Hello and welcome to the Homeowner Show. We are live at Moondack Ice House in Magnolia, Texas. Thank you for joining us. My name is Kevin. With me is Craig Williams.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Homeowner Show. We are so glad that you could join us for another live episode. How you doing, Kev?
Man, I'm good, dude. It is nice out here.
Like, it is, it is literally the calm before the storm.
Yeah, it's gonna get cold. It's gonna Like, they're predicting snow, which down here in Houston is ridiculous.
Yeah. You know, so I saw this gal on, I think it was Instagram today, and she's like the southern gal.
And she was like, look, if y'all haven't figured out yet, like, I follow like a lot of cowboy content and hunting stuff.
Yeah. And so she kind of fits both those categories.
Um, but she was standing in her pasture and she goes, hey, all my friends up north, y'all's weather's in my backyard and I need y'all come get it out.
Yeah, it's drunk. Please come get it, you know. Yeah, it's gonna get cold, maybe snowy, and then it's gonna get rainy, which is just gonna produce ice and mud.
Yeah, right now we're predicted to have snow on Tuesday.
It is. I remember the last time it snowed, I wound up at your house for 3 days.
It wasn't all bad. We had some fun, but it was only because my house froze too.
Yeah, that was the downside.
But it was like 7 inches of snow.
No, that was a— it was a fun day. Yeah, I mean, well, not more than a day, but I mean, it was—
Yeah, a little sledding and sliding.
Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, we're out here with the net and we got some, uh, some cool guests coming up. Sarah's gonna be wrangling for us.
That's right, that's right. As any good cowpoke would. Uh, and we'll talk about some fun stuff along the way. Um, and I'm almost 2 bourbon, Craig, so it's gonna be fun.
All right, I don't know. Uh, we got our first guest lined up. Hi, I'm Kevin.
Hey, I'm Rick. Rick Collins.
Rick Collins. All right, glad to have you, Rick.
Is it 2 Ricks or one Rick? One Rick.
That's enough for my wife.
Depends on how much trouble you're in.
can you hear yourself okay?
Awesome. Well, uh, we, uh, one of the things we do here is just kind of meet people and find out what they do. So introduce yourself. Uh, you know, we know your name's Rick.
Yeah, my name is Rick Rick Collins. I own GO Financial Solutions. That's G-E-A I am from Louisiana.
I'm a 4-time national champion LSU Tiger.
Okay. I'm actually from Shreveport, Louisiana, but I went to school at LSU. Actually had classes with Shaquille O'Neal, my one claim to fame.
That is a big man. I used to always worry he's going to step on me after class.
Yeah, unintentionally. He just walks and clambers around.
So one of the, one of the best presents I ever got was at my cousin's wedding, and I was, um, I think I was just like an usher. And at the time Uh, my cousin's fiancée worked at the Orlando Sentinel, and it was O'Neal's rookie year with the Magic. And so like, I have a signed cap from Shaquille O'Neal from his rookie year with the Magic.
That's it. That's an— I mean, his signature is worth quite a bit, actually. So, and not only that, the dude's super cool.
Really nice guy. He goes to Walmart and buys $10,000 worth of bikes for neighborhood kids. I mean, he's really cool.
No, he's a, he's a super good guy. He owns multiple businesses.
Yeah, I like his philosophy on things. Like $50 or $60 Domino's. Oh yeah.
Franchising. He designed a Kmart brand shoe because Reebok was too expensive.
Yeah, that was the one I really liked where he's like, this is stupid that people are like killing each other over shoes. Like, I'm gonna make them cheaper so like poor kids can actually afford them.
It was something like that.
Yeah, but yeah, it was a big pay cut for him not to, you know, get the endorsement from Reebok.
Yeah, yeah, but he didn't care about that. He doesn't need money. Yeah, no, he didn't need it whatsoever. So, uh, financial, tell, tell us about what, what all you do because that could go a lot of different ways.
I'm in the life insurance space, but what I focus on is infinite banking, primarily to help people get out of debt faster.
So they can turn their— get their house, you know, they bought a brand new house 5 years ago at 8.5%. I have a debt elimination program that actually gets people out of debt 10 years out, 10 years faster. And we couple that with infinite banking so their house note becomes a way to fund their retirement, their kids' college, and they get out of debt, you know, 10 years faster on average and save $100,000 on the house they bought.
So what do you mean when you say infinite banking?
Infinite banking is we use a life insurance policy as a savings vehicle.
You overfund this life insurance, say the premium's $200 a month for life insurance, you put in $1,000. Well, that $800 becomes cash value. It earns interest every year, tax-free, grows tax-free, you access it tax-free. You never lose money because it's in an indexed market index fund, so you never lose money on your dollars. And you can spend it whenever you want, however you want—
college, retirement, whatever.
And it's a way to guarantee no losses to your money. So people are tired of riding the 401 roller coaster. I come in and show them how to use life insurance. And the reason we use life insurance, federal law keeps that tax-free, keeps the IRS out of your pocket.
I'm a way bigger fan of life insurance than I am 401s.
Yeah, life and 401s are a money trap designed to help corporations get out from under pensions.
So that's what I do, especially that debt elimination. I, you know, people have a house note, car note, a college note. college loan they keep around like a pet for 20 years. We do an analysis to see what they can do with just their excess money, the extra $100 here, $200 they have left over. It's amazing what that does in a strategic way instead of shotgunning an extra $20 here towards the credit card, an extra $100 here towards the mortgage.
My Financial GPS program tells them what to pay, how much to pay, when to pay, the fastest way to get to zero debt. And it usually is 10 to 15 years faster than the bank plan.
Are you using like whole policies or like index?
Just because it's got the flexibility and the better return. Whole life is great. I'm not going to knock whole life.
It's a good place to stick your money.
IULs. My IUL makes between 10% and 15% a year tax-free.
Whole life is you're overpaying for your insurance and you get a refund at the end of the year. That's how whole life works. That's why I use IUL.
So, so are you You borrow against the UIA. Yeah.
Any cash value, you access it through a loan.
As your cash value grows, that, that, that's money you can use to take a loan against the cash value. You don't withdraw it because that's taxable, right? You take a loan because a loan doesn't show up on your 1040.
Borrowed money is tax-free.
And the cool thing is the way we set them up, that loan against your cash value may accrue interest at 5%, but you're making 9%, right? So you spent the money. You're still making 4% on the money you spent.
10, 15, 20 years ago. So you get to eventually spend the same dollar twice.
Or if you start early, 3 times.
So are you, are you taking that money and then putting it on the house note? Is that how you're doing that to get people out of the—
Our financial GPS calculates, you know, it's a, it's a monitored debt snowball, debt roll down, but you're paying off, you're throwing extra money at that house note. And instead of spending an extra $100 a month towards your house note, it may tell you to save up $4,000 and do a big chunk. Well, So that knocks off 3 years off the back end of your loan, whereas $100 a month doesn't really move the needle a lot, but if you chunk it like that, it really drastically reduces that debt load because you're cutting payments off the back end. So 5 years of payments is $50,000, $60,000 that you're not
Yeah, I mean, if you're disciplined enough, which hardly anybody is, you can do some of that yourself just by paying more on your loan.
You can, but most people Well, you know, just like a diet, you start off, I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to cut the spending out. The program I use actually monitors all your spending, hooks up to your bank account to actually monitor all your transactions. It tells you, are you on track or not? You've got an extra $300, move it to your savings vehicle. And it'll tell you to do that every month. You keep track of your money, kind of enforces some discipline, even though we don't ask people to go on a financial diet. We don't ask people to cut out their Starbucks or their gun range
It's an extra $100, $200 a month that they have that they can use more strategically. And we help them, you know, get out of debt faster and build that, turn that house note into something that can fund their, you know, kids' college or their retirement or their new car or their new house.
Yeah, but that's life-changing when you can look at it and go like, oh my gosh, I thought I was going to be in this thing for like the next 25 years and now I can be done in 10.
Yeah, 10 to 15 years. I can change a family's financial trajectory because you're out from under that debt and now you're You're creating legacy wealth, right? And oh, by the way, there is a death benefit when nobody gets out of this thing alive. When they do kick the bucket, their kids get a 6-figure life insurance benefit tax-free, right? And we couple that with the trust. So we create generational wealth. So the trust gets refunded, it loans money to people and they pass away, and then your grandkids get money too. It just goes on and on like the Rockefellers created generational wealth
using trusts and life insurance.
And well, and like You know, and some people think that it's just because you have so much that you can just live off the interest. And part of it is that you just have to be intelligent enough to put it in the right places so that it does last forever.
Well, most people are on this rat race and treadmill that keeps getting faster and higher. They keep buying plastic crap on credit cards and they never get out from under the debt load.
Buying plastic crap with plastic crap.
If you got a credit card at 18% and you're paying interest on that, that's the same as if you didn't have that, you could be making 18% profit. And so it's a 36% swing because you're in the hole instead of building equity in your own life.
Well, the Wrangler's giving me the signal. I mean, if you had some parting notes for anybody or want everybody to find out how to get a hold of you to talk about these strategies and these plans, how do they get a hold of you?
Yeah, you can go to my website, getmydebtfreedate.com. That's getmydebtfreedate.com and set up a free consultation with me. We go over, hey, where you are, what do you want to accomplish, and what can I do to help you? And if I can, great. If not, I have educated you a little bit and told you about what your options are.
Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. All right, Rick Rick, man. Glad you're here.
Everybody's gonna know you as Rick Rick now.
All right, thank you, man. Thank you. And I think that's awesome because like so many people— this is the problem with money is most people see it as a vehicle to pay debt, right? And like what I mean by that is a vehicle to pay for your bills, your electric bill, your cell phone bill, all that kind of stuff. But if you see it as an opportunity to produce produce something more than that, you've changed your understanding of what money actually is.
Yeah, I think money is one of those— and this is why guys like Dave Ramsey have been so successful. It's not because I think what he's suggesting is what's best. What he's suggesting is what works best for lazy-minded people. And I don't mean that as an insult. Most people don't want to have to think about it. They want to put it on an automatic schedule. They don't want to have to worry about it.
And so it's simpler to just put cash into envelopes and go, this is how much I have to spend.
You know, and that works.
So, but there's better ways.
At the end of the day to build generational wealth.
For what he's talking about. And so, like, it's, you know, to each their own.
You know, and I'll tell everybody, like, I'm married to a financial Mussolini.
And like, one of the things that we've done is we took our house from a 30-year note down to a 15-year note, and now we're on schedule to be done paying our house off in 7 years.
All at the same time, you know, we're using the IULs. We're using— I think I have 6 different life insurance policies on me at the moment.
That's for a lot of reasons.
It's frightening. I stay on her good side.
But part of that is we want to make sure, like, it's not just that, like, if something catastrophic happens to our family, that my family will be taken care of. That's an aspect of it.
But it's also like what he was talking about. It is a financial vehicle for my family to be able to access wealth later on. Because most of that, you know, those are the trees that I'm planting. that I will never sit in the shade of.
I want those for my kids. Yeah. And when you got— when you got kids, I mean, it makes sense to take care of them. And, you know, we— so many people see their job as a parent to set their kids up for success through graduating.
And that's kind of it. But there's so much more that you can do for your kids. So, man, we could talk about this for a long, long time.
But we do have another guest.
Yeah. So introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
Hi, my name is Rachel Drodie. I own Harper Grayson Communications. We're a digital marketing agency.
Got some competition over here, Kevin.
I guess. I see. I see. Well, tell us—
I gotta tell you, she's a lot cuter than you.
Well, that doesn't take much. That doesn't take much. We're all aware that this doesn't help anything.
I think you're working it.
I don't know. It might take you longer to style that than it does It might.
You would be surprised. Oh, I don't think I would be.
That looks like that's got a lot of work behind it. I'm just going to put it out there.
I bought him a few combs.
Oh, shoot. You know, they may be lost in there. I'm not sure.
We'll send out a search party for it later.
Yeah. I was eating barbecue earlier today, and I was like, I think I've still got it in there. Yeah, not real sure.
We got to kill it. It's a napkin is what it is.
Yeah, no, it's red. It blends into the color of the barbecue sauce.
You do have to oil it from time to time.
Daily. Well, I mean, look, if we're gonna talk about it, you— most people don't realize that your beard doesn't have any moisture to it.
your hair does because your head produces oil, but your face doesn't. You don't know anything about that.
I'm here for all of them.
Look, whenever you don't have any hair on your head, you're more acutely aware of how much oil it produces. And so you have to moisturize your beard because if you don't, there's no moisture to it. Your head hair naturally has oil because of The hair, the oil that you use.
Yeah, but look how long my hair is.
So it kind of gets away from the whole oil thing.
So I feel your pain completely. Like, there's oiling going on here too. There's a lot of hair.
I'm so glad that other people recognize the value of this.
But she's got some hair game going on.
I appreciate that very much. Beautiful. I have to work real hard at this, or my hairdresser does, and he's amazing.
Shout out to the Houston hair guys.
Listen, I am sympathetic. I did locks of love at one point in my life. Are you familiar with that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, wow, you really had a hair change.
Yeah, but what he didn't tell you was his nose hair. Oh, wow.
Yeah, no, I wasn't included on that part of this.
And so some child walking around with your eyebrows and nose hair, that is a lucky child.
Yeah, yeah, that child will be scarred forever.
Um, I'm sorry, I've already forgotten your name. Could you tell me your name again? Wow, this feels like a lot of dates I've been on lately.
So my name's Rachel Brody.
Yes, and you do digital marketing, that part I remember.
I do. Wow, that's what you got.
You feel like a lot of first dates I've been on.
I've gotten that before too.
Anyway, um, so, uh, how long have you been doing this?
Yeah, no, yeah, there's a couple in there.
Okay, well, I didn't even know digital marketing was a thing 27 years ago.
Well, I've been in marketing, so I was a public information officer for Homeland Security, so I've, I've been in the realms for a while. And then, um, I was doing marketing, global marketing for a $2.2 billion industrial supplier. And I didn't quite fit into the mom groups when I moved here, so I started going to networking meetings to like make actual friends and business connections. And next thing I knew, I started my own business, and that was 6 and a half years ago.
I'm curious, I really want to circle back around to the Homeland Security bit. Yeah, like why, why did they need marketing?
So it's— so I was in for mitigation, how to protect your home, people, and property prior to storm damage. Really? Yeah.
State of Louisiana was on it.
Oh, is that where you were working?
So Katrina and Rita, I was part of that gang.
So were you living someplace else?
I was living in Louisiana.
You were living— so like you were living in Louisiana, got recruited by Homeland Security to do marketing?
So I was part of a marketing agency and we were embedded into Homeland Security.
So we're government— like my agency is a government contractor as well too. So I So I'm still carrying that on, but that's how I was embedded in there. And so now I had to go through all the Secret Service certifications and everything else.
Did you have to like send them lists of friends to like interview?
They interviewed my kindergarten teacher. Yeah.
I've been through— so I've had, I had a good friend that ended up in a bunker building nuclear submarines.
And, and on purpose, huh?
oh yeah, yeah, he was in the bunker.
I think anybody who's going to be there building them is doing it on purpose.
And so they sent, uh, they sent a couple of FBI agents to my home to have several conversations with me about him, like, because I knew him— I've known him most of his life, and we went to college together. And they're like, okay, it's like, you, you know this person, you can give us information.
I've given those as well too. So I've had employees, um, I used to manage Abercrombie Fitch back in the day, like when it was actually a cool place to be.
Yeah, yeah, the The '90s.
The '90s. Thank you for dating me, but yes, sir, that's when it was.
That's okay, I dated myself.
So I had to do that for one of my employees that ended up going on to do Secret.
Yeah, so I've been on both sides of it.
I've been the one being interviewed and then the one being interviewed about.
So are you working mainly with like smaller businesses now?
I am now, so that's what we love to do.
Okay, so like what kind of things are you trying to implement for most of them? Are you doing local or are you doing—
We are doing, well, I do local and I actually We actually have some global clients as well too. So what we're doing is, um, we will do either an organic and we'll do a paid search, but we start off getting all of their organic social media, website, everything else on par.
And start them with the foundation blocks that they need to be able to echo what their messages are.
So I do have a team of social media experts, ad experts, and then a website building team as well too.
Which social platform do you TikTok.
Well, I mean, good news for you, it's shutting down on Sunday.
And just because of the sales on it for who I service aren't really there, that's why I'm not there, you know, promoting my clients there. But the back end of it is I think it's causing a lot of problems with the younger generations. I'm a mom, I have 9-year-old twins. And so that's one of the things that I just don't want them on, is that the mental health issue with it. So that's part of it that I don't like.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a— it's such an addictive type of platform. So, but you know, for you, I'm sure you're working on Facebook and Instagram.
And so that's what my clientele is really looking at. Yeah, so I'm one of those Google nerds that's always at their, their events, and so I'm always at the conferences. And I was— I had my choice back in the day. It was like, do you do with the industrial supplier or do you work for Google? And so I was offered both jobs, and I wanted that work-life balance, so I went for the industrial supplier because I was gonna have a work-life balance.
So that was one of the things. But definitely, we're highly invested into Google and what's going on with it and all the aspects of it, making sure that the team pours into that because that's where everybody's gonna go. So if you look at market We have a lot of women that are there, they're on Facebook and Instagram all the time, but where do the guys go to look for information?
They immediately Google what this is.
Well, I mean, I'll tell you just from like our perspective, like, because we're like, right now we're live on Facebook and YouTube, right?
On Facebook, our audience is probably going to be skewed about 65% female.
On YouTube, we're going to be skewed somewhere between 75% and 80% male.
Absolutely. And it's just interesting because like those, those platforms— and it's not that there's not a lot of males on Facebook, it's just there's a lot more female engagement.
And I would agree with that as well too. But definitely YouTube's a— it's underrated and nobody's really talking about that quite as much. But you've got to have great videographers and great content development.
To be able to put it on there to survive.
So that's one of the things that we highly invest in as well.
Awesome. Well, um, if, uh, people wanted to— do we still need a couple of minutes?
Okay, so, so I gotta stay a little bit longer. Well, yeah, but, but I, I got like a million questions I could ask.
But I, I think that the biggest question is, um, when, when someone is a small business owner, I don't think most, most of them recognize how important the digital landscape So when you are counseling or coaching people on their digital marketing strategy, what type of investment do you tell them they need to be considering as far as, you know, the percentage of what they're spending or making or whatever it is in order to get their digital presence where it needs to be?
So the whole matrix of that is I really want to coach a small business owner, a about how much time they're going to be able to put in, and they've got to be able to split out their time. Are they going to be providing content? So the amount that they're actually able— you could be able to get a really good return on investment even if you're investing lowly if you've got the right marketing team behind you. Because if you're producing and creating your— like, if your video and you're handling some of that, then you just need somebody who's coming in with strategy and content you know,
long-tail keywords and working through some of those things. You need somebody that's going to understand the matrix of your business, your financial investments, and your time investments. So that's a big thing that I think a lot of marketing agencies, they're just like, here, this is my package, instead of building it around what does the person actually need.
And so we're scaling to go, where are you and what are you actually going to need? We have basic packages that are written out, but we're actually writing it to go along with the business owner because if they've got content coming, it depends Depends on whatever teams they've got. We really kind of blend in. We're their support team, and that's how we come in. So it's a little different.
Yeah, that's good. That makes sense.
But they have to be able to invest that time. Do they want to shoot their own content? For my people that are in— that are born in the '70s and '80s, they're not really wanting to be on video.
They don't. So how do we do that? Because if I've got a team that's born— or I'm looking at somebody born in the they definitely want to be on it. So it's a completely different scape of what we're gonna get and what we're gonna be able to put out.
I will tell you what I have found with a lot of people is it's not so much because what we ask them to do is to hold like a camera in front of them and do something, but like if you can put a camera in front of them and ask them a question, they love answering questions.
You know, but like most of the time they don't think to bring in another person. They're like, oh, I've got to do this. I've got to say something into this thing and I've got to come up with it rather than going, could you ask, like, could you just find a friend and be like, could you ask me some genuine questions and then I'll answer them in front of the camera? Like, it's a really good strategy I think some people are neglecting because, like, a lot of times you get locked in your own, like, just drain of like, oh my gosh, I'm stupid.
Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm going to seem stupid on camera. But like, if someone's asking you a question specifically about what you do, you can appear intelligent rather quickly because you're the expert. Yeah, because like you've been doing the thing for years. Yeah.
And you know, I, I, you just need the right team to frame you properly.
And that understands who you are before they go to market. Yeah, that's the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So is there a, is there a favorite platform like social media-wise that you're liking to promote guys on right now?
I, I personally love Instagram. That's for my own personal, but I see the biggest return on investment because people with money are on Facebook.
So we're going to make a lot of money on Facebook, a lot of money on Instagram. So if we're on Meta and Google, I see money.
do you see people getting any sort of return from moving over to Threads because it's in that metaverse?
I have not seen enough Now, is it all being pushed to it? Yes, because we're going to be—
there's a lot of attention there.
We want to get the attention there and still be able to catch— I have not seen as big of a kick in yet on the bottom financial line because that's something we're talking to our clients about too, because I want to actually see in that feedback loop we're not seeing as many people actually push out that I'm getting a lot from Threads yet.
Well, I mean, the same thing like with us, we started having the conversation when Elon took over X. he started pushing for a lot of people to go live on X.
And it was like, okay, like we could spend a lot of energy and try and be early there, or we can wait and let a lot of people figure it out. And like, which one do we want to do?
You know, and it was like, I think we erred on the side of let's wait and see because like none of the stuff that we use really supports that.
You gotta know where your audience is.
You know, and we have— we don't have any audience there. So, and it was like, do we want to build one there or do we want to wait and see. And, and that was kind of where we landed, was we kind of want to wait and see. Yeah, just because our audiences are good where we're at. Yeah, you know.
Now, a lot of things that that man touches turns to gold.
So I don't want to discount him out just yet, but I'd like to see where it's going to go.
Well, if people want to get a hold of you, how do they find you?
We're at All of the Marketing. Website, social media, everything. @allofthemarketing.
So like, what's the website?
So, allofthemarketing.com.
See what I did there? Yeah, yeah, I kind of know what I'm doing.
Well, gentlemen, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure playing with you guys. Have a great day.
So while we're waiting for the next guest to, to kind of get up, did you hear about the Bill Burr incident?
on the Jimmy Kimmel Show?
Listen, I have lost complete respect for the man.
For Bill Burr? Bill Burr.
So he went on a rant about the California fires.
He lives in California. Okay.
oh, like, okay, like Steve needs to get in on this. Are you sitting down to talk? Yeah.
All right, come on in. You want to get a on this.
Oh God, cuz I know you like—
I know that you don't have any opinions.
Um, everybody, everybody should know our friend Steve. Oh God, if you don't—
I wonder how I'm going to do this. I didn't think this through with the hat.
Sorry, I just put it on. Oh yeah, there you go. That'll work, that'll work, that works.
So I'll ask you, did you hear about the Bill Burr incident on the Jimmy Kimmel Show? Do you know who Bill Burr is?
So he went on Jimmy Kimmel, and are you guys slightly familiar with the UnitedHealthcare assassination?
So Bill Burr goes on Jimmy Kimmel and he's doing his rant and rail about the California fires.
And he goes, you know what, I think they did a good job managing the fires. And I'm like, okay, you live there, that's your opinion, that's fine, I don't care. He goes, I think they did a good job. I don't know if what you're talking about is managing the fire or preventing the fires. I assume you're talking about managing the fire because that's what you said.
I'm going with that. I don't know that I agree with it, but anyway.
So then he says, all these people who lost their homes had their insurance policies canceled. And he goes, and F those companies and free Louise Free Luigi!
And I was like, all right, dude, I'm done.
I am done with you as a person. Like, I, like, I don't care if you think that UnitedHealthcare is an evil corporation. I am never going to endorse murder. I'm never going to endorse the killing of any innocent life on the street, especially in a cowardly way when you shoot them in the back, right? And, and that dude was a dad.
And by the way, if I'm not mistaken, UnitedHealth has nothing to do with homeowner policies.
Absolutely. And so like, he's conflating 2 ideas. And so like, I like Bill Burr, but like, what a frickin' moron to say such a stupid thing to a national television— and here's the scary part.
I'm just laughing. I'm just sitting back. Make sure you get in.
The scary part is the audience The audience laughed their asses off.
Yes. Well, no, hold on. They should've put him off the stage. Wait, wait, wait.
Did they truly laugh or was that a canned laugh?
I don't know. The guy hit the button and they laughed, right? Which one's worse?
Well, I mean, that they told them to laugh and they did, or that they genuinely laughed at it?
You know, the thing of it is, is if there's a guy on a control board that hits the laugh button—
I mean, go to that, which is worse. Yeah. Some guy in a control room trying to manipulate America into thinking that what he said was funny. You know, I mean, this all goes back to— and, and, and like, we've— Craig and I've talked about this multiple times. I said multiple times to the fact that we are getting to the point, and I think the worm has turned, right? But I think that we've gotten to the point in America where these news media types do what they want to do, say what they want to say without any consequence, and they ruin people's lives. And, and I've said, you know, we're getting
down to the point where somebody's going to show up at somebody's door one day, ding dong, guy's going to open up the door and go, remember me? You ruined my life.
And I mean, that's exactly what happened in this situation.
Yeah. And, and that's what I'm getting at is, is, you know, these people, these elites, you know, I think that they have this feeling of, you know, I'm untouchable. Yeah. I have so much money, I'm untouchable. And unfortunately, I never, ever— please don't ever think that I'm condoning what transpired. But I think that there's a subset of the society that's desperate and they feel like that's it. I mean, think about all these people in The Carolinas where the hurricane went, they're living in tents.
FEMA comes in and says, I'm not paying you for anything.
But if you sell us your land, I'll give you money and you can leave. Yeah. So people say no. And then when they walk away, FEMA calls Child Protective Services and they go in and take their kids because kids shouldn't live in those conditions. Yeah.
I mean, that's what I'm saying is you're pigeonholing people into a corner where they feel they're desperate. Right. And I would, you know, I would like to believe that that guy, you know, lost a family member or something dramatic to make somebody, you know, switch go off in his head to do something like that. But I mean, I still don't condone it.
Yeah. Because he's a whole thing.
Do you know anything about the kid that shot him?
Highly educated. Yeah. But I don't—
Here's what's weird about him is he comes from a multigenerational, multimillion-dollar family. And like, he disappeared for several months. And all of a sudden when he reappears, like, he shows up to shoot this guy and they don't know. There was like some medical treatments he was going under and things like that. So they think he became sort of antagonized through going through the medical care system. But they don't know.
I mean, like, they haven't released the information. But like, to use Kevin's phrase, at the end of the day—
Well, if you had a drink, I'd make you drink.
Well, I said it, so I don't have to.
So, you know, I mean, let's, let's call a spade a spade. When did health insurance companies be allowed to have exchange systems to control the drug price?
To control the what price?
UnitedHealthcare is one of the biggest. Yeah, they are.
No, that actually has a subcompany that nobody knows that they own controlling drug prices, right? And that's what I'm saying is big gets bigger and it gets more ugly and it gets more encumbered, right? And it's just, it is what it is.
Yeah, and like that doesn't take away from the ugliness of it. I mean, it doesn't mean that like UnitedHealth doesn't have some stuff to answer for. I don't know that it's a firing squad. Right, I'm certain, I'm certain that it's not a firing squad.
Well, and, and just go back to the fact that UnitedHealthcare is not the only one.
No, no, no, they all do, right?
Yeah, yeah. So, well, that's all fun.
I'm so glad you brought that up.
No, because Bill Burr just needs to be like shut down. I mean, like, I— like, he's like— he went on there to promote some special, and I, I'm, you know, I hope no one watches I really do, because here I thought that we were going to have an Astro conversation since they re-signed Bergman.
Yeah, we already had that though.
Okay, I'm late to the party.
I'm sorry. Well, listen, I do want to tell everybody that like recently I called Steve because a friend of mine was going through some stuff that I had some questions about.
I had a friend who's had a brand new home, less than a year old, and all of a sudden mold shows up throughout the entire house.
This is the one with the picture frame, right?
And I need some context because I don't know what you're talking about.
Well, no, I hadn't told you about it.
It's a friend of mine, it's a client of mine, and, uh, they called to let us know they were no longer living in the home.
And I was like, dude, you just built this house like 14 months ago, right? Like, what's going on? He goes, we hadn't been able to figure out why your entire family's been sick for like the last year.
Wasn't the mom the worst? Yes. That's what caught them. Yeah.
And they— what they ended up finding is they pulled a picture frame back and the entire back of the frame and on the wall was nothing but mold.
And what it was is they'd had a foam company come in and install what I assume is closed-cell foam on the house without putting a send and return in the attic. And so they had closed-cell foam on all the walls and then closed-cell foam home on the ceiling in the attic. And, and then basically, so just basically created a giant igloo.
Which is, which, which is okay. It's okay to do that.
I mean, multiple homes have that kind of thing.
If, if it's, if it's what, Steve?
Right, if it's, if you are actually conditioning the air on the inside of the house, because especially in our climate, very, very, very moist climate, right? So you have to, you have to get back to the point where you are drying that back out, right? A lot of people do it with dehumidifiers, but your AC unit, your heater, is running the air back through that coil, so it's removing that moisture, right? And so you can't have anything not breathing at a time, right?
My assumption is, is that that moisture was in the attic and it permeated back down through the backside of the walls, is what we discussed. And that's where— that's why where the picture was sitting getting. The moisture is seeping through that because it doesn't have any ventilation whatsoever, and it's picking up that mold. And, and you've got to be careful. So I, I always go back to my baseball adage, right? At the end of it, mid, you know, when we're, when we're trade deadline, right?
You go get pitching, pitching, pitching, and more pitching, right?
And, and if you don't have foam, you ventilate, ventilate, ventilate, ventilate, right? Try to get as much heat out of the house because we are in a nasty hot climate.
Or flip the script and condition it. And I mean condition not by temperature, but condition by actually putting dry air in the environment completely. You've got to dry that out, right? Right. Because 2 human beings will create a ton of humidity just living.
Yeah, we're a bunch of mouth breathers.
And you know, this is— look, this is what I've said for years and years and years, that— and, and we, we didn't— I mean, people that have listened to the show know that you do insulation, but people that don't, or these first time. Steve does insulation, and what I will tell you is I, I've, uh, I've been around Steve, I don't know what, 2, 2 and a half years almost?
Um, and what I learned early on from Steve is that nobody— I've, I've talked to a lot of insulation guys. I've never found someone that knows insulation like Steve does. I mean, he, he researches it, he understands it, he lives it. He, he is not here to just just insulate your home. He's here to take care of you. And so I'm gonna tell you right now, if you need someone doing insulation, it doesn't matter if it's spray foam. And then you got to understand, there's spray, there's open cell, there's closed cell, there's all sorts of options. And then you've got, you know, blown-in insulation,
which most traditional homes have, fiberglass or cellulose or whatever it is. Nobody's gonna give you better information than Steve. Call him. Take care. If you want to take care of your home and insulate it, insulation cost even?
I, I tell everybody in the world I'm the world's worst salesman. I'm a hell of an advocate, but I'm not a good salesman, right? Because I'm going to tell you what I— if you're— if I come to your house, your house becomes my house. How am I going to fix that, right? Good, better, best, right? And then you're big people, you make up your own mind, right? And that's, that's the key, right? And, and that's what But I'm like, Kevin and I were talking about earlier, is I'm just blown away by the fact that we're supposed to have 20-degree weather. Yeah. How many days, right? How many of these people
have not fixed their houses from the first 2 freezes?
Because I've looked at 2 houses this week that still don't have enough insulation in, and they've had new PEX put in. Well, PEX is more resistant to freeze.
It is, but it doesn't matter if it gets like 20 degrees.
Yeah, it'll still freeze.
God forbid if we lose power.
Oh, that's the problem, right? That's the problem.
Because— and on our grid, it's gonna happen probably. And, and if you don't have insulation covering your pipes, y'all, look, get— here's what you can do. It's very simple. Get up to your attic with a flashlight and just shine it across the attic. And if you see pipes, call Steve.
I'll take that back one step further. If you go up in your attic and you shine your flashlight around in that attic and you see lumber on the floor of that attic, you're insulation deficient. Remember, most houses built 2x12 max, right?
You're supposed to be 14 inches deep. You see lumber anywhere on that floor, you're deficient.
So real quick, because we're getting the signal to kick you out of here. Didn't take long. Most of the attics I go I go up into, there is no insulation over like garages and things like that. Is that okay?
So I grew up in the Midwest, right? And the envelope of a house in the Midwest is exterior walls all the way around.
In Texas, they cut the garage completely out. I had to listen to Bill Burr the whole first part of this. You got to give me just a minute. 1 minute. 1 minute. Yeah, I love her.
Sarah, Lone Star Appliance Repair, one of our sponsors. She can do what she wants.
But so they, they cut that out, right?
Because it's cheaper to build.
Sure. Okay, that's what I was wondering.
Yeah, so the interior wall to the garage is insulated, but above is not. Always remember, and, and I had this conversation with somebody and they wanted to warm up their attic. And I'm like, it's not the way that works here, right? Because we're ventilating, trying to get the heat out, right? So you add more insulation, it's going to affect below, not above, right?
And again, if you don't know what you're talking about whenever it comes to insulation, most of— most people call Steve.
If you didn't understand the last 30 seconds, you've clearly never been in your attic.
Yeah. Get up there. There's no reason not to get up there. Peek up there. Like, I mean, do what you got to do. I mean, to get up into your attic and see what's up there, it's very, very important.
Or hire us and we'll come walk around it and charge you.
Or you can call me and I'll come out and do it for free.
You'll get free estimates all the time.
Because the thing, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I always believe customer service is everything, right? I want my customers when I leave to be my friend.
And so I go out and I coach people. I tell people all the time what should, what should not be. If you hire me, great. If you don't, I understand. But I wanna make sure when I leave that you've been educated. And that's the part of the job that I enjoy the most.
Yeah, so for all those lonely homeowners out there looking for a new friend, how do they get ahold of you, bud?
So victoryinstallation.com, or you can contact us at 832-693-8111. And we'd be happy to take care of you. Awesome.
Yep, awesome company, guys. Give them a call.
I was all prepared for a baseball conversation and I end up with Bill Burr.
Bill Burr. That's right. We— yeah, we didn't talk about old Bob.
One of these times we'll talk about Bob. All right. I mean, What About Bob?
Terrible movie. All right.
Got a full-on Texas helmet just slammed down.
Hey, real quick, guys, if you want to jump in the comments, that's how we're actually giving these away tonight. Um, if you want to jump on the comments, just leave a comment and you're at the event, we're going to give you one of these tonight. We're gonna, you know, if we have too many comments, we're gonna, you know— We have 2.
We have 2, so, you know, let's have more.
But yeah, more than 2 comments would be great.
But like, leave a comment and we'll come find you and give you one of these. This is an incredible cleaning product for your toilet. Crazy Clean, the toilet treatment that lasts forever.
It is such a good product, y'all. We did a whole episode on it a couple episodes ago, and you should check it out.
Hey man, what's going on? Mr. Juggernaut.
So let everybody know who you are. Have you done this before?
I was fixing to say, I don't think you've been on. Like, we've known each other for a long time.
I just sit in the background and hang out, stare at people.
I didn't know you had a bike. What'd you ride up here tonight?
Uh, a Triumph Speed Triple. Oh yeah, all right. A little different. I don't— I've ridden Harleys, Hayabusas. I've basically ridden everything under the sun.
And, um, is it difficult with a helmet to not let your glorious Thor hair just whip in the wind?
That's until it gets tangled, and then I gotta get the brush out.
You gotta get the brush out?
You gotta spend 10 minutes brushing it.
I can feel it right in the beard.
It gets a little tangled and then it hurts.
Just gotta braid that thing.
How much, how much money would it take for you to do that for like the show?
Dude, I'd do it. I would do it for nothing. Okay, like, I— you, you forget who I am, man. Like, I've, I've, I've lived my life doing things to make people laugh.
So, so if we had some gals come over tonight and just braid it while we're live on the air, you'd be fine with that?
That's right. So my buddy's got a beard kind of like his, but he takes a straightener.
Oh yeah, I've got a straightener.
But he goes to these competitions.
So he'll go on, he's been sponsored, he gets stuff from these people and he tries it out and he'll send it to me to try it out too.
Scoot up a little bit, I can't, I can't hear you.
Probably talking too low too.
Just, just get up on that microphone.
No, uh, Scott Williams, Juggernaut Payment Processing, local, hands-on. Um, I really pride myself on being a true Texan. Uh, I've lived in the Houston area for about 40 years.
So yeah, I was, I was here before the Beltway 8 was finished.
And now people are racing around it.
Like, so when I ride, I, I do not go past Beltway 8. Yeah, it's—
oh, you mean like heading south?
Yeah, I do not go past Beltway 8.
I don't blame you, it's horrible.
Listen, I don't like to go like south of 1488 these days.
Oh, it's crazy. Life's crazy out there.
1488 is enough of a nightmare. I don't even want to go.
I stay away from it right now with the construction.
Yeah, dude, it took I think 45 minutes one day to go from 45 down to Magnolia one day.
Oh yeah, and we're We're on it.
We're here. Yeah, I'm 1480 right now.
I made it. Made poor life choices.
That's right. It is what it is.
I think, I think started doing this 3 years ago when I first met you.
And yeah, I've never been on stage.
That's crazy, man. Payment processing. So tell me about like, that sounds boring.
I like to kind of explain it. Every time you swipe a card, there's a guy in the middle making money off of it. Okay. That's you. That's what I do.
Well, what I've, what I've seen you do online is you're like unpacking tracking these new systems that, that I guess are for like restaurants and retailers and different things like that.
So like, there are certain ones that people are, you know, seeing when they walk in, you know, and I'm trying to think of like, like, is Mint one of them?
Square is like a big one.
Or it was a big one for a long time.
Um, But like, what, what should people understand when they're shopping about where their money's going, I guess, when, when they see those? Because I know you have some issues with some of them and I don't know if you can like name them outright.
So my biggest thing is these businesses that are— they say they're local and they support local, but you see them using Square and Toast. When you use Square—
You're talking about like businesses that exist locally, but they're using Square and Toast services.
Yeah, that's because so anywhere from 3 to 5% of your income or your revenue is going to San Francisco, it's going to Boston, it's going to Chicago, it's going to Milwaukee. Okay.
And that's a lot of money in the local environment.
I mean, you're talking millions upon millions of dollars leaving this area just for using credit cards and using that point-of-sale system.
And what are those processing fees, I'm guessing?
Yeah, I mean, they can range. So, I mean, normally people, when they see Square, every time they use that card, you're talking 2.5 3.5% every time you're using that card. It just kind of depends on how they're using it for that business. And that's causing— that's revenue taken away from the merchant.
The customer never sees that. The merchant does.
So the merchant, basically, they're charging a certain amount. They have to take that 3.5% off of what they're profiting— not necessarily profiting, but netting from that. And then they have to divvy it up from there.
And what are my other options?
No. Well, PayPal is 2.99%, right?
So I mean, it's not any better. No, really.
And then also you have to worry about their terms and conditions.
So they're under— these payment processors like Square, Stripe, they're not risk tolerant. That means anything that comes out of their risk or their risk tolerance, they'll kick them out of the system and they don't have to let you know about it. They can just do it whenever they want to.
Yeah. Too many chargebacks. One, that's a big one. That's usually the biggest one. Or they're in a business vertical that they don't align with. Like Stripe just came out with like 32 different verticals that they won't work with. any type of coaching, creators, anything like that, they want them gone.
What do you mean by creators? Like online personality kind of like us?
Kind of a little bit, yeah. Like if you're gonna sell a product.
Oh yeah, so like, but you have other companies like Etsy and YouTube and Facebook, it seems like, that are kind of setting up their own like payment processing.
Kind of similar, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but they're always using some backend sort of deal.
Is that what it it is. Who's, who's the backend on those kinds of things?
A big one is Stripe. Really? Like Jobber, like you can use, I think it's Jobber, ServiceTitan, things like that. They're all using Stripe.
A lot, a lot of CRMs use Stripe because it's, it's integrated into their system. Stripe has done a great job of infiltrating those CRMs.
Yeah. And it makes it super easy.
I mean, like that doesn't seem like it's much better than what QuickBooks does, honestly.
No, but there's ways around QuickBooks.
So I have a product called Biller Genie.
Biller Genie, yeah. So it basically puts another level onto QuickBooks, but you do everything regular in QuickBooks like you're building a regular invoice, but you just save and continue and it grabs a hold of it, bypassing their processing to where you can do— you can still do ACH, you can still do credit card, but you can pass the fees on. You can put late payments on them. You can do scheduled payments. You can chop up payments.
So it just adds another level. And so it had that type of convenience is worth it.
Yeah, I know that that winds up becoming a little bit tricky whenever you're, you know, adding— I've done a little bit of research into this where you've— someone says, hey, I want to pay with a credit card, and you add that price, like that fee to them. Yeah. There's like some legal things you have to work through with that, right?
The legality comes with surcharging. So surcharging, dual pricing is 2 totally different animals. Surcharging is basically you're telling them, hey, you're going to use this credit card, we're going to make you use this credit card, and you're going to pay the fee. So that can't be over 3%.
Now dual pricing is where you give them options, so they can do credit card or they can do ACH or cash, whatever they also want to do. And You can, you can pass on a little bit heavier fee onto that, but it gives them options. Okay, but that heavier fee makes sure you're covering everything. Okay, that 3% might not cover everything.
Sure, sure. No, that makes sense.
But yeah, the legality comes with the surcharging, right?
so when, when someone wants to use that product, um, do they pay a certain fee for that, or is that something that just is drawn off of what gets processed? Like, how do they—
Oh, you're talking about the software itself?
No, the software is a separate one.
Because we got to take care of the, the processing fees themselves, take care of the credit card companies and all the backend stuff that, that's happening on the processing side.
So the software is a separate thing.
So is there a threshold where someone needs to be in order for some of those, uh, processors to make sense?
Um, with Square, Square, if they're using Square, usually about $10,000 is where they really start to see it. Per month? Per month is when they start to see the increase in savings. Things like BillerGenie, we're taking off QuickBooks, probably around $20,000. Okay. $20,000 is when you're gonna start to see it.
And so what's the percentage on the BillerGenie?
So to talk about the processing fees?
Well, if you're passing on the fees, it's nothing. You're just gonna pay for the software. Okay, so it really depends. So there's kind of different levels to it, but the— I offer 2 different pricing structures, which is the dual pricing and then the interchange plus. The interchange plus is basically the cost of doing business with credit card companies, and the plus is the markup that I get. Right. So that's really just the 2 options that you have. And so the interchange can be just a fluctuating— whatever card you're using is gonna fluctuate.
Yeah, yeah. And like, so I pulled this up just in— like, I pulled up my personal QuickBooks that we use for our company. And like, for like ACH, it's 1%, you know, and caps at $20. And then regular cards and Apple Pay is 2.8% plus a $0.25 per transaction fee. And then PayPal and Venmo is 2.9% plus a $0.25 per transaction fee.
And, and like, so like, I'm just curious like where it kind of falls in that.
So the average interchange, so that's, I mean, that's kind of on the higher end.
So if you're using a crap ton of Visas, so Visa has a lower interchange rate, so you can actually—
Which is predominantly what we use, is a crap ton of Visas.
So you can actually lower that if you know Visa's 70% of the market. So you can definitely get it lower. And it also depends on the markup itself as well. But normally you can kind of know where you're gonna be at with the interchange and the markup.
I can usually get it— I've had it down to like, uh, the lowest in person I've had down to, I've had it down to 1, 1.2.
Wow, that's pretty low. Yeah, considering ACH is One most of the time.
Yeah, I mean, but like most people don't do that.
You know, so like, let me ask you—
Especially, especially whenever it's like what you do where it's a recurring, you know, it's easy whenever it's a lower amount. Just, here's my credit card. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm curious on the inverse side of that, like, what are we at? How much?
We're done? I got one more question.
So you know, I mean, on the inverse side of that, there's a lot of credit cards out there that provide people with benefits, like whether it be like air miles or you know cash back.
It's like you as a guy that kind of understands the system, what kind of card is the best one that you think for people to be using on these kinds of transactions to get the most bang?
I mean, it's all— it depends on what you're gonna use it for.
Sure. So I mean, if you're traveling, like something that gives you air miles, but like—
Yeah, like the United card is great.
Yeah, but sometimes you get more for buying groceries or for buying gas or all transactions, right?
Yeah, so it's kind of hard because they're all different and it's really gonna depend on what you're gonna use it for.
I mean, some people are out there with 4 different credit cards and they only use this one for gas, you know, use this one this one for restaurants, you only use this one for, um, uh, for, uh, I say gas, for groceries, right? And this one's for all transactions other than that, right? I mean, that happens a lot.
Yeah, so I asked that because like I had my sister-in-law at the house the other night and she's like, look, you need to get this Hilton Visa because like we travel a lot and we get to stay at these like 4 or 5-star Ritz-Carltons for free pretty much all the time because this is the credit card we use for our business. And I'm like, okay, but like, I don't want to stay at Ritz-Carlton.
And I don't travel. I mean, like, I don't travel like that.
No, when you're gonna travel, you're gonna go to Arkansas and stay in an Airbnb. Yeah, that's different.
So I mean, it really depends on what you're gonna use it for. Yeah. You know, if you are gonna stay at the Hilton, those Hilton credit cards are the best. If you fly United, use the United card.
You're gonna get the best deals out of it.
Figure out the thing that you're doing that's gonna give you the most benefit. Yeah, I think that's fair. So like, and I know I know, like, you can, you can set up businesses and restaurants with the new system. And if people are looking for that kind of stuff, how do they get a hold of you?
Yeah, the best way is to call or email.
You got the number right there on the, on the hoodie.
409. That is a, that is a Houston number.
That is an old school Houston number. 409. 409.
I didn't even know that was a Houston number.
Yeah, it was. It's a South Houston, South Houston.
Are you guys— and you're on social and—
Okay, only one out there.
All right, all right, cool, man. Thank you for sitting down with us. It's good to finally get you on.
All right, it's been a minute.
All right, dude, have a good night. Enjoy yourself. It looks like it's happening.
It's happening. Things are happening. We got more guests. I—
according to Sarah, she was giving me the stink eye.
Yeah, he forgot his glove. The glove. The glove. All right, man.
Dude, so did you see, uh, Eric G's post about the hydrants in California?
No, I missed that. Was that today?
No, it was, it was, it was a few days ago.
Um, you know, because so many people were talking about the fire hydrants in California, right? Um, are you guys both sitting down? Yes.
I'm talking conspiracy theories with Kevin. It's fine. Just, you know, it's normal. Adjust yourselves.
Um, so he was, you know, a lot of people were saying like, why can't we get the water to the fire?
Why can't we get the water to the fire? And, and so Eric, you know, and for those of you that haven't been paying attention, like we posted the link to David Applebaum's GoFundMe. He lost his entire home in the Palisades. Super cool guy. He's been on the show, architect there. I mean, he posted today that he's having an office out of a car dealership.
Um, like dude lost everything.
Um, and so like if you go, if you go find our socials, you can find the link to David Applebaum's GoFundMe. You know, if you can send him something, that's great. We had somebody comment back, it's like, I'm only, I'm only giving to people in North Carolina. God bless you. Give to the people in North Carolina.
But like, if you want to give to David, give to David because we love him and we want to make sure that he gets taken care of. But anyway, what Eric was saying is like, look, if you don't understand the physics of how water works, you're not going to understand what the problem is in California right now. It's like, as each house burns down, all of those water pipes begin to get exposed. which lowers the water pressure continuously throughout the entire area.
And so it means that, like, you're not gonna have the water pressure at the hydrants that you need in order to, like, start putting the fires out. And so it's not a conspiracy theory, and it's not like, ah, we were too lazy to, like, have a plan to go get helicopters and planes and dip water out of the ocean. It's like, we didn't expect all the houses to burn down, right, and all the water pipes to be exposed, right, to lower the water pressure. pressure for the entire county.
The problem isn't the water, y'all. It's the forest problem. It's the forest problem. This is the thing.
Like, this is, this is the thing we keep coming back to, is that, like, if you had a government that was managing the wildlife the way it should have been managed, this would have never been an issue in the first place.
But whenever you're out there— okay, I just filtered myself for a minute, but I'm about to unfilter. When you got a bunch of people just hugging those trees, making sure that you don't do anything with them, then you're going to have this problem.
Yes, to a certain degree, I, I 100% agree with you. Like, but like when you keep voting in the same morons—
That's what— that's, that's what I'm talking about. Like, you're, you're, you're bringing in people that go, no, we can't touch this problem. They don't even acknowledge it as a problem. And yet, at what point are you going to look at the, the society that you're living in and going, look, you're the problem? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to say.
I got into a fight online about this today. I don't usually get in fights online.
He was, he was like, it was designed to burn. I was like, it's not designed to burn. It was, it was, it was designed to be managed, right? It was designed to be managed. And it's like, for thousands of years, the people that were here long before us knew that if you did a controlled burn, you wouldn't have a wild burn, right, that would kill everyone.
Right. And it happened for years. Even whenever we were young, they were doing controlled burns.
And then at some point along the line, they decided, ah, the heck with that. I'm not gonna do that anymore.
And this is a result. Yeah.
Sorry, I don't— I got you turned down.
So anyway, what was the reason for them to not do the controlled burns?
Oh, that's a political question.
Well, I will tell you what I've heard that the reasons are is that it displaces wildlife.
And, and like, I'm sorry, like wildlife is used to being displaced. Like there's bears in California that chase wildlife all over.
all those animals that it tries to eat are displaced.
Either in its stomach or down the road when it got away.
Well, in, in all natural disaster things, whether disaster or not, whether it's rain, fire, earthquakes, whatever, they run away from that kind of stuff.
I was about to say They can, they can move around.
You don't have to control burn everything at the same time.
No, you don't. But they won't do it. That's the problem.
Like, look, I'm running up against this problem on my own property right now. I was telling my wife the other day, I've got to buy this industrial rake for the backside of my four-wheeler. That it's like a 40-inch rake that you— that's got a 2-inch hitch on the back so I can attach it to my four-wheeler. and pull out all of the pine needles that have been accumulating over the last 10 years.
Listen, it's only like $250.
Well, why don't you have it yet?
Because, like, it takes— you gotta massage these things, Kevin.
This is how marriages last.
You don't operate under the you're welcome type of marriage?
I'm not as happy that way.
Yeah, I believe that's true.
All right, so you guys, you guys have never been on the show before. Let everybody know who you are.
Uh, I'm Brian, this is my wife Shay. Uh, we're with Jet Clean Pressure Washing.
Jet Clean Pressure Washing.
All right, cool. And, and like, what— I know this is kind of like a new venture, but like, what led you to get into this thing?
Uh, well, one day we were just talking about starting a business and we actually—
Yeah, as crazy people do. Um, you know, You know, getting tired of our 9-to-5 jobs. And so we thought about pest control first.
And I said, absolutely not.
And then I thought about it and I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't like that either.
Yeah. Mainly because he doesn't like spiders.
Well, that's a problem. Yeah, that's a prerequisite. Listen, you don't have to like spiders in order to be a pest control person, but you have to tolerate them. Yeah, I can't tolerate them.
If you don't like them, that could actually be a passion. Like, you can inspire some people when you show up on their property.
No, no, no, no, it would be the opposite. It would be the opposite.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
They say the word spiders and I just start cracking my knuckles.
I've been waiting my whole life for this.
That could be a good, like, name of a business, right?
Like the Spider Assassin or something, right? Like, you might, you might get far.
It's a picture of me going on my truck.
That's right. Like, as a, as a pest control business owner, one of the things I've thought about is trying to buy the rights to John Goodman's face.
Just, just so I can use that for Arachnophobia.
Oh yes, don't remind me of that movie.
And this is why you don't need to buy a pest control business.
That's part of the reason. Yeah, I thought about that movie and I was like, you know what, pressure washing.
Pressure washing, you can knock those spider webs down from a distance. From a distance.
And then I just drag, like, as soon as the spider falls on the ground, I'm just from an inch away with the pressure washer.
Yeah, they're not— trust me, they can't.
They can't survive that. I really want to tell my Black Widow story right now just to kind of freak you out, but like, I won't do it.
I won't do it. Oh no, go ahead.
Oh no, we chase him around our house with spiders.
Yeah, the kids— my kids laugh at me.
I think in the next like networking meeting, I'm gonna bring you like a plush.
Nice. But don't tell me, just kind of like— Just leave it in your seat. Put it up on the—
Dude, I've got some, uh, I've got some lights on the top of the columns that are on the entrance of my of my driveway, as a lot of people do, right? And so I changed out the bulbs in them for Christmas to be green. And so I took the top off of one of them to change the bulb. There's a black widow in the top of one of them. And I was like, hi, you're gonna die. You're gonna die.
And so with the pressure washing, like, are you guys doing like heated applications? Are you doing like driveways?
So it's mostly residential. We'll do commercial too, but, um, it's mostly, yeah, driveways.
We're doing soft washing on houses.
I, you know, wooden decks, fences, any of that kind of stuff. So yeah, yeah, pool pads or whatever.
Pools are one of those places where you don't realize how— because of the water, you don't realize how much like sludge builds up and it gets slick.
And so you need to, you need to get that stuff off.
People die. People have died.
And I know that you guys kind of come up against like the weekend warrior.
Because like people can go buy like a pressure washer at Home Depot or Lowe's or Ace or any of those.
Well, now like Ryobi has those attachments that are like this big around and you can do your driveway.
Yeah, the little surface cleaner things.
Well, they even have like the handheld 18-volt ones.
I talked to a lady the other day, I was bidding a job and she was talking about how she spent 2 days on her driveway because she just had the little wand and it was like a, I think it was a Ryobi.
And she just did it for 2 days straight. I'm like, for $200, you could have called me and I would have went out there and knocked it out in an hour.
And what most people don't recognize is that professional power washers, they don't just get out there with water.
You've got solutions that you can degrease that stuff and break it up to where it's easy to just wash away.
Yeah, and it doesn't— a lot of people don't realize that it leaves lines when you don't use—
you know, we use SH, uh, sodium hypochlorite.
Um, but yeah, it's acid, right?
It's basically pool bleach, but we dilute it down. Um, but yeah, so when you do the driveway, if you're not using that and you're just using a wand on the whole thing— like, I went out there and you could see little lines all down her driveway, and she's like, oh, it didn't look like that when I was done. I was like, well, it does now. You have to post-treat it or pre-treat it with SH, and that way it kind of kills— it gets in and kills all that organic stuff, and then you run over it with the surface cleaner.
It's like washing the dishes. Some things just need to soak before you scrub them.
Not to mention, you know, you do it that way and then it's gonna stay clean for, you know, 6 months to a year. Yeah, and it's gonna look great. But yeah, people want to save money and you're still using, you know, I don't know how much it is to rent a pressure washer from Home Depot. I haven't rented one in forever. But still, you're spending that money, you're using that.
Listen, by the time you get done actually loading it up and getting it home, a guy like you could have already been done with the project.
I mean, I, I, I've used their rental programs for like heavy equipment, which is about the only thing I think they're worth renting for.
I mean, because you don't want to pay like $60 grand for a skid steer. Yeah, but, but that's one of the things, it's like you get it for 4 hours.
It's like, well, I took 2 hours just getting it back and forth from your store. I got 2 hours to do this 8-hour job.
Are you kidding me? There should be— listen, if you're listening at home, there should be a grace period.
Like, there should be like Yeah, that, that oh crap time of like, oh, this is gonna take way longer than I thought.
This thing isn't very powerful.
I don't want to take any of their time, but before I forget, I want to mention, have you seen the handheld Ditch Witch that they came out with?
What? That sounds completely dangerous.
You know what a Ditch Witch is?
So it's like the— it's the tool. It's, it's like a tractor, but it's a giant— I mean, like, saw.
Oh, I know what it is. I know what you're talking about.
But they came out with a handheld one.
That sounds like you're gonna take off a foot.
That's what I saw when I looked at it, and I was like, okay, but that thing's actually eating something.
No, you're thinking of the Foot Witch.
Oh no, I met the Foot Witch one time. Completely different person.
He wandered into the wrong part of New Orleans.
That was different. That's a whole story.
Yeah, we don't have time for this.
No, we don't. Nobody wants to know. They really frown on voodoo on YouTube. So I found out. I've learned.
Well, so like with the, with the roofs, I mean, like one of the things I've always been curious about with roofs is— she's giving me the okay, like we got like, like, okay, 1 minute. With the roofs, I've heard about like a soft wash on the roofs to just get like the mildew and stuff off. Like, is that something where people, if they don't know what they're doing, can really damage So yeah, I mean, it's not so much the roof, it's more like around the house.
So if you go out there and you're just spraying a ton of bleach on someone's roof and then it's running down on the plants, it's running down on their yard, I mean, you're gonna burn a line around the house.
Or whatever, you know, is underneath.
So you're killing all of those plants.
And then you get to hire a landscaper. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or you get to— yeah, I mean, your grass is gonna have to regrow for a year, you know, to look good. So that's, that's the main concern. I mean, a roof is almost like, you know, it's asphalt shingles most of the time. So it's— you could put a lot of bleach on it without really damaging a roof, and it'll just basically kill the mildew and you can rinse it off. But you just have to be really careful. You have to have someone with you that's going to rinse around the house and just make sure that you're not damaging anything else.
Is that something where like you could almost have like a catch basin at the gutters or something like that?
You could, yeah. Uh, I mean, basically what I would do is I'd just rinse. Like, have, you know, I usually have my son with me. He'll, you know, he can rinse the grass, whatever portion that you're doing. If it's running down, you just have them— I mean, as long as it's getting diluted down constantly, then it's not going to hurt anything.
I mean, we spray, uh, pretty heavy bleach on a driveway or whatever, but as long as you're not spraying it directly on the grass and it's not wet, you know, then you'll probably be fine.
you always have to dilute as you're going. Awesome, makes sense.
Well, if people want to get a hold of you, how do you— how do they find you?
We have a website, it's jetcleanpressurewashing.net, and then Facebook is Jet Clean LLC? No, it's just—
it's still Jet Clean Pressure Washing.
Okay, and then Instagram is Jet Clean Pressure Washing.
I should know these things. We have the brain and the brawn here. I'll let you decide who's what.
I'll just sit here quietly.
You can tell who handles the social media.
And internet side of things.
Well, listen, when you guys step away, go on the feed and comment so you guys have a chance to win one of these.
Yeah, so these things are super awesome. Kevin and I have had them both in our toilets for like 3 months now, and we— I haven't had to clean my toilets.
Like, this is what our son needs for his bathroom.
Yeah, we live on a well and the water's great, but it's, it's super hard, and this just takes, takes away the hardness and, uh, takes the scaling away. That's awesome.
And like, even if you get the ring, like, what we've seen is that like if the ring shows up, you just take a brush and it just pops off.
Like, no chemicals needed to get it off or anything like that.
Um, my aunt from Florida like messaged me today and she's like, I've been seeing the stuff you guys have been posting, like, how do I get that thing? And it's like, go to to the website or show up to the networking event and possibly win one.
Yeah, we're giving 2 of these away tonight, so that's it.
Yeah, jump on there and just drop a comment. When you guys— you guys will get in the running. Yo, yo. So thank you guys for jumping on.
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, it's starting to get a little chilly.
It's getting a little nippy.
Yeah, we're good. We have someone else showing up here.
I think David's fixing to sit down.
All right, David, come on in. Always.
Hey, hey, hey, Kyle, I didn't— I didn't want to tell you, like, you might want to talk to Sarah. Like, you dropped to number 8.
And most people only drop a number 2. I don't know what a number 8 is. You're still in the top 10. Wow.
You're still in the top 10.
Top ten. Yeah, I guess that makes me number seven.
We've done three hundred and ten episodes now. Top ten ain't bad.
But I'm not a top ten guy.
Well, I'm an I'm a numero uno right here.
Look, we got to schedule another one then.
Man, we we learned a lot on that episode. Oh, we did learn a lot.
I'm gonna say like look anytime you can have like a real estate agent and a broker, it's perfect. It's it's a good episode.
Yeah, match made in heaven.
Yeah, but like the one end we talked about like what we learned his first time.
homebuyers? Oh yeah, that beat them out.
Of course it did. Well, because we're always gonna win.
And I was a first-time homebuyer in 2000.
I'm trying to think what was happening in 2000.
You were graduating. Well, high school. Yeah, right, exactly.
I've been out of high school 13 years at that point.
No, we were, we were already in college at that point, Craig.
Dude, I, I saw your, uh, your buddy Kevin Gillespie Yeah, reuniting with some of his Bravo Top Chefs the other day.
Yeah, yeah, he was getting together with Izzard and Voltaggio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I used to work with Brian and Michael at Aureole in New York City.
So my wife actually got to go eat at Volt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was just there, gosh, like right after Christmas.
That's not when she went, but it was, it was several years ago, but like, that That was like the highlight of her year when she went.
I was the oldest line cook in the kitchen when I was there back in 2001.
Wait, wait, where were you at?
At Ariole. I actually worked with Brian and Michael Voltaggio there.
This is why I love having David on, man. Like, he was a former chef, he loves talking food.
So yeah, uh, Brian was our saucier at the time, and Michael was, uh, he was doing an externship. I think he was at the Culinary Institute.
Oh, both brothers were there at the same time?
Both brothers were there at the same time. And, uh, you know, I mean, our, you know, the chef owner was Charlie Palmer, who's one that at the time was one of the top 5 chefs in the country. And, you know, he's got Aureole in New York, and, uh, not, not just New York but in, uh, Vegas. And they've got the Wine Angels that go up and down the Wine Tower. And yeah, he's got Dry Creek Kitchen out in Healdsburg, California, which he was actually in the process of opening when I worked for him. So yeah, yeah, but yeah, so fun times in the restaurant industry.
All right, so I want to talk about what you do, but I'm also like, I'm trying to get, uh, a chef on the show.
And Trist just shut down.
Yeah, yeah. What, what do you— do you know anything about that?
Um, from what I gather and what I've heard and read, um, I mean, I have a little bit of inside knowledge, but like, he, you know, he Turned in his resignation New Year's Eve after service, effective immediately.
Is that Austin Simmons that we're talking about?
Yes, Austin Simmons. And, you know, he came out with a statement like 4 or 5 days later stating why he did it. And it wasn't because he was unhappy with the food and everything. He was a partner.
In, in the restaurant group there. But the restaurant group that Kind of, from my understanding, kind of owned his restaurant group. Um, they also owned the building, and the building was in such disrepair that he was sinking so much money into the repairs that they weren't fixing that it just became unsustainable.
Yeah, it seemed like it was like a lot of post-flood stuff that they just never addressed.
Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, when you're trying to, you know, deal with mold issues and trying to feed people, you know, and trying to feed people. And yeah, you've got equipment issues.
That's kind of like— and I'm not, I'm not saying he was being like unethical or anything like that, but it's kind of a sneaky way of saying like, hey everybody, that area of The Woodlands is probably not a safe place to be hanging out because of all the mold issues and all the, you know, you know what I mean?
I mean, It's one of those things that if you address it immediately, it's easier to fix and you can get it done and you can continue on with business. Yes. Yes, you're going to have a capital outlay, you know, to begin with, but it's going to be more than worth it in the long run because, you know, you're going to be able to sustain the business. But if you're not, you know, every business owner knows that, you know, you've got overhead and you've got expenses. And one of those expenses is going to be for repairs and, you know, maintenance and stuff like that.
That's just, that's just the nature of doing business. And when you're not addressing those and they become more and more, those, those repairs and expenses become even bigger. And then it becomes, you know, a much more, you know, much larger capital outlay. And, right, you know, some people just don't want to do it. Yeah.
Well, I hope he lands somewhere. I know he's got his beef venture.
He's got his beef venture that I'm really I'm really excited about.
We've reached out to him. I hope he comes on the show. I want to talk to him about it because like I'm— I've been in like, you know, very, very like amateur ways in beef production over the years just because that's, that's like my family background.
Um, and, and good beef production is— and he's talking about getting into Wagyu and on the United States side.
Well, I, I'm just hoping that the Wagyu that he's doing here is true Wagyu, you know.
You, you walk into H-E-B and they label that stuff Wagyu. To me, that's upper-level prime.
I mean, for you though, I mean, like, does it have to be from Japan in order to be—
Okay. No, no, no. The original, um, processors of Wagyu in the United States is Snake River Farms. out of, uh, Idaho, I want to say. I think it's Idaho. Um, they were the original ones back in the early 2000s that started producing, uh, wagyu in the same style that the Japanese do, and it was a phenomenal product.
Yeah, and you can still— you can find it. Um, I know, uh, there's a place off Rayford Road, Creekstone Home and Outdoor or something like that, has frozen Snake River Farms Wagyu that they sell.
So sorry, this is my aunt.
Oh, love you. And his mom right behind me.
Yeah, awesome. Buy out the dude that has—
I have a tab open. Oh yeah, you are? Yeah, he's so awesome.
I have a couple multi-million dollar homes that I take care of and I go buy this.
Oh, and they'll buy it. Okay.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Steve. All right, Steve. Yeah.
Uh, so what are we talking about tonight other than food?
Is there any other conversation? I mean, we were having a conversation. You told me you had something you wanted to talk about.
Yeah, well, you know, as you know, I own Space City Payments, and one of the things that we do is consumer financing. We give, you know, contractors, people in the trades, auto repair shops, jewelry stores, furniture stores, anybody with an average ticket of like $500 $500 or more that needs to offer financing, we give them the ability to offer that financing. And I've got a new program right now that's, uh, you know, it's one application for the, the customer, you know, access to 40 different lenders with one application.
Loans from $500 to $100,000, terms up to 144 months. That's to 12 years, you know, of course depending on, you know, somebody's credit and all that.
Interest rate for the customer can be as low as 5.99% if they have great credit, and, you know, it goes up from there based on their credit score, their debt-to-income ratio, that sort of thing. And we do both secured and unsecured loans. The great thing about the program is, is that there's no annual fee, no monthly fee, to the merchant that's offering it. It's just a 4% dealer fee on every funded loan. Right. You know, and that's funded loan, and it's a soft pull on the customer until they actually accept an offer, and then the lender will do a hard pull.
What do you mean by— what's a soft pull? What's a hard pull?
A soft pull is when they can, you know, see your credit and base the loan amount, the terms, and everything on what they see just by looking at your credit score. A hard pull, they're actually pulling and digging in and seeing, okay, this is your payment history, this is your, um, you know, this is, you know, what your debt-to-income is, this is, you know, yeah, we can do, we can definitely do this.
Right. So does a hard pull actually, like, affect your credit?
A hard pull will affect your credit.
I mean, it may not drop drop it, but like—
Well, it'll drop it some.
Every, every hard pull, whether you're applying for a credit card, applying for a car loan, a mortgage, all that is going— you know, when you apply there, most of those places are doing a hard pull, and it's going to drop your credit score like anywhere from 10 to 50 points.
Like, if you, if you have like an 800 credit score and you do a hard pull, is it dependent on the amount that you're, that you're trying to borrow, or is it just that they're pulling in general? How many points should people expect it to drop?
You got an 800 credit score and you're—
it doesn't matter at that point.
At that point, at that point, it's a hard pull. It could be, it could be 10 points, it could be, okay, it could be 50 or 60 points.
It's not going to be like 100 points?
No, usually not. Okay, usually not. So it's all based on, you know, what their, you know, what their income is, what their debt-to-income ratio is, you know, what their mix of revolving credit versus installment credit is, you know, all that plays a role in it.
So, so, so, so what you're saying is if someone has a $10,000, uh, fee— but let's say fee— let's say they're selling a product, it's $10,000, the only thing they're going to pay is $400.
They're just— they're not going to get $400, they're going to get $9,600 instead of $10,000.
Or you do what I tell every single single one of my merchants, build it in. So instead of $10,400, you know, instead of $10,000, say do $10,500. That makes sure you cover that dealer fee and any extra fees.
And then if they decide, you know, if the customer decides to go to the bank and get you a cashier's check, pay you cash, write you a check, give them that discount.
Because once you give them that discount, you're building even more loyalty, more brand awareness. more referrals from that customer because you went out of your way to do that. The bottom line is, as the merchant, you're still making $10,000.
That's still a good ROI there.
And when you think about, you know, people in the trades, especially the people that do remodels and stuff, and what their margins are, you know, that's—
They're still doing okay.
They're still doing okay. I've had I had one client that the first year he was with me did over $500,000 to his bottom line because he offered financing.
Last year, that fell a little bit to about $300,000, but, you know, again, people were real nervous about the economy, nervous about the election.
They just weren't willing to spend money, and the banks had also tightened up some as well. And a lot of loans that were, you know, used to be unsecured loans all of a sudden became secured loans.
You know, just because, you know, you know, when we go through recessions like we've been— and I don't care what side of the aisle you're on or whatnot, we've been in a recession for the last year and a half, 2 years.
Whether or not they're willing to say it or not.
Whether they're willing to say it or not, we have been. You know, banks tighten up. Yeah, you know, interest rates go up. I mean, look at mortgage rates, look at our insurance rates. Everything has gone up.
Man, that's good. I like the— I mean, because the truth is, whenever you're offering something that's, you know, and you said anywhere from, you said $500 up, right? So, but especially whenever you're offering something that's, you know, $5,000 to $10,000 up, So a lot of times people need financing, and it's not— and some people, here's the thing, what a lot of people don't understand is many people would rather finance something even if they have the ability to pay cash for it, so that they keep their money liquid.
So there's options that you give a wealthy person who's willing to spend $100,000 on a home addition or whatever because they're still wanting to stay liquid.
Exactly. And also taking into account, you know, these loans are simple interest loans versus, you know, if you put it on a credit card, that's gonna be compounded interest.
You know, so, you know, I know a lot of people want to put stuff on their credit cards because they want the points and stuff like that, but then you're paying compounded interest on it instead of simple interest, right, on that loan. Also take into account that the average credit card rate these days is like 23%.
The average credit card rate is 23%.
Yeah, we did a whole episode about how like Home Depot is like charging like 29% on their, on their like their, their Home Depot card. So yeah, come on, come on in here, Adrian. You can sit down, it's fine. So okay, so like if merchants are looking for guys to— I mean like guys like Adrian, uh-huh, to, you know, to sell their higher ticket items, to give good financing on that, that's not gonna like drop their credit by like 100 points or whatever, how do they get a hold of you?
Well, you can get a hold of me at david@spacecitypayments.com. You can, uh, go to my website spacecitypayments.com. Uh, you know, I've got a forms page there, or you can reach out to me, 737-932-2160. That is my cell phone, and I answer.
How long does it take someone to get set up with financing? Not, not with the— how long does it take the merchant to get set up with you to offer financing?
I can usually, once I get all the information get it entered.
I've seen it be approved in as little as 2 minutes.
Yeah, and I've seen it take as long as an hour.
Just depends on my guy, you know, and then, you know, they get a series of emails and stuff like that, but we can get you set up really fast. Awesome. And, uh, go from there, you know.
Awesome, man. Thank you so much for sitting down with us.
Appreciate it. My pleasure, man. Yeah.
All right, are you, are you the next guest, or do you just lurk in here. Lurking. Hang on.
Throwing the stanky eye, David.
Here comes in, you know, and by the way, Adrian here is actually—
he's not one of my clients, but he does use the platform, one of the platforms that I represent.
You know, he can vouch for us.
And yeah, he's— so listen, if you want to be one of the guys that gets one of these at the end of the night, you got to go on the feed and comment. Just leave it, just Just leave any comment, and we're— if they're here, I think we're gonna pick somebody to get one of these.
These things are super awesome. Um, I imagine both of you guys could use one of these.
Well, sure. I don't want to comment on the state of their toilet, but I will say—
By the way, you know, you guys are financing clients of mine too.
Yeah, no, no, we use David. Yeah, for sure. Like, we use David for like our mosquito misting systems. We're trying to work on to get our termite stuff financed. Um, and, and so like, could you switch it over on that one? He's, he's working hard to try and do creative financing. Say what now?
Financing is a game changer.
Financing is a game changer.
It's about 80% of our business.
We do about $3 million worth of revenue a year. About 80% of that is finance.
Yep, absolutely. Because if you're talking about getting an interior, uh, remodel done, right, because that's what we do, kitchen and bath remodeling, uh, it could be, you know, $70,000, $80,000 to remodel a house. Well, you know, it wasn't really what I was thinking. We just wanted to get the floor done and the walls painted. It's like, okay, we could do all this stuff.
Why don't we put it all in there?
It's gonna turn out to be about $800 a month. Oh my goodness, $800 a month? It's like, well, that car out there, what's your payment on that? Oh, it's about $700 a month, $800 a month. Okay, and it's depreciating in value. Yeah, let alone I'm gonna come in here and make your house appreciate in value for the same cost.
And then, I mean, and that's where you pitch payment been overpriced.
Yeah, yeah. 95% of people out there can't put $10,000 together if need be, but we are all payment buyers.
All right, David, thank you so much.
All right, well, Adrian, glad you're here, man. But, uh, I will say that, uh, you're over here wearing an All-Star AC and Heating hat, but that's not what you do.
that's not your business.
It's the hat that I had in the truck.
No, it's okay, it's okay. But I guess my point is you should tell people, even though you've been on the show multiple times, you should tell people who you are and what you do.
Uh, well, my name is Adrian Rojas and I own In-Home Floors. We're a kitchen and bath remodeling company in Conroe, but we'll operate all over the city from Galveston to Huntsville, Crosby to Beaumont. We'll get it taken care of. And the cool thing about us, um, we actually have a really cool deal that we have going on with Gallery Furniture, uh, Mattress Mack, who's obviously a local hero So when people get a remodel, a kitchen remodel gets you a living room set for free, a bathroom remodel gets you the adjoining bedroom set for free, and a whole house remodel gets your living room set for
Wow, that's an awesome deal.
Yeah, going over to get whatever you want from Gallery Furniture.
He came up on the Patrick Bet-David podcast today.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were talking about natural disasters and they were talking about how the community responds and they were saying Hey, have you heard about this Mattress Mack guy? Like when like the—
The hurricane happened, the church shut down, but Mattress Mack opened the store so that people could jump in and live there for a while and actually find refuge. And like, so like this guy, this guy, like, look, brilliant marketer, incredible businessman, provides a quality product, and it's incredible. Like when you guys To meet him and do a commercial with him.
Yeah, yeah, we've done a few now. And it's a it's really neat thing because where he's at in his life, he doesn't care what anybody else thinks. No, he's gonna do whatever in the heck he wants to do.
He's doing commercials from the hospital.
You know what would make me feel really better is if you went and came by furniture.
Okay, that's my guy. Yeah, that's awesome. How's it going, Miss Allison?
Are we talking about Mattress Mack?
How can he not talk about Mattress Mack?
Yeah, we're best friends.
Anytime I see Adrian, I bring up Mattress Mack.
Here's the thing I know, speaking of Adrian and versus Allison, which I'm Kevin by the way, we've just met. Um, I'm really glad she sat by me instead of you because she smells pretty nice, and I don't know about you, but I don't think he does.
Yeah, if anything, it's whiskey and cigars.
It is the best I've ever smelled Adrian smell.
Oh, okay, well, congratulations. I just know that she sat down and I was like, that's nice. Really? It took a weird turn. I'm not trying to be— I'm not trying to be creepy or weird. I'm just acknowledging that she did something that you probably didn't.
That's a genuine compliment.
Before, before we get into Alyssa's stuff, I, I want to ask Adrian a question.
have a little bit of inside intel.
I want to know about this chair that you're putting in your shower.
Is this like an old person chair?
No, no, it's like a lounge chair.
And that I measured to my dimensions.
It's, it's, it's custom-built for you.
I custom-built it for me. Yes, my guys are installing it. So I turned my closet, my 7 by 7 7 closet into a shower.
But who needs a closet? I brought you something.
Adrian forgot to mention that this is in his house. He has shown everybody this photo and everybody's been like, wow, that's crazy cool, and he has never mentioned that it's in your house.
Yeah, it's my, it's my shower.
So there's a shower chair that I've measured to my dimensions that I could sit just perfectly lounged like a La-Z-Boy chair. But that's only part of it.
There's more! Wait, there's more!
I've got 2 separate shower pans in my shower. One is for the green wall for the plants that I'm gonna have so that as the water runs off, it drains.
And the other is for your shower where you stand under the shower. But cool thing is the drain is hidden. See the way I'm doing the standing part of the shower is you stand on a large paver plate and the water drips off the side into white decorative bull rock that is sloped to a linear drain on one side of the room and the water drains out. So you stand there and shower and water just beads off the side. You can't actually see the drain because it's under 4 or 5 inches of bull rock.
I don't even know what just happened.
Here's what I want to know.
are you planning on putting you need a separate water heater just for the shower?
I mean, there's a very strong chance I'm gonna have to.
If I'm gonna have— because both shower— so both shower— there's 2 shower systems in this shower. This is why I'm asking this question, because there's a standing part of the shower which has a 24-inch by 24-inch rain head as well as waterfall, so it just pours water out.
And it's got 6 jets and a a wand that will water, while at the same time I could be running an 18-inch by 18-inch shower head with 4 jets and a wand.
Listen, listen, I have, I have the 18-inch shower head. It is magical.
Well, see, here's the thing, right?
As a bigger dude, like, you need something that—
He's talking about, he's talking about himself, by the way. Not me.
I'm not disparaging you. I'm definitely not disparaging Kevin. Um, like, as a bigger dude, like, you need a bigger shower head to, like, stand underneath because, like, part of you— if, like, a traditional shower head, you're good, parts of you are gonna be cold.
Unless you get, like, the big mama jama.
Nobody wants to do, like, the dance in your shower where you're like, turn, turn, turn, just to stay warm.
It's especially— Constantly defrosting part of you. That's right, especially in this cold weather we've been keeping the most important parts in the middle.
I know, so we need a jet on that part. Let's go, let's go!
That's Adrian's next addition to his shower.
No, it is, it is hard to maintain the heat, uh, and there is probably gonna have to be a separate thing. But the really cool thing is my wireless Bluetooth charger for my phone.
So I could use my phone in the shower and it could just constantly be charging while I'm standing there in the shower.
How long do you spend in the shower? That's what I need to know.
Not near the same amount that I'm going to.
That's not the question to ask. It's not how long do you spend in the shower, it's how good do you want him to smell?
Better than he smells right now.
That's why we're building this thing, man.
Here's the thing, Craig, because you and I, to date have seen the coolest shower ever, and that's in Eric G's house.
He's got the coolest shower to date that we are aware of.
This could rival it, but he has like an—
Eric does not have a lounge.
Nobody does have an 8-inch touchscreen to control the whole thing inside the shower and like ambient lighting and such. So what do we got here? Oh my goodness.
That's the actual chair. There's the, the 1, 2, 3, 4, and then the shower head that does the rain right on top of that. And then on the other side, this is where— because it's in, it's being constructed right now.
And then on this side you've got your 6, uh, there's one there but the thing snapped off, plus the hose for the wand, uh, the control And then the— you can't see it, it's out of frame, but that's where the tiling is currently. It's being constructed, and this is where you're gonna stand. It's gonna be a fantastic fishbowl magazine.
Is that a BlackBerry you're showing us? What is that device?
It's a foldable screen. Have you not seen this?
Okay, I don't need to see all your photos, please.
But still, the ones that you took in the shower.
You have no idea how many shower photos you would need.
It's freaking awesome. I mean, for, for, you know, remodeling, absolutely.
Being able to show the customer. All right, so here's the thing. We, we have to talk about her for a minute. Yeah, shut up, because Sarah's fixing to like kick her off.
Yeah, I just got here and I haven't even talked about myself. What is this?
Introduce yourself and tell everybody what you do.
Okay, my name is Allison Anderson. I do business development for Heroes Lawn Care. Heroes So Pro's Lawn Care is an irrigation, lawn care treatment, and pet waste removal company.
Oh, low man on the totem pole gets that job.
Perfect for Texas marketing.
So we focus on the lawn health though. A lot of companies out here, you're either doing maintenance or sprinklers or landscaping. But we focus on the actual health issues going on with the grass.
And there is an epidemic in Houston, it seems like, with St. Augustine grass. So we offer free lawn assessments to help diagnose those issues and then offer treatments. And, you know, whether you are a DIYer or you're willing to pay for a treatment, I'll give you both options, really.
My job is to educate people and help you learn more about what's going on with your grass. Why are you spending $6,000 on new grass and losing it in months, you know?
Yeah, yeah. So like, as, as someone who took a turfgrass science class in college many moons ago—
Okay, well, there you go.
What? No, like, I want to know because like one of the—
That's a required class at A&M. It is.
Listen, we developed our own grass for Kyle Field.
How do you overcome the thatch issues with St. Augustine?
Thatch issue with St. Augustine?
So it's interesting that you say that because with St. Augustine, when you think of—
Yeah, screw you, Kevin. I had a good question.
That's a great question. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you.
So when you think of dethatching, it's that machine that has the claws that come in and break up that material. But St. Augustine, the way that it grows with the stolons and it's above ground, if you come in with a dethatcher, you're tearing up your St. Augustine. So in reality, thatch is an issue within Bermuda and Zoysia grass, not necessarily St. Augustine. With St. Augustine, there can be dead material built up, especially right now we're seeing a lot of dormant grass.
But I would recommend more like core aeration rather than going in with a dethatcher or even just raking up the dead material.
Of course, it'll decompose as time passes, but if you want to give your soil a little bit air, sun, water, fertilizer, anything like that. Yeah, we recommend just like breaking up the dead material because dethatching St. Augustine will ruin it.
So aerating is probably— yeah, she passes, Kevin.
well, listen, like, call her.
I had a neighbor recently— Warm in here?
Actually, no, it's pretty cold out here.
Let me just say, grasses— he's from West Texas.
I went to Aveline Christian University.
That's where I went! How dare you!
Yes, I did grad school at ACU.
I did. So did Kix Brooks.
We didn't. Yeah, that's true, that's true. To be fair, we were gonna keep talking about it. I knew I liked her from the beginning.
All right, so they have a really cool thing, uh, so they've— I I'm a customer of theirs, and you know, with everything that happened with Beryl, there's a lot of customers that were heavily impacted right in this area by the hurricane. Trees knocking over. Well, we had a customer that had a tree got ripped out and it yanked up all of the entire line of irrigation.
The, the, uh, the thing that's real expensive at the end, it's not supposed to—
The backflow preventer. It's not supposed to shoot out water. Small valve, it's a whole thing.
Yep. came out the next day and got it knocked out before I even had a chance to come look and see what was going on.
Efficient. And they also helped my dad set up a system where he could do it all from his phone.
And keep it all— keep track of it.
And if something is happening to the yard, he can reach out to them and be like, hey, there's this going on. And they can tell him like, okay, you need to do this, change this or this.
And if you're at your house, you can do that while you're in the shower. Uh-huh.
Look, maybe we can get it downloaded on your little Yeah, I will say with our company, we do focus a lot on irrigation efficiency. So with the smart controller that he was talking about, we offer irrigation maintenance programs. So that includes seasonal checkups, 10% off repairs, you know, free service calls, and you pay your annual price. And then you also have the option to have a smart controller installed for free. And the biggest thing with smart controllers is you don't have your rain sensor, You know, it connects with a local weather station. You're able to control it all from your
phone. You get live alerts if there's something wrong with the wiring of the system.
What's the brand you guys are using?
So we normally use Ratio.
Okay, that's what we did a review on. I put one in my house, well, previous house. They're awesome.
They are. If I was a homeowner, I would have one, and we actually gave one away at We had a local event that we were, we were a vendor at, and we were able to set it up for someone else, and it was awesome. I mean, it really does help with irrigating correctly, but also not overwatering, making sure there's no unknown leaks going on. And The Woodlands is very stingy with their water.
I used to have yard envy, but not anymore.
No more. It handles it for you.
Because I mean, we don't know what we're doing.
Nobody does. You talk to the guys at Lowe's or Home Depot, they say, oh, get this, get this, but we don't know. And so—
And you can only read so much Randy Lemon.
Yeah, that's true. Randy Lemon can go pound sand.
I'm so glad we're on the same page. I almost—
listen, I am listening. Stop listening. Let's go.
There is my biggest accomplishment with my position has been selling Randy Lemon customers. And I walk in and they straight off the bat, they tell me, I listen to Randy Lemon. That is my go-to guy. That's who I listen to. That is—
He's not right every single time.
Yeah. Listen, I grew up driving to church on Sunday mornings and my parents would put Randy Lemon on, so I totally get it. But they're DIYers, they think they can do it themselves. And so when I go to a house and I say, yeah, that's root rot, you have root rot, and I can do a test that verifies that, and Randy Lemon has an article on root rot, so I'm not lying, you know, you can trust me and you can believe me. Selling a Randy Lemon customer is— it's an accomplishment, it's a big feat.
So, all right, so I've got this question for you. I'm gonna need you to move along because I'm getting to see like Sarah's like you don't want to be on her backside.
I didn't want to put it down and walk off.
I've kind of just we got we got to bring somebody else on.
So like I'm am I allowed to take a sip?
Absolutely. Like listen, cheers.
I was gonna say I've already been taking a sip.
Always good to see you, bud.
Not a problem. Love you, dude.
You can take this, it's empty now.
As you hand off your empty—
What I want to know is, because Kev—
that dude's really cool, man.
Oh, he's so cool. He's pumping it up for someone.
Oh, definitely. Actually, he's not packing, that's why he's doing that.
Did you grow up Church of Christ?
No, you just ended up at ACU?
Johnson Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
And you wound up at ACU? Did you play sports?
That's what it was! I actually was the first recruited class for beach volleyball at Abilene Christian College.
You look like a volleyball player.
I love that compliment. I'm tall, you know, I'm lanky a little bit, but yeah, I mean—
And, and, oh, you know some people that I know.
Uh, well, we'll, we'll have to get into that.
Well, I know, yeah, yeah.
When were you there? When were you there?
Okay, now I'm sure you know it's a little past my time. I did get to experience the Crisps. You know Crisp? Oh yeah, my gosh, yes, of course she played. She's like the best volleyball player ever. Holy moly.
Yeah, actually I really didn't think that we would know the same.
No, I know, I hate to— it's because Caleb is a friend of mine. So yeah, that's awesome. Well, Caleb— well, John John and Caleb, but John's wife, yeah, who is the, uh, volleyball coach at McMurray. She's awesome. Oh, you know her?
The connection goes deep. Yeah, it does.
I like this guy. Yeah, well, and, and his grandpa is Royce Money, who used to be the president. Oh geez, really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, I know people.
Hey, West Texas ain't big.
No, it's not big. It's not big.
Spread out. Yeah, but it's Not many people, for sure. But yeah, I played beach volleyball there and then COVID hit.
Which is really hilarious that there's beach volleyball at Abilene Christian.
Oh, you didn't tell me that.
Well, you know what's funny? We started playing at Hardin-Simmons' little recreational beach volleyball court, which was absolutely horrible. And then we finally got enough money for beach volleyball courts on campus. And then COVID hit.
You know, when I was at ACU, which was before you, the best, the best The best beach volleyball court in Abilene was at Sonic.
It was so good! The one on Judge Ely? So good!
You know those— can I cuss?
Okay, you know those shitty apartments on Judge Ely?
Um, they're right across from like Taco Bueno or something.
Oh yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
They said like $300 a month.
I have a love-hate relationship with Taco Bueno.
I didn't try it once while I was Thank you. What?
I thought it was because it's terrible.
Obviously terrible from the outside.
No, it's Rosie's is great. Rosie's is a whole different level. That's the thing.
It's like everyone's like, oh, it's like, but like, you can't compare it. Like, your favorite Mexican restaurant is a fast food thing? Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's okay. It's like 2 notches above Taco Bell.
No, well, I think it's below Taco Bell. No, it's definitely not.
But I say that as someone that's literally never tried Taco Bueno, so.
No, it's actually It's actually really, really good. Uh, Rose is on a different level.
I will say this, it was a big deal. Was it Taco Bueno that got in the Bean?
There was a Mexican place in the Bean.
There were several restaurants in the Bean. Well, there were, but the best— But there was a Mexican place in there.
I don't remember what it was.
You know, I block out a lot of my memories from ASU. Either I block them out or I was blacked out. We were called almost Christian university.
Well, like, here's, here's the thing, and like, this is, this is something that I absolutely 100% ascribe to, is I used to be in college ministry, right? And I had— I can't even tell you how many parents come to me and say, what's the best Christian university to send my kids to? And I would be like, if you're sending your kids to a Christian university to try and fix them, you've already lost the battle.
You should probably send them to A&M.
No, really, like, the best Christian university, like, from my, from my perspective, was A&M. Not because it's like a Christian university.
They got a great Bible chair.
The, the Christians are gonna find one another because they're looking for one.
If you go to Abilene and looking for meth, you're gonna find meth.
I mean, like, it's, it's legit. I mean, and it's like there was a huge contingency of kids there that were like there because their parents sent them there to get them fixed.
And, and they just went off the deep end.
You're speaking my language.
Because they, they all of a sudden like realized like, oh my gosh, mom and dad aren't watching me anymore, I can do whatever the hell I want.
And, and now, and, and the parents are like chilled out because they think their kids are at a Christian university, thinking like, oh, now they're under control. And like, no, they're not. They have a lot more freedom than they used to, and they can do whatever the hell they want. And now they're going to get even worse.
Yeah. You know, the curfew didn't stop anybody.
No, it never stopped anybody.
No, there were workarounds.
Well, and the good— I mean, the one thing about ACUs, their curfew goes away after their freshman year, really, because that's when you stop having to live on campus? No, actually, you have to live on campus sophomore year too, but there's no curfew as a sophomore. Oh, okay.
I was only there as a graduate student, so I had no rules whatsoever.
No, it really, really, after your sophomore year, there's even not—
So unless you live on campus, like if you live in the apartments, you still have some rules, but yeah, most people don't. The only reason you live on campus is if you're on scholarship. And you're getting it paid for.
All right, so real quick, because we want to talk to Robert, not because we don't want to talk to you. Don't pay attention to her.
Sorry, I had to pose for the photo.
If people want to get a hold of you, they want to talk about thatch, they want to talk about irrigation, they want to talk about pest, you know, waste removal, they want to talk about mosquitoes, all the stuff that you guys do, how do they get a hold of you?
They can— do I put my phone number? Whatever you want. Name drop. So our office number is 832-220-8100. You can Text or call it. My name is Allison Anderson. My email is aanderson@heroeslawncare.com. Heroes is spelled H-E-R-O-E-S, by the way.
Oh, a lot of people struggle with that.
So hero plural, you add an E-S at the end.
Heroes Lawn Care, basically. Yeah, so they can contact me at that number.
But that's the normal way to spell heroes, y'all.
Okay, so you would think a lot of people knew that.
Does the European version have like some W's in there?
No, all I know is, do we know English? That's all I want to know.
That's true. Come on, what are you—
you know West Texas English. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Craig went to A&M though, so good enough to get by. We're good. All right, well, thanks for showing up.
Awesome, thank y'all for having me.
Hey guys, if you haven't yet, comment if you're here because you might win a crazy clean—
Can I win one? Yeah, absolutely.
Go on their feed and comment.
Shut up, he was telling me about you the other day and I was like, that sounds like a crazy invention.
Well, I didn't even tell him.
Well, that's what I just asked and you were like, yeah, it was me.
No, I didn't let you finish the question. No, I was just—
no, we just have these here to give away tonight.
Yeah, well, we just go on the feed. So is that one for me, one for her? Is that what you're saying? Right, right. I mean, you guys can fight to the death over it. I mean, that's great.
If you go back a couple of episodes, you can listen to our interview with the owner.
And it was really Steve, and he was really awesome. And most likely we will see— most likely we'll be promoting it in the future.
So just so you guys know, this was actually one of the first big items on QVC back in the day, like in the late '80s, early '90s. It was called Toilet Clean, and he's now rebranded it, and he's doing it off his own website rather than using like Amazon or something like that. It's off his own website. So he's got this, this product out now, and Kevin and I both have it in our toilets for like the last 3 months. No stains.
My kids love it because they're responsible for cleaning our toilet.
I was gonna say, the toilet is probably the worst place you're cleaning, so that is brilliant. All right, well, I will let y'all talk with Robert. Thank y'all so much for having me.
My fellow West Texan. That's right.
Yeah. That's right. Awesome. Robert, what is What is wrong with you, man?
What do you mean? You got short sleeves on over here. I'm getting a little chilly. Hello, Robert.
I haven't seen you in a while.
Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah, it's been a while.
Absolutely. I got my friend Jeff over here with me.
So really, he's the one signed up for the— for this time slot, I just, I'm just joining him.
You're moving people. What do you do, Jeff?
Merchant processing. This is like the 3rd merchant processing guy we've had tonight.
That's like the thing this year.
It is. Yeah, everybody wants merchant processing these days. They're trying to save money.
Is this your merchant processing guy?
This is not, but he probably will be. Okay, we're working on it. We're working on it, yeah. You want to move that thing a little bit closer to you?
I will say though, a lot of people that I know that have signed up with them, they're saving, I think, what, thousands of dollars? Some of them— what was he saving, like $3,000 a month? Yeah, a month.
Yeah, no, no, no, $3,000 a year. Oh, a year. But we, we did save a dealership about $40,000 a month on fees.
When you say a dealership, like a car dealership?
I mean, can you tell us who, which one, or is it like disclosed?
That's not a small dealership.
yeah, Toyota. Yeah, yeah, very cool, man.
So how long you been doing this?
I've only been doing it a year.
Uh, I, I just can't hear you. That's sort of the—
so I work for somebody. It's a small company. It's, uh, him, the, the owner, and then like 2, uh, 2 or 3 salesmen.
And, uh, he's been doing it for 17 years. I've only been doing it for about a year.
And the end of February will be a year.
So, so you've been doing about a year. What's the, what's the biggest thing you've learned in the last year?
Networking. I am a very, very introverted person. Uh, I could go my whole life sitting—
I can tell by the distance of the microphone.
I could go my whole life sitting on the couch working from home and never meet another person, I'd be just fine.
But I've learned that, you know, you have to get out there. Like, it's becoming more of a digital world and a networking world to where if you don't meet people, you're not gonna succeed.
that's really always been like that.
It's always about who you know instead of what you know.
But I was keeping myself from knowing people. Yeah, just on purpose. I go to my past jobs, I go to work, I go home, I may go out and play pool. I'll go to the corner of the bar, I'll play on table by myself, leave, not talk to one person that entire night.
All right, wow. So like, you've opened the— you've opened the box now. Are you any good at pool? Oh yeah.
you shouldn't tell people.
Oh yeah, I'm about to be 31. I've been playing since I was 4.
Okay, I've been playing for about 26, 27 years.
What What kind of game do you like to play?
8-ball's okay. Now I can—
it doesn't matter what kind of rules you want to play by, I'll play by all of them.
Okay, we got a serious player over here.
If you break and you leave the 1-9 combo, you can hit that and win in one shot, and it's just like a lot of people take that easy out instead of running them all out, right? Yeah, I just don't like it.
Okay, well, I don't know the rules of pool, so apparently You must be good, cuz I just— Well, if you hit the 1 and then simultaneously hit the 9 and it goes in, the 9 ball is the only one that matters.
The only ball that matters.
So if you hit the 1 ball that hits the 9 ball and it goes in, you win the game. That's the end of the game.
So is it just— I mean, that game is just all about knowing how to break. I mean, I'm good at both.
I just like playing 8-ball.
Longer game. I feel like it's a more strategic game because there's more balls on the table.
Yeah, I mean, I get that.
This guy's walking in playing by himself when most likely he could be walking in and be like, hey guys, you want to play pool? I'm a moron. Listen, man, run the table.
We have a tournament-sized table at the studio.
It's got tools on top of it.
Sounds like you need to come to the studio.
I have a bar replica in the living room.
Yeah, so it, it can be converted to be coin-operated, but I have it to where it's just Just move it on the sides. Yeah, yeah. And no coins needed.
So we, we actually had Kevin— Kevin and I— so I—
we had one given to us. We should have hired Robert. Oh, they are— and don't worry, we moved that thing by ourselves.
2 of us. Well, listen, we moved it.
Well, we took it completely apart.
With the slates inside of it too? Yes.
Oh yeah, we took the slates apart.
I think it was 3 parts, right?
well, yeah, 3 separate slate things.
Yeah, but depending on the size of the table, it's either 2 or 3.
How strong we are. Do you love it? Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. That's a real man right here. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Now see the beard?
We took it apart and like, but that was the thing is like everyone was like, don't move a pool table. We're like, listen, we can do this.
Look at me. Just look at me.
Well, like here was the story is the, they tried to give it to the Montgomery County County Fire Department, and they sent like 4 firemen over there and they tried to move it and they couldn't because they tried to just like pick it up and take it out the door.
Yeah, and I was like, that's stupid.
And so I watched some YouTube videos and I was like, oh, you got to take the bumpers off, and, and like it's actually pretty easy to put back together.
Yeah, yeah. And you just, you stretch it and you— and like it's been great. And I was like, Those dummies.
They're so dumb. We, on the other hand, like, look, so smart.
When it comes to fire, I'm gonna call him every single time.
I don't know what I'm doing, but like, I learned how to take a pool table apart.
Yeah. And like, I got a pool table. Now let me say, it wasn't fun because let me tell you the problem. I helped move the pool table. I don't own the pool table. So Craig got all the benefits.
I may have gotten dinner out of it. I don't know. But either way, either way, we're here to talk about what you do and not what we did, right? So, uh, I don't know. Tell me what we need to know about merchant, like, processing.
I'm probably less experienced than the previous 2 you had, but, um, what I can tell you is—
Less experience but more motivation.
More motivation. I'm probably hungrier in multiple ways.
You and me both. How long you been doing this now?
I've been doing it for almost a year.
So like, what's your preferred kind of client?
Right now, anything is what my boss would want me to say.
I mean, like, would you say like restaurants, retailers, small business? Yeah, both.
Yeah, all 3. Whale clients, like someone, something that would take me to like the next level. I could get a new car, whatever I needed to get.
We have people that have, uh, call centers that collect payments from, you know, their healthcare accounts and stuff like that. Those are big ones. Um, hotels. Hotels are good. Apartment complexes. We have a program to where they can pay their rent on credit card.
Yeah, I wish I could pay my mortgage on credit card. Wouldn't you like to get your points from the bank every month? Yes, I would. I do it with everything else. from my mortgage.
And yeah, we, we work with mortgage companies as well. Uh, just depends on the size of them. If it's a company that only owns like 1 or 2 houses, yeah, we can't— our numbers aren't going to look as good as— it'd still be the same percentages of savings, but it wouldn't look as good like, yeah, the people that have hundreds of houses, for sure.
But well, I do have a customer that I think owns a hotel.
Uh, cuz she said they manage a hotel, and we need to pick up something from the hotel and take it to their home. So I'm going to actually talk with her about that.
Because, uh, that would be a great referral.
Yeah. And I do free statement analysis. It takes me 15, 20 minutes to do that, so I'm not going to charge for that. I don't know if anybody else does, but, um, it's just time. It's all it takes for sure.
So, hey, do y'all notice that like when we started the show we had like a massive crowd out here, and all of a sudden the temperatures dropped like 15 degrees and there's no buddies out here.
I just started wearing these like dress shoe type of shoes. No insulation.
No insulation. Yeah, totally frozen. A little chilly.
No love, no love to the tootsies.
They're refrigerated pigs right now.
Doesn't help that these seats are also metal too. Oh, I know. So, and Sarah keeps bringing us people, so yeah, yeah, yeah, which we love y'all. It's fine.
I, I actually have a question for Robert because I think I, I I talked to you about this not too long ago. Moving pianos. Have you moved many pianos?
It was a baby grand piano.
Let me see if I got pictures of it.
Okay. Do you, do you have a piano tuner that you call when you move them?
Well, you're supposed to wait 6 months after you move it before you tune it.
I understand. But you have a tuner.
oh wow, show, show the camera. Point it right over here.
You can point it right, right there.
Yeah, point it right over here. I don't know if the camera can see it. Uh, you know what, let me get, uh— oh, fancy on him. What? Adrian's Fendo. He's got this old BlackBerry.
Well, I mean, I, I know that's a big concern, especially with like a baby grand. I mean, like that it's going to be in tune when they get it there. I mean, do you have a piano tuner?
So we have a piano tuner we work with, but honestly, we move, we have a lot of pianos pianos, organs, uprights, grand, baby grands. Most people that have pianos don't play their pianos.
It's just, it's just furniture.
Sure, that's true. So, um, usually we don't get it tuned. I asked the customer if they want it tuned, they don't want to spend the money on it.
Just because they don't, they don't play it. But the ones that do play it, we do get in and get it tuned for them. Yeah, yeah. That we, that we work with.
I, I worked for a place one time that had the pianos that we had that I played. I'm not, I'm not a great player, by the way, but it was, it was a piano that was valued at like $1.5 million.
It was a full grand concert piano.
And it was like every time it got moved, it had to be tuned.
Kind of, kind of a deal. It was an incredible piano.
Yeah. And so like I got to know the tuner pretty well and like you know, how that whole system works and like things like that. And like every time you move the thing, man, you have to—
Did I ever tell you my piano, like the one that we own, story?
It's a good story. So literally, um, we were looking for furniture when— before we got married, my wife and I were out looking for furniture and, um, went to this used, you know, secondhand store, furniture store. We didn't have any money, so in the back of the store there was this Baldwin piano, really, really nice piano. And so I sit down and I start playing the piano. And I— and like, I don't know, like 5 minutes later, I, I'm like done playing. Like, I'm just playing. It's, it's up against the wall, whatever. I get up and I look around and there's 25 people standing there and like they
start clapping for me. And I'm like, hi, you know, like, okay, whatever. And, um, so Kimberly, my wife, she goes, well, forget the furniture, let's just buy that. We can sit on the stool. And I'm like, no, we can't do that. And she was like, I didn't know you could play like that. And I was like, well, I hadn't played in a while. I can actually play better than that if I actually try. Um, but anyway, uh, months go by and, uh, our— it's time for us, you know, get married or whatever. And her grandma—
You guys were buying furniture before you got married?
Well, you know, we knew it was coming. They knew. Um, and so anyway, we, uh, we went over to her mom's house and she was like, hey, by the way, your, uh, your grandma bought, uh, you a Christmas— like a, like a Christmas— bought you a, bought you a wedding gift, right? Uh, but you have to— it's, it's in here. You got to close your eyes or whatever. So we walked in and she bought us that piano. So we have that piano in our house from this random secondhand store in Longview, Texas that we, uh, we bought. Anyway, it's kind of crazy.
Yeah, it's a different story. But, uh, pianos are like— I've moved that thing multiple times. It sucks. Moving pianos is the worst. Yeah, I think you probably helped me move it.
So we're getting the stink eye from—
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, real quick, because we don't want you to have to jump off, how do people get a hold of you if they want to use merchant services with you?
Um, what are those numbers? What is that email?
The email is jeff.mckinney, like McKinney, Texas, at macpayments.com. M-A-C Payments.
Uh, phone number, 936-500- Is there a website or socials or anything like that?
Facebook. Facebook's a good one. It's just Jeff McKinney or Jeff with Mac Payments is the Facebook.
You're looking to make friends, huh?
I don't really have any other social media besides like the BNI groups and doing all this networking groups and stuff. Yeah.
So is this your first time at a net event?
No. from NBNI. Oh, at a net event?
I mean, that's who brought us to the table.
So, all right, he's gonna be joining the, uh, the new group that we're coming up with.
Uh, the Willis Group. The Willis Group?
When's that one launching?
Yeah, probably jumped the gun and saying something, but there's whispers of that. We got about 14, 15 people interested.
Is that the the one David's helping launch?
No, that's probably the Tomball group.
Are you helping with the Willis group?
Uh, no, but I probably will be. I'm not, not at the moment, but I will be. I know I'm helping the Tomball group.
Like, what, what different businesses do we have in the Willis group so far, if you, if you know offhand? I don't expect you to know.
JoJo has a list, but I know we have, um, you know, cleaner, organizer interested in being in it, somebody who does junk removal, payment processing, uh, And I'm not sure the other ones. I'm assuming probably the traditional, you know, realtor insurance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I know JoJo has an actual list of people that are wanting to join the Willis.
Yeah, Willis is growing pretty quick, man.
Yeah. Are you up in Willis?
Really? They put an HEB up there. Yeah, literally, that's why.
Once HEB's there, everything—
everything else branches out from there.
What else do you need to know? If an HEB comes, you know your value is probably gonna go up. And by the way, Montgomery he's putting one in this year. Yep.
All right, so not, not, not to put you on the spot, but, but, but best, best restaurant you found in Willis so far?
Pizza Shack's pretty good.
Oh yeah, they do have a Pizza Shack in Willis. That's right.
Yeah, that's the original. Um, oh man.
Well, like, okay, real quick, because you say Pizza Shack, Shack, and it sounds like pizza.
No, it's an Italian restaurant.
It's an Italian restaurant. Like, they're legit Italian.
If you want a really good chicken Parmesan, which is my go-to, I go— I get that every single Italian place I go. I go for that.
It is good. Yeah, for sure.
I need that now. Yeah, my wife gets it with the, uh, she gets the chicken Parmesan at Pizza Shack with the, uh, Alfredo, like fettuccine Alfredo on the side and stuff.
If you go over there right now and get some fries or some fried pickles or something, I will split them with you right now.
I've been sitting here for 2 hours and I need some calories.
Sarah keeps bringing us people.
I've been— look, look, I'll split them with you and I'll pay for them.
Let's see what I can do then.
Right. I feel your pain. I haven't ate anything today, so. Yeah, I get—
I don't know if I want to show my card to the camera.
Show the card. Oh yeah, it's all metal. Here, is it metal? This is metal. I could cut you with this right now. Thank you. Right here.
Everything we do is on the back. I don't know if they can see it.
ACH payments, mobile terminals, no contract, credit debit payments, invoicing.
This is a straight metal. I've never seen like a—
That's a good question. Maybe.
It's aluminum, so I don't know. Aluminum.
Aluminum's typically not magnetic.
For all of our British fans who are wondering what the hell we're saying.
Exactly. Aluminum. Which, by the way, he's getting too cold, guys. That's funny.
Have you guys? Okay, like this is totally tangential, but like have you ever guys like in the United States we say pedophile?
Have you ever heard the way they say it in Europe? No. Pedophile.
What? Oh, I have heard that.
And so like there's an episode of The IT Crowd where there's a guy named. Peter File.
Oh no, that's bad. That's a rough one. Peter File.
He's at the airport and they say, we need Peter File to come to the front.
Peter File. I'm Peter File. I'm Peter File.
And they say it without the space on purpose.
It's like, look, it would be way more easier for that dude if you just went with the way Americans do it. It's pedophile.
I'll just go by Pete, right? Or just change my name altogether.
Peter, we need Peter to come up here.
Could you say one of my names, please?
Yeah, it's like that comic that made a shirt for kids that says, I'm a legal pedophile. I'm like, why would you do that?
You shouldn't. You just shouldn't. Shouldn't. Bad decisions.
So, all right, real quick, if people want to get a hold of you, I mean, like, I know we got your card, but like, did we already do that?
Do it again. Hey, I'll say one thing. What is the reason why people should go with you versus anybody else? What is the difference? So I know the difference, but I'm gonna ask you.
In my eyes, customer service. I don't work at places that don't have good customer service. So for my boss to show me how good of service we do— so anybody can sign any client for merchant services. Not all people do on-site quarterly reviews of their business, so they can show them their card mix, their percentages, strategies on how to lower their costs even more by not accepting some or accepting more cards of this, splitting up the payment so it's not as big of a charge. There's different rates that you can go with, depends on what your business is signed up for. Just because, uh, 24/7
support team. I'm the first line of defense if you're my client. If you're my client in 50 years, I'm still getting paid off of your account. Some companies are 1 year and then they sell your account off to an 800 number that you have to call if you ever have a problem. So you'll have my number the entire time. If you have a problem, call me. If I can't fix it, I'll call my boss. If he can't fix it, we'll call the support team for you. You don't ever have to deal with any of that. So customer service, I would say, is a big one.
And Robert, if people want to get their stuff moved—
I mean, I know you're, I know you're all over the place, but like, you know, we're, we're in pretty much all 50 states now.
I mean, I don't think we're moving anybody from Alaska, but like, if people want to get a hold of you, how do they find you?
Yeah, so, uh, Robert Green, Greenlight Movers, um, 832-929-6683. My email is robert@greenlightmovers.com.
I almost forgot my email. Website, www.glmovers.com. And of course you can find us on Facebook, Greenlight Movers, Instagram, Greenlight Movers. And just get a little blurb about us. We just care about customer service. That's all we care about. We come in whether we're moving one item, the entire house, packing, unpacking, whatever it may be. We just want to make sure we do it with customer service and quality first.
Thank you guys for jumping in with us tonight. I mean, it's right Appreciate it.
Yeah. One last thing. The amount of testimonials I've heard of this guy is out of this world.
I've been working with Robert for years now.
He moved us. He packed our whole house. Yeah, we moved it, but he packed it. And, uh, man, it was a great, great experience. So it wasn't— that's not normal that we usually pack somebody's house and not move it. That was probably one of the first few times we've done that. It was odd. I realized that. I'm cheap, but I didn't want to pack it.
look, I was like, look, I can, I can carry it, but I don't want to pack it. I mean, you say you're cheap, but you still paid us to do the job. You're really not cheap. No, no, it's true.
I guess you just see where you want to sit, where you want to spend your time. That's right. I have told so many people, it's like, if I ever have to move again, like, you either have to like pry me out with a crowbar or you have to hire Robert.
No, no, especially whenever you talk about a barn.
Like, whenever you got to move a barn.
Now it's like a whole nother thing.
If you move, I want your house.
Yeah, yeah, I want your house, right?
Yeah, yeah. Now that I got my shop all finished—
No, actually, your shop is cleaned out. Your shop is cleaned out, really? I know. I mean, it looks, it looks nice, dude.
I've got like— I now I have like 2,000 square feet of just like floor space.
Yeah, it's awesome. It's like I could move stuff in.
Shut your dirty mouth. Also, secret for the pool table: take the slates off. If you have any extra felt, put it on the rails. It quiets everything down. You can't even hear the balls drop.
That's actually where my pool table is, is in the shop.
Yeah, I bet it echoes too, doesn't it? No.
Well, to be fair, I don't use it that much.
He wouldn't know. Fair enough.
Yeah, it's more like eye candy.
It looks cool. I know the life. Sounds like you need to go over there and get on the podcast over there. And he knows about eye candy.
I do know about eye candy. Yeah, I look in the mirror every morning.
Well, you got to do what you got to do. Yeah, look, it is what it is. Awesome.
Thank you guys for sitting down.
Yes, thanks for having me.
Yeah, if you guys want a chance to win one of these, jump on the feed and leave a comment. Uh, we'd love to give one of these away to you You guys tonight with this. Um, so leave it, leave a comment in the, in the feed, and we'd love to, you know, it's going to go to somebody who's here tonight. That's right. So it might as well be you.
Testimonial to the podcast. I have a huge fear of this and y'all made it super comfortable.
Yeah, it was really cool. It's a conversation, man. I mean, that's it.
I'm assuming, are we going to the Homeowner Show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Facebook.
