this is Trades, Tools. & Talks. A podcast powered by Simpro. I'm your host, Karlie Huckels. In this episode, we are talking to Art of Smart. They are Simpro power users in the uk. Let's dig in. Jumping in, Tell me your name, tell me what you do and then we can get going with some more interesting things. Cool. So I'm Rich from ama, we own a home technology company based in the uk. We're predominantly based up in N North in Classical Yorkshire but we covered the whole UK with our national network
partners.
Yeah, so I'm Cameron I'm the media manager at smart, so I help manage the team of a social media executive and I video register dom kind of mucking and do a bit of everything, whether it's filming, edit videos, myself website strategy, all that kind of stuff.
I'm Craig. My role is like social media executive, but I kind of just do a bit of everything.
Craig wears many hats. Yeah, hats. All hats. The thing with Craig, well everybody work, what works for me now is like really interested in pushing towards the vision, helping where they can. But Craig's like social media executive, but for like, Craig, shall we make a brochure? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll, brochure I used to, And when we grew the business done like all the social media myself until, well, two years ago when Craig joined us, and I think that's probably the, a large contributor type of success. Cause when people kind of make things too corporate and it's kind of no personal personality or personal touch behind it that's when I feel socials fall down a lot. I'll tell you the level of a business that needs to be like corporate, corporate, that it's a different story.
And yeah, basically Craig's first like definitely three months, maybe up to six months of his job was, oh, what do you want me to do today? Just watch and watch Maybe like saying to camp, come like, is there anything else I could do? Just go back and watch all the YouTube videos. Actually, Paul Craig, one of his first job was literally go through and chapter 200 YouTube videos. Do you remember that? I was glad. Was it? Yeah,
it was good learning experience. So I've, I mean like, I still remember stuff for a minute. That's like how I learn. Like what a smart home is, cuz like you say, we, you know, like little bits about it, but then like, when you actually come and work for it and see some of the jobs in like the racks and the termination box and stuff, and you're like, it's like serious, very serious.
So really like with Art of Smart, you, you started taking off just because of social media.
Yeah. And again, that's like I attribute social media even to this day. Hugely, hugely, hugely. So what we are, how we're doing it, and who we're doing it for. Like my ethos for the first three years, and to be honest, still a large forefront of my mind or other change, actually shift a little bit was always reputation of a profit. Now that fought your business probably not great advice.
Don't follow me for financial advice, but reputation of a profit always was my ethos for the first three years because I knew get the brand right, get the reputation right. Everything else a bit easy, you know, just if you, again, like there, the picture, I'll show you that, that client's item, which was Louis Vuitton piece. Not that it's a lot of money, but it's a solid brand. People want to use that brand. Is it the best brand? Is it the most practical brand?
Probably not or something, you know, but it's the, the one, but again, if you've got the other attributes and it's a brand, but it's a solid product as well, it's a recipe for success. And funnily enough, it wasn't actually until we introduced him PR that I actually worked out how wrong my numbers were in those first three years. Yeah. Like, like literally it was like shit. Hmm. Interesting. Because the fact of the matter is like what?
Cause there's lots of job management platforms on the, on the market, right? And you're now gonna get, tell, I actually fell into, so when Coronavirus lockdown hit like 2021, we researched every job management product on the planet. All of them had holes in. And kinda what I mean by that is some were really, really good for smaller companies that were really too bothered about manage assets, inventory management, that kind of things. Some things were really good for up to 10 users.
Some things were good if you just have field based staff and maybe one or two office based staff. And the thing which draw is into Simpro, even though it's a little bit more expensive than those other packages was. The fact of the matter is, I know. When I've transitioned to this software, I'm not gonna have to move again in a year, in two years, in three years. And as my business grows, Simpro will grow with me.
So if I, when, when we first onboarded the software and we're just mainly doing quotes and stuff on it, I think we were using 10% of what Simpro was capable of and what's IPR do. But then yeah, as the business has grown as the business has grown, that's grown with it.
That's awesome. The configurability is something that we hear a lot with the interviews that we've done because you
can't Yeah. But when I talk to people about it though, and again, I mean, we've brought a lot of people into Cipro, but the one thing that I always am with it is, is honest because it is a comprehensive system. And if somebody just wants to put a little bit of data into a software and hit the ground running tomorrow, Simpro probably isn't the one for you cause you need to put effort in. But same as everything in life, you get out what you put in.
And now throughout lockdown and then past that, we obviously put a lot of data into it, continue growing it, we keep maintaining it, updating the pricing, same as anything. The more you use it, the more like second nature it comes. Like come in on first used Simpro trying to get through the menus. And I was like, wow, this is a complex software. Whereas now it's just like, bang, quarter million, panco, half an hour.
And that's, that's probably the other main thing that I love with Simpro is like, trust is a big thing, isn't it? Not, not, not just with a software package. A live relationships. And we've seen pro like trusted numbers implicitly.
And that's important because as we do jobs and the way that Simpro does life financial data on those jobs, we then know if we've done a job, which areas made us money, which areas lost us money, which areas we need to maybe look at pricing and then add some extra labor hours into those sections. And yeah, it's, it's really great for just continuing growing and improving.
Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about your team now, because you, you started it, you've got to the point where you are now. What is your team structure looking like and what are your plans for the
future? So interestingly, so before covid, we had eight members of staff in the year following Covid, it depends when you say following Covid, we're still on the tail end of it now, but let's call it 2022 up to 20, no, back in, no back end of 2021 to tw to 2022. We went from eight staff up to 21 staff. Relentless, but I got carried away. You know? Cause then you're like, oh, we need you just putting people in for the sake of putting people in that part.
And the fact of the matter is as well, I'm an electrician, you know, so like, although some of my team are learning, growing asset to them, like I'm literally learning growing as well, you know, to never run a company, never manage people or the hf and that comes with managing people. So the following year from that, we pulled it back down from 21. I think we're set at 13, is it now? Come about 13. Something like that. Yeah.
Around 13, 14, about th
yeah, about 13, 14 off the top of my head. But the key differences between us then and us now is during Covid as well as implemented Syra we built a train academy. So we have an in-house training school called Outsmart Academy. And we trained 200 contractors from all around the uk, which now work as with us as part of our partner network, if you like. So kind of our business now is marketing. Then we deal with all the pre-sales and procurement, then we deal with all the inventory.
The guys then do the actual physical installation on site. Our team then go down and commission it. And then we handle all the after sales as well and the aftercare management. And then if we need to service a project or deploy an engineer to a same day, call out. We've got 200 guys around the UK that we can send us in pro work order to and off the go. That's awesome. That's what I do. So, yeah.
Now it's, it's interesting because the evolution of what we've done with social media, but again, I, I always say there's like my three keys to success is find a niche, social, the death out of it, and then systemize your business with process, you know, processing software. So softwares and systemized, that's like when somebody says to me, what's the free, that is my free pick niche, hammer my social media to death with it and then systemize the business software in place.
That's, well, yeah, that's what I've done. Seems to work so far.
Yeah. So what, what are your, your strategies with social and marketing right now then? Because you said that that's really important to you and I would love to hear more about it.
It's interesting because it's changed so much, hasn't it come over the last six months? Yeah. Like
We always kind of say like a lot of social numbers, especially when you're trying to like push growth so hard. We kind of call them vanity metrics and for a while we kind of forgot our own lesson of like, it's one thing pushing subscribers and pushing up your likes and all that stuff, which is good and it's gonna put you in front of more eyes. But sometimes you've got to think about the goal, which is getting inquiries, winning work.
So we recently had a big content shift towards going more for that target audience rather than we, we have a couple of different audiences. Well, don't we, rich? So we have obviously our client audience and then our kind of trade the electrician audience as well. So it's, it's kind of trying to cater to
both those. It's difficult. That's where, yeah, the platform's got a bit confused while in, especially like YouTube. Mm-hmm. Because we have, cause our stuff is pitching to multiple audiences. Like comes said, we have the Trades, but we've then also got the The actual people that are doing our jobs with it.
But the, the interesting thing and why we try and keep a fine balance is because quite often a lot of our inquiries will come from Trades, been at a job seeing one of the remotes or the light switches we've posted online saying to the customer, oh, do you like this control for system? And then going, no, we hate it. And then going, we follow these guys on Instagram, give 'em a call, and I'll probably say that equates for 20% of our business.
Just randomness that follows on Instagram recommended us. But yeah, the biggest shift come talk, come out the biggest shift. What I like to do, you, Greg Legends.
Well, basically we, we brought our website design in-house as well. So we basically completely restricted our website. We, we did some stuff with external companies before, and it was okay, but we just found it was taking a while to get things done.
So we brought all that internally as well now, and it just allows us to have a few more metrics, a lot more data analytics to, to structure the marketing we do, rather than just sapping in the dark and spraying and praying basically, and hoping something sticks. But yeah, it's, it's it, it, it helps us make data-driven decisions, basically. That's what we say
B d d conversated out. So
that whole marketing strategy shift and just changing the frame of mind, trying to appeal to both audiences, but tailoring content to n users rather than people who just kind of watch that stuff
possibly. Absolutely. That's, that's a really great way of looking at it cuz you've got the, the B2B and the b2c, but like, yours is different than what I would think of, you know, because yeah, your content, you can be way more niche and I, I absolutely love the content you guys put out.
I do have to say that because it's, I have to say that I'm, I have to say that I do, I'm talking to you so I have to say it because it's so fun to see the different projects you go to, the different things that you can put out there and the content you put out is, it's varied so it keeps people engaged. And I think you're really working on building a community rather than just preaching to an audience. And I really, I like your guys' approach to social media.
I think it, if more trade businesses were to take on that approach to build like the community and share what you're doing, but share like the things you're good at and create that, I think it's a really, you have a formulative success with that.
Yeah, so there's, there's especially more in the early days that whole, cause the thing is people buy from people, people don't buy from businesses. Mm-hmm. And that's like, doesn't really matter what business it is. So again, Simpro is a great products, but you know, I buy from Mat Wray. Yeah. Because Ricky great guys to work with.
And throughout our partner journey as we've building the partner network, ultimately if our partners using Simpro, it's better for us because then we can share jobs on Simpro.
So you said you have the Art of Smart Smart Academy. Are you guys still doing stuff that's involved with like trade education and working towards helping the community like that?
Yeah, so we are on an online basis, so because our classroom training academy did so well I mean we didn't announce it during the pandemic. And it was crazy. We actually have another podcast, which I'll go into a lot of detail, but I had this idea for this training academy for years. So because of the social media, I mean, we're based up in New York, so, which is up in the north of uk.
And because it was personal on social media, we'd get inquiries from Scotland, from London know, from guy saying. I've seen your content, I've seen the work you do. It's so much better than the guys we work with. You know, can, can we work with you? So basically what happened is I would service these jobs all over the place when I maybe had like two or three installers and we'd drive in here, there and everywhere.
There'd been many nights at like 11:00 PM on a Friday night driving back up the, the motorway. And I kind of, again, one of my late nights driving, I came with this idea. I thought if I, because people always ask me, where do you, where'd you get training to do what you do as well? And I thought if I had guys all over the country that worked alongside me, they did the bulk of the install and then we just flew around commissioning. That would be the dream. And it was the dream for like two years.
But you're in the rat race and you're running, you don't have time to do any of these lovely ideas. So then, yeah, covid hit, and then what did we all have? The one thing that we never get, which was time. So I had time. We was put Simpro in. We then thought we gonna a trade academy. The problem is we had no money. And the very short version of this was a Haida web designer come on board. Well I say a web designer guy was passionate about wanting to do websites.
We built our website, we announced our training, and the Academy basically self-funded its own project from the revenue of the trading sales. Well, for the most part anyway. Which professor Then we were run training for pretty much 18 months every other week, trading eight guys. Cause the demand was there, it was crazy. Like sometimes we'd have 200, 300 people on the waiting list for our training cost, which was great.
And we was gonna like draw to a close, but then this lister keep getting full. And then we then used to put like out an e-blast out to the waiting list. Anybody wanted to do training. And then the training used to sell out in like two days, like another eight places. And then we run it.
But the, but the problem was, We started getting too many projects, not too many projects, but we had all these jobs, the partners and then, I mean the partners as part of our partner network, but like the sales guys too, cuz these guys are out in the field trying to plug our systems into their jobs cause they wanna work with us. So we got a lot busier as a business and because I like to deliver the training myself become a massive strain on the business. So we stopped the classroom training.
But whilst we're doing this, we're getting inquiries from all over the world. And then we, we launched an online training academy as well. So it was myself and camp. Basically filmed a 12 month growth journey with our partners. Seven modules covering social media, how to use Facebook, how to use LinkedIn, how to use social li YouTube, Instagram, or even done a full video or dedicated on how to do an Instagram, Instagram livestream.
You know how to do like face Facebook videos, talking through projects, highlight things, what to do if you're uncomfortable talking on camera like I used to be. And can you believe it? Can you believe it? No, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Can't believe it. No. The funniest thing is though, when I actually do talk on camera, for the most part, it's weird when I start stuff, it's like slap into, I step into a persona character. Yep. For the most part, that whole, it makes,
it makes our job easier. Filming
even, even if like today with a long day, I'm tired as soon as I give that, hi guys Richard, smart Bagga character. Go, go. Full energy go. Which was great when we're doing our online training academy, because that was had, again, we underestimate what was actually involved in creating an online trading gallery. We absolute labor of
love, wasn't
it? Yeah. So basically it'd been, and this is when Craig first started that was doing it, Craig and Cam never saw each other for about six months. Cause Cam would really was film with me on a Sunday, coming on Monday, back up all these files and they'd be like, right, I'm editing from home for the rest of the week, so need to get this lesson out. So, yeah, we filmed that for, for a year and that went out to like over 500 people around the world to that online train academy.
The biggest uptake was in America, I think about 300 people from America. We've had people from Australia New Zealand, India as a Baja. Like every cup it was, it was literally crazy. What, when you look at the stats on the website where people done the trading from, it's like pretty much all over the world.
Yeah. And it's still solid now as well. It wasn't just kind of one hit like it's we
still got a lot of interest. We did it and then we've now resold it. Now we've got control of our websites after. We'll look at this man, cuz, cuz the sun's just setting in the UK and the blinds are programmed to automatically close it. Sunset.
That's awesome. I need to learn how to do this stuff. That sounds
fun. Oh John, I'll give you free access to online Ali. Yeah, but that's the thing with the online training Academy, people are like, oh, it's online, can learn as much from it. And a matter of fact, you actually probably learn more. You're self-paced. Yeah, you're self-paced. But if that week is an intense week, as I'm sure you can have had, especially the week we one on one talking about smarts. Geez, you, good luck.
So we've done that, but it's a lot to check in on a week and you're never gonna learn everything. How we always pitch the pitch, the training was it's enough to give you another view of everything and see which pitch you really wanna drill down to, or even specialize in. Some guys maybe just trying to program on the laptop. Some will come see the laptop side of things and go, geez, way beyond what I will ever get to and again, that's fine.
So they've invested a little bit in themselves to find out where their strengths and weaknesses lie. Then to go away and to work on that. And the beauty is, I think it's the only course I've ever known where the cost doesn't finish when the cost finishes, cuz obviously these guys would then work with them. And it's an online learning, you know, it's an ongoing learning.
So when guys then win a job with us or we bring them into a job, we then bring them back to our headquarters if they want to, to build all the equipment racks and the backend systems and program it up for them. And then we commission the jobs on site together. So these guys are continually learning on their journey. Might get to a point where they say one day, Hey Rich, thanks a lot. Thanks for teaching me about Simpro. Thanks for teaching me about all this smart stuff.
Listen, I've got everything I need. Cheers for your business model. And I'm gone. So technically we train our competition, which meant really? Yeah.
And, and then we, the good thing is we can document that journey the entire, entire kind of way as well. And we see a lot of familiar faces coming in more and more into the office when it's partners who are winning work repeatedly. You know, ev every, every few months they're coming with something and we are seeing them a lot more usually, isn't it, Craig?
Yeah, I was gonna say, it's, it's quite funny seeing like the photos and videos from when they're upstairs in the, in the room, like building a rack and like, oh, what is this thing? And then, you know, six months later, two years later, you know, they're on, they're leading their own projects and we're working alongside them. So, yeah, it's cool to see that journey.
It's another cool thing cause I, with like all that content, I have a mantra of don't delete anything like we've got 160 terabyte server in the building just for media assets. Doesn't get used for any business stuff. It is literally just media assets. We've been got over the next couple of months getting a second server which will go into a data center to synchronize with it so that we then don't lose that backup.
Cause like there, we've got content from years ago and when these guys were on training and then now they're here doing jobs with us. You know, the physically, the physically look older, the, you know, it's crazy. The physically look older and we've got these video and then we do testimonials at the end of the training week.
So we got these guys saying, oh, I've come this class cause we're only do smart homes and then bang, we'll do a reel cut into 'em in the rat Bill lab and working in a mansion two years later and it's like, it works. There you go. There works. Content is king.
Content is King
They definitely, they definitely get out what they're playing as well because the ones that you see time and time again are the ones that are engaging with the socials and using the knowledge to, to actually push it to new, new audiences. But like Rich said, yeah, you can, you can make as much as you wanna make from
it. All right. So I have to ask to if people want to get in touch with you or follow more, learn more information, what is the best way to do that?
So before I'd actually sent you to our follow our social media platforms, if you search Art of Smart on any social media platform it'll hopefully pull out our account up, should do. But also on the website like I said, we used to use an external website company but I sunk like best part of quarterly pounding to our CRM website for it to basically flop yeah, a better pill to swallow. And then the media buy said, We'll learn about websites and help you met.
So they did learn about websites and help us. So we now have a lovely, sexy [email protected] or AOS academy.uk if you're interested in the training side of things. And yeah, we've got all this stuff on there.
Awesome. Well, we are at our time for today. I do like have a bunch of other questions so we could set up another time to chat through things cuz I just, I wanna keep talking with you guys, especially as you continue to do what you do. Mm-hmm. But if you have anything else that you would wanna add that people should know now is the time to speak or forever hold your piece. Mm-hmm.
Again, our plug are offering a Simpro plug.
Mm-hmm. So you had enough Simpro plugs, there's enough Simpro plugs in there, you like added it in like every other question. I was like, all right, I don't even need to ask about that now. Great. So
like, just fire it in because without, like I said, without it been, So hopefully this podcast for people watching it, you know, they'll be inspired by what we do as a business, but that the key focus behind that is wouldn't done that well, without Simpro. Mm-hmm.
Well, thank you guys so much.
Cool. Sounds good. Cheers guys.
Thank you guys. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for listening to Trades, Tools & Talks. Talk to you next time.