Pickle - Home Maintenance Made Easy with Josh Stutt

This is episode number 158 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're glad that you could join us for another live episode here from The Homeowner Show studios. Welcome back, Kev.

Yeah, well, dude, I, I just can't seem to be here enough.

I don't know what to say for yourself.

I— well, it just kind of is what it is, man. Well, it's football season, that's part of it, and then I was out of town for a little bit. So anyway, I should be back for the duration at this point.

Okay.

But we'll see.

Everyone was asking about the Tupperware party that you were a part of.

Well, let me tell you that we, we did plenty of Tupperware things. I bought lots of things.

Good.

Now I'm stocked up.

Nice.

So it is what it is.

Got lots of the, the red and clear plastic in the, uh, in the bottom drawer now. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's fantastic stuff.

You were really womaning it up for the last 2 weekends. Tupperware party, wedding.

Yeah, no beard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Were you in the wedding?

I— well, yes, I was in the wedding.

Which side of the—

Well, they— I, I was the one that introduced the couple.

Matron of honor?

Yeah, no, I was, I was responsible for this thing.

Okay.

Without me, they would have never met. So, okay, that's the way that happened.

Nice. So anyway, okay. Yeah. Well, good deal.

How you doing, man?

I'm doing good, man. There, there has been some, some crazy developments in, in the bee world. Oh, in, in the last couple of weeks. So 2 things. One, uh, one, one of my, one of my guys found a colony of bees in a hot tub. And when I say a hot tub, like, not like a freestanding hot tub, like a rock-surrounded hot tub.

Oh, no.

And there was a gap between 2 of the rocks, and the bees are flying into the gap in the hot tub.

Oh, so this is like a, like a nice, like an outdoor, really fancy, like, pool area.

Yeah.

All that.

Wow. And so they're like, we don't want to kill the bees. And we agreed. And so we're like, we got to figure out how to open this rock up.

Uh-huh.

Because it's hollow underneath there.

Okay.

And I think on this pool, a lot of people don't realize this, if you have a salt pool and then you have like natural rock that you put in around it, that salt water will actually hollow out the rock behind the surface of the rock.

Oh, so you have to do some sort of like a, like a filler back there to make sure that doesn't happen?

No, you just need to not have a salt pool. That's the answer.

Okay.

Yeah. So the other one is a friend of mine sent me an article from a small-town news station where a little 4-year-old girl discovered a colony of bees, which doesn't sound all that impressive, right? Except for it is a stingless colony of bees.

What?

Yes. I'll try and find the link to the story. I think I've got it on my Facebook. I'll try and— I'll try and bring it over to our page and we'll put a link in the show notes. But it was a species of bees that the United States decided to experiment with, I think, back in the 1970s.

Okay.

And so they brought like, I think it was 10 colonies over to the US, and they split them up between 3 different sections of the country. And one was California, and the other one was somewhere in the middle of the United States. The other place was the East Coast. And like, none of them did well.

And they were—

I think they were from South America.

Okay.

But they were looking to see if they could develop a very productive honey and pollinating species of bees in the US that didn't sting.

Okay.

Which you could see why that could be really valuable. Sure. You know, if you're a, you know, an apiarist or, you know, a beekeeper or whatever, like, if you have to go out and tend your bees and you don't have to wear a bee suit, that makes it way better. Well, like, the bees did terrible. And so they, they completely abandoned the project. Well, apparently one of the colonies of bees in California had gotten out, and they just forgot about the project for the last you know fifty years. And this little girl found these bees in a tree, and and was like, "Hey, these!" And she's four, and she's like, "Hey, these bees look different than other bees." And so they they contacted the local.

So like every every county has like different people that oversee different parts of the environment for that county. And so they called the local entomologist and like, hey, we got something over here this little girl found, looks really different. We don't— and so he came over there and he was like, yeah, we— this, this species of bee doesn't exist here. It doesn't even exist in the US. And then he started doing his homework and he was like, hey, we introduced these back in the '70s.

Oh my goodness.

And they just must have been, you know, surviving. And, and, and so there— it's, it's possible that there's more of them there. Yeah, but they didn't think that they could survive even in that climate, and apparently they're doing pretty well. So they're looking for more, but she found one.

Did they, did they say how big the colony was?

It was a big colony.

Really?

Yeah, it was, and it was inside of a tree.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, so it's a pretty cool little story. I mean, I'll, again, I'll try and, I'll try and link it up on the page. Um, but I love that kind of stuff, man.

Yeah, well, we are, we are, uh, Bee people over here. We like the bees.

There's 6 colonies right over there.

Got a ton of them right out there. But they're very good.

Yeah. And these are the friendliest bees I've ever had.

Really?

This, this is the, this is the first set of bees that I've ever had where I have no fear of like opening the top and just looking in.

Which bodes well for you since you put it on this side of the fence exactly where your wife didn't want them.

Yeah. And now she loves it.

Yeah. For now.

Yeah, which just goes to prove I'm always right. Okay. I'm confident in saying that because she doesn't listen.

She doesn't listen.

Nope. And tonight will probably be the one night that— No, I don't.

I don't believe that's true at all.

Yeah.

She won't listen.

Did you see the comment from Lisa?

No, I didn't.

No, pull that up.

Okay. Oh yeah. Lisa.

Can you bring it up on the screen?

Yeah. Yep, I did just now.

Lisa says those are my kind of— Me too, Lisa.

Yeah. Those are the ones for sure. So, uh, we gotta— we got a cool episode tonight, man. I'm excited about this.

Yes, this— so, and, and our guest is gonna actually have to remind me how we even got connected. I think, I think I reached out. I can't remember if he reached out. Okay, uh, but we've got Josh Stutt from Pickle.

Pickle?

Yeah, yeah, which they don't make pickles.

No, not at all. No.

But they they have developed something really really cool that I actually just signed up for.

Okay.

So Josh, welcome to the show, man.

Hey guys, how's it going? Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Well, we're we're glad we're glad that you're here. We're we're interested to to dig into this a little bit because I think on the outset people are like pickle, what's that? So I I think I think let's start off here. Tell us a little bit about you. And, um, you know, whatever it is, just to, to let us get to know you a little bit, and then feel free to jump into Pickle and, and what it is and what we need to know.

Yeah, sure. Um, again, thanks for, for having me. Um, Craig dropped us a line on Facebook.

Did we lose him?

We couldn't say no. So that's how we're here.

Hey, Josh, back up like 5 seconds. I think we lost audio there for just a second.

I don't know what happened. Something cut out for— so, so you were—

you were—

last thing we heard was that you and Craig connected over Facebook. That's it.

Yep, yep. So he dropped us a line, said, hey, just saw this, would love to talk to you guys. If you'd like to come on the show, we'd love to have you. And we couldn't say no. So That's how we got connected. Not as interesting as stingless bees, which— that was crazy.

Yeah.

But my background, so I've been in digital marketing, e-commerce, working mostly with startups for the bulk of my career. A little over 2 years ago, I got hooked up with this team called ngLaunchpad. and said, hey, we're developing this thing called Pickle. And immediately, you know, the name was like, whoa, what's that? And originally, Pickle was built to go into the direct-to-consumer home insurance space because there was this understanding that, you know, everyone needs home insurance, but no one pays it any mind. No one really understands it. So we thought, well, there's an interesting problem we might be able to solve. In building it out and doing a little bit of testing, what we really learned was that the gap in

understanding wasn't about home insurance. It was about home care. There was just a real disconnect with homeowners, particularly first-time homeowners, and knowing How do I take care of my home? What do I have to look out for? What do I have to do? You know, ounce of prevention, pound of cure thing. How do I make sure I don't have big problems? So we stopped doing the insurance thing and said, we can solve a much bigger problem by giving people a very simple, streamlined, easy-to-use way to take care of their home. And thus, you know, Pickle was born. And that's, that's kind of where we arrived at the point we're at. The whole goal of it being to just put together the simplest

and smartest way to care for your home. You know, have it all in one place, have all the tasks you need, give you step-by-step guidance on what you need to do to do the tasks to take care of your home. Um, and really just try and help people make their home, um, a happy place.

Yeah, so that— first of all, that sounds really, really cool. I, I'm— really quick story here. So the first time we, we bought a house, my wife and I, we, we found a house we really liked. Uh, the price was really good, and there was a list of things that came back on the inspection that needed to be done. We talked to our realtor about it. Um, I didn't understand really most of the things that were on the list. Um, but she was like, look, you know, these are all pretty easy to fix. I wouldn't go in and, and, and put any contingencies on this thing. Like, go ahead and buy it. And you— so that's what we did. Um, I did not

look at that document for probably 4 years. And that's probably very common. People just don't think about it. But, um, along the way I would see something and be like, oh, that, that needs to be fixed, or I need to, I need to work on that, and we need some more insulation in my house, or, you know, the gutters are falling off over here, this, that, and the other. And I, I just kind of started recognizing things that needed to happen. I went back and looked and found that, that document, looked at it, and realized, oh, I'm not as bad with owning my home as I thought I was. But I would guess that the majority of people, they,

they're more apt to let things go and just not be— part of it's just, I don't know how to fix that, I don't want to fix it, you know, all of those sorts of things. So this sounds like it's a real good go-between for, for someone like me who started off, just bought a house, didn't know what to do, to give me some information on how to do that. Am I, am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah, I think you're really spot on with it. It's kind of just a way to get everything in one place for everything you need to do to look after your home. And it can go from simple tasks like cleaning out your dryer. You know, one of the interesting things I've learned through this is that, do you know there are over 29,000 home fires a year caused by dryers which have not been properly cleaned out.

Wow.

And it's— yeah, it's a problem you wouldn't think of, but then all of a sudden, middle of the night, you've got the dryer running and boom, there's a fire. Now you've got a real problem on your hands. So, you know, stuff like that to being able to check the foundation, being able to recognize when you've got an insulation issue. So it's It's been built as a way to, you know, help you identify those simple everyday tasks that you just might not realize you need to do, as well as some of those larger, more, I guess, advanced things that guys like you may be familiar with. But someone like myself who, you know, admittedly coming into this was very

ignorant about home care, you know, this is a way for us to learn about it as well. So, you know, all-encompassing, all under one roof, um, and all free.

Oh, wow. So what would you say the biggest challenge is for someone who is owning their home, sees a problem that needs to be fixed? Um, what, what's the biggest challenge between those 2 things? I see a problem, or maybe I don't even know that I have a problem. to actually getting it fixed? Do you see that there's a disconnect there somewhere and a way to fix it?

Definitely. I think what we recognize though is that the big disconnect comes at the first part of that, is recognizing the problem before it is a problem and taking the steps that you can take to prevent those problems because that's really how you get ahead of the game. and identify things before they become big issues and cost you a lot of time and cost you a lot of money. So that's the disconnect that we really want to try and shore up. But then definitely on the knowledge of how to deal with it, what we've done to try and bridge that gap as well is to break everything down into very simple step-by-step guides. So when you go to highpickle.com, you create your free account, you get your task list. If you look at any of the tasks on there,

it's not just a, hey, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to do this, whatever. You can go into any of the tasks and it will give you very simple, very plain English. In the future, we'll have some more videos and visual aids to help with it. on completing those tasks. And if it's something that is generally too advanced for, you know, a layperson such as myself or your typical homeowner, you know, we'll say, hey, maybe you need to look for a professional for something like this. So we really want to bridge that knowledge gap on the front end of identifying a problem before it's a problem that costs you a lot of money, costs you a lot of

time, endangers your home because 29,000 house fires a year are caused by dryers that haven't been properly cleaned. Um, and, and spotting those things beforehand and then how you deal with it when you recognize something needs to be done.

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Josh, I wanted to— so I, I actually signed up for Pickle a few days ago. I wanted to— I wanted to see kind of like what the onboarding process was. I wanted to see Uh, kind of what it did. Um, and, and I, so I, and I did it on my mobile phone and I want everybody to know, I mean, like, it's, it's not an app, but it, the, the website functions very much like an app. Um, and I, I assume that was very intentional.

Yeah, definitely. There was a lot of discussion back and forth in the genesis of it. And, you know, we all know that This is easier to digest for people as a phone app, right? We live in an app world. It's always easier to say, hey, go to iTunes, go to the Play Store, download the app. But when we thought about what our mission was, and that being to provide the simplest and smartest way to help people take care of their homes and to help out as many people as possible. We knew the best way to do that from the beginning was to make it browser-based because then we didn't have to say, okay, well, we're going to

build an iOS app first and then leave all the Android people out in the cold, or vice versa. We didn't want to do that. We wanted everyone to have access to the guides, to the care, to all that great stuff right from the jump.

Right.

So right now it is browser-based. If you look at the FAQ section on highpickle.com, We explain how to get it bookmarked on your phone's home screen so it can function just like any other app. It's designed to function like a native app, like you were saying, so you wouldn't even know the difference. But yeah, very high up on our to-do list is to build the native apps on, on both Apple and Android platforms. I mean, it's the number one question we get, hands down. It's, why can't I find this on the App Store? Is this an app? Or Whatever, whatever.

Yeah. And it like, when you're on the website, it very much feels and functions like an app. Um, and, and that, I think that's actually a good point is I don't know, I don't know that a lot of people know that, you know, if you have a website that you use on a regular basis, you can set that up to function like an app on your home screen, at least on, at least on Apple. And I'm, I assume you can do the same thing on Android.

Yeah. I mean, it's for, for, I don't know about Android, but for Apple it's as simple as, um, Going down to, uh, there's the little share button at the bottom of a website.

It's the square with the arrow, the little square with the arrow.

Click that and scroll up a bit and go, uh, add to home screen and boom, that website is now on your, you know, your screen as, as an, as an app. So you can just press that app. So that's, that's a way to do that pretty easily.

So, yep.

Yep.

It's pretty straightforward on both platforms.

Okay, cool. Yeah, so, um, I guess one of the questions that I want to get to before we get too far, where did the name Pickle come from?

Nothing to do with sandwiches as much as I love them. It's not a food-based name. It really just came from trying to solve a problem in the home. And the recurring theme of like, well, I don't want to get caught in a pickle. So no one wants their living situation or their home situation and to feel like they're stuck in a pickle. So we said, well, let's go with Pickle because we'll help you stay away from that. And then, you know, just from a marketer's perspective, it's short, easy to remember. I say, hi, pickle.com. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, easy enough. So, you know, pretty, pretty straightforward along those lines. And it's, you know, we like to think it's a little bit

catchy.

No, it really is. It's really funny because our friend Lisa, who put— was talking about the bees earlier, I'll just put this up here. She, she wrote in and said, please tell me your tagline is don't be left in a pickle, join Pickle. So yeah, it kind of, kind of is.

So she saw what you were doing there.

Yeah, she did.

That's—

that was gonna put me out of a job.

Well, hey, no, it's all good, man. It's, uh, it's— it is, it's a very catchy, um, very catchy, uh, title and everything. So that's really good. So, um, I, I, I, I guess the next question that I've got is, um, help me understand how the website works a little bit. So, so we don't, you know, we don't, we don't have a screenshot here that we can put up necessarily, but For those that are listening, what's kind of the user interface? What are you going to get whenever you go to the website, whenever you kind of— whenever you see it? What types of things are on there? I mean, you mentioned dryer, those sorts of things. What are some other things?

Wow, we've got just a whole slew of tasks. We continue to add them on the regular. We actually just added another 15 tasks. to the platform earlier today. So we're always trying to expand on what it can do for you in your home. But if you go to hi pickle.com, you'll get some basic information about what Pickle is, what it does, a little bit about the team. You'll see my lovely profile on there. But you can click the Join Free button. So easy enough. Real quick signup. We'll ask you for an email address, home address, You don't need credit card, like I said, totally free. So you'll sign up and that'll take you to the actual app itself. And I believe the direct URL for that

is app.hypixel.com. But when you go in there, you'll get a complete guide and task list that is built specifically for your home. One of the really great things about what we've built, at least in my opinion, Is originally starting out on the insurance side, we got access to a lot of great information and databases. So when we have a home address, we can pull a lot of public data records. We know historical insurance information about it, not about like you and your home, but about the address. So, you know, we know crime rates, weather patterns. school ratings, all that good stuff. So with that and the little bit of information that we ask you to provide as a user,

we build a custom home plan specifically tailored just for you, just for your home. No 2 users are going to have the exact same pickle.

Wow.

So when you join and you're on there, you'll get a task list, and as I said, we continue to to add to them all the time. We just put 15 more up today. Things like checking the stucco, actually cleaning the dryer was one that came up today. So there's a wide variety of simple to more advanced to interior to exterior, and those are given to you on a timing. It's not just a list of here's everything you need to do. It's here's this task, you need to do this once every 3 months. Here's this task, you need to do this once a year, you know, smoke alarms twice a year, so that you can almost have like a schedule and a constantly updating list. And

we built this little icon at the top of it with an avatar of your home, and as you complete more tasks, you'll see that the home gradually smiles and smiles more.

Nice.

So you can have your happy home score. So we try to gamify it a little bit because one of the things we decided is you'll always hear me say home care and I'll never say home maintenance because maintenance kind of feels like a task. It feels like work, right? But care is something that you do out of love because you want to, you know, have more joy. So we wanted to build a home care app. So that's why you get this little icon and it smiles more as you do more tasks and confetti rains down. So we wanted to make it a fun and engaging experience that, you know, yeah, okay, cleaning your dryer out isn't the most fun thing in the world. Testing your smoke alarm isn't, you know, woo-hoo, I get to test the smoke alarm.

But we wanted to add a little fun and excitement and a little gamification to it so that you'll be motivated to have your little happy home icon Smiling wide when you log in and you know that, hey, I'm doing everything I can to give my home all the care I possibly can.

That's great.

Yeah, one of the things that really jumped out to me about the way that this works is that you do sort of combine into a list the things that you need to be doing, you know, weekly, monthly, annually, every 6 months. And the thing about, you know, I think most people are pretty good, like you know, if they're, if they're slightly organized, could remember to do monthly tasks on their home. But when you start getting into some of the tasks that are really important that only need to be done once every 6 months, it's really difficult to get those on a good regimen. Because you, I mean, like, if it only needs to be done every 6 months, well then what's, what's 8 months or 9

months or, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And so it becomes easier to push those tasks off, whereas something like this, you know, will kind of keep you on a, on a on a schedule that, you know, makes, makes it a little bit more regimented for you to, to keep your house, you know, healthier.

Yeah. So I, I got a question specifically related to that, and that is how, so, so when there is a task that needs to be done, am I alerted, uh, by the app or by the, by the website, um, by Pickle through an email or a text message or something that tells me it's time to now do something?

You definitely will be in short time. One of the drawbacks of going to the browser-based as opposed to the native app is, you know, we didn't have the ability to send direct notifications.

Okay.

So we couldn't ping you on your phone like, hey, today's the day to check out and make sure your basement, you know, all the seals are good. So that is something that will definitely be a part of the native app when it's built. And we're currently in process of building browser notifications in. So even if you're not sitting there on hypickle.com all day like I might be, we can still ping you and give you that notification like, hey, you've got to do this today.

Yeah.

And even if you're not on for a week, we can still hit you with that. Because like you were saying, it is really important. You know, you go on to Pickle today and you see, oh, I got to do this once every 6 months, and you just forget about it because it's 6 months, once 7 months, once 8 months, and all of a sudden, oh crap, I got a $25,000 problem on my hand. It would have been much easier if I had just done this every 6 months. You know, we want to make sure we can deliver that to you at the right time and make sure that every user gets the right notification at the right time for the right task. Uh, so definitely

coming soon, uh, because we know how important that is.

Yeah, definitely. And one of the things that I hear is, I mean, this, this just— we're, we're really on the front end of this, um, this system and, and, and this way of doing things. But which is really cool for, for those of, uh, our, our people that are listening and watching right now. Um, hopefully they'll be able to kind of get in on the ground floor. In fact, uh, one of our friends Megan even put up here that that cleaning, cleaning your vents in your kitchen is important, you know, with the grease and the filters because it becomes a fire hazard. So, I mean, there's all sorts of things that need to be done around your house that just, you don't

think about because it's just, I use my home and then I go to work and I come home and I go to bed and all those sorts of things, you know?

Yep, yep, exactly. You just, you don't think about it because either you don't know Or, you know, you've got work, you've got kids, you've got school, you know, you've got life and life happens. And when life happens, you may not remember to check, you know, your kitchen tile grout for mold. And then one day you've got a big problem on your hands or, you know, God forbid, you know, you develop a respiratory issue because you let the mold go too long.

Yeah.

So, you know, it is a major driver for us to make sure that we have all those little things. that people don't necessarily think about or remember to do all the time. But like you were saying with Megan's comment, thank you, Megan, that's awesome. One of the great things about this for us so far is we are pretty new. Pickle has barely been around for 2 months in its current form. All the great feedback we've been getting from people, you know, messages on Facebook, Facebook, emails, Instagram, just everywhere of like, hey, I love this, but what about this, what about that, you know, hey, is this task there? And that feedback is really helping us shape the

development of it. We've already added 10, 15 features that, you know, a bunch of us sitting in a room working on this for a year and a half never even thought of. But within 2 weeks, our users are telling us, oh, you got to do this.

Yeah.

And, you know, light bulb goes off for us. So we love hearing that from the users, particularly at this stage, because, yeah, it is the early stages and Pickle is taking shape and forming every single day. So, you know, to anyone out there who is using it, Tell us, tell us what you like, tell us what you don't like, tell us what it needs more of, what it needs less of, and, and help us shape this moving forward so that we can deliver on our mission of, of Pickle being really the, you know, simplest and smartest way to take care of the home.

Yeah, man, that's, that's good.

So I, so as, as one of your new users, I actually have a question about the way that this thing, this thing works because Um, one, I'm slightly competitive and, um, there's, uh, there's some things on my list that I can't achieve because they're not in my home. And so I was wondering if there's a way that I can remove items in my to-do list that don't apply to me. And so like specifically for me, um, it's, I don't have a sump pump.

Mm-hmm.

And so it's telling me that I need to check my sump pump. I'm like, oh, I can't do that because I don't have one. I could lie and say that I checked it too.

You could just come do mine.

Okay. Yeah, that's what it's for.

Okay. Yeah, I actually put that in yours, by the way.

There we go, problem solved. You're gonna have a sump pump, take care of your neighbors.

That's right.

No, you know what, that's a great thought, and it goes back to kind of what we were just talking about. We sat around for a year and a half, and the thought didn't even occur to us that Like, hey, some people are just gonna have tasks on there that aren't a fit for them. We need to give them a way to just clear it out without it hurting their Happy Home Score and having that smiling house avatar.

'Cause I want the full score.

And then you hit us on Facebook and said, hey, there's some stuff on here that isn't applicable to me. Can I remove it? And we said, oh, wait a second, we totally whiffed on that. Boom, it's on the feature list. It's coming.

Cool. That's— I mean, yeah, because I mean, inevitably, despite all of your hard work, there's gonna be something that somebody wants differently, right? Um, well, I— and I know, absolutely, everybody, everybody is different. And it, you know, it's like everybody wants something just a little bit customized, which I, I think is exactly what y'all are going for. And it's just just working toward it. So I also noticed that there is a subscription-based option with, with Pickle as well. It is free, and all the things that we've been talking about is free. What, what are the— what does that premium feature give you?

So the, the premium Pickle Premium, which don't tell anyone, but it's not actually active yet.

But okay.

We didn't, but you just did.

And go through the process, you might get hooked up with it for an extended period of time when it launches for being one of the first people. You didn't hear that from me though. So, well, you know, so Pickle Premium, we do have to make money somehow. Pickle itself is always going to be free. Pickle Premium is going to be kind of the upper tier. So some of the features we'll be building into that is customized tasks. So things that aren't on our task list but you want to get in there, you'll be able to create your own tasks, create your own schedule for it. Account sharing is going to be on there. Some other things that, that we are looking at

is to manage multiple properties for either those of us lucky enough to own multiple homes or to say a landlord or something like that who has several homes that they want to watch for under one account. Um, and other things we think of, uh, along the way that not really ready to divulge yet but are in the works. Uh, but yeah, so Pickle Premium is going to be the subscription model. Um, not active now, but like I said, if you go through, click a few buttons, you might be on a list, then you might get a few goodies thrown your way.

Cool.

I love it. No, that's like goodies.

I do too, man.

I'm, I'm all—

and that's the comp— that you talk about you being competitive. Yeah, that's competitive in me. I'm like, wait, I get something for free? I'll do it. Uh, I, I do have a little thought here, and this is just an FYI. Um, I was actually— so I own a camper, and I was actually just thinking the other day, like, I wish I had a list of, of maintenance things that needed to be done on a camper. Um, there are hundreds of thousands of people that own campers. So as you—

Especially now.

Oh my goodness, they're all over the place. If you drive down any highway, backwoods, wherever, you're gonna see campers. So when you're ready to expand, hit me up and we'll talk about how you can expand into camper maintenance as well, because that might be a A niche?

I'll just say that on a whiteboard somewhere right now is the thought, Pickle for cars.

Oh, yes.

And it's kind of along that line.

Perfect.

Perfect. Yeah. And oddly enough, that was from an early beta tester. They were using Pickle. They said, this is awesome. I didn't know any of this about my house. I'm definitely going to use this when you guys release it. Do one for cars, please.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And again, a bunch of us, you know, you get tunnel vision when you work on things sometimes. A bunch of us sitting there going, oh yeah, we, we could do the same exact thing for cars too. So I, I think that it's a fantastic idea. It's in the thought process. If there are any app developers out there listening to this, you didn't hear any of that.

Yeah, and, and he probably Yeah, exactly. You probably also didn't hear that it's going to be called Lemon instead of Pickle.

I like it. Everyone out here taking my job.

Oh man.

Well, I, I really do like that premium thing. It's— it really, it really does, um, it offers you a more customized experience, um, and I like that. And, and I think one of the things that I just kind of want to say about that is I know for most people it's like we get subscribed to death, right? It's like, oh, we got, we got Disney Plus, we got Netflix, we've got this, we've got that. And it's like all of a sudden we have all of these subscriptions. But, uh, one thing I just want to throw out there, if you're listening to this thinking, okay, uh, because right now it shows up on the website as $9.99 a month.

Mm-hmm.

So you're talking, you know, $120 for a year. If that keeps me from a $25,000 repair bill, I think $120 for a customized experience would probably be worth it, you know? That's what I'm thinking.

Yep.

So anyway, just throwing that out there.

That was, that was our thought process as well. Um, and, and there will most likely be a reduced rate, uh, annual subscription. So if you don't want to pay $10 a month for $120 a year, most likely when it goes live, you'll be able to get a year for $100 if you want to go upfront with it.

Cool.

Yep.

I like it.

Okay.

Makes sense.

So Josh, one of the things I wanted, I wanted to make sure and talk about, because when I was going through the signup process with, with Pickle, one of the things that, that came up, uh, was the reason they wanted your address is so that they could give you accurate information around weather. Um, and I assume that has to do with like sprinklers, but I was wondering if that had anything to do with like potential inclement weather situations that might come up with different kinds of home maintenance that you might do around, you know, like, you know, like we, I think you mentioned before the show you're from, you lived in the Houston area, so you're probably a little familiar with hurricanes. Well, and you're in Miami now.

Yeah.

Um, is that, is that something that, that Pickle does? I mean, because I, I And am I right in assuming that it has— most of that information has to do with like the use of sprinklers and other things like that?

Yeah, for sure. The— so one of the things might have gone out today, if not coming very soon, is actually geographically different tasks for precisely that reason because, you know, myself in Miami, You know, you guys in the Houston area, hurricanes are a thing. They're a fact of life. You need to know how to prepare your house for it. You know what the deal is. Someone in Indiana, not so much. So we want to make sure that we can get people, you know, the right home care tips for their specific location, for their specific weather patterns. You know, someone in the Chicago suburbs They need to be reminded to salt the driveway and to deal with all the snow stuff. I'll never have to deal with that. So

that that that is a part of it. Longer term with it, where we'd like to be able to go is to actually provide notifications on severe weather alerts so we can get you know right on time. Hey, there's a tornado coming. Make sure ba ba ba ba ba. You know you're in the eye of a you're in the path of a hurricane. You know here's this many days. Make sure you do this. this many days, make sure you do that. So we can get more real-time things. But for right now, what it allows us to do is to draw on the database that we have available to us from the start on the insurance side of things and knowing, you know, what inclement

weather is localized to your region, what are the real threats for people in your area. Versus other areas. And then we just hope to be able to build on that and provide more customization, more notifications, more real-time helpful information to you as we go along.

Man, that's— I love that. Like, we, you know, Craig and I have done like a, like a hurricane preparedness episode and stuff like this. But like, I think that, man, if if all I had to do was sit back and wait for an app to tell me when to do stuff, oh my goodness, I— my, my ability to be successful in life would go way up. Because right now it's just kind of like, oh, that needs to be done eventually, you know?

Yeah.

And half the stuff I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing.

When the hurricane's coming.

I know, I know.

Josh, did I miss this earlier? Is there, is there a way to set this Is there a way to set Pickle up to where it can notify you via text message?

In development, not currently ready. It is a request we've had. Really, the notifications have been high on a lot of people's lists to say, oh, love what you're doing, but for me to get the most out of this is, hey, tell me when I got to do this. Tell me when I got to do that. Because if I knew when to do all this, I might not need Pickle. Um, so, you know, we're looking at all the various ways that we can remind people at the right time, hey, this is what, what you need to get on right now.

Yeah, cool.

Well, so then on, on that subject then, I mean, I, I, and I realize you guys are, are, are still new, which is part of the reason I, I was excited to talk to you guys. I want to make sure and, you know, get the, you know, most recent information out to our, to our audience. But like, what are some of the updates that you know are, are coming down the pike for, for Pickle that you're most excited about? Because I mean, it has a lot of cool features already, but I know you got to have some new stuff in, in the pipeline that you're, you're excited about that you know is coming up pretty soon.

Yeah, for sure. Um, the, the, the geographical, um, information split's coming very soon. If, if it didn't get out the door today But that's coming very soon. The removal of tasks that are no good, thank you to the users who suggested it, that's coming very soon. What really has me personally excited is the native app development because we know that that's what kind of— that's the number one thing everyone has been asking for.

Mm-hmm.

They want to go to the App Store, they want to be able to just have it right there. and they want those instant notifications. One of the other cool things that we're working on that I've got a couple family members who have told me like, hey, you really need to do this, is the Pickle Kids, where you'll be able to have kind of like a chore and task list that you can share with the kids and teach them how to take care of the home they live in, even if it's just simple things of like, You know, the stuff we all had to do is taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn and that kind of stuff as

a way to get the family, you know, more involved with it.

That's awesome.

Yeah, we wanted, we wanted to really, you know, everyone lives in the house together, so we want to be able to get everyone involved. We've been talking about the best way to get the pickle community a little more connected with each other because right now Everyone, you know, they go to highpickle.com, they set up the app, they've got the stuff for their home, and then, you know, they're all doing it themselves. So we're going to be putting together our Facebook group for Pickle members, and, you know, we're looking at some ways to build some friendly competition in there. We don't want anyone at each other's throats, but, you know, do the most tasks this month, rack up the most happy home points, and win a Lowe's gift card. hard, or, you know, something this or that. So those are the

kind of things so we can really build a sense of community around the Pickle people, around our users, who we all know care for their homes and can help each other out and provide guidance to each other. And doing those sorts of things to really, you know, build up a sense of we all want the same thing. We all want a happy home. We all want to be happy. and, and feel safe and secure in our homes. Let's find ways we can do that together. So those are the sorts of things that really get me excited about the project in the, uh, in the future.

Yeah, and I love the one about kids because, um, you know, for, for a lot of people, they feel inadequate to do something themselves, let alone to teach their kids how to do it. And so, you know, if I had something in my hands that could give me step-by-step instructions on helping them achieve something, then, you know, teaching them a skill and teaching them some responsibility, all of those things are really, really good. Uh, one, I do have a question, and I just wondered if this is something that is already either in the works or being considered. You mentioned that maybe there's a task that you don't recommend a homeowner do. Whatever, whatever that task is, and that you, you probably need to hire a professional to, to take care of that situation. Um,

is there going to be an opportunity to find a contractor that, that performs that task within the app?

Oh yeah, for sure. Um, that, that's something that is, uh, we, we've, we've been looking at since day one. And we're trying to find the best way to do that right now, whether that's going to be working with contractors individually and bringing them in, or perhaps linking up with someone like your guest from your last episode from the builder market who built that great platform and just bringing in, you know, third-party verified users and having that there.

Yeah.

But we understand that A lot of the tasks that we're telling users they have to do, they're simply not able to from an ability standpoint, or they don't have the right tools, or they simply don't want to, and they would rather just pay someone else to do it.

Sure.

So there's an opportunity there for us to provide help to the homeowners that are using Pickle, and that, you know, as I've said a couple of times already, That's really our goal, is to find ways to help people take care of their home. And doing that, directing people to the right help for the right job is a major function of that. So that is definitely in the works. We're trying to determine what is the best course of action to pull that off that is most beneficial to the user base. And once we have that final answer, you're gonna see that as part of the platform. But what we didn't wanna do is turn Pickle into an advertising

vehicle for folks.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we want Pickle to be free. I mean, you go to highpickle.com, there's a join free button. We want that always to be there. We always want Pickle to be free, and we don't want you to sign up and then get thrown a bunch of ads in your face or us to monetize your data that you give us and us go selling that off to people. So, you know, we wanna find the right way to be able to provide the help that people need to take care of jobs that are outside of their scope of expertise in a way that doesn't disturb the user experience.

Awesome. Yeah, I mean, what I heard from that is like, you're in Miami, Brett's over in LA. So here in Houston, we just need to host you guys and have the high-tech homeowners summit.

That's right.

And we'll get you hooked up.

So yeah, exactly.

I love it. I gotta get out there. I was telling you guys before, right before we jumped on, I can't find good fajitas in Miami.

So that's right.

It's a good excuse to come. They're all over.

They're all over. We got a pick a place we could, we could take you. Well, so here's what I love about this so much, Josh, is that we on the Homeowner Show Our whole agenda in doing this podcast for 158 episodes now for 3 years is to help people own their home better and to, to give tools to people about, about niches and contractors out there that they don't know. You know, they need a plumber. They have no idea how to go hire a plumber because they don't know the right, right questions to ask. They're afraid they're going to get taken for a ride. All of these sorts of things, and we're we're really trying to to close that gap a little bit to in into

really educate people on how to own their home better. And so one of the things that we do whenever we have a contractor on here is we we we ask them like if I were to be looking for a plumber like you, how would I go about finding that contractor and not finding someone that's just gonna you know? eat my lunch, you know, and not— and ultimately maybe not even fix the problem that I've gotten. And so how do I find that? Well, I, I think your biggest challenge there, from what you're telling me, is how do you vet some of these people to make sure that the, the contractors that you suggest are people that are trustworthy, are people that are going to go out there and do a good job? Um, I don't know what all

that looks like, but what I do know is that if you can figure that piece of the puzzle out you're going to significantly increase your audience because people are going to know I've got a trusted source here. Not only am I being told when something needs to be done, how to do it, because I don't know how to do it, but now if I don't want to do it or I can't do it, don't have the time, whatever the case may be, now I know I've got these options that they've already vetted for me on some level that can give me some information on how to do this. What— so Like, it's like this, this most beautiful combination of what the Homeowners Show is trying to do and what you are able

to provide that could be potentially huge for the average Joe homeowner out there, which is the majority of homeowners, you know?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, and that was, you know, that was really why when we got the message from you guys, at first we're like, Oh man, this this is perfect. These guys are you know they're they're doing the same kind of thing we're trying to do. You know just from a from a different angle. So it was a it was a perfect fit because you know your whole show is about helping people take care of their homes, finding the the right people. You know and and how do you do that? And how do you identify the right people? You know versus these guys are just out there taking jobs and and causing more damage. than they solve. So it perfectly lined up

when we got that message. We're like, oh, this is great. And that, yeah, that's really why we've taken our time with not just launching with a, oh yeah, just go and talk to these guys to get this fixed, because we really want to make sure that we approach it in the right way. Because like you were saying, we can tell someone they need to do something, and they can recognize that they need help. But if we steer them into help that doesn't really help them and then takes their money, then we've lost their trust. And once we've lost their trust, then we've lost them forever. And we're not doing what we set out to do. So that's why we've taken a very measured approach to

having that As a part of the platform because it's something that we recognize that we needed to do from day one. But, but like I was saying before, we want to make sure it's done in the correct manner so that it doesn't interrupt the user experience. And they know that, hey, if, if they find a contractor to, to, you know, fix issue, to, to get a bunch of bees out of rocks by their pool, um, you know, it's gonna be a guy who can do the job correctly. Um, and, and isn't going to rip them off or make the problem worse.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. I, I don't envy you trying to figure out how to, how to find who those contractors are and, and, and partner up with them. But the thing is, I mean, the bigger this grows, they'll come to you and, uh, and those sorts of things. So, um, but yeah, it's a huge problem out there. How, how do I know who to call, Craig, if If I need, you know, bee removal, how do I know? Well, you gotta do your research and that takes time, it takes effort, it takes a lot of research and so it's tough. So, Craig, you got any other questions?

Especially in an area like this where, you know, for most of us, you know, Craig, you're a contractor so you know that, you know, you know this stuff. Someone like myself, I don't. So I don't even know what I'm looking for when I look for a contractor. Like, he could say, oh yeah, I'm the best plumber in Miami. You know, I've worked on, you know, I do this, that, the other. Like, all of that's Greek to me. So, you know, even the searching for it, I don't know what I'm looking for, you know, right from the jump. So that process is so difficult. So yeah, we take it very seriously. And like you were saying, kind of Field of Dreams-y, as it were. If you build it, they will come. And we

recognize that if we build a great app that helps millions of homeowners take care of their home in a very simple and straightforward and fun manner, then the other pieces of the puzzle will Will arise. Yeah.

And, you know, one of the, one of the things, I mean, just speaking from on, on the contractor side of things, it's, it, it's a difficult hill to climb because I don't think a lot of people realize, like, how long you have to be at it in order to get any sort of traction. Because when you, when you start trying to bump up against, and I, this is something Megan just mentioned in the, in the comments, is like when you start bumping up against things like Angie's List, you know, on these, you know, pay-to-play platforms. Well, if you're not one of the biggest fish out there, like, you can't afford to play. And so, like,

your, your only means left then is, is just your reputation and the reviews that you get on things like Facebook and Google, uh, and, and other, you know, and other platforms like, like that. Um, and so you really have to build this organic traffic in order to even, you know, get the attention of people. And so that— and that's part of what makes it so difficult for homeowners is because they intuitively know this, but at the same time, the tools that these, you know, pay-to-play platforms provide for them are so easy for them to get access to that, you know, it, it almost becomes the price that you pay, uh, for getting worse service from a bigger fish

almost becomes, you know, It's almost not worth it to go find the better person sometimes. Um, so it's, it's, it's, it's difficult out there for, for small business guys sometimes, you know. And, um, it just, it just takes a long time. And I, I encourage anybody out there that, you know, and even you guys, I mean, like, because it's, it's probably not going to happen overnight, but like, it's one of those deals. Like, I think if, I think if you guys stick with it, just like anybody else, if you stick with it, if you have a consistent message and you produce a quality product, you're eventually going to win the day. Um, and I'll say, like, in, in my business, most

of my new clients come from bad experiences with bigger companies.

Yeah.

Yep. I, I would bet that's true for sure.

So, yeah.

Well, well, let me ask this, this question, Josh. What have we not hit on? What have we not covered, um, that you want to make sure that somebody knows about Pickle?

You know, I think we've touched on a lot of it. You know, for me, the important thing that people out there know is that you can find us on hipeagle.com. But our goal is to give you the simplest and smartest way to take care of your home. And it is a relatively— not even relatively, It is a new app. So what, what would allow us to, you know, achieve that mission is to hear from you, hear from the homeowners. What do you need? What do you like? What do you don't like? What do you wish you had? And the more feedback we get from people, good and bad— a lot of times the bad is way more helpful than the good, although we all love being

told we're awesome. You know, the, the more feedback we get from homeowners on what would help them make their home a happier place, what would make them a happier homeowner, the more we can build into this and the better product that we can have for people. So I, I don't think it's something we necessarily haven't touched on, um, but it's something that I, I just wanted to really reiterate. Check us out at hypickle.com. Play around for free, totally free. You don't even— no credit card needed. It's totally free. And tell us what you love. Tell us what you hate. Tell us what it needs. Tell us what it doesn't need. And the more you tell us, because we are in such early stages, the more influence you're going to have on the

future shape of this. And like you guys were just saying a minute ago, If we just continue to stay focused on building the best pickle, the best product that we, that we can, then we'll get to where we want to go. And then we'll have happy homeowners. And then everyone's thrilled.

Absolutely.

Yeah, most definitely.

One thing I'll add to that, that, Josh, because I think this is some people's hesitancy with, with free sometimes is because you do have to do, you have to give your email address. You guys haven't spammed me at all. Um, I think I got an email since I signed up, and that was, I think that was 3 days ago. And that's not to say that you guys aren't communicative. I just don't want to get 10 emails a day from, from, from people when I sign up for free services. And, and that has definitely been part of the, the, the upside of the experience with the app so far is like, you guys are not bothering me, so to speak.

Yeah.

You know, I get to use, I get to use it for what it is. So that, that's been a, a great upside. So if we don't have anything else, Kev, I think it's, it's time for everybody's favorite portion of the program.

Yeah, absolutely, because right now, right before your eyes, it is time for the Final Four.

The Final Four.

That's right, the final 4 questions we ask each and every one of our guests. And so, Josh, you are our newest victim. So, um, here we go. We're just gonna kick these things off, uh, right now. So What is the must-have tool you won't leave your house without?

So, as I mentioned, we were chatting before, you know, I listened to a couple of episodes, and one of the things I picked up on is, you know, everyone says the phone, right? Yeah. So, I don't want to say the phone. But, you know, I don't carry around a lot of physical tools in my day-to-day. So I think the most important tool that I carry around when I leave the house, I think, is my attitude.

Mm-hmm.

How do I want to take on the day? How am I going to react to what happens to me during the day? What am I going to give to my day? I know that if I approach every day with, you know, I'm excited that I get to work on this, I get to accomplish this, I get to do this. If I don't let the distractions, the problems, the setbacks get in my head too much and I stay focused and I stay positive, then I know at the end of the day I'm going to be happy with where my day went. So I would say my attitude is, is the most important tool that I leave the house with every day.

Man, I love that. That's— we've not gotten that one before. That, that's not one of the answers we've ever had.

No, that was, that was a, that was a sneaky way to, uh, to get a motivational speech in there. It was good.

It was, but it, but it wasn't just—

I like it.

It was good. Yeah, absolutely. All right, next question. So, uh, you're working on your house, something's going on, and you're like, man, this is not going the way I wanted it to.

What's a project or a job that you walked Well, if we're talking jobs, how much time do we have?

It's the internet, we have all the time we want.

Yeah, I've walked away from a number of jobs in my day. The quickest one was when I was in high school and worked in a food court, a little sandwich shop, and I set fire to the place.

You might have been asked to put out a wildfire.

It wasn't a bad fire, it was put out quickly. But needless to say, I walked away and there was no day 2.

Yeah, yeah.

So projects, you know, I think I've mentioned a couple times, I'm not much when it comes to home care and repairing those things. I'm one of those people that, like, I paid someone off Thumbtack to hang blinds. Like, that's how bad I am. A job I walked away from many, many years ago when I was starting my career, I was doing B2B sales, really high-impact dialing for dollars phone stuff, and it was a cutthroat business. It was very— if you've ever seen Boiler Room, Wall Street, any of those kinds of movies where it's A bunch of guys banging on phones and yelling at people and just being a general jerk. I was one of those guys. And I made some decent money doing it, so I can't complain about that. But,

you know, after a few years, I just had to walk away because I wasn't feeling good about it. I wasn't feeling good about how I carried myself. I wasn't feeling good about what I was selling. I wasn't feeling good about how I related to the people I was working with. So that was something I had to walk away from to say, hey, you know what, I'm going to go find something else to do. I might not make as much money, but I'm going to sleep a lot easier at night.

Sleep is good.

Yeah, most definitely. That's good. Very, very good. All right, 3rd question. How do you wind down at the end of a long day?

Well, as we mentioned, I do live in Miami. I'm fortunate enough that I'm a block and a half from the Atlantic Ocean. So, like many Miami people, I'm gonna tell you, I go to the beach. Either I'll grab a coffee from the shop around the corner and go and sit, or I'll go for a run, or I'll just go and hang out. The beach is always calming, always amazing, and helps me stay centered no matter what's happening. So the beach is my happy place.

Man, that's a, that's a good answer. If you live near something like that, it's a great answer. That's what you should be doing.

I think I'd be angry at you if you lived near the beach and you didn't take advantage.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Absolutely. No, very, very good. All right, 4th and final question. What's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice you've ever received?

So you mentioned kind of, you know, I flipped answer 1 and turned it into like a little motivational speech.

Yeah.

So when I was first thinking about this one, everything I thought of was, was right along those lines. It was everything from like every, you know, motivational speaker and, oh, you're, you know, your hustle posts on Instagram and all that crap. So to take something that, um, I, I heard a little while ago on a podcast by Mark Bernardin, who's a writer. And he put this t-shirt because it was a slogan that he threw out on the podcast one day, and his fan base loved it. He built a t-shirt on it, and I absolutely love it. What were the language barriers here? I don't think we cleared that one up.

Just put a bleep in front of anything that might—

Okay, I'll bleep it.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

So this great piece of advice: be humble, but let MFers know.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. All right.

Very, very good. Very good. Well, listen, man, this has been really, really good. I feel like as some things continue to progress with with your business, with with highpickle.com and with pickle itself and all that kind of stuff, I feel like we're gonna have to have you back on. to give us an update on the things that are happening. And, you know, because honestly, this is something that, that would be very, very easy for us as a, as a podcast to promote and, and to help out with, just because like you said, the, the niche fits so perfectly well, you know, for sure. So yeah.

Thank you so much. Um, you know, we were, we were thrilled to hear from you guys. Like you were saying, I mean, it perfect match. We knew like, hey, we got to talk to these guys. And not only do we have to talk to them, but we need to be listening to them because they've been at this for a number of years. We're in 180-something episodes in the business. You know, these are the exact guys that we need to be paying attention to. This is the exact audience we're trying to reach. So we'd be more than happy to come back. Craig, you're on board already. So you'll be getting the emails. You know, you'll be getting the

updates as new features and things roll out. I'll probably be bugging you when we got new stuff, like, hey, let me come back on and tell you about this or that.

All right.

So yeah, you know, we're— we'd be more than happy to come back anytime. In the meantime, you know, everyone can find us at hiepickle.com. We're on all the socials at Pickle Home Care. So reach out, you know, Join, let us know how to make it even better. And yeah, we would definitely love to talk to you guys again in the future.

Awesome. And if people have questions, is there like a good email or something like that for people to get a hold of you guys with?

team@highpickle.com. That, that's, uh, that's the email. Um, you can hit us up on, on Facebook, Instagram.

Did we lose him?

We just lost him.

All right, well, we got the— we— what? All right, sorry about that, guys. Sometimes we have technical difficulties, but, uh, we'll, we'll make sure and get all the information up on the, uh, up, up on the show notes. Uh, and until next week, Kev, anything else?

I think that's it, man. Leave us a message, uh, review info@homeworkershow.com. Go leave us a rating or review on, on Apple iTunes or anywhere that you listen to our podcast. But until next time, man, see you later.

See ya.