TNB Vigaro & Beu P2 Audio.txt
English (US)

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I'm never quite sure with AI if it's going to be better for me or make my life harder. Massive shift that's going to happen where people are looking at marketing, where they're looking at their SMSes, their WhatsApp, their website. That's changing in a good way. Mercy of the algorithm, you know. They know they've got a page four times a week.

They know they've got to do their stories. Then they sit down and they're like, what do I post? We've got tools that will help you plan all of that. It'll give you ideas for that. Booking systems now we've not had. Priceless. Printed for Lord knows how long. There have been several points of me kind of going.

We need to put the profit, and then I'd look and realize there's another thousand price lists in the book. I'm like, maybe I'm just going to throw them away all right on them the amount of times you'd go into it, but, you know, crossed out, extra tenner. That's what you could have got. Yeah. Hi. Welcome to the Nova Barber podcast.

I'm Anthony Lebon, and we'll be talking to various people in the industry who've made it and their journey and how they got here. Talking honest, cutting through the crap and making sure your story and their story is heard to help your business and hopefully mine. If you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button and I hope you enjoy this this episode.

Hi there! Welcome to the Noble Barber podcast. I'm Anson Lebon and welcome to part two. Um, the, uh, the business and the tech side of online booking. Um, I'm still here with, uh, Jason Downs from Vergara and Ben Fisher from Bow or bow, depending on which half of the country you're in. Um, we spoke a little bit about, actually.

Thanks for the first half. I really enjoyed that. Thank you very much. But we kind of AI kept popping up and I felt I feel we could drill down a bit more on AI, um, and obviously how it's playing at the moment, but equally the future. Um,

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obviously both of your products, both companies have these. So for me, the nice easy bit about the good stuff of it. Yeah. And I think especially for barbers, because ultimately the AI can't create the customer intimacy. I can't do the wonderful stars. AI can't do the the troubleshooting, the counseling.

I can't do anything to the. Barb is actually a really good place. The good thing is AI will enable I say, the stuff that they don't really want to do. So help the the marketing and a lot easier. Yeah, it will help the reporting a lot easier. I call it almost like it's your AI buddy. So you're going to have your own personalized assistant, your own personalized buddy who can help you barber shop.

So I think on the plus side, um, this sector and I think the beauty industry as a whole is really well placed because it's an enabler and a support and not a threat compared to some industries. But that's at the highest level, I think. Then when we were talking, there's as you go down the flow of AI, there's some bigger challenges probably to worry about.

Yeah, yeah for sure. So that's one of the key things that I'll take away from this, like out of every industry, I would say is probably the least threatened for the people that work in it. So I already think like, uh, accounting, legal, uh, tech development, uh, all the, all these jobs are already getting replaced and generally the lower level jobs are getting replaced, but that will that will creep out of the ladder as time goes on.

Thankfully for for barbers, doing anything with your hands is really tricky, so you can't train a robot to be doing that. Not at least, probably not in the next 20 or 30 years. Yes, the other side of it is the kind of guy that's got nothing to do with me. That's not my industry. The AI is going to have it. Can't get here.

What's it going to do? But actually, when you start looking at the applications of what it can do, um, it does it kind of annoyingly it should and can do it better than we can. Yeah. And, you know, we spoke initially about the kind of AI receptionist, which I thought was the kind of future point of AI, which I'm reliably told.

Absolutely. It's the past. You've already got that. Yeah, absolutely. So how does your receptionist. Oh, literally, I was literally you could phone in and you could literally get booked in, um, or we arrange your appointment straight away. And. Are you speaking to a voice? Yeah. You're speaking a voice?

Yes. It's just you're just connected through it. So your phone or chat, whichever way you may have assume, you have a thing to note is the driving and chat people are. So the reduction in phone calls is getting more and more dramatic. So the more you actually your chat enabling AI is what's going to really help the industry more than voice.

Yeah, yeah. I think the other side to that as well. It's not just about booking, it's about consultation. So um, with AIS, like with the chatbot as well, it's not just, hey, look, can I have a booking for this? They may want consultation on the different types of services, what the differences are. The AIS trained on the back of house data.

Really at the barber runs. Um, so say, for example, if they, like, saw a picture on their Instagram or whatever and said, hey, look, I like this. This how like what service would this be again in here it can be a bit more where you've got more intricate colors and things like that. Um, but you can tell them how to do it.

It would recommend which appointment it would be, and it would also link in with the staff as well, based on their buyers and better, presumably because if you're phoning a if you're phoning AI, it's going to know who you are. It's going to recognize the phone number from the system. It doesn't forget. So it knows.

It knows who you are. It doesn't have a hangover on a Monday and is in a bad mood or whatever, you know? Yeah. It is. It's just so it is going to have a big part in our industry whether, you know, whether we embrace or don't embrace it. I always say when people talk about receptionists, I think, well, yeah, you've got a big salon.

Big barbershop. Your reception is often actually much smaller that they are your front of house experience. So obviously that's not being replaced. It's the other stage before. Yeah. Which is, you know, your bookings, your consultation. But again, I think don't underestimate how much intimacy and relationships that you want want technology as your partner, but you still need to have that at the forefront.

And if you're, you know, if you are talking receptionist face on their left giving you your, your, um, you know, your service rather than stopping every two minutes to answer the phone. Absolutely. And go from that. But but AI will be better presumably even at recommending other things that you know, my Rebooking obsession from the first half and client retention.

We should see I. Yeah. And you will be able to get to prompt so you can go for your data to say, look, tell me when I'm quiet, when should I run special promotions? What should I do here? So so it will intelligently mine your data. And this has been bang on. It's about your data, as in your barber shop, not about the whole universe of data.

And that's when it gets really powerful because it homes in on you. Um, and I think both of both your systems will allow you to be, um, prompted by AI to look through your system so you can go to your systems with this is my problem. I want some new clients. I don't know where my clients are coming from or whatever, and and it will scale your own data.

We're literally just going through that testing to make sure what you want is make sure those recommendations are absolutely correct. Yeah. So it's those nuances that and this is why you find when good tech companies launch stuff, not all of them, but when good ones do it like Vergara is, you do it properly.

Yeah. Which is why, you know, we could launch things now to do a lot of that, but we just wanted to make sure we got absolutely everything right. So it absolutely is your business partner. Yeah, because I think that's it. Like I say, it's a it's a good phrase. My business partner I think that's interesting.

The fact is that we're all getting used to this kind of amount of data that we've got, um, to have AI go looking for it. I mean, I haven't been, I've been writing columns for magazines and different bits for years and years. I feel like chat does on chat. Jeeves does an awful lot for me now. Um, and it really does.

It really does. And the more it's got to know me and my style and how I like to write, and I've got a bigger reservoir of what I want to use. It really works. And that's exactly what you're saying about our about our, our data, that it's going to just drill through and have a look at what we're doing. And then I think for some barbers who are scared a bit, just even as simple as instead of where you would normally google something, just ChatGPT it.

It would just help you get into that rhythm. And maybe some of that fear stuff. The fear is the unknown and you think, oh, that's pretty cool. And once you start doing some of those things, um, it may well help you. Yeah, yeah. I think the big thing is people are scared about control. So if you speak to most barbers, they're not going to say, I want to be spending more time doing like creating social posts, more time writing the content for it.

Finding what images it is, deciding what kind of social posts I want to do, or answering the phone. Sending WhatsApp at 1130 at night, trying to get people rebooking. If they don't want to do that, they want to be, you know, in the shop when they want to be in the shop or out and about when they want to be about just cutting hair and speaking to clients and, you know, fostering the relationships.

So I picked up all of the part that's not really hands on time with the client and just lets them focus on what they need to do to run the business. A lot of people just say it's the dog bit. Yeah. But it's still really important. Yeah, we're trying to make it sexy, but it's the dog. Exactly. Yeah. I've been, you know, I've been a, you know, I've been owning stores and self-employed for my whole career.

Um. And you're never off. You're never off. You know, I'd still. You know, I now make it a firm rule at my phones in the kitchen when I get in. Because otherwise I never get through anything without checking. Um, the fact that AI will be running all of this quietly for you without your interaction. Um, yeah.

No, I think it's an absolute. Is it? But you also still need to do the upfront work. Yeah, because if you just do an example of I'll run three social posts, but if you, it would just be very bland and generic. But if you actually do what you're doing, which is teaching AI to about you, you share with AI your values.

You share your goals. You show your personality, your humor. Before you know it, it will then be your true partner. Yeah, but that's why I say to all barbers out there, just put your toe if you're not already, put your toe in there now because it's, it's it's going to impact us all huge. Yeah I mean I guess that's I mean, that's I mean certainly with I guess most of our interaction with AI is, from Google.

I guess, you know, as soon as you start, you know. Whereas it used to be sponsored boxes up first. Now you've got your AI response first of all. Um, anyway, the sponsorship will find a way to to to win. You know you are. Yeah. There's no doubt about that. The money. The money will follow. Follow. But but it does make you think that the algorithms are changing that that.

Whereas, you know, there was a quite a good way as a barber, you could find a way of making sure. But now you're having to rely on on AI finding you. Yeah. For sure. Any any tips from text as to how we can, how the algorithms really running now and how we can. I think a lot of we can start for example, you know, it's actually the same basic principles.

You want to be top of mind and your top of mind by doing things regularly. So regularly, posting regularly, doing some blogs regularly, making sure you're getting reviews because all it's doing is driving off content. So if you're not doing things regularly, there may be somebody two doors down who was.

So it's the same principles in my. Yeah. For me I think like you have AI skeptic written on you. Yeah. You know, to be fair, no, it's not about that at all. So, like, um, I think there's, like, there's two things that happen here. One is like attracting new clients, finding new clients, getting getting them through the door.

Once you have those clients, like, you're not really reliant on your marketing so much as it is about just like nurturing the relationship. So like if you speak to most clients, they're booking the bar because they, you know, they like that, they like the haircut, they're getting whatnot, but they also like the guy or girl that's cut in their hair.

Um, and like often we found from doing some research, a lot of the time when people move about, it's not necessarily because they haven't been marketed to, it's because they've lost the touch point. So that's one of the points that we want to focus on with AI. So, um, you know, like say for example, some people are very, quite particular and barbers are quite particular worried about if I go to online bookings, I can't WhatsApp.

You mentioned this before, you know, and um. That's fine. Let the AI do the WhatsApp messaging. That's the booking part of it. Yeah. You can still jump in and have a chat with them, but they're not going to give you a tip based on how efficiently you book them. No. So but if they send a WhatsApp at 1130 at night and you're already asleep, if I can just pick it up and book them in in the morning, that's job done.

So it's all this kind of stuff around the business, around being with a client that we want to just not take away, but just like free you from really, I guess is what it is. So you can just do what you want. I guess you're right. It is the boring stuff. You're absolutely bang on. It is all the boring stuff that we know you need to do.

Um, and I'm intrigued with young barbers. So guys who are just setting it up. Um, but presumably that's much more in their mind. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the big generation shift in terms of who's using, um, the technology and to what level they're using it, and also how they're using it, especially around the marketing side of it.

Um, and they're just so quick at it as well. Yeah. Um, but it's yeah, it's interesting when you go, you talk about how I've got my barber. I'm loyal to my barber. But actually, sometimes if you're on a three week, four week cycle, your barber is not there. And actually just even going back to some of the basic principles of what's already in the booking system, as you can put photos in so you can see what they look like.

You can put some notes in to make sure you know what it is. And I've done this umpteen times when somebody would say, oh, I want to go with Dan now because I want to have a chat with Dan about his business. But actually I want to make sure he knows what my haircut is from Luca. So Luca would actually have in the notes very clearly exactly what he was.

And that again is just using the the technology, today's technology to make sure you're blocking your customer in. So there's no doubt about that person moving away from your shop. Um, because there's lots of them. Yeah. No, it really is not going to make this smaller. Yeah. It's not going to make less barbers.

Yeah. But I do like the fact that I think that that that AI will learn your business if you teach it. If you teach it. Um, and I love that the systems now, um,

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We'll look through our own data. And I think that's this thing that I keep coming back to the the before you have a,

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um, a business coach come in and start going through your businesses that you've at least gone through this aspect of it, first of all. But the other thing is, with technology, and especially with now the AI shift, um, what I class is the established legacy software platforms, which actually were, you know, 15 years ago, first mover advantage were absolutely the right decision to go with, but they just haven't had the investment from a development cycle of some of the new emerging businesses like Figaro, like go, where actually that AI is going to be at the forefront of that journey.

Um, and I would urge everybody to look at what I class as your legacy system. Be careful. It might be okay today, but it's what you're missing out on in six months, 12 months times I worry for you. So I would urge people to just think about when they're making that choice. Is it future proofing? Because technology is changing so quick, and there's only a few of us out there who will be able better keep up.

I mean, we're lucky because we got, you know, 450 developers, you know, and a CEO who built the product. Um, and he's a developer at heart. And that you just you just are always getting pushed to be at the forefront of tech. Um, but some others have are changing ownership models. Now they're owned by, in essence, firms with money.

Money. And they've lost that tech edge. Yeah, I think that's the um, the big factor that, you know, I was chatting to someone two weeks ago who's just telling me that my website isn't AI proof, and I'm like, what? Yeah. Um, and, you know, I said, I've been I've been using booking systems for 40 years. Um, but I'm like, oh, actually, no, you're right.

I the way my, you know, it was written, you know, in a, in a different way. I mean, it's only about 3 or 4 years and it's probably great 3 or 4 years ago. But it's not, it's not, it's got everything. It's got to be rewritten so that AI are going to find it. And we are found every barber shop out there. We are all found by it, by Google.

We are all searched on phone. Absolutely. Yeah. That's right. You talk about you know again websites and you know Vergara has my site which is great because ultimately what everybody hates is bad data. So normally on a website and your booking platform, you've got a key in the hours, the prices, the employees, and you're doing it twice.

Yeah. But with the way it's integrates, which is just clever tech. So ultimately you change it in Vergara and instantly your website is always auto updated. Which again is another thing about price increases. People hate doing price increases because it's almost like, I've got to do it here. I've got to do it there.

Well, actually, by using, you know, best in class technology partners that it doesn't work for you. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting you're saying about about, you know, with booking systems now, we've not we've not had priceless printed for

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lord knows how long. And I would definitely think there have been several points of me kind of going, we need to put the price. It's and then I'd look and realize there's another thousand price list in the book. I'm like, maybe I'm, you know, I'm just going to throw them away. And so I do think that text, the amount of times you'd go into it, but, you know, you crossed out extra tenner.

That's what you could have got. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but I want to talk to you about something really important. Our podcast here is more than just about the industry, the barbershop and the life they're in. It's about the community that we built. And in the time we've been doing this podcast, the community has been amazing and we've loved it.

Now we're looking for you to get involved and become an essential part of our future. We're seeking long term, mutually beneficial opportunities for partnership to come on board and help spread our message, to connect with our community, to help grow it, to keep the message strong, and to keep hearing and discussing these amazing topics that we do with all our guests.

If you think your brand is the right brand for us, if you want to get in touch, please email me at the Noble Barber Podcast at gmail.com or DM me on Instagram. Be really good to talk to you. We'd love you to be part of our future. Okay. And now back to the episode and I still come back. I'm not going to get too labored on it, but that we do seem to be very terrified of of those changes and being terrified of it.

It's not going to do you any favors. You've just got to embrace really more now more than ever. Because actually, I think this is I think, talk. It's the big changes about to happen. Yes, it's a big shift, a big, big shift. So where we like from the hour, fundamentally we've been technology focused first.

So everything we did we built like not with what do we want to build now but like how can we make the technology future proof that proof. So when we build for self-employed we do all the self-employed, all the payment stuff, all the data segregation, all of that stuff first. Made it really easy to build the stuff on top where more legacy systems, they'll look at that and say, actually, how do you do that?

How do you differentiate between the self-employed? How do you sort the payments? How does that go to their account? And we've done the same with AI as well. So rather than like quietly roll out the AI, we've been building like an AI infrastructure in a back end. It's not just for you as well. We've got our own AI developers that are actually working on the tech too.

Um, that we train on all of the stuff. Um, so it's like a AI thrown through company almost now. Um, but yeah, it's it's definitely a massive shift that's going to happen where people are looking at marketing, where they're looking at their SMSes, their WhatsApp, their website that's changing. Um, in a good way.

I'm never quite sure with AI if it's going to be better for me or make my life harder. Yeah. Uh,

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I think, yeah, because we certainly do now. You know, we we've got, you know, we have all our social media, we've got our WhatsApp, we've got the SMS, we've got our e-newsletter that's still goes out. We've got. So you end up with all these different arms to have something that's actually going to start gluing that together.

So for this industry I go this is this is really good. AI is really good for the industry. Yeah that's the thing. But what we do industry is maybe a bit harsher. We're leveraging AI. So most companies in our sector, we'll build our own bits, our own GPT internally, but we'll be leveraging AI generally. So for our industry, I think it's great.

I think it's going to make everybody more efficient. It's going to increase their fill time. Even silly things like, you know, like everyone's at the mercy of the algorithm. You know, they know they've got a page four times a week. They know they've got to do their stories. Then they sit down, they're like, what do I post?

Yeah. So we've got we got tools that will help you plan all of that. It'll give you ideas for that. It'll look at the stuff that you're doing as well, and it'll feed all of that into it as well. So it's on brand. It's not just random. Um, so yeah, I think adopting AI in the industry, the early adopter, you're gonna get a first mover advantage as a barber.

And I think the big thing that's a great for you, you don't have to be worried about adopting it because you can't take your income source. So you're adopting it in something that's tangential to your income line. So it's not going to replace you at any point. It's just going to make you more efficient and, uh, allow you to spend more time doing it.

I guess that's it. The amount of, you know, the amount of magazines, newspapers that have suddenly got rid of the amount of ad agencies who have ditched their copywriters. Yep. I mean, I read the most heartbreaking story of a group who'd been brought in, who'd written all this copy and then discovered that actually, all they were being hired for was to fill the, uh, to fill the AI with the right wording, the right sentencing, and then another layer we're not going to be we're not going to be replaced, but what it will do.

I mean, I you know, I'm a marketer at heart and, you know, so I used to pride myself and be able to write good, compelling emails. And then the other day I just ran it through, um, the AI. And I thought, ah, it's better. Yeah, yeah, I still have to teach you what to do, but wow, the output was so much better. Um, which is where you've almost got to say, okay, have the confidence to try it and get in there and then just see what it can do for you.

But this industry, it's. Yeah, I think it's going to really help. I think that's what we found though, our industry is, you know, as you said in the first half. You know, it's a really different industry. You know, we do have a real care, a real point of interest. Um, you know, um, I think, uh, said so Tsung in a previous episode just kind of went look.

Sainsbury's put their prices up every goddamn month and they don't care. And, and and that's that. But we do care. We do worry what people who you make, we are worrying what we're doing. But equally, you know, we you know, for, for for UK listeners, we've got the budget looming in November. There's a genuine fear factor and we are still laboring under, you know, the last budget.

We are still we are still carrying a lot of Covid debt and so on. It's you know, it's not easy. And then on top of that, you have so many barber shops opening up that are the that are on your, on your doorstep that it is a, it's a difficult industry, but we're all surviving and we're surviving. We're surviving.

Well the fact that AI can I mean the system we use but has not offered me this. And the thought of actually asking AI to run through my data and start sending me me, get me to send myself reports. Um, I think that's so exciting. I think it would do. It will force people to look at their business in a better way, because it will.

One of the things that I'm too busy. So if you take that excuse out because it's going to speed everything up, I think it's going to really help people. I always there's this industry. I think it's incredible the passion, the skill, the creativeness. But there's a lot of people who are working very hard and not making enough money as they deserve.

And I really hope by using technology, we can help businesses actually make a bit more money for what they deserve their hard work deserves, and it will mean making some tougher calls and and more intelligent tools. But that's the bit I think it is looking at your businesses. Yeah. Um, and and the with, with the amount of data, it's now so much far farther along than track and trace just to name and a number.

And like I said, I still really enjoy the fact that I know who's coming in now. Um, you know, there are guys that I hadn't known. I had no idea about, about their names. And now you can get ready for them. Yeah. And you hear the guys kind of go and actually add me another ten minutes in there. He's got so much hair or, you know, he's a great character.

It takes me 15 minutes to get him to sit down and shout, you know, but he's still keeping that intimacy in person. But, you know, how nice would it be just to wish him happy birthday because you've captured when their birthdays know your mate. You'd like that. But what the chances are coming for a haircut on the actual birthday?

Very few. Yeah. You know, we've got this lovely thing on wait list that you can actually decide, rather than that you can be first come, first serve on the wait list. Or actually, you could choose the most expensive valuable service and you can prioritize that way. So again, you can just use the tech to help you get a little bit more money.

And it's not it's it's you can you can focus on that. In the US is much more ambitious. They do. They talk about I want to be a, you know, six figure, um, barber on my own. Yeah I want to have multi chains. I want to do this. Well I think a lot I do I mean I still speak to a lot of young guys. A lot of guys that are opening up now are all kind of with this impression that they want to have an academy, they want to do this, they want to do that.

So the ambitions there, um, and now with the data, presumably that's only going to only going to help. I mean, just for a bit of gossip. What bits do you think are your systems that aren't really used if you two were running a barber shop? What bit of system do you know that your customers don't use? Because you can see it that you would prioritize above, above, and beyond?

Just set up them. Just setting up the automated marketing stuff, the amount of people that just don't set it up and they just do it for online bookings. And it's only once they, you know, will drop a message, say, hey, look, you know, you can you can automate all of this. It's really clear. Oh yeah, I know, I know, but I haven't done it yet.

Don't worry about it. And then, uh, we'll drop another hint, hint or message and then they'll come back to us after like. Yeah. So I put on all the automated marketing made my life so much easier because like, things like no shows as well, no show protection. That's another massive one. So we got a feature where when they book in, it'll capture all their details.

If they don't show up for appointment, you can charge them. So it's like a one click to turn it on. And you know you're going to get that revenue. And it also takes away a lot of people were doing deposits. We can do deposits too. But there's no need. You know you have a big barrier with deposits. You're worried people are like, oh, you know, I don't want to put half the money down now and then half later.

So with no show protection, you just click it. When they make their appointment, they confirm their appointment, and then it all ties into the cancellation and the no show policy. If they don't turn up, you can just charge them. So that's a big one because that's a massive start setting up, isn't it? And that's why we spend a lot of time with new customers to say, look, we know it's a change either brand new to software or you're coming from a legacy software.

And that's where we put a customer success manager with them for 90 days to help them with all this. Because once you've done your first one, which is, you know almost that you haven't been in for four weeks, and I know you're on a four week cycle or email. Yeah. Or my happy birthday. The really easy ones. You can then work out how to do some more sophisticated ones.

Yeah. Um, but I think it's just getting them really set up for success, which is why we partner with the Customer Success manager for 90 days. And then after that, to be honest, they run it how they want to run it. Yeah, yeah. And that's fine. It's your business. You should do it how you want to do it. Yeah, that's a really good point actually.

Yes. I think we're quite similar in the way that we handle that. So when we onboard customers we set up a WhatsApp group. One of the big reasons for us is we can help them onboard their they're all the features that they want to turn on and how to run it. But for us, we get really valuable data back because we can have conversations with them whenever we want and we find out what features they want us to build.

So and that's the way that we've from day one, we've always been tell us what you want, we'll build it and it makes it easier for us to go to and then mark it, rather than us trying to build and then sell it. So. And do you get very. Have you had some random ones. Oh yeah. That you're kind of like, no, that's not even vaguely possible.

Or have some of the really good ideas that you've got as part of your system genuinely come from a barber sitting there going, mate, this, this is my problem. We had one barbers. It was like real random. It was like, oh, they were people say, oh, now this software is not for me because originally it was a, you know, hair salon software.

And then they're like, I don't like the color. So we just changed it to dark mode and instantly. Oh, really? The positivity and the sentiment changed almost overnight just from something as simple of it's now dark mode. The default for barbers is Dartmouth. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And, you know, everywhere you go in barbers, everyone's wearing black aren't they?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We had a very similar one with the colors as well. That was a big one because we obviously started in hair two and then went into barbering. And uh, the big the big no was the color and it was on the, on their side. It wasn't the customer side. They were fine with that because it's all customizable.

It was what they see on their side in the shop. They were like, oh, the color doesn't match our brand. And like, we never considered that would be a point that people would care about that much because, you know, it's just a tool you're running. It was fairly neutral anyway. Uh, but they wanted more dark colors.

So, uh, charcoal grays and, uh, science.

00:28:07.320 — 00:33:02.589
And from your existing client, what would you say is your, your most Regular bit of feedback. I mean, obviously you're only going to say it's positive feedback, but what would be the the the the the the the the genuinely, um, positive thing that your customers come back to you with? I guess where I get pride is in the team, the sentiment of the team in terms of how supportive, while they really do know the software.

So the expert advice comes through and we call it five star service, five star support. So we pride ourselves on that side of it. Um, but the big one that goes back to the automation point they always come back to is, wow, I wish I did it earlier. I can't believe how much time I've saved. Yeah. Um, and then you get a few others.

At the moment you're going cool. At least I know. Know what my bill is now. Yeah. So. But yeah, there's are probably the top ones of mine at the moment. Yeah. The big one for us is pain point. So we're like it's kind of focused about solving pain points. So like I said, we we went all in on the fact that the market was going towards the self-employed model.

Mhm. Um, so we built all of the stuff around that and we, we had to build everything else after. So we when we started, we were like great on payments, really advanced on all that kind of stuff. The payment splitting, the data management, the KYC, um, you know, the segregated data for self-employed. But we didn't have quite have feature parity in the early days.

So we we knew that we couldn't compete like for, like with, you know, $100 million companies or billion dollar companies from day one. Um, so it was very much a case of we would have very frequent conversations with our partners to find out what is that they wanted, not just what are they experienced in other software.

Uh, but you know what? Like blue sky thinking what would make your business better? And that was like a real core part to our growth strategy, uh, because it helps us avoid falling into the pits of building what we thought, what barbers and hairdressers wanted, which most of the time was wrong. Seeing as I've never it's so hard to get.

I mean, I it's taken me a long time to be really excited when someone complains, you know what I mean? Really, genuinely. I'm all ego. I want people to tell me I'm brilliant. Um, Anthony and I. Don't worry. Yeah. Thank you. This podcast is superb. Yeah. No, but I do. And then. And then I started. I then started really listening to kind of complaints.

And we don't get a lot. You know. I mean, my team are amazing. They really are. And, and and we don't get a lot. And we got fabulous five star reviews across everywhere and all that kind of stuff. But when you do get a complaint, they're so rare you kind of go, oh, are used to kind of dismiss them, but actually they tend to carry much more weight and much more.

And so I really have rethought myself that if someone comes to me and tells me off about something, but generally those are the ones that make really big, fundamental changes to us. And I love that. Um, but it has taken me a very long time. Um, presumably if you future proofed yours. This isn't something you get when you're standing there.

This is my. This is my next bit that you two are both absolutely all in industry events, and not just big pretty stands and a load of casual workers in there. You guys are there yourselves, and you've stood there and you know, I've, I've, I've done those events standing around for 3 or 4 days. Manning. And it's it's exhausting stuff.

Um, but you're there. That interaction has got to be mind blowing for for you guys, isn't it? Um. What? You go through the whole spectrum, you get your customers who are saying, oh, how do we why can't it do this? Or why does it do that? And you think, oh, of course we can do that. Let me just show you. But clearly we've missed a trick in explaining that.

Yeah. So we're constantly then going back when you're onboarding, make sure you're being really diligent explaining the benefit and the user case. Then you get from competitors. You really get an understanding the pain points why they're coming over. Because everyone they're not coming over for a chat.

There's a lot more other stuff they can be doing. They're generally there because they've got some pain. So you get to understand that and then you get some wacky ideas, which is cool. And you think, oh, okay, that's cool. Excellent. Yeah, I think like like like I think it was off camera. I said this, but we, we did our first event pre product so we had nothing.

Um, didn't have any money for it either. So I spent all my money booking out a little stand and then had nothing I could actually put on the back wall or anything. So I ended up printing out A4 paper with some like early logo and early name ideas for the company. And everyone was coming over like, what? What are you doing here?

And like for me it was like the validation on the ideas. So I wanted to speak to as many people as possible, find out what their pain points were, why that's their pain point, and why they're not being served or serviced properly by existing software. Because I thought there was something there, but I didn't know exactly what it was.

And, um, we got such valuable feedback on that. Um, we've adopted that into like, our all of our product roadmap thing. It fundamentally comes down to our customers and our

00:33:03.590 — 00:34:06.560
our customers, our existing partners and also future partners. Um, you know, where we can meet them and find out what it is that they needed. So that's been, like, intrinsic for us. It's not just a sales side to it that we do. It's all about building the product. Um, and also kind of starting those relationships about providing the solution as opposed to like, here's our source, here's our software, here's our price payer.

And, you know, that's the end of it. It's that's not the kind of company that we've turned into purely because it's benefited us. Speaking to the barbers firsthand, finding out what the pain points are. So I think it's also an industry that wants you to be present, and they want you to be seen that you are supporting and you're not going away.

And I think the first one we went there, I was thinking, this is strange. Um, even the industry doesn't know who we are yet. You know, so we've got work to do just to get that validation and trust. Now, we've clearly got that people are coming over to us very positively now. Um, but it is an industry that I think you've almost got to give if you want something back.

Yeah. I mean, we we this salon international's next weekend. Um, I think this is probably going to go out afterwards. Um,

00:34:08.480 — 00:36:00.830
anything that you're expecting differently this this time? Obviously, yours is a now very slick operation at these events. You guys have. I saw you beautifully at hair con. Um, your stands are really huge. Presumably your presence at this is going to be. Yeah, we've got we've got a big presence. But, um, at Salon International, we're also at PBE Autumn as well, next door.

Um, so there'll be lots of the Vergara team for people to come and see. Um, share some ideas. And I always say, look, it's a software. The only thing we're a software company to do is demo it, because you've got to see it through your eyes to see how it would work for your barbershop. Yeah. That's a that's a big thing.

Just get a demo go around. Have a look at all of them and, you know, see what they do differently. Because ultimately that you you don't see it or you can't really imagine it until you see it and use it. So, um, and before we end, most of your guys are used. Is this most of your customers running your systems on phones, on iPads, on Macs.

What's the what's the general operation from your phone, on the sides to everything? Yeah. If you're a single business, often you don't. You're just running it all for 100% for the phone, and that's absolutely fine. If you're a more mature business, you've probably got all of those above. You've got iPads, you've got phones, you've got Apple and Android, you've got you've got everything.

Yeah. But system wise it'll run on. Its up in this thing. Exactly. I thought I'd simplify with and I'd finish with a very nice, simple, easy to answer the question guys. Thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. I hope we've answered covered or the past, the present and even tapped into the future.

And we don't do that half heartedly. You've been listening to the Noble Barber podcast. I've been answering the band. Thanks very much. Welcome to the Noble Barber podcast. We're always looking for interesting people and interesting stories. If you know someone or you are someone with a great story that you want to share, get in touch and come and join me on the sofa.

Thanks very much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the episode and we'll see you next time.