How it all started with HomeZada

Hello. So, Beth, I'm Beth with HomeZada. I'm one of the co-founders of HomeZada. I'm off to a big event tonight, and I haven't talked to you guys in a long time. And I wanted to share the story, how it all started. A lot of people ask me, why HomeZada? Why do you want to do this kind of— track all this kind of information about your house? And I'll tell you a bit about the story. So, I was working at a company called Meridian Systems, which many people have— many people are familiar, but if you're not, Meridian Systems is, or was, the leading commercial construction project management software in the world. And what that means is it was helping manage all of the data about major construction sites. And so if you think about the largest buildings in the world, like the Burj or some buildings in Shanghai, even the major casinos in the US, as well as the airports and stadiums, they used our solution, Meridian Systems Prolog or Proliance, to manage all of the data about those particular project sites. And it was anything from contract data to financial data to communications, whether it's email, telephone transcripts, etc., to also the people that were on the job site, as well as the insurances and materials delivery, and a whole, whole lot of list of other things that was being managed. Because these job sites were very complicated, and in order to get these jobs completed on time and on, on under budget, or at least on budget, you needed to make sure you had data that you could see and manage. So basically, this project, this product, this software company was amazing. Just had a great time at this company and loved what we did and also products could do. So what that meant was we could help people manage these projects, and it was fabulous. So from that time, I started looking at the buildings and how they were being managed. And I was traveling a lot for work. I was super busy because I was working really long hours. And I also had moved from the East Coast to the West Coast. So I had had temporarily— I'd had a home on the East Coast and also trying to help manage my home on the West Coast. And I was learning that there were different nuances about where I was living. And that's Anywhere in this country. Certain parts of the country have 4 distinct seasons, certain parts do not. Certain parts of the country, um, the homes have basements. So I went from a basement-oriented environment to one that didn't have a basement. And then, um, what else? The materials were different. The, the contractors that I had on the East Coast, I clearly didn't have them on the West Coast. So I had to go find new contractors. But all the different nuances and the different things that I was learning was crazy. So I said, okay, that's the first challenge that I'm having. The second challenge that I'm having is I have very little time. How the heck can I manage all of the data about my house? Seriously, I was just overwhelmed. And in my house alone, at least the one in California, I had documents in five different locations in my house. Went what? So in one place, I had photographs of my house because I had built my house under construction and all my previous houses, and I loved them. And so I had all these pictures in a container in the corner in my attic. So it's like I wasn't even looking at them anyway, but there had to have been some value somewhere. Then. I had all of my contractors, their business cards, their forms, and everything else in a drawer inside my pantry or something like that, or cabinets, kitchen cabinets or something. I don't know. Tells you how much I knew about where all my data was. And I see Mike Dawson's with us. So is Anthony Will. Welcome to the party. But I also had What else did I have? I had those documents, photographs, and cards, and coupons, because sometimes I never even got a card. I just got a coupon of the contractor. But then the other thing that I had was real estate documents, project documents, construction documents, design documents, because I had used a designer for one thing. But I had all those documents in a separate location. So I'm up to 3 different locations. Then I had, my 4th location was, oh, I had all these different, um, uh, finishes. So I, I had, um, designed my house. I had also had some extra stuff lying around. And so I had all these samples and everything else in another drawer with all of the work orders in that drawer. And then I had documents somewhere else. Oh, that's right. I had actually initially created an inventory of my house using Excel. And I kept all of the receipts in folders that were labeled room by room. Yes, I am super organized, but I had all of these different folders in a drawer. And so I have all of this information in 5 locations in my house, and I'm like, seriously, there's got to be a better way to do this. So that was one area— the materials and the differences, living conditions from East Coast to West Coast, the multiple homes, which was Just crazy town. The different paperwork, that was something else I had to deal with. And then I had to deal with who was actually gonna take— perform the task of the maintenance. You know, just, just saying, I'm not gonna do it all. Okay, I just don't have the time. And, um, my husband and I were trying to figure out, well, who's gonna do this? Who are we gonna work with? And which one of us is going to take lead? And, um, we just kept talking to each other, and in some cases we were arguing over who's going to change air filters. And I said, seriously, this is such a waste of my time. So I started looking at how am I actually managing my time, because clearly I'm not managing it very well. And am I going to get everything done? Oh, I forgot to tell you this one. So This other situation happened. Can you tell my house is pretty important to me? But at the same time, I've seen it all. Excuse me, I'm coming up just coming off a cold. So moving to California, I didn't realize where I was living had a lot of hard water. And so brand new house, brand new hot water heater. I didn't know I had to flush it. You know, but my husband's from Northern California, so I just assumed he knew all this stuff. Whatever. Um, little did we know, my husband is definitely very experienced when it comes to project management and when it comes to software and stuff like that. But, um, not knowing all the details, he didn't know either. So after being in that brand new house, within 2 years I had to replace a hot water heater, all because neither one of us knew we had to flush the hot water heater to get all the sediment out. In order to do all this, and they pulled out the tray from a traditional hot water heater. Mm-hmm. Because that's what we had, and it was full of grime and dirt and nuances, and it was terrible. But what was even more terrible was the fact that I had to replace it so early on after I just bought it, because these hot water heaters should last between 10 and maybe even 15, 20 years. And I had to replace it within 2 years. And that was thousands of dollars that I unexpectedly had to come up with to pay for this. So now you hear me saying all these different nuances that I'm faced with, with my house. New seasons, new materials, new contractors, new documents, new, uh, maintenance tasks. It was just crazy town. And so I really value my time. I value, um, a dollar. I really do. And I also value the things that I own. I like to protect them. I like to, um, make sure they're operating really efficiently. I like to make sure that they're still in pristine working order. That's just who I am. I do it. Many people who know me, like, I'm super anal retentive, like, about my cars, and they look brand new after I've had them for 10 years. And it's the same thing with my house. I, I like to make sure it is still looking fresh and clean. And new as much as it can, knowing that houses do evolve and they do get dirty and we do have to keep maintenance on them. I get that. But how do I actually do all this? So during all of this time, I'm experiencing all these problems. I go back to Meridian and I go back to these products called Prologue and Proliance, which were phenomenal products. And I said, why can I not have a similar solution to Prolog and ProLiance that Meridian offers to actually help me manage my house? Clearly, I do not have a billion-dollar house. So the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and some others, these are billion-dollar projects. I do not have that complexity. I said, but how can I use a similar solution to help me manage my house? There's got to be other people out there that are suffering from the same thing that I'm suffering from. Who were looking to be more efficient, who were looking to be more scheduled, who were looking to be, um, just organized as it relates to the data about their health. And I looked, and I looked for 10 years. So I looked for 10 years, I don't see anything, and, um, now I've got to figure out what am I going to do. So I'm still managing everything via paper and I'm still managing everything via Excel documents. Then something else happens. Wait till you hear this one. I've had computers crash. I have had computers stolen while I'm doing something in a conference. So they were stolen right out of a car. I have had documents lost. I accidentally deleted documents on a laptop before. This is great. You know, I'm in the technology world but I've done all these things. And I have probably recreated my home inventory 4 to 5 times before I had HomeZada. And I was like, enough's enough. Enough is enough. And so, um, once again, the other thing that Meridian had was this solution called ProjectTalk, and it was a cloud-based solution before the cloud was very popular. It was way ahead of its time, and it was an amazing tool. And we had a lot of customers using it all around the world. And the whole premise was to gain access to the same property when you have multiple people on a project site who need access to this data, and they can do it from anywhere in the world. It's pretty simple. So that's kind of all the inspiration about HomeZada. And lo and behold, I was fortunate to have 2 co-founders who said, we think we can do this. Let's go build this and let's go talk to other people who may need the same solution. And as it turns out, because we have a lot of customers all over the country— in fact, we have a lot of customers in 9 countries outside the United States with no marketing— and we have every type of customer you can possibly imagine who owns a home, whether they're a millennial who is looking to take care of their maintenance activities, whether they are an X, a Y, or a baby boomer. Who is looking to better manage their time and to stop keeping their maintenance up here so they can get the alerts when they need to get it done and to also track the contents of their home because they're really looking at adding new contents. And then obviously projects because everybody wants new design projects and their families grow and they may need to add on rooms and, and those things and other. And then we also have the silent generation. So the senior generation that's using our solution to— excuse me— to manage their contents for estate planning, to understand what they have in their home so that they know the value of it, but also where they want to allocate it when they pass to the next phase of their life. And then at the same time, work with their maintenance professionals because I'm just a firm believer Anybody over a certain age, and you could be an X, a Y, a boomer, what have you, do not climb a ladder. Hire someone to clean your gutters. Please, please, please. I want to make sure everyone stays safe on ladders, and ladders are a big deal for me. Um, I just don't like people on a lot of ladders if they don't need to be. So, uh, the Silent Generation is also using it to track maintenance and to make sure that they are hiring the right resources, because you can track your contacts for all your vendors inside HomeZada as well. So that's kind of how HomeZada came to be. It's kind of a funny story. There's a lot of details to it, but every one of these details I have benefited from HomeZada. I now know what maintenance needs to get done when. I now know how much I'm gonna spend on maintenance every year because I have estimated budgets. From the year before, and I know what my vendors charge me. I have all my vendors' contact information, so I know what's going on. All my projects— I— Meridian people know this— project planning is a big deal, and I have to plan my projects out. I just can't afford to do them all at once. So I plan them out over time, and of course, anyone who knows myself and my husband John, we always negotiate which project's a priority. So, um, we're always doing that, and we now can review that data inside HomeZada. And then obviously the 4 to 5 times I had to take a home inventory— done. I now only have one home inventory, done it once in HomeZada. I update it every year periodically, which is perfect because I can delete items that I no longer have. I can move items to different rooms if I've moved them to a different room. I just simple updating something that I already have and then getting reports on the data about all this different information on my house is amazing. Oh, and by the way, did I tell you about the documents? I no longer have paper about my house inside my house. Every ounce of my paper about my house is inside HomeZada. It's tied to an item. It's tied to a task. It's tied to my property documents, but I'm just so over the moon that I just don't even have any of that paper in my house. And I know that I can log into my HomeZada and find exactly what I'm looking for with a simple login and password. And for anyone else out there, my, um, my, uh, what do you call— I can't even think about it right now— my browsers Remember my passwords. I don't even need to remember that anymore. Click, and there I am inside HomeZada, either on my desktop or even on my mobile, and I have access to everything. And it's amazing because when my husband John asks me, where's this document, where's that document, I just send him straight to HomeZada. Here, go in there, you'll see it, you'll find it. Everything's labeled, don't worry about it. That's where you can get all your data. It has made even my marriage amazing. This— there's no more arguments over who's going to change air filters. It just gets assigned to somebody and somebody does it. It's brilliant. So I wanted to share the story of why HomeZada's here and how I've benefited, because many of you I've heard have benefited in other ways, and I'd love to hear your stories. And at the same time, if you haven't heard about HomeZada, By all means, share this with your friends or sign up for it yourself and play around with it. You will find it invaluable if you really want to make sure you're maximizing your time, your efficiency, and you value the contents in your home. I value my time, which basically gives me more time to do other things. I just love it. So have a great day. I hope this was very helpful. I hope you know a little bit more about our story. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I'm always up to hear not only your stories of how you're using Humzava and what you're faced with, but also if you have any questions for me. I'm around. So either— although tonight I am off to another event, so I must go. But have a great day and thanks for joining us.