Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Built a $2M SaaS for contractors from his Mom's room

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Built a $2M SaaS for contractors from his Mom's room · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

• 0:00
  You ever watch a non tech industry get quietly eaten alive
• 0:03
  by a kid with a phone and 0 patience?
• 0:05
  Kai Stone went from post college degenerate mode to building
• 0:09
  stone systems, A $297.00 a month copy paste software stack that
• 0:14
  helps contractors run their whole business from their phone.
• 0:17
  Because most contractors aren't at a laptop.
• 0:19
  Some don't even own one. Here's the tension.
• 0:22
  Marketing agencies lose either way.
• 0:25
  If they don't get contractors leads, they get fired.
• 0:27
  And if they get them too many leads, they still get fired
• 0:30
  because the calendar explodes. Kai, flip the model.
• 0:33
  Sell the baseline software first, make it sticky, then
• 0:37
  upsell services later after. Trust the founder.
• 0:40
  Lesson here is don't build better tech.
• 0:43
  Build tech that matches how your customer actually lives in a
• 0:46
  novel use cases. If your buyers live in text
• 0:49
  messages, build your products so their phone bugs becomes the
• 0:52
  dopamine loop that keeps them pain.
• 0:54
  Now here's a Dee question. What part of your life or
• 0:57
  business are you avoiding fixing because failing at it would feel
• 1:00
  like failing at you? Welcome to AI for founders.
• 1:04
  I'm Ryan Estes. In this episode, you'll learn
• 1:06
  Kai's meet them where they are, product strategy, his scrappy
• 1:10
  customer acquisition playbook and how he thinks about churn
• 1:13
  retention and scaling. This is for founders selling to
• 1:16
  blue collar offline or non tech markets and anyone trying to
• 1:20
  build sticky sass without a giant team.
• 1:23
  And if you're building in public, building in chaos, or
• 1:26
  building with mild delusion, you belong on AI for
• 1:29
  foundersnewsletter@aiforfounders.co. We send one e-mail that feels
• 1:34
  like a cheat code and a slap on the back at the same time.
• 1:37
  So go subscribe and next time you're spiraling at 11:47 PM, at
• 1:41
  least spiral with the plan. That's the newsletter at AI for
• 1:44
  founders.co. And if this show ever made you
• 1:47
  open Notes app like a maniac, leave a review and tell the
• 1:50
  Internet what line ruined your piece.
• 1:52
  Founders, here's a quick one. If your company is legit but
• 1:54
  your pipeline feels like it's running on vibes and caffeine,
• 1:57
  you need distribution that actually compounds.
• 2:00
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• 2:04
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• 2:06
  The podcast your buyers already trust.
• 2:09
  And here's why that matters. Ads are rented attention.
• 2:12
  Podcast guesting, his own credibility.
• 2:14
  You show up, tell the story, explain the problem you solve,
• 2:17
  and those episodes keep working for you while you're doing
• 2:20
  literally anything else. Sales call hiring, parenting,
• 2:24
  existential dread, whatever. And Kick Caster makes it stupid
• 2:27
  simple. They handled the targeting, the
• 2:29
  outreach, the booking, the prep, and they make sure you sound
• 2:32
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• 2:35
  and collect the inbound. If you want more leads without
• 2:37
  more hustle, go to kitcaster.com and get booked on podcast today.
• 2:41
  That's Kitcaster by MO Burst. Hi, welcome to the show.
• 3:00
  Thank you so much for joining me.
• 3:02
  I appreciate you having me, man. Thank you so much, Ryan.
• 3:04
  Absolutely. My pleasure.
• 3:05
  I know it's early there. You're calling from Hawaii, so
• 3:07
  it's about 7:00 AM. So I appreciate you waking up
• 3:10
  early and jumping on this this podcast.
• 3:14
  I got you Monster, Monster Energy and Coffee man.
• 3:16
  It's a lifesaver. Indeed.
• 3:19
  OK, so we've gotten to know each other a little bit over the last
• 3:22
  couple of weeks and I got to say, man, I am super impressed.
• 3:25
  I know folks are going to love this podcast because what you
• 3:28
  built is extraordinary. A couple of reasons why I like
• 3:30
  it so much. One, you're bringing tech to a
• 3:34
  place that's kind of notorious non tech.
• 3:36
  Not only that, but you're meeting your customer where
• 3:39
  they're at. And not only that, but you,
• 3:44
  you've had just like an absolutely explosive growth
• 3:47
  trajectory. And honestly, you're a sales dog
• 3:50
  with so you're a a man after built after the image of my own
• 3:54
  heart, I would like to say. So give us an introduction to
• 3:58
  Stone Systems and basically the software and tools you've
• 4:01
  created. 100% So with the software, basically we serve
• 4:05
  contractors and we just give them a software that makes it
• 4:07
  easier for them to run their business.
• 4:08
  So websites, AI automations, we help them get customers to the
• 4:12
  Google page. Everything we do is like super
• 4:14
  basic, like any founder, any tech guy would look at what we
• 4:17
  do and just say like, Oh my God, like this would take me like 2
• 4:19
  hours to like figure out, right? But I just had a buddy who was a
• 4:23
  contractor, really good friend of mine, and he just didn't, his
• 4:26
  website didn't work. Like he had no AI automation
• 4:28
  tax, he had no system for getting Google reviews.
• 4:30
  He had no AI in his business at all.
• 4:33
  And then I saw my mom, I helped her with her with her Airbnb
• 4:35
  business and she had no systems, no automations, no AI.
• 4:38
  And like we just, I implemented the simplest things in both
• 4:41
  their businesses and it completely changed how they did
• 4:43
  business. And it just saved them so much
• 4:45
  time and energy. And I was like, wow, this is so
• 4:47
  simple. What if I just copy pasted this
• 4:50
  and just kind of like really refine the system and then just
• 4:52
  sold it to as many contractors as humanly possible and get them
• 4:55
  using the system every single day to run their business.
• 4:58
  And once you can be sticky like that and have them kind of rely
• 5:01
  on your like app, then they just never stop paying you,
• 5:03
  especially when you're not asking them to pay you thousands
• 5:05
  of dollars a month, right? So that was pretty much the
• 5:08
  whole mindset. And yeah, there's not much more
• 5:11
  to it, man. I just, I saw the market and
• 5:13
  everyone, like everyone who was marketing to contractors was
• 5:16
  trying to get them to spend $1500 minimum a month.
• 5:19
  So what we did is we came in and severely undercut the market at
• 5:22
  $297.00 a month. But what we did was we instead
• 5:26
  of doing a service, we just had a copy paste software.
• 5:28
  And then what we did was we have the service on the back end and
• 5:31
  it's a lot easier to get someone to pay you once they paid you
• 5:33
  once, right? It's a, it's a lot easier to get
• 5:35
  someone to pay you thousands of dollars when they've already
• 5:37
  paid you 2 or 300 bucks. So we basically just kind of
• 5:40
  took what the market was already doing, but we just reversed the
• 5:42
  order. We kind of built trust and
• 5:44
  authority. First we got contractors to kind
• 5:46
  of know, like and trust us. And then once they're set up, we
• 5:48
  said, hey, Mr. Contractor, we also have all this other stuff.
• 5:52
  Do you want to buy that? And a lot of them will say yes.
• 5:54
  So that's pretty much the premise of the businessman.
• 5:57
  And that's, I think that's why it's going so well.
• 6:00
  It's fantastic, you know, and I'm always looking for
• 6:02
  opportunities to get as close to people's revenue as possible
• 6:05
  because that's always the stickiest and, you know, the
• 6:08
  services you're providing. So 1, you create beautiful
• 6:10
  websites, 2, there's very easy lead generation.
• 6:15
  So if somebody's interested and wants a free estimate, they put
• 6:17
  in their name, they put in their phone number, their e-mail, and
• 6:20
  then there's automatic follow-ups.
• 6:22
  Is that correct? Yep.
• 6:23
  And then also a system for getting Google reviews.
• 6:26
  And then we're also jumping into invoicing and calendars booking
• 6:28
  as well, so they can take payments directly with their app
• 6:31
  and then also just do invoicing with the app as well and then
• 6:34
  schedule all their appointments in the app as well.
• 6:36
  So that's we're trying to, like you said, we're trying to get to
• 6:38
  be as sticky as humanly possible.
• 6:40
  Yeah. And and you know, a lot of for B
• 6:43
  to B folks like they're kind of the assumption is, is that
• 6:45
  people are sitting at their desk or they're at their laptop at
• 6:48
  the cafe or whatever. They're running through emails.
• 6:50
  That's where a lot of business is done.
• 6:52
  But for contractors, they're in the field, so you see them all
• 6:55
  the time. They're, I mean, the, the, their
• 6:57
  phones are glued to their head, you know, so this is actually
• 7:01
  all through text messaging. So it's basically delivering
• 7:03
  them new customers, new prospects, opportunities for
• 7:06
  reviews, you know, repeat business straight from their
• 7:09
  phone. And I, I think that's like a key
• 7:11
  part of it too, because a lot of times where I, I feel like
• 7:14
  people are kind of passed by in technology, it's because it's,
• 7:18
  they're the, the platforms aren't utilizing the tools that
• 7:21
  are actually in their tool belt. A hundred 100,000% I knew that
• 7:25
  super early on because I saw my buddy who is a contractor and I
• 7:28
  saw the way he ran his business and I was just like, holy shit.
• 7:31
  Like this guy's never on his computer.
• 7:32
  So everything that we did was based around how can we get them
• 7:35
  to use it on their phone? And I forgot what study I used,
• 7:38
  but there's some, there's some study about like addiction and
• 7:40
  like dopamine reward. I think it's called like the the
• 7:43
  buzzing phone study or something like that.
• 7:44
  But everything we do is set up to have that contractors phone
• 7:47
  buzz. So every single time they get a
• 7:49
  new review, new lead from Stone Systems or sorry, new review
• 7:52
  from Stone Systems, every time they get a lead, new lead from
• 7:54
  Stone Systems, new appointment booked by Stone System.
• 7:57
  So it's like every single time there's an opportunity to get
• 7:59
  that phone to Buzz, we try to like get it to Buzz and send a
• 8:02
  notification right to their phone.
• 8:03
  We barely even e-mail these guys and we make sure they can do
• 8:06
  everything from their phone as well because like you said, like
• 8:08
  these guys don't check emails. Some of these dudes don't even
• 8:11
  have a computer, so you're 100% right like that.
• 8:13
  That's a big part of what we focus on on the back end is how
• 8:16
  can we get everything to be on their phone?
• 8:17
  Super like very very key. Very key.
• 8:20
  Yeah. And, and talk about a little bit
• 8:22
  the challenges you know, of, of working with, with contractors.
• 8:27
  It seems like there there could be a capacity problem where if
• 8:30
  you're like pouring gasoline on the fire, maybe they want to
• 8:32
  bring the fire down a little bit.
• 8:33
  What are some of the challenges? So it's so funny you just said
• 8:36
  that. So most marketing agencies have
• 8:38
  that exact problem. So if you're a traditional
• 8:39
  marketing agency for a contractor, right?
• 8:41
  Like let's, let's, let's, let's think about that.
• 8:43
  If you do poorly, they're going to fire you because you did a
• 8:46
  shit job. And they're not, they're not
• 8:47
  getting any jobs, right? And then they're just spending
• 8:49
  all this money on you. Let's say you do a really good
• 8:51
  job and then you overload their calendar.
• 8:53
  They're still going to fire you because they can't handle the
• 8:55
  work. So that's why we have the
• 8:57
  baseline software, the website, the AI that they never, they
• 8:59
  never stop paying for. And then we all, we always have
• 9:01
  the few of the fire to add later on, which is marketing.
• 9:04
  So the marketing we can turn on and off.
• 9:05
  But that base level of software, that base recurring revenue
• 9:08
  always stays the same. They can never stop paying that.
• 9:12
  But as far as the challenges, man, I mean, you could probably
• 9:14
  guess like contractors or a certain type of person, like you
• 9:17
  have to have extremely like very thick skin.
• 9:20
  If anyone's ever been in a Call of Duty, like Modern Warfare
• 9:22
  lobby, it's very similar to being in that talking to
• 9:25
  contractors. It's just a free for all man.
• 9:27
  They're high testosterone, freaking alpha male individuals.
• 9:30
  And it's, it's at this point, it's funny.
• 9:32
  But when I first started, I really had to get used to it.
• 9:34
  I was like, wow, this guy's really telling me to go jump
• 9:36
  like off a building and he doesn't give a shit about me.
• 9:38
  Like, it's actually the stuff that I've heard is at this
• 9:42
  point, it's funny. But at the beginning I was like,
• 9:43
  wow, man, this is this is hurtful.
• 9:46
  Yeah. Yeah, you know, I, all my
• 9:48
  friends are working the trades, you know, and one thing that's I
• 9:52
  I've noticed is, is that they're Craftsman, you know, whether my
• 9:56
  best friend works in tile, another my buddy works in
• 9:59
  hardwood floors. And so to them it, it's not like
• 10:03
  they're running a business, rather it's kind of a lifestyle
• 10:06
  type business. We might say, you know, because
• 10:08
  I'll, I'll come to them with kind of be like, oh dude, you
• 10:11
  need, you got 1 truck. We get let's get 3 trucks.
• 10:13
  Like let's get some crews like let's go.
• 10:14
  And they're like, no, no, no, no, they they really don't want
• 10:17
  that. Do you?
• 10:18
  Do you run into that a little bit as well when you're working
• 10:20
  with contractors? We do, we do.
• 10:22
  And that's still OK because that's where we just say, hey,
• 10:24
  all right, this is going to be a guy who's just going to be on
• 10:25
  the $297.00 plan. We'll just keep him there and
• 10:28
  we'll just, you know, we'll, we'll do the bare minimum that
• 10:30
  need that is needed to upkeep him.
• 10:32
  And with the 297, like like 90% of the work is done on the on
• 10:35
  boarding, right? And then past that, it's pretty
• 10:38
  much on autopilot. So that's that's why it's so
• 10:40
  great. But again, like you said in the
• 10:42
  beginning, you have to just meet them where they're at.
• 10:43
  If it's that type of person, there's no reason to try to push
• 10:46
  them to do more than they're comfortable with, right?
• 10:48
  That being said, I would say 70 or 80% of them are are actively
• 10:51
  still trying to grow their business for sure.
• 10:52
  But there are there are those 20% who just kind of want to
• 10:55
  chill. Yeah, they, they just want to
• 10:57
  make sure that they got their nine to five filled.
• 10:59
  But other than that, you know, let's get the links.
• 11:02
  Exactly. And, and usually those are,
• 11:04
  those are the older guys who are looking to retire and they're
• 11:06
  kind of just like, oh, this is a mom and pop business.
• 11:07
  We only do word of mouth. And those are actually the worst
• 11:10
  customers because they just they, they don't want to use
• 11:11
  technology and they're kind of just doing it because their wife
• 11:14
  told them to or something. So those guys usually aren't the
• 11:16
  best customers, but we still take them.
• 11:18
  Cool. So let's go back to the
• 11:20
  inception. So you're what are you doing
• 11:22
  before you begin stone systems? Yeah, like I said, I mean, dude,
• 11:26
  I graduated college. I was fucking just drinking and
• 11:28
  doing drugs like all day every day.
• 11:30
  It was so bad. Like just just being a complete
• 11:32
  degenerate. And you know, I'd like I would
• 11:35
  say my only real skill in life is being able to like take
• 11:37
  criticism well and be like self reflective.
• 11:40
  So I just kind of woke up one day and I'm just like, dude,
• 11:42
  like what are you doing? Like you're going down such a
• 11:44
  such a like what's going to happen if you keep doing this
• 11:47
  for five years? Like you're just going to have a
• 11:48
  shit unhappy life. So, you know, I knew my parents
• 11:51
  had an Airbnb business. So I was like, hey mom, like let
• 11:54
  me like run this thing. You know, I can, I can work a
• 11:56
  computer, I'm probably better than you.
• 11:58
  And she just let me do it. And it was a crazy risk on her
• 12:01
  part. And I ended up, you know,
• 12:02
  tripling their business in like 6 months.
• 12:05
  And I was like, holy shit, like I can do this business thing.
• 12:07
  And that's where I got the idea for the software was helping
• 12:10
  them my mom with like a simple website, automations and
• 12:13
  realizing that she just had no idea how to do it.
• 12:15
  And it's helping her so much. And it wasn't that hard for me
• 12:17
  to replicate and do. So after the Airbnb business, I
• 12:21
  just, I saw the software and I kind of was just like this is it
• 12:25
  like, I don't know what I'm going to do?
• 12:26
  But as soon as I saw it's called go high level, as soon as I saw
• 12:29
  it, I was just like, Oh my God. Like I can create some kind of a
• 12:32
  copy paste system and have people use this every single day
• 12:35
  the exact same way my mom did. And that's it, man.
• 12:38
  I just, I just jumped locked myself in my mom's room for two
• 12:41
  years. And here we are two, two and two
• 12:44
  years and some change later, and pretty much every single young
• 12:48
  successful person that I've ever met has gone through the same
• 12:50
  thing where they kind of just look at their life and they're
• 12:52
  like, dude, this is not going down a good path.
• 12:54
  And they decide to make a change.
• 12:55
  And they locked themselves in a room.
• 12:58
  They cut off. They cut off everyone.
• 12:59
  And they just grind and. And that's it.
• 13:02
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• 13:06
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• 15:33
  Well, that's that's kind of the story of Charlie Parker.
• 15:36
  I mean, to put it in jazz context, it's exactly what
• 15:38
  happened to him. He showed up, you know, at some
• 15:40
  gig and he played so terribly. The drummer threw a cymbal at
• 15:43
  him. So he went to the woodshed.
• 15:45
  That's where that idea of the woodshed comes about, because he
• 15:48
  just went in there and just locked himself in in a room and
• 15:51
  played until he, you know, lost finger, lost feeling in his
• 15:55
  fingertips, you know, that's. What has to happen?
• 15:57
  Yeah, it it, it's an important moment that and let's talk about
• 16:00
  that moment, too. Where'd you go to college?
• 16:02
  Santa Barbara, UCSB. Nice, what did you study?
• 16:07
  Sociology. I was going to say I couldn't
• 16:08
  remember, dude, I didn't learn a single thing.
• 16:10
  College man, at college, college.
• 16:12
  Like I learned how. I learned how to drink and talk
• 16:13
  to girls. That's literally all I learned.
• 16:15
  And in college is just like, yeah, I don't want to shoot on
• 16:17
  college, but it is so unbelievably useless if you're
• 16:19
  trying to like, unless you're trying to be like a doctor or a
• 16:22
  dentist or like a lawyer or something where you need a
• 16:24
  certification. And even when I was in college,
• 16:26
  man, everything I learned was never in the classroom.
• 16:28
  I would just go home and YouTube it.
• 16:29
  And the same way that's how I learned everything about
• 16:31
  business, everything about software is all off YouTube.
• 16:34
  It's online education. It's it's all for free on, on
• 16:37
  YouTube. Like literally everything you
• 16:38
  need is on there. But yeah, Santa Barbara it was.
• 16:41
  It was a good time. You know, to that point though,
• 16:43
  I mean, you can actually get a Harvard education for free on
• 16:46
  YouTube, you know, so like the value does become in some of
• 16:50
  those relationships. I mean, I had a similar
• 16:52
  experience in college where, you know, I, I think I feel like the
• 16:55
  only thing I learned is how to like, pop a, a cap off of a beer
• 16:59
  bottle with a lighter. That's pretty cool, though.
• 17:01
  That's pretty cool. Hey, it came in handy.
• 17:04
  Yeah, but no, college, college doesn't, I mean like man, like
• 17:07
  they don't teach you anything about taxes.
• 17:08
  They don't they don't teach you about hiring.
• 17:09
  They don't teach like they don't teach you like they don't they
• 17:13
  don't even teach you kind of how to learn, I think.
• 17:15
  And, and that's a big one. And it, I just, I, I don't know,
• 17:19
  man, I think YouTube is so good because only you know what the
• 17:22
  actual issue you're struggling to learn is.
• 17:24
  Like you specifically, right? If you put 100 people in a room
• 17:27
  and you have a professor preaching and, and talking, each
• 17:29
  of those hundred people are going to have different
• 17:31
  questions. So the thing about YouTube is I
• 17:32
  can just go there and selfishly only ask the things that I'm
• 17:35
  confused about and I can just learn at such a faster rate
• 17:38
  because like my own private tutor and I can specifically
• 17:40
  cherry pick the information that I'm confused about.
• 17:43
  South YouTube is man, it's the best, it's the best education in
• 17:46
  the world. And I think young kids are
• 17:47
  becoming like more and more aware of that.
• 17:49
  I think like young, younger entrepreneurs, you know.
• 17:52
  But you seem like super ambitious though and aggressive
• 17:54
  like that. It was there just not a program
• 17:56
  in college that fit you. And you're like, well, I guess
• 17:58
  I'm treading water here for a few years or.
• 18:01
  Yeah, I mean, literally, I just, I don't know.
• 18:03
  Everyone was talking about what to do after college and they're
• 18:05
  they're what is that called? Apprenticeship and all that
• 18:09
  stuff. And I was like, dude, I just, I
• 18:11
  never applied for any of that shit.
• 18:12
  I just knew I wasn't. I don't know what I was going to
• 18:13
  do. I knew I just wasn't going to
• 18:14
  have a job. Like I had no clue.
• 18:17
  Like genuinely, it just didn't make sense.
• 18:19
  It just didn't make sense. It wasn't, it wasn't about like,
• 18:21
  you know, like I never thought I'd be.
• 18:23
  I wasn't sure if I was going to be an entrepreneur, what I was
• 18:25
  going to do. I just knew like, I wasn't going
• 18:26
  to be a doctor. I wasn't going to be a lawyer.
• 18:28
  And I sure as hell was not going back to school after, after the
• 18:30
  four year degree. I was over it.
• 18:32
  Fucking hated it. Yeah, the, the education side of
• 18:34
  it, not, not the partying. The partying was fun.
• 18:38
  Yeah. And I think it's also overlooked
• 18:40
  how kind of important that can be as well.
• 18:42
  You know, and, and I guess I just, I'm curious selfishly,
• 18:45
  because, you know, my daughter's a freshman in college, my son
• 18:48
  17, you know, he's a junior this year in high school.
• 18:51
  And so, you know, there's a lot of divergent paths, you know,
• 18:54
  because ultimately, yeah, like school just isn't for everybody.
• 18:57
  It. But there is such kind of a
• 18:59
  stigma that like, this is the way you need to go.
• 19:02
  I think there's also kind of like, you know, there's like a
• 19:05
  second adolescence really in adulthood now because, you know,
• 19:09
  one, just the world's so much more complex now.
• 19:13
  You know, it's not like what, you know, I lived like a a bum
• 19:16
  musician for five years after college because it was like
• 19:19
  Amanda, you don't need anything but like a fork and like a
• 19:22
  lighter, you know, But now you got to have your Wi-Fi, you got
• 19:26
  to have your devices, you got to have this and that and this and
• 19:28
  that. It seems like the the barrier of
• 19:30
  entry of just being a dirtbag is a little bit higher, you know,
• 19:33
  But you know, I think that's it. There's there's also a place.
• 19:37
  So what where I'm kind of getting at is, you know, you get
• 19:41
  out of college, kind of not sure what the next steps are.
• 19:44
  You know what you don't want to do, which I think can be a big
• 19:47
  informer and give you a lot of directions.
• 19:49
  Like I'm, no, I'm not doing these things.
• 19:51
  But you start like sounds like, you know, alcohol, drugs, having
• 19:54
  a good time. But of course that can go both
• 19:56
  ways. You know, partying does have its
• 19:58
  dark side. Do you feel like there was like
• 20:00
  a angst in you that was getting out or were you just like,
• 20:02
  enjoying yourself? No, no, I wasn't enjoying myself
• 20:05
  at all. And, and that's a really good
• 20:06
  point. I think college is really,
• 20:07
  really good for like the partying and stuff makes you
• 20:10
  very social and being social is very important in business.
• 20:12
  Being able to talk to people and hold a conversation and being
• 20:15
  comfortable in rooms, very important for business.
• 20:17
  And college taught me that for sure.
• 20:19
  But but no, it wasn't after like after college getting to the
• 20:22
  party and the drinking and all that.
• 20:23
  It wasn't like I was feeling good anymore because like that's
• 20:25
  what you do in college. That's not what you're doing
• 20:27
  after college. And back to what you said, like
• 20:30
  I'm also a big fan of being directionally correct as opposed
• 20:33
  to like pinpointing exactly when I what I want to do.
• 20:35
  So I think, you know, just knowing what I didn't want to do
• 20:38
  is important. And then just knowing I wanted
• 20:39
  to go somewhere in the direction of working for myself or doing
• 20:42
  my own thing. Like, I don't know, like how
• 20:44
  like you're just blind kind of walking down a corridor, feeling
• 20:46
  the walls, like, at least I know I'm going this way and I know
• 20:49
  I'm not going that way. And I, and I think a lot of
• 20:51
  people don't do that. I think a lot of people don't
• 20:53
  make decisions because they think they have to have it all
• 20:56
  planned out and they have to have an exact north star of
• 20:58
  where they're going. I think that's a huge mistake.
• 21:01
  And one example of this is I used to play video games
• 21:04
  professionally in high school and I always thought that I
• 21:06
  wanted to be a Twitch streamer because they make lots of money
• 21:09
  and they seem to have a really good time doing, you know,
• 21:11
  playing video games. I tried Twitch streaming for
• 21:14
  like a month and I absolutely hated it.
• 21:16
  And all my friends that I'd be good at it.
• 21:17
  Everyone said I would love it. I thought that was going to be
• 21:19
  my career and at least I tried it and I had the balls to go
• 21:22
  jump and try something. And a month later I was like,
• 21:24
  wow, this is not for me. I absolutely hate it, but if I
• 21:26
  had not jumped and tried it, I would have thought my whole
• 21:29
  life, like if I failed, like I would have said to myself, man,
• 21:31
  I would have been such a good Twitch streamer.
• 21:33
  Like what could have been like the glory days, you know?
• 21:35
  So it's really important to just try stuff the same way that I
• 21:38
  just started working with your company and I'm trying out the
• 21:40
  podcast and all that. I might absolutely hate
• 21:43
  podcasting in a month, but at least I'm going to try it and
• 21:45
  figure out if I like this or not.
• 21:46
  So far I love it. And I don't know, in a in a
• 21:48
  month or two if I hate it, I'm going to stop and I'm going to
• 21:50
  do something else. But but yeah, you have to jump.
• 21:53
  It's such an important point, like getting comfortable with
• 21:56
  failure or always putting your yourself in a position where you
• 21:59
  can actually fail. You know, it's like, I like to
• 22:02
  do yoga and there's just these people that are like ballerinas
• 22:05
  and dancers in there. I'm like, Oh yeah, well, it's
• 22:07
  easy for you. I'm like the Tin Man.
• 22:09
  I fail in yoga every single day. People are very afraid to fail,
• 22:13
  though. They're very afraid to fail.
• 22:15
  Yeah. What do you think that is?
• 22:18
  I, I, I think it's the fear of looking, I guess it's the fear
• 22:20
  of looking dumb or, or being embarrassed.
• 22:22
  And I think that that probably holds more people back than any
• 22:24
  one thing. Like genuinely like having
• 22:27
  people wondering, like what their friends are going to
• 22:29
  think, what their family's going to think.
• 22:30
  And I know that sounds very cliche, but it's so true.
• 22:33
  And, and people always say like, oh, go follow your passion or
• 22:36
  find your passion. Passion is bullshit.
• 22:37
  Like you're passion about things that you're good at, right?
• 22:40
  And you're not going to be good at something until you fail a
• 22:42
  bunch of times even like even, let's say that for whatever
• 22:45
  reason, you're, you play guitar, right?
• 22:47
  Or you do yoga, whatever. But let's use guitar as an
• 22:49
  example. And let's say you're really,
• 22:51
  really good at guitar and you want to turn your passion into
• 22:53
  your career. Like eventually you're going to
• 22:55
  have to go find an agent. You're going to have to do
• 22:57
  things that you don't want to do.
• 22:58
  That is not just playing the guitar.
• 22:59
  You're going to have to market yourself.
• 23:00
  You're going to have to do interviews, you're going to have
• 23:01
  to do podcasts. You're going to have to market
• 23:03
  your new CD. There are parts of that business
• 23:05
  that are not going to be your passion.
• 23:07
  So in my opinion, I think passion comes later.
• 23:10
  I think you get good at something first, then you find
• 23:12
  your passion after. And again, like, even if you
• 23:14
  want to be a, a guitarist, like yes, that's your passion, but
• 23:17
  there's still so many things you're going to have to do that
• 23:19
  are outside of you just playing the guitar to actually make
• 23:21
  money doing that thing. So either way, it's going to be
• 23:23
  a business. And I think, I think the, you
• 23:26
  know, don't do anything until you find your passion thing is
• 23:29
  complete bullshit. And I think people just should
• 23:31
  just try stuff and see what they're good at, see what they
• 23:33
  like, see what they don't like, and just blindly like, just try
• 23:36
  stuff, Try and fail as many times as you can, literally.
• 23:39
  Yeah, I I totally agree. And there there seems to be like
• 23:41
  some kind of dividend that pays in a novel ways and like a
• 23:44
  chaotic good way. Like you go and you fall on your
• 23:47
  face over and over again. You just don't understand that
• 23:50
  in this other domain it's going to be this huge win.
• 23:52
  So, for example, did have you seen this story recently of the
• 23:57
  Minneapolis Sudanese daycare centers?
• 24:01
  I saw something about that. Isn't there some scam?
• 24:03
  What? What's going on with that?
• 24:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
• 24:05
  The scam is, is that like these Somali people, and no, no
• 24:09
  disrespect to Somalis, but they just happen to be Somalian,
• 24:13
  we're getting like massive government grants.
• 24:15
  We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that they're
• 24:18
  putting into like daycare Centers for kids.
• 24:20
  Well, this guy on YouTube shows up at the daycare centers and
• 24:24
  there's no kids there. He's like none.
• 24:26
  And he's like, well, they just got a $7,000,000 grant in
• 24:28
  October. There's not even a kid here.
• 24:31
  So he kind of uncovers this on his YouTube channel.
• 24:33
  It blows up. So this is a national news
• 24:36
  story. He's gotten 500 million views or
• 24:38
  something insane on his YouTube channel.
• 24:40
  And before that, he was doing like prank videos, you know, And
• 24:43
  then he got into like investigative journalism.
• 24:47
  So I was listening to an interview with this guy and
• 24:49
  they're like, dude, you're doing some kind of like risky stuff.
• 24:52
  I mean, he like, shows up and it's just like, hey, what's up?
• 24:54
  Why, Why are you guys getting all this money?
• 24:56
  And like, where, where's it going?
• 24:57
  And like, he's pressing people that don't want to be pressed.
• 25:01
  So they're like, how did you kind of get the courage to do
• 25:03
  this? He was like, I was a Mormon
• 25:05
  missionary for two years. I walked in front of people all
• 25:08
  day long that wanted nothing to do me with me, cussed me out,
• 25:12
  chase me out you know, told me to go F myself and he, he's like
• 25:16
  it inoculated me to failure. Which is a beautiful thing.
• 25:20
  And he's with that's called winning in the weeds.
• 25:21
  That's what he did right. And sorry, sorry, can you
• 25:24
  continue? Go ahead, Go ahead.
• 25:26
  No, just the only the the end point of that is then it started
• 25:29
  me looking back and I was like, Oh well, what about me?
• 25:32
  Well, when I was 19, I hitchhiked to Alaska and the
• 25:36
  only job I could get was canvassing for Greenpeace.
• 25:40
  Now, Alaska's an interesting place because it's the only
• 25:43
  place in the United States where the rural people are very
• 25:46
  liberal and the people in the city are very conservative.
• 25:49
  Everybody in the city of Anchorage works for oil and gas,
• 25:53
  lumber, fishing, basically all natural resources, which is to
• 25:57
  say they hate Greenpeace with the burning passion.
• 26:01
  So I'd show up, knock on the door, like, hey, I'm canvassing
• 26:04
  for Greenpeace. Like they would stick the dog on
• 26:07
  me. Dude pulled a piece out, chase
• 26:09
  me off his property. And like, you know, after a week
• 26:11
  of that, I was like, I'm invincible, man.
• 26:14
  I, I just want to go talk to some ladies, have tea and see
• 26:17
  what I can do. I don't think I got like $5.
• 26:19
  I mean, literally they all hated me.
• 26:21
  But it was from that that like kind of my passion, should I
• 26:25
  say, for sales was like, oh man, there's something here.
• 26:28
  You know it. If I could sell myself before I
• 26:30
  sell the product, I could probably get some people on
• 26:32
  board. So this idea of inoculating
• 26:35
  yourself with with failure, particularly when you're young,
• 26:38
  I think it's absolutely crucial. And and those two things like
• 26:42
  it's, it would be very hard. I don't know who said it, but
• 26:44
  you can't connect the dots or do you Only Connect the dots
• 26:47
  looking back, right. And and like you just said, like
• 26:49
  that whole experience going door to door sales, like you didn't
• 26:52
  know at the time that that was going to lead you to sales.
• 26:54
  You were just doing stuff. And then you only realize later
• 26:56
  that that thing that you're doing, kind of like the Mr.
• 26:58
  Miyagi wax on wax off thing when in the New Karate Kid or
• 27:01
  whatever, when he's putting down the jacket, putting it on,
• 27:03
  putting down the jacket, putting it on, he doesn't know, but he's
• 27:06
  learning how to fight. He's learning karate.
• 27:08
  Exactly, exactly. It's winning in the weeds and
• 27:10
  doing all this stuff that you think is useless at the time.
• 27:13
  But then all of a sudden you come to an experience where
• 27:15
  you're for whatever reason, very good because you had all these
• 27:17
  individual experiences. They gave you the skills and LED
• 27:20
  up to you being really good at that other thing.
• 27:22
  And you don't know it while it's happening.
• 27:23
  You can only look back and see in retrospect, right?
• 27:26
  So it's it's such a cool, such a cool concept.
• 27:28
  And that's why I'm such a big fan of dude, just do stuff.
• 27:31
  Just do stuff as much as you can.
• 27:34
  Yeah, and it, it, it gives you a, a feeling of the patina of
• 27:39
  failure, like what is the essence of it so that you can
• 27:41
  recognize it down the road, You know, because the almost the
• 27:45
  worst thing that can happen to you as an entrepreneur is you
• 27:47
  have some home run right out of the gate because every company,
• 27:50
  every project has a beginning, middle and an end.
• 27:53
  And if you just expect that like your brilliance is going to
• 27:55
  shine every single time you're you're ready for heartbreak.
• 27:58
  But if you've tasted defeat, then when you you find something
• 28:01
  that catches fire, you get, you get like early signs of
• 28:04
  traction. You get you starting to get
• 28:06
  market share. You're like, Oh my God, I have
• 28:07
  product market fit and it blows up.
• 28:09
  You know what that feels like? And you can balance them.
• 28:11
  So when you have a project that's, that's not doing so
• 28:15
  well, you can be like, OK, I need to put that away now.
• 28:18
  I, I think the important part here and why people hate failure
• 28:21
  is because what they'll do is they'll would shed an idea for
• 28:24
  years and years and years become totally attached to it as their
• 28:27
  identity. And if it doesn't work, that
• 28:29
  means that they don't work, you know, so, so they, they can't
• 28:33
  separate themselves from the, from their idea.
• 28:36
  But the, the truth is, is like you got to sacrifice your
• 28:39
  babies. You got to put a knife and a
• 28:41
  dagger in the heart of your baby and take it out sometimes if
• 28:44
  it's not giving you what you need, you know?
• 28:46
  Dude, 1000% and and that's the thing about business is I, I
• 28:50
  care way more about something working than me being right.
• 28:53
  If it works, it works. And that's so many people.
• 28:56
  And I see even with, even with some of my friends with
• 28:58
  entrepreneurs is like they're so there's this ego that comes into
• 29:01
  it where that's like, no, my idea is right.
• 29:02
  Like it has to be this way for me.
• 29:04
  It's like, dude, if my idea is right or your idea is right, I
• 29:06
  don't, especially with my business partner, it's like, I
• 29:08
  don't care. I care that it works.
• 29:10
  And that's why I love, I love Mike, who is my now partner is
• 29:12
  both of us have this mindset of like, maybe you're right, maybe
• 29:15
  I'm right. Neither of us care about who's
• 29:16
  right. It's like what works?
• 29:18
  What's going to win? What's going to make us more
• 29:19
  money? What's going to drive the
• 29:20
  company forward. And I think a a lot of
• 29:22
  entrepreneurs struggle with that ego, especially once you start
• 29:25
  to see some success. Actually, actually, yeah, as you
• 29:28
  get successful as an entrepreneur, you start to think
• 29:30
  like, hey, I'm the shit. And I think it's very easy to
• 29:32
  shift from that kind of newbie, newbie mindset of like, I just
• 29:35
  hope everything works and I want to learn to yeah, I know exactly
• 29:38
  what I'm doing. I think people entrepreneurs
• 29:40
  start to fail once they start to get that ego right.
• 29:42
  And that's something I'm really trying hard to kind of maintain
• 29:46
  as my curiosity and understand that I still know anything.
• 29:48
  I'm a baby in this game and there's always someone who knows
• 29:51
  more than me and always being able to learn from every single
• 29:53
  person I talk to. I think that's very, very
• 29:55
  important and I see a lot of entrepreneurs in general who I
• 29:58
  can tell like they just, they think they know everything and
• 30:01
  that I think that kills businesses very, very fast.
• 30:04
  100%, I totally agree. Now let's talk about your ramp.
• 30:07
  So you have some validation with the Airbnb business.
• 30:11
  You're like, hey man, I think I can extend this.
• 30:12
  You have some experience with some friends that are struggling
• 30:15
  with marketing in the trades. You're like, let me see if I can
• 30:17
  put two and two together. So you you go to go high level,
• 30:21
  you create a functioning software, it works for your
• 30:24
  buddy. How do you then basically take
• 30:26
  the next steps to go find customers?
• 30:29
  Yes, I, I just, I literally didn't know what to do.
• 30:31
  That was a great question. I mean, there's such a huge
• 30:33
  skill deficit at the beginning. Like I don't even, I didn't even
• 30:35
  know what that meant to go get customers.
• 30:37
  Like I knew I had to get stuff people to pay me, but I had no
• 30:39
  idea like what route to take. So I just picked up my cell
• 30:42
  phone. I, I googled handyman, handyman
• 30:44
  near me and I just started calling local contractors here
• 30:47
  on Maui and I just started walking to businesses and say
• 30:49
  like, Hey, I have this software like can I build out for you for
• 30:52
  free and see if you like it? And that's it.
• 30:54
  I started with like free trials. I think I got to like 3 or $4000
• 30:58
  a month, which is like 20/15/20 customers just calling people
• 31:01
  off Google Maps. And then we discovered paid ads,
• 31:05
  which is like Meta ads, Google ads, but essentially meta.
• 31:08
  And that's where I can, you know, take a video of myself
• 31:10
  saying, Hey, I have this thing like here's what it does, do you
• 31:12
  want to give it a try? And then I can put money into
• 31:14
  that ad and have people across the world contractor see it.
• 31:18
  And the way that we really ran our ads was me saying stuff that
• 31:21
  like nobody else would say, which is like, like I remember
• 31:24
  what we had one ad, which is me saying, contractors, let me try
• 31:27
  not to scam you like everyone else.
• 31:28
  And then I would talk about like what we did and that ad went
• 31:30
  crazy or contractors, this is an ad from a douchey looking guy in
• 31:34
  a hat. Please don't click off.
• 31:35
  Give me 3 seconds, I'll change your life.
• 31:36
  Like just weird stuff like that, that nobody in the market was
• 31:39
  saying because everyone had these highly edited, highly
• 31:42
  scripted ads. And I came along and just filmed
• 31:45
  like the most casual stuff and just had crazy hooks.
• 31:47
  And those ads just took off, which exploded our acquisition.
• 31:50
  So, so yeah, that's, that's kind of how the acquisition works,
• 31:53
  man. It was, it was crazy because no,
• 31:54
  everyone told me not to film those ads and not to run that ad
• 31:57
  because it would be bad for the brand and not look professional.
• 31:59
  And I was like, fuck it, dude. Contractors don't want
• 32:02
  professional. They want like authenticity,
• 32:04
  right? So, so yeah, that's kind of how
• 32:06
  it exploded. Yeah, amazing.
• 32:08
  So early on how how did you find signal?
• 32:10
  Obviously you're getting, you're getting leads in.
• 32:13
  Did you, what was your CAC? It was 1 to one on the front end
• 32:17
  and it's still, it's still almost one to one on the front
• 32:18
  end, which is that's exactly what we're looking for.
• 32:20
  That's 300 bucks. 3. 100 bucks, 297, yeah.
• 32:23
  And then and then now we have upsells and then we have
• 32:26
  obviously all recurring revenue. But if we could just break even
• 32:28
  on that front end, 1 to 1 plus money with upsells, we basically
• 32:32
  have unlimited money to run back into advertising, right?
• 32:35
  So, so yeah, the Lt. VS obviously like 7 to one,
• 32:37
  eight to one, we would love that to be 20 to one.
• 32:39
  That's obviously a forever problem.
• 32:42
  And then as you grow a company and you know, as you start
• 32:44
  onboarding, you know, 10 people a day, it becomes a customer
• 32:48
  service issue, right? Because now you have so many
• 32:50
  people that you have to hire a bunch of customer service reps
• 32:53
  and then you have one customer service Rep handling 4050 people
• 32:56
  and that customer service Rep quits.
• 32:58
  Then you have to somehow juggle those 40 to 50 clients onto
• 33:01
  another service Rep. So obviously the bottlenecks
• 33:04
  change as you grow. But at the beginning, everyone
• 33:06
  has an acquisition problem at scale.
• 33:08
  You have a customer service problem, right?
• 33:10
  And that's what we've been hitting the last four or five
• 33:12
  months has been in churn and customer service problem, which
• 33:15
  again, me and my partner, this is both our first business.
• 33:17
  We still have no idea what we're doing.
• 33:18
  We're just figuring it out as we go, right?
• 33:21
  Amazing in churn? What?
• 33:22
  Why are people churning? So people the, the main reason
• 33:25
  people churn is bad, bad choosing of the client, having
• 33:28
  someone come in and see $297.00 and think, oh, this is a full
• 33:32
  service lead generation system, right?
• 33:34
  As opposed to them thinking this is a software to help them run
• 33:36
  their business. They come in thinking it's just
• 33:38
  for leads. So that's on our sales guys,
• 33:40
  that's on the marketing and that's just picking the right
• 33:43
  client avatar dude. And that's and that's something
• 33:45
  that we'll never, I mean that's going to be a problem forever.
• 33:47
  It's always going to be an issue, right?
• 33:48
  Because contractor sees like, oh, help me get more business
• 33:51
  for 297. They automatically think leads
• 33:54
  and while like website Google reviews, AI does help them get
• 33:57
  more business, It's not a direct correlation.
• 34:00
  It's not like we're running paid ads for them and saying, hey,
• 34:02
  you spend $500, you should get this many leads.
• 34:04
  It's how you're spending $297.00 a month.
• 34:06
  We're spending, we're saving you a lot of time.
• 34:08
  We're making you show up better online and we're making you look
• 34:10
  more professional. There's not a direct correlation
• 34:12
  between hey, we're going to get you 50 extra Google reviews and
• 34:14
  you're going to make $125,000 more revenue.
• 34:17
  It's an indirect correlation as opposed to A1 to one direct
• 34:19
  correlation. So it's a little bit different
• 34:21
  and explain that value and having have them to understand
• 34:25
  the value of the software is the hardest thing.
• 34:27
  And obviously we're way better at it now.
• 34:29
  But if we can get them to understand the value and get
• 34:31
  them to see like, holy shit, this is so valuable.
• 34:33
  I need to use this. They never turn.
• 34:34
  But it's the guys that come in with the wrong expectations.
• 34:37
  And that's on me as the marketer and that's on me training the
• 34:39
  sales team to actually say the right shit and not just blindly
• 34:42
  sell, right. I think, by the way, is the same
• 34:45
  reason that you that you take your calls as well, because you
• 34:47
  don't want random sales people just selling people that
• 34:49
  shouldn't be qualified to work with you, right?
• 34:51
  So it's same issues all the way across.
• 34:53
  Business is business. Yeah, you, you know it 100%.
• 34:56
  You know it. It's also there, it's such a
• 34:58
  transactional economy that you know, having a beautiful
• 35:01
  website, having a good media presence is, you know, let's say
• 35:06
  a best case scenario, a three month burn before you start to
• 35:08
  see traffic generated from that website.
• 35:12
  So what I love is the, is the review automations that you have
• 35:17
  as well. Did you kind of use that?
• 35:18
  So that, hey, while we're starting to let this website
• 35:21
  cook, you know, like we can go back to all your old customers
• 35:24
  and get reviews, which then in turn increases your local search
• 35:28
  and, and all those things. So now you have a bit of a a
• 35:30
  bridge to get from, you know, .0 to .1. 100% So with software,
• 35:35
  there's something called time to value, which is like how fast
• 35:38
  once somebody signs up, can you get them on board and they can
• 35:40
  see value from your software, right.
• 35:42
  So that's why we do the reviews and also those reviews help
• 35:45
  contractors rank higher on Google as well.
• 35:47
  But the craziest thing is not only do we do the reviews, but
• 35:49
  contractors in general usually have a huge list of past
• 35:53
  customers that they haven't talked to in years, months or
• 35:55
  years or whatever, right? So we'll also take that old list
• 35:58
  and we'll blast that entire list, 20 or 30 people a day with
• 36:01
  some kind of a discount offer. And then we'll have an AI bot
• 36:04
  qualify those leads and book them into the contractor's
• 36:06
  calendar. So essentially once like we can
• 36:08
  get them 5060, even $100,000 worth of work just by blasting
• 36:13
  text messages that old list. So that's a very, very easy win
• 36:16
  that proves our value right off the bat.
• 36:17
  So we have that list getting blasted with reviews and we had
• 36:20
  that list getting blasted with reactivation campaigns that
• 36:23
  basically offer discounts or incentives for old customers to
• 36:25
  come back and buy again. So that's how we get, you know,
• 36:28
  QuickTime to value. And that's very, very important
• 36:30
  with with churn as well. The quicker you get someone on
• 36:33
  boarded and show their value, the longer they usually stay on
• 36:35
  the software. 100% OK, so you kind of doing 1 offs, you start
• 36:40
  running ads, ads start blowing up.
• 36:42
  So what is what does your your calendar look like?
• 36:44
  Are you doing 15 minute calls, 30 minute calls?
• 36:47
  Like how how did that kind of translate into like calls on the
• 36:50
  calendar? And then what was kind of
• 36:51
  conversion rate and closing right after that?
• 36:53
  Yeah, so. Closing rate was crazy high.
• 36:55
  We had like a 55% close rate. I had like a 70 when I was doing
• 36:58
  it and our sales team now has about a 50, which, you know,
• 37:01
  some people would look at that and say, like, oh, you need to
• 37:03
  up your prices. And, and that's fair enough.
• 37:05
  And people have been telling me since day one, we're too cheap.
• 37:07
  And people have been telling me day one, do all this.
• 37:09
  Do it. Like since day one, people have
• 37:11
  been telling me I'm running this business incorrectly.
• 37:12
  So it is what it is. It's obviously working.
• 37:15
  But but yeah, it was just me, 15 sales calls a day, waking up at
• 37:19
  7:00 AM, doing sales calls of 6:00 PM.
• 37:21
  And man, I was so burnt out by the end of it.
• 37:24
  I like started to realize that I talked to my partner and I was
• 37:26
  like, dude, I'm doing this company a disservice because I'm
• 37:29
  so burnt out on like on this. I know you're burnt out on this.
• 37:32
  And we had this negative, not negative, but I guess you could
• 37:35
  call it a limiting belief that only me and him could sell this
• 37:37
  thing. We didn't believe anyone else
• 37:39
  could sell it. And that's a classic, a classic
• 37:41
  misconception for a first time founder to think like where the
• 37:44
  shit and nobody else can do what we do.
• 37:46
  But we realized like, man, we have to hire a sales team.
• 37:49
  And once we hired a sales team and we got people taking the
• 37:51
  calls for us, it freed up our time.
• 37:53
  So freed up his time to go do the back end tech and
• 37:56
  automations and it freed up my time to only market.
• 37:58
  And once we did that, that's when we really exploded because
• 38:02
  instead of me sitting on sales calls for 12 hours a day wanting
• 38:04
  to jump off my balcony, I could then just sit back, look at the
• 38:07
  company from a bird's eye view and be like, OK, I can do this
• 38:10
  ad, this ad, this ad, I can do YouTube content, I can market
• 38:12
  this way. I can help the sales team sell
• 38:14
  XYZ. So once you remove yourself from
• 38:16
  the bottleneck and you can get that fixed by someone else, you
• 38:19
  can just go hyper scale mode because your time is not taken
• 38:22
  up by sales calls all day. So that was a huge lever for us
• 38:25
  to pull and that's when we just, that's when we went from, you
• 38:29
  know, 100 and 5200 clients like 700 and like under, under a year
• 38:33
  as wild. Incredible.
• 38:35
  You know it, it can't be mind numbing, that kind of pace.
• 38:39
  But what happens is your pitch becomes a finely tuned weapon.
• 38:44
  So you know, so good that you can do it with hamster eyes and
• 38:47
  you're still closing at 70%. You're like, what in the world?
• 38:51
  So. Oh, Matt, Matt, sorry to
• 38:52
  interrupt. I probably shouldn't say this on
• 38:53
  a pod, but there, there was a period where it's just like we,
• 38:55
  I, we were so over it where I would just go party in Texas
• 38:58
  with one of my buddies and I would just, we would just get
• 39:01
  obliterate. And this was when I was just, my
• 39:02
  only role was to do sales calls. So we just get obliterated.
• 39:05
  I would wake up to three hours of sleep and I would just wake
• 39:07
  up still drunk and just close everyone because like you said,
• 39:10
  you're just so you're so good at it.
• 39:12
  Like, you could do it backwards, forwards, upside down, Like I
• 39:14
  could close someone if I was in a coma at that point.
• 39:16
  Yeah. And you just get so good at this
• 39:18
  thing. And then it becomes so easy to
• 39:20
  then teach someone else because you're so good at it because
• 39:22
  you've just done it so many times.
• 39:24
  Like you just, you've seen every single variation of of the sales
• 39:27
  call and how it goes. So yeah, continue.
• 39:29
  But it's just you. Just you just do the thing so
• 39:32
  many times it'd be unreasonable for you not to be just amazing
• 39:35
  at it, you know? I love it, and ultimately that
• 39:37
  is what I love about productized services or services of
• 39:41
  software. They're calling it now, is that
• 39:43
  you're doing one thing for one person and you're going to do it
• 39:46
  to be the best in the world. You learn all the objections,
• 39:49
  you know how to overcome all of them, and you can just
• 39:52
  absolutely crush. So when you're approaching a
• 39:55
  pitch and you want to bring on a new salesperson, how are you
• 39:58
  introducing this pitch? Like what are the components?
• 40:00
  Of a pitch and where are you moving to close and things like
• 40:03
  that. Should be so funny man.
• 40:04
  And, and this is like maybe someone else has had this, I
• 40:07
  don't know. But we, we, we kind of fell, we
• 40:09
  stumbled backwards into this by just being so burnt out.
• 40:11
  We just stopped. We just stopped caring.
• 40:13
  And funny enough when we, when we were so burnt out and we put
• 40:16
  in less effort and talked less, we just started closing like
• 40:19
  crazy. So the pitch is literally it
• 40:21
  goes like this. We send them a video before the
• 40:23
  call. It's a 6 minute video of me
• 40:24
  talking, showing the software. We literally train our sales
• 40:27
  guys and say, Hey, how's, how's your day going, blah, blah,
• 40:29
  blah. They sit there and they are
• 40:31
  trained to say awesome man. Well, what questions do you
• 40:34
  have? Silence, answer the question.
• 40:36
  What questions do you have? Silence, answer the question.
• 40:40
  Cool man. What other questions do you
• 40:41
  have? Literally that is the pitch.
• 40:43
  That is it. They just keep answering the
• 40:44
  question until there are no more questions left and then they say
• 40:47
  awesome. So is there anything else you
• 40:48
  need to know before we get you started?
• 40:50
  Those words are like gold. And then boom, as long as they
• 40:53
  say no, we just can't. And that's it.
• 40:54
  Like it's the simplest sales process in the world.
• 40:57
  There's no, how would this make you feel?
• 40:59
  There's no getting the pain. There's no like I think you come
• 41:02
  from high ticket sales. So there's this whole sales
• 41:04
  process. We don't do any of that.
• 41:06
  It's just simple. What questions do you have?
• 41:08
  I know you saw the video covering exactly what we do.
• 41:11
  What questions do you have? That's it.
• 41:12
  Dead simple. So simple.
• 41:14
  And it crushes crushes the. Assumptive clothes.
• 41:17
  And I mean at 297 people just like, yeah man, let's give a
• 41:20
  shot. We need a website done.
• 41:23
  I love it. And then you can just funnel
• 41:25
  this mass volume in the front door and you're still going to
• 41:27
  have 10% of people that hate you and that they're like, you know,
• 41:30
  not not hate you, right? But they're going to be unhappy.
• 41:32
  There's going to be mismatched, mismatched expectations.
• 41:36
  Those are the guys you just refund and say, hey, sorry,
• 41:37
  we're not the company for you. But 90% of the time it goes very
• 41:40
  well. It's very smooth.
• 41:41
  And then you can cherry pick from that 90% who you want to
• 41:44
  try to upsell later to more services.
• 41:46
  And the beautiful thing about that is you can cherry pick the
• 41:48
  people that you know are going to get the best results.
• 41:51
  So it's very easy for them to do well and for them to continue to
• 41:53
  pay you a lot of money because you just know what kind of
• 41:55
  customers will succeed and what and what won't, right?
• 41:58
  So instead of just taking on everyone, you take on everyone
• 42:00
  at the 297, which is very cheap. And then you cherry pick the
• 42:03
  people that you want to upcharge, and they almost always
• 42:05
  do well because we know who's going to do well and who's not.
• 42:08
  So. So yeah, that's basically the
• 42:09
  system, man. Cool, I'm a big fan of sales
• 42:12
  enablement videos too. Largely so everything is just
• 42:15
  review after that. Plus if it's like your face on
• 42:18
  the video then they meet you, they feel like they know you a
• 42:21
  little bit. It works really well.
• 42:22
  If they haven't seen the video, what do you do?
• 42:25
  Or is the only way you can get to the calendar through the
• 42:28
  video? Yeah, but there's a lot of guys
• 42:30
  who show up and not see the video.
• 42:31
  And we train the sales guys to say, oh, no worries at all.
• 42:33
  Like here, let me just send that to you real quick and I'm going
• 42:35
  to grab some water. I'll just have you watch it and
• 42:37
  selfishly, man, like if you watch that video and you decide
• 42:39
  it's not for you, I don't want to waste your time.
• 42:41
  Just let me know. And you know, we can hop off,
• 42:43
  but just give that video a quick watch and then they pitch right
• 42:45
  after the video every single time.
• 42:47
  Brilliant. I love it.
• 42:48
  They have to because otherwise otherwise, because like the the
• 42:51
  thing about those pre call videos and I don't know why more
• 42:53
  people don't use them is there's never going to be a time where
• 42:56
  you can record and talk about why your thing is the best,
• 43:00
  where you have no pressure. You can do as many mess ups as
• 43:02
  you want. You can talk to the camera and
• 43:03
  you can get your value across so well and you have unlimited mess
• 43:07
  ups because you're recording. You can always edit or rerecord
• 43:10
  whatever. And when someone's watching the
• 43:12
  video, their barrier to like feeling like they're being sold
• 43:15
  to is never going to be lower because we're not on a call.
• 43:18
  There's they're not face to face.
• 43:19
  They're just simply watching a video.
• 43:20
  So they're being sold to without even knowing it.
• 43:22
  So they're getting the best version of you and you're
• 43:25
  getting the best version of them because their barrier to being
• 43:27
  sold to is down and you're presenting in the best possible
• 43:30
  way. I'm never going to present what
• 43:31
  we do better live than I will on a recording because I have
• 43:33
  unlimited tries at the recording.
• 43:35
  So that's what we realized very early on as well.
• 43:37
  So that that pre call video is the the golden nugget to the
• 43:42
  success. Like there's there's no way
• 43:43
  would be where we were without that video where we are
• 43:45
  beautiful. Amazing.
• 43:47
  OK, so you've, you've nailed the marketing, you've got traction.
• 43:50
  You're looking for product marking fit.
• 43:51
  You started, you're getting burnt out.
• 43:53
  You're starting to say like, OK, we need to bring people in.
• 43:56
  Who are your first few hires? Yeah.
• 43:58
  So I mean, sales was sales was huge because that that's the,
• 44:01
  that's the engine of the company, right.
• 44:02
  That's the, that's the, that's how you get the train leaving
• 44:04
  the station. So our first people were sales
• 44:08
  and then we did a customer success managers to handle the
• 44:10
  back end fulfillment. And then once you have sales, so
• 44:13
  you have people handling the front door and you have people
• 44:15
  fulfilling on the back door, right?
• 44:16
  You're basically now your, your hands off.
• 44:18
  You're no longer talking to clients at all.
• 44:20
  So once we have that, like, I mean, that's, that's pretty much
• 44:23
  where we are now. And we're just, you just have to
• 44:25
  do more. So once something's working, you
• 44:26
  just do more. So now we're just, OK, do we
• 44:29
  have a sales? Like do we have too many leads?
• 44:30
  OK, we need more sales people. Do we have a churn problem?
• 44:33
  Are clients unhappy? OK, we clearly have a customer
• 44:35
  success problem. So there's really only two
• 44:37
  things. There's there's really no
• 44:38
  product like there's really never a problem with the product
• 44:41
  unless like some update gets pushed and gets messed up.
• 44:44
  We know the product is good. It's just about OK, do we need
• 44:46
  more customer success? Do we need more leads and more
• 44:49
  sales people, right. So it's, it's really just just a
• 44:51
  balancing seesaw and it's very simple.
• 44:53
  I mean, I think about like other companies our size and there's
• 44:56
  just so many moving parts. And it's like not to say that we
• 45:00
  don't have a lot of moving parts, but it's fairly
• 45:02
  straightforward. It's, it's just like what I
• 45:03
  said, do we need more sales? Do we need more customer success
• 45:06
  and then just hire for that role.
• 45:07
  That's literally it. Yeah, and I've, I've always
• 45:09
  hired 2 salespeople at a time, so they just do against each
• 45:12
  other. Yeah, nice.
• 45:14
  How do you manage relationship between sales and fulfilment?
• 45:17
  Because usually it's like the spider man meme where everyone's
• 45:20
  pointing at everybody. Why is church so high?
• 45:22
  Well, I'm getting the terrible clients.
• 45:24
  Why aren't, you know, that kind of thing?
• 45:25
  How do you deal with kind of internal struggles?
• 45:28
  You had to be 100%. It's a shit show, man.
• 45:31
  Problems. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely an
• 45:33
  issue. We we have sales meetings and me
• 45:36
  and Mike, we're very good at like we're both young guys.
• 45:38
  So we're very good at creating company culture.
• 45:40
  And it's just like, hey man, if someone's full of shit, like
• 45:42
  just say it. Like if there's a problem,
• 45:44
  somebody say it like there's no fingers being pointed here.
• 45:46
  Like let's just again, it's about like what's right.
• 45:48
  It's not about who's wrong unless.
• 45:50
  And that's why we have several sales people and several
• 45:52
  customers success people because it's very clear to see when
• 45:54
  there's a problem, when it's the, when it's the problem with
• 45:57
  the same customer service Rep every time.
• 45:59
  Or it's a problem where a customer service Rep will say
• 46:01
  like, hey, I keep getting these bad clients.
• 46:03
  And then you just you, you trace it to the source.
• 46:05
  So if we have all ten of our customer service reps saying
• 46:08
  like, I've gotten like 2 bad clients this month.
• 46:10
  And then we just go look where those bad clients came from.
• 46:12
  We just look what sales guy actually sold that client on our
• 46:15
  service. And then again, let's say we
• 46:18
  have, you know, 20 people churning.
• 46:19
  They're all very, very unhappy. And let's say 80% of those
• 46:22
  people came from 1 customer service Rep.
• 46:24
  It's like, OK, there's problem. There's probably a problem with
• 46:26
  that specific Rep. So you just backtrack the
• 46:29
  problems to their origin and then you solve accordingly, if
• 46:31
  that makes sense. 100% yeah. So you, you know, you built that
• 46:35
  up to a $2,000,000 annual run rate and breakneck speed, which
• 46:39
  is thousands of customers at a time.
• 46:41
  What were some major benchmarks where you kind of looked at your
• 46:44
  partner were like, this is crazy.
• 46:46
  Like what were some of the the the different kind of like times
• 46:50
  that you could tell something changed?
• 46:54
  I really haven't felt much since I had the 1st $10,000 a month,
• 46:56
  man. It's, it's just kind of been
• 46:57
  like a video game for me since then.
• 47:00
  Like it, it's, it's weird. Yeah.
• 47:02
  I mean, I, I would say the big one was when we got out of
• 47:05
  sales, that was probably huge because we're like, holy shit,
• 47:08
  like we are now. There was a time when it was
• 47:10
  just me and my partner. We had two sales reps and like 3
• 47:13
  CSM and the company was still fairly small.
• 47:15
  I think we're doing like $100,000 a month.
• 47:19
  So it's still 1,000,000 / 1,000,000 a year, but it was
• 47:21
  still fairly small and me and my partner looked at each other and
• 47:24
  we're like, dude, we can just chill right now.
• 47:26
  Like we, we all we do is jump on two or three hours of meetings a
• 47:29
  week with our sales guy, sales guys and our CSM.
• 47:31
  So we're like completely just chilling.
• 47:34
  We're both taking home like 2020 KA month or so.
• 47:36
  So that was a big one. We're like, wow, like we could
• 47:38
  just be hands off right now and not do anything.
• 47:40
  And of course, being young hungry guys, we look at each
• 47:43
  other and we just go like, yeah, fuck that.
• 47:44
  Let's scale this. So now we're obviously back in
• 47:48
  the shit show of, you know, just building a, a huge company, but,
• 47:51
  but man, yeah, I haven't, I don't think I'll ever be as
• 47:54
  hungry or as excited as I was heading that first $10,000
• 47:58
  month. Like that's, that's the
• 47:59
  happiest, most like the craziest I've ever felt because I was
• 48:02
  like, Oh my God. Like I really locked myself in
• 48:04
  my room for two years and, and built this.
• 48:06
  It's like that was surreal for me.
• 48:08
  You know, I didn't have a lot of self belief.
• 48:10
  I kind of thought I still think I'm pretty dumb.
• 48:11
  But back then especially, you know, I, I didn't think I was
• 48:15
  the brightest going in the bank. So.
• 48:16
  So yeah. So exciting man, and Congrats.
• 48:20
  Now I'm gonna bounce around a little bit, but the scaling with
• 48:24
  meta ads is incredible. Feat itself.
• 48:28
  How much targeting did you do and how much did you let kind of
• 48:30
  meta AI kind of do what's saying?
• 48:32
  Yeah, great question. That's funny.
• 48:35
  I don't know if you've heard of the Chad, the Chad approach
• 48:36
  versus the Virgin Media buyer approach.
• 48:38
  I. I don't know it.
• 48:39
  So the, the Virgin Media buyer is the guy tracking their CPMS
• 48:42
  Like trying to get like a .5% better row as you know, Max just
• 48:46
  maximizing their ads, the absolute fullest ability.
• 48:49
  And they, they fight for like a, you know, they fight for like a
• 48:51
  .5 row ads, which is return on ad spend.
• 48:53
  Then there's the chat approach, which is 0 scripting, turn on
• 48:56
  the camera and film open targeting.
• 48:58
  Let Facebook just RIP. And I've done the chat approach
• 49:01
  forever. I literally will film something
• 49:02
  wild, put captions on it, slap it in, let Facebook do its thing
• 49:06
  and that's it. And I would just, I would just
• 49:08
  pump out mass volume of ads of me saying funny wild stuff.
• 49:11
  And I would just let Facebook's AI do its thing.
• 49:13
  And I, I don't know what media buyer thinks that they're better
• 49:17
  at Tarvin than like Facebook. Like Facebook wants you to do
• 49:20
  well. They want you to spend more
• 49:21
  money on their platform. You are not going to be better
• 49:23
  than Facebook's AI. So stop overthinking it and just
• 49:25
  blast ads. Blast as many ads as you can
• 49:28
  with as many different angles as you can.
• 49:30
  And like, dude, you're going to crush like you're like people
• 49:32
  who overthink it, man. They can never scale because
• 49:34
  they just, they, they overthink everything.
• 49:37
  So broad targeting all the way, baby.
• 49:39
  How many how many ads are you pumping into the the ads
• 49:41
  manager? Right now I probably have like
• 49:44
  150 running no? Kidding.
• 49:46
  About 3 KA day yeah, right now to make probably 2.5 a day and
• 49:50
  then as soon as it's again like I said, the seesaw right.
• 49:53
  So right now we don't have an acquisition problem.
• 49:55
  We have a we have too many customers coming in the door.
• 49:58
  We need better customer service because our customer service is
• 50:01
  going to shit because they're overloaded.
• 50:03
  So we have to fix that first before we can add more money to
• 50:06
  ad spend and bring people in the front.
• 50:07
  Otherwise we're just you know, we're just pouring water into a
• 50:09
  bucket with a bunch of holes in it.
• 50:10
  We had to plug the holes first, then I'll pour my water in cool.
• 50:14
  Two 2 1/2 K per day ad spend. Yeah, about probably about two
• 50:18
  point 2.4 right now and then on. I mean as soon as, as soon as I
• 50:21
  get the green light, I would spend 10 KA day.
• 50:24
  There's no reason not to. You know I would.
• 50:26
  I would spend 100 KA day if I could.
• 50:28
  Amazing home service businesses are super desirable right now
• 50:35
  for a lot of reasons. 1 you have the whole boomer generation that
• 50:39
  refuses to retire, but they can't really operate their
• 50:41
  business, but they have an incredible book of business
• 50:44
  which you already know you can take an established business to
• 50:47
  exit in no time. So is there a future play for
• 50:51
  using all of this is kind of a filtering kind of lead Gen. to
• 50:55
  find acquisition opportunities? Never.
• 50:58
  I will never run a home service business.
• 50:59
  I mean, if you saw me with a hammer Braille, you'd be like,
• 51:01
  put that thing down before you hurt yourself.
• 51:03
  There's there ain't no, there's there's no chance only because
• 51:06
  of the complexity of running a brick and mortar.
• 51:08
  And no shade to home service businesses or anyone that wants
• 51:10
  to do that. I just truly believe any brick
• 51:13
  and mortar business you like. If you sit there and we have a
• 51:16
  debate about whose business model is better, I'm going to
• 51:19
  destroy you every time because online money and it's just, it's
• 51:22
  completely different. Your margins are better.
• 51:23
  You can hire the same level, if not better of talent overseas
• 51:27
  for 8 to $10.00 an hour and it's just more scalable in every
• 51:31
  single way. And also, there's only so much
• 51:33
  you can do. Sometimes with brick and mortar
• 51:34
  business on my computer, I can sit here and always be doing
• 51:37
  something to drive the business forward.
• 51:39
  Sometimes with a brick and mortar, if you're like,
• 51:40
  sometimes you're just stuck, right?
• 51:42
  So just an I'll just never, I'll never acquire brick and mortar
• 51:45
  business ever. It makes no sense to me.
• 51:48
  Amazing. All right, Kyle, we're ready to
• 51:50
  enter the quantum round. Are you ready?
• 51:52
  I'm so ready. What is that?
• 51:54
  I don't know. It was the lightning round, but
• 51:57
  it's 2026. I mean, we're just going to go
• 51:59
  quantum. I love it.
• 52:00
  I'm ready. All right, Let's do it home.
• 52:02
  Let me. Let me get all my stuff in my
• 52:03
  monster. Let's do this.
• 52:04
  All right. Is there another category, if
• 52:07
  not home services, that you think a service like this could
• 52:10
  be successful with? Barbers and Med spots only
• 52:13
  because you can completely automate their website, their
• 52:15
  booking system and the review system and their payment system
• 52:17
  so easily, so easily. And and just you can just build
• 52:20
  something all the way down the chain that you can just take
• 52:21
  over their entire business A-Z and every single Med spot, every
• 52:25
  single Barber shop relies on calendar booking.
• 52:28
  Not all contractors need calendars.
• 52:29
  So every Med spa, every barbershop has to do some kind
• 52:32
  of booking system. Then booking systems and
• 52:34
  payments are some of the stickiest features you can
• 52:36
  provide to people. Med.
• 52:38
  Spas are like Botox and like liposuction and TRT and these
• 52:43
  kind of things. Exactly, exactly.
• 52:45
  But my my favorite would probably be a barbershop.
• 52:47
  Just it'll be just just because. Yeah, counter booking
• 52:50
  reactivation campaigns. They all need reviews.
• 52:52
  They all need websites, They all need counter booking.
• 52:54
  Yeah, I I would say that's better than home service.
• 52:57
  Cool, if you had to go back to college and do it again, what
• 53:01
  would you study differently? I would do nothing differently.
• 53:03
  I had a great time. I absolutely loved it.
• 53:05
  I I would, I would have actually, I probably would have.
• 53:07
  I probably would have tried less hard because I would have just
• 53:10
  had more fun partying because it was so those grades were
• 53:12
  complete. I had a good GPA, 3.8.
• 53:14
  Completely pointless to have that GPA didn't serve me at all.
• 53:20
  What's your relationship with alcohol now?
• 53:23
  I don't do it and then when I do it, I go way too hard.
• 53:25
  I still love it. You can, you know, you can take
• 53:28
  the, you can take the take the boy out of the frap.
• 53:29
  You can never take the frat out of the boy, as they say.
• 53:32
  Amazing. How are you using LLM's right
• 53:36
  now? Really just to write sales copy
• 53:39
  and then actually to kind of give me ideas and solve
• 53:41
  problems. So like I'll kind of say like
• 53:42
  what what the issue with the business we're having.
• 53:45
  It doesn't solve the problem for me, but I love working with
• 53:47
  people. I get a lot of good ideas from
• 53:49
  people. So I kind of just use it as like
• 53:50
  a third partner to kind of tell me where my logic might be
• 53:53
  flawed and then give me ideas and then I'll kind of just riff
• 53:56
  off whatever it gives me, basically.
• 53:58
  Yeah. Is there ACEO or another
• 54:02
  entrepreneur that you follow closely?
• 54:05
  I mean, anyone who's anyone who's in the space knows it's a
• 54:07
  daddy Alex Remosi, absolute legend.
• 54:09
  I mean, just just the just the best at everything he does.
• 54:12
  He's just, he's just phenomenal. And and it's just, I don't, I
• 54:16
  don't like to say I worship other men, but I worship him.
• 54:18
  He's an absolute guy. I know I, I would, I would, I
• 54:23
  would go on all the juice and get a one of those breathe right
• 54:27
  strips if, if he gave it to me, you know.
• 54:30
  I would, I would. I would.
• 54:32
  Yes, yes, 100%. He's he's amazing.
• 54:35
  Amazing. It sounds like your mom was an
• 54:37
  instrumental person in your life for those two years.
• 54:40
  You would shop, shopped in, in, in in her house.
• 54:45
  Tell me a little bit about your mom.
• 54:47
  Yeah, dude, I mean, she's, she's, she's amazing, man.
• 54:50
  She's like my best friend. She was, you know, I got kicked
• 54:52
  out of every single school I ever went to.
• 54:54
  She was always there for me. Like she was always fighting for
• 54:56
  me, always telling the teachers that they were wrong, even
• 54:58
  though she probably knew I was the problem.
• 55:00
  And yeah, dude, she's just, she's, she's been the one person
• 55:03
  to have like unwavering belief in me since day one.
• 55:06
  And even if I was like a loser, I still feel like she would just
• 55:09
  be like, as long as you're happy, you know, like, whatever,
• 55:11
  as long as as long as you're stoked on whatever you're doing.
• 55:13
  Obviously she's super proud of me that I made the business
• 55:15
  thing work, but I never felt any pressure to be successful from
• 55:18
  her or my dad, which was, I think that was awesome because I
• 55:20
  think pressure, pressure can sometimes it, it can make or
• 55:24
  break you. But yeah, man, she's just, she's
• 55:26
  just great. She's she's cool.
• 55:28
  Good lady, what what attributes would you share similarly to
• 55:31
  with your kids? I would say the ability to have
• 55:36
  laser focus on one thing for an extended period of time and just
• 55:39
  no matter what, like nothing else exists besides that one
• 55:42
  problem, that one thing. And no matter what you're waking
• 55:44
  up every day, I'm just going to solve that.
• 55:46
  And just being able to shut out every other opportunity.
• 55:48
  That's not that thing is it's it's key to entrepreneurship.
• 55:52
  Amazing. And I know, thanks.
• 55:54
  I'm talking to you. She kind of like went through a
• 55:55
  bout of breast cancer and was able to beat it.
• 55:58
  Yeah, yeah, she's, she's still going through it, but she's a
• 56:00
  lot better. We actually just, we actually
• 56:02
  just did the last round like 6-4 or five months ago or so.
• 56:07
  But yeah, she's doing a lot better.
• 56:09
  And yeah, it was rough. There's a crazy diagnosis to
• 56:12
  kind of just casually get dropped now.
• 56:14
  I think that was about two years ago or so.
• 56:15
  So she's doing a lot better now. And yeah man, fingers crossed.
• 56:19
  Amazing and want to give a shout out and I'm going to put a
• 56:21
  couple in the liner notes because what I'm going to do is
• 56:23
  find some like really great organizations that are doing
• 56:26
  awesome stuff with breast cancer.
• 56:28
  I'm going to see if I can find some spot local to to Hawaii too
• 56:31
  for you guys, because I know there's just some great works
• 56:34
  doing big stuff out there. Kai, this has been absolutely
• 56:38
  extraordinary. Thank you so much for sharing
• 56:40
  your story. What are the with the website?
• 56:43
  It's, I believe stone systems dot IO.
• 56:45
  Is that correct? Yeah, sound systems dot IO or,
• 56:48
  you know, if you want to send me Adm or, you know, shoot me a
• 56:50
  follow on Instagram, it's at Kai Stone.
• 56:51
  Anyway, that's kind of where I do a lot of my connecting and
• 56:53
  and talking and and stuff that is in the DMS.
• 56:55
  Then you know, there's I met a lot of cool people through
• 56:57
  YouTube. But yeah man, just if you want
• 56:59
  to hit me up, send me a message and we can connect.
• 57:02
  At Kai Stone on Instagram, and I'll link the YouTube channel
• 57:06
  too because I know it's new, but you're putting amazing
• 57:08
  resources. If you guys really like hearing
• 57:11
  about Kai's sales pitch and how he's gone step by step building
• 57:15
  his company, he's putting all that on a YouTube channel so you
• 57:18
  guys can check it out and follow in his footsteps.
• 57:20
  Kai, it's been amazing. Thank you so much.
• 57:22
  Yourself. Thank you so much, Ryan.
• 57:23
  Appreciate you. Hey founders, let me ask you
• 57:27
  this. Are you building with AI or
• 57:30
  getting left behind by it? If you're serious about scaling
• 57:34
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• 58:25
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