Is AI actually changing home services… or just hype?
In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Tyson Chen (Founder of Avoca) to break down how AI is actually being deployed inside home service businesses right now—and why the gap between operators is widening fast.
From contractors building their own tools to PE-backed companies unlocking millions in efficiency, this episode cuts through the noise and gets practical.
What we cover:
- Why contractors are rapidly deploying AI across their businesses
- The rise of “AI-native” operators (and why they scale faster)
- Real use cases: dispatch, call center, marketing, and capacity planning
- Where AI drives the biggest ROI (and where it breaks)
If you’re trying to scale, improve margins, or stay competitive as AI adoption accelerates—this episode will reshape how you think about your business.
Host: John Wilson https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Guest: Tyson Chen https://www.avoca.ai/partners/oao
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#HomeServices #HVAC #Plumbing #Electrical #AI #Automation #ServiceBusiness
More Ways To Connect with O&O
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
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Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. Uh, during the day I run a plumbing, HVAC and electric business, uh, out of Ohio, Indiana, and soon, one more state, which is pretty awesome. And for fun, I talk to my friends about how to grow home service companies and what they're doing to do it.Today I have my good friend Tyson Chen on the founder of Avoca. And we've been partners with Avoca on the show, but also inside our business for two years now, and they help power our call center dispatch, speed to lead, and a bunch of other capabilities. So today we're diving into AI inside your business.Tyson, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here, John. Uh, good to see you again, and happy belated St. Patrick's Day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were, were you in New York for say anything interesting? We had a few people in Chicago and they have the Green River thing. Yeah. We, uh, there was a parade. I was actually visiting a, uh, customer, um, uh, one of our customers in Midtown.Yeah. Uh, and this, there's a giant parade that, uh. Uh, you know, delayed. Uh, I luckily took the subway, but one of my colleagues got delayed almost an hour. Oh gosh. Uh, by this massive parade. Uh, that's funny. You're an Irish. Oh yeah. Irish as hell, baby. I I thought you were Irish. Yeah. Well, I'm just very pale.Yeah. Today will be, today will be fun. Di I, AI is sort of like. There, there's a, AI is obviously the big conversation, so like it's done so crazy over the last couple months. Yeah, it's crazy. And I'm not even like in the trades, but, but you know, like on the macro you've got like ai, there's uh, job risk, like me, Meta's doing their 20% thing.Like there's like a lot going on externally. Um, and inside the trades, uh, I think it's kind of funny how much. How, like, how people are deploying AI inside the business is it's, it's hilarious. So we, we had this, we had this event at our office two weeks ago and we had a, a dinner and the average contractor there was like maybe $20 million or something like that.And, um, every single person in the room, it was 20 operators, every single person in the room. Was actively building something or actively deploying something in from like an AI tool inside their business. And it was just, it was like you sit there and you're like, I'm talking to people. Running plumbing companies, like running roofing companies.Yeah. And like everyone is shipping something inside their business to help automate some process or, or do something. It, it felt like surreal. It. Feel it. What was the, uh, I, I mean, I, in my podcast I just, uh, started a one called, uh, uh, trade Secrets from the Ground Up, where I interview, uh, kind of founders and operators of home service businesses learn about their stories, their trials and tribulations, but.Um, recently, my recent one, um, there's a guy, uh, mark from, from Golden Rule, and he was telling me about, he used, he's been acquiring a lot of smaller businesses doing tuck-ins and the process used to take him, you know, like a week to find all the companies that were interesting and then reach out to them in a personalized way to gauge interest.And he, Claude coded it up in like an hour. And it just runs now. Um, he, he, he understand the workflow in his mind. He just had to write it in cloud code. It integrates with Gmail, it integrates with Google Maps. Yeah. And it can do research. It's, it's mind boggling. Um, how, how much it's progressed really in just the last three months.Oh, yeah. Too. Well, as, as they've dropped more of this autonomous stuff, like Yeah. Yeah. Claude code, um, what is it? Uh, perplexity computer, like one of 'em, like controls or. That's open claw. They have the open claw computer where like controls your, um, computer and it, it is wild. Like yeah, what you can ship.So like, yeah, that's an awesome one. There's like a bd like business development component. Um, I'm seeing stuff as simple as, hey, I'm launching, uh, something to like help me do quotes. Like I need to help estimate. So here's my labor, here's my material. Um, I, like, I see people trying to code CRMs right now at which like, I, you know, I don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea, but like, they're trying, can't fault them for trying, but hey, maybe like in six months it's, you know, who, who knows?It's, it's pretty insane. I mean, some of the top, I was just having this convo with my co-founder the other day and, and, and we're talking about this at all hands. It was, it was like even, like six months before. The difference between someone that was good at using AI tools and could kind of use it was like 50%, maybe 30% productivity difference.Now it almost feels like it's five x. Yeah. You know, there's that anthropic post recently about how marketing team Oh, the one guy, all their marketing with one person. Yeah. And we have a guy, um, at our company. And he's, um, this is this, I just realized this two days ago and it completely blew my mind. He's a, um, a guy on the product team and instead of, he doesn't even write, uh, a code anymore.He doesn't even use an IDE. What he has set up is this, uh, environment where he's controlling eight AI software engineer agents for that right code. Two that, um, uh, you know, kind of check and, and monitor, uh, and then two that kinda relay the information. Yeah. And it's kind of like a, like an AI scrum master.And, you know, every once in a while they'll, they'll come to him when a decision needs to be made or a judgment call needs to be made. But more or less he's just able to develop these products that, I mean, would probably have taken a team like three weeks. In, in a day, um, just by interacting and iterating rapidly with his team of a, uh, eight AI software agents.That is, yeah, that is interesting. The, the, um, you know, we, where we're at with AI is like, I, I feel like we were probably considered an early adopter. Like we started pushing pretty early. It was like two or three years ago or whatever. Yeah. Um. Now where we've sort of stopped is we haven't, we haven't gotten over the auto, like we haven't done that yet.Right? Like, we haven't gotten, gotten over that autonomous hump. Um, I think we have a couple, I, I have a few ideas on like how to do it. Like one would be purchasing, I think could be kind of interesting. Where like, how much of that process can we. Make autonomous. Um, I think another one that would be, uh, cost comparisons would be another like job costing basically.Like, can, can we sh you know, shave off some labor? Uh, from that, uh, I'm thinking some of our work inside our accounts payable department because like accounting is like the big nut that not many people have cracked yet with, uh, with ai. 'cause I think they're afraid of like the data manipulation. Um. Our AEs would absolutely love if we brought in an AI accounts receivable agent.Oh, yeah. Uh, because people in a lot of, a lot of contractors are not good about, uh, uh, you know, like, uh, updating like credit, credit cards and stuff like that. That's, that's funny. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And the AR one would be a good one. Um, yeah, and I, I want to do something with marketing. Like, I think there's, there's some alpha to be gained and like, obviously the Anthropic thing is a great example.You guys are a great example. Where I struggle is like budget control. 'cause like what I imagine happens is like some, you know, frigging AI bot spends a hundred thousand dollars in an hour on meta ads and we just didn't even know it happened. But I, I do think there's like a real advantage to like, what can we, how close to anthropic can we.It is fascinating. I mean, we are, our, uh, our roadmap, a little bit of kind of insider, uh, you know, information there is that we are, uh, looking into the, uh, building AI marketing agents more end-to-end. We already actually have, uh, success with some, you, you, it's not specific marketing, but um, and you guys are kind of using this, but it's like.It's an autonomous way to think about capacity management and filling your board up based on weather patterns. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So let, let's say like, you know that it's going to be, um, you know, pretty moderate temperatures for the next three days. You can use, we can use that to then, uh, anticipate what the demand levels will be and then backfill, uh, how many jobs need to be, uh, made.And then we understand. How many texts and calls we need to send out to your existing customer base in order to, to. Um, you know, create the, those many maintenances or jobs. Yeah. And we, and we just kind of do that in a continuous way. And so, um, that's more so leveraging, you know, members, existing customer base, any pre, you know, historic customers in order to keep your board full.Um, and so, so that's kind of a agentic workflow that. That's been working really, really well, uh, for, for some of our larger customers recently. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I think I heard someone the other day talking about like LSA management or GBP management, uh, which would be kind of interesting. Um, yeah, I, I think there's something to do there and, and I don't know what it is, but like we're trying to work on it.The, the first one we're actually like. Oh, the first one we're actually like working on and prepping to ship is like a cost comparison tool. We've tried to find these things outta market, but what, what we, and I have like five friends that have built this now, which is kind of funny, but every invoice that comes in compare it against another invoice and match the sku.So like, did a copper fitting from this supplier cost the same, more or less than this supplier? And like, are you driving best in class pricing? That's so funny. Uh. I remember his name, uh, Eric, I think it was Eric Maxon from A-P-H-C-C conference that I went to two years ago, had that idea and we, we were almost thinking about building a, a, like a workflow for him, uh, at that point.Maybe we should reconsider it, but his perspective was like, for any per, like RFP. For parts. Yeah. Like, uh, he wanted an agentic process whereby we would effectively conduct the RFP for him. Yeah. Like say, here's what we need for a project. Here's the parts. Reach out to email 10 suppliers, or call, get their quotes, see who has the best quotes, narrow down to three, and then have them like bake off against each other.Yeah. And just run that entire thing genetically. Um, so yeah, seems, seems like, you know, we're getting to the point where that is possible. The tricky part is always like the kind of. Um, the details and the nuances so that, you know, you don't, you don't make weird Yeah. Like mistakes and you're actually, and also able, like connect all the systems together.Yeah. Well, the challenge, the challenge we found is the SKU numbers or like the written description. So like the AI has to be able to pick up the context that, hey, this is a, they're saying this is SKU number 1, 2, 3, 4, and these guys are saying a SKU number 5, 6, 7, 8. It's the same thing. It's hard. And so that we're finding is the hard part is like how do you connect different descriptions, different skew numbers and use context, but Exactly.And it's like two things that sound similar might also be a slightly different. Yeah. You know, I mean I think the potential advantage is you could probably drive like 20% material savings. Like I think it can be easily very real cost savings. RFP, like no, I feel like people don't really think about it that much.But, um, I had a case in, uh, at BCG with, uh, this company called Restaurant Depot. Yes. Um, they're a giant supplier. They're, they're like, uh, they're like the Costco for restaurants Yeah. Is the quick description. Um, but we ran some RFPs with their suppliers, um, 'cause they, they haven't changed them for like, for three years.And easily 20, 30% or, or more just by running an RFP? Yeah. Yeah. So we we're, we run ours regularly. What we probably should do is, maybe even the simplified version of that is like, when was the last time we ran an RFP against, like this skew bucket, water heaters, faucets, furnace, like whatever it is. We're probably on a quarterly basis, but some of them are extremely time consuming.Uh, we just ran a five month process for our VMI and I mean, it took a long time and then we ultimately ended up switching one of our VMI vendors. Um, but it, it was, it was a real process, but the savings are probably gonna be like 10 or 15%. Like it's meaningful and you know that on millions of dollars is a lot of money.It's a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, uh, yeah. How's, uh, yeah, business has been, uh, booming. How, how's Yeah. So our, what we're doing this year, and it's been kind of fun, um, we're bringing on these small tuck-in acquisitions, and I haven't started using it for deal sourcing. Like you said, mark from Golden Rule was doing.Like, I like that idea a lot. That's funny. Um, so we, what we're doing is like, we're, we're going into these small businesses, we're trying to find. Companies two to $5 million of, uh, revenue. And what's really interesting, you, you, you take o you forget the, um, you, what's the right way to put this? Like, we've invested so much into our infrastructure and our tech stack and like our internal capabilities.You forget how much, how far you are. Until you go look like take over a company that has not done any of that. And you're like, yeah, you're like, holy shit. Um, so that has been kind of fun because we're walking into these businesses and it's like, oh my God. You know, we don't have, we don't have twenty four seven phone answering.Like, what are we doing? Uh, we don't have a speed to lead, so I can't even use like, most of our lead partners because they would just, it would go nowhere. Um. Dispatching is still very manually like no one's touching dispatch yet. There's no like, you know, SMS campaign to schedule appointments, so they're not really utilizing their previous customer base overall.Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's really interesting to, so we did two acquisitions so far this year and we're prepping for our third one right now. We close in like a week. And, um, it's you, it's wild to walk into these businesses and. See the amount of opportunity that you have. And that's like, kind of like the low hanging stuff to like, hey, well we can just add twenty four seven call center and like your board will fill, we can add speed to lead and I can use for leads.That's by that, by just being 24 7 on Google, you're gonna get an extra, you know, however many leads a day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, the company we took it over, um, we took a small one over. It was a million and a half of revenue. In January 1st, and in their first month, like a million and a half revenues, like 1 10, 1 20 a month.In their first month we did 240. Wow. So double it. It was wild. And it was like we turned on more leads. We responded to 'em faster. Uh, the, the call twenty four seven call center took a minute to launch. Uh, actually, I, I gotta find out when that launched, but. Um, because some of it takes time, but it, it is funny.You walk into these small businesses, you're like, you are fighting with two hands tied behind your back for, for basically no, no real reason at all. Like, you, you can just go get the technology to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really a great, I, I mean, for PE especially, I think that's something that. Is, uh, is just like a very easy, easy win.I mean, we, we've launched now throughout all of, uh, of Sila, like, uh, the entire, uh, country. That's crazy. And. They have, um, they have a requirement now. Yeah. Every new acquisition they make, um, they, they'll just like have us onboard them in like one of the first month, all that stuff. Yeah. So just get that taken care of and yeah.I mean, for you, I'm imagine it's, it's amazing you're getting to buy these smaller companies that. You know, low mos balls. Yeah. And then tuck that into the, the main business. And also double, it's like, just like stacking, um, you know, stacking wins on top of each other. Yeah. I mean, it really has been. We, so, and like we're still figuring out the, you know, we've done a ton of acquisitions over the years.Um, but like figuring out how to centralize is its own journey. 'cause when we've done acquisitions over the years. We, we didn't really centralize, we just sort of combined, but these new acquisitions are in new markets and we're running them as new locations. So centralizing is, is a whole topic now. So, hey, are we centralizing?Call center dispatch, install coordination. Are we centralizing tech stack? Are we centralizing into one ServiceTitan or multiple and just like trying to work through all the nuance of that and like, is this company TCPA approved? 'cause that's like, I mean, that's a thing that's a big thing right now. It's that is huge.Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, just trying to like figure out our central, so we, how we started it was, Hey, we're gonna run these things a little bit separate. And after a month it's, it was like, Hey, I, we actually have to centralize this, this. Like if we can combine call center, if we can combine tech stack, if we can like do all of this in one thing, this is better.So the Cila thing makes sense to me. Like are they, that's not, they're all in like separate instances, right? Of ServiceTitan. Okay. So it's not like one giant instance. Yeah. Okay. Multitenant. Yeah, exactly. They got multi-tenant, um, architecture going, so yeah. Uh, but it's, um, yeah, it's, it's really fascinating.I mean, how do you determine, um, when you do these tuck-ins, do, do you, do they all go under, um, you know, the Wilson brand or like, how do you, how do you determine like what goes under versus like stays its independent brand? Uh, yeah. Um, I, if it's close, historically, we've always rebranded just to Wilson.Yeah, we're trying to decide we're, we're going through that exact same question right now. So we, we closed on one in Indiana and we're about to do one, um, in another state. And both of those, it's a little bit more of a question mark, right? They don't know the Wilson name. That doesn't mean anything to them.We have no brand equity there. These brands do have some brand equity, but they've been under invested in, um, so I don't know the answer. I mean, like normal PE. They tend to not rebrand because there's a lot of risk inside that rebrand. Um, so the way we've thought about it is how is, uh, I, I think there's some efficiency to be gained on the rebrand.Building one brand is probably more like valuable as a business over time. Um, I, I think. I think there's nuance. So one of 'em will probably rebrand the other one we won't, the larger one, 'cause it's like seven or 8 million and I feel like there's probably some brand equity there. The other one's 3 million and I think we could rebrand that pretty safely.But I think the answer is, it depends. Um, horizon seems to, I mean, Dave rebrand all of 'em. Yeah. Are any of those launched or are they all acquired or kind of a mix? Um, I don't know actually. Um, we, we are, um, yeah, I think we're, um, yeah, we, we know those guys. Um, we we're, we're not, uh, like live with any of 'em.Okay. Well, I mean maybe, uh, you, you talked about Golden Rule a second ago. Do you know like is he multi-location? Um, yes he is. And is he rebring 'em to Golden Rule, or is it just sort of like. Um, I think that there, uh, I believe so. Uh, there's also, and, and then there's, he has some other brands too, like roofing, but I believe that the plumbing HVAC is, uh, is Golden Rule.Yeah. I think he's just like built a pretty, uh. Uh, kinda unique brand that, that he's Yeah, exactly. Trying to add onto. Yeah. But yeah, with Sila, it's also, it's very, it's very, uh, situational. Like sometimes he'll roll 'em into the, the Sila, um, uh, main brand, like have Sila in it, like Cila something. Yeah.Sometimes they'll like, you know, like Jackson Comfort will be, you know, remain Jackson comfort, so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I feel like, uh, maybe it's size, maybe it's geography. Um. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what it is, but it, it is interesting how, how much like as you, something that I think is kind of interesting.I was talking with a friend of mine about deploying ai, uh, I don't know, yesterday, and he's, he's a small business. He's like a $3 million plumbing HVAC contractor. This dude's shipping, like, like we talked about earlier, this dude is just like fucking, every tool that he can Yeah. He's just like, you know, vibe coating.Yeah, it's hilarious. So like living off of Red Bulls and, um, so like, you have that like contractor, that's the small contractor that's just like pumping AI tools into their business faster than they can move. And then you have. Um, like the, the pe the large, large cons. It doesn't even have to be pe but just like the large contracting business, um, maybe it's a hundred plus million.I, I don't know what we wanna consider large here, but, um, and that seems to be a much slower process, which obviously makes sense. There's more people, there's more jobs, there's more layers, there's more all that stuff. Um, but what I, what I kind of find interesting about that is the level of what could be gained.Is so different. Uh, so like the a another example, I have a, I have a, my friend, uh, Sam over at Service Scalers, he's shipping shit like crazy. And like one of the conversations we had is like, scorpion's, not like no one could tell me that Scorp, like the CEO of Scorpions, like vibe coding is fucking way through, uh, like whatever they want to build for Scorpion.And, but like if Scorpion did, they'd probably save $20 million. Yeah, so I, I, yeah, I don't, how are you, like, what are you seeing for like these large consolidators, like what's the pace of technology adoption? Are they getting what they were after, like this cost savings or are they not moving fast enough?'cause my perception is the small guy is going crazy and they're getting good benefits, but the big guy could save like five or $10 million by deploying the right stuff. Absolutely. I mean, what we're seeing, we, we do work with probably now 10, you know, billion plus revenue home service businesses. Um, that's, that's, that's, that's a ridiculous statement.Just, just off the, like, that is, that's crazy. Like, that didn't exist 10 years ago, but, all right. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Mark said when he first joined, um, Nexstar, the big cat in the room was Horizon, uh, at the time, which was like, uh, like 40 million or something. Oh, 40 would've been gigantic. 40 was exactly, that was the elephant in the room.A $40 million company. We, it's insane. Yeah, yeah. Oh, like I'm 40 this year and I still feel like an infant, like, yeah. Um, but uh, yeah, I will say that, um, you know, to kind of your, your kind of the two parts of it, um, a hundred percent, I do think that companies that have the, you know, quote unquote, like AI native like way of, of being built, even home service companies, um, you can just ingratiate that into the DNA, right?Instead of. Having this huge call center or this, you can have one person that is, um, you know, uh, a kinda an agent whisperer or like an agent manager that's really good and just like being able to do a lot of things. And if you start it with that DNA in mind, it's a lot easier to grow without, uh, you know, grow efficiently.Um, and, but, but exactly like these larger companies. I would say there's, it's usually fallen two camps. Um, some that are very, um, ai like f like forward Yeah, and tech forward generally. Um, those folks, they, they're down to go fast and they have alignment, like all the executives are aligned. The board is aligned, like, Hey, this is, AI is an existential threat.You have to, we have to incorporate into the business quickly. We typically work with more folks like that and, and you know, if, if everyone is aligned and kind of rowing in the same direction, it is very tough. There's still a lot of, you know, change management. You have to fundamentally change a lot of operational processes in the business, but you can go very quickly.Yeah. And exactly. We've seen case studies, tens of millions of dollars in terms of revenue uplift and also like, you know. Uh, cost savings as well. Um, and, but then there are folks that are a little bit more traditional, careful. Um, and so yeah, with those folks, um, they, ty they typically like to just, you know, go a little bit slower, uh, and just like kind dip their toe into it a little bit, like, uh, and to, to, you know, some degree.It's, it's fair as well. I think the worst case you, you can be is someone that doesn't have like the processes in place. But, and you're really gung-ho about ai. Yeah. Then you're just gonna fuck yourself. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of businesses that don't use AI and are still like, extremely successful.Um, a a ton of them. Yeah. Uh, don't use any type of capacity planning, like, um, and, and just like, you know, stick to the, you know, the old ways and, and do things really well. Like, those businesses can be very successful too. Mm-hmm. Um, so one of my, one of my favorite examples of that, which I think is like. Is is funny are, are you working with Four Seasons?Yes. So, so the, Hey, they, uh, I think they're like a funny, obviously they've built an incredible business and they've like, they've led the charge like for the industry. Like it's an incredible business. Dave is also, uh, Dave is also just an incredible person overall. Dave, he's a, he's a great guy. I've only talked to him once or twice, but like, he's, he's awesome.You know, you know, he is a Porsche, uh, uh, race car, like a Porsche, uh, race driver. I, hell yeah. Dave. Like pop. Yeah, pop off, dude. That's hilarious. Um, but yeah, it, it's an awesome business. But I, I think something that was really interesting about them is, um. I, I think they're adapting now, obviously, like they're using ai, but like two years ago or three years ago, whenever Core Tech got involved, like, I don't think they were using ServiceTitan yet.They were using like a legacy CRM that they, no, they're still not using ServiceTitan. Okay. So, yeah, so they were, they were using a legacy CRM that they self-designed in like 1990 or early two thousands or something like that. And I, I think so. I mean, honestly, that's kind of interesting that they're using AI when still using that.Uh, tool. Like what, how, how, I mean, I guess I don't need to know how that works, but that is, that is interesting. Uh, yeah, it's kinda interesting. Like, uh, the way I see it is, I, I use this analogy a few times. It's like, like China actually, a lot of countries they don't, they never use like credit cards. But now they've kind of just skipped forward.Or like, for example, they didn't have, have, they just use Apple Pay or something, training infrastructure, and it's like they skipped that entire, like, generation and now they've just kind of skipped into the future. Um, it's ki it's kind of like a similar uh, thing. Like, funny enough, if you never got onto the, some of the modern tech stack of home services.Like some folks we're seeing is like they're going from their own, like self-made or like on-prem CRMs right into the future of agents. Uh, and that weirdly enough because they, they definitely know they need to switch off the legacy platform is almost sometimes a smoother transition 'cause they've essentially gotten to skip over, um, an entire, uh, kind of, uh, tech generation That is wild.That is wild. Yeah. So what, what's the, I'm I'm trying, I'm trying to imagine and, and this is 'cause like when I think about my dispatch board, I think about my service Titan dispatch board. So how much deployment can happen inside someone that's like on a homemade CRM. 'cause this is becoming a bigger conversation now, like more and more companies.Yeah. Our actual, like, I made a joke about it earlier in the show, but more and more people are attempting to like to save a hundred grand a year and not do a conventional ServiceTitan route. Uh, so like how does that work? Like what does deployment look like? Yeah. So with agents like you, again, for us, um, and, and I'm sure like, you know, other folks too.Uh, we're pretty CRM agnostic, like you can use a CRM, but at the end of the day, all we're using, um, to run the agents are APIs into the CRM. And if you think about it, it's just like the CRM is a UI on top of, uh, a database. And if we're using APIs where obviously bypassing the UI layer directly, just, um, you know, talking to the database layer.Um, so really any, any CRM that has a database. Uh, is, is applicable. Um, and even some people that like just have a database like we, we could also, you know, work with technically. Uh, so I would say there's, how many large companies are you seeing that are just database. Not many by and large, you know, most folks, uh, that we work with are on a, uh, ServiceTitan or a Salesforce, um, or an I 360.Yeah. You know, accurate. You know, there's a lot of these different ones. Um, that's interesting. But yeah, the beauty of the agents is that they can work, uh, as long as there's API keys. Or some way to kind of speak to an underlying data source. Um, the agents can work on top of it. So this, this came up as a topic, uh, on the show I think about a year and a half ago.And if we think about, um, like what could AI do? Uh, I, I don't, I think this was, uh, I don't even think this was me. It was Chris. Chris Hoffman said it, and he was talking about. The, the dream scenario is one day could his company run and it's 150 or $60 million or whatever it is, four or 500 techs. Could it run off of Jobber or House Call Pro and could they reduce their opex by half a million dollars a year?If it, if we're like basically just referring to a database because the, the big problem that you have to solve. Like you don't even need reporting. 'cause you could have an AI bot, like you could pull the data out and manipulate it in whatever way you want. You can pull it. I mean, even for us, like we don't even, you know, for, we have, we use HubSpot, uh, and HubSpot reporting is notoriously ask.Yeah. Like just completely trash. Uh, and so we uh, have just started to create views. Uh, funny enough, like a lot of times we don't even use decks anymore. Our, our, like VP of sales has gotten so good and, and, you know, soon I think everyone will, we're spinning up like super, super nice decks completely on Claude.Um, so to your point exactly like these, all these things can be spun up now with Claude. Um, it's interesting. I mean, there's still a lot of value to a nice CRM. Um, in, in a lot of these, like, you know, accounting and, and all these workflows. Yeah. Um, it's still important to have one, but, um, but like at what price I think is the, I think is the, at what price I think is the question.A lot of people, a lot of people do feel, feel that I think the, yeah, like, like as the value is, is um, is kind of, uh, going more and more to the, to the agent and like AI worker level. Um, yeah, it's a, it's a question a lot, a lot of people are asking. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, Chris's thoughts at, at the moment, I think were, um, really the only problems I have to solve are what's my technician interface like, what are they entering, invoice and like price, booking and, and payments and like, those are the three sort of core problems.And then you just have to determine how much is that worth paying. Because it's a lot. I mean, what would your, I mean, what would happen to you if you, if your business, um, let's say like in three months had to move to, uh, I dunno, jobber, um, since you mentioned that one, like what, how would that impact things for you?I mean, it'd be probably a shit show, but I think what we would have to figure out is exactly this problem. We're like, Hey, we do rely on reporting, we rely on payroll features, we rely on accounting features. We would have to, we would have to like deploy a I deeper rebuild. Yeah. We would've to rebuild those phones because Housecall pro's not made to run us.Um, and so I think we'd have to figure that out. But I also think someone's gonna figure it out. Like, I think that, like the cost savings is worth figuring it out, but you can imagine a person starting out with like a 1 million, 2 million, that's a little bit tech savvy. Yeah. They could literally, if they started building their, uh, business on top of Snowflake and then just, um, you know, connected Snowflake to cloud code and built a set of dash, like all the dashboards they need in ui, um, you know, that could be, and then they just scaled it like that.That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think how, how far away do you think like, well, I, I guess on, on the, on the PE side, the, the one thing that I think. Keeps big CRMs, having like market share aside from like long-term contracts is who's gonna buy the business. And if Apex is on ServiceTitan, then they're gonna want you to be on ServiceTitan.And I think that that's the, it's almost like the, because it's the legacy infrastructure for some time until somebody giant. Does something different. It, I mean, maybe, I mean, Salesforce is probably just the same price as ServiceTitan. It's probably like, yeah, exactly. There's some folks that have, I know are, you know, thinking about it.But with the, all the implementation, it's probably, I think, a little cheaper. But with the implementation costs of having to kind of retrofit Salesforce for service business, it's, it, it'd be like the same or more expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I don't suspect, I mean, I guess you tell me, like, sounds like some people are like talking to you about this.Is big PE talking about this or is this just the contractor that's like looking at this line item? There's a few, there's some big PEs obviously. I won't name any names. Yeah. Like they're thinking about it for sure. I mean, obviously we all know that, um, there's one big P that's not on ServiceTitan. Uh, but yeah, there's been chatter.Um, there certainly has been, uh, but I do think, I don't see, I don't see, you know, in the next, uh, you know, three, four years, uh, like a, uh, you know, a, a departure from ServiceTitan from the top 20 PEs. Yeah. It'd be, yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah. Too much. It's like too much switching costs. Too much switching risk.Yeah, but I, it is interesting because I think in the next couple, in those three to four years that these companies won't move. They're going to have to figure out how to integrate people that custom built their own fucking CRMs, because people are starting to do it. Like it is. It's funny, there's a, there's a guy in Pennsylvania, he's got a $5 million shop and he custom built his own CRM.He vi, he vibe coded it with Claude like two weeks ago. He put it on Twitter and I'm like, all right dude, let's go.Yeah, it's, uh, it is, it's certainly, certainly crazy. And, and who knows what's gonna be possible, you know, six months, one year from now. Yeah. That's gonna get, that's funny, man. So, what, what else is coming up? What, what else is coming up for you guys? What's next for, for, uh, Tyson and the Evoke team? Team? Yeah.Well, we just did a pretty big, um, feature launch, uh, a new product called avo. Okay. Is, uh, it's kinda like the Jarvis for, it's kinda like the Jarvis for being able to control your business, uh, in one interface. So John, imagine being able to, um, we gotta show you and Lori this soon. Uh, imagine like a chat GBT like interface, like a terminal.Yeah. Where you can ask it any question about, you know, plugs into all of your Oh, okay. Um, uh, you know, data, uh, conversations. You can ask, oh, what was my booking rate, uh, you know, last week. What was my revenue, um, in this location, uh, during, uh, winter, uh, storms and uh, that's interesting. What were the top reasons my calls weren't unbooked?Were, uh, going unbooked. So you can ask it. All these interesting questions directly get insights instead of needing to comb and filter through like a bunch of these different views. And the coolest part is it has right functionality as well. Okay. So you can say, hey, like what are all the outstanding unsold estimates?Filter, uh, sort that by, uh, a day of estimate, okay. For all estimates that are over four days old, um, you know, do, do this to them or do that or like, send an SMS campaign, send a drip campaign with number one, number two, number three. So just a really cool thing I think for, um, no, that's really cool for owners to be able to control their business.Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean that is, that is really cool. It reporting is tough. Um, I was actually. And maybe, maybe I'm just, um, I'm in like a weird zone where we're not small and we're not big. Uh, but I was trying to like, access data today and honestly it was kind of a pain in the nuts to get the information I was trying to get.'cause like I, I touched ServiceTitan reports. Once every three months. Like I, you know, it's at this, at the, they've been auto emailed to me for years, so I haven't had to build something in like a long time. And I'm trying to like fumble my way through this. Uh, and it was, it was kind of ridiculous versus like, yeah, it like just a query makes total sense.And that's what everyone's used to now anyways. Like, just ask chat, GBT like, hey, what, what happened here? Like, walk me through it. So that makes a ton of sense. That's sweet. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I think it'll be, then another nice part about that is it's a, it'll be a way to directly control your agents as well and like update them.Like, Hey, we need to update, you know, before you would need us sometimes either go into this portal or, um, you know, ask your CSM to make updates. Now you can just ask Avo to make this update to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. That's really sweet. I'm, I'm into that a lot. Yeah, that's, uh, that's one thing. Um, other than that, uh, we opened a Santa Barbara location Nice.Around two months ago, so. That was, uh, yeah, it's, uh, our first, um, uh, our, our first new office, uh, uh, and, uh, yeah, really excited. I'm gonna go down and, and visit those guys, uh, next week. Um, and then, um, yeah, I think I'm, I, I kind of me mentioned this very briefly, uh, but I'm starting, uh, my own podcast, uh, uh, Avoca podcast called Trade Secrets from the Ground Up.Okay. Uh, and that'll probably premiere, uh, I think, uh, in early April. Oh, nice. Well, yeah, probably by the time this goes out you'll have an episode or two out, so we should be able to link to the show is, it's on Spotify, apple, YouTube, like pretty much everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do, we'll do it all. And, and the premise is really to highlight, um, you know, really outstanding home service founders and operators.That have, um, built businesses from the ground up. And so for, you know, all the folks out here listening around, you know, wanting to start a home service business, thinking about taking the lead. Yeah. Uh, you know, you can hear, hear what it takes and how to, um, how to move in this new world of, uh, you know, AI first world.Yeah. Yeah. That sounds awesome, dude. That sounds awesome. Well, thanks for coming on today. This was a fun conversation. Uh, if people want to get ahold of you or contact you or find out more, like where can they find you? You're on Twitter now. Uh. Uh, yeah, I have, I have a Twitter. I'm still not big on it. Uh, my, yeah, my email, um, is, uh, is just Tyson at Avoca ai and, uh, of course you can, uh, find us, uh, uh, get a demo of the product just by visiting the, the website.Awesome. Thanks man. Thanks for coming on and, uh, everyone, if you like what you heard, make sure you like and sub.
