My Journey to Creating a Complete Digital Home Management Solution- HomeZada

Hi everyone, Beth Dodson here with HomeZada. I hope you are having a wonderful day and thank you so much for joining me today. I hope what I'm about to share with you today will give you some insights on how HomeZada can benefit you, and specifically what I'm going to talk about is my journey and why HomeZada is here. Many people have asked me and they want to know why I created HomeZada and what value it provides me personally, so I'd like to share that story with you. So first of all, it started when I moved to California from Maryland. I was managing 2 different homes, which was challenging in and of itself, but I was also managing 2 different homes in 2 very distinct different geographical territories with different weather patterns and different materials used on those homes. And so I had to quickly get up to education, and it was very challenging. So I was managing a lot of this via spreadsheets or some other format A lot of paper was sitting in my house. The second thing I realized was I was also told frequently by my insurance agent to take a home inventory. And I'll be perfectly honest, I don't want to be that person if something were to happen who wasn't prepared. That's just not who I am. But I wanted a document that could actually help me manage an inventory. And I had taken an inventory on Excel spreadsheets and I had printed it on paper for extra storage, and I had, um, lost that inventory many times. I come from a world of technology, so I've had computers stolen, computers crashed, as well as paper lost in my house, and I had to recreate my home inventory 5 times. That was not making me very happy at all, so I wanted a system that could recreate it and I could craft this inventory one time and then I could it effectively so that I can access it anywhere I needed to without losing it or it getting destroyed by some situation. The third reason why, um, HomeZada really played a role in my life is you've probably heard some of these stories about the maintenance aspects of managing a house. When you are moving from one location to another, um, there's different maintenance tasks that need to happen, and I was unaware of a lot of the maintenance tasks that needed to happen in California, and therefore I was having equipment break way before it needed to. And one of the things that occurred was I had a hot water heater break after warranty— always coincidental, isn't that the case?— and then also before I had the ability to actually know what to do with it. And what I mean by that is I had no idea I had to flush the hot water heater until This home maintenance personnel came in and said, we need to flush it. I'm like, well, how was I supposed to know this? And I would have avoided this expense of replacing a hot water heater shortly after I moved into my brand new home. And there was no real way to find this data of how to take care of my house, and especially in my new house in California, which was unfamiliar with the maintenance task and the maintenance process. And I had the funds to actually replace that hot water heater right away, but I was worried that other people didn't have that capital to actually replace that water heater, and that just wasn't right. How do we educate people so that they can take preventative measures to care for their house without these unexpected expenses or the inconvenience of not replacing a hot water heater and then having cold showers, no hot water for your dishes, which could also create germs? And the long-term effect was so horrible that I just wanted to have a solution to make me do this. The other thing you may have heard as it relates to maintenance is I was actually arguing with my husband over air filters. Silliest thing in the world. I think there's better things to argue over, which this is so irrelevant, but air filters were something that we needed to take care of and replace to make sure that we were healthy, but at the same time, who was going to do it and when were we going to do it and when did we last do it? I wanted to know all of this data so that we could all stay on top of it. Finally, I wanted to look at all this data in one location, whether it's managing my inventory, managing my maintenance, managing my projects, or my finances. It's all tied together. And when you tie together all of this information, you actually understand how much you're spending in your house. When do you need to make repairs? When are you enhancing your house? And the thing is, not only do I have it all in one location for me to view, but I have it all in one location for my spouse to view. So he can access everything in our HomeZada account, and he knows what's going on. And this is really also important if, God forbid, something were to happen to one of us. Then in the case of a death, one of us could also take over everything very easily. And yes, these things do happen, and you have to think about it whether we'd like to or not. And all of these situations were occurring. So my story ties into managing multiple homes. It ties into having to take a home inventory multiple times and it being a massive inconvenience. It ties into having all your data in one location, which was really, really important, and to understand how to educate myself on how to care for my home so I didn't have unexpected expenses. And at the same time, I was actually caring for my house, so I'm maintaining that value and I'm maintaining the look and feel of it and I'm maintaining the health of that house. So this is the reason why I use HomeZada. This is the reason why I find it extremely valuable, and this is the reason why I started HomeZada. I hope you find that these reasons are enough value for you to use it as well, because I can attest to you, these initial reasons go well beyond what I find value in today using HomeZada, and I am so grateful that that I have the founders that I have to help me build this solution and to get it out to people like yourselves so you cannot— excuse me, so you can avoid the challenges that I faced for all those number of years. So we're here to make it easy. Home management doesn't have to be difficult. It can be easy with HomeZada, and we're here to provide that for you. If you have any comments or you have any questions, please put them in the comment section. We would love to hear from you. We'd love to even hear your stories. Have a great day.