2024-09-20--t06-11-29pm--guest562736--david-lopresti
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Jeff: [00:00:00] All right, David. It is great to have you on, man. It has been really a pleasure to get to look into a little bit of a different product set than we normally get to. And, I'm curious to pick your brand, a whole bunch of stuff, but welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

David: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about what we're doing.

We always start off with a little bit of just warm up and get to know you. The question I always like to ask, and I am super curious to hear your Take on this because I think it's a chance to hear a little bit different, but product is a very wide lens, right?

Jeff: Like the product roles can go almost any way. So when you're talking to non technical people, how do you describe a product and, product management to the non technical folk? 

David: It's interesting. Yeah. Cause I think about my parents who are, in their early seventies and when I talk to them, I say I'm responsible for building the U Haul app I'm responsible for managing the teams that build the U Haul app. What does that mean?

I think the easiest way for me to describe it is it's my job to make products more [00:01:00] accessible, and I think that's the simplest way to, lay it out is we have. The products that we offer are very straightforward. I think most anyone you encounter on a day to day basis has a U Haul store, has used our product in some way, shape or form.

I would even go so far as to say, as my job is to make a very stressful experience. Less stressful. That's one of the, one of the interesting anecdotes, our CEO is, it tells me time to time I've learned is, , a few years ago, we ran with the tagline you home makes moving easy.

David: And that met a tremendous amount of customer backlash because there is absolutely nothing easy about moving regardless of how, what the reason for your moving is. You think about in terms of you can move for completely fantastic reasons. You get married, you buy a new house, a new job, but you can also move for, very, not so great reasons.

And none of, even for the most opportunistic situation, it's still not easy. So they, [00:02:00] learned that the, it was, we, you haul makes moving easier. And I think that's my place in the organization is to advocate for the customer to how to make a stressful experience, less stressful.

Jeff: And I love that because, and we'll get into this in a little bit, but having that just like crystal clear resonance. Knowledge of what you do and what the company does and how it filters down through the work. I think it's just so important to building, something U Haul, which is, we look at tech companies and they've been around, 20, 30 years.

And we think that's successful. They're still, big and going, but U Haul has been around for just decades and is successful and keeps going. And you're just everywhere. To the point of, , being there for people you bring up, I remember, a couple of years ago, we have a small place , up in the white mountains that we live, several hours away in Boston, our car surprisingly just out of nowhere broke down, we were stranded.

There was no way to get anywhere, no car rentals. There's not a car rental for, 80 miles, but we were able to get. local taxi to give us a lift to the local U Haul [00:03:00] store. And we rented a cargo van and were able to drive it all the way back down to Boston. You guys were the saviors, but it's amazing to see how just there is a U Haul.

everywhere. And that's a testament, I think, to, having just that clarity of vision of what you do and being able to execute on that again and again,

David: Yeah. If you look at the, our retail network, we have, approximately 24, 2, 500 company locations, but we have 22, 000 independent locations and they range from self storage locations to auto repair shops. And that really is the differentiator in terms of why I believe that we've been successful for going on 80 years now is responding to customer demand, being where the customer wants us to be.

The, there's a graph that gets shared that was, I think it was a research study that was done sometime in the 60s, and it's still relevant today, showing in concentric circles, how far from a customer are they willing to travel in order to participate in a product and service?

And it's interesting because when you look at it, like, once you get past to the two, three [00:04:00] mile range, You see a dramatic decrease in penetration and, so you have to be able to be where the, convenience is more than anything, in my opinion, what is driving everything now is, I'm sure I didn't invent the term, but I was thinking about it this morning, in when we were thinking about the show is, we've transitioned to a convenience economy, we have a real appetite as users 

to get what we want when we want it. That's where I think we are able to differentiate ourselves is we have, 125, 000 trucks, we have 150, 000 trailers. We have millions of square feet of storage. Like we, to be successful, you have to be where the customer wants. You can't expect them to travel to where you're at to do business.

You have to be where they want you to be.

Jeff: It's the same way if you I know you're not local Boston here, but \ if the folks who are, you will literally have a situation where you have a Dunkin Donuts across the street from a Dunkin Donuts and it's because it's too hard. You just want, you want, they basically will catch them going that direction of traffic only,

David: Yeah. I've driven on your roads and I can understand. I, it's hard to get across the [00:05:00] road. Impossible. Yeah.

Jeff: If you drew it on, then you understand why we need a dunks on both sides too. Okay, moving on from this one, we'll retouch on some of those elements, but again, I'm curious about this one, but tooling is one of those things I feel like, as an industry or as a world, I feel like we've gotten a little over tooled, but what are like three things?

Three tools in your day to day work life that you can't live without.

David: Oh the first is notes on my iPhone or my iPad. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a very disorganized person. So I've really tried very hard to train myself to be able to. Make sure that if I have an idea or something, I'm at least writing it down somewhere. And I know that there's plenty of other alternatives to, notes, I've tried it before, but it just works and it syncs across my devices.

The same with voice notes. , I try to keep an audio recorder with me at all times, either with my phone or a personal recorder to make sure I not quite want to be like the Michael Scott at the, at the desk, talk about movie titles or movie ideas, that's where, I've found that to fill in the gaps in my weaknesses is I'm not the most organized [00:06:00] person. So , those 2 have tremendously helped me. And then, I guess , if I was to pick a third one, I would say, as much as I know people online like to bash on it, when we switched over to Microsoft products a few years ago, and we finally got everybody on to teams because, of course, a few years ago, everybody was, fragmented across slack and all these other tools is, getting everybody centralized.

So teams and being able to, indulge myself and reach out to my dev managers and things like that at any time. I know they're going to respond. I don't set an unrealistic expectation that they have to respond outside of hours, but In my opinion, having these working relationships, communication is really the key to getting anything done.

And yeah, I know those are probably not the three sexiest tools, but they work for me and I think it's helped me be a better product manager, be a better director and try to make sure that I'm doing my part to make everybody around me successful.

Jeff: I it's fine. I it's rarely ever the kind of new sexy tooling that when [00:07:00] you get to kind of leadership level is what people are relying on, right? It's, I hear notes a lot. There's always some kind of, planning or something like that. I use literally just a list tool called to do list.

And, but I love it because it has a widget that goes on the front of my iPhone. So whenever I open it up, my top priorities are just right there. And then, you said teams, we use Slack here, but it's always some permutation of a notes thing, something to organize tasks and. At least one communications thing.

Sometimes people like, Oh, it's like Slack and then my text message app.

David: One of my, one of my friends in the organization, he's one of our district vice presidents in the New York City area helped me understand a few years ago, he told me his plan for success is every morning. He writes down 3 things that he wants to accomplish that day.

And as long as he accomplishes those 3 things, he considers himself to be successful. Now, of course, he does more than 3 things in a day. But it, yeah, sometimes it's hard to measure or, it's hard to measure. How successful, how much work you're getting done. So you have to commit to being able to be able to go back and reference [00:08:00] it.

Yeah, it's just top of mind awareness, is the best way to describe it is if you can keep it at the forefront of your mind, you're just going to keep thinking about it and you're going to keep iterating on it. I

Jeff: Exactly. I think I have the same problems. That's like what you do. Like I'm organization doesn't come naturally to me. So forcing myself into it it keeps me there. Alright, yeah talking about actually always moving stuff forward and making sure we're hitting on the most important things. Things on a day to day basis, right? I feel like something that you talked about earlier with Jess on our team here you sat down and did a spotlight interview with her for our blog actually a little bit ago One of the points you made I feel like is just so Salient to the discourse going on today in the world of kind of product and just companies in general, Paul Graham recently came out with his founder mode essay on the back of Brian Chesky talking at Y Combinator event and I loved what you said.

I don't, I don't think you were speaking in context of this. But you talked about basically, you look to hire [00:09:00] people who want to be part of the solution. And I have a bit of a bone to pick with the whole idea of like founder mode, because I don't think the deification of founders is what's going to save A company I've seen plenty of bad founders or as well, or great founders who are not operators and not gonna, work like Chesky is who can sit there and do, a sales operations problem, a problem, a product problem, a, positioning problem all within 25, 30 minutes, but. I think it's a problem of making sure you're hiring people who care. But you had a story around this, right? You had a VP who kind of puts some faith into you early on. So can you maybe give us a little context on that first? And then we can dive in more.

David: Yeah. I bring it up because my 20 year anniversary with U Haul was just a couple months ago and I was,

Jeff: Oh, congrats.

David: thank you. , I'm becoming more and more of an anomaly when I talk to new hot, interviewees and I tell them how long I've been at U Haul.

They look at me like people stay at a company that long. I'm like yeah, I think, what happened was, is I had been with the organization for a couple of years and I liked the work that I did. I liked the people that I worked with and [00:10:00] I was working in our retail sales group, managing our online buyer, our online store for boxes, movies, place, and, but it gave me a chance to work with our independent dealers, the locations I mentioned, the storage facilities, the auto repair shops, the rent vehicles. And it got me a chance to work with what we call area field managers. They're basically a manager that has 20 or 30 of these facilities that they oversee, they help. And I really loved working with, let's, we call boots on the ground, the people that are actually out doing the work and getting it done.

And so one day just by happenstance, I saw that a job posting had gone up for a program manager for our dealer operations group. And. I'm like, Oh, this would be fantastic. But I was going through and I was reading the requirements. And of course, I, I didn't have any of the requirements at the time you had to have a couple of years of experience working in the field and all these other things.

So I said, you know what? I've been here a couple of years, worst case scenario. I have a good chance to talk to the vice president, to introduce myself and maybe an opportunity that aligns with , my talents. So Comes along and he thinks of me. So we had a really fantastic interview and about a week later, I [00:11:00] get an email offering me the position and I was just overwhelmed.

I'm like, Oh my God, this is fantastic. So what's interesting is that department didn't have any available desks. So I had actually, my desk was inside his office for probably the first eight months I worked there, which was very interesting because he was a Colonel in the Air Force. He was actually a base commander at Andrews Air Force Base.

So he had all these great stories you would tell. But One day I finally got up the nerve to ask him about a month and I said,, I've wanted to know since you hired me, like, why did you pick me? You had dozens of other candidates that had qualifications and I didn't meet any of them and he point blank just looked at me and said after I met you, I realized one of two things was going to happen.

You were either going to fail in a spectacular manner or you were going to exceed my expectations. And he's honestly, I just wanted to see which one of those happened. Thank you. That kind of, that set the stage for kind of how I envisioned and molded my own manager style is, he was willing to take a risk on me.

He obviously saw something in me that wasn't I don't want to call it nonconformist. It's, that's too cliche, but there was something that I said or something I did that [00:12:00] thought that I would be a good fit to help him. And I've, Been trying to repay that debt since that day back in 2000. So 16 years now, I've I've taken that to heart now, his communication style was a little abrupt.

I've tried to be a little bit better at that, but what I've, what I found in my career, not only doing that in about five years after I had joined that team, I actually was able to take over as director of our moving help program. And, leading a team, I started with, Three employees.

And when I took over the app a year ago, we'd grown the department of 50 people is I've always approached hiring from the perspective of being very straightforward. I'm looking for people that want to be part of the solution that have feel that they have something to offer because at the end of the day, you Work is a, regardless of what it is, work is something we have to do. And if we have to do it, we might as well enjoy it or, look forward to it, so generally speaking, more often than not you have that conversation with people and they, [00:13:00] people want to be, I think inherently people want to feel valuable and they want to feel like the work that they do matters.

And if you put them into an environment where you give them a certain amount of flexibility, more often than not, they'll impress you and they'll do good work. It doesn't work all the time. You know what I mean? , there's been quite a few times where when I talk to people during interviews and I say, listen, I'm not a micromanager.

I don't even know if macro management is actually a term, but that's the word I always use. I'm like, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna provide the direction, I'm gonna provide the goals. I'm gonna make sure that you have the tools available to you, but I'm expecting you to use your brain and some people love that idea, especially people that come from being, think being micromanaged, they go, there's flexibility in this freedom.

And, some people prosper, but also some people struggle with it. Some people unfortunately need to be micromanaged because they're task based and that's okay. And, but those people do struggle working for me and that's okay. They've, they find success in other groups. But I think I would rather take a chance on somebody impressing me than I would having [00:14:00] to constantly micromanage or, be involved in the day to day operations because if I'm in, if I'm having to be involved in the day to day operations of everything, I'm not thinking about.

What we're going to be doing a month from now, six months from now, 12 months from now, and that's really what my job is to make sure that we have a future for not just myself, but everybody else that works here. So what it really depends on what is it, what goal is that you're focused on and can you, have you clearly communicated what the goal is?

Jeff: That's where I think the whole kind of very binary thinking of founder mode versus manager mode breaks down, right? Like it's very easy to say Steve Jobs. Versus, Scully one was a visionary who drove the company forward and one stepped in, came from Pepsi and stepped in at a time when the company was already ascendant and basically just probably long term, drove it almost to the ground versus, jobs like a Phoenix, from the ashes created the most valuable company in the world.

But it's not. That binary, right? Like [00:15:00] when you think about this idea of founder mode, what people get to at the heart of it is they say founders understand the mission uniquely founders care. I know a lot of people who care. I've been very lucky enough to hire several people who care a lot.

I think what it boils down to when I'm looking to hire and isn't, the Graham essay did make me think about this is. It's not, founders are magic and they can do things that no one else can. It's look for people who are going to approach it, at some level, similarly people who care about the mission and, or as you put it, care about, being a part of the solution.

People who are going to, have the capability. To understand and to execute people who want to move the needle. It ultimately comes down to people who, give a shit if you can find that

David: No, that's, that's really is. And I think in my opinion, a lot of it comes down to just understanding who your customer really is. Steve Jobs has always comes up and, Walt Disney is one of my personal favorites in terms of, as somebody who has a background in [00:16:00] marketing is they are against all odds, they understood and believed what the customer wanted, sometimes to the detriment of their own organization.

And sometimes it's, yeah, sometimes that doesn't necessarily work out. But at the end of the day, the customer are another, thing that our CEO likes to say that I latch onto is in a capitalistic economy, the customer picks the winners or losers. So if you're not focused, All of your energy on who your customer is and what your customer wants, you're going to struggle.

You're going to go through those periods. It's, the, that founder mode I was thinking about the Airbnb and of course, Airbnb is a fantastic business. , but compare them today versus Uber. If you go online and look at, Reddit or whatever else, you can see It to me appears like Airbnb has pivot, has their customer or the hosts and which is why you see nothing but complaints online about, I'm renting your place, but I have to wash the bedding.

I have to, cleaning fees and things like this. And now you have state and federal and legislators cracking down, they're blamed for housing crisis and the housing [00:17:00] price problems. But you look at Uber who, Has, in my opinion, has focused entirely on what the customer wants, has pretty much successfully avoided government intervention.

Even California tried to pass a proposition to classify their employees as or classify their drivers as employees. And the state of California, the citizens voted it down. So. Really what it comes. It's simple. It's, in my opinion, it's listening to what the customer wants and give them more of it.

Jeff: Exactly. I think, history is rife with manager led companies that did well, eBay under Meg Whitman Snowflake under Frank Slootman. You could, go on, but there's also plenty of founder led companies. Look at Andrew Mason and Groupon. It, no one, I don't think uses a Groupon anymore really that much.

But I think what it comes down to is if you feel like. The missing piece is that no one understands the mission well enough, but you, that sounds more just like a problem of communication to be fixed. Not, something that only the [00:18:00] founder can take part in.

David: That's absolutely a you problem. Like I, I joked at my anniversary party that working for the CEO of U Haul, Joe shown is very easy because. The simple metric I measured on is, did I serve more customers today than I did yesterday?

Jeff: Exactly. And I just want to be clear here right now, by the way, I'm not, Brian Chesky is phenomenal CEO. Airbnb is a great company. I've stayed at a lot of Airbnbs, but more just I think the framework could use iterating. That's all

David: Yeah. I think, we, I guess the term is disruptor. You're, you're always going to have companies that there's always going to be somebody out there that's smarter, better than me at whatever it is I'm doing. And it should be easy for anyone to acknowledge that somebody could come along with a better idea.

The question is an idea has to, an idea has to be iterated on and it has to be developed and it has to be implemented and it has to be managed. So like there, there is this life cycle of all these things. But at the end of the day if the mission is not clear to everyone involved, then you can't, Be confused when the mission isn't happening as far as I'm concerned.

But I it also depends on how you know many [00:19:00] people you're managing and I you know, there's you know There's always going to be this, this trickle down effect of or the game of telephone if you will like you know as you're passing this information on but yeah, If the concern is , your employees don't understand the mission, then you have to assume that you didn't explain the mission.

Jeff: Yeah. It's not always going to be as easy, as we make moving easier, but if you can distill it down to that, you give people a North star. That they can always look to. And if I'm doing this, I'm on the right path.

If I'm not, I might need to rethink what I'm doing. Now , can you point to, an experience where you've hired someone who, they really were able to surprise you and bring something forward that, further this.

David: Yeah. There's been a couple of instances, the most recent, which I, my, I have a program manager who works for me by the name of Kate and she was she'd been in the organization. She worked in our advertising and marketing group. She has a background in digital design and, when I first met her, she seemed very, I'm very.

I'm very loud. I'm very, I can be obnoxious at [00:20:00] times. I'm the first person to admit this. Um, 

Jeff: about that.

David: And when I met her, she did come across as reserved and a little bit quiet, but what I picked up from her was that she had a, I guess the best way to describe it is I think she had an ax to grind. She knew that she was capable of doing more and all she wanted was that opportunity to prove that. And at the time I was a one man operation. I, when I took over the app team, I had to reevaluate where everything was at. So it was I wanted to be firmly involved in every decision was made very early on, but it came to the point where I needed to start building my team out.

She was recommended and. She's absolutely overwhelmed me in terms of her quality and her ability to step in and be helpful and do all the things that, supplements my abilities. And I, but I think if I can be somewhat cliche, it's I have had the most success picking people that I felt had an axe to grind, that felt like they had not been valued in their previous role and were just looking for a chance to prove it.

And I've probably done that at least [00:21:00] half dozen times in my career. And every single one of those people has either gone on to continued success or this team or have left the organization for bigger, better opportunities. And that's okay too. I tell everybody that I hire to I know it's another thing, like we're not a family.

This is a organization. This is, I appreciate you and I will do everything I can to be successful. We very clearly have a an employee employer relationship. That doesn't mean that we can't be cordial. That doesn't mean we can't be friends, but at the end of the day, like this is a job and I have very clear expectations for you.

And that kind of, I think also helps mitigate that whole idea of. Worrying about employee loyalty. People will be loyal to organizations where they feel they have something to offer. I think that's generally what you find when people decide to leave is they feel like either they've outgrown the position or they haven't been allowed to do their best work.

And to me, it's not complicated, but maybe reductionist view of it.

Jeff: I feel like [00:22:00] in life a lot, there are a lot of problems that are a lot less complicated. Then we make them when you boil them down. But yeah, I love someone with a chip on their shoulder. I have time and time again, just had incredible experiences. We have one guy, Will on our marketing team who started here, as an SDR which is like the junior est of junior salespeople.

And. He made it very clear early on that he wanted to go into marketing not into sales and just over the last, four or five years, he's gone from a entry level, junior salesperson to a director running our entire growth team. But , it's been multiple times when he's a bit of a troublemaker and it's awesome.

, there's been times when he's asked to do something and we, we all told him, no, that's not going to work. Here's why it's not going to work. We, we've seen this before. And this, this is always willing to say, like you said, I think before we started the show, it's better to sometimes ask forgiveness and permission.

He went, he did it anyway. And lo and behold sourced, use that channel to source one of the bigger deals of that [00:23:00] quarter and several other things. And just out of nowhere was this huge value generator for us that we just did not expect. And again, it's because he understood You know, he understood the solution we were trying to bring forth.

He understood the problem we're trying to solve. He had the capability to understand it and to execute. And he cared a lot enough to take that risk and to push forward. Cause he, he felt strongly about it and he had that chip on his shoulder to prove himself. And I don't think we're, we'd be where we are if we hadn't put our faith in people like that, or, one of our content folks, Nicole, who routinely will just like, she has a editorial book that she's supposed to focus on every month.

We'll regularly just come and be like, I wrote this anyway. I know it's on top of everything else, but I thought it was going to do well. And that's always what, that article will always go viral or, get picked up in, some other big thing or, create 10 X the page views of anything else.

So

David: If you're not fostering an environment of risk taking, you're not, you're never going to grow. I know that's overplayed and, a lot of situations, but I take that to heart. Nothing great ever came from. A [00:24:00] half assed effort,

Jeff: Yeah.

David: Yeah, yeah, I think, like I said, it's never going to work 100 percent of the time.

, you can lay it out, you can lay out the goals and you can lay out the responsibilities, you can describe it, and, Like I said, sometimes it doesn't work out and that's okay. You just, you shake hands as friends and you move on and you just continue to move forward and it's allowed me to be successful here.

David: It's allowed me to see people who work for me be successful. So I'm just going to keep doing it.

Jeff: Nice. No, I love it. We have, I always say, at least on the marketing team here, we have two tenants that are really important. One is, think about operational failure versus experimental failure. Operational failure is bad. Avoid it like the plague. But experimental failure, it's gonna happen. And it's a good thing.

We figured out something that doesn't work, we learn something good, and we move on. And the other, and you touched on this a second ago, is we never half ass anything. You're like, you're not allowed to half ass it. You either, I want a whole ass on everything, or else it's not worth doing and we're just not gonna do it. And that, that combined people who, had that chip on their shoulder, you can do really cool things. And I've been constantly amazed by the team [00:25:00] here. So let's move on to a little bit like applied theory, maybe about you haul here. , this is a business that goes back for decades and decades.

It's, at heart you are renting storage space or trailers or, trucks and vans and stuff like that. But you had to move to digital and you've done it, I think in a pretty good way and, that's where you're living and breathing now, but what brought that along?

What caused you guys to look at the business? And go, now it's time, we can't just survive off of someone walking in to the counter anymore. Hmm.

David: Conversations among business leaders about what are we doing with the customer data that we have? He calls it big data. What are we doing with what we know about the customer to help them make their move a little bit easier?

And If you really were to sit down and look at the tremendous amount of customer data we have, it's just, it's absolutely astounding. We have origin destination, we have, age, [00:26:00] I could go on and on, but what we weren't doing was anything with it. We were essentially presenting the same linear experience to every customer that came in the door, which.

Granted serves us well and has made us successful. People know that when they need to run a truck, they go to U-Haul. Now of course we have competitors, but U-Haul is the common term for any box truck, regardless of who owns it, of being rented. But what he was mindful of, and I think we all started to be very mindful of, was moving to this.

Convenience based economy and after, seeing COVID especially really drove home the idea that customers derive value from convenience. So can we take what we know and can we simplify these processes? So the, this, the idea was, is we had an app for many years, which allowed us to do some things, but we'd really never focused any of our efforts on it.

But , he was cognizant enough to realize Hey, like we could really create a channel. That recognizes the user from the get go and help them do the things that they want to do with a little less friction. Just something as [00:27:00] simple as this customer rented, rents a truck from this location multiple times.

They probably want to rent a truck from the same location again. So do we send them into a linear process where they have to put in their zip code and select a location, or do we just assume that this is the location and if it's not, so what we have. other options for them. But let's just let's do those things. In dealing with the fact that, the majority of app users signed in, so we know who they are, we have this, , that's really what it came down to is how do we leverage customer information, do something useful with it, something that the customer will be okay with. How do we, recognize them, embrace them in their personal space, while at the same time not come across as, invading their personal space.

And I think that's really what this endeavor has been. And, we've stumbled quite a bit. We've learned a little bit, we were overly confident in our ability to manufacture and create our own solutions. We realized now that we were, transitioning a large, good percentage of our business to app based.

It means we had to work with external vendors. We had to focus more on building APIs versus, services. [00:28:00] We've stumbled quite a bit. But I think that's good because now we know, I think what we learned more than anything was that the customer demand was there without us really even having very hard to try it.

We, in the first 18 months of relaunching our new app, we have, I think we're running on 13 million downloads across iOS and Android. Summer is typically our time of year, that 4th of July weekend always is our business weekend of the year.

And I remember signing in and checking my accounts and, we, our U Haul app was being downloaded more than my Disney experience in Southwest Airlines. So it was very clear that customers had an appetite for this, but \ , what it's made us keenly aware of is those customers expect more in terms of experience than customers that walk in or even customers that are on the web.

And that's. That's our challenge to overcome now is can we match their expectations? And I think we've learned enough now that I think we can, we just now as an organization have to realize okay we're going to have to commit resources to doing it the way the customer wants us to do it.

Otherwise someone [00:29:00] else, a disruptor is going to come along and figure it out. We either embrace it or we just, continue to believe that we'll be successful because of our brand name.

Jeff: What were some of those stumbling blocks you guys hit on before you set up designated people to really focus on this?

David: I think it was, \ the idea that we could simply just wrap our existing web services, we could just, we could perpetuate the same web process in the app and customers would be fine with it. We've been successful in, the majority of our, a good portion of our business being online reservations, things like that.

Of course, those processes work, but you go in and you actually read customer reviews, which that's one thing that, we've been very high on for more than 10 years is getting customer reviews and reading them and understanding them. And as you read them, and you realize what we thought was good.

Was not as good as we expected because now we've pushed more people into it. Like our self, our truck share program where you can, you can dispatch from your phone is, it had been a successful program. We've, we launched in 2016 and when we brought it into the app [00:30:00] the customer sentiment towards that product was not as high as it was is on for web based customers.

They clearly didn't match their expectations. So that's, I think that's the stumbling block more than anything is not recognizing that this group of customers has different expectations and it's up to us to decide what we want to do with that. Cause like I said, at the end of the day, we're a needs based business.

We're not a wants based business. We're not Amazon. We're not selling product. We're not dealing with customers on a weekly or monthly basis. \ , customers have to use us. The question is do we want to continue to focus on just being the business that they have to use?

Or do we focus on being the business that they want to use? And I think, , if I were like, imagine if you wanted to do business with your internet service provider, imagine if you wanted to do business with your power company, those are things that don't sound possible at all, but because we're needs based, we fallen, I feel into that same kind of mode.

So, we're going to be successful regardless of what we do simply [00:31:00] based on our locations and our fleet size, I would rather build a future where customers think of us as, you know, we're never going to be on the level with a Google, but at the end of the day, I would like for us at some point to be recognized for our technological prowess, which I think we can get to if we keep focusing on being where the customer wants us to be.

Jeff: Yeah. No, you keep going back to what's best for the customer. How do we serve the customer? How do we make it good for the customer? And that's, I think across boards, when people are focused on that's where you see the companies that continue to grow and continue to do well is because that's always going to be, the North star that makes you most successful long term.

So I guess to that point though, you're serving people who are maybe, moving to college for the first time and are, in their late teens, early twenties, all the way up to, folks who grew up and matured and maybe even had children before a time of Before a ton of smartphones, let alone before the internet, maybe.

[00:32:00] How are you balancing as a company? I know you're focused on the app, but as a company, how do you guys look at, you need to serve both those sets of customers and everyone in between.

David: I think that's where the app is it's evolved from a into a more of discussion about how we approach digital marketing in general. You mentioned college, that's a pro, we have a product at U Haul called College Boxes, which is specifically designed for college movers because Once again, it evolved from the former, for those of us that are in our forties our millennial, Xennials, whatever you want to call it, when we moved to college, our parents rented a trailer and we loaded up the U Haul trailer and they dropped us off at school.

Schools. Have become, entirely a pedestrian based. You can't bring a trailer onto some college campuses now. So the idea was as well. Do we just forget about this business altogether? Do we develop an alternative product, which is what our college boxes program is? The challenge, of course, is our college boxes program is much, much smaller than our truck rental business.

In terms of our web presence, our truck rental program is always going to get 99 percent of the attention [00:33:00] simply because of the size of the program. But through the app and through digital marketing, if I can. Leverage the app. If this customer is near a college campus, this customer is in their early 20s, this customer has these things.

I can now prioritize college boxes as the premier experience for that customer based on what I know about them. And I think that's really what the app, focus, trying to refocus our efforts on digital marketing is taking all this internal knowledge that these groups have. And how do we build smaller segments with more focused direction so that I can get very relevant information to the right person.

And I think in terms of marketing, like the Internet has made marketing infinitely more easier, but also infinitely harder at the same time, because you have to be specific with that particular user they expect to be catered to. So I even use my own example with our trailer program. , I've worked for you all for 20 years, but I had never actually driven and rented a trailer until about six weeks ago.

And I went into the.

I went in, I went to the trailer people. I said, listen, I said, it would have [00:34:00] been really great for me. I'd never rented a trailer before. If you would have been able to serve up a video on how to drive a trailer for the first time. Which we found that we have a YouTube video for that's had millions of views.

Jeff: I saw it. It's 4 million views. It's

David: Yeah it's insane. But I would, do I want to go to YouTube to find content or could I have just served that content at the appropriate time to that customer? I think that's really where we have spent the last 12 months as an organization thinking about is how do I define the, how do I define the group that I wanna target?

What is it that I want? What unique selling proposition do I want to give to them? And how am I going to make it easier for them to get that one thing? It's not, it's upselling, it's cross selling, whatever you want to call it, but it's based on what we know you are likely going to need, not what we want to sell you.

That really what it comes down to is, that's, our focus has been on don't try to sell the customer something they don't want, give them options, they'll need and they'll likely take them. And that's exactly what we've seen. And that's what we're continuing to focus on.[00:35:00] 

Jeff: It's like the opposite of a restaurant where it's, the chef is saying, move the fish because it's getting a little old. It's what is the customer needs? So to that point, you talked about, you have just so much data and I think It's great to hear about, someone's moving and the destination is near a college campus or they're of the age, or maybe you stack those two data points together and okay, this person's probably moving to college.

Have there been other like really what are the other important signals or data points you've found there? What have you been able to do that's maybe a really cool story?

David: I think some of the, some of the more interesting things we've come across is something is benign is looking at our claims for customer damage. So customer rents a vehicle and when they get done with the moving, they took our insurance policy and, they file a claim for whatever reason.

If you actually we spent some time when looking at our claims data, you found that more often than not, that claims data showed that. The customer's TV was the most likely product to be broken. And, that's because, TVs have become increasingly smaller and more flexible. [00:36:00] And, when you buy a TV, you throw the box away.

Now, when I go to move and I don't have something to move that particular box. Holy crap, we have a very specific product for this particular customer. Why aren't we doing more to make sure that they're aware of it to solve this? Looking at insurance claims.

ultimately helped us understand and drive towards a marketing opportunity because what we were trying to do was, yeah, we could make some money selling a 20 boxes, but I'd rather do is make the customer not need to file an insurance claim. So they're not, they don't hate us for something getting damaged during their move.

Jeff: exactly.

David: We're, yeah, we have a solution, but really what we want to do is we just want you to have a good moving experience. We want you to understand we want to make this as seamless as possible, just being aware of what's happening with customers can drive a lot of these decisions that, at the end of the day, still are focused primarily on benefiting them.

Jeff: Yeah, no, I think this has been great, David. I appreciate you coming on. Like the things we covered hire people who [00:37:00] understand the solution you're trying to deliver and want to be a part of delivering that. Focus on what is going to make the customer happier and what do they want to anticipate their needs before, they tell you they need it.

I think even one thing we just started to get into, is and I was reading the Mr. Beast onboarding. Corporate book, which sounds ridiculous. It's this fantastic corporate document, actually that one of the things they talked about is like to be here, you have to care. And in their case, it's, you have to consume the type of media you're going to produce.

You have to be an expert on it. And part of that's living that. So there it's, you have to, Watch a lot of viral stuff and you should be consuming the media you're living in. But for you, Hall, it's equivalent of, you, you used a trailer and you were like, Hey, here's some things we probably should do to make that experience better.

And it's always living that way of how can live it. Love it, understand it and care. And yeah, I think, great things we've talked through here.

David: Yeah, you just have to be willing to understand that, At the end of the day, what I think the, I think it was Mr. Rogers or something like, any room you're in [00:38:00] expect that someone in the room is smarter than you. So as long as you're leaving yourself open to suggestions and ideas and asking for real feedback, people will give you their honest answer.

And generally it's out of a, it's out of a mode of just wanting To be helpful. So be willing to listen and to whoever it is that can tell you can do better. Don't take offense to it. It's if you're, you gotta be somewhat humble in terms, in order to be successful. 

Jeff: I think that's a great lesson to learn to leave on right there. So David, it was a pleasure to have you on, man. This is a blast. I love talking to you, but I also, U Haul is doing cool stuff. It's great to see how you guys are thinking about delivering these great customer experiences and where you can, Make moving easier which is a great way to think about, that's just simple catalyzation. I think really nails it. So thanks for coming on is, if someone wants to reach out is LinkedIn the best place to reach or is there anywhere else, or

David: LinkedIn or, my email address is pretty simple. It's David at U-Haul dot com.

Jeff: I saw that, how did you, that's wild to me that you have just the first name, like

that's [00:39:00] founder mode right there.

David: I'll leave it on an even better note. So what's interesting is our CEO's email address is joeyuhal. com. And what he's well known for is there were quite, there was a number of years ago where, the current affair did a story. He gave his personal cell phone out on national television, which you can find it on the internet today.

And I can assure you, he is the one that picks up that phone and talks to customers. So I've always looked at that as here's a, there is no filter to get to the CEO. So if you have a problem and you're not getting a solution, This is the guy if all else fails, get to. So if that's enough, if you're accessible, then it gets a lot easier.

Jeff: Yeah. Talk about hiring people who care about the mission. So awesome. Thank you so much for coming on David. It's been, a real pleasure. I learned a lot. I had fun. I hope you had a good time too.

David: I had a great time. Thank you for having me.