← HVAC Masters of the Hustle
HVAC Masters of the Hustle
Episode #301- YELP But For Contractors
00:33:12
HVAC Masters Of The Hustle would like to welcome Cody into the Hot Seat on episode 301. Many contractors get themself into bad situations with sticky homeoners. Sometimes as a contractor we wish there was a YELP where we can rate clients. Dont wait...
Loading summary
Transcript59 lines
- [00:02]
A
This is H Vac Masters of the Hustle with your host, Jacob Moneymaker. Looking at the city like I already own it. What is up? You are listening to H Vac Masters of the Hustle podcast. And here's your host, J Dub Moneymaker. And welcome to episode 301. And first off, I gotta say, this podcast is brought to you by Nuva Thermostat. This is the thermostat made by the contractor for the contractor. You talk about private labeling, you talk about customizing features, but most importantly, you talk about retaining your customer, your client base, your competitors, not going out there and taking them from your database. Super important. And, you know, I just got back from Michigan. No, not Michigan. What was it? Minnesota. Michigan, Minnesota. They all run together. But the last week I've been to Texas, California, back to Minnesota. And I did a speaking event at Hook Agency. And this thing was a packed house. People came all across the nation. And I just got to say, you know, Tim and his team, a lot of hard work, effort, you know, was put into this event. And I mean, it was just a top notch, well, networking thought out eventually and I was honored to be a part of it. I spoke on stage for about an hour talking about processes and procedures and understanding consistency and also understanding, you know, 2024. A lot of you that are listening to the podcast might have been going through some obstacles and challenges, and what that is called is called pressure. Okay. And what happens is if you're a piece of coal under pressure, the outcome of that is being a diamond. And so I talked about letting your light shine in 2025. So everyone listening to this podcast, let your light shine. I'm super excited to be a part of everyone's growth. Make sure everyone shares and likes the podcast. March coming up. I will be speaking EPIC 2025, massive platform. I think of roughly about 2,000 contractors at Disney World. So I'm super excited to be a part of that event. If you guys want to get tickets to that, go ahead and put in special code JDUB for $50 off your ticket. Otherwise, let's roll into the podcast, y'all. I'm super excited because, you know, they got Yelp out there for clients and they got different platforms where clients could rate contractors on a scale one through five. But there's nothing on the reverse side for contractors to rate their clients until today. And, you know, I had the opportunity to meet this gentleman. I was in a house running an appointment, and he told me about the software that he designed. And I was mind blown because I said, this is a missing puzzle piece of what we need in the trade. And we found it, y'all. So let's go ahead and welcome Mr. Cody into the hot seat. What's up, Mr. Cody? Jason.
- [03:52]
B
How you doing, man? I love your style here, man. Your studio, your. Your dress up. This is awesome, bro.
- [03:58]
A
Yeah, you know, you gotta. You gotta brand, represent. You gotta have the swag. You gotta. You know, I've been doing this since six years, consistent every single week, man. And this is kind of. Kind of the feel everyone used to ask me, you know, the. The yellow and black. It had to grow on me because I'm not a Steelers fan. And for the first couple years, everyone always asked me, you a Steelers fan? You a Steelers fan? So thanks for recognizing, though, but I'm excited to break this down, dude. So when I was at your house about two weeks ago, I was out there to give you an estimate on replacement of ductwork, and you and I were chit chatting, and all of a sudden, you know, you were talking about a software that you came out up with, and you were able to design this for the contractors. Can you talk about this software? Because this is absolutely. Game changer.
- [04:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. So the Software is called LeadCheck, and it's essentially a reverse Yelp with a lot of other cool features and tools inside. And it lets contractors rate and review their customers, but it does it anonymously. So it's an anonymous system, and it also automates the whole process. So, you know, we got all these systems in place to where you just connect whatever CRM you're using to lead check, and it kind of just works. You know, we. We. I've always hated having, like, these additional programs to have to manage and worry about figuring out. And I knew contractors were getting burnt out, too, on all the different programs they wanted to manage. So when we built this out, the big thing was like, hey, how do we make it totally automated? Like, just totally automated. It does everything for you. You don't have to do all this manual input. So it's a rating and review system for contractors to review their customers. And when most people hear that, you know, the most common response I get from contractors is, oh, I thought of that 10 years ago. I thought of that 20 years ago. Oh, we've needed that forever. You know, I've been thinking about that. We tried to build that out. And so it's something we've all been thinking about, we all know we need, but for whatever reason, it hasn't come to the market yet. You Know, some people have tried, it didn't work out, yada, yada. We think we figured out the secret sauce. We built it with some really special tricks. I. I guess tricks and features that just make it work well, because you can't build it like you build a Yelp or Google Reviews, you know, even though it's the reverse of that, you can't just mirror that. There's other things you have to do to make this work properly for contractors and customers, essentially.
- [06:49]
A
So talking about, before we get into the nitty gritty of what this does, what was kind of like, let's bring you back to phase one. What was the process from bringing this from a vision to reality? Because technology is difficult. There's a lot of coding. There's a lot of different things. So how long did it take to come up with this?
- [07:11]
B
Well, can I go back before? Before phase one, actually? Because where it really started was dealing with terrible clients. You know, that's the real phase one is when we started encountering bad clients over and over and over again. And even though it's only like, you know, 2% of our clients are the bad ones, you know, if you get enough volume, you end up having to engage with. With bad people constantly. And I'm talking about people who don't pay their bills, who treat you like garbage, who look down on you because you're a contractor. You know, sometimes they sue you and drag you through ridiculous lawsuits. So that's kind of where it all started, was just the pain of having to deal with bad, toxic clients and being frustrated that, hey, a client can go and tell their story on Yelp or Google. But what do we have? We have no leverage. You know, right now, the scales are kind of tipped against us because the clients can report you to the license board, they can go and smear your reputation online, and all you can do is apologize, even if you're in the right and they're in the wrong. So it's kind of a twisted system. So I got sued a couple times by a couple different clients in a short period of time, and they were both frivolous lawsuits. And so me and my brother, who's also my partner, we sat down together one day, and we were like, dude, like, I don't even want to be in business anymore, man. I just want to do something else. I don't even want to be in this industry. It just sucks. This is making my life miserable. And we started really talking about what sucked about it. And we're like, well, it's these Bad clients. It wasn't for the bad clients. You know, we'd be, we'd be okay. You know, construction is hard enough on its own, so when you add the bad clients on top of that, it's just, you know, the straw that can break the camel's back.
- [09:10]
A
Yeah.
- [09:10]
B
So we're like, well, what if we could build a system that helped us avoid having to deal with these people, avoid bad clients just from the start, don't even have to engage or interact with them. And that's where leadcheck was born. That's kind of where we started brainstorming on it. And that was about two and a half years ago now.
- [09:32]
A
Two and a half years ago, and then developing and everything like that. How many people did it take to design this software and talk about the launch of it? Because if I'm not mistaken, it just launched.
- [09:48]
B
Yeah. So in the beginning we had four partners, and now we've got six to design it, test it, get it coded, get it to where it actually works. Took a good, I'd say about a year. And then we spent about a year running test pilot programs, testing it with actual companies, figuring out the marketing, figuring out how to market, how to reach contractors, which contractors to reach. You know, these are all important things. Spent a bit of time on the ip, getting our patents in place. We tweaked it, we perfected it, and, you know, now we're at the point where we're, we're just ready to kind of go full out, out the gate here and spread this thing around. Now with that said, there's still a threshold. You know, we're looking for medium to large companies at the moment just because we're still in the early phases of this thing. But that's kind of where we're at now.
- [10:46]
A
When you talk about I, I want to bring it back a little bit. One thing you were talking about is when a business puts something up about a client, right. A bad client, it's anonymous. So talk about that, because that's an important feature so you don't get, you know, dragged across the mud, per se.
- [11:08]
B
Yeah. When we were doing the original R and D, we realized that the number one fear contractors had and dude, we're kind of scaredy cats as contractors. We're kind of wimps. Number one fear was even if the client's terrible, if we review them, the fear was, well, then they'll go and review me. Or the second question I would give is if I review them, I can get sued. Now it's a myth. That's a complete myth. You're not going to get sued for leaving a review. But we knew it was a fear regardless. So we're like, you know what, let's just make this thing anonymous. It'll make contractors more comfortable about leaving the reviews. So let's just make it fully anonymous. Now, there's still criteria for getting on Lead Check. You know, we, we have our own vetting process because we don't want really legitimately crappy companies mudding the waters with bad reviews. So we only want the good companies on Lead Check, but we want them to have anonymity. We want them to have a certain level of privacy so that clients don't just come back at them if they do, for some reason figure out that a review got left about them.
- [12:18]
A
I like that. I like that. One thing that I want to ask is, so there's a lot of people listening right now, what does the startup process look like for a company to sign up? Maybe onboarding or something like that?
- [12:33]
B
Yeah. So, you know, the great thing about this is it's extremely simple. It really depends on what CRM you're using. We typically integrate our companies through whatever CRM they use, whether that's HubSpot or Go High level or even Builder Trend. We can integrate those very easily with our own team. And we can also integrate through your website. If our team does the integration for the company, it's usually a couple hours if they do it themselves. Depending on the system they use, it can be anywhere from two minutes on the really simple systems to a couple hours.
- [13:15]
A
Have you seen any. What are some things that you had to adjust during, like, testing, you know, process and everything like that. Anything that you had to adjust or tweak?
- [13:28]
B
Oh, there's been a ton. I mean, we're on like our eighth update. Yeah, we've, we've been tweaking the whole way. You know, we're always tweaking. Every, every month we're, we're pushing a new update and trying to perfect the system and make it better. You know, the tricky thing, one of the challenges was making sure that the reviews follow the person and not the address. And you would think that's simple, but it's actually not. You don't want a situation where you review a homeowner and then they move and that review sticks with, like, attaches to the new owner some somehow. And so we had to figure out how to kind of connect the dots to the person. Not a, not an address or a home, essentially. And so to do that you got to use a lot of different data points and set a bunch of different weights just to make sure it all flows properly. We also figured out a clever way to connect the spouses. So, like, if you got a really toxic client that's just a serial abuser of contractors, and they have their spouse contact someone, we know that and we notify you and say, hey, just FYI, there's red flags on the spouse of this person. So that was a unique and kind of tricky problem to solve. Another, another big problem we had solving was the, the, the, the clients shopping habits. We track them. So we got this system in here called a tire kicker score, and we've got a bid shopping tracker. And what we're trying to do is if you got a big sales team, you know, most of these companies with sales teams of like five to 30 guys, they're only closing maybe 20%. So 80% of their time is completely wasted. They're not closing those leads. And so with leadcheck, it actually tracks the client's shopping behavior. It shows you how many other bids they're getting with the other companies on the system. It shows you where you are in line as a bidder and you can give input. Like it's a type of anonymous collaboration. Like if you're not interested in the project, you can just say, not interested, and show everyone else that the playing field's been narrowed a little bit. And so building out that side of lead check, which is just as important as the rating and review side was, that was a little tricky as well.
- [16:00]
A
I like that. You know, you call it tire kicker. What was the name behind that? Who thought of that?
- [16:08]
B
That, that was me that came up with it. And, you know, I found that everyone's got their number, like their threshold of when they, they're going to deem a client a tire kicker. And for, for more boutique luxury companies, you know, if a client shop in three or four different companies, they might think that's too much. But even volume builders, you know, if a client's getting 10 bids, you know, do you really want to go out and spend your time? I mean, your odds of getting that job are so low. So what a lot of people want to do is if they know the client's doing a bunch of shopping, instead of spending a bunch of time in consultation and meetings and designs, they might just get them on the phone and spend five or ten minutes giving ballparks and seeing if the client's actually going to be serious, you know. So the whole idea is giving contractors as much data as possible. And if we can help you save 10, 5, 10% with your sales team on avoiding the really, you know, the, the, the tire kickers and avoiding just bad clients up front that are just wasting everybody's time, then it's well worth it, you know, to be on the system. And then you got the whole other side of it, which is the rating and review side that helps you avoid the terrible clients.
- [17:28]
A
Yeah, no, I, I see that and I, I love the vision. One question that I gotta ask, you were talking about, I think, you know, you're looking for companies right now between, I think like that 5 to 10 million dollar mark. Why is it that, that that's the sweet spot?
- [17:48]
B
Well, it's actually 5 to $100 million mark is the companies. But, but right now because we're, you know, it is a startup and we're trying to build up data and what we found is if we can get companies that are getting over 50 leads a month on the system, we're able to provide value very quickly to those companies. Whereas if you're a company that's only getting 10, 10 leads a month, you're not going to see data flowing for a while right now, you know, so in the future when everybody and anybody's on it, you will, you know, it'll, the smaller companies will get huge benefit from the system. But right now, just based on where we're at in the process, if you, if you're kind of at that 50 lead plus a month, that's where we find that we're, we're able to add the most value.
- [18:45]
A
Now. Let me ask you another question. What do you feel like? So there's a lot of different problems that y'all are solving within your, your technology of what you guys created. What do you feel like the biggest problem is that it's resolving?
- [19:02]
B
The biggest problem that we're resolving is the problem of bad clients. I believe there's clients that are just serial abusers of contractors and when they don't pay their bills or they just leave bad reviews, they're just a scourge on the construction industry. And so the problem is bad clients, we help you avoid the bad clients, which in turn is better for your cash flow, it's better for your company morale, it's better for your stress. And guess what, it'll help you avoid lawsuits as well. You know, if you just avoid one lawsuit by using this system, then I mean, it's worth its weight in gold, man. So that's the main problem is avoiding Bad clients. And then secondarily, it's increasing your closing ratio by getting some additional information on the client's shopping habits.
- [19:56]
A
I would also say another one is running more efficient. Right. By being able to cross eliminate potential tire kickers. Right. And this is factual information, data that's being implemented. So by being able to eliminate that, potentially is making the company run more efficient as well.
- [20:19]
B
I would agree with that.
- [20:21]
A
Yeah. One thing that I also want to ask is where do you see Cody, you know, Lead Check in the next three to five years? I mean, y'all just started this. It's in, you know, startup phase. But I mean, where do you see it in the next three years?
- [20:40]
B
I mean, I really see this as becoming the Yelp or Google reviews for contractors. I think the majority of contractors will be using leadcheck in the next three years.
- [20:49]
A
And is there anyone else out there that has anything similar to this that you know or.
- [20:56]
B
No, not even close.
- [20:58]
A
I mean, this is. This is great information. And as I. I've been a trainer for the last six years, being able to travel, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard business owners, contractors, just talk about, man, there's these softwares and these websites for people to complain about us. But on the flip side, it would be great to have that on the reverse side. And the fact that you are able to create this solution for contractors is something that I think is amazing. How are you getting it out there right now? What have you been doing to market and really push the software?
- [21:43]
B
Yeah, we do everything. So we're heavy in email, we're heavy in cold calling. We send gifts out to contractors. You know, we create. We create a lot of different streams for outreach because we're trying to saturate the market as much as humanly possible. So, you know, we've. I try and do interviews and podcasts when I can as well, although, you know, we don't have so much time for that stuff. But, you know, we have a lot of different ways we do outreach. And. And our outreach works. It's working well. And also what's pretty incredible is when we can book a demo with a contractor, we have like a 75% conversion rate. Like 75% of contractors. We book demos with, sign up, and become members of Lead Check. I mean, this is. People just intuitively know and when they see it, this works. It's going to benefit my company. And they've already been thinking about it, too, for years.
- [22:43]
A
Yeah. Do you plan on, like, is your ultimate goal to Go public and sell this and, and continue to create other things, or is this something that you want to hold on to?
- [22:57]
B
No, I have no goals of going public. I think I prefer private. You know, we are going to be fundraising next year and I don't even like the idea of going to VCs. You know, what I might do is raise funds out of the construction industry just from CEOs and owners of massive companies who want to come on board and partner with us. We've also discussed partnering with some of the larger CRM software companies and try and raise funds that way. But, you know, I like private. You know, that's, that's, I think, what I prefer and I don't feel any need to try and make this public and, or sell it eventually. I just, I just want to make a successful, profitable business that can really help the industry.
- [23:45]
A
Yeah, and I think you created something very special that's definitely going to make a massive impact within the trades in the industry. And I, I, I don't know. I think when we had the conversation a couple weeks ago and you're telling me about this software, for me, if I envision in three years, I mean, I think this is going to be as big as Yelp for contractors. I mean, I really believe that you and your team created something really special here that the contractors have been missing for a long time.
- [24:18]
B
I appreciate that. I mean, you know, we believe that too. That's why we've put so much into it, you know, and, and we've seen it work for companies. You know, that's the big thing is like when you see, when you get companies set up and you start setting up hubs over here and hubs over there and start seeing data moving and start seeing the companies getting value out of the data, value out of the reviews, it's, you know, then that's, that's kind of what, what's got us to this point.
- [24:45]
A
I have Tim who reached out. I'm gonna ask this question Tim was asking, how does he reach out to get a demo?
- [24:56]
B
So you can go to leadcheck.net and there's gonna be a button at the top of the site that says request access. Hit that button, put in your info, and we'll take it from there. We'll reach back out to you and we'll set up a demo.
- [25:15]
A
All right, there you go. And I'll go ahead and put that in the comments too, below on the link to that as well.
- [25:24]
B
Just so you know, the reason we do it that way, it's really important to us that we get good companies on the system. So when we get an access request, we do a quick check just to make sure you're not a company with a horrendous reputation. You're not out scamming people. And so, you know, if there's red flags, we might reach out and ask some questions and say, hey, what's going on with this? But, you know, we have that process set up right now just because we want to make sure we're getting good data.
- [25:56]
A
Yes. Actual data.
- [25:59]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:02]
A
You know, as, as you continue this journey and everything, do you feel like all the kinks are worked out or do you feel like there's going to be more obstacles and challenges?
- [26:15]
B
The biggest obstacle at this point, you know, the software is, is bulletproof at this point. It works phenomenal. And the integrations we've built to automate everything have been working phenomenally. The biggest obstacle is getting contractors attention and getting them to give. Give you time reaching the contractors. So many contractors, when you call them, they assume it's spam. When you email them, they assume you're spam, or they assume we're lead generation, which we don't do. And so that makes it hard to get, to break through and actually get in contact with people. But once we get in contact with them and explain the system, it's always like that aha moment. It's all like, always like that. It's like, aha.
- [27:02]
A
Oh, oh, you're the, you're doing that goes off.
- [27:05]
B
The light bulb goes on because they've already talked about it, like you mentioned. But it's cutting through the barriers, you know, that are, that are put there just to keep the spammers out because so many. I mean, we. Dude, like, I get calls all day, every day. I don't even answer my phone anymore. So I get it, you know, I totally get it. But that's, that's the biggest hurdle is the outreach side of it.
- [27:26]
A
Now, let me ask you another question. One thing that's important to get your product out there, especially in front of contractors, is networking. Going to events and things like that. Is that something that you've been able to do and, and if you've done it, how's the reach and response been?
- [27:44]
B
Yeah, we've gone to several trade shows, several events. Sometimes we host, sometimes we just attend. You know, we, we got a good booth and a good, good pitch, so we're able to get a lot of attention when we go to these shows. The response has been good.
- [28:01]
A
Who do you feel. Who do you feel like is responding better out of the trades? Electricians, H Vac, plumbing, roofers. Who do you feel like is really attracting or who do you find is, you know, out of the trades, more receptive to it?
- [28:16]
B
Definitely. Remodel companies is a big one, whether that's full home remodel or just kitchen and bath remodel. Definitely. Backyard contractors, pool contractors, roofers, electricians, plumbers, H Vac to window companies. You know, we found that the more time people have to spend with a bad client, the more pain they experience if they get one. So there's a scale there for sure, but nobody likes getting stiffed on payments. Nobody likes getting the crummy reviews. And some of these clients are just serial reviewers. They just give everyone bad reviews. And so, you know, all those industries, you know, we have people using it in, and I don't know if there's any one specific industry, but, yeah, I would say the ones who spend more time with the clients are often more aggressive about signing up.
- [29:17]
A
Yeah. Now, as you continue this, you know, I got listeners from business owners, installers, technicians, dispatchers, sales professionals. What would you like for them to get out of this episode of H Vac Masters of the Hustle?
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, I'd say, you know, I know in construction, we're also competitive. You know, we're always trying to compete, and we're focused on making more money, making our businesses more successful and beating out the competition. And I think what happens is sometimes we allow the clients and the crazy amount of leverage they have allow us to pin us against each other when we should really collaborate more. Man, if we collaborate more and think of it more like, not it's us versus the clients, but it's sometimes us versus the toxic clients, I think we'll have less stress in our lives. We'll have more money in the bank. We'll have a happier home life. You know, I think it'll be good all around. So, you know, I'd say a rising tide lifts all boats. And this is one of those situations where it's like, yeah, it's collaboration, but it's anonymous collaboration, and it helps us all.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Love it. You know, I had the opportunity to meet you two weeks ago as a client. You didn't know my background. You didn't know me as an individual. Just real quick, can you tell the listeners kind of your experience of when I went out to the house, when I gave you the estimate on the duckwork replacement?
- [30:58]
B
Yeah, you know what? It was a very memorable experience. The Way you carried yourself is very, very professional. I can tell you've been trained or you've practiced. Like, you spent a lot of time practicing your craft and your art and especially the way you communicate and the way you sell. So I felt like it was very professional. And I assume when I'm engaged with someone with, you know, that carries themselves that way, probably they're doing a good job in the actual work they're doing as well, because you presented yourself so well. So I figure, okay, then the work he's doing is probably going to be solid, too.
- [31:34]
A
Yeah.
- [31:35]
B
So, you know, you got me to sign up on the dot. You had a great presentation, you had a great pitch, and so. Yeah, that's. That's.
- [31:43]
A
Well, thank you. I. I like the response of my clients and, you know, bringing it to the people out there because I'm very transparent. And I. I, As a trainer. Right. I want them to know also that when I do go in the field and those opportunities do come up, you know, I am exactly what I preach, you know, and leaders show by example, and I think that's what makes a strong leader. Like you said, all ties, rides all ships. But also, I hate the saying it's lonely on top of the mountain, because as a leader, that means you failed to do your job. Because it's our job to bring everyone to the top.
- [32:20]
B
I like that. Oh, and I also loved your opening, man. What makes diamonds? Pressure. And if you run a company like we do or multiple companies, it's like, dude, we deal with so much pressure. And that mindset. I. You know what's funny right here? This is. This is what sits on my wall.
- [32:43]
A
Yeah. See, you were open, and I was like, I'm gonna.
- [32:47]
B
Me and this guy are gonna get along.
- [32:49]
A
Absolutely. Love it. Well, until next time. Y'all take care. God bless. Oh, no. Diamond.