Business Innovators Radio - Nate Kear’s TrueBlue Home Services: Expert Handyman Solutions for Aging Homeowners

Starting point is 00:00:02 Welcome to the Agents Lounge podcast, where we talk all things real estate with the industry's top performers. Join us as we dive into the inspiring journeys of successful agents and uncover the secrets to their success. Whether you're a seasoned agent or just starting out, we've got the tips and tricks to help you navigate the world of real estate. Brought to you by Eritory Comfort Solutions. So grab a seat and join us in the Agents Lounge. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the latest edition of the Agence Lounge, sponsored by Air Integrity Comfort Solutions, your local leader in HVAC Solutions here in San Antonio in the surrounding area.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Today on our show, we have our special guest is Mr. Nate here from True Blue Home Services. Welcome, sir. We're glad to have you. Yeah, thank you. Awesome. Okay. Now, we're talking about home services. And, you know, and Francisco, please feel free to chime in whenever you like.

Starting point is 00:00:56 What are we talking about home services? Like, what is, you know, I just want to get down to that. what exactly does that encompass? Yeah, I mean, for True Blue, it's a pretty diverse group of services, but we do focus on Handyman and then some light remodeling as well. So it could be, you know, carpentry type work, you know, whether it's trim work in the inside or outside. It could be drywall work.

Starting point is 00:01:18 We do a lot of drywall repair work. It could be, you know, fixtures in terms of, you know, ceiling fans or plumbing fixtures, those type of things. So it's pretty diverse. but yeah, it's a lot of those things that, you know, maybe some people feel comfortable taking on and other people don't, but we're there to help. Okay. Now, for our listeners, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into what you do? Yeah, yeah. So my background is actually in engineering. So I was an engineer for about 22 years for a company Cooper Tire. And so did different roles throughout my time there, but mostly was focused on kind of testing, tires.

Starting point is 00:02:00 and so forth. Moved to Texas to work on our test track. So Cooper has a test track south of San Antonio and loved it here. And just with some different corporate things going on, it was either moved back to the Ohio region or find something else to do here. And my family just loved it here, so we were looking for something else. And so with that, I had stumbled upon True Blue, which is actually a franchise, and we just love the mission of helping seniors,

Starting point is 00:02:32 which we'll talk about here in a little bit, but I love that mission and just decided to say, hey, I have skills in this area. I've done a lot of DIY stuff. I've built my own house. I think this is a great fit for me and dove into it. And so that was about two and a half years ago, so we've been doing this for, yeah, two and a half years.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Wow. Okay. You said something here. You built your own house, and we're not talking like Legos or Lincoln Logs. you know, you literally built it from the ground up. Well, I did a lot of the work myself. I was the general contractor for my house build.

Starting point is 00:03:06 So I hired a lot of people to do other things too. Not one person can really do everything. But yeah, you know, I hired foundations and framers and so forth. But I did a lot of the finish work myself. I built all the cabinets in my house. I built all the doors in my house. I did all the carpentry trim work and did, you know, just basic painting and stuff like that. So, yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:28 Yeah. That's pretty neat. All right. You know, I got to say, that's not anything that is in my skill set. Yeah. And probably most of humanity, ladies and gentlemen, you know, but tell us a little bit about True Blue. Like, you mentioned it's a franchise.

Starting point is 00:03:43 What makes them stand out from, you know, maybe somebody else who maybe does that similar work? Right. So the idea with True Blue is really to provide a professional solution to the kind of the handyman type role, right? So there's lots of handyman. A lot of times they're neighborhood handyman or they're just guys that maybe are in between jobs and are like, hey, I'll do some handyman work for a while. But there's not a lot of professional type organizations that you can know and trust and say, hey, when I need something, I can call True Blue. I know they're going to be there.

Starting point is 00:04:15 They're going to do good work and they're going to back their work, right? Because a lot of times that's the issue that I see in San Antonio's guys, they go out there, do the work real quick and get out and you can't find them anymore. So the idea of True Blue is provide that professional solution. The other thing that's kind of different and unique about True Blue is we focus a lot of our efforts on helping seniors age in place. I'm sorry, would you mind defining what that means, age in place? Right. So seniors at, you know, 65 and older, they don't, every time you look at a survey, they do not want to go to nursing homes. They don't want to go to assisted living.

Starting point is 00:04:53 They would much rather live in their house. as you age, that can become a challenge. It can become a challenge just from, you know, at home care, but it can also just be a challenge to keep up with the house, right? So as you know in the industry, there's just a lot of different things that you need to do to maintain your house. And when you're a senior, getting up on ladders and doing some of that stuff really shouldn't be part of the equation.

Starting point is 00:05:16 And so our goal is to help people age in place, stay in their house that they want to and make it as easy as possible. So there's different ways we do that. sometimes it's safety projects, so it could be, hey, we need to take a look at their bathroom. You know, what can we do to make it safer to move in and out of the tub? Can we, you know, change it out to a shower? Can we add grab bars? Can we potentially raise the toilet so it's easier to get on and off a toilet?

Starting point is 00:05:43 Can we change the vanity so you can get in and out of the vanity easier? So there's a lot of things like that from a safety standpoint that we can do. It could be ramps to access the house. It could be railings to outside. access the house. It could be just improved lighting. So not all these projects have to be like thousands of dollars of projects. They could be really simple things. They can really improve safety a lot. So there's a focus on that. And then we also have a focus on just maintenance, right? So what I see a lot of times with our older adults is the house just kind of degrades over time.

Starting point is 00:06:18 And unfortunately, when that person does either pass along or moves to assisted living, the house now, is kind of in a shambles. It's not worth near what it should be worth. And they lost a lot of the value of the house where if they would have been able to keep it up or hired somebody to help them keep it up, they actually would have maintained the value in the house and actually had a much better investment.

Starting point is 00:06:41 And Nate, well, I'm in the AC industry and a lot of times we can't get projects done in the H-REC because the senior citizens, they'll hire somebody and they'll just take off with their money. They're like, well, I can't buy an AC unit, because I just hired a contractor. I gave them a check for $60,000, and then they showed up for a little bit, and then they lost, and now they're down without an AC, without the repairs,

Starting point is 00:07:04 without money. And they can't get up. So what are some of the recommendations you would have to somebody that's listening? It's like, hey, before you hire somebody, what are some of the couple of things that they should look at? Yeah, I mean, certainly try and look at reviews, because, as you know, companies come and go, and people reform these LLCs and so forth, and also they have no back. background. And so that's kind of a red flag. Like if they don't have a history, that's... Like, you can't go and find history online for them. Like, if you're looking for reputable

Starting point is 00:07:32 history? Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that can be a red flag. Not always, but the other thing is, you know, do they require a lot of money up front? So, like... Oh, red flag. Yeah. So personally, like, I rarely take any money up front. In our business, a lot of as a service, you know, sometimes we're going to get materials, but unless it's a big, huge bathroom model or something like that, there's not a ton of materials in my industry that I'm going to get. So 95% of the time, I'm not charging anything until we're done with the job. And so that's just the way we do business. And the reason is because of those stories, like you just said, when I first started this, I was like, man, I heard those stories like right

Starting point is 00:08:15 off the bat. It shocked me that that happens, but it is happening. Well, you know, in San Antonio, Um, you know, growing up here, people would go downtown and just hire, hire day laborers, you know, and, and just pay them cash. And the work is not, there's no, you know, guaranteed. It's, you know, it's just hand to mouth, you know. And you know, you're basically professionalizing it and making it, you know, there's no risk. Well done. Guaranteed work, you know, and just streamlining it. It sounds like. Exactly right. You know, we're trying to bring a whole level of service that's much higher than that, right? And so, yeah, if you want to save money, then maybe that's the route, right? But you're taking a big, big risk, and that's when you hear these stories, like, what you're saying. And what type of warranties do you all offer for? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the work. Like, so what I always tell everybody, I'm like, look, I'm the owner.

Starting point is 00:09:12 I'm out in front of the job as well. So if you ever have an issue, we're going to come back and make it right. So, but yeah, there are certain warranties depending on, like, if it's a shower, if it's waterproof, you know, it's going to be waterproof for X amount of time. If it's, you know, cocking, which, you know, cocking tends to shrink and so forth. So we get a lot of callbacks just because they're like, hey, now there's a gap. What happened? I'm like, well, yeah, cocking shrinks. So, so we do that.

Starting point is 00:09:39 That's part of the way we run the business and we build that into the jobs and we just know that, hey, we're going to provide that level service. Okay. Now, you mentioned some of the services you do for seniors. I would imagine that applies to maybe some of our more physically challenged listeners, you know, disabled folks. Yeah, absolutely. The same issues that seniors have are a lot of the same issues with disabled as well. And so, yeah, again, it's focused. One thing we do is we actually do a free home safety assessment.

Starting point is 00:10:09 And so like myself, I'm a certified aging in place specialist. So I've gone through training to actually identify. issues in the home that could be problems, you know, for people moving in about. So whether it's a walker or a wheelchair or, you know, a prosthetic leg or whatever, we're trained on how to identify issues. So sometimes they're super simple. Like you walk in a house and I'd be like, well, look, you've got an area rug here that's, you know, right in this walk area. This is probably not a good, good solution, right? So, and you're going to have to have some of these difficult conversations with people because, you know, this is their stuff. And it's like, hey, you know, I know you love this rug.

Starting point is 00:10:50 It's probably, you know, whatever's hand down or whatever where you got it. But maybe can we move it? Can we do something else? Can we at least at a minimum make sure it's tacked down nice and secure to the floor? So you don't have a trip hazard here. So those are the sum of those things we're looking for. But, you know, it can be, you know, lighting. It can be levers on, like door levers versus door knobs.

Starting point is 00:11:11 The most things that we just take for granted or we walk by every day, we don't even think about it, could really, you know, impact someone who's maybe in that same situation as you. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things like, so when I look at bathrooms, a lot of bathrooms have the door and it opens into the bathroom. It's probably the most common situation. But what people don't think about is if you have a senior disabled or somebody that has an issue in that bathroom, let's say they fall or whatever, They're on the ground, and you now can't get to them because the door is now, a lot of times, bathrooms are real small, right? So the door is now potentially hitting somebody that is on the ground that needs emergency care, and it's really hard to get to them.

Starting point is 00:11:56 So that's one thing. I always bring up, I'm like, look, we should really think about swapping this door direction so that now it opens out so that there is an issue. You can quickly get in and help somebody. So there's a lot of things just like that. that, yeah, I would, I don't know about you, but those are things that probably I wouldn't encounter. I mean, when we're designing HVAC systems, you know, we're looking at stuff like that, you know, how many drops you can bring in and all that stuff, but I mean, that's, that's pretty impressive, I got to say, you know.

Starting point is 00:12:26 I agree. Alex, do you have anything you want to add? Yeah, no, I was going to ask him, Nate, obviously doing a lot of different things on the interior, and you mentioned on the exterior ramps and railings and things like that. Is there any other kind of work that either specific to, you know, seniors or disabled or just like in general handyman scope outside that's kind of stuff you handle or touch? Yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of times we're looking at, you know, just general stuff.

Starting point is 00:12:52 It's siding repair and trim repair, fascia, softets. You know, so we see a lot of issues with raccoons and chipmunks getting in people's softets. And I know that's kind of up here. We mentioned that, you know. about all those little critters. Yeah, yeah. So we'll see the holes in there and they're like, hey, we're getting critters in the attic and so forth. We can hear them up there and, you know, it's kind of disturbing, which it would definitely be disturbing. So, yeah, so those are typical things that we'll get called on.

Starting point is 00:13:23 You know, sometimes just painting updates and so forth on the exterior. I mean, in terms of senior stuff, the biggest thing we look for exterior is just accessibility, right? So can you get from your car into your house and how easy is it for you to? get to do that, right? So front door, you know, there's steps leading to the front door, garage, same thing. Can you get in and out of the garage? And then, you know, if there's a backyard and a patio, are you able to get to the backyard and enjoy your patio and so forth? So sometimes it's ramps to withstand some of those steps. Sometimes it's a combination of ramps and railings. Sometimes it's, you know, some bars at the doors. We also do a lot of threshold ramps. So

Starting point is 00:14:06 If you're not familiar, like doors have usually like an inch or two sometimes threshold. And for, you know, our everyday person, it's like a big deal. You don't think about it, right? You're just walking. You walk right over your threshold. But you have a walker or a wheelchair. All of a sudden that, you know, just that one to two inch, you know, bump is a pretty big issue. And so there's some pretty unique products out there that we can kind of implement and sometimes even custom build to kind of just get over those threshold issues too.

Starting point is 00:14:35 You mentioned, I mean, clearly you know you're the expert in what you do, but you mentioned about a certification that you have for this. Can you elaborate a little bit on what this certification is and what you had to go through to be certified? Yeah. First off, you have to have some experience in the industry first. So it's done through the National Association of Home Builders, and it's like a three-day course that we go through, and typically it's kind of spread out over a few months to kind of show like,

Starting point is 00:15:04 hey, this is some of the things on how you kind of need to talk with seniors, how you need to present yourself and so forth. And then there's the nuts and bolts of, okay, you know, what are the types of projects that we should be looking for? How do you assess the house? How do you assess the client and what's best for the client as well? And then you look at, you know, what are the different types of solutions that they can actually afford, right?

Starting point is 00:15:29 Because not everything, you know, you can spend thousands outfitting a house, but that's not realistic for everybody. So what can we do, you know, maybe, you know, on the cheaper end versus, you know, a more custom solution and so forth. So, but yeah, it's pretty encompassing. And we have to recertify every couple of years as well. What is it called? It's a CAP certification, it's called, and it's just certified aging and place specialist. So there'll be a lot of folks like myself that are trained in that type of thing.

Starting point is 00:15:59 But then there's also a lot of, like, orthopedic nurses. and some forth like that that identified the same time. So it's not just like home services, it's just anybody who works with that population of people. Correct. Okay. I mean, that's something that our listeners should keep an eye out for

Starting point is 00:16:15 if they have somebody that they know. Yeah, and there's other ones in town that aren't contractors. So if someone's not feeling comfortable like, hey, this contractor, you know, he's trying to tell me all these things, but obviously he's, you know, he's trying to get business as well. But we can put you in touch with somebody else that, you know, is a non-biased person that could give you advice as well. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:16:38 That's good. Now, do you have any unique stories or experiences when you're talking about going and helping people with any kind of home redo, remodel service? I mean, someone just said, hey, I want the back cave at home. Can you turn my basement into the bat cave? I don't know. Yeah, we haven't done any back caves. Yes.

Starting point is 00:17:02 Yeah, not yet. But we could if somebody wanted to do that. Yeah. Well, here's one that just came to mind. So we work with a lot of realtors, and so a good amount of our business is helping realtors get properties ready for sale or clients getting their property ready for sale or rent and so forth. And so we were working in this empty house,

Starting point is 00:17:27 and I think the owner had thought they moved everything. out, but they hadn't quite moved everything out. So we were doing some cabinetry work, and we were working kind of in this little hidden cabinet that's, I think it was above the refrigerator or something, and we opened the door, and then there was a whole collection of adult material. Oh, no. That was left from the previous owner, so, and it was. Hashtag awkward.

Starting point is 00:17:55 Hashtag awkward, yes, very, very funny. So, my technician, he immediately called me. like, hey, I just opened this cabinet, and just so you know, there's all this adult material and so forth. So anyway, I mean, I'm thinking about us, the next HVAC job we do. I'm going to not comment on this conversation. You know, so many directions. You know, someone's going to hide stuff in their ductwork for us, and it's like, oh,

Starting point is 00:18:22 we've seen it. We've seen it. There's a lot of things left in addicts. Yeah. And we're not talking about you, Alex, not the kind of crawl. No, no, I'm talking about just like personal belongings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, some places here in San Antonio don't have addicts.

Starting point is 00:18:36 I know there's basements is not a common thing, but, you know, yeah, people keep stuff, all those kinds of things. Yeah, of course, wow. That's crazy. A lot of our audiences are homeowners or they're looking to find, buy a home or sell a home. Or rent? Or rent. So I want you to kind of. give some tips on what are some things they can do first if you want to buy a home like what are some

Starting point is 00:19:05 the things you want to look to get the quality of the home or make sure that what are some of the things that you see out in the field that could be a red flag and then the other question is if somebody wants to sell it what are some of the things that they should be doing yeah i mean if if you're if i was going to look for a home in san Antonio um you know i would be looking for you know foundation of course probably the first thing right because we have a lot of earth movement here in town and so your whole house lies on the foundation so if you don't have a good foundation you're going to have issues

Starting point is 00:19:38 whether it's wall issues or plumbing that gets messed up because it's cracking because the foundation's moving so there's just a lot of issues that can happen if your foundation is not solid so you know look for cracks in walls and floors and so forth if you see some of that you certainly should at least investigate it doesn't mean that the foundation is bad per se.

Starting point is 00:20:02 There's always movement and there's always some things that happen in terms of like walls, cracks, and so forth. So some of it could be just cosmetic, but it's at least worth saying, hey, I see all these tile cracks and I see some wall cracks by the windows or in the corners and so forth.

Starting point is 00:20:18 It's at least worse investigating and saying, hey, I need to get a foundation person to check this out, make that as part of my inspection or ask the seller and say, hey, do you have a clearance from a foundation expert? So that would probably be my biggest advice in terms of buying a house in San Antonio. I mean, fit and finish is always something to look for, right? If the fit and finish, like the trim work and the painting and stuff that that doesn't look good,

Starting point is 00:20:41 then you probably have other things behind the walls that maybe aren't as good either. You can see the brushes on the wall? Yeah. You know, it's just general quality, right? So, you know, we have a lot of new homes built in town. And so that's the things I'd be looking for with new homes because they build them so fast. Your cookie cutter style, just one right after another, after another. And what would you say is the difference from what you do and say, like, a home inspector?

Starting point is 00:21:07 Yeah, I mean, a home inspector is looking at lots and lots of stuff. So they're doing way more than, like, what I would ever feel comfortable doing and have expertise in all the fields, right, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. And I don't have that type of expertise, and I would never tell anybody I did. but they also are sometimes, in my opinion, overly critical because that's kind of their job. They're trying to point out everything. They're trying to find out with the red flags. Yeah, and they're trying to cover their own butt too because they don't want somebody coming back to them and say, hey, you didn't tell us about this.

Starting point is 00:21:43 So they're just overly critical. So like I see, you know, realtors send me inspection punch lists all the time. And, you know, it's like 40, 50, 60 pages. and I'm like looking through all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, yeah, he's pointed this out. But this is really pretty minor. This is nothing and so forth. So there's a lot of that and I get it.

Starting point is 00:22:02 That's just part of what has to happen. So you just got to kind of understand that when you look at those reports. And for somebody who needs any of the services you provide, which clearly are valuable, I mean, what kind of payment options are available or like, you know, how does that work? Yeah. So we do have some different payment options for bigger projects. for sure. So we have, you know, especially with like some of the bathroom renovations and things like that, where the price tag goes up and so forth, even the realtor type project. So we're trying to do a make ready. So sometimes those projects, you know, if we're painting a whole house and doing a bunch of repair, you know, that can be, you know, a pretty substantial amount of money. But we do do pay at closing in some situations for people selling homes. We also have to be, you know, we also have. have programs that we can do three months same as cash, six months same as cash, and then there's

Starting point is 00:22:58 some other financing options. So we have a financing arm that we work with, again, because we're a professional organization, and it just depends on what they qualify for. So I can't really go into details. Everybody's different, but yeah, there are different options for that, for sure. And then just to go back, like, in terms of, like, selling your house, like, the market kind of defines like what you need to do so like a couple years ago like people weren't doing much of anything except putting a sign in the yard yeah yeah and all of a sudden the house was selling so today that's quite different and and i've i work with a lot of agents and i kind of get a feel for how the market is and so forth so today's market you really need to have you know your best foot forward on your

Starting point is 00:23:40 house to really guarantee a sell and get it sold pretty quickly so we're seeing a seeing that change quite a bit. And so my advice, you know, to people selling their homes is, you know, take care of the cosmetic stuff for sure, right? So when someone walks through your house, you don't want them point out, you know, oh, there's a drywall issue there, there's trim issue there, or now there's pain all messed up there. Don't overlook anything. Yeah, right? Just like you wouldn't want to go on and, you know, spend hundreds of thousand dollars in the house and then know that, oh, now I got to repair all this stuff after I just spent hundreds of thousand dollars, right? So you guys got to kind of think through that, you

Starting point is 00:24:17 as a seller and be like, okay, what can we do to take care of that? And it could be stuff you do yourself or it could be something you hire us or whatever. But all the cosmetic stuff for sure is typically what we're working with agents and clients on. Neutralizing the colors is super common. Like, accent walls are great, but, you know, your taste is not to say somebody else's taste. So a lot of times getting rid of those for the home sale is usually a good idea. Okay. And one just final question, and then we'll later, Alex, ask one if he has one.

Starting point is 00:24:52 But we do, in the HPEC industry, we focus a lot on doing maintenance, annual maintenance, to make sure the AC system is running the year long. Is there something you offer for maintenance, for homes or homeowners should be doing? No, great question. Yeah, so we do a couple different things. We do a quarterly maintenance plan that kind of depends. depends on the size of the house, what the pricing is. But basically, it's focused on maintaining that house and just making sure everything's working properly.

Starting point is 00:25:25 So that could be things like, hey, we're going to check out the windows. Do they need re-cocked, right? So we can make sure everything's watertight. Same thing with doors. Do doors need adjusted so that the weather stripping is hitting? Or does the weather stripping need replaced? Do HVAC filters need replaced? I know sometimes they'll have HVAC companies do that.

Starting point is 00:25:44 Other times people don't have that. So that needs to happen. Softener systems, you know, are those being maintained? Do they even have salt in them? So we've got, you know, quarterly programs. Those quarterly programs are more focused on just maintaining the house. You know, we typically would look for busier adults that just don't have time to do stuff that, hey, we'll come out every quarter. You know, we'll have a whole list of stuff that we're going to do.

Starting point is 00:26:10 We'll knock it out. You know, you're going to be good to go. So it's the expertise on knowing what they're going to be. to look for as well as just making and making it happen. We also have what we call Helping Hands programs, and those are focused more on seniors. So I have some seniors that do that. We are actually at one, we were going to be at one today, where we actually go in every single month for a few hours and just help them maintain the house.

Starting point is 00:26:34 So doing a lot of those same things, but also just giving them a helping hand as well. And so those could be pretty buried. So sometimes it's like, hey, I've got some furniture that's loose. can you help, you know, make that tight. I have a customer that every month he has a walker, and so over time, basically that there's a break on there that just kind of loosens up over time. He's like, yeah, just if you can come in, tighten that every month as part of our list, great.

Starting point is 00:27:00 Yep, not a problem. Same thing, like his recycling. So, like, just taking the boxes, breaking them down, getting them into recycling. So we do that every month for him. So there's different things like that. Sometimes it's pulling seasonal items, like this time of year. It's like getting into your actual. getting some of the Christmas decorations out.

Starting point is 00:27:17 That's something that maybe we shouldn't have seniors getting up on ladders and doing. Putting up the lights on the outside. We're putting up lights, right? So that's kind of what those helping hand programs are kind of designed to do is to give you a little bit more boost. You guys do a lot. I'm just curious. How big is your team? So our team is a group of four technicians and then myself and then we have some administrative staff as well.

Starting point is 00:27:41 Okay. we're probably going to keep it spanning based on how the business is going, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're at five or six, you know, six months from now. You don't want to grow too fast and then... Yes. Yeah, there was a point this year where I was like,

Starting point is 00:27:59 we were busy enough that we could add a fifth, but at the same time I was like, I just wasn't quite ready to train and do all that. Sounds like the conversations we've had. Yeah, yeah. Alex, do you have anything you want to chime in, sir, with your expertise or curiosity or anything? No, I mean, I didn't realize that I know Nate for about a year now or so,

Starting point is 00:28:20 but I didn't realize that he had, you know, did some of these other kinds of things, the help of hands, and also just, you know, I can't stress enough how important it is to make sure you're keeping that at caulking and other kinds of things. And the things are easy overlooked, even by people that aren't overly busy. I mean, as a homeowner, I mean, it's just, it's a big thing to tackle and there's a lot of responsibility and not the best of it. And so having a team and come in and do that regularly to take care of those things is. It can be really valuable because it's preventative work for things like, you know, leakings and, well, in my industry, like critter access. So it's powerful. Upkeep, maintenance.

Starting point is 00:28:54 Yeah, it's a great testimony. Well, I have another testimony. Can you get the camera? Yeah, sure. Let's do it. So we invite experts to our podcast, and I've known Nate for about a year already, and we're part of a networking group. And, I mean, he's always very professional. everybody, I mean, the same calm and very mature and very professional person is the same type of person that's going to show up to your home and they're going to do quality work.

Starting point is 00:29:23 So they're one of our referral partners, so we highly recommend them. We know that they're going to do a good job for either any of our customers or any of the referrals and that it's going to be high quality work. And most important, you're going to feel comfortable that somebody's going to come to your home. It's going to treat your grandparents right or your parents' rights. right or be very, very respectful to your wife and kids. And I think in this industry, in the handyman industry, especially here in San Antonio, you want somebody that you can trust to go into your home. Trust is a key.

Starting point is 00:29:57 I mean, you want to feel like the person who's doing the job that you need knows what they can do, and they're going to do it the way it needs to be done in a very people-centered way. So, Nate, final question. Where do we see you in the next three to five years? what are some of your personal goals or things you want to accomplish? Yeah, I mean, personally, I have a few things. I want to continue to grow the business. I'd like to get to a couple crews probably by three to five years.

Starting point is 00:30:27 And really focus our growth efforts in terms of helping seniors. So seniors are the toughest people to reach because they are very guarded because of a lot of the things that they've had happened to them from other contractors. So it is tougher for us to reach that demographic and that need. So we'll continue to push that. But yeah, my goal is for our business to be that focused. Still do all the other handyman support work for agents and other homeowners. But we want to be known, like, in five years, if someone says True Blue,

Starting point is 00:31:06 I want people to know, like, oh, that's the group that helps seniors. Right. So that's where we want to be. Outstanding. Okay. Well, we appreciate you being here with us today, Nate. And thank you, Alex, for joining in as well. As always, I'm Larry and Francisco. We're with Air Integrity Comfort Solutions, your local leader in HVAC Solutions. And we will see you next time on the Agents Lounge. Thank you very much.

Starting point is 00:31:34 You've been listening to the Agents Lounge podcast, brought to you by Airtegrity Comfort Solutions. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show, or to listen to past episodes, please visit agentsloungepodcast.com.

Business Innovators Radio - Nate Kear’s TrueBlue Home Services: Expert Handyman Solutions for Aging Homeowners

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