Are Virtual Estimates the Future?

Jon Bryant: Hey, welcome back to the Price. Sell. Paint. podcast where myself, Jon Bryant and Michael Murray tackle all the hardest questions and problems in the painting industry one by one. Michael, good to chat with you again. Today we're talking about virtual estimates. It's a concept that many of us have heard about, some of us have tried. And Michael, I want to talk to you about so many things about this because I am kind of confused. You've had some success over the years with it. I have not. And I want to learn a bit from you about where that came from and kind of what you've done in order to get some success. I think I have a bit of PTSD from just trying, failing and thinking, okay, this is not possible. But I think we all want it to be. I think there's a world of Amazon that would be really nice in painting and the trades in general, where you can just kind of order what you want and get it to your house. Maybe it's more like Uber, I don't know, Amazon Uber, but yeah, tell everybody a bit about your experience just to kind of get into it.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, and I want to ask you a question a little bit on that, like where that interest comes from, but I guess I'll answer your specific question. So yeah, we've done it. Right after COVID, within like a week of COVID, we signed up with this company that's basically become Groundwork, which is the video submission software, where it makes it really easy for somebody to record a video on their phone and send it to a contractor. That's what Groundwork does. It's a good app. I would recommend it. Anybody that's interested in trying to figure out a virtual sales strategy, I think should definitely check out Groundwork. We still use it. We don't necessarily utilize it as much now for virtual estimates as we do for maybe some other things like warranty submissions and stuff.

But yeah, over the last, I guess maybe four plus years now that we've had that software, we've tried to use it in a lot of different ways to create a virtual sale system. The biggest part that we've had success with was with our cabinet painting. Certainly, I think most of us have tried to do some sort of photo submission, video submission. Cabinets are relatively easy to quote. I don't need to do as much measuring. There's not as much variations of prep work and things that I just need to be there to see. So yeah, we tried that. Our experience was that it can work, but we had some lead conversion issues. So we can dive more in depth, I guess, on all those things.

Jon Bryant: Great, what was your question for me?

Michael Murray: Yeah, so I mean, you made the comment that we all want this kind of as a blanket statement that everybody wants this as a solution. You mentioned Amazon and Uber. I think if we take this back to the base, like kind of root level, do we like, do we all want this or is this, you know, are the trade-offs that might come with it things that might not be good? And I think the other question is what's the client or the prospect's position here? Like, do clients want this? You know, because as a company, if we want it, but our clients don't, that might be a bad approach to kind of anything that we're trying to implement into our business.

Jon Bryant: So what do clients want? Man. It's funny that you and I have both been clients for trades, for purchasing and hiring craftspeople, but it's sometimes hard for me to put myself in that position. I mean, what do customers really want? But I do, to answer your question, I think what customers want is just ease of purchasing. They want to know they can just go and get what they want and they want it now. And there's not a lot of desired interaction with people. You know, it's like part of the beauty of Uber is that you just can have like, you don't have to have any interaction at all with the person. And people seem to be drawn to that. You know your price, they pick you up, you don't have to talk to them. The app pays them. And there's no awkwardness of paying and tipping and all that kind of stuff. And I think that part of that is just the smoothness of transaction and it's just easier. And so deep down, I think that question is being asked by a lot of people at a lot of levels in this industry and probably lots of industries of just how do we create easier solutions for people to buy? And that's where it comes from.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I think I'm not really on board with Uber as the example of what we're trying to do. I like the Amazon better. And for me, I think it comes down to trust. And I think what is interesting when we try to have these conversations is, you know, what makes maybe us different than some of the stuff on Amazon is the amount of trust. You know, what Amazon's done, I think is basically said, you know, before Amazon, before we bought everything online, we're using Amazon as the proxy for that. We would go to a store, we would be able to physically touch it. Maybe we could even ask the person at the store some questions, you know, hey, give me your opinion. Which TV model do you like? Give me some education on the different options here.

And now, we're pretty comfortable with the idea that we're just going to go online. I don't need to interact with anybody and I can just purchase that TV and it's just going to show up at my house. There was some trusting that we had to, you know, that was involved in that initial transaction of like, yeah, I want the expert opinion and things like that. But over time we've slowly but surely gotten away from that. If we go back even 50 years ago, you know, we used to go to the specialty shop to buy our shoes. Then that became we would go to a big box retailer, like Walmart, to buy shoes there. We're not going to talk to somebody who's an expert on shoes, but that's okay. And then actually just going to buy my shoes online.

You know, that transition over whatever 50 or 60 years or so. I think what's unique to our industry is that we require a significantly more amount of trust than any of those types of goods or services that you might buy online because of the fact that, you know, I'm inviting you into my home, my most intimate space, there's safety concerns, you know, and just even if it's not safety, but even if it's just quality of life and headache and hassle of having somebody in my home. And that's the bridge that we have to try to figure out. Is that possible? Or can we get enough trust in a residential repaint setting on a high level? Sure. At some level, there's always going to be some people that are fine with that. But I think that's the biggest piece of this that has to get figured out, if it's ever to be figured out. What are your thoughts on that?

Jon Bryant: Yeah. And do you think it's more like, so what I hear is that there's a bit of a societal shift that happens where trusting the product type, experiencing the product is just different. And I think there's a lot of mechanisms in place that make us trust online purchasing. Like you got the ability to return, which is a big deal. And you know, you can get all the sizes and figure out which one works and send them all back.

Michael Murray: Reviews.

Jon Bryant: And I don't, so I mean, I don't know if there's an equivalent for us in the painting industry, but I am curious to understand for everyone listening, how it worked in your business for cabinets. I know you did it and you don't do it anymore. So maybe can we dive into that a little bit? I think it might help give some context to the whole thing.

Michael Murray: Yeah, sure. I mean, so you want me to explain how we did it or what the results were?

Jon Bryant: I think both. Maybe start with how you did it and the results.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, so again, we tried a lot of different iterations of it. What we've settled on, and what I would say worked the best, was trying to replicate the in-home sales experience as close as we could without physically having to go there. So when we think about the in-home sales experience, it's generally something like, hey, let's spend some time, you know, I show up at your house, let's spend a little bit of time getting to know each other. Let me ask you some questions to understand your needs, desires, pain points, if you will. And from there, give me some time. I'm going to come up with a proposal, get an idea of what this might cost, and then let's get back together and go over that, give you some options to close, handle objections, and see where we go from there.

Jon Bryant: Were you doing that by like, was that a FaceTime call? Was that a phone call? What'd you do?

Michael Murray: Yep. So yeah, so this wasn't version one. I'll go back to version one. But what we settled on, I think what worked the best was using Zoom. This would have been kind of like, we really got to this point, I would say in 2022, 2023. So it took us a little while to try some different things and kind of settle into this, where we would have a scheduled appointment for a Zoom call.

So essentially what would happen was you would fill out the form, call us, whatever. Hey, I'd like to get a quote for cabinet painting. Okay, no problem. What's going to happen is we're going to send you in a text message using Groundwork. And in that, you're going to record a video on your phone of your kitchen. Make sure you can show us all the cabinets. If you could open the door a couple of times just to maybe show us some of the inside, whatever. A little bit of instructions and you can upload that video using that link on your phone. Once you've done that, we're going to reach back out and we're going to schedule a time to kind of talk about your project and go over pricing and give you some options there.

So somebody, we'd send them out that link and sometime between right away to never, we can get into this, somebody would send us the video. Once we got the video, we would then immediately, within the next hour or so, we would reach back out and say, awesome, we got your video. This is happening through text messages. Let's schedule a time to go over that. We would try to have that scheduled within the next 24 or 48 hours, trying to capture that excitement. So that would get scheduled. And then from between now and whenever that call's scheduled for, we just need to have one of the sales reps watch that video, put together the bid in Paint Scout so that they were prepared for that call.

And then on the call, it would start with, so tell me more about yourself, tell me more about your project. Why is this important to you right now? What's your vision? What kind of colors are you looking for? All the types of things that we would talk about when we would first arrive at the house. And that might happen a little bit shorter than it would in person. And then from there, it's like, okay, great. You know, based on that, let me make a couple quick changes to the quote here. And then we would screen share, show the Paint Scout quote and kind of walk them through that just like we would do on an iPad in person. Ask them if they wanted to do it, handle some objections, schedule a follow-up call if needed, and do that.

Jon Bryant: So just try to replicate that whole process, but virtually.

Michael Murray: Yeah, exactly. And what we found was that we actually sold at about the same rate. And so I think the biggest thing that I hear when people have an argument between should we do virtual sales or not basically goes back to this trust idea. It's like, can we book it? Can we win the sale? In our sample size where we did all of our cabinet quotes for about three or four months virtually...

Jon Bryant: Do you know what that percentage was?

Michael Murray: We found versus where we came from, where it was basically, or where we are now, where it's basically 100% in-person, we found that the win percentage was actually about the same. So either way, we've won about 50%. So about half of the jobs we would win. And the difference was within a point or two of each other. So that was not what I expected it to be. I expected that it would probably be closer to 10 percentage points less. And that we would make up for that on volume. That we were going to be able to do that many more quotes because we didn't have to spend the time traveling around to these quotes.

Zoom calls would take about 20 to maybe 30 minutes on the high end if they had a lot of questions. Versus, if I've got 45 minutes to an hour set aside plus a half hour to drive there, a half hour to drive back to the office or to the next appointment, it's pretty easy that each appointment falls into the hour and a half to two hours of calendar time. So the hope was that you could do the math, that you could easily do three, four times the quotes in the same amount of time. And so if we experience a little bit of a win percentage drop off, no big deal. We'll make it up in volume. The problem is that we actually lost volume. And that really came down to lead conversion.

If 10 people reached out and said, we'd like to get an estimate for cabinet painting in a non-virtual setting, we would schedule an appointment with 10 of them. And maybe one or two would cancel. We don't bat 100. But it's like, okay, fair enough, or 1,000, I should say. And so fair enough. We're not 100%. We don't bat 1,000. Mixing up my analogies there.

Jon Bryant: You're the baseball guy. I don't even know what you're talking about, but that worked for me.

Michael Murray: But what we found was that in this situation, we were only getting like 50% of the leads to convert to sending us a video and scheduling the Zoom call and showing up for it. Right? So it was like in any one of those spots, people were dropping off at a level that was unacceptable really. And you know, what we found was that as it got harder to generate leads over the last two years compared to 2021, 2022, we're not willing to sacrifice all those leads for the savings that virtual quoting could bring. If we got 10 leads, we only do five estimates, we're only booking two or three jobs. Where you give me 10 estimates and I go to eight or nine of them, I'm booking maybe four or five jobs.

Jon Bryant: And so that process, obviously it was working except for the fact of lead conversion, which I think a lot of people don't really talk about. We talk about win rate, but lead conversion is actually a pretty big deal too. In future episodes, it'd be great to talk about your speed to lead and all that kind of stuff, because it all matters. But in this particular case, do you think there's anything you could have done differently? Could you have changed that process to get more people to convert?

Michael Murray: So the problem with that is we are losing control in this situation and we're putting the work in the customer's hands, which is part of the argument for it, right? You'll hear people say, yeah, do the virtual estimates because you're going to get rid of the tire kickers. They're not serious. If you're not willing to send me a couple of pictures or a five minute video on your phone, you're just not all that serious about it. I hear that, that's maybe true, but kind of be careful. It's easy to say that when you've got too many leads, but when you don't have too many leads, you know, then you don't see that. I used to see in the Facebook groups, people talking like that all the time in 2021 and 2022, not so much in 2024. You know, now all of a sudden everybody's changing their tune to, yeah, if you're interested in a quote, I'll come out and do it.

Yeah. So I think we put in their hands a lot of the work and, you know, people get busy and they lose their excitement in it. And I think part of the problem with cabinet painting is it's not necessarily a need. You know, the next project comes up or, you know, we actually decided to just do a vacation this year. We'll just live with the kitchen we've got or whatever. And that, you know, if we don't get them to the next step in their mind. Right. So in my mind, if somebody calls us, what they expect to have happen is a booked appointment for an in-home estimate. That's what homeowners are used to when they call a home improvement company. And when they're told, Hey, we got this great new system where we can do this all virtually. It's immediately like, wait, what? Like, that's not what I was expecting, but okay. This sounds interesting. Maybe I even like this. Yeah, that sounds good. I'll do the video thing.

And then they just often get busy with life and, you know, kids and soccer practices and homework and all the things. And now we're playing the game of, you know, chasing after them, begging them, Hey, you reached out yesterday. We haven't heard from you. Can you send us the video? Please, please, please. And sure. Like we, I mean, we have a pretty decent size team. We have the ability to do all those things really well. And it was not for a lack of effort. But it's like after you reach out to somebody 10 times with no response, it's just not happening. They've moved on.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think there's two interesting points that I think about a lot in this process. And that's one, when customers contact us and then we make them do something, it's not often met with excitement. We get a lot of projects just summertime. It's just how many projects are coming in? A lot of them aren't the right fit. And so we ask customers to take a picture for us. People drop off when you have to take a picture. It's like, gosh, a picture. It's like, hmm, that's a small barrier, but people aren't thinking they have to work to get a price. It's just I need a price. And so creating that seamlessness I think is really, really important.

But two, one of the other things that's always on my mind is who our target audience is. And I think what's interesting is that, you know, you and I, we're fairly tech savvy, we're trying to do things most efficiently we can. And our target audience for cabinet painting, how would you define them? What's the demographics here?

Michael Murray: I mean, we do a lot of it so I can speak just from that experience, I guess. But what we see is that kind of falls generally into two buckets. I would say it's like, you know, middle-aged married couple with younger kids, somebody that's, I don't know, 35 to 50, kids in school kind of idea. Or the other bucket is more of the retiree who's, you know, kids have finally moved out of the house and they're ready to make some changes, get some upgrades, you know, but maybe they don't necessarily want to rip out their whole kitchen.

Jon Bryant: Totally. So that's how I define it too. And what's interesting about those two groups of people is one group is busy. Like you said, they've got their life going on. The other group is not tech savvy. And...

Michael Murray: Yeah, we're stereotyping, I agree with you 100%. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Jon Bryant: And obviously we're stereotyping, there's some nuances there, but I just think of, you know, my parents, and if I told them, hey guys, I'll give you an estimate, but you got to take a video. You know, my mom is actually really, really good, but she might have it upside down or different. Operating that's just not her strong suit. And she would just love for someone to come by and to chat and to hang out. And so trying like that was my, because we've tried to do virtual estimates. In fact, we do them all the time when there are jobs that we don't really want. It's like, Hey, love to do it. It's 2,500. Cool. And then they hang up. I'll never call you. And so this is my fundamental issue with this is that, you know, as service providers, we have to make it so easy and seamless for people to get what they want from us. And any barrier there, I've just felt has been hard.

The other fundamental issue with this, I know we're talking about cabinets, which I think, like you said before, is just a more simple, approachable project that, you know, you can have a conversation about, can count and figure out a price. It's not wild if you've got your numbers dialed in and get your Paint Scout template up and you're just plugging it in. I want to, I mean, eventually I want to talk about PaintZen and this idea of, for those not familiar, PaintZen is a company, I think it still exists, right? Still out there. I haven't looked at it in a while. Yeah, and if you're somebody who is from PaintZen listening to this, feel free to comment just to let people know if I'm being correct here, but there's an online flow. You can actually go and pick as a customer, I want to do a bedroom and here's how big it is and here's the paint I want to use. At the end, you get a price and then a contractor just says sign and goes and does the job. So that's, I think, the next level of this.

Michael Murray: That's like a self-service, 100% self-service. That's like the Amazon model versus what we're describing as not really Amazon, but it's in the direction of Amazon. And what they're trying to do is that full self-service. You tell us how many rooms you have and how big they are, we'll tell you how much it costs. If you want to do it, enter your credit card information and somebody will show up and do it.

Jon Bryant: And yeah, so I want to talk a little bit about that, but just to close off the cabinet question for you, would you in your mind, after seeing all of that, go back to it in a different way? Would you ever change the way you did that in hopes of doing that again, or have you just given up?

Michael Murray: I will say, I'm going to answer your question, but I want to add one more contextual point here that we haven't mentioned, is that some customers actually appreciate it and actually prefer it. I specifically remember going out to a job site, cabinet painting, project was ramping up, customer was elated, so happy, loved us, wanted to write all the reviews and do all the things. I sat down with her, I said, what was your favorite part? What really stood out the most to you?

She said, actually it was the virtual estimate, whatever, you know, the video quote or whatever wording she used. And I said, really? That's interesting. You know, you're just telling me how you love the crew and your cabinets are amazing. And that was not what I expected her answer to be. I said, well, tell me more about that. Why? And she said, because, you know, they lived in a nicer home. And she said, because typically my experience is that a contractor comes to my house and they see that we have a nice car and we have a nice house. And I know that they're charging me more than they would to somebody else because we have nice things and they, you know, so we get overcharged because of it.

Where with you guys, you never came to our house and you don't know what car we drive. And it was really easy. It all happened within, you know, a day of me reaching out. And I felt like I wasn't being taken advantage of because of our cars or whatever. And I said, huh, that's what I said. I was like, well, that's, I never thought of that. I never, in all of my thinking of listing out all the pros and cons of doing this, that one never came to my mind. And for her to say that that was the biggest part of this whole experience for her, I was like, wow, that's very interesting. So I don't know what to do with that. You know, it's one anecdote from one client out of lots, but it's certainly not for nothing.

Jon Bryant: When you did this process, did you offer the ability to do it either way?

Michael Murray: That was part of our original plan. So before we got to this step, in the 2020, 2021 stages, we offered both. You pick, do you want in-person or virtual? And it worked okay. We had some of both. Part of the problem is scheduling, managing, you know, you're doing appointments and then you got to get back to the office, you can do the videos. And the reality is that the video quotes kind of become almost second priority, right? Because it's like, wait, I can't do this right now. I got to get out the door. I got to run off to that appointment. I'm going to be late. And it's just like, well, yeah, but this video was sent in three days ago or two days ago. We've got to do that today. And it's like, well, I can't, I got to go to do this. And it became easy to not do the videos because we're running around doing the in-person stuff, especially during busy season, which is part of the reason I said, hey, we're going to dedicate one sales rep to just do virtual quotes for three or four months and really test this and see how it works.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Man, that's, it's very fascinating because there like, that makes me think a lot about just the comment I made earlier about making it easy for customers to get what they want. There is an element of this that's really, really easy. And also I never thought of that either that it levels the playing field and you don't have to have someone in your home and you can decide, kind of get a sense whether you want to even start that process with somebody by having the price and talking to the person and all that kind of thing. Did you find there was any issue? Obviously your win rate didn't go down, but do customers like to see the product? Do they like to feel the cabinet? Is that part of it too?

Michael Murray: Yeah, for sure. And I think that's actually one of the biggest reasons why, because we were always worried about that. We know that just to your point, seeing is believing. We are very confident in the products and the process that we have is superb. And that when somebody sees one of the cabinet doors that we've painted, the response is always, you know, wow, this is way better than I thought. This is way better than my friends who had somebody else paint their cabinets and things like that, where in a virtual setting, that's hard to do.

We talked about, what if we mailed them a sample and what if we could get these made so small and inexpensively that we could afford to just mail them and not need to get them back. And it's like, yeah, we could do that. We could raise our prices maybe a little bit to account for the cost of doing that. So there's a way to do that. I would say that we never really got, we never went full in on that part of it, in terms of making the investment to do that. So I think there's a way to do that. I think it requires quite a pretty significant buy-in in terms of logistics and some of the things that it would require.

Jon Bryant: It didn't sound like it was a barrier though. Like that's what is interesting is that your lead conversion was lower, but your sell rate wasn't lower. So maybe it's not an issue for customers. If you have a reputation, maybe, or that kind of thing. Yeah. You guys do a lot.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I think that's part of it. Yeah. I do think that having the reviews and the strong reputation, you know, and kind of being known for that service, I think helps us. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, again, sometimes it's hard, right? And this is part of the problem with a lot of these things, there's no control. There's not a science experiment where we can have, you know, we give the same quote to person A virtually with no sample and then a quote to the same person A in person with sample and the same person gets a quote virtually with a sample. Which one works better? So it's challenging.

Jon Bryant: So, okay, I mean, let's talk about this PaintZen thing because I think that's really, going back to the start, like you said, that's more of the Amazon, self-serve approach. You get what you want. And maybe there's a room for that in the cabinet world where you just enter your cabinet doors and drawers and whatever else. And here's a number and purchase with your credit card and then we'll come to the house.

Michael Murray: I hope not.

Jon Bryant: And, you know, I had this conversation recently with somebody about, I think it was somebody in the paint manufacturer side of things being like, the future, what's the future going to look like? Automated estimates. And this is what contractors need is you go on the website and get an automated estimate. And obviously I come from a point of relationships is how you sell. People need to trust people. People buy on trust, especially in their home. Like you said, it's a castle and we need to build that. And so I've always thought that that process is a scary one. And maybe it works if you're in an apartment in New York City and you have a $1,500 job and you are, you know, somebody who is a young working professional and you just go on, buy.

But what's interesting about the whole thing is kind of watching that system play out. And again, if anyone from PaintZen is watching, would love to get your comments. What I gathered after watching it for a while is I'd go on and test it and see how it worked. Because I was like, ooh, we got to do this for ourselves. This sounds awesome. And inevitably, what you'd find out is that you'd take these routes. You'd come up with a couple of pictures of a room, small, large. OK, I'm in a large room. I want the trim, and I want the walls done. And then it moves to the next one, select another room. And as soon as you select another room, it says, great, we'd love to come out and do an estimate for you. And it was like, I believe what happened, the other person's like, wow, that was useless. Yeah.

Michael Murray: Now I'm just pissed. Hell that I wasted this time.

Jon Bryant: And I think as soon as you clicked exterior estimate, it just said, we're coming out to see the property. Because what you run into with this industry is that preparation plays such a major factor. And I think you piss so many people off when they go through this fun little game. They select it and you pay for it and the crew shows up. They're like, actually your job is triple the price because you didn't tell us about the ceiling height. You didn't tell us it was oil paint that's super chipped up and it's triple the price. And now everyone's pissed off. Am I wrong? Does that seem like the right assumption there?

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, that's, I think everybody, all of the sides of it, I think those are the fears. And I, as you were talking about what PaintZen is, it's turning the painting industry into a commodity. And that's, you know, that's something we should all not want. And the reality is that if PaintZen's going to do it, Amazon's going to do it. And if it's going to work, then Amazon will be the place where it's going to go.

And then we're all subcontractors of Amazon and they're just looking for, you know, who's going to do it the cheapest because quality doesn't matter to the most extent. You know, and it quickly turns into, you know, or even like an Angie's List kind of idea, where they do all the marketing and sales and the painting company is just the one to fulfill. And as long as you do a decent quality job, then you get more work. Well that, it is a race to the bottom. You can see, you know, Amazon is great for a lot of things, but if you're an artisan furniture maker, you don't want to have to compete with Amazon. You know, there's still a market for that, but it's made it very difficult. And so I think in our industry, companies like ours that are trying to provide a higher price point, higher level of service, that's going to require more trust, more education, more one-on-one interaction with a person. And I think that's a good thing, personally. I think that's what you're saying too.

I do think, I think PaintZen, again, I think they're still around or whatever, but I think what they started to get into was more of the commercial side. And I can see your point. I can see that working if you're looking to flip apartments or turn apartments or whatever, or things like that. It's like, yeah, here's, you know, here's how big it is and what's the best price you can give me. Don't really care to some extent who shows up, what their background is, how trustworthy they are. Don't necessarily care that they're using the best products and things like that.

Jon Bryant: Get her done. The faceless people that paint. That's the ones we're looking for.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, at some point you're going to get replaced by that robot painting thing that we've probably all seen on the Instagram or whatever. What could go wrong?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, it looks really cool. I'd love to hang out with it, have a beer with that thing. I mean, so in concept, I mean, these things sound great. You're like, yeah, it's super easy. Just create this flow where people can go and make decisions and they just buy. But the reality is that, and this has always struck me as so interesting about this trade is that we're selling art and the customer's deciding what kind of art we're going to do. Like painting.

So people often ask, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm a painter. And they're like, do you do art on canvas? Or it's like, no, we do homes. And those are somehow miss-equal. I don't know. But it's also the same word exactly. And so I step back and I'm like, actually we're just kind of doing this large scale application of paint, but it's kind of artistry. And as soon as you start to move that into commodity, it just kind of falls apart because now you're leaving the expertise of the job in the customer's hands and they actually are hiring you for your expertise. It's like they don't know how to paint or they don't want to paint. So you're going to let them do the estimate for you. It never really, at a deep level doesn't sit quite right with me. And I would love to say it's possible because how sweet would that be? But I'm just, I'm not sure. I just don't see it.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Right. I mean, if you're the lower cost provider or, you know, you're subcontracting, not doing your own work and things like that, I can, you know, there might be a reason this might make sense. But for I think companies that are trying to build a team of employees, sales team, higher price points, you know, what you're hiring is our trust, you know, the trust that you have in us and our reputation and, you know, that same similar experience that you're going to get from this company because you're going to get the same type of crew each time at a higher price point. That I feel like takes more of that know, like, and trust in the sales process. You don't get a whole lot of know, like, and trust when you fill out a form on the website and then it spits out a price. You get a little, you get a little from testimonial videos or something, but it's just not the same thing as meeting somebody.

Jon Bryant: What's funny is I kind of think back to maybe the cab industry, the conversations they had before Uber. When Uber came in and they, yeah, sorry cab. What's the correct term for that? The cab industry?

Michael Murray: Got it. Yeah, sure.

Jon Bryant: The taxi, taxi cab, there you go. Okay. Thank you. I haven't taken one for a while obviously, so I forget what they're called. But they probably had the same discussion and maybe this is a good point for us to end on, which is that they're probably sitting there thinking, they love us. They have your driver, they like talking to us and it's about the relationship and, you know, the trust level that you get because we have a reputation and Uber will never stand a chance. And then now to my point earlier, I can't remember the last time I took a cab. Actually I do, it was like a couple of weeks ago. And the reason I took it is because it was half the price and recommended by the hotel. That was the only reason.

Michael Murray: That's good.

Jon Bryant: And so there's got to be room in the industry for some type of advancement in this area. I'm just not convinced how it works. And I think you and I would be hard pressed to sit here and think this could never get any better, change. Obviously you've seen good results with some tweaking, maybe society changes a little bit more and they're more inclined or, you know, those younger people start, once everyone that's used to phones is now 60 years old and used to that more, that type of process. Maybe we're just ahead of the game.

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, I mean, I made the point earlier that maybe Uber isn't the right example, but based on the way you described it, I do see the similarities, right? Where the taxi cabs, yeah, they had those medallions which was the license essentially to be able to operate as a taxi driver. I assume it came with background checks and different things that would be the proxy for me as a consumer to trust that this person wasn't just going to drive me out somewhere and murder me or whatever. It's like, okay, yep, I'm going to willingly get into the car of a perfect stranger and they're going to take me where I need to go and they're not going to hold me hostage and they're not going to charge me more than they're supposed to.

And what Uber said was the system can just be built on reviews and reputation. That if we built the system on reviews and reputation, that will replace the medallion of the taxicab world, which was completely corrupt and had been...

Jon Bryant: Run by the mob ever since it was created.

Michael Murray: Yeah. So it was just like, I think there was some very good opportunity to fix a system that was broken. Kind of turned on its ear and they did. But yeah, to your point, I mean, those big taxi companies or whatever were sitting around, like we are saying, Hey, nobody's ever going to trust random strangers to drive over and pick you up in their car. You know, like what's the proxy there? And what Uber has shown is that the trust proxy is the reviews, you know, maybe I don't, I never driven for Uber, but I'm sure there's some kind of maybe background check or something that's done. I guess I hope.

Jon Bryant: Let's sure hope so. How you haven't gone missing, Michael, is beyond me. Your level of trust is too high.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, I remember when, yeah, I don't use Uber that much. I don't, you know, but yeah, I mean, I remember when Airbnb first came out and I was just like, this is insane. I'm going to just go to some stranger's house and just go in and stay in their house. Like, this is nuts. Who's doing this? Who would ever do this? And now, if we, I mean, going to a hotel is the last option now when I travel. Only if we can't find an Airbnb that makes sense. So I think it's a similar proxy for the trust part of this conversation.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think, you know, I'll kind of wrap it up with more of a question than an answer, but this is probably, as you're listening along, feel free to leave a comment where you think it's going, but what are things that would have to change in order for us to get to a world where it becomes that for the trades, for painting, for other things. I think you see it more in the product side, like HVAC, I know has this type of a flow with a lot of their sign up for an install today type approach and it's happening. And I just don't think I've wrapped my head completely around the idea of it in this industry, but I might be short-sighted. I might need to have my eyes opened a little bit. And I think this whole chat has made me realize that there's a space for it. So I think it's open-ended. I think the future will be interesting. I'd love to have those conversations as we keep exploring it.

Michael Murray: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think there's so much customization in what we do that that's the harder part, right? Where, you know, in a lot of other industries, it is less custom than home improvement. But yeah, we'll see.

Jon Bryant: For sure. Yeah. Well, we'll leave it up in the comments. For those listening, guys, if you're enjoying this, please like and subscribe. We enjoy having these chats, and if they're helpful to you, we want to keep doing them. Michael, thanks as always. Such a pleasure to chat. We will absolutely catch up with you guys soon. Thanks very much, have a great day everybody.

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