Brian Johnson on Refocusing Pioneer Overhead Door – EP.289

(00:00:00) – Intro
(00:00:55) – Building the training facility
(00:03:09) – Shaping the customer experience
(00:05:49) – Lessons from home service industries
(00:07:51) – The technician as educator
(00:09:38) – Background in finance and search
(00:12:56) – Underwriting the deal and due diligence
(00:14:58) – Day one challenges
(00:17:33) – Shifting from commercial to residential service
(00:18:54) – Working capital crunch in commercial installs
(00:24:13) – Price versus value in service calls
(00:31:02) – Preventative maintenance in commercial
(00:38:36) – Refining the sales process
(00:56:50) – Customer service and AI experiments
(01:01:21) – Looking ahead to growth and culture

Brian Johnson: In terms of the sales process, yes we’re regularly tweaking every little piece of that because every little piece matters. Where do you park the truck? How do you get out? What’s the first thing you say to the customer? How long should you talk to the customer before you get down to the nitty-gritty?

When do you bring up the investment? If you give them four different options which option do you present first? How do you handle objections? How do you handle no? Are you comfortable with them not being happy with certain things? All of those little pieces we review and rebra-regularly look at and strive to get better at

Alex Bridgeman: Brian, thanks for having me in the office and showing me around.

Brian Johnson: My

Alex Bridgeman: pleasure. How, how long have you been in this space, remind me?

Brian Johnson: We bought the company in 2000 and… In 2023 and have been here since day one.

Alex Bridgeman: Gotcha.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. You

Alex Bridgeman: m- You mentioned adding a training facility that you just pointed out- Yeah … a little bit.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: When, when did that come about?

Brian Johnson: So early on I got linked in with a garage door group of similar owners, and in that process we’re regularly talking about, okay, what do we do to set ourselves apart, and what do we do to try and get a little better?

What kind of support can we provide our technicians? And we made the conscious decision that we don’t want our guys learning, um, in someone’s home. And so we built the training center, oh, probably about 18 months after we, we bought the company, and we certainly do a lot of technical training here in the shop.

We also do all of our sales training here in the shop. But it took probably 18 months to kinda figure out how we wanted the company to look and feel moving forward.

Alex Bridgeman: Well, well, in that 18 months, like, what, what questions were you thinking about on how do we want this to look or that to look? Like, what, what buckets of processes did you look at?

Brian Johnson: Yeah. So I would say, at least for me, like I’m, I’m slow on the uptake, so it was drinking from a fire hose day one. I mean, I bought the company with no industry experience and limited experience in owning and operating a company. So it really did take me 18 months just to figure out what I had. It was a great company to begin with.

The numbers looked really well, but I didn’t really know what I had. And so it, it took a minute to figure that out, and then it took a little bit longer to figure out what direction we wanted to steer it moving forward. But I would say again, being involved with other like-minded owners and having the opportunity to really talk through how they managed and navigated that growth piece and the operations side really helped shape what we wanted to do.

And then we’ve got, we’ve got our leadership team in house, and as we talked through how we want the company to look and feel, all of those things kind of Took shape and are still taking shape. It’s a work in progress, but we knew early on we wanted to have a, a focus on the customer experience. And so we’re all– We’re customer centric.

We care about every interaction that they have with us, whether it’s from an initial view on one of our advertisements, seeing our marketing in a mailer, to the first time they call in. How’s that experience with one of our customer service representatives? What’s the build-up to actually a in-person meeting with one of our service professionals?

And how does that piece feel and operate while they’re on site? And then finally, what is the, the closeout and the continuing marketing to them look and feel like? So we knew early on that we wanted to strive to be great at that. And again, that’s another thing that’s a work in progress, but we’re definitely focused on that, that customer journey as it relates to our specific space.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm. On that customer journey, as I was walking in, your, your front desk was answering a customer. I could overhear a little bit. What helped you understand the customer journey the fastest when you first bought the business?

Brian Johnson: The best thing is to think like a customer, right? We all have stuff break, and being in the home service industry, that’s when we step in.

And so you think about we’ve all had interactions traditionally with the, the fix-it guy or the handyman or when something breaks. And so when you look at it from a first person standpoint, it’s a least– Little easier to think through, “Okay, I’ve had people in my home, and I’ve had companies that have done a good job, and companies that haven’t done a good job.”

There’s a big range. Yeah, there’s a huge range. And historically, in home services, I, I think that it was… There was a certain stigma to how jobs are run or how companies are run. And I would say, uh, the HVAC plumbing groups probably a couple decades ago kinda caught on that there, there’s a better way to do it and the rest of us have s- have slowly caught up.

And so really we– It’s easy to draw from your own experience because those of us who have had a toilet break or a spring break in their garage or their AC go down when it’s hot, we know what that pain is like. And so our job on the flip side of that certainly at Pioneer Overhead is to recognize that most of the times that we go out we’re going out because there’s a pain point in the garage and what can we do to help the customer relieve that?

And help make sure that it, it doesn’t happen again.

Alex Bridgeman: Do you … We were talking about podcasts before. Do you find that most of the HVAC lessons fairly cleanly apply in garage doors?

Brian Johnson: Certainly the, the principles apply. I mean there’s th-the customer service side applies. Their, their process that they run is a little unique.

It’s a little different. Uh, so at Pioneer we kind of have put our process together from a number of, of sources whether it be from the HVAC industry, from our own garage door industry. From you know standard best practices to things that our technicians come up with that we work through. I was sitting with our service technicians here before the podcast this morning and we b- we regularly relook at the entire process and from our standpoint we chop into two different buckets along the way right?

So I’m focused on making sure that the customer is happy and comfortable and educated before the technician even shows up so that we’re doing as much of the heavy lifting on the front end so that when the technician shows up they Gotten to know them a little bit, whether it’s from a text bio or from an email that we send out.

They know a little bit about Pioneer again from a, an intro email. The next piece that we’re looking to implement here is that they’ll have either a video or a-an email that’s sent relating to the issue that they’re having and the options that we expect our technicians to present. And so from a, from a service call standpoint, we break that piece down to fix, okay, can we fix the front end so that the customer when we show up has seen our face, knows our branding, understands what a, a service call should look and feel like?

And then when the technician’s at the home, how good do they do? How well are they able to convey the different options that we have? And we expect our technicians… We don’t think of them as salespeople, we think of them as educators. Like our job is to educate you on the systems on your door and give you a-an array of options to solve whatever problem there is from the top end, “Let’s get you a new door system,” to the very bottom end of, “Let’s just fix the specific thing that’s wrong today.”

The unique thing about that is I say system because the door operates and functions as a system. One problem can spill into two or three or four dozen different things that are going on with the door. And so if we don’t do the education piece with the customer, they don’t know. They see, “Oh, my spring’s broken.

Just fix my spring.” Well, the spring is just one symptom of maybe a larger issue with the door. And so we expect our technicians to go out and educate the customers so that they have all of the info they need to make an informed decision. And then we want to give them multiple options in, in that buying cycle where they can make a determination on what they want to do.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson: And then on the back end, we want to make sure that the… With the customer again, that the billing’s painless. You pay right, you know, tap your card right on our, right on our iPads or telephones to pay, and the invoice is sent back to them via an email, and then the, the continual, continual marketing with them as, as we move forward.

So that whole process has taken shape with us and is, uh, it is continually being modified, but that’s taken– That takes time to get that right for, for your group.

Alex Bridgeman: We kind of jumped right into it, but what were you working on before buying Pioneer? Maybe what stood out about the business?

Brian Johnson: Yeah. So my background is finance.

For 20 years, I was in the lending industry, whether it was doing construction loans for builders or helping businesses buy commercial property to own and operate their business out of. So I kinda hit like the atypical midlife crisis. I got 20 years into the career and thought, “Is this what I wanna do for the next 20 years?”

And I was happy working bankers’ hours, you know, really enjoying things. But felt like there was another opportunity that I could take. And so I spent probably two years working through companies and being in the lending industry, albeit I’ve always been on the production side. I knew enough on the underwriting side to get myself into trouble.

So I looked at dozens and dozens of companies, maybe hundreds of companies. A lot I, I dismissed immediately just because I knew it was not the type of industry I wanted to be in. A lot I dismissed after an initial quick spread of their P&L or their tax returns, and then whittled it down to companies that made sense financially and were interesting.

And so I– It was, um, you know, the career leading up to that point gave me kind of the tools to make an informed decision. But again, yeah, my background, I, I went to school for economics and then spent 20 years in finance. And so it was a definite departure from, from what I was used to.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. W-were there, like, two or three industries or maybe themes that stood out to you as you were looking through businesses?

Brian Johnson: I definitely, it was really more of a math question for me. In the lending industry you lend to a debt service ratio and that was a, a key indicator for me so like I said, I cut certain things out that I knew I didn’t want to do. I’m not a food guy so I didn’t wanna own a Wendy’s or McDonald’s or some type of franchise.

I also felt like I probably wasn’t a franchise person so that cut out big things like lube shops or tire centers, things like that. I knew I wanted to, to own and operate my own thing. Other than that it really boiled down to locale. I’m from Utah. I wanted to stay here. And then how the company, how the company operated and did.

And so I didn’t know anything about garage doors. I didn’t know anything about home service. You know, I jumped on this company when the previous owner was looking to sell it and the frontline numbers made a ton of sense. And the more I got into it, the more I ap- appreciated the reoccurring nature of, of the service and the sales that are in home service, and really just kind of made the jump somewhat ignorantly but yeah, that was three and a half years ago.

Alex Bridgeman: And what did you do to m- maybe before closing to think learn about the industry and the business or like what helped you the most? Like pre-close.

Brian Johnson: Pre-close. So I had a– I have a f- a neighbor who owns and operates a plumbing company and my water heater broke right as I was underwriting Pioneer Overhead and he came over and he got talking with me and I had mentioned “Hey look, I’m looking at buying this.”

He said “Oh you know what? You need… I need to introduce you to a friend of a friend” So this guy was partners with Ellen Rohr and Al Levy on a drain company in Utah. They were like the franchisor and he was the primary franchisee in Utah. And he said “Look, I know these guys,” and they’re, they’re also affiliated with Tommy Mello and Tommy’s a, a big name in the home service space and in the garage door space.

So he linked me up with Tommy and Tommy and I talked. Tommy wouldn’t even know me from Adam today ’cause w- it was three years ago but he and I talked maybe a half a dozen times and he talked about, you know, how passionate he was for home services, how he felt about garage doors in specific, what he thought about the industry And, you know, we talked and, and that certainly helped.

So that, that was one of the primary things that really helped me figure things out. I’m also– my other neighbor is, um, a CFO in the auto industry, and I twisted his ear a little too, ’cause he’s a numbers guy, so we talk numbers and-

Alex Bridgeman: You got a healthy neighborhood here.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. No, we’ve gotta… We– It helps where you live, for sure.

Alex Bridgeman: Yes.

Brian Johnson: So I talked to him. I pulled two or three other people. I really have some people that I, I trust, that I appreciate their opinion, and I talk through and, and of course my family. I included, uh, my family in that decision, and really in, in the end, um, it was something that we felt comfortable with doing and making the change.

Alex Bridgeman: And so what did the first day or two look like, feel like in the business? What’d you work- Um What’d you work at first?

Brian Johnson: Everything. So, so I will say I vastly underestimated my ability to own and operate a business. I had no idea what I was doing. Granted, the last company I came from was a startup, and I was employee number one.

But there’s a big difference moving one seat over. Like a world of difference. So when I first bought the company, we were, and still are to some degree, very heavily commercial rated. So we do a lot of commercial projects, a lot of big commercial installation jobs, a lot of commercial service. But day one, day two, really the first year really was holding on for dear life.

One of the things that made the company a great buy financially made it a horrible buy operationally, which was there was no office staff whatsoever. The previous owner was the atypical technician turned owner. He was the estimator. He was the bookkeeper. He was the accountant. He was the AR person. He wa- He answered every single phone call You know, he mailed the estimates.

He paid all the bills. Like literally there was four trucks, seven technicians and one owner. And so that was a rude awakening to come in to have very little in place in terms of operations and that was a wild ride for the first year, first 18 months it was w- was long days, long nights, a lot of stress trying to make sure that, you know, we didn’t drop the ball.

Alex Bridgeman: Your EBITDA probably went down too as you made some back hires too then?

Brian Johnson: Yeah. Thankfully we’ve been pretty conscious about how we’ve grown the company. The old owner did a great job of what he was good at. We’ve managed to really start increasing our service as a function of total revenue and so we’ve been able to grow and maintain the, the EBITDA at, at or even slightly above what it was.

So we’ve been really fortunate that we’ve linked up with some other great companies that allow us to ask questions when we’re part of this garage door group that, uh, is helpful too. And yeah, that it– It’s been quite, quite a few years for, for us to, to get to this point.

Alex Bridgeman: So is it more evenly balanced between residential and commercial now?

Brian Johnson: We’re getting there. So residential is … W- We’re, we’re getting there. When I first bought the company we were probably 80/20, maybe 85/15 commercial to residential. Today we’re probably closer to 60/40. The big thing for us is to have a, as a function of revenue, higher percentage in the service. And so we’re really focused on maintaining our install thresholds while trying to increase our service, uh, again, as a percent of total revenue.

Alex Bridgeman: So keep installs steady-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: but all growth comes from service. Yeah.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, that’s the goal. The service is really what the … I- it is, is the valuable piece in terms of a margin standpoint and from a, from a, a cash management standpoint too. Service you, you pay to play, right? We come out today, we fix it, and you pay today.

That’s not the case certainly in commercial installs. You’re under contract, you have to front a lot of the money. It can take anywhere from 30 to 120 days to get paid, and so you’re floating inventory, you’re floating your operating capital. So-

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah …

Brian Johnson: yeah, it’s definitely a different world.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Was there k-…

any working capital squeeze when you first bought the business as you had these projects you’re carrying balances for?

Brian Johnson: Yeah. So, so thankfully we were pretty conscious of that going into it. We s- we got a loan to buy the company, and as part of that we, we funded a small working capital account. And then the old owner was kind enough to float, um, a lot of the inventory.

So he had a lot of inventory that he had paid for, but we ended up installing the, the work. And he floated that for me, and we paid that off as we did those specific jobs. So that ended up being a, a blessing that we didn’t have to come out of pocket with all of that to begin with. But, but it was … It, it still got crunchy.

Like, there was one point maybe six months in that I had to make a big order of inventory because, again, in the commercial space you can, you can get a job where you’ve gotta lay down $100,000 or $200,000 to buy the inventory. And I had to draw on, um, on some credit to do that. Thankfully that was the one and only time I’ve ever had to do that.

But it was a little, it was tuck and go for a minute just from a cash management standpoint be- before we really got our feet under us.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. We’ve heard of owners who had to remortgage their house or refinance their house to cover a big job and-

Brian Johnson: Yeah. Yeah, that’s- Scary … that’s really scary. You know, you go into it with your eyes wide open, and you hope that you’ve done enough Y- that, that you know enough to make the right decision.

Leveraging your house is a scary thing Right? Yeah. ‘Cause y- you’ve h- we’ve heard of jobs go bad. I have friends in companies where, you know, they’re under contract with big time contractors in the state, general contractors, and for whatever reason, they go, they go bad, they go south, they don’t get their money, and things can, things can go bad quick if you’re, if you’re not careful.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Have you noticed as service revenue increases that you find financially there’s some… There’s more– There’s greater stability in the business overall, and I, I imagine that would show up in a lot of different ways.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. So as we run our reports and our analysis, that does show a little healthier on the balance sheet, for sure.

Having that in place is good. Now, the other thing that helps, and, and I’m unique, is I’m a saver. So, you know, I could pull a bunch of money out of the company and, and buy stuff personally, but that’s just not who I am, so I leave most of the money in the company. And thankfully, that’s been very beneficial to us ’cause we haven’t had to get any, uh, other type of operating lines or any type of credit.

I just fund the growth from saving money from the company. So we’ve been pretty lucky. But to be able to, to do service and get paid the same day, yes, that’s the, that’s the standard. That’s what you’re looking for For Pioneer specifically, because of who we are and who we’ve been, we’ve got such a name in the commercial space that, you know, we’re gonna stay in that and accept that there is some cash crunch to, to operate in that, uh, in that space.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. As a quick sidebar, we use Mercury for our banking.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Do you use them as well or…?

Brian Johnson: No. So we’re– We bank with the local credit union, and they’ve been a good partner. Um, you know, we haven’t… That’s not something that I’ve really looked at, uh, since I bought the company.

Alex Bridgeman: Mostly asking ’cause Mercury has a, like a high yield savings treasury account- Ah,

Brian Johnson: yeah

Alex Bridgeman: where we can get three point six percent

Brian Johnson: on

Alex Bridgeman: it. Oh,

Brian Johnson: okay.

Alex Bridgeman: Which is very good.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: So hopefully you’re getting three plus percent on

Brian Johnson: your

Alex Bridgeman: excess cash.

Brian Johnson: To be honest, I’m not even sure. I’d have to go and look at that and see. Oh man. That’s definitely something worth looking at. It’s, it’s more than the quarter of a percent or whatever you get sitting it in your checking account.

Alex Bridgeman: Much more. You could even have um, you know, Charles Schwab or Vanguard account and just buy like a money market.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Or a short term bond fund that gets you… I mean if you have a million bucks, that’s forty grand a year-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: that just shows up doing nothing. Yeah, that’s a

Brian Johnson: great idea. Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: We thought about doing that, ‘Cause for durable trades we’ve called some of the initial capital.

We have a, an investor shareholder who their only shareholder is Wells Fargo. And so there’s some weird like banking holding company act stuff that they need us to follow so we can’t do it yet.

Brian Johnson: Gotcha.

Alex Bridgeman: But once we own a company any cash we carry can be invested in a money market or high yield savings.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: And you start doing the numbers and you’re like “Wow that’s actually-” How can you not? “…really dramatic.”

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Then I, I mean forty grand could be like your travel budget for the year.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, for sure.

Alex Bridgeman: And like th- Just not having to worry about that.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, yeah that’s a great idea.

Alex Bridgeman: Getting back to service.

It’s so interesting ’cause the, the simplicity of residential service getting paid at the end of the job, no customer concentration seems really appealing but owner — A lot of owners have told us there’s, you know lots of money in commercial when y- If you do it well.

Brian Johnson: Yeah There is w- There is money in commercial.

It’s a different approach for sure. Like when you go out to home you’re dealing with the decision maker whether they admit it or not, you know every now and then you’r- you’re going to hear a husband or wife say, “I’ve gotta talk with my partner.” Oh we know that s That’s not true. They’re just, they’re just trying to put you off.

So when you go to a home by and large you’re talking with the decision maker. When you go to a business that’s rarely the case. You’re usually talking with a facility manager or a general manager or a, a shop guy at least in our space, and you go out and you give them an estimate and they say, “Well we’ve gotta run this up the flagpole.”

So unless it’s something dire, the sales process is different in the commercial space. Now you’re absolutely right, you can make more– y-you can make a higher ticket average in the commercial but there is an offset to that too, right? In our space you rarely can go out to a commercial job without dragging a trailer and lift because doors are usually taller than eight or nine feet and we don’t like our guys being on ladders much taller than eight or nine feet.

And so you’re dragging an added ex-expense to get out there. The other piece for us is you go to a commercial door you’re usually going to need two guys to go out Whereas in residential you never send two guys on a service call. So yes, you can make more money, but if you’re looking at, at top line revenue, you’re going to miss a big piece of the financial picture because there are definitely expenses that go into the commercial side that you don’t, you don’t experience in the residential side.

So the other thing about commercial is there’s quite a bit more ramp-up period to get a technician proficient on the commercial side than there is on the residential side just because you’re dealing with bigger doors, a broader array of brands, different styles of doors. So we, we install and service sectional doors which are the same type of doors you would find on most homeowners garages.

We do rolling steel doors that are steel slats locked together and that they run on a track. We do rolling sheet doors like a storage unit door. We do high speed doors so doors that you would see on maybe high end auto dealerships things like that. So to be able to get a technician up to speed in the commercial space takes a significant amount of time And so there’s…

There’s definitely some more barriers to entry on the commercial side than the residential side But yeah it is just like residential service If you do it right and you do a good job You can–you can make money

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm Have you found that certain pockets within commercial are more profitable for you than others?

Like am I Or Are you shooting for a consistent margin across any commercial job you do or – Uh.. There are certain ones that y-you’re just not gonna get that margin if you go after that business

Brian Johnson: Yeah, there are property types that we know we probably would pass on those are area dependent and location dependent to some degree For us our process is the process So if our guys run the process when they’re out onsite Then, then our margin is, is guaranteed.

So the only, the only variables to that are if it takes us… If, if we do a hard bid, say we go out and we say, “We’ll do the work on this job for a specific dollar amount,” and it ends up taking us much longer than we anticipate, that’s the margin killer. But usually we bill, on the commercial side, we bill by the hour.

So if we’re out at a job and it takes eight hours, we’re gonna bill you for eight hours of time. And so yes, there are a lot more moving parts. The one piece that’s easier to sell in the commercial space, at least that we found, than in the residential space are preventative maintenance programs or membership programs.

You know, if your garage breaks in your home, you’re annoyed, of course. If your overhead door breaks at your business, it’s dire. Like, we have companies that require us to be out within a certain amount of hours

Alex Bridgeman: 24/7

Brian Johnson: Yeah, yeah. And so thankfully we don’t get called out late at night very often, but certainly during the day if, uh, if one of our high priority customers call, we’ll pull guys off other jobs and go fix their door because we’re under contract to do that.

And so when your door goes down at a manufacturing facility or a trucking facility, you’re losing money when it’s not operational. So because of that, it’s an easier sell to go in and say, “Let’s put you on a, a preventative maintenance program,” say, “And we’ll get out and we’ll tune up and lube each door semi-annually.

We’ll do anything preventative that we need to to retain the warranty on the door, the motor, the systems, and we’ll have kind of a forward-looking eye added to see if we notice anything that may be a problem down the road.” Like, and I tell guys, there’s nothing that’s going to stop… There’s, there’s no way to know when someone’s gonna run their forklift into the door the next day.

But in terms- Or the

Alex Bridgeman: airplane through the hangar …

Brian Johnson: Or the airplane through the hangar, which has happened, or the helicopter through the hangar door, which happened last year too. Like, it happens.

Alex Bridgeman: Helicopter? Like-

Brian Johnson: Um, yeah, we put a bunch of doors. We don’t do hangar doors, but we do, we do a lot of doors in hangars that are sectional doors, and we finished a nice private hangar here in, in Utah, and a month later, a guy was taking off in his helicopter, and he caught the, the, he caught one of the hangar doors that was open.

Oh. And thankfully, thankfully no one died, but there was some serious damage. But we get stuff like that, and I say the same thing. I say, “Hey, I want their, I want the forklift drivers’ name and number,” ’cause that’s who I send all my Christmas cards to . You know, thank you for keeping us in business. Feel free to run into the door anytime you want.

We’ll get back out to get you taken care of.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s funny. Uh, yeah, we, we can’t fix your helicopter, but we can fix the door.

Brian Johnson: Yes. Yeah, we’ll fix the door. You’re on your own for your helicopter. Yeah. That’s totally different. But they’re probably more expensive probably. Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, for sure.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, the door is, the door is nothing compared to, I would assume, a new set of rotor blades or whatever.

Alex Bridgeman: And all the recalibrating and balancing-

Brian Johnson: Yes …

Alex Bridgeman: for those. Man, that’s nuts For preventative maintenance in commercial, I imagine there’s a couple like key channels that you get those. One is like you do the, you do the install and you sell the service agreement afterwards or there’s a previous, you know, residential customer owns a business then calls you and there’s just the calls out of the blue to you to fix something even if you’re not– You didn’t do the install and have any relationship with them

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Is there one or two of those or maybe all that you focus on? And-

Brian Johnson: So- …

Alex Bridgeman: feel like are most fruitful for new commercial service business?

Brian Johnson: Yeah, for sure. So, so to be honest, that’s a piece that we layered on only recently. So within the last twelve months we’ve, we’ve started really trying to, to build that piece out.

So in terms of the sources that you can find it, you were right, right? An existing customer that we go and put new doors on a facility, that’s a conversation that we have with the customer when the doors are done. Typically our customer is actually not the end user, we’re us- We’re working with a general contractor.

So we have put in place, you know, our office team reaches out on any install that we do to recommend a preventative maintenance program. And in reality to retain the warranty as required. So that’s an easier sale. Historical jobs uh, the company has been around since two thousand and three, so we’ve got a wide base of historical customers and clients, so that’s low hanging fruit Cities and municipalities bid out that work contractually, so we’re– We, we participate in those bid forms.

So like for example, Ogden City put it out to bid and we, we won that, so we do all of Ogden City’s facilities. The Department of Commercial Maintenance, we’ve got a contract with them on some of their buildings. So bigger cities and municipalities are definitely great sources for preventative maintenance because they’re responsible for fire stations, airports, their public works buildings, all of their outbuildings.

You know, you could sign a contract and they could have hundreds of doors, which is, which is great. So those are the, the low-hanging options that we go after. There are some other options too that we — that, that’s kind of plan 2.0 for us as we continue to build it out. But the membership programs, the preventative maintenance, I would say we’ve tried to rev that up only recently within the last 12 months.

Alex Bridgeman: What do you feel like is working the best so far in terms of how you’ve approached it?

Brian Johnson: Existing customers.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Brian Johnson: So it’s a very easy conversation when we hang the door to go grab ’em and say, “Look, it’s brand new, but if they’re getting high use, they will wear out quickly if you don’t pay attention to ’em.”

So existing customers for sure. The other thing that we try to have in place is any service call that we go, when our billing group sends them the invoice, we try to have them also bring that up. “Hey look, we were out, we fixed this one door. We noticed that you’ve got 30 other doors on the facility. Let us send you some information on our preventative maintenance plan and, and we’ll go through that.”

We just, we just did a walk through with a big… the largest plumbing company in the state, and they’ve got 30 or 40 garage doors and they wanted us to take a look at it and we had that conversation with them. Like, “Hey yes, of course we’re gonna come out, but you really should just let us come out every six months, get our eyes on it, s- s- lube and tune the springs, make sure that everything’s calibrated and well, the, the doors will last longer, the components will last longer, and we’ll catch anything before it becomes a major issue.”

Yeah. So o- our existing and our, our existing customer base is the best, the best source of, of those types of deals right now.

Alex Bridgeman: Have you found the, like the ideal way to write the contract or are there any, are any, are there any worthwhile experiments with trying to pitch the contract this way versus that way or having the service agreement look like this vers- versus that?

Brian Johnson: Yeah, that’s a good question. There are different ways to set it up. We’ve got a standard contract In terms of what the customer wants, we’ll, we’ll defer to them. If they want an annual maintenance, if they want a semi-annual, we do monthly stuff for super high use doors. What we work on a preventative maintenance, we typically say, “Look, we come out at a reduced labor charge and we expect to be able to handle this many doors over this period of time.”

And, and we write that into the contract and then we, we bill it as we send guys out. And so they get a, a little break on, on the labor that they would pay had they just called us out in, in general. The other thing that they do that I intimated earlier is they, they get put into our priority status too.

So if you are a contracted company and you call, we, we come out. Like we’ll leave someone else’s job and come out and help you if you’re under contract with us. That’s the commercial space. The residential space has a little more structure to it because it’s just a set plan. You know, we’ve got our Dependable Door Club and that

If they, if they are comfortable with that we recommend doing a monthly A monthly fee for that, and then that, that buys them a- an annual lube and tune. It buys them discounted product when we need to come back out. It gives them some, some added benefits that you wouldn’t get otherwise if you were just to call us, you know, out of the blue.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. One thing I find so interesting about it is if you have six technicians each doing, you know, four jobs a day… I’m thinking like residential. Like maybe commercial takes longer, but depending on the job. But that’s, you know, 24, 25 jobs a day over, you know, over a week. That’s, you know, 125 jobs.

That’s a pretty big sample size to like try different things and just see what works and say, “Hey, this week we’re gonna try pitching things this way” or, “We’re gonna try, you know, this strategy or this thing here.” And y- there’s lots of little experiments you could do throughout the year, even just within the week-

Brian Johnson: Mm-hmm

Alex Bridgeman: that give you like a re- like a statistical sample size.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Are there things you’re like testing out now just to see like how does this work versus that work?

Brian Johnson: Yeah. We, we regularly tweak the process, and we record every service call that we go on. Our guys have a, an app that they record it so that we can go back and listen to it and pay attention.

In terms of these– the sales process or the educating process we ask them to do onsite, that is a work in progress, and that, that really boils down to the individual technician’s desire to be great. You know, you can have the step-to-step process you want ’em to follow. You can tell ’em they need to smile when they get to the door.

You can tell ’em how to knock or how to stand. You can tell ’em how to build a, a good relationship and rapport with the customer, and you can put ’em… Y- you can give ’em all the tools. In the end, it’s, it’s up to the guy that’s boots on the ground whether they embrace the process and, and want to be great or whether they just go through the motions.

But yes, we’re regularly tweaking every little piece of that because every little piece matters. Where do you park the truck? How do you get out? What’s the first thing you say to the customer? How long should you talk to the customer before you get down to the nitty-gritty? When do you bring up the investment?

You know, how do you approach that? If you give them four different options, which option do you present first?

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson: You know, how do you handle objections, right? They, they always have a, an issue with it. How do you handle no? Are you comfortable with them, you know, not being happy with certain things You know, all of those little pieces we review and we re- regularly look at and, and strive to get better at.

I- in the end though, one of our core values of the company is to own the experience. So we have three core values, and one of them is own the experience. No matter what experience you’re in, take ownership of it. And so we look to the technicians, we look to our installers, we look to our office staff. If you’re, if you’re in an interaction with a customer, own it.

You know? Be great at it. Seek to make it as positive as possible. We were talking again this morning in our sales meeting, can we be unreasonably hospitable? Right? Can we go above and beyond what the normal expectation is when you have a blue collar guy show up to- It’s a good book by

Alex Bridgeman: the way. What’s that?

Unreasonable Hospitality.

Brian Johnson: Yes.

Alex Bridgeman: It’s a great book.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, it’s a great book. So how can we implement those things so that when that person leaves, they’re happy with us, they’re happy, they’re… They feel like they got a great value for what they got. And if they’re in a conversation with someone down the road and so

A- and they say, “Hey, y- you know, I’ve, I’ve got, I’ve been having issues with my garage door,” that person who interacted with us should say, “Don’t call anybody but Pioneer Overhead Door.” And again, that’s, it’s a process. We’re all trying to get better at it, and we’re, a- and we’re working through it. And so that’s the goal.

When I first bought the company, within the first week I did a ride along with one of our s- one of our senior technicians. And again, I had, I had no idea what I had. So we went out and there was a broken spring. We got out there, and this technician had probably fixed 10,000 broken springs. And they didn’t have a sales proc- There was no sales process whatsoever.

You had one option: The spring to fi- fit your door. Which, that’s not the case. You’ve got a number of options of springs depending on what you want out of it. But anyway, when we went, we ran up to this call, the technician ran in, shook the lady’s hand. He’s awesome. People love him. And he looks at it, he’s like, “Okay, uh, clearly you have a broken spring.

We’re… Let us get it taken care of and we’ll knock on the door and we’ll come, we’ll come let you know when we’re done.” Like, it wasn’t 15 minutes that he had the spring off, a new one on, fixed, done. And it was, it was over. And back then we charged 389 bucks. That’s what you paid for a spring whether it was a non-insulated door or the nicest door that you could buy.

Y- you paid 389 bucks. 15 minutes later he’s knocking on this lady’s door and she walks out and she’s upset Because it’s only been 15 minutes, and we’re trying to leave and get paid. And he said, “Look, you pay for the expertise, right? I’ve done it a billion times. You’re paying me because I’m great at my job.”

And that stuck out to me as we drove away, and that to me was the inception, at least the pioneer on How people interact with price and value. She got a really low price, 389 bucks is cheap to get your spring fixed, but she felt like she didn’t get a good value because we were there for 15 minutes. So over the next…

Again, over the next 18, 24 months, we- And working with all of these other people in the industry, we carve out the process that we run now, and we expect our, a technician– We book a, any service call for two hours. So w- we expect it to take up to two hours. Now, I don’t want them out of there anytime under an hour, no matter what they go out for.

But let’s stay with that same example. So today, if we were to send a technician out to the same lady’s house, we park the car differently, the truck differently. We approach the door differently. When they knock, they know the type of mindset that the technician should be in. We get to know the customer before we even want to talk about what’s going on.

We wanna know how long they’ve been in the house, how many times they use the door, how many people use the door. Do you have kids coming and going or pets coming g- and going that we wanna consider or be worried about? How long do you plan on s- on living there? Are you going to sell the house anytime soon?

What do you do for a living? Like, we wanna get to know the customer. We call that section of the sales process the, the BRT, build the relationship of trust.

Alex Bridgeman: And also if it’s recorded those notes added to that customer’s profile. Yeah. So we know that there’s two dogs, there’s three kids.

Brian Johnson: Yes. Yeah. So i- so if we go back thereafter, the technician can look at back up and say, “Oh gosh, I remember Mrs.

Jones. She works out at the base and has lived here for 20 years and never wants to leave.” Okay, we’re going to recommend a different solution for you than the person that is like, “Hey, I’m renting this house, and I literally want the cheapest possible option.” So again, going back to that same experience.

So the technician’s going to take their time. Then they’re going to say, “Okay, tell me what’s going on with the door. Obviously you’ve got a broken spring. I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna take care of that for you today. Is it okay if I do a full inspection on the entire system of the door, the panel system, the torsion system, the motor system?

We’re gonna run a 29-point inspection and make sure that everything is, else is, is working properly. ‘Cause if you’ve got a bad spring, it’s likely that your cables are messed up. Your drums may be having issues. Your bearings may have a problem. Your rollers may be worn out and used. Your motor may be overworking.

Like, it’s, it’s a system. So we’re going to look at everything. We’re gonna spend some time. Uh, is that okay, customer?” And they always say yes, right? We always wanna know. And so now When a technician goes out to that same person, they spend that hour of time with the person. And then we present them with that report.

“Hey, these are the things that we’re concerned about. These are the things that you oughta be thinking about down the road and these are the things that are working great with your door.” And then we based on that information that we have, we recommend one of these four options. And guess what? Our cheapest isn’t 389 anymore.

It’s more than that because we’re giving you more. And we run that process and the average customer goes out and they may, they may depending on what they want, they may pick a much more expensive option. Say they walk out spending $1000 but they’re happy to leave us a five-star review and say, “This technician did an amazing job.

I love the experience that I had. I’m so happy” Guess what? They got a new spring on their door just like the lady did three years ago, but we’ve been there for an hour and half or two hours and they see the value that we’re trying to present to them in that process versus, you know, “I’m here for 15 minutes pay me so I can get outta here onto my next job”.

And that, that very first, that was the first ride along I ever did as the owner of the company and that I sat and chewed on that for months before I was like,” We’re changing. We’re gonna change how we do it at Pioneer

Alex Bridgeman: Overheads.” Yeah this is not going to work Do you have, do you use ServiceTitan to capture the- Uh-huh

inspections and every– all the-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: photos and everything?

Brian Johnson: Yeah. So we use Service Titan. We’ve got some prebuilt forms that we expect them to use, and then some prebuilt templates that we expect them to use when they present the options to the customer.

Alex Bridgeman: We had our car serviced recently- Wow … and they did the same inspections, but it was a video.

Ah. So there was … And it was like f- five to ten second clips- Mm-hmm …. across each component or part. There was a picture or a, a short video of the brakes and then the tires and oil, and they like-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: pull it out. Like here’s the, here’s the new oil, and like here’s how it’s working.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: And I thought that was pretty unique ’cause they had the voiceover too.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. That’s, that’s unique. What we want to do is we wanna do some show and tell. So we wanna go back and knock on the customer’s door, and we don’t wanna be there unless the customer’s there. We, we wanna get to know them and understand what, what their intent is with the, with the service call. So we’re gonna bring them back out into the garage, and I tell them, “It’s literally show and tell.

Here’s your old roller. Here’s a new roller. You know, they’re rated for 10,000 cycles,” or for, for any cycle count that, that we have there. “Would you like us to put these old rollers back on or the new roller? Here’s what a bearing, your old bearing is plastic and, and nasty and full of dirt. Here’s a new bearing.

Would you like us to put a new bearing on? Here are the old cables. Here are these new cables rated for the airline industry. You know, they’re never gonna break.” And we want the customer to, to have a, a tactile experience at that point so that instead of us just saying, “Oh, you need new rollers, cables, and bearings”, well let us show you why we’re recommending that.

And we use that in conjunction with our 29-point inspection. So here’s the problem, let me show you a solution. And then what do you wanna do? It’s completely up to you.

Alex Bridgeman: Right. Builds a lot more trust that way too actually showing- Yeah … them here’s the worn out part. You can see it here. Yes. It’s fraying. Yep.

That probably, that resonates a lot more I bet.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. No s-… now step 3.0 for Pioneer Overhead is u- along the lines of a little more technical. So wh- w- the next piece that we’re working on is providing the customer with that information on the front end. So Service Titan allows us to code jobs so we know what’s typically what’s wrong before we go out.

So let’s stick with that spring example. So what we’re working on right now Is right now when the, when the customer calls in and we go out, they get a job reminder email or text, and that has a technician bio, right? “Okay, your technician John, he’s coming out. He’s been with Pioneer for this long. He likes puppies and long walks on the beach, and he’s a softie even though he’s all tatted up.”

Whatever it is, right? In the future, what, what it’s going to be is it’s going to be an embedded video. So instead of the customer receiving a text, they’re gonna receive a, a text with a video in it that’s John saying, “Hey, I’m John. I’ll be your technician. I live here. I’m local. These are my hobbies. I’m really looking forward to helping take care of you in your home.

Thank you for, thank you for trusting Pioneer.” They’re gonna get that. The next piece they’re gonna get is if we know, let’s say it’s a s- a broken spring. We’re working on a video series that’s a 30 or 40 second clip of, “Let us explain to you what goes into to pricing a spring. When our technicians come out, we’ve got hundred different spring options depending on the size, the weight, and the warranty that you want for your door.”

So we’re– we don’t just quote you, “Oh, a spring is gonna cost $389,” anymore because we’ve got options for you, depending on how long you want that spring to last. Do you want us to have a warranty on it, so if it breaks, we come back and fix it for free? What… You know, we can get a powder coated spring. Do you want a certain color of spring?

Do you want, you know, different material of spring? So what we’re doing now is a video series that, um, we’re creating as a company where, depending on the job type, they’re also going to get a, an intro into, “We know you’ve got a broken spring. Let us give you a little bit of information about that before the technician shows up,” so that you feel educated on what they’re trying to tell you when they get there.

And we’re going to extrapolate that out to all of the different services that we provide and chunk it down into bite-size videos so that they can do it. Say they want us to come out for a A new door install estimate, right? And they call six companies, which happens all the time. Well, maybe we’re quoting you a really nice high-end steel back polyurethane insulated door and company B is quoting you a same looking door but with much less technical ability to it or a, a much inferior door option.

Outside they look pretty much the same, but the guts are different. And so we’ll have a video series also to talk about l- let us explain to you the difference between this type of door and that type of door and that type of door so that the questions that we know the customers are asking get answered before, before a technician goes out.

So that’s step 3.0 for Pioneer is really being to ed- being able to educate the customer on the front end of the sales process. And all through text? Uh- All through text? Text, email, or linkage. So we’ll either send them a link to our, to our YouTube page or to our social pages. We’ll do a text or, or an email.

The other thing that we utilize is ringless voicemails, so we’ll send a voicemail directly to ’em On occasion that’ll say, “Hey,” you know, we do a lot of that on our, our follow-up process. Wonder if you

Alex Bridgeman: can send a voice memo

Brian Johnson: too?

Alex Bridgeman: Like

Brian Johnson: a- You could … voice

Alex Bridgeman: recording

Brian Johnson: through text? Yeah, you could send a … You can send a

I don’t, uh, yeah, you probably could. You could send a voice recording through text.

Alex Bridgeman: I do that the iPhone to iPhone it works well. I don’t know iPhone/Android or vice versa- Yeah … if it’s any different, but that would be really interesting. We had our furnace serviced back in North Carolina, and they used ServiceTitan, and they had texts to, you know, uh, let us know they were on their way- Yeah

and whatnot. But the problem was they used like four or five different phone numbers. They have like a- Oh, okay … It was a different number for the tech, and then the, the other tech had a different phone number. Yeah. And then there was the main phone number.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: And so I was trying to save the number so that when they called, I knew it was them, but every time it was a different phone number.

Oh. So I was just, like, adding… Do I add five phone numbers to one contact? That doesn’t make any sense.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, right.

Alex Bridgeman: And so if there’s a way to make it all one phone number, that’d be sweet. We’ve also started using Ramp, and they, when they texted to set up the account, the contact already got added to my phone.

Um- Oh, nice … I think it had a logo and r-… I didn’t have to add it yet, but they had the logo and name of the company in the text conversation already there.

Brian Johnson: That’s nice.

Alex Bridgeman: I, I don’t know how you set that up, but that would be kind of cool, too.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, all of our outbound communication gets sent from ServiceTitan, so-

Alex Bridgeman: Probably up to them, then

Brian Johnson: Yeah, those are things that we would… And they may have… So the way they do it is they give you the, the base subscription, and they got a bunch of pro tools, so they may have that in one of the pro tools that’s just not something I’m familiar with.

Alex Bridgeman: S- that’s on my wish list now after seeing that. Yeah. Like, oh, I want, I wanna figure that out.

Yeah. It looks sweet.

Brian Johnson: That’d be cool.

Alex Bridgeman: There’s a lot of power also to the, like, like video and explaining, like, like sharing your name. Mm-hmm. Even just the basic. I think it’s in I think there’s a section in Never Split the Difference-

Brian Johnson: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: about the power of names. That’s a

Brian Johnson: great book, by the way. Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, and it talked about how n- there was, you know, i- if you’re in a, like, a bank robbery situation- Yeah

like h- you’re a hostage or something-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: like saying, like introducing yourself to the, to the guys saying your-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: your names, that gave you a meaningful better odds of not being harmed in any way. Yeah,

Brian Johnson: yeah. No, that … I’ve read that book more than once. That’s one of my go-tos, and we… I, I have the technicians do that too.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, nice.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, ’cause, yeah, you’re talking about his… So he, he did talk about the bank robbery, this is Chris Voss, but he also talked about an airline experience where, you know, you’re lined up at the counter, and people are given… People are in stressful situations. He always says, “Hey, my name’s Chris,” and he makes sure that, that there’s a, an interpersonal relationship.

And then- The

Alex Bridgeman: late night DJ voice

Brian Johnson: too Yes, yeah, the late night DJ voice. But he does that, and I do that all the time. It drives my wife crazy, ’cause I’ll be like, “Hey, what’s the Brian discount?” Or, “Now that we’re best friends, you know, what’s the friends and family discount?” And yeah, it drives my wife crazy, but I do that all the time too.

Alex Bridgeman: Like even the, like basic stuff, like LA checkout- Yeah … just being friendly, like gets you a long way.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. Oh, for sure. And you know, none of it’s new. You, you hear all of this stuff and you think, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” Customer service isn’t new. Taking care of people isn’t new. It’s just for some reason a lot of companies forgot what it’s like.

And you know, from going back to the value piece, people only complain about price when there’s an absence of value. Like, if we do a good job of indicating the value that we pr- that we’re providing, and give people options, you don’t hear them complain about price as much. When they complain about price is when they don’t see the value that you’re trying to, trying to offer.

And so a lot of the service side really is just taking care of people and giving them a really good experience. That’s easier said than done. Yeah. It’s not easy.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, yeah. I agree. I, uh, I’m also a big fan of how fast, like companies that answer the phone really quickly-

Brian Johnson: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: and don’t have as many of the automated or even any automated like, “This call is being recorded for quality” or-

Brian Johnson: Yeah

Alex Bridgeman: or press one for this, like-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: even though they all go to the same person.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. Some, so some states force you to do that. Thankfully Utah does not.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s nice.

Brian Johnson: They have done studies. If you don’t answer the phone, it’s something crazy. If you don’t answer the phone within like 20 seconds, people will just hang up and call somebody else The, the easiest things to implement AI in is in the phone side.

And we dabbled with an AI receptionist and we had a horrible experience. Everybody hated it.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, geez, really?

Brian Johnson: Uh, yeah. And we thought, “Oh, this is gonna be great,” right? We’ll just turn the AI, the AI lady on and she’ll solve all our problems. And we did that for about three months, and had so many people frustrated and not happy.

They knew they were talking with a robot, that we turned it off. Now, we do keep, we do keep our AI receptionist on. Her name’s Emily. But we keep Emily on after hours.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, that makes

Brian Johnson: sense. Because, yeah, we don’t have… I’m not gonna ask my, my people to stay up at 2:00 AM. So we still will accept a call at any time, and Emily is good.

She’s getting better. But if you call after hours, she’s gonna take it, she’s gonna shoot us a text, and if it’s an emergency someone will get it and move on it. If not, we’ll get to them the next day. But yeah, that, th- that AI is still, we’re still working through that piece.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Brian Johnson: Did you try it for, you tried it for all hours, like everything?

Uh-huh. We tried to turn on… Well, what we tried was What you’ll find is you have call volume spikes and, and dips, right? And as a small company, we only ever have one or two people that are dedicated to the phones. So if you get three people calling at once, someone was going to voicemail.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson: My initial thought was, “Well, let’s not get them to voicemail.

Let’s at least get them on the phone.” And so we hired this AI company to be the overflow, is what we called it. Got it. So if we had three or four people on the phone on a call, it would automatically get answered by Emily, and Emily would try to work them through a process, and she was okay. And let’s be honest, probably in the next year or two, we’ll all go that way because it will be indistinguishable from a live person.

Alex Bridgeman: It’ll get better.

Brian Johnson: Yeah. But today that wasn’t the case, at least with, in our experience. And so we turned it on, and we had a lot of people annoyed, and we, we turned it off for overflow. So we felt like, at least our experience, it was better for a customer to get sent to voicemail and us say, “Hey, sorry, we’re crazy busy right now.

We will call you back as soon as we get off the phone”-

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm …

Brian Johnson: than send them to an AI.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. Could you see, like, the, a measurable difference in, like, booked jobs, new members?

Brian Johnson: Um, no, we didn’t, we didn’t see that. What we saw was a measureable, measurable difference in people complaining. Mm-hmm. So people would– You’d hear it on their, the call transcripts with Emily.

It’d be like, you know, “We know you’re a robot. I want to speak to a live person.”

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, yeah.

Brian Johnson: And, and I get that too. If I had my preference, I would rather speak to a, to someone. Now, again, in, in a year or two, or maybe less, the AIs, that piece may go away ’cause they’ll just be so good and so conversive and so able to answer your questions that y- really what you want is you want to get your problem solved.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm

Brian Johnson: If a computer can do that and you can’t, it– better than a human, that might be one thing that goes away in the next, in the next couple years. But again, for us, im-in the immediate future, we’re still answering. We just hired another customer service representative ’cause our call volume’s a l- a little high right now.

So we’re still gonna have a, a live body answering the phone.

Alex Bridgeman: Good. Good. Nice. I, I’ve noticed even like a… I’m excited for AI to keep getting better with speech-to-text.

Brian Johnson: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. I like speech-to-text for texting and emails. Whisper flow is pretty good. It’s a little clunky on the phone, but the desktop version is, is really good.

Is

Brian Johnson: it? Okay.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, so Siri has been bad for a long time. Yeah. It does not — doesn’t really seem to be getting better, but some of these other tools seem to be getting better, and-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: I’m excited about that.

Brian Johnson: Okay. Okay, yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Some random things like that. But in closing, like what are you excited to see get done this year?

Like if we’re, you know, it’s Christmas here-

Brian Johnson: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: what are you gonna look back and be, I think most, most pumped about?

Brian Johnson: You know, one of the interesting things about growing a business in my experience is you don’t recognize the l- the little wins that end up making a, a big impact. And having underwritten hundreds of businesses in my previous career and, and having bought and sold a few and now operating Pioneer Overhead, the thing that sets businesses apart is th-the operations, right?

How good are you at operating a business? And the hard thing to– about measuring that is the tiny little wins along the way, the little pieces along the way. For me, there’s gotta be joy in the journey, right? We’ve recognized that we have some pretty lofty goals of where we’re trying to be as a company in the next three to five years, and we certainly have markers that we’re trying to hit and goals that we’re trying to achieve.

It’s the can you– are you happy with the day-to-day and, and how you are– and, and who you are every day? At Pioneer Overhead, we, we blur the lines of what the typical employee-employer customer relationship looks like. We’re interested in our employees. Are– Is their home life happy? Are they… Do they have happy hobbies?

Are they out doing things other than work? Are they progressing as people? Like we talk a lot about that here. And so to answer your question, you know, by the end of the year, what do we want? We certainly wanna grow as fast as we can, but we want team members here that are happy To work here and that are motivated, and that have upward mobility.

And we want customers who are raving fans to bring in another great book that have positive experiences with Pioneer Overhead that tell their friends and family about us. And if we’re doing that, the growth will come. There’s always little things to tweak in a company. But in terms of, you know, if you step back and take a holistic look at it, that’s the goal.

Team members who are happy and thriving and moving forward in a positive manner and customers who love us.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. I love it. Well Brian, thanks for coming on. This has been a lot of fun. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Brian Johnson: Yeah, it was nice to meet you. Thank you for letting me.

Alex Bridgeman: Absolutely.

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