Jill Fratianne 0:02

Welcome to the Unscripted Symphony, the podcast where courage takes the lead and life's greatest opportunities happen between the notes. I'm Jill Frattianne, and with Each Week, we'll explore the stories, lessons, and bold decisions that remind us to do it scared, trust the process, and create a life that's uniquely your own. Today I'm here with John Ray. He is a Sarasota-based business systems builder who spent 25 years in fire and safety, real estate, and software before turning that experience into AI systems that help small businesses, uh and mid-tier businesses catch every call and book every job. Hi, John.

John Reay 0:51

Hi, good morning, Jill. How are you doing this morning?

Jill Fratianne 0:53

I'm doing great. Should we tell the listeners what time it is?

John Reay 0:56

Oh, why not? Let's do it.

Jill Fratianne 0:59

They're gonna say we're psychotic, but that's well, this is this is the life of how you fit it in. So um part of this podcast is helping people get things done that they need to get done. And John and I could only find one time really quickly that we could get this uh recorded for our listeners. And what time is it, John?

John Reay 1:19

It is a little after 6:30 in the morning.

Jill Fratianne 1:22

6 30 a.m. And uh again, like I spent my life as a musician staying up very late at night, and I have I have switched that around. It was a huge life changer. But I want to get into this with you because I spent time reading all about what you're about, John. And tell me about and tell us about this goal of a thousand millionaires. What's that?

John Reay 1:47

So it is it's an aspirational thing that we put in place because one of the things that every I think every entrepreneur, when they get started, they they get into that business or into that mindset of doing things for them because well they wanna they want more out of life, they want more out of what they're doing than than just a normal job. And we did too. And so that thousand millionaire goal was something that actually one of my business coaches put in my head, and the fact that if you want to be a millionaire, then you need to help others to become what you want to become. And I think his his mindset of it was if you make make a hundred people a millionaire, then you'd be the 101st. My thought process is okay, let's double down on that and and let's really go at it and say, okay, this will be a 20-year goal for me, but it's a thousand. I wanted to do a thousand. And so to me, that was one of those things that moved moved where we were at mentally with things because I was into a lot of, as you saw, I've been in a lot of different businesses. I've had a lot of different things go on in my life, and they've all been revolved around building those systems and those those types of things for for others to help other people get out of the cage that they built. And I always was the one that ended up back in it. I always found myself, all right, here I am. I'm back in the same box I built for myself, and I'm I don't have the freedom I want. And so that was that was really what started started the systems building and started doing that. But that's that's really where we're at with it. Is that was the overall goal for for this is to help those around us to get where they want to go. And I know as a process that that also means in that you know we're gonna have some really good success along the way too.

Jill Fratianne 3:52

I just love that concept of giving giving more than you receive, right? Give first, receive second, provide value, help others, serve others, and then in return, you know, the gift is the gift is a reward for yourself.

John Reay 4:10

Absolutely. We we give our clients the long end of the stick every way we can. It's just it's the way I believe it needs to be done.

Jill Fratianne 4:19

And what made you so passionate about the trade?

John Reay 4:23

So for the trades specifically, that came back from a couple generations back where my my grandma and my grandfather on my mom's side and on my dad's side for that matter. Um, my mom's side, he my granddad was in HVAC and and heating and plumbing all of his life. And he he learned the trades, he learned to work with people um helping to get their their systems up and running in Illinois. So, you know, you have four seasons there, not like we do down here in Florida, but we do four seasons up there, and so it was never an option. And his comment to me was as long as you know how to provide something of value to another another family that they need, you're you're never gonna have a problem. You take good care of them, you're never gonna have a problem with finding work or having a being able to provide your family a living as long as you're providing something of value to others. And so that was the the trade side of it. And what I also noticed though was everything that he'd built, thankfully, you know, my grandmom was very resourceful with with money and how things were handled after he'd earned it. But once he stopped working, everything stopped. He didn't have any real business to show for afterwards, and that was the first little hint of that issue that I started to see, and I see it more and more now than than I think ever before. So we've got a lot of very prideful people in the trades that they're good, honest, hardworking people. They never want to cheat anyone. But I feel like they they've cheated themselves when it comes to how things are going to really pan out in the end, because if they stop working, their business stops.

Jill Fratianne 6:14

Well, and that's a challenge too, because a lot of folks in the trade, right, they're using their physical body to hammer in the shingles or to you know make custom cabinets. What happens when you injure your left hand, or what happens when you have a rotator cuff, or you know, name the list of injuries. Um, I heard plumbers, it's the worst actually for your neck because you're looking back and you're extending to have all kinds of spinal issues, and they can tend to retire young just because you know physically everything's starting to break.

John Reay 6:47

Yeah. Well, and it's it's funny you mentioned rotator cuff because I know for me, one of the fun things in the fire and life safety side of things, we were working on fire sprinklers. And the the steel pipes that you use, they're you're bringing in sections of pipe that are sometimes 20 foot long. They're heavy. And I ended up, you know, having a rotator issue on my right, right shoulder, and and that really kind of helped that that come to light for me. It was like, oh, you know, if this if this were if I weren't able to work tomorrow, exactly where are we going to be financially at that point?

Jill Fratianne 7:27

Which is scary.

John Reay 7:28

It is, it really is.

Jill Fratianne 7:30

It's super scary because and I I found this too as a classical musician for years by trade when I was younger. If people injured their hands, okay, and they worked their whole life to play in the Chicago Symphony, and they injured their hands. Like, what are they gonna do? And I've I I I've seen that happen to musicians, actually, really famous um soloists insure their hands. Yeah, and to a non to even to musicians, it sounded like, well, why would you do that? But as you get older as a human being, you're like, Well, um, there was a famous violinist, and I'm zoning on her name. Uh absolutely incredible, right? One of the 0.001%, and she was cutting onions and sliced her finger. She was able to recover from it, but case in point.

John Reay 8:21

It was a wake-up call though, yeah.

Jill Fratianne 8:23

Yeah, it's it's like your your slice your finger.

John Reay 8:28

Yeah.

Jill Fratianne 8:28

Um tell me a little bit about your life story and journey.

John Reay 8:37

That's a that's a sorted one. I mean, I think I think the best way to sum it up is that this was a cycle, and I call them loops. It's it was a loop basically that has replayed itself several times in my life, and I think I think a lot of people recognize that if they really look in theirs. That it mine it it started in the early 90s up in Illinois. I I built systems and software just because that was something I was teaching myself. My father had had given me free reign on learning basic COBOL and the past, you know, different programming languages, coding is what they call it today. We called it programming languages back then. Uh, but I built a demo system for the Army Corps of Engineers, had no idea what I was doing. I learned it as I went, and they they loved it, they bought it, and they're like, Well, how much do you want for it? I'm like, shit, I don't know. I have no idea, I didn't even expect this. And so it's 500 bucks because it seemed fair at the time, and and then they're saying, Okay, cool. How who do we make the checkout to? I don't even have a company name, didn't even know I needed one. I'm I don't know. So I made up a name at the time, just off the cuff. Yeah, just off the cuff. And then I gotta figure out now, once they wrote the check, now I'm like, okay, now I gotta figure out how to build the business name and and entity around it to be able to put the money in the bank to get it cashed. And so there was all that. So it was an interesting loop that got started. And then I realized now I'm I'm still trading time for money. So I'm like, all right, don't like that. Um, let me go back and I'll learn to build systems and things like that. In the meantime, had a job, uh, started developing the systems and things for that company that ended up moving me down to Florida. Long story short, we're we're building systems then for uh uh video editing. At the time, this was in the late 90s, early 2000s. So it was still, it wasn't apps and stuff, it was hardware and it was dedicated machines. One of which ended up over at Kennedy Space Center, another one that ended up over at Skywalker Sound, which is Lucasfilm's audio studio out in California. And so we had some some pretty good-sized things. I didn't actually have an ownership of that business, it was just me, you know, I was the technical side of it, and the owner was the money side of it. And so I was basically building that system for him. And then he decided to sell two years later, gave me a pretty decent check, and I realized that I thought I had a lot of money and it didn't go as far as it did, and so uh the party ran out, and so did the money. And now I'm at that point, I was living in a car in a 95 Dodge Neon in Florida. Yeah, I didn't know what the heck to do. So uh went, found uh found a job at the time and got my real estate license, started doing real estate, and and um we grew from there. And again, it just it found that that same cycle and loop of I'm building something for others and not something lasting for myself, because even real estate for me, I thought that was you know, I'm a business owner now, I'm I'm an entrepreneur. No, you're still you're still uh you're self-employed, but it is still a job. It's you're the the head chief and and the the head cook all at the same time as a as a realtor. So I went back to my roots, said okay, fine, I'm gonna just go through and I know computers, I know it really well. This AI stuff's really starting to take off at that point. I started learning and and developing that again and going, okay, I'm really good at figuring out business systems and taking complex processes and problems and putting it together and making making it make sense, making it automate and work. Uh, so that's where that got started. And uh, and now, you know, several couple years later, here we are. We're we're now talking together at 6 30 in the morning on a on a Friday.

Jill Fratianne 13:04

Here we are, right? Like Steve Jobs says, you can't connect the dots moving forward, you can only connect the dots moving back, right?

John Reay 13:11

Yeah, yeah. But I think nobody really sees those loops and those repetitions until you until you look back, like you say there. Um once you do that, then you start seeing, okay, now there are some recurring themes, even though it's several different lanes of traffic, it's still a recurring theme.

Jill Fratianne 13:30

So AI. Yeah. A lot of folks, myself included, like, you know, AI isn't going to affect the trades. Right? AI is not coming for the trades. They'll be the last one that are gonna be affected by AI. But how is AI helping the trades? I don't think a lot of people even put that together on how AI could help a plumber or an HVAC company. Uh right. Tell me a little about that.

John Reay 14:08

Well, I think a lot of people when they they think of any of those trade services, they they their belief of it or their exposure to it is the person in the home. The plumber that's banging on my pipes, the the person that's fixing my air conditioning because it got hot at three in the morning. Um AI to me is one of those things that it is it's a tool. It's not a replacement for people, it's just a another tool in the tool chest. And so in the trades, it's gonna be able to do a lot of the back-end stuff. The way I see it, not the way we believe it is, is it's really meant more to help the the owners with the back-end business than it really is for the customer facing stuff. It can deal with those customer-facing things and do pretty well. But it's never gonna be a replacement for that human-to-human relationship. Um and so that's where I look at okay, what systems is the owner constantly doing or the people and staff in the the business constantly doing that their lives would be absolutely better. They'd be able to do so much more in their job if they didn't have to do the mundane repetitive stuff. And that's so that's that's really where I see it starting to happen. I mean, we see robots and things like that that can, you know, they can lay floor, they can do this, they can do that. But it's still a tool. It you still have to have somebody that understands, okay, that's really the quality that we want, and to make sure the job actually gets done right.

Jill Fratianne 15:53

There's something you said that that's a resonating theme, even because I'm I work in tech. Um, I work for a CRM company. And one of the things, even in our, especially in my job, right, people are just waiting for the robot to take over the Zoom. We actually have components of our business right now where the robot is taking over our very small business team. It's providing demos, you know, it literally is replacing a human being. However, something you said on uh one of your reels about AI isn't coming for your job as a contractor necessarily, but it's but but it is your competitors are coming for your business. Basically, that concept. If if they start to learn how to leverage AI, that's where you're in danger.

John Reay 16:43

Right, right. It's a force multiplier, is how I look at it. And that if your competitors are able to answer the calls coming in, in the case of phone services and phone systems, that system's not there to take the place of a human. A human at three in the morning isn't going to be very reliable to answer a call and be able to tell whether it's an emergency or whether it's you know somebody who accidentally dialed you instead of dialing their mother, and they're dealing with a whole nother issue. I've answered on call calls. I've had those, so it's I know. But I think that the the underlying issue is that the people that can get to and help more people in a faster and more expedient manner is going to be that difference that makes the difference as to whether uh they're still in business and they have a bigger share of the business in the marketplace. Or if it's one of those things where you're just you're just slugging it out trying to buy leads from everybody under the sun and just keep the doors open. And I think that gap is gonna get a lot wider if you don't adopt the technology. I mean, I I see a lot of calls come in but they're still handled by voicemail or answering machines in some cases. One of my auto shops that we've been working with and getting them into modern times now, they're literally still running their shop on an answering machine. In the middle of the day, they can get a call from a customer that needs an needs something taken care of, it goes to an answering machine. That's not a very good experience. If your first customer experience is that you probably aren't gonna be able to handle nearly as many people in your business as your competitors, and your competitors are gonna outpace you. That's not to be fearful, it's just that's a fact.

Jill Fratianne 18:45

Right. And we we we see that all the time. My my family owns a wedding venue, and I I'm gonna be embarrassed to say, John, it still goes to uh to an automated voicemail. It will ping um my husband, he manages that business, it'll immediately go to him. But if he can't pick it up, it goes to voicemail.

John Reay 19:05

Yeah, right.

Jill Fratianne 19:06

We get a transcription of what the voicemail is, we'll get right back to them. Um, but it really made me think, right? There's now if I look at all the other wedding venues who are competing competition, I would still say we're probably further ahead in a lot of different ways, but we are by no means I look at as I look at it as archaic at this point.

John Reay 19:27

Yeah. And see you you see it that way because you know where that technology is right now.

Jill Fratianne 19:33

Right.

John Reay 19:34

Most people have maybe experienced those types of situations very few times, so they don't see what really is coming yet, I don't think. Um one of the things that kind of struck me as interesting though is, and I hear it a lot online in the marketing side of things, is well, my customers though, they'll they'll know it's AI. And I thought about that for a while because at first I was kind of hurt about hurt with that, and I'm like, well, maybe we just need to make it sound more human. But I think the opposite is true in the fact that if you have an answering service, if you have a voicemail, the customer knows what that is. And they don't just hang up and go, oh, well, it's it's an answering service, so I would never work with them. There, I think it's the same way with AI. They're gonna know that it's AI. Some states even now require you to say it. Just lean into that. Let's let's move forward with that and go, yeah, uh, it is AI, and we've put that technology in place because our customers are that important. We want it to have a better experience, them to have a better experience.

Jill Fratianne 20:43

A hundred percent. And I think I have a different perspective because I'm in the business, but I even find myself because I'm in the business of tech, when I see small businesses that care, to me, it's a sign of caring. If I see that I go to their website and it actually is beautiful and mobile friendly, because even now, right, there's a ton that don't even have websites. There's a ton that, you know, they built it literally 20 years ago and it looks wonky on my phone, right? But if I go to a small business construction company and they have a chat bot that pops up, there's something psychologically that helped happens when you see a chat bot, you know it's a chat bot, but I'm like, oh, someone's gonna get back to me if I fill this out. Yeah. Versus if I go to the contact us form, psychologically, I don't know if someone's gonna get back to me. But if there's a little chat bot that goes, can I help you? Um, we are actually all we are busy at the moment, but I'm gonna route your message to someone internally and they're gonna get right back to you for whatever reason it psychologically feels like someone's gonna get back to me. I get it, they're business, they're busy, they're small. But I see I to me it is caring. I was uh looking at, and my mother would care. Me for say this because she's 70 something going on, about 25. But my parents worked in long-term care, so we're always thinking, like, you know, when it's time for all of us, where are we gonna go? Is it gonna be great? We want to make sure that we have places to land that we love to be. And I was looking at assisted living facilities and independent living facilities, and I'm telling you, the one that I like the most had the most beautiful website, had a chat bot, they knew how to market themselves. It made me feel comfortable. And if they cared that much on the front end, like answering a phone call or having, you know, an Instagram account that's updated. I felt if they cared that much about that, that they would care more about my mother in the facility. And I wasn't wrong.

Speaker 2 22:46

Right.

Jill Fratianne 22:46

I stepped into that and it was like a very professional experience. Meanwhile, these other assisted living facilities or long-term care facilities were like stuck in you know, 1994, and their website looked like it was 1994, you know, and these places cost upwards of five to ten thousand dollars a month. Yeah, this is not a small engagement that you're that you're you know that you're walking into. So I'm with you, you know.

John Reay 23:15

Yeah, it's it's not a small engagement, and it also is it's your mom or it's your dad, it's family that you're entrusting others that you don't know to to actually take the time and give the the proper care that you expect them to give, that you would give if you had the time.

Jill Fratianne 23:36

Right. And it to it's it's that every touch point you're making your customers feel like you care. Yeah. That's what it is. Maybe it's an AI bot, but everybody knows that.

John Reay 23:50

You know, you know. What's interesting is those chat bots and things that you were telling me about, just to take it one step further, they now have them. I don't know if you've seen it yet or not, but they actually have them now where you can click on it and you can sit there and have a conversation with them. And I I think that's even better because there's nuance that even AI will pick up on that you hear in an inflection or tones of voice that on a keyboard never come through.

Jill Fratianne 24:20

We program them at my company. It's called a customer agent, right? So there's a chat, there's just a basic chat bot, which again, if you have nothing and you have a chat bot, you're still probably better than uh you're still better than most. So many, right? Just a basic chatbot. And I would always tell people they get shocked at how many people fill it. Well, what if happens if everyone fills it out? And then what are we gonna do? I'm like, well, you're seeing how many opportunities you have been losing the second it goes up. It's shocking to people how many people start filling it out.

John Reay 24:54

Yeah.

Jill Fratianne 24:54

And then step two is, and it is unbelievable, even within the last six months, how advanced how advanced customer agents have become. They'll have a full-blown conversation with you, and you program it. You take everything that you know you've said in sales calls or customer service calls previously, you program it into the spot, and even if it isn't 100%, it's better than 0%. Something that Dan Martell says, but I love when you're trying to buy back your time. It's like you have to get comfortable if it's 80%, that's better than 0%. Yeah, get away the fact, get away with the mindset that it has to be a hundred percent. If it's 80%, it's okay.

John Reay 25:36

Be okay with that 80%.

Jill Fratianne 25:37

Be okay with the 80%. I say that to myself all the time, you know. Um, another thing, you've lost a hundred pounds.

John Reay 25:52

I've got about probably a hundred more to go, to be honest.

Jill Fratianne 25:56

John, I know, but you know, come on, that's like uh what it tell me, like what are the non-negotiables in your life that um helped you get there?

John Reay 26:07

The biggest one for me, and this is it's still a challenge to do this day. So it to give anybody hope that it doesn't that it ever becomes something other than than just work, it never does. But my diet was the biggest thing. When I was in the trades, when I was doing fire and life safety or real estate or any of that, Dunkin' Donuts, no problem. Pull in. Um, you know, when we were visiting up in Canada at that point, it was you know, Timmy's, you went there, you got you you had tons of sugar that you were getting. It your diet was everything. So we learned through some things my wife was going through, we learned um a ton about nutrition and diet, were by no means perfect, but it made such a huge difference. And now physically, um, I've gotten to that point where it's like, okay, now it is literally a it is a physical workout routine and things like that, and really dialing in more on macros and diet. And so it's it's never easy, but I had to just put things in my head that it's like, look, the sugar, the simple carbs, the pastas as much as I love it. Um they're literally they're poisoning my body, they're poisoning my system, and that's and that's really it was a byproduct of that. I was not really shooting for a hundred pounds, but it ended up being a hundred pounds, and and I'm I still got ways to go, but that's that's where we're at with it.

Jill Fratianne 27:42

That's awesome. Super proud. Well, John, thank you for joining me, us today. This was awesome.

John Reay 27:50

Thank you for having me.

Jill Fratianne 27:52

And where can people find you on Instagram?

John Reay 27:55

On Instagram, you just look up uh John Ray Official, R-E-A-Y, though, is how Ray is spelled. So it's always a little different, but John at John Ray Official is where you'll find me. We post most anything there, and and um we've always got things going on. So if you want to reach out and find out more about any of this, just reach out to me. It'll be me and we'll talk about it. And if I can help, I'm more than happy to.

Jill Fratianne 28:21

Awesome.

John Reay 28:22

Thank you, John. Thank you, Jill. Have a good afternoon.

Jill Fratianne 28:28

Thanks for listening to the Unscripted Symphony. If today's conversation inspired you to take one courageous step forward, share this episode with someone who needs it. Remember, life isn't about playing every note perfectly, it's about having the courage to keep playing. Until next time, go create your own masterpiece.