Transforming Sales Game-Changing Strategies With Rilla's CEO Sebastian Jimenez | #108

Hey everybody. Jeff Duden on the home front and I am excited today to have Sebastian Jimenez on with us today. Welcome Sebastian.

Thank you for having me on, Jeff. I'm super excited to be here.

Yeah. Sebastian is the co founder of rillavoice, one of the hottest, coolest startups in tech. One of the fastest growing companies in the world today. A company that I am super excited in because of the impact that he's made transcribing coaching. There's over 10 billion conversations that happen face to face out there with salespeople, engaging with clients. And Sebastian has a vision that he's worked on and capitalized on to create incredible AI coaching intelligence around all this. Super excited to unpack it. Unpack it with you. Welcome.

Thank you so much, man. Yeah, I like how you put it there. 10 billion face to face conversations out there that people are having with each other. And yeah, we're going to talk about what we're doing here, but to me that was kind of like all those conversations happening, nobody's capturing them. They're lost in the short term memory of the salesperson or the service person who's having them. It's like a lost civilization that was never put into the written record. And so all we're trying to do really, and I'll talk about what real is in a second, but all we're trying to do is we're just trying to capture those conversations that are happening and make them searchable, indexable and make them useful for companies to make better decisions so they can all be like, like Google and Amazon and making really smart decisions about their customers.

Where was the moment that you identified this opportunity? You had a startup going, it was something similar and then you just had this aha moment. Tell us about that.

So for those of you who don't know what Rila is. So Rilla is the leading virtual ride along software for altitude sales and service, specifically the home improvement industry. So you think of people who sell window siding, flooring, doors, H vac plumbing, electrician, solar roofing, people who sell home improvement products and other outside sales and service people. But they talk to people face to face, they record their conversations with the Rilla app. And then we use AI to transcribe, analyze and give them feedback to help them improve their sales and to help their managers do what we call virtual ride alongs that are 100 times faster, better and more productive. She asked me where the idea came from. So I've never had a job. I've always been, I always tell you right before this my mom likes to call me perpetually unemployed. I've never had a job, I've only done startups. And before this I used to do standup comedy. So when I graduated college I just started my first startup. And my first startup was a field marketing management software that would help companies like Heineken, Red Bull, Coca Cola manage their field marketing campaigns. So for those of you who don't know what field marketing is, think of like the, you know, the Red Bull kids with the uniforms, they go to college campuses and events and they give you rebel and they're like woo, Red Bull. And, and that's like field marketing, right? Those are brand ambassadors. Our software was a very basic software that was used to manage brand ambassadors in the field. They could take pictures, you know, submit the reports about how the event went, you could manage the brand ambassadors, pay them like an all in one field marketing management software. A lot of home service folks will understand this like something like service site where you could just basically run your entire business on service site. So this, that we were that for field marketing. And one day I was talking to the field marketing manager at Heineken and in her reports on, on our tool it said that she, her they were doing 50 events a week, face to face activations in college campuses, stores, the storefronts and so on and so forth, selling seltzer and new, new products and stuff like that. And, and I, and and then it said also that they talked to 100 people per event. And she said yes. And I said that's 20,000 people a month that you guys are talking to every single month. 20,000. And then she said yes, that's about average. And I said how many markets are like you and Heineken? Because that was just one little tiny market. And she said about 200 nationwide. And I said 200, that's 4 million people a month that you guys are talking to if the math is correct. And she said oh yeah, that's about right. Yeah, that's about right. Four million people, I said. And then I realized that those 4 million conversations they were being had, people were talking about they would try the product. It was like doing in store demos, like trying the product, saying what they think and leaving. And none of them were captured. And at the same time I realized Heineken was spending like hundred like hundreds of millions of dollars every year on social media analytics, on surveys, focus groups, market research, to try to understand their consumers a little bit better. And from all those sources of data combined from online sources, surveys, all these different Data sources. They were getting like, you know, maybe like 500,000 points of interaction every month. So I said, 500,000 points of interaction with consumers online, 4 million offline. That's eight times the amount of data, right? And it's much more relevant because there's no. There's no robot, you know, there's no bot. There's no, you know, it's real data because it's a person talking to you face to face, the real conversation. And I said, what if we could go there and capture all these conversations and give Heineken 8 times more data about their consumers that they don't have today? And then I thought, well, that's not just Heineken. 85% of commerce in America happens offline. People think of Amazon, ebay, they're so big. But if you think about E commerce, E Commerce is basically 15% of commerce. EBay, Amazon, all of what you buy online is only 15% of commerce. Most commerce in America and around the world still happens face to face. You know, somebody going to a store, going to a restaurant, going to a home, and talking to another human being face to face. Right? Like, I was like, okay, so that's not only Heineken. How many conversations does Coca Cola have have? And then I started thinking, why stop at field marketing? What about the. They have field salespeople that go into the restaurants and the stores to try to talk to the buyers there. And then I thought, why stop at food and beverage? What about the people who sell windows, plumbing, siding, doors, H Vac, electrician? What about the people who sell pharmaceutical devices, medical devices? Right. What about the people selling retail stores? You walk into a retail store, and I started thinking about the whole universe, which is what you described. There's 12 million outside sales and service people in America. 10 billion conversations face to face every month. I thought, if we could go out there and make all these 10 billion conversations part of the historical record, then maybe we could. We could attempt to build something as magical as Google did once back in the day, where they made the Internet index of what if we could make the same. What if we can make the same thing happen for offline commerce to give the same power that Google has to understand customers to all businesses around the world.

Now, how old were you when you had this epiphany?

It was 2019 and I was born in 96, so 23.

Nice. Okay, so. So. So you grew up in the doctor. 22. So you grew up 23.

23, 23, yeah.

You grew up in the doctor and then you came over and you did a program at Yale in 2013, then you went to school at NYU.

Yes.

How did that, like, how did, were you entrepreneurial up until that point when you lived in the Dominican and then when you, how did you decide to come to the United States?

Yeah, so I, I, I, I knew I wanted to come. I learned how to speak English very early on. And, and, and like I, I used to watch south park and, and Jackass, like all the crappy American. We used to have a, like pirated American tv. And I learned like by looking, watching the shows, reading the subtitles. So like, if you listen, my voice sounds very cartoonish. Dominicans do not sound like this. I don't want to. I'm like, this is not how we sound.

So you're, you're patterned after south park, basically.

Yes. Yeah. And if you meet me, you won't, like, if you get to know me, you will see like, oh my God, that makes so much sense. This guy, this guy, this guy's, this guy's a potty mouth. And so, so, yeah, so, so, so I learned how to speak English. I, I was always like, very, I, I was always in the doctor. We look a lot to American culture. There's a big diaspora of Dominicans here in New York City and Miami. So America is the end all, be all. So we look up to. And so I grew up just being kind of all very close to American culture. And so I always knew I wanted to come to America and kind of make things happen here. I came to college at nyu and that was great in hindsight because NYU is a college that doesn't really have a campus. You're basically an 18 year old and they just throw you in New York City. That's basically what's happening. There's no campus. I remember when I was, when I was coming to, there was like the school tour and there was like a little girl in the front, like a freshman, like, like giving a tour and saying like, oh, you know, this is like Washington Square Park. And then it's like, like, right, like there comes a crackhead just like screaming at the top of, it's just like yelling crazy stuff. And, and I'm like, is this part of the. Because you're just like in the streets in New York.

And so that's, that's the orientation right there. Welcome to New York.

And he's just screaming and all these little kids are like, is this like a performance? Like, what's happening? Oh, no.

And, and, and so, no, that's that's, that's a Tuesday. That's all that is.

And so, and so you're just in New York City and, and it forces you to kind of find your own way. NYU is not a really good school for people who want to have like the traditional college experience, because if you don't find your own way, you're going to get depressed and sad very quickly. And so what I started doing, Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, he has this great quote which is, you are who you are when you, you are who you were when you were growing up, when you were little. That's, that's, that's who you are. And he said, I was a designer because I always love painting and designing things and that's who I am because that's who I was when I was growing up. And so I think about that quote and I said, well, I, I, I, I am a clown. That's what I am. Like my, my nature is, is to be a clown. Because ever since I was little, I always loved making people laugh. I always loved laughing. I got really into stand up comedy. I used to watch comedy all the time, like late night tv. I used to like stay up late watching pirated versions of Conan o' Brien and all these different things, right? So when I came to nyu, I was like, oh, perfect. This is the city of stand up comedy. It's the best city in the world to do stand up. I started doing stand up immediately, like when I was a freshman and I was doing six shows a day, seven days a week doing stand up comedy, stand up comedy, stand up comedy. And, and I fell in love with it. And I would say that the biggest thing that I learned from, there's so many things I never went to class in nyu. I never like, I just literally just would show up to take my tests so that I could get my visa at the end of the four years. And I would just like, I literally just started. Never showed up to class because, because it says in my degree, I got a degree in business. That's not true. My actual degree was in stand up comedy because that's all I learned in college. And everything I learned about business today, I learned from stand up comedy. And one of the biggest things I learned was how in order to do something truly great, insanely great, it's not enough to just have a great idea. That's not just like 1%. Like, that's, that's not, that's like 1% of the whole equation. It's also very necessary to Fail many times over, like a thousand times over, to get it right. That's, that's, that's really the secret sauce. I learned this in Stand up because in Stand up, it's one of the only art forms where you have to practice in front of a crowd. So like in music and painting and writing and poetry, you cannot, you can practice in your room and make sure that your music sounds good before you show it to people. In Stand up, you do not have this luxury. As soon as you have an idea, you write it down and immediately you try to go to an open mic and tell some strangers the joke to see if they laugh. And you don't know if they're going to laugh. You have an idea. Even if you're funny, you don't know because the joke is not ready yet. It's like very half baked. But you do this and then you fail, inevitably, many different times. And every time you fail, you listen to the failure. You're like, okay, the joke might have been great, there's some funny in there, but the setup was wrong, the punchline was wrong. I lost them at the end when I said the last word or the way I helped the mic. Let me try that. Let me try the same joke, but let me hold the mic there. And you're looking at all these little, thousand little variables to actually make the joke, you know, work. And so the best comedians, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, they bomb like 50% of the time because they're always trying out, they're always trying out new material. And so as a stand up comic, all I was trying to do was generate three new minutes of material every single week. And for that you have to be constantly generating new jokes.

Yeah.

And, and that is the secret sauce in like any, just really any art form, any creative endeavor, entrepreneurship. To me, it's just like I read the biographies of Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, George Westinghouse. I read all these biographies of these insanely great entrepreneurs who defined history. And I said, what was it that made them special? And when you read their biographies, you see a common pattern. It's not that they were the smartest people. They were really smart, but they were not the smartest. They had smarter people around them. Like their iq. Their IQ was not the highest in.

The world, by the way. Right.

They were really smart, but not the smartest people. Was it that they were the most hard working? They were really hardworking, but there was hard working people all around them that worked just as hard. So that's not It. Were they the most creative? Yes, they were very creative. They were not the most creative. They hired more creative people than they did. Was it the combination? No, because they had very hard working, very intelligent and very creative people that were working around them that did all of these things higher than they ever did. And so what was the secret sauce that made them so special? The secret sauce is that they had an insane tolerance and appetite for failure like nobody else. That was it. They. Thomas Edison, classic example, 10,000 tries to get the light bulb to work. Somebody asked him, you failed 9,999 times. He said, no, I just figured out 9,999 times to not get it to work. And then I found the one that did.

Right.

And when he talks about the 10,000 tries to get the light bulb, mind you, this is 10 years of him toiling in a lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, just literally just trying to get this light bulb to work for 10 years. Most people would have given up, but he kept failing and failing and failing and failing and failing and failing. Similar to Steve Jobs, the first iterations of Apple 1 and Apple II circuit board. And it took him many years. Almost like, it was like, I don't know, it was like almost 10 years to get the Macintosh out there. It was like between 5 and 10 years. Same with Walt Disney. You look at the first early animations, it's like these crappy little cartoons with Mickey Mouse. And then you see color and then you see sound, and then you see Snow White and it's like. And then he defines animation for. For the entire century. It's the biggest skill that I learned that you needed was this insane tolerance and appetite for failure. If you can fail longer and more and faster than anybody else at a micro level, you're just going to learn so much faster and you're going to become unbeatable because you're going to learn every single thing of what not to do.

Well, and that was Elon Musk's philosophy. Says, we're going to Mars and we've got to launch a rocket ship every hour on the hour. So I need to start blowing them up every week?

Yes.

I mean, SpaceX, my son would show me, he'd say, he said, hey, we got another launch. We'd look at it and the thing would explode. I'm like, were there people on there? He goes, no. And it kept. Every week it's like, yeah, it's blowing up. And then, you know, a couple years later, he's, you know, they're landing On a. On a robotic pad out in the ocean. And now they're going to be landing right on the launching pad. And it's just. It's a testament to saying, you know, he. It's. You have to accelerate your failures faster and faster and faster to get to where you want to go, because there's always going to be a breakdown before you have a breakthrough. Now, before we get off the subject, my daughter goes to nyu, so I've been spending a lot of time in the city.

That's so cool.

Yeah, it's great. And so, favorite pizza?

Favorite pizza? Prince Street Pizza.

Which one?

And Prince Street Pizza.

Okay.

I didn't have to think about it.

All right.

Prince Street Pizza.

All right. So she's got a new place right across from. She lives on 95 Christopher street there. And there's a new place right across there. I can't think of the name of. It starts with an L right now, but we go to John's on Bleecker. That's good. There's one in Christopher Street. Luciano's. Lucci. Lucci's. Looking it up. You looking it up?

I used to live there, by the way. She's, like, in the West Village. It's a really nice place.

Yeah, it's not bad.

Really nice neighborhood.

We wanted her. We wanted to be able to walk, you know, to school.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, where all the musicians, all the artists live. She's. The JC has, like, a house. That's a really nice place, like the West Village. And the school's right by.

Yeah. Anytime. Anytime she leaves, I move in and I just go walking on this.

Yeah, it's. At least she's, you know, she's not in the. What, the other side, which is like. What's the Alphabet City?

That's where you need to get, like.

A whole body armor and then try to make it to school unharmed.

Are you still living in the city?

I. I'm in Queens right now, so our company's in Long Island City, Queens.

Okay.

Which is, like, right at the tip of Queens, like, five minutes from Grand Central, so. Yeah. Cheaper rent.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt.

Much nicer.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, I tell you what. I caught one of your sets on YouTube. Great set. When's the last time you did stand up?

Last time I did stand up. I mean, I. Technically, if you like. I go to shows. I go to contractor shows a lot of the time. So that's. Basically this whole company is a ruse for me to do stand up. That's what this company. Yeah. I basically travel to all these shows and I get to make contractors laugh. So if you count that last week. But when I did stand up proper, I was at a, I was like at this investor dinner, like, a year ago, and the investor said, well, for tonight's entertainment, we actually have a comedian in the crowd. And so, and it was like a dinner with a bunch of founders, like 25 people. And we're like, yeah, so, Sebastian, come up and tell some jokes. And I'm like, this, it's not, that's.

Not, that's not the right room, man. It's not the right room. It's not the right room.

You know what? No, but I did all my jokes and they started because I'm so out of pocket, and they're used to, like, being all formal, like these techies and all these, like, tech nerds. And I just started saying all my crap and they, and they, like, just were bawling, laughing, because I was just doing my old jokes. I was like, I'm just gonna do my 2016 jokes. I don't care, dude. Like, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Hey, you get what you get when you throw, Throw you up there. Yeah, I do the same thing. I do, I do, I do a ton of training. I do a ton of speaking. You know, I've, I've got all my stuff worked in there. But, yeah, it's just like, it's an excuse for me to get in front of people. I get to do it, you know, two or three times a week. And, you know, it's just great. It's just great getting in front of people and being able to work the room. Course when I do our training for our franchise group, you know, I do, like, the first two hours, and we have six brands, so we're doing a training almost every week. But, you know, I've got my stuff worked in there. You know, you need it. You can't just talk to people for two hours and then not have fun. Yeah, it needs to.

And keep attention. You gotta keep. If you're gonna keep attention, you have to throw, like, a little bit of attention. Grab things in there.

Yeah, stories, things they don't expect, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I've gotten in a little trouble in a couple of. I, I, I, I tried, I tried a couple of things in probably the wrong audience, and I got in a little.

Oh, that's the best, dude.

But, you know, you gotta push up time.

I bombed the worst time. I bombed it. We can trade bombing stories. I, I, My brother asked me to do stand up in Spanish for the first time. I'd never done stand up in Spanish. I'd only done stand up in English. And he said like, come do stand up. And I was like, okay, whatever. This guy basically invited like 500 people to his restaurant down in the Dr. Because I was down there for Christmas. And he said like, oh, this like New York comedian. My brother, who's like a New York comedian, he kept calling me like a New York comedian, like an NYU student who doesn't know anything. And. And he's like, oh, my brother's in New York comedian. He's going to be doing comedy today. And I go like, dude, how many people are coming? He's like, oh, 500. I'm like, what do you want me to do? And he goes like, I don't know, do you do your thing? I'm like, I've never done it in Spanish. He's like, dude, just translate. I'm like, it doesn't work like that.

And he goes.

And I go, how much time do you want me to do? And he goes, oh, like an hour. And I'm like, an hour? You want me to do an hour? Are you crazy? And it was so bad, man. Like the first 50 minutes, you know, you're bombing. There was a lady in the front row was going like this, like, with like a rosary, like praying to God for forgiveness. And, and my dad was in the crowd and he was heckling me. He was like, go back to school, you suck at this. And yeah, it was a fun time.

What, what are, what are your favorite clubs in New York? We go to the Cellar almost every time I'm in.

The Cellar is the best club, I would say probably in the world. It's like between that and the Laugh Factory in California. The seller is great. I didn't, I never, I was never. I, I did the seller like one time for like a comedy class on a Wednesday at 3:30pm I didn't.

Okay.

I did it like when, like, you know, the waiters are cleaning up, you.

Know what I mean?

Getting ready. You know, it's like they did like a charity show for me to feel special. It's like a make a wish for stand up comedy. And then I used to do the stand. The stand NYC, which is in Gramercy, around that area. Like 23rd. 23rd. I think it's the Stand. And then I used to do a Broadway comedy club I did a couple times. And then I used to have this regular hosting gig at the Climate Lounge on 7th Street. And. But I used to do, like, all the. All the open mics all over, like, you know, West Village. Village, and so.

Nice. Hey, next time I'm up there, man, can we hang out?

Yes, dude. If you come here all the time. Yes, dude, absolutely.

All right, we'll do it. I can't wait.

Just let me know.

I can't wait. You know, I guess we got to get to business at some point on this.

Yes.

Not really.

Sorry, folks. Sorry, folks. We're just having fun here. We just. Yeah, no, I.

Well, look, but, like, this is the core of success, though, man. It's like, how do people. Like, this is an entrepreneurial podcast, right? So, like. Like, you know, people. I think people are so serious, man. And the reason that comedians, I think, are some of the. They're some of the smartest people. You have to be sharp. You're always thinking about what things mean. And I mean, it's like, you know, it's. I think it's. I think it's pretty well documented that the best standups are really bright, brilliant type people. And if you can. If you can be that creative in the moment, you can put concepts and thoughts together. Plus, you're engaging people, like, which is the whole thing. I mean, great salespeople are great connectors. I mean, we've got this. You know, we're in franchise sales, right? So that we have franchise salespeople. And really what it comes down to is, like, can you connect with somebody in, like, 60 seconds? Like, if they. If you can connect with somebody, like, right off the bat, disarm them and get that. Get. Get them in the pocket where, you know, they're. They're enjoying the conversation. That's it. Everybody likes to have fun. Everybody likes to, you know, feel good, feel like they're getting something out of it. So, I mean, people that are selling through scripts or just, you know, and you see it, right? Because what you do is basically, you made the invisible visible. There's 10 million invisible conversations going on, People selling at the kitchen table, and you have no idea as a company owner what in the world is getting said. The only thing you see, they go into the black hole of the house. They come out, and they either have an order or they don't. But then you know that this. This salespeople, every lead you give them, they bring you $1,000. This salesperson, every lead you give them, they bring you $4,000. What's the difference? You couldn't tell until Rilla voice was created and came onto the scene. And that's really the value in it. So what have you. What are some of the best insights that you have seen that maybe you didn't expect as you start getting all of this data in from all of these hidden conversations?

Yeah, so. So, yeah, like you said, so one of the. One of the. One of the things that you mentioned, which was for us, it wasn't the initial value of the product, but it was kind of like, you know, an unwitting byproduct of what we did is that we started collecting a lot of conversations. So we've analyzed like millions and millions and millions of conversations being had between salespeople selling home improvement products and homeowners at the kitchen table. And for the first time, we can do this thing that we call Moneyball for sales, which is you a Moneyball, which for anybody who hasn't watched the movies, the movie with Brad Pitt, it's based on a book that basically tells the story of this guy was the manager of the Oakland A's team of baseball. He brought the concept of using data science and analytics to playing baseball games. And instead of just relying on human intuition to make decisions, you rely on human intuition coupled with data, big data analytics, to understand what are the inputs in the game that produce the outputs that we want. And so how can you maximize the chances of winning baseball games by using data? And so that concept was very powerful. It's used all over sports. When it comes to coaching, by the way, I hire a lot of D1 athletes from college. I like to talk to a lot of sports coaches. We recently interviewed Nick Saban at a conference. I went to the 49ers Stadium, like, recently to see, like, you know, I got the opportunity to go and I've met a lot of athletes. And so I'm always talking to athletes and I'm always talking to sports coaches because I've noticed that the world of sports and like coaching in sports is way ahead of the world of coaching and sales and coaching anywhere else. Like, the sports coaches are the most advanced coaches of all, right? But when you go into any other fast and they use technology and they use analytics and they use data science, right, To. To coach their team. So I'm always trying to learn from. From the very cutting edge of coaching, which is in sports. And so for this concept of data, right? In sports has been around. This is not a new concept. This has been around since 2001, since this guy Billy Beaner brought it to the Oakland A team of baseball. And so it's been around for, like, 25 years, and here we are talking about this big innovation and all this crap. Like, the sports people are like, yeah, I mean, of course, like anybody who does sports in college. One of my customer success reps, she was a D1 hockey player. They get tracked with this. You know, they have, like, this little sports bra that literally tracks your heart rate and how fast you're running. And coaches use that data to actually make decisions. And so for the first time ever, we have an opportunity to do the same thing that Billy Beane did for the Oakland A's and what he did for all sports, which is use data science to make better decisions for sales. Because we can analyze the conversations. Not only we could see if it closed or not, we could see why. We could see what happened before that, because we're getting a bird's eye view into what's happening in the home. And one of the first things that we found, we analyzed at this point. We had analyzed like, 1 million conversations in the home. We found we wanted to understand what is it that makes the absolute top 1% of top performers different than everybody else when it comes to selling in the home, right? So we looked at people who sell roofing, looked at people sell windows, siding, all home improvement products. And. And we've segmented it by industry, and we publish all these reports now. We wanted to see what is it that makes them different than. Than the average salesperson. So somebody who closes. You know, the top performers who are in Rilla right Now, they're closing $10 million of annual revenue to their businesses, $13 million every year. $15 million is the first, like the top, very top of the 1% of the top performers, they're closing 10 to $15 million of annual revenue to their businesses. Think about that, okay? These are people who are literally making seven figures in their own pocket every year, like, who are multi millionaires just by doing sales. So we can understand what it is that they're doing differently as a group so that we can kind of mimic that. And one of the first things that we figured out, what is the difference between a $10 million closer and a $1 million closer or a $500,000 closer, is that those $10 million closers, they talk 50% of the time. So if you look at the talk ratio between the customer and the sales rep, the top performers, they talk between 45% of the time and 65% of the time. And versus a homeowner who talks, it's basically like a 50, 50 split. And the average reps, the Average salespeople, they talk between 75 and 85% of the time. So if you lower your talk ratio to that kind of 45 to 65 range, you're putting yourself along with the top performers. And it's what you're saying, Jeff. They have a conversation. They make people feel good. They listen. They understand people's pain points. They understand their problems. They have a conversation. They don't go out there like the Shamwell guy and be like, but listen, Mrs. Homeowner, there's more. Wait a second. Wait another hour for me to tell you another thing. They listen. And so that was one of the first things that we found. It's like talk ratio. Lower your talk ratio, you're going to make more sales. Pretty simple. Yeah.

That's incredible insight. What do you think are other areas of disruption that Rilla and other tools like it can drive, like call center or maybe even customer journey before the in home sales happens? Like what? The things that happen up to the point where somebody gets to the front door. What do you see in those areas and are those areas that you're looking to continue to disrupt as you get this data?

Yeah. So Rila is moving. Rila. You can think of Rila's journey as starting from the moment that the sales rep talks to the customer. And we want to help with that entire process after that sale. So that's really where we are. Like, that's where our domain is and that's where. And that's what we want to keep growing. And there's so much that we need to build for Rila. Like right now, we built an analytics product that allows you to look at data. The next iteration of that with large language models, which we're building now, is it's not an analytics product, it's an assistant product. And instead of having analytics are very annoying for the human brain, especially for our customers. Our customers are salespeople and they're sales managers. Sales managers and salespeople. They're not math preachers. They're verbal people. Their linguistic IQ is insanely hot because they talk to each other. They talk for a living. They're always thinking about what to say and how to say it. And so an analytics product is kind of annoying for a verbal user because it's easier to talk and get feedback by talking to somebody. So what we're doing is we're building Rilla not as an analytics product, but as an AI product where you could just go in there and say, what are the top objections that my team got last Week. I have a one on one meeting with Jose tomorrow. What should I talk about with Jose tomorrow to help him? And then Rilla looks at all the data from all the conversations. It looks at your CRM, whatever it is that you're using, and it looks at Jose's close rates, his average tickets. It looks, it looks at all the trends with Jose, how he's doing compared to the team. It looks at all his conversations. And then it gives you like a little answer of like, hey, tomorrow you have a one on one meeting with those ways. Here's what he's doing really well, here's what he's struggling with, and here's what you should probably show him to help him understand how to navigate the price. Objection. Because that's what he's been struggling with the most recently. And it's just like ChatGPT, but it's trained on your conversational data and your CRM data, not just on the general Internet data. And so turning that to a language product instead of an analytics product, that's what we're working on. But there's like a bunch of other things that other people are working on as well.

Yeah, I've started using Perplexity AI a good bit.

Yes.

And, you know, it seems to have a better feel for things. Like if I wanted to say, hey, I've got Sebastian Jimenez coming on my podcast today. What are the types of questions that I could ask him that he would be interested in answering or stuff like that, and it'll give you. I mean, it's pretty good. It's pretty good.

Yeah, it's basically that. It's exactly that. It's like Perplexity. It uses Google. It looks at information that's real time on Google. Rilla, you ask Rilla, we call him Rick AI, our little AI assistant. His name's Rick in honor of Rick Grasso, who was one of the famed sales coaches in Home improvement, who was a friend of the company and he passed away recently. And so we wanted to kind of honor Rick there. So Rick is a coach, right? So you ask Rick, like, Rick, you know, what are the top objections that came up last week? Or I have exactly what you just said. And just like Perplexity, instead of looking at Google, it looks at your conversations instead of looking at websites. So it's the same thing. And then you asked another question, which was, what other things am I seeing? So for before the sale, there's companies, I mean, there's companies like, like Service Times came out with Dispatch Pro. There's another Startup called Pro Book Dispatch. Pro Book and Service Time Dispatch Pro. What they're trying to do is automate the dispatch process, make it AI based instead of a human being. So the AI makes decisions in real time. You have people like Chirp. Chirp is automating a lot of your marketing and a lot of your follow up with customers. So, so like, you know, hey, we didn't close the sale. It's a rehash program. There's like other technologies in the home for H Vac. There's this technology, really, really cool technology called Conduit Tech which allows H Vac contractors to do the manual J calculation with their phone. So it's basically uses LiDAR technology to measure everything in your home. How many windows, what's the size of the home, everything. So that you can kind of give a accurate temperature load calculation to your H Vac So you could determine what is the proper size of the H Vac unit based on the temperature that the home actually needs. And so there's like so many technologies that are coming out here for the trades, which is very, very, very cool. If you're a contractor getting into the home improvement industry, it's a really great time to be in the industry now because you have like all these companies that I mentioned. There's Avoca, AI that's literally automating your call center. Avoca. Avoca. You could, you could literally imagine like calling a contractor, you know, and you want to get, you know, you want to get some roofing inspection booked on your, on your schedule. Instead of talking to a human being, you'll be talking to an AI agent. That sounds exactly like a human being. Quacks like a human being. It'll be integrated with your, with your scheduling systems so that it'll take care of all of it. It's automated call center. Right. Which is kind of crazy to think about. And that's a, and that's a home improvement native company. Like they're not building for. None of these companies I'm mentioning are building for the general use cases. They're building for home improvement contractors.

Right.

Tyson, the co founder of Avoca, he's from mit. George from Pro Book, he graduated from University of Pennsylvania. Shelby graduated from Stanford. You have all these insanely smart people, young, young kids like you know, all trying to come after the home improvement industry because it's such a special time to be in home improvement.

So yeah, when you have contractors that look to in, look to onboard Rilla, like who's a traditional customer, like what's A customer size and then what are the people usually put their toe in it or do they go all in with it? Like, what's your experience in onboarding contractors? What are they resistant to? And then ultimately once you see them turn the corner, like, what does that look like?

Yeah, so. So Rilla is a product that works the, the most. The, the more data you have with it, right? Or the better. The more data you have with it as a company, the better the product gets because you get like all the analysis that we publish on the Real Labs. We have this podcast called the Real Labs or we're going to have you probably there soon. And the real. Laughter Always publishing these insights. Like I told you, like, oh, the talk ratio is an important metric. Open ended questions. Top performers ask five times more open ended questions than everybody else. They ask 25 open ended questions per hour versus the average reps to ask 5 open ended questions per hour. The top performers, they talk at a talk speed that's about 184 words per minute. So a little bit faster than the average human being, like 1.2, but not too fast because the talk speed curve looks like this. It's like a belf curve. The, the faster you talk, you start getting gains in conversion rates and average tickets. But after you go up outside of the 214 words per minute, it starts dropping down because you're talking too fast. Like I talk 220 words per minute. That's very fast. That's a lot of words. Sales conversation in the home, you don't want to do that. You want to stay between 180 and 200 words per minute, which is a little bit, just a little bit faster than the average human talk speed. So you think the average human talk speed is 160 words per minute. So you do 1.2x speed like you're listening to a podcast at 1.2x speed. That's the idea. So we have all these insights that are generalized, right, for the entire industry and we are publishing them like every week now. And we're doing these like we did a study on financing, we did a study on promotion, like we always do these studies. But imagine if you didn't just have generalized data from the industry. Imagine if you had your own people learning from the top performers in your team, understanding what they're doing specifically to your own sales process. That's what Rilla lets you do. So for us, for the product to not just work, but to be magical and for people to say like, this is the most amazing thing ever Which a lot of our customers do. You have to have a minimum of at least five salespeople in the same account. Right?

Okay.

So that's why, for instance, we have a lot of franchise customers. Part of being in a franchise, the value that you get is as a small time franchise, you could be part of the umbrella account where you get to learn from the other franchises that are in your network. So, so that's one of the big benefits that we have with, with, with franchise companies is that they can put their, their franchise, their franchises that are, you know, maybe like one, one man shows or like you know, two sales reps, but they can become part of an umbrella that has 100 or 200 people or 300 people. Right? Because, and then they, they all start sharing best practices from across the country. And so for us, the, the ideal contractor, you have at least five salespeople or service people on your team. So for, for home services, you can think of technicians, five salespeople or technicians in the field talking. And so then you can grab a lot of good data. Think about it, five people having two conversations a day. In the first two weeks or in the first month, you're going to have 200 conversations that really is going to be looking at what's working, what's not working. Helping your own salespeople will be getting personalized feedback from an AI coach in their pocket, telling them what they're doing right and wrong, comparing them to the top performers in their team. So you think about that, right? So we work with like a lot of the top contractors in the country, a lot of the private equity backed contractors, a lot of the top franchises in the country. But you know, we also work with like companies that are about 5 million, 10 million in revenue. A lot of our customers are in that range of 5 to 10 million, which is usually about the minimum size that you need to get to 5 salespeople in your organization. About 5 to 10 million in revenue.

You had a short stint in private equity right out of school and then you co founded this, you co founded this business with two partners. What experience can you share about starting a company, starting it with partners, going out and getting funding? Because I think you, I think you raised some capital in the beginning. Like what experience, what was that journey like for you? And what can you, what experience can you share about that?

Oh my God. So yeah, hmm, I'll share. I think this will be a helpful experience. So I started my first company right in 2018 when I graduated college. I had no money, which is broke I was a stand up comedian during college. I didn't make any money. I remember it was like one time I was doing stand up in the park and a lady, very nice lady, gave me $20. And I thought it was my comedy was good, but she thought I was a homeless person. She just like put $20 and left. And so I didn't have any money. NYU gave me. I got into this accelerator NYU had for NYU kids and I forced my way in there. They asked me like, what's your big, you know, what's your, what's your secret sauce? And I was like, I'm a, I'm a clown. I'm very funny, I'll tell you that. They're like, how does that help you with that? They're like, do you know how to code? I'm like, nope. I was like, but you should look at my comedy. It's pretty good, huh? And so I don't know why they let me in. They're not very good decision makers there. And so they let me into this accelerator and they gave me $10,000. And I remember, I remember making the math. I, I, to me, $10,000 was a lot of money because, because I think about it in pesos and, and $10,000 is like a lot of pesos in Dominican pesos.

It's like $1 billion billions.

A lot of pesos, dude. And so I was like, wow. And so in my head, I was like, oh, I'm going to use. This is it. I need this. This is all I need to start, you know, in New York City. $10,000. Wow. What a lot of money. And I took $10,000. And I remember my plan was, I'm gonna make this $10,000 last me like a year and a half. So my goal was that I was gonna spend $500 a month to live in New York City. And I did that. That's what I did. So, so my, I had, at the previous company, I had two co founders, they were still in school, and I was like the only one working full time on it. And the idea was, like, any money that we make, we're just going to use it for me to maintain myself, because you guys are still in college, and I'm the only one doing this full time. And so I, I lived with New York City with $500 a month. And so the way I did that was I split, I split this, like, really crappy apartment with my, with my girlfriend at the time, and we lived in like, this base. You can only describe it as Like a base. It's a basement that we lived in Williamsburg. And there was, like, rats, and there was, like. It was like a very, very bad apart. Not like the West Village apartments. This is not. And not like the nice buildings, but this is, like, right on top of the L train stations, subway. And it was very bad. I was. I paid $400 for rent, which in New York is very bad. And then. And then I would eat dollar pizza and Nathan. Nathan's hot dogs three times a day. And so that would come out to $90 a month, because it was $3 a day, 30 days in the month. So that was $490. And then once a month, maybe I would treat myself to Chipotle if I could afford it. Yeah. And then. And so that was my money. And so I remember the first time I closed my. I closed a $30,000 deal with my first company in November 2020, 2018. And I almost started crying because to me, it meant that it wasn't like. Well, it was. It was increasing my monthly revenue from, like, 500 or my monthly, you know, expense. I could spend not just $500. I could spend $2,500 because it was like $30,000 divided by 12. And it also meant in my. Because I'm an immigrant. And so being an immigrant in this country, you, like, when you graduate school, they give you a visa, you have three years. I knew I had three years to figure it out. And so when I made that first deal with the $30,000, I remember, like, crying in the streets, being like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Because I was gonna get it. To me, it was like, if I figure that out, how to make money, I was like, I was gonna be able to stay in America. And so. And I. And I was so happy. And so. And remember, it was like, $2,500. That's, like, still below the minimum wage line. I was like, me. But to me, I was like, oh, this is because I was still used to spending $500 a month till 2,500. I was like, five times, like, what do I do it. I'm rich. Like, I don't know what I'm doing with all this money. Like, $2,500. And so that was really important because now in Rilla, we're still. Like, you mentioned, we're one of the. And we are.

We're one of.

We're one of the fastest growing companies in the world today and in history. Like, if you look at our numbers, we went from, like, zero to $20 million of annual recurring revenue in our first two and a half years. That puts us ahead of Salesforce, Apple. In the first two years we grew faster than Apple. Figma, Amazon, to give everybody perspective, went from 0 to 15 million of annual revenue in the first two years. We went from 0 to 11. So in the first two years. So we're like right between. So we really are growing fast. But we're also one of the most capital efficient companies because we don't have that many employees. We've kept it pretty lean because we have this DNA of making like literally squeezing the most Jews out of all the money so that we can, that we can be. And it actually helps us grow faster the fact that we're really lean. But I learned that back, back then. It's just like so, and, and, and the purpose of this story is like, it's really like I remember now, I still think like, oh, I can do that with just $10,000, you know what I mean? Like I could give myself the time, I could give myself a year and a half with $10,000. When you really remove a lot of the vanity of life, all the stuff that you think that you need. I mean I didn't need anything because I was like a, like I was a dumb like 22 year old. I'm like. And, and I think that was, that was really good that it's because I was a comedian. And as a comedian, like as a stand up, if you're prepared to, to do what it takes, you just know that you're going to be poor for 10 to 20 years if you want to be one of the best comedians of all time. Kevin Hart, he made no money for the first 10, 15 years. Bill Byrd, Louis C.K. they didn't make any money for the first 20 years of their. And then they got big. Right. Because they were so unbelievably good.

Well, Seinfeld said that if he had money he couldn't have done it because it was too hard. Yeah, like if you, if you have, you know, like you probably have just by all the success just killed your standup career.

Well yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I, it's exactly like because stand up by the way, to me way harder than this, way harder than, than doing this thing because like, like I look at my life now, I'm like 28 now. Just turned 28. I have a salary, I have a company. Like I'm the lowest paid person. Not really. Because I really don't know what the hell to do with money. I don't know What? I'm still living like back in. I don't know what to do with money and. And so like. But I look at it as a stand up comic. I was prepared to be poor for 10 to 20 years. So to me, I'm like ahead of schedule. And that's something that you need, right? Like you need a really long time horizon if you want to do things that are truly great. Because it takes time again, it takes repeated failure and trial and error. And there's no. Even if you're the smartest person in the world, it is not possible to do something that's insanely great. Whether it's art or business or science. It is not possible unless you devote yourself completely, entirely for a long period of time. And you're constantly failing and failing and failing and failing and failing for a long period of time. That's it. So I was prepared to do that for stand up. And so now that I did this and I'm like, oh, dude, I have a salary now. Like, that's to me, I'm like way ahead of schedule. So the lesson there in my, in the story is like, you can, if you just are willing to go through the suffering and the pain of like, you know that. And as a young person, you kind of have to because you have nothing else. You don't have experience, you don't know. You don't have no network. Yeah. The only that you have is that the willingness to do it, you know, and then like, like unsatiated hunger and ambition, that's all you have. So. So yeah, so I did that and then the $30,000 turned into $100,000 for my first business. We. When we came up with the idea for Rilla, the three co founders, we split. I took my money. One of the co founders came along with me to found Rilla. We split our money and so we brought some of our money to. To found Rilla. Rilla. We started it with less than a hundred thousand dollars. It was, you know, very small amount of capital. And then we raised a little bit of money. Now we've raised a lot of money. But that came after we, we. We did all of my. Like, we. We just raised enough capital that we thought we needed to survive to the next stage and to experiment. We never raised a lot. We've. We still haven't raised like. Like, you see all these companies raising so much money, like at insane valuations. I do think that there is creativity and constraints and limitations and we practice that. So we never. Like, all the, like, we have Investors that literally break into our office to try to come and fund Realm, and we don't. If we don't need the money, we don't take the money. And. But the lesson there is, like, you don't need that much to get started. Right?

Right.

It's just. You just need somebody who. Who's just insane and obsessed, just, like, willing to do it for enough time and continue to fail. It's not just hard work.

Right?

It's not just hard work. It's like the ability. How did some. I said this to somebody the other day. It's like the. The. The ability to have unrelenting confidence in the face of impending failure. That's what you need. You need really hard, like you're failing, and you need to remain confident even though you're failing every day. Then nothing's working. That's it. You just do that for enough time, and then you figure it out, I guess. But that's very hard.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So when I started a company in the mid-90s that I ended up selling some 24 years and 11 months later, I. I was. It was 250 a week that I was able to negotiate for, but I had to be my rent and everything, so. Two Whoppers, no cheese, no fries, at that point was $2 and 10 cents. So that was my main meal. $2 and 10 cents every day. They got to know me at the drive through, and they'd be. They'd hear me come. They'd be like, yeah, I get it. No fries, no drink. Okay. And they'd give me my two Whoppers. Right. And. And then when I. We started our second location, I mean, they. The. The. We had three. There was four of us. They gave me $2,500 to go to a new city and start a whole new location. Rent an office, get a, you know, build a production team, and 2,500 bucks. Like, that's. That's. That's what I had to work with. And so I rented one room inside of. I went to a business park, and there was somebody that had a conference room. We had something called a thermal fax. You'll never have to know what that is or deal with that.

But it was like. I don't even know.

It was like thermal paper would come out of this. So. But I had the fax machine. I had the conference room. This other guy was running this business in there. And then. And then that's just. That's just where we started. But, yeah, we didn't. We didn't raise any money. We didn't burn any money. And I think, you know, you can, you can make bad decisions when you have too much money in a startup because you start throwing these Hail Marys out there or, you know, you start. I mean, I'm looking at your office furnishings right now. You're in a closet somewhere. You know, you got to.

Yeah, no, this is our podcast studio. Let me show everybody.

Okay. All right.

Well, it's just being remodeled.

I'm sure it's.

I'm sure it's.

I'm sure it's very. I know it's nice, but like, you know, you got a, you got a $20 million recurring revenue business. That, that's, that's a, it's. It's a sizable, sizable business there. But yet you don't. You're not, you're not just going out getting money for the sake of money because you're passionate about what you're doing. You're passionate about transformation. You're. You're. You, you have an opportunity to be. You are the number one in the space. Is there anybody following you right now?

There's a. So Rilla's not the. We are not the first or last company to attempt to do this concept of, you know, capturing face to face conversations, recording them and doing this concept that we call now the virtual ride along.

Okay.

There was companies that tried this before and like Microsoft once tried this and they. And it didn't work. Microsoft's a very big company, I think, because I've been doing this for a while now, since like 2019, since we've been doing Rila. I've kind of learned the history of this thing. The first ever company that. I think there was a guy who had a startup in 2008 or 2009 that tried to do this for car dealerships back in the day, and it didn't go and it failed. There's people that have tried this for. For many different, many different markets, verticals. There's still people like that have tried that. I don't know. I don't know. There. I don't believe there is any other company other than Rilla that has figured out how to do it, because it's. And that's another lesson, which is it's not like people think like, you think like Mark Zuckerberg, right? You see like, how successful it was, and people sometimes think like, oh, my God, I wish I came up with that idea. Oh, my God, I wish I came up with Amazon. Like back in the. It's Like a lot of people did come up with it, by the way. It's not like nobody ever made any money with an idea, by the way. The only people who make money with ideas are patent lawyers that come after your ass because they're so like this. There's nobody who makes money with an idea. People make money on making the idea the reality. And I learned that from stand up. That the idea for the joke is not what counts. It's the laughter and being able to get the repeated laughter every single time in that process. And that's not just the idea. That's like, you have great experiences, you meet interesting people, you hear interesting things. That gives you the ability to have great ideas. You go and try out those ideas and then you listen to the failure very intently. Why it didn't work this time, why it didn't work that time. And that. That is the hardest part of the process is being able to make failure your teacher, because failure is the best teacher there is if you're willing to be a student and not shy away from it. And so Rilla is the only company so far with this concept that was able to figure out all. Like, we figured out every possible way to. Not to. To. To make this fail. We failed on every single possible way that there was to fail this company. And we just kept going, okay, that's all we did. Everybody else who has tried this has failed in one of the ways that we also failed. But they gave up. And so, yeah, this is a very annoying product to build. Very annoying company to build. There's like a lot of changes in habits that you have to generate from people. You have to change the habits of sales managers. You have to change the habits of sales people. You have to change the habits of consumers. You have to get over the icky factor of the recording. You have to get over. You have to. You have to process in person conversations with AI which had never been done before. And the research on it is very low because nobody ever did that. So you have to solve the technology problems, the product problems, the market problems. There's a lot of problems that you have to figure out beyond the idea. The idea makes sense to so many people, right? The idea is so simple. Oh, you're analyzing your call center calls. Why don't you just analyze your salespeople, which you know, which are. Why don't you do the same thing.

So well, think about it like you. The timing matters too, because without AI, you don't get the reports that you get. So like, you, you brought you Know, the convergence of technologies sometimes. I mean, gosh, what was it? Gosh, what was that? It was a great book, but it talked about, you know, the timing of things and you know, the jobs wouldn't have been jobs, Gates wouldn't have been gates if that.

The outliers.

The outliers book. Right. Wouldn't they, wouldn't they wouldn't have been them if they didn't, if, if they weren't born exactly. At the time. Yeah, yeah. And there was just really smart people that saw the opportunity, took advantage of it. I've got kind of a nuanced question here. How do you get around privacy laws? You're, you're basically recording in people's homes, standing there with them. There's different laws in different states. How does that work?

Yeah, so, so the, and that was the first question, by the way. That's one of the things that when people came up with the idea, they were like, ah, it's not legal. Bye bye. And then they dropped it. So. Yeah, so I'll talk about the law. So, so in the United States you have two, you have two types of states. You have one party consent states, and you have two party consent states or all party consent states. The law of the land is one party consent, which means that you can record a conversation as long as you have the consent of one party to that conversation to record it. And usually, I think in every case, in almost all cases, that usually means if you're part of the conversation, you can record it. So meaning if I'm having a conversation with you in a one party consent day like New York, I can record it because I'm consenting to it. It doesn't matter what the other person says. So that's what, that's, that's 38 out of the 50 states in America for the purposes of in person conversations. There's some states that have different laws for call center and for in person. And then there's 12 states like California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania, Washington, Illinois, Montana, Connecticut, Delaware, they have, they are all party consent states, which means you need the consent of all parties of the conversation to record it. So you can't just say, oh, I consent to it, ergo I can record it. You have to get the consent to the other person. So how do you do that in this, like in this scenario where you're talking to somebody in the home, in the call center, it's very easy. You just call in and so, and, and the phone line says, everybody knows it's this quality, this call is being recorded for quality training purposes. Everybody's heard that message. That's why they're doing that, because they want to comply, you know, with the law. And so how do, how do you do it if you're talking to somebody in an in person conversation? So the same thing in the call center, you just have to let the other person know and then you do what's called implicit consent. Implicit consent is you let them know and then they continue with the conversation. You don't have to get them to say verbally, yes, I consent. At least in the United States you don't have to do that. And Europe much different. In Germany, you literally have to get them to sign an agreement, you know, give you their social. It's very difficult to deal with this in Germany. So sorry, Germany, we can't go to Germany anytime soon. So. But anyways, in the United States you just have to do the same thing. In the call center. Somebody calls in to book an appointment or you call them, right? And what does the line say? This call's being recorded. Instead of saying this calls being recorded, you say, hey, thank you for calling us. All of our calls and in person appointments will be recorded for quality and training purposes. You put that automated message there. Okay. Then what you do is you send the customer a reminder if you're using something like service, diner, hatch or chirp to send somebody a reminder to, to for the appointment. Like, hey, so and so's on the way for the meeting. Just, just, you know, we're going to be recording that meeting for quality and training purposes. So you send a, a reminder via text or email ahead of the appointment. And then we also have a lot of customers, many customers who literally have their salespeople tell the homeowner, hey, Mr. Mr. And Mrs. Homeowner, how's it going today? Today I'm going to be doing, just to give you a sense of the agenda. I'm going to be going out, taking a look at your roof, taking a look at your windows. I'm going to be doing a walk around the entire home, taking some pictures, seeing what I can find. While I'm here, I'm going to be presenting these results for you. I'm going to be recording all of our interactions to make sure that I don't miss anything for quality and training purposes, if that's okay with you. And after that, hopefully we can present some options, some prices, show you some financing. And, and, and that's, and that's our conversation today. Does that sound fair? Sounds fair. So they just Include it in there in their little, you know, in the little jingle at the beginning, you know.

That's right. That's right. And you've, and that's, that's recorded. So there's proof of it. Now what if somebody, what now you're in the middle of a sales conversation and then a third person walks in. Somebody gets home. Yeah, you got to go, you got to basically go through it again.

So that's where, that's where you get into the gray area. Right? Because it's like the same thing applies if you're in a zoom call, right? And you're talking to me over zoom and I wasn't wearing these headphones and let's say I'm in California and somebody walks by and you capture that person talking. Like you're talking. It's the same thing, right? So that's where you get into reasonable expectation of privacy. Right. Which is, which is, you know, in California, which is a two party consent state. You know, technically it is a two party consent state, but there's also this thing called reasonable expectation of privacy. It says the law only applies when there's reasonable expectation of privacy. So for instance, and reasonable expectation of privacy is defined as like a place where you cannot expect to be overheard. Right. So if you go in, the contractor told that person, hey, we're recording, and you're talking to them. Right. And they're all aware that the conversation is taking place and it's being recorded. You have a third party who's not really, you know, who comes in and everybody's aware. Then the, then it's basically like the zoom call where you're just like walking in the background. You were not part of that. You never got the memo, but you participated. Well, you could say there's no reasonable expectation of privacy there because there's a contractor in my home, they said that they were recording the conversation. They're clearly recording it. The other person knows everybody's aware. And then I just stepped in as a third party. So that's where you get into that, you know, which is the same, the same kind of gray area that you get into your zoom calls. If somebody's walking in the back or the same kind of gray area area if, if you call the call center and the person, the thing says this call is being recorded for quality and training purposes. Well, what if the person put the phone down while you said that and they didn't hear it? You know what I mean? You know, it's the same as a company. You need to just Follow all the best practices. Make sure that you're being transparent on your website. You can put it on your website. Also, when. If somebody's going to book online, make sure you put it on your website. Right. Make sure you put it on your call center. Make sure you put it on your appointment reminder. So you're. That there's a documented record that you're being compliant with this. Right, Right. And then you also. And I would recommend, you know, you're in California. Absolutely. Tell your reps to say the homeowner. We have Data on this. 99.7% of homeowners don't give a crap that you're doing the recording. They were like. The answer is like, oh, of course. Yeah. So. And you have that recording. You even have a tracker on Rilla that if the salesperson doesn't say it, you can just like, automatically delete the conversation because it's not. It didn't capture that. We call it a tracker. So you can have all these little guidelines set in place as a contractor to make sure that you're being the most transparent as possible with your homeowners. As long as you're doing that, you shouldn't have any problems because you literally, there's ever an issue, you could be like, well, we said it here, here, here, here, here, right here. We told you there, we have the recording. And then, you know. Yeah. You see what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. And still there'll be some attorney out of California that will challenge you.

I thought there's always. There's always whatever.

Yeah, yeah. I caught a. I caught a call center claim. It was just ridiculous one time, but they were just out there harvesting for money, and they, they had somebody as a plaintiff that said, well, you called me on my cell phone and it was a, you know, from some state, but they were standing in. Their feet were in California at the time you talked to them, and, you know, you can't prove it. So, you know, we got. We got. We got held up. We got held up for like $25,000. I mean, we were in the right. We had done everything right. But, you know, there's. There's always people looking to make an issue of things.

Well, but think about it that way. So there's. I mean, there's. I mean, in home improvement, I heard this from a contractor the other day. If you spend a. If you spend enough time in the home improvement industry, you're. You're going to get. You're going to get some claim. You're Going to get some suit. It's going to happen because you're dealing with somebody's home. And I met this contractor out of Colorado. They had been recording all of their conversations, all of them with body cams, police body camps, since 2014. Okay, this is not Rilla. This is like before Rilla. And I asked him, why did you do this? And here's why he did this. Before this, he. His business was sued, right, by a customer claiming that they did some horrible work. And you know what I mean, one of these he said, she said situations, and the claim was all bogus. It was all crap. He had to fight the claim and spend a hundred thousand dollars right, in lawyers. And he said, I'm never gonna go through that again. And what did he say? I'm recording everything he saw. Police started. Has started wearing body cams. And so you think about it from that perspective, it's like, okay, there's also the other perspective of all the risk that you have because you don't have the conversation recorded. You know what I mean? And the risk is that. And if you think about it, for the homeowner, for the homeowner, by you recording the conversation, not only for your technicians and your salespeople, you're making, you're making them protective from anything that can go wrong in the conversation. Well, he said that you could do this. Like, well, really, did we say that? Let's play the tape. But for the homeowner, most of the interactions in a home improvement environment is a female homeowner with a male sales rep or technician. Those are most of the interactions. When you're recording that conversation with the female homeowner, that female homeowner feels so much more comfortable having that conversation with a strange man in her house because now she knows, oh, this is a company. There's somebody like, there's. This is not just. This is a. This is a whole train. Like, this is all being supervised. I'm not alone here. And so, and, and, and, and you're also reducing the risk for the homeowner in that interaction because you're protecting them. You're protecting the technician, the salesperson. And, and you. We've looked at the numbers. Rilla not only helps contractors increase their close rates and their average tickets, you also bring down your cancellation rates because salespeople are less likely to over promise because they know that it's in the. They know that it's right there on, on the record. And so the cancellation rates come down, so you're selling more at a higher average Ticket. And homeowners are also happier. Right. So you know what I mean? So. So when you look at it from that position. Yes. You know, you should make sure that you're following the laws and being compliant and making sure that you're telling everybody. And there's very simple ways to do it. You automate it in your call center, all these different things. And at the same time, you're also protecting your company. You're protecting the homeowner. That's. That's kind of how I think about it. The same thing as in the call center, by the way.

Awesome. Well, we kick off here at Homefront Brands first of next month with Rilla voice. So we're very excited about it. We're deploying it at several different levels in our organization, so. Super excited about that. Two questions I have left for you, Sebastian. Is there a point that you can see that Rilla voice becomes a size where you are no longer interested in running it?

No.

You're going all the way.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, yeah. You can put me on the record.

All right. Well, you get bored. You take money, you get boards, you get. You get money, you get. You know, it gets complicated. Like, when you get to the size you are, right. It gets complicated, and there's other stakeholder holders involved and all that. But then you see the Zuckerbergs and the Bezos and all these people that have run their company for, you know, decades and done a great job doing it. Is that how you see yourself?

Oh, my God, yeah. To me, I. This is, like, so fun for me. And. And I don't do this. Like, again, I'm not motivated that much by money. I'm motivated more by the game of it all. Like, just how fun it is.

All the. All the great ones. All the great ones are.

Yeah. Like, this is so. This is the most fun thing that, like. Like Tommy Mello, I. He. He, like, very recent. Like, he now lives in a big house and all those things, and he's a great customer of ours. There was a time he was, like, a multi hundred millionaire, and he was living in, like, a crappy apartment, and his friends would be like, dude, what are you doing here? He's like, I don't know. This is where I live. And it was like, in the hood or stuff. It's like. And I'm very much in that mindset right now. I'm like, I don't. I don't care about money. Investors have tried to buy a. Buy secondary for me. I absolutely. I tell them what. What for, like, some of my friends tell me, like, oh, dude, it's normal for founders to sell second. I'm like, dude, hell no. Like, screw that. Like, what am I. No, I'm not gonna do that. But I'm like, what do I need the money for? And they're gonna, like. They're like, I don't know, man. Don't you want to go on vacation? And I'm like, I hate vacation. So. No, no, no, not. There's like, a law of inertia right now. For me, it's like, any object that's stationary needs some force to start getting into movement. And any object that's in movement, it needs some force to. To. To make a stationary. And, man, I'm in movement right now, so. So the. The wheels are cranky. I, like, so I'm just going to keep moving until, you know, hopefully until I'm dead. So, yeah, like. Like, like Steve Jobs, that guy kept doing it until he. Literally, the only thing that stopped him was that. Same with Walt Disney. I want to just keep doing. His life is too short, man. What the hell am I going to do sitting in my ass with a bunch of money? Whatever, dude. You know? Yeah, money's the easy part. The hard part is, is doing something magical.

So, yeah, you know, you only need to count your money once, because once you start counting it two or three times, it gets really unfulfilling and very bored. It's not about. It's not about, like, it's. Now. I've lived without it, and I've lived with it, and I. I will tell you, I prefer with.

But it makes things. It makes things easier. Yeah, I think about.

I got less rats anyway.

Yeah, it's like. It's a. I think about it as an instrument to do awesome things. You look at somebody like Elon like that, he's like a very special kind of person because he's like that at the very highest levels. And he always goes all in. He doesn't get this idea of like, oh, let's put some chips off. It's like always all in. No, he.

He burned through his hundred million dollars from PayPal. He just. He burned it. He burned it, like, in, like, pushed it in.

It was rockets. And so to me, money is an instrument to do awesome things, because there are certain things and there are certain things that require really, like, a lot of upfront capital investment. One of them is building rockets, by the way. So some of it is science, like, where you need a lot of research and funding and development. Some like you look at the companies that he's doing, those are those, you need a lot of money, like NeuroLink, you need SpaceX, Tesla, the boring company. These are all very capital intensive companies. So I hope that I can be like that someday where if I'm ever cash liquid, like if I ever have a lot of cash liquid in the bank, I can kind of deploy it into something great for humanity. Because, because I, I, I actually think, I, I, I, I remember, I think that is one of the purposes of human beings is to innovate. Remember watching this equation by Paul Romer which explains why countries keep growing over time and innovation is like the only thing that has increasing marginal returns. Everything else in the world has diminishing marginal returns. People have diminishing marginal returns. Capital has a diminishing marginal returns. But innovation, the more innovation you produce, the more innovation it's likely so that the iPhone comes out. The iPhone doesn't make innovation diminishing, it actually increases the speed of innovation. Right? Because with the iPhone you had companies like Uber that were possible, Instacart that were possible. You have companies like Instagram that were possible. Rilla becomes possible because of the iPhone, right? And so you see that the rate of innovation doesn't slow down over time, it actually keeps accelerating. And so to me, that is one of the core purposes of human beings on this planet as the only animal who can actually invent things at this scale that we can. And so the more you can do that, if I can just keep doing that, dude, until I'm dead, and inventing new things and using money to invent new things, that's a good life for me. So no, I don't want to stop doing this. And if somebody takes me out of this, I'm going to do something else. So I don't care.

Well, brother, you are an animal. You are an absolute animal. I mean that in the best way possible. Last question for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, somebody that might want to be an entrepreneur or do something, what would that be?

Don't be afraid.

Oh, awesome drop.

Yeah, perfect.

Yeah, perfectly said. Nothing. Hey, every, it's. None of this is fatal. None of it. Yeah, right.

Don't be afraid.

Awesome. Sebastian, this has been great. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our time together. I can't wait to meet you in person and we're super excited to roll your technology out here on the home front.

Welcome to the team, man. Welcome to the real family. Let's do some together.

All right, let's do it. This has been Sebastian Jimenez. I am Jeff Dutton, and we have been on the home front. Thank you for. Listen.