Episode 23 - Daniel Felt of Kura Home Maitnenance

Kura Home Maintenance: Cleaning House and creating healthier home efficiencies

After helping his parents build their dream home, Daniel has since used his entrepreneurial spirit and building knowledge to help others upkeep the safety and well-being of their own homes. With houses becoming more complex, people just don't know what they don't know. Daniel and his team are there to help the unseen factors making the air in our homes polluted, and helping to create a safe and comfortable living environment. Also diving into the ins and outs of his company, Daniel shares how he balances his workload with clients and the software he uses to stay on top of his business logistics. This episode has it all, so check it out!

Listen to the full episode:

About Daniel Felt

Daniel Felt is the Founder and CEO of Kura Home. Since starting in 2016, Kura Home has grown from Daniels garage to now servicing the greater Minneapolis area. Focusing on high-quality work at a fair price, Kura Home services over 600 homes on a quarterly basis completing their routine maintenance needs. In his free time, Daniel enjoys being a husband, father, camping, hiking, marathons, ultra-marathons, and Ironman triathlons. He is also a private pilot and certified home inspector. Daniel's goals for 2022 include selling 10 franchises, reading (listening to) 52 books, and servicing a total of 1000 homes' routine maintenance needs. For podcast guest appearances, Daniel has been a guest discussing many topics including advertising, marketing, SEO, home services, franchises, entrepreneurship, business start-ups, business challenges, and much more.

Resources

• Visit Kura Homes Website

• The Kura Homes Instagram

• Transcript

  Mark D. Williams 00:05

  All right. Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams. I'm your host today I am joined with Daniel felt from career home maintenance. Welcome, Daniel.

  00:11

  Thank you. It's great to be here.

  Mark D. Williams 00:12

  All right, if you're in from Minnesota, you've probably seen their green vans driving around. But why don't you give us a little brief background of, of who you are what you do, and then we'll dive into it a little bit more deep.

  00:23

  Yeah, for sure. I grew up out in Litchfield, Minnesota on a farm how my parents build their dream home. And at the time, I thought I was absolutely horrible, but kind of logic and where I'm at today, I went to school I studied Business Marketing after that I worked for agricultural company they sell casual about 8 million chicken eggs a day and created some a million chicken it Yeah, yeah, it's no joke. They're, they're pretty big time. So Wow. Yeah, I learned a ton about just SOPs and creating documentation to help people do things, especially when food is involved. You know, the quality has to be a top notch. And so, learn that after that I my brother owns a home service business. He does window cleaning highlights. He needed General Manager, we grew that from a cruise of 16 and two years. And the idea to start your home came up and and he he he did think it'd be a good addition to his business. And I'm really stubborn. So when someone tells me something won't work. I said, You know what, I'm gonna try it. So in 2016, I started Kia home out of the out of my garage and Plymouth, Minnesota. Oh, boy,

  Mark D. Williams 01:16

  how old were you at the time?

  01:17

  I was 2727. Yeah.

  Mark D. Williams 01:19

  All right. That's amazing. I love you know, it's often been told that you become an entrepreneur, either because you're surrounded by family or because you aren't fit anywhere else. It sounds like it was both it was like you had family. And you're like you told me no fun. Yeah, come on. Yeah,

  01:31

  I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My mom and dad still raise Golden Retriever puppies, really nice dogs. And you know, my brother's run that and in some shape, or form. Almost all my siblings have have either side gigs that are entrepreneurial or something. But yeah, at this point, I'd say I'm unemployable. I never work for anyone else. And it's kind of like, scary thing that but I'm like, I don't think I would be happy, you know, doing that. And that's like, I'm sure I could be. But I think at my soul, I'm unemployable. Now,

  Mark D. Williams 01:57

  I It's funny I've I've I started when I was 2320, fours kind of same deal. But just this last year, you know, every once in a while you either get a difficult clock, you know, client or you just operationally you're stretched thin, you're over committed typical entrepreneur story. And you're like, Yeah, I wonder I just I never had any sort of really corporate experience or any another job, frankly, because you're unemployable. And I thought, You know what, maybe I maybe I was bouncing off a few other people that, you know, were, you know, target or wherever they're working. I said, Now, maybe I want to scratch that. And like, Dude, you wouldn't last four days. Yeah. And, you know, so that it should probably never get scratched. But every once in a while, it's kind of interesting to be like, what would happen if Yep, most definitely. Anyway? Well, so home maintenance, why home maintenance? I mean, obviously, sounds like from the holiday light standpoint. And I mean, you guys, obviously increase the production there quite a bit. What did you gain from there? And why home maintenance? Why was that the place that you decided needed to be filled?

  02:49

  Yeah, well, again, the typical service home service business, you know, we were in usually higher end homes, especially with the Christmas light side, the average ticket at that time was around eight or $900, you know, per home. That's, that's for your lights. So we're usually in higher end homes, and especially, you know, same with window cleaning. And we'd in talking to customers, a lot of times we'd have people say things like, If only I could find someone to do this, you know, that was that was a big problem. And as houses are becoming more and more complex over the years, and also people are growing up more so in daycares, rather than and the home watching their parents, you know, change filters do this. People don't even know what they don't know. They don't know there's a air exchanger in your utility room. There's a filter here, I filter there so you know of the 34 things we do. But looking at that services industry isn't really 34 Is that just a number you pulled? No, that's legit Yeah. 34 services. Yeah, yep. And, and looking at that, one thing that I saw in all these fields is for me, I didn't want to go to college, but I felt kind of like I had to if I if I wanted to, you know make money I guess. And looking at it in home service industry I wanted to come up with something where it was regular work a guy could come you didn't need a college education. And you could work normal like 4045 hour weeks like a normal like nine to five job all year long. So that was a big thing that you don't have a huge influx of you know, coming from that Christmas light because I mean, you can imagine the amount of work that goes I got 60 days of just Aster famine. Exactly and it is it is crazy. So so with this what's really nice about today we serve about 800 routine maintenance clients in the Minneapolis metropolitan area and we visited home once every three months and so it doesn't matter if you sign on any time of the year we're going to come back in three months and see you just have a really nice flowing schedule my guys know they could love three months out okay, I know what I'm doing you know in June July August September they know what they're doing in the in these times. So that was the big the big thing for me also the recurring revenue which is you know for any anyone especially small businesses is like you're always chasing that next when's the phone gonna ring is are my Google Ads working did this work is SEO or here's my website up all these things that are like kind of paranoid, but when you get into the recurring revenue, so looking at it, you know, trying to like fast forward my mindset of a few years down the road like if I I had a couple 100 clients on this reoccurring thing, I feel like my left my life would be not stressful, I'd be able to spend time with. I didn't have a family when I started it, but now I do. But I'd be able to spend dinner with my families and things like that. And so that work life balance was really important to me.

  Mark D. Williams 05:13

  It's interesting, because in some ways, you have a different business operation, in fact that, you know, I build maybe four new custom homes a year and a handful remodels. And you're doing how many of 800 clients I think you mentioned right there, and how I mean from a total visits in a year. So what does that for roughly four times 800? Is that roughly? Yeah,

  05:29

  yep. Yeah, roughly 3200. We also but but the interesting thing is that even though we had no intent of doing air duct cleaning, when we first started, because one of those 34 items as dryer vent cleaning, your typical homeowner just assumes you also clean air ducts. And so at one point, when I was basically scratching for any dollar, we I had all these people asking, Oh, can you also clean my air ducts? And I was like, No, we don't we don't even do that. And so in 2017, I was referring more work than I was doing to some random guy, he never called into like, Hey, thanks for referrals or anything. I'm like, You know what, I'm gonna do this. And we bought a machine that looked really great, had awesome reviews online. And we started cleaning air ducts. And I was doing it for a couple months. I'm like, this thing is just not doing the job that we want. And so we did a ton of research Christmas of 2017. That week, when it's usually pretty slow in the home service industry. Most people aren't, don't want their like, you know, they don't need software assault that week, for example. But I did a ton of research, I ended up I ordered materials from 11 different air duct cleaning vendors that and I swiped nitpicked the way it was done, and we put it all together. And so we clean air, it looks different than anyone else in the entire nation.

  Mark D. Williams 06:34

  But that's our nation. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no

  06:36

  one else cleans. Like you can like we because we order it from 11 different people, most people just buy like a kit. And and I think that if you have a really, really, really well, the guy who's been cleaning it up for a really long time, I think those work really great. But home service industry, your average employee is with you for a year. And so I needed something that I could train someone and how to do it really fast. And I could do a really great job. And typically in the era cleaning industry, if I if you didn't know, I clean air ducts. And I said what do you think what air cleaners probably like, I don't care sounds like a shady business. Right? So with that I needed some of that, that provided proof. And so the way we clean it today, a consumer who knows absolutely nothing about air cleaning can come and you can watch over the shoulder of our guys from start to finish on that job. And you'll know for sure that we did a really great job cleaning air ducts, because you can literally see us doing everything that we're doing it'd be like a video camera. I mean, he's given that do sit Yeah, we email them after the tape of like other lint or cat hair dog here. Yeah, we we do a lot with Lagos we provide a lot of before and after that we find I think every type of animal that can fit in an air duct and every type of toy and or tool that you could imagine. And so it can everything that you can imagine from cash to guns to everything, everything you can imagine cash

  Mark D. Williams 07:41

  to guns. Okay, I was gonna save this question for later. But we're in it now, which I was going to ask you for some crazy cleaning stories. I think it's actually quite fascinating. And I will come back to the technology and how we met because we met about air dogs but guns you find guns and like your vacuum is sucking up what like a rifle a handgun? Like what how in the world is a gun getting an air duct? Well, I

  08:01

  think it's a matter like you wish you could go back because like the current homeowner is like, I have no idea why that is right. So in that scenario, we actually had to get the police we call the police to say you know, here's a gun, and the police were like, well, it's the homeowner who owns a home therefore they own everything within it. So now like you own the gun, you should register it basically what it was like it was a handgun from the 1930s 1930s. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah. So that was really fun. And cash, like we'll find like $1 or two, three coins all the time. But we found five grand and Eric one time, it was the same thing. The homeowners like I had no idea we just bought the house couple months ago. Like that's really typical time when people were there to clean is when they're buying a new home. Because, you know, you don't wanna get all the stuff from the old people or skin cells and all that fun money.

  Mark D. Williams 08:40

  Because when we do remodels, you know, part of our businesses, you know, old homes, right? 1990 1930, whatever the home is, and people are always like, you know, you didn't say you're complaining about the cash, like, I hope and I open up this wall and find original Batman or Superman or something like that was really cool. And we actually did remodel a house that it had been known that the person who had owned the house prior was a member of the Hells Angels and one of the higher ups. And so the homeowner was kind of adventurous, funny guy. And he I remember him telling me architecture, and I wandered on a sidewalk. He's like, hey, just let you guys all know that I will give $1,000 cash reward to any of your demo guys or framers? Not if but when they find something in the walls. Yes. And he's like, I'd like to know, because I suspect there's something in these walls. So anyway, I don't think anything was found. But yeah, so I guess it wasn't a deal. But right. Now, it would have been cool. Yeah. Wow. I think so we met because as I built custom homes, one of the things that we do, we started I don't even know when we did it. And we used a company for a long time, and it was fine. But you guys have such a great reputation. You and I had met at this point. I don't remember how many years ago, four or five years ago, and I was like, hey, you know, as a small company, we're struggling with like a lot of building companies like how do we do warranty do we partner do we do our own thing and it just made a lot of sense for us to be a partner with you. But we started out with the air duct cleaning and it's a very valuable service. For us, you mean obviously we're building a house over a year. Of course, you've got your sheet rock dust and all the other stuff and nails and we of course clean it up. But I suspect that actually new construction is probably less dirty ducts because it's still new even though because it only been there for a couple of months, then some of these homes that have probably never had it cleaned. Yeah, walk us through a little bit a you had mentioned your technology is different than anywhere else in the country. And then we'll dive into some of this other stuff about what air quality and things like that.

  10:24

  Yeah, so it I always say like when people ask me, Well, when when do you get your ducks clean. And I always say it's something new, a new home, a new baby, a new furnace, or a new construction project, or it's been three to four years, when you're remodeling an old home from the 1920s and 30s. And you come in and do all this construction to your point mark, you guys are in there for a year you know, and so with that you can't like clog the air ducts. So you don't get any dust in there. You know the air is going to be filtering through especially you're going through the four seasons, Minnesota, you need the furnace running you need that blower fan running to blow cool air in through the summer. So no matter what it's basically you're gonna get dust in the air if you clog them with a you know bedsheet or sweatshirt or something that's even worse, because they're the furnace is gonna burn out. Yeah, ice up, right. So you can't even do that. So I think the only thing that you could do, if you were gonna be like absolutely crazy is you could put like a cheap cheap filter over the intake ducts. And if you really wanted to, but I don't think even that it was really going to completely take care of for you because there's such a fine dust when you're doing remodel. So the perfect storm, when you're remodeling a super old house, we clean air ducts can be really interesting because like for us, there's all these different colors, it does seem newer doesn't usually like urine inside us from from wood and from sheet rock typically. So you get is a lighter color dust, but all dust for some reason it's dark. So you get all these different types of things. As long as there's not a moisture issue. Usually it's it's totally fine, you know, when you humidity involved, and if they if it's too humid in the home, and that starts to get sticky in the air ducts that can be really, really messy. So walk

  Mark D. Williams 11:48

  me through it again, these 11 things that you're getting from these different clients when you do kind of your experiment. I mean, I had heard a few things like you know, hey, you drive this little thing you'd like a rover, right? It's a little, you know, a bot or like a little whip that's like whiplash, or vibrations, or Sonic or, you know, even when we do aero sealing, which now we do on all our new homes. And for those that don't know what air sealing is, is we essentially pressurize your H vac system, the metal, it's cheaper and more effective. And I've heard that they can fill like a silver dollar sized hole with this stuff. So it's really meant to if there's any little micro holes, screw holes, pinholes, anything like that. It sends this chemical through and then adheres to any hole. And now your your H vac system is much more efficient, right on new construction for sure. So with that in mind, how are you cleaning? Stuff that is wet or stuff that does has been caked on there for for years? I assume it's a little bit and maybe I'm wrong here but is it a little bit like a carwash and you go that touchless carwash it doesn't touch your car, but it doesn't do that great of a job versus like the ones that obviously are right. Is that a good analogy or not? Yeah,

  12:51

  yeah, that's, that's absolute perfect. That's actually how I always explained people the price wise on because they'll you'll hear about your $99 you're not cleaning and I was like well would you get like a 99 cent carwash, you can get like a six and eight or $10 Car Wash dollar car. So we try to be like the $10 car wash the $8 price point, you know, come in provide a really high quality. And so with that, by having all these different tools and all these different snares, most of the time, you're not having like a sticky, nasty residue that's probably like less than one person on time. But there is like a ton touchless version that you can have like a reverse busting ball, it looks like a ping pong ball. And there's really small little holes drilled in that. So that attachment air compressor holes, and we have really nice high gas powered air compressors that will that will propel itself all the way into the air duct. And it's blasting back towards our dome that we have and that's actually sealed on with with foam and HEPA vacuum. And what's really cool is Mythbusters actually did a thing on this way before before we even doing this but we've had customers send us a video, they'll be like, Oh, how cool is this? Because they actually they pick up a car using the cheapest vacuum from Home Depot. No way. Yeah. So because it's sealed, like a little car. No, no cars legit like a sedan. They pick it up. Yeah, you'll have to

  Mark D. Williams 13:59

  put it on our YouTube channel. Because this does sound it Yeah, so

  14:02

  they attach it and then with the suction power of it. And so we bring that same suction power, we put that over the dome. So all the energy from the vacuum is focused on that one and then you have that air compressor in and so we can use that reverse blessing ball or reverse blessing webs. They're about a foot long foot to 14 inches, their blessing, imagine like a really flexible octopus going through and that's just getting all the debris off the air duct and then it's also blasting it backwards. So between those tools and then that dome sealed on there, all the energy is coming back. It's coming into our HEPA vacuum, and we're getting out of that living space for you. That's amazing.

  Mark D. Williams 14:32

  And just for those listening, so when we hire you guys, you guys will show up you know maybe a week or two before our clients move in or right before let's say you know right after maybe find a wood floor or something like that. So we know all the sanding is done. Everything could be kind of cleaned. We time it with our final clean. Usually we'll have you come in right after a final cleans because you're gonna put dust in the air as well. Why are you so I guess time it takes what four or five hours let's say a house of ours was a four to 6000 square feet. What is something like that? Yeah. I claim Yeah, five,

  15:00

  six hours, like the most typical home, like the average home Minnesota is right around 2000 square feet, we're scheduling that for like three to three and a half hours. That's our most typical. So we can most days, we can do you know, one to three houses pretty typical for us to about two houses, and

  Mark D. Williams 15:13

  then how many trucks will you have running? Just for AirClean, because I assume they're dedicated. They're you're not, you're not having your home maintenance, you know, like a quarterly service plan is not obviously that that's going to be a specialized truck, I would assume it's actually

  15:24

  we can we have, because of the size of our bands, we can have all of our equipment in one one band, so our technicians who are doing the routine maintenance, they can also do air cleaning, as well. So we have that setup. In the spring, when we're busy. We'll be running eight to 10 crews a day in Minneapolis.

  Mark D. Williams 15:37

  Wow, that's a lot. How back to the other question, I guess was you had mentioned earlier that maybe every three to four years, and I think it was funny, because I talked to one of your one of your techs at one point. And I was like, you know, just the idea because I I really like air quality. And it's something that we'll talk about what we'll talk about it now, people talk so much about water quality, right? We have reverse osmosis, we have purified water, and in general, even our tap water outside of Flint, Michigan, you know, you know, you know, United States in general, but Minnesota in particular has very good water. And but we put a lot of thought on it. Even when I'm designing a home one of my questions, that's not my question. Listen, I talked to people like are you interested in reverse osmosis? Sometimes they know about it, sometimes they don't, those kinds of things. Why do you think that people don't talk about the quality of the air we breathe as much? Because I've got to believe that that's probably more of a problem than the water we drink. But yet more attention is focused on water.

  16:30

  Yeah, I think it comes back to which is kind of one reason why I'd say a lot of people maybe do or don't use a certain service, because I think a lot of people don't know what they don't know. Like, we've received five star reviews from people that said for the first night that they lived in their home, they slept all the way through the night, they didn't even wake up. And these are people who like are very sensitive. So you have all these different levels of sensitivity to air quality. Some people are really allergic, like the second spring hits, you know, they're they're having to pop Island. Yeah, all that. Yeah. And they're, they're just, they're, they're sneezing, and they're crying in the next person's like, what's wrong, you know, so you have all these different levels, levels of sensitivity. But I think as a whole, as average consumer, people are spending more time indoors. And I know Minnesota is one very active state, but people are spending more and more time indoors. And I think people just don't realize how important is we've showed up to people's homes, just when air ducts and their furnace filter has been in place for five years. Oh, man. I mean, how do you a how's your furnace still running? I mean, that's like, kudos to that furnace. Like, you're the MVP here. But they don't even realize so we clean air ducts. We put a new filter for him and like, wow, yeah, this is this is a game changer. Like I can literally feel the difference. So you don't even know. It's kinda like if you never work out. And then also you start working out in like, two weeks, and you're like, wow, I just feel so much better. I didn't even know

  Mark D. Williams 17:39

  how much better I feel after that person was sore for the first 10 days. Yeah, exactly.

  17:43

  So I think it's just a matter of what people aren't aware of, of what they but fortunately, a lot of homes that are are older, there's enough like airflow, air seeps and things like that. Because now like with air exchangers, and how tightly seal homes are, they're so efficient, that we literally have to have machines in the house, the air exchanger, HRV er, we either have to have a machine in the home to just bring fresh air in. And that'll get clogged. That's like one of most neglected things like I've had someone said, if they were gonna kill someone, they would hide it in air exchanger, because literally no one things on which I'm like, that's crazy, that that's where your mindset goes on that goes to you.

  Mark D. Williams 18:12

  And also the one that found the gun, and we're gonna send social services over Yeah, next. Yeah,

  18:17

  exactly. So it's been very interesting. But that was, you know, that things aren't working properly, then people are wondering, like, Why am I always sick? Why, you know, my kids are always sick, or all these things. And it's like, there's, there's quite a few little things that if you were doing them on a routine basis, the air quality inside your home would be significantly better. And people just aren't aware of those items.

  Mark D. Williams 18:34

  Wow. So we, a lot of times we'll do it's kind of like a feature upgrade list. Not every person we had someone that had a I don't think it was a lung disease but very prone, very susceptible, especially right before COVID. And then COVID hit. You know, basically his life depended on his, you know, the conditions of as long as we were very susceptible. And so we ended up doing ultraviolet light. And for those that don't know what that is, essentially, it's a UV light that kills I believe, like 99% of the bacteria, but it just kills it. So the dust would still be in the air, and the bacteria and then you could go to a HEPA filter. And a lot of times people will say well, you know, hey, help us you know, it's a very well known name. I don't even know actually high efficiency.

  19:14

  What is purification sometimes?

  Mark D. Williams 19:17

  Yeah, I don't feel bad anymore. And thanks for making me feel good. Yeah. All in all, you

  19:22

  know, is what happened if it's certified HEPA it's it's that it's qualified as it's like 99.9 and then a 9% purification. Okay,

  Mark D. Williams 19:29

  yeah, yeah, the point is, is that you do need it you don't want just happen in my experience, you want a kind of a general filter as well kind of like a layered approach, right to catch the bigger debris. And sometimes a lot of clients say, oh, I want to do HIPAA, but then it'll clog a lot more to so you need to have a system in place that essentially is a little bit like a strainer you know, start with the bigger stuff get to the and then eventually at the handle up to HEPA do its final work at the end. So anyway, some of these systems in tandem, so anyone out there building a home or remodeling. First of all, you want to clean your ducts on a regular basis. But after that, you know, make sure you have the proper equipment in place or upgrade Did so that you're getting clean air. You had mentioned going back to the earlier question of, you know, three to four times and so your rep had mentioned I was like, oh, man, you know, we should do it. You know, every single year is like a thank you gift to our clients or like a Christmas gift. He's like, Oh, no, wait a minute. Daniel has lots of golden retrievers. I didn't know that your parents have a golden retriever. You know, factory. Factory is wrong. Sorry. It's the Dalmatians Cruella De Ville is behind bars. And this is a very nice family friendly place to go. Oh, just that you have a lot of dogs. But yeah, on your own personal residence. You only do it about three years. Why? Why? I'm curious. Why is that? I mean, if you have dog here, I'm just thinking if I can literally see if I can see the dog here. I imagine it's in the air. Why only every couple of years versus let's say yearly?

  20:47

  Yeah, for sure. So for me, I am changing my filters. I usually they say the plumbers pipes leak. One thing that I am really good at. Sometimes our water softener gets low. But I am really great. I bring up big box filters home and I'm changing those every two to three months. So I'm doing that very frequently. Additionally, my wife kudos to her does a really great job of brushing our dogs, as you know they are in and out. But they kind of stay in just one spot. And so basically what I'm doing is I'm watching we do have clients that use us on an annual basis for air to cleaning, but they are typically like someone who you were recently talking about more sensitive to the air quality. And my family is not super sensitive to air quality. And so I'm just doing it based on you know, how does everything feel my home? Does it feel cloudy? Does it feel smoky? is like my nightstand is that getting dirty? Like if at an irregular basis like if I wait my finger on it? Am I seen that it's it's really really dusty more frequently than it sheds. Some of those are some of the things that I'm looking at the other day, like I do respect my guys time, you know, time is money, right. And so with that, doing it every year, I don't, it just seems like it's not gonna be as beneficial. But that's because of our scenario where we're at. We also like our dot we're on a farm, little hobby farm out in Delano. And so with that, my dogs do get dirty. So they really kind of say to one spot in our house, they're not like sleeping on our bed with us. They're not up in the, you know, our room. So. So with that we're not sensitive enough to need it on an annual basis. We have some people that are you know, have they they're clean freaks, essentially they they were they just want to be perfect. And I've had my guys go there and they're like, We don't, we don't really think you need this, you know, they're so honest, you know, and and it's like, Hey, you guys are at a certain point, they really want it clean, just slip for their peace of mind to know that it's clean. That's fine.

  Mark D. Williams 22:21

  I think you're describing my wife. So we're coming up on our 10 year anniversary. And at this point, she has trained me very well we did a sleepover with my kids, I have a seven, five and a three year old and my cousin is like my brother. And last weekend we went over to his place while the wives were working are gone. And so anyway, the next morning, we're making waffles for the kids and, and we lived together for in college for like nine years. So he knows me extremely well. And so anyway, the kids are doing it. And I'm like Uber vacuum cleaner cleaning up after everyone like wiping on the table. And he looked at me he's like, Dude, your wife has you extremely. You were not like this before. But I say that by saying is like, I've often laughed when the cleaners come to our house. I wonder if they like sit in the corner and like, you know, check their phones because like there's nothing to do here because the house is so clean. But we have you guys come four times a year a when you and I first started working together, it's really important to me that you know, even the sponsors on this podcast, I want to have a relationship so that when I give a testimonial, it just means more when I can tell a story. And so before I use you before I recommended you to any of our clients, I said, Well, you know what? I am gonna use you on my own personal home. Now I have a 9019 home. It's radiant heat. We don't actually have any ductwork. So there's no nothing, I guess to clean from that standpoint. But dryer vents are always something that needs to be done. That seems very neglected. Plus, it's a fire hazard. Yeah. And then what people often don't know what you do, but and I'd like you to speak to in a minute here is, you know, the oil pans in your hood. So you know, we do these beautiful homes with beautiful gas ranges, and you're cooking a lot and you're using them hopefully. Or they're just art and then you don't even clean. Yeah, but you know that you're getting a lot of oils in general in that fan. And then I saw a picture that I was like, wow, now it's easy to clean once you know it, but I didn't know for a long time. I don't even know those things existed. I just thought, hey, the hood vents and the vapors just go away. But I didn't realize it was a collection. Can you speak a little bit to you know, some of the collection points in a house that are easily overlooked?

  24:07

  Yeah, for sure. And that range for that oil pan that you're talking about is is a big one, it's really easy. You know, a lot of times you barely even see them and especially now they're they're built so nice and elegantly now, but that's a big one. There's a ton of different models and it can they can actually get pretty complex, where we actually pull even like the fan out and clean that up. Because so much grease gets built up. And our ultimate goal, you know, get it like we get it like owning a house is expensive and replacing things, especially now it's just getting more and more expensive. So how can we by following the manufacturer's recommendations, just make this lasts longer and more efficiently. So that's our goal with everything and rangehood is a big one. People have no idea that their dishwashers have a filter in them. And I'm like the nerd that I go to a big box store and I walked around I open up like all 12 And I'm like see Filter Filter? Yeah. And I'm like, and I've actually made videos about it. So I'm like you guys, every single one of these like you're like oh my house doesn't have a filter. If you've literally bought a dishwasher in the last like six years I can basically guarantee that As a filter because look all these dudes

  Mark D. Williams 25:01

  out of curiosity before the filters, what happened to stuff? Yeah, just sat in the bottom of the dishwasher well, but after like can't just scoop it out with a shovel or Yeah, or

  25:08

  things were just built better. So now that filter is built better. Yeah, in my opinion, I don't think I don't think appliances are improving, they look nicer and they make nicer sounds maybe and, and they're getting a little bit smarter like, for example our washer and dryer it knows like if you put like delicates in the washer, and then it knows to dry as delicate as well. So like they're getting smarter, but I don't think they're becoming more durable by any means. Like we have clients that have like a refrigerator. It's from like 1960. They're like, Oh, yeah, good, old faithful. And then the next person like all my frigerator went on for three years. So because it's got too much tech is too smart, right? So basically is built better, they didn't need that filter in place to help the pump get on base to drain that, things like that. So the dishwasher, the washing machine is a big one. If you have a top loader, usually on the bottom left or right hand corner of your washing machine, there's somebody it looks like the size of a poster, the college post image card and that it needs to be open and there's a filter in there. It's pretty dirty, smelly job. But I want the smelliest things we do. So those are those are three things that's on the tablet or the front loaders are on top loader loader. Yep. Exactly.

  Mark D. Williams 26:07

  Why is that I think this is, you know, from an aesthetic standpoint and from design, you know, building new homes. I mean, I do obviously want to recommend to our clients something that's going to last. But that being said, we're also balancing form and function like anybody else. I mean, the front loaders are very in vogue, they're very nice looking. And you can obviously put cabinets on top. I mean, so there are there's a useful side of it. However, I've heard from clients after clients and my own house included, you know, where basically, you know that that ring smells because you've got a horizontal situation in the drain is on the bottom versus the old vertical tube or obviously water straightening out the bottom. What is your opinion on that? In general, just like, as you mentioned before about odors and smells with the filter?

  26:47

  Yeah. So we actually be based on demand, we added like four additional services at the beginning of 2022. And from 34 to 38. Or from 30 to 3034. Yeah, yep. And so we're at 34 right now, and who knows where we'll go. But we're trying to we try to keep our services where it's like a yes or no, can you? Did you do it or not? Right? And so like changing the first filter, yes or no? Did you do it? Some things that we had gotten rid of from the very beginning was like clocking, for example, because that can take like eight hours. And you may think that needs to be done. And I may say no, it doesn't vice versa. And then they're like, well, we we were gonna see 400 clients today. And because now you want caulking done, you know, we have to like reschedule everything. So logistically, we got rid of some of those things. But the with so with the washing machine, we actually now added where we will clean that seal, we will will not only a like do the elbow grease, part of like we're getting in there, we're wiping all that down for you. Then additionally, we do a clean cycle. And we put a solution in there to help clean that. And that has been like people have literally the gym they call us like we want your quarterly services just so you'll come and do that.

  Mark D. Williams 27:44

  I mean, it smells smells better. I'll go and you know, we do a one year walkthrough on all our new homes. And but just in general, I mean, I don't have my own personal home, you know, we've got a front loader. And you know, my wife has a very specific way of leaving it open, like air drive, and I'm sure you're wiping it down after every use. It's a lot more maintenance than people think. Yes,

  28:01

  most definitely. And I think that's the the overall consensus of what's happening today is you almost need like a host manager for these homes because there's some Everything needs like oh, it's not that big of a deal. Just change this filter every three months, like okay, that and everything else in your house and they plus you have a kid schedule and Saturday morning comes around. It's like you want to be doing all these routine maintenance tasks? Or do you want to be at your kids soccer field or playing T ball with your feet in the backyard? And

  Mark D. Williams 28:23

  what happens is five years later they you come in and they haven't changed their filter one time I Yeah, we have something that we often we joke good heartedly about it with our clients. But you know, they pay us good money to design and build them a beautiful home. And but they're buying a home. They don't know as much sometimes about owning a home. Now, this is a total stereotype, but my experience has been true. The older generation, no problem. They kill it. The younger generation, right? I don't know the exact age, but let's call it anywhere under 45. Anywhere under 40. I mean, you can't clean your house with a click of a button. Yeah, there's no app, actually, there is a great app that current home use that your app will talk about the development your app in a minute, that app is next level. Someone still has to do that work. Yeah, for sure. And I think there's this misconception when you build a new home, like, Hey, I just built a $4 million home $2 million home, I don't care $100,000 home, it doesn't matter. There's this perceived thing, like it's new, it shouldn't break. It shouldn't need anything. But I think I think it's on me actually to explain to the client from the get go, maybe not the first meeting. Yeah, I don't want to defer to them from building a new home. But you know, at some point to educate them and say to your point, this is a this is a you know, if you have a big enough estate, you have a caretaker Right, right. And so people on that level of home, you know, these, you know, big estates, obviously, they're gonna have a full time care manager and they need it. Yeah. But frankly, even the smaller ones now with all the technology that you're talking about, you need at least regular check ins Yes. Or you at least need a blueprint or checklist to go through and then actually stay on it. Schedule it.

  29:57

  Yeah, I think the best way and I And going back to the car analogy, which most people seem to understand is if you bought a brand new car, and it told you in three months to get oil change, would you say no, because it's a brand new car, right? You'd still three months and get that oil change? Because you know that you want that car to last Wait, do

  Mark D. Williams 30:14

  you have to put gas in a new? Well?

  30:18

  Yeah, but and so so for a lot of people, you're right, there's a very, very common in my opinion misconception that you don't need to maintain a brand new home and it's like, oh, well sign on like a year in it's like, I hate to tell you, but at that point, you've done all this extra wear and tear that wasn't even necessary. And you're you're depreciating your your appliances significantly faster than you would have, if you would have just started from the very beginning, sir maintain them. And realistically, even if you were moving in, and day one, there's still a ton of things that we could come in and do. Because even just like think about the furnace filter, for example, if it's a brand new, that furnace has been in place for quite a while, if you're moving in day one, I'm sure that furnace has been there for minimum a month to three to six months, you know, depending on on the season. And like the time it took me

  Mark D. Williams 30:58

  one of the things that you and I have just recently done this last year, and we're going to do it going forward, you know, at a certain price point of home. And you know, I guess I could also just talk to the client about it ahead of time if it's a different price point or a remodel, but you know, we include with the purchase of our home, you know, some extended service, which is essentially you guys. And we found I mean, obviously time will tell but I suspect right we get you guys in the front end right away, right to make sure that you're basically keeping, you know, you know, oil in the gas. Yeah, oil and oil tank. Yeah, the best analogy really is just to keep things operating smoothly. And I think a lot of times people are you have some decision fatigue, after a new home is created, you just spent a year two years, three years building a home, and you're just like, I just want to enjoy my home, well, you want to enjoy your home and keep it operating at a high level, you need to actually start with service, right and make sure you can miss the first quarter after you've moved in, we'll let you go by that one. But after that, it's really important that you it's also setting up a regular cadence. So they understand that it's because I suspect that as this goes on with between us that, you know, people then will start picking up years three, four and beyond just because it's like this is this is great. And you know, it's kind of like ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I mean, I definitely think, you know, people often ask what is the lifespan of your furnace? Depends what is your lifespan of all these different things? And right, it frankly, depends. Yeah, one

  32:12

  thing that I'm seeing is that people are really specializing in certain things. And these people that are very, very intelligent and really great at certain things that are maybe living in a one to $5 million dollar house, they can't even hang a photo like and and that's nothing against them. Because you're so great at what you do. And it's like your brain works this way. Mine, I could engineer what you're engineering or run the company or do whatever it is what your occupation is, but it's no fault to them. They're just they're so crazy smart in one area, that it's like there's not room in their brain because they're so good at this. There's not room

  Mark D. Williams 32:43

  to do. I'm smiling because it's not because I'm smart. But the biggest fight I've ever had in my life with my wife was overhanging a picture. Yeah, because I wasn't capable. It's because she kept changing your mind. And so actually, whenever we move into a home or change stuff, I'll have my trimmer come over because I'm like, It's for the sake of my marriage. It's better if Todd my trimmer hangs my pictures in my house because it's you know, a lot of wisdom right there. You know, we're on your 10 here, man. Wow, this is turning into a congratulations for a decade of marriage podcast. I love on your website it said farmboy work ethic to the city. I love that approach. What do people say? I mean, how often do you actually get to meet people? This is actually you know in the five years this is the first time you and I've met actually face to face yeah ready to start a podcast in order to meet Daniel so that was worth that it's worth it guys. But how often are you in the field either doing sales calls or what is your day to day look like now you've built this incredible company you know what is your day to day look like?

  33:38

  Yeah, I am not doing routine maintenance or clean I would say I'm I'm running a business. And what's really interesting is as you network with other people like another service, I feel like well you and I could like switch places because I'm not so much involved in in like that now you know, we know how to clean air duct we know how to do we're teammates we know how to do the sales so for me I'm I'm working on just on the big picture thing. I did a report every Monday morning for my executive assistant. And here's what's here's what happened last week, here's this going if there's something alarming there, whether it be numbers or a callback or lost a client whatever those if there's something alarm alarming I jump in but I'm extremely, extremely fortunate to have a team of people that really care about the way that we service our clients. When how all the quality we obsess about our reviews like we like if we get a bad review, it's like all hands on deck. Like what happened why did this happen? We we actually still to this day, we have a 15 minute technician meeting every single morning in case there was an issue that a beforehand Wow, that they can address if we got like call back Monday afternoon. Would That's that same issue is not gonna happen on Tuesday because we fix it that fast in the morning and my operations manager runs out. So I'm I'm extremely fortunate I feel extremely blessed to be the point where I'm not so much working on in the business. I'm working on growing that and my largest thing that I'm really focusing on is expanding your home services across the nation. And we've tried doing that a few different ways. But what's what's working now in stickiness is with the franchisor licensing model. So we've just sold our first license. And so gentleman came in from Seattle. I saw that on your Instagram the other day. Yeah. So we're really excited about that we came we trained him in and and in and he's like, this is an awesome he's like I You're, you're putting me like 1218 months ahead of where I would have been if I would have tried this. But what's really tricky about the routine maintenance is knowing Google's it, people don't hear about it. So we've found very unique ways to get that out to people. So you think like, why doesn't every city or metropolitan have their own version of cura home? And I talked to a gentleman on Monday morning in California, and he's like, I've been going at this for six months. And I have three customers, how do you have 800. And that's the secret sauce that we're sharing with people to get them from, hey, I've got my three customers, which is not a sustainable model to 800. And you've

  Mark D. Williams 35:39

  gotten maybe I'm not even that's because, you know, I think there's, you know, two to 4 million motor we got three 4 million people in the metropolitan area. I don't know how many homes that would be live, but let's just call it 2 million. Yeah, I 800 seems extremely light, it seems like you could walk down the street and pick up 100 people, you know, maybe this is my sales optimistic side, because it's like everybody needs it. But not everybody wants it. So is it about? Is it about that message that you have to convey out there to like, what is the hurdle? Why? I mean, everyone needs it.

  36:06

  Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that, like a typical situation, right is the wife calls. She's so frustrated that her husband isn't getting this done. He's busy, right? He's working. This is so hot. And we're doing the estimate Valentine's Day special. Yeah, exactly. And we're doing the estimate, and the husband is standing in the corner with his arms crossed, listening over to all the things that we could do. And he's like, and we do all of her options, right? So we say, hey, of the 34 items, like your house has 28 of them, you know, and which ones would you like us to do? And he's in the back round trip. And I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. And the smart wife says, but you don't. Right. And so then we actually we we train our sales guys to say that, hey, you know, Jim, homeowner, Jim, we know that you can do this. And we know that you're probably great at it. At the end of the day, what's your time worth? And do you really want your wife as sweet as she has to be bothering you, every three months to be doing this, when we could just come in, I don't know what your time is worth. Let's say it's anywhere from 100 to $500 an hour, I don't know. But we can do this for a couple 100 bucks a quarter. And that includes everything. And then it's just done. And here's the end that's like it, I know that we're stepping on your toes like coming into your domain in your house that you own yourself, you're the hotshot, but we'll find it we have to like allow them a reason to say you know what, I don't need to do this. So we work with a lot of women, a lot of a lot of women that their husband is busy and a lot of dual income people that they're both too busy. They're like, we're just they're so sick of things breaking down their house. And it's like life's Go, go go. And they just call us so. So I think that there's a lot of people, I think I can assume myself, there's a lot of people that just goes back to they just don't know what they don't know. And you know, they just have no idea that so this

  Mark D. Williams 37:35

  is interesting. I'd be curious to know, on your demographics. I had mentioned earlier that the people that I find that are probably better at taking care of a new home just based on my experience, like they change their own filters they do, or people probably, you know, 50 and older because they've been doing it for a long time. They probably would be your most difficult clients to get because they're also they can do it. Where I'm just guessing. I want you to confirm this where if someone was let's say 40 and younger, they don't a not only try, they be don't even know what it is, but they probably are less, they're probably have less red flags for you to even come in. Is that true?

  38:05

  Yeah, for sure. You've hit it exactly of our a&r clients, I think we have like five or six. I don't we don't ask people their age, but just in like talking to my sales guys. I think we have five or six that are over the age of 70. So we barely touch that that demographic, because they have time. They know how to do it. And they're like, and I think it's a sense of pride for them. Like I'm gonna do it. And I've actually back in the day I gave an estimate to the sweetest old lady. She was like nine years old. She's like, No, I can do this often result I'm selling like, there's no way you can carry the somersault bag. That's half your body weight. She's like, No, I'll show you. She'd go away. Yeah. So so I'm like, I gotta, you know, so I'm like, I can carry it. She's like, No, if we go the back of a truck, she already had it all set up the back for a little sedan. She takes an ice cream scoop, and scoops a little bit of salt out. And she's like, No, I'll show you it took us like eight minutes to get to the basement and she dumps in that one thing. She's like, Yeah, this doesn't take any time at all. And I was like, at that point, I just understand that there's some people that and that client actually that she wasn't even gonna pay for her son was like, please go take care of this for me. I'm always doing stuff my mom's house just don't even tell her the price was Dolores and she had to cap Yeah, exactly. And she and I was like, man, bless her heart that like That's amazing. But you know, I like one thing that someone told me when I go to school is like, what just do something when you you know, join chess club if you have to just join anything and I think for for a lot of people when you retire, you got to be doing something and I think they enjoy nitpicking. But to answer your My really long winded question your answer we we are primarily in people's homes that are between the ages of 30 and 55. If you narrow down even more, I'd say you were definitely in that like 38 to 55 range all day long of people they've got a couple kids is golden tree we're running around the backyard pitch from afar I'm

  Mark D. Williams 39:37

  still blown away at this late 90 year old lady with a with ice cream bucket is actually pretty impressive. Yes. I mean, you could say a lot you could almost write a book on that particular subject right there like perseverance. I mean, that time right. I mean, I think it was Tom Brokaw, I didn't read the book, but it was, you know, the greatest generation right? That generation of you know, yeah, World War one too and all that I mean, just this focus mindset of a Getting it done. That's, uh, yeah,

  40:01

  I mean, I left that I was like, that's who I want to be when I'm 90. Like, I'm so stubborn. I'm like, No, listen. Yeah, let's hear young man. This is why. Exactly, you

  Mark D. Williams 40:09

  actually started way younger? Yeah. When they, when your brother told you, you couldn't start a business, you're like, dang, I take this bucket, and I'm gonna grab some salt. And I'm gonna do I'm doing it exactly. I'm gonna use my hands to clean your ducks, probably not a great idea. Wow, that's, that's really interesting how from a. So you've got your 34 services, obviously, quarterly walked me through a little bit of, you know, you come out you do a sales call with with somebody, you have their list of services, and I assume it probably increases, they start just probably a very entry, whatever you can get in to start it. And then I assume that that model continues to grow year in and year out, or people usually like once they're in there, like, I'm going to do most of the services and just let you do. Yeah, for

  40:50

  the most part, people select almost all the items right up front. And then your every once awhile, they'll like add one or two here and there depending on on where they're at. Or sometimes they they think like my husband's gonna do this, or maybe they were buying software assault from the local sports team, you know, baseball, wrestling, and then their kids are out at that stage. And now they're like, actually, can you guys just take care of that, too. So a lot of times, they're adding all the services, and then they're doing there, they're not changing it. And the way that our pricing structure works is for the quarterly services like grease and oil, your garage door, for example. It's a very simple task, no one does it. So it's, I think it's like $8. For us to do that, right? Very simple. Some things are a little more expensive, like dryer vent cleaning, if you just call us today be like 139 cleaner dryer vent. But if you're on the quarterly plan, it's 80 bucks a year, we're gonna do that once a year or as needed. So we just charged $20 A quarter to come and do that. And so once a year, you know, it's done. So you're not one, you're not paying like $800, one visit and like $200 a difference. We just, it's like, you know, three to four bucks every and same price every single quarter,

  Mark D. Williams 41:46

  I suspect you have a lot of people, excuse me, like myself in the fact that I, as a business owner, hire you and introduce you to some money, my clients, but I also am a you know, I wanted to try you guys out. So I use my own personal home. And one thing that I was really impressed with right away was your app. Walk us through a little bit of that, you know, how you use technology. I mean, obviously, the services we just talked about, you can't solve it all with the button. However, your app, it makes it very organized for your service techs, I was impressed that, you know, they show up very professional, very clean, just, I mean, they're on the ball. And you walk us through the from there, we'll get into training in a minute. But you're the app that you've developed, how long did that take? How important is that to your overall system of scheduling? And just, you know, it seems like you guys are in and you're out and just like you're done.

  42:32

  Yeah, I the biggest thing for us, it was really important that I kind of one reason I hinted a little bit of my background of creating systems and processes of that's great, I could be doing this myself. And I could probably do 50 to 100 houses, you know, quarterly, whatever. And so run a business, but that wasn't the goal. That's, you know, it's the company is not about me, it's about a team of people. And so creating systems and processes. And so what would happen is we'd be doing estimate, we'd walk through the house, I'd be like, Okay, you got smoke alarms, batteries, like 90 cents, and I'm trying to like, what's your price gonna be and but you know, trying to figure this out, I'm like, There's got to be a way to simplify the pricing system. And so that's, you know, that we created, so it's all a cart, so I don't care what car you have in your garage, I don't care what if we're going to do the software sold at your house, it's gonna be this price. And that's gonna be the same price for all your neighbors, the person on the other side of town, it's the price is the price. That's, that's what it is for us. And then it just changes based on the items that you select. So that allows us a very systemized approach, and then that gets transferred to our client form and client forum was created out of necessity as well. Because when I went from one to 10, clients, you know, in the very beginning at you go back to point number one, and you're like, What did I do this last, you know, last quarter, and sometimes I look back at like the transition, we're probably in version like 20 of this client form app that that we're discussing. And today, it's so nice, cuz it looks like a really nice report card that you get in elementary school on the left hand side, you can select from one to 30 for the services, and there's four columns for each quarter. And on the right hand side, it tells you exactly how frequently we're going to do it. And then on pages two through six, we have to take a photo of everything that we did for you, and all that the goal is just to lose our most particular client. I'm not gonna say your name and age, but I know who she is. And these are some of the things that she wants. She's like, Well, how do I know you did it today? Well, here's a photo. And so with that, we now have a timestamp on that. And so it's just the goal, find your most most particular client meet their standards and it for the other 799 clients. It's a great are so easy to serve as a great sales

  Mark D. Williams 44:19

  to anyone out there that just heard that listen to that again. Basically take your most difficult client please them and you will blow the rest of their clients out of waters. Yes. What I get out of that most definitely. Wow. That is impressive. How the app itself? I mean, you went to a software developer walk us through how someone who creates an app like

  44:36

  that, you know, like you're really talking this app up and I hate to tell you how simplistic it is. But this thing is cool people Yeah. And it's and we use it internally just straight that it is actually very simple. It what it represents on on the back end, when you look dive deep into the software and I'm not a super techy guy, but it it represents a shopping cart that you would use. So as we're selecting those items, you know, we can scroll based on quantity, and it just really systemize this thing And actually, it's really nice because when we're doing the assessment, I'm not just guessing you're hosting me for 80. And then they're like, Well, I was hoping to spend 425. And now we're having high. Okay, the price is 480. And they're saying my budget was 425. We'll say what's one or two items that weren't super important, just like Amazon, take it off of Yeah, deselect, it's the exact same thing, deselect it, you

  Mark D. Williams 45:17

  don't need it that I think you've guys have embodied even your website is very clean. If you guys haven't seen it's cura home.com. Direct. And it's a very elegant website. those that aren't familiar with the KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. I've heard it once. I love it. It's can't be improved upon. But I even wrote my notes of the for the minute like you have a kiss website, it's very clean your app, obviously keep talking about this amazing app, Steve Jobs really wanted to buy it before. You know, he started Apple, I'm sure. And it's just I think it's really clean. It's mainly because I think I'm attracted to it because it's so visually clean. I think that's what attracts me to that as a as the owner, it's very, I understand it very cleanly in the fact that you can just toggle on it, and it comes up with your price. It also makes your tech jobs much easier. Yes. Because you've figured that out. They're there to do the work. You know, pricing is a whole nother ball of wax. Yeah. One thing I've noticed is and I think this is really encouraging in our industry. Actually recently, I was just down at the Capitol Hill for Minnesota Housing First, which is our local building Association, just trying to get more awareness for why we need affordable housing. And you're thinking like, why are we talking about this right now? This episode is not brought to you by Minnesota Housing First. But if they want to contribute, they certainly can. My point is, is that we talked about declining Industries Building in general, we have a major labor shortage. It's already here. And for the next probably two decades until we solve it maybe indefinitely. It's going to be a major problem, for sure. In Minnesota, but I think across the United States, and you often hear oh, I wish there was more young people in this industry. I wish there was, I have to tell you, at least from the people that I've met, I probably met about 1015 Different of your people. I don't know their exact ages. I don't ask them, but I would suspect them 90% of them are under the age of 30 5am. I close. Yeah. And so I think it's very encouraging. You have young, very knowledgeable, extremely personable, I'm blown away at their I mean, they all work at, you know, hotels and like get concierge service, because they are very professional, very impressive. And you're going to as someone who owns a business, that isn't a home business, you know how important it is, when you go into someone's home, like treat it with respect. And like, you know, you're you're describing this attitude towards the mister with his arms crossed, and like how do you defuse that, I mean, these people have to have a pretty high social IQ in terms of interacting with people yet still be able to do the work, I guess, to two folds, the questions that people have forgot why I'm asking this question. One is I'm a statement as I'm impressed with how young the workers are. And I think it's a positive sign for industry. So kudos to you for attracting young talent, and then to how do you hire and what are you looking for when you hire because that can't be by accident?

  47:46

  Correct? Yeah, it's definitely not we're very, very intentional on finding people like we actually prefer, they have no experience in like air duct cleaning, or routine, routine maintenance. There's no one else doing it. So so that's fine, we're there. But our goal is, is find people that do have a little bit of customer service experience. Otherwise, we can train you in on customer service. And it's in our training documentation, it tells you how to drive in the driveway, it tells you how to knock on the door at these things that you're like, what does that have to do? So it's like a sales script, almost like Yeah, exactly. And every single one of my guys know if they were sitting in this room, they would know that when you knock on that door, you take three to four steps back, and you stand there with a smile on your face, and you wait for that door to open. They all know that because it's in our training documentation. And we go through our training documents every 90 days in that 15 minute meeting in the mornings, where. So everything is very, very intentional. And that's one reason why I can be sitting here right now recording this podcast, and I'm not out in the field or doing something because those guys they know what they're supposed to.

  Mark D. Williams 48:37

  Is that why when you first sat down, you rolled your chair back three feet, because you wanted to get a space, you're so ingrained in your SOP to make you feel comfortable. Yeah, I appreciate that.

  48:45

  Yeah. So it is a little things. I think it's being really, really intentional. And taking the mindset of I'm trying to build something that that we can replicate. I know that when I bring a guy on, I know that hey, after two to three weeks, you're going to be at this level in our in our training process, and you're going to be doing a great job. But yeah, I think it's also a cultural thing. We're really, really intentional, like when guys are being trained in and you see, hey, here's 1516 other guys doing it this way, you're not going to be the odd man out, you want to fit in, you want to get a good review, you want your name highlighted, and that

  Mark D. Williams 49:12

  becomes a positive reinforcement competition, if you will. Yeah,

  49:16

  yeah. And we could dive really deep for how we play that game. Oh, like, like bonuses. This is one that I'm proud of that we're doing this year. My guys love it. One thing that we were having an issue with was guys, they get comfortable, they get relaxed, right? And all sudden it's there at 725 and 730. So pretty soon guys are showing up late or maybe had a big day and you don't want to come in. So I said I tell you guys what. I know the costs that it that it costs us when we reschedule a job. It's really if you're going to do $1,000 today and the rescheduled to Friday, we actually lost on $2,000 because we would have done the $1,000 today and on Friday. We're losing two grand. So instead of you show up on time, every time this week, I'll give you $10 The next week 20 Next week 30 also rides rides so the year ends game and golf. Yeah, exactly. When at the end of year Christmas bonus, you can get 520 bucks if you've showed up On time, every time you can request time off on limited and that's one of the metrics. I assume there might be others. Yep. On time, every time you're going to go, if you show up late, it starts over so you don't get your bonus that week. And so if you're on week 10, you'll see all Ickes

  Mark D. Williams 50:11

  you accumulate your bonus weekly, so at least they're not like if you missed it, and things happen, right? Something happened, what happens if there's like, a flat tire or something like that? It's,

  50:20

  it's, there's no, there's no excuse. There's no excuse, right? If everyone shows up on time, oh, collectively, it doubles. Yield for that week. Yep. Double Your bonus that week. That is genius. But if someone no calls, no shows, no one gets their bonus that week.

  Mark D. Williams 50:36

  Oh, wow, this is incredible. Hi, that's this the first high five in the gears builder podcast.

  50:42

  So that that took me from like, oh, we had to reschedule this client, we have to reschedule this job to like it because I was talking to my managers. And I'm like, you guys, what's your largest struggle there? Honestly, we just need really, really consistency. And they're like, it's fine. But it's just when you have 1516 people, it's like, it'd be like, This guy was late, like, once this month, or like, you know, it's like, really small, you put big numbers in and then you look at you're like, yeah, like one person is at least once a week. And these guys now my one guy who was like the largest offender, bless his heart. He started calling everyone at six in the morning, making sure they're awake. So they're on time. So these guys just started like

  Mark D. Williams 51:12

  self regulating. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it seems like as a company scale is one of the most important things recently talking to some other builders was kind of like a management team within the company. You know, you know, there was another builder on that had maybe 7020 employees, and yet a leadership team of like four people, and they would have their own meetings, their own deal. To your point, essentially, when it's when it's employee lead or Inner Inner team lead, it seems to have much more traction than if the owners. Interesting. Wow. How big is your overall team?

  51:39

  Yeah, I believe right now we're at 19 employees. 19. Okay. Yeah, we had grown quite a bit. We've expanded into a few other states doing owner owner owned corporate owned locations, the day we can keep our quality up. And to me, that's super important that you know, this is I'm trying to build a scalable operation something that one day, you know, my kids buy me out, or I saw, I don't know what the I'm, I'm super happy where I'm at right now. I'm not Yeah, Jerome's not for sale. But, you know,

  Mark D. Williams 52:02

  is it? Is bitters yet your resume? Yeah, send me

  52:06

  a text. But I ultimately when we're in these locations have so hard to control the quality. And one, one thing that's really important to me is I don't miss dinner with my family. I've got a two and a half year old and a six month old at home. And they know that I'm home for dinner, and my 12 year old knows that, like I'm there. And that's really important to me. And so it's, you know, it's like, could you make a couple extra grand this year? If you did this, do that. And it's like, not worth it not worth it. Like I saw his first steps. You know, I love that I was home for that. And that's really important. And we've talked

  Mark D. Williams 52:30

  about that a lot on this podcast, but seems like in general entrepreneurial podcast, we talk about time, and there was another builder that was a good mentor to me and just kind of give us some outlines. And I think especially when you love your job and you love, it's not hard to work sometimes. I mean, sometimes obviously it is, but it's not always dreamed. Yeah, it's difficult. But that being said, you still love working on and in the business. And but you know, why are you doing it? And I think also your values for your company, and for your people. I think that it's not why we do it. But I think it ends up becoming an extremely powerful statement to your clients. Because you know, the things that they would want to value, they should see that you're valuing it, and therefore they value you because you value it and it's not meant to be a salesy thing. It's a real thing, right. You know, you're not selling more homes, because you're like, I get to watch my kids first steps. It's like, No, you're watching the first good step. And if you lose a sale, that's okay. Yeah. And they respect you for that, I think, also understand that you're a business. And you know, it's not like you're not coming at nine o'clock at night. You know, I always use the analogy when people say they want to meet nights and weekends and you know, some flying into town, there's an extremely unusual circumstances, that's fine, but I have young kids do and so I've tried to create the boundaries for those very reasons. You know, if you want to go see the dentist, you're not going to see the dentist at 930. At night after dinner like that does. That doesn't happen? I don't understand why seems like in housing and particular things around homes and even service and maintenance. I'm sure you get calls all the time. Well,

  53:52

  I need you here right now. Well, we'd love to schedule you, we'll do the best that we can. But you know, this is, you know, yep. We can't get there. Right. The second most definitely. I think that's getting better. It seems like more people hire more services done. And people are really specializing on certain things. And so it seems like a lot of people I've used that least a few services like they have long guy or you know, they've got a few things going on at there. So they've been trained a little bit more. Yeah. Yep. A little bit. And there's the there's the odd balls out there that are like, are you gonna notify me or whatever, like, I promise you, you're gonna get email a week before one day before we'll send you a text

  Mark D. Williams 54:24

  photo when we're done. Yeah. Client, you helped us create this. Yeah, exactly.

  54:28

  So we've got all that stuff in place, but everyone's Well, you have to educate for the most part. And a lot of times when we're coming in, especially for routine maintenance clients, I'd say we're typically the fourth or fifth vendor they've got like a cleaning service that's coming weekly, bi weekly, monthly. They they've got their windows cleaned. They probably have a long guy and a snow guy. You know,

  Mark D. Williams 54:42

  I think like I mean, I guess we're all I shouldn't say all I feel like everyone is in the service industry on some level and the fact that like, I have a client I must service them. I feel like I could learn I feel like you have such a high touch business in mine is as well but my transaction, it's a relationship and I love that on your website. You even put that like you're not trying to do one customer and then find the next customer you want to You're the first thing that you talked about was, I want to repeatable business for the sake of my family for the sake of my employees, but also the, for the sake of the client, like you get to know them. Like you, you can take care of something better if you've been there multiple times. And I feel like, you know, building a custom home is a very high touch, very emotional journey versus super emotional. But, you know, understanding and respecting the fact that, you know, this is your home, we want to do a great job. And, but service, I feel like me specifically, I can learn a lot from somebody like yourself that I feel like has much more experienced in the sense that you're touching 3200 clients a year, right, your touch points, I should say, you know, based on that 800 service count, and I feel like you guys have your SOP dialed and super dialed. I mean, it's pretty evident just the things that you're sharing. So, yeah, you might have to do a side consulting gig for businesses on how to truly treat their employees or their their clients. Yeah,

  55:56

  I will say and I appreciate that. I think one thing that really changed changed the way I had to go one goal last year, I was like, I'm not nothing's like lose five pounds BS. I'm just gonna, like consume 52 books. And that really, I feel like mentally brought me to different you've just way I think about life brought me to a different because you're getting these people that are like area experts, and they're documenting everything. They're giving you all their secrets. And you can listen to an audio book, I got his point. I I cheated. I got like got 1.11 with you. I got to the point where at 1.7 times speed I was fully comprehending everything and I like people get my vehicle they're like, dude, who was funny you say that cheat time Windshield University. It completely like changed everything. It really helped you. Yes, it was great.

  Mark D. Williams 56:38

  You should create that your domain name that's actually pretty good one ah, it's funny. I've one of my questions later I guess we can talk about it now was you know, favorite books and I'm super into self education as well. And so it's you know, the reason I started the podcast one of the main reasons the podcasts the audio books, you know, I usually will mix in just a book for to you know, relax do or not relax you know, what a sci fi fantasy whatever your history then a lot of people want to cry and these days yeah, you know, true drama true was a true crime. Yeah, true crime. But so 52 walk me through what were some of the highlights of of that experience?

  57:11

  Yeah. I from that, I got into short term rentals. We and we purchased three short term rentals last year using other people's monies and I know you like it sounds like you're at some kind of huge convention like do it No, zero money down, but like read his book, like we legit we did it. We and that was great. We're 50% owners on these houses and we my wife manages them and it's it's going really really smoothly. They're reading fun books like 10x by Grant Cardone makes you just want to kick a door down. I mean, it's like I'm gonna go out and do this and, and I think what was the name of that book? 10x by Grant Cardone, that's, that's a really good one that that a lot of pee anyone at any stage in life can can read. I'm into endurance sports, and so I really loved any books with David Goggins and living with seal is the book that Jesse it's a wrote about, yeah, because he actually felt like kind of made

  Mark D. Williams 57:55

  it live for like, 60 days with him. Yeah, yeah. They didn't say him by name. I just wrote about the other day when I was working out oddly enough. Yeah,

  58:01

  yeah. And because at the time, David Goggins, didn't want to be known. And so he calls him seal in the book and that one is really good. I've listened to it actually a few times and all these books I've listened to a few times and that there's a lot of common ones like it and I think it really kind of gets into the entrepreneurship like like E Myth revisited things like that. That are like are the pumpkin clamp plan Profit First together like giving you Michael McCalla wits has really Yeah, he knows his stuff. Yeah. So some of those are fun. But like I said, like, you know, I listen to short term rental long term wealth book by Avi Carl, it's, it's short, I think I read I, I had a listen that she didn't have an audio book. But it was a short book. And it basically tells you exactly how to run a short term rental. I mean, we're in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And we're and we've got three houses right now booked out in Cape Coral, Florida. And we haven't had to go there once because there's way the systems and process and we self manage. So because of the tax benefits of of her being able to be a real estate professional. If you spend 750 hours or more, then you can appreciate that. So it's gets into probably probably not this podcast, but it gets into the weeds definitely

  Mark D. Williams 58:56

  going to have like three or four more podcasts one per book, so it'll be 52 podcasts in the series. That's interesting. My I was because one of my questions was What what are you reading right now? Like, what did you listen to while you're driving here?

  59:06

  Yeah, I'm actually like a non business book. It's a 42 hour book. It's called About face. And it's a it's a guy telling his basically his autobiography or of going through the military. And he was, you know, he's a vet. And it's a long book and it talks a lot like it's I'm pulling like leadership things out of this and how and it's, it's amazing because someone, I started a Facebook community for home service professionals. It's really so I just started so there's like, 52 people in it. But But what I said I asked that same question. What are you guys what are you guys recommend? And someone's like, do this read this about Facebook? I'm like, I looked at like, there's no way I'm listening. Okay, but at 1.7 You can really crush that. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I'm flying through it. But it's so I'm listening to about face right now. It's really what I want to get back into visible because just today I was like, I'm like I feel like I'm really motivated. I'm feeling really good. I'm getting all this stuff done. But I'm like I want to keep on just keep.

  Mark D. Williams 59:53

  I have a question for you. So I have a very not that said but I mean essentially Monday through Wednesday, I hit all my pots cast, I think I have three or four that I follow pretty regularly. And then I'll hit up my basically, if I do distance running in the summer, so the trail running and so actually gonna miss that I've tore my meniscus. So I haven't been doing that trail running. But that's, I mean, I'll crush audiobooks. Yeah, when you run it for a couple hours, right? And, but I guess where I was going with this is, you know, then I get into the, you know, the books later, I try not to have multiple books going because I try to my question to you, as someone that is doing 52 books in a year as a business owner, sometimes I want to call it a guilt complex. But as I'm educating and as I'm listening to this stuff, do you read a business like the Pumpkin Plan, or traction, which is I'm sort of reading right now at home. And it's like, in fact, it was so detailed, I had to buy the book, because I'm like, I can't listen to this book and actually process it, it's too I'm gonna have to, like, go through it slower, right? And really understand it and highlight it and all that jazz. But how have you come to grips with all the information that you're getting? versus actually acting on it? Or are you okay, with like, I'm going to continue to, to me, the only way I can analogize this is like a shower. Like, I take a shower every day to be clean. I mean, just I'm just using this as an example. But for those listening, I do take a shower every day. And random fact. That's funny, I really thought Mark smelly. Yeah, sometimes multiple showers a day if you're working out. So anyway, the point of it is, is you know, by doing that you set a practice in place, so therefore you are clean, or just like you mentioned working out, you know, you're not gonna get fast running one time. But if you run three, four times a week, you know, over the long term, you will, but it's not one specific workout workout that made you faster. How do you there's a pretty long winded question, how do you process this idea of you're downloading 52 books in your brain? How do you know which ideas to actually take? Or do you Okay, with like, you know, what, when when inspiration hits me, I write it down. Walk us through that, because I'm personally I'm really interested to know the answer to that, because I struggle with like, do I stop? I can read the same book, like probably 10 times in a row and get something new every time.

  1:01:55

  Yep, for sure. So a lot of those books that are really great, I'm gonna re listen to and some of them are, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I think I've listened to every year since for like 13 years I mean, that things go on I'm like, I think it's gonna start skipping on the on Audible there because it's been listened to so many times but the what I would get

  Mark D. Williams 1:02:12

  like a bad right. Yeah, man bad. Yeah, give you already listen to him multiple times.

  1:02:15

  Exactly. The so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to just build my like mental portfolio of like, good to know things. So I'll like I'll jot things down. I've got notes on a jot or I'll highlight something in that. Just copy it and we'll send myself an email like a reminder to re listen to that. You're listening to a book traction right now, which has so much to take in right, you've got to slow everything down. That might be like a point oh, eight, right. Like you got to

  Mark D. Williams 1:02:38

  really slow that analog. I can't even listen, that's too much. Yeah, exactly.

  1:02:41

  So that has so many things put into it that that and you're actually implementing things same with you know, Profit First, where they want you to go and open all these bank accounts and stuff. So you don't do that out of curiosity. I did we do follow up profit for still? Yeah, like four years later? Yeah, yeah, that was something that got me from, we're not going to make payroll. I mean, I remember at times, I knew that the funds transfer at like 5am. And my would like my mental subconscious has a stressful, entrepreneurial wake up. And like, so the one account would go negative, but I knew if I transferred it by 8am, I won't get the $30 fee from the bank. So I'd have to move like Thursday night, that Thursday morning. I'd have to move it to make payroll on Friday. And that was like, stressful. Yeah. And so we switched profit first. And it was like, within like a month, I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm telling my money more to go. And it was just so much better. And I and reading that book at the time was like, well, there's no extra money. Why? Why? Why does it matter putting into a couple different accounts. But to this day, we found my bookkeeper, they don't love it, because it's a little it was a lot of Yeah, but but they do so. So I think my my answer to it is I'm building a site, when I come up when a problem comes up in in life, I have all this information that I can reference back to him. Like, I remember reading this. And there's a really good quote in one of the books, I forget what it is, but it essentially states that there's no such thing as a problem that's too big, you're just not big enough yet to solve that problem. That's why it's that's why it's so much really, really stressing you out. And I remember things that were stressing me out as a entrepreneur of one year that like I look back today I'm like that happens like 16 times a day now and I don't even deal with it. You know, like I remember like emails coming in all stuff like I gotta respond to email right away. We get back to emails within five minutes like you're home because that's just our goal and that and I don't I don't remember last time I asked her to customer email you that's not my job anymore. So you create the systems and processes in place and you become a bigger person and solving problems becomes easier and easier you can take on larger problems and your business grows as a side effect of of you becoming a more equipped person handle the different challenges

  Mark D. Williams 1:04:31

  do you find that the that your employees and the people that are your team that they also are self educating like this? I mean, you guys do you know, Team books are like, yeah, once a quarter like walk, how do you not enforce is a strong word. But how do you recommend that or how do you process as a team because I just started and we'll see how it goes. We're using atomic habits, which I read a couple of times. Great book. I feel like the other thing is when you start talking to people about books in there, like every single book, like oh, yeah, I remember. Oh, yeah, I

  1:04:57

  remember that one. Yeah. This is really good. As in I

  Mark D. Williams 1:05:01

  remember I read it four or five years ago, and I'm just like, I'm on chapter eight right now. And 1.6 beta can handle 1.7. By the way I can't listen to I can't listen to my own podcasts on doublespeak because I speak really fast. Yep. And but there are some podcasts where I fill up that 2x Because they're just very drawn out and slow. And I had a designer step in my car, we did a road trip going to Rochester, and she's like, Oh, my word. Yeah, this, you're freaking you're tweaking me out. You can't handle this. You gotta build up to it. So I'm not quite to Daniel's level yet. On the one seven, sorry, the question was, oh, how do you implement it with your team? So that they enjoy it? So that they want to do it?

  1:05:32

  Yeah, for sure. So I there's a few different projects, some of my guys that come up to you, you know, we have a chitchat, a conversation sidebar, and it's really ever about work and say, How's life going? And a lot of times, they'll ask, like, Would you be open to a book recommendation? You know, because like, if I tell you, Well, Margaret, you really need to, you need to go to the bank, you need to open up six counts, you're like, Okay, why but if I say you should read the book, Profit First, it'll help systemize and your with your cash flow. That's, you're way more likely to implement that in your life. And so for me with those with with certain people, I'm just recommending a book every couple of months. And I say, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hold your hand on this, and I can babysit. Let me know when you're done. And we'll chat about it. Yep, with my with management, things like that. We're not We're not per, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like I'm the perfect business owner, I'd say about once or twice a year, I read a really good book, and I send it to all of them, I say, I found a really good book, I really love this, if you'd like, I will buy it for you, for you, for you to read it. I think it'll be really great for what we're currently doing. So that's worked, but I'm not we're not like perfect. We don't have like a I've seen some business owners that have like, a like a chart of like, if you read a book this week, put a star and then the stars will put 10 notes are like going

  Mark D. Williams 1:06:35

  back to the little kids. Like if you do your math homework if you did. That's funny. Yeah, exact, some things never change. Turns out your first grade teacher taught you everything you need to know about running a business.

  1:06:43

  You'd be surprised there's a lot of little things that put in place. Yeah, it's amazing how it works, that you can really go back to school things like publicly praising people and you know, privately correcting things like that. It's like, man, you actually did learn a lot just watching I grew up with, I have five siblings. And so where are you on the birth order, I'm number four of six. And we're kind of split in half. And there's a pretty big gap between my brother and I were four and half years apart, or when I was like two. And so I kind of have some older, like oldest sibling tendencies, but for I also have to, like fit in and like follow the term because we all would pile into our minivan yawns really late. And so that's why I'm always like weird tendencies. But it's amazing. Like, you look at all this stuff, and it's like, wow, it kind of makes sense, like running a business is not that different than running a classroom or a large family

  Mark D. Williams 1:07:23

  do you do when you hire? And I feel like we can, we're honestly going to have to do like five podcasts here. There's so much here to unpack. But how? I mean, when you hire people, are you doing the personality tests? Like, see how they fit in and walk us through just because I think you have such a great repertoire to pick from, but how are you? How are you hiring your people? I know you've interviewed him, you want to train them? But how are you basing this off of just your gut feeling? Or do you have a series of questions? Are you multiple people interviewing these people or even like a personality test? Because what you're talking about a little bit right now is, you know how the birth order does affect you know, how you use certain things, which is super critical in a business,

  1:07:58

  right? Yeah, we it kind of depends. At times, we've gotten super deep into it. In 2021, it was really easy to hire people. We were doing group interviews, and we'd have everyone do a DISC assessment. And we'd actually go across room and everyone answer the same question. And then we'd start like lottery. Yep. And then we'd do right. It'd be like, tell me what you'd like to do for fun on the weekend. And it was amazing. Like, you'd ask like six or seven questions that would take like, 1520 minutes. And by the end of it, you could tell like, that person right? There is awesome. Like,

  Mark D. Williams 1:08:24

  and it was group interview,

  1:08:25

  I've never heard it. Yeah, it gives you it makes you so nervous, like when you're first gonna run this thing because you're like, Okay, I'm inviting, like 15 people to show up at 10am. And then like, 10 of the 15 would show up anyway.

  Mark D. Williams 1:08:36

  It's like a it's like a dating reality TV show, you kind of monetize that thing. For sure. That sounds really interesting.

  1:08:41

  That works really that now, you know, hiring is a little bit different. So so now we definitely have a very, we have a set of questions. And and it's, and it's very, very intentional. And it'll be things like at one point during the conversation, I'll ask you, Mark, if you're going to describe integrity, how would you like, if you said your friend had integrity, what would you say about them? And they'll they'll list off traits, like, they show up when they say they're gonna show up, they do what they say they're gonna do blah, blah. And then we'll ask a few different questions, then I'll say, I have a question. If your friend that you described earlier was here, would they say you're a person of integrity? And sometimes people be like, You know what, actually, no, I'm always late. This is like the first time we've been on time ever. It's okay, maybe not the best fit. But then like, some people are also really honest. Yeah. Okay. That's part of integrity. That's another thing during interviews, people are almost too honest. Like and that might be like a tip for people like maybe maybe like not, don't be so crazy honest. I mean, it's, it's crazy people answer any question during interview and luckily, we're, I feel very professional about it. But we have a very, very, a set of questions that make it get to the point where are you going to be someone that fits in with your home? And are you going to be someone that could we send you to our most particular client we use that a lot. Can we send you there in two or three weeks? Or would you only be able to do this and we've had guys that my ops like, you know, I think this can be really great at like doing this, but not this and it's like, do we want to like nickel and dime this thing put together Are we just looking for that great employee cuz I'm willing to what run one less crew and have like eight really awesome crews right now rather than having like eight and then like crew nines like are all we'll send it to like the bad clients like no we're gonna send everyone you could go to our absolute best client you go to our most leisure client doesn't matter where you can go to your house and we're gonna send a really great person. Wow.

  Mark D. Williams 1:10:20

  We are running out of time and we didn't actually want to talk to you about franchising, so we'll just save that for the next time. Sounds good. Where can our listeners find you?

  1:10:28

  Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn Daniel felt if you want to get in touch with me personally, our website is cura home it's que ura cure home.com We're locally you'll see our vans driving up and down all the highways in Minnesota here and yeah, I always love connecting with with anyone locally.

  Mark D. Williams 1:10:41

  Yeah, check them out on Instagram as well. They do some great videos and reels that are always really interesting. If you want to see some of the stuff that they're cleaning out of their ducks. That's pretty great. You can find them at Quora and I'll everything will be in the show notes. So thanks for coming on Daniel. Really appreciate it. And if you liked what you heard, please share it with someone that needs some home maintenance. Please rate and review that's how we get more listeners to the curious builder podcast and thanks for tuning in.

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