Shownotes
Home service is now 4% of the US workforce and the fastest growing industry in the country, yet many successful businesses still struggle with basic invoicing and cash flow management.
Joe Kaye, a tech veteran who worked construction through college, started exploring investments in blue collar businesses and discovered a massive gap between the amount of work available and the systems companies used to actually get paid.
He teamed up with co-founder Luke to build Procured, a field service management software helping businesses get paid the same day jobs are completed instead of waiting weeks to send invoices.
We explore why younger people are choosing trades over college debt, how 60-70% of home service businesses now embrace technology, and Joe's rapid-fire revelations including his vendetta against Reese's for changing their formula and why being 10 minutes early means you're on time.
Highlights:
- Why tracking financials only when checks arrive creates cash flow chaos that makes it impossible to know if you can pay rent, staff, or buy equipment.
- The real cost of waiting 30-plus days to send invoices after completing jobs when you're paying for trucks, materials, and payroll today.
- How the gap between available work and getting paid is crushing successful businesses that should be thriving.
- Why younger workers choosing trades over college debt are forcing the industry to adopt technology or get left behind.
- The invoice that never gets sent because there's no system to track what's been completed versus what's been billed, leaving thousands of dollars on the table.
Subscribe to Blue Collar BS where we talk about the real gaps between generations in blue collar work and what it takes to lead across different age groups in today's trades.
Get in touch with Joe:
Get in touch with us:
Check out the Blue Collar BS website.
Steve Doyle:
Brad Herda:
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcripts
Welcome back everyone to this episode of BlueCaller BS. How you doing today, Brett?
Brad Herda (:am wonderful Mr. Stephen Doyle and what is life in Motor City Detroit today?
Steve Doyle (:it's, know, loving the snow. It's the eternal gray, which I love. I am. It's great. It's fantastic.
Brad Herda (:Here's sicko. The better part is we're recording this in early December on a Friday afternoon after the Detroit Lions took care of the Dallas Cowboys last night, which was always. So that was, that was good to see, right? So here's my little lion guy right here. Very happy.
Steve Doyle (:so nice. That was... It was good to see from...
Yeah, yeah, honestly, they played a lot better than they played on Thanksgiving, that's for sure.
Brad Herda (:Well, you know, when you're three and like 11 in on Thanksgiving games over the last 14 years or whatever it is, you're expected to lose. So it's all good.
Steve Doyle (:No. No, man. Where's the
Brad Herda (:I know you live there. I've also been a fan my entire life, Steve, so I have no expectations on Thanksgiving. I go to Thanksgiving with family. I go to Thanksgiving with family every year. They're you think they're going to win? I'm like, nope, not a chance.
Steve Doyle (:Oooooh
Steve Doyle (:Wow, where's your faith? Man, they call you you call yourself a fan? Really? Reality Wow, wow. Man, well, we could we could go down this path, but today we're not going to. So who do we have on the show today, Brad?
Brad Herda (:It's called reality. It's called reality. I can be a real fan with reality
Brad Herda (:Today we have the CEO and co-founder of a very cool tool that I think our audience is going to enjoy hearing about a little bit from Procured, a veteran known field service management software company. Joe Kay, he is here. We met through mutual connections, LinkedIn, whatever that was. We hooked up, had a conversation. And Joe, we are happy to have you here today to talk about Procured and your journey.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, thank you so much. Happy to be here. I also was a big fan of the Lions win last night. I was playing against a lot of Cowboys in fantasy football and so specifically Pickens having that terrible game was was really nice for me. So yeah, happy to be here and as a fellow Jeff and I, or as a Jeff and and a fellow miserable NFL fan. It's I know where you guys are coming from.
Steve Doyle (:Thank
Yeah.
Brad Herda (:You
Steve Doyle (:you
Steve Doyle (:I didn't say I was a Lions fan.
Brad Herda (:you at least have a Super Bowl underneath your your belt. We don't even have an appearance.
Joe Kaye (:okay.
Steve Doyle (:You
Joe Kaye (:You're good there.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah, you can't get out of the first round, so. So good, so before I forget, we we continue on with our conversation Joe, which generation do you do you identify with?
Brad Herda (:So, yeah, so it's all good.
Joe Kaye (:Thank you.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, Generation Y.
Steve Doyle (:Gen- Generation Y.
Joe Kaye (:is that's what i
Brad Herda (:XY that'd be millennial in case you wanted to use the big word.
Steve Doyle (:Do you?
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, so I did a quick Google. I was like, what gen am I involved in? So yeah, I'm a millennial. But regeneration Y is, as they say, as Google says. Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah, Per the Google machine, per the Google. So Joe, tell us how you got started down the journey of Procured.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, yeah, so it's, it's pretty exciting. And it's been a really, really fun journey. The home service industry is such an exciting place to be right now, as it's one of the fastest growing spaces in the country. I believe it's the fastest growing space in the country, right? It makes up 4 % of the US workforce. That is insane. And so I didn't know these things until I got really into the weeds, but
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:To answer your question long-windedly, I've been in the tech space for a really long time. I've been in the tech space for about 15, 16 years. And I was thinking about getting out. I wanted to get out of the tech space. AI is eating up jobs left and right. And I said, maybe I want to get back into the blue collar space. I had done construction all throughout college. I had a bunch of connections to pay for beers in college. I was doing a hammer. And I said, you know what?
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Herda (:Carry shingles here and there, get some beverages, you're all good.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, we were it was mostly it was mostly like post furniture install, like cleanup touch up jobs. So you know, anything from putting ceiling tiles into place to you know, fixing the fiberglass and the in the cubicles and all that stuff. Very, very labor intensive and all that good stuff. Right. But I still have a
Steve Doyle (:Hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:ton of connections and family that are involved in multiple different avenues of construction. And so, you know, I tapped them and I said, Hey, I'm interested in maybe being a silent partner or just trying to get back into the business. I've got a ton of really, really great knowledge about how businesses work because I've been a part of all these different startups. I really would love an opportunity to figure out a different way to kind of leverage my knowledge and get into the home service or blue collar space, however you want to slice it. And so
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:I started to connect with a bunch of business owners and I signed a bunch of NDAs and through my accountant, he connected me to a bunch of folks and it was, every single person was just, financials were all over the place. It was crazy. was, this check is in the mail. Yeah, I'm gonna get paid on this in six months. Yeah, we haven't sent that invoice out, but we did that job. And I'm...
I'm like, what the hell's going on here? There's this crazy miss in the market. How are these people running and still very successful businesses? Because there's so much work out there for these folks that are in the blue collar space, right? There's not enough people candidly in the space. And so the folks that are in this space are just getting crazy amounts of work. So I went to my account and I said, I can't, know, sanely...
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:invest in a business that does not know how they're collecting their money after they've completed a job. So I kind went to the drawing board. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, eventually. It's true. It really is true. And, you know, like, I had a business owner pull up an Excel file on a call when we were talking about investment in the business.
Brad Herda (:No, they do know how. They do know how. It's called Eventually.
Steve Doyle (:Yep.
Joe Kaye (:And I said, so this is how you're keeping track of all your financials today. And he said, yep. And I update it when a check comes in. And so I went back to the drawing board mentally and I said, all right, there's got to be a way I can take my technology, knowledge, and map it to the knowledge that I have in the blue collar space and the home service industry. And so the idea of Procured kind of came to through that process. And
my co founder, Luke is an incredibly smart guy. The way that he thinks about things, I think from A to B, he thinks about the galaxy, and then all the different ways from A to B that can be, you know, connected. It's just massively different on. Yeah, yeah. And I reached out to Luke and I said, Hey, you think you could build something like this? And he was like, give me a few days. Let me think about it. He called me back like 30 minutes later. And he was like, let's friggin do this.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:The cluster thinker versus the linear thinker.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:And that was about a year ago. So the rest is history. And we've been grinding and doing this startup ever since.
Brad Herda (:And so how has the adoption rate or the opportunity like so when you call the guy who's working on a spreadsheet and you say, Hey, I got the solution. Did he have interest in the solution? Did he care about the solution? Did he or was it just a I'm good. I'll just continue to write. I'll just record my checks in this Excel file when they show up. My wife will take care of
Steve Doyle (:That's cool.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, to be honest, it's a little bit of both, right? I'm not going to sit here and say every single person saying, damn, thanks, Joe, we procured. This is amazing. Let's sign up. I wish it was like that easy, but if it was, everybody would do it, I guess. But, you know, there's certainly a lot of folks that are that are ready to adopt tech. And I believe the number of
Steve Doyle (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:of home service businesses that are utilizing some type of technology in their day-to-day operations is around 60 to 70%, which has massively, massively increased in the last five years. And so when we think about the thought process around tech, it's no longer this elephant in the room. And then candidly, I also think that the home service industry is getting younger. I think that a lot of folks are saying, hey, college is not for me.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:yes.
Joe Kaye (:I personally just finished off paying my loans. want, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have to do what I just did with all the loans, right? And so folks that, you know, don't have to do that and can go making 10, 20, $30 an hour doing, you know, stuff with their hands right out of high school or go to a trade school and have a couple years to learn. I think that's a lot more enticing than it has been in the last few years.
Steve Doyle (:Right?
Brad Herda (:Right.
Brad Herda (:Yeah, I just was at a breakfast meeting with one of my young clients. He does a lot of earth work movement. And then he brought his buddy who just started his own landscaping company after being in different corporate roles for last five years, post-schools that are both in their late twenties, right? And they just out doing their own entrepreneur activities and doing their things.
this product is going to be very beneficial to introduce them to that, because right now it's kind of all over the map as to how they do their things and how do I create an invoice and where does it go and how quickly can I get it? And did I actually send the invoice out? Did I not send the invoice out? I got to wait back to get to the office and there's the there's the clipboard and there's this and there's it's yes. So this is a really cool tool.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, yeah, it's definitely helpful. I think even things like within Procured, can have different service locations, right? So if you're servicing a commercial business that has multiple service locations, how are you maintaining and managing that? And it can't be done on an Excel spreadsheet. It just simply can't. And so, yeah, I really do think that there's lot of value.
Brad Herda (:guys from a smart sheet may argue with you about that, but that's okay.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, there's certainly people that will argue that everything can be done on an Excel file. I've seen it.
Steve Doyle (:Yep.
Brad Herda (:Exactly.
Steve Doyle (:No, I'm so tired of staring at Excel files. So Joe, tell our audience, like from a high level overview standpoint, how does this work?
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, yeah, so it's a good question. I think we've got a lot of different features, but I call it our core four, which really are our most important features. And so those are requests, quotes, job management, and invoicing. Now, when it comes to requests, we actually have an embedded request form that lives on our client's website. And so this functions really as a top funnel lead capture. So I go to Joe Plummer's website.
I visit that website and I say, hey, I need to fix my refrigerator. It hasn't been working, et cetera, et cetera. I, as the business owner, get all that information collected and then put directly into Procured System. And that lives in Procured System for forever. And then you can manage everything off of that said client. So you can create a quote and send a quote directly out and say, hey, thanks so much, Steve, for requesting information from us, from Joe Plummer.
here's a quote of how much it would cost. Or you can even say, we need an onsite assessment or even assign a team member in Procured and have that team member say, hey, this is on you. You got to go do this at three o'clock on Monday. And so once you've accepted that quote, right, the next step is the job management function. And so our guys and gals are able to clock in and out on their phones directly on a job site. They can manage expenses within the job itself.
Steve Doyle (:Hmm.
Joe Kaye (:And then our fan favorite feature is the before and after photos. I call it the CYA pics really is what it is at the end of the day, right? And so what's great about that is you can manage the entire life cycle of a job. But remember, this all lives under the request that came in and the client within our system. So we're almost functioning as a sales force or like a client management tool outside of some of the things that we can do.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Herda (:Absolutely.
Joe Kaye (:And then that fourth and final piece is invoicing, which is pretty straightforward, right? It's, you know, we built this job or we did whatever we said we were going to do. The next step is to let's invoice. So let's get paid faster. And so we're able to invoice via text or email and we can actually track the flight of that invoice, which is really exciting, right? So you send that invoice out and you know, hey, I sent the invoice out at four o'clock on the fifth. Maybe I'm going to get it on the sixth or the seventh and you could actually see what's going on.
And there's additional things like for landscapers, we can actually map out lawns and map the square footage or square yardage and tie that directly to a quote. So, you know, really, really slick features, but I would say our core four is really what is utilized the most.
Steve Doyle (:Nice.
Steve Doyle (:That's fantastic. And from your audience or your target audience base, thinking of it, is there a tech adopt, like a group that is more apt to adopt tech for something like this that you've seen so far?
Brad Herda (:Nice.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, I think it's certainly the younger folks, right? The guys and gals that have just come out of school and they're ready to hit the pavement. They're definitely a lot more tech savvy. I see a lot of bigger businesses adopting tech. So anything between like a five to 15 truck business, for example, I would call that like a medium sized business in our space. But yeah, I think the more successful businesses have adopted technology.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:because it makes their life easier and it also makes their client's life easier. So I think it's a combination of the three. Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Right.
Brad Herda (:And then I guess the ultimate question I would have is for those that have, you know, that helped you beta and go forward and do the things, what kind of turnaround time from a cash cycle perspective have they shared with you to, you know, I know that we've had clients in the past where they were averaging
Steve Doyle (:you
Brad Herda (:Jobs completed. It's 30 to 35 days before the invoice goes out. I have a landscape personal landscaping company that does my stuff here. They will show up at my house on like a I'll say like the fifth of the month. I'll get the invoice dated the 30th of that month, but that invoice wasn't mailed until the 28th. And I may receive it like the third or fourth of the next month. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? This is ridiculous.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:You think I'm going to rush through and pay this invoice after you've taken a month to get it to me? No, thank you.
Joe Kaye (:I've said this a hundred times to a ton of different prospects and clients. When you finish the job, the best time is to send the invoice when they just see the finished job and they're like, damn, this looks great. Thank you so much. Here's the invoice. We've had clients that get paid same day as job completion. It's massively different when you can make their lives easier and send a text to literally collect payment.
I can send a text and say, here's the payment. Thanks so much. I'm doing it on my phone. just turn around times massively different. you know, I've heard the horror stories of the checks in the mail. I've heard the horror stories of saying, hey, we just finished the job. I'm going to send you an invoice and then you can send me a check, you know, when you're ready to go. It's just crazy. I can't even imagine running a business like that because you got to worry about cashflow. How am I going to pay the folks that work for me? How am I going to pay rent?
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:How am going to pay for the trucks? How am going to pay for X, Y, and Z? It's crazy. to me, the industry, that's one of the exciting things for me and Procured is this is a no-brainer. It should be a no-brainer. You got to start to identify how you're going to be using technology in your day to day.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:Correct. Yes, absolutely. And the opportunity to go from getting paid the same day, doing those things and being able to cover, not get on your line of credit, not get everything on your credit cards, not carry 42 % interest on credit card debt.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Brad Herda (:that just goes a long way on your business credit and allows you to go get the next piece of equipment and the capital and all those other things. And having a system that you can show somebody, hey, this is what I've done and not pull up a spreadsheet of maybe I got paid, maybe I did it. I'm going to the bank to look for a loan to get that new piece of equipment is just going to make it so much easier. There's so much benefit here. I stress how much benefit is here just from a system input and your system in particular, as we're talking about today, but just having something is better than nothing.
you know, the old ledger hand, the ledger books are writing it down. like, my gosh. there was one of my networking partners. they've been waiting on an invoice for over a year for work done on landscaping at their house.
Steve Doyle (:What?
Brad Herda (:Did I stutter? Did I stutter?
Steve Doyle (:What? Over a year for an invoice? I mean, at some point. Did the work get done? I got that, yeah. Wow.
Joe Kaye (:See in a minute.
Brad Herda (:Yes.
And it's not like it's a $50. It's not a $50 invoice or anything like that. It was for some hardscaping work that was done. And it's like, Oh, okay. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a five digit deal waiting on an invoice for five digits.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Madness.
Steve Doyle (:What? Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:What? Because you did the job for fun? Like, funsies? Like, that's insane.
Brad Herda (:And they're all left to the decimal point too.
Right.
Correct.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, that's that's I mean that speaks for itself,
Steve Doyle (:Absolutely insane. Wow. OK.
Brad Herda (:Correct. So, all right, I gotta go here. So there's the Metz stuff behind you.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Brad Herda (:Obviously, Steve's in Detroit. Are you guys going to go try to acquire the Detroit pitching staff in order to make your run?
Joe Kaye (:Well, we're gonna do something. Listen, as a Mets fan, you know, one of my favorite sayings is there's always next year. And so...
Brad Herda (:Yes, there is. And as a JetSpan too, it usually ends at week two.
Steve Doyle (:Are you saying that like in April or?
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, Look, we're loyal folks at ProCurred. We are Jets and Mets fans. There's no one more loyal than us, right? But all jokes aside, Uncle Steve, as I call him, Steve Cohen, is the greatest owner in sports. the Mets will have, I promise you, they will have their moment in the championship and they will win the World Series.
Steve Doyle (:Hehehehehe
Joe Kaye (:I promise it's inevitable. It is inevitable. What is the Thanos when he's like, I am inevitable, right? Isn't that what he says? That's Steve Cohen to the MLB.
Steve Doyle (:Okay.
Steve Doyle (:Wow, wow, that's that's some, some very, very cool.
Brad Herda (:Okay. You have our former GM and I know his MO. So he's gonna try to save you payroll dollars and then, right, we're gonna play a little money ball and hopefully it works out and you get the right team together.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Ooh, well, mean, it was a good movie.
Brad Herda (:It was a good movie. It was a good movie. So this is the part of the show we're gonna do a little rapid fire questions here, Joe. We're gonna ask you a few things, whatever comes to your head. It is an explicit show. So don't hold back. Favorite blue collar skill you wish more people had.
Joe Kaye (:Yep. Great movie.
Joe Kaye (:Let's do it.
Joe Kaye (:anything to do with HVAC.
Brad Herda (:If you had a time machine, what year are you going back to and why?
Steve Doyle (:You
Joe Kaye (:50s post world war ii like what what's the greatest time to be in america probably
Brad Herda (:I would agree that's awesome. would agree with you that it was a idea to go there or I'd go back to the Al Capone time. I the 30s before that just to go see what was going on. What's your favorite? What? Go ahead.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, yeah, yeah But but Sorry, sorry now I was gonna say that when you think about these times like you think you go back and you think about yourself being in like the kingpin, know, or like, know, I was I was you know, I was part of the best time of the 1950s out you know, so but but yeah, yeah, sorry god
Steve Doyle (:Aw yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:No worries. What's your go to excuse when running late?
Joe Kaye (:I often just say my bad, I missed it. I'm not a big excuse guy. Maybe not what you want to hear.
Brad Herda (:Okay.
Steve Doyle (:Alright.
Brad Herda (:Last time you got what were you doing? What were you doing the last time you got your hands dirty?
Joe Kaye (:Fixing a tire.
Brad Herda (:rate. Tell me it wasn't a freeway.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:No, glass bottle in a parking lot tucked under the tire. Just backing up. Didn't see it. Other side of the car. Glass bottle shattered. Massive. This happened literally about a month ago, actually. So, yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Huh.
Brad Herda (:least the weather wasn't too cold then for you.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:That wasn't too bad.
Brad Herda (:Let's see here beer bourbon or you're a kabocha person
Joe Kaye (:So I'm a Johnny Walker Scotch guy through and through. I love Johnny Walker.
Steve Doyle (:All right.
Brad Herda (:All right.
Steve Doyle (:Alright.
Brad Herda (:coffee or energy drink
Joe Kaye (:Coffee.
Brad Herda (:Go to Curse Word.
Favorite candy?
Joe Kaye (:Fuck. Used to be Reese's, not anymore because it's like, they changed, I, all right, I have a funny story of Reese's and I need to share this with the world.
Steve Doyle (:Wait, what? Okay, Reese's what? The peanut butter cup, the peanut butter cup.
Joe Kaye (:just Reese's cups or like or like Reese's like Christmas trees or the Reese's Halloween pumpkins yeah yeah so I'm a I was a die-hard Reese's guy all right I would go down I would fight to death this is the hill I would die on this is the candy that I something changed in flavor for me and I I it just it wasn't clicking anymore
Steve Doyle (:Yeah, so the peanut butter cups. Okay, not the the pieces.
Brad Herda (:Okay.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:I don't know if maybe I'd grown out of it. didn't know if it was me. Something was wrong, right? I knew something was wrong. sorry, I'm getting blown up on Slack. Let me turn that off. And so what I did was I actually reached out to Reese's and I asked them, I said, did you guys change your formula? Because I used to love your candy and I hate it now. And they wrote back to me and they said that they in fact did change their formula.
s to the: Brad Herda (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:Yeah, it tastes much flatter. Doesn't have that same richness to it. It just tastes more bleh. Okay, so since it used to be, now what's your favorite candy?
Joe Kaye (:I am anything like caramel that's like got the chocolate covering. I'm a sucker for But yeah, I mean it it's it breaks my heart when we talk about candy.
Steve Doyle (:You
Brad Herda (:Okay. Are you a text or call guy?
Joe Kaye (:I'm a big time call guy.
Brad Herda (:Hmm, not traditional for your Gen Y. Early Bird or Night Owl?
Steve Doyle (:Hm, that traditional millennial.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Well, as of right now, both. I'm up at 5 a.m. and I'm grinding away as we're building Procure. I was up this morning at 5 a.m. I worked out. Thankfully, it was like 10 degrees here in New York, so there was not a soul in the gym. And then, you know, I'm generally up until 11, 30, 12. So a little bit of both as of right now as we build Procure and we service our clients.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah.
Brad Herda (:We're on the clock.
Steve Doyle (:Yep.
Brad Herda (:Okay, favorite tool, either literally or metaphorically.
Joe Kaye (:So, I recently got a nice drill, like a a Milwaukee. And prior to that, I was using a screwdriver pretty much for the most but I live in an apartment. And a drill has has weirdly changed. I'm finding things to just fix or just screw put screws in.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:Okay.
Steve Doyle (:You
Brad Herda (:Many uses.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:because I just I need to use the drill I just need to use it so I would I would go with drill but but yeah yeah no drill drill
Steve Doyle (:You
Brad Herda (:All right, what was in your lunchbox today?
Joe Kaye (:So I eat a Honeycrisp Apple every single day at 3 p.m. This is a fun fact about me. This is a weird fact. I have a Honeycrisp every single day from the fridge.
Steve Doyle (:All right.
Brad Herda (:Okay.
Brad Herda (:All right, dream job as a kid.
Joe Kaye (:I wanted to be a scientist.
Brad Herda (:And you kind of are. You kind of are, just not that. Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Alright.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, data scientists, I guess, to some extent. Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:All right, this one could be controversial. Best pizza topping.
Joe Kaye (:Well, a good pizza doesn't need any toppings. All right. I want to be very clear on that.
Steve Doyle (:Ooooo
Brad Herda (:That's why I thought that you're in New York. I thought this could be controversial.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah!
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, yeah.
Brad Herda (:Let's just have some sauce on some dough. We'll call it good.
Joe Kaye (:we have the best pizza and there's, you can't argue it. You cannot argue it.
Brad Herda (:we can, but just not on this show. There's plenty of shows for that. It's just not this one.
Steve Doyle (:Well, we can.
Joe Kaye (:No. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those people are wrong. I think there's a spot that is not too far from where I currently live. And they put jalapeno slices, pepperoni, and then the spicy honey on top. And it is
Steve Doyle (:you
you
Steve Doyle (:Ooooo
Joe Kaye (:it hits different. It is a phenomenal, phenomenal slice of pizza.
Brad Herda (:Ooh, that sounds delish. I am so glad you didn't say pineapple. We might just have to come out to Procure on a field trip just to get the pizza.
Steve Doyle (:That does sound really good.
Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah.
Joe Kaye (:Right.
Brad Herda (:Last thing you googled.
Joe Kaye (:I am 34 years old what generation am I a part of?
Steve Doyle (:Yeah
Brad Herda (:Hahaha
Joe Kaye (:I had forgotten off the top of my head and I was like damn I gotta answer the question.
Steve Doyle (:Hahaha
Brad Herda (:Wait.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah!
Brad Herda (:Favorite movie quote.
Joe Kaye (:shoot favorite movie quote, I i'm a huge good fellas fan So I I love it's like, you know, I look like a gun? I amuse you I I love to use that when i'm messing around with with my buddies
Brad Herda (:Awesome. Biggest pet peeve at work. This is coming from the boss. So anybody listening as part of the team, pay attention.
Steve Doyle (:All right.
Joe Kaye (:being late to meetings, team meetings, even a minute late. When I was growing up, my dad told me that if you're not 10 minutes early, then you're late. And he's one of these guys, I swear to God, we would get to an airport before a flight, like two hours before the flight. And I'm talking about after we'd been through security. So really, we had gotten to the airport three hours ahead of schedule. And yeah.
Steve Doyle (:That's right.
Brad Herda (:Lombardi time.
Brad Herda (:Right, right. That was probably pre 9 11 as well on top of it.
Steve Doyle (:Yes, I understand that.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. and even like I grew up, played baseball my whole life. And, you know, even just when we were playing baseball, and he would drop me off for practice, he'd be like, all right, good luck. I'd get there 45 minutes before there's not a soul on the field. So I would warm up for like, you know, 3040 minutes. It's just something that's been ingrained in me as a kid to just be on time and 10 minutes early is late.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:Okay, favorite music.
Joe Kaye (:I play guitar, so I love guitar. Any type of guitar, really.
Brad Herda (:Okay, favorite sport?
Joe Kaye (:Baseball. Yeah.
Brad Herda (:Bucket list vacation location.
Joe Kaye (:I would love to go to Asia. want to go to Japan. hear Japan is really, really phenomenal.
Brad Herda (:Okay, book it for 2027 because that's what's going to happen once you go through this 2026 with procured. So book it now. Start planning it. Let's go. Let's make that happen. Living or dead, who would you want to have a conversation with?
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, I really should.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:I'm a big history buff, so I'd probably go with a famous general. I used the World War II analogy earlier on what my favorite time would probably be, just because I think that time in history is so crazy. So I'd probably want to talk with a general of some crazy war.
Brad Herda (:Like Patton as an example.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, Patton Churchill isn't really a general but like a leader of like the free world in in in europe, you know somebody somebody of that status, I would also love to meet jimmy hendrix and and Yeah, yeah, I think maybe like a george washington too. We'll throw them in there
Brad Herda (:Right.
Steve Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Steve Doyle (:Mm.
Brad Herda (:Okay and then the last one which you may or may not get as always because you are Gen Y Ginger or Mary Ann
Steve Doyle (:All right.
Steve Doyle (:out.
Joe Kaye (:Ginger or Mary Ann? Yeah, I don't.
Steve Doyle (:Yeah, Gilligan's Island.
Brad Herda (:Yeah, it's a Gilligan's Island reference. You'll have to go binge watch it on Netflix or something or on MeTV somewhere and then you can make the choice.
Joe Kaye (:I used to watch little clips on TV land back in the day. Yeah.
Brad Herda (:Yep.
Steve Doyle (:Probably.
Brad Herda (:So Joe, how do people find you? Where do they get a hold of you? Where do they get to get a demo of procured? I mean, we'll put a link in our in our show notes and things like that. But how do they find you otherwise?
Joe Kaye (:Yeah. So you can reach out to me directly at joseph at procured.us. You can also go to our website at procured.us. That's probably the easiest way to find us. As of right now, we're also get procured on Instagram. So if you want to check your socials, that's an easy way. You can shoot us a DM or just shoot me an email. Happy to have a conversation with you. We're pretty responsive. I'm up from five to midnight. So you'll get a hold of me.
Brad Herda (:Yep, I as as as we were going through this, I just sent the landscaping guy that I was talking about that earlier. I just sent him sent them a link to to the site with the pricing and things like that. And I said, hey, if this is of interest, I can make a direct connection right to the founder and you don't have to go through all the other the other steps. So we'll see where that goes. But
Steve Doyle (:Move.
Steve Doyle (:the stuff.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Brad Herda (:Joe, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day and coming on and sharing, procured and sharing some knowledge and sharing a little about yourself as we went through the rapid fires and let's get to know you a little bit better.
Joe Kaye (:Yeah, it was a pleasure, guys. I really appreciate the time today. excited to watch this when it comes out. yeah, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, you too. Take care, guys.
Brad Herda (:you
Steve Doyle (:Yeah. Yep. Bye.
Brad Herda (:All right, have a great weekend. Thanks.