Tell me a little bit about yourself. I understand that you've got Pro Valley and things like that.
I just want to understand a little more about what it is you're doing. Is this the third call that
you've had with the first class business? Am I mistaken? Yeah, it is. It's kind of a cool group.
I've enjoyed the conversations I've been having. Well, I appreciate that. You're going to get a
different aspect because I'm not necessarily first class business. You can see what I have in my
shoulder, my chest. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But I definitely want to get your take
on what you've been doing and maybe you'll find it being absolutely from a common ground here
to an extent. Okay. Yeah, cool. So I mean, I am an entrepreneur. I have always had a bent to be
working on my own. Even when I worked with a company, I was very happy being independent.
And I liked having the tools that I didn't have to think about or worry about at my disposal,
which made life really easy as a sales guy. I could really do a lot of good productive work,
which was good for me, good for the company, good for my clients. And that was back when I was in
equipment leasing. And I carried that same theme throughout my career, no matter which business I
was in. It was always good to have the tools at my disposal to help create a smoother operation.
Sometimes, in fact, most of the times those tools had to be built. And so that was the beginning of
my journey with trying to figure out how to automate things because I'm one of those people
that just don't really like to do things twice if I can help it. I mean, it's one of those gut
issues that if I can figure out a way to do it once, do it well, and not have to worry about it,
then that's the way we're going to do it. And if it's something that has to be done more than once,
good gracious, can I figure out if there's a button that I can push to make that happen?
Or even better, not even push a button, just set it and forget it. And so that was the philosophy
behind Chrome Capital and Fuel Capital and now ProValue is what kind of systems can we put in
place that actually automates somebody's otherwise manual tasks to help them run their business better?
So I noticed that that's kind of the thing is work smart, not hard, right? Pretty much.
Pretty much. Yeah, it's not easy work. You got to work hard to work smart. But yeah.
Well, if you don't want to be repetitive, obviously, you can find some sort of automated
process to handle that. That's great. So I guess my question would be around, so obviously, that's
how you form ProValue. And how did that, I mean, obviously, your brainchild and something you
worked with to kind of come out, but it was probably coming from, did you used to work in
the services industry? Or something like that? How did that come about? Come to me?
No, actually, it came from being a consumer of services, I thought there's got to be a better
way. I had a very specific experience with, I live in Florida, and we're fortunate enough to
have our own pool, which is fortunate and unfortunate. It's a double edged sword.
And so we spent some time and energy going through, and we live in an old house in Naples,
and we went through the process of, you know, we didn't want to tear it down. Everybody tears
their house down here, and they rebuild these concrete colossal things. And we were, that's not
really us. We're really more the old school. So but the building needed to be updated. So we gutted
it and replumbed it, re-electric everything. And part of that process was looking at the pool in
the back and redoing that, which we did. And part of that was rewiring it, replacing lights and
things like that. So that was all a big, very expensive process. And I was walking around the
pool, and it was like 2019, and the light had gone out. And so I thought, well, that's odd. I think
we just replaced that. And so we, I made a phone call 10 o'clock at night, and I knew I was going
to leave a voicemail message for my pool guy. And so I did. And then I didn't, then I lost track of
it, got busy with something else. And I wasn't really paying attention to it again until 30 days
later, when I walked back out there and noticed that the light was on. And I thought, you know,
there's got to be, there's got to be an explanation here. But right now, the fact that nobody's called
me back and the fact that it's on, I'm, I'm good with that. That's no more expense out of my pocket.
I could not have been any more wrong. Somebody, somebody got the message and sent somebody out,
like, Yeah, I'm not, I'm not here like I am now. I wasn't working in my office here in the house.
Right. And so somebody had come by, they fixed the light. And the only way I found out about it was
I went to the, actually, I went to the mailbox the next day after I saw that it was on. And I was
like, Oh, yeah. Okay, I'm going to go get the light, right? And I saw that it was on and there
was an invoice in there for some outrageous amount of money. So great that somebody heard me. Great
that they got it repaired. Not good that as a consumer, I didn't know, I, I don't know that I
was heard. Right. And I have this surprise invoice. So, so the whole experience was
I also like to know when are they cleaning the pool?
Because there was a period of time where it was,
it wasn't always on Friday at some time,
which I don't really need to know specifically,
but it's just nice to know that it happened.
So I actually dragged those guys into an office
and I told them what I was thinking about,
which candidly at the time was a bastardization
of a different tool that I was building
with kind of the same premise
where there was a central command center
and there was an app for the guy in the field
and then there was an app for me as a customer.
I was actually trying to design a tool
for getting my boat put in the water, right?
Like this is a really big problem, right?
Just idiotic.
So, but I went the full yard
on the whole boat launching app concept
and went through the process of getting proposals
from various development companies
and I started to look through those and curate
what was the right solution.
And then I was looking at the bottom number
and I'm like, this is a really expensive build
for doing this for myself.
Can I sell it somewhere?
Could I use it somewhere else?
So I investigated marinas all across the country.
I live in Naples, Florida.
There's a bunch of marinas around here.
I went down and I talked to them.
And at the end of the day, I was like,
I just don't see a big enough market here
to justify this expense.
Cause I know having built these systems,
this is just the entry ticket.
Like once you get inside the park,
you're gonna have to upgrade continuously
if you wanna get on these other rides, right?
So it was just kind of coincidental
that the pool thing came about
and I talked to my wife about it.
She says, I think the pool business is a lot bigger.
So I looked at the pool business
and it was three times the size
of the motorcycle leasing business I was in.
And I thought, well, if that's the case,
then we could probably put a software platform together
and run this in the pool business.
And so we did.
And then in the process of building the app
and through various other conversations,
what I was able to uncover was that
we were in a marketplace.
I took a step back from, okay,
it's a pool service business.
I get that, but what other businesses are like this?
And I started to look at the service business as a whole,
as sort of a big umbrella.
And what I found out was there's actually
two different types of businesses, right?
Two different types of service business.
There's an appointment-driven business,
which is where you have an acute problem,
your AC goes out, which happens here in Florida.
You pick up the phone, you call the AC guy,
they come, they fix it, they give you a bill,
you pay them, they're gone.
And that's it.
You don't really see them.
You might see them once a year for maintenance,
but it's not like the pool guys.
So on the pool guy side,
it's a regular interval service business.
And those guys are like pool service,
lawn care, pest control, home watch, home cleaning,
chimney sweeps, septic systems.
I mean, it has to happen on a regular cadence.
So I was like, okay, let's look at these businesses.
And so we actually built the platform in a way
that can account for any one
of those regular service businesses.
It doesn't matter.
The system doesn't care.
It's agnostic, it doesn't care.
We just decided to focus on pool service
because that's how you build a business.
You get really good at one silo
and then you take what you learn from there
and you apply it and you accelerate growth
into the next platform because of what you learned.
So I'm like saying, and that's why I'm gonna ask
a couple of questions, maybe a little more specific.
So you probably did some RCM review,
so which is basically reliability centered management.
And that deals with preventive maintenance
and obviously break fix
and dealing with things for along the line
saying instead of waiting for something to break.
And this is where I'm looking more from my person
says I have like a fleet of cars or fleet of trucks
because I've actually dealt with,
I actually consider developing some software
very, very similar to what you've talked about just now
for the mining kit industry
because they have these huge trucks
that they cost billions of dollars to run per day.
And they're coming in and out.
And if something happens to one of these trucks,
first of all, it's stuck right in the middle of the road.
If it breaks down right in the middle of the road,
so it's not blocking traffic for all the other trucks.
Plus the fact that you gotta get that guy out,
those things weigh tons, those that are not very light.
So how do you get those guys out of the way?
So the maintenance is so much more important
than having it break down the field.
So it's very similar to what you said.
So I actually was back in the COVID,
I was actually looking with a couple of friends of mine
who we were looking at doing that,
possibly getting into making it.
But it sounds very similar to what you're doing.
You're just looking at it from a more,
like I say, from a more service perspective
and necessarily from a maintenance perspective.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you could schedule, I mean, with Provalet,
you can schedule maintenance.
I'm sure, yeah.
On a time basis.
One of the interesting things about on the road vehicles
is typically it's a mileage driven event versus time.
But if you have a fairly clear idea
about the utilization of a truck,
you can probably do it with time too.
It's like, hey, look, and yeah, Jiffy Lube, right?
Come back in three months or 3000 miles
or whatever it was.
Yeah, exactly.
You do your service.
Yeah, yeah.
So I mean, it would work if the company was willing
to do time as a variable versus actual mileage.
So, yeah.
I mean, we've improved the platform for, excuse me,
for the companies that use it at the technician
and in a way that, so the way the platform works
is you have a general dashboard
and then you have a field tech who is given a dispatch,
his list of jobs, his job stops for the day.
They delivered in a route optimized way
and he's GPS tracked.
So that does a couple of different things.
It allows him, number one, as a business owner,
I can actually see where they are, right?
On a map.
I can see what progress they've made along the way,
what jobs have been done.
And when they check into a job,
they actually have to be at the job because with our app,
because these GPS track, every address is geofenced.
Right.
Oh, so they can't, you know,
and they have to finish a job to get to the next job
and all that kind of good stuff.
So it becomes a very efficient way to not only guide somebody
through their day, but also gives the credibility
or accountability that every company wants
their customers to have that
because these are typically anonymous visits, you know,
I mean, you never know when the guy's in your backyard
until you get the bill.
It's like, was he really here?
You know, people are checking their cameras
and they're checking their cameras like,
I didn't see your guy here today.
It's like, well, he was there.
Here's the GPS stamp that says he was there
and he can't check into the job unless he's at your job.
So that works quite well.
And I think the undergirding sort of like benefit
for our platform is the customer
and the communication level that we give each company.
We give them the ability to communicate clearly
and effectively with their customers automatically.
You know, there are notifications.
It's like putting Uber on a service business.
You know, you get these notifications
about when the guy checks in,
comes on the homeowner app.
We're the only guys that have the homeowner app
and people love it because they actually know,
yeah, the guy showed up, he left.
I've got an invoice.
You can pay for the invoice on the phone.
If you have a service request, you push a button,
type in your description,
you can add a video or a picture and send that in
and then that gets handled.
And then by the way, once it gets handled at the office,
I get a notification that tells me
that your request is being reviewed.
And then when they schedule it,
I get another notification telling me when it was scheduled.
So, you know, all this stuff is automated
and it works pretty well.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
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and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.