From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
Pay Smarter, Grow Faster: A Conversation with FieldPay’s Flavia de la Fuente
The search for qualified HVAC talent has contractors desperate for innovative solutions. In this eye-opening conversation, Crystal welcomes Flavia De La Fuente, founder of Field Pay, who's pioneering a revolutionary approach to compensation that's transforming how service businesses recruit, retain, and motivate their teams.
Flavia reveals how today's workforce expectations have fundamentally shifted thanks to the gig economy. When 30% of young adults already earn from side hustles with instant payouts, the traditional two-week pay cycle feels increasingly outdated. This disconnect creates a massive opportunity for contractors willing to embrace new compensation models.
The magic of instant pay lies in its psychological impact. Research shows that merely having access to immediate payment options creates an effect equivalent to a 19% wage increase—without actually increasing base compensation. By connecting desired behaviors (weekend shifts, emergency calls, successful sales) with instant financial rewards, contractors can drive productivity while giving employees greater financial control.
"The marshmallow test shows us that people value choice in when they receive rewards," Flavia explains. "Instant pay is like saying: you accomplished something valuable, here's your reward, use it whenever you want." This approach transforms how technicians view challenging shifts from obligations to opportunities.
Perhaps most compelling is how instant pay revolutionizes recruitment. By attaching immediate bonuses to referral milestones—when candidates apply, interview, get hired, and reach retention anniversaries—contractors effectively turn their entire team into an engaged recruiting force. This creates a powerful cycle where team members actively help maintain the quality culture they value.
For contractors facing labor shortages and increasing wage demands, Field Pay offers a strategic approach to compensation that aligns business objectives with employee motivation. Those who adapt faster with smarter pay systems will gain significant advantages in building capacity, delivering exceptional customer experiences, and fostering stronger company cultures.
Ready to transform how you motivate your team? Visit myfieldpay.com to join the waitlist and be among the first to leverage this game-changing approach to compensation in the trades.
If you enjoyed this chat From the Yellow Chair, consider joining our newsletter, "Let's Sip Some Lemonade," where you can receive exclusive interviews, our bank of helpful downloadables, and updates on upcoming content.
Please consider following and drop a review below if you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to check out our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.
From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
Interested in being a guest on our show? Fill out this form!
We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
Oh, what's up? Lemonheads, welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I'm Crystal and today y'all listen when I talked to this friend the first time, we were just getting acquainted over women in HVACR, just talking to each other, and when she told me what she was doing, I was like, girl, you got to get on my podcast, because I love what we are going to talk about today, which is so. We are all looking for a unique way to stand out and hire new talent and do some unique things, and y'all, she has such a cool idea and a cool concept behind a product and an idea that us, as contractors, we have been struggling with finding something. Y'all, this is it. You're going to want to settle in. You're going to want to put those AirPods on high so you can hear what we have to say. But let's do it. Let's sip some lemonade, okay, y'all in the virtual lemonade stand today is Flavia De La Fuente. Thank God I'm from East Texas and I can at least recognize these names. But I love her name and I love her.
Speaker 1:We only got to talk for about an hour a couple of weeks ago, just getting acquainted. She wanted to get more involved with women in HVACR. We got introduced through a mutual acquaintance and we just started chatting and she said oh yeah, well, I'm actually starting this company where your team members get paid when they run extra, like work, extra time. That's the gist of it. And I was like hang on, press the brakes. This is such a unique way to get new talent, so I'm so excited to have you on the show today, flavia. Before we jump into all the cool stuff you've got going on, tell us a little bit about your background. Like why should anyone care what you have to say today? Sure.
Speaker 2:I just spent the past few years of my life working in another skilled trade. I worked with pool and spa service professionals at a company called Skimmer it's kind of like the service titan, but for pool and spa and we grew that company from just a few pool and spa service professionals to now serving over 6,000 pool and spa companies across the country. I got really hooked on services, on skilled trades, and just was working with a lot of owners, helping them build their businesses. Obviously, our offering was software and payments, but the thing that really kept people up at night and that we spent time talking about and working through was talent and recruiting great people and keeping great people and worrying about whether or not you're giving your best guy and these people that you're relying on the treatment that you want as a business owner who's trying to grow and meet certain goals. And one of the things that we worked on was we rolled out a payments product so you could invoice your end customer.
Speaker 2:But I spent a lot of time thinking about, honestly, the power of pay and the power of money as a thing we all need to lead our lives, and that eventually took us down the path of. You know. Your team is the company you build, and what better way than to align the objectives of the business with your team, than making sure that pay is properly utilized, and usually we just think about paying people more. But pay can come in different shapes and forms and at different times, and that's really what we're working on, and what I'm excited to talk about today is the new rules of pay.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. So I love that you come from the home service industry in a in a sense of you understand the struggle of getting qualified labor and then keeping them. So, um, as you know, I'm a big culture advocate so, like I'm a really big fan of man, you can keep people. Pay isn't everything, but pay is definitely something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Whether we like it or not. Yes, yeah, pay is important. So we can try to sugarcoat it and be like, oh, they don't just stay for pay. You're right, they don't just stay for pay, but pay is very impactful when it comes to the considerations that all of these technicians and listen, there's a call right now. There's a call to more people, to the industry, and so you, as a contractor, you need to get innovative. You need to start thinking outside the box, outside the realms of what you've always heard and thought, and so I love this idea of this is a way that you can use to recruit, you can use to retain, and honestly, motivation. So just because someone's not ready to leave the company doesn't mean they don't need another motivation to sell some extra products or work a few extra time, and so every one of us here would know what a good opportunity you have when you now have people lined up to take extra shifts, lined up to work on the weekends, and so I love it. But one thing that you did tell me is you know and we were talking the other day is how pay expectations have changed. Right, so you know.
Speaker 1:A quick story I was here at Lemon Seed. You know we were getting ready to hire some people and you know they're coming out of college and I say I make a joke all the time like, still smells like pampers, right? Still smell like a fresh box of diapers, you know, and they're young and they're they're excited, but at the end of the day, they don't know anything. They know a lot of theory about marketing or business or finance or social media, whatever. They know a lot of theory, but it's the application, right, it's the actual utilization of the skills that they've learned in a real environment.
Speaker 1:But they come out guns blazing like you know what I need to make $150,000 a year with no experience coming right out of school, and so pay expectations have definitely changed and, honestly, skilled tradesmen now know what they're worth, and so they come out pushing. So you've got to figure out a way to be an interesting, at least approach to things. So I love this. One key point that you sent me when we were prepping is 30% of young adults have earned money from side. I call it side gigs, side hustles, right? So it's those little injections of quick cash, right? Is that what you?
Speaker 2:said that's right. And it's the whole experience of like I want a thing, I want to go on a trip, I need to pay the rent, and there's this whole universe of platforms out there where you can pick up a hustle, pick up a side gig, and it's a really frictionless experience and you can get paid out really, really quickly. So somebody is basically saying here's a thing, here's a behavior that I want a task accomplished and really quickly. Right behind it is the pay when that's done. And part of this is, you know, everybody's got, you know, at least two financial apps of some kind. People are really comfortable with the.
Speaker 1:Venmo Uber Cash Apps.
Speaker 2:Right and like when you, when you use that stuff, it's like, oh, this is so simple, this is so easy, I can just send money around and they start to build in their head this expectation of like, well, why doesn't my employer pay me like that Like of like well, why doesn't my employer pay me like that Like, why isn't it that easy? Why, why not? Why shouldn't I get paid kind of just in time? So even if, you know, not everybody's going to do gig work, but these experiences and kind of the larger ripple effects of how big the gig economy is, it trickles out and it just starts to influence how people think about how and when they're going to get paid.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you're like, hey, work hard, sell some cool stuff, and then in two weeks you're going to see that $20. Yeah, it gets lost in a lot of things when now this is a cool opportunity for them to be like man, I went and hustled. So when you drive, you know Lyft or DoorDash or whatever that pay is pretty instantaneous, right, pretty quick. So if you're on it, like, let's say, you're getting ready to go on a trip, and you're like man, I could go work these two weekends, get the cash now get the money. There's just, it's just a cool way of thinking it. But speed matters. Like if anybody that's listening to this is not very much aware of the fact that the majority of people think that instantaneous, everything should be instantaneous. You should answer your phone Anytime I call, you should respond to my message Anytime I text and like're not just competing with every other company now.
Speaker 1:You've got to find something that stands out about how quickly you get paid. But so I love the other idea, like when you were telling me you were like man, I created instant pay because it felt like a raise. I think it feels like a raise to the employees. Well, you know, I was sitting here like, oh my gosh, I love this for our people. So I don't just love it for me as the contractor, I love it for my people, like this is a cool way.
Speaker 1:Now, listen, we're not in charge of their financial literacy. Okay, so get out of their pocketbook, get out of their heads in a sense, and you can always educate, but at the end of the day, you don't understand, maybe, what they're going through. Maybe they're a young family and they need some formula. You don't know. Maybe they just want to go eat at Papa John's, I don't know, but it's not our place Right. And at the end of the day, your job is to run a profitable company that is supplying resources and solutions for homeowners, and so whatever keeps your team motivated, especially those of you that have younger team members.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you're, you're a business, you're trying to grow, you're trying to get some stuff done and I'll give you the. Have you ever heard of the marshmallow test, Crystal?
Speaker 1:No, but I'm so excited to hear it.
Speaker 2:Okay, who doesn't right? So marshmallow test is basically you put a marshmallow in front of somebody on a table and say, hey, if you wait 10 minutes I'll give you two marshmallows, or you can just eat that one marshmallow in front of you right now. So we're thinking about pay, right, like, where's the marshmallow? I work today. I get paid in a week, or or in two weeks, or, you know, commission runs, or once a month. This is a little different. This is like, hey, you just completed a task or you just, you know, sold that repair. Here's the marshmallow, you can eat it whenever you want. You earned it. Here it is, and you can wait a week or you can eat it right now. It's none of my business, but you earned it and you're talking about this.
Speaker 2:These are your employees and they have their own needs. Your interest as a business owner is getting stuff done right and this is aligning their needs with your needs. And the dream here is whatever desired behaviors you want from your team. Hey guys, I want clean trucks. Hey guys, I want us to hit our 24-7, 24-hour SLA for all of our membership customers. I want us to be available to them over the weekend. Everybody's got these enhancements and targets to grow the business, and usually those wins are they come in a different form for most of the employee base. But if you can wrap instant pay around a win, you win, they win and your business moves forward. So that's really what we're interested in building for all these businesses.
Speaker 1:I love it. And you know they stay longer and they tend to pick up, you know, just opportunities. So, instead of looking at it like dreading it, they start looking at it as an opportunity. It's an opportunity. And again, like, yes, you're still going to have maybe there's some times that shifts don't get picked up. But faster pay does drive behavior, just like a raise, but without that burden. And it's self-owned, earned, I'm sorry, self-earned, so you're not really investing. Like well, I'll just pay you more At the end of the day. Like they can make more money if they hustle for it. Right so.
Speaker 1:But service, you know service departments and businesses like heating and air conditioning, pest control and things like that. We have tough demands, right so, like we're on call, we've got emergency work, we've got holiday work, we've got seasonality we're busy, we're not busy. You know, we just ride this roller coaster of seasonality and it's all different for the different trades. But like, how could this type of pay incentive be used to actually activate those teams during those crunch times? Like you know, is it just out of? You know, hey, now's a good opportunity. Like what do you? How do we deal with the tumultuousness that is our life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm, you know, having come from pool and spa, very familiar with egregious seasonality around services and skilled trades. And look, it's pretty simple, right, you have your team and that's generally a fixed cost, right. But opportunity is like this and there's spikes in heat or in weather that can drive a lot of the environmental factors around whether or not the phones are ringing or they're not. And you know, for an average and I come from pool and there's a lot of recurring work, right, you're paying your monthly pool bill and, as a lot of HVAC businesses build out membership base, you have this recurring work. Well, what's the lifetime value of that customer and what are you willing to do to make sure that they don't cancel on you or leave that membership package that you won you upsold, and the data suggests that there's thousands of dollars of average lifetime value in these memberships. If they call on a Friday and they say, hey, no heat or sorry, no cool, I need somebody, and your team is not running weekends and you're pushing stuff to Monday, is it worth $100 bonus to send somebody out to save Cheryl on a Saturday so she doesn't cancel her membership? If not, she's thinking to herself well, what am I paying for? So, as an owner, you want to think about where are those peaks and what are you willing to make available to your team in those peaks to go win the day, and if not, you are deferring stuff to the subsequent week. You are running risk in terms of speed to fulfillment and you know there's a lot of focus on speed to lead today with voice agents and picking up the phone.
Speaker 2:But the second half of the equation is how quickly can you actually get somebody out there?
Speaker 2:And if you can say, hey guys, I'm going to attach an instant pay incentive to this opportunity in particular, you're going to have a lot more hand raisers than you would otherwise because they're going to do the service call and they can, at the end of the day, you know, a hundred bucks to go to Papa John's or whatever it is they want to do.
Speaker 2:That desired behavior was followed really quickly by the financial incentive and you know one of the folks that we're working with that we're building this for, he's like I was, like I'm just trying to teach my teams that you know making money feels good and it's fun and at the end of the day you can go spend the money after you did a really hard thing and, uh, you know these are really grueling days. Um, you know, I know you're either spending time in an attic or you're in an Arizona sun for six, seven hours cleaning pools. And if you can feel at the end of the day and see that spendable money in your pocket, things happen and you're likelier to come in the next day things happen and you're, you're likelier to come in the next day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I'll say that really stuck with me is you know, and I'm a culture queen, I'm, I'm so hung up on the culture because, at the end of the day, you're right People, they have to choose to walk away from their family or, let's be honest, like those of you that live in this nice idea of four seasons of life, like I have in Texas, it's either hot or less hot, but like they're, they're choosing to go work instead of being on the lake with their family, instead of taking, you know, maybe being at a little league game or something. So this whole like it's a nice trade when you can say, hey, I, I did have to give this up, but I needed this money for this or for that, like I don't know. I just love the idea that when you align the pay with the behaviors that you need the most as the owner of, like you need somebody that is incentivized to work those awkward times. Because you're a service business, right, like you want to be serving your people, how do you serve your employees and your community at the same time? And it's incentivization, right? I might've made that word up but incentivizing them. So I love this idea.
Speaker 1:So, but let's talk real quick. Let's talk about hiring. So recruiting is one of the hardest parts of running a service-based business, right? So I know, and we've alluded to it a lot here. But how does instant pay help here? Like, I have some ideas that jump into my head, but you know, like those quick, like referrals, like hey, you sent me somebody, I hired them. Boom, here's a little bit of cash. What were your?
Speaker 2:No, that's, that's absolutely on the right path. And the original you know the original conception here is you know I talked to a lot of folks. The original you know the original conception here is you know, I talk to a lot of folks and I, you know, you're a professional marketer, crystal, so you know all about funnels and you ask people and if you think about hiring as a funnel, you can ask people, hey, where do you spend the most money on hiring? And they'll say, oh, linkedin, or maybe recruiters. I'm like, okay, what's your best performing channel for hiring? And they'll say, oh, referrals. So it's like, well, let's think about what it looks like to wrap referrals around instant pay.
Speaker 2:And usually most people announce employee referral programs to their teams and then just kind of forget about it. Right, it's tough to action. But if you say, hey, guys, we're going to run a referral bonus and if you send me a good lead, we're willing to pay for that nominal amount, right, like 25 bucks, oh, this guy looks really good. If he actually shows up to interview, I'll pay you 50 bucks. So you're kind of de-risking your hiring with these small rewards.
Speaker 2:You can actually think about how to weaponize your own team and go recruit. You know there's lots of different checkpoints that you could target, of course, the biggest one being hey signing day and 90 days of retention, or 180, like. As soon as that event happens, you'll get paid out instantly. So that is how we're thinking about. You know there's a there's a person moving through your experience as an employer and if you can wrap instant pay around these experiences, you can accelerate their time or accelerate and minimize their time in the funnel in different stages, and there's always going to be more buy-in when it comes from referrals.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's someone they trust.
Speaker 1:Well, I have this whole thought. Like we say this all the time, birds of a feather flock together, right? So if you were to look at your entire team and identify the people that you wish you could replicate and duplicate, right, I wish I could have four. You know, sarah's, or whatever right I wish I could have four. You know, sarah's, or whatever right I wish I could have four. John's right. I love how he works. He's dedicated, he fits our culture. So most likely, or more than likely, he is hanging out with other people like himself or similar to himself.
Speaker 1:So when you can incentivize them to talk about their company in a way that is rewarding, so one thing you could do is give them that instant bonus. Like hey, we hired them, you could give them a small click for just a referral. You could give them a bigger bump if they actually get hired. And then every year, on that person's anniversary, when hey, you get a little extra bump, like we did this for a while, like we were given a thousand dollars after someone got hired, right, and then every year that that person stayed employed with the company was a $500 referral.
Speaker 1:Now, listen, you got all of a sudden when your buddy's like man, I hate this job, I'm quitting. You're like, hang on just a minute, what's going on? How can I help you? Right All of a sudden, and those instant like hey, today is his one year anniversary. Boom, $500 hits their account. They're like, heck, yeah Again. All of y'all are begging for different ways to recruit and retain and we're giving it to y'all. But people will be like, oh, the naysayers, that's expensive. If $500, if a person staying with you year after year is not worth 500 bucks, then you're devaluing the power of a solid team. So absolutely.
Speaker 2:And you can run the math on, like what is the lifetime value of a single hire? Right? Like how much, how much bottom line does a single hire generate over the course of three years? A good one, right? And those are like, that's just math. And if, if, driving the acquisition of that lifetime value, it has its own efficiencies, right? So you can either continue to, you know, spray the top of the funnel with branding, and you know, and Indeed, right, right right Zip recruiters, all the recruiting softwares out there.
Speaker 1:You know you can definitely keep doing all of that, but there's nothing that, to me, moves as efficiently and quickly. And listen, everybody wins. Your own team member walked away with a little bit more money and they gave you someone that you were hopefully looking for. You know, speeding up reward payouts will definitely turn your current team into your best recruiting channel. Okay, so, speeding up rewards payouts definitely turns your current team into your best recruiting channel, but so this is really what the heart of why you're building this tool that you're building and this is what really attracted me is number one. Thank you for having the mindset that helps contractors be able to reward people and retain and recruit. So thank you for thinking outside the box of that, and this is what is like at the heart of what you're creating. So tell us why you think you're. This approach is very different for the trades right now.
Speaker 2:It's a different approach, but it is something that is already making its way out through the rest of the world in other industries and I just see no reason why it shouldn't be and couldn't be applied to the trades. You know, the research shows that just having access not even using it, just having access to instant pay experiences drives the same productivity as a 19% wage increase. So without even increasing somebody's wage, just having access to instant pay makes people feel financially more well off, which is incredible but also makes a lot of sense. You know we talked about marshmallow test earlier. You know, somebody puts a marshmallow in front of you and you can have it right away, or you can have two and five minutes.
Speaker 2:Instant pay is like hey, you accomplished something, here's a marshmallow, eat it whenever you want. Of course, do what you want to do with it, right. So that that's at the core of what we're doing, and we really believe that when you as a business want to drive growth and everybody who's ever managed any kind of sales team knows right like financial incentives plus desired behavior, and the closer you can bring the financial incentive to a desired behavior, the more results you're going to get and it should be simple and understandable and receivable on the same day, after you've had a hard day getting stuff done for the business that you're helping build and that's you know. That's the real vision and dream behind what we're working on at field pay love this, love it.
Speaker 1:So I really love that you guys are basically existing just to help us grow, help these contractors grow, um activating their team and being so exciting. So, hey, real quick. So I know, field pay isn't even, is it not quite live yet? Right, it's super's, super close. We're close.
Speaker 2:We're close, we are building it right now, which is really exciting, and we're talking to a lot of people about what it should look like, what it should feel like. So if this is even remotely interesting to you, I would love to chat. I love to meet everybody. If you are in Texas, definitely reach out. I love traveling around the state and meeting people. And if you're just interested in driving growth for your business, if you know and understand that your team, ultimately, and the individuals on your team are going to make or break your business, and you're looking for ways to address your fixed cost and these big spikes of opportunity that's what we're trying to work towards is these new rules around how to scale and activate your team to meet your goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I love it. You've been amazing. The product is amazing. I cannot wait so.
Speaker 1:But, guys, here's the big picture. Right, the way you pray your team is no longer just about a payroll clerk, it's no longer just about working it into your accounting and your P&L, like we got to think outside the box here. So it's about culture, it's about retaining, it's about recruitment, it's about motivation and, most importantly, it's about growth. So a lot of you have big, audacious goals and you need capacity to be able to do that, and this is one way that you can address your capacity. So businesses that adapt faster with smarter pay, will be able to recruit and retain better. They're going to be able to just deliver a stronger customer experience and an employee culture experience.
Speaker 1:So Flavia has done a great job today. It is awesome. We really loved it. I really encourage you to go over to myfieldpaycom, join her wait list, connect with her somehow to get on the front edge of this product releasing. If you need help getting connected, feel free to email us over at Lemon Seed at hello at lemonseedmarketingcom. I would love to talk to you about your brand and your strategy and your culture and tell you how you could really also make field pay work for you. So thanks for listening to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. Hope you have a great day and we will catch you next time.