AI Employee: How Home Service Businesses Are Scaling Without More Staff

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades – "AI Employee: How Home Service Businesses Are Scaling Without More Staff"

Hosts: Tersh Blissett & Josh Crouch (Skilled Trades Syndicate)
Guest: Dennis Steele (Co-founder, Podium)
Date: March 18, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores how home service businesses—HVAC, plumbing, electrical—can use AI automation to scale operations without hiring more staff. Dennis Steele, co-founder of Podium, shares the evolution of AI employee agents (like “Larry”) that handle communication, booking, and customer service. The hosts and Dennis discuss the tech, real-world stories, customization, practical implementation, challenges, and future trends in AI for skilled trades.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Shift from Automation to AI Agents

• Early AI: Dennis explains that automation was the initial appeal, but true game-changing impact came with AI agents capable of multi-tasking and mimicking human interaction.
  • "We're seeing agents do human level work across multiple tasks and consistently over time. This is where you can set up a system where that agent can actually go make you money." (Dennis, 00:00, 04:40)
• Definition: An AI agent is an advanced tool given a context and set of tasks, empowered to act independently.
  • "So an AI agent is when you're leveraging the AI model and you're giving it basically a set of tasks...to go complete those tasks." (Dennis, 03:54)

2. AI Employee “Larry”: Capabilities and Uncanny Realism

• Features: Larry can handle voice and text communication, book appointments directly in scheduling systems, and manage customer service without emotional fatigue.
  • "Our AI employee, basically two modalities. Able to text, right? Able to talk on the phone, able to book appointments straight into the calendar." (Dennis, 00:33, 10:31)
• Customer Attachment: Customers think Larry is a real person, even leaving positive reviews:
  • "We call our AI employee Larry. The customers...can develop a relationship. People call out Larry all the time." (Dennis, 00:23, 08:55)
• Real Story: A potential customer angrily contacts a business after a traffic incident, but Larry defuses the situation and books a job.
  • (See full story: 09:37–10:31)

3. The Competitive Pressure: AI as a Differentiator

• Business Impact: Businesses using AI agents are providing faster, always-on service, raising consumer expectations.
  • "Once you work with a business that can support you 24/7...it's hard then to go play phone tag with a business over weeks." (Dennis, 07:02)
• Risk of Avoidance: Companies ignoring AI risk falling behind as expectations and competitors evolve.
  • "Consumer expectations are shifting...The ones leveraging [AI] are able to...figure out how to automate their business and find more efficiency." (Dennis, 06:14)

4. Scaling, Staffing, and Cost-Saving Benefits

• Infinite Capacity: Larry can handle unlimited calls during surges, eliminating the need to overstaff for peak times.
  • "You can turn Larry on...during our busy hours, Larry could be taking phone call 3, 4, 5, 6...unlimited number of phone calls." (Dennis, 11:10)
• Flexible Staffing: Larry fills the gaps for after-hours, weekends, or off-peak, eliminating layoffs during slowdowns.
  • "If things do slow down, he just answers less calls...after hours, over the weekends, middle of the night." (Dennis, 11:53)

5. Outbound Communication and Membership Management

• Upcoming Outbound Features: Soon, Larry will handle outbound calls—especially for managing membership programs, renewals, and following up on open estimates.
  • "We do have the capability outbound. We're going to be releasing that soon and it's going to be a moneymaker." (Dennis, 13:18)
• Integrations: AI can analyze tools like ServiceTitan to identify the best outreach opportunities.
  • "We're pulling all the data in, we're looking at the opportunities...the next phase is how do we monetize your data?" (Dennis, 14:20)

6. Customization: Making AI Work for Your Business

• Tailored Playbooks: With Podium’s AI Studio, businesses tweak Larry’s responses on the fly to match company tone and policies.
  • "If Larry says something you don't like, you just tell him...He writes that down into what we call a playbook." (Dennis, 17:08)
• Real-Time Correction: Immediate feedback trains Larry for improved future responses.
  • "He'll go in, he'll write that customization, and then he'll play the conversation back to you." (Dennis, 18:26)
• Balancing Human Touch: Customization lets businesses add or remove “friendly” touches in conversations, matching their brand.

7. Cultural Impacts and Customer Experience

• Stories & Laughter: The hosts share anecdotes, including a bug where AI started opera singing to a client, highlighting both realism and occasional quirks.
  • "She was full on opera." (18:12)
• Building AI Personality: Voice, accent, and region-specific tweaks are in development for localization (e.g., Southern or Appalachian accents).
  • "We're working on some voice customization features that we'll come out with..." (Dennis, 24:11)
• Hiring & Culture: Parallels are drawn between AI onboarding and hiring staff—the more context and training, the better the result.
  • "You are going to have to onboard your AI employee just like you onboard a human employee." (Dennis, 27:08)

8. Security Concerns and Safe Use of AI

• Voice Synthesis Risks: AI voices are increasingly lifelike, raising privacy and fraud concerns.
  • "You can clone a voice now within seconds...It's indistinguishable." (Dennis, 33:32)
• Podium’s Focus: Dennis stresses staying on top of security and safe practices as AI advances.
  • "It's going to be more and more important as we kind of go into this...Part of our mission...is to help...be safe with it as well and adapt." (Dennis, 33:16–34:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI’s transformation of home services:
  • "AI is changing the game. We're seeing agents do human level work across multiple tasks and consistently over time. This is where...that agent can actually go make you money." (Dennis, 00:00)
• On customer realism:
  • "Customers...can develop a relationship. Like, hey, I worked with Larry. He was great. He helped me out." (Dennis, 08:54)
• On defusing a conflict:
  • "Larry takes over...handled perfectly...He ends up like, being like, hey, why don't you guys come out to the house? Give me a quote. Talking about a booked appointment." (Dennis, 09:43–10:15)
• On onboarding AI like staff:
  • "You are going to have to onboard your AI employee just like you onboard a human employee." (Dennis, 27:08)
• On futureproofing:
  • "Everything we've seen is it’s not slowing down and it’s going to require us to just be on top of it as it comes through the pipe." (Dennis, 34:02)
• Opera Singing AI Story:
  • "Nobody says anything. The homeowner does not acknowledge it. Nothing at all. She's like, okay, I'll see you then…She was full on opera." (Host, 19:14–19:47)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Notes | |-----------|---------------------------------------|-------| | 00:00–01:43 | Introduction to AI impact | First mention of “Larry” and capabilities | 03:54 | Definition of AI agent | | 09:37–10:31 | Angry customer/life-like AI story | Real-world example of AI agent handling conflict | 11:10 | Scaling during busy times | Unlimited call handling | 13:18 | Outbound/Proactive AI | Future capabilities | 14:20 | Data analysis for outreach | Monetizing business data | 17:08 | AI customization with AI Studio | Playbook and in-the-moment edits | 18:12 | Opera singing bug story | Hilarious AI mishap | 24:11 | Voice & accent customization | Adapting to local clientele | 27:08 | AI onboarding process | Parallels to employee hiring | 33:16–34:03 | Security discussion | Handling privacy and fraud risks

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Tone and Language

The conversation is candid, practical, and laced with humor—especially as the hosts and Dennis trade stories about AI’s quirks and its unexpectedly human interactions. There’s a clear sense of optimism about the future, a focus on helping real-world service businesses, and acknowledgment of real concerns (customization, security).

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Final Thoughts

The episode demonstrates that AI is more than hype for service businesses—it’s a practical tool that’s already changing how companies operate and engage with customers. Taking full advantage means embracing customization, security best practices, and actively training your AI “employee” just like a human. The Podium “Larry” story provides a blueprint for scaling, efficiency, and better customer experience—plus a few good laughs along the way.

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For more, visit podium.com or listen to the full episode at Service Business Mastery.

Transcript

[Dennis Steele]

AI is changing the game. We're seeing agents do human level work across multiple tasks and consistently over time. This is where you can have something. Instead of just assisting you or being like a co pilot, you can set up a system where that agent can actually go make you money. We call our AI employee Larry. The customers are like, they can develop a relationship. People call out Larry all the time. And it is, I mean part of it is he's thorough, he's consistent, he's, he's courteous. You can't get him upset ever. So our AI employee, basically two modalities. Able to text, right. Able to talk on the phone, able to book appointments straight into the calendar. The other like intangibles is Larry's not going to get upset. Right. And he, he handled it like super clean and then ended up with a booking. So it was pretty amazing.

[Podcast Host]

Hello everyone out there, I hope you're having a wonderful day. If you're listening to this podcast, you may hear some background noise and that's because we're live here at AHR 2026. What's up dude? And I have the, one of the co founders of. Why you looking so surprised? I love this audience. We have one of the co founders of Podium. And so I'm super excited to, to talk to you about the origin story, AI in general, agents, how AI is changing things. This is one of my most favorite companies I have, not to mention I have a lot of great friends that work there. I love how forward thinking you are. And I was talking to Bryce. Oh man, it's probably been a year ago maybe.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And we were talking about AI agents and things like that.

[Dennis Steele]

And he was like, dude, you gotta check this out.

[Podcast Host]

You got to check in Bryce fashion.

[Dennis Steele]

Got to check this out, dude.

[Podcast Host]

You got to check it out. And I'm like, what is it? They're like, you just don't understand how awesome this is. And I was like, all right, what you got? And he showed me. I was like, okay, that's pretty awesome. And so I am excited. I. He was like, it's so good, you should try and break it. And I was like, yeah, I should try and break it. I did not try and break it. But I do love the functionality. I love how forward thinking you are in general as far as AI goes. And I had no idea you had so many team members. With that being said, can you share who you are and how you even got started doing this?

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. So my name is Dennis Steele, I'm the co founder of Podium and we started back in 2014.

[Podcast Host]

So we've been low blah.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, it's been a minute. And it's such an exciting time right now with AI and AI agents. And I just never would have expected like when we started the business 12 years ago that we would be in this position, almost reinventing ourselves as a business and a product now. But that's, that's where we're in. The technology has shifted that much.

[Podcast Host]

How crazy is it that the things that AI have changed has changed? Because when I first thought of AI, I was thinking automation. Like that's where my go to is automation. And then it turned into real AI and I'm like, okay, this is cool.

[Dennis Steele]

How.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, your company's large. I've always heard, like, it's great to stay small because we can pivot.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

How do you, how do you transition a big team like you've got.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, it's tough, it's tough. But the biggest thing is when we first started, you just first start. Everybody goes through this when they first start playing with AI, they see like the power of it.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

And they're like, oh, this can do some automation for me. Right. It can answer some questions for me. The big breakthrough came when we saw the power of agents.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

And how, for those who don't know,

[Podcast Host]

in a crowd, in the audience are listening to this and you don't know what an agent is. What is.

[Dennis Steele]

So an AI agent is when you're leveraging the AI model and you're giving it basically a set of tasks and you're giving it enough context to go complete those tasks.

[Podcast Host]

And so that AI, the AI agents is what for the past two, three years, when I presented on stage and said, hey, we're going to talk about how AI and automation are going to help the trade. And people came in like, hey, I want some of that AI. And they were really wanted the automation they wanted. Agents is what they wanted.

[Dennis Steele]

Yes, but.

[Podcast Host]

But it wasn't until recently that agents are even a possibility.

[Dennis Steele]

Right? Yeah. So initially with AI, what you would look at is like, oh, I can autocomplete something.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Or I might be able to like better determine how to set off a trigger. In software.

[Podcast Host]

It's a really fancy chatbot, Right?

[Dennis Steele]

Right. Where we've come now is we're seeing agents do human level work across multiple tasks and consistently over time. And that was a threshold that we've crossed over the last year or so. And this is where it transforms. This is where you can have something instead of just assisting you or being like a co pilot, you can set up a system where that agent can actually go make you money.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Because the reason why you hire a person or a csr, they have to have roi. Yeah, they have to have roi. Like I'm playing an entire salary. How does that work out economically? Well, they're going to produce additional revenue for my business or help me support additional revenue.

[Podcast Host]

Sure.

[Dennis Steele]

And, and so now what we're seeing with these AI agents is that they're giving these businesses the capability to do that.

[Podcast Host]

Right. And how are you building out agents for clients? Or is that, are you even doing that? Are you using the agents internally in Bodio?

[Dennis Steele]

So it's kind of interesting. I can get into a little bit of the backstory here, but for the first 10 years of the business, we were building a lot of the foundation that our agents use today.

[Podcast Host]

Really.

[Dennis Steele]

We were a communication platform.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

So we started out helping H Vac companies with reviews. It was a basic point solution. My co founder and I, we, you know, there was a shift in technology similar to like there's a shift in technology now with AI. And that was Google, you know, putting reviews online for businesses. And that shifted. Right. It all of a sudden changed where all the leads were going and how businesses were getting leads. And the businesses that adapted to that shift in technology started to make more money.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

And stay ahead of the competition. And those that didn't, they kind of struggle.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

We're seeing a similar shift now.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

It crazy. AI is changing the game. Right. And it's scary a little bit. The ones who are some uncertainty leveraging it are able to, you know, get additional revenue and kind of start to grow and figure out how to automate their business and find more efficiency. And the ones that aren't are struggling to kind of.

[Podcast Host]

Do you think that if, if people are purposely ignoring AI, will they suffer? Like, will they go out of business or they just have to do business completely different.

[Dennis Steele]

I think it'll show up in like two different ways. One, consumer expectations are shifting. Yeah. The more businesses use it.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

So, you know, it's like the first time you use Uber.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

It's just such a smooth experience. You never, you never really want to go away from that after that.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

And so once you work with a business that can support you 24, 7, have the answers you need whenever you want, it's hard then to go play phone tag with a business over the course of a couple of weeks trying to get the answers you need.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

So one is consumer.

[Podcast Host]

Sure.

[Dennis Steele]

Consumer Expectations are going to increase because as businesses adopt AI now, you can, you can have a better service as a business.

[Podcast Host]

People are going to become more lenient or more understanding towards agents, or are we going to have to really make the agents become a lot more human?

[Dennis Steele]

Both.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. Like, if you're working with an agent, that's not great.

[Podcast Host]

Like, sure. Like hang out really fast or whatever.

[Dennis Steele]

So we're going to have to make that a lot better. At the same time, it is a balance. Right. Because I don't think most people are going to want to go through their entire experience just dealing with an agent.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

There's a lot of human aspect that makes an experience really good.

[Podcast Host]

So have you experienced it ever where someone has come to you and said, well, like, I was talking to this person, and then you're like, wait, that's not a person? Yeah, that's an AI, a voice agent. And then, you know, I'm. I'm sure it was the person that was definitely a person. And so much so that they were so confident that this might have happened to me. I had to show them the recording with the transcript from my AI chat or AI voice agent, showing them that that was an AI voice agent, that was not a human that she spoke or he spoke with. Have you experienced all that?

[Dennis Steele]

I feel like we're hearing that all the time.

[Podcast Host]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

I was just talking with one of our partners and they were saying, hey, our customers. Like we call our AI employee Larry. But you can, as a business, you can call podium's AI employee, like, whatever you want.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

But the customers are like, they can develop a relationship. Like, hey, like I worked with Larry. He was great. He helped me out.

[Podcast Host]

You know, I'm, I'm ready to see reviews with Larry's name in it.

[Dennis Steele]

Oh, we've seen him.

[Podcast Host]

Really?

[Dennis Steele]

Oh, yeah, we've seen him.

[Podcast Host]

Larry did a phenomenal job taking care all the time.

[Dennis Steele]

And it is. I mean, part of it is he's thorough, he's consistent, he's courteous. You can't get him upset ever.

[Podcast Host]

That's the best part. I've told people before where they're like, I'm not sure if that was AI agent or not. I was like, start arguing with it. If it does not argue back. Like if no matter what you say, it's just chill as a cucumber.

[Dennis Steele]

Actually, there's a pretty good story about this. So we have a customer, Air Design, in Utah. He's about 10 truck h vac business. So this guy, this random guy gets cut off by one of their techs at an intersection. Tech blew the red light and one finger wave. So he gives. He's. He's. He's mad. So he texts in to the business and he's like, hey, one of your techs just cut me off in the intersection, blew the red light. So upset, Larry takes over.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

Hey, so sorry we care about tech safety.

[Podcast Host]

Like, oh, Larry was texting through the string.

[Dennis Steele]

Like, handled perfectly.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

And this guy just is so impressed. It ends up. He ends up like, being like, hey, why don't you guys come out to the house? Give me a quote. Yeah, I'm talking about a booked appointment. Right. So, like, it is pre.

[Podcast Host]

And Larry was able to book that into their CRM. Yep. Handled it all.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. So our AI employee, basically two modalities, able to text. Right. Able to talk on the phone, able to book appointments straight into the calendar. But the other in like intangibles is like, Larry's not going to get upset.

[Podcast Host]

Right? Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

And he, he handled it, like, super clean and then ended up with a booking. So that's pretty amazing.

[Podcast Host]

And the other thing is, is Larry can. Larry can be simultaneously handling an irate customer while another customer calls in and you're booking a service call there or whatever the case may be.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, that's. I mean, when you look at the way agents are really transforming the business, it comes with scale.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

You can turn Larry on and say, hey, after two phone calls during our busy, busy hours, Larry could be taking phone call 3, 4, 5, 6. I mean, up to unlimited number of phone calls for you.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

So you're never going to hit that capacity. And I think that's hard.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

For an H VAC company. They're trying to staff to capacity. So how many CSRs do I need at any given time? Well, if you have Larry as a backup.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, 100%. And the biggest thing for me was the concern when it slowed down. Like, what happens if it slowed down? I don't want to lay off all this staff. I mean, obviously you want to keep on. Keep everybody busy, but if you have something like, like Larry, then when. If things do slow down, he just answers less calls. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

So like after hours, over the weekends, middle of the night. Right. These are like, if you. If you could hire a CSR and say, hey, I actually, we're okay during business hours, but I actually want you to answer the phone at like, the hardest times. Like, obviously after hours, over weekends, holidays, 24 7, like, that would be the

[Podcast Host]

one to hire and don't sound like you're falling asleep or you just woke up and got out of bed.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, exactly. And like that's where Larry comes in and he performs like extremely well.

[Podcast Host]

So how about outbounding? Is that possibility? I know there's a lot of stigma, regulations. Some people love the idea of doing it because they hate outbounding in general. But I know that at one point there were like some regulations against using AI voice to outbound. I will tell you that my voicemail box would beg to differ because every single day there's like 12,000 messages in my inbox. AI voice for, for outbounding. And are you able to do that with Larry or is that something that you just would rather. Let's just hold up on that. We figure out legislation.

[Dennis Steele]

No, outbounding is big. And yeah, we're going to be, we're going to be releasing it actually soon.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, okay. You are going.

[Dennis Steele]

So we do have the capability outbound. We're going to be releasing that soon and it's going to be a moneymaker. A lot of times it's not going to be just straight like robocalling.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Like you have customers, you have memberships, you have a membership program. And this is where we can use the AI agent to help fulfill and kind of reach out and generate business and fulfill your calendar. Right. Like when we go and talk to some of our customers, a big piece is managing and fulfilling your membership program. Right. Like sometimes it's a full time job. Yeah, right. And so we can upload all that information. We're kind of splitting it into like two products. Which is a membership management agent.

[Podcast Host]

Oh yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

That can actually help you go fulfill. And with that you could potentially pair outbounding to go fill the calendar. Right.

[Podcast Host]

So with that outbound agent, be able to like analyze your service titan account and say, hey, this, this account has an open estimate that needs to be like, we need work. These are all the open estimates. Reach out to them and see if you close the deals.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, exactly. So we're pulling all the data in, we're looking at the opportunities for you. And like this, the initial phase of Larry has been all about answering phone calls and you know, making sure no leads go to your competitor. The next phase is how do we monetize your data?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, right.

[Dennis Steele]

Like data is a big topic all around this. Like everybody's talking about data. Okay. How do you monetize it? Having an agent and also the power of AI on the analytics side to determine what, when's the best time to Reach out. Yeah, when am I going to fulfill. Instead of just blasting some kind of crazy like one sending it all out in shame. Time. Yeah, exactly. You can have the agent reach out the right time. Right time right before you have and actually look at the calendar and know I'm going to fill the calendar over the next two weeks with the customers that are in this timeframe in a really good spot to kind of have. How are you able to.

[Podcast Host]

Or maybe you do, maybe you don't analyze like the lifetime value of the client and figure out like justify. Okay, these, these people here have reached our, the limit or the edge of our lifetime value. So they're not as high a priority to reach out to versus these over here that are like right in the prime of the value, the full lifetime value.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, a lot of that's going to be done. And with AI analytics you don't have to have.

[Podcast Host]

You got to figure that stuff out.

[Dennis Steele]

Data science.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dennis Steele]

Scientist. Right. You can just. We want to get to the point and this is some of the stuff we're, we're building right now where the best thing about these agents is you can just speak to them in plain English. Right.

[Podcast Host]

That's it. That's how you have super prompt engineer.

[Dennis Steele]

Right. So you say, hey look, look, like analyzing the lifetime value of my customers. I want to be able to figure out what the best campaign is to run here. And so that's where we want to get to. That's something we'll be coming out with. Right now we're working on like the mo. The lowest hanging fruit. Right. Cover the phones, answer your phone calls. And that's the pain point 24 7.

[Podcast Host]

Nobody wants to do it as a business owner like. And also I've. What I found was I hired outbounders and they were commission only. Outbounders didn't do an amazing job, but my wife did it and she had a completely different passion because she owns a business. So they could hear that inner voice. Yeah. Like she really cares about those people. And so with the outbounders that we had, they didn't have that same inflection in their voice. So then everybody hates doing it because you get told no constantly. But there's no feelings involved with an AI agent.

[Dennis Steele]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

Well.

[Dennis Steele]

And what we've done and this really separates podium is we've built a really complex customization piece into our agents.

[Podcast Host]

What does that mean?

[Dennis Steele]

So that means if Larry says something you don't like, you just tell him, oh okay.

[Podcast Host]

You don't have to go in and Rebuild the prompt or anything like that. No, you.

[Dennis Steele]

We have this thing called AI Studio. You go in, you say, hey, Larry, don't ever say it that way again. Say it this way. Punch you in the face. Say it this way. He writes that down into what we call a playbook. So what, when we onboard you, you build out this playbook, right? And it's like, hey, incoming after hours. There's all these different scenarios. And this customization is really important because every business is different, right? Like, your wife's going to do it different. And if you like some of those aspects, you could put that into the playbook for Jerry and he'll remember it every time.

[Podcast Host]

So here's the crazy thing for me, Julie, she'll be on the phone with. With a customer way longer than what I should like. I'm like, all right, let's wrap it up, let's wrap it. Let's finish this thing up. And she just. So how's your mom? How she is? I'm like, I don't care about their mom. Yeah, but you know, they went to. Had that. They had surgery on their leg. I was like, again, don't care.

[Dennis Steele]

Right?

[Podcast Host]

Like, let's book a service call. She's like, yeah, but I want to check on their family. I was like, I don't. Let's go. And so, well, and those are the little nuances.

[Dennis Steele]

So with AI Studio, you can just say that. You can say, hey, look, Larry, you're

[Podcast Host]

being too wordy or you're whatever, Right.

[Dennis Steele]

You're asking too many personal questions. Like, pull it back a little bit. So he'll go in, he'll write that customization, and then he'll play the conversation back to you and say, hey, I. How about I handle it like this next time? And then you.

[Podcast Host]

How long does that take? How long does that take?

[Dennis Steele]

That's instant. Yeah, you're just working with the model right there.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. So, like, if you wanted to pick something, say a CSR called you. How about this? What if a service technician calls you and says, hey, go listen to that phone call? I'm like, okay, let me go listen to it. I go listen to it. It's three and a half minutes long. And I say, all right, I've listened to it. And technician says, no, you didn't like, well, you're right. I listened to two minutes of it. So I go back and listen to the remaining minute and a half, and right about the three minute mark,

[Dennis Steele]

maybe

[Podcast Host]

it's Larry, maybe it's somebody else starts singing with opera like opera singing back to the homeowner. And nobody says anything. The homeowner does not acknowledge it. Nothing at all. Literally. She's like, okay, I'll see you then. And my technician asks. Doesn't ask her about the singing. Ask everything. Beat around the bush without coming out and saying, hey, why didn't you say anything to our voice agent whenever she started singing to you?

[Dennis Steele]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

And she was like, I. I didn't. He. He's like, she did not acknowledge it at all. So I called her. And then when I called her and spoke to her on the phone, she's like, trish, y' all do some weird stuff. I just figured y' all were going to try out, see singing to people. I was like, thank God you're who were on the phone.

[Dennis Steele]

Every once in a while you'll find these scenarios where the AI kind of goes off.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, he's. She was full on opera.

[Dennis Steele]

We haven't seen the opera singer yet. But that's a good one.

[Podcast Host]

It was hilarious.

[Dennis Steele]

That's a good one.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. I gotta find that recording somewhere because I gotta start using that in my presentations. It was funny as hell. Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

If you're lucky enough, the AI will just sing to you. If you're good enough.

[Podcast Host]

Customer. Yeah. It. This is what our good customers get.

[Dennis Steele]

I wonder if you actually. If you cut. If you tried to customize Larry to sing.

[Podcast Host]

I won't sing it. Yeah, I don't think so.

[Dennis Steele]

Sound like.

[Podcast Host]

Sound like Travis Tritt singer addresses. Are you sure this is the address? Confirming addresses in song. Yeah. So tell us the. The initial startup of podium. I. I don't think I've ever heard the origins.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. So Eric, my co founder, he's our CEO and we started the business together. We knew each other in college and he grew up working at his dad's tire shop.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Dennis Steele]

And so he saw like a local blue collar business doing really well and the technology that it had to succeed as a business was just not great.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Like most of these systems at that time.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

When he was growing up, you know, 20, 30 years ago, it just wasn't great.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

So he had that experience and angle I was working for a local marketing company and we were helping businesses deal with this huge shift in like Google just came out with reviews overnight. What do we do?

[Podcast Host]

Oh, right, yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

Because it basically shifted from like the business paying the most advertising dollars on yellow pages or a billboard or whatever. They're the ones getting the leads to overnight. Okay. Now all the leads are going to the highest rated Business doesn't matter if

[Podcast Host]

the first three letters of our name are all A's. Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Right. It doesn't matter anymore. Right. AAA service. Right. It just. The. The leads are coming through a different channel now. And so that was the shift that kind of spurred this moment of innovation where we said, hey, we can help these businesses get reviews.

[Podcast Host]

And that was the. That was the target to start with. It was just get reviews.

[Dennis Steele]

I mean, we knew that there was, like, so many opportunities to help these businesses, but we saw we didn't have any experience, we didn't have any money. We're like, what's one problem we can solve? So let's like, build a little app and, like, try to go sell it. And that was our reviews product.

[Podcast Host]

Here we are, 1100 employees later.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. And so that just part of it was luck. But we hit the right timing of a shift in technology that was really valuable, and that fueled the growth. So we raised the money, started growing the company, and that's when we started seeing the power of communication via text message. And we built out the full comms platform for the next 10 years. And what we found now with AI and agents is, you know, there's a lot of AI products out there. I think what separates us is. And this is by luck.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

For the first 10 years, everything we built. If you want your AI agent to make a phone call. We spent three years and $50 million building out a phone system.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

Like plug it in.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

You want your AI agent to text your customers. We spent years building out our text messaging inbox and designing it for H vac companies. So we plugged them in.

[Podcast Host]

And you already had the automations.

[Dennis Steele]

We had a lot of automations. We had the marketing automations. We had the payment piece. Right. So we had a lot of these features that we were able to package and give to Larry and it made him really powerful right out of the gate.

[Podcast Host]

Did you ab test a male voice versus a female voice?

[Dennis Steele]

That's a great question. And we are trying to find the data because there's.

[Podcast Host]

I was curious because it. I see both.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And I'm curious, which is I think

[Dennis Steele]

we will find kind of patterns in the data that might indicate, like, what might have higher conversion. Yeah, we haven't, like, found anything definitive yet, but we do have some customers say, hey, I switched to female voice. And we're seeing higher conversion rates, so it might be something to play with. I think it can also kind of vary by region as well.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

So, you know, I see that different accents and Things like that. We're working on some voice customization features that we'll come out with you guys.

[Podcast Host]

Deep Southern accent. Like either some Louisiana accent.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, yeah, I think it could be. Right.

[Podcast Host]

There's a huge right there in the back. Can't hardly understand about three words. Every third word I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

I mean, they gotta feel like a real team member. Right? So if that's where you're from, you want Larry.

[Podcast Host]

That's right.

[Dennis Steele]

Looking like you.

[Podcast Host]

So my wife grew up in the hills of Appalachia.

[Dennis Steele]

Oh, really?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Sometimes we go back home and I'm like, I'm sorry, sweetheart. I might have to like Google Translate. I can't understand your family. Like, that'd be great to have that reminder of home.

[Dennis Steele]

That's awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So what's the future? What's the future for you?

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. So it's hard to keep up these days, but even at podium with 1100 employees, like we're pushing our teams to be on the edge of this stuff like every single day. How do you. It's tough. Like even this weekend, I'm at home, I'm texting my co founder and we're coding on our laptops. And we're not engineers, but like with AI, you can do that these days. And we're playing with the latest AI models, the latest AI tools. There's some things that came out even in the last week that we think we see the potential of these things completely changing. Not only the way we work as an 1100 like person tech company, but what our job is to then is to package that in a way that our customers could leverage.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

And as soon as possible. And so we're taking these, we, we're taking these kind of advancements in AI by, we're looking at it as a. On a daily, weekly basis. We're going back to the product team. We're saying, how does this change the game for us internally? How are we going to write code faster? How are we going to ship product faster? Okay, great. How now how do we take this to our customers and help them make more money with a as well and

[Podcast Host]

make it so they understand that enough to where they can implement it instead of it being sitting on the proverbial digital bookshelf and collecting dust.

[Dennis Steele]

That's kind of the, that's the tough part. That's the, the art of kind of what we try to have our teams do is take this super advanced technology that we're even figuring out weekly how to use and leverage and package that In a way so that it's plug and play for. For the industry.

[Podcast Host]

And that's. I feel like, especially if they onboard remotely close to summer, it's going to have to be plug and plug and play. Oh, yeah. Or else.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, I mean there's just too. Everybody's too busy.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, we are all busy.

[Dennis Steele]

The thing we do notice though is with the agents, the more context you give them, the better they do.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

The more playbooks you can give them, the more you can tell them about, this is how we do this. This is how we run this process. This is how we do after hours. This is how we do. The more you can give them, the better they're going to perform. And we basically framed it in. You are going to have to onboard your AI employee just like you onboard a human employee.

[Podcast Host]

See, I just, I would rather just like, we're done.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, push button. Like the mandate we give our team is one, the agent has to be as like the best it possibly can out of the box. So if someone just gets it out of just push play and we're going to ride this, right. We want it to be that good out of the box. But then you have to have the customization to. Every time it messes up, I'm going to tweak it. So let me nudge it towards being fully customized and always knowing how we do things.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so let me ask you about this because this is kind of going to kind of teeter there on Some not necessarily NDAs, more like intellectual property stuff. And that's like if you happen to be in the best practice group. And the best practice group says this is how you should do your playbook for a csr. And so you, me being ignorant, I'm like, copy paste. And it's like, oh, I don't know if that's a hundred percent okay because that's somebody else's intellectual property or is it okay, I've paid them $5,000 to coach me, now I own the intellectual property.

[Dennis Steele]

Well, it's interesting because the way that the models work is they're taking that a lot of times as a reference. Right. Because he's got, he's got dozens and dozens of other playbooks to reference.

[Podcast Host]

Okay. Right.

[Dennis Steele]

So the output is. I took that best practices. I also analyze the, you know, 30 other playbooks that you've given me to tell me how to do my job at, you know, X H Vac company and now the output is a combination of everything trying to.

[Podcast Host]

So there's less of a concern trying to adjust?

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, I think so.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Okay, Let me twist this a little bit and. And I'll share my experience. I've gone the podium, I've gone to the headquarters, and I've experienced the employees and the team members. Everybody is great to be around. Like, they're just positive people. And I especially love the beanbags chairs. I'm just kidding. Was no beanbag chairs. I wish there was, but how do you. How do you develop that sort of culture when you have so many team members and you're hiring? You. You have to hire on purpose. But, like, for us, I might have, like, five technicians, and, like, I just take. I'll take a mirror fogger. Like, let's. Let's go.

[Dennis Steele]

Just come onto the team.

[Podcast Host]

But you have to. You have to be intentional about hiring.

[Dennis Steele]

Oh, absolutely. Like, it's one of the. It's one of the hardest things and has the biggest impact. I would say what we've learned over the years is the more direct you can be about your culture.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Dennis Steele]

To your prospects, the better. Like, this is how we do it here. Right. There was a phase when it was really hard to hire in tech.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

Where we started to try to be everything for everyone. But then it's hard to, like, actually have a culture that means anything.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Right. And so we've kind of learned, be direct about your culture. Say, hey, this is who we are. We're going after something ambitious. We have a big mission to go help these businesses be successful and make sure you're finding people that are bought into that. And it might take a little bit longer.

[Podcast Host]

Did you know.

[Dennis Steele]

To find people. But it makes a big difference what we. What we found. Did you.

[Podcast Host]

Was this all trial and error on Yalls behalf, or did you go somewhere. Like, I've heard of people going to Zappos and. Or go in somewhere like that and be like, oh, they have a really cool culture. And, like, let's mimic their culture.

[Dennis Steele]

I think it's a combination, but a lot of trial and error. We had a phase where we learned those lessons kind of hard. Where we looked around the team, we thought, oh, man, it's. It's hard right now. We might not have everybody completely bought into our mission.

[Podcast Host]

And he brings somebody like Bryce on, and he's just a cheerleader for everybody.

[Dennis Steele]

Ice is incredible.

[Podcast Host]

I'm like, no, I don't have this at all. My feet hurt. I want to go sit down.

[Dennis Steele]

No, you got this.

[Podcast Host]

Let's go.

[Dennis Steele]

You had those guys and those people that are what we call locker room leaders.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

That just. They. They. They influence the culture in such a positive way and really bring the best out of the team. So those people are incredibly important. But, yeah, people want to be mission driven. They want to do important things, and they want to be aligned to that mission. And so that's what we found has been kind of the best thing for us, is kind of just be direct with it and find people that align to you so that everyone on the team's aligned.

[Podcast Host]

Cool. Is there anything I've forgotten to ask you? How many kids you have?

[Dennis Steele]

I've had four kids. Me too. Okay.

[Podcast Host]

How old are they?

[Dennis Steele]

So we have my oldest. She's 10. She's a dancer. I got my son who's only 12 months and three days younger than her. He's into everything, sports. He's my only son. And then I got two other little girls, seven and four, and they have. They're all dancers.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's.

[Dennis Steele]

We're in the thick of it right now with dance competitions.

[Podcast Host]

I'm the exact opposite. I have three boys and one girl. Yeah. And 14 months apart. The oldest two, and then 13 months apart are the youngest. Dude, that's awesome. Yeah.

[Dennis Steele]

So it's a fun time.

[Podcast Host]

It is. It's great. It is. It's really cool. Cool. I appreciate you hanging out with us. If anybody wants to learn more about podium, because they live under a rock and they've never heard of it, what's the best way that made that happen?

[Dennis Steele]

Podium.com.

[Podcast Host]

that's tough. It's a hard one.

[Dennis Steele]

It's easy. Podium.com. go check it out. Get with somebody like Bryce. He'll tell you how it is. He's straightforward.

[Podcast Host]

He will.

[Dennis Steele]

It's hard because there's a lot of AI hype out there.

[Podcast Host]

There is so much hype. I mean, it's a buzzword.

[Dennis Steele]

It's somewhat deserving of it, to be honest. Like, once you see what it can do and what it can unlock and what we're seeing happening to our customers, turning it on and making more money within a week, it's hard not to hype it. So.

[Podcast Host]

So with that being said, and I absolutely. This will not be the last thing, because I will not end anything on negative. And it's not necessarily negative. More so security. Okay, what. What's your thoughts on making sure you stay secure using AI?

[Dennis Steele]

I think it's going to be more and more important as we kind of go into this.

[Podcast Host]

How do we do it? How do we protect ourselves, protect our families? Because we have, like, 11 labs, like a AI voice synthesization where I can mimic anybody else's voice with a small snippet of their video.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, yeah. It's getting. It's getting wild.

[Podcast Host]

It is.

[Dennis Steele]

And you can clone a voice now within seconds. And it's indistinguishable.

[Podcast Host]

Even the small breaths every time I say and I go and.

[Dennis Steele]

Oh, yeah, it's starting to. Starting to feel.

[Podcast Host]

It does that every time, too.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah. So we're gonna have to be careful. I think we're all trying to, like, maneuver this a little bit together. And, you know, part of our mission as. As a company is to. Is to help.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Dennis Steele]

Help figure out not only how to use it to make money, but be safe with it as well and adapt and figure out how to. Because it's not slowing down. That's one thing that I think. You know, there's a lot of comments out there. Everything we've seen is it's not slowing down and it's going to require us to just be on top of it as it comes through the pipe. So.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, absolutely. Does anybody have any questions out in the audience? I know I did an amazing job as a host and asked a lot of great, amazing questions. Christopher Hughes, I was. I asked you a question. Did you hear me? You did.

[Dennis Steele]

You were not paying attention.

[Podcast Host]

Alex. Distracting him. He was asleep. I put you to sleep back there. I can't understand what you're saying. You know, L.A. accident.

[Dennis Steele]

Oh, it's the A.I.

[Podcast Host]

it's your avatar sitting back there. Cool, man. I appreciate you hanging out. Out with it.

[Dennis Steele]

Yeah, thanks.

[Podcast Host]

Appreciate it.

[Dennis Steele]

Thanks, man.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you, guys.

[Dennis Steele]

Thanks, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating, and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.