Email address: rick@longobart-ross.com
Phone: 949 943-0334
Website: www.longobart-ross.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/longobart_ross
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricklongobart/
Facebook Company Page: https://www.facebook.com/Longobart-Ross-Consulting-107209254350936
Rick Longobart (0s):
And I think that's the struggle that we deal with right now is do we to be shut down again, whether it's a Canadian country or a U S country, we shut it down and lose that revenue stream, or do we just heal and get better and deal with it? You know, and now obviously with the U S market, obviously there's, there's stimulus money coming in, but that's not free money. And that is Rick Longobart of Longobart-Ross. And we're talking about COVID and all the effects that it might be having on trucking companies, fleets and municipalities even, and how he can provide, or his company can provide some really interesting data and resources for you to make better and smarter equipment decisions that, and more join us this week on theDawg On-It Trucking Pawedcast, and just very quickly a word from our sponsor.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (58s):
This week's episode is sponsored by none other than a safety dawg. Did you know that we have five minutes safety videos that are sent to your drivers? The drivers answer a quick quiz, and now you've got documentation that every month your drivers are being trained. Can you imagine, and it's inexpensive, I'd say cheapest. Hell, but I'd go with inexpensive anyways, if you want some more information on that, go to thedawgspeaks.com and get all the info, there, with that on with the show.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (1m 38s):
Welcome to the Dawg On-It Trucking Pawedcast. When it comes to trucking safety, the dawg is, Hey, Rick, welcome to the Dawg On-It Trucking Pawedcast. How are you? My friend. Good Chris. And thanks for having us today. It's our pleasure to be here. Well, I'm, I'm missing your partner because from the photos I've seen, she's the better looking one,
Rick Longobart (2m 0s):
but you know, it not only better looking, but she's also the smarter one. So I have just a crusty old fleet manager. So at any given time, if this doesn't go well, we can always bring her into the video. As I say, she would be the eye candy I suspect, but you know, I I'm, from my point of view, I'm stuck with you. But, and the nice thing about this interview is if we put our heads together, we kind of look the same. So I do have my, my trusty hairy hair outfit.
Rick Longobart (2m 31s):
So, Hey, where are you guys? Tell me a little bit about yourself because we've never even shaken hands yet, but I met you through our mutual friend, Ron Zima, the idol free guy. So tell me about Rick Longo, Bart. Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, you know, we live on different borders, but hopefully at some point in time in the not too distant future, when we get back past the COVID, hopefully we will have that opportunity to actually Shake hands, to do some work in person until that time.
Rick Longobart (3m 5s):
Chris, a little background about myself is I was a fleet manager for very few years. I worked for three different municipal agencies for 32 years working as a fleet manager. So I have a great deal of experience in sleep as well as facilities and sustainability programs that I've done with government agencies. And I officially retired from the government 2015 after three years prior to that, we actually launched the along the bar Roscoe consulting in 2013, but my business partner, Cynthia Ross, who will officially be in business eight years as of December, 2021.
Rick Longobart (3m 46s):
And we do a lot of consulting for fleets nationwide and including Canada. And we go into sleeps across the nation and from a consulting perspective, we go in and we help them find ways to reduce costs, save money, and be a more efficient operation.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (4m 5s):
Okay. So your company is trying to help them save money and be a more efficient operation. How do you, you know, you've, you've got the experience of 32 years as a fleet manager, sorry, just before we go into that, were you with one organization for 32 years or,
Rick Longobart (4m 26s):
Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And I got to say doc Garnett. Chris has a good question because I'm sure you've never heard that cliche before, but I had to throw it at least one time during this interview. I'm sure that's, that's incredibly original. Right? But to answer your question is, is I was with three different organizations and as you become more efficient in your trade, naturally, you have a tendency to get recruited by other government agencies. So I've hopscotched around with three different organizations throughout the course of my career, but they've all been in the city and municipal Rita.
Rick Longobart (4m 59s):
So the kind of the touch and feel all, all were very similar in insane. And, and to give you a little more background, if I could just jump right in a little bit more into the interview we do is from a consulting perspective is we're brought in by either a private or government fleet. And they have guidelines as to what they're trying to achieve. And in some cases they just are totally lost in neat space and they just need a business plan, a viable or, or a roadmap as to how to get them back on track in order to find ways to reduce costs, be more efficient, more productive in the workspace, but we'll go in and do a full analysis and we're hired to do a full analysis.
Rick Longobart (5m 44s):
We leave no rocks unturned. So we look at their tire operation from how they're using technology to the staffing of their fleet size, to the age of their vehicles. We look at their policies. We look at your procedures, we'd look at their operating costs and how they're actually doing business. And then we provide them after the end of the day. Usually it's a multi-day analytical study. We'll go into their sites. Now, prior to COVID nationally, we do a lot of work online now and we'll provide them with a, a business plan.
Rick Longobart (6m 21s):
And that business plan provides them in our approach, a step by step process of what they need to do first. So we designed it in a immediately needs to be looked at these things need to be resolved. The second immediate is the intermediate step set that can be taken after you've completed phase one and then longterm goals and objectives. And if, if they follow those steps, that one, two and three they're guaranteed to be successful and they will save money in the areas that we identified.
Rick Longobart (6m 55s):
Other chases could be where a fleet organization brings in to do individual verticals. So we don't do a full analysis. They want us to come in and do a staffing study, or they may want us to come in and do a utilization study, or they may want us to write a policy and procedure. So it's not a full analysis. It's these are areas where they have efficiencies, they know where the deficiencies are. And we're just going to focus on that one particular single vertical did that helps
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (7m 26s):
It does it brings up a lot of questions
Rick Longobart (7m 30s):
Yeah. As it should. And that's, that's why we're calling this an interview.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (7m 34s):
Well, I mean the, so there's all kinds of efficiencies. You are working largely for governments. Do you ever work for like I'm in the trucking fleet space you ever worked for fleets? Don't do a lot of, we don't do a lot of work
Rick Longobart (7m 51s):
For private companies. Not that we don't want to, we certainly want to get more into the private space because as you can imagine, there are, there are things that obviously discourage in time that needs to be spent in the government space. Lot of nuances, as you can imagine, a lot of red tape, I shouldn't say that as a negative term, but obviously it does prolong the time it takes to get into
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (8m 19s):
It's all taxpayers' dollars. And, you know, politicians have to be aware of how they spend taxpayer dollars.
Rick Longobart (8m 27s):
Absolutely. And they should, their due diligence, obviously let's face it. And so we can get things done much faster than the private space, but because of my background in 32 years in the government, we have a tendency to gravitate towards that side of the house because I have a lot of contacts. People know me in that space and we have a great reputation, but nevertheless is what we do has the same impact. And a lot of the fleets work very similar in parallels.
Rick Longobart (8m 57s):
So it doesn't matter whether it's a government or a private fleet, trucking organization. A lot of the things that we discover are very similar in trends and philosophies, and we could, we could provide those same services to a private fleet as we can, if that helps. Absolutely.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (9m 17s):
You know, one of the things that chemo you and I did when I first met you through Ron, we were doing a webinar for the idle free. And one of the things that came up through our conversations, I don't know whether it was on the actual webinar or not, is that you help fleets and fleets being government or private determine cost when it's time to trade their equipment in? Is that correct? I'm not saying it right. I'm sure, but
Rick Longobart (9m 46s):
Huh, no, you're, you're, you're, you're dead on it. Good, good transition to a conversation. Because another thing that we do in addition to our fleet consulting is we have through past experiences of doing studies, we've got a corporate replacement analytics where many, many sleeps, and what they wanted to know was what's the optimal time to replace my beer. When should I replace it? What happens if I don't replace it? What does, what does those replacement inflationary costs look like?
Rick Longobart (10m 17s):
What does the maintenance cost look like as I hold them over? And what are the financial impacts and implications such as reliability and obviously other costs associated with the whole vehicle too long. And we've done that study. I can't tell you how many times and in doing so, we found that this was a dire need in that space. And so we developed our own proprietary software that any sleek can use regardless of size, it could be 10 vehicles.
Rick Longobart (10m 47s):
It could be hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Infinity used it, how many vehicles of software to be loaded. And the system will tell a fleet owner when to replace those vehicles. What's the optimal time so that they can look at the costs associated with ownership of maintenance versus the acquisition costs in some other algorithms that really tells them the best time to replace it with vehicles. And so what we have found is this is a tool that has been very successful in our consulting business. So not only are we now consultants, but we're also software entrepreneurs,
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (11m 24s):
So that's cool. Sorry, go ahead.
Rick Longobart (11m 27s):
Oh, I was just going to say, takes us down a whole, another rabbit hole, right. Or four means of this guy.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (11m 32s):
Well, and for the space that I'm in, as you know, I'm a trucking safety consultant. I try to help people operate their fleet safely. What you're doing could directly benefit many of my customers by determining scientifically if that's the right thought when should replace my equipment. Cause that's a, you know, a real stress point, I think when stuff starts to wear out and starts to break down more, you know, so I'm interested in, in that.
Rick Longobart (12m 5s):
Can you tell me a little bit more about how the software works? Does it take into account for instance, one trucking manufacturer, you know, this is 2020. So if I bought a truck in 2020, and it turns out that that truck was a lemon, does the software know that that is a lemon from other history? Or is it just looking at my fleet's history? For instance? Yeah. No great question. So I'll put my, I'll put my scientific glasses on for this question right at the, not that it helps me look any better, but it makes me maybe look smarter.
Rick Longobart (12m 42s):
I don't know. So, so yes, there's a lot of dynamics between our organizations. So when, when we go into a trucking fleet or our government fleet, we're looking at ways to improve their operation and technology, what you offer or another aspect of consulting is a way of us looking at a certain area and say, Hey, we need to bring in a subcontractor such as Chris Harris to help you obviously in this area because we have, we have found a deficiency, right? So, so when we go in, we don't seem to have all the technologies in our tool chest, but we know them all.
Rick Longobart (13m 16s):
And so we can help that. We obviously know who's out there. We can obviously convey that information to them and then bring in a subcontractor such as yourself, help us. But to answer your question with respect to the technology is that we're using a lot of data-driven outwards. So we're bringing in the cost of those vehicles and then we're doing analytical comparison within the software that automatically analyzes and looks at the cost of that particular vehicle.
Rick Longobart (13m 46s):
So when you talk about, is the lemon well, what the system will do is because of the six different algorithms that we use in our secret sauce, as we describe it is that it will start to compare the reliability cost of one class of vehicle to another similar class of vehicles. And so if you start to see red flags and you see high cost, it can compare one class to another. And that's a red flag to you to say, you know what? This vehicle is costing me a lot of money to operate in, compare to what that same year make and model and similar your vehicle is costing a lot less.
Rick Longobart (14m 24s):
Why let's look at some of those trends to see if we can identify why it's costs you more. Maybe it's just because your vehicle is being used more or look at the miles. Maybe it's because it's ideally more Ron zebra as an expert in maybe it's because it isn't one and maybe it's just not a sound vehicle. And so we need to look at those trends and the software automatically does for the customer. So they don't have to go through ready, scientific the system, identifies it immediately.
Rick Longobart (14m 54s):
And then we can drill down on those areas
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (14m 57s):
That a couple of weeks ago, I forget what episode it was. We had Brett from GP trans coal. It's a fleet out of Chicago or the Chicago area with 600 trucks. If I remember, and he's the maintenance fellow there. And he was talking about being able through his software that he's using, being able to identify a shortcoming in a unit and he's, you know, says, Hey, at 600,000 miles, I know typically this thing breaks whatever.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (15m 28s):
And so he says at 550, I'm going to replace it before it breaks on me, on the road,
Rick Longobart (15m 34s):
Something similar. Yeah. Yeah. I feel something similar except for her. We probably take it. I take my glasses off because we're no longer. And scientifical discovery is they're very similar. However, what we do is we use a lot of different other formula. So what we find in the industry is that a lot of our customers would use it a very similar baseline methodology to say, well, I want to reach this X amount of dollars. I know I'm going to spend this amount of money. And so I'm going to go ahead and replace it and say 500,000 miles or say maybe 15 to 20 years.
Rick Longobart (16m 7s):
Well, and that's a, that's a good baseline, but it's not the only thing that you need to discover. Because when we look at those vehicles, we can disclose through the software to say, well, okay, you've reached that 500,000. Let's look at what you've spent. Let's look at the Paris until the acquisition. Now let's look at the condition and let's look at the, the age of the vehicle. Let's look at other formulas and the algorithm and say, okay, yes, you, you definitely reached the five pillows, 500,000.
Rick Longobart (16m 38s):
And yes, you've reached 10 years, but is it really cost you that much to maintain it so that you don't have to just replace a, be able to just because certain times of its age and miles. And so the algorithms automatically will disclose that and say, yeah, it is a good time or no, it's not a good time and you can defer it. And then we have in our software, a what we referred to as a 10 year projection. So the system will automatically forecast out, okay, here's where you're at. Here's your baseline. Here's what you've spent less look at.
Rick Longobart (17m 9s):
See what happens if you hold with vehicle all the time. And let's look at some of those costs and see if, when we'll reach that plateau to exceed the acquisition cost. And I can tell you just in the software that in one year later, two years later, four years later after the original baseline, when you're going to reach that plateau. So now, you know, now you can say, well, I can hold this thing out another three or four years, and now I don't need to replace it because some of these, especially as you know, some of these, these heavy duty over the road trucks get very expensive.
Rick Longobart (17m 49s):
So we're about baby vehicles that maybe cost 26, they'll be $40,000. When you start talking to hundreds of thousand dollars, there's huge incremental savings and safety and reliability that can be factored into the equation.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (18m 3s):
Yeah. I mean, trucks are just so expensive along with the trailers that go along. It, you know, my world is almost all tractor trailers, a few straight trucks, but yeah, I mean up here in Canada, I'm guessing a tractor today with the dollar exchange and everything has gotta be one 60 to one 90 pushing 200,000 and trailers are God. I haven't asked a customer of mine in a while, but I'll bet you, a dry van has gotta be 50 or 60,000.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (18m 34s):
And then reefers are probably a hundred grand. So that's a lot of money.
Rick Longobart (18m 40s):
It is a lot of money, Chris. And then one of the things that now is driving a lot of activity in our, in our company, your business, not only from the consulting side, but from the profit software side, is, is that because of COVID-19, we're all facing of a major financial downturn, regardless of what country you may be living in and operating in is that you're now faced with maybe a downturn in your, in your company's expenditure.
Rick Longobart (19m 10s):
Maybe the revenue stream has decreased a little bit and now you're faced with, okay, you know what? We had X amount of dollars saved for replacement, but now we need to reallocate that to other parts of the business. So how do we then decide how to pair it down? And that's where it becomes complicated is that we are just replaced them all and spend the money, or do I start to prioritize and maybe only spend half of my replacement dollars and which vehicles should I replace?
Rick Longobart (19m 43s):
Because I don't know necessarily at this point, which ones are costing me more to operate. Incomes are less reliable. That's where the soccer really helps, because then you can look at the algorithms without having a complicated Excel spreadsheet. You can look at a simple report and right away you can say by priority, I'm going to start what's the top, top vehicle that's costing me the most, whether it's reliability, maintenance costs or RBC, addition to the vehicle and start hacking away at that order. And that in itself can save any organizations, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (20m 16s):
Yeah. I'll tell you to me, this is really interesting after we get out of this COVID situation, you know, I I'm afraid of what taxes are going to do to companies like yours and mine and my customers, the fleets, because certainly here in Canada, they've spent a ton, just a ton of money, keeping businesses afloat. And I imagine it's much the same down in the States.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (20m 46s):
You're I know based in California and have they not spent just a ton of money down there,
Rick Longobart (20m 54s):
They have, they have, they have spent a lot of money, but there's also another side of it is, is we're, we're fighting with a lot of the leaks that we're working with is there's a lot of, there's a lot of downturn and there's a lot of cutbacks. And that's one of the more difficult things that we're facing is a lot of fleets are being forced to reduce their either capital expensive or their operating costs and looking at ways of reducing money. And it's not necessarily reducing money by deploying technology is just simply, we're just not spending whether it's travel, whether it's placement or whether it's not, not deploying money into technology, is that they're just putting money back in, into the copper, just finding ways to put the money back bang rather than spending it, which, which is counterproductive.
Rick Longobart (21m 46s):
And you know, this is that if you, you know, and this is kind of a discussion, we can choose that deferral seems like a great way to save money because you're not spending. But if you don't look at how you are going to pay me, now pay me later. It could be a very difficult situation to slip that in time, because then it actually winds up costing you more money to maintain those vehicles over time, by deferring them the replacement today, as you probably will.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (22m 17s):
And I mean, I'm just thinking a lot of your customers because the, our government, I would imagine a lot of them have seen a downturn in taxes in revenues because businesses are, if you're not generating revenue, you don't have to pay tax. And so, yeah, I can see a real belt tightening in, you know, cities in different jurisdictions in the trucking area that I've, I do. It really depended on what commodities they held.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (22m 51s):
If they were a food hauler, they're busy as all get out if they were an automotive holler, now that the plants have largely opened up now. But if you are hauled automotive plants during COVID, your fleet was just about shut down. So it was just a huge difference.
Rick Longobart (23m 9s):
Yeah, no, you're, you're absolutely correct. And that's one of the struggles that I think a lot of government agencies are facing is that you're right. If you're a private company you're faced with the commodity and obviously the revenue from sending the merchandise to your client, which then in our situation, it's, it's the government's leads that are not either getting hotel taxes or not getting business taxes from hotels, restaurants, and commerce. And that's where the revenue stream comes from when you're a government agency.
Rick Longobart (23m 42s):
They, yes, there are, there are property taxes, those are usually state driven taxes and that is on going. But when there is a shutdown of hotel taxes and obviously the commerce tax is that, that the big revenue stream, and that can make a big blanket of, of the amount of money that's available for them to spend. And they may need to hold that over until hopefully the economy starts to pick up again.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (24m 14s):
Yeah. I mean, just the way you're talking, just because I'm so close to Niagara falls. And of course you may not know because you're so far away from Niagara falls, but the revenue stream, I believe from tourists, it's 70% you American tourists come to Niagara falls to spend money. Well, of course that jurisdiction is going to be hard. Hit Vegas would be another one that I got to believe is hard hit because a lot of companies are saying, why are we traveling?
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (24m 46s):
Well, why are we going to a convention?
Rick Longobart (24m 49s):
Yep.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (24m 51s):
Anybody that works in different areas. This COVID my, my imagination. Can't tell me how it's all gonna work out in 20 years, but my children will still be paying the price in 20 years. I'm sure.
Rick Longobart (25m 8s):
Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this is a, probably a whole nother interview with someone that's three levels smarter than I, even my glasses going over come, obviously this conversation to make, these was like, I know what I'm talking about, but we have enough. We think about it logically the cost of just a convention center alone when there's no trade shows and travel and the hotels and the restaurants. I mean, it just has a catastrophic dynamic of, of the revenue that are brought into a municipal agency, let alone Vegas.
Rick Longobart (25m 44s):
And you have your beach communities in certain parts of the country. Certain States like Florida, where there's a huge amount of tourists, all that parlays into so much, you lost money. And I think that's the struggle that we deal with right now with do we shut down again, whether it's a Canadian country or a us country and we shut it down and lose that revenue stream, or do we just heal and get better and deal? Was it, you know, and now obviously with the U S market, obviously there's, there's stimulus money coming in, but that's not free money.
Rick Longobart (26m 18s):
I mean, that's, that is, that is debt that we're acquiring that someone's going to have to pay back. And we're just not writing ourselves a blank check with no thought in mind that that has never has to be paid back. So your children, their children will eventually unfortunately have to balance that budget somehow. And I have no idea if that's gonna take place, cause we're not talking millions, we're talking trillions and that's, that's a big thing.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (26m 48s):
Yeah. I can imagine what a million dollars is. I have no idea what a billion is and of course the government's your government spends 10 times more than my government only. And I don't know that that's an accurate number, but your population is 10 times more than Canada. And so that's just by extrapolation, I'm saying, Hey, you probably spend 10 times more. I can't imagine, you know, a million, a billion, and now government's talking trillions and it's going to be interesting in the coming years for the whole world as to how tax goes.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (27m 27s):
So to get back on too long ago and rod,
Rick Longobart (27m 33s):
We solve the economic world,
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (27m 35s):
I just find this whole thing, fascinating. You know, thank God I'm 65 years old and at the end of my working career so that I can kind of look at it and go out. It's not going to affect me for too long, but it's certainly going to affect my kids and grandkids and stuff. And it's just an interesting discussion. So for Longo Barton, Ross, how has this whole thing affected you? And I guess maybe since a lot of your customers are government agencies and you kind of hinted that you're seeing cutbacks from the government agencies, what's the plan going forward?
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (28m 19s):
Why would a government agency want to hire Longo Barton Ross right now to achieve some of their goals? Like tell, I think I never know how to end those questions, but you know, but you know, a government agency, if I was in charge, how could you save me money? Because that's obviously the end goal, my tax revenues down, my equipment is falling apart. Jeez, Rick help help me save me money.
Rick Longobart (28m 50s):
Yeah. Yeah. Well that, and, and, you know, surprisingly enough, Chris, as you say that, interesting enough since we've been in this wide since, since April, 2019, I think it was April, 2020. So we've added this easily enough, which seems to be interesting is that we have been busier than we ever have with our company's existence 2013. And I don't know what the formula is or what the chemistry is or what the reason why is I have as few ideas.
Rick Longobart (29m 26s):
I don't know that there's scientific, but it seems like we have drawn a lot of interest with agencies wanting to bring us in either on site or a nurse software side for a variety of reasons. One maybe because people were working from home and we got their, you got them, you got them in an attention span where they're not being distracted as much as they are in the workspace. So we've got their undue attention where we can grab them and show them our software. And there seems to be a lot more interest and maybe they have more time because they're working from home too, is I think that the government agencies or private agencies are looking for ways of reducing costs and bringing in a consultant.
Rick Longobart (30m 6s):
Yes. Unfortunately they have to spend a little more upfront money, but if we can come in and look at their operation, we generally can one or two areas to triple the amount of savings versus the investment of hiring a consultant. So oftentimes they know that is going to either save them money in soft costs by not having to have as many staff or maybe they're understaffed, or maybe just by the point of a certain technology over time will by far save them more money than they're spending.
Rick Longobart (30m 41s):
And they need to do something because let's face it sitting and doing nothing will provide nothing. So they've gotta be creative. And they've got to look at all avenues of ways that potentiality of saving money. And we're one of them. We're a way of coming in and looking at analyzing their operation and saving up money. We know equipment replacement has a way of delivery vehicles that just differ in one vehicle genius from a copy of our software will by far triple the amount that they'll spend by replacing one vehicle by making a onetime smooth investment.
Rick Longobart (31m 16s):
So there's a lot of different reasons why I think we're capturing a lot of attention. I know it's difficult time for all of us, but we need to do something. We need to find ways to reduce costs and deploy either technology or bring in a consultant to help find ways of internally reducing the cost within their operation.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (31m 35s):
And I mean, one of the benefits of hiring a consultant, you've already got the software for instance. And I believe in using technology is because it just saves money. So why would I go out as a municipality or as a city and buy it when I can, I don't need it for a long period of time. Maybe I need it once every five years to do an analysis. Cause I would imagine, is that a good timeframe? Every five years, I should bring Longo Barton Ross in to, to review.
Rick Longobart (32m 8s):
Yeah, you always, you always want to do a refresher. So, you know, you don't want to hire a consultant to come in and on an annual basis because they're probably already tell you something that you already know. However, as a, as you know, thing, the people that obviously technology changes quite rapidly to, to, to do it every three to five years, to bring someone in, to have a fresh set of eyes or some new blood within your organization is always going to foster new opportunities to make sure that you're not overlooking something now our software, you know, we're a subscription based.
Rick Longobart (32m 41s):
So technically a user can come in and use our software for a year, run reports and say, you know what? I loved it. It worked great to, you know, we prefer obviously to have a client that's that has a long legacy of loyalty. If they keep the use of the software, but nothing prevents saying, Hey, we're going to use it one year. We don't need it for the second year subscription and we'll bring it back into the third year. And they can alternate years. It's not something that they have to buy a license and keep it for infinity. It probably be more effective if they did over.
Rick Longobart (33m 13s):
There's nothing that prevents them from turning the switch off and saying, we'll bring it back in the fall here. And that's the beauty of what we referred to as SAS software, as a service where they can have it as a subscription base and use that their discretion versus obviously buying the bucket all at one time and putting a lot of up front cash in one time and having to make that big, huge, solid investment. They just pay the incrementally as they go
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (33m 39s):
Well, and everything is going subscription. I, you know, I look at my credit card every month and it, I mean, I'm a Mac user, so I've got Apple subscription, I've got a Google subscription. I've got different software that I'm paying monthly for. We're not paying monthly for subscribing for, because I use it on a regular basis. You know, it is the way, I don't know if the way of the future, it is the way of the now because we used to buy all this stuff and then it, now it's all started.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (34m 14s):
Do subscribe.
Rick Longobart (34m 18s):
Good, good point in the next technology software is, and it's already out, it will be software that can retain all your passwords for all these subscriptions because God knows. I can't remember them all, typically leadership. We use the same passwords to obviously avoid from hackers and stamps. So that'll be a whole nother subscription there that you'll have to remember that password.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (34m 39s):
And I have, I already paid for one and it is a subscription by the way. And, and I love it. It's called one password. It's available for Mac and a windows users. I don't know if anybody else like, whether it's good for Linux or not, but I'll tell you, I love it because it generates, or I allow it to generate a different password for every login. And I only have to remember the master password
Rick Longobart (35m 13s):
And you revealed your age, Chris, and I'm not too far behind you. So as, as, as we get older and pastor the journey, those things become a little more difficult to remember. So I'm a big proponent of the technology that you just described.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (35m 29s):
Yeah. Well, I like it, but even that they tell you, God, I can't even remember how long my master password. It's a pain in the butt because it's long and it's got symbols and all the stuff that they tell you to put it.
Rick Longobart (35m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. That's when you, that's, when you need to put these on
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (35m 49s):
That's where my hat comes on and you know, I just looked like a dummy and I can do that.
Rick Longobart (35m 58s):
I like the look. I think you should stick with it, right. Maybe I should turn it.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (36m 3s):
There you go. A little more. When I, now you got a rally cap, when sports comes fully back, you kind of look like any Garcia, move it there. I dunno has come back. Sports is back. Although I know baseball's having a devil of a time at the moment because they did a different than hockey. Hockey is a bubble, as you probably are aware baseball, they're traveling from city to city and they're having some difficulties with it.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (36m 35s):
Basketball is basketball, a bubble. Is, are they in Orlando? I think,
Rick Longobart (36m 40s):
Yeah. They're, I think they're in a bubble too. You know, the only difference is that you, you would think of baseball done, right? It would be successful opposed to maybe football or basketball where there's more contact sports and you have a tendency. I would think obviously in cases, such as that to transmit obviously the potential virus when you're so close, opposed to where baseball is knows that you've got that social distancing, you know, short of obviously contacted the plate. You would think it would be successful, but when you're traveling and going home and coming back, I think, you know, that's where the challenge has become definitely a difficult time in any time.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (37m 18s):
Yeah. I mean, we could talk about sports, but we're supposed to be talking about Longo Barton, Russ.
Rick Longobart (37m 23s):
Yeah. We have definitely solved many problems, both financially and sport and technology and consulting. So I think this has been a very successful interview. We've accomplished quite a bit and you definitely have got the Bosley for hair solution solves. So I think, I think there's no more interviews required after this one
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (37m 44s):
Last word, kite. Well, it's never the last word cause I always get the last word, but the last thought that you want to express while you're here,
Rick Longobart (37m 55s):
Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Obviously, you know where we are amongst many other consulting companies. We like to obviously brand ourselves as, as a, as a very friendly company. We're not the biggest, but we'd like to think of ourselves as the best. Obviously we do what's best in the interest of the agency. And we really tried to be part of the family. We try to customize our consulting so that we're not just going in doing a job and then leaving. We want to make sure they're successful.
Rick Longobart (38m 27s):
And so our best customers are not the most ones that spend the most is the ones that really at the end of the day provides us with the, that said, you know, you guys came in, you did your job. You provided us with a report that was easy to understand, easy to read and guess what Don Garnet it was, it was ahead of time. It was successful. We were actually able to accomplish what we set out to do. And if they're successful, we are successful both either on our consulting side or on what we refer to as profits software.
Rick Longobart (38m 59s):
If they use it, then we're happy. The worst scenarios will we launch software, you load all their data. We migrated it to the system, but they never use it. If you have our software and we make money off the software, that is not what we're after. We're after the customer that really used the software and benefits from it. Otherwise it's a subscription that they're not using and that doesn't parlay it in more business.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (39m 28s):
And you know, you just reminded me of the fact that I have subscription software that I sell. I have a five minute safety video that goes out every month and it's surprising to me how many of my customers pay for it. And they don't, I know it's hard to force drivers to do stuff or operators, but they just don't force it on them. And it's, they're not getting the benefit.
Rick Longobart (39m 57s):
Yup. Yup. Yup. It's interesting that you say that. And again, I don't need to regurgitate the interview all over again and maybe we can do this for another, probably three days. We found out that that was the case as well. I mean, our system can tell us what people are logging in and whether or not Bob in and the activity of it. So we actually self generated reports that automatically send the emails to the clients. And that report could be said to anybody within the organization, whether they're a scribe user or not, it can be set to the administrator, could be sent to their boss and automatically generate reports just for that specific reasons.
Rick Longobart (40m 34s):
Now whether they do anything with reports to the whole nother subject, but it automatically sends them information so that they know is out there. That's designed to be a tickler red flag and say, Hey, I'm out there. Make sure you look at this stuff because it's important. And it's only as good as referred to as cliches is people who for projects is the software is only good as good as the people that are behind the keyboard.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (41m 3s):
And that's always the problem. And usually the, I had a software problem on one of my subscriptions. And of course the problem was between the seat and the keyboard and had nothing to do with the software, right. Once they explained it to me, look at Rick. I want to thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. And I wish you all the best. And I hope like, heck we are out of COVID and all of its stuff very, very soon.
Rick Longobart (41m 34s):
Thanks so much My friend, I said, sorry, Greg, didn't me to catch you off. Yeah, no, go ahead. Sorry. No, I really, I really appreciate this opportunity. Obviously you don't come by on a regular basis, so we are honored and privileged to be with you today. And we thank you so much for this opportunity and be safe out there. Thanks so much. And we'll talk again soon. Thank you very much. Please leave us a, like a thumbs up a review, a comment, a rating.
Chris Harris, Safety Dawg (42m 5s):
Thank you so much. And I do really appreciate and join us again next week for another exciting interview.