2178 - Connecting Consumers with Exceptional Service and Discovering Daisy's with Hagan Kappler

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Hagen Kapler. Hagen, you are the co-founder and CEO of Daisy. You're found on the web at daisyco.com, D-A-I-S-Y-C-O.com. Hagen, it's great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah. Well, before we talk about Daisy, and boy, I'm going to be excited to talk about your area of expertise because I am such a nerd on what you do. But speaking of nerddom, uh what what are what are you into lately you know outside of work I don't know if there's any movies tv shows hobbies anything that that you geek out on that that others may not know or you know I guess just kind of the things that you're passionate about my life is um outside of daisy I've got four kids so um I'm doing whatever they're into which is a lot of little league baseball, a lot of, you know, kids sports.

2:01And then otherwise I'm sitting on airplanes going and visiting our branches. So I'm watching a lot of white Lotus. I'm watching Hacks. You're watching white Lotus too? Are you all caught up? So good. Yes. Okay. As of when we're recording this, so to our friends that are listening, the show is long since over. We are recording this and the season finale is in about five days. and how would you describe like why like like the the show structure of like White Lotus for someone who's never watched it like how do you like how would you sell it because this is the third season yeah and this is the longest season by the way oh really the first season seven the second season and this one has eight episodes but for someone who's never watched it like how would you describe it?

2:49I think it's playing around with human dynamics, how people like interact with one another. There's a little bit of a class dynamic too, because there's the people that work in the hotel, the people that are on vacation. And I think you sometimes think, oh, you know, if someone's on vacation at a, you know, White Lotus or Four Seasons Resort, their life must be perfect. And you've come to find out they're incredibly flawed. nothing is perfect no it's perfect and um in this particular season there's this dynamic between these three girlfriends that go on this girl's trip that is probably my favorite storyline is just like one girl leads and the other two talk about each other and so my friends and i just die laughing because that's so true of adult women who are like still acting like they're you know in high school.

3:44Yeah. So it's like, it never ends. You know, it does. We're all just kids who we're all just in, I think in one of the after shows, one of the women says, we're basically just high school kids that have never grown up, you know, high school in our minds, we're still in high school and we've never grown up. Yeah. But, but some of us do grow up and become CEOs of very successful companies. How's that for a segue? Right. Hey, can tell us about Daisy, what you do. Yeah, Daisy, we founded the company. My co-founder and I founded the company a little over a year ago. We're the first national brand in home and small business technology.

4:24We both install the technology, but what has differentiated us is we have an ongoing service. So we're helping homeowners and builders and property managers with an ongoing service. So we don't just install this kind of complex work of art and disappear. We stick around and we're helping kind of be stewards of technology for customers' lives. And when I say home technology, I'm talking about television, speakers, security systems, lighting, motorized shades, and then the control systems that tie these things all together. So to build this national brand, we set about by acquiring existing companies.

5:08There's 20 ,000 of them in the country alone, and it's a$30 billion market. Yes. So we acquired them to form a foundation, and then we franchised the brand from there. So in the last a little over 12 months, we have acquired 12 companies. We've franchised nine companies, but we've got a ton of more companies in our backlog. So now we've got locations all across the country. You know, this is absolutely brilliant because, and I'm so great. Listen, as someone who is a total smart home nerd, I have been shocked that if you want a contractor to help you. And there, listen, there are a lot of very complicated considerations that most homeowners, unless you go down the rabbit hole, like I did and watch a hundred hours of YouTube videos, which I did, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of mistakes that you can make.

6:10And so right now, if you want to hire somebody to do that, first off, it's the wild Southwest because you don't know, like, for example, we had one contractor, he's like, you know, and this was, I remember this was a few years ago. He's like, oh yeah, I'm going to hook you up with some smart home stuff. I mean, this was the worst, cheapest garbage doesn't integrate with anything. And me as a consumer, I'm like, ooh, how fun, smart home stuff. Well, then come to find out he installs these things. I can't use this with anything else because it doesn't talk to anything. We're going to talk about that in just a second, but I want to talk about the state of the industry because again, it's felt like the wild west.

6:51There's independent contractors. There's no consolidation. There's no standard. Basically anyone who says I'm a smart home person. Okay. I guess you're a smart home person. But you know, you're speaking to fellow consumers, your mileage may vary. Right. What are your observations? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what we found as well. There's, I mean, I guess our take on it, and we've now met with hundreds of these small business owners across the country. And, you know, I think it's not, you know, part of the challenge that these business owners have, it's not that they don't love the technology.

7:33It's not that they're not great at installing and learning about the technology. It's just that they don't have the support that they need in order to run and operate a small business. Things like, you know, they don't have a C, like a CPA, they're not accountants. And this is pretty complicated accounting. These are, they're, they're serving a very high, high-end consumer. These are 50 to sometimes$300 ,000 installations, maybe more, maybe million plus installations. You're working with high-end custom builders in many cases. You're having to hire experienced technicians, you know, and how do you go about finding that kind of talent?

8:15Marketing to this kind of high-end clientele is very complex. So every kind of element of operating a business on your own is one thing. And that exists. My team, we all come from other home services, pest control, HVAC, home cleaning. And in those industries that have been invested in now over the last 20 years, there's been a lot of private equity financial sponsors in those spaces. There just hasn't been that kind of investment here. And so part of our, as we've been acquiring these companies, we've also been, we're venture backed. So as we've been raising money, we've taken every dollar, put half towards the acquisitions and half towards building out infrastructure to support these companies.

8:59So it's not as if they're wanting to hurt the consumer necessarily. They just maybe don't have great relationships with suppliers. And in fact, what we see is a lot of times the suppliers don't give them great training. They can't get on the line with the supplier. So they're not given the respect that they really deserve. And so we have great relationships now from a purchasing perspective. And we have good training in place because now we have that kind of purchase power. So those are the ways that we've taken kind of those observations that you kind of probably felt as a consumer. We've started from the business owner's perspective, tried to provide some tools so that they can go out and be better with the consumer just because all those other elements of running a business, we can kind of take off their plate.

9:49They can get back to doing what they do best. I think that's fantastic. You know, and by the way, in terms of the opportunity, can you talk more about, and you've mentioned this just a little bit about what the potential is for the future? Because, listen, as someone probably who's a little bit more on the, you know, the front edge of this thing, I walk into any room in my house and everything is automated. Everything is voice activated. Everything is smart controlled. I have intelligence, you know, that just controls everything. But again, it's been hundreds of hours in order to get here. And, you know, many, many thousands of many thousands of dollars that many, many, many thousands of dollars I put into this.

10:37But now that I'm here, like when friends come over and I show them, you know, what is possible, the envy is real. Because it's like having Jarvis in your home. And so, you know, there are the, you know, kind of the people that have been, I guess I'm getting my question is, everyone's going to have this eventually. I say everyone, but most Americans, when they see what kind of quality of life improvement you can have in your home, how much money you can save off your electricity bill, how many automations can just improve safety, security, well-being, making sure your home is safe and intelligent for your children.

11:22there are so many reasons why you probably want to start making your home a little bit more intelligent instead of living in a dumb home. Can you talk about what investors and other people understand about the future? Yeah, I think there's different target segments out there, and I think there's a smart home for all of those segments. So the issue today is there's kind of this DIY segment, and it sounds like you kind of fall into that space. And now, and there's this high, high exclusive, you know, very wealthy high-end segment. And, and that's where this, the guys, and frankly, that's where Daisy kind of serves today.

12:03It's like, what about the rest of us, you know, in between and, and our goal, my aspiration wasn't to build the company to just help install speakers and putting grains for the rest of my life. I do think that over time, as we become more efficient at installing and servicing these homes. And also as technology costs come down, we'll be able to help solve the various needs. I think a couple of things in terms of the needs that are in place. I mean, one is what we have found is that technology, as wonderful even as your system is right now, it's going to break. There's going to be upgrades that the various manufacturers will make, which will wreak havoc in the rest of your system.

12:47And it sounds like you can figure that out and you'll be able to troubleshoot that. Not every customer wants to do that. And not everyone has the time to do that or wants to do that. And so that's where someone like Daisy comes in and will be there. We can do that remotely, frankly, but we can also come to your home every quarter. And that's a service that we provide. um the the other issue that we're finding from the the ongoing services is that your life also changes your you have kids and so you know maybe or your your um your position in your career changes so maybe you have more disposable income so originally you put you know kind of builder grade shades in your home and then as time went on you know you were willing to upgrade the shades in the guest room, or maybe you had a baby and all of a sudden you want like blackout, totally soundless motorized shades.

13:39I don't care what it costs, right? Well, how am I supposed to keep up with what technology, what's going on in technology? I mean, I go to CES every year and I see there's like literally, you know, huge Vegas convention centers worth of things that are happening in technology. The average consumer is not aware of what's going on. And so part of our role that Daisy is keeping the consumer, just staying in touch with the consumer, being aware of what her needs are, and then, you know, kind of being a steward to her in terms of, hey, you know, what's just been developed, you know, the price may not be right for you, but let's keep, you know, tabs on this kind of interesting speaker because you don't like the look of it.

14:23So, but you can put speakers in walls now and the sound is pretty good. The cost may not be within, but then the consumer may say, no, no, tell me what the cost is. I would love that. I want it at any cost. Right. So, you know, you may make different trade-offs in your life. So yeah, there's sort of the break fix. There's the changing lifestyle. There's also a segment, which is like, I actually don't care what this stuff does. I just want it to work. When I have friends over, I just want my speakers to play. When I need to like make dinner for the family, I just want to be able to play Taylor Swift, I want the lighting to work.

14:59And I want to just push one button in for it to set a scene. And I don't think people are realized that that's pretty easy to do. But they don't, they're not like you, they don't want to have to do the 1000s of hours and 1000s of dollars to set it up. And those are things that we can do, you know, with relative ease. And we're happy to do that. Because if you're a customer for life for us, we'll, we're happy to serve you for life. we don't need to spend a hundred thousand dollars with you from our first time we talked to you. We'll see you for the rest of your life and we'll make that worth it to you.

15:31You'll make it worth it to us. So those are the things that we're seeing. Oh, the other trends that we're seeing, you mentioned smart energy. There's also aging in place. And so as we're all kind of trying to take care of our parents or trying to take care of family members, there's ways that we can, And while people are trying to age, you know, respectfully in their homes, technology, it can very much, you know, play an active role. On the very far end of the spectrum, robotics are definitely coming, humanoid robotics, robots in the home. I don't care how great that technology is, they're still going to need to be installed.

16:08They're still going to break. And you're going to need someone to help you, you know, install them and fix them. There's so many things I want to talk to you that you brought up with. we got to keep moving. Is Daisy a franchise model? Yes, we are a franchise model. We have some own locations so that we can try things on and test and pilot, but we also have a franchise offering in two ways. We can take an existing business and you can lock into our system, our brand, and all of our services and just convert to our brand. Or you can set something up from scratch. Actually, there's a third way you can buy a company if you're just a business person who's interested in buying, you know, a company in a$30 billion market growing 15 % in a great, you know, market.

16:57And then you can convert to Daisy and get all of our support. Yeah, I love it. Okay, so let's talk. Boy, there's use cases like we didn't talk much about. I mean, businesses are obviously outfitting their office spaces and their workspaces with smart technology. technology. And if you're not, you're probably just losing money and you're creating, again, you can improve the environment for both your workplace and obviously, you know, in our homes as well. But Hagen, just in the few minutes that we have left, I want to talk about, you know, who should be reaching out. I really want to stress the franchise opportunity here because, listen, as an advocate, I'm like, if you are just flying independent or you've been toying around with offering, like you're good at smart home.

17:44Like I've got friends that would be so brilliant at this if they went full on in. Can you explain next steps for someone that might either be interested in the franchise opportunity or if they want to engage Daisy services? Sure. Yeah. Anyone can reach out to me. We also have a form on our website that I think you mentioned, daisyco.com. You can talk to someone on our team, me or someone else, and we can kind going to walk you through the services that I've mentioned, the fact that we have a call center, the fact that we have HR support, finance support, marketing. We have a whole tech stack that I haven't talked about, a CRM built out, field services support, things that don't really exist yet in the industry that you can get access to that companies don't have to build out.

18:31Yeah. And then we have a process where we'll talk to you. You can meet different members of our team. And then we fly people out here to Newport Beach where our headquarters is. So the worst case, You just get a nice little beach vacation at Newport, but you get to kind of see one of our example franchisees, get to see our headquarters. We go out for dinner, you know, so you get a real flavor for our culture. And if this would be a good fit. So those are kind of the next steps. And then, you know, there's a fee to join. And then there's kind of a royalty from there. But that's it. That's the process.

19:05Wow. Hagen Kapler, co-founder and CEO of Daisy. Your website, again, is daisyco.com. Hagen, thank you so much for doing this. I'm really excited about your business model here because I know how huge Smart Home is going to be. Just watch what Apple's doing. Look at what Amazon is doing. And they're just kind of doing the hub type stuff. I mean, the entire industry, the technology that is coming up and it keeps improving. Standards like matter and thread are really improving things, too. It is going to get really, really good. Hagen, great conversation. Thank you so much for this. Thank you.

19:50Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from.

20:31I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

21:13I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening, and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.