Another day of ups and downs…This is seeming more common. Little bit of good and bad with the server hardware, a little good and bad with provider signup, a little good and bad in my sanity. Ups and downs.
This morning started off at 8:00am where the fire inspectors were supposed to come check the fire system at the warehouse for our Amazon business. Sitting in the breakroom because this is before we open, I started looking at business stuff and felt VERY unmotivated to do anything. It was supposed to be a day of cold calling but it just didn’t happen. Since I have to go to Dallas tomorrow for my nursing job for some worthless education and team building, I figured I’d try and get these 2 backup servers ready and deploy them at the Dallas data center tomorrow. Didn’t happen. One is up and running fine with TrueNAS on it. The other is being a pain an in an infinite loop of lifecycle controller. Some good news though, I got a new Sonicwall firewall in. I was skeptical as it was an ebay purchase but it included 2 years of license and it was a brand new firewall. We paid $925 for it. If I bought it from an online dealer, it would have been $7500. Got it registered and the 2 years of license was good!
Provider signup….not much going on there. Just was not motivated but the good news is, one of my business partners started calling today so thats good. I had a great conversation with a local HVAC company today. He’s definitely onboard but what I took away from that conversation really got me thinking. Can Fix it Today be more than an easier way for homeowners to find a company that can fix their problem today?
Well in that conversation we discussed how he spends $150k a month in advertising. That really hit home when he said his average conversion for a new hvac install cost him $1400. That money is DIRECTLY passed to the customer. Imagine how much better pricing he could have if he didn’t have to spend $150k a month! When we were talking he said ‘these ad prices make it unsustainable for homeowners”. That made me really stop and think. Can Fix it Today help lower the costs of all of these home repairs and installs? Can we help society by lowering the costs? Maybe.
So how would that work? If we can drop his $1400 average cost to say $400 (we won’t be his only route for finding customers) but if he can drastically drop his CAC by using Fix it Today a lot more, he theoretically could lower his prices to homeowners. Well, what if we go against all of my previous thoughts of not having “preferred providers” and had preferred providers, BUT they don’t pay us to be a sponsored ad or anything like that. They become a preferred provider by offering some of their savings to the customer. So how does this benefit each party? Homeowner – gets a better price by using Fix it Today and using their preferred partner. Everyone wants to save money. Service provider – drastically lower CAC, increased business by being a preferred provider on Fix it Today. Fix it Today – we win by having people want to use our service because they will get better pricing and the specific Fix it Today discount.
This whole idea changes everything. This is a HUGE and MONUMENTAL task to make this actually work, but I feel like its possible. We are going to piss off a lot of people along the way. People like Google and the other lead providers will lose millions in revenue if not hundreds of millions in the long term, BUT Fix it Today can help everyone by trying to lower the costs of home ownership. We can make a positive impact on society.
