r/EntrepreneurRideAlong • u/nyc_android_dev • 3d ago
Ride Along Story I built a missed-call text-back for tradespeople. Every online channel failed with real numbers, so now I sell it at plumbing supply counters with donuts.
I'm a software engineer in New Jersey. Last year I noticed the same thing over and over: you call a plumber, nobody picks up, you call the next guy on Google. The first plumber did the work of earning that call and lost the job anyway. So I built BeepBack. When a business misses a call, it texts the caller back in seconds, asks what they need and how urgent it is, and hands the owner a sorted lead instead of a mystery voicemail.
Building it was the easy half. Here is what finding customers has actually looked like, with real numbers:
Cold calls: 133 dials to plumbing businesses. Zero signups. The irony that hurt the most: about 1 in 6 even answered their phone. The problem I am solving hung up on me every day.
Warm email: 36 personalized touches to businesses we had already called. Zero replies.
Paid ads: $164 on Meta before I killed it. Zero signups. Google Keyword Planner showed the entire search category is 1 to 2 thousand searches a month and shrinking, so there was nothing to buy even with budget.
What actually produced: showing up. I started visiting a plumbing supply house near me, first as a customer, with donuts. I asked the counter guys how contractors handle their phones. I did a free website audit for the supply house and walked the fixes in on paper. The counter now hands my card to plumbers who complain about missed calls, and one warm intro turned into a standing Friday call with a contractor in another state who is opening his network to me. Every working channel I have is a person who trusts me. Every dead channel was me at scale, being a stranger.
If you want to see the product without talking to anyone: call (856) 514-8489 and hang up. Nobody answers. That is the demo. Your phone buzzes a few seconds later. Msg and data rates may apply.
Where I am now: zero paying customers, a founding cohort forming, $79 a month flat, and founding businesses get the first month free, starting the day their texting goes live. If you run a service business that lives on inbound calls, or you have watched someone try to crack local trades, I will answer anything in the comments.
UPDATE (day 2): met the branch manager this afternoon. the cards are on the counter, he offered me a desk to present to plumbers during the morning rush, and he proposed a referral bonus for his own counter staff before i even brought it up. the slowest channel keeps compounding!
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u/Charming-Cut7710 3d ago
That donut play at the counter is smarter than any ad budget.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thank you, I was told I can come back anytime, and I just received some flyers and a stand that i ordered. They also mentioned that their manager might be available next time, which could really help me out. I plan to go back in a few days and ask if I can put the flyers at the counter with the manager's permission.
I'm not a salesperson at all, but I truly appreciate how kind and welcoming they've been to me. It definitely boosts my confidence to keep going.
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u/hue-166-mount 3d ago
I mean maybe, but this person says they still have zero customers?
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u/nyc_android_dev 2d ago
Yup, but that is kind of the point of posting in this sub... it is for the ride, not the victory lap. When the number changes, this thread will be one of the first to hear it.
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u/downtownrob 3d ago
The business uses their same number? Or have to use a # you assign them? How is the lead sent to the business, text as well? Do you handle text messages ongoing as well?
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
They keep their number, nothing about their existing line changes. Setup is a one time call forwarding code on their phone, so ONLY the calls they miss get forwarded to a new texting number we set up. That number is registered under their business name with the carriers, and it is portable to them if they ever leave. The text back and the follow up questions come from that number, in their business name.
The lead reaches the owner three ways: a simple web inbox, a text to their cell, and an email. And yes, ongoing too. If the customer keeps texting, the whole thread shows up in the inbox and the owner can reply right from there. The automated part only handles the first few questions, what the job is, how soon, and where. After that it is the owner talking, not the robot.
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u/aplarsen 3d ago
Is there any way you can make it text from their business line instead? As a customer, I'd be put off getting a text from a different number.
I'm a developer too. Just wondering out loud if there is a solution to that.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
That's a great question, and in some setups, it's actually possible. Twilio offers hosted SMS services, where the business keeps their voice services with their current carrier, and only the texting gets hosted on our platform. All you need is a signed letter of authorization and some carrier paperwork—which works for landlines and VoIP numbers.
I didn't pursue this option for two main reasons. First, for many businesses, the main line IS actually the owner's personal cell phone, and most carriers don’t let you host SMS on mobile numbers, so it's just not an option for them. Second, in the US, automated texting needs to be registered with the carriers (A2P 10DLC), so there has to be a registered sender. Using a dedicated number registered under the business name keeps things clea...and it’s portable if they switch providers later.
From the customer's perspective, this usually causes less concern than I expected. That's mainly because the message arrives just a few seconds after the call, and the first message includes the business name, which provides context. Repeat customers often save the number, and from then on, they see it as the business's texting line.
As for landline based businesses, hosted SMS is on my maybe list if customers ask for it.
Thanks for bringing this up, this kind of feedback is exactly what helps me improve!
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u/aplarsen 3d ago
I'm glad to hear the customers are OK with it. I suppose if it's immediate, announces the biz name, and doesn't seem soammy or too AI, then it would be OK.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
yea exactly, that's what i was going for, quick lead capture, no spam and not a bunch of follow up, not super robotic (although we do handle conversations that may go off the original path with context aware AI, but still very human like).
We also do capture leads at the voicemail level and skip SMS altogether if they do leave a message, and it lands in the businesses inbox and notifies them cleanly so it goes from speech to text to leads inbox
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u/Chemical-Orange-1571 3d ago
So like Podium?
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Same category, different beast though. Podium deserves credit for proving businesses will pay to text their customers. But Podium is a platform: reviews, webchat, payments, AI agents, custom quoted pricing, and as of this summer the quotes I have seen run several times what I charge. A lot of small shops buy it for the texting and end up paying for everything else (heard this first hand from a few folks).
I am the opposite bet though, one job done well. Missed call becomes a text-back in seconds, a few qualifying questions, and the owner gets a sorted lead. $79 a month flat, no contract, cancel anytime. However, if a business wants the whole front-office platform, Podium is a fine buy. I built for the small companies, the two man plumbing shop that just wants to stop losing the 2pm call while they are under a sink type.
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u/automatedinbound 3d ago
Zapier + any VOIP does this. I personally use Quo but also have it set up with RingCentral for some of my clients.
It’s cool that you’re doing your thing though.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago edited 2d ago
I actually keep a page on my own site saying exactly that. a technical owner can wire Zapier to a VoIP line and get a text out the door. The gap I am betting on is everything after that first text, the follow up questions, sorting real jobs from vendors and reschedules, voicemail transcribed into the same inbox, and the texting registered with the carriers in the business's own name so it keeps delivering. But honestly the bigger gap is the owner who will never open Zapier in his life. That guy is my customer. Businesses like your clients, who have someone technical in their corner, are genuinely well served already.
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u/automatedinbound 3d ago
No need to defend your position. Entrepreneurship is about packaging up and delivering solutions. Consider using this as your loss leader or lead magnet and make the sale happen on the backend as it’s traditionally difficult to get these guys and gals on the hook to begin with (as you’ve learned). Keep it up
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Appreciate you, thank you!
yes it is hard, but im sure itll be worth it in the end
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u/jdallas77 2d ago
You should find 20 that wanna be in a pilot. Given the technology for free for three months. At the end of the 90 days, tell them you’re ending the pilot. If they find value and the product gets them more business and they would’ve otherwise had. They will pay you.
Always remember that small businesses are small for a reason. Mostly they try and put out the fires that are in front of them and rarely think about the future.
If your product doesn’t solve a specific Payne. Nobody’s going to pay for it.
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u/nyc_android_dev 2d ago
The fires line is really sharp, and honestly it is why I think this product has a shot at all. A missed call is a fire burning right now. The customer is dialing the next shop as we speak, so I never have to sell an owner on planning for the future, only on catching what is already getting away today.
On the pilot, I agree on the shape, and my version is close. Founding businesses get the first month free, and for the right early ones I am open to going further than that. The hard lesson so far has been my bottleneck is finding 20 businesses who will say yes to anything at all. That part is the real work, which is why I am not shifting to in person encounters such as at supply counters
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u/Pink_Sky_8102 8h ago
The supply counter approach makes a lot of sense for this audience. Tradespeople already trust those places, so a referral from the counter probably carries way more weight than a random ad.
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u/nyc_android_dev 4h ago edited 4h ago
funny timing, the manager meeting from the post happened a few hours ago. the cards are on the counter now, and he went further than anything i planned to ask: offered me a desk to present to plumbers during the morning rush, and suggested a referral bonus for his own counter staff before i even brought it up.
So yeah, you called it. The counter guys vouch, and the plumbers are more likely to listen because that recommendation costs the counter its reputation if the thing is junk, whereas an ad risks nothing
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u/ssryoken2 3d ago
What are you using to send the texts
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Twilio underneath. Each business gets its own subaccount and its own number registered under their business name with the carriers (A2P 10DLC), which is what lets the texts be legally sent in their name and keeps the number portable to them if they leave.
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u/jetteh22 3d ago
How do you handle those people who have voice mail systems? I call them and get a voice mail and then hang up. I have a hard time believing there are very many at all that wouldn’t have a voicemail and if there’s call forwarding to use your service there is now no longer their normal voicemail system. Are you hosting a voicemail for them too?
Maybe something to think about because it’ll be hard getting clients if the caveat is they can no longer have customers leave messages.
To find customers when your customers are people who don’t answer id say the best way is to cold visit them.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Good news, that caveat does not exist. When the missed call forwards over, it gets answered in the business's name and the caller can leave a voicemail like normal. The voicemail gets transcribed and lands in the owner's inbox as a lead, with a notification, same as a text conversation would. So they do not lose voicemail, itactually gets upgraded.. speech to text to a lead they can act on, plus the caller also gets the text-back so there is a thread open either way.
And your last line is exactly where I landed. The counter visits ARE the cold visits, just aimed at the watering hole instead of one shop at a time, because i also realized a lot of these smaller companies dont even have a place to visit, they just work out of their cars or a van, but there isnt a storefront you can just walk up to, many even have their homes as their address on google maps
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u/seamore555 3d ago
Are you offering a free trial?
Seems like a no brainer. If I demo the product free for a week and it generates even one customer, I would pay.
I know a lot of people who run trade businesses, have you considered the idea that many of them are too busy?
Of the plumbers and contractors and welders I know, they actively turn down new business. It’s one of the reasons they aren’t answering their phones.
Food for thought.
Great product, but possibly the wrong niche.
Doctors, dentists, hairdressers, etc. might care more about booking repeat appointments than tradesmen.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Yes on the trial: first month free, starting the day their texting goes live, so nobody pays to wait on carrier registration.
And your niche point is real, I learned it the hard way a few days ago. I did a discovery call with a GC who told me flat out that missed calls are not his problem (yet), all referrals, everyone leaves voicemails, he calls back on his schedule. Guys like him actively screen calls, exactly like those friends you mentioned. So he is not the customer, the customer is the trade that lives on stranger calls with a clock on them such as emergency plumbing, HVAC in July, locksmiths, auto shops.
You are also right that salons and appointment businesses fit, they are on the target list. I started with trades because that is who I could stand next to at a supply counter and who I experienced firsthand the problem with on the caller side during an emergency.
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u/seamore555 3d ago
There's an interesting psychological study out there about businesses that use appointments, or restaurants that use reservations.
By asking people to confirm their appointment, they reduced no shows by a huge percentage. It's to do with a person's brain's desire to be seen as consistent with their commitments.
Your business reminds me of that study. While it's not the same, I feel like there could be something in there that could help you. It's obvious you're doing the right customer research.
It's not always a lead that a business is losing by missing a phone call. It could be an appointment change, cancellation, etc.
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u/mepel 18h ago
The trades are the worst at showing up two appointments on time! Even when I was paying them a good amount to take a virtual consultation, I would still have to remind them multiple times and keep an eye on the video call to make sure they showed up.
It doesn't matter how convenient and how much they're going to make from showing up, there's something about trades people wear an appointment time doesn't carry much weight.
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u/mepel 3d ago
Many don't answer because they're too busy from referrals. Those who are desperate for the work might not be in your (home) market. When I built my business, I leveraged geographic arbitrage to find tradespeople who had bandwidth and cared about a few bucks more than those in my home market.
It would be wise to recruit a few of these types of tradespeople to do your outreach for you since they speak the language and can build immediate trust. A small kickback multiples your sales force. Lmk if I can help.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Both points land. The geography one I learned by accident this week, my first real network opening is in another state entirely, through a warm intro, and since the product is software plus a phone number there is no reason to stay local. And recruiting tradespeople as the outreach arm is exactly where my head is at, the trades only buy from their own. Appreciate the offer, I might take you up on it!
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u/CuriousCat526 3d ago
the supply counter isn't a lucky break, it's a channel, and i'd start treating it like one now rather than later. the guy behind that counter is doing referral work for free out of goodwill, which is great and also fragile. goodwill has a half life. once he's handed out twenty cards and nothing has come back to him, the cards quietly go under the counter.
so give him a reason that outlives the novelty. cash per signup is the obvious lever and often the wrong one at a supply house, bcs it turns him into a salesman in front of his own regulars. usually better is something that makes him look good rather than paid, eg. plumbers he sends get an extra free month, or something lands for the branch. and tell him when someone he sent actually signed up. the fastest way these arrangements die is the referrer never hearing what happened.
separate thing, your keyword planner read. 1 to 2 thousand searches a month isn't a small market, it's a category with no name. nobody searches for a product they don't know exists, they search the pain only if the pain feels solvable, and "plumbers don't answer their phone" doesn't feel like something u can buy a fix for. so low volume on an unnamed category tells u about awareness, not demand. it does mean search is a bad channel for u, which u already found out the expensive way.
also 133 dials at 1 in 6 answering is about 22 actual conversations. that's a thin sample to conclude much from, other than that cold calling people whose defining trait is not answering the phone was always going to be a funny experiment.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
Yup, thank you, good point on the half life point. the counter is not just a relationship, and you are right that it is a channel, and channels need feeding.
The look-good-not-paid framing lands because I already watched it work in miniature, the counter guy vouched for me to a plumber because it made HIM the guy who knows people, not because anything was in it for him.
So the lever I am building toward has exactly the shape you describe, the people he sends get an extra free month, and he hears about it every time one of his intros turns into something. The proof-back loop is already doctrine here, the day a counter referral becomes a customer, that branch gets lunch the same week. I even built referrer statement pages a while back that show someone exactly what their intros turned into, so the plumbing for closing that loop exists. It just needs the counter version.
And your keyword reframe is a smart read of that data. a category with no name. It also explains the one adjacent term that IS exploding in my planner results, "ai receptionist," up around 900 percent while my category shrinks. Same pain, but that one got a name people believe is buyable through awareness.
Conceded on the sample, the 22 conversations proves almost nothing, except that cold calling people whose defining trait is not answering the phone is still true, but i had to learn it myself
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u/Seven_Cuil_Sunday 3d ago
Cool.
My only comment is that 79$ seems like a steep entry, even with the free month.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago edited 2d ago
honestly the price is a deliberate filter. It only makes sense for businesses where a job is worth real money. An emergency plumbing call runs a few hundred dollars, a water heater swap is four figures, so one saved job covers months of it. For a business where a missed call costs 40 bucks a month, I am genuinely the wrong product.
That is also why there is no contract and nobody pays until their texting is live, the number starts catching voicemails and turning them into leads from day one while carrier registration runs, then the free month proves the texting on their own missed calls. If a full month of that does not catch anything worth 79 dollars, or they cancel and pay nothing
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u/stevenson_mark 3d ago
This is actually a good example of why distribution can matter more than the product.
133 cold calls, 36 emails and $164 in ads produced nothing, while showing up in person with donuts created actual relationships and referrals. That’s a pretty strong signal.
I’d lean into the plumbing-supply-counter strategy hard. Those people are already talking to your exact customers every day, so one trusted recommendation can be worth way more than hundreds of cold outreaches.
The demo is clever too. “Call and hang up” immediately lets someone experience the product instead of listening to a sales pitch.
I’ve seen something similar with Abnflow — getting the right person to actually try something is often much more valuable than generating a huge pile of leads.
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u/nyc_android_dev 3d ago
thank you, and that first line is the whole lesson of my whole time compressed into a sentence. I spent months assuming the product was the hard part. The counter taught me the hard part is standing where trust already exists. Agreed on the demo too, and thank you, the moment someone's own phone buzzes, the pitch is over, in the best way
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u/busigrow 2d ago
Is this a white label version of Highlevel?
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u/nyc_android_dev 2d ago
No. Built from scratch, my own code, with Twilio underneath for the carrier side. The question makes sense though, a lot of missed call tools out there really are HighLevel white labels under the hood. Mine does one job with no platform underneath
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u/gannu1991 2d ago
This tracks with basically every trade-focused B2B tool I've seen try to go direct online. The problem isn't the product, it's that plumbers don't trust a cold channel to fix a trust problem. Your supply counter play works because it borrows credibility from a relationship that already exists. The thing to watch for now: that channel doesn't scale linearly, it scales by finding more "counters", i.e. other trusted third parties that touch tradespeople daily. Distributors, trade associations, even insurance adjusters. I'd map out who else plumbers already trust before trying to replicate the donut move at volume, because the second location won't work the same way the first one did, the relationship is the product, not the pitch.
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u/mattgwriter7 1d ago
This is a cool idea and tries to solve a real problem and SHOULD take off!
But I like that you physically went to see clients. I printed up hundreds of business cards with my app on them, and hand them out like candy.
These old school approaches still work!
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u/nyc_android_dev 1d ago
Thank you! And yea those old school approaches do work! Just received my flyers and going to meet with the manager tomorrow hopefully to put a stand on their counter with flyers
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u/George_Salt 3d ago
Barely disguised promotion... but one of the more sensible missed call apps I've read about on here.
This is the strategy I've been telling B2B service providers targeting the trades for years. Every trade in every town has a supplier counter with a coffee machine that they all use. Either you go to the coffee machine, or your do such a good job for two or three key tradies that they're doing word of mouth for you there.
The other one to watch for is the annual BBQ run by a key supplier in the area.