Born For The Trades: A Home Service Podcast
00:21:10 · Marcel, Mandeep Bhalla
[00:21:10] S1: Well, I'm not quite sure I fully understand the question. Biggest mistakes of... [00:21:14] S0: Yeah, some the biggest mistakes or lessons you learned in building for the trades, especially for the home service industry in building Broccoli AI, you both together coming from operations and tech background? [00:21:28] S1: Well, I know this is going to sound strange, but you know, we've been winning every day. And I can just say the reason for that is because of the philosophy that we've carried all the way through. And the reason AJ and Adi and I met is because AJ and Adi have worked so tirelessly to be on the Ground Floor with us, with me, shoulder to shoulder, right here at my desk asking me what my problems are and how can they fix them. And you know what Mandeep, that has not changed. It hasn't changed one bit. They are still and so if there was any mistake, would say maybe it's they're not in the office enough because they're out in the world with the contractors. They spend hours and hours and hours on the road next to their contractors to really hear what is the problem and how can we solve it for you. And that's not gonna change. That's how we built, that's how we've grown. And that's our mandate is to bring something healthy to every single contractor that we meet. And I just think, you know, talking about mistakes, I'm sure there are some maybe AJ can think of a few. You know, the only one I can think of is, gosh, I'd love to have them back at home base a little bit more. It's not going to change. We're going to keep doing that till the end.
00:21:28 · Marcel, Mandeep Bhalla, AJ Jain
[00:21:28] S1: Well, I know this is going to sound strange, but you know, we've been winning every day. And I can just say the reason for that is because of the philosophy that we've carried all the way through. And the reason AJ and Adi and I met is because AJ and Adi have worked so tirelessly to be on the Ground Floor with us, with me, shoulder to shoulder, right here at my desk asking me what my problems are and how can they fix them. And you know what Mandeep, that has not changed. It hasn't changed one bit. They are still and so if there was any mistake, would say maybe it's they're not in the office enough because they're out in the world with the contractors. They spend hours and hours and hours on the road next to their contractors to really hear what is the problem and how can we solve it for you. And that's not gonna change. That's how we built, that's how we've grown. And that's our mandate is to bring something healthy to every single contractor that we meet. And I just think, you know, talking about mistakes, I'm sure there are some maybe AJ can think of a few. You know, the only one I can think of is, gosh, I'd love to have them back at home base a little bit more. It's not going to change. We're going to keep doing that till the end. [00:22:51] S0: Love it. [00:22:53] S2: Yeah. So what we've converted or we've changed our biggest, like what we thought was a disadvantage to a huge advantage is that we don't come from the traits. [00:23:05] S0: Yeah,
00:23:05 · Mandeep Bhalla, AJ Jain
[00:23:05] S0: Yeah, [00:23:05] S2: we are just great engineers. So from day one, we knew that we don't know anything about this market and what our clients want. So what way to learn is to go and talk to them and let them tell us what's the problem. And then we take that problem and work backwards to build a solution. So the disadvantage of not having any insight about this market and the customer and go after It's just like we don't have any biases. We don't sit in a conference room in San Francisco and debate on what we should build next, because we are not the best people to decide that it's the contractor who's in the field who knows what their pain points are. So Marcel's point like we were in Boise and Salt Lake at the start of this week, we just came back last night. And next week, Oklahoma City to onboard another company. It's like, every company is unique. We don't impose broccoli on anyone. We don't take any company for granted. So there were a lot of learnings for sure. We've made so many mistakes. And we always go back and it's like, we can't do that. And it has worked really well, where you don't have any bias, you don't have any other assumptions, you take your customers board for what it is, and then just be a good engineer.
00:24:27 · Mandeep Bhalla
[00:24:27] S0: That's amazing. You know, learned from going out in the field and meeting your customers, boots on the ground and seeing what are the challenges and what's going to work the best. You come back and you make changes, tweaks, or, like, new innovations in your product to make sure you're you're delivering the results. Right? That's Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Love love this journey. Like, over... Overall, it it feels like it's a magical journey. How you guys met and created this product and it's working fine. Booking jobs, you're actually solving problems and amazing ROI that home service contractors are seeing there. That's amazing. All right, let's come into the last segment here. What does the future look like for Broccoli AI and for the contractors who adopt this early?
00:25:24 · AJ Jain
[00:25:24] S2: Yeah, we 100% believe that AI is still in its early days. And with time, it's just going to become like, we just use it like you're going to use it in your personal lives to order a pizza to call a plumber, you're going to use it internally to optimize your operations. So we don't create any kind of fear or uncertainty around like, jump on the ship today, otherwise you're going to be left behind. It's just, if you care about your customers, you'll find the best solution. And today we believe AI is one of the best solutions out there. So it's just like a no brainer for us. If we think about it, we use AI internally at Broccoli to build so much stuff. I've educated myself about how to hire the first marketing hire because I've never done marketing. So that's helped me personally as well to evolve and learn. So I think it's a great and very powerful technology. From a Broccoli point of view, we are a company that is we treat ourselves as an AI partner for the trades. We never started the company to build an AI call center. So Broccoli is evolving. We don't do this for other companies or other industries like financial services or insurance companies. We are just like as you said, Mandeep, at the start of the call, we were not born in the trades, but we are going to die for the trades. So laser focused and we use it properly evolve into doing much more, care about the technician, we care about it. So Broccoli is going to evolve and try to automate the business and make it more efficient and delightful for the end customer as well.
00:27:03 · Mandeep Bhalla, AJ Jain
[00:27:03] S0: That's amazing. You gave me goosebumps here. I love what you said. And again, as the owner of agency, just home service industry, not any other niche, we are born for the trades and we're gonna die for the trade. Yeah. That's that's that's I think it's in our DNA and you are evolving, learning every single day. It's not like, you know, you have built the product and let's forget. Yeah. I think things doesn't work like that. You have to keep evolving, keep learning and implementing with the real experiences, with the feedback. Right? You're always open to the feedback. How can you improve and implement new things? So that's amazing. My last one, maybe you both can answer. If you could give one piece of advice to a contractor who wants to grow but doesn't know where to start, what would it be? [00:28:00] S2: Marcel, I'm gonna let you go.