 Hey, good afternoon everybody, Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. We've got a couple of awesome guests today, Dan Smith is back and he's going to be helping us with more technology hacks and Matt Ricketts and Griffiths as well. Hello folks. Hey guys. Hello. Good afternoon. Yeah, fine. It is Wednesday the 12th of May. Can you believe May is almost halfway over? Okay. Have you all noticed that for every date, Tom has something to say that like illustrates the date in a new way that makes you go, dang it. Every, every day. On the 7th, wow, we're already a weekend. Are we a weekend on the 8th? Wow, we're working on halfway through the month already. How's he doing that? And you know, you know, Denet sent me a footlocker full of hats for like all the different holidays that you could imagine. I've got to scrounge through there to see if I can find the one for Memorial Day because that's going to be here in a couple of weeks, isn't it? It's coming up. Yeah, I have a good one for Memorial Day that she sent me. Thank you for that, Denet. Yeah. It's funny. I don't know if she's on yet. I don't see her yet. I don't think she's here. It's okay. When you go back and watch this later, Deni, you'll see about it. You know, stop market today, you know, to you as depends on which market you're looking at, dropping a couple of points, two or three research points, which is a whole lot of money. And everybody's concerned about inflation. At least investors are the government's kind of denying it's happening, but I'm not sure if they're going to be able to shift the consensus or not. And, you know, corn, for instance, wasn't a couple of months ago. It was like $3 a bushel. Now it's over $7 a bushel. And any type of meat typically is fed corn and, you know, a piece of plywood costs $100 now. But it's not really slowing down consumption. People are, they're opening homes like crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. From a smart business move, Sam Poy, what does that mean to us as house cleaning business? It means that we're going to be paying more for everything too, including our labor, right? We've talked about this before, but just a reminder, if you haven't been raising your rates, now's a good time to think about it. And if you are bemoaning that everybody is, that the government is paying them too much and unemployment is causing this problem, stop. Just stop complaining about that, because not getting you anywhere, you're not, it's not making you feel better and it's not helping you to take action. So it doesn't matter why. Solid. Yes. We just got to, we got to jump on this bandwagon. Actually, we want to jump in front of the bandwagon, right, Tom? Yeah, you don't want me chasing it. I've chased it and I've gotten in front of it. And as long as you're guessing right, every once in a while you get in front of something that doesn't come and that's not very much fun. But if you guess right and you get in front of it, you're in an awesome position. And I think that we're right on this. I think we're on our way to higher wages. And you can wait a couple of months and find out that your last company on the block that said I'm raising the wages and that point everybody's already got a job. Or, you know, now's a really good time to get in front of it, I think. I agree. I agree, I agree. Now, for those that were not on the call on Monday, Tom, you made a comment that you've kind of jumped in already. Is that right? You've taken some steps in that direction. Yeah, that's right. We announced Monday that our new minimum wage across our branches, Georgia and South Carolina and the official minimum wage in those states is still the federal minimum wage at 725. But ours is 15. So that means anybody that we hire from this point forward is going to be started at 15. And it means all of our incumbents got a decent increase, you know, making sure that everybody's above 15. And if they were already, you know, a few months higher than what our previous minimum wage was then they got, you know, a pretty decent increase above them. Keith, I'm a decent above 15. So I'll keep you posted on that, guys. Yeah, jumping ahead of it as you said. It's good. We did this a while back and I did a presentation today and I was looking at my turnover for, you know, week by week for the year. You could kind of watch the trends of like, our turnover was pretty good, pretty good. Then there's that stimulus at around like the 10th or 12th week of the year, all the way to the 14th of the week. My turnover annually went, my annualized turnover went up to about 350%. And then it's been declining since then a back down to about 170%. You know, just looking at the data, but the interesting thing is I've gone four weeks in a row without losing anyone. We've gained five employees. So I think that the trend is going right. Although I think we have another two that started this week on top of those five. But maybe, you know, maybe aren't, we'll see, you know, maybe they're watching, but I don't think so. I don't think so, but I think it might not make it. But we've overall done really good with the hiring over the last couple of months. And I'm hopeful that everyone makes it when they start because it's such an investment to bring them on. So we're seeing positive trends. I do want to caution everyone too that the new minimum wage, the higher wage that people are expecting from us. That is now becoming a barrier of entry, y'all, to be able to get people in. This is not going to be the thing that is going to make people stay at your company. If you get it in your head while I'm paying them so much money, they better be happy. That's not what this is. That's not going to happen. And you need to never think that thought if it entered into your mind at all ever. Hash it out now. It's not happening. As they say, it's necessary, but that's sufficient. Absolutely. One other thing I want to throw out there, then we can hop back up on this train of thought. But is anybody running into situations where they're running out of gasoline? Like if you're in the southeast coast because it's becoming a real thing here in South Carolina. They got hacked and I guess there was a ransomware attack. And I guess that happened Saturday. And I drove, I spent the day in mortal beach today, which is about two hours north of here. So I drove by a bunch of gas stations. Half of them had the little yellow bags of the gas pump handles indicating that they were out of gas. And the other had like serious gas lines. And you know, I was, you know, I remember the kids saying what was happening in the early 70s where you had to have an even and an odd license plate. I determined what days you could get a pass and people that lined up forever. That was happening here. I saw that today at South Carolina. Not with the other thing, but I mean, people like backed out into the road, you know, cars like a dozen deep waiting to get to a gas tank. Oh, all right. Good to know. Good to know. Wow. I haven't heard anything like that. We had some people in Georgia that in Atlanta that couldn't go to work today because they couldn't get gas. So this is one of the times when I think my husband is so amazing. We have two of those really big drums full of gas that he treats and he uses them every so often and then gets more and treats it. So we always know now y'all know where to come. There's all the apocalypse kind of a little bit of a proper. We definitely have like the five gallon buckets of food and we definitely have like the big water tablets. And I don't know what all we have. We have a whole big thing. So a little bit like CNN's on top of a shortage. And for what I understand, there really isn't a shortage but people are hoarding it. It's kind of like the whole toilet paper thing, you know. But people are hoarding it. But we're hoarding no differently than we have always hoarded. So we're not impacting anything. Name horde ratio, huh? Yeah. That's right. There's one more thing I want to share, which is kind of important. I shared I went to Myrtle Beach today. Oh, Raymond. Yeah. A number of us know Christine and Raymond. Raymond passed away a couple of weeks ago. I guess he took ill a little over a year ago, which is just kind of an interesting story. They, Christine and Raymond travel a lot. They were in England and they're originally from England, but they were visiting. He fell ill, had a health problem, a heart problem. And he was in the hospital and he wanted to be treated in the U.S. And they really didn't want to discharge him. So basically escaping the hospital. Like when he was on the airplane, you know, the authorities came in and said that, you know, you, you know, the hospital reporting this thing. And he goes, yeah, I know that. I'm going back to the space to get my surgery and they letting go. And that was a little over a year ago, but his health declined. And I don't know what to say about Raymond. Before you guys who know him, he was a very charismatic, very friendly boy and always dressed sharp as anything could. Lit up a room. When Raymond was around, everybody knew it. He grew up in an orphanage, joined the Royal Navy at the age of 16. He rose to the ranks of a significant company within England that did vending machines. Spent a lot of time in the States working in various parts of the country in that industry. And just really happy to die and he's going to be missed. Yeah, absolutely he will. Their company is Royal Mades and Immortal Beach. And if you're ever around, if you're like Christina Yell, they've got a really cool business. The whole thing's built around their English background. You know, Christine kind of kind of tags yourself as Lady Christine. And she does some radio ads and TV stuff. She's quite a personality as well. Yeah, he will be missed by a lot of people. Did you go to the service today Tom? I did. I went up there. They had a service today at 11 Eastern. It was really good. They've got some kind of off way, off Broadway type stuff that they do there, like live entertainment. You know, I guess really kind of like some stuff that you might see in an Asheville or Branson type thing. They had some talent that does not like professional talent like singing and play music and stuff. I've been to a few funerals in my life, but I've never been entertained like this. Quite a production. I would have been what Raymond would have wanted. Yeah, that's very cool. I've never been to anything like that either. That's awesome. I love that. Wow. You did it right. So we're going to talk about technology and picking up on the theme that we're on Monday for you guys that were here on Monday. Dan and Gosha were with us. They were talking about the technology, and I guess it's a workflow in the process that they're using to get reviews. And we can pick up on that for a minute, and then I guess we want to move into some other areas where technology is going to be important. Because getting reviews is good for getting customers out of a lean part of the whole marketing process. Did we talk about tools per se on getting reviews, did we? No, we really didn't dig into tools because there's a number of ways to do it. And I know with the different software pieces that business owners have in place today, some have automation tools built in, made Central being one of them and Service Autopilot being another. So there's the capacity for people to achieve such an automation with the tools they have. Or if they don't have that in place, they can homebrew, put together something with the tool front such as Zapier. It's an automation component that shakes hands, if you will, between different software pieces. That's a more manual way to get it done, but that's an example. So I didn't drill into the tools because there's really more than one way to skin a good genuine review, if you will. Do we want to maybe just take a high level view because if people saw that and want to know, hey, that's cool. I'd like to be able to do that with my tools. Matt, I know you've got some familiarity with some of the tools on the marketplace for review generation. Yeah, and one tool I'd like to just test real quick is if Liz or Tom, if you guys want to dial down your speaker a little bit because I'm getting so much feedback. I don't know if I'm the only one hearing it because I've tried it. Go now. Yeah, let me see. So what I was going to say, there's a few tools Dan was talking about, kind of homebrew or do it yourself. And that's sort of what I did for years using something like Formstack, tracking their, you know, tracking the request. And basically, you know, the problem I found with that was is we didn't have a good system to mark that we had already asked them within the last six months. And so that became cumbersome. So there's services like Birdseye. That's probably like the gold standard of review requesting and, you know, probably the most expensive, probably $300 a month would be a tool like Birdseye. So very granular data, like really, really robust tracking and, you know, compliant with, compliant with Google for things like the way that you ask, like, you're really not supposed to gate keep your reviews. Like if you're going to ask, you should really ask every customer that you serve. That's probably best practice. That's what I do is I just, even though our, you know, we kind of survey them first and then kind of gate keep them at that point and ask for review. I go ahead the next day just to avoid Google saying that we're gatekeeping. I send out a request to everyone that we serve the day before through Nice Job. I don't use Birdseye. I'm evaluating Birdseye. But, you know, Nice Job is what I'm currently using. Basically, Nice Job is like a simple version of Birdseye, like a stripped down basic tool. And I think it's $75 a month does a lot of the same things, not as granular, not as rich data, but probably for our purposes, more than enough for what we're doing. So those would be the two that I like best. It's like one is top of market. One is kind of what would be considered lower tier software, very simple. But, you know, for 75 bucks, I'm using Nice Job just to make sure that I'm Google compliant. I like that one. Dan, are you familiar with anything else? There's probably a half dozen, but... Yeah, I am. On Monday, I spoke to that specifically and wanted to make sure that in talking about the review automation that I was kind of sharing with the community, I wanted to make sure exactly what you just drove home on. There's pre-built solutions out there. So tell us, Nice Job, Birdseye are all probably the dominating three, if you will. And going back to Monday, for those of you that follow every day, one of the things that I touched on is there's no wrong answer, right? If Birdseye is working well for you and just cranking out those reviews, that's wonderful. But not everybody can afford a $200, $300 solution present day. Matt, one of the things that I touched on was the... And I know many business owners that use those services and they work exceedingly well. We have found success with the intimacy of the message coming from a person in our office. All through automations, but it coming from the entity in which they have the relationship with, as opposed to a third-party brand, label, machine, that albeit does 20 other things that are amazing and plug into social media and SEO and some really great things, no doubt. But at a core level, if you are wanting to make sure that you're getting reviews today, gosh, there's a way to make sure that you're staying on top of it, because what we all know is just asking once the return on that is so low and the act of following up to ensure a higher return is almost impossible, right? Because we've got the next call, the next client. So be it a pre-made solution, be it something you put together with automations, what's most important is that social proof, making sure that you're doing what you can to stand out in your local market with credible, genuine reviews that play on the right side of the Google ecosystem, for sure. I'm sure you probably hit on it when you guys were talking about it too. But most of the signals that Google is looking for as far as how they're going to deliver your Google guaranteed if you're going to do an ad or your Google local page to searchers is going to be on review velocity, how much frequency of reviews are you getting. Even if they're mediocre, it's better than getting none, right? So as far as Google is concerned as far as delivering you, then I think the third on the list after how close you are to where they're searching, so that's more of a relevance factor as far as distance from the search. The third factor is actually your review rating. The fourth one I think is activity on your page, but I can't remember. You have some control over that as far as making updates, making sure that you're posting things on your Google places, Google local page. Yeah, I think you can do a lot of that yourself and you can have a lot of great results because most people in our space might have 10 or 12 reviews. If you get 50, you get 100, my company is 250, you probably have more than I do then. I saw someone the other day had like 400, and they're not any bigger company than me, they're just better about asking. Yeah, that's the key, putting a tool in place, whatever it might look like to ask. The credibility factor, you hit the nail on the head, Matt. When someone is comparing you against other people, there is that business out there and some of the people watching today might fall into this category. They're happy that they have 40, they're excited that they have 60 reviews and that's good, keep charging, keep adding, but when your competitor has 200 or 300 for most people shopping, it's a no-brainer. Matt, to hear that you're at 250, I'm at 248, so I just sent a message to my office manager, we need three more before this call ends. I might actually get 245, I think you might actually get ahead of me already. I may have been rounding up, to be honest. It's interesting in terms of ranking in the map pack, sometimes companies with fewer reviews and maybe even a lower average score ranks higher than companies with more reviews and higher scores. Sure, more recent activity, more, you know, it's just maybe another third. It's half a dozen different things. I think Maz has an article, it's like eight different things and you're right, making sure your pictures are there, making sure you're updating it regularly, having, and they evolve that too. I guess the configuration on that, they keep adding more opportunities to put more stuff there, right? Yeah. They do and Matt touched on making sure that you're playing in all the different realms that are relevant and I do think that's the biggest takeaway. Not knowing exactly what they're basing things on, if you're doing your updates, if you're, you know, adding images, if you're just playing in the ecosystem, you're strengthening your position across the board. It may not be overnight, but as things change, they release something new, just making sure you're playing in their world as they want to play. You will be rewarded over time. There's no doubt on the Google platform. Yeah, I think that this is, you know, we're probably talking about this all day. I think what I, you know, as far as technology goes, maybe we want to pivot to maybe some scheduling and dispatch tools. Yeah, let me just say one thing real quick for anybody that wasn't on the call on Monday. One of the things that Dan hit on that, that I think is really, really important that the other sites don't do so tell us nice job. Even bird eye is he reaches out to them every single time they have a good interaction of any type. So if the customer calls and gives a new credit card number, great, we're so happy to help you with that. Mrs Johnson would know and he uses his little spiel, whatever any time they have any good engagement with the customer, which I think makes a really, really big difference. It's not just around the cleaning. It's around all of it, the whole experience. I agree. That's brilliant. And I think the way that you ask and kind of preface it's like, hey, would you mind, you know, give us an interview and then like the follow up email or follow up text. I mean, this is probably the critical factor. I think, I mean, not to talk about Made Central, but I think Tom and I should really talk about building that sooner or later and kind of automating that at some point. Because I think the way you think is the way that we need to be, you know, moving and making it really easy for people to do that. So yeah, that's stuff. If you're interacting with the customer and if you're doing anything other than being yelled at and threatened to be fired, you should be asking for a review. Yeah, I did a talk today and I, you know, basically I, one of the things I really hit on is, is that operations is marketing. I mean, you're the way that you, the way you operate your business and the way that you deliver your service is your biggest piece of marketing that you do, whether you know it or not. And like every one of those touch points you have needs to be positive. So, you know, having the right people on the bus, the right human interfaces and the right technology that's facing customers that makes it easier for them to deal with you is really critical. You know, one communication tool that we just talked a lot about is text messaging. It sounds like it's like simple, but there's a lot to it. I think there's a lot of technology that you can really put into place with text messaging. I think as far as a customer service touch point, I think we should talk a little bit about that, about how that actually is improving customer service and, you know, delivery. So that might be something a little bit tech wise to talk about in terms of, you know, all the way from, you know, communication and sales all the way through, you know, it even helps with scheduling and dispatch of your day and how you're communicating with your customers. So it might be. I do a mastermind group, Matt, with an attorney. And I've learned so much about sales from him. Because his point is that that's all he does. He has, he's a trial attorney. And that's all he does is he has to sell this, his, his solution, his argument to the jury and to the judge. And how he goes about that is so much different than what we would normally think. It's not just about telling the story, which is what we all think it is. But it's so much more than that. And Dan speaks without maybe recognizing that he's speaking to it, but he speaks to a lot of this stuff. One of the things is meet them where they are. You, before you give them what you want to give them, you have to give them what they want. So that, that's a big thing that, that my friend is always talking about. He's like, if the, it doesn't really matter what you tell the jury, if they're not ready to hear it, they have to be ready to hear it. So you have to get them in the place where they're ready to hear your message. And a lot of that has to do with little stuff that you would not think about. Like what kind of language do, does everybody use in the courtroom? So what kind of language is the customer using? And if you're texting, same thing. Are they texting to you with no capitalization and no periods? Should you respond to them in the same way? Or should you respond to them in a more professional way? His, his response to that is professional to start and as quickly as you can bring it down, bring it down to their level. So they feel like they're back and forth with you. Now they're in relationship. So I just thought it was really interesting how everything that we do here ties back to sales and all the other parts of our lives as well. We're selling all day long and selling is a lot more than getting somebody's credit card. We're selling the idea that we have an awesome service. We're selling the idea that we have awesome jobs. We're selling the idea that it's important to set your alarm clock and get out of bed every day and come to work or something. You can go on forever, but we're selling. Yeah. Yeah, there's no doubt. When, when it comes to the technology front, it's not just a matter of how can I use technology to get more sales, right? It's how, how technology impacts the efficiency of your office, how it impacts the interaction with your team, whether, you know, it's throughout the week or in the moment, your clients kind of across the board. And I know all too often for some people, especially maybe new to, to business that can be daunting. You're trying to build a cleaning empire and every, you know, every other Facebook post is try this software or try this service or go in this direction. And it can be very, very overwhelming. If you fold into that mix, someone who is not comfortable on the technology space, then you're down the rabbit hole of who can I trust and, you know, who's legitimate. And it just kind of, it's a domino effect of, of do, do I act or do I stay on the sideline knowing that I should act, but not knowing what to do. What, what doesn't change is the need for technology in our business. I mean, that's, that's a fact. So how do we navigate that in a way that kind of levels the playing field so that everybody can, can make progress. And that's, that's through tools, that's through training. That's through, you know, just conversation like this to make sure that, that everyone understands it's relevant and you've got to figure it out somehow, some way, whether it's with a partner or, or learning on your own with, with no agenda other than help us out there. You just, you got to, you got to find it. So, you know, I guess there's several areas that, that we could, could, could touch upon and no particular right or wrong in terms of order. You know, we mentioned that, you know, marketing sales was an area that, that, that we could talk about scheduling and dispatch, you know, the whole operations logistics part of the business. We talked a little bit, you know, talent acquisition and management certainly is, is a hot topic today. Anything in that consideration set that anybody wants to jump on? Well, I first want to know if anybody has an answer to Robin's question. Because I don't. Google, they don't, Google doesn't tell you, but I mean, still, yes, I think so, because like most of the services like Bird's Eye or Nice Job try and post your, your reviews to Twitter and other social media and then link back to your Google Places page and other things. So, or your Google Local page, they change the names many times. I always, I can never remember which, which to call it. But yeah, I do believe that it would have some minor effect on that, especially if you continuously, you know, posted your reviews out to other social sources and had links to relevant, relevant properties like your Google Places page. This is... Also, if you guys are looking for any of these places, it is sotellus.com. It is nicejob.com. And then it's birdeye, no S in there, birdeye.com. Yeah. And if I were to recommend one for most of the people watching today, I think I would have to say Nice Job would do 90% of what you need for half the cost. I mean, it's, it's pretty robust for, you know, pretty good value for the money. So, I open a browser and I take S and O and Tellus popped up and I don't think I've ever been to this website. So, that tells you how many people go to Google searching for this company. Yeah. And Nice Job is the third one. Yeah. Nice job.io, I think. Yeah. We use Nice Job. Got it. It's not nicejob.com. I thought it was. Oh, it's getnicejob.com. Okay. I'll click on. I wonder why they do that versus using their... So, back to Robin's question. Just for a second, I dropped a link earlier. This paper's a little bit dated, especially when it comes to SEO, but it's the most recent one I can find from Moz that basically breaks down the factors that Moz has determined that Google uses to rank both on local SEO as well as the map pack. The criteria is a little bit different. Like on the map pack, what they call the signals, the business signals, proximity categories, keywords. So, do you have a presence in the physical location that you're searching on, for instance? How about your links? What type of words do you use in your anchor text and is that keywords matching what's being searched? The reviews, the type of reviews that you're getting, the on-page signals, citations, so on and so forth. I dropped this link. I'll put that in there again, Robin, but if you read that, I think it's... Even though these have maybe have shifted some a little bit over the last couple of years, the general concept of what Google looks for for both the map pack as well as organic search is still some useful info here. Coming from a purely arbitrary statistical standpoint, if you're going out there and taking action in these various areas, that's probably more than 50% of your competitors. That's probably more than 75% of your competitors. If you're in a big market, that might be different, but the vast majority of your smaller cleaning companies, your mid-sized cleaning companies, might not be checking off the boxes, right? They're trying to keep operations in order. They don't have time or maybe the partner to worry about all these things. So you're ahead of the game if you're even trying to check off seven of the 10 boxes, knowing that those boxes always change, something is better than nothing for certain. Yeah. It's about taking action. Remember, old business coach I used to have, CEOs have to be prone for action. Even if you aren't always doing the right thing as a role, you're going to be better off doing something as opposed to doing nothing. There you go. For sure. The only time I got to argue on this, you guys, if you're busy all the time and nothing's happening in your business and you're just going along, doing the same old thing every single day, sometimes you have to get off the hamster wheel. It's not okay to just be busy. You work all day, every single day, and nothing's happening. I'm sorry. You have to stop doing that stuff and start doing some of the right stuff. Now, I will agree with everybody. What they're talking about is activities that are going to grow your business. Do one of those. Yes. Don't just search through Facebook for more good ideas. You already did that. Stop doing that. You don't have to keep doing that. And just because you're doing that doesn't mean you're doing the right thing. Dan, I can't run on people all the time about this. There's a difference in motion and movement. Make sure that you get the things that are moving. We're talking about technology. One thing is that you don't have to be the one doing it all. A lot of this can be happening through automations in your business. Most of us have quite a bit of automated stuff in our life. We don't even really think about it. I just did a workout. And right after I did it, I got a little notice from Peloton that said, hey, nice job. Do you want to stretch out now or something like that? And it's automated. And they're trying to get you to engage in the software a little bit more, right? Or with the platform a little bit more and tie you in. I just finished the 50th ride on the thing and it gives you a little certificate. All of that's automated. And to condition us to do things, to get back on that thing tomorrow, that's marketing. And so like the way we do that in our businesses is we do things like reminders and we condition our clients that we're coming on certain days and certain times and we're consistent on the times that we show up and we use our software to make sure that we're consistent. We send the right teams and the right days with the right resources, right? So, you know, a lot of activity can be done without you actually doing it. You don't have to burn the calories yourself. You put the processes in place. And, you know, the whole theme this week is using technology to grow your business. And maybe we should just take a minute and talk about that. If you think about, you know, where we've been and where technology was and where it is now, it's really been democratized. Where, you know, these tools that we're looking at for getting reviews or if we're talking about, you know, building our workforce, although there's a ton of technology out there from applicant tracking systems to learning management systems that are just really easy to manage and tools that promote, you know, employee engagement that automate a lot of that. I mean, hundreds of platforms on any one of these categories that you talk about, a lot of them are at a price point where, you know, they're within our reach. They're not like, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, certainly, you know, you had to be a publicly traded company, a very large company to afford some of this technology. And today it's available to all of us. I remember 14 years ago, I really wanted Salesforce when I was starting my business because I wanted all the automations and the, like, bells and whistles for when, like, someone calls that it would tie into my, you know, to my CRM and it would track, like, all the interactions that we have with customers. I mean, that is what Dan's building on his current website. I mean, he's basically got code on there, like, basically every time someone goes to his website, it's tracking those events and then it's, you know, what happens next because they do this and, you know, it's marketing on a very, it's marketing on the edges a little bit because he's doing so many other things in the core, right? So now he can go out to the edges a little bit and, you know, use technology to kind of make even more money. And maybe it's because he likes technology and he's good at it and it's just maybe it's fun to play with this stuff too. You know, sometimes I think, you know, Dan and I are tinkers and, you know, that's just, we're going to go play around the edges and see what we come up with. But even just the core functionality of software was not available 10 years ago when I started my business. I did it all on, we've been doing this instant quote thing for, I don't know, 14 years now. We've been in business in 2013 years. And one of the first things I did was I put this instant quote on my website. All I did was I did some math that basically just added up, you know, different things based on whatever and we would give somebody a price on our website. We were doing that 10 years ago, 13 years ago, nobody else was doing that. And then now if you're not putting your price online, you're probably seen as probably, you know, maybe old fashioned. You don't have your quoting or whatever online, you know. So what does that mean? I have a hard time not going back and thinking about the way it used to be with, you know, yellow page ads and in-home estimates. And we were cleaning companies and a big part of what we did was focus on removing soil from a surface and a lot of the other stuff which is kind of French stuff but it feels like we're as much technology companies today as we are anything else. We're spending all this time talking about SEO and, you know, I don't care what the process is, we're talking about what technology is out there to support it, right? Yeah. So... You know what, what comes to mind is is kind of a disclaimer, right? To your point, Tom, there are all these software pieces out there and they're affordable and they're within reach. But when you tie in what Liz said, there's the element of getting caught up in investing in software or investing in a solution and not implementing and not executing. And I know I've been there myself where you buy some new whiz bang and you think it's so great and, you know, I've ventured to guests. There's people on the call who, you know, they've got something that they plan to set up that they haven't quite set up yet every month. And you really have to... My disclaimer is there's a lot of solutions out there that can improve the efficiency of your business. Pick one, focus on it, implement it, master it before moving to the next. Otherwise, it can just be very, very overwhelming. So when we're talking about the topic as a whole, let us not forget the importance of executing through to production. That's key for sure. Yeah, I agree. I just talked about that today with marketing is that we all get, like, we get distracted on 15 different things. And if you get really good at one, you should just keep putting quarters into that one thing until the return starts dialing back a little bit. And then, I mean, you can still be going wide in testing things out, but, you know, having 15 things to measure and track is a lot harder than... You know, I really go... I leverage really hard on Facebook and, you know, AdWords I do just to stay relevant. AdWords I do because it works. And it's pretty much automatic around Google, I'm sorry, Google guaranteed. And then, you know, SEO is just something that, you know, you almost have to do to stay relevant. But, yeah, if you pick a project, like you're talking about, like executing on that one project, take 90 days and really hammer it out and, you know, implement it and go out. I see people take six months to execute software and it's very expensive that it would be a lot easier just to knock it out in 30 to 90 days and just be live. Yeah. Is our job changing, though, as CEOs of companies? I mean, it's certainly evolved over the years, right? And it looks different now than it did five years ago, really, from a technology standpoint. I mean, a bigger part of our job description is from a strategic standpoint, making sure that we're leveraging technology. But I'm not sure that it's so much changed, Tom. You have been hammering on this for years. You have been saying this, that it's a tech, that we are in a tech business and in a logistics business. It's logistics. What? It's logistics, for sure. But I think the tech has changed three years ago. You've been saying how long ago since you were giving the big texture. That's been our stick for 20-some years. I mean, that's just kind of the world I came from. And you're right. I mean, I was a logistics guy and I used technology and I always saw that as a competitive advantage and I believe it always has been and we've done okay in this industry. But I think it's on steroids now. It's just, the technology has become so ubiquitous and it's just so much more of it out there and there's so many options and stuff that we couldn't do even a couple of years ago or stuff that you could do that it really took some geek stuff and learning how to stand up a Linux server and build some stuff that now you can, with a credit card and 50 bucks a month, you've got it. And it's different in that regard. Yes. It's certainly very democratized, like was said. So you guys are very, very techie. All three of you guys are very, very techie. I am not. And I would hazard a guess that a lot of the people that are on smart business moves also are not. So for people like us, like what do you recommend? How do we, how do we be more techie? What do we look at? What do we, you know, what's the smart business move for us? I like what Dan said. Execute on one thing, get it right and do, and then stack that on until you have your tech stack built. One thing at a time. I mean, it's just too critical. I mean, I was looking at, I was looking at someone's data, just coaching them the other day. And they were like, they had all these jobs. They were telling me that their price was $45 an hour. They had all these jobs. Like they were made service, made central customer, but they just hadn't looked at this report yet. They didn't know it was available. And I was digging through and I was running a report for them. And I was like, you are not making $45 an hour. You're not, you're making $37. Can you pay your bills at $37 an hour and pay your people? And she's like, I don't think so. And I'm like, you better start knowing so. I don't think it's a choice. I think you have to start knowing these data at a finer degree because we keep talking about wages going up. Well, you can't pay higher wages if you don't know that you're able to control your cost of goods sold in a way. I mean, you could do it on spreadsheets and I think that's fine. You know, that's technology too. That's a form of technology. But you, you better be, you better be managing that like every day. You better not be letting stuff slip through the cracks. So my, my suggestion would be to go back to what Dan said is master one thing and then master the next. You know, I'll add to that. And this is not unique to, to, to any one person because I've fallen victim to this along the way myself. But picture a matrix, right? You've got, you've got all these options of what you need to do to build your business. And in this block right here, it is Facebook posts. And in this block over here, it's blog posts. And in this block over here, it's a great website. And you've got one more block over here that is email marketing. Holistically, the better approach is to slowly build your foundation, right? Before you fold into these, these other solutions, but all too often small business owners, medium business owners kind of cherry pick, right? I, well, I, I know I got a Facebook post and I know I have to send out something on Google, my business. And you know what? I want to send out emails as well. But, but that fragmented solution maybe, maybe doesn't work to your advantage if you were systematically just kind of building that strong foundation and then stacking things on top of it. Just today in, in our MMA group, we were talking about leading the business with a proactive mindset. All too often, we get caught in the reaction area as small business owners, medium business owners, we're, we're in a reactionary mindset, right? This is not working today. So I've got to fix it or this is the fire of the hour. This is taking all my attention. And at the end of the day, you can go home exhausted and you're wore out and the your to-do list just kind of grows and, you know, just, it's there. But when you're operating with a proactive mindset, what can I do today and apply that to technology, apply that to operations, apply that to recruiting, what can I do today that is going to head off that, that collision that's, that's going to happen if I don't do anything, or what can I do today that's going to improve the sales for tomorrow or what processes can I put in place today that is going to improve my employee retention. You know, we can talk about technology and that is, that's today's topic. But, but when you roll in that proactive mindset, it's just as important. It's not relative just to technology, but being proactive in your business, Tom making changes to wages now when he doesn't have to, it's a proactive measure for the greater good as opposed to the reactionary. Well, everyone else is doing and I have to, to make that change as well. So I, I kind of echo what Matt said. There is the the, the pick your battles. But, but doing so proactively I think is what what is going to gain more ground than just kind of putting out fires on a, on a day to day basis. Which, which is kind of a kid to, you know, being prone to action. It's, it's not about doing the daily minutia checking your email every day. It's about what are the things I need to accomplish that are going to be moving me forward. And, you know, we talk, if you do foundations, we, you'll hear us talking about reversible decisions. And a lot of times we spend a lot of time wrestling with, do I do something that if you try it, if it doesn't work, it really doesn't cost you very much. And you can do it the next day. So it's a much, you'll move much faster if, if you can identify it as a reversible decision, you go, what's the worst case that'll happen? And if you apply it to technology, it's like play with it. You know, get it, and see and talk to other, your peers and other people in the industry. I love tinkering. And, you know, I'm up there with everybody else and tinkering a dozen years ago, I think actually was a more rational thing to do because if you didn't tinker to figure it out, you weren't going to get there. I mean, we built telephone switches, we built IVR, but we did all kinds of just great, we built our own on a next-tell beat-beat telephone because there wasn't anything else out there. Tinkering in 2021 needs to look a little bit different because why build it when you can put it on a credit card for a mass amount of money every month and you just got it? At the end of the day, we should be making money in our cleaning businesses, not trying to tinker some solution that somebody already did a whole lot better and has made it very affordable for us. Yeah, sound advice. I do think it is important and I know we don't want to have this be like a big Made Central pitch all the time, but this is one thing that I really like about Made Central that I don't think enough people talk about or give credence to, especially for people that maybe are not all that tech-savvy. Made Central brings a lot of the processes all together under one roof so that you don't have to have this thing here and this thing here and this thing here and this thing here. Like, it doesn't have to be Made Central, but really you got to have some way of getting everything all together because the stuff has to play well together also. Not, not everything works together. So you get this and it doesn't quite sync up with this and kind of jury-rig it and make it work. I think it's a good term. No, I think it was okay. I was like, well, what do I say? But I think that that's also an important piece is finding tech that can make everything easier. If the technology that you're using is making your life harder, you need to rethink that. You need to you need to like simplify. Matt mentioned the technology stack. That's a fancy term for what type of software you're going to be licensing to run your business. And before you get too deep into spending money on that, you really need to look at your workflow. And this is this is something that we use in foundations as well. And every cleaning business kind of looks like this and every one of these boxes is a process within your business. This stuff at the top here is basically finding people who want to clean homes and cleaning them and training them. This line in the middle is basically marketing and advertising and sales and finding homes to clean. There's some other logistics stuff down here supplies and equipment, but you take the people who clean homes, the homes that need to be cleaned and some supplies and you mix it all together in scheduling and you send teams out to clean and you clean. You got support activities where you're doing your accounting your payroll that technology. What technology are you going to use to create as much efficiency in terms of the back room help you need to make all this happen plus getting maximum outcomes in your business in terms of providing quality service, hiring good people, cleaning homes and being profitable and doing it. And so many of these processes are interrelated where if you get a quality score that ties into your employees that also ties into your customer that ties into your training. If you've got separate systems that don't talk to each other then you don't even see what it is that you need to be doing. So that's where it kind of gets into Matt's technology stack and a lot of software can kind of be put together Dan's talking about you know Zapier, Zapier I've heard it Zapier. Zapier makes you happier but however however they pronounce it you want to be thinking bigger than just that activity it's about the data. This is what I'm trying to say. It's about you know part of is the activity but a bigger part of it is the data that goes along with the activity because that's data Tom. So many of us are data collectors and you need to be able to use that data in your business too because I know lots of people that run lots of reports that are actionable like you know that's where that's why if it's coming into software like whether it's made central name some others and made as an admirable competitor you know for companies that aren't ready for made central like something would be better than nothing where you're bringing this data in and I don't mean that you know that you know you couldn't run and they'll hit limits where we're just collecting data without software and solutions will not work I know some people that have built substantial businesses with desk calendars and pencils with very sharp points on them it's amazing but I do believe that every day that goes by they're at a greater competitive And at some point, you know, what used to work, I don't think I don't, you know, I can't see how those companies are going to continue to be as competitive in the future is what they have been in the past because of the technology that's out there. I do want to say to Matt real quick. Matt, and we have someone in a mastermind group that does a $2 million business, and they use Salesforce, and it doesn't track ROI on your marketing. Really? No, it's marketing software and it has to. I'm telling you, he's been using it for how many years, Dan Fai? Yeah, if not a little more than that. He can't figure it out. He can't find it. This is not a stupid guy. No, I know. Yeah. And me and Tom were evaluating HubSpot the other day, you know, it was like a $25,000 check we were talking about stroking really. Like, we just couldn't, we just couldn't get ourselves there yet. Like we want it someday, maybe. Maybe the tool is just too much. Maybe it's just not the right tool. And, you know, because I was I was definitely attracted to it. Like, it looks like this amazing tool. Part of it was what Dan was talking about earlier, it was the implementation part of it is like, you know, if we're going to spend that much money, we need to need to make really sure that we've got maximum bandwidth to put it to use. We just don't have that right now. Yeah, that's the biggest issue is like, it would be me implementing it. And I was like, Oh, one more thing that I've got to do on top of running two companies is, is implement software, a big software change. Let's hold off on that till I can make active campaign work a little bit longer. I like active campaign. You know, I got myself to like it and made some zappier integrations work. Good deal. You know, at the end of the day, we're talking about technology, we're kind of strategizing all across the board. For me, you know, being newer in the industry than the rest of the panel here, right? At five years in the industry, for me, the biggest awakening early on was it's not about the cleaning. And that's, that's my phrase. That's kind of what I was able to muster when I came to realize we have to deliver good service. We have to clean, we have to take care of our clients. All of that is critically important. But operationally as a whole, it's not about the cleaning, right? It's about how you operate the business. It's about how you use technology, how you mend relationships, build relationships and rapport and trust with your employees, the culture of your business. And this technology piece is just one component. And I say that because there's a lot of businesses out there that are center focused on the best cleaning experience. And I don't want to detour them from that. But it's not just about the cleaning, right? It's not just about the disinfectant you use. It's about how efficiently you're running your business. And to close, technology is the most impactful ROI when it comes to building out your operations in my opinion. And we're talking about getting ahead of it. And if you think it is now, you know, a year from now, two years from now, it's just going to become more and more important. So, you know, every day counts. Yeah, sure. All right. What time is it, Liz? It is on my clock. It's 301. My guess is on yours is three o'clock. It is. No, it's six o'clock, actually, but it's at the top of the hour. Are we good for the week? Yeah, I think we are. Thank you, everybody. Are we going to be back Monday? We are. What are we going to talk about? I don't know. The calendar says leadership. Leadership? All right. We'll be talking about leadership, y'all. Next week, Monday, five o'clock Eastern, be here. Dan, Matt, thank you, both. You guys are awesome. Bye-bye. Bye, guys.