Show Information
Episode Number: 62
Date: November 25, 2024
Duration: 55:14
Guest Contact Information
Guest: Chris Yano
Company: Ryno Strategic
Guest Website: https://rynoss.com/
Podcast Host of: To The Point- Home Service Podcast
Host Contact Information
Host: Justin Deese
Website: JustinDeese.com
Contact: Justin@JustinDeese.com
Summary
In this episode of the Freedom Blueprint podcast, host Justin Deese interviews Chris Yano, founder of Ryno Strategic Solutions. Chris shares his journey from a small-town upbringing to becoming a leader in digital marketing for home services. He discusses the evolution of his company, the challenges of navigating a dynamic market, and the importance of accountability in partnerships. Chris also highlights the significance of understanding booking rates for business health and reveals Ryno’s new branding and growth strategy, including a recent private equity partnership aimed at scaling the business further. In this conversation, Chris Yano discusses the merger of Blue Corona and Ryno, emphasizing the need for a reset in the digital marketing landscape. He explores the integration of AI in marketing, the importance of finding purpose after significant transitions, and the necessity of resetting personal life pillars. Chris shares insights on choosing the hard path for growth and the opportunities available in the trade industry, encouraging listeners to focus on self-improvement and leadership.
Takeaways
- Chris Yano’s journey began in the Midwest, focusing on helping small businesses.
- Ryno Strategic Solutions evolved from a small marketing firm to a major player in home services.
- Understanding the consumer’s buying cycle is crucial for effective marketing.
- Accountability is key in partnerships; it’s not always marketing’s fault.
- Booking rates are a critical metric for assessing business health.
- Ryno’s new branding reflects its growth and commitment to the industry.
- The company has adapted to market changes, especially during COVID-19.
- Chris emphasizes the importance of community service in business culture.
- Private equity partnerships can be a strategic move for growth.
- Building relationships in the industry has been vital for Chris’s success. The merger of Blue Corona and Rhino was a strategic move to reset the digital marketing landscape.
- AI is a tool that should be used wisely in business.
- Finding purpose is crucial after significant life transitions.
- Resetting personal life pillars can lead to better overall well-being.
- Choosing the hard path often leads to greater growth and success.
- The trade industry is experiencing a resurgence of opportunities.
- Self-discipline is key to achieving long-term goals.
- important to take responsibility for one’s actions and decisions.
- Continuous self-improvement benefits not only oneself but also the team and family.
- There are abundant resources available for learning and growth in today’s world.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Chris Yano and Ryno Strategic Solutions
05:10 The Evolution of Ryno’s Services
11:11 The Importance of Accountability in Partnerships
17:58 Ryno’s New Branding and Growth Strategy
24:54 Private Equity Partnership and Future Plans
30:37 Navigating the AI Landscape in Marketing
40:27 Resetting Life’s Pillars
46:53 Choosing the Hard Path for Growth
Transcript
Justin Deese (00:01.745) All right, welcome to Freedom Blueprint podcast. I have got a pretty awesome guest today who, gosh, he is the founder of Rhino Strategic Solutions. He is the podcast host of To The Point podcast, which by the way, one of my favorite podcasts. I love that podcast. You guys do such a good job on that. I'm going to say husband and father because that's important. And entrepreneur, crazy entrepreneur. Chris Yano (00:24.558) Thanks, brother. Chris Yano (00:28.191) Yep. Justin Deese (00:31.138) And I want to talk a little bit today about what that all looks like. But before we dive in, Chris, man, welcome to the show. Chris Yano (00:37.826) Dude, Justin, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for all those comments. Justin Deese (00:40.178) Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to dive in a little bit and kind of learn a little bit more about you and Rhino and what that looks like today. Full disclosure, I'm a customer, so just going to throw that out there. If anybody's got any questions, they can they can certainly hit me up and ask me whatever they would like. but yeah, so so Chris, tell us a little bit about the journey of getting started in the digital marketing space and then niche down to home services. I mean, I'm sure you didn't start out that way or did you? Chris Yano (01:19.854) No, no. I literally was just having this, we had a whole bunch of new hires come on board and I don't normally hop on any of our new hire meetings, but basically I got a last second message from my wife who was supposed to lead that. She said, hey, can you spend 30 minutes with this new hire group and just tell them about the history? And I was like, what? Okay. It'd been a while since I've done, they usually make me a part of those. So I just kind of had this whole conversation with about six new hires. No, I didn't mean to get into the trades. It was just one of those deals where I grew up, I think you know this about me, Justin, but I grew up from the Midwest and I started the company in Indiana, which is where I'm from. I grew up on a big corn and soybean farm, man, so I'm just like a small town guy. When I started, when I did get into to start the digital marketing company, I did relate most with Blue Collar because that's kind of, know, like I come from the country. It just was far more relatable for me and I was more comfortable, you know, talking to the trades. So, it wasn't like I intended, like it's just what I knew, you know, and I didn't have any business plan. I was just like, I need to, you know, I need to make some money. And you know, I made my parents super proud, Justin, you'll be happy about this because I went to college for, you know, four years to get an associate's degree, which takes most people to. In criminal justice and then I got a DUI so like I screwed all of it up So I messed all those things up so I had to do a hard pivot to figure something else out. So Chris Yano (02:53.87) But you know what, the whole thing was when I started the company I was like, man, there's some big businesses out there but I'm the small guy. So I'm like, I'm going to be like the marketing company for the mom and pops because that's who I'm going to fight for. Like the David versus Goliath story, which is kind of interesting given the fact that I think that it's flip-flops today. And I'd still like to fight for David except I think for Goliath. But it was just one these deals where we had an HVAC and plumbing company that was a decent size who had some... Chris Yano (03:25.185) some pull with one of the manufacturers, carrier corporations based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. and we did a great job for them and they said hey this is like back in 2010 so like a minute ago and then it was like hey you know we'd be interested in having you be a preferred vendor well there's like you know me my wife and like one other person and and they want us to kind of come and be a preferred vendor of theirs for all their you know contractors and these certain distributors and they're like can you handle this kind of account and of course the answer was yes there's plenty of us but at that point in time it was still so early on in the digital marketing game for HVAC. And I thought, man, if we only focus on HVAC, like we should be the best at it. If we do it every day, we should be the best at it. And that's kind of set us down the path. then, you know, it's all these years later, still doing the same thing. It's just kind of morphed into HVAC, HVAC and plumbing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, garage doors. So that's kind of the path it's down now to where this behemoth is today. But yeah, I mean it just started like at the end of the day it was You know, I I really wanted to help these businesses grow, you know, I I You we coming from a you know a small, you know, my mom was an entrepreneur You know, we were farmers like you learn all the things and it was Just something that I knew I wanted to be helpful and help people's businesses grow and impact their livelihoods and their employees and their families. And that's still the way it is today, it's no different. It's just I get to do it at massive scale today. that's the game, man. Here I am all these years later. There's a lot in between that, that dash there. Justin Deese (05:10.814) think what's interesting and so awesome about the industry that we're in is exactly what you said. It's as big of an industry as we're in, it's really small. And it's one of those deals where the six degree of separation from our space is really more like two degrees of separation. But again, I think that had you not done a good job, they wouldn't have said, hey, you need to come help us out. So that's, you know. Chris Yano (05:29.176) Yeah, right. Yeah. Chris Yano (05:38.114) Yeah. Justin Deese (05:39.54) The person, the pudding, so to speak. Chris Yano (05:41.622) Yeah, you know, and listen, it's not like we certainly have gotten it wrong too. You know, like no matter how good you are, there's still a human being aspect to this business that you hope that they follow your system and process that you put in place. like nobody loves your baby as much as you love your baby. And you know, they can love them a lot, but not as much as you. And sometimes there's a miss, especially as the business gets bigger, you know, but the one thing you don't, you know, that you can control still is what you do and your output and hopefully your culture of your business. The best thing you can do is just say, listen, I've got the best foundation and the right values in place, and I can just trust them to follow those things. And if they do, great. If they don't, well, then we have to figure out how to correct it. And yeah, so I've had to learn a lot, man, over these last few years. Justin Deese (06:28.596) Well, so mission, yeah, mission's wildly important. And I like the mindset idea of that too, where you just kind of went, let's do this. Like we can be the best at that. And really all the verticals, even that you just said, they're all still home services. They're all still a technician crossing the threshold of a door. So I think it's still all ties in regardless. That's great. Chris Yano (06:55.436) Yeah, it's Playbook. I the Playbook's the Playbook. it's really industry agnostic to be quite honest with you. It's just, you got to figure out, like, there's certainly value in understanding the industry because we are basically in the psychology game. And that is... human being buys things a certain way or certain ways, well doesn't change, know, like the habits that that person takes to buy something don't change, it's just how they go about it. So understanding the buy cycle from the consumer is the most important part. If you figure that out and you've got the playbook already, well it doesn't take much to start to learn it quickly, you know, if you're not trying to learn all these things. So it wasn't like... Sometimes we can get wrapped up in paralysis analysis. You ever heard that term before? And my whole thing was like, send it. Like, let's just jump and then throw the parachute and pray to God the parachute opens, you know, and I'll figure it out really, really fast on the way down. let's exactly. Justin Deese (07:42.262) yeah. Justin Deese (07:51.956) Build the plane as you fly it. It's a term that my wife and I use a lot. Build the plane as you fly. And that's my, that's my, it's usually my saying. She's not like, she's like, no, I'm I'm a planer. She's a planner. I'm not a planner. I'm a same, same way. so it's gotta be, okay. So from a digital marketing aspect, part of the challenge I would think that you would face. Chris Yano (08:00.524) Yeah. Chris Yano (08:06.966) yeah. Yeah. Justin Deese (08:17.362) besides all the regular business stuff, And making sure your culture is good and your mission and vision and all that kind of stuff. Man, you're in a business of a moving target. It constantly moves. Like constantly. How do you even, and I'm not looking for specifics, but that's gotta be a challenge to stay on the forefront of all that stuff. Chris Yano (08:39.086) Yeah, you think about, you know, as for your listeners that are listening now too, depending on where they're at, you know, in their journey, whether it's, you know, you're new, you're, you know, just, it's just you, you just have a few people, you're a million, you're three million, you're five million. It doesn't matter where you're at in the journey. You know, you, we all go through it. It's just that I go through it with you, except I go with it through you and about a hundred other people at the same time. So like, I have to carry that burden quite a bit. Well, you know, I signed up for that. So it is my responsibility to find solutions. I picked the business and I chose to stay in business and I chose to keep fighting on behalf of the contractor to learn my business as best as I could to help them grow. That's the job. So I signed up for it. But you're right. When people feel the pinch, You can guarantee I'm feeling that pinch too because sometimes it's not a it's not a marketing problem And there's an accountability problem too, you know? And so we just need to know if we're truly gonna work together. Is it a marketing problem or is it a you problem or is it a we problem? And then when we figure that out, then we work on the solution to one or the other. Like that's being a good partner. And so I've just learned, Justin, like over the years is let's not treat this like it's always marketing's fault because that's not me doing, you're not doing yourselves any favors and I'm not doing you any favors by saying, you know what? The customer is always right because the customer is not always right. they need to know that sometimes but you got to back up. Justin Deese (10:09.074) That's an old school mentality. that tide has changed for sure. Chris Yano (10:14.255) Well, and it has to, especially in my role because like to your point, it is a moving target. It's a non-stop moving target. like, listen, I did everything in this company back in the day from doing website builds to pay-per-click to SEO to social, all of it, like account management, listening to every phone call for the like, I did everything. Today, I'm not doing everything like that. Like it's not scalable, but there's 300 some odd people here at this business now. It's a behemoth, you know, and And we want people smarter than me in those positions. Like I'm best at the top. You know, we were talking pre podcast, Justin, my new technical, technically, yes, I'm founder, my new title is Chief Strategy Officer. Well, that's what I've actually spent the last eight years of my life doing is, you know, the private equity world, you know, that, or the brand consolidators like, or if it's like some of our biggest, you know, multi-trade, multi-location clients. Yes, that's what I sit and do. I sit and work through the strategy for them when they want to grow, you know, 20 % next year or whatever. Like that's the stuff I love to do I'm good at because I've done it 17 years I've been through the wave a few different times now You know, but but that's the game right like my job or the company the job of this company is to grow these contractors Period. That's the game. I just make sure I take it a step further and say well Let's let's make sure that one, you know that my team is actually doing their job of bringing in new opportunities for the contractor But is the contractor holding up their end of the deal too? You know, that accountability sets the tone for a different type of partnership. You're no longer just an agency. You know, now you're a true partner because I'm not just lead, I'm also operations at that point. Justin Deese (11:40.29) Yeah. Justin Deese (11:51.386) Yeah. So I'll tell you just kind of putting my coaching hat on for a minute. There's a lot of times when I have sat down with business owners that are shaking their fist at their marketing department, a marketing company they're using, and you sit down and they're at a 35 % booking rate. Like I, it doesn't matter what you're doing. If your booking rate is that bad, you, you, that's your, that's your hole in the boat that you got to fix. It's not anything else. Or if the answer to that is I don't know what my booking rate is. Chris Yano (12:14.541) Yeah, it's a big hole. Justin Deese (12:19.556) then you can bet the problem is you're booking right. yeah, there's a lot of them that go, okay, well great, what's your booking right there? I have no idea. Okay, fix that. Like that's gotta be step one before you start pointing the finger out, you gotta kind of point it in. Chris Yano (12:21.695) Yeah, that's a good point. Chris Yano (12:27.832) Yeah. Chris Yano (12:34.658) Yeah and you know the drill too especially when you're a smaller business you're still answering the phone some right so like you know when you're smaller you're like my booking rate's great well if it's you answering the phone you're the owner well yeah of course your booking rate it should be great because nobody's more passionate than you and you know how to handle the call and take the call but it's not scalable so but there's plenty of people Justin like who are big players Justin Deese (12:51.725) Right. Chris Yano (13:03.07) And I'll be like, hey, we don't need to do anything. We don't need to spend any more money right now. Let's just pump the brakes on the spend and work on the booking rate for this location because it's atrocious. And here's the booking rate compared to the others. And that's the stuff that we need to know is the dangerous part about marketing companies is you have to trust that the information that they're giving you is correct. Because we're all making big boy and big girl decisions based off of that information being correct and Where I've done it different all these years than everybody else was I was willing willing to listen to every single phone call Like physically human beings here in the United States of America that are my employees listening to every single phone call so that way I could remove the guesswork out of the way and you know and say okay of the 250 leads, I'm using air quotes for those listening, not watching, leads that come through. How many of those were actually legit new brand, like brand new bookable opportunities for you and what was just a repeat, know, repeat a referral business? Because to me, my job is the new business, not repeat and referral. And then what was my booking rate on that number? And then what was my cost per lead on that number? And how did you perform on that number? Like those are the numbers we need to know. Because if you said, hey, Chris, Of those 250 leads, only 100 were actually legit opportunities that we went on and we closed X. Well, at what cost per... It doesn't take long for me to do the math to figure out, well, if you need 100 more leads, is your booking rate okay if it is? If the cost per lead is 150 bucks, well, we know we got to do the math. We got to figure out what's the... If you need 100 and more leads, I got to go up and above what your booking rate is to make up for the actual... You're actually going to book the call and go run the call and sell it. It's just simple math at that point in time, but the numbers have got to be accurate. Now, the downside to that is if my team sucked on delivery, it is crystal clear that they underperformed in one month, but you own it. I mean, you've gotten the luxury of working with some of our team. You got to work with Joss and some of them. You own it. You build so much value and trust in your relationship when you own a bad month because no one wants to own a bad month. Chris Yano (15:21.932) But if you win 10 out of 12 months, like that's how you keep tenure. That's how you keep your reputation going. But you got to do a good job. Like that's the game. It is still, it still boiled down to a numbers game. Justin Deese (15:33.468) Yeah, so anybody who is listening a couple episodes ago, we had Nicole on and Nicole is for our business at Paradise in Navarre. She is our everything. And what we were talking about was the booking rate that her and her team have and it's 80, 85 % man. Really it's 85, 90%. If it's under 85%, she's a little bit worked up. But that happens because through the Rhino tracks, Chris Yano (15:57.977) yeah. Justin Deese (16:02.872) she's able to go through the calls and she's able to use that as a tool to train very quickly versus listening to every call ourselves and writing the notes. mean, it's a really, it is a really good tool and it's a great accountability step from, like you mentioned from a partnership standpoint, it is a good partnership standpoint because you're giving a tool for them to, for us customers to use in order to better their business. Chris Yano (16:29.474) Yeah, I mean that was the game, right? I just wanted to be different. And the unfortunate part is for a lot of years it put us in like a, not an apples to apples comparison, because so many other marketing companies are sharing total lead volume versus what was actually truly should have been a lead. When that to me, that's again, new bookable opportunity. Not every contact form that needs service is a legit new lead. It's just repeat and referral, especially for when you're good business, you should have a lot of repeat business. Justin Deese (16:32.38) Yeah. Chris Yano (16:59.476) So yeah, that's all it was is I just wanted to do it right. This kind of goes back to my values of how I grew up. I wanted it to be really clear that I did a good job or didn't do a good job. And that's how I knew how to do it. But this is... There's a lot of people on that team, know, 70 some odd people on that call listening and reporting team. So I'm like, we're really close with AI to making it help be very, very helpful for us. I'm guessing January, then we can do like real time, you know, it's doing real time call analysis based off of how we're training it. That's going to be the cool stuff, but it's still too far away now. Like there's too much, you know, if there's 10 % error, to me, that's too big of a gap. So you just have to use human beings until, until it's actually ready, but we're getting so much closer. Justin Deese (17:42.852) Yeah, that's exciting. So let's shift gears a little bit. So Rhino's obviously got a pretty awesome new makeover. I love the new color scheme, partly because I'm an Auburn fan. Sometimes not during football season, I'm not. Although at the time of recording, we did win against Kentucky last week. So I wasn't sure that we were even going to get three wins out of it, but I'm digging the new new color. So tell us a little bit about the new branding and what's new at Rhino. Chris Yano (17:58.37) You Chris Yano (18:11.947) Yeah, so well congrats to your boys getting it done. You know, it's just one of those deals where you've been through this. is, you know, when you grow these businesses, like I told you, I didn't have a business experience when I was growing. I learned everything by being in the business. And thankfully we've been blessed enough to scale a really great company with a good reputation and grow it. And once you hit a certain size and a number of bodies in here that are relying on you to make good decisions, it was like, and what the market gives you, right? The market changes things. And when we hit COVID, we were so prepared for a situation like that. And we moved. Thank you. But keep in mind, I had went through, I started the business in 08, like so the 08, 09 stuff. it was kind of like a weird little. Justin Deese (19:00.88) Good for you guys. Justin Deese (19:10.064) Yeah. Chris Yano (19:12.61) Honestly, it was a blessing because people were like, now what do I do? New construction. So they were taking chances that they wouldn't maybe normally taken. And so I was like, this is great. Internet is a great chance to take. So it kind of prepared me for this COVID thing. but my thought process was, people are going to be home. So like, why wouldn't they be using everything more? And like, if, if, it was just navigating like the whole contact piece of it. And then once I thought like, If can do like if your stuff goes out, you still got to have somebody over. Like you can't not have somebody fix your toilet and your furnace at the same time. You want it to be hot and stinky. You know, like you see people are going to and I just was one of those things where I was like, hey, let's create this no contact service call badge. And then what I did because it was kind of a crazy spot. I delivered it. I made one post in social media and I said anybody wants this, I'll design it for you and you guys can just take it and put it on your website. This will help you. But that was after. after I took it and put it on every single one of the Rhino customer sites and watched it like pick up conversion rates. I was like, we got something here. But then like the giving back side of me says, OK, like let me give this to the rest of the industry. And I can't remember how many of those things we distributed, but it was in the thousands where I like bit off a little more than I could chew because I was like, shoot. Justin Deese (20:31.22) Well, and they didn't like, not only did they not have an option, they're going to do it quicker now because now they are at home. There's no reprieve to go to the office or go anywhere, you know, especially depending on what part of the country people are in. Some people like didn't leave their house for, you know, an unreasonable amount of time. Chris Yano (20:51.222) yeah, for sure. It was just one of those things where it was, that's actually kind of, and I think you may have learned this too, is like, That's just part of my DNA. Part of my DNA is that, you know, and it was like, how can I help the masses in this thing? I want to be able to leave this industry and leave a really great legacy of somebody who was genuine, who really cared and helped grow contractors, whether I got anything from you or not was not the point. Did I want to grow a healthy business? I did, but not on the back of selling for the sake of selling something. You know, somebody had told me, know, how you make your money is more important than how much money you make. And I just believed if I focused on my reputation, the revenue would follow. part of that is like also being able to look at yourself and say like, can I do this? with what this company needs because through COVID we hit a whole other growth spurt and the company went on a rocket ship and the podcast was fantastic. That was a huge help and that was just all these guys who have been industry legends, the Dave Geigers, the Ken Haynes, the Ken Goodriches, the Leland Smith, these are all guys I've known and built relationships with and they trusted me. I was their go-to guy when they had to to board meetings to ask questions about what's the cost per acquisition for drain cleaning and whatever place. Like I built relationships with these guys. But what they gave me back was a lot of education on that podcast because you know this is like a weekly education session for me where I started learning and understanding the game of private equity and how that worked because obviously I got so busy. Which by the way like this is an absolute blessing for our industry. Chris Yano (22:35.49) Like there's so much light shed on our industry and I'm sure you saw that article that came out in the Wall Street Journal, Justin, was talking about how HVAC and plumbers are the new millionaires. I love that. I have so many friends that have been impacted by that. There's a light on the trades and it ain't going nowhere because AI can't go and install a furnace. So we still gonna need some trades folk out there working. They're gonna come at a premium, which is nice. Justin Deese (22:45.372) Yep. Chris Yano (23:03.438) But you know it impacted my business as well, right? So like I have a lot of customers who grew really really fast, you know, and I have a lot of people who wanted to come work with us and I kind of had to open up, know, Dave Geiger and I went to a roofing event that I was doing a keynote at. I invited Dave to come with me because he wanted to play in the roofing industry. So he and I started like flirting with the roofing industry together. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna start bringing on roofing clients. And I started learning like, God, this is much easier than HVAC and plumbing. so lead generation for roofers. So, you know, but the business really started to blow up and then I was like... Hey, we have a lot of employees. There's like 160, 170 employees. And I was like, man, that's a lot of responsibility. And I need to make sure like, in order to actually give everybody the opportunity that they were telling me that they wanted, I was going to have to double the business. Well, I'm like, damn, it took me 15 years to get to this size business. And so I had to make a responsible decision. And for those that are listening, my wife and I started the business. She was basically all things back of house operations, the financials, management, HR, all the things and I was sales and marketing. And really she was the one that ran the business. mean, if we're being completely honest, she's for sure the one who's the triple major super sharp girl. But we had a conversation and we're like, Kim, do we really think we can do this in a much shorter timeframe? And the answer was no, we weren't equipped to do that. And not that I couldn't have figured it out, but that had been very irresponsible of me to try and like figure it out. No matter how good a resourceful you are, yet I had to make a responsible decision. And thankfully, when we decided to go and look for a private equity partner, this was a growth play. It wasn't a cash out and leave play. I mean, obviously I'm still here. You know, two years later now. Justin Deese (24:51.59) Right? Chris Yano (24:54.434) But it was a growth plan. It was a very responsible decision. I needed to find somebody who had been through it, who understood how to scale it, but would agree to our terms. Because we do community service days every single month, like one Friday a month, everybody in the company goes and does community service. That doesn't look great on a P &L. So to an investor, unless you look at the company growth and the retention rate and their employee retention rate, then you can make sense of the story. we made it you know we made a big decision and the reason I chose the private equity partner I did and we had 85 some that came to the table initially it was incredible the volume people who were interested in and getting into the home services space via Rhino. Well, one of my good friends owned Blue Corona, know, his name was Ben Landers and Ben and I grew our businesses at the same time. And Blue Corona started in 2007, just like Rhino started. And so we kind of grew our business together. Well, he, his private equity company went, he went a year before me. So at least he was post acquisition, you know, you hear all the horror stories and he's like, no, man, they did everything that they said they were going to do. And I'm like, this is great. So after I boiled it down to it, like we met with everybody, it took us 14 months to go through that process. That's a long time. We took our time. We found the right partner, somebody that we believe to help us scale. And that's who we chose and that's what we did. And the hope was that eventually Blue Corona and Rhino would become one. And I wanted it to happen right away. I was like no the markets ready for it Let's go right away and our and the and our sponsors said Pump the brakes Chris like Pump the brakes like let's go ahead and get you know, it was they were right And we needed to pump the brakes we need to make sure we knew everybody I'd never done an integration before so like Thank goodness. We didn't just jump into it But we spent the last you know year Chris Yano (26:47.618) putting that puzzle piece together, which we rolled out of Pantheon. The official merger of Blue Chrono is now Rhino. And that was ultimately what I wanted to do because they have a lot of really smart people on the Blue Chrono team, great technology. And I was like, if we can merge these two behemoths together and the brains that we have in this and technology, it will set the bar for every other marketing company in this space right now. And I think the market needed it. The market needed a reset. you know, on expectation of a digital marketing company. And we did that. And I led the charge on that thing and I'm excited for it because it makes everybody step up, you know, which only makes it better for the contractor. So here we are. The only change I had to make was change the Rhino Orange from black and orange to now blue and orange. And no, I'm not an Auburn fan. I'm not a Boise State fan. I'm not a Virginia fan, but I'll tell you what, I'm a Rhino fan and actually it's growing on me. It looks pretty good. Justin Deese (27:41.867) It does look pretty good. That's, that's a great story. I was actually in the room when you were announcing this at Pantheon and it was so cool cause you're like, so these guys know all the nerdy stuff and we're the cool kids. And it was just like, the whole room was like, yeah, that's. Chris Yano (27:54.958) It was totally true. I think I offended a few of the Blue Corona, the legacy Blue Corona employees. But then once I had to have the all hands conversation, I was like, no, no, no guys. was a joke. It's a joke. Justin Deese (28:00.194) Yeah. Justin Deese (28:08.672) No way. Yeah. Yeah, no, no way. mean, and let's think about it. That's, that's not a bad term. Like it used to be. It's, it's not a bad term. So somebody asked me the other day about, reading a newsletter and I'm like, I just, love nerding out on it. Like I just, there's Saturday mornings, cup of coffee, reading through industry. I just, I'm, I'm nerdy like that. Chris Yano (28:16.856) No, it's not. Chris Yano (28:30.514) Look how many nerds and their positions are out in our business. Look at the Bill Gates, the Elon Musk. Look at the nerds. Pretty cool to be a nerd, if you ask me. Justin Deese (28:36.182) Yep. Yeah. Chris Yano (28:40.014) So I feel like if you could have combined the two, I mean, I have all the relationships in the business. We have a ton of tenure, we have a ton of strategies and we track everything. So they, and we grew our businesses to completely different ways. It was the perfect case scenario for us to bring that thing together. And we're still going, like we're still going. We did the full integration with Service Time, which was huge to bring real time reporting to everybody. It was just... I mean, it was just the right timing to do it. But I had to make a big boy decision and that was to let somebody who could do it better than me take it and run with it. so being in the Chief Strategy Officer still leaves me exactly where I want to be and where I'm strongest. But my commitment to the board isn't as... hard as the new CEO Mike Wilson's commitment to the board. He was the president of Blue Corona, so he had been in the business too. So he'd been through that before, and I hadn't. just was, again, it wasn't an easy decision, but it was a responsible decision. Justin Deese (29:52.034) Well, and I think for not only for your team, it's, it's good on you. Great leadership for identifying that. I know with, with selling paradise and partnering with, leap services, that was for me, it was, we wanted to grow the business to the next level as well. Liability. I was like, it is really cool to see 40 trucks driving up and down the road. But I think about the, age of my kids and where we are in our lives. And I think. Man, if we didn't have that liability, but I could still be part of the mission, that would be really fantastic. So no, I get it. And good for you. And I think that's, I think it's going to show. Right. So you guys are leaning in and technology. got to see some of the new rhino tracks coming out, which is bad to the bone. I mean, technology is just, so we were at, was it service world a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing how many AI companies were lined up. Chris Yano (30:37.015) man. Justin Deese (30:49.885) for all kinds of different things. It's just, neat to see our space and how it's being impacted by AI. And a lot of times, I was talking to some contractors and they were, they're like, I don't use AI, I won't use it. Right, just a very narrow mindset. I'm like, do you spell check? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, I hate to tell you, but you've been using AI a whole lot, like a long time. This isn't a new thing. It's fancier, it's faster, it does cooler stuff now. Chris Yano (31:12.792) All time. All time. Chris Yano (31:17.966) Yeah. Justin Deese (31:18.725) But yeah, at end of the day, that was AI before they called it AI. was just a... Chris Yano (31:24.287) You know Chad Beerman is one of my good friends and a business partner and he's our co-host on the podcast now when he makes it. When he makes it. But we talk about this, we're talking about all the AI options out there now. There's a lot of shiny objects and you gotta be careful because you can't... There is a lot of the stuff that regardless of size of your business can absolutely help you, but you got to understand it to be able to implement it. And that's half the battle. But there are a lot of really cool tools out there and it's just kind of which is the one that works best for you. But AI is, it's a buzzword, but it's not new. It's been around a long time, a long time. I think it's just. Different, know, different softwares can help you at different, you know, times. mean, geez, even if it's just somebody who's having trouble answering their phone, is an AI answering service the best thing for you? The best thing? I don't think it's the best thing, but it's better than what you're doing. You know, so just different ways you can use it. And by the way, like you can imagine, Justin, you probably will get this too. The volume of AI companies that come to me to want to be a strategic partner of Rhino, you know, Justin Deese (32:24.079) Right. Chris Yano (32:40.456) is crazy. Like I can't even, I never heard of some of these companies. I know some and there's, but there's so many more that we don't even know that are trying to come and break into the space. Point being is that's only going to continue to advance and these companies are going to advance. But don't, know, anybody listening, don't get caught off guard by all the shiny objects, man. Like if you find one, really try to understand the one and figure out who's actually going to implement the thing before you go and use it. Justin Deese (33:05.732) Yeah, yeah, to that point, AI should be a tool in your toolbox. Do not let it be the end all be all. Do not just put stuff in it and then put it out to the world. You will be embarrassed. You do have to kind of check it and make sure that it's right. But yeah, it's definitely just use it as a tool in the toolbox for sure. So, so OK, so now part of a bigger group now. Chris Yano (33:10.53) Yep. Chris Yano (33:18.848) Go. Chris Yano (33:26.659) It's all right. Justin Deese (33:34.839) One of the things when I reached out to you, said, you I, you had a, you had a podcast about kind of the Valley that you went into when you made this shift. And I, and that's why I reached out to you. Cause I said, man, I've been through that before when I sold my other company, because I, I sold and walked like I walked away from it. Like here's my check. I'm going to go hang out at the beach. and I went through like this really weird time and it was hard to get anybody to kind of understand what was going on because everybody was like, well, you just got a giant check. You should be like, you should be happy. And it was like, well, purpose is probably the number one thing. And I don't know, I wasn't even involved in that business on a day-to-day basis, but I did miss my team a lot. So anyways, I wanted to kind of ask you about that a little bit. When did you realize that you were kind of in that rut a little bit? Like what were some signs? Chris Yano (34:31.118) Yeah, you know what it was? You know, our situation was a little different because I you left, so that's its own thing. I think that might have even been harder on me because if I wasn't busy, I'd have been in real trouble. Because you can keep busy your brain for a while and be on autopilot. At least I could. But it was, hey, know, there's like the first three months of just figuring out how to... run the business differently. sometimes it didn't even really change the first three months. I still kind of did the same thing. And then it was, hey, we'd like you to step into this chief marketing officer role and be that over these companies. And then we acquired another company and then we had acquired another company. And I was like, okay, this is kind of cool. I know I've not historically. been responsible for just marketing and the marketing funnel as the board likes to see it where you're lead volume and like cost per lead, cost per customer acquisition, like all these crazy terms I didn't know. So there was kind of fun in learning. the how the board views their investment from a marketing perspective. Sales of sales, like that's not difficult to figure out. But marketing is measured differently. So there was like six months where I was like, this is fun, because I'm learning. And I really enjoyed challenging myself and learning and then having to be held accountable for those numbers to a board. And then figuring out how do you fit into a bunch of Harvard guys and Wharton School guys. it's like, what you realize after a while is they don't know your business as well as you know your business. But they do know the numbers maybe a little bit better than you know the numbers. And that's scary. But. Chris Yano (36:23.758) Once we kind of got through that, feel like, I got this dialed in, like one I belong at this table. And I get how to do the math on these numbers and like, okay, cool. I wish I would done this forever ago, but I didn't know about it. But then you hit the, you said the keyword Justin and that's purpose. And a lot of people cringe when they hear that word. Cause like, God, we're going to talk about purpose. Or it's kind like when you talk about culture. we're going to talk about culture. Let me tell you how much purpose matters. When you lose it, when it's time to fight, you might not fight as hard. Like if you're listening to this podcast and you're small business, you know that, that, and that could be the day where you've got, where you've got no leads to run or no calls to run. And those are the hard days if you let them be hard, know, like, but you, you have to figure out, instead of being like, you know, moping about it, like, how do I go and do something different that might not help impact me today, but it might impact me later? Well, I was going through it, but the problem for me is You know, I work in the business with my wife and, you know, and I'm, I could always work through any issue just by working. Well, I'm not, you know, if I'm not the CEO of the business anymore, I don't have the same workload that I had before. Now I have, it's not saying that I was working half the day. It's just I had different workload. It wasn't the same. So I started to like, you know, flounder and I kind of looked at I have these four pillars in my life that I run to you have your you know your faith your family your fitness and your finances and the finances is business and I could run on those four pillars and I'm like how am I firing in all four of those cylinders you know and and you know my faith was like kind of all over the place you know and and it was because I was like just trying to figure out my God, I haven't hit the gym in like a year because when you go through diligence, you'll see what I'm talking about. And it's a grind. so I just was like, and not that I'm, I've always kind of been small. So I've never had like any real big indicators except for the fact that I'm 45 now. So I did start to feel like I looked like the Grinch, know, like skinny little legs, a little belly, you know. But I knew I was like, you know, physically like I wasn't good. I starting to lose my, you know, Justin Deese (38:19.731) Mm-hmm. Chris Yano (38:44.694) just my commitment to faith, which is important to me. Doing the little things in the morning or just even making it to church just to make sure I could at check that box. I was missing on all those. And then I've always been a really, really great dad. Chris Yano (39:05.358) But I was like, even in my relationship with Anna, I was like struggling, you know? And it was like I was probably short, like I was a little bit more short with her, you know? And I was probably more irritable. But I was just like floundering in all these phases, you know? And then as far as the business goes, I didn't know what to work for anymore. Like I was like, because I was like, it's all the people, all these people need me. Well, you start to realize like... They do, but it's not the same, like, because you can't make that call anymore. And so, yeah, was, here I was failing at all four pillars and like that did not feel good. And so me and Anna had one weekend, it was like a Sunday and we had a pretty gnarly blowout and... It was one of those moments where I was like, something's got to change. Like, I can tell I'm not in a good spot and I've got, she relies on me, my kids rely on me, the people in this business rely on me, the investors rely on me. Like all these people are relying on me and I'm like just sitting over here floundering. And this is again, another where you're gonna make another big boy vulnerable decision for yourself is I could have sat and complained about it and it's like I have a financial problem, like I don't have to work anymore if I didn't want to, but I do, because it's not about the money for me at this point, I checked that box. So. I needed to reset. At 45 years old, I needed to reset. And so I literally got in on that Monday and I reached out to this, the organization I went to, I'll throw it out there, a little shout out to those guys, it's called Rise Up Kings. And it is a faith-based boot camp for business leaders. Like it's what it is. And so they said, Chris Yano (40:53.804) We don't like the class was that Wednesday. It was in Dallas Fort Worth. And they said we don't have any openings. It's sold out. And I was like, I I called him. was like, I can't. was like, when's the next one? They said November. This is in like, you know, I'm not sure it was. I guess it's been nine, jeez, August, turn around two, in July, end of July. And I was like, November's not going to work for me. Like I can't wait that long. And. Somebody like canceled the next or canceled that afternoon and I was able to pick up that spot and I was in Dallas on Wednesday. And I just went into it and was like, I'm going be an open book, you know, both emotionally, you know, and physically, like, cause I was out of shape. This is a boot camp. Like it kicked my butt because it was a boot camp. Like I was, you heard me say I'd done anything in a long time and I'm out there running. It was crazy, but It was three days of a grind, but man, I came out of that thing like another like in beast mode and I've been on it ever since. So I'm, I'm about a hundred days post that event. And, and as I said on my podcast, like now I'm hard to kill cause I'm back to like, You don't always hit all four pillars of your life. You certainly fall short. There's some days where I'm like, I tried to work out, but like I was working too much and like, okay, well, I journal every morning, so I got to hold myself accountable. But I had to re-find my purpose in that grassy field in Dallas, Fort Worth. Like I had to re-figure out like when shit is hard, I don't know if you can say that or not, but I believe it out. If it's hard, if it's hard, then you got to find a reason to want to dig deeper. Justin Deese (42:28.405) You're good. Chris Yano (42:34.186) So basically I had to realign what my purpose was and my purpose was to not build a business that you could sell because that was never my purpose until I realized, okay, I'm looking to find out a partner that's selling your business. We call it what we want, but that's what that is. Well, I had to reset because now it's not. I yes, I rolled 30 % so I have a lot of money in the business, but that's not going to get me through the hard times. So I needed to reset everything and refine my purpose and that's what I did. And again, that's a lot of decisions, Justin, that you know, some people never get to it. And the business fails or they fail and you blame everybody else, but you didn't look internally and try and fix your own stuff. I looked internally and fixed my own stuff because I a lot of people relying on me, number one being my family and number two being all these employees, which then means all of our clients, people that rely on me in this industry. I had hit a reset, I just decided to share it on that podcast episode with the guys that started Rise Up Kings. thought, you know what, if somebody hears that story and it changes them, great. It did. The volume people that reached out to me from that episode was massive. It was so cool. Justin Deese (43:49.95) Man. And first of all, thank you for sharing. And when I heard the episode, was like working around the farm, right? I had my earbuds in and I was listening to it and all I could do was go back to when I was in that stage and I was like, man, I wish Chris would have made this episode like, like seven, eight years ago. Cause I, because I, I, like you, had to, I had to find a reset. it was not rise up Kings. just had to kind of do some internal things, but, Chris Yano (43:52.374) Yeah. Chris Yano (44:06.23) Hahaha Justin Deese (44:19.831) But yeah, man, it's not easy to own that. then part of the challenge with being a business owner, and especially when you're a bigger business owner, is that you spend a lot of time with people coming to you for answers. And all of a sudden, you don't have the answers. And you're like, all I want to do is not disappoint the people that come to me for the answers. And that's just not, from a leadership standpoint, from a man's standpoint, it's just a hard place to be. Yeah, thank you for sharing that and definitely Rise Up Kings is a fantastic organization. And yeah, man, I'm glad to hear you're kicking butt and taking names though, dude. That's awesome. Chris Yano (45:00.522) Yeah, thank you. know, like it feels good, but it's like when you're in it, it doesn't feel like you can climb out of it. But it's, you know, you just got to be okay with delayed gratification and know it's coming as long as you want to put in the hard work. it was, you know, what's interesting is I've learned and I've had the same conversation with my kids is, you know, no matter what you do, something is going to, it's going to be hard one way or the other. Right? Like have this conversation with my son who's Justin Deese (45:23.511) Mm-hmm. Chris Yano (45:27.502) Like struggles with his grades right at the beginning. He's 13. He's an eighth grader. Struggles with his grades like right out of the gate. Like he forgets to do assignments and things like that. Well, you know, back in our day, Justin, we had to wait till the report cards came out so you couldn't see your grades along the way. But now you can see them. Like you can see them because they're always updated in the different portals. Well. Justin Deese (45:41.94) Yeah. Chris Yano (45:49.454) This kid like every time comes out of the gate and like misses assignments, he's got D's and it's like he's always working hard at the end to pick his grades back up. Like way more than he had to had he just done the hard work right up front. It's hard no matter what. So why not be hard and you not get in trouble versus it being hard and you're in trouble and you still got to fight for your grades because if you don't get those, you don't play football and that's football. all he cares about. But that's like a lot of life in general is like it's going to be hard no matter what. So you choose which hard you want. Like and I just choose to do the hard work on myself now because. I mean, I one I'm able-bodied, but two, have like the wherewithal to know that the outcome is much greater and what I want for myself than being like, you know, man, this is too hard. I'm just going to sit this one out and I'm not sitting it out anymore ever. So I'm willing to do the hard work. You might drift like you might drift off the path. Well, you just got to pull yourself back on. It's okay to drift. Everybody does it. but you got to catch it. And that's also the hard work. Catch your drift and then get it, you know, get yourself squared away. Justin Deese (46:53.072) So we talk a lot on the podcast from time to time about tactical versus strategic, right? And everything you said is that really falls into that. Like tactical versus strategic is not only in your business, but it's in your life. Like the long delayed gratification and doing the hard stuff now to win later, I mean, that's strategic work on yourself, man. There's some gold in them there, Hills, if you... Chris Yano (47:18.222) sure is you know what it literally comes down to because I you like talk about mindset stuff some people don't understand what that actually really means tactically you know what it means is discipline that's probably the number one word I can think of is you have to be so disciplined to do the things that you know you don't want to do, but do it like you love it. The analogy I heard when I was at Rise Up Kings was there's two people that go into a knife fight. One person who doesn't want to get cut, there's a person who knows they're going to get cut. Well, because when you know you're going to get cut, you can go be the aggressor because you already know you're going to get cut. You're not afraid to get cut. You already know it's coming. So your mind shift is different. Like, no, now you're on the attack and the other person's like, I don't want to get, you know, they're more defensive, you know, and I was like, you know, I'm going into everything knowing I'm going to get cut. Like I know I'm going to get cut and I'm just going to go after it because that's who's going to win. It's just like, You you got to be disciplined to do the hard things. Here's a perfect example. I woke up at 5.30 a.m. this morning, not because I love waking up at 5.30 because I do not. That's why I do it. I immediately did something I don't want to do just to overcome my own brain, my own mindset right out of the gate. So 5.30 goes off, the alarm clock goes off. I don't hit snooze. I pop right out of the bed. I never did that before, but it was just one easy little thing to set me off on the right path to start the day right at the back. Do I make it at 5 30 every morning? No, I don't. But the majority I do and the days I don't, I'm like, dang it. You know, it's up to five three. I hit the snooze, but damn it, I lost. Now I got to find another way to make it up. Justin Deese (49:10.292) So I have a, in my studio, I have a giant banner up here and it says, like you're broke. And for me, that's always the mindset that I've always tried to kind of go after, you know, anything. Which, know, a lot of times when you, you know, when you hit a certain point in your life, it's hard to remember that because you're not broke. you know, just like the strategic things, if you don't do that one little hard thing, Chris Yano (49:16.6) Yeah. Justin Deese (49:35.024) No, it may not be the end of the world, but if you go after it with just that mindset of, got to have that one more call, I got to have that one more sale, I got to have that one more, man, there's some really good things that can happen for you and your life and those around you. Chris Yano (49:51.97) The thing you can do is nothing. Worst thing you can do is nothing. Worst thing you can do is complain, you know, or make excuses. you know, sometimes it's easy to blame everybody else or we have a victim mentality, but sometimes you should maybe stop and think about what was, like, what was your part in this? Like, you know, what was your responsibility and what just happened? Maybe there's nothing, but... maybe there is something and maybe it could have been had I just done the thing you know two weeks ago I wouldn't be in the situation now that I'm moping about you know so like I think it's a lot of times you need to look at our you know where do we take responsibility because too often I think we probably shed off responsibility and use the victim carbon really we shouldn't and and that will crush your mindset so because it's easy to blame somebody else but there's no no there's no move forward in it Justin Deese (50:43.526) Love it, Chris. Love it, love it, man. So glad that you came and hung out with us today. I know you got a ton of stuff to do. So any kind of closing thoughts you want to leave with the audience before we call it good? Chris Yano (50:55.758) Yeah, I mean, I'll just say this. Well, first off, Justin, I appreciate you having me on, you know, and I appreciate you guys being a client of ours too. And you just what you're doing in the, you're doing something like this in the industry. Like this is a very thankless thing in a lot of ways too, because it requires a lot of effort, you know, and time to put it out there just to help others. So I really respect you for doing that. My two cents would be this, for anybody that's listening right now, again, regardless of what size you are. you're in the right place because the trade business right now has never been more popular. There's a lot of opportunity for you, far more than there was a decade ago. A lot of opportunity for you to keep growing and scaling these businesses. And know as the private equity world continues to grow and scale like There's a lot of good that can come in that for you who are still privately held businesses too. A lot of you are probably privately held businesses. You're going to find some great talent. You're going find some great talent that comes out of some of these private equity things. You just want to get back to building the basics of these businesses or kind of getting back to the smaller businesses and being a leader that doesn't have a private equity lurking over their shoulders or watching their numbers, but they still love the trades. I think these next few years are going to be really, really great years for the trades. I really believe it. And like I hear everybody from every different position and these, you know, of all sizes. And I just feel like, man, there's a really good buzz around the trades right now. You know, through COVID, we became order takers. Then last year, we had to get back to figuring out how to run businesses again and the blocking and tackling and, know, and actually running a business and trying to get, some opportunity again. Do I think it's going to get easier? No, I don't think it's going to be easier. Justin Deese (52:26.831) Mm-hmm. Chris Yano (52:39.064) But it certainly is, gonna be plenty of opportunity for you to keep growing and keep working on yourself. But I'm telling you, you keep listening. There's so much material out there. There's so many places you can get educated to learn things, to bypass any hurdles in your business right now, like these podcasts. You have so much at your fingertips that these guys before you never had. It's just how you choose to use it. you don't blame that you're busy being busy. If you make time for the things that matter and what matters is you Justin Deese (52:58.002) Hmm. Chris Yano (53:09.008) to continuously growing yourself. The better you are for you, the better you are for anybody that's in your business, the better you are for your family and your employees' families. So just remember to make the time for yourself to constantly get better. Justin Deese (53:22.17) Man, good closing thought. Chris, thank you so much for coming and hanging out, man. Chris Yano (53:26.19) Yeah, appreciate Justin. for having me. Justin Deese (53:28.69) Hang on one sec.