Full Transcript for 83.An AI Agent Booked Goodhart Coffee: What Instant Quoting Means for Your Cart (Roundtable)

morphed it to make these like sugar pearl donuts that were insane and I still think like that's that's kind of like this secret amazing recipe that I pioneered and Modified that I have not brought out also in probably 10 years since that champagne power hour. Maybe it's time is coming again soon Daniel: Dude, this is the season. Q4, let's bring out some add-ons, some sugar pearl waffles, some Danish crisps, some pumpkin spice flavored espresso. All right, I'm I'm ready to roll. Cool. Well, on to the business of the hour. where should we start? Workflows? Zach Capshaw: Yeah. Yeah. Tell us it's a bit of a product update announcement, but I think it's pretty exciting and I want people to know what you shipped, Daniel, and how the different way what it unlocks, because I think there's a lot of use cases that we've talked about on the pod that that weren't that always required duct taping Zapier or some other tools onto flash quotes. But w we just we just made a big step forward this week. So maybe share share what you did. Daniel: Yeah, yeah, super excited about this and the continuous development that's gonna be going on as we hear feedback from the community. But essentially we rebuilt workflows version two. And if you've used workflows and flash quotes before, it essentially was a way to send email on some sort of time duration and to sync a whole bunch of emails together, which was valuable in and of itself. It helped you follow up automatically when you might otherwise not follow up, send emails pre and post event and all sorts of things around communications. But what we were starting to hear from people was, hey, there's a lot more within flash quotes where I want to have this if this then that dynamic. I want to be able to customize a flow of actions based off of triggers and timing. And I just want magical things to happen so that it's automatic. So I don't have to worry about it, so that I can leverage some of the really powerful flash quotes features, like s like instant quoting to their fullest potential. And so that is what we released. this a couple days ago, which is super, super cool. So to get your wheels turning on some cool things that you could do out of the box right now, you could have a workflow where based off of the event type, you choose a different quote template or based off the service. So you if you have an espresso service and it's a wedding event type, you could show a beautiful bride and groom. You could have imagery, you could have text that's relevant to this. You could have an email follow-up sequence that's pertinent to that specific event so that somebody feels like they're not just getting a generic quote for your service, they're getting something that's custom and tailored to them and to their event and allows them. Everybody's needing help imagining what it's going to be like having you at their event. Well, give them imagery of exactly where that's going to be. you could potentially provide a discount for your favorite customer or a customer that's a recurring customer. You could say, Hey, when this client asks for a quote from us. We want to just give them a five or ten percent discount every single time because they're just rock solid, they're repeat, they mean a lot to us. You could do something cool like that. the list goes on and on, but you can basically have conditions. So if this condition is met or these collection of conditions are met, then do these things and those would be actions. So any that are on your guys' mind as you're you've been playing around with workflows as far as use cases? Justin: That's the biggest one, Daniel, is just routing people to see beautiful photos and relevant reviews for that event type. Previously, every single lead saw the exact same set of photos, saw the exact same set of reviews, and now I've split them out. The Baby Shower, the private celebration one, sees all these beautiful Baby Shower private party photos and reads reviews from other people who've had private celebrations. And same with like brand activation, the big corporate stuff. They see the big corporate images, read the big corporate reviews. So you're really just speaking. You're you're visually communicating and and through all your reviews and everything about that price quote is speaking directly to that person and I think it just makes the sale and And their understanding of what you can really provide and the value that it has it's just that much easier So that was the first one I did I'm still kind of like exploring how else I can integrate but but Daniel, that's such a great job with just the the number and the power and flexibility of the different conditions and things you can modify instantly through these workflows about the quote about the payment terms, the contract you could be assigning, you know, different contracts to different things based on, know, the event type or the service you provide, or let's say you're a multi service provider. Let's say you do whatever it is like cotton candy. Well, what's a more real realistic one. maybe a matcha bar and that's its own thing and a coffee bar and that's its own thing. Now someone could come through, go through your lead intake form. If they select matcha bar, you can route them to all matcha photos. Or if again, if you did have ice cream and coffee and they select both, I want ice cream and coffee, you could send them to a hybrid quote that has photos of both ice cream and coffee instead of just one or the other. So what it really should allow is for many more people to feel comfortable, hopefully feel comfortable instant quoting. We've just seen time and again that instant quoting is incredibly powerful and so with these workflows and automations it will allow you to really make sure automatically and instantly the clients are experiencing the visuals, the reviews, the prices, the add-ons that they should have. And that way, hopefully, can build your confidence to ultimately

move to instant quoting. I'm kind of hesitant to share this. I didn't really want to share it it's kind of private good heart coffee data. But, you know, I did a big analysis of how long, the average time to book at Good Heart Coffee, the average duration between when someone inquires and when they book their service. And what I found, what Daniel helped me find, is that 46 % of our leads book within 21 hours of their quote, of first getting their quote. So like, That blew my mind and it's Zach Capshaw: What percent? Say that again. Justin: 46%. Daniel: Almost half. Zach Capshaw: Almost half your leads book within what was it? Daniel: Less than a day. Zach Capshaw: Within a day of getting a quote. Yeah. Justin: 21 hours and that disturbed me a little bit. I mean it's a huge win that's actually it disturbed me in the context of some Google Ads analytics and stuff I was doing but that is actually a crazy win and I think it speaks to you know we have the data that Zach has pulled and we have on our website about the importance of of instant quoting and how you know the the booking percentage goes up when you're doing really rapid or instant quoting. But the data we didn't have in the analysis we hadn't done is like how quickly those quotes are also turning around, right? We knew the booking percentage was higher, but I was so blown away that that 46 % of my customers book within 21 hours of getting their first quote, that's crazy fast. So if you can harness the power of instant quoting or really, really fast quoting and kind of move people, I don't know what other, I don't know if this is a Goodheart thing. And you know, we haven't done like aggregate anonymized data analysis across all companies in Flashquotes. That'll be really interesting to see, because I don't know if that's normal for all Flashquotes users, if that's Goodheart doing really well, or maybe other companies have faster time. I have no idea, but I was shocked and then you extend that out 75 % of all of our customers book within seven days of getting a quote so then from day two to day seven another 25 % of people book and then the final kind of 25 % of people book Something like probably by ten days from receiving their quote We're probably at like the ninety ninety five percent of everyone who's going to book has book so anyway The new workflow features that Daniel has built means that your instant quotes can be way better, way more personalized, way more customized, and you can start to move that graph, right? The speed at which people book your service. I don't know what yours is now. You could probably use the Flash Quotes API to calculate it, but if it's taking your customers on average two days, three days, four days to book, this is a way, using these workflows, that you could really compress that time. get people to book you much faster because you're building more trust and conveying more value faster. So yeah, that was just a little tidbit I wanted to share. Daniel: Yeah,

it was it was awesome and very interesting seeing that. And I think, mathematically it also is a reminder to not just look at the mean, the average, because generally we've always thought about the average. Okay, on average it takes four, five, six days, but Justin: Yeah. Daniel: it's really about the distribution and the median as well. Like what what is the middle across all quotes and that delta of time? What is the middle point? Because What we found was a huge concentration was within that twenty one hour or less period, nearly half, as we said. And so the middle was, I think, like less than 24 hours or just a little maybe a tad over, which was unbelievable. And and just to I guess underscore that, right? somebody is able to book or sorry, quote and be booked within 21 hours. If you're quoting two day in two days, like you you you're losing you're losing your shirt relative to the speed of instant quoting and the value that that can derive for your business. And yeah, we're really excited for the workflows to be a part of that and enhance the ability. Cause I know people that have even, you know, turned off instant quoting for a time because they wanted more customization. And now you can do both. And so I'm really excited. Zach Capshaw: I I ran another little quick query while you were talking, Justin. and I don't know if I used the exact same methodology as Daniel, but for even a narrower window, what percentage of of Goodheart's quoted bookings were booked within four hours of the customer getting the quote? You wanna venture a guess? Justin: 25 %? Zach Capshaw: Thirty-eight percent. Justin: Well. Zach Capshaw: so more than a third of your bookings are coming from people who quote and book in less than four hours. Justin: That's crazy. I think that goes to something we've always preached. Honestly, I'm like. uncomfortable share a little bit uncomfortable sharing this stuff. the thing it illustrates, and that we've been preaching, and now we have this data behind is speed and convenience wins, right? The entire modern world is moving just more and like everything. If you bet on the the laziness, not laziness, but just how busy people are. And if you make a bet on speed and convenience, and if you can provide speed and convenience in the quoting, in the booking, and in the execution of the service, like That is always a winning bet every single time. And I think these numbers really illustrate it. And I've been betting on this for years. Good Heart, think, is one of... maybe one of the first that plays such big bets on have to instant quote, I have to be able to book immediately because we've got to bring catering into modern times. Catering is such an old school industry, enough of that. Like there's DoorDash, there's Instacart, there's Airbnb. People need to, you know, to be able to cater very, very quickly and easily and with low friction. these numbers have honestly kind of blown my mind. and show what's possible. If you're not instant

quoting, I would encourage you, give it a try. We have the off-ramps, like... we have the dollar amount threshold. So hey, if an inquiry comes in for over this amount, don't instant quote it. So we have that guardrail. So right away, you can be confident that like, okay, if any really big custom quotes come in, you can still custom quote it. Then we have all the workflow automations. We also have, it might not be on the pro plan, it might be on the scale plan, but like the ability to dynamically price events. based on event type. like your conferences, your expos, they can automatically have like a 15 % increased price on them because there's so much more work and so much more product. yeah, that's my challenge to all of you is like, if you've been skeptical about instant quoting, you need to get your pricing calibrated and give it like a one, two. four week trial period. You don't have to marry it. You don't have to commit to it forever, but go on a few dates with Instant Quoting Daniel: Mm-hmm. Justin: and see how it goes. Set up your workflows, set up your pricing, set up your workflows, and go on some dates with it see how it goes. Zach Capshaw: Yeah. Yeah, I think the biggest people challenge people run into is just figuring out how to get their pricing dialed and then how to reflect how to configure that the pricing that they want in flash quotes. And that's that's something that we're working on. but I would open invitation. I've offered people in mobile mobile business school. Like if you're struggling to figure out how to get your pricing coded into flash quotes so that you can turn on instant pricing, like don't let that be a blocker. Just DM me or DM Justin in mobile business school. Like we'll get on we'll get on a call, we'll work through it together. It's a bit of a math. Sometimes it feels like a little bit of a math homework problem, but once once it's set, it's like you do it one time and then you never have to bust out a calculator again. You you the the system can do all the quoting math forever. Justin: Yeah, is a little bit, it's a little bit tough. it has always been the hardest part. I remember way back in the day trying to build out my own instant quoting using all these formulas. It was, you know, we've made it. I feel like we've made it about as easy as it can be. mean, sure, maybe we could do some like AI auto setup configuration. We've made the interface is really easy, but it is a, it takes a little bit of thought, a little bit of time. But man, it's so powerful when you get it. It's just like the payoff is unbelievable once you've got it in place. So, you know, take the hour, set it up, reach out to our support person, hop on calls with us. We'll get you in a comfortable place with it. you'll be happy. Zach Capshaw: Right. That Daniel: to mention then people can use their Muse agents to to book you. Justin: Daniel, give us the talk about this. Tell us about the little test you did. Daniel: Yeah. So the other day I was playing around with Muse from Meta. It hit top of the the leader's boards in the app store. And if you haven't played with it, it's essentially AI, but also with a little computer. And so it's an agent that can act on your behalf and navigate the internet and use websites and do all sorts of cool stuff. And so I was naturally very curious to say, okay, what can this do with can I book my good friend Justin for for an event at the Denver Zoo? And Yeah, I I asked for a coffee cart in Denver. It gave me some options. Good Heart Coffee was up there. I said, let's go with that. it proceeded to say, hey, we can do an instant quote. You want to get a quote right now? It's like, sure, that sounds awesome. It tapped into the flash quotes form on Justin's site, and it basically provided me all the fields that I needed to provide, asked me for those, and it filled it out on my behalf. And Press submit, get my quote. It landed on the flash quotes quote page. It said, here's the quote. Here's how much it costs. Do you want to add a few more add-ons? Or are you ready to book? And I said, Yeah, let's go ahead and add custom carts to our to the Denver Zoo extravaganza and let's book the event. And it proceeded to take me through the booking form, asking questions along the way that it was required to fill in. I filled it out and Justin does card on file. So All of a sudden it literally used Stripe integration. So it allowed me to use Stripe Link, which is super powerful, right? That's where my phone number is tied to my wallet across the internet to reserve within that chat reserve good hard coffee for the Denver Zoo. coming up here in October. And all of a sudden Justin just texts me and he's like, What the heck are you doing? Are you playing with stuff? Like, what's going on? Zach Capshaw: Hm. Justin: Yeah, I see this new booking alert with his name on it and I'm like, I tell my team go charge that card right away. Daniel: Charge that card before it goes down. So, anyways, that would not have been possible to that degree without instant quoting. The experience without instant quoting is I put in this quote on your behalf. Hang out. Hope somebody emails you. Right. This is a game changer. This is literal agenc commerce for booking your mobile business, enabled by the fact that you can generate prices on demand mathematically. Crazy. Justin: Yeah, and this is just gonna get more and more powerful, I think, as more and more people are comfortable and kind of the overton window or like the cultural comfort. shifting with people being open to using these AI personal agents. Unless we block, I mean, we're not planning, a lot of websites and commerce giants immediately blocked Muse and have certain of them have blocked agents like Walmart and Amazon, like blocked metas, personal agent. I don't think we have any plans to block agents. So yeah. Daniel: Yeah. that's where we're aligned, right? We're fully aligned with our customers. We want everybody to go

gangbusters and make a whole bunch of money and we benefit and make some some money in the process. So, it's a win win. Zach Capshaw: Still think it's earlier Daniel: Sweet. Zach Capshaw: I'll I'll throw a little I'll throw a little cold water on the agent to commerce thing just 'cause I think it's an interesting topic for debate. I th I think it's ex I think it's exciting. I think it's cool and I that's definitely where the future is headed. But I I mean do you guys really think most most people are ready to like give their credit card to a to an AI bot? that that that's the chal that's almost like the self driving car challenge for AI, right? It's like are you are you willing to put to put your life on the line and get in a car get in a Waymo. I w I am. A lot of people I know aren't. I saw I saw an article that was like a survey sh a cer a recent consumer survey survey showed that like 75% of consumers now would trust an agent with routine productivity tasks, but only 10% would trust one to make a purchase on their behalf, which ten 10% is actually kind of a lot. I almost thought that was higher than I expected, but it's but it's still definitely a minority of people who are who are to the point where they're like, Yeah, just give AI my credit card and go book me something. so it's it's early days, but I maybe graduate like you said, Justin, the Overton window will grow, it'll become more normal. more people will ride in autonomous Teslas and Waymo's every day, and more people will probably give their agent their credit card and and that will eventually it will eventually get to that point. Justin: Yeah. Daniel: I think for me, I I guess my response to that would be I'm more concerned about an agent booking the wrong thing or buying the wrong thing. It's really more like we've talked about the the research step, getting the highest quality thing, finding the social proof, figuring that out, than I am, yeah, yeah. Versus Zach Capshaw: Yeah. Does it have my judgment, my taste? Can it express my preferences? Yeah. Daniel: versus using my money because because Muse and all of these are probably going to integrate with Stripe, I'm already comfortable with link as a concept. There's this. layer where I know Stripe as a company and all I'm doing is putting in my phone number experientially to pull up something that I'm already doing. So at least for me, I felt pretty comfortable. It's using a credit card with which has its own ability to, you know, question charges and fix all that stuff. So you have some some protection there. So for me it's not so much commerce online as it is decision making. So that's what I'm interested to figure out and provide from the flash quotes, quoting and booking process for these agents. How do we provide an abundance of great information, social proof, imagery, other context to help somebody decide no, this is the one I want to go with. I don't know, Justin, what do you think? That's my take. Justin: Well, what was really interesting about that process, Daniel, was it went through, Muse went through, read the whole contract. signed the contract, but specifically flagged the rescheduled cancellation policy, payment terms and all that. So it was actually like very aware of like, here's the cancellation policy and here's your event date. So like you could cancel up to this date. And it definitely had that in mind. It's making me think that like we probably should have like native fields on our price quote with like cancellation policy, not just in the contract. But yeah, it was very keenly aware of those things because then it kind of understood that like We can book this now, but then you would have this window to cancel if for any reason you wanted to before you were kind of locked in contractually to certain payment terms or anything. yeah, it was really looking at the policies and everything as it was going through that process. Daniel: I was surprised, Justin, you hooked up you hooked up your email and you said, Hey, find subscriptions and cancel them for me, right? With Muse. you you you're Justin: Yeah, I did. I did. Daniel: you're like a privacy nut. You won't even Zach Capshaw: Mm-hmm. Daniel: let people look at your I face face scan you at airports, bro. Justin: Yeah, that's that. Yeah, I do usually opt out of that. I don't know why. But yeah, no, I well, I think I exported the yeah, I think I exported the bank statements and I was like trying to have it fine, like unused subscriptions. No, but no, I was going to just see I was Daniel: so you didn't hook up any do any connections or anything? Okay. All right, consistent. Consistent. Justin: just trying to see like the you know how useful it could be because I was hearing a lot of a lot of the hype. So. Zach Capshaw: Mm-hmm. I'll say I I I personally have I'll trust AI agents with a lot of my financial information. I don't really care about that. And I AI w was like so helpful with my with my tax return this year. It was it was almost so good that it made me question like like the should I find a new tax guy? Because it was finding mistakes and and errors and missed credits and things that were run in credits that were claimed that I wasn't eligible for it's it it was way I and and like I mean was questioning it. I was like double checking this stuff. I'm asking the tax guy and it's like, yeah, that was just an error. That was a mistake. I mean it it found meaningful changes from just reviewing, you know, basically dumped in the full in a folder like all of the different tax, you know, tax documents that I received from banks and investments and whatever, mortgages and And just dumped it all in there and said, here's the here's the raw data, here's the draft return, spot check it. And it and it was it found a lot of meaningful changes that ended up happening. full disclosure, I'll probably end up trying to find a better tax person because I was like almost alarmed with how many changes I didn't find.

But yeah, it's it's it's great at that stuff. Like that, that just the anything like that, Justin, combing through credit card statements, looking for anomalies or recurring stuff that you forgot about or big purchases or combing through tax documentation that's arcane and hard to understand. that's like that's a killer use case if you're if you have if you have enough trust to give to to give it those types of documents, which I I personally do. Justin: Yeah. Daniel: Sweet. Well, that was a good one. Took it took a wild turn. Love it. Zach Capshaw: Mm-hmm. Daniel: let's talk about hidden multipliers. This is a book you've been reading, Zach, and I know there were some things that really jumped out at you. It's valuable. Zach Capshaw: Yeah, founder book club. the this is something we've done a couple times. It seem it seems people like these book recommendations and stuff. So I'll I'll give a little plug for this book and then talk about like one interesting idea I've taken from it that it that I think applies to mobile businesses and then I want to get you guys' reaction to. So the book I've got it here is Hidden Multipliers, Jumpstart Growth with Your Existing Budget and Team. It's written by Jason Cohen. Most Jason Cohen's not that famous for how how successful I think he is and how smart and wise I think he is. he's he built, but he's known in kind of some circles and some podcast loops and the business, business tech world. He he's built two different billion dollar software businesses. The the most recent was WP Engine, which is which is a a large and very profitable WordPress hosting company. He started back in like 2010. I think it's one of the biggest or maybe the biggest, privately held WordPress, WordPress specialized hosting company. and prior to that, he built like another software company and then he's invested a bunch. And he's been blogging prolifically. He kind of reminds me Naval a little bit. Like he's sort of a he's sort of a business philosopher type guy. He has a lot of just wisdom and I and general frameworks and ideas about business that are broadly applicable, I would say, not just tech focused, but like just, you know. business and strategy and how you how you how to run a company and int unconventional lessons that he learned along the way. And he's been publishing this stuff on his blog Smart Bear for like 20 years. It's a it's like a deep, rich blog that a lot of people that I've gotten a lot of value of out of and a lot of entrepreneurs I look up to also cite it as like some of the best like business insight on the on the internet. So well flies under the radar a little bit, but super wise guy. Anyway, he published his first book this year. hidden multipliers. And it's I love it. I think it's he the way he organized it, it's basically like he took his maybe whatever it is, how many chapters there are like 11, 11 best unconventional, uncommonly thought of like tactics and ideas and strategies for improving the ROI or

the growth of your business that are not commonly talked about. and kind of compiled them into just like 11 independent chapters that are just lessons. he calls them hidden hidden multipliers because hidden because. They're not they're not obvious. Not a lot of people are talking about them or doing them, but multipliers because they can dramatically Justin: Ahem. Zach Capshaw: change your growth trajectory or your profit margin or move move revenue needles in a way that's disproportionate to how how simple the changes are in some cases. there's a lot of stuff in here that's really good. I I read a chapter this week though that I thought was a great topic for the pod. I think it's chapter four about it's about it's about pricing strategy. and how to think about your pricing strategy and then how to execute and be consistent with your pricing strategy. So I'll I'll tee it up here. So the here's here's the here's the hook. There are only three pricing strategies you can have as any business. More for more, more for less, and less for less. What that means is if you're if our if your strategy is more for more, it means you are getting the very, very best and you are paying more for it. You are willing to pay more to get the To get more to get the best thing there is. So think ultra premium, expensive, luxury, craft, niche, high-end products. The ex example he he actually gives an example of coffee in each c each of the three categories. So the in this category, it would be like the $22 bag of beans that's single origin, like very you know, exquisite, rare. you're buying into the story of the farmer and the origin and the way and the way that it was crafted and how amazing how amazing it is. Or the, the the $500 bottle of wine, whatever. It's like it's Justin: Thanks. Zach Capshaw: it's it's so expensive because it's it really is just designed to appeal to the very, the very niche high-end person who really wants the absolute best you can get in a certain category. obviously 99% of people or more don't buy $22 coffee bags, right? They buy, they buy, they go by Starbucks, they buy folders, those are those are the other categories kind of. But for there is this. More for more category that is that is a valid strategy for some businesses where we we're just gonna be the best that money can buy at this thing. We're gonna charge a ton for it and we're marketing to people who want the best. We're gonna have hire the best people, we're gonna use the best raw materials that you can possibly get. We're gonna sweat every detail, we're gonna pour craft and energy and opinion into this. It's white glove, it's high touch, it's custom, Rolex, Mercedes, Louis Vuitton, that that's the message. Of more for more. The pros of more for more are high revenue, strong margins, you know, strong, like high prices, loyal customers that that love your thing and go and keep coming back because like this small people who love the small niche of people who love this are really passionate about it. But the con is that it's like limited to it's there's just not that many people who actually want more for more. It's very it's you're very much targeting like a small subset of the of the of the populace. Who have very low price sensitivity for this particular category and they really care about the best. That's like 1% of people at most in for any product, any service, no matter what you're doing. So you're kind of limiting your size and scope. so that's more for more. More for less is kind of the the happy medium that most businesses fall into. And he actually says that if for bootstrapped businesses, you should almost always be more for less, which is like the high ROI option. It's like, You get you get a lot and you actually don't pay that much, right? It's you it's value, it's high ROI, high quality at a reasonable price. This is what most people want. This is what most people are shopping for. This is how most people buy most things, right? It's it's it's Starbucks. It's not, it's not the crap, it's not the $22 coffee. It's not you're not trying to posit, you can't position yourself as the best, and you're not positioning yourself as the cheapest. You're positioning yourself as like, look how much you get and look how reasonably priced it is for how much you get. So it's a value play and trying to communicate the value relative to the cost being so favorable to the customer. and we'll I'll circle back on like strategies and t and takeaways for each of these categories, but then I'll just I'll just to close the loop on the intro, I'll talk about less for less, which Justin: you Zach Capshaw: is obviously like super budget option. Folgers, Costco, Walmart, IKEA, Southwest Airlines. The whole strategy of the company is weird we are the cheap option and we We are leaning into the cheap option. We're trying to find, we're almost innovating on process or technology or business strategy in a way to make make the product cheaper than it ever possibly could have been before. We're basically selling to people who they're deciding between like not buying it at all or or or buying buying this super cheap option. Like they're not even in the market for for more for less or more for more. They're like, I don't really need a I don't I don't really need a Need a new dresser, but it's Ikea and it's $89 and might be nice. I'm I'll pick it up. it's that, it's that that segment. Really hard to execute, really hard to be excel at. it's kind of a race to the bottom thing. And you also almost need to have some some kind of insight or process innovation to make it economically feasible. But that's less for less. It's kind of just being being the budget option, leaning into it, saying, Hey, it's yeah, it's not perfect. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but look how dirt cheap it is. Like you might as well get it. It's it's basically costing you nothing. So those are those are the three strategies he talks about. he gives a lot of

examples about what what you should do in each category and how they differentiate. They're all obviously valid options, but his main takeaway is you've got to pick one and lean into it. Don't be don't tell people like you're the best, but you're also the cheapest. Like that those that actually turns people off. And it's it like a inconsistency in your message and your and your positioning that that can hurt you more than it helps you. So what are your thoughts on that? Justin: I love that. think it really simplifies a complex, a potentially complex... area. Pricing is, you know, like we have a lot of configuration and there's a lot of different ways people think about pricing their mobile business. But yeah, I think it's a great framework to just help simplify and clarify. Because really, the one of the other core things is, just where you trying to position yourself in the market. That's impossible to avoid question when you are figuring out where your prices for your business should be. And so, starting with where you're trying to position yourself, more for more, more for less, less for less is really the beginning of that conversation. Daniel: I guess yeah, I like that, but I have having a hard time seeing who would who would like want to claim less for less. And and even the example of I I think you may maybe mention Costco, right? Like to me, I'm getting there's certain things I'm getting more of. I'm getting I I'm getting value there, I'm getting higher quantities of these things. I'm potentially getting the equivalent thing, like in the case of maybe a tech or TV, that they've like they're using their leverage and scale and then a strong belief that like they're just cost plus, I think. They just like literally say, this is how much it costs us. We're gonna add whatever percentage is to cover our overhead and our costs. And and then I'm also getting the Zach Capshaw: I don't even think they're cost plus. I think they're at pro they're at price wholesale almost or very very close to that exclusively monetized by the memberships. Mm-hmm. Daniel: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Even b even better. So then there's there's a moreness there about like I'm now a part of they're selling something else. I I'm a part of this group of people that likes Costco and likes hot dogs and buying twenty four packs of soda or pallets of soda. I it doesn't e it feels that feels even like a more for less for me. I d Justin: To me, Costco is more for less. me, it's more like Dollar Tree is less for less. Walmart is less for less. And no one's gonna fully market themselves that way, but what is the less? It's lower quality for less money. So the marketing is not gonna be that, but that's effectively what's taking place instead of these really high quality, thick fabrics or towels. If you're buying whatever, towels for your bathroom or socks or underwear, it's like... These are polyester cheap fabric that was made overseas and it's less quality for less money. Daniel: I guess

my counter argument would be I think less for less it well, you did say this, so I'm I guess I'm agreeing with you. It's a race to the bottom. Like that's that's kind of a trajectory for demise. If you're if you're in less for less land, you need to figure out what how to get to less for more because and what your more is. I mean, even in the case of Walmart, right? I I live in a small town. There's not much delivery at all. I signed up for a Walmart subscription because they're Their grocery and immediate delivery, because I can't access Amazon, prime now or anything, is actually phenomenal. And of all the stores in the United States, unless you count Amazon warehouses and Walmart still may have them beat, their proximity to the most US citizens, like within, I don't know, 30 mile radius, is the top in the entire country. And so they acquired, I forget the name of the company, but they acquired like a fintech. e commerce company to jack up their e commerce stuff and really leaned into same day delivery because they realized like, we can compete on this. So to me, everything Walmart's been doing, probably from their strategic angle, is trying to find like, okay, if it's still going to be crappy jeans that are super cheap, like that's our less for less, but you can get more for less as well. I mean, to me it's it's a they're finding their more and that's a part of their strategy. Justin: Walmart is such a fascinating company. Zach Capshaw: Yeah, I think that's one one way to put about I I think where you I think this is a good conversation, by the way. so the the distinction maybe that is missing in the new or the nuance that's missing in there. I agree I agree with what you're saying. Like I think I'm trying to think about how Jason Coed would answer it because he gave up both of those examples. And I think what he would say is like obviously you're getting like there's bet there's merit to something less for less. Like people don't just buy crap to buy crap, right? They don't want they don't want to buy Bad products. they don't want to buy, they don't want to shop at bad stores. So it's not like less for less isn't intrinsically bad. Less for less means the primary value proposition and like organizational orientation of our business and the way that we position ourselves is that we are the budget friendly option. Like that, that is the no that is front and center in how we market, how we sell, how we price, why people come to us. They they're coming to us to get a deal. That is what our business is. It's the place you come to get a deal. That's what that's what he would say Walmart is. That's what he would say Costco is. There's not to say that there's they're not you're not getting some some, you know, some some value because Costco gives it in bulk or because Walmart has, you know, e-commerce and delivery and and the things like that. They have to make their offer compelling. They have to make people still want it. It's just that their their

orientation is a business, their whole strategy of how they market, how they sell, how they price, what they talk about in their commercials is like, look at what a great deal you're getting. As opposed to a less for more sorry, a more for less business is is not so much like look at what a great deal you're getting. It's like high quality at a reasonable price. You're getting a very, very good product at a moderate or reasonable price. You're not primarily searching it out because you're look at you're deal hunting. You're You're looking for a tr a balance of the quality and the the experience and what I'm what am I getting relative to the cost. So cost is not like the primary way that it's not the primary positioning angle for those companies. It's and you're not selling to people whose primary motivation is how do I find the cheapest thing to solve way to solve this job to be done? It's like there, it's a balanced thing. It's a it's more of a balanced approach. Like po cost is good relative to how much I get. So yeah, I know if that makes sense, but I think that's that that's how he would maybe answer that distinction there. Cause I think he advocates that like less for less is a valid strategy. It's not a bad strategy. There's lots of great businesses like the ones we're talking about, Costco and Walmart, Southwest Airlines is another one he talks a lot about, where their their whole strategy is like we only do short haul flights, we only have one type of plane, we do we do a lot of unconventional process things to create to create value so that we can be the cheapest option. and IKEA is another example he talks about a lot, where it's like our innovation is that we ask the customers to build it themselves because it saves us, it helps us have really organized warehouses and it reduces our the amount of furniture that breaks in transit and it saves our margins here and there and our our square footage of our of our the real estate that we need to develop and how how much product and how many SKUs we can fit per square foot and the likelihood of of returns. It's all tied tied to this idea, this unconventional idea like. You could just make people build it themselves. So they have a creative insight that lets them unlock a unlock a lower tier of price than was otherwise possible and then p position price as the primary reason why you shop there. Daniel: Yeah, I just don't feel like I'd ever want a less for less business. Zach Capshaw: I don't either. I think they are the of the three, they seem like the hardest. They seem like the hardest to execute, right? Because you're always your your primary advantage is your price. And someone can always just come along and and undercut you and then and then what do you have? Justin: Well, they can undercut you for a time until they probably go out of business because you likely have more advantages of operation and scale potentially, or that would be the hope, right? That would be the hope that you could

establish those so that people try to undercut you. Zach Capshaw: Mm-hmm. Well that maybe we can pivot the c Daniel: So what is Facebook? What are what are social media platforms? Less for more? You're not like if you're the customer Justin: No, that's advertising. I don't know. That's attention. That's, yeah, that's an interesting point. Daniel: Yeah You're Zach Capshaw: Yeah, you're not the you're the you're the product at Facebook. You're not the you're not the customer. Daniel: not paying anything. Yeah. Zach Capshaw: I guess probably for the actual customer, which is the advertisers, it's it's a it's a more for less play. Like look how much ROI you can get for a reasonable ad cost, click cost. Yeah. Yeah. Daniel: L more for less, yeah. Yeah. High targeting, better return on ad spend. Yeah. Justin: Compared to newspapers, by the way, because Zach Capshaw: So how does it Yeah. Justin: I was still alive and like in high school, the other form of like small advertising that was accessible was newspaper advertising. I remember my dad would run newspaper ads in the Montrose Daily Press for my lawn mowing and yard and manual labor services. Yeah, when you look at Facebook compared to how targeted they are and how effective they are compared to yeah, generic TV ads that are just blasting to everyone with no targeting or newspaper ads blasting to everyone, yeah, they provide some unique value. Zach Capshaw: The thing I one other comment on more for less, and then maybe what I really want to do is actually is ask you guys about like how you think this applies to mobile business. Cause as I was reading this, I was picturing like, yeah, like less for less, you know, we see comp we see companies that are coming into the market and charging like absurdly low prices for s for their services, like really heavily almost discounting their own time, ch charging two, three hundred bucks for a coffee cart service or something like that, like just trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel and I think we have thoughts on whether that's a viable strategy. But there's that end of the market. I think mo the probably the most of the bell curve falls in the in the more for less camp. I think good art coffee would be like a textbook more for less type of type of value prop where it's like, look how much you get, it's reasonably priced. Like that that seems to be a lot of how you position your your services. And then there's like the more more for more end of the spectrum. We've talked to people like Cynthia, for example, is a great one where she's she charges she keeps raising her prices. She wants to be the top of the market. She wants to be the most expensive. And she's very comfortable with the trade-off, which is you're you're not gonna have a very high booking rate. You're gonna lose a lot of leads. you're you're not you're intentionally narrowing the pool of people who who you're a good fit for. and she's okay with that. She wants her her stated strategy on our webinar was like, How do I make more money and not do more events? so that like that's that's a that's a perfect example of someone I think who leaned into that piece really well. But curio curious if what you guys think about these three models and how they fit with the with what we see in the mobile business world. Justin: Yeah, I I feel that I definitely fit into the... the more for less. Because I really try to be like all inclusive. I don't really charge extra for like matcha or chai. It's just like everything's included. You know, it's not cheap, but it's a good price for the value. So yeah, I think what's weird about or the challenge of certain businesses in certain mobile businesses is Some of them can exist outside of kind of like the the the business evolutionary structure, meaning like they don't really actually have to be profitable because they're a side hustle for someone who works a W-2 job. It's like these businesses can exit the financial realities of a lot of the business because they're just trying to make side cash for themselves personally. And it means they won't scale and it means they can charge really low prices. And those are probably the businesses that really can stand to do less for less. It's like the analogy I'm thinking of is like indoor outdoor cats, right? Where it's like, or other pets where like cats who are indoor outdoor can like go out and wreak havoc in the environment potentially, right? But then escape predators and and go indoors at night and be safe so they can go out and hunt to their heart's content Come back indoors and be safe from predators and it's almost like businesses who? Who are not? actually providing the living wages to the owner They almost exist in this like domesticated realm where they don't face the pricing Survival challenges of businesses where it's like this feeds me I survive on this and so So there's some interesting parallels there where probably the only businesses or at least like The businesses that don't charge enough to sustain themselves and can't scale like they still might be making good good cash side vacation, Christmas present money for the owner. But I don't think they're really competitors long term because they're just, they're a fun business and they won't scale and they can't scale and they don't have much capacity. yeah. Zach Capshaw: Yeah. I love I love that example. I I like it triggered in my mind another another type of example example related to that would be like the laws of business are almost like the laws of physics. Like it once once you're fully subjected to those laws, it's like you must be able to pay pay your bills, pay your overhead, pay your warehouse rent, pay your staff, pay yourself and and exhib and fun you know a living wage or a good competitive market based wage for all of all of those things and all the people involved and still turn a profit at the end of the month. Those are those are the laws of business that you know that that affect

every single business. But businesses who who are who are kind of fledgling, like you said, or side hustles, they don't have that pressure. They can kind of they can kind of skirt the laws of business for a little for a little while and and let their pricing c can be distorted because they're not They're living in a s in a playground where they don't have the pressures of of a market wage for every person who's involved. but the t I think that so the takeaway there to me is two pieces. If if you're in the first camp, like you're you're a level one, your side hustler business who's aspiring to go full time, you need to like wake up and smell and and deal with the reality and think about like is my price does my pricing accurately reflect like a a world where I pay someone else to do this work and I'm not there or Could I actually turn a profit at these prices and still hire and hire people to help me and run a business run a profitable business? If not, then it's just a clue. You you're artificially inflating your booking numbers and you probably need to figure out how to sell, sell at a higher price so that you have a sustainable pricing and profit structure that can that can accommodate the costs as you scale. And then for people who are in the who are in that camp, they're they're fighting the gravity, but they're competing against all these all these upstarts who are chart. way undercutting them on these unrealistic prices. I think the strategy there is just lean into the advantages that you have that they don't, right? You have a team, you have profit, you have budget for marketing, you have budget for salespeople, you can you can convey better value. You can have a better website. You can instant you could pay for flash quotes to instant quote, right? You have you have capital as an advantage over over the people who are in side hustle land. So think about how you could use that capital to to differentiate yourself and create a lead and create and and swallow up more of the market share as your as your competitive edge. Justin: I know we have some really exciting news about an event we're hosting. Zach, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Zach Capshaw: Yeah, so Ark, if you're a first time listener, our we have a community, free community for mobile business entrepreneurs. It's called mobile businessschool.com. you can it's a great place for more conversations like this. Other there's a lot of other mobile business founders in there chatting about ideas and strategy and answering questions for each other. but we are we've ha have been leaning into more live events for the community. We ran level five live, our first conference for the community la this past June in Denver. 75 caterers came out to Denver. We had a great two-day conference to sp specifically focused on how to grow your mobile business. And we that went so well, and people were so excited, and we enjoyed it so much. We want to do more live events. So definitely planning level five live part two next summer for 2027, pencil that in. but we're also trying experimenting with a a smaller format live event. So we announced this past week the mobile business mastermind. This is a Two-day small group event mostly focused on people who are like at or approaching level four or five businesses, meaning you have a team, you're scaling quickly, you want to grow, you want to grow quickly, you're ID probably doing multi-six six figures of revenue, maybe seven figures of revenue, or you aspire to reach seven figures of revenue for your mobile business in the next 12 to 24 months. this is kind of specifically tailored to people at that stage of the journey. we're gonna we rented out a sick compound in in Tampa, Florida in February, February 4th to 7th, where we're all gonna we're gonna do catering private chef. we're gonna do some talks, some workshops. We're gonna have different speakers who've who've hit different who've hit that seven figure marker better. And the whole idea is like let's just have a small group of like 15 people who who really want to go deep on this stuff and talk about really, really Boosting the putting rocket fuel on their business. So if that sounds interesting to you, I'll there'll be a link in the description. Check out mastermind.mobile business school dot com. It's by application only. There's limited seats. So I know I think more than half the seats are gone now. So go go check it out. submit your application and we'll hopefully see you in Florida in February. Justin: Awesome, love it. Yeah, and just to highlight that this most people probably won't get in. This is not for people who are just weekend warriors. This is for serious operators who want to grow. It's expensive, but the the minds in the room and the people you get to talk to and the insight you're going to get, you're not going to get this anywhere else. Like it's by people who've done it, who've been there, who can help you solve your problems and can really help you scale. It's not for people who just want to Talk it's for people who really are committed to doing the work. I'm gonna be there Zach Daniel be there and and you know a bunch of other really incredible high-level operators, so Yeah, this is it's gonna be incredible But it's it's not for everyone. So You know if you're if you're serious if you're committed those are the people we want there Zach Capshaw: Awesome. Well on on that note, yeah, check out the link in description. And thanks everyone for listening. good conversation today, Justin. I enjoyed that. Justin: Yeah, good stuff. We'll catch y'all next time.