Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / The Six Rs of Sales: Doug Vail's Process for Revenue Predictability

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The Six Rs of Sales: Doug Vail's Process for Revenue Predictability · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Doug Bale, Chief Revenue Officer at
0:21
Industrial Inspection and Analysis.
0:24
Founded in 2015, IIA is a high growth industrial inspection and
0:30
analysis company serving a variety of sectors by offering
0:34
professional, fast and accurate services.
0:37
Their mission is to help clients achieve success by ensuring
0:41
safety, reliability and compliance within their
0:44
operations. Now, Doug brings over 15 years
0:47
of experience in sales and operational leadership.
0:51
His experience with private equity ownership or
0:53
restructuring an enterprise to position it for private equity
0:57
engagement. Doug has played a key role in
1:00
forming a best in class industrial inspection and
1:03
certification platform that supports industries across the
1:06
country. Beyond his professional
1:10
pursuits, Doug is also the founder of Emma's Ambassadors, A
1:14
nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children with autism.
1:19
He has held several leadership roles throughout his career,
1:22
focusing on strategic growth and organizational excellence.
1:27
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1:58
All right, back to our guest today, the CRO of IIA, Doug
2:02
Vale. I appreciate you making the time
2:04
to Share your story today. Thanks so much for having me on,
2:06
Anthony. Looking forward to the
2:07
discussion. OK, so Doug, I understand you
2:10
are a proud graduate of the University of Alabama.
2:14
I imagine that your strong technical background with a
2:18
degree in mechanical engineering has given you some credibility
2:23
in the various sales and business development roles
2:25
you've had over the years. Did you know that you always
2:29
wanted to get into sales and marketing when you first started
2:31
your career? Or did that kind of happened by
2:33
accident? Definitely more accident than
2:36
plan. I was right out of school, got
2:41
into some different manufacturing roles.
2:45
Anthony And thought I enjoyed that.
2:48
I thought it was a it was a fine way to make a living.
2:50
That's kind of what engineers do.
2:53
If we're not going to be designing things, we like to
2:55
build stuff. So being able to make parts,
2:56
manufacture parts or produce materials for a variety of
3:01
different industries, it's kind of an OK way to go.
3:05
Actually. What happened was the sales
3:08
opportunity presented itself through my sister and she ran
3:13
into an old friend of mine that I went to high school with and
3:16
he was looking for somebody who had more of a technical
3:19
background to help lead and and grow sales in the Southeast for
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AI would say another high growth company that did a lot of
3:29
specialized welding. So familiarity with some of the
3:33
welding processes and things like that, that certainly
3:36
helped. And so then when I went to work
3:38
there, though, my ability to connect with the customers on
3:44
what types of, you know, what value those particular services
3:48
and technologies provided was a little bit easier, I think.
3:52
And then knowing that I had a mechanical engineering degree
3:55
that I wasn't just kind of, you know, a, a pushy sales guy, it,
3:59
it definitely helped make those initial connections.
4:02
And then from there it was about growing and and improving the
4:06
the overall value that I was delivering to those customers
4:09
and, and maintain a lot of those relationships over the course of
4:12
the 25 years I've been doing this.
4:15
So the strong technical background and, you know, you
4:19
sort of discovered that you had this knack to interact with
4:22
customers. This wasn't something that had
4:24
sort of been, I don't know, nurtured or cultivated in you,
4:28
just kind of how your personality is.
4:31
I guess it was, it was kind of interesting when I was in
4:35
school, I, I, I, one of my, one of my good friends I've met in a
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lab and, you know, I look around and I would see a lot of the,
4:45
these Mechanical Engineers, these people that were grinding
4:48
extremely hard every day to, to learn the material and, and make
4:53
sure they complete and things. And I didn't find it to be all
4:56
that difficult. So I had a lot more free time to
5:00
go and enjoy myself at the University of Alabama, maybe
5:03
more so than I should admit. But when, when I was able to do
5:08
that, but you know, I, I began to attract others into my world
5:13
and not really knowing what that meant.
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But my father had a, you know, 30 plus year career in sales and
5:23
that just sort of maybe the person I that I had developed
5:26
without really knowing it. And then when I got into
5:29
engineering, I thought surely I would get into management
5:32
leading people and all the other things in engineering.
5:35
But the sales was something that really didn't cross my mind
5:38
until it was presented to me. And when I got to see their
5:43
approach to the market, the value creation that they were
5:46
providing to their customers, all I can think about was, man,
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I wish I had somebody like this who would sell to me versus some
5:54
of the, you know, used car salesman that I dealt with on a
5:57
daily basis in a production environment where they want to
6:00
sell you this widget or that widget.
6:02
Some of them was truly adding value to a customer was
6:07
something that I really, really appreciated.
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And ever since then, I've looked for companies that are, that are
6:12
doing that very same thing, you know, avoiding trying to get
6:15
into commodity selling and and providing real solutions at real
6:19
value. What were maybe a couple of the
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more important stops for you along the way before you got to
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IIA in terms of really helping you to level up your skill and
6:31
your craft? Well, I think, I think when we
6:36
the original job I had, I was able to progress through my
6:39
career with them and we we were a very small about that a $60
6:42
million business when I joined it doing this specialty welding,
6:46
we grouped about 100 million and then private equity started
6:49
taking notice and we became part of what was the Equillex family
6:54
at the time. And then we began buying some
6:57
very large service companies that were not like ours and just
7:02
building a truly industrial service platform.
7:07
So there was a lot of challenge in that and understanding, you
7:10
know, how they were successful, what drives their revenue, what
7:13
drives their growth, what drives great profitable revenue.
7:18
And so just learning that in on a, on a scale that we were, we
7:22
went, you know, I was, it was $100 million company.
7:25
We got to 250 pretty quick and then we started bolting this on.
7:28
Next thing you know, we're, we're an $800 million company
7:31
and looking at that and going this is pretty amazing.
7:36
And but there's so much going on and trying to learn how to
7:41
manage all the different divisions of that business, but
7:45
with a, you know, overriding strategic direction was, was
7:49
pretty challenging. But it did help as I've gone
7:53
into other companies that are looking to potentially divest at
7:58
some point or sell to a private equity group, be able to quickly
8:03
get to, OK, here's what we've got to get to pretty rapidly
8:05
with this, with this particular company or these, this multiple
8:08
service company and the types of things we've got to do to grow
8:12
that and be successful. So that when an investor looks
8:15
at it, they can see that kind of trajectory of the business and
8:19
also believe that it's going to predict bigger growth later on.
8:23
And and then the integration piece obviously was a lot of
8:26
that too, just having these companies come in and how you
8:28
get them set up and who's getting which players for their
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team, for OPS or sales or finance, whatever it might be.
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Just all those things. And making sure that when I look
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at the organizations that I'm working with and for, we can
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quickly identify with these roles and get people on the
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right seats. So in the work that you've done,
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would you say the biggest lever that you've had to pull and sort
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of affecting that growth is acquisition?
8:54
Yeah, I think, I think that certainly helps that those are
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the big accelerators if you will that.
9:00
But there's always an element of organic growth that is, is
9:03
critical to the health of the business and making sure that
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you're adding new customers, cross selling obviously is a is
9:10
a big deal when you have multi, multiple services like this
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industrial inspection company I'm with now IIA, We have so
9:18
many different services that cross into the industries and
9:22
customer base that we have. So making sure that we're
9:24
promoting that effectively and communicating those capabilities
9:28
to our customer bases is an absolute.
9:31
So being able to organically grow at a reasonable pace and
9:35
I'd say 8 to 10/8 to 15% is probably a pretty good year over
9:40
year increase. But then yeah, bolting on new
9:44
services or bringing in similar services but just with more
9:49
scale to them and then being able to roll that stuff out to
9:52
the to the end markets is really important.
9:55
So with IIA, how many acquisitions have taken place?
9:59
So they started in 2015, long before I got here.
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Well, I should say about five years before I got here, they
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had done 17 and then we divested 3 and we've done six more.
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I guess it's 6 now. Yeah.
10:17
So we've done a total of 23 where we basically the company
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we have right now is 21 different operating companies
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that are now assimilated into what is IIA.
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And we're all one company now, which was never easy, but that's
10:32
that was one of the first challenges we had when we got
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here. Is it typical that a client of
10:39
one of these entities would be a client or could be a client of
10:44
multiple other entities? Or are these pretty well siloed
10:48
services that there isn't really much cross selling that goes on?
10:51
I I think that if in fairness they're not, it's not everybody
10:57
serves everybody. There's not that, but there is a
10:59
lot more cross sell opportunity because we strategically think
11:04
about the types of companies we want to buy to bring into the
11:06
fold so that we're not doing something that's so out of the
11:11
kind of the realm that we're comfortable with.
11:13
End markets, customers, geographic, those kind of
11:18
factors making sure that when we do buy companies that they're
11:22
going to contribute to the overall enterprise and that
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there is that opportunity to cross sell.
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And we focus a lot of time during the integration process
11:31
and seeking and defining what those things are going to be and
11:33
how we're going to go about doing it with our sales and
11:35
marketing efforts. I would kind of like to peel
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back a layer of the onion and understand that process a little
11:42
bit more. It's one thing if I've got
11:45
company A over here, I've got a good customer base and I've got
11:48
Company B over here, they've got their own customer base and
11:51
there's some crossover and now you know, the 2 are coming
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together. It's it's sort of easier to see
11:57
like, OK, let's introduce everybody to the other company.
12:00
But when you've got 20 plus entities like how do you even
12:05
begin to wrap your head around, let alone, you know, your, your
12:10
sort of your frontline team's heads around, you know, how do
12:14
we find who's the right fit and make those introductions and,
12:18
you know, try to do some of that cross selling, like what does
12:20
that look like from a like an operational or procedural
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standpoint? I, I wish it was easy to tell
12:27
you the answer, but the reality is is everyone's a little bit
12:30
different and you have to kind of come with an approach of I
12:34
need to learn about how they go to market and what their prop,
12:37
you know, what their value message is and who they're
12:42
targeting, like what industries and like what makes the most
12:45
sense for them and where they found the most success.
12:48
And then we can, we can kind of take that and go, that's very
12:51
similar to XY or Z and start connecting those dots so that
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it's not just like a, OK, they're just like these guys,
12:59
you know, this service line and this service line fit really
13:01
well. We want to try to get it across
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as many as we possibly can. And so we asked not only a lot
13:08
of questions of the acquisition team that were, you know,
13:11
potentially acquiring, but we're asking a lot of these questions
13:14
internally about, hey, what if we were doing this?
13:18
And we find things out all the time in that process that like,
13:21
oh, they've been outsourcing that particular request.
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So now we can bring it in house. Yeah, that's, that's a that's a
13:29
win, right? Like that's an easy one.
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Let's go make sure we, you know, jot that down.
13:34
So the other ones are a little bit tougher.
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But when you, when you to your point, I guess when you've had
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20 acquisitions, you really do see you kind of look at how your
13:48
umbrella of services satisfies the end markets.
13:52
In fact, we're going, we go through a strategic planning
13:55
session annually. And one of the things that we're
13:58
looking at now are like, what are some of the things that our
14:02
customers need to be tested or inspected or certified or need
14:05
to be done to keep them within compliance that we don't do?
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And like, should we go by that or should we go develop the
14:13
capability to go deliver that? And the whole point being is if
14:17
we were just looking at ourselves all the time and not
14:20
really thinking about the customers, you can kind of get
14:22
stuck a little bit. So now it's like, what are our
14:25
customers asking of us that we're not able to deliver?
14:29
And what's the, what's the right pathway to go make that happen
14:33
for them and bring that, you know, single source solution
14:38
provider story to, you know, even more customers?
14:42
So testing, analysis, certification, verification,
14:48
yeah, give us like some more specific examples of the kinds
14:52
of things that you do and the kinds of folks that you would
14:55
serve. And I know with 20 plus
14:57
companies that could take us the rest of the afternoon.
15:00
So I'll try the Readers Digest. I'll try to give you a couple of
15:03
examples or people will probably know this.
15:05
So I think we've all driven down roads, highways, country back
15:11
roads, whatever. And we've seen one of these
15:14
trucks parked on the side of the road.
15:16
It's got the outriggers. So it's holding its stability,
15:19
but it's got a lift device on it.
15:21
And a guy standing up there, maybe he's clearing trees or
15:25
he's trimming some, you know, some limbs around some power
15:29
lines or guys that actually are working on the lines themselves
15:33
and, and running power to new neighborhoods or improving the
15:37
infrastructure. Well, every one of those lift
15:40
trucks that that somebody sits in is required to be inspected
15:44
annually and certified that it is functionally operational and
15:49
safe for a human being to go stand in that thing for in some
15:53
cases, 10 hours a day, right, in some not so great conditions.
15:58
So our company is the largest third party inspector of those
16:03
types of equipment in the United States of America.
16:07
And we we just acquired a company in Western Canada called
16:11
Cova Engineering and we're now the largest third party
16:15
inspector of that stuff in Canada too.
16:17
So, so pretty, pretty like again, it's, it's a requirement
16:22
to do this on an annual basis. And a lot of people that do it
16:26
would be like an OEM or even sometimes the, the, the line
16:30
contractor or utility will do that inspection themselves.
16:34
But they have found that there's greater value in US doing it
16:36
third party unbiased. We give them the results, they
16:39
can make some decisions. And then and then other things
16:42
too would be, let's say a customer is or a customer is
16:48
manufacturing a brand new medical device.
16:50
And these things are very small, very fine precision
16:54
manufacturing. Well, every one of those types
16:57
of parts needs to be inspected to make sure that when they they
17:00
do get to their main manufacturing process that it's
17:03
within the the design tolerances.
17:06
And we have some very high precision equipment that'll get
17:09
down. And look at that piece of
17:11
equipment or that part down to the basically the size of the
17:15
hair on your head, not mine, but yours.
17:19
But yeah, be able to give you that kind of dimensional view of
17:24
how how that part's being manufactured and how consistent
17:27
it is on these tight tolerances. So precision, high precision
17:34
effects you in medical, it's aerospace, it's, you know,
17:39
Department of Defense, those kinds of things.
17:42
So those industries are something that value that level
17:45
of precision and repeatability. It's basically like a weird
17:49
question, but do you guys get involved in lobbying at all?
17:53
It seems like if there were sort of some government regulations
17:57
that says this needs to be tested or certified, that that
18:01
would be sort of good for business.
18:03
We don't, but it's actually something we've thought about
18:05
that that maybe down the road if we get to a size, I mean, you
18:09
know, we're we're 100 million plus right now.
18:11
But at some point in time it probably does make sense.
18:14
Regulation certainly is our friend and the more regulation
18:17
there is on these types of inspections, the more the more
18:22
volume of work that there is for us.
18:25
But we haven't had to do that yet.
18:28
But at some point in time there will be a need for that.
18:30
And when you look at kind of our energy independence here in the
18:34
United States and what we're trying to get and what that
18:37
means for manufacturing in the Automotive World, those kinds of
18:42
things matter. But, you know, where they make
18:46
the decisions to to deliver or the requirements of the
18:51
government puts around what what, what they want to have.
18:54
Yeah, those things certainly lend itself to great
18:57
opportunities for companies like ours.
19:01
So across all these different acquisitions that you've been a
19:05
part of or, or come in after the fact and you know, had to sort
19:08
of help with the integration. Kind of curious to hear maybe
19:12
what you've learned about integrating different teams,
19:17
different cultures, different skill sets under sort of 1
19:20
unified vision. It's not always easy.
19:25
It's in fact it's never perfect. You have a vision of what it
19:29
should be like. You try to put the right people
19:33
in the right seats on the bus so that we're all heading in the
19:36
same direction. But inevitably you, you, you
19:40
sometimes discover that that individual isn't right for that
19:44
particular role and, and either you try to get them into the
19:47
right seat or you may have to part ways.
19:50
It's never the outcome that you desire, but I don't know that
19:54
we've done one where there wasn't, you know, even the
19:57
slightest bit of carnage that that comes in the wake.
20:00
And it's, it's, it's a tough pill to swallow because you
20:03
think you do all the right things and you're, you've done
20:06
enough work to, to not have that happen.
20:09
But it, it's still and that we happens.
20:11
And sometimes it it might be as simple as just that individual
20:15
was frustrated that the company got sold.
20:19
That they thought that they had a better career path with the
20:21
company being held by the old owners, you know, whatever it
20:24
might be. And, and sometimes they're just
20:27
stinkers and you, you got to kind of cut bait and move on in
20:30
some cases. But I also think that the, the
20:33
one thing that I've learned is similar to when you're hiring
20:36
sales and marketing professionals, you really take
20:39
your time to hide, you know, to, to do what you can to feel
20:43
confident that they're doing it. But you take some time, you kind
20:46
of hire slow. This is a great day of quoting
20:48
quote, hire slow and fire fast. If they're not getting it done,
20:54
you know, early on in their career with you, it's probably
20:57
not going to be something that's going to happen or they're going
21:00
to suck up so much energy that we're going to be losing in
21:04
other areas because it's taken up so much of our time to help
21:07
that person try to be successful.
21:10
And it's again, probably best just to cut bait and try to find
21:13
somebody else to fill that particular role.
21:17
What other strategies do you have when it comes to recruiting
21:22
good folks and then when you found the good ones, making sure
21:24
you hold on to them? Yeah, one of the things I
21:26
started doing before I actually got to IIA looking for looking
21:30
for sales professionals is I would put them in a selling
21:34
situation. I'd give them a very brief
21:36
outline of like, hey, here's what we want to cover.
21:39
Do you mind putting together a PowerPoint presentation and
21:42
standing in front of a, you know, a group of in in this
21:45
case, it would be interviewers and, and just kind of talk about
21:49
yourself, present yourself, present what you're about, talk
21:52
a little bit about how you go to market, like what's make you
21:55
successful. And in the context of that, we
21:59
have found that we're pretty, pretty good on finding the right
22:06
types of folks that fit us culturally, which is kind of a
22:10
big thing. You can kind of see how they the
22:12
dynamic of how they interact with the, with the, with the
22:14
hiring team. And then you also kind of get
22:18
them in a situation where sales people, generally the good ones
22:23
don't like talking about themselves.
22:24
And you can kind of tell that they don't, they're much more
22:26
comfortable talking about a product or a service than they
22:29
are themselves. But you kind of, you kind of get
22:32
through that. And, and you, but it's been,
22:35
it's been really helpful. And those, those things will
22:37
take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour in general, just get
22:40
getting through really four or five pieces of the topics.
22:44
And but it's, it's been, it's been a great, it's been a great
22:48
context to hiring and finding people that will will fit what
22:52
you're trying to build long term.
22:55
Now Doug, I understand that you are obviously more heavily
22:59
focused on sales and marketing side of things.
23:02
But if we kind of zoom out and look at the, the, the big
23:07
picture of the company 20, some entities got to be several 100
23:12
employees. How did, how do they sort of
23:14
breakdown, you know, you've got sales and marketing, you've got,
23:18
I don't know, other white collar admin, some field staff, maybe
23:22
some collar like what? What's that kind of landscape
23:25
look like? Yeah.
23:25
So we're, we're just over about 750 employees.
23:30
We're we're fairly lean on the, the admin side.
23:34
I mean sales professionals, my, my sales and marketing's 20
23:38
people. When you look at the operations
23:43
leadership, it's probably about 20 ish strong as well finances
23:52
10:00-ish. And then you have like you say
23:54
in the admin and the and the the real work where it's done.
23:58
So our field technicians, I'm going to say we're up over 500
24:04
right now that are these. Are the people out there?
24:08
Like doing the work, they're either, they're either in a lab
24:10
doing the testing or they're out there in the field doing the
24:13
testing. And, and yeah, I think with a
24:16
service business like ours and industrial service and really
24:19
like any of them and anybody will tell you this too, is we
24:23
get reminded every time we buy company.
24:24
The most important part of this business is the guys that are
24:27
doing the work or the gals that are doing the work.
24:29
And we're like, we fully understand that and we, we value
24:31
that. And it's very important to us
24:33
that we, that we build relationships with them.
24:36
And I don't know that up until we began doing tech conferences
24:41
where we were going to different geographies across the country
24:46
and having these field guys that rarely get together ever because
24:49
they're always out. You know, they're working 50
24:52
weeks out of the year and they don't get together.
24:55
But we started getting them together for two or three days
24:58
and trying to learn and meet more, meet them and learn more
25:02
about them as people. Because we don't have a business
25:06
if those people aren't a feel valued, feel important or part
25:11
of what we do. But knowing that they are the
25:15
most important things that that to to this business is success
25:19
today and tomorrow. So we do that now regularly
25:23
every year. And then of course, as I
25:26
mentioned earlier, go just going to the labs and being present
25:31
there as leaders and and talking with everybody that's involved
25:35
there and letting them know how important what they do is and
25:39
and trying to help them have a better experience every day then
25:43
that's what we do. I mean, I think that's
25:45
leadership one-on-one. Take a step back.
25:49
I wanted to ask this question earlier and then we just kind of
25:52
got into some interesting stuff. But how did the opportunity for
25:55
you to join IIA first come about?
25:58
You've had kind of a long story career, lots of different
26:00
companies. What?
26:01
Why IIA for you? Yeah, I was, I was working for a
26:06
actually an environmental company here in, in the Atlanta
26:09
area, pretty, pretty high growth business as well.
26:14
And you know, I'd stayed in touch with a former colleague of
26:19
mine who was thinking about taking this role on as the CEO
26:25
of Industrial inspection Analysis.
26:27
And he called and asked me if I would be a reference, which I
26:31
thought was kind of peculiar. And I said sure.
26:34
And then he ended up he called me and said, hey, do you mind
26:38
doing a phone interview with one of the principals here at the
26:42
ownership company? And I was like, yeah, no
26:44
problem. So I, he called me like to the
26:47
guy called me like 10 minutes later and, and I talked to him
26:50
for, I don't know, 45 minutes on the side of the road.
26:52
Actually, I pulled over so I could talk with him and 5
26:58
minutes after I got done, the, the my friend, my colleague,
27:02
former colleague called me back. Goes How'd it go?
27:04
I go really have no idea, man. I don't know how that went.
27:06
I, this guy was really tough read for me and I'm generally
27:09
pretty good at that, but I, I don't know, I really don't man.
27:12
But good luck, you know, and turns out, if he called me about
27:15
an hour later or actually it was the next day and said, like they
27:18
they're going to, they're going to let me give me the offer.
27:20
And I was like, that's fantastic.
27:23
And then about a week after he started, he called me and said,
27:26
we need a chief revenue officer. Do you want to do this?
27:29
And and haven't spent a little bit of time, you know, kind of
27:34
preparing for what this call was going to be out be at.
27:37
I said this is the kind of company I want to do and, and he
27:41
and I share a very similar kind of opinion about IIA, which is
27:46
the things that we do every day affect lives and save lives in a
27:51
lot of cases. And so we try to keep that
27:53
message from center to our people that, you know, this
27:57
isn't just a test, this isn't just an inspection.
27:59
This is, you know, the ability to protect lives.
28:03
So having the ability to, to, to provide really a safety umbrella
28:08
to a litany of different industries and, and, and people
28:12
is, has been a blessing. And I think he and I both
28:15
appreciate that so much. And so that's it.
28:18
I mean it it since since 2020 when we basically started here,
28:25
it's been a pretty good partnership.
28:28
So I want to talk now about TRIR total recordable incident rate.
28:36
Can you explain to me what it is?
28:37
Because I understand you guys have recorded a 0.00 TRIR which
28:44
is either the absolute worst it could be or the absolute best it
28:48
could. Be thank you.
28:49
Yeah, I don't know if we promote if it was the worst thing, but
28:52
yeah. So TRIR is most people in in the
28:56
industrial world understand is, is a number that is provided
29:01
based on the number of incidents, recordable incidents.
29:04
You would have safety incidents that your company has divided by
29:09
250,000 man hours. And so to have a zero, you
29:14
literally have to have 0 incidents over the course of
29:17
time. And I think the one that you
29:20
might have seen was a full calendar year that we had a
29:25
0.00. So 2024 we were able to complete
29:30
in without having any incidents. But I just found out actually
29:35
last week that we've completed now 2 calendar years.
29:39
So from February to end of February to end of February, we
29:43
went two years without having a recordable.
29:45
So that's me knocking on wood. It, it's not luck though.
29:50
I, you know that the, the, the answer to the question is always
29:53
like, well, how do y'all do that?
29:54
And, and we were, I was just at a meeting with the customer in
29:56
Ohio earlier this week and they were like, that's, that's
29:59
impressive. And, and, and even theirs is
30:02
impressive. They're like a, they were like a
30:04
.2. And I'm like, man, that's,
30:06
that's phenomenal. And in our industries that we
30:10
serve, if you, if you're at A1 or higher, you, you kind of get
30:14
blackballed from being able to do anything.
30:16
So for us to, to maintain 0 is great.
30:21
And, and it, it's just a testament to the leadership's
30:24
commitment to it. And then our, our frontline
30:27
folks, the people that are boots on the ground, paying attention
30:31
every day, looking out for one another, doing the daily kind of
30:35
walk and talk about safety. I think all those things are
30:40
just become inherent to your culture.
30:42
And but frankly, it, it none of it would matter if if the the
30:47
C-Suite didn't talk about it, promote it, live by it, expect
30:53
it, and then, you know, make sure that we're constantly
30:55
communicating that throughout the, the organization.
31:00
That's really impressive. Are there maybe some unique
31:03
technologies or processes that you guys have introduced that
31:08
help you not only maintain that safety, but also just to stay
31:12
ahead of the competition in terms of what it is that you're
31:15
able to offer? Yeah.
31:17
I don't know about technology, Anthony.
31:19
I don't think there's really any.
31:20
There's no magic bullet to it. And I think there's ways of
31:23
tracking and measuring. The first thing that we employed
31:28
was if you have any kind of an injury or incident, no matter
31:34
how small it might be, you need to let a supervisor know within
31:40
30 minutes. In fact, that became the CEO is
31:45
going to find out about it in 30 minutes.
31:47
He better or there's going to be ramifications.
31:52
And we when we started doing that, there was still this sort
31:56
of reluctance. You know, a lot of bad behaviors
31:58
over the course of some of these folks careers have been doing
32:01
this thing for 20 years, much longer than we've owned them.
32:04
But Florida they've been part of the team, but they they just
32:07
weren't used to communicating every little thing that
32:11
happened. But because of that, we were
32:14
able to see where there might be an opportunity to improve our
32:19
focus on a specific task so that we could make sure that thing
32:23
doesn't happen again. We don't want that ever to
32:25
happen to anybody because the next one could be much more
32:29
severe to be the individual and certainly the the organization
32:34
as a whole. So being able to have that
32:37
expectation that you're going to notify the right people.
32:41
And then we're going to dig into that incident and we're going to
32:43
try to find out why. Why, why right the the old, you
32:47
know, root cause analysis and being able to drill into those
32:50
things. I think that is kind of how most
32:53
big companies or how much our industrial companies are
32:57
successful is treating any little incident with real
33:02
severity, critical thought and then trying to make sure we can
33:06
do whatever we can to not let that happen again to somebody
33:09
else. I want to shift gears back into
33:13
kind of what's more of your focus is the chief revenue
33:16
officers, the the sales, the marketing.
33:19
You know, I think of a business like yours that's primarily B to
33:23
B serving other businesses. Yeah.
33:25
And I immediately go to, oh, this is probably, you know, a
33:29
lot of lunches and dinners and, you know, shaking hands and, you
33:35
know, showing up with coffee and Donuts.
33:37
I but I'm curious, is there any level of being able to leverage
33:41
any digital marketing strategies to sort of extend your reach?
33:46
Yeah. So we've, we've learned a lot
33:49
over the course of the, you know, the five years having been
33:52
here, we've tried a lot of different things.
33:55
And I think the, the, the big thing we recognized back in
33:59
2022, this is, you know, coming out of COVID and trying to deal
34:05
with a, a, a world, a marketplace that, you know, for,
34:09
for almost 2 years, we're basically saying we're not doing
34:12
any face to face meetings, right?
34:14
Like don't come here, you can't come in.
34:18
I mean, we had customers that were, were basically shutting
34:21
the, the gates and they, they weren't having their whole teams
34:24
come in. So we had, I had to adapt.
34:27
I had to learn because I'm, I'm a hand to hand combat guy.
34:30
I like, I like looking people in the eyes, shaking their hands,
34:33
tell them what, what we're going to deliver, how we're going to
34:35
deliver it and building that confidence just based on my
34:39
confidence with them. And when you're through a
34:42
computer like you and I are doing right now, it's, it's,
34:45
it's not that. And it, it requires a little bit
34:48
different skill set development. So we had to work on that.
34:52
And we, we spent a lot of time at the initial stages of COVID
34:56
practicing delivering, you know, and communicating through a
35:00
computer. But then beyond that, we also
35:04
recognize that we need to ramp up our digital marketing world
35:09
and social media continues to be a big player and TikTok and all
35:12
these other things. And we needed some help.
35:16
And so we've gone out and, and hired a full time digital
35:19
marketer and, and she's been amazing.
35:22
And we went from a director of marketing who knew a lot about
35:26
it, but was overwhelmed with how much she content she could
35:30
deliver. And now we've got somebody
35:32
that's focused on it solely and studies the metrics and, and is
35:36
always looking for the next angle and, and she's done an
35:40
amazing job. So but yeah, we've we had to do
35:42
a lot of that. In fact, we, we don't have a
35:45
sales team for all the lab services we do.
35:48
It's, it's 40% of our business and all the lab services that we
35:51
provide. We focus solely on digital
35:55
marketing to, to grow the customer base and keep them
35:57
informed and cross sell and do all these things.
36:00
And it's, it's the, the returns have been pretty amazing with
36:07
new customer accounts and reactivation of old accounts and
36:11
cross selling services service line to service line has been
36:15
really, really amazing. I don't know that we could have
36:16
predicted it would have been as good as it has.
36:18
And the hard part is keeping it up, keeping that pace up.
36:23
But it's been, it's been pretty awesome the last two years.
36:26
So as much as you're comfortable and as much as you're sort of
36:29
aware of the nuts and bolts, I'd be curious to dig in a little
36:32
bit more because I, you know, I think of B to B and I think of,
36:36
again, sort of like, just like you said, hand to hand combat,
36:39
you're sort of there in person. So it's really impressive to me
36:42
to hear how well the digital strategy is working for you.
36:46
But then my mind immediately goes to, oh, well, if they're
36:48
targeting other businesses, this probably primarily LinkedIn is
36:52
their mode of outreach. But I heard you throw out, you
36:55
know, like TikTok, you know, some of the other social media
36:58
platforms that I would traditionally think of as, hey,
37:02
I've got a backpack to sell or a new hair brush or that kind of a
37:05
thing, not like an industrial testing service.
37:08
So correct me. Tell tell me why my thinking is
37:12
sort of outdated. Well, you're not.
37:14
We do. We do quite a bit in LinkedIn.
37:16
A lot of promotion goes on there.
37:18
We just don't limit it to that. We put similar posts in, you
37:22
know, old people social media like Facebook, Instagram, places
37:27
like that X we generate, you know, little video blurbs of
37:34
different testing that goes on. So I, but I would say the bulk
37:40
of our digital marketing is truly, you know, Google ads
37:44
going to the different search engines and ascertaining how
37:51
well our digital keywords and things like that are performing
37:56
and then going that one doesn't have any runway.
37:59
It's we're either calling it the wrong thing and we need to, you
38:02
know, figure out some other means to promote.
38:06
But I would say that our digital marketer, Renee spends a good
38:11
bit of her time kind of in that free space.
38:15
It's not free, but it's, you know, it's kind of like that's
38:17
where the general population or is going to go look for, of
38:22
potential of potential supplier. So when we look at our rankings
38:26
trying to maintain that position of 1-2 or three.
38:29
So it's on the first page and, and those kinds of things.
38:32
And, and since we have elevated ourselves from way down the
38:37
third page to generally speaking on the first page of a search
38:41
result, we're certainly getting a heck of a lot more clicks and
38:46
interest and and opportunity to work with companies that we
38:52
never heard of. And they turn out to be a really
38:55
good fits for what we do as an as an organization.
39:00
And we've never would have found them probably driving down the
39:03
street looking for something because it's companies you would
39:05
never hear of. But they're large companies that
39:08
supply a really diverse end market base and they're, they're
39:13
really, really good at what they do, whatever that little element
39:16
of manufacturing is that they do.
39:18
We've we've, we've somehow found them.
39:20
And it's it's crazy to think about actually when you when you
39:24
get right down to how many customers we have added in
39:27
markets we have penetrated that way.
39:29
So it sounds like Google Ads probably like some SEO that
39:33
that's sort of that free space in Google that's helped a lot.
39:37
But are you also finding, since it sounds like your your digital
39:40
marketer is great at sort of tracking all the data, are you
39:43
finding that people are coming from content that you've posted
39:47
on places like TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and
39:51
actually coming into your funnel and becoming customers?
39:54
That's a really good question. I don't know that I don't know
39:56
that I've looked at the detail there.
39:59
I suspect that my marketing director looks at that quite a
40:03
bit. We're pretty predictable when it
40:07
comes to what's working. Let's do more of it, you know,
40:12
and what's not, let's maybe course correct a little bit.
40:15
That part of it I don't have to mention any longer.
40:20
It's sort of become part of their, their DNA and it's what
40:24
they do every day. So I, I would probably freak out
40:28
a little bit if I saw some decline in, in performance, but
40:33
I haven't seen it yet. So I, we said it's something we
40:35
don't worry about it. And I, I would think feel very
40:40
confident that both the the director of marketing and our
40:43
digital marketer, if they ever felt like they were kind of at
40:48
wit's end and something was really frustrating that they
40:51
would raise their hand because it's, again, that's just kind of
40:53
the culture we've created that let's let's talk about it before
40:58
it becomes an issue that would surprise a lot of people.
41:00
And so you have a lot of open and candid conversations about
41:04
those kinds of things. What does?
41:07
Future growth look like for you guys, Doug, Yeah, more
41:10
acquisitions. Is it new types of advertising,
41:14
new services? Where's your head on?
41:16
That yeah, I think that's the, it's kind of like kind of going
41:19
back to the beginning of the conversation and and it's
41:23
definitely going to be a combination of organic growth.
41:25
It's definitely going to be a combination of of new
41:28
acquisitions where the service kind of limits are, I'm not
41:32
sure. And that's probably the most
41:33
exciting thing is we literally just bought a company that
41:40
operates in Canada, in the US that does fuel, lubricant, oil
41:43
testing. I never would have thought about
41:45
that until I looked at their company website and saw some of
41:50
their customers. And, and I'll go, oh man, that's
41:52
just like our lift group, like we should go do that.
41:55
And then I start talking to our own people.
41:57
They're like, Oh yeah, yeah, we actually do that for several
42:00
customers. We'll get samples out of their,
42:02
out of their trucks and then we'll send them to a lab and
42:05
they pay us like something for it.
42:07
And I'm like, how many of those are we doing?
42:09
They're like not many. I'm like, OK, so it was, it was
42:13
that kind of thing. Like until you, until you
42:16
explore broader, you're not, you're going to probably miss
42:20
some good ones. But I, I would say we're going
42:22
to, we're probably going to stay pretty comfortable here in North
42:25
America, Canada, in the US, there's a lot of consolidation
42:29
going on in the, in the tech space, the texting inspection
42:33
certification and compliance world.
42:35
So there's, so there's lots of these little, you know, lab
42:38
service companies, field service companies that probably make a
42:41
lot of sense for us to go look at.
42:43
And and so we've got a whole team that that is out there
42:48
trying to find those adjacent spaces or complimentary
42:51
companies to what we do. And likely it's a lot of the
42:56
same serviceable markets because they're pretty desirable, pretty
43:00
predictable. And they they tend to perform
43:04
better through the the cycle of economic fluctuation that we
43:09
have experienced over the course of the last, you know, five to
43:12
six years here. So, but those are the kinds of
43:15
companies we we admire. We don't, we don't do, we're
43:19
very lucky. We don't do like fix IT
43:21
projects. We're not trying to take a
43:23
company that's, you know, leak and oil and try to make it
43:27
something great. We we've been, we've been really
43:29
focused on buying well, you know, high performing, high
43:33
growth companies that that would fit into the world of of tick
43:39
for us and that's what we say. If there's somebody listening
43:43
who's maybe getting towards the end of their career and they're
43:46
thinking, hey, this might be a a good time to exit, the good fits
43:49
for you guys would be. I think companies that serve
43:55
precision manufacturing that do testing inspection for precision
44:00
manufacturing. So as I mentioned, aerospace,
44:03
medical, defense, Department of Defense, a lot of government
44:06
work. I mean we're, we're part of a, a
44:08
very small Oregon team that is building submarine parts for the
44:14
US Navy out and doing it with 3D printing.
44:17
We're, we're like the testing group, we're helping qualify
44:20
procedures and inspection methodologies for those parts so
44:25
that when we start 3D printing all these parts across the
44:30
country by different suppliers, the the, the quality control
44:35
aspects of it have been defined by us with these manufacturing
44:38
partners. So that kind of stuff's pretty
44:40
cool, but but we're looking for companies that can help us, you
44:45
know, obviously grow in what we serve our customer base with.
44:49
So at just adjacent space, if they've got some services that
44:53
are that are testing inspection related, we'd we'd love to talk
44:57
to those folks because it's it, we know that our customers need
45:02
it and having a one stop shop or one stop solution provider,
45:07
there's great value in that. Doug, what's a serious challenge
45:12
that you've overcome in your life?
45:15
Sales So I guess the, the story goes like this.
45:21
I was, I was in my role for about 9 months and I had gotten
45:28
a new boss and he had been over in Europe and was just crushing
45:31
it over there, basically doing the same thing I was doing.
45:36
And we were selling this automated welding concept and,
45:39
and high precision corrosion resistant welding.
45:43
And, and he goes, I want to go on the road with you and I'm
45:46
like, great, let's go. And so we'll go down to sunny
45:48
Florida. You know, we'll knock it around
45:50
down there. Well, I, I didn't, I didn't
45:54
prepare very well, Anthony. And it showed in the quality of
45:58
the meetings that we had. It showed in the results of the
46:02
meetings. And as he was, he, he was
46:09
basically heading to go visit some family down there and he
46:13
dropped me off at the airport so I could fly home and, and he got
46:18
out of the car and he says, maybe this just isn't for you
46:22
and kind of hurt my soul. And when I got home, I talked to
46:30
my wife and told her what he said.
46:32
And, and it was interesting because I, I didn't, I never got
46:35
mad about it because I was like, it would, it felt like that hit
46:41
home. And so I, I told my wife and she
46:46
said, have you really given this all you got?
46:48
Because you're not one to fail. Like everything that I've ever
46:51
seen you attempt to do, you've always been good at and been
46:54
successful with. And that's not just the work
46:58
world, but just kind of things in general.
47:00
And I, that kind of hit home too.
47:03
And so I kind of had a weekend there where I contemplated, is
47:08
this what I want to continue to do?
47:10
And can I, can I, can I do this and be successful?
47:14
And I quickly decided that I needed to think about sales much
47:20
differently. I needed to come up with a more
47:23
robust plan on how I am going to run my day and what that's going
47:29
to look like. And so being an engineer, it was
47:34
easy to sort of say this has got to be a process.
47:37
There's a process to this, and the successful guys always have
47:40
a process. And so, and then, man, you know,
47:43
Fast forward 15 years and Nick Saban saying the same thing,
47:46
right? It's kind of weird.
47:47
But, but like all those things, I started, you know, trying to
47:51
qualify and define what it was. And I spent a lot of time just
47:58
crafting out what this needs to look like on a daily basis and
48:02
what I'm doing with my time and how I'm preparing for meetings
48:06
and started scheduling my time out, not not kind of the week
48:10
before. And here's what I'm going to go
48:11
call next week. I mean, I was planning six weeks
48:14
to six months going. I'm going to be flying down
48:17
there to Orlando and I'm going to, you know, here's that week
48:20
I'm going to spend. And then as I'm doing that, I'm
48:24
realizing this preparation piece is now helping me be really
48:32
prepared for any kind of customer meetings.
48:35
And so that's that sort of strategic view of selling and
48:40
then executing on a process was the life changer.
48:44
And now, you know, six companies later and 25 years later, the
48:52
process is something that I can share with not only, you know,
48:56
new sales professionals, but people that have been doing it
49:00
for 10 and 15 years. And they're like, yes, that's
49:03
what it is. That's why it is this way.
49:06
And that's how I could be more successful than I've been.
49:09
And and in some cases for guys have been really successful, but
49:12
now they're kind of taking it to the next level of success and
49:15
growth in their own professional careers.
49:18
So but that was it. It was just kind of an aha
49:21
moment. That guy kicked me in the head
49:23
and I took it from there as something to do and I guess it
49:28
worked out. All right, What can you?
49:30
Share What can you share with the audience about this this
49:34
process that you've developed? Yeah, it's so.
49:37
We've got a lot of sales people who are who listen to this.
49:40
You know what? I'll try, I'll try to, yeah,
49:43
I'll try to break it down pretty simply.
49:45
But it's, it's, it's again, it's what the conversation that I can
49:49
have with anybody on my team has got to do with what we call the
49:52
six Rs or the six rights. And it's, it's making sure that
49:56
you've got the right targets, you, you know who they are in
50:01
your world. And, and if it's 1000, well,
50:03
let's break it down to the best 200 and that we're going to try
50:06
to get to this year. Like the account universe for
50:09
the for tick is so big because everybody needs a little bit of
50:13
it and some people need a lot of it.
50:14
And so you, you've got to kind of prioritize all those targets.
50:19
And then you've got in, in our, in the case of our sales guys
50:22
who run different regions, you know, they've got different
50:26
pockets in there where there's a lot of manufacturing here,
50:28
there's a lot of line contractors there, there's fire
50:32
departments everywhere. And we service the, we're lucky
50:35
we we've, we've serviced the fire departments up and down the
50:39
East Coast and we're trying to grow that business.
50:41
But so there's never a shortage of targets.
50:44
It's really about where do you going to put your priorities.
50:46
But all that right target thing is the first thing, the second
50:49
piece is the second R is the right audience and who do you,
50:53
who are you talking with and who is going to see value in what
50:56
you're providing and who are the decision makers for those kinds
51:00
of things? That's not new news.
51:01
Everybody who, every sales thing that I've ever seen talks about
51:05
making sure you know who the the decision influencers are, but
51:09
making sure you're meeting with them on our basis and not just
51:13
meeting with any, you know, any Joe Schmo in the business is, is
51:18
important. And you need to hold yourself
51:20
accountable to making sure that you're connecting with that
51:23
right audience and not just an audience.
51:26
The third thing is the right message.
51:28
And I think in general, you have one shot at making an impression
51:31
with somebody and you want to you want to put your best foot
51:35
forward. And and so making sure that you
51:38
the message that you're going to deliver, not only you're
51:41
comfortable with and confident with, but it's also something
51:43
that's going to read relate to value, perception of value on
51:46
their end or something at least they want to explore.
51:49
And if you can get that customer to commit to, I need to hear
51:53
more than you've won. If you get through your pitch
51:57
and they're kind of like, thanks for coming in.
52:00
You need to refine your message. You need to work on what that is
52:03
or you you did, you missed the mark in what you thought was of
52:08
value to that customer. Why?
52:10
Again, that's sort of the self reflection, self accountability,
52:14
holding yourself to not letting failures like that go without
52:18
being some level of improvement going forward.
52:21
And then we talked about the right, right proposal.
52:24
There's got to be a document that says here's what we're
52:26
going to deliver for you, Mr. Customer, and here's what your
52:28
expectations are on that. So there's got to be the right
52:31
kind of proposal that not only resonates what message you
52:35
provided earlier, but now has some commercial offering to it,
52:38
right closure strategy. Who do we need to involve in the
52:41
organization to be successful in closing this deal and how do we
52:48
align our safety guy with their safety guy and our quality guy
52:51
with their quality guy and their chief financial officer with our
52:55
chief financial officer? You know, however that is is do
52:58
we have the organization, our organization aligned with theirs
53:02
and can we have communication with them?
53:04
And then the last thing, which is one of the most important
53:06
things to me and it's again, none of these are really in any
53:11
kind of order, but the, the right, the right customer
53:14
commitment, which means whatever you have done up to a point in
53:18
this sale, if you have not gotten that customer to commit
53:21
to some action to move closer to evaluating our organization,
53:27
then there's something that's broken somewhere along the line
53:29
too. So having a customer commit to
53:32
visiting one of our labs, going to a, a job site and seeing us
53:37
in action, watching us go do a full-fledged inspection of a
53:42
vehicle, demonstrating that capability, that that
53:45
experience, that expertise to that customer.
53:49
If we don't get that shot, then then somewhere along the line
53:51
again, we've we've missed the message, we've missed the
53:54
audience or we've missed we're talking to the wrong type of
53:57
target. So all those things kind of
53:59
wadded together or what I have taken everywhere I have gone
54:03
since 2020 and it's been fairly effective.
54:09
And the one, the one message I always tell a new hire is until
54:15
you value your time, nobody else ever will.
54:18
And so don't let customers bully you into, you know, come next
54:23
week, I need to see you next week.
54:26
And unless it's a quality issue, then we got to do what we got to
54:29
do. But, but I never like a guy on
54:32
my team that doesn't have three weeks of packed time.
54:39
I want him to be scheduled with customers for four or five weeks
54:44
out if possible. And if a customer calls and
54:48
says, hey, can you come out here next week?
54:51
If you say yeah more than you're saying no, it's probably a
54:54
problem. You're not going to be super
54:56
successful long term. Why is that?
55:00
Is it just because they don't have enough in their pipeline,
55:03
or that you feel like you're sending the signal that you're
55:07
too needy or what? What's the philosophy?
55:10
There are you asking about the why would the customer say that
55:12
or why would I say why would I expect that from my guy?
55:15
The second, OK, the reason I expect that from my guy is that,
55:19
that if, if they're waiting, if they have availability in the
55:22
middle of next week, for example, then I feel like they
55:26
haven't been planning and preparing enough to fill their
55:30
own schedule up. And if we're waiting for
55:32
customers to call us to fill in our schedule, we are never going
55:36
to get out ahead of it enough to where our funnel is going to be
55:38
satisfactory for us to deliver on our objectives, financial or
55:42
otherwise. And so if they have, if they are
55:46
booking themselves two and three weeks, I'm not opposed to
55:49
telling a customer I can't be there, but I can get somebody to
55:53
come there. Give me an idea what the context
55:56
of the meeting would be. Because otherwise I'm going to
55:59
be in your area and they can look at their great plan and go,
56:02
I'm going to be back in your area in five weeks.
56:05
Can it wait till then if customer might go, Oh yeah,
56:09
yeah, that's no problem. And sometimes and then other
56:11
times they're like, no, I need somebody out here next week.
56:14
And that's when my guys would pick up the phone and go, they
56:17
call me, they call the CEO if they have to the CEO, we will
56:21
find somebody to support that particular meeting somehow,
56:26
someway if that's what needs to be done.
56:29
But from a sales perspective, you always want to have a much
56:32
more full schedule and, and of your time.
56:36
And that's why I say if you don't value your time and you
56:39
let the customers kind of push you around, it's going to be
56:43
really tough to be consistently successful in anything that you
56:45
end up doing in sales. That makes sense.
56:48
Pretty simple. So beyond your professional
56:51
life, Doug, you're also known for founding Emma's Ambassadors,
56:56
which support children with autism.
56:59
Tell me why this is so important to you.
57:02
Yeah, thanks. So when my daughter was 2, she
57:07
was diagnosed with autism. And of course there's a lot of
57:11
woe is me and what does that mean?
57:13
And back then, I think that the number was one in about 342 kids
57:20
had autism. So we were one of them.
57:24
I was I've been blessed. I've had a great career.
57:26
I've I've I've I'm pretty financially sad.
57:30
I don't struggle for much. But as I was looking around at
57:34
some of these other kids in our area that were diagnosed with
57:38
autism and they were in the public school system or even
57:41
somewhere in a private setting, private school setting, you
57:45
could just tell they just weren't able to get what they
57:48
needed. And from either a therapeutic
57:51
standpoint being getting through the right therapies, having
57:54
equipment in their school that would help them be more
57:57
comfortable and relaxed. And they're in a challenging
57:59
environment with, you know, hundreds of other kids around
58:02
that are typical. So, so we founded this with the
58:06
idea that we're going to raise money and try to get it to the
58:08
schools and the families that are affected by autism.
58:13
And over the course of, you know, now it's been 19 years,
58:19
we've raised and, and basically given away about $400,000.
58:25
And it doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're talking about,
58:29
you know, $1000 iPad here or outfit in the school with, you
58:34
know, $20,000 worth of therapeutic equipment to try to
58:38
help these kids be a little bit more comfortable, it's been
58:41
pretty impressive. So we, we do a one annual
58:46
fundraiser a year, although we accept donations year round, we
58:50
do one big annual fundraiser a year, which is a golf tournament
58:54
the end of April up here in where I'm at just outside of
58:58
Atlanta. And we sell out every year.
59:02
And, and the first year was a struggle.
59:05
And then we're we're having our 15th golf tournament this year.
59:09
We called our 15th anniversary and yeah, and we sold out the,
59:16
the golfing spots, 128 spots in less than three weeks.
59:20
So great community support, got lots of friends and family that
59:26
support the event. And we're, we're, we're blessed
59:30
and, and the, the funds that we raised goes directly back into
59:34
helping these families up here. And they've all seen a lot of
59:37
them. A lot of my friends have seen
59:38
Emma grow up. She's now 21, she's still
59:42
autistic, hasn't changed. And so now we're kind of looking
59:46
at our, our foundation and, and what are we going to do now for
59:50
the future? Because helping the younger kids
59:52
has, has been sort of something we've put a lot of time and
59:55
energy into. And now we're looking at, you
59:57
know, some of these kids becoming adults and, and like,
59:59
what is their, what is their world look like?
1:00:01
And what can we be doing maybe to help better that, that, that
1:00:05
adult life, if you will? And, and so always something
1:00:10
gears turning, things like that to, to where we go next.
1:00:13
But it's been a lot of fun. It's been very rewarding for my
1:00:16
wife and I. And yeah, we look forward to
1:00:20
what helping authors out in in North Georgia.
1:00:23
That's really cool. I'm here in Columbus, OH.
1:00:26
My wife is a speech therapist in a low income school district and
1:00:31
she works primarily with preschool kids.
1:00:34
And so the last several years I've heard her get both excited
1:00:38
and frustrated with trying to outfit more kids with
1:00:43
communication devices, which I think is part of what you're,
1:00:46
you know, the funds raised that have gone to especially kids who
1:00:49
aren't non verbal having trouble, you know, forming
1:00:51
words. How can they communicate?
1:00:53
There are these sort of souped up iPads that have, you know,
1:00:57
different buttons and icons and things that make it easy for
1:00:59
them to to communicate. She's really excited about this
1:01:03
and then also really frustrated sometimes that they can't get
1:01:06
funding or approval for the funding.
1:01:08
And So what you're talking about, my wife, she doesn't
1:01:13
really watch my shows. I think she'll watch this part
1:01:15
of it and she'll really appreciate what it is that
1:01:17
you're doing. Fair enough.
1:01:18
I appreciate that. Yeah, we actually, we actually
1:01:21
had out a lot. And it's pretty interesting that
1:01:23
Apple and in the developers of their different apps, they're
1:01:26
starting to get to where there's really, really good software for
1:01:31
an iPad or, and we, we provide a lot of those to kids because
1:01:35
most of them, it's unfortunate they have to leave the device at
1:01:39
school, they can't take it home. And so they're, they're really
1:01:41
ineffective when they get home. And there's that frustration for
1:01:44
the parent. And we've lived through it.
1:01:45
We've been there. So being able to allow them to
1:01:47
have the same equipment while they're at home and, and, and
1:01:52
what a, what a phenomenal life improvement for those kids and
1:01:55
their families. One more question for you, Doug.
1:01:59
Before I do it, I want to do 2 things.
1:02:01
First of all, for everyone listening today, I would invite
1:02:04
you to hit the follow like Share, Subscribe button on your
1:02:06
favorite podcast app so you can continue to get more great
1:02:10
interviews like we've had today with Doug Bale.
1:02:12
Doug, I also want to let people know the best way to either
1:02:15
continue to follow your story or to get in touch with you
1:02:18
directly. What would that be?
1:02:19
Yeah, I I'm easy. I'm easy to find in in LinkedIn.
1:02:24
It's Doug Bale Vail, Like Bale Colorado one and if you if you
1:02:29
just type in Doug Vale one, it should pop up and and find me.
1:02:33
There's a surprise. There's more and more Doug Bales
1:02:35
now, Douglas's and whatnot in LinkedIn, but like, I think I'm
1:02:40
one of the first ones, so. Bunch of impostors.
1:02:43
No, I don't know. We'll make sure we include a
1:02:45
link to the correct. One in the share notes here, but
1:02:47
perfect. Yeah, that's good.
1:02:50
Last question for you, Doug, as you look to the future of and
1:02:54
you could take this either from an industry standpoint or the
1:02:56
business, what are some of the exciting changes that are
1:02:59
coming? Yeah, I am.
1:03:04
I'm kind of an old school guy. As I mentioned, I like the
1:03:06
president of the flesh, but you have to be stuck under a rock if
1:03:11
you're not thinking about how AI can affect your business.
1:03:15
I'm actually dabbling with it a little bit with my own nonprofit
1:03:19
at Ms. Ambassadors to help deliver more routine content
1:03:25
that I don't have to sit and develop.
1:03:26
I think that's one of the things that can be kind of debilitating
1:03:30
is paralysis through analysis and, and not just keeping up
1:03:35
with a, a really rapid churn. So I think how AI effects sales
1:03:40
and marketing in the future is going to be incredible.
1:03:44
And then it as, as I'm, I'm partners with our COO, Jason,
1:03:49
and, and he and I are always talking about these little
1:03:52
angles and, and we'll, I'll go, yeah, this AI thing.
1:03:55
And then he'll be like, yeah, I need to look at AI and how it's
1:03:57
going to affect our operations too.
1:03:59
And I'm like, yeah, we just got, we're kind of into this world of
1:04:04
Power BI business information and how fast we can get reports
1:04:09
that used to take us hours to put together and now they're at
1:04:11
our fingertips. Like the speed of business
1:04:14
information and making decisions is getting so quick that it
1:04:19
helps, you know, really stay ahead of the competition, your
1:04:24
markets that you serve, all that stuff is just the, the world of
1:04:28
information is, is, is aggressive.
1:04:31
And I, I think it's going to be healthy.
1:04:34
But if you're if you're not paying attention to, it's going
1:04:36
to be a real challenge in the next 5 to 10 to keep up.
1:04:40
Doug, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both
1:04:42
your time and your story with us today.
1:04:44
I really appreciate it. This was fun, thanks for having
1:04:47
me. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:04:50
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:04:52
Thanks for learning with us today.