The Remodeler Digital Playbook Podcast

Educating Homeowners: A Consultative Approach to Empower Decisions with Jeremy Maher

• Rathna Ramakrishnan • Season 1 • Episode 8

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In this episode of the Remodeler Digital Playbook podcast, Jeremy Maher shares his unique journey into the remodeling industry, detailing how a negative experience with contractors inspired him to start his own business, Phoenix Home Remodeling. He discusses the importance of partnership dynamics, the transition to a design-build model, and the significance of technology in enhancing the homeowner experience. 

Jeremy also addresses the impact of COVID-19 on the remodeling industry, the challenges of hiring skilled labor, and current trends in kitchen and bathroom remodeling. He emphasizes the importance of marketing strategies, the role of AI in business, and offers valuable advice for aspiring contractors.

📌 KEY MOMENTS:

- 03:13: The Dynamics of Partnership in Business
- 11:57: Utilizing Technology in Remodeling
- 21:02: Trends in Kitchen and Bathroom Remodeling
- 27:00: The Role of AI in the Remodeling Business
- 29:58: Advice for Aspiring Contractors

🌟 What You'll Learn:
- ACTIONABLE TIPS for business owners to utilize technology for remodeling.
- INSIGHTS into Jeremy Maher's marketing strategies to enhance SEO. 

🔨 Essential listening for remodeling contractors seeking to advance their digital marketing strategies.

🎧 Tune in now to transform your approach to digital marketing!

Ready to see real results from fellow General Contractors?

→ Step 1: Join our FREE Digital Dominance Club for Remodeling Contractors

→ Step 2: Follow us on Instagram

→ Step 3: Schedule a 1:1 call with Rathna now!

Let's rock your remodeling journey! 🛠️💰

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:05.315)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Remodeler Digital Playbook podcast. I'm excited today to interview remodeling contractor Jeremy Maher He's not only a finance major, he's also a published author, and he loves serving homeowners. So I'm really excited to chat with him to learn more about his story of how he got into remodeling and how he runs such a successful business, which has over 100 reviews on Google.

So let's dive right in. Jeremy, share with me your story of how you got into this remodeling.

Jeremy Maher (00:43.732)
Yeah, absolutely. First off, thank you for having me on here. So it's kind of a different story than normal. To keep it short, my family and I bought a house in an area called Awetuki of the greater Phoenix area. And it was a little bit of an older house for the area. And we had to use contractors for several things and they all were just terrible. I'm putting it lightly. I'll just leave it at that.

and it just shocked me. so whenever something would happen, some of the times I would complain to my boss. his name is Ben and he was the director at infusion software. worked about a decade ago. And at one point he's like, you know, my brother, Mark lives in Illinois. He's a contractor. I've been trying to get him to come out here for a long time. I think we should consider, you know, either you consulting with us or maybe the three of us started business.

And so we talked about it for maybe a year and that was roughly a decade ago or just short of a decade. And then we ended up getting everything set up and starting Phoenix Home Remodeling.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (01:55.971)
Amazing, so when you say you set everything up, there's the three of you that are in partnership that are running Phoenix Home Remodeling today.

Jeremy Maher (02:05.132)
Correct, yes. Yeah, three of us.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (02:06.633)
And how does that play? How does that play when you have partners, you have very predefined roles? Do you have like, you know, clear silos that each of you manage?

Jeremy Maher (02:19.306)
That's a great question. That's actually the word I often use is like silos or like our own department. Because you always hear these bad stories about people partnering together and there's just so many dynamics. I think probably one thing that helped was Ben was my boss and I was his employee. So we had already worked together. And obviously that's a dynamic that most people probably wouldn't want to work with their boss. Obviously there's exceptions.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (02:42.541)
Hahaha!

Jeremy Maher (02:45.28)
But Ben and Mark are both very relaxed. I'm a little more of an excitable personality, I would say. But we're all just very honest and direct with each other. So that has some help there. We also have the same goals in mind. And it really just stems around making sure that the homeowner has a good experience. And then the other thing that probably helps is, kind like we started to touch on with the silos, we kind of stick to our own little area.

and don't get too involved with anything else that's outside of our main area of expertise. And so there isn't that opportunity for butting heads or other challenges. We each know what we're doing. We each have a department that's our specialty. And I think that also helps out from a customer standpoint because when you're a homeowner, working with an employee is great. We have several employees.

But when you work with a homeowner or you have a homeowner in charge of the department, there's a certain sense of ownership that they have. And they also have the ability to then kind of exude that or promote that to anyone that's working with them. So I would say it actually has helped us out considerably having three owners and

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:45.822)
right.

Jeremy Maher (04:03.946)
There's been a few times over the years, Ben and I have made jokes like, don't know how someone does this if they're only one owner. We give them props. Like it can't be easy, especially in construction.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:10.293)
Absolutely.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:15.267)
Right, so your bad experience of that remodeling inspired you to start your own. So you quit your job and then you partnered with Mark and Ben and you launched Phoenix Home Remodeling and here you are 10 years later, you know, with your silos of tasks. And so do you have a physical office or do each of you just work remote and you have employees that sit in an office?

Jeremy Maher (04:42.654)
Yeah, so I work from home just because I sit in front of a bunch of monitors and I don't know how else to say it's kind of like, well, I'll just leave it at that. I'm in front of a bunch of monitors all day and everything I do is online. Mark and Ben actually work at our main office. So we do have a regular office with a design room for homeowners and for designers. And it also has a warehouse so that way we can store all of the client's information or client's materials.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (05:12.343)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (05:12.854)
Because some of that stuff gets pretty big, obviously, construction materials. And so the majority of our employees work at our office. They work from home if they're not client facing or if they're just doing phone calls. But for the most part, most of us work in the office.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (05:30.787)
Nice. So you are a design -build firm. When you started 10 years ago, did you start off right away as a design -build firm, or did you just take on projects and then realize that there is tremendous value that you can bring to a homeowner who has these larger projects? If you can incorporate the design and then the build, then it just simplifies it for the homeowner. At what point did you become a design and build firm?

Jeremy Maher (05:58.388)
Yeah, that's a great question because we started as a regular contractor. We didn't even know the design build method was available. Most homeowners have never heard of it. And being part of a bunch of different groups online, I wanted to learn everything I possibly could even before we got started. And so when we first got started, we had heard of it, but it was like, eh, that doesn't really make sense for us. And as time went on, we realized that there's no way to do this as well as possible without being designed build.

Everything from the initial visit to the way that you would estimate it to the client expectations, pretty much everything. know, for example, when you work with a regular contractor, they come into your house, they might spend 30 minutes, an hour, maybe an hour and a half. And then a few days later, a few weeks later, you get a proposal from them. There's no way to know how much the project's really going to be.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:51.597)
Thank

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:56.707)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (06:57.322)
from someone spending an hour at your house. It's just not possible. It's not their fault. It's not possible. You have to pick out all of your design selection items. You have to plan everything out, work with a designer and actually have the renderings done so you could see what it looks like. So there's a lot of stuff that's involved that unfortunately gets skipped when you're a regular contractor. And so we were doing some of those design build things. We didn't even realize we were.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:59.937)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:24.173)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (07:24.406)
We just didn't have it organized as well as we should have and we didn't have the process even though we had a good process for being a regular contractor We didn't actually have the design build process set up and so that was Maybe five years ago roughly We changed to design build it took me almost a year just to get it all set up because it's a lot of extra work But it was well worth it. It's one of those areas that we look back on now and say wow that was that was a good move

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:53.427)
Nice. So then you have in -house designers that do the design renderings for your clients. Awesome.

Jeremy Maher (08:01.59)
Correct, yeah. Currently we have two designers, yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:05.597)
And what is the experience that a lead goes through when they come into your universe? Because remodeling is such a personal business. You're in people's homes and spaces and redesigning a kitchen or a bathroom, just, know, uprooting their lives. How does it look when you have a lead that comes in from, you know, whatever source of lead generation that you're using?

and what is the first point of contact and then what happens to the lead cycle till they convert to a client and revenue in the bank for your business. What does that look like?

Jeremy Maher (08:42.676)
Yeah, that's a great question because unfortunately our industry contractors, home services even to some extent, are known for never returning calls, letting people slip through the cracks. So the company I worked at with Ben, it was called Infusionsoft and the entire point of that software was to help small businesses make sure people didn't slip through the cracks. So we have a pretty elaborate setup, not to get into, but pretty elaborate setup.

where we make sure no one can slip through the cracks. But from a more basic standpoint, if someone calls us, instead of us trying to have a receptionist that might be able to pick up calls roughly six hours out of the day, and they're probably doing some other task, and so they're trying to take calls, we have a service that has been trained on exactly what to do. And so no matter what, anyone can call 24 seven, and they will always get a human being immediately. It's not one of those things where it takes

Rathna Ramakrishnan (09:23.874)
Eh.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (09:38.755)
Fantastic.

Jeremy Maher (09:41.29)
you know, seven to ten days just to get a call back. And then when they call you as the homeowner, you're not available and you play phone tag and it's just, it's ridiculous. So if someone fills out a form on our website or they call us, we reach out to them immediately. Then we provide them with emails that have actual important information, like questions they should ask remodeling companies. So before they even spoken to us, usually we want to make sure like, Hey,

We may or may not be a good fit. We need to make sure that we are giving you the right information in case we don't get the chance to talk to you or just for any other reason. So we're all around education. It's very well known inside of our company. We are anti -sales. I come from a sales background. I do not like sales. I do not like to be sold. I don't think other people like to be sold. We come with more of a consultative approach where we just want to educate and empower homeowners.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (10:27.139)
anything.

Jeremy Maher (10:39.752)
and then they have the ability to make the decision. One of the reasons is because we're going to be working with someone for months. We're going to go through a planning and design phase. We're going to be inside their house for longer than they've ever dealt with anyone being in their home. So we want to make sure this is a good fit both ways. We don't want to try to pressure someone. And so every person inside of our company knows that we are very against that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (10:51.874)
Yes.

Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:01.229)
you

Jeremy Maher (11:08.726)
And it just creates a better dynamic and relationship for everyone.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:12.845)
So then you have an initial phone call and then you have, I don't know what you call your team. Are they a project advisor? Do they go to the homeowner's site and then they meet with them and.

Jeremy Maher (11:25.642)
Yeah, great question. Sorry, I didn't finish that. essentially, the first step is they have a phone consultation with Justin. Justin is essentially our consultation manager. He wants to make sure it's a good fit in a bunch of different ways. So he learns about the project, asks questions, provides advice, and then at the end gives a rough price range to see if we're aligned correctly. And then if it's a good fit, we schedule the in -home evaluation. It's complimentary. And then what happens is our home consultant goes out.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:31.565)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (11:54.44)
essentially already has a scope of work typed up from Justin's notes. So everything that was discussed on the phone call is not only typed up in notes, but it's typed up in a very specific type of scope of work we've developed that has like a checklist. So our home consultant, their main job is just to make sure that they get through everything so we don't miss anything. Now, the downside to that is our price is higher because if we're not missing things and we're way more detailed,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:57.453)
Mm. Mm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:06.552)
My scene.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:15.853)
Mmm.

Jeremy Maher (12:22.57)
That means the cost goes up because that's the real cost. But for homeowners, most of them appreciate that. Obviously, sometimes they don't like that because, hey, why are you more expensive? And it's like, it's not because we're just charging for no reason. It's the fact that we're being real about it. The other reason, and the next step is as soon as our home consultant is finished, you know what they do? They actually submit this to our estimator who uses a cost catalog and pricing software.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:25.388)
right.

Jeremy Maher (12:52.054)
to ensure that it's a real price. As of right now, yeah, as of right now, we are the only company in the United States that takes the time to do this. There could be other companies I'm not aware of, but I'm part of several groups that have different contractors, design -build companies online, and everyone says it's a waste of time, which I understand. They think it's a waste of time and money. But for us, we found that we can do it very efficiently.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:55.459)
Fantastic.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:03.403)
amazing.

Jeremy Maher (13:20.958)
and at a very low cost. So essentially we're able to actually build out their project in pricing software. And then from that point, we actually have a real price and then we take that real price that we get to the penny and we change it into a price range. So the homeowner essentially has a better idea of what their price would be compared to somebody who just uses an Excel sheet or just frankly makes up a cost. And then from that point,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:28.311)
Yes.

Jeremy Maher (13:50.482)
After that, we send the proposal to the homeowner and they have the ability to just take their time and decide if they want to move forward. And then if they do move forward, they sign a planning and design agreement that essentially says, Hey, we're just hiring you, Mr. Contractor, Mrs. Contractor to do the design and planning phase, but not the construction. So then the homeowner has the ability to work with us, design everything, get renderings.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:12.141)
Bye,

Jeremy Maher (14:18.72)
pick out every single aspect of their remodel. And then we come back out to the house after we've figured everything out and we reprice it and let them know, hey, here is now the new price. Do you want to move forward with us? And they're not obligated at all to do this. And that's one of the reasons very few contractors want to do that because the homeowner gets to test drive them. And if they don't do a good job, the homeowner can easily be like, no thanks, I'm out of here. Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:35.597)
Wow.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:45.357)
Cancel. Right. You made an excellent point. This summer we had to remodel our master bathroom. I live in an older home and there was a plumbing issue. And so we had to remodel our master bathroom. And I went through this whole, you know, interviewing a bunch of contractors, getting these codes back. And then finally the contractor that we went with, they're very pleased with what he delivered.

the pricing, it kind of kept switching and changing and then we're like a little bit more, a little bit less and then eventually we did land way over budget. But at that point in time, we really didn't have a chance to say this does not work because we were already entrenched in the project. So I think your system seemed right on in terms of customer service and being able to help the homeowner prepare because this is a huge investment when you're trying to remodel your space. So I just love your process of.

giving them a chance to like not only get to know you, but actually use a cost catalog and have an employee that's able to estimate for them that that I think is just above and beyond because it really gives you the peace of mind in knowing where your project value is going to land and the fact that you have a contractor that gets what they're doing. So it's fantastic. So just listening to you, seems like technology is a big piece of your

lives because you use an estimation tool and you have the Infusionsoft background. So if you were to look at a tech stack and share with a fellow contractor what are some of your three to five tools that really make a big difference not only for your team but for the experience of the homeowner, what would they be and why do you love those tools?

Jeremy Maher (16:28.384)
Yeah, absolutely. So I would recommend something to use on the front end. So if someone fills out a form on the website, if they call in and there's some kind of disposition that needs to be placed inside this database, you can use it for texting, emailing. There's a lot of options out there. Infusionsoft is one of them. Go High Level, Active Campaign. There's a bunch of them that are called All -in -One Software.

And they do a lot of different things for a contractor or any small business. And then specifically for contractors and also for homeowners, any homeowners, if they happen to be listening to this, they want to make sure that their contractor is using some type of project management software. Usually that would be Builder Trend or Job Tread. Those are two of the most popular software and those are the two best ones that are out there. At least as of recording this right now.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:13.89)
You

Jeremy Maher (17:25.438)
So one of the big benefits to this type of software is it allows the contractor to have a schedule with Gantt charts and everything. Tasks can be related to those calendar items. So everything's together. You can have different to -dos. Even little things like employees can punch it, clock in and out of the system. And homeowners love this system because they are given progress photos, daily logs of what was done for the day.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:33.741)
Mm -hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:44.215)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (17:55.1)
along with normal updates and things of that nature, videos, photos. And we have a fair amount of clients that own second homes because we're in Phoenix. And so it's very popular. They call it snowbirds out here. And it's very popular for people to have second homes to want to remodel. And they love working with us. And one of the main reasons is because we have this software where they don't even have to be in the same state.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (18:08.723)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Maher (18:22.292)
and they know exactly what's happening because we're giving them updates. So I would say that is probably the most important software. And then whatever they like to use for email, whether it's Google Workspace or Microsoft and the normal things that come with that, like calendaring and things of that nature. I would say those are probably the three big ones.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (18:40.973)
So what is the CRM that you're tied to? Do you use Infusionsoft or Go High Level or what is working really well for you?

Jeremy Maher (18:48.724)
Yeah, so actually we use Infusionsoft right now and I'm in the middle of moving us to Go High level currently. I know that that's what you use. I could tell from your link in your email. So yeah, you know, I'm a huge fan of both, but Go High level is beyond incredible.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (18:56.109)
Very nice.

Yes, yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:06.967)
Yep, I'm an early adopter of Go High level and a huge fan and we built some custom automations for the remodeling nation. just works fabulously. then in terms of, yeah, in terms of the builder trend and, know, do the home owners actually get access to the software and they're able to go in and see the photos and the before and afters and as the project moves along, is that how you set up the tool?

Jeremy Maher (19:12.96)
Nice.

Jeremy Maher (19:17.785)
that's amazing. That's very helpful.

Jeremy Maher (19:37.066)
Yeah, absolutely. So the first use that they have is they work with a designer and the designer can actually put things in there and say, hey, how do you like this? Or if they provide samples or they go somewhere, they'll show those and the homeowner will say, really like this one. So then the designer puts it into the software and then the homeowner has the ability to decide which one they want. And when they hit approve, it automatically updates the price for them. So they always know like, okay, well this one I was under.

This one I was overpriced and so homeowners love that control and then of course just the normal transparency of it of seeing what's going on also having communication mostly in one channel makes everything much more organized and then once they move to the construction phase from that point what happens is the project manager takes over and the project manager is putting in like daily logs progress photos videos messaging back and forth

anything else that would be involved with the project. So even five, 10 years down the road, the homeowner still has access to this software. And so if they're like, you know, let's say someone asked them, where did you get that tile in your backsplash? And it's been five years, the homeowner is like, I don't remember the name. Let me look it up. And they can go on their mobile phone, desktop, look it up real quick and say, hey, let me email this to you. And they can just send it to them. So it's just like a very small use case.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:44.555)
Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:52.087)
but I can look at it.

Jeremy Maher (21:02.696)
of how helpful this software is even after the remodel is done.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:06.039)
then you just kind of become part of their lives. Not only are they grateful for the beautiful space you've created, if it's time for them to show off to their friends, it's easy for them to like go dig up information and share with them. That's really cool. with me a favorite remodeling project that your team completed and why it was special or what made it fun. Was it a complex before and then the after was just fantastic.

Jeremy Maher (21:16.235)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (21:20.35)
Mm -hmm. Yep, absolutely.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:33.079)
Was it elevation, grading? Share with me a fun story that comes to your mind.

Jeremy Maher (21:39.444)
Yeah, we've had a few. One that was a really big one. I don't know if I could say his name. He did leave a review and mention this, I'll just for privacy. So we essentially redid his kitchen. We removed a bunch of walls that were in the kitchen and we changed like the entryway, same with the laundry room and a bunch of other things because he was getting towards having to completely be wheelchair bound, not fully at that time.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:53.217)
it

Jeremy Maher (22:07.796)
but it made such an impact for him because it was so easy to go in and out of different spaces. Essentially imagine a kitchen that had two entry ways and they were both very narrow that went into the actual home front door entry along with like the family room area and also the hallway to go to all the bedrooms and everything. And it was just very tight. And so we opened everything up, redid all of those areas and

Rathna Ramakrishnan (22:13.379)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (22:35.134)
I know that it had a really big impact on them without getting into it. It just had a big impact and it just felt really good to know that you had that type of impact on someone's house. And there's been a few of those that really hit home. And then there's also, of course, just any remodel. When you see the before and afters, there's just such a drastic difference. It's really nice to see that and then also read like the review afterwards of how they were, you know, happy with it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:00.78)
Yeah.

I also noticed on your website that you have your happy clients like hold up a sign and then they take a photo of like with the space in the background. And I thought that's like such a sweet idea to kind of get the client involved in the process of it.

Jeremy Maher (23:20.862)
Yeah, we just started that a couple months ago. That's one of those things where we asked some people, hey, would you be willing to hold up a sign? And most people say no, which I totally get. I would rather not have to hold up a sign and have someone take a picture. But yeah, it's just another way to say, hey, this is a real remodel. Years ago, someone said to us, I don't believe that all your reviews are real. And I was like, well, what do you mean? They're all perfect. And I was like,

I don't know what to tell you. We have one bad review. It's from someone who never even worked with us. They never even spoke to us. They didn't like something about how they had to do a consultation first. But anyways, yeah, it just felt like that was a way to make it more real. Here's the homeowner in their space. And that's where that essentially came from.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:03.821)
Yep. Yep.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:08.609)
we are just too good to be true, whether you like it or not, right? Because sometimes people are always doubtful about those five -star reviews and Google knows those fake reviews and Google will just hide them if you're trying to have like fake people write reviews for you. So the Google algorithm is very smart when you come to the review cycle. So considering you have a finance background and you've made this, you had a...

Jeremy Maher (24:17.909)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:36.535)
conventional job and a boss and you've gone down the path of being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial life is not for the faint of heart. There's ups and downs. And so when you look at your switch from having this happy corporate job and then moving to a business owner, what are some of the struggles that you faced in becoming the successful entrepreneur that you are today?

Jeremy Maher (25:02.614)
Yeah, I would say one for me was working from home because all I have to do is walk downstairs and in less than 10 seconds, I'm in front of my kids and my wife and you know, whatever they want. And it's like, Hey, I didn't have that 10, 20, 30 minute drive to just kind of like decompress. especially when you're a business owner, that's all that's on your mind all day, at least for me. And I think most people it's like, that's all that's on my mind. The majority of the time, except for when I'm trying very hard to stay present with family or

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:19.127)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:23.841)
Yes.

Jeremy Maher (25:32.512)
friends or whatever other aspect. I would say that was the most difficult for me. And so I just created some very basic rules for myself. Like sometimes I'll decompress for five minutes in my office. Sometimes I just go downstairs and I immediately go use the treadmill or go for a walk or just change my mindset the second I walk out. Like, hey, just take a break from thinking about work, little things like that.

One other thing that might seem unrelated that really helped was I use this thing called a gratitude journal. I know many people would probably use it or have heard of it, but it was foreign to me up until maybe two years ago. And I really like it because every morning I write what I'm grateful for and three things that I'm excited to do for the day. And then at the end of the day, it asks you, Hey, you know, what did you accomplish or what were three things that were positive for the day? And I noticed that really helps out.

And especially in any small business, there's always challenges. There's always a lot of things going on. You're taking care of a lot more stuff than you would usually as like just an employee. And so it's nice to have something that reminds you of like, well, this thing's great or that thing's great. So yeah, that would be one other thing I think might be worth mentioning.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:42.487)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:54.147)
Very cool. So considering you have these two partners, Mark and Ben, do you just maintain a professional relationship or are you friends and you travel with your families and you meet up over the holidays? What kind of relationship cadence do you have with your partners that's working really well for you? Because being in business for 10 years and as a partnership team is not trivial. So congratulations to you on that.

Jeremy Maher (27:00.491)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (27:21.791)
thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, essentially the way it works. We usually just meet up every once in a while, maybe once a quarter, hang out wherever we feel like, talk about different things. Ben and I have a weekly call just to go over whatever is going on for the week. And then we usually get together a few times a year to do like a nice dinner with the spouses, just so we're all together and we're hanging out.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:23.939)
So hot.

Jeremy Maher (27:47.722)
We're also busy, so we don't really get the chance to do as much stuff as we all want to do. We've talked about maybe doing like a vacation at some point. It's just, when do we have the time? And then with kids and everything, it's hard enough just to find a time to do a vacation with children, let alone three families together.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (28:08.739)
Cool. So how do you think the remodeling industry has changed in the decade, in the 10 years that you've been in it, you know, with the pandemic in the middle and, you know, tax rates and all of those things, different things, right? So how do you think it has changed or how are you viewing it? Is it on the uprise? Is it a plateau and then it's trending up?

Jeremy Maher (28:33.258)
Yeah, great question. So you mentioned COVID when that happened. I remember that April, everything slowed down. I, it was one of the few times I was truly worried. And then May, just exploded. Everyone's stuck in their house. They didn't have the opportunity to spend their money on vacations or whatever fun stuff. So being stuck in your house, you start to notice everything and now you have more money. So it's like, okay, well, I want to do this or that or whatever it was.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (28:48.771)
You

Jeremy Maher (29:02.198)
The downside to that was the cost just went up considerably. know inflation went up and all that, but remodeling costs were way higher than the rate of inflation. They're still high, unfortunately. And so that was a big impact during that era. And then I think things have slowed down a little bit over the last year for many remodelers. We're still growing, but being part of a bunch of these groups, I'm hearing a bunch of different things like

Not as many people are reaching out to contractors or they do reach out, but they don't move forward. Different things like that. I think we've been lucky with just kind of how we do mostly word of mouth and other just kind of like low key type of marketing. As of right now, we're not spending money on like Google ads or other types of advertising. And I've heard that that's gotten tougher for people too, just from what I hear.

So yeah, I would say that's probably two of the areas that have kind of had an impact over the last few years.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:05.823)
And how did labor impact you? labor got really pricey and scarce post pandemic, where you impacted by finding high quality team members. Because in remodeling business, you need so many hands to get the project done right, and so many skilled hands. So did you face a slump, or were you able to keep your employees? How did that play out for you?

Jeremy Maher (30:11.989)
Yeah.

Jeremy Maher (30:28.714)
Yeah, that's a great question because you hear so many businesses talk about how it's hard to find employees and especially in remodeling, it's difficult because even though this will sound like a generalization, the fact is less and less people want to go into physical trades. There's obviously still people that want to, but that number is clearly dwindling from all stats, colleges, everywhere that you look. It's just a known thing. And there's a little bit of a revival going on right now.

but it's one of those things where it is a little bit harder to find someone. What's nice is we've created this culture with the three owners and with our teammates where when we're interviewing people, they usually can tell that like, hey, this is a good place to work. And so at that point, like we have a little bit of maybe enthusiasm or buy -in from them and...

Ben and I have a fair amount of experience being managers and having to interview people. So I think that helps a little bit too. We also put people through the ringer and not intentionally just to put someone through the ringer, but I can't tell you how many times we've had applicants tell us, I've never been through anything like this. And some of those things involve like, know, personality tests, mock meetings. So whatever their job role is going to be, we have them come to my house or Ben's house or Mark's house.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:45.032)
Thank you.

Jeremy Maher (31:52.532)
and we make them do whatever it is that they're going to have to do with the understanding that they're not going to do it exactly the right way. we found that just different things like that have helped us keep a good pipeline of people that are interested in working with us. And then once someone is a teammate of ours, we find that they like their job because we're way more organized than any place that they've worked at. don't do a lot of the, I'm trying to think of a nice way to say this.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:54.953)
Mm -hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:13.291)
Hmm

Jeremy Maher (32:20.32)
I'll just give you a fact. So we had an employee who was a project manager and they worked for one of our competitors and their job was after the homeowner had signed the contract, their job and their pay was dictated by how much they could increase the price because they would intentionally keep the price low. And then the project manager's job was to do whatever they had to, to increase the price so that way the contractor could be profitable. Yeah. and then

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:34.657)
Whoa.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:42.561)
Wow.

Jeremy Maher (32:49.344)
When he came over here, he was like, wait, this is amazing. Like I knew I wasn't going to have to be paid commission, but like I could just do my job. There's no issues. Like you, what you guys said is the real price or at least really close. If you knock a wall down and there's something behind there that we couldn't possibly know about, maybe the price goes up a little bit, but that's a very rare thing to happen. And so for each of our employees, while they may have tough days, cause it's work.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:52.46)
Okay.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (32:58.413)
Pressure, yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:06.712)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:15.863)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (33:16.778)
They like working for us because that organization piece, our clients, we make sure that we kind of vet them in the beginning because we are going to be in their house for a while. And we need to make sure that it's going to be a good fit for everyone. And we do have to protect our employees. And so our employees know that they are protected and that we care about them. And they're the main reason for the homeowner's experience and having the good reputation that we do.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:42.167)
Amazing, yeah, I'm sure in an organized organization, you have lesser churn, your employees are happier, they just stick with you and it makes life simpler for everybody. So very cool. Yeah, and I think when the interview process is a little intense, it also weeds out the people that are not qualified or not able to go through that interview process and it helps you find those unique gems that can be a perfect fit to the team.

Jeremy Maher (34:08.886)
Mm -hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:10.563)
You know, every homeowner, there is a statistic that every homeowner is likely to have a kitchen or a bathroom remodeled in their lifetime, likely kitchen and a bathroom remodel. And so what are you seeing as some fun trends in kitchen and bathroom remodeling? Anything with, I was looking at some touchless faucets and some really fun sinks. And of course, in the bathrooms, there's the world of Toto with all of the

Jeremy Maher (34:12.118)
Absolutely.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:39.613)
singing toilets and warm seats and what are you seeing as the trend today that's kind of popular with homeowners or what you think is like hey this is cool.

Jeremy Maher (34:51.786)
Yeah, so there's a few different things and I don't work in the design area, so I don't know as much as our designers. So our designers would say a lot more. But in bathrooms, one of the things that's become very popular is to get rid of the bathtub and just have a free space there. So a lot of people worried about their home value or their resale value. But what essentially happens is when no one wants a bathtub there, it doesn't matter what the next homeowner wants.

And what we're also finding is some homeowners just don't even care. They're like, Hey, look, I don't use the bathtub. It's a huge area that's not being used. need to utilize this space. And of course we have other people who do, build a bathtub or put one in, should say. But that free space is really nice because a lot of people will put like storage or a bench or whatever it is that they want. And it can change over time as their needs may change. along with larger showers, people like having a bigger shower.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:33.984)
Nice.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:39.703)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:48.483)
Sure.

Jeremy Maher (35:48.842)
And then in kitchens, there's the normal design stuff that you see. You you're seeing more of like a sleek look, a little more minimalistic. But a big one is storage. So companies like Rev -a -shelf, and there's others, where they allow you to utilize your cabinet space so much better than you normally would be able to. I think most of us have Tupperware and you have like Tupperware lids all over the place. And they even have like an organizer.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:00.547)
Mmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:15.09)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Maher (36:17.29)
where every lid has its place depending on the size, little things like that. Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:20.107)
I like that.

Very cool. Yeah, it's all about simplification, right? In your kitchen and your bathroom so you're nice and comfortable because you land up spending so many hours in there. Considering you do the design and build and you're probably capable of doing some quick remodels, have you considered those 48 -hour remodel or a 72 -hour remodel? Do you make those kind of grand promises? Is that something that you even venture into or you just choose to be?

a hardcore design and build firm that will just come in. It's going to take us three to eight weeks, but we are going to deliver this magnificent custom home or kitchen or bathroom. Do you try to add to your revenue by going through those plays of the quick and dirty remodels?

Jeremy Maher (37:10.526)
Yeah. So we actually looked into that about three years ago because somebody that I look at or follow closely in the remodeling space in another state and we're kind of friends, he was getting into it. So I looked into it and for us, we didn't like it. There was a few reasons. one was it was much more salesy. And what I mean by that is like, we don't present things to people and have them sign something at the kitchen table. I know that's kind of the design build way and there's nothing wrong with that.

But with this other model, you essentially have to kind of pressure them to make a decision quickly for it to make sense. And then when it does make sense for the company, what I mean by that is the profit margin is very high. And the reason is the materials are okay. They're not bad, but they're not great. The way that it's installed is very fast. And that's how they can do these quick ones. The problem is

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:49.687)
Mm -hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:57.143)
Mmm.

Jeremy Maher (38:09.578)
people don't really get what they want from my understanding, from feedback I've heard. also showers are very risky. So it's one of those things that we decided we didn't want to have that issue with like not as good as showers. We didn't want to hurt someone like a homeowner from that. We didn't want to hurt our brand. So we decided we wanted to stay away from that. The other reason is the design build method.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:27.904)
I'm gonna go.

Jeremy Maher (38:35.818)
You know, if someone's going to just have like a vanity installed in their house, then a contractor is perfect for that. But if they're going to do a shower, which is the riskiest thing they can remodel in a home, or if they're going to do like a whole kitchen or a whole bathroom, they need to work with a design build company because they need to have everything planned and designed beforehand to not only ensure that it goes well during the remodel, but that

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:58.307)
All

Jeremy Maher (39:02.462)
you dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to get the construction done and that the price doesn't go up as often or as much if at all. So yeah, that would be the big thing I would mention is the design build model is so important for bathrooms and kitchens that doing the quick kind of thing, I just think it's a disservice to homeowners.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:10.039)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:22.935)
Very cool. Very cool. I love your philosophy. So considering that I run a digital marketing agency and I work exclusively with remodeling contractors and I help my clients generate leads online, I'm just curious to understand what is the marketing mix that's working for you today? You mentioned that you do not run Google Ads. So is it predominantly a referral -based word of mouth growth that you've had or are there other online lead generation strategies that you engage in?

And how do you arrive at a marketing budget for a brand like yours? Do you base it on your growth goals? Do you base it on your revenue goals? How do you arrive at a marketing number? So what are the different tools in your marketing toolbox that are working well for you? How do you arrive at a marketing budget?

Jeremy Maher (40:17.322)
Yeah, no problem. For leads, a lot of ours are from our website. So I've tried to make our website like the main hub for everything, especially as time goes on, it seems like more people are wanting to take time to research, especially something serious like a kitchen or bathroom versus just calling. We get plenty of calls, but a lot of people want to first visit the website. And so we try to make all the information on the website as educational as possible.

we have a whole type about advice and there's all kinds of stuff. It's probably a book's worth almost. and so for leads, most of them come from, people searching like kitchen remodel. So they call SEO and then the other area is, Facebook. So we do a post once a week on Facebook and we essentially post that on different groups.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:49.953)
I saw that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:59.349)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (41:13.014)
that are kind of in the area that we service. And it seems to get some buzz sometimes. And I think that helps also with the amount of leads that we get. In terms of marketing budget, we don't really have a marketing budget right now. We don't feel the need to spend money on advertising at this time. But in the future, it would probably be based on a percentage of our revenue. And I know everyone has different answers, but I've heard anywhere from like four to 12%.

of whatever your revenue is, is what you should be spending on your marketing. But my guess is it probably depends on so many factors, what their gross profit is, their net profit, how many owners there are, what their other expenses, and how many leads they actually need. Because each lead source has a different level of quality to it, especially in remodeling. So that would be another factor I would probably consider.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:43.203)
Bye now.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:07.075)
Very cool. I was looking at your website and it is indeed a very good looking website. There was one thing that I had to share with you is that your Google business profile is not linked to your website and your Google business profile is worth a lot because of your 103 reviews that you have there. So that's easy SEO. So you should add the logo and link it back. But talking about your Google business profile, I'm just so fascinated with the fact that you've crossed that.

hundred mark, right? There is magic that happens on Google when you're able to hit those triple digit reviews. Your phone will ring organically. You know, you will show up on the three pack on search. And so how have you in the past 10 years gotten to those over a hundred reviews? Do you have a clear strategy of what point in time during the project that you solicit to review or maybe you don't even solicit the reviews. You just have reading fans and they love you and they leave reviews, but

Jeremy Maher (42:42.187)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (42:46.484)
Mm

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:02.463)
Share with me if there is another contractor that has a personal goal of wanting to hit those triple digit reviews, know, cross that hundred mark. What can they do or what are some of the things that you've done that has helped you get there?

Jeremy Maher (43:12.551)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (43:16.82)
Yeah, we didn't ask for reviews for many years. It just was something that slipped. We're busy on other things. And then once I had more time, I could start looking at other areas. That was one of them. And we don't really have one of those elaborate systems set up. I know there's software that can do that, like Go High Level can. Really all we do is we just essentially ask them at the end if they'd be willing to leave a review, either way, good or bad.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:22.615)
it

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:36.151)
Yes.

Jeremy Maher (43:44.884)
because honestly at this point, we're kind of hoping to get a bad review. I know that sounds crazy, but it'll make it look more real. whatever the issue was, we could show like, look, we got it fixed or we care about customer service. Cause you know, some homeowners, that's what they look for. I know I do. Like if it's all good reviews, it's like, what's going on here? So yeah, we just ask everyone at the end, like, Hey, would you be willing to give us a review? But there's nothing else besides that proactively. Sometimes a year later,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:49.195)
Thank you.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:55.811)
here.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:01.581)
Great.

Jeremy Maher (44:13.814)
After we have our one year anniversary, I send them an email and it just says, hey, it's been a year. Don't forget we have a warranty. So if you need anything, just let me know. And I'll forward it over to our production team. And then I ask, hey, would you be willing to leave a review on another platform? So if they already left it on, let's say Google, I'll say, hey, would you be willing to copy and paste your Google review on Facebook? We haven't had that big of a return on that, but

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:34.498)
Doodle.

Jeremy Maher (44:43.242)
We have had a few where they will copy and paste it. So that's just another way to get your presence online a little bit more. Because unfortunately now there's just so many places to look at reviews, right? There's dozens of them. And so if you only focus on one or two and a homeowner finds you from some other place and you have zero or one review, it looks like you're a brand new company. So I'm slowly starting to branch into these other channels and try to get some reviews there.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:53.965)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:09.751)
Very cool. AI is huge today. know, chat GPT and Gemini and so many tools. Is your company using any of these tools for your day to day, you know, content creation, client interactions? Are you a fan of AI? Share with us your thoughts and how you use AI today.

Jeremy Maher (45:29.812)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge fan of AI. I'm still worried about it, you know, where it could go. But at the moment, it's fantastic. We use it for so many things, like we use custom GPTs for all kinds of different things. Even people that are customer facing, they even have their own specific one where I gave it all the documentation, like the tutorials we have for that specific employee, common FAQs. And what that allows us to do is

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:34.913)
you

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:56.333)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (45:58.954)
the employee can just copy whatever that message is or the string of message, go back and then just copy and paste it. And then the AI will give two responses. And usually the employee doesn't use it word for word, but they use it as just kind of like a framework. We're also using it for all kinds of areas of content. We don't let it write the content, but I use it for like outlines just because of

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:14.787)
Mm

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:25.431)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy Maher (46:27.028)
We have a very specific way we like to give advice. And there's very specific things. know it's AI doesn't do a good job. And we've used Zimwriter, which is considered to be the best AI writer out there and a bunch of other stuff. And while it's fantastic, we just choose not to do that for a few different reasons. But it's great for keyword research, topic clusters, and a bunch of other fun stuff. And then we are in the process right now of testing

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:35.841)
Woohoo, woohoo.

Jeremy Maher (46:57.212)
AI texting. So more and more people don't want to pick up the phone and call, they want to text. And so in about two to three weeks from now, hopefully, or maybe a month, our website, instead of just saying call us, it'll say text or call us. And then that way, any time of day, they can text and the AI is better than what I would do. It's much more articulate. It's a little bit more proper. Everything I've seen so far, it's amazing.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:58.551)
Thank you.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:23.341)
Yes.

Jeremy Maher (47:25.45)
We also tried AI calling about six months ago and it just wasn't there. And I've looked at like five or six other providers and some of them are probably good enough now. But I would say that's going to be a game changer for contractors because they're just so busy, you know, especially if it's one owner, they're usually doing some of the work. They're doing every aspect of it, bookkeeping and who knows what else. And so being able to at least have someone who can answer the phone and do it exactly the same way.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:27.853)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (47:55.506)
every time they're not going to be sick, they're not going to call off, they're not going to be in a bad mood. Like you're going to get the exact same thing minus some what they call AI hallucinations. Those are still a thing, unfortunately, but they're getting better. Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:56.535)
Yep.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:06.431)
Yes. Yeah. So have you played with the AI within high level because that's one of our special things that we do for our contractors that we're just able to build out a custom bot integrated with chat GPT and then it can be trained to be the voice of your brand. And it's an employee that you never need to fire because the employee gets better and better as the bot interacts. So it's a pretty powerful workflow setting within high level that

that just books appointments for contractors that are in it. So you said you were exploring high level. Have you had a chance to like look at that portion of it yet or?

Jeremy Maher (48:45.096)
Yeah, we tried out their native one and then decided to try, let's see here, we tried Consolidata first, we still have that. Then we're right now testing Assistable. And then we're probably, if we can't get that one the way that we want, then we're probably gonna move to ClosedBot. But yeah, there's so many options out there now. But yeah, the idea is that, I mean, imagine,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:54.167)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:08.717)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Maher (49:12.298)
somebody can just go to the website, there's a chat pod that looks like it's a live chat and the homeowner can get any question they want answered better than if it was an actual service that has to sit there all day and answer questions. So yeah, it's gonna be a huge change for all home services.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:28.055)
Yeah, because unconverted leads is indeed the biggest problem in the remodeling industry because people have the project, but they want an instant appointment, an instant answer. So putting AI to work really speeds up the process of the homeowner being able to connect with the contractor. The native Eliza bought on high level. She's not as smart yet, but I think she's getting better and better. But within the workflows, you're able to integrate chat GPT and then teach that custom bot to just become the voice of your brand, which is just

I find that kind of like tech stack absolutely fascinating. And it's just so much fun to make it sound more, you know, it can sound like Jeremy over time if we choose to and teach it to become the voice of your brand. Yeah. And I think remodeling is probably one of those industries where AI cannot take away jobs. It's just near impossible. We need the carpenter, we need the Tyler, we need the, you know, so there's, there's no worries with this industry that

Jeremy Maher (50:08.106)
Mm -hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:26.303)
AI is going to take over like critical roles. If there is a brand new contractor that's interested in starting a remodeling business, what is one piece of advice that you would have or what was it that really helped you? know you had this partnership scenario, but do you rely on mentors? you like books that you get inspiration from? Are you able to share anything for a up and coming contractor?

Jeremy Maher (50:41.398)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (50:51.87)
Yeah, the first thing would probably be read the book E -Myth by Michael Gerber. It's a well -known book about running a business and helping yourself remove yourself from the business. Not to get into it just because that book does a great job. Another piece would be as soon as you can, I would get some kind of system like Go High Level that gives you the ability to streamline so many processes. Like for example,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:55.971)
Yes.

Jeremy Maher (51:17.504)
There is two roles where they're in Infusionsoft all the time and they'll be in Go High Level all the time. And Infusionsoft actually manages them so I don't have to. imagine not having any of the psychological or emotional aspects to having a human telling you you're not doing something perfect or just having to remind you. Infusionsoft can automatically do that. So if an employee is busy and they need to do something and they don't get to it, Infusionsoft or Go High Level

Rathna Ramakrishnan (51:38.307)
Mm

Jeremy Maher (51:47.424)
can send them a reminder a day later and they're not emotional about it because it's like, this is the system. This is just what we all ironed out. We all decided this was the right timeline and the way to do it. And employees love it. Instead of them being like, God, this is really annoying. It's like, I do need to get to that. That one's not urgent, but I do need to get to it. And then they do whatever they need to. And then there's the obvious stuff with Go High Level or any platform like that is it just makes sure that every step is taken care of.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (51:52.632)
Bye.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (52:02.285)
Thank

Jeremy Maher (52:16.054)
I definitely would not recommend a contractor set it up themselves. While it is expensive to pay someone else to do it, you need someone who not only understands the software, but they need to understand marketing. They need to understand your industry because otherwise it's just going to turn into a complete, you know, difficult thing to leave it at that. Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (52:20.235)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (52:38.403)
Absolutely. Very cool. So put systems in place and then stick to it and use a tech stack to simplify your life, is what you're recommending for a new contractor. Please share with us some things that you like to do for fun with your family when you're not working. How do you choose to spend your time?

Jeremy Maher (52:49.577)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Jeremy Maher (52:59.446)
Sure. So I'm in Arizona right now. It's like 100 degrees. It's pretty hot, but at least more than half of the year. It's amazing. We have mountains in our subdivision. So I love to go hiking, even just go for walks. And my wife likes to do that also, which is nice. My wife and I were picking up pickleball before it got too hot. So we both like to do that. We're about to go to Disney World next week. It's our first time. So I've got an 11 and a 13 year old and they still want to hang out with us.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:02.509)
Yeah

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:18.605)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:24.608)
wow! Perfect!

Jeremy Maher (53:28.596)
I don't know how long that's going to last. we're like, Disney world, this is the perfect time. They're old enough to do the rides. They still want to hang out with us to some extent. So a lot of it just revolves around hanging out with my family, hanging out with friends, but mostly it's just how can I improve the business? all the time. That's what's on my mind. So I actually enjoy that kind of stuff. I'm a little bit of a workaholic. So yeah, that would probably be the areas that I like to do if I'm not technically working.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:57.515)
And you're a local kid, did you just grow up in the Phoenix area or did you move from somewhere else?

Jeremy Maher (54:05.014)
Yeah, so I grew up in Michigan and then roughly 20 years ago I moved out here to Arizona and just absolutely love it. Michigan, it's very cloudy, it's hot. It's just one of those things where, like I'm trying to be positive about it, it's just one of those things where when it's cloudy every day, people aren't as happy. Obviously people aren't always gonna be happy anywhere they are, but I find that in Arizona people are a little bit happier.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:25.421)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:33.207)
Hahaha

Jeremy Maher (54:33.49)
and it's sunny all the time. So that's kind of a big positive. Yeah, so I love Arizona.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:40.423)
Very cool. Well, it was a delight chatting with you and thank you for your time and sharing all of these amazing tips, tactics and how you scale your business. If I may ask you, how is it being on a podcast with me? Did you enjoy the cadence of the questioning or is there anything you'd like to share?

Jeremy Maher (55:01.494)
It was great. You mentioned cadence. Yeah, it was conversational. Just having a chat with someone. Very easy to discuss things. And I think the questions were really good. Not only from the standpoint of what a homeowner might want to hear, what a contractor would want to know, and what other people will want to hear or understand. I feel like this kind of helps everyone that could even be involved. Maybe even someone who may not be a contractor, but they might be in home services also.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (55:28.503)
Very cool. I appreciate your time.

Jeremy Maher (55:33.108)
You too. Thank you for having me on here. I appreciate it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (55:38.863)
I just stopped the