Ty Cobb Backer: 0:01

And we are live. Welcome back everybody to Behind the Tool Belt, episode 268. I am your host, ty Cobb-Backer. Thank you for joining us on this Wednesday edition. Today we have another special guest. Stay tuned. We will be back after our short intro from our sponsors.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Welcome to Behind the Toolbelt, where the stories are bold, the conversations are real and the insights come to you live, raw and uncut. Every week, host Ty Cobb-Backer sits down with game changers, trailblazers and industry leaders who aren't afraid to tell it like it is no filters, no scripts, just the truth. Please welcome your host of Behind the Tool Belt, ty.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:09

Cobb-Backer. Welcome back everybody to Behind the Tool Belt. Thank you for joining us on this Wednesday afternoon, 12 pm, eastern Standard Time. On the East Coast. Here Today we have another fantastic guest, my friend, aaron Thompson.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:23

Tom Thompson, thomas, thomas I think I've done that to you a lot. Yeah, thomas, aaron Thomas, who is actually, I think, would be considered our fractional CMO for for TC backer and, amongst other hats that that you've wore here for us and still continue to help us improve the quality of our company, whether it's lead generation to our marketing efforts, our brand recognition and all the touch points that we've been able to create throughout the county and the states and everywhere else that TC Backer is and lives today. So we thought, you know, why not get Aaron back on the show today? He either reached out to me or I reached out to you about a sales gadget, you know, and really making a big push and a big splash in, you know, the roofing and home service space for 2025. And I thought why not have Aaron come on?

Ty Cobb Backer: 2:20

Because you're in our building at least once or twice a week or on a call with somebody probably every day from our company and the sad reality is is that I don't get to see you very often and I'm not just saying this part here just because we're live on Facebook right now but I want you to know that I know what you do for us and I thank you sincerely. I want this to be a public recognition that I do know. I speak with John on a regular basis. I speak with Robert on a regular basis, so I know what it is that you do for us and probably many other contractors across the country, and I know the quality and type of person you are family, family person, um, you know, uh, you guys recently got married too, right Got?

Aaron Thomas: 3:12

married five years ago. We recently had our first child. So we have a five month, five month old at home.

Ty Cobb Backer: 3:18

So yeah, August 31st.

Aaron Thomas: 3:20

August 31st.

Ty Cobb Backer: 3:21

Yeah, 2024. How I know? That is why that stands out, cause my birthday is in August, okay so uh, as I say, you're really good August 31st.

Aaron Thomas: 3:29

You just pulled that right out.

Ty Cobb Backer: 3:30

Is it? Is it Caden Acadia Acadia, Acadia J, Acadia J? Yeah, so five months old. Congratulations on that too, Cause I don't know if I've seen you since then to uh congratulate you on that. So you know, you're a father, you're an entrepreneur, you're a husband today. So, so let's, let's, let's unpack that a little bit Like like, let's talk about your, your entrepreneurial journey and how you figure out, you know, being a father, a new, newly father, somewhat newlyweds. I can't believe that's been five years. Have we known each other that long?

Aaron Thomas: 4:02

Yeah, well, say so. We met in roof con back in 20, the year before covid, maybe 2020 or 2018, 2019, something like that.

Ty Cobb Backer: 4:14

As well go. So that's a funny story in itself. Yeah, how, how we met, um, but I guess let me share that story real quick, because this is how ironic and this is how I remembered it. So four or five, six years ago, whatever, whatever it was. So Aaron is local to our area, so never met him and still didn't meet him yet. But our team ran into him down at RoofCon in Orange County, florida, at the Orange County Convention Center there in Orlando, florida, and so they're like hey, you got to meet this guy, aaron, he's from Dover, and so we got the. We somebody introduced us to each other. But more crazy is is that I found out like you're from Dover, right, and your wife Brooke is also a Dover high school teacher, or junior high One of them, and that I think Mackenzie was one of your wives.

Aaron Thomas: 5:12

She, she graduated a year after us. I think she was probably 2017.

Ty Cobb Backer: 5:17

Okay, okay.

Aaron Thomas: 5:18

Graduated in 2016.

Ty Cobb Backer: 5:19

Okay, so you guys went to school together. Yeah, okay, okay. I thought maybe that maybe your wife was a teacher of one of my children.

Aaron Thomas: 5:28

So yeah, so rocket. Okay, she had rocket in class, so that was three years ago now, whenever rocket would have been in seventh grade.

Ty Cobb Backer: 5:37

Yeah, yeah. So crazy, crazy weird how smaller roofing space is, but crazy weird that it took us going to Orlando to connect with each other. So, and and honestly I'm grateful that we have done that, um have met each other, um, because of just the wonderful things that you have brought to our company and in our lives and stuff and I know John just admires the shit out of you with the technology and the brain power that you bring to our company, and of course, so do I and you know, in the sales field, there's probably so much that you do here that I don't know or unaware of, and along with and I'm saying that because I'm sure our sales team and people have no idea what it is that you actually do and that's kind of what you know. We'll unpack that a little bit, but let's, before we get there, let's, let's talk more you know about, like, your entrepreneurial journey. How did this space find you?

Aaron Thomas: 6:34

Yeah, Good, good question. So I actually got started in entrepreneurship as a mobile DJ. So I don't know if you knew this, but I was going through high school and or no, I wasn't even high school, I was 13. I couldn't legally get a job yet because of labor laws. I'm like, how do I make money? How do I? What am I passionate about that I could use? What skills and talents do I have? And it was music for me. So I was always into music.

Aaron Thomas: 6:59

Growing up, I was in marching band, played drums, and I'm like, what if I'm just a mobile dj, like I can make some cash on the side? And so I asked my parents I'm like, are you cool with this? Like yeah, like we're not gonna like financially support you in it, but like if it's something that you want to do, like go, like we're behind you 100. So it was through that. I did that for four or five years, grew that to a point where I was doing more weddings on the weekends. I got stressed on weekends a lot, because it was like the bride and groom's big day. I was like this has to go perfectly, you only get married once, or it's just such a big moment that I was like I don't want to be the dj that drops the ball. Yeah, so it's very stressful and I'm like I don't know that I want this lifestyle anymore. I don't want the the stress and I don't want to always be on the weekends Like that was the biggest time where people got married.

Aaron Thomas: 7:48

Friday, saturday, sunday. So it was through that and then I ended up selling that company to a larger production company that did audio video lighting for concerts and tours and more corporate events. And so when I sold to them, they're like, hey, would you join our team as well? As, like our sales and marketing rep, like, yeah, sure, like that sounds cool. I would love to learn marketing and I was doing a little bit of marketing for my, my business at the time but to kind of take those skills and apply it to a bigger business.

Aaron Thomas: 8:17

I saw a solid opportunity there, so worked with them for a couple of years and it was through that that I really developed my love for marketing, that passion. Fast forward a year after that, there was at the time the pastor of my church. He recently wrote a book and he was like, hey, I want to take my message of this book and expand that beyond the four walls of the church. So from there hooked up with him and Michael Anthony like he's a huge mentor in my life and still a good friend to me to this day.

Aaron Thomas: 8:48

He married my wife and I, so I worked with him for about two years and then I was like, hey, we're doing all this great stuff for you, I'd love to apply that for other businesses and stuff. So that's when the marketing agency came about. We started to apply the same skills and principles to different businesses. I love the home services space. We bought our house as a fixer-upper, did a lot of the renovations ourselves, so I liked the trades and I'm like there's a huge need for it in the trades because there's a lot of lead generators and marketers out there that they say a lot of things and they can't back that up. So I was like how do we transform the industry?

Ty Cobb Backer: 9:46

How do we transform the space and lead with integrity and honesty and transparency and that's why we're here early on, had experienced the pressures that that come along with it. Um, and I can't even imagine, at 13 years old, you know, I grew up, you know, in a family in an operated bar, restaurant, catering business, and and I remember my parents, you know, cause they catered a lot of weddings and a lot of receptions and all kinds of things like that, and how perfect everything had to be, from how we look to how we presented the food. And my mom was, was, was, um, you know, had been to culinary school and things like that, after, you know, as as an adult, and stuff like that. But just so she wanted to, you know, sharpen her skills and stuff like that. So, okay, so you, you um, your your church, um, okay, so you, you um your your church, um, anthony, I, um, I'm familiar with him, I, I'm over there, I know, yeah, I know who he is.

Ty Cobb Backer: 10:32

I think my friend, eric Brewer. Uh, I think they had a leak at their church over off of, uh, blooming, what's the, what's the road over there? Uh, it was in New York, new Salem, okay.

Aaron Thomas: 10:40

Yeah, well, maybe he's moved churches or congregations or something like that it was in New York, new Salem. Okay, yeah, new.

Ty Cobb Backer: 10:45

Salem. Well, maybe he's moved churches or congregations or something like that, but I'm pretty sure I'm aware of that, gentlemen. But anyhow, I've only heard good things about that. So you got to experience that pressure of entrepreneurship early on in your career and then you moved into the marketing space and stuff like that. But what so? What, what, what kept you? You know, once you experienced that pressure, what, what made you want to continue feeling that?

Aaron Thomas: 11:16

Yeah, that's a really good question. For me, it was like I fell in love, Like I still love the concept of owning a business, like being in business for yourself, you can set your own schedule, you can kind of create like I would classify myself as a creative, so being able to create something and be proud of it and for me it wasn't necessarily that like entrepreneurship itself at that time was stressful. It was I associated it with. It was the wedding side of things that was stressful, because everything needed to be perfect for that one day. So I'm like, okay, well, how do I still be an entrepreneur but not have the stress and pressure of that specific industry? Now, hindsight being 2020, like that stress and pressure doesn't go away, Like it's always there in entrepreneurship. But yeah, I think I just really fell in love from an early age, like the ability to create something and to be proud of it and not have someone to tell you when you have to show up for work, and just that freedom and flexible lifestyle and doing what you want.

Ty Cobb Backer: 12:12

Yeah, you know, that's something I think you know a lot of people. That's why they get into entrepreneurship right away. You know they want to start a business because they think you know they're going to have that freedom out of the gate. And some companies may start out that way where the owner has that freedom and stuff like that. But do you still? Do you feel like, have you gotten that freedom yet or have you? You know, did you start out where it's like you know I've I had that freedom, or do you feel like you're, you know, your business still kind of owns you at times? Does that ever go away?

Aaron Thomas: 12:46

Yeah, good question. And I think it's different seasons of business too. Like there's a time period where it was just myself, like I was. I was the guy, so I was doing all the web design, I was doing the SEO, I was doing all the lead gen. I didn't have a team behind me. So at that point there was definitely some stress because I was managing everything and like if balls were being dropped with the clients, like it was my ownership. I have to step up and make sure that.

Aaron Thomas: 13:09

I've been taken care of. I think right now, what I'm experiencing is a different type of stress and pressure with how do we grow a team? Like we're hiring like crazy, we're training new people like crazy, and it's like there's a different type of stress and overwhelm now.

Ty Cobb Backer: 13:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah To. To touch more about that Cause I was thinking earlier, you know, when you said the pressure from the weddings right, like that's just isn't I felt like you know, you, you didn't like that because you can't thrive in that type of pressure. You know what I mean. But, like, for me, right there, right there's, there's, there's pressures that I thrive and I do really well, and it's almost like I need to have that added layer of pressure in order to perform very well. But it has to be, you know, a project or the industry that I'm in, that that I have a passion and and need that extra push of anxiety to to, to be the creator, you know, or the builder, or or whatever it is that we're, we're, we're into. So it sounds like, early on, you were able to find, like that niche where you can actually thrive in that that controlled chaos, and be creative within that control chaos. Is that? Would that be accurate?

Aaron Thomas: 14:25

I would say it's like the whole concept of like falling in love with the game. Like when you, when you realize that entrepreneurship it's not necessarily a destination, like do we have goals to sell? And like build this big, massive company and have that legacy? Absolutely. But it's falling in love with the journey of the game. And like waking up knowing that how do I hire the right people, how do I train them to make sure that our clients are being taken care of? But also like how do I get my time back? So I've just recently been finishing up a book, dan Martell, buy back your time.

Aaron Thomas: 14:55

I love that book Completely changed the way that I thought about this.

Aaron Thomas: 14:59

And it was from reading that book. Since reading that book, we've made four or five new hires within the last month. And it's been crazy because at first I'm always like, do I want a big company? Because big companies sound stressful, managing large teams, a hundred plus employees. Like, do I desire that? And in his book he's like no, the reason why you want to build a big business is so that you can have the freedom. Because if you have a big business and you have a team and you can delegate, then you buy back your time and you have that, that freedom. So that completely changed.

Ty Cobb Backer: 15:30

Yeah that's such a good book. And there was a term or a phrase that he used, like don't hire to, like fix your problems, you know, but but hire to or or to make more money, but you're, you're, you're hiring to buy back your time, you know, and that's that's such a good, such a good philosophy, because I think a lot of times, like you know, early on for me, I would hire people thinking that they would solve my issues. You know what I mean. But trying to find the right person, who may be smarter than me in certain aspects of things, where it can just do it better than the way that I'm doing it now, is is it's hard to determine if you're hiring the right people or you know, one of the biggest things that I struggled with was keeping the wrong people around too long, right, so, and of course, you, you live and you learn and you crash and you burn, Right, and you make a lot of mistakes along the way, and you know, but I, I think you know that sense of freedom that that I get from, just you know, the, the entrepreneurship journey that I've been on isn't necessarily the amount of time that I've I've gotten back, but maybe the, the from the sense of accomplishment, right, like you know, cause today it's more, more so about like developing people and and creating co-leaders and things like that. Those are the things that I kind of nerd out on and that's. That's just the season that I'm in.

Ty Cobb Backer: 16:55

I'm not saying that like that's what your focus needs to be early on in entrepreneurship. I think it's it's more of a a hustle and grinding. Let's get this thing you know built out and then get the framework built so then we can easily duplicate this, so I can find a replacement for myself in certain aspects of what the task that I'm, you know, putting myself through and I mean through because I put myself through a lot of stuff early on and still do at times Like I'll still start other ventures Right, and I and I know not to hold onto it as long as I used to, because that was that was a lot of. My problem was is that I thought nobody could do it as good as me. This is my baby. I put the blood, sweat and tears into it, but today it's kind of like I know I can sense when it's becoming too much for me with all of the other irons in the fire that I have.

Ty Cobb Backer: 17:44

So it's kind of like okay, do I have this documented well enough in order to pass this off to somebody else? And why that's so important is because I've ran business with everything up here, right, and what happens, what happened to me from from doing that is you know. What happened to me from from doing that is you know. Nobody knew what else was going on, right, they didn't know. Like everything was so inconsistent and I was inconsistent because I didn't document, I didn't even write it down.

Ty Cobb Backer: 18:13

It was basically off of feel and intuition and we're just going to go this direction today and we're going to do that tomorrow, and then I'd show up for work the next day and it would totally change.

Ty Cobb Backer: 18:23

So everybody was kind of sort of waiting outside my office door waiting for me to tell them what to do, opposed to me training them on how to think for themselves on their own Right.

Ty Cobb Backer: 18:34

But I was teaching them, basically training them how to you know how, what to think, not how to think, if that makes sense and until I started to really like create the framework, like the 20% piece of it and I think he might even talk about that and then hand that off to them and let them build out the 80% of it, you know, but then following back up with them too, because I think a lot of times people think delegating means just pawning things off and forgetting about it and then circling back in six months wondering why nothing moved forward or it was done wrong or inaccurate. But then you also got to realize too, there's also more than one way to do something too. So there's a fine line of critiquing somebody right and and taking the wind out of their sails or encouraging them like wow, I really love your thought behind this. I would have never did it that way. You know what I mean Doesn't mean it was the right way or the wrong way. It was just the way that they came up with finishing the project.

Aaron Thomas: 19:33

Yeah, and I love hearing you share about that, because you can sense the passion that you have with building into people. And I think oftentimes going back to the previous point about like freedom and like what what is freedom Like? I think sometimes we associate with freedom with oh, I'm just going to sit on a beach and sip cocktails and like life is good and I'm not going to work at all. Like to me, that's not what freedom is. Freedom is being able to do what I want with my time, of what I'm passionate about. And, like you went from being a roofing contractor to being a business owner that, instead of your time focused on building roofs and projects and all that, you now have the freedom to use your time to pour into a team, to coach your team, to make sure that you have other co-leaders stepping up in the organization. That's where you find your passion. And like, that's freedom. Like you're still working, but you're working and you're allocating your time to what your passion is. Yeah.

Ty Cobb Backer: 20:27

And what's funny about that is is I'm probably working more now, but I don't really necessarily consider it work, because this is just what I do and it's fun and you're so right about this is. What makes me feel free today is basically choosing Okay, I want to pour into this person today and not being held captive or handcuffed to my business, where it owns me and it's dragging me through the mud and I can't see the forest or the trees, because I've been there and sometimes I can still get myself in that position where it's like I've lost the clarity of like you know, whether it's from, like what is my purpose today, or you know it's so close to my face that I can't even make a decision. But, like I said earlier, like I I know now to let go sooner, you know, because that honestly, quite frankly, I wish I would have probably let go a little sooner because we might be a little further along. But at that moment, when you start to let go of certain things task, jobs, you know, responsibilities and things and start empowering other people, when you let go and start encouraging and empowering other people, that's when the true growth of the company starts to happen to happen not just because you gave it to somebody else and they can do it a lot quicker. But through some of the errors and mistakes that I've made and then allow them to make, then not only are we learning from the mistakes, but we are both now learning, you know, from those mistakes and you got to leave a lot of room and become callous that mistakes are going to happen and not be so judgmental and have empathy or for those that might be making those mistakes, that truly want to do a good job but made a mistake, because that's where growth happens, right In those pain, and if they love what they do, they're going to take it to heart that, oh, I screwed up, right, but they're going to learn. And so many scenarios are going through my head right now where you know I've watched people make mistakes and it guess what, it's never happened again.

Ty Cobb Backer: 22:30

But that's where, like, sops and KPIs have been developed and born in that framework that we talked about earlier. You know the framework is, is basically our standards and operating procedures. You know, and, and like, this is what I've came up with so far and you know, take it and run with it and you know, benefit from it. You know, reorganize it. You know, do do what you want to do with it, and giving people that authority to be able to do that is where true growth for me took place. Because that's not me, that wasn't me 10 years ago. You know it's my way, or the highway. But you know, here, here's what I've come up with. You take a look at it, see if it works. If it doesn't work, because I'm sure there's a lot of nuances and corners that I can't see around at this, you know, at the, at the level that I'm at, but here it is, go with it, run with it, tell me what you think and let's reconnect in a week or so. You know what I mean. But no, that's good. And I love business, right, I love that's a fun game, it is, it is.

Ty Cobb Backer: 23:30

I was just thinking that we're getting ready to kind of redesign some internal things and for the past couple of weeks I've been really nerding out on certain things of how we track certain things and most of it's financials and stuff like that, and I find it so interesting to be in the place that I am right now. There are some things that are probably pretty obvious, that weren't so obvious to me earlier on, but are obvious to me today, right, that, as I'm going through and I'm drawing these things out and I kind of showed Vic a picture of how we're going to manage, you know, our finances and stuff that is so much different than it was when I first got into business, and the leverage that I have today with financial institutes and and, and different opportunities that I've been presented because of being in business as long as we have been, or the trust that I've gained with financial institutes and the credit that we have, like just all of these things, how things are so much different today. That one, there are so many different things that we don't utilize that we need to start utilizing If we want to become, you know, the, the organization that I I think I I see the vision for right, we, we need help from from other organizations, we need more people, we need to make sure that we have the right people in the seats on the bus, right, and and thinking cause a lot of this went back six, nine months ago, where I was getting ready for 2025. Like, literally, we were talking about our marketing efforts, our brand awareness, the products that we were going to use, and a lot of people are thinking about that stuff right now.

Ty Cobb Backer: 25:20

Yeah, and and it is my job today as the chief energy officer is to, you know, have those projections, whether they're financial projections, and how? Not just that, but how are we going to achieve them? And have it broken out for a quarter per month on average, weekly, like all of these things. And when you start really drilling down into that stuff and that for me is the fun part goosebumps, just thinking about it and then pulling these levers and hitting these buttons and then watching it come to fruition the next day, the week.

Ty Cobb Backer: 25:54

Some things take an entire quarter to find out if you made the right decision or not, but it's so much like the thrill of the kill or the the hunt. You know kind of feeling that that I get and gain, and it's like I don't really look at things as problems anymore. I look at it as a challenge and challenge accepted, more so than oh, my God, we're going to die. You know kind of thing. You know, especially like going through COVID, like we got through and learned and gained, and really it put us where we are today, like it was the best thing that ever happened for us, and not necessarily to us.

Aaron Thomas: 26:29

Yeah, I can completely relate to that, especially like all the like we're already digital digital marketing.

Ty Cobb Backer: 26:35

And.

Aaron Thomas: 26:36

I think COVID had a had a lot of blessings for us, because it opened up the world and it's allowed the world to be a much smaller place, that you don't think twice about doing business with someone across the across the world or across the country, or hiring somebody. Or hiring yeah, you literally from a business owner like I literally get the pick of the best talent in the world. So some of our web designers, some of our coding and some of our engineers, like they're in India- Some of more of our social media.

Aaron Thomas: 27:04

like Philippines is so, so strong when it comes to digital marketing frameworks, and so you can go to these different parts of the world Columbia and Latin America amazing call centers, amazing people that can do like client success management and stuff. So, you get to open up so many different parts of the world. It's so cool to see the different cultures and the different work ethics and, like, you're assembling your Avenger team from all over the world.

Ty Cobb Backer: 27:29

It is. It's great, you know. So, which leads us to, you know, let's, let's talk a little bit more about, like, what you're doing today with sales gadget. Like, what is it like? Like give, let me know I know what it is. I think you know what I mean. I think I know what you know you. I know what you do for us. I'll put it that way, but I do know you have many other irons in the fire. So let us know what. Tell us what it is that you do. Yeah, for sure.

Aaron Thomas: 27:55

So when we started out in the agency space, we were a full service marketing company.

Aaron Thomas: 27:59

Just like any other one, so web design, seo, lead gen on Facebook, google, local service ads pretty much your entire um gamut of of marketing, right? I I believe in an omnipresent approach. I'm not one to just say Facebook is the only thing that works. Go do Facebook. Seo is the only thing to work. You should put all of your money into SEO. The end of the day, marketing it works. All platforms work if you work it right.

Aaron Thomas: 28:24

So it was within the last six months that we really focused on what are those things that move the needle the furthest for our clients, and it was a combination of all of these different things. It was a combination of Facebook ads, google ads, seo, ai with speed to lead, and making sure that we have good communication, reputation management, making sure we're getting those Google reviews. So all of it worked and it's like well, how do we package this in a easy to consume way that makes sense? So that's why we developed our four pillar marketing framework. So we have four pillars that we focus on. One is our neighborhood takeover strategy, which is all about Facebook ads in a very localized area. So we actually teach and train sales teams to record selfie videos in front of a neighborhood sign, in front of the local giant, the Walmart, key visual hooks where people can relate to and they drive by. Often they record a selfie video. Hey, we're doing work in the area. John and Mary called us out. They had a leak. Just tell the story and then a quick call to action. So that's neighborhood takeover. That's all about the Facebook ads of it.

Aaron Thomas: 29:30

Pillar number two is, once we start generating some of those leads, what's the follow-up process and what we've noticed through seeing our client accounts? There's a lot of leads that come after hours. So you'd be surprised the amount of leads that come in at six, seven o'clock at night. We even have leads that come in at 12 o'clock midnight and I was actually looking at one of our client accounts the other day and he had a lead that came in at 11, 11 PM and our AI immediately engaged with them. They were dialoguing back and forth between 11 and 1230 at night and then by 1245, we had a booked appointment with them. Could be that they were working third shift or different shift work. They're up at different times.

Aaron Thomas: 30:10

So that was the. That's. The second pillar is speed to lead. How do we nurture and convert those leads that we're generating into appointments? Third being reputation management, all about Google reviews your social media presence. And then the last pillar is AI driven SEO. So what location pages, service pages, blog posts are we creating on your, on your site, to make sure that you're ranking? And those money keywords, those roofing contractors in York, roofing companies, york, pa, that type of deal?

Ty Cobb Backer: 30:39

Wow, yeah, so you guys are fully engaged with AI.

Aaron Thomas: 30:44

We love it. We love it. We're building some pretty cool tech. Some of our clients are using it. It's voice ai. So one of the things that we heard in the space is homeowners. They hate how contractors are horrible with communication. They don't answer the phone. They try to call for an estimate. They're not open after hours. It's like there's if you're doing roof replacements and your average ticket's 20 25k and you're not answering the phone, um, that's a lot of missed opportunity. So we've developed voice AI that can answer the phone for them, qualify them, get the details about the job and the appointment and then actually schedule that to the calendar for them.

Ty Cobb Backer: 31:19

Wow, wow. How do you see AI changing our industry?

Aaron Thomas: 31:25

Yeah, I would say it's already had in a major way. So specifically in the roofing space you see a lot of different ai companies popping up for a variety of things. So one being like the uh, forget the name of the rilla forget the name, like the sales sales trainer so the fact that you can literally have a wearable device that records a conversation that you can train your sales team with ai. You can literally ai can tap into the best sales trainer in the world right and train your team on that.

Aaron Thomas: 31:54

And so that's one really good use case. Our use case is obviously communication. So being able to have really good communication with your homeowners, making sure that the ball is not being dropped, making sure if they're reaching out to you, that if they want an estimate, you make it easy for them to schedule that estimate with you estimate you make it easy for them to schedule that estimate with you. So there's so many use cases where we're using it for content creation, blog posts, location pages.

Aaron Thomas: 32:14

It's just allowed things. It's allowed you to do so much more in a shorter period of time. Before we were paying full-time copywriters to hopefully write a blog post in five hours. Now a blog post can be written in five seconds.

Ty Cobb Backer: 32:28

Yeah, multiple blog posts, yeah, yeah. So would you say AI is the engine behind a lot of the stuff that you guys are doing and performing for contractors today.

Aaron Thomas: 32:40

So I would say that it's not the only engine Like I'm not one to believe that AI it produces it and you should just copy and paste it and put it right on your site, Like it needs some massaging, it needs some tooling for it to sound good and for Google not to like say, hey, you're obviously just producing all this content and it's just scammy content. So but we, we train our team to use it when creating outlines for content, when doing keyword research and analysis, when creating the baselines of how do I create Google business profile posts, social media posts. So we empower a team to use it, but making sure that you still have the thought process like that how?

Ty Cobb Backer: 33:20

am I going to?

Aaron Thomas: 33:20

adapt this so that you're compliant with search engines and all that fun stuff.

Ty Cobb Backer: 33:24

Yeah. So if, let's just say, we weren't using AI, if a roofing company that wasn't using it, what? How would they go about? Like, where would I go? Do I just call you up? Or is there so many other companies out there? Like, is this a special niche that you have cornered the market in? Like what? What should I look for too? Like, if they say that they use AI for for SEO and for writing blog posts and things like that. Like, if I, if I had no idea what I was doing, what should I look for?

Aaron Thomas: 33:58

Yeah, I would say a lot of, a lot of what we're finding in this space is just making sure that if you're a roofing company, make sure that you do the due diligence over asking the right questions with your marketing agency. So if they prove to have some magical secret silver bullet- I would call them out on their BS and say like what is your silver bullet?

Aaron Thomas: 34:18

Cause there is.

Aaron Thomas: 34:18

There's not a magical system, it's marketing principles and, when applied correctly, that's where you see success.

Aaron Thomas: 34:25

So, yeah, I would say like, if you're looking into this type of deal, there's a lot of solutions out there that, if you're tech savvy, if you're a business owner that you like to geek out over the tech, tools and AI and how to use it to grow your business, there's so many resources out there that you could probably perform a lot of this yourself.

Aaron Thomas: 34:42

You can go to ChatGPT and have it prompted to create blog posts or location pages, or ask it like hey, I'd like you to act in the style of Alex Hormozy and Grant Cardone Please produce me a video script that I can use to get more leads on Facebook. Boom gives you a script. Pull out your phone, put on a teleprompter app, record it. Like there's just so many use cases that if you just embrace AI and not view it as like AI is too complicated, too technical, there's no way that I'll know how to utilize it. Like, just start opening up ChatGPT and just talk with it, and then you'll begin to see the power of how you can use it in content creation and your marketing.

Ty Cobb Backer: 35:26

Would you say that if a company elected not to start using AI like what would be the ramifications of that?

Aaron Thomas: 35:33

Yeah, you're going to be severely, severely left behind because you got to think, like your competitors, they're embracing AI, they're producing content at scale. Google loves content, right? They love blog posts, they love making sure that you're an authority on specific topics. They want to make sure that they understand your locations, that you're an authority on specific topics. They want to make sure that you're they understand your locations, that you serve. And if one contractor is only producing one location page a week or one blog a month, and you have this other competitor, that's really embracing AI and they can do that stuff with speed and ease and they're producing 20 location pages and five blog posts, or 20 blog posts a month. Which one do you think is going to win? It's going to be the one that's producing the most content.

Ty Cobb Backer: 36:13

So would you say most businesses are applying AI as one of their helpers for marketing.

Aaron Thomas: 36:21

I think, yeah, I think a lot of businesses they want to, but they might get stuck on like how to like AI is such a buzzword. Everyone's using AI and it's like well, what does AI actually mean? What is artificial intelligence?

Aaron Thomas: 36:32

and how do I use it, and there's so many different use cases. Like I said, there's the content creation side of it, of producing content for your website, your blog post location pages, but then there's also how do I utilize AI to make sure that my homeowners are not being left behind and missed calls are happening. So it's one of those things that can be overwhelming when it's like all right, I got to use AI for my business, but what does that mean? Right, you got to break that down further and be like well, what does it mean to use AI?

Aaron Thomas: 37:00

in my marketing. What does it mean to use AI in my communication strategy?

Ty Cobb Backer: 37:04

Right.

Aaron Thomas: 37:05

What does it mean to use? Ai in my sales training strategy and philosophy and what tools can I use to adapt it. So I think a lot of companies want to use it, but it could be overwhelming with where do I start or how do I. How do I do it?

Ty Cobb Backer: 37:17

Yeah, cause that would be my question. I mean, if it wasn't for you and John and a couple other people, I mean I wouldn't know where to get started. Yeah, you know what I mean and that's why we've been so lucky to to have met, because you have seemed to be out in the forefront of, you know, the new technology that's moving and that's that's the other cool thing. You know, that I love about business, too, is is is being an early adopter of something you know and and trying new things and thinking outside the box. And AI is definitely that thinking outside the box. But it's been around long enough for for people like you and companies like sales gadget to have.

Ty Cobb Backer: 37:53

I don't want to say master it, because it's like Google, things change all the time. It's, it's staying up, but like this is what you do every day, so you are more dangerous with it than than anybody. Quite frankly, that I know at this point. You know, what do you think the biggest mistake is? It's. I think it's. It's been around long enough. What do you think the biggest mistake that you've seen people are using, how they're using, ai right now?

Aaron Thomas: 38:20

yeah, I think it goes back to just thinking that ai is going to magically solve all of your problems with no other human input. Like I'm a firm believer that, um, there's going to be job roles and people are going to be hiring AI engineers specifically for prompt engineering. How am I talking to AI and how am I using AI to get me the best output? And so if you're someone that's just like you're using AI just to write content and you're copying and pasting it, there's going to be no unique advantage for you versus your competition. You still have to inject in with your blogs and your pages your personal stories, how you help specific homeowners. You still have to have that personal touch. I think the biggest detriment would be just utilizing it as a tool that I can just copy and paste and say that that's good enough and just create all of this content. That really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. You want to make sure that it is optimized and still using the age old best practices around SEO and marketing and content creation.

Ty Cobb Backer: 39:22

Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. What do you, what do you predict the future of AI looks like.

Aaron Thomas: 39:28

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a's a scary one too, because I you hear all the horror stories about how we're all going to be replaced by robots, and like this dystopian vision of what ai is doing. Yeah, uh, do I do I see that as a concern. Sure, like the amount of advancement that we saw from what three, four years ago when chat, gbt and open ai first became a thing, consumer level, yeah, uh, until where it advanced. Now, like it's crazy, the, the, uh, how much advancement happened in those short two, three years and so fast forward.

Aaron Thomas: 40:00

10 years from now, 20 years from now, like what does that really mean? Yeah, um, so there, I think there are, as with anything, the internet. The internet was an amazing invention, but is it also used for a lot of really evil and corrupt things? For sure, ai is going to be the same thing. There's going to be a lot of tremendous opportunity to do good.

Aaron Thomas: 40:22

I was reading an article the other day about how it's going to be used in the healthcare system, how all of your EMRs, your electronic medical records. If built with AI, it can access all of these different medical records all across the globe, and so your doctors and specialists can then get diagnosis a lot faster, because it's not any more just locate or depending on their specific knowledge of what they know to be true in the medical space, but it can pull from all of these different diagnoses and cures and and I mean they're talking about being able to cure cancer and be able to uh early detect it in dna and then use that dna to build a vaccine and then use ai to develop that vaccine for that specific person their specific dna within 48 hours.

Aaron Thomas: 41:07

Wow, like that's what's coming 10, 15 years down the road. Incredible advancement in the in the healthcare space.

Ty Cobb Backer: 41:13

So so you don't see it replacing. I mean, I'm not saying that there wouldn't be some form of you know work that AI couldn't replace, but I guess it's almost like you know going to the grocery store and there's that self checkout like you still need someone supervising that and there there's still you know people manning the checkout and stuff like that. What do you, how do you see Google playing Like? Do you see that affecting you know does well, ai? You know, at least for somebody like me, on how I use AI, like I'll ask it a question right For for, for something that that I need educated on, or something like that, and I I go to Google all the time and search something. Now that it's becoming like a search engine, right, like for me to search things, how do you think that's going to affect Google?

Aaron Thomas: 42:02

Yeah, I think right now Google obviously has the market share. Everyone Like if you don't know something, you Google it. And I think we're still early on. I don't know that AI and OpenAI and some of these other AI platforms will truly ever replace Google, just because Google has a lot of other IP. They have Google Maps, they have their Google business profiles and all that stuff.

Aaron Thomas: 42:22

But we're already seeing how homeowners are going to ChatGPT and say, hey, give me a recommendation of a roofer. It's like, okay, well, how do we have ChatGPT recommend us as a company?

Aaron Thomas: 42:37

versus my competitor, and it's all search engine optimization, it's all SEO. But yeah, I do think that there's going to be more adoption in the space where, especially the younger generation, instead of Googling something, they're just going to put it in ChatGPT, because they know that it's a lot more powerful than Google at GPT because they know that it's a lot more powerful than Google.

Ty Cobb Backer: 42:53

Yeah, let's talk a little more about the detriment of it. You know because and I'm going to use Garmin and TomTom as an example, going back showing my age here a little bit so I remember the Garmin. I'll be honest with you. Like even spell check has ruined me. Okay, I, I'm. I feel like I'm so illiterate anymore that I can't even think for myself. I can't even drive home without looking at down even though I don't necessarily have to punch my address and driving from work, but I feel like I can't even get across town anymore without my GPS. What type of effect do you think chat GBT is going to have on people in that sense? What type of effect do you think chat GBT is going to have on people in that sense? The reason why I brought that up is is I, my me personally I'm very careful with how I use chat GBT because I know I'm looking back over my life, right when, you know when, when I was a service manager for a roofing company and I got around York County with I can't remember the name of the map book, it was like a book, literally like a, like a book that you could get at rudder's or tom's, when tom's was a gas station. But I would literally use that and and highlight you know routes of. You know when I would plan my day because I was in the service department, so I do you know a 40 minute job here, a two hour job there, so I would try to map my day out. And then, you know, tom, tom came about right, and then Garmin came out with their you know where. You would suction, cup it to the windshield and you know and, and then that technology got more sophisticated where I could actually start plugging in all of the addresses and then it would kind of tell me how and which, when. Yeah, in chronological order, right. And so for me, you know, I, you know I'm not, you know, the most smartest guy in the room, which I used to think I was at one point in time in my life. But I've surrounded myself, fortunately, around a lot smarter people. But I don't want to make myself any dumber than I already have become because of the tools and technologies that I use today.

Ty Cobb Backer: 44:59

So for me, I'm very, very leery, or not leery, but but very conscious of how I use chat, especially chat thatT, that that form of of AI. You know, because I I even went back to writing notes instead of typing notes and I went back to actually reading books instead of listening to books, because the just because I felt like something like I wasn't retaining things as well as I was, just even a few months ago, like is, when I probably started to notice where I started to become more dependent upon technology, where, like you said, I couldn't even think like critically or problem solve without going to hey, siri, how do you spell? Yeah, hopefully I don't pick that up, sorry, go away, she's always listening. But so I was asked to. So I called a co-authored in two different books. One was hunter blue's recent book, and then daniel zabotny had um, asked me to co-author, amongst you know, john scenic and a whole group of just really smart people.

Ty Cobb Backer: 46:09

So I was very flattered and I, of course me, I'm a procrastinator but not just that. It was just kind of like what do I want to write about? How deep do I want to go? There isn't much space. So I got to cram it all in there and somebody made the comment to me like why don't you just chat GBT? And I was like I don't want to do that. No-transcript enough thoughts because of one where I was at that time with everything else that was going on that I needed to have like everything quiet. I needed to make sure it was like a Sunday morning where I just kind of like I can jam out pretty good on thoughts and theories and plans and visions and stuff on Sunday mornings.

Ty Cobb Backer: 47:01

But I thought how pathetic is it that I can't even really write my own life story without relying so much on spell check and and and grammarly right, which is so super fricking, annoying, right. But I've actually learned how to use grammarly to my advantage, to, to help me with my grammar, and and punctuality and and and things like that. Because I started to like practice, like you know, putting commas in. Like you know, you start text messaging like none of us are great grammar kings when it comes to text messaging Like yes, should have, you know, a comma then, sir. Then exclamation point. We're writing yes, sir, exclamation point. Yeah, you know what I mean. So it was like a reminder to me of like how horrible of a writer that I am. You know what I mean.

Ty Cobb Backer: 47:57

I know that might sound crazy, but it's kind of like I'm testing, I'm going back to, like the basics. I'm reading literature, I'm reading books, yes, I'm listening to podcasts and I do listen to books and and things like that, but I'm actually taking the time to sit down and write things out, all of my notes here. Most recently, I got myself the old school graph paper with the holes already punched in it so I can put it in a binder, because I can't just have notebooks, because I'll I'll lose it and just you know, once I fill it up, then what? So I got myself a little three ring binder, that with some graph paper in it, and I and I literally started to love that started to write again, because I found myself not knowing how to write words that I know for a fact, that I knew how to write in the past. So for me, that's, I think that's what technology on the negative side has started to do to me, and for me, that's I think that's what technology on the negative side has started to do to me.

Ty Cobb Backer: 48:51

And, like you touched on earlier, I'm terrified for our children and our children's children. They're not going to, are they even going to know how to communicate, first and foremost, with each other without emailing or text messaging or whatever form of communication might be out in 10 years, that maybe it might be able to read your eyes. I have no idea. Like we won't even have to.

Aaron Thomas: 49:15

You just think it and it just does it.

Ty Cobb Backer: 49:17

Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. So it's just, I guess if I, if there's a message in there, I would say be careful with it. It is a powerful, be careful with it. It is a powerful, powerful, powerful tool, but be careful and leverage it like you would anything else in life or in business Leverage it to create real.

Ty Cobb Backer: 49:37

But again, it still needs someone to supervise it, because they may spell phish, p-h-i-s-h, when you needed to be phish, f-i-s-h, right, thank God, hopefully I didn't misspell them because my my brain's becoming mush with all of the new technology. But no, but I've seen that and I've seen people make those mistakes where they're just trying to turn and burn reels out, but they didn't even edit the, the subtitles in it. You know what I mean. Or the, you know the, the, the text at the bottom where it's popping up um. So, yes, um, that's that's. You know, if there's a message, just be careful, get back and and there's nothing wrong with reading a book, yeah, you know and writing out notes, and it's refreshing too, like when you, when you're especially for me, like I notice myself, like I use technology all day long I look at a computer screen all day long.

Aaron Thomas: 50:29

Yeah, it's like nothing gives me more energy than like if I can go home and just like read a physical book and like be away from my screen so in a sense, like I, have so much more appreciation for the analog, even though that what we do is a lot of digital.

Aaron Thomas: 50:43

We do it because we have to and like it's a it's a good tool to use for efficiency, but never lose sight of like going back to the basics of handwriting stuff. I mean even like from from team building, like go out of your way and do a handwritten note versus like a text message of appreciation like that alone will help tremendously in your team culture.

Aaron Thomas: 51:03

So there's just certain things like use it as a tool. Use it as a tool and don't just rely on it 100 of the time and just utilize it. Utilize it in a good way and be aware like self-awareness is also a huge key of. Am I depending on this a little bit too much? Do I need to step back and, um, start handwriting stuff again? Do I need to read more physical books and stop with the audio books? So just yeah, have that self-awareness to know if you're in too deep.

Ty Cobb Backer: 51:32

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So what makes sales gadgets stand out from any other sales gadget type of tool or company?

Aaron Thomas: 51:44

Yeah, I would say the company level, just like our culture of who we are, like we do business with people. Uh, and we're we lead with transparency, integrity. We, we focus on character. You hear the horror stories and just recent clients that we signed up. They always have the stories of like, oh, this marketing company burned me, they're a scammer.

Aaron Thomas: 52:05

And it's like we're we're put here on this planet and this earth for a reason. And and it's like we're we're put here on this planet and this earth for a reason. And we want to make sure that we're doing good work or performing for people. So I would say that's one thing, like I would much rather make sure that my clients are having a positive experience with us than just cashing a check or swiping a credit card. So definitely like the integrity behind what you're doing. But then I would say, on the other side is just our innovation. Like I am. Naturally I'm a I'm a tech geek. I love, I love to geek out on tech, on AI or new tools, and probably to my team's detriment, cause I'm always like.

Aaron Thomas: 52:39

Hey, check this out. Like what do you think Can we start using this?

Ty Cobb Backer: 52:42

Right.

Aaron Thomas: 52:43

And, um, I would say that, like partnering with us, you're going to get someone who's always on the leading edge. Like we're always looking at what is the latest tool that we can use and apply and do we see success with it? If we do, then we can go ahead and scale that across the counts and all that stuff.

Ty Cobb Backer: 52:58

So yeah, I love that and I agree with everything that you said. That's my impression, that's what I've experienced. I appreciate that. Yeah, you said that's my impression. That's what I've experienced. I appreciate that. Yeah, from you, with you, with from your team, you've, you've, have always gone over and beyond for us and I, I know that, and you're always there when we need you for for any questions that John John may have, or any new campaign that we want to start running, or whatever. Like you're, you're, you're, you're top notch for real. Okay, so, before we get off here, what, what would you say, is your most rewarding thing about being an entrepreneur? Not not a father, but necessarily, you know, and we, we, you can, you can go down that way too, but, like, what is the most rewarding thing that you get from being in the position that you're in right now?

Aaron Thomas: 53:47

Yeah, I think, easily to sum it up, is just helping people. Like I was always brought up in a family that, like you served, you served others. I grew up in the church and so volunteering was a big focus of mine and I think when it comes to like your career, endeavors and being an entrepreneur, you get to create and your product and service gets to serve other people, to help them excel and get results and grow their businesses. So I think that's my biggest takeaway is just having a space where I can serve.

Aaron Thomas: 54:17

Um, and like you you hear often about like people, are you going to volunteer? What's your volunteerism like? And like you work a nine to five job and like you don't. You don't really associate your nine to five with serving others, but I would say that it's all encompassing. When you're at your nine to five, you're serving your coworkers, you're serving your team, you're serving in our case, we're serving our clients. So just being passionate about helping people and giving back and serving and making sure that our clients are being taken care of and that we can just provide a level of experience and expertise in the space that that needs it.

Ty Cobb Backer: 54:55

Yeah, and the beautiful thing about what you just said was is that you actually get paid to do what you love, and that's to serve others. You know, and that's that's something that we talk about a lot at our meetings. You know, it's like we're here to serve each other and because we're good at what we do is that we get the opportunity to serve our community and impact our communities, and we love what we do. And the crazy part about this is that we get paid to do what we love, and it's not about the money, but the crazy, the catch-22, or the paradox. The paradox about that is the more that you serve, believe it or not, the more that you get paid. It's true, do you know? I mean, and that's that's just the tip, the reward of doing the next right thing, having impact on people's lives and catering to their needs and and and really sincerely taking care of them in ways that they they didn't know were even imaginable at times, and that's that's definitely what you have done for us.

Ty Cobb Backer: 55:57

And and we were just talking about a BNH, which is a place where we get microphones and cameras and stuff from and great company, great customer service. Customer service is exactly what we were talking about like I, I will order something, and not just how quick it, but I'm, I'm serious. It's like next day, saturday night, okay. Saturday 8 pm. Okay, because they close certain hours on saturday but they're open on sundays. So if you order something 8 PM, 9 o'clock, 10, 30, I don't care Saturday night it gets processed and is delivered. Now they say Tuesday, but it showed up. Our last stuff was is we got the 50th anniversary road mics from them? I, of course it's red. They don't want to let me buy two because they're limited edition, but I'm going to try to sneak in under VIX accountants.

Aaron Thomas: 56:47

There you go. Yeah, just create new profiles, I'll order some for you?

Ty Cobb Backer: 56:50

Yeah, right, but the service is, and we started using them quite a few years ago and it was like dude, that's the standard. Like if we call them and we have questions about any type of equipment, even if we didn't buy it from them, okay, they sell it, they know, they have specialists, like I don't know where they're at, but they're like just, yeah, let me put you on hold real quick. Johnny specializes in the sony, you know, uh, whatever, x, x, a x7, and uh, johnny comes on the phone. He's like yeah, what, what's happening? You know, not annoyed, not irritated, we didn't have to wait 30 minutes Like, just walks you through, sends you a link right for the owner's manual or a YouTube video or something. You know what I mean? We ordered man, I can't remember what it was and I had to call them.

Ty Cobb Backer: 57:47

We were down at the other studio and just a couple years ago, man, they walked me through what. I think we were having trouble with the black magic camera. Yeah, at that time something was going on to come to find out. I think it was too cold if we, because we didn't have uh heat in our old studio back then. I remember it, I remember and uh, the cameras were getting too cold and uh, he walked us through it and and like when it would warm up, there was, you know, condensation building up on the land, like just stupid things.

Ty Cobb Backer: 58:15

But like he, he helped us through that and it wasn't even necessarily a technical issue. You know what I mean it was. It was a situational short atmosphere situation where he's like so where, where are you guys located? We're like we're probably four hours east or west of you guys. We're, we're in york. Oh yeah, new york, pa. Yeah, I got relatives there living here. It was just you know. And he's like well, what's the temperature you have? And he just thought of everything and crossed every t and dotted every I for us.

Aaron Thomas: 58:43

So, but anyhow it's, they serve yeah, and that guy probably got so much passion from helping you Like he's like dude. I like it brought him joy and gave him energy, knowing that he was able to solve your problem. Yeah, that's how I feel. When we go above and beyond for our clients is that gives me joy and energy, that it's like, dude, let's do more of this. I just want to out serve people.

Ty Cobb Backer: 59:04

Yeah for sure, definitely. That's that's what makes you the most wealthiest, and and and that's where true success lives is, in that it's not monetarily, it's, it's the fulfillment you feel by helping somebody Right, and especially if you can figure it out right, like like, like Johnny did, you know, from the call center from B&H, right, like that, that sense of you know, not commitment, but that, that, that satisfaction that he felt of completion. You know that, that, that I can't think of the word that I was looking for, but he felt completed, you know, fulfilled, and you know, and that's that's the, that's what I chase today. I chase that, that that feeling of fulfillment, and, and I have passion for you know, to do, I have good days already known. You know, some days I do have to take care of myself too, but you know, but in order to take care of other people.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:00:01

But that's that's just what it's, that's what business is about, and to have a successful business is finding people's pain points and and you know if, if you can figure out how to cure things, you know, and ailments and and pain for other people, you're going to be super successful, no matter what industry you're in. And and truly that's what it's about, and if that's your true motives is to help other individuals. Dude, listen, I have made some really bad business decisions, just not not in order to to hurt other people, but just, let's just say, financial decisions where I may have overspent on something, something, some, some force, the universe. Something has always looked out for us because our intentions were always good. You know what I mean. I don't think you necessarily have to graduate from Harvard business school or anything like that to run a successful business. I think if you're truly passionate about helping other people, the universe just makes sure that you're still relevant later. So true.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:01:02

You know, it makes your wins outweigh your bad decisions. So true, you know, and, and, honestly, if at that, I think that's how we did it, that's how we are still here today is just by doing the next right thing, especially when nobody's watching. Yeah, yeah, so cool man, what a great conversation so your pastor's on here yeah okay yeah, what we got michael anthony.

Aaron Thomas: 1:01:27

Toughest thing about being a business owner, I would say, yeah, definitely the. For me right now in this, uh, this season of life, is how do you balance entrepreneurship and business ownership with being present with family? We have a incredible five-month old at home and I want to spend all the all my time with her, but I also know, like I got, to provide for my family too. So it's, what is that healthy balance? Um, not letting business consume me, but um, yeah, how do I, how do I have that healthy balance? I don't believe that there is a such thing of work-life balance, cause I think it's always a dance, but I would say that's probably the most challenging and toughest part right now is just time, like I'm so, when you're so passionate about something and you want your business to succeed and you just want to serve people and serve people. It's easy to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week yeah, because you enjoy doing it. Yeah, but you can't neglect what's happening at home and all that.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:02:28

So, no, I, I would 100 agree, um, with that statement that you just made. You know, finding that work we call it work-life blend because I don't know if there's ever going to be a balance but I find that the more time, especially in the season that I'm in right now, I I, a couple of two years ago, I started to uh, make sure I spent some intentional time with rocket every morning and, uh, I kind of have strayed away from that. Actually, with you know, traveling and stuff and time zone changes and stuff like that, my sleeping pattern gets a little goofed up. But I find, you know, I try to arrange my schedule where I'm home on weekends and I do that so I can spend enough time with, you know, my grandchildren, my children and, and most importantly, jana, because I find you know you never shut off, you know I think, the battle of trying to shut it off.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:03:23

You know business, you know I I stopped worrying about that so much because when I'm in a different atmosphere, and usually with my family, is when some of the best visions come to me, when I can actually remove myself from my office or out in front of the computer screen or off my phone and put my phone down for a minute and we're outside working on a project together. You know, rocket and I built this, uh, this, uh, golf net. It's like a batting cage. Literally. We built a batting cage for for golf balls. We both both started playing golf this past year and that took our relationship to a whole. Nother level was learning something together that's cool, but I've it is.

Ty Cobb Backer: 1:04:05

It's become so rejuvenating for me, even though it's it's an hour here, an there, half hour there, three hours here, it becomes so rejuvenating for me to have to get that clarity back again and why, and helps me put things in perspective. Because I love them so much, I can't fail. Yeah.