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Owned and Operated #191 - How AI Is Transforming Lead Generation and Market Expansion
Want to grow your HVAC, plumbing, or roofing business using AI, lead generation, and marketing automation? In this episode of Owned and Operated, we dive into how artificial intelligence is transforming the home service industry. Host John Wilson sits down with James Zaner from Modernize to explore cutting-edge strategies for using AI-powered tools to generate high-quality leads, automate operations, and expand into new markets. Whether you're a contractor, service business owner, or operator looking to scale, this episode is your playbook for growth through AI integration, customer segmentation, and smart marketing systems.
Discover how top-performing service businesses are leveraging AI for business growth, customer acquisition, and operational efficiency. James shares how Modernize uses tools like ChatGPT, CRM systems, and AI automation to improve sales productivity, nurture long-term customer value, and drive sustainable expansion. From optimizing lead generation funnels to implementing AI agents and marketing tech stacks, you’ll learn exactly how to modernize your service business and stay ahead in a competitive market.
🚨 In This Episode, We Cover:
🔹 How Modernize uses AI to scale lead generation and improve ROI
🔹 Real-world applications of ChatGPT and automation in business operations
🔹 The importance of customer segmentation and CRM in growth
🔹 Why modernizing traditional trades is crucial for future-proofing
🔹 How to align marketing strategy with long-term customer value
🔹 Market expansion tactics driven by smart data and AI
💼 Special Thanks to Service Scalers!
We’ve been partnering with Service Scalers to maximize our Local Service Ads (LSAs) and optimize our Google My Business profiles, and the results have been incredible. With hundreds of thousands in sales and 900+ calls in a single week, GMBs are now our top-performing organic lead channel.
Want to learn how Service Scalers can do the same for you?
💼 Shoutout to Avoca AI!
Looking to train your call center and improve technician performance? Avoca AI helps teams identify issues, improve call quality, and drive results from start to finish.
🎙️ Episode Host:
🗣️ John Wilson
🎙️ Episode Guest:
🗣️ James Zayner
Episode 191 Transcript
James Zayner: [00:00:00] How are you guys using AI just in your business to drive more, we get quite a few leads coming in from ai. AI are starting to know, like and trust brands. You can look state by state, city by city, company by company. You can check on your competitors. It's changed my life and my team has effectively doubled their output.
John Wilson: Welcome back. To owned and operated. Uh, today in studio I have James Zaner from Modernize. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, John. I. So the latest thing that we've been working on is maximizing our LSAs, which is local service ads, and also optimizing our Google My Business profiles. So what that means is we're making sure that all of our LSAs are on when we need them, and they're maximized to give us the best ROI.
And then for GMBs, it's been partnering with service scalers to drive. Way more traffic through our GMBs. GMBs are almost like the new [00:01:00] SEO. The more you put onto them, the better the performance. So our GMBs have been consistently getting better week after week after week, and it is our currently, our single most impactful.
Organic lead channel. So we'll sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a week through our GMBs. And I think last week we got 900 phone calls. So really impactful, awesome investment, and we've been able to partner with service scalers on both of those things. If you wanna hear a little bit more about Service scalers, check out service scalers.com.
This is gonna be a lot of fun. Uh, now you do have the unfortunate pleasure. Uh, following up Jamie. Uh, we had her on the show maybe two months ago. And just an incredible conversation. Uh, so you're gonna have to like take it up a notch.
James Zayner: Jamie Smith is a gangster in our industry. She really is. Yeah. She's four foot 11.
Oh, okay. And she comes from a consulting background, so she has like this like McKinsey esque way of going about things. Okay. She's my [00:02:00] boss. Um, one of the reasons why I love working at Modernize. And so yeah, it's, it's gonna be a tough follow.
John Wilson: Modernize. We, we did a really deep dive, but if someone hasn't heard of it yet, what's like a real quick 60 seconds on Modernize.
James Zayner: So Modernize is a lead partner.
John Wilson: I learned that last episode. Yeah.
James Zayner: Yeah. We love, we love the shift into that because there's so much more going on in our space.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: So there's a variety of marketing services companies in the industry. Companies like Modernize Angie Home Buddy. We're lead partners. What Modernize does specifically is we provide four different products.
Uh, one being your shared lead. It is shared if you wanna play the game, fight and, and win your 25% of the yeah, of the share. And that's like a one in four. Yeah, one in four split. Some companies do more. Yeah, I, I've heard some of our competitors say five, six, so yeah, we do four and then we do calls. So we have a live transfer call.
We will transfer over from our call center. We'll pre-qualify. We'll try to make sure that they're not looking for [00:03:00] government grants or anything. And then we also do inbound calls, which is great for like Resto, which you're getting into.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: Also HVAC if your, uh, unit's out, plumbing, if your water heater is having problems.
So those inbound calls are great. We're getting into other exteriors as well, like roofing, siding.
John Wilson: Yeah, we, well, when we talked to Jamie, uh, plumbing was like up and coming.
James Zayner: So we launched, we're always launching new trades. That's fucking sick. Yeah. And then so we saw that expansion was the way to grow into the future.
So we've launched like, like trade line extension, like Yeah. Okay.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah.
James Zayner: So we launched, I think we're up to like close to 10 new trades over the past 12 months. Mm-hmm. Uh, plumbing was one of them. Yeah. Plumbing was one of our first plumbing's an interesting one because what's the difference between a leaky faucet?
And so you're like figuring out that whole thing in the form submission process. Also in the customer intent journey. Like they don't know what the problem is.
John Wilson: Yeah. When, when you're thinking, and this is just like a nuts and bolts question, and then we can like, dive into the actual stuff here. Yeah. But [00:04:00] like, do you know how like new.
Market expansion goes, is that like boots on the ground? Is that cold calling? Is that cold Emailing, like, because I, I, what I assume happens is you cover a map like, hey, I want to take over the Midwest. Or maybe it's even wider because like the more data, the cheaper the lead, like the more reps you can get on your spend, the cheaper the lead.
So if you're covering this data point, how do you actually get. Buyers of the leads, how do you find them?
James Zayner: Word of mouth is great. Yeah, that's always a good one. So there's a variety of ways of going about it. Currently we're going through a few initiatives, but I mean even just standard bottom funnel, SEMI need home improvement leads.
Um, yeah, it's like in for our business though, you, you have to really think about margin. Because we are selling a tangible product that we in some ways are acquiring for a cost or purchasing for a cost.
John Wilson: The the [00:05:00] lead
James Zayner: being the tangible product, the lead being the tangible product. And so it's almost like e-commerce in a way.
But we've got this marketplace too, where we've got two sides where we're fulfilling. I. Um, so we really have to focus on, in the end the margin.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: And so that's where we're going out. We have 4,400 combinations of DMAs and trades that we're constantly looking at where the margin debt is. Yeah. And we're trying to fulfill that way.
So we're going SEM targeting in our most important areas. We're, we have a full mid-market sales team where we're directing them towards accounts that we're scraping from. Mm-hmm. Our most priority areas, and then handing them over. And then also this, uh, new program, we're starting out with networks and, and partnerships, which is Oh, okay.
I don't, I've heard about that.
John Wilson: And networks is another lead partner. Like we've used them in the past,
James Zayner: not networks, um, with an X Networks as in like franchise networks, partnership networks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like nexstar. Yeah. That'd be sweet. Yeah. Okay. So. What we're getting into now, because [00:06:00] we, we have the ability to like identify where we need targets.
I can get Hatch on the phone and say, Hey, do you know anybody? What do you have? Yeah, yeah. Do you know anybody here that can help us out?
John Wilson: That's interesting. Yeah. And that increases their
James Zayner: stickiness too, I guess, but, well, yeah, especially with us, we're Hatch's largest lead throughput partner, so Really? Yeah.
So it, it, I think. Hmm. Co-selling with Hatch is a, is very, um, beneficial for us. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. Whoever thought of that,
James Zayner: me.
John Wilson: That's a good idea. Hey James, that's a good idea. I got a lot of good ideas to talk about today. I'm pumped. Hey, Jamie. Uh, James has a lot of good ideas. Okay. How do you think about the introduction of AI and what I'm in?
What I'm specifically thinking of at the moment is like Thumbtack integration with. Chat. GPT. Sure. The operator, right? Yeah. Chat. GPT Operator. Yeah. How are you guys thinking about that? And then how are you guys using AI just in your business to drive more
James Zayner: Surprisingly? Um, we get quite a few leads coming in from ai, whether it's chat, [00:07:00] GPT, rock, um, there's a variety of 'em.
So even just starting to learn more about how to get placed. And that's 'cause you're like showing up in search. Yeah, you show up in search. I think that helps. I don't know if talking to AI improves your results, like feeding it information, does that go back to the the mainframe?
Speaker 8: Yeah,
James Zayner: I'm not quite sure.
I imagine ais are starting to know, like, and trust brands. I. Similar to a human.
Speaker 8: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: And so I wonder how that has an impact, if there is a lot of like interesting public slander about a company, is Chachi PT gonna recommend it?
John Wilson: Oh, yeah. I wonder how much of that would be like, locked off, you know, I'm imagining like, uh, nextdoor or Facebook groups that they don't have invites to.
Like is that how available is that data?
James Zayner: Yeah. Well, yeah, for sure. Facebook's a, a walled garden. LinkedIn's a walled garden. Uh, we've been doing really good for organic on the B2B side. So that's been helping us and we started looking at the SGE results from Google. So there's a little down [00:08:00] arrow you can click to the right where it'll show you the articles.
It pulled its results from
John Wilson: Oh, for the AI spotlight or whatever the top, yeah, the AI spotlight.
James Zayner: And so we started looking into that and we started reaching out to different brands that had articles showing up in that for like best lead generators or whatever. Um, like asking for inclusion. But for AI as a whole, I.
Obviously with, you know, Avoca, you've got the gorillas, the ros.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
James Zayner: Um, engage, uh, I mean, keep naming 'em. They just keep coming Yeah. In this industry. And so there's, there's gonna be a lot of interesting stuff going on. I'm sure ServiceTitan has something planned in the works. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 7: Maybe
James Zayner: it's like revenue optimization or like profit margin optimization, things like that, that you could be easily using AI for.
I hope it's reporting.
John Wilson: Yeah, this is me requesting a feature, but I hope it's reporting. 'cause if they're reporting, you know, I was looking at um, I think it was House caller jobber or one of them, but instead [00:09:00] of like a reporting function, they just have a GPT. Yeah. Built inside it. And it is just better.
Like, Hey, here's what I want to know. Data. Yeah. It's so much better.
James Zayner: It does it, it could give it in a table. You can just ask for it. To give it in a table probably.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Here's what I want. Send it downloadable Excel.
James Zayner: Yeah, that's what I mean for me, that's what I've been using it a lot for is, um, we've got, uh, Quinn Street who is the corporate, uh, boss of us, modernizes a business unit within it, uh, Quinn Street by the way, publicly traded company, QNST on the stock market.
They've got a variety of different verticals, modernize being one of them. We have a lot of different systems and we kind of all like share. And so I kind of have to, for me to do a lot of, of my data. Research on what's going on. I have to kind of like pull spreadsheets and like do a lot of VLOOKUPs and like mm-hmm.
Or I could just kind of like drop that in and, and say, Hey, [00:10:00] I need this, this, and this brought together. Can you bring this, can you match these columns and then do this? And then it's done in a minute and 30 seconds versus me writing all the code for it. Yeah. So that's exciting. I have my whole team on, uh, chat, pt, they all have a license.
Mm-hmm. Uh, I had a training last year for them. On AI and what it can do. And it's, I mean, we've doubled our research output. So research, like I said, we have to go find companies, find contacts.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: There isn't really a database that covers the whole industry. And my team has effectively doubled their output recently.
'cause we built out this whole ingestion engine. I posted a video on LinkedIn about it. Long build, long build a lot of moving parts. And also user, it's like scraping. The internet,
John Wilson: everything.
James Zayner: Uh, I mean, you have to choose destinations, but yeah. And it come and the data comes in different, um, formats, and so you have to reformat it.
And so yeah, we found a [00:11:00] tool that helps us reformat, and then we get that back into Salesforce so we can assign it to our account executives. Mm-hmm. But yeah, AI is amazing. I, I talk to AI like it's a person. Mm-hmm. Which is I think, very helpful for people talk to ai, like it's a person, like it's an upworker that.
Completely understands English and understands everything, but it just needs context. Like it needs absolute perfect context and it'll do everything for you.
John Wilson: I was at, uh, we had a conference two weeks ago and one of our sessions was on using ai, right? It's everyone's thing right now, but. The feedback they gave, which I loved, which is exactly that, but like one more level down.
So treat it like it's a remote employee.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: And if I was hiring a remote employee today to do X task, what would I give them? I would give them a job description, I'd give them a couple SOPs. Um, I would give them like, the, here is what I expect from you. And then the beauty is you can just, you like, you can just ask, uh, whatever you're [00:12:00] using GPT or perplexity or whatever to give you that output.
Like, Hey, I need a data analyst position. Give me a job description. Yeah. Is roughly what I want. Yeah. Okay. Here it is. And then you just feed it back. Yeah. Uh, and I thought that was just a really. Easy way for me to wrap my head around increasing quality output was, Hey, this is an employee wrapped in a computer, and how do we just feed it exactly what I would give to a new accounts payable clerk for them to know what they're supposed to do.
James Zayner: And also the, I think that that mcps, uh, that's like getting more defined for your chat GBT instance. Mm-hmm. Like the ncps on, I think it's Claude, um, anthropic is using them. Yeah. You can hook it up to a database and like, so one thing that I don't think you all use, I don't know if you've ever heard of, have you ever heard of the shovels?
API?
John Wilson: No.
James Zayner: So Shovels, API is a database of all permitting across the us.
John Wilson: Oh, interesting. [00:13:00] I have a friend that uses this in, uh, Dallas. Okay. He's foundation repair and he uses it, I don't remember how he's scraping.
James Zayner: Yeah. Or what he's using for, so it's like 500 bucks a month. Yeah. You have access to the API. You probably have a limit on how many calls you can make.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: Um, but you can, you can look state by state, city by city, company by company. You can check on your competitors depending on if you're in a permitting trade or not. That's wild. And you could see the, the address, the possibly homeowner name and things like that because these are, this is public information.
It's a permit you have to file with the city. And so it's all public information. Huh? And so I'm gonna use that. Well now everybody's You better be first, first adopter. That's interesting.
John Wilson: Yeah. So, um, there's a really cool, and it gives you like, type. So like water heater,
James Zayner: stove. Well, do you use permits for water heater?
I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if you need a, yeah, it would tell you the type of job, what the permit was for. Like, they even have [00:14:00] like average job cost. So I can look up a company and I can look up, that's crazy. I can look up what they project, the revenue being based on the number of permits they've written.
T
John Wilson: what do you, what do you think the, um, feedback like time is? Could I pull yesterday's or probably like a month ago? Hmm. I'll assume a month.
James Zayner: I'd be more generous. I mean longer than a month. The way that No, no. I'm saying like I maybe two weeks, like I imagine that stuff's updated in near real time. Now most cities are on computers and like not operating in paper anymore, and so if it's on the internet and it has to get filed.
I, I mean, maybe I haven't looked, but I would I even if it's a month, that's pretty cool. Yeah. To know what your competitor did last month. Oh, absolutely. I'm fascinated.
John Wilson: I'm fascinated. And then you also see this is where I wish I could like get something up on the screen. Yeah. I would just pull somebody up.
That is really,
James Zayner: and I think the way you can think about it as well is you know the date that that [00:15:00] person got their unit change. So then you can put. A reach out task.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: 15 years in advance, which, I mean, it sounds crazy to most people, but as a long termist, like Wilson Plumbing.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: You know, in 15 years you should like, they're gonna need
John Wilson: something.
Yeah.
James Zayner: Yeah. You gotta, you gotta ask 'em what's going on.
John Wilson: I'm a big fan of that. That's wild.
James Zayner: Yeah. And so what you can do with that is with AI that the way I think about it, so we use a tool called Clay. Yeah. Clay is basically a spreadsheet on steroids. You can pump a bunch of API data into it and then you can use columns.
As like an AI researcher to go find out more information based on the data points you already have in the spreadsheet. Mm-hmm. That's what we do for the businesses. We'll go scrape business websites, how many trades do you offer, and then we'll put 'em in the format that, that our Salesforce accepts, so then we can import it easily.
Um, but I mean, it can be anything with like this shovels API where you could easily pull in all the data.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: Have like an easy lookup for like sort by competitor. Um, have an easy [00:16:00] lookup for what the average job cost was. And you're like, starting to find out, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm not in your position, but like, it just, the possibilities are endless for the type of information you Yeah.
I think like, you know, I'm thinking of
John Wilson: acquisitions, I'm thinking of that too. Yeah. So if somebody say, that's probably the highest, I mean, it, it's interesting for like curiosity. Yeah. Like, okay, like how big are these guys actually? But I think it would be a good funnel for like, oh, I've never even heard of these fucking guys, and they did 200 permits last year.
Like, who are they? Yeah. Um, and like they're in a territory.
James Zayner: I want, you can also see like, zip maps of like where, where it's, where it's hot right now.
John Wilson: Yeah. Okay. I
James Zayner: want this
John Wilson: a lot
James Zayner: right
John Wilson: now. Yeah, actually. Alright. Yeah. We're, we're, we're gonna dive into that. When, how do you think somebody, like how do you, so I, I wanna launch a new territory.
Mm-hmm. Uh, whether through acquisition or greenfield. How do I combine that data and like the tools of a lead partner? Yeah. To like win. Like how do you think I do that?
James Zayner: I have [00:17:00] this, uh, dream and I don't know if possible. So modernize is an amazing data company. We have a very sophisticated data team, very smart people.
Um, we have big Tableau dashboards reporting on as much as we possibly can down to like unique data points, right? And I haven't even seen it on the, the homeowner lead side, what all that data, but I know on like the B2B side, like I can go look at a, a map like Jamie did in, in her conversation. Yeah. Where it's like, what's the average close rate of this zip for this specific lead type.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: I know there's a program going on with our account managers where they can sit you down. They can look at all of, I heard you talking with, uh, Peterman about Greenfielding. Right. And how, how he's kind of gone and attacked areas that are an hour out Yeah. And how he chose those areas. And he maybe did it in his own sophisticated way.
But for you, if you were gonna start picking and choosing areas, you can look at supply and demand, and you can look at average split rate of [00:18:00] how much, how many people were selling leads to, and you could
Speaker 7: mm-hmm.
James Zayner: Honestly, just start answering calls for those areas and send a truck out.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: And then once you get enough work, you, you, you drop an office in.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: And you can like, probably experiment with certain areas and like maybe you try one for three months for a quarter and it, it didn't work out. And so you try the next one if you're actively pursuing greenfield expansion or acquisition. Mm-hmm. I imagine acquisition would be helpful if you, you see a concentrated area where.
Leads are selling a lot and there's somebody there that's probably, you'd have to probably, we wouldn't communicate with you probably who our customers are, but
Speaker 7: Yeah.
James Zayner: Um, you would find out whether or not, I mean, if they're a buyer of us, they're likely also a buyer of Angie.
John Wilson: Right.
James Zayner: Especially if you're good.
And they're also likely playing around with a bunch of other networks. Right. Really work with your partner. I, I'm not sure all the other partners do what we do. Yeah. So, I mean, if you wanna talk to modernizing, you wanna get in on. Figuring out how to scale into your next new zips. Mm-hmm. That's a good way is to work with our account management team.
John Wilson: You know, [00:19:00] when one of the things we were thinking about as we were thinking about our expansion is, um, like, yeah, we, where is there No, uh, we call them real, but, and I'm not trying to like, uh, dog larger companies, like some of the areas that we're identifying. There's a 15 to $20 million player. It's just that they're not very sophisticated.
So like they, they wouldn't have any idea how to make a lead partner like functionally work, like their tech stack's just not there. Mm-hmm. So we see that as like pretty easy pickings. Like yeah, there's a decent sized company, but like they don't really know what they're doing. Mm-hmm. Uh, which I maybe sounds ridiculous, but, and we're still act like figuring out.
We've roughly decided what we wanna do. We're like 99% there. But my 1% just keeps going back to the other side. But you have two opportunities when you're thinking about this, whether acquisitive or greenfield. Uh, do I want to go where the market's easy or do I want to go where the market's big? And it's a [00:20:00] big decision that really determines a lot.
Like I could go to Columbus where the market's big. That market is not easy. Like there's a lot of people in Columbus and, uh, like a lot of very real sophisticated competitors. Mm-hmm. I could go to Youngstown and there's nobody real or sophisticated. Uh, I think the biggest company's like $12 million.
Mm-hmm. Uh, which is still like close to mom and pop operationally. So they just, it, you know, that's easy. Like, okay, we could run $10 million there relatively easily, but then that's probably the cap. So then you run into the. That's the biggest we could ever get there, versus Columbus could support another $50 million branch.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: And Chad's a good example of, he tended to choose easier markets 'cause they were an hour away. Uh, and he says it himself, he, they look for C markets, they look for markets where they can go in and win. Yeah. Yeah. Dayton. Louisville, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The, the downside with that is eventually they hit a cap and that is just the biggest it will ever [00:21:00] get.
And it sounds to me. Like that's probably what we're gonna do. But it is harder to run 10 small branches than two giant ones.
James Zayner: Not if you know though, that there is an ultimate that you can just get to and stop and you don't have to worry about scaling anymore. Yeah. Like that's kind of cool to know.
John Wilson: Like I know that's his perspective is he tries to stop before they hit 15.
'cause at 15 is when you have to add like real. Infrastructure. Yeah. But under 15 he was saying like there's like six guys in a shop. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like a $10 million company. If you don't have to add like real, like, Hey, do I need an HR person? Yeah. Do I need a controller on site? Yeah. Like do I need purchasing on site for that branch?
If you don't have to add that, it is just a cash cow. 'cause all of it's fed from headquarters. Yeah. Drive the trucks out like he was saying. So that is beautiful. Yeah. I mean that is beautiful. He's just ripping gross margin.
James Zayner: Yeah. I, I like his model. I think, um, well, the Columbus market, what's interesting is I would identify, like, [00:22:00] and I'm not, I'm new to this, so I might be talking outta my ass.
Let's go. Um, it's, it all comes down to real estate and brand, right? Like how powerful is their brand? Yeah. What kind of real estate do they, not real estate, hard real estate, but real estate on the internet.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah.
James Zayner: What's their digital real estate impact? Like, how much are they being talked about on the local message boards?
Like Yeah. Do they have that going for them? Because if they have that. Then you can at least immediately walk in and drop a moat. Yeah. And then start operating like
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: If, especially if they're not using a good modern tech stack.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: Like that's the easy improvement right there. You're gonna see significant wins, but, um, minus the four seasons.
Those are the, you're saying they're doing it without the tech stack, but Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. That's, that's still amazing. I remember reading one of their, a friend of mine competes, uh, I think you mentioned him before we got on Air Isaac.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
John Wilson: Uh, awesome guy. Like, took the business from six to like, I think 24 in like three years.
No way. Freaking crazy and like really inspirational. Like Yeah. He's a, he's a fun person to, uh, be friends [00:23:00] with, but he can, he competes directly with Four Seasons. Okay. In Chicago. And he sent me one of their job like posts. Yeah. And it was so wildly specific. So someone has to know how to use this software.
Custom built in the eighties. Oh, and that's their CRM? Yeah. Yeah. So, so they, they couldn't hire this, like, in order to be an accountant at Four Seasons, you have to know how to use this software custom built in the eighties or like the framework.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah.
John Wilson: Uh, which is like absolutely wild to me. Yeah. I mean, it worked like, I can't really throw rocks at it.
They're nine times my size, but like, yeah, that's still like, holy smokes. And I bet that's a ship turn.
Speaker 8: Yes. I,
John Wilson: I wouldn't even know how to put that on ServiceTitan if I
James Zayner: wanted to. Titanic. Yeah. I, I'm impressed by Isaac. Like his whole story excites me. Yeah. Yeah.
John Wilson: Like, which, which part? Walk me through it.
James Zayner: Investment bank, banking analyst. Turned, uh, growth tech bro. Turned, uh, plumbing [00:24:00] company owner.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: And also I'm from Chicago. Okay. I was, yeah, I was born and born and raised in the suburbs there. So just, uh, understanding. His vibe. I loved his explanation of, um, his gorilla marketing stuff. Yeah. And how he's just attacking these blocks, um, which is Chicago.
I mean, it's all just boroughs, like, kinda like New York. Yeah. Yeah. And if you can just overtake a burrow, you get your sticker on the pizza box. Mm-hmm. People know your name like. Yeah, I think it's fun. I think it's fun that he kept the name too. Yeah. The Jay Blanton
John Wilson: might have been 21 or 22 that he bought it, but yeah, they're gonna close in the low twenties.
That's awesome. This year, I think it was 17 last year. That's awesome. This might be his third year 'cause he took it from six to 10, 10 to 16, 17 and now Yeah, mid twenties.
James Zayner: I, I wanted to, the, my favorite stat that you threw out recently was, uh, it wasn't recently. It was. Maybe a year ago it was, I think, on the Isaac call.
Yeah. 70% of your income is from memberships. Yeah. [00:25:00] Revenue. Yeah. Yeah. That's just super interesting one 'cause I. Just, um, learn as much as you can about those members.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We've done data studies on ours. What, what's been, what's been interesting is I, I was at this thing last October, so six months ago.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
John Wilson: And I was talking to this guy, he's a great operator, uh, I wanna say 45 ish million and like growing strong. And he started talking about how they gave away memberships. I was like, well, that doesn't like, walk me through it. Yeah. Could be like, I think we always wanna say like, that's dumb, but like, hey, like curiosity.
Like why? Um, and they have 10,000 members. Whoa. And it's a lot. That's a lot. But it's, it's an, he has a community. He has a community. But the interesting part is they, they, they segmented their, now they're in a, this is important. Like it, this is what I wanted to talk about. It's good for. It's good for where they are geographically.
Yeah. It would not work here in Cleveland. [00:26:00] Okay. But they are near a, an air force base. Yeah. So that, and that's important because they give away their memberships. Well, that's nice to anyone. Active or veteran. Yeah. So like huge win and like these guys are buying houses. Yeah. Yeah. These guys like, it's a great community that would, not that it would be cool for Cleveland, but like it.
Eventually you have to be, it would eat, it would eat away at the business. Yeah. So what we did is we did a, we do a customer study like once every four or five months, and we should do it every 90 days, but, um, it's every four or five months. And what we identified was like, Hey, here's our age, here's our typical customer.
Some of the trends were a bit concerning. Like a lot of our customers are older. Mm-hmm. Um, I don't know if that's the macro of Cleveland. I don't know if that's how we market. No, it's macro. Being
James Zayner: an old company.
John Wilson: Could be the macro being an old company.
James Zayner: Yeah.
John Wilson: So what we started doing is we gave, we created a, a segment of our membership where we just give away memberships to, uh, anyone over 65.
We call it Wiser Wilson Club. Let's go. [00:27:00] And yeah, it's been a win because like the LTV on memberships happens nine months after you, they first become a member. Okay. So even if you use a membership to create a discount Yeah. In that first visit. The actual value comes nine months after that first appointment where we sold that membership.
Okay. They start thinking about it, they get our communication. So almost it is like 60 to 70% of LTV is at month nine, not day one. Yeah. And that's like a big industry counter, like everyone thinks it happens like day one, nine months for us. So we started giving it away because that's like, that's our biggest spenders is these retired.
Uh, individuals and they're also easier to schedule our, our tuneups for. Yeah. But yeah, that was in, that was insight we couldn't get without a strong customer base study.
James Zayner: Yeah. Honestly. Um, are you paying an outside agency to do that or are you doing that internally? Yeah, we did. Oh, I don't even remember.
John Wilson: I don't even remember who we, we
James Zayner: did it with.
It would be interesting to, [00:28:00] um, so you could start. Finding unique. Yeah. Data from like the tool clay that I was talking about. Okay. Yeah. So one thing you, you mentioned too was um, you have a hundred thousand person mailing list. Um, probably
John Wilson: larger now, but
James Zayner: Yeah. Yeah. So
John Wilson: like a year or two ago it was a hundred thousand, our customer database, but we add, you know, thousands a
James Zayner: month.
Okay. So you're probably 1 52, maybe one 30. I would, I would expect. Okay. Yeah. And you were talking about segmenting. I think that's the. The interesting thing is like trying to find unique insights on like neighborhoods, right? Um, you could break it down by zip and start seeing like what the most common thing ha that happened in X month.
Yeah. Recently, right? Yeah. Like, I think that's the really interesting stuff that could become campaigns or, hey. We started seeing people in your neighborhood have this problem. It might be great [00:29:00] to, to book us for a checkup. Yeah.
John Wilson: Um, and you could rip that probably outta permits the shovels. Probably outta permits too.
Yeah. Like, hey, hey, we started to see, um, you know, X number of water heaters, X number of furnaces go live. Yeah. I, I think part of it's the trigger, like how do you trigger, like getting the data, the data's always been there. Like some of the stuff you've always been able to get the data. I think creating the trigger points.
To create an action is more complicated. Yeah. So like, hey, this development broke ground 15 years ago, or 10, 12 years ago. Alright, so awesome. So they're going into roofs, they're going into water heaters, furnaces like we are in breaking time. Yeah. For that development. How do, how do we create that trigger in order to start doing something?
Because otherwise it's kind of manual.
James Zayner: You would almo Well, I mean, yeah, it is. It's manual batch by the marketer or whatever, but I think if you could sit down and maybe have like a, [00:30:00] a kickoff day where like your team spends the whole day building these and it's like, okay, what are the 60 developments in our, yeah, in our geo.
And then what years are they built? Mm-hmm. What can we program a bunch of like already in so that when those triggers hit, there's just gonna fire.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: Um, especially if it's forecasting into the future. So then you almost have a, you can include that in your predictability model mm-hmm. For your budgeting that like.
We know this year there's four developments that are coming across this, this deadline threshold. Yeah. Um, and I think that's interesting. That's super interesting. And that also could come down to greenfielding and expanding like, oh,
John Wilson: a hundred percent. You can start looking at
James Zayner: the developments in those areas and being like, what, what do we got going on over here?
What can we Yeah. Plan forward to in the future?
John Wilson: Yeah. What we're trying to do, and we have not been successful at it yet, is between the customer database. And just like, so we've got our very large customer database. Mm-hmm. Like that's, uh, [00:31:00] 8% of our TAM is in my customer base, which is crazy. At Wilson. We've saved a stupid amount of money by having AI help out with our call center.
And the best tool out there that's making that happen is Avoca. So look, you've probably heard the buzz about a i, CSRs. They seem to be everywhere, but not all. A i CSRs are created equal and Avoca seems to rise to the top. Every time they answer every call in the first ring, they sound just like a real person and they don't take breaks.
But here's what makes Avoca really interesting in the real world, if the call's getting heated, like they're getting frustrated or annoyed. Avoca knows it hears the tone, emotion, and hand the call to a real human so you can still save that call. And this has been huge for us here at Wilson. There's no more churn or people yelling representative into the phone and the backend is tight.
It directly integrates into ServiceTitan at the gold tier level. That means it can handle reschedules, check tech, arrival times, and lookup customer info. It even helps with capacity planning. It's basically a CSR with perfect memory. On top of all that, it consistently makes our [00:32:00] team better. We get post call analytics, auto tagging, and coaching tools so that no matter who's on shift, we deliver for our customers.
If you're curious, go to avoca.ai av. oc.ai, book a demo and tell 'em owned and operated, sent you. So big customer base, lot of data. How much of that is members? 3% of the one 30? Yeah. Okay. Or like
James Zayner: a little bit less. 2.5. Yeah, we have about 3000 members. Okay. Interesting. And then that's only 5%, 3% of the tam.
John Wilson: So that'd be, so my population in Cleveland's around 4 million.
Yeah. 1.6 own homes and have my required income levels. Okay. So that's how we, we measure TAM as 1.6. Yeah. 130 is 8% of tam. Now, some of those are debt accounts, old accounts. Sure. My live accounts are probably 80 to 90. Okay. But still a pretty significant portion of [00:33:00] addressable market.
James Zayner: Yeah. I was talking to, uh, Sam earlier from Service Scalers.
Okay. Asking him about a, a campaign, so I recently learned that you can attach a VCF to a QR code. What's a VCF? The contact card. Oh. And so people can like, scan the QR code. It'll automatically pull up the contact card on their phone. And so there could easily be for like the part of the market or the part of the TAM that.
Maybe isn't aware of you or Yeah. You could easily do a campaign that's like, you have the QR code, you have the contact card, and it's like, Hey, Siri, call Wilson Plumbing.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: And then once they add that to their phone, it's like, it's stuck in their head. Mm-hmm. There's like, uh, that, so I was thinking about that for the part of your audience that maybe isn't a member or isn't like
Speaker 7: mm-hmm.
James Zayner: And then adding a CallRail number there. So then you can track how many people came [00:34:00] from that campaign when they call you. Oh, yeah. Interesting stuff that I was like, how could you access more through like, unique ways of like land grabbing.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: And it's like becoming the phone number on their phone. How can you, like, how can you get that real estate?
Well, I, I think
John Wilson: that's a big part of why companies do that hour away, hour away thing. Yeah. For new locations. Yeah. Is they get to continue to, like it's increasing density. Mm-hmm. So. When we think about, uh, when we think about our next market, like we're probably gonna do something that sits inside my current MSA, so it's gonna be more dense and it's gonna be in zip codes that are just on the fringe of where we would currently serve.
So hour and 15 away.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: But hour and 15 away from the office, or hour 50 away from downtown Cleveland. From here. Okay. Yeah, because a, a normal, the, the hour away thing is what? We've just noticed everyone does. Now people change at a certain point.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
John Wilson: But early stages of going multi-location, it's our way, our way [00:35:00] our away.
Yeah. So I've talked to operators with six locations. I've talked to operators with 40, and they all do our way. It does tend to switch, uh, like people, maybe it depends on where you are, but at 10 to 15 locations, you have enough going on. You can be more selective of your market. But for those first five or six, it's all about.
Increasing density.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
John Wilson: And then increasing memberships. But, uh, I wanna say it's horizon, but I don't want to give them too much credit if it's not them. So, but they have, um, for some segment, I think it's Washington, like DC Okay. Uh, they have a membership for one in every three home. You were just saying that.
Yeah, I, I remember you saying that podcast. That's freaking crazy. That's
James Zayner: crazy. Yeah. That is it. That's amazing. And
John Wilson: I feel like a lot of that comes from our way, like just being ever present.
James Zayner: Well, and yeah, the length of time in the, in the, uh, in the area. Um, also like acquiring businesses that have really good membership programs.
Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: It could help. That's insane. Yeah. One in three is, and [00:36:00] that's a very dense area. Yeah. That means like. That means the person two doors over is also a member. Yeah. That's crazy.
John Wilson: Yeah. I feel like members are, um, members are an interesting one. As we we're a little scared of this year because we started the giveaway thing in January.
Yeah. Um, we've added, sold and given away. We've added like, uh, 600 net new members, I think.
James Zayner: But you're, you're just losing on the things that you give for free in the program. They still gotta spend on units and things like that, right?
John Wilson: Yeah. Like we basically don't care. I think if you. If you're not losing, you're giving, I'm sorry.
Right. Use that word. Inappropriate, basically, I think. I think people need to nail down what is the purpose of a membership. Yeah. And for us it's stickiness in LTV. Yeah. Like that's the purpose of a membership. Exactly. And I think people get really caught up and like, oh shit be 10 bucks or 15 bucks or 40 bucks a month.
Yeah. It's like it doesn't fucking matter. Yeah. It's the LTV and it's the stickiness. And that is what matters. Yeah. I believe we have it right, but maybe in two or [00:37:00] three years I'll be like, dude, that was a terrible, yeah, that was a terrible idea.
James Zayner: Now are there, I I, so plumbing and hvac, you can have a membership.
You probably can't have a membership in like roofing and exteriors. Maybe. I know some guys that do. Okay. But it, it's like, it's very like long term projects. Yeah. Yeah. It's like,
John Wilson: I'll tune it up. I'll make sure your shingles are Yeah. Good. I, I don't really. You know, um, we've had a lot of roofers on, I still don't really know how it works.
James Zayner: The roofer jokes are
John Wilson: funny,
James Zayner: dude. The
John Wilson: It is, it is. They so much money. It's so annoying. Okay. So I, it's so annoying. I
James Zayner: will humble myself. I, between jobs before taking the job at modernize, I, I quit my job. I just didn't wanna work in tech anymore. Yeah. In that side of tech anymore. And I drove Uber and like, I think multiple times I picked up a guy who ran a roofing company from his living room that just subbed out everything.
Hell yeah. And it was like ditch living. It was just,
John Wilson: well, there, there's um, you just gotta know how to LSA
James Zayner: in, in Google. Yeah. Spa.
John Wilson: Well, I, I feel like there's a good argument for that in, um, in HVAC or, or plumbing. I think there's a way to [00:38:00] do it. Yeah. So, you know, top line, I don't remember where they're out of, but I think Pittsburgh.
Okay. I gotta have 'em on the show. They're close enough. Uh, but they run an install only model. So they're, and they're growing like crazy. Okay? So they're doing amazing stuff. Um, so I'm gonna give all the credit where it's due, but they're subbing out everything. I don't know if they're subbing it out, but they won't service the equipment unless they installed it.
They've gone from like zero to 40 million in like three or four years. Wild growth story. And who's offering the warranty? The installer? Yeah. Like they, well, they are, I don't think they sub it, but I think, like, my point is they're not worried about service at all, and they're basically a sales and marketing engine.
Like they do handle the fulfillment. It's almost like lead gen. Okay. Yeah. Like basically, yeah. Um, oh, so there's local companies that they will sell the install to? I, I have to find out about that. Yeah. I just know that the, the big emphasis is install only. So it just reminded me a ton of roofing. So I, I do think there's an argument for, for doing that.
Okay. Um, the
James Zayner: membership things, I think what you keep [00:39:00] mentioning LTV and I think when people think about lead partners, they don't think about LTV, they look at immediately at the NSLI or the cost of marketing. Yeah. And they're not really looking at the LTV. And I think as more and more people get smart, like HVAC and plumbing, where they start looking at these memberships and they are tracking this, you know, contact object in their CRM for years at a time.
It's like, bro, you spent 40 bucks on a lead. Yeah. Come on. Like you made like $40,000 off of them over 15 years. Yeah. And we got them to you. Yeah. When they were in need. So I think that's the. The interesting story to think about too. Well, I think that's
John Wilson: the, that's the, uh, like how are you continuing to reactivate that customer?
James Zayner: Yeah.
John Wilson: And like, what's the discipline that's there? And obviously some, some businesses you, you can't do it like it. No. Yeah. Like roofing, like, you know, you're not gonna sell a roof every year. No. But power washing, uh, obviously plumbing, hvac, electric, that's pretty sticky. What are some other ones you can think of?
I think
James Zayner: also you gotta look at like your, your like, uh, referral and [00:40:00] review programs. Mm-hmm. Like if you're using like a snowball or, I don't know, there's some new referral programs, um, out there where, what do you get, like what's your average net generation off of a single lead? Yeah. Like how many times does that get referred over?
Or something like that. Like, yeah. And if you find a power referer and that person refers you four other jobs, like Yeah. What is that worth to you? And
John Wilson: so, or, or training internally, like what we found is it's 15 to 20% of any lead, uh, will turn into two leads. So if someone call and we have a bunch of buckets to catch it.
Okay. So you guys send us a live, uh, lead. We handle it the same as. We have like buckets of how we handle leads, but like we treat modernized and LSA, like roughly the same.
Speaker 8: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: And um, so it comes in and we have a little bit of a script specific for it, try to keep it tight, but then we offer 'em a promo.
So if I'm calling in about hvac, we're gonna offer 'em a promo for electric or plumbing. And it's like, Hey, we also have this, just so you're aware. So we attempt to at the first offset, turn that one, lead into two and have the price. And then [00:41:00] once we get onsite, we do the same thing. So we, uh. And we get really, really tight about it during like quarter one.
'cause there's just less leads to deal with. Yeah. That wasn't our, that wasn't our experience this year, but last year, like we became just a machine. Yeah. At every lead that comes in the door, did we, how many chances did we give that lead? Did become two leads? Did we refer in plumbing while we were on site?
Did we bring up our, uh, rehash? Um, like did we handle on the first call, did we handle it when the tech was in the home? Did we bring it up after the exit? Yeah. Like, did we. Did we like crosspollinate,
James Zayner: that's all being tracked on service. Titan ServiceTitan? Yeah. Okay. And if you, have you brought in home for like Rilla or Cyro?
John Wilson: Um, yeah, we, we have tried both. Uh, right now with Cyro. I don't know that, like we've tried both. Okay. I'm not like wild about any of them. I think, I think execution's the more important part and like how you're [00:42:00] recording it just doesn't matter that
James Zayner: much. Okay. Um, my quick take. Yeah, no, I was curious 'cause I was like, how are you tracking like the offers, like how, I mean the tech Well, so we try
John Wilson: to measure it more like we do measure, so who, who's it referred by?
Yeah. So we just track like number of leads set a day. Okay. Um, and that's like either the technician set that lead or, um. Call center set that lead. So that's kind of easy to track. And then on the rehash campaigns, uh, post visit, uh, there's a few videos, there's a few other ways to like cross pollinate.
Speaker 8: Yeah. The
John Wilson: big thing we are aiming for is we found out that only 7% of our customer base used all three services, 7%. That's interesting. That's really, that's
James Zayner: massive growth. That's a,
John Wilson: yeah. So like we're looking at our own customer list and we're like, holy shit. Probably the biggest growth opportunity that we have over the next 12 months is taking that from seven to 30%.
Sure. Like that would be game changing for us. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not even acquiring new customers.
James Zayner: Yeah. And is that membership cover individual business units or the entire? All three. It's all [00:43:00] three. Okay.
John Wilson: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So 7% uses all three, and I don't remember what the number was for, for two of the three, but it was, it was really interesting,
James Zayner: I think building programs around that.
One of my, uh, the guy, the CRO of HubSpot, the original CRO of HubSpot, Mark Roberts, um, he used to say, would you rather have a thousand customers using one feature in your product? Yeah. Or, or like a hundred customers using all five features. Yeah. It's like, you want that a hundred using all five? Oh yeah.
They're, they're raving fans. Oh yeah. They'll tell everybody about you. Yep. They've got you in their phone. They like watching your commercials. Mm-hmm. Um, I think that's, yeah. So if you can convert people into the, the trio.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: That's nice.
John Wilson: Yeah. It's been a big focus of ours. Uh, I think we we're at like six or seven steps now.
We've implemented to turn one every lead into two different leads. Yeah. And then I love that cross. Yeah. Cross selling across the [00:44:00] business because we want to increase our density of service within our base. Yeah. Magic. Yeah. It's like being Mickey and Fantasia. Yeah. Well, and if you have a big enough customer list, like we'll talk to, uh.
We will talk to people that have like 10,000, that's a lot. Like 10,000 human beings. Yeah. Are in your customer list. You know, maybe they're like a three, $4 million business and it's just an old business. Sure. Um, but a three or $4 million business probably only needs like 15, 20 appointments a day. And they have 10,000 like yeah, like over a year.
And I'm like, my God, average click
James Zayner: through rate's gotta be 1% at least on that email list. And or, or
John Wilson: like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think roughly 1% on email list or even, um, outbound calling to our customer list. Yeah. Like our outbound calling. Our, our book rate on an outbound call is like 14%. Mm-hmm. Which is crazy.
Industry average is six to eight, so our call center manager does an amazing job.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: But that's really like a lot. [00:45:00] Yeah. That's a freaking
James Zayner: lot. Wild. And, and are there, like, so you were getting into water treatment, I didn't know you were in that, right? Like, do you do water treatment? Mm-hmm. That's an amazing Bolton.
That's what, five to 10 grand a CV? Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: Like that's insane. Yeah. And I, so yeah, like thinking about just adding in new products and, and product lines and stuff. You could,
John Wilson: yeah,
James Zayner: just, I think you were talking about finding like 5 million under a rock and stuff like that. Like
John Wilson: that's, well, that, I think, yeah, Tommy said that and he said he, he brought on this CFO.
And they kept just like finding buckets of money. Think that's bucket quote. And, and what has been kind of funny is like, as the bigger the business has gotten, I'm not finding the same buckets as Tommy is. No, but. We are finding these random pockets of opportunity. Yeah. Just inside and, and we're not that complex of a business.
Yeah. Like, yeah, we're maybe midsize, but like still one location, like not that complicated of an org structure. So to randomly be [00:46:00] able to find like 40 or 50 grand or sometimes more is like, yeah, what the, what the heck? Yeah.
James Zayner: That's wild too. 'cause you're taking over. Right. And that's a lot of the industry right now are the, the, the new generation, the heirs to the thrones that are taking over their father's businesses or they're, you know, it's these, um, investors like coming in and like learning how it all works.
And then they're just like, it's like mo, like. Going to grandma's house after, you know, everybody's gone and like going through all the old things, it's like, oh wow, there's this, oh wow, there's this, like, you just start finding stuff that you didn't realize was possible. The industry, I'm so excited about the industry.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: There's so much going on.
John Wilson: Yeah. You were thinking about getting deeper in yourself.
James Zayner: Yeah. My buddy, he keeps sending me these, um, like there was a plumbing company in, uh, the west suburbs of Chicago for like two 50. Yeah, I mean there's, there's flooring companies. Yeah. I don't like flooring though. 'cause oftentimes they're just like a showroom and they don't provide install and you [00:47:00] gotta figure out how to sub out the install and, but yeah, it's, it seems like, um, a legitimate path for me.
Mm-hmm. After like, you know, stay at modernized for as long as I want. Learn as much as I can keep talking with people like you and I'm basically going to college.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: Taking
John Wilson: this back to Isaac, that was roughly what he did. So he, um, I actually dunno how many site visits he did, but he visited us a few times.
Yeah. When he was in like, the exploration stage and he just came and hung out for like three days. Yeah. And comically, this was, this was kind of funny. Uh, at the end of it he's like, you know, John, uh, you really shouldn't just like let people. Copy your business, like show up like random people on Twitter, show up like that is kind of weird.
And I'm like, I Isaac at the MO now. We're very good friends. But yeah, I was like, Isaac, you are random person on Twitter. Um, but yeah, he basically went to school for six to 12 months, uh, site visiting all types of companies all over the US and just like, how did you do this? How did you do this? And taking the best.
I mean, literally
James Zayner: you can just listen to own and operate it. [00:48:00] And it it is legit. Yeah.
John Wilson: It's meant, yeah. It is pretty like, here, here's what we're doing. I, I think the, now the danger is if you're, I, Jack tends to call me on it, but I tend to be, uh, a bit unrelatable at times because the things I'm working on aren't the same as what like a million dollar, uh, shop would work on.
Yeah. So we do, we do try to hit that too, but for the right zone. Yeah. I'm a great resource.
James Zayner: Yeah. It's, well, even just 'cause Jack, I mean. What was it like a, a year and a half ago, Jack started doing plumbing. Yeah. Um, he's like,
John Wilson: he went from a million to five in like two years.
James Zayner: Yeah. Yeah. And so that's interesting watching by the way.
I was kind of looking forward to meeting Jack, having him been a Bitcoin bro in the past. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like him, like doing all these different things and then getting into, uh, the trades. Um, it's interesting, interesting questions for 'em. Yeah. Your,
John Wilson: your long term vision is that you. End up in the trades in a deeper capacity somehow.
James Zayner: Somehow. I think I'm just, I'm, [00:49:00] I'm a wealth of knowledge when it comes to like, um, I would say like novel mm-hmm. GTM strategies and then working at modernize. I'll probably be here for a few years and I'm just gonna acquire so much information across trades like, yeah. 25, 30 trades.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
James Zayner: I imagine some PE companies gonna come and try to like scoop me up at some point and be like, what do you know?
But I would love to, uh, dabble in ownership. I think I've, I've never really, um, challenged myself to own something. I did a little VR company back in the day. That was kind of fun. I was going to weddings and corporate events. Mm-hmm. Launching like this VR platform. I think that would be really interesting.
Is. Trying, trying the game.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: Yeah, because it's not as, I don't need to be a software engineer. Like that's where software is hard. You gotta be a software engineer, you gotta know how to do product management and all that stuff.
John Wilson: Feels like that's starting to change. Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: Well, yeah, with the coding,
John Wilson: I mean, this is crazy.
Yeah. Super weird. Yeah, this is crazy. I have all these friends just starting to like, pump out, [00:50:00] you know, lovable apps and I, I wonder if, I wonder what'll happen and, um, this, this doesn't feel like a great moment to be in SaaS. No, somebody can build, like, I mean, somebody could, I don't know what it takes to rebuild a ServiceTitan, but I know it just got cheaper.
James Zayner: Yeah. Well it's not even rebuild a ServiceTitan. Most software we just talked about, like most people only use one feature for your app. Yeah. And so like all somebody has to do is go build that one feature, put, make it a Chrome extension or whatever.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah.
James Zayner: And sell it for 29 99 and get a hundred thousand customers, and then they're sitting pretty and retiring.
Mm-hmm. It's pretty wild. That is wild. I'm seeing it happen all over LinkedIn, like Yeah,
John Wilson: yeah, yeah. We're, we're starting to mess, we, we building an automations team. Um, that's good. And we've had one person in the role for like four or five months now. Yeah, I remember you. And then we're adding in the like, AI component right now.
And it is wild. I, I assume we'll sell some of them off public, but most of 'em are like, Hey, I have this [00:51:00] hyper-specific need to like. Draw data out of ServiceTitan. Sure. Like that. That whole like AI integration thing inside ServiceTitan, I really think they need to do it. 'cause I'm having to build apps to do that right now.
Yeah, because like their reporting is tough. Um, are you, what are you, are you using like n eight to N or are you actually like building like JavaScript? It was JavaScript, yeah. Yeah. Um, and then actually, I don't know if it's JavaScript specifically, but it, it's, it is line coded. Yeah. Yeah. Now we're adding in like Python.
It's either Rept or Yeah. Rep. You can build apps like Yeah, that's, yeah. I mean, well, it builds, it, it builds like 80% of the app. Yeah. And then you just need the coder to do the back 20. But like we have the coder now. Yeah. Like we put that team so. Uh, so yeah, we're starting to spin out, like our first app went live on Monday and it's like very simple, but it's, it's a dashboard for our support teams 'cause a, a pain point, which I never knew how to have this fucking pain point, but apparently when you get larger you have to know the response times of your [00:52:00] support teams.
Oh, yeah. Makes total sense. Like you, you're probably used to this like, Hey, we expect four hour email response times to our customers. Whatever big good thing, you know, when you're, when you're $10 million, doesn't, doesn't matter. Nobody really cares about that. But. At 30, we have to care about it a lot. So like what is our HR response time?
What's our HR resolution time? What's our fleet response time? What's our fleet resolution time? So we added, that's our first app that went live on Monday. Again, not pretty, but it's functional. Yeah. And we can track response times and resolution times across our six support teams. Yeah. And now we just threw it up on a tv.
It's like
James Zayner: Google Data Studio, but
John Wilson: like, well, that's what we were gonna use. We were gonna use a Google script or. I don't remember what the go. Yeah, it might be Google app. I don't even remember. There's some, there's
James Zayner: an subscript. Yeah, there is. They have the data studio too. I saw. So there was one guy who recently used Clay to, um, build a lead magnet for SEO for his teams where he went and scraped the company.
He did the, he ran the [00:53:00] company's numbers, like through the, uh, I don't know if it's a SEMrush, API or Google search API or something like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
James Zayner: Pulled all the data in and then. Connected to the Rept, API mm-hmm. Built the rep lit dashboard for all their numbers. Oh yeah. And the, and and then he sends that in the email.
Yeah. He's like, here's your current. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's wild. It's so wild how quickly
John Wilson: they can automate it. It's wild. Yeah. We're, we're trying to get deeper into it, I think. Um, it's a, it's funny project mm-hmm. To work on. Yeah. And funny only in from like. I'm a plumber. No. So like,
James Zayner: but you're a business owner.
But the amount of
John Wilson: data that we need to run this ship every day is wild. Yeah. Uh, I, I really, every time I think about our business and, you know, think about like what it takes to run it today, I really am amazed by companies that grew 20, $30 million like 15 years ago. Yeah. I mean, that's granted why there was so few of them.
It's just incredible what it takes.
James Zayner: Yeah, I, I mean, you [00:54:00] got the premier home Pros doing zero to a hundred in two years. Yeah. That's crazy. Roofing a bathroom. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
John Wilson: bathrooms, maybe kitchens, but yeah, very sophisticated lead funnel. They're gonna come on the show in a couple weeks. They should. Yeah.
Yeah. I think Let's go. They're based like 15, 20 minutes away. I'm going to visit 'em. Yeah. Heck yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll be, that'll be fun. I've got a couple rapid fire Q a's for you. Let's go. Um. What is one piece of advice for marketers working with ai?
James Zayner: Yeah, I kind of said it earlier, just start talking to it.
It's scary at first. You're worried about people getting access to your information or data it. The privacy is probably impeccable, I imagine. OpenAI is never gonna let somebody hack your account if you don't have a easy password. Just tell it as much as you can mm-hmm. About whatever you're going through.
Like whether it's even relationship with your boss, the current situation you're in, the, the problem you're trying to solve. Um, where can you access [00:55:00] resources for more information if they can't, don't currently have it? Like I, I just, I talk to my, uh, chat CCPT app on my phone a lot. Yeah. Just put it in the voice to text mode.
I don't want to hear it talk back to me. I just want it to gimme text feedback and, um. It's changed my life and my team's output and performance significantly.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Of the various verticals you guys have right now. What's your favorite? Ooh. What's
James Zayner: kind of yours? The hvac, plumbing, electrical.
Just 'cause it's the, um, most entertaining content right now. You, you have me at roofing. Like that one's, I'm starting to get interested in that. Roofing is such
John Wilson: bullshit.
James Zayner: I'm starting to get interested. It's pretty bullshit. Well, I just, I mean, watching the Home Genius story, like you'll learn, I'll, I'll show you Yeah.
What they're up to, but yeah. It was three guys moved over from College Works painting three executives. Yep. Started an exterior company and they're booming.
John Wilson: Yeah.
James Zayner: I think water treatment's gonna be super hot moving forward in the future. Water quality's gonna definitely become more questionable. Yep. It's just [00:56:00] at like human nature for water quality nearby to become more questionable.
Yeah. Like we're really bad at keeping water sources fresh. Yeah. We're getting into like new trades, like fences, decking, things like that. Yeah. So those would be interesting to look into. I think Sunrooms is, I was talking to a guy about Sunrooms, ACVs, like 50 k.
John Wilson: Yeah, I, I feel like if I was redoing all of this and I was intelligent when I first started, I would've picked like Premier's doing an amazing job and they're totally kicking ass.
Mm-hmm. Like this is not dogging at all. They're inspirational, but it sure helps having an average ticket of 50 to 70 grand. Yeah. So I'm like, man, I should have, I should have done that. Like we should have done some, and that's why roofing I think is a bit alluring. It's like, okay, average ticket's 18 to $20,000.
And you're mainly a marketing and sales engine? Yeah. Like, sign me the fuck up. Yeah, yeah. Like, where's the line? That sounds amazing. Yeah. You're just competing at, at uh, H ones and H twos. Right. And like I think I can play that game. Yeah. Maybe I can't, but I, you know, I [00:57:00] think I can. I mean, you wanna Yeah, I think I can.
It's like UFC, right? Like Yeah, I think I can, where, where's like, plumbing's average ticket is good, but it's $2,000, $3,000.
James Zayner: Yeah. Like it's just a different game. But it's also fun because you have these rabbit fans that like follow you. It's probably a lot easier to build a podcast in the community in plumbing and hvac.
You don't have your roofing customers sitting around listening. Yeah. Well a lot of roofers
John Wilson: listen and they, yeah. See, the funny thing about it is I keep calling it easier than hvac and I'm expecting some roofer to like, like clap back in the comments and they're like, nah, dude, it is, fuck you guys collecting checks.
Yeah. What is a current marketing trend that's overhyped
James Zayner: current marketing trend that's overhyped. Well, I'm in a different space for being B2B, but I don't think anything's overhyped. I think I. The hype comes from the people it works for.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
James Zayner: And the people who think it's overhyped are the people it doesn't work for.
Mm-hmm. So, like, I think, 'cause like marketing's marketing, man, it, like, not everybody can do each individual tactic the [00:58:00] same way. Mm-hmm. Like, not everybody has a face. Right. Like. And sometimes it's not the most attractive face that wins on, on video. Right. We've seen it right
Speaker 7: here.
James Zayner: Yeah. And brand too. Like sometimes it's not the most attractive, like multi hundred thousand dollars brand kit.
Mm-hmm. Like that wins if it's over. If, if you feel something's over hyped, you're probably not good at it.
John Wilson: That's a nice take. I like that. It's a hot take. Yeah, it's a hot take. Yeah. Hot take. If people want to connect you with you, where can they find you?
James Zayner: I'm at James Zaner on Twitter. I'm uh, linkedin.com/in/james zaner on LinkedIn.
Um, and I'm also at modernize a lot of cool stuff to talk about. Mm-hmm. I imagine my, my goal this year is just to become a sophisticated knowledge keeper of. Information, like stuff that you, you deliver on your podcast. I wanna start meeting a lot of customers. I wanna start, uh, talking about tactics and things in person.
Yeah. So here for you if you want a conversation. Awesome.
John Wilson: Yeah. Thanks for coming on today. This [00:59:00] was, uh, this was a lot of fun. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for having me. If you like what you heard, check out owned and operated.com and make sure you sub for more.
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