Ep. 103: Building the Future of Skilled Trades with Sander Daniels, Founder of Thumbtack & Groombuggy

[00:00:00] Sander Daniels: I just think people are missing out on the opportunity to go build in any of these industries.[00:00:30] 

[00:00:32] Wyatt Smith: We’re really grateful on the UpSmith side to be joined by Sander Daniels, uh, a co founder of Thumbtack and an entrepreneur, uh, as CEO of Groombuggy. And he has been a great friend to our business from the very beginning and somebody that I’ve looked to for. Perspective on, on company building. So thank you, Sander, for joining us and sharing us about ideas for building the future.

[00:00:52] Very happy to be here. Our podcast is really focused on ways companies can combat skilled labor shortages and grow their businesses and [00:01:00] ultimately be successful in the context of a pretty dynamic labor environment. And our goal is to be able to share perspective on sort of challenges people have seen and ways that they’ve overcome them.

[00:01:10] And so we would love just to start by. Having folks hear your story, because it’s a really remarkable one. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about the path that’s led you to where you are now? 

[00:01:19] Sander Daniels: Rewinding way back, I grew up on the east coast outside of Washington, D. C. in Virginia. Thought I was going to be there my whole career doing federal political work.

[00:01:29] I felt [00:01:30] lucky from an early age about the opportunities I’ve been given. Was nothing super out of the ordinary, but I thought when I get a little bit older. Maybe I can help pay it forward a little bit. So in college, in addition to engineering, I studied history, politics, philosophy, followed that up, went to law school.

[00:01:44] While I was in law school, I kept in touch with a couple of friends who had gone a similar direction for similar motivations. They were working at the White House at the time. And we said, well, politics is one way to make a difference, but there’s another way, which is technology. So for a year, brainstormed ideas of things we could start that if [00:02:00] successful would create.

[00:02:01] Economic opportunity, create jobs for people. And what we landed on was the idea for Thumbtack. So we started Thumbtack in 2007, 2008, Thumbtack has been an amazing journey. Thumbtack continues to grow and thrive 16, 17 years later. And then a couple of years ago, I started another company, kind of in some way spun it out of Thumbtack [00:02:30] and.

[00:02:31] It’s called Groombuggy. It’s a mobile dog grooming business. So there you go. That’s the 10, 000 foot overview. I have 

[00:02:37] Alex Hudgens: so many questions about the dog. We’re going to get there. We’re going to talk about the skilled trades. That’s the main point of this episode, but as a dog lover, that questions. 

[00:02:47] Wyatt Smith: Amazing.

[00:02:48] That’s awesome. I, I, I’d love to go back to that decision you made about going all in on, on Thumbtack and what the process was like. Um, obviously it’s a company that’s made a huge impact for [00:03:00] users all over the world. But going back to those earliest days when it was still more of an idea than it was a big business.

[00:03:05] Can you take us back to some of those conversations and the decision you made to go all in? 

[00:03:09] Sander Daniels: Back then, back then tech was not part of the cultural zeitgeist. There weren’t my friends going to Silicon Valley to start tech companies. Tech CEOs were not on the covers of magazines. Y Combinator did not exist at the time.

[00:03:29] [00:03:30] Everybody was. Going into consulting, law, finance, whatever. When I decided to go all in on Thumbtack, it was a hard decision. It was risky. I thought, uh, and the people around me thought it was even riskier. Then I did my friends thought I was kind of weird going out to Silicon Valley. My parents thought I was completely crazy.

[00:03:55] I was working at a fancy law firm at the time, making [00:04:00] a lot of money as a first year associate, and they thought, Oh my gosh, you’re at this. very fancy white shoe law firm and you’re going to start this thing that will almost certainly never succeed, which was 100 percent correct. Um, you’re taking your wife out there, your new baby, you’re crazy.

[00:04:19] So that was a pretty, um, complicated decision, but I, Thought, you know, if there’s ever a time to take a risk, it’s at the beginning of [00:04:30] my career and what’s the worst that can happen in all likelihood, it’s going to fail, go out of business and 18, 24 months. I assured my wife, don’t worry. We’ll be back home in Virginia in no time.

[00:04:42] Once Thumbtack goes out of business, um, but Thumbtack kept not going out of business. So here we are 16, 17 years later in the Bay area, four kids. Uh, not going back to Virginia anytime soon, probably. 

[00:04:57] Alex Hudgens: I was going to ask what the, I told you so conversations were [00:05:00] like when Thumbtack was successful, but you sound like you were prepared and betting on it to, to not work.

[00:05:08] Sander Daniels: Is that correct? Well, you know, we have. We had huge chips on our shoulder for 10, 15 years, because no matter what you start, anything you start new, there’s always difficulties, always people telling you no, that’s never gonna work, or facing rejection of all [00:05:30] kinds. I could go into many war stories at Thumbtack.

[00:05:33] Tried to raise a series a round and talk to 45 VC firms and they all said no, we thought we were going to go out of business. So on and on and on, you know, I’ll never forget. Uh, there was a tech crunch article that for some reason I commented on with a Facebook comment saying, I’m Leaving a law firm to go to Thumbtack and then the like [00:06:00] dozen responses to that comment were like, you’re an idiot.

[00:06:04] Why would you ever do that? It’s never going to work. I just checked out the Thumbtack website and it looks totally dumb. And so I have. A screenshot of that that I haven’t looked back on in years because it’s long behind me now, but I did look back on it, uh, you know, every few months for a decade, 

[00:06:22] Wyatt Smith: you guys got a lot of traction pretty early.

[00:06:24] I mean, the vision from the very beginning around being a marketplace for service providers. Certainly [00:06:30] was resonating and I recognize that sometimes the after after action can be rosy, but it seems like the idea you started with is the idea that you continue to build on or the company continues to build on.

[00:06:40] Now, is that a right 

[00:06:42] Sander Daniels: read? 100%. We’ve never pivoted. We’ve never changed directions. We’re still building towards the exact same vision we had from day zero. Uh, yeah. Market for local home services, one of the largest areas of the economy. When you look at these other areas of the economy, housing and [00:07:00] transport, hotels and lodging, taxis and transportation, dating, e commerce, these are like 60, 70 percent plus internet penetrated home services to less than 10%.

[00:07:10] internet penetrated, it’s transacted overwhelmingly through word of mouth. So if you’re looking for a contract for your home or a tutor for your kid or a photographer for your wedding, you’re asking a neighbor for an introduction or a parent of your kid’s school or a friend who just got married. We knew the solutions out there for finding a local service professional were broken.

[00:07:28] It was people delivering yellow pages, [00:07:30] books to doorsteps, people Stapling, moving company flyers on telephone poles or thumb tacking their yoga business card on a coffee shop bulletin board. And we said, that’s not how this can be done in the future. There’s a better way. And so we started building that.

[00:07:44] Wyatt Smith: And you’ve been building for a while. That’s, that’s awesome. I mean, I, we are very focused on skilled trades businesses and help helping people in home services be successful. We talked to lots of companies and I think one of the core problems that you guys were helping them solve from the very [00:08:00] beginning was about how to connect with more customers.

[00:08:03] Can you talk about that like core problem that you’re helping them solve? 

[00:08:06] Sander Daniels: That’s right. Folks who are in the trades, they’re world class at what they do. But doing marketing, digital marketing, sometimes other parts of running the business, they’re not necessarily world class at. And so we wanted to build a platform where we could do what we do best, which is Marketing for their business and allow them to do what they do best, which is run and [00:08:30] operate their business in the day to day.

[00:08:31] So that was a huge part of the motivation. Exactly. Can you think back to 

[00:08:34] Wyatt Smith: any of those early users that were just really cool stories of people that you were helping out and ways that you were doing it? 

[00:08:41] Sander Daniels: We’ve been mission driven since the day we started the company. Proud of the business was very human centered from day one.

[00:08:48] We knew that there was this human problem to be solved on the consumer side of the marketplace, but the human problem is perhaps even more acute for people on the other side of the marketplace. We call them service professionals. And for them, their number one [00:09:00] concern is where do I find my next customer, where to put money in my pocket, next food on the table for my family next.

[00:09:05] And the stories of. People building not just their businesses, but their livelihoods and supporting their families and making something of themselves with Thumbtack. Our stories we would tell at every new hiring session in those sad times when people weren’t paying attention to us, [00:09:30] we would, uh, send those stories around.

[00:09:34] I remember for. Years in the early days when it was just a dozen of us cranking away in a townhouse in a neighborhood Here in san francisco called the castro Every friday, I would I I led our customer service and customer operations. So every friday I would send an email message to the office at Listserv with [00:10:00] stories of how Thumbtack was impacting their life.

[00:10:04] Oh my gosh, before I came to the United States, I didn’t know how I was going to earn a living for my family. But I got here, I heard from a friend about Thumbtack. I logged on, I got my first job through Thumbtack. Here we are nine months later, and I’m running an eight person lawn care company. I am able to feed my family and create jobs for half a dozen other people.

[00:10:29] [00:10:30] Thank you, Thumbtack. Uh, so, it’s that that made us so proud for years and motivates really my entire career. That’s awesome. 

[00:10:41] Wyatt Smith: Was there a moment where it became clear that it was taking, taking off like a turn in the corner moment where you guys looked at each other and said, this is really 

[00:10:49] going 

[00:10:49] Sander Daniels: to work from the very early days we were die hard.

[00:10:56] Religious believers in [00:11:00] what we were building and being in the weeds with the users, seeing the metrics, talking to our customers, it was super clear that we were solving a big, important problem. So actually, internally, for the half dozen or dozen of us that were cranking away for four or five years with nobody paying attention, we, There was not a doubt in our mind that so long as we stayed alive, we, this was going to be really big.[00:11:30] 

[00:11:30] Um, and all it was, was a matter of us getting to enough scale where regardless of our complete inexperience, uh, we had non technical founders. We were, you know, there were a million reasons that people didn’t invest in, didn’t want to invest in us. But over time, the supply. of the marketplace came online, the [00:12:00] demand of the marketplace came online, and then finally we nailed the revenue model and people started paying attention.

[00:12:08] A lot of 

[00:12:09] Alex Hudgens: people. I saw that y’all have a community of 300, 000 local services businesses. Why are they coming to you and not anybody else? Like, what is at this point the differentiating factor? 

[00:12:21] Sander Daniels: We. Have a product that businesses and customers love. It [00:12:30] starts, frankly, with the consumer who’s looking for somebody to help them with their home.

[00:12:37] We are a home care platform for consumers. We are out there helping people manage what is most likely the largest investment. That they have, which is their home. How do I maintain it? How do I improve it over the course of time? Um, so we are building an end to end home care platform. So consumers love that.

[00:12:59] [00:13:00] They don’t have a partner in managing their home and we try to be that partner to them. But then on the other side of the marketplace, there’s. Pros who are hungry for work. They don’t have a great, easy place online to find new work, find customers, grow their business. And we’re that easy one stop shop for them to help them grow their business.

[00:13:26] So that’s what folks love about it. 

[00:13:29] Wyatt Smith: That’s awesome. [00:13:30] We, we talked a lot about the challenges that that pro is facing today and they are. There are a lot of, uh, of issues that make their businesses complicated to manage. One of the core ones that we think hard about at UpSmith is about their workforce and about where they find and recruit and train and retain great people.

[00:13:48] Having served a lot of companies, I’m curious about what you’ve learned around how people manage labor and workforce and skilled trades. It’s 

[00:13:57] Sander Daniels: clear to me [00:14:00] that this. The local trades, it’s a gigantic part of the American economy, and all of the categories of local trades are supply constrained. There just aren’t enough plumbers, roofers, lawn care folks in the country to do the work.

[00:14:18] My strongly held view is that The trades need to attract even more talent than they already do. You know, folks that I went to school with, [00:14:30] they were attracted to law or consulting or finance or whatever. I can guarantee you that so many of the folks, uh, of those folks would be even happier with their careers had they, instead of moving to New York or San Francisco or whatever, moved back home.

[00:14:51] Opened up one of these companies and grown it steadily over the course of time, they would be able to sponsor the local [00:15:00] soccer team, hire their kids into it, earn a good money for themselves and create a bunch of jobs. So that is, uh, a part of my motivation for having started groomed buggy. And I think a lot more people should be doing that.

[00:15:16] That’s a great 

[00:15:16] Wyatt Smith: transition to talk about Groombuggy. So it’s a really cool business that you’re building and I’d love to have our, our listeners learn about it, um, particularly about the mission and, and what’s the big problem that you’re tackling. 

[00:15:29] Sander Daniels: [00:15:30] There had. There’s always been this internal joke at Thumbtack who’s going to start a mobile dog grooming business because although all local home service categories are supply constrained, mobile dog grooming was always top 1 percent most supply constrained.

[00:15:43] Anywhere in the country if you want somebody to come to your house to give your dog a bath or a haircut, it’s a 6 8 week wait if people even answer their phone. So, a couple years ago I was thinking about what’s next and to make a long story short, I Said a few things. [00:16:00] First, I love building and operating.

[00:16:01] Being in the weeds, zero to one, I’m less of a strategist investor consultant type. I want to be building new stuff. Second, I’m as motivated as ever around this mission to create jobs for people to work on a real problem for real people in the real world. Uh, third, I know something about local home services and then, uh, so maybe I’ll keep doing that.

[00:16:20] And then, uh, finally, maybe I’ll start like a family business. I’m going to hire my kids into sponsor local soccer team. Like I said, so I wasn’t sure. What type of [00:16:30] business I was going to start. I thought I might start like a plumbing company or a carpentry company or whatever. Um, but I got to know a mobile dog groomer quite well, kind of through happenstance, uh, through some, through strategic research.

[00:16:44] I talked to a bunch of trades, people in all the different trades to be a partner in the business, but this. Person I got to know very well. He taught me a little bit about the business and I said, all right, I don’t know anything about mobile dog grooming, but I know people had been kind of joking about it, [00:17:00] Thumbtack, let’s do it.

[00:17:00] Um, so got our first truck on the road in January of 2022 in the Bay area. Um, and we’ve been growing since then. 

[00:17:10] Alex Hudgens: Do you have dogs yourself? 

[00:17:13] Sander Daniels: I would love to have dogs, but I can’t. I have many animals in the house, in the form of small children, um, and are, uh, my father in law is allergic to them, my kids are begging for them, but they visit us a bunch, so.

[00:17:29] [00:17:30] We’re, we, we don’t have one now, but the kids are begging for it, so it’s possible that before long we’ll have one. 

[00:17:37] Alex Hudgens: Hypoallergenic. That’s your next problem to solve. I know, exactly. The whole time you’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking the joke that millennials are no longer, it’s like, if you have plants, that’s the new dogs, if you have dogs, that’s the new kids, and if you have kids, those are the new, like, exotic animals.

[00:17:53] Huge market for us dog, us dog owning dinks in the 

[00:17:57] Sander Daniels: cities. I’ll tell you what. [00:18:00] Alex, I didn’t know much about the pet market before I started GroomBuggy, but it turns out the pet market is big. The pet market is as big as cyber security, it’s as big as fintech, it has these generational tailwinds behind it, 42 percent of American households have a kid, 72 percent have a pet.

[00:18:17] So you, until you’re in it, it’s hard to truly understand just how big this market is. I had no idea. My mind has been Blown every day since we started the [00:18:30] business. That’s awesome. 

[00:18:32] Wyatt Smith: Tell us a little bit about the products. How do you think about the user experience and how does someone learn about groomed buggy and use it?

[00:18:39] Sander Daniels: Uh, where we are, which is in the Bay area. And we recently expanded to Denver. There’s just overwhelming demand. Um, and so a huge. Portion of our customers are of our new customers are organic, repeat word of math, seen our vans driving around on the road. And then of our total customers, a huge portion is [00:19:00] recurring.

[00:19:00] So people, um, get their dogs groomed every six to eight weeks, just like humans get their haircut. And so it’s recurring business. So we’re having a, uh, a total blast. It’s actually a pretty simple product to love, but a pretty simple product to use customers. I love it. We get an overwhelming number of five star reviews and all the digital platforms and it’s text message based.

[00:19:23] So people text us, they fill out a form, they give us their information, then we, uh, just text them. So it’s like their local [00:19:30] handyman or something, or their, their friendly contractor that they’re, they’re chatting with. That’s so smart. How do they, how do they find you? They hear it from their neighbor. They see our vans parked at their neighbor’s house across the road, or, um, they can find us on Google or Yelp or wherever we’re everywhere.

[00:19:52] Wyatt Smith: Yeah. Well, I’m, I’m, I’m teeing you up because you’re, you’re one of the best around in digital marketing and thinking through search engine optimization [00:20:00] as a, uh, a strategy. And so we just love to learn like in this context. How does it play out? Like, how do you think about that approach and what are the sort of keys to how you approach it?

[00:20:11] Sander Daniels: Well, it’s funny because at Thumbtack, we were some of the best digital marketers in the world and a lot of the consumer part of the marketplace was built on, um, digital marketing, Google search. And so obviously GroomBuggy is a little bit smaller scale at this point. [00:20:30] Um, but. The concepts in digital marketing are the same.

[00:20:34] And so here it’s actually very complicated for a small business to manage their digital marketing. There are so many different platforms out there. All the different platforms have different features, different things you need to do to maintain them, different cadence of posts and updates and responding to reviews and, um, ways that you can spend money or not, or ways to get your business verified, [00:21:00] um, wait, like.

[00:21:02] If you’re expanding when you should open a new location on Yelp or Nextdoor or Thumbtack or Google AdWords or Google Local Service Ads or Google My Business or Google Organic like it’s all like any single. Platform is easy and all of those platforms try to make it as easy as possible for a local business to operate.

[00:21:27] But once you’re doing it all, [00:21:30] um, and then you’re layering not just like messages through those platforms and emails and text messages to the business and phone calls, it suddenly becomes very complicated. So it’s a, uh, like I would say, it’s Whereas building digital marketing at Thumbtack was true wizardry, uh, at digital marketing at GroomBuggy is more just like keeping things [00:22:00] organized, which is a lot harder than it sounds given you’re operating across all these different locations, different platforms.

[00:22:08] It sounds 

[00:22:09] Alex Hudgens: hard. Don’t worry. This is my job at UpSmith and I’m like, preach, just preach. I’m so curious. You saw this market with the pets. Like, I live two blocks from the most bougie petco you’ve ever been to in your life. It’s nicer than anywhere I shop for myself. It’s constantly hopping. So I’m like, yes, that intuitively makes sense to [00:22:30] me.

[00:22:30] But to hear the numbers is nuts. Where else are people missing out right now? We’ve got business owners tuning in. 

[00:22:38] Sander Daniels: I think it’s everywhere. I think, you know, before I started GroomBuggy during my transition period, um, I’m still at Thumbtack part time, uh, on a, on a part time basis. I do new hire onboarding every other week, for example.

[00:22:54] Before I started GroomBuggy, I thought, hey, maybe since I like building [00:23:00] new things and I know local home services, maybe I’ll build a portfolio of local home services companies and there’s these long term holding companies and buy and build type strategies and all this stuff. Um, and I. I’m going to start one and see what happens.

[00:23:18] And it turns out this one was a winner, but honestly, I think there are so many winners to be built in all of these categories. It’s like. I, [00:23:30] I, I just think people are missing out on the opportunity to go build in any of these industries. What you need to do is find a partner in the business who knows the trade.

[00:23:44] And so they are the total expert in the trade. And then you are the expert in building the business. And to me, because I’ve been doing it for 15, 16, 17 years, building the business comes. And it’s, [00:24:00] uh, you know, no building, no business is easy, but it’s easier for me. And I think that it is a lot of people have been there, done that.

[00:24:05] I don’t, I don’t know the trade, um, as well, but I found perfect partnerships and people who do know the trade and I can help build business. And so, um, I think there’s just so many people out there who would love doing this. We are having a total blast at Groombuggy, like every day. Yes, of course it’s, it’s hard and there’s, there’s obstacles and.

[00:24:29] Stuff [00:24:30] happens. That’s no fun. It is so fun. Like, you know, you’re out there, you’re working with your hands, you’re working on an interesting problem, you’re creating jobs for people, you’re embedded in the community, um, you’re sponsoring local organizations, you’re giving away gift certificates at the elementary school, auction, like, it’s so fun.

[00:24:57] Fun and fulfilling. We just [00:25:00] launched in Denver two months ago. And last week we got an email from the Denver children’s hospital and they said, Hey, we have six dogs. We are looking for a mobile groomer to come bathe the pups that work with the kids once a week. Would you be interested in doing that? And I’m like, would we be interested in doing this?

[00:25:23] That’s what it’s all about. Like, yes. And it doesn’t matter what trade it is, what business you’re in, there’s good, there’s opportunities like that [00:25:30] in all the local trades. And I think so many more people should be out there starting these businesses. There’s, of course, a generational turnover in the business owners.

[00:25:41] They’re aging out, they’re retiring, they need more talent to come in and either take over the business or start. A new business to fill the vacuum they’re creating. And, uh, there just aren’t enough great people out there doing this. That was the 

[00:25:56] Alex Hudgens: whole episode. I’m going to cut out everything that Wyden and I [00:26:00] said, just go with that clip.

[00:26:02] The, the children’s hospital. Are you kidding? My heart. Also that content. My brain can’t not think like the same, right? Some great content. Yeah. Good for you. Wyatt. I can see a followup question jumping out. Go for it. Well, 

[00:26:19] Wyatt Smith: I just, I mean, I think that’s awesome. I, and I’m, I’m really excited for Groombuggy to create a lot of jobs for people and to serve people super well and create a lot of joy for them.

[00:26:27] We think hard at UpSmith about [00:26:30] productivity and how do you measure it? How do you think about it? It’s different for every company. And so for somebody that’s running what is a somewhat operationally complex business with lots of moving pieces. I’m curious about what productivity means to you. 

[00:26:42] Sander Daniels: Yeah, it’s interesting at Thumbtack, we innovated in many ways in the early days, uh, around how to manage talent at scale.

[00:26:53] Now there’s, uh, because there’s a lot more tech companies that have grown, a lot of it’s modernized, there are books that are [00:27:00] written on how to manage a workforce and how to motivate people and engage people and performance manage and all of that. So a lot of it. A lot of those best practices are much more widely known today than they used to be, but at GroomBuggy we’re taking so many of the best managerial practices.

[00:27:19] Um, that are common in tech and translating them to building this, um, local home service business. And again, for [00:27:30] the us, the leaders, it’s second hand. It’s second nature to, uh, treat people fairly to get all the ideas on the table. So we can solve problems together to share information transparently. To, um, be excited to build a company that people want to be at for years and decades and grow personally and [00:28:00] professionally in the way that is best for them.

[00:28:04] Um, but what we hear from a lot of the. Groomers who join us from other companies is, Oh my gosh, I never dreamed that I would be able to work at a business that has the values that you do, that treats us the way that you do, that listens to our ideas. And again, You know, uh, for me, it’s [00:28:30] tape that’s table stakes.

[00:28:31] Um, I’m, I, one of our, one of the things we say all the time is nobody’s perfect. We’re not perfect. The, uh, we’re always looking to improve the best we can do is identify our strengths, celebrate and identify our strengths, talk openly about and support one another and improving or compensating for our weaknesses.

[00:28:51] But this kind of like growth mindset attitude where you’re always measuring performance, always Doing one on [00:29:00] ones with people every week or every other week to ask them, not just to like task, manage them and show them their KPIs and whatever, but to like, ask them, Hey, how are you doing? Is this working out for you?

[00:29:11] Do you want to update your shift for some reason, whatever, like this is, this is innovative. Um, and again, I think it’s a clear example of. Where so many people who know about these best practices and have even done them before have an [00:29:30] opportunity to go and do this in some of these areas of the economy that Uh, where this isn’t yet common.

[00:29:36] Wyatt Smith: Yeah. I recall when you were preparing to really go all in and Sander had a blog, a sub stack that he was sending newsletters out on. And one of the things that stuck out to me is, uh, you were referencing a conversation you’d had with a friend who’d said, where are you going to find users for this? And you said, well, I’m going to answer the phone.

[00:29:57] Sander Daniels: Yeah, exactly. [00:30:00] Exactly. I mean, people, people, you know, at Thumbtack, um, we searched for product market fit for years and years and years. Um, at Groombuggy, we had product market fit on day one and all of my tech friends are like, how are you going to do this? Like, where are you going to find customers? How are you gonna build the business?

[00:30:20] I’m like, we’re going to answer the phone, show up on time and do a good job. And they were like, Oh my gosh, [00:30:30] that’s so innovative.

[00:30:35] Wyatt Smith: But I think it’s, I think it’s insightful though. Cause it goes back to my question around. How do you think about productivity? Very focused on the basic building blocks of running a good business and applying those in this context. 

[00:30:49] Sander Daniels: A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, What we are focused on at a business level are things like van utilization.

[00:30:59] How do we make [00:31:00] sure that our trucks are utilized as much as possible? Um, how do we make sure the vans are up as many days of the month as possible? That they’re staffed as many days of the month as possible. That once they’re staffed, folks are, uh, attending work. On time that, uh, once folks are attending work on time that their schedules are filled with customers.

[00:31:24] Um, and so at, in some ways the business is very simple. It’s [00:31:30] vans, groomers, and customers. But there’s a lot of nuance and complexity that goes into orchestrating that beautiful answer the phone, show up on time, do a great job. That’s 

[00:31:42] Alex Hudgens: awesome. How do you think about Uh, rewarding your employees. 

[00:31:48] Sander Daniels: People of course work to earn income for their families, um, but at the same time, that’s not all they’re there for.

[00:31:53] Um, and so we ensure that people are compensated fairly. That is our North Star. We want to make sure that [00:32:00] we treat people fairly and that runs through our compensation philosophy. Um, and so we have comp, um, program that is, um, pretty, pretty good. Deeply thought through in concert with our groomers that ensures that we properly motivate them, compensate them for all the work they’re doing and rewarding them.

[00:32:23] Um, but to me again, that’s just like the very. table stakes. It’s like [00:32:30] there is so much more to rewarding and compensation than just that. On Wednesday, two days ago, we had our quarterly groom a palooza where we get people together for half a day. And it’s very fun. Every quarter we show up. Um, this one was at our new garage in the East Bay in California, and we get everyone breakfast and [00:33:00] We look back at the last quarter, in this case the last year, and we show what we all did together, how many grooms we did, the total dollars that we put in the pockets of our groomers, how many, how much groomer earnings there were, how many five star reviews people got, and then we go through and Give out awards for the most number of five star reviews, the most number of grooms completed, the [00:33:30] highest, um, uh, people who have the highest book of recurring clients, things like that.

[00:33:35] Then we look forward to the plans and then there’s a few training modules, uh, and people love that to kind of brush up on their skills. And then we all are Chipotle or whatever, and people are stoked. Um, and so that’s just like one. Small example of the way we try to reward and recognize our team and ensure that [00:34:00] people have a growth ladder that where they can grow their skills, where they can learn new parts of the trade, they can expose to different in our case, dog types, um, or cuts, um, that they haven’t done before where, um, you know, there’s different styles of, of grooming.

[00:34:18] Um, people are, people can like get in a different. Styles of grooming if they want. And so we have experienced people on staff who are 20 plus year groomers who are there [00:34:30] to train the people who are a little bit less experienced. They can go out on ride alongs with folks and shadow or reverse shadow, all these types of things.

[00:34:37] It’s a huge part of the way we do business. Same. 

[00:34:40] Alex Hudgens: Us too. That is awesome. Also, you can’t call something a small example that’s name ends in Palooza, just so you know. Yeah, that’s right. Like, Groomapalooza is a big thing. Just saying. By definition. That sounds 

[00:34:54] Sander Daniels: like so much fun. It’s a blast. 

[00:34:57] Wyatt Smith: Alex is already, I think, thinking through how she can [00:35:00] join for the Q2.

[00:35:01] Groomapalooza. 

[00:35:02] Alex Hudgens: Not gonna lie. It’s on the list. I’ve got a lot of ideas as a dog. Parent, so I’ll be there. I have so many more questions and we’ve already almost hit time. Can we rapid fire a couple, like for our listeners, you’re doing it. You’ve done it successfully. I know you’ve got some hacks and tips and recs that will help anyone who’s already running a business.

[00:35:26] Or if I’m listening to this, I’m fired up to go [00:35:30] find a tray to get started because you’ve been very. Inspirational about all of that. Do you have any productivity hacks or optimizations or platforms that you use that you swear by? Because there’s so many. What actually works for 

[00:35:44] Sander Daniels: you? So what I would say, I mean, I, I, I am a person of routine.

[00:35:52] My, my schedule is very routinized. I’m an early to bed, early to rise type of person. [00:36:00] So I have. Uh, kind of like I architect my whole day to make sure that, uh, I have the energy to bring to work and home and everything else, but honestly, the thing I’m most passionate about is just making sure that more capable people get into.

[00:36:21] Blue collar trades. It’s such a huge opportunity. It’s so meaningful and high impact. And you don’t have [00:36:30] to start with huge ambitions. You can start something small. Frankly, the way I personally started the mobile dog grooming business was with simple ambitions of building a family business, something that could grow through cashflow.

[00:36:47] In this case. Our ambitions have totally changed. Now we’re out to build the next national pet health and wellness brands. Uh, so, but, but not everybody has to do that. In fact, You’re never going to be able to [00:37:00] build the national pet health and wellness brand without starting day one with something small like you can start part time in a trade and you don’t even have to know the trade to get started.

[00:37:14] You’d find a partner, somebody who is frustrated in their current. You put up a Craigslist ad or an Indeed ad and you say, I’m looking for, I’m looking to start a [00:37:30] business with somebody I’m excited about electrical or about lawn care or about, um, photography or whatever it is. And you find. Somebody who’s, uh, struggling, who, who loves the trade, but it’s struggling to grow their business or to figure out where to start.

[00:37:48] And then honestly, you just like start from day one, you incorporate, you put up your first. Uh, [00:38:00] Google my business listing, you open, you buy a domain, you get your first customer, you start answering customer emails and answering customer phones, you start booking an appointment, you start collecting payment.

[00:38:17] And then with each of those little steps, you figure out, all right, like if I wanted to five or 10 X this, what do I have to build? You go from there. Sounds simple. 

[00:38:28] Alex Hudgens: Maybe not easy, but [00:38:30] simple. Two different things. 

[00:38:32] Sander Daniels: People overthink it. Sometimes I think, 

[00:38:35] Wyatt Smith: how can our listeners be helpful to you right now? What would be ways for them to learn about what you’re up to and get involved in what you’re doing?

[00:38:42] A 

[00:38:42] Sander Daniels: few things. First, I am excited to build a community of home service operators and whizzes. There’s so much I don’t know. I am learning every single day. I would love to have a group of great people who are out there [00:39:00] doing similar things. If you’re doing that, let me know. If you are building a team or at a team, That’s growing.

[00:39:09] I would love to chat about how you are managing the team, growing skills in the team. This is a huge passion area of mine, making sure that people are growing personally and professionally in the way they want. We did that for 15. Plus years and are still doing that for tech workers [00:39:30] at Thumbtack, but I think so much more of that needs to be done for, uh, folks who are working in the trade and not nearly enough.

[00:39:38] It is done today. So, yeah, those are a couple ways. I would love help from people. 

[00:39:45] Wyatt Smith: You heard the call to action there. That’s that’s it. Well, Sanders, we’re grateful for you joining. Thank you for being a big supporter of the UpSmith mission and the belief that we can tackle this skilled worker shortage through lots of innovation in different parts of the economy.

[00:39:59] Um, good [00:40:00] luck with what you’re building. We are cheering for you and we want it to be wildly successful and we’re very excited to be a part of that team. 

[00:40:05] Sander Daniels: Thanks. And likewise, I just couldn’t be more excited about the UpSmith mission, which you are building is. Super important. You’re modernizing a lot of the way that folks are trained, skilled.

[00:40:15] Um, and I think there’s, there’s no more important mission out there. 

[00:40:20] Wyatt Smith: A lot of work to go. A lot of work to do. Thanks for joining. This has been a lot of fun and please tune in next time for. Untapped 

[00:40:26] Sander Daniels: [00:40:30] with UpSmith.