GorillaDesk Founder Chris Moreschi on AI and Breaking $1M
Table of Contents
I just got off the mic with Chris Moreschi, the founder and CEO of GorillaDesk, and he’s been on the show before, way back in the early days. Chris has been building GorillaDesk for about 15 years, and the software has been out for 13. They now have close to 20% of the pest market and onboard 50 companies a week.
This was one of those talks where I kept wanting to stop and take notes, so I did. Here are the lessons that stuck with me after we hung up.
Don’t gut your support team when you grow
This is the one I keep thinking about. Chris has watched a lot of software companies get bought and rolled up, and the pattern is always the same. Prices go up and support gets cut. You call in and nobody picks up for days.
Chris does the opposite on purpose. One of GorillaDesk’s core values is being “remarkable,” and as he put it, that means “having people positively remark about you in the marketplace.” You can’t do that if your support falls apart while you scale.
So that is what he has been working on lately. He watches the wait times for a chat reply, a callback, and training a new company. His training calendar had been booked six days out, which he called a problem, so they opened up more slots.
The lesson for me is simple. Growth is easy to brag about. But if customers feel friction when they need help, they feel it fast, and they tell you.
AI won’t replace your people. It promotes them.
GorillaDesk rolled out an AI chat rep for the customer portal and text messages, and you feed it your own info. Your hours, your zip codes, how you do each service, your pricing. It runs on OpenAI, and you can even tell it what tone to use, friendly or funny or whatever fits your brand.
The smart part is that it ties into the CRM, so it knows who it is talking to. Is this a brand new lead or a customer of five years? Chris was big on this. Don’t treat a longtime customer like a stranger, because people want to be known.
But here is the part that changed how I think. Chris does not see AI taking jobs, he sees it moving people up. As he told me, “Everyone’s job is not about being replaced. It’s about dealing with a higher level of communication.” The AI handles the boring stuff like changing a card, checking an appointment, or rescheduling. Your real team handles the hard stuff and manages the AI on top of it.
So a support rep is not just a support rep anymore. They check the AI’s answers each morning, keep the knowledge base fresh, and jump in when someone needs a real person. Chris thinks that makes the job bigger, not smaller.
The five-year vision: prompt everything
I asked Chris where this goes in five years, and his answer got my head spinning.
He thinks everything inside a CRM becomes prompt based, where you just tell it what you want. Reroute all the jobs next month across these techs. Write this email campaign and send it to customers who got these services. No more digging through menus.
Then he took it further. Connect your data to a model and you can ask it to think like a CEO. And he shared a trick for getting real answers. “The secret is you’ve got to go three layers deep, four, five layers deep.” Build me a model to win. Now beat that model. Now come dominate both. Each layer gives you a sharper plan.
The far end of it sounds wild. Chris described a future where you become the manager of an AI CEO, one that can do in seconds what would take a person hours. It plans the campaign, makes the creative, and buys the ads on its own.
When I asked how operators win right now, he kept it real. The tools already give you great answers, but you still have to go execute. If you are good at execution, you are already ahead. He also pointed me to OpenArt.ai for brand mascots, where you feed it three to five poses and it can put your mascot anywhere you want.
The money you’re already leaving on the table
This might be the most useful lever in the whole talk. Everyone obsesses over new sales. New, new, new. Chris says the real miss is expansion revenue, which means selling more to the customers you already have.
He sees it in his own business, where revenue spikes whenever GorillaDesk sends out messages about what is new. The same thing works in pest control. Chris ran timely expansion campaigns for his brother’s company last year, and his brother broke a goal he would not have hit otherwise.
As Chris put it, “expansion revenue should be occurring every single day in the business.” Mosquito in summer, attic and crawl space dustings, and there is a right time to pitch each one. Most owners just are not running it. So when people ask Chris how to break a million dollars, he points them right back here.
Reviews and video are the easy wins right now
When I asked what levers operators can pull today, Chris did not hesitate. “Review generation is the number one for everyone,” he said. Get reviews flowing to your Google profile. He was almost surprised more people are not using it.
Then he flagged something newer. ChatGPT has started showing YouTube video results in its answers, and people are using it for local search now. So Chris says put video content on YouTube around your local keywords. It is a cheap way to show up where buyers are looking next.
Hire slow, but the right one shows up day one
Chris had one book for me, and only one. It is called Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building, and he said it covers hiring, interviews, scoring people, and leadership. He warned me not to let the size scare me off.
His take on hiring rang true. A great hire makes an impact almost right away, and if you are two or three months in and still wondering, that is your answer. As Chris said, “It’s probably not the right person.” He admitted he dragged one out too long last year and learned the hard way.
He does give grace in the spots where someone is weak, since those are the areas you knew you would have to train. But the core skills you hired them for should show up fast.
One more thing on sales hires, which Chris takes slow on purpose. His top pest control closer, Chrissy, ran her own pest control company, passed a million, and sold it. She has instant rapport because she has lived it. Chris said close rates go up when the buyer talks to someone really from the industry, not just someone who says they are.
Lead by example
We opened on health, and it turned into a leadership lesson. Chris has worked out with the same trainer for seven years, and he still benches 405. But the part that stuck was the ripple effect.
When Chris quit drinking, the people around him quit too, and he did not ask them to. Even some of the smokers stopped, which he said he never expected. I have seen the same thing on my team. My number two dropped 50 pounds, and then guys started showing up to the gym at 5 a.m.
You don’t have to give a speech. You just show up and do it, and people follow.
My takeaway
Chris is not trying to sell GorillaDesk for a big payday. He told me he has built his life and his days the way he wants them. He keeps his calendar open so he can stay creative, and he guards time for family because he knows he gave too much of it away before.
That is the thread under all of it. Build the thing well, take care of the people, and keep showing up. The growth follows.
Full transcript
Every word of the episode, from the video captions
Welcome back to another show. This is 117. Got another stud back in the house. I look back and you're like one of the early episodes, Chris. So, feels good to have you back and you probably don't need need much of an introduction. You're a stud. Everyone pretty much knows who you are at this point in life. Pass drove but if you don't got Chris Moreschi he's the CEO founder of GorillaDesk so super important guy today super excited about this one Chris welcome how you doing buddy man doing amazing you've done 117 episodes that's awesome and you're keeping at it yeah there's a few weeks in there where we got busy and didn't record or some people missed or whatever happened but yeah we're still at it still grinding away and before you know I think we'll be at a thousand episodes so we're getting there man how How many are you doing in a week?
You doing one a week? This week we have four scheduled. So in a perfect world, if I could just do two a week on the same day and knock them out, it be easier for me. But doesn't always happen that way. So I just accommodate my guests and just keep rolling.
But before the pod, we were just talking real quick like about dieting, getting healthy. You look really good. Down 170 lbs. Was awesome. Is there a reason that you wanted to do it other than just to do it?
Well, I don't know if you know, but I've been working out with a trainer for like seven years. Same guy. He's like my best friend. And I just love feeling good. I've always wanted to stay in shape, you know, and have a certain aesthetic.
It's just something I've always been into. My dad was in bodybuilding when he was young. And I have this one picture of my dad on my on my fridge of his him in an old school undies posing. And it's just like, you know, my dad was really into Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, all those guys. Is. So, he actually used to pull me out of school on school days to go watch movies. And that's some of the best memories I have of my dad.
And he was just really into bodybuilding and all those guys. And you know, I took it up in college. I didn't know what I was doing, working out. You know, I was kind of like eating all the wrong things, not working out well. And then once I started, let's see, like GorillaDesk, I hired a trainer full-time just so I can make sure that that was always on point cuz I knew if I felt good and I was lifting that other things always felt way better and they fell into place. You know, there was this it would like a relieve a lot of the tension around everything else that I'd be dealing with.
So, I do like to work out in the evening. That seems to be the best time. A lot of people like to do it right in the morning, but I find like after work's over is the quiet time where I can chill out and really hit the gym. When are you hitting it?
You're doing in the morning, right? Yeah, I'm morning guy. Like I'm usually there by 600, 7, 8, somewhere in there, depending on if the girls have to go to school or what that situation is. But yeah, for me, I get out of the way early.
I've been doing two a days for the past 160 days now. So 45 minutes in the morning, 45 minutes in the afternoon, gallon of water. I've been doing 75 hard for literally 160 days straight. So that's a good question for you, Jonas. Why are you going all crazy?
Why are you working out all crazy? I kind of feel the same way. Like I feel like I got lost for a few years, you know what I mean?
With my health and looking back and just shaking my head at myself, like just drinking and not taking care of myself, working hard, you know, like probably the wrong type of work. But I was just growing the business, you know, you get kind of gets caught in a rut there, but you're just grinding every single day. Come home, have a few beers or whatever and then yeah, stop drinking and then start getting healthier and now I feel really good. I look really good and like you said like you take your shirt off and you feel good, you look good. It just changes everything, you know, like whole different type of confidence and yourself and feel good. If you try to, you know, feel, you know, be good for my kids and make sure healthy, showing them a healthy lifestyle. So, a lot of the above, you know, but yeah, I feel good. I'm strong. So it's probably why you're crazy strong, man. Let everybody know. What are you benching?
He just he just gets down, man. Bench is what 405 in a second. What happens?
Yeah. Yeah. I did I did 405 two weeks ago. Did it for a couple weeks in a row. Yesterday I started with just the bar and then 10 plates on each side. And then I kept adding 10 plates till I ran out of room. And I was doing 10 reps of everything until it was like 365 by the time I was done. And it was a lot of reps. Those are wild. So yeah. So every time that every every time I added a plate, I do 10 reps. So it was 10, 20, 30, 40 on each side. Yeah, I got 365.
Did that once and then a lot of times I go back down, but there's a lot of reps already, so I didn't I don't know, man. I don't think you're telling everybody. I don't think you're being completely honest with what you're doing over there, bro.
Yeah, I think I think I just have T-Rex arms, so it's easier for me. That's what you say. That's your That's what you lean into. T-Rex arms. Yeah, it is. I don't know what else to tell you. Just I've always been strong.
I think it's just the way that I'm built. I'm built a lot like you, just short and stocky. So, not a whole lot of movement, but you did a lot of wrestling. So, you got that wrestling strength. I do. And I think it's the old man strength, too. I'm in my 40s now, you know. I hear you.
But, yeah. So there's a lot there, but I feel really good down. I think I started off at 186 like 170 from, you know, sitting right around 168 to like 172. But yeah, I hope I feel really good. What's really cool about Jonas is that's rubbing off on your team.
It is, right? Like other guys around you. I know that you're number two. He started working out a lot and now he's inspiring the other guys to work out and it's just like Yeah, he dropped he dropped 50. He did 75 hard this winter and he dropped 50 lbs.
Yeah, it's awesome. He looked like a totally different human being. And then Yeah. Then all a sudden you see all the other guys, they're hitting the gym at 5 6 a.m. Before they're going to knock and Yeah. And it was the same thing when I quit drinking, you know, like all a sudden everyone around me who had like not say drinking problems, but they didn't like but just they just stopped drinking too. And then even the people who are smoking cigarettes, they stop, which is I never anticipated that part of it. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Probably the best part to be honest.
Yeah, you just show up and you just lead by example. Absolutely. So yeah, man, you're killing it. Appreciate it. Well, again, without further ado, we'll get into the podcast a little bit more, but real quick, people who didn't listen to last episode, kind of just give us your background how you got into pest control in the first place. Yeah, my dad started his pest control company in 1986, like same story.
You know, he just kept it as a very a side gig basically to help put me and my brother through private school. So, I never thought that I would really get into pest control. I went to school at Florida State, studied English, got a degree in technical and creative writing, and at when I got my first job at BusinessWire, I was a news release editor and kind of figured out really really fast that I was unemployable. Like I didn't like being told what to do at all. So essentially, I looked at my family's company and I said, "Well, what can I do over here where I have a lot more freedom and I can use everything I know to enhance their business?" And I had done a lot of online marketing, web development, a little bit of e-commerce.
And my parents weren't even didn't have a web presence or anything at that time. And this is now like let's say 20 years ago now. You know, we've been doing Gorilla for 13. And before that, I was managing the pest control company for my family for 7 years.
So 20 years ago, I started in my family's pest control company. And I grew that over time by giving them a web presence, rebranding it to being a natural organic service line and took that over like I was saying about 20 years ago, ran it for 7 years and during that time knew that I wanted to build a product that I could bring to market which was going to be GorillaDesk. I wanted something really easy that my family could use. We were using smart service at the time which was a desktop based application and wasn't cloud-based.
And so that kind of nudged me to know, hey, if I build something for my family and they do really well with it, they're not that techsavvy that I knew a lot of other people could take advantage of it as well. So, you know, I came up as all the other cloud products were starting to come up at the same time. It seemed like as I was developing a product, all the solutions were essentially a desktop based solution and then I was kind of the surge of all the cloud-based options.
Yeah, it's super awesome. It's hard to believe like the software has been out for 20 years like you said and there's still some companies that don't use the software. Yeah, Gorilla has actually been for 13 years. It's been out for 13 years and I've been working on on it for probably 15 years and but I mean there are a lot of companies that use it.
Actually there's we have about 18 almost 20% of the market in pest and we're onboarding 50 companies every single week. Most of all the companies that come to GorillaDesk are a hybrid of pest lawn, pest wildlife or you know other services like pool cleaning but mostly we're doing all green industries pest lawn tree care anything that's doing any type of chemical or fert applications people come to Gorilla you know cuz it's a specialty we do in auditing and making sure you're hitting all the material requirements.
So I mean we definitely have come a long way. Are you sick of paying marketing agencies and not getting results?
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You're ahead of all the technology. Like, it's been one of the coolest things to watch. I appreciate that about Gorilla like in the best way possible. Like, you're smoking everyone as far as implementation. Yeah. Now, now we can say that, right?
It took how long to be like Chris you need this, you guys need this, you need that, you know, and then over time you just cons continue to listen, continue to build, and then yeah, it is a really exciting moment. Even though we've got to this point and it seems like this has been a long journey to hear, it almost feels like it's just the beginning cuz now we're up front and now we can show people really what we can do, right?
How how to keep the customer service and support high, how to continue to onboard and grow at the same time as as doing that. I'd say that's the most difficult thing is if you really want to scale and you balance and keep the support side high and great and keep that that service component really tight then you don't have as much friction on scaling. As soon as you start giving your customers friction on the support side while you're scaling they feel it and they let you know.
So, you know, in GorillaDesk land over here, we really put a lot of focus on the back end, on the onboarding and all the experience after the fact and figuring out, well, what's our weight times?
You know, what are our weight times on chat? What are our weight times on getting a phone call?
What are our weight times on getting a call back same day? What are our weight times on getting you know, a training call in for a new a new onboarding company versus our current companies on board. So, a lot of that is what I'm looking at right now is how to make sure that all those times and support times don't get destroyed as we onboard more and more and more clientele, you know?
So, that's kind of been my focus if we're talking like that's what I'm working on the last few weeks, how to make sure the support side quality, we're hitting the same increments in time and support that we were always in the past.
And you'll notice that once you know once companies are acquired, you know, usually they roll up the prices of the subscriptions and they pull back the support side. And so you have to have the opposite mentality. You know, how do I provide more value by providing more service and charging for that service and then making the support side even more of a delight so that people are continuing to remark about us, right?
One of the core values of Gorilla is remarkable. And so to be remarkable means having people positively remark about you in the marketplace. The only way to really do that well is to keep the whole backend side really nice and tight and then provide them the support that they feel like they've always been getting as a client and will continue to get as a client.
So that's what I've been working on a lot lately. That's really cool in the like that's what I was going to say next like happens every single time they do a rollup they get rid of a lot of the support staff because it's all about EBITDA at that point right scale back the CS team and then it goes to from there like you can't get a hold of anyone they call you two three four days back later if they even call you back it's a struggle for real and it's not just one it's all of them that happens to you know a close friend of mine close friend of mine sold his company too. Same exact thing.
Yep. I feel like what the customers know a lot too, I mean the expectation of course is that the service support's going to be there. But I think what they're really seeing in the market is what applications am I going with now that are on the forefront that are continuing to develop with AI in mind.
Like even though I don't see a lot of AI true AI fullout adoption, I think that in our industry they are a bit of a lagards that will get onto the AI train, you know, but everybody still knows and talks about it's like well are they set up for AI because I don't want to have to switch to another company in the future or are they continuing to develop and what you're finding is many of these companies are just stagnant in their product development and that's that creates a huge advantage for Guerilla. Es because we've kind of kept this mantra of ongoing production, ongoing development. It's not something that it's like baked into our DNA, you know. So, we're always releasing new and on the edge, you know. We just released our full chat AI for the customer portal and text messaging and soon for voice.
What's really cool about the AI that we've introduced it's basically an AI receptionist that can man your SMS or your customer portal and provide live chat and it's really sweet Jonas cuz you can basically create your own library of documentation for your company and you probably have a lot of it already. So it's like your hours of operation, the zip codes that you work in, how you perform each service, your pricing table sheet, you know, etc. You can basically feed all that to AI. And we're using OpenAI as the back end right now, and it will take all of your data set and kind of and act just like a receptionist in your company.
What else is really cool with these AI agents is you can tell it how to behave. Hey, I want you to have a really bubbly, friendly you know, mannerisms or, you know, make it make it comedic if you wanted to or you know, whatever the tone is that you wanted them to convey. You could even let them know that when you're building your AI and it's really really simple and intuitive like anybody, you could basically feed it a text document or just tell it what you want to do in plain text and it ingests it that way.
So, what's really cool, the way that we've created it, making it that easy, anybody can just train their AI really, really really, really quickly by just adding any any of their current documentation and pricing and then it will accurately answer based on, you know, the question that the customer is asking.
It also as their last step gives them the ability to escalate any conversation, ask for a real person. So you're providing them the ability to get whatever questions answered they need fast on the support side as well as escalate whatever they need to you know you're a real support team. That's awesome. How have the customers of pest control companies been adapting to it?
Have you seen it at that level? Well the customers are I think of the different segments, right?
You have your solo operators and then you have small teams, larger teams. So small operator, it's awesome because generally they're in the field working, right?
So the AI representative can take any lead information for them on their behalf while they're working. Could handle any customer questions. You know, a lot of times a customer will just say, "Hey, I need to pay my bill." Or, "Hey, I need to change my credit card on file." Or, "Hey, when's my next appointment?" Like, it'll literally ask that to the AI. The AI is integrated into Gorilla CRM and so it already knows the customer's account and the portal and it could already start, you know, handling offloading some of those questions.
So, you know, the solo operator has a lot less to do. It's almost like having your first you know, representative in your office, but basically as a digital agent. For the larger offices, I see a lot of them definitely the very first thing they want to do is they want to turn it on for after hours.
They want it for after hours SMS and definitely on the portal so that they know that they're still able to capture at some level this business using the AI agent. What's really cool is I noticed those companies, they'll they'll review all the conversations at night and basically approve that AI on the fly. So if anything that is coming through that is not being answered properly, they're they're more on top of making sure that it's dialed in for the almost the very next day for those conversations will go well.
So after hours I think is huge for the larger companies. And then generally, you know, just being able to, let's say you're max staff or you have you have a representative out right from your office.
Everybody else feels that. What's cool is that they can offload some of that by running the AI at the same time. AI can field lower level chats and then the chats or conversations that are hitting your customer success team are like a level up from just the mundane, right?
So, you're able to save time on all the mundane QA that might come through. And so I think what's what I notice is these companies will hit a pain point like, "Oh man, we're out to representatives today and we're feeling it.
So let's look into what the AI representative can do. Then they turn it on. Then they start to realize the opportunity there. And then they make that basically as another employer employee team. I think they've just got to feel a bit of that pain and then they turn it on for the first time and then they start to you know aha start going off and they really see what it can do for them. So that's what I'm noticing. But I do notice like I said in the beginning of the conversation like our industry are a bit of a lagard in adoption this process and a lot of them have this feeling that I'd rather be talking to a real person.
You know that's kind of like the natural how everybody's responding until they find themselves in a moment where they really could have given somebody better service. Right?
Where when they find myself in a moment if I'm a solo operator I can't provide service. I'm not providing service. If I'm a larger company and our we're we're underst staffed for whatever day, I'm not providing the same level of service. I think once they once they see that and then they see, oh, I could actually provide a better level of service, then it then it becomes a natural thing to turn to start using the AI.
Yeah, that's really cool. And then as far as like your pest control operators, customers, how have they been receiving it?
Do they have you see are they using it quite a bit? AI I think like anybody you we just want it to work right so it works most of the time but some of the times it doesn't have the question the answer to the question and that's either from you know the original pest company not putting in their full and then the second thing I think that we've made it easy is you got to really make it easy for somebody to request a real person you know so as long as you have that ability for them just to request a real person And also the last thing that we've just kind of baked in and I notice a lot of the other AI agents that are out there serving us don't do this. They don't integrate directly with the CRM or the portal.
Right? So the AI has no context on who they're talking to. You've got to give the AI context. Like does the AI know is this a new lead?
Is this a current customer? Is this a current customer with a long history? Is this a current customer that just signed up?
You know, the AI can treat them all the way they should be treated if it's doing its job well. And I think if you're doing that with your AI, then the customers on the end will receive it well. If you don't have it integrated, the CRM and the customer is asking anything, can I change my credit card on file?
When's my next appointment? It doesn't have any answers and just has to forward everything to a rep. That's not as helpful. So what we've done at GorillaDesk is we baked in the AI to the CRM proper. So it knows basically who the avatar is and can segment your customer base and at least address them properly.
People want to be addressed and recognized for like who they are. I'm your customer already. You know, don't treat me as a lead. I've been your customer for 5 years. Don't treat me as somebody that hasn't, you know, been with you for a while. So I think that those nuances of providing that on the back end programmatically, basically giving your AI the ability to have a more u an emotional idea on who how it should respond, you know, and some type of empathy baked in to who this customer is and how long they've been with you.
So, a lot of that is what I'm excited about cuz I see that as the lowh hanging fruit opportunity because nobody other CRM are not really trying to take it that far, you know. And so if you do get to that point with it, which it's still work in progress, but it's way better than it was, being able to actually recognize who your customers are on AI side. By using easy indicators is kind of like the way to go if you want everybody to feel good about what's occurring and want them to feel good about how they're being how they're how basically the service is being rendered. You know, how well does is the bot serving serving me really?
How how well is AI serving me? Really. And what I'm excited about is I feel like at some point people aren't going to know the difference between speaking to someone versus an AI rep. They're not going to know. At some point, you know, we're not there yet, but at some point it's going to feel it's going to feel human, you know, which I think is amazing for all of us to be able to leverage that with with also our real staff.
So, I love the AI stuff, man. I could talk about it all day. You just keep me going. Any any way that we can get rid of some overhead, right?
Or keep overhead to a minimum. The way that I find our personnel changing is you're going to have managers of AI, right?
I'm not going to just be a customer success rep. Now, I get to be a customer success rep and AI manager. Hey, did you check all the AI responses this morning?
Were they all on point? Can we dial them in better? Can we put in our playbook so that the AI team which you're managing now is being effective you know like another thing is everyone's job is not about being replaced it's about dealing with a higher level of communication like you know I can have an AI do this but I can't have Jonas as a rep do this like there's a higher level there's always tiers of communication right until you get that tier where hey I need I want to talk to a manager Right?
We want to avoid that. But if people get to that point, there's plenty of communication that the AI can handle where I don't want a real person. I just want something done now and quick. I want to update my card details. I want to know what my appointment was. I want to request a reschedule. I want to whatever. Like, I don't need a real person for this, but I have a problem with my account, right?
I want to easily escalate to someone. So, I see that our customer success reps won't have to deal with the mundane. They're going to deal with the next level up in communication requirement and they're going to be able to manage at an operational level the AI communication and basically the repository of data for us, right?
We should arm them and say give them the ability to make sure that that knowledge base of information that AI pulls from is up to date and current. And our customer success team can do that. And when they're doing that, they're buying back the company a lot of time and buying us back their time to work on more difficult scenarios, right?
More difficult communication scenarios or ops scenarios if that's with routing or scheduling, whatever. So, I just see us being able to lift all of the support team up and also if we frame it properly, we can make it seem like this job that they're getting is even now way more important.
You're now affecting other areas of ops, you know, and framing it that way and making them feel good about it. I think that all the success will rise to the occasion and feel like, all right, this is awesome. We don't have to do all the mundane so much anymore. And I actually am in dealing with real serious conversations or real serious ops work. Yeah. How do you stay in front of in the forefront of all this?
Like who are you learning from or how do you stay in front of it?
One is like you have to have a real good vision for what you think can be we can achieve. You know the vision for me like I'm telling you it can it's actually will end up feeling like they're just speaking to another representative.
You know I don't want I don't want the person on the other end of the call or a text message to feel like you're not being treated well. And because I know that that's achievable and going to be achievable. I'm really striving towards that.
So, I'm looking at all the products that are allowing us to, you know, get that nuance of relatability in what we're building for the chat representatives. And really, that just means watching there's basically five different AI that are in the running and staying on top of what they're doing and what their models look like, reading all the new model releases and seeing what's coming out. It's not that bad, Jonas. It's like, you know, there's not to too much that you have to stay up on. Yeah. Cuz you have you have to know what's coming down the pipeline, right?
What you think is going to be good and then taking that thing and going to implement as fast as possible. Yeah. And what's cool though is they give us the APIs to execute pretty much at a at a very high level, at a quick level. We've got all the basis covered of the whole, you know, infrastructure being able to deploy your chat rep. Everything we do on the back end now is just reiteration on now what more can we get contextually that these APIs are giving us. It's basically one main primary question.
It's either going to provide an advancement enough or not. And to a point we basically already have it. We could do a lot of backend engineering which we're currently working on which is tying the account data information into very specific ways in which that representative should respond you know and you could even think of them off of your head you know like how should you treat a customer that's been with you 10 years versus a customer we just signed up yesterday in what way should we acknowledge them and really that is humanlike training it's not really out of the box through the API so much right now.
But that's great. It means that we're creating something that is custom, you know, that everybody else would have to create custom or else it's just not going to be available to them, which is really good. You know, allows you to have an edge. Do you think that voice will be there the same way over time like where there's like the CS team is still managing like the voice team like the voice AI?
No doubt. Voice AI will be the very next thing that we end up working on. There's some other features that we what we did is we did the portal and the text messaging AI and now we're going back to do some kind of operational work that a bunch of our clients have wanted us to work on.
And then we're going to come back around probably I'd say in two months and work on the whole voice AI and this will give us also enough data because we released the chat AI rep in like November of last year.
We re reiterated on it for the season to make it more emotionally intelligent and connected to the accounts about a month ago or so. And so everybody's rocking on the portal and SMS. And then I'd say within 60 days, we'll start working on the voice AI. And it's going to be very easy to deploy because it's going to use all the same infrastructure that SMS and the portal AI uses. It just needs to be connected to the phone system.
You know in the way that the companies want to use it, however they want to set it up, if they want it to kind of be first in the round robin or you know be you know if no one's available you know it just depends on the options that we want to build for how how they want to handle voice basically the times times and hours of operation.
Yeah, we've tried in implementing voice and it's just for us it's just not quite there yet. It would end up being more like a because it's not it wasn't integrated right. So almost like it was just more of a voicemail, which is fine. Like they could do some things here and there, but it just wasn't exactly what we needed yet, you know. But it's there. It's cool. It sounds really cool. It can be helpful. It did sell a few accounts, you know, but it wasn't integrated with our software at the time. So it's just hard, you know. Yeah. On the lead genen side, there's plenty of them, you know, for lead genen.
But when the lead genen doesn't know I'm already answering the call to a current client, you just kind of screwed up being remarkable. You know what I mean?
Like, so that's my whole goal. That's my whole goal is how do we is we had to come out with the portal and SMS first, find a way to get to be remarkable and have context so that we're not when we're running AI on the phones, it's just not another, oh, it's just another lead tool, you know. No, it needs to be deeper than that. Needs to be actually like a person working in a company and have context and have access to the account.
So yeah, you know, I want to do everything the right way. How how long do you think that'll take you from start to finish to get Not whole thing too. It just gears. Yeah, I'll probably take 60 days to the first version once you start execution.
No, no. Most all things we get execute within 60 to 90 days. Because we placed it as a focus for the full team and we have 64 people on our engineering team right now. So, and more than half of those are developers.
So, once we go after something, it's, you know, all hands on deck becomes a priority and a focus. Two questions. What's been the hardest day with you with GorillaDesk?
The hardest day? Yeah. Oh, the hardest days are not that many, but it's when there's a downtime, you know. Luckily, in the past year, I had one day on a weekend morning, which really made it not that bad where we had like a few hours of time when we were trying. So, what happened was we're doing a server migration in night that went long and into the morning and not accounted for, right?
Because we thought the migration would have been done hours before. And there are things during a migration unaccounted for like you know having an issue with a migration to a server and then having to restart that server that migration then you just lost that time that you had accounted for.
So, you know, when I feel it probably I feel it, you know, when when anybody's having a problem in application, I feel it and it makes me it makes me not that I've gotten to the point where I'm mature now. It doesn't upset me. It gets me in mode of let me get this done, you know, how am I going to get this done as fast as possible?
How am I going to help everybody if there's a, you know, if there's an issue?
But those are the hardest days when things are running smooth. As long as system's smooth, nothing else is that that difficult. I can deal with everything else. But when servers aren't running that smooth or there's even because there's a lot of thirdparty applications we use that aren't under our control you know everything's thirdparty applications we rely on everything is completely vertically integrated or do we own or did we build everything so from phone system to text you know to servers relying on by AWS there's a lot of different security tools that we utilize and those securities create blockages sometimes that aren't really warranted you Oh, well, and you know, we're basically getting attacked and all systems like ours are getting attacked every day.
And a lot of systems like ours will use products like Cloudflare for layered security to prevent from getting DDoSed and just our servers taken down. So, you know, with the mix of the tools, the mix of the server environments, the mix of thirdparty tools I rely on, there's things that go wrong, bro.
And I it's just when the server issues are an issue, like it's maybe once or twice a year, but there's bound to be something. It just seems to be that way. It's how fast can you react as a team, you know?
So what's great about GorillaDesk is you know phone call away I have always four guys always at the ready and we jump on and make sure that you know everything's good to go and we also do a lot more and have learned a lot regarding doing any types of new deployments or updates you know when's the best time how much additional time to all lot how to how to pre pre-roll the whole thing we basically a week before we pre-roll the whole update to see how would go we play place it in like you know its own environment to try to test to see if we can catch anything ahead of time. So I mean we're doing all the best practices but even then the hardest days are when even when you try to do everything correctly there's either things out of control or things that are unexpected that create a problem for the system.
U but other than that man everything else is gravy. Yeah. So like when a server goes like you like you see your system goes down and it's a server and it's out of your control, what do you do there?
Well, basically we have a high we have a higher level of support with AWS, right?
So we pay for a higher level support and we get our engineers on with the support team there and they help to troubleshoot it. They're pretty quick. I mean, all the team usually does maybe within 20 minutes they'll have the problem and then they'll be working on the resolution of the problem depending on what it is.
But that's what we do. We have a higher support level with all of our vendors, you know, so that we can get directly in touch with them and handle anything on that we need to. And that's basically what they offer. You know, there's not much more that you can do beyond that.
And just making sure that you keep a good connection withever whoever your lead is u and connection to the current lead on the current GorillaDesk team and that's it just keeping that open line of connection communication for when we you know don't want those things to happen when they do that we know directly how to go through an ops procedure. So we have full ops procedure on any of those partners you know and what would happen what the case scenario would be from the support line all the way down to that senior person that needs to get it handled. That's really cool.
Talking about AI still like what are you most excited for in like the next keep it simple because it's far away like 5 years like what do you see even beyond like the texting and the AI for voice like what do what do you see beyond that yeah everything's going to be prompt based man how often are you going to ChatGPT now every day that's all I do yeah so I noticed my behavior change man right from Google or ChatGPT for a lot of things sometimes for some things like local ratings, hotels, flights, you know, I make I have ChatGPT will give me all my all its suggestions for what flights, what hotels, but then when it comes down to actually booking, I go back to Google.
But that's the point. Everybody is getting conditioned to use a chatbased prompt and that's the way it's going to end up being in the CRM. Essentially, you'll be able to go in your CRM and it. And now imagine all the prompts, Jonas.
Hey, GorillaDesk, create an email campaign to these users with jobs between this time frame of these services. I want to batch out that email. We want to write, can you help me write that email together?
And then batch it out. Hey Gorillas, can you reroute all the jobs for all of the next month across four or five different technicians?
I want this technician to handle all pest control type related service. I want this technician to handle this and I need this technician only working in this region. Imagine prompting every activity that you would ever do. Hey, I need you to give me this report. I want these columns. No, take that column out. Okay, give me a sum here. Give me multiply here. Give me, you know, the route to be so incredible.
Everything generally, I mean, if you can prompt it and then you can have it react programmatically, I think that that's all the gravy right there because everybody's going to want a prompting interface. Now, people want checks and balances. So, they're still going to want the old school CRM interface. They're still going to want to understand, hey, did what I just do take, you know, do I have confidence in the changes that it just gave me?
You know, once you get a level of confidence and you can see that they're still going to want the visual CRM, but I think everything's going to end up being prompt based, that whole UI interface, you know, people are, you know, they there's more difficult products than GorillaDesk and those products are very painful to learn and train on.
GorillaDesk, even as easy it as it is, can have even another level of use if there was a prompt-based use. Because what I noticed and I watch customers using GorillaDesk is they're they're taking their data from GorillaDesk and trying to prompt more data extraction in ChatGPT cuz everybody wants to look at things their own way or pull certain data their own way and you know in the past you would have custom data tables where you would basically say I want these field sets in my data table.
In the future it will be this is the data that I want. I don't need to define anything. And the system will already know and already grab all that data for me, you know. So, there's going to be less it's going to be less finicky, less fooling around going from one application to another if inside GorillaDesk you already basically have a ChatGPT model connected to all the data.
So that's what needs to be built now is that the underlying data sets, the data tables that you have access to in GorillaDesk CRM property, the AI needs to know and access all the fields and know contextually what all the fields are for.
And so in the back end we are building you know basically a model for training an OpenAI model. Here's Gorilla model and all the fields and what they represent. Then you connect them to an API model. And give you as a power user the owner of your company a ChatGPT interface right then you can tell it to pull any report you want then you then what goes on from there Jonas then it's now the model knows all the data understands the context of all the data and now we start asking the model to act like a CEO right hey based on all the data you know if you were going to compete against those near next to us, which product lines would we focus on and expand on and how would you compete, you know, at another level?
How would you go how would you take our company from the current revenue market to the next?
Now, here's what here's the secret that everybody should learn and know when they're using ChatGPT products. The secret is you've got to go three layers deep, four, five layers deep. Okay?
If you would build that model, how would you then come in and compete against that model if you were going to build a new model?
All right, now you've got a new model. All right, if you were going to come in and dominate and destroy everybody that came in with these two models, what would you do?
And then you start to parse, you know, but you get to bigger, broader understanding of what are all the things that ChatGPT would recommend to me that you wouldn't have to sit there and have a brainstorming session or whatever because it's already turnurning it all out for you.
All right. Now, you're saying, Chris, five years out. Five years out means telling ChatGPT to build you a model, asking it to beat and break that model, asking it to come in and dominate that model, and it's going to say, it's going to come out, here's the whole marketing plan, here's the whole service strategy, here's how we need to execute on service side, right?
Here's the ad campaigns we would have to run. Okay. Now, the five-year out is telling ChatGPT deploy and you as an owner, you don't do anything because it's connected to your ad campaigns. It's connected to, you know, your Google Analytics. It's connected to Facebook ads. It's it has all your accounts. It's connected already.
Okay? It can it can generate imagery. It could generate ad content. It could buy and deploy the full marketing campaign, right?
On its own, it can change the way you want to operate GorillaDesk and optimize for that on its own. It could go out maybe even put new hiring posts out everywhere you would go out and hire sales rep. On its own, it will go, you know what I mean?
Like there's a level where ChatGPT can basically or any OpenAI model, you know, if it if it has the right connections, it will be able to do those things on its own. And that's what everybody's going to want. They're going to end up you're going to end up finding you're going to have connecting your your LM system to what they probably have is like an API interface. Imagine like right now we have Zapier, right, at a low level where you can connect APIs. Okay. So, imagine there's going to be like a Zapier for having your ChatGPT connected to all of your other accounts, right?
And then it can automatically sign in and do and take care of all those activities for you. So, that's what I'm most excited about is that basically you become a manager of an AI CEO and that AI CEO can execute within milliseconds things that would take any individual person hours of work to do.
And so as an operator CEO, how do we how do we win? How do we how do we become the first ones there?
Obviously talking to Chris every day. So I knew a lot of that was coming. We've already talked about it. But like how do how do we win there?
You know, like how do we be the first one to be at the marketplace for that?
How do we be in the forefront? Well, you can already start winning right now because the information that ChatGPT is giving you back is really great information. It's still us that we have to execute on it. So if you're great at execution, you're still winning.
You're just not taking advantage of that layer that I know is possible where ChatGPT can go out there and already implement execute against you. When it comes down to the creative, what I find is what these models can already do is if you feed it creative that's like the creative you want for your branding, it can now start creative like I can I can give it my mascot and it will give me my mascot right back. What are you using for that?
Using Grok for that or you using what are you using for that? I'm using OpenArt.ai. OpenArt is the most powerful tool that I found for regeneration on mascots. What you have to give it is five, ideally five, three to five just poses of your mascot, right?
Front on, quarter turn, side rear. If you do that, that's all you need to generate for any mascot now at this time. And then you can feed that to OpenArt and you can ask it to do anything with your mascot.
You know, put it in a pool naked wearing, you know, pool floaties, whatever you want to do with your mascot. Open our AI will do that. But soon all those tools will be able to do that. And so, you know, you'll feed your initial AI, let's say your your brand kit, your mascot kit, and then the AI can go from there.
So like there are things you can already take advantage of just like the that tool you can already take advantage of it on doing your creative you know there's also a lot of sweet tools that are coming out for video creative not just still imagery creative so I'd say where you win now is taking advantage of all the individual agents and where we live we live in 5 years like you're asking for that 5year vision man agent deploy go do it all for me there will be an easy it's we're all going to be striving for that easy button on the technology side to make it that easy for everybody. But until then, you're going to have all these individual agents that you're going to be using. You're already using ChatGPT.
Okay, if you're using ChatGPT, you have, you know, have felt the power that you have already available to you. But where you're not using it's there now. If you're not using it on art, it's there for art. If you're not using it for mascot development, it's there. If you're not using it for ad creative, you know, video creative, it's there in its capacity. And I'd say using all those tools now is a good time to start so that you understand what's available to you and you're going to understand what's available to the AI and what those eventually e easy buttons are going to be allow you to deploy, you know.
Yeah, it's awesome. What are what are some big levers that operators can pull right now inside GorillaDesk that can really move the needle in their business?
I mean, review generation is the number one for everyone, bro. And I'm sure everybody knows and is using it by now, but that's the number one. And it surprised me for people that are actually on Gorilla Basic because Gorilla Pro is a no-brainer just for review generation alone.
You know, getting reviews on your GMB. Now, we don't know how GMB is going to change. That's an interesting question. Yeah, that's a crazy question, right?
Because of course at some point ChatGPT or any AI is going to want to come in, take some of that away from Google My Business. Of course, right?
Something I noticed recently is that ChatGPT is starting to recommend video results from YouTube, which is odd because, you know, ChatGPT is almost it's a competitor to Google, but they're still bringing up results from YouTube, which is great for you, which is also great for every independent company because people are starting to now use ChatGPT in some ways for local search because they're thinking they can get it to do And so what I'm finding comes up for local search is video content will come up for local search.
So that's one thing I would be doing right now that's like a lowhanging fruit is making sure I have some video content on my YouTube around my keyword terms for my local area that I'm serving and starting to see if I can jump in ranks and ChatGPT.
Because I already noticed when people look for best pest control software, a bunch of our affiliates are coming up in ChatGPT searches and that's great, you know, because I was wondering, well, what's going to happen now with ChatGPT search?
Are they actually going to integrate Google assets or YouTube assets or not? And are. What else can they do inside Gorilla?
And I think all the automated communication, this is old hat stuff, but I would say, you know, thinking about your follow-up most of the time people will want to dump people into a review rating process right after on an initial follow-up. It's great for the initial followup, but where everybody's kind of falling short is following up after the fact and throughout the season and expansion revenue.
You know, I feel like all of that I feel like we get the customer, we focus on sales. I'm I do it too. And then it's, you know, but where all the backend revenue that we're leaving on the table.
So I think on the follow-up communication we could be having a more personalized approach based on the service that is rendered. GorillaDesk already allows you to do that today, you know, so you can dial in per each service type you're doing how you want a follow-up and how you want that follow-up cadence to look like.
And then I think in GorillaDesk, we also have a sales opportunity pipeline. Now, that pipeline allows you to broadcast or run phone call sequences against any cohort in your system. So, you want to be building cohorts for expansion revenue.
You want to have your sales team or your customer success team dialed in so that they know exactly what lists they need to hit on every single day to make sure expansion revenue as well as closing your regular sales, but expansion revenue should be occurring every single day in the business, right?
So, hey, we got we're we're really focused on getting these leads called back same day or next day, but we aren't so focused on making sure on, you know, the first quarter or once summer season hits that we're upselling everybody into whatever strategic product that we're doing, whether that's mosquito f or something else. You know, attic dustings, crawl space dustings, you know, there's timeliness for everything that should be occurring on expansion revenue as a basic like op that is never missed, you know. So, we're putting a lot of focus on the sale, closing the sale, new sales, new sales, new sales. How much more did we grow?
But, the expansion revenue part is there's a lot more there than you think like in GorillaDesk and even. So, we did when we send out broadcast mails and messages on what's new or what they should be taking advantage on within whatever given time frame, huge spike in what we're doing on expansion revenue that affects overall revenue.
And so, it's the same thing in pest control. You know, my brother just did it in his company. He got we ran for him last year very timely expansion revenue campaigns and he was able to break a goal that he wouldn't have broken otherwise.
You know, everybody at GorillaDesk wants to break the 1 million in revenue mark. And you know, when they're starting to ask how we really get there and what we do for that, I redivert all their attention back on expansion revenue cuz all they're thinking about is net new and they're not really hitting that component of business.
So, that's kind of where I'd be. I'd work on that and then scaling people. And I know Jonas, you always we don't have a lot of time today. I know you're always asking me for one book or a few books. I have one book, okay?
I have one book and that's Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building, you guys. It's a it's a really thick book. Don't let it scare you because each section is broken out based on what you need to do as far as execution, whether that be hiring, doing proper interviews, continuing to score people over time, leadership development, like everything is in this book, you guys. On scaling people.
And so if I were to tell you know, what else do I recommend?
It's really getting into people. You know, I think that a lot of people or owners hit a wall if they have a bad hire. And I like my one thing of encouragement is don't be discouraged by having a bad hire. Like we all have it. There's a there's only a percentage of hits on base that you do well when it comes to hiring.
And when you do have great hires, it makes everything else worth it. Like, trust me, you're going to have a great hire and then you're going to have then you're going to see the frame of what a good hire looks like. And that's going to excite you to continue hiring, but you're only going to be excited to continue hiring if you feel confident in the way that you hire and manage.
And this is the best book that I found for myself to go back for hiring management and leadership development. So, highly recommend scaling up. That's awesome. Thank you. Of course, I was going to end with that question, too. Your what's your book you're reading right now?
It's what I always do. That's great, great, great advice. When I every time that I've hired a key executive on day one, they've made an impact and they've been really when they've been really good. Have you noticed the same thing?
For sure. It becomes like it's almost like you exhale and you're like I made the right call. You know, you know it. And it's very soon. You know, if you're if you're four, if you're a month, two, 3 months out and you're like, still trying to see if it's going to work. It's probably not the right person. I had that happen last year and I probably drug it out too long. When we met we're like 45 days in and I kept asking people like what do they think and they're like oh just give them a little bit more time these people are a little bit different than you're used to they're more creative side and I was like okay more time same thing 45 days in like this is not going well I had to end it then again have other other people day one day one like they made a massive impact on the it's like okay good sigh of relief move forward like been great there are roles I'd say like a CEO O or an operator role where there is patience, you know, cuz at our level where we're used to doing it and you know I don't have a level of patience like cuz I just want things to get done.
So what I have learned though is that in operations roles you should allow at least for me like a 60-day almost like a shadowing so they can kind of absorb the way things have been working.
But at the same time coming with ideas on what should be changed before doing ex any new change execution and then allowing them to start work and also giving them grace in the areas that you know you hired them in where they're not as strong. Like you're not always going to let's say you want an operator but they're not as strong on the marketing side but they got everything else down. You got to understand that and you got to be there in the trenches with them to get their marketing chops up. You know, wherever identify where they're not strong and show yourself and them the grace to allow enough time.
That's the only time, you know, but they should be coming with the skills that they are strong with out of the gate and that should show a remarkable change or remarkable contribution very soon, you know. So grace in the areas where you know when you hired them they're not as strong that you knew you need to train up and already had a plan for training them or giving them the grace to go through a period of training and then seeing that they're really delivering on the things that you did hire them for that are their core competencies within a very short amount of time. Great advice.
Last question for you as we wrap this up but I know it's probably changed a lot over the last few years but what's your what's the day of Chris Moreschi look like today?
My days are basically I putter around in the morning, have a coffee. I don't, you know, I kind of just allow myself to relax in the morning. I get sun in my eyes. I hang out with my dog.
I'll have a good breakfast. It's usually like a parfait or eggs and toast. And then I'll start reviewing basically everything that's going on in product that would need my attention. And so if there's nothing in product that day that needs my attention, then I'll go and work on new ad campaigns or new product that's coming much further down the line.
Because those are things that I enjoy working on in the morning. The things that I that are all administrative or meetings I like to do afternoon time or if I'm meeting with any clients or usually I'll do maybe two calls a day with different clients, usually my our larger clients.
So I'm not on the phone that much and then the rest of the time I'm supporting my team in all the areas like I told you today we're working on the support side. So I met with the support team specifically and we'll meet for the next few days to make sure what we've done on the op side is meeting the expectation.
I only run three meetings for myself a week. I do two meetings on Wednesday and one on And I do the marketing meeting, a client success meeting, and a sales meeting. And then product I'm meeting with basically every day depending on what working on a product side.
So I spend a lot of time on product because it takes a lot of iterations and a lot of a lot of like massaging product for me to get it exactly right. And I'm a I'm a core component of the product team.
So I mean most of my days I keep generally open because if I'm going to create anything new it means that I'm kind of coming from a blank place you know a blank slate and that's something really important for me you know if I'm creating or working on anything new then I need nothing else can be like consuming my mind.
So in the very morning also like as a practice I'm working on where am I out of integrity and where I get need to get in integrity. That's like when I'm taking my coffee and hanging out with Zane.
I'm thinking like is there anything that's weighing me down that's going to keep me from being completely open and creative. If there's anything weighing my myself down I direct it to my team or I handle it myself. Like that has to be done. Gets that then that gets off their shoulders. Now I can be creative.
And then like I said, I just run a few meetings a week and the rest of the time it's open creates creative time for me. You know, it might might not be all fun work. It might be process work or you know where is the bottleneck next?
Where do I where am I identifying as a bottleneck? But a lot of all the grow initiative and strategic planning you know I've already done last year for all of this year and then as before quarter four comes in quarter three I do all my strategic planning for the all of the next upcoming year. So this year is already solid. It's just about execution and then making sure based on growth that you know all the departments are keeping up with the amount of growth.
So I don't know hopefully I answer your question. Few meetings very open time frame stay creative stay open. And I don't like to have something booked every hour on the hour or else I'm really not leveraging my real core competency is the strength to teach as strategically as possible about the product and executing against the product.
That's awesome to my ass. That's great. Do you have your next hire in mind?
Big hire. I've been hiring a lot. There's, you know, all of our hires seem be as far as higher levels, more department hires, you know, mean more support team, more sales. At the high higher level, our, you know, my core team is strong.
I don't really need anybody in those seats. What we need is more execution on more sales calendars. We're being we're right now we're booked out six days out for sales. That's a problem. You know, right now, before this week, our training staff was booked six days out. Now, we opened up more training calendars, so we're not booked on the support side six days out anymore. That was one critical one to make sure. But now, I need to go back to sales. And I need to actually what we've been looking at is, you know, do we really need to open another sales calendar or is still everybody getting served within that window is what I'm kind of looking at right now. But generally, I already know, my gut knows, yeah, we need another sales hire.
And we take the sales hires pretty slow because I like to get somebody that is very relatable to who we have them speaking to. Right. So right now Chrissy, which does a majority of the pest control sales, she ran her own pest control company, passed a million, sold her company, you know, ran it with her husband. So she has immediate rapport, knows what the customer is dealing with. And so we're also moving into lawn and lawn closes are coming along really well. And so we're going to get somebody strategic on the sales side in lawn. So, I've been taking my time with that hire.
But that's, you know, the next person strategically. It finds we find that the close rate right on the on our sales accounts, if they're at least having a one-ouch with somebody that's within the industry, the close rate improves.
You know, a lot of the competition will kind of they'll have people in seats on the sales side that they all say that they're from that industry, right?
But I want people that are really from the industry on closing. For Chris, what the next five years look like for you?
Next five years, my family, my parents are getting up there. So, I've been making it been very adamant about doing family and friends trips throughout the year. I ch try to do two friends trips and three family trips.
I'm noticing those are the things I look back on on year and I'm like I'm so glad that I did that, you know, spending spending that individual time with them. So continuing that as a big part of my 5year goal.
You know, GorillaDesk right now we're growing at 35% year-over-year. As of two years ago, we were growing 60% year-over-year. And so I'm trying to strategically, you know, find a way back to beyond 50% year-over-year growth. It's kind of my primary goal right now. And that does mean moving into other industries.
So GorillaDesk has been working all of its communication at the front end and at the ad level to appeal and to feel like it is for additional industries, not just pest control. And so we've done that really well in lawn and cleaning and pool, but mainly lawn is our next focus.
And so I need to have an unlock there and kind of do every all the things that we've done in pest industry for lawn. And that will probably be a 2-year push. You know, we've done a lot of progress this year, but we'll make a lot more next year and the year after that, I believe, until we start seeing traction within the communities and recommending GorillaDesk.
So once we do break into lawn, it should it's going to basically like double the amount of acquisition, if not triple the amount of acquisition. It's just becoming hitting becoming a real fit and them feeling like yes, it's really for us. And there's a few things being built there that are really exciting. Mainly, you know, being able to draw to get linear and square feet right on the map within the application.
That seems to be a big one and that's coming really soon. So, that should check a lot of boxes that the lawn guys are asking for. I'm see myself continuing to run GorillaDesk. I love the team that I work with. I love what I get to do every day.
So, you know, one thing is for the next 5 years, like getting to still do what I do now. I feel like everything's on all cylinders. You know, it's kind of like I've built my life over the last 13 years to dial it into how I have it now.
And this is the way that I like things. You know, I like it to where I can be creative most of the day, work out, get my, you know, boxing in and being able to spend whatever time that I'd like to with my family.
You know, I think that I've also given up a lot of family time. And I'd say to anybody else out there, don't give up family time if you can. I know that, you know, on the entrepreneur side, there isn't really balance when you're all going all out, but and I'll say from my own experience, you know, I'd always be thinking about business.
No, wherever I was, you know, that was it. That was what on my mind. I had to, you know, winning at all costs. I'd say that the balance is yes, you're unbalanced, but to be able to be completely present when you are with your family, I'd say for the next 5 years, that's something that I want to keep, you know, where when I'm with my family, I'm with my family and I can be present there and take that with me instead of just, you know, being there but not really present and trying to focus on your next win. You know, at some point like the success is there. It's but the real success you really realize is the time that you're able to really spend you know with the family that you have for the limited time that you have them becomes the real win you know because you're going to end up where in a place where you're going to win if you keep at it if you persevere.
I would rather be at that place knowing that I was also able to be present and have time for friends and family. And I say I wasn't as good at that before, you know. So when you look at the next 5 years, it's about taking everything that I learned that I'd want to have change or do be a bit better, be more mature about and actually live how you want you know design it and execute against that so that you know there are no real regrets. You know, there are some regrets. You can't, you know, a lot of times you'll say, "Oh, I can't have no regrets or else it wouldn't have got me here." No. Yeah, I do regret this and I'm going to adjust and change this so that there really aren't any more regrets, you know?
So, next 5 years about living with what I've learned and doing it the way that I will always want to be doing it and feeling good about that, having the people around me feel really good about So, you know, there's no big exit opportunity or no getting no big bag off the table. You know, I've invested so well during this whole time. My investments take care of everything.
You know, GorillaDesk for me now is about doing what I want and being creative in the way that I like to show up every single day. You know, that's why I feel really confident and people will ask, you know, hey, when are you going to sell or Chris, you know, what's going to happen?
But that's not what I want. Like I don't need that. This is what I need to feed myself creatively. So I don't I think and you know me, Jonas, like if anything were to happen, I'd be right into the next thing immediately and I'd be building something else right away, you know?
Right. Yeah. No, that's freaking awesome. I love it. You're a stud. I'm glad that you're here. Glad you spend the last hour and a half with us. I appreciate you jumping on here. I appreciate our friendship. Like glad to have you around. You're awesome.
Yeah. If you need anything, let me know. Thanks for having me. Of course. I'm sure we'll have you back soon. Got some big things coming in the pipeline. So, secret. There's a secret on the table. There is. All right, brother. I appreciate you. All right, man. Be good. Appreciate you.
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