Lighting for Profits - Episode 235

In this episode, we talk with Chris Scoville, a 30-year veteran in contractor financing and founder of Improvifi, Inc.. He shares how financing isn’t just a backup plan—but the most powerful tool to close more deals, increase ticket size, and scale a contractor business. From real industry insights to proven strategies, Chris breaks down how contractors can turn financing into a competitive advantage and build long-term success.

Listen to Episode Here

Watch the episode

Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All Light. Powered by EmeryAllen

Welcome to Lighting for Profits.

All Light. All Light. All Light. Powered by EmeryAllen

Here is your host, Ryan Lee.

All Light has passed 100 five star reviews on Apple and Spotify

All right, all right. All Light. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the number one landscape lighting show in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It is getting hot. It is getting hot. This season has started. I think everyone's starting to get a little less depressed because the sun is shining. And we know what happens when the sun comes out. The phone starts ringing and people start investing in their properties, which means we get to do more landscape lighting. So if you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, you're definitely in the right place. We want to educate you. We want to motivate you. We want to help you. Wait, I was about to say

we

want to educate you. We want to motivate you. We want to dominate you. But I don't know if that's true. We're here to educate. We're here. We're here. We want to educate. We want to motivate. We want to help you dominate. I think that sounds better. I don't even know anymore. Guys, thank you so much for your support. We are up to a hundred and three. We've passed the century mark, 103 five star reviews on Apple. So thank you guys so much. And now it's like, okay, now what? Well, I think we have to go for more, so we'll take 104, 105. and also don't forget about the Spotify people. We still love you. I don't know why. I just wanted to get to 100 on Apple, but now we got 57 on Spotify as well. So let's get that to 100. I don't know why not? And, by the way, kind, of cool. I mean, it wasn't really a goal, but we also did pass. We have over 100 members now in landscape lighting secrets. So shout out to the Luminati members. Illuminati. That a cool name. we've got 103 members. It's kind of weird because there's 103 members and 103 five star reviews at the exact same time. You know, some of those are going to change here. but coincidentally, 103. So again, it wasn't really a goal, but it's kind of a cool number to celebrate, to pass the sentry mark. So, really, really appreciate your support. this has just been such a fun opportunity. I get to hang out with amazing guests. I get to preach, the good word.

Today we're talking about payment options for your lighting business

Today we've got Mr. Chris Scoville the CEO of Improvify. And, this is going to be awesome conversation, because, I never even knew that you could offer financing when I had my lighting business. I sold it in 2019. I'm sure you could. I just didn't know that you could. And I was like, well, why, why would I offer financing? I had people that wrote me hundred thousand dollar checks and I didn't know what I know now. And so we're gonna, we're gonna talk about some things that I wish I would have known, that, hopefully can help you out on today. So we're gonna be talking about payment options and Chris, is the man. He's gonna bring the fire, he's gonna bring the energy, and we're gonna help you grow your business by offering this amazing service to your clients. So excited to have Chris on. I reached, I reached out to him a while back with some questions. He gave me the greatest answer. He goes, I don't know. I'm just the CEO. I'm just the CEO. And I love that because I remember telling, a customer that too. They were like, now you're going to be here on the day of the install, right? And I'm like, the day of the install? What? Excuse me? And they're like, yeah. I mean, for the install. I'm like, no, I'm just the owner. I'm not. My guys are way more qualified than me. Like, you don't want me installing your lights. some of you guys are proud to be installers and maybe you shouldn't. But, in fact, I was thinking the other day, again, we're gonna have just, in just a few minutes, Chris Scoville, the CEO of Improvify, on.

There's a difference between surviving and thriving in the outdoor lighting industry

But I was thinking about the, the other day, if you really want to scale your business and not just survive, because there's a difference. There's people that have been in the outdoor lighting industry now for 20, 30 years, and some of them are still just surviving. They've actually never really scaled. Right. you've got to accept some really, really hard truths. Okay? And, here's what I think this is. My opinion is you're actually not a landscape lighting company. You're a marketing and sales company. Okay? You're a marketing and sales company that just happens to design and install some really cool landscape lighting. And it may be hard to hear, maybe you don't agree with it. That's okay. But honestly, the most successful landscape lighting companies are always going to be the ones that are the best at marketing and the best at sales. And I don't even, I don't even think this is an opinion at any anymore. I think this is just a fact. and, and it sucks to hear this when you've, like, maybe spent, you know, two, three, four, five, 10 years, like, you know, getting better at your craft and learning design and, and spending time, like, being like, the best installer you can and figuring out all the little tricks and tips and stuff like that for getting lights and nooks and crannies and stuff like that. But, but honestly, like, in the end, like, whoever can become a better marketer and a better salesperson is always going to dominate an area. And again, I'm not saying that you can't survive. Like, you can always just like, figure it out if you're, if you're a human, like, you're able to survive. I mean, we've made it this far.

Right?

Right. but there's a difference between surviving and thriving. And, you know, being self employed and kind of doing everything yourself and dealing with all the headaches and, and, you know, that's just more like surviving, whereas thriving, you're actually scaling to a point where you ascend above the chaos and you remove yourself from the day to day.

Light It Up Expo gave the outdoor lighting industry a huge hit of adrenaline

And so I was thinking about this, and I'm still coming down from a high that I had at, Light It Up Expo a few weeks ago. So many cool people, so many cool things happening in one room. Just so much energy all in one place. And it was all about lighting. It was all just outdoor lighting. Like, who would have thought? A bunch of lighting nerds uniting to discuss outdoor lighting. but honestly, it gave the, the lighting industry a huge hit of adrenaline. I got so many messages. People, sending me messages. Oh, man, I was able to do this. And they're sharing all these just badass success stories directly related to someone that they met or a certain conversation they had or something that they learned at Light It Up Expo. And, there was this. There was this guy. When I say guy, I kind of mean kid. I mean, I'm. I think he was like 18. Okay, I need to ask him. but he's. So he's technically a man. But like, I'm 46 and I, like, I'm so much older than him. Right. So I say kid, but he's a guy. But he's a man. Right. But he's not old enough to have fear yet. Okay. I remember being younger and like, you just don't care about certain things. Like you'll try a 360 off a jump and not worry. Like, what if I tweak my knee and I have to go to the hospital? You just do stuff. Okay. His courage is definitely greater than the fears that he might feel right. And I've noticed the older I get, the weaker I get. You know, suddenly like responsibility takes over and I'm less likely to take risks in, in pretty much everything. And like, you think about like finance and business and sports, whatever it is, right? But, here's, here's my prediction. Here's kind of what's happening in the outdoor lighting industry right now. For years, for like couple decades now, it's just been mostly a bunch of like blue collar, like really, really hard working guys and, and a handful of gals in the industry. And there hasn't been much marketing. There really hasn't. I mean, there's been some, right? You'll have maybe one, maybe two, maybe a few people in each area doing some marketing, but no, no one's really ever taken it that serious. For the most part. It's just been a bunch of, you know, people working really hard and relying on word of mouth. In fact, I'll see people bragging like it's a badge of honor. Just like, man, I've been in business 20 years, never advertised, never had to. Yeah, word of mouth. And I'm like, what? That's not cool. Why are you bragging about that? Like, that's all I hear when I hear that is like, you could have done better. Like, how much more successful could you have been if you did advertise? Like, it is cool that you didn't have to, like, what if you did, right? And so that's, that's all I hear is like, how much more successful would you have been if you would have advertised? And then I think how much more successful would the industry be if there was more awareness, if there was more people advertising than that this was even a thing? Because there's still people that come in the industry today, either as a designer, installer, salesperson, contractor, that you, you'd never, you'd never heard of outdoor lighting before, right? And then there's still homeowners that are still up and coming that maybe bought their first million dollar house or got into their first $5 million house, and they're still learning that landscape lighting is a thing. They thought you just got lights from like Costco or Home Depot and they're like, wait, what? You hire a professional, like, it's still a new Thing, right? And so I think about how much more successful now is Landscape Lighting going to be? And so there's this new guy, new kid, new man. I'm not going to use his name. Canton. Okay. And, he came to Light It Up Expo. Didn't have enough money to join Landscape Lighting Secrets. I made an offer there for the whole group. so he joined. He did the next best thing, which is he joined Light Lighting Academy. Lighting Academy is the fundamentals. It just helps people get started. it's crazy high value for the price. But he joined it. It was 97 bucks. Went through the entire training in a weekend. And he's sending me messages, dm, like, hey, I went through the training. I'm like, what? How did you already go through the training? There's people that have been in Lighting Academy for two years and they still haven't completed the training. And he's been. And he did it in a weekend. I'm like, what? Like, don't you have anything else to do? And he probably didn't, right? So what he started doing was opening his mouth. He starts marketing, he starts doing sales. He did two demos. This was like the following, like, four days later, he did two demos and closed one of them on the spot. He had never closed. I mean, never attempted to close on the spot. Tried two of them, closed one on the spot for $6,000. Okay? Not because he was the greatest lighting designer in the world, not because he had decades of experience, because he was better at marketing and better at sales. Since then, which has literally only been a couple weeks, he's. Now, he scheduled like 10 more demos.

Josh Latimer says marketing is everything in landscape lighting. And you might take that the wrong way

And I didn't keep track of, like, what his close rate, was or anything like that, but I know he just. Actually, he just joined Landscape Lighting Secrets because he's making money now. And in the last three weeks, he's closed over $18,000. Okay? And again, he's not better at lighting design than you. If you've been in this industry longer than six months, he's not better than you. He's not a better installer. But he is better at marketing than you and he is better at sales than you. And some of it's. He might not even be better at marketing than you. He's just more loud. He's just. He's just making. He's just taking action. Right? my friend and mentor, Josh Latimer, he. He says marketing is everything, and everything is marketing. And you might take that the wrong way and be like, yeah, me becoming a better lighting designer is marketing. Because he said marketing is everything and everything is marketing. But, like, that's not what that means. It means that you have to take action, get out there and turn, turn all these interactions into marketing. Right? And so all he did was went through Lighting Academy in a weekend. Again, he's not better than. He's not a better. There's no way he's a better lighting designer than 90% of the lighting industry, yet he is kicking the ass of 90 of the lighting industry, you know, doing 18k in just a couple weeks and he doesn't even know what he's doing yet. Right? So now he's made enough money to join Landscape Lighting Secrets. He just joined last week. Now do you think he's gonna spend any more time wondering, like, is this even gonna work? You know, we should, we should, do the pros and cons and, and, and like, risk, reward, like, no, no, he's taking action. You know, he doesn't have time to think about the risks, right? And so I want to encourage you guys to adopt this younger version of yourself, the, the risk taker, right? And you can be, you can be reasonable in your risk. You don't have to just do like, hey, I'm going to jump off this cliff with no parachute and see what happens. Like, okay, there's risk and then there's stupidity, right? But he's not going to be bragging 10 years from now, oh, man, I grew my company from 0 to 500k. Like, he's going to do that next year, right? He's not going to be bragging about, oh, how I'm on all the installs and all my customers love me and it's all about me. And I've never had to spend any money on marketing. Like, no, he's going to keep getting better. He's going to get better at marketing, get better at sales, get better at making money. He's going to reinvest that money back into replacing himself. This is the new way he's going to invest in advertising. He's going to grow this thing faster and faster and build momentum faster than someone who's even been in the industry 10 years, right? And this is how the lighting industry finally becomes an actual standalone lighting industry instead of like, part of like the landscapers that have like a couple booths for lighting. You know what I mean? Like, this is, this is how it happens. It's called awareness. Because people like the person, I'm not going to say his name, Kenton, they're going to start advertising and when more homeowners see more ads about landscape lighting and it's not going to be like, oh, well, yeah, one day we'll do that. It's going to be like a normal thing where like, you're almost, you're going to feel like you're going to have fomo. Like, well, we have to get landscape lighting because our neighbors have it. And look how cool that looks. It's called awareness and that comes from marketing. This is what's going to grow the industry. A rising tide raises all boats, right? And so the people that are reluctant to grow, they're going to be throwing a fit, okay? The old dudes in the industry, they're going to be complaining about all the newbies that have destroyed the industry, when in reality the pie is not, it's not a fixed pie, you see, it's just going to get bigger, right? And then the awareness that these younger, newer people in the industry create was going to help everyone that is still in the game, that is still in the game, that's branded, that's, that's focused on SEO, that's focused on building a brand, that's focused on AI. Those people are going to win even bigger because everyone's going to win together. Those that get better at marketing, get better at sales. They will have an unfair advantage. And, it's just what it is. And I look back at my company, you know, I built that up. We were doing two and a half million dollars a year. We had an unfair advantage because imagine being the new guy that came into the industry. Like, we were branded everywhere. We were paying for all the marketing, we were doing all the right things with sales. Like, you can't compete with us, right? And so you can be a really good lighting designer, you could do really good installations, but you're not even going to get the lead because we're going to get the lead and we're going to close it.

Jackson: Double down on your marketing efforts and on your sales efforts

And so I want to, I really just want to encourage you to double down on your marketing efforts and on your sales efforts. Are you investing in yourself? Are you getting better at, not just the craft of design and installation, but the craft of marketing, the craft of sales. Because honestly, even if, even if you're like anti advertising, like you're getting a referral right now, that's not just calling you, they're going on to Google and looking you up, right? And all of a sudden they see your competitor who has 186, five star reviews and you have 12, right? Or AI. I mean, AI is changing a lot of things. Have you guys ever put something into AI, into Chat GPT and ask it a question, and it follows up with another question? Hey, do you want me to provide three more? So someone could go into Chat GPT and like, hey, what's the number for Ryan Lee's lighting company? Oh, here's the number. Hey, while I'm at it, do you want me to get you quotes for two other lighting companies as well? So you have to be obsessed with this. This has to become normal if you want to scale your business again. If you want to stay stuck, you want to stay small, you want to just survive. Maybe this isn't for you, but that's. That's my pro tip. Because I see these younger guys coming in, and they are going to scale faster than we've ever seen anything before. They're going to make my company look like chump change. And that's what I'm excited about. I feel like I get to, to coach the Tiger woods, the Michael Jordans, these people who like, how do you coach greatness, right? And it's not because I'm better than them. They're going to be way better than me. But I get to see the different angles. I get to, to, help them adjust, make these little minor tweaks. So really looking forward to the next five, 10 years. We got a huge Runway in front of us, guys. It's going to be awesome. All right? Where's the songs? Where's the beats? Where's the things? Hey, listen, friends. You guys know this. Friends don't let friends install garbage lamps. If you want less callbacks and more referrals and more repeat business, stick with Emory Allen. Emory Allen makes premium LED lamps for lighting professionals who demand the best. Don't settle for less. Upgrade your designs and installations today with Emory Allen. All you need to do is reach out to Jackson lryalon.com to learn more and take advantage of their discounted contractor pricing to just email Jackson l dot com. Don't forget to mention that you heard about him here on Lighting for Profits. He'll hook you up with that discounted contractor price. Remember, don't email Tom anymore. Tom is probably retired on his boat somewhere. Just email jackson l.com Thomas replaced himself. He went from operator to owner. All right, guys, thank you. Emory Allen. You guys are awesome. Emory Allen was there. Big, big supporter of Light it Up. Big supporter of what we're doing here at Lighting for Profits.

We are about to blow up your outdoor lighting business with Chris Scoville

All right, guys, now is the time. We are about to, blow up your business. Let's get our guest coming on here and let's get that music going. Hope you guys are ready for this. Are you ready?

Foreign

welcome to the show, Mr. Chris Scoville. What's up, Chris?

Got the music going, man. So your music is playing and there's a kid down the street just ripping a wheelie down the road. Oh, the music went so well with this kid. He just likes that he's having the time of his life.

Well, thanks for joining me, man. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I think we're going to blow the mind of the outdoor lighting industry today. So you ready for that?

Yeah. I'd also like to share a sales experience with the audience since this is what they do for a living. That's cool.

Of course. It's your show. I start the show off with my, like, rant so that I can just get everything out of my system. And I don't. I can just be. This is all about you now.

Chris Scoville is a leading expert on low voltage lighting financing

All right, let's get this story out of the way. Then we'll introduce who I am. So we live in. We just moved to the, Beach Intercoastal, the waterway down here in Gulf Shores, Alabama, from Utah, the mountains of Utah. And my wife and I are walking the dogs last night in the dark. And we live in a very private community. I'm on the cul de sac because I'm on. It's called the sanctuary. And we're the only gated community on the island. next to just one other one. There's only two gated communities. So we walk out and right at the end of the street is this beautiful home raised up a little bit more than everyone else. And it had beautiful low voltage lights shooting from the ground up through the palm trees. And it had, the driveway so eloquently lit up. And they had beautiful low lights installed in the home. And my wife, she doesn't know that I'm on this thing right now. She goes, can we do that? Right? And I go, of course we can, honey. we could do anything you want. Right? Because that's what a good husband says.

That's why you're still married.

Yeah, I'm looking at it going, you damn right we're doing it. The curb appeal was just like, the house just stood out among everything. It looked like a, million bucks in the dark. Well, it was well over a million dollars. But anyway, it just looked phenomenal. So I'm thinking, shoot, if I was in the lighting business, how would I sell quite a Chris Scoville real easily. There's technology now that can take a picture of my house, make it dark and then show what the low voltage lighting would look like. So I'm like man, if somebody took a picture and then they super embedded the low voltage lighting and then they took a GEO picture of a Google picture of my 36 foot dock and they put low level lights out there and then they put it on a door hanger and my wife came home and saw that with a QR code and it went to a loom. Video of hey I'm Chris with low voltage lighting specials in your area. We'd love to put lights on your home and this is what it would look like. My wife would see it. You show, tell and sell. You showed me what it's going to look like. You tell me who you are now. You sell me on what the dream outcome is going to be. But where you make the sale with me on a probably M A12 to a $15,000 lighting project here is by offering me a low monthly payment option. One because I just bought this house and I'm broke. I spent all my money. Yeah, but my wife wants it so we're going to make it happen. So how do you sell me? If you can sell me a $12 to $15,000 project and show me the low monthly payment option of 89 bucks a month, I'm all in baby. Put my lighting in. When can we get this done type of guy. So I lead with a story because it's truly a real story on how I, the CEO of my company, been in the financing industry and home improvements for over 30 years. This is how I would buy from you. My wife is just going to buy it because she doesn't care. I'm going to say I'll buy it if you can make it affordable or if the payment is right or if you can give me a 12 month no interest. I'm the way. That's how I buy. So showing up differently nowadays in this modern world of people in the know with a consumer credit center and payment solutions is only going to help you sell more easier. And that's exactly what Ryan was just telling you about. This younger guy, this guy's going to adapt to financing like that, an old school guy is going to be like this. I don't need financing. All my customers pay cash. Except for the ones that don't hire you and hire someone else. Exactly.

So anyway, by the way, that would have been me five years ago. I Would have had arms crossed, like, nah, they all pay cash. And then you would have said that. I'm like, damn it, he's right.

That's my intro and I'm sticking to it.

Ryan Miller: Landscape lighting is something that actually people want

Thanks for having me today, Ryan. It's a pleasure being here with you, man.

No, I love it, dude. You I talking about the, the husband and wife relationship. It reminded me how awesome landscape lighting is because it's truly something that actually people want.

Yeah.

and of course, you know, like, you know, like, people need a roof and they need H vac and stuff like that, but, like, no one really is like, man, I can't wait to spend 50k on a new roof. This is going to be the best thing of our life. You know what I mean? So, like, but they just know they have to. Whereas, like, people want to go to Hawaii, they want to go on trips, they want to do cool. They want their house to look amazing. So, like, we're so lucky that we get to sell people something that they want. And in your case, you, you know, obviously did it beautifully on how you do the, the payment options, which is better than I could have done. But it's also like, you get to get your wife something and be like, hey, how about if we do that for our anniversary? Like, this gets you off the hook for a lot of different things.

forever, man.

Like, whatever.

I'm building her a closet system right now. And that was Valentine's Day.

Okay.

Yeah. I took one of the rooms in this home and I've turned it into a walk in closet.

But you're giving her a gift that she enjoys that you're also like, I don't hate.

Gives me more room in my bathroom.

Yeah.

So, yeah, just do me a favor

and do a quick introduction of who you are and how the heck did you get into in financing of all things.

How do I make financing actually fun and interesting? Right.

Chris Scoville founded Improve the Fi to help home improvement contractors get financing

So, once again, I'm Chris Scoville. I'm the CEO, founder and head janitor at Improve the Fi, which stands for Finance Improved. I come from many, many years of being in finance. Over 30 years was in roofing in 1991. I got into the financing industry, construction firm, wholesale industry in 1993, and was worked for many, many different banks for many years. I. I retired from a company called Service Finance. I was part of the $2.2 billion exit over there with Truist, and I was a senior vice president and managed companies like Beacon, Ranai Lennox, Home Depot, Sam's Club Finance programs. I was A head trainer over there. and I just love the industry so much that after I retired from service finance, I decided to build my own company finance company out of, necessity, because I, working for the big banks, always saw all the holes in the boat. It is like the perfect business story. You're like, I'm gonna go fix this industry. How? I'm just gonna plug the holes in the boat like it was rock science. Right. I've done it for so long. I love the industry. I'm passionate about it. I love helping contractors win and, and build financing and train them and all this cool stuff that we do at our company. But it was real easy for me to go, well, lenders don't care about contractors. They just want them to sell their finance programs. So what do we do different about it? And boom, we do everything different to that. Lenders don't have training. Why? They don't care. They don't have the staff. They don't put the money toward it. So we have a huge training program. Lenders don't have a, deal desk to call. So let's build a deal desk so a contractor can call and talk to a human being, not AI and ask questions. Okay, cool, let's do that. I just basically added on, all the things that big, beautiful bank America, doesn't offer home improvement contractors with their lending. So they, they offer a commodity and we deliver an ecosystem is really the best way.

Yeah. So, so I like it. There's a lot of. So right now, when you, when you look at our, the outdoor lighting industry specifically, there's a lot of CRMs, but I would say the top two are like a house call pro and a jobber. Again, there's, there's, there's many, many. But those ones have certain integrations where, like, you'll send over a proposal.

Yeah.

Says, all right, the lighting is 15,000. And then it's like an afterthought, like, hey, if you want financing, you can click here.

Yeah, talk to me.

What type of training is required to offer financing instead of providing payment solutions

When you mentioned training, I think the first thing I thought of was like, training. Why do I need training for. To offer financing.

Yeah.

What, what type of training is required? And what do you see the winners doing differently than the people who just offer financing instead of someone who provides payment solutions?

Yeah, lots unpack there. So the one thing that I say best, is those who learn earn, meaning that if you are a contractor and you have sales pros and they're not learning, therefore they're not earning. So the ones that Put the time in to learn how to offer, ah, financing, to learn the terminology, to learn how to do a sales presentation, to learn what the lending ladder is, to learn about obstacles and objections that consumers could present at the point of sale when it comes to financing, to learn how to use a promotional loan, a secured loan, a long term loan with the payment option.

Right.

All these terms that I'm throwing at you right now is how we take a contractor and a sales pro and train them how to present financing at the point of sale. But more so the payment solutions. Right? So there's a method. It's not magic, it's a simple process. And let me give you an example. this is a laminate. The laminate is what we would white label and private label to a lighting company and let's call it Relentless Lighting. And this is Relentless Lighting's consumer credit center. So if I was a sales pro and I was at the point of sale, I may say to the customer this. Hey Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, I'm not sure how you're looking to pay if you're looking to use your money or use ours, but at Chris's Lighting we have a consumer credit center. some of our customers love our 18 months no interest. And some of our customers like a long term open payment option with no prepay. Out of these two options. What sounds more interesting to you? That was a mini presentation in a script to introduce payment solutions to somebody that wants to spend 15, 20, $30,000 on lighting or 5,000 or 2,000. I don't care what the number is. It's taking the pain away from the price tag and bringing them buy now, pay later. The terms that they see on Amazon, the terms that they see at Ashley Furniture, the, the terms that they see when they buy an automobile. Why are we not doing that in Home improvement? Bring the affordability to the point of sale instead of big scary pricing. Now to your point. The great CRMs out there that have the finance button, there's nothing warm about that delivery. Matter of fact it's quite scary. Consumer knows nothing about the button. They don't know what's going to happen when they press it. When they do press it, it starts asking what their Social Security number is. So instead of doing that, the better presentation is best, better good. 12 month, no interest, long term loan payment option, no prepay. I'll walk you through the application, Mrs. Smith. It takes about five minutes and it's a soft credit poll because what if the customer gets declined? What do you do. You leave. No. Call the deal desk, ask for help, take it to another lender that we have in our portfolio or you as a consumer credit center, have. So this is what I'm m talking about actually. Closing deals and giving customers affordability and earning five star reviews rather than just making a sale. Like, that's cold. That's like the old way of selling is one time close. Making the sale. Now it's consultative. Meeting your buyers where they'd like to be met. Much better. easier and longer. Better relationships too.

Yeah. So good, because you're literally like pre framing the entire conversation. You're pre educating. You're, you're, like you said, you're, you're consulting with them. You're not just being like, oh, here's the price. And then, oh, if, if you can't afford that. We do have some finance options.

It's like keeping the ace in your back pocket. It's a little, But some people have a different thought. They're like, well, I don't have to offer financing to my people. They don't need it. What do you mean they don't need it? They finance their automobiles, they finance their home, they're financing Amazon buy now, pay later for a, device that they'll never use but wants a workout piece of equipment. What do you mean they don't need it? For your 10 to $15,000 home improvement, we're just going to assume that they're going to take it out of their savings and empty out their 401k. We're just going to assume that, that they want to pay 35% on their credit card. Like, how rude of us to assume that a customer wants to buy. That way when you just ask and let them buy, it's a better, more consultative way to make a sale. Because we're being nice.

Yeah, I could, I could see it also increasing the average ticket from someone saying like, hey, well, you know, let's just start with the front now because, you know, we'll see how that goes and then do the back later. Like you said, maybe they're waiting on a bonus. Maybe they're waiting on the. Maybe they're selling a company. Just because they have a lot of net worth doesn't mean that they have millions of dollars of cash sitting in their checking account. Right. And so I, I could totally see that happening where it's like, oh, dang, it's only that much per month. Let's just do the whole thing. We could pay that off anytime.

You said show, tell and sell. Show people what the front's going to cost

You said show, tell and sell. Show them what the front's going to cost. Like, tell them, but then show them what the whole project looks like and do an options close. Okay, we can take care of your front. You're looking about five grand just for the front. Do you know what if we wrap the whole house in the dock, the backyard, those beautiful palm trees you got, we can light those up for you. You're looking at about 89 bucks a month. So our crew's going to be out here. We're going to do the work in the front that you wanted. But what if we could give you and then insert the dream project, all of this for 89 bucks a month and get it done for you? Like that's how you shift from $5,000 ticket to $89 a month. Dream outcome. So they do this in the decking industry. They open up the magazine. Yes. People still read magazines and they go, oh, there's the deck of my dream. And they think it's $15,000 until my great deck. People come there and patio people come and go, yeah, that's 45. So we'll take your fit your $10,000 down. We're going to finance you up to 35 for you at $229 a month so you can have the dream outcome. They're shocked. I bet people are shocked as well when you show up and go, yeah, project's gonna cost 10 grand. They're like 10 grand for some lights. I can go to Home Depot and plug it in the ground myself.

Right, well, and sometimes they think it's 10 and it's 50. You know, like, there's always sticker shock. There's always sticker shock.

So that's what we're doing. We're taking the pain away from sticker shock by giving them a monthly payment option or no interest.

What are some do. Is there a way for you to, like, you know, either, you know, them off your on top of your head or like, what are some realistic numbers that if someone were to pitch a $10,000 project or a $50,000 project, what those actual monthly payments would be?

Well, I just so happen to have the Improvify app right here.

Let's hear it. Let's see it.

All right, so give me a number. What do we sell?

Let's start with 10,000. It's a $10,000.

And what's the $10,000? Assume I've got prime credit and I know that I can go up to. Do you want the lowest monthly payment? Do you want to have this paid off, like, in a couple years. What's up to you? There's no prepayment penalty.

Yeah. If there's no prepayment, then we want the lowest payment, Right?

Cool, man. So for $10,000 with your prime credit, you told me you're looking at about 96 bucks a month. Does that sound fair for you and your wife?

96amonth for how many months?

this is for 20 years. Oh, my gosh. But you had told me that you're moving to Arizona. 3. Correct. When we did our survey.

Yep.

Because I do a survey because I'm a salesperson. I want to know how long they're gonna stay in their home for two things. Number one, it helps me close knowing how long they're gonna stay their home. Why? Because I get to say, my gosh, this home is beautiful. This lighting project is gonna enhance the value and the appearance of your home. And looking to stay here forever, right? Forever home. The grandkids live down the road. Yes. Wonderful. Let's light this sucker up. Or we're looking to sell and move to Arizona three years. Fantastic. Let's put these lights in here and light this up and increase the value of your home so when you sell, yours will stand out on Zillow amongst all the other horrible homes in this community. So we're going to get to the highest value. So I don't care how they answer on the survey. To close. I'm going to use that to close. You're going to stay here forever. Cool. Let's light it up.

Ryan: Loans are not amortized like a mortgage. Most people pay them off in three or four years

oh, you're looking to sell in two years. Great. That's cool. Let's light it up. But I'm also going to use it in the close to say, hey, look, you wanted the lowest monthly payment, right, Ryan?

Yep.

Cool. We go out to 20 years with no prepayment, penalty. So don't worry about paying this off for 20 years. Most people pay them off in three or four years because there's no prepay. So when you win the lottery, you get a bonus or you get money back from the government. If they still do that, I don't know, All I do is pay them. You can pay the loan off whenever you want. It's an unsecured loan of take the debt with you if you want Arizona. So I don't care if they take a 20 or 10 or 5 or whatever. I want to get them to say yes. So the way that I get them to say yes is give them affordable payment solution. Now, if you did 10,000. And I do have this memorized on a 10 year, it's $132 per month. So a 10 year, you're looking at $32 more a month than a 20 year.

Okay.

Yeah.

And it's. What was the percentage? 10%.

I put 9.99 just with an assumptive. Now a personal loan with high credit score, you're looking at 6.45%. I like a three to a five year or maybe even a seven.

Okay.

But the 9.99 10 year and a home improvement for a prime customer. Prime meaning 680 to 850 credit scores, about the standard, that's been the norm for the last 18 years.

And so if the contractor closes it and they close this, you know, 10 year, 6% one or whatever, who pays that fee? That's just, that's in the interest. Does the contractor pay any fee?

What fee?

Yeah, like who pays for the financing?

The customer does. Just like they would on their mortgage. Right. So if my mortgage interest rate is 5% for 30 years, I pay interest for 30 years. If my 10,000 hour lighting project, home improvement project is a 9.99, I paid the interest on that for as long as they're simple interest loans, they're not amortized like a mortgage. So interest principles even throughout the loan. Okay, I think you might be talking dealer fee. If a lender. So if a lender charges for a program and it's typically going to be a promotional loan because the lenders. I'm writing a book on this in case anybody wants it. It's going to be very boring. It's going to be talking about how money gets from Main street to Wall Street, Wall street and back. So anyway, money, costs money to get it from Wall street to the contractor to the consumer. If it's a promotion loan, like a 12 month or an 18 month, same as cash, they got to make money somehow. So they have to charge a dealer fee, which is a merc, basically a merchant fee, like a credit card swipe fee on that product. So let's say it's 5%. A contractor selling a 10,000 lighting project should sell the job for 10, 500. I'm not factoring by the way, it's $526 to be exact. But anyway, I digress. Why? Well, because the lender's got to make their 500 bucks because if that customer pays that loan off on day one, the lender loses money. The lenders have to make money because there's no interest On a promo. So lenders have to make money. Lenders make their money off of the long term, short term, midterm loans off, of the interest rate.

Okay.

Okay. So how does a contractor build a dealer? Financial pricing. Pick 5%, go sell. Don't even think about it anymore. Why, why 5%? Why is 5% the magic number? Well, number one, our 12 month, zero interest on one of our programs is 4.25, so it's covered. A credit card swipe fee for most of your credit card places is like three and a half to four. So that's covered. If it's a cash customer, well, you make an extra 5 points. Or if you want to give the customer 5% discount for cash at the point of sale, is it closing negotiating technique. You could do that. So if you build 5% in as a buffer, go out, sell, you don't have to ever worry about dealer fees whatsoever.

Yeah, I like it. And I could see a lot of. I don't know if I see a lot. I could see those customers where you're. We're thinking, man, they don't, they don't need financing. They're not going to do it. That's fine. When a cash buyer presents itself, then they will say, well, I, I don't want to do any of this financing stuff. How much? I'm paying cash. How much you got?

Money, baby. Good, Excellent. We take that too.

Yeah.

And so that's a beautiful thing. Like, I don't know, Ryan, how you're looking to pay. I don't know if you want to use your money or like to use ours, But a lot of our customers lean into our 12 month, no interest or short term. No, no, short term, long term, no prepayment penalty stuff. We're here to help facilitate the transaction.

Unsecured lending pays the contractor directly via ACH when the job is completed

I, don't care how you pay. Just pay me.

Right.

if you don't present it and they need it and you get no sale, your competitor comes in, the young guy that's adopted to everything he's training, he's doing everything that you tell him to do. He's like a sponge. He's gonna walk in there with financing and wipe your butt off the road, man. Because he's just gonna do what somebody told him to do. He's gonna present financing.

So let's say someone accepts the deal. we had a good question. what's the turnaround for the homeowner to receive their loan? And does the. First of all, does the homeowner get the loan? Do you get the money, where, where does the money go?

Great question. So at Improvise, our company we give you a multi lender approach called the waterfall. So it's loaded. Unsecured lending pays the contractor directly via ACH when the job is completed. A personal loan from improve. If I pays the money to the consumer, the kids and then 24 hours consumer pays you like a cash customer. If you're to use our secured loan. We give the money to the consumer in five to seven days and they pay you like a cash customer.

So five to seven days after they are approved or after the project's complete?

After they're approved. Takes five to seven days to get these secure. Takes 24 to 36 hours to get the personal unsecured. And the contractor on unsecured is paid directly via ach. Consumer never touches the funds. So with that being said, this is part of the training. When a contractor's on the approved platform, we always present unsecured lending first. Why? Protect the contractor's funds, protect the consumer, protect the project. I'm all about protection. By the way, I was in compliance on Wall street for many, many years. So unsecured is our first offer. Well, I don't want unsecured. I want to do the lighting project. I want to have a backyard patio built. I want a hibachi grill. I need a hundred thousand dollars. Great. Here's our. Hold on a second. Here's our secured loan. Scan the QR code. We can get you $100,000 right now. They get the money in five to seven days. Treat them like a cash customer. Get your 50%, get your other 50% at completion or whatever your progress pays. I got really bad credit. I want this done. my mom is super rich, has got good credit. Can I just get a personal, can she get a personal loan for me? Absolutely. I'll send her the link right now. So I don't care what the obstacle or objection is, our job at Improvify is to arm the contractors with a mobile app with all of the lending solutions to fit the customer's needs best or the contractor's needs. So if a contractor says I'm not going to give cash to my customer, I'll walk away from those deals. I only want to offer unsecured 12 month promo and a short, mid or a long term, unsecured loan, perfectly fine. Set up the app with just that lending and only off of that lending. I would never do that though. Yeah, because I don't want to walk away from any sales which is A relationship, which is a referral, which is a five star review. I'm going to do all deals and treat all customers. Whether they do unsecured or they get cash in hand. I'm treating them all the same.

Some lenders do offer progress pay, if you qualify

How do you recommend people deal with a lot of. I know, a lot of contractors right now are listening to this, going, all right, so I think I'm on, I think I'm in. But what happens when I needed deposit right now to order the materials.

Cool. Don't offer, 100% finance, offer 70% finance. So, Mr. Smith, we got a consumer credit center. We do require 30% down, but I'm going to finance the other 70% of this project. Let me show you how low the payments are. You don't have to offer 100% financing, but I get that. Now some of our lenders, if you qualify, do offer progress pay. be in business for three years, do over a million annual sales revenue. They can do like a 50, 50, a 25, 25, 25, a 30, 30, 30, 10. So some of our lenders do offer it. Not many. Why? Risk. I don't know if you remember if you've been in the home improvement long. You remember renovo.

No.

Was private, private equity that went out of business this year like seven organ, like in the billions. They burned lenders for hundreds of, millions of dollars, on progress pay because they had advanced funded all these 50, 100 million, $100,000 jobs, took the money and went bankrupt and the lenders lost it all. So contractors are like, well, I just, I, the lender should just pay me the money. Well, think about the billions of dollars. It's a $596 billion industry. The industry would go out of business if they progress paid all contractors. It is risky because a contractor can take the advanced funds, sell a million jobs and go to the Cayman Islands and never install any, you see. So there's a risk factor of giving progress pay, which is money prior to a job being completed. So.

Got it. Yeah.

So either a solution for that, it's called Fun Lock, but it's not launched in my app yet, but it's coming soon. It's an escrow service to hold the money to make sure contractors get paid, are taken care of and the project gets done.

Nice.

Yep.

Yeah. And I think, I don't know, the more if you're, if you're newer and you don't have cash flow, then you, you actually need that deposit.

Right.

If you're, if you're growing and you Maybe. I, I don't know, I, I just look at my business. When I started I didn't have any money. So I, there's no way I could have, I couldn't, I couldn't even have any inventory. I would have to use their deposit to buy it. Later on I got, you know, I did better financially and I was more secure in my, at my dealings with the people and the agreements and stuff. And if someone didn't do a deposit, it's like no big deal. We're still going to take care of them.

Don't self fund jobs. Don't ever lend your own money to people

And let's touch on that. By no means. And please listen to me one thing. I, I'm agnostic. Whether you're using proof of fire or not, or you use a competitor, it doesn't matter. I don't compete against anybody. We collaborate with everybody out there. Don't ever lend your own money to people. Please don't do that. Don't self fund jobs. You're now not a contractor, you're a bank. And that is a risky, risky place to be, man. Lending out your hard earned money because you like someone and you trust somebody.

It's a great point.

We'll self fund that for you for ten grand. Then all of a sudden you got a next nice one and you got the next nice customer. Pretty soon you've got a hundred thousand dollars leverage against your business and people you're not collecting. Well, I don't really like the way that the lights ended up and they stopped making payment. Now you got to put a mechanic's lean on their house and that's a real pain in the butt because you're never going to move. You're never going to get that lien. It's just don't lend your own money. That is the riskiest thing to do in the world.

That's great advice. I mean, that's. It brought up another point I wasn't thinking of because there are a lot of contractors out there that are like, oh, I don't have any money to invest in advertising. I know you want me to go do this. Michael, I thought you just had like a good month. You sold 80 grand or 200 grand. It's like, oh, yeah, but there's, they haven't paid me yet. It's like, like you said, like why are they, why are they.

Oh man. Use the bank's money, baby. That's, it's just leveraging the money from the bank, using the living crap out of these lenders that don't care about you understand? That's Why I built this company. Lenders are a commodity, and they will treat you like a commodity. We are the intermediates to make that not happen anymore. We're the voice of reasoning. I'm the guy that'll teach you about zero cost averaging and dealer fees and how to build proper margins into your jobs to protect your funds so you stay in business and don't go out of business. And I'm going to tell you, just like Ryan will raise your prices because you're worth it. Don't race to the bottom. It's never worth the win. I am here to protect contractors, not watch contractors go out of business. I've been doing this so many years, and I've watched so many roofers go out of business because they're chasing accounts receivable, doing insurance projects. It's horrible. It's awful. I hate watching good contractors go out of business. It affects their family, it affects their psychology, their emotions. It affects their relationship with the Lord. It's just awful. Good guys going out of business because they race to the bottom because they were trying to be the cheapest to win jobs. Raise your prices. You're worth it.

I was reminded, actually, at Light it Up Expo. my. The very first person to join Landscape Lighting Secrets. I didn't have a podcast. I didn't have a name. Like, no one who knew I was this guy, Luke Jensen, decides to pull the trigger. And, the very. One of the very first things I told him, I was like, so tell me about your business. And he tells me he's charging 250 a light. I'm like, dude, you need to raise your prices to like, 350, 400 bucks, like, almost double. He's like, oh, man, I'm having such a hard time closing it. 250. I'm like, exactly. Like, if you can't close at 250, what's the difference between closing at 350?

It's because people sell out of their back pocket.

Oh, yeah, we do.

We, we. And I say we. Let me say this in a way of, like, I'm a sales guy selling lighting, and if I think that $10,000 is a lot of money, I'm going to present that way. If I think that $189 a month for a lighting project is expensive because I couldn't pay 189, I'm gonna sell that way. We never sell from m our back pocket, huh? We approach the confidence level of with big, huge peacock feathers. And we get excited about the fact that we're presenting a $10,000 investment in their home to increase the value and make their wife happy and make their yard look gorgeous. We get excited about the affordability of $180, $189 a month so they don't have to give us $20,000. We celebrate it with a mindset and a confidence level that helps us sell. But we never sell out of our back pocket. because if we do that, we will emotionally never sell.

I'm amazed at how, how low those payments can get.

Oh, it's crazy, man. My. The calculator we have also in the app does best, better, good. So if you're selling front yard, mid yard, full yard, or three different types of lighting systems, you can very easily show them how affordable it is to go $5,000 more. Also, when they apply for financing, they'll find out what their max approval is, and that's very easy for you then to go. Oh, well, congratulations on your $50,000 approval. We were looking at the $15,000 project, but, geez, a $25,000 project is only $32 more a month, right? That's less than $1 a day. And now you're like, doing the Ben Franklin close. Like, you can justify it very easily because the wife's spending $9 a day at Starbucks.

You know what's crazy? I, I had this idea the other day because there's people in the outdoor lighting industry that are able to sell, okay, if you can sell holiday lighting, you're selling Christmas lights. You're spent. People are spending $2,000, $2500 to have lights up for six to eight weeks. You know, really, eight weeks at most. When you do your price per night, do, your price per night on that bad boy, and then do your price per night on, landscape lighting.

Chris Scill bought four homes in the last five years

That's going to be on every single night, 365 days a year for the next 10 to 20 years. Your price per night is a fraction of the cost.

So how long do those little light bulbs last for?

I mean, most of them are warrantied, like, warrantied from the manufacturer for five to 15 to 20 years. Wow, that's a long ass time. Yeah, you need maintenance and there's other stuff.

Right, But I bought four homes in the last five years. I don't stay in a whole long. Yeah, I'm not moving from this one. Holy cow.

Why would you.

No, I got an elevator. Elevator in my house. We're at the association, meeting the other. So only five homes in my neighborhood. I'm now the Vice president of the association, mind you. And the freaking president calls me out, he's like, yeah, Chris down there, he's got an elevator in a house and he's got a pool on his second floor. And I was like, hi, my name is Chris Scill. I, I bought the house at the end of the street. I'm like, thanks a lot, Charlie. Like, so much for being low key. And the neighbors that bought the house

next door, they already knew.

No, he goes, turns around, he looks at me, he goes, you have a pool? I go, yeah. He goes, where? I go, it's on the second level. He goes, your pool is. I'm like, yeah. I was like, yeah, it was pretty dope. We bought this place site unseen.

And because it's the, the picture you sent, it's like, like water can go underneath it, right?

Yeah. So the homes are interesting here. 2019 on. If they're gold fortified, there's different fortified levels for insurance. If it's gold fortified, they have to be raised up. I think it's 12 or 14ft on pylons. So my entire first floor is a four bay garage. It's an outdoor deck. It's where we have the hot tub. I've, got a gym down there. I've got all my toys on one. My wife's got her car and I got my F350. And I've got about, 15ft in front of my F350. So if that shows you the size of, the bay, it's pretty dope, man. the garage bays are huge. Huge.

That's fun.

Chris Scoville: We have two programs. One is business Starter and one is pro level

all right, so I guess kind of as we're, wrapping this up. Yeah. How do you qualify? Because there's people listening to this that have been in business a long time and they're gonna have the revenues, no problem. Others are newer, and I know when they've gone to qualify for finance companies in the past, they're like, oh, well, you know, you have to be in business five years or you gotta do it.

Little frustrating, you know, you think, and there's a big argument, and I can, I can feel that. And we're, again, we're here to work with contractors and make it happen. The argument is, well, why the hell do they have to vet me? I'm the one selling their loans. Well, it's a risky business. Unsecured lending is super risky. The bank's giving money through you to a consumer. They don't know you from nothing. They don't know if you're A good person or a bad person. So it is a risky business. So to answer your question, we have two programs. One is business Starter and one is pro level. Well, let's define business starter first. Business starter is I'm Chris Scoville, I want to start Chris Scoville's lighting. I've never done this before, but I've got an llc. So that is Business Starter. New in business, we line them up with an unsecured loan, two personal loans in a secure loan. So four lending solutions in, in the app. Pro level will be over a year and over a million in annual sales revenue. Those contractors go through the pro level, which is a higher level because we get better. I say we have better. We have different lending solutions. You can do the 2 to the 20, no dealer fee. You can do the 12 month, ah, 12 month deferred. You could do the 18 month, no interest. And we've got different lending solutions. We have a new lender coming on four, non licensed, low voltage level electrical, you know, or contracting that you guys do. So those are the two solutions that exist.

Okay, sweet. So literally there's something for everyone whether

you and business go down a path. Ah. And then the cool thing is is that when they get to that level of in business for a year and over a million ASR, we just roll them up into pro level.

Sweet.

We add on lenders. So we have a mobile app and we load it up with your enrolled lenders. So you can utilize at the point of sale with a QR code or just email the customer. So it's big fat buttons for big fat contractor thumbs. send QR scan, QR code at point of sale, apply 5 minutes of credit, pull approval or. I'm, not with the customer. I did the estimate, I'm going to send it to them. I'm going to send them the finance link on the phone and you know, walk them through the process. So there's a couple of different ways to deliver the finance app. It's pretty simple.

Okay. so I'm big on helping people, you know, close on the spot and, and guiding their customer to that. Right. Decision.

Yeah.

How much time should someone put into becoming proficient with financing apps

Let's say someone's listening to this how? In terms of expectation, realistic expectations. Like you said, there's some training, there's some terminology I need to get used to. Secured, unsecured and all this differently. How much time would you expect someone to put into this to come out of the gate and be, you know, proficient with it?

We can get a contractor up and running in a day. when we add on an unsecured lending solution, that could take 12 to 15 days because the bank's got to do the compliance, we got to get you trained on the portal, but we can, we can get a contractor set up. So you got selling immediately be with a personal loan, two personal loan links and the secured loan, to be proficient. I don't know, it depends. Because if you jump right into school and you watch a couple of videos, you're raring to go and go sell. So just it's, it's up to the contractor on if they want to take the effort or they not. Because we're going to do welcome calls, go to market meetings, private one on one training for your team to make sure that you or your sales reps know how to open up the app, how to speak to it. We're going to give you your laminate with your name on it and with a QR code on ah it so you can scan. So like the tools that we give are pretty dummy proof. Like if, if you just follow the simple instructions. The beauty is this, if you don't follow instructions, if you don't do the work and you still need help, you just call the damn deal desk and you say, hey, Amber, I'm at the point of sale right now and I didn't take any of the training, I didn't go to the go to market meeting. What do I need to do? Right. And my, my people will go, open up your app, click on the button, have the customer scan the QR code. I'll, be right here if you need any help. So you're not.

They could literally have them on the phone while they're closing the deal.

Yeah, and, and all my, I say competitors, the big banks didn't say that I could do it. They go, you'll never be able to do that. You can't scale it. I could scale anything I want. I'll, just keep hiring more employees here. I'm not. There's no AI. These are employees trained by me. I've been in this business for 30 years. All of my employees and teammates who work for this company are trained by me. They know what to say, they know how to answer, they know our programs. It's not an AI tool. It's a human that you get to talk to and yell at nicely.

Yell at nicely. Glad you added that in there at the end.

We get some contractors that are really nice and we get some that are very aggressively nice.

Yeah, I Think I've met some of those.

Lots of different personalities in our industry. But you know what? We. We can dust ourselves off here because we know who we're dealing with. The contractors are dealing with 10,000 things all at once. We're just dealing with financing. You know, they're worried about paying their bills and picking up supplies and got an angry customer like Chris Scoville that doesn't like the line because it's not straight. Like, we understand what contractors are going through, and sometimes they're not mad at us, but we're just nice enough for them to take out all their frustrations on us.

This has nothing to do with financing or payment options or payment solutions, which I. Are you anti the F word, by the way?

Oh, no. I say because we speak the language that our customers want to speak. So if they say finance and we say financing, I love to present payment solutions or payment options.

Do you would like. If a homeowner said, do you guys offer financing? Then would you say financing solutions?

We have tons of payment options for you. We've got tons of financing. Because everywhere you look now, there's financing options. And the effort isn't the effort anymore because this new buying generation is seeking debt. They can't wait to load more debt on because they're. They're used to buy now, pay later. They're used to financing everything. So this new generation doesn't care about financing. The 80s generation, the 70s generation, which are kind of God, bless them, they were taught, don't ever take on debt. The new generation is like, debt, baby, go. It's a different world that you're selling to. So they're okay with financing, they're okay with payment solutions, they're okay with payment options, they're okay with investment. Like, they're all right with any term that you want to use that you're comfortable with.

But for all.

For all this purpose, like, if they speak the language, mirror the language. If they go, hey, do you guys have any payment options? Say, yeah, we've got lots of financing. Don't say that. Say, yeah, we've got plenty of payment solutions or payment options in our consumer credit center. By the way, it's your consumer credit center. It's never. I work with X bank. X bank. Don't name the bank. People don't want to do business with banks. They want to do business with you.

Yep.

So it's your consumer credit center. It's not the bank. The bank's gross. They'll Google the bank. They'll hate the bank. You'll lose credibility.

Cool.

I'm in the finance business. I've always been. For some weird reason, I love this industry

All right. So this has nothing to do with payment solutions or financing, but your zest for life. Like I don't know where you get this energy from. I just want to know what the drugs are called and where do I get them?

You don't want the drugs that I'm on right now, as we've discussed. But I, I love this industry so much. I'm super passionate about it. I've always been. For some weird reason, I just love this industry. But I'll guarantee you this. It is 5 o' clock right now in central. I'm in Alabama. Still getting used to that, by the way. At eight o' clock I'm flatlined, baby. I go to bed, I sleep like I've never slept. I'm up at 5am down in the gym downstairs and I'm good till about 8pm a, but after that I'm done skiing.

Good to know. Won't bother you after eight. Well, this has been awesome, man. I really appreciate you, like I said, bringing your energy. Energy, bringing your passion. I, I love it. I love that you're passionate about this because if you weren't, I wouldn't be. You know what I mean? Like we, we need you to, to give us that energy.

You imagine. What do you do for a living? Well, I. Talk about financing.

Sounds terrible.

You, you what? It sounds like a horrible job. It does. I mean, people ask me like, well, what do you do for a living? I'm like, I'm in the finance business. Like it sounds horrible, but I, the energy that we put into our community over in our school platform, it's just great. It's just on, Wednesdays we do live trainings. We set up one on one trainings for contractors. The team that I have here in our company, all the culture is just a big beautiful blend of real cool people. We're just building one hell of a company from the inside out over here, man.

So awesome. Well, I appreciate your guys's support. You guys came to light it up Expo.

Alex, he had a really good time. We met some great people there.

It was cool. and I mean we, we, I don't want to say we needed you, but we needed you because again, like we, we just don't have anything like that for the, for the lighting industry. And I, I, it just made a huge, huge difference.

If you do it again, I'm sorry, I should say when you do it again, I'd love to come get up on stage and actually really role play and script this out. Let's do some hey, how do you present this thing at the point of sale and how does this work within my job or my CRM estimating tool? Like let's bring some real world situations and obstacles objections to the, to the front of the room. Yeah, I like the role play huge role play. Let's do some Q and A. Let's throw some of the hardest obstacles objections out there and I think that'll really move the needle to help a lot of people that may have never offered financing. Some of your people may not even know that they can finance what they sell. Yeah, like you know, they probably think or maybe they don't think or maybe they don't know that this is financeable. They're, they're just asking for cash, check or credit card or bitcoin or horse and carriage.

Well how, what's the best way to, for people to get a hold of you?

Yeah. Go to the websites, improvify I M P R O V I f I improveify.com and we're getting a big beautiful website rebuilt. Fill out the little form and let me, I'll tell you how high stressful of a call it is. You get on the phone one of our consultants, we're going to learn about your business, we're going to learn about your market, we're going to learn about who your competitors are and then we're going to open up the hood to the truck and go okay, here's the best solutions for you. Are you interested? Yes or no. And at the end of the call we'll either work together or you'll walk away knowing a lot of really cool stuff. Or even if you know we can guide you on what particular lender to go to. If you decide not to work with us and have a multi lending stack, we'll guide you in the right way where to go. We're just here to help the industry.

That's cool.

My main goal is to protect contractors. That's, that's what drives me in this industry

All right guys, go to improveify.com and I will say Chris came in and did a monthly training for us inside landscape lighting secrets. And even on that call that, that training he was, he was giving shout outs to other companies like who I would consider maybe his competitors. Like oh they're, they're good for this if you want them, they're good for this.

Yeah, yeah there was quite a few on there. I just want you guys to do well. I want you to sell, I want you to make enough money to care your family, your subs that Install. I want you to bring affordability, the customers so they can have these dream projects done. Whether it's with me or, a bank or a competitor, I don't care. I just want you to do well because we have 5,600 users on our platform. I'm okay. I'd love to have you, but my main thing is, is to protect contractors. Bring something cool to the industry and, and get your families fed and sell more and help more. That's my goal, man. That's, that's what drives me in this industry. It's not to, dominate and take 100 of the market share. I don't give a about that. I don't need it. I need you to do well. I need you to sell. I need you to help more people at the point of sale. And that's it.

Love it.

Landscape Lighting Secrets recently added Improvify as a new partner

Well, just a reminder, if you guys are in Landscape Lighting Secrets, Improvify, is one of our new partners. And so there we do have a discounted, deal worked out with improve. So make sure, when you guys do reach out, make sure you're mentioned with Landscape Lighting Secrets. If you're not a member, don't tell them you're with Landscape Lighting Secrets, because they will reach out to us. We will confirm and be like, this guy's a liar, and they won't want to do business with you. So, but if you are, just as a reminder, we've got, and we've. We keep growing our partner network. I think we've got like 25 or $30,000 worth of discounts. Kind of like a buyer's group now. It's kind of weird, but, really cool stuff. So, Chris, thank you so much for coming on here. like I said, thanks for injecting some of your energy, your passion for financing, for payment solutions into us. I'm looking forward to really seeing what we do together to grow this lighting industry so.

As well, man. Thank you so much for having me again, Ryan. It's like the third time that you and I have met. Just in the last, you know, just to think in Utah, we were right

down the road it took you moving to Alabama.

It's all about timing. I've got lots of, software companies that are partners of ours up in Lehigh.

Yep, same area.

All right, well, thanks a lot, guys. Take care, everyone

All right, well, thanks a lot, guys. Reach out to improveify. Com. Thanks, Chris. We'll see you guys next week.

Thanks, Ryan. Take care, everyone.

All right, later, everyone.