Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Contact Center Cactus Chat, The Pac Biz Story Part 1

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

For the first episode Eric and Jake talk about the Pac Biz story and how the company came to be. Listen to how Eric started from one small business to another to get to what Pac Biz is now in this spisode of the Contact Center Cactus Chat with Eric Mulvin.

Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I'm your host Eric Malvin coming to you from sunny Phoenix, Arizona. And I'm your co-host Jake Ayang from Dumaguete City, Philippines. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business 10 years ago and six LLCs later I started PacBiz Contact Center Outsourcing in 2015. Today we have over 200 employees growing. And I'm the operations manager here in PackBiz, and I've been working with Eric since 2014, and I grew as a company group. So whether you're looking to outsource for the first time, whether you manage a contact center, or you're just looking to improve your customer experience, we'll be covering topics for you. So business managers, operations managers, business owners, this is for you. So make sure to subscribe. Welcome to our very first episode. This show is really for people who manage call centers.

They are business owners or operations managers who are looking to outsource. You guys are having trouble hiring, having trouble with training, the turnover, and you're looking to fix that because your business isn't growing or you're looking to improve the customer experience and you manage a call center and you've been stuck or some of those things like that, right? Anything else, Jake? Yeah, just to give you an idea of what it looks like working to outsource to a call center. working to outsource to a call center. And yeah, most of the time, the role of PacBiz is to help the companies to focus on something else, not with the call center where they can grow their business.

So we're excited to talk about this. We got tons of experience. Jake and I have been working together for almost 10 years running a call center. And so what I was thinking was for our very first episode or two, I wanted to share the Pack Biz story with you guys because I think every time I tell it to people, they tell me, this is an amazing story.

And so I tell people individually. So I thought, why not tell the world through a podcast the first episode first episode or two uh is to pack this story and how we came to be and how we existed and jake is a huge part of that and so i'm gonna have him share some uh some of his side of the story and uh of course i am too so uh to help me pack this story, I got to go back to elementary school. I was five years old because everyone always asked me, how did you get to start a call center or run a call center and have all these employees? And that's like so many people and so much to manage. Yes, it is. But you know, you don't get there overnight. You start when you're five. My first business I started was a Lego city I built and not

only did I build a Lego city, I charged my parents admission to go look at the Lego city and so I had a whiteboard I even wrote and I even did dynamic pricing so if you came during the daytime it was one price if you came on nights and weekends it was another price. Where I got these ideas from I have no idea looking back I didn't know anything about dynamic pricing but that was the very first business and in for me and it was it led to a series of businesses I had something called Kobe's card check in my backyard bought and sold sports cards right around the time Kobe Bryant was a rookie and so I actually have some

pretty valuable Kobe Bryant rookie cards that. And so I actually have some pretty valuable Kobe Bryant rookie cards that I do not plan on doing anything with because of that experience. But I have my business card. I made business cards. And this was like around sixth grade. I went on to make CD mixes in high school, sold those when Napster first came out and CD burners first came out and I made t-shirts worked with a print shop in town and designed different t-shirts and sold them to all the people in high school and it was pretty good side money I think I was making like 50% margins on the shirts so not bad there's no overhead it was just me and no no warehouse or anything a lot things are a lot simpler when you're just in high school but fast forward I don't want to tell you my whole life

story but there's a lot of interesting little businesses I started but the very first true business is true cap it's the taxi business and so ten years ago I took my last paycheck from my last job I was working at Yelp and I used it to get a loan for the very first tax and so we got these red bright red taxis we had free coffee and donuts if you're going to the airport in the morning before 9 a.m. we had Verizon tablets in the back you could watch netflix check your email watch youtube play music through the bluetooth sound system this is in 2012 like lyft and uber they were doing this stuff three four years later um but we were doing we had the first taxi app in arizona in 2012

and this little tiny company that had like three or four cabs at the time was trying to take uber head-on I remember that Stacey yeah one of the drivers actually you know talked to me about uber but there was no name she just said that you know what's coming up there's you know they're contacting drivers and you know there's something big coming up and yeah that's that's where uber was uh uh introduced to to me i mean yeah from a taxi driver that uh you know i felt uh threatened by uh by that uh you know rumors and it was yeah it was really really true that uh it uh it would really uh it took over some part of the businesses and yeah that's one of the the business that they took over was you know the company that we we work for yeah you know and what's interesting I maybe you don't

remember this Jake but you know when we started the taxi, we were actually one of the first people in Arizona, probably in the country, to work with Uber. At the time, they were only working with limo companies. And we started a – because PacBiz is like the sixth business I started. So it wasn't like taxi PacBiz. It was – there's several series of businesses that led to the call center but the second business we started with the limo company so we could pick people up at the airport so we had a Lincoln

Navigator and it was like a 2005 Lincoln Navigator this is like 2012 2013 so it's like almost 10 years old. Uber, they got really strict, and they would have never accepted vehicles like that. But at the time, they're like, you have a working vehicle? Come on in. We'll work with you. So yeah, crazy stuff. So we did work with them.

And then they changed your pivoting. We talked about that. You pivot. They pivoted big time. They went from working with limosos and you get a black car. Like for my wedding in 2013, we used Uber to get a black car, and we didn't have to book a limo ahead of time. We just used that.

It was great. But they went to private vehicles and the model that they're in today. And that changed everything. And it changed, you know, stuff for our industry. We had to get out of taxi. We were losing money. And that's, that's actually how we started PacViz because we were working with another taxi company in town. And when we were too busy, give them calls. And, uh, so when I told them, Hey, you know what, uh, we're shutting down. This isn't working. Uh, he offered me a job and they, uh, he also said, well, what about your call center agents? They sound great. I've talked to them on the phone. Why don't you bring them on into our

office here in Phoenix and we'll interview them because we could use some people in our office. And that's when I told him like, well, I'd love to, but where are you, Jake? Are you gonna be able to hop on a plane to Phoenix to start a job no so yeah and yeah I can you know the way I imagine things you know it's inevitable like this is the direction that we're used we're supposed to be going you know the timing of uber at that time was you know that that gave us an opportunity to to evolve into a business. And here we are now. And, yeah, what would it be? I mean, what could have been if, you know, we continue with that taxi business?

You know, it's, you know, who knows? But, you know, this is the direction that we're supposed to go. So, yeah, I think this is, yeah, we're on the right path. Yeah, and that's what we're thinking too. We're like, oh, gosh, we own this taxi company. The cabs are falling apart. The drivers in the summertime here in Phoenix are struggling. Like, this isn't working.

So coming up next, we're getting close to wrapping up our first episode here. So coming up next week, we're going to talk pack this and the growth of pack this and how we went from Jake and his like three co-workers three or four co-workers to what we have today over 200 people so yeah it's yeah that's interesting yeah I think yeah I'm sorry yeah it's uh you know the growth of the company as well as the growth of the clients that we have, you know, there will be a lot of stories that we can tell. And, you know, just stay tuned for the next episodes. Yeah, I'm excited because PacBiz is an awesome story of, you know, amazing, amazing talented people, personal growth, and their core values. So I will see you guys next week.

Thank you for listening to the Contact Center Cactus Chat. I am, again, Eric Malvin. And this is Jay Kayo. All right. And we'll see you next week.