“If you walk through where the customer starts interfacing with your brand and move downwards, that’s where you can start seeing the different processes. Because, by the way, it’s not just the sales process; your business is a series of processes, just like your body is a series of systems. You have the digestive system, you have the respiratory system, you have whatever. So, you have these systems that all have to work within each other.”

-- Moustafa Moursy, President at Push Analytics

Construction business owners often establish their business with a set of processes and start finding customers. But as they grow, the market changes, and customer preferences change, too. Without updating their sales, marketing, operations, and all their processes, they won’t be able to meet customer needs.

Push Analytics provides these businesses with a data-driven outside perspective on areas of improvement and avenues of success. President of Push, Moustafa Moursy, joins us for this interview, where he shares the philosophy behind Push’s methods for empowering companies to update their processes and take control of their future. Listen in as Moustafa provides stories and insights from his experiences in the field.

Topics discussed in this interview:

- What led Moustafa to found Push Analytics?

- What kind of businesses does Push work with?

- What makes up a basic sales process?

- What interrupts a good sales process from forming?

- Should a sales process evolve to match customer and market needs?

- Meeting clients where they are

- Developing systems tailor-made to each client

- How to get buy-in with your team when introducing a new technology

- What process does Push use to help teams adopt new tech?

- What does a typical relationship look like between Push and a client?

- Moustafa’s predictions for the future of construction tech

- Rapid fire questions

Email Push Analytics at hello@pushanalytics.com, and include “Construction Disruption” in the subject line to speak with their team about transforming your business processes today.

For more Construction Disruption, listen on Apple Podcasts or YouTube

Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn

This episode was produced by Isaiah Industries, Inc.

Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Construction Disruption podcast, where we uncover the future of design, building, and remodeling.

Todd Miller: I'm Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries, a manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building materials. Today, my co-host is Ryan Bell. Ryan, how's today going for you?

Ryan Bell: Hey, good morning, Todd. So far, so good. How are you?

Todd Miller: You know, it's not too bad. I kind of had an interesting conversation with my wife the other day. I told her that I would like to be cremated. She made an appointment for me for next Wednesday. So have I told that one before?

Ryan Bell: I don't know. Maybe.

Todd Miller: Oh, well.

Ryan Bell: An oldie but goodie.

Todd Miller: There we go. We'll pretend it's new. So I did have one thing I wanted to kind of talk about. I know, Ryan, you're not a big Facebook guy, but right now it's kind of a trend on on Facebook and probably other social media that I don't pay attention to of showing little videos of people who go up and like ring people's video doorbells, their ring doorbell or whatever, and maybe they leave some sort of a joke or an encouraging message or they do some funny antic or something like that. And so that's kind of kind of been a trend here recently. Well, there's one going around right now on Facebook that I just think is cool. So you've got these, I don't know, three or four kids or boys, probably seventh grade or something like that, middle school. And so they go up and one of them hits the doorbell and they're going to, I think, what we used to call a ding ding dong ditch.

Ryan Bell: Yeah.

Todd Miller: They're going to ring the doorbell and run. And it was pretty funny. I've had someone do that once on my video doorbell, too and it was pretty humorous. But anyway, so one of the kids rings the doorbell, the others take off and one of the boys stays there and he looks into the camera and I don't remember his exact words, but it's something like he said, I just want to tell you that you matter. You're alright. There's always going to be someone who cares about you no matter what you're facing. You're alright, you matter. And you know, and it's going around. And I just think it's incredibly cool. And it kind of reminds me a little bit, of course, of a few episodes, we had kind of stretched way outside of construction a little bit, although it's a topic and subject that hits construction pretty close to the heart. But we had had an episode where we talked about suicide and suicide prevention. And, you know, one of the things that our guest on that show had talked about was. You know, one of the best things you can do when you find someone who's going through a tough time in life is assure them that they matter, that someone cares about them, and that, you know, his encouragement to everybody was if you're going through that time, talk to somebody. People out there care about you and talk to them. So I just think that video's really, really cool. And who knows? They may have staged the whole thing. I doubt it. It look like it just kind of happened off the cuff.

Ryan Bell: Yeah, I do think I've seen it and it seemed pretty organic and natural to me. In fact, I think the kids were the ones or his friends were the ones that rang the doorbell.

Todd Miller: Yeah.

Ryan Bell: And then he went up because he didn't want to be part of that because they all took off running and he said something about like, "Ignore them" or something.

Todd Miller: And yeah, that was, that was cool. That's good stuff. So anyway, that was a fun one. And need more kids like that out there, that's for sure. So anyway, well, let's go ahead and dig right into our episode of Construction Disruption. I'm excited about this one. Oh, one of the things I always forget and I will remember now is we are doing challenge words this episode. So Ryan and I and also our guest each have a challenge word we have been given by one of the others that we are challenged to work into the conversation somehow as seamlessly and naturally as we can. And so you, the audience might be listening for peculiar words that we use. And at the end we will reveal whether we were successful in using our assigned word or not. So anyway, let's move forward. So, you know, it's interesting and I have seen so much change in this in my years in business and construction. But, you know, today we and for a number of years now, we live in a world of data and information. You know, I grew up with Encyclopedia Britannica. That was the household thing you went to reference. You went to to get information. And, you know, today we have more information at our fingertips, obviously, than would fill a million sets of Encyclopedia Britannica 40 years ago. But yet, I think the challenge we have is how do we use that information to really benefit our businesses? And today we're going to talk some about that. We're going to talk about much more, including how to develop processes in our businesses that lead to success. And we're going to discuss that with our special guest, Moustafa Moursy. Moustafa is the president of Push Analytics, a company that was kind of created to be a bridge between advertising and information so that critical business decisions can be made with speed and precision. Moustafa, welcome to Construction Disruption. It's a pleasure to have you as our guest today.

Moustafa Moursy: Absolutely. Pleasure to be here, Todd. Thanks for having me.

Todd Miller: Well, thank you. So you really have a pretty long history in technology and also in sales, including several years as a sales engineer and channel manager with Schneider Electric. I'm curious, what market needs did you see that led you to co-found Push Analytics?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely kind of like you said right there is, we live in a in a world where data is key, data is king. And, you know, really to be able to be making the right decisions in any business, whether it's in construction or outside of construction, you really need to be able to have the right data at your fingertips. And you need to also have good processes in order to enable you to have that data and in order to be able to act on that data properly. And they go hand in hand. And we can dive into that a little bit here.

Todd Miller: Very interesting. Yeah, no, and I love it how you talk about, okay, no point in having all this stuff and trying to do something with it until you have the processes in place to actually make something of it, do positive things. So I'm kind of curious, you know, before we get too much in the weeds, can you give us an overview perhaps of the types of clients that you work with at Push Analytics and maybe even a little bit on the variety of services that ultimately you provide to your clients?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we we work across different industries. We work with service-based businesses, we work with direct-to-consumer businesses, we work with B2B businesses. And you know, across the board, what we're helping people with is really enabling their businesses to succeed more. Now we have a diverse history and we have different services. I mean, we do offer like data. The first thing we actually had offered as a company historically was, you know, ads management for Google, Facebook, like all the ad platforms. And we knew that we wanted to do it in a data-driven way, like me and my partner have a lot of experience on the ad front. We knew we wanted to do it in a data-driven way and really hone in to that. So that's why we started Push Analytics and then we do process build-out CRM consultations, like kind of like really getting your full process, like end-to-end organized. I have a ton of B2B experience and really getting your processes organized and, and and just, you know, data consult. So I mean, we can think about as like we always have like three divisions. So the advertising side, the process and business consulting side, and then the data division, right? So we build out integrations for people, reports, a lot of difficult things.

Todd Miller: You know, it seems to me that there's not a lot of companies out there that bring all three of those together. And I love kind of how you broke that down to explain what you do do. And so often companies will do one of those, but not the others. And so people are left with, you know, kind of this chimera, sort of this three-headed monster. They don't know what to do with it, but yet here you are bringing it all together. So that's awesome.

Moustafa Moursy: Great use of the word chimera.

Todd Miller: Well, I know I woke up with that word this morning, it's the weirdest thing. Anyway, I know that you talk again about the importance of businesses establishing a solid sales process even before they start to implement a CRM or any other sort of tech. What do you see as the essential basics of a successful sales process that every company should have? And that seems like a basic question. But yet I do think there are companies out there that miss some of the basics.

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, it's not a basic question, actually. It's a great question. And you know, a lot of companies don't have the basics, like you said, or, you know, whatever, even bigger or smaller companies. I mean, you see it a lot where they're missing things on the process side, they don't really have a good sales process. Just, things fall between the cracks. And it could be simple things like, hey, you know, you got leads inbound and you don't have a way of keeping track of the leads that you're getting inbound or following up on them. I mean, if you have a process by which let's say you go out and do estimates for people, let's say a contractor, you go out and do estimates for homeowners on something and then you get those leads, then you don't have any way of keeping track of that or following up on them. A lot of things are falling between the cracks, right? So it could be, quote-unquote, small things. But I mean, that's ultimately what a good process is. It's a bunch of small things that are organized in a way that add up to significant, you know, activity at the end. A lot of times we're doing consulting or we're talking in webinars. We kind of ask people like, where do you feel like your processes are right now? And we put up a slide with like, you know, four answers, like very good, not good, bad or nonexistent. Now it's a little bit of a trick question because when people put nonexistent, the thing is every single business has processes and it's, I think, something very important to understand because a process is just a way to get from point A to point B, So if you have customers, you have a process. Now, you might not be paying attention to your process or be cognizant of that. So, you know, you might not have a great process, but ultimately you do have a process. So something very important to take full attention to because it's there regardless and it's going to impact you regardless. And it's it's very low-hanging fruit, relatively speaking, to be able to address that and make sure that you're getting the best out of it.

Todd Miller: What do you think sometimes, you know, stands in the way of people developing good sales processes? I mean, they just get busy with other stuff. You know, what else ends up taking priority? And, you know, I guess furthermore, what sort of failures have you seen happen because people were missing key parts of that?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of things. So the first part is obviously the education part. And that's why I kind of I said what I said about everybody has a process. I think it's important to realize that, right? I mean, it's kind of like when you go to I don't know, when you go to the doctor and you start doing blood work and they tell you something like you whatever, and your blood is high. I mean, you've had that the whole time. You just never pay attention to it, right? So it's not like it's not there. You've had to eat healthy the whole time. You had a diet, right? And people will say the same thing with diet. Like diet, anything is a diet, right? It's not what you're doing to lose weight or whatever is a diet, anything is a diet, it's just a bad diet. So it's the same thing, right? Anything is going to be a process, just could be just a bad process. And so you ignoring it doesn't mean that it's not there. So I think the first thing is really the educational piece of like, how critical this really is. But then it's like not understanding how to do it, not understanding, you know, what to look for, not understanding where to start. Some people get overwhelmed, even though it shouldn't be not understanding the or being able to kind of get the maybe the rest of the organization on board. Because again, we see this around like very large organizations where it's very hard for them sometimes to get the right process and implement the right process because there's sometimes a disconnect. Maybe you have somebody who is in charge of making the process, who there's a disconnect between them and the people who are going to be, let's say, running the process. You have some VP of sales, but he's been on a sale, wants the salespeople to do some process. But then the salespeople and the VP of sales don't really see eye-to-eye or he's not really aware of how they handle things. They're not really accounting for things that the salespeople are dealing with, and then they're kind of like, whatever. I mean, they don't really understand what we're doing anyways, so whatever. So you see that a lot too. So yeah, you definitely need to be able to, if you are going to do a process, get an understanding of what's happening across the board down to the frontline and be able to kind of incorporate that into a process that works for both the organization internally and works for the people who have to interface with the actual customers as well and doesn't introduce friction.

Todd Miller: Interesting. Well, you know, given that everyone, yeah, they've got some sort of process, it's a matter of whether it's a good one or not. But you know, is there any sort of, you know, exercise that you lead folks through to help them evaluate their sales process, to determine whether it's doing all that it should be? And I guess I'm curious, furthermore, I mean, do you see a sales process as something that we've got to set and we never have to mess with that again?

Moustafa Moursy: No.

Todd Miller: So it's more it's a destination or is it something that is more of a journey?

Moustafa Moursy: Absolutely. And that's a great question because because people oftentimes and that's even one of the reasons why people might not do something, because they might be like, well, they want to wait until they get whatever it is perfect. It's not going to happen that way. You got to do a big chunk up front. Get something good, decent enough starting. But then that's the kind of the whole point of process and data. They go hand in hand. You're going to do the process, you're going to get your data. The data might actually lead you to make improvements on your process and not just the data of like what customers are doing, but also the the data points on like what your sales team, for example, is doing, right? It's like maybe you set a price their way and then you realize like, Hey, we thought the sales team was going to use this one feature, this one reminder feature a lot, whatever. And they're not and then you talk to them and then it turns out they would rather have a reminder elsewhere in the process, for example. So that's really key. It's going to be evolving, it's going to be growing. You don't have to get 100% right upfront, but you do want to do something upfront as far as like where to where to start or where to look at. I mean, one thing that we. So first of all, when we consult somebody, we always ask them like, look, just tell me what your process is today. And it doesn't matter. There's no, like, wrong answer, not judging, but.

Todd Miller: Right.

Moustafa Moursy: You know, if your process is like, super, you know, hey, we have like this whole sophisticated thing that maybe is too complicated, great. If your process is spreadsheets, great. If your problem is we write stuff on a napkin and we hand it to the customer and that's our sales process, that's fine. Just tell us what it is. There is no wrong answer. And, you know, the napkin thing is is more common than you think.

Todd Miller: Yeah.

Ryan Bell: I was going to ask that.

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, I got that reference actually from my working construction days and I've been using that with other industries and it's like very useful because a lot of people are, that is their whole process. So, and again, there's no like wrong answer. So we kind of take it from there and then start working through it. Now one way to look at it, and a lot of times on webinars and stuff like that, we will go through kind of like there's a diagram that we'll show, but where do you start? Well, you got to look at the process from the thing that matters the most for your business, which is your customers. So you kind of just, if you walk through like where the customer starts interfacing with your brand and kind of move downwards, that's kind of where you can start seeing the different processes. Because, by the way, it's not just the sales process, it's actually your business is a series of processes, just like your body is a series of like systems, right? Like, you know, you have the digestive system, you have the respiratory system, you have whatever. So you have all these systems that all have to work within each other. Okay, there's different components, but then they also have to connect to each other, right? So there's still a key points at which they connect to each other. They're not, they don't operate in a void. So your sales process has to work within itself, but then your sales process connects to other things, right? Maybe your marketing process or your lead gen process. And then on the other side of the tracks to the operations side and like the service side, which by the way, is a huge friction point that people don't even pay attention to. So yeah, so you kind of start looking at like your customer comes in, they come in, they find out about you through different ways, then they come and they might be interested. Let's say they come to your website, they might be interested and they put in their info. And so that's kind of like the first aspect, which is like the lead management process. So then you start and then you kind of keep going down is the way that you know, to think about it and be able to look at it is.

Todd Miller: Very interesting. I want to kind of go skip ahead a little bit and talk about the subject of implementation. And really it could be implementation of a change in the sales process. It could be implementation of a new CRM or some other tech or an advertising platform. You know, I think sometimes businesses spend a lot of time, you know, I almost want to say in their ivory tower and they kind of strategize and map these things out or they pursue this new tech or whatever, but they don't really get good buy-in from their team members. And so the whole thing kind of falls apart during implementation. Any suggestions for how business managers and leaders should handle that as far as you know, having a successful implementation of something new?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd say getting key input or, you know, having a business leader that maybe already has some understanding, but getting key input from key people at the front. Look, I mean, anytime you're doing a new process, there's always going to be, even if it's a great process, even if the tools are great and everything is always going to be a little bit of friction just because people have to get used to doing something in a new way. Which, that's perfectly natural, right? But it's getting some buy-in and some feedback from the people who are going to be using it. So, you know, oftentimes, let's say let's say you're working with like a VP of sales and set up like a new sales process. And then one thing you might be like is like, Hey, let's get one of your like star salespeople on the call with us, right as we're talking through this in the planning stage. You don't want to have the whole sales team on the call. It's not going to be very productive. But maybe, here, let's get one or two of your star salespeople or people that can also throw in some stuff and they might come and everybody's working on something. And then they're like, Hey, you know, actually this one thing you guys, you guys have to understand, we whenever we send out contracts to the customer, it's like we need to get it back right away. We can't wait. Like, they might give you, like, these little things that are, like, really key, and then you start incorporating some of their feedback. So then then when you go out and you're actually, you know, build it, then you're able to, you're able to kind of like relate back to the sales team, like it's from something that actually originated from them. So that's one aspect is like incorporating feedback from somebody in the sales team or the front lines. But then the second is your choice of tools should be something that's intuitive or easy to use. I can talk more about that. But and then third is you want to make sure to have the appropriate training. And that's why anytime like we're doing like a CRM build out or anything, there's always, always a tail end of the training as part of the scope because like really, really important. Like you want to have like a training to get the people to understand like what's happening, what are we doing with very clear steps. Like if you have a sales process, a lot of times like a deal pipeline in your CRM, you want to have very clearly delineated steps to be able to show what's going on and what defines what's in each step, you know. So and the training is very key. And as part of that training, you want to show them how this is beneficial to them as well. Because there is elements of the process that are kind of beneficial, maybe more internally or to like a sales leader. But there's if you do it right, there's elements that are going to be beneficial to the frontline people. Like if you when you put in, when you put in your estimates, you know, we have automation that you get reminders if you know a customer can move forward after two weeks, for example, well, that's going to help. So somebody else is going to see the reporting, that's fine. But that's also going to help you because because now you're going to get more sales, because you might have forgotten about stuff. You might have gotten overwhelmed. You know, I might pull up a report and be like, Hey, did you know that you did like 40 estimates that you worked with the customer in the past four months and only like three of them bought? Like there's probably more that would have bought, but you know, you probably just forgot about them or you just can't see them in a clean way. And the last thing on that actually is, is and this is something that's really on the company that having a really good company culture matters a lot, right? So if you're like kind of sitting, if management or whoever is sitting in an ivory tower and it's like, you know, they want to make a process because you want to like really see what the sales guys doing. And it's kind of like in a way that's just more like you need to have it in a way that if bosses are like, Hey, we want it, we want to all communicate. Like, guys it's fine, like these reports are here, these things are here to help all of us grow, right? So having that culture is really important. We were doing this once with a service-type process that we were building after we built the sales and we started doing like certain reports on time to close ticket, number of tickets handled, and stuff like that. And one of the things we made a point of saying is like, look, there's no bad. Maybe a rep is working on some more complex tickets, right? But we just need to be able to see it and then have the conversation of like, Hey, do you need help? Like, what can we do to help you? You know, as opposed to like, Hey, Todd, why the hell do your tickets take way longer to close? Closing them really fast. The bad culture is just not going to help anybody.

Todd Miller: Well, and I loved, you know, where you talked about that implementation. What I was kind of getting a picture, there was, you know, you want to get some buy-in from folks. So, you know, some of your respected people in the organization really become champions for what it is that you're trying to implement. And so you want to; makes a lot of sense. Well, talk a little, tell me a little bit about training at Push Analytics, and what does that look like when you're training a company to implement, you know, a CRM or whatever it might be? Is this done virtually? Is it done in person? Is it ongoing? Is it a one -hot done sort of thing or what?

Moustafa Moursy: I mean, all the above are options. It depends on the implementation and the scope and everything. All the above are options. I mean, some people do want ongoing help. We do offer ongoing services where it's beyond training, like we help maintain. We help clean up and tweak, if you like, a CRM tool. If you're using that, we help maintain that. But definitely at the minimum, if we're doing any sort of scope, we want to have at least, this is again, the minimum, you want to have at least like one or two sessions where you're really getting the team to understand like what's happening and to understand like what you implemented. It's always like we're going specifically through what their implementation is, right? So you really want that because you want them to have like visibility. I mean, you need the process to be obviously clean and you need them to have visibility as to like what's happening and why it was done and to be able to like use the tools. So if you're implementing a CRM, I mean, there are some certain things you need to show like we're a top, we work with different standards. We're a top, like for example, HubSpot partner, we're in the top 10% or like platinum tier. And you know, it's always like people might know how to use it. We do feel like HubSpot is easy to use. So that's one good thing that helps with the adoption, like we were saying, Todd. People might know how to use it, but they might not know like, Hey, this cool feature that like saves you a lot of time, right? There's been a lot of times where I saw like a feature on a call that maybe is like, you know, how to send like a snippet of text, like save it and like, reuse it. And then people like they're like, Wow! The fire is lit up and they're like, Wow. And then they get really excited and you could tell they're getting really excited because they're like, Wow, this saves me time. So now they're not like really thinking of like, I got to do this because I got to do it. They're like, Oh, this actually saves me a lot of time. So they kind of start seeing that. They get excited, they want to use it now, and that just helps with the buy-in. Again, there's another part of the company culture that that company kind of has to do, but you know, at the very least, yeah, so you want to have that as a minimum, the initial training stick to get that initial push. And then depending on the organization, depending on its needs, it can be like ongoing training, ongoing improvement, you know, or they could be doing something internal to kind of keep pushing and keep monitoring.

Ryan Bell: Well, I was going to ask you just I think answered it for me there, but I was going to ask if you offered additional training or support after that, after that initial phase or if that's something that falls to the CRM platform, then?

Moustafa Moursy: No, no, no. We offer it. 100%, we offer initial support. I mean, the tech supports at the platforms are just that. They're just gonna give you tech support. They're not going to give you sales consulting and coaching and training on how to use a specific implementation. So no, no, we do offer ongoing support, you know, again, as an optional. So that's why I say it just depends. So, you know, when we do a scope, we're first understanding the business. Where we understand exactly what's happening in the business, where they are today. We discuss that so we can take them from where they are to where they want to go or need to go. You know, we map it out and we do a lot of flowcharts. We map it out showing exactly what happens, where in the process it should happen. And then we discuss like what we want to implement and do there. So we're doing all that first before so that everybody can kind of see what's going on and be on the same page. We map it out so that you don't end up with like some sort of cyclops where it's just like a one-eyed process and you're not really seeing what's going on and you end up with all these automations and all these things and you're like, I can't tell what's happening, and it just looks like a big monster, right? So, so a lot of times, a lot of times we do that, we jump into CRM importations. They have no visibility. They have a lot of automations. You ask them like, why do you guys have this? What is this doing? What is it supposed to be doing? I don't know. I don't know. Somebody set it up three years ago and we have no idea what they write. So that's not good either. So we'll sit there and basically map that out, show everything. We'll look at it together. And again, this is in collaboration with the client because they have to have their input like a lot. We ask a lot of questions, right? We're looking at together and we're like, okay, hey, you might be like, Oh, actually, can you add this here? Can you had a reminder here? You know what? I like how you guys mapped out that after the estimate, we're going to send the reminder email. We're going to send an email to the customer like, Hey, thank you for getting an estimate from us. And two days later we're going to send them an email like, Hey, did you call your sales rep, for example? You might be like, Yeah, we lose a lot of people there. Can you actually add another two emails, for example? So we map all that out and this is before we've built anything in any tool. And then once we have that laid out, then we are off to the races and we actually go and build that. So that's a little bit different about how we do it, you know, even working with like other people, like just on the CRM side, they might just jump into the tool. We don't do that because you need to be on the same page and we need to map things out. And that part is actually harder than the actual building out of the tool. So the context really matters.

Todd Miller: So I like that, you know, the thought of mapping things out makes a lot of sense. I'm kind of curious is that a lot of how your relationship looks and works with your clients, or is there anything you do upfront when you first have a potential new client that really helps them assess the areas where maybe you or new processes can help them? What does that look like early on?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, of course. So for a new client, I mean, we obviously do discovery and we help them understand and work with them to understand where they are today. So you might come to me, you might be like I already have a CRM and we're not using it. I'm like, okay, well, which features do you have? What CRM do you have? What are you doing? I have HubSpot. What hubs do you have? What did you buy? What do you like? Let's look at your current implementation. Let's see what you're using, what you're not using. So depending on that, like the conversation could take different approaches. I mean, you might be like, we don't have anything, we don't have a CRM. We use spreadsheets. So then I might be like, Well, show me your spreadsheets. And we start looking at your spreadsheets and we start talking about like what we can do and oftentimes we'll phase it, right? So you don't want to start with everything right away because let's say you're like, you know that you want to do stuff on the sales side, stuff on the marketing side, stuff on the service side. But, you know, we just want to chunk it off a little bit. So we might be like, okay, well, the hottest thing, just based on kind of what we're looking what we're talking about is you guys don't really have anything on sales, but you have a lot of leads coming in. So maybe let's focus on getting you up and running on a CRM for the sales side and build that process out based on the spreadsheets and stuff that you guys have. We can move that over, make some reports based on the spreadsheet. We talk to you, and then Todd, you agree and you might be like, Yeah, sounds good. Or yeah, can we also add this? And then we build a scope, like a plan of work, a scope of work, how everybody sees it before we start. So everybody's on the same page as to what we're going to be diving into. We dive in before we dive in. But, but I mean, we dive in obviously more when we start the scope. So, you know, we're going to refer to some of the stuff. So then we start that scope and be like, okay. Todd, we just talked about the spreadsheets and we looked through them before, but now tell us more about how you guys generate these spreadsheets. Like where does this information come from? You know, how often do you guys feel? And we start asking like more specific questions on that and then mapping that out.

Ryan Bell: Do you ever work with like, say, you get a contractor that is running their business with spreadsheets and they want to continue doing it that way? Do you work with them if they're set on continuing to use spreadsheets or do they need to move into a CRM?

Moustafa Moursy: I mean, it depends. It depends on the needs. I mean, we have worked with people who, yes, they do want to keep using spreadsheets. And actually one time, it was one of our marketing clients because all the time when we're doing marketing, you know, we always also want to look at certain aspects of the process. Because if we're going to do our Google ads for you and we're going to help you get leads, but your leads go to a dead end and a black hole then it doesn't really matter to spend the million dollars on leads. And you've got a 100,000 of them, but nobody answers the phone and nobody does anything. So it doesn't really matter. And you're just coming and going, I'm not getting leads, but you are. So we always look at that. So this was a contractor, they wanted to make sure that they had a way to look at the leads. We were initially kind of telling them like, let's get on a CRM, and then they are like, we have something. So they had a, it wasn't exactly spreadsheets, it was Airtable. If you guys ever heard of that, which is kind of like, it's a fancier spreadsheet. It is kind of a spreadsheet, but it's so you can connect them to a little more project management. A little bit, yeah, a little bit more project there. So they were using like spreadsheets and Airtable essentially, we looked at it and we asked a few questions and we're like, It's good enough for now. Like we can just make some tweaks but this is good enough for now. Like we can work with this, right? So it depends. But at some point you guys are gonna need a CRM, but not right now, right? So, so it just depends, depends on, you know, what they need and how flexible they are. I mean, obviously if somebody is completely like doesn't want to change anything about what they're doing at all, well then they're not really that serious about it. But if they're like, you know, they're comfortable with spreadsheets, they want us to see if there's a way that they can continue to use spreadsheets as part of their process, if it makes sense. I mean, it's something we could, you know, look at. But again, it just really depends is the answer. Just really depends. But I would definitely have a conversation with them be like, why don't you want to get in a CRM and try to understand that and explain to them by kind of the benefits or not. But ultimately, like we always want to do what's like, what's going to help the business. So like in the example I told you, for example, even though we kind of went in with the hypothesis of like this is kind of the CRM plan we want to do, and we saw what they did and we saw that it's actually good enough. We're like, You know, just keep what you have. So we're not, we want to see what's going to help the business. So we're going to work together and figure that out. As long as they have an open mind, then that's totally fine. We want to hear all that they have to say and why they have to kind of go back and forth and like one thing is better than the other or not.

Todd Miller: I'm curious, what are some, you know, trends or developing technologies or maybe even things you see in your crystal ball that don't even exist today that you see coming up in the future that are really going to have an impact on how companies do business and do sales and lead gen and all that type of stuff?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, I mean, we while we are on Construction Disruption and I do want to say that I think I think construction is ripe for disruption, right? So I think that I think that a lot of construction businesses, it just there's not a lot of people with both construction experience and tech experience. So a lot of construction businesses. And I mean, like I mean, people know how to use tech the time. I mean, but I mean, like technology backgrounds, right? Like working at a tech company or whatever. There's not a lot of people, like the people who went to tech, not like when I used to work at Schneider, for example, you know, it was like a hidden universe. And like, I'm like, Wow, nobody knows any of this exists. But it's like a huge part of the world, right? Like, I mean, I the way I got the job was, was I was looking for a certain type of job. I never wanted like a sales engineer job. I don't know who Shneider was or any of these companies were. Like you know Trane or any of the other companies that I was, you know, possibly going to work for. And they came to our universities. And there was like, oh, they had a good sales program. So, sure, why not? No, I started like looking and I started looking at the catalog. I started understanding what a breaker was and all this stuff was. And I'm like, Wait, this stuff is everywhere. Like, it's not, this isn't like some secret thing that they sell a niche product. this is literally every house and every infrastructure. And but yet nobody knows about it. Like, you know, even if you studied electrical engineering in college or something, you don't know, like, you don't really know what any of this stuff is. So that's kind of the thing, right? It's not one of those fields. It's not like tech, for example, where everybody knows. I'm like, I got a friend that worked at Google or Facebook or whatever makes how much money and everybody just wants to be in tech. It's not like that, which I think is a nice, cool thing. But at the same time, I think that you're going to start seeing there's just more opportunity there. I think that's a great thing because there's more opportunity, right? So construction businesses and stuff, a lot of times and again, this is this is not a bad thing. It's like having been doing certain things in a certain way and haven't been leveraging some of the stuff that's been used in other industries as much. So there's a huge opportunity and I think the contractors and distributors and the businesses that are going to take advantage of this and actually use digital, use the right digital tools, you know, do the right digital marketing, fix up their processes, they're going to thrive, right? That's what I think. I mean, I worked extensively with distributors, also with contracts of distributors, end users, and consultants. But I worked with distributors when I was actually there. And one of the things, again that I see is like what other types of businesses are doing or have been doing to some degree that is not really on the digital side, is not really being done as much on the distributor side yet. So, so it becomes like, so for example, let's just say you're like a lawyer or something, everybody and every lawyer is doing Google ads. And if you come to buy, it's an auction. If you guys are familiar with Google ads, I mean, it's a little bit of tension. You're clicking on an ad and you're bidding a keyword for the most part. So it's kind of an auction unofficially. So you might say like, Hey, you might want to bid on if somebody types, I need a personal injury lawyer in Google. You might want to say, well, I want to pay for that keyword or these keywords, right? So the keywords are really expensive though, because A, law is expensive and B, there's a lot of lawyers that are willing to bid for this because they know that if I spend $100 for a click or $200 for a click, every time people from those, one of them is going to call us and be a customer and we're going to make $5,000. Who cares if we have to spend $2,000, even. So they know that, but they're all doing it. Now, imagine you're in a in a field like a contractor whatever. They're not doing it as much. So you might not really be competing. It's anybody, even though even though it's worth a lot of money. So you might actually be able to get like very like a very good advantage, so to speak.So if you're bidding, like, whatever service near me and nobody else is really doing that, it's kind of open market. So I've seen a lot of that. I think that's going to be something very interesting potentially. That's why, you know, anytime I talk to any of my construction contacts, I'm like, you know, you really got to get on this because this is like a huge, huge opportunity.

Todd Miller: Few episodes ago, we had a gentleman from Zurich, Switzerland as our guest and his whole topic was, you know, talking about entrepreneurism and the opportunities that exist out there in construction because we are such a huge and varied industry and on the cusp of so much advancement and disruption. And so, you know, he's talking about, hey, there's opportunities out there, find something and pursue it. And so it's like, yeah, good stuff.

Moustafa Moursy: Absolutely.

Todd Miller: Well, thank you so much, Moustafa. This has been very informative and great to hear about Push Analytics. We're kind of close to wrapping up what we call the business end of things, and then we have a little bit more fun. But is there anything we haven't covered today that you'd like to share with our audience?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, I mean, I would just say like kind of as we're wrapping that up that I mean, we talked about different things, obviously, but one thing to just know is really like pay attention to your process. Really look at that and your tools. And the one thing that I like to say about process that that's kind of unique is that if you're as long as you are in business and you have customers, any improvement to your process is as guaranteed as you're going to get ROI as anything else. Because it's something that's already more in your control, right? If you're doing like marketing or you're putting up billboards or you're putting up Google ads or whatever, you have to worry about, like, okay, like, are they going to come? Are they gonna click on my website? Are they gonna? I need to figure that out. I mean, there's a process to figuring that out, no pun intended, but it's a little bit more distant, right? Whereas when you are building up, like we're fixing up your sales process, it's all stuff that is in your boundaries, it's in your organization. These are all leads that you have. These are estimates that you have. So it's you're basically like extracting, you know, relatively free money out of what you already have. Because if you already do, let's say 100 estimates a quarter and right now you got ten of them, eventually you sign up and you can bring that number up to 15. You already have the 100 estimate. They already did the estimates, you already have the contacts. You know, maybe they've got better process, better follow up, better management of lead cycle. Now you're up to 15. You just increased your revenue without doing anything externally. So it's a huge opportunity and it's the same thing for like efficiency. If you were able to make like a more efficient service process and now your service team can get people back quicker and the customers are happier, you could take on more customers, and customers are happier, so they're more likely to come. And it's like something that you could you have full control over. So that's something I love about process because again, we do marketing projects, we do process projects. We do like outsource things. So that's something I love about process is that that ability to like really control what's happening because it's all inside, it's all in your turf. You're not waiting for them to pass you the ball like you are with marketing. It's all in your field, right? So that's why it's super key to really pay attention to this. And even if people want to reach out and ask us questions or pick our brains, we could we could do that as well, too. So, don't feel overwhelmed by it.

Todd Miller: Well, we're going to put this in again later. But what is the best way for folks to contact you?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, absolutely. So I would say just email us directly. Just keep it simple so, you can send it to hello@pushanalytics.com and just put in the title that you came from Construction Disruption. Then the team will go ahead and route it, and we can jump on a call with you guys and I can even jump on a call with you and we can, we can really talk through it. So as long as you just put that in. You know, we have everybody to know that we'll take care of you guys if you come.

Todd Miller: Well, and that's great advice. Just looking for those little opportunities that, you know, will end up having significant ROI and, you know, letting them build on each other. And so good advice. Well, Mustafa, before we close out, I have to ask you if you're willing to participate in something we call our rapid fire questions.

Moustafa Moursy: Nice.

Todd Miller: So this is the way we close out shows. This is a series of seven questions we ask you. Some some are on the serious side, some are a little silly. Are you up to the challenge of rapid fire?

Moustafa Moursy: Let's go. Let's try it out.

Todd Miller: Awesome.

Moustafa Moursy: Can't promise what the answers will be, but let's go.

Todd Miller: Okay. We will alternate asking if that's okay. Ryan, you want to ask question number one?

Ryan Bell: I would love to. I was hoping you would throw this one my way because I love this question. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be? Would there be zucchini served? And what's the first question you would ask them?

Moustafa Moursy: Man, I have so many that I would want to like, just so many politicians. I mean, you know, I'll go with Abraham Lincoln. I think I'd go with Abraham Lincoln. And would there be zucchini served? I mean, if he likes it. I'm not a zucchini fan, sorry. But if he likes it, sure, we'll do that. And I would just really I don't know if it would be a question, but I would just really, like, want to pick his brain. I do think he's an interesting personality. I mean, I don't know, like I would be 200 years removed or whatever. But it's like you look at it and you read that and you're like, wow, this guy cared like way above and beyond what you would think that, you know, politicians usually do, right? Like he really, like, sacrificed to actually, like, try to get things done right. So I kind of want to pick his brain and be like, you know, like kind of just, you know, feel him out, obviously. I mean, it sounds silly, but that's something that's always been curious to me, you know, when you read about the different, like he feels like a politician that wasn't really a politician and was really trying to, honest to God, just do something. Because some of the things he said and some of the stances he took, there's no way you're going to take that if you don't have some level of genuine true concern. And that's not that common in that space, right? Yeah. So people are usually doing same things to like appease an audience or whatever, but it doesn't seem like, again, it's hard to tell. We're not alive at the time, but it doesn't seem that way. But I do want to know. I want to find that out.

Todd Miller: He seemed to be working more from conviction than he was from "How do I get elected again?"

Moustafa Moursy: Exactly. Like, how do I actually help people? How do I help the country and not like "How do I just win votes?" which sometimes can get conflated, but in times of like true crisis like that, it's very hard to it's very hard to do what he did if you don't have any conviction.

Ryan Bell: I am voting that the best answer to a rapid fire question in the history of Construction Disruption.

Todd Miller: Oh, good one. Okay, question number two. Do you have a hobby or an activity you enjoy that might surprise people?

Moustafa Moursy: I mean, I like to do a lot of things. Surprise, I don't know. I mean, I like working with electronics, for example, but that's not really going to surprise people. I started electric, although I had that hobby from before. I like biking.

Todd Miller: Oh, cool.

Moustafa Moursy: Well, I don't know if that. Yeah, I don't know anything that's gonna like, necessarily surprise people. Like I don't like, for example, like jumping off parachutes and skydiving or anything crazy like that. So yeah, I do have a lot of hobbies. I don't know that any of them will be particularly surprising. But yeah, I mean, I did do, I wasn't too like, like a lot of just learning about like crypto and stuff like that. So if anybody wants to have a crypto conversation that was like kind of a little bit of a hobby. So that may be one.

Todd Miller: Very good.

Ryan Bell: Question number three: what's the last TV show, movie or book that you couldn't stop talking about?

Moustafa Moursy: Well, it was the last one that I watched, though. I went to watch the last Spider-Man, I guess, Across the Spider-verse with my wife, and I couldn't stop talking about it, but maybe not for the same reasons that people stopped talking about it. We have, like, uh. Yeah, I, I was really annoyed that it was to be continued and I really, I don't go to the movies that often. I'm not like a big movie theater person. I watch stuff at home on Netflix or whatever, but I'm not like a big movie theater person. But I did because it was like an occasion. I went with my wife and I was like, I need to talk and move a lot. So like when I have to sit in the seat for like three hours and not say anything, it's very hard for me. So I'm like getting jittery. It's a good movie, by the way. I'm getting jittery and I'm like, okay, okay, okay. And I'm like, But this plot is like here. And there's like, this has been going on for hours. Like, how much longer is left? And then all of a sudden it's like "To be continued." I'm like, Man, come on, I didn't know that. I didn't know it was going to be I wouldn't even have watched out. I would have just waited till the next one came. Now I have to wait. I couldn't stop talking about that. And my friends are like, We can't believe you can't appreciate this masterpiece. And this is what you're talking about. I'm like, I'm sorry, guys.

Todd Miller: That was a good answer. Next question. Do you have a bucket list vacation that you hope to take someday?

Moustafa Moursy: I like traveling a lot, but it's it's a lot easier said than done. Obviously, with kids and stuff. So I do like traveling, and we do travel. But I mean, I think like being able to travel. Like if I had like, you know, just an undetermined amount of time, like being able to travel like the entire world, like one of my friends. He was smart; he did this before, before, like, you know, doesn't have kids or anything. So he actually went and like, I think did like a whole like Europe, cross country, cross continent, like drive or something like that. I think he went to like I don't know how many countries. I've never been to Europe. I think he went to like, like a bunch of like five, six, seven countries in like one trip and kind of just drove across. I think that's really cool because like, just getting to see, like how different countries operate and how they do things and stuff like that. I think that's like really cool.

Todd Miller: Good stuff.

Ryan Bell: That would be fun, yeah. Question number five: what is a product or service that you have purchased recently that was kind of a game-changer for you, something that, you know, kind of made you say, "Where have you been all my life?"

Moustafa Moursy: Oh, I got a standing desk. I didn't get it necessarily just because it's a standing desk, but it was one from like a company that had a friend that had that. And I really liked that. And I always wanted the desk. Well, first of all, a lot of desks you buy online now, they don't have like real wood. It's all like laminate and whatever. And I was like, I want real wood, I just want real wood. And yeah, and it's adjustable. So it's like really nice because the ergonomics are like it's really important to have good ergonomics if you sit at a desk all the time, I just, I just learned about this and I feel like it's like super key for everybody to know. And you can adjust it like exactly your height. Allows you to game change and helps organize everything. I decked it out with accessories, so I have like the wheels on it, I have the bolt-on surge protector on it. So like all my plugs are now basically just I only need one wire from the desk to the wall for the most part, and I can just roll the desk to wherever I want. So yeah, it's been a game-changer. I'm like, really happy with it, you know, sitting on it now. I feel good.

Todd Miller: You are our second person who that's been there answer, actually.

Ryan Bell: Recently, yeah.

Todd Miller: Yeah, recently.

Ryan Bell: What brand? What's the brand that you got?

Moustafa Moursy: I got an Uplift desk. So we'll give them free marketing. Yeah I like it. Again there's less expensive desks but I liked the accessorizing factor. I know somebody who was going to offer, he's like I already have the legs for building a desk. And he was going to give them to me and I just had to buy the wooden thing and put it on. But I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to buy like a ready, like a ready-made desk with the accessories I want, like the way I want it, because I'm not going to buy this every year and hopefully I'm just going to buy it. I'll never buy one for like five or ten years. Kind of like Todd's video on the metal roofs, right? We bought it and we made a good investment one time and now we're chillin and everybody else is still changing their roofs. You know, it's the same thing. Get the right one and hopefully do the same.

Todd Miller: Good stuff. Okay, next-to-last question. What would you like to be remembered for at the end of your time?

Moustafa Moursy: I really would hope that, you know, I can be remembered for like helping people. I mean, I do. And actually, I was going back to your bucket list question that was on there. I forgot. There is one thing where like if I was like, I just didn't have to work as much or whatever. Like sometimes when you hear of like, oh, there's like a natural disaster or something or whatever, you kind of like just go and help for like a week. It's really hard though. Like, you know, if you're not like it is like, you know, it's like already hard enough to, like, manage and take your family on vacation, like just finding time and stuff. So it's hard, but I would want to be able to do that, but I hope that I can't. There's a hurricane, let's go help clean up and let's go help people and stuff like that. So, I mean, just helping people. I do really think that like and I do think like when you help people, it actually helps you kind of in a weird way. It's funny, in high school, I used to be really good at physics, and we were taking AP physics and I was like legendarily great according to some people, I don't know. So I was like really good at physics. So a lot of times I would be sitting there, people would just be calling me all the time and ask me questions and I'm like helping them study and, you know, like, like my family would come to me and be like, Hey, like, you need to study. Like, what are you doing? Like, you're just on the phone and you're just, like, talking to people, but you're not like, studying on your own. I'm like, No, but you don't understand. Like me helping them, I actually understand the stuff way better, and I don't get to study as much. Like, it actually works to my advantage. I mean, that's not why I was doing it, but and I just realized that it ends up working to my advantage, right? Sometimes even more than it does to theirs. I mean, you know, they're getting the value, but I'm also getting that. I'm explaining it and I'm understanding it better. And then I just need to study less, you know, so. So it's very interesting. And I would always have these conversations with my family and they're like, Hey, you got to study. You're just on a farm and you're like, You don't get it.

Ryan Bell: Okay, final question. If your life had a theme song that played every time you walked into a room, what would it be?

Moustafa Moursy: Man, and I think I was asked this before, too, and I don't think I know. I don't think I know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know what I said the last time, to be honest. But the thing is like, do I really want the same theme song playing every time in a room? I think the last question was kind of like, Would you want that? Or would you want like a different song every time? I don't know that I'd want the same exact one every single time. I think I'd wanna keep people on their toes a little bit and I'd want to shift it every time.

Todd Miller: There you go.

Moustafa Moursy: Or every so often.

Todd Miller: Well you had great answers, that was fun.

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, it's actually a really cool segment. I like it a lot.

Todd Miller: Well, thank you again for joining us here today. So these will be in the show notes. But again, for folks who want to get in touch with you, how can they most easily do that?

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, absolutely. So once again, just email us at hello@pushanalytics.com. Just put in the headline "Construction Disruption." Write whatever you want in the email. The team will know to send that to me. And then I have a moderator in my email as well. So then I'll get back to you and we're happy to jump on a phone, to jump on a call or something to talk about your business. I mean, for people listening to this podcast, just, just make sure that you put "Construction Disruption" so we take care of you.

Todd Miller: Great. That's a great solution. I like it.

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, so hello@pushanalytics.com should be pretty easy.

Todd Miller: So I'm pleased to report that we were all successful with our challenge words. That was pretty cool. Ryan, you had the word?

Ryan Bell: Zucchini.

Todd Miller: Abraham Lincoln and zucchini, perfect combination, makes every bit of sense. I had the word chimera, which I had never I'm not sure I'd ever heard of before. I think I've seen it before, but I somehow squeezed it in there.

Moustafa Moursy: You crushed it, though, that was really good. By the way, I got to say, you should put that as a clip on the teasers.

Todd Miller: And Moustafa, your word was?

Moustafa Moursy: Cyclops.

Todd Miller: Which you also did a great job working in there. Good job.

Moustafa Moursy: Yeah, yeah. I wanted to do a little more, but I forgot the first half, we were so into it. That's why I wasn't actually going to use it. I was like, Oh, shoot, I forgot. I got to circle back and make a u-turn.

Todd Miller: This been a great episode, thank you. You've been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Moustafa Moursy: Absolutely.

Todd Miller: Well, and I will thank our audience, too, for tuning in to this episode of Construction Disruption with Moustafa Moursy of Push Analytics. I encourage you, please watch for future episodes of our podcast. We always have great guests. Don't forget, please to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Till the next time we're together, keep on challenging and disrupting, shaking things up out there, looking for better ways of doing things. And most important, don't forget to have a positive impact on everyone you encounter. Make them smile, encourage them. Simple yet powerful things we can all do to really change the world. So God bless and take care. This is Isaiah Industries signing off until the next episode of Construction Disruption.

Intro/Outro: This podcast is produced by Isaiah Industries, a manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building products.