The Clarks’ story offers a unique perspective on the intersection of family and business, as Mark and Joe Clark discuss their telecommunications venture, ContinuousTouch.

Mark’s career at AT&T is a significant focal point, where he gained invaluable experience managing communications for major corporations. His transition from a corporate environment to entrepreneurship highlights the lessons learned in the corporate world that have been instrumental in shaping Continuous Touch's operational success.

The company started with a niche market, providing VoIP solutions to John Deere dealers, and has since grown into a prominent service provider across multiple states, showcasing their adaptability and commitment to evolving technologies.

The father-son duo delves into the operational aspects that make their business thrive, particularly the significance of compliance and vendor management. Mark shares his philosophy on negotiating contracts, emphasizing the importance of having clear remedies in place to ensure accountability. This principle not only protects their business interests but also fosters strong relationships with their vendors.

Joe, on the other hand, focuses on customer support, illustrating how retaining clients is far more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Their strategies for maintaining high customer satisfaction rates and the role of technology in enhancing service delivery are discussed, providing valuable insights for small business owners.

The episode further explores the emotional dynamics of working together as family, revealing how their professional relationship has brought them closer. Joe’s reflections on the ease of scheduling and collaboration with his father emphasize the unique advantages of family businesses, where personal connections enhance teamwork.

As they look to the future, the Clarks express excitement about incorporating AI into their services, aiming to streamline processes and improve customer experiences. This forward-thinking approach positions Continuous Touch at the forefront of technological advancements in telecommunications, ensuring they remain competitive in a rapidly changing market.

You can reach them at their company website, https://continuoustouch.com/

00:00 Introduction to ContinuousTouch

00:36 Mark's Journey from AT&T to ContinuousTouch

03:44 Early Days of VOIP and Business Expansion

07:13 Family Dynamics in Business

08:13 Remote Work and Cloud-Based Operations

10:06 Vendor Management and Corporate Lessons

14:03 Family Bond and Business Strength

18:15 Reflections and Future Plans

22:57 Exploring AI and Future Innovations

25:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Hi and welcome to another episode of Celebrating Small Family Businesses. And today we are celebrating Mark and Joe Clark of ContinuousTouch. Welcome, guys. How are you doing?

Fabulous.

We're happy to have you here.

Yes.

So Continuous Touch, I know it is telephone or telephony, I guess I want to call it, or telecom. But while you guys span quite a history. But tell me about that. What is it? Hard-line phones? Is it all voip? What's the deal? And how did you get there?

And while I worked for AT&T, one of the things that I was in was what was called the signature client division, where we specifically, you know, like, we were the elite of the elite when it came to our support of Fortune 500 companies. So my primary one was John Deere up in Moline, Illinois. I did some support work for Caterpillar, State Farm and ADM.

So as I was working with AT&T, I had really two responsibilities. One responsibility was to the John Deere dealers who was getting involved in technologies in order to communicate with John Deere corporate.

And then the second side that I really focused mostly on was international. So I did international to the bric, Brazil, Russia, India and China.

And then as far as the John Deere dealers, I rolled out communication platforms to the dealers so that they would have access to John Deere internal functions. So I moved to Atlanta. And in Atlanta, I had moved to a different segment and it just wasn't working out.

So I ended up talking to one of my dealers who was interested in voiceover ip, which back then was relatively new, I would say mainly because of the Internet, but it was relatively new. So I thought, okay, I'll start a company and roll out voiceover IP to John Deere dealers that I knew.

And at that point, I had a partner by the name of Daniel Smith, who's also a friend of Joseph, still a good friend of ours. And we started the company. A few years went on, and Joseph came on board. And then there was a lot of changes in the company.

Daniel left, and we started still moving forward with what we had. We are what we are today.

But I decided to make a career change and began working with my father. And that's where my telephone skills started to come into play. And with them Since.

All right. Yeah. I remember you talked about the early days of VoIP. We just happened to move out of Florida.

We moved across the country, and we were in a rented place, and a friend told me about. And I can't remember the name of the company now, but it was one of the very first retail voip.

You got a little box, and you plugged a phone into it, and you plugged into your Internet and you had phone. And we moved about every. Well, we moved once a year because we were in a condo, and that didn't work.

So we just kept, you know, we unplugged our phone and just plugged it in at the new place and we had the phone.

Magic Jack.

Yeah, that's who I was thinking. Magic.

Anyway, they were one of the early pioneer. Magic Jack, I think came a little bit later. But we. We did that for about eight years, and it was. It was. It was magic.

It was wonderful that we didn't have to keep canceling, because when we moved out of Florida to go out west, one of the things I learned was we had our email address with the cable company, and when we wanted to leave and close that account, we said, can I take the email address with me? And they said, nope, you're lost. So that's when I got the, you know, the idea that that portability was going to be huge.

And so voip, you guys were pioneers. So you started with your John Deere dealers, and then. And then how did it evolve from there?

Well, from there, between John Deere dealers, and then we started bringing on agents. A lot of them are friends of mine, if not all of them. So the agents started selling our services also. So I don't. I'm. I think we're across.

Is it 17 states now or how many?

Joseph? 17.

So we're in 17 different states across the country. We have full compliance with the government. So we have a company out of Longwood, Florida, that does our compliance.

So when we send out a bill, there has to be specific taxes to those municipalities and those particular counties, and we collect those taxes. And through our compliance company, we are paying taxes to over 17 states across the country.

Wow. That's got to be complex. I'm glad you have a company that specializes in that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we found that outsourcing is very good because. Well, that was one of the things.

When I was with AT&T, they really started heading down that outsourcing road.

So I was involved in several outsourcing master agreements, so I had a pretty good idea of how to formulate a good outsourced environment with the right partners, and also how to kind of keep them in line. So it's worked out real well.

Lessons from the corporate. That's wonderful. That's. That's actually one of the themes that we see in, you know, in a lot of smaller businesses, family businesses, that.

Where they have transitioned is the lessons that they learned in corporate that they brought over, you know, and replicated.

Yeah. As long as you're not too concerned with the golden handcuffs, you know, then you can definitely take advantage of what you learned from corporate.

That's for sure.

I want to hear from each of you, what do you love about working in family business? If you want to. Like, what was that transition from working from another company to working for your dad? What was that like? Because I'd love.

Oh, the transition was little.

It was actually not too bad in the beginning because, you know, I started off, like, just selling stuff on ebay and, you know, making some phone calls to customers. And eventually I. I began to learn more about the products and services that we offered. So from there, I just kind of got to the position.

I am now just learning from the different carriers and other resources I had provided to and Mark. I also had Mark for any other questions and concerns I had or I have currently even.

And are you guys. Have you always been remote in different locations?

We have had different offices in Atlanta.

We had an office that we primarily went to, but with this job, we also have the flexibility to work from home or work from a remote location like Mark's at the office here in Wesley Chapel at Wiregrass. And I am working from my home office today.

Okay.

The office of his residence, too. So it's. It's nice to be able to have that flexibility.

Like, I went to Columbia, South America last month and was able to work there for several weeks.

Wonderful.

Well take support and whatever needed to be done.

And no Internet glitches.

Well, I better. Your guy, Thanos. It was not bad.

Cool.

We had our offices at airports up in Atlanta. So the first airport we were at was Peachtree, DeKalb, where we kept an airplane, and then ended up in Lawrenceville, where we kept an airplane.

But here we're at Wiregrass. There weren't any offices at North Tampa, where we keep the airplane low.

Not that far.

So with what you're doing, do you have a big need for infrastructure, like big computer racks of computers that you, that you funnel data through. Or is it all cloud based?

All cloud based. Everything we have is cloud based. Or accounting is cloud based, or phone servers are cloud based or CRM is cloud based.

So when I was in Paris, I was doing things on the, on the computer. So I could be anywhere. Joseph can be anywhere to do either this or the trading thing that I do.

That's, that's wonderful. You must have a pretty good relationship with some IT folks to keep all that running and secure routes.

It's vendor management, right?

Is it okay?

Yeah, it really is. You know, there's, there's a set amount of things a person needs to have when they bring on a vendor and one of them is testing.

You gotta stress test the vendor, otherwise you really don't know what their capabilities are. You don't know where their weaknesses are. When, when I look at bringing on a vendor, I want to know, first of all an escalation procedure.

I want to know an ordering process, I want to know a deployment process, I want to know the life cycle process. I can't take just their flowery words from sales guys telling me that it all works because that never works. It has to be stress test.

So, you know, I usually, if somebody can rattle off everything, I feel pretty good about it. And maybe the stress testing isn't quite as dramatic.

And I do say dramatic, but when somebody is just feeding me, oh, yeah, we can do that, we can do that, we can do that. And it's like, okay, I like what you do, but first we got to figure out if you can really do it.

So many times it, it either fails or the vendor gets better at it. One or the other failure is definitely up there on the high side.

Wow.

So it's got to be, got to be done, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so is that a lesson you just learned through experience the hard way, or did you bring that also from.

The corporate experience plotted over from corporate norm? Word. You know, the one thing that I never really realized until AT&T was the fundamentals of a contract.

You know, a contract can sit there and say, we're going to do this, going to do this, going to do this, going to do this. The piece that seems to always be fundamentally lost is the fact that with every one of those points, there has to be a remedy.

If there's no remedy, then all it is is just the talking. You know, it's like, okay, we're 99.999% uptime. Oh, great. But if there's no remedy, then if they're 99%, okay, it means nothing.

You know, if they're only 91%, what's the remedy? If I put in an order today and it's not done in five days, what's the remedy?

You know, there's always got to be a remedy to every one of these points. Otherwise the contract isn't even a contract, it's just the brochure.

So that's a really interesting point of view. So with all those clauses, it's kind of like the question needs to be, or what? Well, we're going to do this or what?

Yeah, there's no or what. It's just talking point. So that's what I focus on when I'm looking at new vendors and even when I'm talking to people about agent agreements.

So we gotta, you know, any type of arrangement we have to know what we're committed to and what the remedy is. If that commitment isn't real simple.

Okay, Joe, what is your main role in the company or your specialty?

My specialty is probably the support side of things. I deal with our customers and make sure that they get all the changes that they want.

Onboarding new customers, making sure that they're happy, adding, move, add, change, delete, mainly if we need to remove steps.

So regarding the family part of, you know, family business, oftentimes, you know, we say, you know, family in the business is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the business. So from the strength side, what do you find that your family bond brings and how does it strengthen your business? What's the best part of that?

I think the best part is that since I came on the continuous touch, my father and I have definitely come more talkative to each other before. We, I don't know, but that's a tough one. How is that, dad?

You're older now.

Yeah, I'm older. He's taught me a lot of things. I mean, I would have never known about the telecommunication industry. We've, it's easier to schedule things.

You just tell me at 7 o'clock at night to do something instead of, you know, try and tell an employee to do it and then stay late and whatnot. It might be a little tougher to make that happen.

And you can have a little one.

In the background and I can have a little one in the background, which I'm trying to figure that part out. But yep, brought us closer for sure.

Excellent.

Yeah, that's, that's again a theme, A theme we hear, and I love to hear it, that the, the business Working together in the business oftentimes creates a. A different dynamic, a different, you know, a greater respect for each other because you see each other in a different role than just, you know, the.

Whatever that family role is.

And typically we do try to turn it off on the weekends now. If there's an emergency, we'll handle it. But we, you know, like last weekend we all went to the beach together and not much was talking about work.

We're just enjoying life down here in Florida.

If you can work together and play together, you've got a success.

Especially as long as we have 13 years now. I would imagine it's like a marriage if in last seven had made better chance of going on. Right.

There you go. I would think so too. But you figure stuff out, right? You figure stuff out about how you communicate. And there has to be a level of openness.

And sometimes my own experience, there were things that, you know, we weren't going to fix, we weren't going to resolve. Just had to make peace with them. So I did. But I've learned since it would have been a lot healthier to really address those things.

So hats off to anybody who does that and can still play together and have fun.

We have a real liking for the same things. You know, we both like technology and we can play off of each other.

If I don't know how to do something, Joseph generally does, and if he doesn't know how to do something, I generally do. And we have grandkids that can figure out some of those smaller, maybe even bigger of things. So it's. It's more, you know, it's.

Even though the company says it's just. Well, it's not just Joseph and I. We have his brother. He does accounts receivables in Austin, partakes in whatever he can, whenever he can.

He's gone to conventions with us, so, you know, it involves the whole family. Actually, I don't know if you heard our latest jingle, our only jingle, but Austin created that, so.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Yeah. So, Arne, it's in. The little ones are more than happy to be involved or tell Lennox.

My grandson, he's going to be the Cieio pretty soon, so he's getting ready for law at 8 years old.

And he knows he can do it too.

He knows he can do it. That's right. So, yeah, it's more than just Joseph and I, by a long ways.

Thank you for clarifying that. Thank you. So now that you've been in this for 11, 12 years, whatever it is.

What do you know now that you.

Wish you had known then when you were partnering up? That's hard to say. It is partnering. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, it kind of relays to the other thing that I do with day trading stuff, because I learned so much in that, that it really made. I applied so much of what I learned in math to the company, then it dramatically made the company much more profitable. So.

Ooh, like, for example, you know, and some of them were just. They're the dumbest cliches yet. Unless you actually do something with them, they're. They're meaningless.

Like, it's so much easier to work to save a dollar than it is to work to earn a dollar. Again, it's just a cliche yet, unless you really think about that and apply it. I'm going to get a cybertruck, hopefully Sunday.

I mean, it's not a big deal. But I can save that money because I'll go down to my buddy's house in Key west, hang out with him. He's got one, too.

We'll wrap a couple of cybertrucks. We'll have a great time. I'll save $3,000, and I won't have to have worked trying to find 20 customers in order to make that happen.

I mean, like I said, it's a cliche, but it's such a profound one. Know, even with vendors, I mean, I'm actually going up to New Jersey for a wedding for somebody that used to work for us.

And I mean, that guy, he literally negotiated vendor contracts that put at least $10,000 a month into my pocket, you know, and it's like, geez, I'm going to have to pay $400 a night to go up there and be at his wedding. But, I mean, what I've made in the last 10 years, or actually eight, is just. Just a drop in the bucket from what he was able to do for us.

So, yeah, that one's. You know, we.

We look at pretty much anything that we have to pay money for, we look at to determine is this the best price, is this the best deal, is this the best value? And I mean, if. If I can put my thumb down on a vendor and get some more money out of my will, because that's just how we become more profitable.

We have better vendors because they know that we insist on having high quality capabilities from them. And if they don't give us the quality that we require, that we're going to go find somebody else.

So that's only really made so much of our daily work so much easier because the vendors we have are working so much harder to make sure they keep us. So, yeah, that the number one thing was it's easier to work to save a dollar than it is to work to earn a dollar.

I love it.

That just so dramatically made such a huge change in this company.

From an accounting standpoint, your overhead costs, right. You save a dollar on overhead, you've made a dollar profit and it's direct. Whereas with your.

If you're making new sales, you've always got costs of making those sales and you've got a profit margin. So you're much more efficient to save than your new sales from that point of view.

Absolutely. I mean, obviously you have to have both.

Right.

But you know that saving money should be as big of a focus because that's where the easy money. The low hanging fruit, right? Yeah, that's. That is where the low hanging fruit is.

And customer support, from Joe's standpoint, customer support is almost the same thing because retaining a customer is way cheaper than going and finding a new one, right?

Definitely is. And our retention is pretty good.

With our customers.

We generally only lose customers because of retiring or. Yeah, retiring, unfortunately, or they merge with somebody that just doesn't want to move their whole network over to us. But we always make it.

Well, I know, I know we need to keep our time under control here. So what's next?

I know you guys have gone into AI and we could probably spend another half hour talking about AI but is that part of what's next for Continuous Touch?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. AI is. I mean, we're looking at two different fronts. One is creating an environment where all of a company's phone calls are analyzed.

AI looks at them, looks for dissatisfaction, looks for extreme satisfaction for training purposes, or looks for holes in a sales process. And then the second thing is to find a solution where AI is actually the receptionist, the scheduler.

You know, 24 by 7, never goes to sleep, never have to worry about AI getting sick or taking breaks. Yes, it hallucinates. Right. But at some point it will. You know, I always look at AI like a piece of beautiful stained glass.

You know, you've got this beautiful stained glass of all these different pieces and the sun shining through it and everything is beautiful. As soon as you take a hammer to that thing, it's shocked I mean it's gone.

So you know, as far as Skynet taking over any type too soon, I really don't expect that, no matter how big the hype is. But I am.

Doesn't do it while you're driving your cybertruck. That's.

Yeah.

As long as well I can take over. I don't care.

Well, you know, and that was part of the thing is the truck to me is a big part of this whole AI solution capabilities because Elon Musk is created an AI component called Grok. So and Grok is going to be part of the Tesla vehicles. And you know, the intention is for us to give the truck a personality.

And that personality can go across multiple vehicles, multiple applications, and actually really look out there far.

I could just see my great great grandchildren out there that never even knew me going to their Tesla car and saying, hey, what would grand great great grandfather do? And how cool. I could give them an answer. Right. So that's where I see the intelligence going.

Wow.

And you will bring it so that I can ride in it, right?

Sure. I'll be bringing it around.

Right. All right.

Rewrites.

Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us and it feels like to be continued because there's so much more that we could, we could dig into. There you go. There is customer support needed. Done. Thank you. See you soon.