What Will AI Mean for Your Career—and Your Company?
AI is changing how businesses operate, and the elevator industry isn’t immune. In this live conversation, I met with Jonathan Taub, President of Fieldboss, who has over twenty years of experience in software strategy, implementation, and customer success running high-performing operations. We discussed what AI means for elevator professionals and companies, what opportunities and concerns are emerging, and how it could affect company valuations, job responsibilities, and the value of employees’ skills. The goal of this conversation is to clarify: where an elevator company should start with AI, what risks companies should consider before adopting new technology, and what AI could mean for your business, your skills, and your career.
Transcript:
Matt Allred (00:00)
Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Jonathan (00:02)
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Allred (00:04)
Thank you. Glad to be here. So thank you, audience members, as well. Today, joining us is Jonathan Tobb, president and CEO of Fieldboss, a field service software company built entirely on the Microsoft stack for elevator contractors. Jonathan has spent more than 25 years in the Microsoft business applications industry and has become one of the sharper voices on what AI actually means for contractors, not the hype version, the operational one.
He spoke on this exact topic at the NAEC Educational Conference back in March. And today we’re continuing the themes with updated information from his March session. Jonathan tells us sorry, jumped ahead there. Jonathan, tell us about your background and how you found your way into the elevator industry.
Jonathan (00:51)
25 years of sobering to hear out loud.
Matt Allred (00:54)
Yeah.
Jonathan (00:54)
gone by in a flash. I graduated business school and I I got a job at KPMG, pretty much the only firm that would hire me. and I got it got hired late in the process, which was humbling because it was usually pretty easy to get an audit job, but I ended up in the real estate and insurance
Matt Allred (01:13)
Okay.
Jonathan (01:13)
practice, which was completely new for me.
I ended up s getting my certification, my chartered accounting designation then, which is now a CPA designation. And I went into accounting because my father owned an accounting firm and he was he did very well. He had some very strong clients that, you know, he he you know propelled him, you know, a small company, but you’re only as successful as your clients. So I thought I would just get my designation take over. Boy was I wrong, because it was all personal services and he was really good at it, and I was not nearly as good. But
I liked playing video games and flight simulator, so I knew how to build computers and clones. So I started selling them to the clients and on the side,
Matt Allred (01:53)
Interesting.
Jonathan (01:54)
yeah, ’cause I was just an auditor.
wasn’t like fun, but it was when computer accounting was coming online. So I ended up I ended up becoming a micros a great plain software reseller because I went to Vegas to the computer electronics show and there was a guy there promoting a 32-bit Windows accounting system. I thought it was the greatest thing since Slight Spread. Although they didn’t have purchasing and sales or processing at the time I still thought it was the future of accounting. So I signed up that product Great Plain Software ended up becoming
Microsoft Dynamics when they got acquired by Microsoft, which became Microsoft Dynamics 365. and you know, sort of grew a business. I left the accounting firm that my father was, there’s no way I was gonna get anywhere with it. And I went
Matt Allred (02:39)
Gotcha.
Jonathan (02:40)
into the computer accounting business with his clients. And 25 years later, you had staff, you had clients. Slowly, here we are. That’s what happened.
Matt Allred (02:48)
Yeah. How how does your experience in software strategy implementation and and operation shape the way that you view AI?
Jonathan (02:58)
well, you know, there’s been in the course of all those years, tr like big events. So, you know, I think back about when they went from prem to cloud and then mobile became a thing, which is when we really got into the elevator space and now we have we have AI. So in all cases they you know, the hype was how transformational these things are gonna be, but like
It’s kind of if you step back, it’s all sort of the same theme where you know there’s a shift, there’s gonna be productivity gains, life will get easier, opens up lots of opportunity for this and that. So I I’m you know, and I’m not immune to some of the hype either. It’s easy to get sucked in, but I have you know, my moments where I step back and I get clarity. And I to me it’s just another innovation for we can, you know, exploit for fun and profit. Yes, it’s listen, it’s big.
But y we we don’t have to lose our heads about it.
Matt Allred (03:47)
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah,
yeah. Well, and it sounds like you’ve been at it, you know, through a few different iter iterations, right? Whether whether it was the the initial, you know, Windows-based accounting. And then, you know, you’ve you’ve seen a different way, few different waves of this type of thing. But but yeah, to your point, it’s maybe not it sounds like we don’t need to to lose our heads about it. At the same time, it is, it’s probably the, in my opinion, the the biggest of the waves, right? There’s a lot more.
That it can do this time. So yeah.
Jonathan (04:18)
I th absolutely. I mean,
I don’t wanna I didn’t wanna like discount it my comments. It’s both. It it you know, it’s big it’s it’s it’s really, really, really big. But you know what? All our clients make their money installing, maintaining, repairing elevators. You know, a lot of themes still hold true. we just have more to work with now.
Matt Allred (04:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’m just gonna insert one quick question. How did you you mentioned getting into elevators when when kind of the mobile thing, what was it that led you to to choose elevators?
Jonathan (04:50)
Well, this is a inter for me it’s an interesting story. Glad you asked that. So we had a diverse practice group, money many different industries were selling accounting systems. And then a generator guy called and he needed a maintenance scheduling system, and he happened to have the accounting product we were supporting. And Microsoft came out with dynamic CRM. And
Matt Allred (05:10)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (05:10)
I had a perfect storm of a guy at Microsoft that had had it up with meetings and stuff, and he was looking to do something new. I was close with him.
and he’s mechanically minded. And he we were talking, you know, Microsoft was also pushing their partners to not be in like horizontal software space, you have to verticalize, no pun intended. And this guy who I really liked and trusted said, Look, look at all the trucks running around the streets with ladders on the roof and vans. It’s like field service is huge and it’s so gross. Anyone that would go into the software business for that has got to be crazy. It’s really hard. So we should do it. And he had a whole, he was
really good at the CRM stuff. And I also had a close friend that was left Microsoft.
Who actually had the patent for TAD browsing. So I had a perfect storm of like an accounting consultancy. I had a guy that knew the CRM side of it and I had a developer. And it was like, there’s no way I could live with myself if I didn’t jump right into this thing. So he kind of talked me into the market. A generator guy called looking for a scheduling and maintenance solution. And then an elevator guy called right after that. And we did a little research and we realized that the elevator market was pretty antiquated in terms of business systems. And we went to like one of the one of the NAC shows at the time. And we were
swarmed. There was just nothing. And I thought, this
Matt Allred (06:26)
Interesting.
Jonathan (06:26)
is going to be pretty easy. Turned out to be like really hard to make a sale, but you know how the elevator industry can be once it gets in your blood, like it’s kind of does something to your wiring of your brain and there’s no getting out.
Matt Allred (06:40)
Yeah,
yeah. So I was gonna share a an audience comment. AI is good if used properly, they say when people rely on it to do their jobs, then is when you have problems. So we’ll get it Yeah.
Jonathan (06:50)
Well yeah, yeah.
Matt Allred (06:52)
We’ll get into that even more and and I know that there’s appreciate that comment and and yeah, there’s a there’s a lot to come.
Jonathan (06:59)
We’ll
be talking a lot about that in the next little bit here for sure.
Matt Allred (07:03)
Yep.
Absolutely. Absolutely. so in last last March you spoke at the NAEC Educational Conference and you you know, you talked about this this exact theme. And I know when we talked before, you said, so much has changed since then. Talk to me about that. What has changed? And I think that’s one of the scary things about AI is it it does seem to change so fast that you may you may learn something and a few weeks later it’s no longer relevant.
Jonathan (07:28)
I wouldn’t say that you learn something and it’s no longer relevant because the this stuff builds on itself. So that I actually
Matt Allred (07:33)
Good.
Jonathan (07:34)
don’t agree with. I mean there’s all the hype that you read in the headlines, it’s like coming at us like endlessly. It’s infinite, it feels like. And especially even like this morning I was looking on a browser, you know, between meetings and the Chinese Communist Party’s worried about the impact on AI on their ability to keep power.
Matt Allred (07:51)
I’m sure.
Jonathan (07:51)
You know, so
like, you know, it never stops and it gets seems like it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I think since the show, I like to present at these shows because I it forces you to learn something you don’t know. And I really, really did a deep dive into like the sort of the the mechanics of it all. And I spent a lot of time at the show talking, you know, I remember asking the room, like, you know, who here’s budgeting for tokens? Nobody even knew what a token was in that room, which was not unreasonable. And so, you know, and and then since the show though, which was I think in March.
For us, like if I really want to focus on elevators and elevator contractors, Microsoft released a lot of stuff that really puts it in the hands of the users and the company. So they they they put they they put AI right into the platform. So it’s right embedded in the sales app, the lot in the accounting app. So it’s no longer like you just ask it a question, you get an answer. Now we could actually do things for real. So that that I think that’s
Matt Allred (08:46)
Okay. S so more of the the agent right.
Is that right? The agentic. Okay.
Jonathan (08:50)
Yeah, there’s more like
agents out of the box that you can leverage. Also, I think what’s changed since I spoke was just governance, security, all the all of the guardrails you need, I think for me is something I would highlight a lot more now. And also like, you know, I don’t I don’t know what the equivalent Moore’s Law is in AI, but also like models are getting a lot cheaper. You can do a lot more. So things have just got it’s just gotten like bigger, stronger, faster.
You know, but the sort of basic tenants of the elevator industry haven’t changed.
Matt Allred (09:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Well and and back to your comment, right? I I may have misspoke when I said everything changes, but I think it just it just grows. It becomes bigger and more complex and builds on builds on what it was, but it but it is growing fast.
Jonathan (09:35)
You know how I like to explain it to people or to myself? think of it as a fully loaded plane, full of fuel, full of luggage or full of people rolling down the runway.
And it started lumbering down. You’re going slow. It’s not so bad. But it feels like it’s now we we’re getting airborne and we’re starting to climb. And as like you get higher, like there’s less resistance in air and the thing starts going faster and faster. Feels like we’re or like a rocket leaving, you know, gravity and it accelerates.
Matt Allred (10:02)
Okay. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (10:03)
I feel like we’re we’re starting to like really get rolling.
Matt Allred (10:07)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and the question that comes to mind, you know, where’s it going? Right? That’s always the question.
Jonathan (10:15)
Well, again, it’s easy to get sucked into the headlines and all the hype and everything. It’s like where’s where’s an elevator contractor going? And that’s how you can ground yourself, you know.
Matt Allred (10:24)
Mm-hmm. Good point. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Jonathan (10:28)
Well that’s how I I keep myself sane. Just go back to first principles.
Matt Allred (10:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it’s that’s a good that’s a good way of thinking it, right? It’s it’s just a tool. So where wherever you’re going it can help you get there. why should people in the elevator industry owners, managers, office employees, why should they pay attention to AI now?
Jonathan (10:49)
the because because it’s it’s gonna impact everybody it’s gonna impact you you like all the workers in the industry, field, back office. It’s gonna impact the owners. Like, you know, we’ve been at this a long time. These businesses are personal.
Matt Allred (11:07)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (11:07)
And
you know, a lot people’s and identities and family wealth is wrapped up in these things. And AI is gonna have an impact on valuations, gonna have an impact on jobs, it’s gonna have an impact on safety for sure. It’s gonna have an impact on the traveling public, the building owners. So it’s everywhere. And it is really, really, really big. So, you know, I y I think
to to sort of sort of sit back and say, well, you know, we’ll see what happens. Nothing’s gonna change. I actually think it’s huge and doesn’t matter what your role is in the industry, there’s a there’s an existential impact to your job or your or your assets. That’s how I
Matt Allred (11:49)
Sure.
Jonathan (11:49)
feel.
Matt Allred (11:49)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What do you hope people will understand differently by the end of this conversation?
Jonathan (11:57)
I guess not to be afraid of this, but to take it seriously and get on it. You know, I think also it would be nice if people left this thing questioning like some of the stuff they’re hearing, getting second opinions. There’s a you know, I I I think though at the end of the day, if they if if I did one good thing under this podcast, it would get somebody to like get a subscription to one of the AI, you know, hyperscalers or a and just like start using it, learning it, start moving your s your life along.
Matt Allred (12:25)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that’s great. So when we hear the the term AI, what are we talking about from you know, from your research and and knowledge?
Jonathan (12:35)
Yeah, well, AI’s been around a long time. It doesn’t just come out like, you know, when anthropics ship the legal tools and the SAS apocalypse hit us all. It was it’s way before that. AI is like an umbrella term like biology or chemistry. There’s a lot of like subsets to it. you know, it’s it’s technologies that like help predict, understand, create, and act.
So you know, sort of like five kind of a hierarchy of five core technologies that like spell check is AI in a way, right? So
You know, and if you sort of dial it down to like our business solution, again, I’m not trying make this podcast about our product, but like, you know, automation, you know, a billing automation or getting like an automated procedure done like a macro in a in a software product. That’s AI, in my opinion. And then with the when ChatGPT came out with you know, I th OpenAI came out with all the stuff and Claude, then you’re getting into like AI assistants that could like, you know, you can query them and ask questions and they have these models, data sets that they trained on. So you went
From like sort of macros and automation to something you could ask questions of, but it’s basically looking at a data set. And then copilots came along, which is what Microsoft branded theirs, but that would like give you more of an agent-like experience. It would take not only the model that was trained on, but data that you give it access to would do something. And now,
Matt Allred (13:55)
Okay.
Jonathan (13:56)
you know, there’s like now then we’re into agents where they you know you can sort of set a goal and they’ll actually just do it. So there’s a hierarchy of of capability in AI.
But it’s ch generally just a a a family of tools to achieve a certain kind of outcome.
Matt Allred (14:14)
Gotcha. Okay. So y you mentioned briefly AI governance just a minute ago. What what did that mean for for our listeners? How how should they think about that?
Jonathan (14:24)
Well, When you hear about the term governance and guardrails, think of it like, with AI, you you’ve got your colleagues who who wear polo shirts and logoed polo shirts in the elevator industry. We all do that. Well, think of having a bunch of colleagues with no heads and no polo shirts, right? So you’ve got people you work with that are running around doing stuff. So, you know, like who manages them? What data can they look at? You know?
What decisions can they do on their own? Where would somebody need to intervene? You know, who approves their work? How do we monitor their performance? That’s governance.
Matt Allred (15:01)
For sure. Well and and you’ve talked about, you know, AI it kind of embedded in the in the systems you use. But if you if you had like, you know, Chat GPT and you upload your PNL and say, Hey, you know, give me an analysis, well, as I understand it, that now lives on the internet and anybody can or or out in cyberspace.
Jonathan (15:19)
Depends on the account you have. I do searches to see if that happens in the elevator industry. I do that for fun when my wife’s watching some show I don’t want to watch. so yeah, like I’m not gonna say if I found anything or not, but you know, the day will come where you can make an agent to go look for me. I suppose I should be doing that, paying more attention to what’s going on in the room.
Matt Allred (15:44)
So it includes that though, the the risks of okay, not only does does Bob the headless you know, employee not need to see this, but it doesn’t need to be sneaking out on on the internet available.
Jonathan (15:54)
It’s more than that.
You don’t want like, you know, like these are systems of records. You don’t want the agent writing to like a database, you know, over over like bypassing the business rules and things.
Matt Allred (16:04)
For sure.
Jonathan (16:05)
So like it’s amazing what like it’s absolutely incredible, like, you know, even what we do internally to run our own business. And you gotta like really you you you you really gotta think through who can do what because
they can start doing things at scale and then like it’s one thing, okay, a client blows something up. We can call Microsoft and roll back the database at a certain point in time and keep going, which is ugly unto itself. These things, doing things at scale because something you know got over overlooked is terrifying to me.
Matt Allred (16:36)
When you say to scale, do you mean over the whole enterprise system? Is that what we’re talking about or?
Jonathan (16:41)
It just I just think about like some kind of recurring process that just writes th thousands of transactions that it shouldn’t do.
Matt Allred (16:48)
Mm, mm.
Jonathan (16:49)
You know, just when I say scale I’m talking about volume of data.
That’s you know, these are the black places I go to in my industry. You know, like so we have a like a you we got over 125 clients, you know, we got it and it’s our it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re okay and and you know, we are very, very careful about this stuff. But God forbid we get a phone call where some system’s gone you know, we missed something and like tons of data got overwritten or somebody, a client goes hires some like, you know, contractor to do something, know something about AI and
does something we don’t know about, you know, how do we how do
Matt Allred (17:26)
Right.
Jonathan (17:27)
we fix that?
Matt Allred (17:28)
Right. So so to boil it back to to governance, it’s really keeping a lid on it in the way that it needs to operate because if it gets outside that lid, and we got one of our listeners saying, you know, what are the resources out there to help a company establish AI policies and and training principles? because it it does seem, at least in my mind, right, it’s a little bit what what are the fence what what are the rules, right? What are the
Jonathan (17:53)
Brother, yeah, well, that’s why we’re on the Microsoft platform for a reason. You log in with your
Matt Allred (17:57)
Mm.
Jonathan (17:57)
username and password. If your tenant’s set up properly, like you get all that governance as part of the platform.
Matt Allred (18:03)
Sure, sure.
Jonathan (18:03)
You know,
if you’re on Amazon with something that somebody wrote and using Google and you’re using different platforms and there’s different handoffs and stuff, that’s where the vulnerabilities happen. So, you know, for me personally, like I sleep at night because we don’t have to pay we don’t have to fund this, we don’t have to design it. It’s all part of the platform. You when you license a piece of software, you inherit that.
But if you’re, you know, and and and And this is big for the elevator industry, ’cause there’s a lot of different ways to run an elevator contractor.
Matt Allred (18:31)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (18:31)
And if you’re using multiple platforms, multiple pieces of software, you have different people giving you advice or doing things, that’s where you start creating like airspace between the things and things happen. You know, so I think if you want to inherit governance, just use a proven product that’s that does that for you.
Matt Allred (18:50)
Okay. So so in other words, it’s a risk to yeah, use use you know, s just some some bolt on or or maybe maybe you’re pulling it into your system but you don’t have it well corralled. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (19:03)
Listen, it it’s all situational specific. It depends on
the use case. Like, you know, a lot of the really interesting AI solutions are very, very, very specific. So maybe the risk isn’t as big. But you know, what happens is like say, you know you’re working away at a certain process you’ve done your, you know, for years and then you suddenly
I don’t know, you meet somebody in a bar who knows AI and then you like bring them back to your office and they say, Hey, let me do this for you, and I’ll save you like, you know, 15 minutes an hour for the next like three months, and you sort of say, Yeah, let’s do it, and they miss something, that’s where that’s when you have risks. I’m sort of making a joke about just bringing someone off, you know, in test give, you know, but everybody seems to know somebody that knows a lot about AI. There’s a lot of people that have really embraced it, a lot of really smart people that have talent.
But it’s one thing to know, like to to do something in isolation on a business system is risky.
Matt Allred (19:55)
Yeah, yeah. No, I I appreciate that. Well, and and one of our one of our listeners is saying it feels overwhelming to figure this out for my company, to be honest. Right. There’s there’s so many options.
Jonathan (20:02)
It is. That is absolutely
real and legitimate. And you if you don’t feel that way, there’s something wrong. Like, listen, we I have access to such a mate like both internally and you know in our network. And it is really hard for all of us. So that’s legit.
Matt Allred (20:20)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What what are some things that the AI can genuinely do well today?
Jonathan (20:26)
Well, I mean, it’s all about pattern recognition at its core, like, you know, all these sort of responses it does or all these agents. It’s ultimately just running math and looking at probabilities and figuring out the most likely result. so you know, how how does that like capability or recognizing power patterns translate into like like you know the elevator industry?
Well, an example could be like sensor data coming off an elevator. There’s an anomaly. you know, that you know, you can get an alert, we can turn that into a service ticket that gets dispatched. You know, so it’s just, you know, that’s an example of a pattern, you know, sort of anomaly that can trigger an event. Another thing could be like in the in in our accounting system, Business Central, Microsoft ships a payment predictor, a late payment predictor. So it’s just looking at patterns of behavior of a customer, cash flow.
wise the next thing you know you get a notice that you might want to look at this thing. I think you know so there’s alerts about things that don’t smell right like rustling in the leaves like someone better get on this that’s where you want a human on it but you can actually use agents too. I think all the
Matt Allred (21:33)
Kind of a reminder tickler, yeah.
Jonathan (21:36)
it’s all different you know based on the companies even in the within the elevator industry but the other thing that you know
AI can do really well is just some of the administrative grunt work, the repetitive
Matt Allred (21:46)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (21:46)
stuff, data entry matching, reconciliations and stuff, it does really well. But anything that needs like a human judgment, like that’s where you still want to have a person with a real head and a logo t-shirt involved.
Matt Allred (22:00)
Right. Right. Well I I was thinking about some some comments you’d made before, just talking about, you know, the where where it’s being oversold and and I think maybe even the comment earlier from our our audience, right, that if you’re trying to delegate your job to AI and and just want to turn your brain off, that that’s a major red flag.
Jonathan (22:20)
Well, I mean, that’s like anything in life. Okay. You
Matt Allred (22:23)
Yeah.
Jonathan (22:23)
know, and you know, I mean, if my kids are in their late twenties, early thirties, but if I had kids getting into school, like I want them learning things the old fashioned way because you need to have the fundamentals to get through life. And it’s the same in the elevator industry. Like there’s no shutting off your brain and letting the I AI do it. It just frees you up to do the work that you are better, you know, that that’s a better use of your time.
I so no, like there’s like I I I almost take offense to that kind of sentiment, you know, because that there’s so much upside to this stuff. I I t I think what offense is the wrong, sorry to interrupt you. It just it just tells me that those kinds of like fears are coming from an uneducated place and it’s time to roll up your sleeves and understand really what’s going on here.
Matt Allred (23:12)
Good. Well a and and speaking of what what are some AI develop developments that you’re really excited about?
Jonathan (23:22)
Well
I guess it’s, you know, I’m I’m I’m secretly really intrigued by the Chinese models that are available that you can get for way cheaper than the frontier. So by frontier model, we’re talking about like open AI, anthropic, like the stuff that costs real money. But there’s there’s much cheaper models that you can get to do certain tasks that are low risk. So it kind of like, how do you budget for all this stuff? And you know, like what do you use where? you know, competition is good for everybody, and you know, America’s got like a huge investment in data centers and all these.
you know, major, major tech companies. And then you’ve got like, you know, just pick on China for a second. They’ve got like a huge labor force dedicated to like, you know, I guess replicating and coming at it cheaper, which is good for a lot of businesses. So I think what I’m excited about is sort of the potential to apply compute at, you know, for our
for for a normal company at a much more cost-effective way. And there’s still a place for these frontier models to be used for certain types of processes, but we just have more options, more competitions, more just gives us more options. The other thing that I’m really into is like the IoT stuff. I don’t feel that it’s really been like taken in as well as it will be. There’s no really I don’t I can’t point a finger as to why.
But I think that there’s a huge opportunity to like be able to execute in the elevator business using the telemetry, combine it with agentic workflows. the other thing that
I’m like really, really excited about. Mostly it’s because I’m seeing what are we working on internally is just the the the reporting and the so we’re taking the data and putting into like a lake house and then being able to do stuff much differently with AI. So you we got like data in the elevators, we got data in the field, we got data in the accounting system, we got data in sales, got data everywhere. And right now, like what it the way it used to be is like you would use like a viewing tool, you could use Excel or Power BI or whatever, and like sort of query the stuff and get an answer back.
But now with having all this stuff dumped into like a like a lake house, like a like a like a big data lake, they call it, we can query and do stuff with that way, way, way, way faster. So the potential for insights in real time and having agents work off that is like it opens up a whole whack of possibilities how to run these businesses. That’s really
Matt Allred (25:41)
Very cool.
Jonathan (25:41)
big and no one’s talking about it. But that’s probably the future of these systems.
Matt Allred (25:45)
Awesome. Awesome. So I want to talk for just a minute about what AI could mean for elevator companies specifically. And I I just want to give a quick shout out to the to the audience. You know, if your company’s already committed to or using AI on a regular basis, go ahead and put a note in the chat. I I would just be curious how many people are already kind of marching down this path, whether they’ve, you know, got a a plan or not. I’d be I’d be interested. but the first question for you in this regard is when you look across the elevator industry.
Where do you see the greatest opportunities for AI?
Jonathan (26:19)
well, you know, you there’s there’s two ways to answer this question. Like you can generalize and then, you know, what I find is my experience has been, you know, all these companies are snowflakes. So they all have their unique challenges and it’s often based on the people that work there. So they may have a complement of staff that are good at one thing and they’re they may not have, you know, be it IT or process people or you know, they’re always missing somebody. We always are. It doesn’t matter how big
Matt Allred (26:44)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (26:45)
you are, you always have a hole you feel like you need to fill.
So, you know, so and so the opportunities are gonna be site specific, but if you sort of take a step back and look at the industry, you know, like these are businesses that are valued based on EBITDA. So you just gotta follow the money, you know. So I think y you know, in terms of like what’s what what does the industry struggle with, you know, it’s getting the time in and the bills out the door.
So I think the biggest opportunities, like if we can solve whatever we can do, whatever incremental gains we can do around, you know, there’s a whole like sales and proposal turnaround time and dispatch stuff. Just park
Matt Allred (27:26)
Sure. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (27:27)
that for a second. But once the guy gets dispatched and he’s out there like about to do a job, anything we can do to make sort of what happens after that frictionless is money in people’s pockets and time back in their life.
So I think the real uptime or the real upside in the field has to do with you know, just getting these guys to do a better job. You know, I it’s such a cliche, first-time fix rates, but doing it right the first time and documenting everything so that we can get a bill out the door that they’re gonna pay with the right evidence.
and accounts for all the nuances around the contract, that problem can be solved today. And that’s kind of where we’re focusing because we you know so we want to give a much better experience to the guy in the field so he can be part of the team.
And then in the back office and all stuff comes in, it’s like, how do we clean this up and get it invoice ready? It doesn’t matter if it’s like an AIA bill or a maintenance run or just a quoted repair. just what we can do in there’s so many because when you think about the minutiae that go into like this industry, that’s what kills you.
So I think I’m really excited about all of that. And then, you know, I’m sort of, you know, responsible for sales around here. So anything you can do to turn around a proposal that’s gonna sell and win, I’m always like close to my heart. But if I go down the hall and talk to the people that pay the bills around here, they’ve got different things that they feel should be close to my heart as well. So it’s all go ahead.
Matt Allred (28:53)
sure, for sure. So
so one of the things you you kind of talked about just a minute ago was the importance of of you know, like sensor driven at least that’s what I I understood. You said IoT, but I was thinking specifically of of remote monitoring software and and connecting that with the A AI so that AI says, Hey, you need to go check on such and such. In other words, you could you could be proactive and before it even shuts down, possibly.
have your guy go out there and and fix it and bill for it without waiting for a an angry customer.
Jonathan (29:27)
I’m an I’m a CPA. Remember the first question you asked me, like how did I get into this industry? I’m
Matt Allred (29:31)
Yeah.
Jonathan (29:32)
an accountant and I sell a billing machine. I don’t know if predictive maintenance is something that can truly be achieved. I would sort of step aside and let other people in the industry answer that because, you know, it seems to sound like a holy grail. I think in my limited ability, it sounds plausible, but you hear so many people that are elevator whisperers that say this will never happen. So I don’t know.
Matt Allred (29:57)
Fair enough. Fair no, thank you, thank you.
Jonathan (29:58)
I will tune into
your next podcast that covers this. I will I’ll be online asking questions about it.
Matt Allred (30:05)
It’s it was worth asking. And I do I do appreciate
Jonathan (30:07)
Yeah, no.
Matt Allred (30:08)
you you saying, Hey, there’s enough blocking tackling in the back office to do w without without getting speculative about what we could fix prema you know, preemptively. so, no, that’s that’s all good.
Jonathan (30:21)
I believe in
predictive maintenance, but I think there’s so many little things that derail that, especially for the independents that we service. I I’m not sure that’s what I if I was a business owner or if I were not in like an elevator technical person, there’s other places I’d be putting my time and money to like you know, increase cash flow and mitigate risk. my opinion.
Matt Allred (30:43)
Okay. And
you’ve kinda yeah, I was just gonna say you expound on that, but you’ve you’ve really already said the billing and the you know, just that whole the cash flow process of getting somebody out in the field, getting the the the work order back, and and anything else you’d like to add to that?
Jonathan (31:00)
Well, the ROI is around getting sales up, getting
Matt Allred (31:03)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (31:03)
costs down, improving cash flow, managing compliance, right? ‘Cause a regulated industry, and risk. So depending on your company, where you’re at and what’s going on, different things are gonna be flashing in terms of a payoff for you.
And so, you know, like AI can go after all of these things and some things are out of the box turnkey, boom, done. Other things just require a reimagining of how you do things internally. Like I keep I I I’ve done sales, I I th think a lot about the sales I didn’t make and what would be different now.
And I remember, I’m not gonna say who the company is, that’s for sure, but it happens to be in New York. And you know, and this could be one of many, so I’m safe to say, like all these violation departments, I think they could be completely overhauled.
You know, between like what we can get off the Department of Buildings and what we can do to like manage compliance, my God, there’s such a huge opportunity there around getting costs down, being more ahead of that stuff. So I just think about like the kind of stuff that maybe when I was making sales five years ago as to how we would approach it, now it’s completely different.
Matt Allred (32:11)
Right, right. No, I I I appreciate that. what do you think you know AI could help independent contractors? I you you mentioned them a minute ago. I’m just curious the the difference maybe between them versus larger companies, in your opinion.
Jonathan (32:29)
That’s a tough one for me. you know, like I’m you know, I know what it’s like to be the only employee in the company with your dreams of, you know, getting somewhere in life. So I’m a sucker for a startup or, you know, story. I’m worried I I actually think it’s both. Again, I’m sorry to say it that that. But you know, like in terms of the smaller independence I want to get somewhere in life is absolute yes, for sure this is a force multiplier.
They can do a lot more than they ever could, but you need to have the right people in the back office. Noah gone are the days where you can bootstrap it and get like, you know, somebody that knows QuickBooks and like can get them cheap or whatever. Like, no way. You if you’re gonna use AI to like try and take on who you’re gonna be taking on, you’re gonna need some pretty sophisticated people that can leverage these tools, in my opinion.
I actually think that and and and where they have an i like listen to me. Like like I don’t know everything. This is just my my opinion. Okay. it’s worth like, you know, take it for what it’s worth. I think that, you know, if you’re well run and well managed, you have a shot at really taking the stuff and making it work for you. And if you’re in a market where the bigger guys are dysfunctional, you you absolutely can like smoke them. You can outflank them. That’s really
Matt Allred (33:47)
Mm-hmm.
Jonathan (33:47)
exciting. However,
If a larger company that works at scale figures out how to actually deploy the stuff properly, they will be killers. Absolute killers. They’ll be able to like
you know, they’ll they’ll be able to compete with you on margin and price. I think like I think it’s gonna be a world of whoever like sort of makes it work for them best, really for the customers and for the field guys, they’re gonna win. So I’m not trying to be evasive about it. I think, you know, I think like a big, large private equity roll-up or a very large company, if they have the right leadership management and execute, they will win absolutely. That’s right. If I had to invest $1,000 in like shares of one of these companies, I’m betting on management.
Matt Allred (34:33)
Sure. Sure. Well, and and you, you know, in in previous conversations, you’d kind of just just really, you know, the the operations, right? because, you know, the question being, does does becoming AI capable begin with buying an AI tool or with improving the company’s operations? And and I’m hearing you say operations, hands down, right? You’ve got to you’ve got to solve that nut.
Jonathan (34:55)
You’ve got to you gotta redesign the processes to align with the tools. It used to be like, you know, you don’t wanna buy software that you have to adjust your processes to the software. Nobody wanna do that. And then, you know, everybody wants it to work the way they like to work. That’s all gotta go out the window now. I think you’ve gotta be
Matt Allred (35:12)
Mm, okay.
Jonathan (35:12)
open to like new ways of working. And you have to and it’s really hard, you know, like you you think, you know, people get it down to a science of their day.
I think it’s both but also so you’ve gotta you’ve gotta find a software provider that can deliver to you. You know, and and I don’t and and there’s products out there right now that I are just like obsolete. Like they just aren’t they just can’t sort of accommodate what’s possible just because of their lineage and legacy. It’s not it’s not that anyone did anything wrong, but it’s both. Like
Matt Allred (35:46)
We’d have to rewrite the whole
thing, is what I’m hearing you say, right? It’s like okay that
Jonathan (35:49)
Yeah, there’s d
there’s so many things around the governance, around the data structure, and then the fact that they don’t have everything. So they’re using other products and you gotta account for that. Like it’s ugly.
You know, I’m mostly worried about like, you know, Oracle, Salesforce, you know, and we’re on Microsoft. So we have like the benefits of those platforms. So, you know, that’s who I think we’re gonna be competing against going forward, unless there’s things I don’t know about what’s out there. I don’t know everything. So I don’t wanna shoot off my mouth, you know, improperly. But I think like if you were starting an elevator company from scratch with like twenty five people or fifty people, you are starting with raw clay, blank slate, and the world is your oyster, like for sure.
That’s hard to do when you’ve, you know, you’re tearing your hair out day every day. You’ve got like you know, phones ringing and life goes on. Like, how do you do both? It’s like the old joke I’ve been saying for 15 years. You’re changing the engines on a plane while it’s flying. Well, you’re actually redesigning the aircraft while it’s flying. But you don’t have a choice. You have to do it and you have to embrace the challenge because you’ll come out of it like amazing. And it can be done, but it’s not easy. And that’s why back to your original question, like the small guys
You know, is this gonna benefit the small guys to compete or the larger ones? It all d it all boils down to ability to execute. So leadership and focus and intent, in my opinion.
Matt Allred (37:05)
So so obviously you gotta gotta execute, but you’ve also gotta, like you said, design efficient systems and then be willing to change the way you like to do things and and that’s the that’s the awkward part, and then you gotta you gotta execute on those new mm.
Jonathan (37:19)
Well, you might have to let people go. If you have
people that can’t like adjust, like it’s really this is big, you know, like you know, like you’ve got a process now that, you know, and you’ve got a person in there who knows everything, knows everybody has relationships. If they can’t like like change, they will hold you back and you really won’t have a choice. The economics will get you because your competitors will get you. That’s how I I see it. And that’s
Matt Allred (37:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Well let’s talk
just for a minute, because we we are talking about, you know, the the benefits, risks of of changing, upgrading, not just software, but you’re talking about process, procedures, and and and teaching old dogs new tricks and all that. what are the the benefits and risks of actually making some of these changes we’re talking about?
Jonathan (38:01)
Well again, I think the payoff is varies by company. It’s gonna be like an increase in sales or reduce cost, better compliance, you know, mitigate risks. So, you know, these these sort of platform solutions that are are are available now, it just changes the economics of the business.
You know, my favorite movies Moneyball, you know, so you you can completely re you’re talking about yields on payroll, because like the on the margins on on parts and stuff, like let’s assume they’re sort of like they are what they are. But it, you know, depending on what your payroll is, you’re talking about like are we can we get like a five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty-five percent lift? So, you know, like you are and these are s you know, it’s not like a two percent gain here. We’re talking about real money. You know, like if we can get like invoices out the door like twenty-five percent faster.
And then we could add like another, you know, 25% to your field staff and number of elevators we’re maintaining and not have to add head count. I mean, that’s you can’t ignore that.
Matt Allred (38:59)
Big. Yeah.
No, that’s big. So what typically makes a technology transformation succeed or fail? And I’m sure you’ve seen a a few of those in your day.
Jonathan (39:11)
Yeah, and you know, well everybody has good jobs and bad jobs. it one I think if I had to pick one thing that like was a a predictor of success, it’s who’s running the project on both sides, our side and the client’s side.
You know, and it’s really the client side and so so so much so that I think you know, we’re developing job descriptions for what we need on the client side to execute. And it includes like, you know, technical skills, communication skills, you know, sort of like elevator industry awareness, you know, like they need to know what happens on a phone, what the impact is, like, you know, on a you know, in the office. So who you assign to own this is critical.
And you know, I d and you you know, ideally, you know, there’s so many like major pillars to this stuff, right? Because there’s the sales aspect, the operation stuff, there’s the materials stuff, there’s the accounting stuff, there’s the IT stuff, and there’s the leadership stuff. So, you know, we’ve had some really amazing stories where one person could handle elements of that really well and could orchestrate the change at at our at our clients. And it doesn’t I’m not talking about like big giant jobs either. You know, it just so happens like some of those roles are more, you
Three hats are worn by one person. That’s okay. It’s kind of nice because they know everything and the impact. So, you know, it’s it’s back to the same old thing. It’s leadership, it’s it’s people, it’s met, you know, it’s organizational skills because the technology works. You know, like the data comes in, it does a report, everything works. It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s an exercise in it’s a project. It it’s not a technical problem.
Matt Allred (40:49)
So I think you’re saying that that humans introduce the the biggest obstacles, whether they’re capable or incapable or willing or or not, or is that fair to say?
Jonathan (40:59)
Yeah, like the
the tech the plat all the software products in the industry work.
You can run an elevator company in everything. So it’s not about that. And yeah, some of them are missing things or not as sophisticated. Like, who cares? You know, you get like the right people with the right attitude and the right, you know they got to do their homework, they got to make themselves available, and they have to want to do it, right? Then you can achieve greatness. And then if you couple that with like a really strong platform, like what we’ve got and what AI can do, like it’s the the, you know, how high is up. Like the potential is that’s what’s so exciting. Like you get the you put this thing in the right hands of the right kind of organization.
organization and it’s really I have no idea you know like sometimes I hear things that our clients are doing. I can’t believe it. Like I can’t like you know they did what? And we’re supposed to how are we supposed to support that? And we hate that so much, but like to me I’m kind of secretly like, yes, you know, they get it.
Matt Allred (41:51)
Right, right. I mean they’re they’re yeah. Sounds like they’re adding or or maybe showing you new capabilities that you weren’t didn’t know it was there, but now they’re reaping the benefits.
Jonathan (42:00)
Well, we get a lot of people
buying us because they want to get access to the platform because they think they can do things themselves and then they have to fight with our product team that don’t allow stuff because it’s we need guardrails on our own stuff. We need to be able to upgrade, support it. We can’t have them
Matt Allred (42:11)
Sure, sure.
Jonathan (42:12)
down. And it’s easy to have it’s like raising kids. Like you want them to make mistakes, but not so so much that you’re gonna get sued or there’s gonna be like physical harm, right? So it’s tough
Matt Allred (42:21)
Ha ha ha.
Jonathan (42:21)
because you never wanna say no to a client. Like you’re on their side, it’s their system. They you know, and and you know, you don’t wanna burst their bubble, you know.
same time like you know we we can’t bail you out of jail on a weekend
Matt Allred (42:38)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I I can see that. So let’s let’s talk for just a minute about, you know, obviously there’s a lot of private equity activity. are you seeing or or have you seen the, you know, the I guess valuations affected by technology versus operational maturity. What what does that look like from your perspective?
Jonathan (42:59)
I have no idea what goes on in all these acquisitions. We have a lot of private equity companies that use us and are buying companies all the time. And it feels like every elevator company of substance is always for sale in the elevator industry. I deliberately don’t pay attention to this stuff. You know, I know that it used to be like, you get 30 times monthly maintenance, that’s valuation. And I always thought, like, that you know, that sounds like dot-com bubble, because if you’re like losing money but you got a big maintenance book, like how you know, why is that good?
So for sure, I I’m under the impression, you know, I know for a fact EBIT is still number one. And then the multiplier you get off of that is gonna really vary. You know, in the past, like earnings quality, you know, repeatability, all that, the standard stuff applied. But there’s no doubt in my mind, and this is where I feel a lot of pressure personally.
Like we have to deliver a platform that impacts that valuation and it’s definitely changing. So like you’re gonna have your eBid and number and your multiple, but I think you know, even ourselves, you’re gonna be measured by revenue per employee, agents per employee. Like there’s other there’s other KPIs that are gonna factor into your attractiveness to a buyer if you want to get out.
And you will get heavily like if I was knowing what I know and if I was on the PE side buying up companies, I’d be looking at companies that will never be able to execute properly in this new world and you should be able to pick them up at a bit of a discount. And I’d be really looking at their field people and their salespeople, and that’s it.
So I think it like just to summarize, I believe that the standard like sort of, you know, numbers and formulas applied. I don’t think they do as much anymore. Cause we, you know, when you think about the product we sell, you’re moving away from licenses per user per month to like some kind of measurable outcome. So it’s gotta be this is such a cliche, it’s gotta be a win-win for us and the customer.
Matt Allred (44:41)
Gotcha. Yeah.
Jonathan (44:41)
Right. We have to deliver
something that’s of value to them. And it’s not even us. Like Microsoft is going to be moving away from like selling a license per user per month. Now it’s going to be like, okay, if we saved you 50% of that payroll, we’re not charging you a hundred bucks a month. I don’t know what that number’s going to be. But that’s
Matt Allred (44:57)
my gosh.
Jonathan (44:58)
what but think about it. Like if you deliver software that cuts, you know, the processing cost of say you’re paying someone a hundred thousand dollars a year and you save thirty-five percent of their job, you don’t license that out for 10 bucks.
Not to mention the fact that we gotta pay off the data centers, all the energy costs. Like there’s a huge infrastructure cost to recover on, right? You know, and pe you know, and people need to compensate for all the risk that’s been put out there. So where all the where the economics are going is gonna really evolve. I think it’s happening already now for sure. This is a big topic. Another one, a podcast I’ll tune into when you decide to rope someone in who can talk about this better than I can, because it’s it there’s a lot of meat on this one.
Matt Allred (45:36)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Well let’s let’s shift gears for just a minute about you know, AI and careers. We and we’ve touched on this a little bit, but how do you think people should in the elevator industry should feel about AI? Excited, concerned, combination of both.
Jonathan (45:51)
Cons I
you should be concerned and curious. And
Matt Allred (45:55)
Love
Jonathan (45:56)
you you should be concerned for sure because it’ll creep up on you. I think that and I don’t mean to be a doomer here, but I really I you’ve got risk. I think it’s not gonna happen next month or next quarter. you know, the Jonathan prediction, which has know, never been right.
I would say by the end of next year, you’re gonna see elevator companies in the space really pulling away from the pack in terms of how they work. So I
Matt Allred (46:22)
Hm. Okay.
Jonathan (46:22)
think market value of salaries are gonna evolve. I mean, you’re gonna know better than anybody given what you do for a living. I think like certain jobs are gonna devalue based on like you’ll have institutional knowledge with that has value, but your ability to like do things that an agent can do will discount like I’ll give you an example. So like we’re looking for a salesperson and I interviewed somebody and you know,
It was like I you know, I I they’re in the industry, I get a paycheck, I get a bonus. What’s a bonus bait on? I don’t it’s just a bonus, you it’s industry standard, like which I hate.
Matt Allred (46:53)
Sure.
Jonathan (46:54)
Okay, I got a I got a car allowance and I get a cell phone allowance and I’m worth X. And that’s true, that’s what that person is worth in the in the market. But to me
Person has no capability to use like co-work and learn how to do an agent themselves and identify their own little day-to-day life. So
Matt Allred (47:12)
Yeah.
Jonathan (47:12)
I like, I don’t want to hire someone like that. I don’t care how much you know about elevators and who you know. If you’re gonna be a burden internally, we gotta carry you. I’m not interested. And I think that’s gonna be the case in many, many different roles. And I don’t care if you’re a bank clerk or like a purchasing agent or whatever, you need to know how to use these tools to justify your paycheck because.
Matt Allred (47:34)
Yeah. Well,
and you and you mentioned that in a you know, just that just that getting involved in the process and and how it’s implemented rather than waiting or sitting back is, you know, it it could be a new career path for you, right? If if you’re willing to learn it and and teach others or or you know, whatever the case may be.
Jonathan (47:52)
If someone came to me and said, you know, I worked on junk, but I was able to take ChatGPT and program it to do X, Y, and Z. I’m getting my attention. Like, what have you, what did you do on your own that showed innovation and resourcefulness? That I love. You know? It’s table stakes too. I really think it is. You have to know how to use these tools. When like, you know, like I, you know, I think about like my kids and kids that are coming out of school.
You have to have not superpowers, but you have to have something that I don’t have to invest in to get you there. Because there are other people that have it. So, you know, I you really, really, really do need to be concerned. And I think if you’re working at a place that isn’t sort of willing to invest in that in your in in in HR for your people, I’d be I’d be looking for other places that are more open to like
Making that change. I think employers have a responsibility to help people retrain for this stuff. But you know, I can’t emphasize enough. Like, I think you really need to be concerned. And I also think it’s a solvable problem. Like, even if your employer does nothing for you, just get a license, get online. There’s a billion YouTube videos, a billion podcasts, start learning how to do something that makes your life faster, and you’re off to the races.
Matt Allred (49:05)
Cool, cool. Well and and that along with that question, what what human abilities do you think will become more valuable as AI takes on some of the routine work or the, you know, repeatable tasks?
Jonathan (49:18)
the ability to communicate will always be really, really important, even if you’re just writing up a prompt. Like some of these systems work and they need context and stuff. So listen, you still need to be able to, I think, yeah, I think you need you need to know the industry. I think more than ever, you need to know the elevators and the elevator industry because that’s because the systems are gonna do stuff for you and the and the knowledge is free. You can ask the thing a question, it’s gonna come back to you. So you need to be able to have, I think you need more institutional knowledge.
like that you can apply to what these systems can do is the most important thing. But also like, you know, you know, as a business owner and I gotta hire people. I want people that can communicate, that can you know, verbal, written and know how to have relationships, you know.
Matt Allred (50:04)
Yep. And I’m and I’m hearing, you know, you mentioned curiosity a minute ago, communication. There’s a a lot of it kinda comes down to what are you willing to to tackle, to take on, to to take some initiative and you know, you’ll become more valuable. But if you sit back and you kinda wait to be displaced, that’s not gonna help anybody.
Jonathan (50:21)
You will get that
will happen. I think you need to be passionate about something. I don’t care what it is. If you’re passionate about doing a bank wreck in five seconds, I got respect for that. You know, it does there’s nothing that’s too obscure. You just gotta have purpose and and a real passion for something. Drive, you know.
Matt Allred (50:37)
Yeah. Yeah. Well
yeah. Let’s let’s invite some, you know, if there’s members of our audience that wanna ask some questions, go ahead and do that now. We’ll we’ll take a few minutes and and see if they have something to say. I w I will share one of the the comments that came in earlier, but we we’d kind of moved on by the time I noticed it. But the question was whether there are resources out there to help companies establish AI policies. And somebody said, Yes, there are. There’s, you know, you don’t have to implement it all yourself. There’s
course there’s software out there, other tools. So again, about being curious, you know, you can find it.
Jonathan (51:13)
I don’t know. I don’t
I I I don’t know about, you know, like I don’t know what tool is referenced or what it does, but the problem is like again, if you’re on multiple pieces of software, maybe a tool like that will help. But the the the the software products that people in the industry use come with it. So you don’t have to build the stuff yourself. You you you have to worry about it if you’re you’re bringing in consultants and they’re doing this and they’re doing that, then yeah, you need it. But you should be able to use a platform or a tool that it comes it’s part of the package.
Matt Allred (51:42)
to yep. Yep. so I’m gonna still invite guests if they’re if they’re out there to go ahead and throw something in the chat, we’ll we’ll respond to it. before we wrap up, we got just a a few minutes here and
Maybe I’ll move on and s and see if any hop in there. But Jonathan, question if you owned an elevator company that had done very little with AI, where would you begin? Where would you even start?
Jonathan (52:16)
if they’re on like Microsoft Office, I’d get everybody a subscription to Copilot.
So you have like an Outlook and Word and Excel, that. So at least, you know, and then you know, and start using it for little things. Like, you know, if you if you’re not good with pivot tables, this thing can help you. If you want to use more sophisticated formulas, like try that. So there’s very low risk things. It’s scary. Take baby steps. And it doesn’t even have to be like elevator stuff or accounting stuff. Like, I don’t know, like.
You know, like if you if you want to renovate your living room, take some pictures, build, do a project, learn how these things do stuff. And before you know it, your social feed’s gonna start sending you like all kinds of prompts you can buy online to help do your living room reno. So just use it to do something. I don’t care, like you they’re they were
Matt Allred (53:04)
Engage. Yeah.
Jonathan (53:05)
like, yeah, they were making fun of me today at lunch that I sort of said that I was kind of using ChatGPT to help me pack for like a two-week trip I’m doing.
You know, and I’m like you and they were like making fun of me, but you know what? It saved me a ton of time and I’m not gonna look stupid because I have the right like I took pictures of my clothes and I just uploaded it and it like saved me some time. So I think you know, if you’re not at work, there’s all kinds of examples around like exercise or shopping, nutrition, it’s endless, it’s endless. And then you’ll become one of these people that just starts dictating to your phone your new friend ChatGPT or whatever you’re using. You know, grok is pretty good too, actually. I like them all.
And the next thing you know, you’re turning into like some, you know, like like who are you talking to? Getting it. But the stuff is amazing. I think at work though, like just pick the most mundane, stupid thing that you hate doing. And there are ways to like sort of streamline those things. So just start small and build on that. Is like I taught, like I’m begging everyone to do that. Don’t be afraid
Matt Allred (54:01)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan (54:02)
of this stuff.
Matt Allred (54:03)
I’ve got a friend that’s a business consultant and he’ll he’ll say something, you know, if you if you do a task more than five times a day, if it takes you more than, you know, fifteen minutes, he’s got kind of this rules that he goes through. But if you know, if if certain tasks fall under these, you know, requirements, then then it’s time to to try to automate it and you know.
Jonathan (54:21)
Yeah,
but you don’t want to be a slave to these things these rules either. Like maybe the ritual of doing those five things is what centers you in life. So you you gotta be you gotta be money smart about I mean I’m joking, you know, like it’s like the people that wear these
Matt Allred (54:33)
Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan (54:34)
sleep trackers and are a slave to like their sleep score. Like you can also let it go and just sleep. I think that I think that the but there there are, you know, there’s definitely if you like sort of take a step and say, what do I do all day long?
You know, it it’s it’s really amazing. One of the things I’ll give everybody a tip. Like I record meetings, I take the transcripts, and then I have like summary sheets or or Excel files that I do. I take the transcripts and I give the thing rules and it it populates like my notes for ser for for like the next handoff internally. You don’t need like I did that myself. I didn’t need any help to do that. You can’t believe how much time that’s saved me. And it did a better job than me taking notes in a meeting. So there’s lots of little wins if you don’t have it in your software that will get you closer to like
then you know it like it it’s like I said, it’s that plane that’s weighed down and is taking off slowly. Start lumbering down the runway. You will get off the
Matt Allred (55:25)
Sure.
Jonathan (55:26)
ground.
Matt Allred (55:26)
Sure. Well, and and you you kind of talked about this before, but you know, just using it as a thought partner, right? Like what should I be thinking of if I want to pack my clothes the most efficient way, right? It can start to teach you some just different thoughts.
Jonathan (55:39)
Well, one one of the
things I learned is you got to give it context. My suitcase is, you know, this inches wide, deep and long. And it, you know, I get like stains on my shirts when I, you know, eat street food and you know, and not having access to a washing machine. And I’ve got, you know, like you give it and and the point is you give it really specific context, you get a way better result. And that’s a skill.
So, you know, you can make a joke about it, but like you it can get and then you learn, okay, so I I’m good at like developing these like one-off things, but all these systems have project capabilities, right? So you can start uploading files and make and and having it like run a whole major thing and it’s got resources to look back on. And that’s how you start learning how these things work.
Matt Allred (56:23)
Right. Right. No, that’s that’s a good point. So a couple couple questions before we wrap up. how can leaders include employees in the process instead of making them feel like AI is being imposed upon them?
Jonathan (56:37)
I think bring them in to the bring them in as early as possible. just so they know what’s going on and they’re they don’t have this like sort of like they’re not telling me I don’t know if my cause you worry about is my job at risk? Is he doing this to get rid of me? I think you know
Matt Allred (56:48)
Sure. Sure.
Jonathan (56:50)
just getting that fear off the table is helpful. I think also like the staff members know the like the people doing the work know what’s going on. They’re a great source of inspiration and ideas. And I I really, really believe you wanna you wanna be pretty transparent, you know, what will change for their role.
What won’t. And if you’re planning to make a major overhaul, like give them a chance to like help with that and reposition themselves. they also you also need to get a feedback loop from them because like people might be afraid to say, like, this is a waste of time, or the people you’re using, like they don’t really know what they’re doing, or I don’t trust them. So I think it’s about being like supportive. It’s it’s almost like
I I I do like the analogy of dieting or exercise. Like you have to educate them, you gotta go slow and you gotta go at their own pace, but the changes come with persistence. And if you exclude people, it just makes it that much harder.
Matt Allred (57:43)
Yeah. Yeah. So last question for you. What should a company have in place before allowing employees to use AI with customer or company information? I mean, talked a little bit about some of
Jonathan (57:55)
Well.
Matt Allred (57:55)
the
Jonathan (57:56)
You you need to be you need someone who knows security to find out what they’re doing with the stuff. Like you said, like are they just putting stuff into a public model? You know, like you need it’s IT. It’s this is an IT security thing. We for our clients, we don’t get involved with that stuff. We make sure they have an IT company that knows what they’re doing. And so all the like licensing around the infrastructure, all the security, all the device management is an area for experts. So start with that. So you want to have like, you know, your customer records, wherever they are, some
Someone needs to know like who can get at what and like you know what happens where and what doesn’t happen, you know, like like someone needs to own security and it’s I believe it’s typically the IT department and also the accounting department. Because that financial stuff, you know, that that’s kind
Matt Allred (58:39)
Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.
Jonathan (58:42)
of where I would start. And then also it depends on what software you’re running to run the business. They can be an asset or they can be a huge liability, depending on what’s going on.
Matt Allred (58:49)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jonathan, we are out of time, but I appreciate you being with me today.
Jonathan (58:52)
That went so fast. I could I mean I
Matt Allred (58:55)
It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate it. And
Jonathan (58:57)
Yeah.
Matt Allred (58:57)
and there’s a lot we didn’t get to cover. So maybe maybe we’ll do this
Jonathan (59:00)
No, I know.
Matt Allred (59:01)
again sometime.
Jonathan (59:02)
I’m all you gotta do is send me an email, dude.
Matt Allred (59:06)
Sounds great. Well, thank you again. And until next time we’ll yeah, we’ll sign off. Thank you.
Jonathan (59:12)
Okay, thanks Matt. Appreciate that you you gave us this opportunity.
Matt Allred (59:15)
You bet.