Business Evolution and Resilience: Roland Ligtenberg Explains How Housecall Pro Thrives Amid Challenges

What could possibly compel a group of individuals to tattoo a company logo on their bodies? Imagine a platform so pivotal to your business that you'd proudly ink its emblem on your skin. Prepare for an enlightening conversation with Roland Ligtenberg, co-founder of Housecall Pro, a game-changing platform that originated from the simple need for a better way to find a plumber. Roland shares the birth and development of Housecall Pro, painting a vivid picture of how this tool has transformed the lives of home service professionals. He also introduces us to the Super Pro program, an exclusive club for Housecall Pro's biggest evangelists, complete with unique benefits such as being able to test new features and enjoy an SEO boost for their businesses.

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a pit of writer's block? Or maybe you've longed for a way to automate the monotonous tasks that eat up your day? Roland is here to give us an insight into how Housecall Pro is harnessing the power of AI to revolutionize its product offering. From dynamic texts and emails to automating roofing estimates and Facebook lead forms, AI is becoming the ultimate game-changer, freeing up precious time for pros to focus on what matters most.

And what happens when an unexpected global pandemic strikes? Roland enlightens us about the necessity of adaptability and resilience, sharing how Housecall Pro's product and marketing teams navigated the choppy waters of COVID-19. From handling customer reviews to providing flexible payment options, you'll learn how this company is dedicated to continuously evolving, adapting, and providing the best possible service to its users. Tune in for a remarkable journey into the world of home service professionals and the tools that propel them to new heights.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:31

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, cory Barrier, and I am here with my man, roland Lightenburg. What's up, roland? Hey, how are you doing, cory? Good, my man Roland, you know what. You probably can tell everybody a little bit more about you than I can, so I'll let you introduce yourself and then we'll dive right in.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Sure thing Again. My name is Roland Lightenburg, one of the co-founders of Housecall Pro. We help tens of thousands of home service companies operationalize and better systematize their business with our software. Technically it's called a Field Service Management software, but we do so much more because we've got different business solutions also that we empower pros with. But we've been in the business now since 2013, so 10 years. So it's been a decade and we've grown tremendously and we've got our own private Facebook groups and all kinds of different super pros and all kinds of fun stuff. So I'm excited to talk to you today, cory, and whatever you want to ask whether it's about our pros, whether it's about our business or the software or some of the things that we can do Open buck here to share.

Speaker 1: 3:31

Well, so you just triggered something for me. I have clients that use Housecall Pro obviously, one of which I think pretty well, which is Jason Julian, and I've talked, obviously, to Jason countless times and he gets so jacked about the super pros group and I don't really know if every field service software does that, but if they do, I'm not totally aware of it. So can we get a little bit more about what that is and why that's different from the other group?

Speaker 2: 4:05

Sure, we have multiple different groups, multiple different communities, but our super pros are our biggest evangelists and there's probably I don't know, there's a small single digit percent of our overall base that can even qualify to become a super pro. So you have to apply to get into it and once you are in the program you get all kinds of different benefits. Some of the benefits are you get to do all the alphas and the betas. You get your own special group. You get special support. You get to talk directly to the product managers, right. You get to trial all kinds of different stuff before it's even something we decide to build. And then we also do all kinds of things like there's a bunch of SEO benefits and things like that, where we're able to do super pro spotlights, different social media things that we do link back to the pros websites really give them a big boost there. So there's a whole bunch of different benefits of the super pro program. But it's wild to where we've got a bunch of super pros that have gone super pro logo tattooed on their body. So I never thought that would happen, but we must be doing something right if our pros are willing to do something like that, and so that's super awesome and it's great to have a super pro community where we get to really listen to the feedback of our best customers or most engaged customers. Our customers are growing the fastest, that are really insightful, that care about the progression of our software, and so we love all the feedback that we get. They turn into what we do and then we go build it.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Beth, dude, that's tremendous. It's funny, jason was telling me that. Well, let me back up for a second. The fact that people get this tattooed on their body, that dude that says like I can't remember who I was listening to. It wasn't long ago and they said if you can build a brand where people will actually tattoo the logo on their body, you've done something right. Mm-hmm, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2: 5:44

That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah, there's a happy to send a link. You can watch it later if other people want to see that. You can put it in your show notes if you want, but it's amazing. That's really cool.

Speaker 1: 5:55

So what made you get into this industry? Just had a curiosity.

Speaker 2: 5:59

Sure, yeah. So I've got other co-founders, and my previous CEO hit him as a co-founder. His dad was in the painting business, so he grew up watching his dad paint, and I actually had a painting business in college as well to help pay the bills. But that wasn't the real reason why we're getting in the industry. It was originally. We were working at a big company called Qualcomm, and Qualcomm, if you're not familiar, it's not just a stadium that the charges no longer play out, it's actually a. If you think about it, it's a chip company without really any manufacturing. They've got all the IPs, so if you have any kind of phone in front of you, qualcomm's making a cut of the phone. And so we were working there. And when we were working there, we were like, ah, wouldn't it be nice if we just find a plumber? Super easy, click a button, boom, it would show up. And this was back in 2013, when Uber was like still a black car. And so we're like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if you click a button and boom, the plumber would show up and it'd be a great plumber and you just pay them and then you don't even need to bring out your checkbook, because that sucks. So that's where we started. And then, as we were building that, we're like, oh my gosh, none of these home service people, they've got good software to run their business. That's the opportunity. That's the opportunity. And so we really dove down deep into that, and so we became a house called pro and we launched that in 2015 and we're off to the races. So that's the Genesis story.

Speaker 1: 7:12

That makes sense. That makes total sense. Software is not easy to build. I think a lot of people believe I don't know what a lot of people think I could tell you what I thought. I didn't realize how complicated software was. I'm not really a software guy, so that gets. It makes sense. But software is, but it's a lot of work to get it to work the way it's supposed to work. Like I didn't realize how much I saw dove in the AI space, Not like dove head first into the AI space, I guess back in November, and I built an MVP for call centers. Well, it didn't go anywhere because I got to the MVP portion and I'm like Jesus. I'm like I'm a sales guy, I'm not a software guy, and so I didn't realize how much breaking and trying and testing that you've got to do after that and it was a good idea, but I just wasn't able to fulfill it. Long story short, what are you guys doing? What are you guys doing right now with AI? Is that something that you're obviously you're looking at it?

Speaker 2: 8:16

Yeah, there's a lot of different aspects of the business that were really starting to utilize AI, and a lot of different parts of our product now have AI baked into it, and one of the new ones that's coming out is our marketing center. That allows pros to send out dynamic texts, dynamic emails, to customers, and the biggest thing is getting over that writer's block. So we've got that built in, which takes a bunch of the data that we have and really high performing emails high performing and click through texts to help pros get through that writer's block. What message do you want to send to what customer, at what time, and how do you want to say it different to customers that have been around for five years, versus your new customers that you just got, versus ones that you haven't talked to in years? You want different messages, different folks, and so before you have to craft all this individual messages for each one, you have to cradle the sub segments and do it all the right way. But with AI, you click a button and it comes up with some pretty great stuff just out of the box when it's connected to all these great data sources. So at High School Pro, we're thinking a lot about how do you leverage the power of AI with the data that you already have to then come up with something new, which? is different than just going to chat to you and just doing your own prompting, because that's good and that's the beginning, but the reality is you can train it on so much more, and so, at House Call Pro, we've got a lot of data that we can help leverage to get some amazing results for our customers, for our pros.

Speaker 1: 9:35

For sure. I'm actually glad you brought that specifically up. So with the guy that I'm working with outside of my coaching and consulting, and because I've been into space for a little bit, I'm just, I'm buried in it. So have you ever heard of a company called Roofle? I haven't heard of Roofle. So Roofle does like roofing estimates, right, they do. They spit out. If you go to their site or if it's embedded on another website, you can fill out the contact form. It shoots over the information. It shoots back pretty good estimate, right. And so what we've done is we've taken that process and from a Facebook normal lead form, which everybody knows what a Facebook lead form is. Essentially, when you click on an ad, it will take the information, your information, pre-fill it, shoot it over to the Roofle website, shoot it back and, in the like you're saying, in an email format, with all that information within 15, 20 seconds. So it's pretty amazing, it's like it's pretty wild.

Speaker 2: 10:44

So it definitely is. There's a lot of options that have opened up. So I think there's a lot of things that a lot of home service companies they have employees work on that don't need to be worked on, that AI can just take so they can focus on higher leverage tasks, things that you can't throw out. Ai ads, the soft skills, the things that you teach to. They're so important to a part of any business, but particularly the home service business. It's not just being able to turn the wrench, but it's a customer centric business, and so you got to learn the ins and outs and that we should focus on and let AI do the more monotonous stuff, and also it's pretty creative. So if you ever have a block or you don't have to solve something, what AI knows a lot. But you got to work within the prompts and so we're thinking about well, what are those tasks that find out the commission of all the systems that Jason sold in the last three months that don't include a free tune up? Okay, that'd be really cool if you could get that answer really quick and we're building that out so you can just ask it. You can just ask Housecall Pro. We'll do that, but we leverage AI to do those kinds of components.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Yeah, 100%. So one thing that we've done with Jason through Housecall Pro is the unpaid invoices. Like we fixed it now to where he gets an email once a week and at the first of the month with all the unpaid invoices, so he doesn't have to go in look for it. It shortcuts the process and it's really simple. Stuff like that Well, I say simple, not simple to build out, but when I say simple, like it makes the contractor's life so much more simple. And let's just be honest, most contractors are very like me. They have ADHD, which is part of the reason I like working with all contractors, because they are just like me. I just don't know how to swing it, Burn a wrench or swing a hammer, that is. It's huge to get clarity through organization that you don't really have to think about a ton. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 12:41

Yeah, look like anytime I tell people where do you find opportunities that you can leverage AI for? The best thing is like okay, if you had a thousand interns right now, what would you have work on? Oh well, I have to go through my old database and I go find all the customers with that I've given estimate, but then I followed up with once, but then not after that. Okay, like that's easy to do, okay, and then I have that tell the intern to come up with some clever message to like find a way to get them to book something. Okay. Well, yeah, I can do that, right, and so there's a lot of things. But then once you get to the home, right, once you get to the home, that's when you got to work your own magic. But everything before then, what can you automate some of those pieces and how do you make it very specific to that one individual customer? And if you use something like house call pro, you might have the notes. So a lot of the best pros that use house call pro, I see like in the notes they'll put like the dog's name is pooch, the wife's name is Sandra, and they they prefer wearing booties in the house because they're like need free. Well, you can put that into AI as preferences, right, and then when you come up with a message, it can be targeted to them, that's custom to them, that makes them feel like you actually know who they are. Well, who do you think they're going to buy from the person that they think knows them? Or the just random, faceless and nameless truck with some white letters? And so those are just some things that you can start to leverage, but that's the easiest way to start to identify areas where AI can help you in your business.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Totally, I know, I 100% agree. The other thing that this, by accident, through this process, what we found was there was and I may mess this up, but basically there was part of the something wasn't sinking with the numbers. I don't know exactly what it was, but through this process we figured out it wasn't. I don't even think you knew it wasn't sinking right and it was like a week off, and I'm not saying I don't think it was a house call pro thing. I actually, again, I don't remember what the issue was, but it was really interesting going through this and then discovering that, well, now this solves another problem. That makes sense, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:54

Yeah, look, you can use all kinds of different methods to double check the work that you've previously done, and, as humans, we're all foul, we'll make mistakes, and so what better than have a machine double check your work and even have the machine check the machine? Now, all of a sudden, you're getting in this like whole meta conversation. But machines check the machines, it's the chance of it being wrong start to drop quite quickly. And so, yeah to this. To the extent you can leverage the things that they're good at, do that and then focus on the areas that are soft skills, interpersonal skills, the ability to make homeowners feel like they've got options and choices and they're fully educated in all different paths that they can take. That's going to help you with the end goal, which is the selling of your services.

Speaker 1: 15:35

You've still got to render a great service.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Right, you've still got to go do a good job, but it helps you focus on the things that really lift the numbers versus the things that sure they help your business, but they just make you feel busy. But feeling busy for busy work isn't going to change your life.

Speaker 1: 15:50

Definitely not, and I look at this like it's a. It actually can do the job of multiple team members. Quite frankly, I wonder how some industries are going to survive Like. I wonder how, like copywriting like you can, if you ask it the right way, if you prompt the AI the right way, it'll write something just like you would write it if you were an author. Or, like I am an author, it would write it just like I would write right, if you ask it the right way. So I don't know, man. I think it's going places that we don't even know, but I don't think people need to be scared of it because I don't. It's not. We're not in the terminator world, don't be wrong, it's closed but we're not in like, where the bots are going to start killing people, and I think that's where people's mind goes, and maybe it's because they watch the news. I'm not sure. I don't watch the news personally, but Well, either a friend, or understand the bot or don't.

Speaker 2: 16:44

On which side do you want to be on? It's a simple choice.

Speaker 1: 16:48

But how long do you think it's going to be before? It's not really a choice, because this is moving pretty quick.

Speaker 2: 16:54

It moves super quick, and so is there really even a choice? In my estimation, probably not. So what's the saying? Make hay, make a. What is that saying, yeah, just go do it, go learn it. I think there's only a growth in being uncomfortable, and so this makes you uncomfortable. It's a good way to start to understand. Aha should go focus over there. If something's super comfortable, don't focus your energy there. This is not going to give you much returns, that's right.

Speaker 1: 17:17

So tell me about a time speaking of uncomfortable that in this last let's take decade in the business that maybe you just felt like everything was going to implode and I'm sure there's been multiple times like that. But I'm just curious, maybe, what one of those times would be and how did you handle that.

Speaker 2: 17:40

Sure, I'd say. When COVID first hit, really back in March and April of 2020, it was really hard for home services businesses is now, all of a sudden, everyone's like, oh my God, I can't let someone in my home. Well, what is home services? You're letting someone in your home Not all cases, right, maybe not landscape or the pool boy, but I'd say like in most cases, like what happens in that world. How can you, how can you live and make a business in that world? What do you do? That's a perfect example, for that's uncomfortable for all parties involved in what something that might have been working for your business and doing free in-home estimates. Well, guess what? They're not free estimates anymore. Can you see something via Google Maps, gps, and can you look at a roof and quote something without even having to show up. Can you do virtual estimates, can you do virtual consultations? Can you walk people through fixing their own thing, but you're their coach on the phone and use boom pop on a FaceTime. So I think that's a really great example of the industry potentially imploding. What does that mean for the industry? And then, on an individual pro level, how do you change your business? How do you adapt? You've got all these people now they're used to driving around. Well, where are they going to go? Customers not going to let them in the home. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? So I think that was a perfect example for a house called pro. What we did is we transformed a couple of different things on the product side and on the marketing side. On the product side, we decided to work in and I was like what can we do to help pros have these virtual interactions with customers, because they might not be able to go home? Things like virtual estimates, the ability to offer gift certificates for, like, future work, because everyone still needs to do work. It's not like, oh my God, covid's here, we're not using the bathrooms anymore. No, everyone's still using the bathroom, and at some point there was going to be an issue, so something's going to have to happen. So from the product side, there's a bunch of product work that we did. On the marketing side of it. We said, all right, what can we do to get more information out to the pros? We started to dissect all the stuff coming out on the PPP loans, eidl loans, sba banks that you should go to, which ones are approving, which ones are not. And so for us, our marketing team, like we changed so, reading a lot of legal docs and seeing what was coming out of Congress at the time, to give that information to our pros so they could be the first ones to take advantage of it. And so that was what we changed. On the marketing end, we did our own podcast and we got to interview some really special people on our podcast and, if you're curious, it's ProTalks and I'll get to interview, like Simon Sinek If you haven't heard of him, go look him up Mark Cuban and Jockel Willink, barbara Corker and some really great folks, alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford and Boeing, but we were able to interview a whole bunch of folks, get their take on the situation and get their advice and advice they were giving to their people and we syndicated out and put that back out into the pro community. So in that moment, covid, what do the pros do? What does the industry do? What does Housecall Pro do? There's three different examples that tie together how something that's very uncomfortable still results in growth and we saw some of the biggest booms in our business during those times. Sure, it took a couple of months to shake out a little bit, for people to get their footing again, but after that everything took off.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Yeah, you're right. A lot of people, by and large, a lot of people, got spoiled after that first little bit, especially HVAC, for sure, and now times have changed because I think the aftermath of that little disaster that we had in 2020 is hitting the market. So what are you seeing as far as growth inside of companies? Let's just take HVAC, for example. What are you seeing across the nation, across the board? What kind of? Are you seeing? A big drop, Of course. We're seeing a drop right in the amount of business people are doing. What are you seeing?

Speaker 2: 21:27

Well, I'd say the types of folk that really understand that using software to better your business. Those types of pros typically are a little more resilient to changes in macroeconomic trends, because they're the cream of the crop. They really think about the business, working on their business, not just in their business, delivering a really high customer experience, because the on my way texts, the text of the technicians that are showing up, the ability to pay online, the book online, and so a lot of pros, especially our pros, even though there is a little bit of slowdown, aren't as affected so much as we see some of the other pros or some of the newer pros that are coming to the platform. They're finally going to realize like yeah, the triple kit paper isn't really working out anymore. Just getting checks isn't really working out anymore because they hate chasing those things. So I'd say, by and large, the pros that are taking advantage of the latest technology in their business I think they tend to be more thoughtful pros and also find other ways to generate revenue, find other ways to differentiate in times when people are maybe a little more tight about their spending, and so I feel like the type of person that's welcoming any kind of opportunity. If there's a slowdown, there's always opportunity, and so I feel like a lot of our pros have found very clever things to do. I think consumer financing on our side is definitely taking off. I think a lot of people after they ran through their similar checks and easy money and easy loans and all that kind of stuff, then you start to dwindle. You start to dwindle and then what you get back into financing things, and so pros that aren't offering multiple options, pros that aren't offering financing, just because you don't like a dealer fee doesn't mean the customer has the money to be able to forge a service. So if you could give them something to allow them to afford it and you could give them a couple of different options. Why would you not? Why would you not? And so, if you don't, you're uncomfortable with that. Well, guess what? The pro that wasn't comfortable with it before that is offering it. You just sweeping up all your business. So I think that's a big catalyst for a lot of pros to start to try new and different things and really embrace what we call full fintech adoption. Your business is multifaceted. You need to make sure you've got all the avenues that a customer wants to pay. You should offer it. You should have gone. I don't want to do credit card because there's a credit card fee. No, man, if that's how a customer wants to pay because they think and guess what Credit cards know the game. They give points and that's obviously why there's a fee to it. Right, Because you're essentially paying for the points. But do you think the customer is going to spend more money if they know they're going to get more airline points for it? Yeah, but guess what? So it was a credit card company, so they give you more miles and like bonuses and five X on gas, and so everyone's trying to get the customer to spend more money. So why would you take yourself out of that mix? Because you're like I don't know about that 3% fee. No that's the way just business is done. Now I think you got to embrace that. It's uncomfortable. Is it costing you 3% or is it actually making you 13% more? Because that's what, on average, customers are spending when they're spending with credit card. Same with consumer financing, they're financing bigger things they would have never even conceived of buying, because no one's got 20K and just cash sitting around their bank account waiting for you to knock on their door. That's not realistic, and so I feel like those are ways where, if you're not using something like Housecall Pro, if you're not using software, if you're not using AI, if you're not make yourself uncomfortable with stuff that's outside of your wheelhouse a little bit, you're going to start to fall behind. And so my biggest goal, and the reason why I love what we do at Housecall Pro, is we champion all our pros and success, and so we make money off of our pros being successful. So everything we do is trying to make our pros successful. I show them up on a podcast and talk to someone such as yourself. That helps pros in other different ways. Right and developing soft skills the things that aren't necessary to turn the wrench are all very important for us.

Speaker 1: 25:32

Man, you really hit a nerve with financing. It's mind blowing to me when I talk to a contractor that says I don't want to pay the dealer fees. I'm like it's beyond me. Look, we are trained one to get things really fast. Amazon were also trained, at this stage of the game, to pay everything by the month. So I was working with a company not long ago and they were offering they would go and pitch the entire system price and I'm like how much since does that make Like to your point? It's $26,000. Why would you tell them it's $26,000 opposed to $450 a month? That makes zero sense. No clue, no clue, yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:22

So I think it comes down to if you haven't tried it and you're uncomfortable because you want to look like an idiot from your customer, my biggest advice is try it on a friend, try it on your spouse, try it on yourself, walk yourself through the system end to end. What does the flow look like? You don't actually have to sign the application, but see what it looks like on the other side, because once you see what it looks like on the other side, look at the end of the day, you're a consumer too. You're a homeowner too. You're buying all kinds of other services and whatever trade you're not doing. So put yourself in their shoes and then see how it feels and remember. People aren't going to remember was it $26,000?, was it $450 a month or $475 a month? You're just going to remember. You know what? When Corey came to my house, I felt like I knew exactly what I was getting. I got to pick what I wanted and I'm paying something that I could afford and that's it, and he gets a five star review. Next time someone asks me who don't want to come to my house, I was like Corey was great and I'm going to be like well, I got him from $26,000 down to $25,000 and there was a rebate and there was a no it wasn't none of that. But they're going to remember the experience. They're going to remember feeling comfortable and they're going to remember feeling like they were in control. Right the day where the one's making a decision, all you're doing is just helping them get to the right place. That's it.

Speaker 1: 27:30

That's it 100%. So it's interesting you bring that up about when you said the name. One of the things I noticed that you guys do is it seems like you encourage the technician to get the review because then people can go in and see Jim Bob, whoever, has X number of stars I can't remember exactly how it looks, but I think it was stars or reviews or whatever. I think that's massively beneficial, not only for the technician but for the company as a whole, because people don't care about the company, they care about you.

Speaker 2: 28:04

And that's why, with Houseball Pro, we really help service those customers that are doing 10 million a year and under. And when you're looking at those types of businesses, you know some people aren't buying from Rotor Reuter, people aren't buying from Benjamin Franklin. They're buying from Jason Julian and Julian Heanear and his last name is on the business. If anything goes wrong, he's going to make it right. And guess what? He personally trains each one of his technicians and Bobby that name, bobby keeps popping up in the reviews. And guess what? Bobby gets a nice little bonus every time his name pops up in a review. Why? Because it's a people business. People want to know that Bobby cares, he's at the business, he got great reviews and he works for Jason Julian at Julian Heanear and that's my local business and I want to support local business and I know that they do a bad job because they're local and I see them at the baseball game all the time. I'm going to run into them. They're not going to screw me over, not like a Benjamin Franklin or any hour AC or any of those other ones. Even though those other ones they might have more availability because they've got more technicians, because they got nothing to do, even though they might be available 24 seven because they've got a call center, that dispatch is after hours at some ridiculous rate. Like you still won't go in that direction, not if you're a serious home buyer or homeowner and you got to power that somehow. And you have to be consistent and with your employees. If you're not able to be consistent, you can't drive those reviews. If you can't drive those reviews can't compound in. Each business compounds over time. So as soon as you get started better. So you're not doing something. You're not able to do it every single job without you having to lift a finger. You're not really building a business. You're just going to get injured one day and then not have a lot. So if you're spending the time, do it right.

Speaker 1: 29:37

Yeah, a lot of guys are finding out, when they go to these PE groups or try to go to sell their business, that you are. You are the business and you've been the business for 25 years and you may have made two or three million dollars a year for the business, but when you're out, there is no business.

Speaker 2: 29:52

Yeah, I think it's going to be next time.

Speaker 1: 29:55

Yeah, so all right, let me shift gears for a second. Your review. You're the review platform that you guys use. I don't know the name of it. It's not a house call pro. It's integrated, right.

Speaker 2: 30:06

So with House Call Pro, we have our own built-in reviews and it comes with every single House Call Pro product and if there's other review products that you want to buy, you can. But the reality is it doesn't really matter. The difference between them is nothing. It's still the same link to, usually, your Google my Business looking, now called Google Business Profile, whatever the name is, whatever their call it. We're reflecting those reviews. This is a link to there, and what makes it work is that you do it on every job, and a lot of people will roll in this one customer, mary. She had all these 10 cats and she was so demanding. She's just that customer you don't want to ask a review of. But the reality is you just ask reviews of everybody or nobody, because she's probably not going to leave a review, or, if she does, the response and the way that you address it publicly in front of others is going to help people make a decision to pick your business over other businesses 100 times over any other positive review. And so you want all those reviews. You want those at bats. You want to show other customers or other potential homeowners that whatever happens, you'll make it right. So don't worry. And if you can show that publicly and online. You can only get that if you're asking everybody for reviews. So inside of Household Pro, we have the ability to help us solicit and go get those reviews and you get to pick percentage-wise if you want them to go more to Google or more to Facebook or if you want them to show up more on your website. Whatever you want, you can configure that Household Pro and you can also reply to them, and replying to them is probably the most critical piece. To feel like a lot of contractors don't do, I feel like it's a big missed opportunity. So if you're listening to this. Roland, I don't know how to respond to that reply. Throw it in a chat, gpt and be like. Here's a customer review. How would you handle this? Write me out a reply as an owner. My business is trustworthy, local, dependable on time, affordable. And now come up with something. Boom, here's a reply. Copy paste do the next thing.

Speaker 1: 32:00

But if you're not doing that, if you're not automating that, process.

Speaker 2: 32:03

you're not working on compounding your business. You might end up self-up, however, many years later 25 in your example, wishing you did.

Speaker 1: 32:10

That's such a good point, and if you do get a bad review, the last thing you want to do is be a jerk inside of those comments, because it tells the next person exactly how you're going to handle them if something goes sideways.

Speaker 2: 32:27

That's right. Even if it's someone who you don't recognize, or even if it's a competitor that's spamming your reviews, just reply. I'd be like hey, corey, I don't recognize your name not in the system, but if you happen to be, or if you're logged in from a different account. If you have any issues, please call us. We'd love to make it right. Here's our office number on the owner and then boom, okay great. Like now, all of a sudden, if a competitor is leaving bad reviews, they're just making it look better. That's it, wow. And the owner cares about someone they don't even recognize, who's even a fake one. That's cool. Yeah, I don't do business with them. That's great. Good on them. I don't know 100% All right.

Speaker 1: 33:00

So if you have other partners, you have partners outside of just the house call pros and software that you do integrate with, right? I don't know what that might be. I don't know. I can't for some reason. I thought the review one was that, but evidently not how would? If somebody was going to integrate with house call pros, how would they go up? By the way, your API, from what I've been told, is pretty tremendous. I can't remember exactly how he said it. Again, I'm not a software guy, but I guess it was pretty easy to work with, which he found that was pretty cool, because I guess the others are not that easy to work with and, again, I don't really know the details of that, but so yeah, go ahead, me and all describe our philosophy.

Speaker 2: 33:45

A lot of our pros have a lot of different tools in their tool bag. It's really important they all work together and if you are the tool bag and if you can contain all the tools some or none or whatever you want you got to be able to connect all the dots and the pieces and all the monotonous stuff, which is just data transport and data entry. If you don't make that easy all of a sudden, you don't become that handy as the tool bag. So make that part really easy. And if you want to integrate someone's house, call pro. If you are on a max plan, you get access to an API key which essentially you can give to any developer and they can build things on your behalf, like connect things on your behalf. If you're another company, there is a more formal process. You know, if you want to become a real partner, you have to go through that and then you're able to integrate with every level of account. Our basic philosophy is whatever we can do to help our pros become more successful will help us find success, and so that's why our mission is to champion all pros to success and whether that's an API key or developing a partnership or whatever it is, in the end of the day, for pro wins, we win. So we've made it really easy for others to be able to try to integrate and do things and innovate, because that's what differentiates you in a world where people try to lock you in because they keep all your data. Why do businesses like Meta Facebook get in trouble? What are all these like antitrust thing? This is like who owns the data? Where is the data. Can I get my data in? Can I get my data out? You can get your data out really easily. It's a total pain in the ass, but with house call pro, like you, got to be able to access different things. So for us, having that easy to work with is super important, because our pros may want to do something to spoke, or maybe they're using another really cool tool, or maybe they just they've got a legacy system like an old school system they're trying to get data out of. Well, let's make it really easy to get the data into house call pro too. So that's the general philosophy. But yeah, if you're curious, you could just go to docshousecallprocom and you can go prove it around. It's all there. It's not. It's not hidden, it's not secret. It's just a different piece of data you can either input or get whatever you want?

Speaker 1: 35:48

Yeah, Because now I think about it, from when? The field sort of the other? I'm not going to really name names, but they don't make it easy. In fact, some of them don't have access to it at all. I mean any access to it either, data, not even an open API sometimes.

Speaker 2: 36:06

Yep, yep, and I don't know. I think there are different ways to play that I say for us, we don't do contracts, and so you pay for house call pro month to month. If you want to pay, you're in advance, you can get a little discount, but you're not forced into any kind of contract. You can leave it anytime and what that does is it makes you build a product that people will truly love and they like to pay for, versus they're using because they're locked into a contract or they're locked into some sort of data hostage situation where they can't get the data out and it'd be a pain in the ass to start all over again. Those are not reasons to stay with the company.

Speaker 1: 36:40

Now I will say this one thing that Jason told me a long time ago is that he had made a decision to switch over from house call pro to something else, and his story about you in particular was super impactful. He said the reason that I will probably always stay with house call pro is when I got some bad information or I didn't ask the right question and I made a decision to switch over before I got all the information. And you were so cool about you, said hey, if you need help, I'm happy to help you and like stuff like that really resonates with me, because it really resonated with him Like you've won him over forever, probably Right, and I think it really makes a big difference when you take the time, especially on an individual basis. Obviously you can't do that with every single human being that you have in the organization as a pro, but I do think that's really commendable of you that you handled it that way. It's exactly how we're saying you would handle a bad review. It's the same thing.

Speaker 2: 37:49

Let's look like there's lots of tools out there and if this is a better tool, let's be honest and suggest it. But I would say by and large, sometimes the kid has to learn that it's hot If you put your hand on that burner stove just because daddy's telling you hey, it's hot, don't do it. They're gonna. Sometimes they got to feel it themselves and unfortunately that's sometimes the way to learn. But the kitchen would be punished for that. Why make it hard on them? Let them make their decision and then in the future They'll know, maybe to help them out. And then afterwards don't laugh at them, just be like I'm sorry, what can I? Get some water on that, some ice? Let's go wrap you up. Let's get some meal sporn on it like do all those things now. Granted, that's not the best analogy because it's your kid and it's not gonna go anywhere, but the reality is the grass is always gonna seem greener wherever everyone's got a great sales pitch. Everyone's a great salesperson. They know all the right things to say. The reality is you got to partner yourself with other folks that are in it for the long haul and when I talked to other people too about field service management, you want to partner with a business as well funded that has a company that's not just 10 people. Now we started as 10 people eight years ago and a lot of people took a risk on this and we grew to where we are now. But if you're making a bet with your business, do some research. Join some other user groups. See what people are saying. Understand why people are sometimes pitching something that there are other incentives that play, just like homeowner does research about you in your Reason line go look online, go check it out and then, at the end of the day, if you ever feel like you're pressured for something, Doesn't that usually should be a signal to you where you should revisit and think and sleep a little more, because anything that's good shouldn't have to lock you into any contract. If it's good, you should willingly fork over money month over month. I could leave Netflix whenever I want, but you know what? I always find good stuff on there and so I just keep paying it and I know that if, whatever reason, I don't like it anymore, just cancel it not a big deal right. It's different than the big cable companies, different than blockbuster. Well, you all know what happened those and so I think when it comes to technology, it's very easy to turn things on and turn it off and spin up, spin up, uncount, spin it down. It shouldn't involve like this whole lengthy process, it shouldn't be super hard. Now for some businesses that are in $10 million or more, $20 million or more, you may get value out of some. It's so robust. But even house call pro, we get clients of that size all the time where the owner goes, hey, you know what, rather than have to spend an extra 30, 40, 50k a month on another piece of software, I'd rather pay a thousand dollars a month or a couple thousand dollars a month, and for that for them is quite a bit of money. Now, does that mean they're gonna get the optimal growth rates? I don't know, but in the reality, is that enough money to live like the point 1%? Maybe that's your goal anyway. So why not do that and why not do that now? Software doesn't have to be expensive.

Speaker 1: 40:29

I was actually gonna ask you I guess it's not an incredible question, but and I don't bring up names but how does it? How do you guys compare on a monthly basis? I hear it all and so I know that I know who's the most expensive. But how do you like, how do you guys compare to the other Softwares out there in terms of the monthly price?

Speaker 2: 40:50

Yeah, look, house call pro pricing is quite easy and we increase the price over time as we build more stuff, but in general right now we're about $35 per user per month. So if you got 10 people was 350 bucks, you got 20 people, it's more. And then there's some different add-ons that you can add on which not all pros need or want. If you want to VoIP, if you want a price book, if you want a pipeline feature, but like, by large, that's the basic part of what makes house call pro. So when we see other pricing out there, there's other software out there that's 60 to $100 per user per month. That's more. And then you have someone like service time, that's considerably more, that's 10x that amount. And then the thing is like is it 10 times better? I don't know, I don't think so. Is it 1.2 times better? Yeah, maybe for some companies that are big, is it twice as good? Yeah, if you're a $20 million shop, you can do way more things. The reality is like is that your goal? Do you really want that? I don't know. I'm happy to go into the grocery store. I'm like jeep. I don't need to drive a Lamborghini to the grocery store. It just because I could I don't know just to say that I'm paying a lot of Money for it. I don't know, that's not the type of person I am. I don't think that most people are that way, but it's plenty of companies and that that zero to ten million dollar space, that's 95% of the home services market and that's an amazing living anything above a couple million dollars. That's an amazing. Like you're in the point one percent already. Like, do you really want more? I think some people do and that's great and more part to them, but I don't know. It seems like a lot of headaches and that's actually my next question.

Speaker 1: 42:22

I often wonder. I know there's a lot of features in, like, for example, service Titan, but my question is I don't know if there's enough time in the day To use all the features. Maybe there is, but I don't know that. I've met too many people that utilize a Ton more than just the basic stuff. Does that make sense? I Well, it gets confusing. I think it gets like there's it's like the shiny syndrome, right like you see all the shiny things and You're not really sure which one you need to pick. And so well, I know how that works with my brain. They just shut down out. Pick any of them.

Speaker 2: 43:04

Yeah, but I think that's where, if you're big enough company, you can focus on one of those things which is a great point of leverage. And because you've got 20 trucks on the road, maybe, right, that little bit of leverage is like an extra million dollars a year. That's impactful, right, and so that maybe helps to pay for the software. But if you're a smaller business, you don't have the time in the day to be able to do that, to get the leverage to pay for it. So the ROI isn't there. So a lot of people are like, oh yeah, it's great for small companies to or start there, because you don't want to Grow out of it. It's like, no, that's just always your marketing hooks and like you're enduring not just so much pain on the cost end, but the amount of time you're gonna spend on it. And so the reason why we've grown up to become quite a formidable company here is it's some of the fact that it's simple, it's easy to use, it looks just like Google Calendar, right, and you don't need to spend hours and hours, not hours and hours, weeks and weeks training people on how to use the thing. It just works out of the box. And I feel like in the last year and a half or so we've developed so many great features that Really help close the gap on all the things. We take a look at our reports now versus even what it was a year ago. You can get all the data points you need, all the job costs and the price books like flat rate calculators. All of it's built in and I'd say Do you want to pay I don't know ten times more or five times more for something that maybe does a little bit more that's not gonna use anyways? Maybe you do because you like to drive Lambos around and more power to you. But I'd say most people would take that money and go do something else right buy another vacation home or hire someone else like a chief of staff, or or invest it in someone that could be a COO right that can actually run the company for you, so you don't have to do the day-to-day. I don't know. I'd rather get by my time back Now. That, to me, is more valuable right than just spending money and necessarily for something that's shiny, just because all the other cool kids are buying them. But there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's a great piece of software for a lot of folks that are really ambitious, that want to grow that really big business. But I say by and large do you need it? I don't know it's fair.

Speaker 1: 45:04

So all right. So I'll ask you one more, one more question. I don't just really you here, but customer like how is what's the customer service experience like if I'm a pro or if I'm not, or if I'm, if I'm not, I guess, super pros, what I was about to say. It doesn't matter whichever category I fall into. How is that? How is the customer service experience if I have a problem?

Speaker 2: 45:27

Sure, yeah, look, you get what you pay for. So the reality is, if you price something that's a lot more affordable, you're not going to have the same resource to be able to service right. But I think that's what's remarkable about what we built is that we've got a great community and a great community of super pros to help one another that actually know the product inside and out because they actually use the product day to day, versus some customer support that is getting paid. Whatever they're getting paid, they don't really use the software, but they know the common questions and they know the common answers. And so I'd say, with House Call Pro, the customer support that we have is you can chat with us at any time. We've got a blue chat bubble. You can come in there. It's nice because maybe you want to fire off a couple of questions and go run a job or do something and then come back to it. You got the answers. You can call us Usually. If it's something simple, we can help on the phone call. If it's something more complex, you've got to schedule a time with a specialist, because we can't afford a whole swarm of specialists at the price that we charge. So I'd say House Call Pro because we're so simple and easy to use. You're not going to have to use it very much Versus a complex piece of software. You're going to be calling support all the time, so you better really have great support. But I will say, if you ask any House Call Pro user how easy is it to reach Roland me? I would say I'm a pretty reachable guy, even though we have 40,000 customers, a couple hundred thousand technicians out there using the platform. I put my cell phone number out there all the time. It's 858-215-1512. So if you want to text me, you can. If you call, I'm probably not going to pick up because I'm in meetings most of the day. We're doing podcasts. But yeah, I would say, find a company that cares and then talk to the other pros that use it and see what their experience is. That's my best advice I can give you, because if you go look at other industry forums, you can see what the level of support is like in other places.

Speaker 1: 47:14

Yeah, for sure. All right, so it looks like you've got a lot of books behind you. What's? Give me a cool book that you've read recently that you think would be beneficial for the audience.

Speaker 2: 47:26

Sure, sure. The recent one, the one that I'm reading right now that's not on my bookshelf because it's downstairs by my bed. It's called Outlive, and Outlive is a great book. It's not so much about business as it is about being healthy and what Medicine 3.0 is versus Medicine 2.0. So I'd say, go pick up that book. That one's one of my favorite. This was a great book too. I just recently finished this one. I really like this one. It's called the Rational Optimist, and Matt really does a really good point. I think there's a lot of pessimism in the world. I think there's a lot of people that read the news, see the news, the election cycles coming up, doom and gloom, climate change Is it real? Is it not? Like all this kind of stuff, the Rational Optimist takes a look at like humanity over time and really paints a quite a really cool, different picture than what you can. Give you a lot of hope out there.

Speaker 1: 48:12

I really recommend that book.

Speaker 2: 48:14

If you're looking for something nice, I would say probably one of my most favorite books is Is this one which is. Meditations. So if you haven't read this book yet, it's by a priest, emperor, and Marcus really does a great job in here, and I've got a couple of these in my bookshelves because sometimes they give them away. But that's probably just my generic favorite book that I pick up whenever I get a chance.

Speaker 1: 48:35

I love that. I meditate almost every single day. I think it's, I think it's so vital to we live in such a busy world. We live in such a constant at least for me. I'm constantly in the middle of something, and so taking that 15 or 20 minutes and just cutting myself off from the world really improves my day.

Speaker 2: 48:59

My best advice is just tell yourself you're going to read five pages and when you do something like that you always reading you end up reading a lot more than five pages, but you've got to start somewhere and usually you feel like you don't have the time. But once you're into it you make the time. I mean, I can do five pages a day. It usually turns out to be quite a bit more than read a lot of books, so yeah, it ends up working out.

Speaker 1: 49:21

Well, I appreciate this, my man. I mean, you're already getting your phone number out, so I guess that's how people can get ahold of you. Is there another way people can find you or get in touch with you?

Speaker 2: 49:30

Yeah, you can find me on Facebook. You should shoot me an email. Roll into housecallprocom you can find me pretty easily. There's something in front of request because it capped me, but you can always DM me on Facebook as well. But, yeah, feel free to reach out to me text, email, whatever If you've got questions curious about housecallpro, if you're curious about AI, if you're curious about your current housecallpro user and you're like, oh, I should be using it more, what should I be doing? I can take a quick look at your account and tell you some of the things you might not have noticed that we've recently released, that they should be taken advantage of. And so, yeah, feel free to reach out. And obviously, soft skills is super important and a lot of people think, oh, you know what, I'm good at my trade. But remember, it's a people business and you got to have those skills to make the homeowners feel like they're in a place of their own control, they're making informed decisions and they just happen to be going with you because they like you. And if you do that, everything else falls into place. But, like anything else in life, you got to practice, you got to learn from others and it's important to have good mentorship, good, always rational decision to pay for coaching and to have someone else that can keep you accountable, because when you're your own boss, well, you don't really have a boss, but in reality you always need someone else that's holding you to something. And when you call your shot, if you don't make it, that's okay, but you need to tell someone what's the shot you're making.

Speaker 1: 50:54

Yeah, no, I, obviously. I totally agree with that. Yeah, I think it's vitally important to have somebody, a third person, to bounce stuff off of, to make sure that you're not. Look, we're human beings, we miss stuff, we make bad decisions, I make bad decisions, but if I'm accountable, those decisions become less and less. So I appreciate this, fran. I really enjoyed the conversation.