Tyler Carlson: Fostering Community Through Innovative Outreach - From Campus Entrepreneur to ReSquared's Vision of Elevated Customer Service and Neighborhood Vibrancy

Imagine transforming your approach to connecting with local business owners—Tyler Carlson of ReSquared is here to tell us exactly how his company is doing that through a blend of innovative technology and personalized outreach. On this episode, we journey through Tyler's entrepreneurial evolution from his days at Florida State University selling study guides to leading a tech platform that's reshaping commercial real estate and sales industries. You'll learn why Tyler believes in creating meaningful relationships over mere transactions and how ReSquared's meticulous data management practices benefit clients by keeping their database both current and highly effective.

Have you ever thought about what the Michelin stars of customer service would look like? Tyler Carlson has, and he's passionate about making that soaring level of customer satisfaction a reality. This conversation will reveal how ReSquared's platform caters to a wide array of clients, from business brokers to product sellers, with customized SaaS solutions that focus on exceptional service. Tyler's commitment shines through as he talks about his dream to honor businesses that go above and beyond in customer service, setting them apart in an AI-dominated landscape.

Our episode wraps up with a heartwarming nod to the importance of community. Tyler, a true embodiment of the 'good neighbor' spirit, shares how his company's ethos extends beyond business, nurturing the warmth and camaraderie of our neighborhood. As a token of our appreciation for his contributions, Tyler is featured on our Good Neighbor Podcast, where we celebrate local businesses making a tangible positive impact. Join us for this inspiring conversation that not only focuses on business growth, but also on fostering genuine connections and uplifting our local community.

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https://www.re2.ai

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mike Sedita.

Speaker 2: 0:12

Welcome to the latest episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I am your host, mike Sedita, and today we're joined by Tyler Carlson. He is the co-founder of ReSquared. Tyler, how are you doing today?

Speaker 3: 0:22

Living the dream, mike, living the dream, happy to be here, excellent.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Love to hear it. I'm trying to do the same, can't complain. Things are going well. Everything's been rolling along this week, excellent. So just wanted to fill you in a little bit about what the Good Neighbor podcast is and what we do and keep you up to speed. So the Good Neighbor podcast was started in 2020 as a way for business owners to communicate their brand message to people in the community while still being socially distant, and over the last four years, we've developed into a national brand. I'm the person here in Tampa that gets to talk to entrepreneurs like you. So, with that being said, tell us a little bit about Resquared.

Speaker 3: 1:02

Sure us a little bit about re squared Sure. So one of my best ways to kind of explain what we do is start by my favorite mantra in life, which is if you chase two rabbits, you catch neither, and how important it is to chase one rabbit at a time. Right and so very relevant to your audience. I'm sure. The rabbit we chase is local business owners. So we work with folks whether it's commercial, real estate, insurance, marketing agencies, et cetera to use our platform to reach out to local business owners across the country, and our mission is to create a product that both the salesperson likes and the local business owner likes. So we're anti-blast and essentially we have all the contact information for almost every local business physical local business in America and Canada, and we work with B2SMB or B2 local companies to help them become more efficient and provide the same opportunities to these local businesses that some of the big boys typically would get.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Okay. So you're going to have to explain that a little more to me understanding you deal with. So let's take a commercial realtor, for example. Sure, A commercial realtor comes to re-squared and says, hey, I want to get in front of these business owners and create some sort of outreach to them. Is that the connection? So that hey, if you, Mr Business Owner, if you are ever looking to sell your business, I'm the guy you need to contact for commercial real estate? Is that where re-squared fits in the food chain?

Speaker 3: 2:27

Sure, yeah, that would be a relevant example. Essentially it's a prospecting tool for whether you're looking for somebody to sell their business, for them to sign a lease, for them to sign up for your marketing services, etc. So essentially we're a sales enablement platform for people that are targeting local businesses, and so I could pull up a platform, pull up St Pete search chiropractor and hit up every chiropractor in the St Pete area in just a few minutes and make it hyper targeted in my messaging so I'd be able to say you know South Tampa chiropractor, instead of trying to blast everybody.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Okay, so this is a massive database that you guys have that you house. How do you make sure the, how do you guys go about making sure this information is up to speed? I mean, we know, I mean business owners, I mean restaurant businesses, for example go out of business in the first year, like 90% of them.

Speaker 3: 3:35

How do you guys maintain making sure that information is accurate and correct for the people that you're working with, data management, et cetera? You know, to the local space and, to answer your question directly, we take a bunch of fragmented market. You know all the, from Yelp to their their websites. You know we all know how fun it is to work with the government and their database, right Like Better Business Bureau, chamber of Commerce, secretary of State data. We compile that all into one place and how do we keep it up to date and accurate is just like any great tech company out there.

Speaker 3: 4:09

A lot of that is driven by the customers. Using the product makes the product better. So every day, our customers are reaching out to tens and hundreds of thousands of businesses, and so we're always enriching our data, always updating our data and, because we started in commercial real estate, we know who's growing before anybody else does. When a nail salon says that they're looking to sign another lease, we can then take that information and bring it to a bank, for example, who might want to write them a loan, if you will. So it's all about one being a tech company through and through and having all of the bells and whistles in terms of checks and balances, while also having our customers use the data in the real world, so we can continue to update that on a regular basis.

Speaker 2: 4:49

So two questions I have for you, because you kind of brought it up. So, using the nail salon, if I knew a nail salon that was looking for commercial real estate space, you guys can't help with that. You could just connect them to the actual commercial realtors in the area. So you don't have any way to find what's available. It is just really connection B2B.

Speaker 3: 5:10

Correct. Yeah, we essentially take 10 hours of prospecting to a local business and turn it into 10 minutes Go ahead. I'm sorry, no, I was just going to say so. We're like we said, we do one thing, great. So it's not a marketplace, it's not you know X, Y and Z, it's simply you're selling a local business and our platform will one give you the contact data.

Speaker 3: 5:31

But I think another thing that's worth underscoring, Mike, and I think you would appreciate this, is anybody that's ever sold anything can appreciate that I can have Mike's email address, but if I send you a shitty email or if I don't make a clear call to action, you're never going to get back to me, Right. And so half of the value is the data, but the other half of it is we have millions of data points and we know what to put in a subject line, what the call to action should be, depending on the use case, et cetera. So that's a big part of it is the human touch behind the product, where we're teaching people how to sell local instead of blasting like most people do.

Speaker 2: 6:05

It's almost like taking a lead and turning that lead, like overlapping a personality profile on top of that lead. So the salesperson knows how to come at that particular lead. Some people like to be direct and to the point and get it. Other people like to be wind and dined. Everybody's personality is different, so is that what you're saying is part of crafting? The messaging is customized to the list or customized to individual businesses? Both.

Speaker 3: 6:36

Both. So, yeah, me as the individual, I'm going to add my own flavor to it, and then, depending on the business, it's going to be a different approach, and we use AI to make every one of our emails unique. And so you create, you know, 80% of the email, and then the AI fills in a sentence or two and makes it custom. So they might say you know, I love how strong your margaritas are, if you're reaching out to a Mexican restaurant, which gives that letter a little tailoring, while also creating the space for, you know, you to add your own flavor and your own messaging on top of it.

Speaker 2: 7:07

And then the last question I have, before we move on a little bit, is can you reverse engineer? So say I have a database, say I'm a marketing person that has a database of 5,000 names of people A lot of it is good data but some of it is crappy data. Can I export my database and say, hey, resquared, here's my list. Can you guys scrub it and update it and bring it back to me with refreshed data?

Speaker 3: 7:34

So we're not a data company as much as we are a platform. So you can work with us and integrate your data into our platform and we would clean it up for you. But at the end of the day, I think that just a list is a race to the bottom right, Because then it just becomes a commodity in terms of just having an Excel file with data in it. I think that the big value for us is having that data, but then also having the entire platform to actually reach out to these folks, right?

Speaker 3: 8:02

Because, what happens is the vicious cycle that we see every day, and when we interview people in our podcast mostly local business owners they say the same thing, which is the salesperson has to bust their ass to get a list. They finally get the list and then they send this like one email that they think it's gonna work for 4,000 people. Nobody gets back to them. So then the salesperson gets pissed off because it's even harder, right, and the local guy gets that crappy email which makes it even harder to sell them. So it's just this vicious cycle where it's so hard, and so we break that by providing the contact information and making sure they send a quality email.

Speaker 2: 8:37

Yeah, I mean, and that initial email. I mean, like you used the two rabbit analogy. My analogy is always you never get a second chance to make a first impression. You send that shitty first email and now this business owner is like you know, whatever. So yeah, listen, I do a lot of this type of outreach too on a regular basis, and a big part of it for me has always been when you're making that initial connection to whatever platform it is.

Speaker 2: 9:03

It can't be war and peace. You cannot create a novel to explain everything to everyone all the time. There has to be nuance, it has to be short, it has to be concise, it has to be like that elevator pitch tailored to that specific person to make it work. And that sounds a lot like what your platform is doing for people. So for you personally, your background, I mean how do you get here? I mean, everybody has a different story of how they end up in the spot they're in at the moment. But are you a tech guy? Are you a sales guy? How do you get to this point?

Speaker 3: 9:39

I'm more on the sales side. So I went to Florida State thinking I was going to be an orthodontist and I wanted to create the orthodontist like the Hooters of orthodontists. That was my, my plan.

Speaker 2: 9:52

My time out Hooters of orthodontists is. I mean these are usually young girls. I mean you were only going to service boys or their teeth and have girls in like.

Speaker 3: 10:03

Not the best business model, mike. Mike, it's not the best business model. I'm not gonna lie. Probably didn't think through enough uh but uh, you're exempting.

Speaker 2: 10:10

You're exempting 50. I like the idea.

Speaker 3: 10:13

Don't get me wrong um, girls still eat at hooters. Girls still eat at hooters. Man, come on now, I'm just messing, it's a mouthful, okay?

Speaker 2: 10:21

so that was kind of the. That was the 19 year old tyler. What what we were going to do?

Speaker 3: 10:26

Yeah. So I went to Florida State and at Florida State it's cool to party and talk about how blacked out you were the night before and this and that, and you know great, great university, great people, but it's the truth. And so I started selling study guides for my classes, ended up creating a joining a business around that. That happened to start at FSU and join the co-founder, and we sold that business my last semester of college and I dropped out of school and came back to Tampa and I I'm sure people listening to this can appreciate, when they come back from college or wherever they go, their friend group is doing something or nothing. There's a very clear divide. People are either figuring shit out or they're coasting, and pardon my French here. And so I had some buddies of mine, specifically Hannibal Baldwin, whose family has a super successful insurance business here in Tampa, and they were opening Yogurtology, which is a place I don't know if people are familiar with that here in town, and they opened one. According to a local broker, it was a perfect site up in Citrus Park and, long story long, that site failed. And so that was how I got introduced to commercial real estate and technology was we built a company to help predict sales of brands. So before you sign a million dollar transaction to open a Burger King or a Yogurtology or whatever, you could do your own analytics. And that's where I met my co-founder, griffin.

Speaker 3: 11:45

But to kind of share a little bit about my experience, I sold the first seven figures of revenue all by myself.

Speaker 3: 11:51

I built the sales team working with companies like Burger King, inspire Brands, subway, fresh Market, so I learned how to sell, how to sell big deals, how to get in the door with big customers, and then from there I switched to the customer service side of the business and ran that team. So I can appreciate getting in the door but also delivering the results. So, yeah, I've personally sold close to like eight $9 million of software and over the last few years everybody in our company is required to use our product, including myself, and so we call that dog food in the tech space, right. So everybody's eating dog food and so I personally am prospecting to local businesses basically every single day and so I have that first row experience combined with the big brands, combined with the tech and, you know, kind of the entrepreneurial lens. So that's why we're here and you know, one thing I'm proud to say is that selling to local businesses is challenging. We have a solution that combines both data and just helping humans connect with humans and doing less dumb manual work.

Speaker 2: 12:54

Let me ask you this what makes a platform like Resquared so desirable for someone in that space is there's literally 27, 24 hours in a day, seven days a week, and the one commodity that we don't have the luxury of replenishing is time, and the way you're presenting it at least the way I'm hearing it is this takes out a lot of the fogginess and the wasted movement that causes a lot of businesses to fail, which is incredible. But you did say one thing in there and it got me thinking. So I mean, commercial real estate obviously is big, but I would think, like business brokers or like who's your garden variety, like every business has like a 90-10 rule or an 80-20 rule, whatever you want to call it the majority of your businesses that you guys are working with to connect, is it like the business brokers and commercial real estate space? Is that most of it, or is there some other people in there that I can't think of?

Speaker 3: 13:58

Yeah, good question, mike. No, I think your head's in the right place. So back to the rabbit analogy both my partner and I came out of commercial real estate with our last company and so it was a natural, you know, transition with our connections et cetera, and so that very much um was our focus and remains our kind of foundation. So I would say it's, you know, uh, um, the significant part of our, our business. Um, about a year ago, a year and a half ago, we opened up the platform for essentially anybody, because it's a very long tail you can even think about. We got people selling freaking cans of tomatoes to pizza restaurants. There's a long tail.

Speaker 3: 14:33

Some of the major players here in terms of use cases are business brokerage Absolutely. I actually just got coffee with some folks in that world this morning. In fact, marketing agencies is another one, as well as insurance and SBA loans is another big one as well. And then you start to get some of your more like telecom, you know. You know like the spectrums of the world, you know as well as well. So we're looking at both from an enterprise, the big guys like the Gallagher insurances of the world, as well as people selling cans of tomatoes, but those are some of the use cases in terms of bigger topics that we're going after.

Speaker 2: 15:16

And I'm assuming there's different levels. So if I'm a tomato seller there's only a certain fragment of that list that I need. I'm assuming you guys tailor it specifically to the usage.

Speaker 3: 15:28

Absolutely. Yeah, we're a SaaS, so we're not consultants at the end of the day. But it's all about what access do you need and how many people do you need and what level of support you want. So if you're young and hungry and selling cans of pizza, you can get it a lot cheaper than if you're a national. You know commercial real estate company that needs you know our team to do all these trainings for, you know. So, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's the two ends of the spectrum and we try to. You know, at the end of the day, do our best to provide the highest level service for everybody. And you know what I preach to the team is you know, do what's going to have them talk about you at dinner. So that's kind of our mantra internally when it comes to customer service is how can you go above and beyond? You know whether it's handwritten letters. You know gifts for their kids. You know that kind of stuff. Adding the human element behind the technology is what I really preach to the team.

Speaker 2: 16:20

So the tech space always has some. So the tech space always has some, you know, like a little mystery to it. Like they're because people are like they see these things happening, like ai, for example. You referenced it earlier. People see ai and they're kind of like, wow, this is really cool, but don't quite always understand what it is. So in your world, you know, for re squared, what's the biggest myth or misconception that you're debunking? When people come to you, do they think it's just going to be, hey, I press a button and my calendar's full and you have to kind of level set. I mean, what is the thing that you run into the most?

Speaker 3: 16:54

I think that AI is going to take. Their job is, like the most common thing you know, especially like intermediaries, like brokers, you know, in commercial real estate and in, you know, banking and in insurance, et cetera. You know, I think, at the end of the day, the way I like to explain it is there's a great book everybody should check out, called A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson Really cool way to kind of see you know evolution of things. And one thing I took away from that book, mike, is all of the great discoveries in the past were done by priests. Why? Because a lot of the great discoveries not all, but a lot of them Right, because they didn't have to work with their hands. Right, they weren't in the fields hoeing the fields, and you know making armor and you know cooking and doing laundry. They got to sit there and think Right, and think creatively and you know grow things and merge things and you know experiment with things.

Speaker 3: 17:45

And I think that ultimately, ai is allowing all of us to become priests. It allows us to do less dumb stuff, right? How much time do you spend every day, mike, going back and forth in email? Right? How much time are you spending thinking about an email that you know you may or may not get. Imagine a year from now, two years from now, you have an AI assistant who's looking at every one of your emails and it's only tapping you when there's actually a problem. So you have all that mental clarity in that free space. So I think that's one area. The other is that this idea of us you know the idea of magically using AI to do all of the tailoring for you, and it's like to do all of the tailoring for you it's like you need to add the human element with the AI. The AI is basically a badass intern, but would you trust your intern with your business or would you check their work? And that's where Right right.

Speaker 2: 18:33

Yeah, I will tell you, you touched on one of the biggest things. It's one of the biggest pain points that I have. I mean, I run four successful publications, I run a podcast, I run all sorts. I have like five email accounts, and that's not even including my personal email account. I spend my day juggling stuff and I'm so anal, retentive when it comes to it because I spent 20 years in like in corporate finance type stuff.

Speaker 2: 19:00

If I don't put stuff on my calendar, like if I literally don't like voice note to myself on my calendar, hey, interview with Tyler, ask him about X, y and Z and put it there for me to see it. If it's not on my calendar, the shit just doesn't exist. It's never going to get done. So that would be something that drastically would clear up my headspace. I will tell you, though, the priest analogy. Growing up Catholic, I could think of a whole bunch of anecdotes that I could add to the priest analogy about clarity and discovery, but we'll kind of leave that for a different conversation. So we talked a lot about granular, technical stuff. What do you do when you are not selling over eight million dollars worth of creating over eight million dollars of the revenue. What do you do? For fun you went to Florida state, so I'm assuming you eat crab legs or whatever they do up at Florida state.

Speaker 3: 19:57

Yeah, when rings, you know, is what we do.

Speaker 2: 19:59

I'm with you, baby. I'm an old man myself. I live in Gator country, but I'm an old man.

Speaker 3: 20:03

Exactly, exactly, my. My dad actually went to undergrad at Florida state and law at Florida and my actually went to undergrad at Florida State in Law at Florida, and my mom went to undergrad at Florida and pharmacy school at Florida. So you know, I grew up a gator hater my whole life. My dad's always jolted in my head. But what do I like to do for fun? So I got two kids. I got a three-year-old daughter and a six-month-old daughter, oh shoot, so I am in the sauce right now. Yeah, you are. So I am in the sauce right now with my kiddos. My wife she has her own business that she started called the South Tampa Book Club, where she works with students in schools, like Academy of the Holy Names to do, which I really think is so great. She'll work with students of the highest reading level and the lowest reading level in the same room so they can all kind of lift each other up, you know, and create some social dynamics that you know we all live through the challenges of COVID.

Speaker 3: 20:55

I love golfing, I love the fish. I've been trying to, you know, eat right and exercise. So I'm actually going to go get a little lift in here later this afternoon. Got my walking treadmill here next to me. So, yeah, I also, personally, I'm obsessed with customer service. I think that, you know, customer service is the differentiator, you know, as software and AI eats the world, and so I. My dream is to create the Michelin star of service where I travel around, giving people, you know, kind of an award for their great service, which they can either, you know, sell a gold coin for 500 bucks or use it as like a badge of honor. But yeah, those are some things, but mostly, being a dad and running the business is, you know, 99% of my focus right now.

Speaker 2: 21:38

So it's funny, a lot of that stuff that you just said. So number one, I mean the kid thing. God bless you two daughters. You're going to be in it for a long time. You're in the muck with that. Number two, the reading thing. You know really good.

Speaker 2: 21:51

Side note is I've had English Bulldogs for over 20 years. My first English Bulldog was a certified therapy dog and we used to take him to libraries because they said kids who were that lower level of reading or just learning to read they were apprehensive about talking in front of others reading to an animal read, that were apprehensive about talking in front of others reading to an animal, brought those apprehensions down and got them to sort of open up. So we did that for a long time. So that's a great program. But the big thing there you talked about the customer service award.

Speaker 2: 22:20

So I told you I came from a corporate background. I worked in insurance, I was a manager in a call center, a 3,500 call a day call center with 65 to 70 reps. There's always attrition in a call center and there was a company called Dalbar. Dalbar was like the secret shopper of call center service and so the thing was with Dalbar is we knew that if a Dalbar like we could tell a dow bar call so you knew if they were calling and they said, hey, I want to look at my account and there was a dummy account, it would always have less than a certain amount of money in it and you'd always be like, oh, we're selling annuities that have a million dollars in them, but you have an account with 10 grand in it. So there was always checkpoints to make sure you had that service of that level and dow bar would give you a ranking. It was almost like the JD Powers of call center customer service, but you hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 2: 23:14

So, as a media buying agency, there's hundreds, thousands of people that buy marketing services and sell marketing services. There has to be a differentiator, and the differentiator always has been the service, the quality service, the 24-7 connection, what you do. That goes above and beyond. That differentiates you from the other people out there that are doing what you do. So, with that said, I mean what is the one thing that people need to know about? Coming to Resquared? There's a bunch of tech companies out there. There's a bunch of people that have databases with drip, email notifications and AI and all that, what makes you guys different, that we need to contact you today.

Speaker 3: 23:58

Yeah, what makes us different is we get all the efficiencies of a tech company where we have all the scalability, we have all the data, we have all the metadata around what to put in the templates. But then we have the people that are going to get on the call and they're going to create a template with you on the, on the, you know, on the go, and you're going to prospect real world. There's not any. Here's how you click here and how you click there. It's you get into the call and the goal of the first call is to get a lead on that call Right, and we have that happen quite often. A pizza shop owner will reply and they'll be like holy smokes the guy just got back to me.

Speaker 3: 24:36

So I think that it's the combination of the tech and the people and, at the end of the day, consultants that people work with. In order for them to scale their business, they have to be cookie cutter, or else they're not able to justify the scale, or you buy just a pure list, which is the definition of cookie cutter, and what we're able to do is give you the best of the consultative approach with the, you know, the raw data all in one, and we only, you know, do a short term pilot for people. So it's low risk, you know. So there are no free trials. We never do free trials because you got to have skin in the game. You'll be able to see it for yourself and it won't be cookie cutter. It'll be for you, whether you're selling pizza or you're selling leases or you're buying businesses. So what is a short term trial? Does it take a month, three months? We usually look for three to four months.

Speaker 2: 25:22

Three to four months, and then what happens in that three to four months is people say holy, holy shit, like these guys are filling my calendar up. We need to create a longer agreement and continue to do this and peg off the categories that we need to hit Exactly.

Speaker 3: 25:35

You got a kickoff call and then a week later we say did you get leads? If you did, we celebrate and we make sure to emphasize to you how important it is to follow up with those leads right, not just in one email. And then if you didn't get a lead, then we make sure that, make sure your domain and everything is working well, and we tweak the messaging and we do whatever it takes to get you those opportunities, you know, using things like Facebook Messenger, instagram, email, phone calls, etc. So yeah, at the end of the day, even if you have a sales team, we can make you more efficient. If you don't have a sales motion, we can help you be more proactive rather than just relying on referrals.

Speaker 2: 26:09

And then you know. Then the million dollar question is like how do people get a hold of you? What is the best way? I'm a person who needs to get a hold of local businesses. How do I contact you today?

Speaker 3: 26:19

So you can contact me two ways. I know I said I wouldn't give my phone number, but I changed my mind, so you contact me two ways. You go to our website, re2.ai. So RE2.AI is our website. Check it out. You can schedule a demo right from there and we'll qualify you and get you set up with our sales team. Or if you're taking the time to listen to this podcast and you made your way all the way through to the end here, you can call my cell phone number at 813-283-8773. That's 813-283-8773. Mention this podcast and I'll even do some prospecting free of charge for you, or even some data for you. At the end of the day, being born and raised in South Tampa here, I'm happy to help serve my community any way I can, and if you have any ideas of what we can do to improve or any way we can serve you, you let me know.

Speaker 2: 27:15

Wow, that's great. So, folks, if you're listening to this and you're a business owner that is trying to get a hold of other business owners that you don't have the time to scrub the data, to create the customized email, you don't have the resources to hire somebody, shoot that in and amongst itself is a difficult process, Not only just hiring people in general, but actually then training them to do it the way you want to do it. To do all that, why not use a company that has an experience in doing exactly what you're looking to do and making it turnkey for you, just with some initial brainstorming sessions, to upload and get the data so they know your voice and how they need to speak to people to get them in your system? You definitely want to reach out to Resquared Tyler Carlson. He's the co-founder. He wasn't going to give his phone number, but it's 813-283-8773 or re2.ai. Tyler, thank you so much for being a good neighbor. Thank you for being on the Good Neighbor Podcast. You have a great day. Thank you, Mike.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast PASCO. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnppascocom. That's gnppascocom, or call 813-922-3610.