Data Is Only for the Big Guys? With Anthony Limpert of Data for Trades

Full Transcript

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1. 0:03Announcer

   From Clickflame. This is Smoke and Receipts. The hype goes up in smoke. We bring the receipts.

2. 0:12Justin

   Alright, Marcus. We've got a guest today who knows where every receipt on this show comes from.

3. 0:18Marcus

   The boss is in the building.

4. 0:21Justin

   Today's hype. Data is only for the big guys. The chains and the national brands buy the numbers. The little shop down the street just guesses.

5. 0:30Marcus

   Guess the price. Guess the labor rate. Hope for the best.

6. 0:35Justin

   Our guest just launched a site called Data for Trades. Anthony Limpert. Tell everybody who you are.

7. 0:42Anthony Limpert

   Hey, I'm Anthony Limpert. I run Supercanic, a mobile mechanic business in Riverside County, and Shop Desk, the software it runs on. I started Clickflame back in two thousand four, the same year I finished my computer science degree at the University of Akron. So I've been building websites, and digging up the numbers behind them, for a long time.

8. 1:06Marcus

   So what is Data for Trades? Give it to me in one breath.

9. 1:09Anthony Limpert

   It's clean public data for local trades. License lists, pest control companies, wage tables, rent tables, and real auto repair jobs. Right now it's over five hundred eighteen thousand rows, across fourteen datasets, in nine industries. And every file has a free five percent sample. You don't pay a dime to see what's in it.

10. 1:34Marcus

    Five hundred eighteen thousand rows. Where does all that come from?

11. 1:38Anthony Limpert

    Most of it, we already had. We build directories for the trades, so we've been pulling license lists and business data for a long time. It was just sitting in folders. So I thought, let's clean it up, and let owners, agencies, and writers actually use it.

12. 1:54Justin

    Give me the big ones.

13. 1:56Anthony Limpert

    The biggest one is the California contractor license file. Two hundred forty four thousand licenses. Pest control is twenty two thousand companies, in all fifty states and DC, plus over thirteen thousand records from fifteen state license lists. Then there's government data, like wages by job, fair market rents, health centers, and dental providers.

14. 2:22Marcus

    Okay. But the one I want to talk about is the auto repair jobs. Because those are real jobs, from real customers.

15. 2:30Anthony Limpert

    Right. That one's ours. Two thousand six hundred thirty two jobs, from Supercanic and the shops on Shop Desk. That's August twenty twenty five through October twenty twenty six. Seventy five percent of them were done at the customer's home or work. And diagnostics were the biggest category, twenty eight percent of all the jobs.

16. 2:52Justin

    Now hold on. Real customers, real cars. What about their privacy?

17. 2:57Anthony Limpert

    That was the first thing I thought about. There are no names, no phone numbers, no plates, no full VINs, and no shop names in there. Every number we show in public comes from a group of at least fifteen jobs, so nobody can point at one person. We put it in the privacy policies on Supercanic and Shop Desk, too. Your customers' personal information is never sold.

18. 3:21Marcus

    Good. Now tell them about the shop price crawl, because that one got me.

19. 3:26Anthony Limpert

    We crawled twenty two thousand independent shop websites, and we were able to read about eighteen thousand of them. Only two hundred seven of them post an hourly labor rate. That's about one shop in a hundred. And the ones that do post it, the median is a hundred twenty nine dollars an hour.

20. 3:44Marcus

    One shop in a hundred. Everybody's hiding the rate, man.

21. 3:49Anthony Limpert

    And that's the whole point. Shops hide the rate, because they think it scares people off. What really scares people off is not knowing. Put your rate on your site, right next to a couple of real jobs and what they cost.

22. 4:03Justin

    So who is this for? Who's buying?

23. 4:05Anthony Limpert

    Independent owners first. Then the agencies, and the writers who work for them. If you write for a mechanic or a pest control company, you need real numbers, not made up ones. Now you've got them, with a source and a date.

24. 4:21Justin

    Does it actually move the needle, Anthony? Give me a receipt.

25. 4:24Anthony Limpert

    Our pre purchase inspection site, PrePurchaseAuto, went from two Google clicks to two thousand six hundred seventy two, in matching eight week windows. Paid inspections went from four to fifty five. MechanicRank went from one thousand forty eight sessions to nine thousand nine hundred forty three, over two equal twenty four day windows, with the bot traffic taken out. Both of those sites are built on real prices from real jobs.

26. 4:54Marcus

    Two clicks to over twenty six hundred. That's a receipt, man.

27. 4:58Justin

    Last one. Why put it out there at all? You could just keep the data to yourself.

28. 5:03Anthony Limpert

    We've got one rule across everything we build. Do good first. Help independent owners grow, ahead of just making money. The big chains already have this kind of data. The guy running a two bay shop doesn't. Now he can look at it for free.

29. 5:18Justin

    Where do people find it?

30. 5:20Anthony Limpert

    Datafortrades.com. Grab the free sample, put the numbers on your site, and answer your customer's question before they have to ask.

31. 5:29Justin

    Data for trades dot com. Alright, Marcus. Data is only for the big guys. Smoke, or receipts?

32. 5:38Marcus

    Smoke.

33. 5:41Justin

    Smoke. Over half a million rows, a free sample on every file, and real repair jobs with nobody's name on them. The little guy has the numbers now. Anthony, thank you for coming on.

34. 5:54Marcus

    Talk is cheap, man.

35. 5:56Justin

    We are action.

36. 5:58Announcer

    That was Smoke and Receipts, from Clickflame. Find us at clickflame dot com. Like, subscribe, follow, and grow together. Leave a comment who you are, and how we helped you grow.