From Coffee, To High-Pressure Misting Systems | Joel Cronenberg from Element Mist | #3

On this episode of Build Arizona we'll be speaking with Joel Cronenberg from Element Mist. We'll be getting background on his journey; from making coffee, to making high-pressure misting systems; what the two have in common; Arizona's hard water situation; and how they design the perfect patio misting system. Element Mist is one of the leading providers for misting systems in the Greater Phoenix area, and you really can't beat their service or Sapphire Club maintainance program.

Schedule a quote with them today at https://elementmist.com

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Build Arizona is a space for folks in The Trades to share their stories, insights, and thoughts about what's next for Arizonans. While our content is local and regional specific, there are insights for contractors around the world. Join us and let us know what you'd like to hear about next!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this episode of Build Arizona, we'll be speaking with Joel Cronenberg from Element Mists. We're gonna get some background on his journey from making coffee to making high-pressure misting systems. What the two have in common Arizona's hardwater situation and how they designed the perfect patio misting system. Thanks for joining us on Build Arizona. Joel, thank you for being here. Absolutely. Uh yeah, I know your schedule is very busy as it continues to heat up uh here with this heat wave that's going on in Arizona. Uh so I'm sure your schedule is pretty packed coming up this week.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Very packed, yeah. I'm glad we could finally make this happen, carve out a little bit of time today. Um I'm gonna be right back into the field after this, but really important to do this with you. So thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

And uh yeah, like I said, um, you know, we we we've been working together for what, a you know, a year and a half now. So I know a little bit about your story in terms of growing up here in Arizona and uh, you know, your your story from from uh going from high school uh and then um actually working in the coffee industry for a little bit, which got you really into uh water systems, uh, which is really interesting. But I want to hear that in your own words and so that the listeners get a little bit of background on you and Element Mist.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Yeah, definitely. Uh me as well as all of the partners in Element Mist um are natives from Arizona. And as far as how we got started, um, I previously was in hospitality. I have a passion for serving others, and I just really like taking care of people. And I've always just wanted to start my own business, and that's always something that I've had a desire to do. So five years ago, we started Element Mist, and as you had said before, previously I was in uh coffee professionally here in the valley, and my time in coffee taught me a lot about water. We were building high-end water systems to really get to the exact types of water that we needed to achieve for our customers in coffee. And when it came to starting a business and looking at the options, I was already working adjacent to water so much that it was just so hot here. I was wondering, what does water have to do with uh misting systems and what can be done there? And um it seemed like something that we wanted to check out. Um, additionally, misting was an opportunity to have a relationship with our customers. There's so many other interest industries where you do a good job and you don't see that customer for another 10 years. I wanted to have an ongoing relationship with our customers, and mist really provided the opportunity to give that ongoing service.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Right. So you had a pretty unique entry path coming from, you know, coffee, right? And then just like you're saying, you know, into this, into this out of the service industry, into you know, service of your community through being a business owner with Element Mist. Right. Um, so I the couple of things came to mind actually when you were talking about that. Uh, and I do want to talk about the customers in a second here, but um the first question that came to mind was obviously working in coffee. You weren't you weren't just like here, let me do a drip coffee. You were actually working uh in particular with with remind me, was it mythical or was it provision? Uh provision. Mythical is a friend of yours, right? So um, yeah, so provision coffee. So this is like, you know, for for the listeners who don't know, provision coffee is like creme de la creme coffee, right? And and in fact, you were actually uh tell us a little bit of that uh that background as a barista, because you you got a little bit of um I mean elevated position, right? Yeah, championship of society.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

I feel like I know what you're getting at here. Yeah. My time in so I think I was with Provision for um almost seven years. And so in that amount of time, you really get the opportunity to do everything. So I really did start just in the cafe and then worked pretty much to every position. Um at the end of it, I was the director of operations for the wholesale, really taking care of our wholesale clients, um, doing consulting for cafe build-outs, equipment, overseeing the roasting operations pretty much all the day-to-days. The nice thing about provision, as well, is they do have kind of an uh AMPM, if you will. They do serve cocktails as well, and they have a very cocktail forward approach to their coffee and how they construct specialty craft coffee cocktails, um, non-alcoholic and alcoholic. Um, so during my time as a um uh being with Provision, uh, I had the opportunity to compete nationally, um, which was a really special opportunity. It was a lot of training, so we trained for about six months. Um, and for anyone that's not familiar, it's it's just really intense and it's a fun kind of a fun fact to throw out. But there's multiple different arenas within coffee competitions. The one that I specifically competed in was Coffee in Good Spirits. So it is a performance-based competition. We kind of traveled around the nation um doing, you know, regionals and finals and things like that. So, all in all, we took fifth place, which was really special um to be able to say, you know, that's something that we did. So that was in uh 2019.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

And that's fifth in the nation.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Fifth in the nation.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah. Yeah. Which is yeah, I remember when you first told me that, I remember being, you know, just kind of amazed, right? Because one, that's such a highly competitive space, right? And two, it's just not something that you would expect, right? And this is, I think, one thing that I've been really enjoying about Build Arizona is learning everybody's pathways into the trades. And yours seems very intentional, right? I mean, maybe a little bit of luck, you know, element of luck, right? Of like, okay, so uh, you know, I've done this with my life, where can I go from here? But it wasn't like, hmm, let me just look at the market and find a niche that I don't think is being served. Like I think there was this natural progression of you saw, you know, these systems that you were building, right, and being a part of, um, and and you found some interest in that, that you had interest in that. Yeah. And so you were able to take and partlay that from your, you know, uh job experience in in that field and move it into element mist, absolutely, which is what you're doing now.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And there was a brief moment there when I was working in restaurant positions, um, that I got out of the restaurant industry to move into the home service space. Uh, that was my first taste of the home service industry. This was probably 10 years ago, but I was fixing garage doors. So I did that for a very short period of time. Gotcha. But that was like a window into that industry. After that, I got back into the restaurant industry. That's when I started coffee. So when it came time to doing my own thing, that's the only reason I even thought of or had a any understanding or an idea of starting something in the home service space, which really, really rewarding, as you know, you work with so many home service professionals. Um, it is a really cool industry.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

It is. Yeah. It is. And and to see the change recently, right, in in and again, another thing that I want to do with Build Arizona is elevate the trades uh to their rightful place, as you know, like uh these people with such like a depth of wisdom, right, in in our communities with the way that our infrastructure works, right? And so actually last episode I was talking to Cole Kemp from Greenkeeper. Uh in landscaping, we were actually talking about, you know, just just touching on it, right? Uh, but a little bit of like, you know, people in the trade should have a seat at the table when it comes to policymaking. Uh and sometimes those two things uh butt heads a little bit. Um but uh you know, it's like the the men and women in the trades are the people on the ground that understand, you know, really just like the wisdom of how things work.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Uh uh and so yeah, I mean, I'm sure being with Element Mist, you've learned a ton. Obviously, you know, I was born and raised in Arizona and I've I've lived here, you know, most of my life. And I know that we have a notoriously, you know, hard water problem. Right. Um, and so I'm sure that plays a factor into uh into Element Mist and into like, you know, I'm sure you have to have that conversation with with customers of like, oh, let's get a water softener or something, you know, upstream from this so that way by the time the water hits the system, you know, your your stuff lasts longer. Um yeah, I'm sure you've you've uh you know been exposed to a lot more uh just wisdom of how the infrastructure of of Arizona works in terms of yeah, in terms of um, you know, it's like in particular with your misting systems, right? Um, yeah, actually, let me let me let me not talk about this for you. Let's have you explain this. Can you tell me why, in particular, that the municipal pressure, you know, that you get from your water system is not enough for a professional misting system?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Sure, yeah. Well, it's really in the name. We call it a high pressure misting system for a reason. I think there is a lot of people that are native to Arizona that just know what that means because we've been around it for a long time. Even though my industry is somewhat in its infancy, um, a lot of people know what that means. It's second nature. But we have so many people moving to Arizona. Lots of my customers are not from Arizona and they hit their first summer and they go, oh my gosh, this is what is going on? What do we, what can we do here? But in terms of high pressure, you know, we're talking about a thousand PSI system. That's what everything is tuned around. You'll hear a lot of other things. You'll, you know, Google search missing systems, and you'll see low pressure, mid-pressure, you know, low entry level, mid-tier, commercial grade, all these, all these buzzwords. Um, but really, it's either high pressure or nothing. Um, if it's not high pressure, it's not going to be functioning the way that you want it to. The role that the pressure plays is that it's actually atomizing that mist so much more effectively. If you're not atomizing the mist, you're not having a fine enough droplet size, you're not evaporating. It's not the water that's doing the cooling, it's the evaporation. It's that flapper flash evaporation.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Gotcha. Yeah, okay. So that makes sense. I mean, you've explained it to me. I've seen your systems firsthand. So uh as that water is coming out, like you said, it's extremely high pressure and it's coming through. In particular, you've explained to me, it is a is a smaller nozzle. Actually, we have one here. Um, it is this tiny little pinhole of an opening that the water is being forced through. And so that's what you mean by atomizing, right? It's it's literally coming out at like it's not a droplet, it is a very fine mist.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hence why people call it mist. Sometimes you'll hear the word fog as well. Um, when you hear the word fog, they're typically referring to mist that is coming out of the ground. So, same thing happening here. Fog and mists are one and the same. The one thing that we do have control over, which is a huge part of what we do, is we control the size of the orifice of the nozzle. So depending on certain variables, we might spec in a nozzle that is capable of putting out more mist or less mist.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yes, I'm actually gonna put that on the screen there. You can see, you know, some of these uh plastic lines that you get from like Amazon or, you know, Walmart or whatever, um, they have this larger opening. Right. Uh and yours, you can see the steel line down uh down here. Uh that steel line is a much smaller opening. It's almost half the size. Yeah. It's a little bit, a little bit bigger than half the size. Uh, but that makes a huge difference. And actually, I do have some photos, right? Um, you know, again, like like we said earlier, we've been working together for for a long time. So I've uh had the privilege to work alongside you and see uh, you know, some of these systems and the difference, right? Yeah, that's pretty typical right there. Yeah. So we see some of these cheap $30 backyard systems, right? And I think I have we have more images in this blog here.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

It's it's really unfortunate and it's really all too common. Um, it's really tempting for people when they go on and start Googling because they want a miss system and they're looking at different options and they go, well, this one's $5,000 and this one is only $500. Maybe I can get away with this small one. And the truth is, is even if it's working perfectly, it's still not working the same. It's it doesn't hold a candle to it.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yeah, no, it doesn't cool down. I mean, I grew up with this system on the left here, right? And like you said, it's not it's not uh atomizing. So like you can see on the right here, that is mist. Yeah, right. This one on the left is rain. Well, it's rain on the left. This is mist on the right. Yeah, and the difference is, yeah, you get sprayed, you get wet uh when you walk under this one. These plastic lines are gonna last one, maybe two summers if you're very lucky, uh, here in the brutal Phoenix summer, right? Where your steel lines are gonna last much longer. And in fact, you have, and we'll get a little bit more into the Sapphire Club later, but you have uh an awesome um practice in your business where if any of these nozzles get clogged, you replace them, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know I'm biased, but we do have quite literally the most comprehensive best service program in the valley for our customers, which is one of my favorite parts uh about the business. And when you look at one of those DIY systems, you're still putting the same amount of holes into your house. Yep. So you really want to make it count. When you look at the the good stuff, it's like this is something that you're putting on your house that's adding value that's gonna last. No, this I wouldn't say that this adds value here. No, not this.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

You and like look at the damage your house. Exactly. And and then, you know, you're working with what 60, 40 to 60 PSI from the municipal pressure. So it's not really gonna get to the end of your system, right? And then, you know, these ones up front, they're gonna take the the the brunt of that pressure. And so you'll see stuff like this all the time. And I again remember growing up as a kid here having these types of systems and they never last. No, right? And this is what happens typically is you see something just coming apart at the seams, uh, you know, the pressure is coming out at the connector, not actually, um, not actually uh, you know, through the nozzle. Uh and and yeah, it's just like, and what's funny is to find all these images, to find all these images for this blog, I just went to Amazon. I looked up, you know, plastic uh uh misting system, you know, misting systems, right? And then I just went into the comment section and I just pulled photos from that because I was like, I don't know where I'm gonna find all these crappy misting systems. They're up and then they're down within a couple of weeks. And I was like, wait, I'll just go to Amazon because I'm sure there's plenty of one and two star reviews filter filter by the reviews. Exactly. And that's what I did to find these images because that's kind of what you can expect. You know, you get what you pay for, right? And so it's like if you want to add value to your house and if you want to have something that actually cools down your area, like yeah, you're gonna want something like this.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

That's a conversation that I have with our customers very commonly, you know, is it's kind of all or nothing. You either do it the right way or I try I try to tell people, you know, I'd rather you not do it at all, you know, just do it right or not at all. And when I come into a home, that's what I'm looking for is what does it take to achieve the goal the customer's looking at? And I don't get to determine that. The space determines what it needs. So if the customer is telling me they want a certain type of performance, I'm basing my design off of what's already there, what the what the space dictates. So you have a formula for this, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:44

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Uh a lot of it's has been trial and error. You know, we install so many systems, we have so much experience installing miss systems. We typically are installing at a minimum one a day of these miss systems. Some of the most important variables that I look at when I walk into a customer's home, which is the most important part, is that conversation with the customer of um what are you wanting? Because I can design a system that operates many different ways. It's just a determining what's important for their space. So um, how big is the space? Just physically, how much mist do we need to put in there? Do they have tall ceilings? Do we need to have a bigger nozzle or a smaller ceiling or a smaller nozzle to combat for a taller ceiling or a shorter ceiling? But also, like what direction does the patio face? If I have a customer who says, Hey, Joel, I'm only out here in the evening times and I have an east-facing patio and I only come out here after work after the sun goes down. Well, that's a system that needs to be tuned to a much finer mist because if you're misting at night, you don't want that mist connecting to the ground and getting things wet. You want to make sure that the way that you design the system is going to function the way your customers want. The other example I give is, you know, if it's one o'clock and you got kids and the nannies over and they're by the pool, you probably want the system tuned a lot heavier. You're not really worried if a little bit of things, if the pool deck's getting a little wet, you probably just want max cooling power. So, you know, what direction does the patio face? How tall are the ceilings? How deep is the patio? Are we going to be mounting on the outside? Are we going to be mounting on the inside? Um, those are all factors that we're going to be taking into consideration on how to design a system. And then it gets even deeper from there. You know, do we need to valve off certain sections? Do we need to give you options for when it's running to have certain sections be able to be turned on for a little bit more or less mist, depending on what the scenario uh requires? So fully custom. Very custom, yeah. Fully custom. And that's absolutely I believe that's really what makes the difference. Our customer feedback is just really incredible. Um, and it's because I think there's a lot of people who go, okay, how many feet is it? This is how much mist it is. They don't really, there's no personal touch to it. Um, and they're not really listening to the customer and taking those details into consideration.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah, absolutely. And as your marketer, that's one of the things that um it's a highlight of my job and working on your account in particular is going, you know, when we get new reviews in, it's always, it's always, you know, one, they're talking about the efficacy of the system and how nice it is to now have some uh, you know, how have their backyard available to them in the summer. But it's also the customer service. Yeah. Almost every review that I see is like, wow, Joel and Jake are so knowledgeable, right? They they really took time to explain to me what my options are. Yeah. And that's that level, you know. So, so again, part of this build Arizona, right? So we a few things that we try to highlight here, but one of them is um we're here to make money, yes, right. That's part of business, right? Money is the is the grease for the business wheels, right? Yeah. So it's it's it's a necessary element of it, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:44

But what else? And it's also, you know, if you're not profitable, you're not gonna be able to take care of your customers the way you need to. Correct. We are there for our customers. If you call us, we answer. If you have an issue, we're out there. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And and and that's it, and that's exactly what you know, I was I was just I was just getting to was you guys go above and beyond because these are your neighbors. Yeah. Right. You know, it's like there are so there are a lot of trades that are notorious for cutting corners because they're just trying to make their their bottom line. You know they're just trying to they're trying to make as much money as they can, right? And so, you know, of course, like I said, you know, money is a necessary piece of the business machine. It allows you to deliver a high level of service to your customers, right? But there is still that piece of like, do you care to deliver that high level of service to customers? Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Because we have almost 100% of our customers on our service program, we see our customers over and over again. That was the goal of starting the business. We are highly incentivized to ensure our customers are happy and stay happy. If we don't do a good job, I have to see that customer over and over again. If they don't like the way it works, they're gonna tell me they don't like the way it works, and that almost never happens. So we're really incentivized to make sure we're listening to their needs, deliver on that, and then we can maintain that relationship.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Right. Well, we've talked about, I mean, ever since the beginning, we talked about a little bit of what is the lifestyle aspect of Element Mist, right? And you and I growing up here are very familiar with summer pool parties. Yeah. Right. And so you are a big piece of these summer pool parties now. And so it is your job, right? Um, you know, obviously someone someone is going to come to you and request this for their house, right? But it is also your job, you know, in a way to to impact our our culture here, yeah. Yeah of like, you know, I'm an outdoorsy person. I am outdoors as much as I can, right? And so having one of your systems at my house is fantastic. Yeah. You know, I enjoy it. I actually turned it on this last weekend, literally.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

I honestly, I it's because I do it every day, I almost take it for granted and I don't think about it. But really, it's pretty insane to think about having it versus not having it, is quite literally the difference between being able to use your space. Like you are not going out there if it's 115 degrees. It is quite literally the difference of now the heat is an option. Now I can use my space. Oh, my house is the hangout house now because I have misters. So it is it is pretty amazing, really, that yeah, it's even possible.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah. So why don't you tell, you know, if there's any homeowners listening, why don't you tell them by how much will it cool down their space?

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah, definitely. Everybody, uh, you're gonna see a lot of different things online. We like to say up to 25 degrees of a drop, and that's huge. 25 degrees is massive. Um, a lot of that is going to determine on things outside of our control. Like again, like we talked about time of day, what direction does your patio face, what are we able to achieve, and also what are you willing to put in as far as as far as mist. We're always going to tell you what we recommend for the optimal performance of your space. Um, but yeah, typically up to 25 degrees. 20 degrees is very reasonable. On the worst end, on like a really sub-optimal system, I've seen 15 degrees as like suboptimal performance, uh which is still huge. Yeah. Like very, very small amount of mist with hardscaping rocks, radiant heat, everything working against you with the sun facing you, you're still gonna see at a minimum, typically 15 degrees difference. But um, usually it's no problem getting closer to 25.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Yeah. Which again, that's that's night and day difference. And, you know, like I like to tell people who are from out of town, right? It's like, you know, people will see like 100 degrees and they'll be like, oh my god, that's miserable. And it's like it's warm, but there's no moisture in the air here, right? We always it's it's so cliche. It's a dry heat, right? And it is, right? It actually is not that bad. If you go stand in the shade, it almost feels like it's 15 degrees cooler, right? And so so a hundred degrees isn't that bad, but 115 sucks. Yeah. Like it just there's there's no we don't have earthquakes, right? We don't have hurricanes. We you know, we have haboobs and we have heat, right? And so you have this, you know, you're this interesting trade. Uh and I actually talked to Colin from East Valley Roofing Repair about this, where where Colin's trade. Is like, ah, it sucks, but we've got to pay this money because our roof is leaking. Yep. Right. Your trade is like, heck yeah, we get to have our our backyard for another two or three months out of the year. Oh yeah. You know, and so yours is this thing that this purchase that people look forward to. Definitely. Uh, which is which I'm sure that actually impacts the way that and uh, you know, you you work with your customers. You know, do you do you see? I mean, you because you mentioned you worked in garage doors, which that's another like, you know, maybe you're going out to do maintenance, but oftentimes you're getting called because it's broken.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Well, no one wants to fix anything that it was unexpected, you know. Oh, you got a broken garage spring. It's part of life. You have to fix it. What are you gonna do? So you do have to fix that. And with our customers, that's part of the reason I was intrigued that starting and going into this industry is because it's not an emergency service. I'm used to that emergency service um type customer, and this is now, you know, it is a luxury item. It is something that people are excited about. It's not a I have to have this, it's a I want to have this, and we get to be this like hero. And again, it's like we do it every day, so sometimes I take it for granted. But the reaction that I get for people when we turn it on for the first time is awesome. It makes it worth it because they're like, oh my gosh, yes, this is my backyard now. Are you kidding me? This is so awesome! Yeah, meanwhile, it's like, all right, on to the next one. I got to install next another one. Um, but yeah, no one's forced into buying a miss system, so it's really that option. And um, when you talk about the the culture that we've experienced growing up here, like we're used to that and we're used to our parents probably just spraying us with a hose while we're running out in the grass. It's kind of funny looking at those early dated um slapped together miss systems versus what we do now. It is a night and day difference because I think when some people think of a miss system, they still have that early idea of a miss system where it's like falling apart. It's like you picture the patio that's got the broken sling chair with only like one sling still attached, the fan blades that are all sad and droopy. And that's what you think about, like with an old crappy, drippy miss system. It is absolutely not like that now. It's unbelievable. And it's great to get the feedback from our clients year after year, you know, all the way down the road. And they go, Man, I wish this was the first thing that we installed on our house. Um, this is I always tell people this is now permanent on your house. You know, it's it could outlive what it's attached to. You know, if this goes on your pergola, it's not like up for a season. It is now fully a part of that pergola or on your house, we're on the patio structure. Um, and it's gonna look good too because the way we install it is so clean, it's got all the nice bends on there.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Oh, I was gonna say, I we have another blog that specifically was it's it's one of my favorite images that you guys have taken. Because, you know, you know, it's it's challenging to capture mist as an image. Right. So let's see, so let's see if we can find it here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, the reaction that we get.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Give me two seconds.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Actually, while you're while you're finding that, um I'm not sure if we're able to use it, but I actually took a video of a prime example of something that I walk into on a regular basis when somebody calls us out for a system that we did not install. Um and it was a really unfortunate, really sad looking system that somebody who wasn't a professional miss system installer installed. They hated the system. I said, What's what's wrong with it? They're like, I don't I don't know, it just kind of sucks. I'm like, okay, well it's you know let's check it out. And uh lo and behold, I get there and the line is just curvy up the wall, it's falling off the ceiling. It's it looks awful, and it was just installed, and that's how they left it. Really? Yeah. So I actually took a before picture of what it was. I said, I can basically chop all this down and redo it all, and they were just ecstatic. Like they were so they were relieved almost when they saw it. They're like, this just looks so much we were so disappointed before.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

And this is what I meant a few minutes ago when I was talking about like this is for the community, right? Again, you're running a business, but this is also the community. Uh, you know, it's like it's one of the one of the greatest joys in my business is getting referrals. Like you've referred a couple of people to me, which has been fantastic. And what I hear from them is like the way that you speak to them about me, right? Um just you know, you talk about like the results that you've gotten, and ultimately that's my that's my job as your marketers and make sure that you're getting leads and that you know it's like what you're getting offsets what I cost.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

I want you to win. Yeah. If you're winning, then I'm winning. Yeah. And it's awesome like watching Colin's podcast episode because I want him to win and he's doing great. And I'm glad that you guys are working together now.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

It's so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're getting leads, you know, and that's my job, right? But to hear the other aspect of it, which is like you you dealt with another agency prior to mine, and you were very skeptical of agencies after that. Of course, you were referred to me by a mutual friend of ours, and so there was a layer of trust that was already there, right? Yeah. Uh, but when someone comes to me and they're like, hey, I talked to Joel at Element Miss, I'm like, I owe him another steak dinner. You know, but uh it it just it's um yeah, it's a wonderful thing to hear that, like, hey, my level of customer service is what makes the difference. And so to hear this, you know, it's like I guess I'm just mirroring this like situation where it's like this previous installer did a poor job. And it's like when you asked me to audit your website and I asked you what you were paying for from that previous agency, I was like, unless they're hiding it deep on your website somewhere, it does not exist. Right. Right. And so it's like you've unfortunately been paying for these services that haven't been rendered. Yeah. Right. And so it's like that is that is a like a notorious hallmark of trades. It is a lot of people cut corners and they don't care. That, you know, this is something that Cole and I talked about. We talked about the karmic effect of like what you do in your neighborhood. And so, you know, him with so he's part of Lush and also um Greenkeeper. And so in Greenkeeper, we were talking about the landscaping aspect of it where he's out there and he's working. You know, it's a hot day here in Arizona and you're out there working, right? And he would manicure a park and then he'd go home, right? So he's going home because he wants to go home and shower and be done with the day, be back with his family, right? He might not see that next morning when another family goes out and they enjoy that park that he just took care of, right? And so you have that, you have that compounding effect in the community of like, here's what we're doing to uplift the community. Yeah. Right. And so yours is the same way. Whereas like you come in on a job site and someone's done a very poor job. They've cut corners, they made some money and ran. You know, and now it's really frustrating because that homeowner is out some extra money, but you have the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

And they paid the same amount if they would have gone with us, or you know, maybe a few dollars less if they went with somebody who's maybe a little cheaper. It just kills me. It breaks my heart that somebody would because it's still this stuff, the materials are not cheap. So somebody paid for a really bad job, and that's awful.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Right. Yeah. Right. And so, okay, so so to round this back to what you're talking to, so you know, that you you came in and you saw this like, you know, ugly sort of squiggly line on there. Like, look at this, look at this work. I remember when you first showed me this photo, I was like, look at that color matching, look at these bends. Yeah, like it this this adds value to your home.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah, and on a system or on an example like this, there's two 90-degree bends that are visible, which is eliminating two chunky 90-degree fittings. Yes. So that every little bit that you're able to subtract from the eye uh makes it look that much cleaner. And this is zoomed in. So this is super close. This is super close photo. What you're actually going to be seeing when you're seeing this in real life is 15 feet away. So it even disappears.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

You almost don't even see it.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

The way that that line disappears where the color changes, that's really what your naked eye is seeing. Yeah, which is nothing. And then it's hidden in the quarter.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Yeah, exactly. Back here in this bin, that's kind of what the effect that you're talking about, is that almost just looks like the crease of the house. Yeah. That doesn't, you can't even see. Like this, and this is what I was so you know impressed by. You know, so being design forward myself, you know, my education background was in design uh at Arizona State University. And so I came into uh building websites through you know, design, design forward. Let's make it look nice. Like obviously it's got a function, but let's make it look nice too, right? And I think that's one thing of my services that that constantly and cons consistently rather stands out to people is like, oh wow, you make websites that look really nice. Oh, yeah. Right. And so I noticed this about your work too. Like your same pride in your job, right, is very apparent. It's it's it's obvious when we look at your work.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

It's obvious on on your end too, you know, design is a different category than the actual work sometimes. But if you have both, which you do, it shows. Yeah. Um, the example I give in like the home service baits is like you move into a new build, you let the turf contractor or whoever who's not a designer design your whole backyard, but they're not a designer. It just looks it doesn't look bad, it just looks like cookie cutter. Yeah. Um, versus there's a big difference between someone who hired a designer and hired the contractor to do the work separately. Whereas with with your what you're doing, you have the experience on both ends. Yeah. Which helps a lot.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, and and and and same, you know, here's another photo of yours. I say same with you. It's like I remember when you were working on the system at my parents' house, you know, you guys pull out a blowtorch and you're sitting there and you're like heating this pipe up, and that's how you're achieving bends like this, yeah. Which is which again is really impressive because the more that you can eliminate these, I'm sure one, your cost of materials goes down, yeah, and two, any potential failure points goes down, and it just looks nice. Yeah. Right. And so this is just it's just quality work everywhere you guys go. And every photo that you send in, I'm like, great, we can post that because it's fantastic looking.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

And our customers have those options. So, like in the other one, it was color matched. This customer obviously chose plain stainless.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Yeah, I was actually just gonna switch the camera over to you here. Yeah, because I don't know if you want to just hold this up for the camera for a second. And so, those who are listening, what Joel is showing right now is um this sort of what is this, like a two foot by two foot board?

SPEAKER_02 33:08

This is these are just some of the examples of the parts that we're using. And I realize that customers really want to see this stuff. Right. And so when you're going in front of a customer, here, so I'll hold it up to this camera and then you can go. There we go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Go ahead and chat about it.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

When when we when we go into a home, um, like I said before, the first thing that we're doing is designing the system, listening to the customer, figuring out how they want to use the space and how can we design something that achieves those goals. The next thing is my part, you know, taking the measurements and actually calculating everything. But then the really cool thing is that we give options, right? So we don't leave our customers with one quote. We literally give them several quotes. So we'll show them all of these materials, we'll give them all of the options, and then the ball's in their court. Hey, do you want a really robust system that functions well? It's everything that you need, but it has none of the extras. Great. We have a package that's plain stainless steel. You get the premium nozzles, you still have all the premium things where you need it, but hey, maybe you don't have color matched lines.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Right. Okay, so I was gonna say, so again, for those who are listening, what we're holding up right here is this uh pegboard that has uh, you know, probably about a dozen different uh um lines on it, all different colors. Now I'm gonna go ahead and assume that these are common colors of Arizona homes. Yeah. Right. And then you have also some just ones that haven't been, is this uh is this like a powder coat or is this like a these are powder coated.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

So underneath the powder coating, you still have a full stainless steel line. Okay, it's all gonna be stainless steel. Uh the difference is is if is it powder coated or not?

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Okay. Yeah. So these are some of the quotes that you're leaving behind for customers is do you want just the I'm assuming the standard stainless steel is going to be less expensive than the powder coating, right? That's correct. Um, and then what other options are available to your customers?

SPEAKER_02 34:48

That's a great question. And honestly, that powder coating is probably the most popular option. That's what people really want. It's a very HOA friendly. I've never had an issue in all of our years with an HOA. Um, but we have different fittings here. So different fitting materials, two of the most common are going to be full stainless steel um uh compression fittings. You can have brass fittings, you can also have slip-lock fittings, which are basically like a push connect type of shark connect fitting, which are not widely used on um homes. It's there as an example. We use them in some other areas. Um, but then also the nozzle choices. So the nozzles, there's two main types. You know, there's there's normal nozzles and then there's non-drip. And uh for the non-drip nozzle, I'll kind of go into depth on this one a little bit here. But this is uh this is a premium stainless steel nozzle. I don't know. We see that. We're not gonna be able to see that.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

We have to get close to the camera there. Um so this is a I'll show some images afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Yeah. Premium stainless steel nozzle with Viton O-rings inside. Viton is a more premium material compared to a rubber. It's gonna retain that shape and rigidity over time. And what makes it a non-drip is it does have a spring and plunger inside of there.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Yes. I do, you know what? I might have that. Keep going. I might have an image of that here.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

So all the water has to pass through this nozzle. It's a little bit bigger than a regular nozzle, but the result is that when you turn the system off, you're not getting that constant dripping. So that's why they're called the non-drip nozzles. That's so nice. Yeah. And that's what that's doing is that o-ring and that spring in there. It's plugging that hole up. And then in addition to this, this is another one of those little quality things that we're doing. This is included on every system, actually. It's not even an option. We install what's called an auto-drain valve on every system. And when you turn the system off, you know, it's running, it's got a thousand psi in those lines. When you turn it off, the auto drain valve opens up and it alleviates that excess pressure. So there's not a bunch of pressure sitting behind the nozzles, wanting it to drip. Now it's able to evacuate the water out of the system when it's not in use. And that's part of why the nozzles last so long.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Oh wow. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, because you probably don't want to leave your system under pressure. No, for yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Do do your competitors, is this something that you see on other systems when you come in, or is this something that's unique to Element Mist? Sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Yeah, some people are doing it. It's one of those small things that a customer probably wouldn't notice if you didn't do it, but it certainly has a big effect over the long term of the system.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Well, and I'm assuming that also makes, you know, because again, back to this aspect of like, you know, uh we're here for the community and and and what we work on, right, is is benefiting the community. So obviously you we want to be conscientious with the materials that we're using, right, in the systems that we're building for others uh so that they last longer, their investment goes further. Yeah. And I'm sure when you uh are doing your your uh maintenance runs, right, you're it's much easier for you to go just go turn it on and then you don't have to deal with anything that's broken.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Well, I I want to change that perspective of people thinking miss systems are what they used to be, like the sad backyard to what they are today. They're completely different. One of the number one questions that we get asked, it's probably the first question that we get asked, is well, don't those nozzles just clog up? And surprisingly, no. I always tell people it's it's generally a non-issue. It's not that they never will or that they can't, but with the proper filtration, the proper water, and if your system is set up and designed correctly, it's a non-issue. You're not gonna be fighting the system all year long. If you do need a nozzle, um, that can happen. It's kind of like brakes on your car. It's an if or it's a it's a when, not an if. Eventually you will need that as a wearable item. Right, right. Um, but that's another one of those reasons why we have the best service program. We give all of our customers lifetime nozzle swaps.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Right. And so I'm gonna pull this up just so we can see what we're looking at here. Uh so you know, this is a pump that we're looking at, but before the water gets in here, right, you have a couple of filters. And so is that is that predominantly what's dealing with that hard water? Because again, I think what those customers are picking up on is what we chatted about earlier, which is like it's Arizona is notorious for hard water. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So so you have so not only do you have this high pressure missing system, but these things have filters.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Yeah. So we do need to filter before it goes into the pump. These pumps are very calibrated. You don't want anything going into there. That's a picture of a triplex plunger pump that you had pulled up, but any sediment going in that would ruin your investment. Gotcha. So, first and foremost, we do want to protect the pump itself. And so, at a minimum, we're typically doing dual filtration with sediment and scale filtration that we build in-house, given my water background. So we actually build those um in-house. Additionally, if you want to go a step further, soft water is always recommended as well. So the customer has the option to plumb soft water to where that motor is going to live. And now you're going above and beyond. So if you already have a whole house filtration or soft water, of course, you have that option to plumb that over to um the pump. So we're filtering out the pump regardless. It's not uh it's totally optional to have soft water, but it is a massive benefit to have it. Um, and then you're looking at the pump there, so that's where the pressure comes from. You're taking that city water pressure, which is 40 to 80 psi generally.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

So you have these two pistons in here that are like this is a motor.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

I guess there's a small crankshaft, and there's three pistons in there basically.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Like it's just I remember, you know, first learning about this. Because again, growing up with this, it's just you kind of take it for granted, and it's usually not very good, right? You know, the systems that we had growing up. And so actually going in and seeing this cross-section of this motor, I was really impressed because this is that's a motor. That is what you know, like that's what you see in cars is you see like these pistons, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Um, you know, and in there too, you can see a little bit of that crankcase, that's where the oil's gonna live. So there's actually an oil bath where that's lubricating the system. So an oil change is part of that maintenance on your miss system. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

And you have a lot of experience in that regard, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Uh, with maintenance.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Yes. Yeah. Well, because you know, so actually tell me, tell me a little bit about that. What is it that you you know, I know a little bit about it. I'm kind of leading you in this question here, but um, you know, some of your some of your free time activities also play into your knowledge of this, right? And so you you do a lot of work on cars. Okay, yeah. Yeah. And so you have a little bit of of knowledge of this, right? Does that also play into your understanding of these systems and how they work?

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Um a little bit. You know, you can definitely draw the similarities between the a mist pump looking like a motor, and you know, this is kind of the motor of the mist pump or a motor of a car, very similar, the way they some of the the pieces of those things work together. I think for me, my hobby with working on cars and you know, turning wrenches and driving cars is really just the ability to kind of think and tinker and to get my hands dirty and to not be afraid to dive into something like this with the mist pump.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that that's really neat because now I'm seeing more of that full circle picture of of Joel Cronenberg here of like you have this water background, you have this machine background. It almost seems it was inevitable that you were going to be doing element missed. Yeah. Right. Uh, but the last element, no pun intended, aspect of that, right, that got you there is something I want to talk about here, which is uh taking that leap to become a business owner. Okay. Right. Yeah. Um, that's always a risk. Yeah, huge. And and one of the things that I found myself talking about in the last couple of episodes is um, you know, that's one thing that I think a lot of people shy away from when they start their own business, or or rather, um, not when they start their business, but it's almost something they shy away from that prevents them from starting their own business is that uncertainty. Uh, and so there is an aspect of being a business owner that is uncertain, right? And and even if you're an employee of another company, yeah. Sort of that that's that uncertainty is sort of outsourced to your boss, right? Because you just kind of expect the paycheck to show up every time.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

Which is ironic because it's still there. You're just blissfully unaware of it. Unaware of it. Right. Right. Somehow you feel safer, but it's it's not. Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Yeah. So so have you had stressful mom, I'm the answer is obviously yes, but have you had stressful moments being a business owner? And what do you do personally in your own life to mitigate some of those things?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, your your first question of like starting the business and there being risk, of course there is. And the the irony is that if you talk to anyone who runs their own business, I think most of them tell people like that's their advice, is heck yeah, start your own business, which is ironic because it's a lot easier said than done. Oh, yeah. And I would say the same thing, except for it, I didn't take my own advice for many years. I wanted to start my business years before I did. Now that I did, I'm like, okay, I wish I did it sooner. Um, but it was a huge risk, but it was a calculated risk. And I definitely have to mention my business partners in this because they're a huge aspect of starting the business. So, you know, Jake is a longtime friend of mine, and we've been talking about business ideas for many years before starting this. Jake and I were both well in our careers, just you know, working in our career uh past. Pathways that we were, and we did this really together. So it was like, hey, are we gonna do this? Are we gonna jump? The third person in our business is actually a family member of mine, my cousin, um, who has a lot of experience as well in the home services space. I actually worked for him for that brief stint when I was fixing garage doors. Um, so we actually had gone out to lunch and I had told him my idea of this business, not pitching him on it at all. Just we were just having small talk. And then he later came back and said, I looked at everything that you were telling me about. I think you should do that. You know, he said, you know, you're the next one in the family to do this, so you need to do this. But also It's your turn. But I want to do it with you. And I was like, Oh, okay. Uh wasn't expecting that. I knew that changes things, but I'm like, uh yeah, like love that idea, know what you're capable of. I need to talk to Jake about this because this whole time it was just Jake and I really crafting this idea and coming together on it. And so we all agreed a one-third partnership there uh was the the way forward.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

So it's been really great. That's awesome. Okay, so so obviously, shout out to Jake, shout out to Adam. Um, and this question I do like to ask is there anybody else that influenced this decision? Uh, or maybe influenced sometime after the decision, maybe the way that you run the business? You know, anyone that sticks out to you that you'd like to give a shout-out to?

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Honestly, I'm I'm drawing a blank there. It was uh just in general, my friends. Sure. Because they're the ones that you talk to at the end of the day when things are stressful. I remember texting uh my friends on the last day leaving my job, thinking like, what the heck am I doing? Like I literally I was still questioning my sanity. Um, it was a very calculated risk, but it was like, you know, I didn't have an income for almost a year. Um, and I knew that that was gonna be difficult, but I planned for that. And you know, my now fiance was there for that moment, and I was like, this is this could be you know rough. I don't know what we're getting into, but she was there for the whole thing, so that was awesome. Um, so yeah, just pretty much everyone that you're surrounded with, your friends and your family and stuff like that, but not like any one particular thing. I just felt like it was something I had to do. It was like a turning point in my own life. I had a lot going on, and uh yeah, I mean people will think you're a little crazy. No one, I mean you know, no one really is like bought in until it starts working. Yes, you know, even uh telling like my own my mom about this idea while I had a job, and then you know, being like, okay, yeah, okay. Yeah, it's like an idea that you have, and then you quit your job, and they're like, Oh, you actually quit your job. Yeah. So this is real now.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

This is real now, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was mine for a while. Mine actually it took me a while to get there because you know, I was doing a lot of building of websites, uh, and then I was sort of traveling back and forth. Uh time of travel in my life, which was wonderful. Awesome. Uh but at the same time, you know, you know, parents are like, Is this what you're gonna do? You know, yeah. So you kind of have that. Yeah, until you sort of settle in and you put down some roots and you go, This is the path that I'm gonna pursue. Um, you know, it's kind of it's kind of up in the air to that point. But but yeah, you're right, it does take a village, right? And and it's mirrored in my own experience with Bang Creative, of like, you know, it was the influence of a lot of people in my life uh that helped me get to where I am today. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Yeah, it's hard to put it on one specific thing. It's a lot of small things along the way. Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Uh how do you I'm gonna get sort of into this section of of of meaning, identity, and philosophy here. So um we've already answered a few of these questions, but what I want to know, and this is one question that I do like to ask, is how do you define success beyond the money?

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Oh man. Easily time, work-life balance, the more of that you have. The the longer life goes on for me, the more you know, I value time. Yeah. When I see somebody doing something that looks like it took a lot of time, I'm like, wow, they must have a lot of time. Not they must have a lot of money, but like they must have a lot of time that they can go do these things or travel or you know, have these hobbies. And and even right now, my my hobbies have all really taken a back seat um even this past couple years, as you've probably seen from our personal conversations. I'm not going to the racetrack as much anymore. And now it just seems like crazy to take a day and to do that um when there's so much to be done. So for me, my goal is always, and I I guess it's a constant back and forth, but um, I always want to pursue having that balance. Um and specifically for our, I think it's worth mentioning for this industry in particular, it there's a large seasonality component to it. So in the summertime, it's time to work, and in the wintertime, it's still time to work, but a little less.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

When you're a business owner, it's never not time to work. Yeah. I I always make that joke of like I left my nine to five so I could, you know, have more freedom. I ended up working 12 hours a day. You know, exactly. That's kind of how it goes. But it's uh but it's the ability to say yes and no to things, I think, is uh what makes it um I think that's the driving factor for a lot of people who start their own businesses is that ability to say yes and no.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

Um, you know, because I know for me at my last job, uh, you know, one of the reasons why I left was I butted heads with my boss. And, you know, I admire him dearly. Um my old boss at NOCO is a wonderful guy and a great mentor of mine. Um, but at that time and at that age, uh it was a challenge for me in that particular situation. And so I always wanted to just be able to say yes or no in my working environment. And uh, you know, I always used to say, like, I don't want to have a boss, but now as you know, B2B marketing uh uh person, I have several because several people to answer to. But I met at a level of respect, right? I'm met at a level of like, hey, what do you think? Yeah not hey, do this. Hey, what do you think we should do in this situation? And that level of respect is is what I actually wanted. Uh, and I didn't know it at the time when I was starting my own business, right? But that level of respect uh and and appreciation that I feel from my partners that I work with uh is is very gratifying. And to me, that is a that is one of my markers of success.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

It's such an eye-opening experience, and I make the that joke all the time, like, man, if I knew what I knew now then, but you just can't, you didn't have that experience, you hadn't gone through it yet. Right. And now I'm sure that you see the entire world through a different lens. Um, communication does not go away when you're your own boss, it only becomes more necessary. You need to be better at it. Yes, and so the sooner you just kind of get with the program and you go, okay, this isn't going anywhere, so I need to learn to hone these skills whether I like it or not, I think the more successful you'll be.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Yes. I think that reminds me of a Jordan Peterson quote um where he was he was having this discussion on a podcast. I I I forget the particular one, but he was encouraging someone to just make the first move. That's always the hardest. It's always the hardest. And and he said, even if you move a hundred feet in the wrong direction, you now have gained the perspective of knowing that that's not the right way either. And you just keep doing that, and eventually you will find what is that right direction. Progress is progress. Exactly. And so, like you said, you're like, I wish I would have known the things that I know now, but how could you have? You know, and that's part of the journey for everybody. But that does bring me to a good question, which is what would you have done differently if you knew what you knew now when you were starting your business?

SPEAKER_02 51:30

That's a good question. Um I don't want to say nothing, I don't think we did everything perfectly, but what I will say is a lot of what we did in the beginning was like really bootstrapping it. We had a salvage title van that we bought for next to nothing, wrapped it, made it look good, and that was a big friend favor who basically sold an extra van that they had laying around for cheap. Um, thank you, Tommy Mello of A1. A1 Garage. Uh that was the garage company, wasn't it? That was the garage company. That wasn't the garage company you were. Actually, our our home show backdrop, which again, cobbling everything together, was just an extra old laying around in the back warehouse of the A1 garage door or of A1 warehouse. And so, you know, we printed out a new thing to go over it. Um, very used, very old. I I can't stress it enough how much like every dollar matters when you're fighting for survival in the first year. Um, and now it's easy to be like, why did we ever buy a crappy van? That was so much stress fixing it all the time. Well, it's easy to say now. Yeah. But at the time we were like, oh my gosh, we have a van. We're legit.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Yeah. Yeah. We're a trade company now. Yeah. We have a rap van. I mean, it is a hallmark of success, right? In those earlier stages, like it definitely does feel like uh a moment of success. Uh, but but uh yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

So you would you would another another trial and error was just a lot of our marketing efforts. Yeah, you know, like you had mentioned, we got taken to the cleaners with our first marketing agency, and that was crippling. We had to literally steal our website back overnight from this um agency with your help. Yep. You remember that? I remember that. Um what was another one? And then uh we went we tried a few marketing channels a couple years ago that had zero return. Yeah. And when you when like that's a huge portion of the money that you get to play with and put back into marketing and it yields nothing. Oh my gosh, it sucks seeing that so bad. So um it's not that we would have done anything differently. I I like the approach that we took. We're very scrappy and we still are. You know, we we just hit our five year, we're hitting these great milestones, but that doesn't mean like we're out of the weeds yet. Right. Um, we're still trying to be extremely efficient, run lean. That's that's the reason that we utilize software. That's the reason why our team is still able to be small, is because we're extremely organized. Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Yeah. Right. Yeah, you're actually onboarding a customer service representative this year, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:01

She's on now. Oh, awesome. We we have had some in the past. The goal this year is that it's not so much a seasonal job anymore. Gotcha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

Okay, wonderful. And it's not Madeline. It is not. It's not Madeline this time. Speaking of bootstrapping, right? Yeah. Using family members uh, you know, to plug in those gaps where you need help uh growing. In fact, uh every now and then I um, you know, because because one of the one of the benefits that I like to offer to uh my partners is like, if you have any printing needs or t-shirt needs, uh just just run that through me because I have B2B licenses with all these companies. And so it just makes it easier. And I don't want you, I want you to come to me as like a one-stop shop and come to come to Ben Creative as like a one-stop shop. But in certain cases, like I've had orders of like I actually have one this week of 75 t-shirts, and I'm like, that's not worth my time, but it's worth it to the customer to have that ease of like, I just need to get this done because I want you to focus on selling and converting it's worth up, and so 1% affects the 99%.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

Actually, a coffee reference for you. When I was in that world, we hated dealing with cups.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

But our customers wanted cups, they didn't want to go to somewhere else to get cups and get coffee from us. But we realized that if we stopped selling the cups, which had zero margin for us, where it wasn't great, they're huge. Yeah. So you're warehousing a lot of large items that are not profitable. But if we didn't sell the cups, people didn't want the coffee. So it was like, oh, we really would lose a lot of a lot of people who they are smaller and they just need a one-stop shop. Yeah. And you know, credit where credit's due, that's definitely what you are. I tell everybody you're you're more of a trusted partner and an advisory figure with Element Mist. Like you are a part of the Element Mist team and not just some contractor that we use. Right. And I feel that in your industry, that's extremely imperative because you're touching a lot of sensitive details for the customer, quite literally. I mean, credit card information, they're spending, you're in all of their accounts. And to go even further, you need to have an in-depth understanding of what the business is and what their goals is and what direction they're moving, because you have to end up making decisions a lot of times on the uh, you know, on the behalf of your clients, is I believe so. I mean, that is for element. Yes. You have a lot of agency there um with decision makings um for for my company. And I hope that's how it would be with any other company, and that's why I recommend you so highly to anybody else I know. Um, it's kind of like, you know, if you have a a plumbing need and you're like, this is somebody I'd recommend to my mom. I'm okay if this guy goes to my mom's house. Yeah, you know, I want you to work with anyone else as well because you've it's just been incredible.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Thank you. Oh, that that thank you. That's nice to hear. And and it's it's true. Um, I've realized over the last year or so of my business, you know, I still position myself as a marketing agency because that's the keyword, right? Yeah. That's a big part of my world is figuring out keywords, right? Uh, but really like the up-and-coming um phrase that I've heard for typically or technically what I am is it's like a fractional marketing officer. Okay. Right. So uh in effect, I, you know, because like yeah, you have agencies that are like, okay, here's our formula, and we we ram this in and you know, this is the outcome. And I'd say for 80% of what I do, we follow our formulas, right? We have our we have our productize systems, and so it's very clear of like, you're we're gonna put this in and this is where we're gonna get out of it, right? And so I don't have to necessarily I like what I don't do anymore is I don't come to a company and go, well, let me see if I can figure out all your needs and let me see if I can plug all the gaps for you. Yeah, it's like no, no, no, this is what you need, and I know this because we've had success over and over and over and over again. And so what we do is we plug that into the side of your business, but that's only gonna get us 80%. And I want to offer you a hundred percent service. Yeah. And so for me, I have to then, yeah, learn about the business, right? And I have to put my thinking cap on of element mist. Uh, and so, you know, we have our our Monday morning meetings every other Monday, you know, and it's to it's to touch base and to to understand what I'm doing. Um, and I take great pride in that because you are entrusting me with this aspect of your business, and I am, you know, it is my job to do it well and find you a return. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:17

And so when we need to pivot, you know why. Yes. If we're all working towards the same goal, then we're all working towards the same goal.

SPEAKER_00 58:25

Yes. And and my success follows your success. Yeah. Right. Because I am a I am a you you're you're B2C, right? You're your business to customer, right? I'm I'm business to business. And so my success is literally dependent on your success. So like it is, it is like it behooves me to make sure I understand exactly what are the ins and outs of your business, what are your offerings, where can I come in? And like I said, I don't necessarily try to find the gaps and go, okay, well, this is how I can this is how I can like piece my services together to make sense for you. No, no, no. It's like the offering is very clear of what my business runs as an added benefit. That's just how I am as a person. Like a business owner is like, I really am incentivized to make sure that you're making money. And so in order to do that, I need to understand your business, right? And so, so thank you. First off, that's very kind um of you to share that. Um, and yeah, I take great pride in in doing that for it.

SPEAKER_02 59:18

Seems like everyone's feedback of a bad example or you know, an experience, bad experience with an agency is all the same. It's like my story, not unique. And it sounds like that's what everyone has to go through a few times before they find, you know, somebody like yourself, like a John at Ment Creative. Um, and it's just like, like you said, understanding the business. Our last business was from the East Coast. We're on the West Coast. They don't know what missed. They literally didn't know what we did. And so they're writing these blog posts about what we do, and it literally is AI gibberish that doesn't make sense talking about your crops and your farm animals. And it's like that is not what we're doing here. Um, so it's really funny, but just a great example of why it's important to actually have an understanding of who are you working with, who are their customers, what is the goal here?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

Yeah. And in my goal, again, so Build Arizona is just a natural extension of my goal, which is uh, yeah, I mean, when I started my business, right, and building websites, one, I wanted to beautify the web space, right? Uh, you know, going through design school and looking at these, these, these websites, yeah, you know, I found myself frustrated with so many tools that I was using and things like that. And so I was like, okay, I want to beautify that space, make it easier for people to be able to navigate around and things like that. Um, you know, uh extending beyond that, um, you know, what really what I wanted to achieve uh is that level of um customer service. Because again, you know, I'd say probably 75% of my customers come to me with that same story of like, oh, we've worked with someone that was terrible and they weren't delivering. And it is sort of a um it's a very niche specific, or I should say it's a very like the the the knowledge requirements for what I do, there's not a ton of people that have taken the time to learn it. Right. And so it is easy to pull the wool over somebody's eyes. And it changes all the time. Yes. It's it's easy for you, especially like you know, trades are so very hands-on oriented that when you get into, you know, the computer systems and stuff like that, it can seem overwhelming. And so a lot of people they just go, okay, well, you're doing you're doing what needs to be done, right? And and that's about the extent because they don't know what to ask. Right. Right. And so, and so um they don't always know what to ask, so they don't always know what to look for.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

That's really scary.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Yes. Yeah, and so you're you're putting a lot of capital on the line with this company, and a lot of agencies out there know and take advantage of that situation of like, well, we know the knowledge and we're doing all that, we're pulling the right levers and pushing the right buttons for you, right? And and and if you just give us six to eight months, we'll we'll we'll eventually show you a return. And it's like, yeah, you know, it's you got to put a lot of faith into that person. And so for me, seeing that over and over and over again with my, you know, I have friends in in trades and things, uh, you know, other businesses that rely on marketing, and to see that over and over again where um yeah, they're not given good service at all because they don't know what to ask and what to look for. And so that company will collect money, give them the bare minimum, push off the phone call two weeks. So hopefully they hit another billing cycle, collect that money from you, then answer the phone because they're ready for you to give your 30 days notice. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:22

And those things, like I said, they change all the time. Like when we have our every other week phone call, there's usually a new strategy or something's changed or something's being updated. We need to shift our focus, and like that's too much for me to think about when I'm out in the field.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

That's what I that's what I rely on you for.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Yeah, exactly. I mean, your your job, right, being customer facing, right, is one to deliver awesome systems, which you do fantastically at too. And two, is that to bring that level of customer service and customer care, right? Again, to build our community around us. And it's like, you know, in the last 10, 15 years, the whole the whole internet aspect of it uh is has become its own job. Yeah, and it is really hard to run uh both of those systems.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

Yeah, well, I think this is like a perfect segue. You were mentioning earlier, I think trades are overall being more respected. Yes. In this day and age. When you look on the road, when you're driving on the freeway, you can't not see multiple home service company vehicles. You know, they're rolling billboards, so obviously you're gonna see them. But there literally are more of them. Uh, it's so important. We are becoming so special. People, whatever you do, whatever your job is, even if you aren't in the home service industry, people are getting more specialized, and less and less people are doing their own things that they used to do. So you're relying on a company to do all these different things. So it's very important to differentiate yourself, like what you do for us as being the experts in the field. You know, how do you present yourself? That's very important, um, versus some you know, Joe Schmo who's gonna come in and slap a system together. Um it's it's incredibly important.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

Absolutely. Where do you see uh well first off, I want to be respectful of your time. We've been going for an hour. Do you do you have more time? Yeah, a little bit of time. Okay. Uh I I want to know a little bit more about Joel. Uh in in do you see yourself obviously you're gonna continue with Element Mist. You've been successful and you've seen, you know, year over year that that success is compounding. Uh and I firmly believe with your guys' one uh amazing systems uh and your and customer service, like you will be the name. Like you're already a top contender for the name. You will be the name of missing systems in Arizona, of that I have no doubt. Do you beyond this, you know, uh again, this being called Build Arizona, but this is a very open-ended question here, but like, do you see yourself potentially doing something other than Element Mist? And you know, it's not a conversation of like are we gonna build it to sell it, right? Like, this is more of like where do you see yourself making change in Arizona down the line? That's a really that's a great question. That's a big question.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:58

Um, I've always viewed myself as an Arizona native, and so that's kind of an important part of like who I am. Um and just like it's it's just nice when you meet somebody who else is also a native and grew up where you grew up and you you know the same things. And as far as like yeah, I want to make a splash with uh element, I feel like we're already on the right path. We've already made a bit of a name for ourselves in our in our first five years. Most missed companies, I mean, there's just so many missed companies that pop up every single year as soon as it gets hot. It's just all of a sudden there's 20 more and they won't be around the next year. That's really what kills me and breaks my heart because they're gonna go do bad work and then I'll be the one to fix it, and the cut will end up costing the customer more later. So I really do want to change people's perspective on what mist can be, doing it the right way and having a nice system for sure. Um, in terms of like what else I want to do, I don't know what the next venture would be. But internally, we always you know talk about Element Mist really is a family business. Um, Element Mist is you know my best. Friend who I consider my brother, and my cousin, who's literally my family. So it's a family business. We didn't grow it to jack it up and sell it really fast. We really just wanted to have this be something that can be fruitful for us and our families and to afford us some extra time, maybe eventually, maybe not ever. I don't know. Yeah. It's so busy right now. Um, but ultimately, I want to bring other people into this. I want to be really thoughtful about it. I want to be methodical about it. And I just want to really maintain that quality as we grow. That's the thing I don't want to let go of. We're on every single job. It's not like I go sell it and somebody else installs it. We are installing every job. We're going to be on every job. Um, we already have the best service program that exists. Um, so I want it to be something that we can just kind of have and be proud of and have people be stoked about for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:53

I love that. Yeah. Again, it always brings it back to that uh you're, you know, each job that you do, you're building the community around you, right? And that's an important aspect. Yeah. Uh, you know, one thing that we talked about with Colin was uh storm chasers, right? So, so roofing companies that that chase big storms, they come in, they do a shoddy job, and then they leave, and there's no warranty to be heard of, right? And so it's like it's like you are you have this same, you know, it's like the heat ratchets up. Yeah, yeah. And so you have you have the same situation where you have this heat, you know, going through the roof and you have these these companies coming out of nowhere. So the next question that I want to ask is let's say for homeowners, they're they're going to be vetting a misting system company. They're ready to make that investment, uh, but they're going to be vetting a missing system company. What are maybe one, maybe two, maybe three tips for homeowners when it comes to picking the right missing system contractor?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Yeah, oh my gosh. Well, as as we already outlined multiple times, there's just a lot to stay away from and steer clear of. So trying to identify who that is. And honestly, there are a few other companies that we we like and we know they do good work, but there are far fewer companies that do good work than good ones. And again, it comes from this being a bit of a niche industry. It's very seasonal. So you don't have a lot of larger companies that have that year-round staff. So it doesn't attract that type of person. So it is rare when you find someone like Element Mist who puts all this amount of effort into it, even though it is still a seasonal business. And there's reasons that we can achieve that. That's kind of on our on our back end that goes along with our servicing. You know, I'm doing services throughout the wintertime, which is nice for me because that's when we have the time for it. But first and foremost is just, you know, your licensing. Are they do they have a proper license with the ROC? What are they doing? You know, look at the work that they're doing on your house. Are they properly licensed for it? Um, another one is you know, website and photos and reviews. What does their website look like? Does it look pretty like Met Creative did it? Um, do they have good reviews? And then I'm actually leaning on this one more lately is actual photos. Yeah. Um, because I get people all the time that are like, wow, we really want to go with you. You're you know, you're a couple hundred bucks more expensive, but we'd like to go with you. And I'm like, did the level of detail that we are are putting into each job? I cannot stress this enough. I have I don't see, I do not see it anywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

Value is way higher.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:20

Yeah. Um, and it's frustrating because, like I said, every time I go on a repair call or a service call that is was not originally our customer, because my customers are taken care of. If you got a system from us, you're probably already on our service program, and probably nobody else is in the industry has ever seen our work because we hang on to our customers, we take care of them. Whenever I go to any other without fail, if I ever see any other system that we did not install, it is very hard for me to even bite my tongue because it's just it's so bad. These are people who view this simply as a just how many feet is it? Slap it up, it looks awful, it doesn't even work that great in the first place. Um, there is just a massive night and day difference. And again, this is something that's going to be on your house. This is gonna be something that you look at for 10 plus years. I see systems that are going on 20 years old. You know, this is not going anywhere. You want it to be done very well. You want it to blend into your house, you want the bending to be top-notch. A lot of these other companies, they just hire a bunch of people when summer hits to take on as much work like you're talking about, like the storm chasers. So you have a bunch of less skilled people putting them together, overusing fittings, it's not very clean, they have no experience with the bending. Bending is something that you can learn and pick up on, but usually it takes a little bit of practice. Um, you just it's gotta be really good.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:38

So, so if someone shows up to your house with a van that says like Bob's light installation, permanent light installation, and misting systems. Thank you. Thank you. Um you know that they have a winter job and then a summer job.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:51

Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with trying to fill both sides. Sure. But what I can tell you from our experience is that I'm busy throughout the winter and all we do is mist.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:02

You know, I'm not a plumber, I'm not an electrician. I'm we do mist and mist specifically. Right. Um, a lot of times when you see people where mist is an add-on service, it's not their main focus. That's what the people I'm talking about. So if you have a plumbing company that decided to add mist as an add-on, well, on paper, yeah, plumber has the can do it. The licensing, um, it's very similar. The attention to detail, it's just completely different.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:26

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

We we live and breathe just mist. So there's a big difference in that. And same thing with, you know, if you have a company that does lighting and mist, mist might not be their only focus. So where's their head at? Right. I don't know. Because like if you call one of those people for lighting in the summertime and they're like, well, we're really focused on mist right now, so are they gonna do a good job on the lighting either? All right, or is it subpar on both?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:49

Right. They're gonna chase probably which one is gonna bring them the most revenue at that time. Yeah, which doesn't necessarily always equate to a job well done. Yeah. Right. Uh all right, so I'm gonna ask you some rapid fire questions here. Uh this will this will wrap it up. Unless unless you have any questions for me marketing-wise, that you would like to ask, I'm happy to answer those. But if not, I would move into these. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:13

Um, let's move into them if I have any sure. If anything comes up.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

Best advice you ever got in this trade? From who? Not from Adam. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:25

Um, you know, it in this industry, like I said, it's very um niche, and there's people who have been around and done a good job, and then there's like basically everybody else, which is like the vast majority, which is why it's like really be careful who you choose. It's been interesting to me to see the lack of camaraderie between companies in this industry. When we came on board, I reached out to several other people, and it was very clear who was welcoming and who was like, nah, you're I don't want anything to do with you. Um, I'm very open and honest with customers. I mean, I'm very transparent. Same thing with other quotes as well. Like, I don't disparage any other um companies if I'm on a quote. So, like, that's kind of the the advice that I I take in to myself in that way. Um, I like to talk other companies up. And I think it's really fun too when a customer's like, well, this company's gonna do this for me. I was like, that sounds like pretty good. Maybe you should go with them.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:18

Yeah, absolutely. No, that's okay. So what I hear from that is integrity. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:24

You know, stand behind, stand behind your work. If you're gonna do something, I try to one thing that I hold myself to as well is just like I I won't take on a job that I can't execute 100% on. Right. I want to do my best work all the time. Right. I've I have walked away from projects in the past where it's something that we can't execute at the best highest level.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:46

Gotcha. What is what is the worst advice you ever got?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:51

I don't see again. There's not much advice being given around on this one. Uh by a used van.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:00

I can't even I can't even make something up there. I'm sorry. Uh okay. So um yeah, as a missing system installer, what is one tool that you can't live without?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:10

A bender. Okay. So the bender is what actually does the bending of the pipes. Um that's your main tool. You need it on every job. Yeah. I'm a tool belt guy though. I have a big tool belt and I can't live without it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:26

I almost you know what, I wonder if we have uh if we can quickly scroll to actually this video's right here. Perfect. So oh look at that. There we go. Yeah, there's Jake. Right there. Almost as if that was on cue. There we go, yeah. That was fun in this room. There you are with the vendor right there. There we go. Yeah, that's that's super cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:13

And uh Fulbrim hat and sunscreen.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:19

Absolutely. Okay. Cool. Uh let's see. One book, podcast, or source that influenced your approach in your business. We've already talked about it about Adam, obviously, you know, coming from his background, I think would be a good answer here. But is there anybody else or anything else that you're like, oh, that really stuck out to me when I was starting this?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:39

My favorite I think the book that is the one that I go back to the most, and it's uh that's one of the simplest ones, but it's the seven habits of highly successful people. Great advice in that. The one the one really big one that for me is probably my favorite is uh is like the quadrants. And so there's these different quadrants, um quadrant two being the things that are not urgent, but important. Those are the things that you push off each day because it's not urgent, so you don't need to do it, but those are the things that if you did focus on, it would move the needle. And the more you can shift your day to focusing on the things that are genuinely important, even though they're not urgent, that will move the needle. Whereas the opposite, things that are urgent and not important, not fully not important, but like you're, you know, getting through your inbox every day. That sometimes you sit down to do something important, but then all of a sudden you start going through your inbox, hour goes by, all of a sudden, you know, now it's you just got home, you're you're trying to you sift through everything, you didn't make any time for the thing that was important because you were getting through the things that were urgent. Um, and now you have no time for the things that do move the needle. So that's a big one. And then uh that was actually uh really important book to me. Um Never Split the Difference. One that I read more recently, still digesting as well, but just uh it makes me think about how I have dialogue with people and kind of kind of doing what we're doing now, like using just how can I re-ask the same question or allow the customer to come to their own conclusion uh of what they want.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:19

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

Okay. And the last question I already asked, but uh maybe we can phrase it a little bit differently, which is uh one thing that you tell your younger self when you were starting this trade, and this could be like a Joel to Joel thing, right? Um, I think you know, last week, for example, uh Cole was his response was to uh tell himself to not give up because there are many challenging nights as a business owner of like, are we gonna make ends meet, right? Uh and so that was sort of a personal, personal touch. And so is there anything that you would tell your younger self as you're starting this?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:54

Definitely the just get started. Just get started. Yeah, that's the hardest advice for me. I want everything to be so perfect to the point where it's analysis paralysis. Yeah. And so just simply doing anything, just taking a step forward in the right direction is one of those things. And like right now, that's a conversation that I'm having um with my fiance, Madeline, as well. Is like she has an idea that she wants to, you know, maybe pursue. And it's like there's never gonna be a right time, right? And that's always what we talk about. Well, right now we're doing this with the house, and right now, uh, you know, this is changing, and I don't know if this is the best time to do this, and there's literally never gonna be a good time. So if you want to do it, you gotta jump in.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:36

Yes, it's like every reality starts as a thought, yeah. Right. And then the next action is that first step forward.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:43

And then this isn't this isn't really advice, but more of a reminder. I think everyone's experienced watching somebody else do something poorly, but do it successfully because you didn't do it at all. And you're like, I could literally do that guy or you know, whoever it is, um, doing something worse than you, but yet they're successful and they're doing it, and you're sitting there on the sidelines thinking like that guy's an idiot and they're doing a bad job. Oh man. But it does it doesn't matter because they're doing it because you're not.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:13

Because they're doing it, yeah. Yeah, I would say that's actually uh, you know, to frame it as words of encouragement is you know, because similar, similar. Uh, you know, that's one parallel I think uh I see between you and I is uh I had a lot of paralysis when I first started because I spent so much time reworking what my brand looked like.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:29

Yeah, you were in the middle of that when we hopped on, yeah, and I think you were almost in a state of apology for it. You're like, well, don't worry about this now because I'm kind of tweaking that and I'm like, I I don't mind, whatever. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:41

Yeah, that was that was a hallmark of, you know, I think by the time that you and I started working together, I was on Bank Creative 3.0, and I think I'm on 4.0 now. And it's like it's fun and it's nice. And and I do think, you know, where Bank Creative is when you go to Bankcreative.co, it looks fantastic at this point. Uh, and that's a testament to all that time of of spending working on it to get it to where I wanted to be. But like ultimately, that that's not what makes the sale. Yeah, it definitely helps. And when you when you have sort of someone who's primed for what they're going to be expecting in a conversation, it's it's very helpful, you know, for that conversation to go well. Yeah. And for that sale to go well.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:17

Well, it's a first impression. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:19

Exactly. But at the end of the day, it's like, for me, do I drive results for you? Right. And so I think the case study that actually that is on the website about your business, right, and the success that we were able to find last year, um, you know, and that we're gonna do better again, you know, on this year, uh, so showing that case study is actually what I show prospective clients now at this point. It's like, it's like, oh yeah, there's the front, there's the homepage. Yeah. Here is what we do. Take a look at Element Mist.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:45

Well, I mean, to to brag about you for a bit, you know, like I think I know a little bit about where you started and where you're going, but I guess for the camera, what is the next stage? Because you and I share a similar thing where in the next stage of our business, there will be people coming on board, but I think we both feel that obviously maintaining the quality is the obviously most important thing. Yes. And I'm framing, I mean, if I was just out to get as much sales as I could, it would be very different. That's not what our goal is. We want to be really methodical. Um, so how does that look like for what stage are you in? And what does that next stage of Bent Creative look like for serving customers and maintaining quality?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:26

Oh, this is great. Thank you for asking me the question. I love this. Um so okay, so where Bent Creative is at right now is we have in the last couple of years figured out the formula for success for the trades. Right? We know they're seasonal businesses, we know when to pump the ads, when to when to pump the breaks on the ads, right? And then focus on okay, we're we're growing your influence during your off-season and we're we're targeting the keywords that get purchases during your on-season. Yeah. Right. And so we figured out sort of how these these you know these fluctuations go. And as we're we're growing and scaling at this point. We are we're right about that point where we are going to be scaling to to more clients. And like we've had this discussion where where what the one thing that I was really conscientious about as I approach this season in my business is making sure that I don't lose customer service. Yeah. Because that is number one my number one tenant when I started Bank Creative is do good business. And to me, doing good business means one, providing results and two providing customer service. And so what I don't ever want to do is get to a point where I've taken on too much that it starts to degrade those other relationships that I've had that got me here, right? So scaling um the systems to a point. So for me, automation is a big, is a big piece of noticed that not only for me, but for my customers.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:49

Well, you you embrace it. Yes. It's not just like an option, it's the only option.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:53

Yes. And and as AI is continuing to propel forward, I personally see within the next one to two years, SEO services are going to be very, very not profitable. And what I mean by that is already you can go, I mean, this is what I'm doing for my customers. This is actually what I did last week with Element Miss and several other websites. Uh, but what we're what we're doing right now is we're focused on AI searchability. Yeah. Right. Because in the last two, three years, you know, we've seen Google push uh uh you know the AI automated response to the top of the screen. So obviously SEO is still very important because that AI has to get information somewhere. So we still need to be producing content on your website, yeah, right, that can be picked up, and we have to write it in such a way that it's searchable byte by byte. You know, so the FAQ section, think it think about it like that. So it's like you have to have a question and then answer it in a succinct way that the AI can pick it up and then post that as the response. Serve it, yeah. So for me, you know, you can you can now just go take your website, toss it into, I use Claude personally, so you can toss it into Claude, and you can just say, Hey, am I gonna be picked up on uh, you know, like um what is it called? It's called generative engine, uh generative engine. So an AI like engine uh that's doing the searching for you. It's a generative engine. Uh so am I am I going to be searchable by AI? And and if if not, what am what is my website missing? And it'll tell you. Wow. It'll read the link and it'll go, okay, your rich snippets are showing that you're this, this, this, this, this. So let's just make sure, are you a local service business? Is this your location? I found your your phone number on these 10 different websites. We're making sure it's the same across those because those are trust signals, right? So it'll give you this entire readout of like, yes, you are or no, you're not. Yeah. And here's how to fix it. Right. And so these are things that used to be an esoteric type of knowledge where it's like your your SEO person better have been doing this. And and if they did know how to do it, they were a good SEO person. You can now just toss your website in there and have it essentially, I mean, you still got to go in there and put those things in if they're missing. Kind of like an audit. It's kind of like an audit. There used to be paid programs even to do these audits. Yes. And it's still an offering for my business because a lot of people are still at that level where it's like even approaching this, they don't even know which questions to ask. Of course. And so to answer your question a little bit more in depth of where do I see Bank Creative going in the next few years is uh we are going to be more content heavy. So this being a Build Arizona being a wonderful example of building a trust engine. So having people on like yourself talk about their business, we're gonna get a whole bunch of clips out of this, right? And I'm gonna get clips out of this. So we can then have a long format video on YouTube, and then we can cut that down into 15 seconds for social media. Getting myself and my customers in front of people with that local celebrity effect with content is going to be far more important because what AI is not going to replace is taking a camera out into the real world and capturing the work that's getting done.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:57

And so I need to be intelligent about how I am structuring content for my customers and and how we are capturing that and then how we are displaying that. But also producing it. Literally creating it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So so that's where I see Bent Creative going in the next one to two years is SU is going to become ridiculously easy. Uh, and I still think, like I have said this since Chat GPT was first launched, you know, a couple of years ago, um, with my mentor and and and uh person who helped me start my business, Micah Beverly. Um, we have had the same conversation for years now, which is eventually, right? And I I've you've I think you've asked me this question, but I've been asked this question several times, which is do you see your line of work going away? Do you see AI replacing your line of work? And my response is no. I see AI making my work easier and augmenting my work. And my role, instead of being the guy that's going line by line, you know, code to build your website, yeah, right, uh, which is of course what we did with Element Mist and and and all my other clients, is we build that, right? Eventually, that's gonna be a prompt. Yeah, it's gonna be as easy as a prompt and then talking to the prompt machine, right? So talking to the AI. So my role will then switch from the pixel pusher to the liaison. And so I go to you, I figure out your business, your sales channel, what it is that you need. I take and translate that to the tool, which is AI, to have it then build those pieces. So uh my job is going to be that high-level strategy, and then and then I think predominantly it's going to be content generation. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's amazing. You could literally tell somebody the exact playbook on how to be successful, say, hey, do these 10 things, it's this simple. Just just follow these instructions, but nine out of ten people won't do it. Right. So the the things still have to get done. You can tell someone exactly how to do it. Most people still just aren't gonna do it. Right. So that's awesome. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:57

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Again, I would be respectful of your time here. Um yeah, thank you for coming in. I really appreciate it. I'm just shit. Thanks so much. Let's do it again.

unknown 1:28:10

Just a second.