. Wow. In the next six to 12 months, we're probably looking at somebody that has 10 to 15 years understanding in the next six to 12 months and understand the level of type of tasks that it can do, especially getting into estimates and getting some other work. [00:11:04] David: And again, just you know, having empathy in my own life towards the people that jumped in that are like, what is this all about? Like, how does AI fail? Like, you know, there's still people that are involved and it was like this big like momentous train of like, you know, all these people were jumping on and giving ideas and people are in the loop and now it's weeding everything out and the AI stepping in and saying. [00:11:27] David: Hey, I appreciate all the input that you've given me. Thank you for all your effort. I'm now ready to step up to the plate and to own the outcome. Right. And that's what we're seeing at the NARPM show that's coming out. There's five AI tools. There's a master agent, five AI tools. And you know, I'll give you a couple of pieces here that, you know, we had feedback from our property managers like number one across the board. [00:11:50] David: A property manager said, if I'm hiring AI as my last employee, that has to work in my system. Yeah. Okay. Right. Like I don't want another, I don't want another technology. Yeah.  [00:11:59] Jason: I don't want a new system I got to get every vendor to use or a new system I got to get my team to use or figure out. We don't need another tool to make our lives more difficult. [00:12:08] Jason: No. They've got to use our stuff.  [00:12:09] David: They got to use, we have our existing stack. Yeah. So now the AI is fully integrated into all the most common PMS systems. You know, you have a cool chrome extension that you can download and there's a little yellow kangaroo right right there. And it's actually reading the work order that you're working on, and you can literally just ask it a question now and just being like, Hey, did anybody express frustration or concern on this work order? [00:12:32] David: Right? Because that's the emotion behind the status that you need to know. And it's like, yeah, two days ago Sally said that, you know, she was actually really frustrated about the multiple reschedules by this vendor. And it's like, great, that's a person I should be reaching out to and that's what I should be knowing that a status is never going to tell you. [00:12:47] David: Right? Yeah. It's in your slack, right? So if I have, if I'm on my phone, I'm talking to my employee and I'm laying in bed and I have a panic attack as a property manager, and I'm like, oh my gosh, did we take care of John's refrigerator and the office is closed? I can't get ahold of my employee. Yeah, you can. [00:13:03] David: Your employee works 24 7 now. Hey, can you give me an update on the refrigerator replacement at John's place? Yeah, it was scheduled this day. I contacted John. Everything's good to go. You know, go to sleep. You know, like, like that's the power. Full audit. Full syncing. So it's in your platform. That's really cool. [00:13:21] David: The other thing, it's got to be branded, right? This is a thing that we really learned about, like how important branding is to the community of property managers, right? Yeah. So the communications that go out have to be from your area code that's done. The emails that go out have to have like, you know, your company name and your logo on it. [00:13:39] David: The AI is doing that as well too. So that's being sent out, which is really cool. So people are feeling like, you know, that loyalty to brand is super important. And also do you know now that the AI can ask the residents to give a Google Review and we can link to the Google reviews and give you instant Google reviews to your page through the ai, which is cool, like how it's, it will know that if the success of a Google review is high on the way that the work order was done, that it's probably best to ask this person and it will send them a little thing. [00:14:11] David: Hey, can we get a feedback from you? And we link up to your Google review. And it posts that Google review to generate those 'cause we know those are super, super valuable to property managers. So that's actually going out today. That's kind of a little teaser there. That's the emails out now. [00:14:23] Jason: Nice. We'll have to get you to also connect it to our gather kudos links for clients 'cause then people can pick which review sites. So it diversifies the review profile.  [00:14:32] David: Love it. Love that. I'm going to hook you up with our guy Dotan. He's running that. He's one of our head of product. He's, actually out of Israel. [00:14:39] David: He's a amazing guy. I'd love to get you connected with him. Yeah. Cool. Let's do it. Cool. And then the biggest one too is like, I need a single point of contact. Right. And we knew that before there was a lot of people were still involved. There was a lot of oversight that was going on there, having that confusion and single point of contact. [00:14:56] David: Now it's in your phone, it's in your Slack, it's in your phone extension. It doesn't matter what's going on. You have one point of contact. It's your employee. You ask the question, get the answer, Jason, you can even ask for a change. You can even say, Hey, I want to change a vendor on a job and you'll see that the vendor gets changed for you in the system. [00:15:17] David: You can even say to your ai, and this is the big one: hey how do you triage this work order? And I want you to do this, or I want you to do that. And you just do it right through Slack or right through your PM chat and it makes the change for you. And now you have custom triage and all property managers have the ability to train their own AI for their company. [00:15:36] David: Think how cool that is. A person with 75 doors now, and the product that's being released has their own AI agent customized for their company, right? Yeah. Like, that's what happened over the last eight months, so you can see my excitement. There's been a lot of hard work in this. [00:15:54] David: Yeah, that's amazing. But this has been all the effort and a huge thank you out to everybody who's tried us, you know, even said that this wasn't for them at that point in time because those learnings went into what's going to make this product the best product in the property management space and is going to help people leverage sales and leverage efficiencies and blow their owners' minds away in ways that, that we have never thought about. [00:16:15] David: Oh yeah.  [00:16:16] Jason: Yeah. So I know like initially when you rolled this out, a lot of people were nervous about AI and you guys had kind of a human layer in between the AI and any communication Yeah, initially. Yeah. And so there was like, they had like a reps and a lot of people associated, oh, I've got this rep. [00:16:33] Jason: Yeah. You know, Steven or whatever is my rep or Pedro and I've got Pedro and like, oh no, what if Pedro leaves? And they were associating with that while the AI is really doing the crux of the work. Right. And so you guys have shifted away from even that now the AI is directly communicating with people. [00:16:52] Jason: Correct? Yeah.  [00:16:53] David: Yeah. So let's talk about that. So, definitely, so in the beginning there was like, we all had like lack of trust. We believed what it was going to do, but it was like we had a ton of people still trying, like, you know, using qualified VAs, training them. Like, you know, like, you know, if it fails, like, you know, you have to have a person stepped in and so let's talk about that. [00:17:12] David: So, you know, it was definitely that human layer. And let's talk about where we're at today. It is very clear to us, and the one thing that separates us from everybody is we still believe that humans are super important in this process. Okay? Yeah. And where humans are very important in this process are going to be when the AI says, Hey, I need you to make a phone call to this person for me, right? [00:17:35] David: Hey, I've reached out to this vendor three times and they haven't responded yet. I need you to give a phone call to see what's going on. Right? Hey, I need you to recruit a vendor for me. I need you to reach out and do a recruitment for the vendor. For me. Hey, this owner is asking questions about this estimate. [00:17:51] David: I need you to give a call for me. So the AI is basically able, on a standard work order, the AI can handle 95% of the workflow, no problem. Work order comes in, gets assigned to the resident. It gets out to the vendor. It's under the NTE not to exceed. It's great. The work gets done, the resident uploads its photos, the AI says to the resident, are you happy? [00:18:14] David: Everyone's good. It closes the work order out. Cool. Right. And then if a human...  [00:18:19] Jason: and how is it communicating with the tenant and with the vendor typically? [00:18:24] David: Yep. So, it's very clear that and this isn't a surprise to anybody. Everybody loves text messages, right? Yeah. I mean, that's just, it's just what it is. [00:18:32] David: You literally, like, people will get a phone call and they won't pick up and the text will come back and like text back. Yeah, text me. What do you need? Yeah. Text me here. But, so here's the things that people don't see behind the scenes that we'll talk about. So the complexity that went into. [00:18:51] David: Mapping out how to allow vendors... so a vendor could have like 20 jobs, right? And we don't want to send him like a code that he has to text for every work order so that it links to the right work order. Like what guy wants to do that? Okay. Like that's not how he works. So we figured out how to allow a vendor through AI just to use his regular phone and text anything about this thing. And it's understanding it and it's mapping it, it's routing it to all those work orders because we knew that in order for this to be the last employee somebody would have to handle, it also means that the vendor has to be happy and the same for the resident. [00:19:30] David: They can just text that they have multiple work orders. It understands what work order it's going to. If it's not quite sure, I would ask them, Hey, is this question about this work order? And they say, yeah. And so there's not like, again, codes and links and things that they have to do. It has to be seamless if they're working with a person. [00:19:46] David: So yeah, text message is massive. Email is second, and then phone is third for sure.  [00:19:51] Jason: Got it. So is your AI system calling people yet or you or telling the property manager to make the phone call?  [00:19:58] David: Yeah. People are okay with. If they're calling in like our new front desk agent, which if a person calls in and they want to get information about a listing or if they want to get information about a work order or something like that, or, you know, they're okay with getting that type of information. [00:20:13] David: Yeah. But they are, it is very clear that they are not okay with AI calling them when they're asking for an update on a work order like that. Like that line in the sand very clear. Yeah. And so we have people on on the team. That are constantly monitoring into ai, giving feedback, hitting improvement. [00:20:31] David: I want everybody to know there is not a work order that is taking place that is not touched by a human at least twice.  [00:20:38] Jason: Okay.  [00:20:39] David: Okay. Right.  [00:20:40] Jason: So there's a little, there's some oversight there. There there's, you're watching this, there are humans involved  [00:20:45] David: And then the ai will when it hits certain fail points, right? [00:20:51] David: It then escalates those things up to what we call the human in the loop, right? So there's an AI assistant, we there's people now that we're training a whole new generation of people that are no longer going to be maintenance coordinators. They're AI assistants now, right? And so when the AI says, Hey, this work order is not going down the path that I think it should go to be successful. [00:21:12] David: I'm escalating this up to a human, and so now as a property manager, not only am I getting this AI agent workflow that's standardizing the empathy and the workflows and all the stuff that we talked about in the communications, I also now get a fractional employee that when the AI says, Hey, I need help, I already have an employee that it can reach out to that can make that phone call or call the vendor. [00:21:36] David: But it's also monitoring the AI for me on top of it. So yes, there is, and that's one of the big thing that separates us apart is that the platform comes with what we call a human in the loop, an expert in the loop and so we're training the first generation of AI assistants in the property management industry. [00:21:55] David: Yep.  [00:21:56] Jason: Got it. So the AI maintenance coordinator. Has human assistance. Yep. Underneath it.  [00:22:02] David: And before it was the other way around where Yeah. The AI was assisting the human right. And now the humans are assisting the ai. That's what's happened in the last...  [00:22:11] Jason: that may be the future of all of our roles. [00:22:12] Jason: So,  [00:22:13] David: If you're not reading articles and studying up on this I think that's going to catch you by surprise pretty quickly. Yeah. Learn how to write prompts. I'll tell everybody right now. Yes.  [00:22:21] Jason: Yeah. Interesting. So, now what about this, you know, there's the uncanny, you know, sort of stage where people get a little bit nervous about AI and what do they call it? The uncanny valley or something like this, or right where it gets, it's so close to human that it becomes creepy. And there's some people that have fear about this, that are concerned. You're going to have a lot of late, you know, adopters that are like resistant. "I'll never do ai." [00:22:49] Jason: What would you say to somebody when you get on a sales call and they're like, well, I'm really nervous about this AI stuff, you know, and they just, they don't get it.  [00:22:57] David: Yeah.  [00:22:58] Jason: I'm sure there's people listening right now. They're like, oh man, AI is going to kill us all and it's going to take over the world and it's going to take our jobs. [00:23:05] Jason: And they think it's evil.  [00:23:06] David: Yeah. Yeah. I, and you know, I really want to hear that fear and I want to like, again, have empathy towards that. 'cause I do understand that fear of change causes people to get... Change in general. Yes. Right. It's like, whoa, I like everything the way it's going to be. Right. And we are historically in one of those phases of like, you know, the industrial revolution, the renaissance, like the automobile from horse. [00:23:34] David: Like, this is what is taking place. This is, this will be written down in history. It's massive change. It's a massive change. Massive. So what I would say to them, and not to, not from a way of fear. But to inspire them is there are a lot of hungry entrepreneurs out there that are embracing this head on. [00:23:57] David: Yeah. That are pushing the boundaries and the limits to be able to bring insights and customer service to their clients at a much higher level. And if you want to compete in this new AI economy. I would definitely encourage you to understand and get in and start investing in yourself now. But understand that investing in AI means having some pain threshold. [00:24:21] David: Like you got to get in, like you, you need to be able to give the feedback. You need to understand that if it falls short, do you have to be able to give it the time and the energy and the reward and the payoff of what I'm seeing for property managers who've embraced that when they're sitting there and they're going, I don't touch maintenance at all anymore. Yeah, it's wild. Right? And those are the people that in the beginning of this relationship, and there's a few that come to my head, are the ones that were sending me emails constantly saying, David, this is failing me. I believe in this, but this is failing me. And as my technology partner, I know that you're going to help us get this better. [00:24:58] David: And there is, you know, I have this word down that struggle equals great con conversation, right? Like, and so they had a struggle and that opened up a great conversation and because of that, their technology and the technology is getting better. So yeah, I think that from a personal point of view in this industry, one thing that I want to solve with AI is I think that we can all say that over the past 15 years, we've probably yelled at a lot of vendors or yelled at a lot of VAs or yelled at a lot of people. Let's start yelling at the ai. And then hopefully that the AI will actually eliminate the need for us to ever have to yell at anybody again because it knows us. [00:25:36] David: Yeah. It never fails us.  [00:25:38] Jason: You know? It really is amazing. I mean, your company is creating freedom for the business owner from being involved in maintenance. Yeah. Really?  [00:25:46] David: Yeah.  [00:25:47] Jason: And it just, and they get used to that pretty quickly. Like maintenance is just running and they're like, yeah. It frees up so much head space for them to focus on growth. [00:25:56] Jason: It gives them a whole bunch of like just greater capacity. Yeah. So they feel like, yeah, we could handle adding any number of doors now and we know we can still fulfill and do a good job.  [00:26:07] David: Yeah. Fixed cost scaling. Right? That's a term that we came up with is now that you know that I have a price per door that will cover all my maintenance. So if I went in and brought on 75 doors, I know that I don't have to go out and hire another employee. The system just grows with it and I know exactly what my margin is for all those doors. Right. And as we know previous, before fixed cost scaling a property managers is like, I have enough people. [00:26:32] David: I don't have enough people. Someone quit, someone didn't quit. My profit margins are good. My profit margins are bad. Yeah. And now with these AI tools. You know, you have your front desk employee, you have your maintenance coordinator, you have these fixed cost scales, and now somebody calls you up and says, Hey, I want you to take on 25 doors, and you're like, I have the resource resources for maintenance, which is, we know is 80% of the workload already. I don't have to go out and hire another maintenance coordinator 'cause the system just grows with me, which is cool.  [00:27:00] Jason: So one of the things you shared at DoorGrow Live and you're our top sponsor for the upcoming... Can't wait for DoorGrow Live, can't wait to, so we're really excited to have you back so. [00:27:10] Jason: Everybody make sure you're at DoorGrow Live if you want. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management. And we're bringing, we're going to be showcasing, innovating pricing structures that are different than how property managers have typically historically priced, that allow you to lower your operational costs and close more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:27:30] Jason: We're, we'll be showcasing a three tier hybrid pricing model that we've innovated here at DoorGrow, and we've got clients using it. It's been a game changer. We're going to be sharing other cool things about the future hiring systems, et cetera. Right. So you guys will also be there showcasing the future. [00:27:46] Jason: One of the things you shared previously that really kind of struck me as you showed, you did some research and you showed the typical cost. Per unit that most companies had just to cover and deal with maintenance. Yeah. And and then what you were able to get it down to.  [00:28:03] David: Yeah.  [00:28:04] Jason: And that alone was just like a bit of a mind blowing. [00:28:07] Jason: Could you just share a little bit of numbers here?  [00:28:09] David: Yeah. So one of the first things that we had to do when we started way back in the day is figure out well. Like, like what's the impact of AI going to be us from like a cost perspective, right? Is it a huge change? And so we went out on a big survey mission and we were surveying property managers and asking them, what's your cost per door for managing maintenance? [00:28:30] David: How much do you spend every door to manage maintenance? Now the first thing is less than 1% of property managers knew what that cost was. Sure.  [00:28:37] Jason: Oh, sure. Right. Because, but then they got to figure out, oh, we got a maintenance coordinator and we've got these people doing phone calls and they cost this, and yeah, it's complicated. [00:28:45] David: It's complicated. So we built a calculator. Okay. And then people could start adding in that information out into the calculator, and the average person was around $13 and 50 cents a door.  [00:28:56] Jason: Okay. Okay.  [00:28:57] David: Wow. Right, right. So that was where the average person was, somewhere in the low twenties. Yeah. [00:29:01] David: And others were actually pretty good. Like, I'd say like, you know, some of the good ones that we saw were maybe around like, you know, 10, $11 a door or something along that line.  [00:29:09] Jason: They probably had a large portfolio would be my guess.  [00:29:12] David: Yeah. And also I think a lot of it's just like, you know, I don't know if they were still accounting for all their software and everything that they had. [00:29:19] David: Maybe they're not factoring everything. Yeah. No, I think if we really dug in, it'd be different. So now we know that, you know, the base package of what people are getting in. The average cost of what people are paying for 24 7 services that's emergencies around the clock is about $7 and 50 cents a door, right? [00:29:37] David: So right off the bat in AI's first swing, it said we cut the cost in half. Yeah. Okay. Right. So 50% reduction. I mean, to me as an owner, a 50% reduction in cost. That's like. You know, alarms and celebration going off, you know? For sure. And then, yeah.  [00:29:55] Jason: And that's, if everything just stayed the same, like it was still the same level of quality, cutting in half would be a solid win right there. [00:30:03] Jason: Yeah.  [00:30:03] David: Yeah. That's just like status quo stuff. And now what, with the release of the new Vendoroo product that, that's actually being announced here today. The email's going out to all of our existing clients of all the new features that are coming out now, we're starting to see that. You know that quality is now increasing to where if you were to go out and hire that person, you may have to be spending, you know, 55,000 or $65,000 a year. [00:30:29] David: Right? So now it's like saying, okay, if we can get as good as what these people are using for their VAs right, and we know what that cost is, and they're saying that's, you know, that's what their factors is. Well, what happens in the next six to 12 months when this is a seasoned person that you would've to pay $85,000 a year to? [00:30:45] David: Right. Yeah. And right, because they have knowledge of. Estimates and knowledge of vendor routing and knowledge of, you know, it can handle...  [00:30:53] Jason: you've invested so much time into them, so much attention. They know your properties and know your portfolio. They know the vendors. Like you've invested so much into this person that now they sort of have you by the balls so that they're like, Hey, I want 80 k or I walk.  [00:31:06] David: Yeah.  [00:31:06] Jason: You're like, you've got to come up with it.  [00:31:08] David: Yeah.  [00:31:09] Jason: Right. You've got to do it.  [00:31:10] David: Yeah.  [00:31:10] Jason: And you know, because that's not easy to create. And a lot of people, in order to have a good maintenance coordinator, they need a veteran of the industry. Veteran of industry. [00:31:19] Jason: They need somebody that's been doing this a long time.  [00:31:21] David: Yeah.  [00:31:22] Jason: And that's really hard to find.  [00:31:24] David: Yes. It's extremely hard to find as we know. One of the things that I think that we're doing for this industry is we're actually preserving knowledge that I don't think is necessary getting passed down. [00:31:33] David: Yeah. You know, there's a lot less people that I think are as handy as they once were in the Americas and so we have a lot of that knowledge. Like, you know, we know that the average age of an electrician is in the sixties, the average age of a plumber's in the sixties. And these guys, you know, they have wealth of knowledge that it can troubleshoot anything that's going on in a house. [00:31:54] David: And so to be able to try to preserve some of that, so maybe if a person does come in, you know, maybe there's some knowledge sharing along the lines. But let's take it even in another step forward Jason that in the future, you know, the AI is going to know the location of the hot water tank in that house. [00:32:10] David: It's going to then add it automatically to the system, like. It's going to know more knowledge than they will because it's going to have maps of every single property that's all currently sitting inside of, you know, that maintenance coordinator's head, right? And so it's going to, it's going to actually know more than them, you know. [00:32:26] Jason: Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. It's the future. Cool. Well, you're rolling out a bunch of new features. You're announcing these today. You've told me a little bit, but why don't you tell the listeners what's changing, what's new, what innovations have come out? What are you guys launching? [00:32:41] David: Yeah. Exciting. Yeah. So, the biggest one I think is, which is the most exciting is, is Resiroo, which is the first one that actually handles all the communications with the resident and does the triage and troubleshooting. First one of what are you talking about? So we have our products. [00:32:57] David: So you have these AI tools, right? These agents. Right.  [00:33:00] Jason: And so, you know, every, so think of them like different sort of people?  [00:33:04] David: Skill sets. Yeah. Different person. Okay. Exactly. And so that's when you come and see our display at the NARPM conference, you'll actually will see these five agents kind of in their work desk and in their environments, kind of cool. [00:33:15] David: Okay. Able to see them right. So the coolest part about that one is we're doing a major product you know, update on that for not only the knowledge base, but we're actually turning that over to the company. We were talking about this a little bit before, and now they own their own AI agent and they can customize it into how they want it to ask questions or the type of questions and the mindsets when it's triaging stuff. [00:33:41] David: Triaging work orders for their portfolio. Like super cool. So fully customizable to your company, right?  [00:33:49] Jason: So now sometimes the more humans get involved, the more they mess stuff up.  [00:33:54] David: Yes. We make sure they don't mess it up. So everyone's going to learn how to write prompts and they'll submit it into us. [00:33:59] David: And we have a great team of AI engineers that when that knowledge base is written or what they're doing. We will ensure that it is put in so that it actually produces the desire outcome, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a very exciting one. The second one that I'm that I think is so cool, do you know that only 10% of all estimates get approved by the owner without one or multiple questions? [00:34:23] David: Because owners really struggle with trust when it comes to estimates. Like 10%. Like, that's a really bad number, I felt as the industry that owners only believe us one out of 10 times. Like that's the way I took that. Yeah. Right. And so, Owneroo is what I coined inside, is the estimate of the future. [00:34:41] David: That really was looking in understanding like what was, what questions was the owner asking when they were rejecting a bid that that we could proactively ask the answer for them to help guide them to understanding the value in this estimate that they're looking at in historical context of the property. [00:35:00] David: How many other people have experienced this issue? Like, like there's a whole bunch of factors that should go into an estimate and an estimate should no longer be like, here's a cost from Frank. Right? Like, like that was like, like that was...  [00:35:14] Jason: here's what Frank said it is. Yeah. Like that was like from the 1940s. [00:35:17] Jason: That's good. How do I trust that?  [00:35:18] David: How do I trust that? That was from the forties and we're still...  [00:35:21] Jason: how much went into this decision? Was this just out of the blue, like pulled out of your ass or is this like legit?  [00:35:27] David: Yeah. Yeah. What's the, you know, we live in a data-driven world, so what's the intellect behind this estimate? [00:35:33] David: And so I'm really excited about Owneroo, which is going to be the new standard for the way the estimates are created. We have the front desk agent which is coming out. So, that one is going to handle phone calls that are coming in, be able to talk about available listings, actual general questions about leases route phone calls over to property managers for you. [00:35:54] David: So again. Very human-like interaction, great AI voice. Actually. We feel it's going to be the best in the industry. So a person's calling in, just like they're calling your office able to handle all those front desk things. We, we have the PM chat, which is now the employee which is fully integrated into all of your systems. [00:36:14] David: It's in Slack. That's your employee that you get to talk to. We believe that if you're going to hire somebody, they should be inside of your communication channels. You have the Google Chrome extension that it's on right inside your AppFolio or your buildium or your Rentvine software that you can ask and talk to it. [00:36:31] David: So, yeah, so we have a lot of exciting products that have come out. And then of course the backbone of all of them in the middle is Vendoroo, which handles all the scheduling, all the communications. You know, a resident asks for an update, responds to them, an owner asks for an update, it responds to them. [00:36:48] David: And you know, it handles actually the body of the work order. So you have those five tools, we believe are what the property management industry said. If you are going to give me an employee, this is what the employee has to be. This is what makes up that employee. So we say that these tools, these agents were actually built by the property management industry. [00:37:08] David: And that excites me because if you're not building AI tools from working with your partners, from being on the ground floor with them and using the data and building tools based upon the data and their pain points and their failures, buyer beware. If somebody's coming to you and saying, Hey, we figured this all out in the lab. [00:37:25] David: Come use it. Yeah. Right. Buyer beware.  [00:37:29] Jason: Yeah. So you guys connect with Slack. They can communicate through Slack, but it slack's a paid tool. Have you guys considered Telegram? I love Telegram Messenger.  [00:37:37] Jason: Alright. Could you do that? Write it down. Telegram Messenger is like the iMessage tool that works on every device. [00:37:44] Jason: It's free. It's one of the most secure, it's not owned or controlled by Facebook. Like, WhatsApp, like, yeah. But WhatsApp might be a close second, but we use Telegram internally, so I love Telegram.  [00:37:58] David: We'll definitely take that into, into consideration for sure. Yeah, check it  [00:38:02] Jason: out. Because I, what I love is the voice message feature and I can just listen to my team and others at like high speed, but internal communications and it's free for everybody, which is great. [00:38:12] Jason: So, yeah.  [00:38:13] David: Yeah. I think a lot, for a lot of people it was like you know, who was Vendoroo in the beginning and Vendoroo was like the team of like people that were trying to figure out like how is AI going to work in this industry? [00:38:26] David: How is it going to solve the needs of our property management partners? And this is why I say to everybody, if you thought about Vendoroo, if you came in and the experience wasn't great with Vendoroo, if you're one of our existing clients that has been with us and you're and you're still moving forward, and we thank you so much for your dedication to this, the Vendoroo product, everything that we've done, everything that we worked at is being showcased at the NARPM broker owner. The email's going out today. This is who Vendoroo is. We are a team that is a technology partner for the property management industry that is helping building meaningful AI tools, specifically by demand, by our industry to help us show value and to preserve this great industry. [00:39:09] David: For the future in this new AI economy, right? Like we need to step up. We have clients that are adding doors left and right because they're showing their clients that they use an AI maintenance system and their clients are like, this is what I expect from a property management in this community. [00:39:24] David: Right? And again, Owneroo, that estimate, we believe that in the future. Like, like owners are going to say like, I'm not approving an estimate unless it's like the estimate of the future, right? Like, like that's the new standard. So you got to know what the new standards are and you got to get technology that are going to help you compete with those new standards that will be in your community and are will be in your community in the next week, the next two weeks. [00:39:46] David: And definitely some really cool products in the next six months.  [00:39:49] Jason: All right. Well, yeah, I'm really excited to see what you guys have been able to create so far. So yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. Well David, it's been awesome having you on the show. Sounds like you guys are really innovating the future. Everybody come to DoorGrow Live. David, are you going to be at that one? I will be there. All right, so you can come meet David in person. [00:40:08] Jason: We've got some amazing people that are going to be at this. We've got technology people. There's a gentleman there, one of the vendors they created another really cool tool, but he had a hundred million dollars exit, you know, in a previous business, like there's really amazing entrepreneurs and people at this event, so come to DoorGrow Live, get your tickets, and if you do, we have just decided that we're going to give out to anybody that registers. [00:40:34] Jason: You can pick from one of our free bonuses that are well worth the price of the ticket. Or coming or anything in and of itself, including our pricing secrets training that goes over a three tier hybrid pricing model or our sales secrets training, which goes over how we're helping property managers crush it and closing more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:40:55] Jason: And reputation secrets, which are helping our clients get way more positive reviews by leveraging the psychology and the law of reciprocity and getting the majority of their tenants in order to give them positive feedback online. Maybe some others. So you'll be able to pick from these bonuses one of these that you might like and that's our free, most incredible free gift ever that we'll give to each person that registers for DoorGrow Live. [00:41:19] Jason: So.  [00:41:20] David: Cool. Awesome man. Always great to see you. Looking forward to seeing you at DoorGrow Live and love that you guys are working on pricing because AI is going to make people think different about pricing. It's going to be way more efficient, so you guys are ahead of the curve on that. Great job, Jason. [00:41:33] Jason: Awesome. All right, so how can they check out Vendoroo, David?  [00:41:36] David: Just visit, Vendoroo.ai, go to the website, request a demo with one of our great sales reps, and yeah they'd love to help you out. See all the new products, see how far it's come. And again, we thank everybody from the bottom of our hearts for all their effort, people who've tried us out. [00:41:52] David: Come back and see what you built and yeah. Come check us out at Vendoroo.  [00:41:57] Jason: Got it. Go check out Vendoroo, it's vendor. If you know how to spell that, V-E-N-D-O-R-O-O dot A-I, go check it out. All right? And if you're a property management entrepreneur, you want to add doors, you want to make your business scalable, you want to get out of the day to day, you want to increase the capacity so your company could easily handle another 200 plus doors without having to make any significant systems changes, reach out to us at DoorGrow. We will help you figure it out. So until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. 

It's not always easy to get information from clients. If you're in a situation where you have good relationships with your clients, but you're struggling to get the information you need from them, there are very specific things that you can do that will help you to accomplish that a lot faster and a lot more organically. It'll just feel better when you're doing it right, and they'll be a lot more likely to help you with it. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing getting information out of clients. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: Hey, welcome back to you too. I'm really excited to talk about this because let's be honest, like we're all very conscious of the fact that everyone wants our information, so it's a bit of a struggle sometimes. David: Yeah, it really is. And when we're looking at trying to extract information from clients, sometimes it's like trying to pull teeth. Or trying to get the information that we need to either advance the sale or to be able to get an order completed and that sort of thing. And it can definitely be challenging. Kevin: Yeah, no doubt. How much of it do you think is how people ask for the information? Instead of saying like, give me this. Is it better to kind of think about it in more of a storytelling narrative kind of way to pull things out? David: That's a great question. I think a lot of it depends on your personality and the way that you communicate with people. Many salespeople, many of the best salespeople, I think are natural storytellers. You ask them what time it is and it starts with a story. Right? So... Kevin: Well, it all started back when I was eight. David: Let's talk about time, shall we? Kevin: Yeah. David: Yeah, so I think it can take that form. I think there are also situations, a lot of times, where we know what we need to get from them, and sometimes if we're just going for it all the time, that can come across as a little too pushy in some ways. So I think there's a natural give and take that needs to happen, so that people can feel engaged with us. If they feel engaged in the conversation, if they feel that we're listening to them, paying attention to what they need, and that's woven in with getting the next piece of information that I need without coming across like an interrogator. Like I'm going to shine a light on you. It's like the third degree in the cop movies. Right? If it feels like that, they're gone. But when you're able to just engage them and let them know that you care about getting them a result, then they're a lot more likely to be free with the information. Kevin: Obviously at the front end of a sales cycle, it's more basic information and it keeps going, getting more detailed as things go on. Should people change their approach as they go on from first contacting someone to maybe having a warm or even hot lead? David: Definitely, and I think you raised exactly the right point there, which is that it does generally start out more general and then it gets more and more specific as you're getting down to it. Sometimes salespeople will lead with things like, what's your budget? Right? Which is kind of intrusive, right? Kevin: Yeah. That's the one, right? David: You don't need to ask me about my budget if I'm not buying anything from you, right? Kevin: Yeah, yeah. What's your budget? What's your timeline? Right? Isn't that what everybody always says first? David: Yeah. And that's not the kind of thing that generally needs to come first. Initially, what needs to happen is they need to feel some sort of connection. They need to have a clear idea of what you do, how you can help them, and all that sort of thing. So I think a lot of times, in the early stages of a relationship when we're first meeting a prospect, it is information gathering from us, but it's about trying to find out what they need, what they're looking for,

When we discuss a step-by-step approach to the sales process, we're taking a scientific approach, which most people don't do. They just keep going out there and getting in front of people, smiling and dialing, whatever it is they're doing. And when you take a more strategic approach, you just get far more consistent results. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing a step-by-step process to the sales approach. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: Great to see you, David. Excited to talk about this. David: Yeah, it's great to see you as well. This actually came up because I saw this question going through a Facebook group. I thought it's an interesting topic because everybody's got their own idea of what that is, what that should be, and very few people actually have what they would describe as a step-by-step approach to the sales process, which I believe is critical if you want to be able to create consistent results. Kevin: Why is it you think that people don't implement a step-by-step process? Is it just because they just like to shoot from the hip a little bit more or what is the reasoning? David: Well, there are a lot of salespeople who do just like to go with the flow and they go with the conversation and everything like that. And there are some people who can do that extremely well. Kevin: Sure. David: But my feeling is that even those who can do that extremely well are essentially harming themselves, by not having at least a framework that they go back to again and again and again, so that when prospects or clients inevitably get them derailed, they know exactly where to come back to so that they're not missing any steps. That's why I think having the sales process in place is pretty important. Kevin: Obviously, there's no universal sales approach for every industry because you know every industry is a little different, so how can a business lay out a good step-by-step sales approach that is suitable for what they do? David: Great question. So in our business, one of the things that we help our clients with is exactly this. And a lot of our clients are in the print and promotional products industries, but this also applies to any other B2B business. It actually applies to a B2 C business. I haven't really found an industry where it doesn't apply. And so when we initially laid this out in a program called Top Secrets of Customer Acquisition, we basically laid out six steps to customer acquisition. I'll put up a graph here to sort of demonstrate it as we're going through. But the first step that we've identified is the targeting. Who exactly is it that I'm going to go after? Because if I don't know who I'm targeting, I've got no one to sell to. I've got to have a really crystal clear idea of who the people are that I would like to go after. And so for me it always starts with that, who is it that I want to sell to? Kevin: And in this day and age, we have so much data, we have so much information that there shouldn't be any reason you can't figure out that pretty precise target. David: Exactly, and a lot of times people want to feel like they sell to everybody. But the problem is that, as the saying goes, if you feel like you're selling to everybody, you're probably not selling to anyone. Because people don't always get it. They don't resonate with something unless they feel like the messaging is actually directed toward them. So, it's a really good idea to. target small, Aim small, miss small, as they said in the movie the Patriot, right? Aim small, miss small. You want to be able to do that with your targeting because when you do that, you can be more consistent in what you're saying to the people that you're approaching. It'll make a lot more sense to them, and you'll be able to get a lot more traction with what you're doing. Kevin: All right, so after targeting the right people, what's next?

What are the things you can control in your business? What are the things that we can look at? Identifying the very specific companies, the very specific industries that we need to be able to interact with, to be able to get our customers as close to what they need as possible. We might not be able to get them exactly what they want at the price they want it. But most of them are going to understand that. Most clients are not going to blame you for the fact that the economy is doing certain things, or that there are things happening in the world. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, cohost Kevin Rosenquist and I will be discussing focusing on things you can control. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: Hey, it's great to be here, David. I always am a big preacher around the house of "control what you can control." You know, I can't do everything. So control what you can control. So I'm excited to talk about this. David: Yeah, it's a really good topic, both from a personal standpoint and from a business standpoint. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day of what's going on outside our own environments. Especially with the news. Everybody's talking about different things that are happening regarding the economy, the stock market, all kinds of things that are happening. When we focus too much on the things that are outside of our control, we basically abdicate the things we can work on that move the needle for us. Kevin: Do you feel like people are even more focused on stuff they can't control? Like what's happening in the world and in the news now because of how much news is thrown at us in so many different ways with social media and whatnot? David: I think so. Yeah. I think it's always been like this. But yes, it does seem to be more of an epidemic lately, than maybe it has been in the past. I remember being exposed to this concept, I think it was in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey was talking about your sphere of influence. Kevin: Mm-hmm. David: Where you basically draw a circle and you say, okay, inside this circle is what I can control. And everything outside. It is what I can't control, which is basically the world and everything else. Right. Kevin: Which is, which is a lot of stuff. David: It is a lot of stuff. If this is the circle, then everything outside the circle off into infinity is the stuff you can't control. Exactly. In a situation like that, the more you focus inside your sphere of influence, the bigger it gets. So when you're focusing on the things that you have control of, you end up having control of more things. When you focus your attention outside the sphere of influence, the smaller it gets. That's because you're not working on the things you can actually control. And so for those of us in business... When we are able to really pay attention to that, you can grow your sphere of influence. You can control more of your own environment to accomplish the things you're looking to accomplish. Kevin: Absolutely. So let 's get a little specific here. Let's talk about sales for a second. 'cause one of the things I think about with sales is that sales teams can get really tied up with market conditions and what competitors are doing and all that. How can sales teams kind of focus on what they can directly influence. David: That is such a brilliant example because it's so true. In sales meetings very often you'll have conversations. "Well, this person's doing this, or this person's doing that. Or these people are cutting their price." It's all valid. Those are all things that may actually be happening in the marketplace that we have to respond to. But the first thing to do in that situation is to say, how can we flip the script on this? How can we turn this into something that we can do that is going to be better, different, and received by the market in a way that makes what they're doing less important...

We'd love to help you to get from here to there in terms of eliminating waste in your business. When you're focused on getting those things done and when you've got processes and procedures in place to allow you to accomplish it more quickly, then everything gets a whole lot better. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing eliminating waste in your business. Welcome, Kevin. Kevin: Great to see you. David. Excited to be here. David: I'm excited to have you here. Kevin: Yeah, so we're talking waste, obviously waste in business. There's different kinds of waste. A lot of people will immediately think of money, but that's not really what we're talking about, is it? David: Well, some of what we're talking about, I guess. Yeah. There's been a lot of talk about finding and eliminating waste in the news. So I thought, how does that really apply when you're operating a business? Kevin: Mm-hmm. David: Anyone in business, particularly small to medium sized businesses, must be aware of the fact that there is always likely to waste in the business. And as you pointed out, I mean, very often it starts with money. We're afraid that we might be wasting money, and in many cases we are. Kevin: Sure. David: But for most businesses who are reasonably run well, that's usually not the biggest thing. Kevin: What would you say is the biggest thing, or can you give me like your top three? David: Okay, sure. Yeah. I think for most of us it probably starts with time. Kevin: Yeah. David: Because the time that we waste is something that we can never get back. I think I heard Brian Tracy say this years ago. If you lose money, you can always make more, but if you run out of time, that's it. All the money in the world won't help you. That's pretty much how it went. Kevin: Yeah. I mean, there's no going back. So far they haven't figured out a way. David: No. We have not figured out a way to do that. So when we look at our days, weeks or even hours, we look at things like meetings. Are our meetings productive? Are our processes organized or disorganized? What are the distractions like during the course of a day? Because when we're focusing on one thing and then we're distracted and we have to switch back and forth, it requires flipping the switches in our brains and getting ourselves adjusted to the new thing that we're thinking about. All of those things consume time, which is, in many cases, even worse than money when we start wasting it. Kevin: You brought up a good one, meetings. And I think that's something, especially in this day and age of Zoom calls and all that stuff. I have a lot of friends who are in the corporate world or in the business world, and they talk about the needless meetings, the constant need for them, for people to feel like you got to get the crew together. Why are small businesses and medium sized businesses so focused on that and how can they like pull back? David: Yeah, it's a great question. I think there are some people who just feel like it's necessary. I think there are some business owners, some managers who feel like their presence in everyone's day-to-day life is critical Kevin: Right. David: And that's true more of some people than others. Some employees are happy to be able to just do their own thing and get everything done. Others do need more interaction. So it is an individual kind of thing. I think most business owners have to take a look at that and say, how much of me do they need? How much of their sales managers do they need? But being aware of the fact that each time we force everyone to get together, the clock is running. The clock's running on everyone. And when you have a bunch of people on one meeting, that means that all those people are tied up for that period of time. And if it's not productive for everyone on that meeting or in that meeting,

If we look at the idea of reactivating your client base in as many ways as possible, it means interacting with the people who have spent the money with us and doing that at a personal level, building the relationship, that's about the best thing we can do. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing reactivating your client base. Welcome Jay. Jay: It's good to be here. You know, it's funny. I hear this everywhere I go now. If I watch Shark Tank or anything else, I hear this term CAC. You know, what is your CAC? And it's your customer acquisition cost. And I have to believe that your CAC, for a customer you've already worked with, has got to be lower than trying to bring in a brand new customer. Am I right? David: Oh, absolutely. And I think instinctively as business people, we probably already know this. We've probably heard it a hundred times, but the purpose of this discussion is not to have you hear it again. The purpose of this discussion is to ask, “are you doing this?” And if so, how well are you doing this? How much better could you be doing this? Because as you pointed out, once you've invested that money to acquire a customer, now you want to be able to leverage that relationship as much as possible to provide them with additional help, additional solutions so that you can generate the revenue. They can get the results they're looking for, and you're not spending more money to attract people. You're able to just expand the relationships that you have with the people who you've already acquired that first time. Jay: Yeah. And I think it's disappointing if you spent that money for customer acquisition and then you don't have a system to retain them or keep them online. And so now it's almost like you're spending the same money twice. If you're trying to get them back again. David: Right. Yes. And so when we think about reactivation, there are a couple of aspects to it. One is just people who haven't bought from you in a little while, to touch base with them again, to reengage those people and to see what they want, what they need. Essentially, requalifying them to find out where they are in that process. Are they ready to buy more things? Do they have a date in mind when they want to buy? Are they ready to go now? Or are they just not ready to do anything? Are they sort of disqualified for the moment? Are they unresponsive to you? Because they'll generally fall into one of those five categories. They're either ready to buy. They have dates in mind when they want to buy. They're open to the idea, but not sure when. Or they're disqualified, or they're not responsive. When you are able to go back and sort of requalify your existing clients, you can reactivate the ones who are ready to go now. You can schedule the ones who know when they want to go next. And the ones who are generally receptive, you can just stay in touch. Jay: Yeah. Or what about the ones who were disappointed, but they didn't take the time. Right? So many customers will never tell you that they had a bad experience. They just move on and… David: Yeah. Jay: you had no idea. So you're not improving your customer service and your chance of reviving that customer is very low. David: Yeah. And that's an excellent point, too. Because as you indicated, if you don't know that, but you're reaching out to them to see how you can help next, and you find out about that problem, then at least you have the possibility of restoring the relationship, if not doing anything about the previous order. Jay: Yeah. So what are we talking about here? Like good drip campaigns? Is that kind of where you would start? So you're in constant contact? What do you think is the best way to go about this? David: Well, I do think it starts with engaging your people. You can engage your people in a lot of different ways. It can be done via email with a drip campaign.

Disrupting sales relationships is tricky. When you go into a sales presentation, if you recognize that it's likely they're going to have someone, and if you've got an arsenal of responses that you can come back with to demonstrate to them why you are obviously the better choice, then they're going to be a lot more likely to at least give you a shot at that business, than if you don't have those things in place. David: Hi, and welcome back in today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of disrupting sales relationships. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. It's a pleasure as always. I don't want to do it.  Don't want to disrupt sales processes. I refuse. Don't want to do it. David: Okay. I refuse to participate. Yeah, it's a tough one. The word disrupt is a tough word. But the reality of the situation is that when we're approaching a new prospect, a new client, and that person already has a business relationship, perhaps with a competitor of ours -- the only way that we're even going to get a shot at that business is if we can, in some way, disrupt the existing sales relationship. Now, I'm not talking about trying to drive a wedge between people. I'm not talking about anything nefarious. I'm just talking about the idea that to disrupt an established sales relationship, particularly one that is going reasonably well, requires you to be significantly better and different than the option that they're already looking at. Jay: Yeah, I agree. and I think that this starts way ahead of trying to disrupt any particular process that's going on right now. We've talked about, in the past, do you know your competitors at all? Do you know their sales process? I mean, how would you disrupt anything if you didn't know the process of what was going on? David: Yeah, exactly. And if you think in terms of business relationships versus personal relationships, when you're in high school and you first start dating, and the person that you like is already attracted to somebody else, like, oh, okay, well, how am I going to position myself as a better alternative, a better option, right? So it requires strategy. It requires persistence. It requires some sort of advantage, right? Some sort of, what we would call in business, a competitive advantage. And we need to think through those things, because it's the same in a business relationship. If they've got a great business relationship, it's going to be a lot harder. In those situations, we have to determine whether or not it even makes sense for us to try to provide a better solution. But here's the thing, if we truly believe that our solution is better than whatever they're currently receiving Then we kind of owe it to them to let them know that, don't we? Jay: Oh, yeah, I absolutely agree with that and we talked I think in the last podcast that we're a company that loves it when you talk to our competitors. We love it when you're in a sales process with somebody else, cause we know how unique we are in our presentation, in our initial consultations. We know. And so the key for us to disrupting an existing sales process with somebody else is just, how do we get them to call us? How do we introduce ourselves to them mid process? Because we know if they can find us or we can find them, our chances are pretty good. David: Exactly. And so in your situation where you're using online resources like pay per click and things like that, it's a matter of getting some sort of messaging in front of them that has them questioning at that point, whether or not there is a better alternative out there for them. And so the only people who are going to schedule a call with you are the ones who have determined that they are at least open to exploring that sort of relationship. I think it's interesting that a lot of times in business loyalty is often based on inertia, right? It's just easier to stick with what I have rather than to try to fin...

In order to turn the tables on rejection in sales, there are very specific steps you can take, and we work with our clients to help them do that every day of the week. David: Hi and welcome back in today's episode co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of turning the tables on rejection in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey Dave, it's always good to talk with you and I love these topics. They're so important I think more than anything, at least for me, rejection, fear of rejection stops me from doing a lot of things that I know I should be doing. David: Yeah. And you are really not alone. I think we've all felt that way at one point or other. I know there was a period of time, a lot of years ago, where I was so frustrated by this that I'm like, okay, what can we do? To not just try to overcome it, not just try to overcome the fear, but to actually turn the tables on rejection in sales. And essentially what I came up with is that in order to make that happen, we have to take the initiative in terms of identifying the types of clients that we want, the types of clients that we will accept. And by leading with that strength, going into each prospecting opportunity with the idea that I may accept this client, I may not. They may accept me, they may not. If the two of us agree that we want to work together, we will. And if one of us doesn't want to work together, we won't. And being okay with that, Once I embraced that idea and that concept, everything became a lot easier. Jay: Yeah. So just a paradigm shift. I will tell you, and this is no joke, before we dive into your concept a little bit more, I went to a doctor and I said, just give me a drug that makes me not fear rejection. He didn't have it, but hey, I was willing to try anything. David: Yeah, it's funny because you would think there'd be something for that. I guess maybe something that might relax you or make you not care as much about the rejection, but, short of medication, I think the idea of sort of reframing it in some ways and saying, all right, I'm going to do what I can on my end in terms of identifying the clients that I want to work with. And just by doing that, you can actually eliminate a lot of rejection when you decide in advance that there are some people you're going to talk to that are probably just not a good fit for you. Jay: Yeah, I love this and I feel like I've been doing this, but not purposefully like you're talking about. I get to the point now where when I talk to somebody and they're not interested, I almost feel glad. Because through the conversation, I learn they're not really a good fit for me. So we both kind of decide that on our own. We wish each other well. I add them to our drip campaign and it's done. I can hang up the phone call and do other work or move on to the next call. David: Yeah. It's so much better when you're able to take an approach like that and feel good about the fact that we really weren't born to do business with anyone who can fog a mirror, right? It's not an ideal scenario for either of us. I also realized at some point or other that rejection in some ways can actually be a tool to help you find better clients, whether you're the one who's rejecting them, basically saying, okay, this isn't a good fit. Or even in a situation where if you decide you would potentially like to work with them, if they decide they don't want to work with you, if you view it as essentially a way for you to be able to find better clients, that also makes it quite a bit easier to take. Jay: Yeah, I think I told you in the past, my dad was a salesman his whole life and I asked him how did you deal with rejection and he said I look at no's as a positive. I know what my close rate is. I know how many cold calls I have to make. And so every time I got a no, that means I was one step closer to the yes. So, changing your outlook, your mindset, it actually made him feel good.

"You have to create value in the sales process, create value in all the communication that you're putting out there. When you do that, you're already positioned better and differently. So when you think about the idea of what you say about what you do, you're doing it in a way that is actually appealing to people rather than repellent." David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic "what you say about what you do." What it is, Jay? Jay: Hey, David, how's it going? Once again, it's a pleasure to be here. I think, how we view ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, what is that inner monologue? Those types of things, they matter a lot, and they're probably things that we never think about. David: Yeah. And it's interesting you should bring that up. Because when we talk about what we say about what we do, yeah, there's what you just mentioned, what we're telling ourselves in our own heads. And then there's also the idea of what we're saying to prospects and clients about what we will potentially do for them. Essentially the communication, the messaging that we are putting out into the world, that will allow someone to decide whether or not they want to do business with us. Jay: Yeah. And this is so important because if you over promise, you're setting up for failure from the beginning, right? If you under promise, then they may find a competitor who promises something faster or better. So there is a strike zone there somewhere that you have to find. David: Exactly. And our messaging is very likely either going to attract the person we're talking to, or it's going to repel them. Probably the worst case scenario is if it does neither. It's just totally boring and they're not even paying attention to what you have to say. But when we recognize that, particularly in the early stages, what we tell them about what we do or what we're planning to do for them is going to determine the nature of the relationship. If we communicate something that sounds appealing to them, It's like they'll be interested. If we communicate something that does not sound appealing to them, then it's likely they are not going to be interested. So we don't want to go into these situations and wing it, particularly when we're going from prospect to prospect. We want to make sure that we're creating a consistent experience so that each person we talk to is getting the best of what we have to offer, up front, so they can make an intelligent decision. Jay: Yeah, we've really started using, I learned it from being in the media, process language. Like, if you are out doing a news report somewhere, you didn't just say, well, I'm standing on the street corner and this is what I'm seeing. You instead say, "well, we got here about 20 minutes ago when we rolled up, this is what we saw. This is what we're seeing, right? You bring them with you to wherever you're at. And so we kind of do this process language, not just about how we got here. And process questions. Like I want to know what drove you to call me. So that's the first thing I want to know, "what drove you to call me?" The second thing I want to know is, what is your expectation from this call? Like what are you hoping to gain from it? And then we can get to where we're at. And then we'll start talking a little bit. If you use our services, this will be the process moving forward. By the time we've shaped this whole thing, it's like we've been friends for years, you know what I mean? So, it's something that I love doing and it makes the potential client very comfortable. David: It makes a whole lot of sense and it's really about being present in that moment with the prospect or client, and having them be there with you at that point as well. Where one person is not talking, another person is totally tuned out. It really is about creating that level of communication where you are interacting the way that...

Reimagining the essentials is different for everyone. And I hear both sides of that from people. I hear people who are like, ” oh yeah, you know, I've been doing this forever. I know exactly what I'm doing and all that sort of thing.” And then I have people on the other side who are like, “Hey, I'm doing all the things that I've done before. I'm doing it more aggressively. I'm doing much more of it. I'm doing it with more people and it's not working.” And so for the people who are struggling with that… again, it's not really a matter of saying, “well, now instead of prospecting, we need to do something different.” No, you're still going to need to do prospecting. The question is, “can we now do it in a way that is going to reach the people that you need to reach, communicate the things that we need to communicate and allow us to advance our communications and close the sales?” David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing reimagining the essentials. Welcome, Jay. Good to have you here. Jay: It's so good to be here once again. I'm very excited about today's topic. What's the Point of Reimagining the Essentials? David: Yeah. I mean the whole idea of the essentials to some people it's like, "oh, essentials, that's boring." Right? But it seems to me that in current times we really need to look at the essentials and say, "okay, how can we tweak them or fine tune them or change them around so that they're going to be more effective in a 21st century post-COVID economy?" Jay: Yeah. When I think about essentials, I think about foundational type things. And once you take away the foundation, other things that you have in play don't work as well. So what type of essentials specifically are we talking about that we want to, that we might look at in one when everybody looks at it that way, but we're going to reimagine or rethink about them in a different way? David: Well, I guess when I think of the fundamentals or the essentials, I tend to think of the real basics, prospecting, presenting, following up when it comes to sales. And sometimes you start talking about those things and people's eyes glaze over like, "oh, I know all that stuff." And yeah, we all know we need to do it. Knowing and Doing are Two Different Things We all know we need to do prospecting. We need to make presentations. We need to follow up with prospects and clients. But knowing it, knowing what to do, is really not the issue at all. It's how are we doing it? How well are we doing it? How much better are we doing it than our competitors? How frequently are we doing it? How consistently are we doing it? There are all these different nuanced aspects of it that completely change the results. And when we look at things like prospecting now versus five years ago, 10 years ago, it's completely different. Same thing with presenting, same thing with following up. In the past, it was basically phone and in person. Well now phone and in person are a lot less popular than other methods of communication. So that's really what I'm talking about here. Jay: Yeah, I think again, it's so important, you know, it's so easy to just fall into that trap of I've, you know, we've done it this way forever and it's always worked. I think it's hard for people to break free from those things, because it's hard to know what type of impact you really can have. And I think part of that is even understanding what your baseline is before you can make changes to understand if you're making any progress, right? What Happens When Everything Changes? David: Yeah, absolutely. And I hear both sides of that from people. I hear people who are like, " oh yeah, you know, I've been doing this forever. I know exactly what I'm doing and all that sort of thing." And then I have people on the other side who are like, "Hey, I'm doing all the things that I've done before. I'm doing it more aggressively.

Don't be invisible to your target market. Do they even know you're alive? This goes back to the idea of money versus time. Because one of the advantages of social media is that if you have more time than you have money, you can spend more time posting and contacting people directly on social media. If you have more money than you have time, then you can run ads and you can get your ads in front of people without having to sit in front of the computer all day. So there are definitely different ways to accomplish this. If you want to become visible though, you have to have one or the other. You have to have time or money. You can't be out of both. Well, I have no money and I have no time to do this. Well, at that point, you're out of business. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of, Are You Invisible to Your Target Market? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. This one is tough for me because when you know you have a product that people want, you just know it. And you know if they could just learn about you, that you would be able to sell this product and you just know they don't see you. It's a frustration. It really is. David: Yeah, we've talked about this topic before. I've talked about this topic in live presentations and probably in previous podcasts, and one of the reasons that I keep coming back to it is that it really resonates with a lot of people in business, a lot of sales people, a lot of business owners, because it is so important. The idea of being visible or invisible to your target market is going to directly impact your ability to make things happen. And what I find kind of fun about this topic, to the extent that it can be fun, is that a lot of times in the movies or in television, invisibility is generally viewed as a big advantage. It's an asset, you know, Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if I'm Harry Potter and I've got my invisibility cloak, and I can do all sorts of things that are cool and fun. But in business invisibility is just deadly. Because, as you indicated, if the people who could benefit from what you're offering don't see you, don't hear you, don't know you're there, don't know you are alive, then you have absolutely zero possibility of selling to them. So in evaluating that question for yourself, are you invisible to your target market? It's probably a good idea to really think it through, and don't assume that you are more visible than you might actually be. Jay: Yeah, we know about assumptions, right? But I think this is also important because a lot of people will only focus on advertising that gets them leads or some type of returns. There's a whole nother level of advertising where it's just brand awareness. You're probably not going to generate clicks, but if you can be one of the options in their mind, you know, if you're a plumber and you're not necessarily getting a lead every time you send out a postcard or something, but when that toilet finally goes down, if you're one of the three that they think about, then you're so much closer. And so that's a part of advertising that I think a lot of people miss. David: Yeah, I completely agree. I think another problem that people run into sometimes with this is that they're trying to be everywhere at all times with everyone. And unless you have an unlimited budget, that just doesn't work. So you can get in front of a whole lot of people who have absolutely no capacity to buy from you. I've worked with businesses in the past that were running radio ads and they were business to business businesses. And they're running on music stations, and I'm like, okay, well, it's possible that there are some business owners or some people who could buy from you who are listening to that station, but the majority of people listening to that ad don't own businesses. They can't use what it is that you're selling.

When we're doing business-to-business or business-to-consumer outbound calls, the truth about call reluctance is that it can seem very real. Those fears can be founded. They might very well say no. Or they might be rude, obnoxious, belligerent. It's possible they say all kinds of things that you don't want to hear. So that's all true. That could happen. One of the things that helped me a lot though, is recognizing that we are not doing it for them. We are not doing this for the people who react like that. We are doing it for the people that we are ultimately going to help. And we can't get to the people that we are going to ultimately help without having to go through some of these people sometimes in between. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Is Call Reluctance Real? Jay: Listen, it's a pleasure to be here, David, and let me tell you, this is one of my biggest issues. I know it's real because I have a job where I spend a lot of time on the phone and man, there are days where I just do not want to do it. And what's funny is it's actually something that I enjoy, but it requires a certain level of energy. It requires that you are prepared and there is the occasional call that turns in a direction that I don't want to go. And so this is me to a T. I experience this on a regular weekly basis. David: Yeah, and the title is kind of provocative and I guess I sort of did that on purpose. Because anyone who has experienced this, that feeling of, "oh, I just don't feel like picking up the phone," is going to look at this and say, "well, yes, of course, it's real." And I think that when we just look at it as call reluctance, then it's easy to say, yes, it's real. What do we do about it? But the reason that I wanted to raise the topic is that I don't believe that call reluctance is actually the issue. if you boil it down, what does it mean? When I did this for myself and for other people who were struggling with it, it all really just boils down to fear, right? It's some type of fear. It's not that we're really afraid of picking up the phone. That's the easy part. It's not that we're afraid of dialing. The issue is what's going to happen next. It's about that unknown. And I think that's what people struggle with, without even realizing that that's what they're struggling with. Jay: Yeah. So I mean, for me, fear of rejection, fear of the no, and I mentioned fear of the negative experience. You know, the guy who's asking the questions that I can't answer or wants to spend two hours on the phone and I only have 20 minutes for him or those kinds of things. You're right, it's all born out of fear. David: And what's interesting, too, is that today, if you have to pick up the phone and call somebody and you don't have an appointment with that person, the likelihood that they're actually even going to answer, that you're going to get to a live human being is probably what? 30%? 20%, right? 10%. I mean, most of them are going to go to voicemail. And so voicemails are kind of easy as long as you know what you're going to say when you get a voicemail message. So a lot of it, I mean, at least 80% of it, it's like, well, there shouldn't be any fear here because they're probably not going to answer. Right? But as you indicated, it's the fear of rejection. In some cases, it's the fear of success. And some people are like, "I've never had fear of success. I love success." Well, we all love success, but sometimes getting to that success can be a little frightening. It can be a little bit of a struggle. And sometimes it's just, hesitation is born out of fears that just haven't even manifested yet. Jay: Yeah. They're not real. And, for me, it's asking the question, "what if?" And this is again, something that my parents taught me. I would tell them that I didn't want to do something or I was afraid of doing something and ...

When you're creating demand for your products and services to the point where they really want it, "listen, yes, I want to do this. I want to move forward with you." That is extremely powerful. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss creating demand for your solution. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Thank you so much. Once again, a great topic. If we could all do that, if we could all accomplish this simple goal, then none of us would have to worry. We'd have all the business that we would want, correct? David: It sure seems that way, doesn't it? I mean, when we are able to succeed in creating demand for our products and services, selling becomes so much easier. It's not quite unnecessary, but it gets darn close to it. When somebody just really wants what it is that you have to offer, everything gets easier. Jay: Yeah. I think may be a little bit counterintuitive, right? Where like, I need to find a demand that people have, and then I need to create solutions for that demand. And I think that's entirely appropriate, but it's not enough, right? It's maybe only half the battle. David: Right, because there's a certain amount of demand that can be found, but there is probably a lot more that can be mined with a little bit of effort. Now mining, that sort of implies that you've got to do some digging. You've got to do a little more work and just sort of saying, well, I found this, this, and this. These are the three things I'm going to talk about, and these are the three things I'm going to lead with. But when you recognize that there are things that we can say, there are things that we can do that will not just create demand for our products, particularly if we're selling commodity products. Because creating demand for our products isn't going to be helpful unless it's creating demand for the products that we're selling. Because if they can get it anywhere, I can create demand for something that they can then go buy from someone else. So part of this has to be the ability to create demand for not just the products and services you offer, but the way that you offer those things. All the little differences in the way that you do things, there needs to be demand that is created for that. And you're the only one who can do it because you're the only one who knows what those differences are. Jay: Yeah, I agree, and back to the idea that I'm going to create a business based upon a certain demand, can that demand actually support and sustain a business? You know, just because there's demand doesn't mean that you can survive off it, especially if you're only going to get a certain market share of that demand. So it better not be your only solution, right? And so I think with your website advertising, with everything that you do, you should be thinking, how do I convince people who may happen to my site or happen on my business? Wow, I didn't even think that I needed this person, but I really do. David: Yeah, and a lot of that goes to getting past the what, in terms of the product, and getting to the how. The way that you are better, the way that you are different, the reason that If they don't choose you over every other option available to them, they're shooting themselves in the foot. And that's what most people tend to miss in their messaging. They talk about products, they talk about speed of delivery, they talk about pricing, all the usual things. But so many of those things are common to everyone, that those can't be the things that you focus on. Because if you do, you're just creating more demand for the products and services, as opposed to creating demand for your method of providing those products and services. Jay: Yeah, you know, I think about our own business model. A lot of people call us and talk to us in the consultation. They're not even sure if they need help. So our first step is to convince them they absolutely do.

To hit the ground running in 2025, we can start by taking responsibility. Whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you're just going to feel better about yourself. You're going to feel better about your situation. Because you're allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you're a victim and there's nothing you can do about it. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to hit the ground running in the new year. Happy New Year, and welcome back Jay! Jay: Thank you, David. It's such a pleasure to be here. I think everybody has a desire, you know, at the beginning of the year, to say this year's going to be different, you know, we're going to make all these changes. It's going to be fantastic. But do they really have a way to translate that into action? I picture myself hitting the ground, you know, it's like the cartoon when they start to run, you know, their feet are moving, but they're not moving quite yet. I think a lot of us are in that place. How do we get from spinning to actually moving forward? David: Yeah, it's a great question. I know in the promotional products industry, we have trade shows that start at the beginning of the new year, the ASI Show in Orlando, the PPAI Expo in Las Vegas. And, There's one in Fort Worth as well, an ASI show in Fort Worth. So we got three trade shows in the industry that are really designed to help people get up and running and get started. But as we look at today, you know, this first week of the new year, even aside from that, whether or not you're attending a trade show, chances are you're probably pretty reasonably fired up. Okay, here we go. It's another new year. What are we going to do? This is exciting. And if we think about the types of prospects that we want to interact with this year, the types of clients that we would like to attract, the types of customers that we might want to let go this year, and really focus on building our businesses as proactively as possible. Building our client lists as proactively as possible can really help to improve our quality of life in a dramatic way. Jay: Yeah. I love that. in the restaurant business, there's something called a theoretical food cost and an actual food cost. Theoretical is, what would things be like if you ran perfectly? If there was no waste, everything was perfect. And then actual is where you're at. And the goal is to constantly be trying to close that gap. And so to me, I think about it in any business, what does your ideal look like? Your ideal client base, your ideal staff, your ideal sales? So if you can know what that is and then track a course to get to it, I think that's a great way to feel progress. Because that's what I tend to miss when I'm running a business is sometimes it's just a daily grind. And I don't feel like I made any progress today. And if you do that over and over again, it's hard to continue to press forward. David: It really is. And I think a lot of that goes to the fact that very often we're just tied up in the day. Whatever it is that's going on in the day, we're just facing whatever is happening to us moment by moment, day by day. And that can get very frustrating. I remember, I think it was Tony Robbins was talking in a seminar one time about the idea that in order to create our future, we need to envision it first.

Today, we'll discuss a simple framework you can use this week for New Year Success Planning. Very often we say we're going to prioritize time with our family and our loved ones. And we do this every year, January 1st, going to spend more time with the people we care about, the people we love. And then by March, it's back to life as usual, right? So if we decide what we're going to prioritize, who we're going to prioritize, and again, the flip side, what am I going to deprioritize? Who am I no longer going to prioritize in terms of allocating time? Those things as well allow you to live a far more proactive life. And it allows you to really start living the kind of life that you want to engage in. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to use this week for New Year Success Planning following a simple framework I call The Big A.P.E. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Well, I'm so glad to be here. David. I have to tell you, after Christmas my number one tendency is just to kind of want to detox, you know, because of all the shopping and everything else. But I know it's also, because there's not a lot going on business wise. It's probably a great time to kind of start thinking about the next year. David: Yeah, and I think detoxing is also a really good part of that. It's nice to be able to use this time, it's sort of the eye of the hurricane, a little break in the action before the new year starts and everything gets rolling again. It's just a great time to be able to do that, to be able to take a breath. Take a moment. Sort of think through how things went, what we liked, and what we didn't like about the past year and what we want to do better and differently in the coming year. And for me, I think it's just a great time for planning, for making notes, and really considering the things that we'd like to accomplish. Because, there's something magical about a new year where everybody wants to start fresh and turn the page. I mean, there's no reason you couldn't do that any day or every week. Reminds me of the expression, "today is the first day of the rest of your life." People hear that and they go, "yeah, that's right." And then we never do anything about it. But boy, January 1st rolls around and everybody wants to do things. We've got different resolutions, and I'm going to do this better. I'm going to do that better. Lots of people join gyms and they go for two weeks. Then that's the end of it, right? So there is this tendency to get really excited and really focused about a new year, and then perhaps let it fall away. So if we use this week to just really think through, okay, what do I really want? What am I trying to get out of my life, my business, you know, my relationships? What is it that I'm looking to accomplish? It's just a nice sort of quiet time to consider those sort of things. Jay: Yeah, and I think, you gave the example of the gyms. My wife goes to the gym all the time and she can't stand January and into February because she can't find an open machine to use, because everybody has set this new goal and it's going to last at most six weeks and then everybody returns. I think that that's kind of a microcosm of our goal setting for the new year and for resolution. So it has to be important too, as you're being mindful to be specific I think, but also to be reasonable with yourself, achievable, right? And trackable are all things that I think would probably be important in this process. David: Absolutely. There's another thing that I tend to think of, just in terms of planning and thinking things through. I refer to it as The Big Ape, A.P.E., the Big Ape. And it stands for activities, priorities, and expectations. So what are the activities that I want to engage in in the new year? What are the activities I no longer want to engage in in the new year? Right? And that's big.

I think the best holiday gift is to make the most of ourselves, when it comes to personal development, whether that means sales and marketing training, whether it means personal training, whether it means meditation, whatever it is for you, prayer, whatever it is that allows you to get to a place where you can really focus, really be present, and be your best for yourself, and those around you, is really important. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David, for the opportunity to be here. And I love this question. It's a little off track from some of the things that we normally talk about. But I think as we talk about running your own business and the amount of time that it takes, taking a little bit of time out to think about your family and how you can make their holidays special, I think it's a critical topic. David: Yeah. And of course, because of the nature of the things that we talk about, what I'm really thinking about when it comes to the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family, I tend to look at it as "a better you," right? If you can provide yourself and your family with a better you, a smarter you, a more motivated you, a more inspired you, that is going to really make a huge difference in your business life, in your personal life, and the life of the people that you care about. And of course, this time of year a lot of people are focused on actual gift giving, which of course is a traditional thing as well. But when we think about what really is going to help ourselves, our family, our loved ones most, it's going to be, you know, a healthier, happier, safer, more productive you, generally. Jay: Yeah. I love this line of thinking because you could give them all the presents in the world, but if you're stressed out all the time, if you're angry, because of what's going on at work and those types of things, you can't buy their love or their gratitude with gifts. Maybe they're a little bit happy in the morning, but by the end of the day they still remember what kind of circumstances you've left them in. David: Yeah, I remember when the kids were really young and we'd have gifts in the morning and by afternoon , it was like everybody was kind of cranky because you kind of get what you wanted out of the day and have too many sweets and all that sort of thing. But again, I think if we think really more in terms of what we're going to be doing and how we're going to be living and interacting with each other. A great example of this about a week or so ago on social media, Charity Gibson, who is involved in the promotional products industry in a lot of ways, and is just really inspiring for a lot of people. She posted something on Facebook about what happens when, at some point, you're doing everything for everyone else and you're not doing anything for yourself. You're not taking care of yourself. And I think it's such a great point, because a lot of times people can fall into this trap of thinking, well, I don't want to be selfish. But there is a big difference between selfishness and what I refer to as rational self-interest. In other words, rational self-interest is what keeps us from stepping off the curb and into traffic, right? The desire to look both ways before we cross the street. That's rational self-interest. Nobody would really look at that and say, oh, you're being selfish. But I think a lot of times people tend to, for themselves mostly, think, well, I should be doing more. I could be doing more. They want to help everybody else. And if you don't put gas in your own tank first, you're not going to have any energy left for anyone else. Jay: Yeah, such a good point. In fact, I saw a study just yesterday and it was talking about the high levels of anxiety in our youth,

If you're just copying what everyone else is doing, and 80 percent of the market is doing that, you're just going to be seen as part of that group. So stop following the followers! If you want to differentiate, it starts with that. How am I communicating my strengths to an audience that actually needs the strengths that I'm able to deliver? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Stop Following the Followers. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Once again, a great topic for our discussion. This one is hard. Sometimes we are sheep and we're not following a leader, right? We're following everyone else who's following that leader. Why are we doing that? David: Yeah, great question. Why are we doing that? I know in the early stages of my business, I did that all the time. When you don't know what to do, you're basically looking around to see what other people are doing, and very often they don't know what they're doing either. I particularly remember in the early stages of my business where I would look at somebody who I saw as a competitor in my space, and I would say, okay, well, what are they doing? And sometimes I would do that pretty indiscriminately, not even realizing that they may have been in worse shape than we were at that point, and I'm looking at what they're doing. Now, fortunately, I've always been able to learn as much from bad example as I have from good. And to me, that's like a superpower. If you're able to do that, it is extremely helpful. If you look at something that someone else is doing and you say, you know what, I am not doing that. And you see something that you like and say, well, I am going to do that. That's extremely helpful. But very often we don't know who's doing extremely well and who's not doing as well. And we see something we like, and we may imitate it. We may try to copy it. But, it may not be working for that person, and it very well might not work for us either. Jay: Yeah, or I think understanding what is making them successful and what you're seeing them do, that doesn't mean that's what makes them successful. I mean, there are many people out there who are successful in spite of all of the mistakes they're making. And that really frustrates me, David, when I see that, because here I am busting my butt to try and do it right, and I see other people that are... it's like they'd have to work hard to mess things up. They just fall in a bucket of gold everywhere they go. Drives me crazy. It's like when I was in the radio business, we had a consultant who was paid incredible money and we're like, why does this guy know what he's doing? Well, he happened to work for somebody who achieved major syndication. Well, just because he worked for that guy doesn't mean that he's the reason that guy was successful. And that doesn't mean we should listen to everything that he says. David: Absolutely. I've got similar radio horror stories. I think we've all had experiences like that. We've also probably had experiences where we see someone, and our impression is that that person is successful, is smart, is doing things right, and is doing things well. And that's not always the case. Because we don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. In our work with clients, one of the reasons we have the brand we have, TopSecrets.com, is that there are things that people don't know that can help them. Whether you want to consider them secrets or whether you just want to consider them things that somebody's never learned, doesn't really matter. But it's a fact. And I've had conversations with people who say, "oh, there's no such thing as secrets in business." And I'm like, "I completely disagree with that." I completely disagree because while there are a lot of things that are common in business, and a lot of things that everybody knows. For every one of those,

I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, "no is a complete sentence." have you ever heard that one? It's interesting because it's very hard to just say no in business when someone asks you something. That was an old Nancy Reagan thing, right? "Just say no." Say no to drugs. Just say no. But when somebody asks you to do something, you just say "no." I think there was an episode of Seinfeld like that... David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss the need to say no in business. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I think this is one of the hardest things to do in business because we feel like we can answer every question and that we should. And the reality is, that's not the case. David: Yeah, and it's such an easy trap to fall into because there are so many people that we feel like we need to say yes to, right? We've got business associates, we've got clients, we've got prospects, we've got family, we've got friends, everybody coming to us with things. And the agree type of person inside us wants to say yes to most things. We want to be agreeable. We want to do the best of our ability. But sometimes we can really get in over our heads when we don't at least start to say no to some of the things that are not going to allow us to get where we need to go. Jay: Yeah, and I agree. It's in your personal life. It's in your business life. If you have a sales cycle, it's which customers you choose to deal with. I mean, you can let your entire life be dominated. And I know people like this and I've looked at him and I said, how do you ever get something done? I mean, I love you because you want to help everybody and you're so serving to other people, but your family might be neglected. Your business might be neglected. There's got to be balance in the force, right? David: Yeah. And sometimes, during some stages of life, it's easier than other times to say no. But there are periods in there, man, where it's just like you feel like you have to do everything. You have to say yes to every opportunity. You have to at least explore it. You want to try to help everyone you can possibly help, which is a great thing, but we all have a limited, finite number of hours in a day. 24 hours is fixed. It's inflexible. We can't change that. And everything we say yes to means that we're saying no to something else, even if we're not physically saying no. We're not giving ourselves the ability to accomplish additional things, which creates sort of a huge opportunity cost if we're not careful. Jay: Yeah, and how many of us are careful? That word careful, right, David? What does that mean? Is it identifying the things that you have to get done? I think yes, the things you want to get done, the priorities? And I don't think we're saying no to everybody, right? It's understanding yourself and what's most important and saying, I'm actually going to say yes. to so many people, but after that, I'm booked. I can't. I've got to be with my family. I've got to be at work. I've got to be, with these other priorities. David: Yes, and I think for a lot of us, it's inside of work where we often have the most difficulty saying no. Because when you're dealing with family and friends, in a way, it's easier to say, well, I can't because I have to do this. I can't because I have to work, right? We're not saying no I'm not doing it. We're saying I can't. When in fact, we're either prioritizing incorrectly or prioritizing poorly or we're just making the decision that no, I'm going to do this instead And it's very difficult to do that to actually say no to someone as opposed to presenting the excuse instead of the actual no. Saying I can't as opposed to I am choosing to do this other thing. That's tough. Jay: Yeah, it is tough or find what I'll do is because I don't want to use the word no, I'll put it off till later. Like, I'll say, well,

Working harder won't cut it, and breaking the Effort to Outcome Myth starts with understanding that it's not going to be a 1 to 1 thing. You're not going to put in more effort and just immediately generate a corresponding amount of result. That's why it's necessary to look for points of leverage -- in the form of systems, technology, and delegation. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the Effort to Outcome Myth. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I've got this figured out. All I have to do is spend so much time on something and that guarantees me that I'm going to have the exact outcome that I want, right? David: Cool. This is going to be the shortest episode ever. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it kind of falls along the line of what people always say about "you get out out of life what you put into it." And I like the sound of the expression, but what I found personally in my life is that it's just not true. It's not accurate. It's never really a direct correlation. You never really get out of life exactly what you put in. You never get out of business exactly what you put in. You get out some sort of multiple, at least that's been my experience. Now, if your multiple is one to one, okay, then you're getting out what you're putting in. But I'm sure you've had the experience as well, where you put a whole lot of work in on something, and it didn't create the return that you wanted. You've had other things that maybe you didn't have to put a lot of work in on, but they happened to work out well and created great results. So I think sometimes when we make that connection in our mind saying, I have to push harder. I have to work more. I have to do more things in order to get what I need out of it. We may be missing some elements there. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. As you know, I've studied a lot of these billionaire types. I think a lot of people do, and I was looking for some commonality. And I do see commonality in how they think about things, how they look at things, but I don't see commonality in scheduling and how hard they work. Some people like Bill Gates, his schedule, I mean, I get exhausted just reading it. But other people are like, no, I work smarter, not harder. And I work because I want time off. I want to enjoy my life. So I don't see a correlation between how much they work compared to what their results are. David: Yeah, definitely not a one to one correlation. Now, some of it also is common sense. If you think in terms of people engaging in busy work, as opposed to impactful actions, things that actually move the needle. There's an example of where you can start to create some leverage for yourself. If you look at your day to day actions. And you recognize that many of the things that we might be doing are not actually moving the needle for us, then it's easy to say, Okay, well, what can I eliminate? And what can I focus more attention on so that I can get the results that I'm looking for? Jay: Yeah, and I think it's really difficult. We talk about this a lot. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? Especially as a small business owner, the idea of working smarter sometimes is the hardest thing that you can do. Because you're putting out fires and those fires need to be dealt with. That's why they're called fires, right? So finding a way to do that but still move the needle forward can be a very difficult process. David: Yeah, and I think when we look at things in terms of applying a brute force solution to what could be a strategic or a planning problem, that's also where we kind of run into trouble. Thinking, okay, well, I have to do more. I have to push more. I have to push harder. And what that doesn't take into consideration is the law of diminishing returns, right? There are more hours that we're working, but that can often lead to burnout. It can lead to a lack of focus.

Dealing with qualified prospects only is the best. Try to get rid of some people as early on in the process as you possibly can. If you found out that you invested some time with them and you later discover, okay, this person is no longer qualified. Cut the cord, move on. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Qualified Prospects Only. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. Wow, this is the dream, right? This is the dream. If you could spend all your time only dealing with people who want your services, need your services, and then, wow, that's what we're searching for every day. David: That's it, man. We are living the dream. And I think for a lot of people, the reason they don't live the dream is because they don't make it a priority. They don't build it in to their processes. They don't say to themselves, when I am in touch with a prospect today, this needs to be one of the very first things that I do. Is to get them qualified in or out as quickly as possible so I can move forward and not waste another nanosecond of my life energy on an unqualified prospect. It's doable, if you prioritize it as one of the first things that you want to have happen in a conversation with any new prospect. Jay: Yeah, and I do want to point out there's qualifying your leads and making sure that new leads fit in, but then there's what we're talking about. Okay, you've got somebody new, you're talking to them. In that process, you don't want to spend more time with them than you have to if they're just not going to fit what you have to offer. Now, I can usually do this in about five minutes, with somebody on the phone, and it's because I've learned what to ask. So, normally I'm like, I really don't think we're going to be able to serve your needs. And then I get to move on to the next call. And I think you're sending a message to them and they may circle back to you eventually, because you were upfront with them. David: Yeah, and we want to be upfront with people about that. Because we don't want to waste their time any more than we want to waste our own time. One of the things that I've said to people so many times in so many conversations is, "Look, I respect your time as I respect my own, which is to say a lot." And it is so true. And the older I get, the more true it becomes. Although it's been true for decades now, right? I've always looked at it as, I think I heard this from Brian Tracy originally, in one of his recordings, he said if you run out of money, you can always make more, but if you run out of time, all the money in the world won't help you. And I thought that is brilliant, because it is so true. When we invest time with unqualified prospects, when we spend too much time chasing down people who don't have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend. It means we are not in front of people who have all of those things. And I did learn this lesson fairly early in my business, but I didn't immediately implement it. It took me probably another several years before I finally got all the processes and all the procedures in place to try to strain those out, before I ended up in conversations with them. And so often in my conversations with our clients, I'll be talking to them about their procedure for bringing new clients through the door, like clockwork, because in my mind, everybody has to have that. If you don't have a procedure, in your business, for bringing new customers in like clockwork, then you're going to be struggling. You're going to be missing out. And during some of those conversations, I've had people say, "well, yeah, I've been trying to get an appointment with this person for months." And sometimes I'll say, well, does this person even deserve an appointment? Have you qualified them? Have you asked a couple of qualifying questions to find out if they have any of the things, the need,

Each time we're handling objections in sales, we should get better at it. Every sales call you have, every objection you ever receive, if you're able to document the primary questions and objections and concerns that you get, and you can properly document your best responses to that -- the ones that have gotten you the best results -- now you build up an arsenal of material that allows you to stage those responses up front, make them part of the presentation, part of the reason to buy from you rather than your competitor. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss why salespeople struggle handling objections in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Another great discussion. I feel like we get into just kind of the same old responses, or we feel like at the first rejection, "Oh, that's a no. So I move on to the next person." David: Yeah, I give up when in fact, most objections indicate interest. And sometimes salespeople forget this. A lot of them know it and they forget it, but some don't even realize it. They think, okay, if they object, they don't like it. They don't want it. They reject me. They hate me. All these types of things. Most of which are not true. And maybe none of them are true. But when somebody objects or raises some sort of objection to what you say, it means, "okay, you have me interested enough to ask the question. Otherwise I would say, no, not interested at all. Thanks." So that's one important aspect of it, is that if you struggle handling objections in sales, part of it might just be your mindset. If you believe that an objection means non-interest, then you kind of shoot yourself in the foot to start out with. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think you have to convert your thinking a little bit and look at rejection or questions as an opportunity. This is kind of side thing, but you know, in the restaurant business where I started out, people were always afraid of customer complaints. And I always felt like these are an opportunity. They create an opportunity to build loyalty because none of us expect anybody to be perfect. Well, some people do, and some people you can't please, right? But they do expect you to resolve it. And so, I always felt like if I can really resolve this situation well, I build loyalty. Because they know that if they come here, they will be treated well. And I think rejections are the same depending on how you handle them. David: Yeah, no question. And what you talk about, rejections, especially if it's after they've received the service, right? If you come to a restaurant and you had a bad experience, that's an after the fact, then it's remedial. You have to fix that. In a sales situation, they haven't tried the food yet, right? So this is up front, this would be like, well, why should I even come into your restaurant in the first place? And that's where you've got to be able to have your messaging dialed in to the point where it makes such perfect sense for them to choose the right option, as far as you're concerned. To come into the restaurant or to take advantage of whatever it is that you offer, that they will give you a shot. So when people struggle handling objections in sales, in some cases, it's that they haven't documented the objections they've gotten in the past. And if you don't come up with answers, to the things that come up again, and again, and again, that is really a bad sign. I've seen this recently on TV. I try never to talk politics on this podcast, but sometimes people ask the same question over and over and they never come up with a good answer to it. Jay: Yeah. David: And that doesn't make sense. What you need to be able to do when you sell yourself, when you sell your business, when you sell an idea, is you need to be able to identify what are the most common questions I get? What are the most common complaints or objections that I get ab...

If you're in a situation where you know you need to get more leads -- you need to generate more and better leads -- there are very specific ways of doing it. One of the things that we do with our clients is we focus on, what are the different methods of lead generation that they're currently using? What are some of the methods they could be using, if they're not already using those. And then testing those out as quickly as possible to find out what actually works and what doesn't. Some people spend months or years trying to perfect something that isn't working. And simply by switching to another method, you can get incredibly better results in a much shorter period of time. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to get more leads. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it's so good to be here, David. What an amazing topic. I mean, it's got to be the question on everybody's mind, how to get more leads. David: Yeah. And I think a lot of people look at it and they think, well, they know leads are the lifeblood of our businesses. Now, if we're not constantly getting new leads in the door, then your pipeline dries up, everything gets bad. It's not an ideal scenario. Obviously, it's a very important consideration. There are lots of ways to get more leads and there's no shortage online of people who will try to sell you different methods of doing that. And, this is why I value your opinion on this as well, because I know that you do quite a bit of lead generation in your own business, and lots of people pushing lots of different things. I'd like to get a feel from you, if you don't mind, to start out. sort of the types of things that people have told you are going to help get you leads and which ones seem to work better and which ones didn't seem to work as well. Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. This is something that we rely on heavily. Our entire business model is getting people to sign up for our free consultations. And so, how do you do that? How do you make sure that they're the best leads? We started out relying heavily on Google Ads, pay per click. But even that, can be so tricky. I don't want to spend my time talking to a lot of people who really don't need my services. So, not just leads, but qualifying leads. We're going to talk about that in an upcoming podcast. But, I'll tell you, David, we don't want to pay for every lead. So our question has been, how do we get leads that we don't have to pay for, right? And then also, how do we make sure that we have the best close rate on leads? But, we get email marketing, we get people contacting us every day saying, we can do this for you and we can do that for you. And you want to try some of those, but at the same time, I'm like, oh, we have a system that works. And so I have a hard time breaking away from that and spending a lot of time on those other things because you really don't know what's going to work until you try it. David: Yeah. We've probably had a bit of this discussion in the past as well. The idea that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So there are people who like generating leads on Instagram. And so they'll put out information on here's how to get leads on Instagram, or here's how to get leads through Facebook groups, or here's how to get leads on LinkedIn, or through LinkedIn direct messaging. And so everybody's got their own little tiny slice that they're looking at to say, this is it. This is exactly the way to get leads. And in my experience, not only in our own businesses, but also working with other people's businesses, what I found is that it's very easy for people to get sold on the idea of like one particular, tiny niche solution that is going to be the solution to all of your lead problems. And I mean, I spend a lot of money on my own training, my own education, exploring, what's available, what works, what doesn't work.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.ktfpress.comListen to a recording of our monthly subscriber chat from this past Tuesday, where Jonathan, Sy, and our subscribers get into:-        How to practice hope and peacemaking in fearful times like this election season-        How peace is different than unity, and takes power dynamics into account-        How hope is shaped by God's presence with us, the depths of evil and suffering we see around us, and perspectives outside our context-        And we discuss and contextualize the news about increased BIPOC support for TrumpCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Editing and Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Intro and AnnouncementsSy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Sy Hoekstra, and this is a bonus episode where we are bringing you the subscriber conversation that we had just a couple of days ago. You might notice that I, both in the recording and right now sound a little bit sickly just because I have COVID. Don't worry, everything is fine. It's been pretty mild, but I sound stuffy.We are bringing you a great conversation today about hope and about peacemaking in difficult times and times like this election, frankly. Why hope is so hard to have, both because it's risky, but also because it can seem privileged and naive, and why we think it's not and we do it anyways. Some stories of where that kind of hope comes from. And we talk about peacemaking and how it's not the same as just unity and kumbaya, but how we sometimes strive for unity in the name of peace. And sometimes we strive for a little bit of strife, maybe, to tell some truth in the name of peace. Not maybe, we definitely do that a lot [laughs]. And then we get into a little bit about some kind of changing, somewhat changing demographics about who is voting Republican and why that is. And that actually makes sense when you understand it from the perspective of whiteness and colonization.Quick favor to ask, if you like this podcast, which I know you do because you're listening to the subscriber only feed, go give this show a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you're on Apple, give us a written review too. They are so encouraging, and the ratings and the reviews help other people find us and see that other people think that this show is good and worth their time.Also, in case you missed it, we are going to be doing a Substack live conversation on November 6th at 1pm, that's the day after the election. If you're listening to this, you're already on our mailing list, so that means you will be notified via email. You will need the Substack app. There will be a link in that email, but you can also download the app at any time, iOS or Android, and then you'll be able to watch our live video conversation. We've already done the tech check and everything [laughs] to make sure that it all works. It's a new feature on Substack, and we're excited to talk to you, kind of in that new format. So do join us, Wednesday, November 6th, at 1pm to hear our reactions to what happened on Election Day and whatever is going on after it. There's a lot of possibilities. Trump will have declared that he won no matter what happened, that's my guess, and we will be moving on from there. So please do come join us. That'll be, I don't want to say, a fun conversation, but it'll be an interesting conversation for sure, and you will find some grace in it and some people who share your values. So join us then, and alright, without any further ado here is our monthly subscriber conversation for October.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Let's pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil one. For thine is kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen.Sy Hoekstra: Amen.Jonathan Walton: And thanks again for all of you all for being here. Sy is gonna set up our time.What does it mean to have hope or be a peacemaker in stressful times like the election?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, thanks for coming. We just figured we wanted to, I mean, obviously we do this every month, but we wanted to talk some about kind of what it means to be a thoughtful peacemaker in a time like the next week [laughs] or the next couple of months to come, depending on what exactly happens next week. And first of all, you'll hear I'm a little stuffed. I apologize. I have the COVID virus.Mindy: Oh no.Sy Hoekstra: I've been okay, don't worry. It's been a mild cold for me. Welcome Allison. And so I will sound nasally, but [laughs] that's all. And so I guess we wanna talk a little bit about that, and then we wanted to get into, assuming people don't have questions. At any point anybody can interrupt with questions that they have, you put in the chat, or you can just join the conversation and ask questions. So we wanna talk about what it means to be a peacemaker in this time. And then also, a little bit about interesting things that have been happening around, like where voting demographics and stuff with the with the Trump campaign. So Jonathan, I think you had some thoughts to get us started on what you think it means to follow Jesus' instructions to be a peacemaker in a time that is as unpeaceful as this. So [laughs] do you wanna get us going?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think we may have talked about this a little bit on the podcast last week, just about how the invitation from culture, particularly the people texting me to give to campaigns [laughter] and emailing me. I got a text, it literally said, “We have texted you six times. You have not made a donation.” And I was like, “That is true, I have not made a donation [laughs]. I did not know you had texted me six times.” But Walz wanted me to know that. But the feeling is that I should be afraid, and then as Sy mentioned on the podcast, is that his sense is that he should be cynical. And so this invitation to cynicism and to fear, and just no. Jesus says no to that [laughs].So what does it look like to be hopeful and have our hope be set on the hope that does not disappoint in that way, and then that we can ask questions and be introspective, and do the radical interrogation that is necessary to follow Jesus in ways that are transformative and helpful in a world that is fractured and falling apart, and not be cynical. And so, I don't know if you all have thoughts about that or feelings about that, but how are you pushing towards hope when you're pressed to be afraid, and then how are you, or do you have questions about leaning into radical interrogation and asking good, hard, deep questions without slipping into cynicism? I have thoughts, but that was something I wanted to open up with, particularly in light of CNN, and a certain rally that happened in New York City two days ago. Does anybody not know what I'm talking about when I say the rally?Sy Hoekstra: You might as well just say because people listen to it later, so [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Okay, great. So there was a… shoot, what's his name? Shoot. Donald Trump [laughter] had a rally.Sy Hoekstra: What's his name. Old What's His Name?Jonathan Walton: Well, because I was writing another… so I did not write this blurb. This will not show up in the newsletter, but I was trying to write, and it turned into too many links about the Nazi rally from the 1930s at Madison Square Garden, and that comparison to the rally that happened yesterday, and like they're strikingly similar. Also the similarities between Elon Musk and Henry Ford and their anti-Semitism racism, but that's an essay, friends. That's not a blurb in our newsletter, and takes more time and energy than I have right now. But all that to say, Donald Trump was at Madison Square Garden, and he did a rally there were however many thousands of people there. And it was littered with racist, xenophobic nationalists just… it was a lot. It was a lot of them in one speech with lots of people.So I honestly can't tell you what other content was there, because there were so many groups that got kind of called out, which was similar to Trump's presidency. But I think the invitation from that is to be afraid and then to be cynical, because it's quite likely that he could win. And so that feels for me particularly pertinent to present to being hopeful and present to asking good, hard questions and loving the Lord with my mind in that way. So yeah, any thoughts, comments, puzzles that you'd like to share Allison sighed. I mean [laughs], Mindy sighed. And David looks very reflective [laughs]. So feel free to share about that, what you all are thinking and feeling. David, looks like you almost started. Did you have anything to share? No? Alright.Making Peace Involves Taking Power Dynamics into AccountSy Hoekstra: Okay. I could talk a little bit, Jonathan. The guy who spoke, the guy who most of the comments that the media is focusing on, was a comedian who opened for Trump who told a bunch of racist jokes. And I think when I think about what it means to be hopeful and peaceful in this moment, I do contrast it a little bit with what I think a lot of people who I think would probably be sort of politically in the middle. Oh, David says he can't unmute himself, Jonathan.David: Now I can.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, there you go.David: Sorry, go ahead.Sy Hoekstra: Okay, well, I'll keep talking, and then you can go, I guess, since I started [laughs]. But I've just been contrasting in a little bit with what I think some people in kind of the middle would view as peace, which is…Typically the default in our conversation is, without recognizing this or making this explicit, the default is people who vote for Trump are real Americans, with the concerns that we should care about and we need to understand and empathize with. And lots of other people, especially people who are marginalized, are more marginal. Not to say that no Trump voters are marginalized, but more marginalized than the demographics that vote for Trump are like DEI concerns, you know what I mean?Like some kind of special concern outside of the concerns of real Americans. And so I do think that, in part, what it means to be not cynical and not fearful and hopeful and peaceful is to reject that binary and to say, for me to be a peacemaker, I need to take into account power dynamics and say that the thing that has to happen is, yes, everybody needs to be understanding and kind and empathetic and everything toward each other, but because there are power dynamics, there actually are people who need to do that more than others [laughs]. And it is not that the elite liberal media on the coasts needs to understand the farmers in the middle [laughs]. That's not the power dynamic.The power dynamic is everybody who has positions of privilege, whether they're on the coast or in the middle or whatever else, whatever part they're part of needs to be making an attempt to understand people who have less of a voice and less of a say in the world than they do. So that's my initial thought. I don't know, David, if yours is related to that at all, but you're welcome to go ahead.God's Often Confusing Presence in Our Grief Is a Foundation for HopeDavid: No. Thanks, Sy. And I agree. I think it's there's a combination of, what do you do? What should I do? And I don't have a lot of clarity on that. And I think you're right. I mean, I think some of us have more responsibility than others to do and to stand up for the people who are going to be feeling marginalized no matter what happens in our church.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I was just gonna say, what are you doing as a pastor? It's an interesting question.David: Yeah, this coming Sunday we have All Saints Sunday, and the gospel reading is the end of the raising of Lazarus. And I was talking to someone this morning who said, “This really should be the reading for the Sunday after the election, because we can say it's been four days and it stinks”Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].David: Which I guess is the cynicism temptation. But just sort of in reflecting on that, I think that's one of the things that I've been trying to wrestle with, is being in the space of Jesus both knows what he's going to do at the end, it's gonna be good, when he tells us what to do we're gonna say, “Oh no, no, no, that's not a good idea.” But we haven't gotten to that point in the story yet. And we're at the point of the story where we're weeping, and God is weeping with us and present with us. And I think for me at least, I think we have to be grounded in that first. That God will show up. No matter what happens, God will show up. God will show up in a way that we don't expect, don't understand, and probably will resist at first, but we don't know what that is yet.And right now, emotions are raw, and they're gonna be raw, and just knowing that God is present in that, I think that has to be the starting point. Because if we don't start there we're gonna just do whatever comes to our mind first, and that's probably not gonna be the right thing, because we're reacting out of a place of fear.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.David: And there's a lot to be afraid of.Jonathan Walton: Right. [laughs] Mindy nodded, yes, there's a lot to be afraid of.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.David: But there really is a lot to be afraid of.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: What you're saying is…David: Regardless of who wins, to be honest.Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely.Insisting on Hope is Difficult and Emotionally ComplicatedSy Hoekstra: And what you're saying is not to delegitimize that reality.David: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And it's a hard thing to do to insist on hope [laughs]. It's not just a hard thing to do because you're risking, like, what if I hope and I'm wrong and I get hurt? But there's also just, there are people who are going to see hope and think it's the wrong thing to do, and it might even be an insulting thing to do, depending on where they are, and we're still called to it, and that is just genuinely complex.

When I say "get over being scared of selling," that doesn't mean that you have to engage in methods of contact that you're really, truly uncomfortable with, right? That means finding a path, finding a path that works for you, finding a path that works for your people. Finding a path that works for your prospects and clients, right? And there's always a path. There is always a path to get there. David: Hi and welcome back. Are you scared of selling? If so, get over it. Today, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing that very topic. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it's a great Halloween topic, right? Being scared. My kids are watching scary movies all of this month and I participate in a scary movie all day long when I have to pick up the phone and I have to talk to people who I don't know and convince them why my services are what they need. Please write me a check. That is a scary prospect when you think about it. David: Yeah, entrepreneurs basically are facing Halloween every day. In a lot of cases, a lot of ways, whether it's making phone calls or making payroll or making decisions, making rules, it's always about making something. And the whole idea of being scared of selling, I hear this from so many people that I thought we needed to address it. And when I say get over it, that sounds very insensitive, and perhaps it is, but it's also very necessary. Jay: Yeah, I mean, it's the reality. If you're in a business model where you have to sell, then you have to get over it. It's just that simple, and if you don't, then you're going to constantly be struggling. And it's not something that you're going to do from day one, but it is something that you have to be determined to do. David: Yes. And when I say this, I don't mean to put anybody down, right? There are a lot of really good people who have really good reasons for being scared of selling. Certainly in their minds, they've got really good reasons for it. And I'm not taking any of that away. It's a fact. The fact that there's a term called "call reluctance" indicates that there is a level of fear based here to the point where they had to create a term for it. So, what I find is helpful -- particularly if I'm interacting with salespeople who are running into this situation -- and a lot of times they won't even say they're scared of selling, but ultimately that's what comes out. One of the things that we have to look at first is why are they scared? Why are they scared of selling? Is it fear of success? Is it fear of failure? And a lot of times we hear blanket terms like that and they're like, "Oh no, it's not that." But sometimes it is. Sometimes it's variations of that. I'm afraid that if I call and they say no, it's going to hurt my self esteem. That's fear of failure. I'm afraid if I do too well, people are going to resent me and think ill of me, right? Some people think that way. So any of those preconceived notions that we have about what our sales success will do to us, for good or for bad, are going to impact our actions. And that's why I say we need to get over those things, right? We have to get past those things and once again, deal with reality. I've been on a sort of truth quest lately in terms of let's not look at what we think about. Let's not look at what we fear. Let's look at what's true. Let's look at what's real in the market right now. If there is somebody in the market right now who is afraid to interact with prospects or clients, it's going to impact their performance because it's going to impact what they actually do. If you're scared to pick up the phone, you won't pick up the phone. If you're scared to send an email, you won't send the email. Or if you do, it'll take a lot longer than it should. And then that's four other emails that you wouldn't have sent in the meantime. So we have to get over it. And a lot of it starts with the why. Jay: Yeah, the why is important.

Imagine enjoying the freedom to focus on visionary leadership while your business runs like a well-oiled machine. This Monday Morning Episode dives deep into the art of systemization in business operations, partnering with systems expert David Jenyns to reveal transformative strategies that liberate business owners and team members from monotonous daily tasks. Discover insights behind legendary organizations like McDonald's and Netflix, as David sheds light on the benefits of implementing documented processes. This episode not only highlights how these processes lead to career growth, job security, and streamlined workflows but also tackles the common hurdle of team resistance, providing actionable advice on engaging early adopters and ensuring positive introductions to new systems.David emphasizes the importance of clear communication and tailored processes that strike the ideal balance between systemization and empowerment. He discusses how business owners can remove non-compliance excuses, set clear expectations, and build a team of systems-driven individuals, paving the way for sustainable success. Tune in to learn how to transform your business into a systemized powerhouse, where creativity and structure coexist seamlessly, all thanks to tried-and-true methodologies.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Benefits of documented processes for career growth.Strategies for overcoming team resistance to new systems.How clear communication and setting expectations lead to smoother workflows.Techniques to remove excuses for non-compliance.The impact of surrounding yourself with systems-driven individuals.How renowned companies like McDonald's and Netflix utilize effective systemization.Tune in now to transform your business with expert strategies for systemization!‍‍You can reach out to David Jenyns here:Website: https://www.systemology.com/‍Mentions and Links: ‍Accounting Software:MYOB‍Brands:McDonald'sNetflix‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey Dave, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? David: When it comes to stepping out of the day to day operations as a business owner, you've got to capture your systems and your processes. And most importantly, you've got to get your team on board. And I feel like that's probably the biggest challenge for a lot of business owners.They try to systemize, they try it for a little bit, maybe one team member follows, maybe most of them don't, and then before they know it, everybody's forgotten about it, and it's just back to the way that things have always been. And it really, this one piece of advice I've got centers around how do you get your team on board?How do you get your team to follow process? And even. resistant team members. How do you get them to go, Oh, this is how we do things here. And key here is the way in which it's introduced to your team. A lot of business owners, when they go, Oh, we're going to start documenting our process. And we're going to have a particular way of doing things.The team member in their brain, they start to think, Should I be worried about my job? Is he trying to document what I'm doing so that he can replace me? Is he going to take my job offshore? I kind of like having this little black box where no one really knows what I'm doing because. It creates some level of job security for me.I don't want to capture my process and have that available and accessible for everybody else. So that's some of the things that go on in their head and that's what can make them resistant and then fall back to the ways that they may have done things in the past or not even want to share what it is that they're doing.So the bit of advice and the secret here is to really think about How it's going to benefit the team member. rather than just introducing it where the team thinks, Oh, the business owner is doing this to replace me, or maybe they want to go on a holiday. And, don't want to support that.Show them how, hang on, if you document your process or capture the way that you're doing things, this can help you move up in our organization because, by documenting process, we could delegate down to some newer team members. And that doesn't make you less valuable. It makes you more valuable because now you can work on higher value tasks.You can start to work your way up and work on these higher value activities. That's might appeal to some people. For other people, you might need to say, Hey, when you go on holiday and you tell me you want two weeks off and I say fine, but then I call you up every second day to go, Oh, where's that client's file up to?Oh, is that job up to? Do you remember where we saved that thing? And I'm on the phone calling you every second to try and find out what's going on. By documenting our process, it means that other people can step in and do some of those tasks, and the team can keep things moving while you're on leave, so when you come back, those things are done, and you can have a proper, restful holiday.So that might appeal to someone else, or, maybe it's, hey, there are going to be times when you're going to need time off for family. So, having process and the enable systems just means that people can step in and keep things moving. And that makes your job more secure and this business more secure.So again, a lot of it has to do with how you frame it and how you let them know this is going to benefit their situation. That'll dramatically increase the adoption of a systems culture. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then, David, can you share specific communication strategies you've used to address this type of resistance?How do you ensure the message is understood and embraced by team members? David: Well, The first thing to do and it's a little bit counterintuitive, is you actually don't think about who's going to resist it up front. Think about who's going to support this initiative. So when you first introduce the topic and you say, Hey, we're going to look to build a systems culture and want to capture some different processes.Hey, I've got, this book or this podcast that I want to share with you, just that talks a little bit about what we're doing and then see who resonates with it, who listens to it, who gets it and say, Hey I'm looking for some people who want to help me drive this forward. Who sticks their hand up.And then start off by leaning into them. So that's kind of step number one. You start to empower them, you get the first set of systems down and then you start to celebrate system wins. when a team member does something, you go, Hey, we just documented this new process. Jenny did an awesome job over here.Hey, Sarah, we normally have this frustration when someone goes on leave, but Sarah documented this process. And then we had John step in and do the task. Hey, Sarah, you're awesome. And you shine a spotlight on that. Maybe you give out a monthly most valued player award to the person who really embraces this idea.that's the best place to start because then you start to go, Hey, we're going to celebrate and showcase, and this is what we want more of. So that's the first step. And then you start to watch out for the. resistant team members. Now, the best thing that you can do for them is firstly lead by example, and then by shining a light on the people that are, doing it.And then you want to give those team members every opportunity to jump on board because new things you have to figure it out. And some people are going to embrace change more than others. And you try and support them. And then you need to really think about every team member and their situation.And the real key is a lot of times team members, their default excuses. Yeah, but I didn't know how, or I didn't know that was expected of me. So one of the first things that you need to do is. To remove that. So by capturing a system and a process, you're then saying, Hey, well, we have a way of doing things.You want to make sure that's never more than one click away from when they actually are doing the task. So if it's, setting up something in the dental practice, we'll have a QR code that they scan on their phone. Maybe it's on the printer or something, and it jumps to the. System or the process after scanning that QR code, or maybe it's setting up the dental practice in the morning and here's the 10 point checklist that needs to be done.It's got to be so obvious. So front and center. So you can remove that. And then the conversation can start to change. Okay, you did know we've got a process. It's listed out here. My expectation is that you follow the process. I don't care if you've got it open or not, if you're doing it right, but since you don't yet know the process, you've got to have it open, but once you get it right, then fine.You don't have to have it open every single time, but at the start, this is my expectation. And that's kind of just the start of how you address it. You've got to remove excuses. Michael: so then what consequences do you implement for team members who continually resist systems? Even though you've, done these systems, you've,Remove the excuses or try to, have you found incentives to be effective in encouraging this type of adherence? David: you can, like I said, have something like the MVP where you might reward the system wins and shine a spotlight. You can even link it towards KPIs either the generation or the following of process.can do a few things like that. I think the reality is. A lot of business owners don't realize up front how important it is to have someone who follows process. And it's not something that they've, incorporated into their recruitment process. Once you get this moving forward, it actually gets a lot easier.Because you look for people who will adopt this way of doing things right from the get go. The challenge is always the existing staff who are used to doing things a certain way, who there may actually be some people in there who aren't processed people. you'll need to navigate through that.Am I saying that you might need to jump in and do a whole bunch of, layoffs? that's definitely the last resort. And I know in certain different industries, finding labors can be challenging, but the reality is a business is infinitely easier when you surround yourself as a business owner with systems driven people.And that goes double if the business owner, or maybe the. dental practitioner owner isn't a systems person. If you don't see yourself as a systems person, then you better make sure that you're surrounded by systems driven people. Because again, business just works better that way.So do have to navigate through it. I've not seen, incentives. work amazingly well, generally you want people to do it, who do this naturally and then naturally organized people and you giving everybody the chance to jump on board and then addressing the ones that don't, oftentimes you're the employer, like the person listening to this, you're paying, they're there to do a job and it's okay for you to have, A set of expectations around the way that you want things done.That's your right as a business owner. But just persist with it. Cause it's, challenging at the start, but you get over this hump and then business just gets so much easier. Michael: Yeah, I like that. Okay. So then you mentioned KPIs to like, do you track and measure whether team members are following the systems specifically as a leader?Like what role do you personally play in and ensuring systems are followed? David: there's a couple of different ways that you can do it depending on the task, depending on who it is. If you've got some sort of project management software in how tasks are signed out, you can look at how they complete the tasks many times they're checking certain things off.You can have a look at error rate depending on if certain tasks causing you some challenges because people aren't following process and it's causing errors. So you can track that error rate and you're looking for reduction in that by following the process. it comes down to this whole idea that, to improve something, you have to track it.So you just have to think about what is it that you want to improve? If you want to improve the fact that they're. Opening the process or successfully completing it. Maybe there's some final step that they have to complete, which confirms that they have reviewed and followed the checklist.And then you're monitoring how often they're doing that, or are they doing that? depend on the situation and the task. Michael: Gotcha, gotcha. I like that. that in mind, like at the end of the day, make sure you're,you let me know, or you send me an email or you do this checklist.And then office manager at the end of the week, we'll look at how many people did this. How do you balance being hands on with empowering your team to take ownership of these systems versus it's seeming like, man, he's just micromanaging everything. David: Yes. Yeah. The main thing there is depending on what the work is, you've got to Systemize all of the things that need to happen in business.There are certain things that kind of just need to happen a certain way. patients will need to be checked in a certain way or they have to fill out certain forms, maybe The practice or the studio needs to be set up a particular way, try and systemize all of the mundane pieces or parts of business that just need to be done a certain way.And sometimes leaving out the creative part or doing those types of systems a little bit more high level, You, you've got to think about who's doing the task and documenting to the level that's required for that person. If they're a skilled operator, you don't need to tell them well, here's exactly how you log into MYOB.Here's the exact buttons that you need to check. it can feel, like you're micromanaging at that level. It's art and science, to try and find the right balance for this. look at something like McDonald's, And McDonald's has systemized every possible aspect down to the minute detail, but they're also running a hamburger business that is taking very unskilled operators, flipping hamburgers.So they've got to go down to that level and it can really feel. Like micromanagement, whereas a lot of people are going to be running, a successful business with high quality team members, and you've mightnot need to get down to that level. A quote that Reed Hastings said from Netflix and he said, when we started systemizing, we wanted to systemize every possible aspect of the business. We wanted to make sure our business was dummy proof. The only thing was once we got it to that level, only dummies wanted to work there. Because they'd gone too far on the systemization spectrum.So again, lot of this has be with, thinking about the situation, the individuals and what they need to do a great job. If it feels like micromanagement chunk up a level, have a higher quality or higher level checklist that has, key milestone levels instead of these super micro details.Michael: Nice. Awesome, David. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group or where can they reach out to you directly? David: Yeah, best to just go to systemology. com and there's some links through to, all of the ways to contact us or follow us on social media.Michael: Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. And David, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. David: Pleasure. Thank you.‍

Change is coming... because change is always coming. And we need to try to stay ahead of it. And we're not always going to be able to do that. But we do have the ability to anticipate things that could potentially happen in the not too distant future and say, okay, if this happens, then what am I going to do? How am I going to adapt to that? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Change is Coming. Don't Make it Harder. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It's good to be here, David. Change is hard. Change is not easy in life, in business. We like comfort zones. We like to get in a groove. And I am the first to admit it. If I could find a way to not have to change in business and just cruise, I'm not opposed to just cruising. David: Yeah, well, status quo can certainly be comfortable until it's not, right? It's very comfortable until it's not. And when I say change is coming, I mean, so much of what we've been hearing lately is about all the potential changes that could be coming. And regardless, and I'm not going to get into politics ever at all on this podcast, but regardless of the outcome, there is going to be change coming, because it always does. It's the nature of life. It's the nature of business. Change is always coming. And so, When we try to fight it, when we try to avoid it, we make things harder on ourselves, right? The change is going to come. Now, we're going to have to change our approach very likely. We're going to have to do things differently. We're going to have to plan differently. There are all types of things that we are actually going to have to do. But if we focus on that, rather than the indignity of the fact that change is coming, we make it a lot easier on ourselves. Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. I think about a change that we all had to go through, and that's the pandemic. And how that was all a change that we wondered if we were going to survive. It was going to destroy our businesses, our workplaces, our way of life, everything. You think about, we're home office now. And we're going to stay that way. And if you had asked me before the pandemic, I would have said, no, that wouldn't work. I look at my friends in the restaurant industry who pivoted to drive through only, and when the time came back to open up their dining rooms, they didn't want to do it. They really liked the drive thru model or the delivery model so sometimes being forced to change and being ready to change. You're going to discover, things that you would have ruled out otherwise, and you're going to be better for it, ideally. David: No question. That exact example, there's a restaurant that we go to in our area a lot, and when the pandemic came and you were no longer able to go into the restaurants, they started a pickup service. And it had never occurred to us to pick up from that restaurant before. We always went in, sat down, enjoyed the meal, and that was it. But after a while, you're like, well, I could really use some of that food. We don't feel like cooking. Okay, I'm going to give it a try. I'll go pick it up. And all of a sudden, that door was open for us as well. And so after you were able to go back into the restaurant, there were still a lot of times, and there are times now where we'll still pick things up and bring it home because now we know that it's possible. So what it gave them is a new revenue stream, right? At the time they had a new revenue stream, but they didn't have their primary revenue stream. So they were hurting. But then after things opened up again, they got the regular business back and now they have this takeout service that people are using more and more, it actually allows things to grow. So it's a perfect example why our topic is so appropriate. Change is coming. Change is inevitable. It's happening all the time. And the more we resist reality, the more problems we have. Jay: Yeah,

When I say your competition isn't that good, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to perform better. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I say, your competition isn't that good. Right, Jay? Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Do you even know who your competition is? Do you know what they offer? Do you know what people think of them compared to you? Maybe you don't even know if your competition is that good. David: Exactly. And I hear, so many times, when I'm talking to salespeople, the idea that, there's a lot of competition. Competition is very difficult. There's a lot of online competition. There's a lot of local competition. There's a lot of price-cutting competition. There are all these different variations on competition. And that's all true. But a lot of them really, honestly, just aren't that good. And if you recognize right up front that most businesses are average, right? There's an average in every business, in every industry, there's an average. And some people are better than average. Some people are worse than average. There are a lot of average. So if you're competing with the average or the less than average, then you should be able to do pretty well. If you're a conscientious individual, if you're reasonably good at what you do, if you study and practice your profession and you get reasonably good at it, you'll be able to outperform a lot of them because to the extent that there are really exceptional competitors in your market, there are a lot less of those than there are the ones on the other side. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I've always believed this, you know, you can get caught up in the muck. When I was in radio, I worked for a radio station that had a built in listenership because it was so ingrained in the community. And what that did is it made it so they didn't have to work hard to get sales or to get numbers. Now you would think, oh man, that's an amazing place to be. But what happened is, they started to get complacent, right? Everything was so easy, and then all of a sudden ratings started to shift and suddenly they realized, we don't know how to sell. Because we're so used to sitting at a desk and the phone is ringing. And we're just taking orders. So you're not a salesperson, you're taking orders, right? And their competitors started to eat them alive because their competitors had to sell all the time, and they were very good at it. So sometimes you're successful just in spite of yourself. And that may be what your competitors are in, what state they're in. David: It really could be as simple as that and as difficult as that, in either situation. But, you know, the idea that the competition is excellent, or the competition is terrible, or the competition is average. In a sense, none of it really matters. Because this is life. This is the world that we're in. These are the cards we've been dealt, right? So our competition is there. We're there. The question is, how are we going to make sure that we are outperforming our competition in all the key areas of customer contact? I mean, if you were to boil it down and say, okay, let's say my competition is very good. Let's say you completely disagree with the premise of this podcast, that your competition isn't that good, or that it's average or whatever you say. "No, I've got a lot of competition." Okay, then that's your question. How do you outperform your competition in all key areas of customer contact? Some people may say, "well, I don't know. What are the key areas of customer contact?" And if you're asking yourself that kind of question, that indicates that there's work to be done in your organization. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And do you even know how the competition functions to be able to compare yourself? I mean, that's got to be at least half the battle, right? David: Yeah, that's part of the battle.

If you're at a point right now where you know you need to be selling more, but for whatever reason you're not -- and you could feel like it's the economy, you could feel like it's the competition, it doesn't really matter what it is -- If it's either of those things or if it's something else, there are ways around it. There are specific things you can do that will help you to get through to the people that you need to reach, and drive them to either a yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down decision. Sometimes the answer is going to be no. But sometimes it's going to be yes. If you're not even giving them the option to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, there's no way you win. David: Hi, and welcome back. Today, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Don't Wait for the Economy to Improve. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, Dave. As always, it's a real pleasure. You know, I've been thinking a lot about the economy, and it's really kind of unique because there are parts of this economy that are really struggling and there are parts that are really booming. So depending upon where you're at in that spectrum, you could be getting hit really hard or you could just be celebrating, right? In our case, we're definitely feeling the effects of inflation. I can feel it in our client's willingness to make purchases. Cause things are a little bit tighter than they normally are. David: Yeah, it's interesting. Like you said, some people are really struggling right now. Some people are having their best months ever. It really kind of depends. But when we talk about the idea of not waiting for the economy to improve, I think there are a lot of good reasons for that. The first reason I would say is that your smart competition will not, they're not going to wait, they're going to be out there, they're going to be in front of people. And if you're not in front of people, then that just means you have absolutely no opportunity to get the business. So I've heard a number of people talking about the problems with the economy. And I've heard a number of people talking about the fact that they're waiting for things to improve. And I saw that comment online the other day, and I thought, we need to talk about this because essentially we have to be selling all the time, right? I mean, most businesses can't afford to wait around until things get better. Reminds me of that old Zig Ziglar line where you don't wait until all the lights turn green before you head into town, right? It just doesn't work. Jay: Right. Right, right. It's a great point. And I also think that part of any of your business strategy, you have to be prepared for the ups and downs. Good businesses know how to pivot, they know when to pivot. So if you're a new business, this is going to be hard for you, but it's one of the reasons why you want to always be tracking, right? Always be watching because there's seasonality, there's economies of the country, of your local economies, all kinds of things that can impact your business model. David: Yeah. And the truth of the matter is that we only ever have right now. We can't sell in the past. We might be able to sell in the future, right? Nobody knows their future. But yeah, we can plan to sell in the future, but we can't sell in the future right now. All we can do is sell now. We can make plans, but sometimes they happen, sometimes they don't. Right now is the only thing we've got. So it's always the best time to sell. Right now is always the very best time that we have to sell, because we really have no alternative in the moment. Well, I guess the alternative is wait. But when you're waiting, you're not selling, and other people are. Jay: Yeah, and I'll tell you, I'm not in a business model where I can just stop selling. I mean, that's not an option, right? So, we're in the process of talking about our pricing structure, talking about the different products we offer.

David: When we talk about learning from failure, it doesn't just have to be our failures. We can learn from the failures of others. Jay: Oh yeah. David: We can learn from the failures of our friends, our family, our parents, our children. We can learn from any type of failure that we meet along the way. And when we do that, when we learn from other people's failures, we are saving ourselves a lot more aggravation. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing learning from failure. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Once again, it's a pleasure to be here. This one, again, another important topic. I think we have a tendency, when we have failure, to not want to try that again, as opposed to saying I don't know who said it, but fail forward. Right? So like it or not, we're a result of our failures, and we're probably going to fail more than we win. So defining what we do in failure, I think, is very important. David: Yeah, I think this particular topic for myself, I know, has been absolutely critical in every aspect of my development from the time I was a child. When I was in grade school and I wasn't always the most motivated student because I wasn't interested in some of the topics, I would not do well in certain areas. And that wasn't great. I mean, what I should have learned from that is do a better job of it, anyway, I didn't learn that at the time. And maybe that's why I'm an entrepreneur today, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs start out the same way. It's like you're on a path. There are specific things that just really interest you that you can focus on diligently. And there are other things that you can't. But also just an example, I know throughout my own life, you're going to be able to learn something from everyone you meet, whether it's positive or negative. So you might as well take advantage of that. And if you recognize that you can pick up on these things fairly early on in most relationships and decide to learn from them, everything gets a whole lot easier. Jay: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. Once again, I think all the podcasts we've been doing recently self awareness. So important. Personal inventories, so important. Do you even recognize the failure? Are you deliberate about what your response is going to be? And if so, I think you can turn it around and make it a positive. If not, I think it's just by nature going to become a negative. David: Yeah, and whenever we're going through something in business that we would categorize as a failure, and that varies widely in business, as you know, to a complete business failure, I mean, that's something you'll learn from for a really long time, when that happens. It can be small things, it can be large things, but if we look at each of those things as an experience, there is very likely a lot that we can learn from that. What was it that caused this problem to begin with? I know in business for myself, most likely cause of issues and ultimate failure has always been, In some way related to communication. We weren't communicating properly with the other people, or they weren't communicating properly with us, or they weren't communicating honestly with us, or however it worked out. But a lot of it, for me, boils down to communication failures. And when you're aware of the areas where these failures likely happen, you can then pay closer attention going forward so that you don't repeat those types of things. Jay: Yeah, I grew up kind of in the retail industry and, when a failure happens, you have managers who want to just find the closest person and, yell at them and blame them. But then you have others and I've learned that usually it's not like you said, a person problem. It's a systems problem. So is it your communication that's bad? What is it? And if you can fix it, is it your training? You didn't train, you know, whatever it is,

Your internal monologue is critical. The worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your internal monologue. What's going on in there, Jay? Jay: Hey, David. I'm not sure what's rattling around up here, but I think this is an important topic. I think that often we are a result of what we allow to rattle around in our brains. And if we're not aware of it, if we're not conscious of it, then that can kind of define who we are and what we do each day. David: Yeah, it really does. And I've read a lot about this topic over the years. I've listened to a lot of podcasts on the topic. Of course, we all live this on a day to day basis. I remember reading in one of Michael Singer's books, he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul and he was talking about your internal roommate and how basically you've got all these thoughts going on in your head and half the time you don't know where they're coming from and what they're saying to you. And a lot of times we tend to interpret what's going on in our heads as us. We think that's us dictating that stuff. And he says, no, it's basically, our brain generating thoughts, but it's not really. necessarily us. So when something goes through our minds and we're like, what on earth made me think that? It's just your brain. Don't take it personally. Jay: Yeah, it is random, right? I mean, your mind's gonna just be all over the place. And until you kind of do an inventory of what you're thinking, And I don't know that we're necessarily talking about affirmations. I think that some people are like, look in the mirror and say these things to yourself. I don't know if we need to go that far, but certainly be aware of what you're thinking and take control of it. Because you are what you think. David: Yeah, and taking control of it starts with just being aware of it. Recognizing the different things that go flashing through your brain on any given day and how that then impacts our actions. Because in business, if we're not aware of that, if we just sort of go along, thinking we're on autopilot and just doing things as they come up and not paying attention to what's going on in there, we can find ourselves either distracted, or maybe doing the wrong things, or taking the wrong actions, or responding inappropriately. Lots of different things can go wrong if we're not aware of what's going on in our own brains. Jay: Yeah, for me it's a matter of demotivating myself. My brain is very good at identifying the reasons not to do something. I don't know why that is, But I think that I'm not alone, right? So, I have something that I want to do today or that I've scheduled today, and my mind will just tick off the reasons why I can't do it, why I shouldn't do it, why I should be doing something else, why I should be doom scrolling on TikTok instead. And I don't know why that is, but I feel like my brain always defaults to the here's why you shouldn't do it mode. David: Yeah, and it's good you're recognizing that. I remember I was listening to a podcast, the Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo, and she was talking about the fact that our brain generates sentence fragments. So it might just be a few words that go by in your brain and you internalize it. It might be that you're looking at a project and you know that you need to be working on it. And you might get a sentence fragment like, "I don't feel like it," or "I don't feel like doing that." And if you have the kind of job where you can determine what you do and what you don't do, that can significantly impact your actions. But when you recognize these little sentence fragments going through your brain and you identify it, you can then choose how to sort of reprogram. So if you catch yourself saying,

When we think about prospects who can't or won't say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don't reply back after they've gotten all the information, it's basically two pieces of the same puzzle. When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can't drive them to the yes. Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing prospects who can't or won't say no. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. You know, there's so much to cover about how to deal with prospects. You really have to be thinking in depth about, who are these clients who can't or won't say no? Do you even recognize that? Because that's going to affect how you spend your time. Will you be working with them? Are they worth the time? Things like that. David: Yeah. And it ties back exactly to our last podcast where we were talking about prospects who don't respond to you. We're actually talking about clients who don't respond to you. And then we got carried away with clients. We said, okay, we'll talk about prospects in the next episode. And this really ties together nicely because in many cases, the people who can't or won't say no to us are the very same people who end up going radio silent and just ghosting us. When we're trying to get a sale closed. Jay: Yeah, and I think it's, again, we need to track and keep records. We need to be able to know, like, I have a system where I get a reminder. Hey you know, it's my CRM. The last time I spoke with a potential client, I made a note. Remind me about this client in five days, if you're running through a lot of potential prospects, you're not going to remember your last conversation. You're not going to remember, are they one of these clients that we're talking about? So tracking and, searching for this particular concept, are they saying no? Can they say no? A very important part of the process. David: Yeah, and that's where I think the notes that we keep for ourselves inside our CRMs or wherever we document that stuff are so important, because if we're just saying follow up, follow up, follow up in our notes, that tells us nothing. So a lot of times it's really good in our next set of notes to say, spoke with Joe yesterday, he indicated he'd have a decision by such and such a date, so that when you contact him on that day, you say, hey, listen, when we last spoke, you said you have a decision today at 1230. What are you thinking? Right. And you can move forward from there. But when we talk about people who can't or won't say no, I think this is where I've had several epiphanies along the way, because I think in sales, our desire is always to get them to say yes. But, in reality, sometimes we are better off getting them to say no. Because these non decisions are just killers. And sometimes people, they just can't bring themselves to say they don't want to do it. Whether it's fear of missing out, or they don't want to hurt our feelings. I don't know what it is, but I know that whenever I run into it, I find it extremely frustrating, because I'm a pretty direct communicator. If you and I are having a conversation, I will tell you exactly what I think. I mean, I won't be rude about it. I won't be obnoxious, in most cases, right? But I'll be very direct because I feel like I owe that to every person I talk to. If we're talking about working together, I want to make sure that people are extremely clear on what we'll be able to do and what we won't be able to do. And we can't do anything until we get to that agreement. I mean, I say this all the time, whenever two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they'll figure out a way to do it. If one of them doesn't, they won't. And very often the one who doesn't is the prospect.

Reed Smith and its lawyers have used machine-assisted case preparation tools for many years (and it launched the Gravity Stack subsidiary) to apply legal technology that cuts costs, saves labor and extracts serious questions faster for senior lawyers to review. Partners David Cohen, Anthony Diana and Therese Craparo discuss how generative AI is creating powerful new options for legal teams using machine-assisted legal processes in case preparation and e-discovery. They discuss how the field of e-discovery, with the help of emerging AI systems, is becoming more widely accepted as a cost and quality improvement. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, and welcome to Tech Law Talks, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies Group. In each episode of this podcast, we will discuss cutting-edge issues on technology, data, and the law. We will provide practical observations on a wide variety of technology and data topics to give you quick and actionable tips to address the issues you are dealing with every day.  David: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Tech Law Talks and our new series on AI. Over the the coming months, we'll explore the key challenges and opportunities within the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Today, we're going to focus on AI in eDiscovery. My name is David Cohen, and I'm pleased to be joined today by my colleagues, Anthony, Diana, and Therese Craparo. I head up Reed Smith's Records & eDiscovery practice group, big practice group, 70 plus lawyers strong, and we're very excited to be moving into AI territory. And we've been using some AI tools and we're testing new ones. Therese, I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce yourself.  Therese: Sure. Thanks, Dave. Hi, my name is Therese Craparo. I am a partner in our Emerging Technologies Group here at Reed Smith. My practice focuses on eDiscovery, digital innovation, and data risk management. And And like all of us, seeing a significant uptick in the interest in using AI across industries and particularly in the legal industry. Anthony?  Anthony: Hello, this is Anthony Diana. I am a partner in the New York office, also part of the Emerging Technologies Group. And similarly, my practice focuses on digital transformation projects for large clients, particularly financial institutions. and also been dealing with e-discovery issues for more than 20 years, basically, as long as e-discovery has existed. I think all of us have on this call. So looking forward to talking about AI.  David: Thanks, Anthony. And my first question is, the field of e-discovery was one of the first to make practical use of AI in the form of predictive coding and document analytics. Predictive coding has now been around for more than two decades. So, Teresa and Anthony, how's that been working out?  Therese: You know, I think it's a dual answer, right? It's been working out incredibly well, and yet it's not used as much as it should be. I think that at this stage, the use of predictive coding and analytics in e-discovery is pretty standard, right? Right. As Dave, as you said, two decades ago, it was very controversial and there was a lot of debate and dispute about the appropriate use and the right controls and the like going on in the industry and a lot of discovery fights around that. But I think at this stage, we've really gotten to a point where this technology is, you know, well understood, used incredibly effectively to appropriately manage and streamline e-discovery and to improve on discovery processes and the like. I think it's far less controversial in terms of its use. And frankly, the e-discovery industry has done a really great job at promoting it and finding ways to use this advanced technology in litigation. I think that one of the challenges is that still is that while the lawyers who are using it are using it incredibly effectively, it's still not enough people that have adopted it. And I think there are still lawyers out there that haven't been using predictive coding or document analytics in ways that they could be using it to improve their own processes. I don't know, Anthony, what are your thoughts on that?  Anthony: Yeah, I mean, I think to reiterate this, I mean, the predictive coding that everyone's used to is it's machine learning, right? So it's AI, but it's machine learning. And I think it was particularly helpful just in terms of workflow and what we're trying to accomplish in eDiscovery when we're trying to produce relevant information. Information, machine learning made a lot of sense. And I think I was a big proponent of it. I think a lot of people are because it gave a lot of control. The big issue was it allowed, I would call, senior attorneys to have more control over what is relevant. So the whole idea is you would train the model with looking at relevant documents, and then you would have senior attorneys basically get involved and say, okay, what are the edge cases? It was the basic stuff was easy. You had the edge cases, you could have senior attorneys look at it, make that call, and then basically you would use the technology to use what I would say, whatever you're thinking in your brain, the senior attorney, that is now going to be used to help determine relevance. And you're not relying as much on the contract attorneys and the workflow. So it made a whole host of sense, frankly, from a risk perspective. I think one of the issues that we saw early on is everyone was saying it was going to save lots of money. Didn't really save a lot of money, right? Partly because the volumes went up too much, partly because, you know, the process, but from a risk perspective, I thought it was really good because I think you were getting better quality, which I think was one of the things that's most important, right? And I think this is going to be important as we start talking about AI generally is, and in terms of processes, it was a quality play, right? It was, this is better. It's a better process. It's better managing the risks than just having manual review. So that was the key to it, I think. As we talked about, there was lots of controversy about it. The controversy often stemmed from, I'll call it the validation. We had lots of attorneys saying, I want to see the validation set. They wanted to see how the model was trained. You have to give us all the documents and train. And I think generally that fell by the wayside. That really didn't really happen. One of the keys though, and I think this is also true for all AI, is the validation testing, which Teresa touched upon, that became critical. I think people realized that one of the things you had to do as you're training the model and you started seeing things, you would always do some sampling and do validation testing to see if the model was working correctly. And that validation testing was the defensibility that courts, I think, latched on on. And I think when we start talking about Gen AI, that's going to be one of the issues. People are comfortable with machine learning, understand the risks, understand, you know, one of the other big risks that we all saw as part of it was the data set would change, right? You have 10 custodians, you train the model, then you got another 10 custodians. Sometimes it didn't matter. Sometimes it really made a big difference and you had to retrain the model. So I think we're all comfortable with that. I think as Therese said, it's still not as prevalent as you would have imagined, given how effective it is, but it's partly because it's a lot of work, right? And often it's a lot of work by, I'll say, senior attorneys instead of developing it, when it's still a lot easier to say, let's just use search terms, negotiate it, and then throw a bunch of contract attorneys on it, and then do what you see. It works, but I think that's still one of the impediments of it actually being used as much as we thought.  Therese: And I think to pick up on what Anthony is saying, what I think is really important is we do have 20 years of experience using AI technology in the e-discovery industry. So much has been learned about how you use those models, the appropriate controls, how you get quality validation and the like. And I think that there's so much to use from that in the increasing use of AI in e-discovery, in the legal field in general, even across organizations. There's a lot of value to be had there of leveraging the lessons learned and applying them to the use of the emerging types of AI that we're seeing that I think we need to keep in mind and the legal field needs to keep in mind that we know how to use this and we know how to understand it. We know how to make it defensible. And I think as we move forward, those lessons are going to serve us really well in facilitating, you know, more advanced use of AI. So in thinking about how the changes may happen going forward, right, as we're looking forward, how do we think that generative AI based on large language models are going to change e-discovery in the future?  Anthony: I think there, in terms of how generative AI is going to work, I have my doubts, frankly, about how effective it's going to be. We all know that these large language models are basically based on billions, if not trillions of data points or whatever, but it's generic. It's all public information. That's how the model is based. One of the things that I want to see as people start using generative AI and seeing how it would work, is how is that going to play when we're talking about very, it's confidential information, like almost all of our clients that are dealing with e-discovery, all this stuff's confidential. It's not stuff that's public. So I understand the concept if you have a large language model that is billions and billions of data points or whatever is going to be exact, but it's a probability calculation, right? It's basically guessing what the next answer is going going to be, the next word is going to be based on this general population, not necessarily on some very esoteric area that you may be focused on for a particular case, right? So I think it remains to be seen of whether it's going to work. I think the other area where I have concerns, which I want to see, is the validation point. Like, how do we show it's defensible? If you're going in and telling a court, oh, I use Gen AI and ran the tool, here's the relevant stuff based on prompts, what does that mean? How are we going to validate that? I think that's going to be one of the keys is how do we come up with a validation methodology that will be defensible that people will be comfortable with? Again, I think intuitively machine learning was I'm training the model on what a person, a human being deemed is responsive. So that. Frankly, it's easier to argue to a court. It's easier to explain to a regulator. When you say, I came up with prompts based on the allegations of the complaint or whatever, it's a little bit more esoteric, and I think it's a little bit harder for someone to get their heads around. How do you know you're getting relevant information? So, I think there's some challenges there. I don't know how that's going to play out. I don't know, Dave, because I know you're testing a lot of these tools, what you're seeing in terms of how we think this is actually going to work in terms of using generative AI in these large language models and moving away from the machine learning.  David: Yeah, I agree with you on the to be determined part, but I think I come in a little bit more optimistic and part of it might be, you know, actually starting to use some of these tools. I think that predictive coding has really paved the way for these AI tools because what held up predictive coding to some extent was people weren't sure that courts were going to accept it. Until the first opinions came out, Judge Peck's decision and the Silvermore and subsequent case decisions, there was concern about that. But once that precedent came out, and it's important to emphasize that the precedent wasn't just approving predictive coding, it was approving technology-assisted review. And this generative AI is really just another form of technology-assisted review. And what it basically said is you have to show that it's valid. You have to do this validation testing. But the same validation testing that we've been doing to support predictive coding will work on the large language model generative AI-assisted coding. It's essentially you do the review and then you take a sample and you say, well, was this review done well? Did we hit a high accuracy level? The early testing we're doing is showing that we are hitting even better accuracy levels than with predictive coding alone. And I should say that it's even improved in the six months or so that we've been testing. The companies that are building the software are continuing to improve it. So I am optimistic in that sense. But many of these products are still in development. The pricing is still either high or to be announced in some cases. And it's not clear yet that it will be cost effective beyond current models of using human review and predictive coding and search terms. And they're not all mutually exclusive. I mean, I can see ultimately getting to a hybrid model where we still may start with search terms to cut down on volume and then may use some predictive coding and some human review and some generative AI. Ultimately, I think we'll get to the point where the price point comes down and it will make review better and cheaper. Right. But I also didn't want to mention, I see a couple other areas of application in eDiscovery as well. The generative AI is really good at summarizing single large documents or even groups of documents. It's also extremely helpful in more quickly identifying key documents. You can ask questions about a whole big document population and get answers. So I'm really excited to see this evolution. And I don't know when we're going to get there and what the price effectiveness point is going to be. But I would say that in the next year or two, we're going to start seeing it creep in and use more and more effectively, more and more cost effectively as we go forward.  Anthony: Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, I can see that even in terms of document review. If a human was looking at it, if AI is summarizing the document, you can make your relevance determination based on the summary. Again, we can all talk about whether it's appropriate or not, but that would probably help quite a bit. And I do think that's fascinating. I know another thing I hear is the privilege log stuff. And again, I think using AI, generative AI to draft privilege logs in concept sounds great because obviously it's a big costs factor and the like. But I think we've talked about this, Dave and Therese, like we already have, like there's already tools available, meaning you can negotiate metadata logs and some of these other things that cut the cost down. So I think it remains to be seen. Again, I think this is going to be like another arrow in your quiver, a tool to use, and you just have to figure out when you want to use it.  Therese: Yeah. And I think one of the things I think in not limiting ourselves to only thinking about, right, document review, where there's a lot of possibility with generative AI, right, witness kits, putting together witness outlines for depositions and the like, right? Not that we would ever just rely on that, but there's a huge opportunity there, I think, as a starting point, right? Just like if you're using it appropriately. And of course, today's point, the price point is reasonable, you can do initial research. There's a lot of things that I think that it can do in the discovery realm, even outside of just document review, that I think we should keep our minds open to because it's a way of giving us a quicker, getting to the base more quickly and more efficiently and frankly, more cost-effectively. And then you can take a look at that and the person and can augment that or build upon it to make sure it's accurate and it's appropriate for that particular litigation or that particular witness and the like. But I do think that Dave really hit the nail on the head. I don't think this is going to be, we're only going to be moving to generative AI and we're going to abandon other types of AI. There's reasons why there's different types of AI is because they do different things. And I think what we are most likely to see is a hybrid. Right. Right. Some tools being used for something, some tools being used for others. And I think eventually, as Dave already highlighted, the combination of the use of different types of AI in the e-discovery process and within the same tool to get to a better place. I think that's where we're most likely heading. And as Dave said, that's where a lot of the vendors are actually focusing is on adding into their workflow this additional AI to improve the process.  David: Yeah. And it's interesting that some of the early versions are not really replacing the human review. They are predicting where the human review is going to come out. So when the reviewer looks at the document, it already tells you what the software says. Is it relevant or not relevant? And it does go one step beyond. It's hard because it not only tells you the prediction of whether it's relevant or not, but it also gives you a reason. So it can accelerate the review and that can create great cost savings. But it's not just document review. Already, there's e-discovery tools out there that allow you to ask questions, query databases, but also build chronologies. And again, with that benefit, then referencing you to certain documents and in some cases having hyperlinks. So it'll tell you facts or it'll tell you answers to a question and it'll link back to the documents that support those answers. So I think there's great potential as this continues to grow and improve.  Anthony: Yeah. And I would say also, again, let's think about the whole EDRM model, right? Preservation. I mean, we'll see what enterprises do, but on the enterprise side, using AI bots and stuff like that for whether it's preservation, collection and stuff, it'll be very interesting to see if these tools can be used there to sort of automate some of the standard workflows before we get to the review and the like, but even on the enterprise side. The other thing that I think it will be interesting, and I think this is one of the areas where we still have not seen broad adoption, is on the privilege side. We know and we've done some analysis for clients where privilege or looking for highly sensitive documents and the like is still something that most lawyers aren't comfortable using. Using AI, don't know why I've done it and it worked effectively, but that is still an area where lawyers have been hesitant. And it'll be interesting to see if gender of AI and the tools there can help with privilege, right? Whether it's the privilege logs, whether it's identifying privilege documents. I think to your point, Dave, having the ability to say it's privileged and here's the reasons would be really helpful in doing privilege review. So it'll be interesting to see how AI works in that sphere as well, because it is an area where we haven't seen wide adoption of using predictive coding or TAR in terms of identifying privilege. And that's still a major cost for a lot of clients. All right, so then I guess where this all leads to is, and this is more future-oriented. Do we think we're at this stage now that we have generative AI that there's a paradigm shift, right? Do we think there's going to be a point where even, you know, we didn't see that paradigm shift bluntly with predictive coding, right? Predictive coding came out, everyone said, oh my God, discovery is going to change forever. We don't need contract attorneys anymore. You know, associates aren't going to have anything to do because you're just going to train the model, it goes out. And that's clearly hasn't happened. Now people are making similar predictions with the use of generative AI. We're now not going to need to do docker view, whatever. And I think there is concern, and this is concern just generally in the industry, is this an area, since we're already using AI, where AI can take over basically the discovery function, where we're not necessarily using lots of lawyers and we're relying almost exclusively on AI, whether it's a combination of machine learning or if it's just generative AI. And they're doing lots of work without any input or very little input from lawyers. So I'll start with Dave there. What are your thoughts in terms of where do we see in the next three to five years? Are we going to see some tipping point?  David: Yeah, it's interesting. Historically, there's no question that predictive coding did allow lawyers to get through big document populations faster and for predictions that it was going to replace all human review. And it really hasn't. But part of that has been the proliferation of electronic data. There's just more data than ever before, more sources of data. It's not just email now. It's Teams and texts and Slack and all these different collaboration tools. So that increase in volume is partially made up for the increase in efficiency, and we haven't seen any loss of attorneys. I do think that over the longer run that there is more potential for the Gen AI to replace replace attorneys who do e-discovery work and, frankly, to replace lawyers and other professionals and all other kinds of workers eventually. I mean, it's just going to get better and better. A lot of money is being invested in. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think that we may be looking at a whole paradigm shift in how disputes are resolved in the future. Right now, there's so much duplication of effort. If you're in litigation against an opposing party, You have your documents set that your people are analyzing at some expense. The other side has their documents set that their people are analyzing at some expense. You're all looking for those key documents, the needles in the haystack. There's a lot of duplicative efforts going on. Picture a world where you could just take all of the potentially relevant documents. Throw them into the pot of generative AI, and then have the generative AI predetermine what's possibly privileged and lawyers can confirm those decisions. But then let everyone, both sides of court, query that pot of documents to ask, what are the key questions? What are the key factual issues in the case? Please tell us the answers and the documents that go to those answers and cut through a lot of the document review and document production that's going on now that frankly uses up most of the cost of litigation. I think we're going to be able to resolve disputes more efficiently, less expensively, and a lot faster. And I don't know whether that's five years into the future or 10 years into the future, but I'll be very surprised if our dispute resolution procedure isn't greatly affected by these new capabilities. Pretty soon, I think, when I say pretty soon, I don't know if it's five years or 10 years, but I think judges are going to have their AI assistance helping them resolve cases and maybe even drafting first drafts of court opinions as well. And I don't think it's all that far off into the future that we're going to start to see them.  Therese: I think I'm a little bit more skeptical than Dave on some of this, which is probably not surprising to either Dave or to to Anthony on this one. Look, I think, I don't see AI as a general rule replacing lawyers. I think it will change what lawyers do. And it may replace some lawyers who don't keep pace with technology. Look, it's very simple. It's going to make us better, faster, more efficient, right? So that's a good thing. It's a good thing for our clients. It's a good thing for us. But the idea, I think, to me, that AI will replace the judgment and the decision-making or the results of AI is going to replace lawyers and I think is maybe way out there in the future when the robots take over the world. But I do think it may mean less lawyers or lawyers do different things. Lawyers that are well-versed in technology and can use that are going to be more effective and are going to be faster. I think that. You're going to see situations where it's expected to be used, right? If AI can draft an opinion or a brief in the first instance and save hours and hours of time, that's a great thing. And that's going to be expected. I don't see that being ever being the thing that gets sent out the door because you're going to still need lawyers who are looking at it and making sure that it is right and updating it and making sure that it's unique to the case and all the judgments that go into those things are appropriate. I do find it difficult to imagine a world having, you know, been a litigator for so many years where everyone's like, sure, throw all the documents in the same pod and we'll all query it together. Maybe we'll get to that point someday. I find it really difficult to imagine that'll happen. There's too much concern about the data and control over the data and sensitivity and privilege and all of those things. You know, we've seen pockets of making data available through secure channels so that you're not transferring them and the like, where it's the same pool of data that would otherwise be produced, so that maybe you're saving costs there. But I don't, again, I think it'll be a paradigm shift eventually in that, paradigm shift that's been a long time coming, though, I think, right? We started using technology to improve this process years ago. It's getting better. I think we will get to a point where everyone routinely more heavily relies on AI for discovery and that that is not the predictive coding or the tar for the people who know how to use it, but it is the standard that everybody uses. I do think, like I said, it will make us better and more efficient. I don't see it really replacing, like I said, entirely lawyers or that will be in a world where all the data just goes in and gets spit out and you need one lawyer to look at it and it's fine. But again, I do think it will change the way we practice law. And in that sense, I do think it'll be a paradigm shift.  Anthony: The final thought is, I think I tend to be, I'm sort of in the middle, but I would say generally we know lawyers have big egos, and they will never allow, they will never think that a computer, AI tool or whatever, is smarter than they are in terms of determining privilege or relevance, right? I mean, I think that's part of it is, there's, you know, you have two lawyers in a room, they're going to argue about whether something is relevant. You have two lawyers in a room, they're going to argue about something privileged. So it's not objective, right? There's subjectivity. And I think that's going to be one of the chances. And I think also, we've seen it already. Everyone thought. Every lawyer who's a litigator would have to be really well-versed in e-discovery and all the issues that we deal with. That has not happened. And I don't see that changing. So unless I'm less concerned about being a paradigm shift than all of us going out for those reasons.  David: Well, I think everyone needs to tune back in on July 11th, 2029 when we come back to get stuff to begin and see who we're going.  Anthony: Yes, absolutely. All right. Thanks, everybody.  David: Thank you.  Outro: Tech Law Talks is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's emerging technologies practice, please email techlawtalks@reedsmith.com. You can find our podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.  All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.

When dealing with unresponsive clients and prospects, we have to make sure that we're doing everything on our end to be as responsive as possible. If somebody takes a week to get back to me, that doesn't mean I'm going to take a week to get back to them. Because if I start to fall into the trap that they've laid out, then that's not good for anybody. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing unresponsive clients and prospects. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Once again, great topic here. I think all of us are guilty -- anyone who's involved in sales -- of thinking, this client is going to turn into something, but really, if we looked at it, should we be spending time on somebody else instead of trying to push people through who are not ready or not able to do so. David: Yeah. And I think, as you said, everyone in sales deals with this, and that's when you're dealing with prospects, right? That's when you're dealing with people who have not yet spent money with you. This is even harder for some people when you're dealing with clients, people who have spent money with you and who are not getting back to you with the information that you need in order to do the job that they paid you to do. Jay: Yeah, I actually have a client right now that is driving me crazy, because we're in the tax business and they were like "we need to get this done because we have an extension." And so at some moments they're like pressing me like this is so important. And then they'll ghost me for like three or four days. So right now I'm in the ghost period. I've emailed them, I've called them and I'm like, where did they go? And I just know like tomorrow they're going to be, "Hey, we need to get this done." It's driving me crazy, David. David: Yeah. And again, you are not alone. I think everyone in business deals with this, and every time it happens, we're like, why is this happening? I don't get it. And that's why I think it's important for us to take the time and sort of examine this and try to determine, okay, what are the reasons behind it? If it's a client, why are they not getting back to me with the information? So in a situation that you just described, maybe they don't have access to it as quickly as they thought. Obviously, they're just probably distracted with other things. They're working on other projects. They know it needs to be done, but they're not able to do it as quickly as they'd like. Every excuse in the book, some of them valid, some of them not. But when we are tasked with getting things done on somebody else's behalf, and then they refuse to live up to their side of the bargain. That's when we start to run into trouble. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I'm guilty of as we talk about this, is feeling like if I put any pressure on the client, it's going to like affect our relationship or something like that. So I treat people with kid gloves. And I really kind of find out, no, if I'm, I don't know if stern is the right word, but at least, David: Maybe firm? Jay: Yeah, firm maybe is a better term. David:  Yeah, because I think there is a difference between stern and firm. Firm is basically like... Jay: They sound the same. David: Yeah, exactly. Listen, I'm trying to help you here and I need this in order to move forward. And in most businesses, when you're interacting with someone, particularly in a service business, it comes up a lot. So the rapport obviously is key. We have to be able to have the rapport with people to be able to say, "listen, this is what I need. Otherwise I can't move forward on it," and have them be able to come back and say, "yes, listen, I understand. I'll get this taken care of for you." But it doesn't always flow like that. And that's why I think if we start to look at what are the reasons for it, we may be able to have better ammunition in terms of dealing with ...

Knowing vs. Doing in sales is all about implementation. Implementation connects the knowledge you have to the results that you're going to get. And without that key element being implemented again and again and again, you're never going to get to the results, the sales, the possibility that you have in your entire career. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing knowing versus doing in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. I love this topic because I think so many of us are just doing what we think we should do, but we're like, squeaky wheel gets the grease. And so, are we really focusing and fine tuning and honing our sales. David: Right. And doing what we know. Jay: Yeah. David: Because a lot of us can get trapped in input, rather than output. And I know I am guilty of this myself because I am a chronic learner. I am always reading books and studying stuff, watching videos, learning from courses, I spend a whole lot of money educating myself every year. What's the newest, the latest, the greatest, the things that I should be paying attention to? And sometimes when we get too focused on input, we don't engage in the output necessary to get the results we're looking for. Jay: Yeah, I'm exactly the same. Like I have all this technology. I'm always trying to hone my systems, but like we hear garbage in, garbage out, right? I spend so much time on that, maybe I should be spending time on actually closing sales, meeting with clients, you know, those types of things. David: Yeah, and keeping track of what we're doing, keeping track of our output, I think is really important, and a lot of us lose sight of this. I've actually created tools in my training programs that allow people to start to capture that. Because when you boil it down, the things that we need to be doing on an ongoing basis involve bringing new prospects through the door, getting them qualified in or out as quickly as possible. Engaging in presentations with the people who are worthy of presentations, making offers, closing sales, all those things are key. And a lot of that is just about engaging in conversations with people. So simply by tracking what we're actually doing on a day to day or week to week basis, we can have a crystal clear idea of where things are going wrong in our business. But if we just sort of think in the back of our mind, "Oh, well, yeah, I know that, or I'm doing all that," we can really be misleading ourselves more often than we think. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about tracking, I'm looking for the perfect software to track or things like that. And often a notebook, you know, start simple and work your way up. A spreadsheet, something and just reviewing your daily activities can be a very powerful thing. David: Yeah, whatever you'll actually use is your best contact management system, whether that's a full blown CRM software system, or whether you're just good at being able to keep track of your appointments and notes on a calendar or in some sort of notebook. As long as you have it all in one place and you know what's next, that's huge. Knowing what's next for each prospect and client. When do I have to reach out to them and what am I going to be reaching out to them about? If I know that somebody has an event coming up in November and I need to be in touch with them by early October, I want to make sure that I've got a note for early October that says, be in touch with this client, early October, about their event mid November. So that when I reach out to them, I'm not just calling and saying, "I'm just calling to check in" or "how's everything going?" No, I'm calling, "Hey, listen, I wanted to give you a call. We were talking about this event you have coming up in mid November, wanted to see where we are with that," so that we're able to continue the conversation where the last one left off,

A lot of people just think broadly in terms of expanding their market, without asking themselves a really important question, which is why? Why do you need to expand your market? Am I not doing things well enough in my existing market that I haven't been able to mine that as effectively as I could? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Expanding Your Market. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Once again, I'm excited for this conversation. I know we always kind of learn from each other. We're in a process in our business where we're trying to expand from the inside, from our current customer base. Like right now we have a great Google Ads program, but we don't have an organic program, right? So that's one area that we're looking at right now. How do we get those organic leads? So we're right in this process right now. David: That's really interesting because there are so many different ways we can talk about expanding. I mean, the first thing you mentioned, just expanding inside your own customer or prospect base, right? You could just look at your Excel spreadsheet of all these people say, how can I expand within the people on this sheet, right? Or you could be talking, like you mentioned about an ad campaign. How can we expand this ad campaign to reach more of the high quality prospects that I need to reach in order to have those conversations, in order to do business together. So yeah, lots of different ways to do it. I think the appeal of a topic like expanding your market is that a lot of people tend to want to do it. I want to have more customers. I want to have more clients. Not quite sure where that's going to come from. That's sort of the generic thought, I think, for a lot of people. I want more customers. How am I going to do that? And a lot of it boils down to this. minute stuff that we're talking about, identifying who these people are, how we're going to reach out to them, and how we're going to get them on board with us. Jay: Yeah. And I think that's something that a lot of people fall prey to, and I catch myself sometimes as well, is thinking that movement is doing something, right? I'm busy. I'm writing a check. We're doing something and we're just moving. But ultimately, are you getting results and are you monitoring those results and fine tuning them? If not, you're kind of wasting your time. David: Yeah. Confusing movement with progress and they're two different things. You don't even realize you're doing it, but you're like, Oh, I should really do this, I should really do that. And we've also talked about the fact, in previous podcasts, that many business owners suffer from entrepreneurial ADD. Where you're working on one thing and then the whole squirrel, squirrel, squirrel! and we're doing that. And now we're off on something else. I think a lot of us have to reel ourselves back in when it comes to that, because there are so many different ways to expand your market. So many different ways to get in front of different groups of people, and so many different things we can say to those people. And there are too many variables. And I think when you're looking to expand your market, you can't be changing all of the variables. You can't say, okay, now I'm going to go after a totally different group of people with a totally different message and promote a totally different product or aspect of my product, right? Or a different approach to describing my product, because you will have absolutely no idea at that point of what's working and what's not. I mean, in some cases we can do some minor tweaking of maybe one of those variables. If we've got a sales presentation that has worked historically for us, for a long time, then it makes perfect sense to test out that presentation in front of a different group of people who have never heard it.

When you're able to deliver what you say you're going to deliver, that will start to motivate buyers to want to do business with you. And particularly for repeat orders. Because the first time they're buying from you, they don't really know exactly what you can do. They're basing it on what you're telling them, the conversations you're having. But then after they have that first experience with you, and they know what you're like, and they've liked that experience, then they are going to be motivated to buy again. Because at that point, they know those things. And it's not just based on what you're saying. David: Hello and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing what motivates buyers. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Yeah. Hey, it's good to be here, David. I kind of think, why would you need to know or have a discussion about what motivates buyers? I think it's because we assume everybody's like us. And that assumption, can be completely wrongheaded, right? David: Yeah. I know Tony Robbins, in some of his material, talked about the fact that he's not motivational. His goal isn't to motivate people. And I thought that was a really interesting takeaway because you look at somebody like Tony Robbins and you're like, well, that's what he does. He's motivational. He motivates people. But his goal is to educate people and to encourage people and nurture them and provide services that are going to help them in their lives. Like the rest of us, most of us in business, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to provide products and services that help our customers. So when we talk about motivating a customer, there are a couple of different aspects to it, because one aspect of it is motivating them to buy, right? Once they have all the information, sometimes it's difficult to get people off the fence. So there's that aspect of motivation, but even in the earlier stages, what will motivate a customer to want to even have a conversation with you? What will motivate a customer to even go to your website to investigate what you have to offer? So my feeling is that motivation, at lots of different levels, is pretty much critical in business and in sales. Jay: Yeah, I agree. And also a recognition that people are different, right? I remember walking into one of my program director's offices and he had a cardboard cutout and it was divided up and all the things that he felt the listeners wanted and I looked at it and this was not based on research. This was just, you know, what he felt. And I looked at it and I'm like, I don't think that's accurate at all. It's nice that you have this cardboard cutout, but I think you need to put a little bit more thought into it. David: Yeah, that's a great point. And a lot of us go into every situation with our own preconceived notions about situations. And so it's the same thing in sales. If we think that a customer is looking for X, Y, and Z, then that's all we're going to be talking about. But that's why I think the whole consultative aspect of selling is so important. Asking questions, diagnosing, finding out what the actual need is. And when it comes to motivation, you're going to be a lot more likely to motivate people based on what they want than what you think they want. Jay: Yeah, I think about people who create the product from the product side instead of from the customer side, right? And we just assume I like it, right? See it on Shark Tank all the time, right? These people are just so invested and they mortgage their homes and they do all these things and they don't have any sales, but they're just so convinced that this product is going to be something that everyone will love and they're shocked to find out that nobody does. David: Yeah. It's like the old adage, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. He was like, look at this. This is the greatest thing in the world. Like,

I mean, you have a podcast called Building Trust in Sales, you say, "yeah, be trustworthy." That's pretty obvious. But it's also necessary. It's necessary to be that, and to be able to convey that, and just to be authentic with it. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing building trust in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David, it's such a pleasure to be with you. Sales is a huge part of our business model, trusting that system. And, a lot of times it's like crossing our fingers that it will work. I think a lot of people would like to have a little bit more surety than that. David: Yeah. And trust is absolutely critical to the whole experience. If they don't trust you, there's no way they're going to buy from you. Now, there are some people who are untrustworthy and people should not buy from them, right? So if you're untrustworthy, this is not a podcast about how to appear trustworthy. I'm assuming that everybody who's paying attention to this is coming from a place of honesty and fact of being about who we are. Because trust is going to be built on that. The trust is going to be built on the conversations that we're having, how those conversations are taking place. Are we being candid? Do people feel like we are providing them with honest answers to questions? And sometimes in sales, that can be hard for people. There's a balance between wanting to put our best foot forward in sales, and being completely truthful and honest. And I feel that when we're weighing that balance, being completely truthful and honest is absolutely the way to go. Because if you start sugarcoating things, and if you start exaggerating your abilities, and that sort of thing, that's going to end up badly. And so I think in order to build trust, it has to start with ourselves. Are we trustworthy? And if we are, then how do we convey that to the people we're interacting with? Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And one of the things that, you know, looking at it from a consumer that really bothers me, and we've talked about this in other podcasts, is where I'm on a website, which is often the storefront now, and they're offering me a free quote or something like that and I go through the whole process, and at the end it says enter your email and we'll send you the free quote, and I'm like You freaking lied to me, right? And the last thing I'm going to do after that is reach out to you or give you my email address. David: Yeah, I think if people are clear about what's going to happen up front, that's usually better. I've been in situations like that myself. Now, if I see that somebody's asking questions and I start going through that series of questions, I'm kind of expecting it at the end. But, There are a lot of sites like that, where it'll start out and it'll just ask for your zip code, right? If you're trying to find a professional in a particular area, you enter your zip code, and then they ask what you're looking for, and when you're looking for it, and how soon, and, all that sort of thing, and they do exactly the same thing. You get there and then they want your information, and then some of these sites will pass it on to a hundred different people, and now instead of finding the one solution, now you've got a hundred people annoying you. To me, that's a business model problem. Which creates a trust problem because now, we don't trust anybody who's asking us for any information. So a lot of times the worst players in the market set the tone, set the stage for what we have to go through. And when you're having an honest conversation with someone, talking to them about working with them, they're viewing us through the lens of someone who is not trustworthy. And then we all have to jump through additional hoops just to get back to zero, essentially. Jay: I love this point, but I also think there's another way to look at it,

What do we want the overall customer experience to be like? How do we want this person to be welcomed if they happen to walk into our business? Because we want that experience to be consistent. That's another important aspect of this. The businesses that really consider their customer experience want to make sure that it is absolutely consistent. David: Hello and welcome back in today's podcast. Co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing crafting the customer experience. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. And I feel like here once again I'm going to learn something from our discussion because I don't think a lot about crafting the experience. For me, it's like, Hey, we had a sales call. Now you're a client and we'll just fake it until we make it, I guess. David: Right. And that is certainly a way to do it. It's certainly valid. I believe it's probably what many businesses do, perhaps most. The thing that actually got me thinking about this was a trip that I took to Disney World a number of years ago. And I thought about how every aspect of the experience is crafted. It is thought out in advance. It's planned. It's choreographed. There is very little, ideally, that happens there by accident. And at the time, I thought, "wow, as a business, if we were able to craft a similar sort of experience for our customers, what would that look like?" I've done presentations on this topic over the years. It's something that a lot of businesses tend not to think about, but when I raise the issue with them, they seem to feel that it's pretty appealing and interesting. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you bring up Disney World or amusement parks. I remember being a little kid and going to an amusement park, and I thought even the staff members were installed as part of the experience. I was amazed when I realized they actually went home after work. And then I ended up working at that very same amusement park on the backside, you know, where all the employees walk? It's so disappointing! David: It's got to be. Jay: Yeah, absolutely, and I think this is one of those topics where we're not talking about, boom, one day you've got the customer experience defined. I think this is a process. It's going to be very different from when you first open your doors, so to speak, because it is something that you should always be fine tuning, correct? David: Yeah, and we can't even fine tune it if we're not thinking about it. If we basically show up for work every day and do what we do, then we're doing what we do. We're not considering what the customer experience is. If you just take the title of this podcast to heart and say, "okay, what if I did want to craft the customer experience? What would that look like?" What happens if somebody calls our business on the phone, what happens? Is it a person who answers? Is it an auto attendant? If so, what does that auto attendant say? Is it encouraging to help people get where they need to go? Is it discouraging? Is it likely to put them off? Something as simple as that, that's one aspect of the customer experience. This is what happens when someone calls us on the phone. This is what happens if someone visits our physical location. This is what happens when I meet someone on a Zoom call or in an in-person situation. Every single aspect of the experience, if it is considered, if it's even thought about, is likely to be a whole lot better than if we're just winging it. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And I think one of the problems, David, is self-awareness. I think about this in sports. Like when all my daughters played sports and there were players and parents of players who didn't really understand their individual skill set and they thought they were much better than they were. Because of that, they didn't ever progress because they thought they had reached whatever marker that needed to be. They're kind of prideful about it.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.ktfpress.comThis is your free preview of our bonus episode, a recording of the first monthly chat with paid subscribers Jonathan and Sy had a couple weeks ago. Become a paying subscriber to hear the rest of this episode, attend next month's chat on July 23rd, and get access to all our bonus episodes!Here's the transcript of the preview of the conversation:Jonathan Walton: So there's two things I just want to let you all know. One is that you're welcome to show up as you are. And the questions, proclivities, personality traits that you have, they're welcome here. Some of those things we not be able to perceive, but you know about that are welcome. So if you're like, “Hey, you know what I am…” I've been in calls where some people have ADHD, and if you're comfortable naming that, then we know or you give us tips for how to engage in ways that may be helpful. Like Sy cannot see very well, and so like naming for that. It's like if you put something in the chat, I'm going to be the one that's looking at the chat. But if I'm talking and you put something to chat, you may just want to say that out loud, because Sy's not going to notice.Sy Hoekstra: I do, I have access to the chat actually.Jonathan Walton: Oh, you do.Sy Hoekstra: I do.Jonathan Walton: Okay, cool, cool. All of you is welcome. The messiness and the good stuff that you already know about. The second thing that I would say is I would hope that spaces like this, you don't just feel welcome, but you cultivate welcome for other people. So like I'm hoping that the hospitality that we receive, we're able to offer, and that this would become a sought after kind of fruitful space for people.Sy Hoekstra: Amen.Jonathan Walton: We may have a cool liturgy or something another time, but this is pretty casual. So I'd love to talk about and hear your thoughts on one of the things that that's going around in my mind right now is some of you follow me on Instagram, and I had just a lament around women and girls. So like I saw Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, his comments when he was doing a commencement speech at a conservative Catholic university. I was thinking about the “man versus bear” meme, and just add that the Reddit thread is long of just really hard stories from women. I was thinking about the SBC and the vote that they, quote- unquote, decided to take, but we all know that they believe the things, even though they voted against it.And I was at gymnastics with my daughter. Like I was watching her turn into a little girl, and hopefully one day be a strong woman, and I just cried. Once you open the door for grief, all the grief comes out [laughs]. So thinking about the, it's Pride Month and how so many churches don't know how to talk about that in ways that are honoring and helpful to our queer brothers and sisters and family made in the image of God. And also the unrelenting, I mean, the algorithm has got me just like, there's just so much violence on my Instagram feed. So like Congo, Haiti, Sudan, Palestine, I'm somebody who is engaged and I'm overwhelmed, and I have tools and frameworks and all the things, but that's something I just want to name, is that if you are quote- unquote, engaged with the news and then engaged with our own families, we are not even talking about sickness in our own family, or death in our own families, or stuff that's just at our kitchen tables.So I admit I feel overwhelmed and just wondering how you all are feeling processing the various global events and local events that are happening with you. So anyone want to speak to that, that how you're feeling processing things? Oh, and feel free to introduce yourself, because I realized we did not do that. So you could say your name and where you're at, and then feel free to answer that question.Rana: I will respond to that. I'm in Southern California, and I am a contributor to Jonathan and Sy's anthology, but unnamed, anonymous. And it's been, I see you on LinkedIn Jonathan, and I see that you are really engaged. Anyhow, I know that it's very difficult for me to, you know, like just with… I'm Palestinian, and I have family in Gaza as well. Both my parents grew up in Gaza, and they were, my dad was a Nakba survivor and essentially my mom was, they left the year before, but they weren't able to return. So I still consider both parents and both families as refugees, because they still lived with the limitations of not being able to return. So anyways, but I can't continue to consume all the news and it's just a struggle. I don't even know what to say.I always tell my dad, my dad, he's in his mid-80s and he watches a lot of the news. And I tell him, “Dad, you were not created to take in this much suffering and sorrow and watch this all day long.” And I guess that's something I would say to you and anybody else, but I'm not an expert. I've been watching Palestinians since the 80s on TV growing up, but I don't claim to have the answers, but I would say that it would be important to protect your own mental health and well being. It doesn't mean that you disconnect from yourself. And I know for me it's also trying to show up, like I'm learning to show up with who I am, because I realize that there's a lot of pieces of who I am that have been silenced. So I feel like I'm trying to find my voice.And if you remember, when I wrote the piece in the book, I struggled a lot with that, and that's something I've emailed you about or messaged you, but that's another conversation I just don't… I can't get to all of it, but there are things, there's conversations I want to have, there's things, but realistically, there's just, we're limited. Thank God. So, yeah.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: As you were sharing, one, thank you for sharing and saying things about who you are and how you show up. I really appreciate that. You all are gonna see this thing called a lead generation magnet soon [laughter], but it was literally written in response to that overwhelmed question [laughs] and the cover of it is a young woman holding a newspaper that's on fire. Like that's the image [laughs]. So just introducing this thing called pace yourself with the news, and pace yourself as you engage with injustice. So, yeah, it is easier preached than practiced.Sy Hoekstra: This is an acronym Jonathan invented.Jonathan Walton: Oh, it is an acronym. Pray, assess, collaborate and establish. Pray and lean into God, assess who you are, what he's given you, what's around you. Bring those things to then collaborate with other people, and then where you can establish rhythms and patterns for flourishing. And so it is much easier preached than it is practiced.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so definitely try to do that. Oh, David, Will, Allison, did you all want to say anything about that? Or we can go to the next topic.Allison: My name is Allison, I live in Wisconsin, and I do have a little bit of adversity in my life as far as I'm blind, so I've had some challenges with that. But I also recognize that I'm White and I'm very well-off. I always had wonderful support networks and I'm really blessed. I probably watched too much news. I admitted I kind of watched, kind of been watching news all the time, taking in stuff all the time, and probably isn't good for my mental health. But then I also have this feeling of like paralysis as a person who is, you know, White, well off, I have this sense that I should be doing something, I should be doing something. But what? What? So it sounds like almost like by watching the news, it's like I feel better because I think I'm doing something, even though I know I'm not really.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs].Allison: But it's like I struggle with this idea of when I see my friends just laying on the beach or going to a silly movie or something, like how can you engage in that frivolous [unclear] and stuff when this world is suffering, you know? It's like I struggle with that [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Man, does anybody want to add on to that at all? Have similar feelings?Sy Hoekstra: I was just going to say, this is a thing… [laughs] I feel like, Alison, you and I and Jonathan would have been friends in college, because this was like a thing we [laughs] constantly... People were like, ‘Why don't you just like chill out a little bit?” And we were like, “No!” [laughter].Jonathan Walton: It's true. I was not mellow at all [laughter]. David, were you going to say something?David: Yeah, no, I'm just going to say I appreciate that and feel that myself. And I also recognize that sort of feeling like the world is my responsibility is part of the White supremacy that's all around us.Sy Hoekstra: Amen, David [laughs].Jonathan Walton: There we go.David: That's [unclear] like why is the world my responsibility? So sort of like how to gage, what is mine to do and what is not mine to do is, I just find it's really a hard thing that I struggle with trying to figure out how that works.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, David just went there, so let's hang out in that water.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, let's do it [laughs].Jonathan Walton: I do think it's… I was just teaching a workshop yesterday to about 60 college students. And I run cohorts around these things, and it is a very interesting question when someone says, “I want to do something about X,” and we just stop and ask, why. Like why do you wanna do that? Oftentimes, what I've noticed is that there's a role that we think we're supposed to play. And then we have to ask, “Well, why do I think I have to play that role?” And then you keep asking why, and usually it ends up at some systemic ideology that has been trickled in. So for me, I'm not White, but the way I participate in White supremacy is, there's this book, there's an essay in, it came out in like, I think like 1909, and it's about the White man's imaginations of the negro.So there's like the brute, the thug, the vagrant, the deviant. And essentially, when Black people participate in these tropes, we participate in White supremacy. And one of the things that I noticed about myself is that my desire to save and to be responsible is to be seen as one of the good ones and not to be seen as lazy. Which is downstream of the same system. I'm still not free. It's just an acceptable, socially acceptable way of showing up when the vice is kindness, but it's not coming from a place of freedom in that way. And the gospel liberates us from trying to be masters. So both of us, for different ways, are trying to be masters. To control.

Everybody has to make those determinations about their business when making sales and building brands. How am I going to do it? Is it going to be about me? Is it going to be about the customer? And how do I convey that in terms of my company name, my logo, my brand, and any slogans or taglines that you use, in order to communicate all that. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing making sales and building brands. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. And again, just a great topic. I don't know if everybody feels like they're a brand. Like, I'm a company, I offer a service, but am I a brand? When I think of brands, I think of like Kellogg's or Tesla or things like that. I don't know if I think about my own business that way. David: Yeah. And a lot of small businesses don't. But even though they don't, very often, if they don't know what to do from a marketing and sales standpoint, they will copy the big brands because that's what they're seeing. You're watching TV, you see a commercial for Kellogg's or you see a commercial for McDonald's or some retail brand and you say, "Oh, okay, that's what I need to do. I just need to get my name out there." Right? When I think of branding, particularly for small business, that's what I think of. Somebody who's like, "Oh, I just have to get my name out there." And when you've spent as much money on marketing as Kellogg's has, or as McDonald's has, or any of the big companies have, they already know what those companies are all about. They already know what they do. So they can just basically say, come in and buy from us. And they're like, okay, I already know what it's all about. For small businesses to do that, to just put out the name of their company and expect people to want to wander in, it just doesn't happen. And that's why I think this topic, you know, the idea of making sales and building brands, I could have said making sales versus building brands, because I think sometimes people view it as two different things, but ideally we have to do both. And even if it's not a matter of seeing yourself as a brand right now, once You're established enough in your market where people recognize who you are and what you do. That's sort of building a brand in their minds. So that when they hear the name of your business, they associate it with certain things, related to what you do and how you do it. When you think about Tesla or Elon Musk, you have a very good feel for sort of what he's all about and how he tends to approach things. So to me, that's an established brand. When small businesses want to establish a brand, they can spend a lot of money doing it, which is why they kind of have to be making sales along the way and focused on that first. Jay: Yeah, great point. You know, in those big companies, they have the big dollars to have focus groups and all of those things. Talking about the very beginning of your branding, again, I think we're coming up with another podcast topic here, though. People who just throw together their logos or their slogans, It drives me crazy because it's like the first impression when they meet you in public. David: Yeah, and again, with small businesses in particular, sometimes we can be too cute for our own good, too creative, quote unquote, for our own good. We think that something that appeals to us is going to appeal to everyone else. Personally, I think that the simpler we keep it, the more direct we keep it, the more sense it makes. Now Nike spent so much money establishing what that swoosh means that they can put a swoosh up on the screen and people go, Oh, maybe I'll go buy some shoes, right? We can't do that. And so. Unless you have that level of funding, unless you have access to that much money that you can teach people what your logo means, then you have to be a lot more clear and direct about your communication, your logos,

When we think in terms of creating persuasive communication, it's really important to consider the flow. What is the flow of the communication? In what order are you asking these questions and having these conversations? Are you leading with the pitch? Because if you're leading with the sales pitch, then that's not going to work well at all. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing creating persuasive communication. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thanks, David. You mean all communication is not good communication? I just thought sending out emails and random texts, that's the way to go. David: Yeah, random communication is often different than persuasive communication. I guess sometimes it can line up, but the stars have to all be in alignment for that to happen. Jay: Yeah, I see this. I get emails saying, Hey, just following up. And I'm like, Oh, you know, I don't know that that's really how you want to approach a potential customer. There's no energy, there's no urgency, there's nothing persuasive about it. It kind of feels meh. And, I recognize that now cause I'm in that business, right? David: Exactly. And I think if we start from the premise that different prospects have different needs, that's a really good way to start. Because I think a lot of salespeople tend to think in terms of persuasive communication, meaning saying things that will get them to buy from you. And that's only the case if and when we've determined that we have a good fit with the person that we're talking to, right? Persuasive communication doesn't just mean getting them to buy. It's about seeing if they buy into what it is that we do, seeing if we've got enough of a fit to have it make sense. What I think in terms of persuasive communication, it's the kind of thing that's going to get people engaged. It's going to pull them into the conversation rather than repel them from the conversation. So while the term persuasive sort of implies that we're trying to persuade them to do something, that is true, but it's not just about that. It's not just about trying to get someone to do something. It's about seeing if what we're talking about to begin with even makes sense. Jay: Yeah, and I think we talked about that a lot in our last episode, getting to know that customer so that you can build loyalty. How do you expect to send out persuasive communication if you haven't taken the time to get to know them? And for example, I'm in the tax business, which is hard for me to say, I can't believe that happened. But my communication is very different right now in the summer than it is in March, right? In March, there's a built in urgency, and so it's a lot easier to communicate to them what they need. This time of year, very different. David: Right, and the things that you need to persuade them of now are different than the things you have to persuade them of in January, February, March, right? Because what you need to persuade them of now is perhaps thinking in advance about what they're going to need to do rather than trying to cram it in at the last minute. So that's going to change the languaging. If you think in terms of who do you need to appeal to, that's going to be happening throughout the year. What type of prospect am I looking to bring in the door, and how can I help that person to make a decision based on what we're doing as opposed to what someone else is doing? You know, what are they likely to want? And we can't always know that. We can assume, okay, well, I think they're going to want to pay less taxes. That's probably a reasonable assumption. And for some people, for most of them, that's probably going to be the case, but there might be some sort of extenuating circumstance that plays into that as well. And if you're not touching on that, if you haven't taken the time to understand what it is they're actually looking for,

When I think in terms of turning leads into loyal customers, what is that first contact? And I know we've talked about that in a number of podcasts. And then from there, what is the desired path that we want them to take with us, that we want to take with them, right? Without some sort of basic path to get from here to there, the likelihood of making that happen is pretty much slim to none. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing turning leads into loyal customers. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Such a great topic again. I love our conversations cause I learn so much and I feel like there's a tendency to say, okay, I got the lead. I closed them. Now I'm going to move on to the next lead. And I think we would save ourselves a lot of time and money, if we were able to turn that customer into a returning loyal customer. David: Yeah, absolutely. And you raised a great point because I was thinking in terms of just new leads that come in, turning them into loyal customers. But I think what you pointed out is probably even more important, that we already got someone and we've already turned them into a customer. And now how do we make that customer more loyal to us? I know in a lot of presentations that I've done over the years, I've talked about these sort of different layers of recognition in terms of what do people think about us? And I've often drawn it out like a target for archery practice. And outside the target is the area where it's total obscurity. They have absolutely no idea who we are or why they should do business with us. And at the center of the target, it's complete customer loyalty. And you don't get from, "I don't know who you are," to "I'm completely loyal to you" in one step. It's got to happen in a series of actions. So what you're talking about there, you make that first sale. That doesn't even happen very often in the first contact. A lot of times it requires intelligent repetition of contact to even get to that. We go from obscurity. I don't know who you are, to recognition, I recognize you, but I'm not sure if I love you yet, right? I don't know enough about you. To comfort, and then once we get to comfort, once they're comfortable enough with us to place that first time order, like what you were talking about, then they're going to see how we do. And if we did well, they might give us another chance and come back again. And if we do well on that second one, they might come back and give us a third chance. And then As long as that continues to play out, that's going to lead to that level of loyalty, but it sure isn't likely to happen in one conversation or one transaction. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. But I kind of like where you started off, too, before we dive into that a little bit more. And that is thinking about making the loyal customer out of the lead . Where do you start? Because a lot of people are like, I can't make them loyal until they've purchased a product. That's not true, is it? David: Well, I think if you recognize that when I attract a lead into my organization or when I'm even just trying to attract a lead into my organization, the goal is to turn that person into a loyal, longtime customer or client. So when you start with that perspective, you become a lot more discerning about even the people that you're approaching. You have more skin in the game, because it's not just about, "hey, can I make a sale to pay my bills for today?" It's about, "do I want this person as a loyal customer?" And this goes back to a lot of what we've talked about in previous episodes about qualification and that sort of thing. But if we start out with the idea that we want to turn our leads into loyal customers, I think it positions us better, because it makes it more relational and less transactional. Makes it more about creating the kind of relationship that will result in a loyal cus...

Maintenance is often the most challenging area in a property management business. What if you could automate your maintenance workflow with an in-house, expert AI maintenance coordinator? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David from Vendoroo (formally Tulu) to talk about AI maintenance coordination and how it could revolutionize the property management industry. You'll Learn [05:25] The AI Revolution [10:51] What can AI Maintenance Coordination Do? [20:58] How Vendoroo Handles Work Orders [27:56] Why You Should Have in-House Maintenance [37:30] Where do Humans Step in? [41:37] Handling Worst-Case Scenarios Tweetables “Property management is a very human business. It's a very relationship-driven business.” “Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives.” “Residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager.” “The first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] David: Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control.  [00:00:24] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high, trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:05] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:25] And now let's get into the show. All right. So today I'm hanging out with David Normand and Reza Keshavarzi. Did I say your last name right?  [00:01:36] David: We always say it sounds like the great sauce that you would put on a steak. Keshavari. So delicious. [00:01:41] Jason: All right.  [00:01:41] David: Yes. Cool.  [00:01:43] Jason: So David and Reza are from a company called Tulu, which we'll be getting into, which I think are probably revolutionizing maintenance related to AI and our topic today, we're going to be talking about AI and maintenance coordination, maybe getting into some of the current maintenance challenges, what AI could help with, what should be automated, what shouldn't be automated because I think that's a very important thing to cover and how to turn maintenance into a profit center. Before we get into that, why don't we get into some background? So David, why don't you give us the journey? How did you two get into this? How did you event like, how did you start your journey in the property management space? [00:02:24] David: Yeah, great. It's crazy to think about it. It just all started probably about 15 years ago. Like many of you, started a property management company with a buddy of mine. I remember we started off with 80 doors. Got our 1st client, was excited. He left his job at Verizon. I was actually in the banking industry, bidding on subprime auto loans and the 2008 crash happened. And so we all knew what happened after that. And so anyway we actually had some tremendous success and in just over four years we added over 600 doors. Which was a phenomenal growth in our market. And we had a lot of people going, "Hey, what's your secret sauce? what are you guys doing?" Right. And the reality was, is that we just cared, right? We cared harder. We had fiduciary duty. And all of these owners were leaving their other property managers and saying, "Hey, Maybe these guys have it figured out," and we were getting conversions and our close rate was like 80%. [00:03:13] It was really crazy, but something happened and just like many of us, owners started getting frustrated feeling like, the magic was wearing off because at the end of the day, no matter how hard we worked. Those owner statements and those maintenance invoices at the end of the month, I realized were the main source of friction between those long lasting relationships and the same reason why somebody left that previous property manager to come over for the hope of more transparency and maintenance was the same issue that we ran into. [00:03:41] Right. So that led me on this journey of trying to figure out, how do we standardize our fiduciary duty to owners when it comes to maintenance and help them bring transparency and education and understanding to what I feel is really the cornerstone foundation of what a great relationship is? Because no, the building can be full, the mortgage can be paid, but those maintenance bills still come in and there's still the questions.  [00:04:06] "Why does this cost this much? So I had some great opportunities to work went on with Fannie Mae helped them manage their rental portfolio, but still in the back of my head, wanted to try to solve this issue. And all these years later, I get a phone call from somebody that said, "Hey, you need to meet this guy, Reza. He's in the HOA industry. And he's seen a similar issue with lack of transparency. And I think that you guys are trying to solve the same issue. Hey, why don't you meet up?" And I'll, and I'll preface this. This was the fourth introduction to a guy in a fourth type of tech or a company that we try to part with. [00:04:40] And it just shows you the journey of an entrepreneur. Like you never know when that right connection that's going to align with your passions, resources, and understanding happens. And I actually had three other techs that didn't work out before. And I didn't want to bring them to market. [00:04:52] Right. So that's our story. We got introduced to each other and the synergies have been fantastic. And I'm really excited to talk about what we're doing here in the space. So it's been a crazy journey. It's been exciting. Maybe one day I'll write a book down the road about all the things not to do. [00:05:04] Jason: I think every entrepreneur that has a little bit of success could write that book. I'm sure. So cool. David, where do you think we should start? Like there's a revolution right now, this AI revolution, like it's AI everywhere. And and it's moving fast.  [00:05:21] David: Yes.  [00:05:21] Jason: Like really fast. [00:05:22] And it's a bit crazy. And. Everything's changing. There's a million software tools and companies coming out. Maybe AI is making all of them. I have no idea, but like...  [00:05:31] David: 85 percent of all content written online is written by AI these days. So yeah, definitely.  [00:05:35] Jason: Right. There's the fake internet theory that like the majority of the traffic and communication and comments on the internet isn't even real. So it's like we're walking around this fake ghost town online. And we're consuming content and we're like none the wiser in a lot of instances. So my quick take, for those listening, as we're going through this AI revolution, it's exciting. There's a lot of change happening. [00:05:57] We don't want to be left behind. We want to make sure we're paying attention to what's new, what we can use. Everybody's probably used chat GPT once or twice or keeps hearing about it from other people. "They've got a GPT, that thing that you use." Yeah. I used it this morning, right? Like I was trying to figure out something in my Chevy Tahoe. [00:06:15] And I was like, "how do I do this thing in my Tahoe? Like, can you just tell me?" And it can collapse time, but sometimes it's not useful. I think my take on this is that human interaction is going to be a premium. It's going to be at a premium. It's going to be something that really sets people apart because we're moving away from humanity to some degree by leveraging all this tech and AI and all these tools and property management is a very human business. [00:06:43] It's a very relationship driven business. And and I think we'll get into this today. We want to be careful of using technology where we shouldn't or trying to trick people. "Well, look, I'm pretending like it's me, but it's AI. Haha. I tricked you." And what's funny is there's little indicators, like, and we know that this stuff's being used in a lot of different ways, like governments are using this now, like, we don't even know what's real on the news or what's like deep fakes or AI, like they're showing people's like doing interviews and people are zooming in and noticing their rings are disappearing and like weird stuff, right? [00:07:20] David: Yeah.  [00:07:20] Jason: And stuff's going viral on like the internet. And so we're living in this world where we're super skeptical and we wonder if anything's real.  [00:07:28] David: Yeah.  [00:07:29] Jason: Sometimes people are even asking, like, is this AI on a phone call?  [00:07:33] David: Yeah, well, you can't tell the difference now. I'll tell you, our tech team and AI guys they actually played around with me a little bit and they actually use my voice and had me doing work orders and no one could tell it was them. [00:07:44] Not me speaking and giving triage and doing that type of stuff. And I actually I tested it with my wife and I sent her a message over it and she didn't even blink an eye. Didn't even blink an eye. It was crazy. It was that first like aha moment that really when we talk about our fiduciary duty to our clients and ourselves about the power of this and where it's going, right. [00:08:01] And to that point. So when it comes to AI, I think people need to understand that really, the way that we look at chat GBT to me is just the new Google, right? It's Google on steroids. Okay. And so, yeah, for sure. Do we use some chat GBT to understand like, how to write the perfect sentence structure? For sure. [00:08:18] But the cool part about this, Jason, is that what we're doing is: how do we use these models in this education that teach it about fiduciary duty to your owners? That's what gets me excited, right? That's what gets me excited to understand and to think intelligently and to think with thoughtfulness to the owner's pocketbooks when it's considering a decision of how to dispatch for maintenance, right? [00:08:42] Like, isn't that what we're all looking for? That we need a system that every work order that comes in that it goes to a expert maintenance coordinator that we know what that costs. I'm talking expert maintenance coordinator, a person's been in this job for 15 to 20 years that you can send a work order to and they don't make an error. [00:09:00] They're intelligent. They're able to educate, they're able to be client facing. Like there's a real skill set there if you put that on a CV for somebody, right? But that's not what this industry is filled with. Actually, this industry is filled with individuals who are under pressure to find the most affordable maintenance solutions and the most affordable ways to try to find people to run those maintenance solutions. We're allocating the least amount of resources to handle what I consider the highest probability of owner dissatisfaction in the property management relationship with the owner, right? So I have a VA who's 2000 miles away that's responsible for spending a thousand dollars in my owner's money. [00:09:38] And there's all types of potential errors and things that are happening as a result of that. So the way that we look at AI and actually in our business, we just use the word smart a lot. And we try to use that word, that intelligent instead of artificial. Because you know what? There is a lot of human input that has gone into this to teach it how to be smart and to teach it how to consider the fiduciary duty. [00:09:59] So at the end of the day, I would encourage all the listeners here that are going on this journey with us today to understand, not to be skeptical, how to maximize its value, right? And that's really what we're going to be focusing on today and to show you how we're maximizing its value to help us achieve what we call our dream outcome when handling maintenance. [00:10:18] Our dream outcome is as a property manager, I'm starting a company or I'm looking to grow, or I'm hitting those next growth objectives, or I'm looking for ways to be more profitable. What is my dream outcome? And that all circles around having an expert maintenance coordination in my office that is reducing trips costs and considering the fiduciary duty to my clients. [00:10:40] Right? So that's what we'll talk about here today and how we're using AI to achieve that.  [00:10:43] Jason: Got it. Well, let's get into it. So what can AI do and what can't AI do? Like, well, specifically what can Tulu do and what can't Tulu do?  [00:10:54] Where's the line drawn?  [00:10:55] David: Yeah, that's a great question. [00:10:56] So first of all, I always tell everybody this out of the beginning: we are not an outsourced maintenance coordination solution. We're not an outsourced company. Yeah. We are not a vendor. Okay. We're not bringing vendors to your marketplace. Okay. Tulu is your expert in house maintenance coordinator. [00:11:13] So if you're thinking of "I'm hiring a maintenance coordinator" or "I'm building a property management and I need a maintenance coordinator," you now have that. That's that ability to add this onto your software, your system. It's a simple plug and play. You get to remain inside of your portal, you don't have to leave it. [00:11:30] There's not another new portal, all updates, all things are pushing to Buildium and we're pushing to Appfolio. That was a big part of it. There's no new app for the vendors. There's no new app for the clients because we know what's important for them to live inside of there. So what can it do? Well, first of all, it's a leader. [00:11:43] Okay. And being a leader means that it is going to use the information that we capture about your company to lead your VAs, to make expert triage decisions that always consider your fiduciary duty to the owner. So let's give an example right here to break that down. Right. Say a hot water tank comes in. [00:12:03] Okay. Hot water tank's leaking. Okay. First thing it's going to want to understand is what time of the day is it and where is the hot water tank leaking from?  [00:12:09] Jason: Okay.  [00:12:10] David: And then it's going to determine based upon the location of the hot water tank, the type of the hot water tank, which type of vendor at which time is the right one to send out. That is the most cost effective that has the greatest probability of resolving that issue for the best price and meets the satisfaction of the resident. Right. Now that was a mouthful right there. Okay. And if you think about all of the potential errors and data points and things that are involved, the smart maintenance coordinator considers all those and it brings out a triage and it tells the VA "here's the pieces that you're missing. Here's the information that I need. And here's what my suggestion is for you to move forward." So it's amazing at being a leader. And then it's amazing at being an expert about creating communications for the resident and to the vendor to direct them. And then it's also an educator and at the bottom of every work order. [00:12:58] And I hope to be able to show some people it's really cool. We don't believe in just telling people what to do. We should educate them and tell them why they're doing what they're doing. Right. So imagine if you had the best expert maintenance coordinator leaning over the shoulder of every VA that you have standing there and telling them every work order, every time, here's what to do, here's how to do it, and here's why you're doing it. Right. And as a result, we're finding that VAs that come over that are dedicated to the account in two weeks, they're educated. And in six weeks, the majority of them are executing as a high level maintenance expert within six weeks. Of after sitting down and learning the training system, because just as much as it's leading, it's also training and educating. [00:13:38] That is a wow moment for somebody who's been in the space, who's been here for 15 years, managing hundreds and hundreds of people for government entities and stuff and understanding the amount of time and effort and training that goes into somebody. And then all of a sudden they come and they tell you, "Hey, by the way, I got a new job. Thank you for all the training. I'm going to go make $30,000 somewhere else," right? How many times has this happened to me? Hundreds of times, right? And so that's a big part of what we're solving here.  [00:14:02] Jason: So in order to be effective and operate as an expert maintenance coordinator so that your VAs that don't have this knowledge can function as if they have this knowledge, then this has to be programmed, right? Maybe it'd be helpful for, the viewers or listeners of this podcast to find out what are all the inputs that go into this? What did they have to provide and what do you guys provide, so this AI, they can trust it? [00:14:29] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question, Jason. So first of all, I want to put it on point two to make an emphasis that in this journey that we're all learning about these smart technologies and AI, there's still a big part of human component, right? [00:14:38] And it's like when you chat, when you write something in chat GBT, like you just don't send it without looking at it. Right. You're reviewing it and making sure it's still saying that you want it to say. Right. So everybody rest assured this thing is not, living on its own and there's checks and balances. [00:14:51] But the onboarding on average takes 30 to 45 minutes. Okay. And one of the things that we did is number one is, when it comes to triaging and best practices, there's literally probably about 500,000 work orders of data points that it's considering. And it's an expert in that thing that's saying, "Hey, listen, this is how you should handle every work order that comes in because I've seen this, 20,000 times, and this is the best outcome." [00:15:18] Right. But then what it does is it allows the property manager to talk in natural language. Like you want to talk like a robot. We don't have to write weird code. Just say things. "Hey the owner of one, two, three main street really loves Tom." Tom works on his properties. Comes in 123 main street comes up. It understands what Tom's capabilities are. And it says, "please use Tom to use this." The owner prefers that Tom works on his properties. They have a great relationship. Cool. And so those little tidbits for example, if the heat goes out in unit number one, understand that access has to be in unit number two basement to the HVAC unit, right? [00:15:52] So that's good to know, but why is that important to know? Because most VAs would make a mistake. They say there's no heat. They don't check property notes. They send out the plumber. Plumber is knocking on the door at unit number one. Person says, I don't know where the HVAC unit is. Tenant next door is not home. [00:16:06] Now you just charge your owner for 250 emergency call to go out. The resident still doesn't have heat. They think that you're unorganized. It shows you're unorganized on your owner statement because there's two invoices. "Oh, no, wait, you want to cover that? You're unorganized." So you just ate 250 that you're already not marking up on maintenance and you do that 10 times a month. [00:16:25] Okay. And that's what's going on.  [00:16:27] Jason: And this is where then the owner's like, "I might as well just do it myself because I know everything and it's in my head." So how did they get all of that out of their head? All the little things they know about each property, each multi unit property, what's in the basements, what's..? [00:16:40] David: We have a cool onboarding process. And again, most times about 30-45 minutes, they sit in, it's called building your AI co pilot. Actually, a lot of people dig it. It's cool. It's a cool process. And we will be first, we go into your system and we're able to pull out all your work order data and it organizes all your vendors, and we can tell who all your vendors are and what you're doing based upon the work order types. [00:16:59] We can tell if you're a preferred guy is here. Number one guy is, "Hey. This guy always seems to be working on these properties." So there's a lot of information that we gather. And then you just come in and you're like, "yeah, he's my primary. He's my secondary. Oh, here's this little information about this property." [00:17:13] So you really don't have to get like, like crazy. Like, like, the mailbox is located, like. You can add that stuff later, but in the beginning, it's just like, what are those important rules? I remember this one that really jumped out at me as impactful, a classic mistake, this owner had a lady living in the apartment for 35 years. [00:17:31] Okay, and she's getting old and one of the rules is that no matter what maintenance ticket comes in, "don't ask her to triage. Don't ask her. It's the tenant's responsibility. I love this person. Please send her out and just take care of her. Right?" What a great rule to put into your system that shows the owner that when that work order comes in, He's not getting a call from, and I forget what her name is. [00:17:51] And like, they're asking me to change my light bulbs again. And then he's like, I told you twice not to do this. And next thing he's looking for another property manager. And I always love that example of that rule. So that's what you're looking as far as the information you're giving us takes about 30 to 45 minutes. [00:18:03] For people who have anywhere between, 150 to 350 properties. If you start having, 500, 600, a thousand, I would definitely allocate up to two hours and onboarding for sure.  [00:18:13] Jason: Okay. That's really fast when it comes to rolling out a new technology. Yeah. It's ridiculously fast.  [00:18:19] David: Yeah. [00:18:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Extremely quick. So basically you have all this learning and understanding that's going into who your preferred vendors are. We know how to handle the maintenance work orders. There's no like integration that has to happen. And so as this triage is coming through, you're getting this expert level triage and you can add things down the road. [00:18:38] You can add it, but how to handle the work orders as we say, there's really nothing new in maintenance. What's new is: "what's the NT for the property? Are there any special conditions that we need to know? Right? What are your residents' responsibilities and what are you responsible for?" Once you have those four questions answered, how to handle the hot water tank, at what time to hit on the hot water tank, how to, how to repair this door, how to do that. [00:19:02] Those true principles of maintenance are true for everybody, if that makes sense, right? So, so that's a big part of the value that you get that You're hiring an expert maintenance coordinator. If you were to hire him, you wouldn't necessarily be telling him. "Hey, this is how you replace a doorknob." [00:19:18] He should already know that when you hired him. Right. So think of like it that way when you're considering us as a technology.  [00:19:24] Jason: So, a human maintenance coordinator, the challenge would be, there's no way they can remember every detail about every property, right?  [00:19:32] David: Yeah,  [00:19:32] Jason: it's not. Which means they would have to keep notes. [00:19:35] Let's say they've already got a decent amount of notes somewhere. Might be in the property management software, maybe they've got their own, I don't know, database of something. Is there the ability to pull in all that information?  [00:19:46] David: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. To grab those notes out. A lot of people have the ability to export it. [00:19:51] They have a good note file or something like that. We get those, we take that information and it can just be pushed up into the system for sure. So yeah, the onboarding it, it can be, again, some people come in and say, "all I have is single family houses." Everything's pretty straightforward. [00:20:03] Other people send over an Excel list. "Here's my property notes at the property levels" and upload them. So that's the cool part where. You ingest into the system. There's not a lot of data, manual input. It's reading it and assigning it. And that's where we're using technology to help even improve the onboarding process that you talked about, right? [00:20:19] You think about people wear t shirts, like, I survived the Yardi onboarding process, right? Like, technology has come a long way to help improve that process, and that was a big part that we focused on.  [00:20:28] Jason: Yeah, that's wild. So once you've got them onboarded and they're in your system, the AI knows pretty much everything about the property, but maybe it doesn't, maybe there's some things it doesn't know. [00:20:41] And so work order comes up. You're working on something and it's still just in the property manager's head or it's still in the business owner's head or maybe they don't even know yet, but it runs there. It runs into an issue. It's like it has a question maybe, or it doesn't. It needs to know some more stuff. [00:20:57] I don't know. What happens in those scenarios? [00:21:00] David: Yeah, this is a great one. So, all right, so let's talk about the life cycle of a work order. Right. And let's everybody just understand that there still is a human component involved in this, right? Every property manager has a dedicated, we call them a remote team member, who's now this expert maintenance coordinator at the cost of a remote team member. [00:21:16] Now they're able to execute at a very high level. But there are going to be things that they're faced that they don't understand. So they have the ability to communicate with you one on one, or we also have this process internally that they have this ability to go, "I need a request from the expert in the loop" and the expert in the loop is you know, invoice review, complication that they're saying that the AI is not clear on them and it's asking for additional support. And so they can bump that up to individuals, myself, and there's other members of the team members that are big part of this and they can get expert level triage inside of there, to say, "Hey, listen, I'm facing with this vendor issue. They need 25 percent upfront. The job is only 500. I'm not understanding what to do here. The building is located and they're saying access is weird. They need to bring something in." There are complications that still involve human understanding. And so that expert in the loop solves that piece in there. [00:22:07] And also speaking of humans, we believe that residents and vendors still need to speak to a human. Okay. Super important. Okay. So the value that we have is that we're able to create expert level triage, According to their specifications and the training model and all the great things and the automation and the text messages that are written for them and the codes that are written for them the emails, all those things. [00:22:31] So, if we can automate at a very high level and free up our people to be able to provide support on the phone to the vendor on the field, or to actually talk to a resident, everybody knows this and I talk to everybody, guys, residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager and that when they call in, a lot of people have not even adapted technology for anybody who has, residents have been with them with a while and they're used to talking to Janet, they're used to talking to tell him inside and next thing you can say to them, "Oh, we have a new maintenance system. And by the way, you have to talk to the system." They're like, "okay. This is lame," right? Like, so that personal connection and we have a saying inside of the office that we keep your residents and your vendors within arm's length of you, right? It's communicating. They're using your property management name. [00:23:20] They're speaking on your behalf. This is an extension of your office. This is your maintenance coordinator. Don't think of this as a vendor. Don't think this is an outsourced maintenance solution that you're setting all your maintenance to some company that's sourcing vendors or bringing them in and doing every, this is your in house maintenance team. [00:23:38] So always consider that when you're thinking about Tulu, real people. In house maintenance coordinator just powered by AI enabled execute at a crazy high level.  [00:23:46] Jason: So, yeah. So how do tickets get into the maintenance system? Like how are they initiated? Do they still have to be answering their own phone calls? [00:23:56] Are they just putting it into their property manager software? And then Tulu is going to like start taking some action. What communication does Tulu facilitate or take over if we're going to be having still needing some humans to be in Tulu allows us to increase the amount of communication and care that we show. [00:24:13] Where do we draw the line? Like, where is Tulu stepping in and doing some communication and where do we need team members to be doing communication?  [00:24:21] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So let's just go through the life cycle of a work order for everybody. I think that's what everyone really understands when they're all thinking about this. [00:24:28] Okay, let's give me a work order from start to finish. Right? So no change to your residents. No change to anybody. They log into their portal, Buildium, Appfolio, RentVine, whatever they're using. They submit a maintenance work order, that maintenance work order through their system is dispatched to the Tulu maintenance coordinator, expert maintenance coordinator. [00:24:46] All the magic is happening, all the triage, everything is taking place, and inside of the property management software, they're going to see. Work order.  [00:24:53] Jason: And is that dispatched through via email? API? Yep.  [00:24:56] David: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just through email? Yep. Set up as simple. You can set it up as a maintenance coordinator and as the maintenance coordinator is set up and the email comes in and it pings out and that creates the work order and starts to process through the, yeah. [00:25:08] Yep. Cool. And then the property manager will see that the work order has been it's in triage on the status of their system. Then it's assigned, then the vendor will be assigned there. And then from there, the updates, when it's scheduled that we call it the who, what, and the why, right? [00:25:25] What's going on, who's doing it and what's being done to progress this for. That's a note. You're constantly getting those notes. Now, the cool part about this, Jason. is behind the scenes. All of those text messages and phone calls and emails that we call the noise that are between the residents and the vendors and everybody are all being captured in a system behind the scenes. [00:25:45] Right. Super value there, right? If a resident is a little bit upset about something or you have some questions, "Hey guys, can you hand me the phone call this one to show me the text messages," right? Communications are big part. So we capture all those communications inside there at any time that the owner of the property manager wants to pull them. [00:26:00] That's great. Then the work order is completed. The completion, quick question. So  [00:26:05] Jason: all this communication between tenants and vendors, unless they're using some sort of magical system That the vendors have to be in and that the tenants are logged into. And it's like seeing all this, how does Tulu capture that? [00:26:18] How does it know that the vendor is communicating with the tenant or the tenant? Okay. So it would be any point.  [00:26:24] David: Yeah. Good point. Any point that the the tenant. Is communicating or the vendor or just communicate with two of those. So if the vendor happened to communicate directly with the tenant, it would not capture that part, right? [00:26:34] That's their phone to phone with that part, right? So it's when the resident or the tenant is communicating with the maintenance coordinator. And as we all know, tenants and vendors love to communicate by text message, right? That's their number one thing to do. So, it's really cool for vendors too, because as we know, a bunch of vendors, they hate. "I don't want to work in another app." Vendors can take pictures from their phone. They can upload estimates from their phone. The estimate comes in and it's actually turned into this really pretty estimate because we know vendors estimates are notorious for being on the back of a paper and hand scratched, right? [00:27:06] So it actually creates into a brand new Tulu estimate. And so your owners get transparency into pricing and labor. And it's standardized and everything looks clean. And so yeah, vendors love it because they're not lazy, but they're busy guys. And instead of going home and trying to do a whole bunch of paperwork, they can now just generate an estimate, take a picture and shoot it right through. [00:27:22] So, yeah.  [00:27:23] Jason: Because the challenge that there's a lot of communication involved. And so usually to decrease the amount of communication, they're trying to figure out how do we get the vendors to just talk to the tenants directly to collapse time? But if you have AI, then my guess is that Tulu will still just act like that middle person because the vendor can communicate with them, they can immediately text you, then Tulu texts the tenant, then it's just doing it real time. [00:27:45] You don't have to wait on a human being in your office to like make this communication happen. So you're like, "well, we're so slow. Let's just get them to talk to each other." The AI is making this happen. Is that accurate?  [00:27:56] David: Huge point right here is, and man you really hit off the nail on the head on this one point here. [00:28:01] The amount of people that we are seeing that they're using vendors to perform triage in this space is actually alarming. Okay. Alarming. All right. Vendors should not be performing our triage. They should not be the ones trying to figure out what is going on. They're not our client facing people. Maybe some guys are good. [00:28:20] your in-house guys, goods or whatever. The majority of people are using this, right? The beauty of the system is: Do we have enough information that is captured? From the resident, the property manager that considers the needs of the owner to formulate the correct direction to the vendor so that they can show up with the resources that they need to fix the job the right time or show up educated about what they're there to fix. [00:28:41] Jason: So let's talk about this real quick. Like vendors should not be doing triage and why not? Like, like what are the obvious ramifications here? Well, vendors, that's like asking a surgeon if you need surgery, right? That's how he makes his money.  [00:28:55] "That's the solution is surgery. We should chop that out, like, let's cut that thing out and I get paid thousands and thousands of dollars."  [00:29:02] David: Or how about this one, Jason, on an owner's report. I see a cost for so many times you see a cost for a maintenance guy, "unable to resolve expert needed." well, why? Because the maintenance vendor was sent out to do the triage. [00:29:15] That's not fiduciary duty to the owner. If we had the right information, we could have avoided that one trip. So we have some really cool case studies. I'd love to show people that out of like 260 work orders, we have one right here, a client that signed up with us. And so out of that thing here let's see. [00:29:31] They completed 194 work orders. 17 unnecessary trips were canceled. Wow. Okay. 17 unnecessary trips and 15 of those work orders had an immediate reduction in price because they said that the wrong resource was assigned to that. So think about that. 17 different numbers.  [00:29:48] Jason: So if that, if they have an in-house maintenance team, you're decreasing your your cost deploying these texts, going out and doing stupid work, like significantly. If you are using third party vendors, then there's always an expense. If you're sending anybody out, unless you're like, go do a bid, or something like this, but that's costing the vendor, which they're going to be more frustrated with you. [00:30:09] So you're freeing that up or they're charging you for it. "Oh, well, if I go out, I charge, right?" Yeah.  [00:30:15] David: I'll give you an example. We just saved owner of a pad split property who wanted to replace the refrigerator. The request came in and they asked for three estimates, okay, to replace the refrigerator. [00:30:28] Okay, the suggestion came back that basically said in a nutshell, summarize this, "why are you sending three different appliance vendors who are all going to charge a trip fee to go look at a refrigerator when a Home Depot program should be used and the cost of refrigerator should be 860? To factor all those costs in, it would have been about 1, 400. I don't understand why you're doing this. Please explain, right?" Talk about fiduciary duty to the owner.  [00:30:51] Jason: This is why owners get frustrated and they're like, "I might as well just do it myself." [00:30:55] David: " Because I knew better. I would go to Home Depot. Everyone knows to order a refrigerator from Home Depot, right? Unless there's special circumstances." And now imagine this, and this is where we're going with this, Jason. At the end of each month, these owner reports go out to all these owners, and owners sit down and they call up the property manager, and we always hear people talking about this at every conference. [00:31:14] "Oh, I don't want to answer that phone call. I know what this is about, right?" And the property manager is scrambling at the end of the month to call the maintenance coordinator, dig into work order notes and justify why did this cost this much? "Explain this to me," right? So we have this really cool report that's coming out that basically, including in the property owner, It would let you know that, Hey, you had six jobs that were able to send a handyman this month. [00:31:38] Here's what's going on. You had two emergencies, two replacements, little asterisks that said, "Hey, this trip fee was 120. Why? Well, it required two people because there was a toilet that was being replaced on the third floor so they requested an extra hour of labor to be able to bring that toilet up because it was too like..." intimate details so that your owners are feeling like they're getting this like this whole transparency, unbelievable transparency, this report, the property manager doesn't have to waste at the end of the month, which I used to send away two to three days at the beginning of each month, just to answer phone calls and questions.  [00:32:12] Jason: Right. Yeah. It's like "why did it cost us much? Why?" [00:32:14] Like they can just see it.  [00:32:16] David: Yeah. "Why didn't you send Tom?" "Well, I did send Tom to snake the drain because it was clogged in the master bathroom. We set his limit at an hour. He used a 17, 25 foot power snake. And we said, if you can't get this done within an hour, then we need to send Roto Rooter." "Oh, I get that. You really did try to save me money in the beginning. Yeah. And Roto Rooter found that 35 feet down the thing was a clogged diaper or something like that." That's what owners need to understand. And to break that down in every work order is a tremendous strain on property managers and our system in V2 that's coming very quickly. [00:32:52] I was actually working on this morning. Those owner reports will be generated then if every month that explain intimate details about the thought process. and the costs and any decisions behind breaking it down into category for every maintenance work order type for their owners. Huge value. Imagine going to a client, a new client, and you're presenting against somebody else and they say, "Hey, how do you handle maintenance?" [00:33:14] And you pull that report out and you put it down on the table.  [00:33:16] Jason: You're like, "like this is the level of detail. Nobody else is doing this." The maintenance coordinator get on the phone every time and saying, "let me walk you through all these charges and why they happened and what did." And like, how many people listen to this right now? [00:33:31] I'm like, I know you're listening to this going, "if I never had to do that again, that would be the best thing ever. Ever. Like I've never had to have that uncomfortable conversation with the owner." Like it's all in there. It's all there. Like it makes sense.  [00:33:43] David: "Here's why we are your property manager. And here's the value that I'm giving to you in the transparency to maintenance." [00:33:50] That's a huge burden. It's a significant pain point. And we know this Jason, the first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner and they're beginning Googling "other property managers around me." The third one. You're just waiting for them to look and to go somewhere else. [00:34:07] So the relationship is falling apart. Right. And we are trying to know that  [00:34:11] Jason: You got a 600 door business in four years.  [00:34:14] David: Yes.  [00:34:15] Jason: Like, and so, and you have probably heard countless stories of people if they're switching companies, it's really rare that people switch companies. Usually things have to be pretty bad and maintenance that's in communication. [00:34:27] Those that's number one factors, communication and why people leave. And so this allows you to free up a massive amount of time so you can actually be on the phone with the people when you need to be on the phone and stop wasting time with all of these repeat calls, repeat requests, what's going on with this, and yeah, this would just save so much time. [00:34:44] David: Well, think about growth, Jason, right? So the three things that we're solving for, number one is we're protecting fiduciary duty to the owners, justifying maintenance costs and reducing the cost of expert in house maintenance coordination and making it scalable. Yeah. Okay. [00:34:58] So now if I can have an expert maintenance coordinator that I add to my office, there's a fixed cost to it. I can scale infinity and not have to worry about hiring and training and staffing and issues and all these problems in global, right? My fiduciary duty to my owners, I got reporting and transparency. [00:35:17] Maybe my property manager now, instead of being able to manage 250 doors, maybe they can manage 350 doors. Isn't that cool? Like that's where we're going with this stuff for sure.  [00:35:25] Jason: Yeah, it definitely would make a business as maintenance coordination, maybe infinitely scalable. So, okay. I know somebody that's listening, that's very detail oriented and their brain doesn't think like a spider web, like mine is going, "Hey, you guys never finished the example scenario because Jason derailed it." [00:35:43] And so we've got the maintenance request. It's come in.  [00:35:46] David: Yeah.  [00:35:47] Jason: So take, let's go back to that.  [00:35:49] David: Okay. Yeah. Maintenance request comes in the triage takes place. The information is gathered once the information is gathered, and it fills the requirements of what they believe is the right decision. [00:36:00] At that point, the scheduling takes place. Okay.  [00:36:03] Jason: Okay. So which pieces of Tulu doing?  [00:36:05] David: All of this.  [00:36:05] Jason: Okay. Okay.  [00:36:07] David: Okay. Okay. So then we're scheduling and then the work is completed. Quality pictures are received. If the resident is satisfaction, you have happiness received, vendors invoices received, and that's all uploaded into the system. [00:36:20] And then at that point, the property manager can pay the vendor directly if they have a great relationship and maybe they want to pay them in whatever way they do. A lot of people like paying their vendors, that's fine. Or they can reimburse the Tulu system. If they just want to pay one vendor for the rest of their life, and then Tulu will pay the vendor for them directly. [00:36:38] So it is from intake to vendor payment, all updates, all communications, all triaging, everything.  [00:36:46] Jason: Tulu does all of it. Does it all.  [00:36:48] David: It is your perfect maintenance coordinator. What we call the dream scenario. It has the ability to triage, troubleshoot, knowledgeable about vendor pricing, it's client facing and experience and client facing means that you can even set the parameter that said, "Hey, if anything is over my NTE, I would actually like you to generate your justification as to why think about this and send it out to my owner." Now imagine your owner getting this super email that's like, "Hey, listen, we have this problem. So the five to fancy, here's the steps that it took place to do."  [00:37:15] Jason: So like the amount that's in the agreement that says like anything under 500 in a single month, like we have a right to just take care of it. Right. Or something like this property managers having their agreements. Okay. So, so where do they need humans then? Where do humans come in all of this? [00:37:31] David: Humans need to be there to provide expert level, the same expert level triage that the system is providing, we need humans in there to make sure, first of all, it's accurate. There is a component of that, right? We're reviewing this and training it, learning it, but as we talked about before, humans need to be there. [00:37:47] We love that they have a great relationship because they're an extension of the office with their RTM, right? With their property manager and that RTM, they get to know each other. Humans are needed to talk to the residents and humans are needed for vendor support. Okay. Vendors don't want to call into a robot when their hand is in a sewer line from the field asking about, "Hey, I need help and direction. What's going on?" [00:38:07] They don't want to hear "press two if you're unhappy with this service," like they don't want to hear that. That's where humans come in.  [00:38:13] Jason: Got it. Okay. So what are some of the results that you're seeing when you're installing in this into businesses? Like what's shifting? Because I'm hearing some things like it's going to decrease the time you're spending on the phone with your owner. [00:38:25] So it's going to decrease the amount of time doing communication. You won't have to spend time doing triages. It sounds like a large piece of maintenance coordination is going to be taken care of. It sounds like staffing costs can be reduced. You tell me what are clients noticing once they get this installed over their previous systems of using a stack of tech tools to try and get their team to be able to handle this stuff? [00:38:47] David: I think in the beginning and I think that it's cool in our relationship is just to hear people come back after the first month and go, "I can't believe it. Like I went an entire month and like, I was not involved in maintenance the way that I feel that I needed to be to make sure that all these things were taken care of. And I'm finding myself with like 20 hours extra a month." And we're like "yes, go grow. Go add more doors. Go show greater value to your clients. Maybe call your client that you haven't been calling in a month because you've been so busy." Right. So, so those are really cool. I think from a cost perspective, they are appreciating. [00:39:24] And I'm believing that. Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. So even though you're giving to somebody, they never were able to detach themselves from me. [00:39:37] And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control. If that makes sense. Or they're giving it away, but they're actually feeling they're in more control, if I'm making sense there. That's one of the coolest things is that they feel now they have their pulse on every work order where versus before they have to dive into search. Now they know that their requirements are just laid over every work order. So those are some big ones that I'm seeing, especially for those people who really show their value to their owners in the fact that they say, "I'm involved in every work order, every job." That's a great value prop. It really is. Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? [00:40:29] Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives, right? Scalable solution. And basically what we're doing is we're allowing the best in the business who are property managers who have created great relationships to duplicate themselves. And that's exciting for them to see. I think that they're like, "wow it's thinking like me."  [00:40:45] Jason: This really sounds like a serious competitive advantage for a property manager that adopts this over any other competitors that don't  [00:40:54] David: Jason, I'm going to a new client pitch and now I'm knowing that the guy next to me is sitting down showing him, "this is how I handle maintenance. This is how I'm keeping your cost down. This is the process. And that new report's coming in our V2. I was actually working some funnels that this morning. And if you're laying that down and then you're walking in behind them and the person says, "well, how do you handle maintenance?" [00:41:15] "Well, I personally call you on every maintenance ticket." We're witnessing the greatest generational movement of wealth and real estate properties from retiring baby boomers to the next generation to their kids who are all grown up in a technology world that are demanding transparency and reporting and it's just going to be the new standard, Jason, a hundred percent. [00:41:34] It's going to be the new standard for sure.  [00:41:36] Jason: Okay. We probably got somebody listening. They're super skeptical. They're like, there's no way. And they're going to throw us some crazy scenario that came up recently. And I'm sure you've heard some of these. So how would you address that? Like some sort of like, "well, what if it's like this and this," and it sounds like worst case scenario. [00:41:54] The AI just says, expert in the loop. Like it's, it raises his hand in some way and says, "Hey, I could use a human over here."  [00:42:00] David: Here's one that actually, as a guy who in my history, we had portfolios, like 30,000 properties. [00:42:06] So I've done probably over 500,000 work orders. In my career. Okay?  [00:42:10] Jason: More than most of the people that are probably listening to this. Yes.  [00:42:13] David: Yes. And as a result, just because of the size of the inventories that we used to manage the other day, a resident submitted a maintenance work order in and said, "my microwave is not working. And I assume it's because my gas stove is not turned on. And does my gas stove need to be turned on in order for the gas to flow up to my microwave?" Okay. True. True. Okay. All right. True maintenance work order. The the smart system picked that up and now imagine a VA facing that without any knowledge or an experience that's going to be an email to the property manager, a phone call to somebody, or maybe they make a mistake because they're 2000 miles away and they don't have any contacts and they sent out a plumber to go investigate. And the owner says, "why are you sending out a plumber for this?" Right? Right. Okay. The system picked up and it literally educated and trained. And it said that gas has no relevance whatsoever to a microwave solution. This is an incorrect thing, right? And that, when I saw that one, it makes mistakes. [00:43:04] Don't get me wrong. It's not perfect, but when I saw it pick up on that one, I said, man, I said, this is getting exciting that it picked up on that. So I would ask that person to come and just experience it and look at a little bit and understand guys, right? This is exciting. This is new. It's learning. [00:43:19] We're developing and it's improving daily. There's still a lot of human oversight. There's still a VAs that involved. We're getting expert maintenance coordination down to a price point that is affordable for everybody, scalable for everybody. And the biggest point at the end of the day, your owners are going to feel that every maintenance work order comes in, it's being handled by the best maintenance process in the industry. [00:43:39] And that's what you're going to be able to offer them as a property manager to compete against other competition you have in your market. And I think that's a good value prop. So.  [00:43:46] Jason: Yeah, definitely. So is there anything else related to turning maintenance into a profit center that we should cover? [00:43:52] David: Yeah the first step going into a profit center is realizing that the average person is paying between 16 to 28 dollars per door to manage their maintenance, right? If we get that down to the correct number, and I'd love to have anybody come through and we'll run the analytics for them and we'll give them a pricing model for that just off the bat, the first profit center that we're creating is what if I'm able to reduce that by 50 percent your cost, that's an immediate profit center, right? [00:44:16] That's profit center number one. And then we can look at profit centers number two, that like, all right, now I can add on if I want to add on to my markup or we have some other ways that we can show them how to. But the first profit center needs to be is what do you know how much you are paying per door to manage maintenance? [00:44:34] Take all of your staff, all of your VAs, all of your systems, all your after hour services, take all those pieces, add them all up and divide them by the number of doors that you have. So every door that you bring on, it's costing me $27 to handle maintenance emergency services. Okay. Know that number, and let's have a talk. [00:44:54] Jason: You got to build that calculator on your website.  [00:44:56] David: It's coming.  [00:44:57] Jason: A lot of calculators like that to help people calculate their cold lead marketing costs or whatever. And as soon as they fill that out, they're like, "okay, I'll sign up. Like this is ridiculous. What I've been doing?"  [00:45:06] David: We have that in product right now. [00:45:07] We have a couple of pieces. We did the finish on it, but that's coming out where people can just understand what they're paying per door. But give us a call up. We'll walk you through the exercise. We'll show you what you're costing. Think about that as your first profit center, Jason. And then we can talk about other ones and we help give some people some advice still. [00:45:22] Jason: So David, you have a lot of knowledge and experience. How much of your knowledge and experience has gone into bringing this AI up to understanding what you know?  [00:45:32] David: I've been working on this for 12 years. Of putting the data and the learnings. And again, I've been fortunate guys where it was just my path. [00:45:39] It was my journey through this, where I've got to work for some huge outfits. I had my own consulting company for seven years. I was working with some of the biggest SFR groups in the nation, guys with 10,000-20,000 doors. And I'm just fortunate to understand the amount of data. So, I've put my blood, sweat and tears into this, but at the core of that Jason, my blood, sweat, and tears. [00:46:00] Is that, 15 years ago when I was brand new in this property management space, I had a broker tell me one time that after the sale of the property is done, the success of the owner is no longer your business or mine. And it's up to them. The sale is done. And they told me that when they walked away and that bothered me to this day, it bothered me that the fiduciary duty that individuals are giving to us to manage in some cases, millions of dollars of their money and assets and portfolios, right? And what type of products or services are we demanding of this industry? That we would demand of, let's say if I gave 50,000 to my broker to invest in the stock market for me, what type of services and technology and platforms am I demanding of that person, education, schooling, name brands, right? [00:46:45] But yet, are we demanding that same of us in our fiduciary duty to somebody that's giving over maybe their retirement to us their kids', future, college... you hear all these people, "why'd you get into real estate?" "I want to create a college fund for my kids." And after two years, the guy's like, "this is not what I signed up for. This is the worst mistake I ever made. And I'm backing out of, buying more properties because of challenges," right? That's what I'm driven by. And I've always been driven by that. It's my curse. And so I'd have to say there's a hundred percent of me in this Jason, for sure.  [00:47:13] Jason: Awesome. And it, this will outlive you like AI doesn't die. [00:47:17] And this is this not to be grim, but this is the concern. Like anybody has when they're signing up for a business, they're like, all right, "how much is reliant on just this one person? How much is reliant on that key person I'm interacting with?" Right. And the AI is not a person. Right? [00:47:34] And so, yeah, so that's really fascinating to think about. Like you've built all that into it and it has immediate, instant expertise. It's not like, "Hey, well, let me go call Tom and let me go check with Fred or let me..." like all the data it has, it's there and it's instant. [00:47:54] David: What's the difference between an emergency of a hot water tank that's leaking in a basement with a permeable stone floor versus emergency hot water tank that's located in the utility closet on the first floor? [00:48:04] One doesn't have to necessarily require a person to go out because there's no damage to prevent with water leaking down there. But the other one is leaking onto the floor and damaging your drywall. So these conditions have to be taking place. Locations of hot water tanks, like there's, I can nerd out in this and I'd love to sit down with anybody and drink beers and talk about all the millions of different maintenance things that I ran through. [00:48:24] But at the end of the day, when you're able to show your owner, "we acted as an expert." That's the guy that's going to say to his buddy when they're just having a drink, "call these guys up to manage your property because they're an expert in the thing." And that's what we're trying to bring to the industry for sure. [00:48:37] Jason: So this brings a level of expertise that the business owner, the property manager, the maintenance coordinator, and certainly the VA's just would not possess.  [00:48:48] David: You're talking 15 years, over 500,000 work orders worth of data points, learning and understanding from commercial, multifamily, single family across the board, best practices. [00:49:01] And it's for somebody who wants to imagine now a person can start a property management company tomorrow onboard Tulu. And they're immediately a veteran in the maintenance industry. Immediately.  [00:49:12] Yeah. No learning curve. You're operating and executing as the best maintenance coordinator in the industry starting tomorrow. [00:49:19] That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. Really cool.  [00:49:22] Jason: This is really, it's really wild. So now my brain's like, how can I get experts, how can I clone Tulu, but make an operator version of Tulu for running a property managed business. Or I can make it.  [00:49:32] David: Yeah there's, there, there are offshoots on this. [00:49:34] I would have to say, and I do want to tell anybody that in this space that we always say that property managers are safe because you know what the property managers do a great job of doing. You guys do a really good job at building relationships and creating value in your local markets. [00:49:46] Right. Focus on that. Don't get pulled into maintenance, right? Maintenance and that stuff can be automated. There are best practices. Don't struggle to have to be an expert there. Show your value and the resources and tools that you have. Lower your overhead. Produce better results. Be at networking events. [00:50:03] Shake more hands. Talk to more people. Sell more homes. Add more doors. Shine where you shine. Brokers shine when they're out in front of people shaking hands and having expensive salads over a nice glass of chardonnay and closing deals, right? Let us flip the toilets and do it well for you. [00:50:18] That's what I say.  [00:50:19] Jason: Awesome. Okay, cool. David, if they're interested in Getting started. How do they find out about Tulu? You can go right to our website  [00:50:26] David: at trytulu. com. And if anybody wants to email me personally, david.norman.trytulu.Com. I'll connect you with our sales team and set you up on a personal demo. I'll walk you through it. I promise I won't bring so much energy. I'm an energy guy. It's just my calling this space to be in the maintenance and I love to doing what we're doing and seeing owners go "yes!" Seeing property managers go "yes!" And we're not trying to replace anybody. We're just trying to help people honor their fiduciary duty to their owners. And that's my mission. That's what I'm driven by.  [00:50:56] Jason: Yeah. Fantastic. So try Tulu, T U L U. Dot com.  [00:51:02] David: Yeah.  [00:51:02] Jason: All right. Try it out.  [00:51:04] David: All right.  [00:51:04] Jason: David, thanks for coming on the DoorGrowShow podcast. Appreciate you.  [00:51:08] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Always great. Looking forward to the show. Until next time.  [00:51:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are wanting to add doors, you get maintenance off loaded, off your plate, and you want to focus on growth and figuring out how to get more doors, you want to join the DoorGrow mastermind, our growth accelerator is all about that. [00:51:29] We are really good at optimizing businesses for growth using our rapid revamp class, where we clean up quickly, all of the front end stuff that is causing you to like kill trust and leaking trust and preventing deals. And then we give you the right strategies. We've got at least seven different growth engines that we can help build into your business that you can stack that will feed you unlimited leads without having to spend any money on advertising or marketing expense. [00:51:55] You just need people and it actually decreases the amount of time those people will spend If they're following working on the warm leads and the stuff that we would get you to do instead of cold leads, which take a lot more time. So we also have our super system level of our mastermind. This is where we're focused on ops, operations, helping your operator. That key person that's going to run the entire business for you, Mr. or Mrs. Visionary Entrepreneur, and they will help take your business to the next level. We can coach and support your operators, your BDMs, your salespeople, or you, the business owner to make this business infinitely scalable so that you can go to the next level and add a lot of doors. So reach out to us, let us assess your situation and see if we can help. [00:52

With strategic networking, you can make some initial decisions about who you think you'd like to target. Then it's a matter of saying, "okay, where do these people congregate?" Identifying exactly where they are. Are they online? Are they offline? Most likely they're doing both. But if they are online, where's the best place to find them? And a lot of times, particularly with social media, we just end up interacting with whoever we happen to be connected with. But if that part of it isn't strategic, if we're not connected with the people that we could actually potentially do business with, then we're wasting our ammunition. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the power of strategic networking. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I'm really glad we're talking about this because I think, you know, sometimes I think I'm great at networking, but there's not really any plan. There's not really any, like even down to storing information and how I'm going to follow up on it. I would not use the strategic word in what I'm doing. David: Okay. And I think you're not alone. I know that I have struggled with exactly the same thing. And even when we were thinking in terms of topics for today's podcast, The Power of Strategic Networking. What does it even mean? Right? What does strategic networking even mean? And the way that I'm looking at it is basically that strategic networking means, not just anyone, right? You're not just looking for anyone who can fog a mirror. You're looking for the people who are going to be best suited to you and what you have to offer. I think a lot of us tend to stumble into networking situations, whether it's with a chamber of commerce or BNI group or online in different situations, we're online, we're interacting with people. We consider it networking. But is it networking or is it just schmoozing? Is it just interacting with other people, or is it designed to get a positive result from a business standpoint? So I think if we start with that, the idea of strategic networking being that we're doing it for a specific result, which is to meet and interact with the type of people that we can ultimately do business with, then it becomes a whole different thing than just talking to people. Jay: Yeah. Again, this is so important because we're always talking about maximizing your time, focusing on the things that only you should be doing. And if you're just out there collecting business cards and now you have to follow up on each one of those. individuals, you're going to be spinning your wheels a lot and that's going to cost you money and time in the short term and long term. David: Yeah, especially if you're not quite sure what to do with those business cards. In other words, if you're just thinking, okay, I'm going to meet people, collect business cards, gather information, and then follow up with them. It's too generic. I mean, what does that even mean in terms of follow up? What does that even mean? And so for our clients, one of the things that we stress a lot is the idea of getting them qualified in or out as quickly as possible. I know so many salespeople who have engaged in networking that was you meet someone, you exchange business cards, and then you keep contacting them. You try to schedule an appointment to meet with them, to try to find out what they need and all that sort of thing without ever bothering to try to find out whether or not they're even a decent prospect for the products and services you offer. And it can be a huge waste of time if, in fact, they are not. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. We talk about time wasting and I think that even applies to thinking about it before you go into a situation where you want to employ marketing. Like in my particular use case, just walking into a room full of business owners doesn't cut it because I have a very niche product.

There are a lot of people who aren't quite sure where they are with the whole business growth thing vs. just maintenance. Some people are content where they are. And if you're okay with just maintaining, then none of this applies to you. Right? You're not required to grow your business if that's not where you're going. But there are so many people that I talk to that really want to do it. They want it to grow. They want it to be more than it is. They want to be able to create better lives for themselves, for their employees, for their families, for everybody they impact. And they know they can't do it without growing. And when they use maintenance as an excuse, that's a tough one to overcome. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing business growth versus just maintenance. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey David, once again, it is a pleasure to be here. And it's so funny, oftentimes we choose these topics and I'm like, "man, I am right in the middle of that!" So, again, I'm excited to discuss this with you. David: Yeah, I think the reason that I wanted to talk about it, this came to mind fairly recently because I've had so many conversations with people, business owners primarily, small business owners for the most part, some sales managers, who say, "listen, I really need to grow this business. I need to grow my sales. I need to grow my profits. I need to make that happen now. This is a priority for me." And then we talk about some of the incentives and we talk about some of the things that they're going to need to do. we talk about some of the steps they'll need to follow and nearly all of it is designed to save them time, save them money, generate more revenue, just make everything a whole lot easier and a whole lot better. And one of the things that I find extremely frustrating is when I'm talking to someone like that, who then says, well, I really don't feel like I have time to implement this because I have so much that I'm dealing with on a daily basis, maintaining the business, essentially. I'm busy doing this and I'm busy doing that. And I'm doing all these different things that are allowing me to stay just underwater, a little bit, where my nose is just barely peeking up and down above the water, but I don't have time to do the things that are going to get me out of the water and make sure that things are still functioning the way that they need to function. So in most cases, I believe that growth is the solution to maintenance, but it doesn't work the other way around. Jay: Yeah. What is it? Winning gets rid of all the stink or, you know, whatever. Winning is the best deodorant. That's what it is. Winning is the best deodorant. David: That's true. Jay: Yeah, you know, it's funny, this last year, I'm kind of reliving everything that you're talking about, because of our seasonality, we have times where we have to be all growth, all the time, we have this influx of customers. We can't be worried about maintenance at that moment, but then all of a sudden, it practically dies instantly, so now we're asking the question, "How do we maintain our current base?" Because we want them to be back and so what maintenance things do we need to do? But not only that, what about the people who we talk to who might be interested in the future? Can we reach out to them on a regular basis? So now that we've died down, we're talking about drip programs, we're talking about newsletters to our existing clientele. So we're kind of in this process between maintaining, we still want to grow during this time so we can pay our bills. But we're really kind of in this mode where we're trying to do both, but a certain part of the year we can't do one. We just don't have time. David: Right. Yeah, it's hard to grow when the business is just coming in. And in seasonal businesses like yours, that's particularly true.

A lot of the people that I work with now are exceptional at what they do, but they may struggle to get other people in their organization to be able to do it, because they haven't codified the success protocols that would allow them to say, "okay, this is how we perform this task. This is how we do this. This is how we do that." And when they start doing that, they're just amazed at how far their people can come so quickly. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your protocols for success. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it's such a pleasure to be here with you again. This may be a situation where I want to sit back and listen to you a little bit because I know you have a lot of experience and coming up with these protocols and things like that. So I'm just going to say hit me and I'll see if I can learn something here. David: Okay. Well, when I talk about protocols for success, we talk a lot about systems and processes and the work that we do with our clients. And if you want to be able to create consistent results in your business, you need to have these things in place. Protocols is another term for it. But the reason I like the word protocols is that it sort of establishes the fact that these things aren't optional. This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it in this organization. And when you approach it like that, everything gets a lot easier because you don't have to make a hundred different decisions now. It's like, I know what the process is. I simply need to follow it. If you're veering from it, you know it. If you're on it, you know it. And so does everybody else. People who don't like accountability will not like that. But people who do like accountability will know, Hey, listen, I followed this procedure to the letter and this didn't work. And then you can talk to the person that you're working with to have them explain, okay, well maybe this protocol needs to be changed or updated. It's almost like a baseline. Most people need to start with some sort of baseline protocol that they're going to say, okay, this is how we do this. This is how we perform this particular task. And then you have a number of people do it and they follow the protocol or they don't. If they follow it and they get a comparable or consistent result, great. That's a good protocol. If five different people try it and they get five different results and they all follow the protocol, you have a problem with your protocol. You need to clarify, you need to identify, okay, what are the problems with each of these steps? And I need to tweak that so that when I hand it to five different people, they can all get a similar result. That's the nutshell version. Jay: Hmm. You know, this is something that's so critical. I think a lot of managers miss this point. Managers are afraid to hold people to the protocol or hold them accountable, and they don't realize that this actually robs your staff from feelings of success. Because if you don't have a baseline, and the baseline is basically when they fall before it, it's not a matter of getting mad at them, it's a matter of saying, okay, what was wrong with the protocol first? And if the protocol is good, then we probably have a training issue, right? So that's underneath the expected line. But above the line means that they met the line or they did better. That's the only way you're going to feel success. If there is no line, I promise you, your employees will never feel like, man, we did it. Because you never put a baseline on it. So that's, to me, how you consistently make people happy. And that's why I like the word protocol over accountability, because accountability always sounds negative to people. David: Yeah. I mean, accountability is basically, did you follow the protocol or not? The protocol is the list of steps saying this is how we accomplish this task.

Indecision comes with a high price. I think most of us in business try to make the best decisions possible, but really it becomes a matter of saying, "okay, do I have all the information I need?" And if I do, then make the decision. Say yes, say no, but make the decision. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I are back with a talk on the high price of indecision. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. And I think this is something that we all suffer with, especially in a new business, just knowing what you should do. What are your priorities? How can you tell that? Paralysis by analysis is very common. David: Yeah, no question. And I think some people are more wired to be decisive while others are more wired to be indecisive. If you're decisive, dealing with indecisive people is extremely frustrating. And if you're indecisive, dealing with decisive people can feel a little intimidating. So it's a challenge. Jay: Yeah. And I think sometimes you need both. I mean, if you're sitting around waiting to make a decision. You could miss the perfect opportunity, right? But if you move too fast, you're probably not going to be prepared for that situation. So we got to find balance in the force here. How do we do that? David: Great question. Yeah. I think missed opportunities is definitely the first thing we tend to think of when it comes to indecision. But if we're trying to find balance in the force, then that would also mean talking about, well, should decisive people do anything differently? And my guess is that's kind of a quick one. My guess would be to say, all right, if you think you're too decisive, then maybe you need to take a step back, aand consider things a little more. But in business, wow, it's much more detrimental in most cases, in my opinion, to be indecisive. And there's a great quote from Tom Watson that says: "Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business." So there are lots of schools of thought on this. The bottom line for most of us is that you're better off making a decision, because if it's the wrong decision, you'll find out sooner, and then you can change it and make a better decision. If it's the right decision, then you're already past the point where you would have been if you were still putting it off. Jay: Yeah, I think part of this though is to be decisive, but to be informed in your decisiveness. If you don't have good tracking of what's going on, like, we were decisive before, and this is how we learned, and we tracked it, and so next time we can move faster because we have some knowledge, we have some key performance indicators, those things are going to help our decisions go faster, and we're going to be more confident in those decisions. Because for me, sometimes when I feel like we've acted too soon, I'm not at my best. I'm hesitant because I'm hoping it's going to work, but I'm not sure that there's anything backing it up. David: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think you also sort of raised an interesting point, which is the difference between informed decisions and uninformed decisions, right? I don't think decisiveness means just making up your mind without having all the facts. I'm saying basically, if you've got all the facts and you're failing to decide, that to me is indecisiveness. If you've got all the facts and then you ARE deciding, that to me is decisiveness. But I completely agree with you. If you don't have all the information then it's too soon to make a decision. But in sales situations, a lot of times salespeople struggle because the people they're talking with don't have...

Particularly in the early stages, breaking through a sales plateau may just mean doing more of what you're doing. But generally, at some point, we hit a plateau that is created by the fact that we can't run any faster. We can't do any more by ourselves. So we either need to implement new procedures and new processes, we need to get some help, or something needs to change fundamentally in the business in order to get us to that next level. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing the idea of breaking through your sales plateau. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It's so good to be here again with you David, and as always, I'm very excited about this topic. I know businesses that hit these thresholds. It can be a monumental task to get to the next level and they're not sure how to do it. Is it, is it marketing? Is it adding new products? I think that's what a lot of them try to do. They're like, well, let's add 10 more products to the lineup and then we'll do it. And oftentimes that can just make the situation worse and not better. David: Yeah, it's true. Most businesses, I think it's safe to say, at some point run into some sort of plateau. They hit a level of sales and they can't get past it. I believe in small businesses this is particularly true, where you're just working and pushing and you're trying to get to that next benchmark. And you just can't reach it. And there are thresholds, I believe in small business, getting to your first hundred thousand in gross sales and then your first 250, and then you hit 500 and then a million and then 2 million and going from there. And in the early stages, you can generally do pretty well, like to get from a hundred thousand to 250 is often easier than it is to get from a million to 2 million. But most of us, at some point, will encounter some sort of sales plateau. You get there, you see it, you're targeting it, you're working toward it and you just can't seem to hit it. And so it's really just a matter of getting stuck. It's like, I feel like I'm stuck and I'm here and I need to be here and I'm not sure what to do next. Jay: Yeah. And I wonder how much of it is that they're not really sure how they got to the first plateau. I mean, they may think that they know, David: That's true. Jay: But it could be something completely different. And this could go back to something we talked about in a previous podcast: following up with your customers. Find out why they purchased, how they feel about their purchase. Are they returning customers? Are they not returning customers? So if you didn't understand why they bought in the first place and how they felt about that purchase, it's going to be hard breaking through that next plateau. David: It is, absolutely. And the biggest hangup that I see for most people is not knowing, "what do I do next?" And as you indicated, people get to a certain point in some cases, they're not sure how they did it. What's that referred to as? Unconscious competence? Jay: Mm-hmm, David: Where I'm doing things and it's working, but I'm not even sure of what I've done. So I haven't gotten around to building a system around it to put that into place so I can replicate it. But there's also the idea that what gets me to here will not necessarily get me to here. Right? So what gets me to level one won't necessarily get me to level two. That's not always the case, particularly in the early stages, you can do more of what you're doing to get to a higher level. But generally, at some point, we hit a sales plateau that is created by the fact that we can't run any faster. We can't do any more by ourselves. So we either need to implement new procedures and new processes. Or we need to get some help. Or something needs to change fundamentally in the business, in order to get us to that next level. Jay: Yeah, something that can be very hard for people,

From a sales mindset connection standpoint, market domination starts with the idea that it's possible. And if you're not sure that it's possible, ask yourself this, your very best clients. When they think about who to go to for the products and services you offer, who do they think about? Obviously, if they're your very best clients, it's you. They're thinking about you. So you've already achieved a level of mindset or market domination with your very best clients. That demonstrates that it can be done. So then it's a matter of saying, okay, well, how can we do this with other people? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Bianca Istvan and I will be discussing the topic of the sales mindset connection. Welcome Bianca. Bianca: Thank you so much, David. Very happy to be here with you. And I'm just curious, what do you say to people who think mindset is woo-woo? David: Yeah, there are a lot of people who feel that way. To some extent, I've been one of them. And in fact, Bianca is our newest addition to our team here at Top Secrets. She and I actually met in a clubhouse group years ago, and we were talking about the idea of mindset there. And I said, well, I'm not really all that much into mindset. Most of my training is about the specifics of what to do. And Bianca said to me, well, I don't think so. Everything you talk about is pretty much mindset related. And I didn't realize it at the time, but it really kind of opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah, a lot of what we do, even though it's not geared to be about mindset, is about mindset. So the whole woo-woo thing really kind of touches a nerve with me because I felt that way in the past. It's like, oh, mindset, well, no, you just need to do the stuff. But the reality of the situation is that if you don't have the right mindset, if you're not willing to take the necessary actions, then you're not going to be able to get there. So it seems to me there's always a mindset element that has to be there, whether or not you really want to think about it. Bianca: That's so true. And you know, for me, it's great to see that. I mean, you have this ability to connect with people on another level and that's, you know, congrats to you for having this mindset. Fantastic. David: Well, thanks. And so do you. And that's actually how we started communicating was in this clubhouse group and so when we connected again recently, I just thought it would be so great to have you on our team because I know that that's an important aspect of what you do and your communication with people has been great. So I'm really glad we've been able to put this together. But for most salespeople, it seems to me that mindset may be in the back of their mind. They may be thinking about it, but for the most part, they're probably just thinking, How do I make this next sale? How do I make this next contact? And so while I don't think you have to spend a ton of time thinking about mindset every day, just recognize that if you don't at least have it going on somewhere in the back of your mind, you're probably not going to do the work you have to do in order to get it started. Bianca: Yeah, that's so right. And I know you talk a lot about the first contact and what that means, but please tell me, you know, why do you think the mindset is so important when having the first contact with your potential client? David: Well, first contact is difficult for a lot of people, and a lot of people think of first contact as just being cold calls. And that's one example of first contact. And in those situations, mindset is really hard for some people. J just the idea of the fear of picking up the phone is an issue for people, which is all a mindset thing. If they can't get past that, if they can't Overcome the mental blocks that are involved in having to pick up the phone and initiate contact with a stranger, then it's definitely going to impact them.

Our next SF event is AI UX 2024 - let's see the new frontier for UX since last year! Last call: we are recording a preview of the AI Engineer World's Fair with swyx and Ben Dunphy, send any questions about Speaker CFPs and Sponsor Guides you have!Alessio is now hiring engineers for a new startup he is incubating at Decibel: Ideal candidate is an “ex-technical co-founder type”. Reach out to him for more!David Luan has been at the center of the modern AI revolution: he was the ~30th hire at OpenAI, he led Google's LLM efforts and co-led Google Brain, and then started Adept in 2022, one of the leading companies in the AI agents space. In today's episode, we asked David for some war stories from his time in early OpenAI (including working with Alec Radford ahead of the GPT-2 demo with Sam Altman, that resulted in Microsoft's initial $1b investment), and how Adept is building agents that can “do anything a human does on a computer" — his definition of useful AGI.Why Google *couldn't* make GPT-3While we wanted to discuss Adept, we couldn't talk to a former VP Eng of OpenAI and former LLM tech lead at Google Brain and not ask about the elephant in the room. It's often asked how Google had such a huge lead in 2017 with Vaswani et al creating the Transformer and Noam Shazeer predicting trillion-parameter models and yet it was David's team at OpenAI who ended up making GPT 1/2/3. David has some interesting answers:“So I think the real story of GPT starts at Google, of course, right? Because that's where Transformers sort of came about. However, the number one shocking thing to me was that, and this is like a consequence of the way that Google is organized…what they (should) have done would be say, hey, Noam Shazeer, you're a brilliant guy. You know how to scale these things up. Here's half of all of our TPUs. And then I think they would have destroyed us. He clearly wanted it too…You know, every day we were scaling up GPT-3, I would wake up and just be stressed. And I was stressed because, you know, you just look at the facts, right? Google has all this compute. Google has all the people who invented all of these underlying technologies. There's a guy named Noam who's really smart, who's already gone and done this talk about how he wants a trillion parameter model. And I'm just like, we're probably just doing duplicative research to what he's doing. He's got this decoder only transformer that's probably going to get there before we do. And it turned out the whole time that they just couldn't get critical mass. So during my year where I led the Google LM effort and I was one of the brain leads, you know, it became really clear why. At the time, there was a thing called the Brain Credit Marketplace. Everyone's assigned a credit. So if you have a credit, you get to buy end chips according to supply and demand. So if you want to go do a giant job, you had to convince like 19 or 20 of your colleagues not to do work. And if that's how it works, it's really hard to get that bottom up critical mass to go scale these things. And the team at Google were fighting valiantly, but we were able to beat them simply because we took big swings and we focused.”Cloning HGI for AGIHuman intelligence got to where it is today through evolution. Some argue that to get to AGI, we will approximate all the “FLOPs” that went into that process, an approach most famously mapped out by Ajeya Cotra's Biological Anchors report:The early days of OpenAI were very reinforcement learning-driven with the Dota project, but that's a very inefficient way for these models to re-learn everything. (Kanjun from Imbue shared similar ideas in her episode).David argues that there's a shortcut. We can bootstrap from existing intelligence.“Years ago, I had a debate with a Berkeley professor as to what will it actually take to build AGI. And his view is basically that you have to reproduce all the flops that went into evolution in order to be able to get there… I think we are ignoring the fact that you have a giant shortcut, which is you can behaviorally clone everything humans already know. And that's what we solved with LLMs!”LLMs today basically model intelligence using all (good!) written knowledge (see our Datasets 101 episode), and have now expanded to non-verbal knowledge (see our HuggingFace episode on multimodality). The SOTA self-supervised pre-training process is surprisingly data-efficient in taking large amounts of unstructured data, and approximating reasoning without overfitting.But how do you cross the gap from the LLMs of today to building the AGI we all want? This is why David & friends left to start Adept.“We believe the clearest framing of general intelligence is a system that can do anything a human can do in front of a computer. A foundation model for actions, trained to use every software tool, API, and webapp that exists, is a practical path to this ambitious goal” — ACT-1 BlogpostCritical Path: Abstraction with ReliabilityThe AGI dream is fully autonomous agents, but there are levels to autonomy that we are comfortable giving our agents, based on how reliable they are. In David's word choice, we always want higher levels of “abstractions” (aka autonomy), but our need for “reliability” is the practical limit on how high of an abstraction we can use.“The critical path for Adept is we want to build agents that can do a higher and higher level abstraction things over time, all while keeping an insanely high reliability standard. Because that's what turns us from research into something that customers want. And if you build agents with really high reliability standard, but are continuing pushing a level of abstraction, you then learn from your users how to get that next level of abstraction faster. So that's how you actually build the data flow. That's the critical path for the company. Everything we do is in service of that.”We saw how Adept thinks about different levels of abstraction at the 2023 Summit:The highest abstraction is the “AI Employee”, but we'll get there with “AI enabled employees”. Alessio recently gave a talk about the future of work with “services as software” at this week's Nvidia GTC (slides).No APIsUnlike a lot of large research labs, Adept's framing of AGI as "being able to use your computer like a human" carries with it a useful environmental constraint:“Having a human robot lets you do things that humans do without changing everything along the way. It's the same thing for software, right? If you go itemize out the number of things you want to do on your computer for which every step has an API, those numbers of workflows add up pretty close to zero. And so then many points along the way, you need the ability to actually control your computer like a human. It also lets you learn from human usage of computers as a source of training data that you don't get if you have to somehow figure out how every particular step needs to be some particular custom private API thing. And so I think this is actually the most practical path (to economic value).”This realization and conviction means that multimodal modals are the way to go. Instead of using function calling to call APIs to build agents, which is what OpenAI and most of the open LLM industry have done to date, Adept wants to “drive by vision”, (aka see the screen as a human sees it) and pinpoint where to click and type as a human does. No APIs needed, because most software don't expose APIs.Extra context for readers: You can see the DeepMind SIMA model in the same light: One system that learned to play a diverse set of games (instead of one dedicated model per game) using only pixel inputs and keyboard-and-mouse action outputs!The OpenInterpreter team is working on a “Computer API” that also does the same.To do this, Adept had to double down on a special kind of multimodality for knowledge work:“A giant thing that was really necessary is really fast multimodal models that are really good at understanding knowledge work and really good at understanding screens. And that is needs to kind of be the base for some of these agents……I think one big hangover primarily academic focus for multimodal models is most multimodal models are primarily trained on like natural images, cat and dog photos, stuff that's come out of the camera… (but) where are they going to be the most useful? They're going to be most useful in knowledge work tasks. That's where the majority of economic value is going to be. It's not in cat and dogs. And so if that's what it is, what do you need to train? I need to train on like charts, graphs, tables, invoices, PDFs, receipts, unstructured data, UIs. That's just a totally different pre-training corpus. And so Adept spent a lot of time building that.”With this context, you can now understand the full path of Adept's public releases:* ACT-1 (Sept 2022): a large Transformers model optimized for browser interactions. It has a custom rendering of the browser viewport that allows it to better understand it and take actions.* Persimmon-8B (Sept 2023): a permissive open LLM (weights and code here)* Fuyu-8B (Oct 2023): a small version of the multimodal model that powers Adept. Vanilla decoder-only transformer with no specialized image encoder, which allows it to handle input images of varying resolutions without downsampling.* Adept Experiments (Nov 2023): A public tool to build automations in the browser. This is powered by Adept's core technology but it's just a piece of their enterprise platform. They use it as a way to try various design ideas.* Fuyu Heavy (Jan 2024) - a new multimodal model designed specifically for digital agents and the world's third-most-capable multimodal model (beating Gemini Pro on MMMU, AI2D, and ChartQA), “behind only GPT4-V and Gemini Ultra, which are 10-20 times bigger”The Fuyu-8B post in particular exhibits a great number of examples on knowledge work multimodality:Why Adept is NOT a Research LabWith OpenAI now worth >$90b and Anthropic >$18b, it is tempting to conclude that the AI startup metagame is to build a large research lab, and attract the brightest minds and highest capital to build AGI. Our past guests (see the Humanloop episode) and (from Imbue) combined to ask the most challenging questions of the pod - with David/Adept's deep research pedigree from Deepmind and OpenAI, why is Adept not building more general foundation models (like Persimmon) and playing the academic benchmarks game? Why is Adept so focused on commercial agents instead?“I feel super good that we're doing foundation models in service of agents and all of the reward within Adept is flowing from “Can we make a better agent”…… I think pure play foundation model companies are just going to be pinched by how good the next couple of (Meta Llama models) are going to be… And then seeing the really big players put ridiculous amounts of compute behind just training these base foundation models, I think is going to commoditize a lot of the regular LLMs and soon regular multimodal models. So I feel really good that we're just focused on agents.”and the commercial grounding is his answer to Kanjun too (whom we also asked the inverse question to compare with Adept):“… the second reason I work at Adept is if you believe that actually having customers and a reward signal from customers lets you build AGI faster, which we really believe, then you should come here. And I think the examples for why that's true is for example, our evaluations are not academic evals. They're not simulator evals. They're like, okay, we have a customer that really needs us to do these particular things. We can do some of them. These are the ones they want us to, we can't do them at all. We've turned those into evals.. I think that's a degree of practicality that really helps.”And his customers seem pretty happy, because David didn't need to come on to do a sales pitch:David: “One of the things we haven't shared before is we're completely sold out for Q1.”Swyx: “Sold out of what?”David: “Sold out of bandwidth to onboard more customers.”Well, that's a great problem to have.Show Notes* David Luan* Dextro at Data Driven NYC (2015)* Adept* ACT-1* Persimmon-8B* Adept Experiments* Fuyu-8B* $350M Series B announcement* Amelia Wattenberger talk at AI Engineer Summit* FigureChapters* [00:00:00] Introductions* [00:01:14] Being employee #30 at OpenAI and its early days* [00:13:38] What is Adept and how do you define AGI?* [00:21:00] Adept's critical path and research directions* [00:26:23] How AI agents should interact with software and impact product development* [00:30:37] Analogies between AI agents and self-driving car development* [00:32:42] Balancing reliability, cost, speed and generality in AI agents* [00:37:30] Potential of foundation models for robotics* [00:39:22] Core research questions and reasons to work at AdeptTranscriptsAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO in Residence at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol.ai.Swyx [00:00:15]: Hey, and today we have David Luan, CEO, co-founder of Adept in the studio. Welcome.David [00:00:20]: Yeah, thanks for having me.Swyx [00:00:21]: Been a while in the works. I've met you socially at one of those VC events and you said that you were interested in coming on and glad we finally were able to make this happen.David: Yeah, happy to be part of it.Swyx: So we like to introduce the speaker and then also just like have you talk a little bit about like what's not on your LinkedIn, what people should just generally know about you. You started a company in college, which was the first sort of real time video detection classification API that was Dextro, and that was your route to getting acquired into Axon where you're a director of AI. Then you were the 30th hire at OpenAI?David [00:00:53]: Yeah, 30, 35, something around there. Something like that.Swyx [00:00:56]: So you were VP of Eng for two and a half years to two years, briefly served as tech lead of large models at Google, and then in 2022 started Adept. So that's the sort of brief CV. Is there anything else you like want to fill in the blanks or like people should know more about?David [00:01:14]: I guess a broader story was I joined OpenAI fairly early and I did that for about two and a half to three years leading engineering there. It's really funny, I think second or third day of my time at OpenAI, Greg and Ilya pulled me in a room and we're like, you know, you should take over our directs and we'll go mostly do IC work. So that was fun, just coalescing a bunch of teams out of a couple of early initiatives that had already happened. The company, the Dota effort was going pretty hard and then more broadly trying to put bigger picture direction around what we were doing with basic research. So I spent a lot of time doing that. And then I led Google's LLM efforts, but also co-led Google Brain was one of the brain leads more broadly. You know, there's been a couple of different eras of AI research, right? If we count everything before 2012 as prehistory, which people hate it when I say that, kind of had this like you and your three best friends write a research paper that changes the world period from like 2012 to 2017. And I think the game changed in 2017 and like most labs didn't realize it, but we at OpenAI really did. I think in large part helped by like Ilya's constant beating of the drum that the world would be covered in data centers. And I think-Swyx [00:02:15]: It's causally neat.David [00:02:16]: Yeah. Well, like I think we had conviction in that, but it wasn't until we started seeing results that it became clear that that was where we had to go. But also part of it as well was for OpenAI, like when I first joined, I think one of the jobs that I had to do was how do I tell a differentiated vision for who we were technically compared to, you know, hey, we're just smaller Google Brain, or like you work at OpenAI if you live in SF and don't want to commute to Mountain View or don't want to live in London, right? That's like not enough to like hang your technical identity as a company. And so what we really did was, and I spent a lot of time pushing this, is just how do we get ourselves focused on a certain class of like giant swings and bets, right? Like how do you flip the script from you just do bottom-up research to more about how do you like leave some room for that, but really make it about like, what are the big scientific outcomes that you want to show? And then you just solve them at all costs, whether or not you care about novelty and all that stuff. And that became the dominant model for a couple of years, right? And then what's changed now is I think the number one driver of AI products over the next couple of years is going to be the deep co-design and co-evolution of product and users for feedback and actual technology. And I think labs, every tool to go do that are going to do really well. And that's a big part of why I started Adept.Alessio [00:03:20]: You mentioned Dota, any memories thinking from like the switch from RL to Transformers at the time and kind of how the industry was evolving more in the LLM side and leaving behind some of the more agent simulation work?David [00:03:33]: Like zooming way out, I think agents are just absolutely the correct long-term direction, right? You just go to find what AGI is, right? You're like, Hey, like, well, first off, actually, I don't love AGI definitions that involve human replacement because I don't think that's actually how it's going to happen. Even this definition of like, Hey, AGI is something that outperforms humans at economically valuable tasks is kind of implicit view of the world about what's going to be the role of people. I think what I'm more interested in is like a definition of AGI that's oriented around like a model that can do anything a human can do on a computer. If you go think about that, which is like super tractable, then agent is just a natural consequence of that definition. And so what did all the work we did on our own stuff like that get us was it got us a really clear formulation. Like you have a goal and you want to maximize the goal, you want to maximize reward, right? And the natural LLM formulation doesn't come with that out of the box, right? I think that we as a field got a lot right by thinking about, Hey, how do we solve problems of that caliber? And then the thing we forgot is the Novo RL is like a pretty terrible way to get there quickly. Why are we rediscovering all the knowledge about the world? Years ago, I had a debate with a Berkeley professor as to what will it actually take to build AGI. And his view is basically that you have to reproduce all the flops that went into evolution in order to be able to get there. Right.Swyx [00:04:44]: The biological basis theory. Right.David [00:04:46]: So I think we are ignoring the fact that you have a giant shortcut, which is you can behavioral clone everything humans already know. And that's what we solved with LLMs. We've solved behavioral cloning, everything that humans already know. Right. So like today, maybe LLMs is like behavioral cloning every word that gets written on the internet in the future, the multimodal models are becoming more of a thing where behavioral cloning the visual world. But really, what we're just going to have is like a universal byte model, right? Where tokens of data that have high signal come in, and then all of those patterns are like learned by the model. And then you can regurgitate any combination now. Right. So text into voice out, like image into other image out or video out or whatever, like these like mappings, right? Like all just going to be learned by this universal behavioral cloner. And so I'm glad we figured that out. And I think now we're back to the era of how do we combine this with all of the lessons we learned during the RL period. That's what's going to drive progress.Swyx [00:05:35]: I'm still going to pressure you for a few more early opening stories before we turn to the ADET stuff. On your personal site, which I love, because it's really nice, like personal, you know, story context around like your history. I need to update it. It's so old. Yeah, it's so out of date. But you mentioned GPT-2. Did you overlap with GPT-1? I think you did, right?David [00:05:53]: I actually don't quite remember. I think I was joining right around- Right around then?Swyx [00:05:57]: I was right around that, yeah. Yeah. So what I remember was Alec, you know, just kind of came in and was like very obsessed with Transformers and applying them to like Reddit sentiment analysis. Yeah, sentiment, that's right. Take us through-David [00:06:09]: Sentiment neuron, all this stuff.Swyx [00:06:10]: The history of GPT as far as you know, you know, according to you. Ah, okay.David [00:06:14]: History of GPT, according to me, that's a pretty good question. So I think the real story of GPT starts at Google, of course, right? Because that's where Transformers sort of came about. However, the number one shocking thing to me was that, and this is like a consequence of the way that Google is organized, where like, again, you and your three best friends write papers, right? Okay. So zooming way out, right? I think about my job when I was a full-time research leader as a little bit of a portfolio allocator, right? So I've got really, really smart people. My job is to convince people to coalesce around a small number of really good ideas and then run them over the finish line. My job is not actually to promote a million ideas and never have critical mass. And then as the ideas start coming together and some of them start working well, my job is to nudge resources towards the things that are really working and then start disbanding some of the things that are not working, right? That muscle did not exist during my time at Google. And I think had they had it, what they would have done would be say, hey, Noam Shazir, you're a brilliant guy. You know how to scale these things up. Here's half of all of our TPUs. And then I think they would have destroyed us. He clearly wanted it too.Swyx [00:07:17]: He's talking about trillion parameter models in 2017.David [00:07:20]: Yeah. So that's the core of the GPT story, right? Which is that, and I'm jumping around historically, right? But after GPT-2, we were all really excited about GPT-2. I can tell you more stories about that. It was the last paper that I even got to really touch before everything became more about building a research org. You know, every day we were scaling up GPT-3, I would wake up and just be stressed. And I was stressed because, you know, you just look at the facts, right? Google has all this compute. Google has all the people who invented all of these underlying technologies. There's a guy named Noam who's really smart, who's already gone and done this talk about how he wants a trillion parameter model. And I'm just like, we're probably just doing duplicative research to what he's doing, right? He's got this decoder only transformer that's probably going to get there before we do. And I was like, but like, please just like let this model finish, right? And it turned out the whole time that they just couldn't get critical mass. So during my year where I led the Google LM effort and I was one of the brain leads, you know, it became really clear why, right? At the time, there was a thing called the brain credit marketplace. And did you guys know the brain credit marketplace? No, I never heard of this. Oh, so it's actually, it's a, you can ask any Googler.Swyx [00:08:23]: It's like just like a thing that, that, I mean, look like, yeah, limited resources, you got to have some kind of marketplace, right? You know, sometimes it's explicit, sometimes it isn't, you know, just political favors.David [00:08:34]: You could. And so then basically everyone's assigned a credit, right? So if you have a credit, you get to buy end chips according to supply and demand. So if you want to go do a giant job, you had to convince like 19 or 20 of your colleagues not to do work. And if that's how it works, it's really hard to get that bottom up critical mass to go scale these things. And the team at Google were fighting valiantly, but we were able to beat them simply because we took big swings and we focused. And I think, again, that's like part of the narrative of like this phase one of AI, right? Of like this modern AI era to phase two. And I think in the same way, I think phase three company is going to out execute phase two companies because of the same asymmetry of success.Swyx [00:09:12]: Yeah. I think it's underrated how much NVIDIA works with you in the early days as well. I think maybe, I think it was Jensen. I'm not sure who circulated a recent photo of him delivering the first DGX to you guys.David [00:09:24]: I think Jensen has been a complete legend and a mastermind throughout. I have so much respect for NVIDIA. It is unreal.Swyx [00:09:34]: But like with OpenAI, like kind of give their requirements, like co-design it or just work of whatever NVIDIA gave them.David [00:09:40]: So we work really closely with them. There's, I'm not sure I can share all the stories, but examples of ones that I've found particularly interesting. So Scott Gray is amazing. I really like working with him. He was on one of my teams, the supercomputing team, which Chris Berner runs and Chris Berner still does a lot of stuff in that. As a result, like we had very close ties to NVIDIA. Actually, one of my co-founders at Adept, Eric Elson, was also one of the early GPGPU people. So he and Scott and Brian Catanzaro at NVIDIA and Jonah and Ian at NVIDIA, I think all were very close. And we're all sort of part of this group of how do we push these chips to the absolute limit? And I think that kind of collaboration helped quite a bit. I think one interesting set of stuff is knowing the A100 generation, that like quad sparsity was going to be a thing. Is that something that we want to go look into, right? And figure out if that's something that we could actually use for model training. Really what it boils down to is that, and I think more and more people realize this, six years ago, people, even three years ago, people refused to accept it. This era of AI is really a story of compute. It's really the story of how do you more efficiently map actual usable model flops to compute,Swyx [00:10:38]: Is there another GPT 2, 3 story that you love to get out there that you think is underappreciated for the amount of work that people put into it?David [00:10:48]: So two interesting GPT 2 stories. One of them was I spent a good bit of time just sprinting to help Alec get the paper out. And I remember one of the most entertaining moments was we were writing the modeling section. And I'm pretty sure the modeling section was the shortest modeling section of any ML, reasonably legitimate ML paper to that moment. It was like section three model. This is a standard vanilla decoder only transformer with like these particular things, those paragraph long if I remember correctly. And both of us were just looking at the same being like, man, the OGs in the field are going to hate this. They're going to say no novelty. Why did you guys do this work? So now it's funny to look at in hindsight that it was pivotal kind of paper, but I think it was one of the early ones where we just leaned fully into all we care about is solving problems in AI and not about, hey, is there like four different really simple ideas that are cloaked in mathematical language that doesn't actually help move the field forward?Swyx [00:11:42]: Right. And it's like you innovate on maybe like data set and scaling and not so much the architecture.David [00:11:48]: We all know how it works now, right? Which is that there's a collection of really hard won knowledge that you get only by being at the frontiers of scale. And that hard won knowledge, a lot of it's not published. A lot of it is stuff that's actually not even easily reducible to what looks like a typical academic paper. But yet that's the stuff that helps differentiate one scaling program from another. You had a second one? So the second one is, there's like some details here that I probably shouldn't fully share, but hilariously enough for the last meeting we did with Microsoft before Microsoft invested in OpenAI, Sam Altman, myself and our CFO flew up to Seattle to do the final pitch meeting. And I'd been a founder before. So I always had a tremendous amount of anxiety about partner meetings, which this basically this is what it was. I had Kevin Scott and Satya and Amy Hood, and it was my job to give the technical slides about what's the path to AGI, what's our research portfolio, all of this stuff, but it was also my job to give the GPT-2 demo. We had a slightly bigger version of GPT-2 that we had just cut maybe a day or two before this flight up. And as we all know now, model behaviors you find predictable at one checkpoint are not predictable in another checkpoint. And so I'd spent all this time trying to figure out how to keep this thing on rails. I had my canned demos, but I knew I had to go turn it around over to Satya and Kevin and let them type anything in. And that just, that really kept me up all night.Swyx [00:13:06]: Nice. Yeah.Alessio [00:13:08]: I mean, that must have helped you talking about partners meeting. You raised $420 million for Adept. The last round was a $350 million Series B, so I'm sure you do great in partner meetings.Swyx [00:13:18]: Pitchers meetings. Nice.David [00:13:20]: No, that's a high compliment coming from a VC.Alessio [00:13:22]: Yeah, no, I mean, you're doing great already for us. Let's talk about Adept. And we were doing pre-prep and you mentioned that maybe a lot of people don't understand what Adept is. So usually we try and introduce the product and then have the founders fill in the blanks, but maybe let's do the reverse. Like what is Adept? Yeah.David [00:13:38]: So I think Adept is the least understood company in the broader space of foundational models plus agents. So I'll give some color and I'll explain what it is and I'll explain also why it's actually pretty different from what people would have guessed. So the goal for Adept is we basically want to build an AI agent that can do, that can basically help humans do anything a human does on a computer. And so what that really means is we want this thing to be super good at turning natural language like goal specifications right into the correct set of end steps and then also have all the correct sensors and actuators to go get that thing done for you across any software tool that you already use. And so the end vision of this is effectively like I think in a couple of years everyone's going to have access to like an AI teammate that they can delegate arbitrary tasks to and then also be able to, you know, use it as a sounding board and just be way, way, way more productive. Right. And just changes the shape of every job from something where you're mostly doing execution to something where you're mostly actually doing like these core liberal arts skills of what should I be doing and why. Right. And I find this like really exciting and motivating because I think it's actually a pretty different vision for how AGI will play out. I think systems like Adept are the most likely systems to be proto-AGIs. But I think the ways in which we are really counterintuitive to everybody is that we've actually been really quiet because we are not a developer company. We don't sell APIs. We don't sell open source models. We also don't sell bottom up products. We're not a thing that you go and click and download the extension and like we want more users signing up for that thing. We're actually an enterprise company. So what we do is we work with a range of different companies, some like late stage multi-thousand people startups, some fortune 500s, et cetera. And what we do for them is we basically give them an out of the box solution where big complex workflows that their employees do every day could be delegated to the model. And so we look a little different from other companies in that in order to go build this full agent thing, the most important thing you got to get right is reliability. So initially zooming way back when, one of the first things that DEP did was we released this demo called Act One, right? Act One was like pretty cool. It's like kind of become a hello world thing for people to show agent demos by going to Redfin and asking to buy a house somewhere because like we did that in the original Act One demo and like showed that, showed like Google Sheets, all this other stuff. Over the last like year since that has come out, there's been a lot of really cool demos and you go play with them and you realize they work 60% of the time. But since we've always been focused on how do we build an amazing enterprise product, enterprises can't use anything that isn't in the nines of reliability. And so we've actually had to go down a slightly different tech tree than what you might find in the prompt engineering sort of plays in the agent space to get that reliability. And we've decided to prioritize reliability over all else. So like one of our use cases is crazy enough that it actually ends with a physical truck being sent to a place as the result of the agent workflow. And if you're like, if that works like 60% of the time, you're just blowing money and poor truck drivers going places.Alessio [00:16:30]: Interesting. One of the, our investment teams has this idea of services as software. I'm actually giving a talk at NVIDIA GTC about this, but basically software as a service, you're wrapping user productivity in software with agents and services as software is replacing things that, you know, you would ask somebody to do and the software just does it for you. When you think about these use cases, do the users still go in and look at the agent kind of like doing the things and can intervene or like are they totally removed from them? Like the truck thing is like, does the truck just show up or are there people in the middle checking in?David [00:17:04]: I think there's two current flaws in the framing for services as software, or I think what you just said. I think that one of them is like in our experience, as we've been rolling out Adept, the people who actually do the jobs are the most excited about it because they don't go from, I do this job to, I don't do this job. They go from, I do this job for everything, including the shitty rote stuff to I'm a supervisor. And I literally like, it's pretty magical when you watch the thing being used because now it parallelizes a bunch of the things that you had to do sequentially by hand as a human. And you can just click into any one of them and be like, Hey, I want to watch the trajectory that the agent went through to go solve this. And the nice thing about agent execution as opposed to like LLM generations is that a good chunk of the time when the agent fails to execute, it doesn't give you the wrong result. It just fails to execute. And the whole trajectory is just broken and dead and the agent knows it, right? So then those are the ones that the human then goes and solves. And so then they become a troubleshooter. They work on the more challenging stuff. They get way, way more stuff done and they're really excited about it. I think the second piece of it that we've found is our strategy as a company is to always be an augmentation company. And I think one out of principle, that's something we really care about. But two, actually, if you're framing yourself as an augmentation company, you're always going to live in a world where you're solving tasks that are a little too hard for what the model can do today and still needs a human to provide oversight, provide clarifications, provide human feedback. And that's how you build a data flywheel. That's how you actually learn from the smartest humans how to solve things models can't do today. And so I actually think that being an augmentation company forces you to go develop your core AI capabilities faster than someone who's saying, ah, okay, my job is to deliver you a lights off solution for X.Alessio [00:18:42]: Yeah. It's interesting because we've seen two parts of the market. One is we have one company that does agents for SOC analysts. People just don't have them, you know, and just they cannot attract the talent to do it. And similarly, in a software development, you have Copilot, which is the augmentation product, and then you have sweep.dev and you have these products, which they just do the whole thing. I'm really curious to see how that evolves. I agree that today the reliability is so important in the enterprise that they just don't use most of them. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's cool. But it's great to hear the story because I think from the outside, people are like, oh, a dev, they do Act One, they do Persimon, they do Fuyu, they do all this stuff. Yeah, it's just the public stuff.Swyx [00:19:20]: It's just public stuff.David [00:19:21]: So one of the things we haven't shared before is we're completely sold out for Q1. And so I think...Swyx [00:19:26]: Sold out of what?David [00:19:27]: Sold out of bandwidth to go on board more customers. And so we're like working really hard to go make that less of a bottleneck, but our expectation is that I think we're going to be significantly more public about the broader product shape and the new types of customers we want to attract later this year. So I think that clarification will happen by default.Swyx [00:19:43]: Why have you become more public? You know, if the whole push has... You're sold out, you're my enterprise, but you're also clearly putting effort towards being more open or releasing more things.David [00:19:53]: I think we just flipped over that way fairly recently. That's a good question. I think it actually boils down to two things. One, I think that, frankly, a big part of it is that the public narrative is really forming around agents as being the most important thing. And I'm really glad that's happening because when we started the company in January 2022, everybody in the field knew about the agents thing from RL, but the general public had no conception of what it was. They were still hanging their narrative hat on the tree of everything's a chatbot. And so I think now one of the things that I really care about is that when people think agent, they actually think the right thing. All sorts of different things are being called agents. Chatbots are being called agents. Things that make a function call are being called agents. To me, an agent is something that you can give a goal and get an end step workflow done correctly in the minimum number of steps. And so that's a big part of why. And I think the other part is because I think it's always good for people to be more aware of Redept as they think about what the next thing they want to do in their careers. The field is quickly pivoting in a world where foundation models are looking more and more commodity. And I think a huge amount of gain is going to happen from how do you use foundation models as the well-learned behavioral cloner to go solve agents. And I think people who want to do agents research should really come to Redept.Swyx [00:21:00]: When you say agents have become more part of the public narrative, are there specific things that you point to? I'll name a few. Bill Gates in his blog post mentioning that agents are the future. I'm the guy who made OSes, and I think agents are the next thing. So Bill Gates, I'll call that out. And then maybe Sam Altman also saying that agents are the future for open AI.David [00:21:17]: I think before that even, I think there was something like the New York Times, Cade Metz wrote a New York Times piece about it. Right now, in a bit to differentiate, I'm seeing AI startups that used to just brand themselves as an AI company, but now brand themselves as an AI agent company. It's just like, it's a term I just feel like people really want.Swyx [00:21:31]: From the VC side, it's a bit mixed. Is it? As in like, I think there are a lot of VCs where like, I would not touch any agent startups because like- Why is that? Well, you tell me.Alessio [00:21:41]: I think a lot of VCs that are maybe less technical don't understand the limitations of the-Swyx [00:21:46]: No, that's not fair.Alessio [00:21:47]: No, no, no, no. I think like- You think so? No, no. I think like the, what is possible today and like what is worth investing in, you know? And I think like, I mean, people look at you and say, well, these guys are building agents. They needed 400 million to do it. So a lot of VCs are maybe like, oh, I would rather invest in something that is tacking on AI to an existing thing, which is like easier to get the market and kind of get some of the flywheel going. But I'm also surprised a lot of funders just don't want to do agents. It's not even the funding. Sometimes we look around and it's like, why is nobody doing agents for X? Wow.David [00:22:17]: That's good to know actually. I never knew that before. My sense from my limited perspective is there's a new agent company popping up every day.Swyx [00:22:24]: So maybe I'm- They are. They are. But like I have advised people to take agents off of their title because it's so diluted.David [00:22:31]: It's now so diluted.Swyx [00:22:32]: Yeah. So then it doesn't stand for anything. Yeah.David [00:22:35]: That's a really good point.Swyx [00:22:36]: So like, you know, you're a portfolio allocator. You have people know about Persimmon, people know about Fuyu and Fuyu Heavy. Can you take us through like how you think about that evolution of that and what people should think about what that means for adepts and sort of research directions? Kind of take us through the stuff you shipped recently and how people should think about the trajectory of what you're doing.David [00:22:56]: The critical path for adepts is we want to build agents that can do a higher and higher level abstraction things over time, all while keeping an insanely high reliability standard. Because that's what turns us from research into something that customers want. And if you build agents with really high reliability standard, but are continuing pushing a level of abstraction, you then learn from your users how to get that next level of abstraction faster. So that's how you actually build the data flow. That's the critical path for the company. Everything we do is in service of that. So if you go zoom way, way back to Act One days, right? Like the core thing behind Act One is can we teach large model basically how to even actuate your computer? And I think we're one of the first places to have solved that and shown it and shown the generalization that you get when you give it various different workflows and texts. But I think from there on out, we really realized was that in order to get reliability, companies just do things in various different ways. You actually want these models to be able to get a lot better at having some specification of some guardrails for what it actually should be doing. And I think in conjunction with that, a giant thing that was really necessary is really fast multimodal models that are really good at understanding knowledge work and really good at understanding screens. And that is needs to kind of be the base for some of these agents. Back then we had to do a ton of research basically on how do we actually make that possible? Well, first off, like back in forgot exactly one month to 23, like there were no multimodal models really that you could use for things like this. And so we pushed really hard on stuff like the Fuyu architecture. I think one big hangover primarily academic focus for multimodal models is most multimodal models are primarily trained on like natural images, cat and dog photos, stuff that's come out of the camera. Coco. Yeah, right. And the Coco is awesome. Like I love Coco. I love TY. Like it's really helped the field. Right. But like that's the build one thing. I actually think it's really clear today. Multimodal models are the default foundation model, right? It's just going to supplant LLMs. Like you just train a giant multimodal model. And so for that though, like where are they going to be the most useful? They're going to be most useful in knowledge work tasks. That's where the majority of economic value is going to be. It's not in cat and dogs. Right. And so if that's what it is, what do you need to train? I need to train on like charts, graphs, tables, invoices, PDFs, receipts, unstructured data, UIs. That's just a totally different pre-training corpus. And so a depth spent a lot of time building that. And so the public for use and stuff aren't trained on our actual corpus, it's trained on some other stuff. But you take a lot of that data and then you make it really fast and make it really good at things like dense OCR on screens. And then now you have the right like raw putty to go make a good agent. So that's kind of like some of the modeling side, we've kind of only announced some of that stuff. We haven't really announced much of the agent's work, but that if you put those together with the correct product form factor, and I think the product form factor also really matters. I think we're seeing, and you guys probably see this a little bit more than I do, but we're seeing like a little bit of a pushback against the tyranny of chatbots as form factor. And I think that the reason why the form factor matters is the form factor changes what data you collect in the human feedback loop. And so I think we've spent a lot of time doing full vertical integration of all these bits in order to get to where we are.Swyx [00:25:44]: Yeah. I'll plug Amelia Wattenberger's talk at our conference, where she gave a little bit of the thinking behind like what else exists other than chatbots that if you could delegate to reliable agents, you could do. I was kind of excited at Adept experiments or Adept workflows, I don't know what the official name for it is. I was like, okay, like this is something I can use, but it seems like it's just an experiment for now. It's not your product.David [00:26:06]: So you basically just use experiments as like a way to go push various ideas on the design side to some people and just be like, yeah, we'll play with it. Actually the experiments code base underpins the actual product, but it's just the code base itself is kind of like a skeleton for us to go deploy arbitrary cards on the side.Swyx [00:26:22]: Yeah.Alessio [00:26:23]: Makes sense. I was going to say, I would love to talk about the interaction layer. So you train a model to see UI, but then there's the question of how do you actually act on the UI? I think there was some rumors about open app building agents that are kind of like, they manage the end point. So the whole computer, you're more at the browser level. I read in one of your papers, you have like a different representation, kind of like you don't just take the dome and act on it. You do a lot more stuff. How do you think about the best way the models will interact with the software and like how the development of products is going to change with that in mind as more and more of the work is done by agents instead of people?David [00:26:58]: This is, there's so much surface area here and it's actually one of the things I'm really excited about. And it's funny because I've spent most of my time doing research stuff, but there's like a whole new ball game that I've been learning about and I find it really cool. So I would say the best analogy I have to why Adept is pursuing a path of being able to use your computer like a human, plus of course being able to call APIs and being able to call APIs is the easy part, like being able to use your computer like a human is a hard part. It's in the same way why people are excited about humanoid robotics, right? In a world where you had T equals infinity, right? You're probably going to have various different form factors that robots could just be in and like all the specialization. But the fact is that humans live in a human environment. So having a human robot lets you do things that humans do without changing everything along the way. It's the same thing for software, right? If you go itemize out the number of things you want to do on your computer for which every step has an API, those numbers of workflows add up pretty close to zero. And so then many points along the way, you need the ability to actually control your computer like a human. It also lets you learn from human usage of computers as a source of training data that you don't get if you have to somehow figure out how every particular step needs to be some particular custom private API thing. And so I think this is actually the most practical path. I think because it's the most practical path, I think a lot of success will come from going down this path. I kind of think about this early days of the agent interaction layer level is a little bit like, do you all remember Windows 3.1? Like those days? Okay, this might be, I might be, I might be too old for you guys on this. But back in the day, Windows 3.1, we had this transition period between pure command line, right? Being the default into this new world where the GUI is the default and then you drop into the command line for like programmer things, right? The old way was you booted your computer up, DOS booted, and then it would give you the C colon slash thing. And you typed Windows and you hit enter, and then you got put into Windows. And then the GUI kind of became a layer above the command line. The same thing is going to happen with agent interfaces is like today we'll be having the GUI is like the base layer. And then the agent just controls the current GUI layer plus APIs. And in the future, as more and more trust is built towards agents and more and more things can be done by agents, if more UIs for agents are actually generative in and of themselves, then that just becomes a standard interaction layer. And if that becomes a standard interaction layer, what changes for software is that a lot of software is going to be either systems or record or like certain customized workflow execution engines. And a lot of how you actually do stuff will be controlled at the agent layer.Alessio [00:29:19]: And you think the rabbit interface is more like it would like you're not actually seeing the app that the model interacts with. You're just saying, hey, I need to log this call on Salesforce. And you're never actually going on salesforce.com directly as the user. I can see that being a model.David [00:29:33]: I think I don't know enough about what using rabbit in real life will actually be like to comment on that particular thing. But I think the broader idea that, you know, you have a goal, right? The agent knows how to break your goal down into steps. The agent knows how to use the underlying software and systems or record to achieve that goal for you. The agent maybe presents you information in a custom way that's only relevant to your particular goal, all just really leads to a world where you don't really need to ever interface with the apps underneath unless you're a power user for some niche thing.Swyx [00:30:03]: General question. So first of all, I think like the sort of input mode conversation. I wonder if you have any analogies that you like with self-driving, because I do think like there's a little bit of how the model should perceive the world. And you know, the primary split in self-driving is LiDAR versus camera. And I feel like most agent companies that I'm tracking are all moving towards camera approach, which is like the multimodal approach, you know, multimodal vision, very heavy vision, all the Fuyu stuff that you're doing. You're focusing on that, including charts and tables. And do you find that inspiration there from like the self-driving world? That's a good question.David [00:30:37]: I think sometimes the most useful inspiration I've found from self-driving is the levels analogy. I think that's awesome. But I think that our number one goal is for agents not to look like self-driving. We want to minimize the chances that agents are sort of a thing that you just have to bang your head at for a long time to get to like two discontinuous milestones, which is basically what's happened in self-driving. We want to be living in a world where you have the data flywheel immediately, and that takes you all the way up to the top. But similarly, I mean, compared to self-driving, like two things that people really undervalue is like really easy to driving a car down highway 101 in a sunny day demo. That actually doesn't prove anything anymore. And I think the second thing is that as a non-self-driving expert, I think one of the things that we believe really strongly is that everyone undervalues the importance of really good sensors and actuators. And actually a lot of what's helped us get a lot of reliability is a really strong focus on actually why does the model not do this thing? And the non-trivial amount of time, the time the model doesn't actually do the thing is because if you're a wizard of ozzing it yourself, or if you have unreliable actuators, you can't do the thing. And so we've had to fix a lot of those problems.Swyx [00:31:43]: I was slightly surprised just because I do generally consider the way most that we see all around San Francisco as the most, I guess, real case of agents that we have in very material ways.David [00:31:55]: Oh, that's absolutely true. I think they've done an awesome job, but it has taken a long time for self-driving to mature from when it entered the consciousness and the driving down 101 on a sunny day moment happened to now. Right. So I want to see that more compressed.Swyx [00:32:07]: And I mean, you know, cruise, you know, RIP. And then one more thing on just like, just going back on this reliability thing, something I have been holding in my head that I'm curious to get your commentary on is I think there's a trade-off between reliability and generality, or I want to broaden reliability into just general like sort of production readiness and enterprise readiness scale. Because you have reliability, you also have cost, you have speed, speed is a huge emphasis for a debt. The tendency or the temptation is to reduce generality to improve reliability and to improve cost, improve speed. Do you perceive a trade-off? Do you have any insights that solve those trade-offs for you guys?David [00:32:42]: There's definitely a trade-off. If you're at the Pareto frontier, I think a lot of folks aren't actually at the Pareto frontier. I think the way you get there is basically how do you frame the fundamental agent problem in a way that just continues to benefit from data? I think one of the main ways of being able to solve that particular trade-off is you basically just want to formulate the problem such that every particular use case just looks like you collecting more data to go make that use case possible. I think that's how you really solve. Then you get into the other problems like, okay, are you overfitting on these end use cases? You're not doing a thing where you're being super prescriptive for the end steps that the model can only do, for example.Swyx [00:33:17]: Then the question becomes, do you have one house model that you can then customize for each customer and you're fine-tuning them on each customer's specific use case?David [00:33:25]: Yeah.Swyx [00:33:26]: We're not sharing that. You're not sharing that. It's tempting, but that doesn't look like AGI to me. You know what I mean? That is just you have a good base model and then you fine-tune it.David [00:33:35]: For what it's worth, I think there's two paths to a lot more capability coming out of the models that we all are training these days. I think one path is you figure out how to spend, compute, and turn it into data. In that path, I consider search, RL, all the things that we all love in this era as part of that path, like self-play, all that stuff. The second path is how do you get super competent, high intelligence demonstrations from humans? I think the right way to move forward is you kind of want to combine the two. The first one gives you maximum sample efficiency for a little second, but I think that it's going to be hard to be running at max speed towards AGI without actually solving a bit of both.Swyx [00:34:16]: You haven't talked much about synthetic data, as far as I can tell. Probably this is a bit too much of a trend right now, but any insights on using synthetic data to augment the expensive human data?David [00:34:26]: The best part about framing AGI as being able to help people do things on computers is you have an environment.Swyx [00:34:31]: Yes. So you can simulate all of it.David [00:34:35]: You can do a lot of stuff when you have an environment.Alessio [00:34:37]: We were having dinner for our one-year anniversary. Congrats. Yeah. Thank you. Raza from HumanLoop was there, and we mentioned you were coming on the pod. This is our first-Swyx [00:34:45]: So he submitted a question.Alessio [00:34:46]: Yeah, this is our first, I guess, like mailbag question. He asked, when you started GPD 4 Data and Exist, now you have a GPD 4 vision and help you building a lot of those things. How do you think about the things that are unique to you as Adept, and like going back to like the maybe research direction that you want to take the team and what you want people to come work on at Adept, versus what is maybe now become commoditized that you didn't expect everybody would have access to?David [00:35:11]: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think implicit in that question, and I wish he were tier two so he can push back on my assumption about his question, but I think implicit in that question is calculus of where does advantage accrue in the overall ML stack. And maybe part of the assumption is that advantage accrues solely to base model scaling. But I actually believe pretty strongly that the way that you really win is that you have to go build an agent stack that is much more than that of the base model itself. And so I think like that is always going to be a giant advantage of vertical integration. I think like it lets us do things like have a really, really fast base model, is really good at agent things, but is bad at cat and dog photos. It's pretty good at cat and dog photos. It's not like soda at cat and dog photos, right? So like we're allocating our capacity wisely, right? That's like one thing that you really get to do. I also think that the other thing that is pretty important now in the broader foundation modeling space is I feel despite any potential concerns about how good is agents as like a startup area, right? Like we were talking about earlier, I feel super good that we're doing foundation models in service of agents and all of the reward within Adept is flowing from can we make a better agent? Because right now I think we all see that, you know, if you're training on publicly available web data, you put in the flops and you do reasonable things, then you get decent results. And if you just double the amount of compute, then you get predictably better results. And so I think pure play foundation model companies are just going to be pinched by how good the next couple of llamas are going to be and the next what good open source thing. And then seeing the really big players put ridiculous amounts of compute behind just training these base foundation models, I think is going to commoditize a lot of the regular LLMs and soon regular multimodal models. So I feel really good that we're just focused on agents.Swyx [00:36:56]: So you don't consider yourself a pure play foundation model company?David [00:36:59]: No, because if we were a pure play foundation model company, we would be training general foundation models that do summarization and all this other...Swyx [00:37:06]: You're dedicated towards the agent. Yeah.David [00:37:09]: And our business is an agent business. We're not here to sell you tokens, right? And I think like selling tokens, unless there's like a...Swyx [00:37:14]: Not here to sell you tokens. I love it.David [00:37:16]: It's like if you have a particular area of specialty, right? Then you won't get caught in the fact that everyone's just scaling to ridiculous levels of compute. But if you don't have a specialty, I find that, I think it's going to be a little tougher.Swyx [00:37:27]: Interesting. Are you interested in robotics at all? Just a...David [00:37:30]: I'm personally fascinated by robotics. I've always loved robotics.Swyx [00:37:33]: Embodied agents as a business, you know, Figure is like a big, also sort of open AI affiliated company that raises a lot of money.David [00:37:39]: I think it's cool. I think, I mean, I don't know exactly what they're doing, but...Swyx [00:37:44]: Robots. Yeah.David [00:37:46]: Well, I mean, that's a...Swyx [00:37:47]: Yeah. What question would you ask? If we had them on, what would you ask them?David [00:37:50]: Oh, I just want to understand what their overall strategy is going to be between now and when there's reliable stuff to be deployed. But honestly, I just don't know enough about it.Swyx [00:37:57]: And if I told you, hey, fire your entire warehouse workforce and, you know, put robots in there, isn't that a strategy? Oh yeah.David [00:38:04]: Yeah. Sorry. I'm not questioning whether they're doing smart things. I genuinely don't know what they're doing as much, but I think there's two things. One, I'm so excited for someone to train a foundation model of robots. It's just, I think it's just going to work. Like I will die on this hill, but I mean, like again, this whole time, like we've been on this podcast, we're just going to continually saying these models are basically behavioral cloners. Right. So let's go behavioral clone all this like robot behavior. Right. And then you figure out everything else you have to do in order to teach you how to solve a new problem. That's going to work. I'm super stoked for that. I think unlike what we're doing with helping humans with knowledge work, it just sounds like a more zero sum job replacement play. Right. And I'm personally less excited about that.Alessio [00:38:46]: We had a Ken June from InBoo on the podcast. We asked her why people should go work there and not at Adept.Swyx [00:38:52]: Oh, that's so funny.Alessio [00:38:54]: Well, she said, you know, there's space for everybody in this market. We're all doing interesting work. And she said, they're really excited about building an operating system for agent. And for her, the biggest research thing was like getting models, better reasoning and planning for these agents. The reverse question to you, you know, why should people be excited to come work at Adept instead of InBoo? And maybe what are like the core research questions that people should be passionate about to have fun at Adept? Yeah.David [00:39:22]: First off, I think that I'm sure you guys believe this too. The AI space to the extent there's an AI space and the AI agent space are both exactly as she likely said, I think colossal opportunities and people are just going to end up winning in different areas and a lot of companies are going to do well. So I really don't feel that zero something at all. I would say to like change the zero sum framing is why should you be at Adept? I think there's two huge reasons to be at Adept. I think one of them is everything we do is in the service of like useful agents. We're not a research lab. We do a lot of research in service of that goal, but we don't think about ourselves as like a classic research lab at all. And I think the second reason I work at Adept is if you believe that actually having customers and a reward signal from customers lets you build a GI faster, which we really believe, then you should come here. And I think the examples for why that's true is for example, our evaluations, they're not academic evals. They're not simulator evals. They're like, okay, we have a customer that really needs us to do these particular things. We can do some of them. These are the ones they want us to, we can't do them at all. We've turned those into evals, solve it, right? I think that's really cool. Like everybody knows a lot of these evals are like pretty saturated and the new ones that even are not saturated. You look at someone and you're like, is this actually useful? Right? I think that's a degree of practicality that really helps. Like we're equally excited about the same problems around reasoning and planning and generalization and all of this stuff. They're very grounded in actual needs right now, which is really cool.Swyx [00:40:45]: Yeah. This has been a wonderful dive. You know, I wish we had more time, but I would just leave it kind of open to you. I think you have broad thoughts, you know, just about