Ep 001 - How it All Started

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozik and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Welcome to the first episode of Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. My name is John Bedrosian, and with me is Beth Dodson. Sometimes you'll hear me refer to her as Elizabeth, so she goes by Beth or Elizabeth Dodson. And we are extremely excited about sharing knowledge about what it takes to be a homeowner and all the different facets of how homeowners can take different strategies to save money, save time, be better organized around managing what for most is their largest financial asset and biggest expense. In today's episode, we're going to share a little bit of background about our both entrepreneurial journey as well as our journey as homeowners. And be able to share that with you. So with that, can you go ahead and introduce yourself, Elizabeth?

Thank you, John. My name is Beth Dodson. I'm one of the co-hosts of this show, Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, and also a co-founder of HomeZada. And we'll get a little bit more into that in a little bit. But with that, I want to tell you a little bit about how I came to be an entrepreneur at HomeZada. And that started where I grew up. I grew up in the state of Maryland. It is on the East Coast, and I received my business administration degree from a local college there, as well as my MBA, also from a college in Maryland. And with that said, out of college, I started working for a financial organization, specifically in the mortgages industry, and it helped me understand more about what homeowners need in terms of their lending needs. Whether they needed a refinance, whether they needed a loan for the first time they bought a house, whether they needed a loan for a brand new home, or whether they needed equity loans for their home improvement projects or some other expense that they needed to use the equity in their home. So it gave me the first-time experience of understanding what homeowners need. From there, I then found an opportunity within the technology space and specifically the hardware side of technology, working with software companies specifically in the commercial construction industry. With that said, I was then given an opportunity to go from the hardware side to the software side, working for a company called Meridian Systems that John actually started with another co-founder many years ago. And he'll talk about his journey on how that started. But Meridian was the world's leader in commercial construction project management software. Yeah. Software. So if you think about managing all the large capital projects like stadiums, like school districts, tollway authorities, and the roadways, or whether it's bridges and/or any other type of building you can see that commercial construction would erect, then our product at Meridian was probably used there. It was during that time that I said I needed to take on a different responsibility for managing my own home. But we're going to get to that in a minute. My roles at Meridian were focused on business development and specifically partner management and partner sales, a role that I love dearly at the Meridian organization. I— once we started HomeZada, I then took those roles into the new company as well as roles in marketing, any additional customer engagement because I represent the customers. So I am also the Chief Customer Officer here at Meridian, excuse me, at HomeZada. In regards, I'm confusing all the companies because they kind of roll together, but I'm also the Chief Customer Officer here at HomeZada. And that is why I am engaged with the partners, but also the marketing side, because I want to make sure I'm addressing the homeowners who use our products as well as the partners that use our products. And with that said, I'd like John to tell you about the Meridian journey and his background in his career because it lends itself to the Humzada story and why we're here today at Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast.

Great. Thank you, Elizabeth. Yes, I got a degree in mechanical engineering from a small school in northern Indiana, and we'll save that maybe for a future episode. But my first job out of college was in the construction project management industry where I worked for a company called Turner Construction, which is one of the largest commercial contractors in the US. And I got exposed to what I call the business of how large-scale commercial construction projects get put together. So I was stationed in Los Angeles and I got to see how high-rises got put together, hospitals. These buildings were, you know, $50 million, $100 million, $200 million projects. And it's quite the orchestra of lots of different architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors who all come together. Uh, to build these great, um, new buildings. And, um, from there, I end up leaving Turner, went to go work for a small consulting organization, which is essentially working for the opposite of who Turner was, uh, working for, which is what we refer to as the owner. So, one of their big clients was Kaiser Permanente, which is a large hospital chain. Um, and I got to sit in essentially representing Kaiser's interest in the construction process. Yeah. So I got to learn both the contractor side as well as the owner side. And then my entrepreneurial journey started during my career at both Turner and this other consulting company. I met a business colleague and he came to me and said, you know what, John, you've got a lot of great experience of how these big construction projects get put together. He was always interested in starting a software company and he said, you know what, maybe are you interested in starting a software company? And I was still early in my career and I said, you know what, why not? It sounds like a good idea. I learned a lot about the business process over how these construction projects got put together. I had— I was frustrated in my job of not having kind of a database to kind of manage all this information.

That's right.

You were doing everything with paper, right?

Yeah, I'm dating myself, but yeah, absolutely paper. And for those of you who know, like the birth of spreadsheets and Windows, this was even pre-internet. So you can tell by the gray in my goatee in terms of what age range I'm talking about here. But, uh, yeah, started a software company, uh, turned into a company called Meridian Project Systems or Meridian Systems. We went through a rebrand, um, and it was basically a project management system that helped homeowner— I mean, sorry, builders, commercial builders and owners manage these large-scale construction projects. And it was a fantastic journey because we bootstrapped it, um, personal savings, credit card debt, total entrepreneurial journey. Um, we—

Lots of fun people working with us.

Absolutely. Hired— the key to entrepreneurship is hiring people smarter than you.

Without a doubt.

You guys will figure that out as we continue our journey down this podcast. But the company raised corporate venture, raised venture capital, grew into a global business, became the market leader. It was a fantastic journey. And then, we were fortunate to actually sell to a public company who was very interested in what we were doing. And then, I got a chance to work for that public company for 4 years. And then, passionate entrepreneur, decided to join you and our other co-founder in starting Homesada. And so, yeah, that's been my career journey. We'll talk a little bit more about sort of the—

What do you do at Homesada, by the way?

What do I do at Homesada? That's a darn good question. So, my primary job, I'd say, is product strategy, product marketing, which is essentially identifying the problem that consumers have and then trying to figure out how to build a product, both user interface and business logic, that would actually solve that problem for the consumer, and then communicate that to our other co-founder, who's the technical genius who actually writes the code and turns it into product. The other part of my role is to support you on the business development and sales and marketing aspects of getting the word out about what Homesada does. And then, given my previous experience at the other company, I'd also raised funding, so I deal with the finance and the legal and the fundraising process of going out and finding investors. But one thing I wanted to go back to you on, Elizabeth, is why don't you tell us what your first home was? Oh, and a little bit about—

it's amazing because I look at home prices today and I'm super surprised. So I purchased my first home when I was 25. I remember that it was like a driven goal. And I had— because I was working for that mortgage company, that enticed me to want to do this even more. And with that said, I actually was able to buy a home in Maryland a long time ago for $103,000. It was amazing. It was wonderful. I loved it. But one of the things I realized when owning a home is that once you buy a home and you're in your 20s and you want to go have fun with all your friends, there's a risk of Not understanding how to care for your home, but also there's this risk that you have no more money to go hang out with your friends. So what can you do to solve some of those problems? And, uh, John remembers this because, uh, we were talking back then as well, is I had roommates to help fund my mortgage so I could still have the opportunity to go out with my friends, and yet I was not managing any of the funds coming in or going out with regards to my home. And it was not an easy situation because I also overspent on a lot of decorating projects during the time, which was really frustrating. And then furthermore, I still had my home in Maryland when I moved to California, and This also pre-internet, so we're dating ourselves a little bit. Um, managing renters from 3,000 miles away was really difficult and really challenging because the homes were different on both coasts, different weather patterns, different challenges. And I'm also trying to work in my career, and it was just a lot of tasks that I needed to make sure I was figuring out. And a lot of quirky things happen in houses. And so I remember working with my, um, my renters at the time, and there was this one little GFI that was kind of wonky in my house that I had to walk them through this process of just making sure that they pushed the button at a particular time, because sometimes it would shut down other things in the house. But They wouldn't know that if they couldn't get me on the phone. And I could have simply just replaced the GFI. And for some reason, I don't know why I didn't, but, um, it was just a very quirky, kludgy, hard process of managing the home from afar, but also not understanding what I needed to do to manage that home in the first place, both financially and also the task I had to do it. And So, John, you also bought your first home pretty young. So what was that story like for you?

Yeah, for me, uh, I was, uh, probably 4 or 5 years into starting Meridian Systems, which was the project management software company. And, um, I had gotten out of debt because I had gotten into significant debt in terms of trying to launch that business.

Um, which enabled you the ability to buy a home, right?

Exactly. And so, um, I ended up buying— I think it was like a 1960s-style rancher in a suburban neighborhood. Um, and I had no idea what it took to be a homeowner, but it was the thing to do, right? Everybody else was doing it. I felt like I was tired of paying rent, decided to become a homeowner, and I learned a tremendous amount through error, right? Things were breaking, things were— I was— had no idea what preventative maintenance was. I had no idea about any of these things. Um, and so it was a great experience. And yeah, it was at the time when Meridian was growing, and Beth and I actually worked together at the previous company with Meridian. And as that company was growing, you know, it got to maybe 100 employees, maybe it got even up to 200 employees, and we're kind of growing. And I'd like maybe you to share with our audience today, Elizabeth, how did you come up with the idea for Homesata? Because I know you came up with that idea while you were working at Meridian. And I think it's both interesting in terms of the pains that you were experiencing of being a homeowner at the time, as well as the analogy of what you saw when you were doing your role at Meridian.

Sure. So I just explained some of the pains I was experiencing because I was managing 2 different homes, because at this point, One Step I'm from Maryland, but I moved to California. And so now I'm dealing with 2 homes, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast. And I am dealing with renters. I'm dealing with market conditions because I'm like, when is it the right time to sell my house in Maryland? Or do I sell my house in Maryland? I'm also looking at the maintenance activities. How am I making sure everything is getting done? And then I'm also looking at ways to understand all the nuances from one geographic location that I lived in, which has 4 traditional seasons, and then moving to another geographical location, and it doesn't quite have 4 traditional seasons. It has probably 2 with a couple weeks of a 3rd and a 4th kind of in there a little bit. So how do I actually manage all that? How do I manage the lack of rain that we have in California versus the rain that is continuous in Maryland? All these different issues were really frustrating to me. In addition to that, I must have had documents in probably 7 to 10 different locations within my house about my house.

And so the data is scattered everywhere.

Oh, everywhere. And I was so frustrated. Where is it? Why can't I find it? Oftentimes I'd be at the office or I'd be traveling for work that I'd need the information to coordinate with an insurance company or contractor or something. But it's in paper form in my house and it would drive me crazy because I would always have to wait.

Aren't you a spreadsheet queen?

I love spreadsheets, but at the same time, spreadsheets don't give you good reporting.

Yeah.

And I love good reporting. And, um, at the same time, I also had physical photos of, of the property that I had, both properties, and they were shoved in a corner in an attic. And I was like, I don't even look at these. And if anything were to happen to my house, then I would be at risk of losing all the data about my house. For instance, if there was a fire, then I wouldn't even have that physical data about my house because it's in 7 different locations. In my house, which is just ridiculous if you ask me. But at the same time, I was also, um, trying to figure out when my maintenance was happening and when I need to do it again. And full disclosure, John is my husband, and so—

Really?

So we would argue over maintenance tasks. It's just— this is just the silliest thing to argue over. It's just not even worth arguing over. But it's when did we last do it? Did we last do it? Who did it? Who's going to do it? And I was like, this is just crazy town. There's got to be a better way to manage all this. And because I worked at Meridian, which was a commercial construction project management software company—

That says a lot.

It does say a lot. It's a lot, but it explains exactly what it does. And when you're managing commercial projects, as you know, There's a lot of teams, a lot of people, a lot of details, a lot of paper, data everywhere, budgets, costs that you have to manage that has a similar approach to a house.

So why don't you share the aha moment?

Oh, I was at, um, it was one of my customers and we sold products around the world and I was at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium. when it was being constructed, a billion-dollar stadium, beautiful. If you haven't been there, it's gorgeous.

Jerry World.

Jerry World is gorgeous. Um, but it was at that time when I said, enough is enough. There's got to be a solution to help you manage your home. And I was so frustrated that I would complain to everyone in the office, including my husband, about a better way to do this. And not thinking we were going to start another company.

You were just complaining.

Yeah, I was just complaining because there's got to be a better way. And I actually searched for products out there that could help me actually manage all the details about my house and accomplish it, and I couldn't find anything. And this went on for years. So lo and behold, I did not know this, but John Because he got sick of, I guess, hearing me complain. We're gonna hear that in a second. But he got sick of hearing me complain. So he started kind of mocking up some ideas about what I was talking about. And I'd like you to share that experience of what you started doing behind the scenes, because maybe you were sick of hearing me complain.

That's a little bit of it. But candidly, it's sort of, I do remember that business trip when you came back from the Dallas Cowboys Stadium project and you were like, Why can we manage a billion-dollar stadium and I can't even manage the details of my own home? And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, great idea, but get back to work. We got more software to sell, right? Whatever, right? And so, um, same thing. Fast forward a few years, we were fortunate to sell the company and we were working for this public company and it was a great experience. But for me personally, I think I realized that I was a passionate entrepreneur. I really enjoyed that process of starting Meridian. identifying a problem. Can we develop software to help our customers manage these projects? Building a business around it, creating jobs, helping our customers save money. That whole journey of being a startup entrepreneur, I became basically in love with it. And I was like, okay, this was— we sold the company and we can continue to grow it. But I think my real passion was doing another startup. And so, I started thinking about what could be a good idea to do another startup. And I hearkened back to the days when you were telling me about basically your frustration about the data about our house is scattered everywhere. And I started going, you know what, you're right. I don't even know where the data is about our house. It's scattered everywhere. I know you have got like this color-coded file system that I'm not even allowed access to about where all the data is. And I'm thinking, where is all this information? Why isn't there a simple app to kind of manage all that data? So I started doing the same thing. I started trying to find research over, is there a product already out in market that could help us as homeowners? Found really nothing there. Then I started researching, okay, how big is this market? I started talking to friends who are homeowners. How do you manage the data about the house? Again, same answers. They all have the same problems. Um, I started realizing that the homeowner market is like 120 million homeowners in the United States.

A lot of people.

And, and that's just in the United States. When you look at international countries that have a well-developed, uh, real estate single-family home market, it really grows into a much bigger opportunity. And then I said to ourselves, myself, was if we're going to do another startup, it's got to be something that creates value for the end customer. And it's got to be something that's got a big enough market opportunity to kind of get our juices going as entrepreneurs to kind of start something. And once I figured out the problem and the size of the market, I started basically creating mockups, doing my product strategy bit, which is, okay, where is a home inventory and where are all the, how can I structure an app to manage all the photos? documents about the house and the fact that we were arguing over maintenance and who needs to do maintenance and when, and when does it need to be done. And like, why isn't there a calendar that just reminds you of how to do all that stuff? So I started mocking all that stuff up, and that was kind of my initial journey over leveraging your idea about, or your problem, which is the frustration about the data being everywhere, and trying to think about, can we solve that by building an app? So that was about it in terms of it. Oh, one other sort of side bit. I'd say, well, you could tell the story about how I approached you and said, I think that there's an opportunity here and maybe we should quit our jobs.

All right. Yeah. So he did approach me and he said, I think there's a big opportunity here and we should quit our jobs. We've got this entrepreneurial spirit and let's go build the product that you want and you believe that other homeowners also need. I've done some research. Let me show you what I've been doing. And I was like, what? Where did this come from? And he literally had this full-on document, and it was big, that he'd been working on. He did some mock-ups using PowerPoint, and he was showing me how he would make the product work and how it was interconnected and what that looks like for a homeowner on how to manage all the data about their house. And what kinds of reports we can actually get by using this data. And I was just so just floored.

I was just flabbergasted.

Oh my, I was flabbergasted. Like, I didn't know what to do because we both work really, really long hours and really hard at the Meridian Company, and we do the same at our current company, Hamazada. But I was like, where did you find the time?

And I'm a workaholic.

He is a workaholic. And I was like, What are you doing? And he he proceeds to tell me, well nights, weekends, you know on vacations. And I'm like, okay, we're busy on vacations, but it's it he just likes to tinker. And so lo and behold, we had this huge document, and he said we should do this. At first, I thought it was crazy, but it wasn't until I read the document that I realized that he's really serious about this. And I did my own research. Found out that there is a big market opportunity for homeowners, but there was also still a really big need for homeowners because we need to do that. Now, the next step was if we're going to do this, we had to change our lifestyle a little bit, but also we need someone to develop the product because the two of us don't do development.

Yeah, absolutely. This kind of gets back into the inception story where it was, you know, I look at Beth as kind of the voice of the customer, right? She was the one managing the data about the home. I came up with sort of the idea. We needed a third co-founder to basically convert it all into magic. So we basically worked with somebody who was our CTO at our previous company, David, and he thought about the idea and wanted to join us. And so really, Homesada is built on the 3 of us, 3 co-founders, all with complementary skills, all staying in our sort of lanes, all worked together previously. So we had a great experience of understanding how we would work together as startup entrepreneurs. Maybe I'd like to change gears a little bit, Elizabeth, and head towards the why did we decide to launch the Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast?

That's a great question. So we actually had some conversations internally within the organization of HomeZada, but also with some other organizations that are experienced at producing podcasts. And so they thought that this would be a great topic for other people who need the knowledge or looking for knowledge on how to better manage their homes from all aspects— the financial aspects, the task aspects, um, working with all the different vendors and companies they have to work with within their organization, in their home management— excuse me, in their home management of their home. And then also looking for helping people out on getting prepared for those people who are considering buying a home. So a lot of renters today are considering buying a home, or younger individuals, and they don't understand what they need to do once they buy that home. So how do they get into one? How do they buy one? And then when they buy it, what happens To the tasks that they need to perform and the house itself, and how do they maintain that value? So we want to— we felt that starting a podcast like BS Modern Homeowner Podcast was the perfect strategy to help homeowners and those interested in home buying, and even investors who own multiple homes, understand how to better manage them. with the right resources, both from our experience and our customers' experience and the people we know, but also to have guests come on our podcast and also share their knowledge specifically in their domain and lane so that they can be— they can provide tips to all the different homeowners out there. Because there's so many different types of homeowners And with that said, John, why don't you talk about the homeowner journey and the types of homeowners that we encounter? Because it is so very diverse.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So as we, we've been in the HomeZada business for a couple of years now and we've got lots of customers signing up and using it. And essentially what we learned is everybody goes through a journey of homeownership, right? It's the journey of buying your first home. You know, getting a mortgage, finding the right house where you're going to live, you know, and then it's the journey of being that first-time homeowner and of learning what it takes to manage and maintain it. And then you may improve it. And then people end up in the United States on average living in a home between 5 to 7 years. And then some life event triggers and then it sort of, you know, you move into a second or third home. Obviously, everybody has a different sort of life decisions over how many homes they're going to end up living in in their life. But it's the journey that never ends, and it's the journey that has lots of sort of issues around it, which is there's a whole bunch of content we're going to get into a little bit about what we're going to explore in our podcast in terms of future content. But going back to your original question, when we think as a snapshot of who is a homeowner today, it fits so many different demographics. It fits the millennials who are buying their first home. It fits the Gen X who may be on their second or third home. It fits the boomers who may be are deciding to buy a vacation home, or maybe they own their largest home that they're going to ever own just because they've got, you know, teenage children and they need a bigger home. You've got people who are even seniors who are looking at either downsizing or aging in place. So from a generational perspective, we basically have at least 4 generations of homeowners today. And it goes back to sort of the type of home is radically different also, right?

Yes.

I mean, there are condominiums in urban areas, there are townhomes, which was Your first home. There's single-family homes. There are wealthy people that have you know estates where they have multiple structures on those homes. There are people like you said that are buying multiple homes for rental income, and they're managing their small little portfolio. There are people that are professionally flipping these things. There's so many different you know styles of homes. Obviously, there's the new homeowner. I just bought a brand new home from a builder versus I'm buying a home that's twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years old that needs lots of renovations. It's kind of fixer-upper. So. Really, our podcast is going to touch upon all these different sort of what I call market segmentations or micro segments of the different types of homeowners depending on where you are in the journey. And we've got such a vast array of content that we think we can explore. And maybe that's kind of a segue to you, Elizabeth, maybe answering this question for our audience, which is, can you give them a preview over the types of content that we might be covering in our future episodes of our podcast?

Yes, I can. So, uh, one of the things that we want to talk about is how to better manage your home and what does that look like. So let's drill down into that a little bit. A lot of our insurance organizations tell us to get a home inventory. Why do we want to do that and why is it valuable and what are the purposes for it and how do you do it? And then the second thing is we want to look at the maintenance of your home. A well-cared-for home is a really valuable home, but it's also safe And healthy as well. It has an impact on not only your family and their lifestyles, but also the finances of managing your home. So that's also important. Managing projects, you know, understanding what kinds of projects can add value to your home, how to do that, how to interact with contractors or not to interact with contractors.

To DIY or not to DIY.

Some people love DIY. Some people, it's not your best interest to DIY. So I'm just going to put that out there as well. I'm not always a DIYer. I leave it to the experts. So the other thing to keep in mind is the overall finances. The home is one of our largest expenses. We spend approximately 33% of our annual income on our homes based on documentation from the Consumer Expenditures Reports. And that number tends to keep growing. And we want to make sure that homeowners understand how they can manage those finances, but also manage the value of their home long term, because homes can be leveraged as a retirement— part of your retirement portfolio. So that's really important. We want to bring in experts in a variety of industries. I just talked to you about insurances and finances, but also bring in people in estate planning and financial management. Bring in folks on the remodeling side and the repair side, as well as preventative side of managing a home. Bring in people who are every type of service provider that you can possibly imagine that service homeowners' homes across the country, because we do have different needs. Whether you're in Florida versus Minnesota, you're going to have different needs. Whether you're in California or Maryland, you're going to have different needs of your home. So we want to make sure that we bring in the experts that can address all of those aspects, and then also understanding when to buy, when to sell, how to engage with the right parties to help with that process, how to market your home, how to showcase your home, how to work with and find the best real estate agents for you in your region, and so on and so forth. But as you can imagine, the list can go on and on, and we are going to make sure that we have a lot of content for you. I think there's going to be a lot of questions by our audience, and it may drive some of the content, and we welcome that. So we're super excited to share our knowledge, uh, the knowledge we've heard from many of our customers and our partners, by the way, as well. And then also share our techniques and suggested techniques from ourselves and experts on how to better understand the nuances that you have in your home.

So safe to say there's a tremendous amount of content from both the consumer perspective as well as all of the different parties that they interact with in the home and all the— on how all those things come together from a financial perspective is— We've run out of words.

It's so complex.

We have a lot of ideas for future episodes. So there's not a lack of content where you're going to and make it super exciting for you, the audience. So with that, let's wrap up. And Elizabeth, why don't you close us out by telling us a little bit about what our next episode is planned for?

Oh yeah. So it's going to be super exciting. So we're going to actually talk to you about the concept of home management. A lot of people ask us about what is that concept. We're going to dive a little deeper into what that concept is so that you can better understand the, the tips and tricks that you can do to manage your home in its entirety. So I'm super excited about it. I can't wait to bring that information to you. For those of you who are on the phone, please share our podcast with anyone you think would find value in being the best homeowner they can be or being a smarter homeowner. And then also, by all means, rate us, like us, share us on all of the different podcast platforms that we will be on. And we're excited And we invite you to join us in the next episode.

Fantastic. Thank you for joining us on this episode, and we look forward to continuing the journey with you.

Thank you for listening to the Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. Visit beasmarterhomeowner.com to sign up for our newsletter and find out more about software to help you save time, save money, and manage your home.