Dynamic Discussions: Financing Tools, Entrepreneurship, and Life's Challenges

Immerse yourself in a thought-provoking dialogue between Corey Berrier and Christopher Scoville as they share their daily challenges and achievements. From recounting a spouse's flat tire ordeal to strategizing company rebranding, their discussion traverses diverse entrepreneurial terrains. Exploring financing tools, they discuss website integration and brainstorm podcast themes. They spotlight the innovative features of their financing solution, allowing consumers to comprehend costs seamlessly. The conversation then navigates toward high-ticket item financing, merging with Contractor Commerce, and the power of transparent online pricing. Amid personal anecdotes about tire mishaps and Christopher's career transition, they reveal the journey of his software company's growth. Discover how entrepreneurship, faith, and personal evolution intertwine in their narratives of honesty, innovation, and success.

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Transcript

0:35

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Berrier, and I'm here with my man, Chris Scoville. What's up, Chris? Just sitting here boxing myself and trying to get through the day, brother. So let's just pick up our conversation'cause we were having a really dope ass conversation about always some stuff that you're doing. Always. Yeah always in the green room. That's where the good conversation starts. That's right. So we started out with Chris having a Chris's wife having a flat tire today and. He handled it like a man and went out and handled it after four hours worth of waiting. Well, you know, I had to do my Facebook posts and stuff like that. Of course. Oh, this is great. So when I get out there, what's the first thing that I did? Fuck take pictures. Right? I'm like this and I'm, she's like, really? On the side of the road, on the sawgrass car's. Right. And I'm like, Yep. I'm about to save the day like a jerk, but yeah, I saw it. Here's the bottom line. No matter how upset I got at the price of the fix and the delay of me having to Dr. You know, it was hours. My wife did not get an accident. Nobody got hurt. That's all that matters. It is money. Money is money. I gave some money to some someone. They're gonna take that money and pay somebody that worked and then they're gonna go buy something. They're gonna give the money. So the money will come back to me someday, but for sure anyway. And at the end of the day, it's just life. She's okay. That's right. That's right. So look you've had some, you've had some changes, right? I don't even know the changes, but I'm interested to find out,'cause the last time we talked you were, well, I'll just let you tell the story. You've gone through a brand change, right? Or something along those lines. Well, yeah, I mean, did we talk, so I retired from service finance. Did we talk about that? We never talked about that. We haven't done a podcast, right? No. No. Alright, cool. So we talked several times. We haven't done a podcast. Yeah. I'll do a recap for those of your folks that might not know who the hell I am. Right. So, who's this guy? Right. So, I've been in the industry like a really long time. I work with contractors. It's all I do. It's not a hobby. This is what I do for a living. I don't golf, I don't fish. I work with contractors. I love it. It's my passion. So I've been doing this more than half my life. I'm 52 years old. I. I know, I don't look it, you don't look it all the compliments. But with all seriousness, my father was an attorney and he opened up Roscoe Construction and I was in high school. He built a custom home in Batavia, New York, and I helped him do that. And then at 19, when I finished college I went down to South Florida and started doing roofs, doing tie beams. And then I was like, Think I wanna get involved in the money side of this deal, right? So I became a mortgage broker, wholesale, construction, or permanent side, and I was a banker for 26 years. So I did man, unsecured, secured 2 0 3 k construction to permanent, always working with contractors. Our a c pace, commercial, residential heat locks. Like I've done everything that you could imagine. In the finance contractor space. So it was only natural for me to retire two months ago. When we launched, we've launched and been building our software company called Blue Pages Pro. For those of you that haven't been there, go check it out. It's kind of cool. Blue Pages Pro. We built a software company over the last two years, bootstrapped no investors. Ground up, right? Didn't exist. It exists. Now we've got damn near 19,000 members on the platform in the United States. We just signed a contract in Canada, so it's growing exponentially. So basically what happened is it got to the point where the company got so big that it was time for me to retire from service finance where I was this senior vice president business development dude. And I managed like Owens Corning and Beacon and Lennox and stuff like that, doing trainings and manage. So it was only natural for me to, when I retired, to build a finance center within my software company. Why? Well, dude, it's what I do, right? Like I've been working with contractors providing financing solutions for 26 years. I wasn't about to give that up. So we built a financing center. We got five lenders that we built in there, a multi lending platform, if you want to call it that. So it's real simple for me to do a consultation with a contractor find out what their specific needs are for themselves. And their customers talk about their market, their credit score, average ticket, what they sell. Do you do good, better, and best? What do you install? Like I ask all the great questions and then we line'em up. Either 1, 2, 3, or even sometimes four lenders so they can actually help their population. Right? Because some people have live in areas where it's just all great credit. All my customers pay cash. Sure they do. Those ones. All my customers, sure they do. Meanwhile, they slide you in Amex, and that's not cash. That's financing. But anyway. Then there's some places like I won't even talk about the areas'cause I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings that are on this, but that just have challenged credit, right? That's people that are just subprime, right? There's even states that are notoriously between 600, 6 49. So if I've got some lenders that help that bucket and then lately I've had to add mortgage solutions to it, and here's a reason why. Cost of home improvement projects is exponentially higher now.'cause the cost of goods, right? That's right. I do Down California are doing, and I finance everything. It's not just roofs and windows, doors. If it goes in and on around it, I finance it. I even do commercial in 37 states. So you're flooring in your kitchen and bath. They're like 2 25. That's not even, that's like a joke. In Florida, you can get away with a hundred thousand dollars for flooring in a new kitchen, right?$225,000. California. Your average high-end kitchen is a quarter mill man, so I had to add some home improvement. HELOCs, home improvement mortgage solutions. To the mix. So basically I hop on the phone with contractors. I do this, I shoot this shit. My wife gets pissed. She's like, I can't believe that you make money doing this. I'm like, well, it's fun, you know? That's why this is what I do for a living and I don't play golf or fish'cause I suck at those anyway. I help. Bring money to contractors so they can give it to the consumer so they can buy their stuff. And then as we were talking about money earlier, the exchange, it just goes in there and out there. And then we basically put the financing tool into our software platform called BluePages Pro, which helps them connect, convert, create more relationships and close more jobs. So we embed financing solutions into this really cool website, a micro site landing page thing that helps the world go round and round. Who did you, who was, you know, I guess who is maybe the competitor if there is one, but who did you kind of take market share from? Just outta curiosity? I don't think we really did. So let's go into why I even built this thing in the first place. You've got your third party lead aggregators, okay? So you've got people like Angie HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, modernize craft Jack, They aggregate leads and they got so much money. It's crazy. Well, we know why they have money, right? They sell leads. They sell leads. They got all this money to advertise to people to say, Hey, come to us and we'll fix your home. And then they basically take that data and then they resell it over and over, right? They churn data, third party non valid leads. And I was like, well, that's not very nice. I said, What if I built something that didn't charge for leads A directory, right? Right. A national directory of certified pros Contractors that have qualifications or even become a certified pro. What if I built a directory and I let the consumers go through the front door and worked directly with the contractors and didn't charge anything for it? That's what we did. We built a beautiful national directory. It's gonna be in Canada as well. We just signed a contract up there. So we built this directory that a consumer can go to Blue Pages Pro, choose the asset that they want, choose the zip code, and vet the contractors within that little local market on who they wanna work with. Here's the cool thing. Algorithmically contractors that have platinum, which has got the new automated pre-qual system. It's a financing tool that I built into it algorithmically appear at the top.'cause they have a cool financing thing with multiple lendings. The pro plans algorithmically appear under the platinum. The light plans appear there and then your base plans appear there. So there is a benefit for contractors that are on the Blue Pages, that are on the highest level.'cause algorithmically they have the better offers to help the consumer afford the home service. That kind of brings it all together, but we don't charge for leads. We wanna help contractors. Build the sales finance tool, get it in front of consumers, help'em connect, convert, create more relationships, ultimately close more jobs. And that's why we built this thing. So that's the lead aggregator side. As far as competitors out there that have directories, there's a few like my friend Dmitri, he's got the director I, director ii. Right. Where he's put roofers and stuff in there. So I, he doesn't charge for leads. However, he does charge X percent on the job when it funds. Right. We don't charge for that, by the way. And then I think roofing.com kind of is a lead aggregator type of a thing now where you can go and so there are some other directories out there. I. To cut back to why I built this with the exit strategy already in mind, and I think that it's important for anybody watching this. If you wanna build a software company a sauce, you wanna kind of pre-frame it like, what's the future state of my software company in five years? Do I wanna still be here running it and grinding it and make it a shit ton of money, or do I want to exit? Then go learn how to fish and learn how to play golf, right? So I literally built blue pages with an exit strategy in mind, and a goal that Zillow will buy this in three years for 1.2 billion. Why? Because Zillow needs this. Because Zillow isn't in home improvement, but Zillow needs to be in home improvement. Why? Well, because people aren't moving. They're staying put in their 3% or two and a quarter or two and a half, 30 year, and they're making home improvements. So really with a Be Beautiful plugin to have this database of 50,000 certified pro contractors with financing capabilities in it, that doesn't charge for leads and it helps the contractors around the platform because, They're first seen, first sight of mind, offering, financing, helping the consumers. So the beautiful thing about building the field of dreams, I called it. Was future state. And when I built the software from the ground up, I framework it that the map is on the left and the contractors are on the right.'cause damn it all, when you go to Zillow, the map is on the left and the homes are on the right. So it's a natural fit that when it's fix a home, right? Find a home, find a realtor, get a mortgage. Rent a home, fix a home, click boop. You're already in the flow because the map's on the left. So I really did think it through really well. And everything I do is when I create, I think of future state. I don't think of just like right now, I'm thinking three years down the road. How company Camp showcase galleries. How important will it be for a consumer to show, tell, and sell and look at the projects rather than looking at a stale review? Right? Like, reviews are probably not real anyway, but you can't fake, you can't fake this. When you click on the showcase gallery and 273 pictures pop up, you can't fake that. That's Bill from Hometown that did 276 pictures of the project, of what it looked like in the beginning, what it looked like in the middle, and what it looked like in the end. And we call that show tell and sell because we want consumers to look at the jobs that Bill did. Because now they trust him, because they actually looked at the work that he does. They're not just looking at a stale Bill was great. Here's his five star review. Anita, come on Anita. So let me ask you this. So if I go in and I'm looking at to remodel a, a kitchen, you just mentioned that. Yeah. And'cause I'm doing,'cause I'm doing it right now, right? You were doing it last time we talked. That's pretty sure dear. It's still going on. So if I go in and I, if I go and I click the finance button, blue pages and I'm gonna get, it says you're qualified for$50,000, right? Yep. Yep. And I. A remodel and I'm going through and I'm picking out what it is I want to do.'cause I'm there's an online tool. Let's assume, how does that, does it spit out like, okay, does it spit out monthly payments? Does it spit out the total? How does that work? Because the total, I imagine, would scare the out people. Yeah. That's why, you know, The best contractors are presenting at the point of need or the point of sale, right? So let me illustrate. So if I am a. Do you wanna sell 50,000 remodel? Sure. Okay, cool. So, Mr. And Mrs. Smith we're here and I've done the demo and I've explained how awesome our company is. I've showed'em our work. I've show, tell, and sell. They've explained, we explained what the process is and how great we are at it, and it gets time to put the contract down. Well, I don't know if I wanna spend 50,000. I wanna qualify for 50 is probably gonna be 25. So your want is 25. That's your budget? Yeah. Yep. 25. But I, so here's the AP p s system. It's called the automated pre-qual system that I built. Okay. This goes on a blue page, so it's gonna take the customer's information, what their stated income is. No social security, by the way. What their loan request is and they're requesting 25. No, 50. They're requesting 50 but they think they're gonna spend 25 either are, let's just say 25. Okay. Because I'm gonna show you how it works. So let's say that they ask for 25. We already know it's gonna be double. Who cares? The system doesn't care what they ask for. It's just the data. So now I know what they make. I've got their interim. I'm gonna run a soft credit pull, and it goes through the system. And now I can pull out their credit score, their debt to income. I've got margin integrity built in there and I've got their debt to income and they've asked for 25. Because he's got a platinum level color credit classification 835 FICO and a 25% D T I. And I know that the contractor's margin integrity is 10%. And under these are data intelligent points that I built into it, by the way, so I'm sorry if I'm speaking jargon. It doesn't matter. Here's the bottom line. Within 13 seconds, it's gonna tell Mr. Smith, you are qualified now. The portal's gonna say you're qualified because we have the data points. When he goes to the lender's portal for the application, now we go to application to the lender portal lp, and he applies another soft credit poll. By the way, I still haven't pulled their credit. So the customer's really happy because we haven't dinged their Equifax, we haven't dinged their credit. We're just getting them to the approval. So now we go to the lender, we've got multi lending platform, and we apply. Congratulations, Mr. Smith. You're approved for$50,000. Whoa. I don't want 50. That's fine. I'm just letting you know what your max approval is. Okay, good. You know, because shit happens, right? My granite counter was supposed to be 12. Guess how much it cost me? 17 five wasn't 12. Contingency, right? So here's the cool thing. Now we break it down and re reverse engineer this. 2 25 is gonna cost them$114 per that two. Let's say it's$238 per month for that 25,000. All right, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, I've got your, now we've got the contract. Here's your contract. It's$25,000. Were you ready? Here we go. This is the best part. Were you gonna be using your money or would you like to use some of ours? Well, my AC went out two days ago after we talked, and I'm curious if I can add that in that 25. Absolutely. I mean, is this or into the 50? I mean, yeah. Is the general contractor an air conditioning engineer? Can you sub it out? I don't know. Let's assume he can. Let's assume he's a GC and he can sub out the hvac. So we got$25,000 for the remodel and we got another 10 for the hvac. We're at$35,000. It's$114 per 10. Congratulations. Would you like to use your money or would you like to use ours? How often does that happen? It's a Salesforce how often, but how often does it happen that people go over what they anticipate because of that 50? 80% of the time. I figured. I think so too. Yeah. Like think about how you buy. Yeah, of course. Hey, forget. Forget we're even talking. When you go buy a car, you have high expectations that you're gonna spend X right, until you find out that you got approved for Y and then you do what you upsell yourself. Like that. You go from a freaking$605 a month payment expectation to 7 49 in a heartbeat. Because why? Emotion technology. You wanted the horsepower. I did an article once years ago on how many. Hellcats. They or Chargers, challengers or chargers, whatever. How many models? How many models they made. I did an article on this, I think it started at like SS X T and it went up to Super Demon or whatever. Like they've even got break code like. They have like 33 models. So you go in to buy the X T because it's got the challenger model until you go, well, what are people gonna think of me when I show up to the intersection in a six cylinder car? Shouldn't I really have one that roars dude? And you'll bounce yourself from a 605 monthly payment to 7 49. Just like that. And you don't care because why? Well, here's why. Because it's the monthly payment that you're really buying and when it comes to anything That's right. Not, it isn't the number. So my point when I'm doing sales credits for guys on financing, when I say, Hey, Mr. Smith, You're gonna do business with us. You're in love with us. Now it comes down to payment. Look, were you gonna be using your money or would you like to use some of ours? And typically the consumers will go, what do you mean use yours? Well, we've got lenders over here. Matter of fact, I can let you know what you're approved to right now with a soft credit pull when it won't even affect you. And payments on this thing are gonna be anywhere between$114 to$135, depending upon your credit. We won't know until we do a soft credit poll, wanna move forward and they're like, oh, geez. Yeah.'cause I don't want to take$10,000 out of the bank, right? Especially these days and there's no prepayment penalty. Would you like that on a 12 month, same as cash, no interest? Or would you like to pay it over time with no prepayment penalty? Which one of those two options will work better for you? I'll probably pay it off in 12 months, but let's just take the longer one. I would say so too because, and then I would educate them on what a default rate is, right? Yeah. So I wanna educate the contractors that look, it's fine, Mr. Smith, if you don't, if you want no interest and you wanna do 12 months, same as cash. However, if you don't pay it off in 12 months, it's gonna default to 17.99%. Will that work for you? Then you'd be quiet and they go, no, perfect. Let me explain the program that we should give you. Then. This one's awesome, by the way. This is real. 12 months, no interest, no payment. On month 13, it converts to a 7, 9, 9, fix one 20. That's$121 per 10,000. So imagine this dude. You buy the 10,000 air conditioner. This is cool. This is called a hybrid loan. You buy the 10, the 10,000 air conditioner, and for 12 months you look at your wife and you go, you ready to burn it? She's like, yeah, burn it. And you burn the statement For 12 months in a row. No payments. No payments. No payments. And a month 13, it converts to a 7, 9, 9. The payment's 1 21 a month and you start making your payments to pay your air conditioner off. And then you sell your house in six months and you make, you know,$355,000.'cause you're in a great equity position and you basically had a free air conditioner for two years. You know, like that's a hybrid loan. Those are super cool. Now I like those. And here's the reason why this protects the consumer. If they don't make the payments within a promotional period. They, it's called defaults. I hate that word. It's horrible. But anyway, it's real, it's truth. By the end of the promo, that's why I cut promotional, period. If you don't pay it off, it rolls over to a freaking ridiculously high interest rate. But these hybrids protect the consumer. I. And the interest doesn't even accrue for a year. So these hybrids are awesome. So when I train contractors on how to get financing, how to offer it, how to sell it, get'em set up, put the lender in place, train their team, get'em motivated, market the hell out of it, make more money, help more customers with affordability, I always try to get them to put at least one or two in the bucket in their offer to consumers because it protects the consumer. It also protects the contractor. You know why? When that customer in 18 months from now, or 24 months or 12 months from now, would get a 17.99 or a 29% interest rate, guess what they do? They don't get mad at the lender. Right. They get mad at contract. That's right.'cause he ripped me off. He's one that sold, he's the one that sold. It's so, you may think you have, you've made this customer happy and they're giving you five star reviews and you're going out there to do the AC tech thing that you do twice a year or the roof inspections. They're gonna be happy until the 13th month if you don't put'em in a hybrid program to protect them. So, yeah, sorry if I'm talking a lot. That's what it's all about, dude. Well, I know, but podcasts you're supposed to, you talk, I talk, we talk. I just talked for, I just talked for 30 minutes. You've probably been on a lot of podcasts where the host just talks over to you and I just don't do that shit. No. I was on one once where I wanted to get up and walk out, though I'm sure. Think the guy was snorting cocaine. He was acting erratic. It was facing Damnit. Eric Damnit. Eric Obra. What the fuck was he? Oh, it wasn't Eric. I, no, I know that. I know Eric's my boy. I was on the phone with him today. We were cutting it up. He's such a good dude. I was just with him in Houston. I made him come have dinner with me after he spent like three days doing really grueling activities. I made him come have dinner with me and then I made him pay. I think that we recruited a guy while we're at dinner that he could hire. So it was kind of a wash. Sounds like it. But waiter was awesome. I told Eric, I go, dude, you better hire this guy. Or I'm gonna, you know, if it wasn't for Eric, I wouldn't have got back in to aa. Yeah. Like it, you know, that dude really turned, he really, he spoke into my soul. Yeah. We talk all the time, man. And you know, I was on his show sharing my story. Right. That's how I know you. It was 15 years. I was stuck in the, I was stuck in the dark for 15 years, man. And I don't live in regret. However, I. How dare you say. Say like, how dare you steal time from your daughter and sharing stories and helping people, like I still was a good human being, but how dare you? Like how dare I do that? Man, the, all the people that are suffering and have had their lives cut short and I was just stuck in kind of a dark place for 15 years, but you know what? The only thing that I can do right now, It's do what I'm doing right now moving forward, because I can't go back there and fix the person that was staring out the window paranoid. No. Only thing I can do is say, Hey, man. Here's my story. Do you need help Lena? On me, man, I love you. You can get through this. I'm here to help you, but I can, like my wife is reminding me that says,'cause I've been very stressed this week, kind of had a bad week. I'm not on, and she reminded me of why I am doing what I'm doing with my business. Why I took the risk, why went all in, why burn the boats? Why I walked away from a 350,000 hour salary and went to back town to Ground zero, building a software company up from nothing. Bootstrapped, no investors. I want to help people and I want to give back, and I've got a passion to do this and I'm gonna do it. So anyway. Well, yeah, dude I get that. It's you know, it. Not everybody's like you and me. Like not everybody's like, not everybody can hold on to the dream of building something. The grind of building something, the constant ups and fucking downs and smacks in the face, like it's a, it is, it's something that, it's hard. I don't give a shit what anybody says. Let me ask you, do you have a good circle? Like do you have a guy that you can call and go, bro, I'm getting my teeth kicked in today, man. A hundred percent. Yep. You do. I do too. Yeah. I have a really good group of circle and you know what? I know that they're not gonna think less of me as a man. They're gonna go, bro, I've been there. It's okay. It's normal. It's a roller coaster. You're gonna get through it. Keep pushing, keep climbing, man. Like Joel. So here's keep climbing. So here's the thing though. I've had that circle for a long time, except for I wasn't honest. Yeah, I wasn't honest enough to call and say I was getting my tick kicked, my teeth kicked in. Yeah. I, my ego and my pride held on to the fact that I didn't want people to know. Yeah. And that's worse. Do you think that we are in a, and I'm not talking about fake vulnerability, that was big in like 2018, 2019, when everybody was coming up, like Sean Whalen was coming up with a story to tell everybody about how he wanted a gun in his mouth, and it was really big to be fake, vulnerable and really play off of it. I think that there's a movement happening right now, number one, I think Christ and God and Jesus and faith is coming into our space. Stronger than it's ever done. But I also think that people are being really vulnerable and honest now about, Hey man, things aren't that great. You know, I'm suffering from this right now. And I think that there's an exce there's some, a movement that's happening.'cause I've had more honest conversations with people that are just like, bad month man. It's all right. And I see it and I hear it. I love it. We still know that those gurus are out there on the rented cars all over. They're kind of going down a little bit. Now, I think there's more people that are just like, Hey, I'm self-employed. It ain't always fun. It ain't easy. But I know that I'm doing this for a reason, so I love it. I had to stop, I had to stop following all those people. I had to stop. I had to stop fucking with'em because and back to your, let me just, let me get into the Christ thing really quick. You know, I didn't even know. I didn't know Christ. I thought it was, you know, I've always prayed to God but somebody pointed out something really important to me. They said, you know, everybody believes in God. Everybody believes in God but it's your, and this is kind of how he put it to me. It's like, you know, you, your ego won't, will allow you to pray to God, but your ego won't allow you. To, to kneel before Jesus. And he was a hundred percent correct. Yep. And so I got saved, I don't know, probably three months ago, something like that. And it, you know, I can't tell you that I'm not walking in the valley of, millions of dollars since that happened. Right. Lots of things have changed, but one of the main things that's changed is I have the ability to be honest with people. Yeah. And that is powerful. Oh it's massive. It's a, it's awesome because there's nothing better than, it's like you sleep so well at night'cause you're not living this a fake imposter in impo real people talk about imposter syndrome. I'm like, stop. Right. You're full of shit. You're being, you're just, it's, you're not being an imposter. You're being like real. And I think that being real and sharing and helping is like kind of, so it's like cool now I agree. It attracts a lot more, the, your circle's really an awesome circle once you start being really honest. And I find it really powerful now that if somebody isn't right for me and I know it, I just get'em outta my circle now and I don't even think about it anymore. And sometimes I'll do it if I find that I'm following somebody to not be a champion of them, and I'm following them to see if I could poke holes in them. I'll even separate myself from them because it's wrong for me to do that. And I don't know why I would go to that person's site to be like, I wonder if he's doing well or not. And that's telling me, well, do you want him to do well? Are you a champion or are you going over there to see if he's failing? And I've taken some people outta my life because it's wrong for me to think that way about them. Yeah. And being totally honest, I've removed people my life just simply because. Person. I don't care for the person. They maybe don't care about me. So look, let's, there's 6.9 ERs. There's a lot of billions of people out there. We don't have to be in each other's circles, but I don't want to obsess and go look at your page to see how well or how horrible you're doing That does no energy in anything good in my life. So I've been practicing a lot of that. I learned that from Ed. Millet, by the way, is you, we're in control of our circle. We really are. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I've met more people on fa do social media. People are like, oh, social media. I'm like, no. Like meeting you, meeting Eric, going and having dinner with him, sharing stories, reaching out when I'm not feeling so good. There's a group of people that've met online that I think are gonna be my friends forever. Like they're real people man. And I'm just so blessed that I have social media'cause I've met some really cool cats, man. It's so fascinating the people that, that, that will behind, let's call it in the dms. I did a post two or three weeks ago that just talked about, you know, I didn't really know who I am. I've, I'll have a face for you. I'll have a face for the next person. I'll just be a different person because I'm a great salesperson. So to my, to I say that because it's not served me well.'cause I'm a pretty damn good actor. So I can tell you things are great and you'll believe that. Yeah, of course. But that, that, that doesn't do any, that doesn't do anything for me other than just push me further down. Yeah. Yeah. And so I did a post it just, and I just kind of laid it out there. I mean, I really laid it out there. Worst thing I ever have in my life. And the people that have come out from that, that are like, I can't believe you put that up there, but I've had this, or I'm dealing with that, or I. It's pretty fascinating. And I feel like it's a, you know, a blessing to me when somebody can then share whatever that thing is they're dealing with me. You're teaching someone else. It's okay for them to let it go too. Yeah. I didn't think about it when I when I went on. And you're let, and then there's other people that hate you for it, by the way. Oh, for sure. But you know what, it's your circle. Damnit. It's your circle That's. So when I came out and I told my story about being addicted to cocaine and drugs for 15 years, and I cured myself of it and walked away cold Turkey many years ago and never looked back. My mom watched a podcast where I just openly talked about it and she was so upset, bro.'cause yeah. I told her that I had overcome addiction, but I never sat her down and said, mom, here's what I did. It was from a Friday night till a Sunday, and I was addicted, and I never leave the apartment in California. I was working for banks. Like I was a professional, banker that was addicted to cocaine. I never told her like the story. She knew I over, she probably thought I was like smoking weed, right? And I stopped smoking weeded, right? She called me. She was so upset. She's 76 and she's like, honey, what? What will the people say back in where we grew up? And I said, I don't care. I don't care. Hopefully some, I said, hopefully somebody wants a story that's been through what I've been through, and they know that they're gonna be able to come out on the other side.'cause they have the power to do it and the people and the support to do it. Like, mom, this is what it's all about. We just lean in on people and we help people. And she, at the end of it, she's like, oh my God, that's beautiful. But man, she was really upset. She's like, I'm embarrassed. And what if the people find out from my church and I'm like, You come from a different era, man. Mom, I love you. I needed to let this go. I'm helping people'cause I'm helping release it from myself and not holding myself in ransom and in prison The rest of my life I've had more people reach out to me and walk up to me at trade shows. And I just spoke down in Houston from the stage and I said, we've had a lot of people commit suicide and I'm here. And a guy walked up to me afterwards. He is like, bro, thank you so much. He goes, I will reach out to you. So that person was hurting. I don't know if I'd saved his life, but I'd made an impact in his life. And he walked up to me, he goes, thank you so much for delivering that message today. I needed to hear it. And he said, I'm gonna connect with you and if I ever need anybody, I'm gonna contact you.'cause you said it was okay. So I think I might have changed or saved someone's life. And I didn't. And it wasn't even, my mission, it was what God said through me.'cause when I go up on stage, I just go. So anyway, it's almost like you gave him a ace in the hole, right? He knows now he's got the number, he's got the contact that if he needs it, and that could be all he needed. That's it. Just to know that there's one person out there that can call that went through some really shitty shit. Yeah. Yeah, dude it's really powerful. I love it. Yeah, dude. A hundred percent. Alright, well we kind of went off in a whole different direction than, well, I don't anticipate anything. I never know what's gonna happen, but this is, dude, this has been a great conversation. So this will work your product just to kind of wrap everything up. Your blue Pages will work for any contractor for the customer. They really don't have to do shit, right? They just have to put it on their no. Contractors have to do the work, right? So, okay. Thank God they do. Right?'cause nothing should be easy. That easy, right? They still, we're gonna build this thing. We're gonna teach you about financing. We're gonna give you, we're gonna get you enrolled with a lender. We're gonna teach you how to sell. You're gonna get a portal. You're gonna get a mobile app. You're gonna get digital business cards. You're gonna have this tool that we call a Blue Page. We're gonna integrate it to your website. It's gonna be out there in the stratosphere, www. But you still have to show up and work still. Well, no. I Let me, so I was just saying like, they don't have to do any of the pay. They don't have to, it's not a pain in their side to have, this is what, that's what I mean. No, you just gotta do it. But it's easy. Seriously, let's be honest. I'm glad you brought this up. I could send an enrollment link to somebody and it costs them absolutely nothing to enroll with a lender and it'll just sit in the inbox. Why? Because people don't take action, man. They need it. They want it. They know they have to have it because they got customers that want affordability. And I'll send the link to'em and I'll get'em inspired and excited to do it. But they gotta go in, they gotta open it up and they gotta go find their e i n number. And when did we get incorporated Phyllis? I don't know. I'll go get the folder. Oh, ring okay. Yeah, right. So, oh, squirrel. Hotdog in the hallway. Yeah. They still have to take action. Right. Once they take action though, I'm gonna make it happen. Yeah. That's what, that was the point. I wanna make it clear that like, it's not a lot of work dude, for a contractor, like, it's not like you gotta do a whole bunch of stuff. It costs nothing to get enrolled for financing except some attention. Right? Like, and I'll teach you how to sell it. And if you say, well, the financing programs have dealer fees, no. What we'll do is we'll take all the ones that have dealer fees, We'll get rid of'em and we'll give you the five or six or seven that have no the other fees. You can go to market with that and then you'll fall in love with financing. And then you're gonna wanna offer other different hybrid programs that might cost the customer money. They're like, well, I don't want to pay the X number of percent, but you're paying 3% or four, whatever it is. The visa every time, like, yeah, so already paying. Let's talk about that for a, I love, so you into Macy's and you wanna buy your wife a purse. Okay, and the purse is hanging on the wall. Here's the purse. That's the purse. And you take it down and you walk up to the lady and you put it on the counter at Macy's and you lean in and you look at the lady and you go, I'm gonna buy that for my wife. I'm paying cash today. So here's the deal. It says it's a thousand dollars, but I'm paying cash, so I want you to give this to me for 700. And the cashier, she's this young, cute girl, and she's 19, and she looks at you and goes, okay, that'll be a thousand dollars sir. That's my point. So this purse from Macy's has dealer fees built into it. Here's the reason why. They have no idea how you're gonna transact when you go up to the counter to buy it. Do they care that you're handing$700 cash? Do they care that you're handing an insurance check? Do they care that you're paying by a paper credit card? Discover Amex, MasterCard, visa, apple. They don't care. The price is a thousand dollars. Now Amex, this one is 3.25. This one's 2.75. This one is X. This one's Y. The credit card companies may charge a different merchant fee on that. Let's say that they're all under three. It's already built into the purse. That's right. So when contractors tell me, I don't pay dealer fees, I, all of my customers pay cash. I say, cool. Understand, we've got no dealer free programs that'll work for you. But let me ask you a quick question. Do you accept credit cards? And they'll go, absolutely. Been doing it for years, and I go, awesome. Because we have services for that too. But no, I'll say, How much are you building into your retail book now when you do credit card? Oh, nothing. And I go, oh God. So you've been stealing 3% from yourself for all these years. Why a hundred percent consumers pay for financing within the price of the product? Because financing is a product just like a nail on a roof. The nail is built into the contract nails, products, shing, tile metal financing is part of the contract price because the consumers buying. A product and within the product are things that cost money. Financing is built into the price because it's a product, it's a means to get something done so you can very easily as a contractor build 10% into your retail book. You're selling air conditioners today for$10,000 without financing. On Monday, you sell the same air conditioner for 11,000. And now you can offer 15 programs that are under a 10% dealer fee and stop losing money on credit card swipes, and that's called zero cost averaging at the end of the year. Because if 80% of your jobs are closed under a no dealer fee program and you've built 10% in, you can see how you can get a queue throughout the year at zero cost average. At the end of the year, we closed 80%. On no dealer fee programs, we closed 5% on programs that cost 5%. We closed 10% on programs that cost eight and 3% of the jobs were at 10. We are winner chicken dinner, man,'cause 80% of them closed with that hire where you're making an extra thousand dollars per 10,000. Anyway, we do zero cost averaging to show the contractors, this is how you do it and you don't lose money and you keep your p and l super happy. That's it. Yeah, but it, yeah it, but you're you're exactly right. You're a hundred percent, hundred percent. This is a little dude. I went, talked to contractors just like this. You go into the, what you buy, the person, they start thinking, they're like, everything's got dealer fees, your gasoline, your food, your grocery stores, because they don't know how you're gonna pay when you get to the register. And they ain't gonna risk not making their dealer fee or whatever fee. Right. They have to bake. They have to bake it in. They have to bake it in. Everything's gotta baked in. This damn water. Had it baked in. Yeah, for sure. Oh, well anyway. Yeah, dude, you're a hundred percent right, so Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Totally. Alright, Chris, where can people find you? My man? Where can they find Blue Pages? I probably should probably get like a link from you. Yeah. Blue. Yeah, it's cool. I'll send you a link or something. And Blue Pages Pro. Just visit the website and that's us. If you're on the social medias like Facebook, it's, I think I'm under Christopher Scoville. Can't miss me. I'm balding, I'm ugly. I don't really do the Instagram. I'm under there, Chris Scoville and then I'm on LinkedIn. I've learned something interesting with LinkedIn. You go over there and just be nice to people and have fun and not be a stiff guy with a tie. It's a lot of fun'cause they ain't used to it. My engagement on LinkedIn is fire because I treat LinkedIn just like I do the social medias, funny videos, some memes every now and then, me being super passionate, dropping some F-bombs. Sorry, Lord, like. They're not used to it over on LinkedIn, and I'll get vice president, senior vice president, C-suite level venture capital. People call me going, dude, you're crazy, but you got our but you got our attention. Let's talk. Right. So I'm crushing it on LinkedIn. It's like Joey, it's like Joey Yaks freaking commercials. Yeah, right. You know Joey Yak? Yeah, I know him. He does the crazy contractor commercials that are just ridiculous. But you can't help but to watch'em. Who are some of your mentors? Some of my mentors, well, ed and Andy were for years Yeah. With ate. Yeah. Yep. And then I joined, I moved over from there to Sean. So Lance then. Yep. Yep. And then I moved away from all of them. Yeah. I'm on that path. And it's not that I have anything against Ed, Andy, Sean Brian Stewart, like I've got nothing against any of them. I think that I've gotten to a point to a level where now I get to go to YouTube and study, right? Right. Like some days I need motivation, so I go to, you know what I do for motivation? Some days I wanna learn from Alex for moey and I want to be in completely inspired on something'cause he's very knowledgeable. Some days I need Ed. In my year. Some days I wanna go back to 2017 or 16 and hear Andy. I get to pick who my mentor is now, but I'll tell you what I have done. I've eliminated a ton. Yeah. I've learned. I've learned who's real, who's not real, who's copying people, who's regurgitating their stuff over and over again. And it's really easy to see the fakes now. And like Jay Abraham, I, I love Jay Abraham'cause he's so old school and he doesn't even know what it is to be fake. Right. Like Dan Kennedy. Some of the guys that. Just wouldn't even know what fake means. I like learning specifics now. So I think I'm, after I'm done with this year, I'm done with coaching. Yeah. I li I listen to a lot of books. You know, I spend. I mean, I probably listen to at least two books a week and I always listen to'em twice'cause I have a d h, adhd. And do you listen? Do you listen when you work out? Yeah. Do you take note? Do you take notes? No, that's why I listen to it twice. So you'll work out and listen to a book? A hundred percent. My wife does. She's like, how do you work out listening to podcasts? I go, this is the only way to do it. Whatcha talking about? Yeah, like music just seemed like a, I listen. You know, it's so funny, dude, like I've just shifted. I've just shifted. Like, I want if I'm not on a call, I wanna be learning, I wanna be learning how to get better.'cause shit's moving so fast, like, No, I need to be smarter. I wanna be smarter. And the only way I know how to do that is to listen to books. Isn't it interesting, like when I was in high school, I couldn't care less about learning and I'm absolutely do now and I'm addicted to it. Addicted. I'm addicted to learning and podcasts and it's weird. I go through cycles where I'll be listening and then like just this last week, I've been through some rough. Some anxiety and some stressors, and I'm letting things get, and I'm like, okay, I can fix this. So I'm, maybe I'm praying a little bit harder or I'm listening to Elevation Church or I'm listening to the motivation stuff and it's getting me out of it. Right. And then next week I'll probably be back up on my high level of awesomeness and I'll be like back listening to Alex Hermo learning some business shit. But I like the fact that I've gotten dialed in on who I listen to and who I learn from now. It's cool. Don't ask you about a book, do you? So do you listen to books? No, I read'em and write notes. That's why I asked you to take notes. That makes sense. Alright, so I'm gonna give you a book next time. And look, I think you'll, I really think you'll, you will resonate with this book. It's called, give It to Me brother, I'll write it down right now. It's called Ragamuffin Gospel and you know it's, yes. It's called Ragamuffin Gospel by b Brendan Manning. And the gist of it is, You know, it's a guy just like me and you who got to the top. He was a preacher and ultimately fell. Right. And he talks about, he goes through, you know, it's a biblical book for sure. Yeah. It's the most, one of the most powerful books I've ever read. Muff Gospel. I love it. There's a, oh, you know, there's a movie about it actually, so come on. There's also, yeah, there's also a movie. That's excellent. Oh, Google it. Yeah. Is it called, it's not called Ragamuffin Gospel, I think it is. Just look, Brendan Manning is his, is the guy's name. It, okay. The guy I'm trying to think of the name of the song. It's amazing. Something. God's amazing God. I'd be amazing. God, I can't. I have terrible voice. No, your voice is freaking horrible. Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about though? No, but you really sound good, like you're a real good salesperson, but your voice is horrible. How? Yeah, it's not really good. I don't know dude. It's not very good. Not very good at all, dude. So it there, it's a song. They play it in church all the time. Like what? You'll know it's called Amazing God or something like that. I'll look it up. Hear it? Yeah. When you hear it, it'll be like, oh yeah, I know exactly what he's talking. But this guy is the one that start that, that performed that song or created it or whatever. I would assume he's reggae'cause of rag. No, he's got Oh, his rich. Rich. What's rich? Ragamuffin is reggae though, isn't it? Ragamuffin, it's ragamuffin like, like, dish rag. Sort of interesting. You, dude, you really peaked. You did a good job at hanging out there to get me all peaked up on this. So I'm, when we hang up here, I'm going to go look, I'm going on the Google. Good.'cause that's one thing that you won't find on the Blue Pages Pro is about the That's right. It'll be a good book, dude. It really will. I appreciate it. I'll check it out. Thank you my friend. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on, man. This has been really fun and energetic and I needed this today. I appreciate that my friend.