Wyatt discusses the shortage of skilled labor, the role technology plays in tackling this issue, and its broader impact on the economy. Wyatt and Sid address ongoing challenges in the skilled trades industry, and what innovative solutions lie on the horizon.
Wyatt discusses the shortage of skilled labor, the role technology plays in tackling this issue, and its broader impact on the economy. Wyatt and Sid address ongoing challenges in the skilled trades industry, and what innovative solutions lie on the horizon.
Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar. A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
On today’s episode, we talk with Wyatt Smith, founder and CEO of UpSmith. UpSmith builds technology to address skilled worker shortages, starting with gamification software to help skilled trades companies and technicians win.
Guest Bio:
Prior to UpSmith, Wyatt led business development for Uber Elevate, Uber’s aerial ridesharing business unit. At Uber, Wyatt led a team responsible for 25+ commercial partnerships across the air mobility value chain, generating more than $5B in private sector investment. Prior to Uber, Wyatt served as a consultant at McKinsey. He began his career as a corps member with Teach for America, receiving the 2013 Sue Lehmann Award as a national teacher of the year. Wyatt holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a BS in Human & Organizational Development and Political Science from Vanderbilt University, where he served as student body president and as a young alumni trustee on the Board of Trust. Wyatt grew up on a family-owned cattle ranch in rural Alabama. He and his family live in Dallas.
Timestamps:
00:48 - About UpSmith
01:29 - Wyatt’s journey
04:36 - What is UpSmith solving for?
10:21 - UpSmith’s North Star
16:14 - How did we get into a trade deficit?
26:25 - Today’s uses for AI
35:10 - Future thinking
39:41 - Where to find Wyatt
40:16 - Sid’s takeaways
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, we'll hear from Wyatt Smith, founder and CEO of Upsmith, about how he and his company are addressing the skilled trade deficit.
[00:00:16] Now here's your host, industry and FM technology thought leader and Chief Business Development Officer at Service Channel, Sid Shetty, along with our guest, Wyatt Smith.
[00:00:26] Sid: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar. Thank you for joining us. I'm here today with Wyatt Smith, founder and CEO of Upsmith. Wyatt, welcome.
[00:00:36] Wyatt: It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:38] Sid: Absolutely. Thank you. Um, so Wyatt, for folks in our audience who might not be familiar, can you share some insight into Upsmith?
[00:00:47] Wyatt: Absolutely. Our mission at Upsmith is to combat America's skilled workforce shortage. We build technology to help skilled trades businesses win and skilled trades people flourish. And we're really excited to be serving some of the best home services companies in the country all across the United States right now and looking to grow even more.
[00:01:04] Sid: There you go. I want to double click more on Upsmith in a little bit, but I want to start with you. Um, you have a really interesting background, from growing up on the family farm, to then being a consultant, to being a high school teacher, uh, and then working in the aerial rideshare business before you founded Upsmith.
[00:01:21] So, that's quite a journey. Um, can you walk us through that?
[00:01:24] Wyatt: Yeah, we joke it's a long way from the farm to flying cars, but I had a chance to do it. I grew up on a cattle ranch in Alabama. My dad's an entrepreneur in a cowboy hat, and I learned a lot from him as a kid working on the farm alongside my brothers. And certainly the value of hard work and the dignity of work being really important family values that my dad held a high bar for.
[00:01:47] I was a Teach for Americore member after college, and I think the chance to teach was a super humbling one. It's not, in many ways, the hardest job I've had, but it helped teach me a lot about how you create good culture, and how you hold high expectations for people that can create better outcomes than perhaps they thought they would do when they started.
[00:02:07] After business school, I went out to Silicon Valley. I worked first as a management consultant, and then as a business development leader at Uber. Working at Uber was a massive privilege. Certainly the people that I was teamed up with there were some of the best in the world at what they did. Our vision for the business unit that I led business development for was to bring about networks of safe, electric, quiet air taxis in big congested cities around the world.
[00:02:34] And it was enabled by a lot of innovations happening in the aviation sector around distributed electric propulsion. That business continues, but the challenge we ran into everywhere we went was a lack of grid readiness around electrification and challenges around, uh, preparing to enable the end to end ride sharing environment that in many ways you can only close with skilled labor.
[00:02:57] And so that, that was the business problem that I was most interested in working on because of the connection to where I grew up and my experiences formatively on the farm and in the classroom. And so we got started on that mission about three years ago and have been running hard at it ever since.
[00:03:12] Sid: What made you decide that, you know, the, the skilled trades was, you know, something that you want to kind of go into and focus on? Like, how did you get started on that idea?
[00:03:23] Wyatt: Yeah, the connection certainly goes back to childhood. I mean, most of my, my classmates in high school, their families worked in blue collar trades. A lot of folks in timber, in welding, in mechanical work. And so in many ways, those are my roots. I think also, this is a really big challenge for the United States.
[00:03:42] There's almost a million openings in U. S. manufacturing and construction jobs across the U. S. today. That number is poised to triple by 2030. There is a supply side replacement rate challenge. We have more people Leaving the workforce that are joining in the skilled trades in some cases to the tune of three to one and at the same time, there is a big spike in demand for spending as as companies look to reshore their supply chains and we upgrade our electric grid and we see a lot of Return to the US as it relates to investment in in core capabilities run infrastructure.
[00:04:20] You can't automate away those jobs. You need a human being with a skill set who goes and applies those skills to to build safe, reliable infrastructure and at its core, that's that's the big driver of the shortage we face.
[00:04:32] Sid: So what is it that you're solving for, you know, with Upsmith? Are you helping, you know, the individual technicians get upskilled or are you helping the business owner who employs these skilled technicians? What is the impact that it has on the end customer, which is, um, you know, who we all serve.
[00:04:55] Wyatt: Yeah. Well, we really believe labor productivity is the way to solve this this crisis and what I mean by that is, the output that each worker can produce ultimately will drive our ability to close the gap. Output is a function of your skills, your motivation, the way you get rewarded. And so we built software to help skilled trades businesses grow.
[00:05:18] We think that the revenue running through those businesses is the right catalyst that will create higher wages, that will create better job opportunity. And ultimately, as you raise the stakes there, longer retention for skilled workers as well. Our software is designed to help those trades companies win first through fun, automated competitions that reinforce and reward the types of behavior that create really great customer outcomes.
[00:05:43] And we're starting in the home services market with that focus. An example of that would be an electrician or a plumber or an HVAC technician who's employed by a residential home services company, and there's a set of behaviors in their playbook. And if that technician follows those behaviors the right way, at the right time, every time, really good things happen for the end customer.
[00:06:06] They're taken better care of, they end up with a better solution for their comfort level, whatever demand situation of the day gets resolved more quickly. And so our software hooks into the system of record the company uses. And then it can identify whenever that best practice was, was followed and then recognize and reward the technician.
[00:06:25] We do so with points based contests, things that unlock really fun and engaging performance culture inside the company. And we're having a lot of success doing that with different home service companies around the U. S.
[00:06:36] Sid: It's gamifying the, the, the idea of, you know, employing best practices and kind of bringing in some fun, uh, but also healthy competition among the techs that are working within a company.
[00:06:48] Wyatt: Totally. We used to do it all the time at Uber. And so my team, which, which has a lot of folks that worked in, in, in Uber and other technology companies, built a playbook for how do you figure out the things that will create better customer outcomes? and then give people positive reinforcement every time they do it.
[00:07:06] Sid: And so in, in, in your business, there's. technically multiple personas, right? There's the, the business owner, there's the, the skilled, you know, uh, labor or, or technician. Um, and then there's the outcome that is being produced to, you know, the business customer, right? Um, have you been able to quantify and see like what kind of results, um, this leads to and, and how is that helping both the technician, or the skilled, you know, labor, as well as the, the business owner of, the plumbing company or the, the HVAC company, how do you, how do you pitch and who do you pitch to?
[00:07:42] Wyatt: Yeah, I'd love to share a couple of stories of some some successes we've seen. So one of our customers is a home service company in Iowa called Shawl. And Shawls been around for a very long time. They have a heating and cooling business. They have a plumbing business They have electricians on the team and they're serving customers every day in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and doing just an awesome job. Our software came in and helped to reinforce fun performance based contests for all their service technicians and in the field.
[00:08:11] Every time they go on a home service visit, if they conduct an inspection, if they come back to the homeowner and say, I found these things in my, my inspection, here are some options that you might consider to be able to help solve the problem that you call us out here today to, to, address. There's a best practice that links the number of options you offer someone with the probability that they choose one of those services to fix the problem.
[00:08:34] And it tends in the, in the aggregate to also drive higher risk. And higher close rates for the company. The person's better served as well. So they ultimately are able to get the best solution for the issue that we're facing. And because a lot of these businesses are very commission based in terms of how they compensate their employees, when the close rate goes up, when the average ticket goes up, guess what? The technician takes some more money as well.
[00:08:59] Sid: yeah.
[00:09:00] Wyatt: So in a really short amount of time, six weeks, we saw an increase in average revenue per book job of 14%. inside this company because the number of options that were being offered per opportunity was going up at the same time. And in this case, in excess of 10 or 15 percent every time you offered multiple options, you got a text message congratulating you on nailing the best practice, showing your progress on a leaderboard relative to your peers, giving you that really positive dopamine hit, uh, and reinforcement of, of this.
[00:09:33] very affirming thing you did. And then we saw people just begin climbing. Their close rates increased their, their ultimately revenue per job wasn't going up. And importantly, the end customer was feeling better served because of it. There's a young man named Brian in Cedar Rapids who we saw take his take home pay increase super substantially.
[00:09:53] So look year over year. In many cases, he's making five, 600 a week more this year relative to last, which that is a really material amount of money for someone who is in the trades and it's just starting on their career and it's a chance to really get rewarded for doing the right thing.
[00:10:09] Sid: So Wyatt, is your North star and the kind of impact that you, your team and Upsmith is looking to make?
[00:10:17] Wyatt: The North star around increasing the productivity of our customers is the most important thing. And we're defining productivity or on an economic basis, how much revenue they can produce and how that cascades through to their workforce who are participating alongside them. Um, we think about in the context of value per lead.
[00:10:35] So our customers have got an objective themselves to grow. And oftentimes that means get more opportunities. and convert every precious opportunity in front of the team. So if we can use software to both create new opportunities, and, and there's lots of ways that artificial intelligence and really smart use of AI agents can help to create more leads, can then lead to their team being reinforced every time they do the right thing to serve that customer super well and increase the likelihood that that lead converts, they win. And our belief is we'll win right along, right alongside them if we do a good job of helping to, to drive that value per lead metric. And ultimately increase the productivity the business is able to experience.
[00:11:19] Sid: And are you doing this right now in both the residential side of the business and commercial or, or either or?
[00:11:24] Wyatt: Yeah, we've had a lot of success working with companies in both. I will say that oftentimes in commercial, individual attribution of productivity is tougher. So if we're running an electric contracting firm and we have a lot of commercial customers, it's more challenging to isolate SID's performance versus Wyatt's performance on impacting revenue, tends to focus more on safety, on time rates, on avoiding schedule slip. And those are all things we want to help motivate as well. There's also a lot of benefit when you're a startup of focus. And so if you can get super narrow and say, this is the problem right now that we're looking to solve to get that flywheel spinning and be able to drive our growth because we're taking care of customers and we're serving people really well along the way, that's what we want to be able to do.
[00:12:14] Sid: Got it. We're in this, you know, huge deficit when it comes to the need that exists a day for, for the skilled trades, uh, and, you know, and qualified skilled technicians and. There's this looming timeline, right? There, you know, I think there's different stats I've heard, but one of them is like in the next five to seven years, like half the workforce is, is set to retire.
[00:12:39] Some, something along those lines, right? There's different kind of, you know, variations of those stats, but it's a pretty alarming number.
[00:12:46] Being in the business that you are in, you know, do you, do you hear any stats like that, that, um, you know, you use in how you can have, um, help and motivate your team in terms of the impact you're making at an industry level,
[00:13:01] Wyatt: most definitely. I mean, I think that some of the numbers we talked about at the top around nearly a million openings and growing because of the. supply side replacement rate dynamics that you allude to, that's a hugely motivating thing. And if we don't solve that challenge as a country, we face a lot of competitiveness risks.
[00:13:18] And so one of the things that's really inspiring, I think, for all of us working on the problem is that by creating a pathway for opportunity for a young person who aspires to a career in the trades to be successful and to earn money and and get that sort of reinforcement, they're doing the right thing.
[00:13:35] It's life changing and all of our data suggests that attrition risk is is greatest in the first six months It's ultimately tied. To How productive you are. If you, if you get trained well and get a good mentor and you're out there and you're, you're finding success and you're earning money along the way, you stay.
[00:13:54] And if you don't, you churn. And so it's a, it's a big lever for us to help to ensure that we in a small way can contribute to this bigger challenge the industry is facing.
[00:14:04] Sid: Yeah. Because there's, there's downstream impacts to that as well, right? Because the same, well, there's all these businesses that are competing for the same pool of, of skilled labor. And so, it seems like there's a huge impact to price and prices are going up. Different businesses on the, on the multi site retailer side, you know, the, service providers are servicing, they're having to explore different models to see how they can kind of, um, you know, augment their own workforces internally, uh, or have hybrid models to kind of deal with this increase in price or total cost that they have to incur because business have to be more competitive and they have to offer more salaries and, you know, you're still, you know, uh, losing great talent.
[00:14:52] Right? So I'm sure that has, you know, an impact, um, you know, across the board and it sounds like what you're doing is helping reduce the risk of churn and attrition as well, right?
[00:15:06] Wyatt: We want to help companies win for sure. And interestingly, maybe paradoxically, we find that the, the, the challenges around the attrition dynamics that you allude to are not evenly felt across the industry. If you have a high performing company with a high performing culture, guess what people flock to you.
[00:15:24] Sid: Hmm.
[00:15:25] Wyatt: If you have a company that really struggles to build great leadership, that invests in people and that can create opportunities for, for mobility internally, people leave. And so some of the companies that are out there growing the most quickly, the quickest rather, and like are seeing success, like don't really have retention issues.
[00:15:44] We want to be able to take some of the lessons that. Those folks are role modeling and systematize them so that other people can get better and improve as well.
[00:15:53] Sid: Yeah, I agree. I mean, and some of those fundamentals that make a company great. People might come for money, but they stay for a lot more than that. Um, right. Or, or they're out of the door. Um, yeah, so that, that makes a lot of sense to me. You know, just pivoting a little bit. How did we get here? Like, how did we get to a situation where there's this massive deficit? What went wrong over the, over the past couple of decades?
[00:16:18] Wyatt: Like all big complex problems, there's lots of factors that influence it. I think one of the largest though is like systematically, as a society, we've devalued skilled work in this respect. And it's not because I think anybody necessarily had stigma that they wanted to exert against it, but that could be the case in some situations.
[00:16:41] When I was a teacher, I saw it, you know, we, we, we sort of talked about going to college as a social good in all cases, and we would talk about it as something that was like normatively the best thing you should do. And I did that myself. You know, I would talk to my kids that I was teaching that it was the thing that was the best bet for helping to unlock a better life down the road.
[00:17:01] And a lot of folks went and sought higher education credentials that were not great products, and they borrowed money to do it. And so if you borrow money to pursue something that's not that high quality. And worse, if you don't finish, which is the case for many of them too, you're in a bad spot. You're working out of a hole.
[00:17:19] So many of my students would be so much better off if they had sought and earned a credential to unlock skill based work.
[00:17:27] Sid: Yeah.
[00:17:27] Wyatt: And it's super rewarding and it's a chance to build something that matters. And you see that and you get the positive reinforcement of that. And it's very lucrative. And I wish that I had had more perspective at the time to be able to help talk about those different pathways towards career success.
[00:17:44] And it's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to be leading the company that we're leading now. That's helping to unlock that for people because it's, it's born out of that experience. So that's number one. I think it's the societal mechanics around college for all. I also, I find that like our training systems are broken.
[00:18:00] The way that we think about how we finance workforce development and upskilling, it's largely based on enrollment, not outcomes. And so, if you or I are running a, a, a, a training program and we want to be Title IV eligible, which means we can take money from the federal government in the form of, um, federal aid, it's really tied to a bunch of inputs.
[00:18:21] We have to show that we're, that we're meeting, not really focused on a bunch of outputs on how well people are doing once they go through that program. And then it limits how we can innovate. We're fixed to a certain timeline. We're fixed to a certain credit based system. And employers don't really care about that.
[00:18:38] They care about competencies. Have you mastered the competencies? Are you going to deliver a really great work product? Are you going to do so with the right mindset and cultural pieces we want to see? So that's the second lever. I think we have a broken training system for being able to address the problem.
[00:18:54] Now, the opportunity is empower employers. They are creating jobs. They know where the gaps are. They know what skills are missing to help a person be really ready to thrive. We ought to make dollars pretty flexible to reimburse them every time they invest in their, in their workers and help new people achieve credentials. I think it's the best and fastest way that we could take on what is, I think, a really big countrywide challenge.
[00:19:19] Sid: You think there's this, uh, change in attitude now? You know, with the past few years when it comes to, you know, trade school versus the traditional four year degree and, and, and how folks look at what does success look like?
[00:19:33] Wyatt: There's a lot of buzz about the tool belt generation, uh, with Gen Z, like focusing on, on ways to turn skills to do that work. I'm an optimist. I think that, like, we're on a good path. I think we're going to be able to crack this problem for sure. But it is a very substantial challenge, and it, you know, there's a lot of things that are sort of hard, hardwired in our system that create friction for people to pursue this type of work and get credentialed and get into the job market. And I think it's in our interest to take those things on.
[00:20:03] Sid: Yeah. Because even if, you know, as a parent, now, when I'm looking at schools for my own kids and you look at what, how they're measured, it just feels like a lot of how they're measured is also based on how many kids go from high school to a four year degree in college, right? It doesn't feel like there's any narrative around Going to a trade school or anything along those lines.
[00:20:27] So it's, it feels like it, the problem is even like way sooner, you know, than, or rather more upstream than we think in terms of, you know, the impact that, that we have as, as a, as a culture, right. It, it, it, we need to, we need to make people think, or parents think that it's okay. If your, if your kids are really good with their hands, like let them explore, you know, working with their hands as, and make that a career.
[00:20:53] Like there's a great career there. We can't have, you know, every single individual, uh, only do the same kind of work. I mean, the economy would collapse, right?
[00:21:04] Wyatt: Right. Right. Well, there's at least some, some elements and initiatives to point to that I think are doing really cool things to help shape people's perspectives on what's possible. Uh, I have a friend in Austin named Roy Spence who leads a, an organization called the Make It Movement. Which is creating really cool content about career opportunity that's accessible to people as builders in skilled trades and skilled nursing in a lot of ways that may not have been a path that you would access through traditional higher education and They're working with great guidance counselors and high schools all across the state of Texas There's a group called The path to pro initiative in Arkansas that's done really cool work.
[00:21:44] That's that's tied to this and so I think Letting a thousand flowers bloom around school choice and educational options being pretty open for how people Can access ways to learn things that they can make a big impact on their career pathing. That's a really important flexibility We should offer as well
[00:22:02] Sid: Yeah, I agree. And you know, it's interesting. Like I agree with it. There's there seems to be a movement where, you know, businesses are taking on the challenge and helping contribute to solve the deficit, right? Um, you know, there are big retailers also who. If they're building a hybrid program, uh, where they have their own internal techs, they're actually giving a path for folks that are in operations in the stores, in the clubs, um, you know, to, to actually find a way, um, you know, to, to get into the skilled trades and they're training them, uh, and then, you know, showing them a path and helping them build a career.
[00:22:38] I think it's a really noble thing to do because you know, you're giving folks the ability not just to understand that there's a career here but you're giving them the path and giving them the avenue where they can actually um, you know, spend a few years with you um, and sharpen and hone your skills and then you know, go explore opportunities um, you know, with anyone you want, right? It's quite great.
[00:23:04] Wyatt: Couldn't agree more. The path to pro initiative that I mentioned a bit ago is a It's a really inspiring campaign that's tackling this problem head on. Amazon's career choice initiative is, is really impressive. And so the direct investment in workforce, I think pays off in a lot of ways.
[00:23:19] Sid: Yeah, I love it. So, you know, We're in a time of like massive leaps and advancements in technology, right? You know, everyone's talking about AI and robotics. Um, do you think that this kind of buzz that exists right now, um, is going to further increase that gap and the perception in terms of what kind of education leads to a bright future?
[00:23:40] Or do you think that there's, you know, clear realization that we need both.
[00:23:44] Wyatt: Yeah. Oh, I'll, I'll take the point of view that the advances in AI are the most awesome accelerator for addressing this challenge. I mean, we're so fired up at up Smith to be able to take advantage of things that are happening to increase the power of technology to address skilled labor gaps, because you can put a lot of capabilities in someone's pocket to help them as a person that's learning be even more effective and have all of the expertise that might come from a decade in the industry at their, at their fingertips. I'll give you a very simple example. So, um, with the, with the increase of, of, of reach of AI agents, you can get a lot more opportunity to get in front of more homeowners and home service world and say, Sid, just checking in.
[00:24:28] Wyatt from Wyatt's heating and cooling here. We have a really awesome plumber who's down the street working with your neighbor today. We'd love to have him or her swing by and see, you know, you this afternoon, cause we see there was an open estimate that you left a few months ago that we're just checking to see if it's still an issue for you.
[00:24:42] Sid: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Wyatt: The ability to do that from an outbound marketing standpoint is, is more possible today than it's ever been.
[00:24:49] Sid: No question.
[00:24:49] Wyatt: And so if I'm that technician, right, for Wyatt's heating and cooling, my opportunity for greater efficiency, greater utilization, more take home money just went through the roof. When I show up at Sid's house, I have access to all the things that everyone else who's ever talked to Sid that's recorded in that, in that system of record has, has offered.
[00:25:09] And so if I run into an issue that I'm not exactly sure how to diagnose, before I was relegated to getting someone on the phone who was a master plumber from my shop to try to talk me through it. Now I have the ability to, to, to tap into all that unstructured data to pull insights from it and say, gosh, I think it could be one of these three things.
[00:25:26] And it, it reminds me of this other situation that I saw last week somewhere else. And so that tool in your pocket creates a supercharged superhero of a plumber. And someone that we're like so fired up to be able to support and going and doing a great job to, to serve that end customer. And it's a really exciting time.
[00:25:46] Sid: I agree. I mean, there's so much more access to AI now.
[00:25:51] but the folks that you're talking to, you know, um, are they excited about AI or intimidated by it and wary of it? Because it can be intimidating, right? If you, if you're talking about, um, you know, what does AI mean and what does it do for you? And then how to prompt AI to give you the right answers if, you know, it's new. So do you feel, what are you hearing from the folks that you're talking to?
[00:26:18] Wyatt: Yeah. I'll share my experience has been that, um, a lot of the business owners that we work with are just really excited to try things out. So I, I acknowledge that like sometimes it's a little bit intimidating to say, I'm not sure where to start, but, I'll tell the story of a business owner named Jerome in Charlotte. He runs an HVAC company that's doing really cool work for people. This guy is so innovative. He like is excited about ways to better market. He's excited about ways to be able to grow the membership base of people that they serve and go back to and check in a couple of times a year on tune ups. He's, he's coming up with all these ideas.
[00:26:53] Like, wouldn't it be cool if we could create a way to isolate all the people that were going to come up for renewals on those membership campaigns and, and put an offer in front of them to, to do something around the holidays. And so he's just churning ideas constantly. And what's so impressive about Jerome is he's, he sees AI as a tool.
[00:27:13] He has an end goal he wants to accomplish, which is serve the end customers that they have the opportunity to, to go and, and be in front of really well. Serve his team really well along the way. And then create a brand that's gonna, you know, outlast him. AI is the tool to do that. We're a tool provider who gets to partner with them.
[00:27:31] And there's so many Jerome's around the country who are forward thinking. They want to do it right by their company. They want to do it right by the people that they serve. They're just looking for tools to help them do it. And then I think the companies that win will be those that figure out applications of AI to support Jerome. And being able to go with. Yeah,
[00:27:49] Sid: Agree 100%. You know, let's talk about like, you know, just the last few years as well.
[00:27:55] There's definitely this, this line in the sand of like, pre COVID and post COVID world, right? And some businesses were affected more than others. You know, how did that affect Upsmith? And, and do you see that there was a change in how, uh, people thought about this, this industry, you know, In the post COVID world, maybe that you felt didn't exist before,
[00:28:20] Wyatt: It's interesting too, because we were, we were born in the COVID experience. Our company got started in 2021 and raised capital in 2022 and wouldn't have happened had it not been for COVID as a catalyst, right? An accelerator to kind of shake things up and say, there's a big need here. The market's efficient.
[00:28:37] Let's go solve that need because there's an opportunity. For running a technology company, the biggest change for us is, in the time we started, remote wasn't just an option. It was the only way to run the company. So we started the business with people in different places. And that was just very normal because that's how ultimately the tech sector was, was operating in the post COVID environment.
[00:28:59] Our customers in home service world don't have that luxury. Like you show up at your job site, in front of people. And they were heroes through a lot of the pandemic because they were the frontline of taking care of folks. And so one of the things I think is really important as a technology company leader who's serving home service companies is you got to match where they are. We go in person, we work in person with our customers, we learn about how they use technology, how it could serve them better. We certainly can deploy it remotely, but we want to be there to build trust, to understand their problem well, to build empathy. And I think there's a lot of folks in the tech sector who haven't necessarily made that change post COVID yet.
[00:29:42] Sid: Right?
[00:29:43] Wyatt: And I think the companies that will win will be ones that do because serving folks inside the building trades as a specific example, I could, you do that by being a person. And that's just a core part of how to do it well.
[00:29:58] Sid: I talk about this all the time about how, especially in the last five years, there's this massive spike in terms of consumer expectation. And I mean, I use the word consumer here, I'm talking about your customers, customer, customer, right? Um, be as individuals. When we go into a business, like our expectation of now, what is standard is much higher than it was, you know, pre COVID maybe like, it doesn't matter if it's a luxury brand or a, discount brand. We want the, every business to look and feel clean, uh, feel well maintained, and to be warm and welcoming. And so what that has done is facilities teams and the commercial side that are, that are supporting those locations have to do a lot more with less. And, you know, they have to deliver on better experiences and who are they going to rely on to do that?
[00:30:53] It's the service providers that they have that are going into those spaces, um, and actually turning the wrench. And who's turning the wrench, it's the actual, you know, the skilled, uh, labor and the skilled workforce, right. So there's this massive amount of, you know, pressure in the system when you think about, you know, the shortage with the skilled, um, you know, uh, workforce.
[00:31:15] So,How does that fit into your narrative? Uh, and how does that, what are you hearing from your customers in terms of, what they have to do more now to not just, you know, gain customer loyalty, but also keep it.
[00:31:30] Wyatt: One really relevant way this shows up is in how you seek out reviews and get those reviews posted around your business. Uh, there's a really strong correlation between the number of Google reviews that are accessible for a home service company and how likely someone is to choose that company and trust them to come in on something broken in their home. And so our, our customers know this and so they say, is there a way that you can help us both create a really strong incentive for our technicians to both ask for the review but then do a great job of set that up to be a really positive one? Are there ways that you could run like really clear reinforcement for the technician in the field when he or she does receive one of those five star reviews? So we can really elevate them. We can help celebrate them to all of our people and say like, SID is what good looks like. This is excellence at our company.
[00:32:19] Sid: Yeah,
[00:32:20] Wyatt: We're going to celebrate that, reward it, do more of it. And I, I, I find that there's ways you can use software to automate the process of nudging the technician around like, this is a moment right now to talk about, if you feel like I delivered a good service today, it would mean a ton to me if you'd leave us a review.
[00:32:36] Here's some pictures I took. Here's some things we talked about. If those set up you in writing your review, awesome, feel free to use them. If not, that's okay too. Little nudges like that can empower the end customer to be like, yeah, that was great. I trust Sid.
[00:32:50] Sid: That's right.
[00:32:51] Wyatt: I don't know much about my check system He educated me on it. I feel like really well served by that. I'm gonna leave that great review It creates a digital record of it, which guess what? It's great for Sid too, right? It like elevates his excellence and expertise and the dignity he has as a builder. And so we see an opportunity as a software provider to help make that process work a lot better and ultimately the company's better served Sits better served and that next consumer who's gonna be the person that calls on that company to come help them out we'll be better served to you.
[00:33:24] Sid: I agree a hundred percent. I mean, the technician who's walking through the door to turn the wrench and actually support the store manager in the store, they're also an ambassador for the brand. And the brand being, you know, the company that they work for. So it goes beyond just, Hey, you got the job done, right?
[00:33:43] It is, how are you there, you know, representing your company, telling the customer that if they ever need anything, they know where to find you, you know, all those things. You know, showing up with a smile on your face, like all of those things make a huge impact
[00:33:57] on the brand that they're working with. And, and that shows up in, you know, online reviews, right?
[00:34:03] Wyatt: Amen. Human beings want affirmation It is hardwired into how we're set up. And so it's funny when I was a teacher there was a A technique you learn when you're, you're going through teacher training called positive behavior narration. And the whole concept is, um, if you state an expectation, and then as soon as it starts going, you start calling people out that are doing the right thing.
[00:34:25] And you can say, you know, Jeremy's on task, Kiara's following instructions we gave out. Individuals want to hear their name talked about in a positive way. They start changing their behavior to map to the thing that they're hearing get affirmed.
[00:34:38] Sid: Hmm.
[00:34:40] Wyatt: When you don't you don't need money to do that. That is leadership. And so I joke that now we're building a product around positive behavior narration inside of service companies because the same thing is true for adults. And you want to know that what you're doing matters and it's acknowledged and it's contributing to serving people well. Money matters. Money matters. But gosh, the recognition matters a lot too.
[00:35:02] Sid: 100%. So why, when you, when you look at the future, um, do you think this challenge with the skilled trade deficit is going to get better, uh, anytime soon, or do you think it's going to get a little worse before it gets better?
[00:35:15] Wyatt: Well, the bad news is the structural forces are not with us. The replacement rate issue means that we're we're playing from behind.
[00:35:23] Sid: Hmm.
[00:35:24] Wyatt: And there's also going to continue to be investment in the United States because like this is still the best place to do business in the world. And so you're going to continue seeing that reinvestment on the spin side, um, which is a good thing, but it's, it's challenging for the skilled labor shortage because you got to keep up and you're already behind.
[00:35:42] Now, the reason why I'm really optimistic about our ability to close the gap is because technology is such an accelerator to increase labor productivity. Put differently, like if I've got a bunch of tools in my pocket to help produce more, Well, I'm, I'm 20 or 30 percent better than what the output was for a worker in my same seat with my same skill level 30 years ago.
[00:36:04] And so if you can help make people more productive and then you create a better experience so that they're happier and it's more meaningful and they stay longer, you now have the recipe to help a new entrant on board and be super successful in the process. So that's what gives me hope despite the challenge.
[00:36:19] If you can increase productivity per worker. If you can make it a richer experience, both financially and emotionally, and how you're rewarded both for being an expert and for taking care of people, and people then stay longer so that you reduce the attrition that we face as an industry, that's our way out of it.
[00:36:37] Sid: As you look at the future of Upsmith, um, anything you can share about what does the future look like for your company and what do folks have to look forward to?
[00:36:47] Wyatt: I think the headline is we want to keep embracing technological advances. I mean, the things that are possible with AI today are even greater than what was possible six months ago. And six months from now, it's going to keep going the same direction. And so the task for my team and our group and serving our customers well is to help apply those advances to solve problems for the customers we serve.
[00:37:12] And you know, a big challenge in home services is am I getting enough high quality leads because folks are telling us, it's great that you can help me close by virtue of reinforcing great behavior. Can you help me get in the field more? And so that's, that's the task in front of us. Like let's keep iterating on our product. Let's keep expanding it to better solve the customer problem that our, our customers are are challenging us with. And let's do it in a way that brings the best of technology to serve them. Because they may not have a stable of software engineers on board inside their plumbing or electric company, but, but we do. And we want to be able to deploy that stable of folks to create really cool products for them to help them grow.
[00:37:50] Sid: There you go. Wyatt, what advice would you give folks in our audience who are either in the skilled trades today or are aspiring to get into it?
[00:38:00] Wyatt: There is no better career than being a builder. I think it's a chance to really make a difference for your community. I think it's a chance to have pride and accomplishment in having something that's a really differentiated skill. And I think it's super lucrative because it's a chance for you to build something of real value that the market Acknowledges is scarce right now. So i'm i'm such an encourager for young people or career switchers to take this on We've had the privilege and upswift of serving a lot of folks that were veterans of the U. S. Military looking for their next thing coming out. High school graduates that wanted to you know Get a head start on their careers people that were stuck. Folks were working inside warehouses or and, you know, realize that they weren't going anywhere super fast. And so one of the chance to, to accelerate and we were able to help them.
[00:38:48] And so, uh, anybody out there listening, that fits that profile, like I think, run, don't walk towards the, looking to grow there. And then if you're a company owner or you're a leader inside a company that is in the building trades, like what great opportunity you have to lean into technology and to, to use it, to be able to solve really big challenges on how you serve your end customer too.
[00:39:09] So whether it's us or someone else, like be very open, like be open to experimenting and trying things, do it in a small way first, prove the thing works, and then scale it out. And I think that's a really big and unique opportunity for a lot of leaders out there as well.
[00:39:23] Sid: I love it. Well, Wyatt, I just want to say a huge thank you for being here and having this chat with me. I really enjoyed our conversation. For folks who might want to look you up and connect with you. Uh, where can they find you?
[00:39:35] Wyatt: Check us out at upsmith. com. That's U P S M I T H dot com. We'd love to connect with you, see more about what we're up to. If we can serve you really well, we'd like to. Uh, my email is Wyatt at upsmith. com. I'm always loving to hear from people out there that are doing cool things or would like to connect.
[00:39:51] And then they can also find us on social media. We're on LinkedIn, on Instagram, um, on, on X or Twitter. Check us out.
[00:39:59] Sid: Awesome. Well, thanks again, White. I really, really appreciate it. And for all those in our audience, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.
[00:40:10] Well, that was Wyatt Smith, founder and CEO of Up Smith. Wyatt's diverse background and upbringing gave him a huge appreciation for the skilled trades. So when he noticed the challenges facing the industry, he decided to start up Smith. In our conversation today, Wyatt shared valuable insights into the skilled trades deficit.
[00:40:32] The evolving attitudes towards trade schools versus four year degrees and how the leaps and advancements in technology and AI could be a great tool to combat some of the challenges we're facing as an industry today. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. With that, I'm your host, Sid Shetty, and I'll see you in the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.
[00:40:51] Sid: Well, that was Wyatt Smith, founder and CEO of Upsmith. Wyatt's diverse background and upbringing gave him a huge appreciation for the skilled trades. And so when he noticed the challenges facing the industry, he decided to start Upsmith. In our conversation, Wyatt shared valuable insights into the skilled trades deficit, the evolving attitudes towards trade schools versus four year degrees, and how advancements in technology and AI could be a great tool.
[00:41:19] to combat these challenges. One thing's for sure. There will always be a need for skilled talent, and it's great to see a movement that promotes the trades and encourages more young talent to enter the space. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. With that, I'm your host Sid Shetty, and I'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.
[00:41:43] Right? Isn't that did it or should we do one more?