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How One Remodeler Is Practically Using AI · Remodelers On The Rise

• Kyle: Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about our partner, Jobtread. If you're still running your business on a mix of spreadsheets and sticky notes and a software tool that doesn't quite do everything you need, Jobtread might be exactly what you're looking for. It's an all-in-one construction management platform, estimating proposals, scheduling, job costing, I love job costing, invoicing, client communication, all in one place. What I love about it is how it helps you close more deals faster with professional proposals. It keeps your team on the same page. So jobs stay on time and on budget, and you actually know your numbers so you can protect your profit margins. JobTread has been named the number one construction estimating software two years running. We have a ton of our Remodlers on the Rise clients who love it. And if you've been looking for a way to get organized and grow with confidence, head to JobTread.com. dot com and check it out. Jobtread.com. All right, let's get into today's episode. Welcome everybody. It's the Remodellers on the Rise show in remodellers community several weeks back. Who would have thunk it? There was a topic about AI, which obviously is being talked about often. And Jeremy Mayer, who is my guest today, COO owner, co-owner, Phoenix Remodel. home remodeling down in, guessed it, Phoenix, commented something. Jeremy, you can correct me, but my paraphrase was, hey, we've been implementing a lot of AI, maybe more than most remodellers out there. And that kind of caught my eye of going, I remember talking to Jeremy a few years ago related to some website stuff and he's always on the cutting edge of things. And I said, all right, all right, big guy, if you've been implementing all this AI, I want you to come on to Remodellers on the Rise show and share some of the wonderfulness with us and you are willing to do that and we appreciate it and welcome. Jeremy Maher: Absolutely. Yeah, I think the message might have ended with, please reach out to me. I'd love to help you out. Whoever it that posted it. Uh, so it wasn't just, you know, like, Hey, we're awesome or anything like that. And to be clear, I don't code. Kyle: I know, the story was better with me kind of making it sound like a, you know, arrogance, you know, we're Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: doing it better than everybody else, period. Yes. No, even as Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: we were chatting beforehand, I could hear in your prep for this and in sending it over, Jeremy made my job as a host super easy today. He goes, all right, here's like nine things that we're doing AI related. And that was after he had already kind of thought through what would be most helpful. for fellow remodelers to kind of consider, because they're doing even more than these nine. But Jeremy is coming very much with a servant's heart and with a desire to help all of us who are listening. So we appreciate that very much. Tell us a little bit about kind of just your business and how you got into this. And then we're just going to focus in on AI and things you're doing. Jeremy Maher: Sure. So the way that we actually started was I worked at Infusionsoft, which Kyle: Ahem. Jeremy Maher: is now called Keep and it's a marketing automation company. So we would help teach other businesses how to run their business, automate it, you know, the best marketing practices, things like that. And before I forget one thing that we used to say there, and I'll paraphrase it, Kyle: Ahem. Jeremy Maher: that I think is worth mentioning before we jump into automation, everything is, we used to say something along the lines of, If you automate crap, you still get crap, right? It was more eloquently put like that, but you get the idea. So before I mention anything else, I think that's important to mention that automating is great as long as the strategy and the process are right and other factors. But the way that we got started was I was complaining to my boss at the time, who was the director at Infusionsoft about how I was having contractor nightmares. I won't get into it, but it was, it was really bad. And he's like, well, my brother lives in Illinois. I've been trying to get him to come out here. would you want to be a consultant for us? Cause he knew I owned another business and my parents, you know, were self-employed and all that good stuff. and I was like, yeah, maybe. So then when we talked, we realized let's just be partners, the three of us. So I handle the marketing automation, marketing in general, AI processes, bunch of boring tech stuff. So. I sit in front of a computer all day. You wouldn't want me touching your house or anything like that. I don't have those skills. Kyle: You happily sit in front of that computer though, don't you? okay. Jeremy Maher: For the most part, know, it does get boring some days as you could imagine, right? But yeah. And then Ben handles all of the design aspects. He's not a designer, but he oversees that. He oversees the finances. He oversees a bunch of other things. He's our people person, right? He's a really good leader. And then Mark is his brother who handles all of the construction stuff with our crews, subcontractors, and he also helps out design, helps out other things too, right? So there's three owners. which makes it a lot easier. Honestly, there's so many times where Ben and I will talk and we're like, we don't know how someone does it if they're the only one. So a little kudos to anyone out there that is a single owner, that it's hard enough with three people, let alone one. So that's how we got started. Kyle: There you go. A couple people just kind of put their shoulders, a couple people just put their shoulders back up. Well, that felt good. Thank you for that, Jeremy, of going, yeah. Yeah. Jeremy Maher: yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And then about our company. So we're everyone says they're different, right? And we're not specifically different, but we're in this kind of weird spot where we're not high end and we're not low end and we're probably not mid. We're kind of like mid to mid Kyle: Hmm. Jeremy Maher: high. So that what that means is we have to educate and filter more than normal. Now, obviously, all contractors have to do that, right? but we found that we have to nurture more because we are the pools of where we get leads from. You got a lot of people who think a really nice kitchen is 40,000 when it's really 80, Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: 90, 100, you know, and our prices are usually lower than most design build companies for a few different reasons. But the basic idea is that we had to get good at nurturing or we would not survive. So luckily that was our background. And so it might've hindered us a little bit. Like we depended so much on that, but I think that might Kyle: Hmm Jeremy Maher: be worth mentioning to others that. That's just something that everyone has to do, obviously. And with AI, something I did want to mention before I forget, with AI, you want to make sure that you're not saying it's just bad. Like some people are saying, AI, I would never do it. And the downside to that issue is, well, I won't go into it. It's obvious, right? But what I would like to also mention with AI is, don't be worried that it's gonna hurt the customer journey. So many people are like, I don't wanna automate that because it's gonna hurt the customer journey. And in some cases it could, but we found ways to automate where it actually does the opposite. It stays in front of them in a more intelligent way and it makes sure that no one slips through the cracks. So, sorry, that was a long explanation, but it was just a couple of things I wanted to mention. Kyle: That's good. Yeah. even, and even the, you're getting in front of that of going, no, do we even need to talk about if you're just like AI? No, no, come on. Come on. That's not, it's not going anywhere. It's getting better. We need to embrace the parts. I like the fact that you were like, hang on before you say it's, it's disconnecting us from the client. There's ways to use it that could enhance the client experience. And then what you said even before that of automating a bad process. And you wrote this in your little prep, automating a bad process just gives you a bad process at scale. Make sure that you're not setting up some type of automation or trying to use AI where you don't even have your process step by step. Creating that and doing that manually and then finding ways to use AI to streamline it, to make it easier and more efficient and save you time. That's the way to approach it. That's a very good. caveat to put in there. here's, there's nine of them here. Number one, that you listed here, not in any particular order, you wrote voice AI when the receptionist can't get a call. got a human being receptionist who can't reach the call. Our voice AI picks up answers questions and schedules an appointment for their discovery call with Justin. Tell us a little bit about how you approach that. We'll spend kind of maybe three, four minutes on each of these and see how we can unpack them. Jeremy Maher: Sure, absolutely. So in the order, one thing I tried to do was create it in client journey chronological order. And then obviously some aren't involved in that. But with the voice AI, what's interesting about it is it's better than our receptionist. It's better than I would be. The only problem is the actual voice itself still has a little bit of a roboticness to it. Not much. If anyone wants to call our phone number at Phoenix Home Remodeling, feel free. If you call on a Sunday or a Saturday, you're more likely not to get the receptionist. So our receptionist is in the Philippines. She's great. And that allows us to have really good call coverage, right? So it's hard to miss one, but if they do, or if it's after hours, our voice AI takes over and it's programmed to do all the things that a receptionist would normally do. We don't have a give prices, not because it can't. but because we want them to talk to Justin, who's our next person in line, and he's our consultation manager. Kyle: Does it actually tell the prospect, I'm an AI recording type thing? Jeremy Maher: Yeah, great question. So we tested a few different ways. And when I say test, we don't really have great results. I shouldn't even use that word. But what we found is some are solicitors, but a lot of people would hang up in the beginning. And I wasn't sure if that was the reason or not. And I also didn't want to be tricky. So what we did after probably a month or two is we switched it to saying, and I forgot the exact wording, but it's something like, hi, this is Sarah, an AI assistant with Phoenix Home Remodeling. I can help you with scheduling a call or anything else. How can I help you? Or something along those lines. And so the basic idea is that it's not only able to answer the questions, but it can look at the calendar for Justin and schedule. And then if they give an objection, it can respond back. You know, if this, even something simple, like, I don't know if I want to give my phone number. I've taught it how to respond to that. So it's one of those things that it's actually quite easy once you have it set up and making little tweaks is not difficult. yeah. So it's inside of GHL. Kyle: And what's the pro, what's the, is it an app? it a specific software that you're using for it? Jeremy Maher: So we tried two other companies and integrating it and they weren't that great and GHL wasn't that great, but they've just made some updates. They're about two and about a month. But GHL essentially is the brain of everything. And we use a lot of it. That would be a podcast all on its own. But in any case. Kyle: Okay, yeah, and that's for people just kind of catching up. Let's go high level, what you're using for a lot of probably your CRM and a lot of these automations. Okay. Jeremy Maher: Yeah, it's by far the best. know, you've got Salesforce, you got Marketo, you got all these different options, Housebot. There is nothing that's better. And this is the industry I came from. I used to work for a competitor of GHL. We had Infusionsoft for free. Like we didn't have to pay for it because we had an employee account. And GHL is so much better that that's what got us to do it. The downside to GHL though, if this is worth mentioning is... It's a lot to set up. So you either want to hire someone that already has the setup and can give you the setup and then make changes and, train, or you hire someone in-house. Like we have someone in their entire job is just GHL. So if a salesperson has trouble sending a contract or we have a lead source that doesn't show up on a new lead or really anything with our entire system. I am not even involved anymore. I sometimes I'm included on it, but he just handles it and he's in another country and the cost of that is very low. So our return on investment, I don't think you can actually track that exactly, but it's been a huge help. So if that helps others, you could always get a virtual assistant that knows how the system works. And then Kyle: Got it. Jeremy Maher: if you know the strategy, you could just explain what you need or another option Kyle: And you you. Jeremy Maher: is just to find someone who already has GHL set up and they can give it to Kyle: Got it. Jeremy Maher: you. Kyle: And you, and you found that the idea of, know, instead of getting voicemail and perhaps losing the opportunity, trying to chase them down, the idea of using this seems to be, you know what, we're converting more of those folks. We're not letting people kind of slip through the cracks. We're saving a little bit of time of just getting that discovery call already booked. After that's booked, I'm guessing there's some automations that are probably already asking the clients for some more information, photos, et cetera. You just found that from a client experience and early sales process that to be a very strong net positive Jeremy Maher: Yeah, huge positive. One other thing that might be worth mentioning, solicitor calls. I'm sure everyone that is watching this knows, I mean, we all get so many of those. Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: And one of the things that's great about GHL and also the voice AI or using a receptionist that uses GHL is as soon as you know that's a solicitor, You can mark them in a certain way and our automation makes it so they can never call us again. So we never get their phone call again and we never reach out to them for any reason. The only thing that could be a worry or an issue, which is probably worth mentioning, I might be getting in the weeds is if you do that and that phone number is only a solicitor for a short while, you've now blocked that phone number forever. But if it's out of state, what are the likely? So anyways. Kyle: Right, very very low likely. Okay, all right. So co... Jeremy Maher: You can create processes for that. Yeah, exactly. So it helps with solicitors. It helps with a bunch of different things on the front end. Kyle: Okay. So if you're, if you're super interested in that, go to phxhomeremodeling.com call, call their number during off hours and see, and see what happens folks. The second one, automated client photos. When someone books a discovery call, a client folder is created automatically. They get an email and text asking them to upload project photos. Kind of what I was just kind of mentioning. Photos drop straight into their folder. The folder link sits in the field in the CRM. And if they don't upload, the system keeps nudging them in different ways until they call. Interesting. Tell us more about that. Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Yeah, so I know some people don't like the idea of asking for photos for that discovery call because it creates friction. I totally get that, but we like to have that. So we totally understand the whole process and we have one employee. His entire job is just to do the discovery calls. He also does some other small stuff, but that's his main job. Kyle: This is another outsourced team member. Jeremy Maher: This one is actually someone who used to work with us at Infusionsoft. So Kyle: Hmm. Jeremy Maher: he lives here in Arizona. Kyle: Interesting. Jeremy Maher: and his name is Justin, and he essentially is the first real person that they're talking to. You know, the real first impression, if you don't count Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: the receptionist. And his job is to, as everyone knows on a discovery call, qualify, make sure that it's a good fit for everyone involved. And so as soon as they book, that appointment, it automatically creates a folder so that way Kyle: . Jeremy Maher: if the client uploads the photos, it automatically goes in the folder. There's a folder link inside of our system so Justin immediately can see them. There's like no work on his part. And then what's nice about that too is... As the job progresses, people put other things into that folder. And the reason we did that, it's not hard to make a folder. takes an employee two minutes. But what was happening is it wasn't getting done. And then I realized, why don't we just automate this? So it's a small thing that has just ensured that the beginning part just runs smoothly. Kyle: Yeah, and if you are just to the strategy of that from just a general sales approach, if we have already booked a phone conversation or initial call, whether Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: it's via Zoom or whether it's via phone call, and that's already booked, we're all locked in on that. And then to get off that call and say, hey, we're going to send you another note. If you can take some photos of the space, maybe even take a quick video of the space, that could be another option. When you get on that call, it helps you qualify the Sometimes they won't do it. Okay, that's okay. You can still Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: have a conversation, but the majority of people will, especially if you make it clear and you follow up a little bit. And to me, like you were hinting at, it is worth the effort of having that. I want you as a remodeler or whoever's taking that initial call, I want you to be able to see their space because that conversation has a lot more depth. That conversation, you can qualify a lot more. You're speaking just because you see a few photos. You have so much. that you can speak into, we had this project that's very similar for that. Instead of it being blind, you've got these thoughts. So if you're not doing that, whether it's on your contact us form and you don't have where you can upload some photos, do it. Whether you haven't been asking for it, hey, lean into that, get that so that you have a better picture, literally, of their project. Jeremy Maher: Absolutely, yeah. One of the things that helped us, so when you notice that not everyone's giving photos, you're like, okay, what am I not doing as well as I could, you know, my ask and everything. And what we found was, and it's been years, so I apologize, I won't say this well, but we took a different angle, or maybe not different, but we took another angle of, hey, this benefits you with the photos, so that way we can give you a real price. We all know how contractors have a reputation for low balling. whatever the wording was. And Kyle: Mm. Jeremy Maher: that helped. I don't know the numbers, but it did help. And then if they don't give photos, Justin still does the call. Usually he'll give a range if he still feels comfortable. The range is huge. It's almost pointless in my opinion, but we still do it just so we can say we gave them something. And then from that point, we actually have a process where he reaches back out to them if they don't do it. So it automatically reaches out numerous times, reminding them to give the photos so we can get a real ballpark. And then we scheduled the in-home. So even if they don't give photos, we still ask for it afterwards, even though that creates friction. We Kyle: Got it. Jeremy Maher: found that it still works most of the time. Kyle: Majority of the time you are getting it before even that call though. Jeremy Maher: What's up? Kyle: Majority of the time you are already getting the photo before the initial call. Jeremy Maher: Yeah, if I had to make up a percentage, which is completely made up, I would guess we're probably around 80 % of people. Exactly, right? Yeah. Kyle: Yeah, and 52 % of all statistics are made up, Jeremy. Yes, sir, yes, sir. Now, even going to your Contact Us page, I thought it was interesting of, right, there's your contact form and it says Fast next to it. Call us faster, we're available 24-7. Text us fastest. Text us from your phone and get a fast response. So you're almost encouraging people to do the text version. Is there strategy behind that? Jeremy Maher: Yes, so that's something I forgot to mention. so texting is absolutely fantastic. So there's a button at the top of our website. I don't know if it does it when you click that button. But on one of them, if you do it from a phone, it'll Kyle: Hmm. Jeremy Maher: look different than what you see. Right now you see numbers, but Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: you'll actually see a button on the mobile version. And if they click it, it automatically opens a text message and it actually has the message already pre-written. It's general because we don't know what they want, but it's something like, I'm looking to do a home remodel. Kyle: Hello, I'm considering a home renovation. would like to get in touch. Jeremy Maher: Exactly. And so then the AI knows that we also know that's how, so we do not only lead source, but we do contact source. We want to know how did we get their info. And so once we turned this on, we started getting a lot more. Now, some of those probably ate into the web forms and other things, but it's pretty nice. People like the text. It feels personal. The other thing too, is you get permission faster and people look at their text messages way more than their emails, obviously, but the AI takes over. So imagine someone texts that. We purposely wait a couple minutes so it seems a little natural. Kyle: was gonna say I just sent it. I just sent it waiting for the feedback and I haven't got it yet. Jeremy Maher: Yeah. What the heck? And then the Kyle: No. What the heck? Jeremy Maher: basic idea is speed deletes quick, right? That's super important. So that's why we like people to text because then they also can ask questions and the AI can just jump in, answer the questions, answer objections. And it's just been a huge help for us. Kyle: Cool. Number three, AI generated pre-visit prep. When a discovery call converts to an in-home visit, AI takes the call notes, builds the scope of work, Google Doc, checklists, talking points automatically, so the sales consultant is teed up. Jeremy Maher: Yeah, this was a little bit of a monster, but it's fantastic now. So essentially after Justin gets off the call, he has his notes. He has a very specific form he uses so we don't miss anything. And if the client schedules the in-home, it automatically has AI create the scope of work. And our scope of work is, it's big. It's essentially a checklist of every single question you could possibly ask depending on that situation. So if it's a guest bathroom, it's different than a master. Kyle: And it's taking the record is taking the recording and putting it into that prompt. Jeremy Maher: Actually, just Justin's notes, so that way it's quicker. So Justin knows exactly what to put, like demo, and then he just writes what they want to demo, keep, add. So it's like very short notes, and it takes those notes, and it builds the entire thing. And then that way our consultant has all of the information and also has the exact questions. So when they get to the bathtub, they know which questions to ask about the bathtub. Kyle: Mm. Jeremy Maher: And then Justin checks it since he's the one that had the call. He just makes sure that AI does a good job sometimes. So maybe type something else in there, but it saved us. I don't even know how much time. and then the other benefit. Kyle: And what AI are you using to create that? Jeremy Maher: Yeah, so it's a combination of things. So the back end is open AI. It's an assistant. So it's kind Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: of like chat GPT. And we're using N8n is the software that takes it from GHL, it into creates the Google doc first. Then you have to read the notes and do a couple other things. And so it does not only the scope of work, but We have a bunch of stuff at the top of the SOW. It adds all of that. And then Justin's notes are also at the bottom in case we need to reference them. Kyle: Got it. Very cool. it's a new world out there, isn't it? You know, so, so similar Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: there of using, you know, a lot of people are using like plod to record a conversation, taking that and saying, Hey, here's an hour long conversation. Can you put it through this, this prompt in, in Claude or in chat GPT, and can you organize it based on area of the home and this and that there's a lot of different ways to approach this, but Gone at this point are the days where you have to just be feverishly taking notes and this and that and the other. We have tools to help you really organize, which for a lot of you is some of the most annoying work that you do, whether it be over the initial call, like you're talking about, or at the in-person appointment. Let's get that recorded. Let's have some prompts to organize all of those notes very quickly for you. And listen to what Jeremy is saying on all of this. There is a human element of checking on these things. There's absolutely a human element that went into all of the setting up of the automation. You're continually tweaking these things. We're not losing that human touch, but in this instance, we're making it so much easier to tee this up with good details, everything we learned from them, and other notes that Justin's able to. Jeremy Maher: Absolutely. Kyle: good. You've probably heard a lot about AI lately. Everybody's talking about it. We've been doing some of our shows on it, but most of us are still wondering how does this actually help my remodeling business day to day? JobTread just rolled out something called an AI connector, and it's worth paying attention to. Basically, it lets you connect AI tools directly to your JobTread data. So instead of digging through old jobs and budgets or Client communications to find something, you can get answers faster. It can help you spot trends, summarize job info, and cut down on the repetitive stuff that eats up your time. For those of us who'd rather be out on a job site than buried in spreadsheets, this is a big deal. If you want to see what an AI ready construction management platform looks like, check out jobtread.com. Okay. So that one you've found to be very helpful. Time savers, et cetera. Jeremy Maher: Extremely helpful. Yeah, I mean, imagine something that's six pages worth all done Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: in five minutes and it's always the way that we want it. the right format, you know, everything. And then it does little things like now there's a link from the scope of work into our CRM system. And then every time an employee gets a task, like check the SOW or do this other thing, the link to the SOW is inside the task. So it may sound petty, but we're all about like, why make an employee go search for something when they Kyle: Yes. Jeremy Maher: can just click? Does it save 10 seconds? Probably. And that's not a big deal. But if you multiply that by 50 of those a day. or however many it is, I don't know, Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: it starts to make a difference. And employees like their job more because, I mean, we've made their jobs a lot easier because so much of it's automated. Kyle: Yeah. But I mean, what you said, 10 seconds and you just said, so whether you're using, you know, whatever software you're using or job tread or builder trend or whatever it is, the idea of we created, I mean, the fact that you automated it, we created a task to do the following. And for you to be able to, I can click on it. I can see the scope of work. I'm also guessing that within that template, when it creates that task, the checklist of the things that you need to go, we don't need to go search for it. It's right there. We click Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: it. Some of those little things, like you said, really have a compound effect on it. No doubt. All right, we gotta keep cruising. Number four is Jeremy Maher: Absolutely. Yeah. Kyle: AI analysis of employees. I'll let you just kind of describe this and run with it. What are you gonna use AI to Jeremy Maher: Yeah, so. Kyle: analyze me as your team member and tell me all the things I'm doing wrong, Jeremy? Jeremy Maher: Yeah. And what's great about it. So I come from sales coaching. I was a salesperson, so I've been on both ends and there's always emotion involved. And what's nice about AI is there's just less of it. I'm not saying there isn't any, but it's like, this is a robot telling us and it's a standard that we've created and we both agreed and we both have ownership, you know? So that's the first part that I like about it. The next one is I get, yeah, let me just explain it. So to back up, essentially what it's doing is it's analyzing the receptionist and seeing how her calls are, even though they're very basic calls, we still do an analysis and AI will say, here are some things that are happening this week. Here's a trend of the past month. here are things she does really well on almost every call. Here are things that, you know, Jeremy should coach her on. So it'll actually tell me what I should be doing. So I don't even have to think. I don't listen to her calls. I just let the AI do all the work, right? Kyle: Mm-hmm. See the summary. Jeremy Maher: And then the next one's for Justin. That email goes to him and me every day. So one, I know how many calls he had yesterday. I see what the disposition was in this email. It scores him through five. So that way he's getting feedback every single day. Can you imagine if I try to do that myself? That Kyle: Right. Jeremy Maher: would be a full time job. Literally, that's all I would do all day. So instead, we set this thing up. I don't know how long it took our employee, but probably two or three days worth. And now Justin gets feedback every single day. Kyle: Yeah. And even example of did listen to the recording. Did Justin ask them why they're deciding to remodel and if they remodeled before? Did Justin mentioned Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: some of our key points of difference? Did Justin get really clear with the next step in the process and make it very clear? As far as, you know, having it analyzed through the filter of a great initial phone call. consists of these ingredients and for it to listen to the back and forth and say, man, you nailed that one. You totally didn't even mention this. And next time you could try to just emphasize this a little bit more. What program are you using to do that portion of things, the AI analysis of some of these calls? Jeremy Maher: Yeah. So essentially we had a company called Sales Ask. And then I realized, wait a minute, we could just build this. So now it's set up with the same types of stuff. GHL automatically gives a transcript. The transcript is pulled through, I think, NAN. And then that goes to another OpenAI assistant. And that assistant's job is only on Justin and then there's another assistant just for the receptionist and then each employee has their very specific assistant and that assistant is graded just like you said did they ask this did they say this if they got this objection did they answer it like this like it's very structured so that way we get the best call possible because that's one thing with sales is they're all over the place right that's how we all Kyle: Yeah. Jeremy Maher: are we don't say the exact same thing every time and while that may seem like it's too scripted it dramatically helps improve the quality of the call. And we're not strict. It's not like you have to say the exact wording. We have Kyle: Right. Jeremy Maher: to use certain types of wording. So yeah, that helps a lot. And then there's two for the home consultant. So one is for the in-home visit. All she does is she just records on her phone and she's got the scope of work on her phone. And so she's just asking questions. And then at the end, she just submits it through a form. And then the AI gets it and it analyzes how she did. And there's certain requirements that we have. And that one doesn't score her. It's more of just coaching in general. We found that that one is too. Even though there's a structure, we don't do a presentation. We kind of just jump right in. So there isn't a scoring, but we do have specific things that she has to do. Um, and then the other one is for proposals. So when we do the proposal review, it's on a video call. And after the video is done, it gets transcribed sent to the AI. And that one does score her because that is an exact way of doing it. And so she gets an email on both of those. And so do I. And so does the technical person. And that just allows us to always be giving feedback. And it's crazy. There's so many now where she gets a 99 or 100 because she's just exactly on point. And we've been having a great year. And that's one of the reasons is that. We have her as our salesperson now and because of all the coaching. Kyle: So what are a couple of things that the previous person wasn't doing and that she is doing a little bit better? Because that part is the exclamation mark on all of this. We're having a great year. Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: Our sales conversion has been improving. You mentioned before we started recording, our average job size has been improving. We took our designer and put her into the sales role. What did the AI in particular kind of highlight that it was like, we need to work on this and the delivery of that? What were a couple of those things? Jeremy Maher: Yeah, so one was the in-home. It didn't say we had to do a presentation, but it was before I even built it, I was asking like, what do we need to improve and all that before building crap, right? Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: And the basic idea was it was saying we just weren't doing certain things as well as we could. And one of them it mentioned was it said, hey, Jeremy, you've written a book. Why are you not giving that to some of the homeowners? And I was like, well, that just seems kind of like salesy. And then I thought I asked a I said, hey, what if she just keeps it in the car? And then at the end, if she built rapport with them or she liked them or if they had an objection that's in the book or give some reason, she would say, hey, would you be interested in this book? Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: I have a free copy in the car. So she's not playing games, but she's just not bringing it with her. And then when she brings it back, you know, there's reciprocity there. There's helpfulness. The other thing is we don't require both spouses to be at the in-home. I know that that can be a legitimate thing. We Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: don't. And one of the challenges I remember when I used to do that role was I would show up and the spouse that researched us knew like, we're not like a regular contractor. The spouse that didn't know anything about us treated us like we were you know, chuck in a truck, which is not bad, but I think you know what I'm saying. Kyle: Mm-hmm. Where's it? Jeremy Maher: So what's nice about the book is if they don't even look at it immediately, wait, a contractor gave you a book they wrote? And it's not special. It's the same book any of us could write. Kyle: Yeah. But it's marketing, right? Know, like in trust building. Interesting. So sometimes, yeah, it's those smaller things. And it's the fact that, you know, what you just described on all of those analyses of it is, you know, this is, this is just, you agree that these are the ingredients that make up a great initial call or a great in-home. I'm sure that we're all in agreement on that. And then we know Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: how sales goes. You have somebody that just grabs ahold of the reins and all of a sudden you forgot to show this. You forgot to mention that. And when we don't do that, we don't differentiate ourselves. We're not super clear with our value proposition and our conversion rate Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: suffers as a result. So, you know, these things aren't your boss walking in, shutting the door and saying, look, we got to talk. It's like, hey, you did great here. Here's a room for improvement. And that's, it seems like kind of an upbeat, clear, concise, not in your face way of continuing to improve it. And you guys have seen results from that. Number five. Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: A review engine that keeps working. When I look up Phoenix Home Remodeling, I see 135 five-star reviews there in Chandler, Arizona. Am I looking up the right one? Five, yeah, four. Jeremy Maher: Yep, that's the right one. We actually had about 20 reviews that got removed because we had, I'm sure everyone's getting those fake reviews. And so when we asked to have the fake ones removed, Google actually removed real ones too. Thanks Google, but well. Kyle: Thanks Google. But four days ago, Nancy Stanley, five stars, I loved working with this company. They were so honest upfront about everything. Wrote some good stuff there, uploaded some photos of the kitchen as well. So what is the kind of AI assistant here to help you secure more reviews? Jeremy Maher: Yeah. So that review actually in particular is from the one year anniversary. So on their one year anniversary, we remind them about the warranty and then I ask them for a review and the AI looks to see if they've ever left a review. If they haven't, we ask for Google. If they have, looks to see we have a Google sheet that shows us about seven places that we care about. And it just picks the next one in line. So that is from someone who we had asked for review. They didn't for whatever reason. Maybe we forgot to ask them. I think we did. And then she just happens to be in construction again on some other projects for a second go around. And so I just shot her an email and maybe she saw the remodel subject line and was like, let's do this. So that's an easy win for you guys where you could just create a yearly recurring calendar item. if you don't already have one for someone who closed and then you just ask them for another review somewhere, but we just automated it. So there's Kyle: Awesome. Jeremy Maher: lots of software out there that can do review management. GHL has one. We just found it wasn't everything that we needed. So we essentially just have a Google Sheet as I mentioned, it has the different places and After they're done, if they leave a review, it then asks them for another review. So not only do we get a review from her there, but then it waits a couple of days. It sends our personal text message as if it comes from me and just says, hey, thank you so much for the review. Would you be willing to also leave it on Facebook? And then she replied, hey, I don't have it, but my husband does. Could she use that one? Yes. Reply back gives her the old text that she used. And that way she could just copy and paste it on the Facebook. So. It's automated. make it easy for the client and it allows us to be on more places because homeowners are looking on so many different places now. And so are LLMs, AI, JetGPT, Gemini, right? They're looking at many different spots. So if you only focus on one or two, you're, you know, hindering yourself. Kyle: What are some of those top spots that you're seeing? Obviously Google is still the big dog. And then where else are you like, man, if I had a hundred reviews and I was going to divvy them up to these different places, what are you Jeremy Maher: Yelp. Kyle: seeing? Jeremy Maher: Yeah, Yelp would be a good one. I'm not a fan of Yelp for certain reasons, not to get into, but Yelp is a good one because Apple Maps also pulls from there and Yelp also gets pulled from a couple LLMs. Houzz is also obviously a really good one for our industry too. Kyle: Good. In the interest of time, we are moving our Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Kyle: nine items down to seven. Oh, people are going, or people are going, whew, Jeremy Maher: Cool. Kyle: because this has been drinking out of a fire hose. For anybody listening to this, let me remind you, AI is not going anywhere. Let me remind you that even if you haven't done much with AI, if you have been using ChatGPT and asking it some questions, and having it write a delicate email that a client's disappointed to use it. And you're like, Whoa, that was super helpful. If you've had it review a scope of work and you're like, Oh, this is cool. can, you're ahead of the game. Run your race. It's okay. Yes. Jeremy has done a couple laps already and he's just jogging along and we're just joining him on his 10th lap and we're on our first, but that's fine. Right. It's not, it's no big deal. I had another client of mine send me an email. This was totally AI unrelated. And he was given an update on where his business is this year. And he had a good first half of the year. He's got a really strong backlog of work for the second half. And he goes, you know, I can easily get frustrated with not being further ahead, but then I just reflect back to where I was a year ago. And it's really encouraging. And aren't we as Knucklehead business owners so quick to poo poo the progress we made and lament about this and complain about that. Consider you're making good progress. You're getting things implemented. Do not let these ideas overwhelm you. Let them inspire you and then continue to figure out what the next right thing is to do about it. And maybe just pick one of these ideas and play around with it a bit. So don't get overwhelmed by it, but also don't be a remodeler who just sits back on and sits on your hands and doesn't do anything. Right, Jeremy? Good. Jeremy Maher: Absolutely. yeah. And I would say if anyone has questions or wants to be pointed in a direction that might be good, feel free to message me on Facebook. I'm in the group and hopefully I can help and point you in the right direction. There is one Kyle: you're so kind. Jeremy Maher: item that I'll say for last. It's the business coach. So I know some people already have a business coach. Kyle: Hang on, was gonna save that one, but I did want to still ask you about two of the other ones and then we'll end with that one. Jeremy Maher: Okay. Sure. Yeah, no worries. Okay. Kyle: Actually, no, I don't need to be a dictator on this. Go ahead, hit me with the business coach one and then I'll circle back to another one. Jeremy Maher: yeah, okay. So yeah, the business coaches are one I would say is gonna help them out quite a bit. So I used to ask my business partner Ben, I don't know, five questions a week roughly. I don't know the last time I asked him a question. So the basic idea is, actually let me back up. I've heard numerous people say something like, I don't like it because it just tells me what I want to hear. And it's like, that's not AI's fault. That's no different Kyle: Hmm. Jeremy Maher: than if you went to a stranger and said, hey, how does my hair look or whatever, right? They're going to give you the nice, that's what it's been trained to do. But it's not difficult to just put in a couple of sentences that tell the AI to be candid and to not be nice. So a business coach essentially, is not going to chat GPT and asking it questions. It's creating a custom GPT or a project in Claw. Those are one of the two I would recommend. You could do Gemini Gems. So what you want to do is you want to take some personality tests if you haven't already. You want the AI to know who you are. I can't tell you how many times the AI was like, Jeremy, quit being an idiot. This is your personality. Like it knows me. Like it really, really knows me. I mean, it's taught me quite a bit about myself. So the point is, We are all our own worst enemy. So the business coach is there not only to be like, yes, this is a good written email. It's there to actually help you with strategy. There's not a single day that I can remember besides vacation where I am not using it constantly. The littlest thing. So Kyle: Mm. Jeremy Maher: it's not hard to set up. It's cheap. If anybody wants, I'll just give you the one that I actually have. You'll change some of it. But like literally all they have to do is just copy and paste it, change a couple of things, upload their stuff. Kyle: all the prompts and yeah. Jeremy Maher: Yeah, you know, it's just like one main big prompt inside the custom GPT. And it just helps out tremendously. I mean, there's so much that it can do. And it doesn't always get everything right, just like any human being, but it's something that has been so helpful for me. And the one thing I would mention is pre-mortems. So I just learned about this. Yeah. Kyle: So I was about to ask you about that, of kind of that phrase even, quickly makes sense. Jeremy Maher: Yeah. So like post-mortem is okay, we tried something here, all the reasons that didn't work or here's what we found. Pre-mortem is AI or I guess anyone saying, here's what could go wrong. And I was about to create this project for Justin to do videos and you know, AI will create the entire documentation, the SOP, like everything. And before I had to do that, I was like, Hey, could you do a pre-mortem on this? And it came up with all kinds of issues that could come up with. And some of them are nonsense, but who cares? You just scroll to the next one. And then I said, hey, number X, Y, and Z, these are all things that I didn't think of. These are great. Can you build that into the scope of work or how do we handle that? And it took care of everything. So all these issues that could have came up, I just, within, I don't know, five, 10 minutes, completely squashed that as being an issue. And it's like, wow, that just, I don't even know how much time that saved me in Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: frustration. Especially when you're creating videos if you have to recreate them, that's a lot of work So that would be something I would highly recommend people start using right away because it's easy and it will have the most impact of anything in my opinion Kyle: Very good. then, you know, automated reporting analytics. I think that that's another vein, but last one would be kind of role specific GPTs for the team. Knock that down into just a very kind of elementary level of how that works, how it's kind of set up and what it's used for. Jeremy Maher: Sure. So we have, I think, 11 international contractors or employees. so English is not their second language. And we do a lot of writing, social media, Kyle: Or is there a second language? Yeah. Jeremy Maher: stuff like that. So we have these different GPTs that are specific to the role and specific to that job. So it's not like, OK, they have these five different tasks that they're always doing. Let's just create one GPT. It's like, there's five of them. So like the client story, for example, it scans the scope of work and then writes the client story to put on our website or like, you know, how you had a podcast reached recently on featured stories. It's Kyle: Yes. Jeremy Maher: kind of the same idea, but just not as good. It's a little more simple. So ours is a little more basic, but the is that each of these GPTs has a very specific role and also makes it so the employee can't make the common mistakes. So if I notice an employee is always doing X, Y, and Z wrong, all I have to do is say, AI when you write this or do this, whatever. You can even have it when it's done with whatever. Let's say it's a social media post, it writes a social media post. And then at the bottom, it can say, Natan, don't forget to do X, Y, Z. So Kyle: Hmm. Jeremy Maher: not only can I have it give it the written info, but I could just teach it like, hey, remind the employee to do these things Kyle: set these reminders. Jeremy Maher: at the bottom. Kyle: Hmm, very cool. Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: So and is set up and tell people if they're like, all right, I want to set something like that up. What would they and where would they go? Jeremy Maher: Yeah, it's actually really easy. Here's the meta part about it. You can actually have AI create the prompt for itself. That's usually what I do. I don't sit there and like type out the entire prompt. So let's say you wanted one for, we were talking about social media posts. That's kind of basic, but let's just keep it simple. So essentially you would say, Hey, I want to create a custom GPT that's for social media posts. And the employee's name is. Here's what I don't want you to do. Here's what I want you to do. Here's more about our company. Look up and you know, should, everyone should have documents. Like one is about your company. Why Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: choose us? Things like that. And you just take all those documents. You just feed it right in. So that way, if it has to do any marketing, it's as on point as any copywriter could ever be. And so that's really all it is, is you just have AI write the prompt and then you just copy it. You put it into the custom GPT. If you don't know how, just Google or look on YouTube, it's like a five minute thing and upload the documents. And then what's really nice about the reason that we use chat GPT is it allows you to share it where Claude does not and Google Gemini won't if you're using the workspace version. If you use the personal version, you can. So we just use chat GPT and that allows me to give that to all employees and they just need a link. So in their tutorial, when they're ready to do a part, it just says, don't forget the chat GPT. and then click that link and now they're open and they're ready to go. Kyle: Got it. And then, kind of outside of AI, it's interesting that you've got a team that's a little bit more outside the U S doing various things. what have you kind of found to be pros and cons there? Is it, some folks in just all around the world or they primarily in the Philippines? I asked the Philippines, cause my first, first employees before I had some state side employees was I went to online jobs.ph and had had Cassandra for a number. Jeremy Maher: yeah, John Jonas. Kyle: Yeah. For a number of years, I, I, had Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: an outsourced. that was years ago. One of my clients Jeremy Maher: Yeah. Kyle: recently now has a virtual assistant named Ken that's working for him for pennies on the dollar. And he's very pleased with them. And Ken's very excited about it. And he's over in the Philippines. What have you kind of found in that realm of things? Jeremy Maher: Yeah, so that's an area that I really like. Um, in fact, at one point I thought about creating a program to help contractors just hire BAS. Uh, I don't have the time to put the thought across my mind because it's incredible. mean, we have, I think it's 11 people that would probably be the cost of one and a half. If you were to, you know, average out all their salaries and plus burden costs and everything else. Um, so to answer your question, uh, Philippines is one India, Pakistan, uh, Africa and, uh, El Salvador. are the countries, but most are from Pakistan or Philippines out of those. And so just depends on different things. Kyle: And you've found them through... Jeremy Maher: Hub staff, so it's actually free. We also use online jobs at pH for certain roles that we know we want We may want someone from the Philippines. We just posted on both And it's a very specific setup. It might actually be worth taking 30 seconds to mention So if anyone is looking to hire a BA, I'll give you the structure we use. And essentially what it comes down to is there are sometimes I'll put a job and we literally get 200 applicants in less than a week. I think we've even hit 300. And so how do you weed through that? That's insane. They're all around the country, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a way of doing that. I won't get into it now, but we have a way to do it where it doesn't take up a lot of my time. And that way, you know, the people that actually are worth talking to. But it's been amazing because not only the costs, but Most of them work 50 hours a week. They don't complain. There's no labor laws, which I'm not saying I'm doing anything bad. It's not like that. But, you know, labor laws have gotten quite strict with things. And, you know, if they work one hour over, I don't have to worry about overtime. There's no burden costs or 401k. And we Kyle: Mm. Jeremy Maher: pay them. One of the tricks is we pay them more than what the average person would. And so they're happy. mean, like some of them provide for their family, like other outside of their Kyle: members. Jeremy Maher: you know, a media family. And, know, like our team leader sent me a message like four or five months ago, like, this is my new house. Thank you so much. Because he got promoted up. And so the idea is that, yes, we are getting that for a low cost, but we're also going above and beyond for that person. And then when Kyle: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Maher: you give them a bonus, which is not a huge bonus in our realm. To them, it is huge because of the conversion rate, cost of living, and other factors. So it feels really good to be able to bonus people out when they do something really good. So overall, I love it. And everything is through just chat. I don't even do video meetings. I don't talk to them. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's just very get to the point, next, next, next. And I really do like it. Kyle: Cool. Well, that was an interesting, helpful, eye-opening episode of the Remodellers on the Rise show. And Jeremy, very generous with kind of sharing these ideas. I'm guessing a few people might also say, hey, you mentioned, you know, your little custom GPT and being able to share this. If you can kind of find what would be the best way to find you, just even message you on Facebook. Jeremy Maher: Yeah, just shoot me a message on Kyle: Okay. Jeremy Maher: Facebook and we can chat. Kyle: Awesome. If you wanted to end this thing with one final thought, one final word of encouragement, one final idea, what would it be? Fine, sir. Jeremy Maher: Just pick one thing and attack it as best as you can. Make it great. Let AI help you with it. And that's pretty much it. And just now you've got that one and then go on to the next one when you have time. Kyle: Bam, don't get overwhelmed, folks. One piece at a time, one piece at a time. All right, thank you so much. Jeremy Maher: Mm-hmm. Yep. Kyle: Talk to you soon. Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.