Well today was a big day. We launched Fix it Today. Was it great? Meh. Was it bad? No. It was just a day. Started the day with a developer meeting that was quite fruitful. We are going to build out a home maintenance reminder part to our app. A wise person (Aditya) told me a couple years ago we need to build a system where people keep coming back. The best thing you can do is have someone use it so much they feel like its theirs. Well, Fix it Today isn’t quite that but we can get one step closer. The home maintenance reminder is a reminder once or twice a month that you need to do something for your house but more importantly a reminder we are here for you when you need us. Don’t allow us to become that little app tucked away in a folder and forgotten about. Oh no…we are here and here is a reminder. And, if you don’t to do that maintenance, no worries, we have service providers who can help you out.
So we officially went live. Flipped the home page, changed the provider page and what happened? Not much really. Browsed different zip codes on my phone for service and was slightly disappointed about the coverage. It was still early in the day on day 1. We will need to continue to remind people to add availability. The good news though is we had about 6 new providers start signing up between last nights email and this morning. Just need a few more and I’ll be happy. To do that, we need more cheeky emails and I decided we are going to hire a full time cold caller.
The business partners and I decided to go ahead with our patent application. I had to have what I though was going to be an awkward conversation but they were cool with it. I’m putting the patent under my name, not the business. Having watched a lot of Youtube in the past makes me a IP lawyer and I feel its best to keep the IP and the operating company separate. If anything catastrophic happens to the business, the IP does not go out the window with the company. Its retained by me. Realistically we can spin up the same dang company under a new operating business like things never happened. Lots of big companies do this…like Nike.
After watching an episode of My First Million Podcast on Youtube (love these guys even though they wouldnt give me the time of day when I dm’d them), they had George Mack on and they talked about how quizzes were still all the rage and people love them. This inspired me to figure out how we can have a quiz and hopefully bring some awareness of Fix it Today to homeowners. I’m going to build a fun quiz to see how handy or DIY people are. Its gotta be fun though so things like: Choose the right tool for the job…it will show 3 drills of different brands and when someone chooses Ryobi, they will get a “wrong answer” or similar. Another will show a screwdriver and you pick all of the correct uses of it. We will show something needing a chisel, a screw, pulling weeds, etc. It will be a fun quiz and give a score rated in some sort of DIY scale from clueless to Tim the Toolman Taylor.
