← Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
The Patent-Backed Home Guardian Tech to Expose Efficiency Myths & Reduce Costs with Keith E. Flores
00:45:50
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- [00:00]
Keith Flores
There's never been anything filters. Every filter company, every company that's out there currently right now that tells you hey, we'll send alert when your filters when it's time to change your filter. That's a timer. I've taken every one of those products, given them all to my engineers. I probably spent about 300 grand on other people's products from overseas to here given to my engineers and said tear this apart, tell me what they're using and all of its old technology.
- [00:30]
Podcast Narrator
Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.
- [01:16]
Tersh Blissett
Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.
- [01:20]
Josh Crouch
Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities. Nurture the leads and book them into sold systems before your team arrives to.
- [01:36]
Keith Flores
Help you grow your business.
- [01:37]
Tersh Blissett
Learn more@upfrogio I want to give a huge shout out to Market Storm for sponsoring today's episode.
- [01:42]
Josh Crouch
You've heard of Google Ads, Facebook ads and SEO, but did you know that there's an entire ecosystem like 80% of the Internet that ads can be served on that you've barely heard about?
- [01:50]
Tersh Blissett
That's where Market Storm operates.
- [01:52]
Josh Crouch
They leverage data science and AI to build customer profiles for your ideal customers and get your ads in front of prospects before they are ready to hire a pro, planting your brand in their mind early and often.
- [02:03]
Tersh Blissett
To chat with a team about how they can help you grow your business, visit Marketstorm AI. If you're a contractor with multiple CSRs, check out this service Business Mastery podcast partner LACE AI. LACE uses Cutting Edge AI to analyze your phone calls, uncover lost revenue opportunities and empower your CSRs to convert more leads, you can significantly increase revenue without spending extra on marketing or or hiring. By using LACE AI to boost your conversion rates for the first time, you can gain deep insights into customer needs at scale with minimal effort. Elevate your call center to achieve industry leading booking rates and Revenue visit www.lace.AI to book a demo today. Now back to the show. Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett, sitting virtually next to my co host, Joshua Crouch. I'm excited to have KE on the show again, Keith Flores. We've had him on the show in the past and today we're going to talk about Home Guardian, which is a platform that you've been working on for a little while now. Hey, let's get on the show. I'm finally making it happen. I want to know about Home Guardian, what it does, how it's disrupting the industry, what makes it different from anything else out there on the market. But before you get started with that, don't know your background. Can you give a little history of you and like there's a lot of tech guys out there that went to MIT and they said, okay, I think the home service industry is ripe for the pickings. But you're not that guy. You've actually been in the trades. And so can you tell a little bit about your story?
- [03:45]
Keith Flores
Started in the trades, you know, 12 years old, like just a young dumb kid. And we lad, yes, a wee lad. And I started in the trades with my brother in law. He had a side job, asked me to go do it. After that, you know, it's hit history. I literally fell in love with the trades. I was making some money and just kind of came up through the ranks.
- [04:08]
Tersh Blissett
We get that first check and we're.
- [04:10]
Keith Flores
Like, oh well this wasn't a check, this was like I was doing a side job and cash. My brother in law tells me, we're done, ride your bicycle over tomorrow and come over to my house and I'll pay you. And he opens up his freezer and there's tons of cash stacked in his freezer getting like things.
- [04:27]
Tersh Blissett
Are we just doing trade stuff here?
- [04:30]
Keith Flores
He pulls out, you know, 200 bucks.
- [04:32]
Josh Crouch
And 1213 year old kid. That's a lot of money. Especially, I mean you're not old Keith, but been a few years since you were 12, I would assume that's a lot of money back in the day.
- [04:43]
Keith Flores
Right away I said, hey, when's the next one? And he goes, well I, I think I got one coming up next weekend. And all he had me doing was pulling duck work out. I didn't know anything. I was, I thought it was fun, you know. So after that I just kind of fell in Love with the trades. And. But when you say strictly H Vac, it's retrofit. So you do do plumbing, you do do framing, you do do electrical, you do do roofing and painting and taping, texturing and all this other stuff. So very well rounded. That's kind of my humble beginnings. My family had a company. I left the family business years and years ago. This was. I won't say the year, but I was probably 19 years old when I left the company. Went to work for a guy that by the name of Lou Snailey, told me, here's 20 grand, sign on bonus, and you should become an installer for me. And I said, yeah, I want. You know, back in the day, it was like $30 an hour. And he was like, you sure? And I'm like, yeah. And he's all, but we pay this way. And I said it was piecework. I said, no, no, no, no. I want my $30 an hour. Went out on two jobs with this guy, and he sat in the truck while I installed these two package units. And he goes, dude, you know how much I just made? And I'm like, no. And he tells me it was like, 2,400 bucks because he got helper pay and his pay because he didn't have to split it with anybody. And he was supposed to be.
- [06:00]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, because you were not doing piecemeal.
- [06:02]
Keith Flores
Nope. He was supposed to be training me, like, teaching me and seeing if I knew what I was doing. Both things, we were done within eight hours. I go back and I go, lou, you screwed me. I want that pay. And he goes, you sure you told me you had to have this? And I'm like, I never look back after that.
- [06:19]
Tersh Blissett
I mean, there's a part of it.
- [06:21]
Keith Flores
Is I fell in love with it. It wasn't always like. Everybody always says, it's not about the money, but there is. But I. What I love about this part of the trade, the retrofit trade, is like, at the end of the day, you've accomplished something. You can see it. You, like, look at it, and you take pictures of it. I mean, it's. You're a craftsman. And over the years, I got better and better and better and then, you know, and so forth. So fast forward to now. You know, I own HG Home Services. It's a small heating and air conditioning company out of Corona del Mar, which is Newport beach, basically. I started this company basically because I had an idea about tech. So about five years ago, I started thinking, you know, actually eight years ago, I really started Thinking about this technology, I wanted to give my clients the opportunity to know that they were getting what they were paying for. What I mean by that is we all sell higher efficiency systems, right? Higher efficient, the more money it is. Everybody's making more money, everybody's happy. The customer's saving money. Well, I had one engineer ask one of my technicians, how do I know I'm getting?
- [07:28]
Tersh Blissett
I mean, that is a million dollar question. Like you can install a 20 seer system on some garbage ductwork, and the next thing you know, you actually have a 13 seer system.
- [07:38]
Keith Flores
This guy was an engineer. My technician hands the phone over to him, says, talk to my boss, here's the deal, I'm gonna buy it from you. I just wanna know how you guys come up with that efficiency. I said, well, you know when you buy a refrigerator and it has the little yellow tag, that's what your new system is gonna come with, that little yellow tag. Yeah, but how do I know? And I'm sitting there going, no, the yellow tag. You know, we match this up, we match that up, and it comes with this rating. And here you go.
- [08:10]
Josh Crouch
Somebody did the testing somewhere and said that this is how efficient it is in a laboratory without the super hot and super cold and everything else in between.
- [08:18]
Keith Flores
That's where he got me. He goes, I'm an engineer. These things are tested in perfect conditions. My house is not perfect. You know, in six months, we can come back out and we'll do some calculations and we'll, you know, it'll cost you a couple grand, whatever. And we just kind of went down that. And he goes, I'm buying it. Move on. But in my head, that night I went home and I was telling my wife the situation. I said, you know, somebody's got to develop something like, you know, a fuel gauge on a wall. So we went down a path, me and my wife. And I kind of had some little drawings, and I went down a path and probably spent back then about a half million dollars with some engineers because they told me they could build it and do all this stuff. And they came back probably within four months and said, we need another half million dollars. And they had nothing to show for it.
- [09:11]
Tersh Blissett
That'll piss you off right there.
- [09:13]
Keith Flores
Legitimate firm, too. They had some drawings and stuff, but nothing. Like they hadn't figured it out yet. I shelved it back. Then fast forward. I'm sitting at a company looking at a water company, and I'm looking at this product that they're getting ready to build and go to market. And had all this patents. And I'm like, that's an air conditioner. It's just generating water, right? It's just literally they're filtering water. It was getting the condensation and so forth, making drinking water. And so I'm talking with one of the engineers at the time, and I told my idea, and he's like, yeah, whatever. Comes back, you know, a week later and tells me, did, you know that's like a $90 billion industry? And I'm like, it's bigger than that. But, yeah, sure. And he goes, all right, pay me this. Build it for you. That was almost four years ago. A lot of errors, a lot of not knowing, a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of.
- [10:14]
Tersh Blissett
A lot of that didn't work.
- [10:16]
Keith Flores
A lot of lawyers and, you know, had proof of concept built and then beta testing, and then all just. It went on and on and on. And finally, finally, about eight months ago, we got it to where? All right, we got this. We got this running, we got this operating, we got this, like, all right, now what's the next steps? The next steps have been, you know, figuring out branding, figuring out, you know, a style guide, which I never even thought about, you know, and brand book I never thought about before, bringing in the right team members to help me with the financials, to structure and do fundraising and capital and so forth. So it was a long process. I mean, I was doing all that prior to this eight months ago, but trying to figure out, like, which direction are we going to go? My system does that. Nobody else has out there on the market, for one. We have the patent for whole home technology. So that in itself should tell you people.
- [11:26]
Tersh Blissett
What does that mean?
- [11:28]
Keith Flores
Yeah, that's what I'm sure Apple, Google, and, you know, Amazon are going, why didn't we get that? I have the patent for whole home connectivity. If you have another product in your home and you want to be able to monitor from one. I don't know about you guys, but I see a lot of clients, they open up their phone and they'll go, oh, yeah, I got, you know, ring over here, I got this over here, and I got this over here. And. And they're all in different apps to look at their house. One app, we kind of started going, all right, there's ways to shut off water and notify homeowners, or there's ways to pool filters and just different things. There was two things I wanted to make sure. Ease of installation, wanted ease of install.
- [12:11]
Josh Crouch
That's where, like, Emerson's tried some different stuff. In the past and it was just so hard to install all the little sensors and stuff. And then the cost. You're not going to add another 2, 3, $4,000 on top of an install and try to explain it to a.
- [12:22]
Tersh Blissett
Homeowner and then take a while to install it?
- [12:25]
Josh Crouch
Yeah, multiple hours more to install and then set up.
- [12:28]
Keith Flores
So I wanted to make sure that this thing was installed in under two hours. Right now it's right about two hours to install, depending on the home. But the other thing is I wanted to make sure it stayed connected. You walk into a 1500 square foot home and your Bluetooth or wi fi drops out, right?
- [12:47]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, gosh, yeah.
- [12:48]
Keith Flores
The EKG of the home. I wanted to make sure that we're not losing signal. So that took in itself a lot of trial and error too. So that being said, we like really, we're trying to figure out like, okay, what's the best way? So what technology's out there? What can we use and utilize?
- [13:08]
Tersh Blissett
Is it a monitoring system or is it a bridge between monitoring systems?
- [13:13]
Keith Flores
Picture your dashboard on your car. Your car tells you everything, right? Front tires going out, but it's not going to fix your right front tire, left tail lights out, not going to fix it, but it's telling you what's going. Your quarter tank of gas. Typically, depending on what type of car you drive, the manufacturer's reaching out to you and telling you time for a service. What our device does is it tells you what your water quality is, real time. So drinking water, whatever's coming out of your faucets, real time air quality. Of course, it tells you before your air conditioners go out, before you have a roof leak, before your garage door openers go out, we monitor the entire home. It does not matter what it is, we can pay attention to it. We have nodes that will cover everything and we can stay connected, sub training through water, whatever it is, 875ft away. So that means we can go not only in a residential home, we can do apartment complexes. Your average home is going to take, say the starter kit comes with 12 nodes, but you might want to add, you know, a pool. So you. It's $45 to add a pool. All right, there you go. Very simple. But we can literally monitor everything in the home and tell you what your utility bills are, real time. Right. So if you only want to spend, say $200 a month and it's the 20th of the month with AI and machine learning built into it, it's going to start telling you, hey, turn your Air conditioner up to 78. You're gonna have to sweat it out the rest of the month to stay at that $200. It's like your gas. Like, if you have a quarter tank of gas and 20 bucks in your wallet, you're not gonna drive 600 miles. Yeah.
- [15:07]
Tersh Blissett
And you're not gonna smash the gas pedal every time you leave a red light.
- [15:10]
Keith Flores
You know, I've heard all over the place, hey, you can sell this thing for, you know, $10,000 for a home, but I'm not looking for the uber luxury. I'm looking for every person out there that should have this in their home. So now you can do true budgeting for your home, because a lot of people try and budget, but when your utility bills come, they just come. When your air conditioner breaks, it just breaks. When your roof leaks, you got to replace it. I guarantee this has happened to you guys. You go underneath your sink, and you notice all this mold grew underneath your sink, and you're like, what the hell?
- [15:44]
Tersh Blissett
What the hell happened here?
- [15:46]
Keith Flores
And that could turn into a massive problem. Yep. Our stuff is telling you, outdoor humidity, indoor humidity, there's a spike over here. Sends alert to you, the homeowner, and to your contractor that installed it.
- [16:00]
Josh Crouch
I'm gonna ask about the benefit from a. A contractor, like, you know, because most company, I mean, there is a growing number that have multi trades, but most have one trade, like, let's say H Vac. That's where they found out about this because they want to monitor air quality and some other things and potentially upsell some other equipment things to help out. What's the benefit to them? Because, like, you know, they're, I mean, installing this for like a garage door thing and in a pool and some of these things that they don't do. What's the benefit? Is there some sort of network that they can work with to, like, if they have the referral partners and all.
- [16:29]
Keith Flores
That kind of stuff, how does. How does that all work? So the benefit for them is like, think about this. You guys been in the trades long enough that, you know, if you're just a heating and air conditioning guy, you have a roofing partner that you use all the time. You have a guy, like, there's. You have your own network of people now. You're creating leads for these guys.
- [16:49]
Tersh Blissett
So they're going to come to you, and then you send it out to the other contractors. What happens? You put this thing in, and then all of a sudden you sold somebody an X18 and it's like, well, it's actually a 13 year, probably 10 years.
- [17:05]
Keith Flores
Ago, I started really doing it. I always put up to 18 seers. That's what everybody does now. And if you're not doing it, you better do it. This is going to tell those people, hey, here's the efficiency. It's a gas cage, right? It's telling them, hey, this is where you're hovering at hot days, cold days, whatever it is. The good thing about it is most the time it's ductwork, right? Undersized, whatever. So do it right. You should be doing this anyways, the proper way.
- [17:35]
Tersh Blissett
The problem is, is, like in South Georgia, the duck works in the attic, and it's a gazillion degrees up there and like 300% humidity. So a technician, the moment you tell them, hey, you got a duck job today, they're like, I'm calling in sick.
- [17:50]
Keith Flores
If you're literally offering something to a client and you're telling what it is, you should be doing the right thing. Anyways, somebody's going to come along and tell them. And you, I guarantee you guys have dealt with this. The superhero contractor comes in behind you and goes, oh, they, they upsell you.
- [18:07]
Tersh Blissett
Blah, blah, blah.
- [18:08]
Keith Flores
Now you're being fully transparent. You're telling them, hey, I'm going to tell you what this is. And then guess what? We can figure out how to get it to where it needs to be. There's never been anything like filters. Every filter company, every company that's out there currently, right now, that tells you, hey, we'll send an alert when your filters, when it's time to change your filter, that's a timer. I've taken every one of those products, given them all to my engineers, and I've. I've probably spent about 300 grand on other people's products from overseas to here. Given to my engineers, and said, tear this apart. Tell me what, what they're using. And all of it's old technology. Our technology is like the latest and greatest, right? And we literally, we're telling you static pressures, we're telling you when you need to do things real time. It's not a guess, it's not a timer. We're explaining to clients what.
- [19:05]
Tersh Blissett
How long does it take for it to figure out the seer rating?
- [19:08]
Keith Flores
Well, it's going to be first. Your first year. It's ear because we haven't been through all the seasons. Remember that.
- [19:14]
Tersh Blissett
Okay?
- [19:14]
Keith Flores
So we're doing ear first. The people that are on my team. So Bill baum is my CTO. If you look him up. He was the CTO for REI West Marine. He was in charge of 100 million dollar budgets. Like he's the real deal. I got Mark Katz, he was the CFO of Burlington. You know, I don't ever.
- [19:38]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, Burlington Stores.
- [19:39]
Keith Flores
Yeah. Won't say Burlington Co factory because he's the one that changed it. But he took him, okay, he took him to an IPO and he was the CFO for I think 10 years. Peter de Gon, he does all my financials. He is the founder of Keurig.
- [19:52]
Tersh Blissett
You got a whole slew of them. I'm looking at the About Us page. I mean these are. That is a team right here.
- [19:59]
Keith Flores
We really put together. I went outside the industry because for one, I wanted to keep it quiet for years because I didn't know how long this would really take. I wanted to think outside the box. And that was, you know, utility companies coming to us. We've had insurance providers coming to us. Now we have senators coming to us. Now we have like everybody is home warranty companies coming to us. Now everybody's coming to us going, hey, when can we get our hands on this so we can, you know, start giving instant rebates? Is what we're hearing more and more. Because data is, you know, a true factor of how people can make decisions. Like California, we're the biggest idiots out here. We say, hey, you know what, we're going to go all electric, everybody. But we don't have the power grids to sustain. So on hot days, don't run your air conditioner and don't charge your Tesla. But you have to have those.
- [20:55]
Tersh Blissett
So yeah, that's the only way you can drive.
- [20:57]
Keith Flores
Let's take away gas heating, right, and put little Ethyl, that had a beach house that only had a gas fired furnace, now she has a heat pump. So now she has air conditioning. So now she's drawing more off the power grid. When I sat in front of SoCal Edison, I was like, what? In what world does this make sense? They're like, we need to make some decisions that we don't know. We just know heat pumps are more energy efficient than gas. So I'm like, so they're throwing darts at a dartboard, right? We don't control anything. What we do control is the thermostat.
- [21:31]
Josh Crouch
Or is it uploading data. Like you mentioned, like AI and some of that stuff. As far as like the data it receives, it's analyzing and then learning or.
- [21:39]
Tersh Blissett
How does a device on like your refrigerant lines to be able to test the pressures and stuff.
- [21:45]
Keith Flores
Like when I say water quality, we actually are piercing the water line and literally going into the water line so we can actually get real flow. And I'll tell you what, I don't know who your water guys are or if you guys have a sponsor for water filtration. So tell me now. No. Okay. Halo does what it says. We have it running in a non halo system and at my house and my water quality is pristine.
- [22:14]
Tersh Blissett
Hello, home service professionals. Do you want to maximize your marketing budget? Then you need to be using call tracking from CallRail. Let's say you've noticed a spike in new leads this month. To find out what's driving them, you just log into your CallRail dashboard. Is my new Facebook ad outperforming my other ads or is paid search knocking it out of the park? Or maybe it's time to retire those newspaper ads. Since CallRail assigns a unique phone number to each of my marketing efforts, I know where my best leads come from and which efforts to scrap. CallRail shows you your most cost effective marketing channels so you can get back to business. Go to CallRail.com sbmpod and try it for free. Mark your calendars right now. October 27th through the 30th Service World.
- [23:04]
Josh Crouch
Expo is back in Vegas for its 10th anniversary and we're going big.
- [23:08]
Tersh Blissett
The biggest expo hall in the industry. 2000 contractors. We're talking live podcast recordings all week long with the industry's top contractors.
- [23:18]
Josh Crouch
And when you get to Vegas, come find us at booth 24 oral 3.
- [23:22]
Tersh Blissett
We're dropping an AI automation keynote that will change how you run your operations. Save 100 bucks by using our code SBM100.
- [23:32]
Josh Crouch
You and I are doing a keynote on AI and automation. Contractors absolutely need to hear this stuff. This isn't just another trade show.
- [23:39]
Tersh Blissett
It's where contracting businesses transform.
- [23:41]
Josh Crouch
We're not just attending, we're taking over the podcast stage. Don't miss the 10th anniversary. We'll see you in Vegas. Today's episode is powered by Ciro Systems.
- [23:57]
Tersh Blissett
Cira is all about removing the clutter and unnecessary touch points to run your home service business profitably.
- [24:02]
Josh Crouch
They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.
- [24:11]
Tersh Blissett
Get a tech upgrade for your business at Get Sarah Tech Service Business Mastery.
- [24:19]
Josh Crouch
He was the president of Dynamic.
- [24:22]
Tersh Blissett
Right?
- [24:23]
Josh Crouch
Okay. Because we through coaching organization, Church and I are both a part of. We think we rebranded. That's that stuff. And we sold that stuff in the H Vac companies I was a part of. And then Turch, I know did too. And it's.
- [24:36]
Keith Flores
It's such a hard thing because people.
- [24:37]
Josh Crouch
Again, how do you prove that the UV light is doing its job or is, you know, like, it's such a. Nobody really knows. They're like, well, it does its job. It kills some stuff.
- [24:47]
Keith Flores
Like, well, yeah, now you'll know your air quality. It's like, literally. I'll show you real quick. This is your sexy ass screen. This is your. What mounts on your wall, but got tons of nodes. But I am looking for the air quality. Most air quality sensors sit. I wish I had one sit, like, someplace. And it's just stagnant air just sitting there. My engineers took it a step further. This guy right here, little magnets on the back. So if you want. But you also could screw it in on the front of it. It has a little fan built in, so it's pulling air across it so it's not just stagnant air. So now you can put it in your baby's room in your gym. You can put multiple throughout your whole entire house. Remember, you can put as many as you want in there. And now you can be telling your wife, hey, the baby's fine. The air quality in there is good. This is why. And you can do before and afters with like, dynamic solutions and that type stuff. If your UV light bulb is still running and operating properly, it's not.
- [25:59]
Josh Crouch
The effectiveness of it is. So you don't want to change it out.
- [26:02]
Keith Flores
Everybody guesses. I mean, we literally are reading. Here's another cool node, right? Static pressures, like, nobody does that. Nobody's doing stuff like that. Let's see here. Here's another one that I really like. My engineers, they really took a lot of time and talking with me and for installs and so forth. Oh, that's the H VAC sensor. Sorry, this right here. This. It's. I know it's hard to see. I'll get them in. I'll get you guys one in your hands soon. This basically goes inside your electrical panel. And okay, yeah, as you guys have seen, Emporia or something like.
- [26:43]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, I. I have Emporia in my house.
- [26:45]
Keith Flores
Talk about how hard was it to get it to fit in your panel? This guy, magnetic on two sides. Pop it in the side. Really small, slender, because. And I hate. I'm not trying to. The E Company has this big board that doesn't fit inside your panel. This is slim, nice and easy to put in there. And then you know how big those CT clamps are, right?
- [27:08]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, yeah. There's Tony.
- [27:09]
Keith Flores
Yeah. Compared to the other companies. Come on.
- [27:14]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, yeah, yeah. Big difference.
- [27:16]
Keith Flores
We started messing with everybody's stuff, trying to figure out, like, why is it taking so long to put, like, that type of system into a house? What would make it easier? So we've kind of done all the work to figure out, like, different levels and so forth of how hard would it be, too? It's super simple. So there's an app that literally does a step by step for the installers or the service technician. It's literally. It's not rocket science whatsoever. Anybody can do it. We have an app fee that contractors will love. The app fee is $9 a month to the consumer. $3 goes back to the contractor forever.
- [28:06]
Tersh Blissett
How many nodes are in. Included in that?
- [28:08]
Keith Flores
Your base station kit. You get the base station. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And then there's another tray and 11. 12. 12 nodes, plus 16 CT clamps. And I'm trying to think if there's anything else. We are reading cfm, guys.
- [28:26]
Tersh Blissett
Real time. Yep.
- [28:28]
Keith Flores
We are literally able to. We have phases going now of new product already in the pipeline. We plan on just covering the entire home. It's not just one product. It's literally. And like, what you asked earlier, Josh, how's it benefit the contractor? Think about me. I literally will send a technician out for water, electricity, doesn't matter. We will first send our first line of defenses. All right, no problem. We'll send a technician right over. Then that technician will make a decision if we can handle it or if we need to bring outside people in, you know, like a restoration company or something like that. Now you're knowing, like, developing those relationships, which you already had, but now you're handing it off to a company that the client knows that you're deeply vested with as well. I hear all this retention hub out there. Sorry, my language. But, like, literally, I keep on hearing retention of retention. This is a retention hub. This is telling the homeowner real time what's going on. The contractor real time what's going on. And in the app, there's, I don't need the filter. I just need the filter. Drop ship to my door. Cool. Opt out. How many times have you had to go out on a Fourth of July weekend and go change somebody's filter and.
- [29:50]
Tersh Blissett
You'Re like, they're pissed off because it's a no.
- [29:52]
Keith Flores
Cool.
- [29:53]
Tersh Blissett
On a holiday weekend. Come to find out it's the air filter issue.
- [29:56]
Keith Flores
And Here we're able to start telling them before a holiday, hey, your compressor's drawing high amps. Hey, there's something going on over here. Hey, this versus just guessing and right tech, right call, slow down your warranty process. Like this is going to control. And we're matter compliant, which is big. We're literally plug and play. You can, we are have other softwares that we're looking at tying into all the bigger ones for the tradesmen. I'm not trying to eliminate service technicians, but I'm also trying to eliminate the wasted calls and the headache calls.
- [30:38]
Josh Crouch
Well, before this, like I, I used to have videos when we had no cools and no heats in Wisconsin and be like, hey, check these four things before our service tech gets there. And we would save some service calls. And my, my service manager time was.
- [30:49]
Keith Flores
Like, why are you doing that?
- [30:50]
Josh Crouch
I want to get inside the home. Like, do you really want to go flip a switch or see if the breaker was turned off in the winter and is back on in the spring? Like for 99 bucks and you got to go tell them it's $99, I just flip the. Yeah, everything's fine. Like, it's not a good feel and it's a waste of time for the tech. Sure, you could have them run the play right and do the whole two hour thing. Like, but at the end of the day, if you just flip the switch and everything's working fine, do you really feel good doing that? Probably not, no.
- [31:19]
Keith Flores
And I think that this is great for budgeting tools for homeowners, but also for contractors. It's teeing the client up for the next service call, saying, hey, your system's 22 years old. Look at the amps. I don't have a crystal ball. But it's alerting you, saying how much you're wasting. And it's alerting you, telling you it's drawing high amps like there's something going on. Your temperature split is only 12 degrees. Like, it's not just me telling you it's home guardian over here telling you, like these guys are telling you. And we are branding this specifically for the contractor, which is our client. So you'll, your logo will be in there and you know, everybody else has.
- [31:59]
Tersh Blissett
That right now, but it's even more branding for you.
- [32:01]
Keith Flores
It's all about branding. There's nothing that I have not thought of on this really because I've been talking with all my clients and talking to the clients going, hey, what would you like to see? What's your first five Items that you would want to know inside your home. And it really boils down to what's drawn the most. You know, my wife was big on the water quality. She wanted to know what, what we're bathing in because, you know, like when you're taking a shower, you're absorbing that water. So she wanted to know, and she's a health freak.
- [32:36]
Tersh Blissett
So it's like appliances are damaged by hard water and stuff.
- [32:40]
Keith Flores
So I get so jazzed on this stuff because I'm like so excited that I actually was able to take it to the finish line. And I think the big reason why nobody has done it before is, you know, from chips to everything else has been really hard to source. We are building everything here in the US this is American made. This is not some Chinese knockoff teemo stuff.
- [33:07]
Josh Crouch
Yeah.
- [33:07]
Keith Flores
I will tell you, we have to source our chips because we don't have chips here in the U.S. right. But everything else is being built here in the U.S. my engineers are all based here in the U.S. this is something that I really pride myself on because blue collar guy myself, I know it's all about, you know, red, white and blue for the U.S. you know, blue collar guys love buying American products. And this is a product that you can stand behind and tell your clients, like, hey, look, if it shows that we are not doing something properly, we are going to take care of it. That's how every privately owned company and PE back firm should look at this as, hey, we are not doing these clients justice because it's going to start getting called out no matter what. I don't. The AI revolution is here. People are going to start figuring out like, hey, these guys sold me a 20 seer system and it's doing 14 seer. And you got some knucklehead over here going, yeah, look at this.
- [34:06]
Josh Crouch
Thank you to Company Cam for supporting today's episode.
- [34:09]
Tersh Blissett
These guys are changing the game for contractors with their smart photo app.
- [34:12]
Josh Crouch
Keep your projects documented and streamline your team's communication with even your most complicated jobs.
- [34:18]
Tersh Blissett
Try that for free for 14 days and get 25% off of your first two months at companycam.comsvm this garbage install.
- [34:27]
Josh Crouch
Over here, they could take a utility bill from before and after same months, you know, year over year and kind of see that they probably tell the difference and pretty quickly. And you kind because you can see the different energy usage and what that looks like. Someone's going to figure it out and that's going to be the next dateline low is like all these guys selling High efficiency aren't actually fixing anything and you're not actually saving what you say you're going to save because you're not touching the ductwork or you're not fixing the other problems.
- [34:53]
Keith Flores
It's literally backing you as the contractor, as the service technician. This is, look, it's telling you this, it's not static out there. And the other great thing is, you know, I was looking to do 10 year batteries on these things. Our batteries last three years better than.
- [35:12]
Tersh Blissett
Less than a year. I mean that's.
- [35:13]
Keith Flores
Think about your ring. I don't know if you guys have ring, but I have a ring and I'm always having to go and plug it in and charge it.
- [35:18]
Tersh Blissett
The Google home cameras. And every time you turn around it's like you have 21 hours left.
- [35:23]
Keith Flores
This just came up with my engineers and they're probably not happy with me, but there's no battery scale on our built into our nodes. I said, guys, we have to do this like stop everything. Put that in there so everything has it. The whole thing behind this is your house should be not by green, like saving the earth green, but green. Everything's running good. Think about like when you had an analog car where it was just like, you know, nothing was telling you anything. You broke down on the side of the road, you couldn't go. Well, the check engine light was on. No, it wasn't because you didn't have them now.
- [36:01]
Tersh Blissett
Right, Exactly.
- [36:02]
Keith Flores
Your home is your most value, valuable asset. Right. Doesn't tell you anything. This is telling you everything. Savings on your soon to be. I can't talk much about it, but your mortgages, it's going to hit your insurance bills for sure. And your utility bills to every homeowner. It's not rocket science. And talk about sexy. The boxes are sexy. The, the screens really sexy. Like everything.
- [36:27]
Josh Crouch
Well, Keith, we know you know how to do a presentation. You always are well dressed when we see you. Like you're the only one in the industry I've ever seen give Terse a.
- [36:34]
Keith Flores
Run for his money. So I love it.
- [36:36]
Tersh Blissett
I see keys, I'm like, yeah, let's go. It's not normal. And that's what I like about it.
- [36:41]
Keith Flores
I literally have like brought in the coolest guys to really dive into this thing and make sure that everybody's gonna for one want to offer it and understand. Yeah. This screen is like no other. It's basically two iPhones side by side. Right. You can turn it this way too, just so you know. Yeah. So it doesn't matter. But this is your dashboard in your home. And if you don't want it on your wall, which not to want it on your wall, you can go put it in a closet.
- [37:11]
Tersh Blissett
Does that have to be wired?
- [37:12]
Keith Flores
Yes.
- [37:12]
Tersh Blissett
Or is that. This is.
- [37:14]
Keith Flores
This is your hub. This right here is the thing that everything. All the nodes communicate to, and then from here, it goes up to the cloud. Got it. So, yeah.
- [37:24]
Tersh Blissett
So you probably want that close to a router. Somewhere near a router. No, it's got plenty of distance.
- [37:29]
Keith Flores
We have basically put antennas on the back where basically we can drop an antenna in the wall and it shoots up. So you can use this as a thermostat, or you don't have to use it as a thermostat. I was not planning on doing a thermostat. Yeah, I was really looking at doing everything else and then tying into a thermostat. And then my engineers came to me and go, hey, I feel like that's.
- [37:51]
Josh Crouch
Been the push, right? Like, the last five years. Is that Ben? I mean, I'm sure you know who these.
- [37:55]
Keith Flores
All these people are.
- [37:56]
Josh Crouch
I don't have to say their names, but, like, it's been a push to control the home and have memberships run through thermostats, especially for the H VAC industry.
- [38:04]
Tersh Blissett
So talking in slightly technical. The network that it's. It runs on, is it 2.4 gigs or G, or is it 5G?
- [38:12]
Keith Flores
It's G3.
- [38:18]
Tersh Blissett
Okay. Different type, so it's not gonna interfere with anything else.
- [38:24]
Keith Flores
Dove deep into this. Went down a rabbit hole, trying, like, my biggest.
- [38:28]
Tersh Blissett
I could tell you, you've thought of, like, everything here.
- [38:30]
Josh Crouch
I feel like you've been in a cave for a few years, and you just, like, finally came up for air, and you've just been like a mad scientist in a cave right on the walls.
- [38:38]
Tersh Blissett
It's like Iron man over here.
- [38:40]
Keith Flores
It's been hard for me for the past four years not to talk about this.
- [38:43]
Tersh Blissett
I know whenever you and I seen each other in San Diego, it was like, man, there's so much cool stuff. I just, like, I can't talk about it all, but, you know, just know something's cool coming. And I was like, all right, cool. Got me on the edge of my seat.
- [38:56]
Keith Flores
There is a lot of guys in the industry, some big players that know about it and known about it for a little while longer than the two months that I've started posting. And in our first video out there, between all the platforms, we got 2 million views and over a thousand shares. I'm sitting there going, I wish I could see. See who's sharing it, because I want to know who's.
- [39:17]
Tersh Blissett
I shared it a couple of times on TikTok.
- [39:19]
Keith Flores
There's a necessity for something like this. It has been for years. It's ripping a band.
- [39:24]
Josh Crouch
Yeah.
- [39:24]
Keith Flores
Because I feel like there's.
- [39:24]
Josh Crouch
There's products that some will do the thermostat and it will kind of put some stuff together to give you like, airflow and maybe a couple things about the filter or there's other things that just monitor airflow and give you little, like little things you stick in a duct work or whatever. It's just nothing that does more. It's been very successful from what I've seen. But then you have all these other industries that don't have anything that they can do for this house. That it's all. It's very segmented.
- [39:48]
Keith Flores
Like you said, nobody had a pathway to market either. So you got an engineer. One of you guys said earlier, you know, why hasn't that engineer, like, done this and kind of started going through it? I have a pathway to market because I know so many people in the trades. Oh, yeah. Literally need something for. To retain their clients. I have perfect story was we had a client that we showed up to do our service six months after and guess what? They had a whole new water filtration system and a tankless in. And they literally, their response to my. It was my son was, oh, I didn't know you guys did this. But if they would have had this in the house, we would have known something was going on and we would have went out there and we. They would have known he did this.
- [40:34]
Josh Crouch
I've had that happen so many times. And being in marketing, it hurts my heart when people like, oh, I didn't.
- [40:38]
Keith Flores
Realize you did that.
- [40:39]
Josh Crouch
I'm like, oh, I've been posting about. I've been emailing about it.
- [40:41]
Keith Flores
I don't know how many times I got to beat you over the head.
- [40:43]
Josh Crouch
With it, but I keep telling you, this is what I do.
- [40:46]
Keith Flores
You got industries that have, you know, like you said, they might measure, you know, something air quality or they might measure water flow or elite because it finally touched the two little nodes on the bottom. We're not reading if there's water flowing in the house. We're reading humidity. That's where everybody goes wrong. Because by the time water's flowing in.
- [41:08]
Tersh Blissett
The house, oh, it's already too late.
- [41:10]
Josh Crouch
The dam.
- [41:11]
Keith Flores
Yeah, too late. And that's the game changer. You know, all the different things Roofing contractors, they have nothing. You're telling your client when there's roof leaks, prior to, oh, there's a stain on my roof, I need a new roof, a garage door. Companies that, you know, they have to wait for the garage door to fail. No, you don't want little Susie stuck in their car. All those little things is like, really, like, kind of came together and we wanted to build something that was whole home connectivity along with, you know, future of commercial multifamily, that sort of thing. So, you know, Airbnb is another one that, you know, we're looking at right now.
- [41:53]
Tersh Blissett
We had a terrible experience with the Airbnb last weekend. The air conditioning didn't work. The master bedroom, where I happened to be sleeping, it was like 15 degrees hotter than just outside the door. The fan didn't circulate air because they put it too high up in the ceiling. It was the dumbest thing in the world. $7,000 to stay there for four days. And the air conditioning didn't work. And this, the water heater didn't work.
- [42:17]
Keith Flores
And see, now you're going to. You're comparing. Complain about it. You're going to try and get some money back and all that stuff. But think about the owner of that property. If he had something like this, it's and new that you're making it up. It's. He can see it and preemptively handle it.
- [42:31]
Tersh Blissett
Exactly. Yeah.
- [42:32]
Keith Flores
Because I do Airbnbs all the time. And you're right, you're pissed off because you don't have hot water or you don't have air conditioning or whatever it is. It's like it just. It frustrates you. Or you have landlords that aren't going to collect rent because the air conditioner's out, because in their contract it says, you know, this house is with air conditioning. So they start prorating it. And now guess what? There's problems. I didn't want anything like that was so stagnant. There's so many products out there that just give you basic information, and a lot of it's not real information. You know, well, how monitoring when you.
- [43:09]
Tersh Blissett
Need a filter that's a timer doing actual resistance. Like, do we have static pressure resistance.
- [43:15]
Keith Flores
Your client that you don't have to go to every six months. Maybe it's every nine months, maybe it's once a year. Because they truly never use their new air conditioner. You can start looking at this and you can either opt out of the service, which is really easy for the client, so that if they spilled like a bucket of water in their house. They'll need you. And it sends the signal directly to the contractor. Hey, false alarm.
- [43:41]
Tersh Blissett
I'm excited to check it out, that's for sure.
- [43:43]
Josh Crouch
For contractors that want to find out where they can get this, is it shipped direct? You guys go through?
- [43:48]
Keith Flores
We're going to go directly to contractors. We're not going through a Home Depot. We've looked at those and I don't. We're not going to a supplier. Like it's factory direct that you guys.
- [43:59]
Josh Crouch
Can find more information on. This is hghomeguardian.com it's been on the ticker down the bottom. If you watch the video, we will make sure in the show notes that that information is live. So that way, if you have more questions, you want to reach out to their team to understand more about this and get pricing and all that good stuff. You guys can definitely do that.
- [44:16]
Keith Flores
Just so you guys know, hopefully Josh is going to help me out with the website. Like that was the last thing, you.
- [44:22]
Josh Crouch
Know, we had you on here. And I'm like, I never answered my Facebook.
- [44:26]
Keith Flores
That was my last thing I was even thinking about. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh crap. It was like the brain book. I wasn't thinking any of that type stuff and I was just focused in on the big.
- [44:37]
Tersh Blissett
That's the way it goes sometimes. Keith, it's cool hanging out with you, man.
- [44:40]
Keith Flores
Thanks for having me on, guys.
- [44:42]
Josh Crouch
As long as this episode was, we probably talked for 45 minutes before the episode airs. We always have a good time chatting with you. Just industry stuff and whatnot.
- [44:50]
Tersh Blissett
I wish you the absolute best on this success for this too, because I know it, it's there. If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to reach out to Keith. He's a wealth of knowledge. Make sure you're following him on Tik Tok and Instagram and everywhere else on social media to get more information as well. With that being said, I hope everybody has a wonderful and safe week until we talk again next time. We'll see you later.
- [45:11]
Keith Flores
Thanks, guys.
- [45:22]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.