On THE EDGE with Paul Donald, CEO Encircle "The Future is Awesome"

Welcome to Conversations on the Edge with Tom and TJ, where Generation X and Millennial talk about Restoration, the Edge version 3, and the Worded. All right, so welcome everybody and very excited about our podcast today. We kind of took a few weeks off and very excited to have Paul with us today with Encircle and we're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff today Paul. And of course TJ, welcome. TJ is somewhere on freeway in Tennessee. I'm assuming. Virginia. Virginia, all right. Close enough. And so he's on his way someplace so he's a little bumpy right now but it'll be all right. But Paul, what we usually do is we start off with something fun and exciting going on in our lives that don't have anything to do with anything. So since you are our guests, you get to start out. Something fun and exciting going on in your life. Well, listen here in Canada we get a ton of snow and this has been particularly bad so far this year or good if you love snow. I actually don't mind it but heading down to our place in Port of Erid and Mexico on Sunday. So getting out of the cold weather heading down south and bringing the family down. They'll be coming down over the holidays and I'll be working the smoker out on the deck over looking Banderis Bay with the whales and dolphins in the background. So I can't wait to be there. Yeah, it sounds amazing. Yeah, that's terrible. That's terrible. Now that's awesome. That is awesome. You know, I've been invited down. I've never been down in Port of Erid and then also what's the other whale watching? Cabo. Cabo San Lucas. I haven't been there yet. I've been trying to and been invited but schedule just hasn't made it happen yet but that's I'm holding out. It'll happen. Well, you're in Florida so you still get good seafood. Do you get the warm, the beach? So, you know, we us Canadians, we got to go down and we can get some good seafood. Yeah, we've catch some you know, some salt air that ease the arthritis as we get older. Yep. Oh yeah, can't wait. Well, you're going to have to plan on next year because every year we have our year ending class and I'll talk about a little bit more about that in the first week in December. So you can you can bring bring come on down spend a spend a week with us here in Cape Canaveral and it's awesome. So TJ, what's what's going on in your life, buddy? I'm still on a high from last week to I mean talking about last week, we got to see a couple rocket launches, you know, got to meet Clay, hang out with him. We had an awesome class so I'm still you know, I'm playing a lot of catch up on the work side but it was worth it. Yeah, you know, awesome. Yeah, I'm trying to catch up to and in Paul, it is, it's and and that's that's my fun and exciting thing is is that year ending class. It is it is really cool. It's unlike any other training class that there that there is and it's on purpose. How did you book the rocket launches? That's a tough one. Well, we get lucky in December because there's there are usually a bunch of launches that have been delayed and so that first week in December, there's typically at least one because they're catching up because we we have about 150 launches a year. You're not interesting. Yeah, and so more more launches now than even when we got into the original space race and so it's it's really it's really cool and we go out to Kennedy Space Center and and we had Clay Anderson with the system and and Clay was it was really cool because I was I was nervous because you know, this is my my first celebrity guest speaker and and I was like so I created this video and I couldn't wait for Clay to see it and so we have this big cookout, you know, it's a great networking event, you know, where everybody's there, all the sponsors, all the all the attendees and invited guests and everything and so you know, like we had Michelle Levin stopped in she was in the hotel next door and he conceitly was there and and of course we had Clay and and then all of our sponsors and everything and so we took we took Clay over to the over to the what I call the stage because it's a 8,000 square foot room that we're in so it's a it's a huge room and I've got three screens and it's you know, it's a it's an event and we showed him the video on T.J. was there and it was really cool it was really cool and I T.J. was looking at me and I was just like I would stand behind and Clay just kind of watching him and it was like it was really cool because it moved him to tears and so it was it was it was it was cool it was cool to watch you too Tom because I mean it was like a childhood you know moment for you getting to meet like your superhero. Well you know what I would I try to do with life in general and then with the training and everything that we're doing you know it's like I tell all the people that come to the class I mean enjoy the moment you know enjoy this moment in time because this is then we go out of our way to make it special for you and and I'm glad that we got Clay tied in there so that was special for him also because I want people to remember that moment that week in December and it's it's it's a cool thing I just I take it very personal sometimes you know the classes we don't really make any money but I have a lot of fun and it because it's not always about the money it's about it's about making an impression on people that last and in introducing them to training in an environment to where they feel like they're in a place like none other so they're not in a in a training room in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do they're at a resort you know if they want to go to the pool after after the class and go to the pool and go to Tiki Bar the place is surrounded by 30 40 restaurants it's it's it's it's it's really cool and so and it's nice to see the light bulbs come on with with people that first day it's a little a little cloudy because we're talking about a lot of stuff that they have never thought about or or been introduced to and that's the one thing in my classes you're going to learn something that you don't learn anywhere else no one else is talking about production rates nobody else is talking about square footage prices that you should be looking at and how you should be managing job nobody's doing it don't ask me why but that's that's to our benefit Paul that they are not that's one of the things you and I are going to fix aren't we yes with the help of TJ TJ thanks to the audio and circle supporter in the edge of course I've I've already had tons of follow up last week from several people in the class you know they want to feedback on their projects they they had projects that they started using the edge on so I've been talking to people all week that's great and that's and Paul Paul and I had a conversation here just about 30 minutes ago and I was kind of giving him a briefing on on the rebranding that we're going to be doing for large loss mastery and it's in we're going we already have the domain and everything for that and so it's going to be loss mastery and instead of large loss large loss will be inside of that and then we're going to be introducing more of a small commercial and residential piece into it so it's just not going to be large loss anymore so it's going to be really cool and TJ and I're going to be working together and putting that together and TJ I might have committed I might I might have said that I wanted to have I'm going to want to have it all done by March and so I'm going to be working with you on on on pounding that out because January and February are always my months where it's time to get stuff off the ground and moving and so I'm going to be leaning on you in January in February at least I have a heads up on this one what do you say when you say nice spring stuff well you know I do that Paul and Paul and this is kind of my in my world is I have like these moments of ideas these floors of stuff and so and I know that you've been there too or you just have all of that stuff that you want to do and just not enough time to do it and so sometimes when I bring up a project it might not be at the right time but it's at the time that I was thinking about it and so Paul Paul thank you thank you for joining us Paul I wanted to I wanted to get right to, you and I have worked together this past over the past six months on bringing the edge to a circle and it's been a really exciting journey so far with the team. A lot of the team, they're like, "All right, so you got this, what is this edge? And what do we do with it now?" And so it's been a lot of fun developing and marketing and putting all of that, watching it all develop. And I think 2026 is going to be phenomenal. And I cannot wait to see what the next, what the in-circle version of the edge looks like. And so tell us a little bit about how you feel about the edge and in our, your acquisition. Well, let's go back to, you know, when you introduced it to me several years ago, I already was a big believer in labor production rates because at the end of the day, that's where contractors typically get themselves into trouble. Either it's labor or it's equipment. Now we solved the equipment one in hydro, but the labor one is always dogduess until you and I really started talking about how do we simplify this and how do we expose the importance of labor productivity. Because we all naturally assess that. Even when we have a contractor come to our house, you're replacing a fence. He's going to give you a price on the fence. And in your mind, you do a, okay, how much labor is he charging me? How much materials? And it doesn't make sense. Well, why is it taking him, you know, two weeks to do a fence that should be done in four days? I'm not paying for that. Let me go find another contractor. So it's everywhere. It's Amazon. It's almost every other industry, but fuel in this industry, understanding the importance of it. And I can guarantee you the adjusters are running those same models in their heads if they're not doing it in a spreadsheet. And so the edge just made sense as a tool to help govern how we run, how restore it, run their business and how they interact and educate the policy holder, customer or the adjuster. Right? Because a lot of times that communication just isn't flowing. They're afraid to talk about, you know, what the job is going to cost, how much labor a material is going to take. They tend to do that after when they're invoicing and that's problematic. So yeah, this was a natural fit. And then with our AI scoping that we're bringing a market, again, our vision was this just fits right in because there's a couple of variables in the edge that some contractors may struggle with trying to figure out, well, we can automate a lot of that. Just based off of the natural inputs that you're putting in to encircle. So I'm pretty excited. We're out in alpha right now already outstanding results. In fact, one very large national restoration brand asked if they could deploy it nationally. And it's only been out in alpha for the past three, four weeks. So that's an exciting development. Awesome. Yeah, I can tell you that, you know, when we started talking, Paul, you know, about, you know, this was this was this is a moment that I've been that I've been waiting for, you know, where we're this little thing that I put together that works, you know, it's from a restore for the restores. That we can get out broadly to to the marketplace because it was, you know, I've got a decent following or whatever, but sometimes you have to let go to grow. And so I'm really excited about, you know, I've our relationship in the future and in encircle in the edges in the future. And then plugging you guys into our new, our new class that we'll be putting together for loss mastery and very excited about that because you guys are going to be a big part of that. Yeah, I think together with the educational elements, the ease of use tooling. Like I can tell you, our product team is incredibly excited about we're going because like nobody else is going down this path. And yet just early testing with customers has been profound. It's a big eye opener. It literally educates their PMs, educates their estimators to become better and more detail oriented. So they're spending less time on the administrative overhead and really learning and using, you know, their intelligence, their collective experience to build out that scope or build out that estimate. Exactly the way you teach in your class is what we're trying to do through technology. And so this collaboration is going to pay off in many different ways. I mean, we'll have lots of educational classes. The technology itself will help train them. And then of course the technology outputs will train the reviewers, the adjusters, the engineers who are reviewing the files on I C or C standards, OSHA standards, building codes along with all of these labor production rates to show that hey, these are reasonable and fully justifiable labor production rates. The amount of equipment is fully justified and same as the amount of consumables. So now once we once everybody is on the same page and we're looking at jobs through this because you know, the carriers look at two numbers. They look at square footage and the production rate and restores just haven't been taught that. And you know, and I'm the only one that teaches in this and in our TJ. TJ is, I'm excited to see this is like going to be really cool. And I keep pointing at you like you're here, but you know pointing at your screen. But this is very exciting because I'm always a progression guy. I'm looking at what's next. And not I'm an I love nostalgia. I my the man cave is full of nostalgia and stuff from all over the world. But when it comes to, you know, the business side and where are when I personally it's all about where we're going. What are we doing? What's next? Because there's that's really the only, you know, I don't ever want to ever stop doing stuff. And so there's always going to be things that we're going to develop and things that we're going to do and working with you Paul. I cannot wait until we until we see what's going to happen and what's going to come up. Because who know, you know, two years from now, what everything's going to look like could be phenomenal. So T T what's your what's your thoughts? What do you what? What I'm most excited for I think with the edge being built out to encircle is the consistency that it's going to create across my teams. You know, the onboarding and training is going to be a lot faster. So like as an actual user and in the field every day, I'm so excited to create just a scalable model for my business where I can onboard PMs, I can train them and create consistency across the business and how we do it. So that's what I'm super excited for. Yeah, we're going to have to put it in your hands over the next couple of weeks and let you try it. I'll try to break it. All right. You'll have fun with it. It's you know what what Tom has built from a you know, from a technology standpoint, the fundamentals are just so solid. You know, there's always the non-believers and then they test it and their their estimate always falls in and this is using their best estimate or always has always fallen in in our testing between the range and that's pretty darn exciting. Well, in fall, it's been like that from the very beginning when I first brought it out and it was just a calculator part of it we didn't have you know, it was and because what I learned in software just get it to where it's ready to roll out and get it out. It's not going to be perfect. If you're waiting for perfection, you will never launch. And so I got it out and it was just a calculator part. Won't save anything or anything like that. And in people's first reactions back in 2020, we're again, that can't be that can't be. He knew something or and I have it happen when we do it live now. I just you know, four weeks ago was at an event and did it live, you know, for the hotel that we were in and there were some contractors that were behind me. They're like, no, that can't be. He had details and all this other stuff. And yeah, I had details of the job, but that's a damage assessment. So once you're done with the damage assessment, that's when you start estimating. And when you're done, if you get a good damage assessment, you're going to have a great estimate and you're going to be able to put together, you know, you're in the edge, you know, to EGA you'll tell you he put stuff together 15, 15 minutes. And you know, but that comes with experience. The more you use it, the better, the better it gets and the better you get. I mean, how cool is it to have a tool that makes that puts the power of estimating right in your hands and very quickly and within that range, you know, like you said, Paul. You know, there's just, it just blows me away. And so it, - And now if you can get the damage assessment, and your assessment is based off of your photos, your videos, your notes, all of the things you take in, you get a damage assessment and it's incomplete, and you can read it and see that it's incomplete. It says, well, go back and take pictures and document the stuff that isn't in the damage assessment yet. Just keep going until, and funny enough, what everybody who's been on the Alpha has said is within the first two jobs, it's training my guys to document better. And they want to, because they are spending literally no time on the damage assessment, document creation, which usually takes hour, hour and a half or more. One did a large grocery store loss where the owner said, we need an estimate right away. And they used our Alpha AI scoping tool. And they'd just finished doing all the documentation, photos, notes, videos and everything. And they said, we'll get it to you in a couple hours. He hit the generate scope and it was back within under two minutes and went in, put it into the edge and handed over. Everything was done in 20 minutes and the customer was blown away, like blown away. - And you know, the thing is, we've been, a lot of the industry, Paul has been kind of lolled into this, the estimating takes like this long period of time to do. And when we introduce the edge again in the beginning, people are like, well, what, I don't need to produce it that quickly. When would I ever need to do that? And now here we are, it's like, you know, we're about to change all of that. And so it's interesting how that journey has, you know, how it started where people are like, now that can't be, it can't be that quick. There's no way, it has too easy. And, you know, but, you know, we've, there are some things that we have done into our estimating that didn't make it easier. You know, it was, you know, a lot of the stuff that we're doing now is for the carrier. And really for the invoice, not necessarily for the estimate. And so, you know, it's all great support for the invoice, but we don't have to do all of that when we're talking about the ROM. You know, ROM doesn't mean, you know, 130 pages, 2000, you know, 50 lines of items. It means a ROM, you know, what is our, what is our, what is our rough order of magnitude? And that's really the definition of it is, you know, a two-page document that we rock and roll with. Yeah. But with all of the factual data that's backed up by timestamps, GLOK, it's who captured it. And then with your algorithms, it's just magic. The stuff that we're able to do is unbelievable. Even think about, you know, what we'll eventually get to is you could do daily tracking, weekly tracking for billing purposes, roll-ups of what happened this day, what happened this week, all published for the customer to see. So you're educating everybody as the process goes on, eliminating a lot of back and forth in negotiations. I mean, you're an expert witness. How many times do you see invoices getting cut 10, 20, 30%, it's, you know, because they haven't run the justification all the way along? Yeah. And a lot of times it's just because guys don't know what they don't know. And it's so important, you know, to fill in those blanks when you don't know something, you have to fill in the knowledge gap, you know, they'll have their invoices too big when they don't even know it. You know, they think it's okay, you know, it's just, but it's not because there's so much data out there of past projects. And so it might be the first time that that particular restore has done a hotel, for example, but it's not the first time that hotel has been done. And so there is so much data to which it can be compared to this isn't the 80s anymore or the 90s, where, you know, it was hard to track data. That's no longer the case. That is at your fingertips. And it's really cool. It's really cool. And TGA uses AI all the time with this scoping that has changed how he does business. I think that's the more, you know, the edge is amazing for the estimating, but when you start leveraging the data in your business and applying it, that takes it to a whole new level and how you can leverage it. So, yeah. Yeah. With AI, you've intact all oriented restores. Hammer and Nails guys can actually become operators if they leverage it appropriately. That's how it simplifies the administrative elements of operations. Yeah, I think that's a game changer, because the restores aren't going away this industry. The physical restoration is, we need more of them. It's not going away, but it's going to get rid of the administrative stuff that all restores hate. Yeah. No. As long as they don't get lazy with it, because if you're lazy with AI, it won't give you sloppy results. And so we need to make sure that everybody's dialed in on making sure that we're not regurgitating that information. And so that's a good point, Tom. I'm glad you brought that up, because using just standard AI, it's going to get you into trouble. You have to use purpose built AI, which in CircleHas, we're not just using chat GPD or Gemini 3, which anybody can do. There's a lot of technology that we've built around to stop hallucinations, to drive up accuracy. And that's really important. And even then, we tell every customer, listen, you need to review it. You need to edit it. So what this is doing is compiling the data to make it easier for you to review, edit, and make it accurate, and apply your specific knowledge, because there's knowledge in that you have that no AI model, no matter proprietary to us or public, is going to know. And that's a secret sauce that allows you to come in at a better price than your competitor. Do the job in a better way. That's proprietary knowledge that you now need to add into your scope. And so that's the edit process. And then once you've got that built, everything past that, it's a single button click. It's easy. But if you don't put the time and effort onto the scope side, or the damage report, that's where you're going to get into trouble. And that's where you're not going to be able to leverage the efficiencies downstream. Yes. And what I see is some restores just randomly pulling stuff. And it has a lot of IRC or C stuff in it. But it doesn't have anything from here to the customer, because the scope is about the client. What you're going to do for the client, personally, not quoting too much from IRC or C. And I don't teach it with yours. I know you go through and you edit to make sure that it does exactly that. You have your IRC or C stuff in there. But then your scope fits in exactly what you're doing for the client. Yeah, you've got to tell the story. They don't even know what I see as. So why cloud their vision? Tell the story of how you're going to fix their problem. And they don't care. But there's one thing, one question that the client wants to know is you know what you're doing. They don't really care about how many merubatges you have. And when are you going to be done? Yeah. How much? How long are you? What if how long? Exactly. Yeah. Now we're in an exciting part. And 2026, I'm looking forward to. So beyond going to Port of Aarta, 2026, the first half of that year is just going to be stellar for us. And I think for the industry. I think so too. And I'm very excited about everything that we're-- what we can do together also. You know, this is an interesting time because there's a lot of-- because this is going to be my 40th year in the industry next year. And I never thought that was going to be. But all my mentors were-- they're 44 and 50 years in the industry. And so if they can do it, I plan on another 9 to 10 years. But what are we going to see in that time frame? Think about it. Yeah. In the next 10 years, it's going to be unbelievable. Again, it's on the administrative and operation side of the business. Not much is going to change on the physical side, which it hasn't over the past 20 years either. You get your equipment as your equipment. This is a heavy labor business. business. If people powered, it's, yeah. highly diversified. Anything can happen on any day, so you've got to be really flexible. But it's on the operations side where things are really going to get dialed in. One of the points I wanted to make, because I get this question now all the time, well, AI is just free. And I'm like, okay, that's an interesting concept that, because open AI, Google and Microsoft have put these systems out there free for consumers to use. But for a business to create, really solid technology on top of it, there's actually a high cost, high processing cost and licensing cost there. If you look at how much money, open AI, Google, Amazon are losing right now on their AI endeavors. Is the most money ever poured into a technology without a return in history? Nothing has even come close to this. It is hundreds of billions of dollars are being poured into it, with, you know, they're going to have to recoup that. And how they're recouping it is there is a fee to companies like in circle who are building these components on top. So yeah, it's not free. But if you want to put your data into train these public models and then you don't own that data anymore, go ahead. But I mean, that's not something that your carrier customers are going to allow you to do much longer. And I can even tell you the IAC or C is working very quickly to stop seeing the S500 and other IAC or C documents going into chat GPT, IAC and other platforms. So there's going to be a crack down on all of that. And it's too late on a lot of that stuff. A lot of it is already public information and out there and absolutely. And then we lost TJ. He's must have went down to the other exit. But that's the thing Paul is like, OK, in with restores, you know, unfortunately, a lot of them like that easy. So it's up to us to give them that easy pill, that easy button because we don't want going down that wrong, you know, the wrong road and just, you know, throwing out like a scope that is just like nonsense. And in nine times out of 10, they might be OK, because maybe they're not reading it. But on a bigger projects, you got to have your actually, you got to have a good scope of work, you got to have everything in line with what you're doing or it could cost you your business. Well, even so, you have to have the honorable assets to back up that scope. So it doesn't matter whether chat GPT can spit it out and it looks good and even reads good. If you haven't got the evidence to back it up, that's going to be a problem. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's the details, you know, and that's, and that's where, you know, you're pro, and you know, the encircle product, you know, this is, this is the exciting part about, about you and I working together is I get to see, you know, my creation, you know, go into the mainstream in a big way and then get to see the AI integration into it because that's going to be one of another part that we're going to be doing where you're going to be taking the restores actual data and rolling it into the edge to where it's even faster than it is, which is ridiculous. But that's the future, you know, and, you know, a lot of the carriers are already using similar things. We just want to dial it into where it's a review side. Yes. Sure. They're already using it. But the reason why I bring that up is I think there's a huge opportunity for you and I to educate the broader restoration community on how AI can be applied in a very responsible way that doesn't alienate your carriers, that doesn't create unduly abilities that gives you the ability to leverage technology to uplevel your PMs, your estimators to expert levels and help educate them a long way to get them up there and then substantiate all of the details but do it in a very responsible way. I think that's what I'm most excited for because, you know, restores, they're working hard physically and they're running businesses and doing great for their communities. The AI whole ecosystem is moving so quickly, there's no way they can stay abreast of it. And what we need to do is make sure that they don't put themselves in any high liability situation due to the fact that they didn't know what they were getting into, which types of AI tools they were using and what that can mean for the business. So, yeah, that's going to be a big part of 2020, 26 as well. Yes, it's a key case back. So, let's admit it to the next exit. But yeah, the, you know, dialing in the AI part of this to where, you know, because it is all about making it easier on people because the one thing that's, you know, been the thing that people always complain about is, man, we have to have so much software, we got up this piece and this piece and all this stuff going on, you know, and we got to spend by this subscription and all that. And so now, you know, you're getting, we're going to get to a point very soon within circle to where it's all in one place and one answer, you know, to it all. And this is, it's really cool. Yeah. Do you have a T.J.? Do you have any? That's literally my number one frustration is how many different systems I have to use to accomplish my goals. It drives me insane. What's the, what's the number one thing you would say to you that you would, that what's your number one pain when it comes to that? Just the lack of, like, it's really hard to duplicate roles inside of business when you have such disconnectivity in your systems. So, streamlining it, you know, and in circles headed that direction. I'm super excited about it, you know, getting more TNM, you know, platform and data tracking and then analytics bolster that and allow you to make business decisions is what I'm most excited about. Yeah. Is it takes a lot of time compiling all of that data from various systems and then creating a dashboard, probably an Excel, right? That you can actually, or sheets. Yeah, I use air table, but most restores don't even know what air table is, right? And I think that's a big reason that our industry is so fragmented is because everybody is doing something different with a ton of different systems. So, to create, you know, consistency amongst your stores, you know, you're driving it in the right direction, Paul. Thank you. Yeah. It's going to be a lot of work a lot. There's some companies that don't want to play ball, but at the end of the day, if the restoration community gets behind this, I think we can bring everybody along. And I do think even for all the technology companies, I think it's a win for everybody. And, you know, I think it's not integrating and allowing for that free flow of data to be able to be published, you know, in a single view for you. It also means that there's other systems that aren't getting the data that they need in order to help to provide a higher value to their customers. So, it's, you know, the data is key and you got to have access to it. Otherwise, you're going to be irrelevant to your clients. Yes. And I think there's going to be a lot of, you know, because there's a lot of people out there, you know, they've, they're, they're getting, you know, they've got all their, they're becoming AI, you know, experts and they're creating all this stuff. So, I think there were, we're about a few months away from this flood of like, like all of this new software, you know, and I think it's going to be a little bit, there's going to be a wave of it that you're going to have to sort through in what I love about where you are Paul with encircle is you guys are already there. You're already at the, you're at the, the tip of the spear. And, and so, all of this other stuff is going to come in. It's going to be unproven. The beautiful thing about encircle is it's a proven product, the beautiful thing about the edge is it is proven. And together they're perfect. And so I think it's going to be, it's going to be a great 2026. Yeah, the, the challenge for the other platforms is they don't have the underlying fund eventals and you can't just build that overnight. They were both platforms where years of years of expertise put into the product that they're now combining. So, AI sitting on top of really solid logic is excellent AI just running wild with data is, is a challenge. It's going to, it's going to create some issues. So yeah, I like what we're going. Yeah, it's a long term. solution. There's going to be a lot of these little things that will pop up that will seem like their solution, but they're not unproven and they won't know till you try them. And why do that when you can go to a proven solution? Yeah, I think, you know, the stores are going to try a lot of stuff as they do today. We saw that in the early days with drones and drones, we're going to capture all of the images and we didn't see that. And then of course, water mitigation, there was a whole bunch of platforms that came out and there's a few left, right? Because these things are really hard to do in a consistent, highly reliable way. So yeah, I don't, I think it's great when when we're stores test technology, put it into practice and see what the outputs are, but take a very realistic view. And I'm always happy to work with contractors who want to run the tests to help them guide them on these are the answers you want to look for as you go through evaluating technology. And it can just be the feature list that the vendor gives you of things that can do. You need to test the technology to make sure that it can do what you are expecting it to do in your business. And it's highly repeatable. And then of course, can integrate with all of the other aspects of your business that you need to. So it's really about, you know, future proofing. If you deploy this technology, does it work now and will it work for you in 24 months? Yeah, that's the big thing. And you know, obviously we want to be there first. We want to be, we want to give them, we want, we want to be raising the bar. Everybody else gets to catch up. And, you know, as long as we're providing, you know, products at work, they're proven. That will always be the case. You know, when we when the first laptop came out, it was supposed to be the end of paper. It was supposed to be no more paper. And there is, by 2025, which was, you know, this was 1993 when I got my first laptop. And we, and since then, we have created billions of boxes of paper that are stored in facilities all over the world. Yeah. Well, listen, AI hopefully we'll start taking that down even further. But yeah, we're completely paperless as a business. And, you know, hopefully we can get restores down the route where they're, you know, creating scopes, creating estimates right there in the field, no paper, all digitally done, all authenticated, audible. That's the goal. In fact, one, some of the cool features, little features we're bringing out with AI, Tom, is in our hydro product, the moisture meters. When you take a picture of your moisture meter, when you're doing the reading, it'll actually pull the readings in using machine learning and automatically fill in the fields for you. So we were using, you know, Bluetooth with TramX and that, but there's so many meters out there. So now we just said, listen, let's just use machine learning and take a picture of it. At least it's authenticated with time, date, stamp, geolocates, and we'll just fill it in for you. Doing the same thing with contents. Now we can give, it's unbelievable how descriptive, you know, the quality of the descriptions of the items now. So we're going to see that all through our platform. Just removing a lot of administrative overhead. That's exciting. That is really exciting, Paul. And the industry, you know, it's a very young industry. You know, we're talking just since the 80s. And, you know, so it's, it's, it's not even a century old. You know, barely, you know, barely, you know, a half century. And so, it's amazing to see everything that's changing that can help restore us because the number one thing, it's always been there since when I started in the 80s, was documentation and getting it done. There's never enough time. And what you're describing is, you know, something that can, can make it like this, and to where you can actually focus on the job more than the documentation. Yeah, that's exactly the goal. And with that, you know, if we can help more contractors be operators, think about how they can scale their business. You can't scale your business if you don't become an operator. You're in a cap out at a certain, you know, usually a couple million dollars. But those contractors that can go, you know, 15, 20, 25 million, they become really solid operators in leading their teams and giving them guidance based on real data, right? Like labor productivity, you know, how to scope, how to define the scope, how do we ensure we stay within the guideposts that the edge produces on here's how much labor, here's how much equipment, here's how much consumables. When you stay, when you have those boundaries and you stay within them, you have consistent profit margins. And what do consistent profit margins do? Well, it makes your business highly repeatable. You can scale. I hate seeing restorers struggle after working their butts off. I mean, just work in hard. And then coming up at the end of the year with, you know, very, very low, if not negative profit margins. And we did a study and there's a significant portion of restorers that at the end of the year didn't make any money. And it's unfortunate, you know, team, we've talked about this many times. And one of the reasons why, you know, I love what you've done. You've taken the program and you've plugged it in completely. As you know, exactly what's going on on every single job. And that's, unfortunately, a lot of restorers are just, they're just not doing that. And it kind of, it becomes, it is what it is, you know, invoice. And when you do that, that means, you know, your profit is going to be, it is what it is. And it's usually not a good thing. Yep. Couldn't agree more. Well, Polo, where you are here at the end, I know it's us. We're, it's between, the only thing standing between you and South of the border is, is this interview? Are you guys packed and ready to go to Mexico? I am not because I just need shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops. My wife is probably packed, but I am not. I'm assuming that she's, you know, she doesn't travel light. No, we've had this place for 15 years. So a lot of clothes are down there. Oh, good. Good. Well, that's, that's the way to do it. Have your clothes there already. And then, yeah, that's the way to do it. And the next time, you know, when, when we're here in December, because you're going to have to come down here in December, you're going to sign on it. You're going to sign the surfboard as behind me, I'm trying to point behind my back. I see you. You got to sign the surfboard. And when you're down here, we'll tell you the story about when TJ signed the surfboard on one was that Saturday or Friday Friday. All right. Can't tell you now. All right. I feel like it's a good story. So there's all the signatures that that surfboard has a lot of stories to it. So, yeah. Look forward to it. Paul, thank you very much. You guys get anything you want to close with in particular. I just hope everybody takes time over the holidays to find some mental clarity and joy with their family and, you know, carry them on minimum in the 2026. Yes. And thank you for, yeah, thank you for reminding me. Happy, Merry Christmas to both of you guys. And if I don't talk to you, I'm happy, happy new year also. I can't believe that it's hard for me to fathom that we are, you know, just a step away from Christmas. So it's like crazy. Unbelievable. What is 2025 go? I have no idea. I have no idea. But you know what? I can't wait for 2026. So I was in upwards. I can't either. And very excited to have you with us today, Paul. Thank you. I can not wait to see what we're going to conjure up in 2026. And the industry is going to benefit so much from what we're working on. And thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to Conversations on the Edge with Tom and TJ. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. 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