← The Scoop With Erica Krupin
The Scoop With Erica Krupin
Ep 199. Leaving 40% on the Table? The Real Cost of Your Missed Business Calls
01:17:26
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Scoop with Erica Kruipen. Your host is the owner of Kruipen's Poop and Scoopin. She's built a six figure dog waste removal business and loves talking a little crap with like minded folks. Starting and growing a small business can be scary, but Erica wants to share some tips and tricks that she's picked up along the way as she continues her entrepreneurial journey. She hopes this podcast will educate and inspire you to think outside the corporate box and do something a little crappy like scoop dog poop. And now, here's Erica what's up Scoop podcast. I'm your host, Erica Krupin and on today's episode we have a special guest. We are doing an interview. We're back baby. Spring rush is over. The craziness is done. First quarter is in the wraps and so now I want to hop back into the seat and do a special interview. Most of you know that I have made a lot of changes in my business and this started last year. I really wanted to implement systems and people that were going to help me to get to my revenue goal, which is a half a million dollars in revenue scooping dog poop. So what I did was, is I did some research. I reached out to some people because I needed help answering my phones. I was the bottleneck. All the phone calls were coming to my personal, well, not personal phone, but a physical business phone that only I had control of. That means that nobody else could answer my phones. So I did some research and I found Quo. And I've been using Quo since last year and it has been a game changer for my business. So my husband and I, we were driving down the street and I started talking to him about potentially wanting to get in touch with the folks that operate and have developed Quo. And I swear I looked at the radio and there was an actual ad on the radio and it came up on the, the little like search bar on my dashboard that had quo. It was a Quo ad and my husband pointed to it. He's like, it's meant to be. You have to reach out. So I'm super excited because today we are going to be chit chatting with. Is it Darian or Darina?
- [02:19]
B
Oh, it's perfect. Darina.
- [02:22]
A
Darina, the co developer of Quo. Welcome.
- [02:26]
B
Thank you so much. Erica. Oh my God. Wow. I mean it's such a pleasure. When I got your note, I was so excited to meet you into chat. But even hearing this story, that's wild that it happened.
- [02:38]
A
It did, it really did. Because what was really cool is because Quo is it's an app that goes onto the phone, right? And so that means my team, they can answer it. And we were. We were sneaking away to go get a little bit of a bite, and my phone was being answered by other people other than me. And I said, hallelujah, this is amazing. So I'm really excited that we get to chat about this because a lot of small business owners, we were the bottleneck of the business, right? We're out in the field, we're busy, we're tired, we're trying to wear so many hats, and we don't quite understand why. We don't understand why we're so tired and we're not able to get back to people. Customers are slipping through the cracks. And when we're putting money into advertisement and we're putting money into creating awareness for our businesses, and then a customer reaches out and we don't answer the phone or we don't get back to them, there is so much money being left on the table. So if you could introduce yourself and how this. How did you even get involved in this?
- [03:45]
B
Totally. Well, listen, I mean, you already introduced everything so well, I mean, in terms of sort of like money being left on the table, I mean, totally, like, really the reason why we're doing this, maybe like as a bit of intro, you know, we've been building Quo now for over seven years and going back to when we started and how this idea came to life, several different things sort of inspired Kuo, but one of them actually came from my co founder who mentioned who actually was working previously for a company that was building software for small businesses. And he was a product manager engineer, really developing that product. And that product was an invoicing product. And one thing that he noticed is that his customers were either not putting a phone number on their invoices or putting a phone number on the invoices, but not answering the phone. And when he asked them why, this is actually one of the things they said, which is like, hey, listen, I'm out in the field doing the work. I usually have to drop everything I'm doing to pick up a phone. And it's just so stressful. And it's one of those things that was kind of crazy, right? Because to grow your business, you actually have to be saying yes and sort of like getting these clients, but you really have to have a system around it. We looked at the market, we looked at the solutions, and we just saw that the solutions that were available were very clunky. Very expensive, required almost an IT person to set them up. And there was really nothing that was really made for small businesses that was intuitive, really nice to use, affordable, something that you could just set up in 5, 10 minutes and. And get going. And both of us are product people, so we sort of like others as an opportunity to bring our skills. And that's like the. Going back to the early days of Quill.
- [05:48]
A
Yeah, I'm really happy that you mentioned that it's easy to get set up because I myself am not a techie person by any means. And when I was kind of like doing my research, I was like, I was nervous about it. Cause I'm like, I don't. I don't want to have to learn another software, another system, because I already use Jobber. And I'm so happy that Quo integrates with Jobber. It's so absolutely wonderful. And I'm actually an ambassador for Jobber as well. I've been creating content for Jobber for, oh, goodness, about five years. And I was like, okay, they. They're compatible. That's cool. Am I going to be able to understand this? Because I, um. We're heading into our spring rush, and for pooper scoopers, spring rush makes or breaks our. Our whole entire year, right. So if we have a really, really weak spring, then it's really going to impact the rest of the rest of the year. And I only had. I had one issue, and I think it might have been operator error. It's when I ported everything over, I still had the physical business phone, so imessages were still going over to the physical phone. So I had to put it on airplane mode and shut it off to make sure everything ported properly. Wasn't that register?
- [07:11]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're one of the folks who did this, I guess. Like, if anything, I think that it's amazing that you actually took the step of, you know, taking your. Your phone number, right. Like this other device and moving it over. And I think what's really good is that you actually had. Sounds like that was a separate phone number for your business. Correct. That was not your personal number, Right?
- [07:34]
A
Correct. Yep.
- [07:35]
B
So I think so you already were a step ahead of a lot of folks. What I actually see happen a lot is when people start their business, they just use their personal cell phone number as the business number. They don't have a second device or anything. They just put the only number they have. And that actually creates so many more problems. Right. Because then we see this a lot. Then when they come to Us and say, I'm going to port that number over to you guys. Then they have to get a whole new personal number. So it's definitely more hassle. So I'll say that you're a step ahead there. But we see this all the time. And then they're obviously the bottleneck for their team because they end up hiring people eventually to help them run their business. But the customers all still have your own personal number. So it actually can be sometimes this interesting situation where as a business owner, you feel like you're taking a step forward, you're hiring a team, you're moving yourself out of being the sole owner operator, but your customers are still texting and calling you. So. So we always like when people at least do what you did and have like a separate number that can be portable and you can actually, like, kind of untangle this.
- [08:59]
A
Well, thank you so much. I'm happy to hear that. Because sometimes I feel like I'm just so far behind. I'm like, goodness, we all start at different places, right? So it's like the person you don't know what you don't know. So if you do use your. Your personal phone as your. As your business, there are some challenges that you do have to go through. My question is for the person that's listening to this and they're. They're the bottleneck, just like I was in my business, when would you recommend they start transitioning or switch over to quo?
- [09:30]
B
Yeah, of course. I mean, listen, I'm biased. I obviously will tell people to do this as. As. As, you know, day one. Right. Like, I think for what it's worth, the way we are building quo is we would love to be. We want to win the trust of the folks, to be one of the very first tools you actually get for your business. So that's our goal and that's what we're aiming for. But I think realistically, when you are. I think the answer to that question is when you're already as a business owner starting to see that, like, you're already feeling to be the bottleneck. And maybe, maybe the other way to think about it is like, really going back to your goals. Right. You mentioned the goal for your business. Like, you. You have a very specific revenue goal. You know, where you want to take your company. I feel like if you already have that, you can start investing in things earlier because, you know, the end goal versus, I think folks who may not have that clear goal, maybe it's more ambiguous for them. But the way I think about it is. It's. It's super easy these days to. Again, obviously, I want people to use quo, but there are so many things people should do. They just shouldn't use, I think, their personal cell phone number, because I think that just creates more problems. But if you know where you're going with your business, you know, you will need to hire people. You know, you will need to scale customer acquisition, so might as well make some of these, like, smaller investments early so then you can reap the benefits sooner.
- [11:01]
A
I agree. I'm just gonna love on you guys so much because it really has been a game changer for my business. And I'm gonna share a couple stories. The first one was because I. Like I had said earlier, like, you don't know what you don't know in business, and you're trying to figure out where you're gonna put your money, what you can use to help grow your business. And I think a lot of small business owners, people want to be cheap, right? They don't want to spend money in places that they know that they should, mainly because either there's a couple of reasons, either because they're scared or they're trying to figure out, like, can I afford this? And I was the same way. I try to do things pretty cheap and then realized that that was causing more. More pain than it should have been. And I decided to hire a virtual assistant because I really needed some help. I needed somebody to help answer phones. Last spring rush, they were answering the phones, and I was getting monthly bills for $4,000, $5,000, but we weren't closing leads, and I didn't know I would ask them. They would send me the hours. I didn't know what they were doing. I didn't know what was going on with these phone calls. And so when I seen that QUO records, the phone calls that I could see, like, when I eventually do hire somebody else, because I went my separate ways with them, I said, no, this is not working out for me. But I love that we get to hear the phone calls, because not only do I get to hear my team if we're doing, like, sales training, I also got to do training by myself to hear how I sounded on the phone. And I'm like, oh, no wonder I didn't close that.
- [12:44]
B
That customer.
- [12:45]
A
That was terrible. But also, too, for anybody that can relate, if you're a solo operator, you're on the phone, you're having a conversation with somebody. When you're on the road, you. You don't write the notes down. Then you get back to your office and you're like, what did I talk about with Janet? I literally have no idea. You have the recording and the transcripts right there to remind you to put her on Tuesday.
- [13:08]
B
Totally. Honestly, I think, I think it's one of those things that is probably very under, kind of like we can probably do a better job talking about this more. I think that the fact that you can, you know, with, with our product as an example, you can, you can record all your calls automatically. Actually, like, not just record, you can have a setting to just automatically record all your calls. What that does, it creates this incredible base of knowledge for you. So whether it's your calls, like imagine you have all of your calls recorded. So when you have someone joining your team, you can have, hey, here are the five calls that I think are the best calls. Listen to these calls. This is like what great looks like, right? So you immediately have like sales training, collateral, which is huge because you don't have time to write SOPs, right? Like you, you're busy running your business. So I think that is just so, so, so important. It's like investing in your, like that's a part of, part of it is like it's your own internal knowledge, your internal like assets and resources. And I think the other piece to like what you said when you hire someone to, to help, especially as you hire more and more people, you can say, hey, like this person, this is the new gold star example of how to handle these kind of conversations. And you can easily like listen to a call, give feedback to the person without customer seeing it. You can kind of comment on the recording, right. And say, hey, like this was really good. Like do that more, do that less. But yeah, I think that it's just so important and goes back to scaling yourself because you're investing in that knowledge that stays with your business as you grow.
- [14:52]
A
Yeah. And too it's not just the calls, it's the text messaging center as well. I didn't realize how much I was actually going to need this until because I had told you that I use Jobber. And with the new changes that happen with the text messaging laws, a lot of our two way text messaging, we're going into customer spam folders. So the customers through Jobber were not receiving messages. So I was actually able to go over into quo and follow up with them because if I didn't have that before, I would have to manually go in and do that from my personal phone. And that would have taken forever. And it has been so, so nice to be able to track all of those text messages back and forth. It's just. Oh, and so good.
- [15:40]
B
Yeah. Well, listen, I think that something that, I guess, I don't know, maybe I can use this opportunity to tease like a new thing we're working on and something that actually will be available soon enough. Kind of like related to conversations like calls and messages, transcripts. I don't know if you use ChatGPT or Claude, but we are actually launching a connector there which would allow you to connect if you want all of your conversations to ChatGPT or Claude and ask questions about, as an example, what are the opportunities we're losing and why. And because AI can listen to and scan all of your transcripts at the same time in a really efficient way, it can tell you things that you may not have necessarily caught yourself. So this is something that I think will be such a game changer for all of our customers. I myself used this just recently and I was like, wow, I would not have caught this by listening to calls one to one. But seeing it at scale is just so, so important.
- [16:54]
A
That's awesome. And I think too having chat and then being able to kind of step back and, and like listening to the calls, like third person. I remember listening to one of the calls and I'm a fast talker. And what I've learned in sales is you have to allow the, the potential customer to like process the information that you're giving to them. I was not giving any breathing room for them to process. So it was like, it was very insightful.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Actually I wanted to do a screen share really quick. Is, is that okay to do a screen share?
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B
Let's do it. Yeah, absolutely.
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A
Okay. So for those of you that are listening on the actual, on audio, if you want to go over to YouTube so you can see the screen share, I'm actually going to show you what my, what my first quarter looked like when it came to call volumes and text message volumes. Go ahead, add a stage. So, so this is year to date. What is today? Today's April 10th when we're recording this. So I had 3,842 text messages that came through 904 phone calls. And there's a lot of red here.
- [18:10]
B
Yeah, that's, that's missed calls. But it's, it's okay. It's, it's. I can see that you had a, you had a spike. But then things got, things got better. Things got better.
- [18:19]
A
Yes. And so I wanted you. I know this is off. This is Actually off the script. But I thought of this right before we hopped on. I wanted to hear more about the AI answering for when you're not able to actually pick up the phone.
- [18:36]
B
Yeah, of course. I mean, listen, I guess the. Obviously, you know, red. Red is not good, right? Red. Blue is good. Red is not. And you know, missed calls, you know, missed calls are tough, right? Because I'm sure you and your team, you. You try your best to answer calls as they come in, but you, you might be busy, of course, right? So we have launched our voice AI agent called Sona, which, Which is very useful and it helps you answer calls. It can answer actually all of your calls if you want, or it can answer calls that you are going to miss. So instead of going to voicemail, because all of those missed calls probably went to voicemail, instead of sending people to voicemail, you can have the AI agent help people out. I think is important, right? Because it's really as good as the information you give it. Right? The AI agent should be able to have all your business information and kind of answer any question that people might have. And we have several ways that we make it easy for you to train it on your business. You can actually just put your business website and it goes and finds everything online and gives you this snapshot. And of course, you can also give it any of your SOPs or things like that. But at the end of the day, the idea is you're sending people to voicemail, and instead of doing that, why not give an AI agent a chance to answer their questions? And one thing that's helpful, which I think you would appreciate, is similar to how we allow you to record all your calls that humans make. All the calls with Sona, our AI agent, are all automatically recorded and transcribed and summarized. So similarly, you can listen to the calls that Sona is having and decide, hey, this is great, or this is an area for improvement and you are in control, right? You can say, okay, maybe it will handle these topics, or maybe it should not be talking about these topics with customers. So you are fully in control there.
- [20:51]
A
That's really, really good. Because we can't answer the phone all the time. And that was. The other thing is I had shared this other image I kind of wanted to go over to. I think when I kind of think back to when I was in the field, we're just running, we're just going, going, going, going, and we're not collecting the data. And so when people are like, what is the highest call volumes? Or when do you get the most complaints or, you know, whatever it is, I'm like, I don't know. I don't even know what's going on. I don't even know what day of the week it is. The only reason why is because Jobber tells me where I'm supposed to be. A huge shout out to today's episode sponsor, Jobber. The number one operations management software for home service business owners. Jobber is the software I use to run, grow and manage my small pooper scooper business. Jobber helps me handle the admin tasks quicker so I can focus on growing my business and getting more me time back. From creating custom quotes all the way to getting paid my money, Jobber has my back. Yeah, we're pretty much best friends. But if I had to choose my favorite feature, I'd say the mobile app. I can create the quotes, edit the jobs, communicate with customers and keep my eye on the staff right from my phone. If you're a home service entrepreneur looking to level up your business, look more professional and save time, head over to jobber.comgroupen to start your 14 day free trial and get 20% off your first six months months with my special link. Now let's get back to the scoop. This right here, your analytics that shows when the busiest times are. By seeing this, I was able to put somebody on to answer the phones 100%.
- [22:44]
B
And you know, like I see you have like this consistent 11am Right? This is local time zone. So 11 between like 10 and 12 or even 10 and 1pm you have that consistent volume. Right. So you know, or even it starts at nine, I guess. Yeah, I'm trying to look at the squares but, but you have that like core hours where you need to have someone answering and maybe you know, on the weekend like you had a Saturday, I see there was like a little Saturday sort of bump there. But, but yeah, this allows you to decide like, hey, when I have help, I'm going to put, put that help on these hours and not put it on the hours when you know nobody is going to be calling.
- [23:28]
A
Right? Yeah. And then what's cool is I want to start using the AI answering system. What is it called? Snow.
- [23:37]
B
Sona. Sona.
- [23:38]
A
So now, yeah, I cannot pronounce things to save my life today, Sonia, if I can't, if I can't get somebody to answer. Because that's the other thing that I think a lot of us small business owners struggle with is is there enough money to go around, you know, to have somebody on payroll and a lot of Times it's No, yeah, listen.
- [23:58]
B
And for Sona, for example, I think I, I think I should know this on. I'm kind of blanking, but the I, I can tell you that the cost of a call that it handles is definitely like, it's, it's definitely under a dollar. The exact price I have to like check. It depends on your subscription. But actually by the way, we give everyone 10 free calls per month that are just included. So say if you're a customer, you just get that for free every month. And the cool thing here is that going back to this question, right when you're hiring a person, especially when you're hiring someone to do after hours, if you're staffing someone to be, let's say, available at 8pm between 8 and like, I don't know, midnight, for example, to be answering your calls, you have to pay them for that time, regardless of what happens. But if you have Sona taking the calls in that time frame, you are only paying for the calls that Sona actually takes. So I think that's like a really scalable way to think about it. And again, you can always go up and down as your demand know with your, with your demand.
- [25:10]
A
That's nice because a lot of the small businesses have that, that, not flexibility, but in. Is it the seasonality, that's what it's called. Where it's like it's busy and then we all have our slow seasons and it kind of goes up and down totally.
- [25:24]
B
And, and like, I think that's, I think that flexibility is what, what people really appreciate. And again, I think the other thing that's really helpful is that like this, like investing in this, you know, having. It's similar to when you have an employee, it forces you as a business owner to have these to train them. It forces you to have things to train them with. And frankly, the things that you use to train humans with are also very helpful to train an AI agent. I just think that sometimes people expect an AI agent to just get it immediately, but you also wouldn't expect a human to, like who, who knows nothing about what you do to just immediately be great. So thankfully it's the same concept of training and knowledge sharing that works in both scenarios.
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A
Nice. Nice. So from your experience, what would you say you see often with small business owners with mistakes that are made with communication?
- [26:25]
B
Yeah, there are, there are several. So I think like the first one is that something that I see happen a lot is I see often the business owner is just not hiring, is waiting too long. To hire their first employee to help them with their calls. Whether it's a VA or operations manager, whatever title, whatever role it is, they just hold on to that for too long. And the idea behind it is that obviously they love their business. They are, you know, nobody else will be as passionate about their business as them. And they basically take that as, I'll have to do this for as long as I can. And at some point they hit diminishing returns because they are glued to their phone. They are always feeling the pressure to answer. And you know, they're like sacrificing time with their family. They're sacrificing just like having a weekend when they can kind of like disconnect and sort of, you know, focus on themselves. So at some point, actually the quality of these calls suffers because. Because they're just. They're just burnt out. So I think that's the first thing that I see, which is they think that their passion for their business takes them further than it actually does. Like, they are probably too late to bring that first person. That's the, that's the first mistake I see. And maybe the second one I see related to that is when they bring that person in, they don't invest enough in making them successful. So I guess what I mentioned is I think whether you hire a human or you bring in an AI agent, you have to put some time into training them. So whether it's having calls available that you can say, hey, please listen to these calls. This is our tone and voice. Here's how I want you to handle difficult customers. Here's how I want you to handle this kind of situation. If you don't have that documented, it's not fair to then expect for that person to rewind. So I think that's the second mistake is they hire someone, but they under invest in training them.
- [28:35]
A
And I think those tie in very, very well with like together. Because as you're talking about it, I'm literally thinking about like the scenarios that I went through with my business when it came to this recently, I was on the phones and I was covering the phones a little late because I didn't have. We didn't have proper coverage. My fault because I didn't communicate properly. And like you were saying, we get burned out. And then there's. I don't know. I don't know if it's a lack of compassion or you're just tired, but I started getting a little snarky on the phone. I laughed at a customer the other day when she's like, I don't understand why your price is so high. You're just scooping dog poop. And I laughed and I actually downloaded the recording and sent it over to this female entrepreneur group that I had. But I was, I told the lady, I said, you're hilarious. This is a full blown business
- [29:37]
B
and I don't love that.
- [29:38]
A
I don't love that I did that. But I was just so, so fed up. And I was like, okay, we got to get Erica off the phones right now. But this, this goes hand in hand with the business owner that is like super tired and they want to hire somebody, but they, they don't understand the time and energy it's going to go into somebody to train them. Because we think like, oh, we can just tell a person a couple times and they should be able to do all of this. But not realizing that we're, we're doing eight people's jobs, 10 people's jobs right now. And then we just want to offload all of this stuff. And people are like, what? This is, this is crazy. And so I see why a lot of people wait so long to hire because one, they can't slow down to explain what they do to somebody 100%.
- [30:28]
B
It's almost like you have to take a step back to take two or three steps forward. That's how it works. And I think, I mean, that just resonates so well. I think that the other part of this is that maybe when you bring someone on to help, you kind of expect them to get it, but you forget that you as the owner have probably done hundreds of these calls. You have so much kind of like muscle memory developed that, that, that like the other person just doesn't. Right. And being patient with that and thinking, hey, like, how can I really offload? This is so important. I also think it's knowing, like you probably, you know, let's just say you on a great day, when you're not burned out, you're not tired, you're having like the best day, you know, maybe this is like 100% is, you can offer this 100% of a call. But realistically for your business to scale, do all calls have to be at 100%? They can all probably be at 80% and it's fine. So you being okay to say, hey, I'm going to hire someone who is going to have consistently 80%, whatever scoring rubric you use calls like that is scaling. You can't scale your business on outliers. So it's way better to have consistently 80. 80 out of 100 versus one day. It's 101 day. It's like 10.
- [31:58]
A
Right, exactly. And somebody that's dedicated. That's another thing that I hired out was sales, because as a business owner, it's. Yeah, some days I'm 10%, sometimes I'm 5%, sometimes I'm like 200%. And they can't get a word in because I'm in a rush. I got to go. Yeah, it's the same thing. Go ahead. Sorry, sorry.
- [32:21]
B
You got.
- [32:22]
A
But specifically, having somebody on the phones that you can hear. You can hear the smile on her voice, and she wants to take the time to have the conversations with people, because what I'm realizing right now, the people that are calling the most are that older generation, the boomer generation, and there's so much AI and there's so much technology right now that they're scared. Scared. They're afraid to get scammed. They're afraid that they're talking to somebody or something that isn't real. So they want to hear that warm voice. Nicole is on the phone with them, and she's finding out why. Why are these people reaching out for dog poop removal? There's a lot of reasons why, and a lot of it recently has been wives that had husbands that did everything. These men did everything themselves, because that's the generation. And either they're sick or they've passed away, and now they need help doing the things that their husbands always did. And. And that's not. That's not a quick conversation. That is. We're. We're going through it. We're creating an experience. We're hearing the customer out so we can truly serve them the way that they need to be served. And answering the phone call has. Has. I mean, my. My business has doubled this quarter just from answering the phones.
- [33:46]
B
That's incredible. Yeah. And I think the. Well, first of all, we're so honored to be here to play a small role in that journey. I mean, that's so incredible. I think, to your point, even, like, what you were talking about, imagine that person you mentioned, Nicole. Imagine Nicole being able to not just answer the questions, but also, I think, learn a little bit about why they're coming to your business. I think even that has so many insights. And also you being able to know this on the back end, because you have all the recordings, you have all that information. But I think that is actually another thing that sometimes it's hard to understand is your scaling, which is like you're getting Customer calls, like, why are they calling you? Why did they specifically choose to. Why are they interested? What's the problem they're looking to solve? I think that's that information helps you, like, tailor your offering so you can grow faster. And I feel like you can really learn that from these conversations.
- [34:49]
A
Yeah, I will say because I was the only one answering the phones and because we are high volume, low ticket price. Right. And so when I'm looking at a customer, I'm like, okay, they're paying 100 bucks a month, $25 a week, whatever. I don't want to spend a bunch of time on the phone with them. Like, I need to. We gotta go. But if you really look at it, the lifetime value of the customer, the how, how valuable they're going to be, the people that they are going to tell when you serve them and you have the conversations, and when you slow down to ask them the why, to find the motive, it's crazy how much information that brings to you in your business when you can reflect on it.
- [35:34]
B
100%. 100%. And then this is that word of mouth. Right. Obviously, businesses scale because hopefully when you acquire one customer, you also acquire several others that that customer brings. And I think that is what you're saying is like by offering this extraordinary service, that is what allows you to then be sure that that customer is going to be happy and bring more people.
- [36:00]
A
Yeah, because I mean, it's, it's. I wouldn't say it's free. I guess it is kind of free. Like, you already paid for that one customer. And so with them telling other people, that keeps your ad spend down for sure. And speaking of money, I don't know if you know any statistics, but I know I'm sure you talk to a lot of business owners. By any chance, do you kind of like know an average of how much revenue business owners are leaving on the table by not answering their phones?
- [36:27]
B
Yeah, there are several different. I think so frankly, I think we want to do a better job of having our own data that we can very confidently share. There were several numbers that I've seen in various studies, anywhere from 30 to 40% of revenue. There is one customer that shared with me just a really fascinating look at their calls, and they basically found that 30% of their inbound calls did not have a clear call to action. I mean, that suggests that you basically have inbound calls that could be turning into a lot more revenue. That's one example out of many. But again, various numbers from 30 to 40%. But we want to invest in maybe our own study that will, that we can kind of more confidently share.
- [37:28]
A
Cool. No, I appreciate that because what I'm learning is like the more insights we have, we're able to make better decisions. And I lived. I mean, I ran my business just so, like I'm just off vibes. I don't know what's going on. I'm just here, I'm just scooping dog poop. We'll figure it out.
- [37:45]
B
Well, you've done so well and frankly, I think that intent, you know, you have the vision and you have the intent. I think that it's easier to get all the other pieces in place. But I love that you knew from the beginning where you wanted to go and sort of like had ambitious goals. I think that is important because then you can work backwards and the rest will just fall in place.
- [38:13]
A
Yeah, I had actually reached out to a couple people because I had went to a conference and was just like hearing, when you get around other business owners, you get to hear stories and I think, you know, as like the, the solo person or I'm guessing if you are ants, if you, if your business is operating off of your personal phone, you're probably still quite solo. Is that any truth to that?
- [38:38]
B
If you're, you know, I think I would say yes. I guess it depends, you know, maybe on the. You, you may be, you may have other folks kind of like helping out with actual service delivery. So you're close to being solo, but. But you probably don't have any, anyone kind of like in front office. Right. Because front sort of like front office operations handling customers. The moment you bring on that second person, you can't have your personal number. There's no way for you to physically, like, you know, if I have a call coming to my personal SIM card, like it's only coming to me. Right. So. So I think that that just means usually that you only have you as the, as the owner, are the only person at the front of the house, so to speak.
- [39:23]
A
Yeah. Answering it and you're like, here, just, here's the business phone. Don't break it. Just take it and answer it. But because, you know, I, I said I want a million dollar business eventually, you know, first I gotta get to 250,000, then I have to get to, to 500 and then to a million. And when I went to all these conferences, the only way to do it was through a team.
- [39:43]
B
Yeah.
- [39:44]
A
Like, okay, invest in the people. Let's kind of, let's figure this out. And I don't really. I've never ran a team before. I don't really know how to manage people. I just know how to barely manage myself. So I was like, okay, we have to dial this in. We have to get systems. So from your experience, what do you think changes in a business, when a business goes from being like, reactive to more of a system, has an sop. Got it going out.
- [40:12]
B
Totally. Listen, I think that what happens is you have more predictability. I think that you know really what the first thing is, a level of predictability, because you now know all the things coming in. You actually, for the first time can see with these systems, like, what are your true opportunities? Right? Because what we see is because we handle your calls and messages. Calls and messages are really there to create opportunities for your business. And hopefully you win those opportunities and you get a customer and then hopefully a recurring customer. So the first thing that happens when you start implementing these systems is you actually have visibility into that because prior to it, you sort of, you're kind of like, doing your best, but you don't necessarily see, like, hey, like, we're getting all these calls. We're, we're so busy, we're getting these calls. But, like, why is, as the number of calls coming in is growing, but why is the number of, like, opportunities or customers not growing? You can start seeing these things. Maybe there is, you know, somewhere in this process there is a gap where, hey, you need to be better at converting these interested customers into real paying customers. Maybe, maybe you need to be booking them sooner than you are currently booking them, right? You actually have no idea until you have a system showing you this. And that system then leads to predictability and leads to you being able to, you know, go to bed knowing that, okay, you are doing all the right things to invest, not just in running your business, but into the actual system then brings you closer to your 1 million and, and further revenue goal. And then, you know, also, I guess, like, especially because I love that you, you have these goals for yourself, you can then work backwards and say, hey, to get to this much revenue, there are so many customers that you need or you need. Like, you kind of can work backwards and say, okay, where are we on track by the number of customers you're getting? Are we on track by the number of calls you're getting? Maybe you need more visits to your website. You need more visits to your Google business page. You can start actually seeing where those bottlenecks are.
- [42:33]
A
And it's nice too, because I know for a fact it's not just me. You're. We're just doing the work. We're pooper scoopers. We're landscapers, plumbers. Like what? You know, insert your trade. We're just doing the work. And a lot of us aren't. Like, I'm not good at math. I'm like, I barely. I barely. I took two years of math in high school, and then that was it. I'm like, I'm out of here. But now, knowing my churn rate, my customer acquisition cost, my lifetime value, like, knowing all of these KPIs, and then being able to see the stats that are coming through in quo, which I love the graphs and how simple they are. It's almost where you're like, okay, how. How can we. How can we make this better? How can we answer more phone calls? How can we send out more quotes? I don't know about you guys listening, but, like, I'm obsessed.
- [43:28]
B
No, this is so amazing. I mean, listen, I. It's, it's, it's really, it's so amazing for me to hear. Obviously, when we build the product, when we build all these features, these graphs and all the other things coming in, we obviously build it with the customer in mind and we try all these things to stay super close to our customers. But every time I hear someone like you basically saying, hey, I really rely on that feature, that just makes me so happy. Because that's the goal. Honestly, the goal is the goal for us. The goal for me is helping our customers make more money. And we believe that that happens as a result of much better communication systems. We believe that you get more customers and more revenue because you are just so much better at communicating with them. And you are the business that, as you said, picks up the phone. When you're the business that picks up the phone, you just get more opportunities. And I think that's. That's what you're seeing. So.
- [44:32]
A
And can we talk on that? I am all about communication, and I really think that's why I'm able to charge a premium rate because of my communication. We are answering the phones and we're going to get you scheduled for your first service within three days. You're not having to wait for a week. Let's talk about how important it is for communication and how that's going to set you apart from probably the majority of the businesses out there.
- [44:58]
B
Oh, listen. So, I mean, it's. Listen, that's, that's the belief of what we're building. That's a belief of kind of like everything about what we, what we do. I think that, you know, I've. I've seen this as a consumer myself, but also through our customers, that businesses that scale and become successful are sometimes actually not the businesses that have, that offer the best technical service. They're actually the ones with the best system around it. They pick up the phone. They are really good at responding to their customers. I think calls and messages. I think these days people actually expect things like, okay, I call you, you answer the phone. We booked an appointment, but I expect a text message reminder about my appointment. I expect various things, maybe even automatically to happen. So I know as a customer, cool. I expect you guys to arrive at this time. Maybe it's even blocked in my calendar. I think consumers really expect you as a business to be really dialed in like that. And if you're not, you are for sure losing them to businesses that are. So I think it's all about the speed of response. Like you're fast to respond. I think it's the quality of response. And I also feel like it's about being able to meet the customer where they are. Maybe for your business it is more calls. Although you guys have so many texts, clearly you do all texting and calling. But I think that for me, I've noticed that you need to just be able to meet the customer through their preferred method. So if they prefer calling you, you need to pick up. But if they're all about texting, that's. That's just the way it is. So.
- [46:44]
A
And it's nice to have the diverse, the diverse options because if we're messaging people throughout the day, a lot of them are working, so they can't pick up the phone and have a phone call, but they can text. And that's perfect because some of us, we can't afford necessarily we can't afford to pay somebody here full time. But if we do outsource, like, I do have a virtual assistant that is overseas now. She's much better with texting than hopping on the phone because English is her second language. But we have scripts, so she's able to just run through the scripts and have the conversations. Now, say, for instance, she can't get them to. She can't close them via text. That's when we get sweet Nicole on the phone where she calls and we're going to have a phone conversation and hopefully things go better. And I have seen like, yeah, our close rate has gotten so better because we have the system now. We're no longer reactive. We're systematized.
- [47:38]
B
100%. And, you know, you as the owner, you see what's going on. I think that's the most important thing. Like, at the end of the day, it will take a while to. To get to, I guess your, you know, let's say for every business there is like, your perfect kind of like, close rate. It will probably get a while to get there, but at least you know how you're progressing and where you are, because you have visibility in all these conversations, right? I think that's the big thing. And frankly, that's the sort of one thing that I didn't anticipate people would enjoy and appreciate so much about Quo is that we give you so much visibility into what's going on. I didn't think it's such a big, like, value proposition or selling point. I thought it's all the other stuff we have. But people were like, hey, listen, I can see what's happening across all of my customers. And maybe the reason why people like it because most business owners, they're so protective over their customer experience, right? Like, you want to make sure that everyone who calls you has, like, the best experience. No balls are dropped, right? Everything is followed up on quickly. And you just being able to see it just probably gives you peace of mind to say, okay, I'll go to bed. It's going to be fine.
- [48:57]
A
There's so much truth to that, because when you're smaller and say, for instance, with my business, I know every customer. I've had experiences. I know their dog's name. I know what their backyard looked like, all the notes, right? I put all of those notes in Jobber in the CRM. So I knew all of it. But now, as the team is starting to grow, when we're having staff meetings, they're talking about properties that they're servicing that I've never been to. I'm like, I have no idea. And that it was a rough transition. It truly was. So if you're talking to the business owner that is so protective over their business, like, they're just so nervous. They're like, I don't know if I can hand over calls and text messages. I don't know if I'm ready for it yet. But they need to, because they are dropping the ball. What would be a piece of advice that you would give to them to kind of make this transition a little bit easier?
- [49:55]
B
Yeah, well, listen, I think that, I mean, the first thing I would say is that they can either, like, most people make that transition when things, like, really hurt. So they can sort of, they're going to make that transition regardless.
- [50:11]
A
Right?
- [50:11]
B
So let's just, let's just start from that. They, they, I mean, you know, if they, if they are ambitious, they want to grow their business, they want to scale their impact, right? That point is coming. So you are either proactively preparing for it or you are making that transition when things are really, really hurting. So I definitely recommend doing it before it, it hurts badly. Right. But, but more on this transition, I think the biggest thing is like I kind of mentioned sort of like this visibility. If you, of course you're, as an entrepreneur, you're so protective over your customers. I think you having first of all visibility is really important into that. The second piece is you having making it actually easy for yourself to know. Okay, here's what is really non negotiable. Here's what I really need to train the team on. So having your kind of like non negotiables, like, hey, as a company, here's our voice and tone. We are going to be, maybe for you, it's like, hey, maybe we're a company that's going to always be very, very professional and serious and sort of like that is kind of the vibe. Or maybe your vibe is, no, we're energetic, we're fun, we're like, no matter what, lean on that. Right? Writing this out, maybe sitting down yourself and thinking, hey, here are my non negotiables. When talking to customers and having that. But then being flexible to say outside of this, every situation is so unique. I don't know how you would handle the situation. Don't expect your employee to Suddenly handle everything. 10 out of 10, right. Just have some level of flexibility but know what your non negotiables are. So that would be my piece of advice and of course, documentation. Documentation. Documentation, right. This is again why I love that in quo, all your calls are recorded. When you record your calls, you have, hey, here is a great call. Here is a not so great call. Here's an example of a call that maybe you're not proud of, but you can be open and vulnerable and say, hey, here is the library I want you to listen to as you get prepped.
- [52:22]
A
Yeah, absolutely. What I like too is with the text messaging. So if I, if I see a text message coming through and the call and the text isn't going very well, I, as the owner, I can hop in and be like, hey, I can take it from here, type deal and show them like, okay, this is, this is how I would handle the situation. Do you Want to launch or grow your pooper scooper business? If you answered yes, then you have to check out the Poop Scoop Millionaire community created by Will Milliken, the president of a seven figure dog waste removal business, Swoop Scoop. You will gain access to the same strategies he used to scale his business from zero to over 2,000 reoccurring customers in just three years. Community members will receive exclusive access to his community forums with industry leaders, business courses are running, Facebook ads, commercial services and so much more. You'll get downloadable Pooper scooper documents, live coachings and trainings, and access to verified one on one coaches and vendors that is a perfect fit for you. Including a gold level Google product expert that can help you with all of your Google troubles. Space is limited, so please join Poop Scoop millionaires today@skool.com or click my link down in the description.
- [53:46]
B
That's a great point. I should definitely should have mentioned that. Yeah, you can, you know, with our setup, you can easily at any given point of time be looped in so you can actually tell your team, hey. For the first little while, especially as people are getting trained and getting comfortable, you can tell them, hey, like when you're not confident in answering a message or you're on a call and like things, you know, you're not sure what to do, like follow up separately. Loop me in. You can trans. Can be transferred. That's another thing. You're a teammate who answered the call. But things are off to a rocky start. All good. Transfer to Erica maybe. As long as that doesn't happen 10 times a day, that's fine. But then you know yourself like, hey, okay, my team is only doing it if things are truly escalated.
- [54:38]
A
So yep, it's, yeah, it's really cool with the flexibility and like you said, we get to kind of see what's going on, which is nice. So I want to say that this, this spring rush was crazy because I put almost $18,000 into advertisement in the first quarter.
- [54:56]
B
Wow. Okay.
- [54:57]
A
So the volume was insane and things definitely broke and I was like, okay, we're going to have to fix it. What would you say like kind of when call volumes get super crazy and kind of like things start to break in a business owner's systems. Oh God. What is the question? Sorry, I just got a little lost there. Let me re. Ask that one.
- [55:23]
B
It's okay.
- [55:24]
A
No, no, no. Okay. The question was what usually breaks first in a business when call volume suddenly increases? That's the question.
- [55:33]
B
Yeah, I mean, definitely several different things, I guess the first thing that happens is that things balls get dropped.
- [55:44]
A
Right.
- [55:45]
B
Because you're jumping from one call to another, sort of like back to back. And frankly, you're probably not following up and following through on everything you talk to people about. So we definitely see that you have folks kind of like maybe leaving one call without clear next steps or clear understanding of like, okay, what do I need to do? Do I need to follow up on their booking? Do I need to coordinate with someone else? So calls are just every call creates. Usually every call creates work. Right. Unless of course, you handle everything on the phone and it's perfect. You kind of can hang up and kind of move on. Usually these conversations create follow up work and follow ups just don't happen. Or follow ups are very delayed, which frankly, sometimes a delayed follow up is as bad as no follow up because people expect things to happen very quickly. And I think, especially in your world, I think in a high volume environment that's just the expectation. So I would say that what starts happening when call volume goes up is that you don't have very structured follow ups. And actually I don't necessarily want to fully reveal this, but there is something we're working on right now to help with this problem and I'm excited for the version of this to be shipped next month actually. So. But that is, this is inspired by the problem that people leave calls with items that don't get done and then that accumulates and that just creates a bad customer experience.
- [57:34]
A
I've been guilty of this. So yes, there's a lot of truth. What I've been doing is my little workaround is, Ben, if it needs to be followed up, we're marking it as unread.
- [57:46]
B
Yes.
- [57:47]
A
So it's still in the queue. And so that's been our little bit of workaround to help, I don't know, rectify this situation.
- [57:54]
B
Yes. So that's such a great point and that is what people have been doing. But we have something better coming, so I'll just leave it at that. We have something coming that is going to be, it's going to feel a lot more natural because I also think that sometimes these follow ups, maybe sometimes you need to follow up or it's your teammate or it's this other person. Right. So stay tuned. But we definitely see this as an opportunity to just help people get things done and move on with all that needs to happen versus just hopping from call to call.
- [58:32]
A
Oh, I cannot wait. Stay tuned, folks. We're going to hear about it.
- [58:38]
B
You heard about it Here first.
- [58:40]
A
Yay. I'm excited. So we talked about answering the phone manually. We talked about, like the AI answering if you're unable to answer the phone. And we're in 2026, so people are interested about integrations, ways to automate things. And like I had mentioned before, I use Jobber. So that's the CRM that I am most familiar with. And I actually was so proud of myself. I figured out how to do my first zap, my own first zap. So when request came in through Jobber, I had it zap over to QO and then QO would ask them their first, like, initial question just to start the warm conversation.
- [59:23]
B
Amazing. So that would be a text message, right? So there is a new request through Jobber Zapier, and then there is a text message sent. Amazing. Okay. Okay. I love that.
- [59:34]
A
I was so excited. But then zap broke and then I got too busy and I couldn't go back in there and fix it. So having said that, can we talk a little bit about different connections and way to ways to automate Job to quote?
- [59:49]
B
Yes, of course. Of course. Well, first of all, I think I love that example and we love Jobber. We are very excited to be partnered with their team and to have this integration. I think the first thing is we are looking to do more and more in that Jobber integration. So you don't have to do, I think, what you share doing. I wish it was just available through Jobber so you can just seamlessly connect both tools. So there's work for us to do there. But one of the things that I think is like a core workflow that people have, whether they're using Jobber or something else. Like a really core workflow on Quo is being able to send a text message through Quo. The moment that someone fills out a contact form, some sort of, whether it's contact sales or request a quote. And basically the idea is on your website somewhere, you have a form probably like get a quote or get in touch with us. You ask for their name, you ask for maybe their email, but you really, really are asking for their phone number. Right. So you're asking for their phone number. And then the usual way of doing things is like you just have your team call them back as soon as possible. Now, I think the best way to do this on top of calling them back as soon as possible is to send them a text message right away and have that message go from your quote number. So when they reply and when you call them, it all goes from the same number so the customer doesn't have to be like, oh, why are you calling me from like five different numbers? So that is like such a key, I think workflow and a key thing to automate. Automate. So if you're using Jobber, it would be what you described through Zapier. Doing that if you're using something else. Same idea, really. Basically connecting that form on your website through likely Zapier. Or if you're using things like make.com connecting to quo and triggering a text message the moment the person gives you their number. This also works, by the way, if you're running ads, let's say on meta, and you're running an ad and you're asking for a phone number, or the person basically consents to giving you a phone number, you can do that same thing. So it makes speed to lead instant because the moment they give you a number, you send them a text message, make it a really nice message. And I think that is something that I see people do and it's really, really like, I think it's a game changer. Also makes the customer feel great because they have that instant, they have instant confirmation once they fill out a form.
- [62:34]
A
It is, it is really a big deal with having that instant. Like automation. Even though it's a small automation, it's still that speed to lead, right? So it's that instant gratification. They're being asked a question immediately. And it's so simple because like we've talked about before, like I'm a simple person. Technology stresses me out and I have all these people, especially with my platform, like they reach out and they're like, I, you know, go high level and all these different automations and it's like, okay, you set it up, what if it breaks? I don't know how to, I don't know how to fix any of this stuff. Like, I'm a pooper scooper. I just want to focus on my craft. And so what I really, what I really, really liked is it was just a couple little things that I needed to do to set it up. And the people were, they were responding right away, like, what did I ask? I think I just said thank you for requesting a dog poop removal quote, if you don't mind. How many dogs do you have?
- [63:35]
B
And then that's brilliant, actually, I think that's brilliant, right? Because you immediately get them to respond. It's such an easy question to respond to. And what ends up happening is you get into conversation with them. So you're turning. So the Other thing is, right, if you know, depending on how many people you have and how many leads you're getting, you may not be able to call back every lead like immediately. I think if you're a bigger company, obviously the bigger you are as a company, you can keep people around, staffed to make calls like the second someone gives you their information. But if you don't have that, this is basically your cheat code. You are sending them an automated message and they respond back. And you can respond, I think fairly quickly. You actually might be doing something else. You can quickly respond back, you can have your team respond. I think it's just such a game changer. I think the other workflow that I'll just tell people because I think, I think everyone should be doing this. If you get, essentially if you get text messages or calls and you know, of course I want you to be using Sona, our AI agent, but even if you're not, if you get calls like after hours or text messages and you know you're not going to reply, just set an auto reply. And I think that is like super professional and super. It like makes you stand out as a business and sets expectations with the customer. Right? If someone texts you super late and no one's around to give you, give them an answer. Having an automated message that says, hey, like thanks so much for the message where we're closed. We'll be opening tomorrow at like I don't know, 8am we'll send you a message back as soon as we can. That's just such a. It just makes your business look bigger. It makes your business look more established.
- [65:32]
A
So yeah, it's really good because we use that too. And so we say this is our automated message. Sorry we couldn't answer the phone. If you are looking for a dog poop removal quote, click this link to fill out our request form. And then within a minute we're getting a lead request that comes through. So it's getting them right to where I want them. Essentially I want their information in jobber 100%. And like you were talking about the high volume, right? Well, Jobber has a two way text messaging and that is actually how I primarily was doing all of my texting communication. But because my team has access to the two way text message during spring rush, I mean we were, we were. You've seen how many text messages we were sending. So it was blowing up their notifications. They're out trying to scoop and it was slowing down the system because it was such high volume. I was like, wait a Minute we have quo, let's move everything over to quo and we'll start text messaging through there. Jobber started running more smooth, and then the technicians weren't seeing, like the behind the scenes office stuff of us giving, like, rates and, you know, people being like, oh, your prices are too high, or, you know, whatever it was. And so I was like, oh, yes, yes, yes. This is so amazing.
- [66:49]
B
Yeah. Since you really like this example, I'll give you another one. And I think you'll appreciate this because going back to this idea that you want everything to be in at the end of the day, if you want someone to fill out, you essentially want someone's information Right. Filled out as a quote. One thing that we also now do with Sona, our AI agent, Sona can actually, while talking to the. So another example is you are not around, you can't pick up the phone. You get Sona to pick up the phone, Sona can ask the question, hey, are you looking to get a quote? And if the person says, yes, I want a quote, Sona can actually text, while being on the phone, text a link and say, hey, I just sent you a text message with a link. Please fill out this form which goes back to Java. That's another. That's the same concept, but another example. And at the end of the day, I think having this consistently done, like that allows you to know that no matter how people come in, whether they talk to Sona, they talk to your rep, they talk to, they text. It all goes back to your system of record.
- [67:59]
A
Yeah. And you have them in your system. And what I like too, in quo is you can put their name and their information in there. So when Mary calls, it's not just Croupin Spoopin. Scooping. Erica speaking. Croupin' Spoopin' Scoopin'. Erica speaking. Hey, Mary, how are you? Yeah, they're like, oh, hi, I'm on your Tuesday route. Oh, I know Mary. How have you been? And so it creates this wonderful experience. Instead of being like, wait, what's your name? Who are you? How long have you been with us? And they're like, seriously, dude?
- [68:29]
B
Yeah, exactly. People, people expect 100%. And listen, I think that this is what really makes you stand out. I think at the end of the day, as a business owner, you are able to create these kind of experiences. I think this is what gets people so excited to start a company because they want to offer, like, the best service ever. And what you just described, like, that's the example of standing out where your competitors May cut corners and may not care about these small things, but because you do, the customer will always feel it.
- [69:05]
A
So, yeah, absolutely. And everybody. I mean, their name is their most precious, like, word. It's so important. I learned this. I don't remember where. I don't know it was. Somebody taught it to me. But when I go places, I learn people's names and I actually put them on my phone because I'm forgetful. Like, I will never forget a face. But, like, names are very difficult for me. And so when I go into, let's say, the meat market, and I know the guy behind the counter, his name's Mitch, right. I put it in my phone, and when I went there, I was like, hey, Mitch, how are you? Because I looked before I walked in, his face just lit up. And I was like, we're going to continue to do that moving forward. And it really has. It's made a huge difference in my business just by having it documented in systems like this, because it creates the consistency. It doesn't matter if I'm having a bad brain day. Quo is not.
- [70:01]
B
Quo will remember. I also like to think that, you know, you may be on a call and you may think, right, these days, I may think that I so good at remembering all we talked about. But there are days when you have million, kind of like million tabs open in your brain, but Quo will always record the call and will remind you things. So I think that's important. You want these systems for consistency, and you don't have to rely on your superpowers. Just let the systems handle that for you.
- [70:32]
A
Absolutely. All right. Well, this was so good. I know I could honestly keep you on here forever, but I know you're a super busy woman, so I'm going to ask you one last question before we go ahead and wrap up. If the viewer or the listener is taking notes right now, what's one piece of advice you'd give to them as they're starting to grow and scale their business to keep their communication consistent?
- [70:57]
B
Yeah. I think that the one piece of advice would be build the systems you need to get to where you want to go just before you think you need them. Because the truth is, when you know you need them, that's already. That's already too late. Right. I think you have to invest into being the company that you want to be and not always just build for the company you are today. Because the way to go from where you are today to that company that you aspire to build is these things. So you have to think about investing in these systems, investing in people similarly, and do it before you feel you're 100% ready.
- [71:49]
A
I completely agree with that. I won't make this story super long, but in 2024, I had an employee total, two of my company vehicles. Not one, but two within six months. And my business almost went under. The end of 2024 and into 2025, if somebody would have been like, here's a dollar, I'll take your business off your hands. You don't have to think about it. I'll handle everything for you, I would have said, please. Because I was like on my knees in my husband's garage, just crying, being like, I don't know how I'm going to fix this. I don't know if I have it in me. I don't know if I want this anymore. This is too much. So I took 2025 to regroup. I reached out to people, I had the conversations, I wrote things down, I formulated my plan. And so I essentially took all of 2025 to physically prepare for 2026 spring rush. My husband and I, we eliminated all of our debt. We shared. We shared a car. I dropped him off at work and then I went to work. We made so many sacrifices. And when I was doing the research, I was reaching out to other scoopers about the phone systems. When Quo, there was a couple others that kind of came up. And I heard wonderful things about Quo. I was like, this is going to be one of the softwares that is going to help me to get where I needed to go. And if I would have waited until spring rush happened of this year, I would have had another year of nonsense. So there's so much truth to that. Like, okay, where do we want to go? Let's prepare for it and let's, let's learn the things. Because it takes time for us to learn it. Like, it took me a minute to learn Quo.
- [73:41]
B
It's like you have to invest in being, being the person you want to be, being the company you want to have to get. It's almost like, you know, let's say you have your revenue goal to get to be like a million dollar business. You need to start operating and thinking like you're already there, because that mindset is what gets you there. So, I mean, that's what you did, which I think is amazing.
- [74:06]
A
Had to. I was like, first of all, I got on my knees and was praying to the Lord. I said, I can't do this on my own. I don't want to do this on my own. Like, please help me, guide me. I specifically, like went to a top of the mountain in Colorado and I was like, lord, please put in my life the things and the people that you feel need to be here and eliminate the ones and things that you don't. And he started working very quickly. And I'm so super grateful for everything that's happening in 2026. So thank you so much for hanging out and sharing.
- [74:40]
B
Thank you so much for having me. This was so, so amazing. Such a pleasure. I'm so inspired by your story. I feel like just this, this, this made my day. This made my week. This is truly amazing. So thank you so much for having me.
- [74:55]
A
Awesome. If the listeners want to get in touch with you, want to learn more, how do they find out more about Quo?
- [75:03]
B
Absolutely. We're@quo.com, q U O.com they can check out our site. We have a free trial start using our product. If folks have currently a business phone number with another service, we can port it over for free. If they have a personal number they're using, we can help there as well. And I'll leave my email too if people want to reach out darenao.com so I'm always happy to hear from folks and sort of see how I can help.
- [75:38]
A
Perfect. Okay, we will go ahead and we'll include all of those notes down in the show description on the podcast and on the YouTube. I want to thank you so much for being on and hanging out.
- [75:50]
B
Thank you, Erica.
- [75:51]
A
You're welcome. Don't, don't hang up because we'll have to. We have to let the recording render. So for those of you that tuned in, thank you so much. This is the first interview I've really done since the spring rush began. So I'm really, I was really excited to get back in the saddle and do this. The reason why I share these interviews with you is so you can have real experiences and real insights from a business owner that is doing the real and then also sharing the information that I've learned and the connections that I have so you can grow your business better and achieve the business and the life that you want. So thank you so much for tuning in and have a good day. Bye. Thank you for hanging out with Erica Kruipen. She is so grateful and honored you decided to tune in to the Scoop podcast and hopes the information you heard today positively impacts you moving forward forward in business and life. Follow Erica on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Tick tock at Croupin's Poopin Scooping. And don't forget to follow the show in order to get notified when the next edition of the Scoop drops.
- [77:09]
B
Sam.