The New Normal: Youth in a Digital Age, with Matthew Danskin.

Mission Control Podcast

In today's episode, Mike is joined by guest Matthew Danskin. Matt is an entrepreneur who has played a role in many companies, such as The Building Experts Institute, Boom Institute, and Restoration Referral System, to name a few. He teaches restoration contractors how to develop productive referral relationships consistently. Matt talks about how they have stepped up the game with the production of their online courses and also gives insights into the challenges of successfully producing instructional content at a high level. The conversation turns towards AI and the future of technology—the challenges of raising kids in the digital age, relevant to both of them as fathers.

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Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK

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Matthew Danskin:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.danskin

Building Experts Institute:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buildingexpertsinstitute

Website: https://buildingexperts.institute/

Boom System:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Boomsystem.io

Website: https://boomsystem.io/

Restoration Referral System:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restorationrs

Website: https://www.restorationreferralsystem.com/

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:01.647) Matt, what's going on, bro?

Matt Danskin (00:07.204) Hey man, just enjoying my time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:12.623) Hmm, you and me both brother. We're back for another episode of the Mission Control podcast brought to you by your boy Mike Stearns and proudly sponsored by the team at Rufor. If you guys don't use Rufor, you should. There's a lot of reasons why, but few that come to mind are their instant roof quotes. They're great. Allow you to differentiate yourself and help give people what they're looking for when they're searching for you. You'll close more deals. Use that with their proposals. And I mean, their team is second to none. So there's gonna be a link down in the description. You can click it.

They'll know that I sent you and you'll be happy that you did. I promise. I promise. Without further ado, Matt Danskin back for a second tour part due of the Mission Control podcast. I mean, how excited are you to be here today?

Matt Danskin (00:56.26) You know, it's one of my lifelong goals to be on this podcast, not once, but twice. And I can check it off the bucket list.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:07.056) Yeah, you know, we make dreams come true here. So I'm happy that you feel that way and happy we can help you with that. I'm just, I'm happy to be a part of the, of your aspirations and bringing those to fruition. So thank you.

Matt Danskin (01:20.356) Thank you, man. I didn't know you were working with Rufor. I actually did a training with them on their like masterclass series thing, like a month ago and it went really well. Yeah. I was.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:27.824) Mm -hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:33.265) Yeah, they are. We've we worked with them for a long time. Just there's kind of like a symbiotic relationship between what roofers need from them, the way that ties in together. And for the longest time, it was like the instant estimator and them drawing up their proposals.

with a few hour turnaround or whatever. And, you know, consistently what we found is that every single one of our customers that we were working with, that were working with us, working with Rufr, just had nothing but great things to say about them as far as how well the products work, the experience that they had, you know, if they had issues, their customer support. So a lot of things aligned for us. And it's like it just made sense to kind of partner.

Matt Danskin (02:12.74) Yeah, that's awesome. I like what they got going on for sure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:16.114) Nice. What was the topic for the master class?

Matt Danskin (02:21.988) It was inspect something around inspection. So we actually did. We did a part two for that too, because we did the part one was so popular that they were like we gotta have you back. And so we did part two as well. Same, right?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:33.549) Same. Yeah. Savvy move. So you have a couple companies, right? Tell the audience, what are the names of those companies?

Matt Danskin (02:47.716) So restoration referral system, I've been doing for about four and a half years, teaches roofing contractors and restoration contractors how to create referral relationships with insurance agents. We don't do a lot of different things with that company, we just do that one thing really, really well.

And then Building Experts Institute, about a year ago I started with Matt Mulholland and another guy, John Tillman. We purchased the National Claims Institute. We produce really high quality, in depth.

expert -led training. So trying to tackle more of the technical side of roofing and claims as opposed to sales and management and all that sort of stuff that a lot of people focus on. We're, you know, properly identifying hail, doing a thorough inspection, dealing with engineers, writing exactimates, all, you know, documenting your claims, understanding building code, assessing repairability, all that sort of nerdy stuff. But that nerdy stuff is really important.

too.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (03:55.793) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So with restoration referral system, very specialized focus on one thing. And that makes sense, guys. You know, if you got a, if you've got a heart issue, you don't want to go to your just family physician primary care to have them diagnose what's wrong with your heart. You want to go to a cardiologist because they've been studying hearts for hopefully a very long time. And they're going to be much better equipped to give you guidance as far as how to have you an optimal cardiac health. I would think that's what I would do.

Matt Danskin (04:26.148) Sounds good to me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:26.354) So go see Matt, figure out how you can build these relationships to where you can get a ton of leads, huh? And then the Building Experts Institute, that is, you're covering a lot of stuff. So is it supposed to be a hub where I can come as a...

Matt Danskin (04:39.62) Yeah, so...

Matt Danskin (04:48.868) sorry, it kind of glitched out for me for a second. But, B E I, if you've ever seen.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:52.72) Christian, we'll cut this.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:58.417) So as building experts Institute, is it supposed to be a hub that I can go to as a contractor and really learn all facets of the business or are there certain clusters that you guys are going to specifically get people up to speed on?

Matt Danskin (05:12.9) So we're not trying to tackle all facets. Like I said, we're not trying to tackle sales. We're not trying to tackle management and running your company and your finances and your marketing and all that sort of stuff. Business development, it really is just focused on the technical side of things.

A lot of the the claim stuff that people take for granted and are lazy with and bad at because they don't know any better, frankly, we're.

we're taking and teaching very, very thoroughly. We're getting the best people on the planet. So my, you know, we've, we've kind of copied the business model of masterclass. If you're familiar with that, where they take who is, who is the very best person to teach and speak on this topic. Let's get that person. Let's go really, really in depth. It's not just going to be a little summary, you know,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:02.159) Mm -hmm.

Matt Danskin (06:18.372) on this thing, you're going to understand this better than 99 % of people in the market when you're done with this course. And...

and then we produce it beautifully. John Tillman is our director of media that we shoot it with multiple cameras that are really high -end cameras and he knows what he's doing with them and professional lighting and professional audio and then we added everything down so that's what we're doing right now with the courses that we have in production.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:49.04) Hmm. That's amazing. What my concern with whether it's enrolling in a course or like selling courses, the percentage of people that sign up and don't do anything with it, right? Like even if they attend it, they watch it, like it doesn't get.

there's no action plan associated with that is there some sort of methods that you have as far as trying to bolster what percentage of people that enroll in the course are actually consuming the content and not only that they're actually doing something with that content that's going to change their business.

Matt Danskin (07:25.092) Yeah, so with like with restoration referral system, it is very much like you could get all the information and then do nothing with it. And obviously that's going to do nothing for you. And so I've had to kind of bake into the process. All right, we're going to learn this thing. And all right, now we're going to do that one small thing. We're going to make sure, you know, I still can't make a horse drink, but I can cram their head pretty close to the water is what I like to say with with Building Experts Institute.

really once you have that information, that is going to work its way into your system. Understanding how hailstorms happen and the way that the damage presents itself and the way to document it and all those types of things, they may not adopt our processes 100 % the way that we teach it, but that information is going to better equip them to...

look at a roof and understand what did or didn't happen here and understand how to make that case to the insurance company or to the homeowner or whatever the case may be. That one's a little bit easier. I would say it's almost like a Netflix subscription in the sense of like you sign up for BEI, you get access to everything. Now I have a Netflix subscription and I haven't watched anything in a month.

but I keep my Netflix subscription because I might want to watch it next month. I might have some free time on my hands. I want to sit down and watch that new series that they've got out or that new course that BEI has come out with. And so we don't necessarily force people to do that stuff, but we do want to make the information so good and the way that it's presented so good that you actually enjoy it.

I know that's kind of a foreign concept in our industry because most stuff is shot on an iPhone with the wind blowing in the microphone. And I know you're sitting here in a studio with beautiful production. I'm actually on my laptop here. This isn't what our courses look like. And most of them are with people prettier than me. But the point of it is we're...

Matt Danskin (09:47.62) If you can make that viewing experience and that listening experience better, and then the information is so good that it makes you money, it makes you more successful, that's what we're doing to lead people to go, you know what, I'm gonna invest my time into this, I'm gonna learn this stuff, I'm gonna use it, because I got a little bit of it, and it's working.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:10.127) mmm I love that what's a what some of the critical feedback you've gotten thus far

Matt Danskin (10:17.892) Critical is in like bad.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:21.359) Not bad, just like not raining endorsements. Like when like we're doing this meetup thing and one of the things that we tried to do was like a focus group and it was a lot of things that people felt good about. I'm like, yeah, but I want to know like what you don't like about this. Like tell me, has there anybody, has anyone spoken out as far as things like where they see opportunity for improvement?

Matt Danskin (10:31.044) Mm -hmm.

Matt Danskin (10:35.844) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (10:40.612) You know, I think one of the biggest downsides to trying to have really high quality production and trying to go really in depth is that it slows down how quickly we can crank out courses. And so people are like, all right, I'm ready for the next one. I want more, I want more. And we're not gonna compromise on that quality. We're not gonna...

you know, just spit something out. And so I think that's been frustrating. I mean, that's frustrating for me because I'm like, I want to get all this information out as quick as possible, but it takes time to deliver on that level of quality. So like, that's like the, you know, what is your biggest weakness? you know, sometimes I care too much, right? Like, you know, it's a, yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (11:25.583) Good answer.

Matt Danskin (11:30.564) But some of the things I teach our inspection course, and that's probably been our most controversial because our test squares, I will mark every legitimate hail hit in a test square. So we might have 70 hits in a test square. And 99 % of roofers are gonna mark 10 and then just go 10 plus. And.

Because that's what the insurance company told them to do. That's what the adjusters taught them to do. And the problem that we see is these guys are marking 10 and then the insurance company is looking at their photos and maybe some of those hail hits didn't photograph very well. Maybe a couple of them are not hail. They're blistering or a manufacturer defect or whatever the case is. And then now they go, hey, four of those I don't agree with you on. You.

you got six, our threshold is eight to 10, we're gonna prescribe a repair. And instead of that roofing contractor spending five more minutes to actually document it, now they're stuck. And so some of those things like that, that I truly deeply believe this is the best way to go about it, there's just that friction where people are like, I've done it for 10 years, I've...

I've sold this many millions of dollars in roofs and I get this stuff approved, I'm gonna keep doing it my way. And I'm like, all right, cool, do it your way. But next time that you get one denied that should have been approved, that probably would have been approved had you spent another couple minutes on it, think of me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:13.138) So it's like a situation, and I'm ignorant to this stuff, but based on what you're telling me, so if you're doing 70 strikes versus 10, the sample size is way bigger. So even if they, let's say they minimize what you've marked up by 60%, you still have a situation where there's 30 strikes, right? And it's much harder to say, well, just repair it because there's 30.

Matt Danskin (13:33.38) Yeah, yeah, they, you know, for...

Matt Danskin (13:38.82) Right, yeah, so if their threshold and different carriers have different thresholds of what they consider, you know, significant that might be six or eight or 10 or 12 or 20, whatever it is. If we're taking a sampling of the roof, which is 100 square feet, and most people's process, and we're using that to determine how much damage is all over the roof. Again,

If I mark everything, they can say, hey, I don't agree with some of these. We're still going to be above their threshold. The result still ends up, this claim is approved. We're building the roof.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:17.522) That seems pretty intuitive, why is it controversial?

Matt Danskin (14:22.66) Cause people are lazy. I don't know if you noticed this.

Matt Danskin (14:29.412) Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it's all that they're lazy. It's just that they've had some success doing the bare minimum. And so it's hard to see the forest for the trees and say, you know what, the ones that I am struggling with could be solved very quickly and easily just by doing this every single time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:52.338) I mean how much extra time on each roof does it take to make the additional 60 circles?

Matt Danskin (14:59.94) I mean like maybe five minutes. Maybe.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:01.585) Yeah, I mean, it feels like a disproportionate amount of upside for the effort that would have to be exerted.

Matt Danskin (15:08.516) Yeah, that's why it's one of those things that is like, I'm not gonna change even if you don't like this. I think this is the way to go. And so I'm gonna keep pounding that drum until people adopt it or don't.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:21.619) Yeah, whatever. It's your world, live in it. So what has been, I guess, as far as like the curriculum that you guys have deployed, what has been the most viewed? Where have you gotten the most engagement?

Matt Danskin (15:39.14) The first course that we came out with is called Defeating Unethical Engineering Tactics, which is just a master class on when an insurance company engages with an engineer, essentially for the purpose of denying your claim.

how to navigate that situation. It's like a college course on that topic. Matt Mohon does a really good job of that. He's taught that topic and developed that training for years now. And that's something that...

you're not going to find anywhere else. There's other places where they're going to teach you about what hail damage is, maybe not to the degree we do. There's other places they're going to teach you how to inspect a roof, probably not the same way that we do, but that's something that it's like nobody else touches. And so we kind of own that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:40.852) So how frequently I know that there's challenges to how frequently you're putting out content, how frequently is new content being added to the library?

Matt Danskin (16:52.484) It's about every six weeks right now.

we're releasing a new course. Our goal is to have that once a month. We're not there. We're not there just yet. We've got eight courses out, but I've got three that we've recorded that are in production right now. And so we'll have our next course out here in a couple of weeks. There'll be another one about four weeks after that, another one about four weeks after that. You know, we're not guaranteeing we're going to have a new course every week, but that is something that we are working really, really hard on.

really hard to meet that mark.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (17:34.132) Where did this come about?

Matt Danskin (17:38.916) the business in itself. So I've known Matt Mulholland for years. I've developed a restoration referral system. In doing so, I hired a video guy, John Tillman, and found somebody who's really, really great at that.

I saw Matt had the National Claims Institute, which he was providing great education. People had really good feedback about the information that they were getting. It was just difficult because you had to...

you know, fly down to Florida, take a few, you know, take time off of work, go, you know, sit through these courses. It's just the logistics of it added a lot to the cost. The fact that they could only train so many people made the cost high as well. So it was something that that business wasn't really thriving because they couldn't get enough people to spend a bunch of money on these courses. You know, it wasn't a great deal for the.

the students because they had to spend so much just to get there to learn this stuff. And so,

you know, kind of came up with the idea of like, let's get this really good information out to the masses. Let's record it really, really well. Let's have it available 24 seven. Let's make it accessible and affordable for everyone to have. so that, you know, we can, we can make our business successful by having lots and lots of users, you know, subscribing to this training as opposed to trying to make all of our money off of a handful of people.

Matt Danskin (19:18.982) that we're overcharging for the training.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:24.597) So how long did it take to go from that point to the inception of BEI?

Matt Danskin (19:33.224) About six months. You know, it's something that I, even as restoration referral system, I had kind of played around with the idea of tackling more topics and bringing other people in on doing that. But it was just a matter of like the right people and the right skill sets came together at the right time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:00.885) I love that for you.

Matt Danskin (20:05.092) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:07.637) So what else is new, man? You're welcome.

Matt Danskin (20:08.74) Thanks.

man, I am, you know, it's, it's summertime here, at the time of this recording, if you're watching this later. so I'm kind of enjoying, being home and, you know, working from home and developing courses and all that sort of stuff. We get into the off season, so to speak, and it's, you know,

traveling for conferences, for trainings, for all sorts of stuff. So that's kind of the rhythm of my life right now.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:44.726) So how long do you get this reprieve?

Matt Danskin (20:52.676) About three months. It's about three months of not traveling and about nine months of traveling.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:59.734) It's a lot of traveling.

Matt Danskin (21:02.596) I mean, I'm not traveling constantly during those nine months, but there's a good bit of it. How about you though, man? You just had an absolute game changer in your life.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:15.542) Tell my little Everett.

Matt Danskin (21:17.956) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:18.742) Yeah, he's something special that kid. He's growing quick too. Bulking season was a success from months zero to six, so he's up to like 20 pounds. Now we're trying to lean out just a little bit. Not really lean out, more so just curb the bulk, right? So he's doing great. Brings me a lot of joy and yeah, it's amazing. It's a...

Matt Danskin (21:28.132) Okay. Nice.

Matt Danskin (21:37.828) Okay. All right. Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:43.286) My daughter's turning 17 and lots changed in my life and things that you buy for kids and things like that. So it's been a very interesting journey.

Matt Danskin (21:56.708) I bet man, I've got my youngest is two and a half and I'm glad to be done with the baby stage till the grandkids come around.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:08.854) Yeah, yeah, and then like the grand, I always look forward to being like a grandparent, right? It's like, yeah, bring my grandbaby over. We'll hang out for like five hours. They'll think I'm the coolest person in the world. I'll let them do whatever they want. And then here, take your kid back, right? Sounds magical. Yeah. Things at the center going great. Team's going well. We just brought on an account manager here. We're getting her trained up and

Matt Danskin (22:24.388) That's the dream.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:34.967) assimilated into the culture. It's been a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoy it. We're fortunate to have a great group of clients and partners and things like that. So I mean, yeah, just one foot in front of the other. Brick by brick by brick.

Matt Danskin (22:52.036) Let me, can I ask you some questions? Does that work for the format?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:56.47) okay let's turn the table Christian do some sweet editing on this

Matt Danskin (23:05.156) So in the digital space, obviously it'd be great if customers came to work for you or work with you. What do you see, but even outside of Ascend or anything, what do you see as the biggest changes happening in the...

like website space, you know, not necessarily roofing specifically, but like, you know, I don't stay up to date on these things. Like it, is there any like major changes with, with AI or with SEO or any of the things?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:47.192) yeah, always changes, always big changes. You know, there's some like digital marketing coaches out there that'll tell you all you need is chat GPT.

You know, you can eliminate marketing agencies in their entirety and, you know, just, just do everything with, with chat GBT and you're going to be great. I don't take that stance. I don't, we've, we've used AI's and implemented it in the facets of our business really for efficiency. I think that the, it's a great tool. I think that there's plenty of opportunity for it to grow. I feel like from its baseline to where it's at now, it's improved considerably and it'll continue to do that. But I think that anybody for, for a lot of, especially marketing companies, the ones that are going to continue to add value.

and make impacts for their clients. It's going to be how they leverage these different resources, right? I'm a part of a bunch of forums like outside of roofing and you know, a lot of people are pushing like AI created images, websites, things like that. And it's like...

you can get you know you can tell that there there wasn't much time energy and attention put into these things like where will be in twelve months twenty four months no fucking clue honestly because the rate of innovation and and the rate of which things change it's it's crazy you know when when a i started becoming more pervasive

Matt Danskin (24:55.204) sure. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:05.943) I bet on Nvidia. I was like, they make like hardware to integrate with like these software things and AI. I'm like, yeah, we're gonna do that. I'm really glad I did that. It was a nominal amount of money, but it always feels good to get a win, right? So whatever. Interesting side note. Yeah, I think that.

It's like the AI stuff is so useful for so many reasons, right? Like if you're trying to create content, you're having writer's block. If you're trying to develop SOPs, but I think that there's a, there's an underlying principle that always has to be paid attention to. It's not just like here, put a, put a prompt in, pull all of this out, slap it on an SOP and like now go run your company. Like there's nuance to that, right? Especially like for, for if you're creating standard operating procedures, right? Like use that as a framework and then refine that framework and then take the framework that you've created for that SOP.

Matt Danskin (25:48.324) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:56.313) And then make it your own because your company, company A versus B versus C versus D, like they're all going to change a little bit. They're all going to have different flavors and nuance to them. So I think like that's an instance where as opposed to sitting down with a pen and a paper and trying to write out, you know, a 15 page SOP for something within your company, that really sucks and it's time intensive and not a lot of people are going to do that. Use things like AI and the tools that are afforded to you to streamline that process, make it easier on yourself and accomplish more, right?

yeah, I'm, I'm very interested to see like over the next 36 months where things had in general and, and not just specific to marketing, just like with businesses and the opportunities that AI will afford as it becomes more refined, and more real time, how, how things can change within a business by, by leveraging new technologies that are constantly being created.

Matt Danskin (26:28.26) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:59.735) What are your thoughts?

Matt Danskin (27:04.42) My thoughts, you know, I see the AI, on the AI side of things, I see the, with claims, AI.

taking that over really quickly. So a lot of the supplement companies and all that sort of stuff are already using AI heavily to do their job, right? To write an argument as to why, you know, we need starter on this roof or whatever stupid thing it is for supplementing. I think a year from now, claims are going to be getting settled and negotiated back and forth with AIs fighting both sides of that battle.

You know, to the point where it's just you're trying to build your AI bot to beat their AI bot. So that'll be an interesting development, I think.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:46.872) Hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:02.264) 12 months, that's a prediction.

Matt Danskin (28:06.276) That's my prediction is 12 months, there's gonna be a lot of that. Not to say that that's the only way it's gonna be getting done, but I think there's gonna be a lot of that in 12 months.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:17.815) Yeah, I'm I don't I don't think that seems far -fetched from and again I'm not intimately involved with any of these things but as far as I guess the the fluidity and the agility of AI to adapt and things and as they expand The resources that are invested to it. It doesn't seem like we're not talking about rocket science here, right? You know, it doesn't need to be

Matt Danskin (28:43.684) Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a.

Matt Danskin (28:49.7) There's only so many different variables to a claim situation. And so it's just plugging in the variables and setting up algorithms to deal with all of them and you're done. Then you can replace billions of dollars worth of administration.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:05.398) Yeah. Speaking like AI and like progression of innovation. Have you heard of like Neuralink?

Matt Danskin (29:16.132) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:18.07) How far away are we from like that? Isn't that terrifying? I'm fucking, I'm fucking afraid.

Matt Danskin (29:27.158) I don't see that. I'm not gonna say that it's never gonna happen, but I don't see the path for people to be like, yep, put that in my head. I'm good with that. I think there's enough people that are just like, and I'm a technology adopter, right? I was on all this chat GPT, you know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:40.664) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (29:55.524) a year and a half ago, which is fairly early on, right? I'm not leading the charge by any stretch, but I got an Apple Vision. I get the newest drone that comes out. I'm into technology stuff, but you're not plugging anything into my brain.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:15.863) Yeah, it's like the augmented reality stuff concerns me as well.

I think about when I was a kid, friends would come over, we'd play video games, and it was like a social experience, right? We're playing Resident Evil, fucking shooting zombies, whatever, right? A lot of fun. And then when PlayStation 3 came out with PlayStation Network, and now everyone could just throw on a headset, it's like now everyone isolated, and we still got that time together, but we're all doing it via our own room, and it's not the same. It's not the same experience. And it seems like...

Matt Danskin (30:48.772) Mm -hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:50.712) You know, with with everything being like internet related with social media, gaming and things like that, it seems like much less frequently now nowadays than back in my day. Like kids are getting together and like stimulating each other like in ways and like, I don't know, we used to go play fucking manhunt and go roof hopping when we were like 13 years old in the city. Probably not the best life choice, but it was a lot of fun, right? And I got experiences to draw off of not just sitting on fucking tick tock.

Matt Danskin (31:17.572) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:20.215) watching people dance, I don't know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:26.871) Am I crazy? Yeah, crazy.

Matt Danskin (31:28.196) Yep. No, no, I yeah, it's, it's definitely something that we're very aware of, like, so my, the funny thing is my 13 year old just walked through with the Apple vision on over his head. Like watching a movie while he walks around the house.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:42.391) Mm.

Matt Danskin (31:49.252) and only he can hear it and only he can see it. Which I did, he was doing something with me and then I told him, I was like, I gotta do this podcast, go be by yourself for a little bit. But that stuff definitely is very, it can be isolating and so I think for old folks like us, we're always gonna crave that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:50.487) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (32:13.892) that social interaction and like this is the way that we're wired. But we're probably a generation away from people who are just being like, yeah, I'm gonna sit in my condo by myself and VR and have a date with somebody. And I prefer that experience.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (32:34.423) Yeah, yeah, I've got a couple of questions that come to mind. Like one, what is our responsibility to our children as far as putting guardrails on, you know, how frequently they can use technology, right? Whether it's social media, whether it's VR, like, is there, do we have that responsibility? And if so, in your mind, like how many hours a day? The other thing is like I heard not too long ago, something about like, like people having like legitimate relationships with with chat bots, like AI chat box on the internet.

and like spending hours consuming back and forth like it was fucking I was baffled. Yeah.

So I guess that one's not a question. That's more so that's just more so a statement.

Matt Danskin (33:17.412) Yeah, I mean, I think.

Matt Danskin (33:21.732) Yeah, that's just crazy. Yeah. I mean, I, we, we have, you know, very strict requirements with our kids in terms of like what content they're, they're consuming and how much and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, like, well, they'll get a little bit of time by themselves and then.

you know, if we do something, it'll be like a movie night with the family, which, you know, we've got kids from two to 13. So, you know, that stuff's usually pretty, pretty childish, type of content. But, yeah, we, we also like are very intentional about like getting the kids out and whether it's like sports camps or whatever it is, like you're gonna go be around people and learn how to interact because that, that is.

That is insanity to have a relationship with a software.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (34:15.351) Yeah, yeah, I'd say. And it's interesting, too, because I feel like some of the like the unintended consequence of all these great things that allow like convenient interaction, like like, let's say, for instance, like, you know, playing Call of Duty with your friends on like a headset or whatever.

I think that a social anxiety gets brought about as a result of that. If you look at the way that people typically interact on a website, if you know 100 people, let's say 20 that are age 20, 20 that are 30, 40, 50, 60, and how they choose to interact.

Right, like the older demographic is typically going to be like, I want a phone call. I want to talk to somebody where like at the other end of the spectrum, it's like, fucking I don't want to talk to anybody. let me just book my appointment. Right. And I'll, I'll, you know, if I have a husband, he's going to sit there and talk to it. Cause I don't want to deal with it. so it's like, well, we take that into consideration, like when we're building websites, right? So.

Matt Danskin (35:08.036) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (35:12.983) We don't always want to pigeonhole. If you're a roofer, right, you could be serving people from the age of 21 up to 70, right? And their preferred method of conversion could be very different based on how old they are. So we always want to make pervasive calls to action and diverse calls to action to accommodate whatever it is for the experience that you want, right?

Matt Danskin (35:35.108) way to bring it back around to roofing websites.

That's beautiful. But I mean, that's a great point or whatever is like we all like make like engage with technology differently. So the, I mean, that is a really important thing to make sure you're addressing the way different people deal with technology and the way that they want to engage. I was always as a roofing salesperson, I was always the guy that like,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (35:43.287) Hahaha!

Matt Danskin (36:06.468) I would have someone schedule their appointment with me and a lot of my customers really loved that. And a lot of times they wouldn't even be home and I'd go do my inspection. I'd send them a company cam link and I'd send them an e -doc. And like I literally had customers that I sold their roof, picked out materials, worked their claim, built the roof, collected payment without ever seeing their face. And you know, and that's five, six years ago.

And I wonder if that's going to become more of the trend. And you have people that are like, no, I'd never do that. Why? Why not? If that's the way that they want to engage with it and it's a profitable transaction and everything works for everybody.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (36:59.063) Yeah, I don't necessarily see a reason why you don't at least let it be an option. I guess the only thing is it's hard if you're trying to develop a sales process and you're building a sales team. Let's say you have a larger sales team. I guess they have to be situationally aware as far as catering to the customer and what the customer wants. But a lot of the times it's not them setting the appointment. So the responsibility, I guess, would fall on the...

Matt Danskin (37:07.396) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (37:26.871) whoever's answering the phone to make the determination are we gonna walk them down a path of an in -person appointment? Is it as simple as just asking them do you want somebody in person or do you want to do this remotely?

And I think that's a tough choice to take make because I think a lot of the times people like if I'm a company owner, I might want my salespeople in front of the customer to have the opportunity to build that relationship because there is a difference in that. Right. But to your point, there's a lot of people that they don't want to fucking see anybody. Right. And they just want give me what it's going to cost me to fix. I'm going to make a choice. And if it's you and I never got to see you and I can get a new roof like this has been fantastic. I'll give you five stars.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (38:10.711) I don't know.

Matt Danskin (38:11.684) Yeah, it's definitely not going to be for everybody, but I do think that.

really going forward, you know, talk about like, hey, your Salesforce, can they manage this? I think that allows you to have have AI fill in the gaps for your Salesforce to follow up with customers to, you know, answer their questions that are, you know, the repeat type of questions that they get to update people on what's going on. I think the automations and the AI and all that sort of stuff.

having that type of process and then sprinkling in, you know, if you want, if you want that person in person, great, we've got them too. Yeah, I think you saw that with customer service. People hated that when everything went to robot voice, you know, dial this number for this option or whatever. And then companies started killing it because they were like, we have live customer service.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:11.959) and you're just screaming, agent, agent!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:21.145) I think, yeah, and that's where I was gonna go with this next was, you know, I specifically, I wanna talk to somebody and maybe that's cause I'm old. I don't know what it is. Like I like to talk to somebody, but it might just be how inept the technology has been, right? Where it's like, you know, you'll say, you know, choose from these three things. Are you calling to make a payment? Are you calling to change your service? And you're like calling to make a payment and the AI or the technology is like, did you say Dill Pickle?

Matt Danskin (39:21.86) What's that?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:52.472) And you're like, give me give me an agent customer service rep, you're smashing zero, right? And they take away your ability to bypass their stupid fucking system that doesn't allow you to do what you want. And it's the most frustrating thing ever. Now, fast forward, like if we have AI that's implemented where it actually is competent enough to facilitate the outcome that I want efficiently, I guess I'd be more more excited about using something like

Matt Danskin (40:01.988) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (40:22.34) Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, there's no telling where this is going to be a year or two from now, but it's definitely progressing quickly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (40:34.296) Yeah. So you said that you had questions for me, and I think you asked me one question. What other questions do you got?

Matt Danskin (40:43.364) Okay.

Any growth spurts coming up?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (40:51.896) Yeah, Everett's about to hit a growth spurt soon. I'm not gonna. No, I'm five foot nothing for the rest of my life. So, that's rude, by the way.

But again, work on my posture and I look taller.

Matt Danskin (41:04.708) man.

Matt Danskin (41:09.892) There you go. Just angle the camera.

Matt Danskin (41:19.044) the you know if i was pretty as you wouldn't have to pick on your height so

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:32.984) Mwah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:37.944) Yeah, so...

Matt Danskin (41:38.052) It is it is so choppy right now. I'm I'm getting like little little bits and pieces of you so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:42.584) It is.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:47.672) Okay, well this was fun. We should do it again sometime.

Matt Danskin (41:50.98) Yeah. Yeah. Part three.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:58.04) Part 3 coming soon to a YouTube channel near you at Ascend Digital Agency. I think that's the handle, right? I don't know. Just punch in Ascend Digital Agency, you'll find the content. You go on Spotify, I mean we're everywhere. We're everywhere. Matthew, thank you so much for so graciously attending and providing value to the audience.

Matt Danskin (42:15.908) Yes, sir.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (42:19.512) I appreciate you.

Matt Danskin (42:20.324) Thanks for having me again, man. Sorry about the awkward moments there.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (42:23.224) Yeah, you're fine. Thank you to the team at Rufr for helping making this possible. And thank you to you, the ones listening. We do it all for you. Drop some comments, share it with somebody who it'll help, and we go.