 And we like to think that in most markets that we service, we can keep people busy day in and day out with work. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best. Salesperson, I am Zach Williams, the longest on my coast, and Beth, I think love. And we've got an awesome show lined up for you today. We talk a lot about labor on the show, and today we are bringing someone on who is, I'm going to say on the forefront. You can correct me later, but we're excited to welcome Andrew Spurvey. He is the Chief Marketing Officer for QuickContractors.com. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. So, Andrew, before we dive in with our million questions about labor, why don't you give us a 30,000-foot view of what QuickContractors.com is, kind of what you guys are all about, and then what your role is within the organization. Sure, and again, thanks for the invite. Really happy to be here. QuickContractors.com is a Canadian-based company. I believe we are the largest labor force that represents big box retailers in Canada for services. So if you were to walk into a big box retailer and purchase a product on a shelf for special order, a strong likelihood that it would be our company that would execute the installation of that product in the consumer's home. So the point of sale is traditionally with the retailer, a PO would be issued, and then we would dispatch the technical expertise to go and fulfill that job via our proprietary SaaS software as a service platform. And we are also expanding into the US as well. I believe we're in 16 or 17 states now. And we have approximately 5,000 field technicians in the field that are supported by approximately 100 or 110 employees now. Well, I think the question everybody wants to know, I want you to answer, Andrew, is how in the world are you getting labor right now? If that is your business, like how are you finding people and like how are you coercing them to work for you? Very good question. So we have full-time recruiters that are just spending their days in and out being as creative as possible to attract tenants. So, you know, you got your traditional mediums like running ads through various, you know, publications and websites, like Indeed and ZipRecruiter and that, but also reaching out to the trade schools and building those relationships with the teachers for certain trades to let them know that we are hiring basically at all times. And, you know, your question about winning them over, well, it's about volume. We like to think that in most markets that we service, we can keep people busy day in and day out with work. So, you know, if you're looking for, you know, as much work as you could probably handle is in most markets, we're able to have our technicians keep turning the wrench as much as they like. So you're selling them by saying, hey, we'll keep you really busy, we'll pay you really good. You don't have to worry about work. We take care of that part. Well, it's a mixed bag. There's some technicians that are working with us 100% of their efforts in not doing anything else. And then there's some of those that would use us as supplemental work where perhaps maybe their days aren't being filled. And so we operate on an app that we created out there where those technicians can, you know, populate their capacity, draw a geo-fence of what, you know, of where they would like to service and what service categories. And you know, you just kind of input your pricing and then jobs would pop into their calendars based on that. Now, one of the attractions for many of them is when, you know, they go into a home and, you know, they do a job or a number of jobs throughout the day. Traditionally, you get home at the end of the day or at the end of the week and you need to prepare invoices and you know, get your counting in order. Where we perhaps oversimplify and it's very exciting to many of them the moment that the customer signs off that, you know, it's a certificate of completion, the job is done, our system will automatically invoice us on their behalf. Therefore they don't need to prepare any invoices and their accountants really like that because we have a dashboard and their accounts can, you know, log in and track all that making, you know, really easy for them at tax time for all the remittances. So we're talking about, you know, calendar, capacity, invoicing, it's all wrapped into one platform. So that's one of the things that I think it's very attractive to many of them. Yeah, absolutely. So it's very similar, and I like hate it when people use these analogies. It's like Uber for this or Uber for that. I was thinking the same thing, but it is. It's like, you're an Uber driver as a contractor. That's huge. Well, you're a little driving. I can tell by Andrew's face, we're not the first person to say it and you dislike it more than us. If for our listeners, you missed a pretty massive eye roll that was awesome. You know what, at the same time, it is, I guess, an honor or a compliment to be compared to Uber in that sense. But yes, definitely hear the word daily from clients, friends, you know, customers, so pretty much everyone. So yes, definitely in a similar sense, you could call it Uber for contractors, yes. So our audience is building product manufacturers. They are finding it difficult, a lot of them to find the people to do the work, right? And then they find people to do the work. The other issue for them is how do I convince the contractor or the pro to use my product to change their mind? Because this is an audience, primarily contractors and installers, they find a brand that they like, changing their mind can sometimes feel like a monumental Herculean effort, right? Right. I'm curious to get your perspective, Andrew, do you agree with that? Like is it hard to change their mind? Or manufacturers bringing the wrong type of argument or ammunition to get somebody to change their mind about trying a product? So the first thing you said was to find them. There's a lot of trial and error when it comes to finding good quality technicians, contractors. And in our case, it's big box retail, big publicly traded companies where you're entering someone's home. There are a number of boxes that need to be checked. For example, criminal background checks. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks that we would really like to hire in the trades that don't pass that stage of the vetting process. And it's a very unfortunate, but you need to protect the brands that you represent. And it's important for the reputation to mitigate any potential in PR nightmares, right? And then of course there's the insurance checks, there's workers' compensation insurance, liability type of insurance. And of course you need to be able to validate the skill set, whether it's through referrals or doing checks on their work, a lot of good quality professionals will have a portfolio of pictures to show you the work, that sort of thing, seeing their work in person. And that's just getting into all of this legwork. And so it's all encompassing just for one technician, contractor for one particular trade. All of what I described there is definitely a monumental task for just the one. So there's this ongoing, I guess you would say it's some coaching involved when you're representing large brands, such as big national retailers. And I think the next point that you brought up there, Zach, was building material manufacturers, distributors to position their products to those contractors and to try to swing their business from one particular product to yours. It's definitely tricky in a sense when a contractor is already comfortable with a particular product line, with a particular brand, and they've been through the trial and errors and they're accustomed to the nuances of how to install them. So introducing something new to them, when I say it's tricky, it's definitely possible, but it requires like marketing, of course, a lot of relationship building for sure. And big box retail and also LBM yards is definitely a place for those manufacturer reps to meet those type of contractors, to introduce the products and do demos and that sort of thing. So big box is definitely an important part of that whole chain when it comes to building materials, because I think every contractor in the field will use big box building material stores for at the very least convenience, like a convenience store when they need something on the job, that's where they go. I think the big question for us is just, how do I, as a manufacturer, this is like a general sweeping statement because it depends upon what specialization the contractor installers in, but what they're really after is how do I convince a contractor to try or choose my product? In your experience, like what is the messaging or tactic that you see works the best to get a contractor to go, you know, I use XYZ product, but I'm willing to give yours a shot. Like what have you seen work to make that happen? What I've seen work again is the retailer big box environment where it's kind of like merchandising some specific message into design or video is definitely becoming more important in a sense of delivering the message and perhaps there's a simplicity to the product installation and so on and so forth, but believe it or not, Instagram now has this massive impact on building materials and the contractors. I've been meeting contractors lately and the words that are being used by them is that Instagram is invaluable to their business now in terms of growing it and promoting themselves and TikTok of course too, it's the most widely viewed medium, but at this point I'm seeing more of the building materials side on Instagram today. So it would be a matter of understanding who your specific audience is because many manufacturers and it's not just building materials, it's a lot of industries when you ask them who their target audience is, they're going to say, well, it's everyone, right? Is there a particular age demographic? No, no, our customers are everyone. It's the husband and wife, it's the newlyweds that just bought a home, it's the senior citizens and that sort of thing. So the type of advice that I would give is no, you need to actually do your research to figure out who will be your largest buying segment for your particular product and sometimes you're going after the end user, but you still need to find a contractor to do the fulfillment and it's just really spending the quality time and making the decision on who is it that you're targeting and then just going and executing on that target plan. So make your plan, figure it out. There's a lot of guerrilla tactics out there and that sort of thing, but the organic growth of Instagram for those contractors that I'm seeing out there is actually incredible. And if it is true that your true target segment is everyone, for example, we install a lot of toilets, right? Everybody needs a toilet and that's true, right? Or we install a lot of dishwashers, if it breaks down, you need a new one. The demographics really it's very, very wide, but I would still suggest that you need to hone in and if you're looking for more than one segment then you need to still define them and target them separately through separate campaigns, yeah, absolutely. So it's just massaging your message, really figuring out and of course you can A-B test it, which is nice these days, you can just look at the data of the engagement, but targeting the messaging to the target audience that you're looking for. And I know a lot of people talk this kind of language out there, but actually doing it and really spending that quality time, like I say, whether it's an in-house expert or someone that knows the field, salespeople that's selling the product in the field typically are a really good resource to figure what does the consumer really want. Many years ago, the American Marketing Association, I don't have it handy to tell you when, but once upon a time they published the statistic and I think it was a survey and it was a very, very low percentage of professional salespeople on commission. So that was the kind of key tag there. The salespeople on commission who would actually use the marketing materials that were provided to them by either the marketing department or the manufacturer or the distributor, or even their particular employer for the messaging in the field for sales. The successful ones, again, they're on commission where you need what you kill, as they say. They kind of took, I guess, the materials that were being provided them and kind of created their own to suit their needs. So I'm sure that's still relevant today and professional salespeople will kind of create their own messaging in a sense on how they're delivering it, trying to tap into the actual sales message. From a branding perspective, that's a nightmare. I just had a heart attack. I don't know about, I don't know how, but you're feeling sad, but like, I'm sweating. I think you're right, Andrew. I've heard of similar things and who can blame them if it's hurting your sales. But if I'm a manufacturer, I'm like, hopefully not texting and driving, but I'm definitely sending a quick text to my VP of sales being like, we better not be doing this. I'm gonna need some information. Right, yeah, I totally hear you. The contractor world is, if I find a less politically correct bunch. I think you're right. Let me ask you, Andrew, I mean, you guys are doing a lot to obviously recruit existing people to the trade. Are you doing anything from a training standpoint or are you seeing anybody that's doing a good job at getting people to actually come into the industry versus already recruiting people that are already in it? Yeah, so from a training standpoint, we definitely used to host a lot of big large events across the country where we would have people come in and kind of pandemic, the times have changed where we've moved significantly more towards a digital platform. We are still thinking about going back and doing some personal ones now. We actually in fact are doing an event late next week, getting people back together again for the first time in a while. And so I think it's time to get back out there in that sense. We use a platform called Teachable for training, teachable.com, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's really nice in a sense that you get to use your materials, there's questions and answers, usually like a multiple choice that you get to set up, engage the knowledge base of the audience that you're trying to teach and then make sure that they've got that knowledge base to at least a minimum standard before you go to endorse them to move on. I'm just curious how you're finding ways to, are you training people to get into the trade? And in addition to that, I'm curious, are there other companies that you see or organizations, whether that's manufacturers or someone else that's doing a good job at finding ways to get people into the trade? There is, for lack of better terms, companies everywhere, including ourselves, are blowing our brains out of recruiting budgets and trying to try anything at everything. And some of those recruiting budgets, speaking from experience, can get out of control sometimes when in your pipeline, you see there's a possibility that you might not meet the demand. So across the board, I mean, we try to recruit within a sense, offer incentives to our employees, family, friends and that sort of thing to get the word out there that we're always looking. We do a lot of in-store assembly, merchandise, for example, where it's bicycles and barbecues for retail stores and it's kind of nice if a student, someone, and even one day a week for as many days as they would like to be available, we get to customize a roadmap to match their schedule to work with our app, right? So with our company, we've got individuals that recognize, hey, I can make a business within a business. So I'll refer to a gentleman named Mo that works for us, he's a technician. He was the one-man crew, new immigrant to Canada, who was out there installing dishwashers. And he came up with a question one day, hey, would it be okay if I train someone? I'll find someone, I'll train them myself and I could actually start a business here and we said, absolutely, that's great. So Mo went on in pretty short order, went from one vehicle to, last I heard 12 vans earning something in excess of a million dollars a year. Oh, wow. It's come up before and I'm pretty sure it'll come up again where maybe it was 20, 30 years ago, the trades were really well respected and really well paid. I remember 30 years ago, even in the big box retailer or lumberyard, you might have a carpenter working on the weekend or a plumber in the plumbing department, that was somebody getting near retirement, but they were getting a really good wage back then and then it just seemed that there was a cycle or a behavioral shift in the mindset of just the general public, where it seemed that the trades started to perhaps not be respected as much. And I don't know why that happened, perhaps even the dollars started to decline a bit than what they were earning. And now today I'm finding that there's a shift. If you were to ask me three, four years ago, I found that there was a stigma still with the younger folks heading into trades. Oh, I definitely think you're right. I think you're seeing, you're definitely seeing other people, especially younger generations, want to use their hands and see the value. And especially when you look at the cost of, gosh, college education in reference to what you're gonna make out of it. I think that you're absolutely right. Now, is that shift gonna happen overnight where labor problems are gonna be solved? No, but I do think you're seeing a lot of organizations begin to educate more around that in order to get more people into the trade. Because I mean, you can make great money doing it too, right? Andrew, question for you, if I'm a manufacturer and listen to this, I'm going, okay, clearly you guys have got a really dialed in system for how you find work, find talent, train, recruit, et cetera. And a lot of manufacturers are trying to find ways to either A, partner with organizations that are doing that well or B are even considering doing that themselves, right? I'm curious if you can, in closing, give a little bit of insight and recommendations based on what you know in your organization. What advice would you give them if they're trying to do something similar in the recruiting and training space with pros? Yeah, there's definitely a lot of manufacturers out there. There is a shift in the marketplace where the manufacturers are thinking about test piloting direct consumer programs and offering up labor at the point of the sale, like in the e-commerce checkout platform. And I would say that there is a big challenge here, the commitment and the resources, and just the talent that you're gonna need to put that all together, especially if you're a large manufacturer because if you're a large national brand, you just instantly want national coverage. And just to go through the trial and error and the pain points of who is manageable, who isn't and who didn't show up and upset the customer and who did and so on and so forth, it definitely can be done, but I would say find somebody that has the definite expertise and perhaps a profound expertise with a real good track record of doing specifically just that and making sure that there's some runway there and that you're in it for the long haul. Alternatively, you could find a third party that has a really good track record and does the volumes and that has the capacity or perhaps go around the country perhaps acquiring the smaller players that are in that space that could fast track you to what your objective is. One thing that we get asked or we'll get called, opportunities are facing us all the time and we'll get a call from a large builder and it's a large subdivision and they no longer have technicians for this, this and this task and do you have people readily available and there's companies out there will say, yeah, we're ready to go, but truth is there's no idle capacity sitting anywhere. You're gonna need to develop that capacity and grow it and that's the business we're in and we're constantly looking at opportunities from all kinds of angles to grow that, but why we're successful and I'll share this, it's because honestly, nobody wants to be in the business that we're in and we don't have any competition. That's hysterical. That is some honest talk from you right there, Andrew. Yeah, and then with retailers, they want national pricing. You've got one little town in the middle of nowhere that has a big box store and they want the same price with the flyers in the website and all of that. They don't wanna chop up prices or regionalized pricing for different markets. So we as a company in our risk model in certain markets, we actually lose money on every job we install and that's just those losses kind of averaged out where the gains are in the market. So it's a tough pill to swallow for many or also a business analyst. It's just part of our model. Well, I think you hit it on the head. So Andrew's advice is if you want a successful business, do the things that nobody else wants to do. Absolutely, Bill said that once upon a time. Absolutely. That's great. Andrew, this has been awesome for our listeners. What's the best way for them to connect with you if they wanna reach out? I can be reached at Andrew at quickcontractors.com and that's contractors with an S. I can also easily be found on LinkedIn if you just search hashtag QCrocks or you could search quickcontractors on LinkedIn. You'll find me for sure. But I'm always open to have discussions with anyone. I'm a very open-minded, open door kind of person and I just love creating more relationships out there because you just never know. Wonderful. Again, thank you so much for coming to the show. This has been awesome. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this content, make sure you go to Venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth and Bobbie Glove. Thanks, everybody.