Talos Fleet Technologies

06/11/2026

TIL: the screws holding my finger together are read by my NFC programmer and will cause my Dots to be half encoded. I am assuming the other half is now in my finger?!?!?

06/04/2026

I wore shorts and ASICS to work for 25 years. These dress shoes? Probably about that old.
I came to a small business fair today to network a bit and explore some resources. I considered rocking the running shoes and decided against it. Chose the dress shoes. Bad choice apparently.

05/29/2026

Hanging out with our friends at the San Antonio IEC Annual S***t Shoot!

05/28/2026

Often, when someone starts a business, we know they’re working crazy hours and working hard. What is rarely seen is the support system behind the founders. These are my why AND my support system. Without them, TALOS wouldn’t exist nor matter. Thank you family. None of the things like this will ever be seen outside of these walls and I won’t allow them to go unmentioned, unnoticed, or unappreciated.

05/21/2026

Smart person: "only a fool would buy this flawed product, I can't sell this!" Entrepreneur: "holy s**t it works, I can get so many people to buy this!"

05/19/2026

Got a call from a contractor last week. Not about our product — about a callback.

His tech went out Monday. Diagnosed it. Fixed it. Left.

Thursday the customer calls back. Same unit, same complaint. Different tech rolls out. Spends an hour re-diagnosing what the first tech already figured out Monday.

Monday's tech fixed the symptom, not the root cause. But nobody knew that because Monday's notes were in Monday's tech's head.

One hour of labor. One truck roll. One frustrated customer questioning whether they hired the right company.

The callback didn't start Thursday. It started Monday, when the diagnosis lived in a person instead of on the equipment.

05/15/2026

It’s weird. It is Thursday and each day this week has been 12+ hours. And it seems my most productive time is between 10 and midnight.

I may not get huge sprints completed or updates pushed. Take tonight. Just sitting here playing with a dozen dots. Trying to break the system. Looking for the holes. Literally tapped the Dot in my truck. Then tapped 2 tools. Said the truck had a check engine light on (mine has never! Light can’t illuminate without a bulb!) and then timed how long the email took to hit the manager email inbox. Left notes on one tool and requested a calibration on the other. Tapped the electrical panel Dot in the garage.

As I was doing this, I was taking notes. Found two very significant process gaps.

Why? I built all of this. I should know everything right? I simply can’t hold that much data in my head. Committee meeting at IEC today, 22 sales calls, a dozen emails, new code written for the next phase. Add husband and father and I am completely out of room for what happened at breakfast this morning, much less code written 2 weeks ago.

The lesson is simple: Trust, but verify. Thanks to Brad for that.

05/08/2026

A rare double post. But in 2026, if it’s not working, use that frustration to drive curiosity that enables iteration:

PIVOT!

I’ve mentioned this previously. We’ve all done it. But where is the line between adjusting, pivoting, and changing? Is it a linear process?

In my experience, it is an organic process. As TALOS, we opened 5 weeks ago. One piece of hardware. Solving one problem. From one angle.

Since then, we added a second use case and are now on our third or 4th viewpoint for our initial product offering: a Dot on your expensive tools.

Started as: Know who has what.

Then became: Prove to your insurance it was on that truck and secured when it got got.

Then became: A digital clipboard that turns every tap into institutional knowledge allowing your dispatcher to know who has what tools so they can ensure everyone shows up to the job with the right tools on board.

And now? TALOS isn’t insurance. It’s what you buy so you don’t have to use insurance.

It took me 3 weeks to reach the last iteration. How? Why?

I learned a few years back how to reframe everything in life including life itself with a simple phrase: First Attempt In Learning. My initial sales pitches were admittedly bad. But I believed in the product. Still do. I would argue I am passionate about it and that led me to want to root cause the failure to connect. Right idea, wrong angle.

No one wants to claim a 3k tool theft/loss/disappearance. Why? Even if insurance buys the replacement, there’s a really good chance that premiums will increase. “Industry data shows a 5% to 25% premium increase after a single claim, and a contractor with three theft claims could see their annual premium nearly double. A single major claim can affect premiums for three to five years after settlement.” I can cite the sources. That’s real data.

That’s why my initial pitches died in less than an elevator pitch. I was the idiot selling you something that cost you more money. Insult to injury vibes. They have lived that and I lacked the perspective of those expensive experiences.

Are those adjustments, pivots, or changes?Yes. Yes they are. Be curious how and why it failed. That’s where the growth lives.

05/06/2026

Many years ago, our daughters favorite book was “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”. I must have read that book a thousand times.

Why am I telling you this? Because it easily translates to what my potential customers have been experiencing on my cold calls.

If they give me 90 seconds, I take 3 minutes. If I get 3 minutes, may as well have 5. If you ask about one feature, I’m going to tell you about 4 others too.

The result? I got hung up on yesterday. Mad? Absolutely not. Embarrassed? Absolutely. A bit of shame? You betcha.

What did I learn? Take the 90 seconds. Elevator pitch. Ask. “Can I drop a dot by your office so you and the team can play with it?” Or, “Would you be interested in sitting down to visit about our current offerings and future products that are built, but in testing?”. That’s it.

Not to steal from my previous employer, but just get to the next step. Don’t try and eat the whole cookie in one bite.

05/05/2026

https://talosfleettechnologies.com/blog/your-crew-wont-open-another-app

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