[00:00:00] Wade: Like it's 2025. Why are you still using paper?
[00:00:18] Wade: Welcome to Agents of Scale, folks. This is the show where I sit down with
[00:00:21] Wade: leaders transforming how real companies are using AI at scale. I'm WDE. I'm one
[00:00:26] Wade: of the co-founders, CEO here at Zapier. Each episode we're going to unpack how
[00:00:30] Wade: forward thinking execs are building the future one workflow at a time. And today
[00:00:34] Wade: we got a good one. Uh joined by Forest who is the co-founder and CTO of Jobber.
[00:00:39] Wade: Uh Jobber is the platform powering over 300,000 home service businesses across
[00:00:44] Wade: North America. Forest is one of the quiet forces behind uh one of the most
[00:00:48] Wade: impressive digital transformations in the trades. Uh we've gone from pen to
[00:00:52] Wade: paper chaos to AI co-pilots, 247 virtual receptionists uh across industries you
[00:00:58] Wade: don't usually think as tech forward. So folks like plumbers, landscapers,
[00:01:01] Wade: electricians, contractors, all running their businesses efficiency uh
[00:01:05] Wade: efficiently uh with AI now these days. So Forest, welcome to the show.
[00:01:10] Forest: Thanks for having me. Let's talk Jobber. So you started Jobber
[00:01:15] Forest: quite a while ago now. 15 years. Uh yeah, I was going to say coming up on 15
[00:01:19] Forest: years or Yeah, exactly. pretty much exactly at 15 years. Uh now, um you
[00:01:24] Forest: know, the trades never been like the cool space. Um what
[00:01:30] Forest: what made you all place a bet on an overlooked market that most folks in
[00:01:36] Forest: tech just ignore or simply just don't know much
[00:01:39] Forest: about? So again, we weren't looking to make
[00:01:43] Forest: some cool company. We weren't looking for flashy headlines. We're just really
[00:01:47] Forest: driven to solve people's problems. Uh both Sam and I, we were freelance
[00:01:51] Forest: developers before this. So, we went around talking to small business, trying
[00:01:55] Forest: to understand their pain points and seeing what we could solve with
[00:01:58] Forest: technology. And he one day had been talking to and doing some work with uh a
[00:02:03] Forest: local company, a friend of mine who worked at a painting company came in
[00:02:06] Forest: independently approached me. So, we had a couple businesses,
[00:02:11] Forest: you know, same sets of problems, and we were just talking about this one day.
[00:02:15] Forest: It's like, look, these these are real businesses with real problems. They all
[00:02:19] Forest: have the same problem. Maybe we can help solve that. It kind of reminds me of a
[00:02:25] Wade: thing we're starting to see more of right now with these AI founders is a
[00:02:30] Wade: lot of them are taking jobs on the front lines in these boring areas just to
[00:02:36] Wade: learn like the workflows and the use cases and all that sort of stuff. Then
[00:02:39] Wade: they go start a company to actually like build agents and automate that stuff.
[00:02:43] Forest: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's such a key piece of being a founder is like you
[00:02:47] Forest: first have to be really passionate about the problem you're solving and you have
[00:02:50] Forest: to get really close to the customers. If you're not doing those things, you're
[00:02:53] Forest: not going to be successful. Yeah. Do do you remember like maybe the
[00:02:58] Wade: first customer where you felt like, oh, wow, we're we are actually solving a
[00:03:04] Wade: pretty important problem for them. Like I think we might have something special
[00:03:07] Wade: here. I mean, at the end of the day, our very
[00:03:11] Forest: first customer, uh, Ging from Painters Enterprise would be, you know, that very
[00:03:15] Forest: first wow moment. We'd spent more than 6 months trying to find that first
[00:03:21] Forest: customer, going around every day talking to small businesses. We were actually
[00:03:26] Forest: cold calling out of the phone book by the end. Uh, I had a whole script put
[00:03:30] Forest: together. I was like, "Hey, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I don't
[00:03:33] Forest: even have anything to sell. We're just two guys working on a product that may
[00:03:36] Forest: someday help businesses like yours. If I could grab 10 minutes of your time, show
[00:03:40] Forest: you what we're working on. I'd really appreciate any feedback you could
[00:03:43] Forest: provide. Uh, and you get lots of hang-ups and everything, but we'd go
[00:03:47] Forest: out, we'd show people, walk them through the demo, and they'd always end by
[00:03:52] Forest: telling us that like they're not going to use this product, but then we'd ask
[00:03:56] Forest: why, and they'd give us great feedback. We'd go back to our coffee shop and
[00:03:59] Forest: iterate from there. And after 6 months of this of no, no, no, no, no. When we
[00:04:04] Forest: sat down with Graeme and showed him, walked him through the demo and said,
[00:04:08] Forest: "Would you use this for your business?" He said, "Yes." And that was like that
[00:04:12] Forest: holy moly, we got our first user. Uh, yeah.
[00:04:17] Wade: What do you think was different about Graham compared to all the nos prior?
[00:04:21] Forest: Every no we received up to that point came with a lot of learnings and we took
[00:04:26] Forest: those learnings and put them back into the product. We had sort of
[00:04:31] Forest: crossed a mark where 100% of people would say no to the product to a point
[00:04:35] Forest: where 99% people would say no to the product. But beyond that, Graham super
[00:04:40] Forest: generous with his time, very entrepreneurial naturatured uh and I
[00:04:46] Forest: think he sort of took a look at us and decided he was going to give us a shot
[00:04:49] Forest: uh see what we could do. He was very generous. It's it's
[00:04:55] Forest: interesting how like all these early stories have similarities. You I
[00:05:00] Wade: remember our original pitch was similar. You know, we're not trying to sell you
[00:05:04] Wade: something. I would I would say I would email them and say, "Hey, I'm working on
[00:05:08] Wade: a project and you know, you you're you know,
[00:05:11] Wade: you're asking on the forums like about an integration with this, that, and the
[00:05:14] Wade: other. You know, we've got something that does that. Like would you be
[00:05:18] Wade: interested in taking a look at our project?"
[00:05:20] Wade: Uh and you know eventually some of those folks were like oh yeah like I it if
[00:05:26] Wade: that does what you're saying like I I think I would be into that. Um so yeah
[00:05:30] Wade: very very sort of subtle. um you know sort of the the way I understand it is
[00:05:35] Wade: the initial problem is you're you're helping these service businesses with
[00:05:39] Wade: managing scheduling quoting ad all the sort of like back office complexity
[00:05:43] Wade: right do you remember like what like some of those early stubborn problems
[00:05:48] Wade: that you had to solve were to really get um you know folks like Graham to to say
[00:05:53] Wade: ah like this actually is worth um sort of migrating from my old system to a new
[00:05:59] Wade: one. Yeah, it well and a reminder 15 years ago
[00:06:04] Forest: assistant meant like pen and paper, carbon copy invoices, filling a like
[00:06:10] Forest: binder, uh getting crinkled up, left under the seat of their truck, lost
[00:06:15] Forest: forever, uh finding out 3 months later that you forgot to invoice a client.
[00:06:20] Forest: That's the system we were trying to replace. But it's really interesting
[00:06:23] Forest: that there's almost nothing more flexible in the world than a pen and
[00:06:27] Forest: paper and the real world is messy. The real
[00:06:30] Forest: world gets complicated and real businesses are complicated. So
[00:06:35] Forest: building jobber from a simple system which people could look at and go it's
[00:06:40] Forest: just I don't think don't think my business could really fit into that.
[00:06:44] Forest: being able to build for all the edge cases and real world complexities
[00:06:48] Forest: without becoming too complicated and overwhelming. That was the real
[00:06:51] Forest: challenge. I think there was some of it was technology, a lot of it was user
[00:06:55] Forest: experience and trying to find that right balance.
[00:06:57] Wade: I I'd love to hear more about, you know, maybe like the mindset
[00:07:02] Wade: around design and building software or even selling to bluecollar users. Like
[00:07:08] Wade: that's not an industry most tech thinks about. What do you think you had to do
[00:07:12] Wade: different to land an audience that isn't known for being maybe tech forward? And
[00:07:17] Wade: to your point, they're all on pen and paper at the at this point in time.
[00:07:21] Forest: It's a bit of a misconception that they're not tech forward. It's that they
[00:07:26] Forest: don't have time to waste. Uh so they're not going to waste their time on some
[00:07:30] Forest: shiny new piece of technology. You and I both know that often the cutting edge
[00:07:33] Forest: technologies, you're going to spend 5 hours automating a fiveminute task.
[00:07:37] Forest: You're going to spend more time learning the tool than it's actually going to
[00:07:40] Forest: save you. They don't have, you know, any appetite for that kind of technology.
[00:07:45] Forest: But if you can save them real time, real money, help them look more professional
[00:07:49] Forest: to their customers, they're all over that. Uh they take it really seriously.
[00:07:53] Forest: And that's one of the things I really like about them. That's what I love
[00:07:55] Forest: about all SMB in general is it's not smoke and mirrors.
[00:08:00] Forest: Yeah. You just have to provide real value. And
[00:08:03] Forest: if you're doing something that makes their lives better, they're in. And the
[00:08:06] Forest: moment you stop doing that, they will leave uh right away. It's a very honest
[00:08:10] Forest: business. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of we were
[00:08:14] Wade: talking uh with the CEO at at Newfront, Spike, and he was talking about this too
[00:08:19] Wade: where, you know, they've got all these brokers in the business, which again
[00:08:22] Wade: sort of not known for being tech forward, but he's saying similar thing.
[00:08:24] Wade: Hey, that's a little bit of a misconception. It's just we got we got
[00:08:28] Wade: work to do. And so their workflows was how do we build a bunch of technology
[00:08:32] Wade: behind email? Because people use email like crazy. And you know, if you can
[00:08:37] Wade: sort of tap into the stuff that people are already using, that's actually
[00:08:40] Wade: practically useful versus, you know, making somebody use some sort of
[00:08:43] Wade: whisbang, you know, app that, you know, uh, like new thing to learn, etc. So,
[00:08:49] Wade: yeah, I think you're kind of you're on to something there, which is like, hey,
[00:08:51] Wade: make something actually useful versus just tech for tech sake.
[00:08:55] Forest: Yeah. I think one thing I'd add in because I didn't fully answer your
[00:08:59] Forest: question about like how you have to work differently with this
[00:09:02] Forest: crowd is we you have to start by spending a lot of time with them
[00:09:07] Forest: a so that you can authentically speak to the value you're creating but also speak
[00:09:11] Forest: their language. Some industries use the word quote, some
[00:09:15] Forest: use estimates, right? Like, you know, you need to quote, you need to actually
[00:09:19] Forest: visit, do an assessment, right? You need to be able to have good examples, good
[00:09:25] Forest: demos, good uh material at every step of the journey to give it real
[00:09:30] Forest: authenticity. Uh because that's part of what helps
[00:09:33] Forest: convey the trust and build the trust that we're not just saying. Nothing
[00:09:37] Forest: destroys trust faster than us saying we understand your business, but you see a
[00:09:40] Forest: bunch of words that like that's not your language. That doesn't match your world.
[00:09:45] Forest: Uh so we do have to have a bit of a for lack of a better word translation layer
[00:09:49] Forest: at every stage of our journey to make sure that we're conveying the value in a
[00:09:57] Forest: language that really connects what we're doing to their world. We they're not
[00:10:02] Forest: going to come to us. We have to go to them. H how do you how do you instill
[00:10:05] Wade: that as a core philosophy internally? You know, you and Sam, you're spending
[00:10:10] Wade: time with these customers in the early days, but now you've got all these
[00:10:13] Wade: employees. These employees probably don't necessarily come from uh the the
[00:10:17] Wade: background of the customers you're serving. And so, it's probably doubly
[00:10:21] Wade: important that they are spending time walking in the shoes of your customers,
[00:10:25] Wade: understanding their language, etc. How do you systematize that?
[00:10:30] Forest: It's probably one of the most important things we can be doing. We take voice of
[00:10:34] Forest: customer and customer interactions really really seriously. Uh at every
[00:10:38] Forest: stage we find opportunities to inject it. A few examples. We have a in Slack a
[00:10:43] Forest: voice a customer channel. Every review, every feedback, every cancellation
[00:10:47] Forest: reason, every NPS, everything feeds into a Slack channel that everybody in the
[00:10:51] Forest: company has access to. Uh we kick off every town hall with our CEO
[00:10:57] Forest: interviewing a customer. We shut down the whole company once a quarter for a
[00:11:00] Forest: couple hours and do a customer panel where we bring customers in and
[00:11:03] Forest: interview them. We've set up so like everybody in product does ride alongs
[00:11:07] Forest: where you're actually going out and visiting customers out in the field.
[00:11:11] Forest: When our senior leadership team gets together, we uh we're a semi- remote
[00:11:14] Forest: company, a hybrid company, but once a quarter we bring all of SLT together for
[00:11:19] Forest: a few days. That's really valuable time. And yet we'll take the first half day,
[00:11:26] Forest: break into groups and go out and visit clients in person, learn about them,
[00:11:31] Forest: their goals, their ambitions, why they started, what makes a good day, what
[00:11:34] Forest: makes a bad day, because then we're bringing that firsthand in set of
[00:11:38] Forest: insights together when we plan out our strategy for the rest of uh the quarter.
[00:11:42] Forest: We even every board meeting we start off with a video interview of one of our
[00:11:47] Forest: customers uh to make sure even at the top level even at like our VCs are
[00:11:52] Forest: getting in the headsp space of the customers and who they are before we
[00:11:55] Forest: start making decisions. Uh so from the very f front lines all the way to the
[00:12:00] Forest: very top board meetings we try and instill our customers voice.
[00:12:06] Wade: Love it. Um let's shift to AI a little bit. 15 years ago. I'm guessing this
[00:12:11] Wade: isn't on your radar. Do do you remember your first sort of like aha moment um
[00:12:17] Wade: where you thought I we need to be paying more attention to
[00:12:23] Wade: this? Interestingly enough, I was it was on my
[00:12:26] Forest: radar 15 years ago. Uh before starting job when I was in university, I was
[00:12:31] Forest: passionate about machine learning. Uh I thought I was going to be an
[00:12:35] Forest: academic. I had been accepted into a master's program, had my professor all
[00:12:38] Forest: lined up. And in my last semester of my last year of my undergrad, just before I
[00:12:43] Forest: graduated and went into stream of academia, I came down with a bad cough,
[00:12:48] Forest: got checked out. Turns out I had a big tumor in my left lung, had to go in for
[00:12:51] Forest: immediate surgery. It messed up my plans, diverted my course, but I've
[00:12:56] Forest: always had a passion for machine learning since. Uh, back in 2017,
[00:13:02] Forest: it was already the title of my vortex. Jobber will become your most trusted
[00:13:07] Forest: employee. And I'll be honest, I spent millions of dollars trying to identify
[00:13:13] Forest: Jobber before the technology was ready. I had
[00:13:17] Forest: hired PhDs out of the university. We were going hard. Unfortunately, we just
[00:13:22] Forest: could not make that connect and I had to put on a shelf for years. Uh so you can
[00:13:26] Forest: imagine how excited I was when this most recent generation of technological
[00:13:30] Forest: innovations came about and we uh were able to take that vision and make it a
[00:13:36] Forest: reality. So what was the first moment for you
[00:13:40] Wade: where you actually did get some of these ideas to click and work inside the
[00:13:45] Wade: product? I'll ignore all the things that we tried
[00:13:48] Forest: that didn't work back in the day. Uh there was a lot of interesting promise,
[00:13:53] Forest: but we just couldn't quite make it reliable and consistent enough. Like
[00:13:57] Forest: it's always AI is one of those things. It's easy to have moments of greatness.
[00:14:02] Forest: The hard part is making it consistently great enough that you can turn into a
[00:14:05] Forest: production product. With this most recent round, we were a lot more
[00:14:09] Forest: cautious. uh going back into sort of 2021 2022
[00:14:16] Forest: we started playing with if AI could start to use the data in your account
[00:14:21] Forest: and generate really good insights and advice.
[00:14:25] Forest: One of our PMs uh Bob Evans he actually built out a whole system where he was
[00:14:30] Forest: just taking contacts out of accounts who had opted in. He had 50 accounts that
[00:14:35] Forest: put their hands up to try this thing. You take out, copy, paste into chat GPT
[00:14:39] Forest: with prompts, hit enter. This was back in like the 30
[00:14:43] Forest: days. Uh, get the results, copy paste it back into a spreadsheet, then take all
[00:14:49] Forest: those spreadsheets and email them out one by one. So, they got a weekly digest
[00:14:53] Forest: of advice from AI. And when that was getting good results, it's like, okay,
[00:14:57] Forest: it's time to turn this into an inproduct experience. And then we started to go
[00:15:01] Forest: from there. But once you have this interface in the product where you can
[00:15:05] Forest: engage and try and seek business advice, it started a whole journey. You can't
[00:15:10] Forest: make the most trusted employee if it doesn't even know how Jobber works.
[00:15:14] Forest: Right? One of the first things people do is ask questions about how Jobber works.
[00:15:18] Forest: All right, time to hook it up to a rag. Make sure it has our knowledge base.
[00:15:23] Forest: Now, it's offering some basic support, but it wasn't talking the right
[00:15:26] Forest: language. It was very technical, manual. it wasn't able to take the features of
[00:15:32] Forest: Jobber and put them in a broader context. Luckily, we had our wonderful
[00:15:37] Forest: blog, Jobber Academy, 2,700 professionally written uh or and
[00:15:43] Forest: professionally interviewed articles talked about all the different ways our
[00:15:48] Forest: customers are solving their problems. So, that started to make a lot more um
[00:15:51] Forest: voice and tone and business expertise, but it was very disconnected from who
[00:15:56] Forest: our customers were. That led us to teaching it how to query their data
[00:16:02] Forest: first hand. This was before tool calls existed.
[00:16:06] Forest: Um, but we got it able to put together SQL queries,
[00:16:12] Forest: fetch the data out of the accounts, and now it's starting to make more sense
[00:16:16] Forest: like your data, this business advice. But it still was missing the broader
[00:16:23] Forest: context because a plumber in New York is still very different than a plumber in
[00:16:27] Forest: Edmonton as an example. Um, a twoerson plumber versus a 20 person plumber, very
[00:16:32] Forest: different advice is going to make sense. So we start giving it benchmarks and
[00:16:36] Forest: best practices, right? And that got us to a point where now we can have a
[00:16:40] Forest: prompt in the product that pops up and goes, "Hey, did you know your quote win
[00:16:45] Forest: rate is 20% below other 4 to 10 employee landscapers in Texas? let's talk about
[00:16:50] Forest: the best practices that they're doing to get that higher number. That gets
[00:16:55] Forest: clicked every time. When they click that, then we can have a conversation
[00:16:59] Forest: with you about what are you doing and what aren't you doing and what should
[00:17:02] Forest: maybe change in your business. And once you're like, okay, let's start
[00:17:07] Forest: doing that. Then we can guide you through the product and help you turn on
[00:17:11] Forest: those features and configure them correctly. And then we can circle back
[00:17:15] Forest: and show you how much that's driving up. And we're doing all that now through
[00:17:20] Forest: this more agentive approach. So one of the interesting things you've
[00:17:25] Wade: talked about is you know jobber is like your most trusted employee and
[00:17:31] Wade: AI t it's it's non-deterministic uh and so it it makes mistakes like how
[00:17:37] Wade: do you sort of like make that concept come to life in a way that these uh your
[00:17:42] Wade: customers you know build trust with the system versus degrade trust with the
[00:17:47] Wade: system. It's a great question and one we spend a lot of time on. It goes back to
[00:17:53] Forest: start by working really closely with the customers and understanding where we
[00:17:57] Forest: have permission to play. You start by giving advice.
[00:18:02] Forest: As the advice gets accepted more and more, you can start to get permission to
[00:18:06] Forest: draft, prepare, notify. As you continue to gain permission, you
[00:18:12] Forest: can start to automate. You can also work with them to understand where are the
[00:18:16] Forest: guard rails and escalation paths that are needed. A perfect example would be
[00:18:20] Forest: our AI receptionist. So this is a fantastic tool. We've launched it uh
[00:18:24] Forest: recently. It's now taken over 200,000 phone calls uh on behalf of our
[00:18:28] Forest: customers. And this feature is exactly what it
[00:18:33] Forest: sounds like. It's a great way to it picks up the phone. It has a
[00:18:36] Forest: conversation. It has access to your price book. It can
[00:18:39] Forest: answer questions for your customers. It has access to your calendar. will book
[00:18:42] Forest: callers directly into your calendar uh for you so that you show up the next
[00:18:47] Forest: morning to a bunch of new work already scheduled. It took a long time to
[00:18:53] Forest: develop the right guard rails and give our customers the sort of permission
[00:19:00] Forest: ladder where they can start with it's just sort of more of an answering
[00:19:03] Forest: service. is taking a message, then it okay, now it can sort of go through a
[00:19:07] Forest: form, gather up all the lead and all the key information, but I'm still going to
[00:19:11] Forest: call them back and book them in to booking directly into the calendar.
[00:19:18] Forest: People actually go through that transition really quick, though, because
[00:19:20] Forest: again, going back to where we started, people are very willing to adopt
[00:19:25] Forest: technology if it's impacting their bottom line, if it's actually helping
[00:19:28] Forest: them save time, save money. 76% of phone calls come in after 5:00 p.m. 33% of
[00:19:35] Forest: phone calls go unanswered. And that's why of all the jobs that our AI
[00:19:39] Forest: receptionist is booking in, more than 30% of them get created after hours.
[00:19:44] Forest: That 30% those would just have been missed otherwise. That would have been
[00:19:48] Forest: lost business. So we're saving them so much time. We're booking them so much
[00:19:53] Forest: money that if it occasionally makes a mistake, they'll give that feedback and
[00:19:58] Forest: it will get smarter and it will get better.
[00:20:00] Forest: Um but they're very quick to actually progress up that trust curve.
[00:20:05] Wade: What want to zoom out again? You've you've got um you know, one of the
[00:20:09] Wade: things you hear a lot about kind of in media is this generational shift in the
[00:20:15] Wade: trades. You've got, you know, all these folks that, you know, spent their whole
[00:20:18] Wade: careers as a plumber and now there's sort of a new era of folks coming into
[00:20:22] Wade: the workforce. as this turnover happens, does that change the way like the the
[00:20:27] Wade: types of features, the types of interfaces that Jobber is delivering?
[00:20:31] Wade: Like how does how does that shift what you do with AI, what you don't do with
[00:20:34] Wade: AI when you have like a different p type of person or different age I guess of
[00:20:39] Wade: person that's using the technology? I think the next generation has been
[00:20:43] Forest: pretty um excited about adopting the technology.
[00:20:48] Forest: It basically homeowners their expectations have been changing very
[00:20:52] Forest: fast. the convenience economy. It's, you know, starts with Amazon, transitions
[00:20:58] Forest: into Uber, you get to Door Dashes. Uh, this idea of instant gratification, lots
[00:21:05] Forest: of notifications, lots of awareness at every step. I want to know exactly where
[00:21:09] Forest: my package is and getting tracked through my shop app. And that is raising
[00:21:14] Forest: the bar on the expectations that home services offer to homeowners. And the
[00:21:20] Forest: next generation gets that. So they're very quick to adopt technology that can
[00:21:26] Forest: let them represent themselves the way that the brands they like represent
[00:21:30] Forest: themselves. Let's talk about AI usage internally at
[00:21:34] Wade: Jobber. You know, you're obviously like paying a lot of attention to AI yourself
[00:21:40] Wade: uh since your school days. And so you certainly have, you know, folks inside
[00:21:45] Wade: your product and engineering org that are you, you've hired in that are
[00:21:49] Wade: obsessed with ML, obsessed with AI in the same way you are. But I'm going
[00:21:52] Wade: guess like the larger company is probably paying less attention to it
[00:21:57] Wade: compared to maybe uh these folks that are uh you know, specifically you know,
[00:22:02] Wade: hey, here for this. When did you first start thinking like, hey, maybe we
[00:22:07] Wade: should be rethinking how we use AI internally across the organization?
[00:22:14] Forest: I think we've been pretty excited about it again from day one. The moment it
[00:22:17] Forest: started producing value for the customers, we knew that there was a way
[00:22:21] Forest: to for it to start producing similar value for us. That's why yeah we so we
[00:22:25] Forest: started using the moment we had internal docs loaded into the AI to help our
[00:22:32] Forest: external customers we can start using that to help newly onboarding customer
[00:22:38] Forest: success representatives get up to speed faster as an example uh there are lots
[00:22:43] Forest: of ways we're already using it internally 76% of our inbound chats are
[00:22:48] Forest: now uh supported directly with AI with a fantastic seesat
[00:22:54] Forest: uh evenings, weekends, we're starting to offer uh a percentage of support with
[00:22:59] Forest: the same technology we're using for our AI receptionists uh and are wrapping
[00:23:04] Forest: that up all the time. There's many ways that we're uh exploring how to reimagine
[00:23:11] Forest: how our business runs and that's a really exciting thing.
[00:23:15] Wade: Are there specific like um cultural rituals or um things um you know tools
[00:23:23] Wade: that you've had to procure or approaches you've had to take that you know enable
[00:23:27] Wade: the organization empower the organization to do more of this on your
[00:23:30] Wade: own or you know is it mostly an effort run by you know kind of like a
[00:23:34] Wade: centralized team led by you like how how are you sort of going about getting it
[00:23:38] Wade: in the hands of folks? I really try and encourage everyone to
[00:23:45] Forest: look for ways to solve this and if they see an opportunity but don't can't quite
[00:23:50] Forest: get there then they should ask for help and they'll we'll partner with them to
[00:23:54] Forest: address it. But I want to push you through uh to everywhere. I think a
[00:23:58] Forest: great example would be a recent uh partnership we did with one of the sales
[00:24:02] Forest: managers where using Zapier. We connected to Gong, grab the transcript
[00:24:08] Forest: automatically, run it through a whole scoring system and uh pump it into a
[00:24:13] Forest: spreadsheet. So they have every call from every success rep or uh every sales
[00:24:18] Forest: rep with a bunch of different key scores and then that can all get aggregated
[00:24:22] Forest: through a pivot. So they can see how the different sales people are performing
[00:24:26] Forest: with like rich call scoring and a lot of coaching and advice comes out of it
[00:24:30] Forest: because we can identify the AI is spitting out, hey,
[00:24:34] Forest: this person, you know, they're a little weak on their intros. You know, they're
[00:24:38] Forest: they're not always consistently delivering the message. You know, this
[00:24:42] Forest: other person, they're they often forget to finish their call with like the next
[00:24:48] Forest: steps and the action items that they learned from the call. Uh and that's all
[00:24:52] Forest: powered by AI. And that came from one of our sales managers. Uh, one of our
[00:24:56] Forest: customer support managers recently used built a custom GPT for role playing and
[00:25:02] Forest: training that now everybody uh on that team uses to get up to speed faster.
[00:25:07] Forest: Those are things that are coming from the functional managers
[00:25:11] Forest: and uh we have a dedicated Slack channel called social AI where anybody at any
[00:25:15] Forest: time can go in, hey, I'm trying to do this. I'm a little stuck. Any advice?
[00:25:20] Forest: and they'll get lots of support from uh each other.
[00:25:24] Wade: That's super cool. I love that uh gong coaching uh workflow. We see that
[00:25:28] Wade: similar use case across the customer base quite a bit. Um are are there ways
[00:25:33] Wade: in which you sort of fan the flames of this like organic interest. It sounds
[00:25:36] Wade: like you've got this social AI channel. You've got, you know, a pretty
[00:25:39] Wade: responsive team that's like uh there for folks to to help. Um are there other
[00:25:44] Wade: efforts that really sort of have accelerated adoption internally? I think
[00:25:49] Forest: it's just beating the drum at every opportunity. You know, talk about town
[00:25:53] Forest: halls, talk about standups, talk about in Slack. And at that recent choose your
[00:25:57] Forest: impact event, uh many of our speakers were brought in specifically to talk to
[00:26:02] Forest: the company about AI, the future of AI, why this is exciting, why this is
[00:26:06] Forest: important, why this isn't something to be scared of, it's something to be
[00:26:10] Forest: embracing. But it's also something that you can't just passively sit back and
[00:26:14] Forest: let happen to you. you have to roll up your sleeves and you know control your
[00:26:18] Forest: own destiny when it comes to reinventing your role and reinventing the future
[00:26:22] Forest: with AI. Uh yeah, I mean that drum beat thing
[00:26:26] Wade: like resonates so much like that. We see people running hackathons, do show and
[00:26:30] Wade: tell at the all hands like uh you know Slack channels like the the drum beat
[00:26:35] Wade: really does seem to uh you know if you do it consistently it does seem to over
[00:26:39] Wade: the course of time meaningfully inlect uh folks uh usage of of the technology
[00:26:46] Wade: uh and allows them to like I I find it um I find it makes folks a little less
[00:26:50] Wade: fearful too like there's so much fear around AI right now and um the more
[00:26:54] Wade: people just use it the more they realize wow it's really impressive And also like
[00:26:59] Wade: it is yet another tool in the tool belt. Uh and so it just takes some of the fear
[00:27:04] Wade: away. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:07] Wade: Um you know you you have this like vision around uh business owners like
[00:27:11] Wade: supervising the business instead of AI like actually running every last inch.
[00:27:15] Wade: What what do you think the sort of future of the trades looks like with you
[00:27:20] Wade: know AI as a core collaborator as part of the work? No one is going to
[00:27:25] Forest: benefit more from AI than small service businesses. Uh for them, time is
[00:27:31] Forest: literally money. They are out and about in the field often like between
[00:27:38] Forest: different devices or devices on different platforms. You know, they're
[00:27:42] Forest: not sitting in front of a computer keeping everything organized. And yet
[00:27:46] Forest: even things like customer support, customer service, timely replies, like
[00:27:51] Forest: are really really important. These are all things that AI can really help with.
[00:27:55] Forest: I think in the future, one person will be able to we can remove all the toil.
[00:28:02] Forest: That's a tax on small businesses, right? All the things that they're doing that
[00:28:08] Forest: aren't paying the bills. You know, there most of that paperwork that's just a
[00:28:13] Forest: drain. That's takes away from the time that they should be spending growing
[00:28:17] Forest: their business or and earning money. Um, so if we can be helping with the
[00:28:22] Forest: transactional communications, with the scheduling, keeping track of the
[00:28:26] Forest: payroll, keeping track of the invoices, doing the follow-ups, running their
[00:28:30] Forest: campaigns for them, helping keep track of their websites, and updating their
[00:28:34] Forest: SEO and all the things it takes to run a business that are a distraction from the
[00:28:41] Forest: things that really matter. That allows business owners to focus on
[00:28:47] Forest: both doing the work, but having the meaningful interactions with the
[00:28:51] Forest: clients, having the meaningful interactions with their employees, those
[00:28:54] Forest: are the things that really matter that only they can do. And I'd love for the
[00:28:59] Forest: future though businesses to be focused 100% on that.
[00:29:02] Wade: Uh, I love that the in fact one of the very early usage of generative AI I saw
[00:29:09] Wade: that really made me go whoa was I was talking to a customer who um her wife
[00:29:15] Wade: was a gardener and uh she was really bad at sending out invoices to her her
[00:29:22] Wade: customers but love gardening. Uh, and I think this is like a story that's pretty
[00:29:25] Wade: true for a lot of folks in trades. Like they like the work, but the the back
[00:29:28] Wade: office stuff is like, ah, it's a it's a burden, right? And so he built this
[00:29:32] Wade: pretty simple use case. He called it voice to invoice. And uh, it was a
[00:29:37] Wade: little form on her phone that she could press record and she would just talk
[00:29:40] Wade: into it while she was out in the field and say like, "Hey, I talked to my
[00:29:42] Wade: customer. You want to buy this many of this flowers, this many of this flowers,
[00:29:46] Wade: the budget is this, da da da." And, you know, it would send it through a
[00:29:50] Wade: transcription app. uh it would uh spit the details into a spreadsheet and then
[00:29:55] Wade: it would spit out an invoice on the other side and Zapier sort of hooking
[00:29:58] Wade: all this stuff up and it was just like one of those things where I'm like, "Oh
[00:30:01] Wade: my god." Yeah.
[00:30:02] Wade: Like why wouldn't anyone use something like this that's running a small
[00:30:05] Wade: business? Like this is such an obvious thing to exist in the world and this guy
[00:30:10] Wade: just built it in five minutes. Uh like this technology is going to change the
[00:30:14] Wade: the way the economy works. I absolutely love that story. Uh I think
[00:30:18] Forest: it touches on two key things. one it we actually like I'm a big believer in that
[00:30:24] Forest: just overall user experience uh at March we shared uh hey jobber which
[00:30:30] Forest: is the voice interactions and the agent of experience where I can actually start
[00:30:34] Forest: working with your screen that's making a lot of progress so you can just walk
[00:30:38] Forest: around a house talking at your phone like hey it looks like this ceiling
[00:30:42] Forest: needs this work here and we're three walls we got to have a door frame and
[00:30:46] Forest: the quotes just building as you're talking I think those types experiences.
[00:30:51] Forest: That's the future for a lot of small service businesses. But you touched on
[00:30:56] Forest: something else there with that example, which is where we get a lot of
[00:30:59] Forest: inspiration for the opportunities is from our customers. Right. Over a year
[00:31:05] Forest: ago, we actually did a survey when we were trying to understand before we
[00:31:08] Forest: launched our first version of our co-pilot just to understand the
[00:31:12] Forest: sentiment. Right? In my head, I was worried that people were really fearful
[00:31:15] Forest: of AI. 72% of the market back then had already been playing with it, already
[00:31:20] Forest: trying to figure out how it could help give them an edge in business, right?
[00:31:24] Forest: These are the, you know, plumbers, landscapers, window washers. 72% of them
[00:31:29] Forest: were already trying to figure out how AI could help small businesses. So, when
[00:31:34] Forest: we're talking with clients, we always ask them, "How are you trying to use AI?
[00:31:37] Forest: What would you love AI to help solve for you?" And they all have a lot of
[00:31:41] Forest: answers. They've already thought deeply on this problem.
[00:31:45] Forest: Unsurprisingly, a lot of things they ask for don't require AI. That's just
[00:31:49] Forest: straight up product. But there are a lot of really brilliant
[00:31:54] Forest: uh ideas that they're bringing forward and in situations where it applies to a
[00:32:00] Forest: large enough base of customers, it makes it right to the top of the product list
[00:32:04] Forest: and now we're building it. And I'll give us a little plug that uh coming up
[00:32:10] Forest: September 25th we have our Java now event which is our uh twice a year uh
[00:32:15] Forest: event where we do a big set of releases and we have a dozen features most of
[00:32:19] Forest: them are AI powered and all of them are inspired directly from conversations
[00:32:24] Forest: with clients. You know it's funny you say uh a lot of
[00:32:29] Wade: the requests don't require AI. I we found that too where it sort of feels
[00:32:33] Wade: like the the advent of AI has caused customers to be more ambitious in their
[00:32:39] Wade: requests uh more visionary in their requests out of it's like I would wanted
[00:32:43] Wade: to do this that or the other. They may not know like, oh, does this need AI?
[00:32:47] Wade: Does this not need AI? Uh, and they don't have a good sense of what's easier
[00:32:50] Wade: or what's hard, but it's it's been fun to watch them be more demanding, I
[00:32:56] Wade: think, of the software that they use. And I think at the other side, we are
[00:32:59] Wade: going to build like a lot better software when when customers are
[00:33:02] Wade: dreaming bigger about the the possibilities of of what could be. On
[00:33:07] Wade: that note, like what what do you think um small business the trades like what
[00:33:13] Wade: are they not doing enough of with software that they should be doing? Like
[00:33:16] Wade: what are the things where you're just like gosh these are no-brainer areas and
[00:33:20] Wade: I'm surprised I don't see more folks um running their companies this way.
[00:33:26] Forest: Actually, payment collection is probably a big one. And I say this knowing that
[00:33:32] Forest: our customers only have so much control over how their customers pay them. But
[00:33:37] Forest: using like a proper credit card payment system like Jobber, you know, has
[00:33:42] Forest: payment collection built right into it. Uh but any form of credit card
[00:33:46] Forest: collection is not it's still an uphill battle. Checks make up the majority of
[00:33:53] Forest: financial transactions. And just this idea of like this piece of paper that
[00:33:58] Forest: you know you have to show up in person uh you know it's written out by hand
[00:34:03] Forest: it's getting lost like you know you have to actually like go to bank and now now
[00:34:08] Forest: it's getting a little easier but still it's go use a proper digital system to
[00:34:12] Forest: get paid like it's 2025 why are you still using paper it cash is still
[00:34:18] Forest: actually a pretty big thing and the most successful businesses we've seen again
[00:34:22] Forest: working with you know over 300,000 pros we've for 15 years who've had a chance
[00:34:26] Forest: to see a lot of businesses. The most successful ones are actually saying,
[00:34:30] Forest: "I'm sorry, I don't take cash or check uh credit card only because they're
[00:34:36] Forest: focused on the things that really matter." Most of the time, you can push
[00:34:39] Forest: your client to pay on that uh format and it lets you everything's digitized,
[00:34:44] Forest: everything's tracked automatically. So if you need to start doing reporting,
[00:34:47] Forest: understanding your job costing, uh it improves your cash flow because you can
[00:34:52] Forest: get, you know, instant access to funds. I'm always surprised that that is such
[00:34:57] Forest: an uphill battle in this market. You know, it's funny you mentioned that.
[00:35:02] Wade: So um my wife and I, we lived in the Bay Area for 10 years. You know, of course,
[00:35:09] Wade: everybody's using like the most modern technology uh to go about this. And so,
[00:35:14] Wade: you know, in my mind, checks. That's a thing of the past. To your point, it's
[00:35:17] Wade: 2025. What are we doing here? Well, we moved back to to central Missouri, uh,
[00:35:22] Wade: you know, at the the start of the pandemic. And, you know, we're starting
[00:35:26] Wade: to work with, you know, some local small businesses on a handful of things.
[00:35:30] Wade: Everyone takes check. And we're like, what is going on here?
[00:35:34] Wade: Like, we're going to have to order checks. How do you order checks? I don't
[00:35:37] Wade: know how to order checks. So, you I think there's this this right
[00:35:42] Wade: here. I think is something that one, you know, when you're in the middle when
[00:35:47] Wade: you're outside the AC chamber, you actually notice things like this. You
[00:35:50] Wade: notice that like, oh, there is a different in going about this. And two,
[00:35:53] Wade: it also speaks to that other thing you were talking about, which is go spend
[00:35:57] Wade: time with your customers. You're spending time with them. You're going to
[00:36:00] Wade: understand like, oh, maybe there are some things that I thought was a solved
[00:36:04] Wade: problem that turns out there's still a huge opportunity here. Like most things
[00:36:09] Wade: are still pen and paper, most things are still checks. Um, we can still figure
[00:36:13] Wade: this out. There's still work to be done here.
[00:36:15] Forest: Yep. Uh, I love it, Forest. Well, that is a
[00:36:19] Wade: that is an incredible story to end on. Uh, thank you so much for for joining us
[00:36:24] Wade: here on the agents of scale. I think uh the story here like pretty perfectly
[00:36:28] Wade: captures um you know what it looks like to to scale impact with AI without with
[00:36:34] Wade: like a deep sense of focus on humans, deep sense of focus on customers, and a
[00:36:39] Wade: deep sense of focus on like pragmatism. like this isn't just like AI for AI's
[00:36:43] Wade: sake. This is like we're here to solve a problem. So, uh thanks for joining on
[00:36:47] Wade: the show and uh we'll Yeah, go ahead. Just one last thing. It only because
[00:36:51] Forest: it's driving me nuts and I got to get it out uh before we end. I stumbled over
[00:36:56] Forest: the name of the podcast earlier. I accidentally called it Masters of Scale
[00:36:58] Forest: and Masters of Home Service. Uh that's the name of the podcast. I don't want to
[00:37:02] Forest: be claiming uh somebody else's podcast. There you go. You heard it folks. If you
[00:37:06] Wade: want to if you want to check out the job podcast, it's Masters of Service there.
[00:37:10] Wade: It's got all sorts of great tips and tricks on how to run your service
[00:37:13] Wade: business. At least that's what I'm going to assume it's about.
[00:37:15] Forest: Absolutely. Uh awesome, Forest. Well, thanks for
[00:37:18] Wade: joining me. A credible conversation and uh you know, we'll catch you all next
[00:37:22] Wade: time on Agents of Scale.