BizTech Podcasts

59. IoT – Grab huge profits from building EV Charging Stations. With Joel Urano of Modas

March 8, 2023

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Listen in today as we talk to Joel Urano, CEO of Modas Systems. Joel talks about an area you might not be thinking of at all, but you could be sitting on a gold mine. We talk about how to sell, build and manage EV Chargers for businesses! There’s ROI, Modas manages the whole process and revenue share even back to the business. It’s a no-brainer. Learn how to take advantage of this land grab before it’s too late!

Transcript of episode can be found below.

Josh Lupresto (00:01):
Welcome to the podcast that is designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus. And this is Next Level BizTech, everybody. Welcome back to a new episode, one that you have not heard before. Today we are talking about how to grab huge profits from building EV charging systems. And I know you’re probably thinking what? That’s not CCaaS, that’s not mobility, you know, that, that’s none of these other things that we’ve talked about before. So exciting to break into this topic here. You know, as we kicked it off of the previous segment with Jason Kaufman, but today we’ve got Joel Urano, CEO of Modas Systems. Joel, welcome on, man.

Joel Urano (00:46):
Thanks. Appreciate Josh. Thanks for having me on.

Josh Lupresto (00:49):
So, Joel for anybody that’s not familiar with Modas, we’re gonna get to that in a second, but I think the most important part of this show is hearing how the heck people got to where they are. So I want to hear your personal background. Did you start out selling beach towels and then stumbled into technology? What, what’s the path for you? How did you get here?

Joel Urano (01:08):
Yeah, I I started my first company back in 2005 and actually I started the phone buyback, not the industry, but, you know, I started a phone buyback business back in 2005. And, you know, within 90 days we were moving about 30,000 handsets a month. It was just you couldn’t get enough like the, the, the buyers wanted more than, you know, we could even find, you know, so there was no enterprises out there turned over that much. So, you know, kind of grew that business. And what got me to Modas was something that really is not that exciting, but it’s a part of every business and it’s Supreme Court rule that guess what? Now you gotta charge sales tax, ah, on stuff, right? And, and not just, I’m outta state. You don’t have to do it. So you know, now if you’re outta state seller, you gotta collect sales tax.

Joel Urano (01:48):
So, you know, we put together a platform that could assess sales tax on different types of products and solutions. And you know, we found that in the reseller side of the channel. They didn’t know how to do that, right? And even a lot of technology buyers don’t. So but what really got exciting is that we realized there were technology providers out there that wanted to get an agent channel but didn’t wanna do direct billing cuz they didn’t wanna deal with sales tax. So we kind of bridged that gap and looking forward to bringing new technologies to the Telarus family.

Josh Lupresto (02:14):
I love it. And, and, and let’s, let’s talk about Modas. I mean, I know the, the, the title of this track. We’re gonna get into some nuts and bolts here about EV charging and building that out and profiting from that as a partner and all of that good stuff. But, but maybe before we, we branch off into that piece of what you do, give us a little bit of an overview for somebody who’s never heard of Modas. What are, you know, overall vision of the company, A couple of the key things that you do and what are big focuses for you? Product or vision-wise?

Joel Urano (02:43):
Yeah, no, sure. So, you know, for us, you know, product-wise is, you know, we want to be the, the kind of catchall for, you know, the Telarus sales partner. You know, if it’s there’s a, a solution or product that’s not in the portfolio today and we want to be able to ones, we want to go grab it and make it available to your, your partners, you know, on the quick. So, you know, maybe could take a week and right. We’ll add it to our catalog and right now they can sell it and, you know, just goes through our regular commission scale with, with Telarus. You know how we got here, as I said, you know, we kind of deal with that sales tax thing, which is kinda that foundation, right? It’s that non pretty thing that every house has to be built on, but everything’s got, everybody’s gotta have it. Well, we found the EV charters and, you know, in the resale side, this was just a great fit and introduced it to the market and it’s pretty exciting with the the land grab that’s going on and the revenue and the, the commissions that are out there for this. So we’re really excited.

Josh Lupresto (03:32):
So, so break that down for me for a second. I, I don’t think people will realize and understand how exciting this is, right? When, when, when Kaufman first told us about this of let you know, Hey, by the way, I mean, as nuts and bolts as we know, the i t and this whole space to be, these guys can be a vehicle for us if we can find great products that we need. Right? Which is, which is awesome for us because that saves us from having to go explore and find new suppliers and go through all that process, right? That’s not something that we, we, we want to necessarily do. We wanna lean into the suppliers that we have. Mm-Hmm. . So could you give maybe just an example of, you know, you’ve obviously established the EV charging and you figured that, and we’re gonna get into that. But what are one or two of the other things that either A, you’ve established or B, you could envision establishing later as, Hey, you go get the partnership we’re gonna put us on, put it on Modas paper, Modas is gonna support it, and then engage the, the reselling partner however you see fit.

Joel Urano (04:27):
Sure, yeah. You know, it, it’s interesting cause a lot of it actually comes from your team and say, Hey, can you guys get us this kind of solution? Right? There’s that, you know, it’s kind of both sides. So it’s your team and then it’s also a suppliers that, you know, never had access to the agent channel or agent portion of the channel. And, and, you know, now they realize that we’re a, we’re a gateway tech cuz they don’t want to build direct. So, you know, Samsung has got a great program with their digital signage. It’s a great model because it’s recurring revenue to the sales partners for the life of that display. And they could be up there 10 years. You know, that’s a pretty exciting one. Excuse me. You know, we’ve got a, a new relationship with Fujitsu for their network operations center and out, out outside, or I’m sorry, outsourced you know, network management for, you know, larger businesses. So guess what? Partners can sell that too, right? The Fujitsu team comes in, does their assessment and puts everything together. And so, you know, so we’re, we’re getting new suppliers that we’re talking to pretty regularly. But we’re really excited about the Samsung digital signage you know, and, and whether that’s on its own or, you know, pairing with the EV charging stations.

Josh Lupresto (05:29):
I love it. And, and, and, and if you’re a partner and, and you’re used to looking at your itemized list of things that you can sell on the Telarus back office on a per supplier basis I, I would say look at it today, what it looks like with Modas, and you’ll have itemized line items there. And depending on when you watch this today, tomorrow, six months, nine months from now, there may be more items in there that you can get through this. Right? So I think that’s cool to see that you guys are such a great vehicle for this, that, that fits inside your wheelhouse. It just saves us you know, ultimately helps us bring more value and saves us a ton of work of trying to figure this out on our own. So we love that.

Joel Urano (06:01):
Well, you know, and I would say, look what’s there in six months and if it’s not there, give us a call. You know, because it’s not that, you know, it’s not that we wouldn’t add it, it’s just maybe we hadn’t got to that one yet or thought about it. So

Josh Lupresto (06:11):
Yeah, I, I suppose that really means when we say built for you , it really is, what do you selling? Where do you need to go? What, what’s gonna help you grow? Cuz it is, this is, this is a big Lego block Lego blocks mm-hmm. mm-hmm. that, that, you know, that we keep looking at. So good stuff.

Joel Urano (06:24):
Right. Right.

Josh Lupresto (06:26):
All right. So we’re talking about ev for for the next couple of questions here. I, I want to get an understanding from you. I, I’ve always been an EV fan. I, I, I always try to look as far out as we can and kind of see where this thing is going and help us get ready for, for what’s next. And, you know, always been a car guy, right? So, naturally, I, I love to pay attention to this space, but talk to me about, you know, what have you learned most valuable in this? I mean, how, how did you come across this whole EVpartnership and, and, and, you know, being able to build and profit from this?

Joel Urano (07:00):
So, you know, with EVyou know, what’s most exciting is that, you know, it’s out there in the press, right? We’re not having to go publicize it. It is out there in the media every single day. You know, the government’s behind it, the government’s putting money out there to fund projects. There’s just, you know, there are grants at the federal level. There’s tax credits not right off, but credits, you know, there’s accelerated depreciation stuff out. I mean, so there’s all sorts of benefits to the business owner. What we found is that, you know, some guys are really excited about that and really kinda depends on the business, but then others like, well, you know, I’m a, I’m a restaurateur, right? I don’t know anything about being EVcharging, but I still need one at my restaurant. So, you know, so we’ve got two models where the, the, the customer can say, I’ll buy it, right?

Joel Urano (07:41):
And then we’ll get, we’ll take care of all the construction you know, get it in the ground and, you know, then the customer gets all the revenue. But we’ve also got another model where the customers are saying, you know, again, I don’t really want to own and maintain it cuz I, you know, I wanna focus on my business. So we’ve got another model with some owner operator partners. They’ll come in, finance the whole project, pay for the equipment, pay for the install, run ’em, maintain them, and they just do a revshare back to the to the, the business owner right, or, or at least the business. And what’s really exciting about that is there’s no upfront out-of-pocket expense to, you know, the customer, but there is a check coming in the mail every month back to the customer. So, you know, so it’s a, it’s just a solution where the customers actually will make money, mailbox money, you know, without having to do too much. You know, if they go the owner operator path, if they, if they choose to buy themselves, there’s not really a whole lot to it. But, you know, some of these projects could get quite expensive. So, you know, we work through each project with, you know, your partners and say, okay, you know, here’s what makes sense at this location. And you know, I mean, if the customer wants to buy more, okay, but, you know, we wanna make sure that, you know, they’re getting what makes sense for their location and performs as expected.

Josh Lupresto (08:50):
I love it. And, and so if I’m a, if I’m a partner and I’m listening and I’m at this, this point, I’m thinking, all right, who, who, who’s my prospect here? And, and I think outside of, you know, Tesla has built out their supercharger network and, and those exist. And then outside of that, everybody else that I have is a business that wants to attract customers and be friendly and have ev chargers in whatever their business is, residential, commercial, whatever, is an opportunity, right?

Joel Urano (09:16):
Mm-Hmm. . Absolutely. Absolutely. And I’ll, I’ll tell you the, right now, you know, the market’s gonna evolve, but today the best ones are gonna be multi-family complexes. You know, like apartments, high-rise condominiums, that kind of stuff. Also gonna be hotels, you know, cuz you, you really want to think about how long is that customer gonna be in the parking lot, right? And that, that then drives what kind of charger we want to put in there. You know, is there an expectation? So movie theater, all right, you’re gonna be there a couple hours, so you know, you can put a charger in there that may make sense. You know, hotel, you know, with the rental cars going to electric, you know, think about this. If you’re a business traveler and you get an electric car and you go to some hotel and there’s no charger, you gotta go drive down the street, park your car, Uber back to the hotel, you’re probably just gonna pick a hotel with an EV charger in the parking lot.

Joel Urano (10:05):
And some of the hotel brands, you know, the big brands that we all know one of ’em is actually looking at taking their you know, their elite level frequent guest program. And, you know, once you get to a certain tier, your charging’s free, which means they’re gonna need, you know, they’re, they’re still gonna need to put ’em in. And, and these are all done at the franchise level. You know, most hotels are not owned by corporate, so hotels are a great one. You know, truck stops anywhere, you’re kind of an in-transit destination. Those ones are great too. You know, gas stations, those are, those ones take a little bit more work, but, you know shopping malls you know, but but you really wanna look at, you know, where, where do you think the traffic’s gonna be and you know, best for your customer. You know, like where there’s people, right? Not the, not the town where there’s 2000 folks in there and, you know, there may not be an electric car there for two years. Yeah.

Josh Lupresto (10:50):
I love that. We don’t have to think of, you know, what kind of tech stack does this customer have? Is it a MySQL database? Is it, it’s, do they have people that stay there for a while? That’s an opportunity. So I think the partners wheels are spinning, so that’s awesome. I love that. I think there’s huge opportunity there. Let’s talk about innovation for a second. I mean, this, you wanna talk about an innovating space? I mean, how do you, it’s innovating as you’re touching it. It’s innovating, innovating as you’re getting into it. What, what, is there anything key that you’re paying attention to in this space from an innovation perspective? Is it, is it grant money flowing in? Is it tax credit? You know, how do you think of, you know, how does Modas pay attention to innovation of, to be ready for what’s next in an industry like this?

Joel Urano (11:36):
Well, I’ll, I’ll give you a great example. So with the EV charging, you know, let, let’s say we’re five years down the road and you’ve got a charger at your office that you can plug into during the day. You may not even need it, but it’s there. You’ve got charger at your home. So why do you stop at the gas station in town anymore? You know, I mean, cup of coffee, bottle of water, maybe you know, the snack, but, you know, why do you stop there? So, you know, like the gas stations, they’re, you know, they’re looking how to innovate. What can we do to make stopping at my gas station? You know, not just a, a necessity, right? Well, they want it to be a necessity. So, you know, I’m really excited about what new technology can we work with the gas stations to say, I need to put this new technology in to keep my business going.

Joel Urano (12:19):
So, you know, there’s some, there’s a gas station chain that I wouldn’t say they’re out of Dallas, but there’s, you know, certainly they’ve got a lot of stores here and they’re starting to put some tables and a frozen yogurt bar in there where you, you know, you may sit for 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, just have your, you know, a lot of ’em starting to have these deli’s in there. So, you know, it’s not just go ahead and get gas and, you know, grab something off the shelf and pay the cashier. You can sit down and, you know, I mean, it’s not like a full-fledged restaurant, but you know, the expected time that you’re gonna be there is a little bit longer. So we’re starting to see a lot of that. You know, we’ve got one, one of your partners is working on a really exciting deal with with the gas station chain, and they’re doing some really innovating stuff.

Joel Urano (12:55):
So, you know, it, it’s, that part’s really, really, really cool. You know, looking at other types of businesses, you know, like just a, let’s say a a a commercial office complex, you know, where you’ve got a property management firm, this is a draw for you know, for possible tenants. You know, I mean, you with Modas growing, oh, looking at new space. Well, guess what? You know, if they don’t have EV charters, cuz you know, I’m going to an EV vehicle in the next year, probably not gonna look at, although we may just use that and negotiate that, we’re gonna put some in and take some rent off, but , but no, I mean, but in all seriousness, you know, you know, if ev charter’s gonna need, need to be at, you know, commercial office, so you know, so we’re always just kinda looking at what goes into that place, what makes sense.

Joel Urano (13:39):
You know, we’ve got a great, great solution with company called LiveView Technologies, and they’ve got subscription-based security cameras. So we’re all right. We need to put the cameras there for security purposes, for insurance purposes, you know, make people safe or feel safe when they’re there charging, you know, you don’t wanna be in some dark, you know, dark parking garage or dark parking lot and, you know, maybe there’s somebody by themselves. Well, you know, we’re gonna put some lights and, and, you know, other things around it, but what other technology can take from the supplier catalog can put it out there.

Josh Lupresto (14:07):
Love it. Yeah, I mean, it’s a, I I think it’s important. I mean, if you think about what, what people look at nowadays with, if I’m, if I’m getting my first apartment and I’ve grown and, and and experienced nothing but tech, and I expect tech everywhere, I’m gonna think, you know, does this apartment complex just have an embedded smart doorbell? Does it have, you know, all these other things include, I’m gonna look for some of these things and, and at some point I’m gonna expect them to your point, and it is gonna change where I go, who I, you know, who I socially align with, or who I like from what tech they have, and it’s gonna influence my decision, and I’m gonna be okay if some of that gets subsidized into my rent or, or, or whatever, because I, I think it’s an amenity or it’s gonna be , it’s a utility, really. So good, great points there.

Joel Urano (14:53):
You know, I mean, really, you know, with, with getting placement of EV chargers at a business, you know, at, at your partner’s customers is are they gonna be the blockbuster or are they gonna be the Netflix , you know, blockbuster passed on Netflix, and look what happened. So, you know, I mean, it’s going to be something that is critical, right? It’s, I mean, it’s not gonna make or break a business, but it’s just gonna become that expectation. You know? I mean, people say, you know, I mean, you know, you go by a home, right? And someone says, well, how many bathrooms or does this house have? Oh, well, it’s three bedroom, two bath. Okay, well, nobody asks how many power outlets does this thing have, has the house have? Well, guess what, that’s gonna change with, you know, with the EV market, you know, just growing and growing and growing. You know, do you have ev chargers at your apartment, you know, in your parking garage at the, at the business? You know, that, you know, you buy new homes. So

Josh Lupresto (15:42):
Yeah, good points. All right. Let’s, let’s get into a deployment. So, all right, I understand this. I think, can people listening at this point understand what the opportunity is, who to go after, how to go after, but let’s say I’m ready to do an employment. Now, I’m not saying let’s pull up an SOW and go through line item by light item, but, but help me understand, how do you price this out? What are, what are the things that, that, that create the costs in this, you know, how, how long does it take? What are the roadblocks? Walk me through a deal, something like that. Sure.

Joel Urano (16:14):
Yeah, no, that, that’s a great question. I’m glad you asked that. You know, so, you know, one thing that, you know, the partners need to keep in mind, and we make sure we tell them this, is that this is not technology rollout, but probably more importantly, this is also a construction build. And, you know, you don’t build a house in a week or two weeks or a month. You know, this is a construction build where, you know, it could take six months just to get the, the permitting done, right? It’s gonna take a while you know, but you can get started. I mean, six months is a long time for permitting. But, you know, just as an example. So the cost, cost come with, there’s the, the equipment itself, there’s the cost of the construction and really that’s it.

Joel Urano (16:54):
You know, there’s, there’s a little bit of maintenance, but, you know, depending on the warranty that the customers are buying, you know, the maintenance is mostly covered for, you know, five to seven years. So you know, the one actually there, one of the big piece of value I want to touch on. So for those business owners that buy these EV charters right, or, or, you know, just put ’em in through our owner operator program, that actually will increase the value of that property. So, you know, it’ll increase the value through a cap rate calculation of the, that property. So we had a customer buy million, two worth of charters, and it increased the value of his property by $3 million when he sold it. So property owners a good one. But back to the cost side, you know, the, just, we wanna make sure the partners understand that, you know, as a construction rollout, you know, there’s, contractors have to get involved, city permitting, you know, there’s work to be done.

Joel Urano (17:42):
But you know, again, we’re not talking a hundred thousand dollars sometimes. I mean, in some cases, you know, we’re talking million. We’ve got one quote, we’re working with one of your partners right now, that’s a 17 million quote. Well, you guys can go look at the commission tables on that, and, you know, I think everybody would be really happy. So so really it comes down to the cost and the, and the construction. The, the big driving factor on the construction side is placement of the chargers, and, you know, how far are we from the transformer of the power panel, you know, and we, so we did one with a customer and they said, well, we want it on the south side of the parking lot, but the power is on the north side. And the difference for one charger, right? It was just one charger, but it was a $50,000 construction difference based on where they wanted it based, you know, versus where we suggested. And once we show ’em the difference, like, oh, no, no, we’ll go with where you guys sync

Josh Lupresto (18:31):
Unnecessary $50,000 extension.

Joel Urano (18:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

Josh Lupresto (18:35):
Got it. Good. I love it. In that process, right? If I’m, if I’m thinking about this, I’m going, okay, there’s this piece, there’s this piece, there’s that. Does Modas really act as kind of the GC does supervise, or the PM does supervise this whole thing, or what’s that?

Joel Urano (18:49):
Absolutely. Yep. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, we take care of all of that, you know, you know, we really need, we need the partners to inter make the introduction, you know, kind of help us quarterback the you know, get the calls, get the customer buy-in, and then, you know, we get the paperwork started. And at that point, you know, we’ll just keep the partner in the loop and you know, we get everything closed up. You know, we work with a contractor to get that done you know, and get all the construction done. Once, once the, once the installation works done, we get the Chargers commissioned, and those things are live and, you know, project closed and commission’s paid.

Josh Lupresto (19:21):
And, and so who, who are my who are my stakeholders and my decision makers in this? Is it owners? Is it facilities people? Where do I start and who do I want to be in this conversation if I’m prospecting out here?

Joel Urano (19:35):
You know, if you’re, if you’re looking at the smaller, you know, the smaller business is certainly gonna be the owners. You know, you get to the larger ones where, you know, you’re on a, let’s say you’re on a large commercial property, you know, it gets a little bit more complicated there, where, you know, maybe the tenant, you know, they’re a tenant, so, you know, they, they may not own the gas or may not have rights to the parking lot. So, you know, there’s a little bit of little bit of working through that with, you know, let’s say the, the, the management firm or the, you know, the building owner. But again, typically the building owners are the ones say, absolutely, go ahead and do it. So but, you know, in the hotels is really interesting. You know, the, depending on the contracts for management of hotels, sometimes the management firm takes responsibility, and sometimes it’s the investors that own the building. So, you know, it’s not, it’s not a lot of digging. It’s just a, a couple simple questions to ask.

Josh Lupresto (20:20):
Hmm. So, so walk me through, and we, we can keep names out of this, but I mean, walk me through an example. I would love to hear about how one of these started, right? Did, did, did people hear about that you knew this or that, that you knew how to do this? Did, did you walk in, you know, what was that right? And how did you, how did you scope one of these things out? And and what was the solution that they ultimately went with? Just walk us through a real example.

Joel Urano (20:44):
Sure. So really the first, you know, first one that was, you know, sizable, actually, this was the first one. You know, what we did is, you know, we have, we had a couple of your partners that we had a great relationship with, just we, we talked to regularly. And, you know, we said, Hey, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re gonna roll out ev charters, what do you think? And, you know, it’s like, ding, the light came on and Right, I got a customer for this, and this turned into a 41 acre truck stop Travel Plaza with I don’t know, probably close to 60 chargers on this property. Whoa. And you know, and so, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s in the works, you know, the construction’s going on, but you know, it’s, it’s a big one. It’s a big one. And, you know the partners and, you know, I didn’t know anything about this, but, you know, this wasn’t a hard sell. It was just, you know, I just needed to get the part, the people together, and you guys took the risk. You know, we’re not asking if there to be electrical engineers or contractors. It’s just, you know, get us together with the you know, the business owner or the, the property owner and

Josh Lupresto (21:44):
Love it makes it sound so easy. It’s just different. I, I, I think it’s, it’s so much easier to understand, not to, that you need to get into the nuts and bolts and be a general contractor yourself, but I think fundamentally you just, you understand the value prop right away. You don’t have to cut underneath and go, well, wait, does it really do this? Does it actually go this way? It’s, it’s just so easy to understand.

Joel Urano (22:04):
Well, on that, that travel plaza. So this Travel Plaza owner, over the 10 years, they’re making 15 million on the Chargers. That’s the revenue coming back into them. And of course, we said to, you know, your partner, we said, Hey you know, they’re gonna make 15 million with revenue from these EV chargers. Go sell ’em something else. I mean, obviously we’d love for you to sell ’em something we’re providing, but, you know, hey, we know that we don’t provide everything. So, you know, if they need VoIP, if they need, you know, or zk, I mean, anything that, you know, you can get through the Telarus portfolio, go sell it to ’em, because I can’t say it’s not in the budget because we made the budget

Josh Lupresto (22:40):
For, you made the budget. Yeah. , I love it. So you’re, you’re providing a place that makes people providing a place that or, or I guess a technology that makes more people want to come to the business makes it more appetizing for the business. On top of that, you’re adding a service for the end customer. You’re providing revshare to the end business. And so they’re ultimately gonna recap ROI on that either quantitatively and or qualitatively, and then the partners are gonna make money on it, right? I mean, so it, it really is kind of an ultimate win. I love that you use it to the term mailbox money. Cause I was gonna use it if you didn’t. So , good. Good. Yeah. Alright, so as we, as we wrap this up, let’s talk about my favorite thing to talk about is probing questions here. And, and you’ve given, you’ve painted a lot of good scenarios, right? So, so I think maybe people understand it at this point, but all right, let’s say I’m, I’m juiced, I want to hang up from this podcast. I want to go call my prospects my relationships that I think are in this. Cuz we’ve got a lot of partners that focus on these verticals that you’re mentioning. But who do I start with? What do I say? What are my questions and when do I stop and bring you in?

Joel Urano (23:51):
You know, so, so they want to go talk to the partners and you, do you guys have any interest in putting, you know, ev charging stations here at the, at your location? You know, again, those objections may get, well, we don’t own the building, or, you know, it’s that’s higher up. Maybe you have to talk to our facilities guy. So, you know, who you talk to is gonna vary business to business. But, you know, it’s really, it’s that, it’s that simpler question. You know, because like I said, you know, you could use it for the example of hotels where, you know, guests might not stay there. Well, guess what? If you got employees, you know, it’s, it’s becoming an amenity, right? It’s not becoming a, you know, it’s not becoming, it’s a draw to bring people to your business, you know, but it’s not just customers.

Joel Urano (24:27):
It could be employees, right? As you’re trying to hire new folks. So, you know, ask ask those questions of, you know, where, you know, how many businesses do you have or how many locations do you have? You know, is there any interest? You know, you likely you’re gonna get that pushback of well, you know, it’s not really something, you know, we can pay for. It’s not our focus. Great. Well, you know, I’ve got a partner Modas that’s also got an owner-operator program that, you know, they’ll come and take care of everything. It’s just outsourced and, you know, they’re basically paying you to put these charters into your, in your parking lot, and there’s really nothing for you to do, Mr. Customer, right? And, and by the way, now it created that budget for that other project you said you know, wasn’t, wasn’t on the book for this year.

Josh Lupresto (25:07):
Love it. Simple. All right, final thoughts here. So look into your crystal ball, Joel, and, you know, maybe in six months we’re at flying cars, maybe not yet, but who knows, AI’s progressing and tech is progressing great, but if you look out six, 12 months, 18 months, anything you want us to be ready for, pay attention to additionally, or should be just focused on this and saturate the heck out of this because there is so much runway here.

Joel Urano (25:36):
There’s a ton of runway here, Josh. I mean, this thing is, you know, it, it’s, it’s a land grab right now, right? It’s not gonna be there forever. You know, I mean, once there’s charges in the parking lot, you kind of don’t need more. So, you know, it’s gonna be a land grab. You know, the other thing we didn’t touch on, but I’ll just mention briefly is the digital signage, which is also recurring revenue generator, you know, just like you might see in the airport, but we’re putting these signs outside, you know, and they’re generating revenue for customers you know, in some cases 5, 6, 700 a month. So we’ve got one that’s, you know, they’re almost that deal and it’s gonna generate $2,000 a month ad revenue back to this customer. So it promotes products in his store, and it’s gonna pay for the, the equipment and then it’s all gravy for the guy. So you know, there’s that, the other thing that, you know, we’re, we’re evaluating and you know, would love, if you’ve got a couple partners that have any thoughts, love to hear from them on, you know, are there solar projects out there? So, you know, solar is something that, you know, we’re, we’re looking at trying to make sure we find the right supplier, right partner to bring into the ecosystem you know, to, to push out to the wall.

Josh Lupresto (26:40):
Yeah, it’s good. I mean, it just seems like such a natural half step over from what you’re doing, right? At least as it relates to this to, to the ev charging, we’re talking ev charging, we’re talking profitability, we’re talking ROI and signage. Why not stack solar on top of it at all? Right? And whether that’s that’s revenue generating, that’s power, pays for power, whatever it is. I think, yeah, I think that’s, if that’s not I mean, we did just get a request for that yesterday, but if that’s not gonna become more frequent occurrence I I I don’t know what is if we look out, so, no, I love it. Absolutely. Right? If, if, and we don’t say this a lot, but partners, if you’ve got ideas and there are things that you want Modas to look at that you’ve got customers that are going to need and, and we just maybe haven’t found a great way to market for that, bring it to us. Loop us in loop, Joel in and, and, and let’s talk through it. I think there’s a lot of great opportunity there, so, well good. Joel, we covered a lot of good stuff. I’m excited. I wanna go help somebody sell this stuff. I think this is great , so I’m, I appreciate you coming on, man. Thanks so much.

Joel Urano (27:43):
Yeah, thanks for that. I really appreciate that. Look forward to working with everybody.

Josh Lupresto (27:48):
All right, everybody, it wraps us up for today. I’m your host, Josh, Lupresto, SVP of sales engineering at Telarus. Joel Urano, Modas Systems CEO. Till next time, thank to everybody.