← The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Unlocking Sales Potential Through Financing with Justin Hatcher
00:55:11
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- [00:00]
Justin Hatcher
Typically, if you're offering somebody a payment option, your average ticket goes up by like 25%. It's massive.
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Tommy Mello
Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where.
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Podcast Host/Announcer
Each week Tommy chats with world class.
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Tommy Mello
Entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes. But I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O t e s to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevate and win.com podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I got Justin Hatcher in the house. Not really. He's in Scottsdale, but I'm in Phoenix. He's an expert in sales, business and financing. He's based out of Appleton. He's the president of One and Fund. Justin is the president and visionary behind One and Fund where he helps home improvement dealers close more and bigger projects through smaller financing or smarter financing. With over 20 years in the home improvement and financial industries, Justin has a deep expertise in building, managing and scaling high performance sales and consumer financing programs. A former member of Renewal by Anderson Finance council and the Big 12 Finance Council, he helped Tunderland grow from 25 million to over 125 million in annual sales by financing 65% of the projects. Now leading one and funds innovative patent pending one look platform, Justin is redefining how contractors sail, scale and win. Pleasure to have you on Justin.
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Justin Hatcher
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, Tommy.
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Tommy Mello
I'm excited, man. Why don't you just, why don't you just kick us off with telling us a little bit about you, your upbringing, how you got involved with home improvement and what you're looking forward to.
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, so I am from Minnesota originally and I did not want to go to college because I figured it wasn't the life for me. So I was going to get into radio broadcasting and was got accepted to school. I actually had an internship at a big radio station. And then I started siding houses in the summer for one of my brother's buddies. And I was making like $15 an hour cash, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. So I decided not to go to radio broadcasting school because I didn't want to get sent to like Topeka, Kansas or somewhere like that. Not that there's anything wrong with Topeka, but just I didn't want to go to a smaller market. So I decided to stay with siding houses. And I lasted one winter and I realized that installing in the wintertime is not my future. So that led me into selling home improvements. I was like 19 or 20 at the time. Fell in love with sitting in front of Mr. Mrs. Jones. Sold a million dollars, you know, back in the early 2000s. And I did that for several years, which led me to the mortgage business. Because reason led me to the mortgage business is how we financed projects. Back in the day, there was like one unsecured lender. Otherwise I used to be like, okay, Tommy, let's get this project done. Help me understand what you're paying for this, what you're paying for that. What we're going to do is we're going to roll everything into one mortgage and we're going to refinance your house and lower your monthly payments. Get this project done. So I was selling mortgages without realizing I was selling mortgages. So that's what led me to actually get in the mortgage business. But I kept on missing the home improvement space. I always wanted to go back. And then when my beautiful bride dragged me from Minneapolis to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, it led me to renewal by Anderson Window. So I started selling in the home again, which led me to a guy by the name of Brian Gottlieb, who I know you've had on this show before.
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Tommy Mello
Good buddy. Yeah, he's amazing.
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, Brian's awesome, man. So I ran his financing. So I was in charge of training sales reps how to offer financing at the point of sale, negotiating with lenders to helping customers. I had my sales reps only one run financing option in the house. And then my team would take that over and in chase second look and get those deals done. Talk to Mr. And Mrs. Jones over the phone and chase them down. Fast forward to when Brian started to sell his businesses. I stayed on with one of the acquisitions and then also had a side hustle where I had deals with a lender and then I have a lot of friends in this space. I had negotiated rates and programs for my friends and network. And my wife and I quickly realized, hey, we have a business here. We could, we scaled it really fast and really quickly. What our blind spot was, we couldn't, we realized we couldn't rely on one lender. And so once that lender was acquired by a bank and they actually shut down that program, we sat back and said, all right, we have a business. Well, we just don't have a perfect business model. So then we sold that business to create One in Fund. So we have a platform where lenders live on and we can actually dictate the terms with the lenders and just create that level playing field so contractors can win more than the lenders can. And that led me to where we are today.
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Tommy Mello
So One in fund is how many finance ors are involved with One and Fund?
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, good question. So today we have, we have seven lenders live today and then we have four lenders that we're currently integrating with. On top of that.
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Tommy Mello
I love that. We're going to talk about a lot more about that. But before One and Fund, you were part of some very high performing organizations. Renewal by Anderson, Leaf, Fitter, Tunderland. What patterns did you notice in how top performing teams use financing differently from the average companies?
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, you know, 65 to 70% of their jobs are being financed. Right. I worked for some smaller companies prior to that and they almost fell into financing without even trying or they would present price and all of a sudden like, oh, but we have these great financing options, you know. So what I saw these top organizations do is they, they wove it into their sales presentation. Right. So starting from their marketing of, hey, we have no payments until XYZ or payments as low as, you know, so all that did is it set up their sales reps, how to have those conversations in the home. So that way, through that entire process, you could drop these seeds to the consumer of hey, finance this or payments here, you know, so it's, it really set them up.
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Tommy Mello
What is there like a magic number? I've always thought like garage door prices went through the roof during COVID And I felt like after $5,000 was when people started to consider more like, I'm not going to put it on a credit card. I'd rather just. And when I talked to Mark that we just talked about earlier, he's like, listen, if you could keep it under $145, most people take a 10 year loan and they pay it off in two and a half years. He goes, they just want to know they could afford it for a rainy day, Christmas is whatever it might be. Most people tend to pay it off a lot earlier than the loan lasts. Is there like a number that you find that's like people definitely choose to finance?
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, I think it's all about how the conversation's set up. Right. When I was selling Leaffilter, my average ticket was like $4,100. But I finance 90% of those projects, you know, so it's, I mean, if you look at today, I mean, the average person maybe has four or five grand in their bank account at the moment and their savings, you know, So I, I think that 4 to 5 is kind of when that conversation starts, you know. But if it's a situation where, you know, you can easily write a check for $5,000 for, for new gutters. Right, Tommy, but if I could tell you that you could keep that in your bank account for a year and you could make 10, 15% on that money in your bank account, wouldn't you rather use financing and take advantage of a 0% versus giving me the money today to get that project done now.
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Tommy Mello
Now what's the plan on that? Because you're obviously paying dealer fees. So if someone wanted to pay a check, what's the advantage of doing financing other than usually the ticket average is higher because you're using other people's money.
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah. I mean, from the. Obviously that's directed towards the contractor. Right. So what's the advantage? You know, my take on this is this. I like frictionless ways for customers to pay. You know, so how we did it is we. Our average cost of the average plan that we would allow our reps to have was 8%, you know, and then we looked at what our average cost for credit cards, which is just call it 3%, and we looked at the percentages and we took a, you know, 20. About 15% of our projects were credit cards. 60 of it was financing. So we did an average, it was like four and a half points. So what we did is we just took a 5% price increase. So no matter how you paid for that project, you know, however that consumer pays for it, whether it's a check, credit card or financing, it's all the same price and it's a net, you know, net positive to you. Right. So it's actually not costing anything if you build it out that way.
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Tommy Mello
Yeah.
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Justin Hatcher
Just take a price increase.
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Tommy Mello
So when you helped take Tunderland from 25 million to over 125 million in annual sales. You, you, it was largely because you weed financing into the DNA of the sales process. What were the early lessons that you learned that shaped how you kind of built that process?
- [10:08]
Justin Hatcher
I, I think Brian's been on here and he said, if you're going to be wrong, don't be long for wrong. Don't be long for wrong. Right? You know, it was just, we were a really well oiled machine, like as a leadership team. So we had, you know, daily check ins with each other and we were like, okay, how's this marketing working? How's this working? How's sales working? You know, the lenders performing the way they should be. So we were, we were constantly checking up on all of our KPIs that we had set. So that way we could always hit those, you know. And I think the other thing is, you know, we weren't thinking like a, a $25 million company when I started. You know, we were thinking like we were a $50 million company. So we were always thinking we were bigger than we were so we could scale towards that versus, you know, every, every home improvement company flies by the seat of their pants. Some just do it better, right?
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Tommy Mello
Yeah, no, I think about Leaf Fitter. I see their commercials probably six or seven times a day. I mean, it's crazy. And I'm like, how many people need a leaf guard? Like, I mean, they're good commercials and they remind me of Anderson's commercials. And you know, that's something that you don't need. It's something that it's, it's like something that you might want. Right? It obviously could save you money in the long run. It makes, it makes less leaks happen and it saves your roof. But what, what do you think is, is it mostly TV that they're doing? What is the marketing play for some of these large home improvement. Because, you know, I, I, you know, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but Renovo just shut their doors and you know, that was a BlackRock company and I just wonder, you know, that was a big thing and I know I'm kind of bobbing and weaving here to bring that up, but. Yeah, but what do you want to chat about with that?
- [11:59]
Justin Hatcher
It's interesting. So when I was in that Big 12 group, a lot of those Renovo companies were in also in the Big 12. So they're all friends of mine, you know, and I think my take on it was, I guess if you Step back and look at it. You know, private equity. They understand how to run a business. They understand how to run a P and L. You know, I think where their biggest area of opportunity is when it comes to these home improvement companies that they're buying, where they. What they don't understand is how to weave culture into the business. And they don't understand how important the culture of that business is to make your team want to strive.
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Podcast Host/Announcer
Right.
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Justin Hatcher
I mean, and they also run everything off of one month's P L, which unfortunately, you're going to have bad months in home improvement, but you can't go fire a bunch of people because you didn't hit quota that month. Right?
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Tommy Mello
Yeah.
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Justin Hatcher
So I feel they. I mean. Yeah, right. I mean, you see that all the time, I imagine.
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Tommy Mello
Well, Tony Hodi had emailed or Facebook messaged me and he's like, you know, these young kids and their spreadsheets, that has nothing to do with the culture of a business. And there is going to be highs and lows and you got to remember the people come first. If you. Your net promoter score internally is probably the most important thing. Brian would agree, and I think you'd probably agree. And I think it's just so easy to say we're going to cut our way to the top and we're going to fire and we're going to top grade. But, you know, there are. This is a weird time. I mean, the economy, I think, is headed in the right direction, but you got to be able to with withstand good years and bad years. I mean, Covid was the best thing that ever happened when everybody was stuck at home doing good stuff to their house, at least for home improvement and home service. It's very interesting. You know, there's so many great stories about private equity and there's a lot of not so good stories. What do you think? What do you think makes a great PE company to partner up with?
- [13:56]
Justin Hatcher
You know, I think it. There's a couple things, you know, you have. You have to interview them just like they're interviewing you. I think that's the thing. Right. Just because, you know, as a bit of. As an owner of a business, I probably get, you know, 30 inquiries a day about somebody who wants to buy my business. Right. And you know, as a curious individual, I've. I've actually taken some of those calls and it's just. It's a bunch of waste your time. Right. But to be more specific with your question, I mean it. I think they have to align with what your values are and what your, you know, what your business values are and if you can align with that, that's going to make a good partner. I mean I, they're going to, I think a lot of people struggle with. If you do take money from private equity, it depends on how much you're taking for one as far as a percentage of your business and how much you're willing to have somebody else have a say in your business too. Right. I mean if you have majority ownership, yes, you still need to measure up to the KPIs because they, they give you money. But I mean I, I think it just depends on how much you want to have ownership and say in that.
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Tommy Mello
Yeah. You know, I hope that if you're the CEO and founder, one of the things I've learned is the PE companies are getting smarter and making sure the founder is staying on and still stays motivated. The hard part for them is, you know, they've got limited partners that they got to answer to every week. And you know, they're, they're taking money from pension funds and different firemen and police officers and teachers and unions. And then, you know, the hard part is you're giving somebody maybe a hundred or two hundred million dollars, depending on the size of the company, then how's the, is the founder going to stay as motivated and how old are they? What are their goals, what are their aspirations? How big is their family? Do they have grandchildren? Do they want to continue to sprint? And that's the hard part, I think to make that from a PE perspective.
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah. And I think you're spot on. Right. But the other thing with the private equity, it's not like they're, most of them don't just have that cash sitting around, they're financing that debt to buy some of these businesses. So I mean it would explain why maybe they are so driven on like this needs to hit, this needs to hit because they're living on a very small timeframe themselves.
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Tommy Mello
It's very hard when you got to make, if they borrow several hundred million to pay the founder, you know that that puts a real constraint on the company because the company's got to put out that cash every quarter or every month to pay the lender. So I think if you were smart and you were talking to private equity, you say over equitage the deal, meaning pay more cash. You'd want a partner that was, has the cash to fund the deal mostly without taking a massive amount of debt. You know, with, with H Vac they're able to take 6.7x EBITDA and if they max that, then you're sitting there having to make these massive payments because you're super leveraged. And so I think that's a really good point is how much cash are they borrowing versus putting in from the fund and going into my next process, whenever that is, I'm going to make sure that that's like the partner I choose is going to be, you know, a massive company that has the cash to be able to put most of it up. Because those first couple years are so important. Because you want to go buy companies those first couple years you want to, you're a little bit more aggressive, but if you don't have money and you're making these large payments, it's kind of a bad situation to be in.
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Justin Hatcher
No, I agree. You know, and I, I mean going back to even the, if the founder if stays on and that they don't stay on, I, I've definitely seen, you know, I work with a lot of private equity groups. Right. Some do it really well, some are scattered. Right. And they, they let all their groups kind of run by themselves and not trying to create that, you know, symmetry, centralized process. Yeah, exactly. But the ones that I found successful are the ones that the founders have stayed on and they've, they've kept that culture, but they've also, you know, are open to that centralized process with the group that owns them.
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Tommy Mello
I agree. Going back to Anderson and Lee Fitter and you know, the other companies you've worked at, it's Tundra land. What are the best things they do for marketing? What are the things that you found to just be super effective? Obviously I see the ton of tv. What other. I see Anderson, whatever handwritten letters that are at every single event. I mean those guys do a fantastic job. I mean they are, they are everywhere. But what, what works the best as far as marketing that you've seen that you would just, if you were going to start up a home improvement, these, these would be the critical things you would be doing no matter what.
- [18:27]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, I mean to that point I'm actually at a one day bath conference right now and, and Jacuzzi's here and they, you know, they're, they're explaining their product and they have 150 different lead sources just for digital marketing. Right. I mean so you know, obviously the easy answer is digital SEO is going to be what you need. You know, if, if I were to start a new home for BECOME today, I would focus on the community and how I can weave my brand into those communities and whether you're going to a cherry festival or a music festival. Doesn't matter that I'm in that community. And my, my brand and culture is weaved into the, the culture of the community. That's what I would do first.
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Tommy Mello
And do you think tv, are you a big believer in radio and billboards or not?
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Justin Hatcher
Really, not so much radio and billboards. You know, much like yourself, Covid was awesome and TV was, you know what really helped a lot of what helped Tundra Lands growth is everybody who's at home. So I mean, I'm always going to be partial to tv. You know, I think with TV what people need to think about is yes, spend money on tv, but make sure that you know what spots you're running on with your tv. Because if you run an ad where you don't have your call center open to take those calls, you just wasted a bunch of, a bunch of leads and a bunch of money. Right.
- [19:50]
Tommy Mello
What's the follow up sequence like? I, I've done a couple roofing companies that are pretty world renowned. I've done Jacuzzi. Talk to the people that do the marketing over there. I mean it is like speed to lead and just relentless. And it's like 90 days, they're still calling daily. You know how much is too much? I was talking to the guys at Cortech, which is the PE company we work with. They're like 25 times in a month. That's outrageous. But I'm like, that doesn't mean you're getting a hold of them every time. And there's email, text messaging, voicemail, blast, there's letters, there's a lot of different ways. So you're hitting them from you could do geofencing, you could do ott. There just so much you could do. It doesn't mean you're just calling, but that's one of the, the best ways is to get them on the phone. But how much is too much? And what have you noticed with the follow up process in this type?
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, I, I, there's definitely a fine line. I mean it's almost to the point where either they're going to tell you to stop calling or they're going to do business with you. I think that's the, the fine line there, you know, But I think of myself when I'm, you know, I might get a wild hair and be like, hey, I really want this XYZ thing. Go online, fill out the lead form and maybe once I, they start calling me, I'm not in the mood to have Those conversations. Yeah. Do I still want that or not? So, I mean, I, you know, I think as myself, as a consumer, and we're all consumers, you know, sometimes I need that extra push, you know, or if somebody's trying to sell me something, I'm like, hey, look it. Sometimes I'm hard to get a hold of and, and just busy. So just, it's okay to reach out to me. So I, I'm okay with basically until they tell you to stop calling or they move forward with you.
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Tommy Mello
I like that. I like that a lot. So you said before that financing isn't just all about affordability. It's about access and confidence. Can you take us back to the moment when you realize that financing could actually become a sales strategy rather than a barrier to closing deals? I mean, what was the mind shift. Shift change?
- [21:47]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, you know, I think it's still a working shift in this industry. I, you know, a lot of my friends who are finance managers for these large organizations, we always kind of joke and say we're the, the black sheep of the home improvement business, even though that we're one of the most important pieces for that. You know, everybody. There's always a focus on. Your call center has a script. Your sales team is very heavily scripted. Even your production teams are scripted. Your call center teams are, you know, there's really not a script for financing, you know, so it's, it's really building that script into your, your current, current sales model. And it's not hard. There's really four things you need to do. It's market, it's talking about it before you go do anything else. Right. So I would teach my. We teach this of like, oh, hey, Tommy, how'd you hear about us? Oh, Valpak. Great. Do me a favor. Grab that Valpak ad. And they would grab that Valpak ad, like, oh, that's our 20% off and our 12 months. No interest, no payments. Our customers are really loving that right now. So that's a spot right there where you're not only telling them that other people aren't buying your service, but people are financing it. And then I would do my needs analysis and just why am I here? What do you need? All those different questions, whatever your discovery questions are. And before I do the walk around and be like, hey, Tommy, really quick, you know, when people move forward with us in several different ways, some like to write a check, some like to maybe put on a credit card and finance some of it. And some like to fully finance, you know, which bucket do you think you'll fall into and just pause for a second and if they answer and start talking about financing, go for it, like have that conversation because that means they're, they're serious about the project and they're very interested in that, you know, and then the fourth thing is just present financing to everybody know, because you technically have to because otherwise it's, you're discriminating against people. Right. So if you're offering financing the one, you must offer it to everybody. So that's really the process to do it. It's pretty simple.
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Tommy Mello
And the average ticket goes up dramatically, doesn't it?
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Justin Hatcher
Yeah, it's, it's pretty crazy. I mean like we do, we work with all the different recording softwares like Rilla and Ciro and typically if you're offering somebody a payment option, your average ticket goes up by like 25%.
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Tommy Mello
I love it.
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Justin Hatcher
I think in the home service space it's actually like 200%. I mean usually it might be a little bit smaller numbers for like H vac or something, but it's, it's massive.
- [24:18]
Tommy Mello
For one and fund one look platform. It simplifies the entire financing process into one soft pool multi lender system. For a lot of people in this space, that, that innovation almost seems impossible. What did the development process look like and what were the problems that you obsessed over solving?
- [24:40]
Justin Hatcher
I don't think we have enough time for that. But you know, I, you know, I used to work with a lot of different platforms. So being an old mortgage guy, I wanted to streamline that approval process. So that's why we do a soft credit check up front, you know, so what we can do with that is that let's say it's a, you know, it's a prime customer. That's easy, you know, it's going to go directly to that prime lender, get your approval in 30 seconds, you know. But if you have a subprime customer that maybe they have some challenge credit but they're still deserve your product, you know, if you're thinking of like the traditional model of it going to lender A, B, C and then D, not only is that a long time and just a really poor customer and rep experience, it leads to a bunch of fud down the line because they're going to receive a bunch of decline letters from all those different lenders. So we wanted to streamline that process, make a 600 FICO score feel like an 850 buyer, you know, so we're going to go directly to that lender that's going to give them the highest approval. So that way instead of the sales rep saying, oh, Tommy, you know, this lender didn't take it. Don't worry, I have another lender that can look at this. They're saying, congratulations, you're, you're approved. Right? So it just makes it just an easier conversation. It's going to convert a lot higher. We typically see about 12% higher conversion rates on finance deals because we're, we're giving those approvals right at the point of sale, you know. But to go back to the development question, it's actually a funny story. So when we were building this, you know, we talked to a ton of different developers. My old neighbor, he used to work at, or he still does work at Amazon as a, like in cyber security. So we were having beers one night and I'm telling what we're going to do. He's like, oh, I can build that. And I'm like, no, dude, we're really going to do this, right? He's like, no, I can, I'm like, how about I, how do you hire you as a consultant and you can interview these tech platforms for me? So we talked to a couple of them and he's like, these guys suck. I will build it for you. And I'm like, once again, man, we're really going to do this. I need you to do it. And he's like, I, I got it. So we start integrating our first two lenders. We have a, we have a go live date of January 1st. So I met a, a concrete floor coding national sales conference because they picked us to be their financing partner. And I am selling this. Oh, can I. I don't think.
- [27:05]
Tommy Mello
I know you're good.
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Justin Hatcher
Anyways, I'm selling our platform. It can slice, dice, it can do everything. If we sign up 50 of these dealers, we go live. They start so many applications and it doesn't work. We have to, we have to push everything on the back end manually. I'm taking these calls. Everybody's just like feeling this stress. So I'm calling my buddy. I'm like, dude, this doesn't work. What are we going to do? We resolve the situation. We end up hiring a full time cto. We had to rewrite some code, rewrite the platform, but now it works beautifully. I mean, there's obviously everything that comes up. We're always enhancing the product. But it, those first several months were very stressful. I'll say.
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Tommy Mello
Well, I love the idea of it. Your goal is always to get the approval and you know, I used to talk to all the guys that were sitting on the back end of whether it was Good Leap or Service Finance or Green sky, and especially in H vac when it was a 20, $30,000 deal, they would figure out, you know, is the wife there? And what, you know, there's. The good thing about Good Leap is they, they pull the best credit. They pull from all three bureaus. They take the best one and they say, listen, what do they do for work? How long have they lived in the house? They were basically underwriting it. They were figuring out a way to get to. Yes. And that takes time. And you don't want to do that with four or $5,000 deals. You know, if you got a big deal, you could see wanting to do that. But so your platform makes it simple.
- [28:33]
Justin Hatcher
It does. And we have, and we have support team. Right. So we do have a chat bubble. It's actually not bots, it's actual chat bubble. So they're maybe they're in a situation they can just, the rep can calmly go on their computer, click the button, be like, hey, is there any other options with this? And you know, our team can be like, hey, have you thought about flipping the two customers or flipping the two borrowers or you know, can they get a co signer? Can they do this? You know, we're always coaching too, as far as if there is a decline. You know, we have some micro messaging that pops up that says, hey, have you thought about getting a cosigner and. Or asking them if they can put half down, half upon completion? You know, always trying to do whatever we can to save that deal.
- [29:16]
Tommy Mello
Yeah, I think a lot of people need coaching on how to. I love the four steps. You got to get it in the marketing. That's something I need to do a better job of and that's something I'm going to focus on this week. You know, how do you actually.
- [29:31]
Justin Hatcher
One thing I want to just what you said, I mean, you know, I was reading this or listening to this Brene Brown book and she had a really interesting quote about this. Like, software is not going to fix your problems. You know, and it really resonated with me just because owning a software business and, you know, we have these tools that can help a lot of people and a lot of, you know, consumers and a lot of businesses out there. But if you're not willing to have the mindset of changing your process, software is not going to fix it. It's going to help. But it's a mindset Shift of, hey, I need to stick to this process, understand this process and commit to this process. And now this technology is going to make it go. I'm going to get tenfold out of this.
- [30:18]
Tommy Mello
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, you use Rilla Voice or Ciro, we created a pretty cool tool called FieldSpark that competes with them. But those tools don't work if you're not coaching and listening to the calls and highlighting the good stuff and really understanding how to coach using those tools. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. You could have the best CRM, but if you're not putting the data incorrectly, there's just a service tank could be a lot to handle. And so we use power bi to kind of digest all the data in a way that we could actually coach with it. How do you balance simplicity for contractors with the complexity of a multi lender system?
- [30:58]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, and our platform gets more complex every day. You know, it, it all starts with just, you know, when we first meet with a contractor, we're going to seek to understand, right. We want to understand their business, you know, so we're going to do a deep dive into understanding, you know, what lenders, they use, what programs they use, you know, what their strategy is for their marketing, what their strategy is to, how to, how to, what their process is that's offering financing. You know, so once we understand that, we can say, okay, here is what we recommend. You know, whether that's using your current set of lenders or hey, maybe these are some different lenders that you need to add to your stack. You know, wherever that situation is, it's, it's not a one size fits all. It's very customizable into what's going to fit into their flow. You know, all of us that work for this company, we're all ex home permit dudes, right? So we, we never want to come in and blow up your model, you know, we want to be a complement to your model, you know, so we, we can help guide you as much as you want us to. Or you know, if you want to just say, hey, this is what I want. This is how this is going to flow. Perfect. We can program it to be exactly that for you.
- [32:06]
Tommy Mello
Yeah, I mean the best companies on the planet are over that 70 financing. It's the number I always hear. It's, it's whether it's H vac roofing, home improvement, bathroom, you know, remodels, it's, it's a big spot that I feel like we're missing the boat and it's just, it's a complete culture shift because technicians tend to think, if, if they don't have money, let's offer them financing. But the idea should be, like you said, everybody gets the wealthiest people in the world use other people's money. So everyone should get that opportunity.
- [32:39]
Justin Hatcher
Well, yeah. And you know, I would, I would challenge your technicians and say, hey, have you ever bought anything on Amazon, which we all know they have, but I mean, if you go on Amazon, you buy a $50 item, they're going to give you payment options, right? So, I mean, we're conditioned as consumers to make payments or to take advantage of these different things. Right. So it's a lot of. It's 100% of its mindset. I totally agree.
- [33:02]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Hey, I hope you're enjoying today's episode. I have a cool story to tell you. It's from a contractor who attended Freedom 2025. He said to us, I came in with three major challenges in my business and I'm leaving with clear solutions to all three. So thanks to conversations with people who've already figured it out. I just think that's so incredible. Back when a one was a much smaller shop, industry events like this didn't exist. I never had access to this kind of knowledge from $100 million contractors. That's why I'm so excited that we do this every year now. What makes the Freedom event the best, in my opinion is we make sure you leave with new energy and strategies to win in your market so you can scale faster than ever with more profit. And that's critical in 2026 because we're in the biggest gold rush that the industry has ever seen. With private equity AI and retiring baby boomers shaking things up. If you build your business right, you can enjoy wealth for yourself and your family that lasts generations. Listen, do you want to bring your wife and family on vacation, buy your dream house, fund your kid's college education? You need to take action now and learn from the best in the industry. So check out freedomevent.com to learn more and grab your ticket at the exclusive pre sale price before February 1st. It's freedom event.com now back to the episode.
- [34:20]
Tommy Mello
You know, there's all kinds of mistakes when it comes to offering financing. If you were training a new home improvements salesperson today, what's the one mindset that you would teach them to win big?
- [34:33]
Justin Hatcher
Stay out of your own head. Trash would probably be number one. Just because you wouldn't do this or don't agree with what this can you know what they want to do. I mean that's, it's not your decision to help, you know, it's your decision to help guide them. But if they want to make this decision to finance or do this or that, it's, it's, don't do that, don't talk them out of it, because you wouldn't do that. I think that'd be the number one thing I'd say and follow the process, of course.
- [35:01]
Tommy Mello
But yeah, it's so funny because I, I interview my technicians, the best guys, once a week and it's always, I shift around different people and they say, man, I just followed the process and I'm like, man, I need more than that, I need more than that. But it's true. Once the process is dialed in, it's like, and you got to be willing to have the hard conversations. You know, you wanted us to come out here, you wanted your order to be safe, you wanted to make sure it's working every time you hit the button. So what, what do we need to do during your business? And a lot of people don't sit at the kitchen table and ask for the sale. They don't spend the time with the both homeowners and really go through a really, really long, you know, answer all the questions, ask great questions, be quiet when they're responding and do show and tell. I mean, what's the guy's name that used to carry a GoPro? He used to sell gutters. Rodney Webb. You ever heard of Rodney Webb?
- [35:57]
Justin Hatcher
I've heard of Roddy Webb, yeah. I listened to a ton of his books back in the day when I was selling.
- [36:01]
Tommy Mello
So yeah, yeah, I think you just need to sit down. When you did the merger between one and fund and one click contractor, how did that come together?
- [36:12]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, fast, I'll say that. So we were, we were actually looking at doing a three way merger which would have been insane if we actually pulled that off. But so thankfully the third company's board had some questions and they were probably the, the one that didn't make the most sense anyways, so the two of us look at our business, we're like, hey, we actually really complement each other really well. And I might have manifested this a while ago because I've been saying for a little while prior to the merger, hey, I really want to control that point of sale. So having the ability to estimate, do price, presentation, contract, it just naturally fed into our financing platform. So we met January of last year. You know, the three way fell apart and then they, they're like, hey, we really like you guys. I really want to do this. And I had some reservations. And then we met with them. Valuations worked out really well and, and my old business partner is an M and A attorney. So we did diligence in like six weeks and, or like, I think it was like five weeks. So we closed that deal in five, you know, five, six weeks. So it was really, really fast. And there was a lot of excitement with the merger. So it started off great. And then we ran into some culture things, just like you do when you're merging two businesses together. And it was, it was growing in the. Really. It was growing in the wrong direction. So, you know, I, I pinged my team. I'm like, guys, we need to, like, meet off site as a leadership team. We need to align ourselves even. Let's just look at six months down the road. And I want every leader of every department to figure out what their rock they're chasing for the next six months. Rock or rocks? And we did that and we aligned as a leadership team. Then they went back and got their team on what we're doing as a, as a company. And then we held a, A meeting, everybody. And it was, it was awesome. We've never been aligned as we ever have been. That's great.
- [38:05]
Tommy Mello
It is tough. It's very tough when you're combining two pretty big companies. So you've been in the, You've been in the space over two decades. What's. What personal philosophy has guided you through the ups and downs?
- [38:22]
Justin Hatcher
That's a really good question. You know, I, I've been a. I really, I've always been really hard on myself, for one. Right. And so keeping myself, living to a certain standard that I want to, I want to be at.
- [38:36]
Tommy Mello
Right.
- [38:37]
Justin Hatcher
As far as whether it's, you know, personally, professionally, you know, the money I want to make. So living up to that or setting those goals and living by them, that's always been number one. I've always been really good at. When things don't go my way is looking at the step, stepping back and looking at the situation and, you know, whether it's. It's a me thing or somebody else thing, and just looking at it from every point of view, so that way I can make a. The right decision versus just making a quick decision that could cost me greater down the line, you know, so that's been the. Yeah, that's been massive. And I mean, don't get wrong. That took me a while to get to that point. Right.
- [39:17]
Tommy Mello
So I love it, it's funny, when I look at our business, it's getting, it's getting to a larger size and there's money in every, there's more money to be found because a fraction of a percent here and there is a big outcome. It's because we deal with so many clients and there's so many things we could do. It's just ruthlessly prioritizing the initiatives and really make sure you hit the finish line and be relentless like the focus. If you think about your legacy, what do you want one and fund to represent in the home improvement world?
- [39:51]
Justin Hatcher
I want to be for one and fund. You know, I wanted to be known as the, the disruptor. Not so much as like, this is what we did for the industry, but I want to be the disruptor for the lenders. Right. Because, you know, like I mentioned earlier, those lenders have had so much power in this space and they've dictated how to, how you run your business to like, you have to do it like this. So I want to be known as a company that made that playing field even, you know, lean more towards a contractor, but then also be the first person to, to build something that, that actually works in this space and not have it be a janky system.
- [40:32]
Tommy Mello
Have you, I don't know if it's even fiduciary, the responsibility if you could do this, but have you ever thought about running a client, you know, maybe at a 590, like give them a free credit repair type and just say, look, in six months we'll be. I don't know if that's legal. I know it's not legal for the finance company to offer that, but what if you were able to get them up to a 650 work like, like you say, listen, we've got this program, it's super affordable. We're going to split the cost with you as long as you sign when you hit this level that we'll go ahead with the, you know, we're going to help you get this and it's going to make your credit better.
- [41:08]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, it's, I've, I've been wanting to do that, even go back to my tundra land days. And I've, I've explored it more than I probably should have. So we, we are developing a program we have for a while to have that and we can do that especially since we get that data. So, you know, the, the whole goal behind that is, is you want to make sure that, you know, keep that customer in your database, keep the, you know, the touch point that, you know, the email blast, make sure you keep them engaged. And then whatever it costs that customer, whether it's, you know, 500, $600, you can even give that as a discount to their, their project if once they build their credit up and then get approved. So it's a great idea. Where it. The challenge with that is what I found, because I've, I've tested out with a couple different companies, is those programs are going to. They cost that consumer money, right? So typically, the people that need that, they don't have an extra 40, 50 bucks, you know, So I think finding that sweet spot of something that's affordable for them and are they going to actually, you know, because there's two ways to do it as far as the credit repair. It's like a DIY where you're going to give them, okay, you need to send this letter, send this letter, send this letter out to get that removed from your credit. So you need to rely on them to actually do it. Or if you're gonna, if you're gonna have somebody do that for them, it's gonna cost them even more money to do it.
- [42:38]
Podcast Host/Announcer
If you could get it to where.
- [42:39]
Tommy Mello
They can get to a 650 plus, you could if the credit repair company was willing to take the payment later. I don't know. Yeah, that's. It's something I've thought a lot about. I thought a lot about it more from my technician and CSR dispatch, you know, the A1 crew, because I want them to have great credit. So I think about things of how to make their lives better. It doesn't mean I want them to go out and get a bunch of Harley Davidsons and new boats. But great credit is something that everybody should be serious about getting.
- [43:09]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it makes your life easier if you have great credit. You know, the other complexity with that is how is that sales rep bring it up if it's at the point of sale, or how is your CSR team talking about it with the consumer know, it's, it's. It can be an uncomfortable conversation, right? Be like, oh, you have terrible credit. But hey, I have this great. I mean, there's easy ways of wordsmith that. But it's. There is a fine line how to actually have that conversation.
- [43:37]
Tommy Mello
Yeah, it's something I want to look into more. I want to talk to you offline about that. What's one piece of advice you would give to a young entrepreneur who is just starting out in the home service, home improvement space?
- [43:50]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, I, I think the, it's okay to fail. I think that's a, I think a lot of people when they start something, they think it has to be perfect and everything has to go right. And it's not, it's never going to be perfect, it never will be perfect. You know, it's, you know, are you going to learn from those mistakes to make you a better entrepreneur? That would be number one. The other thing is not every idea is a good idea. I think we've all learned that the hard way.
- [44:17]
Tommy Mello
You know, I, I played this video at Garage Door Freedom of Jeff Bezos. He said, in the early days of Amazon I hired some really smart people. And he goes, one of my chief of staff, the guy that we were working with was actually like one of the best consultants I had ever worked with. And I got very fortunate to be able to bring these people on in the early days. And he said 30 minutes. And Jeff Bezos said 30 minutes with me in front of a whiteboard, I could put down 150 ideas. And the gentleman, the chief of staff told Jeff Bezos, you could single handedly destroy this company in a matter of 30 minutes in front of a whiteboard. He goes, so here's the deal Jeff. The company is not at the size to be able to handle your ideas, so you need to keep those to yourself and prioritize them and release them as the company grows and we've got the staff to accomplish those. So, so he said keep the ideas to yourself time, release them as you see the importance, but you're prioritizing them and your goal should be to build a company eventually that could handle all of your ideas. And he said without that advice early on I would have, because there's a million things they were trying to do. But they needed to build the company to be able to handle that many projects and get them to the finish line. They tried to get into the home service space twice, Amazon, both times they failed. I beta tested both of them and they thought they had it all figured out. They thought it was just going to commoditize. But all labor isn't created equal. I mean when you show up with a new truck, with the right tools, with guys that are really trained and background check. The problem is these software guys, they think they can commoditize the home service space and maybe one day somebody will figure it out, but there's still too much human interaction involved.
- [46:03]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, it's funny you say that, I mean I've been toying with how to create that online experience. Right. And you know, part of what I'm super excited about with our merger with one Click is to have those tools be able to create the estimates very easily. Right. You know, I'm thinking of the, the generations that are coming up. I don't own those houses yet. I mean, they grew up with a phone in their face or a tv, you know, like all this different technology. They don't want to have three companies out and pitch them for nine hours to move forward with this project. Right. They want to have a, fill out a form, know what they want, pick their product, maybe pick between a list of contractors and just be like, I want that one. They have good reviews, signed contract, here I go, have the funding. All. All right there. So I think it's going to get there at some point. I think we're still 5ish years out, maybe even 10 years out. I know a lot of people are trying to chase that, me included.
- [47:03]
Tommy Mello
So I was going to ask you what the changes that you are predicting over the next three to five years in the space. That's one of them, obviously.
- [47:14]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, that's definitely one of them. You know, I think the consolidation for sure. Right. And that's on both sides of it. Whether you're. I think there's gonna be some large groups just like Renovo, unfortunately that, you know, I don't think they're alone. I'm, you know, friends with a lot of people who have worked for those companies and you know, they were refinanced away from going on a business themselves. Right. So I think, you know, so opportunity is probably the best way to put that. So if you are a, a newer, smaller company, get your systems right, get your, get them tight. I mean, there's gonna be massive opportunity in front of all these companies. And you know, if you're not, if you don't have the systems in play, you're going to stay where you are and maybe even go out of business.
- [47:57]
Tommy Mello
I want to jump back to one more thing. So you said you like tv, you like getting ingrained in the events, especially local events where there's probably not a lot of competition. Could be even a high school football game. What other things in marketing do you feel like isn't something that people are thinking about?
- [48:16]
Justin Hatcher
Here's a good one. If you become friends with a Porta Pott, Porta Potted company, because if you see a bunch of Porta Potties being rented and brought somewhere, that means there's going to be a lot of people there. So that's a way to think outside the box and be like, okay, maybe there's a festival I don't know about, or maybe there's an event that I haven't heard about. But if you see where those Porta Potties are going, you know there's going to be people there.
- [48:41]
Tommy Mello
Oh, I love that. It's like, that's really smart. Actually. I was in the. We went to a sports bar to watch. It was game six at the, the baseball, you know, the, the World Series. And I went to the bathroom and they had these things where there was advertising, you know, the, the monitors. And I'm like, I wonder how these do. I mean, you know, you're, you're taking a whiz and you're looking at it. It's not. I never called anybody from that, but it's great for impressions. I, you know, I guess it's the Omni approach of being everywhere. I thought, you know what I thought about at the sports bar at topgolf is like, that might be better to have an ad for recruiting, but it's also an impression for the company. Yeah, definitely. I just told my coo the number one thing I'm focused on is talent. I said, a great technician, a great installer. They show up on time, they got a smile, they recruit for you. They do self promotions, they're posting on social media. They, they definitely have their KPIs dialed in. They don't turn over. You know, hopefully they're, they're, they plan on being here a long time. And if we did better. I was at NASCAR yesterday, and, you know, there was a military recruit. It was a lot of military people there. And I'm like, we should hire a military recruiter. Like, somebody that knows how to find winners. And they, they, they've done it so long, they could identify the people that are going to be here for a long time. They know the questions to ask and if they're actually going to follow through. But that's where I think, go ahead, I'll say.
- [50:10]
Justin Hatcher
And they know how to follow a process, which is important.
- [50:13]
Tommy Mello
Yeah. I mean, we got this new recruiter. Her name's Sophie, and she has just changed the output of the talent we're getting. And she's using AI and a B testing, and she hired three recruiters. And I think that's probably the most important thing if you're going to grow a business is finding winners, taking great people and making them phenomenal.
- [50:34]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, definitely.
- [50:35]
Tommy Mello
I, I used to, I used to think, hey, I could take an average guy and make him great. And then I'm like, that takes a long time. So is there any books that really change the way you look at business over the years? I mean, you said you, you read Rodney Webs. You mentioned a girl. What is it? Renee Brown. Renee Brown. Is there any books that you're like, this is a must read if you're going to be successful other than the e Myth and like.
- [51:06]
Justin Hatcher
No, 100%. You know, I think there's two books that really changed the way I've done business. The first one is the go Giver. It's one of my favorite books. Yeah. I think I, I think I read that once a year just to like, refresh my brain. Right. You know, and I think the other one is Art of War. I have. I, I do the same with that one. You know, just, I think I pick up something every time I reread the Art of War. So that's great.
- [51:33]
Tommy Mello
Two great books. I think, you know, the Art of War just explains patience and just being able to weather the storm and how to infiltrate kind of your competition and how to outlast. I. There's a lot of lessons in that book.
- [51:49]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah. I think my favorite quote from out. Or is it like in the midst of chaos, there's. There's always opportunity. Right. So. Because there's always chaos. So it's. I think I have that on my screensaver on my computer.
- [52:00]
Tommy Mello
So I love it. If somebody wants to reach out to you, Justin, what's the best way to do that?
- [52:08]
Justin Hatcher
I think easy way. Be our website. So one click contractor.com and it's just O N E. So one clickcontractor.com. who.
- [52:19]
Tommy Mello
Who is the best? Go ahead. Where else?
- [52:22]
Justin Hatcher
Oh, I say if you. I'm then I'm personally on Facebook or LinkedIn. Feel free to message me there. So.
- [52:27]
Tommy Mello
Okay. And then is there anybody that like, stands out that you've worked with? Just like world renowned. I mean, obviously Brian got le I think is one of a kind. He is just, you know, he's the hammer. But is there any other, you know, operators, sl founders that you're just obsessed with, like, as far as the way they lead?
- [52:51]
Justin Hatcher
I, I think, I mean, I'm very blessed and fortunate to work with a lot of them. You know, I'm going to say Michael Hoy has been, you know, a good friend and a mentor of mine too with the CEO of Great day improvements. So watching him grow basically from a bankrupt company in 2014 to a 1.6 billion or $1.8 billion company today, you know, and how he's navigated buying all these businesses to, and merging them under one platform. I'd say he's been a. I've loved hearing his story and just being a friend and a mentor to me.
- [53:25]
Tommy Mello
That's fantastic. We talked a lot. A lot. So many things. And I love the emphasis on marketing and finance. Maybe we didn't talk about something. I'm going to let you close us out and just whatever you feel like the audience needs to hear.
- [53:40]
Justin Hatcher
Yeah, I appreciate that. It goes back to, you know, kind of something I mentioned is, you know, have a process. You know, be open to listening to change. You know, sometimes change can be scary in your business. But, but change can also be really good for your business. And you know, if you're not financing 40 to 50% of your projects, that's fine. There's, there's processes out there we can help you out with to do that to your business because you're going to see higher tickets, better close ratios and it's going to make you more profitable as a business, which will lead to employee retention. It's going to lead to more marketing, more customers. It's, it's a really great cycle to be on. So implementing your business today, that's what I'd say.
- [54:25]
Tommy Mello
I love it. Justin, thank you so much for taking the time today.
- [54:29]
Justin Hatcher
I appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me.
- [54:31]
Tommy Mello
Tommy, great work. Hey there.
- [54:32]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 garage door service. So if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to. To a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch.
- [55:08]
Tommy Mello
Up with you next time on the podcast.