The Builder Market with Brett Taylor

This is episode number 157 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to bring you the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Craig Williams, and I am all alone in the studio tonight. In The Homeowner Show studio. Yeah, Kev's not here. He had prior obligations. I think he is actually attending a Tupperware party up in the, uh, the DFW area. So, uh, that, that should be interesting for him to explain when he gets back. But tonight we have a really cool episode for you guys. We have my new friend Brett Taylor from The Builder Market, and we're gonna bring him in right now. There

he is, all the way from the sunny West Coast. It is sunny there right now, isn't it? Isn't it, Brett?

No, it's been a little chilly this week.

A little chilly?

79.

How dare you?

80 degrees, and it's overcast. It's not your typical, uh, sunny Southern California weather.

Oh my gosh. Well, so honestly, like, the— I've been, I've been to LA, I think, I think twice now, and both times I was in Malibu. And when I— so like, when I was there, I was like, all right guys, I get it. Like, it was the middle of summer, like the heat of the day, it was like 84. At night, it was like 59. And you're in the mountain and they're at the ocean. I'm like, okay, fine, I get it. Like, it's gorgeous here. Like, it is ridiculous there. Like, it's such a cool city.

It's stunning.

Yeah.

And there's so much more to see and do in California besides Malibu.

Well, yeah, absolutely.

We have mountains. Just this past year, I've been to Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia. Joshua Tree, down Big Sur, up to Monterey.

What?

There's a never-ending list of things to do.

Yeah, Disney just reopened, so you got that going on.

I did go back to Disney.

Did you really?

Um, it's a bit overrated and it's expensive. It was like $154. Oh my God, for the entire day, no fireworks. And then if you wanted to get food, you had to buy it through the app and you had to wait for hours.

Geez.

So because they, they give you a specific time.

Did, did you go to see like the new Avengers Campus or were you just there just like have fun?

No, I was there right before, um, that opened.

Okay. So I haven't, haven't got to see the robotic flying Spider-Man yet.

I, I did not get to do the Spider-Man.

Okay.

I was there with my nephew. He was 9 years old. And it was a little bit of a bummer because obviously you have to do what the kids want to do. But I just couldn't believe that he didn't want to go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Dude, you got to prep this kid before he goes. I mean, that's a must. That's absolutely a must.

He's obsessed with Star Wars.

Well, who can blame him? I mean, really, it's everywhere now. Yeah, so I mean, right now we're live on Facebook, so if anybody watching has, uh, questions or comments as we go along, be sure and, and post them there. Also let us know how the audio and video is doing. We were having some issues with that last week, so we appreciate the feedback we got on that. Um, but Brett, you are, you started The Builder Market. Uh, and so this is thebuildermarket.com. Uh, and, and this is really a, a, a new and interesting way that you are connecting contractors and builders and professionals with homeowners. Mm-hmm.

Correct. Yeah. So it, the marketplace, it's supposed to be comprehensive and ranges from home improvement projects to commercial construction.

Okay.

And our website includes contractors, architects, engineers, interior designers, tradesmen, and more.

Yeah, I was, I was actually, I was going through the website a couple hours before the show. Just checking out all the different categories, and it really is in-depth. And like, there's— what I really thought was impressive was the way in which you could search for people via zip code, which I thought that was a really nice feature that you had rather than just letting— like, because I feel like a lot of websites are looking to capture your information, and this one was really trying—

Correct.

It seemed like it was trying to give you information more than You know, take information from you.

Yeah, that's one of our selling points. So oftentimes when you use HomeAdvisor and Angie's List, you, you as the homeowner or whoever is searching for a professional to do the work, they require you to provide all of your personal information including your name, phone number, and address. And one thing that we're doing is we're not requiring you to provide any of that information to the professionals.

Yeah, and just, I mean, why? Why aren't you doing that? I mean, that's what everybody else is doing.

Because homeowners hate doing that. And so they don't want to use the service. Yeah, they're just like bombarded, phone call after phone call, and it just leaves a bad taste in the people's mouth. And so what I've done is, in order to post a project, I'm going to verify that you are who you say you are. And so there's an authentication process with your mobile phone. We send a confirmation to that to make sure that people aren't posting fraudulent products. And then at that point, it's up to the professional to sell themselves. And then if you like the professional, then at that point you can provide your personal contact information.

Okay. So like it, And this is after you've posted a project and then professionals— so how does that process work? You post a project and then do people who can provide the service to do that project, do they respond on the website or do they— is there like a messaging way that that works on the webpage?

Yeah, so after you post the project, we automatically send the project details to all the professionals in your area who service that particular category.

Okay.

And so it's based off geography and project category. And then professionals have the option to contact the customer based off of the description. So if they're interested, they're going to send you pricing, they're going to send you marketing materials. You can set up an appointment.

So does, does that come— I mean, does, does that come through like your email or how does that work?

Email, email and text messages.

Okay.

And so professionals receive an automatic text message as soon as the project is posted. And then the other really unique thing about our marketplace is all the projects posted on the platform are publicly available. And so let's say we miss a particular professional and they're going scrolling down and they see it, they can still contact the customer. And so that's one of the main things that I've done with this marketplace. I'm trying to make it as transparent as possible for everyone involved.

Which— and so transparency is difficult on the internet. I mean, like, you know, authentic transparency. I mean, I think, I think a lot of people would say, you know, we want to be transparent, but like at the same time they're withholding a lot of like what they're doing. It really seems like you're trying to put forward the best— your best foot and say like, look, this is the way it works. Correct.

Yeah. And so it, it's gonna take a little bit of time for people to realize that this website is actually transparent. We're not just another HomeAdvisor or Angie's List where we're gonna bait and switch you.

Right. And, and, and let's, let's, let's, I mean, not, not to talk bad about them. I mean, like, I'm, I'm sure they have their flaws and understand what's wrong with some of their, their products and, and things like that. But like, what really differentiates you between those, those guys and, and, And let me, let me just, like, I, I've never dealt with, with Angie's List other than I've, I've seen their ads. I've dealt with HomeAdvisor. They are of the devil. Like, I, like, I, I—

Yeah. I hear that every day.

I, I have yet to speak with a small business owner. Now, I, I'm sure on scale, like, HomeAdvisor works to some degree just because of the way that they operate. But I have yet to meet a small business owner that's like, yeah, HomeAdvisor worked really great for me. Like every single one of 'em is like, that was the most horrible hellhole I ever dug myself into. And then I couldn't get out of it. Um, and, uh, you know, and that's, I mean, like, again, that's just my opinion, uh, having, you know, used their services in the past. Um, but from, from your perspective with, with Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, because those, those are the 2 big players that you're competing with, what, what really, you know, makes you stand up against these guys and

differentiate you?

Well, every single day I'm hearing horror stories from contractors who have had terrible experiences with HomeAdvisor. And so the first thing is that they want to know is, how am I different? And so one of the biggest things that differentiates ourselves is the builder market is going to provide value for your business and your services. even if you don't pay for our leads. Every single professional across the US has access to a 100% free and customizable business listing. And on that business listing, you can provide, offer photos of your past projects, your phone number, your website, all of the details so people can contact you directly.

Okay.

And this is a free service for everyone. Essentially what I'm doing is I am creating the LinkedIn equivalent for the home improvement and commercial construction industry.

Okay, I like the sound of that. I mean, like, that, that actually makes a lot of sense to me. So is there, is there a way with, within that, I mean, I, it's, I mean, is it, is it supposed to feel like a social media platform or is it supposed to feel more like a marketplace?

Well, it's, I, I want it to be more of a marketplace.

Okay.

It's a place where you're going to, search and research pros. So you can research pros through our directory. You can post projects. You can also look through our inspiration gallery. So our inspiration gallery professionals can post projects that they've already completed. So you can have a real know-how about the work that they've completed. So, you know, if that professional is actually doing work within your area or if they're a new upcomer. So if they're a new upcomer, they're probably not going to have a lot of photos. But the other thing that you can do with The inspiration gallery, you as the customer, you can actually publish the photos of the work done. And so if it's

great, you're going to be able to say, hey, look at this professional and what job they did for our house. Or if they did a really terrible job, you're going to be able to document that and publish that on the galleries. And so people are going to be able to see the work that's been done.

That's, that's—

So that's another way that we're going to be able to make the industry more transparent.

So does, do the pictures then get attached to the, the contractor that actually ended up doing the work, or is it just based on—

Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's cool. Oh yeah. So, so it, I mean, you click on a photo and it's going to take you directly to the profile of the professional behind the work.

Okay. Very cool.

So we're still working on, on the gallery right now. The focus has been building out the directory. So one thing about the directory is it is legitimately the most comprehensive directory of professionals. for the metro areas of Austin, Houston, and Dallas. And so if any professional has an online presence, there's a really good chance that they are on our website.

Okay. And, and like I was, I was on, uh, with the press release, I got it. So you guys are in LA, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Boston, and New York. And so, you know, you're saying Austin and, and Dallas as well. Are there, are there any other major cities that you guys are in right now as well?

So we're actually in all 50 states right now.

Okay.

Um, I was using those, uh, particular cities just because they're extra big and just to emphasize—

Well, it's close to where we are. I mean, you know, keep it, keep it close to home.

Yeah, keep it specific for Texas because I'm sure that's the majority of your audience.

It, it is a large portion of our audience, that is for sure. Um, yeah, so with it, with it being in, in, in multiple states, one of the other things that I saw is that you guys have over a million— is it a million? How do you—

how do you call it? 1 million professionals are on there. 1 million professionals are still building it out.

That's insane. That's a crazy amount of people that have registered on this site.

So it's taken a long time to build this list, months and months and months. I have a staff of people helping me build this out. So regarding the directory, so the directory, it is a resource. Not all 1 million professionals have claim to their business listing at this point. It's more of a resource, and professionals have the ability to claim their listing, and then at that point they can make any modifications that they want to it. I'm actually following the playbook of Yelp. So what Yelp did when they first started is they got all of the data for all of the businesses nationwide. And so back in the day when you were researching on Yelp, you would see claim this listing for many of the listings that were unclaimed. And so I'm essentially doing the same thing.

Okay.

But for this particular niche, but it's really awesome. In the past 2 weeks, I've had over 1,000 professionals claim their listings. So we're averaging over 100 a day. And, and it's still going to take a lot more work. I have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of emails. And so we're having to email every single professional and say, hey, I have a listing.

Yeah.

For you.

Which, which I think is actually how we ended up getting connected, right?

Yeah, that's exactly how we got connected. Yeah.

So I mean, like, it's, it's working.

Yeah, no, it's totally working. It's pretty exciting. It's really interesting. Most professionals are pretty excited about it and providing positive feedback. I've gotten a couple FUs. Which is always fun.

Well, at least they took the time, Brett.

Right? But they still have a listing.

I mean, sometimes that's better than being ghosted. You know, at least you gotta know.

Yeah, no, no, sure. Well, I think as soon as people realize the fact that their listing is theirs, yeah, and there's really no hidden agenda. I'm really trying to make it easy for people to communicate. between professionals and customers. That, that's all this is. And so even if you're not paying for leads, you're still going to benefit from it because I've optimized all of the listings. And so now Google is picking up every single listing. And so if somebody types in Craig Williams Show, they're going to see that there's a listing on Google. I like it.

I like it.

It's pretty in-depth.

Well, and so let me ask you this, because this is, this is an issue I know some other folks have run into, is how are you authenticating people when they, when they claim those listings?

Yeah, so most all of them have it, their email address includes their name. That's very common.

Okay.

And then if there's anyone suspicious, I just don't accept it. So I'm actually having to go there manually and accepting all of the listings one by one. And so far it seems that everyone has been incredible.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah.

The other thing I keep on getting from the emails is, what's the catch?

Yeah.

Nobody does anything for free.

Oh, sure. Which is a fair question, but you can feel free to go ahead and answer it. So.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing. If we really have hundreds of thousands of people on the website, There's plenty of advertising options.

Sure.

And then also how we make our money is through the project posting board. So if a professional is interested in a project, they're going to have all of the details of the project before they even make the decision to contact the customer. They're going to pay us for the opportunity. And so it's going to range from anywhere from $2 to $30 per project.

Okay.

And the pricing varies based off of the category and the geographic region. So obviously something that's happening in Kansas is going to be a lot less money than something that's happening in New York City.

Right.

And so we're going to do the market rate. And so how I'm looking at it is the professional, first off, has really targeted marketing opportunity, and essentially they're just paying to take a customer out for a cup of coffee.

Mm-hmm. So you're not, you're not saying that they're paying, are, are they paying for the lead? Are they paying when they get the lead? Like meaning that they—

No, they're paying to contact the customer.

Paying to contact the customer. Okay. I gotcha.

Correct.

So it's not whether or not they, they close the deal.

No.

Okay.

Which, I mean, it's whether or not, because first off, having a professional pay for upfront. That makes sure that only the qualified people who think they can do the job are gonna be contacting the customer. The last thing we want are a bunch of spammers spamming people because, hey, I can contact someone for free.

Right. Yeah. And so, but it, so here's, here's where it's, it's kind of cool though, is like, it's, it's free to post a job, right?

Correct.

And it's free to have your business listed.

Correct.

So is, is there any reason that a business would be charged if, like, say I'm just a user on the, on your site and I, and I, I look down here and I see, you know, you know, Bob's Construction Company and Bob's Construction Company has like some good photos and they've got some good reviews and I see that they've actually completed, you know, 3 or 4 projects on this, on this new site and I'm like, you know what, maybe I just want to, you know, have a chat with Bob.

Are—

is the business gonna be charged anything if that customer uses your site?

Bob will not be charged. If the customer contacts the professional, they— that's a free lead.

There you go.

We're, we're, we're trying to facilitate people being able to talk with each other.

Yeah.

That's all this is about.

And, and so for a regular homeowner, what, what does it take for them than to post a project?

Well, it takes about 30 seconds of your time.

Okay.

And access to the internet. And it also really helps if you have photos of the project.

Okay.

So I'm a sales manager. That's how I came up with this concept anyways.

Right.

So most, most of the time, people who are seriously researching pros, they have a good idea of what they already want.

Yeah.

And so they can provide measurements, they can provide photos of what they want done, all of the particular information. The other cool thing is, let's say that, um, you got a quote from Bob the plumber and he is charging you an amount that you think is just ridiculous. Well, now you have that estimate and you know the work that he wants to have done. And so you as the homeowner, you can say, hey, I've met with a plumber and These are the things that he wants to work on. Is this necessary? What would you charge for your services? So you can actually go out there and get additional quotes. And it also benefits the contractors and the plumbers as well, because now they can save having to go out there for a visit.

Oh, absolutely.

Because a lot of times with these visits, they're just a waste of time. And so this makes it easy for both Professionals and homeowners. It's really a win-win type of situation.

Oh yeah. I, I encourage my customers to send me pictures all the time. I'm like, look, if I can, if I can answer your question or put your mind at ease via a text message, that is way more valuable of both of our time than, you know, me having to make a trip out there and hold your hand and then explain it to you, you know, because you didn't send me a picture. Yeah, no, sure. And then charge you for my time, which may not have been necessary. So, I mean, taking good quality photos of your project and what you're thinking about is extremely valuable. Can you, on those projects, I mean, I'm thinking about interior decorators and things like that, and landscapers, could you

also include a link to a Pinterest board or something like that?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Okay.

Providing photos, I ask customers all the time for photos of things that they like, and then I show them the work that I've already completed. It just makes it a lot easier. The other really cool feature that we'll be offering is I have partnered with another startup, and they have— they offer the latest technologies to conduct virtual visits. And so rather than the professional going out to the homeowner or commercial site, they can actually access the camera setting on the customer's phone and they can walk through the job site through the phone. They can take measurements. The entire experience is recorded and so the professional can access it afterwards. Oh, that's cool. I'm very excited about that.

That's awesome. Who's the— can you talk about who the company is? that you've partnered up with?

Yeah, the company is Powered by Stream. They had a gig last year with— it was Lowe's. Lowe's was offering their services for free for a couple of months. I've worked out an arrangement with them. So oftentimes how they set up the accounts with their clients is they charge a monthly service fee. And so the minimum is $350 and goes up to several thousand dollars. So what we are able to do is we're able to do like just an initial setup fee of $20 to $50 for the professional, and then we charge per minute. And so if they have just a couple of appointments a month where they want to access the service, they're going to be

saving a lot of money. Having that price per minute.

Okay.

Yeah.

Huh.

Took a while to work that deal out.

I would imagine. Oh, um, so, well, and let's, let's take a minute because I think you mentioned that you were, you were a sales manager, um, and that's kind of how you got into this. But let— can we talk a little bit about the origin stories? I mean, how, how long has this thing been in development and how— what would— what really birthed this, this whole concept?

So the idea behind this was actually just from being on sales calls. I was thinking, why is there not a service that makes it easier for people to communicate? I know that there's HomeAdvisor and Angie's List and even Thumbtack, but they have all of these barriers to entry for professionals to use their service. And so I wanted to create something that limits the barriers. really the whole motto of this is provide value for other people and be of service rather than trying to monetize every single transaction. And I've been working on this idea. I've actually recently graduated from USC Marshall School of Business. And so I was working on the development for this for several months. And then for the past

2+ years I've been working on building out the platform. I, I'm— my background is not in computer science and building out websites. And so like, it's really a miracle that I've even been able to build it. It's taken a long, long time. Have you had to learn how to do a lot of that stuff?

Or did you— have you brought other people alongside to kind of help you with a lot of that?

I've brought on a lot of people.

Okay.

Along this journey, I've worked with anywhere from 100, 150 people. I've lost count.

That's crazy. That's—

Yeah, it's really crazy.

And so how long did it take you from conception to now where it's available to the public?

So I've really actually just been launching the platform in the past month. And so that's why I'm so stoked to have all of these professionals verifying their listings.

And so, well, so from, from conception of idea to, to now then, I mean, 'cause like, I think, I think you said, what was it, August 11th when like the press release went out? I mean, that's—

yeah.

Is that when it went live?

Um, well, I, I've done like a soft launch. Like it, it's been sort of live. I've not been marketing out the services until just like the past month. And that's just because it takes so long to do anything with this size. Like that directory, oh my gosh, it's taken months and months and months to put that together.

I can only imagine, man. I mean, just the idea of like the amount of data entry. I mean, I don't even know how you would like do that at scale, but like to get over a million in there. So I mean, was it like from, you know, original idea, were you talking like 2 years, 3 years, 1 year? What, what are we looking at?

2 years.

2 years.

It's been 2 years and 2 months. And like, because I started in June, once something— it was my summer break.

Well, you—

rather than going and doing an internship, I, I started building the website.

Well, we're, we're coming up close on like to like 2 years of a global pandemic. You may have hit that stride just right to be able to like, you have to be inside and working on this thing and Yeah, you may have planned that. No, I don't know if you planned it or not.

It really was perfect timing because they've been very strict here in California.

Yeah.

And so really been isolated for a long time. Things are opening up. Very happy about that. We— it's back to normal LA traffic.

Yeah.

But it was very nice driving when there was no traffic because since I'm in construction, I'm considered an essential worker.

Yep. Yep.

And so I was literally working the entire time. It was like, the pandemic didn't really affect my job, but it affected my social life because you can't go do anything. So I would just stay at home.

So all you can do is work.

That's all I did.

I think a lot of people realized that in the middle of all this is that their main source of social interaction had been, you know, was the ability to work. And so if you could work, even if it was on Zoom, I mean, you had some outlet for interaction with, with, with people. Or if you're like, you're like me where you're like, you, you like, you have no choice but to go out and, and be in and around people's houses, whether or not they'll come out and talk to you or not. Excuse me.

No, that every, everyone's always waiting for me. Yeah. And I, I, I have sales appointments every single day.

They were excited to see you.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. And like, you know, that's— I think that's one of the, the big lessons that we're getting from all this is every, every tragedy. And like, and like, I think it's fair to say what we've gone through the last year and a half or however long it's been is that, is that it has been a tragedy, but that every tragedy has an opportunity. Um, and whether or not you took advantage of it is completely up to you. And it, I mean, it sounds like, you know, it was just good timing for you to kind of like really bear down And, and make this thing happen so that when you came out the other end, you've got this product ready for when, you know, the economy opens back up and

people, you know, are, are still ready. I mean, like, because it doesn't look like there's any sign of slowing with people wanting to do home improvement projects and additions and new builds and like, you know, redesigns. I mean, pe— people are excited to do these things with their homes. Uh, and so it's like—

And have floor.

Yeah.

Yeah, our typical turnaround time for our work is 2 to 4 weeks, and now it is an unprecedented 6 to 8 weeks. And that's just because everyone wants something right now. And then add that with inflation and all of the materials taking extra long to get.

Yeah.

It's crazy. We're literally having to raise our pricing 5 to 10% every other month.

Yeah. Every, everybody's gonna have to, um, otherwise they're just not gonna be— well, like, like you just, I mean, from my own perspective, like it's getting to a point where like I have to raise my prices in order to be able to hire new people because there's so much new business that like, yeah, sure. We, we can't handle it if we don't raise the prices because we, then we can't afford to bring on the new people in order to handle the new business. And I'm not gonna do it all because I'm exhausted. And I'm the boss. So it's good to be boss sometimes. But yeah, what— so I wanna, I wanna go, I wanna circle back around to, to something

we were talking about earlier with some of these other platforms. Because it seems like I— correct me if I'm wrong, with Angie's List, you as the homeowner have to pay to get access to that List, correct?

No. So they have rechanged their business model. And actually Angie's List is now Angie, and they also own HomeAdvisor.

Oh, they own both? I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, no, they own both. And Angie is more of just a directory with reviews. So let's say that you are wanting to find a professional, and then they pop up the questions to find a professional where you say what kind of project you want and you finish it by giving all of your personal contact information, that's actually sent to HomeAdvisor.

Oh.

Yep. So you're not even accessing the professionals on Angie. Angie just advertises for professionals.

It's a funnel. So yeah, okay.

It's just a funnel. And the thing about HomeAdvisor which really affects the homeowners or whoever's using it to find the professionals is the fact that professionals hate using the service. And so you're not getting a lot of the good guys using the service. And so it kind of baffles me. We don't use HomeAdvisor. It's crazy. HomeAdvisor did like $1.3 billion last year. And they only have 200,000 professionals paying for their services.

And that's nationwide, right?

Nationwide. And every single one of the professionals that use HomeAdvisor are on my platform. Every single one.

So if you really want to use those guys, you can do it. You can access them for free on your website. 100%.

Yeah. It's kind of crazy.

Oh my goodness, man. Like, there's so much that frustrates me with that, that whole system. I mean, like, on one hand, you know, good, good for Angie. I mean, like, you know, that's— she's obviously built something really great for herself.

Angie.com, that's a decent website because you can go there and you can read reviews.

reviews. Mm-hmm.

It's a great tool to actually research the professionals, and they really have that niche. They're dominating that niche of reviews for professionals. However, they are not dominating connecting you with the actual professionals. And so I, I think there's a real need in the market for people to be able to connect. And so that's why I've completely changed how the platform even operates. Like with HomeAdvisor, you have to pay $350 to even join their marketplace.

Yeah.

And then after that point, they are just sending out leads to you. And so even if the lead doesn't pertain to your services, they're still charging you $20, $30, $40 for that lead.

Yeah.

And they make it really hard for you to be able to say, hey, I don't want that lead. Please refund me my money. And so what I've done is I've created a marketplace where everyone can have a business listing. And if you want to differentiate your services, we do offer a vetting process. And so if you've been through our process and we've verified that you are who you say you are, we verify your credentials and make sure that you are a legitimate company. We then put a vetted badge on your profile for everyone to see.

Okay.

And actually, vetted professionals will rank towards the top of, uh, the directory.

So that affects your listing in the directory?

Correct.

Okay. So is that sort of like the, the Twitter blue check or whatever?

Yeah.

Okay.

Exactly.

Okay.

Where you're verified.

Yeah.

They also do that with, um, uh, Tinder. I mean, you're married, so you don't do Tinder, but, um, there's something on there where like, um, if you've been vetted by Tinder, they'll put like a little checkmark next to your names.

I really don't even want to know what the process is for that. Thankfully, I got married long before these services were available. Good grief.

All you do is you just show like a state ID.

Is that it?

That's all you do for Tinder. Make sure that you are like who you say you are, because there's crazy people.

Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's crazy people, and the world needs crazy people. It's, it's much less entertaining without them. So I wanna circle back around to something we were talking about earlier. We were talking about posting a project, and I know we said we're taking pictures, it takes 30 seconds. What else do I have to have? What other information should I have gathered? I mean, am I posting like, look, this is what I wanna have done, this is my budget, obviously the location, area of town. I mean, what else am I needing to put in my post to make sure that I'm reaching the right contractor or service provider?

Well, you know, it varies based on what type of project you want. Everyone's at a different process of when they need the professional. Some people are just planning and budgeting, and they're just wanting to know who's operating, um, and to get a basic overview of their services.

Okay.

Versus some people, they've already met with a contractor, and now they're wanting to get, uh, an additional quote. And so I'm actually trying to leave it open-ended for whoever's posting the project. And the other thing is posting projects isn't just for homeowners, it's also for contractors. So if a contractor is building out a new restaurant, they can actually publish the elevations onto the platform and then they can say, hey, we need people to help with the windows, with flooring and whatever other projects that they're working on.

That's cool.

resource and a tool for people who are in the industry to be able to find subcontractors.

Hmm. That's neat.

So it's not— it's much more than just a HomeAdvisor. It's a mixture between HomeAdvisor and the Blue Book. That's really how I came up with the idea for this was by using the Blue Book. The Blue Book is supposed to be for professionals and we paid what it was like $3,600 for the entire year to access it.

Well, and, um, hang on, hang on real quick because I don't, I don't think everyone knows what you're talking about. Because you say Blue Book, some people might be thinking Kelly's. What, what are you talking about?

Okay, so the Blue Book, they've been around a long time. Um, back in like the '80s and '90s, what they were famous for is they had a massive book that kind of resembled the Yellow Pages, but they called it the Blue Book. And inside the Blue Book, you would go through it and you would see, um, different advertisements for professionals within each particular category.

Okay.

And so that's what the Blue Book is. And, um, they have not been able to modernize it to, uh, 2021. And so I was like, what? Why would I even pay to use this service again? And so, um, uh, that, that, that's another main reason why I built this. Like, that, that, that's the awesome thing about the builder market. It really is the LinkedIn. It's the place where people can just connect on any sort of project that they need.

Yeah.

The versatility behind it. So, like, if somebody, an interior designer, is looking for some particular chair and they're looking everywhere for it but they can't find it, they can actually publish it in the directory. And now furniture retailers across the country can be seeing that project posting being like, hey, I actually have this unique chair that you're wanting, and we facilitate that.

And we'll ship it to you.

So yeah, exactly.

That's awesome. Yeah, like when you talk about the, the Blue Book, it always reminds me of when I, I instinctively, when I look at business names now, um, like when I see something that's like, you know, AAA Brake Repair. You know, I'm like, oh, those guys have been around since Yellow Pages.

Because they— it's old school. And I, I, I understand that many of the people who are in construction and commercial construction, all the management, they're all in their 50s and 60s. Like, um, you are an exception. I'm an exception. But like, overwhelmingly, it, it's all of these other guys. And so I'm creating something for a long term.

Yeah.

I'm hoping that this is around 30, 40, 50 years. Like, I never thought that I would be in construction. I never thought that I would be building a platform for construction. But here we are. I just know that this is something that people actually need. and could 100% use. And so as soon as people realize that this is actually— there's a lot of free perks for the website and we're not trying to bait and switch people, I, I can foresee that we're going to just continue having massive growth. Hmm.

Well, and I feel like we've covered it pretty well, but is there, is there anything Uh, on in, in the back of your mind or on the horizon for you, you're like, look, in the next, you know, 6 to 12 months, this is something additional that we're planning or looking at or would really want to have as part of what we're offering to the public.

Well, right now, um, the focus is on, uh, marketing our services and letting people know about our services. So first off, thank you very much for allowing me to do that with you tonight. And the next part of the phase is I want to continue building out this directory. I'm only half of the way there. I still need to work on Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin. Like, there's still so much more work that needs to be done.

Right.

The goal is within the next 12 months that we will be the absolute go-to resource for home improvement, and commercial construction professionals. Pretty much with all of those cities that I put in the press release for New York and Los Angeles, those legitimately are the most comprehensive directory locations online. And so we're going to continue building that out. Pretty much everyone on the Blue Book, everyone on HomeAdvisor, Everyone on Yelp, Houzz, they're, they're all on our platform.

Hmm.

And so we're just gonna continue building that out for the entire country. Yeah.

So we— I had a, I had a comment just come through. Let me see if I can bring it up on the screen here. Yeah, there we go. There's Chris Turner. He said, I was told 30-week wait for Windows a few days ago. So Chris, Chris Turner is— he's actually been a guest on the, uh, the show before. And, uh, he, uh, right now he's focusing on building barndominium. So he's, he's a contractor.

Um, what's a barndominium?

A barndominium. So, uh, man, that's, that's kind of a hard— so it's a structure that was usually intended to be a barn, but you convert part of it and/or all of it into being a living residence. Um, and they're usually metal structures. Um, and they're a little bit more affordable to build. Right now than a traditional home. And they tend to be just as, you know, strong up against, you know, like here in South Texas, hurricane winds and, and such. Um, so anyway, he, he was just, he was just commented just now, just like, hey, I was told, you know, 30-week wait for windows. So this is, this is professional. So this is exactly what you're talking about where Chris is saying like, look, I'm— My guy is telling me I've got, you know,

30 weeks to wait on the windows that I want. He can post that on your site and go, hey, are there any window guys across the country willing to ship this size? This is what I'm looking for. And so I— that, that actually—

Yeah, no, absolutely. That's exactly how I want the site to be used.

Okay.

Chris should be able to go on the website and say, hey, can I get windows from another manufacturer?

Yeah.

Any quicker than 30 weeks?

So my, my initial question to that then is Okay, like say you are a, a Chris Turner and you're looking for windows, but I'm not necessarily looking for windows in my area. I'm like, hey, I don't care if you're from New York, Minnesota, Florida, you know, New Mexico. How would I post that on your site and say, hey, who on here could potentially provide me with these windows?

So when he posts, uh, the project on the site, obviously we're going through all of the different project postings. And so, if we see that it's a particular project that is for manufacturers across the country, Mm-hmm. then we'll be able to access our database of additional manufacturers. And so, if he is looking for something in New York, we'll be able to facilitate that. And we'll be able to facilitate the same project posting for Seattle. It's going to be public information. And so, that's the other component to having public project postings board. And so, well, let's say that we're not exactly contacting the correct people, but the manufacturers are coming to our platform to see what's available.

Okay.

Everything is going to be categorized. And so they're going to be able to see, hey, Chris out here in Texas is looking for windows and we can get those windows for him in 2 weeks. And so that, that's a major benefit of having a public project postings board.

Awesome. Awesome. I, you know, I just, I mean, both directions. I, I think this is just gonna be an incredible resource for people looking to do different projects around the house, whether you're the homeowner looking to connect with better professionals or you're a professional either looking to connect with other professionals that you can sub to, to do, you know, bigger projects, or you're just, you know, looking for better leads than what you've been paying for.

Yeah, that's right.

Over at the hellhole.

Um, I'm still thinking about the barntominium. In LA, there are not many barns.

Well, so, so here's, here's the deal, man, is, um, there's, there's a guy up in your neck of the woods, and he actually lives, uh, his name's Eric G., and he does, he does a radio show out of Portland. Um, and he and I have had, uh, numerous conversations about this, about how regulations are just completely different on the West Coast versus here in Texas and really other places. And he was just telling me the other day that in Portland specifically, they passed some new laws that's going to make it take 3 years to complete— not 3 years to complete, 3 years just to get the building permits for new builds in Portland now. Which is crazy. Absolutely crazy.

It's infuriating. I'm dealing with the effects of this every single day here in Southern California. They are not building more units for our population. It's insane. Literally 3 years ago, there were no homeless camps near my house. Now, with 3 years later, I'm not embellishing. There are at least 100 tents within a half mile from my place. Everywhere you go, you're seeing homeless people and they're not doing anything about it. They're throwing money for homelessness to give them some services or to rent out a hotel. But the fact of the matter is this is a supply and demand issue. And they are not helping to make it easier to build that supply. And it goes back to them making it so difficult, like in Portland, where it's for

3 years. A couple years ago, they passed an initiative in LA County where they were going to spend $1.2 billion to make additional housing for the homeless. But each unit was costing anywhere from like $600,000 and up. And they did like an analysis of that cost of $600,000 and around— I'm always wrong with the numbers, but it was somewhere between 40 to 60% of the cost was in soft costs.

Yeah.

Meaning these were costs that the government of LA does not need to impose to build housing structures.

Yeah. You were paying the salaries of the bureaucrats to run the programs.

Yeah, 100%.

Yep.

And now we have a homeless— major, major, major homeless population.

Yeah. And well, LA was bad before all this started, and from what I understand, it's just gotten worse. I mean, I know this is something like Joe Rogan rags on all the time. This is part of the reason that he said that he left. Um, and this is, this is why you hear a lot of people talking about that they're, that they're leaving. Um, are, are you, are you optimistic that anything happening with the recall right now might You know, when Gavin Newsom was running his initial campaign, he—

one of his central proponents for why you should vote him in office was he was going to build 3.5, 3.2, somewhere around that number, housing units within 5 years. 4 years. I'd be surprised if we even built 10% of that since he's been elected. I'm not very helpful right now. They're really not doing anything.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's really a pity.

Have you ever—

this is something I'm following every single day.

Have you ever done any work with homeless people? I mean, like, you know, it doesn't have to be extensive, but like it— so I, I, I have. Um, and if, if you spent any time with homeless people, like, it's very rare that you actually meet somebody like they want your help, but they want your help in a very specific way. They don't want your free housing most of the time, like, because they, they understand and they've figured out very quickly that your free housing comes with strings attached and it always comes with strings attached and they don't want your strings. Part of the reason that they're out there is that they're completely free and they don't have to follow anybody's rules and they don't have to do what anybody says. They don't have to take their meds. They

don't, you know, whatever. Like, they don't have to go to work. Yeah, they don't have to follow any norms. And so like, that's part of the appeal to them is they don't have to be doing those things. And so like, when you tell them like, hey, we've got this, you know, this, this free house over here you can come live in, like, they understand You know, very, very well what it comes with, and they don't want anything to do with it. And so it really—

Well, not here in California. They'll just give you— there's no strings attached. You know, I, I, I know people who have, uh, went homeless, and, um, they, they get money, they get like a weekly allowance.

Oh, you're, you're talking about— I got you, all the free stuff they're getting in LA.

Yeah, then they give you housing in a hotel. They rented out several hotels, and it's just homeless housing. And then they, they give you a weekly allowance. So, um, come to California.

Yeah, just— we'll, we'll completely de-incentivize you to become a productive member.

Um, the other part of that is, um, there are a lot of people who are homeless who are homeless because housing costs are just astronomical. Um, a good percentage of the population pays 50% of their monthly salary just on rent.

Easily.

And so for a lot of people, it's just too much. And so why not save some money and camp on the sidewalk for a couple of months?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I know, and, and you meet those guys too. Like, if when you spend time with them, it's like, yeah, I just decided to do this for a year. See if I could.

Yeah.

Or, you know, whatever reason. I mean, like, I got crossways with my parents. And like, I'm, you know, I'm 24, and so here I go. You know, like, I've heard multiple, multiple stories, but like, you know, when it, when it comes to like public housing, like, I, I've, I've rarely met one that wanted to go into it, you know, like, because we, like, here in Houston, I mean, like, we, we have multiple shelters, um, you know, most of them, they'll, you know, put a Bible under your pillow, and so they don't want that either. You know, not to say that that's a bad thing. I mean, it's their organization. They can do what they want. But, you know, about the only time that they're full is when it's cold.

Yeah. Well, I think the focus should be on creating more housing units. Absolutely.

To make it more affordable. More affordable housing, for sure.

Yeah. They're also really screwing over my entire generation. I'm a millennial. And just to be able to buy a house in LA with a 20% down payment when the average house is, in a really bad neighborhood, $600,000, $700,000, and then you have to pay the 20% down. And I don't want to live in a bad neighborhood. I would rather just rent.

Yeah.

And so, like, just not having access to housing. When I am fully employed, and if I lived anywhere else besides California, I'd have a wonderful house. It's absolutely crazy. Um, as soon as the builder market takes off, I plan on leaving California.

Good. Come on, come on over to Texas. So here's, here's one I'll show you, and this is, this is kind of what I was talking about. This is Chris Turner again. He was responding to what we were talking about with barndominiums. Um, here's his— what he says, barndominiums can also be built ground up in about 90 to 120 days. So, and, and, and that's here in Texas. Um, and, and so one of the things that we've been experiencing here, like, I'm, I'm in a suburb. I, I, I, this is, this is weird to even describe because Houston is a sprawling suburb. So I'm, I'm like 4 layers deep in suburb of Houston cuz I'm about an hour, hour and a half

outside of of, you know, downtown Houston.

Is that without traffic?

Yeah, yeah, which is— okay, which is not considered a far distance to drive because of how sprawling the Houston area is. We have now 3 major loops around the city, like expanding loops around the city. Um, and so when you, when you look at something like that where, you know, Chris is talking about putting a barndominium up in 90 to 120 days. You know, guys are looking at that going, okay, well, it's cheap to build, it can go up quick, I can actually get some property with it. I don't mind driving an hour and a half into work if I have to. And in fact, right now they're not wanting me to come into work. And so if I have internet, I can work remotely in my

new cheap home. Um, whereas, you know, you look, look at like what my buddy over in Portland is dealing with where Like exactly what you're talking about, where they're screwing people who want to get into new homes, but they can't afford them. Not because the materials and the actual building of the home, but all the bureaucracy that goes along with it that says, you know, like, well, it's going to cost $100,000 just in building permits to get this thing off the ground.

Yeah, no, of course.

It's like, of course there's homeless people.

And then on top of that, another thing that increases the cost of building a house is they put a homeless tax. And so like for every square foot, they, they charge taxes to help pay for the homeless.

Yeah.

And so they're increasing the pricing. Well, it's a messed up situation.

He, he just, he just sent me a message. He, he just sent me a message. He was like, hey, it's inexpensive. It's not cheap, Greg. It's inexpensive. It's absolutely right. You do quality work, bro. So, Brett, is there anything else we need to talk about before we, we, we shut this thing down? This has been a great conversation.

Yeah, no, it's been wonderful. Um, uh, thank you very much. I'm happy that you randomly sent me a message inviting me to your show.

Dude, no, it's, it's been great. We, we're always excited to get good information in, in front of our listeners because we want to provide them with the most up-to-date and, and newest products that are out there on the market that, you know, providing a good service for them. So I'm really, really glad we got to talk. Um, I'm also glad you didn't get to talk to Kevin. He might like, you know, you know, he's a good guy, but he, he really wanted to go to that Tupperware party. All right. So with nothing else, it's time for everybody's favorite part of the show, the final 4. Brett, are you ready? This is, this is the most stressful part of the show.

Got it.

All right, here we go. Number 1, what is a must-have tool that you won't leave home without?

Right here, my cell phone.

That's the one. What are you rocking there?

Um, I, so I have the notebook. The Samsung Note.

Okay.

With the stylus.

Oh.

I use this every single day rather than Paper.

Okay, very cool.

Can't get it in front of the camera.

There it is, there it is. Okay.

Right here. Yep.

No, that, that is absolutely the number one answer from all of our guests is, is their, their cell phone. Like, it's like, at this point, like, it's— how can you operate a business without one?

You—

I, I don't, I don't know how you could.

And you know, I'm not a fan of the iPhone. I think that the Samsung is superior. Oh, everyone.

So For you, what is it? What are— is it like a feature or is it just like the way it performs? What is it that you like better?

The performance is better. I just feel like with Apple, everything has to go through the corporate channel. If you want to get anything, you have to like remember that password. And if you don't remember that password when it's on your phone, they make it almost impossible. Yeah. They're just evil. At the end of the day, I think they're evil.

So yeah, and like, there's— so I'll tell you, I'll tell you something interesting that happened. Like, my, my wife works in, in the nonprofit world, and she recently had an iPad, uh, donated to her organization. She works with kids, and they were looking to get devices for kids in order to help them with school. And these, these guys donated iPads and they were completely unusable. And why? Because they hadn't wiped them before they donated them. And so if you try and do anything with them, they want the password for the last Apple ID. And you're like, well, somebody donated it. What do you want me to do with it? And they're like, you can't do anything. Can you— if you can

contact the person that donated it and get their password, then you can wipe it. And I'm like, he's not going to give me this password. Why would he do that? I don't even want to ask that question. No. And so I get why, because they want to prevent theft and all that kind of stuff, but it's just annoying.

It's so annoying. It's unnecessarily annoying.

So I say that, but we use pretty much Apple products for all of our business stuff, but to each their own. Um, all right, number 2, what is a job you have walked away from?

So how I even became a sales manager, I— it was like the same week I was offered this job and then the other job was I was actually going to be on track to become a talent manager.

Oh wow.

Because remember, here I live in Los Angeles in the entertainment capital.

Yeah.

And, um, I decided to take the position to do sales.

Okay.

And, um, I bet that I've been doing it ever since.

What, what were you selling exactly?

Uh, so I work for, uh, Superior Awnings, so I'm, I'm really in the shady business. We have like 30+ different projects, um, from awnings to patio covers to carports, curtains, Like, there's a lot of awnings here in Southern California. Half of the storefronts have awnings. So we're very busy.

So do you guys typically do like those vinyl ones that kind of like sit over the top of windows? Are you doing like carports?

What do you like? So we don't— we tend to stay away from vinyl.

Okay.

I think aluminum looks nicer and it's more durable than vinyl.

For sure.

Everything that we do, like with all of our awnings and cabanas, We do cabanas for the Beverly Hills Hotel. Like everything is custom made.

Nice.

And so we, we make it up at our facility, but for some of the patio covers, like if it's aluminum, then we, we, we just install it.

Okay. Very cool.

So I'm, I'm, I'm just the sales guy. I just go out there, take measurements and say, hey, what color do you want? That's, that's pretty much my job. Yeah.

All right. Number 3, how do you wind down at the end of a long day?

I, I don't really wind down, to be honest.

It just never stops.

I, I'm a bit of a workaholic. I, I work till like 10, 11 every single night, and then I just get too tired and I'm like, I'm done. And then I'll put on Netflix and I'll pass out and wake up and do it all again. Yeah, um, I, I go hiking a lot. I live right next to the Hollywood sign, so I'm always up there.

Nice.

Yeah, it's, it's a good walk.

So do you, do you only hike there in Cali or have you, have you hiked other places?

Well, I'm originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, so I've done a lot of hiking all throughout Utah, but pretty much just here in California. But there's so much to see and do.

Yeah. Have you ever been to Zion?

Yes. Dude, that was one of my favorite hikes I ever did. Zion is awesome.

Yeah. Gorgeous park.

Have you been to Yellowstone?

I have not been to Yellowstone yet, man. It's on my list. But like, I've— so like there's guilty dad brain for me. Like there's places I've been that like my wife and kids haven't been yet. And so I feel the need to like take them there first before I get to go experience new things. Um, but one, one of the ones I'm looking at right now, I really want to do Alaska in the summer. So I'm gonna have— I'll probably have to wait till next year, but like, that's, that's on the list. Um, but Yellowstone's on the list.

Um, I, I've been to like 41 states, 40-something different countries, and, um, Yellowstone is hands down one of the coolest places to visit in the US.

Hmm. So I'll, I'll tell you a place that has really good hiking that most people don't recommend. And that is Ukraine.

Okay.

And specifically in Lviv. I've been there a couple of times. Incredible. Most people don't know that there's like really good skiing in Ukraine.

Oh, that's awesome.

Just 'cause it's kind of still an impoverished country and can be dangerous from time to time. But it's gorgeous.

I'm not sure.

Gorgeous up in the mountains there. Most people don't know that they have mountains, but they do. Anyway, check it out. All right, number 4. What is one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice you've ever received?

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

There you go.

You know, it's all about keeping a positive mental attitude every single day. It's about what you make of the situation. I'm not the mindset where I'm a victim. I never like to be the victim. It's always about like, how can I change this situation and make something positive? Yeah.

So like, is there something mentally or like something physically that you do, like when something upsetting or, you know, something that, you know, makes it seem like I'm becoming the victim that you stop and do in order to sort of recalibrate your brain?

Hike.

Hike?

You know, hiking always calms me down.

There you go.

Anywhere, I'll go hiking.

Awesome.

A couple times a week, and that calms me down. And a lot of exercise.

Oh, okay.

Doing those weights and high-intensity workouts, that's a good stress reliever.

Absolutely. I mean, well, and it just causes the brain to work. It causes the oxygen to move through the body. I mean, it gives you the ability to actually think in a different way and get your mind off the problem that you were dealing with before, probably. So, yeah, sure. That's awesome, man. It's good that you have, you have those outlets. All right. So we have the secret 5th question of the final 4. But, you know, the final 5 just doesn't roll off the tongue as well. But we have a 5th and secret question for you. Are you ready for this question?

Yeah, go ahead.

It's a doozy. Brett, if people want to find you or find The Builder Market, how do they do so?

Yeah, just go to www.thebuildermarket.com, or you could email me personally at helpful@thebuildermarket.com. There's also a contact us form on the website, so if you have any questions or you want to reach out, just fill that out and it goes directly to me.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show this week, man. It's, it, it really, really is gonna be a valuable tool for, for our listeners. I really appreciate you coming on.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Alright, man. Well, everybody, thank you for joining us this week. We are glad that you could be here. If you have not yet, hit the subscribe button, hit the thumbs up button, notification bell, all the things that you need to do in order to follow Homeowner's Show. And you can always follow us live here on Facebook, or you can find the video on our YouTube channel. Uh, and any of the information that we talked about this week will be in the show notes. So be sure to go there and click on all the links so that you can go find Brett and the builder market. So until next time, we'll see you then.