Welcome to the very first episode of The Dispatch!

Join Ryan Prosser and Jessica Begley, Co-Founders of FieldMind, as they kick things off by answering the big question: What is FieldMind and why does it exist?

In this episode, you’ll hear: The real problem facing field techs today (hint: it’s not just about finding manuals), why the trades are harder to break into than ever before and how technology can help instead of hurt and the story behind building AI that actually works FOR tradespeople, not against them.

Whether you’re running a service team, working in the field, or just curious about what’s happening in the trades, this is your behind-the-scenes look at how FieldMind came to be.

Follow us on TikTok: @RyanTradesUp // @FieldMind
Follow us on Instagram: @fieldmind_app

Transcript 

Hey guys, welcome to The Dispatch where job site legends get the mic. Join me every other Thursday as I sit down with the biggest names in the trades to find out what’s really happening to keep America running. So whether you’re on the road or in the garage beer in hand, settling for a great conversation.

I’m Ryan Prosser, and this is The Dispatch. Welcome to episode one of The Dispatch where job site legends get the mic. I’m your host, Ryan Prosser, co-founder and CEO of FieldMind.

And today for our very first episode, I joined by someone who’s been here since day zero, my co-founder and our COO, Jessica Begley. Jessica, welcome to The Dispatch. Thanks Ryan, excited to be here.

Since it’s episode one, let’s start with the basics. What are we doing here? For the last 10 years, we’ve been building products that folks out on the front lines are using, servicing, and I wanted to create a podcast where we can talk with and about the trades. Jessica, what’s your take? I think it speaks to the signals that we’ve heard.

And I think we, like you said, we’ve been creating connected products for companies for years. One of the things that we’ve seen is the increased complexity in all of this hardware that’s out there. And one of the things that we started to understand was like, why were companies having such a hard time servicing all of this hardware? And then it came to us that, you know, while there are some incredible trades people out there, the average age of a trades person in the United States is now over the age of 50, there’s a huge learning gap for individuals who are coming into the trades.

And there’s a lot of enthusiasm around them, you know? There are so many people who are really passionate about this work, but being able to really jump in and learn how to service equipment and be excellent at their job, the barrier is higher than ever because this hardware increases in complexity. The amount of time that people have from the time that they might finish up school to actually being out on the job is really short. And so people need a way that they can learn quickly while on the job and not feel like they need to call someone every five minutes to double check their work.

And so we saw this unbelievable signal out in the market and we thought, we are the right people. We understand, we can speak this language. We know how to build the technology.

Now let’s bring them both together. So Jessica, we’ve been working in and around the trades for many years now. And one of the things that we’ve been asked to do repeatedly that kind of caused us to build Fieldmind was build a product that allowed the people servicing equipment to be able to access the documents more quickly and so forth.

I’m doing a terrible job of explaining it. Give us 30 seconds on what Fieldmind is for folks out there that have never heard of it before. So Fieldmind, think of it as another app that lives on your phone.

And what it does is it captures a variety of different type of information. A lot of times the models that you’re working on, they have documents, they have manuals that have been produced by the manufacturer. And then also there’s a lot of companies out there who have internal documentation.

You know things that work. And what we’re doing is we’re taking all of that information and we’re uploading it into the app. So when you as a field tech are out there or you, the director of service operations are out there trying to assist field technicians, they have an ability to just have a conversation asking questions about the problems that they’re seeing out there.

And it’s tapping into all of the information that’s at hand. And again, it could be that documentation that’s provided by the manufacturers. It could be internal documentation.

It can even be those individuals, we call them the Freds who everybody calls, they know everything, they’ve been around forever. We can even take the information that they know and synthesize it and put it in there as well. So instead of having to call Fred every time, you can just use the application just like you would use any other chat based application in order to get the answers.

Sometimes you have really basic questions like, hey, I’m looking at this model and I need to know this part number because I’ve got to place a reorder for the part. It can help you identify the part number just by your description and the serial number. Or it might be something more complex.

Hey, I’m looking at this piece of equipment. Here’s the serial number. This is what’s happening.

I can’t quite diagnose it. What are some things that I should test? And then it’s gonna give you a step by step walkthrough of the things that you should test and you’ll be able to redirect, hey, this didn’t do anything, but this did. What’s my next step? So basically think about it like having that on-call technician that’s with you.

But in fact, it’s just you on your own with the app itself. We’ve created this technology to help folks that are out on the front lines. And I think in the trades, there’s this natural like allergicness to AI.

People are like, we entered the trades specifically because we do not want to be around AI, hear about AI. We want an AI proof profession and AI is like the enemy. And what I tell people all the time I think is that I think what you’re missing is this is the best and sometimes only pathway for new folks to enter the trades because the training is moving so quickly.

It’s so intimidating. We hear this all the time on the show that like day zero techs that are just getting started, the older techs are not friendly. I mean, Godspeed to all the older techs out there listening but like you guys got a job to do and I get that and your job isn’t always to be training the day zero new folks coming in but someone’s got to train them.

And so to have this companion that can answer their questions and in some cases just reinforce things they already know, this is super powerful. This allows this next generation of trades folks to enter the field. And I think for me, that’s one of the things I’m most excited about that I think people miss.

I think one of the other aspects is these individuals who’ve been in the trades for 30, 40 years, they have so much knowledge. It’s only in their head. You only gain that through experience.

And so part of it is they’re out there on the toughest, most complicated jobs themselves trying to solve that, right? Using all their skills and they have everyone calling them because everyone knows this is the person. It’s in their brain. It doesn’t live anywhere else.

And I will also say really digging into a lot of this, a lot of this unbelievable equipment now, again, increased technology, more and more complex hardware. You open the manuals to one single individual model and you’re looking at 200 pages of size 10 font with incredibly complex schematics. I mean, it would be enough to make anyone crazy, even somebody who really is knowledgeable in this field.

And so you take all that information and you think about that’s one single model, one single model with 200 pages. How many models are people going out there and seeing in a day, you know, the amount of information that’s being asked on a lot of these individuals who are out there as a field tech, like they are being asked to memorize and understand just extraordinary amounts of information. And so to your point, Ryan, like our thought is we’re not trying to replace anybody by leveraging technology.

We’re trying to make it so that people can be better at their jobs. You feel more fulfilled. You know, you have that feedback loop of, oh my gosh, I was able to accomplish this really complex task.

I was able to do it on my own, assisted with just the tools and technology that’s available to me. Now I feel so much better going into that next job and I have a lot more confidence that I’m feeling better and better about my job every single day. And that’s the intention.

That’s what we’ve created FieldMind to do, not to replace anybody, but to make people feel really great about the job that they’re doing, not to feel intimidated by the number of different models or the number of challenges they have in the day. And then to be able to feel great, finish up your day and get home to your family. One of the things that I’ve observed is it really helps three different groups, kind of in three different ways that, and I don’t know that maybe at inception that was something that we expected, but I see these early stage technicians.

And like I said before, it gives them this on-ramp into the trades where they have someone that they can ask questions of that maybe isn’t as impatient as someone who has another job going on. And so they’re able to either confirm that what they’re thinking is the right approach or frankly, if they don’t know the answer, a place to go get that answer. And then I think about like the more mid-career technicians, like folks that have 10 plus years of maybe 10 to 20 years of experience.

And I think of this as like a force multiplication. Like this is the technology that is gonna fill in any remaining gaps. It’s gonna get them answers quickly.

You talked about the 250 page manual for a single piece of equipment. Like at a certain point, a human being cannot possibly retain that specific of information at that volume across this many different product lines. And so like the reference ability, like this is an unprecedented force multiplication opportunity.

And then I think about, lastly, kind of the super techs. Like you said, we call this the FRED. If you’re out there and you own a service organization, you probably have like one or three people and you’re thinking of their name right now.

And these are the people that are absolutely core to your company. Like they go away, you don’t have a company tomorrow. And you really want that person out there solving the hardest problems.

Probably the highest revenue generating problems. And of course, no problem for them to be answering the questions of junior technicians, but probably not at the volume that they currently are. That’s where the real problem is.

And that’s where this tribal knowledge piece comes in. So they’re answering a question once and for all. And then that information is being pulled in and made available.

So they’re not having to answer it ever again. So it’s sort of like a once and for all answering of these most difficult, but also most common questions and freeing up the super techs to then go do revenue generating stuff, focus on customer problems, customer satisfaction. And I don’t know that when at the outset we necessarily thought in terms of like those three different groups, but it does seem now that that is kind of the way that folks are using the tool.

What’s your take? I agree. And I think that one of the things that we’ve found in having conversations is a lot of the documentation that people are using, even regardless of where they are in their career, these are still like either physical paper manuals that are sitting around, right? Or you’ve got maybe they might be in PDFs, but you’ve got people who ultimately you’re all gonna, everyone runs into problems at work and how are you gonna solve them? And the best way to solve them is by not needing to flip through hundreds of pages back and forth, back and forth through manuals. It’s the way to be the most efficient and best at your job, no matter where you are in your career is by using technology in order to be just like another tool in your toolbox.

And again, regardless of where you are in your career, we’ve heard from a lot of these owners of companies that they’ve got that one or two key people and they can’t let them retire. They can’t let them retire because of the breakage that that creates. And it’s not just about like getting them out into the field, it’s about the other people and how they support them as well and the knowledge base that’s really contained just within their brains.

Because again, like the speed in which the technology is changing and the length of time it takes people to learn things is continuing to be more challenging. So I think it’s really beneficial for a wide variety of individuals out there. One question I had for you is, what makes Fieldmine different? Because I hear a lot, hey, kind of like the two buckets of things I hear a lot.

Number one, hey, we’ve got this big repository of documents, like why would we spend money on anything? Like folks already have access to that, they can punch in the product number, boom, they have the documents right there. And two, and you often hear these like the two horsemen of, you hear them side by side all the time, is, hey man, OpenAI beat you to the punch. We’re already using chat GPT, bro.

So like, and it costs us 20 bucks a month or whatever, with the free version. So we’ve got the repository of the OEM documents over here, we’ve got GPT over here, maybe both, maybe one or the other. What in the world do we need Fieldmine? You know, you talked a little bit earlier about like, hey listen, having a 250 page document is not the same as having access to the right answers, but expand on that a little bit if you would.

Absolutely, I think one of the things that’s incredible, every single director of field services, field technician that we’ve been able to talk to, like they take their job really seriously, right? Because there are real implications of getting the answer wrong, and that’s incredible. I think that’s like, there’s so much pride in the work, there’s so much pride in what they’re doing. And you know, one of the things that we found is the technology that’s being built right now for the trades in particular, it’s really about like job ticketing, like did you, okay, the job comes in, who’s on it, is the job complete, now we’re gonna get to billing.

But we’ve realized there’s this huge gap, nobody’s talking about how do we help you actually do the job better? We’re talking about how you get to the customer fast, how you get, how you bill the customer, but like actually doing the job and digging in there. And there is a reality, you know, anybody who’s ever played around with chat GPT, they, it has a tendency still to have a lot of one hallucinations, like it’s gonna make up answers. If it doesn’t know the right answer, it’s just gonna make going up for you because chat GPT does not wanna look silly in front of you, right? Like any of us, we don’t wanna, sometimes people just answer the wrong answer to say an answer.

That’s what chat GPT can do. And so you take that, then you say, okay, we’ve got like, listen, we’ve got drives and drives and drives of information, PDFs. And it’s like, you’re out in the field, even if you have a tablet or something that has access to that, it’s like, what are you doing? Fumbling around, trying to search between all these different documents.

Like, how do you even know which one to look at? How do you know which page it’s on, right? And so instead of doing that, what we’ve done is we’ve taken all of that information, put it into what’s called a closed system. So think about instead of like having access to everything, it only has access to the information you provide it, so it can’t tell you the wrong answer. And what we’ve done has been able to create this where you can just ask it a question.

So instead of, you know, a lot of times, I think we’ve all run into the problem where you try to search for a document on your computer and whatever you named it isn’t the words that you’re thinking about right now, right? So like now you can’t even find the document. Like it’s just like, you don’t even know what it’s called. What we’ve done with FieldMind is just talk like you normally would talk to your butt.

Like you need to call Fred to ask him a question, say it the exact same way into FieldMind, and it’s gonna give you the answer that Fred would give you because it’s able to synthesize the information. It takes all of it and it says, okay, we know what to do, we’re here with you, and we’re gonna do this fast and very clear. We’re gonna give you very clear step-by-step instructions and we’re in this with you, but don’t worry, we’re not gonna give you the wrong answer.

That’s the difference. ChatGPT is gonna give you any answer it can find out on the internet, and I think we’ve all run into circumstances where the internet is incorrect, sometimes in certain categories, way more times it’s gonna be incorrect than correct. FieldMind is just using the documentation, not everything it can find out on the internet, and that’s the biggest difference.

And so what we wanna make sure is that you have the right tools at the right time. One of the things that has been, I think the coolest for me is in the early days of FieldMind, I remember showing this to some kinda beta customers, and I’m of a certain age, born in the late 70s, that I remember very vividly Napster. So for folks out there that remember Napster, for a lot of people, this was their first experience with anything that felt like black magic.

Napster was very different than anything that came before, and I don’t remember anything ever again feeling that transformational. And yet, when I show this product to folks that run companies in the trades, it’s that feeling again, almost 30 years later, 25 plus years later, and I remember showing Napster to my grandpa in, I don’t know, 1999, approximately, and he would have been in his 90s at that time, and he didn’t know anything about the internet. It was happening all around him, but he didn’t know anything about it.

And to see that he could instantly have access to these songs that he hadn’t heard in 50 years, but on command, exactly what he wanted. Now, if you’re listening to my voice right now and you’re under the age of 40, you have never known a world where that didn’t exist, but this used to be super rare that you could immediately have total control over that kind of information. You wanna hear, I remember, he wanted some song called Boogie Woogie.

I’m like, okay, whatever, Grandpa. And I found it, and he said, what did he say? He said, oh my God, I can’t believe this has been happening this whole time, and no one told me. And that is the same reaction that we get, especially in those early days when I’m showing FieldMind to folks and they’re saying, this is incredible.

Within less than two minutes, the system, two minutes, the system is fully an expert on all of the products that a particular company surfaces. And their reaction is, this is incredible. And I feel fortunate to be building a product that causes that kind of reaction because I can remember all those years ago thinking it must be so cool to be a part of this Napster movement.

With respect to the music industry, it was quite transformational. Totally, I just think about that. And I think about all of the times and places right now where similar type of situations are happening for companies and people want to do a great job at work.

They wanna feel pride, you know? And I think one of the things that we’ve seen now in the last couple of years is the trades are really making this incredible comeback. Like there’s a renaissance in them right now. People are really proud of the work that they’re doing.

This is the backbone of America. The backbone of America is running in the trades. And I feel really privileged that we are building technology to support that.

Yeah, I totally agree. And one of the reasons I was really excited to co-found this company with you is there’s a curiosity I think that we share in terms of how can important problems be solved in ways that are new and innovative. And this approach to the trades, it feels very overlooked.

I think folks are, I don’t know, thinking about data centers and various things like that. And maybe a little bit afraid to get in there, roll up their sleeves and get side by side with the folks that are working to keep America actually running. And with you, I’ve always had a partner that really relishes that.

Where are the opportunities? Where are the people that are actually doing things? How can we get involved with them? Be helpful, help push that forward. I’m very passionate about it. And these last few years, it’s been great working side by side with you, somebody that views that in the same way, because that’s exactly what FieldMind is doing.

We’re bringing technology to a group that is kind of a roll up your sleeves, no excuses group. They have got to get the thing done. And if the tool is helpful, they wanna know more about it.

And if it’s not, they’ll tell you really quick that like, this is a waste of time and I’ve got things to do. You just absolutely nailed it. I think it’s that combination of like, our perspective on work is gritty, tenacity, resilience, anything it takes to get the job done.

Anything it takes to get the job done. And that is, I think that’s where this alignment is so like incredible is that is what happens. You are out there in the field.

You are not leaving until the job is done. So whatever it takes and we share that mentality. Yeah, so this will be the first episode of The Dispatch that most people hear.

So we will publish this as the first episode, but I’ll share with the folks at home. It is not the first that we’ve recorded. So we’ve actually recorded several episodes already that we’re really excited about.

And I can tell you at home what you guys are gonna be hearing. What you’re gonna be hearing is some really interesting candid conversations as we get kind of in the trenches with folks out there doing the thing, and talking about how field line could be helpful. But sometimes not talking about FieldMind at all and really just understanding what is happening on the front lines with field service text.

What are the problems they’re encountering? What are some of the common issues? What are the hopes? What are the dreams? What are the things they hate? What does it look like when a customer is terrible and they don’t want a job, but they don’t wanna say it. So what are the things they say to get out of a conversation politely? And those are the types of things that in the last few months as we’ve been recording these episodes, it’s been absolutely fascinating to get to know these trades folks better. And I am super fascinated to continue this journey and just see where it goes.

I think we have been so lucky to your point, Ryan. Like there’s been some amazing people who we’ve already gotten to talk to. Some really big names, some super connectors who are out there doing the work but also talking about the work and bringing people along on their journey.

And we’re so excited to have them along the ride for The Dispatch and be able to, again, connect more people to the content, to the real stories of what’s happening out there in the field. And I think that excitement, I mean, we’ll see. But my sense is that that excitement is shared by them as well.

And I think they see FieldMind and they’re saying to themselves, anything that pulls more people into the trades is a good thing. Almost everyone can see that there’s plenty of work to go around, probably more than can possibly be serviced by the population of trades folks now. And anything that’s bringing the next generation in, that’s capturing the knowledge of those master techs and making it available is a good thing, is an exciting thing.

And so as they learn about FieldMind, they’re saying, this is exactly what the trades have been looking for. And so I think that’s what’s cool about FieldMind, is people are saying, we’re passionate about the trades, we’re heads down doing our thing, but here we see FieldMind bringing in technology, bringing people in, helping make it a little bit less intimidating to get started. And that is the opportunity.

That’s what’s causing people to be excited to come here on the show. That’s what’s causing people to be excited about bringing FieldMind into their organization. And that excitement has been really cool for us to be a part of.

Yeah, so we’ve got some great guests coming in, some big names, so everybody should stick around. And if you like this conversation, make sure you share it. Yep, Jessica couldn’t agree more.

And that is a wrap for episode one of The Dispatch. If you’re out there in the field running teams, or you just love behind the scenes of how things actually work, you are in the right place. Thank you for listening.

Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok at RyanTradesUp and we will see you on the next one. Thanks for listening to The Dispatch. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review and share it with a friend in the field.