Scaling sales leadership to $100M — Ned Arick on first hires, forecasting, and CS

Ned Arick, CRO at Attyx, shares his journey of transitioning from building high-growth B2B tech startups to scaling a massive home services conglomerate to $100 million in its first year. He highlights the stark differences between the two worlds, particularly how software companies often overlook their true cost of goods sold and the critical importance of post-sale fulfillment. By building his home services business "backwards"—focusing first on customer success and execution—Ned's team guarantees rapid speed to value, like a 72-hour HVAC install guarantee. Furthermore, Ned emphasizes that business fundamentally boils down to math. Unlike tech, where 80% margins can allow for sloppy unit economics, home services demand absolute precision. CROs must forecast not just lead-to-opportunity conversions, but track granular details like cost per sit, cancellation rates, material fluctuations, and go-back labor expenses. He argues that tech CROs would greatly benefit from operating with the day-to-day rigor and P&L scrutiny required of a services CRO.

Discussed in this episode

  • Why scaling a B2B SaaS startup is fundamentally different from scaling a physical home services business.
  • How Attyx built its go-to-market strategy backwards by securing contractors and fulfillment before launching sales.
  • The critical role of speed to value, demonstrated by guaranteeing HVAC installations within 72 hours.
  • Why tech companies struggle to accurately calculate their true customer acquisition costs and underlying cost of goods sold.
  • The necessity of mastering unit economics and forecasting every stage from cost per sit to cost per go-back.
  • How fluctuating interest rates and material cost variances directly dictate sales strategies and gross margin targets.
  • Why measuring business performance on a quarterly basis leaves you three months behind your actual revenue pace.
  • The intense operational demands of a services CRO, requiring daily involvement in safety compliance and quality control.

Episode highlights

  1. 0:00 — Introduction and Ned's background
  2. 2:15 — The hardest sales roles
  3. 4:00 — Software vs physical services
  4. 5:30 — Building the company backwards
  5. 7:45 — Competing with local providers
  6. 10:15 — The wild west of solar
  7. 12:30 — Mastering unit economics
  8. 15:00 — Forecasting the full funnel
  9. 18:20 — Adopting a services mindset
  10. 21:00 — Rapid fire closing questions

Key takeaways

  • Build backwards starting with post-sale fulfillment.
  • Business is math; master your full P&L.
  • Track your sales metrics daily, not quarterly.
  • Speed to value builds immense customer trust.
  • Tech CROs need daily operational rigor.

Transcript

And like, there's no such thing as like passive home services revenue. Like we'll do $200 million next year. I'm going to be just as involved next year as I was at zero, as I was at 11 million, as I was at 25, after after the acquisition, as I was at, you know, 120 that we're doing this year. It's like, there's none of this like, oh, just sit back, relax, let the guys do what they're going to do.

Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagine Podcast. We have what I would say thus far is our most untraditional guest with us so far today, that I am so freaking excited to talk to. Ned Erics is the CRO at Addex. He is a seasoned pro in both startups and scaleups, having been both sales higher number one, sales leader number one across multiple ventures.

Ned's tackled everything from launching a home services company, despite, according to him, these are not my words, never lifting a hammer, to driving Bean Solar to eight-figure first-year growth and leading it through a successful acquisition. He also helped rebrand and merge companies into Addex Home Services, which we'll talk about, achieving a small $100 million in its first year. Previously, Ned was head of growth at Close Loop, where he delivered double-digit revenue gains for clients through data-driven strategies and team development. A self-proclaimed data nerd, like myself, and early-stage startup expert, Ned has built high-performing sales teams that have driven and have driven multiple exits.

With strategy, systems, staff, skills, and most importantly, relentless drive, Ned turns hustle into results. Ned, thanks for joining us, man. I am stoked to have you here. Thanks, Adam.

Yeah, thanks Dale. And uh, I actually didn't even realize you were talking about me for about half that time, so that's kind of cool. Listen, man, I uh, it's the it's the radio in me. I I I I got to introduce you right and then you could take that clip and whenever you walk on stage, just play that.

Dude, I'm still I'm going to play that every time I walk into a room. Oh, I I I listen, I'm down for I'm down for that, man. I love it. Ned, thanks for joining us.

I appreciate it. So, as Adam was was giving you the great uh introduction, I was starting to think what was what's the hardest role? The first sales person, the first sales leader or actually executing and running your own company? That's a really, really good question.

And actually one I've never thought about before because I put all of them really deep back in my head so I never think about them. Um, but I would say it really depends. So it's very difficult to be the first sales person if you're joining a company that doesn't have product market fit, the founder hasn't done a lot of like of the pre-work, right? Like I can imagine that that would be a very, very difficult role to be in.

Um, I can say I've been blessed to be in sales roles where um, you know, as the first sales leader or a first sales hire, I've come into an organization where they had a lot of the, you know, customer stories already, even if it was friends and family, right? Like it was there was a lot involved there. Um, but I think there is nothing more difficult personally than starting from ground zero in a co-working space in Greensboro, North Carolina with your business partner, launching Facebook ads and seeing $1,000 a day go on your business credit card and being like, oh crap, we should probably start making sales because neither of us are making any money. Um, and then there's nothing probably more harder than than hiring people, making sure that they're set up for success.

Then, there's also nothing harder than hiring people that are going to do good work for the home owners that you sell to. So, I think like it's all dependent on how you look at it. Uh, but I would say in my career, uh, the the hardest thing that that I've done is for sure starting being with Alex and really just scaling that as quickly as we did, because with fast scale comes a lot of problems as well. Right.

So, sure. Yeah, it's the the problems with scale are interesting, but you you touched on something that I think a lot of people in B2B software don't think about, right? So as a CRO in B2B software, obviously, you're focused on marketing, you're focused on sales, you're focused on customer success. But you don't have that component of physical product or physical service.

And I've done physical product and that's very hard and I think a lot of people don't realize that like selling software is one thing, but getting this pen from point A to point B, whole fucking different conversation. But services is interesting. You said hiring the people that are going to deliver great service to your customers. Talk to me about how that affects just your overall revenue mindset when you're building the business, because most, transparently, most of our listeners probably have never had to think about it other than, you know, I I hope our software's good and I hope I have a great, you know, customer success person who could deliver, but that's very different than I'm going to your home and I have to deliver the service.

Yeah. Yeah, it it one of the biggest things that I brought over from software was the customer success aspect, right? And it's interesting because every other day on LinkedIn, I'll see someone be like, customer success is dead. And I'm like, well, we built an eight-figure company and then nine figures from honestly our customer success team, right?

And so we almost started backwards. Like, we Alex and I started having conversations with general contractors, installers, you know, electrical board members in North Carolina before we launched the sales process, before we launched marketing. And the reason is is because when you are providing a service, and especially when you're providing a service to a homeowner, uh, I mean, you're going into their space and they're expecting you to do a bang-up job. And if you don't, all their friends, everyone they go to church with, their group with that they work out with at the gym, uh, oh, by the way, everyone on Facebook is going to hear that you are the worst company that's ever, you know, worked, just because you left two or three cigarette butts on there in their yard, which to most people, you'd be like, oh, well, that's not a big deal.

You know, clean them up, I'm sorry. No, to a homeowner, that's a big deal. And so, you know, I would say that what we did really differently than in most cases is we really focused on that back-end fulfillment piece, really even before we said, hey, let's put in our marketing sales systems and strategies. And, you know, I would even say for like B2B software, right?

What is your adoption look like? What is your onboarding process look like? What is your speed to value look like? How quickly can you get someone from putting, you know, a dollar amount on on their credit card or in the invoice to them seeing that first result, right?

And you know, we have a, you know, in in our, um, North Carolina, South Carolina markets when we first started, we had a, your H-Fack is installed in 72 hours or it's free. Wow. Right? Because it was, it was like, when we first started, it's like, oh, we might be able to schedule two weeks out.

Well, number one, we're going to lose that revenue. And number two, everyone's going to be pissed off because it's the middle of summer and we need air conditioning, right? Like, well, you better go put some AC in someone's house. So, you know, I think there's a lot to be said around focusing on the fulfillment, understanding what that post-sale process looks like, and understanding like, obviously your whole entire operating model from start to finish, but if you can get the fulfillment down, especially in a service-based business and really decrease that speed to value, um, I think every service company wins there.

Yeah, it it's you're actually building the company the right way, and I think that's what's wrong with a lot of tech companies, the way they've built them, is they're just built like they're trying to grow as fast as they can, grow at all cost. They really haven't thought about the back end of it. They're like, and this is this is a function of the invest the investments, the investors, for sure. The CEOs, like, this isn't really a function of like, let's let's see what the customer wants.

Let's figure out what that value is. When we articulate or derive that value, then we can work backwards to it. And and in fact, um, we're, you know, speed to lead or speed to quote or, you know, speed to value, all the things that you're talking about. I think people are now realizing, you know, in in 2024, like if we don't get to those things, either if your tech's not good enough, or your service isn't good enough, like people, one, they're not going to spend money with you.

Two, they're not going to come back to you. So like, repeat customers, as you probably know, like repeat customers is like so much less expensive than trying to like find new customers at top of funnel. So building that backwards, I think is exactly the right way. I've never heard you sound so intelligent, by the way, Dale.

I'm very impressed. That was impressive. I should start. I'm very impressed.

He he he's he's lucky. He's on a performance improvement plan. Oh, got it, cool. I I'm going to do better.

Well, well, at least, Adam, you're not firing him before all of this, you know, so. The the funny thing is, not to sidetrack, uh, Dale, I forget who it was, but we did have a customer who sent an email and basically it was like, um, they basically said that I worked for Dale, is the short version. They didn't realize that like we're partners. They're like, well, I need to check with Dale to see if this is okay.

I'm like, dude, like, I don't work for Dale, and Dale doesn't work for me. Like, we're all trying to help you together here. But it was it was fun. And Dale never lets me live it down.

Oh. Yeah. You shouldn't. It's true.

It's true. Well, it's funny because we we actually we lead, like one of us leads the the account, and it's inevitable like whoever's leading the account that ends up happening, but um, Oh, yeah. I mean, it happens with our lenders and vendors all the time. Like, I'll email them and they'll be like, oh, we've got to go through this person.

And I'm like, yeah, that's our that's literally just accounts payable. I just need you to answer my question. And that's the same email coming to me, by the way. Um, yeah, it's funny.

As you guys were building that backwards model like not the backwards model, but from customer success to value, do you guys implement on the front end of it? And it sounds like you do. And I think this is where a lot of software companies have a hard time articulating that value and telling them like you said, if we don't install in 72 hours, it's on us. Like, how do you how do you like leapfrog that or how do you make it better or like, what's the competition do when you do that kind of stuff?

Like, are they trying to replicate it? Um, what does that look like in your business? Yeah, you know, in you know, we do H-track roofing and solar, right? And it's it's a really interesting market to be in because if you look at our business, you've got solar, which is the Wild West, right?

There's no regulation. You know, we've got buddies that just literally get a team of 10 guys. They'll go to Lincoln, Nebraska for 10 days, and all those guys walk out with $40,000 in their pockets, right? So it's like this weird this weird Wild West industry where like, yeah, you've got to be very forward thinking, right?

With what your value proposition is, how you're selling, who you're selling to, being very strategic on the doors you knock or the people that are calling in. And then you've got roofing and H-track, which are these kind of antiquated markets. And they're markets that really haven't been um, the only word that's coming to mind is sexified. That's not a right word.

But like it hasn't been made sexy Yeah. Because it really is built by great technicians and great construction guys that don't necessarily know how to build a business. But what they do know how to do is do great work and build great relationships. And so when we come in to a market, it's it's very interesting for us to have to actually beat out Chuck and his truck, because Chuck and his truck has been there for 30 years.

He's got 500 clients who he goes out and services at 10:00 p.m. on a Sunday. Right?

He's the best price. He's got, you know, he goes to church with the people. I think that's what you run into more often when you're a conglomerate like us. And what that's actually sort of forced us our hand to do is actually be or kind of build a roll-up model.

When we see a guy in a market that's doing really well roofing, H-track, things like that, you know, what what I do love about it is they're always open to talking to us, right? Like I have conversations every day with H-track owners and roofing owners. Just like, hey man, what are you doing? Like what's happening?

What's working? Like, you know, where are you getting your where are you getting your skilled tradesmen? Like, what where are you where are you going for that? And they're really open.

But what that also does open the door for us as well is to say like, hey, here's some jobs that we have. Hey, go do these jobs. We'll subcontract to you and then we start to just consistently give them to them and then eventually we're, you know, rolling up their company and they're, you know, Chuck and their truck by addicts now. But, you know, to answer your question, Dale, it it hasn't been something that we've really had to be super concerned about, right?

It because the model really is do good work, build great relationships, scale your business. And scaling your business really up until a couple of years ago in H-track and roofing was, man, you know, your your $10 million revenue is a great company. And don't get me wrong, it's still a great company. Um, but once private equity started coming in and there was a lot of this like outside money, most of what's happening is these mom and pops are getting rolled up into, you know, these larger, uh, organizations and they can't keep their pricing, things like that.

So, yeah, we haven't really had to like deal with a ton of like copycats. The whole the whole Chuck and a truck thing is interesting because We we're just talking about that. Yeah, we're we're working with a service company now and and it was the first time I heard it. Yeah, we're actually just like in a meeting with the senior executives and the investor, and they're like, Chuck and a truck.

And then you just said it. And so it made me think about that. But what I what it was was sparking in my head was first, Florida is like the worst place for roofing cuz like we both live in Florida. So so does Ned.

If if you looked at your show prep, you would know that you live in Oh, you do you do live in it. Neptune Beach specifically. Dale. Yeah.

That's funny. But it's like, you know, it's the perfect area to do H-track and and and roofing. So it's it's like, how do you you're competing against these little guys and like you said, they're in they're in church all the time. But it's all about good work.

Like I don't I see people in Florida, because we're from I'm originally from Boston, hustle, work, like work ethic up there. Like you like the contractors, all that kind of stuff. You get down here and it's like, where are the people? So Yeah.

I think it's easy to compete against some of those guys. We we love like our New York office is I mean, it's our most efficient market just really due to the like, I mean, we could literally call our foreman and he'll have 10 guys on our roof within five minutes. Like they're all just like, and I mean, I'm talking like an emergency job. He's like, cool, yeah, we got 10 guys right now.

So it it's wild the work ethic up there. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's funny to me. Like people services is such a different business.

Like it really is, right? There's so many components that I think 95% of software people would go to services and have no effing clue what to do, right? Like you have real margin, like real human capital. Like you you have to pay someone to go do this.

Plus, you you have an H-VAC unit that has a cost. Like there's just it's a whole different way of looking at P&L. Talk to me a little bit about on that topic. Like, what was that transition like and how did you go from being a successful CRO in the tech world where we all could probably do this shit with our eyes shut to like, I this has a cost and these people have a cost and I still like great, I could bring these businesses together, but shit, man.

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Yeah, yeah, I mean, when you look at a good, like a a good company in home services, you're looking at 15, 20, 25% margin and you're like, you're you're going to get 8 to 10X EBITDA from a private equity company, right? A typical H-Track company acquisition's three to five, but that's typically because they've got pretty low EBITDA. Right? So, I mean, it to it was definitely a transition.

That's for damn sure. Like, it was, you know, I'm sitting there. I'm like, dude, let's just throw a bunch of money at the wall. Dude, dude, I've got the best marketing.

I've got the best sales systems, right? We are going to crush and then like, you start to realize, all right, our customer acquisition cost on that deal was 13, five. Okay, we bought the unit for 3,500. Like, you start doing the math in your head, like, not even a spreadsheet, and you're like, oh shit, we just only made $1,000 on that.

Right? Yeah. Okay. All right, well, we're not going to grow to a million dollars off of a $1,000 profit margin.

And so it, you know, I think that one thing and I I really don't think this is this matters whether you're in home services or if you're in a software company. If you understand the unit economics very well as a leader, I think you win, right? And, you know, I I made a comment. I forget who posted this the other day, but I made a comment on a post of like, I really think that the reason that I am where I am is because early on in my career, I just like went all in on spreadsheets and math has always come easy to me.

Um, and so I just like went all in on understanding what 1+1 is in business. And like, we all know that like, business truly is math when we break it down at the end of the day, right? It's leads to opportunities, to, you know, how many discovery calls, the demos, to whatever it is. Like, it all is math at the end of the day.

And so once I realized that, okay, cool, for an average job, this is how much we are going to spend, right? And that changes sometimes month over month. And, you know, we started the company in 2021. Um, we were selling like 199 interest rates, right?

So that's a completely different conversation than what we were doing this year at, you know, a minimum 599 interest rates, you know, we're we're able in 2021 to buy a three-ton H-track unit for $2,500, one at a time from the uh warehouse. You know, now we're lucky if we can get it for 45 at volume, right? And so there's a lot that just goes into the understanding of the P&L and being able to understand, okay, cool. Each section of it of like, here's our gross revenue, here are our expenses, here's our cost of goods sold.

Here are just like looking at it and being able to at the end of the day understand like, if we need to be at a 20% margin every job, which is our goal, we have to price it this way. And then from there, you have to understand like, well, there's also in home services, there's go-backs. Well, I've got to pay a guy to go back and fix that job. Right?

So that eats into it. And so you just start to understand your forecast isn't just like, man, I think we can get this many leads and make this many sales and we'll be good. It's you start to forecast the entire funnel, right? You start to forecast lead cost, you're you start to forecast your cost per meeting, your cost per sit, you uh forecast your cost per sold opportunity, which doesn't necessarily mean customer acquisition cost yet, because people can cancel, right?

They can cancel within three days, right of recision across the country. So it's like, now what's our cost of progressing deal based on that cancellation, right? And then what's our cost per install. But then what's our cost per install plus go-back, right?

And what's our like, what is the minimum that we can forecast and what's the maximum we accept? And so it's a much more, I wouldn't say it's more in-depth, but you just start to think about things a lot more than I did when I was in software. It was like, okay, cool. We just need to make 100 sales in software and we're going to be good and we have, you know, 80% margins on this.

And all we have to worry about is like salaries. Cool. Like, now it's salaries, you know, it's benefits, it's our guys on the roof, it's insurance, it's the trucks, it's all of these things that people don't realize and it's why I wouldn't say like I'm against people saying like, hey, go just buy a home service company and you'll be a millionaire. Like, I think it's decent like advice like, hey, go to these unsexy markets and you're going to have some success.

the next R R revenue stream are our home services. There you go. That's actually a pretty cool net. Um, but I think like what people don't realize is in this model, there's so much more than just like buying a company and calling it a day.

Like, you are a people manager Yeah. Like, day one. Oh, yeah. And like there's no such thing as like passive home services revenue.

Like we'll do $200 million next year. I'm going to be just as involved next year as I was at zero, as I was at 11 million, as I was at 25, after after the acquisition, as I was at, you know, 120 that we're doing this year. It's like, there's none of this like, oh, just sit back, relax, let the guys do what they're going to do. There's a lot of involvement making sure that the systems, process, structure are happening and the SOPs are being followed constantly.

So so you would say that a services company CRO, which I also think is something that people just aren't used to, um, is much more involved than a technology company CRO as you scale. I would say so. Yeah, I've definitely worked more in the last four years than I did in tech. Like, and not necessarily from an hours perspective, because I if you ask my family, like, I'm kind of a workaholic.

Um, but from it's in the nature of the CRO beast. Yeah, right? Exactly. Um, but I would definitely say from like a hands in the dirt with the guys, literally sometimes, with the guys, like, yes.

I'm I am making sure because I mean, when you've got guys on roofs, it's, you know, although we've got a head of construction, if we get screws, you know, if we have OSHA roll up and our guys aren't tied off on the roof, we get fined. We lose licenses. Like that's a big deal. So we've got to always be making sure that the things are happening, whether that be the sales process too, cuz like if our guys tell someone in a house something that is inaccurate, especially when it comes to solar and there's government funding involved, that's an attorney general that gets involved.

That's not just a bad Yelp review, right? There's like legal matters that come into that. And so, yeah, I mean, I definitely find myself a lot more in the weeds on a day-to-day basis. And I think a lot of technology CROs would benefit from acting like a services CRO a lot more.

Could not agree more. Would you ever go back to tech, Ned? Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

But I but I bet you'd be a lot better too. Like and I just want to make sure Adam knows that 1+1 actually equals two. So I just wanted to make sure that you got that that formula down. Yeah, I I always drop those really smart nuggets on podcast.

That's why people have me, you know. Just like rudimentary math. But it's really funny. One of the things that you were saying, because I I actually don't think a lot of tech companies understand their cost of goods.

Like, I don't think they understand their their cost of service. Like, they they think they're we were just talking about this with a with a client on customer acquisition costs. What their real customer acquisition cost is? What is included in that customer acquisition cost?

All of a sudden, they're looking at EBITDA at the end of it and they're like, well, we're not making as much margin as we, you know, we're supposed to be making 80% margin on software. But it's like, okay, do you really know when you spin up a new customer on your AWS server? Like what that really costs and Yeah. How much, you know, uh, technology are you using?

Like people don't know it. I think every customer you go into, we try to ask, what does it cost you to bring on one more customer? And they can't answer the question. Like they're like, oh, it's not much.

Like that's what you hear. And the tech people don't really want to tell you on the tech side. Um, and then you're just hiring people and all of a sudden, like the margins aren't making sense anymore. But I think because we're working with a service company, kind of like what you guys are doing, we're trying to build comp plans and we're used to building comp plans on, you know, 10 or 12% commission rates.

Yeah. But you can't do that in the margin business, right? Because Yep. If you're if you're selling a big deal and you're comping them at, you know, 3%, 4%, whatever that looks like on a services business, you're cutting into that margin that has real labor involved in it that you can't really get out of.

Um, so I I do think one of the things that you said, the faster companies can get into their numbers, whether they like the I think the reason why we don't do it in tech is we don't like the numbers. Like, We don't like our conversion rates. We don't like our close rates. We don't like our average deal size because like you go in, you ask, what's your average deal size?

I don't know, it's somewhere between like 10 and 50,000 a year. It's like, Yeah. That's not your average deal size. And then even Ours is 71,720.

Yeah. And you know that right off the top of your head. Right. And I I know exactly what our cost per install is.

And the thing is, I'll tell you this, is what I said about like more companies need to like act in this way is where in tech, you really do run into a lot of vague answers, right? Like when I was at Close Loop, I worked with founders like all the time. Worked with over 300 founders in my time at Close Loop. And they didn't know.

And and like when you start to dig into the numbers, like you were saying Dale, it's like there's this not there's not this understanding or they know one part of the business amazingly well and then the rest is just like, well, if this is humming over here, like the rest must be doing well. And I think there's like what what I really like hard harped on big time with our organization is like, if you guys called up any of my VPs, they could tell you exactly what the conversion rates are of our reps down to the like down to that one rep that just started in South Carolina, right? And the reason is is because we have in in a lot of home services companies, there's silos, right? It's like, hey, we've got our our services team.

They don't really talk to our sales team, who doesn't really talk to our marketing team, because there really isn't a marketing team. That's a third party. But it's like, we understand at the beginning of every month the amount of money that needs to be spent on marketing in order to hit our revenue goal and what our conversion rates need to be. And we know on a daily basis.

And this is where I think that, you know, the question of like, you know, have I done more work in uh, in the home services is like, I'm looking at these numbers on a daily basis. What are the fluctuations daily so that we can be making these because we're such a transactional sale as well, right? Someone could come in and we could be we could have $8,000 in our bank account from them by the end of that day. Right?

And so that's I think the biggest thing that I would say for a lot of tech people is we look at quarters. And I think that was the biggest transition for me is like, I'm looking at, when I first got there, I was like, oh, let's look at quarterly numbers. And it's like, no. If you're looking at quarterly numbers, you're you're three months behind where you should be.

Yeah, we're. And we say that even in even in tech, we're saying like, at least look at it monthly. Like, because it snowballs. Like there's a domino effect.

Like that small snowball. Like if you're off like eight percentage point, now you're off two percentage points. Now you're off four percentage points. And then you're like, now you're way off.

And and how do you backfill any of that funnel or backfill any of the close rates or know that you got to give a special deal or whatever it looks like? If you wait too long. There are so many things that I think to put a bow on it that can go from tech to services and make services really successful. But vice versa, so many things on the services side that those of us in tech land don't even look at that would fundamentally change your business if you looked at things from a different perspective.

I I feel like we could spend another 90 minutes digging into this. I'm definitely want to have you back on the show to dig in more. Um, but we are coming up on this little thing that we call time, unfortunately. Um, I I really think we could do a whole series on this, but I digress.

Um, Ned, we'd love to do some rapid fire with you. You cool with that? Yeah, let's roll. All right, here we go.

Early bird or night owl? Uh, early bird. What's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning? Uh, Bible app, actually.

Nice. I'm getting better. Yeah. I'm getting better.

This is truly the first time it hasn't been something to the effect of Slack, LinkedIn, email. Um, personal first, man. I love that. Yeah.

Favorite guilty pleasure snack. Oh, crumble cookies. Is that a snack? Yeah, that's a snack.

That's a that's a meal. That's a that's a full day of calorie. That's that's multi-day calories. Yeah.

Yeah. If your company were an animal, what would it be and why? Hmm. Uh, a lion, because we like, literally that's all we just hunt.

Like that's all of our guys know. Like my my VP of sales development literally sent a video in our like group chat today in Slack and it was like the Spartan, you know, like, who are we? Spartans? Like, just so you're aware, home services is a very bro culture.

So, yeah, we do a lion. I love that. Ned, if if you weren't, I don't want to say if you weren't in tech, but if you're not in sales, whether it's tech or services, what profession would you be in, man? Uh, I'd be a strength and conditioning coach.

That's actually what I went to school for. Um, and did a couple of internships, uh, with a couple of NFL teams, a couple of Division One football teams. Uh, and I kind of got bit by the business bug though. And, uh, yeah, maybe one day I'll go back, who knows.

I love it. What do you think about Belichick going to UNC? I think it's super interesting with NL. Yeah.

I think he's like he's he's a player developer, right? You've got the Patriots that have that won what? Six Super Bowls with guys that you'd never heard of ever, right? And it's like that that's who Bill Belichick is.

He's a he's a player developer and I think he'll be great. Yeah, interesting. Last question, wrapping it up. Dream vacation destination, besides someone's roof.

This is this is this is going to sound douchey, but I live where people vacation. Yeah. Um, I love being home. I travel a lot for work.

We live at the beach. Like we surf every day. Like I I'd love, you know, my kids like love the beach, they surf, they do. It's just like, we honestly like are super blessed.

And so I would say my dream vacation is like coming home from work travel. We feel we feel the same way. I lived in Boston and Northeast for 30 years. I've lived down here now for 10.

Feels the same way. I've been all over the world. I'd rather come to this quirky west coast of Florida anytime. 100%, yeah.

Ned, thank you so much for joining, man. Where, uh, where can people go if they're in need of your services, because everyone listening is going to need services at some point in time. Yeah, it's it's attyx.com, pronounced Addex.

Um, and you can tell that we that I come from tech when we merged the two companies and came up with that name for damn sure. Um, but LinkedIn is where you can find me, um, and yeah, you can probably Google me and find some stuff. I don't know. Like, don't look too deep.

Ned, thanks so much for joining, man. We appreciate it. Awesome. Thanks.

Cheers.