Small Business Interview with Tyler Merritt from Field Harmony – Small Business Show Episode 102

The Small Business show, episode number 102 for Wednesday, January 18, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show by, for and up about small business owners. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you doing, Dave?

I am doing well.

Back from the superfish trip down to Mexico.

Yeah, it's been a crazy couple of days digging back into work after, well, being out for that and then just prior to that, being out for ces. So it's been a little crazy, but that's a good thing, I always say. Yeah, crazy is better than the alternative of having nothing to do.

You got it. For sure.

For sure.

Hey. Well, today we are fortunate enough to be joined by a guest, Tyler Merritt from Field Harmony. Tyler, thanks for joining us today on the Small Business Show.

Thank you for having me, gentlemen.

Yeah. Hey, before we get started, I want to ask you a quick question. We connected on the small business subreddit up on Reddit.com do you hang out there business pleasure? Or is this. How'd you come. How'd you see our post that I put up there?

I'm definitely a hardcore Redditor, have been for many years. And if I have a free moment, I'm probably on Alien Blue on my iPhone, just sort of scrolling through.

Yeah, that's good. I would attest on the same way. So. And you know, I was up there for. I'm up there so much, and I was like, wow, I'll post something up there. So it was great, and we really appreciate your response. So let's talk about Field Harmony for a few minutes. Tell us how you came up with the concept, how long you guys have been around, and what services that you offer.

Absolutely. So, like a lot of small business stories, it starts with a problem. College roommate of mine and best friend was running a service business, in this case, appliance repair out of Wahoo in Hawaii. Not a terrible place to start a company.

Yeah.

And he had been asking me to come join him for a number of years. And I said, you know, you can't afford me. I do technology. I'm not really, you know, handsy with tools and mechanical and anyway, I finally found myself in Hawaii through happy accidents. And he was desperate for a solution, running 10 trucks at the time off pen and paper, I kid you not. It was a spiral notepad and he had an office manager. He hired a couple staff to take phone calls. And I said to him one day, you Know, an errant elbow into a pot of coffee and your, you are up a creek, right. You will have nothing, no records. The IRS comes knocking, what are you going to say? And I think that was a seed that sort of planted, took root in his mind. We evaluated some services to manage field assets, in this case people, not the equipment, like some larger companies. He implemented a couple actually at my behest and was not satisfied. You know, difficult man to, to satisfy. He starts talking about the problems. And I said, listen, you, you're never going to be happy. Nothing that has been built is going to match your workflow. So the only thing you have as an option is to build it. And I was, you know, kidding, like a lot of people, like, shut up. Little did you know, accept the reality that, you know, you're going to have to adapt instead of expecting the world to, you know, come see from your point of view. And he said, of course, how much? And I was like, okay, here we go, right? This is, this is when the dice start rattling and you got all your money on one of the hard ways and you're going, come on. And I said, you know, I don't know, let's shop around. So we talked to a friend I had met through another endeavor that I was working on and he said, you know, I can get your prototype built for you very quickly. So we put in some of our own money. It was a small amount, relatively speaking, to what I know a lot of small business owners have invested in terms of capital, but from that moment it just took a hold of us and we eventually now have launched and are live paying customers, subscription revenue, all those good things, our own business as a result of him saying how much and me not walking away when I should have.

Yeah, okay.

So I'm very curious because I've done this many times for myself where I needed something that someone didn't make or didn't make the right way and then built it, but have never taken it from the. Solving an internal problem and turning it into, you know, my business. Right. And now it's a customer facing thing. And what was that process like of, you know, polishing up this functional, but perhaps not entirely form based, you know, not pretty thing? Sure, yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious what that's like because I have yet to do that and I should have because I built by hand one of the first content management systems that ever existed and should have turned it into WordPress, but you know, I didn't. So there you go.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, I think like, the benefit of hindsight, of course, is that I can go back and think deeply about all the days and weeks and months that went into this, and maybe I can identify a pattern for you and give you guys some advice. But if I'm being brutally honest, it was simply an unwillingness to give up on my part. I was not, at the time when this started many years ago, a programmer. I had some system administration experience. I was happy at the command line of any Linux system, having worked with that for many years. But I was not a programmer. I didn't think the way programmers think about taking problems and chopping them up into some of their parts and then getting small enough where you can just solve. You can answer a question when you get to the point where you can ask a single question and get a single answer and you can write that in any programmatic language, that's basically what makes you a programmer, right?

Yeah.

And all those LEGO blocks together become some form, some shape. But honestly, I've been a person who's been accused by pretty much everybody in my life of not knowing when to throw in the towel and just being very stubborn. And that's what it was. I was unhappy with the code I was receiving from our outsource endeavor. My friend was great, but the people that were actually doing those first iterations for us had no eye for scale. They didn't care about multi tenant kind of environments. I don't want to get too technical because our audience may not be. But I just.

Was it your. Let me joke real quick with one question. Was it your intent from the beginning to build this platform to market to other businesses? Or was it, hey, we're going to solve this problem for my buddy's appliance repair business.

So it was both, right? Like, okay, our original idea was, we want to get your company into the modern age, right? Pen and paper in 2000 and whatever it was some years ago was just unacceptable, right? For any business. Like, he didn't have financials that he could submit to any kind of auditor, right? Like, he wasn't using QuickBooks. I mean, it was nothing. It was pen and paper. So me being very entrepreneurial in mind and dreaming of one day where I make that company that can sustain a nice lifestyle, I thought if I build it for you, I can replicate it for everyone else. And I understood from a technology point of view, I understood hosting and multi tenanting and just the kind of basics that go into stamping out the same environment for a variety of companies. And of course he had the Context, he had people in the industry that he knew from trade shows or what have you. And so he was like, listen, I can bring. You know, if you build it, they will come, right?

Yeah.

And that's kind of. And then we just snowballed from there.

So that's.

I think that's what you were asking, right, Dave? Making that jump from building it for myself to then actually selling it.

Yeah, I mean, and you answered the question well, because you weren't building it for yourself, you were building it for your buddy. I think that one step of removal is the key. And I don't mean to say that if you're building it for yourself, you can't have that one step of removal. In fact, after hearing your story, I'm thinking you almost need to impose that upon yourself so that you start thinking about these things that you're building internally as something that might become a pivot point for your business or an expansion point for your business in the future.

I think that's a very keen insight. I had a good mentor when I was working right after college. I worked for a startup company in Los Angeles and the founder and CEO of that company, one of these crazy mad men, genius guys that we've all maybe come across a couple times in our lives. His genius was about business. He wasn't necessarily the most tech savvy guy, but he had a very natural ability to distill simple truth from very complex situations. And I just took a lot of the lessons that I had internalized at my time there and I put it into talking my friend into, hey, we can make a go of this. And we have. And the system is, I'd like to say, I'm proud to say that the system is profitable. We probably have a 75% margin, so our expenses are very, very low compared to what it takes to go into it. Now neither of us are paying ourselves the type of money that we are making from day jobs, but at this point, it's a sales and marketing problem, it's not a technology problem.

So that brings up my next question, kind of leads well into that. What did you find the most challenging? Building and launching it? Getting things up and running, or growing the user base? What was more difficult?

The answer to that question has changed as the years have passed. I focused on the technology in the early days because of the two of us. I was the technologist and still am. I'm also happy to say that I have since then guided my friend and he has taken it on himself to learn programming. And now is a full time programmer. He has a day job as a software developer. And so I'm very proud of him for that because he transitioned from a mechanical industry where he was physically fixing gears and motors and things like that. And he was able to use those same ideas of hey, this is just a complex thing that has many moving parts and finally get through the steep part of the learning curve of software development which anybody listening, if you're in that field, you know, it's hard to get started and then at one point things start to make sense and it snowballs. That's been a good result of that. But yeah, now I would say the problem is me struggling internally with do I quit what I do, which is sales in my day job and do I put all of that into this business? Which I think being honest with the listeners and with you two, we've made a niche product. We know that we're never going to be $100 million recurring revenue company. That wasn't our intention. My intention was to create subscription revenue that I could live on. And what my buddy and I constantly talk about is we want to purchase our time back from the world. I want freedom and it doesn't mean riches. I have no like hobbies that are very expensive. I have no grand desires to go spend money. You know, what I want is to not have to set an alarm every night.

Yeah, that's good.

So that's kind of what we're going for. And we think in the neighborhood of $20,000 recurring business, which is not that much money for a small business. But when you have the kind of margins we have, we could get there very quickly and then live on less than. Let's say we lived on 8k gross. I mean, that's a tiny amount. There's plenty of small business owners out there that are like, I want to be a millionaire. I'm like, more power to you, man. I just don't want to have a boss.

And I commend you. It's just a great place to start because in my experience I found that the folks that are constantly focused on the million part are the ones that have the most trouble either getting started or in case you're building a software, actually be launching with a product that you could sell. You could stay in development mode forever. Those small steps are great. The service, it's pretty broad, right? For any type of service industry or is it primarily in that appliance space?

Well, I think that it does apply. This is one of the things that my partner and I go Back and forth on. He believes that our service is streamlined for appliance repair and there are certain aspects of it that lend to that sort of workflow where it's same day appointments, cash on delivery, AKA somebody has to go and assess a problem before they can tell you how much it's going to cost. Right. Like I don't know what's wrong until I see it. And so you know, we go back and forth on that but you know we have a subscription capability in there, we've got credit card processing built in there, we've got the ability to set recurring appointments and things. So yeah, if you're a, if you're pest control, if you're lawn care, if you're pool cleaning, if you're something that's a every other week type of service, I think it's pretty perfect for you and it's all mobile first. So we have a lot of people that are just rolling around with an iPad and they are the sole proprietor of their little business and I think it works well for them. So to me it applies. He I'm not sure has drank that Kool Aid fully. And so that sales and marketing type, like we have limited budget, where are we going to apply that bat? Right. Where are we going to put the wood behind? And so we've got two campaigns on AdWords. One is more generic if you're service business, check this out. The other is very highly focused on appliance repair and so we get leads from both and we'll just see which one kind of takes off. Right?

Yeah. So is that where your main marketing is focused right now? The AdWords and the search, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. We are, if it's, if it's outbound marketing it's going to be AdWords. We of course maintain our mailing list of people who've hit the site or our customers and you know, we do the mailchimp thing to keep in touch with our base as well as try and get people that maybe have checked it out but didn't quite take the plunge to give it a second look and then word of mouth, you know, I, as I said, I do sales in my daily life and so I know the power of the profit. Right. I tell people that I'm selling me and I'm selling sort of the same thing that religion sells. I'm selling a message, you're the champion.

Right?

Yeah. And then people, I kind of baptize people into our way of thinking, if you will and people become zealots and they become really Excited about the technology. And those people are worth more than gold. Right. One of those guys bring you 50 accounts. And so we do everything in our power to, you know, encourage those people, support those people, bend over backwards for those people. Because that's really your salesforce is your references.

Yeah, for sure. Well, as someone, you know, I use contractors all the time for my personal, my business life. And you know, I gotta tell you, there's millions of these folks out there running their company on a spiral notebook that have a hard time absolutely keeping appointments. And I mean reliability is, you know, just tremendously challenging with contractors. The over commit, don't wait, you know, have a hard time managing. So I think it's actually a huge market for you guys to, to bring, you know, order to the chaos that I think most of these guys live in.

I do want to say one thing though, because I know we have a lot of listeners that are at that point in their business where, where they' running on the spiral notebook. There's nothing wrong with starting there. That is not guaranteed failure or anything. In fact, it's a fine path to success. Just know that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, you've got to migrate past the spiral notebook.

That's all. Yeah, you know what? I absolutely, you're absolutely right. I certainly don't want anyone listening to take that as a disparaging remark. It's wonderful if you are starting and doing something for yourself. My wife recently started her own business. The 28th of this month she should receive her license from the state. So it is a, you know, something that they have to come and kind of evaluate you. I don't want to get too specific, but I'm very proud of her. And she's doing it all literally. She's writing policies and procedures and stuff in a spiral notebook. I kid you not. But you know, you're right. Once you, you can't replicate yourself ever. People think they can. They think with good training and good, you know, you know, whatever, a workbook or some sort of recipe to follow that they could just reproduce themselves. And that's never going to happen. Right. Like you are the magic sauce of your business. What you have to do is learn to sort of let go. You have to be able to trust people that you hire to do what you hired them to do and just that. And if they grow beyond that, wonderful. But if they don't, don't ever be disappointed. You hired an accountant to account for your revenue, not to run your operations, you know, so, sure, yeah, tools are important. Is kind of the way, I think. And my buddy, clearly he ran 10 trucks and three people in the office on pen and paper. Good for him. He was making a lot of money.

Yeah, he started. The key thing is, I think we all would agree is the start right? There's no barriers in front of you. You just get out there and start doing it. And slowly, over time, try to automate and get it in some kind of database or accounting software is a step in the right direction. So looking back at those kinds of things, this whole development process, how long did it take you guys to really get the software to the point where you're comfortable bringing in your first customers?

Man, it feels like forever. So, so this was another point of contention, I think about, let me see. We started in, I think April, and by December I was pushing on him hard. I was pushing him to get people on the phone, you know, you know, all these people, you've met all these people, tell him to try it, Tell them to give it a look. You know, as a, as a software guy, I'm a big believer in fail fast. And I wanted people to tell me if I was spending my time wastefully, right? Or if I was actually pursuing real solutions to real problems that they had. And so I was like, just get people to start trying. And he was like, it's not ready, it's not ready. And so I think there was a good year there where we went back and forth and customers came, people came, tried it, liked it, signed up, started paying, but they had bug reports and can you add this? And well, how do I do this? And you know what I mean? It's a work in process. But I mean, one of the greatest nuggets of wisdom from that crazy founder I was mentioning earlier, fail fast, Agile Scrum, there's all these words for it. The point is, ask the question, does anybody want this? Right? And you have to go find those people and then you have to be willing to change and adapt to what they're telling you. Because the difference is if they say, no, I don't want that, you have a bad idea, you have an idea that's not going to fly. But if they say, well, it's good, but what about this and this and this? That's like the hook, right? That's when you have somebody on the line, they're willing to spend their time giving you feedback about your business. And people don't realize how very, very valuable that is. Your time is the only thing you can't print more of, right? So to Me, my time is infinitely valuable, and that's why I say my goal is to purchase that back from the world, because right now I have to trade my time for money.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we are. We are right there with you, man.

Well, we always say that starting a small business or starting any business, frankly, means trading your freedom for flexibility. And that's what you're talking about here, is you want to buy that flexibility back.

Yeah, I want it back.

Yeah, absolutely.

Most people. Yeah, most people are some of the hardest, you know, working people in the world are small business owners, and we have a ton of respect for them. That's why we do this show. And, you know, I always joke, you know, these are the folks that are willing to work 80 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours a week, you know, for somebody else. But it's a big difference. You know, you get to, you know, adjust and work where and kind of when you want often. And, you know, that's a huge thing.

You guys are right on it, because all these guys, me included, like, if I had recurring revenue or didn't have to work, I'd still work. Of course, I do it because I enjoy building. I enjoy the problem solving. This is my crossword puzzle. Like, small business is my New York Times Sunday edition crossword puzzle. I'm going to do it because I like doing it, but I don't want to have to do it. Right. And that's kind of mentally, once I get there, I will think, that's success. That's what equals success.

Yeah. And I always joke around, having done some physical labor when I was a kid, you know, and moved wheelbarrows full of cement and rocks and things, I'm like, that's work. Sitting here like this today and talking and coding and working on the computer, marketing and doing ads and building your website. You could argue, yes, it's taking your time, but hopefully you enjoy it, and it just spurs you along, and it's not.

I did half a day of irrigation in the summer in the south when I was in high school. Half a day, and I was all it takes.

Check the box. Huh?

Yeah, it's perfect. It's perfect.

Yeah. So, you know, we're big fans of mistakes on the show in the sense that they. They teach us so much. And I'm speaking for myself because I've made so many over the years. You know, what's the best mistake that you think you've made during this process that really taught you something, you know, valuable?

The Biggest mistake, I think, is I was naive to believe other people are me. They think like me, they see the world like me. And I thought this particularly about my partner. I love him. He is a brother to me. We've been fast friends for many years, and we're not the kind of people that's gonna let a business break us. I would walk away from it if it would cost me my friendship because he's more important to me as a friend. But because we're so close, I thought he could naturally get inside my head and just see the world the way I see the world. And even after over a decade of friendship, we're different people. And I think every business owner needs to know that the other things are driving the people that you're working with and the customers that come and find and use your service or do business with you. And you have to suspend what you want and really get inside their head. What does he want? How do I motivate this person to either pay me money for my service or to keep working hard when there is no money building this business? And for a long time I just kept saying, come on, man, you can do this. It's so easy. It's so obvious. And he was just like, you're a sucky teacher. I was like, I'm not a teacher. I'm building a company. I'm not. You know, it's a different job. So anyway, that was a big. Yeah.

That, Tyler, that is so insightful. Because I think that when we don't remember that, especially if we're kind of hard charging starters and trying to get things done and create our own reality, you really can, you know, bang your head against the wall thinking, you know, I don't get it.

Why.

Why are they not like this? You know? So that. That is a really an excellent lesson. That's really good.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

It's a hard lesson. It's a lesson that we all learn. I certainly learned the hard way and many times over, in fact. And I'm sure I'll learn it again because I always just assume, like, all right, great. We're together. We're running down this path. We're building this. Whatever thing it is we're building. Of course you see the world the way that I do. And no, in fact, it's not how it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course you'll be working at 10 o' clock at night while I am, you know, sitting on the couch, you know, typing away. And, yeah, that's really good. And I'm glad you reminded us of that. So. So I. I think I know the answer to this based on what you were saying earlier. You know, we talk about measurements of success, you know, in small business, you know, cash is king, of course, but we all have our own measurements. And, you know, how we measure the success of our business. What's beyond the cash and the revenue? What's your measure of success for your business and your journey here?

Certainly, every time a customer thanks me for, oh, my goodness, this is so much easier. This is so much simpler. Any sort of positive feedback is a big accolade, and, I don't know, it doesn't mean the world to everyone, but it means a lot to me. It fills me up in a kind of spiritual way, I guess, that I feel good. I did that, I made that, and I'm proud of being able to solve problems for people. To me, success is hearing that feedback and watching companies that use my product grow and thinking that I contributed to their success in some way. It's not truly just about the dollars. What we're after is the time we want our time back, but, you know, through the time to kind of do it in a constructive way. Right. Not to derail the show, but the kind of landscape of the world in the past few years, I think, has been very destructive in certain aspects. And so I'm looking to kind of inject a little bit of positivity in whatever micro way I can.

Yeah.

And, you know, I just want to. I want to keep, you know, I got a small kid. You guys may have kids, other business owners have kids. And I don't want her to inherit what I see right now, you know, I want her to inherit, you know, hope and, you know, optimism. Got it. So for me, that. That's a driving force, for sure. Yeah.

I mean, that's why we do this show is. Is, you know, get kind of molding and giving back, as in. In our own. Like you said, that the smallest way possible. Not that we intend it to be that, but it's just, you know, this just whatever we can do is great.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that. Attaboy, you know, it means a lot.

It does. Yeah. I always try to tell our listeners this, that even when we get just a note that says, hey, I don't have a question to ask, I don't have a complaint to lodge, just say, thanks for the show, that means a ton. Because you don't usually get that. You usually get the, hey, I have a problem, or, you know, and it's not always bad, but it's rarely do you get that. And so it's nice when. When that comes in and. And you can. And it's okay to go and look for those things. Like you said, finding the customer that's just stoked about the way the product works, it's like, oh, that's killer. Awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he spent. He spent his time. He opened his wallet of time, and he spent, you know, five minutes or whatever typing something out, and that's. That's infinitely valuable to that person.

It's infinite. Totally.

So I really respect and appreciate that. And I. And personally, I try and do that in business as well. I try and take time to write letters of happiness, whoever I work with.

Yeah, well, you get to your point about whatever state the world is in. I always say to people, listen, yep, there's all kinds of crazy stuff, and you can pick the stuff you like and the stuff you hate, but every day, there's one person that impacts your day more than anyone else, and it's you. And so you get to pick and choosing to do those happy things because not only is it nice for somebody else, but it kind of puts you in the right state, the right frame of mind.

Definitely does. Definitely.

Yeah. It opens yourself up to good things, that's for sure.

Yep. You got to let the charmed life in, man.

You got it. Yeah, that's it. And you need to remind yourself of all the things that are going on. You know, we talk about the success list here on the show a lot. We've got a blog post up on BusinessShow Co where we just kind of list out how you need to remember. Remember all these things that you're successful at, even if they're just very little, especially as business owners, because you don't really hear it that often from your. You certainly may not hear from your employees. It's human nature to kind of complain more than to make a positive comment. I like your take on. I think as business owners that have gone through this process, we are more apt to leave positive comments and to give an attaboy to that. That person that maybe gets ignored. I think that's. That's really good.

Huge, man. Yeah. You never know. You could be the difference in someone's life. You know, it. I get down just like everybody gets down. And it's. It's hard, you know, when. When you're building a business, you're in a foxhole. Everywhere you look is mud. Just mud everywhere.

Yeah, you're right.

The war is going on. It's just mud. And you have no concept of the success of the war that you're waging. So.

Right.

You know, and often you feel by yourself.

You're by yourself. Like, no one's ever been through this before like this. And really, we all have. And that's, again, the impetus for us to be here today is to share that information. So, you know, our target, our demographic is the person, you know, sitting there late at night, needing help and finds the show and starts listening and they go, wow, these guys have been through the same thing. I'm going, I'm not alone. You know? Yeah.

Yes, we have. Yes, we have. And you can do it. Whoever you are listening, you can do it. You are doing it. That's great.

Very cool. Well, we love hearing the story of you and Field Harmony. What's the best way for folks to find more about your service? To sign up and spend a little of that time that you mentioned earlier?

Absolutely. Fieldharmony.com spelled like it sounds. No hyphens, no underscores, anything weird. Just fieldtoharmony.com nice little marketing page that I was looking at before the show and need to maybe refresh one more thing on the list to do. But free trials abound for us. Sign up and start using it instantly. There's no, you know, you don't have to confirm anything with us. I should probably trap people a little more. But we don't. We just, you know, boom, and you're in and you start using it. So I'd be happy to hear feedback from anybody, positive or negative about it. It just. I get to a point where I don't know which way to go. Right. And choosing is refusing. So when you're seeing a bunch of paths, you gotta, you know, it's all the ones you're not going to take that you spend your time thinking about.

That's good. Well, we have a. We have an appliance repair guy coming on the show in a few weeks and we'll definitely get to point him your way. And we'll also feature up on. Yeah. Up on the website and at BusinessShow Co Facebook. You can jump into the small business support group and we're going to feature you in there as well. But thanks again for hanging out with.

Us today, you guys.

It was.

It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thanks, Tyler. Folks, as Shannon said, find us, find our small business support group over on Facebook@businessshow co Facebook and keep living that charmed life we'll see you over there. Have a great week.

Take care, everybody.

Thanks. Tyler.

Sam.