In this episode, John Wilson sits down with Richard Dunbar of FieldPulse to dig into one of the most important — and often overlooked — levers for scaling a home service company: modernizing your operational platform. Whether you’re running HVAC, plumbing, electrical, restoration, or any specialty trade, the shift from legacy tools to a true field service management system (FSM) is one of the highest-ROI moves you can make. Richard and John break down how contractors are ditching whiteboards, Excel boards, paper invoices, and manual dispatching in favor of flat-rate pricing systems, centralized pricebooks, technician-friendly workflows, real-time visibility, and true operational clarity.
What You’ll Learn
- Why legacy systems cap your growth
- How flat-rate pricing really works
- Where the real ROI of FSM software comes from
- How to remove friction from the entire customer journey
- The #1 mistake contractors make when trying to scale revenue
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Richard Dunbar — FieldPulse
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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
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OAO 262 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. Today I'm talking with Richard Dunbar of Field Pulse. Field. Pulse is a modern field service management software for contractors that are looking to bridge the gap between craftsmanship and business performance. This's gonna be an awesome episode where we dive into case studies.
We talk about how their software has helped co contractors improve their business and a lot more. Thanks for tuning in. Richard, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on.
Richard Dunbar: Appreciate it, John. Thanks for the invitation.
John Wilson: Yeah. This is gonna be, this is gonna be a lot of fun. Uh, I'm excited to dive in. I know that we've started using, uh, field Pulse with cut and dry restoration.
Uh, that's right. So that's our, our, uh, remediation business. Are you doing other remediation businesses or are we like a pilot?
Speaker 3: No, we do. Um, yeah, so, so we, we kind of operate in the, in the core three, the hvac, plumbing and electrical. We serve, um, I'd say probably about [00:01:00] 40 different sub-verticals. Um, yeah, and a actually, you know, as, as cool as the core three are, you know, I'm a homeowner, so those are pretty important ones.
But it's really, it's really interesting to see like all the different stuff that's out there that people can do. Oh yeah. Like, like we have one, one company that uses us, uh, for example, that does crime scene cleanup.
John Wilson: Oh yeah, sure. That, that's, that's pretty adjacent to remediation. We've looked at buying some businesses.
I never thought about
Richard Dunbar: it though.
John Wilson: Yeah. We, we've bought, or we've looked at businesses that are like mold remediation and like trauma and trauma is a type of cleanup. And, and every time we've looked at it, we're like, I, I don't think I can, like, I can't get into this.
Richard Dunbar: You imagine what the hiring has gotta be like around that, like.
Guy comes in to interview for the job and you're like, well,
John Wilson: yeah, we've talked to a, so we've inter, because it's industry adjacent, so we've talked to a lot of technicians and they're like, yeah, like we used to do, we, we would get leads from the police, we would get leads from fire. And it was a, it was a lot of bodies Oof.[00:02:00]
Speaker 3: That's it. Is cra crazy to think like what the KPIs are in, so
John Wilson: something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's funny but not funny, you know?
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah. Def definitely traumatic. Um, well welcome. This will be a lot of fun. So, so field pulse, uh, field service management platform that's helping contractors grow and scale their business.
That's right. Anything I missed? Anything I missed in there?
Speaker 3: No, you, you nailed it, man. You're, you're ready to come work here? Uh, no. It's, it's literally hell. Literally that simple.
John Wilson: Hell yeah.
Speaker 3: It's literally that simple. You know, we, we work with, um, contractors of, of Yeah. You know, all shapes and sizes. You know, folks who are really kind of looking to.
Nail the basics and, and get the business into a place where it's good, sustainable, and like moving at a good, at a good clip. Um, and then there's like, great, we've got the foundation built now we want to grow from here. And that's, that's where we excel, um, because out of the box. You can kind of do all the things you need to do, like the, the, you know, the core operational things that just you need to nail, and then there's just so many [00:03:00] different ways from there that you can streamline and, and create those efficiencies that you need to get to that next level.
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More book jobs, less wasted spend and no more missed revenue. See it in action at the link below. Start winning more jobs today with Boca. So the core three, plumbing, hvac, electric. Um, and then what, yeah, what are some other sub-verticals? I'm imagining roofing or concrete, or, I don't know, landscaping. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so we do a little bit of landscaping. Where we're really strong is, um, is glass window installation kind of Okay. Fell into that. They just sort of found us. We're really good there. Um, we do a lot with gutters. Not, not [00:04:00] exactly roofing, but a lot of times roofers, you know, will kind of double up and do, do both things.
Um, yeah, so that's another one. Um, audio, video installation services. Um, yeah, there's, there's a lot that we really fit really well into. Um, we, we tend to skew much more heavily towards the residential side. Not quite as much on the commercial side, although we do have, you know, a decent, uh, decent base of commercial business as well.
Um, but most of the stuff we bring in is, um, typically those, those areas. Um, primarily on the residential side though.
John Wilson: Yeah. Okay, cool. And where you guys, uh, tend to come in and sort of help out is, uh, businesses are starting to invest in the professionalism, like they're professionalizing. Maybe that's the, just the right way to put it.
Yeah. So maybe a smaller team, like five to 10 people, the owner's still probably wearing a lot of hats. Like I, I have a friend, um, here locally, he has five plumbers, I think, and a call center. I dunno if it's call center manager, call center [00:05:00] rep or, or what the title is. Mm-hmm. Then maybe a service manager and he's like in that sort of professionalization mode.
He's trying to pull himself out of day-to-day ops. He's trying to figure out what that looks like and that that's a lot of like where you guys are fitting in and helping people get organized.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. You, you, you put it that way. 'cause uh, a lot of the folks, so I, I love to go to the industry events that we do because it's a great opportunity to talk to these folks face to face.
It's like dur during the normal workday. You know, trying to call in on these guys and talk to them is like, they don't, they don't want that, right? They're out doing the job. Um, but these are times where they've got that dedicated time. You can actually talk to them. And I'd love to just hear like, what, what's going on in the business?
How, how are you operating? What's it like? And I, I'd say John, probably 90 plus percent of the time. I'm talking to the business owner, they're, they're playing the role of like, player coach. They're running the business, but they're also operating a truck. They're out there doing the HVAC work, doing the electrical work, doing, doing the things that their guys are doing.
They're in the field doing a lot of that. And you definitely see, [00:06:00] especially as they, as they start to get older, you definitely see those guys saying like, I, I don't wanna do so much of this anymore. You can understand why. Um, and they're trying, they're, they're getting to that point where they're like, all right, I, I need to get this business to a place where it can run.
Without me, and I, I don't mean like completely without, but like where they're not having to be as dialed in on the every day and they're able to kind of focus more on the general business aspects and less having to like operate a truck themselves.
John Wilson: Is that a lot of the sort of people that find their way to you, like the owners like just stepping out of the truck or they're still like selling or like engaged in field activities?
Speaker 3: I, I think, yeah, most of them are still engaged. I think a lot of them have just not quite gotten to that point where they can do the handoff or, um, they don't know what that point is, that that's probably the more likely case is they, they're like, yeah, maybe that's a little bit of fear, which I get. Like, you've put everything you've got into this business and growing it.
It's like when I hand this off, like, is this the right [00:07:00] time to hand it off? Or, you know, should I do this first? Those are areas where we can definitely help them. I, I think a lot of that anxiety just comes from uncertainty that comes from. The operational things that they've just grown accustomed to always doing that.
Now if they stop doing it, they wonder like, you know, you know, can, can Joe take this? Can he run with this? I don't know. And chances are Joe's probably gonna do just fine. Um, but it's that, you know, relinquishing control piece that I think a lot of folks struggle with.
John Wilson: Yeah, no, that makes sense. We had, uh, we had sort of three big decisions, uh, that we talked about prior that we felt like.
The process of, uh, professionalizing a, a company like this. So I would love to double click on, on each of these. Uh, I'll just list 'em off and then we'll just go one by one. So, uh, first one transitioning, and I am curious how this works outside of the core three, like you would have way more exposure to this than I do, but, uh mm-hmm.
Like transitioning to a, some version of a [00:08:00] flat rate pricing, uh, and how important that is. Um. Getting rid of, uh, legacy tools and like starting to use forecasting and just better control. And then centralizing, scheduling, dispatching and job data, which I think that one, that one makes a ton of sense. I, I remember a decade ago, probably a decade ago, um, like we used to use a whiteboard, which I'm probably a lot of people did a decade ago.
Uh, but like I had, uh, you know, there was the call center. Uh, rep and then like six feet in front of her was a whiteboard and we'd, you know, right. Here's the customer name, job number, and yeah, kind of funny. So like, being able to put all that in one thing or the sort of the big three steps, um, which Yeah.
Makes sense to me. So on, on the moving to flat rate pricing, like, I, what, how are you guys seeing that manifest inside your, inside your customers?
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, when I, when I think about this, I kind of lump this into a, a general bucket of like. If you're operating the business, you really should be [00:09:00] laser focused on how do you make everyone's experience within this process as simple as possible.
So in this case, if we think flat rate pricing, you think, okay, this is gonna make it easier for my sales guys, number one, because, you know, one, one price to do the job is just a lot easier to digest. Um, but then also on the, from the homeowner's standpoint, and that's, that's also one of the things I think is so, so cool about the type of work that we do, is that.
So many of us are homeowners, and so you can put yourself in the end users 'cause, 'cause the homeowner really is the end user, they're the consumer of that experience. You can put yourself in their shoes and say, all right, I've, you know, I've had to have my, uh, I live in Florida, you gotta get your a CU service is the last thing you want is for that thing to go out in July.
'cause you're gonna have a real tough time. So you put yourself in those shoes and you say, well, you know, you probably had a good experience. You probably had a bad experience. So, so what does that look like? Um, so, so to more directly answer your question. I think that, um, you know, contractors have just gotten.
Very used to being at the [00:10:00] mercy of outside factors that kind of govern their profitability. But there's, yeah, technical solutions that can solve for this stuff. Um, things like being able to see your costs over time and then having real time access to pricing and availability around like materials and stuff like that, that allows you, if you wanna make that change over to a flat rate model or something, it just gives you the peace of mind to say, all right, if we do make this shift.
We're not leaving money on the table. Mm-hmm. And we're able to confidently simplify this for our salespeople, for our technicians. And you know, I'd argue most importantly for the homeowner, I, I would love it if they could just say, Hey, you know what? We do this kind of work all the time. It typically costs this much, and maybe there's a good, better, or best option.
I can just pick the one I want. That's so easy for me and I feel really good as the homeowner, um, being able to have a, you know, play a part in that decision, but also know that it's gonna solve the exact problem that I called you out here to fix.
John Wilson: Yeah. Something that I think is interesting, uh, [00:11:00] is I flat rate to me was such a foregone conclusion.
Uh, but so we host these workshops. We host, uh, two a year and, um, I think we're on our fourth or fifth one. And each time it's like 30 contractors and it's called breaking five. So, so the idea is like, most people are gonna be under 5 million because like, they're here to learn how to break 5 million. Uh, and, uh, it, it is a lot of fun.
But what's always fascinating is like 40% of the group, maybe even more, is not on a, a version of flat rate. Like they're doing, like time and material, or they're doing, they're doing something and that it blows me away every time because I was like, I thought this was like a decade ago. Solu like solution.
I, I can't believe that this is still a thing that, that is, uh, showing up in the industry. What, what do you think the gap is? It's just hard to come up with, or it's expensive or like, why do you think people don't just like go on it day one? Because I, I don't even see how that's possible, to be [00:12:00] honest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a, it's a good question. I, you know, I'd, I, again, I'd have to kind of lean on the conversations I've had with folks at these events and I, I think a lot of it is, I think this industry is just really prone. To just doing things the way things have always been done. That there's a, there's a very strong like, legacy aspect to this line of work.
Like, you know, my grandfather did this and he did it this way, so I do it this way. My father did it that way, so I do it this way. I think, I think a lot of that just persists. And I also think, going back to what you were saying before, I think a lot of these guys are just, they're so deep in the weeds of doing the work that they're not taking the time to step back and say, all right, well what, what things can I change about this business to make it better?
You know, the, the, the kind of classic mentality is, well, I'll grow the business by getting more leads and I'll service more leads. Yeah. And I will just, as I grow and build a reputation and get bigger, I'll just do more. And yeah, that's part of it. That's great. But there's so many other aspects of that, that eventually you're gonna hit a wall where your [00:13:00] processes, your systems, your legacy stuff, if we're sticking with that motif, you know, your kind of legacy processes.
They're not gonna work at the scale that you need them to. So yeah, I think that's my take on it. But I'd love to hear, like in those sessions when you're talking to those guys, like what, what do, what do they say when you ask them? Do they, do they have an answer?
John Wilson: A lot of people just don't know how to get a price book.
Uh, which to be honest, is kind of complicated. Uh, it's sort of for something that's so straightforward and so. Like, you literally can't do a job without knowing how you're gonna price it, you know? Right. It's such a fundamental core part of our business. It, it's like, it's like trying to launch a plumbing company and not having a truck.
Like you can't, you could walk everywhere. You just carry all the ice. Yeah. But like, it doesn't, you can't really do anything. Um, yeah. So. I mean, for me it'd be like a day one, uh, thing. But yeah, it, it's hard to get a hold of like, depending on the platform that [00:14:00] people are using, it's either included or it's not, or it's an add-on or it's not, um, I don't know, like is it included inside Field Pulse or like, is, how does that work?
How does the actual price book integration work?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so there, there's actually, uh, quite a few different ways that you can do pricebook with us, which is really cool. So, so one area where my team focuses specifically is. Building out relationships with the different suppliers and distributors to, um, get realtime data to plug into the price book so that as you're building it, you're actually building it based off of availability, um, inventory count and, and price in real time.
And so that, that's actually been a massively popular feature with our users because yeah, prior to that they would just, you know, pull, pull, pull up at the supply shop. Get a post-it note, slap it on the counter and say, here, I need this stuff. I'm like, well, I got half of that stuff. The other half you're gonna have to go to the other branch to get it.
Well, that's not good. Um, so I, [00:15:00] and and to your point about the importance of it, um, you know, e everybody needs it. Everybody like you. I don't see how I, I'm like you, I don't see how you can do any of this stuff without having that when I first Yeah, you have to price the job a hundred percent. When I, when I first got into this industry.
Um, I was, I was sitting down, I was talking to one of my colleagues and they, you know, the term price book kept coming out. I was like, well, what, what's the price book guys? Explain it to me. Explain it to me. And I'm like, why does that have to be a thing? Isn't, I mean, isn't that just like a foregone conclusion that you would like this must mm-hmm.
It must exist. Therefore, I don't think to ask about it type of situation. They're like, no, you'd be surprised how many people don't have anything like this. And just sort of like. Operate off of just what's up here. And again, like that, that legacy experience, legacy knowledge. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. Kind of. Kind of wild.
Are are other in, outside of plumbing, HVAC, electric, I'm sure it's like more common there, but other industries, is this as prevalent or [00:16:00] how's that look? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would say, I would say most of our users, I, I don't have the hard data, I'm kind of going anecdotal here, but I, I talk to our CS team quite a bit 'cause I love to hear, you know, what, what it is that they're, they're hearing directly from the customers.
But, um, I, I would say it's, it's few and far between where a customer of ours is not using our, our price vote feature functionality in some capacity. You have some who are power users who may have many price books with many, many different line items built into them, and there's a lot of complexity around it.
Um, I think you see that a lot more, um, maybe on the electrical side than you do elsewhere. HVAC tends to be pretty, um, pretty standardized, more like package driven from what I've seen. Um. But, uh, I, I would say, gosh, it's probably, you know, north of 80% of customers are using our price book functionality in some capacity on, on a daily basis.
John Wilson: Uh, next up was like ditching legacy tools and getting real time visibility. I think the bigger we've grown, I [00:17:00] know this has been. It, it's one of those things where like, now that you live in this reality, it's hard to envision it any other way. Like, if we didn't have hour by hour or minute by minute sales, like how would we know what was going on?
Like, yeah, that's a, it's kind of a new, you know, that's a kind of a new problem. Um, or like if we didn't GPS, the truck, you know, all those different thing, like real time visibility is so powerful, but it is funny, uh, how it's still pretty new.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I, you know what's, what's so cool about this is when you think about.
Some of, some of these businesses that come to us and may maybe we're their first FSM or maybe they're, you know, switching from another platform. Um, some of these guys I was talking to a guy up in, um, um, up in New England a couple months ago, and it was really interesting conversation and, um, you know, older gentleman and I was kinda asking him like, oh, you know, how, how long have you been with the business?
He's like, oh, it's, it's my, it's my grandfather's business. And I'm like, whoa. Wow. Um, so how [00:18:00] old's the business? He's like, oh, we, it was started in the 18 hundreds. Oh wow. I'm like, oh my God. He's been doing the family business. The family plumbing business has been around in the kind of Massachusetts area, um, for over a hundred years.
I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, how much data? How much data is this? Oh, yeah. Now granted, there's only so far back you can go, right. 'cause, you know, paper's, paper. But, um. It got me thinking like, okay, even if a business has been around for a couple of years, how much data have they accumulated that can then if, if it's unpacked and Yeah, and they look at it right, and know what they're looking for or, or bring in somebody to do it for them, how much can that tell them about the trajectory of their business?
What's working, what's not working? They may. They'll certainly find out new things, but how many of their assumptions or sort of gut feelings that they have, because they're really good at their work, are gonna be, um, [00:19:00] confirmed or affirmed by what that data tells them. And then think what that unlocks for them and how they can then decide how they want to grow the business and what they wanna do with it.
I think like all, you know, all the funnel metrics, all of the, you know, um. Time it takes to get jobs done. How? How their cost for their materials has changed over time. Maybe they bought from like different suppliers and different suppliers have been more or less prone to price fluctuations, but there's so many things that's that, that are just there that exist that either they're not tracking or they just don't have the appropriate analytics to sit on top of it to sort of tell that story or paint that picture for them that says, this is what you ought to be doing.
Um, that to me is like one of those, one of the big opportunities where technology, and especially with AI now being able to do a lot of that work for you by just telling it, I think that's one of the biggest unlocks, um, that this industry has, has facing it now because like, let's face it, so many other businesses [00:20:00] are, are looking at using AI as an example, is like a threat to, you know, a threat to the industry.
Like, AI isn't gonna fix your pipes, like you still need the trades. Mm-hmm. I think these guys. Are probably one of the most protected, um, industries in our, in our world right now. So for them it's all upside. Like why not leverage that to take that data, parse it out, and give you really good insight into the business.
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John Wilson: I'm, I'm remembering, uh, we bought this business, uh, back in 2018 and, um, data in 2018 was just a lot harder. It was ev, you know, dispatch boards were on Excel. There were other software companies that had been around.
Um, but I think it was still pretty early. I don't remember when, like mass adoption started happening. Mm-hmm. Uh, but yeah, so the, anyways, we bought this plumbing company in 2018 and they were using Excel as like their dispatch board. And we had like the. That experience of like onboarding and figuring out their schedule and migrating it into ours and just all the nuance that came with [00:22:00] that.
And I compare that to a business I bought in 2022 that was on a software and. It was, I mean, much easier. You could actually figure things out. You could understand what was going on, and even just the way they led the teams was so comically different where the one on paper in Excel was checking, like the service manager's main job was to review the paperwork orders the next day.
And like, Hey, did you, did we do a good job or a bad job? Like, you know, we have no idea. There's no real time visibility. Uh, right. And uh, versus like, okay, yeah, now we have data. We know how many times we visited this house. We have notes we like, we just have more. And the customer's more valuable 'cause we can contact them.
Like, which I think is probably the most important piece of all.
Speaker 3: Every time I hear someone say that, and, and we use, we use, you know, Google Sheets in Excel, like I think every business does too, despite, you know, the technology we have it, I always think of that, that meme where, where the guy's like holding up the entire planet and it's like.[00:23:00]
You know, the entire economy of the world and the guy's name is Microsoft Excel.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah. You know, so many businesses like that, that is kind of how things operate and run and look like. It's, it's a, it's a great tool to get you to a point, right? If that's, that's kind of the theme is like certain tools will get you so far and there comes a point where you need kind of that next piece to level up.
I, I'm actually curious, John, what like. How, how do you, with your portfolio companies, how do you guys approach data? Like, do you have a data person or a data team, or is that like a, a function that rolls into someone else's, um, you know, job responsibilities?
John Wilson: Most of the company's data driven, so data falls into sort of everyone's job.
I, I'd it depends on like whose section, um mm-hmm. Most of the way that we use. Data is in, is inside like either marketing or the initial contact to set an appointment. So, uh, and there's like a lot to unpack there, so. Mm-hmm. You know, age of equipment, serial [00:24:00] numbers, like that determines marketing, but it also determines what tech goes out to that job.
And how we get all that information is like photos and I, I don't know, um. Our customer list is about a hundred thousand, maybe 110 or something. Uh, so a, a lot going on there. As far as like rehashing, contacting, when was the last time we were there? What was the last trade we were there for? What was our last ticket?
How do we, you know, continue that relationship? Um, so I'd say most of it happens in between marketing and. Initial, uh, appointment. So like call center. There's a lot of performance stuff that happens later, but that's not really data. That's more like, I mean, it is, but most of our data happens Mark upfront marketing and call center.
Speaker 3: Got it. Okay. Yeah, it's, I find it, it's always interesting to just kind of hear how folks are. Taking the data they have and, and you know, where, where it makes sense to apply it to the business. Kind of what insights they get from that. So yeah, I appreciate you answering that.
John Wilson: Alright, next big, uh, [00:25:00] next big decision that really like helps drive professionalization is I'm, it's, we have here on my notes, like centralizing, scheduling, dispatching and job data.
But I. I really feel like it's, um, it's probably more like centralizing everything. Like, 'cause there's a lot more than just that. Even like price book is such a great example. Like how easy is the price book compared to where I'm cut putting together the invoice and can I just like put that together?
Where's my point of sale and can I just swipe there? So I feel like all of that together, like the platform that the business runs on, is, is, might even be a better way to say it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more like when, when I was thinking about this, that that's where my headwind is. You know, even if you, even if you pull on one of the threads, it always comes back to all, all these things roll up into Yes.
You know, just ge general, um, general operational efficiency and, and, you know, centralizing as much as you can. I, I think going back to what I was saying before, I think it's the same type of thing, which is you really want to [00:26:00] create as much efficiency. Within the business for the people who are doing the business as possible.
Yeah. IE the, the technicians, so the, the guys and gals that are going out and doing the work. It should be, in my opinion, top priority for any operator to make it as easy as possible for those folks to come to work every day, to go out and do the work that they're there to do, and to be able to go home at the end of the day and feel really good about the work they did.
And I, and I think, and I've seen this with other, with, with our customers too. The ones who nail that and have that, um, technician or, or let's just say employee experience 'cause it's not just the text, but ha have that employee experience, um, functioning as, as, as I described. Yeah. Those are the happiest ones.
Those are the ones who are growing the most. Those are the ones that feel confident about the trajectory that their business is on. And it's no coincidence at all that everyone underneath them, everyone who's doing all that work. Feels very confident in what they're doing [00:27:00] as well. And so it's a credit to those operators, whether they're using, you know, field Pulse or another platform that they've had the wherewithal and have taken the time and made the investment to do that, but have prioritized that employee, that technician experience over and above everything else, knowing that that's gonna be the root of the success for their, for their, you know, long-term growth.
John Wilson: Yeah. I'm, I'm, uh, I keep going back to just like my memory of the industry. Um. But I think something that's been, uh, fascinating over, over my career. I've said this a lot on this show, but the average size of a contractor has risen so much, and I think it's, it's probably this point of like, how can I centralize as much as humanly possible into one platform that runs it all?
Um, yeah. I just remember like a decade ago, the average contractor was like a million dollars. And in, in the core three, and now the average is probably like five to eight or, or e even these days it seems like people are considered small under [00:28:00] $10 million, which like, that's kind of ridiculous if we look at the history of the industry, uh, that like a $10 million small, 'cause $10 million used to be the biggest in town by like multiples.
Yeah. Just a couple short years ago. Um, so yeah, I, I, I think this whole like centralizing everything and re removing friction from the different sections of the businesses. It. Yeah. Probably the big thing that propelled the industry forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I think, I think there's a lot of truth to that and I, you know, it's, it's important to look at those things too in terms of like, that, that scale versus like, some sort of benchmark or index.
Like, even if you just look at inflation, you know, it's, it's outpacing even that the, the growth there, which I think is, is pretty amazing. I, I was at a, I was at an event, um, a couple weeks ago and one of my favorite questions to ask anybody is, you know, how many trucks do you run? 'cause it's not the answer I care so much about.
It's how they answer it, that that is really telling. And this one particular event, um, this one was [00:29:00] um, uh, uh, garage doors or overhead doors, which is actually just another sub-vertical we're, we're really strong in. And I asked him that question and it was amazing how many people would say, oh, I only run 12 trucks.
I only run 12 trucks. I'm like, yeah, that's a lot of trucks. Yeah. Where, where you're talking to, you know, maybe it's, um, I dunno, maybe it's hvac. I'll, I'll pick on them for a minute and you'll talk to them and they'll say How many trucks you run, oh, I'm running two. And that, and that feels like a lot, you know, and, and it's obviously they're like different stages in these businesses, but Yeah, just the, the mentality of like, oh yeah, twelve's not that much.
To your point about kind of where things have kind of gone, um. That's a lot. It's kind. That's a lot. It is. It's kind of ridiculous lot.
John Wilson: I mean, most of my career was under 12 trucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I, I just think like, my wife and I have two cars. I can imagine having three, what would I like? Two is enough.
I, [00:30:00] I don't need anymore. Um, but yeah. To, to do that and be like, yeah. You know, we're really small. We're only running 12 trucks. Geez. Um, but yeah, I, I definitely think like, you know, the industry's kind of. Growing, adapting. Um, I, I think too, uh, you mentioned this earlier too, I think standardization is important.
I think being able to have mm-hmm. Aspects of the business that you can standardize, that don't really compromise the, the end user experience. Just make things really simple for everybody. Again, like technicians just wanna do the work, so make it easy for them and similar for the homeowner, you know, if, if you come to do like a recurring service for me, just make it the same experience every time, then I know exactly what to expect.
We have, um, we have a, a cleaning company we hire to help around the house. They come every two weeks, come in same day, every time, same time, every time. Um, usually the same two people every time. And they do the same cleaning every time.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They charge, they charge me the same amount every time. They build me at the same time, every time.
And I love it. It's so predictable and [00:31:00] so simple. Um, and it's just great. It's easy for me, it's easy for my wife. We, it's great from like, you know, budget management standpoint. So those, those types of. Aspects of, you know, standardization and just operational efficiency, like those trickle all the way down to the end user.
And you may not see it or hear it, but like as the homeowner, they're feeling it. They're not vocalizing it necessarily, but they're definitely feeling it and it's appreciated
John Wilson: as you guys are helping these businesses professionalize. Um, I mean you're, you're working directly probably with the owner? I, I'd say the most,
Speaker 3: yeah, typically, yeah, typically the owner or a, like, they'll have like a designated person.
Um, a lot, a lot of the folks we talk to, especially if they're, especially if they're a little bit on the older side, they'll have like a son or a daughter who's like just who's grown up with technology and they're like, look, they know what we need to do, but they're really good with technology. Can you just work with them please?
Uh, which is great 'cause they're. All this stuff is native to them. They've had a device in their hands since they [00:32:00] were babies. Well, maybe not babies, but
John Wilson: yeah. Alright, so you're, yeah. You're mostly, uh, so the owners are sort of carrying through the integration of the platform, like the onboarding and the success of it?
Or how does that usually work?
Speaker 3: Yeah, typically, so, so one of the first things that we do is we sit down with them. Before, before we even try to do any of the, the actual work, we'll sit down with them and we just want them to educate us on their business. That, that is arguably the most valuable thing that any of our customers can do for themselves.
Mm-hmm. Not just for us, is help us understand your business. Um, what are you doing today? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? What's important to you? And it's not, you know. This isn't like a sales thing, this is a, I want to help you and I want to get this platform configured for you in the best way to be conducive to growth.
In order to do that, yeah, I need you to, you know, open the kimono a little bit here, have some, have some humility, and kind of tell us what's good and what's bad so that [00:33:00] we can apply the, the, the prescription to kind of fix and solve those things for you. Um, and so yeah, we'll work with them and look the owner.
In most cases, you know, if the owner's dialed in, they're, they're gonna know what most of this stuff is. And a lot of times in my experience, if you ask 'em, they'll, they'll just tell you, you know, they're very transparent about like, you know, we're really good at this, but John, we're really terrible at this.
I need your help here. Can you please fix this for me and say, sure, we can do that. Um, you might have to dig a little bit, but yeah, it's fixable.
John Wilson: Okay. So you've seen into a lot more businesses than I have. I wanna talk a little bit about some lessons learned. Uh, so I know from my personal experience, I'm sure you've got more context here, but you can't scale on manual systems.
Any additional flare to add?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I, I think, um, I think for the business owner, it's really important to have a vision. A clear understanding. Again, this kind of goes back to what I was saying before, but a clear understanding of where the business is at today before they're even gonna be able to build out the kind of efficiencies they want to kind of get to [00:34:00] scale.
Um, and I mean, you could do probably a whole series of episodes on this by itself, but like, you know, knowing, knowing your KPIs, how much does new business cost you? How much do you make from the types of business you do? Um, but then have like, have a north star for the business that's distant but achievable.
What is it you want to be like, let's say you're operating, you know, an HVAC company in, in the Akron area. Like, okay, I, I, I imagine you don't just want to be another HVAC company in the Akron area, so what do you want to be, what, what is that goal? And then be honest about that and communicate that out to, um, to your team and let everyone buy into that vision and then work backwards from there.
You know, what, what are you trying to do and, and how do you get there? And it becomes a lot simpler when you focus on. When you know what the end result is, but you focus on what you can do today to get there.
John Wilson: A another sort of like quick hit. And I'm looking for additional context. Efficiency is good, but clarity is better.
I think this is back into that real-time [00:35:00] visibility.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And I think, um, you know, when you get into. A technical solution that's kind of helping you get that real-time visibility and everything. I think as you go through that, you really need to approach that whole process with, with a bit of honesty and humility.
Yeah. Um, and, and I, I kinda mentioned this before too, but I, I, I'll double down on it. The, the, the what's working, but then also. What are your must haves? You know, when we were working with the cut and dry team, we had that conversation with them. We said, Hey guys, what, what is the thing that you must have?
And, and there were kind of three standouts, at least for me. But there was, you know, they had their list, which was great. Mm-hmm. But they wanted very clear visibility into data from day one. You said it yourself, your businesses are, are data driven. They're reflecting that, which is great. 'cause that's a great reflection, you know, on you as the, as the owner.
Yeah. Um, they wanted to make work as simple for their technicians as possible and let them focus on the thing that they're best at, which is servicing your customers. That's great. You know, that tells our onboarding and our implementations team. Cool. We need to make sure. [00:36:00] When we build out the workflows and all the automations and the workflows that we're doing.
So in such a way that it satisfies this specific requirement. And then the third one that really stood out for me from, from, you know, their, their punch list was that they wanted as early as possible, they wanted to have as much stuff standardized as they, as they could. Um, yeah. And that was super helpful for our team too, because, you know, when we know that it's so much easier to build that stuff at the beginning.
Than it is when you're, you know, 6, 7, 8 months in or a year in and it's like, oh gosh, I wish I had standardized this. Like, ugh. It's a little harder to go back sometimes.
John Wilson: This next one, uh, I think is, is in the, in the age of AI and just like, you know, such, uh, sort of rapid tech deployment in the trades. Uh, this one might be tough for people to stomach, so you know, I'll go slow.
Uh, but the real unlocking growth isn't tools or tech. Or technology, it's, it's removing friction. [00:37:00] So I What additional context do you have there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I, I love that. Um, you know, I, I came prior to coming and joining Field Pulses, I came from mm-hmm. Uh, the payment processing space. And we worked with a lot of different businesses in a lot of different industries to help them streamline, um, how they incorporate payment acceptance into their flow.
And one of my favorite analogies had to do with what you just said, and I said. Think for a minute what is the, what is the simplest, maybe we can do it right now for fun. What is the simplest buying experience in your, in your day to day? What do you think that is?
John Wilson: Uh, the simplest buying experience. Like going to a store probably like you just go there.
'cause now that's probably just me. Most people's is probably like Amazon or something, but like, bingo, I can, I can never find my credit cards. So Amazon is not easy for me. Okay,
Speaker 3: well you teed this up perfectly for me, so thanks. But so that, that's the example I would use. I say guys, yeah, [00:38:00] think about Amazon.
All right. You need something, you know Amazon has it. All right, I got my phone right here. I pull it up. Okay. I go on Amazon. My credit card is saved, which is a cool feature. Yeah, you might wanna check that out. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I need to,
Speaker 3: um, I go find the item and they have this thing called, uh, swipe to buy. Okay. I swipe and it pulls up real quick.
It's like, Hey, is this the right address? Just to make sure, 'cause obviously, you know, if you get that wrong, the whole thing's shot and you say yes. It's like, okay, cool. Done. Yeah. I mean, I, I've done that. Yeah. I've done that in, I wonder how many, I
John Wilson: wonder how many billions of dollars that added. Like that simple, like it's a one, one click buy, or is that what they call that?
The one click buy? But it's crazy. It's
Speaker 3: ba it's basically the same thing. It's like, Hey, I, I know who you are, I know where you live. Right. It sounds creepy, but that's their business. Yeah. And I have your payment information.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also have an unlimited warehouse of items that you need or want. Um, why, why make [00:39:00] it hard for you to get those things?
Yeah. And, and to your point about friction. I mean in, in your guys' line of work, it's not that simple, but if you think about it from that standpoint, when Amazon started out, they, they, they didn't have that. Like you, you wanted to buy a book. Well, how did you do it? Well, you went to the store and you hoped they had it, or maybe you called ahead.
Either way, it's kind of a pain in the butt, but at the time, that's just how things were done. If you had said to someone in the late, mid, late nineties like, Hey, you know, in. I don't know, 10 years you'll be able to buy any book in the world from anywhere in the world in about 10 seconds. And you'll, and by the way, you can have it delivered to your doorstep, uh, maybe by the end of the day said, nah, that ain't gonna happen.
Yeah, that's crazy. Well, it did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it
Speaker 3: did. And it really just took them looking at the business from that lens of saying, where are our friction points and how do I eliminate them? That's, that's it. Like, that's the trick. So that, that, to me, that's always been the North star, is how do I, how do [00:40:00] I create the one click or swipe to buy experience in whatever line of work that I'm in, whatever industry I'm trying to serve.
John Wilson: I think it's easy to get caught up in the tech, especially with like more and more AI tools coming out that like have lofty promises. And I think at the end of the day it's like. Fundamentals. Are we picking up the phone? Are we booking the call? Are we pricing accurately? Are we completing the work well?
Do we have a follow up system to make them a return customer? And I, I think anything else is like, like, uh, ener, it's just energy that could be just Yeah. Better spent on, yeah, just improving the core.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I think, I think once you nail the core. You are effectively operating on the margin at that point.
Yeah. So, so to your point, it's like, okay, I've got the fundamentals so well ironed out and I'm so confident my business is doing really great with the core stuff. What are those kind of edge things that I can now just kind of tweak [00:41:00] and refine and that, that's that margin that you're operating on? And you may, you may squeeze out a few more basis points or a, you know, a couple percentage points here and there in terms of profitability.
But if you do that enough times and you're good at it. Those individual percentage points, those add up and those do make, those do make a difference. And then that's all, that's all multiplicative. Every customer you add is benefiting from that same percentage gain operating on the margin. And I think when, when more business owners and operators are kind of thinking about things that way and like what is the, what is the marginal aspect of me making this change?
I think it just unlocks a lot of opportunities for them and maybe a different. Perspective in how they approach the business.
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Speaker 3: Ooh, I like this one. Um, so I'm, I'm gonna lean a little bit on my, my payments background here. Yeah. But I've, I've run into this a lot. Um. Make it really, really easy for the customer to pay. Yeah. That, that's the simplest thing. Um, I think if you have, uh, a strong team and you have strong processes built around getting paid, that solves and unlocks so many things.
I've seen kind of [00:43:00] sticking with the general theme here, I've seen a lot of businesses struggle with growth because of cash flow, not because of the amount of jobs they have. Yeah, it's, it's getting paid and then deploying that cash into the right areas to grow the business. But there's no cash to deploy if they're not getting paid.
And you'd be amazed. Well, maybe not. You'd be, you'd be amazed how many of these people I talk to and I'm like, well, how, how do you typically get payment? Oh, we send an invoice. Yeah. Okay. Invoice has a payment link in it, right? And they're like, no. I'm like, oh my God. Make it easy to pay. Most customers, most customers want to pay and be done.
Um, quick story. We had our entire landscaping around our house replaced earlier this year.
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: And the whole process was just amazing. The lady who ran it did the whole thing, just all of it was just like, just great. I tried to pay her for three months. I, I was like, I was texting her, I was calling her.
I was like, Hey, I want to pay you. I wanna pay. Send me a link, gimme your [00:44:00] event, something. Let me pay you. And she's like, oh, yeah, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. And it just lingered and lingered. And then I'm like, Hey, yeah, yeah, if you can do that and run your business, like God bless you, like more power to you.
But I wanted to pay her and I, and I couldn't. So make it easy. Mm-hmm. Take the cashflow variable outta the equation. And, and just make that piece super simple for everybody.
John Wilson: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, that, that aligns with just my own lived experience of early on in our growth journey. Uh, most of the decisions that we made were around this concept.
I don't think we thought of it that succinctly, but it was, you know, I mean that's flat rate. Like, Hey, do you offer flat rate or not? Well, one of the main reasons is you can walk out with a check that day, like that's important. Um. Are you taking credit cards? Are you using technology to have a point of sale?
Are you offering financing? Like all those different, it's really a lot of decisions, but yeah, I agree with you. It, uh, [00:45:00] that was probably like a first 12 months of ownership decision for me, and I think it really helped propel us forward because that was now outta the equation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, it was probably one of those things where once you guys learned.
How to do it. You don't really have to go back. Got a good process for it. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. And you can do it in any of your businesses, right? Yeah.
John Wilson: It's a platform like this is just how it works and um, yeah. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. Love to hear that.
John Wilson: Well, this was a ton of fun. I loved having you on today.
Uh, if people wanna reach out, how can they find you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm, I'm pretty easy to get to, um, Ricky at Fuel Pulse, RICK y@fuelpulse.com. Super easy to reach. Um, I welcome anyone to reach out if they have questions they wanna know more about. Who we are or what we do or, or just wanna have a chat about anything we talked about here.
I'm more than happy to to chat and then also very easy to find on LinkedIn.
John Wilson: Awesome. Well thanks for coming on today and for the listeners, uh, make sure you give us a five star review wherever it is that you listen to shows.
Speaker 3: Thanks John.
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