Episode 27- Lance Anderson of Admit One Home Systems
Empowering Your Team and Company: Admit One's Custom Home Technology and Lance Anderson's Business Journey
Lance Anderson, CEO and founder of Admit One Home Systems, joins Mark to share his journey from IT to founding his own company. He discusses how he found his niche in custom home technologies, and how essential it ito empower himself and his team to work confidently and independently. With a focus on the luxury residential market, Lance and his team are hands on with essentially all aspects of technology in a home, including audio/video media rooms, security systems, lighting and more. They install seamless, easy to use technology for the homeowner to have full control of their needs and make their home fully customizable. Listen in to hear more of Lance's journey and how Admit One continues to benefit homeowners.
Listen to the full episode:
About Lance Anderson
Lance Anderson is founder and CEO of Admit One Home Systems. With a background in IT and former employee at Best Buy, Lance has always been in the tech field. He decided to take the step into the business world to create and develop home technology that could be easily incorporated into a homeowners daily life.
Lance and his team at Admit One aspire to make seamless technology utilized by home owners at the touch of their fingertips to create their own customized and personal home sanctuary.
Resources
-
Thinking about LEDs that we lost moving from incandescent was you don't get that warmer tones. As you dim the lights, it's kind of blue, it looks blue to you, but it's staying the same Kelvin as you dim and it just feels unnatural. We're used to, you know, dimming down to candle color, right? So then then we take that simple LED fixture and we add warmth dim to it. And then as you dim the light down, it will get warmer and temperature kind of more setting a comfortable mood. So that's more of a mechanical way of achieving, you know, mimicking what we're used to with incandescent lamps.
Welcome to the curious building Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host, I'm with Lance Anderson with admin one. Welcome, Lance. Hey, thanks for having me. All right. For those that don't know who Lance is he owns admit one. They're a low voltage technology company here in in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thank you office is actually in the diner, right? Yep. Yeah, I'm barely on the edge. Obviously, as a custom homebuilder, we work a lot with audiovisual in our custom homes. But why don't you tell us a little bit about your company's position in the Minnesota market and a little bit of how you became an owner and your journey? Yeah. Man,
that's, that's, there's a lot there. Yeah. You know, it's hard to believe that we've been at this for
21 years now. And so, it's basically, you know, the only job that I know, I mean, I was in it, you know, back before starting this business, or when was fostering working at Best Buy, you know, and call myself a blue shirt, or there's a few other, most of us come from either BestBuy, or the old days of audio king or Circuit City, best by being the blue shirt. So I was a blue shirt. And while I was going to school and computers up in Duluth, and just started in the tech, the tech bench, what's now known as Geek Squad, I guess, working on computers, and they realized I could sell stuff. So they put me out to the sales floor. I think it started an audio first. And that's, I think, where the passion really started for this business. In this category, you know, in these homes, what was really nothing more than audio and video back then. And we've morphed into, you know, such a much bigger category, I guess, in people's lives and homes. But yeah, so that was where the passion began. And I ended up doing a small project for my brother in law just while I was in school. And while I was at BestBuy taking advantage of some of the discounts I haven't had access to, and he's like, You got to do this for a living, you're so passionate about it. And I was, you know, 21 years old, I'm like I, you know, business, like, I don't know how to do this. So he's like, he was a serial entrepreneur at the time. And he's like, Yeah, I'll give you I'll give you a hand, I'll give you get you started. And that's kind of how we started working out of his basement. In the project that I executed for him when I was at BestBuy. And, you know, I was still doing it work from you know, 8am to 5pm and running crew crew during the day and selling at night, basically on on the weekends to my clients. And we really were consumer, like focused on the end consumer at first. So lots of like, lots of marketing spent a lot of dollars marketing, because we were young and new and there's really some big players in the market at the time that we're selling to builders like yourself and so again, a lot of our revenue came from direct marketing and those early days
in now using your obviously relationship with Best Buy early on, did you leverage that with your company? Or did you start going to manufacturers directly? Yeah, no exposure at that point in time?
Yeah, I think I mean, there was a lot of conflict of interest. So you know, the best buy career was short lived. I mean, I moved after school I moved back here. I mean, I guess the idea fostered in those days of BestBuy and then I moved back here and finished up school and worked for an IT company so I'm sorry if that wasn't clear, but I worked for a fortune 500 company running their computer hardware systems. Okay, while I was fostering admit one got on the side,
I love your name. What was the origin or why did you choose that? So it sounds like you had that from the very beginning. Yeah, because it's one of the it's a great name and it's good for me just because without you letting me bias it when I think about it when I think of like a movie ticket Yes, exactly one and I've seen it on your logos as well in the past and I just think it's very clever words and emotions people can identify with how did you come up with it or how to how to literally
literally from from the ticket and that was our first logo was was a picture of a movie like the old school lunch movie ticket looking thing.
Little perforated edges all around the actually ripped off like carnival.
And we've morphed into logos morphed quite a bit from there. But yeah, that's where we
the latest one, I think you had it on your because your do great merchandising I like swag. And for those watching on our YouTube channel, he's got it tattooed on his wrist here. And we have mutual blue colored shirts are still in the blue twinning, twinning. And but anyway, the name is phenomenal. So I was like, interesting names and reason to bring it up now is we've recently discussed about rebranding Mark delivers custom homes. You know, for me, I'm like you, I, you know, my name, company name when I started is myself. And I think about long term 20 years from now, if I'm going to sell the company, it's hard to sell a company with your name on it. But, you know, ultimately, I am kind of the company don't have a lot of physical assets where admit one, I mean, you have an amazing infrastructure, and I have a personal relationship with you. I mean, for those listening, I mean, the first time I met you was going mountain biking. Yeah. And, and yeah, we've mountain bike a few times, we have to do it some more. But I think Ross Agnolo was kind of our mutual contact over all anchor. Sure. And he's coming on the show later, as well. So he'll be who to talk with, but we'll get into some personal stuff at a later date. So
but yeah, the the branding side of it, you know, like we went through that whole thing too, because the the like I was mentioning audio and video is really where this industry was 20 years ago, like it was TVs, some distributed audio throughout your house. And hopefully, in our case, a media room or a theater. And it really changed, it's changed a lot. So the the movie ticket became and the name became less applicable to what we were doing was, so I'm glad to hear that, that there's still some cleverness left there, but we had to change the logo on the brand a lot. And simply just go buy like more of an AO branding, you know, in moved away from the movie ticket, and we've had a couple other logos since but I'm like completely in love with our branding. Now. And I'm glad we we made that change that we did, because it's the first time really that I you know, find myself being merged out. Like I was kind of the last guy to be like, wearing the brand everywhere, but literally have it tattooed on me. I'm wearing a hat right now that's got our brand on it. I usually have like a Lululemon with, you know, EO on it, like, can't get enough of it. And so it's a brand that I'm proud of, or the mark that I'm proud of. All of it, so that's cool.
That's when I first met you you had a camouflage radio on Yeah, I remember. It's a big tennis player. And Al stands for Australian. Oh, that's right. And when I saw it, I was like, Oh, is he a tennis player? Yeah, I don't even know what your companies Yeah, when we were out my bike and and I was like, That is super sick. I want that hat. Yeah. And but you do you do you have great marketing. And as someone who's in marketing, even though we build homes, I love merchandising. I love branding. And for a long time, I felt the same way. The last thing I want to do, like I would give it to my staff and right well, that worked for me. Yeah, but the idea that I wear my name on myself always seemed like the Geek Squad like I didn't want. It just felt weird to me. It's like do business owners really wear I'd wear nicer clothes. If it was like, Well, how about you buy nicer clothes and get a cooler logo? What we started doing? And then you'll actually want to wear? Yeah,
yeah, so I would encourage that. Yeah, it's nice to represent a little bit more. And then even in a subtler way, you know, like, and that's why I like the simplified Ayios. And people often ask that people ask a lot too well, especially when they see it. tatted on me and hat on. They're like, what is this brand? It's the first time I've like been approached about the brand a lot. Have you had
anyone else get that tattooed on them?
Yeah, really? Well, for like to any my employees, it seems a little bit like Yellowstone, the TV series, but I've offered to any of the employees if they want the tattoo, we would pay for it. But my partner's Kristen and Andy John has pending. Both have their our brand on them too. So they're new partners in the last year here, so
it's it's kind of gonna be awkward when you tell them you're actually changing the brand next year after
I think what we talked about maybe doing at least on me was putting the legacy brand on it towel. So we can just continue,
like a sleeve. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's commitment. Yeah, that's commitment. Um, you had mentioned previously just about how much the technology has changed. Where has it gone? Just as I'm a custom homebuilder in Minnesota. Yeah. And you work with a lot of FCU around all the time. What have you seen in terms of technology changes from what people usually think of TVs? Movie Theater, because, for us anyway, at the price range, you know, we're million a half to 5 million. I actually have only ever done one dedicated theater. Not that the clientele can't afford it or not want it? It's mainly just like their lifestyle is more than open rec room. It seems like the dedicated
theater. Yeah, we're seeing more media rooms these days. You are Yeah, for sure.
What about I mean, I'm interested in Like the home automation control package, I think we'll get into that. But tell me a little bit about how the journey of your technology is what it was to what it is now, and then I'll follow up later, where do you think it's going to be five years
has been kind of, it's kind of, it's been an interesting ride. And for me, it's come full circle, you know, because of my background being in it, you know, and it was kind of a degree, I thought I and CAD work, by the way, because I was in a little bit of engineering, CAD drafting before it, but I thought I was throwing those those, you know, degrees away. And turns out, you know, shortly after we start this business, it starts to change into more, you know, automation and control and security, and all this stuff resides on the network. And, you know, Wi Fi, and it just really came full circle. And literally, when someone asks, what we do, besides categorically we work in the luxury residential market is any technology within the house, I'm short of the actual computer, and we facilitate the computer, we just don't like remove viruses from your computer and manage that, but like, literally everything else that has to do with technology in the house. And, you know, so went from audio and video and media rooms to, you know, security, camera systems are a big thing these days, security, like I said, lighting control at first. So just simply, you know, automating and turning on lights throughout the house, and simplifying the lights throughout the house. And now more recently, one of the verticals is lighting fixture sales, the lighting fixture itself, is evolved. So, so much, and it's really, you know, if we're not already seeing it, you know, in the building market, you're, you're definitely going to hear a lot about it going forward. But there's so much more sophistication with lighting these days that it kind of fits really nicely within our scope of work that we're already executing in these houses. And I mean, I can talk for hours on on lights, and how how they, I think have a big impact on how we use our homes, how our homes, look, how they make our bodies feel like all of it is pretty powerful stuff.
It's funny, you mentioned about how you feel I was gonna bring this up. And I know you guys have worked on this before you have more knowledge than I will. But I did a tour recently of a lighting company and distributor. And they were talking about the temperature settings of the the lighting, and we're in Minnesota for those that live here. But maybe there's people out of state, obviously it gets darker here, you know, what, November through March, and but they're having the basically copying where the sun would be accurate and your circadian rhythm matching it from the beginning, you wake up throughout the day, Zach and maybe can speak a little bit, because I think it's fascinating technology, we can talk a little bit about what kind of cost implications this has. But from a straight technology standpoint, you know, in you would know this, like what I don't even know, but like when you flip on a light in a normal house, the incandescent light bulb is what was the Kelvin temperature
like 2700 lumens. And
like, you know, like an LED you can adjust to anyone you want. Right, right? And what what does the human body like? Or does is each person different?
Right? You know, and I think as we've evolved as humans, just generally speaking, the color of the light outside tells us our body, it's telling our body what we're supposed to be doing. And the like, the beginning and the end of the days are warmer, more waking up slow. And then and then we get to high noon, and it's bluer light and gives us more energy. And this is when we're supposed to be working, you know, whatever that means it's where we're most productive. And then it starts to get warmer towards the end of the day, it's time to wind down we go to we go to sleep, it's I mean, we see a lot of studies and devices, even my iPhone now has, you know, the what are they called the day shift or where the device looks less blue at night, so we can sleep quicker or easier. And that's kind of you know, the principle it's all based based around and then you can disrupt that to purposefully and like the example I can give is we had a client on the lake on the west side of town here and worked with Singapore a lot and like needed to be on conference calls in the middle of the night. And so could tune his house and his lighting to one give the perception that he was actually in the same timezone of whom he's meeting with, but to really energize his body and when as far as like putting in a full skylight into that space, so that that that the perception is that your body is interpreting the time of day is different than what it really is. And so it's kind of powerful stuff.
I went through that home was at home on tour. Yeah, yeah. So I know the builder pretty well. And yes, you know, as well. And he's coming on the show, actually. Yeah, I wanted to ask him about it. Well, he told me it was in by a crane. And he told me it was like the way I am Italy. Yeah, of course, if I wanted to convert, and all our hardware comes from Austria, it's like, do we generate anything here? And but I was fascinated, I was blown away. That was kind of the first I'd heard of even something like that. Now, who out of curiosity on that particular project? Is that something that architect found? Is that something you found? Was the origin, the origin story of that light fixture that essentially simulates? Could it actually simulate sunlight? I mean, yeah, it actually have solar radiation in it,
you would, you would think you would be convinced that it did, just because your body reacts to it, the products called co locks. In it, it has a projection system in it like like a like think of home theater projector that intensifies the light in a direction, and it has a hotspot like you can pass through it, you can see it on the floor, it was very convincingly the sun shining through the, the skylight, and then it has other lights that illuminate you know, that give the halo effect and all that, but it is an intense light, it's very convincing. It's not inexpensive. You know, it's it's not it's on an every every
course. I mean, that's a unique situation. But you can, you know, we'll go back in a minute of how you can actually set up your entire house to do so this, but I know this particular individual is up at what one 2am In the morning exam working, you know, in an Asian market, if you will, so he has to, I had heard to mimic those feelings. So yeah, incredible technology.
Yeah, this episode is brought to you by NRD. Landscaping, they are just a tremendous company. They are located off a one on one and highway seven, and the western side of Minneapolis met Eric and his team about five, six years ago. And I've just been absolutely blown away at their design capabilities, their value, and they're just a trusted partner that we introduce to every client that we build our custom homes with. So if you have a small project, a large project, if you're an architect looking to bring in a landscaper, I highly recommend Eric over at energy landscaping, you can check him out on his Instagram handle. And rd landscape or online at ener D landscape.com.
How would you ever have to wear sunglasses? Or is it? Is there a UV issues? You
probably wouldn't want to sit right in the beam just like you wouldn't in the real sun? Like really? Yeah, if you were in the beam path, you'd be, you know, oppressed by the light? I would say it's that it's that intense? That's incredible. Yeah. Um, so as the sun so that company
that developed that I what was their? I mean, I assume they didn't develop that light fixture for this person. No, that's a that's a this comment that people are. I mean, what, how do they develop this,
it's a product that's been around, I've known about it for a fistful of years. And you look for opportunities to because it's, again, it's not an everyday product, right. So hopefully, like cost wise, it becomes more feasible in the future here for for more and more common usage. And there'll be other technologies too, that will mimic it, you know, in a different way. I mean, the projectors are super costly way from, to produce that light intensity in a directional, uniform. But it also is very costly from a square footage space, like nothing is four feet deep, or three feet deep or something like generate all that power and all the heat. Yeah, because the projectors got to be at an angle, like facing downward. So you know, it's tilted. So there's the boxes.
Did you see that? No, no, we have the international builders show coming up in January. Do they have a lighting Expo that you see these types of products? How did you
Yeah, this product? You know, I don't know where I first heard about it. But Chicago has a big lighting fair. I can't remember the name of it. I just might be the Chicago lighting fair. Okay. But yeah, that's, that's what it's all about lights, interesting. Like, whole show floor.
Right, going back to just because it's something that's more relatable to our clientele. Let's talk a little bit about pricing for those that are listening. You know, obviously our electricians are more familiar with this as well. But you know, the temperature settings of your lighting, give us kind of a good better best scenario like a recess can cost probably what 130 bucks. And you know, it's led, you know, a little bit of dimmer, but not a whole lot of temperature changes, if you will walk us up, like how do you get to the point where you'd have this control system? Because it sounds great. I know it's not inexpensive, but to have, you know, your circadian rhythm match throughout the day, this lighting like how does one go about designing it and what is something like this even cost?
Yeah, there varying degrees of it and like this the set in the simplest form, you know, we're putting in a high quality LED light that is got that they've got an accurate Kelvin for the room that you're in. So like, if it's in a bedroom, you know, we want might want more warmer temperature, if it's in a kitchen, we might want something a little cooler, cooler closer to daylight just so colors are represented accurately. And then in that's, you know, that's not a lot different. It's just a high quality LED version of what we're used to using every day. And then from there, you can do kind of a warm Damn, are you familiar with that at all, like a warm, dim fixture, so it's an LED. And the thing about LEDs that we lost with incandescent moving from incandescent was you don't get that warmer tones, as you dim the lights, it's kind of blue, yeah, or it stays, it looks blue to you. But it's staying the same Kelvin as you dim, and it just feels unnatural. We're used to, you know, dimming down to candle candle color, right. So then then we take that simple LED fixture and we add warmth dim to it. And then as you dim the light down, it will get warmer and temperature kind of more setting a comfortable mood. So it's more of a mechanical way of achieving, you know, mimicking what we're used to with incandescent lamps. And then from there, you start to get into what we would call like tunable, white, and tunable. White means it doesn't matter if I dim it, I can still control up Calvin, white is coming out of it. So if the mood calls for, you know, dinner time on I'm actually eating, maybe I want it to be a little bit more warm in the room. But while I'm preparing food, it's, you know, again, more task and it's more close to daylight type. So we can control our lamps that way. So that's our third step have led. And then the fourth would be what we would call full spectrum. And so full spectrum is like tunable. White except for we can add color to it now too. So you can literally change entertainment rooms theme by going purple for the Vikings if you want to, you know any any any color you can imagine. And that would be full spectrum. And once we have that full spectrum, all that color palette, we can, we can kind of saturate color better within the space. So there's something called vibrancy mode on one of the products that we use. So if it's a art light, and there's a piece of art on the wall, and we're illuminating it with this full spectrum LED light, we can click it into vibrancy mode, and it really enhances the colors like the the art and when we shift from normal light to an enhanced the light. Like you you can see the art jump off the apron, so much more saturation. And it looks really cool. And like we've had requests to, you know, let I want to see what this painting looked like when the artists painted it. So like you could if we knew where the on the earth at that was painting, the time of day it was painted, we can illuminate it with the same color of light, which I think is kind of cool. Oh, that's
very cool. Interesting. How often are our clients educated on this before they meet with you? And the one thing, just because so many of the people listening to this will be in the trades or involved with the building business side. I'd be curious to know like, obviously, as a builder, I didn't know how electricians and low voltage, excuse me play together. But now you add in an architect, you add in a client walk me through a little bit of the dynamic of how a system like this goes like where does your I know they're blended but you know, the cans that are being SPECT? Are they coming from you? Are they being directed by you walk us a little bit of of how this would integrate well in a custom home.
Yeah, and you know, it's, it's a there's a lot of education that has to happen. It's a fairly new category, I would say. And so we have to talk about it a lot to educate our clients. And right now it's kind of blended. You know, in house we have Kristin, one of my partners who is certified in lighting, design several certifications, and can provide the lighting layouts and designs herself. Sometimes it comes from architecture, some of the architects sometimes it comes from a lighting designer, and either way we can not only like execute the schedule of fixtures, we can control them too we often are just kind of tied into all of it. You know what I mean? Like do
the actual let's say the electrician so who's installing so you have a light fixture traditionally, you know the light the when I send a plan out for bed and let's say you're building a $2 million custom home and you know maybe I'll have off $50,000, electric, you know, bid and that'll include all the light fixture hanging out the actual fixtures itself, you know, include all the wiring, you know, all the cans, and then you know, maybe on a home, like that'll have 30 to $40,000 for an allowance, if I've never met, the client has never met, the low voltage guy just has kind of like a, you know, a placeholder, if you will, they'll sit down, you'll design the system for them. At that point, when do when to use Windows? Does the electrician and when does the low voltage guy start working back and forth, so that both are being heard and how it's happening?
Yeah. I mean, I always say like, the sooner that a low voltage guy selfishly can be introduced to the client, the honestly is the best solution because there is so many things that can kind of change some of the design and how we work with people. But so the sooner the better. But you know, if we're, if we're meeting the electrician, and after the homeowner relatively early in the process before either one of us have done any pre wire work that I mean, that's ideal, with ample time for the client to kind of marinate with some of the decisions that they have, you know, before they feel the pressure to make one. You know, before pre wire, you know, before we're wiring up a house, like, what are we putting in this, because sometimes it gets a little tight, and we we can sense the clients, you know, feeling pressured to make a decision, and sometimes when we don't make the best decisions, or we're under pressure, but so yeah, the sooner the better. And then, you know, the fixtures themselves, some some of the more simple ones are simply inserts on the, you know, Juno or Halo cans that might be going in there. In which case, the electrician, aka Sparky can put like wire the house up traditionally, and we're just providing a different picture for the insert. But other times, you know, it's a little more sophisticated, where literally, both of us have to touch both of those fixed or the same picture. So there's high voltage coming into that fixture, and there's also a low voltage tie in some cases, too. So there is a lot of hand in hand that happens between us an electrician. So ideally, ideally, the electricians play nice with the low voltage guys and vice versa. And we tend to have a pretty good relationships with our electricians because there is so much interaction and a lot of that comes from our documentation, like make trying to make their lives easier. So when we do a lighting control panel, you know, like we're providing the electrician with exactly where he needs to plug in and all his wires so he doesn't have to think about a whole lot he can put a guy in front of it and knock it out
at the end of Ruffin before we insulate and sheetrock. Are you guys videoing? Are you photographing or all your wires are just recently, there's a builder that I network with and follow and they actually had our company Matterport I was just so sad part the whole thing. Yeah. What do you guys we document your blender work,
we do it more kind of manual brute force, you know, and take photos of all of our rough in locations, and then just use simple like markup tools to let us know physically measured where they are, if we need to recover any of them, but like that Matterport it's a pretty awesome product. So like it's a nice complementing addition to I think builders doing I think it's a smart thing to do.
Our builders in our market doing that already. Yeah, yeah, they're I think there's a couple of them that are they just share that document with you?
Yeah, we have access to it. I mean, I think the homeowners, it's a it's an add on to the homeowner, I think, at least at the level that I've seen. And then then at any given time, the unforseen like we want to run a wire up this wall, is there water pipe in it is there. HVAC, I mean, some of that stuff is easy to figure out. But other times it's not
we've looked at the reason I ask is we've looked into potentially doing it on every home, but it gets it's also expensive, but it's a built in cost. It's no different. I mean, this ultimate decline is on a cost plus contract, right? bid to for that matter. I mean, it is the cost of building you a high quality and they
do they have different levels of that or is it kind of like
we I've done most of them for the end, I am just looking into now what it would be if we did rough in only Okay, and so, I think that's more advantageous to all the subcontractors we posted on our, our, you know, drives of builder trend or? Excuse me, yeah, it's
a pretty cool,
I just think it'd be, I think be really handy. Yeah, for sure. And I still think it's very professional, I think when you're trying to win a big client or you're trying to demonstrate your you know, it's always evolving you know, just
like it adds value even if even to a future homeowner to can you imagine like if you're buying a house, it's 10 or more years old and you have literally a map of the bones of that house.
So I have a question for you. And then I want to talk to you more about you know, we did a pretty deep dive on lighting. What just really interesting to me. But just for those listening, a big part of the podcasts are just understanding how people run businesses. The thing I love about businesses that regardless if you're manufacturing pens, building homes, building shoes, or having a low voltage company that are maybe what 60 70% of all businesses have commonalities, people orchestrator. So we'll talk a little bit about that, that pulling back for a minute.
So we'll have to edit this. I can't remember what my question was. Well, what were you just talking about a minute ago?
Matter poor report? Well shoot the house, second sale, the house or the? Not the original owner,
something like that. But it'll just get cut out? I guess we'll just talk about business. There was a question, they don't come back to me maybe. Let's just talk a little bit about running a business in general. So when you started, you'd kind of mentioned that, you know, you had started, the client that you had originally worked for, you know, was also an entrepreneur? Did you ever think you were going to own a business? And was it when you first started a business? How quickly did it grow? And where are you at now, in terms of the number of people that you have working with you?
Yeah, I think I think I always had a desire to work for myself. And I think that comes from, you know, watching my dad do it for multiple, multiple businesses. So I don't think it was that much of a stretch or a leap to get there. I'm not classically trained in business. I don't have an education in business, or accounting, or finances, or anything that's applicable, really, to the business side of things. But I do think that gives an advantage to like, I tend to look at things from fresh eyes when I was starting this thing, and sometimes it was highly stressful, like, how do I do stuff? But also, you know, maybe thinking outside the box a little unorthodox, is kind of my style, you know, not just doing what felt right, instead of, you know, doing what everyone else did or does. And, you know, some of the things that have come out of that wasn't even aware I was doing differently. And what you may or may not know about, like our VIP service promise to our clients, or the butler button that we have, was really born out of it was born day one, but not even marketed until, like, 10 years after we did it. And it was, you know, it's as simple as, like our VIP service promise to our clients is, when our clients buy a system from us, we don't send them a bill for service, like ever, after the sale. So wow, if they spent $100,000 With us, you know, it didn't seem right for me, you know, 12 months later to send them a bill because their cable company changed the channel numbers of where their favorite channels were. So I just never did it. I never marketed it. I never I just I just thought, hey, this guy is a good client. Why would I send him a bill? It seems like a
massive dividends for you as a reputation. I'd be curious as a user blown away. Yeah, as a business owner, how do you I mean, it's still time and money, you send a tech out there? How do you budget for that? Or how do you? Do you just, you know, roughly you trash stuff, you know, back, you know, you backlog it and say, Hey, I spend 100 hours a year, I have to build into my overall cost structure. I mean, I assume you have to get methodical about it probably didn't start that way, with the promise. And then you figured out how to produce it later.
Well, I was, you know, our whole, our whole structure. And DNA was always around that, you know, Montra, like we but we didn't know it, like outwardly didn't know we were doing anything different. And then we start talking to peers at our peer events. And they're like, What, you're crazy. This is where we make the most money is in service. And I'm like, we have we don't we literally have no service revenue. You know, the only revenue we have from service after the original sale of the house is if someone adds scope, they add a TV, they add a speaker, of course, we're going to send you a bill for the TV that you added. But but but this ongoing service, we do not. And everyone always asked the question you'd like how does it work? Like how can you pay for that, and as a result, over time, we have spent a lot less on marketing. And I think it's because the word of mouth is so strong, we really bond a relationship with our clients, where we the the cost to acquire a new one or to keep our clients is very low from a marketing standpoint, and so I look at our VIP service promises as our marketing budget and it does cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 to $300,000 of opportunity and profit loss every year to do that, that we're basically investing back into our clients opposed to taking more profit because it Garner's us more sales. So that's incredible. Yeah. And I didn't again, didn't even know we were doing this for 10 years until I hire a sales guy from a competitor. And he's like, wait, what do you do? And I'm like, Yeah, this is what we do VIP, you know? And he's like, we should be shouting this on the top of, you know, every chance we get. And I was like, okay, yeah, let's brand this and like, do something with it.
Do you know, is there any other industry, within the building community that could do that? Like, for instance, a builder, I'm thinking about? You know, if I did something like that, as a builder, you know, I actually one of my project managers brought this up in the last year we talked about, we're a small company, 666 people in service and punch list stuff is always difficult. It's like for a small company, it's like, well, you know, do we do we get a guy in a sprinter van, putting in $100,000 worth of equipment, and, you know, whatever is a fire we sent him. But you know, you have $100,000 of equipment, plus, let's say, a $60,000, a year salary or whatever, you have to pay this, maybe it's more, you know, to have this kind of full time service tax, or let's call it 160. You know, you look at what we pay, spend a year on marketing. And then you go long term, you say, You know what, we're not going to do full page ads, we're not going to do some of these other things. And we're just going to simply say, our clients are going to be so impressed with how we service them that we don't actually need to do
marketing. It's not just the budget or marketing, right, it's the presumably increase in revenue gained too. I
mean, I mean, that there's some faith that you're jumping, you're jumping off the diving board and hoping the pools build by the time
you're done. We definitely got lucky because we could start this when we were smaller, right? And see how it worked. Right? Knowingly or unknowingly. And it's morphed into like one of our biggest differentiators blown away, I did not know that that's incredible. And I mean, the other thing I would add is to like when my peers hear about one that we do this, too, how do you do it? But the third question usually is, well, your service must not be as good as everyone else's. Because I didn't even think about Yeah, so they're like, well, it's free. So they like, you know, like, how can it be good. So you people associate cheap with free. But again, because service was literally in our DNA from day one, like, our service department is different from our peers to we have dedicated service staff, when, oddly in our world, given how technology involved it is, a lot of our peers still utilize the installation technicians to execute their service. And they're conflicted. Or they have to wait time, but they're conflicted because those install the original install guys, those guys are the revenue generators, they're their producers. And if you pull them away from generating revenue, now, you got to take them into service to you know, so they usually are taking a backseat. So we hear about service lengths and times of weeks to get stuff done from AV guys. And literally, we do stuff in days or hours. And that sounds like a line. But like, our service ticket software that we use, tells us exactly how long we can close a ticket. And and it's, you know, we were hesitant to say faster than 48 hours. But the reality is, in most cases, it is unbelievable. Yeah, yeah.
How often given give us a you know, people love stories. Do you have a story where you had a client that was blown away by this that mentioned it to, you know, an architect or another big client, and they then in turn, brought their builder and came back to you and said, hey, wow, you know, Lansing and MIT one of their team, they're Unbelievable. Look at what they do. You've got to use them. I mean, or does it happen more subtly?
I think, I mean, I can't put my finger on a specific story, but But I do think and know what happens more subtly, you know, organically to and again, it, because we spend our budget on our clients, instead of marketing. Sometimes we can't be always loud about some of the stuff we're doing it and it is really more styles, just let our work, speak for itself. Let our service speak for itself. We really are playing the long game with our partners and our clients, like, you know, we're not in it to sell the one job and walk away from it. I
mean, I can tell you right now, not only on this podcast, but just in general. I'm gonna tell the story to everybody. I mean, this is unbelievable. I can't wait after this interview is over the call the other builders I know outside of our state and be like, can you believe this? Like this is routable I'm really impressed.
And then to augment our actual service we have I mean, we to simplify it, we call it you know, it's our butler button. But it's it's nothing more than an easy button like from the old was at Office Max or Office Depot days. Yeah. But it connects to the cellular network, instead of Wi Fi but you literally push this button and it alerts half of my team that the client XYZ has a service issue and we can we pick up the phone and call them within minutes. It automatically generates a ticket for us to Do it you know, it's a little bit tchotchke. But it but it really tells our clients how important service is like, yes, you can send us a text message, yes, you can create a service ticket. Yes, you can call us. But we can put a button on your fridge, or you can just walk up to it no matter when and press the button. And it will at least get your ticket logged in generated and a phone call, find out what's going on and see if we can't help you immediately, or set up a call to take care of it, you know, in a future because
I assume a lot of a lot of this stuff. I mean, I have to imagine that. I just because I know from experience, I've been dealt with it. It's like, throw the breaker replace the batteries. I mean, a lot of this stuff can be done on the phone. Yeah, if it's a hardware issue, obviously you gotta go out and not saying that everything is trivial. But a lot of times these homes are very complex, right? And but sometimes it could be a very simple answer. So you're able to solve it probably pretty quickly. Well, if it's phoneclean, then
technology has changed a lot. You know, where we have smart outlets where we can remotely reboot stuff. So the client doesn't even have to take care of it or auto reboot things like if it detects that the internet's down, it can automatically reboot the modem or the router, on the system, stuff like that is made, we have a lot more tools these days to assist in, in service. So it's kind of fun time to be
on at night. There's like a bat signal in the air of EO. Yeah, you know, I think that's pretty cool.
There's a parody that we're working on literally, like super Tech with an AO on their chest type of deal.
That's pretty, that's pretty legit. I love that. How I'm sorry, I've got this cold makes my voice Oh, interesting. But walk me through owning a company. So you've recently taken on some partners? Yeah. What led to that? And where do you see the company kind of going?
Yeah, I mean, my original partner, brother in law, who helped me get started was really more on the silent side of things, I, you know, certainly was a mentor and helped me help plaster this business. But I think the last couple years, you know, I don't know if you share this experience to or what your corporate structure looks like. But, you know, sometimes it's nice to have someone in the trenches of the foxhole with you. And I think I've always had a desire to have real true teammates in my business. And like that, that were with me every day. And so I identified some people that have been super loyal to me in this business, and ask them to be part of it. And intrical partners, and I think what that does, you know, I my biggest limiting factor, you know, like in terms of business, like I limit the business, how much I can take on or how much I'm willing to take on. And not only has this kind of freed up my mind to be more vivid visionary instead of stuck in the mechanics of the business. It, it gives the horsepower and the desire to grow it now I have more motivation to grow this business than I ever did. Like, I could admit, one could stay the size that it is, you know, 20 some employees and do well and, and, you know, be proud of what's been created. But now with, you know, three more partners, you know, I'm more motivated than ever to draw this thing, because that's what they want to and I'm like, Alright, this is time for the new generation and
kind of take the shackles off of you. Because as you're putting out, you can work on the business. Right? A lot, right? Yeah, for sure. And just in out of curiosity, why 234? Like, how do you how did you decide on how many partners to make?
Yeah, I don't think it was a quantitative thing. It was more just like identifying who am I, you know, people were that I've invested in to this business, you know, in terms of time, as much as I have or interCall in the future of the business. And so I think it was an easy this decision that way to find out who included I'm completely open to including more down the road, too. So it's not really a I would love this Sunday to be more employee owned, I think is Yeah, I mean, what I mean, I think that's how you take you can, uh, one avenue you can take to really make a business shine is it's a mentality that I've always had no matter who I worked for it was I was accompany quote unquote company guy, like I always thought about profit and the quality of the work and all of it and I didn't realize that not everyone does, you know, is employee wise, like I was a little different that way. So it's just about identifying those people who are like minded and then and then including them in it because you can amplify all of it like they benefit from the success of this business. They you know, they already walked around like little owners like why not make them official? Right.
Interesting. I'd love to talk with you more about that may have to bring you on again for episode three, four and five.
I've been working on lots of attorneys Like the guy you just
even to be great all these limited partnerships. Yeah. You know, and I think a lot of people listening have small businesses. And I think the model and some of the aspirational vision that you have for the company is super empowering, you know, you're empowering your people. And it also frees you to do what you do. You know, I'm super inspired by it makes me want to do some of these things as well. But yet, you know, as a classic, you know, type A personality, it's like, I think the hardest thing for, you know, for myself to do, and other people like me is like, you know, let your people do what you hired them to do stop doing their jobs for them. A they're better at it than you are. Yes, I'd heard recently that if you can find someone that can do your job to within 60% of your ability, you should hire that position out and move on to something else. No, you hope you don't want them to stay at 60%, right. And when I hear that, I'm like, 60% Oh, man, that's 40% not what I want. But I think, you know, the idea is simply that, you know, you take a job leader, or someone that is really good. And maybe that's not what you want to do as your business, maybe you want to stay small, because, you know, there are people that they do it all. And that's what they want to do. And that's great. You know, for myself, you know, my skill set, I joke with my clients, and evidently they like this. But you know, I'm not super handy. You know, I'm not on the job site, framing or building cabinets. And so my strength really isn't the conductor of the orchestra. It's assembling the team. It's, you know, creating the vision. And it's it really being a cheerleader, being a huge fan of not only what the homeowner wants, but you know, we work with so many talented people like yourself, and I'm just blown away at the reason we even started this podcast is I just want to celebrate businesses that are successful. And I think that anyone who's in business has done something, right. And I love hearing stories that, you know, you have an idea, go for it. And you know, Steven, who we had on in a previous podcast, you know, obviously, as a lawyer, you want to have stuff kind of buttoned up. And I'd probably tend to be more on the line of you have an idea, just do it. I think more people create plans, or talk about doing something and never do. I will often just even if I don't have a fully thought out plan, you can't build a house this way, obviously. So don't worry customers. If you're listening, I'm just winging your house. But I think when you have an idea, like just do it, like just start, you know. And I think by just doing that you'll celebrate you'll, you'll magnetize people around you to get whatever it is that you want done. And I'm sure you've had this happen to you as well, that, obviously now five more ideas came on, you're like, Wow, I never would have thought of that. Let's do that. Right? Like even like your buddy coming on, you didn't even know you're doing VIP service. I mean, you knew you're doing it. But no one else really knew what that was. The guy's like, wow, you need to tell everybody. Right? Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Outside of outside of work, you know, as we're closing up here, what do you do for hobbies? And how do you stay engaged? With your business? I know you've got a couple kids, and you're an outdoor enthusiast. Tell me a little bit about that.
Oh, man, yeah, you gotta have hobbies outside of work. I mean, this, this started, like a lot of my peers in this industry. This was our hobby, you know, this is how it started and then turn into business. And so suddenly, the hobbies not as interesting at home anymore like that. So you need other hobbies outside of what you do. And I think it just gives you a break from it in let the passion kind of build for the for your business. So yeah, man, I'm into photography, mountain biking, of course, you know, obsessed with bikes. have too many still looking for more?
Was that something even as a youth like when did that happen? Yeah, no, only though, like, as an adult. I
mean, I think I was so entrenched in my business for so long. You know, I missed out on some of that stuff. So I'm playing a little bit of makeup there, especially on the adventure adventure side of things, and travel. You know, I didn't really make time as I should have for it, then. So yeah, I would say the last five years, I learned how to snowboard. I bought my first bike. You know, photography kind of started with the kids. I mean, it the business was what started photography, I couldn't afford to have a photo guy come in, and shoot my rooms at the time, like 2500 bucks a day or something like that. So I just figured out how to start using a camera. And then I had kids and that made it even easier to get behind the camera. And so now it's not a fun hobby for me doing landscape stuff. It gives me purpose to travel.
Yeah. How do you I'm always interested in this. Personally, I have three kids and I have tons of extra curricular activities and hobbies that probably too many because I'm not good at any of them. I'm just sort of good at all of them because I can't focus on one right now just like too many things. How both business and personally do time block, how have you how have you structured your day, your weeks, your months and years to really honor the things that are important to you. I think there's any reason I ask that question. I think every business owner, this is a The thing that we always it evolves, it changes with our life as well. But it's I always love asking this question to see if someone has kind of a hack that has worked for them to employ in your own life.
I mean, I think I think as business owners, at least me, I feel guilty sometimes when I leave myself Leave, leave work, you know, and giving myself permission, knowing I'm healthier doing it, it's still hard to do. Like it's, I'm still a healthier better owner. If if I give myself breaks, and go do stuff, but it's so hard to do. Even knowing that I don't have a hack to do it. I think I probably miss a fair amount opportunities depending on how much my workload is. But there is things that I do religiously every year, you know, January I, you know, do this and, you know, in the fall, I go biking out west, headed there in two weeks, you know, Moab and in the winter, there's a ski trip. You know, that sort of stuff. I don't let a lot get in the way of those things. Yeah, you know, the kids trip, you know, in the summer, taking them to Iceland next year. So that kind of stuff like don't those are the hard and fast. You know, can't can can't get in, let them get in the way. We'll have to
shout offline. We did our honeymoon in Iceland. Oh, really? Oh, I love it's I mean, it's amazing. It's only a five hour flight. A lot of people don't Yeah. It's like 500 bucks. I mean, it's super easy to get to it. Yeah. We'll talk more about it because
it's been cut. Well, Kristen, and Andy, my partner's getting mad. They got engaged out there. Okay. And now they're going back to get married. So yeah, they'll know all
the good stuff, but because you have two daughters, right? Yeah, they're gonna love it.
Yeah, let's do the deal. The van life camper life thing.
Oh, wow. How long are you going for?
I you know, haven't booked it. Okay, the dates yet. They're out there for 10 days. And there'll be the whole 10 days or a good chunk of it. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's how long I can have my kids.
Well, thank you very much for coming. I was honored to have you on Gotcha. Cool things from here. Awesome. For anyone that's listening. Where can where can the listeners find you?
Oh, yeah, I admit one. systems.com Okay, I'm Lance at admit one. systems.com. All right, very good.
Everything in the show notes as well. So you can there's anything you like or want to repeat again, you can follow the show notes along and we'll have everyone's websites and social handles there as well. Thanks again for coming on Lance. Appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to the curious brother podcast. If you liked what you listen to please give us a five star rating and write us a review. It really means a lot. It's a great way for us to just understand what you like about the podcast and while we can keep doing so like and review and please share it with your friends and family. Find out more at curious builder podcast.com
This episode is sponsored by:
