We started our journey a couple years back in the construction space. One of the biggest areas of need was affordable handy man services. Most “company” style handyman services are very expensive for the kind of work needed which makes folks reluctant to call a company up. It is not the company’s fault, they have costs of running a full business, staffing a scheduler, insurance, licenses, and many more expenses. So sure it sounds outrageous for a handyman to cost a $100-200 to do a simple repair, like tightening a leaking faucet. But a business needs to cover overhead of every visit.
Mind you Handyman services is not construction services, it does not compete against the vast majority of construction businesses. Most licensed construction companies want jobs that are thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars. Not the sub $500 jobs that handymen are legally confined to. Many of the folks that work as handymen (or are capable of working as handymen) are also folks that can no longer do the physically demanding work of regular construction workers. They don’t want to do the big jobs. But they would be happy to help someone tighten a faucet, fix a light fixture or squeaking door.
Meet Stan
Stan is one of those guys, he is a bit older and his body can no longer handle the grueling work of his youth in construction. He loves this work, getting most of his jobs from folks at his local big box home supply store where he works. Technically speaking, he is not supposed to do work for the store’s customers, liability and all that. But that doesn’t stop co-workers from telling customers that Stan can help. When they meet Stan, his natural personality takes over, like that father figure who has seen it all and knows exactly what to do. One thing leads to another and soon Stan is at the customer’s house installing something. He doesn’t do it for money, he does it because it gives him more emotionally. And it does help a lot with retirement.
So Stan came up with a brilliant idea to help his fellow co-workers, which many were former construction professionals that were injured or otherwise can not work construction. The big box retailers does not pay as well as their old jobs and many struggle with medical bills. So it was Stan who actually invented the referral system in Hefe. Personally, I had come to get to know Stan when he worked at the Pro Desk, ordering all sorts construction materials for my own construction projects.
Stan felt that on an average day, he would have a dozen or so folks asking him for help getting stuff installed. While the company had an app for that, most folks were reluctant to use the app to find folks. Nor was the workers rewarded from the app in a way that helped them pay the bills. So he figured if we could make it simple enough to where folks on the floor or specialty depart could text someone an invite…then they take it from there. They could potentially supplement their incomes while helping others get stuff done.
Over time a secret network has formed, as Stan transfers from store to store, he spreads Hefe with it. If you ask him, he doesn’t do it for the money. He actually uses a lot of his services at his Church which he is the handyman for. As he says, they are always tight for money doing any repairs and improvements. The app has been a godsend.
Application.
For you all thinking about handymen services as market that you are interested in. Workers are fairly easy to recruit for, in many towns those folks are standing in the parking lot waiting for work. But to make it really sticky in your community, you want to think about getting high quality folks to build a strong reputation. Many folks knows a guy, who also knows a guy. Soon you’ll have dozens of local high quality handymen.
From there, the harder part is customers. We have seen many approaches to customer acquisition. Folks using NextDoor. Folks going door to door. Facebook groups. Mother’s groups. You name it. The neat part is to watch how fast a job is posted before it disappears because the handymen respond instantly. This space is hot and will only get hotter. Home owners, business owners, Churches and more need handymen. Average spend we have seen has been a few thousand a year in our market. Which is comes out to about $60 per house, per year. Count how many houses are on one street.
Best Practices
We have learned a lot from our own work in this space as well as all the agents that operate in this market. Here is a few best practices we have gleaned.
QR codes. Some folks going door to door have a paper flyer, small card or business card. They use online QR code generators like https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com to create a scannable code that automatically links the home or business owner to their referral account. Just past in your referral link from the app into it. Create a QR code and try scanning it with your phone.
Business cards. For handyman services, folks love using VistaPrint, Moo or others they found using a quick Google search for business cards or magnets. Sometimes telling us that they got their first few hundred cards for free or deeply discounted. They add the QR code to the card with a short message on getting help for anything in the house. The idea is to enable folks to quickly find help if they forgot about the referral link that they sent. Or if no one was home.
Pitches. When doing walks around the the neighborhoods recruiting home owners and businessmen, folks have various 60 second pitches. Short and sweet. Usually looking for something that is obvious. Like “Hey I was walking by and noticed that gutter is broken” with the obvious response coming back from he home owner of they were just about to get it fixed. “so when you want to get that fixed for cheap, there is this great on demand platform where you can just post the picture and get some reasonable quotes” handing them a business card or sending them a text message. People love the safe word of cheap. Homeowner are scared of calling folks because they are still paying from the last time they called a company out for something simple.
Memorable. The folks that do well create memorable interactions have higher success rates. Put your heart into it. If you just go door to door like it is a job that someone forced you to take, well you will have zero results. If you are outgoing, ambitious and can tell a good story, people are much more willing to adopt what you are selling. This doesn’t come overnight for anyone. It requires a lot of practice and perseverance. If you have ever seen Kenny Brooks, he is worth watching.
Push Backs. On occasion, folks will push back saying they have a guy, an uncle or someone that does all this stuff for them. This is actually a very typical response which, you should have a way better response that gets the person to stop, listen and remember. First ask them for the Uncle’s phone number because you can help that uncle make more money. That usually has folks stopping to think for a moment. If they won’t give you a number, they probably don’t really have an uncle. Then follow up with, with something about not replacing your Uncle but being there if your uncle is on a fishing trip or too busy to help now. Then throw in something about things you wouldn’t want your uncle doing or he’ll hate you for the rest of his life. You know, crawl spaces with spiders and roof repairs in a storm. From there you can talk about helping local handymen earn money and saving money. People love saving money.
Recruiting Quality. As mentioned above, if your recruit bad quality handymen to your community. We all will pay the price. Be sure to seek out the best of the best. Make sure they have a really good profile photo. Some of them might need a tiny bit of help getting started. But once they have it figure out, they’ll be very productive and happy. If they are happy, you will be happy.
Balancing act. Once you get started the biggest focus area is balancing supply and demand. You can’t have too many handymen and no jobs. Just like you can’t have home owners posting and not getting a response fro days or weeks. In our core market, we have been averaging 15 minutes from posting to hire. Usually the handyman work is done within hours. Something to consider when rolling out in your community.
We have more to come in this exciting space for Hefe. We are always looking for success stories to share, so once you get rolling strong, we would love to come fly out or drive out to your community and do some live interviews. Otherwise keep DM’ing us your tidy bit of knowledge and experience to help others across the country.