What Would Change If You Treated Your Home Like An Investment with Kaylee Holley, HomeSmiles Virginia Beach

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:57All right, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Kaylee Holley with Home Smiles Virginia Beach. Kayla, how are you doing today? I'm doing good, Cliff. How are you? I'm doing great, and we're really, really excited to have you. So if you don't mind, let's go ahead and jump right into it. Sounds good. All right. So, you know, for those of you who may not know it yet, you know, what is Home Smiles Virginia Beach and what exactly is the company?

1:31What problem are you trying to solve for homeowners? So Home Smiles Virginia Beach is a preventative maintenance company. And most people are like, what's preventative maintenance? Well, it's like the little things like cleaning your gutters, doing some pressure washing, dryer vent cleaning, all those things around your house that need to be done and you just don't do. So what we're trying to do is, you know, have the homeowner take care of those little tasks so they don't create big problems. So, you know, like your gutter's not working, you could get some severe roof damage, foundation issues, so all that.

2:11Just one simple thing that could be fixed with a phone call ends up a lot more phone calls, a lot more money, and a lot more trouble for the homeowner. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. But now, Kaylee, who are you as a person? What do you have going on in your personal time? So personally, I am a transplant. I was originally from Washington State, was there for like 25 years and came to Virginia. It was only supposed to be temporary. Met my husband and we ended up deciding to start the business because we knew it was something that we think Hampton, the Hampton Roads is needed. So, yeah. Okay, good deal, good deal.

2:49So do you miss, do you ever miss Washington? You said Washington State, right? Yes, Washington State. Yeah. Do you miss it at all? I do. I really do. It's great. I have family and friends there. So I think that's probably what I miss. It was great for a season. Weather is wonderful. I will say not all this hot, humid summer weather here that we're having. But, you know, there's different seasons in life. And now I'm calling Virginia home. So it's great to go back and visit, but love it here. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. So, you know, Kaylee, most people wait until something actually breaks before they call someone.

3:30So why are we so bad at preventative maintenance when it comes to our homes? Because we don't see it. We don't see the need. We're so busy with everyday life and don't realize it. You know, the culture here in the U.S. is, you know, we work in like 10, 12 hour days, go home, you have your kids, you know, your dog, y 'all take your dog for a walk. And the last thing you think about is your gutters. You don't look up. You don't look at the roof. You don't think about your dryer vent. You know, you just it's out of sight, out of mind. And you don't realize it until it's actually broken or something severely happens.

4:07And then you got to fix it. so it's just we're busy i think that's the thing if you don't have a plan for it if you don't know about it you just you just don't know how to do it yeah yeah and i also think too uh procrastination kind of gets in there a little bit too right because i think some people do know about the problems but they don't probably like i'll just i'll take care of it eventually and then eventually never comes exactly exactly especially you know like we all have that like i have some picture some wall hang some things I need to hang on my wall and yet I'm procrastinating to hang it up you know what we all have that list and it's like if it doesn't become that important at that time you're gonna go with something else it's like do I cook dinner or do I change the HVAC filter in my home to make sure my you know my HVAC is running properly it's like yeah let me just cook dinner because that's what's needed right now it's just those little the choices that you have to make although if that hvac goes out you're going to be complaining you and your family going to be complaining pretty well like you said especially up here when we're dealing with this hot humid weather this heat wave or whatever it is we're dealing with right now it's pretty hot exactly and so it's also trying to educate homeowners too it's like hey you know you need to do these things so you're not stuck in a in a rut with like your hvac is is out you know and you have no sort of AC and you're dying with this humidity inside, but it's like, Hey, if you, you know, did the proper maintenance and most likely wouldn't have.

5:36Yep. Yeah, no, I agree. Now you talk a lot about protecting one of family's biggest investments, you know, their home. Was there a moment when that mission really clicked for you personally? When it clicked for me personally, I will have to say it's probably my own personal experience because I own a home and I, it's, and I had some issues where it's like, hey, if I would have known this stuff before I got into it and I would have seen that like all this preventative maintenance could have helped me and, you know, save me like $20 ,000 with having that information and having someone come out and look at it and tell me what I needed to do, it would have helped.

6:17It would have saved me, you know, just those minor things that could lead to a huge problem because I had a little, I had a leak. So, you know, a lot of people don't understand around your toilet you have a wax seal and something that needs to be replaced after a significant amount of years or else it could cause water damage so then i had to get my whole floor removed and redone so now it's just like the education part too it's important for homeowners to know these things because it costs a lot costs a lot of money one simple five dollar wax ring twenty thousand dollars later i don't know if that answered your question but that's kind of the one thing that sticks out to me personally when it comes to preventative maintenance and why i'm passionate about it it does it does definitely so what's something home earners think is completely normal that actually tells you they may have a major maintenance issue growing that's a tough one i will i'm trying let me think about that one I mean, I know you field calls and questions all the time.

7:24And I'm sure if you see something and you're like, Ooh, I don't, that sounds like that's a deeper issue. Yeah. I will say the, the squishy floor, you know, like, Oh my, my, with the sub floor issues, I think too, it's like, Oh, like my four is a little squishy. That one's concerning, you know, or if they have their ACs in the attic and they have, you know, water droplets coming from their, their vents, you know, those are a sign where it's like, hey, maybe this needs to get checked out because water damage is huge. You know, a lot of people have their water heat, well, not a lot, but I've seen a lot more people have their water heater and their AC unit in their attic.

8:03And so sometimes water with the condenser, the AC unit could end up causing a huge leak. You know, thousands of dollars of repair. I actually visited a lady's house this morning who had that happen too. And And it's like, hey, if you see it happening or you hear those weird sounds, you know, you should call someone to take a look at it because that could hopefully save you in the long run the cost of having to replace and fix everything. So I would say water, you know, just like, why is my roof bubbling? Why do I have a leak coming through my window? Any sort of water damage is a huge one. Yeah, I know it is.

8:44and you're talking about with the with the grow attic thing you're talking about like where it spills over like where they where it spills over like the water that collects from the ac spills over and damages the water heater is that what you're talking about yeah so when it it goes out over they usually have something underneath it to contain the water but sometimes and then it could come out and then cause water damage so if you haven't been properly getting those maintained as well or you know sometimes water heaters they're old and they sometimes they'll break or they'll have an issue and then your water heater starts to leak everywhere.

9:17And if it's in the roof, that's not good. Or if it's downstairs as well. So those are main things I would be worried about as a homeowner. Now, Kaylee, every business franchise owner has a moment where they think, you know, what did I get myself into? What has been that moment for you specifically? Oh, okay. Just one moment. I say there's a lot of them. I think it's more along the lines of like, especially with us, we have a franchise. You know, you're supposed to have the tools to help you. It's supposed to be a little easier for someone to start a business. But I will say it's a lot of learning and knowing the market you're in because what's working for someone else isn't going to work for you.

10:06So I will say the hardest part is being able to grow the business and be able to help the people in our area with what they need. So like, yes, we talk about preventative maintenance and everything else, and we want to educate everyone on that. But I feel for me, it's realizing that everyone needs a handyman. They need someone to just fix it right now and maybe learn about the preventative later. It's always like the emergency mode. So I think for me, the biggest shock was the urgency of, hey, this needs to replace right now. Because I was under the impression of when jumping into this business and it's like, yeah, we'll do preventative maintenance.

10:52But no, it's like we just got to do some education first and then preventative maintenance later, I feel, is the change for me. That was a big shocker. Not a lot of people know what it is. So I think that's because I did after I had my issue and my situation with my home. But it's just a lack of information out there for homeowners or they just don't know where to get it. Or there's no there's not a lot of classes. People don't go like, you know, to homeownership 101 or how to take care of your home. Like I need to do all these things. So I think that was the main the main shocker for me. the one item that made me think, huh, what'd I get myself into?

11:37Because it's a lot of learning and growing and trying to adapt to what you need to bring to your market and your area and what your clients and customers need. So just being adaptable. Now, and this next question is probably, it's hypothetical, but, you know, let's say if you could wave a magic wand and, you know, instantly fix one challenge or one thing that you're dealing with that could be better in your business tomorrow, what would you fix? I think it would be for us currently is having, you know, staffing. It's really hard in this area to find good quality people to work. And I think that would be the main one.

12:23And so then we could also then grow as a business and, you know, educate homeowners and be able to help out our community. Because we have a lot of, we have a lot of older retirement areas that they just need some help. You know, they just need some education, need someone to go out there, a lot of military in our area. So I think it would be having staff and compassionate people to be able to go out and, you know, help our community. Now, if you were able to, like, let's say if you were able to get a staffing influx of a bunch of candidates, they're all, you know, amazing, 10 out of 10, you're able to make them offers right on the spot.

13:05Yes. With the current, you know, processes and everything that you have in place, would you be able to handle that if you were able to hire everybody that you wanted to? Or would you need to make some changes? Well, I feel like depending on how many employees too, we definitely have to scale up to that amount. But right now I feel like we have a lot of relationships that we've built and that we're continuing to build with HOAs and property managers about like education with homeowners and renters. And I feel like we could scale it when needed. We're at the point where we would be able to scale.

13:46Did that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, it did. Now, Kaylee, what would you say is the most expensive maintenance mistake homeowners can make? The most expensive? Waiting. Waiting to the last minute or just saying, I'll do it later. That's one of the most expensive ones is just the complacency and putting it on the back burner. I think that that's the biggest thing because, you know, one day it could be fine. Two days later, not so fine. And just, you know, that you need to be educated. So it's one of your biggest investments. Now, if someone was listening, you know, to the podcast episode today with you, Kaylee, and let's say they spent just one hour this weekend taking care of their home, what should they do first?

14:39Well, I would ask a couple of questions. When was the last time they cleaned their dryer vent? When was the last time they did a walk around their foundation and took a look at where their gutter runoff is? Because we've had some rain, you know, a lot of people. We've had some really torrential downpours. And, you know, just look and see, are my gutters clogged? Do I have siding that is off the house? Is my, like, take a look. go walk into your street, look at your roof. Is your roof good? So I would say just doing a walkthrough of your house with a different set of eyes rather than your everyday, I'm just going to do this and that.

15:22Put down a list, look at your gutters, look at your roof, look at your foundation, your siding, look inside, check your dryer vent. You know, if you haven't, YouTube it. There's a lot of things that you can do just by searching on the internet. Like a lot of people don't know you need to drain your water heater every year so it helps maintain the life of it so there's i would say start with a list go outside spend an hour just look at it search your home like you're trying to buy one okay yeah that's true that's true right yeah because we we're so picky when we're trying to buy a house right oh i want this i want that but once you get into the home it kind of that kind of disappears a little bit especially because you see it every day.

16:10You don't, you don't think about it. Yeah. I like that. That's good advice. Now, what would you say is the craziest thing you have found during a home inspection or maintenance visit? Ooh, the craziest thing I will say it has to do with animals. There was, see, underneath your gutter area or your fascia in your house, there, a squirrel got stuck in there, created a nest, everything got up on the ladder, trying to inspect it to see how we could repair and the squirrel literally almost, yes, scared me half to death. So it jumped out. So I will say that was the one crazy thing that's happened to me when it, just inspection-wise, is squirrels living in the eaves or in your roof line.

16:58It happens a lot. Got a call about a bird the other day. So some of those things, that would be one of the craziest ones. another one would probably be a leak where you could see all the way down to the second floor or the first floor from the second floor you know just straight on water leaking and that was also that was due to some plumbing issues so it's just there's a lot of things that happen and you know people just don't know how to fix them or you know the trees growing in the gutters you got a four like a two foot long tree growing in your gutters, causing it all sorts of issues. Those are some fun ones too.

17:43Okay. Okay. Now, you know, and this might be hypothetical, but let's say if someone shadowed you for an entire day, or let's say even for an entire week, they kind of kind of shadowed you and watched everything you do, how you run your franchise, you know, what would surprise them the most about how you run it and operate it? I think it would just be the flexibility that we have in being able to do multiple things. And just the way that we run our business, we try to do it kind of like a family first model, but we try and be more community-based. We're not going to tell you, hey, we're just going to slap something on it.

18:23We want to explain it to you. This is the reason why it needs to be done, the communication behind it. Give them their options. A lot of handyman or people that you know to fix things, they'll just give you the cheapest option or what they think would work. But it's like, hey, you know, you need to have options. You need to see. We're going to tell you how it is. You're like, we're not going to do, you know, well, I don't know if I can say this, but like a half job, you know, we want to do the full thing. So it's more education and being community first. It's like we want to take our time with someone and explain and make sure that they're okay.

18:58Because I mean, making changes to someone's house is huge. And some people aren't, you know, they need to feel comfortable with it. So they'd see that we are, we do a lot of different things. It's really busy, but we're overall very community-based and we try and run our business honest. Now, Kayla, if your house could talk and tell you something, what's the first thing it would complain about? My house personally? Yes. Okay. My house personally would probably be like, I need a one thing, full disclosure. So guys, I usually pay attention to detail, but I have one shutter on my home that needs to be readjusted.

19:43It's like two inches lower than all the other shutters. And I'm like, but the thing is, is it's one of those things. It's a, it's not necessarily going to hinder my home. It's just appealing on the outside, but I would say it's telling me to fix it. But I feel like for all the preventative maintenance stuff, I, I have a list cause you know, I have to, it's, this is, this is a business I run. So it would say, you know, hey, take care of me. Make sure I survive another how many years. Because, you know, you want to make sure your home is taken care of. You know, you live under it. And no one wants something bad to happen.

20:31Now, how do you create trust when you're asking a homeowner to let you into one of their biggest investments? You know, start up a conversation. I just you know everyone is different you want to just be open honest be a real human you know don't don't sugarcoat anything I feel like some people like to sugarcoat things and you know it's important just to tell them how it is be like hey we could do this we can't do this maybe this is out of our realm we'll try and find you someone else so I think just being open and honest with your customer and just, you know, having that conversation and being friendly, that shows so much than just going and be like, hey, this is what you need to do and that's it.

21:22You know, it's just carrying on a conversation like, you know, hey, how's your day? How can I help you? Just be a human being. Don't be a robot. Like a lot of these other companies, They have their script. I know that's important, but you know, you just got to be personable. Now, Kaylee, what separates great employees in your business from average ones? Would you say I knew you talked about that earlier that you kind of, you have a hard time looking for staffing. So if somebody is potentially listening to the podcast and maybe they're interested in position, what, what would separate them if they wanted to come on?

21:55Honestly, if you're willing to learn, you're willing to teach you, you understand the importance of having a great work ethic. And honestly, if someone's able to love some, you know, to get their hands dirty, hard day work, get to make a difference in people's homes and help homeowners out, I think that's a huge one. It's just an honest, down-to-earth person who's responsible and would show up. Like, I feel like that's all you could ask for. You want someone that's willing to learn. Now, have you ever had to make a difficult decision that ultimately made the company stronger? I would say yes, we have.

22:45I feel like there has been some scenarios where, you know, you hire someone, they're great up front and something, you see something or something happens and you're like, hmm, I don't know about that. And I will say for us, it's important to make sure that we have a great team and, you know, we're a family business. So we want to make sure we have that family atmosphere. And, you know, we all play as a team. We all, you know, work as a team. We want our clients to be happy and everything else. So I feel like being, that is one of the major things that we've had to realize is that whoever we bring onto our team needs to also reflect like who we are as a business.

23:31And that is one of the major things that we learned that you guess people could, you could get, you could get anyone to come work, but is it going to be the best fit for you and your business? I think that's one of the major things that we have done to help improve our business and grow our business as well as building relationships with other business owners. I think that's a huge one as well because they're in it with you, especially like new business owners. We've only been in business for a year and a half now. And we're not perfect by any means, but we've gotten here because we've taken the information from previous business owners or listened to their input.

24:22Or you should try this, you should try that. And it's helped us. It's helped us grow networking. You know, you never know who you'll meet. and it's important to carry those relationships to where you could, you know, continue to grow. So I think those are kind of our main hard decisions that we've done is like prioritizing networking and building those relationships. And I think as well as making sure we have the right people in our team to make sure we grow in the way we want to grow. So now, what would you say gives home smiles of Virginia Beach an unfair advantage over its competitors? Well, I would say that one call and you could have a lot of things in one call.

25:11We could do all sorts of stuff. So it's supposed to be like a one stop shop. We can offer you handyman services. We can do your dryer vent, pressure washing. We'll do gutter cleaning. We'll do window cleaning, you know, with other services. We make sure that your home's taken care of and you don't have to call all these other vendors. We're licensed. We're insured. And I think that's a main thing, too, is like you have a lot of people in this space, at least the handyman space, that aren't insured. And they don't have that license to if something were to happen. You know, a lot of homeowners, it would be on them if someone were to get hurt and they're hiring a handyman that doesn't have someone who's insured.

25:55and that that's a huge liability for the homeowner too so that would that puts us apart from other businesses now okay so and i appreciate you getting through that here so we're going to get into what's called the quick fire round and how this works is i'm going to give you one word and then i just want you to tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear each word in regards to running your business your franchise and then kind of give me kind of a paragraph on why you chose that. Okay. All right. First word is home ownership. Learning experience. So I think that would be, you know, home ownership.

26:34If you're new at it, it's definitely a learning experience. You learn so much from what you got to do to take care of your home, budgeting your home, knowing how to deal with contractors or different, you know, utility services that you have to maintain information and go back and forth and figure things out. I think that would be the best one for homeownership. So preventative maintenance is next. Okay. Preventative maintenance, important. It's very important because it's a huge, Huge, huge. I don't think a lot of people realize the fact that putting something off can create so much damage for your home, your time, your money, that if you would have just done it, taken the time to do it, it would have saved you thousands of dollars or hundreds or thousands of dollars.

27:36It really depends. But in my case, it was thousands. Customer service. Extremely important. I think customer service is one of the major things that anyone trying to have any sort of service wants and should have. We try to be super transparent with our customers. We send them, you know, information like when we're headed out. And I feel like the handyman or any sort of blue collar work always gets a bad rep for, you know, not showing up on time, not coming, having bad customer service, like, you know, not sending them an invoice for like weeks on end or even just setting up an appointment and not showing up.

28:25So I will say customer service is so important because I've heard of so many clients that we've had that had an appointment with someone, didn't show up, never called, you know, and that's just, it's so hard. Like that's especially for someone who takes time off work and stays there. So customer service is huge for us because we understand the importance it is for the homeowner that they're taking their time away from the day that we also need to do our part and be, you know, be there. Yeah, I think that's it. Okay, leadership.

29:11Leadership is next. Leadership. hold up let me think about this one um this is a tough one for our business i will say it's like for one word let me think sorry one phrase or one phrase yeah okay i will say leadership is valuable in the way that you know you want to lead by example you want to lead in a way that people can follow you and grow with you and you want to make sure that you're leading in this space that you're in you want to be able to give them the value and the perspective

30:00yeah sorry this is harder than it this is hard everybody says that you're not the only one who said that everybody says that to come on they're like man this is difficult um it seems easy right quick fire boom boom boom but no it's not a little tougher yeah Yeah. Next word is growth. I think that growth would be opportunity. You know, it's an opportunity to improve, grow the business and see where it ends up. I mean, having the option to grow is great. It means that you're succeeding and you're doing your part in growing your business. So opportunity and to be great and be better stress um let me see stress is difficult i will say it's trying to manage it is very difficult especially being being a business owner.