Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H VAC and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H VAC and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships, and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now.

Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, hey, welcome back to Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield.

Here it is, another awesome day, and it's another cool day to talk about.

Probably the number one question that I get is, hey, Sam, do you know any better financing options?

Because we all know, other than what, wooden nickels.

Yeah.

It's like, how can we.

Can you pay in chickens?

Yeah.

Back to the barter system.

So that.

And the other one, of course, is where do you find great people?

And so, of course, that answer is build your culture first, and then you won't have a problem with that.

But when it comes to financing options, we all know, especially since the pandemic, it has been a wild ride for finance rates, for all of the interest rates.

Dealer fees especially is a hot topic.

I've seen it all the way up to, Geez, when I was in.

Over in solar, we were seeing 32% dealer fees.

It was nuts.

So I'm excited to have my guest on today.

This is you.

You.

If you've spent any time on social media, you've probably seen this guy.

This is Chris Schofield.

He is the CEO and founder of Improvify.

He's got some really cool stuff.

Him and I actually connected in 2020.

Yeah, five years.

And yeah, we've been.

We've been threatening to do this for a long time.

It's finally happening.

So welcome to the show today, man.

Thanks for having me, Sam.

Looking forward to it.

It's.

It's amazing how you meet people on social media and you just stay in touch and you comment on each other's stuff.

We read our things, and then five years later, we're like, wow, we're still doing this.

No kidding.

Like, we're.

We're still here talking about this cool stuff.

That means that we're doing something.

Means that we're we.

We didn't go and do something different in the.

Right.

Yeah, man.

The longevity is.

That's important.

You know, if I told you.

If I told you the real longevity here, you'd probably be shocked.

Well, actually, let's start out like that.

All the interview podcasts we always start.

Give everybody your highlight reel, man.

How did you earn the right to be sitting in the seat you are right now on this podcast?

Oh, I love it.

I love.

That's good.

The second part of this question, you can answer them in whatever order that you want.

We always like to know what is a driving philosophy or like a mission statement that.

That really pulls you and your company forward as well.

Cool.

All right, we'll touch on that.

We'll touch on the culture and mission.

And I might have to have Tiffany run in here and give me the whole.

There's a whole list of them that we have.

But I.

I have my own philosophy on what I do, and it's pretty simple.

So let's rewind.

How the heck did I get into the seat?

That's a good question.

Grit and grind.

I mean, I hate to say the grind, the hustle and the grip, but really building something from nothing that didn't exist.

That is a platform that is complete blue ocean and kind of an anomaly.

Spend a lot of grit, grind, hustle and crying a lot of tears.

There's a lot of kicking moments, dude.

I mean, if it's not something, it's something else, right?

So.

So back in the day, back in high school, I was hitting some hammers with my dad on a.

On right at Roscoe Construction.

He had a.

He had a construction company.

He was also an attorney.

So we were building some custom homes in high school, and then I went to college, and then I got out, and I was like, what am I going to do?

So what every person does in western New York, they.

They pack up their truck and they move down to Florida.

Because we go where we go where we had spring.

Spring break.

Like, I'm gonna go back to Florida.

Because that sure was fun.

Well, no kidding it was fun.

It was spring break.

Yeah, right.

So I moved down to Florida and I get a roofing job doing tie Beams in St.

Lucie West.

So my roofing career started in 91.

After a few years of doing odds and ends of stuff, I was like, man, I think I'd like to get into the financing space.

So then 1993, I got into wholesale construction of permanent lending with a bank.

So I actually started working with contractors officially in financing in about 1993.

Okay, so it is 2025.

So if your mathematics work.

I'm an O.G.

No doubt, no doubt.

Now I've worked for seven or eight different national banks.

I was in wholesale construction to permanent business up until 2009, got out of it, and then I came back into the home improvement space.

Everything from residential commercial property assessed clean energy to unsecured lending.

And I've worked at, you know, service finance.

I've worked at a bunch of different lenders.

I helped build Sunlight's program.

And then of course, when I retired from service finance came the idea to build a software company, exit the software company and then build and pruvify.

So I've kind of been.

It's been a long roller coaster of a lot of different lending, like commercial residential, mortgage, banking compliance.

I was on Wall street for a long time doing corporate compliance for investment advisors, broker dealers, banks, insurance company.

So I've been around this financing game for a really, really long time.

But I think when you and I started shooting it back five years ago is when I started kind of branding myself in really, kind of in as the guy to go to, to help.

Just help, help, help people.

Right?

And then of course we built Improvify and We have over 680 clients nationally and 5,500 users on our platform right now across the United States.

Funding, unsecured, secured commercial, residential, anything for properties.

You know, we.

We work with our contractors in that.

In the home, home improvement space and now commercial because I own a company called Purple Apple Loans.

We can talk about that too.

But yeah, man, it's been a.

It's been a good haul.

Nice.

Been a good haul.

So, you know, here we are.

Fast forward 2025.

We've moved the.

We moved the corporation from Florida out to Utah.

So I'm out here in beautiful Midway, small farm town in Utah, just outside of Park City and Deer Valley, about an hour from Salt Lake.

And man, I just look out my office window and it is just mountains.

Just 360just.

It's just gorgeous out here.

So yeah, I'm the C.

CEO head janitor in charge.

Tiffany is the CFO and Donna Worth is the chief operating officer.

We just moved her into that role that she earned because she was our number three when we started this thing.

We moved her over this week, so really excited about that.

Big girl.

I saw your announcement about that just the other day on the socials.

That was a cool one.

And I love the area.

I was actually door to Door Con 7 last year.

I Spoke at that conference.

I was there a day ahead, and we took a trip over to Park City.

Happened to be during Sundance, and that was gorgeous and such a cool experience.

I love where you're at.

Really great here.

Yeah.

We went from zero.

We went from one employee to 17 in a year.

Oh, nice.

That's good growth.

Yeah, it keeps you up at night.

That's a lot of responsibility.

It's the entrepreneurial life, man.

That's what we do.

Yeah, it's great.

It's great.

Look at me.

I'm 50.

I'm almost 55.

I feel like I'm 70, but I look 23.

There you go.

It's great.

No, I love it.

As far as.

You know, to answer your second part of your question.

So that's my history.

That's how I got into the seat.

That's.

I'm just here to help people.

So culture is like.

It's so interesting.

You know, Tiff and I sat down for, like, four months, and we're like, what's our mission statement?

What's our culture?

You know?

And we came up with all the fancy words.

Here's the bottom line, man.

We just love this industry.

We want to hire and bring on the best teammates here at this company, and we want everybody to row the boat in the same darn direction with us.

We want to care about who our clients are and care about who their customers are.

And at the end of the day, and I say this from stage all the time, whomever cares the most about the customer at the point of sale will win the sale, whether they get the job or not.

Meaning that these contractors that show up and throw up and don't really care about what they're selling and whom they're taking care of, what they're selling to, what.

The real reason is why somebody needs a roof, window, door, air conditioning, generator, whatever it might be, the contractor that cares the most about that human being wins.

You might not win the job.

You might not close the job.

Somebody else may.

But if you win the relationship and that consumer goes, that guy has integrity.

He tried to help me.

He did the best he could.

He represented his company well.

He.

He was just an authentic, real person.

You may win a referral partner for life, no doubt.

And that's just so Sam.

I get these guys that call me all the, hey, Chris, I got a customer that needs financing.

I.

Chris, Sam, I lose my mind.

What do you mean, you have one customer?

Yeah, well, I've got a guy that needs.

I said, no, no, no.

You are Literally looking at a forest and concentrating on the one tree.

Yep.

In the forest, there's a whole bunch of trees.

Right.

And they're like, yeah.

I'm like, so why are you staring at one tree?

We'll get you enrolled with financing.

We'll train you, we'll launch this.

We'll get your mobile app tech set up, we'll train you, we'll support you, we'll build a consumer credit center for you.

But please, Mr.

Contractor, don't come to me on the 11th hour and say, I need financing because I have one customer.

I need to get this deal done.

Because if my financing that we have, which is great, doesn't work and they get declined because they've got a 400 credit score, you're going to judge our entire relationship on the one deal that you had, not on the overall partnership and relationship of us integrating financing, training and support and tech solutions into your business?

You're going to judge me on the one deal we couldn't fund for you?

Just like a marketing company.

If a marketing company can't produce leads from whatever they're spending money on, you're only going to be judged on that, not on the overall partnership and how you're trying to build a relationship with somebody.

So we are huge on culture and whom we're attracting.

I think that Tiff and Donna and Alex and Tam, they all go through an interview process with people like four or five, and then a panel, and then I don't even interview.

I might meet somebody at the end and go, oh, this cool person.

We had a conversation.

Let them decide if they're going to hire the person.

I don't even hire here.

They do love it.

Oh, I'm not good at hiring.

I'm not good at hiring.

I'm too emotional to hire.

I am.

I like people too much.

I am a horrible, horrible person that I.

I'm not good at hiring.

I just, like, I just want to hire everybody.

Weaknesses are, I want to hire everybody.

They're like, they've got filtering processes and red flags and stuff.

I'm like, yeah, come on board.

You seem cool.

You know, I love this.

I'm going to go back just a little bit to what you were saying about the relationship.

And, you know, the client, the contractor is actually caring.

You know that.

I think that's why you and I have always resonated so much.

That's the heartbeat of closeit now is.

I mean, you can see it right here on the screen.

Be someone worth buying from.

You know, if you work Harder on yourself than you do on your business, and your level of person increases and you just become somebody people want to work with.

It's way easier to close the deal because they just want to do business with you because you truly care and you show up in integrity and service.

And that's why having a relationship with a lender that has the same philosophy, that's not just about the bottom line, man.

It makes so much a difference.

Do you know who's not good at closing?

Who's that?

Me.

I'm horrible at it.

I'm really not good at it.

I'm good at getting on the conversations like this.

I'm good at doing a demo of our company.

And I go so deep.

I don't use crayons.

I use an architectural pen.

Sure.

And then when it gets to the end, when I'm like, so would you like to, you know, become a partner with us and give me your money?

I'm horrible at that.

But do you know who's good at it?

My consultants that we hired.

Yeah, no doubt.

They express value.

They use big fat crayons on what we do.

And at the end, they say, give us money so we can build you an unbelievable financing consumer credit center.

Get your technology set up, build this, train you, support you, care about you, give you the best financing solutions in the United States of America.

I'm just the guy that gets on and just goes so deep and.

And so passionate about the sales process and so passionate about the products and programs that we built.

I am not a closer.

People, like, you're a great salesperson.

You're probably really good.

Like, now I'm probably not good because when it comes, I'm like, hey, dude, pay me.

I should probably be a better.

A better class.

Should probably take your class.

Well, we could totally talk about that for sure.

Let's talk about financing in general, though.

This is one of the things.

So I want to back up and let's start super elementary here, because I know there's a lot of people who listen to this community that are in this community that either are a lot smaller guys.

A lot of the questions that come up that I get are, hey, I'm thinking about offering financing.

Yes.

So let's start there.

You know, I'm sure, you know, off the top of your head, a lot of the different metrics around percentages of the way people buy and the, you know, likelihood of closing a deal if you offer financing versus not and give us a crash course in why.

Why the heck should we offer financing to start with.

Yeah.

So you know, I just did.

We'll just break it down elementary style.

I walked out side.

I'm a kindergartner.

Yeah.

So there's three houses here in the neighborhood.

And this guy across the street over here, he needs a $27,000 roof.

And that guy has about an 850 credit score, but he owns his house free and clear.

All right, cool.

So he needs a roof.

He's got a need.

Great.

The guy across the street from him has a 700 credit score, still pretty good.

But when he buys things, he doesn't like to pay interest.

Okay.

There's a, there's two psychologies.

And then the guy down the street unfortunately has really challenged credit.

He's got a 575.

He went through some things a few years ago, but he's working his way back.

So if you're in home improvement sales and you're knocking, whether you're selling the roof, the, the hardy board siding and the air conditioner, these three homes need in my community, and you knock and they're like, come on in, we need your service.

Yeah, we're ready to buy.

And you get to the point of sale and you say, Mr.

Smith, it's $27,000.

Pay me.

And Mr.

Smith looks at you and goes, well, I don't have $27,000.

This isn't an insurance project.

We're not doing restoration insurance stories here today.

By the way, we're talking about sales.

Well, Mr.

Smith is $27,000.

Pay me, Johnny.

I don't have $27,000.

All right, man, have a good day.

And you get in your truck and driveway right now.

Let's frame it up.

This way, Mr.

Smith.

Thanks for having me.

Johnny Boy from Johnny Boys Roofing.

Hey, look, I don't know how you're looking to pay if you'd like to use your money or use ours, but Johnny Boy Roofing Consumer Credit center, we've got experts here to help you.

A lot of our customers like an 18 month savings cash.

Some of them like a long term loan payment option with no prepay.

And you know what, in five minutes we can get a soft credit pull to see how we can make this 27,000 roof really affordable for you.

Are you interested in scanning this and seeing what we get you approved for or would you like to use your money today?

So just by pre framing the question, how do you want to pay?

Would you like to use our money or yours?

Reduces the ridiculousness of a $27,000 ticket down to this 18 months, same as cash or low monthly payment option up to 20 years with no prepayment penalty.

Now that's just one psychology.

That's your guy with the 27,000.

Let's go across the street.

I had mentioned that that guy's got a good credit score and he doesn't like pay interest on nothing.

Same conversation, Mr.

Smith.

How y' all looking to pay?

Want to use your money or use ours?

What do you mean?

Well, we got a consumer credit center.

A lot of our customers really like the 18 month same as cash.

You know those loans that don't have any interest if you pay them off within 18 months.

Oh yeah, I like that one.

Great.

Scan the QR code.

We'll get you Pre approved in five minutes with soft credit pool.

There's number two.

Let's go to number three.

Hey, Mr.

Smith, how do you want to pay?

Well, shoot, I wish I had money, but I got bad Credit.

It's okay, Mr.

Smith.

We've got a consumer credit center.

And we can help folks with challenge credit too.

It'll take us five minutes.

Scan this QR code, let's see what we get you approved for.

So the same conversation with three different types of psychologies will take place.

Now picture your guy that doesn't offer financing.

How does he sell a $27,000 roof?

The guy doesn't have credit card room, maybe doesn't have equity.

Or even worse.

Or even worse.

You know what's worse than that?

The guy owns his house.

No, he owns his house free and clear.

And here's what he says.

You know what, Johnny Boy, I like you a lot.

I'm going to go down to my local bank.

I'll call you back.

And Johnny Boy so excited because Johnny thinks he's got a sale.

But here's what happened.

That consumer went down to Zion bank, they applied for home equity.

It took them 90 days to get it and now they're flushed with cash.

They forgot how much they love Johnny Boy.

And now they're hiring Chucky and the truckee from the white van.

So at Improvify we build consumer credit centers to set them up with promo long term and secured loans at the point of sale with a soft credit pool.

No dealer fee up to 400,000.

So Johnny boy could just simply do this.

Oh, you want to use the equity in your house?

Cool.

Scan this QR code.

We could do the HELOC right here, right now.

You have the funds in five to seven days with no appraisal.

So we don't want sales Pros not being pros.

Exactly.

If you're in the home improvement industry and you are knocking and walking and walking and knocking and grinding and following up, doing all the freaking hard things that there are to do, you owe it to yourself to have a toolbox full of tools which are financing tools to close the job.

Because an electrician doesn't show up to fix the Jacuzzi with one screwdriver.

He's got a truck full of tools.

He's got a tool bag and he's got a tool belt and he brings them all to the Jacuzzi.

He doesn't keep walking back and forth between the van inefficiently.

So you as a sales pro should be showing up with your laminate.

You should be showing up with your pitch and your presentation.

You should be showing up with your mobile app to take the app because you're a sales pro and you've got tools to take with you to close.

So I know.

Long answer to your short question, but that is exactly what a contractor not offering financing is facing.

And they lie and they say this all the time.

All my customers pay cash.

Cool.

What about the customers that don't have cash?

What do you mean all the deals that you lost because you're not offering a financing solution.

Exactly.

How many of your customers pay by credit card?

60%.

Did you know that?

Credit card is financing.

You're just financing at a higher interest rate on 30 days.

So it's a real easy conversation to have.

Oh, I love this so much.

This is cool.

And you, you opened up a handful of things that I didn't, we didn't even know that you offered, which is really cool.

Let's, let's circle back to the, the eloc, the heloc, right there.

Like having the opportunity on the spot.

Because I've been in plenty of situations.

I've been in thousands and thousands of homes over the years because I, I'm not just.

Oh, you would have loved this in.

So you would have loved this in solar.

Oh, absolutely.

I'm thinking, I'm looking back and thinking, you know, in two years I put up 100 deals across the country.

And I'm thinking it would have been probably closer to 130 or 40 had I had that as an oper, as an option.

More.

Yeah, no doubt.

Because we're meet, this is important.

Listen, we're meeting the buyers where they'd like to be met.

If we meet our buyers where they'd like to be met and we let them purchase how they'd like to purchase and we kill obstacles and objections and buyers remorse, then all they have to do is say yes to the dress.

Yes.

Because if you leave one thing hanging, one question mark in that consumer's head and you leave and you think you got the sale, you probably.

They have a question mark in your head that you didn't uncover.

But what if that guy really does think that his local bank has a better rate than the 9, 9, 10 year that you just slammed him into?

What if he thinks he can get 6.90 from Zion up to 15 years with a 3 year repo, which he can.

He could have got it from you though, at the point of sale if you asked the question 100.

So I want to kill.

I want to kill it all.

I want him to know that we at Johnny Rockets Roofing.

Johnny Rockets Roofing, that's funny.

We have a consumer credit center.

Yeah, Sam, this is super important.

This is different than a lot of the way that especially you know, roofing or any of the trades that go to bat, they're like, okay, well here's our third party lender.

No, they say though, here's Wells Fargo, here's Synchrony, here's Service Finance, here's Greensky, here's Good Leap.

They're literally telling the customers who their lender is.

Bad mistake.

Why?

Because if they get approved with you and they know who your lender is and they hate you, they can hire competitors and say, I already have approval or just don't never say who your lender is.

You know, had that happen.

That's so funny that you mentioned that because I can't tell you the number of projects that I've done where the homeowners were, they, somebody forced them into a pre approval, et cetera, with this, you know, Good Leap or whoever.

And then I come in and you know, blow their doors down and they love it, they love our company, they love me and say, okay, no problem.

Tell you what, we use them too.

We could just make a quick phone call, we'll just swap it over to us.

And I've taken so many projects just like that.

It goes so much deeper.

I don't allow.

Well, I don't allow.

I advise.

Don't do this.

I advise such a company, you can't make them.

But.

Johnny Rockets Roofing Consumer Credit center sounds a hell of a lot better than Johnny Rockets.

Worse with well, Fargo.

Like, what if the person hates Wells Fargo and had a horrible relationship with them before, which they probably did.

Yeah, no doubt.

Well, you've just shot yourself.

You've just killed your deal because you tied yourself some bank that they had a bad experience with.

But what sounds better from branding and third party validation and marketing and all the cool stuff that we build websites like we do really cool things or help these guys build their own consumer credit center.

But you sound so much better saying, Johnny Rockets roofing consumer credit center.

We don't just work with one lender, we have a multi lending, we have prime lending, we have subprime lending, we have secured lending, we have commercial lending, we have, we have personal loans.

Johnny Rockets roofing isn't just a one trick pony.

You just don't have one bank, we have multiple.

So Mr.

Smith, if I can't get you approved here, I'm going to go here.

And if I can't get you approved, I'm going to go here and if I can't get you approved there, well, I'm going to call the improve if ideal desk and maybe they can build a deal for you.

So by the time that Johnny Rockets roofing is done with Mr.

Smith, Mr.

Smith is like that guy fought tooth and nails to go get me money.

Yeah, it's just third party validation.

It's just credibility of how you brand yourself, how you stand out as a differentiator in the marketplace is super important.

In 2025, man, there's a lot of noise out there.

So if you're showing up just like the other guy with a beautifully wrapped truck from Kick Charge with a beautiful mascot on it, you might start all looking the same.

So you might want to start showing up differently and adding, well, we got a consumer credit center.

Maybe your competitors aren't with Improvify, you might be lucky.

Oh, I love that.

You know, it's really cool too because the companies that, well, I mean especially since, well, this goes way back.

I didn't even know it until years later that some of the things I was doing in my early career was a decade ahead of what was the general consensus and what was being trained forever.

So we'll start a little bit back and then come forward.

You know, so many times I go in and win a project and I'm walking out the door and the homeowners say, oh, hey, what brand are we getting?

Well, it doesn't matter because you were here to take care of you.

Yes, here's what you're getting.

But also that's not the important part.

And so especially what happened, we really, really saw this come to the forefront during the pandemic during COVID when all of the supply shortages happened for at the first, the companies that branded themselves as we're the train dealer, we're the GAF dealer.

And then they had to start selling rude and American.

Yeah, yeah.

And so then they were like, it was awful because they didn't have availability.

And the companies that sold the brand, we are close it now.

We are improvify.

We are, you know, those are the ones that won because they would sell the job then they would leave and start calling the supply houses and go, hey, you got a two stage in stock.

Hey, you got a two stage in stock.

Hey, you got a two.

Okay, here's what they're getting today.

But it doesn't matter.

And I love the.

This follows the exact process here because we all know right now, especially those we can dive into the PE conversation especially right now in our, in all of home services.

We've got all of this.

This PE money is coming in and snatching things up.

How do we compete?

Boy, are they making mistakes on their.

They're making mistakes on their bottom line and don't even know it.

Let's talk about one quick thing.

Since you said pe 100% dive in.

Private equity are scooping up all these places and they're doing what they're doing and I'm watching it happen and I'm watching them use different lenders.

This lender has a 5% dealer fee.

This one has a 12 one.

This one has a one, this one has a 15.

So all the 60, 70% of their business is financed.

They're using multiple lenders across the board with all sorts of dealer fees.

So they're losing money left and right when they could come to me and have like 8 no dealer fee programs across the board and they could actually have control of their margins and profitability and margin integrity for all of the PE groups that they're grouping them in.

And then they can maintain control of the lending facilities from the head office down with the relationship, it's like literally I sit here and watch it go, oh, there's another one.

I'm not going to name them.

I watched a large roofing one last week go from one big company to the other big company.

And those two big companies just compete against each other, but they're both the same.

And I called the guy, he's the CEO.

I said what are you doing?

I heard that you over to X and they're not with me.

I do all their commercial stuff because I don't want to impede on their contracts that they have with these Two knuckleheads.

They're both good companies.

I jokingly say knuckleheads.

They know who they are.

I said, what are you doing?

You just went from one to the other and they're both the same because all they do is copy each other and everything's the same.

Well, we weren't getting the level of approvals.

I said, you're gonna get the same approvals over there.

Yeah.

I said, you're still not going to have a sales rep training your people properly since you've done nothing but move sideways, not forward, but keep on doing what you're doing.

Hey, got any commercial deals with me to fund for you?

Like, it's like I, these, these private equity groups are smart guys.

You'd think that they look at the numbers and go, we should probably get our financing partners in place and make sure that we're using a good portfolio to maintain profitability and margins.

Yeah.

Stop throwing money out the back door.

No joke.

You know, it's the other side of the same coin which I, which I really love to talk about too, because this is where, you know, most of my community are more independent guys.

I have plenty of people and no shame, you know, no shade to the.

All of you that listen that are, you know, peo'd or anything like that.

Absolutely love you guys.

But at the same time, you know, this is also that conversation of how do we compete with that?

And it, it's the companies that are so aligned and have clarity on their own branding and they have, you know, their private labeling stuff and everything matches the flow start to finish and the customer journey.

And it lands, it lands right here.

You know, don't walk out the door.

Never let technology, never let the ability to not be able to get somebody financed stop the sale.

How many times do you sell a project and oh, they couldn't get financed.

So I guess I'm stuck.

Well, Sam, do you find some more options?

Sam, do you work with.

What asset class do you mostly work with?

Is it H vac, plumbing, electric or.

That's the biggest vertical.

But at this point, you know, the last several years, you know, we're with a meeting with a garage door company.

We've got.

Oh yeah, you name it, man.

We've got all over the map, everything from irrigation to California closet.

Somebody joined recently.

You know, it's.

It doesn't matter.

That's something that I can't repo.

A closet.

Exactly.

We, we about a month ago released.

We're actually a lender now.

We are of our own multi lending platform.

We have banks like US Bancorp, Citigroup and about 111 national credit unions that provide funds through my LOS.

So it's a bear to get enrolled with.

By the way, if you're listening to this and you want to get part of our family, just knuckle up and deal with it.

Getting you 111 bank keys ain't easy.

But just once you have it, you're going to love it because it's just enroll once and you'll have it forever.

But it's a multi lending platform where you make a soft credit pull application and it goes to the 111 credit unions and US Bancorp, Citigroup and it just goes.

And it algorithmically finds the best offer or an offer for the customer.

Maybe it's multiple offers.

Maybe it's an installment loan for 20 years, a699, no dealer fee five year and my, my dealer fees on the installment max is 2.75 by the way.

And then I have a five year no dealer fee that starts at 699 for Prime.

So you could have an installment, a revolver in a rental option for the customer.

Yeah, we do rental and lease for items that I can go tangible items I can go and remove from the house like garage doors and air conditioners and generators.

So we have a rental lease program too.

So if the customers has zero credit, which some of them do, like Broward county down in Broward, we've got some H Vac companies using it because they've got challenge credit like 375.

They can use our dollar down lease and rental program for H Vac and close the job.

So I love this.

You know, that's like, that's the tool in the toolbox approach.

If I keep saying it over and over, it makes sense.

Like if you didn't have the multi lending platform in your mobile app to offer to that person that doesn't have credit, then how do we help them?

Man, this is the coolest thing I've seen in a bit.

But you just flew through a bunch of stuff real fast.

Let's slow down a little bit and unpack this because there's a couple.

I get this question a lot.

Let's start with give us the real truth behind what a soft pool actually is.

And the information is bogus out there and it's very conflicting.

Does it actually hit a credit score?

All of these things.

So unpack a soft pool real quick and then let's go through.

It's hard to speak to all of the lenders I know from the lending facilities that we have in our portfolio.

And you know soft pull simply means this.

At the point of sale you can run a soft credit check pull real pre approval, a true approval.

Not like yeah we can give you 20,000 and then you install it and then they're like, they pull the hard credit pull.

Like sorry, just kidding.

Like everything that we do at improve is a soft credit pull up from everything.

Even my secured loans, even my commercial, we don't do any hard credit pulls up front at all.

So it's a real approval upfront.

Now it could show up, it could possibly show up as an inquiry but not a negative inquiry, just a soft credit pull.

Visible but it's not going.

To affect the number where it is signed.

And they've chosen their 8.49% 20 year installment loan.

Sure.

And they've signed their docs is when it rolls over to a hard credit pull.

Now some lenders are different because one of my lenders and I'll just pick on one, they could do a max approval.

So if you come in and sell a $27,000 home improvement, you could get approved to $50,000.

Now all of a sudden your sales.

Rep goes whoa, what else do you want to do?

Your gutters look like crap and your hardy board is falling off.

How about we do a forty thousand dollar home improvement and really increase the value of your home.

You're approved to $50,000.

Now the consumers as the ultimate decision if they want to just do the roof for 27 or do a whole home improvement project, it's their choice.

But we've got them approved to 50.

A real approval on a soft credit check.

When it rolls over to what they finalized on the home it could be 40, 45, 50, could be 50 is when it pulls over to the hard credit ball.

Now because they signed their docs and the tnl the truth in lending now it's a real loan and it's booked because it's an installment loan or it's a revolving loan or it's a this or it's a that's a secured loan.

Whatever it is.

Now it's on their credit report because we've got it solidified at 50, the number is settled and that's why we can't do a hard credit pull up front because if we do a modification or a change order in the home improvement project the number is going to keep changing.

So we can't book the loan and book the loan and book the loan.

The loan can only be Booked at the end when it's finalized.

Got it.

Okay.

Beautiful.

Perfect.

Hard credit pull, you know, Transunion, Experian, Equifax, it's all the same.

It's a real hard.

Now I know lenders out there that still do hard credit pulls, the top guys.

And I'm like, how are they still doing it?

And they do billions of dollars so they know they must have some rhyme or reason.

But I will not work with a lender in my portfolio and develop a relationship with somebody that does a hard credit pull up front.

I just won't do it because it's my philosophy.

I wouldn't want it done to me at the point of sale.

So I would never have a lender in my portfolio that does a hard credit pull up front.

Love this.

Not at all.

Let's take a step further and because I know there's a, especially the last handful of years, talk to us about this.

We say I go out, I sell a system or you know, a project and we do our pre approval and they say hey, you're approved for up to, you know, we've got all of our sheets printed here.

It could be this, this finance rate at this number.

We do the soft credit pool and then they come back with a different offer and say oh, we are not approved.

I know two companies that do that and I'm not going to talk about them but I'm going to, I'm going to frame this up differently so I'm not talking about them in home improvement.

So you go to the mailbox and you open up the mailbox and there's a bunch of junk mail in there.

And one of the pieces of junk mail sells says congratulations, you're approved to $37,500 for a personal loan to do whatever you want with home improvements, debt consolidation.

They did a schematic soft credit poll algorithm on you through the systems of the systems of the algorithms of the system.

And they've kind of figured out that because you maybe make this much and your credit score might be here and that you haven't missed your mortgage payment hopefully that you probably wouldn't may qualify for that because of your debt to income and your income ratios wherever you live.

That is a very loosey goosey thing.

Sure.

Because I actually worked at a company that did this and they used it as a marketing ploy.

We can put all these addresses in and you're going to get all these people pre approved off a stretch.

And then when they went out there was like a 43 hit exactly.

Now the people are.

People are pissed.

Contractor thought he had the job sold at 25.

Company that said it was going to be one thing and then now nobody gets approved for what we thought it was going to be.

No, it's just a marketing ploy.

And the companies that do that are mostly tied into personal loan worlds and algorithmic worlds where they have this out of data files and you can kind of guess that guy across the street there and that one down there and that one down there.

They can kind of guess what they might qualify for.

But my God, no.

Take the app at the point of sale, find out what the real pre approval is, where the real approval is, and sell the job accordingly to that.

Nice.

Because I mean it's already hard enough to sell.

Customers don't trust contractors and everything else that they're up against.

Now you got, you've lied to them that you say hey, you're Pre approved to 25.

What about the guys that go and install it for 25 and then they run it and they're like, like no.

Yeah, yeah, it was 17.

But also not just 17.

Sounds good though.

It's a good marketing point.

Instead of 6.9, you're gonna be paying 17 point.

Yeah.

Dump.

Dump a thousand leads in this system and we'll show you who's pre approved and then you go out and you sell to them.

That's like the old fashioned know before you go.

Yeah, they did that back in property assessed clean energy days and compliance people got in big trouble for that.

Yeah.

Because what was happening was this.

There's also a bunch of compliance things that this shouldn't be allowed.

Here's a reason why.

If you tell a salesperson that that customer's Pre approved for 75,000 and you go to that home, you're probably as a salesperson and you might wants to take advantage of that consumer to sell them something worth 75,000.

So the know before you go can really bite people in the butt as far as compliance goes.

I don't really, I'm not a huge fan of it.

And elderly people were unfortunately being taken advantage of in California, Florida with a property assessed clean energy program.

Because that's exactly what it did.

It was telling contractors what they could go out and sell to a homer based on the reverse equity in their house for the property assessed clean energy.

Our PACE loans.

Yep.

And they got the hammer came down and PACE is probably like a swear word now because it's a tax lien on a house.

Yeah.

And they were, people were losing their homes because they couldn't afford the tax assessment when it finally caught up in two years.

Dude, bad stuff, you know, and there's some, there's some really gross stuff happening in the home improvement industry right now with a lot of the platforms and the, the it is being looked at.

The FTC is looking into home improvement right now for these exact type things.

So what, what, what my mission is, and I know yours is too, is to raise the standard of the industry to do things the right way so that doesn't happen.

So we can really raise the integrity, bring trust back to the trades and, and do it the right way and serve it.

That's why we also love our clients.

I, I call our contractors clients because they're not commodities.

We love our clients to meet the customers where they'd like to be met.

Yeah.

And with all these days of rilla and spotty, like all the different tools out there that are recording in the home, don't think for a second that your customer's recording might be on too.

100%.

I mean, there are ring cameras right now.

We've got the ability to record at a moment's notice with anything.

Yeah.

I mean, so saying and doing the right thing will only help a contractor.

But could you imagine giving somebody full autonomy of, I don't know.

How would you like to pay?

You want to use your money or use ours?

Okay, cool.

I've asked them a cool question.

I've asked.

I didn't force them to take my financing.

I asked them, how do you want to pay?

Want to use your money or use ours?

Okay, cool.

They agree to use ours.

Yeah.

Now see what you apply.

We got a promo.

This is how a promo works.

And we've got a long term monthly payment option with no Prepay up to 20 years.

You'll be pre approved with a soft credit pole.

Okay, cool.

Or if you'd like to use the equity in your home, we could do that too.

I've done a full compliance.

I've asked them how they want to pay.

They've said this, I've said that.

I've done nothing.

Now they apply and they get approved.

It's their prerogative and choice if they'd like to take the offer or not.

It ain't mine.

I just asked how you want to pay.

Yeah, that's the right way to present in 2025 when everyone's got a camera, a ring, a thing, you're doing the right thing.

Guy asked me today, he goes, hey, I got a situation.

I said, let's hear it because he called the deal desk and I said, what's the situation?

We've got a deal desk.

By the way, this helps consumers and contractors if they're stuck in the mud at the point of sale and they need help with a deal.

Nice.

Imagine that somebody picks up the phone and actually talks anyway.

What a novel idea, actually.

Can you actually believe that a finance company would pick up their phone to talk to somebody?

Wow, that's amazing.

So he goes, I got a situation.

The sun is out of the country, he's overseas, and the grandmother wants to go look at his loan docks to see if he's doing the right thing or not.

I was like, what?

No.

I said no.

He goes, what do you mean no?

He goes, their family.

I go, I don't care.

Lender doesn't care.

Either wait for the son to get back from being overseas or have him.

It's.

Have him hop online.

Nobody's getting a password.

To go into someone's account to see.

No one's doing that.

No.

Geez.

I'm like, is this call being recorded?

Because this is.

But it's fine.

At least he called me and I told him, I said, oh, yeah, absolutely.

Don't be a part of that.

Talk about some privacy issues.

Say no.

Say no.

No, I'm like protecting the contractor.

Like, no, don't get involved in that malarkey.

Let the mom and the son figure it out themselves.

It's their loan.

Don't be telling people anything about it.

You go handle it yourself, kid.

So this is.

I get involved on the compliance side too, to help protect these damn contractors from being dragged into something they probably shouldn't be dragged into.

Oh my.

One one lawsuit like that would shut the whole company down.

I don't care what size you are, they rip your license out in a heartbeat.

Let's turn the corner here a little bit because there's something that I'd love to hear your perspective on.

And let's take a mindset shift because there's a lot of contractors and a lot of.

A lot of people I train, they have this resistance to offer financing if it has very high.

So it's kind of a two part question.

They have a resistance to offer financing if there's a very high interest rate or somebody just qualifies for that and.

Or they are really resistant to some of the no credit check options and the lease options because of some of the, you know, interest that the homeowner gets hit with.

Yeah.

My perspective has always been it's not Your fault.

They screwed their credit up.

You're there to help them solve their problem.

This is the vehicle that happens to solve the problem for them.

But I want to hear your take on all of this.

Yes, exactly that.

And I apologize because the people are below me now.

Can you hear them with the vacuum cleaner?

No, no, no.

Okay, good.

So everybody listen.

We're both battling something.

There's somebody weeding, right?

You've got the weed whacker, you've got the weed whacker.

And I've got the cleaning crew downstairs right now full on vacuuming in my ear.

So it's all good.

No, we can't hear it on this end.

Here's, here's the sitch.

Here's the situation.

I.

At Johnny Rockets Roofing, my consumer credit center.

I'm here to help you, Mr.

Mr.

Smith.

Now look, I don't know what your credit score is on a scale 1 to 10, but I'm willing to go and help you.

Our goal, because we have a, we have a mobile app with a prime lender, a near prime lender, a subprime lender, and we can use the equity loan, is to start the prime lender first.

Now, the neat thing about a prime lender is they may give you the best offer that you choose and get approved for.

However, if we can't get you approved, there's.

We're just going to keep working and fighting for you to see what type of approval we can get you.

Because remember, Sam, in the beginning we asked the customer how they wanted to pay.

They very could have.

They very easily could have said, here's my cash, check, credit card, insurance endorsement, mom's money, Bitcoin, horse and carriage, but they didn't.

They said they needed financing solutions because they didn't have any money or they wanted to leverage money, opm other people's money.

So we start prime, we go to near prime.

Decline, decline, subprime.

Mr.

Smith, we have to have a conversation.

Now, I don't know if any of your people are going to like this, but I'm gonna just tell you how it is.

I probably take the same angle you do, Mr.

Contractor.

It ain't your fault if the customer's sitting on a 575 because they've ruined their.

Their credit.

I just did a video on this yesterday.

It is the customer's prerogative.

They've.

If they've gone through something in life and unfortunately challenged their credit, and now it's not prime.

But because you have a consumer credit center, your job is still to try to help them.

The conversation is tough though man, because if we're selling a $10,500 unit because we built a 5% margin for dealer fee, in my next conversation with that customer on a buy deeper that's sitting on a 15 dealer fee might be this.

Mr.

Smith, we did everything we could.

We took you to our prime lender, we tried to do an equity loan, we took you to our near prime lender.

Unfortunately, we got to go to buy here pay here.

Hahaha.

Right.

I'm joking, but I'm not.

But let me tell you what buy here, pay here is or, or challenge credit or subprime.

They may charge you more money for this loan, man, but we're going to wrap it into the closing cost of this air conditioning or this home improvement because we're a contractor and we don't pay for dealer fees.

Mr.

Smith, let's see if we can get you approved and see if we can get you to prove and let's go from there.

Do you agree?

Yeah, I agree.

Cool.

Good.

Take it, scan it, swipe it.

Congratulations, Mr.

Smith.

Your interest rate is 20% on a 10 year term.

I've got to change the price from 105 to 11 5.

Why?

Well, you are a challenge credit customer and they charge money for this money.

And I can't put dealer fee on this 10,500 contract.

It's in the garbage.

And I rewrite the contract and the contract price is 11 5.

When you bought your home.

Educate, educate, educate.

The closing costs were rolled into your, into your home, correct?

Yes, they were.

Cool.

All right.

Now we're buying an air conditioning unit.

We're buying it through a buy Deeper credit place that makes money on the money they got to build it to get this risky loan done.

So your new price is 11 5, but you still don't have to come to the table with a penny.

It's 100 financing.

Now, Sam, there's a lot of contractors that can't or unwilling to have this conversation.

But how many contractors can afford to give away 10 or 15% on every single sale out there because they're unwilling to have uncomfortable conversations with homeowners?

Absolutely.

It isn't the roofers, the air conditioners, the siding, home improvement company's fault if a customer's challenge their credit down to a 550, 575.

Nor is it the contractor's responsibility to build Dylan a 20% dealer fee to cover the cost of financing for other customers.

Nope.

The contractor should be taking their portfolio, doing a Zero cost average across the board and being pretty fair.

And cash always equals credit.

The price is the price.

A cash customer pays 10, 5.

A prime customer case pays 10 5.

The guy that uses equity pays 10 5.

The guy that swipes a credit card is 10 5.

It's 10 5.

But I'll tell you what, if we have to cross the line and go to a lender that charges 15, 20% because it's by deeper, that 10,500 contract is null and void and it's in the garbage.

And our new price is 11, 5 or whatever the number is.

Because now I'm not in the business to go out of business.

I'm in the air conditioning, siding, roofing business.

I'm here to build the home improvement.

Your job is to pay me.

I'm giving you a lender that's giving you the money.

You're saying yes to it because it's your prerogative.

But that 105 is gone because we're a contractor and we don't pay dealer fees.

You pay for the cost of financing within the cost of the project just like you did your mortgage and they rolled in the closing costs.

Do you understand, Mr.

Smith?

Yes.

Cool.

Sign here.

It's a very uncomfortable tomorrow, but I'll be damned if I hear one more freaking call from a contractor saying that they're finding bankruptcy.

Why?

Well, we didn't build in proper margins or equity like.

It is never from financing, by the way away.

It's just, it's just, it's bad business.

But it's never from financing that people go out of business.

It's from making poor decisions in your business with your profit margins and your, and your profitability and how you're selling 100.

It's a dude.

It is a tough conversation.

And I don't know how you train a greenhorn to say what I just did.

Because I've been doing this for 31 years.

I would confidently have a conversation with the consumer so they'd be completely educated and fully disclosed on how everything works.

And I probably wouldn't be thrown out of the house.

They probably say yes to the dress.

They do say yes almost every time.

Because you're being honest.

Because I've sat in that same seat, you know, hundreds of times.

You have integrity.

You're being honest.

You're educating them on how lending works.

If they say no, then leave.

Because the next guy ain't gonna be able to sell it at 105 either.

No, nobody can offer this at those same programs.

So let's talk about the.

Talk about your lease program for a little bit because I'm super.

I know we're probably getting bumping up on time here pretty quick.

Y are.

I'm probably bumped up against something right now.

It's 2, 2 12, 30.

2 30.

Yeah.

Okay, gotcha.

Can you take a minute, just one super quick minute and talk about your lease program?

Yeah, we have it.

Okay, cool.

There we go.

Yeah, we've got a, we have a, we have a rental and a lease program built into the multi lending platform.

And if the customers, obviously if the customer's credit is challenged that much, those two offers will pop up for them to, to offer it.

I don't get into the intricacies piece of it.

I have somebody that manages the los to answer specific questions on the rental program because there's like, I think there's like one of them has like a 4% dealer fee and one of them is only a dollar down and the other one is like a minimum payment.

So there's a lot of different matrixes and nuances that my team deals with.

I just know that we have two great programs for H vac and kind of the people that are, you know, in that space that get into a rental and we call it a tangible item.

Tangible would be generator, air conditioning, garage door.

I know I was like, garage door, like the motor.

He's like the item, the actual item.

I'm like, I don't know if I want to do rental release on garage doors, but I guess.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know, the crazy thing is what we find is I've run a lot of people through that over the years and they don't miss payments, they don't want it taken away.

They find a way.

So, you know, it's a non issue, but it's another way to help them.

And that's, that's really the goals.

We're here to help.

We're here to serve.

Yeah, man.

Well, man, I know you gotta go, I gotta run.

I.

I've got, I'm so sorry if.

I, if I, I feel like I get on these things and I just go and I talk and I'm so sorry.

Beautiful.

So before you do give everybody.

How do they get in touch with you?

And, and for everybody listening, I'll make sure to get this in the liner notes.

It's super quick.

If you're on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe.

Okay.

Yeah.

How does everybody get in touch with you?

Because I know you're gonna have a lot of people reaching out, wanting to know about these programs because for everybody listening, I don't bring people on with it.

That's a vendor like this unless I truly believe in it and, and stand behind it.

That's why you've not referred, you know, all of the other lenders on this show.

Because I really don't think they're doing things very, very well or very.

There's good, there's some good ones out there.

Like good ones.

If we're.

I'll tell you if we, if one of my consultants gets on the phone and we've just determined that we're not the right party for them, which is perfectly fine because we're not right for everybody.

We're different, man.

We, we have this full platform.

We have training, we have lending, we have support.

We've got a mobile app, we've got.

We do three live trainings a week for people.

We're just so different.

We're not right for everybody, though.

Some people are just like, I just want my rate sheet and I'm not.

My rep that'll bring me donuts once a year.

Some people are perfectly fine with a commodity relationship vetting us, meaning improve if I isn't for everybody.

We're just not.

And it's okay.

I'll tell them where to go.

In a good way?

No, in a nice way.

I'll say, great.

If we're not the right party for you, this lender might be a good party.

And it's a competitor of mine and I don't care because there's 750,000 contractors out there that really need our help.

And we don't treat anybody differently.

We work with guys that are small.

Five man shops, one man shops, owner, operator, shops to companies that have 17 locations throughout the United States of 350 reps.

We treat everybody the same.

Everybody has the same pricing on their matrixes.

Nobody gets better pricing than someone else.

It's all the same.

Nice.

So how does somebody get a hold of us?

Just go to improvify.com, fill out the little form and it comes into our team and we've got, you know, 17 people here to, to help.

It's easiest.

Improvify.com.

Love it.

Well, man, thanks for being on the show.

Any, any parting words?

Any last nuggets you want to drop or no?

To have you on our tube cast.

Yeah.

100.

So we don't have a podcast.

We have a tube cast.

Cool.

Let's do it.

I'll get the invite out to you.

I'll have Katie send it out.

I'd love to interview you so you can do all the talking and I can just shut up.

Sounds good, man.

I like it.

Awesome, brother.

Thank you very much, Sam.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you.

This awesome.

I cannot wait to do some more stuff with you.

For everybody else, you know how we do go be somebody worth buying from and absolutely reach out to Chris.

This is.

This is definitely something that I think will move the needle in your organization immediately.

So go be somebody worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

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