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HVAC Masters of the Hustle
Episode #293- Ryan Fenn CEO CHIIRP
00:50:35
HVAC Masters Of The Hustle is excited to introduce Ryan Fenn CEO of CHIIRP into the Hot Seat on episode 293. On this episode Ryan and Jdub breakdown the journey of being an Entrepreneur. CHIIRP has taking off and is one of the BIGGEST integrating...
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- [00:03]
Jacob Moneymaker
This is H Vac Masters of the Hustle with your host, Jacob Moneymaker. Looking at the city like, I already own it. Yeah, I'm a hustler, cuz.
- [00:32]
Ryan Finn
I'm a hustler.
- [00:38]
Jacob Moneymaker
What is up? You are listening to H Vac Masters of the Hustle podcast, and here's your host, J Dub, money maker. And welcome to episode 293. And first off, I gotta give a big old shout out to Nuva Thermostat, the thermostat that is made by the contractor for the contractor. You talk about personalized branding, you talk about putting your logo in front of that client, retaining them, making sure that your competitors don't go into some random house and take over that control that client. So this thermostat's awesome. It has so many features. If you guys want to sign up, you want to ask questions, reach out to J dub@h vacmastersofthehustle.com I would love to schedule you a meeting with the team, but also, I got a great podcast episode for you all. I mean, let's talk about someone that is making not just a splash, okay, when it comes to being in the trades, but he's making a big fucking ripple. We'll say. I've been watching this, you know, his journey the last probably year and a half, two years, and just watching his grind, his hustle, and now being on platforms where he's speaking in front of thousands and thousands of people. We were just talking about this, but let's go ahead and welcome Mr. Ryan Finn into the hot seat. What is up, brother?
- [02:09]
Ryan Finn
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Jason. Really excited to be here. Really honored to be on your podcast.
- [02:15]
Jacob Moneymaker
So I just got to start, dude, because your journey started. Like, I want to start, like, not when the grind and the Hustle started, but how did Chirp K come to a. An idea, a thought, and then how did it become a thought into reality?
- [02:37]
Ryan Finn
Okay, so how many hours do we have?
- [02:40]
Jacob Moneymaker
We got all the time you want, Ryan.
- [02:43]
Ryan Finn
Okay, so back in 1982, I was born. And so I. My story is one of just pure, pure grind. There's no. There's nothing handed to me was. It was. I started my first business. I started a business about. What's 20, 24. About 14 years ago, my wife and I, we. We had our first baby, my son Maddox, and I started my first business, which was. And this is all going to make sense. I'm going back in time because it's going to. To make sense to answer your Question. But we were broke. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn't finish high school or college or anything, so I just wanted to sell stuff. That's all I ever wanted to do. So I started a business doing windshield repair. So I would go, and if you had a little chip in your windshield that was going to crack, I would. I would fix that, and I would do that at gas stations. We got set up at car washes, dealerships, stuff like that. We would do it at these places, and that was my first business. I would do it door to door. When I first started, I would do it door to door. And then I was actually in California for Thanksgiving. That's where I'm from, California originally. And I was down there for Thanksgiving. I saw somebody doing it at a gas station, and I thought, man, that's. There's a lot of cars coming into gas stations. That might be a good idea. So I came back to Utah, where we were living, and I found a gas station. Talked to the owner, said, hey, I want to. As cars come in to get gas, I want to wash their windshields for them as a courtesy. And he was totally fine with that. So as cars would come in and get gas, we'd say, hi, welcome to the gas station. Welcome to my. It was actually Mike's Chevron. Welcome to Mike's Chevron. We're washing everybody's windshield as a courtesy today, and we wash the windshield. And if they had a chip on that windshield, we would offer to fix it for them. So we'd say, oh, by the way, you have this chip, it's probably going to crack. We can save you the hassle of having to replace your whole windshield. Pull over to this spot over here, and we'll fix it for you. So we had this constant flow of leads coming through, right? People coming to get gas, and it's just this constant flow. And we would make great money. We'd make four or five hundred bucks a day doing that. And it was, like, the most money I'd ever, like, dreamed, just ball and hard. And in 2014, so after about four years of doing that, I got the idea to start an online course. Because I always liked working. My dream was to always just live in the entrepreneur world, be an entrepreneur, work with entrepreneurs. I just love that space. And so I thought it would be cool to teach other people how to start their own windshield repair business. So I started a course on how to. How to start and grow a profitable windshield repair business. I taught them how to do how to get the the insurance all set up. If you're doing insurance, you know, get the, get the equipment you need, how to fix, how to fix them, how to get into a gas station or a dealership and all this. And I built this little course and I started selling it online. And I was using Facebook ads to generate leads. And I found that if I texted the leads, the moment that they submitted their information, I had a higher conversion rate. So I would text the leads and I would send them a link to book with me so we could have a sales call. So, well, first I would send them a link to watch a video, to watch a video on how the process worked. And then if they liked the video, we would text them a link to book. And I started kind of piecing together different softwares to automate this. And that's really, that's where it all, you know, started was, was that seeing that texting leads was working. And I made like, I made like $2 million selling that course through text messaging. And so that's how, you know, I said, man, if this, if I can sell through text messaging or at least, you know, generate interest and generate buzz and generate leads and generate, you know, interest, I could, there's probably other businesses that could benefit from that. So after a couple years of selling that course, I said, it's time to build a software that helps all businesses do what I'm doing. And that's how Chirp, that's, that's to answer your question in a long, long format. That's, that's how the idea for Chirp came to be.
- [07:22]
Jacob Moneymaker
And Ryan, how, how'd you think of the name Chirp? Where'd that come. Come about?
- [07:27]
Ryan Finn
So we were, you know, we, we'd all, we, we had had all the ideas for the actual software and I was working with a family friend who's, who's very wealthy. He helped us get started. He, he gave us a, a loan to, to pay for Engine. He said something pretty funny because we had a good idea and we wanted a really good domain name, but we had a good idea. Well, we thought was a good idea at the time. And then it just didn't. It just didn't sound right. And so he said, let's spend the next two days just, just trying to come up with a name. And by the time we figured out we should have brain cancer, we've worked so hard on this. So we basically just sat and searched domains and search stuff. And I knew I liked the word chirp, but I knew that wasn't going to Be available just the word chirp. Because I knew it kind of, you know, it's kind of. It was at the time, and you've kind of heard it, you know. You know who made that word kind of stick out was a Dave Portnoy with the Pizza Bartley. Pizza reviews. Yeah. Oh, they're chirping at me. They're chirping at me. And I thought that was a cool idea. And then it was actually my brother Blake. He. He saw that Chirp with two eyes was available. And unfortunately, I don't have, like, a really cool, like, meaning behind the two eyes other than it was available as a domain name. And so, so, yeah, that. That was it. We spent that two days just really trying. You know, I. I went through all kinds of names and all kinds of ideas, but that word chirp just kept going, coming back to me. And then. And then he found that domain and it just clicked, and that's how we got it.
- [09:11]
Jacob Moneymaker
So, and, and so you came up with the idea of Chirp. You started to design a software for it. What was it like to create that software? What, like, how long did it take to. To create it, the prototype and then to launch it?
- [09:28]
Ryan Finn
Yeah. So fortunately, like, I got really lucky with my engineer who. Who has built Chirp in the background. I'm not a software developer. I'm the idea guy. And then I have the engineer who builds what I recommend and what we come up with together. So I knew him from a long time ago, in the mid 2000s. He went to church, at our church. And I got to know him. He was very successful with a shopping cart software that he had built, and he had sold that and moved away. And I knew him. We had. I had helped him with some stuff on that shopping cart thing, some ideas. And when I got the idea for Chirp, and I went to my friend who, you know, who said, hey, I'll lend you. You know, it's a really great idea. I'll give you a loan if you want to start this business to hire an engineer. But he said, you're gonna have a really hard time finding a good engineer because they're. They're expensive. It's hard to, you know, it's hard to find somebody because you're gonna be working very closely with this person. You want to trust them. And so I was really stressed out thinking about it, because I'm like, man, I've got the idea. I've got somebody willing to give me money to start this idea, and I don't have an engineer. And I hadn't talked to this guy in about 10 years. And I called him up. I got the. That night, I was like, I wonder what he's doing? So I called him up and he goes, ryan, you wouldn't believe it, but the last three months, because he had moved away to retired, kind of semi retired, and he was like, not doing engineering full time because he had done well with his other business. And, you know, so I called him up and he goes, ryan, you wouldn't believe it, but the last three months, I've been praying for a new opportunity to start engineering again. And I was like, I think this is it. And he jumped right on board and we started programming. I would tell him what we think it should do. It needs to do this. The first minimum viable product, we call it mvp was I just want leads to come from Facebook lead ads into Chirp and we need to be able to text them and then follow up with those leads. That was like the very basics of this idea. And it took us about six months to build that. Him and I just going back and forth on how it should look, how it should feel like, what it should do. And at that point, we had a minimum viable product. That was January of 2019 is when we actually had something that we felt like we could sell. And it took us about six, eight months to get there, doing that.
- [12:12]
Jacob Moneymaker
And then once you were able to get it there, right, Watching your grind and everything like that, how were you able to put it in front of people? Because one of the hardest thing is to get in front of the keepers, right. From the owners and everything like that. So what was it that you felt like, really brought you to the next level to bring you into getting in front of the right people, the decision makers?
- [12:39]
Ryan Finn
Yeah, yeah. So we started with what I knew. I knew how to generate leads on Facebook. I had generated about 125,000 leads through. For my other business, the. The windshield repair business. I generated, spent. I had spent those. Those leads I'd get for about a dollar a lead. So I had spent, you know, about $150,000 on Facebook marketing. And I kind of had a handle on how lead ads work. Lead ads are still my favorite way of. Of generating leads. I've done very well with those for. For other businesses. But I did what I knew at first. I started doing lead ads. I was not. I was not initially targeting home service businesses. I was targeting any business and just find. Trying to find who would listen to my message. Right. And so I'd put an ad out there and they'd come through. We got a lot of like, you know, real estate agents, dentists. We would get some home service businesses. We'd get barber shops, restaurants, like anybody, you know, that was like, oh, how does this work? What are you doing? And we'd do a demo and we'd sign them up, and it wasn't. And it was okay. We struggled. We struggled to really get traction that way because, you know, you're spending a lot on ads, and with recurring revenue services, you're kind of hoping to make that up over time. And it's. It's, you know, dangerous because if people.
- [14:22]
Jacob Moneymaker
Cancel, it's a risk.
- [14:24]
Ryan Finn
It's a risk. Right? And it wasn't until you. You've kind of seen the last, like two and a half, three years where we've really, really blown up. So there was about three years of struggle before that figuring it out. It wasn't until we had Oscar from Denver Pros. He's a home. He's a carpet cleaner and a house called Pro User. And we had built. We had built an integration into House Call Pro. But I didn't even know really what to do with it. I didn't understand really. I didn't. I didn't have, like, a full grasp on what that integration meant until Oscar started going, hey, let's make it do this, let's make it do this, let's make it do this. And pretty soon I was like, okay, so now, you know, we've got the beginning of the customer journey, the. The lead speed to lead that part. But let's talk about follow up through, you know, converting the leads throughout the. The whole process here. And that's really the. That what I would say is the big turning point point in our business was when he opened my mind up to what this integration could do. Because, you know, the idea of selling something to somebody and trying to get them to switch their CRM is. It's a. It's a very big ask.
- [15:45]
Jacob Moneymaker
Absolutely.
- [15:47]
Ryan Finn
Going to somebody that's. That's deep into House Call Pro, deep into Service Titan or whatever they're in and saying, hey, you know, I want you to move away from that is like, you know.
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Jacob Moneymaker
Yeah.
- [15:57]
Ryan Finn
Even if they hate it, they're gonna go, no, I can't. I can't do it. I've got, you know, and so once I figured out that it was like, hey, let's make them work together. And we're not gonna ask you to move. We're just gonna help you do take what you're already doing and make it better, help you convert more of the leads you're already getting, help you get, you know, better. Just that that increased conversion rate on your marketing without switching was the magic. That's when everybody started to go up and it just clicked. And that's when you. That's when everything started and where you started to see me, you know, get into the scene and really become, you know, a voice for. For automation in home services. Yeah, exactly. And now we're, you know, rocking and rolling with guys like you and Tommy Mello and Aaron Gaynor and Brian Sloan from T.R. miller Legacy Service Crews. All these different groups that we're, you know, hanging out with now and, and making it happen. And it all started from that. That part is.
- [17:02]
Jacob Moneymaker
Isn't it crazy that, that. I mean, Brian, it starts with a dream, right? A vision, and then putting in the work and the grind, the hustle, the great. And then not letting the struggles, right? You said that there were struggles before this thing popped off. And we don't ever see the struggles, right? We just see the shit popping off and we're like, man, that right there, he has something special. But it's like the late night grinds, the no's, the. The, you know, trying to find loans to build what you're doing to present in front of different people so you could also grow with what you're doing. So I just got to say, man, for the followers that are listening to this podcast, it starts with the vision, but then you have to start implementing. You got to start going and doing and, and not just talking, right? There's work and there's action that has to go behind it. But then also know that just because you start a H VAC business or you start some type of marketing business, right? And you're good at what you do, maybe a good communicator, good technician. The big thing is, is there's going to be struggles, there's going to be sacrifices. There's going to be a lot of time where you got to figure out what you got to do. You know, that goes to my next question that I wanted to ask you. You know, the power of networking. You're talking about the different individuals of people that now you're able to not just hang out with, right? But I'm always saying, don't be the smartest one in the room. Talk about what networking has been able to bring you to the level that you are today.
- [18:40]
Ryan Finn
Yeah, I. First, before we answer that question, I want to just touch on what you were just talking about. Because it's very important for your listeners, especially people that are in the grind right now, that, that maybe don't see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet. There are no overnight successes and, and that you, you may see the guys blow up. And I really like what Aaron Gaynor with Eco Plumbers said to me. He's like, and if you guys, if you don't know who Aaron, Aaron Gainer is, he does $80 million, and he's just a great, great operator. And, you know, he, he, he made a really good point to me, which is about, you know, heavy, heavy on discipline and just knowing that the things you're doing are going to eventually pay off and, and that you're not. You don't have the right to change things until you've gone and done the grind and made it happen. He's the same, same as everybody else. You know, he started when he was in his 20s, he had a son and was just like, look, I don't want the same life that I had. I want to make it happen for this kid. And he just went out and did it. And the discipline that came from that of just knowing, just trusting the process, I think is really important for your people to see, because you see people and you just go, dang, that guy. Oh. And one of the things he said that really stuck out was he's like, it took me this long to figure it out. Maybe some other people can figure it out faster than me. Maybe some people take longer me. This is how long it took me. And so don't compare yourself. You might see somebody that just blows up, right? And you go, wow, man, that guy could have a lot of stuff you don't know about that he knows, did experience different things or is just, you know, just. This comes more naturally to him. But you just need to compare yourself to your own self and say, this is how long it's taking me to figure it out and am I better than myself last year or the year before? And that's all that should matter. That's really. I just wanted to kind of drive that home a little bit.
- [20:40]
Jacob Moneymaker
Absolutely.
- [20:41]
Ryan Finn
So to answer your question, with networking, I want to talk a little bit about kind of the process we've done to, to. To generate a good network. And like, for those that are ready to hear this, I think they'll, they'll. They'll get it and they'll hear it, and there's going to be people that. It kind of. It doesn't resonate. But I brought the company up to, you know, a couple million dollars a year in. In recurring revenue. Somewhere between 1 and $2 million in recurring revenue. Just selling chirp from my bedroom and, like, just, like, doing demos and just staying focused. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody. You know, it was just like, let's just, you know, just doing demos and just grinding away up to that $2 million. And that's when I said, I need to bring on somebody that can help me blow this business up even further. I can't just. I can't be the sales guy and own the business forever, right? And so. But I had. I had to figure out how to sell it first. And so that was a mistake that I had made. I had hired sales guys early on that before I knew how to sell this thing and expected them figure it out. And I had to get down into the trenches and figure out how to sell it myself. And. And that's when I felt, like, worthy to bring on somebody where I could say, okay, I know how to sell it now. I can train you, and so on. And so I think some guys think that they're gonna just put a bunch of money into something and it's just gonna work. They're gonna go, okay, I'll hire a sales guy, I'll hire this guy, and it's all gonna work. And that's the problem with people who have a lot of money to start businesses sometimes. But. But. So that's when I decided to bring somebody on. I read the book. Who, not how. I highly recommend reading that book. If you haven't read it. I read the book. Who, not how. So I was like, I gotta find a killer that can replace me. And I set this goal that I was gonna call a hundred people. I was gonna go onto LinkedIn. I was gonna find 100 people that had software sales experience, and I was gonna find a guy that was gonna fit what I was doing. And I put it out in the universe, like you said. I put that I'm a big believer in prayer and putting things absolutely. And I put it out there. I was like, I'm gonna find this guy. I read the book. I sat down, and I pulled up my LinkedIn and I searched. And the first person that came up was Justin Judd. If anybody knows Justin Judd, he is. He is a force to be reckoned with. And he was the very first person of the hundred people that I was gonna call that I called, and I called him, and he was like, hey, you know what? I just. I just left another software company to start my own Thing, But I have been thinking about getting involved with another startup. I'm really good at what I do. Da, da, da, da. And I was like, dang, okay. He came in and, you know, it was crazy because, like I said, I was planning on calling 100 people. And it just so happened that Justin was the first one that I called. And to speak to your question about networking, we sat down, we said, we don't know what we're going to do. I said, this is where we're at. We're at about a million bucks over about 1.5 million in, you know, annual recurring revenue. We need to get this thing cranking. I mean, it was. It was going good. I'm never going to complain, but we always want to be bigger and better, right? And. And so we sat there and we said, well, what if we did a partner program? And we just started reaching out to all the people in the industry that we think would be influential and let's see if they want to work with us. And we put 35 partners on the board. There was, like, Nexstar Service Nation. There was podcasts. There was just owners of companies that we thought would be good. And that was really magical. I want to. I really want to drive that home, because writing things down, visualizing is so. I look back and just go, man, the miracles that have happened from doing the things that everybody thinks are lame, right? Or trivial or like, okay, I don't need to write everything down, or I don't need to say it out loud. I don't need to say a prayer or whatever, Whatever. All these little trivial things. I look back and go, man, I'm glad I did those things because we put those 35 partners on the board. And just as of, let's see, like, March of this year. So this was two. Two years ago, March of this year. We got all 35 of them to partner with us.
- [25:27]
Jacob Moneymaker
Yeah.
- [25:29]
Ryan Finn
And it was just because we had this whiteboard, we had all of the names, and we would just look at them daily and say, what could we do with this guy today that would drive. Drive it a little further. What could we do with this guy? And one of the big ones on there was Tommy Mellow. And if. If, for those that don't know, he.
- [25:47]
Jacob Moneymaker
Is now great connection.
- [25:49]
Ryan Finn
He's an invested partner now in Chirp. He bought part of Chirp and became, you know, and it's like it was all just because we put those names on the board. And our. We had this tiny little two. It was two offices. It was this Tiny little office and we were just in there. Now we're in a 12,000 square feet with 30 plus employees. And we were just. It was just me, him, and behind the scenes we had Taylor and the engineer, Ryan.
- [26:18]
Jacob Moneymaker
I want to hold up real quick and pause you real quick because this is important, I think. So on a whiteboard, right. You have 30 companies that you had listed, which I'm going to say is like a vision board.
- [26:30]
Ryan Finn
Okay.
- [26:32]
Jacob Moneymaker
And because you had that vision board and it was in front of you daily, right. That was able to. To get you guys down the road. Not right away, Right. It's not instant gratification, but it's hard work. Consistency. You were able to get all 30, which. Congratulations, because now I want my listeners to understand. I'm a big talker about vision boards. Right. I mean, I got one right here behind me hanging up. And if you don't put these things down, you don't create a road map, right. Then you're just wandering, you're lost. Right. We need that destination of where we're going. And I guess this goes to. My next question is after, you know, being able to, to partner up and have involvement with all these different people, not only was it able to catapult you, right. But let's talk about now. How big are you dreaming? You know, let's talk about what does the future look like for Chirp?
- [27:32]
Ryan Finn
Yeah, so I want to. Yeah, I want to, I want to answer that. I want to drive home what you said a little bit about vision boards. I. So, so people think that the act of writing it down is, is going to somehow magically make something appear. It's. It's not so much that as it is the beginning of. It's like planting a seed. But then there's, there's steps that have to be done after that is done. So it's not a matter of just let's create a vision board. The vision board is what aligns you daily with those goals. I. If you don't mind me getting a little bit religious, I like the scriptures. I like. I like to find lessons in everything that, you know, is there and, and you know, in the script. Yeah, there you go. Oh, cool. Okay, cool.
- [28:21]
Jacob Moneymaker
Joshua 1:9.
- [28:23]
Ryan Finn
Nice. Okay, so. So one of the things is God spoke right at the beginning. He says God spoke and the world was created. Right. I think that that was him teaching us how to create things. He started by saying the words out loud and that created a plan and that put things into motion. I don't think that I Don't think it was magical. I don't think he spoke and then it just appeared. I think that that was him teaching us. Okay, the process for creation starts with the spoken word, right? And then writing that down. And you, I can imagine it was, There was presence there going, okay, let's. Okay, he said these things and they're writing these things down. Okay, now we've got a plan. So it was the beginning. He spoke. So we spoke and wrote those things on the board. Right. That was the start. And now, now it's a process now every day we come in, we look at them and we just, we use that as a tool to align our goals and our thoughts and our date, our daily actions, so that we're chipping away at it one at a time. It's not going to work if you just write it down and then go, okay, I'll wait for this to. I'll wait for this to happen. It's. That's just the beginning part. So I hope that kind of helps with vision boards. The idea behind. It's not. Woo. It's not. I don't think it's magical as much as people kind of think you're, you're nuts for thinking this stuff. Yeah, no, this is, this is like more scientific than anything. So, okay, so. So the vision now, before it was, you know, obviously we always want to be expanding and growing and there's never, there's never like an end so much as there is just like the journey of, of, of learning and progressing and. Because, like, if you told me three years ago, I would be here to that person three years ago, I'd be doing backflips and saying, I made it. I'm, I'm, I'm done. I can be, I can sit on a beach for the rest of my life. And then you get there and you go, oh, no, I'm not even close. I'm not.
- [30:29]
Jacob Moneymaker
Yeah.
- [30:31]
Ryan Finn
Yeah. And so by the way, another book that really helps, that's by the same author of who not how is Gap in the Gain. That's been a, you've. That's been a viral book in the industry.
- [30:43]
Jacob Moneymaker
That's a great book.
- [30:44]
Ryan Finn
It's really good because it, it gives you room to be as ambitious as you want to be without it, without the pressure of having to be a certain thing. You know, like you don't have to be, but you want to. It's okay to want to be really extremely successful. And that's great. If you need it, if you have to have it, you're probably going to be depressed even when you get it. So, so be happy with what you have now and more will come. But the goal now obviously we, we want to, we want to be the, and I think we're, we're pretty much there as far as like the premier option for lead conversion in the home service space. We want to go adjacent, we want to go into other industries. We want to make sure anybody that can benefit from automated follow up can, can have access to what we do. But our bandwidth, our bandwidth really is what holds us back. We are 100% focused on home services. We want to go into other spaces and we will and we want to be a billion dollar company eventually. It's not. Again, it's not something I have to have or something. It's just, it's just like I can see it and I could see that that could be a potential and would be great. But, but we're just gonna keep pushing to make sure that people are benefiting from it that are making their, their families are richer in a good way for, for using it. We have people reaching out to us, salespeople reaching out to us saying, hey, I had my biggest month because of you guys. You know, we've, we've, we've seen major.
- [32:22]
Jacob Moneymaker
How rewarding is that you off. But how rewarding is that to know that you were able to create something and maybe have that conversation on the onboarding team, right? And that owner was very skeptical. And then all of a sudden they're like, dude, I've, I've created so much leads from you and, and wealth. Right? From my company, which is giving well to my employees. How does that make you feel, Ryan?
- [32:46]
Ryan Finn
It's, it's, that's the magic and that's what keeps me, you know, just like pushing and driving because you just see like, like I just had somebody recently, an owner of a company that was recently bought by private equity. He comes up to me goes, dude, the year that we sold, we sold for the multiple we got because I was able to increase our revenue by X dollars because, because of chirp. And that was like the key that got me to the highest multiple on the exit. And it was like, to hear that, it's like, dude, he's like, I, he's like anything you ever need from me, I, I am there for you, bro. You hooked me up. And I'm like, dude, that's, that to me is way better and it's great. Obviously making money is awesome and I love taking care of my kids and, and My wife and everything. But. But having relationships where people have, you know, where I've changed their lives, and that's really cool.
- [33:41]
Jacob Moneymaker
I think people don't understand that when you take care of people, money's the byproduct, right? If you focus on taking care or serving that client in front of you and giving a hundred percent and not blowing smoke and being transparent, right? I mean, that. That's what I think is completely.
- [34:00]
Ryan Finn
That was a. That was a big mindset shift for me because it was always, I want to be an entrepreneur because I want to make money, right? It was like, I just want to make money because I. And not because I wanted. It was greedy or anything, but I. I wanted to be rich and I wanted to do fun things and I wanted to have a good life and all this stuff, and I wanted all that. But there's a point where you go. There is so much more fulfillment and so much better things. What's funny is, and this is scriptural too, is like, you keep. You keep putting more and you. That's. That stuff becomes less and less important to you, and it keeps filling up. The blessings continue to cook. Like, you're always in debt to the Lord, right? That's the. That's the whole point. He's like, the more you put in, the more you. The more service you put in, the more you get back. And so you're always. You're. And so. So I. I see that as, you know, this shift in my mindset from I'm an entrepreneur to make money to I'm an entrepreneur to create and to become. To create relationships and to create bonds and to create love and high vibrations and all these great benefits that come from this, and money just flows because of that. And it's like, oh, the. So the whole point of if you focus on that thing. Thing, it's not gonna. Like, if you. If you. If you chase money, it's not gonna come. But if you do all the other things that. That, you know, we're supposed to be doing, the money just happens. And so it's like getting. It's. It's that. That idea of attraction versus chasing. You know, it's like butterfly. You know, you chase a butterfly, it's really hard to catch them. But if you sit there with, you know, and build a garden, they come to you, right? Yeah. And so.
- [35:50]
Jacob Moneymaker
Yeah, I love. I love your analogies, man. I. I love it because you're. You're bringing it to common terms, right? Making it relatable for everybody. You know, one thing That I do want to talk about is what's kind of the process of chirp. So someone that is listening to the podcast right now and they're like, man, this chirp episode sounds really good, but what is it that they're going to do for my business?
- [36:15]
Ryan Finn
Sure, sure. So the idea behind Chirp is to, is to turn humans that you already have into superhumans. We're never trying to. A lot of people look at software or AI as like, okay, you're trying to replace jobs. And we. And the whole idea here is I, I'm kind of, I'm a little outspoken about that. AI and software is tools to make humans better, not to replace humans. And so the whole idea here is that follow up is a difficult thing for companies to maintain. We found that to be true across the board. There's no, There are very few companies that are doing manual follow up and following up enough to reach maximum conversion on leads. Okay, I'm going to try to dumb that down a little bit because I sound like a nerd sometimes. I talk about this stuff and I want to, like, make sure that people like that. It makes sense. Leads are coming in from your business. You're paying money to get them in. Most companies are calling those leads once or twice, and then that's the extent of their follow up. Studies show follow up needs to be done 12 to 18 times if you want the most out of the leads. The problem is people make money on those first or second calls and they feel good and they're actually profitable. And they go, I don't, I don't want to bother with following up because I'm doing well right now with these leads. The problem is leads get more expensive. There's a finite number of leads in your area. And so as leads get more and more expensive, your margins continue to drop because you're only closing at a certain rate. And instead. And the only way you can make more money is to spend more on marketing. Right, right. Spend more, spend more, spend more. And we say, well, why don't we look at, instead of spending more, let's just be better at following up on what you already have flowing and see if we can convert at a higher level. Because if you have, let's say you have a, let's say you have a 40% conversion rate or every number could be different. Somebody might have a 90% conversion rate or a 10%. If we could just jump that up by 10%, go from 40 to 50%. That's a lot of money. From the same amount that you spent on marketing. You know, we had, we had one that went from a 70 close rate on a particular lead source to a 78 close rate in one with one campaign that we run. And it was like that 8% makes up almost all of the marketing budget. It's like huge amounts of money that we had. Aaron Gaynor, like I said earlier with Eco Plumbers. Yeah, you didn't realize it but. And he's $80 million company. You'd think, oh, they've got it locked in. They've got it all dialed in. They've got everything figured out, right? And not even, not even at that level do they have it all figured out. Right. And we say, look, how about every time that somebody drops a call, an abandoned call, we immediately follow up with that lead, send them a link to book, make sure their questions are asked. Because people are dropping calls and miss calls. There's people are busy, it's hard to answer all your calls. That was one of like 20 campaigns. You know, it's like. And he made $280,000 that first week from doing that campaign. He didn't like think of how, how sick that would make you feel. You man, If I made 200,008, 280,000 this week, and I've been doing this for five years, how much have I missed out on?
- [39:40]
Jacob Moneymaker
Because let me ask you another question. K. So there's established companies that are out there that have data of, of clients that are in their database for five years. Right. So it's easy to go market to those people and go through and scrub and all that. Now for, for royalty, Heat in air, right. We started, we launched this thing in June so we don't have that database. So with smaller companies that are just starting out, what would you be able to do to get their phones ringing? Do you scrub like a 30 mile radius within their market? How does that go?
- [40:17]
Ryan Finn
It's a good question because a lot of people are confused as to what it does for you. So yes, we can reach out to past client lists and help you generate deals from past clients. That's one of the features of Chirp, but it's not what I would consider to be the main feature. Let's put that in the bucket of text message marketing. Right now we're reaching out to past clients and saying, hey, it's been a year since we've been at your home. Da da da da da. Yeah, that's great, that's cool. But that's not the core product. The core product is automated follow up so this is from leads that are being generated. So let's say you do have a Facebook ad running, right? And they fill out a form requesting information. You have a minute to contact that lead. Are you going to drop everything you're doing and pick up the phone and call them? Or, you know, you're going to hire a csr, whatever it is, or you can you automate that? So we can automate that text message to hit that lead the moment that it comes in and start a conversation with that lead. That could be a Facebook lead, that could be a Google lead, that could be a website lead, that could be somebody, like I said, calling in and the call is dropped. So that's the beginning of the customer journey. We make sure we're contacting your leads very quick, within that first minute, and that is important.
- [41:33]
Jacob Moneymaker
If, if you don't, what's the statistics, if you don't reach out within 60 seconds, what's the statistics of losing them?
- [41:40]
Ryan Finn
You have a 50% less chance of converting in minute two, crazy, crazy, crazy. And then minute three, it drops another like 30%. And then minute five, you're at like, you're at where most people are at and you can actually make money there. And that's what I said. It kind of feels good, right? But you could be doing way better. You could be making a lot more money if we contact faster. And then if you wait beyond 5, 15, 20 minutes, they don't even remember that they filled out the form. At that point, they're like, who are you? What? I don't know what you're. I mean, people have super short attention spans. So speed to lead, super important. And this is for anybody, even if you don't have a database, right? If you're just Mark, you're just now getting the word out about your business and marketing and make sure your content fast. Now, not 100% of those leads are going to convert on that first call. Are you going to call them 15 times over the next two weeks to make sure that they convert? Probably not. You might call once or twice and you might get some deals and you might go, I'm following up, I'm doing a good job. Better. Right? And let's trigger an automation to follow up over the next two weeks. Now let's say they don't convert in that two weeks. Let's trigger a text message to go out in three, three months, six months. There's so many times when somebody, a text will go out and say, hey, you requested some information from us. You know, six Months ago. Did you ever get that problem project take? Oh, you know, yeah, yeah, we do need to do that, you know. And now a lead that you paid for that disappeared and was gone, now you have a new opportunity with that lead. And so you're just maximizing. Now estimate goes out, okay, you, you go to somebody's house, you give them an estimate and it doesn't close. All right, on to the next one. Right? Well, let's follow up with that estimate. Let's make sure over the next couple weeks, we're just, we're, we're, we're hitting them up. We've had people even respond and say, I only do business with people that follow up with me. And so, like they were waiting for the person to follow up. And, and you know, you get the deal. I've had people where the text goes out three weeks later, hey, I, I know this is a, this is a long shot, but are you still looking to get your carpet cleaned? That's obviously not relevant to H vac, but the same principle. And the guy goes, oh, you know what? My dog was sick. He's made some weird. I just remember this because it was an odd excuse, but he was like, my dog got sick and I totally forgot about doing it, but I'm ready to go. And he booked the job. You know, so it's like little things like that where we are just maximizing conversion and making sure that every single lead and the reason that's, you know, that we're, you know, to go deeper, you know, and why we're the best at what we do is we can really laser target down to like, let's say you do have an estimate go out. Let's say you're an H vac and plumbing. You want to make sure that the follow up is specific to the job that you quoted. Right. You don't want to follow up with a plumbing job the same you would with an H Vac job. And then below that, you have different types of jobs within those genres. And so you go, okay, how do we be more laser targeted with our follow up with each elite? And as long as you're doing things in your CRM, whether it's house call, pro service, titan, whatever job where we have all the integrations, we can trigger those to start and stop at the right time estimate goes out, they don't close, great, let's follow up. It's going to automatically just start happening. They close, it's going to stop, and so on. So that's how somebody can benefit from Chirp, even without a large database, if that makes sense.
- [45:08]
Jacob Moneymaker
I love it. No, I, I love what we're talking about, man. This episode. You dropped some, some bombs. You know, we're talking about not just the successes, but the struggles.
- [45:18]
Ryan Finn
Right.
- [45:18]
Jacob Moneymaker
We're talking about capitalizing on all your leads, all your opportunity, not letting it fall through the cracks and everything like that. But then also for those of you that are interested in this, how can they reach out to you, Ryan?
- [45:33]
Ryan Finn
So, so if you want to reach me, you can always reach me. I'm Ryan Chirp.com with two eyes. But if you want to do a demo, it'd probably be better to reach out to my team. That's. I don't do the demos anymore. I have a great team. In fact, I'm super proud of my, one of my, one of my sales guys just got invited to a golf. The con he sold, he got the company set up on Chirp and then they just invited him to their, their company's golf tournament. I feel like that's a big honor for them.
- [46:02]
Jacob Moneymaker
Absolutely.
- [46:03]
Ryan Finn
Sales guy. And, and then somebody else sent him a gift with, with Chirp like engraved on it. And that's the kind of stuff like we love relationships. We want a relationship with you. We're not here to just go, here's your software. Good luck. You know, we, we, we have a whole team dedicated to make sure you're successful with this. We help you set up all these automations, all these triggers and all these things. So what you can do. The best thing to do is do a demo with our team. We're low pressure. We, we want to make sure this is going to actually work for you. We don't want, we don't want a company that's not going to benefit from this. Our, we, we have a reputation to uphold and so, so go to chirp.com c h I I r p dot com. There's a bunch of buttons on there. Schedule demo, schedule them. You'll meet with one of our, one of our guys who's, who's trained in this. If you do decide it's a way to go, you'll jump on board and you'll, you'll get our team that's going to say all right, let's, let's look at your business. What do you use? Service titan, House call, pro, whatever and go. Okay, now from there, let's set up your first triggers. Let's get your speed to lead dialed in. Let's get your estimate follow ups dialed in. Let's get Your. If you're, you know, if you're not getting. We're really good at getting more review, helping you get more reviews. We do more than just send out the text at the end of the job. There's more to it to get more reviews. If you do have a database and you want to reach out, we can help you do that. So all these things are. Our team is going to help you, you know, recognize opportunity and. And start implementing those strategies.
- [47:39]
Jacob Moneymaker
And not only that, y'all, if you guys want to learn more about Chirp, you guys want to meet Mr. Ryan in person or ask him questions in person? We're going to be doing an event together January 24th at Hook Agency, and I'm super excited because, I mean, dude, you're going to bring the fire. I think this is next level for some of my listeners, some of the business owners that are operators out there. If you haven't listened to Chirp, you haven't talked to them, you haven't listened to the demos. Make sure you all sign up, because this is going to help you all capitalize on every opportunity, especially right now, during the slow season. Right. Right now is the time to make sure that the things don't fall through the cracks and to make sure that we keep everything in front of us. Mr. Ryan, I got to ask you one more question before we close. I got business owners, technicians, installers, CSRs, sales professionals. What would you like for them to get out of this episode of H Vac Masters of the Hustle.
- [48:43]
Ryan Finn
So I hope it was clear, like, this. This is not. This is not a sales pitch by any means. I love the blue collar industry. Like, when I, when we started, my. My father. I grew up building homes with my dad. That's what he did. And, like, it wasn't until we got into this industry, I realized, like, this is where. This is the tribe. This is the place. So I really. I. I want to meet you. I want to be your friend. Whether or not you're a Chirp user, I'd love to meet you. Come out to the event that Jason was just talking about, but reach out to me. Add me on Facebook as a friend. Regardless if you're. If you want to use Chirp or not, that's not as important to me as it is to. To create more relationships. So at the end of the day, this is a small. This is a. You've probably seen that this industry is small and there's a lot of love and there's a lot of. There's a lot of hate, too. And I. And I'd like to let that love outshine in the industry. So feel free to connect. I'd love to connect with you, and hopefully, hopefully, you know, a relationship starts and we see what goes from there. But, yeah, I'm all about the love, baby.
- [49:56]
Jacob Moneymaker
I love it, man. I absolutely love your vision, you know, your faith base, everything like that, y'all. I'm excited to see you all. January 24th at the HVAC H VAC Champion Summit. We'll be out there. We'll be dropping bombs. Until next time, y'all late.
- [50:14]
Ryan Finn
Thanks, Jason.